Divided Rainbow

Chapters

One: Dropping By The Boutique
Two: High-Flying Lovebirds
Three: She's On Autopilot, He Needs Saving
Four: Not The Rescuer He'd Expected
Five: Medical Care
Six: Welcome Home, Lero
Seven: Living The Wrong Lives
Eight: The Cottage Dweller
Nine: Exemption List
Ten: To Embrace Or To Spurn
Eleven: Cyan Feather
Thirteen: Dog Walkers And Rain Makers
Fourteen: Pinkie Pie Talks About Oranges
Fifteen: Cutie Mark Chronicler
Sixteen: White Rose
Seventeen: Welcome Home, Lyra
Bonus Guest Chapter: Where The Heart Is
Eighteen: Rarity Lowers The Temperature
Nineteen: Rainbow Dash Entertains Some Guests
Twenty: Early Anniversary
Twenty-One: Three Diamonds
Twenty-Two: Comedy Coaches
Twenty-Three: Cards On The Table
Twenty-Four: Visions Of Elsewhere
Twenty-Five: Taking Things To The Next Level
Twenty-Six: Sextet
Twenty-Seven: Parent-Teacher Conference
Twenty-Eight: Sunshade And Moonshine
Twenty-Nine: War Of The Heavens
Thirty: Unsavory Sorts
Thirty-One: Human Stallion
Thirty-Three: That We All Better Relate
Thirty-Four: Cat's Out Of The Bag
Thirty-Five: Gem Hunters
Thirty-Six: Fluttershy Hosts A Party
Thirty-Seven: Forbidden Knowledge
Thirty-Eight: Applejack Partners Up
Forty: Jockeying For More Swaps
Forty-One: Common Foe
Prologue: Most Outspoken Supporter
Twelve: Through Any Kind Of Weather
Xenophoolia: (2 of 6) But I Look A Little Closer And It Starts To Feel Familiar Too
Thirty-Two: The Sworn Archenemy Of All Mankind
Thirty-Nine: Idyllic Equilibrium

One: Dropping By The Boutique

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Two: High-Flying Lovebirds

It had been a long time since Lero had been on a roller coaster, but there were only two things he’d ever really disliked about them. The first was long lines. The second was the short duration of the rides themselves: just a minute or so of thrilling twists and turns, then, bam: ‘Thank you for riding the Screamin’ Demon, please exit to your right.’ There was a trivia book he’d read once which said the longest roller coaster ride ever ran for a little over four minutes. The adult in Lero knew that this was quite an impressive feat. But the wishful child in him had always secretly dreamed of one day riding a roller coaster that went on even longer.

Lero didn’t know WHERE Dash was getting the boundless energy from, but he could hardly be happier. Rainbow Dash seemed pretty much dead-set-determined on being every roller coaster he had ever ridden on, in his life, and then some... all in one go!

She corkscrewed. She looped-the-loop. She barrel rolled. She cobra rolled. She bobbed and weaved zigzags and serpentine patterns up and down through the air at an ever-increasing speed! Best of all, she did things roller coasters weren’t even capable of.

She whirled around a cloud, faster and faster and faster, compressing it into a tight, tight ball. She kicked a lightning bolt out of another grey cloud, and then nosedived to outrace it to the ground. The lightning bolt barely beat her, but she pulled back up into the air at the last possible nanosecond.

It was magnificent. Dash knew exactly what she was doing; at no point did Lero ever get motion sickness. The ride was just as fantastic three hours in as the first minute. What was more, at no point did Lero ever truly fear for his life; it was pure exhilaration without ever being scary!

Dash paused to regard a particularly huge and towering cloud.

“Hang tight, big guy!” she crowed, and launched herself at it. She cycloned around the immense, formless monstrosity at her fastest yet, again and again, cutting around it and into it in erratic unpredictable patterns. It was all Lero could do to cling tightly to her neck and squeeze his eyes shut... until he felt that she’d stopped moving.

“Whaddaya think?” she asked him proudly.

Lero opened his eyes. The cloud statue Dash had sculpted was as big as that of Abraham Lincoln in the Lincoln Memorial. It showed Rainbow Dash, herself, rearing up on her hind legs, grinning cockily. A pose worthy of a superhero comic’s cover.

Lero whistled in awe. “That’s the finest pirate ship I’ve ever seen!”

“PIRATE SHIP?!” Dash sputtered.

Lero laughed and ruffled his lover’s mane. “It’s beautiful. You make a first-rate cloud, Rainbow!”

“I can still buck you off,” she said, finally settling down upon a flatter, puffier cloud, with a yawn. “And now I’m totally bushed.”

Without even really thinking about it, the two of them shifted position. Dash rolled over upon her back, and Lero lay upon her. Chest to chest. She hooked her forelegs around his shoulders, hugging him to her while shutting her eyes with a dreamy smile.

Sweat beaded on Lero’s head. “So, uh, do you want to... do it?”

“Mmmm... nah,” she answered.

“Why not?”

“Well, you don’t have a cloud-walking spell cast on you,” she breathed, still smiling, still not opening her eyes. “So when you pull your pants off, stud-muffin, they’re gonna fall aaaaaaaall the way to the ground. And I’m not gonna go fetch ‘em for you.”

“So what do we do here?”

“We shut our eyes and take a little nap together on this cozy little cloud.”

Lero took a nervous look over the side of their cloud. “Dash... we must be hundreds of feet up from the ground, and your body’s the only thing preventing me from falling! What if...?”

“You won’t fall,” she promised.

“But...!”

“Ssshh,” she whispered, kissing his face. “Let me be your hammock. Let me be your safety net.”

He felt her wings enfolding him from behind, blanketing him. He sighed.

“If you drop me in your sleep, I’ll haunt you forever.”

“Mmm-hmm.” She pressed against him all the more snugly, as though he were her favorite teddy bear. “Shush now. Sleep with me.”

The sunlight on the back of his head was warm. And so was Dash, underneath him...

* * *

The dreams Lero had on that cloud were a surreal collage of mishmashed random weirdness. Same as every other time he slept, really.

His first dream was most vivid. Lero dreamt he was being born. The OB/GYN was pulling him out of his mother. He reached towards his mom with his tiny infant hands, wailing. But the OB/GYN was a unicorn. His mother was a unicorn too, while his dad was a pegasus. Even though they were ponies, Lero still recognized his parents for who they were supposed to be. His mom levitated a blanket around him, and nuzzled him lovingly with her snout.

Then the dream skipped forward to the day of his eighth birthday. Lero went from room to room of his house, playing and socializing with his classmates and friends. They too, were all ponies. Unlike the ponies of Equestria, everypony on Earth was fully clothed... even down to hoof-shaped sneakers on their hind legs!

Lero would’ve loved to have seen what his friends’ cutie marks were, but there was no hope of that since they were all hidden under everypony’s pants or dresses. Every so often, somepony would ask or joke about his humanness, but all in good fun.

He peered into the kitchen. There was his mom, putting the finishing touches on his birthday cake. Only it wasn’t JUST Mom; other mares were assisting her. His... herd-mothers! He recognized Sheila Winslow, Mom’s all-time best friend she’d had since her high school days. Mrs. Yates, their friendly next-door neighbor, (or would she be ‘Mrs. Michaelides,’ in this reality?) And even... was that pegasus Vivian Danielson, Mom’s supervisor from work? Mom had LOATHED this woman with all her heart. Whenever she and Dad discussed her at the dinner table, she’d always refer to Miss Vivian as either a tyrant or a demon.

Lero watched Mom steal a quick, deep kiss with Miss Vivian when they thought all their herdmates’ backs were turned.

“Cut that out, you two!” Mrs. Yates scolded, with a soft kick to both of them. “There are FOALS, here... eight-year-olds! We’ll all have PLENTY of time for that tonight!” Then she noticed Lero. “Oh, hey, sweetie, why don’t you go get your friends together at the dining room? It’s just about time to bring out the cake!”

So he did. His mothers placed a paper birthday crown on his head, and set the cake on the table: it was shaped like a roasted pig. There was even a real apple in its jaws. Everypony sang Happy Birthday for him, he blew out his candles, and the cake was sliced up. He dug in. Flowers, sugar cubes and hay had been baked into his cake, and his ice cream tasted like a salt lick.

The other dreams went much quicker. He was playing Street Fighter II, only the fighters had all been replaced with Sesame Street characters. He picked Count Von Count, and K.O.ed Elmo by spin-pile-driving him into the floor, Zangief-style.

Then he was in a tavern, trying to wrench a bottle of absinthe from Absinthe’s mouth. “I’m SUPPOSED to drink this!” the colt insisted, drunkenly. “Look!” And the colt showed him an absinthe bottle on his flank.

Then he had a rather terrifying dream about returning to the World-Before-Equestria. It nearly woke him up.

Then Lero dreamt he was in a zoo. All the bars on the cages melted away, and the animals rushed out ferociously to attack him all at once, so he fought them off with a hunting rifle. He’d gunned down a jaguar, two toucans, and a dingo, when a weird-colored cloud floated above his head and showered acid upon him. So he ran for all his worth.

Then he was in a chapel, wearing a white tuxedo. Ponies on the bride’s side, ponies on his own side... an Earth pony priest up at the altar but... hold the phone! The bride... the bride was human! Lero ran up the aisle to have a look at her. Yes, a woman. Her figure was so beautiful and shapely! He reached to pull the veil off her face.

Kiss. Kiss. Kiss.

“Lero?” Dash’s voice called out to him. “Listen carefully to me. Don’t move a muscle, but I want you to open your eyes.”

He did so.

“I dreamed of you,” said Dash, stroking his hair softly with a hoof. “Did you dream of me?”

“...Yes,” he told her. It was a much easier, more romantic answer than the truth. (Why did all the truly bizarre dreams never feel strange during the dream, itself?) He looked past their cloud. “Where exactly are we, anyway?”

Carefully, Dash rolled over on her stomach, so she could see the land beneath them, right-side-up.

“Oh, it looks like we’re right above the Bramblewood Forest. It’s a good ways east of Ponyville.”

“Bramblewood Forest, huh?”

“Yeah. You see all those huge ugly brown things that kinda look like dead trees? Down there, and there and there? Bramble bushes.”

Lero’s eyes widened. “Holy... it’s kinda hard for me to judge from way up here, but those look to be the size of full-grown redwoods!”

“Yep. That’s how big they grow, ‘round these parts.”

Lero caught sight of a railway track, and his followed it to what looked like a town, near the horizon. “What’s that, over there?”

“Oh, that’s Bramblewood Town. Minotaurs live there, as well as a lot of ponies. I don’t visit there often.”

The human glanced over at the sun, which would soon be setting. “Do you think we can pick up a quick dinner there?”

“In Bramblewood Town? Not the most romantic place for a meal, but okay, sure, if you’re hungry. Hop on.”

So Lero climbed on Dash’s back, and she sprang off. A few seconds later, the large bird collided headlong into Lero’s face.

* * *

Spike was wiping down the glass display case which housed the Elements of Harmony, first with a wet rag, then a dry one. When cleaning this display, he always went a little slower than he did with the rest of the house, just for the sake of marveling at the Elements.

A red lightning bolt. A blue balloon. An orange apple. A pink butterfly. A purple diamond. And the majestic star crowning Twilight’s tiara. Like cereal marshmallows, only shinier and crunchier.

There was a tiny part of the dragon — a little devil on his shoulder — that had always secretly wondered what these one-of-a-kind gems would taste like? And would they give him superpowers? Like, if he were to eat the Element of Laughter, would he become funnier? Would Magic make him a wizard-dragon? Not that he had would ever seriously go and do it! The Elements of Harmony were what made Twilight and his friends heroes, one forbidden fruit Spike was happy to leave unpicked. Princess Celestia had been right to trust Twilight Sparkle with them, and Twilight trusted him, and he’d rather die than betray either one of them and leave the world open to the next Discord-level monster.

Smiling, he finished cleaning the glass, and was moving on to another countertop when Twilight entered the room, levitating the book the Princess had mailed to her.

“Okay,” she told herself, with a deep breath. “I think I’m ready. Wherever Dash and Lero are, they ought to be far enough away, and if I procrastinate any longer, I’m never going to get it done.”

Spike folded his arms peevishly. “Hey, how come you’re fretting about Dash and Lyra and Lero being ‘far enough away,’ but ME being in the danger zone is all hunky-dory?!”

Twilight beamed down at the little guy with absolute sweetness. “Oh, Spike, you’re taking this entirely the wrong way. The reason I want you here is because I trust you more with this sort of thing.”

“Really? You mean that?”

“Of course! I love Lyra, Lero, and Dash with all my heart, but you’ve been my number one assistant from the beginning! You’re the one I want by my side when strange magic is involved! With a spell like this... if something should go amiss, especially to me... I feel confident knowing you’re there for me, Spike!”

Proudly, Spike puffed his chest, arms akimbo. “Well, what are we waiting for?! Let’s do this thing! Er... one second, though.”

The baby dragon dashed out the door, then zipped back in wearing an army helmet and pillows roped around his body.

“Okay! Let ‘er rip!”

Twilight flipped Starswirl's ancient spellbook to its final page.

* * *

It had flown into him too fast — a feathery blur — for Lero to identify what kind of bird had struck him. Could’ve been a duck, could’ve been a goose, could’ve been some completely different magical Equestrian bird that would’ve been right at home in a Dr. Seuss book.

Regardless, he was knocked right off of Rainbow Dash.

It took a moment for the pegasus’ brain to register that the weight of her stallion had left her back. She turned around, watching the love of her life plummet toward the ground. His arms flailed; he was screaming.

She screamed louder, a great, long horrified, “NOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!” and dived after him to save him.

If she’d been going fast before, goofing around and showing off with barrel rolls and cloud-sculpting, it was nothing compared to now. Her wings beat for everything they were worth! C’mon adrenaline! she thought. Give me everything you got! Her lungs burned. Her wings shrieked in agony. She ignored everything but Lero.

At first she sought to calm herself: Don’t panic, Rainbow! You’ve done this before, remember? With Rarity? You’ll do it again here, too! Just push it to the max, give it everything you got, and you’ll Sonic Rainboom Lero right outta danger!

But hysteria overwhelmed her in seconds.

No, no, no! This can’t be happening! Why aren’t I catching up?! Please, Celestia, I gotta save him, I gotta! I’ll never ever forgive myself if... oh, Lero, Lero, Lero, LERO, LERO, LEROLEROLERO....!

* * *

“From one to another,
Another to one,
A mark of one’s destiny
Singled out alone, fulfilled.”

* * *

Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark vanished from her flank, leaving it completely bare. Instantly, the pegasus’ heart and mind went utterly, utterly blank. Eyes wide, but not truly seeing anything, bereft of any emotion. The pegasus’ body slowed to a complete stop. She was now more or less just... suspended there, in midair, like a hanged criminal from a noose.

Lero’s jaw dropped in pure unadulterated shock as his body disappeared into a tower-tall mass of brown brambles.

Thirty seconds passed. And then a trio of pink butterflies appeared where there had once been a rainbow-colored thunderbolt bursting from a cloud.

“My animals...” she murmured; a toneless, deadened sound.

And she flew off westward, towards Ponyville, at a tepid speed.

* * *

“Did anything happen?” asked Twilight. “Anything whatsoever?”

Spike looked around, at himself, at Twilight, and all around the room. “Nothing I can see.”

“Huh. A dud spell, is it? Well, Princess Celestia did say it was unfinished. Probably needs... something-or-another. Think I’ll go research it a bit in the library.”

Spike yawned. “Think I’m gonna hit the hay, myself.”

When she sighed in disappointment, the young dragon patted Twilight. “Hey, look on the bright side, Twilight! At least nothing happened. Could’ve been an Equestria-shattering kaboom!"

“Don’t even JOKE about that!”

* * *

When the trio of diamonds faded off Rarity’s body, it was like a puppet’s strings were cut. The fashionista fell face-forward against the side of her own sewing machine, and just remained that way, unmoving, until the mark which had vanished from Rainbow Dash’s flank reappeared on her own.

Her head lifted back up. Rarity’s eyes were vacant. Unblinking.

“My stallion...” murmured the unicorn, in a very faraway voice.

Like a sleepwalker, she turned from the sewing machine. Surprisingly, as she was passing by her vanity, her body jerked to a stop. She stepped up to the vanity, regarding her reflection hollowly. With robotic precision and lack of ego, she proceeded to restyle a small swatch of of her mane into a little braid. A perfect match to that worn by Lero Michealides.

BANG. BANG. BANG.

Rarity heard pounding on the front door, downstairs, and proceeded towards it. Not for the pounding’s sake; she simply happened to be heading there, anyway.

BANG. BANG. CRACK!

A pair of back hooves kicked a hole through the front door. Any other day, Rarity might have screamed or fled, or shouted threats at the intruder. Instead, she merely remained where she was standing and unlocked the door with her magic.

The door opened to reveal Applejack. Despite the fact that she’d been in the middle of breaking and entering, there was no anger or hostility or alarm or anything whatsoever on the Earth pony’s face. The emptiness which sat in Applejack’s eyes was the same as that in Rarity’s own.

Both of them walked forward. Their shoulders bumped against each other, their sides slid alongside one another like two pieces of wheeled luggage at a train station. No words were spoken.

While Applejack ascended the stairs, towards the room with the sewing machine, Rarity stepped outside, and set off in an eastwardly direction.

* * *

Lero coaxed his eyes open, taking stock of his new surroundings.

Author's Note

For those of you who're worried, the 'sleepwalker/zombie' state all of Twilight's friends are in is just a temporary thing: it'll run its course fully by the next chapter. Then they'll have personalities again, and the REAL fun can begin.

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Three: She's On Autopilot, He Needs Saving

The ‘Brambles Towers’ of the Bramblewood Forest were a most remarkable specimen of Equestrian flora.

Bramble Towers were bramble bushes that grew upward to the size and shape of huge cylindrical towers, (some ponies also likened them to large spiny lighthouses.) The largest Bramble Tower in the Bramblewood Forest rose to a height of 117 feet, with a diameter of 12 feet.

When Lero Michealides plunged nine thousand feet from the sky, he landed, more-or-less, dead-center in the midst of a Bramble Tower. He’d achieved quite a velocity. To put it in terms of an actual tower, Lero could be said to have crashed through seven floors, and his body was now lodged midway in the first floor.

The good news was: he was alive. On his way down, the bramble branches had snapped under Lero’s body like so many potato chips — nothing at all like hard, unyielding tree wood — slowing the speed of his fall down to nothing.

The bad news was: brambles. Thick, sharp, oh-so-thorny BRAMBLES.

Thorns above him. Thorns below him. Three hundred sixty degrees of thorns. Not a wall, nor a floor, just a claustrophobic rat’s nest of these horrible little forest-grown spikes. He dangled from these thorny branches like laundry pinned to a clothesline, (if one were using thumbtacks for clothespins); so many of them were caught in his clothing and skin. Overall, the experience was somewhat like being inside a moderately kinder iron maiden.

Two things had saved Lero from death by a thousand tiny cuts. The first was the outfit he was wearing. The upper atmosphere was quite a chilly place to fly through, so he’d made sure to dress in thick, layered clothing before climbing on Dash. The second was that the moment he’d felt the first sharp pricks upon his skin, he’d curled his body into the tightest little ball he could, squeezing his eyes shut, tucking in his neck.

“HELP!” he called out. “HELP! SOMEONE! ANYONE! DASH! WHERE ARE YOU?! Please... someone... please... HELP!”

* * *

Eastward. She trekked eastward. Never in her life had she been so singularly singleminded about anything.

* * *

Remaining motionless with all these thorns sticking into him was painful. Movement was agony, even down to the faintest tilt of his neck. But Lero forced himself. Wherever Dash was, whatever had happened to her... these thorns were unendurable, his one and only priority right now was escaping them!

He extended an arm outward. It was like wading through a swimming pool with broken glass instead of water. Bramble thorns scraped him as he reached forward, further, further... he closed his fingers around a branch, (it felt a lot like grabbing barbed wire.) Gritting his teeth, he pulled the rest of his body forward.

Through the web of bramble branches, Lero could see the darkness of the night.

* * *

She trotted across hills. Through forests, and Diamond Dog territory. There was a river of mud, and she swam uncaringly right through the neck-high muck, not stopping to clean herself off when she reached the opposite side, letting it dry on her coat. Never speaking, rarely blinking, unmindful of eating, unmindful of sleep.

Eastward beckoned.

* * *

“I’ll make it through, I’ll make it through!” Lero chanted to himself, through gritted teeth. “In order to survive in the wilderness, you need a strong will to live! That’s what I have! A strong will to live!”

And finally, FINALLY, Lero’s body passed through the last set of brambles and fell upon the dewy grass of the forest floor. Breathing heavily, amazed to be alive, Lero took one last look up at the horrible monolith of brambles he’d fallen through, thankful to be free of it. It was now the crack of dawn and he was bleeding from almost everywhere. But — thank God and Celestia — Lero’s backpack was still strapped to his back! How very lucky he was that Twilight had insisted on helping him pack last night. “You never know,” he remembered her saying, when she’d given him the first aid kit. He’d thrown it in, merely to humor her.

It wasn’t a big first aid kit, though. Not enough bandages or iodine by half, for his needs. All he could do was use up what he had for the very worst of his wounds; it would have to do. He still needed to get himself to a hospital, pronto, so the doctors could fix the rest.

He began walking. Bramblewood Town... yes, that was its name... but which direction was it? Was he going the right way? Lero’s mind struggled to recall everything television and books taught him about wilderness survival. He remembered seeing a railroad up on that cloud. Even if he wasn’t headed towards the town, itself, if he could find that railroad, it would surely lead him to civilization eventually! Or another option would be finding a river and following that... communities were ALWAYS built by bodies of water... that’d been one thing his middle school history teacher had hammered into him, when discussing the Tigris and Euphrates. It wasn’t like he had a map or anything... he and Twilight had taken for granted that Dash would always be there to know the terrain, or at least provide a solid bird’s eye view!

Thinking of Rainbow Dash just opened a floodgate of questions within Lero. Where was she?! Why had she left him here?! Why had she never come back for him?! Why had she flown off?! And why... why had she suddenly STOPPED flying after him like that?! What was with the brain-dead look in her eyes?! It was difficult to puzzle out. Maybe she’d... run out of energy? No, not Dash... if someone’s life was on the line, she’d have keep herself going until her heart gave out.

Maybe she wanted to see you die? A dark, cynical part of Lero’s mind suggested. You’ve read true crime novels before. Seemingly happy couples... and then one night, after twenty years of togetherness, the husband drives the wife way out to the middle of the woods and takes an axe to her. And she never even saw it coming.

No! No way! Not only did Lero refuse to see Dash as an evil sociopath, it made no sense! Why would she had shot after him in the first place like that if she’d been plotting to murder him? He’d seen the look in her eyes: she’d WANTED to save him!

Maybe the reason she stopped was that she felt that she COULDN’T save you. Couldn’t REACH you in time.

Lero hated to admit it, but this seemed much more believable. He tried to re-imagine the scene from Rainbow Dash’s point of view. There she’d been, flying after him, but Dash could clearly see that he'd be falling right into a gigantic column of brambles. What good would a pair of wings even BE, if you were being asked to fly through THAT many brambles?!

Perhaps... perhaps the reason she’d stopped the way she did, perhaps the vacuous look in her eyes was just the shock of knowing that she couldn’t catch up to him in time.

So where was she now, though? Trying to get help? A doctor? A rescue team?

Maybe she assumes you to be dead, spoke Lero’s inner cynic again. After all, what are the odds of you surviving a fall like that? What are the odds of you surviving all those thousands of thorns?

Was that it? Could it be that Dash couldn’t bear the thought of lingering by the site of his death? Of seeing his corpse? Had she landed somewhere to weep and grieve? Maybe even fly all the way back to Ponyville.

Maybe she even killed herself.

WHAT?!

Isn’t suicide a terribly “romantic” thing for a girl to do, when she thinks her lover has died? Pure “Romeo and Juliet.”

No... No... no...

I can see it now: her crashing into a mountainside at Mach 2, thinking only of her dearly departed stallion...

Lero broke into a wild sprint. “DASH! DAAASH! RAINBOW DASH!! I’m right here! Don’t be dead! Please, don’t be...!”

This was when the horror stepped out from behind the large rock.

A spider as tall as a rhinoceros, and equally as wide. Lero counted nine red eyes arranged in rows of three. Each individual leg was like a medieval pike, if medieval pikes were jointed and hairy. Strangely, the great arachnid only had seven legs; there was an infected-looking stump where the eighth should’ve been. The legs were all the yellow of old parchment, while the rest of the spider’s body was oaken brown.

Lero’s mind refused to accept the existence of this spider. It was some kind of mirage brought on by blood loss and panic. One of the spider’s foremost legs stretched forward, landing way too close to Lero’s own feet.

The human turned and ran, and heard the giant spider scuttled after him. With building panic, Lero ran faster. The spider POUNCED at him like a panther, knocking him flat to the ground. Hollow fangs, longer and thicker than any doctor’s needle, jammed deeply into his body. Colorless venom was pumped into him and his body went numb.

Incredibly, the venom was painless; only the puncture wounds hurt. Lero didn’t feel poisoned, didn’t feel sickly or like he was dying... but he also didn’t feel his body move when he willed it to.

The giant spider grabbed him with its legs, and began rotating Lero’s limp body over and over... the human felt a little like taffy being spun on a taffy machine. While being rotated, Lero could also feel a repulsive, rapidly-hardening fluid squirting onto him from the spider’s spinneret, starting with his legs, and moving upwards to his neck.

I’m being cocooned! Lero realized in horror. Cocooned, or whatever it is they call it!

Lero’s paralysis didn’t extend to his head: he was able to scream out loud. But if anything, his screaming only served to excite the spider; it sped up in its cocooning. Finally, Lero was wrapped in webbing like a mummy; only his head was left untouched. The giant spider finished by drawing out a long dragline, and then dragging his catch to somewhere else in the Bramblewood Forest... much like a child in a Tim Burton cartoon taking his dead dog out for a walk.

* * *

To head southward or northward was to slip further into soullessness.
To head westward was to regress towards mindlessness.
To stand still was to plunge into emotionlessness.

She took yet another step eastward and became another 1/10,0000th less of a zombie, 1/10,000th less of a machine, 1/10,000th more AWAKE.

There were still so many steps left to take before she finally arrived at... wherever it was she was supposed to be. But she hadn’t reclaimed enough emotion yet to feel solid feelings like doubt or discouragement or unease. She was like a blind mare with supersensitive hearing who’d been without water for days... and could hear the rush of a babbling brook from far, far away.

No other choice but to go eastward.

* * *

The giant seven-legged spider had strung the cocooned Lero up on a low-hanging tree branch, piñata-style.

Sliiiiiiice...

“AAAAAAAAAAH!!!!”

Jab!

“AARRGH!!!”

Sliiiiiice...

AAAIIIIIEEEEE!”

The spider had long, curved, claw-like spurs on the end of all its legs. He was sticking and jabbing them into Lero’s body, poking through the cocoon, (if the cocoon threatened to weaken, the giant spider would spin more of its silk around the human.) It was weird: for the most part, the spider’s spurs rarely even broke Lero’s skin; the real pain came from the fluid the spurs were secreting. It burned like fire.

“AUUUGGGGHH!!”

The spider’s goal, from what Lero could tell, was to get him to scream continuously for as long and loud as he could make him.

Then there came a point where Lero and the spider heard the tromping of... something large. Lero watched the spider scuttle away; hopefully it had been scared off, but the human worried: what new horror was in store for him now?!

A tall, brown-furred minotaur pushed through some tall shrubbery, and eyed Lero. The human placed him at around 300 pounds, none of it fat. Judging by the dead warthog he had slung across his back, Lero guessed he must be a hunter.

“And what’re you?” he asked Lero.

The minotaur dropped his warthog and drew a long serrated hunting knife from his belt.

“Bet your meat doesn’t taste half-bad!”

“No, I taste awful!” Lero would’ve shouted this louder, but his throat was quite sore from all the screaming the giant spider had already made him do. Plus, he had a sneaking suspicion that all the spider’s venom was doing something bad to his vocal cords.

The minotaur hunter was taken aback. “You talk?”

“Yeah, I talk! I also think, feel, laugh, cry, sing, do algebra, arithmetic and my own taxes! I’m as much a person as you are, mister!”

Uncertainly, the minotaur hunter sheathed his blade. “But what are you?”

“My name is Lero Michealides. I’m what’s called a human. I know you’ve never seen anything like me before in your life, but I swear to you: I live in Ponyville. I’m part of a herd with three mares in it! I don’t really know where I am and I need serious medical attention! Please help me, for the love of mercy!”

“Okay, okay, I gotcha.”

The hunter drew out his knife again, this time in a friendly way. “Sounds like you’ve had quite a day, buddy!” he said, sawing through Lero’s cocoon. “I can take you to Bramblewood Town, they’ll be able to help you from there.”

“BEHIND YOU!” Lero shrieked.

But it was too late. The seven-legged spider had snuck up behind the minotaur, rearing up on its hind legs, wrapped its forelegs around his chest, and jammed its venomous fangs into his savior’s neck.

“NO! NO, YOU BASTARD!”

The hunter collapsed like a ton of bricks. Cocooning the 300-pound minotaur took no small amount of effort on the spider’s part; flipping his heavyset body over, again and again, but cocoon him it did. Unlike Lero, he even wrapped the hunter’s horned head.

Then it proceeded to feast. The spider bit through its victim’s silken shroud with a different set of hollow fangs than those it’d used to immobilize him and Lero.

“Spiders are unable to ingest solid foods the way humans are,” Lero heard the voice of his old seventh-grade science teacher echoing in his mind. “Instead, they suck their prey dry by first injecting their digestive enzymes into their prey, and then slurping up their dissolved, liquified organs and such.”

And so it went with the minotaur, for what had to be hours. To Lero’s eyes, the seven-legged spider almost looked to be deflating itself as it pumped its corrosive juices into the minotaur, only to then bloat up like a tick as it sucked back in. Deflate and inflate, inject and absorb, back and forth, in and out, until the mighty minotaur was no more than a shriveled, desiccated heap, literally just skin and bones.

The spider then moved on and did the same to the warthog the hunter had been carrying. Afterward, the monster pulled back and let himself have a spell of rest to settle his stomach... the way Lero and his mares did right after they’d eaten a sumptuous Hearth’s Warming Eve feast.

When it saw Lero twisting around furiously in his cocoon, the spider got back up, and injected more venom in his body to quell the human. Then the spider cut Lero down, spun an all-new dragline for him, and hauled him off to a new location.

* * *

Eastward, eastward, eastward.

Back when she’d first left her home to set off on this long walk eastward, she’d been as deadened emotionally as a killer robot from the future.

But she was recovering nicely. From unfeeling robot, she was now functioning at the level of a woodland animal; a deer or a feral sheep or such. She wasn’t quite back to THINKING yet — at least not at any level of proper sapience — but she could FEEL again, and what she felt was dread.

Ever-growing, ever-increasing DREAD. Not for herself, but for... SOMEONE else, someone precious, out there, out eastward. As though she were a mother ewe, following the desperate, helpless bleating of her lost lamb, echoing through the forest.

The dear thing needed her! Needed rescuing! She had to press on!

* * *

Jab. “Aaaah!” Jab. “Eeeah!” Slice. “Go get crushed by a giant foot!”

Lero had decided on a name for his tormentor: Mr. 7. (Admittedly, it wasn’t the most imaginative of names, but Lero was neither a fantasy novelist, nor a comic book writer, and thus, wasn’t obliged to come up with imaginative names.)

The human dangled from another tree, upon a low-hanging branch. Unlike the vile Mr. 7, he’d had nothing to eat or drink. Every scream the seven-legged spider tore from his throat was anguish; the screams, themselves, were getting weaker and weaker.

Then they heard a rustle, and movement from nearby. Something was coming! Once again, Mr. 7 scuttled away, for his next ambush. Loathsome as he was, Lero had to give the arachnid credit for a clever method of snagging prey. This was a lot more intelligence than Lero would have ever thought to attribute to a spider of any size.

He was the cheese in Mr. 7‘s mousetrap. The carrot in his snare.

Well... not this time!

“GO AWAY!” he shouted, with what remained of his voice. “RUN AWAY! GET HELP! IT’S A TRAP! A GIANT SPIDER! SAVE YOUR...! Awww, crap.”

At first Lero thought that Mr. 7 had doubled back, meaning to punish him for trying to scare away the meat. Then the human counted eight legs on this new giant spider’s body.

Of course. Lero thought to himself. This must be Mr. 7’s girlfriend, and I’m the take-out dinner.

Miss 8 scuttled closer, arachnid drool dripping from her fangs.

“No, no, no...!”

Incredibly, it was Mr. 7 who saved him. He sprang up the other spider, and they struggled, each seeking to gore and tear the other apart with their many sharp legs.

Not boyfriend and girlfriend after all.

In the end, despite the handicap of a missing leg, Mr. 7 won out over Miss 8. As she curled into a defeated, insectile ball — legs twitching in the air — Mr. 7 wrapped his silk around her.

In grim fascination, Lero watched in silence as the seven-legged glutton punched his fangs through her exoskeleton and set about cannibalizing his fellow spider.

* * *

How long had she been galloping? Rarity had lost track of time. But she was a fully-thinking, feeling, intelligent, articulate being again, a proper PONY again. She had an identity back and memories again! Not that it had done anything towards quelling her panic. If anything, it had only been sharpened, intensified a thousandfold.

From a vague, formless dread, she now remembered everything with picture-perfect, 20/20 clarity.

Twilight had wanted her and Lero out of the house so she could work on an extremely old spell the Princess had mailed her; one she was scared of exposing her herdmates to. Lero had come up with the idea of making a little vacation out of it; just the two of them! So Twilight had cast the gossamer wing spell upon her, and for hours, the two of them had been frolicking through the heavens — mare and stallion, swept up in love — not a care in the world! But then... this disaster had happened, and she’d watched him fall to earth!

All this had occurred mere moments ago.

At least he was still alive! The marvelous, all-consuming intuition inside Rarity was telling her so! So she had landed, and made those foolish wings disappear off her body, (if she hadn’t flown that high, dear Lero would never have fallen in the first place!) and was racing off to save him! He was still in danger! The intuition said so! But she knew where she’d find him! The intuition was leading her! But if she wasn’t quick about it, he’d be just as dead as if he’d splattered against the rocks!

How could she ever face Twilight and Lyra again if she came home with him in a coffin? How could she ever face HERSELF again?! Whatever had happened to him was her fault, her stupidity! Please, Celestia, let him be alright! Let him be alive! She’d never forgive herself again if he... if he had...!

Rarity shifted course, from straight east to northeast, led on by the sixth sense which had been guiding her all this way, guiding her to Lero.

Please, please, please, let him hate her forever, as long as he was ALIVE...

* * *

Mr. 7 couldn't have telegraphed his thoughts more plainly if he'd spoken them aloud in English.

Scream, bait! Scream, meat!

Once again, Lero had been strung up. This time, Mr. 7 had placed him in the mouth of a cave, and he hung from a stalactite. It boggled Lero’s mind that he’d survived this long. At this point, it wasn’t even a matter of his having a will to live so much as his body having a refusal to die. But how long was THAT going to hold out for?

Scream! Scream! I hunger! Scream for me!

The spider jabbed and sliced him with his sharp spurs, more viciously than ever before. Lero had to wonder... when he died, would he go to Pony Heaven? Or Human Heaven? Or maybe it was all just one place... maybe if Rainbow Dash had killed herself, he could introduce her to his grandparents. How would that go down?

Why don’t you scream?!

...And if ponies and humans went to the same Heaven... did that mean space aliens did too? The little grey guys they spotted in Roswell, New Mexico? That’d be fun. Heh... they ought to’ve made a skit comedy out of that: Space Aliens In Heaven! As good as Monty Python’s Dead Parrot schtick. Heh... how strange... Lero had always figured a man’s dying thoughts would be more profound than his were... but he supposed it was preferable to focusing on what was happening to him at this moment. He ought to at least try for profundity; it wasn’t like he had long.

Lord God... Heavenly Father... for whatever you did to arrange for me to wind up in this world, I thank you. In spite of everything that’s happened to me today... it’s been truly wonderful, living here, getting to know the ponies, and having them know me. Twilight, Lyra, Rainbow Dash... I love you all so much. Be safe.

Yes, that worked.

Incensed with frustration, the great spider stabbed Lero with a foreleg, going halfway through the shoulder. The human howled out in pain, with every inch of volume he could muster: “_____________!!!!”

“LERO!”

The rock was about the size of a bowling ball, and it flew smack into the back of the spider’s head. Jaws clacking angrily, Mr. 7 dropped to all sevens and skittered around to face his attacker. Down below stood a pony. Teeth bared; snorting heavily through her mouth and snout like a wounded bull, scraping the cavernous floor, again and again with an angry forehoof.

Rarity?! Lero mouthed, in soundless stupefaction.

No way. It couldn’t be... could it? The pony was a unicorn mare, to be sure... and the mane color was right, but she was so completely sweaty and bedraggled! As though she’d just run two marathons, back-to-back, through all kinds of weather and several bogs! He’d at first thought the color of her coat fur was spotted — brown and white — only to realize that the brown bits were dried mud. And all of that was just the farthest thing from what Dash’s fastidious, image-conscious, dress-designing friend WAS, right? Right?!

Power shone forth from Rarity’s horn as she glared back at her foe, eyes bloodshot and blazing with unholy, all-consuming fury.

“HOW DARE YOU TOUCH MY STALLION! HOW DARE YOU HURT HIM! I’LL MAKE YOU PAY!”

Author's Note

For those of you who may think that Lero's being able to survive his 9,000 foot drop from the sky is too far-fetched, I submit to you this article...

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-435377/The-man-fell-12-000-ft---survived.html

...Detailing the incredible story of a skydiver who fell 12,000 feet after his parachutes malfunctioned, and lived, thanks to "a thicket of brambles."

I just gave Lero a lot MORE brambles, just to be on the safe side.

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Four: Not The Rescuer He'd Expected

Mr. 7 sprang at the unicorn, all his fangs moving upwards and downwards in stabbing motions, but Rarity dodged lithely to the side. Although the spider landed with surprising grace, Rarity was perfectly positioned to blast him with the burst of magic she’d been building on her horn. It hit one of Mr. 7’s mid-legs with great concussive force, and the spider buckled; Rarity ran up to the leg and bucked it hard enough for a sickening brittle CRACK! to reverberate throughout the cave.

“I’LL SQUASH YOU LIKE THE OVERSIZED BUG YOU ARE!” she bellowed.

From where he dangled on his stalactite, Lero swallowed wrong in shock. If someone had told him yesterday that Rarity would be fighting a giant spider... he’d have believed it. She was an Element of Harmony, after all; they got into a lot of weird stuff. But he’d have envisioned her performing either as a long-range sniper or else serving as live bait; leading the spider to where her other friends could pull off an ambush.

But THIS?! This was bloodlust. And not the apathetic, coldblooded indifference of a professional killer-for-hire, nor the controlled, tranquil icy anger you saw in some action films. No, this rage was the nuclear mushroom cloud variety. When men spoke of matadors flapping their crimson capes at bullfights, of standing between mother grizzlies and their cubs, of tossing stones at wasps’ nests... whenever men muttered, “Hell hath no fury,” THIS was what they referred to.

“YOU WERE GOING TO EAT HIM!”

Rarity was snapping stalagmites out of the cave floor with her telekinesis, hurling them at Mr. 7 as javelins.

“YOU WERE GOING TO EAT LERO!”

Mr. 7 was nimble enough to dodge one stalagmite, two, three, but then he put too much weight on his newly-broken leg, and fell flat. Rarity wasted no time lobbing more stalagmites; two of them embedded right in the sides of Mr. 7’s thorax, while amputating part of his rear-most left leg, cutting it off at the... Did you still call it a ‘knee’ when it was a spider?

“RAAAAAAAAAAAAH!!!”

Rarity took a running start, leapt onto Mr. 7’s head, clamored onto his back and stabbed him there with her horn. Lero couldn’t help frowning; although the horn pierced the spider’s exoskeleton, it was like stabbing a rhino with a butter knife. But then Leo saw what looked like a jet of flamethrower fire erupt from the horn, into Mr. 7’s insides, cooking him alive from within. The arachnid’s legs spasmed and jittered about with no sense of unity.

She sprung back atop Mr. 7’s head, trying to trample his skull into jelly... a rapid-fire quickstep, her hooves like four jackhammers drilling away at once.

“DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE, DIE...!”

Part of Lero’s brain was trying to convince himself he must be dreaming, that any second now, he’d find himself back in front of his old TV set for another round of Sesame Street Fighter II... because it was too difficult for him to make any sense of what he was happening.

That Rarity would be fighting to save his life, yes, Lero could understand. He’d have done the same for her. But this shrieking, wild-eyed, foaming-at-the-mouth frenzy? This whole rabid rampage?! What... had Mr. 7 taken a train down a train down to Ponyville and written an unfavorable review of her Summer Lineup? Had he burned down the Carousel Boutique? Gotten Sweetie Belle hooked on witch weed?

Just what was she DOING, all the way out here in the first place?!

“Whoooaahh.... waaaaah!!!”

The spider thrashed his head about like a bucking bronco, throwing Rarity to the ground right in front of him. Striking like a snake, the spider lunged forward and scored a deep, long bite, right on the unicorn’s neck.

RARITY! Even if Lero could no longer shout the word with his voice, he could shout it in his mind. Rarity’s body was like a breathing rag doll now, unable to offer resistance as the diabolical arachnid dragged its broken body closer, and wove its web around her. One final victim Lero had lured into the evil spider’s parlor... and for it to be a sweet girl like Rarity... always so generous and accepting of him in her own way... it was all he could do to cry silent tears.

But why... WHY had Rarity come here at all?! the part of his mind which clung to logic still demanded to know.

Perhaps Rarity had come here WITH Rainbow as an Elements of Harmony venture? Rainbow must've decided the spider was a Discord-level threat and flown all the way to Ponyville to fetch her friends... they’d decided to linger outside, waiting for Rarity to soften Mr. 7 up for them and... and any second now, Dash and Applejack and Twilight and all the other Bearers would rush in to finish the spider off! He gazed towards the cave entrance, but there was no one. No other pony. No backup.

For whatever mad reason, it was only her.

Lero looked down, and saw Rarity’s horn gleaming brilliantly through all the wrappings that Mr. 7 was hurriedly weaving over her. Mist poured into the cave; thick, obscuring fog, at the speed of a flash flood. Instead of distributing evenly throughout the cave, the fog avoided Lero, as though he were being blocked off by invisible walls.

The fog darkened to a truly ominous grey. Raw arcs of electricity crackled visibly within the fog, no, the cloud! This was a thundercloud! He was hanging right in the middle of an actual thundercloud, watching lightning churn and roil and expand bigger and brighter! When all the lightning blasted Mr. 7, there was a shrill, pig-like squeal from below... and a disgusting, acrid stench billowed up towards the cave roof and into Lero’s nose.

The cloud flew out of the cave, returning back to the sky from whence Rarity had summoned it from. Mr. 7 was now a charred, blackened crisp, exuding smoke from his carcass. Rarity’s horn glowed again, and the bit of silk connecting Lero to the stalactite broke. He was floated gently to the floor, right next to Rarity, so that he and the unicorn were face-to-face. Only, he couldn’t actually see her face; there was too much cocoon.

One more time, Rarity’s horn shone, but much fainter. Lero almost couldn’t see its glow. A small cut opened over Rarity’s mouth and nose, permitting the mare to breath. He watched her breath, in and out, laboriously. He still couldn’t see anything of her eyes, though; she hadn’t cut that part of the cocoon away. A few times, Rarity’s mouth would close thoughtfully, as though she were about to speak. Though he waited patiently, it seemed Rarity was just too weakened for words. In the end, Lero watched the unicorn’s breathing settle into a steady rhythm, indicating she was sleeping.

He followed suite, and slept himself.

* * *

Lero awoke to noises. Hooves clacking on the cavernous floor, the shimmer of unicorn magic, the tearing of silk.

Rarity was standing upright. However much time had passed, her body had recovered from the effects of Mr. 7’s paralytic venom. How Lero wished the same would hurry up and happen to him, but Rarity, bless her, had only suffered one bite. Mr. 7 had pumped so much of that stuff in Lero, he wouldn’t be surprised if it now made up 15% of his bloodstream.

She’d set his back against the floor. He watched her rip the last of the cocoon off his body, thank God. Life was no fun as a mummy.

“Oh, Lero!” The first of many, many tears trickled from her eyes. “Look at you! Just LOOK at you!”

Lero bent his head down as best he could, to regard his torso, arms, and legs. He was still too paralyzed to move a thing below his neck... even a number of his facial muscles felt rather frozen. But yes, indeed, he’d certainly seen much better days.

“This is all my fault!” she sobbed. “All of it!” She lifted his body up with telekinesis, so she could envelope him in a fierce hug, throwing her face into his chest, so all her tears and snot could soak into his shirt.

“I’m SO, SO, SO SORRY!!!”

Lero gaped at her. He couldn’t believe the earnestness, the self-conviction in her voice. Under normal circumstances, he’d have had a few questions for her, such as: Why?! What are you apologizing for? Sitting in your Boutique and letting Rainbow and me go fly out here?! Not making my pants thick enough for all the thorns I didn’t know I’d be falling through? Building the humannequin? Was the mannequin in cahoots with Mr. 7? Just what’s going on?!

“Oh!” Rarity exclaimed, suddenly aware it wasn’t wise to be rough with an invalid’s body. Guiltily, she lay him back down. “I’m sorry for that. How much pain are you in?”

Quite a lot. He tried to tell her. Instead, the most he could coax out of himself was the faintest, faintest ghost of a moan.

“Darling? Say something to me! Hate me if you want, but please answer me!”

Lero tried again, barely louder: the feeble wheeze of a dying old man with failing lungs.

“I’m sorry, what did you say?”

Lero stared at her pointedly and exhaled in a sad way.

“Wait, you CAN’T speak, can you?! You can't move either! Oh, CELESTIA, no!” She was blubbering worse than ever. “Was it the fall? The spider? Oh, Celestia, I’m never going to hear your beautiful voice again and it’s ALL my fault!!! WHHHYYYYYYYY???”

Pity stabbed Lero’s heart. Perhaps it was only to be expected that after all Rarity had put herself through, she would be emotionally overwrought, and not be thinking clearly. She’d just suffered a lot for his sake. He would’ve liked nothing more than to hug her back, dry her tears, and let her know what a hero she was for saving his life. But Lero could only blink his eyes at her.

“Hold on... did you just blink at me?”

Blink.

Sniffling, but getting herself back under control, Rarity levitated some small rocks off the cave floor. “How many pebbles am I holding up?”

Blink, blink, blink, blink.

"That’s right! You’re aware! You can still think!” She dropped the four pebbles. “Oh, I’m so happy, I... Okay, Lero, how about... one blink means yes, two means no, alright?”

Blink.

“Please, darling, I... I have to know... can you find it in your heart to forgive me for the awful, awful thing I’ve done?”

Because they hadn’t decided on a blink-amount that meant — What the HELL are you even talking about?! — Lero settled on one blink.

Rarity’s breath hitched. “You forgive me? Oh, Lero! Your goodness knows no bounds!” And she dove forward, locking lips with Lero’s own.

* * *

Lero’s world stopped. In the moment of that kiss, all the human’s senses heightened to a supersensitive pitch, while his mind cleared completely except for two words:

Logical Explanations.

Yes: logical explanations. Ever since he’d fallen into that giant bramble patch, he’d been having to come up with a LOT of those logical explanation things, hadn’t he? Between Dash going AWOL, Rarity coming to rescue him, none of Rarity’s friends ALSO being there, ESPECIALLY not Dash... Rarity’s EXTREME mood swings... Lero had been inventing logical explanations left and right, to explain and excuse and...

...and rationalize the ever-increasing insanity of a world he thought he knew. But now came this kiss. And there was no way for him to reinterpret a kiss like this. It was the sort of kiss sailors got from their sweethearts.

Both when they set out to sea: Never forget how much I love you! And when they returned from their voyage: You’ve finally returned to me at long last!

Rarity's managed to be both at once. It was long and deep and brimming with passion. There was bottomless joy and relief, love and devotion channelled into this kiss; Lero felt it all against his lips. But it had come from... RARITY!

Rarity was pleasant, Rarity was kind, Rarity was neighborly, but Rarity had never been interested in Lero that way, any more than Lero, himself, had been interested in bedding with Diamond Dogs! And now here Rarity was, gazing down at Lero with the misty eyes of a soulmate!

...It was like landing in an alien world all over again. Nothing familiar to cling to.

* * *

Rarity pulled back. Then she whispered to herself: “Control, Rarity, control... he’s as delicate as an egg right now.” Then she knelt down.

“Lero, I... I simply must know how badly you’ve been hurt.” Lero felt his body levitated to Rarity’s eye-level. Telekinesis removed his all clothes. Rarity was ignoring how many times Lero was blinking twice.

The human remembered what it was like standing naked before each of his lovers for the very first time. For all of them — Dash, Twilight, and Lyra — before things had gotten steamy, they had all taken a moment to first observe his body, as one might first observe the landscape of a foreign planet. But Rarity’s gaze was different. Hers was the look an artist would give a dear, familiar masterpiece of hers... a masterpiece that had been vandalized.

She turned her sad eyes upon him. “I’m no doctor, but I do know a little healing magic. Please, let me do this for you.”

There were bruises, cuts, bramble thorns that Lero hadn’t had the chance to yank out of his body, (all made worse by how tightly Mr. 7 had cocooned him.) Rarity started with one of the thorns, pulling it out with telekinesis, then setting her horn against the wound and channeling magic into it so it would close properly. Her healing magic felt very soothing. Every now and then, she would lay a tender kiss upon a wound or bruise before setting her healing horn against it.

“Feel any better?” she asked, when she was finished.

He blinked in the affirmative. He did feel better; quite a few steps further back from Death’s door.

“I’m glad. We need to get you to a hospital. There should be one in Bramblewood Town. Now how to bring you there without jostling you...? Ah! I know!”

First, she cast a spell on both herself and Lero. He recognized the particular tingle of this spell: it was the cloud-walking spell. Next, she aimed her horn towards the sky and brought some clouds down, pushing them together into a platform. She levitated Lero gently onto the platform, then hopped on herself.

“Up we go!” she said, and with another shot of magic, their platform rose into the sky, higher and higher, until they were back at the same part of the upper atmosphere he’d been in with Dash.

“There!” she said, pointing down at the town. Right down there, do you see?”

He couldn’t, because he was at a bad angle. He was also remembering, very vividly, what free-fall felt like. Even Rarity could see the panic on his face.

“Oops! Almost forgot!”

And she magicked a set of safety belts over Lero’s body. Also made of cloud.

“Now we’ll just float down to Bramblewood Town as softly as a sunbeam, and... oh wait! Er, one more stop! Just one!”

Softly as a sunbeam, they floated down to the banks of a picturesque river. The water was clear and clean-looking, and there was no one else to be seen.

“Forgive me, my darling, but fighting that spider has left me unbelievably filthy!” She lifted a foreleg, grimacing at a mud stain. “I’m not even fit to be seen in public, let alone bring you before a doctor! Please indulge me, I swear I’ll be quick!”

Lero blinked a yes. Truth be told, he was rather relieved: at least THIS part of Rarity’s personality hadn’t changed! The unicorn hopped in the river, humming a tune as she cleaned herself. She even magicked a small raincloud over her head to act as a shower, and then expertly conjured a brisk, warm breeze to serve as her blow-dryer.

From where she had left him, a few feet away on the cloud platform, Lero tilted his neck, watching all the mud caked on Rarity’s body dissolve away. There was so MUCH of it! What kind of places had she gone through to accumulate it all?! It certainly hadn't come by cloud travel!

She glanced over her shoulder and spotted him staring at her.

“Lero!” she exclaimed, with a very flattered and flirtatious grin. “The state you’re in, and all you can think to do is ogle me as I bathe? You’re incorrigible, my love!”

Then she waggled her flank for him. Had he the ability, Lero would have screamed in shock, as he watched one last splotch of mud slide off Rarity’s coat, revealing the rainbow-thunderbolt underneath.

Author's Note

I'm considering getting an editor/proofreader/co-writer to help me with this storyline, (I do have a good rough plan for where I want this story to go and how I ultimately want to end it.) Would anyone be interested? If so, please leave a comment in the comments section.

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Five: Medical Care

At the far end of the street, Snakebite the minotaur spotted a pair of pegasi putting a poster on a brick wall. The pegasus mares were both strangers to Snakebite; but it was the poster that drew him over for a look.

MISSING!

The poster announced at the top. Beneath these words were two color photographs. The one on the right showed a unicorn mare: white coat, elaborately stylized purple mane, and a winsome smile. But Snakebite stared even longer at the photo on the left: it showed a clothed creature with the chest, arms and hands of a minotaur, but a near-furless head that was monkeyish instead of bovine.

“Weird-looking thing, ain’t he?” the khaki-colored pegasus asked.

Snakebite nodded. “Very weird. His smile looks friendly enough, far as I can tell.”

He continued reading. The poster identified the monkey-being as Lero Michaelides and the unicorn as Rarity.

SPECIAL NOTE: Lero is NOT an animal, but a thinking being, just like you!
He talks and is very nice!

If you have any information, please write to Twilight Sparkle at:

And it listed a mailing address. Snakebite turned to the mares. “So you’re looking for these two?”

“That’s right,” the fuchsia-colored mare said. “We’re part of a search team from Ponyville. That’s where these two,” she spread a wing towards the poster, “are from. We’re going to ask around the neighborhood, check if anyone’s seen them, then scout around through the Bramblewood Forest and see if we turn up anything.”

“Just arrived in Bramblewood Town, have you?”

“Pretty much,” replied the khaki-colored pegasus. “Why? What’s it to you?”

“Oh nothing,” said Snakebite, with a grin. “Just that those two’ve been the talk of the town since they got here!”

“What?”

“Yep! Trust me, there’s no need to bother with the forest; you ladies can rest assured, the ones you’re looking for are safe and sound up in Bramblewood Hospital! Just about everytaur, everypony and their dog has stopped in to have a lookie-loo at him!”

“Really?!” asked the fuchsia-colored mare. “Do you know where the hospital is? Have you seen them yourself, sir?”

“I should say so!” Snakebite chuckled. “I’m their doctor!”

* * *

Desperate to escape the barrage of fireballs, Daring Do swam even further underwater into the flooded catacombs! Her lungs burned in agony, ready to burst within her chest! Her eyes span left and right, hoping against hope for some means of escape... suddenly, she spotted something: a great metal tunnel built into the ancient wall!

With nothing left to lose, Daring scrambled inside! Unbelievably, her body was picking up speed in a way which had nothing to do with how desperately her legs paddled through the dark water... she stopped paddling altogether and her body surged faster still down the giant pipe, helpless as a piece of driftwood, her body spinning head over tail in an overwhelming rush! When her snout broke the surface of the water, she gulped the air greedily. Seeing a sturdy indoor floor in front of her, she clamored out of the water, gave her coat a hard shake and fanned the water out from her wings.

Rarity paused, lowering her book to smile at Lero, in his hospital bed.

“This brings back such fond memories. Did you know I first began reading Daring Do the last time I was in a hospital? Well worth the injury.”

Lero’s body had recovered enough for him to return her smile.

Daring looked forward and saw she was inside of a lavish dining room. It would have been immaculate — not even a strand of stray fur — except for the water Daring had splashed about when she’d emerged from the koi pond. Only a single obese unicorn mare ate a table vast enough to seat dozens... an obese unicorn and her enormous pet vampire bats on her left and right, hanging upside-down in their sleep. It was the Duchess: Monkshood herself, at last.

As she approached, Daring peered through the clear, crystalline punch bowl Monkshood ate from; recognizing ghost orchids, wild blue lupines, yellow and purple lady slippers... a salad of all the very rarest flowers of the world!

Rarity paused to take another sip of water. “Want to know something funny, Lero? I can remember reading this story four times before... and yet right now, here with you, I feel like this is the very first time I’ve ever cracked this book open! That’s the mark of a really well-written novel!”

Since Rarity had been bitten on the neck by Mr. 7, (“A Bramblewood Titan Spider,” their physician had said, after Rarity had described it to him,) the doctors had admitted her in as a patient as well. Her bed was right beside his. She’d have spells of feverishness and nausea every now and again, but her bite marks were shrinking away nicely, and she had SO much energy, Lero wondered why the doctors didn’t just declare her cured and discharge her.

Not that it would’ve made any difference. Even if Rarity had beaten Mr. 7 without one scratch or bite, Lero had no doubt in his mind she’d have still stayed by his side like this, every day until he was released, for as long as visiting hours permitted.

“Pardon me?” Daring called out. “Duchess Monkshood?”

Like a sow at her trough, The Duchess disregarded Daring and just kept gorging herself on endangered flowers like they were just another bucket of oats.

“There are sixteen strangled scientists in the floor above us!” Daring shouted. “Sixteen strangled scientists! How do you account for it?!”

As an answer, Duchess Monkshood levitated a toothpick-sized whistle to her lips. Daring didn’t hear a sound when she blew into it.

Her bear-sized vampire bats opened their leathery wings with ear-splitting screeches and launched themselves at Daring.

If nuanced, highbrow literati literature was your cup of tea — Daring Do was something you thumbed your nose at. For all Rainbow Dash had always raved about this series... Lero had always a little wary about getting into what amounted to a pegasus mare version of Indiana Jones, (like so many, that Crystal Skull movie had spoiled Indy for Lero.)

But now that he was listening to it like this... he couldn’t deny it was fun. Silly, in the end, as all swashbuckling adventures ultimately were... but as with The Wizard of Oz, Dr. Seuss books, and the original Super Mario Bros. video game... its very silliness added to the adventure’s charm. Rarity was at the start of Book Three, and Daring’s spirit of adventure was still fresh. Be neat to see how long the author could maintain that. Thirteen books to go, once this was done.

But the venturesome archaeologist's tales were often interrupted by minotaur and pony visitors popping into Lero’s room. Patients and hospital staff alike — their curiosity drawn by the unheard-of creature: the minotaur with monkey parts.

If they were kind and respectful folk, Rarity would offer them a chair, and they’d have a nice chat with the both of them. Well, more Rarity than himself, really, but Lero interacted as best he could with facial expressions and body language, (though he could move his arms and trunk more, his voice still hadn’t returned yet, and his fingers were still too stiff to write anything with. Pony-style mouth writing was right out.) If they’d brought a camera, Rarity would even take their picture with him. But if they were obnoxious or nasty, or especially if his room got too crowded, Rarity suddenly transformed into Equestria’s finest bouncer.

He watched Rarity as she read. Watching Rarity had now become very... well... it did very weird things to Lero’s emotions. Sometimes, when he looked upon Rarity too long, his eyes would lock upon just two parts of her body: the braid in her mane, and Dash’s mark upon her flank, and it was as if the rest of her did not exist. Other times, the exact opposite happened: Lero’s eyes would roam over everywhere BUT her mark and braid, it refused to see them, refused to acknowledge they were actually there.

After she’d kissed him in the cave the way she had... Lero had been so afraid of being alone with the unicorn, of sharing a room with her, sleeping next to her! To EVERYONE — doctors, visitors, janitors — she spoke of herself and Lero in terms of boyfriend and girlfriend, and he’d been powerless to contradict her. Yet for all his initial fear that she’d crawl atop his paralyzed body and mount him in the dead of night... Lero soon came to understand she had no such plan.

Not while he was still ‘delicate as an egg.’

For the most part, she behaved herself, and was nice to be around. Left uninterrupted, Rarity could lose herself for HOURS reading Daring Do books to him. She made for an excellent narrator, and was surprisingly adept at coming up with voices for the characters! Or, when she’d had enough of Daring Do, she’d come by his bed and just chat about random things; movies, clothes, politics. At times like this, Lero could relax with her... could almost believe she’d gone back to being just a regular friend.

“Talkin’ the poor boy’s ear off, eh?” They both looked over towards the door, at the red minotaur in the white coat.

“Welcome back, Dr. Snakebite!” Rarity said, bookmarking her place in Daring Do.

The doctor shut the door, and took out a syringe full of amber-colored fluid. “Time for your next dose of antivenom, Lero. Hold out your arm, please.”

Lero complied. The needle didn’t even really hurt.

“I sent some pretty pegasus mares your way the other day, after I got done with work,” said the doctor. “Did you get a chance to meet them?”

“Sky Chime and Cloudberry?” Rarity spoke up. “Oh yes, we were all quite happy to see each other!”

Chuckling, Dr. Snakebite dropped Lero a raunchy wink. “You didn’t get into anything TOO against-hospital-policy with them, did you, loverboy?”

Rarity laughed airily. “Oh, no, no, no! They’re just casual acquaintances; they flew straight back to Ponyville as soon as we were done talking. Besides, just between you and me, Lero’s been an ‘all-unicorn‘ kind of guy from the beginning! Honestly, I don’t know if pegasi even DO anything for him!”

At this, Lero shot Rarity such a look that she flinched. “What? Did I say something wrong, darling?”

* * *

After checking his blood pressure, heart rate, and his other vital signs, Dr. Snakebite had Lero brought over to an operating room that the human had already visited a few times already. There’d only been a single instance where actual surgery had been performed on Lero. All the other times, he’d been in the care of the good doctors Osteoclast and Osteoblast, both of whom were already standing at the operating table when he was wheeled in.

“Mr. Durability returns!” greeted Osteoclast.

“Good to see you again, Mr. Michaelides, sir!” said Osteoblast.

Lero smiled in greeting at both the unicorn sisters as he was strapped to the operating table. There was no need for an anesthesiologist, not with the way the sisters operated on their patients. The unicorns both lowered their horns over Lero and began channeling their magic into his body.

When Rarity had cast her healing magic on Lero in the cave... that had been like a small and hurriedly-assembled campfire Lero had been grateful to huddle by, after days of wandering from snowbank to snowbank in the arctic tundra.

By contrast, Osteoclast and Osteoblast’s healing was like being teleported from the same arctic tundra, straight into the steamy waters of a Japanese hot spring. The sensation of the sisters’ magic seeping into him was everything healing should always be: soothing, warming, reinvigorating, and enjoyable simply to bask in. Pain faded within him, stiffness released its hold, and his stomach settled nicely.

If there was a downside, though, it was that Osteoclast and Osteoblast’s ‘laying of the horns,’ was a very time-consuming procedure. To watch the sisters at work, one would think they might as well be shining flashlights over areas of his body for hours on end. Yet there was always such tremendous focus and concentration in the sisters’ eyes as they worked. As though they could see straight through Lero’s skin with X-ray vision, and were magically WILLING individual arteries and veins to repair themselves, ever-so-delicately.

When they spoke to one another, it was always incomprehensible medical jargon, and with Lero’s voice so damaged, it wasn’t like he could contribute to the conversation anyway. So it wasn’t long at all before he slipped away into sleep...

“...Mr. Michealides?” Dr. Osteoclast spoke, sometime later.

Lero’s eyes opened.

“Before we resume, your fillyfriend asked me to pass along a message. She said, and I quote, ‘Twilight just sent us a letter through Spike. She knows where we are, and is already on her way out here!’”

Lero grinned wide.

“I take it that’s good news!” said Dr. Osteoblast.

Oh, it was. He really couldn’t wait to see Twilight... not just it would be wonderful to see her, but if ANYONE could get to the bottom of all this madness, it would be her. One way or another, she’d set things right, and put Rarity’s head back on straight!

“Glad to hear it!” said Osteoblast. “Now if we may continue...”

Around the point where Osteoblast was mentioning to Osteoclast about how something something was aggregating into tetramers that formed pores in neuronal presynaptic cell membranes, and it was allowing calcium influx into the cytosol... Lero just let it all wash over his head...

“...You can wake up now, Mr. Michealides.”

With a great yawn, Lero sat up, stretched his arms, pushed his hands into his eyelids to rub the sleep out and... and his hands were working! His fingers could bend and curl and stretch again! They didn’t feel like they belonged to a mannequin anymore!

Springing to his feet, he shook both sisters’ hooves with great gusto. He opened his mouth to thank them, but all that came out was a dead croak.

“Sorry, but we couldn’t help you with that,” said Osteoclast.

Peevishly, Lero tapped at his throat, pointed at Osteoclast’s horn, then shrugged his shoulders in perplexity: why can’t your magic fix this too?!

“Sorry, we’re not the ear, nose, and throat specialists,” said Osteoblast. “They're arranging for Dr. Laryngoscope to have a look at you, later on.”

Lero let off a huff, but shook each of their hooves again, showing them grateful smiles. It was alright. His voice WOULD come back again; it was only a matter of time. Even if he couldn’t speak yet, his hands were still working again. A pencil, a couple sheets of blank paper, and he could finally sit down and have a nice, long, enlightening discussion with Rarity.

* * *

“Leeeero!”

The nurse was about to turn Lero’s wheelchair into his hospital room, when a lovable little ball of purple scales and green spines sprinted up from the other end of the hallway and sprung straight into the human’s midsection. He felt all the wind knocked out of him, and his wheelchair nearly toppled over backwards.

“WewereallworriedsickfordaysyounevercamebackandIwasjustsomiserableIcouldn’tevenworkandTwilightwastotallymiserableandworriedtooandsowereallourfriendseverything’sjustcrazyathomewithourfriendsbutTwilightsentsearchpartiesoutalloverandshestartedresearchingawaytotryandformatelepathiclinktoyouandthentwoofthesearchpartyponiescamebacktoPonyvilleandtoldusyouwerehospitalizedandyoufellthroughabazillionbramblesorsomethingandsoTwilightwrotethePrincessandthePrincessletusborrowherfastestchariotandTwilightwasfranticallthewaydownand... and I’m so glad you’re alive, Lero, buddy!”

Lero hugged the little guy back; brother to brother.

Spike pulled away, sniffling. “You okay? Speak to me, big guy!”

“He can’t, Spike,” Rarity said, stepping out into the hallway. “Not yet; his voice is still too damaged.”

Lero nodded, but the dragon wasn’t even paying attention to him now.

“Rarity!” Then it was she who found herself getting tackle-hugged. “Rarity, they said you’d fought a giant spider! Oh, Celestia, I can see where it bit you!”

“What, this? This is nothing! You should’ve seen the spider!”

Lero felt the muscles along his eye and upper lip twitch. The way Rarity had scoffed... the cocksure grin on her face, even the way her head was tilted... it really was like she was channelling Rainbow Dash herself...

“But you could’ve been killed!” cried the dragon.

Rarity lifted Spike up in her magic, nuzzling him. “I had to, Spiky-Wikey,” she spoke softer, more like herself again. “Otherwise Lero would’ve died.”

“Lero! Rarity!”

“Twilight!” Rarity called back, happily. She ran out to meet Twilight halfway, greeting her with a kiss.

Lero could see it wasn’t the kiss Rarity had given him in the cave: not the be-still-my-heart, you-may-kiss-the-bride-at-the-end-of-the-chick-flick kind of kiss. But it wasn’t a platonic peck on the cheek, either; it was loving, romantic, and on the lips. The unique kiss of this world: the kiss a mare gave to her beloved herd sister. A kiss that Rarity had never given Twilight before, ever, except perhaps, in her now-deluded imagination. The kiss caught Twilight completely by surprise; she blushed pink beneath the purple of her coat.

Spike just went quiet, but Lero had no problem knowing what the look on his face meant, and what very male thoughts had to be running through the young dragon’s head. On one hand, Spike was watching his sweet Rarity kiss another mare, which was hot... but that mare in question was Twilight, who was as good as an older sister...

“So good to see you, Twilight! I’m so sorry, this all happened because of my carelessness! There was a terrible accident, and Lero fell off my back, high in the sky, and this awful spider grabbed him and dragged him off to his cave, but I kept our stallion safe!”

Lero folded his arms in satisfaction. Now it could began. Now Twilight could start shining the light of truth on all Rarity’s delusions. Lero could almost put the first few questions in her mouth for her: OUR stallion? Since when was he ‘OUR’ stallion? And how could you have possibly been high in the sky with him?! Why did you kiss me like that? What are you even doing here?! It would be painful to watch, but it had to be done. It was the only way proper healing could begin for Rarity. He just hoped she wouldn’t turn violent.

Lero watched Twilight’s eyes widen. She and Spike shared a meaningful glance, and he crossed over by her side. They both gave a long, considering look at the new cutie mark Rarity sported. They shared another meaningful glance, and a nod. As if they weren’t really surprised to see it there. As if their suspicions had been confirmed.

“What is it?” Rarity frowned. “Something on my flank?”

“No,” Twilight answered. “Nothing at all.”

NOTHING AT ALL?! Struck by a sudden terrible thought, Lero rose from his wheelchair and grabbed Twilight by her rump, twisting her around, wanting to see what cutie mark SHE now had... but it was just the same old starry one she’d always had. What a relief... if nothing else, at least Twilight Sparkle was still herself, at least this cutie mark problem was relegated just to Rarity alone.

Twilight was staring up into his face, her eyes pleading: Please just let me handle this.

“Excuse ME!” exploded the minotaur nurse who’d been pushing Lero’s wheelchair for him. “But I’ve got other patients to tend to, so IF the patient would kindly return to his wheelchair...!”

“Do you MIND?!” Rarity exploded back at her. “We’re having a heartfelt moment here!”

The nurse snorted bullishly. “Ma’am, this is a hospital. Heartfelt moments ain’t a new thing here.”

So they were moved back into Lero and Rarity’s room to continue to the conversation. Lero just got on his mattress, not just fed up with it all, but exhausted. He looked at the wall clock and out the window at the dark night sky: it was 7:48 P.M.

“It really bites that you can’t talk, Lero,” said Spike from the visitor’s chair. “Why can’t they just give you some medicine or a potion to fix your voice? At least a lozenge or something...”

“Dr. Snakebite told us that wouldn’t be wise right now,” Rarity explained. “The doctors say they’re afraid medicine might trigger a bad reaction with the antivemon in his system. But the promise they WILL get to it, though.”

“Not here, I’m afraid,” Twilight said quietly. “I’ve talked with the hospital director here, and I’ve arranged to have Lero transferred to Ponyville for the remainder of his treatment.”

“What? Why?” Rarity asked. "We’ve been receiving very good care from the doctors and nurses here! They’ve worked wonders with Lero, especially with their horn healing! I mean, he was two hooves in the grave when I first brought him in; and just look at him now! I’m pretty sure they’ll just need a few more days before he’s completely patched up!”

Lero didn’t miss the uncomfortable look Twilight gave to Rainbow Dash’s mark.

“Just trust me... it’s better that we all go home to Ponyville as soon as possible. The chariot is already outside; we’ll be leaving within the hour.”

“...Alright,” Rarity said at last. “I’ll trust you have your reasons, Twilight.” Then the white unicorn bent forward, stretching out the kinks in her body, languidly as a cat. “Mmmm---mmmnn!! So... home again to Ponyville, eh? Spike, I dearly hope you didn’t finish off ALL the oatmeal raisin cookies while we were away.”

“Uh, no... there’s still half a box left,” Spike answered, in great surprise. “But... Rarity, how would you even know about those cookies?”

“Because we all live in the same house together,” she said, lifting a wry eyebrow.

It was as though Fluttershy had presented Spike with a live hen for a birthday gift, and the hen had announced that it laid gemstones instead of eggs.

“Oh, yeah! Yeah... we do!” He eyed Rarity’s new cutie mark like it was his winning lottery ticket, and suppressed a shuddery giggle. Just what weren’t they all telling Lero?! “We’re all one big happy herd, yep, yep, yep, thaaaaat’s us! Lyra, Twilight and... and me and you, Rarity. Living in the same house.”

Lero could all but see the hearts popping out of the young dragon’s eyeballs. Twilight cast him an ugly scowl.

“Oh, Spike, aren’t you’re forgetting someone?” Rarity laughed.

“Who might that be, my sweet?”

Once more, with that slick feline grace, Rarity climbed onto Lero’s bed, bent low enough so her undeniably svelte belly slid all the way up against up his own like a warm mink glove onto cold fingers. This time when she kissed him, her tongue pushed smoothly past his lips, to swirl and twist around his own.

Author's Note

I promise, I swear, Lero's going to get his voice back with the next chapter!

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Six: Welcome Home, Lero

“Didn’t happen...didn’t happen...didn’t really happen, I... I still have a chance, yes, it didn’t REALLY happen...”

Spike walked alongside Lero down the maze-like hospital corridors. All attempts at catching the young dragon’s eye, or patting his shoulder only resulted in more insistent, feverish muttering. They’d fallen quite a number of paces behind Twilight Sparkle and Rarity, at Twilight’s request, so the two unicorns could have a ‘private’ conversation.

“...hospital, not a ...!” he heard a snatch of what Twilight was hissing to Rarity, up ahead.

“...about to leave the place anyway, what’s the big...?” the other unicorn argued.

“...little thing called self-control?!"

“...waited until I was sure Lero could...”

“...Tongue! Tongue! ...saw it, plain as day! Spike... years old, and you didn’t even...”

“...not like Spike is...”

“...STILL just a baby! Not a grown-up midget or...!”

“...’m so sorry. Please don’t be angry at me, Sparkle-kitten. Please?”

“K-kitten?”

The chariot Spike and Twilight had arrived in was already out front when they all stepped out of the hospital. Lero had seen his share of sky chariots before, and could tell this was one of Celestia’s.

Some sky chariots were built to flaunt opulence; all glitzed up with jewels, pearls and gold inlay, the type of chariot you rode in when they were throwing a parade in your honor. While this chariot must’ve also cost a pretty bundle, its design was streamlined for speed: the Learjet of sky chariots. Four pegasi were hitched to its front; their bodies gleaming with the brightness of lampposts.

“If yer wondering about the glowing,” one of them spoke up, catching Lero’s stare, “It’s a spell that makes us fly quicker. Won’t last forever, though, so go ahead and climb on in.”

So Lero, Spike, Rarity and Twilight all stepped in and took a seat. There was just enough room for the four of them: Rarity sat beside Lero, Spike sat across from Rarity, while Twilight was next to Spike. Since the chariot didn’t have any sort of roof, they all felt the wind rushing through their hair once they were airborne, it felt like room temperature to Lero; no sense of coldness. The human guessed this was thanks to more magic spells cast upon the chariot itself... and was proved right when a quacking duck that would’ve smashed into his face, bounced off an invisible force field instead.

“Oh, out of curiosity, how did everything go with that one spell, Sparkle-poo?”

“Spell?” Twilight repeated back at her.

“You know! That unfinished one from Beardy The Star-Swirled or whatever his name was... the reason Lero and I flew out here to begin with. How’d things go with that?”

Twilight Sparkle squirmed in her seat. Watching her was enough to give Lero a sneaking suspicion that Rarity might not be entirely responsible for all her recent weirdness, especially when Spike cracked a way-too-huge grin and said;

“It went super, Rarity! Triple-a-plus-okay! Couldn’t’ve gone better if it’d been raining emeralds!”

“Well, that’s our Twilight for you!” said Rarity, beaming proudly at her ‘herdmate.’

But Twilight hung her head. “Actually... I’m afraid Spike’s a little mistaken. The spell still needs a touch of fine-tuning and reexamination.”

“It does?” asked Rarity.

“Oh yes,” said Twilight quietly. “That spell’s going to be my number-one priority, now that I know you two are safe.”

“How much time do you think you’ll need for that?”

“As long as it takes for me to fix everything.”

When Lero saw the apology in Twilight’s eyes, he knew with cold certainty he’d reached the right conclusion this time. He and Rainbow Dash had flown for the better part of a day to get away from Ponyville, all the way out to Bramblewood Forest... and it hadn’t made a lick of difference. The spell had still had its way with them, just as they feared.

“Rub my back,” Rarity suddenly whispered to him.

Lero tried to pretend he hadn’t heard her, that all the clouds and forestland rushing past were just too fascinating to stop watching.

“Rub my back, pleeease.” She leaned against him needfully. “Come on, I’ve been such a good girl for soooo long in that boring old hospital. It’s not like I’m slipping you the tongue this time, just a teensy little back rub... I need it sooo baaaad. I won’t even make noises when you do it! Promise!”

Why did he have to always be so weak-willed? As he got to work, molding and shaping the flesh under Rarity’s sleek ivory coat, Lero’s mind desperately tried to convince him this was actually somepony else. Half of Lero’s income came from working as a masseur... and it wasn’t like ALL his clients were such exquisite, foxy, breathtaking... oh boy, this wasn’t helping...

....Anyway, some of his clients were downright ugly as sin! Take Benjamin, the 70-year-old donkey jack of a thousand wrinkles, each saggier than the next! Or Sour Pickle, whose entire body was as bald as a fish’s, (and this was no exaggeration. Ponies always described him as hairless, but next to her, Lero was practically the Abominable Snowman.) And who could forget poor, poor Potassium Chlorate, who’d lost three-fourths of her face in that tragic chemical explosion...

He closed his eyes, but he couldn’t un-hear the not-quite-soundless moans Rarity was letting out while he worked. He chanced a look at Spike. Such powerful jealousy simmered in the little guy’s eyes, Lero was in real fear that the young dragon might just fly at him to bite through his neck.

“That’s enough. My turn!”

At first, Lero figured she’d try and set her hoofs against his back, and there simply was not enough room in the chariot for that sort of thing, either seated or laying down. But then her horn shone, and he felt the first touch of telekinesis caress the back of his neck. The sensation of having his muscles kneaded without feeling the weight of a hand or a forehoof pressing into him was most extraordinary. Like being massaged by living shadows. Lero imagined if he were to remove his shirt, it would almost look like his back was massaging itself.

“Does that feel good, my love?” she breathed in his ear. “Mmm... I’ll tell you something, it’s probably for the best that Twilight brought little Spiky-Wikey along, because if it were just the three of us alone... the things I’d do to you and Twilight would probably send this chariot into a tailspin!”

There came a sound like sheet metal ripping. “Spike? What’s with those faces you’re making?”

With effort, Spike unclenched his teeth. “S-sorry, Rarity. Upset stomach.”

“Oh, you poor dear. Twilight, darling? Can’t you cast something on him to settle his tummy?”

“H-h-hey, Rarity, why not massage ME for a while?” Lero could tell by her anxious smile: it wasn’t that Twilight truly wanted her back rubbed, so much as she wanted to distract Rarity from Lero, for both Lero and Spike’s peace of mind.

“I’d be delighted to!” Yet she paused. Lero thought he saw Rarity’s eyes flick to Dash’s cutie mark. “Actually, one thing first, if you don’t mind...”

Then Rarity turned to the side and shot powerful-looking beams of magic at two large clouds their chariot was passing. The clouds reformed themselves into smooth and perfect spheres; one orange, the other blue.

“Ah, that felt good,” she sighed; proud of her handiwork. “I’ve been holding that in for WAY too long.”

Hailstones showered out from the giant cloud spheres — blue hail from the orange cloud, orange hail from the blue cloud, spilling over several acres of sycamore trees.

“Blue and orange really complement each other marvelously, don’t they?”

She turned around to hear their response. A unicorn, a dragon, and a human all gaped back at her in unabashed bewilderment.

“Rarity? Uh... why did you do that? With the clouds?” asked Twilight, speaking for all of them.

The white unicorn frowned in confusion. “Whatever do you mean, dear? It’s what I do! What I’ve always done!”

* * *

Originally, when Lero Michealides had first come to Ponyville, the first house he’d ever dwelt in had been Twilight’s live-in tree library, with Spike. Remembering that period of his life always made Lero smile. To think: all those months of living together, and there hadn’t been so much as a flicker of romantic interest between him and Twilight! My, how things had changed.

Even back then, Twilight and Spike had been terrific hosts. Twilight had been gracious to a fault, treating Lero as though he were an emissary straight from the United Nations, rather than the intergalactic castaway he truly was. And every question Lero answered — about himself, about his home world, about being human — only bred ten more in Twilight’s mind. Spike had been great, too; just plain fun to pal around with. Any source of male companionship in this world was a good thing in his books.

In return, Lero had done his utmost to be a good guest. He’d been cordial, thankful and pleasant, respected Twilight’s home rules, answered all her probing questions, and even helped Spike with his chores. Most importantly of all, Lero had made a point of not overstaying his welcome. He’d focused himself on earning money, whatever small jobs ponies were willing to give him. By and by, he’d won his neighbors’ trust and racked up the bits until he was rich enough to afford his own small home. Leaving had been such an emotional thing, but Twilight, Spike, and all Twilight’s closest friends had been there to help him move into his new home.

They’d even thrown a party for him when he’d completely moved in. Never knowing he and Rainbow Dash were destined to fall in love. Never knowing that Dash would then entice Twilight to fall for the both of them, or that Lyra Heartstrings would wish to join the picture, as well. And they’d formed a herd of five, (Spike being the fifth: the little kid brother whom the other four were raising.) Which had all necessitated another move.

Pony homes were built not only to be mobile, but connectable with one another. “Tie some ropes around ‘em, get a few earth ponies, and you can drag ‘em from one end of town to the other,” was how Rainbow Dash had explained it to him. “They’re built so they can hook together, too, and make one bigger house.”

They hadn’t done this with Lyra’s house, as Lyra had been rooming with her best friend Bonbon. They hadn’t done this with Rainbow Dash’s house, as it was made of cloud, (Dash had often spoken of selling her Cloudsdale home, but Lero had always hoped she would never follow through. It was just too fun of a vacation home.) But they had done it to Lero’s place.

Lero would never forget emptying all the stuff from his home into Twilight’s, and watching Big Macintosh, Applejack, and about six of their Earth pony kinfolk drag his home through the streets, like a team of Ancient Egyptian slaves hauling a giant limestone block to add to their pharaoh’s pyramid. Only with more camaraderie and zero whip-cracking. They had brought his house side-by-side with Twilight’s library-home. Twilight had bent her head and channeled a continuous laser-like beam for half an hour, effectively grafting their two homes together through magic.

It had been quite a sight! Part of Twilight’s tree wall simply opened up, naturally as a mouth. Bark grew itself over a side entrance of Lero’s house like a pair of lips closing over a drinking straw. The end result always struck Lero as a bit comical: his paltry little one-floor bachelor pad, dwarfed by Twilight’s towering tree. Like the house of a mad botanist who’d tampered in God’s domain.

But there was also a beautiful sense of poetry to it too. A sign of how things had come full circle for him. What he had come to mean to Twilight and the others. Whenever Lero let himself stop to consider the symbolism of it all... the sight of their home never failed to warm his heart.

* * *

It was 11:34 at night when the sky chariot landed in front of their home. Twilight thanked the charioteers, who flew off, and the four of them groggily trotted up to the door, which came right open when Spike turned the knob.

“Shoot!” he exclaimed, “Uh, wait...!” He tried shutting the door and pulling out a key, but it was too late for him to cover his tracks.

“Spike!” Rarity’s voice could hardly be sterner. “Don’t tell me you went and left Ponyville and forget to lock our doors!”

“I-it was an accident! I swear!” Spike insisted, nervously clutching his tail. “I was just so worried about you and Lero, it completely slipped my mind!”

“That’s no excuse!” Twilight snapped. “So help me, if I find so much as a single cookbook missing, it’s coming out of your allowance, buster! And if they’ve touched any of my first editions...!”

“Hey, c’mon, girls, this is PONYVILLE we’re talking about! Not some gangster-town with pickpockets in every back alley!”

“We have ENEMIES! We keep discovering new ones all the time!” The white unicorn shot back. “Forget even our personal belongings; this is where the Elements of Harmony themselves are being kept!” She opened the front door. “Look! You even left the lights on!”

The little dragon trembled. “Uh... no, I didn’t. I swear! I know I shut the lights off before we left!”

All four of them exchanged troubled looks.

“Spike, Lero, get behind us,” Twilight instructed, with the rough ‘n’ ready attitude of a black ops squad leader. “Rarity, stand close to me. We’re going in.”

“Roger that,” said Rarity, sidling up next to her.

With tremendous caution, they entered their house. The foyer was empty, but they proceeded guardedly. Like Daring Do had when sneaking through that ceremonial chamber with all the pressure plates. The unicorns frowned suspiciously at everything, no doubt seeing ninjas lurking inside every bookshelf and ceiling corner.

An umbrella was leaning by the door. Lero snatched it, uncertain whether it’d be better using it as a spear or a club. Although the umbrella was a flimsy pink thing, Spike grew visibly dismayed at not having anything weapon-like within grabbing distance. Lero tapped his shoulder, pantomiming how Spike breathed fire, and gave a thumbs-up. Grinning, Spike return the thumbs-up, and let off a soft snort of smoke from his snout.

“Be very careful, you two,” Rarity whispered, over her shoulder. “It’s possible this enemy might wield incredible magic. Wouldn’t be the first time.”

Both Rarity and Twilight’s horns were glowing very dimly. Lero wondered whether these were force blasts they were prepped to shoot, or maybe they’d given themselves infrared vision or something.

Twilight peered around a corner. The glow in her horn faded to nothing.

“Guys, I found our intruders. See for yourself.” Twilight hadn’t even bothered to speak in a hush.

Lero dropped the umbrella when he came over to see. Fluttershy, Applejack, Pinkie Pie and Rainbow Dash all sat at a table, fast asleep. A banner hung from the walls... or at least, that had been the intention. They hadn’t tacked it on properly to the right wall, so it’d come loose and draped itself across the tabletop. Lero had to approach closer to read what it said:

WELCOME HOME, LERO

* * *

Long ago in his boyhood, Lero’s father had once been attacked by a hornet swarm, and nearly died. Afterwards, Dad’s ears had become highly attuned to the sound of buzzing, to the point where he could hear a single bee’s buzz over the roar of a large crowd. In much this same way, after all his days with Rarity the Red-Hot Xenophile... Lero, himself, had become highly sensitized to uncharacteristic, not-their-normal-selves behavior.

Even before she came back awake, Pinkie Pie’s straight hair set off the first of his inner alarm bells.

“Hi, girls! We’re home!” Twilight called out.

One by one, Applejack, Pinkie, and Fluttershy all awoke, yawning and stretching awake. Only Rainbow Dash kept resolutely asleep, drool puddling by her lip.

“Aww, horseapples!” Pinkie drawled, shrill and irritable. “Twilight, Ah thought yew said that chariot wuz drawn by super-fast flyers!”

Straight hair, AND she speaks with a Southern accent. Lero thought to himself. Why, yes, Mr. Mad Hatter, sir, a cup of tea would really hit the spot.

“They were!” Twilight answered. “They had an acceleration spell cast on them and everything! It’s just that Lero was all the way out in Bramblewood Town!”

“Bramblewood Town? What’n tarnation were ya’ll doin’ way out’n that neck-o-the-woods, pardner?!”

This question had NOT come from Pinkie Pie. It felt downright surreal to Lero that Applejack hadn’t lost her own drawl. All things considered, he’d half-expected her to bellow every word in the Royal Canterlot Voice.

“He was recuperating in a hospital,” said Rarity, sitting at their table. “And it was all my fault. We were flying in the sky — him on my back, and he fell off. Oh, it was horrible! He fell straight through a Bramble Tower... you know what those are, right?”

“Eeyup, Ah’ve heard of them.”

“And then this great monstrous huge spider pulled Lero out of the brambles and it dragged him away. I watched it all happen; I was too slow to stop it!”

“Hey, Lero!” Fluttershy suddenly interrupted. “Welcome back! Did you here about the recent kidnapping?”

“Kidnapping?!” exclaimed Twilight.

“Kidnapping?!” exclaimed Rarity.

Kidnapping?! exclaimed Lero in his own head.

“Oh yes! But don’t worry: the kid woke up in an hour!” As the room went silent, Fluttershy shot Lero a tight, needy grin, begging him for something with her eyes.

...huh? Was all Lero could think.

Pinkie Pie groaned and scowled at the yellow pegasus. “Aw, SHUSH, yew! Give it a rest fer five apple-pickin’ minutes! Rarity’s tellin’ ‘er story!” The pink pony leaned closer, on the edge of her seat. “So what happened then?” she prompted.

Smirking coldly, Rarity showed off the bite marks Mr. 7 had left. “I followed that brute into its cave and showed it who’s boss.”

“And... and didja KISS afterward?” asked Applejack breathlessly.

“You’d expect anything less?” the unicorn answered, in a boastful way.

Lero had never heard Applejack sigh so lovey-dovey. “Awww... how sweet, it’s jest like a fairy tale!”

Rarity perked up at that. “A fairy tale? You really think so, Applejack?”

“Yew bet yer purdy little horn Ah do! The handsome prince, captured by the huge, slavering beast, and the brave, beautiful mare who loves him follows the monster to its lair to do battle and rescue him!”

The unicorn laughed delightedly. “Well, when you put it that way... yes, it did all feel quite adventurous! Classically so! Very much a fairy tale!”

“The way yew two love each other is a fairy tale by itself,” It was the first time this whole night that Pinkie Pie had truly smiled. “Ah ain’t never seen nopony more meant-fer-each-other than yew and Lero. Yer whole life’s one ongoing happily-ever-after.”

Rarity was so moved, that she left her seat to hug the pink pony.

“Ah jest wish Ah coulda been there ta see it mahself,” Applejack sighed. “Maybe even helped out.”

“Oh, Applejack, that’s so sweet of you to say, but that spider cave simply WASN’T the place for a seamstress like you,” said Rarity, but quickly added, “Which is not to say you’re useless in a fight... all six of us have fought bravely together, time and again, but...”

Applejack smiled. “It’s alright. Ah’m not insulted in the slightest. Pinkie Pie woulda been better, right?”

Listening to this conversation made Lero feel lightheaded and giddy... in all the wrong ways. He felt the mad urge to let out the tittering cackle of a brain-damaged psychiatric patient.

“Hey! Lazybones!” Pinkie snapped; sour and cantankerous again. “Rarity fought a spider and Lero fell 10,000 feet! Wake up!”

And she kicked Rainbow Dash under the table. The cyan-coated pegasus groaned softly, almost opened an eye, then fell right back to sleep.

“Ah oughta be doing the same thing,” Pinkie sighed. “Gotta git up at the dag-gum crack of dawn.”

“Oh, oh, oh!” Fluttershy shot up like a student who knew the answer to the teacher’s question. “Speaking of which... Pinkie Pie! What’s worse than biting into an apple and finding a worm?”

“...What?” asked Pinkie; flat as a board.

“The Apocalypse.”

First Pinkie’s jaw dropped, then she glared at her like an especially dimwitted stepchild, finally yelling, “HALF A WORM! That’s how the joke goes, Shy! Bitin' into an an apple and findin' half a worm!”

“Oh, eh-heh-heh-heh... that’s pretty funny!” Then she turned back to the human. “Hey, Lero! Two snare drums and a cymbal fall off a cliff! Bah dum, pssh!”

If Fluttershy had asked Lero what he thought of her new personality, he’d have called it a mixed bag. On one hand, this was the most sociable and talkative that the yellow pegasus had ever been, which Lero approved of. However, her jokes were simply the worst thing since Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer had discovered one another.

“...Why won’t he say anything?” asked Fluttershy in a hurt, crestfallen voice.

“It’s not his fault,” Twilight consoled her. “The spider damaged Lero’s voice very badly, but we’re going to have it fixed, first chance we get!”

“Oh, that’s good!” said Fluttershy. “So the only reason you didn’t laugh at my jokes was because you couldn’t. If your voice had been working, you’d have laughed fit to split, right? Right?”

Lero gave her a very feeble smile.

“Oh! Lero, c’mon over here, Ah almost forgot!” Applejack brought something out from under the table. It was a shopping bag. Lero recognized the logo; it had come from Carousel Boutique. He pulled out the folded garment it contained.

“Ah finished up the very first of them T-shirt thingies ya asked me ta sew ya! Took me thirty hours ta figure out how!”

He unfolded it. Rarity cringed. “You know... I’d call that more of a nightgown than a T-shirt.”

Applejack pouted. “Ya think so?”

“And what eye-catching colors you chose to use!” said Rarity, diplomatically. “Celadon and taupe!”

“Cela-what?”

Lero brought the nightgown flat against his chest. It would have fit Lero’s body perfectly, had he been born a six-armed centaur. Spike got a huge laugh out of it.

“Erm... maybe ya can come by the Boutique tomorrow? A few alterations here, a little snip and snap there, and presto! ...Nah, give it over, Ah’ll start from scratch.”

Before giving the nightgown back to her, Lero walked a dazed circle around his table of guests like a toddler playing Duck, Duck, Goose. Three balloons on Fluttershy. Three diamonds on Applejack. Three apples on Pinkie Pie. And... and three butterflies on Rainbow Dash.

“Er... Ah’m sittin’ right over here, sugar cube. Or did ya’ll wanna keep it after all?”

Bitterly, he thrust the nightgown into Applejack's teeth. Meanwhile, Pinkie Pie seemed to have had enough of watching Rainbow Dash slumber like a bear. With a sly smile, she bent towards the pegasus’ ear and said in a stage whisper: “Angel Bunny’s at it again!”

It was like she’d dropped hot charcoal on her. Rainbow Dash shot into the air. “What? What?! What’d he do this time?! How bad’s the damage?!” she babbled. “Is he in cahoots with the iguanas again... this isn’t my home!”

Pinkie and Fluttershy laughed loudest of everypony. “Gotcha!” said Pinkie.

“That WASN’T funny!” Rainbow Dash shouted back at her.

“Ha ha ha! Good one, Pinkie Pie! ...I should’ve thought of doing that myself, why didn’t I...?” Fluttershy finished dejectedly.

Lero had never known ponies could get such dark circles under their eyes the way humans did. He watched Rainbow Dash try to sit still in her chair, as Fluttershy excused herself from the table. “What time is it?”

“Nearly midnight,” Pinkie answered her.

“Midnight?!” Dash blurted. “Oh no, no, no, no... I’ve been gone for hours! Left them alone! Unattended! For HOURS! What do you think they’re doing now? What are they even DOING now?!”

She would have flown out, but Applejack stood in front of her. “Ain’t ya being a mite bit rude, sugar cube? Ya waited all this time ta welcome Lero back, same as the rest of us, and now he’s here, ya can’t even spare ten minutes ta tell ‘im how glad ya are he’s still with us on this side of the grave?!”

Shamefaced, Dash flew back down in her chair. “Hey, uh, Lero, dude,” she greeted, falteringly. “Glad you’re not dead. Totally glad. Dead stinks. Stay alive, that’s the ticket. You’re my buddy.”

Mockingly, the voice of Cole Porter sang in the human’s head: The world’s gone mad today, and good’s bad today, and black’s white today, and day’s night today, and that gent today you gave a cent today, once had several chateaus...

There was no way Lero could ignore how Dash’s eyes kept darting towards the front door... as though it led to a toilet, and nature was calling her name with a vengeance. Her body language couldn’t be more obvious: Should I fly home now? Now? How about now? Maybe two more minutes, just to be polite...

It was enough to tear Lero’s heart to shreds like a cheap paper valentine.

Fluttershy returned to their table with a silver platter balanced on her head, and a doleful look on her face. She set the platter in the middle of their table.

“Ya made an ice cream cake... and ya never put it in the freezer, didn’t ya, Shy?” Pinkie drawled.

“It was going to be such a yummy cake too,” she sniveled. Unbelievably, Lero could still make out words in the melted, creamy soup: Welcome Home, Lero! We All Love You!

With a mannerly smile, Rarity got a knife and began to slice up the ruined dessert, letting out an astonished cry when Lero sprang abruptly from his chair, bolted over to where Rainbow Dash sat, and threw his arms around the cyan-coated pegasus with all of his heart.

Rainbow Dash wriggled away, squirming out of his arms like a skunk had just sprayed him.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha—whoooooa boy...” Dash’s laughter was too skittish and rabbity to be real, only slightly less fake than her smile. Her eyes darted around faster than ever, looking at everything and everypony but Lero... and especially towards the door. “Rarity, Twilight... your human friend sure gets REAL FRIENDLY, real fast, don’t he?”

For the second time since the kiss in the cave, Lero felt his world shatter utterly.

No more. It was just too much. He couldn’t bear another second of being pushed around through this funhouse mirror maze, of having to deal with these twisted distortions, these unreal parodies of everyone he knew!

...of the girl who’d loved him.

“You okay?”

Face expressionless and heart boiling in resentment, Lero spun away from Dash and marched upstairs at a quickened pace, leaving the parodies to finish their party without him, or whatever the hell else they wanted to do with their messed-up lives!

“Stop me if you heard this one, girls: a missing punchline walks into a bar...”

* * *

“Lero? Lero?”

Twilight knocked on the door once again.

“Please let me in, Lero!”

He didn’t budge from his spot.

“You know I’m just going to unlock this door myself!”

He let her into the bedroom, and she nuzzled against him.

“Talk to me, Lero,” she pleaded. “I know things aren’t what they should be at all, but just... let’s talk this out!”

Just when it looked like she was going to give some insipid apology for forgetting about his damaged voice, Lero seized a blank page of paper from the ream on Twilight’s desk, took a quill, dipped it in ink, and wrote this:

THEY’VE ALL GOT WRONG MARKS. THEIR HEADS ARE ALL WRONG. IS THIS AN EPIDEMIC?! IS THE WHOLE TOWN AFFLICTED?! AM I AT RISK?!

The fact that he, himself, didn’t have a cutie mark felt almost beside the point. The human had an awful mental image of himself biting hungrily into a grapefruit-sized ruby, while Spike strutted up to Twilight and...

“N-no, not the whole town! Just them. Just the five of them. No pony else, and it’s not the least bit contagious.”

FIX THEM!

“I would if I could! I’m still haven’t figured out how!”

WHY NOT?!

“I’ll... I’ll tell you tomorrow. I promise. When we’re alone in the library, when Rarity’s gone out. I’ll make sure she leaves us alone, I’ll send her out to buy groceries or something!”

YOU MAKE IT SOUND LIKE RARITY’S GOING TO BE LIVING WITH US.

“I’m 99% certain she will be.”

THIS IS NOT HER HOUSE!!!

“Well, Rarity thinks it is now. And Rainbow Dash... Rainbow Dash doesn’t. Not any more.”

BUT THAT’S NOT TRUE AT ALL!

“...They don’t know any better.” Twilight took in a breath. “Look just... just come back to the party, try and...”

MAKE THEM ALL GO HOME.

“Lero, come on...”

Lero underlined the last sentence he’d written six times.

PLEASE, TWILIGHT. I’M BEGGING YOU. I ALMOST WENT MAD BEING ALONE WITH “NEW RARITY” THAT WHOLE TIME. I JUST CAN’T TAKE “NEW APPLEJACK,” “NEW PINKIE” AND NEW-EVERYONE ELSE. NOT TONIGHT. JUST LEAVE ME ALONE.

Twilight hung her head. Her horn flashed, and the paper Lero had written on disintegrated into dust.

“I’ll tell them you’re just tired... that you’re still feeling weak after your stay in the hospital.”

He shrugged indifferently.

“Hug me.”

Lero poured all his love for Twilight into the hug: his small oasis of sanity, so thankful to feel her hug back, instead of pulling away.

“Now look at my horn.”

He did. The longer he stared, the brighter it glowed — such a soothing silvery color — and the brighter it glowed, the drowsier he grew, until...

* * *

“Lero? Lero? I need you to be SUPER-quiet! Open your eyes and don’t make a sound.”

Hazily, Lero’s eyelids opened. The bedroom was completely dark. But at some point during the night, Rarity had slipped into bed with him, moving his sleeping body so that his head rested upon her (admittedly soft) shoulder, instead of a pillow.

“Get out of bed, quietly as you can, and follow me downstairs.”

Sitting up slowly, Lero looked upon Rarity feeling raw, resentful revulsion for this mad mare who believed herself to be a replacement for his beloved Rainbow Dash. Stealthily as he could, he slipped out of bed. Twilight was already standing outside in the hallway. They crept downstairs, (it was amazing how softly pony hooves could tread when they wanted to be sneaky,) until they were in the library.

“I’ve been pulling another all-nighter.” Twilight told him, after a yawn. “Been reading up on vocal chords all night, and I think I’ve come up with a solution. Point your chin as far up towards the ceiling as you can, then bend towards me, placing your neck right against my horn.”

Lero did as instructed, only momentarily worried about her horn piercing his neck.

The inside of Lero’s throat felt scarred over and broken. And then he felt as though the most soothing balm were soaking into the scars.

Her horn-light dimmed. “Can you speak?”

“Y-yeah, I can,” the human breathed. “Feels good. You should’ve been a doctor.”

“After tonight, I almost agree with you.”

“What time is it?" Lero asked.

“Around 4:30 in the morning,” she let out a weary little laugh. “Yeah, I know, this could’ve waited a couple hours, but between Rarity and Rainbow, you’ve already been through so much heartache and pain. I couldn’t bear for you to stay mute on top of all that, not for a moment longer than you absolutely needed to.”

He looked her square in the eyes. “Do you still love me?”

“Yes!” Twilight said, trembling with emotion. “I... I know what a shock it was to your system, seeing Rainbow Dash as she is now... how do you think it felt for me?! Seeing her back in Ponyville, but living alone, convinced she’d ALWAYS lived alone. I asked her about you, and she was just clueless — it got to the point where I was screaming at her, trying to get her to at least remember where she’d left you! I tried to get her to come back home but... this wasn’t home for her. It’s so backwards — she knows we’re both dearest friends to each other... but she’s forgotten entirely about us.”

Lero’s fingers brushed away the tears she sobbed. “It was especially jarring because she was the first of my swapped friends I came across! And I thought you were lost, that you were dead! I couldn’t sleep, thinking I’d lost both of you!”

“If you love me, Twilight, tell me one thing: WHAT'S GOING ON?”

The purple unicorn let out a long breath. “This is all a result of the unfinished spell of Starswirl the Bearded. I recited the incantation, cast the spell as it currently stands. And the next day, I found this had all happened.”

“Has it affected YOU at all?”

“Miraculously, no,” said Twilight, head sagging in weariness. “For whatever reason, the spell... passed me by. I am unchanged. Just my five Element Bearing friends who... who....” she yawned. “You know...”

“So the Elements of Harmony have something to do with this, then?”

Twilight’s head drooped. “Lero, I’m tired. I need to go to bed. As I’ve said before, we’ll talk about this tomorrow.”

“Technically, it IS tomorrow.”

She snorted. “Don’t split hairs, Lero.”

“But we barely started talk...”

“Do you see something on my horn, Lero?” she lit up her horn, so that it shone silver. “Feels like there’s something crusty on my horn, like dried mustard or something.”

Lero examined her horn. “No, seems pretty... pretty clean to me.” He felt around it with his hand. “Maybe it’s just... just...” His eyelids were so very heavy, staring at the silvery shine. “Oh, you tricksy little...”

* * *

When Twilight Sparkle finally crawled into bed, she slid herself in the middle of the mattress, putting herself between Rarity and her human. She levitated Lero against her, so his head rested cozily upon her shoulder.

“Pleasant dreams, my dearest,” she whispered, sliding the covers over them both. “Whatever else happens, I’m still here. Still love you the same way I’ve always loved you.”

And he smiled against her body.

Author's Note

Anything Goes, Folks!

P.S. — When I first added Divided Rainbow into Xenophilia HQ, I placed it in the "Alternate Universe" folder, because I knew I'd be taking this story into a unique direction, and I didn't want my oddball fanfic to intrude on anyone's enjoyment of the 'series proper.'

Flash forward to a few days ago. I check out Divided Rainbow, and see that someone moved it to the Side Stories folder. Now... I could be reading too much into this. But the way I'm interpreting this turn of events, someone must've thought so well of my story, that they felt it was worth adding to the crop of "Xenophilia canon writers," alongside such greats as Archonix and the Quiet Man.

If I am correct about this, then I cannot thank you enough for this honor. That you'd like to consider Divided Rainbow as canon, rather than an AU... I am greatly touched, and hope to measure up to your expectations.

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Seven: Living The Wrong Lives

Hot, steamy shower water cascaded down both their naked bodies.

“My favorite part of you, my beautiful Rainbow, is here,” Lero’s free hand touched one finger to the center of her chest, over her pounding heart. “And here.” Now he touched her forehead, right between her eyes. “Don’t get me wrong, I like your body… but what I love, Rainbow, is you. The person who lives inside your body, who looks at me through those gorgeous eyes. That’s who I fell in love with. When I...”

Lero would have gone on to tell Rainbow how when he made love to her, his aim was to make the person inside her feel good... but the words turned to ice inside his mouth. Lero looked into Rainbow’s eyes and saw that her head was vanishing. Her whole body was fading away like the TARDIS in the Doctor Who show he’d always loved to watch back on Earth, soundlessly and quick.

“No! Stop! Rainbow, don’t go!” Lero threw his arms around her body, coiling around her as tight as he could. Yet it was no good; he could feel the very solidity of Rainbow Dash evaporating away, until the human’s arms slipped right through her body. From flesh and blood, Rainbow Dash had become nothing more than a fading pegasus-shaped cloud of vapor. Then that too was gone.

Lero dropped to his knees. “Why?” he whispered.

Steam was building all around him, thicker and thicker and thicker still, until Lero couldn’t see the walls, couldn’t see the floor, couldn’t see the ceiling through the nebulous veil. Somehow, it felt like the shower stall, itself, had grown impossibly wider, had soundlessly stretched itself outward in all directions. Perhaps to an infinite extent. And still, the shower water dribbled down his body.

“So the physical body isn’t half as important to you as the spirit within?” The voice reverberated all around him.

Lero looked forward. Thick as the steam now was, the human could still make out the cutie mark floating just a few feet away. The rainbow-thunderbolt shooting out from its cloud — it hovered in place like the Cheshire Cat‘s grin.

Then it was like invisible paint was being hosed off, beneath the high, unseeable shower head. A unicorn mare was revealed, attached to the mark.

“That’s so sweet of you to say! So gratifying to hear! It’s one of the many, many things I love about you!”

With a hard gulp, Lero rose back to his feet, as Rarity sauntered towards him, sporting the same soft and sensuous smile she now always had for him these days.

“No need to be nervous, my sweet prince.” Her voice was like satin warmed by the sun. “At heart, I’m still the exact same mare who fell in love with you, all those years ago. I’ve just been... repackaged, shall we say. And what a pretty new package it is, yes?”

She gave a lithe, limber little turn under the streaming shower. It was like watching a naked ballerina practice a dance move. Then Rarity looked between Lero’s legs and drew an excited breath inward.

“Well, well, well... I’m glad you agree with me.”

Lero shot a mortified look at that traitorous part of his body, trying to turn away. But she was sauntering forward again, catlike, licking her chops.

“Just relax, my sweet prince,” she crooned, “Let me take over from here on out.”

It was like Lero’s brain was rebooting. A classic deer-in-the-headlights experience. Rarity’s eyes were closing, her lips were opening, she was craning her neck forward...

A second pony galloped out from the billowing clouds of steam at a truly fast gait, and head-butted Rarity in the side with the strength of a mountain ram, knocking the unicorn away.

“Back off, sister! I was here first!”

“Rainbow Dash!” Jubilantly, Lero reached out to hug her... but his arms passed straight through. All in spite of the fact that her body now looked solid again! Or had he, himself, become the ghost? Also, he could see those dratted pink butterflies, back on her flank. Yet there was still one consolation: she was standing tall, proud, and confident... her old self again, nothing like the jittery, overtired mare who’d slept through most of his party last night.

Rarity rose back to her feet, glaring coldly at Rainbow Dash. It was hard for Lero to say which of them looked more voluptuous with wet mane.

“What was that bit you were saying about how you were ‘the exact same mare who fell for Lero?’ Horseapples!” said Rainbow Dash, “You may have my emotions now, but you’re still a super-girly, highfalutin’ froufrou-queen! Same as you always were! And that ain’t who Rainbow Dash is at all!”

“No, it’s not,” Rarity countered. “Rainbow Dash ain’t froufrou. She’s something much sadder: a train wreck of a mare who let the stallion who loved her fall from the sky and left him to die in a forest!”

“Only because that bucked-up spell hit me at the worst possible time, and you know it! Why would Lero want anything to do with you, anyway? You’re just a delusional little cuckoo-bird with identity issues as big as all Canterlot!”

The unicorn gave a harsh bark of laughter. “Hello, pot! This is the kettle with a friendly reminder... you’re black too!”

The pegasus shrugged indifferently. “Doesn’t matter! This whole snafu with our switched-up marks... Twilight’s gonna find a way to fix it! You’ll see! And when she does, I’m hoppin’ right in the sack with my stallion and make up for lost time! But you, Rarity? You’ve always wanted PONY stallions, not a guy like Lero! I almost shudder to think what’ll happen once Twilight’s got you back to your old self again! You’ll probably dump a bucket of bleach in your ear to erase the memory of how starved you were for sweet human cock!”

Rainbow Dash smirked at Rarity, as if declaring game, set, and match. Lero watched the unicorn’s sneer relax. For several seconds, she regarded Dash with a look of deep thoughtfulness. Then she shut her eyes with a tired-sounding sigh.

“I have nothing but the highest regard for my sweet darling Sparkle-kitten. She’s the most magical unicorn alive. But I must confess, I’m pessimistic on this. Though I wish her the best, I believe Starswirl’s spell will prove too much, even for her.”

“Why?” Rainbow Dash and Lero asked at the same time.

The unicorn reopened her eyes. “Ask yourself: this Starswirl fellow... how many centuries has it been since his death? And how many generations of scholars, mages, and historians have had the chance to study his unfinished spell for themselves... and none of them could even make a dent in it! What does it tell you that Starswirl, himself, abandoned it completely? It’s a lost cause! An unsolvable puzzle!”

Rainbow Dash flinched, but she shouted, “Princess Celestia would never have given Twilight the spell at all if she didn’t think she could fix it!”

“I applaud our Princess for showing Twilight that kind of faith,” said Rarity. “But you have to at least allow for the possibility that Twilight will fail. That you and I will be stuck as we now are until the end of our days.”

All the self-assurance in Dash’s eyes was rapidly draining away. Lero reached to hug her, but his hands just passed through her body again.

“Rainbow, at the end of the day, you’re still my friend,” said Rarity, with kindly compassion. “No one can blame you for abandoning Twilight’s herd, least of all me. Especially not when your new memories insist that you were never PART of our herd to begin with. But they’re all so precious to me. I’ll do everything I can to fill the holes you left in their hearts. Lero, Twilight, Spike... and Lyra, too, when she returns home... I swear I’ll protect them, be loyal to them, and be the glue that holds this family together. Forever.”

“L-Lero and I are tight!” the pegasus stammered. “He wouldn’t just toss me out of his heart like yesterday’s news!”

“Why don’t you ask him?”

And the two mares both turn towards him.

“C’mon, big guy! What happened at that party was just one ugly moment! We’ve got years of history together! Good history!”

“I traveled hundreds of miles on hoof to save you from certain death! Does that count for nothing?”

“You have your voice back! At least try talking to me one more time!”

“Is the love you don’t have worth more than the love that you do?”

“Is a girl’s heart worth more than her mind?”

Lero’s skull throbbed. He pressed his palms hard against his eyelids, his fingernails digging deep gouges into his scalp. “This is all INSANE! You might as well be asking me which eyeball to not stab: the right or the left? I don’t WANT to have to choose between the heart and the mind; they’re meant to work together! I just want the two of you to be whole!”

“But we’re NOT whole, big guy,” Dash replied sadly. “Neither of us are.”

“The situation is what it is,” Rarity agreed.

Lero was silent for such a long while that both mares grew deeply distressed.

“Say something!” cried Rarity. Say something, please!”

“If you don’t reach a decision, you just might lose us both!”

Then Lero felt himself being lifted upwards through the foggy steam...

* * *

The human awoke.

“Good morning, Lero,” said Twilight Sparkle, drawing her horn away from his forehead. She was sitting next to him, on their bed, but not under the covers.

Lero rubbed the sleep from his eyes and looked about the room. “Where’s Rarity?”

“Out and about. I convinced her to let you sleep in, and gave her a long list of errands, enough that she’ll be gone for hours. I can finally fill you in on everything else there is to know about our cutie mark predicament.”

Lero leaned forward. “Good. Let’s start talking.”

But Twilight hopped off the bed. “Breakfast first.”

“Aw, come on, Twilight! Quit stringing me along already!”

But she was already trotting out the door. “Breakfast first, sweetie. Go get dressed, I’ll meet you downstairs.”

* * *

Lero slathered maple syrup all over his pancakes, and dug in, shoveling food into his mouth impatiently. He was a little surprised to see Twilight also eating her food faster than usual, finishing her entire glass of orange juice all at once.

“Hey, guys!” Spike called out, returning from the foyer to his seat at the table. Guess what I got? A letter from Lyra!”

Lyra! It had been so long.

“That’s wonderful!” Twilight said. “Open it up and let’s see!”

Spike tore the top of the envelope open with a single claw, and read Lyra’s message aloud.

Dear Twilight, Spike, (and very hopefully Lero,)

Twilight, those photographs you sent of Rainbow and her three other friends were nothing short of bone-chilling. You really dodged a big lightning bolt with this one! If you don’t mind me saying so, I’ve never felt so relieved to not be an Element of Harmony myself.

So Rainbow has really left us? And nopony knows where Lero even is? It’s been a long time since I cried the way I cried when I read that. It’s also worrying to learn about Rarity’s sudden disappearance from Ponyville. I almost don’t know what to think if your hunch about her is correct, that we’ve ‘lost a pegasus and gained another unicorn.’ Rarity’s always been well-mannered and polite, but I can tell she finds me a bit too weird for her tastes.

Based on what you told me of your other friends, if a girl like Rarity is to be my herd-sister, I can only pray Rarity’s disapproval of me doesn’t carry over to her new personality. (Had the choice been mine, I’d have rather gone with Pinkie Pie as a replacement herd-sister. Just for her sense of fun!)

Lero chuckled under his breath as an image formed in his mind: Pinkie Pie, in all her hyperactive, reality-bending glory, fused with Rarity’s... urgh... Rainbow Dash’s bottomless lust for him. There’d truly be no escape whatsoever from a girl like her, and he’d never know a full night’s sleep again.

Nonetheless, I do hope Lero and Rarity are alright, and that Rarity hasn’t gotten lost in the woods or worse.

Spike, I miss having you around, and I want you to know that I’ve collected several bags of jet for you to snack on when you get home. (Hopefully you’ll find jet delicious.)

“You know, I’ve never tried jet before!” Spike reflected. “Now I’m curious!”

Lero soaked a forkful of pancake in more syrup. “What, is it candy airplanes or something?”

The other two looked puzzled. “What’s an air-plane?” Spike asked.

“It’s a flying machine they invented on the world I was born on. A ‘jet’ is basically a type of airplane.”

“Cool!” Spike said.

Lero poured himself more orange juice. “Does the word ‘jet’ mean something different here in Equestria? The way the word ‘cooler’...”

“Lero!” Twilight cried out, blanching beneath her purple fur, magicking thick earmuffs over Spike’s ears.

“Er, sorry! Sorry!”

Spike took off the earmuffs as Twilight calmed down. “Here in Equestria, jet is a mineraloid that jewelers shape and sell as a type of gemstone.”

“What color is jet?”

“Black. Very black. Haven’t you ever heard something described as ‘jet-black?’”

“...Actually, I have. I always thought they were referring to jet airplanes that were painted really black.”

“Shall I keep reading the letter?” Spike asked.

“Please.”

If Rarity is now living with us, just please don’t come onto her too strong, Spike.

Lero, if you’re reading this, it probably means that you’ve returned home, safe and sound. I’d like to assume that’s the case, because the alternative is just too dismal. The situation you’re in is discombobulating enough for me to read about from where I am, thousands of miles away from home. I can’t imagine how much worse it must be for you, being right in the middle of it. Especially with Rainbow. The two of you were what brought the rest of us together in the first place.

All I can do from here is assure you that, as with all obstacles, a way exists for us to adapt to our present ordeal. Adapt, and eventually overcome. Also, to remind you how deeply you are loved. Twilight loves you. Spike loves you. And I love you so much too.

Even though it was Spike reading it aloud, Lero heard these words in Lyra’s voice. The minty-green unicorn was such a sweetheart, and Lero loved her back, just as dearly.

As for myself, I am pleased to inform you that I have at last reached the final stopping-place in my journey. It has been a long, cold, salty swim, but I have finally reached the shores of Aardvark Island, home of the great Still Way sensei, Profound Koan. Master Koan has welcomed me into his dojo, and we will begin training tomorrow, shortly before dawn.

This sabbatical has been everything I could have hoped it to be. I have traveled great distances, seen great sights, broadened my horizons, and had my mind expanded by the most learned, enlightened minds of the Still Way. Once I am done with Master Koan, I will begin my long trek home. I hope to offer you more meaningful help through these strange, troubling difficulties.

Or perhaps, by the time this message reaches you, Twilight will have already found a solution for it all on her own, and I will have rambled on and on over nothing. Wouldn’t that be a nice thing to come home to? I have so many questions running through my mind; and here you are, able to send me messages instantly through Spike, while I’m stuck relying on slow mailmares. I eagerly await your response.

All My Love,

Lyra

Twilight took a sip of coffee. “Spike, take a letter!” she directed.

And the three of them sat together and composed a letter telling Lyra everything they were currently going through. After Spike had sent it on its way, Twilight had the young dragon return Lyra's letter to its envelope and hide it in a place Rarity would never find it.

* * *

Breakfast was over, and Spike was cleaning the dishes in the kitchen. Twilight had brought Lero to the room where the Elements of Harmony were kept. A long dark tablecloth covered the display case they were in.

“See this picture?”

Twilight levitated a photograph into Lero’s hand. It was a group shot of all six of the Element Bearers wearing their Elements. They all looked so happy, so well-adjusted, and their cutie marks were all correct.

“That photo was taken about nine months ago. I want you to pay special attention to the color of the jewels on all our friends’ Elements.”

Lero nodded. “Alright.”

“Now I want you to look at the colors that they are now.”

She swept the tablecloth off. Lero placed the photograph on top of the display case, eyes flicking between it and the actual Elements beneath the glass:

A pink lightning bolt. An orange balloon. A purple apple. A blue butterfly. A red diamond. Only the majestic star crowning Twilight’s tiara remained unchanged.

“Rainbow Dash with Fluttershy... Pinkie Pie with Applejack... Applejack with Rarity... Fluttershy with Pinkie Pie... and Rarity with Rainbow Dash,” the human murmured in horrified awe.

“Correct. Absolutely correct,” Twilight said, putting the tablecloth back over the Elements.

“Now, Lero, we’re going to step outside. A little stroll around town. We’re going to visit all my friends again.”

Lero smiled. “Excellent!”

“But I have one favor to ask of you,” she added, rubbing her hooves together nervously. “I want you to pretend you’re still voiceless.”

‘What?!”

“Please! I simply want you to observe how they all are now, particularly at... at their new jobs. I don’t want you to turn this into a confrontation!”

Lero threw up his arms. “Unbelievable! Why did you even bother to heal my throat last night if you were going to do this to me?!”

“Please! For me? Just this one time? I promise, I swear, once we get back home, you’re free to say whatever you want to whoever you want, whenever you want! I... I’ll even have Spike make you a banana split for dessert tonight.”

Lero thought it over. “Two banana splits, and each at a time of my choosing.”

“Done!” Twilight said. He shook her hoof to seal the deal. And they left the room, Lero following the unicorn.

“Now remember; you’re simply going to observe how they all are now. Whatever you see, whatever they say, just smile and nod, and treat it like it’s normal. For me, alright?”

Lero sighed. “For you.”

* * *

Sweet Apple Acres was their first stop. From the moment they first set foot and hoof upon the Apple family’s property, Twilight and Lero could hear the loud argument taking place in the apple orchard long before they could see the arguers.

“Why in the name of apple strudel cheesecake slathered in hot caramel, whipped cream and crushed walnuts are ya buckin’ it like THAT fer?!”

“Shuddup! Yer worse than a gadfly buzzing ‘round mah tail end! Nah, scratch that, yer worse’n TEN gadflies!”

And now Twilight and Lero were near enough to see them: Pinkie Pie and little Apple Bloom. Baskets were arranged beneath all the apple trees, and Pinkie stood by the nearest one. Her tail end was facing the tree in a bucking position. They were both too intent on yelling at each other to notice their approach.

“Ah’m yer little sister, Pinkie, and yew oughta show me some respect!”

“Yeah? Well, Ah’m yer big sister, Bloomy! Try showin’ ME some! Ah’ve been buckin’ trees since before yew were a twinkle in Ma ‘n’ Pa’s eyes!”

She lifted her hind legs and thudded them into the tree trunk with what looked like all her strength. The apples in the tree’s branches quivered but none fell.

“Yah’d never know it by looking at ya,” Apple Bloom retorted wryly.

Lero nudged Twilight. “Apple Bloom thinks she and Pinkie are sisters?!” he asked in a light whisper. “What... did that little filly get herself swapped too?”

“Questions later,” Twilight whispered back. “For now: silent observation.”

“Ah, ain’t THAT rich!” Pinkie growled. “Comin’ from a little screwup like yew!”

“Ah’m NOT a screwup!” cried Apple Bloom, stamping all her hooves. “Take it back! Take it back!”

“The only thang YER good fer is runnin’ ‘round town with yer little friends, bein’ giant nuisances ta everypony, and findin’ 50 new ways ta NOT find yer cutie marks each ‘n’ every day! Speakin’ of... didn’t ya say ya had ta go see ‘em?”

Pinkie kicked the tree trunk again, but this time her back legs bent all wrong against it. Yowling in pain, she fell onto her rear end, blowing onto her aching hind legs as though they’d touched an open flame.

“Ah hope that HURT ya,” Apple Bloom spat.

“Yew, lil’ missy, are nothing but an insolent, disrespectful little... Twilight? Lero?”

The two ‘sisters’ had finally noticed the both of them standing there. Twilight went right over to Pinkie, bent her head, and channeled soft healing magic into her legs. The pink pony smiled thankfully at her friend.

“Thanks, Twi.”

“It’s very good to see you, Pinkie.”

She got off the ground, and dusted herself off as best she could. “Uh... to what do Ah owe the pleasure?”

“Lero just wanted to come by and thank you for coming to visit him last night.”

Smiling, the human agreed with the words Twilight was putting in his mouth by giving Pinkie Pie a small bow of gratitude, and shaking Pinkie Pie’s foreleg, above the hoof. She returned his shake with a fair amount of warmth.

“Still ain’t talkin’ yet, huh?”

“Healing takes time.” said Twilight. Pinkie raised a hoof and patted Lero sympathetically on the shoulder.

“Well... best-a-luck with a speedy recov’ry, sugar.” Her hoof felt unusually jagged, chipped, and almost knifelike.

“Lero’s also sorry that he got so tired at the end and left the welcome-home party right in the middle.”

Lero nodded with an exaggerated frown of apology. He was beginning to feel a bit like a street mime.

“Parties are so much fun. Even the bad ones are still great. I love them all so much, every one.”

Twilight and Lero both gave a small start. Pinkie’s eyes and voice now had a slightly vacuous, faraway quality to them. But more surprising; she’d just spoken without the Apple family’s accent! Then the pink pony blinked.

“Tew bad Ah ain’t got no time fer such foolishness ev’ry day! Ah gotta farm ta run!”

“And Ah got friends to meet up with!” Apple Bloom spoke, turning her back on Pinkie, and making a rather melodramatic show of swishing her tail, as though flicking gadflies away.

“Would you like us to tag along with you?” Twilight asked the little filly.

“Aw, yew don’t need ta go do that, Miz Twilight, but if ya want too, sure! Ah’m gonna be meeting up with Sweetie Belle at the Carousel Boutique and Scootaloo at Sugar Cube Corner!”

“Oh good! We happen to be headed to both those places anyway!”

“Super!” Then, unable to resist one last parting jab at the cranky pink pony, Apple Bloom sneered. “Yew can fail at bucking apples on yer own, big sis!”

With a furious glower, Pinkie gave her mightiest kick yet, and not a single apple dislodged. She wheeled around on the tree, snarling: "Ya rizzing-wracking, frizzing-fracking trees! Yew WILL yield ta my power, and yer fruity-licious bounty shall be MINE! GRAAAAAAHHHHH!!!

Rearing up against the tree and planting her forehooves on its trunk, Pinkie slammed her skull against it again and again, until she knocked herself out cold, and fell to the ground. Ten apples finally fell, all on her tenderized cranium. Immediately, Twilight ran forward and shot another hard jolt of healing magic directly into Pinkie Pie’s head. Then, she lifted her horn skyward, and it glowed with power. All the apples on every apple tree within seeing distance floated off their branches, and were brought softly into the baskets Pinkie had laid under.

“Stupid showoffy unicorn,” Lero heard Apple Bloom grumble, as the three of them quietly left Pinkie Pie groaning into the dirt.

* * *

Two planks had been nailed over the Carousel Boutique’s fancy front door, covering what Lero guessed to be holes. But when Lero entered the store’s showroom with Apple Bloom and Twilight, he could almost see nothing else wrong with it. Fancy dresses hung on proud display upon the pony-mannequins. The place was neat, clean, and orderly. Applejack was ringing up a shopper by the shop’s far end. Lero could practically almost believe that Applejack was merely filling in temporarily, while Rarity was out enjoying a restful vacation.

“Thanks fer shoppin’ with us!” Applejack told her customer. “Ya’ll come back now, y’hear?”

As the customer left with her new dress, Applejack automatically greeted the new arrivals. “Welcome ta the Carousel Boutique, where everythang’s chic, unique and mag—niff—feek.” Then she actually saw who it was. “Twilight! Lero! And hello, there, Apple Bloom!”

“Hi, Miz Applejack!”

“Bet yer here to see mah sister! Hold on a sec.” Applejack opened a side door, and shouted, “Sweetie Belle! Yer little friend’s here!”

There came the light thunder of little hooves galloping down the stairs, and Rarity’s sister appeared. “Hi, Apple Bloom!”

“Howdy, Sweetie Belle! Ya ready ta get our cutie marks?”

“You bet I am!”

Applejack chuckled. “So where’re yew scamps off ta today?”

“We were thinking of kayaking!”

“Well, good luck with that! Make sure ya bring my sister back in one piece! And Apple Bloom, when yew see the rest of the Apple family, be sure ta say Ah said ‘hi.’”

“Will do!”

Lero shared a look with Twilight, and could see that this was all just as difficult to watch for her. Even though this scene playing out before them was as civil and neighborly as anyone could ask for... Lero had held out hope that Apple Bloom had been perceiving Pinkie as a second sister, rather than her only one. But no: Applejack and Apple Bloom were no longer aware they were each other’s flesh-and-blood kin. What a truly cruel, twisted, heartless piece of black voodoo this spell of Starswirl’s was!

“Ready to go?” Sweetie Belle asked Apple Bloom.

“Er, not yet,” said Apple Bloom. “Wait a while. Miz Twilight and Mr. Lero are gonna be tagging along with us ta Sugar Cube Corner!”

“What can Ah do ya for?” Applejack asked the other two grownups.

“Lero just wanted to come by and thank you for coming to visit him last night, and to say sorry that he got too tired to keep partying.”

After Lero had shaken her hooves, she answered, “Aw, that’s okay, Mr. Handy! We’re all just glad yer back home, okay.”

Then Lero walked over to the front door. Again, he mimed out his question: tapping his finger on the small boards that were nailed there, and giving Applejack a clownish exaggeration of a befuddled shoulder-shrug.

“Oh, that happened a few nights ago. Ah was vandalized. Delinquent, no-good foals up to monkey business! Uh, no offense, Mr. Handy.”

Lero knew that any ‘memory‘ or explanation from the likes of Applejack had to be taken with a large grain of salt, at best. But he nodded in understanding and continued to keep in silence.

“Wow, Applejack, I got to say, everything looks so nice, here!” Twilight piped up. “Your dresses are nice, they seem to be selling well... I’m very happy for you!"

Applejack cringed and wouldn’t meet the unicorn’s eyes. “Sweetie Belle, please flip the Open sign over ta Closed. There’s something Ah need ta show Twilight in the back.”

“Do we... do we NEED to do that?” the unicorn filly whispered worriedly.

Applejack nodded, and motioned for Lero and Twilight to follow her.

“Fact is... yes, Ah am selling dresses, but Ah’m jest using up mah stock of good stuff. Lero brought up that night mah door got vandalized... that was when the real trouble started. That was when mah muse left me.”

Twilight frowned. “Your muse?”

“Well, he didn’t so much LEAVE me, as divorced me, snagged the house, the foals, and half mah bank account, and now Ah’m paying him alimony through the nose.”

The orange Earth pony bit her lower lip. “Ah’ve always been one with mah sewing machine fer as far back as Ah can ever remember. But now...”

She opened the door to the room the humannequin was kept.

If Dr. Victor Frankenstein had chosen to be a tailor instead of a scientist, this would be the ensemble he’d have designed. On every pony-mannequin and every clothes rack hung unspeakable atrocities. Of rayon and nylon of bengaline and polyester of cotton and linen and acrylic and jute and pleather and fishnet and even sailcloth, of all things!

“Twilight?” asked Applejack timidly. “Just what went wrong with me?”

* * *

“Oh, I don’t mind that you went to bed early,” Fluttershy assured Lero with her usual sweetness, when the four of them were at Sugar Cube Corner, sitting together at a table. “I’m only sorry that you can’t speak.”

“It’s just a temporary condition,” said Twilight.

“Have you seen Scootaloo in here?” Sweetie asked.

“Yes, I did!” said Fluttershy. “You just missed her; she just stepped into the bathroom. In the meantime, can I get you girls anything?”

“Get whatever you want!” Twilight told both the fillies. “My treat.”

“Awesome!” said Sweetie Belle.

“May I recommend one of our milkshakes? We’ve just begun selling them.”

“Sure!” said Apple Bloom. “What flavor milkshakes ya got?”

Abruptly, Fluttershy’s voice died away to a froggy croak. “Vanilla... chocolate... and hay."

"D-do you have laryngitis?" Twilight worried. asked her friend.

“No,” the yellow pegasus gurgled. “Just vanilla... chocolate... and hay.” Then she giggled, her voice returning to its normal lack of hoarseness. “Like that one? I was inspired by Lero’s condition!”

As Lero scowled a bit at her, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom chuckled weakly.

“Yeah, heh heh, hilarious,” said Sweetie. “I’ll have a hay shake.”

“Ah’ll have chocolate.”

“Coming right up!” As Fluttershy walked off, the restroom door swung open, and Scootaloo stepped out.

“Hey, girls!”

“Hey, Scootaloo!” the other two Crusaders trilled. Twilight slid over an extra chair with her magic so the pegasus filly could sit between her friends.

“So let me tell you about the kayak: it’s blue, we’ll all be able to fit into it nicely, and it’s got a racing stripe painted on its side!”

“Awesome!” said Apple Bloom.

“I feel my cutie mark about to appear already!” Sweetie Belle said.

“No way!” exclaimed Scootaloo.

“Heeeeey, girls!” said Fluttershy, suddenly bounding over from several feet away, spooking the fillies greatly. “Do you know what’s brown and sticky?”

“Brown and sticky?” Scootaloo repeated, arching an eyebrow. “Uh... tree sap?”

“Nope! A STICK!” And Fluttershy chortled at her wit. “Hahahahaha.... SWEETIE BELLE! What do you call a boomerang that won’t work?”

The unicorn filly cringed away. “I... I dunno.”

“A STICK! Hehehehehehe... APPLE BLOOM! What kind of bone will a dog never eat?!”

Apple Bloom licked her lips nervously. “A... stick?”

“Close!” Fluttershy exclaimed. “A TROMBONE! AHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!! Now watch this!”

Then Fluttershy, (whom Lero realized might now be the least sane of Twilight’s five swapped friends) charged headlong into a set of shelves by the left wall, headbutting right into it. Lero saw there was a book balanced precariously on the very edge of the topmost shelf. It fell and bounced off Fluttershy’s head.

“Look!” she called to the entire room. “A book just landed on my head, and I have only MY SHELF to blame! Did you see what I did, there, everypony?! Did you see?!”

“Could I get some service here, please?!” an Earth pony stallion barked by the counter.

“Oops, sorry,” said Fluttershy, much more subdued. Before seeing to the Earth pony, she flitted back to the Crusaders. “Here’s your hay shake, Sweetie, and chocolate for you, Apple Bloom. Scootaloo? Did you want me to get you anything?”

The orange filly shook her head very rapidly. Fluttershy shrugged, and returned to the counter to see to the stallion.

“What can I get you?”

“I’ll have a blueberry cruller and a cinnamon roll, please,” the stallion answered.

“That’ll be ten bits.”

The stallion paid the money. Fluttershy took a set of tongs in her mouth, slipped a cruller and a cinnamon roll into a little paper bag and passed it to the stallion. He began eating it right away, but then gave out a sharp yelp after the first bite.

“LADY!” he boomed. “There’s a fly right on my cruller!”

He thrust it out at her, to show her the fly. It sat there, fanning its wings. She smiled back at him. “Don’t worry, sir! The spider on the cinnamon roll’s sure to get him!”

The stallion fled the building, just as a rose-colored unicorn mare sitting at a different table took a sip of brown fluid from a mug, and spat it right out.

“Miss! Miss!” she called Fluttershy, who came over. She shook the mug angrily under her nose. “Is this supposed to be coffee?! It tastes like mud!”

Fluttershy peered into it. “Of course it does! After all, you did order... FRESH GROUND.”

“Fresh... ground?” the mare repeated slowly.

Fluttershy grinned at her manically. “Wakka-wakka-wakka!”

And then a large earthworm slithered up from instead the sludgy mugful of soil, and dropped wetly onto her tabletop. She screamed and dashed into the bathroom. Lero heard vomiting.

“Fluttershy? Fluttershy, dear?” Mr. and Mrs. Cake had come out. Fluttershy’s seemed to wilt where she stood. She stared at the floor, one hoof scuffing it unhappily. “Come with us to the back, dearie, we need to have another talk...”

As Fluttershy followed the Cakes into the back room Twilight rose and so did Lero. “Well, I think we’ll be on our way.”

“Us too,” said Apple Bloom.

“Hope things go well with your kayaking!”

Lero was first out the door, but as soon as he saw what was right outside, he ducked back in, pressing himself flat against the wall.

Rarity was out there; walking down the street, carrying several bags from several different stores. He didn’t think she’d spotted him. Twilight saw her too, and flattened herself against the wall too.

“What is it?” asked Sweetie Belle. All the Crusaders came over, excited by the scent of adventure in the air. “What are we hiding from?”

“Ssssh!” said Twilight. Ducking down low, she and Lero crouched next to a long window to watch the white unicorn, peering out at her through the panes while trying to expose as little of their bodies as possible. Eager to be part of the moment, the Crusaders joined them. Some sudden impulse made Rarity stop. She set her bags down on the street, gently as could be, and aimed her horn towards the sky. Clouds gathered in the heavens. Not just any clouds, either; square clouds beside equally-sized squares of empty air, forming a checkerboard pattern as far as the eye could see.

Rain fell. It fell in torrents. It fell like it must’ve fallen on the first day of the Biblical forty days and forty nights. Spooked, screaming ponies fled in all directions for the indoors.

“Wait!” she called out, “Wait, everypony! It’s only a bit of rain! Nothing to be frightened about!”

“It’s unscheduled rain!” somepony snapped back. “The weather report didn’t mention this! And that IS something to run from, you crazy psycho!”

And the real kicker is: that crazy psycho’s your new girlfriend, Lero! The human’s inner cynic snickered. Bah dum, pssh!

Lero ran outside, Twilight just a step behind him. Rarity’s back was turned. There was one final destination left to visit, on this god-awful ‘stroll’ he and Twilight were on.

“Lero!” the swapped pony called out to him. “Lero, is that you?”

The human ran all the faster, sprinting through the downpour. The Cutie Mark Crusaders ran off in a different direction. Twilight Sparkle stopped for just an instant to shoot an apologetic look back at her speechless and very hurt-looking friend before galloping after the human.

* * *

The cottage at the edge of the Everfree Forest had always reminded Lero Michaelides powerfully of a king-sized hobbit hole, straight from the mind of J. R. R. Tolkien. Except with more animal pens outside.

But unlike Tolkien's story, this did not feel like a place that meant comfort. It looked downright uninviting, especially with all the rain still showering down on his head. Just looking at it was now as nerve-wracking as sitting in the chair at the principal’s office, waiting for the principal to arrive. He wanted to go home. He would rather be standing anyplace else but here. He could guess what this cottage would contain well enough; actually seeing it firsthand, would just dump a whole shaker of salt in his wounds.

“One more left,” Twilight told him softly, pressing against him. “Don’t worry, Lero. I’m right here with you.”

Fighting back the butterflies in his stomach, Lero knocked. He’d give it five minutes. Ten, if Twilight put her hoof down. Maybe he’d be lucky, and there’d be nopony home, and they could return back to their house. It was raining, after all, damn it!

The door creaked open just enough for Rainbow Dash to poke her head outside. Already cringing, already full of trepidation.

Author's Note

Just throwing this out there; if any of you guys who're reading this know how to draw, would you be interested in drawing an all-original title illustration for Divided Rainbow? I'm hoping for one that shows Rarity, Lero, and Rainbow Dash, all at once!

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Eight: The Cottage Dweller

Lero's heart immediately went out for Rainbow; the dark circles under her eyes, the worry lines and the weary panting. While she never took much care of her mane, it now looked even worse, which was quite an accomplishment; all frizzed and frazzled, as if she hadn't bothered with even the most cursory efforts to care for it.

A brief moment of relief passed through Rainbow Dash's expression as she spotted Twilight and Lero. "Hey, guys!" Then a second thought crossed her mind, and a moment of panic flashed across her eyes, "Y-you aren't here about some sort of critter problem, are you?"

Lero recognized what was worrying her: It had been Fluttershy's job to handle any issues that arose with animals about Ponyville. Often, this meant treating injured animals, or acting like a pet matchmaker when a pony decided they wanted a pet. Other times, it meant acting as a negotiator whenever pony and animal interests conflicted, such as that recent time when a family of beavers had flooded a portion of Sweet Apple Acres.

He'd seen Pinkie's manic frustration at her inability to farm, Fluttershy's desperate, almost insane efforts to make people laugh, Rarity's confused consternation at people's dislike of her weather, and Applejack's quiet desperation about her inability to style. Each moment he bore witness to his friends’ pain was like a nail in the heart, but seeing Rainbow's near-terror at the thought of having to do more work with critters made him want to hug her again... but knowing how that would go, Lero managed to resist.

Thankfully, Twilight stepped in and filled the awkward silence. "No!” she said, hurriedly. "No, not at all."

Rainbow relaxed. "Oh, thank goodness." She bowed her head in relief, before looking back up. "So why are you here?"

“Lero just wanted to come by and thank you for coming to visit him last night, and apologize for leaving early. He was tired.”

Lero managed to grit his teeth, and give another pantomiming performance of thanks.

Rainbow was at least polite, (or disinterested) enough not to comment upon his voice, like the others had. "Oh, no worries, dude, I pretty much slept through most of it mys..." There's a sudden loud crash behind her. "Oh no!" Rainbow said, ducking back inside in such a rush that she left the door ajar behind her.

As the loud noises continued, Twilight pushed the door open the rest of the way and let herself in. "What in Equestria is going on in here!?" She asked, Lero following close behind her.

Bedlam. That's the only word that could describe the scene that unfolds before him; he immediately recognized Fluttershy's animals, but rather than the friendly well behaved creatures he'd come to know from the times he visited her, they were rampaging about like...

...well, wild animals.

Twilight had to duck as a colorful flock of birds tried to dive-bomb her, screeching loudly. Lero very nearly blew his ruse of voicelessness as a mongoose bit down on his ankle. He managed to pull away with a loud exhale, and booted the creature across the room, where it landed on a couch with a thump. He swore it stuck its tongue out at him before scampering away.

"Rainbow Dash, can't you get them under control!?" Twilight asked, having to raise a shield to block more aerial attacks.

"No!” the pegasus growled in frustration, attacked by a toothless alligator, which she yanked off and tossed into a cage. Gummy!? Lero’s mind boggled: apparently, more had changed than he'd thought.

"These animals don't listen to me at all!"

"Fine, then we'll help!" Twilight said, attempting to catch some of the animals in telekinetic bubbles.

"Ugh, don't bother... it's useless, they'll be just as crazy after you're gone." Rainbow replied, attempting to catch a fleeing bird.

"Useless! Crazy!" spouted a blue parrot perched up high on a curtain rod. While his words were a perfect mimicry of the words Rainbow just used, Lero could almost swear from the bird’s tone that they were invectives flung at her.

"Ugh, shut up, Jabbers!" Rainbow shouted back at the parrot. Ironically, seeing her so angry right now reminded Lero painfully of the wonderfully brash pegasus he knew who... but that moment came crashing to the ground, literally, as the blue parrot leaned over and viciously bit one of Rainbow’s wings. Lero knew that pegasus wings were tough enough for that not to injure...

"Arg!"

...but it had still been enough to unbalance Dash and cause her to crash to the ground. Then Lero noted Angel Bunny directing a group of shady-looking iguanas, motioning them to tip over a cabinet, right on top of Dash! He sprinted over just in time to catch it with his hands.

"Ugh, man, thanks, dude..." Rainbow started before the cabinet doors gave way under the weight of it tilted contents, and dumped them out all over her.

"Alright, that's ENOUGH." Twilight practically growled. Suddenly the animals were all suddenly levitating in the air in her lavender telekinetic aura, those who were by cages were summarily caged, and those that weren’t were left levitating in the air, struggling fruitlessly. Lero let go of the cabinet as it magically slide back into place, its contents following.

Clearly, Twilight had reached her limit with 'just observe.' Lero felt a jolt of sympathy for her, this had to be just as hard — if not more so — for Twlight. She loved the pegasus, too. No doubt she held herself entirely responsible for the mess.

"Careful not to hurt them." Dash begged, rubbing her head as she emerged out from under the debris.

"They'll be fine, I mastered levitating multiple living creatures with you, not long ago, remember?"

"Oh, oh, yeah, right, almost forgot about that." Rainbow nodded tiredly.

"Now, come on, sit down, take a rest for a moment. and... try to ignore them." Twilight said, indicating the creatures who still struggled and squawked loudly.

"Idiot! Fool!" Jabbers added helpfully, as Angel Bunny blew a raspberry at them.

"Thanks." Rainbow Dash plopped down on the couch, practically burying her face in a cushion. Twilight sat next to her, Lero cautiously taking a seat on her other side.

"So... How have you been? You look... tired."

"Man, tell me about it! I don't know how I even managed before. If they're not yowling and howling to the point I can't sleep, they're up to some mischief that keeps me up... or I'm so worried about what they up to I can't catch a wink!" She raised a hoof up in frustration, letting it come back down to the couch with a thump at the last point.

"...Dash, when was the last time you slept?" Twilight said, a note of worry creeping into her voice, mirroring Lero's own feelings that gripped his heart.

"Uhm." She brought her head up, staring at them blankly, blearily. "Not counting the nap at the party...?" she trailed off a moment, staring at the middle distance. "Since before you came down here asking about Lero when he went missing.”

Lero couldn't hide his sharp intake of breath. That was days now. How was she able to handle this?! Before Rainbow could organize her thoughts enough to ask about his reaction, Twilight interjected.

"You were awake the whole time!? How's that even possible? I mean- I barely saw you in Ponyville then, how could you fill that much time?"

"Oh... you know. Takin' care of my adorable animal friends. It's m'job." She gave a blatantly fake smile, as she gestured about at them. Her bleary false levity clawed at Lero. He wanted to hug her, he wanted to tell her it would be okay... but he knew there was no point. It would be useless, just as Jabbers the Parrot was squawked repeatedly above their heads. "I don't even really go into town anymore, except when I absolutely have to. To buy pet food and such."

There was a loud CRACK, the three of them looking around for it's source before Lero realized his grip on the armrest of the wooden couch had gotten so tight that the wood had cracked along a seam. Huh, he hadn't even realized he'd gotten a hold of it.

"Lero, what..." Rainbow started before being interrupted by a loud "OW!" from Twilight as a hidden squirrel successfully pelted her on the horn with an acorn, causing her to lose focus. All the animals came crashing back to the ground. Rainbow jumped up in a panic, attempting to corral them again. "Just go, guys, we're not going to have much more conversation in this ruckus!" She said, the edge audible in her voice.

"But..." Twilight started.

"It's what I gotta do!" Rainbow responded before the tumultuous din became too loud to hear over. Twilight looked up to Lero, who could only mirror her mixture of horror and distress. With that, the unicorn mercifully herded him out the door.

* * *

Twilight and Lero had returned home, and now sat in the Elements of Harmony wing of the library. The unicorn had poured them both cups of green tea. Twilight took just small sips of her own, while Lero only held the warm cup in his hands, like a man who’d stumbled in from a snowstorm.

“Why are they all so bad at their jobs?” he spoke at last.

Twilight set her teacup on the end table between them. “Well, I can’t say with absolute certainty, but I think I can manage a decent guess. It’s because they had no experience with the jobs that their new cutie marks are insisting that they’re passionate about, that they’re talented at, that they’re experts at!” The unicorn laughed humorlessly. “Did you know that Fluttershy was highly talented at sewing, in addition to being good with animals? It’s true! She sewed a dress for Rarity once; Rarity’s DREAM dress! And Rarity wore that dress proudly to the Grand Galloping Gala! Why, I have no doubt in my mind that if SHE’D been the one swapped into being the dressmaker, instead of Applejack, Fluttershy would've gotten along as nicely as peanut butter and jelly!”

“But the marks gave them all these memories!” Lero insisted. “False memories, yeah, but... why couldn’t Applejack just... tap into ‘her’ memories of learning how to sew? Learning what was fashionable and what wasn’t?”

Twilight Sparkle shook her head. “Imagine that you had this affliction yourself, Lero. Let’s pretend that you were swapped with... oh... a bodybuilder. A stallion who could lift 500-pound barbells every day. There you are, at the gym, compelled to lift these steel monstrosities. You memories insist you've been weightlifting for years... your heart insists you LOVE doing it! It’s your calling in life! It shouldn't be impossible! So you keep straining, obsessively, to lift that 500-pound barbell, hour after hour, week after week, until one day, you tear your own musculature to shreds and your spine snaps in two! That’s where all my friends are now. Destroying themselves slowly. And it’s all my fault... for casting that damnable spell...”

She began weeping into her tea. “So... so there’s a world of difference be... between watching movies of weightlifters and actually l...lifting weights...”

Lero stared into the surface of his beverage as Twilight hiccuped and sobbed. He knew he should comfort her, but he just felt... empty after seeing Rainbow like that. Any effort to console her would be as empty as he felt. “And what was that all about, with Sweetie Belle thinking she and Applejack were sisters... and Apple Bloom and Pinkie Pie, too...?” He asked.

“Could be some kind of... trickle-down splash effect of the new memories.” Twilight chugged her tea down in one steamy gulp, and poured herself a new cup. “I don’t know for sure. Actually, Lero, that was one of the big reasons why I asked you to stay silent when we were out on our stroll. No one else remembers the real version of reality anymore... you can’t bring Applejack to Rarity's parents and say, ‘This mare isn't your daughter! Back me up on this! Talk some sense into her!’ I had to learn that the hard way. In fact, I made a royal jackass of myself, all around town, those first few days.”

She laughed another of those unfunny laughs again. “I remember talking to this one stallion, a complete stranger, who INSISTED that he saw me and Rarity at a fancy restaurant a small while ago, having a romantic lunch together... a lunch which never actually happened, of course. Claims he was sitting at the table next to ours. Lero, you should have heard the conviction in his voice! How detailed his story was! Apparently, we could barely keep our lips apart for five minutes running.”

“But MY memories weren't changed,” Lero reminded her. “Yours weren't. Spike’s weren't. And Lyra’s weren't.”

“Princess Celestia’s memories weren't changed, either.” She left the room briefly and returned with a letter. “I wrote her a letter describing everything and asked her for help. Here’s what she wrote back,”

My Dearest Twilight Sparkle,

My heart goes out to you and your friends. All I can tell you is to not lose hope. I have unflinching, unwavering confidence that you will be the one to set your friends back on the right path. Have faith in your abilities, for you have already made so many incredible achievements, my faithful student. Above all else, stay kind to your friends. Though so much of their very souls and memories now lies scattered in jumbled disarray, I know in my heart of hearts, that they all still remain your truest friends. Therefore, the most important thing of all hasn't changed.

All of them love you, and none of them will have forgotten what a truehearted and exemplary friend you've been to them all, since the day the six of you met. Do not give up on them. Be there for them, for they are all suffering, and have no idea how to help themselves. They will all need every last friend they can still cling to, that won’t abandon them when they are at their worst. Be a pillar of strength for all your loved ones.

Last of all; know that this calamity was not truly your fault.

Your Proud and Loving Teacher,

Princess Celestia

“Well, she was certainly helpful, wasn't she?” said Lero, handing the letter back to the unicorn.

Twilight gave Lero a helpless look. “If you’re going to ask me WHY we were all spared from memory alteration... I just don’t have an answer. Not enough information.”

His tea was now cooling, and he finally began to drink it. “What hurts me most is how Rainbow Dash has completely forgotten me.”

“I know,” said Twilight. “But strictly speaking, Dash hasn't forgotten who you are. She does know you, and she’s still your friend... but now, it’s only to the same extent that Fluttershy was your friend.”

“And now I feel stupid for not having formed a much closer bond with Fluttershy.” Lero looked back at his tea, pondering whether Twilight could turn it to whiskey, and if so, would she? “So then... if Rainbow now thinks of me like Fluttershy did, Rarity now thinks of me the way Dash did? She really thinks she IS Dash, through and through?”

"You’ve seen how she is. Rarity’s aware her name is Rarity, not Rainbow Dash. She knows that she’s a unicorn, not a pegasus. But in almost all other respects, Rarity’s convinced that Rainbow Dash’s life is actually her own.”

“Is she aiming to be a Wonderbolt like Dash was?”

Twilight shrugged. “I dunno. We should ask her. But that’d be a real trick for a unicorn to pull off. From what I’ve seen, certain elements of their personalities can get 'lost in translation.' It’s never a perfect crossover exchange.”

Lero rose. “I’m done. I can’t think of anything else to say right now. Maybe later.”

“Maybe,” Twilight agreed. “Thank you for being so cooperative, Lero. As I promised, you now have my permission to say whatever you want to say to whomever, from this point on. I just wanted you to be fully informed.”

When the human left the room, Twilight Sparkle went over to one of the shelves, and pulled out ten thick books. Sitting herself in one of the chairs, she opened the first book in her stack: Mark Of Destiny by Raison D'être, and began to read.

A thunderous clatter startled the unicorn, as though one of the creatures from Rainbow Dash’s cottage had invaded their home, and was tearing the place apart. Twilight heard doors and drawers being flung open violently, and things on shelves and countertops being noisily swept off.

Twilight squeezed her eyes and covered her ears. She would ignore it. Lero just needed to vent his frustration. She’d let him, and they’d clean up whatever mess he made later. Then the clamor stopped. Twilight opened an eye and saw Lero marching past the door, a huge garbage bag slung across his back, bulging with who-knew-what.

“Lero? Are you alright?” she called, after him.

“I’m fine,” he told her. “I really am fine. I know what to do.”

She followed after him down the stairs. “What are you throwing out? Garbage day isn't until Wednesday!”

“This isn't garbage!” he shot back, and left the house.

* * *

The was a loud knock on the door, causing the creatures to start up another round of cacophony.

"Dang it all!" Dash opened the door. "What." She asked, flatly. She blinked in confusion, seeing Lero with a large bag over his shoulder, with a look of absolute determination on his face.

"Uh, Hey, Lero, what're you doing here aga..."

"Can I come in?" He said brusquely.

Startled, she blinked. "Uh, sure, dude, come on in." She stepped back letting him inside. He strode purposefully after, carrying enough presence that the animals quieted down. Or perhaps they were tired enough from their antics to minimize their shenanigans for the moment. Either way, they walked them closely.

"Wait, weren't you not able to talk...?"

"Twilight figured out a way to fix it." He figured that the truth, stripped of details, it would be the simplest without bringing up unnecessary discussion.

She plopped down in the center of the room. "Alright. What's going on?"

He knelt in front of her, opening the bag. "I have to show you these." He rummaged around. "I know what I'm going to say here won't make much sense... but I'm asking you to please give me the benefit of the doubt."

She tilted her head. "Yeah I've... gotten that these past couple of days. What's wrong, dude?"

He pulls out a Wonderbolt costume. "This is yours. You told me you had Rarity make it in darker colors to look like an evil version of the wonderbolts. You went around nightmare night on a thundercloud, scaring people with lightning strikes. Afterwards, you decided you liked it so much you had Rarity alter the colors to look genuine. You put it on and pose in it when you think no one's looking." He gave her a small smile, looking in her eyes for a hint, even a glimmer of recognition.

All he saw was confusion. "Lero... I... What are you talking about? I stay home on Nightmare Night. and why would I dress up like the Wonderbolts? I mean... they're cool, but I'm not that much of fan or anything."

Lero let out a sigh. This wasn't going how he'd hoped. Maybe it just needed a bit more of a push... "Please, stay with me here. I'm getting to a point." He pulled out the next item, another uniform: a Wonderbolt training uniform.

"This is yours, too. It's tailored to fit if you want to try it. You were so excited when you got into Wonderbolts- even though it hurt us all to be apart from you so long, we all knew it was something you really wanted, and it'd be worse to hold you back- but you told us you almost gave it up yourself, you were concerned that some of their policies were reckless and putting innocent ponies at risk. But they were so swayed by your determination and forthrightness that they changed their policies because of it."

He looked at her as he told the story- hoping his honesty and earnestness would reach her. Instead, as she looked over the outfit — she checked its measurements to humor him - and found they were dead on. She looked up at him with alarm. "Lero, this is getting creepy. What's going on!?"

No recognition. Just worry and fear.

"Please. Believe me. I'm not trying to trick you. Just hear me out." He looked at her pleadingly. She sighed, putting aside the uniform. "Alright. But you're weirding me out. You're getting all crazy like Twilight was a couple days back."

He didn't reply to that, just handed her an ID card, and a ream of paperwork. The ID listed her as Head Weathermare of Ponyville, and the paperwork were lists of weather schedules, plans and dates. "You told me you first came here as a weathermare for Ponyville. You told me you used to laze about all day, then use your speed to rush through your work in seconds, flat. But you eventually realized that doing your job well was more important than just fast, and that working with your fellow weatherponies was more important than showing them up. You worked hard at your job, and were proud of your work- it eventually lead you to being assigned to Head Weathermare, which you're rightly proud of... even if you hate the paperwork."

Silence. "...Lero? Why would you forge my name on these? I'm not part of the weather team." There was a tremor in her voice.

He let out a sigh of frustration. "Rainbow, it's your mouth-writing!"

"Lero, this isn't funny!" She snapped back.

"...No, it's not. But, hold on, there's just two more things." How could this be happening? She was seeing her own writing, but was blaming him for it... well, time for something she couldn't contradict.

He pulled out a newspaper clipping, showing it to her. The Headline read "BEST YOUNG FLYER CROWNED!"

"You told me about this, it was your proudest moment: You not only won the Best Young Flyer's competition, Pulled off the Sonic Rainbow, not only met your Idols, the Wonderbolts, but saved their lives, and were honored by Celestia for it. But you told me the most important thing was that you saved Rarity. When your friend needed you the most, plummeting to her certain death, you were there. You could do it. You could pull out the stops and save her."

He let the silence hang in the air. "That's... a really cool story, Lero, but... That's not how it went at all. I was there, in the crowd, between Twlight Sparkle and Pinkie Pie. Applejack won, because everyone was amazed by those wings Twilight gave her, and how graceful and beautiful she was."

Lero stared at her, his jaw dropping in shock for a second, before recovering, showing it into her hooves. "Read it to me!" He insisted.

"Lero, this joke is going too far..."

"Rainbow... if my friendship ever meant anything at all to you... please do this for me." Rainbow frowned, hearing the desperation in his voice.

"...Alright." She looks down over it, and started to read. "This year's Best Young Flyer was a complete upset, as a Dark Horse contestant, Applejack, a young earth pony from Ponyville wowed the crowds with her magically created wings- however, the victory was not earned merely by artificial means, her natural beauty, flawless sense of style, and graceful movements won the hearts of the judges- and yes, even that of our beloved Ruler Celest-"

Lero snatched the article back, mid-sentence, reading over it furiously to make sure he wasn't going insane. "Unbelievable showing... Legendary Sonic Rainboom... amazing rescue-" He lowered the article and at stared at her. "...Rainbow. Is what you read to me what you really saw in this this article?"

"...Lero, are you still sick? You just got back from the hospital and..."

"Answer me!" he insisted.

Rainbows ears snapped back at his desperate shout so hard that her equine body language would have been blindingly obvious even if he hadn't spent years studying it. She was somewhere between angry and frightened.

"Yes." She said through gritted teeth.

He stared at her for several seconds. He finally pulled out what he thought was going to be his trump card, but now was his last, desperate hope.

He held up a photo to her. It was the two of them, in an embrace, kissing each other deeply. He remembered the moment, months ago, when Twilight snuck up and took a picture before they could react. At the time, they'd been annoyed, but after seeing it developed, it'd become one of their favorites.

"Rainbow. This is a picture of us, together. It's just from a few months ago."

"...Lero, that's a picture of you and Rarity together." She said slowly, carefully, as if to a person you were afraid was about to crack any moment, and possibly do something dangerous.

Lero finally exploded in frustration. “DO YOU SEE A UNICORN HORN HERE?! POINT TO IT! SHOW ME WHERE IT IS ON THE PHOTO!!! SHOW ME WHERE YOU SEE IT!!!” there was no anger in his voice, just the frustration and anxiety of a desperate man.

"L-Lero, you're scaring me!" Rainbow Dash leaned away from him after his outburst- however, he didn't seem to notice, throwing down the photo and standing up, stalking about the room, gesticulating and ranting like a man possessed. The animals yelping and hollering along with him, making a terrifying amount of noise. Lero shouted louder to be heard.

"Don't you get it!? None of this is right! Everything's wrong! All of your cutie marks were switched around, and your memories with it! You weren't ever good with animals! Fluttershy was! This is her home, not yours! You were the lead weathermare! You were in love with me, not Rarity! We've been a couple for years! We love each other with all our hearts, and we can never get enough of each other, and we made love nearly every single day!" The words exploded out of him in a torrent, as if desperately hoping that saying them would make them real again. "Please, please, please, PLEASE, Just SNAP OUT OF IT, LEAVE THIS HORRIBLE PLACE AND COME HOME WITH ME!" He rushed over to her, hugging the startled pegasus as hard as he could.

Lero wondered for a fraction of a second how he became airborne.

That moment end he slammed backwards over an end table, crashing to the ground. At that point his brain caught up with the situation, and informed him of the intense pain in his chest, mostly likely caused by a Pegasus bucking him as hard as she could.

He scrambled to his feet, catching a flash of prismatic colors vanishing upstairs as she fled. Lero sprinted after, only to find the bedroom door slammed in his face and audibly locked. "RAINBOW DASH!" He pounded on the door. "LET ME IN!" He begged, tears starting to stream down his cheeks.

"You're sick, Lero!" came the reply, the terror and worry in her voice hitting him almost like a smack in the face. "You need to get help! Go away and leave me alone!"

Lero slumped his shoulders, defeated. Truth, logic, evidence... not even the desperate pleadings of a heartbroken man were a match for the magic of this spell. If this was the power of the incomplete spell, he dreaded the horrors of what it might be capable of if it were ever finished.

"Rainbow Dash?" He said to the door, trying to keep his voice from trembling. "I'm sorry. When I came back from the hospital, there were some things I was sure were true. I guess they're not." His voice cracked at the last word, the house damnably silent except for the animals downstairs. A pathetic excuse, but he had to start somewhere. "I won't bother you about this again." There was no response. He stood there silently for several moments, trying to think of something, anything else to say. But then he realized there was nothing to say: his words to her would be as empty of meaning as his heart felt at that moment.

Without another word, he turned and left.

As he walked out into the main room, he gathered up the scattered items, returning them back to the bag he had brought them in, the animals peering at him, silent except for Jabbers who provided a scornful "Fool." to the proceedings. He left without even acknowledging it.

Outside, he paused, looking down at the trash bag. They weren't his things. Or Rarity's. Or even Dash's anymore. They were just the detritus of a life that didn't exist anymore. He tossed it aside, leaving it in her yard.

Lero was now pretty sure he knew what hell was: It was seeing those you loved in pain and not being able to do anything to help. As he walked away, he realized what he needed to do next.

* * *

The patrons of Sugar Cube Corner turned as the door slammed open, banging hard against the wall. In staggered Bellerophon Michaelides, his head tilted upward, lips closed around the neck of a brown beer bottle. It was one of twelve such bottles Lero had bought, not ten minutes ago. He toted his bottles in two cardboard six-packs carriers. Both of the carriers hung around the fingers of in his other hand.

This was his tenth bottle. You didn’t even need a fancy bottle opener to open it; the bottle caps here were all easy twist-offs. He chugged the booze down like a car chugged gasoline. God, he missed cars.

His eyes swam around the bakery, taking in every startled, unsure pony there, as he returned the empty bottle to its carrier. He wasn't seeing the pony he was looking for.

“CAAAAAAAAKE!” he called out, unnecessarily loud. “CAAAAAAAKE!”

“A-are you looking for a pony or one of our desserts?” Lero overbalanced a bit as he pivoted around. As he slowly tilted back upright, he saw the whole Cake family was here: both the parents and their two kids. Pumpkin and Pound were crawling around on the store floor, minded by their mother.

Of course, there was another mare, who was practically family of the Cakes', absent... in more ways that one.

He drew out one of the unopened beer bottles and pointed it at Mr. Cake the way a drunken wizard would point his wand. “You! The one ‘n the funny hat! Where’s... where’s Shudderpie? Pinkyflut? Y’know who ‘m talkin’ about. That lovely little comedienne a’yours.”

“We let Fluttershy off work early, sir,” answered Mr. Cake.

“Awwwww, phooey.” His butt hit the chair like a dropped sack of potatoes. “She’s... she’s comic gold, she is. I was hoping she could give me somethin’ ta laugh at. Somethin’ that’s not my... my shelf... hahahaha.”

“I think you probably want to go home, Mr. Lero, sir. This is a family establishment, and you’re drunk.” Mr. Cake said firmly, moving forward between Lero and his family.

“Drunk?! DRUNK?!” Both his hands banged down hard upon the table as he rose to a stand. “Is THAT what I am? Is that what I look like to you?! You don’t know what I am! Nobody knows what ANYONE is anymore!”

“I think I know a drunkard when I see one. This is a bakery, not a tavern.” Lero felt something soft brush against his ankle. He looked down to see Pound Cake, giggling and reaching upward with his forehooves, as if asking to be picked up. Smiling tenderly, Lero bent to do just that, but Mrs. Cake was too quick, dashing over and grabbing her son up by the diaper, and then retreating to a safer distance behind her husband.

The human sat back down gently. “Let me ask you something, Mr. Cake... if that really IS your name... those two adorable little foals of yours... are your kids really YOUR kids?”

Although the Earth pony didn’t expose any teeth, Lero could tell they were clenched tight behind his lips. “I don’t think I like what you’re insinuating, sir,” he warned him dangerously.

The human continued on, not even really registering what the baker had said. “Well, I’m just saying, mighty weird that a pegasus and a unicorn would be born to a pair of Earth ponies...”

Now Mr. Cake did show teeth, lowering himself into a battle stance. “You have ‘til the count of five to apologize to me and my wife! One! Two...!”

It took him the two seconds to realize the more obvious interpretation of what he was asking. “Wha... No, no, no, I apologize, I apologize! Not what I meant, not what I meant.” Lero held up his arms placatingly, waving them dismissively. “I wasn’t even suggesting your wife was... unfaithless, or whatever. I’m just suggesting that... maybe one day, you went to the daycare and took someone else’s kids home. And those other kids’ parents... they took your REAL kids to THEIR place, cause you and they didn’t know any better.”

“Why would we do a thing like that?!” Mrs. Cake asked. All the customers were quietly edging towards the door.

“Because: MAAAAAAAAaaaagic!” he said, gesturing grandiosely with the hand holding his beer. "Some sort of kooky spell cast on you."

Mr. Cake’s jaw dropped. “A spell?”

“A spell.” The human grabbed Beer #11, and twisted off the twist-off, then held it up, staring at the pony though the brown glass. “I’ve SEEN things today, buddy. I’ve watched two little fillies treat their older sisters... their own FLESH AND BLOOD, like distant neighbors!” He finally finished contemplating the beer, and downed the bottle like a pro. Mmm... you could always count on Foamy Lager to deliver the good stuff. “The mare I loved... we were together for years and she dumped me! DUMPED ME! But that’s not even the worst bit. Dash had plans. Big plans. She was gonna be a Wonderbolt! And she threw it all away, all her lifelong hopes and dreams, threw ME away, to shut herself up in a cottage at the edge of town with animals!”

Had he been a human, himself, Mr. Cake would have thrown up his arms. “You’re not making any sense!”

Lero pulled out his last unopened bottle, gripping it by the cap. Dangling it in his fingers, he twisted it back and forth, debating whether to hold off on drinking it.

“Can you answer a question? What’s the name of the mare who’s your employee?”

“Fluttershy! You saw her yourself!”

“Since when? For how long?!”

“Since she was a young teenager!”

The ends of Lero’s mouth lifted in an acid smirk. He took out his wallet, then showed the baker a picture of him and Rainbow Dash.

“And this mare that’s next to me in the picture... can you tell me what TYPE of pony she is?”

“Yes! That’s a unicorn, sir! It's your marefriend, Rarity!”

Like a doomed, damned man, Lero guffawed uproariously, an obnoxious and wretched shriek of a laugh, slapping his knee many times with the flat of his hand.

“You too, huh? You poor sap. You don’t even know who your EMPLOYEES are! Hell, she's practically your adopted daughter, and you can't tell her from the bashful animal lover! Are you sure your wife’s really your wife? For all you know, you could actually be married to CELESTIA, HERSELF, wouldn't that be a hoot? Are you sure your life’s really YOUR life? Or are you living someone else’s?”

Mr. Cake reared up, planting his forehooves hard upon the tabletop, eyes blazing. “I’m not gonna warn you again; leave now, or I will call the cops on you, you insane lunatic!”

“Me?! A lunatic?! Cake, you’re a genius!” Lero stood up, spread his arms as wide as he could stretch them out, and span around in a slow circle. “I WANT TO BE A LUNATIC!” He screamed at the top of his lungs. “I WANT TO BE THE NUTTIEST FRUITCAKE ON THE FUNNY FARM! INSANITY’S THE ONLY WAY ALL THIS WILL EVER MAKE SENSE!”

“Oh, but what fun is there in making sense?”

All the ponies in Sugar Cube Corner stopped moving. Literally. Not in that they froze up: they were paused. As though someone had pointed a remote control at a video. Incredulously, Lero walked up to Mr. Cake and touched his right eyeball very delicately. It felt like a plastic statue’s eye. Behind him, Lero heard the noise of many small, solid objects being shaken out of a container. He turned around.

A goat horn and a deer antler atop a goat-like head. Yellow scleras and red pupils. Bushy white eyebrows and beard. A lion paw, an eagle claw, legs of a lizard and goat. A bat’s right wing, a pegasus’ left, a dragon-like, snaky tail.

A being as unique, as one-of-a-kind to Equestria as Lero, himself.

The amalgamation of animals had his arms around a pilsner glass as big as a wine barrel. It was filled with golf balls and he was shaking them happily into his mouth, stopping to chew every few moments.

"Mmmm! Shame you seem to be shaping up to be one of those, mournful, buzzkilling, philosophizing drunks," he said between chews. "And here I was hoping you'd be a funny boozer. Ah, well."

“You’re that Chaos Guy,” Was the most coherent reply the human could manage.

The chimera took a suave bow. “My reputation precedes me.”

It did indeed. Lero had never encountered Discord himself before today: his escape from stone and forceful return to it predated Lero's own arrival in Equestria. And as for his more recent 'Reformation,' Twilight and Rainbow had insisted he and Lyra stay well away from him, as it was "Elements business." The only bit Lero had witnessed firsthand was Fluttershy's cottage floating high in the sky, spinning about, visible from a great distance away. There were also all the stories he'd heard, from all his herdmates, and other friends and neighbors. He was glad to not be part of that mess.

But now the mess was staring him in the face.

“What’s with the death glare, old boy?”

Lero grabbed one of his empty bottles, clutching its neck almost in a death-grip. “You did this. You’re responsible for all this madness. You HAVE to be!”

Discord gave a mocking show of being hurt. "What? Little old me? Your life filled with pain and chaos, and I'm the first person you blame? I'm..." He mood shifted startlingly fast to a pleased one, almost as if his facial features somehow didn't move the distance needed to properly move between states. "...Flattered, really!" He sighed. "Sadly, I can't take full credit. And honestly, if I'd been the one to come up with the whole 'Cutie Mark Swap' thing, I'd have probably made it more... widespread." He rubbed his chin. "Oh! Not just widespread — contagious! Imagine that, a plague of cutie mark craziness! Wouldn't that have been fun!?" He chortled, rocking in glee. Or maybe he was standing still while the world rocked about him. Lero wasn't sure if that was his doing or the booze at this point, not that it mattered. Lero broke his beer bottle against a wall: its bottom end now had quite a number of sharp points.

"Oh, please. Angry at the nigh-omnipotent godlike entity, and your first response is physical violence? No wonder you and Miss Dash got along so well. Oh, sorry, used to get along." he said, with only the barest veneer of apology.

With a primal scream of fury, Lero charged the draconequus and stabbed him deep in what he hoped would be his kidney.

A humannequin arm shot out of Discord’s torso and seized Lero’s left shoulder. Another humannequin arm shot out, and grabbed a wrist. Then came MORE arms; the arms of primates. A chimpanzee, a gorilla, a gibbon, an orangutan, an aye-aye, grabbing every portion of his body that fingers could close around.

"No more of that, Mr. Monkeyshines. We have business."

The arms pulled Lero into the draconequus’ body. The human sunk inside as though Discord were made of quicksand... screaming all the way in.

Author's Note

First: I'd like for everyone to stand up and give a great a great big round of applause to Rikmach, who helped write so much of this chapter. He's a truly terrific guy and I'm thankful to have him helping me with this, my very first fanfic ever. Thank you for being there for me, buddy. Folks, he might just be staying with me all the rest of the way on this story. If so, I'm truly blessed.

Second: Please keep this in mind, my friends: Lero is a problem solver. And we're still quite a long way away from Divided Rainbow's epilogue.

I look forward to seeing you all in the next chapter. It's going to be rather... chaotic.

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Nine: Exemption List

Lero Michaelides stood peering downward at a rattling air conditioning unit. Snapping from his empty-minded stupor, he looked about.

A motel room.

A motel room!?

It didn't matter how drunk he was; this was a motel room, made for humans by humans! A cheap, drab rathole of a motel room, but still...!

Electric sockets were in the walls. And there was an end table between two queen-sized beds, upon which sat a digital clock: 4:04 P.M. He opened its drawer, finding a TV remote and a Gideon Bible. Idly wondering what Twilight Sparkle and her mentor would make of the Bible, he clicked on the TV.

“Who killed my sister? Who killed the Witch of the East?! Was it you?!”

Click!

“Our thoughts and prayers go out to the victims of Hurricane Shaquinda...”

Click!

“I’m George O’Grady, and I approve this message.”

Click!

“Only $99.95 plus shipping and handling!”

Click!

"And the rockets' red glare! The bombs bursting in air!"

Click!

“Prepare to feel the wrath of the League of Evil Exes!”

Click!

“Cuddy’s way didn’t fail because she didn’t try to control House. She managed him.”

Click!

"Head On! Apply directly to the forehead!"

Click!

“La-la-la-la! La-la-la-la! Elmo’s song!”

Click!

“Nothing’s better in the morning than the great taste of fresh Florida orange juice!”

Click!

“You’ve got red on you.”

Click!

“Lucky there’s a Family Guuuuuuuuy!”

Click!

“Regarding little Mike Teavee, we very much regret that we shall simply have to wait and see if we can get him back his height, but if we can’t, serves him right!”

Click!

“He got an e-mail from his brother that said that aliens and monsters were attacking his place!”

...Humans, humans, humans! Lero could have sat on the bed and channel-surfed all day long, not even for the shows, but for the incredible number of OTHER HUMANS! Men! Women! Kids! Ever silly little cartoon humans! PEOPLE! It was staggering to realize how much he missed just seeing other humans.

Wonder what Rainbow Dash would think if she were here with me? Lero wondered, his thoughts drunkenly lurching from topic to topic. Which other humans would she find attractive besides me, if any?

But thoughts of the rainbow-maned pegasus brought claws around his guts, and he shut the television off. The room was still so spinning, but he force himself to think though the boulders in his head. The Chaos Guy... he’d grabbed him with his chest-monkey-arms and pulled him into his body. Dash and Twilight had told him all about his powers. This ‘motel room’ HAD to be fake! Just had to be!

He decided to explore some more and uncover some fakeness. Elementary, dear Watkins! Logic might not have been doing too well lately, but it was still mostly reliable. He opened the window curtain. A swimming pool was outside. Past the swimming pool, there was an expressway. An 18-wheeler roared by. He opened the closet: empty, except for hangers. He opened the drawers: no underwear, no socks, no change of clothes, no suitcase to be found anywhere.

His foot knocked against something on the floor, causing a clinking noise. He reached down and picked it up.

“Well, I’ll be damned,” he said. The beer bottle. Same one he’d attacked Discord with. Foamy Lager’s face was on the label still. He decided he’d hang onto it. This place could still be phonier than a nine-dollar bill... and he’d rather not be completely weaponless.

Lero strode into the bathroom and turned on the lights. Towel rack, towels, a shower, a toilet... and how BIZARRE it was to see a toilet actually shaped for a body like his! Pony toilets were pretty much holes in the ground with toilet seats upon them. The good news was: you could flush them; though their ‘flush handles’ were actually pull cords hanging from the ceiling, large enough for a pony mouth to close around. As for toilet paper... only the unicorns could even use that, and even with them, it wasn't popular. In Equestria, you could always depend on restrooms having bidets.

But his drunken brain was drifting. There were tiny little shampoo and conditioner bottles, (which he pocketed) and a dinky-sized coffee maker next to the sink. The logo on one of the keep-the-dust-off paper things covering the glass cups told Lero that he was at the Criddos Motel. The mirror showed him that he looked terrible, and he was wearing new clothes. Where was the outfit he’d had on when he’d tried to attack Discord? He had on a tan-colored trench coat, black jeans, white socks, and sneakers, plus a shirt reading: UNIVERSITY OF IDAHO.

“When did I ever go to Idaho?” He frowned and searched his pockets, surprised to actually find stuff! Oh God, his old leather wallet! American dollars instead of bits, ($150!) His library card! His gym membership card! His credit cards! (What would Equestria THINK of the credit card system? He hoped he remembered to tell them about it when he was sober again!) His driver’s license! He was clean-shaven in this picture, and such a dorky smile!

...There was also a picture of him, clean-shaven, with his mother and father. All smiling.

A hard lump formed in his throat, a lump which had nothing to do with being kidnapped or losing Dash, or the world going mad. Putting the wallet away, he continued to frisk himself. A comb; okay. Car keys; awesome! His old cell phone; good! Wished he had someone to call!

He stopped at this thought.

He dialed a number.

It rang. Several times, in fact. His phone plan was still active? Had his parents kept paying for it since he vanished? Or...

“Hello!” spoke a pre-recorded man’s voice. “We’re not at home right now, but if you’d leave your name and number after the beep, we’ll try to get a hold of you as soon as possible! Thanks!”

It beeped.

“Dad?” said Lero. “Dad, this is Lero. Your son, Lero, i-it’s been years since I’ve seen you, any of you. Or at least it’s been years for me, I-I don’t know, maybe it works like Narnia — y’know, with the witch and the lion? — and here, it’s not even been an hour since I disappeared from home. I was kidnapped, Dad. Twice. The first time, I was taken to a faraway place by evil people. I got away, but... The second time, it was someone else, and was kidnapped right back here. You and Mom aren't gonna believe this, but I fell in love! I met this girl... I meant several girls, in fact! We were so right for each other, Dad, we were talking seriously about marriage! Then everything just... I'm probably not making much sense, I've been through so many terrible things, and I’m so drunk right now. I’m at this motel, the Criddos Motel. I don’t where that is, what state I’m even in... but I’m going to try coming back to you, if this is real. Jesus... you must think I died. Are the cops still looking for me? Or have they stopped, or... I’m sorry, Dad. I swear, I would've called to you if I could... I wanted to call you and Mom so bad... and you don’t know how it feels just to hear your voice on an answering machine! God, there’s so much to talk about, you’d think it was all an acid dream or something... but I’m going to try to come home. Call me! Please call me back, I just got my old phone, you should have the number and... I love you, Dad. Mom too, so much. Call me.”

He hung up. This had to really be Earth. Discord had exiled him back on Earth. There was no way that Frankenstein-animal could have replicated his father’s voice; this had to be Earth. Equestria was gone to him... no way of getting back. Maybe trying to stab Discord through the kidney hadn't been his brightest idea.

He needed to get out of here... thinking about it all hurt his head AND heart and he had car keys... oh, that’s right, he was drunk, and driving drunk was a bad idea. Well, fresh air, then! He wanted to see another real-live human again! A maid or a concierge or whoever. Buy a baconburger if there was a Wendy’s or something in walking distance.

“SURPRISE!” Dozens upon dozens of inhumanly shrill voices screeched as he opened the door.

Lero backed away. Balloons flew in and flooded every corner inch of his room like quicksand filling a shoe. He felt them against the bottom of his leg. He felt them against his back, waist, and front. He felt four or five against his head, rubbing themselves in his hair as though trying to give him a static charge.

A memory suddenly surface: himself as a young boy, diving to the very bottom of the McDonald’s ball pen, and then looking up, trying to see the surface through all the multicolored balls. Through the very tiny gaps between balloons, he could see them swarmed against the ceiling, packed against the walls; green, blue, pink and yellow. They had manic cartoon faces that moved when they spoke in their high, manic voices.

“Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero! Welcome home, Lero!”

Endlessly they went on, all overlapping each other. Lero had never known true claustrophobia or demophobia before, but now he was screaming inside his own head:

They’re everywhere! They’re all around me! Balloons are gonna eat me! They’ll cut off all my air! Shut them up!

Lero swung his broken bottle like an adventurer’s dagger. Drunk as he was, it was literally impossible for him to not hit the balloons. Five of them popped deafeningly, and melted ice cream cake splattered all over Lero’s face and shirt. The balloons made no move to either retaliate or retreat, as Lero kicked them away, swept them aside with his arms, and popped them with his bottle, they only kept closing around him, chanting ‘Welcome Home, Lero!’

He forced his way towards the door, through the cacophony of chants and splattery popping. He had to get out of here. The balloons were probably congesting the hallway, too, but he’d fight his way through them to the way outside, and then he’d be safe. There was no way these balloons could clog up every inch of open air in the great outdoors, right? Right?

He crossed the threshold to the hallway outside, and suddenly... no chanting. No balloons. No motel, either.

Lero was now in a church: with rows of pews down either side of the aisle, leading towards a pulpit and an altar. Only... Lero had attended quite a few churches in his day, but none of them had been made entirely out of yellow and pink stone, and the butterfly motif was rather new to him. As he walked down the aisle he passed several stained-glass windows through which beautifully colored sunlight shone down on him. In a Christian church, these windows would have depicted scenes from the gospel, crucification, and resurrection of Christ.

These windows showcased such scenes as the Element Bearers freeing Discord from his stone statue; Fluttershy’s cottage floating upside-down in the air, Discord, dressed as a maître d', serving the Element Bearers a chaotic dinner, Discord waterskiing through a flooded Sweet Apple Acres, Fluttershy removing her Element of Kindness to give to her stunned friends, Fluttershy angrily throwing a pair of ice skates away, Discord crying, Discord bowing towards Celestia... and Fluttershy and Discord smiling warmly at one another. There were also many engravings, such as the words FIRST FRIEND under an image of Fluttershy, and also FRIENDSHIP IS MAGIC and YOU CAN’T ALWAYS GET YOUR WAY.

Lero slipped his broken bottle into one of the trench coat’s larger pockets. As he walked, he heard a door open and shut — the room behind the altar — and Fluttershy stepped out. Fluttershy, in the flesh! He starred disbelieving for a second before breaking out into a sprint towards her! He couldn't believe it! Her butterflies were back on her! She had her own original cutie mark again!

“Fluttershy!” he exclaimed, startling her a little. “Oh, thank God, you've got your own mark back! Did Discord kidnap you too? Where are the others? Where’s Dash? What mark does she have now?”

Fluttershy blushed a little, turning her head away. “Um... I’m sorry, Lero. I’m actually not the real Fluttershy.”

Lero’s face fell. “You’re not?”

The not-Fluttershy scuffed her hoof demurely on the church’s stone floor. “I’m a magical replica. I’m made of Discord’s appreciation and affection for the real Fluttershy. He gave me a body so that he’d always have a Fluttershy around, even after the real one... went the way of all mortals.”

How stupid of him to think it’d ever be that easy. “Of course,” Lero said with a hard swallow. “Please pardon my mistake, Miss Replica, ma’am.” Damn magic again.

“Mr. Lero... I know what you’re going through, and I’m not here to toy with your emotions. I’m not out to give you false hope. I am what I am. And you can call me Fluttershy, if that's alright with you.” The replica nuzzled his face sympathetically. “ You've got cake on you, you know that?”

Lero laughed, and wiped some of it off his face with a fingertip. “You actually made this for me, Fluttershy. At least, the ‘real’ you did.” He licked it off; nice and chocolatey. “Fluttershy, does Discord treat you right?”

The replica Fluttershy brightened. “Oh, yes! He’s fun and he makes everything lively! He even conjured up my five best friends so I’d never be alone, even when he’s gone!”

Hope rose in Lero’s heart. This Fluttershy acted so much like the real Fluttershy’s old self. Even if it she was nothing more than a replica, even if she had no romantic interest in him, even if it was just a brief encounter before Discord spirited him away to some new wing of this otherworldly madhouse... to see Dash again... her old attitude, her old brashness, her old self-confidence...

“Is... is there any chance I could speak to Rainbow Dash?”

“Oh, um, well, she and the others are napping in their playpens.”

“Playpens?” Lero repeated. “They’re babies here?”

“No... they’re full-grown mares, they’re just... Made out of Discord's appreciation and affection for them, just like I am. He, um, favors me more. So they're far more dim-witted and simple than their real-life counterparts,” Then, desperate to say something positive about them, she added, “But they’re all so sweet and playful and cuddly and easy to get along with! And they can all go to the little fillies’ room all by themselves! Without supervision!”

“Th... that’s wonderful,” he managed after staring several seconds.

The replica gave Lero her own hopeful look. “Maybe if the real ones were more kind and respectful to Discord, it’d make my own friends more complete? It'd be nice to talk to them again. Pinkie's the only one that can manage it, and mostly to tell jokes and laugh. He likes laughter.”

“...I can try putting in a good word.”

She smiled. “Did you still want to see Dashie?”

“No, no, that’s okay,” Lero said quickly. “I probably should just let her nap.”

Seeing Dash as Fluttershy was painful enough. To see Dash as that guy from Flowers For Algernon... he’d have no choice but to get himself twice as smashed. What sort of drinks did they have for that in this topsy-turvy twilight zone? Laundry detergent? Bug spray? Shirley Temples? And what right did Discord have to do that to Dash, anyway?! Even to a replica of her?! He pulled out his broken bottle.

“Where’s Discord, Fluttershy?!” His anger flared again, turning around and shouting, voice echoing throughout the church. “Discord?! DISCORD?! Where are you?! What is this place you've taken me to?!”

“Oh, just a quaint little inter-dimensional hole-in-the-wall I like to call How-Should-I-Know?” Once again, the freakshow had snuck up on him from behind. He turned to see him holding Fluttershy comfortably in his arms.

“I don’t appreciate being abducted,” Lero growled.

Discord stuck his tongue out at him. “Oh, please, who are you, Br'er Rabbit?" with a poof, rabbit ears popped atop his head — another mouth — clearly Discord's forming on his face, and shouted, "Oh, Lawdy, I done punched th' God 'o Chaos sittin' in the middle of tha' road, and now I'm done stuck!" They vanished as fast as they appeared, leaving nothing behind besides a brief sense of disorientation, "Really, what did you expect to happen? Besides, between me, the Spider, and the Gentry, I'd expect you'd be used to it by now. Being abducted to terrible fates seems to be a reoccurring theme in your life."

"You...!" He started to snarl. Wait, he mentally interrupted himself. "Wait, the Gentry?"

"Whoops! Not supposed to talk about them. Lips are sealed!" He makes a motion across his mouth, causing it to vanish. "That one at least." Commented a new opening in his torso, which Lero recognizing being the spot he'd stabbed. "We don't exactly appreciate being stabbed, so forgive us if we don't feel too remorseful."

Lero brandished his bottle’s jagged end at his foe. “You deserve worse for what you've done!”

“Lero, please!” Fluttershy beseeched. “I know you’re hurt and you’re confused, but Discord’s NOT the bad guy anymore!”

“He’s gotta funny way of showing it!” Fluttershy shrank back back from his shout, and Lero took a deep breath, willing himself to bring his voice down. “Get her out of here, Discord. This is between you and me.”

Discord eyed him like an unfunny clown. Nonetheless, his mouths re-arranged themselves and he asked the pegasus, “Fluttershy, dear, why don’t you head on over and play us something nice on the pipe organ?”

“Promise not to hurt him? Please?”

Discord planted a little kiss atop her forehead. “Everything will be alright.”

She smiled and flew up to the church’s organ loft. Discord took on a martial artist’s stance; eagle talon curled into a hook, lion paw flattened for karate chops. He sneered like a proper villain.

“Come at me with everything you have, Mr. Michaelides! Let this be our final battle!” The fact that his mouth movements didn't match up with the words he was saying, gave him a dubbed-over quality. Seemed appropriate.

Lero charged and slashed for his stomach. “I’ll bet it was you who gave Twilight that spellbook!”

But Discord bounced off the ground like a rubber ball, landing halfway across the room. "Whee!" Discord responded, infuriating him further.

“You’re to blame for mix-and-matching our friends’ cutie marks and their memories!”

As he ran after Discord, the pipe organ started up, from the high balcony at the far end of the room. It took a few moments for him to recognize the tune: Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up.

“You’re to blame for making all of Ponyville forget who the five of them really are!”

His bottle swept out in a series of jabbing stabs. Each time, Discord dodged it better than a contortionist with a black belt. Often times in ways that made no sense or blatantly violated the laws of perspective. The draconequus flattened himself into the impossibly low ‘limbo.‘ His body swung backwards like a jump rope. He ballet-twirled from Lero’s jabs. He somehow evade an attack by being very large and far away, and once by being very small and close up. And every time he dodged, there was the sound of a slide whistle, sliding up, sliding down.

“Lero, Lero, Lero... you’re BETTER than this! Twilight told you that it was the Princess who mailed Starswirl’s book to her, and she spoke the truth!”

“How would you know what Twilight said to me?!” the human spat.

“My dear Lero... it’s child’s play when your ears are everywhere.”

And suddenly, like an invasive species of mushrooms, Discord’s ears were sprouting out of the walls, the ceiling, the floors... Lero even felt a pair of his ears pop out behind his own human ones! Screaming again, Lero rushed forth.

This time it was teleportation. Lero would ALMOST reach the mocking monster, and then — SNAP! — he was on the altar, bouncing a tennis ball on a racquet.

"Over here!" He called, gleefully. Lero ran to the altar — SNAP! — Discord was doing a handstand on the pulpit.

"Guess again!" Ran to the pulpit — SNAP! — he was tap dancing atop the confessional.

"Nope, not there either!" Lero paused, panting, glowering at the mismatched beast long enough for the creature to settle down atop the confessional, looking down at him as he started to move towards him again.

"Now, you accuse me of tampering with the souls of Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash. But I’m afraid you’re barking up the wrong tree. Starswirl’s spell — and ONLY Starswirl’s spell — is to blame for their scrambled psyches. I am entirely innocent.” He help up a lion paw, his taloned one over his heart as he said this, as if taking an oath.

Lero stopped, stumbling against a pew, struggling to get his breath back. “How can I ever trust what you say?!”

Shrugging, Discord brought out a yo-yo and proceeded to toy with it.

"You can't, really. However, you just did try to murder me, and I've just messed with you in response. At least give me the benefit of the doubt? Hey, it might be a fun story!"

Lero stared at him for several seconds before decided it wasn't worth dragging this out by calling Discord a liar every three sentences, and just save it for when the freak had said his piece.

“As for your second accusation, that I ‘made all of Ponyville forget who those five really are...’” A prison jumpsuit and handcuffs materialized over Discord’s body. “Guilty as charged. I throw myself upon the mercy of the court!” He dramatically threw himself down from the top of the confessional, into a prostrate pose.

“What?!”

“Although, you’re actually thinking in too small a scope.” He looked up at Lero, making a hand gesture with his hand with his index and thumb, peering through it as if examining something tiny. The jumpsuit and cuffs disappeared, replaced by a huge spinning globe — big as a wrecking ball — which Discord hopped on top of, running upon its North Pole like it were a treadmill, before veering down and running down its side, the entire globe shifting colors into strange, discordant clashing ones.

“It’s not JUST Ponyville. It’s EVERYWHERE. I've altered the perceptions of almost every living thing on this planet, sapient or not, so that they’ll fall in perfect lockstep with what those five believe about themselves! Ask any pony you care to! From the Crystal Ponies of the Crystal Empire, from Chrysalis and her changeling brood to the sands of Saddle Arabia... no one’s gonna believe your version of things! Because I specifically zapped them not to!”

For Lero, it felt like the temperature had dropped several degrees. “That’s... impossible!” He said, already realizing that probably wasn't true.

“You’re speaking to the guy capable of switching the sun and moon’s positions on a second-by-second basis! Remember your buddy, Big MacIntosh? All I had to do was touch my little finger to his forehead, and he was barking and burying bones and rolling over for belly rubs, just as good as Winona! Except I made Winona the one who had to fill his doggie bowl and take him for walkies! You should ask Pinkie Pie about it sometime; she’ll remember every detail about what happened to her ‘brother!’”

Lero slammed himself against Discord’s spinning globe, which did not budge. Discord's casual amused commentary about his past, and the torment on his friends infuriated him again, damn the promise to listen.

“Come down here right now and fight me like a man!” He shouted in fury.

"Tsk, I do so hate interruptions." Discord snapped his fingers, a human-sized birdcage formed around Lero.

He kicked and punched and flung himself against the bars until his knuckles bled, yelling incoherently. Lero was exhausted, sweating like a pig. Yet his grip on the broken bottle’s neck tightened all the harder, as he made a vow.

“I’ll kill you, you freak. You abomination from Hell. I don’t care how I have to do it, how much time it takes, what I have to get, or how I have to change. I’ll become as strong as I must. You’ll pay for toying with everyone’s minds! For forcing us all to bend to your lies!” He glared at Discord through the bars. “Go ahead and taunt me now! I won't be weak forever.”

The dark, gloating pride on Discord’s face ebbed away. “Jeez... now you’ve gone and made me feel all rotten.” He sighs.

Then Discord’s body transmogrified to that of Mahatma Gandhi: glasses, mustache, baldness, white robe and all. He held an olive branch in one hand and a pure-white dove in the other. “Please forgive my thoughtless indiscretions,” Gandhi-Discord said. He even managed a good Indian accent. “Violence is not the answer. Let there be peace between us, my friend.”

“Go jump in magma,” Lero answered bitterly.

Discord turned back to his normal self, but he still held onto the dove and the olive branch. “Maybe the Element Bearers didn’t tell you, or maybe you’re one of the skeptics, but I assure you, I’m not the same draconequus I was.”

“Oh?” Lero sneered. “‘Reformed,’ are you?” He did remember being told their efforts were successful, but he hadn't seen a thing so far to make him believe that was true.

“Reformed I am. You’ll find that nowadays I mended all my ways, repented, seen the light and made a switch.” Discord turned backwards, smiling in Fluttershy’s direction, who music was still lilting down from above.

Lero pointed his bottle at his eyes. “All I see is a dragon that needs to be slain.”

Discord sighed tiredly. “Or a Chimera, perhaps. Ironically appropriate. But before you go back to swinging your Sword of Righteousness at me, Brave Sir Michaelides, why not do the ACTUAL heroic thing, and give me a chance to justify my actions?”

He stuck the olive branch in Lero’s cage.

“Truce?”

Hating himself for every second of it, Lero took the olive branch and threw the broken bottle aside. What good was it doing him against the Embodiment of Chaos, anyway? The bottle grew mole claws, squeaked cutely, and burrowed its way underground.

“Excellent.” Discord snapped his fingers and the birdcage fell apart. “Now let me explain: what I’m doing is not in the spirit of malice or mischief. Rather, it was a KINDNESS to my Element-Bearing friends.”

“Kindness?!” Lero balked. “You broke families apart with your mind games! Including mine!”

The draconequus shrugged, seeming genuinely sad for a moment. “Sometimes you need to be cruel to be kind.”

“Here, take your stupid olive branch back!”

The dove in Discord’s hand transformed into some manner of handheld device. Lero had just enough time to recognize it as a breathalyzer, before the draconequus jammed its mouthpiece against his mouth.

“I must admit, Lero, I’m amazed how articulate you are as a drunk. No shilly shlurring of wordshhh, no hiccups, no nothing.”

Discord drew away from the breathalyzer, and Lero saw that it was clinging firmly to his lips... clinging to his FACE. The thing was sucking... something out of of him! A facehugger!

“But that attitude of yours! You’re mopey and dreary, you fly off the handle, you’re mean to people who wanna be friends with you, you’re just no fun at all as a drunk!”

Lero tried to pull it off, but as he pulled, he watched his own face stretch comically, like a cartoon. Startled, it snapped back in place, leaving only a faint sting of the impact. Lero found he could breathe through it quite comfortably. And yet there was no denying the thing was sucking something out of him. What was it? His soul? But as the seconds passed, Lero discovered he could think more clearly. The buzz was leaving his head. The world was getting less and less swimmy...

...After a while, Discord popped it out of his mouth. “Welcome back to sobriety!”

Lero felt at his head and blinked his eyes. “Oh my God... I am sober!”

“Yep! This little guy feeds off inebriation, sucks it right out of drunks! Isn’t that right, buddy?”

“That it is!” chirped the ‘breathalyzer,’ and bowed respectfully to Lero. “Thank you for being such a delicious meal, sir!” Discord tossed it aside... and it somehow skittered off.

“So! Ready to go back to being the sweet little boy that Twilight, Lyra, and Rarity fell so much in love with?”

Lero paused... and then felt intense embarrassment. Despite Discord's comments, normally he was a relaxed, friendly drunk. If the situation had simply been Dash genuinely dumping him — while still remaining herself — he'd probably simply be an inconsolable, sobbing wreck. Just the buildup of the past several days of physical, mental, and emotional torment, including his best efforts to correct the situation being blatantly, absurdly, denied by the enchantment had pushed him to the edge. All that it took to push him over was just a little bit of booze. Even if Discord didn't deserve better, the Cakes certainly did.

"...Sorry." he murmured, not sure who to in particular.

“Then let’s continue.”

A pull cord dropped all the way down from the ceiling by Discord's side. The draconequus tugged it, and trapdoors opened beneath both their feet. Lero yelped as they fell...

...Into a movie theater, landing in adjacent seats.

They were right in the middle of the theater's center row. The big screen was still showing advertisements... for things like desk lamps you could shave your cat with, and a powder for turning milk into concrete. No one else was in the theater with them.

Discord pulled out two ice cream cones from thin air, and offered Lero one. “Snack?”

The cone that Discord was holding out to Lero appeared to be basic vanilla. The one he kept for himself had loads of cherries in it.

“Sure, why not?” He licked the ice cream cone, and nearly dropped it when he tasted hot pepperoni pizza, straight from the oven.

“How is it?” asked Discord.

Lero took another taste. “Delicious,” he said, and meant it. As long as you could make yourself forget that ice cream was supposed to be cold, and that pizza was meant to be chewed, not licked... it made for one fine scoop of pizza.

“What flavor did you get?”

"Caviar,” answered the draconequus, taking a slow, showy lick.

The theater went dark. Adventurous-sounding trumpet music started up, and the words FEATURE PRESENTATION flashed onscreen.

“Ooh!” Discord clapped him chummily on the shoulder. “You’re gonna love this, Lero! It’s a double feature!”

Lero leaned forward in his chair.

* * *

PINKIE THE FARMER
Act One

FADE IN:

EXT. SWEET APPLE ACRES - DAY

Open on PINKIE PIE; frustrated and ill-tempered, in the Apple family’s apple orchard. She has STRAIGHT HAIR and the APPLE-BASED CUTIE MARK that once belonged to her friend Applejack.

Again and again, she tries to BUCK the same APPLE TREE, but no matter how long or how hard Pinkie kicks, none of its APPLES fall into the BASKETS laid underneath, because Pinkie lacks the EXPERIENCE and the LEG MUSCLE to pull it off.

But she keeps at it with a mindless PERSISTENCE that would almost be ZOMBIE-LIKE, except she’s channeling powerful emotion into her task: growing frustration.

Then young APPLE BLOOM enters the scene, trotting over curiously to Pinkie Pie.

Throughout the dialogue that is to follow, Pinkie Pie will not quit bucking the tree for an instant. She speaks to Apple Bloom without once looking her way.

APPLE BLOOM
Hey... uh... Pinkie?

PINKIE PIE
(high-strung, almost vicious)
Whaddaya want, lil’ sister?!

APPLE BLOOM
(completely perplexed)
Sister?! Me?

PINKIE PIE
Yeah, yew! Mah cutie mark says we’re sisters, and who am Ah ta contradict it?!

APPLE BLOOM
Then yer mark don’t know what it’s talking about. Ah only have one sister, Pinkie, and that’s Applejack.

PINKIE PIE
How dare yew impugn the trustworthiness of mah cutie mark! It says we’re sisters, so we’re sisters, and that’s that!

APPLE BLOOM
Then how come Applejack’s name is something apple-based, like all ponies with Apple family blood in their veins, while yew got named ‘Pinkie Pie?’

PINKIE PIE
Ah have no idea.

APPLE BLOOM
An what kind of an Apple needs to buck the tree fifty bazillion times, and nothing drops?!

PINKIE PIE
Don’t yew dare try ta muddy the issue with glaringly obvious logic! That’s jest a disrespectful thang ta do!

APPLE BLOOM
Stop talkin’ like that! Stop mockin’ mah accent! T’ain’t nice a’yew, Pinkie!

PINKIE PIE
Whudder yew babblin’ about?! Ah’ve had the exact same accent yew do since the day Ah learnt ta talk!

APPLE BLOOM
But Applejack...

PINKIE PIE
Applejack?! The frilly fancy-schmancy dressmaker?! What business would SHE have on a farm like ours?! And Ah don’t have any clue why yew’d think she was yer sister! She’s already got one! Sweetie Belle!

APPLE BLOOM
Sweetie Belle?!
(nervous gulp)
Hey, uh... ‘sis?‘ Mind if Ah take a gander at that cutie mark a’yours yew’ve been on and on about?

PINKIE PIE
What’s stoppin yew?

Apple Bloom crosses over to get a better look at the mark on Pinkie’s flank. Her eyes bulge. She stares at Pinkie Pie in absolute horror.

APPLE BLOOM
That’s... that’s Applejack’s mark! Yew dun stole Applejack’s cutie mark right offa her flank, and put it on yer own! What manner of freakish and unnatural witchcraft is this?!

Pinkie Pie stops bucking. She turns around and hunkers down, eye-level with Apple Bloom. The look on Pinkie’s face is SCARY.

PINKIE PIE
Yew’ve been helping yerself ta them bottles that me and Granny and Big Mac told ya never ta go near, haven't ya?! Oh, yew bad, bad girl. Ah’m-a-gonna tan yer hide something FIERCE.

Fearing for her life, Apple Bloom gallops away towards her home, hollering at the top of her lungs.

APPLE BLOOM
Graaaaaaaany! Big Maaaaaaac!

PINKIE PIE
(yelling after her)
Yeah! Yew’d better run to Mac ‘n’ Granny! And be sure yew tell ’em yew’ve been raidin’ the liquor cabinet! If Ah have to tell 'em, it’ll be a double-whupping for ya!

For a few seconds of screen time, Pinkie goes back to bucking. Then Apple Bloom returns with BIG MACINTOSH and GRANNY SMITH. The filly points a shaky forehoof at Pinkie Pie’s new mark.

APPLE BLOOM
T-there it is! Plain as day for all the world ta see!

GRANNY SMITH
(also horrified)
Land sakes! Mac, d’ya see it?! It IS her mark!

Big Macintosh nods, deeply troubled. All three of the Apples come closer to Pinkie.

GRANNY SMITH
What’ve yew done ta my granddaughter, Pinkie Pie?!

PINKIE PIE
(confused)
AH’M yer granddaughter, Granny!

GRANNY SMITH
No, yew ain’t. Yer no kin’a mine. Yer that crazy girl who works at Sugar Cube Corner!

PINKIE PIE
I’m Fluttershy?!
(licks lips)
But... no, Granny, Ah AM yer kin! Big Brother, tell her it t’ain’t true!

BIG MACINTOSH
(icy glare)
Get off our farm.

Pinkie Pie gapes at her ‘family,’ thunderstruck and heartbroken.

APPLE BLOOM
No, Mac! DON’T let her off our farm! We can’t let her leave! She has Applejack’s cutie mark! Let’s lock her in the barn until we can get Applejack and Twilight here, so the unicorn can put Applejack’s mark back where it belongs!

GRANNY SMITH
(nodding)
Child’s wise beyond her years!

PINKIE PIE
Yer... yer all disowning me? AND yer stoppin’ me from farming?

GRANNY SMITH
“Farming?!”

Granny sneers at all the un-bucked trees.

GRANNY SMITH
Way Ah reckon, ya ain’t done a lick of work, missy!

Pinkie Pie SNAPS. She’s stark raving mad.

PINKIE PIE
How could ya’ll disown me?! Ah need to do this! Ah need to! It’s mah destiny! It’s gotta be! It’s what mah cutie mark is telling me, and it won’t shut up! It never shuts up, not fer a second! How dare yew horrible ponies take this farm away from me! It’s the only thang that quiets the voices just a little itty bit! BUCK YOU ALL! Ya’ll done woke up the dragon today! AH DON’T EVEN CARE IF YER FAMILY OR NOT!!!

From behind a tree, Pinkie pulls out a giant, gas-powered chainsaw. She yanks back on its ripcord and it ROARS to life.

PINKIE PIE
RAAAAHHH!!!!

The screen goes BLACK. But we still hear the RUMBLING ROAR of the chainsaw, the VENGEFUL SHRIEKS of Pinkie Pie... and then the doomed WAIL of Apple Bloom, coupled with the CHAINSAW GRINDING through her flesh, muscle, and bone.

* * *

PINKIE THE FARMER
Act Two

FADE IN:

EXT. SWEET APPLE ACRES - THE NEXT DAY

It is a different day, but Pinkie Pie is still bucking that that same one tree.

A little off to her left: THREE NEW TOMBSTONES.

Then a unicorn in a white coat named WHITE COAT approaches Pinkie.

WHITE COAT
Miss Pinkie Pie? We’ll need you to come with us. Quietly.

PINKIE PIE
Ah’m farming! Get offa mah proppity!

White Coat floats a SYRINGE towards Pinkie while her back is turned, and injects SEDATIVE into her BUTT. She FLUMPS OVER. White Coat turns around.

WHITE COAT
Get her in the wagon, boys.

FADE TO BLACK

* * *

PINKIE THE FARMER
Act Three

FADE IN:

INT. INSANE ASYLUM - NIGHT

Pinkie Pie is in a straitjacket in her own padded room. She just looks sad and doesn't move from her spot. The NOISES of other MENTAL PATIENTS from the other cells all serve as background noise: NONSTOP GIGGLING, INCOHERENT PRATTLING, SPEAKING IN TONGUES, TURKEY GOBBLING, HOWLER MONKEY HOWLS, LOUD PRAYERS TO DEMONS, ETCETERA.

PINKIE PIE
(small, defeated voice)
Why won’t they jest let me farm?

THE END

FADE TO BLACK

ROLL CREDITS

* * *

A ridiculously long list of credits began to roll across the screen Discord and Lero were watching.

“Pinkie would never use a gas-powered chainsaw on other ponies!” Lero whispered in horror. Then, with more conviction, he turned and said, “They don’t even use gasoline as a fuel in Equestria!”

The Embodiment of Chaos scoffed. “Oh, SUE me for taking some artistic license! Would you like me to replay that scene with her using an axe, instead? What's next, you going to criticize me with the technical inaccuracy of her not baking them into cupcakes? Some people!” he rolled his eyes, both in their sockets, and spiraling around on his face.

“Pinkie would NEVER slaughter an entire family like that!” Lero insisted. "Especially not one she believed to be her own!"

Discord clasped his talon and paw together, studying Lero with an owlish look.

“Let me get this straight. You’re saying if someone or something threatened to deprive a swapped pony of something her new cutie mark’s telling her to obsess over... you believe that pony would show restraint? Interesting.”

He looked over Lero’s shoulder. “What do you make of that theory, Mr. 7?”

Lero nearly had a heart attack. In the chair right next to him, sat Mr. 7, cross-legged, sitting awkwardly in the tiny theater seat, a bag of popcorn in its lap, the end one spider-talon propped inside the bag. The Bramblewood Titan Spider wasn’t alive though. Nothing but a maimed corpse, still smoldering, just as Rarity had left him.

“Quiet fellow,” Discord remarked.

A leg of Mr. 7’s broke off on its own as the theater darkened again, causing a faint clatter as it hit the ground.

“Anyway, sssh, this is the best bit! Part Two of our twice-told tale! And you’ll want to finish that off quickly, Lero, dear, before it explodes into fire. Or turns into a bat.”

Lero lapped at his pizza-ice cream in earnest while crossing over to sit in the chair at Discord’s other side, putting the draconequus between himself and Mr. 7.

You just never really knew.

* * *

PINKIE THE FARMER
(Revised by Discord)

FADE IN:

EXT. SWEET APPLE ACRES - DAY

Open on PINKIE PIE; frustrated and ill-tempered, in the Apple family’s apple orchard. She has STRAIGHT HAIR and the APPLE-BASED CUTIE MARK that once belonged to her friend Applejack.

But she keeps at it with a mindless PERSISTENCE that would almost be ZOMBIE-LIKE, except she’s channeling powerful emotion into her task: growing frustration.

Then young APPLE BLOOM enters the scene, trotting over curiously to Pinkie Pie.

But just before she opens her mouth to speak, DISCORD materializes right behind the little filly SILENTLY. Neither pony sees him.

One FINGER of his touches down upon Apple Bloom’s HEAD: the lightest, quickest tap imaginable.

As Discord fades away, Apple Bloom’s EYEBALLS roll upwards for several seconds, showing the whites. Then they roll BACK DOWN, and Apple Bloom smiles at Pinkie pleasantly.

APPLE BLOOM
(cheerfully)
Hiya, big sister! Granny’s made some lemonade for us back at the farmhouse! Wanna take a break and have some with us?

PINKIE PIE
Can’t. Bucking.

APPLE BLOOM
Okie-dokie-lokie!

As the filly trots back to the farmhouse, Pinkie Pie freezes up. Somehow, those last words of Apple Bloom’s have touched some deep part of Pinkie’s psyche. Then she shakes her head and resumes bucking.

THE END

FADE TO BLACK

ROLL CREDITS

* * *

“...And they all lived happily ever after.” Discord was quoting the words now on the movie screen, right down to the underline. "Well." He rubbed his chin. "Maybe not happily, but alive, nonetheless."

Lero thought and thought. “There’s got to be some way to make them remember what their real identities are. There’s gotta be!”

Discord stretched his arms wide, the number ONE and TWO appearing in each hand.

“There’s actually two ways, The first is to just find a cure." He tosses the number one onto the movie screen, where it melted into a projection: a brief vignette of the restored Bearers of Harmony, happily enjoying their true natures with gusto again.

"The second is to prove the truth to them.”

“So it is possible?” asked Lero, “You can prove it to them?”

“The people of your own world were able to prove that the Earth revolved around the sun, instead of the other way around, weren't they? So yes, it is possible. If your arguments are watertight. If your evidence is rock-solid. It won’t be easy at all, especially with their physical senses lying to them. But yes, you CAN unravel the webs of self-deception they've built around themselves. Tear the blinders off their eyes... while they still have their new cutie marks...”

He tossed the two onto the movie screen, where it flashed into light and sound. Fluttershy... Pinkie Pie... Rainbow Dash... Applejack... Rarity... they were all now mad-eyed butchers. Howling, gibbering, SCREAMING insane... a danger to themselves and everyone else. They stabbed, they trampled, they sprinted after terrified victims, they targeted their loved ones first... the montage of gore rolled on before the human's eyes.

“...But that’s not the cure.” Discord said. “Their heads are now telling them they’re one pony. But their marks are telling them they’re another. And neither one shuts up. And this split in their personality will tear their sanity right down the middle. Worst scenario imaginable.”

Mercifully, the film ended. Lero's blood ran cold, realizing what he'd almost done. If all this was true, without Discord's efforts to hide the truth, he might have just driven Rainbow Dash incurably insane. He watched Discord pull out a yellow pegasus feather, toss it up, and then twirl his finger, filling it with his magic and making it dance in the air.

“Once upon a time, I’d have gotten the biggest kick out of watching all the Elements of Harmony degenerate into homicidal maniacs. But I’m not that guy anymore. I owe them big. Especially...”

Discord caught the feather and tucked it away.

“These exchanged cutie marks have an absolute stranglehold upon your friends’ minds, Lero. It’s not like poor Pinkie Pie can go buy some land and start her own apple farm: it has to be Sweet Apple Acres! It’s not like Applejack can build her own dress shop: it has to be the Carousel Boutique! I cannot even exaggerate how all-consuming these impulses within them are.”

Lero couldn't think of what to say.

“I put the whole world under a bewitchment to eliminate any possibility that someone — a long-distance pen pal, a cousin from out-of-town, government inspectors — would suddenly come and prevent these five from performing their pathological compulsions in peace. So whatever else you do, Lero: do not take Rainbow Dash away from her critters, do not stop Rarity from performing her weather magic, do not stop Applejack from sewing, do not keep Pinkie Pie off of Sweet Apple Acres, and do not prevent Fluttershy from... well... trying to be Pinkie Pie. They can be scorned, despised, pitied, laughed at, beaten up, they can fail endlessly at what they do! But if you get in the way of their ‘thing,’ they will grow dangerously insane and violent.”

Lero nodded, wide-eyed.

“My bewitchment is preserving innocent lives, and the remnants of your friends’ sanity!”

Fluttershy was right: Discord wasn't the bad guy here.

“...But why am I not bewitched too?” the human asked. “Or Spike, or...”

“Ah.” A rolled-up scroll appeared in Discord’s hand. “And now we get to the heart of the matter. Here’s the thing, Lero: Twilight Sparkle must be the one to uncover a cure for the cutie swap and complete Starswirl’s unfinished spell."

“Why?”

Discord shook his head, smiling, wagging a taloned finger at Lero. “Ah, Ah, Ah! Spoilers! All you have to know is that there is a grander scheme at play. Twilight has to be the one to come to a solution. Here, take a look at this list.”

He unfurled the scroll.

DISCORD’S COMPLETE
EXEMPT-FROM-BEWITCHMENT LIST
1) Discord
2) Twilight Sparkle
3) Bellerophon Michaelides
4) Lyra Heartstrings
5) Spike
6) (The name was scratched out. Next to it, Discord had pencilled in the words "A Surprise!")
7) Princess Celestia
8) Princess Luna

“Just so you know, It was Celestia, herself, who asked for my help with this bewitchment,” said Discord. “She’s the one who sanctioned it! She wanted to make sure Twilight had enough time to figure out a cure without anything bad happening.”

Lero got a brainwave. “We’re not part of the bewitchment,” he pointed at his, Lyra’s and Spike’s name, “because we’re all part of Twilight’s herd!”

Discord clapped. “Bravo! Bravo! The kid has brains! Yes, the reason why you were spared was because if absolutely everyone else agreed with Rarity & Friends’ viewpoint, Twilight might be peer-pressured into thinking she was deluded! That Applejack being an apple farmer was just a dream!”

“And by keeping us — her nearest and dearest — aware of the truth, Twilight has people she can talk to while she works to find a cure!”

“He shoots, he scores!” the draconequus cheered, the theater shifting into a basketball court, a perfect three pointer swishing into the net, the loud score buzzer and cheers echoing about them.

“But why MUST it be Twilight, though?! Discord, a guy like you can alter the minds of this entire world’s population! Five ponies should be no trouble at all! I wish you’d just fix this yourself!”

The human would’ve said more, but actual hellfire was shooting out of Discord’s ears and nose. The draconequus stood and grew fifteen feet tall and fifteen feet wide.

“Wish? Wish, did you say?!” he snarled. “I’ll tell you something, Mr. Michaelides, if there’s one thing I hate more than Order, it’s greedy, presumptuous little mortals like you trying to make me their wishing genie!”

He held up a lamp... a distinctly-shaped brass lamp they used in all adaptions of Aladdin. The next thing Lero knew he was a human sardine — squashed, knees to face — in a small, oddly shaped brass coffin. He was inside Aladdin’s lamp!

Phenomenal cosmic powers! Itty-bitty living space! His inner cynic jeered.

Lero couldn't even push himself out of this fetal position. He could here mechanical grinding sounds outside the lamp like a really old-fashioned elevator. The lid of the lamp opened, and Discord stuck his angry eye inside.

“When I say, ‘It must be Twilight,’ there’s a REASON!” the draconequus hissed. “I’m doing enough already! It’s not like the LAST ponies who’d had their marks swapped had the benefit of my bewitchment covering for them!”

“Y-yes, sir!” the human whimpered. “I’m sorry! I’m sorry!”

"That's a boy. Besides, it's not as if I'm happy about the situation, either." He tipped over the lamp, Lero having the disorienting sensation of being poured out. "We have the poor sweet young thing failing at being funny and the comedian too busy kicking trees to be funny." He shook out the last drop, the last of Lero's hair plopping into place and becoming solid. "It's not right."

Lero just rapidly nodded with his eyes shut, the rapid mood swings wholly off-putting. Perhaps continuing this conversation longer than necessary was a bad idea. Lero finally found the presence of mind to look about, and found himself inside a rickety and old-fashioned, (yet well-kept) elevator. Instead of buttons, there was a lever which Discord had his talon around. They were chugging upward.

“Not to worry, not to worry!” the draconequus laughed, blithely patting the human’s shoulders. “We’re all the best of friends, aren't we?”

The elevator dinged and the doors opened. "Top floor! Ponies and Friendship and Magic!" Discord announced.

Lero stepped outside. He was... home. Right in front of Twilight’s library home. The human quickly circled around Discord’s golden elevator: it had pushed out from a small patch of grass right on their front lawn. Then he looked inside the elevator at Discord, and pointed backwards at the tree-home. “Is that really where I live?” he asked. “Or are we still in your wonderland of chaos?”

“You’re home, Lero,” Discord answered. “Back to the world ruled by Order and Princess Celestia and The Magic of Friendship.” He chuckled softly. “I’ll be keeping my eye on you and all your herd. You’re a very entertaining bunch. Arrivederci!”

Discord pulled down on the lever. The elevator shut and descended, leaving a gaping, elevator-sized hole that led endlessly downward. Perhaps to the opposite end of this world, or the core of the planet, or to Discord’s twilight zone. Lero gave into the primal urge all men have when they stand before a bottomless chasm: he spat down it, just to watch the loogie vanish.

Yeah, he’d have to cover that with dirt or rocks or something later on.

The moon was out; he guessed it to be somewhere between 6 to 8 at night. He still had on his trench coat and University of Idaho shirt, still had his wallet and cell phone and car keys. How odd.

He walked to the door and turned the knob. Only it was Discord’s deer antler.

“Surprise!”

Lero backed away quickly from the draconequus, who extracted himself from his own front door.

“Just had a thought,” Discord said, coming towards him in great strides. “You've been such a good boy overall, Lero... I’m going to let you have a gift.”

“Will I like this gift?” asked the human warily.

Discord grinned with all his teeth. “I’ll let you have a choice of which gift to get!”

And he grabbed Lero by the shirt, and hoisted him up to his eye level. The human kicked at the air with his feet.

“Option Number One!”

Discord held up a framed family picture of Lero, Rainbow Dash, Twilight, Lyra, and Spike. Lero immediately recognized it as the one in his bedroom! Discord must have taken it... or possibly created a duplicate. He lifted it up to his face, covering his right eye with the picture. Lero's started to protest, but then his left eye got all swirly... so soothingly swirly... and the protest died in his throat.

“Are you suuuuure you see a pegasus in this picture?”

The swirly-swirly-swirly bored into Lero’s head like a soft, gentle drill. The longer he looked between the picture and Discord’s eye... the more the now-shy animal caretaker... faded. And the more his white-coated weather mare came into clearer focus.

“This whole Rarity-for-Rainbow exchange has gotten you so terribly bothered and bewildered, hasn't it?”

Such a calming voice the draconequus had. How lovely Rarity looked, nestled up against him.

“I can simplify things. Strike you off the exemption list. You’ll remember things the way Rarity remembers... the way Dash remembers... the way PONYVILLE remembers! You can love Rarity freely, in all senses of the word! After Twilight finds a cure... how can Dash blame you for believing Rarity was your main squeeze? You were all under the same spell! Just say yes, and all the anguish and all the melodrama in your love life gets blown out the door!”

Yes, of course. How could he even think about giving up his first love? Him and Rarity... so beautiful, elegant, eloquent, and magical... they had always been there for each other, the first of his three wonderful unicorns, they were the foundation of this herd... forever together, it had always been this way...

“NO!” Lero squeezed his eyes shut. “The truth’s too valuable, and too few of us know it already! Twilight needs us all. Besides, whatever I do, good or bad, whatever pain I go through, I want to be the one responsible for my own actions! My own thoughts! Not some bewitchment spell!”

Discord’s eyes lost their spiraling swirl, and the family photo disappeared. “Interesting. Truly interesting." Discord actually seemed... mildly impressed. "Then you automatically get Gift Number Two.” The draconequus set Lero down.

“Remember this scene?”

His arms turn into flesh-and-blood puppets of Rainbow Dash and Lero, frighteningly realistic, as if Rainbow Dash and himself had grown out of the stumps of Discord's wrists.

“But look! I got uniforms! Paperwork! Photographic evidence!” screamed the Lero puppet. Oh, God, the voices were even right.

“You’re a crazed, crazy crazyhead from Crazytown!” screeched the Dash puppet. “Get outta my cottage!”

Then the Lero puppet snapped its fingers.

“There!” said Discord. “It never happened. Purged from Rainbow Dash’s memory banks.”

Lero looked at him with wonder and near-disbelief as Discord leaned in closer.

"I’ve given you a second chance with her, Lero." He winked at him. "Let’s see what you do with it. Oh! And one more extra bonus!”

The Rainbow Dash puppet changed to a Mr. Cake puppet.

“Switch! Swap! Switch! Swap! Switch! Switch! Swap! Who’s who?! My girl dumped me! Waaaaah! I’m cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs!” the Lero puppet whined.

“Why must I suffer such fools?” groaned the Mr. Cake puppet.

Again, the Lero puppet snapped his fingers, and Discord's hands transforming back into their proper shape.

“Aaaaaand more mind wipes! Everyone who saw you drunk in Sugar Cube Corner doesn’t recall it at all! Alright, Lero, I’m done for real now. Say hi to both your fillies for me, they've been waiting a long time for you to come home!”

And Discord stood in front of the huge bottomless hole his elevator had made, hopping up once, twice, three times, like a diver on a diving board, before cannonballing in; the ground closing up behind him.

Lero quickly went back to the front door, and this time, nothing happened to the knob when he turned it...

* * *

...White and purple. White atop purple. Sound left his ears. No, that wasn’t quite right; Lero felt like his body had temporarily rendered him deaf against his will so that his eyes could take in the scene twice as sharply.

Holy Toledo... Lero thought to himself. She’s actually gone and done it. Is doing it!

Twilight and Rarity were dolphin-style against each other. Right on the floor, in the middle of the foyer. They were the first thing Lero saw, halfway through the front door’s swinging open.

Rarity had Twilight pinned bodily to the floor, under the weight of her body and her hooves. Stomach to stomach, she rocked back and forth against the unicorn beneath; her gorgeous ivory pelt against Twilight’s lavender. The librarian’s tail lay flat upon the floor, only giving slight twitches giving the impression of being overwhelmed, while the former fashionista’s hung upright in their air; alert and eager.

This gave Lero — and anyone who happened to passing by at this late hour — a full display of both the unicorns‘ innermost depths, for the forgotten front door simply remained wide open. Several insects quietly let themselves inside the house as Lero moved further in.

“Ruh... Rah... Rare...” Lero heard Twilight pant. Oh good. Sound had returned.

Rarity tilted Twilight’s chin up with a hoof until Celestia’s protégé opened her eyes. “Relax,” she crooned, “Tonight is all about you, my darling. Tonight, don’t even talk... just lie back and let your Rarity handle all the work for you.”

As with everything else about Rarity these days, the way she was making love to Twilight Sparkle had a surreal, dissonant, and inexplicable quality to it. Just to start with, there was the sweat. Twilight was drenched, sopping with sweat. All her fur and mane was feverishly clumping and matted from all the sweat seeping from every pore underneath. Its pungency permeated the whole of the foyer like strong incense, (along with that other scent Lero had come to know so well: the hormonal aroma of mares in the throes of passion.) Rarity, though... while the white unicorn did have sweat on her coat, it seemed almost as if it had all been all been soaked up from Twilight. However long the two of them had been at this, it didn't seem like Rarity had shed a drop of her own perspiration.

Rarity’s curled, prehensile tail suddenly swept downward, coiled itself all around Twilight’s twitching, overwhelmed one, and lifted it lovingly in the air. For a few seconds, Twilight’s tail stayed unresponsive... and then it coiled itself back around Rarity’s. The tails were entwined tightly around each other like an amorous pair of ropes.

“You mean so much to to me,” she cooed, cupping both of Twilight’s cheeks in her hooves. “My sweet enchantress. You’re so kind, brave, precious, adorable, devoted, scholarly, hardworking, and beautiful.”

She punctuated each adjective with a kiss: to Twilight’s snout, to her cheeks, a loving nip on her ear, on her lips. She slipped her tongue in, and Twilight’s mewling rose an octave, even as her own tongue danced with Rarity’s.

More things stuck out at Lero besides the sweating, like the way they each breathed and spoke. While Twilight had been reduced to a thing of ragged, fleeting inhales, and shuddery gasping exhales, Rarity’s breaths were just as deep, measured, and controlled as a yoga breathing exercise. How could she even DO that in the middle of sex?! Where Twilight couldn’t even voice a word, Rarity filled her ears with honeyed praise in dulcet tones.

Finally, there were the facial expressions. Twilight’s eyelids went back and forth from almost-opening fluttering to scrunching down to a painful tightness. Her mouth vacillated between forming a round O to her entire jaw dropping, almost like a cartoon character. While Rarity... Rarity was serene. Her smile was gentle and angelic, almost an exact match for the ones which Princess Celestia, herself, loved to favor her faithful student with. Completely at odds with the orgasm she was working to bring Twilight to.

Lero watched Rarity’s forehooves press down upon the upper portion of Twilight’s chest, kneading and caressing as skillfully as hooves could achieve. And while covered by their tails now, he could clearly see her hips moving, rubbing them together down below. The sides of their glowing horns slid against each other, and sparks erupted from them both with each stroke.

It was as though Rarity were the master, the long-distance marathon runner, while Twilight was just a straggling amateur, red-faced, wheezing, about to buckle. And yet, the master did not look upon this amateur with scorn or impatience or superior smugness. No, it was with deepest fondness... nothing but the warmest affection.

But it’s not like Twilight’s some inexperienced virgin! The logical part of Lero’s mind cried out in despair. Me and Dash and Lyra saw to that MANY times! She can go the distance with all three of us!

Another thought struck him: Despite her occasional histrionics, Rarity had always struck him as the eldest and most mature of Twilight's friends. While he knew Rainbow had next-to-no experience before he'd entered her life, perhaps Rarity was more... practiced? It seemed improbable how much in control, how skilled she was with Twilight. Just what kind of power was this?! Was Rarity just that damn good? Or was it this unfinished curse-of-a-spell that he and Twilight were trying so hard to adapt to? That they both wanted so badly to reverse...

...Or at least I’d thought Twilight wanted to reverse... Lero thought, sourly watching the purple unicorn’s hind legs kick feebly at the air underneath Rarity.

Then Rarity’s mouth engulfed Twilight Sparkle’s horn, her tongue lapping circles around the base of it, where it connected to the rest of her head. Yet another moan rolled up Twilight’s throat, and she twitched erratically. Rarity suckled the horn's base, her lips tight but somehow dainty as they slowly climbed back upwards towards the tip, her tongue tracing a path up the spiraling grove of her horn.

Lero couldn't tear his eyes away. How dearly he wished he could have said that none of this did anything for him; that seeing the two unicorns intimately entwined wasn't the least bit sexy!

The white unicorn withdrew her lips just long enough to observe a the glow on the very tip of Twilight’s horn intensify, no bigger than the flame on a matchstick’s head. Rarity’s lips closed around this spark, and proceeded to suck it with gentle enthusiasm. Like she were drinking a milkshake from the horn.

Twilight’s entire body quivered, she whined in yearning. Magic flared up brighter upon both unicorns’ horns in a steady buildup. Lero could see it most plainly atop Rarity’s head: her entire horn was aglow and intensifying, but he could also see another glow brightening through the flesh of Rarity’s cheeks.

They hit their peaks. Rarity came first, a miniature, multicolored firework spraying out from her horn, which fizzled away harmlessly on the floor. Seconds later, Twilight let out a piercing yell, and Rarity’s cheeks expanded, chipmunk-like. She gulped it down. Tiny wisps of smoke had escaped from her lips and hung in the air. Rarity inhaled it back in and swallowed that, too.

Twilight’s head flopped down to the floor; a boneless, sweat-soaked heap of jelly, stunned in the afterglow. Rarity drew down and kissed her ear.

“I love you so much,” Rarity whispered into it.

“I... I’m... very glad you love me, Rarity,” Twilight answered tiredly.

Ever-so-gently, Rarity rotated herself around to face her beloved human, still atop Twilight’s worn-out form. The faint mirth in her eyes told him she known he’d been watching all along. Her amorous, wifely smile promised: You’re next.

“Welcome home, my sweet prince.”

Her horn shone and the front door closed and locked itself. His brain froze and his legs stiffened like trees. Her horn shone again. The puffy, inner folds of Twilight’s most private region glistened with what the harlequin romances of both Equestria and Earth liked to refer to as ‘nectar.’ A small cloud of Rarity’s magic formed in front of Twilight’s still-quivering folds, and soaked up this nectar up inside itself.

Then the cloud of nectar floated over to Rarity’s lips. Lero thought she’d gulp it all down. Instead, her tongue darted straight through the very center of the floating glob, then drew back in. Just a small taste.

“Hmm. She’s especially delicious tonight, for some reason. But you must be parched. Have the rest!”

The nectar floated over in front of Lero’s lips, formless and especially strong-smelling. Lero sucked in a nervous breath.

“But I imagine that won’t be nearly enough to quench your thirst. Not to worry, my prince, you can drink as much of me as you please. I daresay, my body won’t need much convincing. Then, I’ll probably be a little thirsty myself, and...”

“TWILIGHT! TWILIGHT!”

Lero turned at the sound of little dragon feet hurrying down the stairs. Spike looked panicked, and held a scroll in his claw.

“Twilight, it’s... WHOA!!!!” The gob of nectar fell to floor with a small plop.

Falling flat on his tail, Spike scrambled around, squatting down with his back towards Rarity and covering his eyes with his hands.

With a mortified gasp, the white unicorn lit up her horn. The blanket from their upstairs bedroom flew from down the stairs and covered herself and Twilight.

“Spike!” she shouted, incensed. “You... you should be in bed! You've interrupted a very private moment! This isn't something for little foals to see!”

“I’m really, really, really sorry, Rarity!” said Spike. “But I just got this message, and it’s really, really, REALLY urgent! Look!”

The little dragon crumpled his scroll into a paper ball, and threw it over his shoulder towards Rarity. Lero caught the ball in midair instead, smoothed it out, and read.

His eyes widened. “Twilight! Rarity! Quick! Off the floor, right now! You need to jump in the shower, wash yourselves off, then get your tails back down here, pronto! There’s not a moment to spare!”

Twilight raised her head. “What’s the matter?!"

"What’s the emergency?!” Both unicorns shared an alarmed look. “It’s not changelings again, is it?!”

“Worse,” Lero said, flatly. “Twilight, it’s your mother. Star Sparkle is coming over for dinner, she wants a place to spend the night, and we have only an hour to get ready!”

Author's Note

Hey, everyone! Hope you're enjoying Divided Rainbow and that this chapter answered some of your questions! Thanks also, to Rikmach, my co-writer, who helped lather on an extra layer of awesome to the whole of this chapter!

Also, I have a confession to make. I won't actually be writing Star Sparkle in the next scene. Sorry about that.

BUT ARCHONIX WILL! Yes, you read right! Archonix, himself! The man who BROUGHT us Star Sparkle will be writing the Star Sparkle scene! I'm so thrilled and honored, folks, you can't even imagine! (And if you're reading this, Archonix, thank you once again!)

One more quick thing to Zer0prototype, who was curious how "that happened" between Twilight and Rarity in this chapter. Okay, I'll tell you!

---- Rarity returned back home after finishing all the errands Twilight sent her to do. She found Twilight reading her books in a glum, unhappy mood... Though she wouldn't say why. Rarity decided she'd do her best to cheer Twilight up, show her a good time, and make her feel really special and loved.

And this was her way of accomplishing that.

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Ten: To Embrace Or To Spurn

Chaos reigned.

At some later point Lero might have considered the thought ironic if he'd ever remembered it, but reigning chaos has a habit of swallowing such thoughts whole and hiding them away. One of those acting-from-nature things. Of course had he been presented with the opportunity to think things over rather than frantically racing to accommodate the arrival of Twilight's rather potent mother, Lero might have done something logical. It's safe to say this wouldn't have been a good thing.

His initial reaction had been rash, heated and over quickly – and as such was easily dismissed and forgotten. Had he been presented with more time, he might have started joining dots in ways that would have appeared all too rational to his already frazzled mind. For instance, he might have connected the day's events with the facts of Twilight's parentage and from there begun to wonder whether certain behaviors tended to run in families. Where he could have taken the thought from there would be anyone's guess.

The subject of Star Sparkle had come up a few times over the years. Lero knew her as a fairly affable if rather mercurial old goat; a pony to be wary of, but not exactly bad as such, merely the sort who seemed to find her fun in tweaking everyone around her until they did something she found amusing. A troll in other words, mostly harmless, though prone to spreading certain forms of affection as far and wide as she possibly could.

Twilight's opinion? The best that could be said was that it was less than positive toward her birth mother. In fact from some of the things she had told Lero it was a surprise the two mares hadn't already come to blows. Perhaps they had and she just hadn't mentioned it yet.

All these thoughts and more didn't cross Lero’s mind as the two ponies, dragon and displaced human raced around their home, generally tidying and preparing for the arrival of the mare herself. A dinner was prepared in record time, furniture was cleaned, books shelved, floors swept and Lero was just looking for the air freshener when there was a furious pounding at the door.

Twilight froze on the spot, one hoof twitching as it tried to sneak into her mane. "She's early!"

"Only by a few minutes," Rarity replied as she carefully primped her own mane. A brush descended from on high and snagged at Twilight's frazzled fringe. "You just relax, darling, I will take care of everything."

"But there's so much left to do! We were... and she'll know! She'll know and it'll all be wrong and..." A hiccough shook Twilight's frame, pulling her out of her rant before it could get started. She felt the brush pulling at her mane and leaned into it without really thinking as she looked toward Lero. "She'll know what happened. She'll joke about it..."

The human knelt down next to Twilight, grabbing the brush from Rarity's magic and ignoring her surprised huff. He set about slowly combing Twilight's head with one hand while the other just as gently stroked her back and shoulder. "It'll only be for a short while. If you want to get away, just tap my foot. Gently. I'll distract her and you can escape out of the nearest window."

"That's how Rainbow Dash..."

The rest of her sentence was swallowed in another hiccough. Lero wrapped his arms around Twilight and pulled her close before she could say more, rocking them both back and forth and gently shushing as he did. A quick glance at Rarity was enough to give her the hint to open the door; it unnerved Lero how she always seemed so cued to him, as if they really had spent the last few years that close to one another. He just couldn't see it.

Rather than approach the door directly, Rarity placed herself a distance away and posed in what she presumably thought was the most dramatically welcoming stance she could adopt. The door opened gently under her magic. From outside it would have slowly revealed her as it swung aside, starting with her head that she raised into the air to magnificent effect, then drawing the eye along her body to her flank. All very theatrical. So very Rarity, which proved that some things would ever be the same.

Unfortunately, the effect was spoiled somewhat by the complete absence of any pony standing outside. It took a moment for Rarity to notice, but when she did her mouth turned down and she made a very quiet little hmph sound somewhere inside her nose. It was downright cute.

"I assume this is another one of her silly pranks," Rarity muttered once she had composed herself. Her magic gripped the door to close it again just as a grinning pink head poked around the corner.

"No prank, my dear," said the other pony. A flash of magic dispelled Rarity's own and Star Sparkle kicked the door wide, dragging a pair of overnight bags along behind her as she trotted jauntily into the room.

"Then what, pray tell?"

"Nopony was answering. I wanted to see if I could let myself in through a window."

It was a line that would have been followed by horrendous canned laughter in any sitcom Lero could bring to mind. He let the image expand in his thoughts, giving him the chance to relax a little as his de-facto mother-in-law entered the family home with all the grace and nobility of a brick through the window.

Star slowed as she walked, taking in the sights around her and occasionally sniffing at the air. She nodded to Lero and grinned as her eyes came to rest on Twilight. For her part Twilight simply stared, unwilling or unable to respond. As she passed by, Star inhaled deeply through her nose and smiled at Twilight again, but didn't say anything more.

It was when her full attention came to Rarity that Star finally lost a little of her usually impenetrable high spirits; she stared at the unicorn for quite some time, the way she might normally examine an obscure artifact of some unknown culture. In a feat unrivaled through the ages, Rarity matched her gaze without flinching.

"Well now, Twilight, I wasn't aware you had other visitors."

"We..." was all Twilight managed before Rarity cut her off with a petite cough. Somehow both mares contrived to look away at the same moment, Star shifting her focus to her bags, Rarity lifting her nose in the air and brushing a hoof against her chest.

"I'm not sure what you mean, darling," she said. "You're the only guest we’re expecting tonight, though I suppose another one might turn up out of the blue."

A quick sideways glance told exactly how Rarity felt about that possibility. Ignoring the baleful glare and its implicit message, Star nodded her head thoughtfully. "Is that so?"

"That is, indeed, so." Rarity lowered her hoof with a loud thud. With casual indifference she walked between Star and the others, pausing briefly to nuzzle Lero's hand as she passed. The elder unicorn's ear twitched.

"I see. I would have expected more of that hyperactive bunch of ponies you call friends to be here. Pegasi especially," Star added with just a hint of a grin. There was a predictable snort from Twilight, but she didn't expect the accompaniment from Rarity. "Something the matter, dear?"

"Oh just considering the differences between expectation and hope." Rarity turned again and paced around Star. "We all know about your... your predilections. The way you keep pursuing poor Fluttershy long after she has made clear that she isn't interested simply boggles the mind."

"You mean the nervous wreck who lives out in the middle of nowhere?"

"No, Fluttershy..."

Twilight cleared her throat. Of course Star didn't seem to notice being too busy staring at Rarity, but the younger unicorn's head bounced as if she'd walked into a wall. She pursed her lips and lowered her eyes. "Perhaps not the best topic of conversation to begin the evening," Rarity demurred, drawing Star a short distance away. "I've been meaning to ask you about how Zebra manage their weather. Zecora hadn't a clue when I spoke to her about it, but you've travelled their lands quite extensively, have you not?"

"I have," Star replied with a nod. She shot an incredulous gaze at Twilight as she spoke. "I can't say I know all that much about their practices."

"Anything at all would be useful, not to mention fascinating!"

"Is that so?"

With the conversation safely derailed into more mundane territory, Twilight and Lero both let themselves finally relax. The human backed up a few steps and flopped down on the couch. Twilight dropped to her haunches at his side and let out a frustrated growl.

"Of all the days she would choose to turn up, it had to be this one. I swear, she does it on purpose." She twitched at a persistent tug on her mane an turned to glare at the source. It was Spike. "What's the matter?"

"Is this another Spike-has-to-go-clean-the-basement moment?" Spike had lowered his voice as he spoke. He glanced at Star, idly conversing with Rarity on the far side of the room, then looked up at Twilight with a pleading expression. "Please say it is."

"No..." Twilight shook her head and tried to smile at her mother as she spoke. On any normal day she would have kept up the facade with relative ease. How she was managing it today was beyond Twilight's capacity to understand, but the smile remained nevertheless. "Just go and... yes, make sure dinner is still where we left it."

"I might need help," Spike whispered. Again he glanced at Star. Again Twilight shook her head.

"Thanks Spike, but I have to stay here with Lero in case Mom gets the wrong idea." She frowned again and shuddered. "Or the right one."

As Spike scampered away to the dining room, Twilight turned her attention back to Rarity and Star, who seemed to be deep in debate about something of deep importance to both mares. Quietly bemoaning her lot in life, Twilight shuffled toward the twin sources of torment and tried to eavesdrop as subtly as she could. It was a hopeless cause she knew Star would spot her the moment she got near, but there seemed to be little else to do.

Rarity was holding forth as she approached. She seemed rather worked up.

"And all I'm saying is that you seem to be spending a great deal of time deliberately ignoring my greatest assets."

"I assume that's a rather roundabout way of referring to your dock."

"So you are aware of what I'm talking about!"

"My dear, I am aware that it seems as if you're asking me to ogle you in your own home, with your closest companions present, when it has been made abundantly clear to me in the past that such behavior was, and forgive me as I'm quoting from memory, ‘the most insulting and degrading way to treat another mare imaginable.’"

"All I want to know is why you seem to be so determined to avoid looking at my cutie mark!"

An unaccustomed look of shame crossed Star's face. Her ears fell back and in fact her entire body seemed to try and melt away into the woodwork as she looked away from Rarity.

"It isn't right," she muttered, shuffling a hoof on the floor. Her eyes rose to meet Twilight's; where normally they held a mix of amusement and contempt, now there was confusion. And something that in any other mare might have been fear, though the impression soon passed as another grin wrapped around her muzzle. "At least not when you're so obviously involved with my daughter anyway."

Rarity pouted. "You've never avoided it before. I almost feel as if I should be insulted."

"Well, I won't deny I certainly had eyes for the flank on which that particular cutie mark has always rested," Star replied with a frankly salacious wink in Lero's general direction. "Though I must confess there seems to be a little more heft to it now. I expect that's the inevitable result of all the delicious food this human of yours keeps providing."

"I suppose I shall take that as a compliment," Rarity sighed. Her pout had only increased in stature and it was all Star could do not to laugh at the sight.

"Take it however you like, my dear."

"So!" Twilight carefully interposed herself between the pair before an interpersonal apocalypse could get started. "Mom, any particular reason you decided to show up half drunk on our doorstep with almost no warning?"

Star patted Twilight's shoulder non-too-carefully, taking the opportunity to peer past her daughter's head at Rarity again. Her leering grin grew only broader. "I was traveling to see Zecora, as a matter of fact. I have some Kuur temple scrolls that I believe she could lend a hoof in translating, but unfortunately I could only get the late train from Canterlot so I needed a place to stay before I go and see her in the morning."

"There are hotels in town–"

"Nonsense, my dear! Why would I stay in a hotel when I could visit my beloved daughter?" Star's gaze slipped away from Twilight again, settling on Rarity's rear. The alleged weather unicorn was idly leafing through a copy of Cumulous Weekly (with exclusive reviews of a new industrial construction cloud, no less) and completely oblivious to Star's lingering gaze. "And her highly entertaining herd..."

"It's just that things are a little inconvenient at the moment, Mom."

"Yes, aren't they always?" Star returned her attention to Twilight with worrying intensity. "It's just a shame Rainbow Dash couldn't be here. I've rather missed her company recently."

She grinned again. Twilight and Lero stared back at her with such carefully controlled faces that she almost, almost felt as if she'd gone too far. Of course in her line of work there was never any such thing as going too far. And boundaries? Those were for people without tenure.

"Yes, such a terrible shame. She's always a breath of fresh air, so very energetic. Such pretty wings too!"

Lero stood abruptly and strode the short distance to her side. He could be very intimidating when he wanted to be; more to the point he was proving that right now. He even smiled at her. It was not the smile of a sane man.

Perhaps even she had boundaries. Then again, she considered, half the fun was in crossing them. Lero leaned down to her, going onto one knee and placing his hand very lightly on Star's shoulder. A shiver ran down her spine at the touch; for a moment she thought it was simply unfamiliarity, but there was a little more to it. A barely visible sheen of light flared around her horn as she tried to examine the sensation. Without warning Lero's hand jerked away from her coat and he leaned back.

"We were just about to eat. Would you care for something?" His overbright smile grew broader and somehow less inviting. Star returned it tooth for tooth.

"Oh certainly, I'm famished! I've heard you can do incredible things with fish," she paused and coughed into the crook of her wrist. "Though of course it's such an acquired taste for we unicorns, isn't that so m'dear?"

The question was aimed square at Rarity, who looked up from her magazine with an absent-minded snort and stared back at Star with almost no comprehension. "Is it? I've always eaten fish."

"Is that so?"

"But of course! I need to keep up my energy if I'm to stay on top of Ponyville's weather. After all," she murmured, returning her gaze to the magazine. "I am the local division manager and I can't afford to be caught lacking if I'm going to support the efforts of my team!"

"Of course," Star replied faintly, seemingly at a loss for words for just a moment.

"It helps that Lero does such a wonderful salmon en croute. I've never tasted such a creamy sauce. Just the right amount of salt..." Rarity's tongue crept across her upper lip for just a moment until she abruptly shook her head and blinked. "Well. Yes, I've always eaten fish."

"But Rarity, you hate..."

"Sparkle-kitten, we're not going to have that conversation again."

"But–"

"Darling, not when we have company."

Twilight blushed and turned from Rarity's carefully neutral gaze. Unfortunately her eyes ended up looking straight at Star, who by this point was moments away from exploding with laughter. She held control of herself sufficiently to give Twilight a quizzical look and mouth sparkle kitten at her. Twilight sniffed and looked away.

"Sweetie, you and I need a quick talk," Star said quietly. She flicked her eyes toward Rarity and raised an eyebrow. For a second it seemed like Twilight hadn't quite understood until her eyes went wide. Without taking them from Star she nodded slowly.

"Sure. We'll catch up in a moment." Twilight moved to Lero's side and put her hoof on his hip, and tried her best to smile at him. He didn't return the gesture too well but at least he made an attempt, which was something.

The door closed after the pair, leaving Twilight and Star alone in the room. The elder unicorn chuckled under her breath and walked slowly around the room before pausing to examine a bookcase.

"I never thought I'd see a day like this," Star muttered. She pulled a book from the shelf and idly flipped through it without reading anything.

"Mom, what–"

"Twilight." The book cracked shut and flew back to its place on the shelf as Star continued her journey around the room. She came to a halt directly in front of her daughter and shook her head. "What in Celestia's name have you been up to?"

"I don't know what you're talking about."

"Is that so?" Star's horn lit as she turned away, her magic seeking out anything remotely unusual. She paused in turning and sniffed the air; the glow faded from her horn and her eyes snapped back to Twilight's face.

"I see."

A blush crept onto Twilight's face. "What?"

"Frustrating, was it? Loopy is a thousand miles away and your darling Rainbow Dash really doesn't enjoy the, ah, pleasures of her own sex all that much. It must have seemed like quite the opportunity..." A smile crept to Star's lips as she sat down. She watched the blush spreading across Twilight's neck and shoulders, just visible beneath her coat as a bright red glow. "Heavens know if I were in this sort of situation I wouldn't hesitate."

"Y-you really know?" Despite her embarrassment it was all Twilight could do not to grab hold of her mother and shake her about. "You know?!"

"I know something is terribly wrong. As if that snooty little high society wannabe would ever dare do something so outrageous."

"Rarity is not snooty, she–"

"Condescending, perhaps."

"You'd know!"

Star took a moment to consider this. She nodded. "I would."

"But–"

"Why should I deny it?" She sniffed at the air a final time and shook her head. "You and your herd are going to have a serious conversation when this is over, whatever it is. I have no idea what that tutor of yours has been up to, but I would be surprised if she's not behind this and I would be equally surprised if she's not taking advantage of it all to make you learn some ridiculously contrived life lesson about how you should be friends with everyone."

She had closed her eyes while she spoke, the certainty of her position pulling her into lecture mode without even realising it. When she opened them again Twilight was staring at the wall, tears threatening to roll down her cheeks and her lower lip quivering like an ice-cream deprived foal. For a few long moments Star watched her daughter to see if the reaction would end and she would return to her usual irrepressible problem-solving self, or perhaps resort that hilarious manic phase she sometimes went through.

Neither came to be. In fact all Twilight did was sniff noisily and rub her snout on her foreleg, not even aware of the rather messy trail she left on her coat. Her gaze was fixed on the wall; her mind was somewhere else entirely, a place Star unfortunately knew all too well.

Mustering every ounce of sympathy she could find – and to her surprise, there was quite a lot – Star gently ran her hoof around Twilight's shoulder and pulled her into a hug. With her free limb she wiped at the tears from her daughter's face.

"Twilight, listen to me." When Twilight didn't respond Star tucked a hoof under the younger unicorn's chin and pulled her head around so they were face to face. "Twilight."

Snuffling and blinking bloodshot eyes, Twilight finally paid attention to her mother. She rubbed her snout again and swallowed. It was tempting for Star to smile, but for once she realized it might not help.

"You're better than this. No daughter of mine–"

"Hah!"

"Well it's good to see you've recovered that much," Star muttered as Twilight slipped from her grasp. There was a pause then, a moment of silence as the same unspoken thought passed between them: Rarity.

"Mom, please don't."

"Fine." Star cleared her throat. The grin was back again, lascivious as ever. "I won't ask about the odd little stain by the door if you tell me what in heaven's name is going on."

"There's a stain? Why didn't you...?"

Twilight closed her eyes and very nearly bit her tongue in half as she suppressed her usual urge to panic. She'd get Spike to– no she'd get Lero to clean it up later. Ignoring Star's quiet chuckle, Twilight walked to the couch and tried to make herself comfortable.

"It was a spell. Starswirl's last unfinished spell. Celestia sent it to me to study. After I cast it..." The feeble gesture Twilight made toward the closed door seemed to encompass everything that had gone wrong in the last few days. "They're convinced... all five of them... that they’re each other. She's convinced we're lovers. It's literally like she's got half of Rainbow Dash in there."

"Figures that witch–" Star rolled her eyes at Twilight's withering gaze. Shaking her head, she joined her daughter on the couch and tried to think her way through the problem. "So the princess gave you a spell that mixed and matched a few cutie marks? And now everypony thinks that you're playing beach towel for that diamond-obsessed social climber."

She looked around the room and took another short breath through her nose. "And apparently they're right."

"I didn't have a choice."

"You mean she–"

"No! No, it...!" Twilight closed her eyes and shook her head. By now her ears were flat against her skull and her spine seemed about ready to curl up on itself, like a little filly trapped in a nightmare. "I can't explain without explaining everything and that would take all night. It– I have to–"

Twilight choked and swallowed back a gasping sob, but when Star went to comfort her she pushed away, shaking her head.

"I can't."

"Try me," Star murmured. "Just for once pretend you can talk to your old mare. I won't even joke about it. Cross my heart and all that guff. Or," she continued as she hauled herself from the couch, "you could clean yourself up and we could go and eat. I really am quite famished."

"All you ever think about is your appetite."

"I suppose it does look like that." Star trotted back to the shelves, a wry grin tugging at her lips as she eyed the books before her. "I have spent a great deal of my life working in places that spare no effort in trying to kill a pony, Twilight. I don't have time to consider whether or not my decisions will have long-reaching consequences because most of the time I'm just trying to survive. When you've face a few more of those scenery-chewing hams Celestia keeps sending you up against you'll begin to understand."

Star turned from the shelf, dismissing its contents for the shallow plebeian nonsense she was sure it must be – what else would they read out here in the sticks anyway? – and turned her attention to Twilight again.

"Perhaps you already do," she mused with a glance toward the kitchen. Something quite delicious was cooking within; the scent of it had been growing in the air for the last few minutes and it was all Star could do not to simply turn around and seek it out. Instead she held her hoof under Twilight's chin and peered into her eyes.

"Whatever choices you've made I'm sure they're for a good reason. Just remember one thing, Twilight. When you give yourself to a pony it has to be because you want to. Not because of duty or tradition, or anything like that. If you're sleeping with this mare because you think you have to–"

Twilight shook her head and pulled away from Star's touch once again. "Part of her is Rainbow Dash. I'm still... it's hard to explain, but that part of her is somehow trapped inside Rarity. Part of her is one of the mares I love so dearly. And I'm deathly afraid of losing that." She looked up at the ceiling, a bitter, mirthless smile twisting her lips. "I'm doing it to save her, but I'm so far beyond what I know about how the magic of the elements works that I'm casting blind."

"I won't pretend to understand completely," Star replied quietly. "Just remember what I said."

Just the barest of nods was all the reply she got. They spent a little while just sitting in silence while Twilight composed herself and Star thought through the implications of what she'd been told. At least the world made a little more sense now.

When they entered the dining room the others were already seated.

Spike had positioned himself as far from Rarity as possible without actually facing her head, with Lero just to one side. The pair were engaged in a very subtle elbow fight for the prime spot, leaving the object of their disaffection bemused and more than a little put out. Etiquette demanded that she not show it too obviously, however, and she was a little mollified when Twilight sat between her and Lero with little fanfare.

"So," Star exclaimed brightly as she took the remaining seat before leaning curiously toward a tureen at the centre of the table. "What delicious treat has been prepared for us tonight? I understand you're rather good at old-world-style vermarecelli."

"Tagliata," Lero replied, glad of the distraction from his low-level feud with Spike. He casually lifted Spike's chair and set it equidistant between himself and Star. "Or maybe Linguini, I forget which."

"Little tongues? Strange name, but I suppose it's an improvement on all those mangled parodies you normally use." She didn't wait for a response, instead lifting the lid and thrusting a serving spoon into the dish. "Hm. But not on the menu tonight it seems."

"Lero wasn't sure what sort of dish you would prefer," Rarity replied before the human else could speak. She stared into the tureen as well, eyeing its contents warily. "He's made some sort of vegetable stew with–"

"Dumplings! Oh this takes me back!" Star shovelled around the stew and pulled forth the three largest dumplings she could find, setting them in the centre of her plate. She dug at the rest of the dishes, piling her plate high with an assortment of treats. "The Doon Khani were famous for their dumplings, though they used to make them from plantain flour so the taste isn't exactly the same. I can't get the damn things anywhere in Canterlot, apparently their tastes are too refined for such things."

A final spoonful of the stew sauce completed the towering pile. With her plate filled Star leaned back and looked around the table, grinning at the various expressions before her.

"What?"

The first to give in was Lero. Shaking his head he began to fill another plate, to which he added a couple of gems from somewhere in his pockets before passing it to Spike.

"I'm glad you enjoy it at least," he said as he loaded another plate, this one soon destined for Twilight. He gave a slight bow and a cheeky wink as he handed it across the table. Star chuckled at the sight and shook her head.

"Are all you humans so contradictory?"

"I don't know," Lero replied as Star pushed a whole dumpling into her mouth and began to chew furiously. He held up another plate and then paused over the stew, frowning. "Are all you ponies so voracious?"

With her mouth still full Star was unable to answer, but it seemed the question had already been forgotten as Lero hovered uncertainly over the food. He glanced at Rarity and briefly chewed his lip before settling on a selection of the lighter vegetables.

"No stew for me please, my prince," Rarity said with a casual wave of her hoof. Her magic lifted the plate from Lero's grasp and settled it gently on the table. "And now that we're all served, the rest of us may begin!"

"Oh, was I supposed to wait?"

"It's generally the done thing, yes," Rarity replied. Her eye barely even twitched as Star pushed another dumpling into her mouth and began to chew straight at her. "One certainly believed that a high society mare such as yourself would be aware of such things."

"This high society mare generally feels that high society can go jump off a cliff," Star shot back. "They're all a bunch of feckless, uptight half-wits who wouldn't know a decent meal if it hit them in the face."

"Which I assume it often has when you're around?"

Star nodded and grinned a particularly wicked grin. "Oh my yes. Though, weren't you responsible for something similar with our esteemed Prince Blueblood a few years ago?"

"Why, I have no idea what you are talking about. Unless you mean Applejack's little run-in with the prince?" Rarity poked at her food with a fork and frowned at the offering, as if it wasn't to her usual standards. "Poor dear was inconsolable for weeks afterwards."

"Applejack."

"Yes."

"Orange coat, blonde mane? Accent like a ripsaw through a dictionary?"

"Did I not say her name clearly?"

"Oh it would be perfectly clear," Star replied as she massaged her temples. "If not for the fact that everything you've said since I walked through the door has been complete nonsense! I'm in a nightmare, that's what this is. This whole thing is just one huge cheese-induced fantasy. I'll wake up tomorrow, I will not be surrounded by mad ponies and aliens, I'll be in bed with a hangover and a lovely pegasus I met in that nice bar on the east side, and everything will be just fine!"

The room fell silent, so silent that they could all hear the very slight creak as Lero leaned back in his chair. It seemed that the moment might be able to pass by then, escaping in the shocked quiet as so many moments had before, but then Twilight moved. There was a loud stomp and a crunch of bones beneath a well-aimed hoof. Lero gasped and lurched to grab his foot, but before he could even reach it Twilight had teleported, disappearing with a loud bang and a flash of fire that scorched the chair and caramelised the sauce on her plate.

"Well," Star said as the smoke cleared. "I can tell her table manners have improved tremendously through your indefatigable influence, my dear."

Rarity gave a polite cough and waved a stray wisp from before her face, one eyebrow raised as she examined Star's face. "Perhaps it's a family thing."

"Perhaps."

Star slid from her seat like a snake uncoiling to strike, her eyes never moving from Rarity's face. She pulled a final morsel from her plate and popped it in her mouth as she stepped away from the table.

"I think I shall retire. It's okay, don't get up," she added even though none of the others made any move to do so. Her gaze came to rest on Spike, who fidgeted in his chair and tried to look nonchalant about the whole affair. "I know where the guest room is so I'll just go and settle myself in. I'm sure you and the lovely miss Rarity would like some quality time alone, yes?"

As a pained look crossed Spike’s face, Lero pushed his plate away and leaned back with an obviously fake yawn. "Actually I'm kind of tired too. Spike, you want to take care of the dishes while I go find Twilight?"

"Sure!"

The little dragon leaped from his site and scurried across the table, grabbing plates and cutlery as fast as his claws could work. He scampered into the kitchen after Lero without a single look back, leaving Star and Rarity alone to contemplate the evening's outcome.

"Well goodnight, then," Rarity muttered. The weather pony was forming a delicate filigree in the steam from her food, one hoof idly stirring at the table cloth and the other supporting her downcast face. The elder unicorn shook her head and sighed as she, in turn, retreated from the room.

Yet, at the door she paused and looked at Rarity again.

"Who are you, really? What do you want?"

Rarity looked up from her idle cloudcrafting and frowned at Star.

"What do you mean?"

"They're questions I ask myself every night," Star continued, oblivious to Rarity's increasing bewilderment as she spoke. "Who am I? What do I want? I've never found the answer, but I keep looking."

"I'm not sure I understand."

"Then ask yourself the same questions some time," Star replied. She pushed open the door, but instead of going through she simply stared into the empty corridor beyond. "If you do anything to hurt my daughter..."

“Hurt her? Star! Goodness, I would never do anything of the sort! How could you even insinuate such a thing?"

With a final shake of her head, Star looked over her shoulder at Rarity.

"Love makes us do terrible things, my dear. Things we never thought we would do, things we find abhorrent to our very nature. If you are even a fraction of the mare that my Twilight loves you'll ask those questions about yourself. And about her."

Rarity didn't answer as Star left the room. She was too busy staring at her plate with an intense frown and had barely moved at all when Star closed the door.

* * *

Silence. Even with the ticking of the bedroom clock, which seemed startlingly loud compared to the gulf of silence between Lero and Twilight did nothing to alleviate the sensation of overwhelming quiet.

Twilight finally decided to break the silence. "S...so!" She looked over at Lero, noting his new outfit. "What’s an ‘Idaho,’ anyway?" she asked, tilting her head slightly.

Lero paused, not quite expecting that. "It’s a part of the United States. Y’know, the country where I was born, back on Earth. Idaho's one of the states."

"Ah." She nodded thoughtfully. "Is Idaho known for its universities?"

"No. Idaho’s known more for its potatoes. Each of the states have their own universities, though." The surreality of the conversation was strange. It reminded him of the long conversations they used to have discussing their respective worlds. The sheer normality of it amongst such unrelenting strangeness made it bizarre. Especially since she was obviously try to avoid talking about something else.

Twilight nodded at his response, before another thought occurred to her. "Where’d you get that shirt, anyway? It doesn't look like the one you left the house in, and It doesn't look like one of Rarity's."

Lero thought back to the chaotic events he'd experienced not long ago, and found himself in no mood to relate them. "Ask me about it some other time, not really in the mood to go over it right now."

"Oh... kay," Twilight replied, giving him an odd look.

Lero didn't respond, letting the awkward pause stretch out into silence again.

Tick, tock, tick, tock, tick, tock.

Finally, it was too much for Lero. "Rarity... Rarity sure did look like she knew what she was doing, when you... when you were..." He rubbed his hands over his eyebrows, groping for the proper phrasing, before finally settling on, "...When she was on top of you.”

Twilight's eyes widened, and she nodded rapidly. "It was UNCANNY!" She said with great incredulity in her voice. "She knew EXACTLY where to touch me! No fumbling! No guesswork! You’d think... you’d think if someone were deluded... like if, if, if I were suddenly convinced I was a champion juggler... I’d still drop quite a few balls all over the place! But Rarity... Rarity knew all of my sweet spots! Total familiarity! She played me like, like, like a fiddler plays songs she knows by heart!"

Lero normally found her tendency to go off onto verbose analytical tangents somewhat cute, but considering the subject, all he could do was flatly inquire, "How long were you both at it for?" Almost managing to keep the bite of disgust out of his tone.

Not that Twilight seemed to notice. "Hours."

"Hours? Wouldn't Spike still be up?" His brow furrowed; the idea that they'd have been intimate in the main room with Spike up and about was even more unbelievable. When he and Dash moved in, they'd always been careful to ensure they were intimate in private, or after the young dragon had gone to bed. Originally, Spike had been upset when he no longer could sleep in Twilight's room, but that had faded rather quickly when he realized that Lero had made a room specifically for him.

"Oh! No, no, we... had to send him to bed early." She said, looking down while she moved one hoof about in an explanatory manner. "When Rarity first got home, we started talking about you, and... he started behaving very badly when she began saying really nice things about you."

There came a loud, rapid thumping. Twilight was baffled by it until she noticed Lero rapping his fingers on his armchair over and over. She watched him nervously for several seconds before clearing her throat. "Lero... are you familiar with the theory of parallel universes?"

"I’ve watched my share of science fiction, so yes."

"Ok... Well, what if... what if we’re actually IN a parallel universe?" She let that hang in the air for a moment. Lero looked at her disbelievingly, as if she just suggested they start wearing tinfoil hats to stop the alien frog god from eating their dreams.

"Hear me out on this! What if we’re all wrong about our friends? What if when I cast Starswirl’s spell... it didn’t SWAP our friends, it TRANSPORTED us to a parallel universe! A universe where we DID become Rarity’s herdmates! A universe where Applejack IS a fashionista! And maybe... maybe the parallel versions of US are back on our home world! And they’re just as confused as we are that Rainbow Dash is so intimate with them! Maybe the problem’s not even curing our friends, but getting back home! What do you think?"

Lero didn't respond for several seconds, berfore firmly replying, "I think you are completely, utterly wrong, Twilight Sparkle."

She looked slightly crestfallen at his response. "But... it’s not even how well Rarity knows my body, when we never... never were like that before. All our neighbors, Lero... I’ve asked questions... VERY discreet questions, and so many ponies can’t all be..."

Lero cut her off. "Our neighbors are under a bewitchment! Courtesy of Discord!"

Now it was Twilight's turn to look at him as if he'd started discussing a Reverse Vampire conspiracy. "...Discord?!"

He nodded. "Yeah. I met the guy, he explained how he was making sure almost no one noticed the results of your magic experiment." Twilight still goggled at him in surprise. "But Twilight, listen... forget about Discord for now, let’s save him for tomorrow." He let out a sigh.

"That's where you got the shirt?" she inquired.

"Yeah. But again, let's discuss Discord tomorrow; he’s a whole other can of worms. We’d be here all night talking about him!" He paused, and took a deep breath. "Your ‘parallel dimension’ theory is bunk. Want proof? How about an eyewitness account? A trusted source? I was knocked off Rainbow Dash’s back when we were flying in the sky." This actually drew a small gasp from Twilight. "Don't worry, I got out of it alive."

Twilight ducked her head and blushed. "Yeah, sorry, imagining you in danger even after the fact isn't fun. Please, go on."

He nodded. "Dash flew down, tried to save me... you should’ve seen the worry in her eyes! Then she just STOPPED. Right in midair, with a big look of NOTHING on her face. Like someone had flicked her off switch. I only saw it for a few seconds before I was falling through thousands of thorns." She flinched at that, and he had to stop himself from reaching over to pat her comfortingly.

"Twilight... at the time I had no idea what I was even seeing, but I know now: I witnessed the exact moment Rainbow Dash got swapped!” Twilight didn't have a reply to that, she looks down at the ground, her ears lowered, her expression troubled. Lero continued on, unabated. "Or maybe you should go back and reread that one letter Celestia sent you. You trust Celestia’s word, right? I can’t quote it word-for-word, but I recall this one phrase, something about how ‘their souls and memories are scattered in jumbled something.’ Should I go get it?”

Twilight let out a long exhale. "No." She said softly, then more firmly. "No, you’re right. It... it would be so easy to believe this mare we're living with is just ‘another’ Rarity that I...” She let out another hard breath. “That our REAL friends were just far away, waiting for us to find them and come home. That there wasn't a disaster here that I caused.”

Lero pointed to a picture on the wall; a picture that showed them with Rainbow Dash. "I’m sorry, Twilight. We ARE home." Twilight nodded softly at that, continuing to hang her head and speaking no further.

Lero finally gave in, and got up, sitting next to her on the bed. Most of the anger and resentment had drained out of him, he continued, more soft and calmly. "But yeah, I get it. Rarity... wow... I thought she was supposed to be BAD at everything Dash had been GOOD at."

Twilight looked over at him, closer to eye-to-eye with Lero while sitting like this. "Well... er... remember me saying: ‘Fluttershy was already a great dressmaker, she should’ve gotten Rarity’s mark?’”

“Uh-huh.”

"Well, uh, Rarity has dated. Lots. More than the rest of us six. Every now and then, back in the days when Rarity was her old self... we’d all just be having girl talk, and she’d brag or joke about some of the ones she... well..." She trailed off, her hoof out, as if groping for a word.

“Bedded.” Lero offered.

She nodded once. "Yes. Bedded. She wasn't crass about it or anything, but Rarity made it pretty clear she knows her way around a bedroom very well. So when she swapped with Rainbow Dash, those bedroom skills just... transferred over naturally."

Lero nodded, rubbing his chin. "Maybe... But that still doesn’t explain one other thing."

Twilight tilted her head at him questioningly. "What?"

"Dash was always bent. No sexual attraction to mares. That’s clearly not the case with Rarity."

Twilight shrugged at that. "Guess Rarity’s straightness managed to carry itself over from her old personality."

Lero snorted. "So! Dash’s libido and love for all of us, coupled with Rarity’s bisexuality and bedroom skills. We’re both living through a fun time together, aren’t we, honeybun?" Lero couldn't prevent the sarcasm from creeping into his voice. He saw Twilight duck her head and her cheeks flush in embarrassment, averting her eyes. "Can I ask something, Twilight? I know Equestrians aren’t monogamous like humans are. All the same... there IS such thing as infidelity with you ponies, right? Cheating on your lovers?"

"Yes," Twilight said. "Cheating’s a wicked, awful thing to do. Especially when it’s against your herd."

He nodded slowly. "Alright." He took a deep breath. "So then, WHY DID YOU DO IT?!"

She flinched briefly at his raised voice, but just sighed, hanging her head, realizing she deserved this, or worse, but... she needed to explain herself, especially to Lero. "When Rarity came home earlier today, she could see that I was really depressed. She offered being... intimate... to make me feel better, and she wouldn’t take no for an answer. I ran from her. I hid from her. I teleported from her. She thought I was playing games. Finally, I actually summoned a nigh-impenetrable bubble force field around myself in the middle of the kitchen... and that kept her out. That got the message through." She let out a shuddery sigh, looking back at Lero as she continued.

"I tried to tell her; ‘No! I don’t want this! And you don’t really want this either! You don’t actually want to have sex with me! Why would you need me? I’m not what you want! Search your feelings, Rarity! Please! Deep down, you know I’m right!’ But she didn’t understand. She took it the wrong way. She cried very, very hard and said, ‘You’re wrong! Please, Twilight! I really DO love you! I DO want this! Let me make you happy! I’m sorry for paying so much attention to Lero and forgetting all about you! Don’t be this way! You’ll break my heart forever!” Twilight stopped her story and Lero saw pain and fear in her eyes.

But this didn't make sense. "Look, I understand that there’s a big identity crisis going around, and it’s something we’ve got to put up with... but in spite of what she believes, RARITY ISN’T RAINBOW DASH! What if it were YOU who got switched, Twilight?! Would you want DASH to cheat on you like that? If YOU were the zookeeper, and Rarity believed SHE was Princess Celestia's chosen one?!"

"Lero?" she asked quietly. "Do you remember when I thought you wanted me out of the herd?"

Lero nodded back, remembering the time he'd interceded in an argument very early on between Twilight and Dash and taken sides with the pony he thought had been wronged — a human reaction — rather than just shutting down or mediating the conflict as was proper for a stallion. Since he'd sided with Rainbow Dash, Twilight had thought he'd wanted her out of the herd. It had taken some doing to reassure her that wasn't the case, but it'd been heartrending to see how badly it'd upset her.

"...Yeah. Yeah, I remember."

She closed her eyes. "Seeing Rarity like that... reminded me of how I felt back then. How much it hurt. I... I couldn't do that to Rarity or Rainbow Dash. And besides that... I... I gave into her... I went along and let her do what she did... because I was scared..."

His eyes widened, suddenly remembering Discord's warning: 'If you get in the way of their ‘thing,’ they will grow dangerously insane and violent.'

Would loving them qualify!?

“No..." He said in disbelief. "No... she wouldn’t... She couldn't... she didn’t THREATEN you, did she?! She didn’t FORCE herself upon you?!"

Twilight's eyes widened in alarm. “NO! Absolutely not! I know that if I’d put my hoof down, Rarity would have backed off! So I give you my word, what we did was entirely consensual.”

Now things went back to making no damn sense. “Then WHY?!” Lero persisted.

Letting out another sigh, Twilight closed her eyes. “Because... because she'd said, if I didn’t, I’d break her heart forever. When she said that, I had a terrifying thought: what it would mean to break her heart forever. Especially because it’s not really her heart!”

…Okay, let's keep riding the no-sense train. "Huh?" He managed.

"I... have a theory, Lero." She absently ran her hoof in circles on the bed, absently leaving behind a trail of swirls.

"Explain. Please. I'd like for this to make sense to me."

With a deep breath, Twilight began a lecture. One that sounded sad and frustrated, rather than the eager and animated ones he was used to hearing from her.

"Let's turn the clock back to the time when you were still in the Bramblewood Forest, and Rarity had left Ponyville to rescue you. Once it became clear magic was afoot, I started examining the four friends I had access to. What I could put together was that, effectivelly, all of them have part of each other's... essence in one another. It's not any sort of duplication or copy; it's the genuine article. Just inside the wrong mare. On top of everything else — their cutie marks, memories, sense of purpose in the world — romantic feelings make up part of this essence. Unicorns are taught early on that magic cannot create love, just enhance what is there. With Starswirl's spell, we've now found out it can be transferred, as well."

Twilight sighed and continued.

"Functionally, Rarity's gotten a... er... let’s call it a love transplant from Rainbow Dash. All the love and affection Rainbow Dash has for us has literally been transplanted from Dash into Rarity. Like an organ transplant. The organ's still alive, functioning the same as it ever was, just inside a different person. Now I’m trying to find a way to transplant it back where it belongs. But love, Lero... love needs to be nurtured and fed in order to continue on. So what happens if we stop nurturing and feeding her love? If we give Rarity the cold shoulder? Alienate her? Reject all the love she gives us?”

Her purple eyes almost bore into his own.

“...The love will wither up and die.” Lero pronounced, a chill shivering through his back.

She nodded, sharply. "Exactly. And the day I finally do find a cure for this — the day I get to transplant that cold, dead snuffed-out love for us back into its original owner — what do you think our relationship with Dash will be like, then?”

"You... you don’t KNOW it’ll all go down like that. It’s just a theory, right?" He protested weakly.

"You’re right. It’s an unproven theory. But I’m too scared of it being right." Though she favored him with a smile, Lero saw too much fear and frustration still in her eyes for it to be genuine. "I suppose the safest, more scientific course of action would be for me to keep loving Rarity and you to avoid her. Between us both, at least one of us will have remained faithful to Dash. I don’t even care if it’s not me."

Before he could reply, Twilight leapt off the bed and left the room.

"God dammit." Lero muttered to himself, lying back on the bed, Defeated. "She did make it make sense." Sometimes she was too damn smart, and left him alone in bed with too many things to think about.

* * *

“What have I done wrong?!” Rarity wailed at him.

Lero remembered the time when his dreams were only vaguely half-remembered nonsense, rather than intense, memorable scenes relevant to his life, fraught with drama. He was really starting to miss those. Why the hell were they becoming more intense and meaningful? Was it just the stress in his life, or an indication of something else?

He and Rarity sat together on a picnic table placed in picturesque park. Across an asphalt highway was a cheap motel, the Criddos Motel, sandwiched between a Burger King and a store which sold pianos. Traffic occasionally passed on the highway, mostly semis rumbling down the remote stretch of road.

The mare that thought she loved him sobbed miserably. In the dream, he was unmoved, looking at her without only a casual, passing interest.

“You’ve been so cold to me!” She sobbed, dabbing an eye with a tissue. Lero looked past her, watching human children play on the playground in the park they were in. “You’ve been avoiding me every chance you get! Please tell me why!” Rarity begged.

He glanced back to her, her eyeshadow running, leaving streaks of black down her perfectly white face. "Rarity, I'm not sure how to put this, because I'm not a cruel person. But it's not anything that you did."

She paused in her daubing, blinking rapidly in confusion. "Whatever do you mean, Lero?"

He spread his hands in an apologetic manner. "It's... well, I don't feel the same way about you as you do me."

Her jaw dropped in shock, as did her hold of the tissue, which fluttered down onto the table. He watched it fall disinterestedly.

"I... what... for how long!?" She asked, incredulously.

"Oh, since forever." He said simply. "I was never in love with you, Rarity."

"That's... no, that's impossible! All those days we spend together, sharing our lives, all the affection, the love we showed- that can't be fake!" she shook her head in disbelief.

"Oh, it wasn't. Fake, that is. It just wasn't you I was with, then."

A look of even greater confusion and concern passed over her face. "...Lero, darling... you're not making any sense."

"It was Rainbow Dash. She was the mare that befriended me, who helped me when I was at my lowest, who fell in love with me... and I, without realizing it, fell in love with her. Rarity was always a good friend, but nothing more."

Rarity stared at him, and began to speak slowly and carefully. "...Lero, dear, we need to get you back to the hospital, I think the spider's toxin has done something awful to your memories..."

He ignored her, continuing on. "Twilight cast a spell that accidentally changed your memories around. You think you had Rainbow Dash's life, and she thinks she had Fluttershy's- just another passing friend. Now you think you love me, and Rainbow doesn't know me from Adam. And the sick joke of it, there's magic that makes no one else believe it's true."

Rarity carefully reached out to him with a hoof. "Lero..."

He slammed his fist down on the table, causing her to jerk back. "No! Look, I tried to humor you, play nicely, but I'm done. I don't have it in me to look after a lovesick, spell-addled mare, especially after everything I've lost. I'm sorry, Rarity, but 'this' — which never really was anything to begin with — is over."

"Lero... please... you're sick. Let me help you." she pleaded with him.

"Look, are you deaf? I said I don't love you. Even if I'm crazy, the doctor's can't make me love you. Not even magic can."

Rarity stared at him, tears streaming from her eyes, sobs erupting out of her mouth, Lero just glaring at her finally. Finally, she shuddered violently, almost as if having a seizure. Lero swore he could see the precise moment her heart tore in half.

"...Fine, Lero, if that's how you want it. I don't love you anymore, either."

She hopped off the bench, settling down in the grass away from him. As he watched, her chromatic cutie mark lost all color, fading to a cold, muted, ugly gray. He smiled with satisfaction.

"I'm glad you understand." True, it could have gone better, but he'd still managed to get through to her, despite the magic fighting against him. Finally, a clear and decisive victory against Starswirl's spell!

There was a muted thump. He looked up, startled to see an Equestrian hot air balloon settle beside the table. Twilight, Pinkie, Applejack, Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy all leapt out. "Hi, Lero!" They all greeted him happily. Twilight was levitating a picnic basket and a blanket behind her. None of them seem to notice Rarity's miserable state. In fact, Twilight spoke in a blithely chipper tone as if everything was right in the world.

"Good news, everypony! I have finally uncoveredddddd...." She popped open the basket, revealing an Erlenmeyer flask full of what looked, for all the world, like glowing mango juice. "THE CURE!"

She practically hopped with joy, as did Lero.

"About damn time!" Lero said with relief, as Twilight set out the picnic blanket. The five other ponies joined her on it, as she set the basket down and levitated champagne flutes out for them all, pouring her magic potion into them, one by one.

"Cheers!"

"Down the hatch!"

"Salut!"

"Skal!"

"Kanpai!"

After clinking glasses, they drank. For a moment: nothing. Then each of the swapped girls shook and jittered. Then, their cutie marks peeled off their flanks like children's stickers. Then each of them flew through the air and slapped themselves onto the correct mare's side. Pinkie's flat mane popped back into its crazy curls. She hopped to her hooves.

"Hooray! I was about to smash my legs into raw hamburger against those trees!"

Applejack nodded. "And mah legs were about ta atrophy to nothing in that there dress shop!"

"And I just can’t wait to get back home to my cottage! How I’ve missed the aroma of animal urine in every corner of every room!" Fluttershy said, dreamily.

"Oh!" Rarity exclaimed. "Oh my goodness! To think that I almost... I almost...!" She reached for his hand gratefully, and he gave her hoof a shake. "I don’t care what anypony else says about you, Lero, you truly are a stand-up guy! Thank you, thank you, THANK you for keeping it in your pants!"

He bowed pleasantly to her. "My pleasure, Miss Rarity!" She smiled at him, following the others as they hopped back aboard the hot balloon with Twilight and drifted off... all except for Rainbow Dash. She stayed behind, sitting on the blanket, staring off in the distance. Lero eagerly sprinted over to her, embracing her tightly. "Dash! We’re finally back together again!"

And he kissed her, firmly.

It was like kissing the lips of a cold, putrefying fish.

Like kissing an ex.

He broke it off quickly, looking up to meet her gaze, wide-eyed. All he saw in her eyes was coldness. And her cutie mark was as gray as it'd been on Rarity's flank.

"Yeeeeah, ABOUT that, Lero..." Lero's heart fell. "...I'm not really that into... us anymore."

"No! Rainbow, how can you say that? After everything..." He was interrupted by Rainbow rudely pulling herself out of his arms, shrugging him off her.

"Forget it." She started walking away. "It's no use. There's nothing there anymore."

He followed after her desperately. "But I did everything I could for you! I survived through unimaginable things, I waited patiently for you! I was faithful to you! How can you just say it's over!?"

She stopped, glaring at him. They were now both midway across the highway. "Lero, all I know is that when I got my cutie mark back... the place that used to have my love for you... all that's there now is pain and emptiness. You may not have done anything to me, specifically, but you still trampled all over my love for you. That's what my heart says."

Lero stared down at her. "You mean what your MARK says," he replied bitterly.

"Same thing."

With that, she spread her wings and flew off, disappearing into the sky.

A distant rumbling was steadily growing louder behind Lero. The honk of an 18-Wheeler pierced the air. He didn't even look behind him. Really, when it hit, oblivion was going to be such a mercy.

* * *

Lero awoke with a start, his movement stopped by forehooves hooked around his shoulders from behind his back. Opening his eyes, he looked to see the color of the leg fur: white. He could feel the length of her horn settled softly against the top of the back of his head. The perfume she’d sprayed on herself before turning in for the night was still moderately fresh: lilac and lavender. She breathed in and out against him without snoring. He could feel her smile against his body. They were actually sharing the same pillow.

Easing out gently from Rarity’s grasp, he rose out of bed to take a look at her. It was dark, very late at night, but the curtain had been left open, and enough moonlight shone through for him to see clearly enough. Twilight was not in bed with them. Studying, perhaps?

Lero pulled the bedsheets and cover back just enough to take a look at the cutie mark on Rarity.

Colorful. Not gray, not monochrome. Colorful, thank God. Still alive. He hadn’t actually done anything to kill Rainbow Dash’s... Rarity’s... the cutie mark’s... feelings for him. He crawled back atop the mattress, settling into a sort of kneel, to look upon the cutie mark. Looking at it... gazing at it here, upon this bed... just filled his heart with measureless dejection.

Lero Michealides had lost so much in his life. Stupid things, like certain TV shows, music files, and brands of candy bars. Every possession of his on Earth and all his money. More importantly, he’d lost his friends and girlfriend back on Earth. His parents, his old job, the home he used to live in. All mankind. Familiar sights and sounds, places rich with history and meaning, lost to him. The hope of one day fathering human children, (though Twilight still had plans in the works for foals, on hiatus, of course.) He’d lost his entire world... and not only had he learned to live with that, he’d been able to find new happiness in a new life.

And this magical little icon he was staring at represented Lero’s first truly unbearable loss: the love of Rainbow Dash. And yet, paradoxically, here that very thing was: Rainbow Dash’s Love. Snuggling up right next to him in this very bed, every night. Still clinging to him, still adoring him, just... stamped upon the wrong mare.

Such a powerful thing it was. Strong enough to compel a girl like Rarity to discard her entire life, and walk hundreds of miles across all kinds of terrain to slay a giant spider.

Such a delicate and malleable thing, too.

Cutie marks, when swapped, transferred the memories and emotions of the ponies they had been removed from. When Rarity had undergone her swap, she had been instilled with the full force of Rainbow Dash’s love for him, whole and undiluted by Rarity’s own disinclination for humans as lovers.

So what would happen on that fateful day Twilight discovered the Cure?

If he were to mistreat Rarity, get her to hate him or even leave altogether... every inch of that animosity and ill will would surely transfer back over to Rainbow Dash!

Perhaps he could go the same route Twilight had: go with the flow and feed Rarity’s libido every time it hungered. Accept Rarity, through and through, as their ‘replacement Dash.’ Hey, why not? At least everyone would be having fun! Just like old times! And when the Cure came, Dash would return with nary a change!

...But how fair would that be to Rarity?

Maybe there was a middle ground! Perhaps he could throw juuuust enough cold water on Rarity so they could all comfortably become ‘just friends!’

...He thought about how it would feel if Dash did that to him, and rejected it immediately. What a brutal joke. To have his true soulmate downgraded to ‘just friends.’

What can I do? How can I adjust to this? What’s the right thing to do? How do I still be the good guy? How do I not become the bad guy? How can I return life back to what it was before the Swap?

...The only thing he could hope to do was hold tight and wait for Twilight to have an epiphany.

Lero’s palm stroked the fur of the cutie mark... soft as mink, if not softer. He bent and kissed it. Then he kissed it again.

“I think I told you this before, at some point... but a girl’s cutie mark isn’t exactly what you’d call an erogenous zone.”

Rarity looked at him with a sleepy smile. “Still, erotic or not... when you do that... it feels like you’re kissing my very soul. I love the feeling. And I’m only sorry I can’t do it back to you.”

Lero nodded, though his face was now twisted up with misery.

Rarity lifted her head. “What? What’s wrong, my love?”

“This is going to sound so goddamned childish... but I had a bad dream.”

She sat up in bed, smiling at him like he was the cutest thing in the world. “A bad dream? Aw, you poor thing. What happened? Tell Momma all about it.”

“I dreamed I was a giant jerk to you, and I got you to leave me.”

That wiped the smile off her face.

He hadn’t cried since the time he’d thought that the spider was about to kill Rarity. This had become an unspoken point of pride with him. Dash was gone, Twilight was miserable and helpless to do anything, Spike was coming to resent him more and more for ‘stealing’ Rarity from him... every Element Bearer with a necklace instead of a tiara didn’t know who they were... Rarity was playing havoc with his emotions every which way, but at LEAST he’d been keeping the wet-works in check.

He’d ALMOST broken down after he’d made Dash terrified of him, but good old booze had nipped THAT in the bud. In a weird sort of way, getting drunk had even worked in his favor! He’d never have attacked Discord while sober. And, with one thing having led to the another, Discord would never have wiped Dash’s memory of that incident. So, yay booze.

But this was worse than crying. This was sobbing.

“I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!” All the misery he’d been experiencing this whole time was crashing down on him all at once, like dumbbells set upon high, worn, and rotted shelves.

“Darling! What are you even apologizing for?! You’ve done nothing wrong! Nothing!”

“All I ever wanted was to be faithful to the one I loved!” he blubbered. Rarity’s magic pulled him against her, like a mother sweeping her weeping wreck of a boy into her arms.

“You ARE faithful to me! You’re NOT a jerk! Lero, you’re the sweetest, dearest, most truehearted, selfless, caring stallion it’s ever been my pleasure to know! And both of my herd-sisters would fully agree with me!”

Rarity floated some tissues over to Lero and wiped his eyes. He slowly began to calm.

“I take it that it was a bad breakup?” she asked, with faint mirth. “Me and you in your dream?”

He hiccoughed, but smiled back. “The worst.”

“And here I thought it’d be the spider.”

They both laughed a little. Lero blew his nose. Gradually, he settled down. And then a sudden idea struck him.

Should I? he asked himself. Would it be too bold of me?

“Rarity,” he began. “There’s... well... there’s also this other dream I had that I’d really, really like to talk to you about. I had it just before the one about the breakup."

“What is it?”

“You know that spell that Twilight’s working on? The unfinished one from Starswirl the Bearded? Well, I dreamt that Twilight cast the spell in front of the Elements of Harmony... and it caused you, Rarity, and all Twilight’s other Element Bearing friends to switch cutie marks. You switched with Applejack. Applejack switched with Pinkie Pie. Pinkie Pie switched with Fluttershy. Fluttershy switched with Rainbow Dash. And Rainbow Dash switched with you. And when this happened, Rarity, you all exchanged each other’s roles in life.”

“Huh?”

And Lero confessed nearly everything to her; though his tale was heavily and carefully modified. Couched in the context of a dream, with all the names switched, since the bewitchment wouldn’t allow for the bald truth. In Lero’s story, Rarity was the dressmaker who couldn’t make a dress. Fluttershy was the animal caretaker unable to take proper care of her animals, and Rainbow Dash was... well, Rarity.

Certain other details needed to be tweaked, as needed.

“But HOW would Rainbow Dash have been able to kill that huge spider?” Rarity asked, once he’d reached that part of the story.

Lero bit his lip, but an answer came to him quick. “She bucked the spider around, of course, but she was also able to make great use of her wings. She dive-bombed the spider a couple of times, and also kicked some of the other stalactites in the cave so that they fell off and impaled him. That’s what did the spider in.”

“And to think we’re talking about sweet, shy Rainbow Dash, who cries when a mouse stubs its paw!”

“She had your cutie mark, remember?” he countered. “So she was just as much in a wild frenzy as you were.”

“Ah. That makes more sense, then.” And Rarity looked down. “At least I was able to fly down and chase after the spider right away, when it pulled you from that thorn-tower. The very idea that you were its captive... its bait... and it tortured you for so long while Rainbow Dash was flying all the way from Ponyville...”

“Count our blessings,” he agreed.

When Lero got to the bit where he went to the Carousel Boutique with his bag full of of Rarity’s old belongings... and Rarity said the picture of them together actually showed Rainbow Dash... at that point, the real Rarity in front of Lero fell into tears, so he hugged her, consoled her, and skimmed over the rest of that part of his story.

Lero even told Rarity about getting drunk, making a giant meathead of himself at Sugar Cube Corner... and Discord. Everything about Discord. But he ended his story at the point where Discord had gifted him with erasing the memories of Rarity and every pony at Sugar Cube Corner. Modified or not, Lero felt that telling Rarity he’d then walked inside to find Rainbow Dash fellating Twilight’s horn — that would’ve hit a little too close to home for her.

“Wow,” she said. “That is... that would be quite a lot for anyone to be saddled with. And it certainly doesn’t seem like any of us are enjoying the situation you're describing... least of all, yourself.”

“No, I’m not, Rarity. Especially since this has actually been a recurring dream.”

“Recurring?” she repeated.

“I can’t explain why, but I’ve been having these dreams ever since you brought me to that hospital in Bramblewood Town. It’s never QUITE the same dream twice... yet I keep returning to this scenario in which all of you are swapped, and Rainbow Dash believes she’s my true love. And you know how ‘real’ dreams feel when you’re dreaming them.”

He pointed towards the pillow, imagination working overtime.

“In fact, I know without a doubt, that as soon as we’re done talking, as soon as I’ve fallen back asleep, I’m going to head right back into that world, whether I like it or not. The world where Dash has taken your place.”

“Lero... darling... have you thought that maybe the spider toxin had a bad effect on your mind? Maybe you should see someone about these dreams? Like a doctor... a good doctor!”

For a second, the upper line of Lero’s teeth worked feverishly upon his lower lip. Then he presented Rarity with his most glowing smile; gleaming with confidence and faith in her.

“I have something better than any doctor! I have you, Rarity!”

“Me?” she asked, as he clapped his hands proudly on her shoulders.

“You’ve always steered me right, my love! You’ve taught me so much about pony culture, helped me out whenever I fumbled! I promise, Rarity, I won’t let this turn into a pathological... thing. I know you’ll have the answer for this, too, and then I’ll be able to sleep easy again! Please, please, just tell me, Rarity: how should I treat the Rainbow Dash-who-believes-she’s-you?”

Rarity looked downwards towards her left.

Rarity looked downwards towards her right.

Then she looked back up at Lero.

“I think you should love her in the exact same way you love me.”

His eyes widened. “Even the...?” He made gestures with his hands, indicating physical intimacy.

She actually blushed a bit, but nodded. “Yes. Even that.”

Go ahead and allow me to love you thoroughly, just like Twilight did, while she prepares a cure. Was the translation that Lero Michealides heard in his head. Preserve the passionate relationship you have with Rainbow Dash at my own expense. I grant you my full permission.

“Are you sure?” he asked.

Rarity paused. "Lero, dear, have you ever heard the phrase, 'Protect the Herd'?"

He frowned but nodded. "Yeah, I've heard it used a few times. Sarcastically, more often than not, whenever a pony's acting overcautious or overprotective."

Rarity let out a gentle laugh. "Yes, that is how it is mostly used nowadays... But it's still a statement of a very old Equestrian ideal. Back in the old days, often your herd was the only one you could trust and depend on. A pony deprived of a herd was bereft of protection and assistance. She was vulnerable to enemies and wild beasts, and less likely to be able to take care of herself... in short, most likely not long for this world. But protecting the herd isn't just protecting it from outside threats. It also meant keeping it intact. Preventing it from falling apart from within. That is your duty as a stallion, to keep our herd from falling apart. Not just for your sake, but for Twilight, Lyra, and Myself, as well... or, in this dream scenario, for Rainbow Dash."

He frowned. "I thought herds came apart all the time."

Rarity sighed. "Sadly, they do, these days, but it's never a thing to be celebrated or admired. It's a poor stallion who loses a mare, and a poor mare that drives off a herdsister."

Huh. Lero had never even considered the pony equivalent of divorce, since their social arrangements were much less formal than humans. Apparently, it was easier, but even more frowned upon. However, he had to get back on track.

"But... How is that fair to Rar- Rainbow Dash?"

"Lero... Let's put this situation on its head. Imagine, if you will, some absurd world where your dream was normality. Rainbow Dash was your lead mare, and I, somehow, didn't find you charming and attractive and wonderful."

She gave him a small grin, showing how obviously absurd she found that scenario. It was all he could manage to return a smile and give a weak laugh.

"Speaking for all the rest of us Element Bearers who aren't part of your herd... we love Twilight and Rainbow Dash like sisters. Spike is a darling, and Lyra, while not as close, is still a sweetheart and a good friend. And you're a good friend, who has given Twilight and me... ah, Rainbow so much joy. If taking Rainbow Dash's place is what was needed to maintain your herd... I would do it in a heartbeat. Spell or no spell. Outsider though I am."

She leaned over, and nudged him affectionately, gazing at him through half-lidded eyes. "And on a more personal note, you treat me like a princess. You're kind, loving, thoughtful, giving, affectionate, and, frankly, you're dynamite in the bedroom." She let out a small giggle, looking up. "Oh, my, if being your mare is the 'terrible fate' I have to suffer for the sake of my friend's herd... Well, I'll manage somehow!"

She winked, then met his gaze. "But, more seriously, given the full context of this terrible ‘Swap’ dilemma which your dream-self finds itself in... loving the pony who holds my love for you would be the... if not the right thing to do, then the least-wrong. Rejecting Rainbow Dash for my sake would only end up hurting us both. You'd be hurting two of the ponies who care for you most... simply so you could cling to a moral high ground.”

His hands dropped from her shoulders, staring into space. His mind felt rather blown, yet again. “I suppose you’re right, Rarity.”

“Lero, look at me. Look at me, Lero.”

He looked at her.

“All these nightmares you’re having... us breaking up, me leaving you, me forgetting you... those are just dreams. This is reality. I haven’t left you and never shall. Someday, you’ll be up there in a handsome white tuxedo, and Twilight, Lyra, and I will be right beside you in our beautiful bridal gowns and Spike will be our ring-bearer. Our lives will be as happy together as we've always been. Then Twilight’s going to find a way to help us have daughters and sons of our own. And if they should all look like you...”

She lifted Lero’s unresistant hand to her face, and nuzzled its palm and fingers.

“...Then I’ll be all the more honored as a mother.’’

Lero was tired, emotionally spent, and a still thousand miles away from being anywhere near comfortable with Rarity’s new place in his life, and Rainbow Dash's absence from it. But when Rarity hooked her arms around him again, Lero embraced her as well; his arms encircling her back. Their heads settled upon the same pillow.

“I’m very glad you love me, Rarity,” he said, just as Twilight had.

“Shush now. It’s gonna be okay,” she promised. “Just close your eyes and sleep with me.”

Lero felt her magic stroke at his head in a way that mimicked how his own palm had brushed her cutie mark. She kissed him softly to sleep. Nothing besides comfort passed between them that night...

* * *

...however, an hour later, in the dead of night, Rarity’s eyes shot open.

“But there’s just no way I’d have EVER been THAT bad a dressmaker, Lero.” Her voice was intense. She sounded like she were being possessed by some invading ghost. “Never in a million years. My dresses are the talk of Canterlot. My ensembles are works of art!”

Then she squeezed her eyes, fighting these alien thoughts back down to the darkness they’d scuttled up from. Such strange sleep-talk, what COULD she have been dreaming of? Thankfully, it hadn’t woken her stallion, who slept like a baby in her arms.

“Give my best to Rainbow Dash,” she whispered in his ear. “Have fun together, you two.”

Author's Note

Thank you all for sticking with this story for this long. At this point, we’ve reached what I consider to be the end of Act One.

We’ve established our core players, though more will come.
We’ve provided full context and defined the terms.
We’ve set the boundaries of what can and cannot be done.
The time for bafflement, false assumptions, and groping blindly in the dark is over.
The stakes are high and the penalties crushingly unforgiving.

Act One was all about having our heroes learn the full scope of their unenviable new situation, and be maneuvered into the new roles this situation demands they play.

Act Two will be all about them acting on this knowledge.

Stay tuned! You ain’t seen nothing yet!

And a major round of applause for Archonix for a great Star Sparkle!

Thank you, Rikmach, as well!

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Eleven: Cyan Feather

With a twist of a lever, the shower sputtered to life.

A blissful noise issued from Rarity’s throat. It was as though she’d taken a single bite of salmon filet inside some luxuriant five-star restaurant, and had paused to let the cream sauce sink into her taste buds. She didn’t even need to open her lips as the water pattered against the floor and over her body.

“Mmmmmm...”

Lero heard all this from behind the bathroom’s door. His back was against it, he was looking towards his feet. He still had his underwear on.

“The water’s fantastic, Lero! Aren’t you coming in?”

That was a good question. Was he coming in?

He almost didn’t. Almost went back into bed to go back to sleep, until she’d finished showering on her own. And then, of all things, he remembered the letter that Princess Celestia had sent Twilight. Within his mind, Lero heard Celestia’s mellifluous voice as clearly as if she’d narrated it aloud.

“Be there for them, for they are all suffering, and have no idea how to help themselves. They will all need every last friend they can still cling to, that won’t abandon them when they are at their worst. Be a pillar of strength for all your loved ones.”

“She’s not a usurper,” he whispered to himself. “She’s not a witch, she’s not some fairytale changeling, and she’s not a stalker.”

Rarity was humming to herself behind the door.

“She’s Rarity. She’s... she’s a prisoner in her own body. Buried under ancient magic and... and Rainbow Dash. But Dash doesn’t mean harm. She’s no evil spirit, she’s trying to love us and be there for us, but right now she just has no way else to do it than this. She’s a prisoner too. And I’m not going to shun them. I won’t be resentful or embarrassed by them. I’m their friend.”

As he took off his underwear and opened the door, Rarity’s humming briefly transformed into song:

“Love, I thank you,

For all my pain and torment,

And I’m content for every sorrow.”

Then she went back to humming. It was a strange tune; slow, sublime, and ethereal. Tendrils of steam exuded from behind the shower curtain. Uncertainly filled Lero’s heart, and he froze in front of the fogged mirror. How was he going to do this? Just step in, and act like... like...

...like some stammering, weak-kneed, wrong-footed yutz with stage fright? Rainbow and Rarity need you.

His muscles relaxed. He strode towards the shower as though the unicorn within were just another customer at the spa. Or rather... as though he really were the Lero Michaelides of Rarity’s altered memories. He opened the curtain.

“Good morning, my love,” said Rarity, as the hot water washed over her body.

“Good morning, Rarity.” Under the spray of rushing water, his muscles relaxed all the more. Kissing Rarity chastely on the cheek, Lero got to work; squeezing shampoo into his hands, lathering it up, and working the foam into Rarity’s water-flattened mane. She made a happy little noise at the feel of his fingers.

“Did you sleep well last night?” he asked her.

“Yes,” she answered. “What about you?”

“I slept well enough... WHOA!”

A large dollop of thick liquid had landed on his hair. He looked up to see the shampoo bottle floating upside-down over his head.

“Did some of it get in your eyes, dear?” Rarity asked, turning in concern.

“No, no,” said Lero, resuming his scrubbing of her. “The shampoo just snuck up on me, is all.”

On one hand, floating shampoo was actually not all that new to Lero. He’d showered with Twilight and Lyra before. On the other hand, Lero had entered the shower thinking, ‘Rainbow Dash, Different Look,’ except this was a Rainbow who could levitate.

They scrubbed each other up. Rarity’s magic was like having a nearly-invisible woman work the suds into his scalp with nebulous hands. After finishing with with her mane, Lero switched from the shampoo to the coat wash, beginning with her shoulders and withers.

“Did you dream of Rarity-Dash again last night?” she asked.

Blankly, Lero first thought Rarity was referring to her own self. Then he remembered the ‘dream’ he’d told her about last night.

“I don’t think so,” he told her.

“Are you suuuure?” she persisted, her eyes sparkling with mischief.

“Well... I might’ve...” he allowed. For all Lero knew, he had.

"Oh? Tell me about it!" Rarity insisted, eagerly.

Well, shoot. “Ah... Dreams can be such difficult things to recall, you know? Speaking of which, what’d you dream about last night?”

“I dreamed that you and I were naked together under a hot, steamy shower, and you were dodging my questions.”

Sometimes, when Rarity touched him with her magic, it felt like many thin, fingerlike pressures pressing upon his body; as though she were approximating Lero’s own hands. Other times, the telekinesis could feel harder and blockier... more like hooves. This time, it was more of the former. Only, Rarity wasn’t limiting herself to a measly two hands.

"Tell me!" she cooed.

Magical fingers, touching lightly inside his armpits, where the skin was soft and the hair was scraggly. Magical fingers, poking hard under his ribs. A single featherlight fingertip, brushing along the rim of first one ear than the next. All at once.

"Tell me tell me tell me!" She cajoled him.

“Hahahahahaahaah! S-s-stoppit! Rar-rari--t-t-tee hee hee hahahahhaahahoho stah... hah... HA HA HA!!!”

The harder Lero begged for Rarity to stop, the more she just kept up her assault, tickling him senseless in places he hadn’t known he was ticklish, adding more and more magic-fingers along his legs, his toes — she was a telekinetic octopus! — until he was a curled-up ball of giggles on the slippery, wet shower tiles.

All the fingers vanished, his body uncurled somewhat leaning up against the tile wall. Rarity pressed her front against the center of his chest, pinning him against the wall, looking at him playfully through water-soaking bangs. Nowhere near hard enough to crush anything, thank God, but hard enough to be firm. Too firm to wriggle out from, trying to escape just created uncomfortable pressure, but keeping in place like she clearly wanted was precisely calibrated to be his comfortable option.

“So the recurring dream didn’t recur tonight? Hmmm?” She asked with a tiny, playful pout.

Lord, she was powerful, in more than just body. Prior to the Swap, he would never have thought such a thing of Rarity... but that was before she had exchanged ribbons and lace for downpours, hailstones, and thunderclouds. To think, all this time, she’d been hiding such vast strength... even from herself, most likely! She’d be strong enough to stand beside Twilight and Lyra in a fight to the death.

And the look on her face was pure ‘alpha female.‘ It said: You may be my prince, but I rule this house, this herd and you as Princess. And while Lyra and Twilight were both still stronger than Rarity, the white unicorn impressed him far more with just her force of personality, especially considering what she had to back it up...

“It’s alright, Lero, my sweet,” she promised. “I gave you permission to be with that Dream-Dash, didn’t I? Now I want to know how far she went. So go ahead. Don’t spare one single detail of your tryst. Everything you did with that pegasus-who-thinks-she’s-me.”

...After all, the other two unicorns hadn’t been swapped.

“I’m sorry, Rarity,” he said, “I don't think I had that dream tonight... or at least I can't remember a lick of it!”

She backed away from Lero, and helped him to his feet. “What a shame for both of us. After you told me what you Dream-Dash did... I was planning on figuring out a way to OUTDO her in real life.” She smiled at him. “Are you sure you don’t remember anything?”

“Maybe she got frightened away by your excellent advice,” he said, tickling her chin.

“Pity if she did.” Then her magic shut the shower water. Lero opened the curtain and reached towards the towel rack. “What are you doing?”

He frowned at her. “I’m... grabbing a towel?”

She shook her head. “Oh, Lero, haven’t I taught you better than that? Towels are only for when you’re showering by yourself, or you’re with one of your other marefriends who isn’t me.”

Hot air span softly around them both, a swirling, weightless cocoon of warmth. The water dribbling off their bodies were sucked up into the gentle whirlwind.

“There we go!” She trotted to the sink, and grabbed a toothbrush from the drawer. Lero had to roll his eyes: of course she’d picked the green one Rainbow Dash had been using before she’d been...

Rarity sniffed at the toothbrush’s bristles. “Huh? This doesn’t smell like my mouth!” She shot a baffled look at Lero, who hastily weighed his options, and chose to shrug.

“Twilight must’ve grabbed...” Now she rolled her eyes. “I swear, we all need to get more sleep around here!” And she threw Dash’s toothbrush out, picking a new green one from its little cardboard box.

Having almost been undone by a toothbrush, Lero put on his best nonchalant face and grabbed his own toothbrush. What a perfectly mundane picture they both made: boyfriend and girlfriend, side-by-side, scrubbing plaque off their teeth in front of the mirror.

He pondered Rarity’s explanation for Rainbow’s toothbrush... had she honestly come up with that by herself? Or had Discord’s bewitchment channeled it into her brain? Where did the explanations come from? Was the magic itself making up ideas, (meaning the magic, itself, was an intelligent force,) or did it just instill a powerful compulsion in everyone to rationalize everything? If so, how did it all sync up? Did it just go with the first idea anyone came up with? No, that'd get sloppy and bizarre fast. How did it pick ideas? Decide what was best?

....No wait, Rarity was under the effects of Starswirl’s incomplete spell, not Discord’s bewitchment. Ugh. Magic was too freaking weird and started making less and less sense the more he thought about it. Forget it! Lero began combing his hair, while Rarity reset the braid in her mane. She looked over at him.

“Lero, your mane... it’s getting a little bit shaggy, wouldn’t you say?”

Lero felt the back of his head. His hair hung past his shoulders. “So it is. Guess I’ll schedule an appointment with Sleek Pomade again.”

Sleek Pomade was the manedresser both he and Rainbow Dash had always used. Rainbow never looked forward to haircuts, but even she had to go somewhere when her mane had grown TOO long.

“Pomade? Pomade’s... not a bad stylist, but let me save you a bit of money.”

Her horn shone, and the bathroom door opened itself. His chair floated inside, setting itself right behind Lero, in front of the bathroom mirror. Her horn continued to shine, and a towel wrapped itself around Lero’s neck.

“Sit.” He sat, while she considered his hair. “...I might’ve dried your mane a little TOO well. Perhaps a fresh rinsing?”

The steam in the room coalesced into a small raincloud over his head, and released its tiny little downpour. It felt like a thick, waterlogged sponge being wrung over his head.

“You and your clouds,” Lero chuckled, as droplets wound down his face and neck. She laughed, and did a turn, flaunting her cutie mark at him.

“Oh, you know me! I never miss an opportunity if I can. Weather magic is my passion, my reason for being! Outside of loving you, of course.”

Then she circled around to his back side. Another side drawer opened and a comb and scissors flew behind Lero’s head... a gift from Twilight, rarely used. He felt the comb lift a small swatch of hair by the nape of his neck, and then it was snipped off.

“Hey, Rarity? There’s a question I’ve been meaning to ask about telekinesis.”

“Yes?” Rarity was working at a practiced pace; reddish-blonde hair drifted onto the floor with every snap. The steady metallic clicking of the scissors was sharp in his ears; every so often, the floating comb would lift a section up to be snipped off.

“This one time, I remember watching this unicorn bring a porcupine out of her house. I think the critter must’ve wandered in accidentally. But what got me was, the unicorn’s magic had the porcupine grabbed straight by its quills. Y’know, its spines. I mean, if I tried to grab a porcupine’s quills with my hands...”

She winced. “Oooh, ouch... yeah, that’d be as painful as grabbing it with your mouth, right?”

Lero’s own mouth stung at that very thought. “Exactly. However, I’ve also noticed that... when you... or the other girls are using your telekinesis on me... y’know, as a masseur would... you’ll make your ‘mmmm’ and ‘aaahhhh’ noises, even when you’re across the room. So my question to you is this: how much of a ‘sense of touch’ does that power actually have? How... what’s the word...”

“Tactile?” Rarity suggested.

“Yes! How tactile is telekinesis?”

She paused in her trimming, really contemplating his query. “I’m sorry for not answering right away. It’s just not something that unicorns ever really think about. It’s like being asked how I can blow cold or hot air whenever I choose.”

“Oh. You don’t have to answer if you don’t want to.”

“No, no, dear, it IS an intelligent question.” Her rhythmic snipping resumed. Magic brushed lightly over his neck, dislodging stray strands. She clipped by his ear, extra-carefully. "It just requires a bit of thought to answer."

She took a breath.

“Telekinesis DOES have a sense of touch. Let’s say you were to blindfold me, command me to stand in place, then lay several objects on a table and ask me to identify them. With telekinesis, I’d be able to feel whether those objects were metallic or wooden or liquid... I’d be able to feel what shape they were — square, round or whatever — what size they were... the objects’ temperature... and also whether they were fragile or sturdy.”

“Basically, the same as my own sense of touch.” Right now, Lero was keenly aware of how his own cut hair was itching against his skin. The scissors were working on his beard and mustache.

“Indeed. But here’s the big difference between your hands and my telekinetic fields: biologically speaking, they evolved to be impossible to attack.”

“Impossible to attack? What does that mean?”

Snip, snip, snip... snap snap, snap, comb, snap, comb and snap...

“Let’s say we were in a fight,” said Rarity. “I swing my club at your arm; you’d be damaged. You swing your club at my mouth; I’d be damaged. But if you tried clubbing one of my telekinetic fields, the most you MIGHT do is dissipate it... and it’d have to be quite a good swing.”

“Huh."

“Moreover, if an object happens to be physically injurious, my telekinetic ‘sense of touch’ is automatically blunted to the point where all I can feel is the object’s weight and shape. Because of this, unicorns have been able to handle things like red-hot coals, poison frogs, and cactuses without any pain or injury. No bruises, no burns, no paper cuts.”

She was applying some gel to his hair.

“The only exception is when, say... the boulder’s too heavy to lift, the weed’s too firmly rooted to the ground... the locked door won’t give to telekinetic brute strength... you need to give the telekinesis a rest... stuff like that. That strains our minds until our strength gives out.”

“Makes sense,” said Lero. “Our bodies have to let us know what our limits are.”

Rarity nodded, levitating a brush out from the drawer and sweeping the loose hair off him. “However, if our fields are touching something we know to be safe and pleasant... like a luxurious velvet dress, or a kitten’s fur, or...”

Here, Lero felt Rarity’s own telekinesis caress the crook of his neck, then trail backwards to rub a circle along the top of his spine.

“...the soft, smooth skin of your favorite human...”

The towel came off his neck.

“...then the sensation of the texture is sent directly to a unicorn’s mind.”

Rarity had finished. She held up a small handheld (mouth-held? magic-held?) mirror, so he could look at both sides of his head. It was great! Lero couldn’t have asked for a neater trim!

“I look good enough to run for mayor! Amazing!”

“Only the best for my stallion!” Her happiness was so sincere, he couldn’t help kissing her on the lips. She was too cute not to! The white unicorn almost seemed to grow a quarter-inch, right on the spot... what a joyful smile!

“Who taught you to style hair like that?”

It was brief. Barely three seconds. But it came like a horror movie jump scare. Her eyes shot open and turned unfocused; her head drooped slightly to the side. The same vacant gape of Rainbow Dash when she got swapped.

“Who... taught me...? Who taught...?” Then her soul returned.

“Why, I’ve always had a special knack for all forms of cosmetology! Nobody needed to teach me anything. You might as well ask a fish who taught it to swim! I’m a natural-born prodigy!”

A natural-born prodigy. Of course she was. Because the real Rainbow Dash wouldn’t have wasted ten seconds of her life on something so frivolous and frilly as hair care. Let alone the years which the real Rarity must’ve spent honing her hairdressing skills to this degree.

How silly for him to suggest that hair styling needed to be learned. As though beauticians actually went to school for that! After all, haircuts were just a simple matter of bringing scissors up to your hair and snip, snip, snipping away until the job was done. Easy as writing a novel! (All you had to do was write enough words on enough pages!)

He eyed Rarity’s swapped mark with annoyance, feeling pity for her.

...for both of them.

* * *

Star Sparkle had already left their house at some point very early in the morning, before anyone else had woken up. She hadn’t even left a note, but that didn’t bother them. None of them were particularly sorry that she’d left.

Today’s breakfast was cereal with blueberry muffins and a large bowls of fruit salad. Lero and Spike ate the marshmallowy Wonder Flakes, while the unicorns munched on Timothy-Os. (made from 100% timothy hay, and thus 100% inedible to Lero.) The human sat between Rarity and Twilight, as Spike got the coffeepot percolating. At first, it was a fairly unremarkable sort of breakfast. Spike, Twilight and Rarity were sharing stories about stuff they’d dreamt last night.

“I dreamed I was talking to my four-year-old self!” Twilight said. “She had come forward from time because she was wanted to know what the future would be like for her. I told her all about my adventures with all of you, and how Princess Celestia would come to be my teacher, and also about the Magic of Friendship! My younger self asked if it was worth making friends early on! I was hesitant to answer her, because I was afraid of causing a time paradox. But eventually, I said yes.”

“Well, it’s just as well. You spoiled so much about the future to Past-You already... might as well make some friends!” Spike said, pouring himself a second bowl of cereal. “I dreamed I was with my dragon mom and dad, and they were giant-sized and awesome, and they took me on a ride into the sky, and Mom had laid a new clutch of eggs and they wanted to live with our herd here in our tree-house!”

“Well, the world can only benefit from having more dragons like Spike in it!” Rarity said. “I wish I could’ve met your mother.” The little dragon gave her a loving look. “For my dream, I had gotten robbed.”

“Robbed?” asked Lero.

“Yes,” she said. “Thieves in masks came in, tied me up, placed a mana blocker on my horn, and took away everything in my house! Including the bed, every bookshelf, and every book!”

“Gah!” Twilight yelled. “Don’t say that! Now you’re going to give ME nightmares!”

“So what about you, Lero?” Spike asked.

Lero gave a shiver. “If if’s all the same to the rest of you guys... I’d rather not discuss my dreams right now. Can we talk about something else?”

“Aw, c’mon, big guy!” Spike said, elbowing him playfully. “Spill it! Let me guess: you’re walking through town naked? Oooh, the shock and horror!”

Rarity gave the young dragon a sharp look. “Spike! If Lero doesn’t want to say, then he doesn’t have to say!” And she patted the back of his hand with a hoof. “It’s okay, baby, I’m still here.”

Spike stuck his forefinger deep into his mouth as though he were about to perform an act of bulimia.

The closer their meal came to finishing up, the more Rarity kept anxiously shooting glances at her cutie mark. As though it were a clock, and an appointment she had to keep was drawing nearer. All the rest of them noticed it plainly.

“Does it hurt?” Lero asked.

“Er... what?”

“Your flank. You keep looking back at it. Does it hurt?”

“Oh no, don’t worry, my love. There’s never any pain unless...” Rarity stood up. “I need to go.”

“Where?”

“Work.”

Spike and Rarity both left the table. Spike raced to the coffeepot, while Rarity went to grab her saddlebags. The front door swung open under Rarity’s magic, but Spike was faster, dashing in front of Rarity before she could leave. She drew in an anxious breath. “Spike, please, don’t stand in my way when I...!”

“Coffee?” He held out a thermos with a hopeful look. “Just the way you like it?”

The anxiety trailed away from Rarity’s face. She took a sip of the coffee, smiled, then levitated the dragon up to kiss his cheek before galloping out the door. Grinning goofily, Spike staggered back to his chair at the table. “Ain’t this Swap thing GREAT? Who needs Rainbow Dash, anyway?”

Twilight watched the door. Lero heard her counting down from ten. “Three... two... one... okay, Spike, clean these dishes.” She looked towards Lero. “It’s time you and I had a chat about a certain chaotic somebody.”

“Alright,” said the human. “But Spike’s gonna want to stick around for this. It concerns him too.”

Celestia’s faithful student sighed, and levitated all the dirty dishes into the kitchen sink for her dragon to clean later. Unlike with Rarity, Lero was able to tell the whole undisguised truth to Twilight Sparkle and Spike: about showing Rainbow Dash her old stuff and being kicked out, getting plastered, Discord spiriting him away to a nonsense-world. He shared everything Discord told him about bewitchment, the Swapped Five...

“The ‘Swapped Five?’” Twilight had interrupted him.

Lero nodded. “Yeah. That’s my name for them, collectively. The Swapped Five.”

She’d snorted. “You make them sound like a gang of comic book supervillains.”

...and Discord’s Exemption List. Spike gave him a piece of paper, and he recreated the list.

“Well I, for one, am GLAD that Discord put me on this list!” Spike had said, with an over-dramatic crossing of his arms. “Could you imagine me being bewitched and believing that you and Rarity were meant for each other?!”

“Yeah,” said Lero. “You’d probably be chasing after Applejack.”

The dragon’s jaw went slack. “Oh my GOSH! You’re RIGHT! I WOULD be!”

Lero slapped him on his spiny back. “I can see it now!” the human proclaimed, sweeping his other arm out, as though over a vast horizon. “You writing love sonnets to AJ! ‘Each strand of your mane is a golden ray of sunshine! Each accented syllable you breathe is nourishment unto my soul! Your hat is a diadem of purest...”

Spike shoved his hands over his ears. “Stop, stop, stop! I refuse to listen to this! Rarity is the only one for me!”

“Are you sure?” Lero asked. “You could always do what I did and form a herd.”

“GAAAH!”

Twilight hadn’t been listening to any of the teasing. Her eyes were fixed upon Star Sparkle’s name on the exemption list. “But... why, out of all ponies, would Discord have exempted my mother? Why Star Sparkle, and not Shining Armor or Princess Cadence... or my REAL mom, Twilight Velvet?”

“From what I’ve seen of Discord... he’s just being a mean little gremlin. Making you the butt of his joke, even as he’s trying to help you.”

“Discord’s a Chaos God!” Spike added. “Wouldn’t be surprised if he’d secretly railroaded Star to our door! Like, maybe caused some kind of roadblock here, put a thunderstorm there... like she was a character in Discord’s badly-contrived novel!”

Sympathetically, Lero patted Twilight on the back. “I wouldn’t worry about Star Sparkle. She’s come, she’s had her laugh, and she’s left again. Who can she possibly even TELL the story to, with the bewitchment in place?”

“Right now? No one. But if things go well, and I do find a cure, she’ll tell EVERYONE! I’ll never live it down! Everyone will know that Rarity was living with us as a herdmate... that she and I...”

Twilight stopped at the looks on Spike and Lero’s faces. Clearing her throat, the unicorn looked back down at Star’s name, more pensively. “Still... was that the ONLY reason she was exempted? Just to have a laugh at my expense? Nothing else?”

“Who knows with Discord?” said Lero. He also briefly left and came back to show them his wallet, cell phone, car keys, the clothes he’d worn in the motel room, even the little shampoo and conditioner bottles with ‘Criddos Motel,’ on the side. He realized this had been a mistake when Twilight began asking too many questions about the objects, and took them away, so they wouldn’t get off-topic, promising to discuss them more later. Then he went on to revealing how Twilight was apparently the only one capable of ending the Swap.

“So according to Discord... there really IS a cure?” Twilight said, “And I’m the ONLY ONE who can find it?”

Lero nodded. “That’s his story, O Glorious Child of Destiny.”

“Well, on one hoof, it’s a relief knowing that a cure DOES EXIST. I was starting to worry this was just a wild goose chase, and that my friends’ condition was now untreatable. On the other... I’m the only one who can find it.”

A single strand of Twilight’s mane sprang out of place, all wiry and crooked, like a damaged bedspring. “So no pressure!”

“How ARE things coming along with the cure?” Spike asked.

“Still in the research phase.”

“How long until we pass the research phase?” asked Lero.

“No comment.”

“No comment?” he repeated.

“None.”

Lero even told them about his late-night conversation with Rarity last night; the one which had ended with her promising that she’d one day marry him, Twilight, and Lyra, and have kids with Lero.

“Rarity... Rarity... wow,” That was all Twilight could get out at first. “I hate doing all this, you know? It feels like we’re all conspiring behind her back.”

Lero poured himself a cup of coffee. “Hate to be the one to break it to you, Twi, but we ARE conspiring behind her back. For her own good.”

“I know,” she said. “I just wish all FOUR of us could put our heads together on this. She’s just so sweet and loving.”

Lero dropped two sugar cubes into his coffee. “Best case scenario: she’d have the three of us committed. For our own good... the best shrinks money can buy. And they’d all be on her side. Worst case scenario: she’d believe us, then go bonkers, and we’d need to commit HER. Or worser still: kill her in self-defense. Sorry, it’s gotta be this way. Want some coffee?”

“No, thank you.” Twilight turned resolutely to Spike. “Spike! Take a letter! I want you write to Lyra, telling her everything Lero just told us! We need to keep her in the loop!”

For several minutes, Spike just wrote. “How’s this?” he asked when he was done.

Twilight read it over. “Perfect! Go ahead and send it!”

Spike took in a breath. The door opened, and Rarity stepped inside. “Have any of you seen my....?!”

Spike exhaled. The former fashionista watched the letter go up into smoke which wafted away, out the door she was holding open.

“What was that you just sent?”

Guiltily, Twilight admitted; “A letter. To Lyra.”

“And you didn’t wait for me?”

“Um...” said Lero.

“Well...” said Spike.

“We... sorry, Rarity. That was thoughtless of us,” said Twilight.

Rarity’s cutie mark twinged; Lero saw the muscles underneath the mark give a small spasm. Rarity shot it a look, then scowled in impatience. “Ugh! We can argue about this later, right now I must go and...” But then she stopped herself. “Twilight, I haven’t written to Lyra at all, have I? Not since she left on that sabbatical of hers.”

Twilight licked her lips. “No, Rarity. I can’t say you have.”

Rarity’s mark began to spasm... but this time, the white unicorn completely ignored it. “...It can wait five minutes. Family comes first.”

Lero was impressed that she was able to restrain herself this much. Rarity sat by Twilight, whispering something in her ear that sounded like, ‘learned my lesson.’

“Spike! Take a letter!” she bade the dragon, and Spike raised his quill. “My Sweet Songbird...”

Spike paused. “...Who’s ‘Songbird?’”

“Lyra, of course!” The frown on Rarity’s face said: You should know my pet names for everyone, Spike!

“...Sweeeeeeet Soooooong-birrrrrrrrd,” the dragon wrote out. “Continue!”

My Sweet Songbird,

Please forgive me for my lateness, Lyra. For being just a little bit slower to write to you than the others, here at home. It’s not the same for any of us with you gone. All of us miss you. All of us are constantly guessing when it is we’ll be seeing you again in Ponyville. Myself included. I don’t ever want you believing that you’re just an afterthought to me.

How I wish that Spike had a twin brother, and that twin was with you on your journey! That way, we could hear back from you instantly! Then again, perhaps it is for the best that things are the way they are. Long-distance is no proper way for family to interact. I cannot wait until we can see each other face-to-face and trade stories. Lately, our lives have once again become more tumultuous than they have any natural right to be.

Lyra, if I told you that I worry about you, all on your own, thousands of miles away from us, would you think me a silly filly? I do worry, even knowing what a strong and capable mare you are. Sudden disaster can strike anyone at any time, even the strong. I had to relearn that lesson. Maybe the others already told you this in their own letter, but something horrible almost happened to Lero. And I would hate for anything like that to befall you, my sweet Lyra, in some lonely stretch of nowhere where we wouldn’t know how to reach you. I’d miss too much about you.

I’d miss the music of your clàrsach. Your unique way of thinking and your tranquil serenity. I’d miss your soft smile and voice. I’d miss all your little wisdoms, all the insights you share throughout each day. And I’d miss your touch. This is more than a mere letter, Lyra. This is a long-distance kiss from me to you, my sweet songbird.

I’m sending just a little bit of my love, and am eager to deliver the rest to you in person.

Until We Meet Again,

Rarity

“How does it look?” Rarity asked the others, once it was done.

“It’s... it’s REALLY nice,” Twilight spoke in awe.

“Really, it IS touching, Rarity,” Lero concurred.

“Oh good, glad it’s passable. I was just rattling off thoughts from the top of my head. Wish I’d had time to make the wording more elegant. But now THAT’S over, has anypony seen the mail?!”

Twilight had Spike pass her a stack of envelopes. Rarity runs through them, flipping rapidly through them like cards in a deck. “Is this everything?!”

“Yes, that’s all the mail.”

Rarity rans upstairs. From downstairs, they heard a commotion as she rummaged about through the stuff, and her shouting; “It’s not there! None of it’s there!” She rushed back downstairs, looking frantic. “Have any of you touched my Weatherpony stuff?”

Lero carefully took a long sip of coffee, hiding as much of his face behind the mug as he could, while Twilight said, “No, why?”

“Because it’s all gone! My ID, my paperwork, everything that proved that I work with the Weatherponies! Aaaugh! And she galloped out the door. From inside, they watched her summon a cloud down from the sky, cast the cloud-walking spell on her body, and lift herself into the heavens.

“Hold on. Not yet, Spike,” Lero said. The dragon had been about to send Rarity’s letter to Lyra on its way. “One more thing I think we should add.” He took Spike’s quill and ink and wrote:

P.S. From the rest of the Herd: Lyra, if any skepticism should still remain in your mind about what Rarity has now become, we hope this will remove all doubt.

He wrote these words right next to the letter’s greeting: My Sweet Songbird.

“Now send it.” Spike did. “To think... I’m a sweet prince, Twilight’s a sweet enchantress and now Lyra’s a sweet songbird.”

“So what am I?” asked the dragon.

“Spikey-Wikey,” said Lero.

“Where are you going?” Twilight asked, as the human stood up.

“Bathroom. Then I’m headed to my job at the spa.”

* * *

Lero rose from the bathroom’s bidet, pulled up his pants back up, and strode over to the bathroom sink. As he grabbed the soap bar and ran it across the front and back of his hands, the human mused upon how much this whole Swap business would affect his career, working for Lotus and Aloe.

Perhaps, if he were lucky, it would barely affect it at all. And he could just relax, get lost in his work, and be able to pretend, for just a few hours, that nothing in his life had changed at all. Once his hands were cleaned, he scooped soapy water into his hands, and splashed it into his face...

...Something brushed his thumb when he brought it towards his ear. Something light and ticklish.

Feathery.

Lero lowered his hands and stared into the mirror. Yes. There it was. There it had been, all along. The cyan feather hanging from the braid by his ear. So much a part of him at this point, a thing he maintained without a second's thought... that rediscovering it now had been like finding a treasure hidden in plain sight.

Ironically, the first thing he heard in his head when he gazed at it was Rarity’s voice:

“Rainbow Dash! Is that feather yours? Oh! How unbearably romantic! I didn’t think you had it in you!”

Lero undid his braid, holding the feather in his palm. He took its stem between his fingers, and spun it slowly, examining its every angle.

“Actually… y-you can keep it, if you want. It’s kinda… giving you a piece of me.”

Lero wondered to himself why it was that Rarity had never noticed the feather there. Usually, she was quite observant. Then he recalled the bewitchment, and reasoned that the unicorn must be perceiving it as a... as a horn shaving of hers, or something.

“Why you? Oh, I dunno, maybe ‘cause your personality clicked with mine like no one else’s ever has? Maybe because I’ve never had a closer friend in my whole life? Maybe even because we had so much fun together that I wanted to keep you around some more? And yeah, I’m not supposed to say it, but you’ve got pretty eyes and nice flanks, even with you, ya know, not being a pony.”

Voices, memories started coming to Lero, unbidden, unstoppable.

“Oh, I am so tempted to not even share you.”

“Share me? What do you mean by that?”

“Y-you know... W- wi- with other mares.”

The feather twirled in the mirror, rolled between his finger, the intensity of the memories such that he swore he could see the wing it came from...

“Okay. You really want me to decide if you stick with just one mare or not?”

Moments with her danced before his eyes.

“Round two? You mean we can keep going?Really?”

The touch of her wings, the feel of her hair, even her scent, came back to him.

“I don’t know if I’ve told you, but I love you. I can’t even tell you how much.”

“I’d figured that out.”

“Thought so. Still needed to say it, though.”

“I love you, too, Rainbow. I don’t know why I didn’t realize it sooner.”

The moments of joy, love, happiness...

“All I can think of is going over there, getting you naked, and making love to you over and over and over.”

The intimacy that meant more than just pleasure, more than just fun, but a deep connection to the girl he loved, and the happiness her joy gave her...

“What you and I’ve got, it’s not gonna go away just ‘cause we’re sharing with Twilight. It's always gonna be there, y'know?”

And more, the Generosity and Loyalty she showed in sharing him, a concept alien to him, that she guided him through, showing him the love he could have for others without loving her less, and making his life the richer for it...

“I love you, big guy. Even if you manage to make me mad, I won't stay that way.”

Someone who for the first time in his life, he knew that they'd work as hard as he would to make things work, to always be by his side, because it matters just as much to her as to him.

“I'd love to fly with you. I've had dreams about flying as long as I could remember.”

“Doofus, why didn't you freaking tell me? I love flying almost as much as I love you, and I'd be happy to carry you all the way across Equestria if you wanted me to!”

Someone who wasn't afraid to share any part of herself with him, because she was sure he'd love her no matter what, and would do the same for him.

“The spell’s perfectly safe. See?”

“And even if it weren’t, I'd catch you.”

Someone who'd look out for him, not just because he was her stallion, but because he was the love of her life.

“I... I don't deserve you, Lero.”

“You deserve better than me, Rainbow. But you've got me, for as long as you want me.”

“What if I want you forever and ever?”

“Then you'll have me at least that long.”

Someone who wanted to be with him forever, Someone who wanted to be his wife, someone who wanted to start a family with him.

“And if you've got a problem with him, then you've got one with me,”

Someone who would jump to his defense without a thought.

“I could go with you. If you wanted me to. Unless you wanted me to stay behind.”

Someone who would sacrifice everything to be with him.

“I love you. I want to spend my life with you, Rainbow Dash. I can’t imagine not being with you. Can’t imagine my world without you in it.”

“You didn’t realize?”

“Realize what?”

“Goofus. I’ve felt that way for a long time. I thought you realized what it meant when I gave you this.”

And Dash had touched the cyan feather braided into his hair.

“I wasn’t sure you’d want to stay with me… but I wanted to stay with you. So I gave you this, so even if you left, a piece of me would stay with you.”

Lero shut his eyes. There were too many tears right now.

"You and I… we’re gonna be there for each other? Always?”

Someone who gave him the one thing that he really needed in this stange, alien world: A place to belong. A family. A home.

He couldn't close his eyes to her suffering. Even if it was just a part of her.

He knew what he had to do next.

* * *

"...But... But vhy, Meester Lerro?"

Oh, God dammit. Why was none of this ever easy? After making his decision, He'd headed right over to his place of work, the Ponville Day Spa. Lero really didn't want to do this, but it was necessary. Having no idea how else to go about it, he'd found his bosses, Lotus Blossom and Aloe, and announced his intention to quit.

Man, he never expected his bosses to look so sad. Aloe and Lotus Blossom were some of the nicest ponies he'd ever had the pleasure of working for. On top of that, they were cute and had adorable accents, which just made his guilt worse.

"Vhen are you leaving?"

"Effective immediately."

“Immediately?! Not even so much as a twoo-veek notice?” Their eyes were full of confusion and worry, dangerously close to being outright hurt.

"Is et your pay? Vee thought yoo vere happy vith-"

He held up a hand. "No, I'm sorry, I said this wrong. Let me make it clear: I'm not quitting because of anything you two did."

They looked at each other with bafflement. "Then vhat?" Lotus ventured.

Lero sighed. "Something very important suddenly came up in my life, and I don't have time to handle everything anymore. Something had to give and... I'm sorry, as much as I love and enjoy working for you two, you're the thing I can afford to give up the most."

"But ve have so mahny clients lined op!" Aloe protested. "Et is leeving us en such a bind!"

"I know! And if I could be any other way, I would, but I can't!"

"But if ve can't deliver our promeeses, et vill be bad for our reputati...!" Aloe found herself silenced by Lotus Blossom's hoof, who then walked up to Lero, putting a hoof on his leg.

"I understand Meester Lero. Yoo've been gut to us, helped us more than yoo know. Go, do vhat yoo need, ve vill be fine."

Smiling, he took her hoof in his hand, squeezing gratefully. "Thank you. I'm glad you understand. I don't think it'll be forever, so when I make it back, I'll make it up to you, alright?"

"Just come back to us soon, okay?" She said with a regretful smile.

"I'll do my best." He gave her a hug, which she returned. "Give everyone my best, okay?"

"Ve will." With that, he let her go, gave his farewells, and headed out.

When he was out of sight, he managed to overhear them speaking to each other.

"How can yoo let heem leave? He was our best moneymaker!"

"Seester, fate sent heem to us from nowhere, now it take him away. How can ve complain?"

Dammit. This whole mess was wrecking things for everyone, even those only tangentially involved. But he needed to do what needed to be done...

* * *

Pastoral cottages had no right to be this intimidating. Not when it was broad, sunny daylight. Not without a few freshly-severed heads jammed upon pikes in the middle of the front yard.

Even so, it was not Lero’s imagination when he looked around to the birdhouses and the chicken coop, and saw that every robin, bluejay, chicken and jackdaw peered back at him with foreboding glowers. And he could hear them all the rest of them from within; the birds, the beasts... and Rainbow Dash, who was yelling out as one of them sunk its fangs upon some tender part of her body. How ironic... between all the vicious critters it was the damsel that distressed him most. But there was no turning back. Absolutely none. It was more than just a matter of burned bridges... of rejecting Discord’s bewitchment, then quitting his job. It was about living up to his convictions.

Lero knew if he were to chicken out and go home, all Dash’s screams and sobs which he was hearing would echo endlessly in his mind, throughout the day, throughout the night, and throughout the next day after, until his feet brought him right back to this door again. All her noises of misery were unendurable. Even trepidation could only root him to the spot for so long, before he hammered his fist upon the door, until the pegasus cried,

“Alright! Alright! Alright, already!” And she opened the door to see who had come. “Uh, hey, Lero,” she greeted apprehensively.

“Hi, Rainbow Dash.”

“Oh, hey, your voice came back, huh?”

Lero nodded. “Yeah, Twilight was able to cast a spell to fix it.”

No terror from her. No running away. Lero could see Discord had been as good as his word: Rainbow Dash didn’t remember a thing about his last visit, it really might as well have never happened for her. Such a relief.

But he could also see so much else about her that was the farthest thing from relieving. Missing patches of fur on her coat. Spots along her mane and tail where her pretty rainbow hair been torn out or bitten off. Bandages that hadn’t been changed in days. And her eyes... to say that the circles around her eyes had darkened would be a gross understatement.

Rainbow Dash’s eyes were blistered orbs of bloodshot red, sunken in pits of inky blackness.

“Good. That’s good.” She looked past him, surprised to see nopony else was with him. "So... what're you doing back here again?”

She flinched in dread at a noise from inside the cottage: the unmistakable growling and ripping noises of two large dogs having a tug-of-war with a tablecloth.

“Uh... I’m sorry, Lero, I...!”

She tried shutting the door, but Lero had already wedged his foot inside.

“Rainbow Dash, I’m sorry, but it’s really important that I talk to you. I wouldn’t have come over here if it wasn’t.”

Past Rainbow Dash’s head, Lero could actually see one small flock of cardinals engaged in a bitter battle with a small flock of canaries, along the ceiling.

“This isn’t the best time for me to be having guests over the house...!”

“Then, if you don’t mind, would you kindly step outside here with me? It really IS that important, and frankly, it’s much better that we’re not distracted by your animals.”

The pegasus looked ready to duck back into her house, anyway, but he gave her his most pleading expression. “O-okay," she said, stepping out and closing the door. "What was it you...?"

RUMBLE-RUMBLE-RUMBLE! It sounded like very large, boxy objects were being thrown down the stairs.

“I... I’m sorry, Lero! I can’t! I just can’t! I gotta...!”

But before she could charge back inside, Lero placed himself between her and the door. “Please, Rainbow, let me ask one question... one SINGLE question, and if I like the answer, I promise I’ll leave you alone.”

She frowned hard at him. “Oh, ‘if‘ you like the answer? Who died and made you...!”

He looked at her hard in her red, bleary eyes. “How many hours of sleep do you plan on having over the next two weeks?”

She took a step back. “What?” That... really wasn't a question she was expecting.

“I don’t know the exact number for ponies, but humans are supposed to get seven to nine hours’ sleep a day, or so the experts say. How much sleep are you going to let yourself have, from now on? How many hours will those monsters in that cottage allow you to have?”

“I... They...” She was so lost for words that this time, she didn’t even notice a live raccoon being hurled straight out a side window of hers. The raccoon got back up, shaking its paw like a fist and barked at the window he’d been thrown from before climbing back in to rejoin the pandemonium.

“Starving yourself of sleep will be the end of you just as certainly as starving yourself of food would be. You won’t make good decisions. You won’t be rational! Every setback, every hurt you suffer, is going to feel ten times worse because you’re so tired and stressed out. And have you been feeling paranoid, any? Suffering hallucinations? If you haven’t already, I’m impressed, but it’s due in your very near future.”

“What do you even care?!” she snapped.

Lero flinched slightly at that. Paranoia, check.

She seemed to notice his reaction, and in a more respectful tone, she continued, “Uh, no offense, Lero, but you and I... we’re not exactly what you’d call ‘close buddies.‘ When it comes right down to it, to me you’re just Rarity and Twilight’s coltfriend who I barely ever talk to. Don’t get me wrong, you’re a nice guy, but I have a closer personal relationship to Applejack’s cat."

Lero winced. This was an exaggeration... But not much of one. When he'd first come to Equestria, Fluttershy was actually one of the first ponies to take the time to befriend him, and for a while he'd spent a lot of time out in this cottage, chatting with her about what little he knew about earth wildlife, and much to his surprise, subjects such as biology and evolution, which he'd not initially thought she'd be aware of. However, as his focus had been on history, he eventually ran out of things to to talk about with her and they hadn't much other interest in common. As about that time, Rainbow had started aggressively befriending him, he'd just let his friendship with Fluttershy just.... lapse, making not much of an effort to maintain it. As she'd done much the same, he'd figured that the circumstances suited her as well... But now, he was deeply regreting his choice.

“Well, you aren’t ‘nobody’ to me, Rainbow!”

The intensity of his voice took Rainbow aback. “I-I’m not? Then what am I to you?”

Lero needed to get himself back under control. He thought of Lyra and a particular saying she’d share for moment like this:

“All the cosmos surrender to the mind that is still.”

He stilled his mind. He soothed his heart. He opened his eyes... and FORCED them to not see a cyan coat, but a yellow one. To not see many colors on her mane, but only one: pink. To focus on the three butterflies.

And Lero tailored his speech accordingly.

“To me, Rainbow, you’re one of Twilight’s truest friends. You’ve always been there for her. Being with you, learning from you, has helped shape her into the wonderful mare I love. I’m pretty sure you saved her life quite a few times as well. The same goes for Rarity. On top of that, you did take the time to be nice to me when I first got here, which almost no one else did. Even if it didn't result in a close friendship, it meant a lot to me. A girl like you is a treasure.”

His praise surprised the frown off Dash’s face. She looked genuinely touched.

“But consider this angle as well, Dash: you are one of the Elements of Harmony! You’re the Element of... crud, I’m sorry, which Element are you again?”

“Kindness.” Behind Dash, several sooty birds shot out from the cottage’s chimney without any explanation.

“...Yes. Kindness,” Lero agreed. “Anyway, what’ll happen when the next Queen Chrysalis or the next King Sombra swoops in to endanger us all? You know it could happen at any time! You owe it to Equestria to be at the top of your game! You owe it to your friends, too, they’ll be DEPENDING on you! Or are you just going to race into battle as a burnt-out wreck?”

Chagrined, Dash dug a shallow circle in the dirt with her hoof. “Okay, Lero, I admit, you make some good points. I’ll try to rein it all in, if I can. But dude, c’mon, it’s not like I’m the only girl with problems! I mean, why come to me? Why not my other friends? Their lives are all pretty crummy too right now!”

The human put his hand on her shoulder. “Because out of all of them, you’re the one who most desperately needs help.”

She actually managed a wry chuckle. “Oh, come on,” she said, with a droll tilt of her head. “Am I really as bad-off as THAT?”

Lero regarded Rainbow Dash. So thin. So filthy, and unwashed with such (he had to be honest) rank breath. So not like herself OR Fluttershy. Smiling as though his hyperbole was indeed amusing, but it was time to acknowledge the joke for what it was.

“The way I see it? Yes, Dash. At least Applejack can go to bed at night when she’s done making dresses for the day. She has a sister and parents who love her, and her clothing won’t attack her at night. Pinkie Pie too; when she’s done farming, she can go home to a terrific family. The Cakes love Fluttershy, warts and all, it says a lot that they haven’t fired her yet. Even Rarity... for all that our neighbors are growing to dislike her... Twilight and Spike and I are still there for her with open arms when she comes home.”

Lero swallowed. He was trying very hard not to come across as harsh, mean or condescending in any way... to just tell things as they were. His words were still cutting her to the quick, though. Yet, she had to be woken up to the truth. One way or another.

“But you, Rainbow? You’ve shut yourself in this little house, alone with all these vicious, unmanageable animals who hate your guts. All around the clock, from dusk to dawn and back again... they bully you and hurt you. Endlessly and without remorse. I’ll bet there are times you completely forget there’s a world outside this cottage! And the worse part is... your friends aren’t even free to help you! Twilight’s working on this super-important spell from Princess Celestia, and the other four... well, as you say, their lives are all pretty crummy right now. You are the most alone of all.”

“You big dumb meanie!”

It had never been easier for Lero to mentally superimpose Fluttershy’s face over Rainbow Dash’s than this very moment. He felt like he were giving the most vicious verbal beatdown imaginable to Shirley Temple herself. The tears were what really did it for him.

“How dare you!” she sobbed. “How dare you make fun of my pain!”

But his truly grief-stricken look stopped her breath.

“Make fun of it? Dash, I’m heartbroken by it! You’re a truly wonderful girl! You deserved to be treated right! It was agony watching you in so much pain yesterday! You can't imagine how it hurt that I couldn't talk! It outright haunted me, which is why I came back! It’s a crime how you’re undermined at every turn, how outnumbered you are! At the rate you’re going, if you don’t die of sleep deprivation, then these animals will just eat you alive one day!”

Clasping his hands beseechingly, he broke into tears himself: “Please, I feel so awful for you! Let me help you, please! Someone should! Otherwise, I won’t be getting any sleep just thinking about you! You’d be just as cruel as your animals are!”

Through the tears still falling down her face, Rainbow Dash gawked at the human; this strange otherworldly colt-friend of Rarity’s and Twilight’s. To put it in terms of a biological family, Bellerophon Michaelides had always been the sixth cousin five times removed to Rainbow Dash. The cousin that always showed up to graduation parties, weddings, and funerals, and just more or less filled one of the empty chairs. He’d always been kindly enough to her, and for a while they'd sort of been friends, but Dash knew they had too little in common to make a lasting friendship. And now from out of nowhere... he was absolutely, truly heartbroken for HER sake! Begging her to let him help her! Why...?

From inside Rainbow Dash’s home, there came noises she could not ignore: the sound of every shelf and cabinet within her cottage hitting the floor all at once. With a pained cry, she raced back inside, leaving the door wide open. Lero held back just long enough to see whether or not she’d leave the door open for him or shut it behind her.

She left it open. He headed in.

* * *

Filthy. Absolutely trashed. It had gotten impossibly worse since the time he’d visited yesterday; a combination of pigsty and war zone. Anything which could’ve conceivably been gnawed on or scratched up... had been; practically every object and especially the furniture. Soft things such as the cushions and pillows on the couch had been burrowed into; their cottony stuffing either eaten and vomited back up, or spread out all over. The drapes over the broken windows were the shredded tatters of haunted houses.

Muddy paw prints of every sort were tracked all over the floor. Wooden shavings and shreds of old newspaper — the type used for bedding in rabbit and hamster cages — were spread out everyplace. Lero took a step forward and was startled by a sharp, high squeak! He lifted his foot — it wasn’t an animal, just a headless squeaky dog toy. To his right, there was a toppled bookshelf; Lero saw birdwatching guides, pet care manuals, a pack of cassette tapes with a minotaur’s head on the cover, zoological textbooks, and bedtime stories with animal heroes.

The stench of mouse droppings, bird droppings and all sorts of other droppings overwhelmed the smell of stain-and-odor-remover fluid, (which must’ve been poured on by the gallon.) He felt grateful for the shoes on his feet... poor Dash had to step in this bare-hoofed.

Strangely, there wasn’t an actual animal to be seen. At least, not here, on the ground floor.

“Noooooo...” he heard a miserable pegasus moan. “Oh noooooo....”

Rainbow Dash stood between two staircases. The one to her right led to the cottage’s upper floor, towards the bedroom. The one at her left led down to a basement cellar. Animal chitters and noises of destruction trailed up and down from both sets of stairs.

The moment Dash started upstairs, something huge would crash from down in the cellar. The moment Dash started towards the cellar, there’d be a tremendous bang from upstairs. Twisting left and right, and going nowhere, Dash seemed to want nothing more than to split herself in two like an amoeba. She was just a few seconds away from breaking down into hysterical tears.

Time to take charge.

“Dash!” She looked towards him, almost stunned that he’d followed her in. “You go left and I’ll go right!”

He was halfway up the stairs before she called out to him. “Wait, Lero! If you’re really serious about helping me, you’ll need to take one of these!”

He came back down, and found Dash by the kitchen. Next to the overturned refrigerator there was a large pile of empty animal cages, haphazardly thrown into a pile. Very likely by the animals, themselves. Birdcages, dog cages, rabbit cages, ferret cages, hamster cages, exotic-looking cages for exotic animals, even a few cages the size of small cabinets.

Dash picked up one of the birdcages in her mouth. “Whatever you do, if you see Angel Bunny, DON’T go after him unless EVERY other animal has been caught again! Even if he makes you think you can catch him!”

“Understood!”

Lero perused the selection at his feet and decided he’d take the large cabinet-sized cage. One large cage to shove a lot of smaller animals into... that’d be a good start. Just to be sure, he put a few more smaller cages inside as backup.

Dash took a gulp. “Hey, Lero...you’re very thoughtful for doing this,” Her tone was deeply respectful as she spoke through the bars in her teeth. “I just want you to know that when you run away screaming from this house, I won’t hold it against you.”

“Only if you run away first, Rainbow.”

Laughing hollowly at that, Dash cantered down the cellar.

* * *

Lero Michealides’ parents had been dog owners, ever since they’d bought him his first two puppies for his tenth birthday. (Iapetus and Eurynome, both Samoyeds. God rest their fluffy, face-licking souls.) So Lero DID know a few things about dog care from his days on Earth. But as for all the rest of the animal kingdom? He felt like a pianist having all the instruments in a one-man band attached to his body. If ever there was a case of the blind leading the blind, this was it. But that wasn’t even the point.

The point was to not let Rainbow Dash suffer alone anymore.

The cottage’s upper floor consisted of a bathroom, the main bedroom, a guest bedroom, and a broom closet. Animals crawled all over everything; small birds perched and fluttered along the higher reaches of the upstairs hallway. It was more cacophonous than a petting zoo.

Lero set down his large cage, which was a bit bulky but weighed next to nothing. Where to start...?

A slow tortoise crept by the guest bedroom’s open doorway; Lero grabbed it and set it gently on the floor of his cage. So far, so good.

“Hey, Lero, you’re very thoughtful for doing this.”

Lero looked up. Jabbers the Parrot was perched on a high ledge, looking down on him. He’d need to ask Dash for a net or something. He refocused on a very old-looking Pomeranian, fast asleep on the floor. It didn’t even wake up as he put it in the cage, beside the tortoise.

“Hey, Lero, you’re very thoughtful for doing this,” parroted the parrot.

Lero nodded and set his sights ahead. That kitty-cat up ahead looked cuddly enough to grab...

Jabbers the Parrot drew in a deep breath. “HEEEEEEEY, LEEERO!” he screeched. “HEEEEEEEY, LEEEERO!”

At first, Lero worried that the bird was hurt or something. But the human found out the truth soon enough. This wasn’t a cry for help. This was a call to arms.

He felt like one of the robbers in that old movie Home Alone, walking into an obvious trap. He felt like he was Elmer Fudd, foolishly going after Bugs Bunny, all his bunny children, plus the entire non-human cast of the Looney Tunes cartoons, convinced that he could get the better of them all. The cottage critters were all THAT aggressive.

A dozen small birds flew at his head all at once; pecking at his scalp, and tangling their little bird-claws in his hair. The more Lero hollered, the harder they dug and pecked at his hair, as though it were full of earthworms and free birdseed. In a sudden moment of brillance, he snagged one of the smaller cages, and shook his head violently, shaking them off, popping the cage off his head and snapping it shut. "Ha! Not so smart now, huh?" At which point he was promptly dive bombed by a mockingbird.

While still vicious, the remainings birds took a more cautious approach, flapping along the ceiling top, then swooping down suddenly, one by one. He managed to catch and cage just one bird bare-handed: Jabbers, himself, seizing him by his little feathery neck.

“Wait, Lero!” the parrot called, as Lero shut the cage on him. “If you’re really serious about helping me, you’ll want to take one of these!”

He felt a beak bite down on the back of his neck, and wheeled around in a fury, swatting away a cackling raven. Ugh! This was no good, being all bareheaded like this! He needed supplies! So Lero went to the storage closest... a competent animal caretaker like Fluttershy would’ve SURELY stocked SOMETHING useful in there!

Bats. Seven of them. Large, ugly fanged little mice with wicked leather wings, and boy, were THEY not happy to have daylight shone in their eyes! He suddenly had the entirely unique experience of bats plastered to his face, and he didn't much care for it. The feel of their wings on his skin was every bit as creepy as Halloween made it out to be. Lero promised himself he’d wash his face in fresh-cut garlic, while yanking the bitey things off and tossing them in the cage!

...Was it alright to shove birds, bats, and dogs in the same one cage? Screw it, he'd worry about it later; Gotta catch ‘em all, first! Peeking into the bathroom, he spotted a promising-looking plunger... something that might be useful on the animals! He spotted Gummy the toothless baby alligator swimming inside the toilet bowl when he went to grab it. (Thankfully, there was nothing else floating inside the bowl, but still... ewww...) He poked the gator with the plunger, and it obligingly snapped down on it, allowing Lero to heft it over into the cage.

Then a long, silver-colored water snake splashed up from the bathtub across from the toilet, lifting itself off its belly the way snake charmers were somehow always able to get them to do. It tasted the air with its forked tongue, eyes fixed upon Lero’s. Reacting in pure panic, Lero swung the rubbery end of his plunger straight at its head; it hit the wall, and splashed back into the tub water. He stepped back out into the hallway.

“Eee-yaaakk!! Ennnngh, enngh... Hnurk, nyurk, nyurk!”

It came up the stairs on long, reedy legs, its webbed feet slapping each step wetly. Pink and lanky with a curved black beak. A flamingo. The noises issuing from its throat were the polar opposite of melodious birdsong: honks and warbles and strangled-sounding hacking quacks.

A flamingo. What was he supposed to do with a flamingo? Were they vicious?

Well, this flamingo was. It stalked towards the human angrily. As though Lero were Alice in Wonderland...and Alice had been using its head as a croquet mallet one too many times for the flamingo to forgive.

“Kkkk-krAAAA!” went the flamingo, charging at him.

Lero dashed for the storage closest, and shut himself in.

The flamingo stopped, examining the shut door in satisfaction as he heard the sound of cloth tearing from within.

“How many hours of sleep do you plan on having over the next two weeks?” Jabbers asked the flamingo, in a delighted, congratulatory tone.

The flamingo turned his back on the closet, leading out a proud, “Nyyyyrrrack! Enh-enh-eh!” and this was when the closet door sprang back open, the human grabbed the flamingo around the neck and midsection, spun it around and flung it into the storage closet before it knew what was happening.

The human HAD found useful items inside the closet. For starters: the caged catcher’s mask and catcher’s chest protector. (Fluttershy had played baseball?) Neither were fit for his bipedal figure... but he forced the makeshift armor to stay on by tearing strips off his shirt off and tying them onto the baseball gears as head straps and body straps.

He readied his plunger like a batter’s club. “So who’s next?”

“AAAAAAHH!” This scream wasn’t from any animal... that was Rainbow Dash!

“You big dumb meanie!” shrieked Jabbers, as he raced down the stairs. “How dare you make fun of my pain!”

“MWWWRRRAOOOO!!!” screeched the curled-up cat which Lero tripped upon, on the sixth stair down. He took a tumble, landing on his knees, and pulled himself back up.

This was all worse than one of those video games where if your character bumped into a single animal, every other critter in the forest converged on you as if you'd just uttered a dire insult about their mother.

He hurried down into the cellar. It appeared that this was the place that Fluttershy had stowed all her kibble, extra pet toys, and everything else a girl like her would need to care for a menagerie this big. There was a lot.

At the bottom of the stairs, he found Rainbow Dash, lying on her side, moaning in pain. An entire warren of rabbits was using her body as their trampoline: brown bunnies, gray bunnies, spotted bunnies, but the one with the cruelest and nastiest sneer of all was Angel Bunny. Angel was bouncing up and down atop her head as though it would split open like a rotten melon if he kept at it long enough.

Angel Bunny: the Napoleon of this Orwellian Animal Farm.

Lero charged in, and with a swipe of his arm, smacked the lagomorphs away from her.

“Rainbow!” he called, lifting her up. “Are you right?”

“You’re... still here?” she croaked.

Lero felt something unpleasantly furry try to scamper up the inside of his pant leg. He shook the creature out; it was a old, ugly sickly-looking rat. It darted forward, meaning to clamp down on him or Rainbow with it foul, yellowed teeth. Lero smashed his foot down, crushing it underfoot. For a second, the other animals were intimidated, cowerin and scampering away. However, the brief moment of triumph was washed away as Dash’s butterfly cutie mark twitched very visibly, and she screamed out in deep psychological dismay:

“MY ANIMALS! NO! DON’T KILL ANY OF THEM! I’M THEIR CARETAKER! I NEED TO KEEP MY ANIMALS ALIVE! I NEED TO KEEP ALL MY ANIMALS ALIVE!”

“I’m sorry, I’m sorry, I’m sorry,” he said, until she managed to calm down. With her riding piggyback upon him, he began proceeding back up the cellar stairway and... and yes, that WAS a capuchin monkey at the top of the stairs, and yes, that WAS a bottle of Slippy-Shine™ brand floor polish that capuchin was dumping down the stairs, (Slippy-Shine!™ Removing dinginess and traction from your floors for 30+ years!) Twilight favored the brand, herself!

"Oh, you naughty monkey...!" Lero practically snarled, as it slapped its butt at him. With tremendous care and focus, he took a step up. Angel Bunny hopped onto a stack of boxes, and from there, onto the stairway bannister.

Lero took another tentative step, his shoe squelching on the floor polish. Angel Bunny leapt from the bannister onto the human’s head... now using him as his trampoline.

BOUNCE! Had to focus. BOUNCE! Angel wouldn’t get the satisfaction of making him fall. BOUNCE! Okay, this little punk had asked for it.

Mid-bounce, while gravity had just started to pull the hopping Angel back down towards Lero’s head, the human tilted his face upwards and opened his jaws. Angel’s furry little hind leg fell inside Lero’s mouth. He sank his teeth into it like a dog.

“YEEEEEKK!!!”

The white rabbit kicked at Lero’s nose with his free leg until he let go, and Angel took a fall, tumbling down the stairs.

“What a maroon.” he quipped. Bit by bit, Lero managed to climb the stairs without once slipping. He was too focused on climbing stairs to see Angel rise back up, seething in anger and dripping with floor polish. But the time Lero was on the last step, he heard a loud bell being rung down below.

“There was a bell down there?” he asked. Rainbow Dash only response was a slight groan.

“WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! WOOF!”

Dogs. Big dogs. And they were bounding straight for him! But Lero was ready: he pulled out one of the other things he’d grabbed from the upstairs closet.

“See the ball, boys?” He bounced it enticingly, and gave a chirpy whistle. “See the ball? Ya want it? Huh? Huh?”

The anger left all the dogs’ faces, and their tails wagged eagerly.

“Go get it!”

And he made a toss down towards the cellar. All the dogs raced downstairs, each letting out fearful yipes as they slipped on the floor polish. Lero gave a slight smirk at Angel's expression as a pack of large dogs carreened out of control towards him. Lero shut the cellar door on them: producing the tennis ball in his hand. He hadn’t actually thrown it.

“Dash, what do we do now?! You’ve lived with them longer! What do we do?!”

But Dash was out cold. Still breathing, but she’d reached her limit. She needed sleep. And Lero could see that.

“Dash, I’m going to take you to my place," he spoke a little louder. You’ll be able to rest there for as long as you need... Twilight and Rarity have healing spells! Is that okay?”

Dash slept on.

“Silence gives consent,” said Lero, heading outside with the mare still dozing on his back.

* * *

That... had gone better than Lero expected. Lero had successfully made his point to Rainbow Dash, won her trust, and now... well, he was taking her home, thank god. Sure, she might be upset about it later, but he was sure that after a good night's sleep, a filling meal, her wounds treated, and her friends around her, she'd forgive him.

Twitch.

Oh, no.

TWITCH.

Oh, no, no, no, no.

He could feel it, he could feel her cutie mark start to twitch and spasm the farther away he got from her cottage.

"C'mon, stay with me, don't do this, don't wake up, please, please, please..."

The moment he stepped past the last birdhouses that marked the edge of Fluttershy's home, Rainbow Dash snapped awake.

"Nooooo!" She said blearily. "My animallllssss!" she weakly started to struggle in Lero's grip. "I can't leave my animals...."

Lero managed to supress the urge to scream a loud expletive, but only just.

"Fine, Dash..." He circled around, and the moment he was back within the property line, the spasms receeded, and Dash was out like a light once more.

"...Oh, you've got to be kidding me. Why didn't Starswirl name this spell 'Starswirl's Inescapable Torment!?'" groused Lero, pausing at the door, planning for a moment. making up his mind, he strode inside like he owned the place, shutting the door behind him, and carefully placing Rainbow on the couch, before turning around addressing the assembled animals now staring at him with confusion.

"Alright, listen up you filthy animals, I'm in charge now, and unless you want to end up like the rat in the cellar, you'll do what I say." Lero said, in the most intimidating bluster he could manage, hoping that this would work.

His only response was the unsheathing of claws, exposing of teeth, and angry growls and hisses.

"Shit."

Faster than he could blink, the animals dogpiled him, not even giving him enough time to appreciate the irony that it contained no dogs, as they were all locked in the basement.

"Aaaggggh, getemoffgetemoffgetemoff!" Lero thrashed around blindly, Finally stumbling into the pile of cages in the kitchen with a loud crash. The animals detached themselves as he fell in, watching to see if he'd emerge, or just cower, freeing them to attack the sleeping pony. After a moment, they turn to look at the helpless Dash...

With a sudden explosion of action, cages suddenly flew out of the pile, some snapping shut about startled animals, others just knocking them for a loop. Lero stood up out of the pile, glaring at the animals. "No one touches her." He said with a determination he didn't know he possessed. With a flurry of action, he charged at the animals, slamming cages down atop them, ignoring their attempts to hinder, ignoring the bites and scratches.

With resounding thuds, he starts plopping the occupied cages into a barricade, a literal wall of cages around the couch. He heard scrambling and cries from other areas of the house, apparently other animals had heard the commotion, and were coming to help. Lero grabbed a broom from the kitchen dumped out a metal dog bowl, and slapped it on his head, before jumping behind the barricade, turning around, standing protectively in front of the sleeping Dash, brandishing the broom.

"Alright, you furry bastards, let's do this."

* * *

Lero honestly lost track of time, as he fended off waves of assaults, foiled infiltrations, and narrowly-avoided ambushes. When an unexpected noise caught him off guard, he swung his broom around... and stopped short when he realized he was looking at a very startled Twilight Sparkle over the rim of the barricade.

"...Oh, thank God, it's you." He said, relieved. The few handful of still-active critters were imprisoned in her telekinetic bubbles. However, the vast majority of the animals were lying about, exhausted by the protracted battle.

"Lero! What're you DOING here!? It's been hours, and I've been looking everywhere for you and..." Twilight paused her tirade, looking around the room. "...What happened to this place? And what are you wearing?"

"Armor." He slid the helmet off his head, and started undoing the rest of his makeshift defensive gear, revealing the torn and blood-spotted clothes underneath.

"Lero! You're hurt!" Twilight said with concern, which he waved off.

"Don't worry. Just pecks and scratches." Behind him, there was a loud yawn. They turned to see Rainbow awaken. In spite of everything else wrong at this cottage; he smiled for she at least looked rested.

"Hey, Dash, how you feeling?" Lero asked. Dash looked up in surprise, shocked anew to still see him here.

"Uhm... I'm alright, Lero. I feel a lot better."

Twilight cleared her throat. "Ah, guys? What exactly happened here?"

Dash blinked at Twilight and laughed. "Oh, don't worry, Twilight, I'm not making time with your stallion. Lero here just dropped by to help with my animals."

Lero nodded. "Make sure you get some decent rest, okay?" Dash nodded, and gave him a smile, which he returned. Inwardly, he whooped in joy. This was a small victory, but it represented solid proof that progress could be made against this damnable spell.

He would make more.

"Oh." Twilight managed to not look disappointed, but rather asked, "Mind if I get him home? He needs to be tended to."

Dash shrugged. "Sure, he's not mine to hog."

Lero reached down and gave her an affectionate, comforting, but chaste pat. "Don't worry, Dash. I'll be back to help tomorrow."

Dash laughed. "Dude, go home, get some rest. You need it. And I'll understand if you never come back, but... thanks for what you did and what you said." She gave him an affectionate nuzzle and his heart soared.

"Anytime." After a few more seconds, he reluctantly broke contact, Twilight shifted the cages out of the way telekinetically for him to walk out. Twilight closed the cottage's door behind him before he could hesitate about leaving.

"What are you thinking!?" Twilight said. "What are you doing back here? You were the one that told us how hopeless and not to mention suicidal it is to try to bring them to their senses!"

"That's not what I'm trying to do, Twilight." Lero responded, trying to be serious, but unable to keep the smile off his face. "I'm NOT trying to 'bring her back to her senses.' Right now, she can keep the identity she has, and I'll play along."

"Then what are you doing?"

"I'm trying to help her. Her, just as she now is. That mix-up of Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy."

Twilight Sparkle tilted her head at him quizzically, so he explained, "I realized earlier today that loving the part of Dash that's in Rarity isn't enough. I can't let any part of Dash suffer." He pointed up and down at his own collection of wounds. "Especially not like THIS."

"Lero..."

"All the rest of the Swapped have someone to depend on: Pinkie has the Apple family, Rarity has us, AJ has Sweetie Belle, Fluttershy has the Cakes..." He looked over his shoulder at Dash's new home. "Back when it WAS Fluttershy living at that cottage, those animals were like family. Not anymore, though. They're just EVIL to Dash. So now, Rainbow has no one. I can't in good conscience leave her alone like this."

Twilight ducked her head slightly, looking guilty for not thinking of all this herself. "Okay, I guess that makes sense... but where are you going to find the time to do that? I mean, I looked for you at the spa, and you weren't there. Are you taking vacation time? Or what?"

"I quit the spa," He replied as they reach the borders of Ponyville. Twilight formed a shield to protect them from the rainbow-colored raindrops falling from the sky.

"You WHAT!?" the unicorn balked.

Lero raised his hands defensivelly. "Just until this is all sorted out. Dash is more important than money to me. Besides, we have more than enough saved up. Plus, there's your stipend from the princess and Lyra's reserve pay and money from concerts will be more than enough to keep us afloat. And... I assume the weather service will still pay Rarity."

He winced at the sight of bright whorls of color and shapes forming in the sky, like paint on a canvas... dripping down various colored liquids over Ponyville. Visually, the effect was rather breathtaking, but he hoped whatever it was that was raining down didn't stain.

"Yes, but... you know that I'm the only one that can find the cure. You can't help them." Twilight protested.

"That, I take as a challenge, my dear Miss Sparkle." She scoffed at that. "Look, Twilight you work on the cure. I'll make sure they all don't destroy themselves in the meantime, alright?"

"They all?" Twilight repeated. "What, are you going to play foalsitter to all FIVE of them?"

As they neared a corner, they both paused as a familiar figure crossed their path.

"Ah, Rarity!" Twilight greeted, frowning at her downcast expression and body language. "Are you alright?"

She looked up, smiling faintly at them. "Ah, Twilight, Lero! Hello, my loves! I'm fine, I've just... gotten some rather frank evaluations of my work as of late." She smiles again. "See you at home?" She moved away, her figure slumping further downward as soon as she thought they couldn't see her face.

Be a pillar of strength for all your loved ones.

"Twilight, I'll meet up with you at home later with Rarity, okay?"

"Lero, wait!" But he sprinted off after the receding white unicorn without a backward look. She shook her head and continued on home.

Author's Note

It all starts with a first step forward...

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Thirteen: Dog Walkers And Rain Makers

Lero scanned the horizon, then the sky for Pegasi. It was all clear except for Spike. “Now if anyone DOES come by, you know what to do, right?” he asked the dragon.

Spike responded with a mighty roll of his eyes, the kind he reserved for Twilight's obsessive moments and Lero's body shyness. “Yeah, yeah, don’t let them peek at you. I got it. Just go ahead and change your clothes, He-Who-Must-Not-Be-Nude.” He shooed him off into the bushes.

Lero slipped into the bushes to change, mentally reviewing the previous day. He’d quit his job as a masseur, disappointing two close friends of his, waged small-scale war with all the animals that’d once belonged to Fluttershy and nearly gotten killed for it just to let Dash catch some decent sleep, and his efforts to cheer up Rarity with a pranking spree had resulted in Discord crashing into his life for a second time. Now, he was about to engage in more of the insanity. He was starting to sorely miss the sedate days before the Swap.

It was about nine in the morning, and he and Spike were just outside of Ponyville proper, on their way to Rainbow Dash’s cottage. Behind the bushes, Lero unzipped the backpack he’d brought from home. At least this time, Lero had come prepared. He’d brought supplies, tools, even a first aid kit he’d put together himself last night, from the library’s medical cabinet.

He changed into the ugly ‘Austin Powers’ outfit he’d bought from Applejack last night, and put his good clothes in the backpack. Once his visit to Rainbow Dash was over, he’d slip back into these bushes and put his good clothes back on. He slung his backpack back on, and slipped back outside.

“Gha-hah-hah-hah-haaah!”

Lero bit back the first response that came to mind. The dragon was laughing so hard that he'd fallen over, and smoke was puffing out of his nostrils in thick rings as he rocked with glee.

“Y’know, Lero, there’s a certain sort of dignity to walking around naked." Spike commented snidely, wiping tears from his eyes. "But there’s just NO dignity whatsoever in wearing a thing like THAT!”

“Yeah, yeah, laugh it up!” Lero huffed.

"Alright!" Spike collapsed again into epic fits of laughter, beating his fist on the ground.

Rolling his eyes, Lero waited for the dragon to settle down into giggles. "Done yet?"

He got back to his feet, holding up a single finger, indicating one moment, before the giggling subsided. "Okay, I'm good."

Side-by-side, they began walking towards the cottage again. “Man, Lero... you’d better not let Rarity see you in that!” But then a crafty smile slid up the dragon’s face. “Or then again, maybe you should.”

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Raising an eyebrow, he looked suspiciously at the conniving reptilian.

“Did I ever tell you why it is I agreed to help you out with this?”

Lero met Spike’s smirk with a cold stare. “Because Rainbow Dash has been a herdmate of yours for years now? Practically as much an older sister to you as Twilight is? One you would do anything to help, as any loving family member would? Especially when she’s suffering so painfully as a result of mind-altering magic?”

Spike at least had the decency to look abashed at that.

“Oh! Uh... yeah! Totally! I-I do love Dash in an older-sister way! And I’m only too glad to drop everything I’m doing to go help her!” But some of the craftiness returned to Spike’s face. “But of course... you love Dash in a different way, right, Lero? A closer way?”

“I am to assume there's a point to this line of questioning?” asked Lero, not really liking where this was going. While he genuinely liked the little dragon, his tendancy to connive and wheel and deal was one of the aspects he found less than pleasant. Dragon or no, sometimes he swore he was part snake.

“Well, it’s always been Rainbow Dash who you REALLY want, right?! You’re not even INTERESTED in Rarity like that, rrrrrright?”

That... was true, at least once. However, it was becoming increasingly difficult to sort out his feelings towards Rarity. The more time he'd spent with her; her showing him the same deep, unwavering affection Dash had, and him responding in kind... admittedly, for Dash's sake, but that hardly...

The dragon peered into the human’s eyes. "RIGHT!?"

“O-of course!” he stammered, realizing he'd been caught in self-reflection for several seconds over what should really have been a reflexive answer. The dragon snorted flatly.

“Do I detect a note of hesitation in your voice, dear herd-brother-of-mine?” Spike said, annoyance creeping into his voice.

“Look, just tell me what you’re getting at, okay?!” the human snapped, tired of the dragon dancing around the subject.

“The way I see it, the more I can keep you away from Rarity, the happier we’ll all be! So here’s the deal... the more you keep your distance from Rarity, the more I’d be willing to help you watch over Dash’s pets. Agreed?”

Spike held out a hand for Lero to shake. But he shook his head.

“I’m not agreeing to ANYTHING! Not until I at least see that you can actually handle the animals the way you say you can!”

The young dragon shrugged. “Fair enough. Today will be a freebie. A demonstration, if you will.”

They were now close to the cottage’s doorstep. And in spite of what a wheeling-dealing brat he was being, brotherly worry for Spike filled Lero’s heart.

“Listen, Spike, these animals... they’re just beyond mean. If things start getting too hairy... you might want to use your fire on them.”

These words shocked Spike. “What kind of dragon do you take me for?! I’m not gonna barbecue Fluttershy’s animals!”

“I didn’t mean THAT fire!” Lero insisted. “I meant your other fire! Your postal fire!”

Spike’s eyebrows climbed. “What? You want me to send Celestia a bunch of dogs and cats?!”

“...If Celestia can't handle a horde of angry chipmunks, something has gone horribly, horribly wrong. At any rate, don’t discount it as a last resort.”

They could hear the animals’ growls and snaps as Lero knocked on the door. Stress and dismay were back in Rainbow Dash’s voice as she called out, “Who is it?!” from behind the door.

“It’s Lero!”

“Lero?!” She raced over to open the door, slamming it behind her as though starved wolves were on her tail. “Whoa. You really DID come ba..." Her eyes widened, interrupting herself as she finally took in his appearance. "What the heck are you wearing, dude?”

She was staring in disbelief, grinning at the absurdity before her. Grins from Dash were good; better than misery. He did a little shoulder bob thing, imitating a supermodel. “The latest in Applejack’s must-have, ready-to-wear spring lineup; for the human on the go!”

“What the heck are YOU wearing?” Spike asked Dash. “Is it the bottom of the ninth in there or something?”

“Ha ha ha,” said Rainbow Dash, lifting up her catcher’s mask. “I’ll have you know that this is for my protection, Spike.” Then she did a double-take. “Spike? What are you doing here?”

“I’m helping Lero help you with your animals.” He gave a bow.

And with that, Lero found a scandalized pegasus flying in his face. “You brought SPIKE? You brought Spike HERE?! The small baby dragon?! To THIS place?! WITHOUT SO MUCH AS A STITCH OF ARMOR?!”

“W-well, I...” Lero stammered.

"I do have scales, you know." Spike piped up, walking past the two.

She glared at Lero, ignoring the dragon's protest. “I oughta report you for foal endangerment!”

“Oh, hi there, Angel Bunny!” both of them heard from inside the newly-opened door.

"Oh, no!" Dash's eyes widens in alarm as she flung herself back in her cottage, and Lero following quickly after.

Angel Bunny and Spike were facing each other down: Spike with the friendliest of smiles, Angel with a flat, calculating gaze, rubbing his chin in thought. Pretty much all the other animals were packed behind the white rabbit like the gang of thugs they were; ready to dogpile Spike right when Angel gave the signal.

“No! Don’t hurt him!” Rainbow begged, bending into a bow. “He’s just a baby! I’m the one you all want! Take me instead!”

“Hey, Angel, I was thinking of making a carrot cake... do you know if Dash has the ingredients for that?” Spike continued his friendly repartee, ignoring Dash's dramatics.

At that, Angel turned his back on Spike, facing the other animals. They all watched him thump his left leg on the floor six times, his right leg seven times. All the critters simultaneously lost interest in Dash, Lero, and Spike, each creature just doing its own thing — a dog chewing on a rubber bone, a cat batting a toy mouse around, birds chirping at the top of their lungs, and such.

After a few moments of staring in disbelief, Rainbow Dash picked her jaw off the floor. “H—how did you DO that?”

Spike opened the front door, stepped outside, and motioned for the others to join him. Once they were back out and the door was closed, he said, “Huddle up, guys,” and they huddled.

“Angel and I have an understanding,” Spike explained, in a low voice.

“An understanding?” asked Dash. “When did THAT happen?”

Spike frowned at her. “You’ve had me pet-sit the entire cottage for you at times when you needed to go out, and it always worked out well enough! Don’t you remember, Dash? All the times you and Twilight and the others went off on adventures, leaving me behind to take care of pretty much everything from the pit bulls on down?”

Dash’s face registered the same few seconds of blankness which Rarity’s had, when Lero had asked who’d taught her hairdressing.

“Spike sat...? Spike... sat the animals... for... me...?”

Lero had to wonder whether or not the bewitchment was frantically pumping new ‘memories’ into her head, right on the spot. What did these ‘memory deliveries’ look like for the Swapped, anyways? Was it like filling a car with gas, or popping a disk into a computer and downloading its data?

“Oh. O-oh yeah, I did. Of course I remember, Spike!” She laughed sheepishly, after coming back to awareness. "Sorry, I-I guess I must be even more frazzled than I thought.”

“...Sure,” said Spike. Lero was sure the little dragon had caught the creepiness of her moment of blankness as well. He turned to Lero. “Anyway... Lero, since you’re new, the thing you got to know is this: if you want to get along with the animals here, you NEED to get along with Angel Bunny.”

“Angel, huh?” Even though Spike was directing this at Lero, Rainbow Dash was listening with just as much absorption as he was.

Spike turned and gave her an odd look. “Yeah. Angel’s the kingpin of this cottage, the cult of personality. If Angel Bunny doesn’t like you, none of the critters will." He paused in thought. "Dash, can you remember when it was that things started turning ugly between you and the animals?”

She sighed. “A while back, I was eating an apple as a snack. Angel came up to me: he wanted some of my apple, too. But I thought it would be better to cut up some slices for him from an all-new apple. So I finished off my apple... only to find out I had eaten the last one. Ever since then...”

Spike turned to Lero. “Well,” said the human, “I think it started when I defended Dash from him and his mob. But I think I clinched it when I bit Angel’s leg and caused him to tumble down the basement stairs. And then made a pack of dogs fall on him.”

Both Spike and Dash winced at that.

“Ooh, woooow. Yeah, that'd do it. Well, I’ll just say this: if you can both do what you can to get back into Angel’s good graces, things will go a lot better for you,” Spike told them. “And with that... I’ve pretty much said my piece. Let’s head back inside.”

Inside, Lero noticed that Dash had erected a barricade for herself in one corner of the room out of the table, couch, and chairs. It actually looked fairly defensible. Spike looked over at the empty food and water bowls, frowned slightly, and immediately went down the cellar stairs.

“This is so weird,” Dash said, looking around at all the critters. “To have them all so... so..."

"Calm?" suggested Lero.

She nodded rapidly. "And so not-attacking-me.”

He clapped his hands together. “So! What can I do to help? Maybe... clean out the cages? Help Spike feed the animals? Walk the dogs?”

“WOOF! WOOF! BARK! BARK! WOOF! YIP-YIP-YIP!!! WOOF! WOOF! WOOF! ARF! ARF!”

It was like he’d cast a summoning spell. Dogs sprang off their sleeping spot on the floor, dogs scrambled down the stairs... all racing to pack around him, hopping up and down on their hind legs, grinning hopefully with open mouths and slack tongues. Seeing so many canines all at once put Lero in mind of all the dog shows his mother had loved to bring their samoyeds to. Eurynome and Iapetus had never won any of them, but Lero had always enjoyed seeing and learning about the other types of dogs.

It was entirely clear that — as with all her animals — the Fluttershy of old had valued variety in her dogs, rather than favoring any one single breed. He first recognized the sleepy old Pomeranian he’d caged the previous day. But now that all these pooches weren’t trying out to rip his throat open, he could identify an akita, two bulldogs, two pit bulls, and a pug. Plus a greyhound, an elkhound, a coonhound, an otterhound, a basset hound, a dachshund, a corgi, and a sleek-looking pharaoh hound.

The sight of the large St. Bernard, and the Jack Russell terrier gave Lero a brief moment of introspective pause, where he wondered whether these breeds had different names, here in Equestria. After all, what were the odds of any pony being named Bernard or Jack Russell? And did ponies even have canonized saints? Surely the Newfoundland had to be known by some pony-pun name.

Four saluki puppies were playing around with five schnauzer pups, all nipping at one another playfully. A speedy little chow chow had a bit of knotted rope in her mouth, playing keep-away with a larger whippet. And an adorable blackmouth cur kept running around and around Lero’s body in pure excitement.

Thirty dogs total.

“Well!” he laughed, under a barrage of lapping tongues, “Guess that answers that!”

Rainbow nodded happily. “Yeah, be glad to have THOSE mutts out of my hair for little while. And she dashed downstairs, coming up with a bunch of leashes in every color. She tried approaching a pit bull with one, but it growled at her threateningly, so she just gave up and gave them all to Lero.

“Alright! Start leashin’ them all!”

He stared at the thirty leashes now in his hand. “Wait, wait, wait, Dash... if I didn’t know any better, I’d say it sounds like you’re expecting me to walk all thirty of these dogs at the same time.”

“Well... aren’t you?” she frowned, not seeing the problem.

Lero dropped most of the leashes on the floor. “No, because this isn’t a cartoon! There’s no way I can control that many dogs at once!”

“But... but I was hoping you WOULD!” The pegasus had a pleading look on her face. “It’d go faster!”

Lero shook his head. “Haste makes waste. I know my limits. At most, I can handle one or two of the adult dogs, maybe a few of the pups. I’ll need to take several trips, back and forth, to get it all done right,” he replied firmly.

She sighed, her ears drooping slightly. "Oh, alright."

He decided to start with the whippet and the blackmouth cur, closing the door on twenty-eight disappointed dogs when he went outside. Just as he and the dogs were about to cross over the birdhouse threshold, he heard the beat of pony wings.

“WAIT! Y-y-you aren’t leaving the house, are you?!” Although she wasn’t looking back at it again, Lero could see that damnable mark twitching again. Lero experienced a sudden, vicious fantasy about having Twilight knock Rainbow Dash out with a powerful sleep spell, then burning those horrible butterflies off Dash’s body with lots and lots of bleach. He blinked violently to dispel the image.

"Of course I am, Rainbow. How else would they get a decent walk?" he asked in a reasonable tone.

“C-couldn’t you just have them run laps around the cottage?” she begged.

“If you’re going to do something, better to do it right,” answered Lero, as the cur tugged towards the open road. Dash was hesitant and uncomfortable and twitcha-twitch-twitch went the mark. And then a memory of something she said earlier replayed in Lero’s mind:

"I don't even really go into town anymore, except when I absolutely have to. To buy pet food and such."

With very scarce exceptions, the Butterfly Mark was pretty much determined to keep Rainbow Dash shut in her cottage, except on official pet care business. So maybe...

“Hey, Dash... why don’t you come with me? Come and walk these dogs with me?”

She stared at him, then at the dogs. Her mark’s twitching abated a little, but did not completely disappear. “But... if I did that... what about the rest of the animals?!”

“HEY! SPIKE!” Lero called out, cupping his hand to his mouth.

Spike opened the door. “YEAH, LERO?!”

“DASH AND I ARE GONNA GO OUT DOG-WALKING! THINK YOU CAN HANDLE THINGS HERE?”

They could see the little dragon give the thumbs-up. “SURE! I’LL BE A-OKAY!”

The dogs were getting anxious. Lero smiled at Dash. “It’s been a while since I walked dogs... I’d love to have an expert like you by my side! Someone to make sure I’m doing it right. Come on!”

He tugged on her hoof, bringing her over the threshold, and off they went!

* * *

This brought back memories. The feel of the leashes’ loops around his knuckles... two dogs, hurrying from tree to tree and bush to bush and patch of grass to patch of flowers with big canine smiles on their faces... the female cur squatting and the male whippet lifting his leg at every stop so other dogs who came this way would know that they were here too. Ah, it was like living with his parents all over again.

Rainbow Dash was still wearing her catcher’s mask and chest protector. At first, she almost seemed to be growing comfortable with being outside her house, keeping as close to the dogs as they would allow her... if she got too close, they snapped at her. But as Lero watched her, she started growing antsier and antsier, until by the time they had done about a block’s worth of walking, and were back at the bushes which Lero had changed his clothes in, she was borderline distraught.

“W-we have to go back!” she was insisting feverishly. “T-the animals... A-angel’s just luring Spike into a false sense of security! He’s all alone! They’ll gut him like a trout! We need to go back, now!” She shivered, her mark spasming visibly.

“Okay, Rainbow! Whatever you say! C’mon, girl! C’mon boy! Back this way!”

They spun around, rushing back to the cottage, the dogs barking in delight at the sprint. Rainbow flung upon the door, needing a few seconds to gaze in shock at the sight that greeted her inside.

“Oh, hi, Dash! Back so soon?”

The young dragon stood on a stool. The capuchin was swinging back and forth on Spike’s outstretched arm like a child on a monkey bar. The other animals were more or less just lounging around, eating from their bowls, or else keeping themselves passively entertained in their various fashions.

“Yep!” said Lero, over Dash’s stunned silence. “We’re just switching out dogs.”

And he removed the leashes off the whippet and the blackmouth cur, switching them out for the otterhound and the elkhound.

“C’mon, Rainbow!” And then they were off again. Lero had to keep a tight hold of the hounds; who nearly yanked free of his grip when a pair of wild squirrels scampered by. This time, they passed by the the bushes without incident. It wasn’t until they were at the threshold of Ponyville proper that Dash’s mark began to squirm.

“Uh... would it be alright if we went back home?” This time, her expression was more apologetic than anxious.

“Spidey Senses tingling again?” asked Lero, turning the dogs around.

“Kinda,” said Dash. “Didn’t know you were a fan of Spider-Mare!”

"...Let me guess, bitten by a spider exposed to magical radiation?" he guessed.

"So you have!"

"Sort of!" He laughed, "C'mon, guys!" He sprinted off with the dogs again, Rainbow giving a small smile, her wings flapping as she zipped after them... while staying close to the ground.

When they returned back to the cottage again, Spike greeted them at the door with a look of anxious relief. “Oh, Dash! Thank goodness!” the little guy breathed. “Where do you keep the food here?”

Dash frowned. “Down in the cellar. You know that.”

“Not what I meant,” said Spike, leading them into the kitchen. He opened both the fridge and the pantry; every shelf was bare. “I wasn’t talking about the kibble or the pellets or any of that. I’m talking about the real food. The pony food.”

The pegasus hung her head. “I ate through the last of my food days ago.”

“Huh?!” said Lero, looking at Dash in alarm.

“Then what’ve you been living off of all this time?” Then Spike was struck by an unpleasant little hunch. “Dash! You haven’t been...?!”

“Don’t judge me!” Rainbow snapped. “Taking care of THIS many animals is expensive enough when they’re all BEHAVING themselves! And pet chow’s so much cheaper than real food. Anywhere I can save a bit, I will!” She licked her lips. “Besides, it turns out a lot of the canned cat food’s pretty tasty! You ought to try Meowlicious’ Scrod Pâté! Or their Chunky Chum & Cheddar Feast!” Lero winced slightly; he knew Dash well enough to know that her justifications were thin; those might not be bad as the others, but he could tell from her expression they were hardly good-tasting.

Spike also grimaced, apparently on the same boat as Lero. “You eat pet food?! I thought you were going to say you ate only the grass outside!”

Rainbow Dash blinked, then grinned. “Eat grass? Spike, that’s brilliant! I’d save even MORE money that way!”

“Well, before you go do that, here’s my situation, Dash: I gave Angel Bunny a craving for carrot cake... and he’s getting really insistent that I make it for him.” Spike pointed to the bunny in question. Angel stood on a countertop holding open a cookbook to a page showing a picture of a carrot cake. He kept jabbing his forepaw at it while tapping his foot impatiently.

“Only problem is... I don’t have a single ingredient to start with!”

The three of them looked over at Angel; Dash with a shiver. The expression on the cottage kingpin’s face wasn’t TOO displeased with Spike. Not YET, anyway, just a touch annoyed. The young dragon tapped his forefingers together fretfully. “Next time the two of you go out, do you think you could pick up the ingredients I’ll need?!”

“Let’s do that right now!” Dash nervously told Lero, still staring at Angel.

“Yeah. Yeah, let's,” the human agreed. Both of them could recognize how disastrous it’d be if Angel Bunny were to turn the other animals against Spike the way he’d already turned them against Rainbow Dash.

Quickly, Lero found a pencil and a scrap of mostly-blank paper torn from one of Fluttershy’s books, and copied the list of carrot cake ingredients from the cookbook Angel held open. They were about to leave when Lero stopped Dash.

“You might want to take that off and slip on some saddlebags,” he told her. “We’re not going to a baseball game.”

"Oh. Heh, right." She noded, slipping off the baseball gear and on a saddlebag, they then strode out the door, passing right by the pack of sad-faced canines with leashes in their mouths.

* * *

“Hee-hee-hee!”

“Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha...”

“Ah ha ha ho ho ho!”

“What is he — HA HA HA!!! — what is he WEARING?!”

“Must’ve — ghah hah hah! — must’ve lost a bet!”

Everywhere Lero and Dash walked throughout the marketplace, there was another pony to snicker at what Bellerophon Michaelides was wearing.

“It’s not THAT funny...” he heard Rainbow mutter under her breath, after a fresh look at him.

He pointedly ignored all the stares and mockery as he and Rainbow walked up to another merchant’s booth. He’d endured far worse in the past, just for being a human. At least they weren't running in fear or dragging their colts and fillies inside like they had at first. What was a few chuckles over a set of bad threads? Really, it was in a weird, backwards way, encouraging... they were no longer too afraid of him to risk laughing at him.

“Excuse us, miss, we’d like to buy this bottle of vegetable oil,” he told the merchant.

“That’ll... ha ha ha... that’ll be... eee-hee-hee! ...Nine bits.”

The muscles around Lero’s lips felt rather tight as he paid the money. When he’d put the oil in Dash’s saddlebag ands turned around, there was Fluttershy, looking awed.

“Oh, hi, Fluttershy,” said Dash.

“Hi, Rainbow!” the pink-maned pegasus greeted back. “And Lero! I’ve got to say, you’re the smartest pony ever!”

“Thanks!” said Lero in surprise. “What’d I do?”

Fluttershy had her own set of saddlebags on, completely packed with newly-bought pie pans.

“Everypony’s been laughing their flanks off at you this whole time, Lero! They’re in stitches!" She waved her arm around indicating the guffawing crowd. "And you didn’t even so much as crack a joke! All thanks to that marvelous clown suit you’re wearing!”

He almost would’ve been insulted over the comment... But that was... well, a pretty Pinkie thing to say. What really caught his attention, however, was her pleading. “Ohhhh, I want one too! Please, Lero, please tell me... where did you get it from? Please?”

She even gave him the puppy dog eyes. It was too much to resist. “I got this at Applejack’s,” he found himself saying. “It was a commission.”

“Applejack made this for you?” Her wings were already spread in anticipation. "Oh... oh, I hope I can afford it!”

“Go to the Carousel Boutique and tell AJ I sent you,” he told her. “Look around the store and take your pick. It’s like Applejack’s entire selection of merchandise has been made with you, specifically, in mind, Fluttershy. There ought to be something within your price range. Heck, there’s even a ballroom gown make of bathroom towels.”

“Bathroom towels?!” And she flew several feet up into the air, shouting for all the crowd to hear: “Just you wait, everypony! You’ll all be laughing at me for YEARS to come!”

And she flew off in the direction of the Boutique.

“I don’t know whether to thank you or kick you for that,” Rainbow Dash told Lero.

“I honestly don't know myself, Dash. But the way I see it, I made Fluttershy a little bit happier, and I gave AJ a bit more business,” Lero reasoned. One friend was getting desperately-needed business, and the other was fulfilling a deep-seated need she had... Though, admitedly, helping her make a laughingstock out of her didn't quite sit well with him.

“Well, then, thanks, I guess?” Rainbow Dash shrugged. Apparently, she wasn't any more sure about it than he was, but let it slide. “How about we check to see that we have everything?”

And they went over to the side, out of everypony else’s way, and opened up Dash’s saddlebags, checking what they’d bought against the recipe list:

“Let’s see... carrots, eggs, buttermilk, vegetable oil, white sugar, vanilla extract, cinnamon, salt, all-purpose flour, baking soda, a bag of flaked coconuts, chopped walnuts, a can of crushed pineapples, and raisins,” said Lero, carefully putting it all back in Dash’s bags. “Yeah, I think that about covers it.”

“Alright, then!” said the pegasus. Then she was distracted by another familiar face. “Hey, Pinkie Pie!” she waved with a hoof.

But Pinkie Pie did not respond. When they went up to her stall, they found her snoring lightly, her flat mane draped over her eyes. There weren’t all that many apples out for sale, but still Lero asked, “How much for five of your Red Delicious, Pinkie?!”

“Wh—wha...?!” Pinkie shook awake. “Five Red Delicious? Uh... ten bits!”

He paid the money and bagged the five best-looking apples.

“Pinkie! I’m saying this as your friend; you ought to get some rest!” Dash scolded.

Yawning sleepily, the pink pony replied, “Same ta yew, Dashie. The way ya live yer life these days...” she yawned again, “...jest ain’t healthy.”

"Nnnh. Yeah, whatever. Bye, Pinkie."

They left her stall. When Lero looked over his shoulder, he saw that Pinkie was barely keeping her eyes open. He wondered how many customers she’d missed out on by being asleep on her feet. Sighing, he rubbed one of the apples on the front of his jacket, and bit into it.

“Hey, uh... Lero? Buddy?”

Dash was licking her chops at the fresh apple in his hand, dripping with juice. “Any chance you’d be willing to share the wealth? Please?”

Not needing to be asked twice, he gave her a fresh apple, which she scarfed down in a couple quick bites.

“Aw, yeah...” she sighed happily. “That’s the stuff...”

The bliss on her face from that single apple inspired him further. Pet chow was not enough.

“Hey, Dash, what do you say we pick up some extra food for Spike? He’s been so good, handing all those animals all by himself... he deserves a reward.”

She shrugged. “Sure, dude, as long as you’re paying for it.”

Two loaves of bread, two gallons of milk, three boxes of Wonder Flakes breakfast cereal, peanut butter, strawberry jelly, canned peach halves, canned corn, canned pear slices, canned fruit cocktail, canned mandarin oranges, canned spaghetti, cans of tomato soup and potato soup... he would’ve bought more if Dash hadn’t grown antsy again.

“Dude!” she laughed as they started back home, leaving the marketplace. “This is all for SPIKE?!”

He shrugged blithely. “Kid’s a growing dragon.”

“Yeah, well, I call horse apples! The food you bought is enough to feed me for a good couple weeks!”

"Is it?" He said innocuously.

She stopped in her tracks, thinking back on those just-spoken words, and gaped at him.

“You deserve better than cat food and grass,” Lero told her, quietly.

“But... but... but...”

He continued right over her objections. “You’ll notice that I bought you a lot of canned goods. I’d have gone for fresher stuff... but I figured it’d be more difficult for your mice and your other animals to invade your private stock of food if it was all sealed up in cans. And it’d all last you longer. You do have a can opener at home, right?”

She took on a hangdog expression. “I’m not some hopeless charity case, Lero,” she said, with an equal measure of pride and shame.

“I know you aren’t. I wouldn’t be doing this if you were nothing more than a freeloader, Dash. You’ll get back on your four feet soon enough. Until then, I’ll be there to help you every step of the way. For as long as you let me.” He stated firmly, looking her in the eyes, brooking no argument.

Her mane fell over her eyes as she walked, not quite Fluttershy-like. “I’ll pay you back for all this, Lero. For everything. I swear it.”

“Well, you’re carrying all the groceries for me,” he said, with a friendly thump to her strong back. “So you’re already paying me back.”

She let out a small chuckle. "Smartass."

* * *

The fourth time Rainbow Dash and Lero set out from Dash’s cottage, they took all four of the saluki puppies. The salukis were as excitable as they were adorable, all running circles around Lero so he was constantly having to stop to disentangle himself from their leashes.

As they walked, Lero kept seeing Dash stare up longingly at the sky. “It’s so beautiful up there,” he heard her say. “I wish I could... I wish I could just fly. Everything looks so free up there in the sky.”

“You can fly,” Lero reminded her. “What’s stopping you? No pony with wings like yours ought to be ground-bound.” This was certainly an un-Fluttershylike sentiment. He recalled Rarity's own moments of fashion and beauty and artistry, shining forth through all the changes the Swap had wrought. As with Rarity, that butterfly cutie mark hadn't claimed all of Dash, and he was damned if he wasn't going to encourage the bits of the real her that remained.

She just cast a rueful look at the salukis, who were now straining at their leashes to sniff at a dead quail.

“I’ve got them handled,” he promised. “You just don’t fly too fast, and we’ll follow you. You look down, you’ll see us, we’ll look up, and we’ll see you. Capiche?”

“I don’t know what that word even means,” said Dash, but apparently it was enough, and she spread her wings and took to the skies.

Just seeing her up in the air brought back wonderful memories of how she was before the Swap. Rainbow Dash the Wonderbolt Cadet! At first, she just flew directly over them, like a balloon on an extra-long string. Then she moved onto flying circles around them, like a jogger on a track. Then she grew bolder, flying downward in sharper and sharper zigzag pattens. She did a loop-de-loop, two loop-de-loops... three!

He wished he could be up there with her, tasting the same freedom.

Then she landed in front of Lero, gasping for air, shaking from the excitement of it all... happier than he’d seen her in days. He grinned: first a sweet one at Dash, herself, then a snider one towards the mark on her flank.

I’ve found a loophole, you little demons. He thought at cancerous little butterflies, hoping they had the power of telepathy. I won’t let you torture her. I won’t let you debase her. I won’t let you turn her into your prisoner.

* * *

When they finally returned to the cottage with the last of the dogs, practically ALL the animals were fast asleep. If not for how wrecked the cottage’s interior still was, it would almost look idyllic; a scene that belonged on a flower-strewn, sunshiny meadow. Even the saluki pups, after Lero had unleashed them, simply curled themselves up next to their schnauzer playmates, and slept alongside them, (they HAD done a good job wearing the puppies out.) Only Angel Bunny was up, contently polishing off a slice of delicious-looking carrot cake.

And there, reclined against the side of a nanny goat who slumbered with her legs tucked beneath her underbelly, was little Spike. He looking absolutely exhausted and throughly pleased with himself.

“Welcome home,” he greeted them tiredly.

“Y-you got them to sleep!” Dash kept her voice beneath a whisper, tiptoeing, (well, tip-hoofing, anyway) around them, as though they were living bombs that’d detonate at the slightest nudge. “You got them all to sleep!”

“Nothing to it,” he told her.

Such was Rainbow Dash's delight that she swept the little guy up with her, almost to the top of the ceiling, and peppered every inch of Spike’s cheeks with quick, grateful kisses.

“Marry me, Spike!” she said, nuzzling him. “Nah, I’m kidding... except... just tell me one thing: what WOULD it take to make you start living here with me, full time? Become MY number one assistant?”

"You'd have to fight Twilight over me!"

* * *

“I stole your girlfriend! I stole your girlfriend!” Spike jeered in a classic playground-pest’s singsong, all the way out to the tall bushes which Lero was using as a changing room. The human shot him a sour look before stepping back inside them to dress himself in his good clothes again.

“Heeeeey, Lero!” Spike called out to him, through the leafy branches, “Do you remember when we were at Dash’s house and Dash asked me to marry her?”

“Yeah,” he grunted, while removing his shoes and slipping his pants off. The fact that the childish taunting was getting to him was definite proof on how much this was wearing on him.

“I’ve been thinking it over... Dash and I have a LOT in common... and she’s quite a looker to boot! Plus, I totally got her tied around my pinky claw.”

From behind the bushes, Lero grumbled something thankfully unintelligible under his breath. He really shouldn't be responding to Spike, but dammit, all the effort he'd put in for her to go and shower Spike with praise and affection...

“Yeah, I could easily see myself spending the rest of my life with a girl like her. Maybe I’ll let you be my best man at our wedding!”

Lero stepped out of the bushes with clenched fists, practically about to bite his own lower lip off. He found himself wishing that Rainbow Dash had swapped into the Element of Laughter role instead of Fluttershy. He could’ve DEALT with a Rainbow Dash compelled to tell bad jokes all day long. With a mother like his, who’d watched her sitcoms so religiously, he’d built up an immunity to humorless humor. Within a WEEK, he could’ve gotten Dash the Joker to fall back in love with him, just by sitting and listening to her! If only they could recast that damn spell again!

His eyes widened. The gears in his head began to spin with great alacrity, for this was a notion worth exploring. Excitedly, he sprinted off towards the library.

"I might even... hey, wait up!" The startled dragon raced after him.

* * *

Twilight Sparkle heard her front door slam.

“Twilight! Twilight!” her human stallion called, as he galloped upstairs into her reading room with the bright smile of a colt discovering the Hearth’s Warming present he’d been yearning all year for underneath the Hearth’s Warming tree.

“I got it, Twilight! The answer to all our problems! The cure we’ve been looking for!”

She gave him a look of disbelief over the books she was perusing. “What?” she asked. He did seem certain of himself.

Lero pushed away some of her book piles and knelt down next to her. “You know Starswirl’s spell? My idea is to KEEP casting it!”

If Twilight Sparkle had been drinking something, she’d have done a spit take. “KEEP casting it?! As it is?! Unfinished?!”

He nodded rapidly, taking her hoof in his hand. “Again and again and again!”

“Are you out of your BUCKING MIND, LERO?!” She jerked it away, standing up.

“Hear me out!” he implored, moving over next to her side, and sliding those deft little fingers of his combing through her coat... ohhhh, how long had she been without this?

She sat down again, and leaned against him, letting him continue. "Alright, you have my attention. Go on?"

“First, for the sake of argument, let’s you and I think of Starswirl’s spell not as some dangerous bit of defective magic... but as a slot machine.” He started, his fingers working the skin under her mane in just the way he knew she liked it.

“Rrrrrrright,” she said, not quite managing her flattest monotone under his attentions.

“And our friends’ souls are the... er... the lemons which spin round and round and round.” He probably could have come up with a better metaphor, but she could hear how excited he was about this idea he wanted to get out.

Twilight sat up straighter. “...Hang on. I think I see where you’re going with this.”

“You do?” asked her human.

She nodded, shifting to look him face-to-face. “In essence, I’m guessing what your idea boils down to is this: keep on pulling the slot machine handle, again and again, until all five ‘lemons’ line up in the right rows. Am I right?”

“Yep!” said Lero. “Then it’s jackpot for us!” His glee was almost palpable.

Laughter bubbled up from Twilight’s throat.

“And the best part is, unlike a casino, we don’t even have to pay a rusty bit!” her stallion continued. “Just keep pulling the handle as many times as it takes!”

Overcome with the giggles, she hurled herself backwards on the floor. “It’d be so simple...!” she hooted.

“Right!” Lero agree. “Well... it might take a bit of time before we hit pay dirt. Maybe even as long as a month or so! But if we just keep pulling and pulling on that slot machine handle, eventually the law of averages will come out on our side!”

“...So ridiculously simple!” Twilight laughed, now rolling back and forth on the floor and on books, kicking her hind legs into the air.

“It’d even be kinda fun to watch!” he said. “Just think: Pinkie Pie the Fashionista! Fluttershy the Farmer! We could see all the different combinations as we worked our way to the Cure!”

“Yeah!” Twilight laughed. “Shame I can’t actually do it.” She sighed, her laughter coming to a stop.

“WHAT?!” Why not?!” Twilight swore his eyes were going to bug out of his head.

The lavender unicorn rose back up to her sit. Though her laughter had died away, she kept smiling.

“Let me paint you a mental picture. Imagine I agree to this mad scheme of yours. We stand in front of the Elements. I pull out Starswirl’s book and recite the incantation. There’s a great poof of magic! The smoke clears! And there stands Applejack with my cutie mark on her flank, convinced SHE’S the Element of Magic!”

“What?!” exclaimed her human stallion.

Twilight Sparkle sighed heavily. “Lero... when you get right down to it, I’m just as much an Element Bearer as my other five friends. And therefore, just as vulnerable to this spell.”

“But look at you!” he cried, putting his hand on her unchanged cutie mark. “The Swap doesn’t affect you!”

“THIS time, it didn’t. But suppose that was nothing more than a fluke? Pure dumb luck? Sure, maybe the spell avoids its caster... But who's to say it doesn't? Who’s to say that the next time this spell’s cast, my... well, ‘lemon’ won't be sucked into the slot machine’s spinner too? Maybe the SECOND time we pull the handle, it’ll be PINKIE PIE who’s skipped over, instead of me. Who knows?”

Lero Michealides was struck dumb.

“Bear this also in mind: out of my five other Element Bearing friends, four of them AREN’T unicorns. So if we recast the unfinished spell, that leaves us with a four-in-six chance of winding up with one frustrated pegasus or Earth pony who thinks magic is her life’s calling, but doesn’t even have the horn for it. And in that scenario... if the mare who’s supposed to be me can’t so much as levitate a thimble... then we really ARE stuck in a rut for good.”

Lero hung his head, and Twilight nuzzled his cheek.

“Still, it was a pretty creative idea,” she told him. “Would never have come up with it myself.”

"Yeah. Yeah, thanks for trying to cheer me up." He gave her a quick kiss, before standing up and disengaging himself from her.

And Lero left the room. Seventy-five percent of his mind was awash in disappointment. The remaining twenty-five percent was now curiously imagining how Applejack the Mage would compare against the original Twilight Sparkle in the sack. These thoughts weren’t easy to chase away.

Downstairs, a panting Spike finally opened the front door. "Man, what was that about?"

* * *

"I'm home, darlings!" Rarity announced herself as she came in for the night.

"Hey, I'm in the kitchen!" Lero replied, having busied himself with dinner in the meantime.

"And it smells delicious in here." she said, coming up to Lero and giving him an affectionate nuzzle as she did.

Lero smiled down at her. "Could you get the others? It's almost ready."

"Of course." She smiled, going off to fetch them as he started setting out the meal: four-cheese lasagna with a side of garlic bread. He'd gotten much better at emulating his home cuisine with Equestrian ingredients, even with the vegetarian handicap. Well, except for Spike, who ate anything. And Rainbow Dash — now Rarity — who enjoyed seafood just as much as he did.

Soon, the two unicorns filed in past him, followed by Spike. He gave Twilight a friendly stroke as she passed him and Rarity the same. Spike shot him a dirty scowl. Lero just shrugged, giving him a 'what-am-I-supposed-to-do?' look. He couldn't rightly start playing favorites between the two unicorns without it being obvious.

"Oh, Lero, it looks delightful as always!" Rarity exclaimed.

"Smells it, too." Twilight added, as he served them.

"So, how's the research going?" Rarity asked Twilight, as Lero took a seat, and the herd all dug into their meal.

Twilight sighed. "Well, I'm learning more about cutie marks than I thought possible."

"So you think the spell has something to do with cutie marks, then?" Rarity asked innocently.

Twilight Sparkle opened her mouth, before closing it, staring at Rarity, and forcefully reminding herself of the situation. "Yes, I think the spell has something to do with cutie marks," she at last replied in as neutral a manner as possible.

"So, can you tell us what you've found out?" Lero cut in before Rarity could ask any more awkward questions.

"Sure! There's lots of interesting details. I could practically write a paper on it, now."

"Do go on?" Rarity prompted, she and Lero turning their full attention to the mare.

"Well, I'd really have to organize my notes to get in to much detail, but from what my research is showing, The idea of what a cutie mark represents and how it's gained wasn't settled on until after the founding of Equestria!" she exclaimed, eagerly sliding into her lecture mode.

Rarity paused, scrunching up her nose in thought. "I can follow the first bit on not agreeing on what a cutie mark represents... but... did our ancestors really not understand how a cutie mark is acquired? I mean, since cuties marks are a property of ponies’ nature, shouldn't that stay consistent?"

"That's the thing! My research implies it's not, and it might even shift depending on the culture of the ponies that gain them."

"Huh. Weird." Spike commented, around a bite of lasagna.

"For example, the only ones that came close to the modern ideal of 'Earning' their marks were Pegasi. They gained theirs from acts of Valor, Bravery, Honor, or Cunning in battle, nothing to do with a 'talent.'"

“So cooks and artists and manual laborers just went unmarked?” Rarity asked.

To her surprise, Twilight nodded. “A Pegasus could go her entire life without earning a mark... which wasn't even stigmatized. Rather, those that DID earn their marks were considered heroes and champions."

"Huh. Not unlike Scarification amongst some warlike people back on Earth," commented Lero.

Twilight's ears perked up. "Yes?"

Lero couldn't help but smile: exchanging the history and culture of their respective worlds was something he and Twilight had done for as long as they'd known each other, long before the idea of being in a relationship ever came up. It felt familiar, comfortable, something he really needed as of late.

"Some warrior cultures revered scars that were received in battle. They tended to be viewed as symbols of skill, bravery, prowess, or being just to damn tough to die. Some cultures also celebrated valor in battle with deliberate scarification or tattooing," Lero explained.

Twilight nodded thoughtfully. "Interesting. Anyhow, the culture closest to having a ‘Special Talent’ as we understand it in the modern day, was the Earth ponies. However, it generally wouldn’t be your personal talents, but rather that of your clan. Earth Ponies families tended to be known for a specific craft, and young ponies or outsiders joining a clan, tended to get their marks when they became journeymares."

"So, say, for example, if a family was known for apple farming, they might get, oh, say, apple-related marks?" Rarity asked impishly.

Spike laughed. "Sounds kinda like some ponies we know, doesn't it?"

The rest of them also joined in the laughter. "Yeah, oddly so." Twilight agreed, glancing over to Lero. "Any insights to add?"

"Not particularly. It does faintly remind me of the Guild Systems that started developing when larger cities formed, and production of specialized goods became possible." Lero responded.

"Oh! Yes, that reminds me, there's some speculation it led to the foundation of the Guilds in Trottingham!" She nodded.

"Oh, well, there you go!" chuckled Lero. "What about the unicorns?"

"Well, that's interesting, too. For unicorns, cutie marks generally showed one's social status, position, and family line... rather than talent.

"Huh. Sort of like Heraldry for noble families in feudal civilizations." Lero commented.

"Ah! Yes, in fact, many noble-families' crests are based on those marks." Twilight nodded.

"Huh. Heh, once again we've stumbled across things that are startlingly similar, yet incredibly different." Lero commented.

Twilight nodded. "Funny how that keeps happening."

"So, how about my two boys? How did your days go?" Rarity inquired.

"It went pretty well," Lero said. "I actually managed to get Dash out of her cottage and did some shopping with her."

Spike chuckled. "Not going to tell what happened next?" Lero shot him a look, which the dragon ignored, continuing. "She was so happy with the job I did, she asked to marry me!"

Rarity laughed at that. "Oh, my, Spikey-wikey, you adorable little mare-killer!" She rubbed his cheek affectionately, reminded Lero of his elderly Aunt Ellen pinching his cheek and declaring how adorable he was every Christmas since as long as he could remember. "Have you set a date yet?" She teased playfully.

Twilight, however, had been studying Lero for quite some time, observing his jaw setting in annoyance. "Anyhow..." Twilight started, attempting to head the situation off. "Any news on your end, Rarity?"

"Oh, yes. I've been working with my weather team to formulate a new schedule. We needed to because there's been so many... disruptions lately." Blushing, she lowered her ears, Lero reaching out to give her a comforting touch. Spike shot the human a look while doing the same on Rarity’s opposite side.

"And... well, tomorrow we're going to be working on rainfall for Sweet Apple Acres. Their trees are looking a bit... wilted, so I figured I might as well help out Pinkie some."

Lero paused thoughtfully. On occasion, he'd gone out to watch Rainbow and her weather team at work. It was remarkable how skillfully she'd always been able to coordinate the various Pegasi into a well-oiled team. How well would Rarity be able to fill her shoes as a manager?

As a fashionista, she’d always worked solo. And as an Element Bearer, Rarity had always acted as one of the teammates, but never the leader. (At least, according to Dash and Twilight’s stories.) It was a complete unknown...

"Say, Rarity...?" he began.

"Yes, my prince?" she asked, rubbing her cheek against the hand still resting on her.

"Might I tag along with you when you go to Sweet Apple Acres? It's been a while since I saw you weathermaking with your team."

She lapsed into a thoughtful pause. "I'm not sure, Lero, I, ah, with my performance lately, I could do without distractions. Wouldn't want you to become disruptive."

Inwardly, Lero reflected on the irony of Rarity worrying he might be a disruptive influence on the weather. Then again, in all fairness, he definitely HAD played a part in that incident with Discord yesterday...

"Please? I swear I'll just watch. I promise not be a distraction. Besides... I saw Pinkie Pie in the market today, and she wasn't looking too well. I'd kind of like to check up on her, besides!"

Rarity hesitated. “Are you THAT determined to go to Sweet Apple Acres tomorrow?”

He nodded. “Yes. One way or another.”

“Then I suppose I'll let you come with me.”

Lero smiled back. "Thanks, Rarity." He could see Spike shooting him a 'what the hell are you doing!?' look at him over Rarity's head, but he didn't respond.

"But what about you and Spike helping out Dash?" She inquired.

"We’ll drop by her cottage afterwards. I won’t take ALL day."

"Well, I need to get back to studying. See you all later, alright?" Twilight said, rising from her finished meal.

"Yeah, since we're almost done, I'll start cleaning up. Want to help, Lero?" Spike asked, pointedly.

Lero shrugged. "Sure."

"I need to finish up some paperwork myself," Rarity said, planting a quick peck on Lero’s cheek before leaving the table. “I’ll keep the bed warm for you, my prince.”

As Spike and Lero piled dirty dishes into the sink, Spike practically hissed, "What are you doing, Lero!? I asked you to spend less time with her, not make a date!"

"Look, Spike, I can't have you freaking out every second I spend with Rarity. This is more curiosity than anything romantic.”

“Curiosity?” asked the dragon, mixing soap into the water.

“Yeah. Curiosity. I want to see how she's managing as a Weathermare... and maybe see how if I can help out. Or do you relish the idea of our house being blown down by an artistic hurricane?"

"No, but..." Spike started, unsure.

"Look, I appreciate your help with the animals. I really do. But I will not sacrifice Rainbow Dash's emotional wellbeing for the sake of your crush. Or Rarity's."

Spike fumed, torn between being angry and guilty. "But that's not..."

"Fair? None of this is, Spike. Look, I'll do my best to keep the romance toned down as much as I reasonably can, with the understanding it might not be possible... the same way I'll overlook how you attempted to use the wellbeing of someone who's family to manipulate me into it. Deal?"

"Sure, fine, whatever," the dragon agreed, dunking a large plate under the soapy water.

Lero was pretty sure that wouldn't be the last of it.

* * *

The next morning passed uneventfully. He showered alone, idly determining to himself that today marked the sixteenth day of the Swapped Five’s being Swapped. For breakfast, he just buttered some bagels without even toasting them, and swigged down some coffee. Then he suddenly noted that Rarity was outside the window; she’d slipped out without him noticing. Startled, he ran outside.

"Your chariot awaits, my prince." Rarity smiled, astride a fluffy cloud, low to the ground. She’d actually shaped the front and sides of the cloud somewhat like a wheelless chariot. He grinned and she gave an aristocratic sort of bow.

"I thought it might be nice for me to take you in a bit of style. Growing up in Cloudsdale, I learned cloudwalking... well, as soon as I could walk!"

Lero blushed. "I'd thought you'd left without me for a second."

“Tish. Dear, we've established that if you really want to come along with me, I can't really stop you. You'll either show up on your own, or make me feel guilty enough to come back looking for you. So..." She smiled, leaning forward, her horn glowing as she cast the spell... the now-familiar sensation of the cloudwalking spell enveloping him.

As he stepped aboard the cloud, he wondered again about Rarity's sudden magical proficiency in all things weather-related.

She'd never displayed such climatological talents before. And while her ‘current’ job made it make rational sense, false memories didn't mean competency.

Furthermore, it was worth noting that Rarity’s issue was slightly different than that of the other girls. Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash, Pinkie Pie and Applejack were simply bad at their new jobs. But Rarity was a weather-making dynamo. Her issue was control over her creative urges. Had she always been so powerful and concealed it? Perhaps deemed it inappropriate or unbecoming of a fashionista? Or... was it possible that Starswirl’s unfinished spell had seen fit to bestow Rarity with an array of new powers and abilities she had no rightful business having? Was that even a thing it could do?

He horn glowed again, and the cloud was off like a shot. "Whoa!" he put his hands out to steady himself, ending up with one arm around her. She giggled slightly, and leaned against him, Ponyville receding below them as they reached altitude, heading south towards Sweet Apple Acres. Rarity had been right; the trees did look a bit wilted. Just sixteen days... how had Pinkie managed it?

As they approached, he noted that they had escorts flying alongside them. He recognized Flitter and Cloudchaser, two of Rainbow Dash's better Weathermares. He waved at them. Flitter eagerly, almost hyperactively, waved back... whereas Cloudchaser favored first Rarity, then Lero with a flirtatious wink, swooping one side to the other to do each. They continued their descent down to meet the two Earth Ponies waiting for them: Apple Bloom and Pinkie Pie.

"Howdy, Lero!" The grinning filly practically hopped over to greet them, the way Pinkie used to.

Lero smiled. Growing up as a big brother to several siblings had, surprisingly, led him to rather liking kids. Sure, they could be brats, but most of the time they were creative, clever, curious and eager; which was pretty fun to be around if you were patient.

"Hey, Bloom!" He got off the cloud, giving her a friendly scritch. While fillies and colts were generally less judgmental of him than their parents, the reputation of the 'big bad carnivore' tended to frighten off the more skittish ones, while most others had been forbidden by their parents. So his early interactions with most foals had been them fleeing or daring each other to do things like touch him or whatever.

The Crusaders had been an exception. Two of them were related to the very Elements of Harmony, and had sought to befriend him in defiance of what the rest of the town thought. Scootaloo’s guardians... (were they ponies he’d already met? Perhaps those flower ponies; Daisy, Rose, and Lily Valley? Or a set of reclusive, antisocial strangers?) ...whoever they were, apparently didn't care what she did, so Scootaloo had just gone with what her friends were doing.

All three of them had almost immediately taken to him, Apple Bloom especially. "Ah ain't gonna be afraid a' someone jes cus he's differen', or any dumb grown-up stuff lahk that." Was how she'd put it.

They'd asked him constant questions about himself, humans, and Earth, which he happily answered... well, except for the ones that they were really too young for. How did they know about such grown-up things, when they didn’t even have TV and the Internet?

Heck, one day they'd taken up a 'Crusade' on his behalf, trying to find a way home for him. He’d tagged along with to keep them out of trouble once he realized they'd go looking for a portal to Earth with or without him. While nothing had come of it — no way home or cutie marks — it'd had been an amusing way to spend a day.

Pinkie, on the other hand... Lero again found himself silently measuring Pinkie against how Rainbow Dash had looked, on the day he'd quit the spa and Dash had first begun letting him help with her animals.

First of all, Pinkie was clearly well-fed: no cans of Scrod Pâté on the Apple family's menu! Against all his expectations, Lero could see that Pinkie hadn't completely given up on sleep and hygiene, the way Rainbow Dash had. Yes, she was a grubby and grungy sight... but this was only a single day's worth of dirt and grime clinging to her, the result of good, honest farm labor! (Granny Smith, bless her, had raised her grandkids with an adequate appreciation for cleanliness.) The circles under her eyes were not NEARLY as inky-black as Dash's, (her eyes weren't even bloodshot!) All the same, in contrast to Apple Bloom, Pinkie Pie looked practically dead on her feet.

"Hey, thanks ya, Rare, fer makin' the trip out heah, the farm is needin' it somethin' powerful." she sighed. "Ah jes' don't know what's goin' wrong."

Apple Bloom muttered quietly, "Ah could tell you whut, it's pink an' got four legs."

"Oh, you're quite welcome, Pink..." Rarity started.

"WHUT DID YEW SAY!?" Lero cursed inwardly. Either Pinkie's hearing was better than Applejack's, or Apple Bloom had simply misjudged her volume.

Apple Bloom shot Pinkie a resentful look. Lero guessed that Pinkie's casual verbal abuse of the filly hadn't let up since he'd last saw them, and she'd just had about her fill of it. "Gee, Sis, don't tell me yer goin' deaf, too."

Lero winced, Rarity let out a gasp, Flitter gives a look of shock.... and Cloudchaser snickered.

"That's it! Go to your room! Raight now!" Pinkie practically snarled.

"Yew can't make me! Yer not mah Ma!" Apple Bloom snapped back.

Pinkie's eyes practically blazed with anger, as she stomped the ground dangerously close to Apple Bloom’s own hooves. Lero had to resist the urge to pull her away to safety.

"MA’S DEAD,” she pointed out. “AH’VE pretty much BEEN Ma for ya, in case yew’ve fergotten everythang since yew were in diapers. So yew'll do what Ah say! So git! We got grown-up bizness to do, and we don' need lil' fillies who’re as useless as a glass sledgehammer, an inflatable dartboard, and a wax skillet all at once!”

For a moment, Apple Bloom looked ready to snap back, but finally slumped her shoulders. "Fine," she said, slouching towards the farmhouse.

Pinkie inhaled deeply, rubbing her forehead, seeming to calm down. "Sorreh 'bout that, guys. Ah'dve not had her out here at all, but Bloomy insisted on gettin' ta see ya when y'all got here."

"It's... alright." Rarity replied hesitantly, as Flitter and Cloudchaser stepped back from the great pink grump. "Is everything alright?"

Lero had to strongly push down the urge to stare daggers at Pinkie, instead he settled at aiming his daggers at her cutie mark instead.

"Peachy," Pinkie replied. "Now, if'n yew don't mind, ladies... and Lero... Ah'm gonna get to work, so ya’ll best go do the same."

"Uh, we are gonna start making it rain,” Cloudchaser warned. “You sure you don’t want to be inside, miss?” Cloudchaser asked.

"Chores ain't gonna do themselves." Pinkie replied, waving at them offhandedly as she walked off.

"Well, then, girls." Rarity stepped up to her team. "Let's get started, shall we? Flitter, have the rest of the teams gotten their assignments?"

Flitter saluted. "Yes, ma'am!"

"Kiss-up," Cloudchaser smirked.

Flitter just stuck her tongue out at her.

Rarity was amused by it all. "Alright, then, we should get started..."

"Before you do..." Lero looked of the odd trio of weathermares; the unicorn standing out like a sore thumb. "...Can I ask you all something?"

Flitter nodded. "Of course, Boss!" Flitter had started calling Lero that after she'd learned about his relationship with Rainbow Dash. When Dash had asked, Flitter had explained that while Dash was in charge of her, Dash clearly now answered to someone else. ‘My boss’ Boss is MY Boss, as well,’ was how she put it. Dash had laughed, agreed, and the nickname stuck. Apparently, that'd managed to carry over to Rarity.

"Well... Weather is an exclusively pegasus thing, right?"

"Yup!" Cloudchaser agreed, thumping her chest with a hoof.

"Right in one, Boss!" Flitter concluded, with a hearty nod.

"Absolutely exclusive!" Rarity asserted. He clearly heard the selfsame ‘pegasus pride’ in Rarity’s voice as the actual two pegasus mares, and had to stop himself from laughing.

"And...?" He prompted, wondering if they'd put two and two together.

They looked at each other. "And what, dear?" Rarity inquired.

Huh. Apparently not. "Uhm, I don't know if it's rude for me to point out, but... Rarity, you're a unicorn."

He was expecting to see the spell's now trademark 'Blank-Zombie-Stare-While-I-Figure-This-Out.’ However, Rarity just laughed in good humor.

"No, not rude at all, dear."

"She's a weather unicorn." Cloudchaser told him, as if that explained everything.

Seeing the confusion on Lero’s face, Flitter explained; "They're really rare, but they're honorary pegasi."

“Honorary... pegasi.” Lero repeated slowly.

"Yes, indeed, dear." Rarity told him. "I grew up in Cloudsdale. Born of pegasus parents and raised among the clouds. I understand and get along well with pegasi; for they are my people."

She smiled at the other two, who nodded in a firm show of pegasus camaraderie.

Lero closed his mouth into an appreciative, gentlemanly smile. “Thank you, ladies, for clarifying that for me. I promise I won’t hold you up any longer.”

“Not at all, darling,” Rarity said, before turning to her assistants. "Anyhow, let's get started. Chaser, head southwest, I want you watching out for anything out of Everfree... we're a lot closer than normal and any unexpected weather fronts out of there could seriously foul things up. Flitter, you're going to be watching the Northeast side- careful not to let anything get away from us! We don't want any more... unscheduled weather drifting into Ponyville. I'll head to the center of the Orchard and start summoning up the clouds."

She hopped back up on the cloud they’d arrived in. "Lero? Are you going to be alright down here? It's going to be a rather... steady storm."

He held up his umbrella, which he'd grabbed just before leaving the house. "Still got this."

She laughed. "Alright. But if something happens, don't hesitate to call out to me or my girls. I know you don't intend to be a distraction, but I don't want my stallion getting sick."

She gave him an intense look.

"Don't worry, Rarity. I know where 'being a pest' ends and 'self-endangerment' begins."

"You’d better." She blew him a kiss and a wink.

"What, none for me?" Cloudchaser teased. Rarity laughed, blew her a kiss and a wink, and waved her off.

As Rarity and Cloudchaser flew off, Flitter lingered behind, watched them leave, before turning to Lero. "Hey, Boss, got a minute?"

Surprised, Lero nodded. "Sure, Flitter, what's up?"

"Mind if I ask... what happened to you two? In Bramblewood? I mean, I heard Rarity's story, but... I'm wondering if we're missing something... I mean, don't get me wrong, she's messed up a few times in the past... like that time she accidentally made that sleet storm..."

Lero recognized what she was talking about; a few months back a sudden cold front from Everfree turned a gentle shower into freezing sleet. the town had been covered in ice before the weather team could stop it, which caused all sorts of problems and minor accidents. He recalled Rainbow complaining how the schedule had been thrown off for weeks due to the amount of sunny days needed to melt the ice. Was Flitter attributing accidents and misfortunes suffered by Rainbow's team to Rarity losing control?

"...But it's never been like this! Ever since she came back from that vacation with you, her magic's been going wrong constantly. I'm starting to worry there might be something serious at hoof."

Lero studied Flitter’s earnest, anxious-to-help face for a good, long while. She was bewitched, just like all the rest. It wasn’t like she remembered Rainbow Dash. And yet... all the same... Lero got a powerful sense that Flitter had a stronger awareness than all the others that something was gravely amiss. To see that level of awareness was an unimaginable relief, especially coming from a pony who’d be on his side.

But as with all of the Bewitched, he’d need to word his answers very carefully. If Flitter started... even good-intentionally... interfering too greatly with Rarity’s weather duties, it would get... messy.

"Well... we both went through a lot,” he said. “Do know you everything about what happened to us in Bramblewood?”

Flitter nodded. “Last time we met her, Rarity gave a full-out reenactment of how you were cocooned by that giant spider, and she killed it to save you. Fun story!” Her brow furrowed. “It wasn’t JUST a story, though, was it?”

“Every word of it was true,” he assured her.

“Whoa.”

“But now, back to the matter at hand. I... can’t say what’s the matter with her, myself. Maybe the experience of it traumatized her a little... I did almost die. Or possibly... did she tell you that the spider bit her? Maybe its venom could’ve had a lingering effect. But the doctors gave her a clean bill of health, so I dunno.” He met her eyes. “But if I figure anything out, or need help, I'll come to you about it. Okay, Flitter?"

She saluted, with a big smile. "Anytime, Boss! I gotta get in position now, see ya!"

With that, she was off like a shot.

He started walking about the farm. Above him, he heard the weather team calling to each other. One thing he'd noted about Pegasi: they were extraordinarily good at projecting their voices, moreso than other ponies. Useful for communicating over the long distances involved in flight, he supposed. Which, of course, made Fluttershy that much more of an oddball among the members of her race.

"Alright girls, ready?" For her part, Rarity was also blessed with a powerful, carrying voice.

"Ready!"

"Here it comes!" There was a loud crackle as clouds formed out of nothingness... out of the hydrogen and oxygen molecules hanging in the air! It seemed this was one of the primary advantages of having a Weather Unicorn: Weather magicked up on the spot! No need for Flitter and Cloudchaser to chase stray clouds and bunch them together, or have them shipped from Cloudsdale or some other major cloud city.

"Nnnnnngh...!" Lero glanced up, startled, at the sound of one of Rarity's ‘Artistic Outbursts.‘ Golden tendrils of cloud starting to form out from the storm. Admittedly, they were quite pretty, but they put him uncomfortably in mind of some... living, tentacled creature, reaching towards the ground. He hoped they weren't solid enough to do damage.

"Chaser! Break them up!" He heard Flitter shout.

"Already on it!" He saw the two weather Pegasi zoom into the emerging tendrils, and, with devastating kicks, break them apart, dissipating them into golden mist that faded away.

"Thank you, girls," He heard Rarity breath. "Now let's get back to..."

Lero's concentration on the sky was broken as he tripped over something. He cursed, righted himself, and looked at what he'd tripped over.

A large plow, half-buried in the ground.

An unsteady, wavering trail of plowing led up to the plow’s current location. It seemed to have hit a hard spot, and gotten stuck. Multiple hoof prints were all around the plow — an obvious attempting to free it — but he suspected the pony they belonged to must’ve given up around the point where the wooden handle had cracked.

He gave a small start, at the thunderous cracks of harlequin-patterned lightning. Putting up his umbrella, he continued touring the place, to take the rest of the farmstead in. As the rain fell at a light patter, he noticed more and more problems; some subtle, some obvious. Wilting trees was only the beginning.

For instance, there were many broken spots along the farms’ fences that had either been repaired shoddily... or not at all. Some of the irrigation channels hadn't been properly completed, or were blocked by debris, so the water poured out in inefficient puddles where no crops grew. More worryingly, while the crops were looking sickly, the weeds were thriving remarkably.

He spotted Pinkie Pie pulling a cart full of chicken cages, back up from the gardens. He remembered how Applejack had usually let the chickens out in the garden to help fertilize it, so Pinkie must be returning them to their coop. However, the rain was making the pathway slick...

CRASH!

"Awww, dangit!"

The cart overturned, scattering flapping, clucking chickens everywhere.

"Hey, Pinkie, can I...?"

"No taime, no taime!" Pinkie waved him off, attempting to round up the chickens.

Sighing, he shut his umbrella to help her, chasing after a rooster for about five minutes in the pouring rain, before noticing she'd disappeared. He looked left, looked right, heard the creak of metal, and then looked upwards.

Now she was struggling with a broken rain gutter on the barn’s roof, which was spraying water in an arc onto the path, rather than into the collection barrel.

"No matter whut ah try, ah cannot fix this bastard water spout!" She snarled, before the entire thing gave way, crashing to the ground. Pinkie burst out into a storm of creative swearing Lero would otherwise not think her capable of. Lero headed over to help her up, before a chicken ran by, and she was off like a shot after it.

Lero was starting to grasp why things were in such lousy shape: not only was Pinkie bad at farming, but she was easily distracted, switching between one unfinished task to the next at the blink of an eye.

Lacking much else to do, he entered the barn. It appeared that many of the tools were in need of sharpening and repair. The farm tools had been laid out neatly on a worktable, next to a whetstone and a tool repair kit... still dull, still broken, and with a light coat of dust. He also saw mounds of hay, half-finished in being baled and stacked, and...

He stared towards the canner. Almost all the cans of apple preserves around it were clearly swollen, apparently not properly cooked before being improperly sealed. One was cracked, and the smell coming off of it was out-and-out poisonous, and this was no hyperbole.

"Jesus." he murmured, taking the cans and racing them out to the garbage heap, before Pinkie could actually bring them to market. As he walked back, something struck him as deeply, intensely wrong.

Where the hell was Big Macintosh in all this?

While he was a stallion of few words, Big Mac was a good friend of his, maybe even more so than Applejack. Not saying hi would make sense if he was busy with chores... but he'd not seen any sign of him. At all. Just Pinkie and her frantic, frustrated failures.

All by herself.

This made no sense.

"Lero! Darling! We're breaking for lunch! Care to join us?" Rarity called from above, descending down towards him on her cloud chariot.

"Sure, but... Can you see Pinkie from up there?" He called. He spotted her scanning around, before locking her gaze in the distance.

"Yes, I see her down over in an orchard."

"Can you take me to her? Please?"

Rarity tilted her head. "Of course, my prince, but what's this about?"

"I need a word with her. It's important."

Rarity took in Lero's look of determination. "Alright, my love. I'll get you right over. Come aboard?"

Lero climbed up on the chariot with a single step, and within moments they were at Pinkie's side. She was bucking trees, slightly more effectually now, but nowhere near Applejack's skill. The apples kept beaning her on the head.

"Hey, Pinkie!" Lero called to her.

She looked up, annoyed. "Whut!?"

He stepped off the chariot as they got close. "Can I ask you a question?"

"Make it snappy! Questions distract me from mah farm chores!"

He looked her square in the eye. "Where’s Big Mac?"

Several emotions flickered through her eyes, gone before he could name them. "Where’s Big Mac?" She mimicked, her voice suddenly strained.

Lero nodded vigorously. "Yeah! Where’s he at? I've not seen him around anywhere since we got back from Bramblewood! Not in town, and not on this farm!" He pressed her shoulder, this wasn't something he was going to let her get a pass on.

Apple Bloom was one thing. If Lero were to stretch his sympathy for this curmudgeonly crabapple to its absolute limit... he could sorta understand why Pinkie Pie would be so short with her. After all, Pinkie was hapless enough on her own without adding a second clumsy, accident-prone sister.

But Mac was another story. Big Macintosh was every bit the workaholic workhorse which Pinkie had now become, only his work bore fruit. Lots of fruit. And even at her absolute grouchiest, the Applejack of old had treasured her big brother, through and through. The Elements of Harmony might’ve all been best friends and allies, but here on this farm, Applejack and Big Mac were partners; the left and right hands of Sweet Apple Acres. If even just half of Applejack’s respect, love and honor for him had transferred over to Pinkie Pie’s heart... there’d be no way she’d have done anything to drive Big Macintosh off these fields.

Pinkie suddenly shuddered, closing her eyes. "Ah... Ah never told yew?" she blinked at him. "Bloomy never told yew?" The rain made it hard to tell if she was crying, but... "Nopony never told yew?" ...the tone in her voice and her posture made him strongly suspect.

Fear struck his heart. He couldn't be... dead? No, someone would have mentioned that! "Told me what? ...Pinkie, what happened to Mac?"

Pinkie’s shivers were definitely not due to the rain. "'Bout a day after yew ‘n’ Rarity flew out from Ponyville... a monster from the Everfree Forest snuck into our pigpen and ate up all our pigs. Big Mac heard it happenin’ and tried to put a stop to it, but the monster... it very near done him in."

Lero snorted in disbelief. "I can’t imagine ANY forest animal getting the drop on Big Mac."

Pinkie looked sadly at him. "Lero, sugarcube... with the Everfree, there are monsters, which are jest gussied-up critters... and there are MONSTERS. Thangs that look lahk they crawled out o' yer nightmares. This thang was a MONSTER. Ah had to set the pigpen on fire, jest ta scare it away. That’s the only reason mah brother ain’t... ain’t..."

Her voice cracked with emotion, unable to finish the sentence. She suddenly pushed past it, and burst out with words.

"He’s in Ponyville Hospital now! And it’s bad, Lero, really bad! Nearly took off all four of his legs! All four! He can’t walk! Can’t work!"

Lero was agog at the concept. Big Mac, crippled? He could hardly imagine a worse fate for the proud stallion. "The doctors can heal him, right?!"

Pinkie managed to put on a weak, shaky smile. "Yeah. Yeah, Gotta be grateful fer that. But they think it’ll take a while." She shivered again. "An entire season. Maybe two! Ah’m all on mah own!"

Finally the dam burst, and the Pink mare sobbed outright. Lero reached out to her, and she hugged him fiercely, sobbing into his shoulder.

Rarity had been watching politely from a distance, but this caught her attention. She stepped off the chariot, walking toward them. "Lero? Pinkie?"

"Ssssh, give us a moment, Rarity." Pinkie's sobs grew into a loud wail.

"Ohhhh, Macky, Macky... Ah shoulda ran faster! Ah shoulda ran faster! These legs a’mine are the most WORTHLESS THANGS EVER!"

* * *

Lero peered into the hospital room at his farmer friend, waiting for Rarity to come back from the mares’ restroom, close by. Big Macintosh hadn’t noticed that he was standing there yet. Never had the human seen the gentle red giant of Sweet Apple Acres look so dismally bored; alternating between staring out through the window, staring at the wall, staring at himself, and sighing the sigh of a pony who’d run out of things to think about.

It was almost a crime that they didn’t have TV shows for the patients to watch. How weird Equestrian technology was! Almost disjointed, at times! They had movies at the movie theater... but no television sets, not even old-time black and white ones! The movies were in COLOR too!

Lero felt the side of Rarity’s body brush against his own, and she looked up at him expectantly. He nodded at her, and knocked on the already-open door.

“Mr. Macintosh? You have visitors,” he called in.

Big Macintosh turned towards them. He smiled in gladness as they entered in. “Howdy.”

“Howdy, yourself!” said Lero.

“It’s very good to see you, Macintosh,” greeted Rarity, with honesty and grace. “We just heard about what happened to you from Pinkie. Are you feeling well?”

Big Macintosh was never one to burden others with his problems, so he merely gave a noncommittal grunt, then asked,

“Those for me?” The stallion was eyeing the bouquets of get-well-soon flowers, that Lero and Rarity were carrying. Both of them nodded. “Lero, ya got yers off Sweet Apple Acres, right?”

“Sure did,” the human said. Lero had picked twelve sunflower heads off from the farm’s sunflower fields. “Just a little reminder of the homestead, Mac. They all miss you there.”

“Mine are from our outside garden,” said Rarity, showing him her own array of dahlias and zinnias. “Spike does most of the garden-work, but I water them all personally.”

Big Macintosh smiled at how fresh and pretty they were. “May Ah have yours first, Lero?”

“Absolutely,” said Lero, and held them out within range of Macintosh’s mouth. The farmer leaned forward, bit down on a sunflower and pulled it into his mouth, chewing happily.

Here was yet another thing that differentiated stallions from human men: stallions tended to be far more receptive to getting flowers as gifts, especially when they could eat them like grapes. They were less "Pretty" than "Snacks that stay fresh when you put them in water." Lero set the rest of the sunflower bouquet by Big Mac’s head, in easy reach, while Rarity set hers atop a small wheeled table.

“Much obliged,” said his friend. With his limbs in the condition they were in, he couldn’t shift around in bed. All four of his legs were in casts which smelled heavily of potent medicine.

His family had signed their names and left messages on his casts:

From Apple Bloom: “Please get better soon!”

From Granny Smith: “Granny loves you.”

From Pinkie Pie: “I’m so, so, so, so SO sorry I wasn’t faster! I love you, Macky.”

Big Macintosh motioned his head invitingly towards a black permanent marker on the table. Lero took it and wrote: STAY STRONG, MAC!! — LERO, onto his left foreleg’s cast.

“Hey, Mac,” asked Lero, while writing. “Do you read books? Like, for fun?”

“Eeyup.”

“What’s your favorite genre?”

“Courtroom dramas,” the stallion told him.

That brought the image of terse, taciturn Big Macintosh in the role of Phoenix Wright into Lero’s mind, and he smiled, wondering who the pony equivalent of John Grisham was. “If you like I can pick up a few of those courtroom dramas for you and let you borrow them. I live in a library, after all.”

The scarlet stallion shook his head with a regretful smile. “How’m Ah gonna read it?”

"You can..." He started.

Lero almost said: Just use your hoof to...

Then he almost said: Just call a nurse and have her...

But he didn’t. Because Lero remembered his own hospital stay; being unable to move his limbs. Even if Mac were to use his mouth to turn the pages... it’d probably be real difficult without full mobility.

"...Well, I'll try to figure something out." He finished.

He cast a look at Rarity, and suddenly felt a little spoiled. On one hand, he hadn’t even been able to speak the way Big Macintosh could... but Mac didn’t even have anyone to speak TO. At least he’d had Rarity with him to provide him with mental stimulation. She’d read him all those books, and made sure that all the visitors who wanted a look at him were good people. She’d kept out the bad eggs.

He passed the marker over to Rarity, who wrote: Wishing you a speedy recovery, Rarity. Her calligraphy was fancy enough to serve for a wedding invitation.

“So what exactly happened, Macintosh?” she asked him.

“Thought Pinkie told ya,” said Big Mac.

“Pinkie basically told us a summary,” Lero said. “She said that some kind of big monster from the Everfree overpowered you, and she had to burn the pigpen down to scare it off.”

Big Macintosh’s face darkened with the memory of what had brought him to this hospital room. “Weren’t jest ‘sum kinda big monster.’ No, sir. What did this ta me was a glufferflork.”

Lero felt his lips quirk in an odd direction. “Gluffer... what?”

“A glufferflork? Are you quite sure?” Rarity asked, intently. “Glufferflorks haven’t been seen in the Everfree for decades.”

“Ah saw what attacked me, Miss Rarity,” the farmer insisted. “Ah knows a flork when Ah sees it.”

“Gluffer... flork,” repeated Lero, with a bemused shake of his head. “What, did Roald Dahl make up that name? Or Lewis Carroll? Or maybe Dahl came up with the first bit and Carroll cooked up the second?”

Both the ponies passed him puzzled frowns.

“Sorry. Human humor,” said Lero. “Would one of you mind telling me what a... ‘flork’ is? I’m pretty sure they don’t exist back on Earth.”

“Then Earth is quite a lucky world,” Rarity told him. “Glufferflorks are a sort of slime monster. They’re said to be very predatory, they’re capable of growing to enormous sizes, and their bodies are highly acidic. That’s how they eat prey.”

“Eeyup.” Big Mac drew a long breath in. “Night was late. Pig squeals woke me. Squealing like they was bein’ knifed. Ah ran over. Flork was eatin’ them. Awful sight. Awful. Ah was dumb. Tried buckin’ the thang. Mah legs went straight through its body. Like kickin’ swamp muck. Burned like hell. Flork slid over mah front legs too when Ah fell over. Ah screamed. Pinkie came quick. Pull me outta the flork by herself. Must've been a heck of an adrenaline kick, there. Left me on the grass. Such a good sister. Flork didn’t chase me. It had an entire pigpen left to eat. Pinkie ran into our home. Ran back out with a burning log and ten bottles o’ hooch on Apple Bloom’s little toy wagon. Threw the hooch on all over the pigpen walls and the flork, itself. Set the pigpen on fire. Flork skedaddled.”

“Wow,” said Lero. “You’re lucky to be alive!”

“Eeyup.”

“Are you still in pain?” asked Rarity, patting his shoulder with telekinesis.

“How bad’s the damage?” Lero also piped in.

“Docs have me on painkillers. ‘Profound damage to the tissues’... that’s how the docs put it.” The red stallion tried flexing a back leg, and let out a wordless groan. “Reckon Ah’m gonna be here a while yet.”

“Mac... if there’s anything I can do, just name it!” Lero offered.

“Tell me how things’re goin’ at the farm,” asked Big Mac. “Bloom’s too young, Granny’s too old, and Pinkie’s too busy to stop by and visit. Are things goin’ well there?”

“Oh!” said Rarity, with a smile. “Well, Pinkie’s running the farm... efficiently enough. Efficiently as she always does! I was there today, providing rain for your crops!”

Lero turned towards the white unicorn. His initial thought was that this must be the bewitchment at play again. But no... he could see it in her eyes, in the falseness of her smile.

“It’s like you never even left!” she told Big Mac.

This time, Rarity didn’t actually believe the words coming out of her mouth. This time, she was flat-out, deliberately lying. And knew it.

“Thanks, Miz Rarity. Ah’m glad to hear that.”

The smile on the big stallion’s face was so full of relief. Lero couldn’t really hold it again Rarity for wanting to fib to him. Being bedridden, and unable to move any of his legs... the poor guy NEEDED some good news to keep him smiling throughout the long, empty days of recuperation which were to follow.

But he thought of all the care and hard work Big Mac had always put into the farm. He thought of Apple Bloom, so horribly bullied and disdained by Pinkie Pie.

“...Rarity, I can't do this. It's not right. I’m very sorry, Big Mac,” Lero said, pulling up a chair next to his bed. “But... I have quite a different story to tell about how things are going at Sweet Apple Acres.”

“Lero, don’t!” Rarity pleaded.

“Don’t what?” asked Big Mac, with a growing frown. “What’s going on?”

And he told Big Macintosh everything. He told him about the trees that Pinkie Pie couldn’t buck right, day after day. He told him about the damaged fences and the widespread weeds. At first, Big Macintosh was laughing his story off as a joke... but the laughter died away, especially because Rarity wasn’t laughing along. In fact, the unicorn kept looking down at her hooves, shamefaced.

He told him about their chickens running loose, the plow half-buried in the mud, the tools left blunt and unfixed, Pinkie’s inability to buckle down and finish a single chore all the way through to completion. Big Macintosh went still as a tomb as Lero quoted the conversations he’d heard between Pinkie Pie and Apple Bloom. Rarity was hiding her face in a hoof.

“...And the cans of apple preserves I found in the barn... they were giving off just this POISONOUS smell!”

“Poisonous?” The stallion was absolutely aghast.

“Well... when I say ‘poisonous,’ I don’t mean to imply that Pinkie was mixing arsenic into the apple preserves, or anything. But she just wasn’t canning your cans the right way at all. To me, it looked like they’d been exposed to the open air for days... maybe even a week or so. They were giving off this sickly-sweet smell... they'd gotten a visit from Sam 'n' Ella, if you catch my drift. I knew that if anyone actually ate it, they’d be violently sick for days.”

Hard steel set into Big Macintosh’s eyes. It didn’t matter one bit that he was an invalid. A sleeping giant had been rudely awakened.

“Lero... Rarity... Ah want yew two ta bring mah sister Pinkie here. NOW.”

Author's Note

Major thanks to Rikmach, especially for writing the scene with Cloudchaser and Flitter!

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Fourteen: Pinkie Pie Talks About Oranges

“MMMRRRRRAAAAAAOOOOOOWWWWWWWW!!!!”

Other ponies could probably be forgiven for thinking that a live, angry wildcat had just invaded the hospital, furious and yowling as if sprayed with a hose... for Pinkie Pie was acting like she’d been swapped with one.

She hissed. She spat. She freshly reacquainted many to the true meaning of the word ‘caterwaul.’ She’d long since given up yelling actual words, having since then shifted into shouting rustic, countryside profanity, finally settling into these catlike snarls and yowling. She clawed, (yes, clawed, with her hooves,) at the entrapment balloon she was held inside.

The entrapment balloon was a useful spell. It was just like the telekinetic entrapment bubbles which Twilight Sparkle used to confine Dash’s unruly animals... but with one key addition. There was a magical tether connecting the base of the bubble to Rarity’s horn, so that she was able to drag Pinkie through the air rather like a kid pulling a toy balloon by its string. Only problem was that the pink pony kept flailing backwards in the direction of the farm like a chain chomp in a Super Mario Brothers game, causing Rarity to jerk uncomfortably back and forth.

“Aah! P-pinkie! Please!” cried Rarity, now looking somewhat like a fisherman reeling in a giant marlin.

“Farming’s... not... FINISHED!!!” Pinkie snarled, finding her words.

“Don’t let ‘er go!” Apple Bloom cheered, skipping between Lero and Rarity. “Dig yer hooves in, Miz Rarity! Yew wanna keep a tight grip on that there ornery polecat!”

“Yew weedy lil’ traitor!” Pinkie Pie spat with her fiercest glower. “Ah’ll peel yew like a Golden Delicious once we’re back home!”

The little filly just blew a raspberry at her ‘big sister.' “Totally worth it!”

“Excuse me!” shouted an important-looking mare, trotting up to them. “I’m the director of this hospital! What the MEANING of all this?! You’re in a hospital, not a zoo! You’re disrupting our patients, some of whom are in delicate condition, indeed!”

“TELL ‘EM TA LET ME FARM!” Pinkie shrieked, bouncing against the walls of her balloon like the larva of a jumping bean moth, just nowhere near as endearing.

The hospital director took a step back, especially at the froth bubbling between Pinkie’s teeth, as Rarity stammered, “Well... I... we...”

Lero stepped in between Rarity and the director. “Please forgive us all, Miss Director, ma’am, especially for all the disruption we’re causing. Allow me to introduce my associates, the Element of Lau... of Loyalty, Rarity, and the Element of Honesty, Pinkie Pie. Maybe you’ve heard of them? We’re here on official Element of Harmony business, seeking to prevent another global catastrophe of apocalyptic proportions.”

“Huh?!” shrieked Pinkie, he frantic gyrations coming to a halt, too stunned to even protest further at this moment.

“A global catastrophe?” asked the director, he brow furrowing in confusion. “Of what nature?”

“All I can tell you this: the fate of the entire world rests on us reaching a certain patient of yours unimpeded,” he told her, in his finest Doctor Who impersonation. “So I’m sorry, but if you have any further objections, I suggest that you send your letter of complaint straight to Princess Celestia. Tell her, ‘It was the human.’ She’ll confirm everything I’m telling you!”

And he pushed past the director, the others following after him.

“Wow!” Apple Bloom gushed, as they continued down the corridor. “Ah thought we was jest bringing Pinkie Pie ta see Big Mac! Ah didn’t know we was savin’ the world!”

“We’re not,” Rarity said, shooting a truly dark look at Lero. It was the very first time, Pre-Swap or Post-Swap, that the white unicorn had looked upon Lero with such raw coldness or anger and he shivered, practically seeing the thunderous storm cloud that’d soon be forming over his own head.

“As the Element of Honesty, Ah’m callin’ Liar, Liar, Pants On Fire!” Pinkie cried, pointing at Lero.

“Look, Rarity..." he said, as Rarity began slowing her pace, almost coming to a mulish stop. “Would you say Pinkie's acting anywhere near normal!?”

"Ah'm acting perfectly normal! AH JEST NEED TA FARM!" She practically screamed at them.

Rarity looked up to her. "...I hate to admit it, but... no."

"Yew mincing puffed-up lil' trait...!" Pinkie suddenly found the balloon slammed against the ceiling, bouncing her against the top, causing her to be dazed a few moments. Lero stared at her.

"Her attitude was starting to wear a bit thin on me. She'll forgive me. But anyhow, what was your point, Lero?"

"Well, she's been acting this way since we got back from Bramblewood..."

...Hmmm, what would be a good plausible-sounding excuse that the Swapped could latch onto...?

"...and personally, I suspect it's because she's lost Big Mac. I think bringing her here will help her. Besides, Mac asked us to bring her to him!"

“Well, no disrespect to Big Macintosh,” Rarity huffed. “But he’s not some mafia consigliere, and I’m not his kidnapper-for-hire!”

“I know he's not! But this is important!” he protested.

“I don't see how!” Rarity had come to a complete stop now.

"Do you think that Pinkie'd be much use dealing with an ACTUAL global catastrophe like... that?" He gestured up at the slowly-recovering Pinkie. "Something could happen at any time. If this helps her, it really will be Elements business!"

Rarity frowned. “Perhaps not... and perhaps so. But even still, we’ve dragged Pinkie out here completely against her will! I’m sorry, my love, but that’s just not right, and you know it!”

“Well, Big Macintosh wants yew to bring Pinkie her to ‘im, and Ah want yew ta bring her to ‘im too, so that’s two-over-one! She’s outvoted!”

“IT DON’T WORK THAT WAY, YA MUSH-BRAINED LIL’ SNOTRAG DOOF!!” Pinkie screeched. “YER SO FAR OUT OF YER DEPTH, YA NEED SCUBA GEAR TA KEEP FROM DROWNIN’ IN YER OWN IGNORANCE!”

“PINKAMENA DIANE PIE!”

There was a sudden, all-pervading quiet in the hospital. It's not that Mac was loud per se... he had used a bit of volume, yes, but it was more the tone. The soft-spoken gentle giant of Sweet Apple Acres was singing an entirely different tune: furious! It was like the voice God Almighty saved for Eve and Adam when they’d eaten the forbidden fruit; disappointment so deep your bones felt ashamed.

Rarity was so shocked by its sudden intensity, that her concentration completely broke. Her entrapment balloon popped out of existence causing Pinkie Pie to fall to the floor. But rather than bolt straight back for her farm, Pinkie Pie just stayed in place, shivering like a cripple bug looking up at the underside of a giant shoe.

“YEW QUIT SAYIN’ SUCH HORRIBLE THANGS TA YER LIL’ BABY SISTER, AND GET YER SORRY FLANK OVER HERE!”

It was like the Red Sea parting. Nurses, wheelchair-bound patients, interns, and anything with the remotest capability of locomotion got out of the way, parting a clear path. Pinkie Pie, meek as could be, trotted into her ‘brother’s’ hospital room. Apple Bloom, Rarity, and Lero all followed after her.

Looking at Big Macintosh’s face at that moment told Lero everything he’d need to know about what kind of father he’d be to his future children. It showed anger, but it was righteous and just. Terrifying to a child, but the type that made you fear privileges being revoked... or worse... being the shame of the family... or worst of all, a disappointment to him. Not the darkly menacing sort where the poor kid had to fear broken bones, or worse.

Lero was glad not to have such a look directed at him.

“Pinkie, Ah could hear yew caterwaulin’ from the moment ya’ll stepped inta the hospital,” he said to her firmly.

“Course Ah was cauterwaulin’!” Pinkie attempted a protest, with a hard look at Rarity and Lero. “These two jest up ‘n‘ abducted me right from mah buckin‘ right after Ah told ‘em Ah was too busy to come with ‘em! The only reason Ah ain’t calling the cops on them fer kidnapping is cuz they’re mah friends!”

“They did that because Ah told them to git ya. An' more to tha point, the only reason AH ain’t bootin’ ya off the farm, Pinkie, is cuz yer mah sister!”

Lero swore he saw Pinkie's fur grow several shade lighter as the blood drained from her face. She was reacting as though they were astronauts in a spaceship and Big Macintosh had just seriously threatened to eject her out of the airlock.

“Buh-b—boot m-m-me off?! Off Sweet Apple Acres?! No, Macky! W-w-w-why would yew even SAY such a horrible thang, even if ya don’t really mean it?!”

“Because Ah also been hearin’ OTHER thangs ‘bout yew. Lero here was stand-up enuf to be forthrigh' 'bout what's goin' on at tha farm. ‘Bout the way yew’ve been runnin’ thangs. From what Ah hear about how yer buckin’ the trees... Ah might as well’ve given Lero, here, the job of apple-bucker, and still gotten the same results!”

“Hey!” Pinkie cried, “Ah... Ah... Ah actually gotten enough practice in where SOME of ‘em are fallin’! Sometimes!” She protested feebly, giving a weak grin to Big Mac, but he did not grin back.

“Lero also had some words about the REST of yer farm work, too! Doing everythang stupider than a sackful of square cannonballs!”

“Ah’ve been WORKING HARD!” she cried.

“Yeah. Workin' hard," he snorted. "But not smart. He says yew HAVE been workin’, but ya’ve been as distractible and unfocused as a swarm of drunken hornets, and just as nasty ta be around! There’s not a chore at the farm ya haven’t left half-done! And he says yer apple preserves smell like poison! POISON, Pinkie Pie! That’s the stuff of the Flim Flam brothers, not the Apple Family!”

“It’s true! It’s true, big brother!” Apple Bloom chimed in. “Every word of it’s all true!”

Lero was astonished. Maybe courtroom dramas WERE the right genre for Mac, because he really got WORDY when chewing out the wrongdoers, demolishing every effort they made to defend themselves.

As Pinkie gave Apple Bloom one more indignant scowl, their big brother asked, “IS it true, Pinkie Pie?” He asked, quieter this time... but somehow more intense. Focused. Cutting right to the quick of the matter.

Maybe it was because she was now the ‘Element of Honesty.’ Maybe it was because Macintosh’s eyes brokered no lies. Maybe the pink elephant in the room had finally grown too big to ignore. “Yeah, Macky. It’s true.” She hung her head in shame.

The red stallion’s voice switched from thundering to dismayed. “Ah’d’ve thought this sorta thang of some wine-sipping, opera-goin’ city slicker what never had a plow hitched ta her, not YEW! What happened to ya, Pinkie Pie? Do ya not WANT to be a farmer no more?”

“No! NO!” She cried out. “Ah got my cutie mark cause Ah HAD to be at Sweet Apple Acres! Nowhere else would do! Farmin’ at our farm’s mah whole life!” The pink mare insisted.

And from dismay, Mac slipped into unhappiness. “The sad thang is, Ah kinda believe ya when yew say that,”

"It... it..." Pinkie trailed off, blinking hard, as if holding off tears. "Macky, Ah dunno what's wrong with m-me. Evah since yew got hurt, it... It's lahk everythang got a hundred tahms harder! Ah can't do anythin' as good as Ah remember doing, no matter how hard Ah try!"

Lero thought he’d see a blue moon rise before seeing Big Mac so near to tears. “Yew and Ah, Pinkie, we done EVERYTHING together. Work ‘n‘ play. But now... it’s been over two weeks since the flork got mah legs. Ah know yer tryin’ ta make up for me not being there, but... ya ain’t come by ONCE, Pinkie!”

Heartbroken, Pinkie Pie swept over to Big Mac’s side, giving him regretful, sisterly kisses on his cheek and brow. Even Apple Bloom went and hugged Pinkie’s back legs.

“Ah... Ah didn’t mean fer it to be like this!” Pinkie swore.

“Lero?” Rarity whispered. “Maybe we should give the three of them a moment to themselves.” And she begin to nudge him towards the door with the side of her head, not unlike a sheepdog herding a sheep. “I remember there being this darling little café, just outside the hospital... do you feel like having a cappuccino with me? My treat!”

Lero might have gone along with her to that café, trusting Mac and Apple Bloom to take it from here...

twitch.

GOD DAMMIT.

He saw the Apple Mark spasm on Pinkie’s flank. Her eyes widened while turning to look at it with the same neurotic obedience as Rainbow Dash did with her Butterfly Mark. He gave her a small amount of credit, though, she seemed to fight it for a few seconds longer.

You pig. He thought at the three apples. You unbelievably spiteful slave-driving pig. I don’t think Pinkie Pie’s given herself one break since the night of my welcome home party, and you can’t even allow her to spend a few moments to reconnect with this family you’ve foisted on her. And even beyond what you’re doing to Pinkie Pie... you’re supposed to be a part of Applejack! But between what you’re having Pinkie do to Applejack’s farm and how you’re having her treat Applejack’s family... just what kind of home will Applejack have to come home to, once we DO find a cure? Treacherous, evil pig. You give Pinkie a new life, only to burn it down around her.

Pinkie Pie twitched a few seconds while embracing her brother, before the mark spasmed again, and she suddenly released Mac and began backing towards the door.

“Pinkie?” Big Macintosh asked in disbelief.

She gave him an apologetic, pleading look. “Look, Macky... Ah, Ah’m sorry... Ah understand what yer saying, that Ah need to do the farm work better, and the only way for me ta do that is for me ta be back at the farm!” Lero watched as she backed out oddly, at an angle, almost as if the cutie mark were dragging her backward.

Rarity stopped trying to herd Lero to the darling little café. “Pinkie! Don’t you see we’re trying to help you?!”

“Oh, Ah know, and Ah thank ya for yer concern, ya’ll, really Ah do... but that’s farm life for ya! The work never ends!” She let out a small laugh. It sounded more like a sob.

Pinkie Pie turned to go, only to find Apple Bloom blocking the doorway. “Git outta mah way, Bloomy.”

“W-wait, big sister, please!” the filly insisted.

“Ah need ta farm.” the grumpy menace started to fill her voice again.

Apple Bloom took a gulp, but hit her full-on with her most pleading puppy eyes.

“Please, big sister, i-if yew have any love fer me in yer heart... could ya do one thang fer me? One itty bitty lil’ thang, Ah promise, then Ah’ll stand aside and let ya farm ‘til the cows come home.”

“WHAT?!” Pinkie demanded.

“Tell me the story of how yew got yer cutie mark.” Lero knew that look on the filly's face; Apple Bloom was up to something.

“Mah cutie...?!” The elder sister struck her forehead with a hoof. “Ah already told yew that story!”

“Well, tell it again! Mah memory’s fuzzy!” the younger sister persisted.

From between her teeth, the short-fused sourpuss let out a squeal like that of an impatient weasel.

“Alright! Fine! FINE! From the top!”

Lero and Rarity sat down on the chairs that were there, while Apple Bloom stood where she was and Pinkie paced the floor like a trapped animal. She inhaled deeply and began to let the story spill out of her mouth, rapid-fire, as if attempting to relate facts as fast as possible, rather than tell a story.

* * *

“When Ah was about yer age, Ma and Pa had jest gone on ta their eternal rest. Yew were nothin’ more’n a little sprig of a foal back then, Bloomy. Anyways, the family was decidin’ what ta do with the three of us... Whether Granny could take care of us, whether or not we should be adopted, if'n we three siblins oughta be a package deal, or split up between different aunts, uncles and herdparents. Macky was all fer stayin’ with Granny Smith, but Ah was drawn by all the ritzy glitz and glam of big city life, so Ah decided to go wit' Ma and Pa's old herdmates — Aunt and Uncle Orange. They visited shortly after Ma and Pa passed — and Ah asked 'em if they’d be willin’ ta take me in, and they said yes!”

“Wait... Aunt AND Uncle Orange?” Lero interrupted from his chair.

“Yeah!” Pinkie shot back. “Aunt Mandarin Orange and Uncle Mosley Orange! Like tha' Apples, tha Oranges are a big family! They 'taint related 'cept maybe way way back in the family tree. Not like it's unusual fer ponies wit' the similars names 'ta get hitched. Wann make somethin' of it?”

Lero suddenly recalled Jerry Wilkens, an old middle school classmate of his whose mother and father were both named Chris. “No, no. Go on!”

The look Pinkie shot Lero said: interrupt me again, and that's it. “So Ah boarded a train and went down to Manehatten. Aunt and Uncle Orange, bless ‘em, did their best ta citify me, and it even worked to a certain extent.”

Pinkie was actually beginning to smile; the good memories lifting her out of her bad mood, slowing down her rapid-fire narration. When she spoke again, her voice was every bit as cultured and refined as Rarity’s.

“My dearest uncle and aunt were even able to correct my accent, so that I could sound more like the urbane socialite that they wished to mold me into.”

“Pinkie!” Lero didn’t think Rarity could’ve been more astonished and impressed by this sudden show of sophistication if Pinkie had revealed that she’d been a fellow unicorn, all along. Of course, Lero's wonderment was more based on the fact that Applejack's normal accent was so thick it affected both her and Pinkie after the swap.

The pink mare smiled, and dropped a pony curtsy. “Had I stayed with them, I think it might even have stuck, except...” And she switched back to her old accent, “Ah’d find mahself starin’ out mah bedroom window, wonderin’ what Granny Smith and Big Macintosh were up ta. Ah’d imagine they were buckin’ their way through the Red Delicious trees, or the Golden Delicious... and Ah’d get so homesick...”

The expressions on both her siblings’ faces softened as Pinkie went on. “But then, one day, Ah saw this big and bee-yoo-tee-full rainbow coursin’ through the sky, leadin’ all the way back home to Ponyville.”

“Rainbow...?” Lero repeated in a whisper. He’d felt his heart give a small leap at just that word, even though it wasn’t followed up by ‘Dash.’

“A rainbow!” Pinkie was in elation, seeing it again in her mind’s eye. “Pointin' tha way back home! A sign from above!”

“That rainbow was actually my doing,” Rarity stage-whispered to Lero, with a prideful show of modesty.

“An' I'll never ferget it, yew helpin' me out before I even knew ya, Rarity!” Pinkie Pie beamed.

“Awww, Pinkie...” And the two mares nuzzled.

“Now Ah was a smart gal; when Heaven, itself, sends yew a sign, yew don’t turn a blind eye ta it! So Ah talked to Aunt Orange and Uncle Orange, and they sent me back home!”

Pinkie’s smile was so vivacious and sunny, it was like she’d returned to being the Element of Laughter again. “Ah remember racin’ all the way back from the train station back ta Sweet Apple Acres, and there was Big Mac and Granny, waitin’ fer me right at the front gate! Ah was thrilled ta see them! Ah threw mahself right in between ‘em... we were all nuzzling each other... and that’s when Ah felt the tingle on mah rump.”

She showed off her mark. Without thinking, Lero clapped, before bashfully remembering this wasn’t a theater. Not that Pinkie seemed to mind. She did, however, straighten, and stare down at her little sister.

“Now, Bloomy, explain ta me how that silly old story of mine has ANYTHANG WHATSOEVER ta do with today’s set of problems!”

The young filly looked her square in the eyes. “It has EVERYTHANG ta do with today’s set of problems!”

“Ehhh?!?!?” Her bad attitude was quickly reasserting itself, and she was looming menacingly over Apple Bloom.

“Well... uh... y’know...”

Apple Bloom was shrinking backward, moving to the side, as though to let Pinkie return to the farm. Lero could sense Apple Bloom was onto something important, but what? Whatever it was... Apple Bloom's train of thought has been forcibly derailed by a frightening pink mare... Pinkie Pie was cowing her into silence! What was she going for?

And then it clicked in Lero’s head. Suddenly, Lero had a blinding flash of insight. After grappling with this spell for as long as he had, he'd started to get a feel for its 'personality.' While he was fairly certain it wasn't intelligent, it was still clever; splicing memories and events together into plausible explanations of inconsistencies. But it wasn't subtle. It preferred blunt and simple whenever it could possibly get away with it.

And just as he'd just learned yesterday night, when Twilight had been discussing them at the dinner table... cutie marks were subtle. While they always represented some aspect of a pony — their valor, their nobility, their profession, their talent — everything about them, including their nature was massively subject to interpretation.

Was that it? Was the spell simply too stupid to grasp the subtler aspects of Applejack's cutie mark? Seeing her as nothing more than a ceaseless workaholic? Transforming poor Pinkie into a one-note caricature of her farmer friend?

He stood up, out of his chair. “Apple Bloom’s right! It’s clear you’ve completely lost track of what your cutie mark really represents!” he announced, with a voice full of certainty.

“What?!” Pinkie cried in disbelief, turning on him.

“Think, Pinkie! Think about the story you just told us right now! When did you get your cutie mark? When you bucked your first apple? When you picked up your first garden hoe? When your plowed your first field? When you raked your first leaf pile? When was it? When you slopped your first hog? When you collected your first egg?"

"Of course not! Yew heard mah story!"

"When you were in that bedroom in your aunt and uncle’s house, pining for home, who was it you were always thinking about?”

“Ma—Mah Granny and Big Macintosh...” she answered.

“Not the plow? Not the watering cans? Or the weed killer or any of that?”

She looked understandably insulted. “No! Of course not!”

“And when that train brought you back to Ponyville, and you raced back home to the farm, what was it you ran to first? The chicken coop? The pigpen?”

“No!” She stomped her hoof. “Mah family!”

“Exactly! YOUR FAMILY!” All eyes were fixed on him now. “You ran straight to your family, and THAT’S what gave you your mark! Your family! It was never about tilling the soil or bucking the trees or ANY of that! Sure, they're important, because they're the strongest connection you have to your family, and that's why you're so good at it... but the bottom line, Pinkie? YOUR CUTIE MARK REPRESENTS THE LOVE YOU HAVE FOR YOUR FAMILY.”

Lero could feel it straight in his bones. The cutie mark itself — those three red apples that had once belonged to Applejack — was listening to his words: and it was every inch as thunderstruck as the mare that now bore it.

“But somewhere along the line, you lost sight of that, didn’t you, Pinkamena?” he went on. “You got so caught up picking up the slack for Mac, you got tunnel vision. Doing FARM CHORES became your whole existence, to the point that you put your family SECOND! No, worse than that, they became a BURDEN to you! A bunch of unwelcome distractions.”

He pointed at the first of the apples on Pinkie Pie’s flank.

“You’ve done practically everything in your power to make your little sister feel like dung!”

He pointed at the second apple.

“Your brother got four terrible leg injuries, and the moment he could no longer help you farm, you never once set aside time for him! How long were you planning on leaving him all alone and unvisited in this dull little hospital room?”

“Ah... Ah...”

He pointed at her last apple, but his finger faltered.

“And...! I intended to say something about your grandmother, but I honestly have no idea how you’ve been treating her.”

“She’s been treatin’ Granny like furniture!” Apple Bloom filled him in. “Doesn’t do anything with her at all! Pinkie pretty much just sits at the table with Granny and me when it’s breakfast or suppertime, barely says a word ta either of us as she chews, then heads right out to the farm or to her bedroom when she’s done eatin’!”

Lero pointed his denunciatory finger again, as Big Macintosh looked upon her with shame and disapointment clear on his features. “What she said!” He declared, vindicated.

“Ah’ve been... untrue?” Pinkie’s eyes were as wide as was biologically possible. “Untrue to mah mark? Untrue to mah family?!?!”

“No wonder you’ve been screwing up left and right!” Lero told her. “You’ve put the farm before your family! The cart before the h— pony! Everything you’ve been doing has been completely...”

...He couldn’t resist phrasing it this way...

“...Off the mark.”

Lero sorely wished he'd had a pair of sunglasses to put on, and was faintly disappointed The Who didn't start playing in the background.

Slowly, shakily, Pinkie Pie lowered her rump to the ground. The pupils in her eyes were dilating and constricting with the rapidity of a beating heart.

“Untrue, untrue, untrue...”

The mood shifted rapidly, Lero came down from his high of laying down an epic snark, as he watched Pinkie's mental integrity disintegrate before his eyes. Hers was a special kind of horror: that of the high priestess of some bleak chthonian cult... learning she’s been profaning her own rituals from the very beginning, due to a mistranslation of the Infernal Scriptures.

“Untrue!”

SLAM!

“Untrue!”

SLAM!

“Untrue!”

SLAM!

“Ah have been untrue!”

Almost to a blinding speed, she beat her face into the hospital floor, over and over, as though in devout contrition. A demonstration of unworthiness to her sanguinary, unforgiving god.

“What’s WRONG with ‘er?!” cried Apple Bloom.

The pink mare’s head lifted back up, her eyes finding all of theirs.

...Do not keep Pinkie Pie off of Sweet Apple Acres...

Oh, sweet merciful Jesus. He hadn’t thought this through! He’d made a BIG mistake. He should’ve arranged to have Big Macintosh brought to the farm! (Twilight could’ve pulled a few strings for him!)

“Apple Bloom, get behind us!” he thundered.

“What...?!”

“Just do it! On the bed, with your brother!”

The young filly hopped up, huddled by her brother’s head, looking nothing more than a cornered kitten before a transforming werewolf.

He motioned for Rarity to come over to his side, so they could stand between the Apples and Pinkie. “Rarity, do you have a spell to knock Pinkie Pie out?”

“Knock her out?!” she balked.

“Just LOOK at her!”

Five oceans of bewitchment couldn’t hide Pinkie’s deteriorating state. Her tail curled and uncurled like a party horn at a kid’s birthday. One jagged, farm-worn hoof scraped and scratched at her own forehead, which bled. Sanity and madness were waging a war in Pinkie’s eyes. It almost felt like a vicious alien parasite were about to burst straight through her head.

“Pinkie Pie!” the unicorn shouted in dismay. “What’s wrong?! Say something! It’s Rarity!”

“Just shoot her!” he shouted. “Knock her out!”

"S...She's my friend!"

Discord’s gory montage of the Swapped as murderers replayed in Lero’s mind, along with the roar of the chainsaw from Pinkie The Farmer. If she were to turn homicidal here, they’d need to act fast! Apple Bloom was just a filly and Big Macintosh had never been so vulnerable. If she succeeded in killing all four of them here, there was a whole hospital full of defenseless patients... how many would she carve through before security brought her down? No! Perhaps it was not too late! They could still salvage this, and no one would have to die!

“Do it! It's just a knockout spell! We need to bring her back to the farm RIGHT NOW!!!”

“Farm...” Pinkie repeated stiltedly, like some short-circuiting robot. “...Mark... Brother... Trees... Sister... Apples... Oranges... the beautiful rainbow... Ah... must... Ah must...... aaaaaaaaaahh!”

Bursting into tears, Pinkie Pie ran from Mac’s hospital room, barreling into the public bathroom right outside Big Mac's room. She wept loudly. In the others’ dumbstruck silence, Rarity went out and entered the bathroom herself. Upon returning, she informed the others, “She’s locked herself inside a stall. I think we should just let her be and give her a chance to cry.”

“Ah DO love mah famileee—heee—heeeehhhhhhhh!” they heard her hitching, quavering bawl.

Big Macintosh took in a shuddery gulp, as she proceeded to wail. “This is all MAH fault.”

Lero’s head snapped around. “YOUR fault?" Lero couldn't fathom this interpretation of events. "How do you figure?”

The bed-bound stallion hung his head. “There was anuther time... few years back, we were right’n the middle of Applebuck Season. Biggest bumper crop of apple ya ever did see. Ah’d gotten injured. Couldn’t work. Pinkie felt she had ta do it all by herself. Nearly ran herself inta the ground...”

“I remember that time too!” Rarity realized. “Pinkie and I had prearranged for her to help me brainstorm new ideas for weather. She was so exhausted and burnt out... I nearly ended up causing a wildfire based on the advice she gave!”

“This... this is SO much worse than that time!” And the big lug began to cry, himself. Small, silent tears. “Pinkie... Ah was weak. Ah’m so sorry...”

“Will Pinkie need doctors of her own lookin’ at her?” Apple Bloom whispered, the tiny filly filled with worry.

“Ah dunno,” her brother answered, hanging his head lower, well, at least as well as a stallion in his position could.

“But... with her gone too... who’ll run the farm?” She almost squeaked.

“Ah dunno.” Macintosh repeated, having no more answers than her. At that, Apple Bloom turned her face into Rarity’s leg and wept into it.

“It ain’t fair!” she cried. “It ain’t fair!” Rarity hugged the child tightly to her and made soothing, motherly shushing noises.

Lero, for his part, found his attention fixed upon Apple Bloom. Picturing this little farmer girl at Sweet Apple Acres. Envisioning what it must’ve been like when her sister, brother, and grandmother taught her the run of the place... Lero's nimble brain popped in another idea; this time, though, he was fairly certain it'd not be as disastrous.

“Hey, Apple Bloom?” he asked. “How well do you know how to run your family’s farm?”

Rubbing her eyes, Apple Bloom turned to face Lero. “Ah... Ah’m gonna do what Ah can. Ah hafta. With Pinkie and Mac in the state they’re in, Ah’m the last one left, ‘sides Granny... but Ah’m still jest one lil’ girl, and it’s such a big farm!” She squeezed her eyes shut. “Ah... Ah suppose it won’t be ALL bad! No more school, ‘cuz they’ll need me workin’ the farm full-time! And... and Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo are such good friends... they can probably go Crusadin’ on their own for a few seasons... or so... Ah know they won't ferget about me...”

With renewed sympathy, Rarity hugged the filly again from behind.

“That isn’t quite what I was getting at,” Lero clarified. “Let me ask again, Apple Bloom: how well do you know HOW to run your family’s farm? Just the ‘HOW’ of it?”

“Well... pretty much everythang,” she answered. “I know Sweet Apple Acres like the front of mah hooves!”

All the ponies in the room were surprised to see a slight smile form on Lero’s face. He stepped forward towards Big Macintosh. “Big Mac, my friend... I have an idea I’d like to run by you. Something I think you really ought to consider before sending Pinkie to the psychiatrists.”

The large stallion shifted slightly to get a better look at Lero. “Ah’m listenin’.”

“My idea is that we send both Pinkie Pie and Apple Bloom back to Sweet Apple Acres to tackle the farm work. Only I think we should let Apple Bloom be the big sister.”

“Huh?” said Rarity.

“Wha?” said Big Macintosh.

“ME be big sister?!” Apple Bloom chirped.

Lero nodded. “Hear me out: The way I see it, Mac, between your two sisters... after Pinkie's breakdown, Apple Bloom’s now the most emotionally stable. She’s got her head on straight, and she knows how to do things around the farm. Therefore, she should be big sister for a while. Be the one in charge, help Pinkie remember how to do things.”

“But... but Pinkie Pie HATES me...” said Apple Bloom.

“You sure about that?” Lero inquired. “Why don’t you go ask her?”

She squinted at him, as if trying to divine whether he was teasing her. “Jest go inta the bathroom and ask, ‘Hey, Pinkie, d’ya hate me?’ Jest like that?”

He shrugged. “Just like that. Keep it simple.”

"If'n you say so..." Skeptically, Apple Bloom went into the restroom. Lero lingered behind, pressing his ear against the restroom’s door, hearing Pinkie’s weeping and the filly knock on her stall’s door.

“Hey, uh, Pinkie?” Apple Bloom asked. “Do you hate me?”

He heard the stall door’s open, and waited several seconds for some sort of verbal reply, but all he heard was more weeping. For a brief second he felt terror, wondering if he just sent Apple Bloom to her doom... but there wasn't any sound like that, either. Rarity came up next to him, flicking her ear against the door as well. Finally, she nudged it open, so they could have a peek inside.

Pinkie Pie had Apple Bloom enveloped in a tight, tearfully apologetic hug.

* * *

He shut the door quietly, and turned back to his friend.

“So what happens if this plan a’ yers don’t work out?” Big Mac questioned. “If Bloom ain’t able to help her?”

Lero shrugged. “If all else fails, we can always bring the head doctors to see Pinkie. But at least we gave it one last shot. And if it works, it means less problems at the farm, and Apple Bloom won't need to be pulled out of school. I think the benefits are worth it.”

The clopping of small hooves let them all know Apple Bloom had returned. “She doesn’t hate me!” she told her brother, to which the big guy smiled.

“That’s good. Bloom, we’re gonna try out Lero’s idea. Fer the next couple weeks or so... however-long... yer gonna be big sister over Pinkie Pie. Yer gonna watch her, help her work, and remind her how things’re done right. If she acts up, or tries to pull rank... yew run straight ta me or Granny, and we’ll take it from there.”

Apple Bloom bounced around the room like a bunny. “Ah’m big sister! Ah’m big sister! Yahoo! This’ll be so cool! Ah should get Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle in on this! We could get our cutie marks doing this! Yeah, I can see it now! Cutie Mark Crusader Screwed-Up-Big-Sister-Fixers!”

“NO! Do NOT make this about your cutie marks!” Lero had exclaimed these words with deep panic... as though Starswirl’s spell would spring upon her and warp the child’s mind, the moment a mark appeared on her.

“Wha...? Why not?!” she cried, startled.

Everyone was staring at him. Lero kicked himself mentally; he REALLY needed to stop doing this! “Well, because... uh...” Then his mind hit upon a good response. “...How was the kayaking thing you did with your friends?”

She pulled a funny face at him. “Kayaking? Why’re yew askin’ ‘bout THAT? That was a LONG while ago!”

“How was it?” he persisted.

“Disappointin’,” she said. We didn’t get our cutie marks from it.”

He nodded. “A shame. How many times did you go kayaking after that?”

She rolled her eyes. “Zero. We left the kayak right where we crashed it: upside-down in the mudbank.”

“And is THAT how you’re going to be with Pinkie Pie? Your sister?” he asked, quietly. “Are you going to leave HER in the mudbank when she doesn’t give you a cutie mark?”

She reacted as though she’d been stung by a bee. “What?! No! No, of course not!”

“Good,” said Lero. “If you’re going to do this at all, Apple Bloom, don’t do it for your own gain. If you or one of your friends get a cutie mark out of this; wonderful. But you can't make it about cutie marks. It has to be about Pinkie. Do it because you’re her sister. Because you’re FAMILY.”

The young girl fell silent and reflective. Lero hunkered down, putting his hand upon her shoulder as though she were his own daughter.

“And please, for the love of God, if you’re going to do this, DON’T bring revenge into it. Don’t make this about tit for tat. I know your sister was rude and nasty to you, and it’ll be tempting to use your power to get back at her for that... but she’s in great pain. Pinkie’s become so over-focused on one little aspect of her life... well, you could say she’s forgotten what sort of pony she’s supposed to be, and who she really is. Be patient with her. Forgive her. Remind her how much you love her. If you do... bit by bit... I promise you, Pinkie Pie will remember how much she loves you back. Being the Big Sister isn't about being in charge, it's about the responsibility being in charge gives. Be the BIGGER sister, Apple Bloom. Can you do that?”

The small filly was quiet for several moments, actually looking contemplative, before looking up to Lero and nodding.

"Ah kin do it, Mr. Lero. Ah kin be tha best big sister ever... jes' like Pinkie wuz for me befoah."

* * *

“Peanuts!” Peanut Brittle called out in a singsong. “I’ve got peanuts! Salted and unsalted! Scoop them in a bag!”

“Figs!” caroled Figgy Pudding, “Sweet, tender figs! Straight from the fig farm! Kadota figs! Adriatic figs! Brown Turkeys! Black Missions!”

“Durians!” cried Lychee, a clothespin on her snout. “I’ve got durians today! Exotic fruit here! I’m selling them cheap! They taste a heckuva lot better than they smell! I promise!”

“Melons!” sang Honeydew, “I’m selling delicious homegrown honeydew melons! Unless you’re a human! Then all I got for you’s a kick to your teeth! Yeah, keep on walking, you’d BETTER keep walking, my fine stallion friend... and your little dog, too!”

“Buy some apples! Buy some apples! Buy some apples!” trilled out Apple Bloom, from the apple stall.

“We got Red Delicious!” Pinkie Pie announced, right next to her. She was considerably more downbeat than Apple Bloom, but she was genuinely trying to attract customers all the same. “Golden Delicious! Granny Smiths! Big Macintoshes! Well... Macintoshes, anyway... but our Macintoshes are STILL pretty big-sized! Oh! And Pink Ladies, too!”

“Pink Lady!” Apple Bloom grinned. “THAT’S what ya shoulda been named, Pinkie! Can’t imagine where the ‘Pie’ bit even came from.”

“Well, maybe your parents were thinking of apple pie MADE with Pink Ladies,” Lero suggested as he came up to their stand with Rarity.

Pinkie, herself, said nothing. Her face was hidden behind her long mane.

The little filly smiled wryly. “Then how d’ya account fer the fact that her full name’s Pinkamena Diane Pie?”

The human chuckled and shrugged. “Got me there! Guess your folks must’ve wanted to give at least one kid a non-apple related name.”

“Reckon so,” said Apple Bloom, as the wry smile gave way to one of pure welcome. “Oh, it’s really wonderful to see ya again, Lero! Yew too, Miz Rarity!”

“And you, as well, my dear Apple Bloom, and Pinkie Pie!” Rarity greeted.

Pinkie nodded mutely. “Are yew looking ta buy?” asked Apple Bloom.

Rarity turned curiously to her stallion. “Are we looking to buy, dearest?”

“Not today,” said Lero, leaning in closer to the pink farmer. “Pinkie, I just wanted to check up on you... how ARE you doing these days?”

Pinkie Pie pushed her bangs away from her eyes. This was now the third day since they’d brought her to the hospital to see Big Macintosh. The smile on her face was tinged with melancholy; the smile of a girl only just beginning to emerge from a long depression. But it truly WAS a real smile, all the same.

“Ah’m alright, Lero,” she told him with soft composure. “Ah’m doing better.”

“Yeah!” said Apple Bloom, stepping out from the stall. “Yew aren’t gunna believe this, but Ah had to reteach Pinkie how trees are supposed ta be bucked! Like she really HAD lived all ‘er life with Aunt and Uncle Orange!”

And the young filly gave several demonstrative bucks at an imaginary tree, her bow nearly flying off at one point.

“Y’see, the trick is ta line yer back hooves up with the base of the tree. The sweet spot’s square in the center of the tree’s base, it ain’t all about raw power, though that certainly helps. Hit the sweet spot, and all the apples come tumblin’ down!”

“Bloomy’s been a great big help,” Pinkie said, smiling at her sister. “Ah dunno WHAT went wrong with mah head... but, yeah, ever since that point where Macky got attacked, Ah’ve been buckin‘ them trees and doin’ all mah other chores every way BUT the right way.”

“Your brother really DOES mean a lot to you, doesn’t he?” Rarity asked, to which Pinkie bit her lip and nodded. She walked out from behind her stall, looking up at Lero.

“Yew were right ta do what yew did... bringin’ me ta Macky. Ah was outta control, and farmin’ dumber than a bucket of earwax.” She cast a sad look backwards at Apple Bloom. “The way Ah was treatin’ my family was jest out-n-out inexcusable, too. Thank ya, Lero, and yew too, Rarity.”

“Hey... what are friends for, besides forcibly kidnapping you for your own good?” said Lero.

She let out a tiny laugh. Smiling her heavyhearted smile. "Lero? Kin Ah ask yew a favor?"

He nodded. "Anything, Pinkie."

Pinkie reached out an arm. “Can Ah hug yew?”

“Of course!” Lowering himself down a bit, Lero leaned into her one-armed hug. It was a warm little squeeze, and he felt his facial muscles lift upwards immediately. Pinkie reached out her other arm, pulling Rarity into the same hug, before settling back down on all fours.

“Hey, Pinkie?”

“Yeah, Lero?”

“Wanna know what the best thing I ever got from you is?”

Pinkie Pie pursed her lips in thought. “Was it the Red Delicious you bought five weeks ago? The Aurora Golden Galas from four months back? Or maybe it was the Honey Crisps from September of last year? Or...”

“Smiles,” said Lero.

He might as well have sucker-punched Pinkie Pie. She gaped at him, round-mouthed and buggy-eyed. “Smiles?” she repeated, in the hoarsest croak of a whisper.

“Yes,” said Lero, and he pointed at his own face. “A smile like this is sweeter than any apple will ever be. And you gave it to me, Pinkie Pie. Just now. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart.”

Apple Bloom chuckled. “If'n they're that good, a shame we can't sell 'em! Done short on supply. Ah advise ya ta be glad of the one ya got! Before yew brought Pinkie ta see Big Mac, she was the prickliest porcupine ya ever done see! Then yew went and transformed her into the saddest lil’ basset hound there ever were... but at least we’re able ta love ‘er and train her! In any case, smiles from mah sister are few ‘n’ far between!”

“No... no...”

Pinkie Pie’s whole body was trembling with intense emotions. All the others stared, just at the change in her voice alone. “Ah... Ah... Ah’m SICK of bein’ that mare! Sick of lettin’ ev’ry lil’ thang get me so doggone miserable!”

Neither Rarity, Apple Bloom, nor Pinkie Pie herself, were observing what was happening to the pink farmer’s cutie mark. But what Lero saw made his heart skip several beats.

“And Ah’m just as sick of mah making everyone Ah love unhappy ta be near me! Ah want... Ah wanna...”

Lero saw the cutie mark shift and blur, like it was going out of focus! All the moisture in Lero’s mouth was evaporating, as the apples which had been tormenting her grew fainter and FAINTER...!!!

“I WANT to give more smiles! I want to FEEL more smiles inside me!”

That was the voice of the real Pinkie Pie! No mere hollow shadow of herself staring out with vacant eyes, but clear as a church bell and brimming with living heart and living soul! Lero’s heart leapt to his throat just as renewed joy leapt to his heart!

“...And Ah’ll do it by bein’ the bestest, happiest apple farmer evah!”

The apple mark snapped back into being fully solidified on Pinkie’s flank.

Oh, screw you! Lero internally snarled at the stubborn mark.

“Pinkie? What jest happened?”

For an answer, Pinkie simply stood on her hind legs, scooped Apple Bloom up into her arms, just like a human girl would, and twirled her smaller sister around and around in a circle, laughing with unequivocal, born-again joy.

In spite of his disappointment, Lero couldn’t help but feel that same joy rise in his own heart. The human could recognize what had just happened. A small portion of Pinkie’s true self had bubbled up from the depths, melding with her swapped persona in a truly beautiful way. Her cutie mark still showed apples, not balloons. Her hair was still straight, not poofy. But the brightness in her eyes? The euphoria she exuded? That was a victory. Maybe not a cure... but enough to stop the downward spiral of destruction that once gripped her, and give her a life worth living again. Surely that was enough of a change for today.

“Pinkie???” Rarity asked in complete bemusement.

Remembering that Lero and Rarity were still there, Pinkie Pie set her somewhat dizzy sister down, took ten apples, rubbed them to a mirror shine with incredible speed, popped them into a paper bag, and gave them straight to Lero.

“These are the ten best apples from mah stall.”

“Oh wow,” Lero breathed.

Pinkie Pie pointed a hoof at her own smile. “Ah’m going to see how long Ah can keep this on fer! Watch me, Lero!”

“You bet I will! I’m a great scorekeeper! Especially for long-term things! So sell lots of apples and spread lots of joy!”

“Yew bet yer britches Ah will!”

“Hey there, Pinkie?” asked Bonbon, coming up from their left. “How much for your Red Deliciouses?”

And Pinkie Pie hopped back on the seller’s side of the apple stall. “See ya later, Leery!” she waved.

“You too, Pinkie Pie! C’mon, Rarity!”

As they both set off down the street, Lero tried to quell some of the giddiness inside him. “Alright! That went well! Now let’s see, what’s our next order of business...”

And he pulled out the checklist of errands that Twilight had prepared for them.

“New quills... check! More paper, need to buy that! Stop at the post office and...”

“Lero?”

Lero stopped dead when he heard the tone in her voice. When he turned to look at her, he saw that she’d been staring at him in an awestruck daze this whole while.

“Yeah, Rarity?”

She opened an arm to him. “Can I hug you?"

Lero opened his arms to her. When Rarity reared up and hooked her forelegs around him, nestling her soft head against his chest, he didn’t even feel the faintest vibe of lust from her. Just pure appreciation for who he was as a person.

"You're the best stallion... man I've ever met." She corrected herself. "Even if we hadn't gotten together, I'd be blessed just by knowing you."

Lero wasn't sure if there were any proper ways to respond to that. He just settled on holding her tightly to him.

* * *

...At this point in my story, I’ll admit something to you, Lyra. While I was happy to have gotten Pinkie Pie to shift her priorities from farming to family, I was still worried that with the ‘Swap Jinx’ in place, any goal that Pinkie pursued was doomed to blow up in her face.

So between helping Rainbow Dash, helping Rarity, and everything else I’ve been busy with, I’ve been keeping an eye on Pinkie Pie. Every so often, I’ve even volunteered as a farmhand for the sole purpose of seeing how life was going for her now. Talk about backbreaking! Lyra, I was worried that the entire Apple Family would be at each others’ throats within half a week.

Now just look at these pictures!

“Pictures?” asked Spike, lowering his quill, interupting Lero's dictation. “You took pictures?”

Lero brought three photos out of a side pocket, and passed them over to the little dragon scribe.

The first photo showed the Cutie Mark Crusaders riding through Ponyville in a cart pulled by Pinkie Pie, at a fast canter. Excited smiles on all four of their faces.

The second photo showed Pinkie Pie at Big Macintosh’s hospital room. She’d delivered a ‘Get Well Soon’ gift: a basket of apples and a bouquet of flowers picked from Sweet Apple Acres’ grounds. Both of them were engaged in an exciting chess match.

The third photo showed Pinkie carrying bags of stuff Granny Smith had bought, when they were out in the marketplace together.

It’s a miracle, Lyra. Pinkie Pie is no longer spinning her wheels and going nowhere. She’s no longer destroying herself by beating at walls she cannot break.

Her life is on the rebound. Pinkie now knows how to buck a tree so that apples fall down. She can perform every other chore farm life demands. She sells the apples she’s farmed at the market and makes money. Apple Bloom has been her teacher in all things. To be fair, Pinkie Pie’s still no Applejack. In terms of strength and ability, she’s reached the same level as Apple Bloom, herself, maybe a little bit more... she is a full grown mare, after all.

However, what’s important is that Pinkie can now do everything Applejack did, from A to Z. Far from expertly, to be sure, but still good enough to keep things going. And I’m 99.99% certain that as a direct result of this, Pinkie’s swapped cutie mark has cut her a boatload of psychological slack. Loosened its stranglehold over her mind. She now spends a lot more time off the farm, just smelling the proverbial roses and enjoying herself and meeting up with her other friends.

Lero saw a small, colorless droplet fall off the dragon’s cheek onto the letter he was writing.

“Spike? Are you crying?”

“I... I’m sorry, it’s just... you’re talking about when we happened to met up with Pinkie and Apple Bloom the other day, right? Where we were all just goofing off with each other? And I was just remembering... they DID look so happy... Sorry, I guess how bad things are for my friends is starting to catch up to me, and seeing a ray of hope like that...”

“Hey, if you want, we could hide the letter somewhere where Rarity won’t find it, and finish it up later, when you’re ready.”

“Nah,” said Spike, rubbing his eyes. He shook his head, inhaled deeply, and threw out his chest, his quill at the ready. “I’m ready now. Continue!”

All the same, Lyra, I have to remind you that as happy as Pinkie Pie now is, this is not the cure. A cure would be Pinkie remembering her old life as a baker, a party queen and the Element of Laughter. Knowing that Applejack’s family is not rightfully her own. Getting her old balloons back on her flank. Sadly, I’m not the one who can cure her. I’m not the spell-caster, after all. Twilight is.

But I am proud of my part in helping Pinkie find happiness and functionality again, helping her find what I’ve come to call 'equilibrium.' It’s given me a solid goal to strive for, from here on out. After all, If I can find equilibrium for Pinkie, I can find equilibrium for all the rest of the Swapped Five. It’s not a cure, but if I'm successful, at least they’ll be living lives again, instead of living hells.

If Twilight’s on the road to finding a cure, then this’ll take great pressure off her mind. And if the cure never comes, then at least they’ll all be able to live happy, productive lives. Maybe not their own, but it's more than what they had.

So then it’s One Down, Four To Go, basically. Wish me luck, Lyra, because my very next target will be Rainbow Dash.

All My Love,

Lero

Author's Note

You heard it here first, folks. From here on out, and until further notice, 'equilibrium' is gonna be the name of Lero's game. His aim is to turn the Swapped from this...

...Into THIS.

As Lero himself said: One Down, Four To Go. We're just getting started!

Special word of thanks to Minalkra for thinking up the names Aunt Mandarin Orange and Uncle Mosley Orange!

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Fifteen: Cutie Mark Chronicler

Spike set his quill down, and was about to roll the letter up into a cylinder, but Lero stopped him with an upturned hand.

“I have a P.S.,” he explained.

So Spike grabbed a new sheet of blank paper and took up his quill again.

P.S. — I'm worried about Twilight. I cannot say this with absolute certainty, but I almost think that Twilight might be going through some sort of self-imposed penitence over this. It’s gotten especially worse during the timeframe I began helping Pinkie farm. We all know that she reads books voraciously. But usually, if you watch her as she reads, you’ll see keen attentiveness and critical thinking in her eyes. She genuinely enjoys every minute of it.

But now... she reads like a judge had sentenced her to stay put until she’s counted each individual grain of sand in a desert. No enjoyment, no Levity. At best determination, at worst, misery. Like she isn’t so much working as wearing herself out. Grinding away, hour after hour, not letting herself quit even when her eyes burn. It worries me that she NEVER leaves the house anymore.

Left alone, all she does is eat, sleep, read, and bathe every now and then, and sometimes we have to remind her to do the things beside read. Thankfully me and Rarity can always get her out of it for a bit... but only for so long, and never by her own initiative. But I hope this is just my imagination running away with me. For all I know, she IS making solid progress with all that reading.

Nonetheless, penitence or no, there’s no denying the fact that she feels personally responsible for her friends’ condition, and suffers from survivor’s guilt over the Swap passing her by. We need to figure out what, if anything, we can do to help her with it.

“I... I really think you’re making a mountain out of a molehill on this, Lero,” the dragon contented, in a troubled little voice. “I mean... yeah, she’s... she’s REALLY gotten into her studies these past few days, I won’t deny, but... Is it really that big a deal? I mean, I've seen her when she really goes around the bend... compared that time she’d created a riot because she was afraid to be tardy, this ain't nothin'.”

“As I already said, this COULD just be my imagination running away with me. Believe me, I’m NOT afraid of being wrong on this!”

Spike set the pages of Lero’s letter neatly in a stack. “Do you want me to send it?”

Lero thought about it. “Actually, give me all the pages of that letter except the last one, with the P.S. on it... there’s something I want to do before we send it.”

Spike passed them over, and Lero walked into a different wing of the library.

* * *

Twilight Sparkle had barricaded herself in a dusty corner of this room. Although he couldn’t even see her, he knew she was there because of the tight wall of books she’d erected around herself.

Books on psychology, cutie marks, magic, history, guides to fixing the effects of faulty spells... all these books were from other libraries, she having poured through all relevant tomes in this one some time ago. They stretched up halfway towards the ceiling. She had literally bricked herself into this corner with all these books. He recalled stories of her making book forts as a filly, but this was clearly not a structure of amusement and comfort... he half-felt like she was sealing herself inside, as much as the rest of the world out.

He hesitated. From behind the book, he could hear the dim chime of magic, as pages were turned, and a quill scribbled notes upon paper.

“Hey, Twilight?” Lero called. “Twilight!”

There came a exceedingly peevish noise from within her enclosure of literature. “You know, I’d be able to get a lot more reading done, if I wasn’t being interrupted by you guys every two minutes!”

Every two minutes? Lero remembered it a little differently. Yesterday and the day before, they’d only intruded on her studies a total of four times... mostly for meals. However, he let the comment pass.

“Twilight, listen... while you’re busy reading anyway, you really might want to read THIS.” He stretched his arm out over the top of the book-wall, and dropped his letter down, where Twilight was.

“Huh?” For a couple seconds, he could only hear Twilight reading the letter to herself in a rushed mutter. Then several columns of books lifted up towards the ceiling, like a castle’s portcullis.

She stepped out, her eyes still skimming over sentences, turning pages as she read the story of Pinkie Pie’s equilibrium. Up until halfway through the story, he could see hope and excitement in her eyes, but from three-quarters of the way through, it dropped into flat disappointment.

“This isn’t going to help me at all,” she told Lero, at the end of the last page.

Lero was incredulous. “Didn’t you read it?”

Twilight Sparkle snorted. “Of course I read it! But from where I’m standing, this story of yours amounts to nothing more than another meaningless dead end.”

“Meaningless,” Lero said flatly, his elation draining away, replaced with disappointment and resentment. “I helped Pinkie! Helping them has been the whole point of this, hasn't it!? She’s able to function as a farmer now. She’s NICE to ponies again, especially the Apple family. She’s not destroying Applejack’s life anymore... or her own! She’s YOUR friend, Twilight... and mine, too! Are you really telling me that’s all MEANINGLESS to you?!”

The purple unicorn let out an irritated exhale, as though he were raising a giant stink over a misplaced comma.

“Look... Lero... love of my life...” her hoof reaching up to her forehead, her tone bordering on condescension. “I’m not saying your heart’s in the wrong place. You’re trying to think up ways to help me and all our other friends, just like with that clever but unusable slot machine theory of yours. That’s commendable of you. What you went and did for Pinkie... yeah, it was nice of you to do.”

“But...?” prompted Lero.

“But there’s a huge difference between treating the symptoms and treating the actual malady!” she stamped her hoof. “Any FOAL knows that!”

"Yes, and any FOAL knows that if untreated, it's the symptom that kills!" He glared back. "I'm sorry if I expected at least a ‘thank you,’ or maybe ‘Huh, well, now we understand how this works a bit better, maybe this is useful,’ rather than ‘This is useless.’"

Twilight snorted in response; a sound somewhere between annoyance and dismissal. The human blinked, and for just a second, it wasn’t his sweet Twilight Sparkle standing in front of him, but Pinkamena Diane Pie, the agricultural CEO of Scowls and Growls, Incorporated.

“My job is to find a CURE for this Swap. A CURE. So I have no interest in any sort of ‘equilibrium’ for Pinkie, or any of the others. We’re trying to bring the old Pinkie BACK, not get her to settle comfortably into a new role!”

She floated the letter back to him. “So go ahead and have Spike mail this to Lyra. I’m sure she’ll pat you on the back just like I did. In the meantime, I have to come up with an ACTUAL solution, so feel free to keep on doing whatever it is you’re doing!”

Lero paused, staring at her. Part of him was angry enough to want to start a shouting match. Honestly, if he stoked the indignation in his stomach, he was sure he could make it last for hours. Instead, he just clenched a fist, letting the hurt of her dismissal staunch the anger, both draining from him, and just leaving him numb. He didn't have time to mope or argue, he had the whole day planned out. So he simply took his letter to Lyra from her.

“Very sorry for intruding on your time, Miss Sparkle,” he said, with the same polite, formal, yet impersonal tone he’d have used to ask a stranger to dance with him at a ballroom. “Good luck with your research.” She nodded, and marched back into her miniature book fortress, shutting its ‘portcullis’ behind her, and he turned around, heading back towards where Spike was.

After a few steps he suddenly heard her cry out: “Lero! Wait! Stop! Come back!”

He ignored her, his pace unchanged, continuing to leave... until he physically couldn’t. He looked down to see that a magical glow kept both his feet felt glued to the floor. And then came a crash of scattered hardbacks and paperbacks as Twilight burst through her wall of books like a child through a sandcastle. She galloped to him, rearing up to hug him.

“I’m sorry!” she said, shakily. “I’m really, really, sorry! I didn't mean to hurt you. I've just been... stretched to my limit. I feel like a rubber band pulled taut... and just a touch, and I snap!” She shivered. He turned himself around, so he could properly hug her back. She looked up into his eyes, her expression pleading. “I really DO think what you did to Pinkie Pie was incredible, even if you didn’t cure her! I’d love to see her truly happy again, even if she’s still a farmer and not a party girl!”

He tightened his hug on her. “Then come with me, Twilight. Let’s visit Sweet Apple Acres... you can see Pinkie for yourself! Or, better yet, let’s you and I go out to eat breakfast together at a restaurant first.” He helped lower her back to the floor. “You’ve been cooped up in this library for quite a while, it’s time you got some fresh air!”

She smiled at him, and for a moment, it looked as though she were going to agree. But then... she looked back. From this angle, he couldn't tell if it was at her pile of books... or at her cutie mark.

“I’m sorry, Lero...” She was retreating from him slowly, back towards the clutter of books she’d burst out from. He had an eerie déjà vu feeling of Pinkie backing away from Big Mac. “But w...what if I’m on the cusp of discovering the Cure? Or if I lose my place and miss something important? For all I know, it could be in the very next paragraph!"

She looked apologetically at him. "I can’t let up now... maybe the Swap is a time-sensitive condition, and it becomes permanent and incurable if you’re not fast enough! What if one of them hurts themselves somehow because I wasn't fast enough? I can't let up looking for a cure! One of these scholars HAS to have found some sort of answer to our predicament! I can almost sense it... it’s somewhere in the book I’m reading. And if not there, then maybe the next book I pick up. Or the next book. Or the next..."

Lero stomach felt like a cold pit, but he swallowed hard, and managed to smile. “S-sure, Twilight. Of course. After all, you gotta do what you gotta do..."

"Thank you..." The wall of books closed up back around her, and he continued walking away.

When he was out of the room, he let out the breath he was holding in. Was she being compelled by her own cutie mark... or was it just her own neurotic nature that was making her obsessive to the point of hermitage? Or was such distinction meaningless? He hoped he'd not have to add another name to his list of ponies needing help... four more was a handful as it was. She was better off than any of the swapped... So far.

He went back to Spike, had him send the full letter to Lyra, and went to leave the house, firmly putting Twilight out of his mind for now, opening the front door.

“Howdy, Lero!” He stopped short, barely keeping himself from walking into Pinkie Pie, who had let herself in from outside. She smiled at his start of surprise. “How’s mah two-legged farmhoo... sorry, farm-hand doin’?”

“I’m doing well!” Lero told her. “Good to see you! What brings you out here?”

“Nothin’ TOO big. Won’t stay long. Ah’m actually here ta borrow a book!”

“A book?” Lero asked.

“Eeeyup! Ah’m givin’ mahself time ta read! Ah shocker there, Ah know.” She looked at him. “Mebbe yew could help me find it?”

“Well... as much as I live in this library, I’m really not much of a librarian,” Lero admitted.

“Then mebbe Twilight could...”

“I think I’ll go fetch Spike for you, Twilight’s kind of...”

“No,” Twilight Sparkle said, poking her head in from around the corner, silencing their talking over each other. “I can help you, Pinkie. I’d be glad to help you. Whatever you need.”

Pinkie blithely stepped inside, as Lero stepped out.

“Pinkie,” he heard Twilight start, “I’ve been meaning to ask... how HAVE things been going down on the farm?”

“We’re gettin’ back on track!” Pinkie told her. “Lero’s been really nice... helpin‘ me out round the farm for an hour or two each day! Seein’ ‘im at it takes me back to the good ol‘ days, when he was jest startin‘ out in Ponyville!”

He shut the door, letting the friends talk, giving a small smile. He then focused his mind on what he had ahead of him. Busy, busy day today.

* * *

It took some searching and asking around, but Lero was able to find Fluttershy in the marketplace the next morning. She was impossible to miss.

She was dressed as a piñata. There was no getting around it: her outfit was a full-body costume of a green-colored donkey piñata. How Applejack had achieved the papier-mâché look without using actual papier-mâché was beyond Lero. As though this wasn’t ridiculous enough, she wore a large galosh for a hat, (not a pair of galoshes, just a single galosh.)

...Somehow, he had the impression that the galosh was Fluttershy’s own personal touch. Even Applejack had to know which part of the body a shoe went.

“Oh, hello, Lero!” she greeted cheerfully.

“Hi, Fluttershy!” he greeted her back. “I see you’ve been shopping at Applejack’s! You really DO look silly!”

“Thanks!” said Fluttershy, pulling a goofy face. The eyes on her donkey head were really googly; bouncing around whenever she moved her head. “Everypony else thinks so too! Applejack’s the best fashionista ever; her selection is just INCREDIBLE! This won’t be the last time I’m visiting the Carousel Boutique, I can promise you that!”

“Wonderful!” Lero said, wondering what Pinkie Pie would do with all the outfits Fluttershy bought, after they found the Cure. Or would they belong to Fluttershy, still? “Just keep an eye out for hungry children armed with baseball bats!”

“Ha ha ha! Will do!” She turned as if to leave, but Lero stopped her with a hand on her back.

“Actually, Fluttershy... I was wondering if you and I could hang out together sometime today?”

“Hang out?” She took a step back from him, suddenly a little uncertain. “Well... I’m sorry, Lero, but today’s kind of a bad day. I still haven’t begun any of the shopping that Mr. and Mrs. Cake need me to do, and then there’ll be so much baking and selling to do when I get back, so it’s going to be a big, busy day for me at Sugar Cube Corner.”

Lero shook his head sadly. “Aw, that’s too bad. The thing was, I woke up this morning and... I just had this powerful craving to have lots and lots of jokes told to me.”

Her ears perked up. “Jokes?!” she repeated, surprised bordering on incredulous.

Lero nodded. “It was the oddest thing, but I just... got this hunger about it. You know how that is? Like I could spend an entire hour, just listening to joke after joke!”

“An entire HOUR?” It was as if she’d unearthed pirate treasure. “Seriously?!”

He nodded. “Life’s just gotten so dreadfully, dreadfully serious for me, lately! I’m FAMISHED for some comic relief! But... if you’re busy with other things, Fluttershy, I certainly wouldn’t want to impose, so...”

He might as well have dangled raw bacon over a dog’s nose.

“Well, now, let’s not be hasty!” Fluttershy cut in. “Y-yeah, I got shopping to do, but you could always tag along, couldn’t you?”

“Certainly I could!” Lero agreed. Really, the ‘where’ didn't matter much at all, just as long as it got her talking.

“Great! Follow me!” And he followed the yellow pegasus to a merchant’s booth. “How much for a single box of confectioner’s sugar, miss?”

“Eight bits,” the merchant told her.

Fluttershy tilted herself so her right saddlebag pressed against Lero’s hand. “Lero, can you please reach inside my saddlebag? You’ll find my coin pouch there.”

He pulled it out: it bulged with bits.

“I’d like you to completely fill my bags with boxes of confectioner’s sugar. Please pay this nice mare eight bits for each individual box, then put it in my bag. And while you’re doing all that, I’ll tell you all my best jokes! Does that sound good?”

“Perfectly good!” Huh, no 'if that's alright with you.' Honestly, Lero did like her being a bit more assertive like this. She wasn’t even being over-the-top about it, either! There were some nice aspects of the swap! Well, once the horrific flaws were dealt with.

He heard the merchant groan lowly through her teeth; for this would be a tediously long purchase.

“Now,” said Fluttershy, brimming with excitement. “What’s the different between a mosquito and a fly?”

Lero shook his head while counting out the first set of eight bits from the bag. "I give."

“A mosquito can fly, but a fly can’t mosquito!”

He laughed along with that as he put the first box in her bag, and shook out more money.

“What kind of flower grows on your face?”

He thought about that. Irises, he was tempted to say, but chose to shrug.

“Tulips.”

“Tulips?” His look was blank.

She pointed at her own mouth. “Two lips.”

“Ohhhh!” he said. “Got it!”

“What sort of...?”

“GOSH, Fluttershy!” he cut in brightly, turning to her. “You just know so many jokes... it’s like you’ve been telling them since the day you were born! I bet that’s how you got your cutie mark, right?”

“My cutie mark?” The interruption startled her a bit. “Um, no, that isn’t the case at all.”

“It’s not?” asked Lero, wide-eyed. Acting! “Well, now I’m super-curious! You HAVE to tell me how it was you GOT that mark of yours!” He gave her his eagerest smile.

“Well... uh... okay, I suppose I could do that for you...”

* * *

Today would mark one of the most pivotal turning points in Fluttershy’s life, but she had no way of knowing that when she woke up that morning. For today showed every appearance of being like any other day.

...Like EVERY other day.

She rose up from bed later than her sisters, so she knew Pa would have his stoniest frown for her, when he saw her...

* * *

“Wait, wait,” Lero interrupted. “So you had sisters?”

“Oh, yes!” said Fluttershy, “I was the youngest of four daughters. My third-oldest sister’s full name was Blinquesa Limestone Pie, but we all called her ‘Blinkie.' My second-oldest sister’s was Incandesce Marble Pie, but we all called her Inkie. Then there was Susan Cloudy Quartz Pie, my Ma, and finally, Clyde Igneous Rock Pie, my Pa.”

"...So what’s YOUR full name, then?”

“Fluttershy.”

Lero let that hang for a beat, before dropping eight bits in front of the merchant and looking back to her. “Not... ‘Fluttershy Samantha Pie,’ or anything like that?”

Fluttershy shifted her weight a bit as he put in the next box. “Why would it be?”

The merchant rolled her eyes a bit as Lero laughed. “To think there’s actually a part of Equestria where they have Susans and Clydes!”

She actually smiled shyly, the way she used to. “My family were all Manenonites, so they used Manenonites names.”

“It’s just that... those are the sort of names that HUMANS would name THEIR kids!”

“Really?” She looked downright stunned. “Humans are Manenonites?”

He almost stopped short at that. “Do I look like a Manenonite to you?”

“Not at all!” said Flutershy, with a merry flutter of wings. “Your smile is too well-practiced for that!”

"I think it's just a weird coincidence... Manenonite names just happen to be similar to most human names." He thought up another question. “Are Manenonites monogamous, Fluttershy? You mentioned just ONE mother and father...”

“Oh, no, no, NO!” she was quick to assure him. “Our customs are a bit different from most ponies, but we’re not WEIRD.” She paused. “Inkie and Blinkie always said there used to be two other Mas in our family, but they both... passed away, long before I was born.”

“From what?”

“Ennui,” Fluttershy told him. “It’s a very dangerous, contagious affliction in the part of the world where I grew up.”

Lero waited for her to laugh at her own punchline, waited for her to say ‘Gotcha!’ But that didn't happen.

"Hold on, Fluttershy," said the human, "Didn't you say that you were the youngest of four daughters? I only counted three, including yourself."

Fluttershy blinked several times. "Oh yeah! I'm forgetting my oldest sister, Maud... but we hadn't brought her into the family yet at that point in time."

"What do you mean by that?"

"I mean," Fluttershy explained, "That Maud had lived alone with her mother in a smaller rock farm just two miles from our own. We were next-door neighbors! Pa and Maud's mother had been good friends for many years, long before I was even born, and he'd often go and pay visits to her house! Usually, late at night. When Maud's Ma finally succumbed to her own ennui, Pa brought Maud into our family and made her a Pie, and Maud and I've been bestest sisters ever since!"

"When did this happen?" Lero asked.

"About a week after the day I got my cutie mark," Fluttershy told her human friend. "But as I said, Maud wasn't my sister back then, so she wasn't part of the story I'm trying to tell you..."

* * *

Ma had gone all-out with the breakfast she’d prepared that morning: gruel, porridge, curds AND whey! Pa wasn’t there. He must’ve eaten already, and Fluttershy thanked her lucky stars for that! After quickly brushing her teeth, the little yellow pegasus filly stepped outside, for it was time for her to get down to work at her family’s rock farm...

* * *

“I apologize, but... another question, if you don’t mind. When you say ‘rock farm,’ do you mean a quarry?”

“No,” said Fluttershy. “Quarries are pretty much mines where miners dig out precious rocks. Nothing like rock farms at all.”

“But rocks are inorganic!” Lero stated. “You can’t grow them on a farm like fruits and vegetables!”

“Not unless they’re specially ENCHANTED plots of magical soil!” She smiled. “It takes a while, but there’s actually good money to be had in growing certain stones to enormous sizes. Especially those whose minerals are ores that contain metals... including aluminum and iron, but also rubies, gold, and diamonds! Sometimes you get really unusual rocks, like the ones that contain Rock Molasses! It’s all a matter of proper cultivation and the right seed rocks, just like on any other farm!”

"Rock... Molasses."

"Yup! Sweetest kind there is!"

He shook his head, then shook more money into his hand. “How much money did your family make at that rock farm of yours, then?”

“Just enough to provide for our family. We weren't lucky with molasses or anything of the truly valuable ores, the ones where the real money is. That's why I'm not that good a flier.”

"Huh?"

"Oh, they couldn't afford to send me to flight school, so I had to teach myself to fly, or practice with Granny Pie when she visited. I never really got very good, so I mostly had to collect low-lying clouds."

"...Right."

* * *

When the door to her family’s home shut behind her, Fluttershy stepped out directly onto the Pie farm’s south field. It was another grey day. The land was grey. All the rocks out in the field was gray. The dead ash trees had a nice ashen hue, (to think, actual plants had tried growing in this dry, barren soil!) The skies above were gloomy with grey clouds. Clouds which Fluttershy personally collected for the farm on a weekly basis, as part of her chores... for Ma’d given birth to a pegasus, and Pa’d be a mudstone’s uncle before he let that go to waste.

It wasn’t as though their crops were thirsty for rainwater... this wasn’t that kind of farm, after all! Nonetheless, Pa still insisted that the grayness, itself, led to a better ore yield, as it reminded the rocks of being underground. It pleased Fluttershy’s father — as much as a soul as flinty as Pa’s could be pleased — that two of his daughters should be born with such properly gray manes and coats. At the very least, Pa found it within himself to overlook his youngest girl’s ‘improper coloration,’ when she had wings to make up for it.

Blinkie and Inkie were already hard at work rolling rotating the south field’s crop of rocks to the east field. Fluttershy fluttered over to a piece of limestone, and flipped it over with the tip of her snout, working in the same silence as her sisters.

There was no talking on the Pie farm.

Pa always denounced chatter as the stuff of listless, idle minds. Sometimes he actually rewarded whichever daughter of his managed to speak least on a given day. His favorite prize was allowing the winner to skip Ma’s desserts.

The five of them made for such a tight-lipped quintet, Fluttershy often wondered why Ma and Pa had even bothered teaching her and her sisters spoken language, when they often got along splendidly with stern looks alone.

There was no smiling on the Pie farm.

Smiles — as far as Pa and Ma were concerned — betrayed thoughts unrelated to the farming of rocks. Thus, they were rigidly frowned upon in this family.

Fluttershy knew of Pony Heaven; the place where ponies who’d died were brought to be rewarded with eternal happiness if they’d lived good lives.

Fluttershy knew of Pony Hell; the place where ponies who’d died were brought to be tormented if they’d been evil.

But Ma had also spoken of Pony Purgatory. In Ma’s own words, Pony Purgatory was a place of perfect... nothingness, where ponies were sent if they’d either done literally nothing with their lives, or else all their good deeds and their bad deeds balanced out to a perfect zero value. In Pony Purgatory, there was nothing. Nothing ever occurred. Nothing was thought about, nothing was felt, and nothing was achieved, except more emptiness. You felt that nothingness pervading your heart and ruling your soul, each and every day, for all the rest of eternity.

Fluttershy had asked Ma, “Are we all in Pony Purgatory right now?”

“Yes,” Ma had answered, without a second’s hesitation.

There were moments of disruption in the family, for example when Granny Pie or Nana Pinkie visited. Granny was a traveling baker that taught Fluttershy such things as how to sing and not be afraid of the dark, and Nana was a storyteller who told tall tales she heard in her travels, such as a magical pond that duplicated those who entered its waters.

However, their parents didn't approve of them; they prompted far too many thoughts not involving rock farming. And while they honored them, as mothers should always be honored, they didn't exactly welcome their visits, and so they never stayed long. Ma and Pa had also forbad discussing them when they were gone. In the long run, all her grandmothers’ visits did for Fluttershy was emphasize how dreary the time between them was.

On the Pie farm, there were only rocks.

Little rocks you had to nudge along with your snout, until your nose was all dried, dirty, and scraped, and the back of your neck hurt like you’d slept on it wrong. Big rocks you had to hitch to your back and drag. Huge boulders that needed to be split apart with pickaxes. Anything colorful or beautiful they discovered within the rocks had to be sold away, as soon as possible.

On they worked, until Pa rang the metal triangle by the front porch, signaling the end of the work day. So Inkie and Blinkie and Pa and Ma had trundled back inside the house, mute and stoic. Fluttershy’s legs were aching, so she lingered behind. Pa just cast her one of his flat looks.

Come on in or stay out, daughter of mine. Pa’s look said, as he shut the door. Suits me either way.

Within the next minute came the boom.

Like somepony working in that quarry five miles west had set off one of their larger explosions. Later in life, Fluttershy would wonder why her family hadn’t been drawn out by the noise. But right here and now, young Fluttershy was far too bowled over; speechless beyond the Pie family’s traditional miserliness with words.

First there came a gleaming brightness with a multicolored crest, which swept across the whole of the sky the way ocean waves were said to sweep across beach sand. Then came the shockwave, following like thunder follows lightning, the melodic sound like a thousand bells chiming following the shockwave. Fluttershy felt a tremendous rush of wind blast in her face, along with dead leaves and grit. All the grayness she had so painstakingly collected for her family’s farm had been blown clean away.

Colors arced across the clear blue sky.

Red like ripe strawberries and apples and tomatoes.

Orange like the fruit of the same name.

Yellow like daffodils and the rays of the sun.

Green like lettuce and fresh spring grass.

Blue like bluebells and bluebonnets.

And the purple of a gorgeous twilight.

As a cloud-collecting farm girl, Fluttershy was no stranger to rain, and thus, no stranger to rainbows. But she’d never seen one that glittered and sparkled in the bright daylight like the sun upon newly fallen snow. Never had she seen one that, instead of a single arc of color across the sky, exploded with a multitude of colorful blooms racing each other across the sky. Never seen one that brought birds and butterflies — actual BIRDS and actual BUTTERFLIES — twittering and fluttering around a place like her parents’ farm! It was like the sky and all who lived in it were celebrating some glorious occasion!

Never, NEVER had the young pegasus felt joy like this before! The ends of the farm girl’s mouth lifted higher and higher upon her face, until she was sure her smile had reached the top of her eyes. Lovelier than any ore cracked out from this farm’s rocks. She felt she could gaze at it until she was old as Granny Pie, and still be happy for it.

But the rainbow didn’t give her the chance for that. It vanished, dissipating into the clear blue sky!

...

...No, that wasn’t quite right. The rainbow hadn’t vanished, not completely. It still shone from within Fluttershy’s heart. She still felt the joy of it inside her. She never wanted it to ever go away.

In fact, when Fluttershy stopped to consider it all, not only did she never want it to go away, she knew she wanted nothing more than to share and spread this joy all around, to everypony she knew... and everypony she didn’t, too! But how? Rainbows didn’t come along that often, especially not in this part of the world!

Then suddenly, Fluttershy remembered something she’d seen a few days earlier. She’d been collecting clouds by the quarry, and seeing that the miners were outside, and had taken a break from there work. There’d been singing. Fluttershy had descended down for a closer look at all these bizarre proceedings.

And then the miners had brought out a large dessert, with candles on it, for their foremare. They had sang a song, the foremare had blown out the candles to applause, then divided the dessert up between them into slices, and they’d all been happy.

Fluttershy remembered all this, and quickly sped back into the farmhouse, up into her bedroom, opening a drawer where she kept her entire life savings.

The part of the world where Fluttershy lived with her parents and sisters was a lonely one, make no mistake. There was the quarry, five miles west. Their nearest neighbor lived on her own farm, ten miles south, and that was Granny Pie. Normally, Granny would’ve been ideal to help with her idea, but she wouldn't be around this time of year; it was carnival season. The closest store was Gneiss’ Dry Goods Shoppe & More twenty miles south.

Flying up to the highest altitude she dared, Fluttershy sped off towards Gneiss’. She HAD to hurry! She didn’t think she could bear it if the shop closed! The little pegasus didn’t even feel weary, flying forty miles there and back again.

She brought her purchases into the silo, and got busy.

* * *

Inkie Pie slipped into the large bed that she shared with her other two sisters... except she counted only one sister there. While unusual, it wasn’t a fact worth breaking the silence over. She simply lay against the pillow and her eyes shut.

Blinkie Pie’s eyes opened before Inkie’s did, the next morning. Upon waking, the first thing the eldest sister noticed was that Fluttershy was missing entirely from her usual spot on their mattress, even though she was the heaviest sleeper in the family. Her second — and far more important — thought was that her teeth hadn’t been brushed.

Sue Pie, while preparing that morning’s breakfast, observed that Fluttershy was absent from the house, and recalled she hadn’t joined them for supper the previous night. Her reaction was to remove the unneeded plate from the breakfast table and return it to her cupboard.

Clyde Pie, while sitting down at the table to eat with his kin, discerned the absence of a certain winged, yellow-coated, pink-maned body. Thoughts of bloodthirsty foal killers, pony traffickers, pedophiles, packs of starving wild dogs, and Fluttershy lying in a ditch somewhere, shivering in the cold with broken legs and wings briefly entered Clyde’s head. Then he inwardly chastised himself for allowing his mind to wander to such superfluous flapdoodle, so completely unrelated to rock farming! After all, she hadn't actually missed her chores yet. Such thoughts were best saved when they actually were relevant to rock farming.

The entire Pie family dug into their breakfast of wilted alfalfa and stale bread crusts, washing it all down with tall glasses of lukewarm vinegar. When that was done, and the dirty dishes had been washed, the family stepped out of their house.

“We’d better harvest the rocks from the south field,” Clyde told the others, his eyes scanning about for his absent family member... she was getting perilously close to missing her chores! Then, unusual sounds stopped him in his tracks. It was originating from the direction of the silo; clangs, tooting, and other such strangeness! At first, Clyde took it to be mere noise, but as he and his family listened he realized that it was more of... more of a... uh... more of a rhythmic combination of organized sounds, arranged in a harmonious order that was undeniably pleasing to the ear. It reminded him of that singing his mother kept trying to distract his children with, except it was made with unusual sounds instead of voices. Strangely, Clyde felt he ought to know what the name of this marvel was... he had a hunch it began with the letter M. Meeee---you... something.

“Fluttershy, is that you?” his wife called out.

The silo door opened, and their youngest foal popped her head out.

“Ma! Pa! I need you and Inkie and Blinkie to come inside, quick!”

They followed her inside the silo to find it had been... rearranged. Bunches of floating, colorful, rubbery-looking things hung on strings. They were shaped like horseshoes, hearts, zucchini, and especially upside-down teardrops. Large ribbon-things festooned the place; tied into bows and arcing across the walls like some manner of banner.

Food had been laid out on several tables; all of it sweet-smelling. A large bowl of icy liquid in which a ladle was sitting... it smelled of such juices as apples, cranberries, and... Clyde SWORE he could smell ginger ale mixed in there as well! Plastic cups surrounded this bowl. Nearby was some form of baked bread, (or at least a bread-like food,) only it there were several layers of it. It smelled of sugar and pure deliciousness, and thick glaze of some sort caked the sides of...

...CAKE! Sweet Celestia, CAKE! It came back to Clyde: the name of this thing was cake! He hadn't even seen any since he'd left his mother's herd! Rediscovering that word was like finding his old teddy bear up in the attic! On different tables, there were fruits, and also smaller cakes, just big enough to fit within a cup.

“Surprise!” called Fluttershy. She pulled on a cord, and a thousand colorful shreds of paper rained down on him and his other three family members.

“Do you like it? I hear it’s called a ‘pahr—tee!‘ Mr. Gneiss suggested all sorts of fun things while I was shopping at his store!”

The long stem of dry wheat that Clyde Pie had kept lodged between his teeth since the day of his third marriage simply fell out. The happy hope in Fluttershy’s eyes started to dwindle.

Her sisters and parents were looking around the silo she’d redecorated, their eyes darting about wildly at the decorations and food. Their teeth chattered as though they were out in a blizzard. Odd noises issued from their throats; moans of uncertainty and fear... even a little bit of pain.

The young pegasus hung her head in defeat, her hair sliding down to obscure her eyes. “Oh... I see. I...it’s okay that you don’t like it.” More than anything, Fluttershy wanted to go away someplace where there were no pony faces to look at her and stay in that place forever.

As one, all the rest of her family broke through the shock and uncertainty, and moved their facial muscles in a direction that rock farmers’ were never actually meant to go.

Upwards.

“You... you DO like it?!" The pegasus lifted her head up, tossing back her hair to smile. With a cheer, her family raced into the silo. "You DO like it!”

Fluttershy turned her record player’s volume up higher, and the happy family danced. They danced with abandon, danced as though they’d waited ten lifetimes for each individual note of this peppy polka tune. And as they danced, the mark of three balloons appeared on Fluttershy’s flanks, but it wouldn’t be until her fourth slice of cake that she even noticed.

* * *

The yellow pegasus gave him an adorable smile when her story was finished.

“So... what happened to your mother and father, then? I don’t believe I’ve seen them around here ever.”

The two of them were now walking back towards Sugar Cube Corner. Fluttershy’s bags were loaded with sugar.

“They’re still at their rock farm. They don’t visit Ponyville all that often. Mostly, I come to them.” She smiled. "You know, to remind them how to have a good time now and again."

He nodded. Hmmm, nothing immediately sprung to mind on how to solve the cutie mark situation. Ah, well, he’d come up with something eventually. “Well, thank you for that story!”

“And thank you for listening!" She beamed. "Are you ready to listen to more jokes?”

He almost thought to make up some excuse... but that would not only be rude, but unfair as well. “Absolutely! Fire away, Fluttershy.”

“Okay! Here’s one: Why didn’t the teddy bear eat its dessert?”

“I don’t know. Why?”

“Because it was stuffed!” she chuckled. “What’s green and tastes like brown paint?”

“Artichokes?”

“No... green paint! And speaking of paint, did you hear the one about what happened when one boat carrying red paint and another boat carrying blue paint crashed into each other out at sea? Both crews were marooned!”

Lero laughed.

“Do you know how to catch a rabbit?”

“Believe it or not, that’d be a very useful thing for me to know.”

“Well then, you might want to try... hiding behind a tree and making a noise like a carrot!”

He checked his wristwatch; specially custom-built for his human arms. It was 9:31 A.M.

“Two pigs were sitting in their sty. The first pig said ‘Oink!’ And the second pig turned to him and said, ‘Hey! I was gonna say that...!”

* * *

“...Well, Ah’m jest saying, it’s mighty out-of-the-blue a’yew ta take an interest in how Ah got mah cutie mark, Lero!”

Lero had listened through Fluttershy’s parade of jokes for his promised hour, and then as a courtesy, an extra hour afterwards. An exact one hundred and twenty minutes. He’d helped Fluttershy unload her confectioner’s sugar into Sugar Cube Corner’s kitchen, then gone with her for two more trips to the market, first to buy yeast and then boxes of graham crackers.

Through it all, Lero had the distinct impression that had he let her, Fluttershy would happily continued to crank out joke after joke after joke after joke after joke after joke until she’d worn her larynx out for the day. When he checked his wristwatch and seen that two hours had passed, Lero politely excusing himself, made a quick pit stop back home at Golden Oaks Library to put something in his backpack, and then come over here, to the Carousel Boutique.

Since there was very little risk of being interrupted by customers walking in, Applejack had allowed Lero to come upstairs with her to her sewing room, especially since, (to use her own words) the sewing machine was ‘calling to her again.‘ The garment she was working on was a green sleeping bag — like the kind Lero slept in at his old boyhood summer camp tents — being refashioned into a full-body suit. It looked guaranteed to make its wearer look like an insect pushing her head out of a cocoon.

For a moment, Lero had to wonder whether Applejack were simply running out of fabric, and had been reduced to throwing ANYTHING vaguely cloth-like onto her sewing machine to appease the demands of her Diamond Mark. But all he had to do was look around the room to see over a hundred of rolls of fabric in every color on the shelves. All he had left was to simply wonder: Why? Was it some trace of Applejack’s old self, obsessively incorporating the practical in her designs?

“Lero?”

He shook himself out of his distraction.

“A few days ago, Pinkie Pie had told me the story of how her cutie mark appeared,” Lero explained to Applejack. “It was really interesting, and it made me realize I hadn't heard the rest of yours... and what kind of friend would I be if I didn't ask about something so important to the people close to me? I mean, there has to be a great story behind how the charming and generous girl who makes all my clothes for me chose to take up such a profession! A girl with your brains and your work ethic could’ve done anything she wanted with her life... so why dressmaking in particular, out of all possible careers out there?”

She flashed him a dry grin. “Yer quite good at butterin’ gals up. Anypony ever tell yew that?”

He gave her a roguish ladykiller’s smile. “They have, from time to time. Especially the three of them that bought it.”

Chuckling and rolling her eyes, she said, “And Ah thank Ah’ll stop yew there, before ya start talkin’ ‘bout real butter.”

She stopped in her sewing and turned around to face Lero.

* * *

“I am a hen’s egg and I tell no lies,

Bakers use me to bake cakes, tarts, and pies!

I’m also for breakfast! I don’t like to boast,

But some ponies serve me with juice, jam, and toast!”

The small colt in the egg costume turned towards the backstage, at the Earth Pony mare who was directing this production. “How was that, Mrs. Understudy?”

Mrs. Understudy gave a strained smile. “Very good, Grape Crush! You finally, finally, finally memorized your line! But let’s not get so overexcited about it that we bring the play to a screeching halt, please? We only have...”

She checked the clock.

“...around thirty-four hours until we have to perform this in front of all your parents! So take it from the top, please, everypony?”

Applejack, standing next to Mrs. Understudy behind , shook her head at it all. Since she wasn’t one of the actors or the stagehoofs, this was actually her first time to watch a rehearsal all the way through.

The play was called Hello, We’re Your Food! It was basically a dramatic showcasing of all the categories on the food pyramid: Fruits, Vegetables, Flowers, Grains, Hay, Grass, Dairy Products, Eggs, Fish, and Sweets, which each actor played an individual food group.

Applejack had known going into it, signing on as costume designer, that this would be no Gandrew Gloyd Gwebber production, (how she loved that griffin’s musicals! All her family did!) And boy, did it show!

Applejack knew she and all her classmates were young, but the script was insultingly babyish. Half the actors might as well have been replaced by scarecrows; they would at least be more convincing in their roles. The music for this musical was provided by a single, crummy old piano, which she was certain had never even been close to a tuner in decades.

But worst of all... worst of all...

“Thank you for helping out with the costumes, Applejack!” Mrs. Understudy congratulated her in an undertone, while the actors were put through their paces.

...Worst of all was that the costumes she, herself, had designed... the very first outfits she’d made to be seen by an unbiased public, ponies who WEREN’T her family... matched the same cheesy quality as everything else in Hello, We’re Your Food!

And Applejack knew she had only herself to blame. Mrs. Understudy had told her: Nothing elaborate. Just make them like Nightmare Night costumes. And she’d not been creative enough to figure out how to make those limitations work for her.

“They’re all very nice.”

“Nice?!” Applejack cried back, feeling wounded.

‘Nice’ wasn’t a word any fashion designer wanted attached to her work.

‘Nice’ meant passable.

‘Nice’ meant wearable.

‘Nice’ meant ‘nice as any other piece of fabric on the racks.’

‘Nice’ meant ‘not worth a second glance.’

'Nice' meant 'Three out of Five Stars', not even worth noticing.

“They need ta be SPECTACULAR!”

* * *

When the dress rehearsal had finished, Applejack hid herself until everypony else had gone home. Then she went into the backstage area, into the theater’s wardrobe department, and stole every one of the costumes she’d made, sneaking them out of the school and returning home with them.

Up in her bedroom, bent over her sewing machine that’d been last year’s birthday present from her grandparents, Applejack tried every trick she could think of to make her costumes SHINE. But nothing seemed to work! Something was missing! She even considered starting over from scratch and working all through the night, maybe even skipping the first part of school!

But in the end, even if she really put her nose to the grindstone on this... she understood that she wasn’t feeling any strokes of artistic genius in her head worth that kind of trouble.

“Maybe Ah ain’t meant ta be a fashionista after all!”

* * *

“Mraow!”

Applejack gave a small start as a white Persian cat with a purple bow tied into her head fur leapt onto her back, eyeing the former farmer like an unamused queen.

“Uh... beggin’ yer pardon, Lero, buddy, but Ah’m thinkin’ mah li’l lady Opal here’s gotta hankerin’ ta be fed ‘bout now.”

So Lero kept where he sat, waiting as the palomino pony left and came back with a bowl of moist cat food and water. Opalescence calmly hopped down from Applejack’s back, landing on her feet, and took her first mouthful of gourmet tuna. Lero was surprised how tense all his muscles were and the way he was gripping the cushion of his chair, as though ready to push himself off from it.

Then he realized what it was: Lero had been expecting Opal to attack her mistress. He’d been fully prepared to leap off his seat and wrest a snarling, clawing feline off Applejack’s back and shove it in a cage the way he’d had to do with every one of Dash’s cats... and with every one of Dash’s EVERYTHING.

Lero remembered Spike once complaining that Opal was one of the nastiest animals for a pet-sitter to deal with... but from where he stood, you couldn’t ask for a better-behaved pet that this kitty.

“Hey, AJ? A question popped into my head. It doesn’t really have anything to do with your story, but... where’d you get your accent from?”

“Mah accent?” she asked, after tossing the empty cat food can out.

“Yeah. I know that you’re the only one with that accent in your family. How’d you get it?”

She took her hat off, with a bashful sort of laugh. “Well, thang was... Ah taught mehself how ta speak this way. Back when Ah was jest a filly, Ah read in a magazine somewhere that ponies like fashionistas speakin’ with an accent. So for an entire year, Ah hung out with Pinkie Pie ev’ry chance Ah got, ta pick up on her accent. Drove mah Mom up a wall! Ah practiced ‘n’ practiced ‘n’ practiced that accent ‘til it was as much part ‘a me as lemon juice in lemonade!”

She snorted.

“Turns out that Ah shoulda been more selective ‘bout which accent Ah wanted. Ah’d picked the worst one possible fer makin’ mahself sound smart ‘n’ so-fister-kated to all the fashion ah-fishy-ah-nod-doughs! Bah that time, mah dumb hick accent was so deeply ingrained in me, Ah couldn’t unlearn it! Yew can imagine how mighty furious Ah was at poor Pinkie! We plumb stopped bein’ friends at all, ‘til the day good ol’ Twilight came ta Ponyville!”

Lero blinked. “Whoa. That was...”

“Mean ‘n‘ wrong ‘n‘ small-minded ‘n‘ prissy ‘n‘ elitist ‘n’ unfair of me,” Applejack admitted with deep self-disgust. “Ah was young and stupid. Thankfully, though, Ah managed ta make a good name for mahself in spite a’ mah accent, and grew outta that way of thinkin’. 'Sides, better tah be judged by mah work than mah voice, raight?”

“And you and Pinkie got back together as friends,” Lero said. “Really, that’s the best thing of all.”

Applejack smiled approvingly at him. “Yeah. Yeah... Ah completely agree! That IS the best thang of all!”

The orange Earth pony turned her head; looking at a picture on the wall. It showed all six of the Element Bearers all together, all happy. The poofy-maned Pinkie was even hugging Applejack in her usual exuberant way.

“This may sound weird, considerin’ Ah’m a fashion gal and she’s a farmer, but the truth is... whenever Ah look at Pinkie Pie.... Ah see a lotta mahself in her!”

“Absolutely!” Lero agreed. “I see a lot of you in Pinkie too.”

Sometimes, it was hard keeping a straight face.

* * *

But at that moment, young Applejack was struck by an sudden powerful... certainty. An intuition.

A hunch.

This hunch told her that she should not give up on fixing these costumes.

The costumes needed something that was not in this room.

That was nowhere in this house.

She would need to step outside.

This hunch frankly scared Applejack. She was leaving her house, she was not letting her parents know where she was going, she herself didn’t know where she was going, but she’d never felt such a POWERFUL impulse before... like some kind of magical, psychic thingy you’d expect a unicorn to have! But it was nearly impossible to deny; like suddenly being in pitch darkness and choosing NOT moving towards a faraway light.

Better to see what her intuition was making such a fuss over and accept punishment later, when Mom and Dad realized she was gone, and had to go call the Missing Foals ponies to find her.

At first, Applejack thought this hunch would surely take her to the marketplace and she’d need to buy something from there, (but she hadn’t even grabbed her money!) But no, the hunch took across dirt roads, where few ponies lived...

...And across flat plains where there was nothing but tall grass...

...And through the famous Half-A-Mile Desert, just outside of Ponyville, with all its cacti, tumbleweeds, and cow skulls...

...And up and down several high hills...

The funny thing was; even though she had no idea where she was going, Applejack had no sense of being lost. It was as though she were obediently following directions to some unnamed new destination.

Finally the hunch brought her to the edge of a grey and craggy cliff. The whole strange trip had only lasted forty-five minutes. A humongous object occupied the whole of the precipice’s edge.

“Oh mah sun, moon and stars!” the little filly cried. “A giant rock!”

It was certain a big ol’ hunk of stone, but Applejack wasn’t entirely sure whether it should be called a ‘boulder’ when it was so triangular, like a spearhead. “Ah can’t believe mah own eyes!” she exclaimed. “A giant rock! It’s a rock and it’s giant! Hooo-doggie! Think Ah’ll call ‘im Tom! ...Wait, a rock!?"

A second hunch followed up on the first one: this had something to do with her cutie mark. But what? Was it telling her that fashionista-ing was the wrong path for her? That she ought to be a geologist instead? Or a stonemason? No, she refused to believe that!

"A rock’s mah destiny?!" She groaned in disbelief. "What’s wrong with me? Ah followed a hunch all the way out here for a rock!?"

But then came a great thunderous noise, and Applejack backed away from the edge of the cliff. She looked up for the source of the noise, seeing great whiteness and rainbow colors...

And the giant rock split in two before the young filly’s eyes.

At this early point in her life, it would be many years still before Applejack learned what the word ‘geode’ meant. All she knew was that the insides of the split rock halves were lined with a dragon’s banquet of crystals and rubies and sapphires and emeralds, and amethysts and even diamonds!

All hers for the taking. Finders keepers. Applejack grinned with sudden inspiration. Now if only her hunch had let her know she’d be needing to bring her saddlebags. And a pickaxe.

* * *

Twenty years down the line, none of the ponies who’d performed in that rendition of Hello, We’re Your Food! would remember the plinkety-plink of that pathetic old piano. They wouldn’t remember the inane lyrics from the script. They wouldn’t remember the one-two-three-turn-kick-steps Mrs. Understudy had made them memorize for the play’s meager dances. They’d barely remember Mrs. Understudy. They wouldn’t remember the play’s title was Hello, We’re Your Food! Twenty years down the line, it’d just be ‘that play about the food groups.’

Well, not quite JUST that. Because of what they WOULD always remember — the one precious detail captured by the clicking cameras of their loving parents in the audience — was how gloriously they looked inside those incomparable costumes, how radiantly they shone in the glow of the spotlight... all thanks to the gems sown in at the last minute by one committed, hardworking, and intuitive little filly who generously chose to go the extra mile, instead of calling it quits. It was thanks to her that every one of them looked there best on that special, fateful night.

Midway through that performance, Mrs. Understudy reluctantly turned her head away from the dazzling gleam of the sapphires sown into the fish costume’s eyes, to give Applejack a smile of tremendous pride.

And Applejack felt a sparkle of her own upon her body...

* * *

“And THAT’S how Ah earned mah diamonds!” Applejack finished, looking back proudly at her Diamond Mark.

“That’s quite an incredible story!” Lero told her. Inside, he was wondering how often, (if at all) the original pre-Swap Rarity had hung out with Applejack in their girlhood, the way AJ described.

“Shucks,” AJ said, “T’weren’t the most excitin’ tale, but it’s mine and Ah’m proud of it!”

“Frankly, I’m surprised you weren’t part of the cast! Or do you not like being onstage?”

Out of the corner of his eye, he watched Opal curl up into a ball next to the orange Earth pony.

“Well, half of it was that Ah was more concerned with provin’ Ah could make impressive outfits. The other half... well, Mr. Handy, Ah’m a proud girl. Too proud, even back then, ta get on a stage dressed as a hay bale or a fish.”

Then she gave him a cocky smile. “But believe me, Ah CAN act. Gimme a role worth mah time... especially one where the costume’s super-pretty, and Ah’m as good as an A-lister! Remember that one Hearth’s Warmin’ Eve pageant Twilight and the rest of us performed in? Yew were there! Wasn’t Ah a great Princess Platinum?”

Then Applejack’s eyes widened dramatically, and she let out an affronted gasp. “How DARE yew!” she exclaimed, slipping into Princess Platinum’s character. “Unlike yew pegasi ruffians, we unicorns would NEVER stoop ta such a thang!”

Lero grinned and clapped, for she made a PERFECT Texan princess. For all her Deep South accent, there was an undeniable elegance and refinement in her tone. It was mind-boggling to listen to. But then he thought over what Applejack had just said: 'we unicorns.'

“I kinda remember,” he waffled, though in actuality, Lero remembered that pageant VERY well. “But it’s been a while. You, Applejack, played the unicorn Princess, Platinum, right? And Rarity played the pegasus Commander Hurricane? And Fluttershy played the Earth pony, Chancellor Puddinghead?”

“And Pinkie Pie played Smart Cookie and Rainbow Dash played Private Pansy, and Twilight was terrific as Clover the Clever!” Applejack finished.

Lero let out a weak laugh. “Those... those were some WEIRD casting decisions.”

“How so?” Applejack asked.

“Well, if I were director, I’d’ve cast an Earth pony to play an Earth pony, a pegasus to play a pegasus and a unicorn to be a unicorn. Especially in a play where the three pony tribes are on the brink of war with each other!”

“Well, ya gotta admit, we pulled it off well enough in our play!” She smiled. “Ah give great credit to the costumin’ department. How they hid Fluttershy’s wings under that dress, that fake horn they attached to mah head... and how they were able ta hide Rarity’s own horn inside that specially-designed helmet... genius.”

“How did the costuming department give Rarity pegasus wings?” Lero asked, genuinely curious on that one.

“One of tha' unicorns jest magicked her up a temporary pair! Rarity LOVED every moment of it! Refused ta let them magic it off after tha' play wuz ovah; wanted ‘em ta fade on their own!” She looked at Lero. “Usually, that pageant IS cast with unicorn playing unicorn, ‘n’ so on... but Ah respect our director’s choices. HE focused on which pony could capture each CHARACTER best! And really, ain’t that what Hearth’s Warmin’ Eve is really all about? Not letting what tribe a pony is set up walls?”

“I guess so! Huh, maybe the casting decisions were more appropriate, in their own way.” Lero agreed, and moved onto a different subject. “Applejack, so far, I’ve listened to your story, Pinkie’s and Fluttershy’s... and I’ve noticed that rainbows seem to play a pivotal role in all of them...”

“And when ya hear Rarity, Twilight’s and Dash’s... you’ll notice those same rainbows appearin‘ in all a‘ them, too!” Applejack assured him. "Heh. Kinda surprised... ain't Rarity ever tell ya her story before?"

"It's... never really come up before. Now that I think on it, I don't know Lyra or Twilight's either!" That... actually bothered him, a bit, now that he thought about it. He knew Dash's... or at least, her original one. She’d told him it when she explained cutie marks to him, but it'd never occurred to ask the other two about theirs. When things were better, he'd make sure to ask them about it.

She nodded, took a deep breath of air in and let it out. “Celestia bless Rarity. Ah honestly shudder ta thank what woulda become a’ all six of us, if not fer her. If she hadn’t done what she did at exactly the time she did it. Who else coulda POSSIBLY taken her place? Cast her rainbows?”

“Rainbow Dash, maybe?” suggested Lero, his memory of her tale fresh in his mind.

Silence passed. And then Applejack burst out into peals of merry laughter, Lero snapping out of his remembrance and joining in a second later.

“Ha ha ha ha! Rainbow Dash?! Oh, Mr. Handy, Ah love it when yer funny!” she said.

“It just comes natural to me!” he replied wanly. When his laughter died down, he told the orange pony, “Applejack... I hope you don’t mind, but I brought a little something for you from home. My little way of saying thank you for putting up with me and my questions for this long.”

“Aw, yew didn’t need ta go do that!” Applejack told him.

But Lero was already unzipping his backpack. With great care, he took out a white cardboard box and opened it for Applejack to see. Applejack’s eyes widened as large as Pinkie’s had, the day he told her that smiles were the best gift she’d given him.

“That apple pie’s from the Apple family, ain’t it?” she whispered breathlessly.

“Yes. Yesterday, Pinkie Pie made this pie for me because I helped her out with her farm work a little.” He held it out towards her. “Thought I’d share it with you. Interested?”

She stared at the pie for several seconds more before wrenching her eyes away. “Yer not hittin’ on me, are ya?”

Lero nearly dropped the pie box. “Huh? Oh no, no, no! It’s nothing like that at all!”

She frowned. “Then why ya butterin' me up, askin' me about myself, then givin' me a gift of pie?”

Because I want to see if a pie made from your old family’s recipe provokes a reaction.

“Just because we’re friends! No more, no less. Trust me; I got enough girls to be getting along with, so this pie is the Pie of Platonic Friendship!”

“In that case, sure!” she grinned. "'Sides, Ah think ya know well enuff to not go scoutin' a girl without Rarity knowin'." Lero chuckled at that, as she trotted out to get the flatware.

The orange palomino returned with plates and a knife. Let set the pie on the table and cut two slices for them both. Deliciousness filled Lero’s mouth: the only way this wonderful pastry could’ve possibly tasted greater is if he’d eaten it fresh out of the oven. Pinkie had encouraged him to do just that, when she’d first given him this pie.

Applejack’s first bite was a great big chomp. “This pie... it tastes...”

Her chewing slowed.

“It... tastes lahk...”

She swallowed.

“...Home...”

Lero’s heart stopped at the look of tragic clarity on her face. “Home?” he repeated.

“...Home cooking!” She finished, sunnily. It was like watching a switch being flipped. “Good ol’ fashioned home-cooking!”

Her next bite was not a big mouthful, but a tiny little mouse-nibble, savoring each moment of the apple taste sitting in her mouth.

“Why... Ah don’t believe it, this pie’s so yummy, Ah’m CRYING.” She wiped at her eyes. More tears fell as she took her next bite.

Watching her lips was like watching a busy elevator in a transparent elevator shaft. Up and down, down and up, up and down, down and up, smile to frown, frown to smile, unable to decide what it should be, while chewing that tiny bite of pie. All while crying. It made Lero feel slimy inside. As though he’d shown a widower a video of his dearly deceased wife... just to see what kind of rise it’d get out of him.

And yet... it was all still so damnably fascinating to behold.

The Swapped Five’s rewritten memories were such curious things. Crucial matters such as their families, their childhood, their ambitions... major turning points in their old lives... that was where the Swap had been most thorough. Try to make them recall any of that, and it bounced off them like rubber.

But innocuous little nothings... the smell on a toothbrush... an offhanded comment about parties... an innocent question about where a skill was learned... the taste of an apple pie...

Somehow, THAT was what rocked the boat for them. It touched the core of who they were, the elements that allowed him to even recognize themselves as themselves-with-swapped-marks, rather than that ‘it had always been this way’ attitude. The cores of who they were, were still intact, and trying to shine through the artificial lives awkwardly strapped atop. Their true selves took every chance they could to peek out and be seen... but all too often were battered back down before you could blink.

“...Yeah,” said Lero. He finished off his own slice of pie as quick as he could, though he’d rather lost the stomach for it. “Pinkie Pie always was the best baker in all Ponyville!”

Yeah, keep up the cheerful tone.

Applejack laughed. “That may be, but don’t yew be tellin‘ Fluttershy that!” She swallowed through her tears. “Hurt her feelings, yew will!”

* * *

For the past few days, Spike had been refusing point-blank to come along with Lero to help him help Rainbow Dash.

“We had a deal, remember?” he reminded the human.

"Sure. I'm not the forgetful one." He glared at the recalcitrant dragon.

"What?"

"What I told you about family."

"Whatever, man, I'm not the one two-timing here."

After visiting Applejack at her Boutique, Lero had stopped by the library to once again beseech for his help. But the dragon just kept sweeping the floors busily.

“‘The more you keep your distance from Rarity, the more I’m willing to help you watch over Rainbow Dash’s pets,’” said Spike, emptying dust into the trash bin. “But you haven’t been living up to your end of the bargain, have you, big bro? If anything, it looks to me like you’ve grown CLOSER to her.”

And the dragon moved into the next room to sweep it out.

“Besides, I’ve got too much I need to do for Twilight already. So give my best regards to Jabbers and to Angel Bunny. You and Dash are on your own.”

It was moments like these that rather sharply reminded him that Spike, for all his hard work and articulate way of speaking, was still a child.

* * *

When he’d gotten to Rainbow Dash’s cottage, Lero was surprised to find that none of the animals were being outright violent today. It was feeding time for the critters. And for a change of pace, Angel Bunny had apparently decided to eschew open warfare in favor of a particularly spiteful form of passive aggression.

“Here!” Lero snapped, handing Angel his next carrot.

Odiously smug, the white rabbit accepted the carrot from Lero, taking a single bite out of the center of the orange vegetable. He chewed with relish, savoring its freshness. Then the rabbit placed the carrot upon the floor and kicked it back at the human.

Lero picked the carrot back up. “You full now?”

With a wicked grin, Angel shook his head, rubbing at his tummy with a forepaw, indicating he was still hungry.

Lero thrust five whole carrots at the rabbit’s face, clutching them all by their green stems in his fist. Each one of them had just a single bite bitten out of them.

“Here, Angel!” he said. “Have as much as you want! There’s PLENTY of carrot to go around! Why don’t you try finishing what you started?!”

The rabbit sneered at the bunch of carrots, turned around and kicked floor dust at them with his hind legs.

Rainbow Dash regarded the bunny with weary disgust. “Why did you turn into such a bad, bad bunny, Angel? You make it impossible for me to love you.”

“Impossible for me to love you!” cackled Jabbers the parrot, who took a single peck of birdseed and kicked the rest of his full bowl to the floor.

The worst of it was; every one of the other animals were following Angel’s lead. Even now, Lero watched one of the cats eat one mouthful of their cat food, and then flip her bowl upside-down. What voodoo powers did Angel possess which managed to get a cat to refuse food?

Lero had already tried collecting the spilled pet food back into its bowl, but when he did this, the animal would either knock it over again, or refuse to look at it. But THEN, they’d whine or keen or just stare at you, expecting to be fed.

You’d refill their bowls up with new food; they took one bite and repeated the whole process all over again.

“What are we going to do with all this food?!” Dash asked, sweeping kibble into a dustpan. “Throw it out?”

Lero thought about it. “I think we should put the food they rejected in different bags, and serve it to them again, tomorrow. This IS the first day they’ve pulled this on us. Maybe we should be optimistic, and assume they’ll take it then.”

“Yeah,” said Dash, will dull emptiness. “Optimistic.”

The bulldog that Lero was serving kibble to waited patiently until he had filled the entire bowl. He took one bite, licked his jowled chops, and overturned the rest of it with his snout.

Then he whined at Lero hungrily.

“You know what, Dash? Let’s... not dwell on it all,” he said, as the flamingo overturned his own bowl of shrimp. “Hey! I know! How about we tell each other stories while we work?”

“Stories?”

“Yeah! Like... how’d you get your cutie mark?”

Dash actually laughed. “Wow. It’s been a while since I told that story to anyone. Alright, sure.” She took in a breath. “This may come as a surprise to you, Lero, but when I was young, I was a bit of a... how to put it...”

“A wallflower?” Lero suggested.

“A speedster,” said Dash.

“Huh?!”

* * *

The young pegasus filly named Rainbow Dash was inside the Cloudsdale Weather Academy. It would soon be her first class of the day. By nature, Rainbow Dash was a shy and timid sort of girl, but she was also the sort of girl who frequently had lots and lots on her mind. From one thought to the next, her thoughts would often race along as she went... and her body would race along with it. Without even really meaning to. It was her curse — she was naturally fast, but had no confidence in her ability to control herself at high speeds!

Like most fillies her age, Rainbow Dash was thinking about a lot of things. For starters, all the parts along her left foreleg where it still ached from her crash into the floor. It hurt all down the lower portion of it; in her gaskin, her cannon, all the way down to her pastern! Ooh! She’d needed to put so much ice on them, when she’d gotten home last night!

Her body picked up speed as she flew down the school hallway.

Her next thought was what kind of cutie mark she’d end up getting. What sort of one would be the best one to have? One for studying science? Baking cookies? Selling jewelry? Snapping photos? Critiquing movies? Becoming an astrologer? An astronomer? She always confused the two! Any sort of thing would be good, really, as long as she didn’t have to fly fast.

Rainbow Dash unthinkingly accelerated again, and her fellow students let out gasps of surprise and indignation that she didn’t hear, as they were forced to duck or dodge. It was just that going down these hallways helped her to sort out her thoughts. Class wouldn’t even start for another fifteen minutes, so it wasn’t even like she’d be running late or anything...!

CRASH!

“Ow!” cried Rainbow Dash, holding her arms against her aching muzzle. One more part of her body that was hurting!

“OW!” cried the pony she’d rammed into. She looked up in dismay to see that it was Mr. Egret, the meteorology teacher! Her first teacher of the day! And boy, did he look sore at her!

“Rainbow Dash!” he growled. “Speeding down the hallways like a maniac! This is a weather school, not summer flight camp!”

She shrank away from Mr. Egret, shutting her eyes against him. "I'm sorry!" She squeaked in fear.

“Well, don’t just stand there like a clod of dirt! Explain yourself! Is some madmare chasing you with a hatchet or something?”

“No, sir... I was just... trying to clear my head, Mr. Egret, sir...”

“You want to clear your head? Go sit out in the playground and meditate! You KNOW racing indoors is against school rules! I’m going to have to report you! But I’ll deal with that later. For now, go see the nurse. Your nose is bleeding!”

She touched her nostrils, and it came away with red drops on it. Then she took another look at her teacher. “Um... er... so’s yours, Mr. Egret, sir.”

The meteorology teacher watched his own blood spatter to the puffy cloud floor under their hooves, soaking into it like a tuft of white cotton.

“You...!” he stopped himself there, before he said anything that would look bad on an official file. “...Fine! Fine. Then we’re both going to see the nurse together!”

As they walked unhappily side-by-side, a mocking chant started up among the students they were passing... not a loud, proud song, but muttered under their breath. Each singer the student and teacher passed overlapped the one before.

“Rainbow Dash, Rainbow Dash, Rainbow Dash can only crash...”

The worst of it was, Mr. Egret sang along too, out of the corner of his mouth, where he thought Rainbow Dash was too stupid to see.

* * *

The bell rang, signifying the end of the school day, and the first thing Rainbow Dash did was zip out the classroom. She rocketed down the halls, out the school’s front doors, beating every pony outside. And then promptly crashed face-first into the ground. She got back up and dug herself a hole to hide in. This wasn’t in any way figurative, either: she literally dug her hooves into one of the softer patches of cloud, like a... what did they call it? Like a vole or mole or some other kind of ole. Rainbow wasn’t sure. She’d never set hoof on the surface world ever, so all she knew of its bir... of its animals was what she read in books.

She just dug herself a nice filly-sized burrow to stash herself in, before they could come. She felt like a peanut snug in its shell. She felt like she should stay here an hour, just to be sure.

“Hey! Hoops! Score! Lookie here!” guffawed the last voice she wanted to be hearing. “Looks like somepony planted a carrot down in this here cloud, and it actually took root!”

And she felt the underside of a hoof stamp down upon the tail she’d so foolishly left exposed. She groaned internally, staying stock still, hoping they'd get bored and go away.

“Yeah, looks like it, Dumbbell!” chuckled the voice of Score. “Funny thing about carrots? They actually come in all sorts of different colors! Orange, yeah, but also red, yellow, and even purple!”

“Betcha ain’t never seen one that was all those colors at once!”

“Aw, Hoops, ya stole my punchline!” Score groused. “Anyway, a miracle cloud-grown rainbow-carrot like this don’t come around every day! I think we should split it between the three of us!”

“Sounds like a plan!” Dumbbell decided, and Rainbow Dash felt herself yanked out into the open air, facing the three biggest bullies of the school.

"Ow!"

“Sheesh!” said Hoops. “Ain’t that the ugliest carrot you ever seen?”

Rainbow Dash stared up at them miserably. “How’d you guys find me?”

Hoops laughed. “Why, you were in such a great big HURRY, Rainbow Crash, you left a nice bright rainbow-trail for us to follow! Like smoke from a fire! Led us right to ya!”

Ugh. Those rotten rainbow trails of hers! They always brought so much attention down on herself! It was just horrible!

“So what do ya think we should do with this carrot?” Score asked the other two. “Boil it? Eat it raw?”

“Nah,” said Dumbbell. “I mean, look at it! It’s all KINDS of disgusting colors! Clearly that means it’s gone bad. Let’s throw this carrot in a trash bag and toss it over the side!”

“Good idea!” said Hoops, flying into the air. “Hey, you two keep her pinned, I’ll go fly and get the bag!”

"Nnngh, no! Let me go!"

However, just as Hoops moved to leave, another pony galloped up, butting Dumbbell off of Rainbow Dash’s tail, planting herself protectively between her and the bullies.

“Hey, Hoops! If you’re planning on getting trash bags anyway, then you might as well get a few extra for you three colts!” yelled Cloudsdale Weather Academy’s sole unicorn student.

* * *

“So Rarity went to the same school as you?” Lero asked, remembering everything Flitter and Cloudchaser had told him about the unicorn being an ‘honorary pegasus,’ and Rarity, herself, saying she’d been ‘raised among the clouds’ and ‘born of pegasus parents.’

“Yeah,” said Dash.

Angel Bunny was pointing at a new, untouched carrot, drumming his foot upon the floor expectantly.

“I imagine she must’ve either been completely friendless for being a unicorn... or the MOST popular kid because of her personality,” said Lero, snapping off just the bottom end of one of the already-bitten carrots — no bigger than a pencil’s eraser — and offering it to Angel in his hand.

The rabbit scowled at Lero. Lero ate the carrot bit for himself.

“Actually, Rarity managed to carve out a good middle ground for herself,” Dash told him. “Yeah, the bullies, tribalists, or other jerks gave her a LOT of guff cause she’s a unicorn. But Rarity, well... her being a unicorn was the ONLY thing she had going against her! Even as a filly, Rarity was smart, pretty, fun, sophisticated, very outgoing...”

...Everything I’ll never be... Lero could read in Dash’s regretful eyes.

“...Once you got to know her, there was NOTHING not to like! She made friends with pretty much anyone who didn't have a stupid reason to hate her.” Dash finished. “I should know. I was the very first friend she made. Because both of us were total outcasts, at first.”

Lero said nothing to this.

“In spite of everything the bullies did to harass her... all the scuttlebutt they spread... she was still able to form a pretty solid clique of friends! A brave girl like Rarity wasn’t going to let those meanies keep her at the bottom of the food chain!”

“That must’ve felt nice, being part of a group of friends!” He snapped off another pea-sized bit of carrot and offered it to Angel, dropping it on the floor. When the rabbit refused to touch it, Lero just tossed it over to the bulldog, who instinctively caught it in midair, and gulped it down.

“Uh... well... while I WAS her friend, I never was part of her little clique,” Dash confessed.

“Why? Were the rest of her friends mean to you?” Lero asked, while Angel made angry rabbit noises at the bulldog.

“No, no, no, it’s just... I was... shy,” She hung her head. “There was so MANY of them, and I felt... like I was an embarrassment. A guaranteed embarrassment. Bad enough being ‘Rainbow Dash who could only crash.’ I felt like as soon as they got to know me, they’d know I was even a bigger loser than the whole school thought I was. I was never part of any ‘clique.’ Not until Twilight came to town, and the six of us became the Elements of Harmony.” Her head lifted with a smile. “One of the best days of my life.”

Lero gave her side a single, reassuring rub, and his heart lifted as she leaned into the touch. “Aw, heck, big guy, I know YOU’RE my friend!”

* * *

Dumbbell sneered at the pesky, obnoxious, (and totally NOT cute) unicorn filly. She had thwarted dozens of his attempts to make sport of other students, which had made her as hated as homework.

“Why? She your FILLYFRIEND? Gonna start a HERD with her or somethin’?”

“Oh, it’ll be a match made in Heaven!” Score chimed in. “Cloudsdale’s biggest misfit with Cloudsdale’s biggest loser!”

“You’re just hilarious, Hilarity!” Hoops added.

“Yeah! Hilarious as that stupid parachute of yours!” said Score, sneered at the large yellow pack strapped to the young unicorn’s back. “I think you should make use of that ‘chute, and jump on down to where all the other ground-bound ponies live!”

* * *

“A parachute?” Lero balked. “An... actual parachute? As in... you fall hundreds of feet from the sky, but then the big balloony cloth thing comes out and it slows your fall down so you have a safe landing? That kind of parachute?”

Following Lero’s example, Dash inserted a single birdseed into Jabbers’ bowl. The parrot’s beak snapped down angrily upon it. “Yep! Everyone at school knew that her father made her wear that parachute; it was ALWAYS strapped to Rarity’s back, back then. Used to be a joke going around school that she showered with it on, and slept with it in bed,” Despite herself, Dash chuckled. “Foals can be cruel, but most any one of us would’ve shot down to save her if she fell, but... you know... extra safety precaution. Cost Rarity’s dad a bundle, from what I heard.”

“...Well it’s certainly understandable he’d do something like that,” Lero stated.

It always surprised him what sort of technology they did and didn’t have in Equestria.

* * *

"Starting a comedy act, I see?" Rarity dryly observed. "Let me offer you a suggestion; don't quit your day job as dullards. You're much more talented at it."

Dumbbell glared angrily at her through his bangs for several seconds before another, nasty idea finally bubbled up in his mind. “Hey, remember that old song we all used to sing about you, Hilarity?” He said, turning to his chums.

“I sure do!” said Hoops.

And then all three bullies began singing:

“Unicorn! Unicorn!

Got no wings; she has a horn!

What’s she doin’ in the sky?

Don’t she know that she can’t fly?!”

Rainbow’s heart went out to her unicorn friend as she saw her lip tremble... but then it curled upward into a smirk.

“Look at yourselves! Singing songs. Rhyming names. You think you’re big shots, but in the end, you’re nothing but a pathetic pack of pitiful poets!”

“You take that back!” Dumbbell demanded. “Or I swear I’ll make you sorry!”

She looked down her nose at him. “What are you going to do? Write a limerick at me? A haiku? Tell me, do you even know what a poet is? Or has that eluded you as much as basic manners and decency?”

Dumbbell kicked some cloud up with his hoof. “Grrrrr! I swear, you’d better shut your mouth now, or I’m REALLY gonna make you sorry!”

Rarity found that hilarious. “Dumbbell — and please, thank your mom for me for giving you such a GREAT name! — I’d ask you to look me in the eye when you say that, but I wouldn’t want you to strain yourself trying to see past that mop that’s halfway over your eyes! Here! Let me help, Dumb-Dumb.”

All three of the bullies had great, shaggy bangs curtaining their eyes. But Rainbow Dash watched Rarity’s horn glow, and then she saw a pinkish haze form by the top of Dumbbell’s forehead. The haze cut across Dumbbell’s hair like a tiny katana cutting through grass, and presto! The colt was un-banged.

The next second, Dumbbell flew up and shot down at Rarity, pinning her to the ground. He barked an order, and his two accomplices wrenched the parachute off Rarity’s back. Catching one of the parachute’s straps in his arm, Dumbbell flew high out over the long drop to nothingness, to the surface far below, just a few yards away.

“I’m gonna drop your stupid parachute, Hilarity!” he snarled, dangling the parachute over the empty air. “Whatcha gonna do now?!”

“Give it back!” she demanded, trying to grab it with her telekinesis.

But Hoops and Score came to their friend’s aid, joining in the tug-of-war!

“Heh heh! You’re gonna have to fly down after it, if you want it that badly!” Dumbbell said.

For half a minute they all just pulled at the parachute, back and forth. For all Rarity’s magic, it was still three colts against one filly. Rarity strained just to hold on. Then she appeared to have a new thought.

“...You know something, Dumbbell?” They were all surprised, Rainbow Dash included, when her telekinesis faded off the pack. She had let go. “I just realized, I DON’T want it that badly. Go ahead. Drop it.”

“I really will let go of this!” Dumbbell swore, dangling it as low as it would do. “I’m serious!”

And then Rarity fired a small ball of energy at the arm which held the parachute strap. It hit Dumbbell with the force of a well-thrown golf ball, and he dropped the parachute with a shriek. They all watched it plummet down, down, down to where the surface-dwelling ponies all looked to be the size of ants. Whatever ‘ants’ were.

“So was I,” said Rarity, dimming her horn with a calming breath. “I just realized... I don't need it anymore. I feel... liberated. Like I’ve grown a little. Thank you, Dumbbell.”

Then she turned to the filly she’d done all this for. “Hey, Rainbow? Would you like to come over to my place and let me give you a makeover? I’ll have you know I’m a certified natural-born prodigy at all forms of beautification! I'd like to work with a mane as artistic as yours! Far preferable to overgrown bangs.”

“Sure, Rarity!” said Rainbow. “That sounds great!”

“And THEN we can discuss which of the Wonderbolts you think is cutest!”

The unicorn formed a cloud platform, and tapped her hoof at an empty spot on the platform where Rainbow Dash could hop on with her. But just as they were about to take off, Dumbbell and his cronies planted themselves in front of the fillies.

“You think you’re better than me, don’t ya?” Rainbow Dash felt herself wanting to hide in her hole again at the sound of Dumbbell’s voice. “Just because you have a horn and I don’t!”

“Swap the word ‘horn’ for ‘brain,’ and yes, you’re right on the money!” Rarity replied.

“Whaddaya say to us having a little lightning duel, then?” Dumbbell glanced warily at Rarity’s horn. “With storm clouds.”

Rarity looked conflicted at that. “Well, by the rules of polite society, a lady simply does not attack a stallion...”

“...C’mon, Hilarity,” Dumbbell sneered, “we all know girls made up that rule because boys ALWAYS HIT HARDER...!”

“On the other hoof, the rules are a great deal less specific about giving a stupid colt a well-deserved thrashing!" She finished, angrily getting nose-to-nose with the colt. “Just name where and when!”

“One hour,” said Dumbbell. “The airspace over the Everfree Forest.”

Rarity turned her back on the colts. “Then I’ll see you in an hour.”

* * *

It was amazing how fast word could travel in a single hour.

As they had promised, they were all gathered at the site which was to serve as their dueling arena. Rarity, Dumbbell, Score, Hoops, Rainbow Dash, plus about twenty other classmates of their who had come as spectators.

“You can do it, Rarity!” called out Valley Breeze; one of the unicorn’s friends.

“Zap his tail off!” cheered Winter Wren, next to her.

“Show her who’s boss, Dumbbell!” shouted Gnatcatcher.

“Burn her stupid mane!” yelled Yellowhammer.

The spectators were all on their own cloud, a fair distance away from the combatants. Dumbbell and Rarity were each on their own cloud platform.

“Everyone quiet!” yelled Hoops, and the audience all went semi-quiet. “Good. Now I’ll go over the main rules. Each fighter only gets one storm cloud: the cloud they’re each right now standing on. Go out of bounds, you’re disqualified. Fighters must be within ten feet of their cloud at all times in any direction, any more and it’s another DQ! You win by either A) knocking out your opponent to the count of ten, or B) If your opponent’s cloud is judged to be completely busted or out of lightning.”

Hoops smiled at Rarity.

“‘Cuz she’s a unicorn, Rarity gets one break; she can use weather magic... but that's IT. No horn lightning, no grabbing Dumbbell or his cloud with her tele-ka-whatsit, no nothing but fighting with clouds like a PEGASUS! Fighters! Is this understood?”

“Yeah, sure!” said Dumbbell.

“Yes!” said Rarity.

“Great! Let’s get it on!”

Dumbbell stomped his hoof down upon his cloud. Aiming lightning bolts from a storm cloud so they’d go whichever direction you wanted was foal’s play; everypony knew that! It was all a matter of being familiar enough with clouds to know which part to stamp your hoof on.

A surge shot out at at Rarity’s head, but it was met by Rarity’s own blast, and they canceled each other out.

Rarity was tapping out a rhythmic quickstep beat on her cloud with both her forelegs, almost like a foal throwing a silent tantrum; except that it was shooting out rapid-fire lightning blast at Dumbbell. But Dumbbell threw himself to the floor of his cloud, hugging it with all hooves, then using his wings to propel him away, before springing back to a stand, and returning fire.

Rarity’s horn glowed, and her cloud lifted straight up, almost to an out-of-bounds height, before she gave a great hop and brought all four hooves solidly on her cloud, sending an extra-large bolt zigzagging down at Dumbbell. He dodged, and the bolt bit off quite a chunk of Dumbbell’s cloud, which then dissipated into the air.

So the colt flew to the underside of his cloud, hugging its bottom, using his hooves to thump out retaliatory blasts through the top of the cloud at Rarity; perforating her cloud and actually giving her a painful shock! She glared at him, her horn glowing- Gusts of cold wind whipped aroudn the arena, buffeting Dumbbell's cloud, and driving him back, she causing several more strikes of lightning lance out at him. She was utilizing her advantage; weather magic.

Dumbbell, in response, used his own; flapping his wings hard to drive his cloud rapidly around the arena. Finding herself being attacked in directions she wasn't expecting, Rarity bobbed and weaved, and received a few more shocks before she got a moment to concentrate, and with a glow of her horn, Dumbbell found him blinded by an impenetrable fog bank.

When Rarity sent her next bolt; Dumbbell had to jump to dodge it, since he could only hear it coming. But before he could flap back down and set his hooves back on his cloud, Rarity shot another bolt, and Dumbbell was forced to fly further back from his cloud! Another! Another! Everypony in the audience could see that at this rate, Dumbbell was being forced to an out-of-bounds range from his cloud! They’d have to disqualify him!

The unicorn’s muscles spasmed and jittered as she was struck by an electrical double whammy. She looked to see Hoops and Score had entered the arena, riding their own clouds.

“Never said it was against the rules for others to join the fight!” Hoops crowed.

“Hey! That’s cheating!” Rainbow Dash shouted out from the crowd, but a sharp look from Hoops quailed her. “W...well, i...it is...”

From where they were sitting, Glittershine and, of all ponies, Derpy Hooves were standing up from their cloud bleachers, grabbing their own thunderclouds to come to Rarity’s aid, but the unicorn just let out a snort. "Fine, then! Stay back, girls. I can take on all three of these cowards just as easily as I can take on one!"

But it turned out she couldn’t. Under the onslaught of the three colts’ electric barrage, it was all Rarity could do to keep dodging frantically, as near-misses kept tearing away bits of her cloud. By the end of it, she was down to balancing on four separate tiny clouds under each of her four hooves. Each cloud was only as big and wide as a cheerleader’s pompom. There was now so much electricity charged in the air, that every one their manes stood straight upward like they were a gang of mad cartoon scientists.

Glittershine and Valley Breeze and a number of Rarity’s other dear friends stood poised to dive down and catch Rarity when the bullies made her fall.

“Wanna know what your biggest mistake was, Hilarity?” Dumbbell jeered. “You let yourself be born without wings.”

Rarity's eyes flashed with fury that practically blazed. "OH! IT! IS! ON!" Her horn blinded the bullies; blinded ALL of them, stopping anyone from thinking. The clouds throughout the entire arena responded with a blinding, cold gale, the seats were torn out from underneath the spectators, as they were battered with freezing wind. Rainbow found her support torn out from underneath her. Battered by strong winds, she was unable to find her wings, she spun about wildly in a tailspin until she slammed into another pegasus, who righted herself while Rainbow plummeted!

* * *

She hurtled toward the earth below, while facing upwards towards the sky. Too stunned to think to open her wings, too stunned to even scream, Rainbow Dash just fell and fell and fell, watching cloud after cloud whiz by her head as though this were all happening to somepony else, not her... until, miraculously, instead of crashing, like she always crashed, everywhere... she felt something break her fall.

Thousands upon thousands of fluttery, paper-thin little something. Rainbow Dash looked left and right, seeing little things that weren’t birds... oh, but their fragile-looking wings were so preciously beautiful! Thousands of the pretty things, all fluttering by in a swarm! They had broken her fall. They delicately settled her against the ground.

What was this place? There were so many wonders to behold! So much filling her eyes! The colors alone, here, were like stepping into a particularly glorious dream! Up in Cloudsdale, eveything was, well, clouds. Countless shades of white and grey... and the blue of the sky.

Sure, the rainbows were colorful. The occasional bird, or flock of birds, could be colorful. Pegasi, themselves, were colorful. But her fellow pegasi were just so difficult for Rainbow Dash to deal with! Here, there was greens on the leaves, green on the grass, green on the bushes... and the flowers stems. And the flowers themselves: orange and pink and red and white and yellow and violet and more...! Wild berries, growing on bushes!

Back on Cloudsdale, they DID have flowers and berries and grass and such... for sale in the marketplace. Imported from down below. Cost a pretty bit to buy and bring home with you. But here? Here, in this lovely little forest? It was all hers for the taking. For ANYONE’S taking!

Rainbow Dash looked on, willingly falling under the spell this place was casting on her, struggled to remember everything she’d read about the surface world, the unique vocabulary of it all, every bit as novel and exotic as reading about undersea life.

Up in the trees, she saw... they were called ‘squirrels,‘ their bushy tails were so distinct... clambering up the side of a tree, into a hole. She’d never even SEEN a tree from this angle before now! Always it’d been from the top-down view! A family of bunnies, (or were they actually rabbits? What was the distinction?) The birds weren’t anything new to her... but the bees made the cutest little buzzing noises as they set about collecting pollen for their honey.

Oh, what a truly magical place the surface was! And to think she owed it all to that stupid, silly duel taking place above all there heads! She looked up. A massive thundercloud was forming, jags of lightning proving the continued battle. The storm, oddly, was taking a geometric shape. She shook her head, and turned her attention back to the wonders around her.

Her grin kept widening. Why had all the adults kept her from going to this place for so long? Why, for that matter, would anypony, wings or no wings, willing live in such a barren, colorless place as Cloudsdale? What were clouds compared to all the riches of the earth?

All these animals! She just... she just wanted to cuddle with them all! She wanted to bring them all home with her! These little earthbound creatures were so unbelievably cute, and she just wanted to take them home with her and be friends with them forever and ever! Unlike ponies, critters didn’t mock you or snub you. They’d never judge her for being klutzy, for being too fast for her own good!

If she knew the ground had THIS much up its sleeve, she’d have packed her bags and come down here years ago, and never looked back!

Then, there was a sudden explosion of noise, a thunderous echo of noise as the now diamond-shaped raincloud exploded with perfectly-geometrically shaped hail, the perfect geometric diamond shapes scattering rainbows all across the sky for miles and miles around. A beautifully intricate webwork of colors.

However, all the loud uproar taking place back in her old home, up above was spooking all the poor woodland critters. Eagerly, she set off after them, to kindly reassure them they had nothing to fear. Especially with a girl like her willing to be their friend!

...And the next time she looked at her flank, Rainbow Dash would see three new additions there...

* * *

“And... one thing led to another, and here we both are,” Rainbow Dash finished.

“It’s a good story, but still... BUTTERFLIES?!” Lero balked. “Butterflies stopped your fall?!”

“It wasn’t just ANY old butterflies, buddy! This was Herculoid Pinkwings we’re talking about!” She showed off her flank as though showing off a trio of the live Pinkwing butterflies. “Plus some Herculoid Bluewings and Yellowwings, as I recall...”

“So what’s so special about them?”

Rainbow Dash took on a cocky look. “Well, have you ever heard about how ants are capable of lifting fifty times their own weight?”

“Yeah.” Lero said.

“Well, Herculoid Pinkwings are capable of lifting six thousand times their own weight. And I fell into a flock of them big enough to kidnap a buffalo!”

Lero laughed, not even feeling Angel Bunny kicking at his ankle with hateful frustration.

“Yeah, I know, crazy but true!” said Dash, laughing along. “Believe me, I was there!”

“It’s not really that!” Lero said. “It’s just... Rarity gets a parachute, you get these butterflies, and I get to fall through a bramble tower,” He sighed with a wry smile. “Ah well, c’est la vie, as the French say in my old world.”

“I should’ve been there to save you.”

His eyes snapped over to the pegasus.

“...Dash?”

She shook herself lightly from what seemed to be a mild daze. “Huh? Oh, I’m sorry, dude, spaced out a bit there! What I meant to say was: I wish I could’ve been there to save you.”

Lero watched her look away for a second. Then she looked back. “Lero? Could I tell you something?”

“Sure,” he said. “Anything.”

“Sometimes, when you’re over the house like this, helping me... I suddenly find myself thinking about everything that happened to you in Bramblewood. The fall. All those thorns. And that spider.”

Rainbow’s eyes were filled with deep emotion. “You really suffered, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” Lero simply said. He didn’t want to elaborate. "But don't worry about it. I've had worse." Though right now, he couldn't remember when he'd had worse... not without reawakening happily buried memories of the World-Before-Equestria.

“Well, I think about what it must’ve been like living through that and... this is REALLY silly of me, I know, but I find myself feeling incredibly sorry that I wasn’t there, myself, to swoop down and save you! I'd have done it in a heartbeat! I just... it’s just...”

She took a long breath out, and let it out with a regretful smile. “...crazy of me, huh? I mean, you were on that private date with Rarity... so it’s not like I could’ve been there anyway, right?”

“I suppose not,” Lero agreed.

She sat on the couch. “...Wanna know something else I think about when you come by here?”

“Sure.”

“That welcome home party we threw for you. I remember... when you hugged me.”

“And...?” Anxiety built within him as he sat on the couch next to her. The last time he touched on anything remotely like this, she'd called him sick and locked herself in her bedroom to get away from him. He knew she didn't remember, thanks to Discord, but...

“And at the time, I was just shocked and surprised. A little scared too; I didn’t know what to make of it! But looking back on it where I am now... having gotten to know you better, Lero... I think I understand why you hugged me the way you hugged me. You could see that I was going through a rough spot, right?”

“Well, yeah. That was painfully obvious. I mean it: PAINFULLY obvious. You were dead to the world when I got there, barely functional, and the second you came awake, you were terrified of what was going on back home without you... and afraid of going back there at the same time.”

Even if it was over a heartfelt moment, Lero felt the bizarre cognitive dissonance of legitimately remembering the same memory as one of the Swapped!

“From right off the bat, you were trying to reach out to me,” she murmured. Rainbow licked her lips. “One more thing I remember from that party: Applejack having to tell me to tell you glad-you’re-not-dead. And what I said was just... blah. No, worse than blah, it was uncool. No, WORSE than uncool... it was fake. I gave you a FAKE glad-you’re-not-dead spiel!”

She reached over and gave him a REAL hug. “Lero, I’m so happy you survived! I hate to think what my life would be like today if you weren’t here.”

He hugged her back. “Anytime, Rainbow.”

It felt like home.

Author's Note

Well, we’ve reached the end of this chapter. And doubtless, most all of you are curious why a certain special unicorn who lives in the same house as Lero has not gotten to tell HER cutie mark story.

Well, I figured since Twilight Sparkle hasn’t been swapped at all, there’s no need to retell her story!

...
...

Okay... let me explain myself. My original intention for this chapter had been to tell the cutie origin stories of ALL FOUR of the remaining Swapped. So what happened? I did a word count, and it turned my chapter was running QUITE a bit long.

Plus, I knew that for me to do full justice to all of Rarity’s backstory would pretty much require me to make this chapter twice as long. So I just went and split this chapter up in two.

But rest assured, the tale of Rarity The Weathermare’s personal history is coming next. We shall be delving back into the depths of Swapped Equestria.

Rarity was a HANDFUL for The Swap. It had to BEND ITSELF OVER BACKWARDS, in terms of creativity, just to invent plausible alibis for...

...how a unicorn spent almost her entire childhood up in the clouds of Cloudsdale...

...how Rarity managed to obtain her cutie mark...

...how Rarity came to meet, grow enamored of, and enter a romantic relationship with our boy Lero.

So stay tuned!

And if you haven’t already, I invite you to check out my newly made TV Tropes page...

And “Ask The Swapped Ponies.”

Sixteen: White Rose

At approximately six in the evening, Lero Michealides had returned from the cottage at the edge of the Everfree Forest, his mind brimming with the cutie mark stories he’d just heard from Applejack, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash. But as late as it was, Lero still wasn’t done yet. There was still one more story left to hear, wasn’t there?

* * *

If anyone at Golden Oaks Library had bothered to look at the clock, they would’ve seen it was now 7:02 P.M; the dark of the evening had settled in.

The purple strands of Rarity’s mane had been freshly washed and dried with warm air which the unicorn had conjured for herself. But instead of setting them back into their regular curls, Rarity had kept her hair down. Now it spilled like a cascade of silk down all sides of Lero’s lap — upon which she had nestled herself — so that the unicorn’s beloved human could brush her mane.

In Lero’s hands, that humble little manebrush transformed into a weapon of mass relaxation... a worthy armament in her human’s never-ending war against stress and stiff muscles. She loved it especially when he did what he was doing at this very moment; running that brush through her mane with one hand, while also combing his magnificent fingers through her purple locks with his free hand, and gracing her scalp with an expert, loving touch. How blessed she was that her prince — on top of all his other inestimable qualities — should be such a skilled masseur!

Yet Rarity could not entirely lose herself to Lero’s gentle ministrations. Not this time around, at least. This time, they were doing something a little different. As Lero brushed and caressed her mane, Rarity levitated a book up at eye-level, picking passages to read.

“As soon as a caretaker approached the bonobo enclosure with food, the males developed erections," she recited aloud.

Out of pure shock, Lero momentarily tugged her hair wrong with his brush, though he patted it apologetically right afterwards. “If that were me, that’d be the moment I stop being the bonobos’ caretaker!”

Rarity laughed, as did Twilight, who listened along from the couch where she was reading her own book... though Lero gave the unicorn in his lap an odd look. He gently poked a finger into her ribs. “Why are you grinning like that, Rarity?”

“Oh, nothing! Nothing!” And she turned the page with a peculiar, cheeky sort of smile. “Not just food, but anything that arouses the interest of more than one bonobo at a time tends to result in sexual contact.”

Rarity turned her face far enough to favor Lero with a bright eye and that same cheeky smile. He kissed her soft white-furred cheek and tickled her ear.

“Sorry, love, there's only one of me to go around. Does that make me not enough?”

“It makes you mine, my dearest Lero—”

“Ours!” Twilight called out, nose still buried in her book.

“Most definitely ours,” Rarity confirmed with a sultry look.

Earlier that night, while pouring honey in her tea, Rarity had found her mind wandering back to the last time she’d spoken with Honeydew. Her talk about ‘bonobos.’ In spite of their open enmity, Rarity's curiosity was aroused. If nothing else, she wanted to understand how it was supposed to be an insult to her and Lero.

So here she now was, reading from How Bonobos Say Hello by Professor Trece Segundos. “If two bonobos approach an empty cardboard box thrown into their enclosure, they will briefly mount each other before playing with the box.”

Lero shook his head. “Well that just gives me one more reason to thank God THESE guys didn’t reach the top of the food chain like you and I did. Could you imagine?”

Then her human pantomimed opening a refrigerator door, pretending to be a sapient bonobo. “Oh my GOD! The milk’s expired! Nnggh... that gives me an even BIGGER BONER than when the drainpipe clogs! Time to jack off against my toilet plunger again! DING-DONG! Oh... OH! That’s the BELL! Must be that annoying jerk conducting another door-to-door survey. Might as well go jump his bones... nnngh! I’ll NEVER get my taxes done at this rate!”

“You ARE incorrigible!” Twilight said, as Rarity telekinetically tickled him under his bearded chin.

“A bonobo who finds a new fruit tree will report back, at which point an orgy breaks out, and then after everyone shares in the bounty, another orgy occurs as some kind of digestif.”

Lero continued brushing at the base of her mane. “Man, if I didn't know better, I'd say this was a joke! But I gotta hand it to Honeydew: this stuff makes for SUPER-entertaining reading material.”

“I know. I should return the favor sometime,” she said, skimming the words until she’d found a steamier, (or was that ‘more ridiculous?’) passage to read aloud. Her voice became melodramatically authoritative.

“Sex in bonobos occurs in every possible gender combination, with male-male relationships being slightly less frequent. Bonobos possess a cheerful sense of general promiscuity, weaving wanton sex into their society, and boast a vast sexual repertoire — deep kissing, foreplay, oral sex, homosexuality, and polyamory.”

Lero stopped brushing Rarity's mane mid-stroke.

“Now it’s starting to sound creepily close to how PONY sex works.” To this, Rarity shot Lero a frown, while Twilight threw a paperback at the back of his head with deadly accuracy.

“Sorry.”

“The range of partners includes adults of the same sex, an adult with a juvenile of either sex, and two juveniles together.”

All three of them cringed. “Gah! Hide the children!” Lero cried. “Hide them from EACH OTHER!”

“...Bonobos are the only non-sapient creature to have been observed engaging in such sexual activities as mouth-to-mouth kissing, oral sex, genital caressing by forelimb, male-on-male mounting, frottage, penis-fencing by two males...”

“Rarity, would you STOP SMILING like that?!” Lero begged.

“...and genito-genital rubbing...”

“I know what a ‘genital’ is, but ‘genito’ is new to me.” Lero turned to Twilight. “Any idea what it means?”

The lavender unicorn shrugged. “All I know is that it sounds dirty.”

“...by two females in estrus, who smoosh their swollen vulvas back and forth against each other in a spate of feverish sisterly cordiality.”

“Sounds even more like pony sex, to me — Hey!” Lero flinched and laughed, as another paperback found his head, this time dropping from the top of the ceiling.

“How incredibly eerie...” said Rarity. “I’m almost CERTAIN that I read that EXACT same phrasing about ‘smooshing swollen vulvas’ and the ‘feverish spate of sisterly cordiality’ bit in that last harlequin romance I read. And the one before that, now that I think about it.”

Giggling, she resumed reading again. “Usually there’s no orgasm culminating these activities.”

“No orgasm?!” Twilight sputtered. “All this fooling around, all that promiscuity, all for there to be ‘usually no orgasm?!’”

Rarity shrugged, just as confused as her herd-sister. “All I can say is that part is most definitely NOT how pony sex works! Not in this household!” Rarity turned her head and caught Twilight's eye. An eye and a flash of red cheek peeked from behind the lavender unicorn’s book, and Rarity smiled and continued.

“For this lustful species, sexual behavior is indistinguishable from social behavior. What is remarkable about their use of sex is its apparent casualness; they participate in sexual activity dozens of times a day. Yet with the average copulation lasting 13 seconds, sexual contact in bonobos is rather quick by the standards of all sapient beings... Wait, did I read that right? 13 seconds? Thirteen measly seconds?!”

“Then what’s even the point?!” Both she and Lero shouted at the book together.

They all had a laugh at their unintentional chorusing. Rarity picked up where she’d left off, though honestly, she wasn’t planning on going much further reading this book. For a species of simians so singularly, sophomorically focused on sex... as far as she was concerned, bonobos had just proven themselves to be thoroughly disappointing. Especially when compared with humans.

“Throughout the day, males and females, adolescents and elders alike greet one another sexually for apparently almost any reason — and do so with everything from a quick feel, to pornographic-style choreographies, to elaborately athletic couplings. Bonobos have deployed their elaborate sexual toolkit to ease all kinds of social transitions, ranging from saying good morning to giving the blessing before dinner to expressing a hearty welcome to a new member of the group. Females will casually present themselves to males. The male will walk right up to a female without any hesitation and...”

“Am I interrupting anything?” asked Spike the baby dragon, entering their room.

How Bonobos Say Hello flew wildly from Rarity’s telekinetic grip; perhaps she’d meant to throw it over her shoulder, but it instead hit the side wall with a loud thump. The three of them all recoiled from Spike, red-faced, as though they’d been caught in the middle of bonobo-style socialization, instead of listening to a book being read.

“No! No, nothing at all, Spike, dear!” Rarity quickly grabbed some other book to hide her pink face. “Nothing at all!”

Several seconds past, and Rarity saw that Spike was still standing there, watching her with an odd look. She brought the book down. “Er... something I can help you with, Spike?”

“Rarity... you’re... well...” The little dragon toyed with the end of his tail shyly.

“Spike, you know you can say anything to me.” She gave him a smile which succeeded in encouraging him.

“Rarity, I’ve been thinking about you lot — a bit! — about how important you are to our herd. And to me.” He licked his lips. “To me you’re like... a mother and an older sister, all wrapped up in one. Like another Twilight.”

“Awww, Spike...” said Rarity, tickling him under the chin. “That’s so sweet!”

The young dragon’s eyes went to Twilight, herself, and then quickly to Lero. The truth of the matter was that when Lero had gotten home, he’d gone and had a private talk with Twilight. Then both Lero and Twilight had pulled Spike aside, and they’d both had a private talk with him.

Neither of the two adults had any clear idea how much Rarity would ‘remember’ already telling them about her own past. It’d probably strike her as very weird indeed if they both asked her to ‘retell’ so much. So instead, they had coached Spike to come up to Rarity and say all this. So far, he was performing magnificently; they honestly couldn’t even tell if it rankled him to refer to Rarity as a mother and a sister.

“But when I stopped to think about it, I realized that for a family member, there’s a LOT about you I don’t know!” said Spike, laying down his tail. “Like... what was it like being born a unicorn in Cloudsdale, and growing up there? What was the story about how you and Lero met and fell in love? And... how DID you get your cutie mark? I mean...”

He spun his forefingers around each other. “I was and wasn’t there when you and Lero were in the middle of that whole falling-in-love bit. I was kept a lot out of the way, cause I’m a baby dragon, and you and Lero and Twilight were doing... grown-up stuff to each other. But I’m not asking to hear the really naughty bits! But still, since I really WASN’T there, could you still tell me... how’d it all happen?”

This wasn’t acting, Lero could tell. Spike was genuinely as curious about these questions as he and Twilight were. Rarity gave the little guy a big smile. She stepped out from Lero’s lap, and nestled closer to Spike.

“Come over here, Spike,” she invited, allowing the happy dragon to snuggle up against her side.

“Hey, Twilight, over here,” said Lero, patting the lap Rarity had just left. There was an air of guilt about her, as though to say I’m still sorry about earlier this morning. But she came over and took her place in into his lap, and with a smile he began doing to her what he’d been doing to Rarity: stroking her hair with his manebrush and his fingers, so that she could relax some, while they heard Rarity’s stories. He hoped that indicated her apology was accepted.

“What would you like to know about first, Spike?” the white unicorn asked.

“Well, let’s start at the beginning! Let’s hear about growing up in Cloudsdale!”

* * *

She took a breath. “It was very, very hard. The mare who was my mother wasn’t able to reach the hospital the day she gave birth to me. She had to fly down and went into labor on top of some cumulonimbus. Father wasn’t expecting a unicorn, not in the least. When Father pulled me out from Mother, he was so shocked to see the nub of my horn, he dropped me and I fell straight through the cloud. My first fall, and I was barely a minute old! Father swept down and rescued me right away, of course. Wouldn’t be the last time he’d need to.”

Spike chuckled a bit, but it died away at the look in Rarity’s eyes. “Oh, sorry.”

Rarity waved it off. “Later in life, when Father and I were able to discuss the matter like cool-headed, rational adults... Father admitted something to me. Before that time, there were rumors of my mother sleeping around. He never put any stock into it, even after my birth, but the rumors did intensify. We're not sure if it was true, or if the gossiping simply became to much for her. Really, it doesn't matter, considering what she did. Eventually, one morning, shortly after I was weaned... she walked out the door... And never came back. Leaving me in the sole care of my father. Which wasn't easy in and of itself. It really didn’t help that Father was one of Cloudsdale’s biggest tribalists. Scarcely had anything nice to say about non-pegasi.”

Rarity let out a sigh.

“And yet, I give him great credit,” she said. “For all the unspeakably terrible things he believed about unicorns, and as deeply as he’d come to despise all mares because of what my mother had done to him, Father just couldn’t bear the thought of casting me aside. Of giving me away to an orphanage. Of letting me drop. Father was determined to be the best father he could be to me. He told me that when he looked at me, he realized that I was still just a helpless foal, and without him... I would have no one. I was just a little foal who utterly trusted and loved him. And as much as I was a thorough embarrassment to him, otherwise, Father told me he couldn’t live with the thought of me dying, all alone, because no one else wanted me. Least of all my real parents.”

Twilight and Lero shared a look with each other. What a dismal, oppressive backstory for a girl to make up about herself! On one hand, Rainbow Dash had never gone into that much detail about her past. How many grains of truth about their prodigal pegasus herdmate might be gleaned in this made-up tale?

“But as a unicorn, I was a terrible, terrible inconvenience for anypony in Cloudsdale to raise... never more so than during my earliest years. I would’ve been so, even for a full family of well-adjusted ponies... let alone a bitter single parent like Father.”

“Single parent?” Twilight asked.

“Oh yes,” said Rarity. “Father and my mother were originally going to start a herd together, but after I was born, Father was unable to successfully form a herd. I think a large part of it was his rather open mistrust of mares. I’ve been told he also had a habit of immediately expecting them to take responsibility for me. I like to think he was testing them by seeing how well they took to me. Less charitable ponies claim he was trying to palm me off to them. Either way, Father mostly ended up living his life alone. Or rather... with me.”

“Why were you an inconvenience to raise?” asked Spike, nestled against her.

“Well, the constant threat of death, for one. There was always the danger of me plummeting straight through our house’s cloud floor, straight to my demise. It loomed over the two of us at all times, every minute of every hour of every day.”

“Well, if I were your dad, I’d have just packed up and moved down to ground level,” reasoned the young dragon.

Rarity laughed, and shook her head. ““Yes, that would’ve made things so much easier, wouldn’t it? Not that my father would be caught dead living on the ground. Besides that, it wasn’t much of an option for us. Father worked in Clousdale’s Rainbow Factory; a rather high-up technical position. Not much application for those skills on the ground! Not to mention Father wanted to live with as few non-pegasi neighbors as was possible. Said he didn’t want the other ‘spike heads’ and ‘earth muckers’ giving me any ‘funny ideas.‘ Unicorn or no, I was his daughter, and he was going to raise me the 'right' way. The Pegasus way.”

“How did you even learn to walk?” the wide-eyed Twilight asked.

“At first, I simply didn’t,” Rarity said.

“You... didn’t?!” Spike and Twilight both exclaimed.

Their incredulity amused the white unicorn. “No, I did not. It simply wasn't possible. There was no place to lie, much less stand or walk. At that point in time, Father — and occasionally the unlucky mares he managed to briefly snag — were literally the only things keeping me from falling. So I spent the first three years of my life pressed against his body or someone else's, in some way. I was held in his hooves. I rode on his back. But most of all, he kept me slung in a strong cloth sling, against himself. When I slept, I HAD to sleep on top of Father’s body.”

“That’s... that’s...” Twilight was finding it all hard to fathom: not walking for three years, when you had perfectly capable legs; being attached to her dad like that, how could anypony come out of that sort of thing SANE?

“Must’ve made it weird for him to shower,” Spike remarked. “Or to go to work.”

“It was how it had to be. Father was my lifeline. To pull away from him meant to fall... I came to understand that before I learned to talk. Every now and then, there’d be a slip-up... but he’d always be there to catch me. Always. Father was a difficult stallion for me to live with, but he will always be one of the truest and most loyal ponies I have ever known.”

Suddenly, she sniffled, twisting towards the human. “Lero... w-when you and I were flying in that forest, I...!”

He reached past Twilight and pressed a finger to Rarity’s lips. “Ssh.”

“But I should’ve...!”

He leaned forward and kissed her cheek. “All’s forgiven.”

“I love you,” she whispered with thankful tenderness.

Spike grimaced. “You know, Rarity, I... I get your dad was doing a good thing, but it still sounds insane to me! Like those horror stories of lunatic parents who deliberately treat their kids as babies for the rest of their lives!”

Chortling with laughter, Rarity lifted Spike up telekinetically to nuzzle his nose.

“Aw, Spikey-Wikey... you have it completely upside-down! The LAST thing Father wanted was to baby me. He was a steadfast soldier about it, but he was WEARY of his growing girl getting bigger and heavier and not being able to stand on her own four hooves. Even while Father kept me in a sling, he did EVERYTHING in his power to speed my mental development. ABCs, mathematics, problem solving, he TALKED to me constantly! He took me out of my sling and had me stretch and kick my legs out regularly, so they wouldn’t atrophy. By the time I was three, I could read picture books and was smart enough hold a fairly intelligent conversation. That was when he brought in Mrs. Fluxroot. My first magic tutor.”

Rarity’s horn glowed, and clouds formed inside the library room, forming the image of what had to be Mrs. Fluxroot, out of cloud vapor. She looked to be a stern-looking bespectacled unicorn matron.

“I’ll never forget the first time I saw Mrs. Fluxroot. She came in, didn’t even say hello, and immediately cast the cloud-walking spell on me. Then she told Father to drop me on the floor.”

She laughed again; her magic reforming the Mrs. Fluxroot cloud into the scene she was describing; with Rarity’s pegasus father setting little Rarity down from her sling onto the floor.

“I was so TERRIFIED... I couldn’t believe that the floor was supporting my weight!”

The three-year-old-cloud Rarity just wailed soundlessly where she sat, eyes squeezed shut adorably, as Mrs. Fluxroot and her father just waited for her to realize she wasn’t falling.

“For months, Mrs. Fluxroot lived with us. She spent those months hammering just two things into my brain: how to walk, and how to perform the cloud-walking spell.”

“But cloud-walking’s such advanced magic!” Twilight protested. Then to Lero, she explained, “It’s like learning the quadratic equation before learning your numbers!”

“And I HAD TO LEARN IT, first before any other spell!” Rarity insisted. “And I did! Even before I learned how to perform telekinesis! Thankfully, it turned out I had a talent for weather magic, even back then. Mrs. Fluxroot said she'd never seen anypony take to the cloud-walking spell quite as fast, even though it took me forever to master! Father was militant about me practicing it every chance I could. After I was able to pull it off flawlessly, he was so proud! But forever afterwards, he was just as militant about me casting it on myself twice every single day: right after getting out of bed in the morning, and before climbing into bed at night.”

"Like a diabetic with insulin." Lero commented.

When he realized how many blank stares he was getting, he explained, "Diabetes is an illness some humans get. They lose the ability to process sugar properly. They have to eat and inject the medication, insulin, on a rigorous schedule, or they could get too much or too little sugar in their body and get sick. Limbs have needed to be amputated because of diabetes."

The blank expressions turned to ones of horror. "How terrible!" Rarity exclaimed.

"That must be the worst thing ever!" Spike agreed.

Twilight shook her head. "Please, Lero, promise me you'll never tell Pinkie about that! She'd go crazy just thinking about being unable to process sugar!"

“Yes!” Rarity interjected, while Lero was nodding. “With all the apples she and the rest of the Apple family eat on a daily basis, I shudder to think what her nightmares would look like!”

“Did you learn other spells?” Spike questioned.

“Of course I did! I was a unicorn, wasn’t I?” Rarity said. “Father bought me spell books, and hired other magic tutors. But I was particularly adept at weather-related magic, as I mentioned before. My skill with weather manipulation was always either equal or superior to that of my pegasus classmates. Father was so proud of that!”

Spike frowned. “Are there any other Weather Unicorns like you, out in the world?”

“I’m sorry to say that unicorns like me, who have the natural talent and inclination to specialize in weather magic, are a vanishingly rare breed. I was the first such unicorn to be born in about a decade.” Then the white unicorn smiled. "Why else do you think Father named me 'Rarity?'"

“Did the other tutors come BEFORE you began school, or during it?” asked Twilight.

“Both!” Rarity said.

“And ALL the rest of your classmates were ALL pegasi?” asked the young dragon. “No other unicorns or...?”

Rarity shook her head. “The only other unicorns I saw in Cloudsdale were my tutors. As for Earth ponies, I didn’t even SEE one outside of movies and picture books ‘til I turned fourteen.”

She let out a breath. “I can remember what school was like. Coming to classes not just with my school things strapped to my back, but my parachute as well.”

“Parachute?!” Spike exclaimed in disbelief.

“Mmm-hmm! Father had me wearing parachutes since I was old enough to understand the words, ‘pull this cord if you are falling...’”

Suddenly, Rarity fell quiet.

“Uh, what else, Rarity?” the little dragon encouraged. “Your story’s good! Keep going!”

But she looked over at the human, ears flattening back shyly. “Lero? Would you like me better if I’d been born a pegasus?”

For a second, Lero almost took this question to mean: Would you like me better if I could turn myself into Rainbow Dash? Memories of his lost love danced through Lero’s mind, until he realized what she was really asking:

Would you like me better if I was born a different race?

She was dead serious; hints of uncertainty eroding her normally unshakeable confidence. The implications horrified Lero, rendering him temporarily speechless.

“I mean... ponies have told me all my life that I ought to have been born a pegasus...” she continued, in his silence.

“Rarity, you’re too smart a girl to listen to narrow-minded idiots!” Lero countered vehemently.

“Yeah!” said Spike. “Your... your whole LIFE has been proof that unicorns are just as fit for weather-work as ANY winged pony!”

“Frankly, I’m surprised that MORE unicorns don’t go into Weather!” Twilight added. "If, you know, they could." She amended, remembering the rareness of unicorns with the interest and proficiency in weather magic.

Rarity smiled at them all. “I make it look easy, don’t I? Yes, you’re right, those other ponies ARE small-minded, but the real thing of it is... there’s this part of myself... inside me... it says me being a unicorn is a mistake. Not right. That I really was meant to be a pegasus.” She looked at Lero. “What do you think?”

Words ran through Lero’s mind: man’s soul trapped in a woman’s body. And to think, here, before him, was a pegasus soul, (or at least a significant portion of one,) trapped in a unicorn’s body. From there, the human’s thoughts jumped to the... the surgeries some of these souls back on Earth resorted to, in order to ‘correct’ what they’d been born as.

Would the Swap compel Rarity to do this too? Beg Twilight to cast some advanced, permanent magic upon her? This was the SWAP, after all; Lero couldn’t afford to assume a sane outcome!

“Would you like me better if I’d been born a pony?” he asked her, quietly.

That shocked Rarity. “I... I...” He gave her the same look she’d just given him. “No,” she said, resolutely, as though staring down Honeydew. “No, I wouldn’t.”

“Same here.” He pulled away from Twilight, scooting closer to Rarity. “I mean, for God’s sake, Rarity, please don’t scare me with questions like that!”

“Scare you?” she asked.

“Yeah! Scare me!” The Swap had stolen so much from Rarity already, he WOULDN’T let it take her very unicorn-ness! “You make me think you’re going to saw your horn off or something!”

“Saw my....?!” He watched her stomach muscles clench up from sheer revulsion. Twilight, too, had the look of a girl who’d opened her refrigerator to find it jam-packed with roadkill. “No! I swear I didn’t mean it like that! Really, darling, you’re blowing this entirely out of proportion! What would even give you that idea?!”

He ran his hand though his hair, exhaling. "There's something a very small number of humans experience called Body Dysmorphic Disorder. Basically, they believe something about their body is... wrong. Height, weight, shape, color, gender... and they go about trying to fix it. Sometimes it's relatively harmless, like heavy tattoos, or extensive piercing... but it can often get out-of-control. Extensive surgery. Self-mutilation. Sometimes the compulsion is so strong that they continue on to the point of killing themselves."

Rarity's eyes widened. "I... understand why you why you were worried. Actually, Lero, you sometimes hear about Earth ponies having this... condition you describe. They’ll go to extraordinary... sometimes downright sick measures to give themselves wings or horns. Even both."

Lero brought his hands against Rarity’s cheeks. “All of us love you just as you are, Rarity. We all want you to be happy in your own skin. Please, Rarity, promise you won’t do anything like that. Promise?”

When he kissed the top of her horn, she gave a tender smile. “Oh... alright,” she teased. “You talked me into it. I promise I won’t maim myself after all.”

He breathed easy. In his head, he devised a silent plea to the pegasus soul within Rarity, praying it might come to terms with the unicorn body which now housed it.

Rarity leaned forward as though to nuzzle his face, but stretched a little farther than normal, and whispered in his ear, “Kiss my horn again like that, later when we’re in bed together, please, Lero? It’d reeeeeallly make my night!” And she gave a light nip to the side of his ear.

“Hey! Less kissing! More story!” Spike demanded, prodding Rarity in the side.

“Alright,” she said, pulling away, poking Spike playfully back with her hoof and recommencing her tale.

From that point, Lero went back to combing Twilight’s hair as they all listened to Rarity discuss things like what it was like being the one unicorn filly in a pegasus school and how she was able to make friends despite the bullies, beginning with Rainbow Dash. It covered a lot of the same ground Lero had already heard from Dash, herself, but with more detail, and from Rarity’s first-person viewpoint.

But then Rarity’s story reached the the lightning duel she’d held against Dumbbell and his cronies, and Lero listened more intently as she revealed what Rainbow Dash hadn’t been around to see...

* * *

“Wanna know what your biggest mistake was, Hilarity?” Dumbbell jeered. “You let yourself be born without wings.”

Rarity's eyes flashed with fury that practically blazed. "OH! IT! IS! ON!" Her horn lit like a star and blinded ALL of them, leaving them staring mindlessly in the sudden wash of white light. The clouds throughout the entire arena responded with a biting cold gale, the seats were torn out from beneath the spectators, as they were battered by the freezing wind.

Huge, threatening clouds converged upon their fighting arena with the speed of airborne locusts upon healthy crops. The closer they drew, the starker they changed shape. From fleecy formless masses of puffy fluff, they each smoothed and sharpened themselves into the same distinctly geometric formation.

Diamonds. All diamonds, like the playing card suit. Except that instead of red, these clouds were a snowy white.

The bullies’ skill with weather manipulation gave them a slight edge: they managed to resist having their clouds yanked away from them, but the sheer power of this spell was dragging them in. "Get her!" Dumbbell commanded, and the trio stomped on their clouds, arcs of lightning shooting out at the empowered figure.

"No." Rarity uttered, the clouds moving to defend their mistress, blocking the lighting, forming perfect geometric barriers, not dispersing like they should, the magical-infused cloud starting to rapidly crackle with energy, feeding back into Rarity. The power just built and built in Rarity’s mind until it completely clouded over all her thoughts. Her body was nothing more than a conduit for the power within her. And then...

...then it wasn’t lightning bolts that exploded from the clouds. Instead, perfect facets of searing-cold crystal ice shot form the clouds. As they clinked against each other, they made pitch-perfect chimes, like crystal bells, so perfectly shaped that as the light stuck them, it exploded into shockwaves of rainbows. They spiraled out of the diamond clouds, blanketing the sky with beauty.

And they were sharp as knives.

The three bullies screamed and scattered: Hoops went north, Dumbbell went south, and Score flew straight over his fellow students, seated in the chaos of the wind-blasted bleachers. And a single diamond cloud chased after the bullies as determinedly as if they’d slaughtered their young, hurling deadly spears of ice like a fishermare hurls harpoons.

Being a cloud, it didn’t care that twenty-some perfectly innocent foals — and friends of Rarity’s! — were caught in the crossfire. Although none of the foals had the presence of mind to shout out at Rarity and try to get her to stop, (though it was questionable if she were even capable of stopping herself,) most of them were at least smart enough to flee in a different direction than where the diamond clouds were heading towards.

And the perfect geometric diamond shapes scattered rainbows of Celestia’s refracted light across the sky for miles and miles around. A beautifully intricate webwork of colors.

The following morning, the newspapers would refer to the phenomenon as the Diamond Hailstorm.

* * *

The next morning, a knock came at the door of the small, cloudy white room Rarity had been made to sit in. A room made to house potentially dangerous ponies. She looked up at the door.

“May I come in?” asked a sweet-sounding female voice.

Rarity sighed. “Be my guest, I suppose.” At least whoever the pony was didn’t sound mad at her. Yet.

The door was unlocked from the other side. In stepped the one pony that Rarity would’ve ever expected to be visiting her here, or anywhere! It was impossible... it couldn’t be!

She had never seen a pony taller than this mare. She didn’t think any pony ever WOULD be taller than her... you’d have to cheat with a size-changing spell! Her coat was white; her wingspan enormous. Like Rainbow Dash, she was blessed with a multicolored mane and tail, but it was all in pastel hues and Dash’s mane and tail had never been able to ripple endlessly on a windless day like today, nor would it merge seamlessly into ethereal colors. Her horn was the length of an alto flute. She wore golden jewelry: a crown, horseshoes, and a necklace: unmistakably the royal regalia. The sun, itself, was her cutie mark.

“You’re... you’re...!” Of course, Rarity knew who this pony was. Immediately, the worst possible scenario sprung to mind, and she looked in the great mare’s eyes with the fear of the damned.

“...You’re here to punish me, aren’t you?!” the little unicorn wailed. “I’m that evil, aren’t I?! They needed to send for Princess Celestia, herself, to deal with me! I’m that horrible a monster!”

Loud and inconsolable, the little unicorn dropped to her haunches, crying on a floor of cloud. “Do it, then! I am at fault! I admit my guilt! In a moment of blind anger, I caused chaos and endangered the lives of my classmates with a dangerous spell! So go ahead and cleanse the world of me, Princess Celestia! I deserve not to live on this planet! I deserve to not have oxygen to breathe! Banish me to the moon!”

Princess Celestia stepped fully inside the room with the weeping filly, and shut the door behind her. “Not today, my little pony.”

Celestia’s horn glowed, and a china cup appeared, floating over to Rarity. It was filled with a steaming, sweet-smelling brown liquid.

“Hot chocolate?” offered the Princess. She smiled the most loving and disarming smile anypony had ever given the little pony.

Rarity blinked in surprise at the cup, before taking it with her own telekinesis. She sipped the drink. “It’s delicious,” she said, after a sniffle. Her little lips turned up the tiniest bit at the Princess.

Princess Celestia next produced a handkerchief, bringing it up to the young girl’s noise. “Here,” she said, and Rarity blew her nose. The handkerchief vanished.

The alicorn waited with infinite patience until Rarity had finished her drink. “T-Thank you,” the young girl said, as Celestia teleported the cup back to wherever it’d come from. She felt a little calmer. “You’re very kind, being nice like this to an evildoer like me.”

Princess Celestia sat beside Rarity, and draped a large, soft wing around the filly, gently pulling her closer. “Would you be willing to tell me what happened, Rarity?”

Rarity was very willing. She told her story haltingly at first, afraid and ashamed, but then it all poured out of her, a mixed flood of fascination and wonder and horror at the memory of all of the things she she’d done... with a magic power she hadn’t known she’d possessed. Celestia listened tranquilly and without a single interruption, until at last the young pony looked up at her, nervous again and clearly waiting for the judgment of a goddess to fall on her.

“Thank you for telling me your story, my little pony,” said Celestia, hugging her tightly in her wing and smiling. Rarity had never had such a maternal smile directed at her. She felt warmed. “I’d like to return the favor by telling you a story of my own...”

“Anything my Princess commands!” Rarity declared, dropping into a bow.

Celestia gave her an amused smile, before continuing. “This is the story of a different little unicorn filly I’ve come to know, down below on the ground. Her name is Twilight Sparkle... and she’s a studious, hardworking girl, just around your own age, in fact. Yesterday, Twilight was taking an entrance exam in order to enter a school for gifted unicorns. Her test was to hatch a dragon’s egg, using her magic. A dud egg.”

Rarity quirked her head. “A dud egg? But why...?”

“Well, to put it in the simplest terms,” said Princess Celestia, “It’s a good way of measuring a unicorn’s level of power and talent, and seeing what sort of spells they favor using. As well as how they respond to failure."

“How did it go for her?” asked Rarity, remembering her own response to the challenge she’d faced yesterday.

“Well, I can’t say whether it was performance anxiety or something else, but from what the examiners told me, she started off completely ineffective at her magic. ‘Almost as good as an Earth Pony’ was how one of them put it to me. The one thing she excelled at, however, was her ‘response to failure.’ Twilight was very gracious about saying,‘I’m sorry I wasted your time.’ Then she turned towards the window and saw this brilliant rainbow flash streaking past the sky!"

“A... a rainbow you, say?” Rarity inquired; a laughable attempt to sound nonchalant.

“Yes, indeed,” said her Princess. “This flash shocked Twilight so thoroughly to the core, that it brought forth powerful latent magic from within her, and forced it all up to the surface! Her magic was out of control; there was more there than she could handle! She levitated her instructors in their air and, despite their magical proficiency, they were unable to free themselves! She turned her own parents into potted plants. She not only hatched that small stillborn egg, she made the dragon inside grow even bigger than the tower she was taking her test in! Everyone in Canterlot could see him for miles around... including me. The only thing capable of stopping her... was myself.”

Rarity threw herself down to the floor, crying into the soft cloud. “OH NO! I’M RESPONSIBLE FOR THIS TOO!” she yelled, unhappily.

“Yes, I quite agree,” said Celestia, calmly. “But I would appreciate it if you would be so kind as to get back up and hear the rest of my story the whole way through. I’m not quite finished yet.”

With a look of abject misery, the young unicorn lifted herself back up. “Oh, yes. I’m sorry, Your Majesty,” she said. “...What did you end up doing to that other unicorn?”

“I made her my personal protégée,” the Princess said.

Rarity was dumbstruck. “You... what?!”

“As soon as she had regained proper consciousness, I told Twilight something which also applies to you, yourself, Rarity.” And the Princess drew closer, taking the young unicorn again under her magnificent downy wing. “I told Twilight, as I’m telling you now that ‘you have a very special gift, and incredible raw abilities. But you need to learn to tame these abilities.‘ Then I offered to be her teacher.”

It was difficult for Rarity to imagine a girl her age receiving such an honor. Being tutored by an immortal goddess, the princess responsible for raising the sun and moon!

The alicorn laughed. “She accepted very enthusiastically! Later, when I asked her about it, Twilight told me everything about how it had been for her, and about the rainbow. And so I looked into the matter, and found out that this was not a natural phenomenon, but a pony-made one, caused by a unicorn girl of extraordinary magical power.”

“But... but... the Diamond Hailstorm!” Rarity peered down sadly at a front page article from this morning’s newspaper about the ‘near-disaster.’

"I summoned clouds so hard that buildings came apart! And everypony knows how difficult and expensive it is to solidify clouds into building material! Many of the buildings that weren't torn open outright were damaged by the hail!" One of the adults had tossed this newspaper article at Rarity before shutting her in here, angrily snarling at her to read it. She had. It had been deeply humbling and troubling.

“Those clouds chasing Dumbbell and his friends were relentless!” she continued to protest. “Both of Dumbbell’s hind legs and wings got injured by the icicles they shot! He could’ve been killed, if those specialists hadn’t figured out a way to dissipate the clouds!”

Rarity looked into Celestia’s soft purple eyes... and saw warmth, mercy, and forgiveness.

“You’re not a killer,” the princess assured her. “Nor are you a bad pony at heart. You were simply trying to defend the honor of your friend, Rainbow Dash, were you not?”

“Rainbow Dash!” Rarity cried. “Sweet Celestia! ... erm, no offense... I almost completely forgot about her! Did she come out alright?!”

“Miss Dash is perfectly fine,” said Celestia. “She’s been brought back to Cloudsdale, safe and sound. She says she’s earned her cutie mark thanks to you, Rarity, and has nothing but nice things to say about you.”

Amazement and relief filled Rarity’s heart. “Earned her cutie mark? I... I can’t wait to find her and hear how THAT happened!”

The Princess of Equestria nuzzled her. “I look at you now, Rarity, and I see so much Twilight Sparkle in you. Speaking of which, Twilight wanted me to give you this.”

Her princess brought out an envelope, opened it for Rarity, and and levitated the letter to her until Rarity took it with her own magic and began to read:

To The Girl Who Brought The Rainbows,

Hello! My name is Twilight Sparkle. Thanks to your rainbow, I am now the personal student of Princess Celestia. I’m going to be living with her in her palace! This is the greatest honor of my life. And it’s all because of you that it happened. Your rainbow brought out incredible magic in me. I even got my cutie mark from it! I wish I could thank you in person, I wish I knew your name, but I want you to know that I will always be grateful. You have made my life wonderful! Please always keep making beautiful rainbows for everypony!

Best Wishes,

Twilight Sparkle

You have made my life wonderful! Please always keep making beautiful rainbows for everypony!

Rarity kept rereading those sentences again and again. Those words of Twilight Sparkle’s stirred something deep within her soul. At first, she felt short of breath, then all the tension left her lungs, and she was able to breathe in long, deep, serene pulls of air.

You have made my life wonderful! Please always keep making beautiful rainbows for everypony!

Her weather had improved ponies’ lives. Rainbow Dash... and this girl, this Twilight Sparkle... Did she just feel a tingle just now?

“Oh my!”

Rarity followed her princess’ eyes... she had a cutie mark!

“This is the best day of my life,” she told Celestia in a breathless hush, though her mind felt downright blank. She blinked hard, looking up at Celestia. "What... what happens to me now, Your Majesty? Am I to become your protégée as well?”

“I have a different idea in mind,” Princess Celestia said, with a soft twinkle in her eye. “Namely, I want you to travel the world.”

“Travel... the... the... the...?!” The world? The whole world?! Rarity couldn’t wrap her mind around it. The best it could come up with was an image of herself as some globetrotting explorer, running from cloud to cloud across the entire world, meeting wonderful ponies who would accept her for who and what she was.

“As I said, your raw talent for magic is TREMENDOUS, Rarity, and it deserves the best nurturing that can be provided. My idea is to have you travel from nation to nation as a foreign exchange student on a five-year program. Funded personally by The Crown. You will meet with Weather Masters the whole world over, who’ll take you under their wings, and train you. You would become a true artist with weather. A few of these Masters will even be unicorns like yourself, so you would be schooled in proper control of your magic. Does this sound like an agreeable arrangement?”

Celestia waited to hear a response. Instead, she felt a slightly ticklish sensation by her left foreleg. She looked down to see the young unicorn filly kissing her hoof in gratitude over and over again.

Resisting the urge to wince, the Princess of the Sun hid her discomfort behind a smile, and hoped that the filly would stop soon. Some ponies were already giving her funny-enough looks for bringing Twilight Sparkle to live with her in her palace.

* * *

“So you got your cutie mark because of Twilight?” the young dragon asked, eyes wide with fascination.

Levitating Spike onto her back, Rarity came over towards where Twilight and Lero sat together, and settled herself down by them both.

“I always like to think karma played a part in it. After all, I helped her without even knowing it. And she returned the favor, bless her.” Lovingly, Rarity smiled at the other unicorn. “And to think, our destinies were intertwined at such a young age!”

It occurred to Lero how easy it had become to accept the tale of her past as real, even though it was a reality only the white unicorn would ever truly know. It made him uncomfortable and a little sad, but at the same time... it made his care and respect for this pony who had found her way into their hearts grow stronger. It was beginning to feel like she had always belonged. He suddenly found himself missing Lyra, and then tried to set aside his worries.

“Did the two of you keep in touch?” Lero asked Rarity. “Were you pen pals?”

The white unicorn shook her head. “Sadly, no. I think both of us were too taken in by our studies. But now I wish I’d thought to do that.”

“Do you know what I wish?” Twilight told her, from her comfy place in inside Lero’s lap. She nuzzled Lero’s arm as he brought them around her in a tight hug. “I wish that Celestia HAD decided to make you a second student of hers. We could’ve both grown up in the palace, learning from her together as classmates and friends!”

“I would’ve liked that!” Rarity told her. “Learning weather straight from the mare who’d raised the sun and moon for centuries! And just imagine: both of us coming to Ponyville together from Canterlot to stop Nightmare Moon, and meeting our four other friends!”

“Yeah!” Twilight giggled.

“Not to mention... we could’ve fallen in love with each other years in advance.”

“We could’ve!” Twilight agreed. “It would’ve been wonderful.”

The unicorns kissed. It struck Lero as strange and lovely and unfortunate, all at once, that the two of them made for such a loving pair of herd-sisters.

“Ugh! More kissing!” Spike complained, rolling his eyes. Then he let out a breath. “Well... at least we’re all together now,” he finished, smiling at them both.

“Indeed,” Rarity said, pulling away from Twilight. “No regrets.”

“So now... I know about how you grew up, and I know how you got your cutie mark,” said Spike. “That leaves just one last question; how did you meet and fall in love with... with Lero?”

Not even a hint of resentment in Spike’s voice. He just seemed purely interested in the story. Rarity beamed at Lero, and set a hoof on his thigh.

* * *

There it was. The mysterious monkey creature that Rainbow Dash had found in the Everfree Forest all those months ago. The one that Twilight and Spike were keeping in their library home. Spraying window cleaning fluid on the windows of the Carousel Boutique, and wiping them down.

It wore clothing just like everypony said. Most other ponies seemed not to know what to make of it yet, so of course, there were all sorts of wild theories running around! Some claimed that it was a laboratory experiment of Twilight Sparkle’s, which was patently ridiculous, since Twilight had refuted those claims. Some claimed it was a trained beast, but in its eyes, Rarity could see none of the dull animal vacuity that was characteristic of trick-performing pets.

Some said it was a monster, quietly biding its time while ponies lowered their collective guard. Everypony said it ate meat.

Rarity had time to kill. She’d see for herself what kind of being this creature was. Of course, it was very impolite to stare, but the creature was quite... interesting. If she were to place her saddlebags on the ground and just frisk around for a bit, while snatching glimpses of the monkey being every so often... well, who could fault her?

So Rarity did; opening her coin pouch and shuffling through the coins as though trying to find some special one, putting it back, then opening up a book, and hunting through the pages as though trying to find some bookmark, and putting it back, and when she glanced over, Rarity saw that a young pegasus mare had come up to the creature.

“Excuse me?” asked the pegasus, with a supercilious, lordly air. “Mr. Ape-fellow? Can you speak?”

It stopped in its window washing, turning to the mare. “Pretty well, ma’am. What would you like to talk about?”

Now that she heard the voice, Rarity was sure it was male. The he-monkey spoke with a pleasing baritone, fit for a young stallion in his mid-twenties, at a clear, even volume, without accent. He regarded the pegasus with an air of intelligence, politeness, and the respect owed to an equal.

“Well... I was just curious, what would an ape like you need clothes for?”

“Two big reasons,” said the he-monkey, with the air of a schoolteacher answering an astute question from his pupil. “First, to make up for the fact that I wasn’t born with a fine coat of fur like you have.”

Rarity had THOUGHT his coat was patchy!

“Second,” and here, he pulled the pockets of his pants out to be seen. “I enjoy always having pockets.”

He gave the pegasus mare a soft grin of humor. She neither smiled nor frowned.

“Who made that outfit for you?”

“Applejack.” He waved the flat of his hand towards the Carousel Boutique’s door. “The lady who owns this store.”

“Does Applejack own you?”

...As though her fashionista friend had caught him in the wild, and domesticated him! Rarity felt her stomach clench, hearing the mare. How glad Rarity felt SHE had never gone into tailoring... else, she’d have to deal with mares like THIS all her life! The very thought made her cringe.

“No, ma’am,” he responded, as though her question was not offensive in the slightest. “I own myself. Same as you own yourself. I’m just wiping her windows to earn a few extra bits.”

“Would you say Applejack is a good seamstress?” the pegasus mare asked. Rarity sighed to herself; clearly this question was the sign of a major step forward for the pegasus mare, actually asking for his opinion!

“I’d say she’s one of the finest ones alive,” he answered with absolute sincerity... though it seemed the mare wasn’t quite convinced.

“Is Applejack making you say that?”

“No, ma’am. I’m saying that because it’s true.” And he turned back to his window wiping, as though that were all that needed to be said.

Rarity looked at him with warmer regard. What a fine, fine thing to say about her friend!

But the pegasus mare looked him up and down critically. “I wouldn’t say the clothes you’re wearing look like clothes made by one of the finest seamstresses alive.”

Wonderful! Rarity thought sarcastically. Now she’s even debating with him. Perhaps my species has some hope after all!

On one hoof, the mare’s assertion was true. His clothes, while well-kept and not made from shoddy material, were still plain as could be, only remarkable because they covered so much of him. And yet, Rarity was struck by a desire to insert herself into their conversation, stand before the pegasus, and supply some kind of counterargument on the male’s behalf.

But he turned back to the pegasus. When he spoke again, there was no condescension in his voice, only the words of somepony sharing his wisdom. “First, I'm not going to a fancy party, or to show off. I commissioned these clothes for work and daily wear, not looks. Second... look at me, ma’am. I’m not a pony. There’s literally no one else in this world shaped quite like me. And yet, Applejack was able to put together an outfit that fits my body, feels good to wear and I’m proud to be seen in. How many other seamstresses do you know that can do something like that?”

The mare blinked. “Well... uh...”

“If Applejack can do all this for me, then think about what she can do for you!” he contended. “So for whatever my two cents are worth to you, if you’re interested in clothes — as you clearly are — I humbly suggest you at least step inside and check her stuff out. Might find something you like!”

The mare blinked again, considered his words, and entered Applejack’s store.

...Such a gentlestallion. Such a well-bred, well-spoken, right-hearted, civilized, goodly, forbearing gentlestallion! It was like he’d stepped out of the pages of some marvelous piece of classical literature!

Perhaps sensing her stare, the stallion began turning his hazel eyes in Rarity’s direction. But she was quicker; ducking her head towards her saddlebags, searching for that elusive little widget that didn’t actually exist. Her white cheeks flushed warmly and a tiny excited smile played at the corners of her mouth... but only a part of her hoped he wouldn’t notice that.

* * *

Rarity loved her work. The open sky, the wind in her face, the sun on her back, the artistic satisfaction of crafting the perfect weather! She hummed happily, gliding over Ponyville aboard a cloud platform and going over her mental checklist.

"Ah, yes, a light shower over Sweet Apple Acres." She smiled. It would be good to see Pinkie and her family again. The two of them had been fast friends since she moved to Ponyville, but they'd grown even closer since Twilight had arrived, uniting the six of them into the Elements of Harmony. Seeing any one of them was always nice.

Much to her surprise, none of the Apple clan was out today that she could see. Most likely they were inside cooking, cleaning, or repairing; the smoke from the chimney seemed to confirm the cooking. However, she did spot a familiar figure; the human.

At first, alarm rose up inside her. He was continuously squatting over a patch of farmland, tugging plants out of the soil and shoving them into a sack. Was he stealing food from her friend?! And she’d thought so much better of him! Well, she’d put a stop to this!

Rarity drifted down until she was almost directly over the human’s head. She intended to spook him silly with a lightning bolt... a warning shot, nothing more, then give him a STERN talking-to! But at this closeness, she could see what the human was really up to: he was weeding, not stealing crops at all! Pinkie must have hired him to do some work around the farm. He glanced up as the shadow of her cloud passed over him. Shading his eyes when he spotted her peering over the edge of the cloud, he waved at her. She smiled at the simple gesture, and waved back.

He went back to work, and she to hers, crafting the shower. Glancing over her shoulder at the human, she decided she’d to give the area he was working at only a light, refreshing sprinkle, rather than a thorough soaking.

Once her storm had run its course, she noted him heading towards the farmhouse. Pinkie and Big Mac were coming out to meet him. She floated down to say hello to them all.

"Pinkie, Macintosh!" She waved as her cloud lowered. "Good to see you both! I hope the rain helps."

Pinkie smiled and nodded. "Good of y'all ta drop by, Rarity!"

"Eyup." her brother agreed.

"Just in tahm to meet mah new farmhoof, Lero!" She gestured to him.

"Actually, Pinkie, the term for a human would be 'farmhand,’" he clarified as he approached.

"Ah, riaht. Heh, Ah call yew 'Mr. Handy', and ah din' even thank of that!" She exclaimed, tapping her forehead.

"Hey, it's alright." he nodded to Rarity politely.

"Oh, where’re mah manners? Start an intraduction, and git distracted halfway in! Lero, this heah is Rarity, one of mah best girls, and the manager of all the local weathermares."

"A pleasure." She said, and offered her hoof to him.

The human removed one of his... what did they call cloth that fit over a hand? A glove! Yes, that was it! He removed a glove, knelt down, and accepted her hoof in his hand. It was much stronger than she expected. Much to her shock, he took her hoof up to his lips, and gave it a light kiss.

Rarity was stunned. Pinkie chortled. "Oh mah! Ah thank he lahks ya!"

"In my world, it's a greeting for a proper lady, and Twilight told me that the greeting existed here, too.” The human let go of her hoof.

Rarity found her voice. "As flattering as that is, generally that greeting is exclusively used for princesses, and a few of the aristocracy... and really close lovers." She remembered her own kissing of the Princess's hoof in a fit of gratitude.

"Oh." He rubbed the back of his head. "Please forgive me, Miss Rarity. If I embarrassed you, I am sorry. It’s just... when I saw you floating down from the sky on your cloud with your hair so... richly styled... I figured you had to be someone close to the Princess. A daughter of hers, maybe."

Pinkie snickered, and shared a grin at her brother as Rarity blushed, quickly changing the subject. “So... do you and Twilight talk a lot, Mr. Lero?”

"Oh, yes. We talk about everything, all the time! About this world, and her friends, and pony history and culture, and well, pretty much anything I can get her to tell me... Though I'm learning that a lot of her information is, uh, book learning, and not actual experience."

Rarity laughed. "Yeah, as sweet and adorable as she is, Twilight tends to be very 'By the book.’"

"Tell me 'bout it!” Pinkie cut in. “Me 'an Applejack had ah sleepovah at her place a 'while back, an' she had ah guidebook fer sleepovahs!" All of them had a hearty laugh at that.

"So, you've been spending a lot of time with Twilight?" Rarity asked Lero.

"Yeah, well, not that I don't enjoy her company, it's hard not to. I live at her house... until I can afford one of my own."

"Speakin' of...” Pinkie nudged her brother. “Macky, give it to him."

"Eyup." Big Macintosh pulled out a small bag of bits, tossing it over to Lero, who caught it with his hands.

"Here's tha pay fer all teh work ya been doin' around here for tha last week."

"Thanks!” said the human, with a brief peek into the bag. “Hey... Pinkie? Mac? If it’s not too much trouble, could I ask a favor of you?”

“Let’s hear it,” said Pinkie.

“Please put in a good word for me around town,” the human asked. “I'll need more people willing to hire me if I’m to get anywhere."

"Sure, Mr. Handy! Ah don't always get ya, but Ah know ahn honest day's work when ah see one!” Pinkie told him proudly. “Ponyfolk are only gunna hear good thing about Lero from tha' Apples!"

"Eyup!" Agreed Big Macintosh.

Lero gave them a genuine smile. "Thanks, you're the best."

"Awww, shucks." Pinkie replied.

"Tain't nuthin." Added Big Mac.

What a gracious fellow! Rarity simply had to know more about him! She extended a hoof, giving a dainty cough.

"Well! Mr. Lero, since you've gone to such lengths to establish me as a lady, would you care to escort this lady back to town?"

At first Lero blinked at the proffered hoof, then hooked his own arm in with hers. "It would be a pleasure. Pinkie? Mac? Thanks again."

"Ya’ll take care of Rarity, y'hear?" Pinkie responded as they headed off together. The farmer siblings chuckled between themselves as they waved and departed into their home. The cloud Rarity had been riding was eventually picked up by the wind and borne back into the sky.

The unicorn and the human walked together for a short while, Rarity's thoughts were deep. This alien had acted like nothing but a perfect gent, wherever he was, befriending everypony he could, and took shoddy behavior with a smile. He was kinder than many ponies she knew. She looked up at him. "Mr. Lero?”

“Yes, Miss Rarity?”

“I think I should apologize to you."

He tilted his head at her in confusion. "Why is that?"

"For being a poor friend."

Lero was only further baffled. "But Miss Rarity, we've barely talked. If anything, we’ve only just started being friends..."

"And that is exactly the problem!" Rarity exclaimed. "Any friend of my friends should automatically be a friend of mine. And you’ve been going to great lengths to be a friend with Twilight, Applejack, and the Apples. You’re a hard worker, and you’ve been putting in great effort to gain acceptance in our little town. All the while, I've been keeping a wide distance from you!”

Lero gave her side a hesitant but reassuring pat. “I don’t blame you for being cautious. An alien life form like me? I could be anything! It only makes sense that you’d want to hang back and see whether I’m out to lay eggs in pony brains or disintegrate you all with my laser beam eyes...”

His tone was joking, but Rarity shook her head seriously. “Twilight’s already told me you’re nothing like that; you’re not some sci-fi movie monster. Exotic as you are, you still have a heart and a soul and a conscience as real as any pony’s! It's shameful. I, of all people, should be more sympathetic to your plight!"

That caught Lero's attention. "How so?"

"Are you familiar with Cloudsdale?"

"Well, lacking wings, I've never been there, but yeah, I know of it."

"For most of my life, I was its only unicorn resident."

Lero gaped at her. "...How? Wouldn't you...?"

"Fall? Yes, many times, but my pegasus father always caught me, and eventually I learned to cast a cloudwalking spell... but that's not important. What's important is I know what it's like to be out of place, in a world not meant for me, with none of my own tribe around..."

They both stopped walking as she looked up at him.

"And at least I had my Father. At least, even though I was living among a different tribe of ponies, we were all still PONIES. I can only imagine how much worse your own sense of isolation must be. I should have been the first one to be your friend."

Lero considered her intently. Once again, his face broke out into that kindly smile. "Well... no time like the present. Friends?"

He reached out an open hand.

“Friends!” She reached out her own hoof, which was encircled by his fingers. They shook, only to have the moment ruined as he suddenly stumbled forward.

"I touched it! I touched it!" squealed a high young voice.

Diamond Tiara was already sprinting away by the time Rarity whirled around to face her. Soon enough, she was joined by her cohort, Silver Spoon. "You were so brave for touching the monster, Diamond Tiara!" the grey filly told her as they fled.

"Those ill-mannered brats! I have half a mind to..." Rarity stopped as a hand was places on her back. She glanced back to Lero who had righted himself.

"Let them go. They're just kids."

She sighed, calming herself. "Honestly, Lero, I don't know how you can put up with this all."

He paused, looking off in the distance. "Because I've had to deal with much worse than this."

“Like what?” Rarity asked.

* * *

“They called it ‘The Storm Of The Century,’ the human told Rarity, who listened with the starry-eyed raptness of a young child sitting on the floor for a good war story.

“It was a monster!” exclaimed the human, spreading his arms wide. “This sucker stretched, like, from the Gulf of Mexico all the way up into Canada.”

“How big of a distance is that?” asked Rarity. Sometimes it could be hard to keep track of human cities and countries.

Lero paused to try and remember. “I’d say about two thousand miles, give or take.”

“Two thousand miles?!” gasped the unicorn, holding a hoof to her head in amazement. “That’s... if a storm of that magnitude were to happen in Equestria, it’d be nothing short of the grossest dereliction of duty of the entire Weather service!”

“Oh, wait ‘til you hear the details!” Lero told her. “I was young when it happened. Still living with my parents. Dad had gone on a business trip down in the deep south, and he decided to bring the family with him.”

How many weeks had it been since she and he had first become friends? She’d lost count! Tonight, they were at a restaurant, eating al fresco, in the middle of their appetizers. A small bowl of bouillabaisse for her, while Lero sipped spoonfuls of his salmon bisque.

“Well, it started snowing and snowing and snowing and SNOWING. So Mom and Dad got us all in the car, and we drove back to the airport. Uh, the airport’s the place where the human flying machines land and take off from... remember me telling you about those?” When Rarity nodded, enraptured, he went on. “But by the time we’d reached the airport the blizzard had gotten so bad, it was too dangerous to fly out. So all we could do was just return back to Uncle Kyle’s house — Uncle Kyle was Mom’s old cousin, we’d been staying at his place. God rest his soul.”

In the back of her mind, Rarity wondered, not for the first time, how her life would’ve been different, if she’d had a mom. And what sort of ponies her mother’s family would’ve been like.

“The roads were paved with snow, and it took forever to slog our way through the bumper-to-bumper gridlock. I remember this minivan jackknifing right into a utility pole, and he wasn’t even going that fast!”

To her, these words were the indecipherable technobabble of science fiction tales, but they just swept her away in his story all the more, as if he were a sea captain speaking in plain sailor’s jargon.

“When we got back, Uncle Kyle had been buying TONS of food and stuff, and a good thing he did! It just kept right on snowing so hard, you couldn’t see, it was like a fog! Like a desert sandstorm! We watched the snow build higher and higher! And it just got worse and worse. We stopped counting at 21 inches. And the winds! Uncle Kyle lived by a forested area, and we watched these huge trees just get blown over like they were toothpicks or something! Must’ve been going 50-miles-an-hour!”

Rarity cast a glance up at the sky, thankful to have a sunny day scheduled this morning. If the weather had been anything nastier, it would’ve been like listening to a ghost story in the dead of night!

“And then our power went out.”

“This is that ‘electrical power‘ thing you were telling me about?” Rarity asked.

“Yes,” Lero said. “No appliances, no automatic heat... the light bulbs were out... fortunately, we had enough batteries to get by with, for flashlights. When Mom and Dad’s cell phones ran out of juice, our only link to the outside world was this old battery-operated radio. We kept it tuned to the news station. I’ll never forget the things I heard about what this storm was doing in other parts of the nation.”

She was almost too nervous to ask him: “What?”

“I’ll tell you what! From what I understand, every major airport along the eastern seaboard shut down, one by one! Nobody could fly out! Thousands of people were isolated by the blizzards! The state of Florida was struck by, like, 20 tornados! And God help you if you were boating out on the Atlantic! What was scariest, for us, was hearing about how the weight of the snow got so bad, it caused hundreds of roofs to collapse in on themselves... including big industrial factory roofs!”

“That didn’t happen to you, did it?” Rarity cried out, horrified by the thought of that poor family of humans having the roof fall on their heads, and the wintry cold surging in. Her hooves seemed to clench at the tablecloth.

“No,” Lero told her. He gave her a reassuring smile and placed a comforting hand on one of her hooves. “We dodged a bullet, there. But Dad and Uncle Kyle got to seriously talking about climbing up on our roof and shoveling it off, but Mom was too scared they’d slip and fall. It was all we could do to layer up in our clothes, add another log to the fire, shut our doors against the bone-chilling cold, and watch the thundersnows through our windows. Uh... thundersnows are...”

“...A rare kind of thunderstorm where snow and hail falls instead of rain,” Rarity spoke, knowledgeably. She looked down at his hand briefly, feeling its warmth on her hoof and hiding a surprised tremor in her voice. “We haven’t allowed one of THOSE in years. Not much reason to make one on purpose.”

Lero nodded. “Yeah, we had THAT little vocab word drilled into our brains by the weather reports. Got to watch lots of thundersnows firsthand.”

Then he seemed to remember that he still had a half a bowl of soup in front of him, and began finishing it off. “When all was said and done, I think about 300 people died, and about ten billion dollars in damages were done. What do you think, Rarity?”

The unicorn let out a breath as though she’d just run a long sprint. “I think if I’D had to live through that Century Storm of yours, I’d wear clothes every day too! Here in Equestria, we Weatherponies would NEVER allow such a storm to get so completely out-of-control over any populated area! Had I been there with my team, we’d have been first in line to nip it in the bud! The very idea of a world without weatherponies is like a world where there’s no such thing as a police force!”

Lero laughed. “Yep! We humans are completely at the mercy of mean old Mother Nature.”

“How do you put up with it?” Rarity asked. “I mean... three hundred people! And that’s only one storm...”

He shrugged. “We’re humans. We survive. We adapt. We overcome.”

She was just about to express how taken aback she felt by these words, when an apologetic look crossed his face. “Oh, but Rarity, I’m so sorry! I completely interrupted your own story!”

“My story?” she asked, dimly.

“Yes! You were telling me how you and your friends had become the Elements of Harmony and you... or was it I? How DID we go off on this tangent, anyway? Anyway, your story was just getting to the good part, you’d just crossed that chasm over the broken bridge, and there was something about ‘Shadowbolts!’ Your story was MUCH more exciting!”

He was just so adorable, she couldn’t bring herself to argue. After all, her story WAS pretty thrilling! Smiling at Lero, she took a breath, remembering where they’d left off.

“So there I was, faced with three winged unicorns, dressed in full-body uniforms that were like darker version of my fillyhood heroes: the Wonderbolts.”

“When you say ‘winged unicorns,’ don’t you mean ‘alicorns?‘“ Lero asked.

“Well... no,” Rarity told him, and he sensed a little discomfort in her voice. “There IS a difference. Alicorns are immortal, godly beings. Even though these three Shadowbolt ponies all looked powerful, you still had a sense of their mortality, especially since none of them was the size of Celestia. Besides, it’s perfectly possible for a unicorn to conjure a temporary pair of wings onto herself, but that DOESN’T make her an alicorn. Or a horned pegasus, for that matter.”

“I see,” said Lero, seeming to make a connection. He looked at her appreciatively, and she almost imagined he might be dressing her in wings. “Rarity, I don’t doubt that you would look lovely with wings,” he said with clear sincerity, and Rarity’s face began to fall. “But you’re beautiful exactly the way you are.”

Rarity’s mouth dropped open in surprise, and then she smiled broadly. “Why Lero, you are always the sweetest gentlecolt! What a wonderful thing for you to say. I — thank you!”

She unconsciously rubbed a hoof to her chest, as if she were trying to still her heart. Then she reached over and dropped the hoof to touch his arm, and hurried on, a little flustered. “Now where was I? Oh yes...”

“So the lead Shadowbolt, their ‘captain,’ I guess you could say, turned to me. ‘Join us,’ she tells me, very seductively, “And we will make your dream of flight live again. Join Nightmare Moon and she will make you not only the greatest flier in Equestria, but in command of all her flyers... flyers grand enough to put the Wonderbolts to shame... the Shadowbolts! Join us and Nightmare Moon will grant you your fondest wish. Even the impossible is within her grasp."

"...Well, considering you're standing here without wings, and it's not eternal night, I can guess what happened..."

Rarity laughed. "Indeed. Don't get me wrong... It was very tempting. I'd dreamed since I was a small filly of having wings of my own... and I had idolized the Wonderbolts, and wished I could join them... But my friends were far more important than a silly fillyhood dream."

“Monsieur? Mademoiselle?” interrupted their waiter.

They looked up and he set their entrees down on their table. Then they smiled at each other and grabbed their forks.

* * *

Rarity migrated colorful bits of her entree around on the plate with her fork, carefully arranging them with well-disguised apathy.

“Und zo zhe zays, ‘But Photo Feenish! You haff been shooting zat camera at me for haff za day now! Vhy can ve not haff leetil break?”

Agreeing to this date had been such a mistake.

“Und zo I tell her, ‘You veekling! I eat und breath und drink und zleep und bathe und drezz und live for ZE MAGIKS! You lack ZE FOKUS! Now do eet again!” The photographer smiled. “Und zhe feel back een line.”

Rarity gave Photo Finish a grin that betrayed none of her true disinterest. “Well done, Photo. Way to show her who’s boss.”

And she speared a piece of her Heringstopf Mit Saurer Sahne with her fork. At least this restaurant’s herring was enjoyable.

Photo Finish turned her nose up proudly. “To ride vith Photo Feenish, I need girlz vith endurance! Vith hunger for adventure! Vith need to let me make zem into great beeg ZUPER-STAH!”

Photo went on, occasionally taking a bite of her own Gurkensalat, or drinking from her Glühwein. Then the unicorn’s mind started to wander off the photographer’s words. Both she and Photo had come to this table fully dressed. Thinking about that led to the fact that Photo, unlike practically all other ponies always kept herself clothed. She wonder what had prompted that behavior in her? Was it merely an affectation of style, or something deeper? She did it as consistently and dependably as her good human friend, Lero.

Lero... she had found that her earlier suppositions had been correct: She could relate to him deeply. She felt her cheeks heat as she considered how their relationship had reached a new degree of closeness: he now greeted her with an affectionate hug whenever they met. And she’d quickly come to realize that he simply was the best hugger she’d ever known. Those beautifully pliant arms of his were just made for hugging, wrapping so solidly around her neck and....

“Haff I imprezzed you?”

Rarity was practiced enough that her eyes had NOT grown unfocused at all. She perked up at Photo Finish and expertly covered up her growing loathing.

“Very much so, Photo.”

The mare’s eyes shone behind her huge tinted glasses. “Vurking und living vith Photo Feenish is a glamorous, vunderbull dream, Rarity. Vith ze magicks, zere is no limit to my artistic expression! Ve ride sky chariot to any number of gorgeous locations at a moment’s notice! Tropical islands! Grand ballrooms! Palaces! Kruise ships! Movie sets! Big...!”

Photo Finish kept listing off places to Rarity, who mused upon what it would be like to visit all those exotic venues. Her taste for travel had only been sharpened in her days as a world-wandering student of weather...

Then her mind slipped back to the most exotic venue of all... the planet called Earth. How Rarity loved to coax Lero into telling her stories about his world! The very idea of being at the mercy of wild weather worldwide... all his tales about the Storm Of The Century, Snowmageddon, Tornado Alley, Hurricane Katrina and the Dust Bowl!

And his stories of the noble, determined warriors who clashed on the field of battle, fighting against evil in the present day instead of just in textbooks! The global political intrigues unmoderated by an all-powerful Princess... all of it simply made her swoon!

Such a romantic, dashingly dangerous world Lero Michaelides came from!

If her lovely human friend had one real flaw, it was that he was still something of a fish out of water here. Still making unintentional, innocent faux pas. They were often adorable or funny, but it wouldn't do to have him embarrassed by those mistakes. It just made Rarity want to try harder to help him fit in better, make him feel more welcome as a fellow Equestrian!

Rarity blinked and came back to the present as she felt a hoof stroking up and down the fur on her arm. The photographer was giving her a salacious grin.

“Do you like that zat dress, Rarity? I vould be happy to give you much more to vear. None of ze osser girlz are kvite like you, Rarity.” Photo Finish leaned in close with an almost predatory look. “I vould like very much to make you my own. Make you my must-have, must-love, must-be zupermodel! Ve vill be surrounded by gorgeous models und famous beyond famous! Vhat do you say?”

* * *

INT. BELLE DES JARDINS - NIGHT

Golden Wings steps into Belle De Jardins clad in the lovely new dress she bought, somewhat intimidated by the richness and elegance of this 5-star restaurant. A live PIANIST and a STRING QUARTET are playing a soothing classic-age aria for the patrons. All sorts of delectable flowers sit in vases, all throughout the restaurant.

Golden Wings looks over the small see of UPPER CLASS PONIES seated at the restaurant’s tables, chatting, eating, and being attended to by the WAITERS and WAITRESSES. None of them are naked; all are dressed in high-fashion finery. Their wealth is also intimidating to her.

A MAÎTRE D’ approaches Golden Wings.

MAÎTRE D’
Do you have a reservation, mademoiselle?

GOLDEN WINGS
Yes! Yes, I do!

She looks over all the restaurant guests, nervous because she’s not seeing who she’s looking for... finally smiling in relief as she sees Red Radiance and Blue Skies seated at the far end of the room, both dressed to the nines as well. Red spots Golden and waves at her invitingly, while Blue Skies is too absorbed in his menu-reading to see.

GOLDEN WINGS
I’m with them, over there!

Seeing how Red is waving her over, the Maître d’ stands by and allows Golden to cross over to her table.

RED RADIANCE
Goldie!

The red-coated unicorn mare and the gold-coated pegasus mare nuzzle each other. Angle on the blue hydrangea by Red’s ear.

Blue Skies sets his menu down, surprised to see Golden here.

BLUE SKIES
Golden Wings? Fancy running into YOU here!

Blue Skies curiously looks around at the other tables. Angle on the beautiful red dianthus blossom tucked against his ear.

BLUE SKIES
Which one’s your table, then?

RED RADIANCE
She’s eating with us, Blue!

BLUE SKIES
Is she?

It takes every inch of Golden’s courage to take a seat across from Blue Skies, yet still she is deeply entranced by the pegasus stallion’s statuesque beauty.

GOLDEN WINGS
Hi, Blue.
(shy smile)
You look as handsome as ever. Handsomer, really, in those clothes.

BLUE SKIES
(catching on)
This... this is just what it looks like it is, isn’t it, Red?

RED RADIANCE
(kindly)
Sweetheart... I know that this all comes completely out of nowhere for you, Blue. We deliberately arranged this as a surprise for you. But think about it. We’ve both known Golden for quite a while now, and I really think she would be a good match for you. For us both.

LERO
Wait, Rarity, pause the movie!

* * *

Rarity’s horn glowed, and the film reel turning in the projector stopped. The movie being cast on the surface of Lero’s wall froze on a closeup of Red Radiance.

“What is it, Lero?” asked Rarity.

It was early in the evening, and she was with Lero, at the human’s recently-built house. She and the other girls had helped him move into this place not too long ago. There was barely anything to speak of in the way of interior decorating or possessions, but Lero was content to take this ‘big step forward.’

The two of them sat together on Lero’s couch, (formerly Applejack’s couch, but it had been old and the fashionista been happy to give it away,) with a big bowl of buttered popcorn between them, and soda to drink.

Rarity had borrowed both the film projector and the movie itself from Twilight’s library. This romantic comedy was titled Touch Of Class, and it was seven years old.

The weatherpony was content to share the evening with her good friend, Lero, and this wasn’t the first night they’d spent watching movies together. The first had been a little over a week ago, and Lero had been simply ecstatic to ‘be able to watch a movie at home, after all this time.’ He’d quickly picked up that the films Rarity was showing him were meant to educate him about social mores in pony society. Not that he minded. Most of them were rather good, and even the ones that weren't were fascinating on the basis of being from a culture he knew only so much about.

Lero swiped Rarity's suspended popcorn from the air and quickly munched it with a smirk. Rarity growled softly and lifted the bowl from Lero's lap, casually holding it far from his reach as she continued to munch happily.

“So Red’s giving Blue away to Goldie?” Lero asked, pointing to Red on the paused screen and reaching in vain for the floating popcorn bowl.

“Giving him away?!” she repeated, once again marveling at how his human mind worked. “No, of course not! Red and Blue are together!”

“That’s what I thought!” the human said. “But now, all of a sudden, Red’s fallen out of love with Blue, and she’s hooking him up with Goldie! This whole movie’s gone completely off the rails!”

There HAD to be some kind of cultural disconnect here, the unicorn knew. “Lero, you weren’t listening to what Red was saying. Red told Blue that Goldie ‘would be a good match for you. For us both.’”

“...Both?” he repeated, as though the concept of ‘both’ was challenging to grasp.

“Just watch this next bit.” And she resumed the movie, smiling at setting the popcorn down in his lap.

* * *

BLUE SKIES
So, we’re REALLY getting serious, then, are we, Red? Taking our romance to the next level? No longer just-you-and-me anymore, you want us to start forming a herd?

RED RADIANCE
I would hope YOU’D want this too!

Red’s eyes fix upon Golden’s.

RED RADIANCE
I don’t know if you’ve even noticed, but for all these months we’ve been working together on The Project, Golden’s come to care deeply for us, Blue. For me...

The two mares lean close to each other across the table, and share their first on-screen kiss: deep and sweet.

RED RADIANCE
...And you as well.

Golden Wings nods at Blue Skies.

BLUE SKIES
How long’s this been going on for?

RED RADIANCE
Since April now. But you can be a bit wrapped-up in yourself, Blue, and hard for mares to approach, so it’s no surprise it went over your head.

GOLDEN WINGS
(spoken from the heart)
But I still care deeply for you, Blue. Yes, you can be a bit rough around the edges, but I know you to be a kind, caring stallion underneath it all. As beautiful within as without. Just as much as Red is.

The mares share another loving glance at each other, and then cast hopeful, entreating looks at Blue.

LERO
Pause it again, please!

* * *

Rarity did so.

“Sorry for all these frequent interruptions, Rarity,” the human told her.

“Oh, no, no, no. Believe me, I’m not bothered at all.” She leaned in close and nuzzled his shoulder in a way she hoped came off as an affectionate nudge. “Want to know something, Lero? Years ago, when I watched this movie in the theater, I thought it was a mediocre, uninspired romance... not offering anything new.”

She turned her head to look briefly at the two mares who were frozen on the screen, staring anxiously at the stallion they both loved. “But watching it with you, seeing it from your perspective, hearing what sort of questions it inspires you to ask... and suddenly Touch Of Class takes on untold levels of fascination and intrigue!”

“I’ll tell you one thing,” Lero replied. “If this movie were to suddenly be teleported to a theater back on Earth, just as it is, humans would treat it as some mind-bendingly bizarre, high-concept sci-fi piece.”

“Poor Touch of Class!” she snickered, hiding a spark of disappointment at his response. In a fit of pique, she snatched the popcorn from Lero's hand with a dramatic spiral through the air. She smiled impishly at him... two could play that game! “Now, what was your question?”

“Right.” He took a breath. “So Red and Golden are trying to have Blue hook up with the BOTH of them? At the same time? They’re polygamous?”

She cocked her head at him. “You say ‘polygamous’ as though it’s a strange thing.”

He accidentally crushed a fluffy piece of popcorn between his fingers in surprise. “It’s not?”

“Why would it be?” she asked gently, intrigued to hear his answer.

“Is polygamy the law of the land here?”

She burst into a quick fit of giggles. “I’d say it’s far more than just a ‘law,’ Lero! For us, polygamy... forming herds... is as deeply ingrained into the pony psyche as spoken language or building houses to live in!” She smiled at him, tapping him on the shoulder with an amused hoof. “I mean... surely you’ve seen it for yourself, around Ponyville! Groups of herd-sisters getting cozy with one another? Stealing kisses, perhaps, as they go about their business?”

“Well... I have.” His flustered look was so adorable! “Uh... I mean no offense whatsoever when I say this, but I just assumed that Ponyville was a very lesbian community.”

Rarity blinked at the word. “When you say ‘lesbian,’ do you mean mares who are ONLY attracted to other mares?”

Lero nodded.

After some thought, Rarity said, “Hmm... I’d say the overall percentage of mares who are ONLY attracted to other mares is about, mmm, five percent.”

“Just in Ponyville, or throughout the world?” Lero asked, after sipping some soda.

“The world,” Rarity informed him. These questions made her feel very much like a royal diplomat to an alien ambassador.

He set down his soda cup. “What about mares who’re only attracted to stallions?”

“Only stallions?” She thought again. “Five percent. The other ninety percent of us are straight.”

His mouth quirked in all sorts of funny ways. “But... you just said that the mares who’re only attracted to stallions is five percent!”

“Yes,” said Rarity, plainly. “And the rest of us are straight.”

Then Lero muttered something strange under his breath, something that almost sounded like ‘who’s on first?’ But that couldn’t be right.

“Define what you mean when you say ‘straight.’” The human requested.

“It means you’re physically attracted to both mares and stallions.”

“Bisexual, you mean?” he asked. “That’s what the word ‘straight’ means here?”

“Mmm-hmm! Well, there’s also the REGULAR definition of straight, as in ‘the painter painted a straight line...’”

He gave a small, impatient hand wave. “So... which one are you, Rarity? Bisexual? Heterosexual? Or homosexual?”

Smiling, she shut her eyes, her brain flipping through the faces of all her old love interests, like a stack of newly developed photographs. “Oh, I’m quite straight,” she told him proudly. “I’m bisexual. And you? Are you straight, Lero?”

“Y-----no,” he said, with strong force. “Not by THIS world’s definition of the term.”

Rarity peered up hopefully into those lovely hazel eyes of his, and her voice dropped a little lower. “Then which way are you bent?” she asked, trying not to show her anxiety.

“I’m only attracted to girls.”

A deep, relieved breath left Rarity’s lungs. Before Lero could notice this fact, she asked, “So then I take it that polygamy’s unusual where you come from?”

“Yep!” said Lero. “Monogamy is pretty much the human way. There's a few exceptions, but they're generally either historic or limited in practice, either by geography or belief system.”

Only pairs? Two lovers and no more? For an entire world?! The idea just boggled Rarity’s mind! “Widespread monogamy would never work with ponykind... we’d have made ourselves an endangered species, long ago. Surely you’ve noticed that we have far fewer stallions than mares?”

Lero blinked. “You know, I didn’t think about that! But yeah, now that you mention it, I think I’ve seen about eight mares to every stallion here in Ponyville.”

“It’s not quite as bad as that elsewhere. It's about four-to-one, average, the world over.” She informed him. “Speaking from a purely instinctual, biological standpoint, when you’re a pony, love is about far more than finding a lover. It’s about protecting stallions. The scarcer sex. Ensuring their survival. So for ponies, it’s only natural for mares, especially, to form deep and abiding bonds to both stallions and other mares. This way, a group of mares are always protecting their stallion and each other together. It's not just about several mares loving a stallion, them loving each other is just as important. That's what makes it a Herd.”

“Unreal.” He huffed out a breath of laughter and shook his head. “One more thing to get used to, I suppose. Let’s put the movie back on, shall we?”

* * *

Golden Wings brings out two goldenrod flowers.

GOLDEN WINGS
So would you both be willing to take a chance on me?

Angle on both the goldenrods and Blue Skies’ face, as he thinks it over. Finally, he smiles gently and tenderly.

BLUE SKIES
You know what? I think it’s worth a try.

Happily, Red Radiance uses her telekineses to grab the goldenrods, setting the first one next to the hydrangea on her own ear, and the second by the dianthus on her stallion’s ear.

* * *

Lero frowned at the suddenness with which the picture froze. “Why’d you pause it again, Rarity?”

“I want to point something out to you. Notice how they’re putting flowers in each other’s ears?” When Lero nodded, she asked, “Do you know what that signifies?”

“That they love each other?” he guessed.

“And...?”

She looked at him expectantly, but Lero seemed not to know how he was supposed to fill in that blank.

“It’s customary for ponies who’ve become coltfriend and marefriend to give each other flowers to wear as a sign of their bond. The flowers are always in the color of their lover’s coat, so that other ponies know who they’re in a relationship with.”

“Really?” said the human, examining the flowers with deeper interest. “I just thought it was a bit of symbolism unique to this movie. Flowers have been kind of a running motif throughout this entire film.”

“It’s a romance movie. What did you expect?”

The way he laughed in agreement, Rarity knew these kind of movies existed back in Lero’s monogamous world as well.

“Well, I got to hand it to you, Rarity, it’s fascinating just to watch and learn about how romance works here in Equestria,” he said, and shook his head a little, “even if I’ll never be able to experience any of it, myself.”

It felt as if he’d told her he was blind in one eye, or his taste buds didn’t work. “Lero, why... now why wouldn’t you be able to experience romance for yourself?” she exclaimed, sitting up straighter in her seat. Possibilities flashed through her mind. Perhaps there was a human herdmate from his home world that Lero was still devoted to! She might even be dead... and he could not bring himself to love another.

“Look at me, Rarity.”

She did. In his smile, she saw loss and resignation. In his hazel eyes, Rarity saw an entire world reflected. His world, and all its people. A world he was cut off from.

“What girl in this world would ever fall in love with a being like me?”

As she gazed at Lero, thinking about what to say, Rarity found herself reflecting upon his past. The stories he’d shared... including those with greatest reluctance. All that had shaped him into the man he was today. Lero had once been a human living among humans, until he’d been abducted to a cruel world. One where there had been no other humans to turn to for help. One populated by a race of evil beings who hopelessly overpowered him. His kidnappers. His tormentors.

Then he had escaped to Equestria, and again, the human found himself in another world where he was now the only human. Another world populated by beings who hopelessly overpowered him.

Lero had no wings. No magic. A pair of hands that didn’t even have claws at the end like Spike’s. Earth ponies had stronger bodies than him. He was completely at the mercy of all ponykind, and knew it.

And so many ponies were always so guarded around him because he admitted to being an omnivore, while being perfectly willing to adopt a meatless diet! And they raised such a stink, just because a few of the teeth in his mouth were pointy. Teeth that could easily be kicked out with a sturdy buck.

And it was all he could do to be genuinely grateful, every day, that ponies were as good-natured as they were, instead of the fiends of that horrible world he’d escaped from. To be honestly appreciative of those ponies willing to call him ‘friend.‘ To prove, every day to his neighbors, that he was not a trained animal or a monster. To not rock the boat by demanding too much of anypony.

These thoughts must’ve been showing on her face, for Lero leaned forward and quickly swept Rarity into a tight hug. For all that his friendly touches and hugs had become more frequent, this one still caught her off-guard.

“Aw, Rarity, don’t look at me that way. I promise you; I’m not lonely. Not when I have such wonderful ponies as you and all your friends simply willing to be friends with me. That, alone, means the world to me. So I live a happy-enough life.”

Lero sighed heavily over Rarity’s shoulder, and she could feel his smooth fingers gently digging into her coat more with every second. She pressed her head softly against his, and felt his grip tighten even further.

Rarity had once attended the funeral of a friend. This unfortunate friend and her entire herd had died in a freak fire accident. There had been only one survivor: her dead friend’s brother. Rarity had offered her condolences... and the brother had given her a hug that felt so much like Lero’s did now. For all its lonesomeness, this was no hollow hug. Rather, it was a truly warm and thankful embrace, and Rarity’s heart soared while shattering.

“Let’s, um... let’s go ahead and finish the movie,” the human suggested, finally releasing his hug. His hands briefly brushed her soft coat and drifted through her mane, then pulled back quickly. “I’m probably going to have a million other questions to ask you.”

Rarity turned the movie back on, but she didn’t even hear its dialogue. The video was just a blur to her eyes. The thoughts in her head were too loud. She wanted nothing more than to hug him back, kiss his sweet face, and assure him it was okay, because... because she...

“...Lero? Are we still on to meet each other at the cinema tomorrow?”

“Yeah, of course!” said Lero distractedly. He reached out a hand and placed it on her withers, as though he were touching a human’s shoulder. “Three in the afternoon, right? Wouldn’t miss it for the world! I’m really enjoying all these movies you’re showing me!”

Good. There was still one more film to show Lero first.

* * *

His hand felt soft and confident resting on her back as they stood together and stared up at the marquee. Rarity fought to keep her coat from shivering with a burst of excitement, not wanting to scare him off; what had been a rare and nervous gesture until yesterday had quite suddenly become familiar and nonchalant, and she treasured every un-self-conscious moment of his touch.

She turned her head to watch Lero’s eyes scan over through the list of shows being offered at the Ponyville Cinema, and then smiled at his amused look. There was Vitamin V, Raised By Cockatrices, My Name Is Elephant Garlic, Pony Chicks In Manehatten, The Birdwatchers, 67 Minutes, Disguised As Celestia, Fire Unicorns From Planet Thirddegree, Gangsters Are Coming, Undead Herd 4, Water Polo: A True Story, and Acorn The Talking Squirrel.

“We’ll have two tickets for Pony Chicks In Manehatten,” Rarity told the ticket seller. “The one that’s playing in twenty minutes.”

Lero reached for his wallet, but Rarity was already plunking the bits for the box office mare to take. Confound it... he was getting quicker and quicker with that wallet every time!

They moved in side-by-side, both heading right for the line at the concession stand. As with every time he went out in public, the human attracted lots of stares and whispers. Out of the corner of her eye, Rarity even saw a mare get in line behind him to tap her hoof hesitantly on his back. Even before she turned away from the human, Rarity could tell this wasn’t a true ‘excuse-me-sir?’ sort of tap. Rather, the mare was seeing whether Lero was actually a magical illusion, she, herself, had conjured up.

Rarity gave Lero a look that was an apology on behalf of her entire race. He shrugged; the expression he gave back said that he refused to let any of it bother him.

“Hello! Thanks for coming to the Ponyville Cinema! What can I get you?” chirped a cute little earth pony mare wearing a silly cinema-themed hat. Refreshingly, she seemed to have no curiosity about Lero whatsoever.

Lero already had his wallet in his hand, quick-drawn and determined to beat Rarity’s bits to the counter. He tried not to smile in triumph. “A large popcorn, one cherry-flavored Big Slurp for me, and a Colt-Cola for my lady-friend, here.”

But just as he was putting the money down, Rarity stopped him with a hoof on his arm and her pleading eyes. “Let me get this for you.”

“Rarity, you already bought the tickets... you pretty much ALWAYS buy EVERYTHING for me, any time we go out!”

Her cheeks turned slightly pink. “I... it’s because I know money’s tight for you right now, and you’re watching every bit! And you KNOW how theater food is always SO overpriced! It’s the LEAST I can do!”

“Alright, but next time...”

“Next time,” she conceded, paying for the food herself.

She was about to carry the food in for him as well, but he intercepted her. “I swear, you ought to have been the Element of Generosity, instead!” That gave her a laugh.

After easing through a crowd of curious moviegoing ponies that parted for them, they stood before a movie poster just outside their theater.

“So this is going to be some kind of wacky romantic comedy?” Lero asked.

“Pretty much,” she answered.

The Pony Chicks In Manehatten poster showed the movie’s three heroines, the Pony Chicks, with mischievous, sassy smiles, around a harassed-looking griffin male.

“What’s with those mares’ hooves?” he asked.

“Oh, they filed their hooves down to be more like griffin claws,” she explained.

Lero looked sickened at that. “Is that NORMAL? Like piercing your ears?”

“Oh, heavens, no!” said Rarity. His naiveté was always so fun! “Nopony would REALLY maim their hooves in such a way... those claw-hooves of theirs are as fake as vampire fangs!”

She tugged on Lero’s arm with her telekinesis, and he followed her into the theater, with a backward glance at the poster. “This movie is actually a sequel.” she told him. “Since you weren’t around at the time, I ought to tell you about the first film, so you’re not lost at sea.”

“Fair enough,” he said, as they found their seats.

“The original movie’s called Pony Chicks.” said Rarity. “It’s actually over ten years old... the girls who portray the Chicks in this film aren’t even the same actresses from the original. Pony Chicks is about three pegasus fillies who were adopted by a griffin mother and father, who gave them all griffin names and raised them as griffins. That’s where the ‘Chicks’ part of the title came from.”

“Wait a minute... so, ‘chicks’ as in ‘baby birds?’” asked Lero. He heached over and quickly swiped her popcorn as she lifted it into the air, tossing it into his mouth with a grin.

“Naturally,” said Rarity, stealing popcorn from his tub in retaliation. “What else would you mean by ‘chicks?’”

“Well, just... girls in general! Chicks, y’know? As in ‘chick flick?’” At her blank look, he said, “Don’t you HAVE chick flicks in Equestria?”

“We do, but they’re intended for very young griffins,” she explained. “Though I get the sense that what you’re REALLY trying to refer to is ‘filly films,’ yes? Especially as opposed to stallion shows?”

“I guess I am,” said Lero.

She shook her head. “You humans have rather strange slang sometimes.” Then she refocused on the original movie’s summary. “Anyway, Pony Chicks was about how the Chicks — Jill, Genevieve, and Gertie Goldclaws — end up resolving a dispute between two warring griffin clans thanks to their Innate Pony Goodness.”

“Innate Pony... Goodness?” Lero repeated, clearly holding back a laugh with a tight smile.

“To use the movie’s own words, my dear,” said Rarity, rolling her eyes and nudging him hard with a hoof. “The Griffins were all made out to be dangerous savages, while the Chicks were made out to be super-wimpy, in spite of their griffin upbringing,” she giggled. “It was all just so over-the-top hilarious! No one could tell that it had never been meant as a comedy! I hear the original screenwriter resigned when her movie became a cult classic for all the wrong reasons!”

“And so... this is a follow-up to all that?” asked Lero, with a little trepidation.

“Mm-hmm! From what I understand, a griffin wrote this sequel. A lot of the fans were worried whether it could capture the charm of the original Pony Chicks. Or alternatively, be the complete train wreck most ponies presume it’ll be.” And then Rarity took an anxious breath. “To tell you the truth, Lero, I... already know what’s going to happen here. Applejack spoiled the plot for me the last time we got together. But I think it would behoove us to sit and watch it all the same.”

“For my education with pony society?” Lero guessed, arching a knowing eyebrow at her.

“Perhaps,” she said.

“So what happens?”

And a kernel of popcorn floated into his mouth.

“You’ll just have to wait and see,” she told him. Lero nodded and draped his arm comfortably behind her seat.

* * *

INT. THE SILLY FILET - NIGHT

GODRIC SCALESLASH is standing behind the counter, beak open, staring at what has become of his shop.

His assistants, KUMQUAT GELATO and TOFU BARBECUE, are desperately holding up the side of GODRIC's prized fresh fish tank; the supports underneath it that normally keep it in place have fallen out.

The PONY CHICKS are frozen in place in the middle of the shop. GENEVIEVE has a large bass in her mouth.

JILL is somehow wielding a lobster in each carved forehoof like a sai. GERTIE has a coiled-up electric eel in her mouth like a whip.

All three PONY CHICKS are covered in splattered fish bits and debris from the wrecked shop.

GERTIE's eel goes off, shocking her. Her bones are briefly visible. She drops the eel.

GODRIC
What... what in... What in the High Reaches is going ON in here?!

KUMQUAT and TOFU both SQUEAK as their hooves slide on the floor. Some water spills from the tank.

KUMQUAT GELATO
It... it... it's... not what it looks like!

TOFU BARBECUE
No! It! It... ACK!

The two assistant ponies are hit by a FLOUNDER that sloshes over the top of the tank.

GENEVIEVE
Yes! The... tank started to fall! That's it!

JILL
So we rushed to help!

A lingering ELECTRIC SHOCK runs over GERTIE.

GERTIE
And we may have knocked something over to save the poor little fishes!

GODRIC belatedly rushes over to lift up the supports under the tank. KUMQUAT and TOFU breath out sighs of relief as they can step away.

KUMQUAT GELATO
No. You know what? Just no. Those three jerks did all this!

TOFU BARBECUE
Kumquat, no! Shhhh!

KUMQUAT GELATO
No! I'm tired of this! Godric, these three have been behind ALL of it!

JILL
Such accusations!

JILL poorly imitates fainting to the ground indignantly. JILL then jumps up with a yell as her lobsters proceed to PINCH her on the NOSE.

JILL
OW!

GERTIE and GENEVIEVE both laugh. GODRIC scowls.

GODRIC
I KNEW there was something strange going on! I never heard of any 'griffon pox' or 'wing-melting clouds' before!

GERTIE
We MAY have gotten a little competitive, but can you blame us? It's not like Equestria has a lot of hot hunters like you around!

JILL's voice is nasal, with the lobsters still in place.

JILL
Yeah! And you're never going to find a better pony for a griffon than one of US!

GODRIC spreads his wings across the backs of KUMQUAT and TOFU.

GODRIC
You're wrong there. I found two MUCH better ponies a long time ago. I just never knew it until now!

TOFU and KUMQUAT gasp. GODRIC lifts his head and glares at the PONY CHICKS.

GODRIC
I may be a griffon, but I'm an Equestrian, same as any pony! And a REAL Equestrian knows that fighting with your friends is for jerks!

GODRIC turns his head to nuzzle KUMQUAT, then TOFU.

GODRIC
And an Equestrian STALLION doesn't have to pick just one hen for a mate, so...

GODRIC steps forward to one of the few remaining SHELVES. A HOOF sound-effect plays with every step he takes, instead of his usual CLAW-CLICK. A small TANK is on the shelf with two GOLDFISH inside. He dunks his CLAW in and pulls out the GOLDFISH, then turns.

GODRIC
Kumquat? Tofu? I know I don't have any flowers, and these don't exactly match my coat, but will you be my mares?

KUMQUAT and TOFU look to each other, eyes shining. They nod at each other and rush forward - and, in proper GRIFFON fashion, accept the offering by unhesitatingly eating the fish from GODRIC's claws!

TOFU makes a brief 'ack' expression. KUMQUAT shows no signs of distaste.

GODRIC
Come on, girls. I think we have some celebrating to do. By OURSELVES!

GODRIC steps forward. KUMQUAT and TOFU press to his sides. He spreads his wings across them. They MARCH out of the store side by side.

The supports from the TANK fall out again. The TANK topples over, pouring WATER and FISH across the PONY CHICKS. The TANK ends up upside down over the three of them.

GERTIE
Well. Tanks a lot, Godric.

The other two SMACK her upside the head.

GERTIE
OW!

EXT. CANTERLOT CAFE - NIGHT

GERTIE has a bandage on her head. JILL has bandages on her nose. GENEVIEVE is bruised. All THREE have a CUP OF TEA in front of them. GENEVIEVE lifts her cup.

GENEVIEVE
Well, looks like Godric ended up with those two silly little shy mares.

JILL lifts her cup.

JILL
They never would have made a move if we hadn't been fighting over him.

GERTIE lifts her cup.

GERTIE
And Godric wouldn't have noticed them if they hadn't stood up against us.

The PONY CHICKS clink their cups together.

JILL
And isn't that just like a pony? No spine at all until her back's to the wall!

GERTIE
They really needed somepony to step up and give them a buck in the flank.

GENEVIEVE
And we're good at that!

ALL THREE PONY CHICKS
Pony chicks! Doing good with dirty tricks!

The PONY CHICKS raise their cups high, then drink them dry.

The MAITRE'D, an Earth Pony in a tuxedo, comes into focus in the background, and the camera moves to zoom in. A pair of unicorn WAITRESSES are staring wistfully at him from the BACK.

The camera returns to the PONY CHICKS. They look at each other.

They SMILE.

FADE OUT

CREDITS ROLL

* * *

"So, it was just as good as the reviewers said!" Rarity smiled over at Lero and explained, "The original fans mostly found it just as funny as ever. The griffon critics thought the movie was hilarious for the way the Pony Chicks ran roughshod over Godric and the other griffons... And the pony critics enjoyed the Chicks’ social-convention-breaking..."

"You know, Rarity..." Lero said, not distracted by her commentary. "I think you might have had an ulterior motive for showing me this movie."

"Whatever could you mean?" She said in the most innocent manner possible.

As the last of the other moviegoers filed out towards the exit, Lero smiled and draped an arm across Rarity's neck, pulling her tight against his side as the end credits continued to roll. It felt so good.

"You're the sweetest pony in the world, Rarity,” Lero said quietly. “You wanted to show me it IS possible, that I shouldn't give up just because of a species difference. Maybe someday I might find someone after all."

She nuzzled against his chest and inhaled his wonderful scent, bolstering her courage up. "Oh, no, darling. There's another point I believe you've missed."

Lero blinked down at her, confused, as he felt a little something from her brush his ear. He reached up and his fingers closed around a flower's stem. He lowered it into view. A white rose; short-stemmed, and thornless.

His eyes widened. "Rarity... This is..."

He held it up to eye level so that he could compare the color of its blossom against that of Rarity’s coat. A perfect match, of course. He turned his eyes to hers, blue and lovely and staring back at him with... a glimmer of hope, and a little fear, and...

"Last night, Lero, you said that no girl in this world would find it in her heart to love you,” she reminded him, nudging his chest tenderly. “What if you were wrong about that? You said that you live a ‘happy-enough’ life. What if there was a mare who wanted to make you happier? Suppose you’d made a powerful impression on her? Suppose she was seriously thinking about sharing her life with you?"

Lero swallowed, hardly able to breath. “Supposing that this mare you speak of... was you, Rarity...”

She met his eyes, and wondered if he could feel her heart beating harshly in her chest. “There’s no ‘supposing’ about it,” she told him. “I want you, Lero. I want to make you happy.”

He gave a incredulous, slightly giddy laugh. “It’s so strange... for some damn reason, I... I feel like I’m a character in a fairy tale!”

“You too?” she breathed, hope rising in her chest.

He twirled the white rose’s stem very slowly between his thumb and forefinger, looking back and forth from it to her. “We’ve shared so many good times together, Rarity, even just hanging around. You’re always there for me. Always wanting to hear what I have to say... my thoughts, my stories. You’re always trying to teach me. Doing what you can so that I understand pony society more, fit in more... so that I’m not quite so much of an oddball here.”

She wanted to pat his arm with a hoof, to touch him in any way she could, but decided to let him keep talking.

“I guess what I’m trying to say, Rarity, is that just being your friend, alone, has come to be one of the greatest joys of my life, here on this new world. And now, today, I learned something I didn’t think would be possible. Something that still feels so unreal! That you want to take this to the next level.” He stopped twirling the rose. “I just have one question.”

“Anything, my love,” Rarity said, surprised to hear her voice whispering.

“My love...” he echoed, in soft amazement and disbelief, before looking her right in the eyes. “Is this really what you want? Am I really what you want?”

She reached out to him at last, and her hoof trailing trailed down the side of his cheek in with a featherlight caress. “If you would be mine,” she promised, “That that would be the finest happily-ever-after I could ever hope for, my sweet prince.”

She drew away, giving him the space to make his decision. He focused on the rose again. Curiously, he held the blossom up to his eye, as though it were not a actually flower, but the eyepiece of a telescope.

“I wouldn’t think of it as happily-ever-after, Rarity.”

“Y-you wouldn’t?” Her voice cracked as it hadn’t since her adolescence, and Rarity could feel a terrible heartbreak looming a moment away.

“This isn’t an ending. It’s our starting point. This is us opening a blank book to page one and writing ‘Once upon a time.’ After all, there’s still so much we don’t know about each other. We don’t know HOW this will ultimately end!”

He held her white rose under his nose and breathed in its scent.

“But now that you’ve opened this door and invited me in, I want to find out.” He looked into Rarity’s eyes, and saw that they were wet with tears. “I can’t wait to find out. So here’s to the beginning of our glorious adventure together!”

And he tucked her rose upon his ear.

“How do I look?” he asked, with an unsure smile, perhaps half-expecting her to say, ‘ridiculous.‘

The fur of her underbelly flattened against the fabric of his pants and shirt as she instantly threw herself upon him. Again and again, she kissed his mouth... that sweet and wonderful mouth of his, from which that beautifully poetic pledge of love had been given breath.

All the thanks and appreciation he freely gave every day, all the fascinated, thought-provoking questions, all his enthralling stories, all his noble sincerity and sincere nobility, his lovely laughter, all his words of kindness, goodness, friendship and bold resolution to keep being strong and love life, whatever it threw at him... Rarity rained kisses upon its source.

Her first kiss was met with flat, unready lips. The second kiss, he was prepared for... a REAL kiss. Her tail whisked back and forth against the back of the theater chairs in the next row. Kiss upon kiss, his inhibitions melted away. She felt the very tip of his tongue shyly peek inside her mouth. She thrust her own tongue back against it, shoving his tongue back inside its home... then as if in apology for her roughness, she wound her tongue around his in slippery, warm caress, feeling the subtle differences in size and texture, his thinner, narrower and a bit smoother than hers, coming to a slight point.

She traced along his teeth... such sharp points some of them had! But they only brought momentary alarm, his exotic human fangs enticed her. Danger she had no reason to fear. His tongue thrust back, entered her own mouth, and she pushed his tongue against her enamel, and he ran his muscle along the inside of her teeth, painting them with a thin coat of his human saliva.

And then his arms encircled the back of her shoulders, bringing her down closer against him! Not that tragic hug of loneliness he’d given her last night, but a tight, joyous, wholehearted embrace, and Rarity’s love for Lero Michealides doubled.

He was everything Rarity had ever wanted in a stallion. And now he was hers. Her stallion. Her sweet prince, her fairy tale made true. And she would be his princess. Princesses provided, (at least the ones worth emulating did) and Rarity intended to be a good princess for her prince. She would continue to teach him, and steer him right. She would protect him and shield him from harm. He would never know loneliness again... never need to apologize for his humanity.

She’d be as faithful and true to him as Celestia was to all of ponydom.

She felt him fumble uncertainly against her body, but forgave it readily. Nopony else had wanted to be intimate with Lero before now; of course her prince would fumble. Did he have any previous experience with human mares? Could it be possible he was a virgin? If so, she’d fix all that up! All the expertise she’d developed with her previous bedfellows would...

“GET A ROOM, YOU TWO!”

They jolted out of each other’s embrace. The scowling old usher pushed his broom, sweeping up the hairy, dusty popcorn and little gummy bears with partial horseshoe imprints that littered the floor.

* * *

“So... I gotta ask... how long ago did it stop being ‘friendship’ for you?” Lero asked, as the both of them left the theater, side by side. striding right through the middle of town. His hand rested confidently on her withers and stroked through her mane. “At what point did your feelings for me turn romantic?”

Rarity shrugged, smiling up at him. “Somewhere around three weeks ago, or so, I think.”

Lero shook his head at himself. “I’m an idiot, Rarity! All those romantic movies you showed me, all those times you insisted on paying when we we ate at restaurants... it was all so obvious and I never suspected a thing.”

She leaned her head against the side of his body. “Well, better late than never. You were working at a disadvantage, after all.”

He rubbed the back of Rarity’s neck. “So, what happens now? Do we begin dating? Or have we BEEN dating already, or...?”

“Well, you had no idea of my feelings towards you, so it’d be unfair to call them ‘dates.‘“ the unicorn said. “Of course, there’s a proper etiquette about these things. At this point, we...”

“Look, Honeysuckle!” a new voice called out to her companion. “Look at what the monkey’s wearing!”

“I don’t believe it!” the other pony answered.

Rarity felt Lero’s muscles tense up against her. A pair of Earth pony mares sauntered up to the two of them, intense dislike in both their eyes. One was green-coated and green-maned, the other was pink-coated and yellow-maned.

“What... is that... in that THING’S ear?” the green mare demanded to know, glaring at Lero’s white rose.

Coolly, Rarity’s eyes flicked to their cutie marks: a slice of honeydew melon on one, and a honeysuckle flower on the other.

“Let me guess; you’re Honeydew and Honeysuckle, right?” the unicorn asked. She'd seen the mares around town before, and even bought melons from Honeydew's stand, but she'd never had the chance of officially making their acquaintance until this moment.

“Yeah, that’s us.” said Honeysuckle. “And you’re Rarity. The unicorn holding a pegasus job. Why don’t you magic yourself a real pair of wings and fly off, sister?!”

Rarity’s lip curled. “I see you’re everything Lero’s told me you’d be. What a tremendous displeasure it is to finally meet you ladies face-to-face.”

“Right back at cha, narwhal,” Honeysuckle said.

Rarity knew the Honey sisters despised Lero immensely, and had harassed him several times in the past already. The unicorn looked over at Lero, who was eyeing the skies warily. “Where’s Honeybee?” he suddenly asked.

Honeysuckle gave a mocking coo. “Aw, Honeydew, isn’t that precious! He remembers Bee flying him to the tippy-top of that biiiiig sequoia tree out in the woods!”

“D... what?!” Rarity shot Lero a look, then at Honeysuckle. “Why would you do a thing like that?!”

“We wanted to see him do what chimps do best: scamper through the treetops!” Honeysuckle grinned at Lero. “Boy, were you fun to watch!”

“Nopony’s answering my question, though!” Honeydew snorted, pointing a hoof at Lero’s rose. “What is this weed doing on this monkey’s ear?!”

Lero’s hand came down upon Rarity’s back, pulling her closer.

“Well, Rarity... I guess the cat’s out of the bag.” He turned to the angry green Earth pony. “Honeydew... as of five minutes ago, me and Rarity are officially boyfriend and girlfriend.”

“Coltfriend and marefriend, darling.” Rarity corrected.

“That too,” Lero said.

Honeydew turned slowly towards Rarity. Though her voice was at an conversational level, she looked fit to bite through rope in a single snap of teeth. “Bee’s told me things about you. You’re... you’re LEGENDARY! Bee says that you’ve put out for half the stallions and mares in the Weather Service!”

“Oh, please,” the unicorn scoffed with a dismissive hoof wave. “They’ve exaggerated me to running gag status down at Weather!”

“You’ve been with the sort of ponies no blue-collar cloud-pusher has the right to be in the same room with!” Honeydew sputtered. “Fashionistas! Aristocrats! Army soldiers! Big-name chefs!”

“Celestia and Luna in a threesome!” Rarity called out, matching Honeydew’s affronted tone of voice.

Three jaws dropped. Lero gaped at his girl in astonishment.

Rarity brought a hoof to her mouth and laughed into it. “Kidding! Kidding, I promise! Just being facetious! Oh, the LOOKS on all your faces!”

Honeydew seethed. “You think this is FUNNY, you trashy skank?!”

“Not at all,” answered Rarity. “I’ve always taken my search for Mr. Right with the utmost seriousness. Found a good, reliable job, made effort to keep myself healthy and pretty, saved the world a few times... but even so, you’re not going to find Mr. Right by sitting at home and hoping he’ll fall through your roof. But you have to dig through a lot of dirt before finding gold, and so I’ve had to get,” she shrugged, “a bit dirty.”

“But you could’ve had ANYPONY!” Honeydew’s volume was rising to a boil, “ANY PONY! Why this worm-fingered, two-legged, tailless, shell-eared, no-hoofed, furless, hideous primate who’s lucky we ponies let him pluck our weeds?!”

Rarity snaked an arm around Lero and drew him closer. “Because he’s my dream come true.”

Honeydew got right up in Lero’s face. She seemed to want to say something scathing, but only snorted angrily at him.

“Um, Honeydew, there’s such thing as personal space...” He tried to gently push Honeydew backwards. Next thing Rarity knew, her stallion’s feet had left the ground, his eyes were facing the sky, and his back hit the cobblestones with horrifying force. It was like a... no, it was a martial arts move! Honeydew had performed a martial arts flip on Lero!

Lero tried to rise, but the Earth pony drove her hoof into her stallion’s ribcage. Rarity’s head clouded over with a red mist of fury.

“You might want to think twice about laying your grubby paws on me, Bananas!” Honeydew advised Lero, twisting her hoof about as she drove it in deeper. “I’ve been trained in Rolling Earth! Fought in tournaments and everything!”

His eyes looked around as he wheezed. To his left lay the white rose which had fallen from his ear. He reached for it, but Honeydew snatched it up faster in her mouth.

“Did you want this?” she asked, offering it out to him with a sweet smile.

He did his best to snatch it from her, but she pulled the flower completely into her mouth, worked it between her teeth, then spat chewed-up white rose mush all over Lero’s face and shirt.

“Congratulations on finding yourself a girl,” said Honeydew. “Even if she's into animals. But I suppose since you didn't think to bring a lady-monkey with you, you had to settle for something, huh?”

The Earth pony mare had been too busy giving Lero grief to feel the cloudwalking spell cast on her. She hadn’t felt the thin clouds form under her hooves. It came as the shock of her life when she went rushing 50 feet straight upwards into the air.

“WWWHOAAAAHHHOOHHHAAAHHHOOOH!!!!”

Rarity tilted her head a bit lower, and Honeydew plummeted 49 feet downward, coming to a whiplash stop a foot above the ground, which promptly launched up in the air again.

“GGYYYAAAAAYYYAAAYYYYAAHHH!!!”

Wildly, Rarity yo-yoed Honeydew up and down on her cloud at breakneck speed; it was all Honeydew could do to wrap her limbs around the bottom of the cloud and just hold on for dear life. Honeysuckle looked ready to charge at Rarity to save her sister for all of a single second. One glare from the unicorn, though, and she fell to the ground, begging on her sister’s behalf.

Rarity finally stopped seeing red long after she witnessed Lero stand on shaky legs and dust himself off. Meanwhile she continued to assist Honeydew with her lessons about gravity and terminal velocity. Lero leaned against his newfound love and gently patted his hand against her neck.

“That’s enough, Rarity. I’m okay,” he spoke calmly. He ran his fingers through her mane and tugged at it lightly to get her attention. “I’m okay, you should let her down now. ” Then he leaned over and kissed her cheek. With a long sigh, the blinding anger finally drained from Rarity’s eyes.

The unicorn looked at him for a moment and then turned her gaze back to the sky. The anger might well have left, but the fire in her blue eyes had turned cold and hard, like deep glacial ice as she glared up at the one who had hurt her sweet prince.

At last, Lero — and Honeysuckle, lying yards away and crying pathetically for her sister — watched as the weatherpony finally brought Honeydew screaming down from high, high above, one last time. The cloud platform she lay gripping madly slammed to a stop three feet from the ground, leaving the earth pony bobbing gently up and down for a few moments.

Rarity stepped up and slapped the cloud with a dramatic hoof. The platform dissipated in an instant, and Honeydew fell with a screech, dropping spread-eagled to the ground with a sickening thud and a heavy “Oof!” She lay in the dirt, retching with fear and nausea, as Rarity stepped far back and aimed her glowing horn towards the sky again...

Thunder rolled ominously above them, and in that instant Lero watched as a dozen massive spears of ice flashed down from the sky and slammed with sharp blasts of sound into the ground where Honeydew lay. The earth shook and a cloud of dust and dirt and steam instantly filled the air, blocking their view.

Lero stood staring open-mouthed and horrified while Honeysuckle wailed. Rarity wouldn’t have! She couldn’t have...!

The white weatherpony summoned a brief wind to blow away the resulting dust cloud, revealing the earth pony surrounded by a solid fence of thick, steaming blue ice. Leaving Lero standing where he was, Rarity slowly circled once around Honeydew’s frozen cage before coming to stop before her. She leaned in and spoke, her voice deadly calm.

“I have been trained for years in the manipulation of weather by the finest weatherponies in the world, Honeydew. Princess Celestia saw to that, herself! I’ve stood on mountaintops to direct every kind of weather there is, and even created new ones. I’m sure you believe me,” she said, tapping a hoof against a stalactite of steaming ice, “when I say that I don’t need to be right next to you to harm you. So you’d better listen carefully.

“If you or your sisters ever bother Lero or myself again, I will pick you up and drop you on the highest mountaintop I can find, and I will leave you there to get yourself down.” Honeydew looked up into the weatherpony’s cold blue eyes and stared wide-eyed with new fear. Rarity leaned in close and spoke so softly that Lero couldn’t hear her. “And if you ever hurt him, why, I just might end you, Honeydew. Believe it!” She stomped a hoof to the ground and the earth pony flinched back. “Are we absolutely, perfectly crystal clear?”

Coughing harshly, Honeydew nodded weakly at the ground.

“Good,” she looked back at Honeysuckle. “Be certain you both share that with your sister, Honeybee. Ignorance will be no excuse, my dears.”

Rarity turned and walked with infinite grace and calm toward Lero and stood before him for a moment, her face filling with growing concern. She gently gripped his hand in her mouth and led him away, leaving the two Honey sisters to themselves. Once they had stepped well out of sight, she stopped and nuzzled tenderly against his hand.

“Hug me, Lero?” she asked sweetly. The human lowered himself and wrapped his arms tightly around her neck. Sighing heavily, Rarity pressed herself into him. She shook a little, and he began to caress her coat with a soothing hand.

“No worries, Rarity. I’m alright, now. I just had the wind knocked out of me. I really am okay.”

She sniffled and laughed a little with relief, reaching up to pull an arm around his neck and squeeze him tightly. After a moment she pulled back and looked up at his face. Her head spun with pent-up emotion, and she found herself struggling for the right words to tell him.

“I... I’m so sorry about your rose, my sweet prince. I will buy you another.”

Lero stared back into Rarity’s eyes, and he pressed his hand against her cheek. “Oh, Rarity, I’ve already found my white rose.”

She smiled the brightest smile he’d ever seen, and then she closed her eyes and kissed him.

* * *

“Ha ha ha! Take that, Honeydew!” Spike pumped his fist. “Serves you right for always being such a vicious, loathsome nag, even in... uh...” He looked at Rarity, and decided to finish his sentence a different way. “...Even back when Rarity first met you in the past!”

Twilight blinked. “Gosh, Spike, if I didn’t know better, I’d say it almost sounded personal between you and Honeydew!”

“Are you kidding?” the dragon asked. “I mean, yeah, I’m just as angry as everyone else that she treats Lero the way she does, but she treats me just as badly all the time!”

“What?!” Twilight gasped.

“How long has this been going on?!” Lero demanded.

“Since we first settled into Ponyville,” said Spike. “Calls me ‘lizard’ and ‘reptile’ and ‘gecko’ and keeps asking me how many villages I plan to burn to the ground when I come of age...”

“She DIDN’T!” Rarity growled.

“She did,” Spike said.

“Well, why didn’t you TELL any of us about it?” Twilight asked.

“Because as far as I’m concerned, Honeydew’s nothing but a giant windbag. All I have to do is show her a few teeth, blow some smoke in her direction, and she’s off like a shot. Not worth the fuss.” Then the little dragon’s brain melted into a pile of love-goo, when Rarity picked him up and hugged him.

“Oh, my poor Spiky-Wikey!” Rarity’s eyes narrowed, as she set the dragon down. “I think I’m going to pay that mare a visit and have a chat with her, first chance I get.”

“And I think I’d like to tag along when you do!” added Twilight, with an equally grim look.

Spike let out a breath. “So, uh, did you ever get Lero a new white rose?”

“Of course I did!” Rarity said. Judging by her facial expression, she seemed uncertain whether to laugh or send Spike to bed to get more sleep. “Can’t you see it for yourself?”

She looked over at Lero. The human kept his face neutral as Spike admitted, “Uh, no, I’m sorry, I can’t see it.”

And then Lero felt telekinesis undo the braid on his hair. The cyan feather from Rainbow Dash floated over to Spike.

“Here!” Rarity insisted, tickling his nostrils with the feather. “Here’s the rose, plain as day!”

“Ohhh, ohhh!” Spike smiled and nodded. “Of course! There the rose was, all along!”

Rarity brought Rainbow’s feather under her own nose and took in a long, loving sniff. “Still fragrant,” she sighed. “Even after all these years.”

She brought the feather back over towards Lero’s face. He caught his own whiff. All he could smell on the feather was a faint trace of the shampoo he used, which wasn’t even floral.

“Princess Celestia caught wind of what had happened between me and Honeydew,” the white unicorn explained, and she rewove the ‘white rose’ back into its braid. “The very next morning, she sent me this flower and explained, in a letter, that she’d cast a special spell on it, so that it would be as resilient and long-lasting as a pegasus feather.”

Her smile was so sweet, Lero set his arms around Rarity. Her whole body relaxed against his, almost bonelessly.

Already knowing he was stating the brazenly obvious, he said, “You really like my hugs, don’t you?”

“I really do,” she said. “Of all the wonderful things you do, hugging is one of the high ones on my list. And... well, this is a bit of an embarrassing confession to make, but when you have your arms around me, I feel so safe and loved... warm and comfortable. I feel like a foal again, up in the clouds. Like you’re not going to let me fall.”

The arms around Rarity squeezed tighter, with an unexpected sense of... resolve.

“You’re right, Rarity,” Lero vowed. “I won’t let you fall.”

Then Spike’s scaly little arms encircled her foreleg. “NONE of us are going to let anything happen to you.”

Finally, Twilight joined in, hugging her on her other side. “That’s right. You won’t fall. We’ll always gonna be there to pull you back up, Rarity, no matter what!”

Rarity’s lips wobbled upwards. She could hardly even remember a time when she’d felt so touched. So blessed. The next thing her three herdmates knew, they were all being enveloped together in a grand telekinetic hug.

“All of you are the most precious treasures I will ever have.”

* * *

Shortly after they broke away from their hug, Spike unexpectedly belched up a set of six envelopes.

“Huh?”

They found that the front of each envelope simply bore the name of an Element of Harmony Bearer.

“Wonder why the Princess didn’t just mail these straight to the others’ homes?” Twilight asked, as she and Rarity opened the letters with their names on it. Spike and Lero read over their shoulders as the two girls let out gasps.

“By Celestia’s shimmering mane!” Rarity cried.

“Unbelievable!” exclaimed Twilight.

“And just when I got to thinking that Princess Celestia had completely put us out of her mind... she goes and drops THIS in our laps!” Lero said. “Incredible!”

The two unicorns exchanged letters, reading each other’s over. “Yours is pretty much exactly the same as mine!” said Rarity.

“Whoa. Then I think it’s pretty safe for us to assume the other girls’ will also be the same. Spike!”

The dragon stood to attention.

“I’ll need you to write me letters to our four other friends. We’ll want to arrange a lunch together tomorrow, so I can pass out their letters from Celestia! Now let’s see... where and when...?”

“How about Crispy’s at noon?” Lero suggested.

“Sounds workable!” Twilight said, as she and Spike sat at a table and Spike began to write.

Lero turned to Rarity. “Hey, Rarity... it’s kinda been a long day for me today, and I need a chance to clear my head and think. Think I’ll head outside and just stroll around for a little bit by myself.”

“But it’s the middle of the night!” She objected.

Lero checked his watch. “It’s only about nine-ish. I won’t be long, really. Some fresh nighttime air ought to be just what the doctor ordered!”

A little reluctantly, she nodded. As she walked past him, she rubbed against the side of his body, exactly as a cat would.

“I’ll keep the bed warm for you,” she promised him sweetly, as she trotted upstairs.

* * *

Princess Luna had done an excellent job with tonight’s sky night. A clear waxing moon hung high above in the sky; wonderfully bright, as were the tapestry of stars. The lampposts almost didn’t need to be lit, especially not with so few other ponies to pass by.

A perfect sort of night for cogitation. For thinking aloud.

“So... so Applejack had that hunch of hers... and she said that it was something like what a unicorn should feel!” he tried to analyze, as he was passing by the Mayor’s office. “That’s gotta count for something, right? But... how do you use that? It's not as if I can go, "Hey, you shouldn't have been able to do that! Only a unicorn could! That's why you can't now!" That doesn't help her any.”

While strolling by Sugar Cube Corner, he noted, “Rainbow Dash’s Butterfly Mark is supposed to represent her love for all animals, but it only shows butterflies! ...And that applies to Fluttershy as well. How does this help me in any way?”

While resting against the wall of Davenport’s sofa and quill shop, he reflected, “Fluttershy claims she, a pegasus, was born into an Earth pony family. How could THAT have happened? ...The same way Carrot Cake and Cup Cake managed to produce their twins, right...”

As he cut through the stands at the marketplace, more frustrated than ever, he considered, “Rarity said her dad carried he around everywhere for three years. Even to his day job, though? No boss alive would allow that! Unless... maybe the Swap decided it’d extend his bosses’ sympathy? Or she did say he was high up in the Factory, maybe he was irreplaceable! And that thing about the Diamond Hailstorm, heh, pretty clever substitute for the Sonic Rainboom! Now I have to wonder what the Swap would’ve had Applejack use if she’d gotten the Rainbow Mark... maybe a Sonic Apple Bomb?! Urrgh! I’m getting off-track!”

“Supposedly, Princess Celestia said that Twilight... hey wait!” Lero stopped himself. “Why am I putting Twilight’s story under the microscope? Man, I’m getting nowhere with this...”

Irritably, Lero kicked at a pebble, watching it bounce off the side of a store with a stony clack. This was so frustrating! Back with Pinkie Pie in that hospital room, everything had just clicked so naturally into place, coming to him in a wild blur of genius! And it’d felt so GOOD, like dismantling a time bomb on his very first try!

But now all these other stories felt like he was trying to solve four Rubik’s cubes at the same time. Was this what Applejack had felt like, back when she’d said she’d ‘lost her muse?‘ Poor girl. For what had to be the thousandth time since Apple Bloom had been made the big sister of the Apple family, Lero wondered whether Sweetie Belle could be made to help Applejack with her fashion-work in the same way.

And for what had to be the thousandth time, Lero’s brain reminded him that Sweetie Belle’s attempts at sewing were so notoriously disastrous, she might never live it down... growing to be thirty, and the older adults would STILL be laughing about her fashion flops around their dinner table at get-togethers. And as for Rarity’s true parents, Magnum and Pearl... well, clearly there WAS a market for the the sort of clothes they found stylish. It just wasn’t the same market Applejack now catered to.

Then from Applejack, Lero’s mind went to Rarity, and the stories she’d just shared. What a difficult life she’d lived. But he thought especially about her account of how she and he had first gotten together. The funny thing was... Lero pictured himself in the shoes of the Lero Michaelides who’d landed in the world where none of the Swapped Five were screw-ups. Watching those movies with Rarity. Receiving her rose and accepting it joyfully. And he could completely see himself reacting in those ways. The Lero in that fantastic story was completely in character with his own real self.

Rarity...

“You say it’s only a paper moon, sailing over a cardboard sea,” he suddenly found himself singing softly. “But it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me! Yes, it’s only a canvas sky, hanging over a muslin tree. But it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in me! Without your love, it’s a honky-tonk parade! Without your love, it’s a melody played in a penny arcade!”

And then, unexpectedly, a new voice from the dark supplied some of the next set of lyrics. With orchestral accompaniment. “It’s a Barnum and Bailey world! Just as phony as it can be!”

Like a witch upon her broomstick, Discord flew across the moon on a microphone stand, singing beautifully into the mike... yet failing to wake or draw the notice of any other soul; everypony remained in their houses.

“But it wouldn’t be make-believe if you believed in...” The draconequus gave Lero a sly, downright catty smile, as he landed right next to the human. “...her.”

Lero folded his arms, raising his eyebrows at Discord through half-lidded eyes. “You sure weren’t kidding when you said you’d be keeping your eye on me.”

“You don’t really leave me much choice,” Discord replied, raising a foot in midair.

“What’s THAT supposed to mean?”

With a snap of his fingers, Discord turned into... Lero. A floating doppelgänger of his own self, with an impudent smile.

“Love the new look, there, Big L!” Discord the human said, with two big thumbs up, as a huge mirror materialized in front of Lero.

A draconequus was reflected back at Lero: Discord! But when Lero gaped, the Discord-in-the-mirror gaped too. Lero lifted an arm in shock, and so did the Discord.

“Wha...wha... what?!” He cried, running his arms up and down his body. He felt fur EVERYWHERE... except where he was scaled. His mouth pushed out into a snout. There were horns on his head he couldn’t tug off... and a tail behind him that swished and thumped the ground when he willed it to.

“I’m... I’m...” Lero even had Discord’s voice, just as Discord now had his!

“A handsome devil! Yes, indeed!” the humanoid grinned. Discord wore a new T-shirt that asked ‘WHAT WOULD STARSWIRL DO?‘

“Why would you DO THIS to me?!” Lero shrieked. His new protruding fang on his upper jaw felt really weird, going past his lower lip like this!

Glibly shrugging, Discord said, “Well, there’s no denying that your life has taken on a certain theme, a certain leitmotif, as it were. I was just playing along with that!”

“Change me back!” Lero demanded, pointing a claw at... himself, damn it! “What am I supposed to do with...?!”

Then the human-turned-draconequus stared at the lion fingers on one hand, and the bird talons on the other. A wild grin spread up his face.

“Harley-Davidson!” he commanded, with a hard snap of his new fingers, and a Harley-Davidson failed to appear.

“Er... my old laptop with infinite battery power and free Internet access!” Snap! “New York strip steak!” Snap! “...Chocolate milk?”

Snap! Snap! Snap! Snap! As though trying to start a lighter out of lighter fluid, Lero kept snapping his fingers, and nothing appeared.

“How very disappointing,” Discord said, sipping his own glass of chocolate milk through his right ear. “You didn’t even TRY asking for world peace!”

Finally, Lero lowered his arms in disgust. “Yes, well, I’m already busy enough working on the impossible these days!”

“Yes, well, Lero, THIS is you!” said Discord, in a mocking voice: “Where were you on the night of Septober 42nd at 30 o’clock z.m.? Was your childhood sufficiently childish enough? Why aren’t there any male alicorns? Equestria is home to horses as well as ponies... so what do you ponies call horses in their juvenile state? What is the air-speed velocity of an unladen swallow?”

Then he floated by Lero, jammed a human finger into his scruffy draconequus fur. “Practically EVERY TIME you start one of your little Q and A sessions, I’m have to go pay visits to a thousand different ponies, just to keep the whole world’s memories synchronized! And today, you were on a ROLL, quizmeister! All those actors in that school play of Applejack’s, plus their parents and such! All those army soldiers and big-name chefs Rarity believed she’d been lovers with! The ponies who saw the two of you together in that movie theater! And every branch of the grapevine, besides!”

The ‘human‘ wiped a literal deluge of sweat off his brow, which whipped off into the darkness. “So even if I hated your guts, I’d have no choice but to keep tabs on you! You’re lucky I like you as much as I do!”

The real Lero shrugged. “Well, sorry for inconveniencing you, Discord, but I wouldn’t have been able to help Pinkie Pie without knowing about her past, so I’m not going to stop asking questions anytime soon!”

Discord sighed. “I know, I know,” he said gently, and sat on the ground. “At least it brings more chaos to my day. I complain, but really, it's quite fun, keeping up with it all. And I get to mess with people's minds and get away with it!”

Lero sat next to him, and a little curved bony protrusion on the end of his weird lizard-knee scraped the cobblestones. Discord pulled out a pack of Oreo cookies and held it out to Lero. He ate one, and tasted porterhouse steak. Medium well.

“So, did you at least learn anything worthwhile?” asked the Chaos God, taking a steak-Oreo for himself.

“Maybe,” said Lero. “Hard to say. Might need some more time to figure out how all the others’ stories are going to lead me to help them, like I helped Pinkie. Honestly, I think the most worthwhile thing I learned was how Rarity and I fell in love. At least... well, it's easier to understand her feelings towards me.”

“That’s all well and good, but... ‘Going to lead me to help them?’” quoted Discord, popping another Oreo in. “You make it sound like such a surefire thing.”

“What do you mean?” asked Lero. “Am I barking up the wrong tree?”

Lero watched his body separate the sandwich cookie part of his next Oreo so he could lick up the white stuff in the center. “The way I see things, Lero... the reason you’ve achieved everything you’ve achieved so far, is because you’ve been thinking outside the box. I mean, did you plan out what happened to Pinkie? Heck, it was the rugrat "sister" of hers that had the brainstorm! You just jumped on it and used it to its best potential. I suggest you keep that sort of thing as your strategy.”

“Don’t box in my thinking, huh?” The advice sounded very wise. Discord let Lero help himself to another Oreo: he tasted a peppery T-bone at medium rare. So succulent and juicy. “Discord... you’re a pretty all-powerful guy, aren’t you? Do you know the future already? Will we set things back the way we were? Or will we have to learn to live with everything in this condition?”

Discord laughed. “Lero, you're asking me if I know the future? I'm the God of Chaos! The Avatar of Discord! I laught in the face of Predestination! I make rude gestures to Prophecy, I say unkind things about Fate's Parentage! Imagining that the future is laid out in an orderly, unchanging line like the past! You know me, if I could, I'd make the past as uncertain as the future. The idea of an absolute Fate is so... predestined, so unpreventable, so orderly. I always like to watch the story play out, not knowing what'll happen next, and maybe having a hand in it myself. Damn the spoilers!”

Discord smiled at him; teeth caked in Oreo. “But sometimes, what I’ll do if I have the time, is go visit a parallel universe, and see how things compare there. It's so interesting seeing how tiny changes can cause such massive differences... such... chaos.”

Lero’s bushy white eyebrows shot up. “Parallel universes? You mean those exist?”

“Oh my, yes!” said Discord. “When Twilight cast Starswirl’s spell, it really was like she’d pulled on a slot machine handle. The Element Bearers could’ve been swapped about in ANY combination! In THIS version of reality — I’m sorry to say — the spell was one of the nastiest. Here, it made one of the absolute cruelest rearrangement of lives possible!”

“And here’s me, at my most unsurprised,” said Lero, flatly. He snapped his lion fingers, and unsurprisingly nothing appeared again.

“You should see some of the others, though! Like the one where Rarity accidentally cast the spell before Twilight Sparkle could, and Twilight and Rainbow Dash swapped with each other!” He laughed. “Talk about body dysmorphia! Or the one where Fluttershy’s your lead mare... world’s slowest Wonderbolt cadet, and not from lack of effort! Or the one where Pinkie Pie’s got Dash’s mark!”

“What happens there?” Lero asked, now thinking of his other selves in those other universes, all walking over hot coals to save their friends.

Discord smiled, snapped his fingers, and all the remaining Oreos disappeared. “Ask me again some other time. It's a hell of a story. Or, heck, maybe I’ll take you along and show you. In the meantime, what do you say we head on over to your place, just to see how your herd reacts to us being in each other’s bodies?”

“Ask me again some other time,” Lero snarked. “For now, I’ll pass. In fact, I’d like my OWN body back already, if you don’t mind. It's taken a while, but I've finally gotten it broken in.”

“Suit yourself! If you don't want to be so devilishly handsome anymore, who am I to say you're wrong?” Another finger snap, and Lero was human again, while Discord the draconequus stood beside a rumbling Harley-Davidson, as Lero lifted his newly-restored human hand to his newly-restored face.

Discord swung a leg over the bike and grabbed the handlebars, yanking hard on the gas. As the engine growled loudly, Discord flicked on the bike’s radio, and a merry mariachi band began to play:

[A la furia del cartel

nadie jamas ha escapado...](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aAJgOd233jk)

With a hardy kick to the kickstand, he roared off into the night, calling, “Arrivederci!” over his back.

Lero watched the draconequus enviously as he disappeared. Sighing, he looked to the ten digits on his hands, flexing them, wiggling them, pleased to have them all back. He snapped his fingers, and to his instant surprise an oreo cookie appeared between them, followed closely by the distant sound of Discord’s gleeful cackle. He shrugged and ate the cookie; filet mignon, medium-rare, dipped in Bearnaise sauce. Lero snorted and brushed the crumbs away.

“Hey there, Fingers.”

Lero looked up.

An aqua-colored unicorn mare stood before him, with travel-worn saddlebags strapped to her sides. Lyra Heartstrings. Unannounced, unexpected, and arriving at the most random point in time imaginable... just like all the best strokes of good fortune. For one moment, it almost felt as though HE had just journeyed the thousands of miles to reunite with her. Even in the moonlit darkness, it was clear her sabbatical had been a most well-spent venture. Her body appeared much stronger than even when she’d left; more sinewy and fit without having grown bulkier or beefier. She was beautiful.

“Bet you started thinking I was never actually going to come back home, did you?” There was a rueful note in her laughing voice as she slowly walked up and nuzzled him shyly.

A small smile found his lips. “No,” said Lero, “Never doubted you for a second.”

He swept her into a hug. “The Lyra Heartstrings I know... yeah, she’ll pick and choose her battles, but she never chickens out. She’d never leave her loved ones to fend for themselves.”

“Oh, Lero... I’m so sorry it took me this long to get back home!” She lifted her arms to his shoulders and they came together, their lips never actually separating as they fervently kissed each other, over and over.

“Just get off the train?” stroking her ear and running his fingers through her mane.

“Mmm-hmm,” said Lyra, purring happily at his touch. “Would’ve written to you, but...”

“...Slow mailmares, yeah...” He kissed her forcefully and squeezed the mare tighter, until, long minutes later, their kiss finally ended.

Lyra dropped down again, reluctant to let him go. It had been far too long, and while she might not yet express it, she had missed him terribly.

They pulled apart slowly. Lyra turned in the direction where their home lay. She stared as though some ferocious rival black belt awaited her there, so the two of them could duel to the death.

“So...” she almost sounded offhanded. “...the Swap?”

“Yeah. The Swap.” He had a look at his wristwatch; it was a few minutes after ten. “Today’s the twenty-first day since the Swap happened. About two hours from now, it’ll be the twenty-second.” He ruffled the mane on Lyra’s head as though she were just a kid. “So you’ve missed out on a lot of the fun, Lyra, but there’s still a lot more to be had.”

She snorted at him in response. “You say that as though you’re actually HAVING fun with this,” Lyra noted, raising a questioning eyebrow.

Several memories flitted through his head. Taking that photo of Pinkie Pie pulling the Cutie Mark Crusaders through town on that cart; all of them laughing. The happiness Fluttershy had shown him today at having someone willing to listen to her jokes. Hugging Rarity with Spike and Twilight after hearing her stories. Taking Dash on those dog walks, watching her fly, and sneering at her Butterfly Mark with the triumph he’d felt in his heart. Being hugged by Rainbow Dash, and hearing her tell him that she was glad he’d survived. Spike crying as he dictated that last letter to Lyra. He even thought about how good it would feel having Rarity nestle against him when he crawled into bed, later tonight. Asleep or awake, she ALWAYS nestled against him in bed, unless Twilight had planted herself between them. There were many more good memories... but he stopped himself there.

“Funny thing is... I’m starting to think I am,” he admitted.

He suddenly recalled watching the movie Apocalypse Now and hearing Colonel Kilgore declare, ‘I love the smell of napalm in the morning.’ For the first time, he felt that he could fully relate to where Kilgore was coming from. The fight was hard, the defeats crushing... but every victory was sweet, all the more so for the effort to win them.

"Let's go home, Lyra. We've got a war to win, and many battles ahead of us."

Author's Note

I have an awful lot of thanks to give to a number of people for their help with this chapter.

First, to both Rikmach and WolfeTrax for their STELLAR jobs with editing and touching it all up, as well as the respective scenes they added in.

But also a special mention goes to SpinelStride, both for helping me brainstorm the origins for ALL the Swapped Ponies, as well as penning the screenplay for Pony Chicks In Manehatten. These last two chapters would NOT have been the same without you!

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Seventeen: Welcome Home, Lyra

Fluttershy was the first to arrive at their table at Crispy’s, bounding over and sitting across from Rarity, and for a while, the four of them just shared in pleasant small talk.

“So, Twilight, what’s the skinny on this super-special something you wanted to show us?” the yellow pegasus asked her unicorn friend.

“I’d like to wait until we’re all sitting together,” Twilight told her.

Then Pinkie Pie arrived, unexpectedly bringing Granny Smith along with her.

“Ah hope ya’ll don’t mind mah granny bein’ here with us,” said Pinkie Pie.

“Whyever would we, Pinkie, dear?” Rarity said, “Please help yourself to a seat, both of you! Lero, darling, would you run and fetch an extra chair?”

As he did so, Granny Smith asked, “Any a’ yew youngins know whether they still serve eggplant parmesan here?”

Rarity took a quick skim of the menu. “Yes, they do.”

“Been a dog’s age since Ah last sank mah chompers inta eggplant,” the old Apple matriarch said, wincing slightly as her bad hip settled on the chair.

“I’ll bet!” Fluttershy suddenly giggled. “Hey, Granny Smith, do you ever get tired of apples?”

“D’ya ever get tired of candy?” Granny asked her back.

Rarity and Pinkie had a laugh at that, which Twilight and Lero were slower to join. Fluttershy looked as though she’d just been given twenty bits.

“Oh! Did you hear the one about the two parakeets who were sitting on a perch? The first one turned to the second one and said, ‘Doesn’t it smell fishy to you?’”

“Now THAT’S an image Ah can live without,” said Granny, “Birdies sittin’ atop a dead fish!”

Then Rainbow Dash found their table.

Twilight Sparkle had told Lero earlier that in her letter to Dash, she’d promised to have Spike babysit the animals for her if she came. Spike had set off for the cottage a half hour before the three of them left for Crispy’s.

“Hi, guys,” she said, and the other girls mirrored her greeting back.

Lero welcomed her with a hug. “How are you holding up?”

“Well enough!” she told him, returning the hug with an appreciative smile. “Thanks a million for sending Spike.”

“Gotta say, Dash, you’re looking a LOT better than the last time we were all together at one table!” said Lero.

“Same to you!” she said. On a good day like today, Rainbow Dash was only half as hesitant and shy as Fluttershy had originally been. “I promise you, though; I’m not gonna fall asleep like last time.”

They sat next to each other at the table; Rarity on Lero’s right, Dash on his left.

Applejack was last to arrive. Lero almost thought she’d end up skipping out entirely, but then, midway through their appetizers, the former farmer finally showed.

“Fashionably late, I see!” Rarity said, waving her over. “I hope you don’t mind that I ordered a split pea soup for your appetizer!”

“Split pea suits me fine, Sugarcube!” Applejack said. After sitting, Applejack bent down, sipping out of the bowl, and recoiled. “Still hot!” she laughed, and then gave it a cooling blow of air. For his part, Lero was gladdened to see that the power of their friendship was able to prevail over the constraints of her Diamond Mark.

Lero stood up. “Excuse me, ladies, I need a bathroom break!” He left the table. But instead of heading to the bathroom, he snuck out the side door, circled around the restaurant into its back alley, and then came back to the table with Lyra by his side.

“Hi, girls!” Lyra greeted the rest. “Mind if I pull up a chair?”

“Lyra!” Before the aqua unicorn knew it, she had Rarity’s arms wrapped tight around her shoulder. Rarity kissed Lyra like the long-lost lover her altered memories insisted she was. The same sweetheart’s-kiss-to-her-returned-sailor Rarity had given Lero, almost a full month ago. This happened all while the others were still echoing Rarity’s exclamation of Lyra’s name.

Had his own eyes showed as much shock as Lyra’s now did? Lero would have bet on it.

“Oh, Lyra, this is WONDERFUL! Just so wonderful!” With one arm still swung around Lyra’s shoulder, Rarity turned to address the whole of the table.

“My sweet songbird has finally flown back home!”

The others cheered; Pinkie even patted Twilight happily on the back, as though her friend had won a prize!

At first, Lyra stiffened, wide-eyed. To Lero, she had the look of a girl who’d been teleported into a strange cage filled with five enormous wolfhounds — and the especially toothy white one right next to her was ready to hump her leg.

But then Lyra’s eyes flicked to Lero, and what she did next surprised him.

In the space of a second and a half, Lyra shut her eyes, seeming to jettison all her panic in a single expulsive breath. As if refusing to allow these strange hounds to scent any fear. Her eyes reopened. And with her gladdest smile, she turned back towards Rarity and embraced her fully like a dear sister. She even kissed the side of Rarity’s cheek.

“You really know how to roll out the welcome wagon for me, Rarity,” Lyra told her, softly.

“As if I could ever be halfhearted about welcoming you back to the nest, my darling songbird,” Rarity replied, returning the hug in full.

Half the table went “awww.” All the table were smiling.

“But seriously, Lyra, this is such an unfit ‘welcome wagon’ for you!” said Rarity, pulling away. “Had I known we’d be seeing you now, Fluttershy and I would’ve pulled out every stop! Did you JUST come off the Friendship Express? Just now?”

“Actually, Rarity, everypony, I have a confession to make.” Lero announced. “Late last night, I’d gone for a stroll and met up with Lyra around ten o’clock, and I thought that rather than her saying hi, exhausted, and going right to bed, it’d be niftier to pull this surprise on you all!”

"How'd you pull that off?" Twilight asked. "Even I didn't know Lyra was here!"

“Twilight, you remember that old house of Lero’s you attached to the main library?” Lyra spoke up. “Well, that’s where I slept last night, and where I hid all morning!”

Rarity stared amazedly at Lero. “To think, my prince would be such a sly and sneaky fox!”

When she leaned forward to kiss him, Lero’s arms were prepared to receive Rarity. It was a soft and easy kiss when their lips met. Midway through this kiss, out of the corner of his eye, Lero could see Lyra gaping at him in closed-mouthed shock. As if he, too, had just been swapped. Lero feel very self-conscious. Now Lyra was where he had been, and he was where Twilight had been.

Rarity grinned while pulling away. “Now I’m wondering... what other delightful surprises are you hiding from me back at home? I’ll have to snoop around the house and see, sometime!”

Lyra cast a glance at the momentary look of worry he and Twilight shared.

“Hey, is Spike here?” she asked, levitating a bag that sounded to be full of rocks. Or is he in the bathroom? I brought that jet I promised him!”

“Um, well... Spike’s at my place, looking over the animals for me,” Rainbow Dash told her. “Sorry about that.”

Lyra, who hadn’t taken a seat yet, took a long assessing look at Dash... especially at the Butterfly Mark she now sported.

Dash squirmed uncomfortably under that gaze, until Lyra said, “Rainbow, I’ve, uh... heard that your animals have been getting a bit on the wild side lately.”

“Oh,” said the pegasus, turning downcast. “Yeah... yeah, they are.”

“If it’s not too much trouble... the next time Lero goes to help you out, would you mind if I tagged along with him?” Lyra asked, her eyes beseeching. “I’d love to help you out too... just to be of assistance, and to spend time with you.”

“Sure!” Dash answered, surprised and touched. “Sure, the more the merrier! But I warn you, they aren’t...!”

Lyra hugged Dash. “I’ll be there. I swear I’ll be there for you, Rainbow.”

At first Dash was surprised. But then the shy pegasus looked over at Lero, perhaps remembering how he’d hugged her at his own welcome home party... and returned Lyra’s hug warmly.

“Aw... she’s crying!” Fluttershy sighed.

Lyra wiped away at her eyes. “It’s just... so good to be home!” she explained, through her tears.

Rainbow Dash looked past the aqua unicorn. “Hey, Twilight? Rarity? I gotta say, between Lero and Spike and... and Lyra, now... you two REALLY know how to pick ‘em!”

“Don’t I know it!” said Rarity. “I’ll tell you something; if you mingled more with mares and stallions, there’s no reason you can’t meet herdmates who’ll be just as good to you as mine are to me!”

“Think I’ll give it a try, once I have a better handle on things back home! I’d love to find some really good ones!” Before the pegasus’ words could cut her heart any deeper, Lyra moved on to Pinkie Pie and her ‘grandmother.’

“Hello, Pinkie. Hello, Mrs. Smith. Thank you both for coming.”

“Shucks, Lyra, it’s our pleasure bein’ here!” said Pinkie.

“Hope ya don’t mind me taggin’ along to this here shindig a’ yers,” said Granny Smith.

“Of course not!” Lyra assured the old girl. “My shindig is your shindig! And Pinkie,” she said, turning back to her pink friend. “I don’t know if I told you this before... if not I’ll say it now: I’ve always found it wonderful of you, how committed you are to your family. Never let that change.”

Pinkie Pie nodded with deep emotion. “Ah ain’t plannin’ ta... mah family’s the world ta me!”

As Pinkie Pie hugged the old girl beside her, Lyra turned to Applejack. “Applejack! How goes things at the Boutique?”

The fashionista returned her smile uncomfortably. “Let’s talk ‘bout that sum other time, ‘kay, sugar cube?”

“Lyra!” Fluttershy said, using the flustered silence to cut in. “Hey, did you hear the one about the rhubarb that...?”

“How are Pound and Pumpkin doing these days, Fluttershy?” the aqua unicorn asked.

This question transformed Fluttershy’s whole attitude. From the nearly skull-like, tightly-wound jokester’s grin, her smile softened into something more natural, maternal, and honest. The smile of Fluttershy’s old self, or at least very close to it.

“Oh, Pound and Pumpkin are both such adorable little dears... cute as a pair of puppies!” The yellow pegasus unconsciously made a cradling gesture by her chest. “Oh, how I love watching them and laughing with them and playing with them and feeding them their milk!”

“They like you, then?”

“Oh, yes!” said Fluttershy “We’re really attached to one another!”

“Well, I’m not the least bit surprised!” said Lyra. The Cakes should count themselves lucky they can leave their foals in such good hooves as yours! You’re just the best caretaker I know of, Fluttershy,”

Dash was a bit put out to hear this. But the compliment pleased Fluttershy so much that she completely forget to try cracking another joke for the rest of their meal together.

“Twilight?” she said, coming at last to her other herdmate.

“Oh, Lyra, I’m so happy to see you!” Twilight said as they hugged.

“I missed you terribly, Twilight,” Lyra told her. “I hope you’re taking it easy on yourself.”

“Come, Lyra, you can sit right between the both of us!” Rarity said, levitating a chair between herself and Twilight, before the lavender unicorn could say anything.

Only Lero really caught sight of the gulp which Lyra gulped down, as she sat beside Rarity.

“Now, you simply MUST tell us... where have you been all this while?” The white unicorn insisted, patting Lyra’s wrist. “You haven’t been sending us nearly enough letters!”

The letters from Celestia which Twilight Sparkle had intended to pass out to her other four friend remained hidden under her chair, as the conversation was given entirely over to Lyra. Not that Twilight even minded. She was just as eager as all the rest of them to learn about Lyra’s adventures on her sabbatical. And so Lyra told her tale.

* * *

The purpose of my sabbatical was to visit three Still Way grandmasters around the world.

“Did they know you were coming?” asked Rainbow Dash.

I’d sent them all letters months in advance, and they all accepted. None of us had ever met before, but we knew each other by reputation. The first and closest one was Grandmaster Strawflower, who was taking part in a big-budget movie production way down south in the San Palomino Desert.

“A movie?!” exclaimed Lero.

Yes. Its working title is Mission Force Ninja, directed by Bay Breeze...

“Bay Breeze?!” Twilight exclaimed. The bibliophilic unicorn wasn’t as big a movie watcher as some of her other friends, but even she knew that director’s name.

That’s right, Bay Breeze. Master Strawflower acted as both martial arts choreographer and she plays the role of Mayfly, the hero’s mentor.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, Miz Lyra,” Granny Smith interrupted. “Not that an ol’ apple-bucker like me’d know any better ‘bout a unicorn thang like the Still Way, but moviemakin’ don’t strike me as a very grandmaster-y thang ta do. Navel-gazin’ on a mountaintop, mebbe, or headin’ a sisterhood a’ monks...”

It's true, the Still Way and other martial arts have asceticism as a long-held tradition, but not a strict requirement, even for grandmasters. Master Strawflower actually did something like that for five years running. Disappeared off the face of Equestria to meditate in a tent by a lonely oasis. We all thought she died. That was part of why I was so excited to see her.

I remember Master Strawflower welcoming me into her trailer. I asked what brought her here, and Strawflower said, “Lyra, I came to a realization: it’s easier to be principled when you isolate yourself. To keep true to your convictions among others was the real challenge. And I hungered to be challenged. So when Bay Breeze sought her out for her upcoming movie, I signed on right away.”

Fluttershy leaned in closer. “Was it the fight scenes? The special effects? Was that the challenge?”

All of that, we could deal with. As I came to find out, to be on the set of a Bay Breeze film is to wade through a quagmire of decadence and debauchery.

“So the rumors ARE true!” Rarity marveled. Then Lyra’s eyes darted over to a neighboring table, where a family with two young fillies were eating. Her voice lowered.

Keep in mind... The Still Way’s been around for a while, and there are many different views regarding substance usage. Some practitioners are complete teetotalers, like Master Strawflower. Others use mind-altering substances to aide in reaching certain meditative states. In ancient times, certain plants with stimulating properties were eaten before battle to give an edge. I, myself, practiced under the influence of certain tranquilizers used by assassins to disable the guards of their targets non-lethally, so I could continue to fight while tranquilized.

However, most schooled in the Still Way agree that recreational use, especially to excess, is a distraction and weakness. Muddies the mind, weakens the body... a thousand times more ruinous than overeating! So as for the set... I don’t want to get into TOO many details, since there are foals in earshot, but there was substance abuse galore! So many drunks! Arriving on the set hung-over... chugging liquor while skimming the script! So many stoners! You could smell the witch weed coming off their costumes... I’m almost certain the director of photography was growing it secret!

And Bay Breeze, herself... Twilight, she came onto ponies like your mother does! The teenage girl who plays the movie’s heroine was Breeze’s daughter, and she was a chip off the old block! And they were able to get away with it all because they were filming in the middle of a desert!

“And what were you doing all throughout this, Lyra?” asked Twilight.

Well, after I wrote to Master Strawflower, asking if I could visit, she helped negotiate a deal between me and Bay Breeze where I got to be a cast member.

“Yew got a role in a movie?! Ah always wanted ta be in a movie!” said a wide-eyed Applejack, before calming herself down. “Bet you were just an extra, right?”

Well, to be sure, it wasn’t that LONG of a role. Ironically, they had me play a bounty hunter who kills off Mayfly!

“Who?” asked Pinkie Pie.

Master Strawflower’s character, the hero’s mentor. I even got a line!

Then Lyra put on a villainous sneer. “‘I got her! She’s dead! The money is mine!”

Most of them laughed. Rarity clapped her hooves.

And then I have a brief martial arts clash with the lead actress, who blows up my head. But the thing of it was... in the face of all that vice and iniquity going on around her... Master Strawflower remained not simply coolheaded but incorruptible. Never tempted by any of it. Did the job she was asked to do — pleasantly and professionally — without sharing in the production team’s self-indulgence. Truly, an experience worthy of a Still Way grandmaster. Annoyed the director to no end. I think she was hoping that she'd snag a grandmaster notch on her bedpost.

I was her constant companion every day, until they’d finished filming the scenes I was in. Got a lot of teasing because of it, but I was proud to stand by her side! Master Strawflower taught me so much about serenity, maintaing your temper when surrounded by disagreeable ponies, and not giving into temptation, peer pressure, or frustration. I also picked up quite a few moves from her, between breaks in filming.

“When’s this movie supposed to come out?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“And what do you think of the movie, in and of itself?” Lero asked.

Next year, I think. And from what I’ve seen of the script and the production, it shows every sign of being a top-grossing blockbuster. I might’ve remained longer and helped Strawflower out with choreographing the rest of the movie... but I had a ship to board so I could sail off to see Grandmaster Hushpuppy.

“And where was she located?” asked Twilight.

This time, Lyra brought out a map, laid it on the table. The San Palomino sat bordered on the west by an ocean. Lyra traced a western path from the ocean to the middle of a different continent.

“Here!” she said, and an eye-catching circle of bright magic formed over one of the countries. “In the land of Gǔo-xìa, in the middle of the city of Huţul Village, that’s where you’ll find Master Hushpuppy’s dojo.”

“Ah didn’t know there WAS such a country,” said Applejack.

* * *

Few in this part of the world do. Now... Master Hushpuppy’s dojo is as traditional and old-fashioned as you can get, the sort that would be right at home in a traditional martial arts movie. A gorgeous, expertly-crafted structure fashioned entirely of bamboo, made to house one hundred Still Way students. Her village is on the edge of what the locals call the ‘Bù-Qū Sha-Mo,’ which translates to ‘Unyielding Desert.’

“Did you make yourself learn a new language before going on this sabbatical of yours, Lyra, darling?” Rarity asked.

I learned enough to get by with, Rarity. Thankfully, there were enough ponies at the dojo who already knew the language we’re all speaking that it wasn’t a problem.

Now, as a sensei, Master Hushpuppy was stern and strict... but ultimately a very... very lovable old girl. Always had her students’ best interests at heart. When I arrived at her dojo, she asked me some questions and had me perform a few moves to ascertain my level of skill... then she grouped me with her highest-ranking pupils.

"Well, that's only natural. You are a Grandmaster, yourself." Twilight pointed out.

Being a grandmaster doesn't necessarily mean I'm the best, even against those who are still training. It means I've reached a certain level of skill and accomplishment, and trained at least one student of my own to Master status. Sometimes some Senseis have higher standards than most. At any rate, I had gone on this sabbatical to learn; not to show off or flaunt my rank.

So for two weeks, I was just another student at her school... warm-up stretches, sparring with other students, learning new techniques and drilling them. But it wasn’t as though we kept ourselves shut inside the dojo all day long. We’d take our lessons outside often... running and sparring in different types of terrain! We’d always finish by sitting in a circle around Master Hushpuppy and reviewing Still Way philosophy.

“Preachin’ ta the choir,” Granny Smith said.

Not... quite. They more resemble the old philosophical debates, rather than a lecture or sermon, the students sitting in a circle with the master, debating points amongst themselves, which the master making suggestions for topics and offering guidance and wisdom, but not telling them what to think. Enlightenment is something that can't be simply told to you, it must be obtained with as much mental as physical effort. This is why things such as koans exist...

“Koan?” With her face all furrowed up, Granny Smith looked even more like a dried-up green apple. “That anythang like a pinecone?”

Er, no, Mrs. Smith. A koan, spelled K-O-A-N, is a sort of mental exercise to keep your mind limber and flexible. In addition, when you’re learning something as dangerous as a martial art, it’s only fitting to that the 'choir' be regularly reminded that you’re learning it for the sake of peace. There's little else quite as dangerous than a rogue Still Way practitioner... especially a skilled one.

When lessons were over, though, Master Hushpuppy would spend the rest of the afternoon with me. She showed me around the forestlands and the village, introducing me to the natives. We’d share tea and rice balls, or play games of shogi or go, or held hang-gliding races...

“Hang-gliding races?!” exclaimed Pinkie Pie.

Very popular and traditional pastime in Gǔo-xìa. I think I made a good impression on her. At one point, after I told Master Hushpuppy how I was herdmates with the Elements of Loyalty and Magic she... she actually pulled me out of my futon in the wee hours of the morning, and trained me in a few secret, forbidden techniques. Stuff even her prize pupils weren’t allowed to learn.

“What kind of techniques?” Fluttershy asked eagerly.

They’re secret and forbidden for a reason. She said she taught me them because if I was that close to the Elements, I would most likely need them, but they are not to be spread to others unless their own need was as great as mine. But by far, the single most unique thing about Master Hushpuppy as a sensei was her focus on changelings.

The entire table looked at one another curiously. “Why would they focus on changelings?” Twilight asked, speaking for them all.

You remember my mentioning the Unyielding Desert? Well, the desert‘s kind of like our Everfree Forest. A wild place that resists all efforts at weather control. A hive of changelings live there.

“How CAN they, though?” asked Fluttershy. “It’s a desert! Nothing can possibly live in a desert!”

Oh, Fluttershy, you should try telling that to the snakes, the scorpions, the lizards, the elf owls, the sand cats, and the bighorn sheep! And, of course, the changelings of the Unyielding Hive!

“How bad were these changelings?” asked Rarity.

Depends on who was in charge at the time.

“Huh?” said Applejack.

The Unyielding Hive goes through queens like my stallion goes through socks. Constant and ongoing power struggle. With ruthless queens, the Hive has raided the Huţul Village, making off with ponies to hypnotize into being a love source... or else amplify their efforts to infiltrate families, though never in such quantities as to threaten the village's existence.

“Like livestock...” Lero growled.

...Other times, there have been kindhearted queens, and then the Unyielding Hive has traded with ponies and aided them against greater threats, such as the enormous monsters of the Desert, and reaped much love and goodwill therein.

In her teachings, Hushpuppy really emphasized EVERYTHING a Still Way student would ever want to know about changelings. She was the only pony who knew the changeling martial arts school of Be-Yu. She taught us what to look for, if you suspect somepony of being a changeling impostor. Where to concentrate your attacks when fighting a changeling... or MULTIPLE changelings. But also... she taught how to fight WITH changelings, as allies.

“How did she teach THAT?” asked Rainbow Dash.

Because two of her students WERE changelings: Cuckoo Egg and Goldeneye, both raised by pony families. Cuckoo Egg loved to stay in pony form, while Goldeneye preferred looking like an actual changeling. Both of them believed that peace and cooperation with ponies were ideal - but of course, the queen at the time, the ruthless Queen Ovipositor, wouldn’t hear anything of it. On two occasions, Master Hushpuppy would pick teams, and she’d stage rescue missions into changeling territory. She let me participate the second time.

“Wow,” said Lero.

But things came to a head, about three weeks in, when a ferocious Stonedrake began terrorizing Huţul Village. Horrible, dangerous things, Stonedrakes. Dragons made out of rock. Instead of straight-out fire, their breath is like volcanic ash. And they very definitely ARE meat eaters.

They all shuddered.

Master Hushpuppy sent a student of hers under a white flag, beseeching Queen Ovipositor’s aid in in defeating the rock-bodied beast. Instead, that student was taken prisoner.

“What did the ponies need changelings for?” asked Twilight. “Couldn’t they have dealt with it themselves?”

With great effort, yes, but Stonedrakes are HIGHLY resilient beasts. Very resistant to both magical and physical attacks. Cuckoo Egg explained that the most effective way of dealing with one is to have a changeling swarm driving one off; their subtle mind-magics of the can make it 'decide' to leave.

“So what’d yew do?” asked Pinkie Pie.

Master Hushpuppy organized a task force. There was myself... and Hushpuppy was team leader... also our two changelings, Cuckoo Egg and Goldeneye, along with two regular unicorns named Edamame and Bento Box. We all set out to the Unyielding Hive. Either we would negotiate a deal with the current queen... or put a new one on the throne.

At first, we approached the Hive with our white flag, until the changelings shot arrows at us.

“There are changelings who are archers?” asked Lero.

They may be a bit buggy, but yes, they can use tools and weapons!

“What did you do?”

We threw the white flag away and galloped forward, straight into the hive!

“What’d the changelings do?” asked Rainbow Dash.

Oh, mostly they just splattered against whichever wall we propelled them into, but we were still just six! Thank Celestia we had Cuckoo and Golden! Their job was to literally sniff out Queen Ovipositor. Changelings queens secret a pheromone imperceptible to pony noises, and they were leading us to its source. Everything was counting on a blitz attack! But changelings are tricksy, of course.

More than a few times, they tried to stop us with a ‘false hostage.‘ One changeling would shapeshift into a hostage, while her friend would play ‘kidnapper,’ demanding we cease our attack, ‘or the girl dies!‘ There were other times where smoke bombs would explode at our feet, and when the smoke cleared, EVERYPONY suddenly had twenty doppelgängers trying to attack them! Ugh! I hadn’t seen THAT many changelings since... since...!

“Since Twilight’s brother’s wedding!” Pinkie Pie shouted out. “Him ‘n’ Princess Cadence! Golly, girls, this all really takes ya back, don’t it?”

The rest of them all burst out into remembrances.

“Ya’ll remember that dress Ah made fer Cadence?” Applejack asked Rainbow Dash, elbowing her side.

“The dress?” Rainbow Dash grinned. “Nah, what I remember was at how far YOU could sock a changeling sailing through the sky, Miss Passion-For-Fashion!”

Applejack smiled modestly. “Well, brutishness ain’t a talent Ah wanna hang mah hat on, Dash, but when Ah’m backed inna corner, yew bet yer bottom bit this here rose got her thorns! And yew, Dash... Ah was jest AWED at how yew danced around them hole-legged beetles!”

“Uh... danced?” asked Dash.

“Yep! Changeling leapt at yew, ya ducked right in time for it ta crash headfirst inta another changeling!” The fashionista slapped her knee. “Pure slapstick! It was like yew was a black belt, not even needin’ ta raise a hoof at ‘em!”

Rainbow Dash laughed weakly, looking both scared and abashed by the memory. “Yeah. Me, a black belt. Because you all know how much a girl like me loves...” she gulped and cringed a little. “....confrontations.”

Lero didn’t blame Lyra for falling quiet. At the time, she'd been overjoyed to have been selected to be a bridesmaid for Princess Cadance, which would have been quite an honor, except that Queen Chrysalis had placed his poor herdmate under mind control, and had her serve as a prison guard for the actual Princess Cadence.

“Well, I was amazed at how Fluttershy weaponized her party cannon!” Rarity said, raising her glass respectfully towards the yellow pegasus.

Fluttershy grinned. “Usually, I have that cannon at: ‘Cake & Candles’ as a default setting, but when I saw how those changelings meant business, I cranked it up to ‘Bring Da House Down!‘“

The grin Rarity grinned was one part lioness and one part Conan The Barbarian: the same glee Rainbow Dash had always shown when leaving all the other racers eating her dust. “As for me, the memory of myself as a four-legged fly-swatting bug zapper is one I will savor! Were any of you keeping count of how many of those ugly lovesuckers needed to dogpile me before I was overpowered?!”

“All I remember is sharing a cocoon with your father, Twilight. And trying to see and hear through that goop they filled the cocoon with, and make sense of what was going on underneath us.” Lero muttered. God, he DESPISED cocoons. “Felt weird being able to breathe through that gunk.”

“So what happened THEN, Lyra?” Twilight Sparkle asked, cutting over the all the babble. The rest of them looked chagrined.

* * *

Well, eventually, we made it to Queen Ovipositor. She actually looked a lot like Chrysalis did, except a lot fatter, with more holes in her legs, and her mane was all crimped. Master Hushpuppy approached the the Queen.

“Lay down your crown,” she said, “And we’ll let you leave this hive alive.”

“I’m sorry, it doesn’t work that way, peasant.” The Queen answered. And that was when Master Hushpuppy’s spine was snapped.

“What?!” half the table screamed.

Yes. Shot in the back by a traitor in our midst.

“One of them changelin’ students, huh?!” cried Pinkie Pie.

No, Cuckoo Egg and Goldeneye were firmly on our side. The true culprit was Edamame, one of the unicorns.

“But... why?” asked Rainbow Dash.

Edamame spouted something about how Master Hushpuppy never truly respected her, and about how Queen Ovipositor was going to reward her with a slave village to rule while the changelings set forth to conquer all Gǔo-xìa. Then the Queen’s changelings closed around Edamame, and she disappeared into their ranks.

In the end, here’s how it played out: I focused on defending Master Hushpuppy from attackers, Bento Box did her best to heal our sensei, Cuckoo Egg fended off the horde of changelings, while Goldeneye dueled against Ovipositor. Thank goodness that Goldeneye prevailed and vanquished the Queen, otherwise I wouldn’t be here today.

“Unless...!” Granny Smith pointing an accusing hoof across the table. “...Yer not the real Lyra Heartstrings! Yer jest a changeling tryin‘ ta pull the wool over our eyes!”

* * *

The old biddy’s hoof hung pointing in the air, while the rest of them considered her words speechlessly.

“I’m... uh... not a changeling, Mrs. Smith,” responded Lyra, with no small amount of awkwardness.

“That’s jest the sorta thang a changelin‘ WOULD say!” Granny shot back.

Rarity pressed her hoof against Lyra’s cheek, turning her head so both of them were snout against snout, squinting into the aqua unicorn’s eyes. Lero could practically see beads of Lyra’s sweat sink into her fur as quickly as they were secreted from her pores.

“She’s the real Lyra,” Rarity pronounced.

“How d’ya KNOW, missy?!” said Granny.

“I know my songbird,” Rarity said.

Twilight smiled towards the old mare. “Look, Granny Smith, if it’d help ease your fears, I’d be perfectly happy to take a quick blood sample from Lyra as soon as we’re home.”

Pinkie Pie looked apologetically at Lyra and everyone else in her herd. “Ah’m dreadfully sorry ‘bout mah granny! She don’t mean nothin’ by it!”

“No, no, it’s quite alright, Pinkie!” Lyra assured. “I can hardly blame your grandma for her caution. If there’s anything I learned from Master Hushpuppy, it’s this: sometimes ponies aren’t what they outwardly appear to be. Even if you think you know somepony, it’s only smart to be a little wary, every now and then.”

“Heh! Wise advice,” said Applejack.

"Bah! Just funnin' ya youngsters!" Granny Smith cracked a smile. "You all takin' this so seriously! 'Sides, I ain't no spring chicken, any smart Changelin' wouldn't be tellin' us 'bout no changelings anyhow! Brings up suspicions. She'd make up some other story 'bout the master in tha' desert."

The rest of the table blinks at her, Fluttershy giggling. "Good one, Granny! You had us all fooled!" The others join her in light laughter.

Then Rarity gave Lyra a playful leer that set the Still Way master on edge again. “You know, I almost don’t care if she IS a changeling! If it’s love you feed on, then you shall certainly feast tonight!” The way she licked her lips at Lyra said: And so will I!

The lip-licking managed to actually catch Lyra off-guard. “C...cut it out, Rarity!” Lero hearing the brief stammer before steadying her voice. “Not in front of our friends!” She finished, actually managing a bit of playful sternness to cover.

“Mmm... alright, I’ll behave,” Rarity promised. “So what happened next? Did your sensei survive?”

Lyra hung her head, and the smile dropped from Rarity’s face.

* * *

Bento Box... was only able to stave off Master Hushpuppy’s death for so long. She lived to see the changelings of the Unyielding Hive bow to Goldeneye as their new queen. Lived to declare Cuckoo Egg to be the new master of her dojo. When Master Hushpuppy died, I got to watch her pony form burn away, revealing the changeling she’d actually been all along.

“No way...” Rainbow Dash whispered.

Yes way. You never can tell!

"What happened to Edamame?" asked Fluttershy.

I never saw her again but, well... the people you were hiding amongst suddenly becoming loyal to the person whose master you just murdered? Not good for your long-term survival. All Goldeneye had to say about Edamame was she ‘was dealt with,’ and that was fine with me.

After that, I stayed to watch Goldeneye’s changelings drive off the Stonedrake and to attend Master Hushpuppy’s funeral but then I moved on. One more grandmaster to visit. Profound Koan.

* * *

Profound Koan lived on an island small enough that it barely registers on most maps; Aardvark Island. I had to ride another train for about a day and a half, but after I reached the station, the island was close enough for an athlete like me to swim the rest of the way.

“Don’t like boats?” Applejack chuckled.

I like them well enough, and there was a ferry available. But I figured: ‘Why not? What's the point of all this physical fitness if I don't use it from time to time?’"

"Wait a moment, Lyra, I thought you couldn't swim!" Lero said.

Remember that time you'd dived after that mare Honeybee to save her from drowning?

"Yeah, I remember," Lero said. How Honeybee had kicked and struggled against him, as he tried to drag her back to the surface...

I taught myself how to swim right after that had happened. I figured that the next time someone's drowning, you won't have to risk yourself, or at the very least, you wouldn't have to go it alone.

Lero, Twilight, and Rarity all nodded. "You were so brave and noble, my prince, risking yourself to save that pony's life... and to think it was one of the Honey sisters, at that!" Rarity gushed. "I remember how Twilight got us all sick with worry, making us think Lero was doomed to sink to the bottom of that lake because 'most apes can't swim!'" Rarity recalled.

This was Lero's first time hearing this little detail. The whole table, Lero included, had a laugh as Twilight gave a shamefaced smile.

Anyway, Aardvark Island lives up to its name. There were only a couple things living on it: aardvarks, lots and lots of ants... and one single pony.

...Let me throw you all a question. When you think of a hermit, what kind of words come to mind?

“Alone,” said Fluttershy

“Hates company,” spoke Pinkie Pie.

“Austere,” said Rarity.

“Learned,” said Twilight Sparkle.

“Bum,” spat Granny Smith.

“Threadbare,” said Applejack.

“Stern,” said Lero.

When I reached the shores of Aardvark Island, I walked forward until I came to a what looked to be a roadside diner.

“Huh?!” said everyone.

Yeah. A small roadside diner. Like it’d been teleported straight off a Manehatten block. The kind that could fit maybe thirty ponies, maximum... Barstools and booths with red vinyl seating. Gum ball machines. Checkboard tiles on the floor. Venetian blinds. That kind of place.

“What’d they serve?” asked Lero.

Well, the menu I picked up and read indicated it was a sandwich joint. Grilled cheese, daisy and hyacinth wraps, baked beans, hay fries, malts and milkshakes... that kind of joint.

And then came this voice behind me: ‘Whatever you wanna get off this menu, I’m afraid they’re fresh out!”

I turned around and found this unicorn, grinning like a colt on his birthday. Light yellow mane, plum-colored coat.

“Are you Profound Koan?” I asked him.

And he answered: “A name is but a blanket of syllables thrown upon a pony’s back, a horseshoe to eventually be thrown. Name are inconsequential.”

And so I answered: ‘But does your blanket of syllables come out sounding like ‘Profound Koan?’”

And he gave a little hop and told me, ‘You’re gonna be a FUN one, Lyra Heartstrings!” Boundless energy, boundless enthusiasm; this was what defined Profound Koan. That and the endless wisdoms he shared with me. It was like being with a philosophical Pinkie Pie who could cast magic!

“Ya mean ta say this Koan guy was hardworkin’ and industrious?” asked Pinkie Pie.

I... uh... oh my goodness! Where’s my head? I was thinking about FLUTTERSHY, but somehow PINKIE PIE was what came out of my mouth!

“It happens,” Granny Smith said. Why, ya won’t believe how often Ah get mah own granddaughters’ names wrong!” She elbowed Pinkie Pie playfully. “Ain’t that right, Princess Celestia?”

...Although, Master Koan actually WAS industrious in his own respect. For the first day, when we were first getting to know each other, we cleaned the diner which Master Koan lived in. He was talkative and questioning, and encouraged me, above all else, to be talkative and questioning in turn.

I asked him what a diner was doing here on an island like this, and he answered, “Being a metaphor.”

I asked him to explain, and he said this: “in the end, are we not ALL like the diner on this island? Our WORLD is an island floating on the ocean that is the cosmos. And what are we, if not diners upon it; EXISTING in spite of all the astronomical odds?”

After I reflected on these words, Master Koan grinned and confessed that the diner was already here when he’d arrived on this island, and he had no clue as to its origins: “But it’s fun to make wild guesses, wouldn’t you say?”

“Sounds like a real goofball,” said Rainbow Dash.

He was a goofball... a WISE goofball. Absurdity was the salt he seasoned his wisdoms with. I remember one of the other things he asked me: “Why did you come to this island?”

I already knew this wouldn’t be a straightforward question, but still, I took the bait. I told him, “Because I wanted to find you.”

“And why did you want to find me?”

“Because I wanted to learn from you.”

“And why is it you feel you need more learning?”

“Because I’m aware I have room for improvement.”

“That’s the biggest room you’re ever going to live in: your room for improvement!”

Groaning, head-shaking, and eye-rolling followed from everyone sitting at Lyra’s table with her. Except for Fluttershy, who grabbed a pencil and copied this onto a napkin.

“Yet... I sense desperation in you, Lyra,” Master Koan then said. “You do not seek improvement lightheartedly, there’s something you desperately need it for.”

So then I admitted: “Not too long ago, I got a letter from home, saying that a terrible accident had taken place, and my stallion was near death. Theres nothing I can do about it from here. I’m hoping I’m lucky enough, and that things will be fixed by the time I’m back home.”

“Funny how luck never seems to be around for the pony who counts on it most.” Master Koan said.

“I know,” I said. “That is just what made it so desperate. Some things have made me doubt my strength and so I worry for the future. I have two strong herdmates I dearly care for that regularly face horrors unimagined by your average pony. I wish to be able to help them when needed... but as strong as I am, I still found myself falling prey to such horrors’ machinations. A while back, Chrysalis, a changeling queen, brainwashed me, forcing me to guard her prisoners. If one of them hadn't been Twilight Sparkle, it'd be unlikely they'd have escaped, and Canterlot would have fallen. Now, if things are still bad at home... or if they’ve worsened, heaven forbid... I’ll need the inner strength to deal with it.”

Then Master Koan brought me to this place... he’d created an underground dojo for himself, digging it out with his magic. First we meditated... in a way I’ve never quite meditated before. Master Koan would shout out something like: “Whoever came up with the phrase ‘quiet as a mouse’ has probably never stepped on one. Reflect on this for five minutes.”

And for five minutes I — obedient student that I am — DID reflect on mice being crushed underhoof. Put great mental energy towards it!

Then Master Koan would say: “Many arguments have two sides, but no end. Reflect on this.”

And I would. Of course I was laughing... but the fascinating thing is, when you give a little one-liner like that some real deep thought, it really does take on all sorts of new dimensions! Then he’d challenge me to come up with something equally profound.

I remember one of them was: “the best nicknames tend to be the ones ponies don’t know they have.” And for five minutes we reflected on that. Remember what I said about keeping your mind limber? Master Koan was, well... a master at it. After meditations, we stretched, we sparred, and he taught me some new techniques. And to my surprise, I found that Master Koan is a more fearsome fighter than Master Hushpuppy was.

The next day, Master Koan woke me up, and the first thing he asked me was, “Did I tell you why it is that I came to Aardvark Island?”

“To meditate in solitude?” I guessed.

Master Koan grinned and said, “What fun is that? Follow me.”

And he let me to this clearing... where I saw these THINGS, all of them around the size of bulldogs. They weren’t just ugly, they weren’t just animalistic. They didn’t belong in this world at all.

I saw things that looked like giant kidneys with all-red-eyes and horns. Things that looked like surgically-removed tumors with jaws full of teeth, oozing along the ground. Things that resembled large, skinless mice that stalked about on their hind legs, snapping at everything. And do you know where all these creatures were coming from?

“Underground?” Rainbow Dash hazarded her guess.

Imagine the air, itself, was nothing more than a cloth backdrop on a stage. Now imagine somepony took a sword and slashed a large cut across the middle of the backdrop, and you could see the backstage straight through it. That’s what I saw. A gash in the air that served as an open window into another world.

“Another world?” Twilight breathed. All of them were paying deep attention.

Sadly, nothing that would be useful for finding where Lero came from, I don't think, Twilight. What I saw was this thick, red fog, pouring out continuously from the gash into our own world. But instead of rising into the sky like proper smoke or vapor, the red fog sunk downward into the soil, like water. When I squinted, I could almost make out something like structures in the far distance of that other world. And through the thickness of the fog, I could see eyes. All sorts of eyes, stared at me and Master Koan.

I asked Master Koan, “What IS that?”

“It’s a place where the barriers between worlds grow thin.' he answered. ‘A split in the fabric of the pants we call reality. I think science fiction fans would call it a 'Dimensional Rift'. And what you see on that other side is a netherworld. One of a thousand hells.”

We watched some of the tumor-creatures dribble over the side of the rift, and splat on the ground, then get back up, hissing and shrieking, with smoke coming off their bodies.

“Demons?” Twilight guessed.

It turned out that’s EXACTLY what they were, Twilight. Or at least, something so alike as to make no difference. Spirits of malice and cruelty, ensconced in wet and dripping flesh.

I’m not too proud to admit that I found them scary. But at first, I actually decided not to prejudge them and extend them the benefit of the doubt. So I called out to them from where I stood and said, “Greetings, from my world to yours! My name is Lyra Heartstrings! Welcome to Equestria! On behalf of all my people, we mean you no harm!”

They charged at me like a pack of starved jackals. The noises coming from their throats didn’t sound like any sort of language. The smell of their smoke coming off their bodies was absolutely vile, like rotting peppers set on a grill. For about two minutes, Master Koan just stood off to the side, watching me dodge their and try to be the bridge-building ambassador. Then he stepped in, crushing every one of them in a whirlwind of kicks and magic.

* * *

Rarity turned her nose up a little. “Well, you shouldn’t have even bothered trying to be nice. If it were me, watching something spilling out of another world that looked demonic and smelled and sounded demonic, I’d have attacked!”

“Except that our stallion came spilling from another world looking rather like a wild, filthy ape, wouldn’t you say?” Lyra reminded her.

Rarity stopped, stunned.

“And what’s more, from what I recall Lero saying, the beings who’d captured and hurt him... THEY’RE supposed to all physically resemble humans! Or at least, when they want to. So it’s worth taking an extra second to see who’s really who!”

As Rarity looked away, Twilight Sparkle said, “That’s actually a good line of logic! It reminds me of this book I read upon animal mimicry and...”

“Lero!” cried Rainbow Dash. “Dude, are you alright?!”

The ponies all turned their head towards the human. He’d been bringing his glass of ice water to his lips... and had frozen up, seemingly unaware that his drink was falling into his lap.

“I... I’m fine! I’m fine!” he insisted, quickly putting down the glass and grabbing a napkin.

Rainbow leaned herself against him, looking at him worriedly, until Lero had calmed.

“Lero... I’m so sorry...” said Lyra.

“Not your fault. Bad memories... sort of,” said the human, sweeping a last ice cube off himself. Brief moments of remembrance were all that he had of his time in the place-before-Equestria, moments he could never make sense of, except that they terrified him. He looked at Lyra. “Lyra... do you think that these demons of yours came from that world I escaped from?”

Lyra shrugged. “I don’t know. Do you remember seeing creatures like that, when you were there?”

“I don’t know!” Lero whispered, all the more unnerved. “If they’re trying to get into Equestria... they’ll be kidnapping others... they may even be after me!” The human’s voice became small and tiny, only Dash could really hear, looking over his back. “Not them, not them, don’t let it be THEM, not now, not ever...”

“We won’t let them take you!” The rainbow-maned pegasus set a comforting hoof on the back of the human’s still-jittering hand, looking up at him with the solicitude of a kindly caretaker. Dash’s voice was the softest and most Fluttershy-like he’d ever yet heard, but her voice held surprising conviction in it. “If... if some big meanie tried to steal you away to hurt you, I... I wouldn’t let them! I’d stop them!”

Lero smiled, his nervousness disappearing. “Dash, you’re awesome.”

“I’m not the LEAST bit awesome,” she said.

“The HELL you aren’t!” he barked, startling her quite a bit. “I'm not going to hear anyone talk bad about you, Dash, not even yourself! You may have forgotten how awesome you really are, but I NEVER WILL.”

Twilight eyes were wide and warning, frightened about where he was going with this.

“What’s there to remember?” Dash asked, confused and hesitant.

“Ladies, back me up on this!” Lero said, turning to the rest of them.

The others were all staring at him in confusion, as though he’d claimed that a gerbil had just built a stadium. Until Fluttershy piped up: “Twilight must’ve told you about the time you helped that manticore with the thorn in its paw, Dashie!”

Twilight nodded enthusiastically, catching on. “And remember when you stared down that cockatrice as it was turning you into stone? That saved my life, Dash! And the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ as well!”

“Or how about that time yew walked out on that modelin’ job with Photo Finish?” Applejack remembered. “Wasn’t what Ah’d’ve done, but that still took GUTS!”

"Or that time you stared down that dragon that just batted me away!" Rarity added.

All this seemed to be overwhelming Rainbow Dash. “I didn’t... that was all just...”

Lero placed a hand around Dash’s shoulder. “Dash, here’s something I absolutely guarantee: a day will come when you will fully remember just how much awesomeness you really have inside you. And when that day comes, you will be utterly unstoppable.”

Her amazed eyes studied his confident, smiling face, not seeing a speck of mockery. She turned towards the lavender mare. “Seriously, Twilight, where did you FIND this guy?”

“From another world,” Twilight Sparkle said, levitated her own glass of water for Lero to drink. “Speaking of which, I’ll be writing to Celestia the first chance I get about Aardvark Island. She’ll be able to send specialists to seal this dimensional rift.”

“Well, it’ll spoil Master Koan’s fun, but there’s no denying it’ll need to be done,” said Lyra.

“Anyway, Lyra... your story?” Dash prompted.

“Ah, yes,” Lyra said.

* * *

Anyway, Master Koan explained to me that these were just MINOR demons. This netherworld’s equivalent of rabid lynxes and polecats.

“On a danger scale of newborn Shih Tzu to Cerberus, these guys rank at ‘angry wiener dog.’” Was how Master Koan put it. “Their bodies are so weak, that they burn in direct sunlight. And moonlight!”

The demons’ bodies were always emitting smoke, every moment they were out in the open. You’d think they’d have the sense to seek shelter, or burrow underground, or even retreat back to their home world, but they just stayed into the open, eating ants, murdering aardvarks, and trying to murder us, and their bodies continued to sizzle until they burst completely into flame, alive or dead.

“Ah almost feel sorry for them,” said Applejack.

Well, they WERE vicious little monsters, all the same. But still, Master Koan spent a good eight hours just practicing his techniques on them, then throwing most of the bodies back into the dimensional rift. I followed his lead. Learned a few more techniques that way!

But at the end of that day, I asked Master Koan: Why go to all this trouble over small fry that, while malevolent, were weak and doomed to die on an empty island? The demons couldn’t even swim in the ocean water! Master Koan pointed into the dimension rift, at some of the other creatures who had been watching us in the mist, unmoving.

“Somewhere in there, lurking in the red mist, are more powerful demons who WILL be able to withstand the sunlight. Craven cowards, all of them, but still more powerful, all the same. You see how they’re watching me, Lyra. Watching US, now. And every day I fight these smaller spawn, I’m showing all the REAL baddies in there that a pony exists who’s willing to sit atop their rift and not let so much as a single runt of a demon gain a toehold in our world.”

Then he grinned and said, “Or to put in simpler terms, I’m teaching the demons to never play leapfrog with a unicorn!”

For four days, I stayed with Master Koan, fighting demons. We lived off the land, slept in the diner, and fought whatever spilled out of that rift. I might’ve stayed longer, but I was too anxious to return home, especially to see how Lero was doing. So I bid Master Koan farewell, swam back to the mainland, boarded a train, and began my long journey back home. And here I am.

* * *

Their waiter brought in their lunches. For Granny Smith, her eggplant parmesan. For Pinkie Pie, fried green tomatoes and collard greens with a side of baked cinnamon apples. For Lyra, vegetable stir-fry. For Lero, shrimp stir-fry. For Rainbow Dash, a kale and watercress salad. For Applejack, kelp quiche. For Rarity, a plate of steamed mussels and scalloped oysters over a rice pilaf. For Fluttershy, two slices of chocolate lava crunch cake. And for Twilight Sparkle, a bowl of hearty vegetable stew.

As they ate, the rest of the girls all made small talk with Lyra and one another. When their meals were starting to wind down, Twilight levitated her spoon to ding against her water glass, until she had all the others’ attention.

“Listen, girls,” she said, “As glad and surprised as we all are to see Lyra back... she’s not the reason I called you all out here.” And Twilight levitated the letters from Celestia from underneath her chair. “The thing is, Princess Celestia sent me these letters last night to pass out to the rest of you.”

“Is she sending us on another mission?” Fluttershy asked, as the purple unicorn passed the letters out to her other four friends.

“You’ll see,” Twilight promised.

So Applejack, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Fluttershy all tore open the envelopes with their names on them, and read the letters within.

“From Her Royal Majesty, Celestia, Princess of Equestria, Regent Of The Sun, Eternal Protector of Our World...” read Fluttershy.

“...meritorious efforts ‘n’ courageous resolution in the face a’ overwhelmin’ odds which’ll no doubt continue ta inspire ponies fur generations ta come...” Applejack read.

“...recognition of your heroic endeavors on behalf of the Crown and all ponykind as the Bearer of the Element of Kindness...” Rainbow Dash murmured to herself.

“...A sum a’ no less than...!”

One by one, as they reached that part of the letter, each mare drew in an astonished gasp.

“She’s PAYING us now?!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash.

"Technically, it's not a payment, as this isn't a salary,” Twilight explained, “But rather a gift in recognition to the services provided to Equestria. The money’s tax-free as well."

“Oh my GOODNESS!” said Fluttershy, nearly flying out of her seat.

“Gals, we’re RICH!” Applejack grinned. “Ah’m outta the red! Hey, Twi? Rarity? Didn’t yew two get anythang?”

“We opened ours last night.”

“Send it BACK, Pinkie!” Granny Smith demanded, scowling coldly at the line of zeroes on Celestia’s letter. “We’re Apples, not a buncha no-account welfare wards!”

“Granny, no! Don’t ya see?” Pinkie pleaded. “Ah ain't one to accept somethin' Ah ain't earned but... with this kinda money, we’ll be able ta afford that special super-expensive operation fer Macky! He’ll be outta the hospital in a matter a’ days!”

“Really?! Didn’t thinka that! Well, Ah HAVE been frettin’ ta see may sweet lil’ grandson again...”

Lero felt like he could jump for joy. Mac was coming back! Sooner rather tha later! He and Pinkie both shared a grin across the table.

Rainbow Dash hugged him. “This is... this is wonderful! Lero, just think! I’ll be able to replace all the furniture the animals have been trashing!”

Applejack leaned forward. “Ah been meaning ta ask... just what’s UP with that, Dash? Why is it that yer critters turned on yew like that? Have yew not been feeding them or somethin’?”

Rainbow Dash gave a little jerk. “I... I feed them plenty! Tell her, Lero!”

“We do feed them!” Lero said.

The fashionista peered at her caretaker friend. “Do ponies even come ta ya asking fer help with their pets anymore?”

“Applejack!” Pinkie cried, in a reproachful tone.

“Ah’m just asking out of friendly concern!”

“Oh, like you’re one to judge!” Rarity said with a scowl. “I might ask well as you what’s up with all those dresses of yours?!”

“Ah’m... Ah’m explorin’ new directions!” Applejack said, shrinking backwards.

“Exploring new directions, is it?” The weathermare gave a disdainful sniff. “Looks to me like you’re lost in the woods! Every time I peek in your window, there’s never a customer to be seen!”

“That’s not fair!” Fluttershy protested. “I buy from her! I buy plenty from Applejack!”

“That’s because yer tryin’ ta look clownish.” Pinkie Pie reminded her.

“Well... I...” the baker stammered.

Pinkie rolled her eyes. “Aw, fess up, Shy!”

The yellow pegasus wouldn’t meet any of their eyes. “Yew... yew buy mah dresses ta DELIBERATELY make yerself look sillier?!” Applejack cried.

“Well, at least they get people to laugh!”

Applejack scowled. “Unlike those so-called jokes a’ yers! Seriously, everypony says that they’re lame and dumb and irritating!”

“Leave Fluttershy alone!” snapped Rarity. “At least she still holds a job that puts bread on her table!”

Applejack tilted the brim of her cowgirl hat at a low angle. “Mah artistic muse is leading me through sum highly experimental territory! Ah woulda thought YEW of all ponies woulda understood, Rarity!”

“What do you mean?!”

“Oh, Ah can’t imagine, Miss Argyle-Patterned-Mini-Tornados! Mah designs might be ahead of their time... but at least MAH artwork’s not a serious health hazard! Ponies are gettin’ ta be downright SCARED a’ yew, Rarity!”

They all gave a jolt as two hooves slammed down hard on the tabletop. “None of you are losers! Not one!” Twilight Sparkle cried.

Silence fell over the table as they turned to face their tear-streaked friend, all with wide and conscience-stricken looks.

“You’re HEROES! All of you! You’ve saved the world countless times over! Nightmare Moon, Discord, King Sombra, those changelings at my brother’s wedding... don’t tell me you’ve forgotten them all!”

“No!” said Fluttershy.

“Of course not!” said Rainbow Dash.

They were drawing the attention of ponies sitting at neighboring tables and booths. Twilight didn’t care.

“From eternal night, from eternal chaos, from thwarting tyranny and invasion... you’ve BEEN there whenever our world has cried out for help! And when the next superpowered evil thing comes to threaten Equestria, you’ll be there too! That's why Celestia send these to us - because she remembers how much you've done! And if our neighbors are so quick to forget all you’ve done for them... because of some dresses they think are ugly, because of some weather they find scary, because of some jokes they don’t like, then SHAME ON THEM!”

Hiccoughing, she stared downward the tablecloth soaking up her tears. “I owe everything to you girls! The friendship you’ve given me... all the lessons you’ve taught me about how to be a friend! I’d be NOTHING without you girls! Every one of you is worth TEN of me! I love you all so much, and I’ll NEVER be ashamed of you! So... so hold your heads up high! I... I never felt prouder than when I was with the five of you!”

Completely overwhelmed, she fled, sobbing, to the bathroom. The rest of the table looked around at each other, guilt and sadness on all their faces. Applejack removed her hat. “Girls, Ah’m sorry, Ah’m the one ta blame fer startin’ this stupid, stupid squabble... right when Twi jest went ‘n‘ saved me from bankruptcy! Maybe a nag like me deserved ta have her muse go bonkers on ‘er.”

“Oh, Applejack, you mustn’t say that!” Rarity begged, patting her telekinetically.

As Rainbow Dash and Lyra both got up and entered the bathroom after Twilight, Fluttershy looked down at her letter from Celestia.

“You couldn’t have picked a better student, Your Majesty,” she said.

As the others all exchanged apologies, Lyra and Dash emerged with Twilight between them. She had a faint smile back on.

“Hi, girls. I’m better now. Sorry for ruining the mood.”

"Yew didn't ruin tha' mood." Pinkie replied. "We all did. Yew jus' snapped us out of it." All of them got out of their seats and swept her into a group hug, Lero included. Swap or no Swap, it felt glorious to Lero, knowing they still remained the most truehearted batch of friends ever to stand together. It made everything else so worthwhile.

“Twilight? I think I speak for all of us when I say that you’re the best friend of all,” Rainbow Dash said. “Our lives are so much more awesome with you in it.”

“We’ve been through worse, together. We’ll get through this, together.” Rarity agreed.

“Hey, girls? Everyone?”

They all looked at Lyra.

“Have we paid our bill yet? Because there’s something I’d like to show you all.”

* * *

“There! Right over there, Rarity!” Lyra pointed.

Rarity had conjured an extra-large cloud platform for her not just for herself and Lero, but for Twilight, Lyra, their two Earth pony friends, and Granny Smith. It was probably for the best that Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy instead chose to fly behind her, because the extra passengers were taking a strain on Rarity. Fortunately, Lyra seemed to know exactly where she wanted to go.

They landed in what looked to be a stark wasteland; a slightly hilly area comprised of rocks and arid grit. There was nobody else around but themselves; the land looked to have never been settled by any sapient being. Lero almost felt like he’d landed on the surface of Mars.

“I think we’re close to my old rock farming home!” Fluttershy announced to the others.

Rarity was panting and sweating off by the side as Lyra hopped off the cloud, looking around favorably at some of the skull-sized stone.

“Lyra... what’re we doin’ way out here in the boonies?” Pinkie asked. “Ain’t nothin’ here but rocks!”

“Exactly!” said Lyra. “Lots and lots of rocks!” Then she turned around towards everyone else. “I thought it might be fun to show off some of the Still Way fighting techniques I learned while I was traveling abroad.”

“Yer gunna put on sum kinda chow mien spinnin’ roundhouse kick show fer us?!” Granny Smith said.

“Something along those lines, Mrs. Smith!” said Lyra. “But I’m going to need Twilight’s help!”

They all looked towards Twilight; Lero with some anxiety.

In the days before the Swap, Lyra Heartstrings and Rainbow Dash had sparred against one another regularly... partially for fun, and partially to keep their skills honed. But Lero couldn’t remember a time when Twilight, herself, had participated in a bout. The purple unicorn had always seemed to be of the opinion that fighting was strictly reserved for foes. Indeed, Twilight approached Lyra with great reluctance.

“W... what do you want me to do, Lyra?” she asked.

“I’d like you to make opponents for me to fight,” she said, waving a hoof around at all the many, many rocks littering the landscape. “I remember you saying you learned how to make rock golems not long ago. Come on, let’s see one!”

Some amount of relief crossed Twilight’s face; thankfulness, perhaps, that she wasn’t being asked to engage in a one-on-one duel with her herd-sister. Her horn glowed. A purple aura formed around several large stones, which floated together into a pony form: a close-knit constellation of rocks, about Lyra’s size.

It trundled towards the Still Way master slowly, stiff and herky-jerky, like the earliest prototypes of real walking robots. A golden gleam of light shone from Lyra’s horn and around the stone pony’s legs, which all flipped ninety degrees to the left, shattering like fired clay. The golem went down like a wall of un-mortared bricks.

Twilight blinked at the loudness of her stone pony’s falling apart. All the rest of them settled themselves upon the base of a rocky hillside, to watch with growing eagerness. Rarity was kind enough to clear most of the stones away for everybody to sit. Rainbow Dash settled right up against Lero’s side.

Lero knew that if Lyra were the Rainbow Dash of old, this would be the part where she’d taunt Twilight with something like, “Is that the best you got, egghead?” Instead, Lyra Heartstrings told her, “Hey, Twilight, let me make you a deal. In the next twenty minutes, if you’re able to draw blood from me with your golems... just the TINIEST little nick... I will buy you thirty books of your own choosing.”

Celestia’s student drew in a rapt breath. Trepidation was leaving her, Lero could see. “Twenty minutes, you said?”

“Twenty minutes.”

“I’m in!”

With a slight smile, Lyra called out, “Hey, Fingers! Would you be our timekeeper?”

“Sure thing, Horny!” Lero rolled down his sleeve, exposing his wristwatch. “Fighters! Face your opponent!”

Both the unicorns’ heads dropped in a respectful bow.

“Fifty-seven, fifty-eight, fifty-nine... begin!”

Blocks of sandstone, coquina, and quartzite floated together into an Earth pony form. It charged toward Lyra, who regarded it with unruffled equilibrium. A moment before it raised a heavy stone arm to swing, her hoof lashed out. Four brief flicks of a hoof against the magical creation's torso and then her horn flared. The golem’s main body neatly cleaved in half, the arm crashing down not four inches from her side.

The next golem Twilight made had ‘body parts’ from the previous golem’s body.

“Lyra?” Twilight asked, while the Still Way grandmaster dodged at the last moment. “Is there a limit to how many golems I’m allowed to construct at once?”

“Not at all!” the aqua unicorn said, ending this newest golem with one sharp attack, its head shattering. “Send as many as you can make!”

Twilight’s next set of golems were three ogreish bipeds with gorilla arms. Lyra deftly sidestepped the monsters’ fists slamming into the ground. Her right forehoof planted in the ground and her left forehoof swung sideways, cracking against two of their shoulders at once. She lifted her rear hooves as well, letting that horizontal strike spin her neatly in place on one hoof, bringing both rear hooves into line with her nearest foe.

Her buck landed both hooves against the hard stone. As the golem staggered back, she took a running leap and landed atop the golem’s head, bringing both forehooves sharply down at the back of its neck, severing its crystal spine, and the golem crashed down.

“Come on, Twilight!” Rainbow Dash cheered beside Lero. “You can beat her!”

“You just have to nick her!” cried Fluttershy. “One little nick!”

“Think of all ‘em BOOKS yer gonna be able to read once ya win!” Applejack shouted.

On and on the duelists fought; over ten minutes had passed, and Twilight hadn’t landed a single blow; the grandmaster just danced and shattered through every golem she threw at her, with either a well-placed hoof or precise telekinetic burst. Nonetheless, Twilight’s friends were cheering her on, Lyra didn’t seem the least bit bothered that none of their cheers were for her. In fact, the grandmaster almost seemed to treat it as a bonus - her advantage was so clear she didn't need cheering.

“How much time do they have left?” Dash whispered to Lero.

He checked his watch. “Five minutes.”

“TIME OUT!” called a voice. “TIME OUT!”

The fighting ceased. The golems under Twilight’s control collapsed. All of them turned to watch as Rarity rushed over to stand by Twilight’s side.

“What do you say we make things interesting, grandmaster?” the white unicorn challenged. “Care to take on two golem crafters at once for the last five minutes?”

She wore the same sort of bold and feisty grin Rainbow Dash had always had just before they began a sparring match. Lyra froze up for a moment at seeing such a familiar expression on such a different face.

“Rarity,” Twilight said, “Maybe we should...”

“Fine!” It was a truly rare thing to see calm, meditative Lyra lose her cool like this, actually shuddering a little in anger. Or was that anticipation? It was hard for Lero to tell. Maybe both? “Go ahead! Two-on-one! I’m not afraid,” she finished with determination, regaining her calm.

Rarity’s cocky grin widened. “We begin on our stallion’s say-so! Lero, just say when!”

Lero brought out his watch again. “Fifty-eight, fifty-nine... TIME IN!”

The weathermare’s horn shone. Clouds formed in the cloudless sky. Not just any old clouds, either: these took on a definite PONY shapes.

Having been Rainbow Dash’s live-in boyfriend for as long as he had... Lero Michealides was very well-acquainted with the Wonderbolts. However... there was no pony on the Bolts’ roster that would go out in public with such devilishly sinister leers. Rarity had applied her cloud-coloration magic, as well: and these ponies’ full-bodied uniforms were a dark purple instead of the proper Wonderbolts’ blue.

Most notable of all, the three flying ponies all had unicorn horns jutting out from their heads. And Lero knew them to be the Shadowbolts of Nightmare Moon, as Rarity the Weathermare remembered them.

Except...

The one in the lead, as soon as the shaping as coloration were complete, rather than being the one Rarity had described to him, it was... her. The unmistakable purple, perfected coifed hair and white fur of her horn and face where it peeked out of the unform. However, there was two notable differences; one, she now sported wings; not the ethereal, fragile, but breathtakingly beautiful butterfly wings of the flight spell, but rather, solid, unnatural-looking batwings that nonetheless perfectlly merged with her form; and the cutie mark on her uniform, rather than an exact copy of Dash's rainbow-bolt cloud, the colored lightning now emerged from a menacing Unicorn skull.

Lero immediatelly grasped what it was: Rarity's envisioning of herself if she'd accepted the Shadowbolt's offer. The way her doppleganger and the Shadowbolts moved was remarkable. Their facial expressions and the movements of their bodies were uncannily lifelike, especially the beat of their wings. But because these golems were formed of cloud instead of flesh and blood... the Shadowbolts also had an unnerving, weightless ghostly quality to them.

Lyra Heartstrings was practically transfixed by the sight of the cloud colems, as they circled around her like vultures. Lero looked to the side at Rainbow Dash, and saw that the pegasus mare was even more fixated on the sight of the Shadowbolts.

“Dash?”

“Shadowy... Wonderbolts...” the pegasus whispered. “I dreamed of this, one night... they were talking to me... my friends were far away in the mist... they wanted me to do something... but these guys have horns on their heads... it’s not the same, it’s not LYRA, LOOK OUT!”

The Shadowbolts all lowered their horns towards Lyra and shot hail at her. She sprinted to one side to dodge it.

“They’re NOT ALICORNS, Lyra!” Lero called out, hoping that would help. “They’re winged unicorns! You can take ‘em!”

Rarity nudged Twilight’s side. “Twilight, come on! We’re double-teaming her! Don’t forget your own golems!”

Twilight shook her head, having been just as distracted as the others of the artistry - and menace - of Rarity's creations, and drew a hard breath, and then the rocks on the ground were rising to sweep at Lyra Heartstrings with their arms, to buck her with hooves of basalt, schist, and kaolinite.

As Lyra ducked, spun, and whirlwind-kicked through the opponents, Twilight turned a worried look at her white-coated herdmate. “Rarity, we’re taking it too far!” The rock golems‘ attacks weakened as she whispered these words. “I think we’re really going to hurt her at this rate!”

“Ssh, don’t worry, my sweet kitten,” Rarity whispered back. “I’m taking it very easy on our precious songbird... believe me! It’s all just part of the show!”

Meanwhile, Lyra was ripping apart pieces of the rock golem to throw at the Shadowbolts. Though her aim was spot-on, the stones passed straight through the cloud golems’ bodies, disrupting their forms briefly, but they reformed again almost immediately.

Even though Twilight wasn’t looking at her, Rarity could see she still had qualms. “I’ll end this with the very next blow,” she promised, refocusing her magic back on her cloud golems.

The Shadowbolts all flew towards Lyra Heartstrings at once, hooves outstretched to slam into her face. The lead duplicate of Rarity aimed dead center at her. The aqua unicorn’s eyes flicked around at the mass of rock golems all around her.

“You’re not real,” she told the Shadowbolts. “You’re just cloud. You’ll pass right through me. Your blow will have no force.” She seemed absolutelly confident, but Lero — and he suspected Twilight and perhaps Rarity — knew her well enough to see the undertone of uneasiness, as she stood in a defensive pose against them.

And indeed, almost all of the cloud golems DID pass right through Lyra Heartstrings as easily as colored mist. Yet SOMETHING sliced a thin little cut across her right cheek, as Shadowbolt Rarity 'struck' her.

“Alright, stop!” Rarity called, and her Shadowbolts vanished in a spurt of magic. “The fight’s over! We won!”

Gratefully, Twilight Sparkle let her rock golems fall to pieces, as Lyra touched the dripping cut on her cheek in disbelief.

“How much time did Lyra have left?” Rainbow Dash asked Lero.

“One minute, nine seconds,” said Lero.

As everyone cheered a fight well fought (waking Granny Smith, who’d fallen asleep halfway through the fight), Twilight and Rarity approached Lyra.

“How did you cut me?” Lyra asked.

Rarity levitated up a thin, small length of ice. It was as small and sharp as a shaving razor’s blade, and already beginning to melt.

“I hid this inside the ‘arm’ of a cloud golem, and kept it in place with wind magic!” Rarity explained.

“Are you okay?” the lavender unicorn asked.

True calmness washed over the Still Way grandmaster. “Of course I am,” Lyra told her. “Do you think I’d let myself turn upset over a small scratch like this?”

As Twilight nuzzled against her in relief, Rarity closed the cut with her healing magic, kissing the spot where it had been.

* * *

It was time for everyone to go home. Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy were able to fly their way back on their own, so Rarity humbly volunteered to taxi the rest of them to their houses. All throughout, the others were abuzz with excitement.

“Yew were AMAZING, darlin’!” Applejack told Lyra. “Ah know Ah wouldn’t wanna cross YEW in a dark alley! Heck, not even a well-lit one! And Ah’ll be sure ta look out for ya when that movie comes out!”

“Thank you, Applejack!” said Lyra.

“Hey, Twilight, Rarity... big thanks to ya’ll fer everythang: the meal, the show, and the money! We’ll be able ta fix Big Mac up with these bits, lickety-split!” Pinkie Pie said, with a friendly thump on Twilight’s back. “And Ah’m glad Lyra’s home too!”

“Well, thanks, Pinkie, but the money came from Celestia,” Twilight said.

“Ah, yeah! Ah thank Ah’ll be writin’ Her Majesty a big thank-yew letter when Ah get home, then!”

“Say, Rarity,” Applejack then said, “Ah had no idea yew could make evil Wonderbolts outta clouds like that!”

“I didn’t either!” Rarity admitted. “But I just watched how Twilight crafted HER golems, and from there, I was able to figure out what I needed to do!” She whipped her hair back showily, very pleased with herself. “I’ve really outdone myself today as a weather artist!”

“How does that work?” Granny Smith asked. “Ta me, it just looks like yew unicorns jest point yer horns wherever, make ‘em glow, and whatever ya wanna have happen, happens!”

“It’s not... it’s not LIKE that, Granny!” Twilight protested. “It’s... well, it’s like...”

“Let me try explaining,” Lyra offered from her spot on the cloud platform. “All of you who can’t cast magic, turn to me.”

They all did. Twilight watched in interest, while Rarity, who was piloting the cloud platform, could only listen to what they were saying so she could focus on flying.

“Now, I’m going to whistle a short tune, and I want you all to whistle the same tune back at me. But first, I want you sent your hooves firmly against your ears so that you can’t hear a thing.”

“But how are we supposed to do THAT?!” Lero asked, speaking for them all.

“Lip reading,” Lyra shrugged. “Now, hooves on ears!”

They all did, Lyra included. Lero peered at the aqua unicorn as her lips puckered, discovering he was woefully pathetic at reading lips.

“Hooves off!” she said, while bringing down her own. “Now, whistle what I just whistled.”

Applejack and Granny Smith didn’t even try. Lero, Three completely different tunes from Pinkie Pie, Lero, and even Twilight floated through the air.

“Alright!” said Lyra. “Now, let’s try again, only this time, everypony swivel their ears towards me!”

And this time, everyone floating about Rarity’s cloud platform could clearly hear the proper notes: C#, C, D#, D. So they were able to whistle the tune back at her: C#, C, D#, D.

Lyra smiled. “So if your ears aren’t working and you watch somepony whistle, it looks like she’s making fish lips at you, and you have no idea what she’s really doing. In the same way, if you can’t cast horn magic yourself, and you watch it being cast with your eyes alone, all you see is glowing. But when a unicorn observes another unicorn casting magic... she has a stronger awareness of how the other unicorn’s manipulating the world around her... and can therefore potentially learn from it. Does that make sense?”

“Y... yes.” said Lero. The others seemed to be also to also understand.

“Well put!” said Twilight.

Later on, after bringing Applejack back to the Boutique and Granny Smith and Pinkie Pie to Sweet Apple Acres, the four herdmates landed back at Golden Oaks Library.

“Well, home sweet home!” said Rarity; the cloud platform dissipating when she bucked it. “Bet it’s going to feel nice, being in your old bed with the rest of us, hmm, Lyra?”

But Lyra backed away from the door with a tense smile. “Actually, Rarity, if you don’t mind... That sparring session was a lot more intense than I was expecting, thanks to you. Those cloud golems caught me off guard." She smiled softly, letting the earlier tension ease out, the expression becoming more genuine. "If you don't mind, I'd like to go meditating with Lero to help re-center myself. Besides, it's been a long while since he and I got to do so together.” She glanced over at him. "If you don't mind, of course."

“Um... sure!” said Lero.

“You and Twilight don't have to tag along — I know how boring my meditation can sometimes get. We won’t be long.”

“Okay,” said Rarity, looking slightly confused. “If that’s what you want, Lyra. We'll be here when you get back.”

* * *

A light breeze whisked across the fields of long grass. A faraway magpie sang.

“I remember being on one of the trains. I wasn’t anywhere near Ponyville, yet, but I was homeward bound,” Lyra told Lero, as they both strode through the grass, tall enough to brush Lyra’s chin. It crunched beneath their legs.

“There was this elderly stallion sitting next to me,” Lyra continued. “No one I knew. Just a stranger on a train.”

The tall grass carpeted the the hilltops which the unicorn and human ambled across. The scent of decomposing leaves hung in the air. The whole of the landscape instilled a sense of relaxation and quiet. Almost ironic, considering how close it lay to the Everfree Forest.

“We got to talking about each other’s family. He told me he was a grandfather and he lived in Mustangia. In turn, I told him about what kind of herd I lived with.”

They spotted the gentle brook they were looking for, with all the many trees that flanked it, weaving a watery line to the place they wanted to go.

“I told him that I lived with a being called a ‘human,‘ who wasn’t remotely equine. I described how you stood on two legs, had a somewhat monkeyish form, and how you’d come from another world,” Lyra said. “I talked about my unicorn herd-sister, who’d hatched a dragon’s egg, and how the baby dragon now lived with us as an adopted younger brother. Finally, I told him my last herdmate was a pegasus.”

Lero listened in silence as they trailed alongside the river, into a thicket, rich with cedars, rowans, and magnolias. Lyra spared a second to gaze at Lero’s clothed legs, lifting one foot in front of the other. Somehow, the way his body were built to walk never quite failed to fascinate her.

“And then the grandfather said and I quote: ‘You don't seem the pegasus type, young lady. Why, I’ll bet that last herdmate of yours is actually another unicorn! Am I right?’ I had to look at him to see if he was teasing me, but I'd never seen a more earnest face.”

They stopped at a glade where the sunlight shone haphazardly through gaps in the leafy canopy overheard. They brook that had led them here ended in a small waterfall, pouring into a shallow pool.

“He was willing to accept that one of my lovers was a biped from another dimension, and that my other lover was a unicorn with mythical levels of magical power, and that we had adopted a dragon into our family... all without question. But somehow, me with a pegasus was past the bounds of believability.” Lyra looked up at Lero. “That’s when I knew beyond ALL doubt all this business about the Swap and Bewitchment really WAS real.”

The both of them sat.

“It really does take a while to sink in,” Lero told her, drawing his hands out from his pockets. “I’ll tell you something, Lyra, there’s this part of me that would still love to believe that this is all some elaborate put-up job... like a surprise birthday party, you know? Everyone’s in on the gag except the birthday boy. And the five of them have all painted new marks on themselves, and are acting like each other just to wind us up, and they’ve gotten everyone in town to play along... and eventually they’ll all yell ‘surprise!’ And have a good laugh at how gullible we all were.”

“Well, I got a good look at those new marks for myself, Fingers,” Lyra said, with a shiver. “It’s no makeup job. No illusion spell. And the way Rarity kissed me... and the way she kissed YOU... and not a peep from Rainbow Dash...”

They were in a special place Lyra had stumbled upon, one day. A beautiful glen, strangely unvisited by birds or insects. The patch of bare earth in particular was one of Lyra’s favorite spots to meditate.

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing,” Lero said, stroking Lyra’s withers. “You’re adapting a LOT better than I first did. Like a fish in water.” He let out a slight laugh. “Looking back, I’m actually LUCKY that spider paralyzed me and made me unable to talk. Otherwise, I’d have ruined everything the moment Rarity caught up with me. Either gotten myself shut in the loony bin, or broken her heart. Probably both.”

“You really think I handled myself well with them?” asked Lyra, trying to reach for the peace she'd sought all trip long.

“Oh yeah,” said Lero, toying with a blade of grass, rolling it into a ball between his fingertips.

“Because I was scared inside,” said Lyra. “And sad, all throughout.”

And she showed it fully and openly on her face. Lero knew enough of Still Way philosophy to know that for a Grandmaster, control was everything; they didn't promote repressing your emotions, but rather controlled expression — through meditation, battle, art — or sharing their feelings with trusted friends. Lero honestly felt touched at how easily she shared this part of herself with him. He stroked her back soothingly until she had calmed down some.

“Hey, Fingers?” she asked. “You’re pretty experienced dealing with the Swapped, right? Mind giving me a crash course? Just... tell me everything you wish you could’ve gone back in time and told yourself, at the very beginning of it all.”

Lero looked around. As far as he knew, the only other ones who knew of this location were Twilight and Rainbow Dash. At least, before the Swap. Meaning that Rarity was the one who knew about this place now. Therefore, there was a chance that Rarity could find them at this place, right in the middle of discussing the Swapped. But seeing the desperation in Lyra’s eyes, it was a risk he was willing to take.

Still, he spoke in a quiet voice, and Lyra followed suit.

“The first thing is to always be mindful of who’s now who,” Lero started. “It'll never be as simple as simply looking at their cutie marks. They're still themselves... and yet not. But cutie marks are always a good place to start. Diamonds? Treat her like a Fashionista. Butterflies? The Animal Caretaker. Apples? The Farmer. But always be ready for them to surprise you; they're all still a bit of their old selves. As you’ve seen, Rarity's still classy — just also aggressive and uninhibited, like Dash. Dash is now timid and shy, but she still likes to fly.”

Already, Lyra was beginning to calm, just listening and watching him.

“Second: when it comes to the way the Swapped remember the past, NEVER CONTRADICT THEM,” he told her. “And never do anything to disprove them, either. Just smile and nod, no matter how silly it is.”

“Yeah,” said Lyra. “I remember reading about what happened to you when you brought Dash’s old stuff to her, and what Discord warned you about.”

“Good,” said Lero, silently thanking Discord for the second chance he’d given him with Dash. “Go ahead and pump them for information about their ‘past,’ if you like, but always ask it in a plausible way. A good strategy is this: if your question is about something ‘you should already know,’ coordinate with one of the rest of us on the exemption list to ask the question for you. Spike's been brilliant at it so far. It’s best to be on the same page with the Swapped. They’re all enthusiastic storytellers! But always agree, always play along, always treat it as real history to their faces.”

A thin breeze played with Lyra’s mane as she nodded emphatically.

“A wise human once said: ‘all the world’s a stage, and we are but players.’” He gave a theatrical little flourish with his hand. “Never has that been more true than now, with the Swap. The whole rest of the world’s been bewitched into accepting this fantasy as fact. They’re all playing their parts and the production won’t end anytime soon. So play along, ALWAYS be ready to improvise, and DON’T damage the fourth wall. Because that wall will crush you with a vengeance.” The human snickered wryly, looking up towards the canopied sky. “You almost have to think of it as being THEIR world, not yours.”

“A parallel universe that isn’t,” said Lyra.

Lero grinned. “Well put, grasshopper. Twilight found the idea plausible enough that she suspected that was the case for a while.”

The aqua unicorn levitated some water from the brook to drink. “Alright,” she said, “These swapped memories actually sound pretty easy to deal with. When you get right down to it, won’t it pretty much all boil down to Rarity taking credit for every single thing Rainbow ever did... and so forth with the rest?”

“For the most part, yes,” Lero told her. “But you’ve still got to be prepared for them to tell you ANYTHING.”

She raised a surprised eyebrow. “Anything?”

“Anything. Rarity has quite a few ‘memories’ of things that never happened to Rainbow Dash. Events sometimes play out differently in their memories due to certain things being physically impossible because they're the wrong species, or else elements of their true personality force 'rewrites to the script,' so to speak. Rarity is straight, and remembers dating a lot before meeting me... which is the complete opposite of how it went for Dash. And since you're both unicorns.... who knows? Maybe Rarity will remember competing against you in a fireball-shooting contest last June!”

The sound of Lyra’s scoff was such a funny noise!

“You laugh, but it’s true!” Lero told her. “Rarity’s story of how she fell in love with me is very different from how it went with Dash.”

Discussing Rarity in love was making Lyra grow tense. He put a reassuring hand on her back. “Third... don’t be scared by the Swapped Five. Don’t think of them as ‘the enemy.‘ In the end, they’re victims. Magically compelled to be obsessive about their ‘special talents,’ and to self-sabotage their new lives. Never forget that all of them are still our friends.”

“Friends, yes,” she echoed, in an unconvinced voice. “How should I deal with Rarity?”

“How were you planning on dealing with her?” Lero asked.

She swallowed. “I was... intending to treat her as family. Like Twilight is.”

Lero smiled supportively. “That seems to be the best option. Take it from me. This version of Rarity is extremely warmhearted and loving. Think Rarity's romantic outlook spliced with Dash's enthusiasm. She grows on you after a while. Not that her old self was an ice queen, or anything...”

She fell quiet. For a while, Lero just listened with her to the babbling of the brook. “Was there anything else you wanted to talk about, Lyra? I can’t think of any more advice right now.”

“Lero? Will you make love to me?”

Lero was startled by how plaintive her request was. The Still Way grandmaster looked so nervous and vulnerable, it surprised him, leaving him unable to reply for a moment, as she took a deep and shaky breath.

"I need this.” She came in front of him and kissed his cheek. “It’s been so long.” She kissed his other cheek. “Soon, we'll be plunged headlong into madness — friendly madness or no — where we’ll always have to be mindful of how things ‘have always been.'" She kissed him on his lips. "I can do it, I can adjust, immerse myself fully in it. Embrace Rarity with open arms." She kissed him even deeper. "But... I need this. One last moment as if everything was normal, and I don't have to think about the Swap. One last moment... just you and me, Lero, in each other’s arms. And then I’ll be ready.”

She was right. It had been so long. Lero hadn't allowed himself this pleasure since before the Swap, when he’d still had Rainbow Dash in his herd. Doing it now, even with Twilight, brought up up too many issues with Rarity. While he accepted her, actually passing the line of being with her still made him hesitate... another kiss from Lyra, long and deep brought him to the present, and more pressing issue - and the realization that it had been even longer since he’d last been with Lyra.

He found his voice. "Of course, Lyra." He strokes his hand through her mane. "Of course I will."

They started off softly, lips meeting repeatedly: small, supple morsels of love, eager to share with each other. His fingers slide down from her mane, and ran along the sides of her body, sweeping through her glossy coat, feeling the slender curves of her muscles underneath, learning the subtle differences from before her training. Such a fine, toned body. As trim as Rainbow Dash. Did she have an ounce of fat to her anymore?

Their kissing intensified, their lips interlocking for much longer stretches of time, deep and passionate. He kicked off his shoes, combing his fingers through her mane again, grazing along the sides of her flattening ears. She responded in kind; shifting her head aside, her tongue slid along the creases and curves of his right ear, and Lero felt the first trickle of sweat on his body.

Lyra’s horn shone, and Lero experienced the always-peculiar sensation of every button on his shirt unbuttoning itself at once. He lifted his arms in the air, while still in mid-kiss with Lyra, and felt his shirt be lifted off. Surprisingly, it floated in Lyra’s direction; she brought it to her face, breathing it in like a rose, before pressing her snout against Lero’s chest, shutting her eyes and inhaling the scent of that, running her tongue along the dark, wiry hair of his chest.

It always astonished Lero just how alluring his girls found the smell of his sweat. They'd even compared it to fancy cologne. He supposed it was only natural, as he found their natural scent pleasant, in general. But right now, he especially appreciated the musky, heated fragrance Lyra was giving off at this moment.

The human’s arms encircled the aqua unicorn, drawing her in closer, relishing the sensation of his skin pressing against her silken coat. He felt her magic brush aside a swatch of his hair as her left foreleg wrapped around his neck. His fingers swirling through her mane, stroking and massaging the scalp and neck underneath, but mostly, enjoying its long, silken length. She’d allowed it to grow quite long. Perhaps she hadn’t had it trimmed even once through her entire sabbatical. It was so gorgeous at this length.

“Mmm... I missed this...” she breathed. "Lero, I can’t even count how often I’d be all alone in my train compartment or my ship cabin, deep in the dead of night... and I’d rub my hoof everywhere under my dock, and think of you... pretend it was you..." Then Lyra gave a sort of halfway-laugh. "But a hoof isn't nearly satisfying enough... even for a filly who doesn't know any better. It's impossible to keep a steady touch on yourself with magic when you're getting worked up. And after you taught me what you're capable of, nothing else will ever do." Lero laughed and bent to kiss her again.

As their tongues found each other, Lyra bent the wrist of her right foreleg and stroked her human’s growing bulge with her trimmed fetlock, even as it was still trapped in those pants, even as her magic unzipped its zipper, and tugged down the... ah! There it was, free at last, rising to attention.

Both their hearts galloped in their chests as a delightful friction built between them. The soft, steady massage of Lyra’s wrist, coupled with a deft and precise touch of her trained telekinesis, helped encourage that part of Lero to perk up the rest of the way. Quivering in bliss, the human’s stiffness twitched, and Lero gave an instinctive roll of his hips. Lyra did not move to spear herself upon Lero, though she did rock herself back and forth against him, rubbing her soft fur against him while she magicked the pants the rest of the way off.

Lero fell backward when the waistband of his pants caught his foot, and the two of them rolled, clinging to each other, over the barren earth, onto the grass, until they splashed into the waters of the brook. For a moment, Lyra’s lips left Lero’s to laugh hysterically, a string of saliva still linking the both of them together. Lero made to get out of the shallow stream of water, but Lyra twisted around, repositioning herself above him with her tail in his face.

The sight of her eager sex winking in his face stopped him short. His breath quickened and grew heavier as her tail whipped back and forth invitingly, teasingly. She stepped forward a pace and lowered herself... mistakenly missing the mark in the flow of the water, so that his stiffness poked up from between the fine strands of her tail.

Both of them laughed. Lero moved to put his hands on her croup to help guide her, but before he could touch her, she tried again; this time, the head of his stiffness bumped against her clitoris, and she arched her back, letting out a long feminine moan. Grinning, he got a firm grip on himself and rubbed the two together. She seemed to enjoy that. He definitely did.

On her third effort, he entered her. Lyra threw back her head while clenching down on him, her sweet depths taking him all the way to the base. He bucked up eagerly into her; she ground back against him with a climbing whine. As tightly as she was gripping him, the end of his stiffness poked a slick wall within her again and again, and she cried out in greater and greater delight.

Lero saw the faint glow starting to form around her horn, and reached out to trace circles around her horn with his fingertips. Each jolt of exhilaration added to the rush of ecstasy, as he just held onto her haunches and thrust with ever-building vigor, until she clamped down with all her strength.

Sparks shot from her horn; smaller, less violent ones than Twilight's eruptions, but more delicate. Her nectar flowed down his shaft as Lero’s seed spattered her inner depths. As the climax ebbed away, Lyra actually took a breath and lay down flat against the shallow riverbed, her whole body sinking beneath the surface of the stream, lost in the glorious daze, letting the cool water ease her down. He stroked her velvety pelt, even as it billowed underwater.

Her head broke the surface. “That was... that was...” she gasped, turning a loving look back at her human. “Just like old times.”

Lero grinned at her. “Like the first time. After that you started showing me things Twilight doesn't know a horn can do. Ready for Round Two?”

“I’m ready for Round Seven,” Lyra told him. Then grinned. "But in the meantime, you've got fingerwork to do... and I may not have participated in all the fooling around on that movie set, but I learned a few new tricks by accident, anyhow."

And so Lero made love to Lyra, again and again. He tried not to think about what would come next, about Lyra joining in the masquerade of the Swap. Even if their true identities were intact, the Swap had altered them all the same.

Spike's jealousy.

Twilight Sparkle's guilt.

And Lero himself... the Swap had motivated him to find strength he hadn't known he had.

Both he and Lyra were fighters. They’d stand loyal and true for their herd in the face of this madness to the bitter end... ‘til they all died of old age, if need be. And yet, they relished this one last chance to forget all the rest of them and escape into each other. Before Lyra fully plunged into this chaos as well... and was changed forever. Just like himself.

* * *

The moon was out, as they both neared the house, some hours later.

“One more question,” Lyra asked quietly. “I have all those letters you mailed me hidden behind a dresser in your old house. Where are we hiding all the stuff like that?”

“Well, we had this special place in the basement, but a few days ago Spike came up with an even better idea. You know about his postal fire, right? Well, we wrote to Princess Celestia, and here’s the system we came up with: if we have something we don’t want Rarity seeing, Spike flame-mails it straight to Princess Celestia with the word 'Swap' posted on it, and she shuts it away in this special royal vault of hers. If we should happen to need it back, we send a regular letter asking for it.”

Lyra nodded. “Good. I’ll give the letters to Spike.”

It was Spike who answered the door when Lero knocked. “Lyra!” He opened his arms, and ran to hug her.

“Spike! Oh, it’s so good to see you, little brother!” she said, smiling as he squeezed her legs.

“Rarity’s been telling me all sorts of things about you!” Spike said. Is it true that you’ve been in a movie?! And fought with demons? And... and is that jet?”

She’d levitated her bag in front of his face. The young dragon reached in and pulled out a nugget of the supremely black gem.

“All yours! Dug it out, myself, from Aardvark Island! Dig in!” Lyra invited.

And so Spike ate it. “How’s it taste?” Lero asked.

“Kind of... like a weird hybrid of onyx and obsidian!” he said through a stuffed mouth, rolling the mineraloid in his cheeks.

“Is that good?” asked Lero.

“Oh, yeah!” said Spike, reaching in for another lump of jet. “Tastes excellent!”

His heavy crunching drew the attention of the other two unicorns in the house.

“Well, well, WELL! Where have YOU two been all this time?” If Rarity had had human arms, she’d have planted them on her hips in irritation. "A bit long for meditating, hmmm?" Rarity came up to Lyra and Lero, looking ready to reproach them, but then she stopped, nostrils working rapidly. She drew a little closer. Lero had a horrible certainty he knew what she was smelling off them, and so did Lyra, by the look of things.

The white unicorn gave them both a salacious sort of smile. “Oh, I see.”

“See what?” asked Lyra.

Twilight’s eyes flicked to Spike, who was listening in. “Spike? Why don’t you go eat those up in your bedroom?”

The little dragon took one look at the smile Rarity was sporting at Lero and Lyra and scampered upstairs.

“I see you’re wearing each other’s perfume,” said Rarity, once the dragon had shut his door. “I can tell you both did your best to wash it off, but I can still smell it.”

“What perfume?” asked Lero.

She circled around the two of them “You, my prince, are wearing what the Prench would call Eau de Oiseau Chanteur... and on you, Lyra, I smell Eau de Homme.”

Lero did not know either Prench or French, (which he was almost completely certain were analogues of each other,) but he had a very strong sense of what the weathermare was implying. Especially since Lyra, who did know Prench, went rigid at Rarity’s words.

...And they really HAD scrubbed themselves down hard in that brook!

“You went off by yourselves and didn’t even invite me to ‘meditate’ with you? Or Twilight? Hmm?”

Rarity’s tone was that of a friendly tease, her annoyance at being left at home without them for so long, so shortly after Lyra's return, vanishing in favor of teasing them about their indiscretion. But through the whole time she’d been talking, Lyra’s expression was serious, staring at the Rainbow Mark on Rarity’s flank, with a trembling lip. Finally, her lip quit trembling, and she met Rarity eye-to-eye.

“You’re right,” she told the white unicorn. “It was selfish of me to exclude you, Rarity. I’m truly sorry.”

To this, Rarity laughed. “Oh, Lyra, you sound so serious!”

“I am,” she told her humbly. “The truth is... Rarity, you’ve been on my mind constantly while I was on that trip. You and Lero both. Ever since I heard back from Twilight about that accident in the Bramblewood Forest.”

That took the wind out of Rarity’s sails. She turned around, facing away from all her herdmates . “I... I feel like I can never stop apologizing for what I did back there.”

“It wasn’t your fault, Rarity,” Lyra told her, coming up from behind.

“You’re too kind, Lyra, but...”

Lyra came over to look the white unicorn square in the eye. “Rarity, it WAS NOT your fault. What happened in Bramblewood was an ACCIDENT. When Lero was in trouble... you were the one there for him! You saved him! AND you survived! I mean, I heard that that spider nearly got the best of you at one point! I don’t know how we all would’ve lived with the grief if you had died there, so I’m just so glad to come home and still have four herdmates living in this house with me!” Then Lyra hugged Rarity around the neck. “And that letter you sent me was just so very heartfelt. I can’t even count the number of times I reread it!”

Lyra released the hug, taking in an emboldening breath. “So I’m sorry for keeping you all waiting. It really is good to be home! So if you’re ready, Rarity, I’d be happy to go up to go up to the bedroom with you and...”

“Actually, Lyra-my-love... would you believe I’m not in the mood right now?” The slightly downcast look in Rarity’s face was humbled and shy. "Despite your kind words — which I thank you dearly for — remembering that time doesn't exactly make me feel... enthusiastic." She looked back up at Lyra, her smile widening. “Although... one thing that’d make my night is... would you mind playing your clàrsach for me for a little while?”

Lyra stared in surprise between Dash’s old cutie mark and Rarity. “You want to hear my clàrsach?”

Twilight Sparkle and Lero shared a look, for they could understand Lyra’s confusion. Bach before the Swap, Rainbow Dash had loved Lyra well enough, but her harp had just never been her favorite cup of tea, nor Lyra’s penchant for soothing music. To the extent that Dash HAD a favorite musical instrument, it would’ve been the rock guitar.

“Oh, yes!” said Rarity. “I can only begin to imagine what sort of exotic melodies this journey of yours has inspired, and I’d love to hear them! If you’d like, I’d be happy to brew us all up a kettle of rooibos while we listen!”

“Rooibos?” Lyra repeated. While she remembered Lero's warning to expect a bit of Rarity's old personality to show itself, associating such a mellow activity as tea-drinking with Rainbow Dash was... a bit much.

She looked like she was about to say more, but before she could, there came a rapid, feverish hammering on the front door that just kept going. The type that suggested that starving wolves would soon be pouncing upon the knocker and savaging them.

Twilight Sparkle answered the door. “Rainbow Dash! You look...!”

The hyperventilating pegasus brushed right past her friend, eyes darting about wildly, until they fell upon Lero. Her front hooves rubbed against each other with a scraping sound, like Twilight’s rock golems. Small patches of her fur had gone missing, and there was the oddest smell on her body, foul and acrid, as if someone had eaten several pounds of lemons, then had gotten violently ill.

“Heeeeeeeeeey, Lero!” Her voice was cracked and jagged. She smiled the wide, unnatural smile of a girl whose only chance of being rescued from the burning building she was trapped in was pretending nothing was wrong. “Olllllllld buddy! Olllllllld pal! Bestest animal care friend evvvvvvvvver!”

“What’s wrong, Dash?” he cried. The wild juxtaposition of her appearance and words made a flurry of dire possibilities race through his mind. “What’s the matter?!”

The rainbow-maned pegasus was in his face so fast that he failed to track her movement. The whites of her eyes were clearly visible, showing a spiderweb of red veins. He could feel her sanity tumbling from them.

“Help me!” Rainbow Dash begged.

Author's Note

Big thanks to Rikmach, for his editing... but also for commissioning that amazing picture of Swapped Shadowbolt Rarity!

Also, SpinelStride, for helping me brainstorm ideas for Hushpuppy and Profound Koan.

You guys... just you WAIT for Chapter 18!

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Bonus Guest Chapter: Where The Heart Is

Foreword By Mike Teavee

Lero normally found her tendency to go off onto verbose analytical tangents somewhat cute, but considering the subject, all he could do was flatly inquire, "How long were you both at it for?" Almost managing to keep the bite of disgust out of his tone.

Not that Twilight seemed to notice. "Hours."

* * *

Let me begin by saying that I cannot take credit for this chapter of Divided Rainbow, although I was a key collaborator in its development.

Now let’s turn back the clock back a few chapters. Both on our side of the fourth wall... and poor, beleaguered Lero’s. Back to the last scene of Chapter Nine.

Although it is late at night, it is still the thirteenth day since the lives of Twilight’s five friends were cruelly rearranged by Starswirl’s unfinished spell. And boy has Day 13 been a busy one for Lero! He’s witnessed the Swapped Five fail at their new lives. Been baffled at how his neighbors share in the Swapped’s false memories. Fallen into drunken despair when his attempts to convince Rainbow Dash to come back to her real home backfired so horribly. And for the past several hours., Lero been transported to some topsy-turvy pocket of reality., which Discord had decided was the best place to explain Lero’s plight more clearly.

And upon being returned back to Equestria, and the entrance of his home, he opens the door to find Twilight Sparkle and Rarity at it like rabbits, right in the middle of the foyer.

Have I reset the stage? Excellent!

Shortly after posting this , I, Mike Teavee, got an interesting e-mail from one of my readers, named WolfeTrax. Wolfe was keen to know if I intended to go back and show everything that had occurred between Twilight and Rarity, during those hours that Lero had been in Discord’s company.

I told Wolfe I wasn’t. I explained that while I had a good general idea of how things had gone down between the two unicorns.... to do full justice to that story would’ve required an AWFUL lot of time and effort on my part. And as author, I was far more interested in moving Lero’s story forward and developing him as a hero than getting sidetracked by the past. Though I let Wolfe know that if HE wanted to write that side story himself, he was welcome to!

And to my tremendous surprise, Wolfe took me up on that offer! Although he let me know that he wanted to be as true to my story as he could, so he’d appreciate whatever guidance I could as Divided Rainbow’s author.

Once I picked my jaw off the floor and saw that WolfeTrax was truly serious about doing this, I developed an outline about how things had played out between Twilight Sparkle and Rarity.

Dear Reader, what you are about to read is the result of months of collaboration between me and WolfeTrax. He’s literally been working on this since the time that Chapter 9 first came out. And while I acted as the big Divided Rainbow authority, and provided guidance as creative consultant... all the blood, sweat and tears was WolfeTrax’s own.

Though it is a part of Divided Rainbow, this is Wolfe’s story, not mine. If not for him, this part of Twilight and Rarity’s story would’ve forever remained up to speculation. As for myself, I just feel gratified and honored to have inspired such a talented writer like Wolfe, and lucky to count him as one of my friends.

One more thing: I struggled with where to place this chapter within Divided Rainbow’s table of contents. Should it be before Chapter 9, to be more chronological? After Chapter 10, perhaps? For now, at least, I opted to place it right here.... though if you readers think it ought to be moved elsewhere, I’d love to hear it!

I strongly encourage you all to comment when you’ve finished reading this bonus chapter. Wolfe and I would both love to hear your thoughts!

And now... on with the show!

~ * ~

“Can I interest you in a sofa today as well, Miss Rarity?” the well-dressed earth pony asked as he carefully wrapped her purchase of quills and placed them in a small, sturdy wooden box. There was hope in the tan stallion’s eyes, fed as much by the day’s good fortune as by the hungry looks the lovely white unicorn had lavished on his wares.

Rarity smiled at the shop pony and turned her head to consider the collection of elegant sofas placed at intervals around the shop. There seemed to be quite a few sofa-sized vacancies between the ornate display cases of quills, but there were still several fine specimens available for sale. For Rarity, there was something utterly fascinating about sofas, something so exciting, so... dramatic! Oh, she was quite tempted, but—

“I’m afraid not today, my dear Davenport,” Rarity said. She held a distressed hoof to her white forehead, and then gave the shopkeeper a self-deprecating smile. “I’ve been running errands all day, and I have resolved never to shop for a sofa when my hooves are so tired. Perhaps another time.”

Davenport silently observed that Miss Rarity actually looked positively fresh and energetic, as she always did, but it would have been terribly bad form to contradict her just to push another sale.

“Ah, it’s just as well,” he said with a friendly smile. “That freak thunder storm that blew through here a while ago generated a lot of business for me, what with everypony running for shelter. Between them and all of these quills for Miss Twilight, I’m nearly out of stock now on just about everything!”

Rarity’s ears drooped slightly at the mention of the raging storm she had inadvertently caused earlier in the day, but she perked up again, cheered that at least one pony had appreciated her efforts.

“I am very happy to hear it,” she replied, and with a casual glow of magic picked up the quill box and a few small, paper-wrapped inkwells. She carefully fit the items into the very last bits of open space left in her well-packed saddle bags, and then latched the bags closed with a decisive snap. “Well, I must be off! Thank you once again, Davenport.”

“Thank you, Miss Rarity. It’s always a pleasure.”

With a wink and a carefully pleasant smile at the shopkeeper, Rarity trotted out of the Quills & Sofas shop and into the brightly sunlit street, intent now on finally heading toward Golden Oaks Library: her home.

Immediately outside the shop, however, she slowed to a careful walk as she took note of the detritus and puddles that still dotted the pale dirt roads of the town; the unfortunate remains of the morning’s storm. She stopped and looked far down the length of the shop- and tree-lined street, realizing that it was still simply covered with small pools of water that had collected on the uneven surface. The afternoon sun glinted bright reflections at her from each one, like a million small accusations.

Rarity’s white ears flattened out sadly again as her thoughts returned to the storm she had caused; so many ponies had seemed to react so terribly at her attempt to beautify the sky. And it had been such a fabulous sky! A unique checkered cloud pattern that she felt sure had never been seen in Ponyville before. So what if there had been a tiny bit of unscheduled rain as a result...?

But more importantly, she was reminded of seeing her Lero and Twilight run away from her in the midst of that storm, when she had expected them to be at home! What had they been doing out there, anyway? And why had they run away when she called to them? They were her herdmates, her lovers, and it had simply pierced her heart to know that they had been trying to hide from her.

As she thought it over, Rarity realized that there simply must be a good reason for their actions, and to be quite fair, it had been raining rather too hard for a polite conversation in the street. In any case, she could never remain unhappy for very long when she thought of how much her herdmates loved her, all the happiness they all brought to each other every day. She felt a warm glow spread through her, and smiled as she stepped forward again.

Without the slightest care, Rarity soon began trotting with a quick, happy cadence of muffled hoof falls that seemed to expertly avoid even the smallest puddles of rainwater, leaves, and small branches that lay in the street. Not a drop of water or spec of dirt or debris seemed to land on her lovely marshmallow coat or amethyst mane and tail as she made her way home.

With an easy leap over a particularly large, reflective pool, her thoughts fell again to her herdmates, and she realized unexpectedly that she missed Lyra and hoped that she was doing well. But inevitably her thoughts turned quickly and naturally to her Sparkle-kitten and especially to her stallion, Lero.

There was nothing wrong with having favorites among her herd, was there? After all, Twilight had been one of her best friends for years before they had ever become lovers and herdmates. And Lero... she’d fallen in love with him long before those wonderful, beautiful, first kisses in the movie theater had ever happened, long before they had become a herd together.

Lero. He was the absolute center of her life, truly her soulmate.

Rarity’s breath caught in her throat, and – distracted as she rounded a corner – she stepped heavily through a large mud puddle and slipped and nearly fell. But even then she hardly noticed at all as she straightened up and kept trotting toward the library, now completely lost in thoughts of her stallion.

She realized with trembling heart and breath, for perhaps the hundredth time that day, how very close she had come to losing Lero forever in simply the most horrifying way imaginable. Possibilities swirled in her mind; if she hadn’t found him in time, if she’d been too weak, or too slow, or if she’d been any other pony except perhaps for Twilight, her greatest love would now be dead. And she knew in her heart that if she’d lost him, it would have broken her.

But she hadn’t lost him! He was alive, and he was growing stronger every day! His voice had yet to return, but Rarity felt confident that Twilight would find a way to help Lero. But what mattered most was that he was alive, and that he loved her. That thought grew as a tender warmth as the white unicorn finally neared her home – their home – and the pace of her hooves weaving through the damp street quickened until at last she stood by the front door of the house next to the great oak tree of the public library.

Rarity’s heart beat faster at the prospect of seeing Lero – and Twilight, of course! – but out of habit she forced herself to give her appearance a once-over. A lady must always be presentable.

The mostly-white unicorn looked down at herself with a mien colored in slight disappointment. Well considering the state of the streets, she’d made it home with remarkably little damage, but still her appearance was far from acceptable. Tiny patches of mud clung to her hooves and legs, and she was certain that she felt spots of the stuff dotting her stomach. She was also positive that she could feel the extra weight of it in her tail.

She refused to allow her herdmates see her in this dreadful fashion!

Rarity’s horn lit with a confident blue aura, and with a look of practiced concentration, she sent a sphere of that blue magic swirling in the air before her. It shot out of her sight as it began to skim gently over every inch of her white form and brilliant purple mane and tail, and she giggled a little at the ticklish sensation of it. It quickly accelerated and in moments the sphere flew with such blur of speed over and around her features that for a few brief moments she appeared to be glowing in a lovely light-blue aura. And then just as quickly it was hovering in the air before her, a small blue-tinted sphere of debris and mud and water. After a brief inspection of her now pristine coat and mane and tail, she allowed herself a well-earned smile of satisfaction and then launched the sphere away, watching as it sped far off and fell into a distant green field.

Finally, she was home!

Rarity used her magic once again to open the door and she stepped into the foyer, happily calling out to her herdmates.

~ * ~

“Lero? Twilight? I’m home!” Rarity sang sweetly as she stepped in, setting her saddle bags and the large shopping bags off to the side of the foyer. Spike could take care of them later, as usual!

She felt a little foolish at the obviousness of her statement, but the five members of her happy family had all gotten into the habit of announcing themselves as they entered the house. It was an unfortunate reality that some ponies had decided to make themselves enemies of Lero – and consequently, of his herd – so it seemed the better part of wisdom to exercise a little caution. All things considered, this was probably the most dangerous household in Ponyville to enter without a proper announcement.

“Hello! Lero? Twilight?” A little disappointment crept into Rarity’s voice. “Well, where is everypony?”

“We’re in the study, Rarity!” Twilight’s muffled shout called down the hallway.

The white unicorn’s face broke into a sweet smile as she heard Twilight’s call, and she opened her saddlebag and extracted the purchase from Quills and Sofas – along with a little blue drawstring pouch – and swiftly made her way down the hallway. Her purchases and her happy amethyst tail bobbed in the air behind her.

With a gentle nudge of magic, she pushed open the door to Twilight’s study and stepped into the room, sweeping her searching gaze left and right.

The large dark-paneled room was very nearly a small library, comfortably lined with ceiling-high oak book cases, a small table, and reading lamps and chairs, and it was warmly lit from the window and a skylight that Lero had installed. Against the far wall, Twilight Sparkle sat nearly dwarfed by a massive, ornate oaken desk – a unique gift from her mentor, Princess Celestia – which was covered with books and scrolls and the sad remains of balled parchment pages and broken quills.

Spike worked at the opposite wall to Rarity’s right, standing on a chair and sorting and placing yet another large selection of books into the shelf stack. Twilight was frequently in the habit of rearranging the contents of her personal library to suit the dynamic nature of her subjects of study. So today, the shelves were being lined with everything that had anything to do with cutie marks; a wealth of good fortune apparently brought about by constant new book requests from the Cutie Mark Crusaders.

The little purple dragon turned as Rarity entered the room, and his young face lit with a smile when he saw her.

“Hi, Rarity!”

“Why hello, Spike! Would you be an absolute dear and take care of my bags in the foyer when you’re finished here?” she asked.

The dragon’s whole demeanor seemed to droop dramatically. “Oh. Yeah. Sure Rarity, I can get that for you.” With that he turned morosely back to the bookcase.

Oops! She hadn’t meant to hurt his feelings. But she knew just the thing to cheer him up!

Rarity quickly moved over to Spike and surprised him with a gentle nuzzle and a quick little kiss against his cheek, and his eyes lit like stars as he quickly grabbed her neck in a tight hug.

“Thank you, Spikey-wikey! You really already are such a dear.” She pulled away a little as she floated a small blue felt bag over to him and pressed it gently into his claw. She turned her head to look at Twilight – who was still far too engrossed in her studies to look up – and looked back at the young dragon.

“Star sapphires,” she whispered with a conspiratorial smile, “for later.”

Spike grinned widely, turning a quick look back at Twilight, and then mouthed ‘thank you’ and gave Rarity a thumbs-up. The white pony winked playfully at him and then turned to move across the room.

As Rarity slowly approached Twilight, her heart went out to her lavender herdmate. The way she sat hunched at the desk, hovering over a large tome – so completely absorbed in her work – it was plain to see that Twilight was suffering, terribly over-worked and over-stressed. She hadn’t even noticed as Rarity stood next to her and floated the inkpots and box of quills down to the desk! Clearly this latest project of Princess Celestia’s was taking it’s toll, and the white unicorn truly began to worry. She knew from long experience how Twilight could study, and study, and obsess until at last something broke... She wanted – no, needed – to find a way to help her sweet love and herdmate!

Rarity reached out a hoof to gently set it against Twilight’s lavender shoulder, and Twilight flinched and squeaked loudly in surprise at Rarity’s touch. The white mare’s smile at her lover’s complete adorableness faltered as Twilight turned to look at her with oceans of sadness and failure pooled deep in her soul; this was far worse than she had thought.

“Oh my poor Twilight! You — I’m very sorry, my dear, but you look simply dreadful!”

Twilight smiled sardonically. “Oh thanks a lot Rarity, I — oof!”

The white pony flung her forelegs aggressively around Twilight’s neck.

“Rarity!”

“You are so stiff, Twilight! What’s wrong? I refuse to let you go until you relax! You know that I care about you and I only wish to help you.”

Twilight weakly struggled to release herself from the other pony’s tight grip, but Rarity was unusually strong and she had far more energy than Twilight expected. She was an unstoppable force against a creampuff lavender pony.

“I... Rarity!”

“Not. Letting. Go. And that’s my final offer!”

She doesn’t know, Twilight reminded herself. Besides, she’s my friend. She’d try to help me anyway. And sheesh, she really isn’t letting go.

Twilight sighed heavily, and in another moment she brought her hooves up to wrap them around Rarity’s smooth white neck. At last she allowed her body to relax and then gave in completely and pressed herself into Rarity’s warm hug.

“Okay,” she sighed again. She found herself snuggling even harder into her amethyst-maned friend. “I’m sorry, Rarity. I guess I really do need this.”

“That’s much better,” the white unicorn cooed softly. “I am here for you, darling. I love you, Twilight. And I want to help you in any way I can.” She stroked the lavender mare’s dark, striped mane tenderly. “Please let me help you! There’s no need for you to be alone in this.”

“You — you love me?” Twilight stammered as she pulled back to stare with shock into her friend’s eyes. “Rarity...”

The bright sound of polished gemstones striking the table and floor behind them instantly drew their eyes to Spike, who leapt to the floor and began nervously picking up the gemstones.

“Errr, sorry! Sorry Twilight. Sorry, Rarity,” Spike said, quickly turning his face away. Rarity might have missed it, but Twilight had no doubt of the look on the young dragon’s face; surprise and... a bit of anger.

Rarity reached up a hoof and gently but firmly turned her herdmate’s head back to the discussion.

“Of course I love you, Twilight,” Rarity assured quietly, sounding more than a little hurt. “After all we’ve been through, falling in love together, with Lero, with Lyra, forming our herd... How could you possibly doubt me? Have I done something wrong, Twilight?”

“I’m so sorry, Rarity. I — I know that you... you love me, and no you haven’t done anything wrong! I guess I’m just so stressed that I’m not thinking straight.”

A solid thock of something hard hitting a wood surface rang in the room, and Twilight turned again to see Spike facing away from her, a small blue felt bag clutched in a clawed death-grip against the table.

“Spike! Please be quiet! This is important!"

“Rarity, I really don’t think there’s anything you can do to help me, honestly,” Twilight continued. Her gaze over Rarity’s shoulder rested on the cutie mark on her friend’s flank. Dash’s cutie mark. She tried desperately to hide the sadness that was quickly building in her again, and hoped that her cutie-mark-confused friend wouldn’t push her any harder. “Lero’s already helping me as much as he can...”

Rarity released Twilight from the hug at last, but not without an affectionate caress of her hoof against the young mage’s shoulder. “Twilight, where is Lero?” she asked anxiously, looking briefly towards the rest of the house. “I haven’t seen him since... well, since this morning when you both ran away from me.”

Twilight felt the sting of accusation pierce her, more from the sincere hurt she heard in her friend’s voice than from any rebuke. The young unicorn had never felt more clearly and painfully how every action – every word she’d spoken since she’d uttered that damned incantation – had produced more than just a simple reaction; her words and actions resonated, creating problems that grew like overlapping waves that threatened to engulf not just her, but her friends and loved ones as well!

She took a deep breath, trying to calm her growing stress, and decided to tell Rarity something as close to the truth as possible. “Lero was out helping me with Starswirl’s spell, Rarity, and honestly; we were just in a hurry. Plus, well... it was raining so hard and we really couldn’t stay and talk. I’m very sorry about that. We really didn’t mean to hurt your feelings.” She leaned in and cautiously nuzzled Rarity’s cheek, and sighed in relief as she felt that soft white cheek press back against her with clear affection.

“That’s quite alright, my dear,” Rarity said. She smiled and nuzzled Twilight back. “I do have the oddest feeling that I should perhaps apologize for that storm this morning,” she added with a hint of guilt in her voice, “although I was simply doing my job.”

Doing your job? Twilight sat back down in her chair, hiding her confused look with a hoof against her face. But you’re not a weather pony... And the clouds were in a checkered pattern... Oh my gosh. Fashionista. Weather pony. Of course! Suddenly Twilight felt like screaming. Is every single conversation with Rarity going to be this difficult?

Twilight very, very carefully said nothing.

“Well, in any case!” Rarity said brightly, sure and confident of herself again in an instant. “Where is Lero, Sparkle-kitten? Is our princely stallion not at home?”

Sparkle-kitten? I refuse to feel at all warm and fuzzy about that! This is Rarity. Not warm and fuzzy at all. No!

“Um, he actually stepped out hours ago, Rarity, and he didn’t really say anything about what he was doing or when he’d be back.” Well, that’s the truth, at least. “Oh! I forgot to tell you; I was able to bring his voice back. He can talk again!”

Rarity gasped, and her ears perked up and her blue eyes grew wide with excitement. Her tail began to swish back and forth. “Why that’s tremendous news, darling! I absolutely knew that you could do it! Oh my, now I’m even more anxious to see him! I do miss him terribly, already. I’ve so missed his voice, and his incredibly smooth skin, and those glorious flanks of his... And it’s been so very long since, well—”

Bang!

The sharp sound of books being slammed into wood shelves behind them distracted the white weather pony not at all.

“—since I’ve felt our lovely stallion’s gentle touch, Twilight. Well since we all have, to be fair,” the white mare smirked playfully. “In fact the last time I even felt him so close, aside from that lovely kiss we shared in the hospital, was as we flew east together from Ponyville.”

BANG!

“Spike!” Twilight hissed at the angry young dragon. Rarity hardly seemed to notice.

“You should have seen us, Twilight! It was simply magical! Me with my absolutely stunning gossamer wings, flying high above with our stallion astride my back—”

BANG! BANG! BANG!

“Spike!!” Twilight growled ominously and threw him a deadly look.

“—covering me quite to distraction, I should say. I would much rather not dwell on the events that followed that! But our sweet Lero is now safe and whole. I do hope you will join me with Lero when he returns tonight, Sparkle-kitten,” Rarity purred, giving the now wide-eyed lavender mare a sultry, frighteningly seductive look, “because I fully intend to find out precisely how healed our sweet stallion truly is!”

“AHHHHHHHH!” Spike screamed, and the unicorns turned instantly to watch in horror as the unassuming young dragon began to blast the books on the table before him with the full green fury of true dragon’s breath. In a few seconds he’d already burned entirely through the two closest books on different stacks, before Twilight overcame her surprise and reacted.

“SPIKE!” Twilight shouted, and in an instant she cast a spherical spell of fire suppression that wrapped around him and the surrounding area, a spell strong enough to extinguish the young dragon’s breath and the green flames eating rapidly through the burning tomes.

Rarity was in shock. She’d never seen her sweet little Spikey-wikey so angry before!

Twilight was absolutely furious! She quickly ran up to the little dragon, who was still safely wrapped in the fire suppression spell, and she let him have it with the full fury of all her pent-up stress.

“Spike! What were you doing?! You’ve completely destroyed these books!” she shouted at the cringing young dragon, pointing at the smoking remains with an angry hoof. “The answer to Starswirl’s spell might have been in these books, Spike! And now we’ll never know! Do you realize what you’ve done?!”

Spike’s little dragon face was a mask of childish shame and regret. “I’m really sorry, Twilight, I just—”

“I don’t want to hear it, Spike!” Twilight shouted at the top of her voice, screeching with renewed pain and distress. “Just go to your room and go to bed! And don’t come out at all until I come to get you. Do you understand me?”

Tears started to rim the young dragon’s eyes. “But — but it’s still afternoon, Twilight!”

Twilight shook her head angrily and dissipated the now useless spell, then tromped up to Spike and shoved her angry face right into his and stomped her hoof on the wooden floor with every bitten syllable.

“I. Don’t. Care. Spike! Go to bed. NOW!!”

Without a look at Twilight or Rarity, a teary-eyed Spike slipped down the chair and onto the floor, and then quietly walked out the door of the study. Twilight watched his small form intently as he left, and listened carefully until she heard the door to his room slam shut far down the hallway, near the library.

Twilight almost seemed to have forgotten Rarity was even there, at least for a few moments. She made her way back to the huge ornate desk and quietly sat down to lay her head down between her sadly folded arms. The distressed young unicorn quietly began to sob even as she felt her friend’s hoof gently rubbing her back.

~ * ~

The stench of incinerated parchment filled the study, a smell that seemed to compete with the haze of acrid smoke to see which one would win out over pony senses first.

In Rarity’s opinion it was clearly a tie. As she continued to rub her calming hoof against Twilight Sparkle’s soft neck and withers, she brought her magic to bear on the large window and the skylight high above, opening them both as wide as possible. With another soft touch of magic, she wove a spell that brought a gentle breeze in through the open window and guided it in a circuitous path through the room – touching on every corner, nook, and hidden space – and then pushed the polluted air up and out the skylight. After a few brief minutes the terrible smell had almost entirely disappeared.

“There,” the weather pony said quietly, with a hint of pride. “That’s so much better!” She knew that traces of the odor would linger on books and walls and other surfaces for a few days, but there was only so much that weather magic could do. This would be good enough for now, and the less of a reminder to her distraught herdmate, the better.

After a few minutes under Rarity’s gentle touch, Twilight’s heavy sobs between her arms subsided at last to long, quiet breaths. The white mare took this as a good sign, and began to lightly massage her hooves into the other mare’s back. She knew that she could use her magic to greater effect, but the touch of comforting hooves was much more close and personal and important right now. Rarity smiled as Twilight’s quiet moans of pleasure proved her right.

“I’m very worried for you, Twilight,” Rarity said softly, finally breaking the silence. “I’ve never seen you so harsh with poor Spike before! You’re carrying far too much of a burden, love, and I want to help you.”

“I know, and I’m so sorry about that—”

Rarity pressed a little harder into the her herdmare’s shoulders, moved her hooves over half an inch and then dug in right there, where she always carried the most tension.

“Oh!” the lavender unicorn gasped, and then groaned loudly as Rarity continued to expertly rub out that stubborn knot of muscle. “That’s — oh my gosh, how did you know about that...?”

“What ever do you mean, darling? I’ve done this for you a thousand times, before,” she said. “Just relax. It’s quite obvious that you need this.”

She moved her hooves slowly up Twilight’s neck, skillfully pressing her hooves into the tight knots and ropes of tense muscle, touching secret little places one after another, until the young mare’s gasps and groans of relief had almost seemed to become her only means of expression.

“Oh, Rarity, this feels so good! Thank you so much...”

“It’s always my pleasure, Twilight. I adore helping to calm your nerves in any way I can,” Rarity purred in her ear. “And you know how much I enjoy hearing your enthusiasm for my efforts.”

Rarity leaned in and placed a gentle kiss behind Twilight’s ear, smiling as she heard the tiniest gasp from the purple mare. Still maintaining her massage down the other mare’s arms, she brought her lips across that lovely striped mane to the base of Twilight’s other, twitching ear, and nuzzled and kissed it. Encouraged by another little gasp of pleasure, she slowly moved her lips up the length of that soft-furred lavender ear, encircled the tip with her lips, and bit down gently. She giggled at Twilight’s adorable little squeak of surprise.

“Ah! Rarity, what are you...” Twilight whispered breathlessly. Her friend playfully nibbled on the lavender ear again. “Ooooh.”

“Hmmm? Yes, love? Are you feeling better, now?” Her lover started to tremble as Rarity caressed and pulled aside her dark mane and began to paint slow kisses and sweet little bites along the part at her mane and lavender coat.

Twilight groaned. Oh stars, I can’t let this happen! This is Rarity!

“Ah! I’m... sorry, Rarity. I need...”

“What do you need, Sparkle-kitten?” Rarity whispered hotly. She pressed her lips to the soft fur at the base of her beautiful lavender mare’s horn, and Twilight forgot almost everything as a spark of intense pleasure thrilled through her.

“TEA!” Twilight yelled, shoving backwards in a panic.

Startled, Rarity leapt back as Twilight launched from her chair and landed on all fours in front of the desk, breathing in great shaking gasps and blushing like a solar flare.

The two mares looked at each other with wide eyes and quivering breaths; one confused, panicked, and breathless, and the other extremely confused and a good deal more frustrated.

“Twilight! What—”

“I’m so sorry, Rarity!” Twilight gasped, lifting her head to shoot the white mare a nearly panicked look. Her hooves began to spin her slowly in a tight, nervous circle – which in other circumstances would have been unbearably cute to Rarity – as she clearly struggled for the right words to say in her embarrassment.

“I’m just so — wound up! Obviously, right? I think some tea would help. So I’m going to go make some tea! Right now. Would you like some tea? I’ll make us some tea!”

With that Twilight turned and ran from the room, leaving a bewildered and quite frustrated marshmallow weather pony in her wake.

~ * ~

Rarity stood for a moment in the study, catching her breath and trying to make sense of... Everything, damn it!

Twilight’s behavior lately was maddening! And certainly quite... frustrating! She almost felt like heading upstairs to their bedroom to take care of herself, something she hadn’t actually needed to do since she’d become herd-bound. But she would wait; Twilight needed her, and she would be terribly selfish to satisfy her own small needs when somepony she loved stood alone and hurt and helpless.

There seemed to be little she could do to help with Twilight’s actual problems, whatever they were, though she resolved to try her best.

But failing that, Rarity knew exactly what she might do to relieve her lover’s stress. It was a pleasing gift she wanted for Twilight, and quite strongly needed to give to her; something of herself. Anything, everything, all for her. It felt right, and she knew that it would work... if only she could find a way to break through Twilight’s wall of stress and doubt enough to help her.

Quite resolved, now, she trotted purposefully out of the room and headed down to the kitchen.

Her Twilight needed her.

~ * ~

Rarity made her way down the stairs to the kitchen and paused in the doorway for a moment, looking in.

A burst of bright colors caught her eye as she walked down to the entry. On a counter next to the door stood a small dust-covered ceramic figurine about fetlock-tall that she’d seen that morning. The absurd tackiness of the piece made her lips curl in disdain. The object appeared to be some wildly colorful approximation of a pony, and she wondered why it was here at all; she felt sure that nopony who lived in this household would ever admit to owning it, not even Spike. Ignoring it, she moved her gaze to where it should be.

Her beautiful lavender mare sat with surprising calm at the kitchen table, and Rarity watched her for a long moment as she idly stared into space and played a hoof through her striped mane.

Rarity’s eyes moved to fall on the silent tea kettle sitting atop a lit burner on stove, and Twilight somehow caught her friend’s little smile as it appeared.

“What?” Twilight said with a nervous grin. Rarity felt some relief and more than a little love wash through her at that fragment of a smile.

“Well, darling, clearly your attempts to not watch the pot aren’t quite working,” Rarity said playfully, and then cursed herself for an idiot when Twilight’s face fell.

Lovely work, Rarity! Perhaps you should simply call your lover a complete failure to destroy her self-esteem even more quickly next time!

“Well, you were looking at it,” Twilight admonished with sniff. “Besides, that’s just an old mare’s tale, Rarity. It just hasn’t reached—”

“—a boiling temperature of 100 degrees. Yes Twilight, I know.”

The lavender mare’s surprised look confused Rarity, and they stared at each other for a moment. Rarity finally tilted her head in amusement.

“Twilight, aside from the fact that it’s tea and the water must boil, it’s water.” Rarity pointed a delicate hoof to her white chest proudly. “Weather pony, darling.”

Twilight's ears drooped a little. “Oh yeah. That.”

Rarity sighed. She had no idea what Twilight had meant by that, but clearly she was continuing to fail quite miserably in her attempt to cheer up her herdmate. She stepped into the room and walked over to the mare, cautiously nuzzling her lavender cheek and ear. The white pony let out a breath of obvious relief to feel that nuzzle returned against her own cheek, and she smiled and sat down next to her herdmate.

The two ponies turned to look at the stove as sound began to stir from inside the kettle, a universal sizzling and popping that alerted one that their tea water would soon be hot enough, seeing as nopony had been watching the kettle at that moment.

“Well, at least the magic of boiling water still seems to be performing as a universal constant,” Twilight observed, her voice thick with morose sarcasm.

“Yes, it does appear so,” Rarity said nervously. Her voice took on a soft tone. “And speaking of magic, Twilight... I wish to help you.” She took one of the lavender mage’s unresisting hooves in her own and held it tightly. “But my dear, I’m afraid that I have absolutely no idea how to help you solve this problem of yours, and it breaks my heart to see you hurting so much.”

“I... I don’t know what to tell you, Rarity. It’s not really something you could truly understand and help with. I think I may be the only one who can do it.” Twilight gave a sad, goofy little self-conscious smile for just a moment as she pointed a hoof at herself. “Magic pony.”

Rarity felt her heart stir at that little smile, and couldn’t help smiling back. She wanted to see that smile become wide enough to please even Fluttershy.

“Fair enough. But... try me! What is this about, my dear?”

A low whistle atop the stove came to life and made a slow climb in pitch until Twilight’s magic lifted the tea kettle from the stove and turned off the heat. She levitated the kettle to the table, and the two mares set about making their tea.

Rarity let the conversation rest for a few minutes to allow Twilight to enjoy her tea as she always had, but soon enough she was anxious to press on.

“Twilight, what is this all about?” she began again, softly. “Is it about that old spell that the Princess sent to you? The... Starswirl spell?”

“I, well... yes. Kind of,” Twilight responded, surprised that Rarity had remembered that much. Her eyes shifted away from her friend’s, and she said nothing else. To Rarity, the young mage’s sips from her mug began to feel like an excuse for silence.

“I see. And what is it supposed to do?”

Rarity was surprised to see Twilight’s whole demeanor change in an instant. The pain in her eyes returned with startling swiftness, her ears drooped limply, and her head fell.

“I honestly don’t know yet what this spell's supposed to do, Rarity. I don't think Celestia does, either.”

The white mare looked shocked. “Princess Celestia sent you an ancient spell to fix for her, and she doesn’t know what it even does? Twilight, that could be quite dangerous!”

“I know that, Rarity,” Twilight said, and her face now showed the depression and strain that Rarity had witnessed in the study.

“I saw several books on cutie marks in your study,” Rarity pressed, “and I thought they might be there because of the children, the Cutie Mark Crusaders. But they aren’t, are they? Is this about cutie marks?”

Oh my gosh, no! She’s getting too close!

“I... Maybe! I don’t know for sure! Rarity, I told you that you can’t help me. This is something only I can do, okay? So please just stop!” She slammed her tea cup down, sloshing hot liquid onto the wooden table.

“But Twilight, why is this spell so important? What could it possibly do that would be worth doing this to you?” she asked, pointing her stressed hoof at Twilight.

“I told you I don’t know, Rarity!” Twilight shouted, yanking her hoof from the white pony’s grasp. She jumped up and moved away from the table, backing away from Rarity toward the doorway with ears folded back and long dark tail swishing angrily like a whip. “I don’t even know what it’s supposed to do when it’s working! Just leave me alone, alright? There’s nothing you can do to help!”

Rarity realized at last that she’d pushed Twilight far too hard. She stood up from her chair, trying desperately to find the right words to bring Twilight back to the table, back to that tiny amount of peace she’d had. But her words failed again.

“Twilight, please don’t go! You’re not alone! I’m only—”

“I really have to get back to work, Rarity! There’s just no time!”

The distressed mare backed into the counter at the doorway, and before the pressure against her wildly whipping tail could even register, she’d swept the figurine off the counter. Twilight turned her eyes to the counter and then looked down as the figurine plunged to the floor. She had only a brief instant to glimpse it whole and falling just above the hard wood floor; there was no time to think of casting a spell or to even ignite her aura to do so.

The figurine struck the floor with the distinct sound of glass striking floorboards. An explosion of hundreds of colored ceramic shards flared in a random star of rays across the kitchen floor.

“No!” Twilight cried with a look of horror.

“Oh my! Twilight—”

“What have I done, Rarity?”

The white unicorn looked into Twilight’s eyes and saw something she’d seen few times, when they’d been merely good friends; Twilight was spiraling into a frightening breakdown.

“Twilight, darling, it’s only a thing!” Rarity reasoned quickly. “It doesn’t matter enough to hurt yourself over!”

“Rarity, it was Pearl’s.”

The tiniest sliver of hope lit and died in Twilight’s heart as Rarity stared back at her with complete incomprehension.

“Pearl’s. Y— Applejack’s... mother.”

“Oh, well that certainly explains things, Twilight, and I do apologize, but that little sculpture was horrendously gaudy! I’m sure that a fashion mare of Applejack’s caliber would never miss such a thing.”

The young mage shook her head in denial, still feeling the world spin around her as she kicked at useless broken pieces. On impulse she brought her magic to play and quickly corralled the shards from the kitchen floor, lifting and floating them together to drop them into a sickly mottled pile on the table. There was no possible way to repair this; she could spend days trying to piece it back together, but it would only work as well as anything shattered and glued back together would.

Shattered. Like my friends. Her eyes were wide and began to fill with tears as she stared at her broken friend.

“No, Rarity, you’re wrong,” Twilight said. “It was very special to Pearl... and Applejack, even as gaudy as it is. Was.”

She stared down at the broken pieces, lifting up the upper half of the figurine’s head up with her magic.

“Pearl lost it about two weeks ago, and had been asking ponies all around town if they’d seen it. I happened to find the figurine beneath a tree, of all places. So I went straight to Pearl’s house to return it to her... only to find that she and Magnum had gone on vacation for a month. So I left a a note in her mailbox saying her figurine was at my house, and she should come pick it up when she had returned from her vacation.”

“You should’ve given the figurine to Applejack and had her hold onto it for you.”

“Yeah,” agreed Twilight, dropping the ceramic piece back with the rest of the fragments she’d have to return to Pearl. “I should’ve.”

“Twilight—”

“I am so worthless, Rarity!” Twilight cried softly. She took a faltering step and fell back on her haunches against the counter, holding a trembling hoof hard to her chest. Her eyes stared down intently at the floor as though searching for something whole to save her from her pain. “I’m such a worthless, horrible pony, and I don’t even deserve to cast a magic spell! I hurt my friends! I hurt them so much and there’s nothing I can do to help them!”

Rarity stepped up to Twilight and quietly rested her head over the sobbing unicorn’s shoulder, pressing into her for the comfort of her touch, only to be there for her. She felt some hope when Twilight reached an arm up and wrapped it over her withers, and soon they were hugging each other tightly.

For a long while she stroked Twilight’s neck and back with her hoof, content to just let the lavender mare cry softly into her shoulder, and thankful to feel her calming down at last in their embrace.

“My dear, sweet pony,” the white weather pony finally whispered, “I admit that I don’t understand everything that’s happening with you, but no matter what you believe, don’t you ever forget that I am your friend. And that means I’m here for you, Twilight Sparkle.”

She felt Twilight’s hug grow tighter around her, and then felt the lavender mare give a brief nod against her neck. “Okay, Rarity. I know that. I know you’re here for me. Thank you.”

Rarity was surprised to feel a shy, soft kiss against her neck, nuzzled up beneath her amethyst mane, and she sighed and smiled. She returned the kiss to Twilight’s slender neck in kind and then tightened her hold around her mare.

The white unicorn didn’t want to take a chance on pushing Twilight; the fact that her tears were gone didn’t mean that she wasn’t still in pain, and Rarity didn’t want to chance her lover spinning out of control again because of her own selfish desires. She expected their close contact to end, and for Twilight to return to her study, alone and tense and studious as always.

But she didn’t.

Instead, the lavender mare placed another, longer kiss against Rarity’s withers, almost as a fragile question drawn on her skin. And then a tiny, unmistakable nibble against her coat... followed by an unmistakable soft, nervous giggle at Rarity’s squeak of surprise.

Little imp, Rarity thought. I certainly cannot let that go unanswered, can I?

She nuzzled along Twilight’s neck, drew a very specific little tuft of dark silken mane between her teeth, and gave a soft yank.

“Eek! Hey!” Twilight squealed. Rarity pulled at her mane again, this time slower and much harder, until the lavender mare gasped and pulled herself hard into Rarity’s white neck. Rarity released her lover’s mane and pressed a tender kiss just beneath that sensitive spot. She stroked her hoof along Twilight’s mane, intent on not pushing her at all. But she could lead her sweet lavender herdmare into her own decision.

“That was... really nice,” Twilight whispered with a shivering breath.

Rarity smiled and hugged her a little tighter for a moment, waiting, hopeful that her lavender mare would make another move, give her another sign that she wanted... more. She could feel Twilight’s heart beating against her, now even faster as she felt a hoof brush slowly down her side and soft lips press tentatively into her neck.

The white mare allowed a pleased sigh to escape her lips, a little groan barely a tenth of the intensity she felt. Her amethyst tail twitched with energy, wanting to sway and spread the scent of her arousal through the air, but she held it back with another groan of pained restraint. Finally she pressed her chin into the other mare’s neck, and stroked a hoof down her side to her flank. Twilight gasped at the touch and stretched her hoof down Rarity’s side, but in a moment she pulled her hoof back and held it against Rarity’s chest, so gently that she might almost be feeling for Rarity’s heartbeat.

Let me up, her eyes and gentle hoof seemed to say.

Rarity released her hold on Twilight and stepped back, quickly helping the pastel mare up to her hooves. Twilight stood before her, eyes wide and breath harsh and tail thrashing the air, and before she could even think about it, Rarity pressed forward and kissed her. Twilight closed her eyes as Rarity’s lips pressed into hers, and a little mewl of need and desire escaped her throat as she felt her friend’s hoof on her lavender cheek and her tongue pressed hard into her mouth.

Her pale coat shivered, and she could hardly breathe! She felt that lovely tongue slide against hers and she pushed her own tongue hard into her lover’s mouth and she opened her eyes and oh goddess she was kissing Rarity and she wanted more, oh she wanted to taste her. And then she was pushing Rarity away and sliding next to her and kissing hard down her neck and nipping her lovely white coat down toward that gorgeous tail, and wow, oh gosh Rarity was doing the same to her and Celestia it felt so good—

And then she saw that cloud-and-rainbow-lightning-bolt of Dash’s cutie mark set against Rarity’s perfect, lovely white flank, and it was wrong.

An intense feeling of betrayal flooded through Twilight’s heart and she froze solid, staring breathlessly at that cutie mark, until Rarity impatiently nipped hard at the stars on her own flank. Twilight squeaked in surprise, and with almost no thought, she ignited her aura and with a flash of amethyst light, teleported out and away from Rarity.

Rarity growled loudly with an intense frustration she felt from her ready wet sex to the tip of her horn as her lover suddenly vanished in a colorful flash.

“Twilight! You little devil!” she shouted, laughing in surprise at her lover’s playfulness. “Oh it is SO on!”

Rarity called up her own formidable magic and scanned their home, pinpointing precisely where Twilight had teleported to, and then with a flash of pale blue light, followed her.

~ * ~

Twilight stood in her study, head down and panting and shaking, assailed by the smell of burned parchment and conflicted by emotions that pushed and shoved for her attention. Her body shivered and her tail twitched with the intense desire Rarity had set burning in her... No! She’d almost done that, herself! But her heart was so tight with—

She felt it before she heard the sound, but her disbelief paralyzed her long enough to see the flash and hear that pure distinctive sound of chiming bells followed by that pop of air displacement she knew so well.

Princess?!

Her face didn’t even have time to color with embarrassment at her tutor’s extraordinary bad timing—

Rarity flashed in right behind Twilight only a few seconds after her, grinning in triumph. She saw Twilight’s cute, shocked look and took full advantage of it by clamping her teeth gently into the mare’s cute lavender butt. Oh she smelled wonderful but that was only secondary to the elation she felt at catching Twilight completely by surprise and hearing that absolutely adorable squeak she made.

“Rarity! How did you—” Twilight furrowed her brow severely and whipped her tail in Rarity’s face, then she jumped away with a flash and a pop that forced Rarity’s white ears to fold down for a moment.

The pretty white mare stood calmly and bobbed her head and mane sweetly as she hummed a happy little tune to herself, a smug smile plastered across her face as she counted down the five second head start she’d decided to give Twilight.

This was fun! What a brilliant idea!

Flash!

~ * ~

Twilight flashed in and turned a circle in near-panic, searching for a place to hide or a place to run to; she had no idea which.

She knew where she was, of course, but the scene barely registered: Lero’s old bedroom in the little house attached to the library tree; mostly used for storage, now, and maybe far away enough to avoid Rarity.

What was with her, anyway? Did she think this was some kind of game?

She had to hide! The closet filled with musty winter clothing? No! Her pheromones would give her away in an instant.

Her tail swished. Damn it!

Fine! She... she was attracted to Rarity and vice versa, and they both knew it. Her friend with the right cutie mark and the wrong coat and mane and tail was sweet and loving and giving as always, and now there was something so magnetic and strong and seductive about her that she’d never seen before. But Rarity wasn’t Rainbow, and Twilight couldn’t forgive herself if—

Oh stars, here she comes again! How did she learn to teleport like that?

She began to feel herself falling into a familiar ocean of distress that threatened to pull her under. She had to stop this before she cracked!

Twilight waited until the last possible instant, and then just as she heard the last chiming announcement of Rarity’s arrival, she blinked out of the room. But this time, she was more careful—

—Rarity flashed in and looked around.

Damn! Too late!

“Twilight, my sweet, where are you?” Rarity crooned with a honeyed voice, knowing full well Twilight wouldn’t answer.
She scanned the room and audibly scoffed. “What, this old place, Sparkle-kitten? I may have to teach you some lessons about the Elements of Romance!”

Rarity’s eyes fell to the bed. Then again...

This was the room, the very bed where they’d shared Twilight’s first experience with Lero... She would know that. It couldn’t be an accident!

Rarity smiled again, but this time it wasn’t the joy of the chase or delight at surprising her mare or even the elation she felt at Twilight’s shared desire; it was love.

She followed the path again, one she could barely sense this time. Her Twilight was good, and she felt a great sense of pride in that. But if she was quick, Rarity might just catch up to her.

She smiled at the thought of that.

Flash!

~ * ~

Rarity appeared with a dramatic blue flash of light—

—in the loft of the library tree, next to a place where Twilight had once slept alone for so long, a place now occupied by a bed large enough for three quite lovely mares and one very fortunate and quite handsome human stallion.

But Twilight wasn’t there.

Seriously, Twilight? Rarity groaned to herself. Well, now you’re just being an unforgivable tease! If there is one place you should be at this moment...

Well, points for playfulness meant points for romance, even if she’d taken the game just a tiny bit too far. It didn’t subtract from Rarity’s love or fondness for her sweet, adorable lavender mare in the least.

Scanning the household again, Rarity found the most obvious place where her Twilight would be, where she was right now; she could feel magic building, unmistakably. She knew where she would end this game and claim her Twilight Sparkle.

She smiled, with an intense love in her heart, and teleported one last time...

Flash!

~ * ~

Twilight Sparkle stood nervously, ready for battle, surrounded by an impenetrable violet shield of magic. She’d quickly cast and reinforced it against the onslaught of a relentless white pony who’d mysteriously acquired some remarkable magic skills while she wasn’t looking.

Rarity appeared in a flash of blue light, and on seeing Twilight she trotted over to stand just outside the spherical shield with a triumphant smirk on her face.

“Twilight, you gave me quite a chase!” she said. She lifted her foreleg and pressed into the surface of the magic shield and watched the violet aura coalesce around her hoof. She almost felt Twilight’s presence through it.

“However, our little game is over! You can lower the shield, now, my love.” She tilted her head and gave Twilight smile clearly filled with warmth and desire.

The lavender mare almost dropped the shield as she saw that loving look, and her heart ached at what she knew she had to do.

“No! I-I can’t do that, Rarity!” Twilight said firmly. She lowered her head, took a deep breath, and lifted her eyes to meet Rarity’s look of surprise. “I don’t want this! And you don’t really want this either.”

“What?! Twilight, how can you say that?” Rarity cried out, her look filled now with surprise and hurt. “Of course I want this! I love you and I want you. How could you believe otherwise?”

Twilight was shaking her head and trying to hold back her tears.

“No, Rarity! You don’t really love me and you don’t want to... have sex with me! You can’t—”

“What have I done?” Rarity’s voice began to fill with desperation as she realized that Twilight truly believed what she was saying. “Are you saying — is it over, for us? But what of our herd? What about Lero? Oh Twilight, you’re hurting me...”

I know. I’m so sorry, Rarity. I’m doing this for you, and for Dash.

“Rarity, it isn’t true,” she reasoned with false calm. “You know I’m right!”

She forced herself look away as tears began to spill from Rarity’s eyes and run down her cheeks.

“You’re wrong! Please, Twilight, you must know that I truly do love you! I do want this. I want so much to make you happy!” She lifted her hoof and pressed it to the shield again, desperate to touch her lavender mare. “What did I do wrong? Twilight I can fix this! Is it—”

Twilight shook her head firmly, but her throat felt raw and she could hardly push the words out, now. “No Rarity. This just isn’t you—”

Rarity’s words came out in a rush. “Is it Lero? Twilight, I’m sorry for paying so much attention to him and forgetting all about you! I didn’t mean to, it was just... he was so badly hurt and we came so close to losing him forever and it was my fault!”

She collapsed to her haunches, swallowing hard, and began to sob quietly. “Oh please don’t do this to me, Twilight,” she pleaded. “You’ll break my heart forever!”

Forever. The word whispered to Twilight with implications far beyond its terrible meaning for Rarity. The young mage sat and thought while her friend suffered and her heart shattered. Twilight felt her own heart breaking for Rarity and she wanted to scream...

Shattered?

She turned her head sharply and stared at the broken remains of the figurine on the table. And then at Dash’s cutie mark on Rarity’s flank.

Oh no.

This was all real for Rarity — Twilight couldn’t deny the pure sincerity of her friend’s emotion, no matter how hard she reasoned against it. Rarity’s love for Lero, for Twilight, for Lyra was real. But there was only one heart to whom that love truly belonged, and that was Rainbow Dash.

Oh Celestia, forever! I’m breaking Rarity’s heart forever!

“And I have to return that heart to Rainbow Dash some day,” she whispered.

Twilight watched Rarity sobbing pitifully and she felt panic rising, a terrifying fear and that she was destroying Rainbow’s heart. Before she realized it, Twilight had dropped her impervious shield and found herself crushing Rarity close in her arms.

“I... I don’t want to break your heart, Rarity. It means too much to me.” She almost feared to be rejected and pushed away for the pain she’d caused Rarity to suffer, but the white mare held her tightly as she stroked Rarity’s mane and kissed her cheek.

They held each other for a while in silence, stroking each other’s coats, and Rarity seemed to calm at last; far faster than Twilight would have expected; but then she knew Rarity had always been a strong mare despite her penchant for drama... She felt her friend sigh against her chest, and could almost feel the smile of relief that came with the comforting pressure of her grateful hug.

“I truly do love you, Twilight,” Rarity said at last. She pulled back and stared into Twilight’s eyes for a moment with a look of relief and renewed happiness, and then touched her lips tenderly to her cheek. “If you ever doubt that again, you must tell me and I will remind you.”

She kissed sweetly at the corner of Twilight’s mouth, and smiled again as the mare closed her violet eyes and a little sigh escaped her lips. She moved her lips forward, touching and releasing almost teasingly slow, delighting in Twilight’s quickening breaths as they began to mix with her own...

And then they were sharing a true kiss, lips pressed together tightly and each barely able to breath. Rarity touched her tongue to Twilight’s lips, and felt her mouth open and their tongues pressed together and wrapped in a sensuous dance.

But after a few moments she could feel Twilight begin to shiver beneath the touch of her hooves. She opened her eyes to find the lavender mare staring at her with growing tension, nervousness increasing even as she continued to meet the white mare’s kisses. Rarity brought a hoof tenderly to Twilight’s cheek and slowly ended their kiss; Twilight swallowed nervously through her quivering breath, and the hint of panic in her eyes faded a little as Rarity caressed her face and smiled calmly at her. She pressed her hoof against the mare’s chest and drew comforting circles on her soft coat.

“Twilight, shhhhh! It’s okay,” she said. “I know that this is difficult for you right now, that you are under considerable strain. But I need you to trust me; I only want the best for you, and I know that this—” she leaned in cautiously and pressed a tender kiss to Twilight’s lips, “—is something you need. I love you, and I want so much to show you how much that means. Let me help you, Twilight. Please?”

“Rarity, I—”

Oh Celestia, what should I do? Will Rainbow forgive me? Will Lero?

She saw Rarity’s sweet look, confident and concerned and filled with love, and she knew she would. She wanted it for herself, and for Rarity, but most of all she trusted herself to believe that it was for Dash’s sake.

She leaned forward and brought her lips close to Rarity’s, almost touching, and looked into her eyes... and then she closed her eyes and with the lightest touch, kissed her.

~ * ~

Twilight’s lips tingled as she stepped lightly up the kitchen stairs behind Rarity, full of nervous energy. She paused half-way up and brought a hoof to her lips in wonder, feeling almost like a spark of electricity might jump between them. She’d been excited by Rarity’s kisses earlier in the day – and incredibly turned on – but not... not quite like this—

“Twilight!”

The young mare’s eyes snapped up to see Rarity standing with her front hooves planted at the top of the stairs, her head turned back and watching her with knowing, playful smile. The lovely white mare swished her tail and wiggled her hips suggestively.

“Come, Sparkle-kitten! We’ve not a moment to spare,” she said, looking up and holding her dramatic hoof to her chest. Twilight giggled and stepped forward again as Rarity waited for her with a smile that had clearly turned mischievous.

Sparkle-kitten again, she thought, feeling her blush competing with her tingling lips for attention. Why does that always make me feel so... warm and fuzzy?

She made it up the last steps and stopped a foot from Rarity’s tail, watching that mischievous smile as the white mare refused to move forward. She tried not to let her eyes roam too much to Rarity’s nethers, but — Wow she really smells good! The sweet smell of her expensive shampoo and conditioners, probably, mixed with her own sweet musky—

“Ahem!” Rarity said, smirking at Twilight. She tapped a hoof at her wide blue eyes. “Eyes up here, darling. It is quite uncouth to stare at another mare’s treasures, no matter how lovely she may be.”

Twilight rolled her eyes and gave a derisive snort. Well, that’s enough of that! She leapt forward a step and chewed lightly on the lovely mare’s white rump.

Rarity squeaked and jumped past the top of the stairs, turning about-face with a look of feigned shock. Twilight stepped into the foyer and furrowed her brows. Rarity’s ears pulled back and her purple tail snapped back and forth through the air, performing defensive maneuvers around her flanks.

“Twilight Sparkle, that was quite uncalled for!”

Twilight raised an eyebrow and a new smile curled her lips.

“Or, well... maybe it wasn’t,” Rarity admitted. She giggled and sauntered up to Twilight, her tail calmed and swaying sensuously. “I suppose in reality I was quite literally asking for it.”

She stepped up to Twilight and stole a soft kiss, pressing forward as the lavender mare closed her eyes and purred happily. Twilight tried to follow her lips as they pulled away, but the kiss broke quickly and she felt the white unicorn’s nose press into hers. She opened her eyes and struggled to focus properly on Rarity.

“Come, my dear,” Rarity urged. She turned, carefully keeping her hindquarters away from Twilight’s reach. The two ponies began to walk side by side, pushing and rubbing against each other playfully, flicking their tails and nipping at each other, each trying to avoid falling behind the other as they made their way into private living area.

Rarity closed the door as they reached the bottom of the last thin, curved stairway that led up to the loft, and Twilight hesitated. She forgot about Rarity for a moment as she stared up the winding staircase.

So I’m really going to do this? With Rarity? Her heart began to race a little and she shifted nervously... butterflies churned in her stomach.

She felt the gentle nudge of a soft muzzle against her rump, and turned her head to look back. Rarity was watching her with those beautiful blue eyes; her head tilted slightly and the sweetest smile lit her face. The look she gave Twilight was all of eagerness and affection and love, and Twilight felt those butterflies stir even more inside her.

“Rarity, you are... you’re just the sweetest pony!” she said. Have you always been like this, and I just never noticed? “I really... like that about you.”

The white pony nuzzled against Twilight’s flank again. “I have always felt the same of you, Twilight. It’s one of the many reasons I’ve come to love you, so.”

Always? Twilight smiled and let the question pass for now. She turned back, and with a determined breath and a nervous exhale, she walked up the staircase with Rarity following close behind. She’d been up these stairs thousands of times – many times alone, and many times with Lero and the mares of her herd – but she had almost never been here with Rarity, and definitely not... like this.

The two friends reached the top of the stairs and the big bed came into view. And it was big; quite large enough to very comfortably hold at least three pony mares and one tall human together, sleeping or otherwise. It was also very tall by pony standards, purposely built that way by Lero to make certain activities easier—

Twilight stalled near her bed, looking on nervously – still skittish – as Rarity hopped up with ease, confident and sure as always of where she was and what she wanted.

She turned a circle once and then dropped down to the exact center of her soft white bed facing Twilight, surrounded now by thick down pillows and framed by the beautiful curls of her long amethyst-colored tail and mane. She snuggled low into the mattress and covers with a little purr of pleasure and watched her lover for a moment. Then a little light seemed to come into her eyes, and the soft blue aura of a cast spell enveloped her horn and mane and tail for a moment. When it had faded she lay before Twilight, the soft spread of her now-straight mane flowing around her ears and neck and withers, the hair of her tail also completely straight and spread in a lovely fan of amethyst against her side.

“Wow!” Twilight breathed softly, and her heart decided to race in her chest without permission.

“Do you like it?” Rarity purred, running a hoof through her soft straight locks. She graced Twilight with a sultry look that made the young mare’s thighs clench. “As you know, I comb it out every night like this, but I felt that you might appreciate it more right now.”

Twilight swallowed hard and stared, openly admiring her friend. “Rarity, you’re so beautiful,” she said at last.

Rarity smiled, obviously very pleased with Twilight’s reaction. “Thank you, Twilight,” she said. Her slender white leg stretched out toward the pretty lavender mare, and she patted the soft bed cover. “Up here, my love.”

Twilight stood still for another moment, thinking furiously. She felt like a nervous wreck; her limbs trembled, and her breath shuddered with the rapid beat of her heart. Her tail twitched of it’s own accord, a dark, striped metronome measuring out slow flicks of desire and fresh anxiety.

Oh great stars, what is wrong with you? You’re not some inexperienced adolescent! Pull yourself together and get on the bed!

She hopped up onto the bed, not quite as gracefully as Rarity had, but then Rarity’s heart probably hadn’t been trying to beat out of her chest at that moment. Probably. Twilight looked at her friend and saw serene calm overlaid by a happy smile, and through that she still managed to convey her intense desire for Twilight. Rarity embodied grace and beauty, composure and passion, and even though they were nearly the same age, Twilight couldn’t help but feel a bit young and inexperienced next to her. Questions she’d held for years now surfaced, questions about how Rarity had come to that experience, but now wasn’t the time. Later, though, she told herself.

Twilight stepped up close to Rarity and sat down before her, staring nervously into her eyes and almost touching noses with her. Rarity gave her a pleased smile and leaned forward a little to kiss her, quite softly; a tender touch of lips that for Twilight stretched on, seeming to last so long that time began to lose meaning for her. It was a kiss unlike any they’d shared so far, one that seemed to distill all of Rarity’s love and affection and desire, all for Twilight to taste and experience as a promise of what was to come.

After several minutes the sweet kiss ended at last, and Twilight moaned in her throat as Rarity pulled her lips away. The white mare withdrew the hoof she had been stroking so tenderly across her lover’s cheek and through her mane, and it wasn’t until that touch left her that Twilight realized she’d had her eyes closed.

Twilight mewled sweetly at the aching loss of that kiss, and found herself pressing forward eagerly, searching for Rarity’s lips as they left her. She was shaking now, weak and hot, and her sex was getting wet and pulsing with need. She opened her eyes at last and saw her white unicorn pulling back, looking at her with lust fed by Twilight’s response.

“Wow, Rarity...” Twilight gasped, “I... how did you do that to me?!”

Twilight stood up, shaking, and stepped toward Rarity. Her tail twitched, her ears bent forward, and she crouched low with a predatory look that left Rarity giggling. Until Twilight pounced on her.

Rarity squeaked and tried to get to her hooves as Twilight leapt for her, but she was bowled over, squealing and laughing. Twilight pinned her on her back and pressed their bodies together, pushing her deep into the soft white bed. The purple mare cut off Rarity’s laughter with a hungry, aggressive kiss, and soon Rarity’s arms were wrapped around Twilight and roaming over her soft coat and mane.

Well, this doesn’t seem to be going quite to plan, Rarity thought, distantly. Twilight pressed her hips hard into Rarity’s, and they groaned into each other’s mouths. Oh Celestia! This is supposed to be for Twilight! Not that this isn’t helping her in a significant way...

With a groan, Rarity held tightly to Twilight’s sweet, warm body and quickly rolled them both over, pinning the lavender pony beneath her. Twilight instantly wrapped her arms in a tight hug around Rarity’s neck and head and pushed her mouth up eagerly, trying desperately to maintain their kiss as Rarity held her away with a firm hoof. The young mage groaned in frustration as their kiss was interrupted.

“Twilight! One would almost think this was our first time together!” Rarity admonished with a ragged breath. But she was smiling.

Twilight felt a twinge of guilt for a moment, but she refused to go through all of that again. Not now.

“Well, it does kind of feel that way,” she replied with a sweet laugh in her throat. A determined look crossed her face and she tried to roll the white mare onto her back, but she’d braced herself too well. “Please don’t stop, Rarity! Kiss me!”

Rarity smiled an apology. “I’m sorry, Twilight, but you must listen to me.” She kissed Twilight on the nose and quickly pulled up again as the mare tried to kiss her lips. “I promised that this would all be for you, every bit of it, and I intend to keep that promise. However, we’re starting off far too fast, darling. I need you to trust me, and to follow my lead. Will you do that? Please? I promise you that it will be very much worth your patience.”

Twilight gave a little groan, but she smiled up at Rarity. Then she inhaled a shaking breath, and exhaled it with a resigned look as she smiled again.

“Okay, Rarity. We’ll do it your way,” she said. An impish spark shined in her eye. “But only if you kiss me first. Really, really nicely, and I get final approval. One kiss, and that’s my final offer.”

Rarity chuckled softly and thought for a moment, then she bit her tongue and smiled at Twilight’s surprised look as she began to lower herself slowly and laid her warm body against the young mage. Her hind legs lifted over and slid between Twilight’s, willing them apart with a slow, sensuous movement of soft fur against soft fur. Her arms slid beneath her lover and held her in a tight embrace. She leaned down and nuzzled against Twilight’s cheek, and then pressed her lips there tenderly. A pleased ahhhh of breath escaped her throat as Twilight half-closed her eyes and leaned into the touch.

“One kiss then, love,” Rarity whispered, staring into Twilight’s eyes. “For you.”

The white pony’s lips lowered, and Twilight closed her eyes and waited with intense anticipation for that delicate touch she knew was coming. She was surprised to feel the tickling sensation of Rarity’s long, straight mane falling around her, brushing softly against her horn and head and neck. She gasped with a little inhaled breath at the intensity of the feeling, and as she did, Rarity brought her lips tenderly to Twilight’s open mouth.

The kiss was slow and loving and sensuous, and Twilight whined softly as Rarity’s lips pressed against hers. She expected the kiss to be quick, over and done with in only a few seconds, but Rarity held her lips to Twilight’s and gave no sign that there would be an end to that loving kiss. Twilight soon lost herself in her lover’s embrace and every sense became focused on that kiss; lips slid over tingling lips, and their tongues began to play a slow, sweet dance against each other. Rarity brought a hoof to Twilight’s neck and brushed upwards with a feather touch, up over her mane and across the tip of one tender ear, and then back down. Twilight gripped her lover tightly and whined a little keening noise into Rarity’s mouth, running one arm over Rarity’s neck and back as the other pulled her head even tighter to her.

Her desire for Rarity was becoming unbearable; her body buzzed with the electricity of excitement and need, and she almost regretted her demand for another kiss as her sex began to swim with wetness and her body ached for release. Rarity brushed her hoof teasingly over her lover’s lavender skin again, the barest touch half-way between tickling and pleasure, and Twilight was brought to the edge of begging for that release. She knew somehow that Rarity wouldn’t give her that gift right now, and she began to pray that it was possible to actually come from just a kiss.

And then she felt the barest touch of Rarity’s dripping maresex against hers, and she groaned loudly into the mare’s mouth. Her hips tried to push up desperately, but the white mare had her hindquarters pinned firmly to the bed. She kissed Twilight hungrily now, as she took her time delicately lowering herself against her lover. Twilight’s tail whipped up and down and across between Rarity’s legs, searching for some part of the seductive white pony to latch on to and roughly pull her down. But Rarity had obviously planned for that and kept her tail well out of reach.

Wound up and teased mercilessly for what was beginning to feel like forever, Twilight was in agony and she couldn’t beg! She couldn’t say the words, and she knew it wouldn’t do any good anyway. She began to whimper against her lover’s mouth, and suddenly Rarity’s sweet wet lips pressed down onto hers, and she shook and cried in shock to feel their sex sliding across each other in one of the most intense kisses she’d ever had. Her orgasm was so close, oh Celestia it was so close, but her lover was avoiding putting pressure near her clitoris just enough, brushing her slick sex right up to it and then falling back... and then she was begging Rarity, pleading with her eyes for new lover to make her come.

Rarity saw that pleading look her lover’s eyes and finally ended their kiss with a wide, loving smile, even as she continued to press herself into Twilight and keep her right on the edge.

“Oh Rarity! Please!—”

Rarity kissed her face tenderly and brought her mouth to Twilight’s ear, biting it lightly. “I want you... to come now, Twilight,” she whispered between teasing bites. “Come for me, my sweet, beautiful mare.”

Then she brought her muzzle down to Twilight’s neck, kissing and nipping softly. Twilight’s gasps became a sweet, rising counterpoint to the touch of lips and teeth against her lavender coat, until Rarity came to precisely the right spot... and then licked and bit down as she grinded her hips hard into Twilight.

A white flood of pleasure crashed through Twilight and she jammed her face into Rarity’s soft white neck, and she came convulsing and screaming. Her body clenched and bucked and shook beneath Rarity as she felt the sweet pressure of her lover’s hot sex rubbing tight circles around and over her sensitive nub; the white unicorn bit down at her neck again and pushed her hips down in harder circles, determined to wring every last bit of tension from her lover’s aching body.

Twilight screamed and whipped her head back into the bed as a shower of colorful sparks erupted from her horn, and Rarity quickly followed her as she cried out and groaned, gripping her arms tight around Twilight and coming hard against her sex. She joined Twilight in showering the head of the bed with the colorful proof of their climax together, before they finally collapsed in a wet heap of satisfied pony mare into the bed.

The two lovers lay panting and twitching against each other for several minutes as Twilight, drained of energy and gasping for breath, waited patiently for her burning afterglow to subside and the world to return to her senses.

Rarity lifted herself cautiously from Twilight’s languid form and turned to snuggle at her side, kissing her cheek and caressing her sweat-soaked chest and neck with the affection of a lover more intensely satisfied at the pleasure they’d given than any they’d received. Rarity lay contented and happy, humming a sweet little song next to the lavender mare’s relaxed ear, feeling the rise and fall of her chest and listening to her breathing become shallow and steady.

Still humming sweetly, Rarity nuzzled Twilight’s cheek and her ear. The lavender ear twitched and she nibbled at it lightly until Twilight finally started giggling and tried to pull away. She opened her eyes and turned her body toward Rarity, pressing herself tight against the white mare and wrapping her arms around her. A contented smile lit her eyes and lips.

“Rarity, that was really, really... um...”

“Nice?” Rarity asked. She raised an eyebrow at Twilight.

“Hot. Your kisses,” Twilight said, “are amazing. Especially that last one.”

“You say that almost as if that were our first kiss, Twilight,” Rarity teased.

“Well no, it wasn’t... But — I know I said this before, but you did just kind of make it feel that way.”

Rarity smiled at the compliment, and kissed her lover softly. They lay together for another minute, until Rarity felt – with senses well-tuned by experience to the weather of pony emotion and desire – that the moment was just about right.

“So, ready for more, then? We have so much to do, and all night to do it in, Sparkle-kitten.”

Twilight blushed and stared at the white pony in shock at first, and then a smile grew across her face.

“I’d love that, Rarity,” Twilight said. She blushed harder and bit her lip and stammered. “And... I know this is silly, and it’s just a pet name and I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to it, but... I like it that you call me Sparkle-kitten.”

~ * ~

Rarity kissed Twilight’s nose and quickly turned her eyes away as she felt a surprising splash of warmth glow through her white coat.

Twilight pounced on her reaction, poking a hoof into the white mare’s chest. “Rarity, you’re embarrassed!”

“Yes I suppose I am – a little. But it is quite unladylike of you to gloat, Miss Sparkle,” Rarity replied defensively, but a little smile creased her lips. “You blushed so fiercely the very first time I called you by that name, and I knew there could never be another for you, love. I knew—” I cultivated your love, Twilight, as a gardener encourages delicate flowers in Spring. When I saw how it touched you... “I could see that you liked it. It was quite obvious.”

Twilight smiled a little smile, even as she felt herself become just a little disturbed. She snuggled her face against Rarity’s soft neck, hiding her feelings as she tried to sort through her emotions. This wasn’t something Rainbow Dash had done for her, or would ever do no matter how much she loved Twilight, and she knew it without a doubt; it was all Rarity, and as far as she could tell none of it had ever existed before now. The thought left her feeling a bit of vertigo, a perilous dizziness at the complexity of manufactured past that Starswirl’s spell had enforced on its victims.

She imagined that in another universe, perhaps, another Twilight Sparkle solved the riddle of that spell, and a different Rarity returned happily to herself, and pleased her lover Twilight and made her smile and blush again with that long-missed name. But not here — as far as she knew, the love Rarity held in her heart for a certain lavender unicorn truly belonged only to Rainbow Dash, and Twilight knew she had to return it some day... soon.

Worry for her friends and guilt at her too-easy acceptance of Rarity’s advances began to creep in again. She dug her face into Rarity's soft chest again, hoping to find some comfort and dispel those awful feelings for a little while longer.

“Twilight?” Rarity moved her muzzle a little and placed a kiss against Twilight’s mane, just above her horn. Her white hoof stroked in a soothing circle along the lavender unicorn’s back. “Why don’t you turn over onto your stomach, my dear? I’ll help relax these tense muscles of yours.”

She knows, Twilight realized, and she didn’t say anything. Sweetest pony, ever. Despite her anxiety, Twilight smiled and kissed Rarity’s neck, and then rolled away to lie barrel-down on the bed, her arms stretched forward, her hind legs folded and pulled to her sides.

Rarity rustled and shifted the bed as she rolled and swung over to sit carefully atop Twilight’s hindquarters. Soon the young mare felt hooves pressing tentatively into her back and shoulders, withers and neck, prodding and testing here and there almost as though warming up for a symphonic performance. After a brief pause, the white mare slowly dug a into a spot right at her withers, just below her striped mane, and carefully twisted her hoof into the hard knot of muscle Twilight had had no idea was there.

Twilight groaned and tensed as Rarity slowly increased the pressure and then found a similar spot on her other side and dug into that, too. Press in, circle thrice and release, press in, circle twice and release. Dig in hard, circle and release. Groan! Release and move half an inch up, repeat. Groan!

Twilight began to melt.

“Oh my gosh, Rarity! This feels fantastic... Ohhhh.” Rarity continued her soothing touches slowly across Twilight’s withers and shoulders and neck. Soon the young mage had her face buried between her folded forelegs, moaning quite happily and unable to move at all as she submitted to the seemingly expert care of the loving pony astride her back. “How did you learn to do this?” she groaned.

Rarity stopped moving completely. It was as though she’d instantly become a warm, soft-furred statue. After two seconds Twilight’s brain began to re-engage and concern grew toward action. But after three seconds Rarity resumed her steady massage of Twilight’s neck, and she spoke again as if nothing had happened at all.

“Well my dear, I learned many wonderful things in my formative years away from Ponyville,” Rarity announced proudly (press in and hold... circle and out,) “mostly while achieving my goals as a weather pony in Manehattan and Fillydelphia. I had quite an extra-curricular education, I must say—”

Twilight could hear the smug smile in Rarity’s voice and with that, everything seemed to return safely to normal again. She let the fact of that odd pause slide into obscurity as her lover’s touch reached her head and ears.

“—and very fortunately for you, my love,” Rarity finished as she leaned forward and lowered her body onto Twilight’s back. She enthusiastically kissed and nibbled a lavender ear.

Twilight giggled at the feeling of Rarity’s teeth tickling her ear... and she was also getting turned on. The real pleasure of having all of that stress rubbed out from her muscles was almost erotic by itself, but the feeling of this loving pony sitting atop her flanks and laying the weight of her beautiful warm body against her — Rarity began playfully chomping on her ear in earnest.

“Rarity, stop it! That tickles,” Twilight whined, turning her head to gaze with one eye at her tormentor. She felt Rarity’s arms wrap beneath her neck and pull them both into a full-body hug.

“I’m sorry, Sparkle-kitten,” Rarity said, nibbling more cautiously on a purple ear. “I simply couldn't help myself. You are far too adorable!”

Twilight lay quietly for a moment, enjoying their closeness and... thinking. “Wait, Rarity... you got this massage experience from learning about the weather?”

Rarity hugged Twilight harder and giggled in her ear. She rested her chin on Twilight's head and idly stroked the side of her neck as she recalled her memories.

“No, love, my weather training wasn't much more than the learning of my craft and trade – although I certainly came to know quite a few weather ponies in that time. However, my artistic gifts – and perhaps my other gifts as well – caught the eyes of many of Applejack's fashionista acquaintances, whom I had gravitated toward. I had the very good fortune to meet and live with them as well as with several others. Through them I was exposed to quite a different world than the average working pony might see, and it expanded my knowledge of many things—” she nibbled and kissed the soft, sensitive area behind Twilight's ear, eliciting a soft moan, “—that have nothing at all to do with the weather.”

Rarity laughed a little and nibbled at Twilight's twitching ear again.

“Oh. Ohhhhh! Applejack's fashionista friends... I, um, I see,” Twilight said, surprised. She began to feel the irritating warmth of embarrassment heat her neck and face as the pieces of a long mystery began to fall into place. The romance novels she used to keep so well hidden before joining her herd quickly fueled her imagination; she tried to picture the kind of ponies and experiences Rarity had very likely had, long before they'd ever met. Before Starswirl's spell.

If Rarity noticed any change in Twilight, she said nothing. With another light kiss, she pulled herself up, sitting once more at her lover's haunches, and resumed her ministrations to the mare’s neck.

“You know,” she said, “In so many ways I am truly fortunate to be with you, my dear. You are so bright and kind and sweet and adorable... and perhaps I am vain, but you make me very proud to say that without any doubt, the sexiest mare in Ponyville is mine to love.” She accented her appraisal by reaching both hooves up and stroking them with affection through Twilight’s long, colorful mane. Rarity watched the blush cover her lavender face, and leaned down...

“No, I... I’m not, Rarity. Not really,” Twilight stammered. “I mean... thank you. But you and Fluttershy are both so beautiful, and I'm just... me.”

She gasped in surprise as Rarity gripped her mane with her teeth at that sweet sensitive spot and pulled lightly. “Ohhhhh, ohhh my that’s so nice... wow.”

Rarity released her hold and chuckled in her throat, smiling at Twilight’s reaction but also at her sweet denial; her lover hadn’t really ever believed it was true – that she herself was beautiful – but she wanted to believe it.

“Mine,” Rarity breathed with a seductive, sultry air as Twilight began to quiver beneath her.

Rarity continued to rub Twilight’s neck with one hoof, and stroked the other through the mare’s lovely dark, striped mane.

“There are so many different kinds of beauty in all mares, my love: cute and pretty and beautiful among them... Fluttershy, of course, is not simply pretty, but undeniably beautiful. She can on occasion even be cute, in so far as hiding her lovely eyes behind that gorgeous pink mane may be called cute. In one of her less-boisterous, shyer moods, of course.”

The white unicorn lit her horn with a blue glow and began to use her magic to massage Twilight’s back; ten careful, loving points of pressure, each strategically placed and caressing her, in addition to the white mare’s hooves.

“Rarity, you're...” she gasped, “you’re one of the most beautiful mares I’ve ever met. Oh, ah! Feels so good—”

“I do appreciate your lovely compliment, Twilight.” She paused for a moment in thought. Twilight whimpered at the interruption, and Rarity leaned down to kiss the mare's cheek affectionately. “It would be disingenuous to deny your appraisal of me; I know that I’m beautiful – I certainly work very hard to achieve that – but pretty or cute?” She smiled and snorted a little, pulling back to resume her careful massage. “Hardly.”

“Hey, I’ve seen you... pretty and cute before, too,” Twilight said, turning her head a little to smile and laugh nervously through the haze of her growing lust. “Usually it’s... when you’re wet and playful, though.”

Rarity smiled impishly at her mate, and a crimson blush washed over Twilight’s neck and face as she whipped her head forward again. “I mean... Oh no! Not like this! I mean outside, like — in the rain,” she explained quickly. “You... you’re so pretty with your hair straight, Rarity.”

Rarity leaned in and placed a gentle kiss behind Twilight’s ear, then nibbled and bit at the furry triangle. She touched her lips at the base of Twilight’s other, twitching ear. “Thank you, my dear. I am very happy that you find me so attractive — not that you have ever allowed me to doubt that!” She moved on before Twilight could reply. “But this is not about me, tonight; it's about you.

“And as I said,” she continued, softly kissing Twilight’s neck, “you are the sexiest mare, so very unique in that you embody all three of those lovely qualities in equal measure: you are cute, and pretty, and beautiful all at once, my love.”

She bit teasingly at the base of Twilight’s mane. The young mare squeaked, and then gasped as she felt Rarity begin to press herself down against her sensitive dock. Twilight gasped and lifted her tail and hips upward to meet Rarity, pushing the base of her tail up into the wet fold of the white mare's sex. Rarity groaned at the increased pressure against the swollen nub at the top of her fold. She leaned down again to grip that sweet little tuft of mane she loved so much, and pulled it hard.

“Ahhh! Rarity! Oh my gosh!” Twilight cried out, thrusting her hips up harder.

Rarity closed her eyes and pushed herself against the lavender unicorn. Maintaining control over her body and desires, she leaned down and kissed, licked, and then bit into the lavender mare's soft coat, choosing every spot with deliberate care. In the midst of the lavender mare's moans of pleasure, Rarity reached her tail down to curl around Twilight's, and soon they had meshed in a colorful, tight swirl and began pulling against each other.

Twilight’s hips began to move harder beneath Rarity, pressing first into the bed as she sought pressure against her nethers, and then arching up as she tried to push herself up into Rarity, seeking the feel of that beautiful wet maresex sliding like silk against her sensitive dock.

Rarity smiled and looked down to see Twilight watching her with the heat of arousal on her face. The white unicorn leaned over once again to lay her body flat against Twilight. Her straight amethyst mane fell and swept against her lover’s neck and cheek before Rarity brushed it away with a hoof and kissed the side of Twilight’s lips sensuously. The young mare tried to capture those lips in hers, but her teasing lover pulled away too quickly and continued her touches.

Twilight’s head spun with sensation and desire and lust, but she felt herself challenged to keep up with Rarity – so calm and confident and oh goddess she was sexy! – rather than just let herself go. It always felt better to hold it off, to wait... If she could.

Rarity held an arm around the purple unicorn’s side and pulled her closer as she pressed another light kiss up closer to her lover’s cheek. Her heart beat faster as she watched Twilight’s eyes close and her muzzle slant upwards in response. She felt Twilight’s breath stop in clear anticipation of another kiss.

“I love you and I want so much for you to be happy, Twilight,” Rarity whispered. She kissed slowly and sensuously at the corner of Twilight’s mouth, then pulled back with a smile as Twilight tried to catch her mouth again in an eager kiss. Twilight groaned in dismay as Rarity uncurled her tail and lifted herself from the unicorn's lithe form and slid herself down past those lovely hindquarters, still expertly massaging the young mare's back and sides. She kneaded her hooves and magical fingers into Twilight's lower back, and began to alternately caress and massage her flanks, right over the unique star pattern of her cutie mark as the lavender mare drew intense shudders of breath.

She was rewarded with a sharp inhale and a rising groan of pleasure as her tongue and lips and teeth drew across the sex-soaked wetness at the base of that lavender tail. She laid down behind Twilight and pressed her muzzle into the wet fur, kissing and nibbling and tugging lustily at the taste of herself in the fur of the young mare's dock.

“Rarity! Ah! How did you know that — you always know... oh that feels wonderful! Please don't stop...!”

She pressed her mouth to the side of her lover's dock and bit down gently while she pulled the mare's tail outward with a strong hoof, making Twilight gasp. Rarity took Twilight's hind legs one by one and pulled them carefully down her sides until they were extended behind her. Twilight's tail swished in anticipation as her lover lay down flat between her spread legs.

The white mare pulled aside that twitching dark tail and sighed with pleasure. Twilight was dripping wet. Her tail was soaked, the soft fur beside the swollen folds was matted down, and a sweet musky pool beneath her had stained the bed covers to off-white. Rarity exhaled a cool breath against Twilight's sex, and she heard the young mare moan. She smiled and pressed her muzzle to the side of those beautiful wet lips, caressing her tongue up against her mate's soft lavender fur and smooth skin.

“Oh, Rarity! Yes! Please...” Twilight moaned.

Rarity reached up and wrapped her arms over Twilight's haunches, feeling the mare's tail lash over her back and shoulder in anticipation...

Twilight cried out at the first touch of Rarity's tongue against her lips as she pressed in, caressed her clit, and slid her wide tongue slowly up the young mare's pink folds. Rarity groaned as she tasted a small burst of Twilight's sweet musky wetness in her mouth. The lavender mare's tail thumped against Rarity's back and she tried to push her hips back, but the white mare pulled her tongue back and held her mare in place, stroking her soft back with a hoof until she'd stopped moving. Then she slid her tongue more lightly up the moaning mare's wet lips, smiling to herself as she heard Twilight's sweet cries.

“Oh! Rarity, oh please don't — huff! — don't tease me! — huff! — like this!” The lavender unicorn shivered and tried to move again, until finally Rarity released her hold and pulled herself up. Before Twilight could voice her dismay, Rarity spoke soothingly and nudged her leg.

“Turn over, Twilight,” she said.

Twilight turned over with a flash of limbs and tail to lay breathing heavily on her back before Rarity. The lust and need and determination in the mare's eyes had Rarity moving quickly over Twilight. She held her hoof out to intercept the impatient mare, pushing her gently back into the bed as she rose up trying to pull Rarity down. Then she pinned Twilight's arms to the bed as she pulled herself up and dragged her soft body against her lover, kissing and nipping her chest and neck and cheek while she listened to Twilight's frustrated moans. Twilight shrugged her arms free and wrapped them around Rarity's neck, pulling their lips together in a wild, hungry kiss. The young unicorn mewled with lust and excitement into Rarity's eager mouth until at last Rarity broke the kiss.

“Do you want me, Twilight?” the white mare breathed. Twilight might have laughed if it weren't for the utter sincerity she read in her lover's eyes.

“Yes!” she said with a happy smile, pulling the white mare down for another quick kiss.

“Do you trust me?” Rarity asked. Anticipating another kiss, she touched Twilight's lips again and held them together for much longer, their tongues seeking each other out with slow movements. Twilight broke their kiss after a minute, and her eyes sparkled.

“I trust you, Rarity,” the young mare replied softly. Despite all she'd been through this day, it had never been a question in her mind; she trusted Rarity implicitly, even more now than before.

“Then let me show you how much I love you, Twilight.”

Rarity met Twilight's lips with the sweetest, lightest touch of her own; a soft, sensual kiss that held back the ache of need and in its place gave her the essence of Rarity's desire and love. Her white body pressed down, soft and firm, and her hooves encircled the purple mare's neck. Twilight breathed a sweet little mewl into Rarity's mouth as the white mare's arms tightened around her. Their horns touched.

It came on slowly at first, a whisper of feeling; her lips against her own lips; the mink-soft fur of her coat pressed warm and smooth into her own white coat; love and desire, lust and eagerness seemed to echo back and forth until they became a warm glow of emotion shared by two ponies. Two ponies...

Twilight panicked when she finally realized that Rarity was using an empathic link between them. She clamped down hard on her thoughts and would have wrenched herself away from Rarity if she hadn't felt—

—her hoof softly brushing her cheek and the soothing feeling of love and reassurance echoing through her. Trust me, Twilight, her own soft lips and emotions seemed to say. The feeling of love grew and intensified, and though it resonated between them Twilight could feel that it was Rarity's, and she followed it.

Her arms wrapped tightly around the white pony and she felt intense relief flood through her, so strong that it must have come from them both. They only barely observed – as if from down a long, dark hallway – as their bodies responded; their mouths crushed into each other, arms holding almost painfully tight, high-pitched whines of need and relief resonating through them.

Through the soft glow of their empathic link, Twilight began to perceive her lover's soul. It wasn't simply a collection of emotions and thoughts, but something more akin to white light and color in the dark; a spectrum of everything that made up who and what the pony named Rarity was. She became confused as she dived towards that light; she could perceive her own soul and know that it was without any doubt herself, but this soul was not Rarity, not all of it. Some of it felt like... Rainbow.

She felt herself gasp and renew the strength of her kiss against herself as she delved even further. Arms released Rarity's neck and moved down the slender white form until hooves rested on Rainbow's cutie marks and pressed in to rub against them. Somewhere high above, Rarity broke their kiss, and she worried to lose their connection. Don't worry, love, I'm still here with you, came a soothing reassurance. Tender kisses began to touch down softly against her chest and stomach, trailed by the glowing tip of a unicorn horn.

She delved further, and now she felt like... it was as though the colors that represented her two friends – their coats, tails, manes, and their eyes, all fundamentally different and once split into two defined spectra of light that could be called their souls – had been brought together and focused into a new color, so intermingled that it wouldn’t allow her to define them.
She reached in through the dark and carefully touched that soul, and finally she knew. The love she felt... it was Rarity. It was Rainbow. Their obvious love for Twilight felt so real and so alike and so intertwined that it might never be possible to completely separate one from the other. But the emotion she knew as Rainbow's love for Twilight was there, wrapped around her and suddenly filling her heart.

The connection broke and Twilight was brought into the real world for a few aching moments. Tears flooded her eyes, of happiness and love and relief aching in her chest all at once. The fear that she'd ignored and buried – that she could have been wrong about Rainbow – disappeared, and she gave herself completely to Rarity and to the Rainbow she loved.
Twilight looked down over her stomach to see the white mare watching her with wide blue eyes as her muzzle dipped out of view. She felt Rarity's tongue slide against the lips of her wet maresex and draw slowly upward.

Twilight groaned and cried out, arching her back as Rarity's tongue circled her clitoris and painted over and around it with an artist's brush strokes, drawing rising cries from the young mare. She could feel Rarity bringing her closer and closer to the edge of an intense climax, only to feel the intense loss of that feeling as the white mare's tongue dipped down and began eagerly lapping at Twilight's soaking lips. Her hooves shot down and tried to pull Rarity's head up, but Rarity reached in and easily pushed her arms aside and pinned them to the bed.

Twilight groaned in frustration at first, but Rarity's tongue played at her lips and slipped in, pushing inside her deeper and stronger than she thought possible... and then she felt it stroke inside her, brushing hard across the sensitive textured area beneath her clitoris. Twilight cried out and her head shook back and forth, and her tail tried to whip over her leg onto Rarity's back. Then she felt a gossamer touch against her clit, and through her half-lidded eyes she saw her lover's horn lit in a blue aura and a small magic field wrapped around the top of her sex. It felt just like another tongue and beautifully soft lips, each perfectly touching and pulling her in and brushing against her swollen nub while that other real tongue caressed and pushed and played roughly across the sensitive spot inside.

Rarity somehow pressed her horn down above Twilight's sex, and suddenly she felt their mutual excitement and pleasure echo back and forth in a sweet, intense feedback loop of sensation. Rarity groaned into Twilight's sex and increased her efforts, and the young mare knew she was about to come.

Rarity released her arms at last and Twilight brought them down to hold the white unicorn's head against her sex so tightly. She could feel Rarity struggling to maintain the two spells as the intensity of their shared pleasure mounted. It felt impossible that so much pleasure could be wrung from her body, and the empathy link only magnified it for both of them. She felt Rarity’s excitement and pleasure grow at Twilight's cries, and soon she was right on the edge.

“Oh goddess, Rarity! You're going to make me come!” Twilight screamed. “Don't stop! Oh Celestia please don't stop!”

The mare lost her ability to speak and simply cried out, her screams rising in pitch. Her body convulsed and shook and her head flung violently back into the bed as her orgasm arced through her from her clit and sex to the tip of her horn. Rarity moaned heavily into Twilight and pressed her tongue hard up into that sensitive spot, massaging it and flicking her magic field against that hard little nub as she felt the young mare's climax hit them both.

Twilight's maresex squeezed in hard pulses around Rarity's tongue, and suddenly the white pony's mouth and face were washed with a flood of musky liquid while the lavender unicorn's horn blasted a fountain of sparks that bounced off the pillow and lifted into the air above her. Rarity swallowed Twilight's essence greedily as she felt that orgasm herself, and she came with Twilight, spraying her younger lover’s stomach and chest with a colorful shower of harmless sparks.

The empathy link finally broke away, and as it did Rarity pulled her tongue from Twilight's sweet-tasting maresex, eagerly lapping up the wet residue of her lover's intense orgasm. She brought her tongue all the way up to the young mare's clit, brushing hard across it and reveling in the shocked squeaks it provoked. She watched intensely as Twilight's body shook convulsively with each lick, until the lavender pony finally cried out for mercy.

“Oh Rarity, stop! Ah! Too sensitive...” she said, trying her best to shove Rarity away and squirm away from her enthusiastic tongue.

Rarity hummed her lips against Twilight's swollen sex, and finally pulled away with a soft giggle of delight. She pulled herself up onto the wheezing, satisfied purple mare and rolled to the side, holding her lover and stroking her chest and stomach softly. She pulled Twilight's head over and gave her an enthusiastic kiss, happily taking in each hard breath from the mare.

“Rarity, that was so... Oh my gosh you're... so... amazing...” Twilight gasped as their kiss broke. Then she looked at the white pony and her mouth gaped wider in astonishment. “You're not even breathing hard!” she cried. “How?... Oh let me catch my breath...”

It was true; Rarity was breathing normally, and patiently waiting for Twilight to recover. Her white fur and long straight purple mane were nearly untouched with sweat or anything else that hadn't come from Twilight.

“Oh!” Twilight said as she looked at Rarity's face. She blushed profusely. “Did I do that? I'm so, so sorry, Rarity!”

Rarity touched a hoof to her face, feeling the soggy wetness that Twilight's orgasms had drenched her with. “Oh darling, please!” she said with a sincere smile. “Don't be sorry. You know full well this is a badge of honor for me! It means that I've managed to please you in the most profound way—”

“I'll say!” Twilight interrupted with a grin.

“—and that makes me truly happy, Twilight.” Rarity smiled and brought her lips to Twilight's for a brief, tender kiss and spoke in a low, loving tone to her. “I've said it many times today, and I will happily say it again; I love you, Twilight.”

“I love you, too, Rarity.”

Oh goddess, what did I just say? Twilight nearly panicked, but frustration with herself rose up and took over. Stop panicking at every little thing! Sheesh! Besides, it's true. You loved her as a friend before the swap, and you know that she's at least part Dash. It's okay to love her for the pony she is, now.

Twilight let a happy smile escape her lips as she finally, fully came to terms with herself, and with their situation. Rarity was her friend, and her lover. She could deal with that now.

The lavender mage saw that Rarity was smiling back at her with a glow that said everything about how pleased she was with Twilight's words, and it made the young mare happy. A mischievous glint brightened her eyes.

“So, um... What's next, Rarity?” She sighed and smiled at the lovely white unicorn.

Rarity's eyes and lips lit with her own special brand of playfulness.

“Oh my dear, lovely Sparkle-kitten, something very special,” she said. She looked up at Twilight's horn and drew her mane away from it with a tender movement of her hoof.

She smiled.

~ * ~

Twilight's amethyst eyes looked up and followed Rarity's hoof as it brushed lovingly through the colorful stripes of her mane. She closed her eyes and leaned into Rarity as her hoof made a slow circle behind Twilight's ear, caressing her chin and pulling it upward. The white pony's lips touched hers, and they kissed for a few moments.

“Mmmmm,” Twilight purred. “Special?” She opened her eyes and smiled as Rarity's lips drew away.

“Oh yes, love. Something we've never done together before, but which I've wanted to share with you and Lyra for quite a while, now. However, I...” Rarity paused. Twilight was surprised to see that her lover was suddenly uncomfortable.

“What?” Twilight asked, a smile widening broadly on her lavender face. She surprised Rarity as she slowly rolled them both over and held herself above the white unicorn. “Just what are we talking about here, Rarity? Whips and chains and tight faux leather leggings?” The young mage giggled at the thought of the fashionista she knew so well wearing fake leather, of all things. And holding a riding crop.

Rarity's sweet white face became a bright red mask, and she tapped an incredulous hoof into the other mare's chest.

“My dear Twilight!” she cried, “that is certainly not what I had in mind. Besides, I've never been... at all interested in that sort of thing. And how did you of all ponies learn about — oh never mind! Judging by that smug look, it must have been—”

“Books!” Twilight said with a smug look. She giggled again and kissed Rarity. “You know, it's too bad you're not interested in that! I was kind of hoping to see you in faux leather...”

“Never!” With that Rarity caught the younger mare in her hooves and aggressively rolled them over again. Twilight gave a startled squeak and laughed happily as Rarity pinned her to the bed and kissed her. “Twilight Sparkle, you are deliberately teasing me!”

“Okay, okay! So um, I guess leather and riding crops are definitely out—”

Rarity pushed her lips forcefully to Twilight's and wrapped her hooves hard around the mare, pulling them together into a hard kiss until Twilight gave in and held her new lover in a tight, enthusiastic embrace. When it finally ended, Twilight was left a little breathless, and desire had lit in her eyes.

Okay, how did I become so addicted to Rarity? she wondered as she stared into the lovely blue orbs. Maybe they'd always had a connection she hadn't been aware of – unaware of, like everything else, because of her studies – but in the end it didn't matter. In the end she was with a pony who was part Rarity, part Rainbow, and both of those things made her very happy. She kissed Rarity again and smiled.

Oh yeah, and the sex. She kissed Rarity again and smiled.

Rarity pulled from the kiss, and leaned forward to touch her lips to the base of Twilight's horn.

“Well since you seem to be so well-read, my dear, tell me what you know of horn play between unicorns.” The tip of Rarity's tongue traced a small circle around the base of Twilight's horn.

Twilight clearly looked a little embarrassed at her ignorance. “But I... I thought we were already doing that, like right now. Ooh that feels nice—”

Rarity gave a little roll of her eyes and smiled indulgently. She purred softly into a twitching lavender ear. “I don't mean horn play using our lips and tongues, my love...”

Twilight looked confused for a moment, and then her purple face was suddenly outshined by a massive bloom of red that lit her cheeks. Her eyes turned into wide, dark pools of surprise.

“Oh my gosh! That horn play! Um... wow. Really?” Twilight looked away in mortal embarrassment. “I um, I've read about that a few times, but you know there's a DANGEROUSLY high risk factor involved in that... right? If a unicorn were to let her mind wander and cast the wrong spell while her horn was...”

Rarity pulled Twilight's face back toward hers and held her eyes. ““I assure you, my sweet Sparkle-kitten, I would never hurt you, and in fact it is one of the most intimate expressions of love two unicorns can share. Will you let me show you, my love?”

Rarity smiled at Twilight with that same tender, loving smile she'd shown on the stairs up to her – their – room. Sweetest pony, ever. Oh Celestia—

“Yes.” Oh my gosh, I said yes.

The expression of eagerness and joy that lit Rarity's face was worth every moment of trepidation Twilight had faced.

“Wonderful! Shall we begin, then? Why don't you turn over... yes, just like that. And now some pillows beneath... My dear, please raise that gorgeous rump... And now don't be alarmed! We need to tie this here, and this...” After another minute of preparation, Rarity sat back and looked over her lover and felt her heart thump hard in her chest. “Oh my dear sweet twilight mare, you have no idea how wonderfully exciting you look at this moment...”

The pillows beneath Twilight's lavender stomach weren't much of a surprise, but the silken bonds wrapped around her four hooves were unnerving; even if she and Lero had used them with Rainbow many times, she'd never had the nerve to try it herself. Rarity sensed her nervousness and leaned in close to nuzzle against Twilight's neck and cheek.

“How are you feeling, Twilight? Are you quite sure that you want this?”

Twilight giggled nervously. “You sure you're not about to break out the fake leather and riding crops, Rarity?”

“Twilight, these bonds are not strictly for, well, excitement as much as they are for your own safety. This is, after all,” she added, kissing the base of her lover's horn tenderly, “a very intense experience which you've never shared before.”

Rarity looked into Twilight's wide eye and understood the raw feelings she saw there.

“There was once a time when I was quite literally in the same rather alluring position you are in, my very sweet lover.” She smirked, though her eyes were kind. She kissed the younger unicorn's nose playfully. “And I assure you that it is both necessary and rewarding. I will know how you are feeling every single instant, Sparkle-kitten. Trust me?”

Twilight's eyes were wide and her tail twitched a little bit in the air with nervous anticipation. Her stretched forehooves tugged lightly at the silken rope that bound her arms straight forward on the bed, and she felt the other bonds wrapped firmly around her hind hooves, spreading her legs wide. She knew that she could easily escape those slender bonds at any time, but it didn't ease the heavy nervous breathes that pushed her chest up and down on the bed. She closed her eyes and swallowed hard.

“Um, yeah, I'm okay Rarity,” Twilight croaked. “Just be, um... be careful, okay?”

Then she felt the tender touch of Rarity's horn against her flank, and she gasped in surprise as feelings of love and reassurance and an intense ache of desire melded into her own feelings.

I love you, Twilight, Rarity shared with her.

Twilight wasn't quite sure what to expect, but on top of casting the wrong spell at the worst possible time, she also feared that Rarity might simply... well... just push it right into her, far too deeply, but she should have known better even if this was only their first time together.

Only our first time! How many times will I make love to Rarity before — oh gosh!

She squeaked and forced herself not to lash her tail at Rarity in surprise as a gentle tongue touched down lightly against the soft smooth fur next to her sex. Her arms jerked back a little, and her awareness of the silken rope wrapped around her fetlocks took on a sinister feeling for a moment, a sharp frisson of panic edging into her mind as she stared forward with widening eyes at her bound legs. Twilight closed her eyes and breathed in deeply, fighting down her fear and concentrating instead on the feelings Rarity was giving her.

Gentle hooves caressed her lavender flanks as a touch of wet lips slid along the side of Twilight's sensitive dock, and stopped. She squirmed her hips at Rarity's apparent teasing as a hoof pushed aside her dark, striped tail, and then the younger mare felt Rarity's lips travel with a slow, teasing touch down the other side of her soft folds. The white unicorn's horn touched her skin, and love and reassurance and eagerness enveloped her like a comforting embrace.

Twilight saw nothing through Rarity's eyes – they were closed as her lover relied on only her touch and the sensations her magic showed her. But the white mare's utter confidence and care and love told Twilight that she was right to trust Rarity. Curiosity began to override Twilight's feelings of angst. Just how many partners have you done this with, Rarity? the younger unicorns feelings emoted.

She heard and experienced a little laugh of fondness that also chided her and told her to simply relax and let them make love together as they would. Twilight smiled and closed her eyes, ignoring the silk ropes that held her fast and concentrating on the excitement Rarity felt.

The emotive link soon broke, but the pleasure the two mares felt at that connection was quickly replaced by the lightest touch of Rarity's tongue against the wet, pink folds of Twilight's maresex. Twilight tried to contain her tail's movements, but it swept uncontrolled in an excited arc across Rarity's neck and shoulders as that loving tongue split her swollen folds and drew an intense wet line upward and then plunged inside her.

Twilight gasped and cried out, flinching and tugging involuntarily at her thin bonds as Rarity's tongue slowly pushed its way inside her, and Rarity groaned lustily into Twilight as she lovingly stroked against her tender wet channel. They held each other fast with tail and hooves while Rarity pleased her mare with her wide, thick tongue, slowly pulsing in and out and sweeping it around the inside of the bound mare.

Rarity felt her lover's body shake, felt her sweet lover's opening tighten around her tongue. She slowly pulled her tongue out and brushed it again along the less sensitive areas beside her wet opening.

“Rarity? What are you...” Twilight cried in distress, yanking on her ropes with all four hooves. “Oh goddess! Please don't stop now!”

Rarity pulled herself up over Twilight's shaking body, sliding her soft white fur against Twilight's lovely soft back until her wet lips reached the unicorn's ears and nipped playfully at them as her long mane tickled Twilight's neck and shoulders.

“What do you want, Twilight?” Rarity whispered hotly. “Tell me, lover!”

“My... oh please, touch my... my clitoris,” Twilight stammered. She yanked again at her ropes and frustrated desire strengthened her voice. “Suck on my clit, Rarity!”

Without a word Rarity nipped gently at Twilight's ears – eliciting sweet little throaty sounds of lust and frustration from the lavender mare – and pulled back, biting and kissing her way across Twilight's nearly prone form, and up along her mane and back and raised flanks. She kissed and nipped hard at Twilight's cutie mark and massaged her hooves into her back, smiling as her ears were filled with the frustrated cries of the younger mare. Her roving lips soon met the top of Twilight's quivering dock, and she suckled briefly at that lovely sensitive spot she knew so very well before braving Twilight's whipping tail and sliding her lips down into her lover's sex again.

Twilight's sweet friend – oh, who am I kidding? Rarity is my lover! Not just a friend – teased her for an aching, eternally long time before she felt those hooves pull her at hindquarters and those wonderful, infinitely skilled lips encircled and drew in her sensitive swollen clitoris and lashed it lovingly with that amazing, goddess-given tongue. Twilight felt like her lungs were blasting more air out than drawing in as she screamed and panted and shook. She wrenched at her ropes as Rarity suckled sweetly at her swollen, winking nub for all she was worth. The tip of the white unicorn's tongue lashed harshly at Twilight's over-sensitive clit, playing across it and up and down her sex. Twilight shook and shouted and thumped her tail against Rarity and she finally reached the amazing peak her body had been forced to ache for.

“Oh Rarity, yes! Yes! Ah! Don't stop! Oh my gosh! Oh Celestia—”

Rarity's tongue pressed in and circled and bathed Twilight's clitoris as it twitched and pulsed between Rarity's lips. Rarity hummed with excitement and pulled the mare more tightly to her, sucking her clit even harder and roughly vibrating the tip of her tongue over it until Twilight screamed and bucked her hips and yanked against her bonds. Rhythmic splashes of feminine come drenched the white unicorn's tongue and snout and face and eyes, and Rarity groaned and whined lustily in her throat with each beautiful pulse of opaque liquid she slurped and sucked up.

With her face soaked and her lips pulled into a lovely broad smile, Rarity at last released Twilight's hyper-sensitive nubbin from her lips and pulled back to look on the restrained mare. Twilight groaned with each labored breath, still shivering and pulling weakly at the silk binding around her hooves.

Rarity slowly began to kiss her way back up her lover's body, finally reaching her ears and cheeks. As she approached closer to Twilight's face, the younger unicorn yanked harder at her bonds and whined with intense need. Her firm white body pressed against Twilight's flank and side, and then Rarity stepped over Twilight to stand above her, the curve of her barrel fitted snugly against the dipping curve of that lavender back and her wet sex rubbing against Twilight's dock. Rarity moaned and suckled at her purple ears, first one and then the other, and breathed her sexiest, sultriest voice into each of them.

“Did you enjoy that?” Rarity cooed into her ear, and Twilight moaned and swiveled her hips up into Rarity. “You are the sexiest mare I've ever loved, Twilight, and I can't resist you; tell me what you want, love, and I will give it to you.” But she already knew what her lover wanted from her, and she stretched a hoof forward to caress Twilight's bound forelegs. She kissed Twilight's cheek and leaned in to hear the little gasps of breath Twilight wheezed into the bed, and nuzzled her until the young mage's cheek was soaked with the shared musky wetness of her own climax.

“Wow... Rarity, I really... got you...” Twilight panted with a little smile.

Twilight sensed what was about to happen and lit her horn with an ethereal glow. She cried out sharply as Rarity's lips and tongue caressed and tasted the first few inches of her glowing horn, sending bright spikes of pleasure through her body to her tender sex. She hunched her hips upward again, driving her crop into Rarity's wet folds as the white pony lying atop her expertly played and teased her tongue at Twilight's horn, until the lavender unicorn gasped and pleaded for more.

“Rarity... Rarity... Oh Celestia... goddess, oh please Rarity! I'm ready... Let's try it! Mount me... with your horn! Please...”

Rarity stepped over Twilight and hugged her restrained body. She briefly kissed the mare's lips before she spoke.
“Alright, my sweet. But do this for us; don't analyze it, just let it happen. Okay?”

Twilight nodded frantically, agreeing to anything and everything. Her eyes were wide and pleading. “O... Okay. Hurry!”

With a kiss to the mare's nose, Rarity pulled back and stepped over the silk rope restraining Twilight's hind leg, and lifted her hooves to rest on her lover's haunches. Twilight's tail was soaked with wetness from Rarity's sex, and their scents intermingled as she brought her lips briefly to Twilight's wet sex and tasted her lustily. Judging by the silky wetness flowing from her folds and the lashing of her tail against Rarity's head and neck, the lavender unicorn was quite ready.
Rarity stroked her hooves against Twilight's flanks, and brought her horn alight.

Twilight stared wide-eyed past her out-stretched legs, a thousand miles beyond her hooves. She tugged anxiously at the silken ropes, almost too excited to breath, and moved her tail aside. She closed her eyes and moaned loudly as Rarity bent her head down and gently touched her horn to Twilight's wet folds.

The familiar glow of their shared feelings filled Twilight's senses, and a spark of pleasure thrilled through both lovers as the tip of the white unicorn's horn traveled slowly down between Twilight's pink lips. It touched lightly against the lavender pony's clitoris, and the two mares gasped together. The magic of Rarity's aura tingled against the sensitive nub, and Twilight cried out as Rarity brushed the tip across it, expertly circling the smoothed tip around it and sending little electric jolts of pleasure through her.

Rarity calmed her breathes and smiled as she heard Twilight's sweet little cries began to rise in pitch and felt her lover's fast climb toward a climax. She lowered the intensity of the spell she'd cloaked her horn with, and began to draw her horn upward again through Twilight's dripping lips, coming to rest with the tip just inside her winking opening.

Twilight trembled as she felt an arm carefully reach forward and wrap around her lavender thigh, and another reached over her dusky tail to rest on her haunches. And then Rarity was holding her tight and firm and... slowly pressing her horn into Twilight's warm sex.

A quick shock of panic rolled over Twilight as she realized that it was finally happening. Her friend and lover, another unicorn was... inside her, pushing her hard fluted horn into Twilight's most intimate place. Neither Lyra nor herself had ever dared do this particular deed, and it felt... it felt...!

She panted and groaned loudly as that smooth amazing hardness slowly pressed into her, and her panic disappeared. She felt the exciting heat of it, felt the heat and wetness of herself on it through Rarity's senses. The tingling glow of it sparked through her tender sex as Rarity rocked back and forth with aching slowness, penetrating the lavender mare a little more with each careful stroke. Familiar wet sounds began to mingle with Twilight's rising moans and Rarity's slow measured breaths.

After several long, aching minutes Twilight began to feel the wideness of Rarity's horn stretch her as it pushed further inside her, and soon the fluting around her lover's horn became another exciting sensation that grew and faded and grew again with each long, loving stroke. The tickling touch of Rarity's ears and mane brushed against her rear, and warm, even breaths exhaled against the inside of her thighs... and with one final, slow push Rarity fully penetrated Twilight, pressing her fur and mane tightly against her lover's nethers as her horn disappeared into her lover.

“Ahhhh, Rarity! Oh stars that feels so... oh incredible! I can't believe I'm... doing this! Oh harder!”

She felt a wave of love and intense desire and happiness wash over her at her words.

The white unicorn held Twilight now with an iron grip as she began to move her head and horn in tight little circles, and Twilight cried out sharply and began to whip her tail hard against Rarity's head and down her neck. The two ponies felt each other's excitement grow, and Rarity responded by increasing the intensity of the spell surrounding her horn. What had been a low hum of gentle electricity now felt like a shocking glow within her; Twilight groaned deeply and shoved her face between her legs and into the bed as her body felt the rapid rise to an astounding orgasm. Rarity felt her lover about to come, and quickly reduced the magic field and pulled all but the tip of her horn from Twilight's maresex.

“NO! Don't you dare stop, Rarity!” Twilight screamed. “Put it back inside me! Rut me, damn it! Rut me!”

Rarity smiled and slowly stroked the full length of her horn into her lover. She bottomed out, thumping her head lightly against Twilight's tender backside, pulling back hard with her arms and grinding against her sex. Twilight squealed and shouted her approval.

“Yes! Harder! Come on!” the dusky mare groaned. She yanked desperately hard against the silk ropes, and the bed creaked menacingly. “RUT ME!”

Rarity pulled back again and pushed herself harder into Twilight, grinding into her again as she brought her spell up almost to the limit of what she knew was safe. Her lover screamed in ecstasy, thumping her arms against the bed and lashing her tail like a whip over Rarity's back. Twilight's wetness soaked Rarity's mane and head, and each thrust into the lavender pony splashed more of it against her thighs and in a soggy wet line beneath her on the bed.

Rarity increased the speed and power of her strokes, and in a moment her horn was thrusting hard and fast into Twilight, her head pounding rhythmically against the mare's hind end. Twilight's screams filled the room as her orgasm approached. Her body stiffened and shook violently, her striped tail laid nearly straight and quivering over Rarity's head. With a few last, hard strokes, Rarity finally brought her lover to her climax.

Twilight snapped the ropes holding her forehooves and shoved her face into the bed, screaming as her body convulsed wildly and her horn lit the bed with sparks of light. Her sex squeezed and pulsed around Rarity's embedded horn, and with the first wave of contractions, she showered Rarity's head with a pulsing flood of sweet, musky liquid.

Groaning heavily, Rarity pulled back and then pushed in hard once more, grinding wetly against her lover. She reveled in Twilight's ecstasy as another wave of contractions gripped them both, and she cried out and finally came with her lover. Twilight felt Rarity's horn filling her sex with a warm glow of magic, felt Rarity's climax through their shared connection, and cried again in surprise as another, smaller wave of contractions gripped her and rippled pleasantly through her body. Finally, their connection broke as the spell faded.

Twilight lay with her arms wrapped around her head, wheezing and groaning and moving her hips in sweet pleased little circles that pressed Rarity's hardness very nicely into her tender sex. Rarity released her hold on her lavender lover and tapped her flank gently; she pulled her horn slowly from Twilight, and small flood released and dripped to the bed. Twilight groaned with disappointment, suddenly feeling an unwelcome emptiness inside her.

Rarity untied Twilight's hind legs and ran a tender hoof across her lover's flank and twitching tail. She moved unseen to the far side of the bed and giggled a little as she spoke.

“Come here and lie with me, Twilight. I think it might be a little, um, safer over her.”

Shaking and weak and still out of breath, the young mage groaned and rolled lazily in Rarity's direction, finally coming within hugging range. She saw Rarity's face and mane and chest and gasped as she brought a hoof to her reddening face.

“Yes, my dear, I know,” Rarity said with a little smirk, “and I don't mind at all. Hold me?”

Rarity was drenched – her lovely white face, her mane, her horn, her soft chest fur were all thoroughly soaked and clumped with the musky wet evidence of Twilight's fulfillment. Twilight would have felt mortally embarrassed, except that Rarity still managed to wear that sweet, loving look on her face that Twilight had become so fond of. In a moment she smiled at her lover and scooted over playfully, drawing Rarity into a happy, wet hug and kissing her enthusiastically. She tasted herself on Rarity's face and lips, and then combed a few wet strands of mane from that sweet white face.

“Thank you, Rarity,” Twilight said quietly, still bringing her breathing under control. “That was... I don't think I can even tell you how amazing that felt. I'm glad—” she nuzzled Rarity's wet check and idly brushed a hoof over her neck, “—that my first time like that was with you.”

“I love you Twilight,” Rarity responded, kissing Twilight softly. “I could never do any less for you. As I said, this is all for you, my sweet Sparkle-kitten.”

Twilight smiled and nuzzled against Rarity, then she closed her eyes and sighed. Warm and fuzzy. I think I can deal with that, now.

And with that, she fell asleep against a soft white pony.

~ * ~

Rarity lay in bed holding Twilight close, carefully watching the sleeping mage's sweet face, softly stroking a hoof over her twilight-colored mane as she breathed quietly and dreamed.

It was the most tender caress, so appropriate to the solitude and quiet of their bedroom – an expression of her love unseen and unshared by anypony else. Had Rarity from yesterday watched herself touching Twilight like this, had she seen the look on her own face, she might have thought Yes, this is it; this is me, in love with Twilight Sparkle, and she's sweet and adorable and perfect. And she loves me. But it would have been at least partly an illusion to Rarity of only hours ago.
A tear threatened to draw a fresh wet line across Rarity's cheek, and she quickly brought her hoof up to wipe it away before returning to stroking Twilight's mane and neck.

I almost lost you today, love, and I still don't know why. Stress, perhaps, she tried to rationalize. We all seem to be under such pressure, lately... maybe that's all it is. But I will never give you up, not you or Lero, nor Lyra or Spike; not without a fight. And I can fight.

She watched her hoof combing across Twilight's dark mane, caressing her neck. “I love you, Twilight,” she whispered.
“I love you too, Rarity,” Twilight answered sleepily.

Rarity's breath caught and her eyes turned to Twilight's face; the young mare was still asleep, still dreaming, but now there was the tiniest smile on her lips. Twilight cuddled in closer to Rarity, purring happily as she snuggled her muzzle into her soft white chest.

Rarity sighed heavily, and felt the weight and a terrible ache in her heart lift and vanish like a dark cloud dissipating after a heavy rain. She leaned her head over, and their manes mingled as she laid a kiss on Twilight neck. Then she held on tightly, and with a smile, laid her head down and closed her eyes... just for a few moments.

~ * ~

“...Rarity,” the voice crooned.

Her ear twitched. White-furred and soft and pink inside. Twitch.

“Raaaaarity.”

Warm lips touched her nose, and she scrunched her face at the tickling sensation. She was just on the edge of wakefulness when those lips caressed hers and lingered in a soft, sensuous kiss.

Twilight slowly climbed her way over her white unicorn, lips still locked to Rarity's, and was pulled in close by the white arms that reached up automatically to encircle her.

Rarity awoke and opened her eyes just a sliver, humming happily and smiling into the warmth of Twilight's eager kiss. Twilight at last pulled her lips from Rarity's and began kissing her lover's muzzle and cheek.

“Oh Twilight, please don't stop. Kiss me again?” Rarity pleaded quietly.

The lavender unicorn pulled away slightly and gave her lover a little mischievous smile.

“I think that's my line, Miss Sleepy, but it sounds pretty nice coming from you. I think I'd like to hear that don't stop an awful lot more.” Twilight wiggled her eyebrows at Rarity.

“Miss Sleepy? My darling Twilight you fell asleep long before—” Twilight grinned like she'd won first place at the Running of the Leaves. “Oh you little tease. Well in my defense, you had fallen quite heavily asleep and the room was so quiet and you just looked far too adorable to not fall asleep on...” Rarity smiled sheepishly and shrugged. Then she thought for a moment as Twilight continued to hold herself away, and a serious look passed over her face.

“Don't stop, Twilight,” Rarity whispered with sudden urgency. “Kiss me again. And tell me that you love me... I need to hear it.”

A brief look of surprise lit Twilight's face, then she smiled brightly and brought her lips tantalizingly close to Rarity's. She lifted a hoof and brushed it through Rarity's indigo mane and over her soft ear, and after a moment's gaze of fondness into her lover's eyes, she kissed Rarity with a tenderness she hadn't thought she could ever feel for the white pony.

“I love you Rarity,” Twilight breathed as she finally pulled her lips away, and she felt happy with the sincerity of it in her heart. “And I'm so sorry that I hurt you today. I... You know that I'm under a lot of pressure, and I... misjudged you. I hope you can forgive me.”

Rarity sighed with obvious relief, and smiled. “I love you too, Twilight, and of course I forgive you.”

“Will you let me make it up to you? I have something in mind,” Twilight said, smiling again, “something very special.”

“Oh my,” Rarity said. “But you've never... Twilight are you quite sure that—”

“I'm very sure, Rarity. I know you wanted this day to be for me, but I want to please you, and isn't that also for me?” Twilight raised an eyebrow, daring Rarity to contradict her.

“Twilight Sparkle, you are far too clever a pony for my own good,” Rarity exclaimed. “Well, there is a first time for everypony, I suppose, and you are a fast learner...” Rarity thought for a moment. “Very well, my dear, but I think here is not the place for it,” Rarity said, her head nodding toward the large wet spot still staining the middle of the bed. “I think that old bed in Lero's old house will do rather nicely, don't you?”

“Um, well...” Twilight stammered, and then she looked at the wreckage they had made of the duvet and comforter, and very likely the mattress beneath. “Okay, you talked me into it!”

“Wonderful!” Rarity exclaimed. She felt a little trepidation, but for Twilight's sake she attempted to hide it. “Shall we teleport over, now?” She made as if to bring the young mage close to her in preparation.

Twilight looked a little apprehensively at Rarity and pulled back slightly, laying a hoof against the other unicorn's shoulder.

“Rarity, I know you can teleport,” she stated, “but have you ever done that except by yourself? With another pony?”

The white weather pony looked a little sheepish. “Well... no, Twilight, but the theory is the same—”

“Let me do it, then, Rarity,” Twilight interrupted. “I know you're good, and I am very impressed, but it is much more dangerous this way and it takes practice. Trust me, okay? Magic pony,” she finished, smiling and holding her hoof to her chest.

Rarity sighed. “Of course, Twilight, I shall defer to your better judgment.”

With a quick peck on Rarity's disappointed lips, Twilight turned and hopped off the bed. Then Rarity got up, and carefully avoiding the lake of wet bedding, leapt gracefully to the bedroom floor and came to stand next to Twilight.

Twilight made a show of pressing hard up against Rarity an hanging an arm over her withers. She giggled when the white mare turned her head and gave a thoroughly sardonic look. Then before Rarity could blink, Twilight had lit her horn's aura and teleported the two unicorns from the room with a flash of light.

~ * ~

A moment later they appeared next to the much smaller bed in Lero's old house. Twilight instantly grabbed Rarity in a surprise hug with both arms around her neck, and smacked her lips playfully on the white unicorn's cheek. Rarity turned a slightly peeved and scowling eye at Twilight, but the lavender mage shrugged and smiled anyway. She pressed her lips sensuously into her lover's soft cheek again, until Rarity finally leaned into the kiss and sighed.

“Is everything okay, Rarity?” Twilight said as she lifted her lips from her lover's soft white fur.

“Yes, my dear, everything is actually quite lovely. A momentary lapse on my part – please pay it no heed. You were quite right to insist on being the one to bring us here, and of course I cannot remain upset at you when you are so very adorable.”

“Which of course is most of the time,” Twilight stated with another kiss before releasing her soft marshmallow pony.

“Yes, of course,” Rarity said with a small laugh.

Rarity turned her gaze away and began to inspect the room. Her pretty face began to squinch in mild disdain.

“Rarity?” Twilight asked. She shuffled her hooves nervously.

“Yes, my dear?” came a distracted reply.

“Um, I've been meaning to ask you... How exactly did you learn to use the teleportation spell? I mean, I just don't — What?”

Rarity looked at Twilight as though she'd quite possibly gone mad. Again.

“Who are you and what have you done with my Sparkle-kitten?” Rarity exclaimed. “Are you a changeling in disguise, perhaps?” She smirked and turned an eye and a raised brow up in thought. “That does raise some rather embarrassing possibilities, considering the previous hour—”

“Rarity! What are you talking about?”

“My dear sweet pony, what are you talking about? You know quite well that you taught me how to perform teleportation yourself, well over a year ago! It literally took us months, just to get to the point where you would even let me try. Are you sure that you're feeling well, darling?” Rarity lifted a hoof to Twilight's forehead, which the purple unicorn batted away gently.

Of course it was me who taught Rarity.

“I'm fine, Rarity. I've just been under way too much stress lately. You've, well... you definitely helped me with that today,” Twilight said with a sigh, “but I'm having trouble remembering a lot of things right now. Maybe you could... refresh my memory a bit?”

“I see,” Rarity replied thoughtfully. “I must say that I'm quite disturbed that you don't remember, Twilight! However...”

~ * ~

“No, no, no! Try again.” Twilight stamped her hoof into the green turf. “The Princess will probably banish me if she finds out I'm doing this,” she grumbled aside. “And then she'll banish you, too.” Her head snapped back to Rarity and her brows furrowed sharply. “Concentrate!”

Rarity closed her eyes and forced away her irritation at Twilight and her frustration with herself. She steadied her body, legs splayed in the grass atop the small rise, and attempted to clear her thoughts. It should have been much easier than it was; she'd learned many concentration techniques years before her return to a new life in Ponyville as a weather pony. But her previous subjects of study were often far more pleasant and also far less dangerous.

“Now,” stated the young mage.

Rarity turned away from Twilight's voice and opened her eyes, and then quickly snapped them shut again.

“Start with the park bench,” Twilight ordered, clearly watching to see if Rarity was cheating again.

“Lyra's sitting on the bench, of course – on the far left side, before you ask – eating a sandwich and watching us with that same odd smile she always has... Yes, I know; never mind! There are six trees in that specific area, two of them a different species, the dirt path running before them past the bench—”

“Other ponies?”

“Fluttershy is quite obviously pronking above the shrub behind and to Lyra's left and waving to get our attention, no doubt trying to enlist us in a welcoming party for Berry's cousin from Fillydelphia. Which I highly advise against, by the way—”

“Concentrate!” Twilight growled.

“No other ponies within thirty yards, except perhaps for Applejack's sister and her terrifying little friends, who I see are all hiding out in the bushes to Lyra's right and scheming the doom of Ponyville by tree sap—”

“Animals?”

“Aside from the Cutie Mark Crusaders? None that I see or hear. No birds—”

“I can hear them in the trees, Rarity!”

Rarity sighed heavily and continued.

“—that I can see, Twilight. Besides, the field would push them away when it expanded, even before I could complete the transition into it! Why would it matter?”

“We've talked about this before; everything matters, Rarity!” Twilight shouted, too loudly.

Rarity opened her eyes and looked over at Twilight, lowering her ears with a dejected exhale. Her curled mane and tail both drooped sadly as Twilight lectured her for perhaps the hundredth time that day.

“It's not just yourself you're protecting, Rarity, it's the ponies and other creatures around you! The teleportation field is as finely tuned as you make it, and if you lose your concentration and screw it up – which is terrifyingly easy to do – you risk hurting not only yourself, but somepony else who you didn't think would be in the same place when you jumped. It might kill you and it would definitely kill them.”

“You can't always know what will be there if you can't see where you're going to be, Twilight,” Rarity remarked quietly, raising her head up a little. But Twilight shook her head, deadly serious.

“I can, Rarity. And I'm going to teach that to you before you ever learn how to teleport, but you have to master this part first; being able to visualize where you are and where you're going is absolutely critical. This is how I was taught, and it really is the best way. Too many ponies have, well...” Twilight looked away uncomfortably. “It's too important to skip this lesson, Rarity.”

Twilight saw the look on Rarity's face, and sighed as she realized that she'd pushed her friend too hard again. She stepped close and nuzzled against Rarity's downcast face; her mane smelled distractingly of lilacs, and she blew a light breath through it. Her anger washed away in a moment of closeness.

“Rarity, I... I'm only teaching you how to do this because I know that you can do it — not every unicorn can. But it's so much more dangerous than you realize, and sometimes I get very worried.”

Twilight licked her lips nervously and drew in another lilac breath. And then on impulse she kissed Rarity's cheek, a slow tender touch of her lips. She blushed furiously at herself and placed a lingering hoof against Rarity's chest. She dropped it down quickly and then watched as it pawed into the soft grass. “I... I love you, Rarity. You're my — well you're my best friend, and I have to teach you to do this perfectly. I need to be absolutely sure that you'll never, ever hurt yourself.”

When she looked up, Rarity was holding a hoof to her white cheek where Twilight's lips had feather-touched her, her mouth open with surprise. The white unicorn leaned her muzzle in very close and lifted the mage's lavender chin with her hoof.

Twilight's eyes grew wide, and the two ponies shared warm breaths for a moment as the world around them faded into an absolute certainty of what was going to happen.

“I want very much to kiss you, Twilight,” Rarity stated quietly.

“Rarity, I... okay.” Twilight's quivered with anticipation, and she closed her eyes as Rarity's lips drew closer to hers.

It was a lovely kiss. Of course. The world didn't quite sail wildly out of orbit, lightning didn't really strike them down on the spot, and gravity actually still held the two unicorns to the grass despite the unbearable lightness they felt as their lips touched for the very first time. But the world around them drew in and decided to hold them close together for a few precious moments, wrapping them in electricity and a new glow and warmth of fire.

Their eyes opened slowly, blue and amethyst and sultry, and they reluctantly pulled their lips apart only to inhale a few shaking breaths of air.

“Well,” Rarity spoke first, trying to regain her breath. Her lips smiled and she was hungry to kiss Twilight again. “That was very—”

“Wow,” Twilight replied, touching her lips with a hoof. She wanted to pin Rarity to the ground and kiss her until the world disappeared again. And again.

The sounds of the green park intruded, though; foals at play chasing past them and parents galloping by to corral their errant children; other couples arriving to take up nearby spots and enjoy the sun and cool air together; the pleasant weather and the popularity of the wide green fields conspired against their new desire for closeness and solitude.

The two unicorns looked around, suddenly aware of their stage-like presence at the top of the little hill. They shuffled nervously despite the warmth they felt between them, and tried to say the right thing.

“Maybe we should, well...” Rarity began.

“Yeah, we should probably, um—”

A touch of self-consciousness started to create a small void of indecision around them, but it had no chance of lasting long.

“We could continue with the lesson, I suppose,” Rarity suggested, not at all hopefully. “Or, perhaps...?”

Twilight looked into Rarity's blue eyes as she breathed little ragged breaths, and she saw exactly what she felt in herself.

“N-no, I'm pretty sure we just blew our concentration for the day,” Twilight said, shaking her head with a smile. “Maybe we should... Let's do something else.” A thought occurred to her and her pretty face lit with a stunning rouge glow, but she still smiled.

“That's a lovely idea,” Rarity said, failing to hide her own excited blush as her long purple mane fell over her face.

Rarity nudged Twilight playfully, and the two ponies turned and began to trot with quick excited steps down the hill together, nudging each other hard and flicking their tails against each other's flanks along the way.

By the time the two unicorns reached the edge of the park, their fast walk slowed to an ambling gate; they drew close together, quietly walking barely a hoof apart and touching each other shyly, almost by accident... as if they thought they could still hide their feelings from each other, just in case they might be wrong.

The surprised smiles and waves of a few friendly ponies who passed by on their way to the park might have told the pair just how little they were hiding their affection — if Twilight and Rarity could be bothered to look around for a spare moment.

They stepped onto the packed earth of the street that ran next to the park and bumped into each other gently again, but this time they stuck together quite happily as they continued on for a long silent span.

“Twilight? Do you like Lero?” Rarity asked, her voice softly breaking the quiet. “I've sensed something between the two of you for a while, now—”

Twilight felt her face heat up, and she shook her mane and blew a soft nervous breath in a little whinny of dismay.

Rarity walked on for another few hoof-steps before she realized that Twilight had stopped to stare at her. “Rarity, I would never... ever — well, you know...”

Twilight's head turned away sharply as a realization of their situation set in. Her shame was obvious and her head hung low. “I know he's your coltfriend, and well, I'm so happy for both of you. I should never have... I shouldn't have kissed you, Rarity! I really should go, I'm so sorry—”

“Oh Twilight, I kissed you,” Rarity said, stepping back and leaning her head over Twilight's neck. Twilight tried to turn away, but Rarity's strong hold kept her in place.

“Lero is shy, perhaps more so than you are, my dear, and he might never have said anything to me about it. But I can see the spark between the two of you as much as I've felt it between myself and him... and with you.” Rarity pulled back and nuzzled very firmly against Twilight's cheek. “I asked him about you, Twilight, and we talked for quite a long time about you. We decided that were going to ask you together if you might like to join our little herd, but I think perhaps now is the right time.”

Twilight pulled back a little and stared at Rarity, and for a moment she forgot how to breath. Then she shook her head and took a deep breath, surprised and relieved and excited. A smile lit her lavender face and suddenly she looked happy again.

“Oh Rarity, I would love that!” Twilight cried. She leapt up and wrapped her forelegs around Rarity's neck, squeezing a surprised squeak out of the white pony as her enthusiasm pushed them back a few steps together.

Rarity lifted her hoof to hug Twilight tightly, laughing gently. “I suppose that now you'll probably want to—”

“I need to do some research!” Twilight exclaimed. She pulled away excitedly and dropped to all fours. Her eyes shined. “There's so much to think about! I mean—”

“Lero said you would say that,” Rarity laughed quietly, laying her head over Twilight's neck again as the little mare plowed on, oblivious.

“—he's your stallion, and I need his approval too! And there's the whole dating thing, and the flowers – and oh my gosh, they have to be lavender, don't they, or maybe lilacs! – and wait Lero knew I'd say this?”

Rarity laughed again and this time it was her turn to reach her fore-hooves up to hold Twilight in a tight hug.

“I didn't tell you before, Twilight, but you are absolutely the most adorable pony in Equestria and I do love you. And yes, Lero knew. He wanted to make a wager on it, but I simply refused!”

Twilight chuckled against Rarity's hug, and suddenly she found herself at a complete loss for words. Instead she just lifted her foreleg up and held her friend, making happy humming sounds into Rarity's neck.

“Twilight Sparkle, you sound exactly like a sweet little kitten who's found a new home...”

“Hmmmm, maybe that's because I have, Rarity.”

Rarity held Twilight close for a few moments with her eyes closed, reveling in her new herdmare's soft hum of contentment before she finally released the lavender pony. She lifted a hoof to caress Twilight's cheek.

“Well, my sweet Sparkle-kitten, shall we go and find Lero? I'm sure he's probably home by now... What?”

Twilight was giggling as she lifted her hoof to Rarity's, holding the white mare's hoof close and nuzzling into it.

“Sparkle-kitten, Rarity?” Twilight asked, blushing furiously again. It just seemed to be the kind of day for that. “I kind of... Oh my gosh that's so cute.”

Rarity smiled, feeling a new warmth encircle her heart, and she leaned in and kissed Twilight again.

~ * ~

Twilight stared at Rarity as she brought her story to a close, and she found herself unable to think for a moment.

Rarity kissed the side of her sweetly surprised face. Absolutely adorable.

“Rarity... those are your memories? That was our first...” How? Where could all of those memories possibly have come from? An alternate universe? Or are they all just made up by the spell? The lavender mage quickly cast aside any hope of an explanation as it threatened to unravel the calm Rarity had worked so hard to give her. Just roll with it for a change. Sort it out later. It'll come.

“My dear...” Rarity began. She bit her bottom lip and thought carefully about what she should say. “I think you might imagine how concerned I am for you, love. That you cannot remember is... disheartening, but I am trying to understand.”

“I know, and I'm really sorry, Rarity. It does all sound familiar, and it really does sound like me,” Twilight said with a small laugh. She reached up and wrapped her arms around Rarity's neck, holding her tightly and stroking Rarity's mane as the unicorn spoke on.

“You were quite a thorough taskmistress, I must say, and your methods felt rather harsh at the time. But when you told me that you loved me,” Rarity smiled at the memory and leaned into Twilight's neck, “I realized that I hadn't been taking you seriously, and I understood that you were trying to protect me from myself. It became much easier for both of us after that.”

Rarity's gaze looked over Twilight's shoulder, and she saw herself staring into a dusty mirror hanging behind Twilight.

“Oh Luna in the moon, I look dreadful,” Rarity suddenly pined. “Twilight, why didn't you say something?”

“Well, because I think you look very sexy? And you didn't mind earlier? Seriously, Rarity, you look fine—”

“Oh no, my dear. While I appreciate your sentiment, I think it's time for me to clean up a little.” Rarity tapped Twilight's shoulder, and the pony released her and stepped away. “Give me just a moment!”

Rarity took a step back as her horn began to glow with the color of her azure eyes. Twilight watched in fascination as a cool blue glow quickly enveloped the white unicorn. Rarity's mane and the longer hairs of her coat began to wave as if blown in a strong wind. Swirling patterns formed in the shorter hairs of her coat, and then all at once the thick blanket of blue aura broke apart into dozens of spheres, each one seeming to rotate and fly across Rarity's white form. Her mane and tail were stretched out behind her, drawn by the specter of a gale-force wind, and smaller globes of blue wrapped themselves around her hair and yet somehow drifted delicately through the long strands.

Twilight stood watching, awed that Rarity had learned such fine control over so many thaumatic threads at once. She asked herself, not for the last time, Where had all of this power and talent come from? Was it carried over with Rainbow Dash's soul? Did that explain Rainbow's unique abilities which had clearly always been magical? Or did Rarity always have this potential, untapped and waiting to be put to use? She always was good at thread-work with... fashion. Twilight smiled.

It didn't matter. Twilight's smile grew wider as she watched her friend use her magic, performing the simple task of grooming herself in the most complex way. She looked at Rarity's face; her blue eyes were closed to the touch of her magic, but her smile was lovely to see. She was happy.

At last Rarity opened her eyes and the spell ended. Suddenly the low hum of all the whirlwinds of magic ceased, leaving the room surprisingly quiet.

Twilight giggled a little as she looked at Rarity, and the white weather pony gave herself a cursory once-over in the mirror with a mild snort of approval. She looked at Twilight and returned the wide smile she saw on her friend's face.

“Well,” Rarity said with rare acceptance of her wind-blown appearance, “it could be worse.” She giggled with Twilight as she gave her purple herdmare a brief look, and then came to an instant decision.

“Your turn!” Rarity announced.

Twilight squeaked as she was enveloped by Rarity's weather spell, but she could feel the benign nature of it and decided to just let it happen. She started to giggle as the spell encased her, and then as the field broke apart to do it's work, she had to hold in her laughter. She could feel it tugging at her mane an tail and swirling over ever inch of her lavender body, drying and combing gently through every strand of soft hair. Just as she was about to complain to Rarity about how much it all tickled, it was over. She opened her eyes to see Rarity open the skylight above and toss a glowing blue sphere out the window.

Rarity brought her gaze down just in time to squeak brightly as Twilight bowled her over onto the bed. She landed on her back and sank into the mattress as Twilight pinned her down and pressed her face into Rarity's soft, beautiful neck and mane.

“Twilight! What are you—”

“That was amazing, Rarity,” the young mage said. Twilight pulled her muzzle from Rarity's neck and looked down at her with sparkling eyes. “You have to teach me that, okay?” Twilight kissed Rarity passionately on the lips before the white mare could respond. When the lilac pony finally let Rarity have some air, it was only to give herself a breath before diving in again.

“Twilight! I—”

“I love it that we still smell like each other, Rarity. Was that deliberate? Good choice!” Twilight groaned and nipped at Rarity's cheek and neck, and Rarity's soft moans finally joined Twilight's.

Rarity found herself basking in a surprising glow of pleasure and contentment. If her lover wanted to please her, and if this was all for Twilight, well then who was she to say no to letting Twilight take over for a little while...? Rarity moaned as Twilight kissed her soft chest and began trailing kisses down her belly.

Oh that's lovely, Twilight, oh my, oh yes right there.

~ * ~

Twilight's tongue lapped slowly down Rarity's belly, painting feather-light, cooling swirls of saliva against her pale skin. Her wide amethyst eyes looked up over Rarity's heaving barrel and stared into those big blues, and the desire she saw in them made her purr happily.

She withdrew her tongue and began planting kisses in a slow orbit around each of Rarity's nipples, sucking the smooth skin between her lips and tickling her tongue against it.

“Oh my dear Sparkle-kitten, that feels lovely. What you may lack in skill – ahhh! – you more than make up for with enthusiasm—”

“Well, that's not very nice of you, Rarity,” Twilight pouted, teasing her lips over the tender skin, so very close to a swollen nipple. “Are you saying that I don't have enough skill to please you?”

“No, darling, that's not what I meant at all—”

Twilight swiped her tongue across the smooth, bare patch, and then circled Rarity's nipple with her tongue-tip, never quite coming close enough to touch it... “I only ask because—” She opened her lips wide and fully kissed Rarity's nipple, sucking it between her teeth and lashing it once with her tongue. Rarity arched her back and cried out, just before Twilight released it. “—I can stop... anytime you want me to.”

“Don't. You. Dare!” Rarity panted. “Sparkle-kitten, indeed! Perhaps I should call you Sparkle-tiger, instead...”

A little laugh vibrated in Twilight's throat as her lips drew a slow line of wet kisses towards Rarity's other, aching nipple. Kiss. “Mmmm, I like that,” she purred sexily. Kiss. “I suppose I'll forgive you for now, Rarity.” Kiss.

The slow wet line soon became achingly slow, wet circles around the other sensitive nub. Twilight brought her hooves up and began to stroke upward over Rarity's soft tummy and chest, caressing and kneading as she reveled in her lover's new moans of frustration. She pressed her gasping lover down and felt the white pony's hind legs try to squeeze her tightly as she finally took that second full, dark nipple between her lips and teeth. She sucked it in softly, feeling the sensitive flesh swell; her tongue brushed across and around the swollen teat until Rarity shivered and her dark tail wrapped in a tight caress over Twilight's neck.

“Oh my dear Sparkle-tigress, I apologize,” Rarity breathed harshly, “I had no idea... you've never been as aggressive with me as today... oh goddess, that's so lovely...”

Twilight finally released her hold on her lover's tender nipple and soon began planting little kisses further and further down... Rarity groaned again, and bright amethyst eyes captured hers as they looked up over her heaving chest.

“Well,” Twilight replied with a sweet, throaty laugh, “it's easy to forgive you when my tongue is between your legs, Rarity. I really love making you feel good.” Twilight brought her lips down again in a soft, teasing kiss just above the white mare's sex. Rarity squirmed and moaned beneath her, trying to force the lilac pony further down to taste her wetness.

“I'm... I'm quite happy for that...” Rarity murmured, pushing at the mare with her hooves. Twilight wouldn't budge, so now the white pony tried in vain to push her hips upward.

Twilight smiled and moved her lips down a fraction further, always teasing... always slow... softly kissing every sweet-tasting inch of Rarity's nethers; all but the one place the weather pony most wanted Twilight's sweet lips planted on her.

Just as Rarity felt a hard groan of frustration rise to her throat, Twilight dipped her muzzle down and pressed her tongue, firm and warm, against the top of Rarity's pink, wet lips. Twilight swished her tongue left to right and then slowly dragged it up across Rarity's clit. Rarity cried sharply and gripped Twilight's head in her hooves, trying desperately to pull the lavender mare's muzzle harder into her aching sex.

“Oh Celestia!”

Twilight's eyes looked up once to watch her lover, and she smiled as she saw the white pony's neck and head arched back, her mouth open wide with little shivers of ecstasy rippling through her body...

“You are so beautiful, Rarity,” Twilight said, her voice low and silky.

Twilight dipped her tongue deeper into Rarity's maresex and finally tasted her lover's sweet nectar. She hummed with pleased sounds and dragged her warm tongue harshly up and over and around that sweet, hard little nub of her clit again. Rarity's four legs clamped down hard against Twilight's head as she cried out and humped against Twilight's mouth. Twilight, though, was far from letting her friend come just yet; she pulled back for a moment, her denial accompanied by Rarity's soft, needy whines.

“I think I've neglected you too much today,” Twilight giggled.

The lavender pony released Rarity and slinked up along her body until the two lovers were pressed hard together, face to face. She closed her eyes and kissed her white unicorn hungrily, grinding her hips into the mare and sliding their dripping sex together; they mewled and gripped each other tightly, groaning into each other's mouths. Twilight slowly pressed harder and harder into Rarity, her movements soon becoming surprisingly more frantic with each thrust. A high pitched whine began to keen in her throat before Rarity finally broke their kiss with a gasp.

“Twilight,” she panted, “I want your horn inside me, love. You promised.” Rarity smiled weakly, gripping Twilight's undulating hips with her hind legs and forcing her hips up into the lavender mare. Their tails twitched and played merrily against each other.

Twilight groaned happily and pushed herself up a little on her forelegs, levering her hips down hard to grind her clitoris against her soft white pony's sensitive nub. “Ahhh!” she gasped. “But I love this, Rarity... and you know, I... never actually promised...”

Rarity reached up and hooked a hoof behind Twilight's neck. She firmly tugged her sexy lavender pony down into a brief hard kiss and then stared into her glassy, surprised eyes.

“I love this too, Sparkle-kitten,” Rarity husked sexily. “Tigress. But you did so promise.”

A playful smile spread across Twilight's face, and then her eyelids closed half-way and she gave Rarity a hot, sultry stare. “I know,” she admitted.

She ground herself sensuously against Rarity one last time before sweetly lighting kisses on her cheeks. Her muzzle moved up and she kissed Rarity's white forehead tenderly, eliciting a little shiver as she moved up and pressed her lips to the base of the other unicorn's horn. Rarity's horn began to glow faintly, and both ponies moaned together as Twilight's lips and tongue caressed the fluted organ, brushing all the way to the tip and slowly sliding off. Twilight's eyes closed as she savored the tingling sensation on her tongue.

“You still taste like me, Rarity,” Twilight said with surprise, staring at her lover's horn. Then her eyes locked onto Rarity's, and her face suddenly flushed hotly. Nervous excitement began to shake her voice. “I, um... should we... do you want to turn over? And we don't... have any, um, ropes in here—”

“I won't need the silk, darling,” Rarity said kindly, her voice still quivering with her pent-up desire as she caressed Twilight's cheek with her muzzle, “and I prefer to lie on my back for this — I want to be able to watch you. Though I may need a few pillows...”

With a quick kiss and a reassuring smile, Rarity motioned Twilight from her prone perch atop the white pony. Then with an azure glow of magic, Rarity pulled a few thick pillows from beneath the covers at the head of the bed. She lifted her hips and floated the pillows beneath her hindquarters, quickly settling in as she lowered her weight onto them. She rested at last, her body curved down to the bed and her four legs folded comfortably and rather fetchingly against her barrel. She looked at Twilight, and saw her lover's nervous stare.

“Twilight, my dear, there's nothing to worry about,” Rarity said. “You'll do fine, believe me! I've been where you are now, and you must simply trust yourself as I do — and I do trust you. Come here, love, and wrap your arms around my hind legs.”

“O-okay,” Twilight said, the nervous quiver still shaking her voice.

Twilight moved up closer to Rarity and carefully wrapped her forelegs up and around her lover as directed. She rested her muzzle between those lovely white rear legs, feeling Rarity's dark tail shift and twitch against her chest. On impulse she kissed the soft skin between the white unicorn's teats.

“Oh, that's nice,” Rarity encouraged with a sigh. “Now kiss me again, Twilight. Much lower this time... please.”

Twilight smiled confidently and slowly brought her muzzle down to Rarity's glistening sex — this she could do. She breathed in the sweet musk of Rarity's arousal, savoring it as she took in the sight of her lover's pink maresex. It winked wetly at her with Rarity's obvious anticipation, and she eagerly brought her lips up to it. Rarity gasped as Twilight's lips caressed hers expertly, and then again as her tongue pushed between both their lips and entered the white mare. Both lovers groaned as Twilight's tongue pressed deep into Rarity and curved upward, while the lavender pony's upper lip encompassed and pressed hard against Rarity's clitoris.

“Oh yes, Twilight,” Rarity moaned, “that is perfect!”

Her tongue pushed further into Rarity's wildly pulsing sex and pressed up hard, massaging the soft textured flesh Twilight's tongue found so easily. Lavender hooves held tightly to Rarity's shaking white legs, and drew the white mare hard up against Twilight's soft muzzle and expert tongue. Twilight's excitement grew as her lips and tongue drew sweeter and louder cries from her lover, and that beautiful amethyst tail flailed across her belly with quick lashes, urging her onward. But suddenly Rarity began to cry out in a panic.

“No, Twilight, not yet! Don't make me...” Rarity's heavy breaths wheezed from her as Twilight reacted and quickly withdrew her tongue. “Oh dear Celestia, that was close,” she said with a harsh little laugh of relief. She lifted her head up and looked look up over her heaving barrel to see Twilight smiling at her with a very moist look. Her tongue slipped out a little and drew across her lips, tasting Rarity's wetness.

“You okay, Rarity?” Twilight asked watching her mare's face carefully. A mischievous spark lit her eyes, and keeping them locked onto Rarity's deep blue eyes, she leaned her wet muzzle in again. Her soft lips met Rarity's winking maresex with an enthusiastic kiss, sliding lips against lips with a sweet, frictionless pressure that made Rarity gasp and shudder. Twilight hummed ecstatically as her tongue pushed apart the pink folds, slowly tasting her wet mare as she painted a single stroke of her wide tongue upward, drawing the tip up and over her swollen clit with a little flourish.

Rarity squeaked and flopped her head back to the bed weakly. “My dear sweet Sparkle-tigress, you needn't worry about pleasing me, especially with your horn — I've no doubt it won't take very long.”

“Well... we'll see about that,” Twilight said with a little smirk on her lips, feeling more sure of herself than she had. “What should I do now, Rarity?”

Rarity closed her eyes and took in deep breaths, remembering her own past and recalling the memories of lessons she'd been taught.

“It's very simple, Twilight: you must maintain the empathic connection throughout the experience,” Rarity lectured, “and while you will experience your partner's pleasure, you must always maintain a focus on yourself and on your partner as much as you can.” She licked her lips in nervous anticipation, and opened her eyes. Twilight was clearly a bit nervous again, but she was also excited; Rarity smiled at her. “Just be careful and always go slowly, love, and try not to let your aura grow too strong. The rest will follow naturally, I promise.”

Twilight saw the look of confidence in Rarity's eyes, and nodded hopefully. “Okay, Rarity. I'll... I will be careful.”

Rarity gave a little nod and laid back, closing her eyes and breathing deeply. The young mage ran her arms up between Rarity's legs, stroking her hooves tenderly up along her soft white belly and down to her chest, spending a few precious moments building up her resolve and calming her excited nerves. She looked down at Rarity's face, serene and relaxed, and an unexpected wave of love and affection for this sweet white pony filled her. She was surprised at the strength of her feelings, but didn't consider questioning them anymore; it simply made her happy to please Rarity.

Twilight slowly prepared herself, wrapping her arms around Rarity's hind legs once more. Her desire and nervous energy grew as she brought her muzzle up close to Rarity's puffy wet folds, and after a tense moment of hesitation, she brought her lips close and gave them a tender, loving kiss. Rarity moaned softly at Twilight's touch, and at that moment the young mage lit her aura and brought the two of them together in a connection more intimate than anything else they could share.

Nervousness, desire, need, and love all moved back and forth between the two ponies for a few wild moments of confused identity, until at last the two lovers calmed and drew their emotions and feelings apart just enough to see themselves as part of a loving whole.

For her part, Twilight felt the reassuring touch of Rainbow Dash's soul, of Rarity's soul, and felt a tension that she hadn't realized was there slip away like a mist burning away.

It's alright, Twilight. No need to worry, she felt from Rarity. It wasn't words as much as it was the feeling that made them. Calm. Confidence in her lover. Happiness. Love...

Twilight smiled. I love you, Rarity, she shared, and felt her lover's intense happy response in return. It would all be okay...

She began slowly, feeling the touch of her horn on Rarity's smooth skin from both their perspectives. She wasn't a stranger to the empathic connection, but in this case she knew that moving slowly was extremely important.

She moved her horn down with infinite care, and caught her breath sharply as she felt it move across her — no, Rarity's clitoris, sending a sharp wave of pleasure through them both. The fluting of her hard horn rippled excitingly across Rarity's swollen nub, sending sweet pulses of pleasure through both ponies... until the bright tip of her glowing horn met the soft swell of that little nub of flesh, throwing them both into a gasping haze of intense, overwhelming pleasure.

Too much! Twilight thought as both ponies cried out together, and she quickly slid her horn down and away from Rarity's clitoris, and into the white mare's pink folds. In a cloudy haze of shared ecstasy, Twilight realized that the sheath of magic aura around her horn had brightened considerably and she struggled to lower the intensity. When her senses finally returned, she realized that her horn had been sliding slowly down the wet folds of Rarity's sex, and with a dizzying shock she realized that her horn had slipped inside her lover. It was thrilling... feeling herself inside Rarity; being Rarity and feeling Twilight inside her and wanting it all in her, right now.

Rarity groaned and shook with pleasure as Twilight slowly pushed forward, and mage fought again to keep from being overwhelmed with her lover. Keeping their intense feelings from whipping them both into an uncontrolled fugue of climactic pleasure had become intensely hard, and in the back of her mind Twilight wondered for an instant how Rarity could have kept her cool so well as she'd done this very same thing to Twilight...

It shocked her when she felt and heard Rarity's pleading whine fill the quiet air. Twilight had forgotten that she could hear.

“Oh, more, Twilight! You're doing... just marvelous,” Rarity called out. Her hips moved very slightly, mostly under strict control... unlike her tail, which seemed to want to caress Twilight's lavender chest and stomach like a second lover.

Feeling her own horn from Rarity's perspective, Twilight curled her neck down a bit more to correct the angle of her entry, and she felt her aura grow stronger as she slowly pushed herself further into Rarity's folds. She cried out with Rarity as she felt the intense tingling of her own magic quickly grow and spread through her horn and sex. It was like a flood of electricity finding it's way to every fold and every nerve ending; she tingled brightly and glowed from the inside, and she wasn't sure anymore it that was Rarity, or her, or both of them.

They were shocked when they both realized that Twilight had penetrated Rarity completely. Her forehead and mane pressed hard against Rarity's dripping sex, and her ears met the soft inside of the unicorn's shaking white thighs. Everything was dark and filled with swirls of color, until she realized that she had her eyes closed... At that moment Rarity opened her eyes and looked up over her heaving stomach, and Twilight saw the partial image of herself with only her mane and ears visible between Rarity's folded, shivering legs.

Twilight began to draw back nearly the length of her horn, her slow movement accompanied by the low plaintive cry of her lover and the desperate clutching of her hooves as they tried to draw that beautiful, magical horn back inside her. Twilight moaned loudly, feeling the wet evidence of Rarity's pleasure dripping from her horn, and she became desperate to feel the soft walls of her lover's flesh wrapped tightly around her again. She pushed inward, fighting with every once of control to move slowly and carefully, and somehow her restraint and the combined pleasure of two loving ponies sharing their feelings and sensations managed to make her horn glow even more brightly.

Rarity's mouth hung wide open, and she lost the ability to form any coherent words except for exultant cries of 'Yes!' as Twilight slowly impaled her again. Her hind legs and forehooves squeezed and pawed at Twilight's head, and the only reason the lavender unicorn could even breath was that her muzzle was out of Rarity's reach. But the white mare's tail began to lash upward painfully and hit Twilight's snout along with her underside. She would have taken Rarity's dock into her mouth if she could, but the angle of it prevented her. Instead Twilight ignored it and just reveled in the exciting feeling of Rarity's sex squeezing and caressing her horn as she pushed deeper.

Twilight began to groan passionately with every breath now, and her lover's incoherent cries grew louder and louder as she bottomed out and ground herself hard into the white unicorn.

“Oh Twilight, please don't stop!” Rarity cried suddenly, and her feelings of pleasure and hot desire reverberated through Twilight. She was shaking and grasping at the purple unicorn, desperate for release. “One more... Oh Celestia, just one more stroke...”

Shaking and moaning and holding Rarity's hindquarters down with an iron grip, Twilight began to pull herself from Rarity's soaked, clutching sex again. Rarity's soft maresex tried to grip and pull Twilight's fluted horn back in, rippling and squeezing along every inch of it's hard length. The intensity of feelings whipped back and forth between the two lovers, and suddenly the young mare felt her climax rising up hard and threatening to overwhelm her.

“Oh goddess, I'm gonna come, Rarity!” Twilight screamed.

“Yes, Twilight! Inside me! Please! Don't stop!” Rarity cried with her.

Twilight fought desperately to hold back as she slowly pushed her horn into Rarity's thrumming sex, but each wave of pleasure she felt against her horn and aura was shared and felt and returned to her even stronger through Rarity's perception.
As Twilight's horn finally pushed all the way into Rarity's clasping sex and ground hard against her, she felt Rarity's own pleasure peak and begin to overwhelm them both like a tidal wave slowly crashing into them. It didn't matter in the least who came first; they would never know, because the two lovers felt the it all so closely together that it began as a single, shared experience.

It started as a pinpoint of light somewhere deep inside Rarity, and bloomed like a star exploding in slow motion, spreading it's energy, touching deep inside each of them and traveling through them, from their suddenly curling hooves to their gasping mouths to the glowing tips of their horns...

The pulsing ecstasy of their climax lifted both lovers up to a beautiful plateau of orgasms, high and intense and surprising and frightening all at once.

Twilight pulled the mare's legs hard and forced her head and horn into her Rarity, and she cried sharply as a million tiny stars of brilliant magic suddenly poured from her horn and flooded into Rarity's womb. Rarity screamed incoherently and lifted up and curled her body forward, gripping her forehooves roughly behind Twilight's screaming lavender head. She pulled the mare tightly against her, shaking and convulsing and screaming in ecstasy over and over as the evidence of Twilight's intense orgasms filled her and glowed through her, all while her own horn showered Twilight's outstretched body with a cascade of colorful lights.

At last Rarity's convulsions began to slow, and her climax subsided. Completely drained of energy, she released her unicorn lover and collapsed back into the bed with a weak groan. Her body tingled pleasantly and she couldn't move a muscle that didn't involve breathing in gasped breaths of air.

Twilight felt Rarity finally release her hold, and she used the dying embers of her own spent energy to pull herself carefully from Rarity's womb. Then she dropped down to lay literally soaked and gasping between Rarity's outstretched legs. Her eyes were closed and she panted and drooled into her lover's shivering amethyst tail, utterly exhausted.

The two lovers lay where they were for a little while, spent and dragging hard breaths into their lungs; they hadn't even reached a point that they could begin to call an afterglow, yet. Soon, though, Twilight began to crave Rarity's closeness, and she lifted herself up with a weary groan and crawled over Rarity's unmoving form to drop heavily next to the white pony. She draped her foreleg like rubber across Rarity's billowing chest and then moaned happily into the mare's side as Rarity threw a weak arm around her.

Soon their breaths quieted and their hold on each other grew stronger. Their smiles and mutual affection drew them closer together into little movements and intimate touches until at last they basked in the glow of each other's happiness and closeness.

“I'm so thirsty,” Twilight eventually complained in a small voice, and she kissed Rarity's chest. Rarity laughed a little bit and hugged her lavender unicorn closer.

“I understand, Twilight. I'm sorry, I can't even move! And my magic won't work at the moment...”

“S'okay, we can get up later,” Twilight mumbled into Rarity's side. “I like this.”

Rarity nuzzled lovingly against Twilight's neck and mane. “Take all the time you need, my sweet Sparkle-tigress,” she said quietly. She caressed Twilight's mane lovingly, and for a moment she thought the mare had fallen asleep again.

“Kitten,” Twilight said clearly a moment later. She squeezed Rarity hard and buried her muzzle into the marshmallow pony's side. “I like 'kitten' more.”

Rarity smiled and nuzzled her herdmate again. “So do I, love.”

~ * ~

The air was heavy with the scent of their sex play.

In the past Rarity might have found it almost distasteful after a while, but lying there with Twilight Sparkle resting peacefully in her arms, she felt only a glow of peace and satisfaction.

Twilight had always been so... reluctant in the past to engage in horn play. But today she’d been aggressive. Exciting. Willing to try things she’d refused to consider in the past. Not just willing, but actually demanding. It was almost like she was an entirely different pony in bed... Rarity caressed Twilight’s mane; the purple mare purred and snuggled in closer, and suddenly she was exactly the same sweet, adorable mare Rarity had always known and loved. Absolutely beautiful and perfect.

Rarity sighed as she felt her body begin to flush and tingle, and she groaned a little to feel Twilight lying so close and warm and smelling sweetly of sex. Damn! She knew the little mare needed a rest – hornplay was always a demanding, draining experience for the giver—

“You okay, Rarity?” Twilight mumbled.

“Oh Twilight, I am feeling quite lovely,” Rarity responded, smiling to herself. She kissed Twilight’s ear, and received a pleasant giggle. “You are just simply... making me...”

“Horny?” Twilight said with a laugh. The little mare nibbled Rarity’s chest. Sweet little tease!

“You truly are a Sparkle-tiger today, Twilight. I must admit I don’t know what’s come over you, but I absolutely love it.”
Twilight purred with her eyes still closed and bit into Rarity’s chest, drawing a gasp and a hot flash of need from the white pony. “Just keep calling me Sparkle-kitten, Rarity,” Twilight breathed. “I don’t know why, but it really, really turns me on.”

The young mare pulled herself on top of a mildly surprised white pony, and met her lips with a languid, sleepy kiss as Twilight pressed her body down softly into the mare. Rarity groaned and felt her blood race faster.

“You really excite me, Rarity,” Twilight said, her eyes wide and passionate. Her voice was thick and husky and Rarity’s heart pounded even harder. “I can’t explain it. I... I love you, Rarity. It’s like I’ve known you forever and we’ve just met. I want you. Fuck me.”

“Oh my dear sweet Celestia, who are you?” Rarity whispered with a lusty smile. “And what have you done with my Sparkle-kitten?”

Twilight jammed her mouth against Rarity’s and kissed her deeply, shoving her tongue past the pony’s teeth, sharing sweet breaths and saliva and muscle and taste and moaning into each other’s mouths and oh goddess! how had she never jumped Rarity before now? She pulled back suddenly.

“I am your Sparkle-kitten, Rarity, and don’t you ever forget it!” Twilight said with a happy growl. Then she pounced on Rarity again. The two mares wrapped their arms tightly around each other in a hot embrace and rolled to one edge of the bed and back, engaged in a battle for supremacy that they would both win.

Rarity rolled atop Twilight and kissed her slowly, thrusting her sex hard into the younger mare. She felt like she should be trying to calm the less experienced unicorn and keep her from ending their pleasure too soon, but well, screw that!—

Twilight rolled and thrust Rarity to the bed, pressing hard into her. She giggled at her temporary victory and then gasped as Rarity pressed her wet loins up into Twilight. Their mouths mashed together and then their wet maresex found each other’s in a familiar series of excited movements and intense pressure.

And then somehow Rarity was on top again and frantically turning herself around. Twilight whined with need as nearly all contact with her lover was lost for a brief moment. And then Rarity’s glorious tongue was licking across her clit and oh my gosh! she was pushing her tongue between Twilight’s pink wet lips and tasting her and pushing that sweet hard muscle into her and—

“Twilight! Put your tongue inside me!” Rarity cried. She licked the purple mare’s clit once, then again, as if telling her I’m not giving you what you want until you—

And then Twilight’s arms gripped those lovely, curvy white flanks and pulled them hotly, pushing her mouth at Rarity’s sweet-tasting maresex, thrusting her hard tongue between those hot pink folds and deep inside her lover to touch every surface and explore until she found just the right... spot...!

Rarity cried out and her tongue pulled out, but her lips wrapped tightly around Twilight’s swollen bud and she licked and she chewed and bathed it harshly with her teeth and thick muscled tongue...

Twilight’s tail whipped up between her legs and curled over to vibrate against Rarity’s head as the white unicorn brought her sweet little lover closer and closer—

Twilight pulled her tongue from Rarity’s sex and easily reached her hot tongue down and slowly licked hard against the other mare’s engorged clitoris, swirling it around to the music of her lover’s cries, and then dragging it hard up and between those wonderful sweet sopping pink mare lips she’d never tasted before today. Her wide tongue dragged all... the... way... up... those tight sweet folds and further on until her lips encompassed the sopping white underside of Rarity’s whipping dock, and she suckled and bit and brushed her tongue hard across that hyper-sensitive little white tuft of fur beneath her lover’s tail, and she almost came as she heard Rarity’s sweet cries fill the room with a power stronger than the scent of their maresex. Oh, I love that! the little purple mare thought. But—

Too close!

They had to come together! They both knew it; they both wanted it to happen—

Before she knew it, Twilight’s arms had gripped her lover-mare’s thrusting haunches, and she pressed her lips in a tight hard circle around Rarity’s little nub. Her face was drenched with the white mare’s lusty wetness, but the only thought in her mind was the sweet convulsions and cries each lash of her tongue and nip of her teeth brought to the mare lying atop her, whose muzzle lay buried between her own shaking thighs—

Rarity suckled hard on Twilight’s clit, no longer capable of any subtlety as she raced her lover toward a climactic finish line. She sucked Twilight’s sweet swollen nub in between her well-trained lips and then expertly circled and dragged and brushed her experienced tongue and teeth across the enthusiastic little mare’s bundle of nerves, reveling in the flailing lash of her Sparkle-kitten’s tail and in her high-pitched little cries. Rarity felt Twilight’s lips and teeth grip desperately to her clit and with well-trained timing and a lusty lack of self control and complete luck, she managed to hold herself off until the two ponies at last mounted that final, wonderful, glorious peak together.

Twilight suckled on Rarity’s hard clit and ripped her tongue across it. Rarity thrust her tongue in and pulled out instantly to swirl around Twilight’s nub. They both convulsed at the same moment, thrusting hard into each other... Twilight pulled her tongue away and her lips and teeth sank upward into the underside of Rarity’s dock, and Rarity bit down and brushed her tongue across her little mare’s sweet swollen nub. And they cried out and shook and shuddered violently as they came, each lusty breath a muffled, high-pitched scream that vibrated against each other and filled their world.

Neither mare would let go as they brought each other to a wonderful, glorious, blinding orgasm. Twilight, even in her delirium and quaking fits, moved up again to suckle and cry against Rarity’s tail, and Rarity’s tongue never stopped circling and whipping across Twilight’s lips and clit. The two mares held each other tightly and with intense love as they climaxed together, shaking and thumping hard against each other’s bodies, filling the room with cries of lust and shaking the little bed until they were both thoroughly quivering and quaking and...

And finally they lay spent against each other, gasping and trying to regain their breath, leaning their heads against each other’s thighs and immersed in the scent of each other as they came down from their glorious shared high.

Rarity lifted her still-tingling body and turned around, to finally flop down against her harshly-breathing lover. Without a thought or pause she engulfed Twilight’s mouth in hers, pressing her lips in a gasping kiss that said I own you, even if only for this brief second. Twilight mewled sweetly and gave in to Rarity’s kiss, content at that moment to let her lover win that final, last inch by default because Sweet Celestia she was that good and who gave a damn in Tartarus which pony kissed the strongest after a climax like that...

Twilight opened her beautiful amethyst eyes and looked into Rarity’s sweet cornflower gaze... And she knew there was never, ever any going back. Never. Even as wild and crazy as it would seem to anypony else who knew their story... she loved and treasured Rarity. She knew her better than a sister, better than her brother, better than any other pony alive. They were meant to be together. Call it fate or anything you wanted to, it was simply right.

“I love you, Rarity,” Twilight said quietly, and she smiled so sweetly and brought her arms up to hold Rarity in a long, tight hug.

Rarity lowered her lips tenderly to the little purple mare’s, and kissed her so softly as to almost question whether it had even happened. Almost. “I love you, too, Twilight Sparkle,” she said in a whisper, and Twilight glowed and kissed her back.

~ * ~

Sunlight streaming in through the skylight had drawn high up along the wall, marking the imminent end of the day. Luna’s night would begin to fill the sky, soon.

The two lovers lay resting on their sides together for a while in the fading light, wide awake and languidly stroking each other, quietly enjoying each other’s nearness.

Twilight’s thoughts drifted as she played idly with Rarity’s silky, straight mane. She looked up and saw Rarity’s blue eyes watching her with a look she knew very well now, and accepted and... desired. My Sparkle-kitten, the look said, and Twilight felt herself warm and smile again under Rarity’s gaze.

It had been an angry, confusing, frustrating, frightening day – at first – and yet somehow, because of this one unaccountably sweet and loving white pony, it had become... peaceful and happy, exciting and loving... Twilight looked down for a moment, eying Rarity’s new cutie mark, and the answer she’d already known resurfaced. The love she felt now was partly there, in the Rainbow Dash she missed so much, but it was also in the heart of another friend who’s soul was inexplicably tied to Rainbow.

“What are you thinking about, Sparkle-kitten?” Rarity said, her voice soft low. She leaned in as Twilight’s eyes met hers again, and gave the purple mare a quick, sweet kiss.

“Oh,” Twilight began, and her eyes turned up as if recalling a memory. She purred and smiled a little. “I guess was just kind of wondering, well... what we were going to do next, I think.”

“Ah. I do have some ideas, of course. But I was thinking that perhaps we should take a short break and refresh ourselves a little before...” Rarity stalled, clearly searching for precisely the appropriate words to say.

“...before continuing to make love like two wildly sex-crazed ponies all day and night?” Twilight finished for her, laughing.
“Yes, that was it!” Rarity said, and joined in Twilight’s laughter. Her dark mane fell across her face as her laughter shook her, covering one bright eye. Twilight reached in and brushed it away and pushed it behind Rarity’s ear.

The little lavender unicorn hummed happily and shimmied up a little closer to Rarity. Their bellies pressed together, and Rarity automatically brought her thigh up to rest over Twilight’s. Twilight wrapped her tail over and around Rarity’s and then gently pulled their hind quarters a little closer and tighter together. She pulled her white mare tightly into her arms and kissed her warmly, sharing her tongue for a teasing few seconds before pulling away, grinning.

“So, tell me about it!” A playful, expectant smile lit her lips, and Rarity shook her head in mock surprise.

“My lovely, dear Twilight! I swear, I truly should start calling you Sparkle-tiger—”

“Don’t even think about it!” Twilight growled playfully. “Kitten!”

“—and quite suddenly I have developed second thoughts about that...”

“Yes, I thought so,” Twilight said with a playful giggle. She paused for a moment as Rarity seemed to lose herself in thought again. She stroked a hoof lightly down the pony’s side and down to her flank, playing idle circles around the lightning bolt cutie mark on her field of soft white. “So Rarity, you were saying...?”

“Oh yes. I’m unsure how to begin, Twilight,” the white unicorn replied. “I don’t want to over-explain it, but... well... The best way I can explain is to imagine yourself tied to the bed—”

Twilight’s eyes shot up.

“I think I can imagine that pretty well now, Rarity.” Twilight smiled impishly.

“Oh?” Rarity said with a confused look.

Twilight smirked and lifted an eyebrow at Rarity; Really? She nodded her horn at Rarity and softly patted at the back of her lover’s curvy flank until Rarity’s expression finally changed.

“Oh, dear, yes of course,” Rarity said, her face coloring. “Twilight, you haven’t ceased to amaze me today. Perhaps we should explore a few more new... options that I felt you might not be quite accepting of.”

“I think I’d like that, Rarity.” She drew her hoof in a soft line back along her lover’s white barrel, slowly teasing up her slender neck and brushing tenderly against Rarity’s cheek.

“That feels quite nice, by the way.” Rarity closed her eyes, giving a little purr as she leaned into Twilight’s touch. “So, hmmm... where was I?” she said.

“You were tying me to the bed, Rarity,” Twilight whispered, her voice husky. “Again...”

Her horn lit up, and then her hoof glowed with a thin aura of pale lavender. Twilight’s eyes followed her hoof upward as she reached up and caressed Rarity’s horn. A satisfied smile spread on her lips as she watched Rarity’s intense reaction.

“Oh, Twilight!” Rarity squeaked. “Oh my! Not... n-not right now, love.” With obvious reluctance, Rarity carefully pushed Twilight’s hoof away, and the young mage’s field dissolved. “I’m sorry, but I am quite... sensitive right now,” she said, “and a bit distracted, I suppose.” She pulled Twilight close and kissed her pouting lips.

“Twilight, I have another idea. It’s a bit of a game, something of a mental challenge. And yet, it is...” Rarity licked her lips unconsciously and then bit her tongue with a little laugh when she realized it. Her smile turned sultry. “It is highly erotic for both ponies. But I think instead of telling you, I would rather let it be... something of a surprise.”

Twilight clicked her tongue and thumped her dark tail impatiently against the bed, trying and failing to hide her disappointment. But as she thought about it, she realized that she really was very thirsty, and they did have all night...

“Okay,” she said with a sigh and beginning to stand, “let’s go ahead and get up. We could probably both use a breather.” Twilight squeaked and laughed as Rarity quickly rolled on top of her and pushed her arms above her head and into the bed.

“Change your mind so soon, Rarity?” Twilight smirked. “I’m really not complaining—”

“Shhhhhh...” Rarity’s lips breathed close to Twilight’s ear. “Don’t move. And don’t say anything; not a word, not a sound.” She pulled back and pressed her lips to Twilight’s in a long, hot kiss. Twilight hummed happily and tried to pull her arms down to wrap around the white pony, but she groaned with frustration as Rarity pressed her body into Twilight and held her hooves even harder to the bed.

“Shhhhhhhhhh...” she repeated, kissing Twilight’s ear. “Don’t move, sweetheart.” She kissed Twilight’s neck, slowly, drawing her lips up onto the lavender pony’s cheek, and after a sweet little mewl of desire escaped Twilight’s lips, she finally kissed Twilight fully, drawing in her passionate breath and holding her hooves down to the bed as they struggled against her.

She pulled her lips from Twilight’s and smiled hotly. Leaning forward, she purred into Twilight’s ear with a silky, excited voice.

“Meet me in the kitchen, my sweet Sparkle-kitten. When you’re ready.”

~ Flash! ~

“Rarity!” Twilight shouted as the weight of a warm, lovely, horrible marshmallow pony disappeared. “‘Sensitive’, my purple flanks!”

Twilight groaned. She was seriously turned on, soaking wet, and the base of her horn tingled, damn it!

She thought about sweet revenge as she tried to use her magic, and failed.

“I’m gonna have to walk, now, aren’t I?” She sighed, and slowly rolled out of the bed.

~ * ~

Twilight soon stood in the doorway and glared at Rarity past the tall glasses of golden liquid standing on the kitchen table.

“It’s only apple cider, Twilight,” Rarity said calmly from her chair. She smiled. “Although I might have added a bit of an aphrodisiac—”

“—which I’ll certainly need after that long, cold walk to the kitchen,” Twilight snarked.

Rarity pouted spectacularly, but she still had the grace to look guilty. Her ears drooped sadly. “Oh Twilight, I was merely playing with you! Please don’t be upset with me.”

Twilight walked slowly to the table in silence, returning Rarity’s pout with a peeved look, and she pulled out a low chair and sat down. Her gaze moved from Rarity’s concerned face to the glass before her, and her nostrils widened with a heavy sniff. She took the glass into her hoof and pulled it close, sniffing at it suspiciously.

“An aphrodisiac, huh? Kind of late in the day for that, don’t you think?” she asked. Her tail swished. She breathed in the sweet smell of the juice again, trying to hide her growing fascination with it as she met Rarity’s eyes. “You know, I’d much rather have a kiss.”

Rarity’s eyelids lowered seductively. “Well of course you may have both, if you want, kitten,” she said with a little heat in her voice.

The lavender mare harrumphed, lifted the glass, and sipped. And in a moment she began to drink, and drink... Rarity’s eyes widened as Twilight gulped and drank down the entire glass and finally finished it with a loud gasp for air. Her head raised and her eyes closed as her hoof fumbled to set the glass in a tight wobble onto the table.

“Wow,” Twilight sighed, “what did you put in that, Rarity?” When she finally opened her eyes, she saw that the empty glass had disappeared and Rarity was pushing the other full one toward her.

“It’s only apple cider, love. Drink the other glass – you need it.”

This time Twilight simply took the glass in hoof and drank, though a little more slowly. After a few audible gulps, she stopped half way through to take a breath.

“Fruit-sugar and water,” Twilight stated in a matter-of-fact tone, staring into the half-full glass. “I’m dehydrated. And hungry. You knew.” She looked at Rarity for a moment and then began to drain the rest of the glass.

“Of course I knew, my sweet pony,” Rarity said as Twilight drained the rest of her juice. “I’ve come to know the signs over time, both as a weather pony,” and she pointed a hoof at her own chest as Twilight’s watched her, “and as a... sexy pony.” Her eyebrows waggled in an expression so unlike the Rarity she had known before that Twilight had to laugh.

Twilight stepped out of her chair, feeling miraculously energized, and sauntered over to Rarity. With a seductive smile, she inserted herself between Rarity and the table, and then slowly climbed into Rarity’s lap, wrapping her hooves around the white pony’s neck.

“You are a very, very sexy pony, Rarity.” Her voice was warm and sultry and uninhibited as she kissed enthusiastically around the base of Rarity’s horn. The white pony groaned and held Twilight tightly. “And I’m almost positive you put something in that juice.”

Before Rarity could shake her head to deny it, Twilight leaned forward and nibbled playfully on Rarity’s ear, then she whispered into it.

“Meet me on the kitchen stairs, lover.”

~ Flash! ~

“Twilight!”

Rarity groaned for a moment, wet and excited and suddenly laughing. She got up on shaky legs, wondering how in the world Twilight had ever become such a different pony than she had known before. But she didn’t care. She loved Twilight, and she especially loved what she saw in Twilight right now.

She trotted haltingly to the stairs leading up to the foyer...

~ * ~

...to find Twilight Sparkle – her sweet Sparkle-kitten – pointing up toward the top of the stairs, looking back with a smirk and snapping her tail back and forth in the enclosed space. Her straight, racing-striped tail had already swept the intense scent of her arousal down the stairs, and the smell of it began to draw Rarity slowly up toward her.

“Twilight...” Rarity said as she slowly stepped up toward the other mare. Twilight pulled her tail to the side and held it there, fully exposing her ready, wet sex to Rarity.

“You know, Rarity,” Twilight said with mock sternness, “it’s pretty damned rude to stare at another mare’s ‘treasures’, no matter how sexy she is. Though I do understand; I have it on pretty good authority that I’m the sexiest mare in Ponyville.”

The white unicorn suppressed a laugh as she stepped closer to her lover. At last she neared Twilight, her muzzle just inches from the sweet little mare’s exposed sex, and she breathed in deeply.

“Twilight, you smell heavenly. And you are quite right: I am being very rude, and you should know that I simply don’t give a damn when I say that I absolutely love staring at your treasures.” She swallowed thickly as Twilight grinned and swung her tail over Rarity’s head, and her senses were almost overwhelmed by a fresh haze of Twilight’s pheromones. “I’m going to give you that kiss you wanted, now, Twilight.”

Rarity leaned forward slowly, watching Twilight’s face, and then she closed her eyes and stuck out her tongue. She sensed the breeze over her face from Twilight’s tail, the growing scent of her sex, the sound of her lover’s wet lips winking. She prepared to taste her lover again... and then almost fell over as Twilight disappeared. Again.

In an instant, the young mage flashed in behind Rarity, ready to bite into her firm white rump. But on impulse she stuck her broad, warm tongue out and lapped thickly over the white mare’s swollen clit, deep between her pink wet lips, to caress far up to the underside of her tail. Then with a playful little nip at Rarity’s dock, she quickly flashed away again.

“Twilight!!” Rarity groaned. “Now that was just unfair!” She snorted as she heard the lavender prankster’s triumphant laughter from the foyer, and with a growl she launched herself up the stairs and into the room. Twilight Sparkle was licking her lips, and smiled broadly as Rarity suddenly appeared in the foyer, landing on the thick rug like a predator launching forward to feast on its prey.

With a little laugh in her throat, Twilight quickly moved forward, and caught Rarity in a surprise kiss, lifting her forelegs up and wrapping them around the white unicorn’s neck. She hummed happily as she pushed her tongue between Rarity’s lips.

“Did you enjoy my kiss, Rarity?” Twilight said. Her voice went low as she watched Rarity’s quick surprise turn her hot again. “I love how you taste...”

Rarity cut her off with a hungry press of her lips, and as Twilight dropped her hooves to the rug, Rarity lifted one of hers and began pulling the little mage downward. Twilight’s eyes opened wide with concern.

“Um... Rarity...” Twilight said, excited and nervous. The white pony smiled and gently pushed her down, locking their lips together, and Twilight sighed and took her lead. In a moment Rarity had rolled the two of them over and lay atop Twilight, kissing her tenderly, passionately... When she finally pulled her lips from Twilight’s, she could see a coloring of unease in her eyes.

Twilight spoke again in a small voice between her heavy, excited breaths, as her eyes darted about the small entry to their library home. “Here, Rarity?”

The white unicorn resting lightly on Twilight’s belly laughed in her throat and kissed her lover sweetly.

“I’m afraid the kitchen is too crowded for us, Twilight.” Rarity laughed again and tried to kiss Twilight, but she was gently held back by a nervous hoof.

“You – you know what I mean. What if... well... you know – what if somepony comes home?”

“You mean someone, don’t you, Sparkle-kitten?” Rarity said, her voice a little husky at the thought. “If our lovely stallion is lucky enough to see us together tonight, then perhaps we'll give him a show to enjoy!” Rarity’s voice dropped lower and more sultry as Twilight’s eyes widened. “Or maybe he can take me from behind while I make love to you, Twilight!” She kissed the young mage’s throat and softly nibbled along her neck. “Doesn’t that excite you?”

“Y–yes...”

Twilight’s voice had become very quiet and nervous, indeed.

“It excites me too, Twilight, ” Rarity soothed, as she kissed along the side of the mare’s muzzle. “But right now it’s just the two of us. Are you ready to play our little game, lover?”

Twilight was starting to feel uncertain. Perhaps it was time to call it quits, perhaps she'd had enough fun for one night, perhaps it was time to put in a few last hours of study, finish the last few chapters of that cutie mark book she'd been reading...

“Um... yeah... okay...” She found herself saying, as she looked into Rarity's loving eyes.

Chuckling happily in her throat, Rarity kissed her lovely mare for a moment. “Then we’ll start. The game, my love, is for you to say and do nothing... while I please you.” She slowly pushed Twilight’s arms down to the rug and gently held them there at her sides, but Twilight shrugged her white hooves off and wrapped them back around Rarity. Her eyes opened wide.

“You mean...?”

“I mean that no matter what, Twilight, you must say nothing at all.” She kissed the little mare’s face. “And don’t move, sweetheart, not even your tail. I promise that you will enjoy this – we both will,” she said, breathing into the mare’s ear. “I will take care of you. Are you ready?”

Twilight’s eyes were a little wild as she nodded.

“Put your arms down, love.” With a little groan of dismay, Twilight released Rarity and rested her arms back down on the rug again.

“Very good,” Rarity purred softly. “Now remember; no moving, no touching, and no talking.”

~ * ~

Rarity kissed Twilight’s lips one last time, and allowed her gorgeous, sweet, sexy student to kiss her back, and she reveled in her response as she held herself in check. Her job now was to turn them both on as much as possible, to tease and thrill her mare until she couldn’t stand it any longer. She was worried that she would fail long before Twilight; she’d never felt this excited by her sweet little mare before, and she tried to calm herself and hide it...

...even as she kissed Twilight’s cheek, and her slender neck, and brushed her lips softly to that sweet spot little behind that flicking purple ear while she climbed onto Twilight and slid herself down between the lavender unicorn’s legs. She pressed her lover down into the foyer rug and felt her groan of lust resonate through them.

It was maddening, a terrible restraint for both ponies; Rarity wanted to kiss Twilight so much that she could almost taste herself again on her lover’s lips, could almost feel that exciting tongue dividing her mare lips in the dark stairway and then pressing hotly into her mouth with the scent and taste of her own excitement. Twilight turned her on immensely, and sometimes it was all she could do to not ravish her sweet little mare and grind her into the bed until she screamed out Rarity’s name over and over. Ohhhh fucking stars...

But at this moment... it truly was all for Twilight. Rarity kissed her lover’s body, swept her lips and hooves and mane lightly over that soft fur – wasn’t it the softest she’d ever felt? – over her neck and her chest... She slid further down the Twilight’s body, her stomach and barrel caressing against her, and she drew long curved lines of kisses at the inside of her lavender thighs...

Twilight squeaked and panted, a sexy little sound full of angst and need that sent another thrill through Rarity.

“Oh, Rarity, please! I can’t—”

“Shhhh, Twilight; no words, love!” she whispered. “And put your hooves, down, sweetheart,” she admonished as she felt a telltale of guilt; she longed to wrap her own arms around her lover and bring her to a climax more intense than any she’d ever experienced.

But Twilight’s eyes, her voice and her shivering, quaking body told Rarity that she needn’t worry; as much as Twilight suffered from holding back, she had gained twice as much in the fiery touch of Rarity’s body and hooves and lips drawing such intense pleasure out of her.

It burned Rarity, touched her in places she’d practically given up on, to experience with Twilight things that the mare had always refused in the past as ‘too adventurous’ or simply not tried because it ‘makes me nervous’. Today Twilight had been different, exciting and willing. Wonderfully passionate.

And oh sweet Celestia; horn play! Despite her calm self-control, Rarity felt her sex dripping with excitement all over again at the thought. Twilight had never allowed Rarity to even suggest horn play more than once. But today... perhaps the tension, the need for relief had been too much for her, and she had suddenly sought new avenues of release in a lover whom she trusted almost above all else. It brightened Rarity, lit her up and turned her on, remembering the feel of Twilight inside her...

And so here she was, kissing Twilight’s chest, caressing the inside of her forelegs, spreading her lover’s thighs gently so she could slide down – slowly, oh so slowly – between them, barely letting the hairs of her barrel touch on the little unicorn’s soft underbelly. The tender nip of her teeth touched against those most sensitive places... She carefully tortured Twilight with pleasure, alternately biting and then wrapping her lips around those hard little nipples, and lashing her tongue against them.

She released Twilight’s nipple and with agonizing slowness she laid soft kisses against either side of her lover’s clitoris.

For several long minutes she continually teased Twilight, drawing her tongue over and over with feather-lightness up the wet crevice of Twilight’s sex, to come within a hair’s-breadth of lapping against that hot little nub and only to draw away. She opened her lips and pressed and slid the hot O of it around her clit, but never touched it, never allowed Twilight her release.

Twilight shook and sweated heavily with the effort to restrain herself, but the strain was growing too much. Her hooves brought themselves to Rarity’s head and tried to pull her closer. She groaned loudly and began to cry out.

“Oh Rarity! Please, I can’t take it anymore—”

“Shhhh, Twilight, yes you can,” Rarity whispered. “Don’t move.” She brought her arms up and pressed Twilight’s back down to the rug. The young mage whimpered and whined plaintively...

Rarity lashed her tongue over Twilight’s clit, and the mare opened her mouth wide and groaned and lifted her sex up at her lover.

Outwardly Rarity was the perfect picture of calm, her face serene and loving and infinitely self-confident. But she fought against her impulse to give in to the agony of that little whine of self-imposed suffering growing in her lover’s throat. It became an addiction for her, hearing Twilight’s sweet little mewls of lust and her outright, unrestrained cries of pleasure-in-agony as Rarity pulled that hard little nub between her lips and teeth again and lapped and suckled on it hotly, joyfully. She hummed in time with Twilight’s muted cries as she held her lover’s arms down and her tongue lashed over that hard little button and she felt the mare’s sex flutter against her lips and tongue.

But she never once let herself give Twilight her release.

She was so intent on pleasuring Twilight, so immersed in her lover’s pleasure, that she almost missed it; Lero’s voice was coming through the door, just outside! He was talking to somepony, but she could only hear meaningless snatches of conversation, whoever it was...

"After... how can... squeeze? You were all...! .........blown out the door!”

"NO!" Her prince exclaimed. "....My own thoughts!....."

"Interesting. Truly interesting. ......automatically......"

None of it made a jot of sense, and probably wasn't interesting to begin with!

Rarity looked up as Twilight stiffened; she’d heard him, too. Angst was written on her face, so Rarity did the only thing she knew would work; she brought her mouth back down and suckled Twilight’s wet nub in between her lips and vibrated her tongue against it. The little unicorn’s head fell back and she cried out and squeezed her thighs against Rarity’s head, convulsing with each harsh lap of the white mare’s tongue. Rarity knew she was close, and a plan formed in her head. The white pony stopped, pushing her lover’s thighs apart, and began to crawl up onto Twilight...

“No!” Twilight gasped.

With Lero back, the lavender unicorn felt like she was suddenly back in a nightmare all over again as Rarity laid herself down atop Twilight’s sweat-soaked body. She gasped again as she felt Rarity’s hot wet maresex push into hers, grinding a little.

“Our stallion is home, Twilight,” Rarity moaned in the mage’s ear. She pressed her hips down, sliding her sex against Twilight’s with a slowness that left her almost aching. “Any second he’ll walk in and see us lying here.”

It occurred to Twilight that she had only just met this swapped version of Rarity just a single night ago, in that hospital in Bramblewood Town. What was it she'd told herself? That she knew Rarity better than a sister, better than her brother, better than any other pony alive?

Had it even been a full twenty-four hours?

Rarity pressed down on Twilight again, moving her hips in little circles.

Words and shouts were trying to burst forth from Twilight, and her tail began twitching on it’s own, uncontrollable. More than Rarity’s admonitions, she was desperate now for Lero not to hear her, and she clamped her mouth shut and struggled with her impulses as Rarity relentlessly drove her almost insane with physical need. She wanted to teleport herself and Rarity away, she didn't want Lero to see her! Not like this! Not right in the middle of her foyer!

It almost felt like a sick joke... the kind of backstabbing that an especially cruel and catty bully girl would pull on her unsuspecting victim, after weeks of feigning friendship. But when she looked into Rarity's eyes, all she could see was the heartfelt affection of a true soulmate.

“He’s watching us, now, Twilight,” Rarity whispered hotly in Twilight’s ear. “Are you ready for me, lover?” Her hips circled and pressed harder into the little mare.

Twilight groaned and panted and looked back at Rarity with eyes wide and painfully intense. She felt so tired, dirty, and weak. And Rarity looked so clean. So faultless. So angelic. And powerful. Twilight hardly had the power to utter a broken syllable.

“Ohhhhh! Ruh... Rah... Rare...” Then Rarity crushed into her again and she closed her eyes and fought to hold her desperate sounds in. Rarity brought a up hoof to her chin and spoke to her, but she couldn’t even hear the words. Twilight’s tail twitched and shivered as Rarity spun her hips in small circles, sliding their drenched sex together.

She could feel Lero's eyes upon her, even if she couldn't see what expression her human wore. She was still very tempted to teleport her and Rarity away, even though it was too late to hide what she'd done!

But then she looked into Rarity's eyes again, and decided: no. She'd done what she'd done this night in the spirit of love and consideration for both Rainbow Dash and Rarity. Even if everything else were to blow up in her face, she'd do the one unquestionably right thing, and stand behind what she'd done. Not hide like a guilty coward.

So when their tails somehow became entangled, and she could feel Rarity pulling their hips even tighter together, Twilight Sparkle gripped onto her lover’s tail and pulled the white mare hard into her. Rarity lifted up a little and sat across Twilight’s body, the new, intense wet pressure driving their sex harder together. Her hooves came up and held Twilight’s face tenderly, and this time she heard her words and knew that Rarity was about to fulfill her promise.

“You mean so much to me, my sweet enchantress,” Rarity said softly, kissing her lover’s face. With tenderness and adoration in her eyes, she began to rain slow, passionate kisses over Twilight’s muzzle and cheeks and ears, pausing with each word of love. “You’re so kind... brave... precious... adorable... devoted... scholarly... hardworking ...and beautiful.”

Beautiful. Rarity pressed her lips at last into Twilight’s, slipping her tongue into her mouth. Twilight’s throaty little cries rose up.

She gave herself over to the heat of the moment once more, mewling hotly and driving her tongue into Rarity’s mouth, playing tongue against tongue.

The two lovers' horns began to glow with pale light, and the two mares gasped into each other’s mouths as their horns touched again and again, sending colored sparks of magic flying with each press and sway of Rarity’s hips into Twilight.
The white pony ended their kiss, and before Twilight could protest, she gently wrapped her lips around the tip of the unicorn’s horn and took it deep into her mouth. Her lover groaned and twitched and bucked against her as she pressed her mouth downward, engulfing her horn and pressing her lips against the soft fur and mane at it’s base. Her tongue swirled around it, and Twilight’s body jerked sharply at the intensity.

Rarity pulled back and watched as Twilight’s horn glowed brighter and brighter, a star of light brightening the tip. She quickly drew the tip between her lips again, swirling her tongue around it, and crushed her body into Twilight’s. The little mare convulsed and cried out, thumping up at Rarity as the weatherpony sucked at her horn.

A muted whine of pleasure began to escape Rarity’s throat, and a burst of bright colors flew from her horn as she came, painting the floor and showering Twilight’s scattered mane.

Twilight screamed and convulsed sharply as the shock of her orgasm ripped through her. Distantly she felt Rarity’s body sliding against hers, their sopping maresex’ grinding together, Rarity’s lips and tongue dragging intense pulses of pleasure from her sensitive horn. Her entire body was on fire and she nearly passed out from the intensity. After what seemed like ages, her head finally began to clear as she lay beneath her white mare lover, gasping and shaking. She opened her eyes to see Rarity smiling and swallowing little whisps of smoke.

Twilight’s head and legs all dropped to the floor, exhausted and relieved. She turned her head and finally saw Lero out of the corner of her eye – just as Rarity said he was – standing by the open door with a mix of emotions written on his face; shock, surprise, disbelief... but it was the look of disappointment, of betrayal that hurt her most and brought all the guilt back.

You faithless cheater. She could read it quite clearly in his eyes.

Twilight Sparkle found herself wishing that Lero had stayed at home with her; had not gone out with his bag of Rainbow Dash's old things. Would he have somehow found a way to stop Rarity's advances without hurting her feelings? Lero could be amazingly resourceful, at times. Or would he, too, have joined in the lovemaking? Especially after seeing how delicate Rainbow Dash's heart was within Rarity?

...How delicate both Rarity AND Rainbow Dash's hearts were...

Either way, they were in for a LONG talk tonight.

Rarity leaned down and kissed her ear tenderly. “I love you so much, Twilight,” she whispered.

Twilight reached up with a rubbery arm and pulled Rarity close. In spite of everything, a faint smile curled at her lips. “I... I’m very glad you love me, Rarity.”

~ * ~

Author's Note

Hope you all enjoyed it!

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Eighteen: Rarity Lowers The Temperature

Apple Bloom stared at the third question on her math worksheet: 3) .97 = ____

“Okay,” she spoke, “So if Ah wanted ta convert this inta a fraction, how’d Ah do it again?”

“Well,” said Pinkie Pie, who was laying next to her atop Apple Bloom’s bed, “First, ya gotta count how many spaces to the right of the decimal. Remember: tens, hundreds, thousands, ten-thousands, hundred-thousands, and millions. So count from the decimal!”

“Tens...” said Apple Bloom uncertainly, pointing at the 9 with the pencil in her mouth. “Hundreds...” she pointed at the 7. Her eyes widened. “So it’s hundreds!”

“Good!” said Pinkie. “So draw a line and write that number down underneath it: one hundred!”

Apple Bloom did.

“And since it’s 97...” the pink mare prompted.

“That goes as the top part of the fraction! 97 out of 100!”

She scribbled that into the blank line for the third question.

“Very good!” Pinkie cheered, and Apple Bloom smiled proudly at the older pony.

The filly looked down at the worksheet’s next question: 4) .55 = ______

“So then the answer ta this next question’s 55 out of 100, right?” And she wrote 55/100 on the blank line.

“Nuh, uh, uh!” the older mare stopped her. “Yer fergettin’ all about the least common denominator!”

“Oh yeah!” Apple Bloom frowned down at the .55. “Hmmm... so 55 and 100 are both divisible by five, so that’d mean...” She wrote out a division equation. “11 outta 20?”

“Correct-a-mundo!” cheered Pinkie Pie, arms in the air.

Grinning, Apple Bloom flipped the pencil around in her mouth, did some erasing, flipped it back, and wrote ‘11/20’ as her answer for her worksheet’s fourth question.

SQUEEZE.

Pinkie gave a small start.

Since the day that she’d needed to burn the pigpen down to save Macky’s life... Pinkie Pie remembered experiencing frequent and unpleasant spasming sensations on the part of her body where her cutie mark lay. These spasms were always accompanied by powerful compulsions in her brain:

BUCK THE TREES.

PLOW THE FIELD.

HARVEST THE APPLES.

Stuff like that.

Ignoring these compulsions? That would be like being a sailor on the ocean and ignoring a tattered mainsail, a busted rudder, a hole in the hull. Ignore these compulsions, and she was SUNK.

Thankfully, since Macky and Lero and Bloomy had talked some sense into here, these spasms had been reduced to mere feather-brushes under her fur. Stuff she could handle at her own pace.

But this SQUEEZE? This was a completely different thing altogether. It wasn’t any sort of spasm at all, it felt as though Lero had clamped his fingers around her thigh and given it a squeeze.

And what accompanied this squeeze wasn’t any type of compulsion. No, what entered her head was an image.

The image of a slinking, slurping mass of white waxen goop.

Unbalanced by the odd sensation, Pinkie got off the bed. “Uh... go ahead and keep doing yer homework on yer own for a bit... Ah gotta go get me a drink of water...”

She stepped out of the kitchen, and when she did so... there came something else. A prickle on her croup.

And with this prickle came a new image in her head: Rainbow Dash, in her cottage, with all her animals.

Pinkie poured herself a glass of water and drank it, deeply troubled.

Then her thigh squeezed again.

And her croup prickled.

Thigh squeeze.

Croup prickle.

Thigh squeeze.

Croup prickle.

...Was she developing epilepsy?! Maybe she ought to lay down on the floor, so she didn’t take a nasty fall!

And the twitches continued, and the images with them.

Thigh squeeze: blob monster.

Croup prickle: Rainbow Dash in her cottage.

Thigh squeeze: blob monster.

Croup prickle: Rainbow Dash in her cottage.

...Wait a minute...

Blob monster.

Rainbow Dash in her cottage.

Blob monster.

Rainbow Dash in her cottage.

...Put them together...

THE BLOB MONSTER WAS GOING TO ATTACK RAINBOW DASH IN HER COTTAGE!

Why, this wasn’t epilepsy at all! It was a SIGN! A sign from above! Just like the rainbow had been a sign when she’d been with Aunt and Uncle Orange! (So what if Rarity had been the one who made it?! When a rainbow like hers had touched the lives of six fillies at once, so profoundly, THAT was a bone-a-fied SIGN!)

Good thing for Dash she wasn’t unprepared.

Pinkie hurried into her bedroom, opened the bottommost drawer in her dresser, and grabbed the key hidden underneath the loose bits. Then she galloped outside and entered the tool shed. There was a locked tool chest against the far wall; Pinkie unlocked it and took out the weapon, slipping her body inside it.

“And jest where d’ya thank YER goin’ with that weird thingamajig on ya at this time a’ night, li’l sister?”

Like a much younger girl with her muzzle caught in the cookie jar, Pinkie Pie turned around to see Apple Bloom standing in the doorway.

“Ah’m sorry, Apple Bloom, Ah need ta go help Rainbow Dash!”

“Rainbow Dash?” asked Apple Bloom, “What’s wrong with her?”

“Ah thank she might be in real big trouble, Bloomy, and Ah got ta help her out right now!”

“How do ya know Miz Dash is in trouble?”

“Ah jest do!” Pinkie insisted.

“Well, ya ain’t goin’ nowhere, less yew have my permission!” Apple Bloom said with a hard stamp on the floor.

Pinkie Pie would’ve brushed past her, and she might, if she became truly desperate... But she'd made a promise, and it'd not be right for her to break it! She hadn’t quite earned that right to be the Big Sister back yet. “Please, Apple Bloom, Ah need ta do this ta save mah friend!”

Apple Bloom cocked an ear in Pinkie’s direction. “Please... what did you say?”

True to her word, Apple Bloom had not been a tyrant with her new authority over her elder sister. But even she hadn’t been able to resist this little imposition. She was only a filly, after all.

“Please, Big Sister Apple Bloom, could Ah pretty please with cinnamon ‘n’ caramel ‘n’ pecans ‘n’ nutmeg ‘n’ honey ‘n’ brown sugar could Ah go and save mah friend?!”

Apple Bloom scrunched her lip in thought. “On one condition... ya gotta bring me along!”

“But it’ll be DANGEROUS!” Pinkie Pie exclaimed.

“And that’s what makes it so cool and excitin’!” Apple Bloom said, with an eager little hop. “Sides... big sisters need ta be around ta keep their little sisters safe from harm, don’t they?”

* * *

Rainbow Dash’s emotional stability... No, her very sanity hung by the thinnest thread. All it would take to snap that thread would be for Lero to look her in the eye and refuse to help.

That would never happen. “Anything you need, Dash, I’m here for you!”

Dash let out a soft but frenzied laugh of relief. She turned around, facing the open door.

“Hop on my back!” she begged him. “Please, now, now, now!”

“Wait!” Lyra called out.

But he had alright gotten on top of Dash, practically jumping on board, and before he even had a chance to reply, the world blurred into streaks of color as she rocketed out the door. It was all he could do to throw his arms around the pegasus’ neck and clamp down tightly on her body with the full force of his arms and legs and pray to God that it was enough.

The was nothing like the ride that Rainbow Dash had treated him to before that bird had knocked him off her. This wasn’t a well-controlled roller coaster; it was breakneck speed and nothing else.

“Lero’s here! Lero’s here!” she sang to herself, in a cracked, near-lunatic voice. Her recognized the mantra as something she was using to convince herself, to focus on hanging onto her mind, to keep a grip on her sanity. He hoped she was right. “Lero makes everything better! EVERYTHING! Lero always knows what to do... GAH!” The human’s heart crashed against his ribcage as Dash made a violent swerve.

Her head gave a sharp turn as if someone had swung a tire iron at it. Her body pitched to the side and Lero fell off. He felt the sensation of his stomach lurching away. He was in free fall again, the nightmare of his last flight with Dash returned... except two seconds later, long before he would’ve hit the ground, his body landed on Rainbow Dash’s back. She had performed a super-fast loop-de-loop to catch him.

“I’m sorry!” she cried. “I’m really, really sorry!”

“Don’t drop me again!” he gasped, as if nearly drowned. “Just don’t drop me again!”

“No, no, no! Never you, Lero!”

It was difficult resettling himself on her body at this whirlwind speed. “What was that all about, anyway? What distracted you?”

“I wasn’t distracted! Well... I kinda was.” She admitted reluctantly, sucking in a miserable breath. “It’s killed another of them. Another! And I felt the poor critter’s death in my head! I just can’t stand it!”

Lero set a firm hand on the back of her neck. “Dash... I need you to calm down, fly a little slower and explain the problem. I can’t even begin to help you until I know what’s wrong.”

It took some effort for her to obey this request. It felt like they were going just five miles-an-hour slower, but even this was a relief to Lero.

“Remember that other day when we were cleaning out my bedroom, and you were telling me about that fluzzlegork thing that ate Pinkie’s pigs and put Big Mac in the hospital?” Rainbow asked.

“You mean the...” What had Mac and Rarity called it? The Duggervob? Spurzleslumph? Gopperbreep? “...Yeah, I know what you’re talking about.”

“It’s here!” Her voice had hit a squeaky high note. “At my cottage! Making an all-you-can-eat buffet out of all my animals! I don’t know how to stop it! I can’t even Stare at it! How do you stare down a monster with no eyeballs?!”

Well, probably doesn't help that you probably can't used the Stare at all. Lero thought to himself. However, before the human could ruminate it further, they had reached the cottage. “Slow down, slow down, slow DOWN!”

Rainbow Dash did her best, but still she slammed, stomach-first, against the wall of her cottage. When she fell off the wall, she quickly pivoted herself so that she wouldn’t crush Lero underneath her, again landing on her stomach.

“Sorry, Lero,” Dash winced, needing a second before she could return to a stand. “I always crash when I go fast. You know that.”

“I don't know anything of the kind.” Lero growled, annoyed at the Swap sapping confidence in her own abilities, and him having to slam into things over it. “You all... right...?” He began to dust himself off, but stopped suddenly at the realization that something was wrong.

No barking or woofing. No squawking or twittering. No squeaking or squealing, warbles or gibbers, ribbits or chirrups or cock-a-doodle-doos: the cottage was soundless. Even more alarmingly, there’d always been the rustle and calls of creatures near the edge of the Everfree, no matter the time of day. But not now.

Dead silence pervaded everywhere... silence, and an acrid stench in his nostrils. Like a mixture of tabasco, tzatziki sauce, and developer fluid. He realized he could smell it all over the grass... which was brown and crunched like autumn leaves under his feet... and he’d also smelled it on Rainbow Dash, especially the bits where raw skin showed under missing patches of fur.

"Where is it?” He asked aloud. His eyes darted around to where the birdhouses and the chicken coop were, only to find them missing; corroded patches marked where they once stood. The ground around them was littered with small, blackened avian bones. “And where are your animals?!"

"I think they're hiding,” Dash answered, nodding towards the cottage. “I..."

One of the chickadees shot out through a broken windowpane, breaking the silence with shrill, panicked tweets. The bird shot towards Rainbow Dash, as if towards a savior...

FLORK

Only to be snatched out of the air by a pseudopod shooting out of the darkness, long as a hose, fast as a whip, and sticky as a frog’s tongue. The luckless chickadee was snapped right out of the air by a huge gob of white. Dash’s Butterfly mark spasmed fiercely, and she gave out a shriek, clutching her temple as though it had been struck by a dart.

It slid around from the side of the cottage; the size of a tow truck. To Lero, the flork resembled a massive accumulation of semi-translucent white-colored candle wax. It was possible to see the chickadee dissolving within its shapeless waxen blubber.

Glufferflork. Now Lero remembered the name very clearly. The first time he’d heard that name, he’d took it to be a nonsense word. But standing before it now... it made more sense how they’d earned those names.

Its amoebic movements over the ground made distinct susurrations that, he had to admit, could easily be onomatopoeitized to a "glffr"s sound. while the noise it made to reach out and engulf prey made the distinct flatus noises he remembered from the ‘slime’ toys of his youth... which did honestly sound like ‘Flork.’

“It’s coming right for us!” Dash shouted.

Except that it wasn’t. The glufferflork slid past the pony and human, ignoring them completely. Instead, it proceeded to smush itself against the cottage wall, then suffused itself upward and outward, and then just lay still, pressing itself up against the side of Dash’s home. It looked, for all the world, like a great white polar bear intent on melting an igloo away with nothing more than overpowering body heat.

...And as corrosive vapors trailed into the air, Lero couldn’t deny it was working! The glufferflork was every bit as acidic as Mac had said. Its pseudopodia spread across the cottage like an octopus grappling its unfortunate prey. It seemed to be rapidly sinking INTO the cottage like a red-hot poker laid upon a paraffin table.

“Do something! Please!” Rainbow Dash cried. From inside the cottage, all the countless animals shrieked and screeched and yowled in wild hysteria as they smelled the acid burn, heard the wood and thatch dissolve, and saw the white smeared across the window.

Lero looked about for something to help, and in desperation, he wrenched a stone out from the ground and hurled it at the flork! It impacted on the beast's side, and was immersed with a glorping noise, as if he'd tossed it into thick pudding, only slight ripples resulting. He might as well have pitched a baseball into a lake. Rainbow Dash collapsed onto the ground, letting out a frantic wail, Lero wracked his brains for something, anything! Think, Lero, think!

He had no weapons. No tools. No preparation. Just the clothes on his back, and they were far from acid-proof.

Think, goddammit, THINK!

And then in a flash of insight, a detail from Big Macintosh’s story came back to mind.

“Fire!” Lero exclaimed loud enough to disrupt Rainbow's sobbing cries. She managed to look up at him with a mixture of confusion and hope. “Pinkie Pie drove the monster off with fire!”

“Fire?” the pegasus repeated, blinking, desperatelly trying to shift her mental gears back from all hope being lost to being a slim hope of a solution.

“Yes!” He looked to the cottage door, seeing that the glufferflork hadn’t spread any part of itself across it. “Dash! I know you have a fireplace inside, do you remember where you keep the matches?!”

“Yeah." She repeated, before it clicked. "Yeah! They’re in the...”

“Good, good!” said Lero. “And do you have alcohol?”

“Uh, well, I almost never drink.” The pegasus replied, still not quite up to speed. Any other day, Lero would’ve laughed. The original unswapped Rainbow Dash had been an avid recreational drinker, (though never on the lush-like levels of Berry Punch.) Hard cider had been her favorite... and more often than not, she’d always shared with Lero. Yet another trait of Fluttershy’s the Swap had inserted into her.

“Right, right, but what about rubbing alcohol, lantern oil... anything flammable! We’re gonna need to grab as much of it, as quickly as we can! Also, things like blankets and cloth, anything sticklike we can use for a torch! Some of the broken furniture legs! We need to make a...!”

A bolt of lightning stopped his thought, striking the great white blob from a diagonal angle, and shocking it off the side of the cottage.

“I’d forgotten what an INCREDIBLY fast flyer you used to be, Rainbow!” Rarity called out. “Even going my fastest, I couldn’t keep up with you!” Lero let out a wild laugh of relief. They’d all followed him from home; Lyra, Twilight and Rarity, all riding the same cloud.

Dash was just as happy to see them hopping off the cloud platform to help, but she still said, “Sorry about that, Rarity.”

“What are you apologizing for, Dash?!” Lero laughed. “That was a compliment!”

Rainbow Dash squinted at him. “For what? Being fast?”

“Absolutely! When everything’s hanging by a thread, it’s not the SLOWPOKE people turn to for help, it’s the SPEEDSTER!” There was astonishment in the pegasus’ eyes. It seemed like she hadn’t considered that angle.

"Guys? I don't think this thing is staying down." Lyra commented, her voice strangely calm despite the situation. Black marks were left on its white surface where the lightning struck, but within seconds, they were sucked inside the beast, leaving nary a mark, digesting its own injured mass back into nutrients. Lyra fired her own lightning bolt at the flork, however, rather than Rarity's gigantic bolt of divine wrath, her was smaller and more precise, reminding Lero of a taser. However, it did its job, driving it further back with its spastic jiggling. “What is this thing?” Lyra asked loudly to be heard over it's unpleasant crackling florks.

“It’s a glufferflork!” Lero yelled, so they all could hear him. “It’s an acid monster! It hates fire! Scare it off with fire!”

“Well, girls, you heard him!” Twilight called, taking the reins of leadership. Both Lyra and Rarity fell in line beside her. “Uh... Rarity? Nothing too artsy, if you please. Just simple flame magic; nothing too showy!”

“I’ll restrain myself. A little.” Rarity answered. “But if our aim is to frighten the enemy off the battlefield...” She grinned devilishly at the flork. “Then you NEED to be a bit showy.”

All of their horns flashed, and out poured the fireballs. What Twilight cast at the flork were more straightforward ‘traditional’ fireballs: blazing spheres launched at the enemy that exploded into bursts of flame. Lyra's were small, rapid, precise bursts of flame, more in line with her weaker, more controlled magic. However, what came out of Rarity’s horn was more suited for the Fourth of July: rapidly-spinning miniature Catherine wheels that changed color as they whirled through the air, letting out shrill shrieks before exploding against the glufferflork in bursts of glittering gold and silver sparks. (Lyra actually slowed her rate of fire a bit to stare in utter disbelief; perhaps half-expecting Rarity to transform into the Great and Powerful Trixie.)

Lero and Rainbow Dash watched from a safe distance. The animals of the cottage peered fearfully through their windows and the wide holes which the flork had dissolved into the cottage walls. For all the flame which the unicorns were shooting at the glufferflork, at no point did it actually catch fire. Bits of it were merely singed and curled, which it then absorbed back into itself.

"Lero, I thought you said that Pinkie set this thing on fire, and it ran away!" Twilight called to him.

"She did! But Pinkie mentioned having alcohol with her and pouring it onto the flork and that pigpen!”

“You’re NOT burning down my house!” Rainbow Dash shouted.

Yet the giant gloop monster recoiled at every singeing blast of heat, burbling in what they all hoped was fear. A few times it tried to swipe at the unicorns with a pseudopod or two, but all it got for its trouble was more fire after they dodged, being driven back yard by yard into the Everfree forest.

“Go back!” Twilight Sparkle commanded the blob. “Go back to the Everfree Forest, and never return here again!”

Lero and Rainbow Dash smiled at each other. The pegasus’ whole body relaxed as the gluffleflork’s liquid body sunk into the dirt like water from a bucket, with a sloshy gurgling.

“We won! We won!” Rainbow Dash cheered. She lifted her wing up in what Lero recognized to be the pegasus equivalent of a high five. He gave it a friendly slam with his own palm.

Rarity came forward, peering at the patch of dirt which the glufferflork had seeped into. “Do you think it’s dead?” she asked.

“Perhaps,” Lyra responded with a warning tone, pulling the weathermare back by the tail. “But perhaps it's merely playing possum.”

“Or maybe it’s burrowing its way back to the Everfree,” said Twilight. "But we can't really wait and see." She turned to the cyan-coated pegasus. “Dash! We’re going to save your animals!” She announced, which baffled Rainbow.

"But... it's gone, right?" She replied.

“We really don’t know. It’s too dangerous for you or them to stay here. The moment we leave, it could be back, and you'd be in the same situation. For now, we need to bring them to a place of safety! Is that okay with your c... you?”

Rainbow Dash blinked, thinking for a moment, Twilight and Lero looked to her mark for a few seconds. It didn’t even twitch. “Yes! I can't take that happening again!” She decided with conviction.

“Right! This way, everyone!” She leads the group inside, only to be met with pandemonium, panicked, terrified animals scrambling randomly about the cottage.

“So how are we going to do this?” Rarity asked, dodging a nightingale that almost flew in her hair. The animals were still anxious and uppity, not having calmed despite the Flork's departure.

“Hey, Rarity!” Lyra shouted; the animals were making so much noise, it was almost impossible to think, “You can make a cloud platform, right? How about a cloud CAGE?”

Rarity blinked, then smiled. “Shouldn’t be hard to do at all... excellent thinking, my love!” Then she looked around. “So we’ll need to cast cloudwalking spells on all these creatures here?”

Twilight levitated a struggling newt over in front of her face. “Not JUST cloudwalking spells!”

As Lero watched her horn glow silver, he found himself feeling drowsy, until he realized what was happening, slapped himself back awake, and looked away from the horn as the newt’s eyes fluttered shut, and his body went limp. “...A sleep spell too! They are rowdy little guys, after all. We don't want them clawing each other!”

They all nodded: things were looking good! Twilight passed the sleeping newt over to Rarity, who accepted it in her own levitational field.

“Rarity, you go outside and make us a cloud cage! Make it a big one!” Twilight instructed. “The rest of us: focus on catching all the animals, and Lyra and I will cast cloudwalking and sleep spells on them!”

“Got it!” Rarity said, and left the cottage with the newt.

“Uh, Twilght?” said Lyra. “I know you know the cloudwalking spell... would you mind casting it a few times, so I can figure it out?”

Twilight starred at her in confusion for a second, "You don't kno... Oh, of course you don't, sorry." She did as Lyra asked; aiming her horn carefully at several cats, one by one, first zonking them out with the sleep spell, then casting the cloudwalking spell on them for Lyra to see, before passing them along to Dash or Lero, who ran them outside and dropped them at a pile by Rarity’s feet, as she was still crafting the cage.

After the sixth cat, Lyra said, “Let me try,” and successfully cast the spell at a woodchuck, mastering the spell after a few tries.

“Alright!” said Twilight. “Let’s divide and conquer! Lyra, you, Lero, and Rainbow Dash go upstairs and grab whatever you can find up there!”

“Got it!” said Lero.

“You guys are LIFESAVERS!” Rainbow Dash gushed, as the three of them hurried upstairs. Here, a lot of the birds had flown, trying to put as much height between them and the ground which the horror had come from. Gummy had gotten back in the toilet, not a care in the world, while the old Pomeranian was sleeping it its favorite spot.

The panicked animals bit and pecked and clawed at Lero and Dash when they grabbed them, but at this point, it was nothing new to either of them. Lero had earned so many callouses in his time as Dash’s assistant caretaker, that he was now essentially immune. They brought them to Lyra, who cast her spells on the critters, and then Dash flew them out the window to Rarity... who, by now had finished with the cloud cage.

Lero snuck a look at it for himself; it was even more spacious than a moving van, and the sleeping animals already within it floated higher than the glufferflork could ever hope to stretch.

“So, this is a typical day for the two of you?” Lyra asked.

“Pretty much, except normally, we’re the only ones here who’re even in any danger,” Rainbow Dash said, shutting her eyes as Lyra put the duckling in her arms to sleep. “Ain’t that right, Lero?”

Before Lero had a chance to respond, there came a sudden, loud wooden crunch of floorboards being smashed through, the entire building shuddering, as they all heard a surging gush, and the shrieks of animals. Screaming, Rainbow dashed downstairs, Lero and Lyra followed in right after her.

Pseudopodia kept punching hole after hole through the floor from underground, like a strange combination of tentacle and geyser... feeling around, snatching whatever unlucky critter it could grab. Twilight blasted every one she could, but the sheer volume was overwhelming, the creature must have somehow gained mass underground! Eventually, she was driven back after several close calls.

Unprotected, none of the animals were thinking with their heads. They were all running and skittering and flying around the house in circles of blind panic. Although there were wide open holes burned into the walls, the powerful stench the glufferflork had spread all across the yard seemed to be anathema to the animals. Instead of escaping through these holes, they backed away from them as though the outdoors were filled with toxic gas.

One critter after another was snatched up, and Rainbow Dash, upon seeing this, collapsed, curling up upon the floor, belly-up, eyes rolling in wild circles, teeth chattering. The Butterfly Mark was spasming so powerfully, Lero almost thought he had gone nearsighted, just looking at it.

“What’s WRONG with her?!” Lyra cried.

Lero brought himself close to her ear to whisper an explanation. “Fluttershy’s cutie mark has given Dash some sort of weird mental link with all the animals here. Whenever one of them gets killed, the Butterfly Mark hurts her. You almost have to see every critter here as a portion of Rainbow Dash’s sanity.”

Lyra Heartstrings stared around the bedlam around her with new, horrified eyes. At every bird and beast being snatched and devoured. At her poor herd-sister... lost to the Swap, like a fish on dry land during its last moments.

“Doomed... all doomed... no hope... pet cemetery...”

"Twilight, Rarity!" Lyra called. "Focus fire on my marks!"

“Got it!”

“Light them up, my Songbird!”

She let out a barrage of small flames against the pseudopodia that left arcane markers, allowing the more powerful unicorns to unleash blast of fire and lighting at full force without needing to aim, the spells homing into the markers, tearing through the tendrils. With an angry glurgle, the glufferflork’s pseudopodia vanished from this main room, though they could hear it at work down below in the cellar, and all tried to ignore it.

“Dash!” Twilight and Lyra went to her aid, attempting to get a response from her. "Lero, get over here and help us!" Twilight looked over when the human failed to answer. He was staring very hard at an overturned litter box.

“Lero, this is no time for woolgathering!” the unicorn cried.

But the human went over to the litter box. Twilight peered closer, and could finally seen what had drawn his attention: a cottony white tail peeking out from underneath the litter box. Quickly, he lifted up the little tray, and snatched the rabbit underneath.

It was, indeed, Angel Bunny. Quivering in fear and misery. Befouled in smears of both fresh and stale cat droppings. Pungent urine soaked his fur, and special odorized crystals fell off him like excessive dandruff. Perhaps it was just the result of hiding, or perhaps Angel had hoped that by dirtying himself in this way, the glufferflork would find him too unappetizing to eat; even if it had uncovered his hiding place.

Either way, it didn't matter to Lero Michaelides. He held the malodorous rabbit by the ears with a glare of anger and revulsion; the latter not just because of the smell.

“You’re a VERY BRAVE RABBIT, aren’t you, Angel Bunny?” The human hissed, and Angel trembled harder than ever at that show of teeth. Dash shivered, opening her eyes, and staring over at Lero at the mention of her 'pet'.

“Such a courageous cottontail you are! Leading all your fellow critters on a nonstop blood vendetta against the mare who cares for you, feeds you, and keep you out of the cold! Abusing her, biting her, scratching her, ruining her home, robbing her of sleep... arranging to have cabinets fall upon her head! And how heroic a leader you are: the moment all the other animals under your command are in life-and-death peril, you scamper into hiding and let them fend for themselves! Truly, you are a credit to your race!”

The rabbit tried to wriggle away, but Lero’s grip on his ears tightened to a chokehold, digging his fingernails in.

“Do you know what I think, Angel Bunny? I think... I should love to have as brave a bunny as you for myself! Yes! As soon as the glufferflork’s eaten its fill and slurped its way back to the Everfree Forest... I shall go to Rainbow Dash, and buy you from her! And when I take you to your new home, my little pet, you and I are going to have SUCH FUN! For all the rest of your life!” He leaned in even closer, whispering savagely. “Which might not be all that long. Does the word ‘hasenpfeffer’ mean anything to you?"

Lero Michaelides had no idea whether rabbits had tear ducts back on Planet Earth. But Angel was certainly proving they did here in Equestria.

“OR...!” the human went on. “Perhaps there is an alternative! Perhaps you could actually try to help SAVE the lives of yourself AND your foot soldiers, by getting them to all gather outside by where Rarity is, in a nice and orderly fashion!”

Lero set the rabbit down on the floor to let him make up his mind. Angel sat there for a moment, hyperventilating. Lero glared at him, and he cowered. For a second, Lero was sure he was about to bolt, before he took a deep breath, stuck his paw in his mouth, and let out a loud, shrill whistle. All the animals in earshot paused, looking to him. The rabbit’s feet drummed the floor in a pattern. Immediately, all the animals fell in line with Angel, and they all followed him outside like some lagomorph Pied Piper.

“Gather outside by where Rarity is!” cawed Jabbers, as he flew over Angel. “Gather outside by where Rarity is!”

Lero and the ponies all left the house to stand outside in the front yard, where all the cottage’s critters had crowded around Rarity.

“Oh my goodness!” Rarity said, with a lovely laugh for them all. “This makes things easy!” Her horn shone silver, and in no time at all, they were all fast asleep upon the ground.

“Such darling little dears,” she cooed, levitating them up about fifty feet into the air with Twilight and Lyra’s help, and inserting them inside the cumulonimbus cage. There, all the animals slumbered as peacefully and adorably as a young girl’s bed loaded with stuffed toys.

“...I could’ve done that.”

The voice was Rainbow Dash’s. Lero saw there was a strange clearness and vitality in his old love’s unblinking eyes, as though she were just emerging from something mind-blowing.

“I could’ve done what you just did!” She insisted. “That thing you did... the way you spoke to Angel Bunny, I totally could’ve done that too! I could’ve! I really could’ve!”

He patted her on the side, hoping to calm her. “Hey, don’t worry about it, Dash! We’ve got this in the bag, just let us finish handling it for you!”

“Handle it... for me?” He flinched at the surprisingly hard note in Dash’s voice.

Before anyone had a chance to respond, suddenly the ground exploded all around them, the glufferflork attempting to consume them and the animals all in one fell swoop!

“HIT THE DECK!” A familiar voice rang out. Instinctively, Lero dove to the ground, bringing Twilight and Dash with him, Lyra pulling down Rarity.

BLAM!

With an unholy warble, the Flork's engulfing ooze practically exploded away from them, splattering against the house, Twilight managing to put up a shield to protect them from the splatter.

"Well, look at this! Appears we got heah just in tha' nick of time. What does that make us?"

"Big darn heroes, Sis!"

"Ain't we just?"

Lero looked up in disbelief at the voice. "Pinkie Pie!?"

Heads turned and ears flicked backwards at the thunder of fast hooves, the rumble of wooden wheels. And it wasn’t long at all before Pinkie Pie had pulled up by their side. What a sight she made!

Lero recognized the rubbery-looking nearly-full-body outfit she was wearing as an outfit from Applejack’s boutique. It had been her attempt at a tricolored cocktail dress, but more effectively resembled a hazmat suit in every way. Thick, protective goggles covered Pinkie’s eyes. She came pulling a cart which contained Apple Bloom, likewise attired with goggles, astride several bags marked ‘PAPPA POTASH'S LYE PELLETS.‘

Weirdest of all, there was some kind of contraption... something not quite a sousaphone... mounted upon her body and secured with several metal braces. Its business end pointed forward.

"Gunner's mate, load!" Pinkie called out.

"Aye aye, Sis!" Apple Bloom picked up a bag of Lye, and poured the pellets into a canister strapped to the side, then locking it shut when full. "Locked and Loaded, Sis!"

Just then, the glufferflork violently reformed itself, pulling the parts underground straight out from under the floor of the cottage’s foyer, smashing through the doorframe with the the force of a tidal wave. This produced a domino effect; all sorts of boards cracked and gave way, until the whole of the cottage toppled over to one side, like it was made of poorly-baked gingerbread.

“MY HOUSE!” screamed Rainbow Dash.

The whole mass of the glufferflork was literally boiling in fury: acidic steam rising from its bubbling body. It didn't even need any facial features, for everyone to know it was furious, and that fury was focused upon one pink pony.

“Howdy, Mr. Flork,” Pinkie greeted pleasantly, stepping towards the maddened heap of goo, with all the casualness of a day at the market. “Knew Ah’d see ya back in Ponyville someday. Yew done grown fatter since last time.”

With surprising speed, the flork darted towards the pink pony.

“Pinkie Pie, no!” Twilight yelled.

On top of everything else, Pinkie had what looked to be a riding bit lodged in her mouth, which she brought her teeth down upon.

BLAM!

A shovelful of what Lero first took to be buckshot fired from the mouth of the sousaphone-thing... splashing into the flork’s body. However, as the pellets hung suspended in its gooey form, his amazed mind recognized it as the lye pellets Apple Bloom had loaded.

Seconds later, there was several loud popping noises, as the side of the beast which had been shot practically exploded! With a bizarre flatulent bawling noise, the living acid shrank away from the apple farmer, much farther and faster than it had for the unicorns’ flames and lightning.

“Ya came over mah farm. Ate mah pigs. Nearly killed mah brother. Nearly drove me crazier than espresso-drinking squirrels! But we’re both getting better, thanks fer asking!”

BLAM!

A small portion of the flork was simply blasted off, and just fizzled into a dried-up puddle when it hit the ground.

“And NOW yew wanna go do all that again to mah good friend, Rainbow Dash! Take away the one thang that matters most ta that poor, helpless darlin’: her animal buddies!”

“Poor?!” Rainbow Dash repeated the word in something very close to outrage. “Helpless?!”

BLAM!

“Shame on yew, Florky.”

The glufferflork's oddly flatulent wails continued (and in almost any other situation, Lero would have almost found them hilarious) as it retreated backwards, straight into the ruins of the cottage, hiding behind walls of thicker debris.

“That was AWESOME, Big Sister!” Apple Bloom called from inside the cart. She, too, was wearing a set of protective goggles.

“Pinkie!” cried Twilight in amazement, as she and all her other friends gathered around the pink pony. “What’s going on? What are you wearing?! What’s that... weapon you got? How...?”

“Easy, easy!” the pink pony laughed. “One question at a time! Ta cut a long story short, Twilight... d’ya remember that book Ah borrowed from ya yesterday? All About Slimes, Goos and Oozes? Well, that taught me what a glufferflork’s TRUE weakness is! T’ain’t really fire at all! BASES are what really gets ‘em!”

“Bases?” Lero asked dimly, confused what baseball had to do with anything that had just happened.

“Bases!” said Pinkie. “A glufferflork’s made of living acid, so it hates bases! Thangs like soap, toothpaste, ammonia... and LYE,” she finished with devilish smile. “Went and bought all these bags a’ lye at the market yesterday after reading that book, and then Ah worked all through the night makin’ THIS little beauty to blast them out from! Ah call it the lye shooter! Patent pendin’!”

Vaguely, Lero recalled the unswapped Rainbow Dash telling him a story about Pinkie Pie building her own gyrocopter when a mean-natured griffin friend of hers had tried to keep Pinkie away from her.

But he could still scarcely believe it. Pinkie Pie had constructed a SHOTGUN. He couldn't tell if it was based on compressed air or an actual chemical explosion, especially since it fired lye pellets instead of lead bullets. But it was a GUN, nonetheless. A gun usable by Earth ponies, whose firing mechanism sat in the gunslinger’s mouth. Man, every day, something more unreal!

“But... how did you know I was in trouble?” Rainbow Dash asked. “Did Spike send you a letter or something?”

Pinkie shook her head and shrugged. “Ah jest knew. Sensed yew’d need me.”

While Dash and Rarity gave each other baffled looks, Lero, Lyra, and Twilight exchanged looks of complete understanding.

Pinkie Sense! Twilight mouthed to them.

“Aw, shoot! It’s goin’ underground!” Pinkie shouted. She bit down on her trigger again... and nothing shot out. “Dang it! Gunner's mate, reload!”

“I’ll do it!” Lero offered. "It'll be faster with hands!" He emptied a bag of lye pellets into the canister on Pinkie’s back. It was in fact, faster, but Apple Bloom still gave him a pout.

“We’d better spread out!” Lyra told her the others. “There’s no telling where the flork even is!”

The muscles in Pinkie’s thigh began to clench strangely, as though someone were squeezing it. “Lyra! Dodge left... NOW!” Lyra hopped to her left, just as a pseudopod spouted up from underneath, swiping hatefully at the now out-of-reach Lyra, until she zapped it with an electrical attack, forcing it back underground.

“Lero!” Pinkie shouted. With her thigh clenching up wildly, she was scowling at the ground as though she could see the glufferflork through the dirt with her X-ray vision. “Jest hold still... hold PERFECTLY still...”

The gluffleflork rose up, half-in and half-out of the dirt like the fin of a shark, cutting across the ocean waters. Pinkie gave it another blast of lye.

“Woo-hoo!” Apple Bloom cheered, as the flork roared in agony and submerged back in the soil. “Yew guys’re all jest the perfect team... all a’ yew doin’ yer part!” And she grinned at the pegasus. “Don’t yew fret, Miz Rainbow Dash! Jest fly on up ‘n’ hide upon the highest cloud in the sky, right up there, and we’ll take care a’ this for ya! Soon as we’re all done with this ugly sack of glue, yew’ll be so rescued, yew won’t know what ta do with yerself!”

* * *

Thoughts swarmed Rainbow Dash’s head. The sort of thoughts she wasn’t used to having. The first and most profound of these new thoughts?

Being the damsel in distress sucked.

The way Lero had shown Angel who was boss... that was awesome.

Lyra and Twilight and Rarity bringing her animals up to safety and fighting this blob off? Equally awesome.

And Pinkie Pie! Whoa! She’d shown untold levels of awesomeness tonight, with her freaky (but radically cool!) sixth sense pinpointing, and the lye shooter she’d made...

What was stopping her from being just as awesome as they were?!

Lero was right! She’d done stuff too! There was awesomeness in her too! A lot of it!

Rarity had used her best weather magic on that giant red dragon, and she’d reduced it to tears with a look! Discord had tried to warp her mind, but had been unable to talk her into giving up who she was at heart! He’d had to brute-force her into being changed into an awful pony! Then, after Twilight had used her memory spell, she’d used her speed to catch up with Rarity while pulling that hot air balloon behind her! And then helped her friends hog-tie the discorded weathermare so Twilight could use her memory spell! And then she’d helped reseal Discord back into stone!

Then later, thanks entirely to her, she’d befriended and reformed Discord, turning him to the side of good! She’d done her part to help save Sweet Apple Acres from the Flim Flam Brothers! When Rarity had needed help forming a tornado to bring water to Cloudsdale, she was a record breaker!

Yes, she was naturally shy. Yes, she could be a hoofmat to others!

But she had never been a completely hapless dingbat!

As close as she had grown to Lero, she resented the fact that all of a sudden, she NEEDED his help, needed her hoof held around her own animals... by a stallion who’d had NO EXPERIENCE TAKING CARE OF ANIMALS, HIMSELF. And he still was a better caretaker than her!

“I’m done being helpless,” Rainbow Dash growled lowly to herself, eyes shining with new light. “I’m done being worthless. I’m more than this... I’ve ALWAYS been more than this! I’m through needing to have others save me every single day of my life! I need to be part of the team again, standing by the side and letting them do all the work isn’t kind or loyal of me! If I can be incompetent, then I can also be awesome! And from now on, I wanna be as awesome as I can possibly be!”

Lero Michealides would’ve been ecstatic to see how, for just a few seconds, the butterflies on her flank flickered like a dying light bulb.

* * *

“Okay, Lero, ya listenin’ up?” Pinkie shouted.

“Sure am!” Lero answered, even thought they weren’t seeing eye-to-eye. Rather, Pinkie was crouched like a cat about to pounce, eyes following some invisible laser pointer dot. Staring at... no, through the dirt, as though she had some kind of X-ray vision. Thigh clenching all the while.

“It’s comin’ after yew again, Lero,” she said, pivoting to the side as if a fast snake had slithered past her. “It’s goin’ in all sorts a’ crazy spirals ‘n’ zigzags ta try ‘n’ throw me off, but mah gut says it wants yew.”

Lero grinned. “Just say when to move, and let’s nail this puke!”

Feeling a presence looming behind him, Lero turned to see Rainbow Dash flying right over his head with a bag of lye pellets in her arms and a fierce look in her eyes.

“Dash? What are you doing?” Lero asked.

“Nailing the puke as soon as it comes up for air,” the pegasus answered.

“It’s coming!” Pinkie warned. “Girls, git ready! Lero, hold yer position!”

Lero stood still, trying to think brave thoughts as the unicorns charged up their horns. “Steady...” said Pinkie. “Steady, steady... LERO, DODGE NOW!”

Tucking and rolling, like an action hero, Lero ended up several feet to the right of where he’d been standing. Lyra seemed awestruck, watching his human body perform this movement. Rainbow Dash threw down her bag of lye pellets, which burst open like an egg.

Except that the glufferflork failed to appear.

“Huh?” Lyra asked. “Did it run out of steam, Pinkie?”

“Ah dunno.” Pinkie said. “"It jest... stopped. Weird.”

“Say, girls... do you think tonight’s sky could do with a touch of vermillion? Or perhaps a good shade of ochre?”

Rarity’s eyes were directed upwards... semi-glazed and nearly unfocused. They all gave her odd looks, except for Twilight and Lero, whose eyes were drawn to her cutie mark, noticeably twitching.

"Oh, not now..." Lero started.

"BLOOMY, MOVE!" Only to be interrupted as Pinkie yanked her sister out of the cart, hitting some sort of emergency release for herself and tumbling away as the Flork grabbed the cart from underneath, flinging it away into the Everfree with astonishing strength. Apparently that's what it was waiting for: a moment's distraction.

Snarling, Rainbow Dash scooped up a hoof-full of of lye pellets with a surprising lack of awkwardness, and flung them at the beast. “Come on!” she bellowed with unexpected agression. It was like watching a hornet buzz around the surface of a pool which its target had dived into. “Let's do this! Let’s finish this! It ain’t over until I say so!”

Many of the other ponies backed away from Rainbow Dash uncertainly. She was livid! And for his part, it was all Lero could do to wonder which side of the pegasus’ swapped personality was dominating this time: Rainbow Dash or Fluttershy? On one hand, the way she was raging was classic Rainbow Dash. But on the other, it wasn’t as though Fluttershy were completely incapable of anger. He’d never seen the yellow pegasus mad himself... but they STILL talked about Fluttershy at the Grand Galloping Gala! (Or at least it’d been Fluttershy before the swap.) Who could say HOW the original Fluttershy would’ve reacted to a catastrophe like this?!

Or maybe... maybe neither persona was dominating over the other this time? That both ‘Fluttershy’ and ‘Rainbow Dash’ were on equal footing in their fury for the flork? He thought of Twilight: because she’d been equally good friends with all five of the other Element Bearers, it didn’t even matter who’d become whom... all ten pieces of their fragmented souls were unanimous in their friendship for Twilight Sparkle. Well, except for the whole ‘herdmate’ thing Rainbow had given Rarity...

Like an enemy submarine surfacing from beneath the tide, up came the glufferflork, thirty yards away from where they all stood. He didn’t know whether it was adrenaline or some other chemical equivalent unique to glufferflorks... but the slime monster accelerated to the speed of a runaway bullet train, fleeing Rainbow's assault, smashing headlong into a thick tree... it PASSED THROUGH its trunk while partially DISSOLVING it in its corrosive juices, and grew BIGGER, leaving only blackened trunks.

And it did the same with the next tree that’d been unfortunate enough to haven taken root in its path... and the next, and the next...

Tossing one final pellet at the fleeing beast, Rainbow huffed, "And stay out!"

There was a lengthy pause, all gathered staring off after the beast's path.

"And that... Is how you do it." Rainbow panted, looking to Lero with what, to him, was a heartbreakingly familiar cocky grin. He still smiled to see it, though.

Apple Bloom broke the silence. “Y’know, if Ah didn’t know any better, Ah’d say the snuffleglump there’s headin‘ straight fer Ponyville.”

Cold horror filled all their hearts as the acid sludge diminished from sight.

“...Perhaps a quatrefoil pattern, yes, they’d like..." Rarity continued, oblivious until what Apple Bloom said penetrated her artistic haze. "WHAT?!” she cried, lowering her eyes back to ground level. “It’s heading straight for Ponyville?!”

“Twilight! What can we do?!” Lyra shouted.

“I... I don’t know!” she said, though her legs were already moving fast; already hurrying after the flork, and the others hurried after her... Lyra stopping to run back after Lero and let him ride on her back. “If I had Spike with me, I could send a message to the Mayor or something! Warn the town!”

“Leave that to me!” Rainbow Dash thundered, and off she flew, just like that, leaving the others to shout ‘Wait!’ at a rainbow contrail.

“Ugh! Rainbow Dash... you stupid, hotheaded... UGH!” Twilight grumbled, just like old times.

“What‘s gotten inta her?!” Apple Bloom asked worriedly from Pinkie’s back.

“Glufferflork,” replied Pinkie. “Believe me, Bloomy, Ah sympathize with Dashie. Ya saw what it did ta mah mood.” She turned towards the forest. "Ah'm gonna get tha' lye! If'n the Flork attacks Ponyville, we're gunna need it! C'mon, Bloomy!"

And with that, the two farm girls broke off from the others, galloping out to where their cart had going sailing out towards.

“I... I... I must do something too!” With a glare just as determined as Dash’s, Rarity began conjuring a cloud platform directly in front of her, right in mid-gallop.

“Wait, Rarity!” Twilight called out. “What’re you planning on doing?!”

For a moment, Rarity’s eyes widened in alarm as she stared off into the distance. before that intent look set back in. “LOOK at that monster! Even from THIS distance, you can see how much it’s grown, eating all those trees!”

Rarity was right. Ahead of them, the glufferflork was still a far cry from Godzilla-sized... but for how long?!

“This creature must be stopped at all costs!” Rarity proclaimed, hopping onto the cloud and lifting into the air. “We've used fire, we've used lightning, to no effect. That leaves one thing!”

“What are you talking about?!” Lyra cried.

“Ice!” Rarity called. "You'll know it when you see it, Twilight!" she finished, with a wink at the lavender mare before she too surged forward towards the monster out for pony blood.

Twilight and Lero looked at each other in disbelief. "She couldn't mean...!" Twilight started.

"Care clueing me in?" Lyra asked.

"The Diamond Hailstorm?!" Lero finished.

"The Diamond Whatstorm!?" Lyra interjected.

“It’s a fantasy!” the human whispered. “A fable! An alibi the Swap cooked up in Rarity’s head!”

“Huh?!”

“Remember the story Dash told us about the very first time she pulled off the Sonic Rainboom? How it caused all six of the Element Bearers to gain their cutie marks within minutes of each other?! Well, the Diamond Hailstorm is the Swap’s answer to that! It’s literally a substitute Sonic Rainboom, tailored for Rarity so she could fill in the gap for that part of Dash’s life!”

“What’s it do?” Lyra asked. “Make diamonds?”

“No, it’s some kind of ice storm spell. According to Rarity, sunlight refracts off the perfectly shaped ice and sends rainbows everywhere... but that’s not even important! The key thing is: IT DOESN’T REALLY EXIST! Not in REAL life! It’s nothing but a story! And now, Rarity’s going to go try and CAST it, this nonexistent spell! Not only is Rarity not going to be able to stop the flork from eating Ponyville, she’s moments away from finding out the truth about herself, and going stark raving mad! Just like Discord warned!”

* * *

The speed, the adrenaline, the wind in her mane, the clouds under her hooves... on a calmer day, these sensations would’ve been blissful, the sort of thing she’d want to bring Lero along for! But the glufferflork was slurping ahead of her, huge and slug-like for all its fluidness, and all Rarity could think of was...

TWITCH

...flowers in the sky, gorgeous bouquets, a vast garden of nimbus and cirrus formed in the shape of giant camellias, marigolds, and columbines, that stretched across the heavens, that she’d paint in colors that glowed against the black of night... what a lovely garden to plant in the sky! Already, Rarity was slowing herself down to focus on what was important...

“Please, darling, I... I have to know... can you find it in your heart to forgive me for the awful, awful thing I’ve done?”

And her poor, near-dead prince blinked once to signify that she was forgiven.

Rarity shook herself. What had come over her? She set her sights ahead at the flork. Had she been too hasty, choosing the Diamond Hailstorm? She’d only cast it one time in her life, over a decade ago, without even meaning to. Why, she could think of all sorts of other suitable spells, such as...

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...fog on the ground, only she’d shape and color portions of the fog so they’d look like living ponies, just walking about town on their daily business. It’d be just like with the Shadowbolt golems she’d conjured for Lyra! They’d all marvel at her creativity....

“To me you’re like... a mother and an older sister, all wrapped up in one. Like another Twilight.”

Huh? Oh, this was no time for distractions, not of any sort! Not when she had to concentrate on...!

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...snowflakes that’d be shaped like all the animals of the world, each the size of her sweet prince’s hands...

“And that letter you sent me was just so very heartfelt. I can’t even count the number of times I reread it!”

WHAT WAS WRONG WITH HER?! It felt like her mind had declared civil war on itself! She felt like the rope in a tug-of-war, yanked into the dreamy hazy of artistry, only to be wrenched back to reality by memories of her herd. She’d deal with this later, she needed to beat the glufferflork, lickety-split, and then appease her artistic inspiration afterwards!

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No, she’d create her art NOW, and once it was up in the sky, THEN she’d finish off the flork! Priorities first!

Huh?! What?! No...! PONIES WERE GOING TO DIE IF SHE STOPPED NOW! They were the priority!

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When an artistic idea came to her head, she had to act on it RIGHT AWAY, or else the idea would die in her brain, and the next idea she had was guaranteed to not be as good as the idea she’d allowed to die! Making her that much less of an artist! Less of a weatherpony! She could not let any idea of hers DIE...

PONY LIVES ARE WORTH MORE THAN ANY ART!

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They’re all unimportant ponies who’d mocked you and scorned you. Next to your aesthetic genius, Ponyville could stand to do with a few less of those cretins.

...

“I don’t believe this,” Rarity breathed. “My art has betrayed me! My art is every bit as treacherous a thing as... as every one of Rainbow Dash’s animals! When did it come to this?!”

At this moment, she could see it all clearly now, and used the power of her anger to speed closer to the flork. Her reputation had suffered, because of her art! Her job had suffered because of her art! Her family life had suffered because she had to be a little artist! Just when had she been reduced to this, this... out-of-control art junkie?

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IT HAS ALWAYS BEEN THIS WAY!!!!

Yes, yes... sadly, this was so. As far back as Rarity’s memories went back... it HAD always been this way. She'd always been ambitious, eager to learn and master the weather magic she'd been taught, but her near-unique nature had proven a unique barrier: No one to compete against. While similar, Pegasus weather making functioned very different from hers. So she'd tapped into the artistic side, giving herself the challenge of following her artistic Inspiration whenever it struck, while still making functional, effective weather... But recently, it'd spiraled out of control, giving into her artistic inspiration every time it struck, to the full depths of her ideas, without a concern for the functionality or appropriateness, causing calamity...

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CLOUDS PAINTED TO RESEMBLE THE FUR OF LEOPARDS AND TIGERS! HAILSTONES SHAPED LIKE THE DIAMONDS ON WEDDING RINGS; HEART CUTS, OVAL CUTS, MARQUISE CUTS, TRILLION CUTS! A THUNDERSTORM WHERE THE THUNDER CRASHES LIKE A JAZZ DRUMMER’S DRUMBEAT!

Each one of these ideas came like another foal inside her mind, scraping her brain, wailing to be let out into the world, through her horn... so painful... Almost as if it was attempting to torture her into compliance, her cutie mark spasming so hard she almsot fell from the cloud.

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MIX LIQUID FERTILIZER INTO THE RAINWATER SO EVERYPONY’S PLANTS GROW FASTER! FREEZE THE LAKES SO PONIES CAN ENJOY ICE SKATING IN SUMMER! SHOOT LOTS OF LIGHTNING BOLTS STRAIGHT AT EACH OTHER, JUST AN INCH OVER EVERYPONY’S ROOFTOPS! IT’LL BE A GLORIOUS LIGHT SHOW!

And as insane as each idea sounded, they all felt so damnably tempting to try... just for art’s sake, and containing these ideas in her head hurt SO BADLY...

“What 'any other stallion or mare would do' doesn't matter. This is about what I should do.”

The thought of her herd filled her with strength. “This ISN’T ME!” she screamed at all the parasite ideas in her mind. “You’re not who I am or what I am!”

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Of course this is you!

“I wish that Celestia HAD decided to make you a second student of hers. We could’ve both grown up in the palace, learning from her together as classmates and friends!”

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What is an artist who doesn’t perform art?

"NONE of us are going to let anything happen to you."

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What is a weatherpony who doesn’t manipulate the weather?

“I don’t know how we all would’ve lived with the grief if you had died there, so I’m just so glad to come home and still have four herdmates living in this house with me!”

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Weather was how you got your cutie mark! The reflection of your soul!

Rarity turned to look. Her cutie mark.

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Are you going to betray everything that you are over one nasty puddle of slime? If you’re not a weather artist... then WHAT ARE YOU?!

What was she? What WAS Rarity at the core?

“I mean, look at you, Rarity! Yeah, your loyalty speaks for itself, of course, but you ARE very generous, too.”

A new sort of brainwave was rippling through Rarity’s mind.

“When Lero was in trouble... you were the one there for him! You saved him!”

It occurred to Rarity that whenever her herdmates... ANY of her herdmates, talked about why it was that they truly loved her... art and weather never entered the discussion, did it? Perhaps there was a reason for that.

“You’re HEROES! ...You’ve saved the world countless times over!”

A hero?

“Miss Dash is perfectly fine. She’s been brought back to Cloudsdale, safe and sound. She says she’s earned her cutie mark thanks to you.”

A hero...

Your rainbow brought out incredible magic in me. I even got my cutie mark from it!

“A hero!” Rarity was now flying directly overhead of the glufferflork. She stomped her hoof, and lightning shot out; sizzling the overgrown amoeba!

“You want to know what I am?! I’ll tell you!”

Stamp! Stamp! Stamp! Bolts shot out from the underside of her cloud.

“Before I’m an artist, before I’m a weatherpony, before I’m a unicorn or an honorary pegasus, before I’m even a MARE... I AM A HERO. That’s what my friends and family love me for: everything heroic inside me! I chose to pursue weather as a career because I thought I could use it to help improve others' lives... the way I helped Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash!”

Her cutie mark twinged, but it was vastly weaker than the twitches of before, almost as if it seemed uncertain of itself.

I... is that the case?!

The artistic side of herself sounded so astonished.

“Yes!” she shouted. “It’s always been that way... even if I was too blind to see it until now!"

She kept stamping out lightning bolts. The glufferflork took them like they were jolts from a joy buzzer, but it was still hurting the sludge beast greatly, slowing its sticky, yet smooth motions. Eyeing its current massive size, perhaps her first impulse was correct; the Diamond Hailstorm might be the only thing that could put it down for good.

“But if that’s no longer the case... if my art has degenerated to an uncaring, self-serving, out-of-control addiction, if ponies have to DIE because I had to paint a picture in the sky, then to hell with it!”

A faint twinge: But... but... all your ideas...!

Rarity waited for her cloud to recharge with more energy, and then stomped an extra-thick bolt out, by bouncing with on all four hooves.

“Let me tell you something else, you arrogant art snob, there are a lot more ponies in that town than all my thoroughly justified critics! There’s Spike! Fluttershy and the Cake family! There’s Applejack and... and her father, Magnum and her mother, Pearl... and little Sweetie Belle, that sweet, precious dear...”

For the oddest reason, Rarity felt heavy with emotion at the thought of Applejack’s family.

“If any of them gets hurt, that’s it for you! I’ll live on the ground like a proper unicorn! I’ll not form another cloud platform again! I’ll live as an artless, humdrum workaday boor for all the rest of my life! I’ll suffer through the withdrawal with a smile! If my art harms others, then it’s not not worth being loyal to! I need to give of myself! Be generous! So you can just LEAVE!”

She felt a funny lightening on her flank, and turned to see her Rainbow Mark fade a little. As though it were paint being washed off. For a moment she was sure that this would be for the best.

All of us love you just as you are, Rarity. We all want you to be happy in your own skin.

“Then again, perhaps it’d be far too drastic to do away with such an important part of who I am. After all, to lose my cutie mark would be just as bad as chopping off my horn!”

The cutie mark solidified back, almost tentatively. Rarity was glad; she'd always liked the look of it! Beneath her, the glufferflork crawled on towards Ponyville. She smiled gently at her Rainbow Mark.

“You want me to do something artistic? Help me recreate a masterpiece that’ll REALLY wow the crowd,” she told her mark. “Help me make the Diamond Hailstorm again. Let’s show everypony what my art is truly worth!”

* * *

CLANG! CLONG! CLANG! CLONG! CLANG! CLONG! CLANG!

It was approaching nine in the evening at this point in time. More than a few members of Ponyville’s population had fallen asleep. Or at least they had been before somepony had decided to ring the bell at Town Hall, up in its high bell tower as OBNOXIOUSLY AS POSSIBLE and NOT STOP, as though that DAMNED BELL was guaranteed to WAKE EVERYPONY’S DEARLY DEPARTED LOVED ONES if somepony RANG IT HARD ENOUGH!!! So it wasn’t long at all before many ponies — infuriated, grouchy, drowsy, alarmed, and even simply curious in turn — gathered around the bell tower to see what all the ruckus was about.

There they found Rainbow Dash. Naturalist. Unlicensed veterinarian. Animal caretaker, animal trainer, and even an animal diplomat who helped negotiate deals and smooth out misunderstandings between ponies and beasts of the wilds. Poor flier. Skittish, unassertive, and typically wrong-footed around her fellow ponies. Frequent apologizer. Avoider of conflicts. Laughably easy to scare. Thoroughly peaceable and good-natured. The Bearer of the Element of Kindness.

Tonight, she’d flown right up to the huge clangorous bell, bucking the thing back and forth with such fast and vehement fury, one would think she meant to pulverize it. Even when she had a sizable crowd gathered, Dash didn’t quit until another pegasus flew up and yanked her away.

“Oh!” Rainbow Dash said, looking down at the other ponies. “Good, you’re here.”

“We certainly are,” agreed Mayor Mare, peevish and still with her nightcap on. “You’d better have a very good reason for disturbing the peace this way.”

The Mayor tried her own version of The Stare on Dash, who was not impressed.

“How about a MONSTER RAMPAGE?! That a good enough reason for you all?”

Dash had expected a much bigger reaction than them looking at each other in confusion, as if silently asking each other: Do YOU have any idea what she’s talking about?

“I’m sorry, Rainbow... ‘monster rampage,’ you say?” The Mayor questioned after a sleepy yawn.

“Yes! A huge acid slime beast is coming from the Everfree Forest... from the direction of my cottage! And it’s out for blood!”

The majority of the crowd traded glances, some skeptical, some nervous.

“Couldn’t we send... whats-her-name... Twilight Sparkle, to check this out, Mayor?” somepony asked.

“Twilight’s already trying to help!” Rainbow Dash shouted. “Rarity and Pinkie Pie and Lyra too! You could all help her out a LOT by... I dunno, taking cover... evacuating, setting up a barricade, SOMETHING!”

“No offense, but couldn’t YOU do something about this?” some Earth pony asked. “I mean, you ARE the big animal expert here...”

“Probably some pet of hers gone out of control!” said the pegasus mare next to her. This comment was followed by some wry looks and even snickers, especially from ponies who’d used to bring their pets to her cottage.

“Rainbow Dash, is this true?” asked the Mayor. “This monster... IS it a pet of yours?”

On a normal day, Rainbow Dash would be doing her best to duck into a nonexistent shell, the way snails did. On a normal day, Rainbow Dash would actually be agreeing: yes, the glufferflork was a pet of her, yes, she was responsible, if only to get all those staring, judging eyes off her! But tonight, she didn’t give a flying feather about any of that. She felt anger begin to build, like it had at the Grand Galloping Gala. Then she gave a second look at the pegasus who’d accused her of keeping the glufferflork as a pet, and realized she knew this mare.

“Hi there, Jellyroll! Good to see you!” She took a broad step forward into the crowd towards the pegasus, speaking in the louder voice of an actress performing for a audience. Every pony went quiet in surprise while she grinned at Jellyroll.

“I see the rest of your family isn’t here!” Dash continued, in a would-be chummy voice. “Let me guess: you left them at home so they could catch up on more z’s, right?”

“Rainbow,” Jellyroll whispered, looking around self-consciously at the other ponies watching her. “I don’t know what your problem is, but leave m...”

“Not even an hour ago, my whole house was completely destroyed! It’s rubble! And I got to watch the acid monster that did it digest about twenty of my animals! Do you know what that’s like, Jellyroll? It’s like watching an antacid drop into water... only inside of an antacid, you’re watching your little loved ones’ skin and muscle dissolve in a flurry of blood, leaving only a charred, pitted skeleton behind!”

BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

They all jumped at the sound of thunderclaps.

“We... we didn’t authorize a thunderstorm for tonight!” The Mayor insisted.

“No,” said Rainbow Dash, more calmly. “That’s most likely Rarity, fighting the monster off.” And as the thunderclaps continued, she turned back to Jellyroll. “Anyway, I’m pretty your house lies right in the slime monster’s path, Jellyroll. Shame about that.”

“My FAMILY!” Jellyroll shrieked, shooting off towards her home.

“So, Mayor,” Dash said, casually turning to the older Earth pony. “I’m sure you must have some kind of contingency plan in place for a matter like this. If so, I’d know we’d all love to hear it!”

* * *

Empty!

EMPTY!

All the huge meat-containing hives things were EMPTY! It was like dissolving through giant walnut shells to find no actual walnuts within! (And the glufferflork had eaten through its share of walnut trees.)

Hives weren’t delicious! Wood and brick and paint and nails and screws were all yucky to absorb! The glufferflork hungered for more four-legged runny things! Where were they?! It starved to liquify them! Blood and muscle and eyeballs were unbelievably scrummy! Not to mention the only way to replace the catalyst it'd burned off to flee its attackers. But the most it got were scuttling little beetles and centipedes and spiders and the occasional nest of rats in the corners and the walls of the hives! Not enough, not enough! Not NEARLY enough! Too tiny! Hunger too huge!

Scent and body warmth of hoofed-meat was fresh, but hoofed-meat was gone! Like chicken-hive things with no chickens! Pig-hive things with no pigs!

NOOOOOOO FAAAAAAIIRRRR!!!!

The glufferflork was SO HUGE, and it was already angry and furious enough with all the four-legged running things! Especially the four-leggers with hooves! It thought it'd hit the mother lode, a hive full of animals whose only protector was a flying four-legger that was batted easily aside. Then to its eternal frustration, the flying four-legger returned with more, and they’d flung so much burny-burn and shocky-shock at it!

But then IT had arrived. The glufferflork remembered its scent all to well, the one that had dumped that foul, denaturing fluid on it, then worse, set it ablaze, making its denatured tissue burn! The agony had been unbelievable! The glufferflork wanted nothing more than to strike it down and consume its sweet flesh... but now it had some new horror that made its tissues burn without fire-burn or even explodey-splode! The four-leggers were intolerable! They had hurt the glufferflork! It wanted to eat them ALL! That was why it had grown itself tall eating all the tasting-bad trees on the way here! Where were they?!

Worst of all, the shocky-shock stuff from Up Above kept hitting and hitting it as it schlurfed towards the hoofy-hooves’ hive! Like the hoofy-hooves did, throwing their burny-burn stuff from earlier! Ow! It hurt and made the glufferflork more hungry-mad! It swung out with its pseudopodia, but the shocky-shock maker was too Up Above!

HateHateHateHATEHATEHATE!

But then, somethings new entered its gluffy-florky body. Coldy-sharp things! They didn’t hurt, but his senses quickly informed him that it was ice. That made no sense, it was nowhere near winter, he'd have long ago gone hibernating underground if it were, and he was nowhere near a mountain peak. He couldn't dissolve it, so he moved to disgorge it, only for tens- hundreds, THOUSANDS to replace it! They made it feel so coldy-sick!

Uggggghhhh....! Coldy-sick BAD STUFF! He could feel his tissues start to thicken and grind as they started to solidify. There were so many of them! And it was so hard to thinky-think with them dissolving inside it!

Had winter come early?

* * *

The skies granted an unusual sight, clouds from all around Ponyville zooming towards the city, clumping together into a single mass, taking shape beneath an astonishingly bright full moon, inflating into sharp angles, filling out a very definite four-sided shape.

“That looks like a diamond!” said Lyra, looking up with Lero into the sky.

“I know, but... how's that possible? She can't...” He trailed off. They were all still running towards Ponyville, towards Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and the glufferflork. If Lero had been running as well, instead of riding on Lyra’s back, he would’ve stopped short in shock.

“Is it just me, or has it gotten a bit colder as well, all of a sudden?” Lyra then asked.

“But it’s just a cover story!” Lero said, still staring at the diamond cloud. “Just a cover story, nothing more!”

“Doesn't look like it to me...” Lyra said with a touch of wonder.

From the moment Rarity had flown off, up until this point, he’d been terrified for Rarity’s sanity. Now he was beginning to feel a touch of nervousness for his own. Seeing this diamond-shaped cloud... reality and fantasy were melding together in a way God had never intended. It was like watching live fairies pop out straight from the pages of the Brothers Grimm, and then act perplexed when he told them they were just myths with no proper right to exist.

What was real anymore? What wasn’t? Was he living on the right world?

Calm down! He told himself. So what if Rarity made a diamond-shaped cloud? She twists clouds into any shapes she pleases, like clay! It’s not like she can make them make ice and rainbows! It’s nighttime, after all! Don’t you need sunlight for rainbows?!

The forward tip of the diamond cloud pointed downward like the barrel of an airship’s cannon. And then shortly thereafter, Lero, Lyra, and all the rest of Ponyville discovered how amazing rainbows made of silvery moonlight looked.

* * *

Had the glufferflork been a solid creature of flesh and bone, its cause of death would’ve been the scores of puncture wounds that would’ve rendered it into a raw, bloody pincushion.

Being a liquid creature of acid, punctures in and of themselves were no concern to it. A thousand archers could’ve shot ten thousand arrows into its body, and the glufferflork would’ve happily dissolved each one within itself, and grown all the bigger from it. It could’ve been sliced apart with a titanic axe, and simply reformed as easily as a dollop of vinegar split by the side of a salad fork.

But icicles were a slightly different matter. When icicles entered into a large body of acid, they were not easily absorbed. Even worse, the ice rapidly cooled the acid, rendering it sluggish, and then immobile. Worse, the glufferflork depended on its liquid state to even think clearly. And the Diamond Hailstorm cloud was firing its icicles into the glufferflork like bullets from a chain gun.

In all forthright truth, there were a number of more efficient spells that a weather-focused unicorn like Rarity could have deployed against the glufferflork.. Which was not to say that the Diamond Hailstorm didn’t do its intended job.

Its slimy life ended in what amounted to a death by ten thousand paper cuts: an icicle’s worth of cold at a time. In the end, Rarity almost might as well have flung it in the middle of the South Pole. By the time she was through with it, the glufferflork was nothing more than a solid mass of frozen white acid: a monstercicle. Less corrosive than orange juice, unless some fool decided to melt it.

* * *

Lero saw all the icy projectiles... all the rainbows in the night sky and touched the feather braided in his hair, reaffirming that it WAS a feather, and not a white rose. More than ever before, Lero could empathize with Twilight, back when she’d worried they’d stepped into an alternate universe. (A friendly alternate universe, at least, instead of some comic book Equestria where everypony was their own bizarro-evil twin.) He felt like writing to Celestia just to get a fresh look at some of their stuff she’d hidden away for them in that vault of hers.

“Moonbows,” he heard Twilight whisper, as she looked at the sky. “I remember! That’s what you call rainbows when they happen at night!”

They stepped into the borders of Ponyville, an unseasonable light coat of snow and ice covered most of the city. Gem-like ice crystals perched near perfectly atop houses and other structures, casting moon-rainbows all over the city. It was like Hearth's Warming Eve come early. As they looked about in wonder, Apple Bloom and Pinkie caught up, likewise caught in awe of their surroundings. However, the moment was broken as they found themselves stepping around more partially-dissolved pony homes.

“How many ponies d’ya think it ate?” asked Apple Bloom, tentatively.

“Zero,” said Rarity, who was just around the corner.

At first, it looked like she’d conjured a gigantic statue, about as big as the slime monster had been! Then, when they looked closer, they saw that it was an ice sculpture. However, the ice wasn't clear, rather a familiar semi-translucent white.

“Is that the glufferflork?!” asked Pinkie Pie, staring at the cloudy waxen whiteness of the ice.

“Yes,” said Rarity, finally hopping off her cloud platform. “I froze it like this, just in case it decided to come back to life.”

“Any particular reason why you made it into Princess Celestia?” asked Lero, coming over to her side.

The ice sculpture showed Celestia at her gentlest, looking nothing more like a proud mother smiling down at a truly good daughter.

“Thoughts of the past,” said Rarity. When the others gave her puzzled looks, she explained; “I remember what Princess Celestia told me, long ago, the first time we met, about needing to tame my abilities. Maybe... just maybe, I’ve finally really did it, after all these years.”

She turned around, looking at her cutie mark. But Lero saw that it was not the fearful look of a slave at gunpoint, as he'd seen in so many of the Swapped before. It was a fond look, like that a high school graduate gives her new diploma.

In the distance, they could hear the beat of wings and the nervous clip-clop of pony hooves on the road. The townsfolk were coming back. Anxious about whether the monster had been bested. Curious about the statue. Looking to Rarity for answers.

On another day, Rarity might have been hesitant to face the neighbors whom she had inconvenienced and startled and vexed with her weeks of weird weather. Her guilty conscience might have left her unable to meet any of their eyes, might have urged her quick to move along elsewhere, away from these ponies with whom she could do no right.

Today appears to be a new day, though. Lero thought.

“All’s well, folks!” Pinkie called out to the crowd. “Rarity’s done made a popsicle out of the flork!”

Some of the ponies looked happy and pleased with the white unicorn, delighted she’d gotten rid of it. Others regarded her with dislike, even suspicion, as though Rarity had brought the glufferflork to Ponyville, herself.

And now she’s able to look upon them evenly, as an equal, without resentment or fear. Lero realized.

Fluttershy flew up from the center of the crowd, grinning goofily at the glufferflork statue. “Ice to see you safe and sound, Rarity! Way to treat that monster to a frosty reception! I mean, when it comes to giving evil slime creatures the cold shoulder, you really take the ice cream cake!”

“Fluttershy, darling,” Rarity said, while Lyra winced underneath Lero. “Could you please do me an important favor? I need you to go to Spike and have him write a letter to Celestia: we have a giant monster encased in ice. It may be alive or dead. Please advise. Can you do that for me, Fluttershy?”

“Huh? Oh... oh, yeah!” said the yellow pegasus, who then set off towards the Golden Oaks Library.

“Whooooooaaa!”

A second pegasus came up towards Rarity, stepping out from around the side of a building. She was much younger than Fluttershy. She approached the weathermare with a look of worshipful awe, as though Rarity had just punched a blazing Texas-sized meteor back into outer space.

“Hey, Scootaloo!” Apple Bloom called from Pinkie’s back.

“Hey, uh, Apple Bloom!” said the young Crusader. Smiling a bit guiltily at her friend, Scootaloo quickly turned back towards the white unicorn. “Rarity?”

“Yes, Scootaloo?”

“That was the COOLEST THING I’VE EVER SEEN! EVER!” The little pegasus filly bounced up and down like an excited puppy, her tiny wings flitting like a hummingbird’s. “IT’S BEYOND HARDCORE! Not even Lightning Dust can compete with that level of super-uber-incredibleness! I mean, that monster stood no chance against you! You just flew in, and RAT-TA-TAT-TA-TAT-TAT with the ice crystals!! And all these rainbows! How did you make the rainbows at night?!”

He could see that all the praise pleased Rarity greatly. Lero thought it very possible that the sudden breeze which made her mane and tail flap like a superhero’s cape might have been of her own making.

“Rainbows are my speciality, Scootaloo! Back when I was your age, it was rainbows that first set me on the path to where I am today!”

Somehow, hearing that put an unmistakable damper on the little filly’s mood. “Back when you were my age, huh? That’s... that’s good!”

“Scootaloo?” asked Apple Bloom. “What’s wrong?”

Scootaloo began backing away from their group. “Nothing! Nothing’s wrong! Thanks for saving the town! I... I gotta go, I have overdue library books!”

“I’ll say you do,” muttered Twilight Sparkle under her breath.

But before Scootaloo could scurry off, Rarity grabbed the little filly gently with telekinesis and floated her back in front of her.

“What’s wrong, Scootaloo?” asked Rarity.

“Yeah, Scoots! What’s up?” Apple Bloom chimed in, hopping off Pinkie Pie’s back. “It’s clear something’s eatin’ ya!”

The little pegasus filly almost tried to pull away from the telekinesis, but looked around at all the powerful mares surrounding her, and her body sagged where Rarity held it levitated. “I... I really don’t want to say... okay? Please, it’s REALLY selfish of me...”

“We’re not here ta judge ya, Scootaloo!” Apple Bloom said.

“I can never do what you just did!” The pegasus filly cried out, staring sadly at Rarity, as she lowered her to the ground. “I want to be just like you! As awesome as you! But I can’t do magic! I’ve tried doing so many things, and I can’t do ANYTHING right! I don’t even have a cutie mark!”

For his part, Lero was tempted to tell her not to place so much stock in cutie marks, but he held himself back. Watching Apple Bloom go over and nuzzle her friend consolingly, watching Scootaloo hold back her tears and apologize again for being so selfish, he knew it was the wrong time for that sort of thing.

“You think I’m ‘awesome’ because of what I’m able to do with weather, right?” Rarity asked.

Scootaloo nodded.

“Well, I can tell you this much, Scootaloo: it’s not BECAUSE I’m a unicorn that I’m good with weather. In fact... I’d go so far as to say I made myself a weathermare in SPITE of being a unicorn.” Rarity said, “When all’s said and done, weather will always be the domain of the pegasi, not unicorns. And you’re a pegasus, my dear. If you have love for the craft, if your passion is pure... there’s no reason you can‘t be as good at weather as me.”

“Yeah right!” said Scootaloo, disheartened. “I’m not even that good of a pegasus.”

The unicorn weathermare looked the little filly up and down. “I’ll tell you what, Scootaloo... you know that I live at the library with Twilight Sparkle and Spike, right? Why don’t you stop on by my place tomorrow at four in the afternoon and I’ll show you some weather tricks I know?”

“Really?!” Scootaloo shared an excited look with Apple Bloom. “You mean it? You’d train me?!”

Rarity smiled. “I’ll teach you what I know... and who knows? Maybe between one thing and another... we’ll be able to find your own unique way of being cool!”

And as Scootaloo skipped and flittered around Rarity, going on about how awesome she was... as all the older mares and Lero, himself, smiled at the little pegasus filly and each other, Lero found himself whispering under his breath,

“Two down, three to go.”

Which surprised him. Technically, it was far too early to say any such thing. Logically, Lero knew he ought to not jump to overoptimistic conclusions, to wait a while and watch whether Rarity had kicked her artistic weather habit, or at least gotten it under control. And he had every intention of doing just that over the coming days. Surely, it wasn’t possible for a Swapped pony to reach equilibrium entirely on her own, was it?

Yet as watched the gentle smile, the look of an accomplished girl in control of herself, Lero’s heart insisted all the stronger than everything was going to be okay with Rarity.

“Hey, has anybody seen Rainbow Dash?” Lyra suddenly asked, looking around.

Author's Note

I hope you all enjoyed this one. If you all don't mind, I'd like to ask a special favor, of you, my readers.

On my TV Tropes Page, I'm trying to build up some of my most noteworthy moments for...

My Nightmare Fuel Page...
My Funny Moments Page...
My Heartwarming Moments Page...
My Awesome Moments Page...
And my Tearjerker Page.

I put in a moment for each page, just to bring them into existence. I would've added more, but to quote a very wise man, "there's a name for that sort of behaviour and frankly the hairy palms are unsightly."

So I'd rather ask all of you: what were some of the most outstanding moments throughout Divided Rainbow? If you could, list them in the comments box, (or add them right into the proper page, itself, if you're a troper,) and I'll add it in. I'm hoping by doing this, I can attract even more readers to this story from TV Tropes.

This isn't just restricted to now, either. From here on out, now, until this story reaches its end, if some part of this story really leaves an impression on, just say what it is, say it deserves special mention on the TV Tropes page, and I'll gladly add it in.

And please stay tuned for 19! It's another BIGGIE.

Nineteen: Rainbow Dash Entertains Some Guests

Rainbow Dash hunted through the ruins of her cottage. Bits of wall. Smashed wooden beams, shards of glass. Twists of metal which used to be animal cages. Furniture snapped like saltine crackers. Rubble made of plaster and stone, and random assortments of damaged personal items strewn about.

Rainbow Dash dug through the wreckage with her bare hooves. Hooves were great limbs to have for things like running, stomping, bucking... but digging? Not as much. Still, she dug intently, scraping through the debris that had once been her family room.

Not for her animals. None of them were trapped in the wreckage; she’d have felt it if they were. All her critters were high up on their cloud cage, still fast asleep, thanks to her unicorn friends’ magic. Right now, the last thing Dash needed was for them to reawaken. Digging was her focus.

Rainbow Dash didn’t care about trying to salvage her pets’ toys or her pets’ cages, or pet food, or even food for herself. She wasn’t searching for blankets or empty luggage cases or the very last bit of emergency money she’d kept hidden at the bottom of the ferret treat jar. She wasn’t even trying to find a single photograph of herself with her friends, which was most unlike her...

...Her bookcase! At last! It was so broken, it was only fit for kindling at this point, but at least she knew she was close to what she really wanted. Was it completely destroyed? Maybe only a little damaged? Rainbow Dash nosed aside books on mollusk nutrition and her copies of the Tufty The Loneliest Bunny series...

...There it was. Splintery debris coated it comprehensively, like salt on a martini glass, but other than that, it was completely undamaged. It was an audiobook box containing ten cassette tapes. Rainbow Dash blew the dust off. The box’s cover showed a confident and powerfully-built minotaur bull with a black necktie, a mohawk, a nose-ring, and blue fur all over. He was flexing his biceps assertively from within a wide circle of other minotaurs, all of whom were kowtowing before him.

The audiobook was titled: WHY WAIT? DOMINATE!! It was written by Iron Will.

She felt the fact that Iron Will’s audiobook had come through the collapse of her house whole and intact was almost a sign from above... as much as the rainbow from Rarity’s Diamond Hailstorm, back in her youth. Especially since she had also just pulled out her portable cassette player from the flattened ruins of what had once been her bedroom not a few minutes ago, (plus a set of saddlebags to carry it in.) There had only been a few new scratches on the back of the cassette player.

Rainbow Dash stared at Iron Will’s face a long while, remembering how things had gone the last time she’d embraced his teachings. She hesitated a moment, but then she looked upwards, at all the little beasts right above her, and her expression hardened. She popped Tape 1 into the cassette player, rewound it to the beginning, pressed the play button, and spun the side knob to maximum volume.

“Twaddle Twattle Audio Productions proudly present: WHY WAIT?! DOMINATE!! by Iron Will. Read to you by the author,” came the gruff, gravelly voice of the motivational speaker. “Chapter One: Don’t Get Along, Get AHEAD!”

Narrowing her eyes at her animals, Rainbow Dash laid down upon the ruins of her home and listened on.

“Life was hard for me when I was just a scrawny little calf of four years old...”

* * *

“...So instead of telling yourself, ‘I am a bad pony for not loaning my friend money,’ what you want to say is, ‘I deserve financial stability, and my friend needs to learn to put a padlock on his or her wallet!’”

“Hey there, Rainbow Dash! We’ve been looking for you!”

Rainbow Dash stood up to face her friends as they came. Practically everyone who had galloped out to fight the glufferflork for her in the first place was here now: Lero, Twilight, Rarity, Lyra, Pinkie Pie... Apple Bloom was nowhere to be seen, so Pinkie must’ve had her return home. A bit unexpectedly, Fluttershy had come along too.

“Oh!” the yellow pegasus gasped; her first look at Dash’s demolished cottage. “Oh my! You poor, poor, poor, poor, thing!”

“Are you okay, Dash?” asked Twilight.

“How do you feel?” asked Lyra.

Bitter. Dash would’ve said if she were completely honest. But after all that they'd done to save her animals, and fight the monster for her sake, Rainbow Dash knew that the last thing her good friends deserved was an attitude of bitterness.

“It’s kind of funny,” said Dash, “Right now... after everything that’s happened, I feel nothing. I feel empty.” This wasn’t even entirely a lie. When she set her bitterness aside, all that was left was an empty nothingness. As though she’d been hollowed out.

“How could you possibly not feel anything after you lost your house?!” Fluttershy demanded to know.

“...It takes time and energy to perfect your baleful glower, but the end result is well worth the effort!”

“...And... wait a second, who’s that talking?” Fluttershy asked, peering around.

Rainbow Dash blinked, realizing that she’d neglected to press the stop button on her cassette player when her friends had come. “Oh, that’s just my audiobook,” she said, showing them the cassette player, visible from the open flap of her saddlebags.

Fluttershy peered at her strangely. “Why are you listening to an audiobook, now of all times?”

Rainbow Dash shrugged. “Just... felt like it, for some reason. Especially because it survived.”

“...Act snide and aloof? I’ll send you through the roof!” Iron Will boomed.

Lero placed a hand on Fluttershy’s shoulder. “She just almost lost everything. Give her time for her emotions to settle.”

Fluttershy hadn’t quite heard him. She’d just caught sight of all the animals on the cloud cage. “Hey! I see you’ve got all your animal friends stuck on a cloud!” she noted, in an ill-considered attempt at lightening the mood. “Are you planning on... making it rain cats and dogs?”

The others groaned, or shook their heads. Twilight Sparkle even started to scold Fluttershy, only to find herself cut off by Rainbow Dash’s laughter. The idea of all her animals plummeting from the cloud at that height had a definite dark appeal to it.

“Thanks, Fluttershy, I needed a laugh.” Rainbow said as her laughter settled down to a chuckle.

Fluttershy smiled sunnily. “You’re welcome!”

“...Treat me like a slave? I’ll put you in your grave!”

“What am I going to do?” she moaned, after her chuckle was done. “Where am I going to live?!”

“You can live with us, if you want.”

Every pony’s head turned to look at Lero. Especially Rainbow Dash’s.

“That’s sweet of you, Lero, but... what about all of THEM?” And she pointed upwards at her animals.

He took a long, hard look past her at them all; from Angel Bunny on down, shut his eyes, clenched a fist and said, “They can live with us too.”

“Always, always, ALWAYS look ‘em directly in the eye!” Iron Will advised in the silence that followed. “Remember: all instances where eye contact is made IS a staring contest. No exceptions!”

“That’s... Lero, you... THEY’LL RIP YOUR WHOLE LIBRARY TO SHREDS. And you and your whole herd with them! You know they will!”

She looked to his mares. Two sets of eyes were conflicted, trying not to reveal how much they wanted Dash back the same as Lero did. Nonetheless, every female of Herd Bellerophon turned towards their stallion, pleading with their eyes to get him to see sense.

“We’ll make it work,” Lero said with stronger conviction.

“That’s right!” Lyra agreed, shifting her support in full to Lero. “We can think up a way to make it so you all can live with us, Rainbow!”

“How?!”

“Well, for one thing, we have Spike,” Twilight reminded her, having made the realization moments ago. “He’ll help! And at our home, we have three strong unicorns and the heartiest human in all Equestria! And I know he’s the only one, but he’s still pretty hearty!”

For her part, Rarity had not been expecting this kind of support for Rainbow Dash. The animals would be... quite an adjustment. But she couldn’t help feeling swept up in her herd’s nobility and charity, so she, too, faced Rainbow Dash and said, “Remember, Dash, we just took down a glufferflork! We’re here for you! I don’t care how nasty your animals are, they don’t stand a chance against the likes of us!”

Lero took a step forward “Rainbow Dash... even if it’s just until you get back on your feet... we’d love nothing more than to have you over as part of our family.”

There was such hope in his eyes. In all their eyes; Twilight, Lyra... even Rarity’s, to a somewhat lesser extent. As though her acceptance, her coming to their home would mean the world to them. No one had ever treated her like this before, not even those fawning fans from Photo Finish back in her modeling days could compare. Her opinions, her safety, her happiness hadn’t mattered to others like it did these ponies, and to Lero.

“Y... you guys, you’re serious, you guys are all serious!” she found herself stammering. “I...!”

“Not wantin’ ta interrupt this moment, but if ya’ll don’t mind, Ah’d like ta propose somethin’ that’ll be easier fer everypony here.” Pinkie Pie spoke up.

Everyone’s attentions shifted to the pink pony.

“Dashie... it jest so happens that we have a large old barn way out in mah family’s cornfield; sturdy ‘n’ spacious, and we ain’t really been using it any as of late. Ah’d be perfectly happy letting yew and yer critters stay there fer the time being.”

She thought it over, looking between her animals, the members of Herd Bellerophon, and Pinkie Pie.

“...the world is your gymnasium. You have no excuse not to make yourself strong!”

“Guys, I’m really sorry,” she told Lero, Rarity, Twilight, and Lyra. “If it were just me alone... I probably… No, I WOULD go with all of you to your house. But my animals are real monsters. Given the choice between a farm and a library, it only makes sense to bring them all down to the farm... they’ll do a LITTLE less property damage there... and I know how you feel about your first editions, Twilight!”

Seeing the disappointment Lero quickly hid behind a smile, Rainbow Dash flew over to her bighearted human friend. Lips puckering, she bent towards Lero, aiming to give him a kiss on the cheek... reconsidered, and braved a quick kiss on his lips.

For Lero, it was a fleeting second of heaven.

They pulled away: Rainbow Dash had a powerful and adorable blush to her. “What was that for?” he asked her, both all too aware of the interested stares of all Lero’s other mares.

“Everything,” she answered.

“Chapter Four: Assert, Assert, Assert, and Assert Some More!”

* * *

“...Other ponies can’t read your mind. State it Loudly, You’ll Get It Proudly! The operating word is LOUDLY!”

“Ah don’t thank Ah like this guy on yer cassette player.” Pinkie Pie told Rainbow Dash, while she opened the huge barn doors with her.

“Huh? Why? What’ve YOU got against Iron Will, Pinkie Pie?” Dash asked.

Pinkie shrugged. “Ah can’t rightly explain it. It ain’t like Ah ever met him personally or nothing, but jest listening ta this guy’s voice... feels like a goose walked over m’grave.”

“I know!” added Rarity. “I’ve never heard of Iron Will either before today, but he just leaves a bad taste in my mouth.”

From high in the sky, Rainbow Dash, Fluttershy and Rarity had all followed Pinkie Pie through the cornfield of her family’s farm, until she’d led them to the barn. The weight of all of Dash’s animals up in their cloud cage would’ve been back-breaking for any pony. Thankfully, they still had Rarity; the weathermare provided a powerful yet well-controlled gust to push the cloud cage along. All Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash had really needed to do was steer it.

“Me too!” Fluttershy said, facing her other pegasus friend fretfully. “Why are you even listening to him again?”

Dash could hardly blame her friend for worrying. The way she’d treated her and poor Applejack when the tough-talking motivational speaker had come to Ponyville, made for one of the most shameful memories of her life! At the very, very, least, it’d just been the two of them, and not Rarity, Pinkie Pie, or Twilight.

“I just...” She pressed the stop button on her cassette player. “I just lost my house, half a dozen animals, and got pretty banged up, okay? I want to listen to someone motivational, someone that’ll help me fight off all the negative, downer thoughts!”

“I don’t want you to go back to being New Rainbow Dash!” the yellow pegasus pleaded. “I just want you to keep being your same old self!”

The thing of it was, it was already too late for that. Within her heart, Dash already DID feel like a new Rainbow Dash... even before she began playing Iron Will’s tapes! However, it was a different sort of ‘newness’ than the first time around, when she’d sworn off the minotaur’s teachings.

She looked into the yellow pegasus’ eyes, and put a hoof over her heart. “Fluttershy, I swear on... on our friendship, on every one of my animals, I swear on Celestia herself...!”

“Don’t take the Princess’ name in vain!” Fluttershy gasped.

“...That I will NOT let myself turn into that mare a second time! I swear I won’t let myself bully any pony, I swear I’ll treat every pony with kindness and respect!”

Rainbow Dash meant every word of this promise. It was the only reason she was giving Iron Will’s teachings a second chance. That, and the fact that this catastrophe had changed her into a new Rainbow Dash. And she knew Iron Will would help her solidify this mental transformation, not into someone who was mean and harsh… but someone tougher and stronger.

Fluttershy still looked unsure. Rainbow placed a hoof softly on her shoulder. “Look, just... humor me on this, okay?”

The yellow pegasus smiled at her. “Okay. Last night, I had a talk with a shy pebble who told me, “I wish I could be a little boulder!”

The others stifled their groans while Rainbow Dash hugged the yellow pegasus while laughing. “Yep! I’m humored, all right! Just couldn’t help yourself, could you, Shy?”

The yellow pegasus shot a look at her cutie mark. For some reason, seeing her do this made Rainbow Dash the tiniest bit uneasy, though she couldn’t quite say why.

“Nope!” said Fluttershy, looking back at her. “I couldn’t!”

Rarity cleared her throat. “As much as I’d love to spend the rest of the night trading small talk about jokes and books, it’s been a long night. I’m starting to fall asleep on my hooves, and this cloud cage’s not going to last forever, so if you girls don’t mind stepping aside and helping me...?”

Which they did. Rarity first banished the bars on her cloud cage. Then the four mares worked towards bringing the animals inside the barn. All the creatures were still under the effects of the sleep spell. Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy, and Rainbow Dash focused on the smaller animals; picking them up by the scruff of their necks, or in their hooves. Rarity focused on the heavier animals: breaking off pieces of the main cloud platform on which the larger animals slept, floating them over to inside the barn, lowering them down softly, and then having the cloud dissipate under their paws.

It was an old barn, as Pinkie had said. It seemed no pony had set hoof inside here for at least a couple seasons. Even though they’d opened its doors, a lot of the air inside here was still stale. Yet for all that, it still was a well-built structure, large and strong enough for her needs and those of her animals. There was no animal feed in the barn’s feed room, though... Dash would need to ask Pinkie for some.

“Rarity, Fluttershy, I think I can take it from here,” she said to them. “Thank you for everything.”

“You’re very welcome,” said the unicorn, giving Dash a hug. “Everything will turn out fine for you, Dash. I promise.”

“Tomorrow, I’ll bake you a biiiiig cake to celebrate You-Not-Dying-And-Moving-Into-Pinkie’s-Barn-With-All-Your-Animals Day! Devil’s food cake sound okay?”

“Sounds wonderful!” Dash said.

“Yippie!” she squealed, as she and Rarity left.

“Thank you for doing this, Pinkie,” Dash said to the farm girl. “I want you to know I don’t plan on staying here all that long. I’m no moocher.”

Pinkie smiled. “Aw, Ah know ya aren’t. Yer too hard a worker fer that! Listen, anythang yew may need... food, blankets, medicine fer yer critters, just fly on out ‘n’ knock on mah door!”

“I will!” Rainbow said. “Now that I have money — thank Celestia — I’m planning on hiring some builder ponies to rebuild my house. Soon as they’re done, I’ll be moving my animals back into my old house."

“Sounds like a plan! If ya like, Ah happen ta know the perfect ponies ta do the rebuilding for ya! Winesap ‘n’ Plywood their names are!”

The names were new to Rainbow Dash. “You know, it’s always amazed me how well-connected you are, for a farm girl.”

“One: Ah gotta big, big extended family. Two: A place like Sweet Apple Acres don’t git ta be as profitable as it is without being willin’ ta go out, meet new ponies, and sell apples to ‘em!” Pinkie replied. “Farm girls jest can’t stay rooted ta their farms, round-the-clock... any more than animal-lovin’ gals like yew can jest shut themselves up in their homes and never leave, am Ah right?”

“...Yeah. Yeah, you’re VERY right, Pinkie! An animal-loving gal would be STUPID to shut herself in her house forever!” Saying this made Rainbow Dash feel a little bit freer, inside.

“Mmm-hmm!”

“Say, Pinkie... you know that lye shooter of yours?” The weapon was still mounted on her back; the farmer still hadn’t changed out of the... outfit she’d galloped to battle in. “I’ll gladly pay you money to build one for me. Y’know, just in case that glufferflork had friends or whatever.”

“Can do, Dashie! But yew don’t need ta pay me a thang. Ah’ll gladly do it fer free!”

“I don’t want you to go out of your way...”

“Hogwash! A) Buyin’ a new house is gonna be expensive enough fer ya, B) Ah’d like to be able ta prevent this from ever happenin‘ again, jest as much as yew, and C) Girl oughta have a way of defendin herself and what’s precious to her!”

What unbelievably good friends she had. For a moment, Rainbow Dash considered NOT rebuilding her cottage, and just hiring herself out to the Apple Family as a farmhoof, and all her critters could learn to be free-range barn animals. Instead, she hugged the pink pony.

“Aww, what’re friends for? In the meantime, though, why not come to the farmhouse, and Ah’ll pull somethin’ out of the fridge fer ya? Reckon yew must be hungry after all tonight’s excitement! Then we gotta guest bedroom yew can sleep in... or mebbe yew can even share a mug of hard cider with me before that...”

Rainbow Dash passed a look over to her cassette player. “Tomorrow would be better for me, Pinkie. My animals will need a bit of time getting used to their new temporary home, and I got to be there to help break them in, you know?”

Pinkie Pie eyed the baby alligator sleeping by the armadillo warily. “Tomorrow, then, alright?”

“It’s a deal!”

Rainbow Dash stood by the open barn door, watching Pinkie Pie cross through the cornfield towards her farmhouse, and pressed the play button on her cassette player.

“Begin each morning by looking yourself in the mirror and shouting ‘NO MORE MR. NICE GUY!’ at your reflection 100 times.” growled Iron Will. “Say it with me, out loud! No More Mr. Nice Guy!”

“No More Miss Nice Girl,” said Rainbow Dash.

“No More Mr. Nice Guy!”

“No More Miss Nice Girl!” she repeated, stronger and with more aggression.

“No More Mr. Nice Guy!”

“No More Miss Nice Girl!” she yelled, sorry that there wasn’t a proper mirror to look into in this barn.

“You have reached the end of Tape 1, Side B,” announced a bland-sounding male who wasn’t Iron Will. “Please insert Tape 2, Side A.”

She didn’t bother putting the second tape in. “No More Miss Nice Girl! No More Miss Nice Girl! No More Miss Nice Girl!”

Ninety-four more times she repeated this phrase, each time with more ferocity, like the indomitable pegasus warriors of yore. Upon finishing, she shut the the barn door, bolted it, and turned towards her darling little animals, bucking the wooden, cobwebbed wall of the barn loud and rhythmically.

“Wake up!” she shouted. “Wake-up time, my scaly, slimy, feathered, and furry friends! All creatures great and small! UP AND AT ‘EM!!!”

It truly was a potent sleep spell, but not impenetrable. Grouchily, unwillingly, they rose off the ground, giving the sort of growls which had coined the phrase, ‘let sleeping dogs lie.‘ At the sight of Rainbow Dash, they fixed their caretaker with their old familiar looks of absolute contempt.

Rainbow Dash flashed them her sassiest, brassiest grin. All teeth showing.

“I just want to put all you naughty boys and girls on notice: all your fun is over. As of this moment, it’s all going to be about O-B-E-D-I-E-N-C-E, which spells OBEDIENCE, and every inch of that obedience is going to be TO ME.”

“To me! To me!” called Jabbers... though the tone of those words sounded like those of an olden-day queen unsheathing her sword, and calling her knights to her side in the thick of warfare.

Scampering to the opposite end of the barn, Angel Bunny gabbered at the animals in loud, angry, demagogic growl-honks.

“Are you SUUUUURE you want to listen to cat-stink over there?” Dash asked her pets sweetly, as all of them flocked to the rabbit’s side. Every animal bared its teeth, crouching as if to pounce. Angel Bunny’s smirk couldn’t be more scornful.

“Oh, boy, did you back the wrong horse!” Rainbow Dash spat into a pile of ancient straw, rolling her neck muscles and flaring out her wings. “Think you’re so tough?! I’ll show you my stuff!”

The animals all launched themselves at Rainbow Dash in one collective charge.

* * *

Days passed, though not uneventfully. Much was happening. Incredibly, Lyra Heartstrings was able to convince Lero to leave Rainbow Dash alone for a while, and focus on other things.

“But those animals...!” the human protested the next day, during a safe moment when Rarity had left Golden Oaks Library.

“I’ll have a talk with Twilight and Spike. We can arrange it so Spike can go to that barn Rainbow’s living at right now and have him be her pet-care assistant in your place.” Lyra said, “They’re manageable enough as long as Spike’s there, right?”

“Well, yeah,” said Lero, not wanting to admit how Spike was better at it than him. “But...!”

“I say this,” the aqua unicorn cut in, “Because as I recall, the whole reason Discord put us on his exemption list was to keep Twilight properly focused. So far, we haven’t exactly been doing a flawless job, there. I mean... LOOK at her!”

Across the room they were sitting in, Lyra and Lero were unable to see Twilight Sparkle for all the books she had piled around herself.

“I’ve also talked with Twilight in private,” Lyra whispered into his ear. “Part of the reason why she’s gotten to this state is because you’ve been spending so much time focused on Rainbow.”

“I...!”

“Look…” She put a hoof on his side, comforting him. “I understand. I’m worried about her, too, and it hurt me a lot to know she was suffering and I couldn’t help. But this doesn’t change the fact that week after week, you’ve made a point of going to help Rainbow, spending hours every day at her cottage... then going off to spend more time with one of the other Element Bearers, and often not coming home until late at night. Never once have you paid that same kind of attention to Twilight this whole time. I know she’s not afflicted the same way as the swapped, but she’s still suffering. We all appreciate how worried you are for Rainbow’s physical safety, but Twilight’s grown very lonely for you, Lero. She’s come to believe that you secretly hate her for causing Rainbow to leave our herd, that you don’t care about HER anymore, that you won’t ever be able to truly forgive her until you’ve fixed her mistakes to your personal satisfaction.”

“That’s...!”

“In addition, the fact that you haven’t made love to her once since the day she caused the Swap,” she said, in her softest whisper, her mouth as close as could be against his ear, “Doesn’t exactly send her a positive message, either.”

Lero blanched. A very unsettling thought struck the human: could it be that part of the reason she’d come to develop such a Swapped-like obsession with finding the Cure was as a subconscious cry for love and attention from him?

“Just... BE with her,” Lyra pleaded. “Be with TWILIGHT, make HER your number one priority for now! Don’t even go to Rainbow right now... just let Spike handle her animals, until Rainbow gets her cottage rebuilt! And if the animals are too wild for Spike to handle," Lyra stood straight, as a confident warrior should. “then I’ve got it covered.”

The human hung his head. “You’re right. It would be wrong of me to grow so focused on what I’ve lost, as to neglect what I still have.”

Lyra kissed his cheek. “Don’t you worry, though. Rainbow’s not going to forget all you’ve done for her. And frankly, between all her animals, and the influence of Fluttershy’s personality... I doubt some other stallion’s going to steal her away from you anytime soon, lover-boy.”

Twilight, naturally, needed as much convincing to pull her away from her studies.

“...If I have to, I’ll read through every book in existence!” she insisted after fifteen minutes of talk, levitating her book up closer. Lero was about to say something, but Lyra spoke quicker.

“My, you are a voracious reader, Twilight!” she told the purple unicorn.

“Mmm-hmmm.” concurred Twilight, flipping a page.

Lyra turned to Lero. “Say, Fingers? Do you know what I think of when I hear the word ‘voracious?’”

“What?” he asked blankly.

“I think of food!”

“Uh... me too, I guess.” Whatever she was getting at, he hadn't a clue.

“Lero, remind me... what would happen if I were to just voraciously eat and eat and eat every single scrap of food in this house, without giving myself a chance to properly digest any of it?”

Gluttony was not at all part of Lyra’s character. Unsurely, he answered, “You’d probably vomit.”

“Yes!” Lyra perkily agreed. “I probably would vomit! And... what do you think would happen if I were to voraciously read and read and read every book on these shelves without giving myself a chance to mentally digest any of what I read? Would I be any better off?”

Grinning, finally seeing what Lyra had been leading to, he answered, “Why, I imagine not!”

They both looked to Twilight, who lowered the book from her face. “I see what you two are getting at, but any of these books could contain the answer to...!”

“Maybe you’ve already read them!” Lyra countered. “Maybe the books you're looking for are ones you’ve already read through... but you didn’t give yourself time to reflect on them! Ever think of that? I know you, Twilight: you’re probably looking for the cure to be spelled out to you, step-by-step, like a recipe in a cookbook. But what if, instead, it’s more like a mystery tale? Where you have to play detective, piecing the subtle, scattered clues together in just the right way?”

While Twilight stared at her in wonderment, the Still Way grandmaster gently shut the purple unicorn’s book with her telekinesis.

“Let’s go out to the marketplace. I want to treat you to a strawberry smoothie, and then let’s talk about what you’ve researched. Two heads are better than one, after all!”

“And three heads are better than two!” Lero added.

Twilight looked backwards to her stacks of books... looking ready to insist upon being left alone... only to let out a sigh. “You know... it’s been forever since the last time I had a strawberry smoothie,” she told them.

“Me too!” Lyra said.

* * *

Ponyville’s ice cream shop was run by a mare named named Knickerbocker Glory. Lyra and Twilight both ordered strawberry smoothies, while Lero had himself a banana one, and chose to enjoy them outside, rather than eat at one of Knickerbocker’s tables. But Twilight wouldn’t discuss her research anyplace where there were other ponies in earshot. After all, Bewitched ponies wouldn’t understand, and Ponyville was a small town, so they risked word getting back to one of the Swapped Five.

Instead, they found themselves a high and distant hill, where they could sip their smoothies in peaceful solitude while still basking in the sunlight and fresh air.

“So what sort of things were you able to find about swapping in your research?” asked Lero, with an extra-long drag on his straw. “Are there any other cases or happenings just like ours?”

Twilight gave a weary-sounding chuckle. “Cases just like ours... heh. Well, there is ONE I know of, though I haven’t been able to find a THING about it. And believed me: I’ve SEARCHED. Long and hard.”

“Do tell,” Lyra encouraged her.

Twilight looked over at Lero. “Remember that story you told us about Discord bringing you to his world of weirdness? Whenever I’m researching... there’s a certain something he said to you that always keeps gnawing at the back of my mind: 'I’m doing enough already! It’s not like the LAST ponies who’d had their marks swapped had the benefit of my bewitchment covering for them!'”

Lero nodded, remembering the sharpness in the draconequus’ voice.

“Meaning that at some point in the past, either during Starswirl’s lifetime or after his passing, five (or maybe six!) other Element Bearing ponies experienced a Mark Swap... an Identity Swap!” Twilight said. “Just like ours!”

“Who? When? What happened to them?” Lero said, listening with even more interest.

But Twilight shook her head. “THERE ARE NO RECORDS! NONE! It’s incredible... you’d think that five or six Element Bearing ponies swapping cutie marks, insisting they WERE each other, and in all likelihood, going completely mad would’ve been of interest to at least ONE historian, but no! Nothing! Our own Mark Swap might as well be the first such happening of its kind!”

“And even then, the world at large wouldn’t be able to recognize that our friends’ marks WERE swapped!” Lero noted flatly. “All the experts would tell us that Rarity and the others had ‘always had those marks, right from the beginning!’”

“Do you think Discord might’ve been lying?” Lyra asked.

The purple unicorn shook her head again. “I’ve considered that, but after all he’s done and is STILL doing to help us, my instinct says he was telling the truth on that!”

Lyra stared down thoughtfully. “So then... the records of these Swapped Element Bearers of Yore are gone. Maybe they were accidentally lost, or the parchment they were written on crumbled to dust over the centuries!”

“Or maybe somepony in power had them deliberately destroyed.” Lero suggested.

Both his mares turned to him in surprise. “Why would they do that?” asked Twilight.

“Think about what the Elements ARE!” The human said. “Loyalty, Generosity, Kindness and all the rest! They’re virtues! Like it or not, when you’re an Element Bearer, you’re not just some agent of Celestia’s... you’re meant to be the living embodiment of a virtue! Aspects of the very Harmony that unites your people! The whitest of white knights! So what happens if they’re all driven mad and go on killing sprees? Wouldn’t want THAT to become common knowledge, would you?”

The image of Celesita, with her soft smile and flowing ethereal mane floated into Lero’s head.

“You might want to write a letter to the Princess at some point, Twilight,” Lero proposed. “Ask her whether there might be a scroll or two lying about some section of her restricted archives that can tell us what happened to the last six Element Bearers. Tell her how Discord mentioned them, and you’d like to learn more.”

“I... will.” Twilight looked ruffled, sensing the accusation of her Princess underneath that politely suggestive tone of his. “And by the same token, you ought to go get in contact with Discord and ask him for details, too.”

“It’s not like I can dragon-mail Discord with Spike, and he’ll come running at my beck and call!” Lero told her. “Our Chaos God friend comes on his OWN time!”

“Fair enough.” Lyra replied. “Just try to ask him when you get a chance. In any case, Twilight, since you couldn’t find any other instances of a Mark Swap... did you find situations SIMILAR to what we’re going through?”

“Oh yes!” said Twilight. “There’s Body Swaps, for one!”

“Yeah, tell us about that!”

Body Swaps! Memories of every single long-running cartoon series he’d ever watched as a boy came back to Lero’s head. Almost inevitably, there’d always been one episode where there’d be some form of switcheroo, which was somehow always fixed by the episode’s end. On one hand, he could hardly blame them for wanting to undo their Swaps as fast as possible. On the other hand, a grudging side of Lero would’ve loved to see how those cartoon characters would’ve handled half of the stuff he’d been put through!

“Body Swaps, as opposed to the Identity Swaps brought on by our friends’ cutie mark exchange, are just what they sound like.” Twilight informed Lyra, who had never watched any cartoon’s swap-episodes of her own in her fillyhood. “Your souls exchange bodies, but your minds and sense of self remain unchanged. Effectively, it’d be no different than if I transmogrified your bodies into that of each other!”

Lyra and Lero looked at each other, picturing themselves in each other’s skin.

“Body Swap magic has a long and checkered history,” Twilight went on. “It’s been put to all sorts of uses; some good, others horrific.”

“Like what?” asked Lero, keenly.

“Well, I think one of the most benign uses of Body Swapping is as an empathy exercise. You know, ‘walk a mile in another pony’s horseshoes’ in the most literal sense possible. You’d have stubborn, squabbling foals: brothers bickering with sisters, older siblings with younger ones, and so forth. Teachers and parents would sometimes body-swap them for an hour or so, to help them see things from the other pony’s point of view.”

“How well did it work?” Lero asked.

“Well, one of the most successful cases I read about happened between two young stepsisters. The elder was deaf, the younger was not. The younger stepsister was quite bratty and bullying and COULD NOT sympathize with her deaf sister’s handicap. So her parents finally had them swap bodies, and after a week of being deaf, the younger stepsister treated the elder one much more respectfully.”

“Well that’s good!” said Lyra. “Still... I wonder how it must’ve been for the deaf sister, having to return to her deaf body after a week of being able to hear.”

Then they watched Twilight blush. “There have... also been instances where ponies used Body Swapping as a sexual kink. Stallions and mares swapping bodies to see how sex feels for the other gender. The most extreme example of this was in the case of Putty Knife and his wife, Armoire. Putty Knife wished to, er, experience the joys of pregnancy and foal-birth for himself... so the moment Armoire went into heat, they swapped bodies. For sixteen months, Putty and Armoire remained swapped, until Putty had given birth to a colt and had his fill of femininity."

“Sixteen months?” Lyra balked. “But it only takes eleven for a pony to give birth!”

“Oh, I forgot to mention: Putty asked for a little more time to experience the joys of breast feeding as well.”

Lero cringed. “Weeeeeeeeiiiirrrdd.”

“What an... UNDERSTANDING mare this Armoire girl was!” Lyra said.

Then the look in Twilight’s eyes turned more serious. “But body swapping also has darker applications. It’s practically the evildoer’s best friend! There was a serial killer who escaped arrest for a long, long while, thanks to the Body Swap. There was also this politician running for mayor a while back: she had her opponent kidnapped during an election cycle, so the opponent could be body-swapped with the politician’s loyal flunky. The body-swapped flunky nearly completely destroyed the opponent’s reputation. But the authorities figured out what had happened and the politician was jailed.”

“Whoa,” said Lyra and Lero together.

“And several truly ruthless mages have used Body Swapping as a way of cheating death.”

“What do you mean?” asked Lero.

“You know... they’d get on in years or possibly get seriously ill or injured, see Death at their doorstep, then get some young, healthy pony... or even a foal or a newborn!... and swap bodies with him or her, and let that poor sap die of old age and sickness in their place. Body swaps in general require exceptional magical skill, and using it for THAT is extraordinarily illegal. But it still happens to this day.”

“That’s just diabolical!” cried Lyra.

“Some of these guys put the whole changeling race to shame,’ Lero said.

Twilight nodded. “There was another evil unicorn named Cocklebur who used Body Swapping to prey upon wealthy ponies: accessing her victims’ bank accounts and driving them into bankruptcy to splurge on herself... the most INSIDIOUS form of identity theft imaginable! And then there’ve been instances where married ponies have come home, found their spouse in a passionate, lovemaking mood... only it’s not REALLY their spouse, not INSIDE!”

“Does this spell still exist today?” Lero asked, in a hushed tone.

“It does. I’m perfectly capable of casting it myself, in fact!” Then Twilight smiled at her human herdmate. “You know, Lero... I’ve always wondered what it feels like... being human. Having hands, walking around on two legs. It’d made for a great research paper! Wanna trade?”

Lero felt as if his brain had dropped out of his nose.

“Ha ha ha ha ha!!! Oh, Lero, just look at yourself!!” Twilight giggled. “You should make that expression more often!”

After another second of stupor... seeing she’d just been teasing, he put on a clownish expression of contemplation. “I don’t know... the idea of being Equestria’s most powerful unicorn DOES have its appeal...”

They laughed some more.

“Anyway, besides body swapping, there’s also the matter of possession by ghosts and demonic entities...”

And so it went.

Lyra’s plan was to minimize the amount of time Twilight Sparkle spent reading books each day. Not deny her them entirely, (for of course, the Cure COULD’VE been spelled out in the very next book, as Twilight was always insisting!) But as she put it to Lero, “My aim is to get her to cut back on reading and push forward on THINKING.”

To this end, Lyra kept an eye on Twilight. As soon as she’d seen Twilight reach a book’s last page, she’d pull her to the side of the room and get her to discuss everything she read. She’d ask Twilight questions about what she’d learned, offer her thoughts and opinions, and Lero would be right there with Lyra doing the same, though his lack of magical understanding restricted him to philosophical underpinnings and his perspective on historical events, or a sounding board to explain basic magical points to to allow reflection on them.

The three of them would also go out to Lyra’s special meditation place... the one where she and Lero had made love to each other, (and in fact the place where the three of them had first made love together as a trio.) They used the seclusion to perform special Still Way meditative techniques that Lyra taught them to help clear Twilight’s mind, and then talk with each other some more, about things that were and were not related to the Swap.

Lyra also saw fit to put Twilight on an exercise regimen; mostly jogging and simple warm-up exercises. When Twilight protested the relevance of this, Lyra explained, “Balanced mind, balanced body, balanced heart... best possible outcome!”

Lero was there for all of it, though when the mares performed ‘horn exercises,’ he sat that out for obvious reasons, jokes aside. On the fourth day of Twilight having accepted this regimen, she, Lyra, and Lero made love to each other.

Bit by bit, Twilight’s mood and attitude was begging to improve.

* * *

Lero also set aside time to check up on Rarity, restricting himself to just an hour or so each day, for Twilight’s sake. He always knew where she’d be each workday, since she begun posting her weather schedule straight on the refrigerator door with a magnet. He’d borrow Twilight’s pair of binoculars, (for Rarity was often high up on one of her clouds) and one of the umbrellas and race off to wherever work had called her to.

From the ground, he would watch her in the sky with Flitter and Cloudchaser, and the other members of her team. Sometimes making clouds, sometimes clearing clouds, or ushering in winds or stopping them in their tracks. Rarity would spare him just a quick, fleeting glance... like the eyes of an onstage actress, spotting her boyfriend in the auditorium... before returning to her play. Except for one time.

Lero had happened to come and watch at a time where they were having their lunch break, and Rarity swooped down and insisted on splitting half her lunch with him.

“So what’s new in your world?” He had asked her, after finishing off the yogurt.

“Well, I just had a chat with Valley Breeze, my boss,” she told him. “She let me know that all my infractions had been piling up. All it would take is one more mistake and she’d be glad to hand me my walking papers.”

“Funny,” he said. “You sound so... unbothered about it.”

“I am,” she said. “Because she won’t be able to fire me. I’m just not going to give her the slightest excuse to.” Then she looked at his lips. “Oh, you got a spot of yogurt on the side of your mouth, my love. Let me get that for you.”

And she ran her tongue along his lips, just as Flitter announced that the break was over.

“Mmm, better!” she said, hopping back on her cloud. Lero had touched his lips, feeling Rarity's thin saliva on them, and felt his cheeks heat.

Even without Lero keeping an eye on her, there were no further incidents of irrepressible inspiration, no more angry neighbors knocking on Golden Oaks’ door to yell at Rarity. Clouds only came when the weather schedule said there would be clouds. Snow wasn’t due until after autumn wrap-up. But this didn’t mean that Rarity’s weather-art was at an end.

She’d taken to venturing out to the Everfree Forest to experiment with her wilder flights of meteorological fancy, or even made them around her home when she craved an audience, (though these were strictly contained within her own property lines, never crossing an inch into the neighbors‘ territory.) There was one day, for example, Lero had come home to find icicles dangling from every branch of the tree: each one shaped rather like the swirling spiral of Rarity’s own tail. And he just laughed and entered his house.

And as far as the neighbors were concerned, if some of the rain clouds she made happened to have a lavish curlicue border, or the odd streaks of aquamarine... well, what of that? Even more, though, on occasion, after thoroughly testing it beforehand, she would place one of her works of art in the sky, always in accordance with the weather schedule, and always in a way that wouldn’t disrupt ponies' lives: her art on display for all to see and enjoy, as she’d always intended, without disaster and inconvenience.

But any discussion of how Rarity’s life was improving could not be complete without mention of Scootaloo.

* * *

Twilight and Lero had Lyra approach Scootaloo and drum up a conversation with the young filly, in much the same way they’d had Spike approach Rarity. They were all curious to know what Scootaloo’s relationship with the unicorn weathermare had ‘used’ to be like.

According to Scootaloo’s story, their past relationship had been next to nothing. She’d known of Rarity, of course. Since both her fellow Crusaders were sisters of Element Bearers, Scootaloo had encountered Rarity on occasion and shared words. Emotionally, though, they’d been about as close as Scootaloo had been to pre-Swap Pinkie Pie.

Hero worship seemed to be a key element of Scootaloo’s nature; to have some older mare she could admire and emulate. But she’d been picky about who she idolized; preferring other pegasi over all other races. She’d been a Wonderbolts fan... particularly of a girl named Lightning Dust. Lyra had described Lightning Dust as ‘a very disreputable-sounding but talented up-and-comer.’

Twilight's eyes lit up at Lightning Dust's name. She reminded Lyra and Lero who Lightning Dust had been: a former Wonderbolts cadet who'd been partnered with Rainbow Dash, back when the Wonderbolts had still mattered to Dash. A completely egocentric glory hound with no real sense of teamwork; Lightning Dust had created a tornado one day, just to set herself above the other cadets. If Dash hadn't taken fast action, this tornado would've killed Twilight and Dash's four other friends... and Lightning Dust hadn't even given a damn.

"Hang on!" said Lero. "I think I remember Dash telling me about her, during a break in her cadet training! Didn't Dash go up to Spitfire and speak out against this Lightning Dust girl?"

"Dash didn't just 'speak out!'" Twilight reminded him. "She flat out quit the Wonderbolts! But Spitfire reinstated her right away, after kicking Lightning Dust out of the Academy for reckless endangerment!"

"So then... why would Lighting Dust be BACK in the Wonderbolts?" asked Lero. "It doesn't make sense!"

"Actually, it makes PERFECT sense! Think about the way Starswirl's Swap and Discord's Bewitchment operate!" Lyra argued. "How they 'correct' the past! Since 'Animal Caretaker Rainbow' had 'never been all that interested in the Wonderbolts,' she never would've joined as a cadet, right? Because she didn't join as a cadet, Twilight and her other friends would never have gone to visit her at the Academy, and nearly get killed by Lightning Dust's tornado in the process! So logically, in a world where Rainbow Dash had never entered the picture, Lightning Dust would still be a Wonderbolt cadet!"

"But surely a ruthless girl like Lightning Dust would've eventually done something just as bad as that tornado!" Lero contented. "Don't tell me no other classmate would've spoken out against her behavior!"

Twilight gave a shrug and said, "Apparently not."

Both unicorns frowned slightly as their human stallion murmured something that sounded like it's a wonderful life, but when asked, he quickly bade Lyra to resume her story about Scootaloo. The aqua unicorn went on to detail how several events seemed to have not occurred at all for the filly with her new bewitched memories... not even with Rarity subbing in for Rainbow.

For example, the Rainbow Dash fan club that Scootaloo had been president of had contributed greatly to fueling Dash’s ego, leading to ‘The Mare-Do-Well incident’ which Dash had never liked talking about. The name ‘Mare-Do-Well’ meant nothing to Scootaloo now. Or anyone else not on the exemption list for that matter.

More importantly, there had been a fateful camping trip between Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack back in the pre-Swap days, which had ended in Scootaloo becoming an honorary little sister of Rainbow Dash’s.

Scootaloo remembered there being a camping trip between Pinkie Pie, Applejack, and Rarity... but had decided it wasn’t worth coming along with her fellow Crusaders.

But the glufferflork had changed everything. Seeing what Rarity did to the acid beast had impressed the pegasus filly so profoundly, she’d adopted her as her new idol. And now, Scootaloo seemed determined to make up for ‘lost time’... all her hero worship for the Element of Loyalty she’d been ‘missing out on.‘

Scootaloo was ALWAYS coming over to Golden Oaks Library, every other day, to be taught by Rarity. She always greeted Rarity whenever she passed by her in town, or waved and called out to her, when the unicorn was up on a cloud. A few times, the pegasus filly had come to Lero to ask questions about Rarity, or sometimes even questions about himself and Rarity as a couple, (though she never pressed for the truly intimate details, thank heavens!) Word on the street was that Scootaloo was asking lots of ponies questions about Rarity: she seemed to want to know as much about her as possible!

For Rarity’s part, after all the shame and disgrace she’d curried with her neighbors... a girl like Scootaloo was like sweet music after weeks of listening to nothing but screams and shouts. She adored the little filly just as much as Scootaloo adored her. Certainly it didn’t hurt that both the ‘Rarity’ and ‘Rainbow Dash’ parts of the swapped unicorn’s soul had always craved a fandom.

* * *

Lero had promised Lyra not to go see Rainbow Dash for Twilight’s sake, and he meant to be good as his word. But one day, when he was feeling especially nervous and lonely to see his rainbow-maned love again, he went over to the cottage, to see how the rebuilding was going.

The construction crew was doing a phenomenal job. The debris from Dash’s old house had already been cleared away; Lero had to suppose that whatever old possessions they’d managed to salvage had already been collected by Rainbow Dash.

The Plywood & Winesap team was primarily made up of unicorns and pegasi, and they worked with the industrious single-mindedness of worker ants gifted with wings and magic-casting abilities, both of which really sped the process up immensely. However, it was worth noting that there were several burly Earth ponies moving heavy loads or supporting structures while they were fastened into place.

Lero also got a chance to speak with both Plywood and Winesap, themselves. Winesap was yet another distant cousin of the Apple family: a unicorn mare. Plywood was her husband; another unicorn. Being that Lero was essentially a worldwide celebrity in his own right, they’d already heard of him, and asked him all the usual questions about what being human was like, how well he got around being so oddly shaped, whether it was true that he ate meat, did he ever plan to go back to the human world, and so on. He answered them all with patient, practiced good humor. In turn, he asked them a few questions of his own.

“So from what I’m seeing,” Lero said, turning to the half-finished cottage, “It looks like this new house is going to be a perfect replica of the old one, right?”

“Yes, that’s right!” said Winesap, who didn’t have the Southern accent of any of her local Ponyville cousins. “Right down to the chicken coops and the birdhouses. We offered other options to Miss Dash, but she was adamant on us reconstructing her old home, as it was before that awful monster knocked it down. We did insist on reinforcing it and updating the plumbing and insulation, though.”

“Horrible how you can still smell that thing’s stink all over the ground, isn’t it?” asked Plywood.

“How is she doing these days?” he asked them, uninterested in the stink. “Miss Dash, I mean. Like... on a scale of 1 to 10, with 1 being unhappy and... worse for wear, and 10 being great, would you say she looks okay? How would you describe her?”

Plywood and Winesap shared a grin with each other that reminded Lero of Cloudchaser.

“Just like she said he’d be...” Winesap said, nudging her husband.

“What?” said Lero.

“Yeah, I’d say Miss Dash looks okay,” Winesap told Lero. “Very strong-willed, outgoing lady, but in a GOOD way! It’s clear to me she loves being with other ponies.”

“Yeah!” said Plywood. “Straight ten, no question!”

Strong-willed? Outgoing? Loved being with other ponies?

“Uh... what kind of cutie mark did she have on her?” he asked the two.

“Three pink butterflies,” Plywood told him with a frown.

Dang! It’d almost sounded like she’d gotten her old cutie mark back! Still, though... how was it possible for her to act that way with her Butterfly Mark still on?

“She... spoke an AWFUL lot about you, Mr. Lero,” spoke Plywood. “All you did for her.”

“She just... couldn’t seem to get her mind off you!”

Again, they were grinning salaciously and suggestively at him, the smiles of ninth-grade gossipmongers with a really juicy scoop.

“Really?” he said, uncomfortably. “Wow, cool, gosh, I got errands to run, and you’ve a house to build, so bye!”

But before he actually left the construction site, there was one more thing that stopped him. A familiar face in the crowd of workers.

“Mac!” he called, waving his hand. “Big Macintosh! Hi!” Lero had never seen his large red stallion friend without his yoke. He’d traded it in for a construction helmet. The stallion turned around, on four legs that were strong, muscular, and had fur that was just beginning to come back in.

“Glad to see the surgery went well!” Lero told him.

“Eeeeyup,” said Mac, breaking away from the other workers for a bit.

“What’re you doing here?” asked the human.

“Fixin’ what the flork broke.” Lero would’ve thumped his friend on his back, but Mac didn’t come all the way over to him, looking back towards the new house he was helping to build. “Can’t talk. Work ta do.”

“I’ll come by Sweet Apple Acres later, and we can talk some more!”

“Eeeyup!”

* * *

Finally, there was Spike. Since the day after the glufferflork’s attack, Spike’s routine was thus:

At around 7 a.m., Spike would be roused from bed. By 7:45, he’d eaten breakfast, groomed himself, and was out the door, heading towards the barn on Sweet Apple Acres which Dash was staying at. Sometimes, he’d walk there on foot. Other times, Rarity offered to bring him to the barn herself, letting him ride with her on her cloud platform. He always preferred the latter option.

By 7 p.m., Spike would be back at Golden Oaks Library, and Lero would ask how things were going at that barn.

“Oh, fine!” the little dragon would tell him. “I mean, y’know, the animals were all mean and everything, but soon as I stepped in, I was able to get things calmed down right away!”

How bad were they hurting Rainbow Dash?

“They weren’t hurting her at all!” the dragon said. “I mean, yeah, they growled at her a lot, but I was able to get them to quiet down, and Rainbow Dash was able to take things easy!”

What sort of nastiness was Angel Bunny getting up to?

“Angel Bunny’s kind of been... toning it all down,” Spike assured him. “Just being a brat, nothing THAT big. Not really worth talking about.”

How did the day go?

“Y’know, feed the critters, clean up after their messes, the usual stuff, they were pretty well-behaved, because I was there! Going into details would just bore you to death, Lero.”

How was Dash doing as far as food went? Did she need more? Was the barn holding up well against all those animals? Did Pinkie Pie and the Apple Family ever come by to help?

“Look,” the dragon snapped, impatiently. “If there was anything worth mentioning about what’s happening at that stupid barn, believe me, I’d mention it! The animals are still shaken up after nearly being eaten by that flork-thing, so they haven’t been all that active! Ever hear of post-traumatic stress? It’s just hours and hours of dull, boring animal chores!”

And there wasn’t much more information Spike would tell him beyond that. And there was very little variation in the young dragon’s story, day after day.

“Say, Lero?” Spike said at one point. It was the fifth night since the glufferflork’s attack, and an hour after Lero had tried asking him questions about how things had gone at the barn. “Have you ever heard of a comic book series called Gnarly Gnarls? It’s this really cool story about a super-wacky superhero named Quagga Quigg Quogg who’s been sent to the past to deal with a necromancer, but it turns out the so-called necromancer is a just a friendly robot powered by orange marmalade. The real enemy is a pet store owner who sells dangerous pets from other dimensions, so shortly after Quagga befriends a race of mutant ostriches in the middle of a coliseum...”

“Spike?” the human interrupted. “How much time do you think I devote to reading comics?”

“Oh,” the dragon said. “Point taken.”

On the sixth night after the glufferflork’s attack, Spike uncomfortably handed Lero a piece of paper, saying, “Rainbow Dash asked me to give you this.”

Dear Lero,

My old cottage is completely repaired now, and I’ve just moved back in with all my animals. Spike’s been a huge help to me at the barn. He’s told me about how you’ve been helping Twilight through her own big problems. He’s passed along all your messages about how you’re sorry for not being here yourself, but I understand you have a life of your own. I’m surprised you managed to spend as much time with me as you did!

I know how worried you always are about me and my animals, and I’d love it if you could you come by tomorrow at noon. Will you be able to? Please, please, please let me know, soon as you can!

Big Thanks,

Rainbow Dash

Lero set Rainbow Dash’s letter to the side. “Spike, take a message!” he said, and had to wait for the dragon to fetch quill, ink, and paper.

Dear Rainbow Dash,

Of course I’ll come! If the animals are getting extra-vicious again, just remember the emergency plans we came up with. Don’t let them hurt you. Don’t let them prevent you from sleeping. If it’s something REALLY bad, just do what you did with the flork, and fly over here to the library or to the Apple Family. Always remember that we’ve all got your back.

Yours Truly,

Lero

Lero slept very poorly that night. Worries about what could possibly be happening to Rainbow Dash kept waking him up, six different times in the middle of the night, and he kept forcing himself to return to sleep. After all, he himself had said, ‘Don’t let them prevent you from sleeping,’ and he wasn’t going to be a hypocrite.

* * *

The next morning was the thirty-first day since Twilight Sparkle had cast Starswirl’s unfinished spell. Lero Michealides was once again at the Carousel Boutique. Some of Applejack’s newer creations out on display included skirts made out of the same streamer material that pompoms were, vinyl pants which were half opaque jean-things for the left legs, and completely see-through leggings on the right, and an thick overcoat which looked to have been sewn together from countless magazine advertisements. Yet for the most part, it was still the same merchandise that had remained unsold for the past month, ever since the Boutique had come under new ownership.

“So,” said Applejack, with a weary ghost of a smile, “Back again, are ya?” The former farmer looked so tired. So beaten.

“Yep,” said Lero. “Back again, I am. Gotta go visit my good friend Rainbow Dash, and I want to dress my best. She just moved back into her house.”

“Ah. Good fer Dash,” said Applejack. “Ah’d’ve liked ta seen her... but ya know, mah muse is a tough fellah ta hush up.”

Talking to Applejack was like talking to a girl who’d been bedridden for weeks, and wouldn’t be leaving the house anytime soon. Lero made a mental note to have Rarity pay a visit to Applejack and have her chat about her own artistic inspiration. It might be an much-needed eye-opener for AJ.

“This way,” Applejack said, leading him into the back of her store. “This’ll be the last thang on that list yew gave me, d’ya know that?”

“List?” he asked.

“From jest before yew flew off ta Bramblewood,” Applejack reminded her. “Ah’ll never fergit how flaunty Rarity was of them butterfly wings Twilight conjured up fer her.”

As if from another lifetime, Lero remembered handing a piece of paper to Rarity, back when she HADN’T been a member of Herd Bellerophon, telling the unicorn fashionista: 'All my clothes at home are starting to get pretty patchy... I made this list.'

Applejack brought him to the door that led into the humannequin room, but she hesitated in front of it, looking conflicted, and only able to bring herself to nose it open after a huff of deep resignation. The humannequin stood with arms positioned so that it looked like it was pressing against a storefront window. Or as though it wasn’t sure what to do with the weird appendages jutting out of its shoulder. But the clothes that it wore...

...There was just so much to take in. Yellow pants with black pinstripes, held up with red question mark suspenders against a white shirt with more question marks on the collar, and red gingham trim on the barrel cuffs. A massive silk handkerchief hung from the white shirt’s collar in lieu of a necktie; white polka dots on a red background. Over the top of this shirt; a red and white checker-plaid vest, which had watch chains in the pockets.

[But most striking of all was the extremely multicolored patchwork overcoat, like an explosion in a rainbow factory. Red tartan, purple felt, green felt, red felt, pink felt, peach wool, a checked collar and yellow over-dyed cuffs. The overcoat sported extra-long lapels — one yellow, one pink. An enamel cat brooch was pinned to the pink lapel.

Chunky green braids had been woven along the edges of the side pockets, and an appliqué strip ran down the center of the coat’s back. The inside lining of the coat was some heavily woven material, styled in some manner of fire-patterned motif. Finally, for footwear: green leather lace-up ankle boots, covered in bright red spats, with black buttons down the outer side.](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tu2061ieHSc)

Shockingly, Lero did NOT react by running away screaming, sane as this would be. He circled around the humannequin, examining the patchwork creation in detail. Its ugliness didn’t even matter to him... he had seen this outfit before!

Somewhere!

Carrot juice, carrot juice...

He should know this! He should! Where had he seen this? Where?

I am the Doctor, whether you like it or not.

Doctor Who. Though he wasn’t British, Lero had watched that show since he was a child. He’d even gone so far as to watch the older black-and-white ones! Well, the ones that hadn’t been lost due to the practice of re-using tapes that studios had in that time. When he eventually died of old age here in Equestria, it’d be a shock if they WEREN’T still airing new episodes back on Earth! (What number Doctor would they be up to by then?)

“Applejack?” Lero asked, breathlessly. “I have a question, and you need to be absolutely honest with me: does the word ‘TARDIS‘ mean to you?”

The fashionista had been flinching in the corner of the room, as if expecting to be slapped for what she had done. However, realizing that his question had nothing to do with the outfit, uncertain confusion crossed her face. “Uh, is that sum kinda lip gloss?”

Her incomprehension was too genuine to be anything else.

“Not even close,” said Lero, pressing his hand against the outfit’s vest, feeling the teddy bear heads for buttons... the REALITY of them! “What... inspired this? Tell me! Please!”

“Ah dunno!” AJ sounded unprepared for the lack of revulsion and loathing in Lero’s voice.

He came right up to her. “Think, Applejack! Was it a dream? Try and remember! Was there a big rectangular box in this dream... like an outhouse, but painted blue? Was there a human man, kind of like me, but with no beard or mustache and curly, yellow-colored hair?”

Her head shook in complete bafflement. “Ah ain’t seen no box or man or nothin’! Ah was just stitchin’ fabric together at random, like mah muse wanted me to!”

Incredible.... Unbelievable! “Hang on! I got to try this on!” Lero couldn’t undress the humannequin fast enough. He all but leapt into the changing room. IT FIT!

YES!!!

He stepped out from the changing room like the winner of an Olympic gold medal, and rushed over to a mirror, putting on his finest Colin Baker sneer. “Oh, it's all right for you!” He quoted the show. “You're young, strong, fit of limb! You're confident in your mission, your energy's boundless, you're highly motivated to success. You even have a gun to enforce your will upon others! But look at me! My mind's in a turmoil. I no longer know if I'm coming, have gone or have even been. I'm falling to pieces. I no longer even have any clothes sense!”

“Uh... is this some sorta human thang?” asked Applejack, who he could see behind him in the mirror.

“Yes!” he cried, arms flung upward. “Yes, it IS a human thing! As wonderfully, brilliantly, uniquely human a thing as jeeps, footlong hot dogs, and websites!”

Applejack scratched under her hat with the tip of a hoof. “Ah don’t get it.”

Lero felt like his face could freeze forever in this smile. “Then let me explain what a glorious, amazing triumph you’ve accomplished today, Applejack! Somehow... someway... without meaning to, without even knowing what you were doing... you recreated the clothes worn by a legendary hero of a timeless human myth. A hero named the Sixth Doctor!”

“And... this Sixth Doctor guy... he did his heroing... in THAT getup?”

“He saved ENTIRE GALAXIES in this getup!” Lero told her. “But beyond even me being a hopeless fanboy... Applejack, you’ve given me something I would have never thought possible from anyone who wasn’t Discord. You’ve given me a small piece of my old home back to me. Of all things, it’s the Sixth Doctor’s costume from Doctor Who... but a piece of Earth nonetheless!”

“Yer not pulling my leg, are ya?” she asked.

Lero stepped up to the palomino mare. “How much are you asking for this?”

“100... bits?” She sounded more than willing to reduce her price.

He drew out his wallet and let 200 bits drop on the table in front of the gobsmacked mare. Hurriedly, she took off her hat, scooped the money into it, and ran after Lero, who was already heading towards the door.

“Wait right there!” she said, thrusting her hat out at the human’s hand. “Yew paid me WAY too much!”

Lero turned around. “Keep it. I insist! Half for you, half for...” he smirked wryly at the mare’s Diamond Mark. “...That muse of yours. Tell her Lero says ‘hi.’”

She set her hat down on the seat of a couch. “Why are yew doing this?” she asked.

“Because no one else could have given me a gift like this,” he said, with a proud tug on his mismatched lapels. “No one else but you, Applejack.” And he hugged her thankfully. “Never forget that you are a truly brilliant fashionista. You have a customer for life!”

When he left her store, Applejack watched the human through her window, who sauntered down the street like it was made of gold, and so was the suit he had on. A mare on the street doubled up in laughter, and he gave her the double thumbs-up. Derpy Hooves’ husband stopped dead in his tracks, staring in utter disbelief, and Lero saluted him with a giddy grin, which after a few seconds he returned.

“Ah... Ah made someone HAPPY,” Applejack breathed out. “An outfit AH made... made someone honest-ta-goodness... HAPPY.”

How long had it been since she’d cried out of joy?

The bell by her door rung as... A SECOND CUSTOMER stepped in, before she could ever dry her eyes. A unicorn stallion... but one of the oddest-looking ones she’d seen in a dog’s age! His eyes were all yellow, his face was more goat-like than equine, even his horn had a goatish look to him! His cutie mark showed about a dozen arrows, all going in different maze-like directions. He wore a T-shirt that read: WHAT WOULD STARSWIRL DO?”

“Do I have the pleasure of addressing Applejack? The cutting-edge fashion pioneer?”

“That’d be mah name, mister,” she told him.

“Delighted to meet you!” He tipped his hat... wait, had he been wearing a hat? “Let me introduce myself; my name is Zany Antics, and a good friend of mine spoke glowingly of the clothes you sell!”

Zany Antics looked around the store, grinning at everything he saw. “Good thing I didn’t leave my wallet at home, eh?”

* * *

“Lero! Lero!” The human stopped at the huffing and puffing of a little dragon running to catch up with him. “Le...”

Spike saw what he was wearing.

“Oh sweet mother-of-pearl,” he gagged. “Applejack’s outdone herself.”

“Yes, she has!” the human nodded.

“Your clothes look like someone ate every flavor of ice cream in existence and then threw up each one over a different part of your body.”

“I know!” He beamed happily. "It's the height of sartorial elegance!"

"What the heck does 'sartorial' mean?"

"I don't know! I'm just quoting Colin Baker!"

“Well, I can’t wait to see Dash’s animals tear THIS one up when we get there!” Spike said, trotting in the direction of the cottage.

The human’s face fell. “WAIT! I didn’t think this through...!”

* * *

Spike stood off to the side as Lero knocked on the cottage door. To their surprise, the door was opened, not by Rainbow Dash, but by the capuchin riding on the back of the St. Bernard. The St. Bernard AND the capuchin bent into a bow. The way the capuchin held his arm crooked put Lero especially in mind of a butler.

They stepped inside, equally surprised to find the house was immaculate, as was every possession and piece of furniture. Practically all of the animals were lined up in a double row, on either side of Lero and Spike. Every creature was perfectly groomed, and smelled of sweetly fragrant shampoo. The reptiles' scales were flawless, not a hanging scale, almost looking as if polished to a mirror shine. The dogs didn’t pant, the cats didn’t lick themselves, the birds didn’t tweet. No animal made a sound, they just sat on their haunches in their rows, stiff as soldiers in a line.

Spike and Lero felt obliged to follow the path they made to the foot of the stairway leading to the cottage’s upper floor.

“Uh... Dash?” he called upstairs, a bit unsettled by this unusual behavior by the animals.

They heard hooves descending the stairs at a slow and measured pace. A flock of the smaller birds trilled out a well-harmonized, regal overture.

Down the steps came Rainbow Dash. She held herself like royalty, with her chin aloft, dressed in a regal train of silken spring green, perfectly accented along the hem with fresh flowers that highlighted the colors of her finely brushed coat and mane. While it covered her beautiful, colorful tail, it give the effect a longer, sweeping tail that drew the eye to the soft curves of her hips. At her neck and ear she wore pendants of blue-green butterflies, their presence an even softer accent to her lovely feminine form.

Like the cat that ate the canary, she smiled as every animal bowed their heads when she reached the bottom of the stairs.

“Dearest friends,” Rainbow Dash greeted her guests, “I bid you welcome.” She spoke with such an august and stately air, Lero couldn’t quite tell whether she were being serious or self-satirizing. Maybe a little of both. In all ways, Lero felt like he was being received by the friendly queen of some foreign nation.

“I’m... honored to be here!” he found himself saying. “Dash... look at you!” he said, “You’re... you look...”

“Yes?” she encouraged with a smile.

Lero remembered the way his own father had reacted to his mother, whenever she pulled out every stop to glam herself up. He was feeling that himself, right now. Girls were so unbelievably enticing when they made themselves fancy... and on those rare and special occasions when Rainbow Dash bothered to go all out, styling her hair, applying perfume, wearing a dress this magnificent...

...it had always left him feeling not just thrilled and excited, but grateful. Grateful to be her guy. Grateful she was his girl. Even dressed as elegantly as this, Rainbow Dash’s beauty was nothing like Rarity’s. Nothing like Fluttershy’s, either. It was a thing fiercely strong and uniquely her own: it challenged you to NOT like her.

“Glorious,” he told her. “And gorgeous! Gloriously gorgeous!”

“Aw, thanks, big guy. And you look...” She looked up and down his clownish Sixth Doctor getup, and giggled. “...Colorful.”

Then she flew up to him and gave Lero’s whole upper body the tightest, happiest squeeze he’d gotten from her since the Swap. He hugged her back and they laughed against each other. Out of the corner of his eye, Lero saw Spike smile and give him a proud thumbs-up.

“I guess we’re NOT going to be feeding the animals, or anything like that, then, huh?” Spike said.

“Feed the animals?” It almost seemed as though Rainbow Dash had been waiting for someone to say these words. “Why... we COULD do that, but why not have the animals feed themselves?”

It was then that Rainbow Dash brought attention to something new hanging around her neck: a red-colored whistle worn on a necklace, like the type coaches used. By thrusting her chest forward, she was able to bounce her whistle off her front, and catch it in her teeth. She blew four sharp staccato notes: TWEET! TWEET! TWEET! TWEET!

The animals didn’t waste time. Several of the larger dogs, including the Jack Russell terrier, the pharaoh hound, and the Newfoundland raced down the cellar stairs, while the smaller animals went and collected their food bowls; either carrying them into this room in their mouths, or else shoving it over with their heads, (sometimes in pairs or more, in the case of many of the smaller, weaker critters.)

The dogs returned upstairs with kibble bags on small toy wagons or winter sleds, pulling them over with their mouths. Others, such as the cats, returned up the cellar stairs balancing cans of canned pet food perfectly on their heads. The falcon and eagle helped bring the birdcages down to ground level, to be filled with birdseed. The capuchin was invaluable help in using the can opener to open the cans.

All the animals lay their bowls down in a single long even row. With little metal scoops, the akita and the pit bulls distributed perfectly-portioned servings of pet food to each individual animal, all of whom waited patiently until each last animal had food in front of them, and Rainbow Dash said, “You may eat.” No animal wolfed down its meal, or refused to eat, and made as little noise as possible while chewing.

Rainbow Dash grinned prouder at Spike and Lero’s dumbstruck gapes.

“...how did...?” Lero stammered.

“When did you...?!” Spike tried to say.

“Oh, it’s just a little something we in the animal care biz like to call ‘obedience training,’” the pegasus boasted, planting another kiss on Lero’s cheek as she shut his hanging jaw with a hoof. “But... while we’re on the subject of animals and food... I’m feeling kind of hungry, aren’t you? Have you two had lunch yet?”

“Well we...”

“Good!” said Dash, leading to them to her table. “Please, have a seat!”

It would prove to be one of the most amazing meals Lero had ever sat down for. Not so much for the food, itself, (delicious enough, but nothing exceptional,) but because of who was acting as their waiters and waitresses.

First came the place settings. Orioles and grosbeaks flew cloth napkins upon their laps. Owls dropped forks, spoons, and knives on their tabletop.

This might very well be the most unhygienic meal I’ve eaten. Lero thought to himself, but decided not to share that sentiment as geese lay down the dishes, while the nanny goat deposited cups in front of them, and filled them awkwardly with water from a pitcher.

Lero was no Howard Hughes, but he was a man who could appreciate cleanliness. When he had first come to Equestria, he’d sometimes had moments of reluctance, even squeamishness, when accepting objects from the mouths and hooves of Earth ponies and pegasi, (especially when those hooves had just been in the mud, seconds ago.) And at this point, Lero was all too familiar with where cats and dogs liked to lick themselves most.

Then again, it was simply too fascinating to watch the cottage critters at it... especially after all they’d put him through! The dogs formed a ramp: the largest one standing right against the table side, the slightly smaller ones standing behind them, so that a couple of opossums could bring the huge salad bowl up to their table, and serve them with salad tongs. If he got sick, so be it. When else was he going to be able to say that a chinchilla had ground pepper over his tossed salad?

He felt as though he’d been plopped straight in the middle of Walt Disney’s Snow White And The Seven Dwarves. Except that all Snow White’s helpful animal friends had been whistling while they worked, whereas Rainbow Dash’s pets kept shooting fretful glances at their mistress while they obeyed her commands. As though she could, (and would!) will their heads to explode with her psychic superpowers at the slightest misstep.

In the back of his head, Lero was doing math. He remembered the day the Swap had originally forced Rainbow Dash to leave her old life to take up animal care. Five days had passed between that point in time, and the night of his welcome home party. Five days for all Fluttershy’s animals to go from relatively well-behaved creatures to pitiless, mutinous beasts. And a week had passed between the attack of the glufferflork and this moment in time. Just one week; where they were bowing and scraping before her.

But when he and Spike got to talking, Rainbow Dash was slyly, playfully elusive, deflecting every question about how she had managed this miracle, simply crediting Iron Will for giving her the motivation she needed. So instead, the conversation turned to more mundane things.

Dash and Lero joked and laughed about animal caretaker mishaps that’d happened to them in the past; a number of stories were stuff Spike was hearing for the very first time. Lero talked about Lyra and Twilight, and how the Still Way grandmaster was teaching them new meditative techniques.

The dragon and human recoiled in alarm as a flock of bats served them bowls of buttered linguini, but once they had left, Dash teased Spike about his ‘crush on Applejack,’ asking whether they’d had their first date together yet. In turn, Spike asked whether Dash was still serious about wanting to marry him, and they all laughed. Dash also talked about what a warm, friendly place Sweet Apple Acres had been to her, and how great the cider was... she might’ve drunken a bit too much on her second night there!

“And now it’s time for dessert!” Dash announced, with an extra-wide smile, after the iguanas cleared their dirty plates. Their dessert arrived slowly, allowing him to get a good long look at who was bringing it.

No matter how much time had passed, Lero would never forget the desperate state Rainbow Dash had been reduced to, on the day he’d quit working at the spa to help her. Seeing Angel Bunny now brought it all back. Because things had come full circle for the horrid white rabbit.

Angel staggered under the weight of a triple-layer carrot cake: ten inches in diameter and very poorly and sloppily baked. He had to be assisted by what Lero recognized to be several of his closest rabbit relatives. Other rabbits brought dishes and a cutting knife. The dogs growled angrily the moment they felt Angel’s feet upon their backs. It was incredible that the cake did not slide off its plate as the rabbits hopped their way up slowly, toting the great dessert, finally setting it down in the center of the table.

Icing and raw cake batter spotted Angel’s fur. Bruises and bite marks scored his body. Several were fresh, and others were huge indeed; as though he’d scrambled out from the jaws of a few of the dogs large enough to swallow him whole.

“What do you think?” Dash asked her guests. “Angel Bunny baked it himself! For a while, he kept trying to eat the ingredients, but I broke him of that habit, DIDN’T I, ANGEL???”

Dash’s smile was the very picture of gentleness. The bunny trembled before it as though dangling over a shark pool.

“Now, I think that the first slice ought to go to Spike, don’t you?” she sweetly suggested. “As repayment for the carrot cake he made you that one time. Remember that carrot cake, Angel? I do!”

Rainbow Dash motioned towards the cake knife lying on the side. With difficulty, Angel took the knife in his clumsy rabbit paws and brought it down twice onto the cake, cutting a lopsided slice, which he put on a plate and nudged it towards Spike.

“Please tell us how it tastes, Spike!” Rainbow Dash encouraged.

The little dragon took a forkful and brought it to his mouth. “It... tastes WAY better than it looks!” he said.

The bunny looked ridiculously grateful, as though he’d just received a death row pardon. He turned to see if he had pleased Rainbow Dash; her face was as unmoved as granite. She shooed the rabbits off the table, and cut the next slices for herself and Lero. He’d tasted a lot better cakes, but still couldn’t believe that Angel Bunny had made it! Before he had eaten halfway through his slice, Rainbow Dash spoke up again.

“Do you know what I find goes well with dessert like this?”

“A glass of port?” Lero guessed.

Dash laughed at that, but shook her head and said, “Music!”

Again, she bumped her whistle back up to her mouth and blew on it: TWEET! TWEEEEET-TWEEEET TWEET!

All of the cottage critters assembled in front of their table, as though posing for a group photograph, with the largest animals bunched in the back, the smaller ones further front, Angel Bunny in the center, and Jabbers perched on the flamingo’s head.

“A-one,” started Dash, “A-two! A-one-two-three-FOUR!”

Lero and Spike couldn’t believe their ears. The cottage critters suddenly became what could only be described as an animal a cappella choir. This time, when they meowed, barked, squealed, hissed, and clucked, they weren’t just filling the cottage with needy noise. They were united, unmistakably, in music. Melody, harmony, polyphony... all were there. Each animal’s voice served as an instrument in the orchestra. Jabbers the parrot was the only one capable of actually singing words. The tune of the song put Lero in mind of a military anthem:

Animals were born to obey!
Obedience is now the only way!

Animals are all meant to serve!
Subservience is all we deserve!

None of us were the least bit nice!
Now we’re all paying the high price!

When we’re told to jump, what do we do? We JUMP!
When we’re told to sleep, what do we do? We SLEEP!

And when it’s time to enter our cages,
We’ll go without flying into rages,

We’ll all behave and never be mean
And always keep this house pristine

Eat every morsel we’re served and then
Not demand to be served again

‘Cause we all know what’s in store
If this song we do ignore

We’ve brought this on ourselves!!!!

Rainbow Dash clapped her hooves, and Spike and Lero followed suit after a dazed moment. “Dismissed!” she told the critters, with another blow on her whistle.

Angel Bunny sprinted for dear life. All the other animals ran after him with the full fury of a lynch mob.

“THIS IS ALL YOUR FAULT!!!!” Jabbers screeched.

Angel was forced to stop when one of the sidewinders blocked his path. Another rabbit caught up and bit down savagely on Angel’s hindquarters, nearly taking off the tail. He shook this other rabbit off, and scampered upstairs; the mass of claws and fangs in hot pursuit.

“Aren’t you going to stop them?!” Lero asked Rainbow Dash.

Rainbow Dash set down the fork whose loop-handle was looped around her wrist. “Oh, alright.” Filling her lungs, she bellowed, “QUIET! BEDTIME FOR ALL OF YOU! MAMA HAS GUESTS OVER!”

The cottage fell silent.

“I came up with the lyrics to that all by myself,” Dash boasted. “Did you like it?”

The song itself had been reasonably catchy, and he’d appreciated the irony of Dash’s utter dominance over the beasts when she was so completely at their mercy before, but the situation as a whole was almost getting the smallest bit disturbing. Orwellian, even.

“Rainbow... how in Equestria were you even able to train them THAT WELL?!” Spike wondered.

Lero shot a look at the little dragon. “Wait, Spike... how come you don’t know? You’ve been helping Rainbow out in my place while I was helping Twilight, haven’t you?”

The young dragon suddenly looked away.

“...Haven’t you?”

He felt a hoof upon his hand. “Lero, I don’t want you to be angry with Spike. You’re free to put all the blame on me if Spike’s been... a little less than completely honest with you, this past week.”

“What’s going on?” Lero asked.

Dash gave the fidgety young dragon a reassuring look. “Alright, confession time. The truth is... Spike HASN’T been helping me with my animals...”

“You WHAT?!” Lero rounded on Spike.

“...BECAUSE I specifically asked him NOT to!” Rainbow finished. “Simmer down, Lero, old buddy, I already told you he’s not at fault!”

“But if he wasn’t helping you out, then what WAS he doing?” Lero’s eyes were still fixed on Spike; who hid himself behind the dish Angel had put his cake on.

“Reading comics, mostly,” said Rainbow Dash. “Big old graphic novels! He told me which ones he wanted, and I bought them for him! Would’ve bought every comic in the comic book store, if he’d have asked me!” She chuckled. “I appreciated what he did for me as much as you, and wanted to show it in some way. And I still have plenty of bits left over, even after paying to rebuild my house and replace all my furniture, thank Celestia!”

“She didn’t want my help,” Spike told Lero, not proudly. “She told me that as long as I stayed out of her cottage, as long as I went away to where I’d be safe and comfy, and no pony would see me reading, and as long as I pretended I’d helped her out with you, Lero... I could read all the comics I wanted.”

“I even bought him gems to snack on!” Rainbow Dash added.

“Why?” Lero asked, stunned.

She gave the human an affectionate noogie. “Because I know how you’re always worried sick about me, you sweet, caring, wonderful softie! If anyone deserves a little peace of mind, it’s you, big guy! I didn’t mean anything bad with all this secrecy... I just wanted to surprise you with a show!”

“Well, I am surprised,” Lero told her.

“And it certainly was a pretty fun show!” Spike added.

Rainbow Dash bowed. “Thank you, thank you!” she said. “So then! You’re fed, we had a few laughs, good conversation, a wonderful, fun time together, and I treated you to a first-rate animal sideshow! So for my big grand finale, there’s something I’ve been dying to tell you that I know you’re going to want to hear!”

“What’s that?” asked Lero, not all that sure he wanted to hear it.

She flew up from her chair, puffing herself out as far as her chest would allow.

“You won’t need to lose sleep over me ever again, Lero Michaelides! From this day forward, No animal is my master, None will dare bite me, and I won’t lose a wink of sleep! I’m standing on my own four hooves, and I’m not the damsel in distress! I’m in control of my own life!”

She settled back down, still smiling brightly at him. “In short: I don’t need you anymore!”

“You... don’t need me… anymore?” He echoed, a strange expression crossing his face.

Her wings beat vivaciously, proudly, so caught up in the moment that she failed to notice his expression. The bottom hem of her dress only just touched the floor. “Yep! I’m loud and proud, and I’m my own solo mare again!”

Lero felt strange. Feelings that were familiar but mixing together in alien ways seized him, rendering him unable to form words, or even articulate to himself how this made him feel.

“Oops! Almost forgot!” Rainbow dashed out of the room, returning with a small coin pouch full of money. “This is all the money you spent on me when you bought me groceries!” Smile wide, eyes shut, she dropped the pouch on the table before him. “So now all debts are paid in full!”

Emptiness? Stupefaction? Were those the right words?

Well, they were part of the equation, but not the whole of it.

A distant, analytical part of him put it together. Pride and heartbreak. Interesting combination. He’d done it. No, Dash had done it. With help, yes, but ultimately this final victory had come from Dash and her determination.

And now she didn’t need him.

He felt a frog in his throat when he told her; “I’m so proud of you, Rainbow Dash.”

The pegasus heard that peculiar hoarseness in his voice, and opened an eye, watching Lero take the money pouch she’d given him and pass it right over to Spike.

“I knew it would come back one day,” he said, smiling honestly through quavering lips. “I just knew it would!”

“What... would come back?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Your awesomeness.” Seeing that soft, proud smile of his made the pegasus' own smile falter. “Didn’t I tell you, Dash? Didn’t I say that a day would come where you’ll fully remember how much awesomeness you have? And it came! You brought your awesomeness back from inside you! And it’s just so magnificent to see!”

He spread an arm towards her. “I love seeing you like this, Dash. I love seeing you strong! I love seeing you confident! I love seeing you overcome all adversity like this! There’s just so much about you that’s worth loving and admiring!”

It wasn’t like Lero was speaking sarcastically or ironically. Not in the slightest. All the same, the more praise he heaped on her... the less lovable and admirable and awesome Rainbow Dash felt.

“I know it couldn’t have been easy accepting help from someone like me... but I’m thankful that you were willing to let me be there for you. I’ll tell you something, Dash, in spite of everything, as hard as everything’s been... every second I spent with you was a second well-spent. Seeing you like this, so invincible and unstoppable... that’s the best farewell present you could have given me. So I guess you’re right: all debts HAVE been paid in full.”

To Rainbow Dash, the way he said 'farewell' almost felt like Lero was going to hop into one of those dimensional rift things from Lyra’s story, and return back to the world of humans, never to be seen in Equestria again. Because of her.

“H... hey! Don’t get me wrong! When I said that ‘I don’t need you anymore,’ I didn’t mean it like you think I meant it!”

“Really?” said Lero.

“Yeah!” Dash told him. “What I meant to say that was that you being here would just be useless!”

Spike was looking at her like she was a house burning to the ground. His own house. That he, himself, had accidentally set on fire. Which was nothing compared to the look Lero was giving her!

“N... no!” she babbled. “I meant to say that you being with me is pointless! Uh... sorry, I meant you wouldn’t do me any good... erm... you’d be unnecessary... ergh... a fifth wheel...” She stumbled through her explanations, trying to find the right words, but each one she came up with was worse than the last.

The human bent his head, covering his eyes with his hand. Despite his attempt to hide it, Rainbow Dash witnessed the tear fall through the gap in his fingers and soak into his beard. Her unhappy heart exploded into shrapnel.

“I’M SORRY!!!” she wailed, throwing her arms around her poor friend. “I swear, Lero, I swear on everything, I don’t mean it like that! The words are coming out all wrong! I’m so, so, so sorry!” She wept into his shoulder. “I sound like one of those evil storybook queens... the ones who go, ‘I no longer have use for you!‘ You’re the LAST person who deserves to feel unwanted or unwelcome or worthless! You’re one of the most INCREDIBLE friends I’ve ever had! NOBODY’S been willing to stick through and help me through a tough time for this long like you have! NOBODY! You’ve fought for me! You’ve cried for me! You’ve been there for me, almost every day! You saved me!”

She raised her head off Lero’s shoulder. “Dude, you’re welcome to come over my house again any time you want! I don’t EVER want you thinking you're not my friend!”

Tenderly, he brushed at the tears on her cheek with his hand. “To be friends with Rainbow Dash... what more could any guy ask for?”

She opened her mouth to reply, but instead, her nostrils flared, sniffing the air. A hard look entered her eyes. “I don’t believe it!” she growled, pushing off Lero. “I do NOT believe it!”

“Huh?” asked Lero. “Rainbow...!”

“And I’m pretty sure I know which one of them did it, too! Wait here, Lero. Just wait right here!”

And she left the room, flying upstairs, leaving Spike and Lero dumbfounded downstairs.

“THE FLOOR IS NOT FOR WIDDLING, MISTER!” They heard her thunder. “I thought I’d made that plain for you, but I guess you need a fresh reminder!”

She was answered by barking.

“NO!” She snarled. “Don’t you DARE try to buddy up with me! YOU WERE NEVER MY FRIEND. I see that now! You think I’ve forgotten everything you did to me? You, specifically, you hateful little sadist?! I remember what each individual one of you did to me!”

Then they heard canine whimpering.

“Now you SMELL what you did! Smell it! Take a good, LONG whiff of what you’ve done!”

“Spike? We’re leaving,” said Lero, heading for the door.

“But... why?” asked Spike, “Rainbow Dash told us to wait!”

“Because if I have to spend one more second in this nightmare of George Orwell's while the girl I love tells me how amazing a friend I am, I just might take a knife to my own throat!” He hissed. “Now come on!”

Spike came.

* * *

Lero eyed Spike as he came out of the bushes in normal clothes, the Sixth Doctor outfit packed away in his bag. For the past several minutes, Spike had seemed at the verge of saying something, but had not yet uttered a word. He twiddled his index fingers around each other in the manner Lero recognized as indicating he was confused or nervous. His eye darted back and forth, as if searching for something.

“I… what… Did we do something wrong?” He finally asked.

“What?” Lero responded.

“With… With Dash. Why isn’t she coming home with us? I mean… everything’s fixed with her, no more mean animals, she likes you a lot… why is she staying there? And not with us?”

“Because… she doesn’t love me. Or any of us, anymore. Not Twilight. Not Lyra. And she doesn't love you either, Spike." There came a strangled noise from the dragon's throat. "We’re friends, now, not family.”

Spike looked devastated. “I… Is this my fault? Should I have done more? Would that have fixed this?”

Lero drew out a breath. “Remember, Spike, she’s part Fluttershy, now, and Fluttershy just doesn’t think about us in that way.”

Spike the dragon was a smart, articulate little guy. Between all his wisecracks and the fact that you could leave him at home to clean your house, and he’d actually do it... it was often easy to forget he was still a BABY dragon... all in spite of the fact that it now had to be over ten years since Twilight had hatched him as a filly. But right now, Spike was treating Lero to a sharp reminder of his infancy.

“But… But… I WANT RAINBOW DASH BACK!” he bawled, with much sniffling and many fat tears. So loudly was the little guy wailing, Lero wouldn’t have been surprised if Rainbow Dash and all her animals could hear him all the way back at their cottage. “I WANT HER BACK HOME AGAIN!”

“I know,” said Lero.

“IT’S ALL MY FAULT!” Spike continued to bawl. “Maybe... maybe if I’d helped you help her all those times... if only I’d stayed with her, and not read all those comics...!”

“Maybe,” agreed Lero, neutrally. "Who knows?"

“We gotta go back!” the dragon yelled, tugging at his pants. “We gotta go back and try again with her!”

“No,” said Lero.

“No?!” Incredulously, Spike looked closer at the human’s face. “You’re not even sad!”

“I choose not to be,” Lero told him.

“‘Choose not to be?!’ What’s THAT supposed to mean?”

Lero stopped and turned back in the direction of the cottage, which was no longer even in sight.

“The thing is, Spike... I’ve been thinking things over. I’m pretty sure that with Fluttershy’s mark on her, Rainbow Dash was never even capable of loving us the way she used to love us. She just doesn’t have the right heart anymore. Simple as that.”

“But... but... but...”

“At this point, I’ve done everything in my human power to win Rainbow Dash back, short of outright tying her down and forcing her to love me. Which is not real love at all.” He patted Spike’s spines. “And yet... look at how she is now! We’ve done so much. We were there for her. She’s independent and in control of herself. Her animals aren’t a threat to her anymore; she’s overcome them all.”

“She’s gotten equilibrium?” Spike asked.

Lero stopped short for a second. “...Yeah!” he said at last. “Yeah! I’d definitely say she has! Equilibrium for the girl who needed it most! Three down, two to go! More of them fixed than not fixed! Only Applejack and Fluttershy left!”

He smiled.

“And above everything else... even if she can no longer appreciate us as family... we’ve still built up a much stronger friendship, haven’t we? We can come back and visit her later, as the best of friends! Isn’t that great, Spike?”

“No!” sobbed Spike. “I want Rainbow Dash back! I want my big sister back! I hate the Swap! I HATE EVERYTHING ABOUT THAT ROTTEN, ROTTEN SWAP!”

He bent down and hugged the little guy. “Heh. Welcome to me, a couple weeks back. But don’t lose hope. Twilight could still find the Cure, someday, and then we’ll be able to welcome the old Rainbow Dash back into our herd with open arms! But until then... it’s all we can do to take pride in what we’ve done, and respect Dash’s wishes to be left alone and love her from afar. Even if she cannot love us back.”

For his counterargument, Spike just continued to sob. Lero picked him up, cradling him to his chest like the infant he was. Letting him cry his eyes dry, knowing he needed to let this out as much as he had when he’d finally broken down to Rarity. Until Spike finally demanded to get back on his feet, Lero just carried him home that way.

Thank you for everything, Rainbow Dash. He thought. If this is the life that makes you happy... then I can take comfort and be happy for you too.

* * *

A wide- and watery-eyed Rainbow Dash stepped outside her cottage, gazing around the empty yard.

“Lero?” she called out. Her voice was a forlorn, tiny thing. The entirety of her body language spoke of sorrow and the most aching loneliness and longing imaginable. “Please, I… I didn’t want you to go… don't leave me...”

If only Lero Michealides could’ve somehow seen Rainbow Dash at that moment in time, he would’ve run back to her cottage, they’d have flung their arms around each other, and perhaps Rainbow Dash and Lero could've had the victory they both yearned for.

If only. Some of the saddest words ever uttered. If only they’d not decided to leave. If only they’d waited.

If only. But life, chance, and destiny are rarely so kind.

Author's Note

Say, does anyone know how I would go about getting Divided Rainbow up on Fimfiction.net's front page? How does that work and what are the prerequisites?

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Twenty: Early Anniversary

Mutual silence hung like a thick fog around Lero and Spike as they neared Ponyville on the dusty, tree-lined road. They walked the road side by side, but they dwelled in their own thoughts, oblivious to the world around them as they returned home to a life without their friend.

I choose not to be sad, Lero thought, focusing on the lessons that Lyra had taught him about control. It helped, but it still took effort to convince himself it was true. He stared ahead, mechanically placing one foot in front of the other, and his eyes avoided the color of the sky. I’m happy for her! She’s better off now than she was before. Now she’s safe, and happy, and strong. Strong like... just like—

He quickly brought a hand up, turning his head away from the little dragon walking at his side, and pretended to rub dust from his eyes. His wet fingers moved back to brush against the blue feather hanging from his hair. Control, right. She’s strong, just like... Dash.

The human dropped his hand and turned to look at Spike when he heard a sniffle and a heavy sob.

Twilight Sparkle’s Number One Assistant had grown quieter since Lero had set him down to walk beside him. But Spike didn’t bother trying to hide anything; Rainbow wasn’t coming home with them, ever. The little dragon knew it now, and as far as he was concerned, it was his fault – it was too late to go back and help Dash with her animals like he should have done since the very beginning, and he’d probably never look at another comic book as long as he lived. His guilt and sorrow were etched in his face, and Lero was at a loss how to help him.

“It's gonna be alright, Spike,” Lero said quietly, “What's done is done, and blaming yourself won’t help. All we can do now is move on with our lives, and hope for a cure.”

He didn’t know what else to say, and he felt how underwhelming his statement was when Spike looked up at him with wet, devastated eyes. The little guy wiped his nose on his arm as he looked expectantly at Lero, but he had no more to add. Spike finally gave a quick nod before turning back to shuffle along the road in near-silence. Lero sighed softly, and drew in a steady breath.

One step at a time, he thought. One breath at a time. It will get better; Twilight will find the answer some day, and then...

In a few more minutes the two resident bipeds of Ponyville – the tall human with a pegasus feather in his hair and the baby dragon – emerged from the tree-lined road at the outskirts of Ponyville, and began to cut a soft path across the wide green field of thick grass that was the most direct route to the library.

They slowed in surprise as they approached, and finally stopped a wide distance from the tree that served as their home and stared at the sight right outside.

In the middle of the front yard, Rarity and Scootaloo faced each other, each standing a few feet off the ground atop their own personal clouds.

At that moment, the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ scooter-riding Terror of Ponyville was a complete surprise to Lero. There was no tree sap, no flying paint, no explosions, no panicked ponies diving for cover or sprinting to get out of the way. No movement. The two of them seemed centered perfectly, finding the balance in the clouds beneath them.

He couldn’t overcome the feeling that something was inherently unnatural about this picture... But then Scootaloo was, at that moment, the absolutely most adorable sight Lero had ever seen.

The little orange pegasus stood proudly – legs splayed stiffly and wings at attention – on a puffy little cloud just barely big enough to hold her weight. Her eyes snapped open and she listened with rapt attention to Rarity as she began to speak, but when she saw Lero, her serious look broke and she smiled and waved a shy little hoof at him.

Lero smiled despite his surprise and waved back. He was positive that he was looking at the happiest little filly in Equestria.

Then Rarity – standing beautiful and elegant on her weather pony-sized cloud – tipped off by her protégé, turned and waved at them. She leveled a happy, loving smile at Lero, that, to his surprise, made his breath catch.

But in the next moment, all three of them turned and looked as Spike burst into tears and raced away on his little dragon legs before anyone could react. He was surprisingly fast, and in a few confusing seconds he’d reached the library tree. He flung the door open and slammed it shut behind him, instantly cutting off the sound of his distress.

“Poor little guy,” Lero sighed quietly to himself. He hesitated for a moment, and decided to sit down in the soft uncut grass, too drained to continue inside for the moment. He turned to look at the two ponies; they were looking at him with shock and obvious questions on their faces. Lero hid his own difficult feelings and shrugged.

“He’ll be okay, girls. He’s just... having a rough day.”

Rarity nodded uncertainly and looked at Scootaloo; the filly tilted her head and flapped her wings in a little pegasus shrug.

“Alright, then. Well... so, where were we?” Rarity asked.

“Um... rain clouds,” the pegasus replied, stepping a little nervously on her cottony platform.

“Of course! The clouds we’re standing on are, as you felt, neutral,” Rarity said, clearly moving into a Lecture Mode that made Lero smile for it’s Twilight-like feel. “They’re created and balanced and held together quite easily by pegasus magic — yes?”

“But, um...” Scootaloo put her waving hoof down and shifted a little, embarrassed. “But you’re a unicorn! How, er...?”

Lero shifted uncomfortably at Scootaloo’s question and his eyes darted quickly to Rarity’s cutie mark. He stared at it for a long moment, his hand on his bearded chin, deep in thought.

Rarity smiled and tried not to chuckle. “Well yes, my dear; of course I’m a unicorn, but I also learned my share of weather magic. Believe me, it wasn’t easy! Weather magic is a part of a pegasus, as much as flight! It took me many years to learn how to shape my magic to do some things you will no doubt learn very quickly, and I was a natural, for a unicorn!”

With that, Rarity’s horn lit with a blue corona and, as Lero watched, the air began to change. He felt a gentle wind touch his hair, and soon the air between the weathermaster and student began to coalesce, shifting quickly from a swirling light haze, to a thick fog, and then to a light cloud.

After a few more tense seconds, the glow of Rarity’s spell ended and the wind abated, leaving a large dark gray disk of cloud to fill the space between the two ponies. Random wisps of dark, gauze-like tendrils reached out to touch their white cloud platforms and curl back inward.

Scootaloo and Lero stared at the heavy cloud that Rarity had seemed to conjure literally out of thin air. It was a perfect rain cloud like so many Lero had seen in Equestria and on Earth; ready to empty itself into the sky. Except that this one floated just a few feet above the grassy field.

Lero felt his heart beat faster, but couldn’t fathom why. He had, after all, seen Rarity change the weather countless times before. Why was now any different? He stared at Rarity’s pretty face, framed in her gorgeous trademark mane of amethyst curls, and then his eyes roamed to her cutie mark again, painted brightly on the curve of her white flank. Her long tail swished, her mane shook, and when he looked back to her face, he thought he’d caught a quick glance out of the corner of her eye...

Only a moment had passed before the weather pony continued her lecture. She pointed her hoof at the newly-formed cloud between herself and her astonished student. “Hop over, Scootaloo. Lightly! You, my dear, are going to make it rain,” Rarity announced.

The little pegasus smiled. “Cool!”

Scootaloo leapt over to the center of the darker cloud, her wings flapping almost too fast to see. She landed, surprisingly lithely on her hooves, still sinking into the cloud and bouncing a little in place. Lero smiled briefly at the little filly’s ready-for-action pose.

“Now close your eyes. Stand still for a few moments and listen to what the cloud beneath your hooves is saying to you, as you did the last one,” the teacher ordered. “Then tell me what you feel.”

“It feels...” Scootaloo began, her eyes closed and her hooves stepping pensively in place. “It kinda feels full, not like my other cloud.” She opened her eyes. “Like it wants to rain, and it just needs some help.”

“Very good! This cloud,” she lectured, “is much like the ones we bring from the factory for a scheduled rainfall. It’s ready to rain and simply needs a little more water vapor... or a little compression. Give it some incentive.”

Lero had seen Rainbow Dash perform this task often enough that he felt he could almost do it himself, and he held back a laugh at the thought of himself performing Weather Duty for Ponyville. He was anxious to see how the young pegasus did.

Scootaloo gave Rarity a confused look and stood there for a moment, thinking. She’d been too busy just being a little filly to pay much attention to the weather ponies – until the day Rarity had become her official hero. But she looked up at her teacher, who nodded and smiled with confidence for her new student, and somehow she knew.

She lifted a single little hoof and brought it down with a perfect strike against the cloud, and then nearly fell through as the moisture condensed beneath her, barely managing to recover with a frantic buzz of her tiny wings. The little wave of pressure she caused spread throughout the cloud, forcing fat drops of water to rain briefly to the grass below.

The pegasus squeaked in surprise and hopped over a few steps from the center with a frantic flap of her wings. She looked up and grinned at Rarity.

Rarity clapped her hooves together. “Bravo! Somehow I knew you would learn that quickly, Scootaloo! I’m proud of you.”

Lero clapped his hands quietly for the little weather filly, too, and somehow she became even more adorable as her face colored with embarrassment from all of the unexpected attention.

But being Scootaloo meant recovering quickly from anything! It took only a couple of seconds before she stood waiting – with rosy cheeks and a proud smile – for Rarity to continue the lesson. Her little hooves danced in place with anticipation of the next Really Cool Thing she was going to learn.

Lero, meanwhile, focused back on Rarity once more as she set her hooves down and smiled at her student. This time he spared only a glance at her familiar cutie mark as the thought occurred to him; that even though she held the soul and loyalty of Rainbow Dash, the essence of generosity she’d had before the Swap had never truly left her. It came through in her words, in her actions... in her teaching of a little pegasus filly who had discovered her as a personal hero.

Even with all of the amazing things he’d seen her do, all of the times she’d shown love and affection and shared her protective nature with those around her, Lero only now, finally began to realize how truly extraordinary Rarity was… He’d always admired her, in a distant manner, as a friend and tailor, but now he was finding himself truly appreciating and admiring her as a person.

His thoughts and the lesson were interrupted as the missing two-thirds of the Cutie Mark Crusaders stampeded up from nowhere and began pummeling Scootaloo and Rarity with questions.

“Scootaloo, are ya learnin’ how to control the weather?” Apple Bloom shouted the obvious question as she ran up to the other filly. The two began an animated conversation as Sweetie Belle walked up to Rarity and rested her forehooves at the edge of her cloud platform.

To Lero’s eyes, there was an instant of time when the two unicorns – who in a less-insane situation than the Swap had devised would absolutely have been seen as sisters – somehow seemed to share a spark of recognition... and then it was gone.

“Um, hello Sweetie Belle!” Rarity said, recovering her composure. “Did you want something, my dear?”

“Hi, Miss Rarity. Well, I um, was wondering if maybe, um...” Sweetie looked over at Scootaloo for a second. “...if maybe you could teach me about the weather, too?”

Rarity looked somewhat nervous before responding, but in the end she could not help smiling at the sudden abundance of new students she was being offered. She held a hoof to her chin and smiled at the pretty white-coated filly.

“You know, Sweetie Belle, I’ve already heard from your sister that you have a beautiful voice and a wonderful singing talent, and I would dearly love to see you develop that talent—” Sweetie’s face fell and her ears drooped a bit, “—and trust me, it is so much harder for a unicorn to learn to manipulate the weather than a pegasus. But I’ll tell you what!”

She leaned down and smiled sincerely at the little filly. “You think about it very hard tonight, and if you decide that you really would love to learn weather-work more than anything else, then I promise that I would love to teach you! Does that sound fair?”

Sweetie’s face lit up like the sun and she nodded happily without a word.

“Good!” the weather pony said with cheerful smile. “Now in the mean time, I think Scootaloo and I should get back to her lesson. You and Apple Bloom are quite welcome to watch, but it would be very polite of you to watch quietly from over there—” she pointed towards Lero with a hoof, “—so your friend can concentrate. Okay?”

“Okay! Thanks, Rarity!” the white-coated Crusader said. In an instant she was gone and quickly dragging a confused Apple Bloom off to a safe spot next to Lero.

* * *

Rarity called Scootaloo to attention and continued her lessons. With a quick glow of magic, she enlarged the filly’s cloud platform and then stepped over to instruct her – haltingly – in maneuvering the cloud with just the power of her immature wings.

Normally, Lero might have left at this point – there was always something these days that required his attention – but today he found himself content simply to lay in the grass and watch.

He had to admit it to himself; he had a fascination with the show, a desire to stay and watch her. To watch the sweet-natured white unicorn who held the soul of Rainbow Dash, and who unquestioningly loved him.

The connection between Rarity and Dash no longer seemed a like contradiction, no longer a bizarre amalgamation of things familiar and things alien, no longer like something to fear anymore. At least, nowhere near as much as it once had been.

As he watched the unicorn teach her student the finer points of pegasus flight – a unicorn, expertly teaching a pegasus how to use her wings! – memories of his times spent with her came back to him: the first time she fell asleep against him, holding him close and breathing softly against him; lifting her spirits as they sang together in the rain; his arm curled around her soft body as she sat on his lap, purring with delight while he brushed out her long, colorful mane; being naked in the shower together for the first time, rubbing his hands through her fur, then being pinned against the floor as she pressed herself, hot and wet, against him…

“Ahem!” Rarity coughed.

Lero’s reverie was broken, and he looked up from her cutie mark — ah, well not so much her cutie mark—

Rarity frowned and then rolled her eyes with a barely concealed smile. She’d somehow placed herself directly in line with Scootaloo, so he could no longer see the filly, and he realized the angle put the rest of the Crusaders behind him. The unicorn brought her hoof up from the direction of her cutie mark to her eyes and gestured a clear message; You’re staring at me in that way, and there are little foals watching!

The man blushed and mouthed Sorry! and shrugged, red with embarrassment. Rarity winked forgiveness at him and whipped her tail aside once for him, unseen by anypony else, just to show that she meant it. Then she returned to her lesson, slowly rotating the cloud by 90 degrees as she did.

Lero continued to watch the white unicorn with increasing interest, smiling at her every time her eyes turned his way. She smiled back occasionally, and she blushed and her tail twitched and swung in an unconscious response to his gaze, but she allowed nothing to get in the way of her training of her young student.

* * *

By the time Rarity announced that there would only be one more brief lesson that day, all but one of the Cutie Mark Crusaders were clearly bored and nearing sleep in the grassy field, leaning up against Lero as he pet them idly. Scootaloo was still excited, but was surprised to find that maybe she was a bit tired.

Lero lay reclining on the grass, one hand holding his head up, still watching with half-hearted interest. He’d spent most of Scootaloo’s previous lesson thinking about Rarity, and what she meant to him. In his heart he knew the answer to that question, but he was still having trouble with it. He let it rest for a time, and instead watched her.

Rarity stepped back to her own cloud and began to weave another spell into the air. Another cloud appeared swirling between the two ponies, this one darker, more dense and somehow more threatening than the rain cloud had been. It roiled and seethed at the edges, but held itself together with Rarity’s magic and will.

“Last lesson of the day, my dear!” Rarity called cheerily, as though an ominous thundercloud hadn’t in fact devoured a large part of the general area for itself. Scootaloo actually looked pensive as she looked down at the dark mass.

“Do you... um, want me to—” she stammered.

“Step across to the center, and walk softly,” Rarity said in a calm, confident voice. “You’re quite safe, Scootaloo. Despite how it looks, this cloud will take a bit more encouragement than your rain cloud did.”

The pegasus gave her an alarmed look – I’m supposed to encourage THAT? – but she visibly swallowed and nodded, walking across the storm cloud and standing pensively at its center.

“Excellent!” Rarity practically chirped. “Now tell me once again what you sense.”

The little pegasus closed her eyes and stepped gingerly atop the cloud, in uncomfortable territory and embarrassed to let Rarity see her being cautious.

“It feels kind of... angry? Well, not angry... like, really, really tense.” She stood up straight and tall, feigning a confidence she didn’t feel. “So, uh, what do I do now?”

Rarity surprised Scootaloo by hopping over to her, to land – to Lero’s eyes – with amazing grace and soft caution next to the filly.

“Let’s do this together, shall we? I want you to stomp on it exactly like so!” Rarity lifted her forehooves high and brought them down to strike the thundercloud with a perfect practiced motion. The space beneath the cloud sizzled with acute forks of blinding brightness, and an instant later the air was filled with crisp cracks of thunder.

The master weatherpony grinned widely at her stunned student while everypony else quickly recovered from the sharp shock of light and sound.

“Whoooooooooaaaaa!” Echoed the two other Crusaders in awe, before breaking out into loud cheers of “Woohoo!” and “Yay!” like a CMC Cheerleading Squad, and Scootaloo turned to shout nervously at her friends.

“Hey, pipe down! I’m trying to learn, here!”

Rarity frowned at the little filly, who cringed with a guilty look.

“Um, sorry!” She turned and shouted to her friends again. “I mean please be quiet, I’m having a lesson!” Lero could scarcely believe it; Scootaloo had actually achieved a small measure of ladylike dignity. Briefly.

Rarity smiled in pride and forgiveness and nodded. “Better. I know you can do this, Scootaloo. Give your friends something to really cheer for you about. Now.”

The nervous filly lifted her hooves up and pushed them down hard into the cloud. Her legs sank deep into the dark spongy material, and a fizzle of light sparked weakly beneath the two ponies. Scootaloo looked up at Rarity with red-faced embarrassment at her failure, and her eyes practically pleaded with her teacher to let the lesson end.

No such luck.

“Good!” Rarity cheered at her, instead. “Now do it again! Harder!”

But it was no use. The little pegasus tried several more times to eke anything at all out of the waiting thundercloud, but she seemed to have lost her nerve and replaced it with pure stage fright – something Rarity completely empathized with.

Scootaloo hung her head down a little, looking away. “I wish I was a unicorn! Maybe I could do it, then...” she muttered.

“Oh my dear little pony,” Rarity cooed softly. She sat down next to the dejected filly and nuzzled her head up until their eyes met. “Scootaloo, I have lived among and befriended and trained with so many wonderful pegasi in this world, and there have been many times in my life when I wished to be a pegasus,” she said, nodding affirmation at the filly’s surprised look. “It’s true! But now I know in my heart that I would never choose be anything other than what I am, just as I would never, ever want you to yearn to be anyone other than exactly who you are.

“I have no doubt that had you been a unicorn, you would be just as daring and brave as you are now.” Scootaloo smiled as Rarity touched a white hoof to her orange chest. “But somepony saw fit to put this wonderfully brave heart inside a pegasus body! And when your heart finally realizes what it truly wants and loves—”

She unexpectedly looked over at Lero and caught his surprised eyes with a sweet, tender smile that cause a pleasant sensation of warmth to spread through his chest.

“—it will show you that it doesn’t matter at all who you are on the outside. It is your heart that will do the greatest things of all.

“Now stand tall and let’s try this again,” she finished firmly, standing up and pointing sharply to the cloud. “I have no doubt whatsoever that you can do this.”

Scootaloo smiled pensively, and after a nervous grin, she lifted her forehooves up – a little higher than the last time – and brought them down hard.

Fzzzzt! A spark of light struck the ground and a small bang went off beneath them.

“Excellent! But you can do much better!” Rarity thought for a moment, framing her words to reach the filly. When her eyes fell to a small familiar object lying in the grass nearby, she smiled in triumph.

“Scootaloo, I want you to pretend that you’re coming in for a landing on your scooter. Don’t think about it, just do it! NOW!”

Scootaloo, startled, leapt into the air as commanded. Her hind hooves came down first, striking the cloud hard, and in that instant she felt it give beneath her with a satisfying thump that she knew was going to drain the cloud of water. In the next instant she slammed her little forehooves down, slapping the cloud with all her might.

All at once, a dozen arcs lightning lit the cloud to a white glow and flashed brightly on the others sitting around them. The cloud condensed in the next instant, and as the BANG! of thunder erupted from beneath them, the cloud disappeared into a brief thundershower against the grass and two ponies dropped in surprise to the ground.

A moment later Rarity’s peals of laughter filled the air, and she sat up and pulled the little pegasus into a tight hug.

Lero and Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle had all jumped up in alarm, but now that they knew everything was okay, they quickly began to clap and yell for Scootaloo. The two weather ponies stood in the scorched, wet grass, smelling the sharp tang of ozone and smiling happily at each other.

“You see, my dear? I knew you could do it. You even snuck another lesson in there on me!” Rarity brushed wet grass from her coat and grinned.

The filly smiled gloriously. “That... was totally awesome!”

“That was awesome, Scootaloo! I’m very proud of you.” She nuzzled her student. “And I think that’s about enough for today. Why don’t you find me tomorrow, and we’ll talk about your next lesson. In the mean time—” she walked a few steps and tapped her platform cloud, which swiftly disappeared, “—you still have a cloud left over. You can do whatever you like with it.”

Scootaloo nodded and walked a few steps away, then turned around and ran to Rarity, leaping into her and giving her a surprise hug.

“Thank you so much, Rarity!” she said warmly. She release the stunned unicorn and then ran away before she could reply. Rarity giggled as Scootaloo raced back to her platform cloud and leapt on to it, soon to be surrounded by her friends.

“You’re very welcome, my dear,” Rarity said quietly.

* * *

Rarity turned and breathed the content yet tired sigh of countless teachers and parents at the end of a long day. She looked at her Lero, lying there on the grass, and seeing the warmth of his expression lifted all the weariness from her and made her smile. She walked the short distance to him and sat on her haunches for a moment, leaning hard into him.

Lero caressed Rarity’s side and ran his fingers up over her withers and through her mane. She purred happily and pushed herself harder into him, then lay down on all fours, cuddled up to him.

“Rarity, you would make a truly amazing, incredible mother.”

The white unicorn blushed and watched for another moment as the young trio played in and around the cloud Scootaloo stood proudly upon. The little pegasus held herself like a tiny Princess of Weather standing before her royal subjects, and Rarity giggled at the sight.

“That is one of the sweetest things anyone has ever said to me, my prince,” she said, giving him an affectionate nuzzle and kissing his cheek. She looked back over at the girls. “And it is something I have given more serious thought to, lately.”

Apple Bloom’s tail peeked up through the cloud like a fin through water as she circled around beneath Scootaloo. “Ah’m a sky shark! Ah’m gonna eat’cha!” she exclaimed over and over, while Sweetie Belle hopped along behind her, yelling “I’m a pony-eating seapony! Rawr!” at Scootaloo every time her head emerged from the cloud surface.

“Although,” Rarity continued, some doubt creeping into her voice, “those three do in fact frighten me as to the possible horrific outcomes, despite my best intentions.”

Lero laughed and kissed her on the side of her face. “Yeah, I’m pretty sure that’s their job. At least they haven’t set the cloud on fire yet.”

“I am a Princess of the Skies!” Scootaloo proclaimed dramatically, hoof to orange chest. “Nopony — um, I mean nothing shall hurt me!” She lifted her leg high above her head—

“Uh oh,” Lero said.

“Oh dear,” Rarity echoed.

—and brought it down with a perfect, sharp shock against the cloud. With a loud poof! the cloud platform instantly dissolved into fog, and Scootaloo fell flat to the ground with a girlish squeal. A whoosh of air blew the fog outward in a billowing torus, disappearing into the air and knocking the other two fillies to the ground.

“She certainly is a natural,” Rarity said ironically, shaking her head.

“Well, don’t let that discourage you,” Lero replied with a hint of sarcasm.

“Oh my love, it’s far, far too late for that,” Rarity responded, giggling as two of the fillies picked themselves up and ran away laughing and screaming. Scootaloo raced over to her scooter. She quickly waved to Rarity and Lero and with a determined grin, chased after her friends. Her wings beat the air like a hummingbird’s as she disappeared from view.

The two adults lay on the grass together for a few peaceful minutes, enjoying the calm and quiet together, unwilling to disturb their closeness by moving in even the slightest.

Lero thought heavily as he lay there idly stroking Rarity’s coat, he relaxed the control he’d carefully put on himself, and just let himself feel for a moment. When Twilight first raised the possibility of Rainbow Dash’s feelings towards them being affected by how they treated Rarity, he’d been horrified about the idea of hurting Dash; Rarity almost didn’t enter into it. That’s why he’d done things with her, cheered her up when she was sad, spent time with her, cuddled her, everything he’d do with Dash, short of one thing that felt like betrayal, Rainbow’s soul or no.

But now…

Rarity had been relentless in her love and care, taking almost every spare second he’d spent with her showing him affection, tenderness, and more than a little sensuality, doing everything she could to be worthy of his love. Partly because of the guilt of what she wrongly blamed herself for…

But mostly because she really and truly did love him, with all her heart, be it borrowed or not.

Now, the thought of hurting her stung twice as bad, not just because of the fear of hurting Dash, but because of the thought of hurting her, the wonderful mare who’d shared his life for more than a month. As much as she painfully reminded him of Dash in many ways, she showed other aspects of herself- elements of Rarity, an odd mixture of class without arrogance, generosity without self-neglect, dignity without diffidence, all traits uniquely Rarity.

He let his feelings take rein over his usual caution. Rarity loved him, and...

and…

...the thought of hurting her hurt him so much because...

...He loved her.

He knew that now, and he was happy simply to be so close to her. The rational side of him, ever dominant, gave him convincing reasons to just let him have what he wanted, what he needed; It didn’t matter whether he loved her more for her qualities as ‘Rainbow,’ or for those things that he knew were unique to Rarity. The warm glow of his affection at the touch of her warm coat was proof enough of more than just his desire for her.

He stroked Rarity’s body lazily, running his hand through her mane and over her back, down to caress her flank. She leaned her warm weight against him in response as he brought his arm back up and wrapped it around to hold her tightly. His fingers ran through the soft fur of her chest as he pulled her in to kiss just beneath her ear. He sighed as he took in the wonderful scent he’d denied himself the real pleasure of until now, and the unicorn responded with a pleased purr at his touches.

She pulled back just enough to gaze happily into Lero’s eyes for a moment, and then she leaned in and kissed him. To her intense surprise and delight, Lero returned her kiss passionately, quickly pulling her harder to him. She squeaked just a little, a breathy, happy sound that was followed by her climbing part way atop him, pressing her chest into his and kissing him even harder.

When she finally broke the kiss and spoke, there was a huskiness in her voice that took control of him. “Oh, Lero! Should we... can we continue this inside, my love?” The hope in her voice was almost overwhelming.

Lero smiled and nodded. “Let’s go inside,” he said softly.

Rarity drew back and looked at Lero with a surprise that brought a touch of guilt to him. But her surprise turned to excitement an instant later.

“You mean it?” Rarity whispered.

“I really, really do, Rarity,” he replied. He leaned up and pulled her down into a brief, tender kiss. “I’m not changing my mind no matter how many times you ask me.”

Rarity smiled and leaned hard into him, kissing him back. “Let’s go.”

* * *

Lero reached down to stroke Rarity’s withers as they walked briskly toward the library. She looked up at him and slowed just a little to keep his hand in place, though it occurred to her that perhaps his hand might be better placed... She sped up for a moment, and smiled at Lero’s quick laugh as he suddenly found his hand caressing her flanks and tail, which he patted affectionately. They shared the smile briefly, but Lero’s expression became more neutral as soon as the unicorn looked away again.

If there’d been anypony else around to see them together, they might not have recognized the human’s state of mind simply by looking at him. But the little white unicorn beside him was ears-up and tail-up, trotting close beside him with a wide smile on her face. She was clearly very happy. And excited.

Lero was happy and excited, too, but he was also nervous as hell – and for her sake he did his best to hide it. His conscience nagged at him for the consequences that would result from what he was about to do… while another part of his conscience warned him of the consequences of chickening out.

As they drew near the door, Rarity stepped forward from beneath her lover’s hand and opened it with a soft blue glow of magic. She turned and paused at the open entrance, smiling as Lero walked up and stood by.

“My Lady,” Lero said grandly, bending into a small bow. He gave a little smile and held out a hand, motioning for the white unicorn mare to step through before him.

“My Gentlestallion,” Rarity answered. She nodded with a pleased look as she walked through the open door.

Lero stepped across the threshold and turned to pull the door shut. But after a moment’s thought, he opened the door again, flipped the sign to Closed, and then shut and locked it. When he turned back, he saw that Rarity was sitting cutely on her haunches a few feet away in the foyer, waiting for him.

How lovely Rarity looked, with her long curled tresses hanging down and her body shifting with happy, nervous energy! Her white ears stood tall through her dark mane, and her tail twitched. Her front legs and hooves moved the tiniest bit in a little unconscious dance.

“Rarity?”

“I must demand a kiss before we proceed into our chambers, my Prince,” she announced without preamble. “There are, after all, proprieties to observe.”

She smiled playfully; her hooves shuffled on the rug. Lero laughed quietly. “Proprieties? I see...” he responded seriously. His eyebrows furrowed a little. “My Lady is demanding a kiss as a toll, then, is that it?”

“Quite,” Rarity said with a firm nod. “And I’m afraid that this is non-negotiable, my very sweet prince.”

“Ah. Well, my lovely Lady, I suppose in that case—” Lero stepped forward, and the unicorn’s eyes shined as he dropped to one knee before her. His hands reached down to lift her pale hoof.

Rarity locked eyes with Lero and her leg trembled in his hands as his lips pressed against her hoof, and then moved up and brushed tenderly against the white fur of her slender leg. When he at last released her, he lifted his hands and brushed his smooth fingers against her cheeks. And in another moment he was holding her face and pulling her into a slow, sweet kiss. Rarity leaned forward into his lips and made a little urgent sound in her throat.

For a quiet little arc of time, her prince pressed back and – softly at first, and then forcefully – gave her the assurance she had been playing for; that he truly wanted her. Lero pulled away a little as their kiss ended, and combed his fingers through Rarity’s thick mane. He kissed her nose softly.

“Does this satisfy my Lady’s requirements for entry?” Lero said with a smirk.

Rarity giggled at first, but then forced her face to look more serious. “Oh my, yes, quite. For now,” she said, smiling at his raised eyebrow. “I believe that is a good start.” Before he could respond, Rarity stood up and turned without a look behind her. Her tail swept back in a soft arc, flowing over his right shoulder and neck like wind-blown silk, caressing up beneath his chin and then over the opposite cheek to finally sweep softly across his lips. The familiar scent of aroused mare filled his next breath, and he inhaled another deep, musky lungful before he stood to follow his white unicorn.

* * *

Lero walked behind Rarity’s curvy white form as she bounced up the stairs with a happy, springy trot. He came to a stop about halfway up and simply watched her long equine tail sway like an enthusiastic pendulum, deliberately revealing herself to him as she led the way up. She slowed and turned to give him an excited look as she headed up the stairs, and he couldn’t help but smile when he caught her happy expression; her smile was something he’d become addicted to, reluctant as he’d been to admit it to himself at first.

Every time she smiled at him, it brought back happy memories of their short time together, as he could see her love for him. But even though each time it caused a pang of guilt to rise up, every smile Rarity sent his way had worked a slow magic on him.

Lero tried not to think of Rainbow as he stood there, but it wasn’t in him to avoid the inevitable for long. The thought of truly losing Rainbow Dash to satisfy his desires for Rarity was what had held him back before, and what had stopped him on the stairway now. It almost made him turn around and run out the front door.

But the rainbow-maned mare with Fluttershy’s cutie mark and soul had rejected him. It had hurt terribly, told himself that it had set him free. There was no telling if Rainbow Dash would ever be herself again, but the person she was now didn’t need him, and she obviously didn’t love him. He was free to love the mare with her soul until the cure was found… or forever, whichever came first.

And... here was Rarity, sweet and sexy and undeniably in love with him, leading him up the stairs into what she believed was their bedroom. Actually was their bedroom, now. Even though he knew that she was a different person, she still held the soul of his beloved Rainbow as a part of her own.

As he stood there, Lero began to understand Twilight, to realize why it had seemed so easy for her to succumb to Rarity’s charms. We were already in love with her, really; we just didn’t realize it.

He looked up and noticed that Rarity had stopped near the top of the stairs, watching him curiously at first, and then with a little concern in her blue eyes. She tilted her head and smiled, sweet and sincere and loving—

I’m in love with Rarity.

The reaffirmation didn’t make it easier for him. His emotions swayed back and forth from guilt to love, from denial to desire. He wasn’t sure which way it would end, now — but he knew where he wanted it to go. In the end it, was easier to simply let Rarity lead the way.

She turned and slowly stepped down toward him as he watched. Her hooves clopped softly on the worn wooden steps, and when she reached him, she leaned her head toward him in an undeniable request for another kiss.

Lero’s heart thumped hard, and he couldn’t refuse that smile. With a shaking hand he cupped Rarity’s soft cheek and leaned in to kiss her lips. Rarity pushed in and savored the touch of his lips. Then without a word, she opened her eyes and pulled away. She lifted her eyebrows knowingly, gave him another smile, and nodded her head toward the bedroom. Then she gently gripped his hand in her mouth and tugged him forward, and he began to step with her up the stairs again.

It’s okay, he thought over and over. Rarity pulled at him, more insistent, and he knew she wouldn’t be denied. It’s okay.

It’s really okay.

Twilight had seen Dash, had felt her soul alive and loving inside Rarity. He used that knowledge to take the steps upward and follow a soft white pony with Rainbow’s cutie mark.

It’s okay, damn it!

This was going to happen, and yeah, he was nervous as hell. His heart hammered in his chest, and he felt guilty because he wanted it to happen. He wanted Rarity, maybe even more because she wanted him, truly loved him, and Lero needed to feel that right now. Dash’s rejection hurt, but... Rarity was Rainbow, and nothing could be wrong as long as she loved him. He hoped.

* * *

Was it like this for Twilight?

He stood next to the bed; aroused, nervous, guilty, unsure... Frozen in place.

Rarity watched him from the center of the bed, and her look surprised him; it had become a reflection of his own.

Rarity gave him a small, sad smile. “You remind me of how Twilight was recently, my love,” Rarity said with a quiet voice, ironically echoing his own thought. She sighed, a small sound that carried a heavy weight. Her eyes reflected the sadness now that he knew the source of. “Perhaps it’s simply the nature of our recent past. All of the ordeals we’ve been through, of late, have placed barriers between us.”

She paused, watching in silence for a few moments as Lero took a slow deep breath and finally overcame his hesitance. He removed his shoes and socks and carefully climbed up onto the bed with her. Rarity smiled a little as he moved in close to lay beside her on his side, propping up his head in one hand. She snuggled up close to him and sighed with obvious relief as he laid his hand against her side and stroked her coat.

“I love you, Lero,” she said. It was stated quite simply, with the certainty of a law of nature, and the sincerity of a true believer. “I... risked my life to save you. I even killed for you. For us. And I would do it all again, if necessary, for any of my herd.” She looked away from him and he could see tears begin to form in her eyes. “But it was my carelessness that put your life in danger in the first place, and I am so terribly sorry for that, Lero. When I see your hesitation – almost every day, nearly every time we are close – it feels like... like a knife in my heart. Oh, I’m sorry to be so melodramatic,” she said, laughing at herself a little as she wiped at her tears with a hoof.

Rarity turned her eyes back to him and gave him a crushing, haunted look. “I have tried to accept it all, and you have been so sweet, but it clearly hasn’t been enough. I simply don’t know if you can ever truly forgive me for hurting you.” Lero felt lost. He knew the answer rested with him; Rarity was completely innocent, but it would be impossible for him to explain why without hurting her. But not explaining was worse, it was hurting her and Dash.

I would forgive you, but you’re not yourself; you have the wrong cutie mark, the wrong profession, the wrong memories, and Rainbow Dash’s soul is inside you… And more to the point, you’re not guilty of what you think you did, or of doing anything wrong. I love who you are now, Rarity, and I want you to be happy. I want to be with you. But I have no idea how to fix this. Or if there is a way.

She laid very still, lost in her thoughts while Lero stroked the back of his fingers against her face. His fingers brushed against her horn, so lightly, and Rarity seemed at once to come to a decision. She moved closer and pressed her nose against his shoulder with another little sad smile and the softest nudge: Lie down, Love. He nodded and turned to lay on his back, and the white unicorn followed him, climbing up, soft and warm, to lay stretched out along Lero’s chest and between his legs.

Rarity nuzzled Lero’s neck and kissed his cheek. She pulled back and spoke hesitantly. “If it will help you... I need you to see me, to feel my love for you, Lero. And perhaps... maybe it will help me to accept what you’ve told me. I love you and I want to be with you, but it simply will not work if these walls remain between us.” She blinked slowly, and her horn glowed with a faint aura of pale blue. “Touch my horn, love. Let us see each other together.”

He broke his extended silence. “Of course, Rarity.” He nodded to her, and Rarity laid down close, resting her head on his shoulder. His brought one arm over the pony’s back and held her tightly. Then his other hand came up, and hesitated for a moment before he rested it against Rarity’s glowing horn.

It began with a simple sensation as the connection was made. His fingers tingled with magic, and it was the oddest feeling because now they were her fingers, her feet, her utterly weird toes, and... oh my, that, too.

He had hooves. And a soft coat and pointed ears that could swivel or flatten, and a tail, and a horn and magic! And... other things. They felt each other blush, which was a pleasant surprise since this wasn’t the first time either of them had experienced this... well, technically, not with each other, not that Rarity would realize that. But it was intimate beyond any experience most ponies might share, and the longer they remained connected, the closer they became. Emotions began to surface and resolve; love and guilt, and desire and hope. Lero felt Rarity’s pain, experienced her terrible guilt, and he answered her with the only emotions could; I love you, and I forgive you.

And with that, Lero felt himself almost... divide. A part of him experienced the connection, the shared touches, and responded to them. But this new part – something he had never experienced with Twilight or Lyra – was quickly wrapped in a glow of emotions; it enveloped him and drew him into Rarity, a sensuous, glorious embrace...

He gasped, and a warm darkness took hold of him.

* * *

Lero fell.

It was a weird sensation, and too damned familiar! This time he fell with no wind or sound; the only evidence of any motion through the darkness was a vast slow-spinning whirlpool of color beneath him. He raced down toward it with incredible speed, almost feeling like he was being pulled toward it, rather than falling. Panic shot through him as the maelstrom quickly spread out and took up his whole field of vision. It was vast and powerful terrifying as he silently fell into the bright, blinding center of it.

He opened his mouth to shout with fear and realized there was no air... and then he was through it, falling feet first from a blue sky toward the ground far below, fast enough that he should have burst into flames from the air friction alone. Lero screamed in terror as he realized he was about to die. An instant later he hit the ground, and a last loud shout drove out of his chest.

For ages of seconds he stood bent over and curled into himself, breathing in gasps with his eyes closed and arms held tight against his chest. Horrible words that would have curled his lovers’ manes formed at his lips, but he held them back as he finally started to grasp that he was still alive and unhurt.

Of course. Fuck!

He breathed deeply and calmed himself for a few more long moments, and then stood up straight and finally opened his eyes to look at the world. And just as quickly all of his senses returned.

The smell of the sea and the light tang of salt in the air filled his breaths. A cool breeze blew softly against his long hair. The comforting warmth of sand encased his bare feet and slid between his toes. He turned his head and saw the Mediterranean blue of a vast sea lapping with gentle white breakers at the shore behind him. Thin white clouds curled high above in a cyan sky, pointing inland toward a high, grass-covered rise that bordered the beach and completely blocked the horizon beyond.

Twilight never said anything about this, he thought. I think she would have mentioned the trip down. Where the hell am I?

It felt like Dash, just being here, felt like she was wrapped around him...

(At a great distance in his consciousness far above, he still felt himself holding onto a sweet white mare, felt her clutching him tightly and listening to the emotions that stirred in him. He felt guilt rise up along with the new feelings of love he had for Rarity, especially in this place, and he hoped that they would both forgive him.)

Lero cast aside his emotions for a moment and looked around, blowing a heavy sigh from his pursed lips, and wondered what to do. The wind blew lightly at his shirt and pants, and gave him no answers, except maybe a direction.

Beach for miles... Inland, maybe?

He strode purposefully up the high slope toward the grassy line of the hill, slipping a bit in the cooler sand near the edge. Grabbing a thick handful of long grass at the top, he pulled himself up over the ledge... and stood looking down into an improbable green valley of brilliant fields of tall grass, dotted with large oak trees and surrounded by low hills and mountains.

The long wisps of cloud caught his eyes as they drifted inland from high above, whipped at the ends into soft curls of mist. He watched in surprise as dozens of them floated in from the shoreline and drew overhead, changing dramatically; they shimmered in the sun and lit up, glowing with brilliant prismatic swathes of color.

A grin spread across Lero’s face, and he shook his head. “Rainbow mare’s tails!” he breathed joyfully. “Well, I’m definitely in the right place.”

“Lero!”

The shout reverberated powerfully behind him, and he turned just in time to smile at the pegasus streaking down across the sky toward him, high over the sea. Surprisingly she sped up, moving impossibly fast, until a long contrail of rainbow light glowed behind her.

A few instants later a horizontal disk of light shattered the air around her and drove out in colorful waves to fill the sky. Its leading edge roiled and condensed into bright pinpoints of white that glittered like diamonds in the sun.

Rainbow Dash streaked down toward Lero at supersonic speed, and he realized that she was going to hit him.

“Oh no,” he muttered, and an instant later she plowed into him.

Lero’s world spun chaotically as the cyan pegasus wrapped herself tightly around him, wings and all. Her awesome momentum carried them with incredible speed far down into the valley, tumbling and skipping together through the long field of grass, drawing a long flattened line across it for hundreds of yards.

Finally they came to an abrupt rolling stop with Rainbow Dash standing above him, her wings unfolded and flapping sharply. The pressure wave and sonic boom caught up and pounded over them, sending the yard-high grass and Dash’s colorful mane and tail fluttering and whipping in the wind around them.

Lero was so excited to see her that, this time, he didn’t even give a spare thought to wonder that he was still alive. But he was surprised to see anger burning in her face.

“Well it’s about damn time!” Rainbow Dash growled. The angry pegasus thumped him hard in the chest with a cyan hoof, driving the air from his lungs. “I thought you were gonna keep us waiting forever!”

Lero gasped and tried to draw a breath to respond, but lost it again when Dash’s hoof pounded into his chest a second time and drove it out of him.

“Where the heck have you been, big guy? Probably agonizing over doing the right thing, huh?” she said roughly. She snorted as she watched Lero struggling to regain his breath. Even as he lay struggling for breath beneath her, he lifted up his hand and laid it tenderly against Rainbow’s cheek.

She gasped at his touch and her eyes softened and lost all trace of anger. She leaned hard into his hand and sighed, and her sudden, sad smile couldn’t hide her reluctant admiration for his loving faithfulness. Tears began to fall onto him.

“I’m so sorry, Lero! I mean, we’ve seen Twilight a million times – not that I’m complaining! – but you...!” She leaned down and nuzzled into his neck. Lero caressed her with both hands, then pulled her body down into him and held her tightly. The cyan pegasus moved her lips up and pressed them hard into his cheek. “...I’ve needed you so much!”

Lero reached up, wrapping his hands firmly around his mare’s neck and pulling her back down into a tight embrace. He squeezed her hard and kissed her softly beneath her ear. He felt the wetness of her tears against his neck, and smiled as he held her and stroked a hand through her rainbow mane. “I’m with you now, and that’s all that matters.”

They both startled as a peal of thunder crackled and boomed above them and echoed across the landscape. Rainbow turned her head and looked up sharply as the wind picked up in an instant and the sky began to darken, deepening by the second. Nearby trees rustled and started to sway and groan heavily, and the tall grass bent over in the wind and began to whip around them.

“We don’t have much time! I don’t think you were supposed to be able to get here!” Dash said. She stood up and looked down at Lero, and her bright magenta eyes began to change color. Then she tenderly touched her hoof to his chest, and Lero’s breath stalled when he felt her love envelop him and pierce his heart like a lightning bolt, a parting gift to carry him through all that she knew he faced ahead.

The spinning vortex of colors broke through the darkened sky above and glowed brightly, and Rainbow began to fade a little before him. Her voice took on a hollow, ethereal quality, almost as if two ponies were speaking.

“I’m so proud of you, my sweet love.” She blinked and swallowed hard. “You don’t have to wait anymore, big guy. Whatever happens, you’ve gotta know it’s okay. Everything.”

The swirling maelstrom above caught Lero’s gaze for an instant, and then he stared back into Rainbow’s eyes, now shining down at him with a brilliant blue. Her winged body shimmered and glowed sharply around the edges, and he felt tears begin to run down his face as he realized that their time was over. Too soon!

Words caught in his grief-constricted throat, and all he could force from his lips was what felt like a last goodbye. “I miss you! I love you!”

Rainbow nodded, and her own sadness almost seemed to disappear. She smiled confidently, as though his admission was a given constant of the universe that would never fail her. “We love you too, big guy. Our sweet prince.” She smiled a little harder at that and winked at him. “Take care of us, huh? Both of us.”

With that, Rainbow Dash glared up at the sky, and all at once the brewing storm of colors froze solid above them. The tension of it crackled with snaps of lightning while, with aching slowness, she leaned in again and pressed her body down into him and brought her lips to his. Lero closed his eyes and tossed his arms up behind the pegasus, reaching up and holding her painfully tight between her unfurled wings. Those beautiful, strong wings wrapped around him and pushed beneath him. He quickly rolled Rainbow over and pinned her to the long grass, losing himself in her heat and kiss and tight embrace.

The threatening sky broke again and boomed deafeningly overhead; the wind howled even harder and returned to batter at them, and still they clung to each other. Even as he felt them lifted together and flung back through the maelstrom of Rainbow Dash’s soul, Lero held on desperately and kissed his mare, refusing to let her go.

* * *

Wind and sound fell away. Light began to shine through his closed eyes, but the softness against his lips and the tender warmth beneath him remained – a soft, warm pony wrapped tightly in his arms, pleasant and sweet. The scent of Rarity filled his breaths as he pressed his lips hard into her, and she mewled into his mouth and passionately returned his kiss.

He slowly pressed himself between her legs, pushing her body down into the bed, and then groaned in frustration as he realized that the fabric of his clothes were in the way. He was desperate, for once, to be naked with Rarity.

Lero opened his eyes a little and watched Rarity for a moment. He pulled a hand from beneath her and stroked it up along the soft fur of her barrel and neck and cheek, until finally he was caressing her ear and the soft fur beneath her mane and around her horn.

Rarity slowly opened her eyes and looked up at Lero as he reluctantly pulled his lips from hers. Her large blue eyes sparkled intensely with happiness as she watched him and stroked a hoof at the back of his neck.

“Oh my dear, sweet prince...” she breathed. “I’ve missed you, too.”

Lero caught his breath in surprise for a second, but... she would feel those emotions from him.

He felt... free. Happy. He’d thought the real Dash rejecting him had freed him, but seeing her inside Rarity was what truly did it. An unbearable weight had been lifted, the pressure had been released, and it had left pure desire to take its place.

“I want to make love to you, Rarity,” he said quietly, and he smiled at her. “And I’m not going to let anything stop that from happening.”

“Oh?” Her eyes widened a little in surprise at the intensity of resolve in his voice.

“Oh, yeah. Something’s stopped us at every opportunity, and I’m not going to let anything do that again. Not paralysis...” He kissed her throat softly, nipping gently as he moved up. Rarity purred happily, and he continued to trail trailing kisses up along her cheek and muzzle.

“Mmmmm, yes that was quite frustrating,” Rarity said. “Ahhhh...” She shivered at the memory, or maybe it was the feel of his hand sliding slowly up along the fur of her belly. Both. “I wanted you so badly at that moment, I would probably have mounted you right there in the hospital bed!”

Lero laughed softly as he kissed the side of her mouth. “And we definitely won’t be letting young dragons interrupt us in the foyer...” He kissed her nose and she furrowed her eyebrows.

“That was very embarrassing.”

Lero nodded and sat back for a moment, stroking both hands over her white chest and reveling in the feel of her soft fur sliding between his fingers. He leaned down and Rarity gasped a little as he kissed and gently nipped at the skin beneath her fur coat.

A smirk played at his lips. “Yeah, the nerve of someone walking in on us like that!” he teased. Nip. “I mean, it was such a private location.”

“My dear sweet Lero, you can’t hide it from me,” Rarity admonished. She lifted her arms and pulled him up into a kiss. When it ended, her voice and the look in her eyes had become dangerously sultry. “You wanted me more than anything at that moment. I saw it in your eyes.”

Lero swallowed and bit back his nervousness at the memory of that, but it surprised him how easily that feeling evaporated under that look. “True,” he answered simply. He kissed her cheek sweetly and stroked his hand through her thick mane.

“And definitely not mother-in-laws...” he continued, nibbling on her ear.

Rarity turned her head and stared into Lero’s eyes with a sudden fire, one he would probably aim only at his worst enemies, and only in the most dire of circumstances: Lawyers. Late-night telemarketing callers. Hay fries. Maybe even Honeydew.

“You’re overdoing it, my love,” Rarity stated, but there was a little smile at the corner of her eyes that she couldn’t hide. “But yes, I will never allow her to keep you from me like that again.”

He stroked her cheek and kissed her lips again until the fire had melted back into desire.

“And if a meteor comes crashing down on us through the roof? We’ll just continue making love under it! Hey wait,” Lero said, “Do meteors fall under the category of weather? I mean, you know, meteorology...”

Rarity blew a raspberry at him and poked his chest with a hoof.

“You’re teasing me, of course!” she said with a reluctant giggle. “My sweet prince, there is nothing here to interrupt us, not now. In any case, I believe I am quite capable of dealing with all of those things, but if the very worst should happen to us, well... Then I shall be forced to tie up Twilight’s mother and throw her into the basement until we’re both quite well satisfied. I’m sure that she will forgive me for it some day.”

Lero raised an eyebrow, looking extremely dubious. “You think Star would forgive you?”

Rarity threw a casual hoof to the air with a roll of her eyes. “Star? Oh, of course not! Star has yet to forgive me for existing! You know I meant Twilight!” She bit her tongue at him, and Lero laughed.

He stared at Rarity in wonder. She lay on her back, watching him expectantly, looking happy and sweet and... adorably cute with her forelegs pulled up and folded near her chest like that. Her dark mane lay in a random shroud of wide curls beneath her, and...

He’d thought she was beautiful long before the Swap happened, and he’d always considered Rarity to be his friend even while she remained aloof. But he’d never imagined what it might be like to be with her, to make love to her, to be in love with her.

But here he was – here they were – alone together. And now there was nothing to stop them except for his own conscience.

We love you... Take care of us. Both of us. Whatever happens, it’s okay.

“I love you, Rarity,” Lero whispered. “My loyal and generous princess... Just— just say the word, and I’m yours.”

Rarity’s eyes shined as she realized that the strange and painful wall that had stood between them for so long had finally been unmade. Before this moment she’d still had lingering doubts, even with his presence here, even with all of his kisses and his playful banter. But even more than with the empathy connection they’d shared, somehow she knew now that they would be okay. The answer was bright and alive in his eyes.

She reached up and caressed Lero’s arm, finally taking his hand firmly in her hooves, and she gave him the happiest smile she’d had since their very first kiss.

“Make love to me, Lero.”

~ * ~

Lero leaned down and brought Rarity’s white hoof to his lips, kissing softly, and she giggled as his lips moved up over her soft-furred fetlock. He smiled at the sound of her laugh, and released her hoof.

He slowly lowered himself down, pushing his arms beneath her neck and head as she sighed and wrapped her arms around him. The two lovers breathed in each other’s intoxicating warm scent as they entwined tightly together. He pressed his lips to hers in a sweet kiss, soft and tender at first... but in a few moments they were lost in that kiss. Rarity gripped him tighter in her hooves and mewled sweetly as Lero’s tongue pushed between her lips. She bit down just enough to hold him in place as her tongue danced around his for a moment. Then she opened her mouth and pushed her longer tongue into him, moaning as he accepted her into his mouth and played his tongue and teeth against her.

In only a few moments of uninhibited passion with her stallion, Rarity was hot and wet, and ready for him. She wanted him to mount her right then and there.

Oh, sweet Celestia, I have SO needed this!

She loved the feel of Lero’s heavy weight pressing her down into the bed, but when he thrust his hips down into her and ground himself down between her legs, she moaned in desire and frustration as she realized that he still had those damnable clothes on!

Rarity pulled her mouth from his and panted.

“Lero, please love, your clothes... aahhh!—” She lost the thought and moaned when he brought his lips to her neck and passionately kissed and bit her soft skin, writing a wet trail of nips and kisses up to her ear.

She groaned as he bit lightly at her ear and she felt the hardness of his cock through those frustrating, damned pants, felt the pressure of it driving against her sex. She was already so wet that she could feel him spreading the evidence of it around her thighs and stomach as his hips pressed the hard thickness of him into her.

As much as Rarity wanted him, needed him inside her right now, it was all going too fast.

“Lero, please... slower...” Rarity whined softly, and the man instantly released her tender ear with a soft kiss. She panted heavily and smiled as she saw the lust in his eyes, and she almost tore his clothes off right then. “Oh my beautiful stallion,” she said, with an ache of lust in her voice. She almost couldn’t finish the thought. “Lie down here. Let’s trade places.”

Lero grinned and sat up, reaching his fingers for the buttons of his shirt.

“No!” Rarity gasped, and he stopped, breathing hard and looking confused. But there was no mistaking the desire in her wide blue eyes. “Let me, love. Lie down!”

“Okay,” he said. He moved aside to let her up, smiling sheepishly. “Sorry, I just...”

“No apologies!” Rarity replied, clearly brooking no argument. He shrugged as Rarity rolled and stood up, and she instantly wrapped her arms around his neck and kissed him passionately. Lero gripped her hard at first as they traded the touch of lips and tongues, then he stroked his hands down the mink softness of her white coat and her glorious long mane. He groaned softly into her mouth, until finally Rarity withdrew her lips from his. She pulled back, panting hard, and held a hoof to his cheek and stared into his eyes.

“Don’t you ever dare apologize for making me feel this way!” she breathed hotly, emphasising her sentiment as their kiss broke. Her eyes burned for him, and a small, lusty smile curled at her lips. “Now lie down, my sweet prince. I so want to unwrap you.”

Lero laughed and turned to lie down in the still-warm curve of the bed where Rarity had been moments ago. As he lay down, the scent of her – a perfect fragrance of sweet flowers and soft enticing musk – rose up around him and filled his senses.

“Rarity,” he said. He closed his eyes and slowly inhaled a deep breath through his nose, then reluctantly released it again in a warm ahhhh! of exhaled breath. “Your scent is amazing!”

“You always say that, sweetheart,” she said. “And the feeling is so very mutual.” She stood over him now and nuzzled into his chest, and then his neck, breathing deeply and exhaling tickling breaths into his skin. “I absolutely adore the scent of my stallion.”

Rarity’s voice purred in her throat as she brought her lips to the bare skin of his chest, exposed in the V above the last button. She kissed him tenderly there and heard him moan a little. He brought his hands up to touch her face and hair with soft fingertips, and she decided right then to forego her magic and unwrap her lover with her lips and teeth, instead.

For the first few buttons, she had to turn her head to the side to avoid hurting him with her horn, but that actually helped her along, as she knew it would. She held her upper lip and teeth beneath the cloth fold, and pressed the button through the hole with her tongue. With each release of a button, she nuzzled the flaps of his shirt further aside, and with intense slowness she painted tender kisses and licks against his amazing, smooth skin.

He held her head lightly in his hands, afraid to hurry her with his touch, but his fingers scratched gently and anxiously through her hair and at the parts in her mane. Her soft purrs of delight echoed his low gasps of pleasure while she tasted him and breathed in his exciting salty muskiness.

Her long tail twitched and swung with sharp little whips that flung the scent of her arousal through the air, and she felt her wetness leaking in slow lines down the inside of her thighs. She wanted to rip Lero’s pants from him and leap onto his stallionhood, but it was so much more... erotic this way, so much more intense. It had been so very long since she’d been with him, and she wanted to savor this time.

Lero’s eyes were closed and he thrust his hips up in hopeful expectation. Rarity smiled and ran her hoof lightly over the hard, wet bulge beneath the zipper she wanted to rip open. He groaned at her touch.

“Are you enjoying this?” Rarity cooed softly.

Lero opened his eyes and laughed between gasps, looking up at the mare. “You’re driving me insane, Rarity!”

“Oh, good!” she said lightly. Then she placed her lips against the base of his cloth-covered cock and nibbled her way upward, drawing a frustrated groan from Lero’s throat. With the same technique she’d used on his shirt, she easily unbuttoned his pants, and Lero’s breaths grew more shallow with anticipation. She pressed her lips down into the top of the fold, feeling the tip of his cock beneath her lips, and gripped the tab of the zipper in her teeth. Lero gave a breathy gasp as she carefully drew the zipper all the way down.

Rarity was reaching the end of her own endurance. She wanted Lero inside her... But first...

She drew the V of his pants apart, then without any warning she pulled the top of Lero’s boxers down, and he gasped aloud as his cock swung free and stood up before Rarity’s face.

“Oh my,” Rarity breathed hotly, and her eyes turned glassy with desire again. Unable to control herself anymore, she stuck out her tongue and lashed out and caressed his cock with her soft touch all the way from base to crown. Lero’s groan grew louder as her tongue reached the tip, and he cried out sharply as Rarity took his hard member between her lips and slowly engulfed his length deep into her mouth.

His hips thrust up and his hands gripped her head tightly, one at her cheek and the other pulling her head down until she quite willingly swallowed his entire length deep into her throat. She hummed happily against his thickness and played her tongue against the underside of him while her lips caressed the base of his cock.

“Oh, my God, Rarity! Oh fuck!” Lero shouted. “Rarity! I’m gonna come if you don’t stop! Please stop!”

Rarity halted her enthusiastic caress of her lover’s cock, and slowly pulled her mouth and lips away from him with a wet smack!

“Oh my God. Oh my God,” Lero chanted in halting gasps. Man, Twilight hadn’t been kidding about her… skill. Rarity KNEW his body! His small white pony lover smiled brightly to see him so incredibly turned on.

“I want you inside me, Lero. Right. Now,” Rarity husked at him. “Take me any way you want, but—”

“I want us to see each other,” Lero said emphatically, still gasping as he lay before her.

Rarity smiled happily and then nudged his thigh to get him to move. He quickly sat up and threw off his shirt, laughing as she tugged ineffectually at his pants leg and almost dragged him across the bed with her excited effort.

Finally, Lero was completely naked, and Rarity trembled seeing her love this way. It had been so long!

He quickly moved out of the warm concavity they’d both shared on the bed, and now it was her turn to bask in Lero’s warm scent alighting the air.

She knew from experience what he’d want, but she tried to cut him off as he quickly moved between her spread thighs. He eagerly pushed her thighs over and pressed his lips against her dripping sex.

“Lero, please! I want you inside me, you don’t have to... Ahhh!” she cried out sharply as Lero’s tongue caressed her wet folds. He circled over her clit, and then dove into her, lapping eagerly at her winking sex and swirling his tongue deeper inside her sensitive entrance. His lips caressed her as his tongue dived deep and curled upward. At first Rarity’s lips couldn’t form any words to object, as she very nearly came on his tongue in her excitement. But she did try.

“Lero! Lero, please! I... ahhh! need you inside me, right now! Oh ahhhh! Oh please! I need to feel you...”

Lero gently pushed aside the insistent hooves that had automatically held his head so hard to her sopping maresex, and laughing happily at the evidence of his new lover’s excitement. He pulled away from Rarity’s drenched pink folds, and slowly pulled himself up along her slender, mink-soft body. His love for her was undeniable, now, as was his desire to please her.

He rested at last against her, his weight pressing her petite form down into the bed again, but this time he was as naked with this wonderful, gorgeous, loving mare. Without a word he kissed Rarity sweetly for a moment, and then groaned as he watched her face change as he finally took her; his cock pressed forward against her sex, spreading her pink wet lips apart, and at last she gasped and gripped him tighter as he finally slid inside her.

Rarity cried softly into Lero’s mouth as he sank his thick length into her warm depths, and soon he was grinding himself against her as he bottomed out inside her. She held him in a death grip of hooves around his neck as he slowly began to thrust deep into her. Her hind legs gripped his sides and her tail began to whip up unconsciously between his legs, lightly caressing his balls and thrusting up and over his ass to brush against his lower back.

The white mare opened her eyes as she pushed her hips up against him, smiling with ecstasy and obviously pleasing herself as much as she wanted to please him. Lero smiled back as they rocked against each other forever, each drawing the other out with more passionate cries.

The two lovers couldn't have fit together more perfectly; their bodies melded together, his smooth skin sliding against her soft white fur, their hands and arms and hooves surrounding each other and wrapping them tightly together. Their bodies were made for one another; nothing felt more right, more natural, than doing this.

“Oh stars, I’m going to come, Lero!” Rarity mewled, and Lero began to thrust into her even harder. He quickly reached a hand down beneath her head and pulled her up until her horn was level with his lips. He thrust himself harder into her, and as her sharp cries filled the air and her sex began to tighten and pulse around his cock, he took the top half of her horn between his lips and sucked on her while he hammered her into the bed.

Rarity came, lost in the dazzling bliss of her stallion taking her. Her horn blasted a stream of unseen colors and smoke into his mouth, and the pleasure of his lips surrounding her horn met deep within her as her sex took his pulsing cock, drawing every last bit of him inside her, squeezing and milking him for all he was worth. He groaned deeply as he came thunderously inside the mare with hard, slow, grinding thrusts.

Lero released Rarity’s horn from his lips and collapsed atop her, groaning into her furred shoulder as he felt her beautiful warm sex still clutching at him. She held him tightly in her hooves and continued to gasp brightly over his shoulder, thoroughly wet with sweat and sex and completely spent beneath her human stallion.

Rarity closed her eyes and shook and sobbed as she let irrational tears of intense emotion flow through her for a few moments. Feeling him still deep and hard inside her, she gripped his neck and body impossibly tight until those overwhelming feelings had passed, and she could finally begin to smile.

“Oh, welcome home, my sweet, wonderful Prince,” Rarity breathed, stroking his back softly and smiling.

Lero nodded and smiled over her shoulder, holding back tears that threatened to spill from his own eyes. “My gorgeous, loving Princess... I love you, Rarity.” He paused for a moment, drawing a ragged breath. “We’re both home, now.”

Lero held Rarity tightly in his arms, for a little while longer as her inner muscles cradled him like a precious treasure.

* * *

The two lovers soon lay on their sides and facing one another, the afterglow still a strong compulsion for them to simply lay and bask in each others closeness; the distance between them was barely wide enough to shed their body heat. The sheets weren’t just in disarray; they’d been yanked out completely and lay in a crumpled mass beneath Rarity and pressed up against her back. Her lover lay naked on the bare mattress; he was a gentleman, after all...

After several long moments, she finally broke the silence. “I... I must tell you something, Lero.” Rarity’s voice sounded concerned through the pulse of her heavy breaths. Troubled, even.

At odds with the tension in her voice, Rarity’s hoof drew playful circles around the human’s nipple with the absolute, lightest touch possible. His smooth, naked skin twitched around it in the most fascinating way.

Twitch.

“That tickles,” he grumbled.

“Your toes are... odd.”

Lero opened one eye and somehow managed to furrow his brow severely at her.

“What? They are.” Rarity’s sweet pony face was a mask of perfect innocence. Clearly she’d practiced that look. Probably in a mirror.

“You just made love to the only human being on this entire planet – a fact which I am uniquely qualified to appreciate,” he said, kissing her nose in appreciation, “and you think my toes are odd.”

Rarity nodded and smiled cutely. “Mmhmm!”

The human reached a finger into the space between them, and with the absolute lightest touch possible, retaliated. His finger poked softly into her fur-covered belly-button and then followed her as she squeaked and frantically tried to pull her tummy away from him.

“Eek! Hey!” She slapped a hoof at his hand, carefully.

“Well, I felt like I had hooves for a few seconds, there! And you think my toes are weird...” He poked Rarity in the tummy again and got the desired squeak before she rolled onto her back and brought up a threatening hoof to fend him off. “And how did that happen, anyway?”

The white unicorn gasped and her face became a mask of dire warning, something he knew she didn’t really need to practice. “And what precisely is wrong with my hooves, my dear?”

Lero ignored his white mare’s heated look. Instead, he reached in and took her forehoof into his hand.

“And what exactly is wrong with my toes, my dear, sweet little pony?” He kissed her hoof and began to draw slow, soft lines down the smooth surface with the tip of his finger.

“Well... nothing, really. They simply felt strange for the brief few seconds that I had them. I’ve always wondered; what exactly are toes for? Especially since you mostly keep them hidden in shoes.”

“Well, I suppose we could explore the whole physiology of why I have toes—” and Rarity shook her head emphatically no, “—right, but basically they help humans run and walk and climb, and especially to keep balance. We walk on two legs, so we need that extra help. They probably felt strange because I wasn’t using them at the time you, um, felt them.”

Rarity looked thoughtful for a moment, and he could almost see an idea silently forming. It was the kind of look he’d often seen in Twilight when she got a flash of inspiration at some new piece of world-changing knowledge; Could we do that again? But for the moment she apparently chose not to follow it.

“Alright, then. What was so odd about my hooves?”

Lero smiled, and began to feel his face warm. “You probably noticed that I have a particular... fondness for mares.”

“Yes, I had rather noticed that, actually,” she said, smirking. “A few of us have a very definite fondness for human males. Well, for one at least.”

Lero cleared his throat nervously, and gave her a little smile. “What I mean is that there’s nothing wrong with your hooves, Rarity. I love them. I love every part of you,” he said. He brought her fetlock to his lips for another kiss. “Your question is easy enough to answer, though.”

He held up a hand and wiggled his fingers.

“No fingers. Just try to imagine having no ability to grasp things with your magic or your hooves – which I still haven’t figured out, by the way – and you’ll start to get the picture.” He shrugged. “Humans don’t have magic, so we’ve relied on our hands to shape the world around us. Having hooves would almost be like super-gluing our hands into fists.”

Rarity nodded in understanding. She curled her hoof around his wrist and pulled his hand close. “I do love every part of you as well, my prince. A few things in particular at this moment, such as your hands,” she kissed the top of his hand, “and your fingers,” she added.

Slowly, sensuously, she brushed her lips against two of his fingers. She looked up and, with a touch of her tongue beneath them, slid her lips over his fingers and began to suck lightly at them. She hummed with satisfaction to see the surprise in his eyes and to hear the breathy ahhh! that escaped his lips.

There were times in her lovemaking when Rarity simply allowed herself be in the moment, to experience and react and enjoy her lovers, without making a conscious effort at subtlety and finesse and direction. But this wasn’t really one of those moments.

Rarity was happy, and she so wanted to please her Lero with every touch of skill and experience she could offer.

So what began as light caresses of her tongue and lips to his uniquely human hand – something she had gained a great deal of practice at – became an intense seduction of her lover. She turned him on: This is only your hand, my love; just imagine what I’ll be doing to you two, or five, or ten minutes from now. An hour from now, if you’re patient. Or if I am.

She slowly pulled her lips from his hand, and Lero opened his eyes and exhaled a heavy, ragged breath. Before he could move or react, she pulled him down insistently and drew him into an intense kiss. Their lips met and crushed together, and they had to keep pulling apart just the slightest bit simply to breath, only to grip each other tightly again a second later and crush moaning into each other.

His cock was hard and insistent and pressing against her side as he leaned over her, and finally she gently and insistently pushed his head away a little, and pulled his ear to her lips. She kissed his ear softly and drew her tongue in a warm line behind his ear, and shivered as she heard and felt him groan. Then she whispered into his ear, and smiled as he groaned again and nodded.

They traded places, Lero eager and energetic, and Rarity smiling and restrained. As he lay down beneath her, she swung over him and her body sang with the desire to push back and impale herself on that beautiful smooth phallus, thick and hard and hers right now; but she resisted the intense temptation. Her husky whisper in his ear was as good as a promise, and she intended to keep her word, and much more besides.

Lie down, Lero. Right now. I want to feel the crown of that gorgeous cock sliding down my throat, love.

She lay down on top of him and let herself slide her soft body against his amazing smooth skin as she drew up to kiss and bite his neck and shoulder. It was something she’d fantasized about as she first courted him: What would that smooth skin feel like against me? And the truth had been everything she’d imagined. And even more than that, he’d absolutely loved the feel of her soft fur against his bare skin. They complemented each other, fit each other so well in size and shape and it didn’t matter that they were a different species because they were in love and he had felt so amazing inside her that first time and Oh Celestia he’s sexy and oh my those are my moans and I’m really getting carried away, aren’t I?

Rarity found herself wrapped tightly in Lero’s arms, adding her own voice to his groans of lust as she nipped passionately at his neck, and even better, pressing and sliding her wet sex slowly along the length of that lovely cock she’d made such lewd promises about. With an effort of will and a loud groan of complaint from her lover, she pushed herself away and began to slide down his body. She felt his manhood press hard against her stomach as she made her way down, nibbling, kissing, teasing his sensitive skin with the feather touch of her lips and gentle nibbles against his nipples and chest and stomach.

And then she was sliding down between his legs, feeling his hardness spring up enthusiastically against her chest. She realized at that moment that she wanted more than anything to lay atop his body, facing away from him, to feel his lips and tongue lashing against her sex, but it would have proved too much of a distraction from what she’d planned.

In another moment her lips sucked in the salty wet crown of his stallionhood. Manhood, stallionhood. I don’t give a damn, either one is sexy. Lero moaned and brought his hands to her cheeks and pushed them past her ears to hold the back of her head as Rarity suckled eagerly at him. Tiny exciting whines of eagerness escaped her throat as she sucked hard at his glans, and Lero gasped at the intensity as she swirled her tongue around him and began to suck his cock deeper into her mouth.

I’m still losing control, aren’t I? she thought as she began to swallow him deeper. But it had been so long and she had yet to lose that sense of urgency she’d felt so much at the beginning, but it was all so right because they were both enjoying this anyway so what the hell am I worried about? Her thick tongue swept down the underside of Lero’s cock as Rarity swallowed him deeper.

She could tell that Lero was trying hard not to pull her down onto him, trying not to lose control, himself, and force her mouth down over his length to swallow him whole. But the white pony was ready for him, and far from stopping him, she encouraged him, keeping ahead of the light pressure of his fingertips against her head and ears.

His intense groans of pleasure filled the room and echoed in her ears as at long last Rarity felt Lero’s cock slowly pass that final barrier and slide down into her throat. Her lips and nose soon pressed into him and her tongue danced and swayed against his cock. Lero began to thrust his hips up against her, but his hands released her as Rarity pulled back slowly. She pulled her lips away from the throbbing head of his shining member for a moment and drew a deep breath, then heard his sharp cry as she plunged her mouth back down the length of him again.

Lero’s legs were pressed up against her sides, and his body hunched up almost uncontrollably as Rarity expertly swallowed and caressed him over and over with her mouth and tongue and throat. She’d already kept the promise she’d made to him, but not the one she’d made to herself.

This time...

Her pace sped up, and Lero’s cries suddenly became louder, almost panicked.

“Rarity!” Lero shouted. “Don’t... ahhh! I’m going to — please don’t! Oh GOD!”

Rarity looked up and locked eyes with her lover. Her lips would have smiled if they weren’t already engaged in something that made her so happy, but her eyes told him exactly what she was going to do for him; they shined.

And he knew. “Oh god! No, Rarity, it’s not... right!”

She lifted her head, nuzzling his erection with her lips. Never losing contact with him, she said a single word.

"Please."

Lero shuddered at the feel of her breath washing over his cock. "Rarity, you know I don't..."

She pressed her face forward, brushing the soft fur of her muzzle against him. "Please, Lero. I've always wanted to..."

Lero took a deep breath and closed his eyes. He couldn't remember Rainbow Dash ever having such an interest in finishing him that way. But this wasn't Rainbow Dash in bed with him. This was Rarity. He couldn't refuse her. Not now.

"Just this once," he softly said.

Rarity swallowed him again, humming happily as she watched her lover’s eyes widen, as his hands held tighter to the back of her head and drew her down harder, as she felt Lero’s lovely stallionhood thicken and grow in her mouth and throat as he thrust up relentlessly against her.

“Rarity! Oh god oh god oh Oh fuck!”

Lero thrust up and pulled Rarity’s head down against him, and she eagerly took his length down again as he finally came in her. She heard his shouts and felt the throbbing pulses of his cock shooting thick seed down her throat. Before the next pulse, she pulled her head up forcefully and took that next burst into her mouth, and then another, before she quickly swallowed it all and rammed her throat down again over his pulsing cock to feel another thick stream force its way down her throat.

* * *

Rarity sucked at Lero’s spent cock, and he groaned again and thrust at her almost in agony. She lifted her mouth up a little and pushed her long equine tongue out along the base of his cock and down to caress against his balls, giving a hum of satisfaction as she did. Lero groaned even louder, and she slowly pulled upward, drawing her lips up around the smooth, hard surface of his cock, dragging her strong tongue against his underside. He gasped with a sharp ahhh! as her lips sucked at his sensitive crown, and he pushed her head away gently as she swirled her tongue around his cock head once with an excited, final flourish.

“Yes!” Rarity exclaimed. “Finally!” She licked her lips and smiled proudly at Lero.

She drew back a little as Lero’s head fell heavily to the bed and his eyes closed tightly. His hands fell open at his sides and he lay there panting, his chest heaving up and down.

“Oh my God! I can’t... Oh God, I can’t believe it,” Lero gasped out.

“You can’t believe it?” Rarity said, giggling playfully as she looked down at his throbbing, saliva-slick stallionhood. She drew in heavy, happy long breaths. “Really, dear? Because I certainly believe it right now.” She leaned back in and ran her thick tongue up from the base of his still-hard cock, and Lero twitched against her and moaned again.

Rarity reluctantly released her human lover and slowly crawled her way back up to the head of the bed, planting gentle kisses on Lero’s stomach and chest along the way. The mare snuggled her soft body tight up against him, laid a white arm across his bare chest, and nuzzled affectionately against his neck. Lero almost smiled, but it fell away as he turned an eye toward her with obvious reluctance.

“I’m so... so sorry, Rarity,” Lero said abruptly, turning his eyes away again with a look of shame. “It was incredibly disrespectful of me to do — that.”

“To do what, my sweet prince?” Rarity teased.

“I — I came in your mouth, of course,” he said, covering his face with his hands. “I couldn’t help it! You wouldn’t let me go!” Rarity looked on her lover with a little smile he couldn’t see, but she wasn’t about to let him off the hook.

“Hmmhmm, yes you did come in my mouth. Quite a lot, actually,” Rarity began, sounding very serious. She licked her lips and swallowed. “Well... you certainly don’t taste disrespectful.”

A hand folded away from Lero’s face. He groaned quietly and he looked... miffed. “I’m serious, Rarity.”

“So am I, Lero! I am quite serious.” She placed a hoof tenderly against his chest. “I love you, and you have some idea of how much that truly means.” She leaned in and kissed his cheek. “Do you think that there is anything which you and I could do together in love that must be forgiven? I wanted it – you know I did, just as I know that you did as well. How is that ‘disrespectful,’ my love? I would do it again in a heartbeat.” Her eyes looked down his length briefly, and her eye crinkled impishly. “Well, perhaps in 10 minutes or so.”

Lero snorted, trying not to laugh as he held on to the fading fragments of his shame and anger. “You might be overestimating my ability, Rarity.”

“Or perhaps you’re underestimating mine?” Rarity said. Lero laughed at that, and Rarity smiled and hugged him tightly. “However, if you need more time – or perhaps you feel the need to make penance for this terrible transgression – there is certainly a way for you to make it up to me.” She batted her eyes innocently. You know what I want.

Lero shook his head and rolled his eyes a little in mock-disbelief. He rolled over toward Rarity, holding on to her slender body and turning them both until she lay beneath him, smiling up at him. Without a word he kissed her, pressing his tongue against her lips. She wrapped her arms around his neck and hummed happily as Lero’s tongue slipped in to meet hers. They kissed tenderly for a little while, before he finally pulled back and looked into her eyes.

“I don’t need a reason to do that for you, Rarity.”

He kissed her again, stronger this time, and she held him tighter and danced her tongue against his while her hooves ran through his hair. Finally he began to pull away, and she pushed herself up to follow him, trying to hold that kiss until the last possible moment. Her eyes sparkled as she fell back to the bed, watching him.

“You make me so happy, Lero,” Rarity said softly.

“I’m going to do my best to make you happier in a minute, sweetheart,” Lero responded, kissing her nose. “I’m pretty sure I owe you one.” He still looked a little guilty, but he smiled.

“Ohhhh, good,” Rarity said brightly, but her expression suddenly turned serious and her voice slightly urgent. “Do hurry, though, my Prince! Your Princess requires another very special kiss.”

Lero arched an amused brow at her as he ran his hand slowly along her smooth belly. Then he leaned down and kissed her there, softly. “As you wish.”

* * *

Rarity purred as Lero slowly laid between her legs. He kissed her stomach and caressed her sides, and after a few quiet moments, she giggled a little. Lero looked up.

“What?” He pressed his face into her, reveling in the softness of her against his face and taking in her flowery scent.

“It’s just that I know you, and that sounded like a movie quote.”

Lero chuckled into her fur, and nibbled at her until she squirmed at the tickling. He looked up again. “It was. A good one, too! Remind me to tell you about it, but now—” and he slid further down and planted a slow, sliding kiss against the thinner coat between her thighs, “—is probably not the best time.”

“Hmmmm... perhaps you’re right,” Rarity hummed quietly. “That feels lovely.”

While he continued to lavish soft kisses against her, Lero brought his arms down one at a time, caressing her chest and stomach, then – resting them on his elbows – pushed them outside her hind legs and slid them back up and across her barrel. He lay now with Rarity’s thighs resting comfortably against his shoulders, and he lifted his lips from her stomach and laid them down with a tender touch... mere inches away from her soft pink lips. Rarity moaned a little in anticipation, and then in slight dismay as his lips moved up between her teats instead of downward.

“Ohhhh,” Rarity whispered, her head back and eyes closed, “you’re teasing me.”

Her forehooves began inching down toward Lero’s head and shoulders, but he carefully took them into his hands and held them away to her sides for a moment, before patting and releasing them. Uh-uh, Love, not yet!

Careful to not touch her darkening nipple, he soon brought his tongue into play against her thin skin, sliding his lips with aching slowness along the seam of her thigh. The pony began to breath harder, in little forced breaths as his tongue moved downward and her anticipation grew. Her arms laid over his and her breath caught in a little restrained squeak as his tongue glided down just a hair’s-breadth from her lips.

Lero drew in a musky breath as his tongue circled just beneath the wet folds of his mare’s sex, and the two lovers moaned together as he tasted her dripping arousal... and then moved to trace small kisses and soft warm, licks up along the other side. His tongue passed through her wet trail and slid up so close along the seam of her pink lips. He let the tip touch briefly against the edge of her sex, tasting her briefly again.

His excitement grew as he heard Rarity’s moan and felt her back arch a little and her hooves pull hard against his arms. But he resisted the temptation to push his tongue into her, and instead painted a light brush stroke with lips and tongue, releasing only just above the soft top of her cleft. Rarity mewled softly as he patiently drew sweet wet circles above her clitoris.

“Lero... Lero, I...” she gasped as he began to kiss the inside of her other thigh. The fingers of one hand caressed small circles around one of her swollen nipples. He sucked one nipple between his lips and rubbed his thumb across the other. “Ahhh!”

Rarity began to cry a little more loudly and she bucked slightly beneath him, thrusting her hips up, and Lero worked quickly to give Rarity what he knew she wanted at that moment. He brought his arm down from her stomach and began caressing the back of her thigh. With the fingers of the other hand pleasing her nipple, he quickly began pulling her other swollen nipple between his lips and circling it with his tongue.

Rarity’s gasps and moans brightened and quickened... and then her hooves were holding the back of his head down to her body. He could feel her arching and thrusting and her tail reached around his neck and laid soft and shaking against his back, and when he finally brought his thumb up along the wet seam of her maresex and suckled hard on her nipple, she thrust hard up against him and shivered and moaned and came.

Lero let his pony lover lay back for a few moments, careful not to touch her too lightly, but he tested that, kissing her nipples, running his thumb up between the wet lips of her sex, and was rewarded with a very pleased purr from his little white mare.

“My dear sweet prince, that was a lovely start,” she said with a sigh. “Do we—”

“No, love, we’re not finished, yet,” Lero said firmly. She lifted her head and saw the saw the love in his eyes, and felt it in his touch. Rarity smiled at him and laid her head back; she was happy to have her sweet Lero back, at last. A happy, mischievous thought came to her as he lightly kissed her mare lips again.

“Oh dear me,” she pined softly, holding a lazy, melodramatic hoof to her chest. “I think that perhaps I should stop you now, my prince!” Her eyes teased him and a little smirk snuck past her lips. “I feel I would be dishonoring you if I were to allow myself to come—” she gasped “—into your noble mouth!”

Lero grinned and tried not to laugh. Instead he deliberately drew his lips in a slow teasing circle around Rarity’s sex, ignoring her moan of frustration when he stopped.

“Funny, but you don’t taste like you’re dishonoring me.” His eyes watched her closely as he dipped his tongue deep between her beautiful pink lips again and moved to circle hard, once, around the mare’s clitoris. He pulled his head up and made a show of licking his lips and enjoying himself. “No, I’m pretty damned sure this is a real honor.”

Rarity shook with quiet laughter, then she reached up and pulled at his head, giving a slow thrust of her hips up at her lover. She looked up at him with desire and need, and her soft tail caressed and pulled at his back. “Make me come again, my prince,” she pleaded.

He met her eyes and softly kissed her again. “It will be my honor, princess,” he said.

Lero pulled back slightly and looked on his new love’s sex with... lust. The tender fold of her pink lips glistened, and his eyes moved down it to the soft, inviting white tuft at the underside of her tail. It was wet and begged to be kissed, just as much as the rest of her did. He lay himself flatter on the bed, and when he at last slid his lips along that smooth wet fur, he was surprised to find that he’d chosen well. Rarity groaned as he kissed her there, and her tail held him tighter and tighter as he nipped at the sensitive area enthusiastically. Soon her groans sharpened and he pulled back.

“Kiss me, Lero...” he heard her breath urgently. “Kiss me!”

He lifted up a little in response and then teasingly kissed along the soft edge of her sex, following the movement of her equine body as she tried to bring herself into the path of his lips. Instead of giving in to her desire, he lifted his lips from her, breathed slowly and softly across her wet folds, and pressed them down again on the other side of her sex.

While Rarity’s delicious moan filled the air, he released her soft belly and moved his left hand down across her side. As he slowed to caress her cutie mark, she moved her tail and quickly wrapped it around his wrist and arm. He felt his arm being pulled downward with surprising strength.

“Hmmm, want something, sweetheart?” Lero teased.

Rarity licked her lips and whispered harshly. “You know!” She groaned and humped her hips upward while her tail tried to drag his hand closer. “Touch me!”

Lero slid his head over a fraction of an inch, and felt the intense wetness of the white pony’s sex against his lips. Before she could react, he pressed his tongue into her folds. She rewarded him with a sharp gasp and a little whine that grew louder and louder as he slowly... slowly licked up the length of her slit. Rarity cried out as her lover’s tongue lashed over her clit. She tried to thrust her hips up at him, but he’d already begun moving back down again.

Her anxious forehooves couldn’t quite reach him, so she laid them over the arm he’d draped across her stomach, and touched the top of his head.

Rarity moaned in hot little breaths, now, as she anticipated her human lover. Lero loved the taste of his little white mare, and gave up all efforts to tease her any longer. Once his tongue reached the bottom of her wet maresex, he slowly pushed his tongue into her, pressing his face against her and groaning and reveling in her sweet intense taste, the exciting shaking of her body, in the little groans she panted into the air.

Urged on by the grip of Rarity’s violet tail, Lero brought his hand up to her sex and began to softly stroke his fingers over her dripping wetness. He let his thumb press into her while his fingers played little circles around her clit, and Rarity squeaked a little pleasured gasp as he slowly pushed deep into her. She thrust her hips up in little excited circles and her gasp turned into a long quiet, pulsing moan as his hand massaged her.

Her tail had wrapped its way up his forearm and the long violet length of it lay swishing wildly against his shoulders and back, pulling harder against him with every little gasp and mewl of pleasure that escaped her lips.

He smiled and ignored Rarity’s sudden whine of complaint as he moved to the side a little and pulled his hand away. After a moment spent caressing her lips with the tips of his fingers, teasing her until the grip of her tail almost became a painful pressure, he turned his hand over and slowly slid two dripping-wet fingers into the hot little mare. He leaned over her and his lips surrounded Rarity’s sensitive clit.

“Oh yes, Lero, oh my yes, just like that—” she breathed. He slid his fingers deeper into her, then curled them upward and began massaging the upper wall of her sex with small circles of pressure. “—Oh stars, yes! Just like that... Yes!”

He sucked her clit in between his lips, and his tongue began to dance in small circles and soft brush strokes across the swollen little nub. A deep moan resonated from the little mare, and her hooves reached frantically between her widespread legs to pull at the back of his head, trying to force his lips and tongue harder against her.

He held tightly to the unicorn with his other hand and arm, feeling the soft white fur between his fingers and her hard muscles tightening beneath him as she tried to thrust her hips up at him. He held her down, barely, and lapped and sucked at her, touched her, responded to every movement of her body as if he’d always known her body like this. Every breath she exhaled filled the air with intense sounds, and soon her moans and thrusts became tiny squeaks of pleasure punctuated by little shivers of her equine body.

Lero intensified his touch. His fingers thrust in and out of her sex and massaged harder against her insides, his tongue lashed across the hard nub of her clitoris sucked in between his lips and teeth. Rarity’s sexy sounds fell away as her body and hind legs trembled, and she held him in a death grip that told him she was going to come any second.

“Lero! Lero...” she squeaked harshly. Her back arched and her wet maresex began to clench hard at his fingers. He pressed and rubbed harder into her, moaned and sucked harder at her clit, following that growing intensity of her climax and driving it upward with his touch.

Rarity’s body shook and spasmed violently, and she screamed and came. Hard. Her hooves clutched his head and her tail gripped him tightly, and her body suddenly thrust up so hard that Lero’s hand was pulled from her. In that second he felt a flood of her wetness drenching him while her wails of intense orgasm filled the musk-thick air of the room. Lero released her clit and eagerly ran his lips down her soft, drenched mare lips and sucked at her, driving his tongue into her and greedily lapping at her come. Rarity shook and screamed Lero’s name and bucked hard again, splashing him a second time.

And then all at once, Rarity collapsed into a twitching puddle of soft white unicorn pony on the bed. She lay with her eyes closed, trembling and gasping as her human lover slowly lapped at her warm, wet sex, and softly stroked her belly and chest. Without a word the man reached his right hand high up her body to stroke her slender neck, moved it upward and caressed her face tenderly. Rarity wrapped her forearms lazily around Lero’s arm, holding him in place and nuzzling against his hand. Her tail had finally released its grip on his left arm, and she soon found it stroking her heaving chest.

She purred a little at his touch, but the sound almost came out as a low growl as her breathing struggled to return to normal.

Lero chuckled softly, and with a little regret, pulled his arms back and held himself up on his elbows before her. He wiped the musky moisture from his eyes and heard Rarity gasp. He opened his eyes, blinking away the residue of wetness from them. Rarity was staring at him with a look of surprise.

“Oh my sweet, loving prince, I am SO sorry!” she said, shaking her head. Then long giggle came from her and she covered her mouth with a hoof. “Oh Lero I really am very sorry! But—” uncontrolled laughter burst from behind her hoof as she closed her eyes, “—but I did warn you, love!” Her body shook a little and she coughed through her laughter. Lero simply stared at her, his face practically drenched and dripping, and smiled with a little roll of his eyes.

“That’s quite alright, my sweet princess,” he said grandly, as though there was nothing at all amiss. “I know exactly how to take care of this.”

With that, Lero began to slowly crawl his way up between Rarity’s white equine legs. He dipped his head down with great care and kissed her tenderly... at first. Rarity giggled some more. Then she squawked and laughed in surprise as Lero began firmly rubbing his face into her belly, dragging first the left side and then the right along the dryer swathes of her lush white coat. She pushed down at his shoulders, trying to stop him, but she was weak from the climax she’d just been gifted by her prince. Soon he dropped beside her with a shake of the bed and wrapped his arm over her. He pulled her close and smiled innocently at her pouting glare as his hand caressed her slightly damp fur.

“What?” I am the picture of perfect innocence, his eyes lied unconvincingly.

“That was most un-princely of you, my love.” Don’t even! You are SO in deep trouble, her own eyes replied.

Lero leaned in and with the greatest tenderness, kissed Rarity’s nose. Twice. “I know, sweetheart, but you love me anyway.”

Rarity’s pout softened and she sighed, then smiled. She turned onto her side and cuddled up to her lover, glowing softly with the warmth of their exertions, and a little damp with them.

He gave her a silly grin and stroked his hand down her side. It came to rest on her thigh, and he idly caressed her soft rainbow cutie mark, waiting patiently for the generous gift of forgiveness he knew would come.

“I do love you, Lero,” the white mare said softly, and she kissed his nose.

Lero looked into Rarity’s dazzling blue eyes, and for an instant he could have sworn that they flashed magenta. They did, didn’t they? His throat constricted and he blinked at her, trying to make sense of it.

Before she could react to his surprised expression, he pulled Rarity close and quickly kissed her lips, holding her in that kiss until any doubt he’d given her had been erased. He pulled his lips back and kissed her cheek once.

“There’s something I need to do, Rarity,” he said quietly, and without giving her time to respond, he moved from her embrace and sat up. He looked down across her lithe pony body, and his eyes rested on her cutie mark; a puffy white cloud and rainbow lightning bolt painted in bright colors on her beautiful white flank. His hand caressed the mark lovingly before he leaned down slowly and kissed her there, tenderly, and then again. He laid his hand against her once more, feeling the warmth of her beneath his hand.

“I love it when you kiss my cutie mark, Lero,” Rarity spoke quietly, her voice intense. “I know I’ve told you this, but... it feels so much like you’re kissing my soul.”

Lero moved to lay beside the white mare. He pulled her into his embrace again and held her tightly. The fingers of one hand played through her mane, stroking them past her horn, caressing her ear. He brought his hand back to hold her cheek in his hand.

“I know it does. And I love that soul, Rarity, and I love you very much. I can’t really explain it, but it... took me a little while to realize how much they’re the same person in one truly beautiful mare. I’m so happy that you’re a part of my life.”

Rarity lay there for a moment beside Lero with a stunned look in her eyes... a look that turned to happiness, and then to joy, and finally to desire. She quickly moved to climb atop her lover, and wrapped her arms around him as they rolled together. Lero ran his hands through Rarity’s silky long mane, down her withers, and on to her flanks, where each hand rested to caress her cutie mark.

Rarity smiled, and at that moment she was the most beautiful girl he’d ever seen.

“Make love to me again, my sweet prince,” she said, and she kissed him. “Right now,” she husked in his ear.

Lero’s heart beat a fast cadence in his chest, and there wasn’t anyplace in any world he’d rather be than where he was at that moment. He smiled at Rarity, and kissed her back.

“Oh, I will.”

* * *

All throughout the day, Twilight Sparkle and Lyra had pointedly not mentioned the fact that Lero had not joined them for today’s meditation, exercises, and discussion about Twilight’s research. Both unicorns were well aware that Rainbow Dash had moved back into her new cottage very recently, and that Lero would want to be with her. Nonetheless, the two of them did their best on their own. They had been quite productive for many hours, but now they were returning home.

“Well, I have to say, Twilight, I never would have suspected a stallion like Starswirl the Bearded would’ve been written off as a hopeless failure by so many of his teachers,” Lyra commented, as they both neared the door. “Or that he’d once been apprenticed as a barrel-maker.”

“Different day and age.” Twilight expounded. “Most of his teachers didn’t bother to give him a real chance; a stallion doing something as dangerous as magical research? To them, absurd.” She looked up, or rather down at her precarious-yet stable-position. “And speaking of, I’ve never even heard of shoulder-stands before today... who knew any pony could maintain such a position for over an hour? Let alone me?”

“Mind over matter,” Lyra replied, nuzzling her herd-sister. “I’m proud of you for sticking with it! But now we’ll want to think about what you eat...”

“What I eat?!” Twilight cried, starting to worry.

“Yeah,” said Lyra, opening the door of their home. “Healthy body, healthy mind. You’ll want to fill your body with premium fuel so...”

Both mares stopped as they entered inside, ears pivoting all around, nostrils drawing in air.

“Say, Twilight... do you smell something... unusual?”

“Several unusual things, I’d say. Roses, for one.” Both mares’ eyes fell upon a vase of fresh white roses. It sat on an end table by one of the couches. Through every other room they could see into from this part of the house, Twilight and Lyra spotted more such vases, each holding more white roses.

Twilight sniffed the air again. “But there’s also some other things I smell! Some kind of baked fish, for one. And...”

“Musk,” said Lyra, suppressing the urge to gulp.

“Very thick.” Twilight agreed. “Human... and Pony.”

Lyra and Twilight’s ears flicked in the direction of the upstairs. Listening to Rarity and Lero’s laughter. Smelling hot food. Hearing a movie being played. They might’ve mistaken this movie for several strange ponies having a conversation, except that the ‘conversation‘ was accompanied by a soundtrack and a film projector spinning. Venturing upstairs, they magicked their bedroom door open. The room had been darkened for the movie playing on the far wall, but Lyra and Twilight could still see everything.

Their human stallion wore only two things: an open bathrobe, and underwear. Actually, this wasn’t quite accurate: a wreath circled the crown of his head, and around his neck hung a fragrant lei, both made entirely of white rose heads. He lay atop their bed, with Rarity snuggled up adoringly beside him. A fierce, almost involuntary shudder passed through the other two mares‘ bodies: both at the sight of their body-shy stallion nearly completely undressed and the way the smell of their bodies permeated the room.

A small table had been brought into the room for most of the food to sit upon. Two bottles of champagne, (one already opened and mostly-full), a pair of champagne glasses and even a buttercream cake! Though several slices had been cut out of the cake, it was still possible to determine what it said: HAPPY EARLY ANNIVERSARY, MY SWEET PRINCESS. More food sat on the actual bed. The was a bowl of popcorn next to the lovers, but upon a plate balanced on Lero’s lap, was a fancy piece of salmon cuisine.

As Lyra and Twilight watched, Lero separated a piece of the fish with a fork and knife, and brought it into Rarity’s mouth. She chewed, swallowed, kissed Lero, levitated the silverware from Lero’s hands, and cut a bit of salmon to feed him in turn. She looked up at her herd-sisters at the door.

“Welcome back, my loves!” she greeted, pausing the film. “How’s the day been treating you both?”

“O-okay,” answered Lyra, shutting the door behind her. “What’s that you’re eating?”

“Salmon en croute.” Lero told her. The human had remembered Rarity mentioning that particular dish to Star Sparkle, and had needed to stealthily peek into a cookbook to learn how it was made. While he had whipped up plenty of tasty fish recipes for Rainbow Dash, her tastes had never been quite as... French as Rarity’s were. It’d been his very first time cooking with crème fraîche, and he’d been worried it’d come out tasting wrong. But so far, Rarity was loving every bite of her salmon en croute! She ever levitated a forkful of it to Lyra, but the aqua unicorn shook her head.

“Honestly, Lyra, you’re missing out! It’s always been such a tragedy that two-thirds of ponykind should be so close-minded about seafood! Omnivores like us have the best of both worlds!” And Rarity ate the bite herself. “Isn’t that right, my prince?”

“Couldn’t be righter!” He said, and they both nuzzled noses. “Does this mean you’ll try coming with me to that griffon place, next time we’re in Canterlot?”

Rarity rolled her eyes. “Near-omnivorism, my snarky prince.”

“Aw, and I was so looking forward to treating my girl to a nice dish of pork tenderloins, drenched in rich garlic sauce…”

“What this movie you’re watching?” Lyra asked, stunned to see this scene playing out before her.

“And what’s all THIS about an ‘early anniversary?’” asked Twilight, reading the cake.

Rarity turned to her beloved human. “You tell them, darling! You were the one who came up with it!”

“Well,” said Lero. “When I came home from helping Rainbow Dash today, I found myself so THANKFUL having Rarity as my girl, that I wanted to go all-out and celebrate us getting together in the first place! But since our anniversary is still a few months away, I said, ‘To heck with it, let’s have an early anniversary, instead!”

“White roses...” Twilight whispered. “And that movie you’re watching... it’s Pony Chicks In Manehatten, isn’t it?”

“Mmm-hmm!” said Lero, “Nostalgia’s the theme of this early anniversary!”

“Why don’t you girls join us? Hop on the bed with us! Help yourselves to some cake and champagne and popcorn, and let’s watch the rest of this movie together! It might ruin the film if we keep it paused any longer!”

So they did. For about a quarter of an hour, the four of them watched Gertie, Jill, and Genevieve Goldclaws befriend Kumquat Gelato and Tofu Barbecue, hit on Godric, and surprise a bunch of random ponies who expected the three of them to act like mares instead of griffins.

Then Lyra, who had seated herself by Lero’s other side, whispered in his ear: “I’m going to go step out and use the bathroom. The one downstairs. Two minutes after I leave, YOU’RE going to need to go downstairs and use the same bathroom I’m in. Get my drift?”

Lero nodded.

* * *

When he had joined Lyra in the downstairs bathroom, she greeted him with her gravest look.

“Just what happened with Rainbow Dash today?” She had an edge to her he’d never seen before; almost the barest hint of a threat if he dared refuse to answer, though he had no intention of withholding the truth. It gave him no joy, but he quickly told the whole story of his last visit to Rainbow Dash’s cottage. Her gaze turned from sharp and accusing to brokenhearted.

“...And you can ask Spike if you think I’m making any of it up,” he finished. “He was there and saw the whole thing!”

“I will ask Spike... but I don’t think you’re lying.”

She levitated a washcloth over by her eyes. Although she wasn’t crying, he suspected it was just a matter of time, and she wanted to have it ready if the moment came. “I don’t know what to say!” she told him. “It cuts right to the heart.” Her voice wavered. He leaned down, putting a hand on her side. “I think... the only possible way I could feel any worse about all this is if I’d been there with you, and heard it from her lips myself.”

And now she brought the washcloth to her eyes. “Oh, Lero, I never thought ANYTHING could make YOU give up on Rainbow Dash and... and...”

Lero knew Lyra’s body language, and he could hear the unspoken words: ...I never thought anything could make ME give up on Rainbow Dash, either.

“I haven’t given up, though,” he said, hugging and kissing her. “Rainbow Dash... the part of her that LOVES us all... is here. She loves us every bit as much as she always did. She’s never left us; she’s just moved into Rarity. I actually spoke to this part of her, in person...”

“Huh?”

And Lero went on, telling her about the strange and wonderful vision that Rarity had granted him, seeing the old Rainbow Dash on the beach, her telling him to ‘take care of us.’

“And you swear every word of this story is true?” Lyra asked, wide-eyed.

“On my life,” Lero vowed.

“The empathy spell’s not supposed to be able to do that…” Lyra muttered, confused.

“The Dash I met on the beach seemed a bit confused, too. Maybe it was a pure fluke, like when you swallow your food and it goes down the wrong pipe." He shrugged. "Regardless... and as much as it pains me to admit... that girl living in that animal cottage? Now that her critter problem’s solved, all she wants to do is be left alone and live Fluttershy’s life. She’s a friend, and a good one… That and nothing more. Until and unless Twilight finds a cure, Rainbow Dash is no longer part of our family.”

Immediately afterwards, Lero regretted not finding a gentler way of saying this.

“It’s just a mark of how unconditionally screwed-over this whole situation is!” Lyra spat. “The only way for us to be faithful to Rainbow Dash is to turn our backs on her and love this other girl!”

“Lyra...”

But she shook her head, shrugging him off. “No. We’ll talk later. Let’s go back into the bedroom before Rarity thinks we’ve fallen into the toilet.” Lyra cracked a weak smile as they left the bathroom. “Still, it’s incredible, isn’t it? You got to see Rainbow... her old self... I’m more than a little jealous! Maybe If I get Rarity to cast that spell on me, I’ll get to see her, too!”

Neither Rarity nor Twilight said anything as Lero and Lyra returned into the bedroom to watch the rest of the movie. As Lero snuggled back up by Rarity, Lyra got up against Twilight, though not to cuddle. For the next several minutes, Lyra whispered nonstop into Twilight’s ear; Lero knew that she had to be retelling his story to her. Twilight only gave a single hushed outburst: “A beach?!” But otherwise, she remained silent, even after Lyra had finished the story.

Around the point where they were at the the movie’s third act, Lyra levitated a champagne bottle over to herself and poured herself a glass. And then another. And then another. By the time the credits started rolling, there was just a thin film of champagne at the bottom of the bottle. When Twilight shone her horn and light was restored to the room, they could all see that Lyra had been crying silently the whole while.

“Lyra? What’s wrong?” Rarity asked.

The Still Way grandmaster hiccuped and sobbed. “I’m sorry, Rarity! I’m getting way too over-emotional about this, but it’s just... it’s just...!”

Lero was about to jump over, think up some excuse, and shepherd her out of the room before she could blurt out the truth in her alcoholic haze, but Lyra was far too quick.

“I got to thinking about that word, ‘anniversary.’ I know this isn’t any sort of REAL anniversary... but just think about what that word means! Another year, where we’re all still together! Still loving each other! So many other friends of mine come from broken herds... I guess I’m just projecting, you know? I mean, imagine if one of us were to simply up and leave the herd one day, just out of the blue, with no warning! Imagine if one of us suddenly declared she just wants to live her life alone from now on! I’d be... I’d be... heartbroken!”

Lyra lay by the very base of the bed, facing the wall, her underbelly pressed against the covers, weeping. Rarity came right up next to her.

“What a compassionate soul you have, Lyra,” the white unicorn said. “I feel so sorry for your other friends. But the bonds we have between each other are special. Always have been! So take heart; all of us are going to have celebrate many, many more happy anniversaries together. Never forget how much Lero loves you, how much Twilight loves you, and how much I love you too.”

Wearily, Lyra drew out a long sigh. “What do you love about me, Rarity?”

Concern shone in Rarity’s eyes, but she tilted her head, giving the question good thought. “Well, since it’s hard to pin down your most lovable quality, I’ll tell you the first random thing that popped into my head.”

“What?” asked Lyra.

“I warn you, it IS random!”

“Tell me!” Lyra insisted.

“It’s that next sabbatical you’re planning for us all.”

“Huh?” To Lyra’s surprise, Rarity brought her front hooves against her back and proceeded to massage her muscles.

“You know what I’m talking about, right? The trip you have planned about a year from now, where we’ll be bringing Lero to Mt. Longhorn.” And Rarity pressed her front hooves into the aqua unicorn’s lower spine, rolling them around the sinewy muscles of her back in soothing circles, heading upwards.

“First, let’s talk about this sabbatical you just came from. It goes without saying that we all missed you terribly, Lyra. The difference between you being gone and your being here is as stark as night and day. It hasn’t even been that long since your return, and already Twilight and Lero both have been able to unwind so tremendously, they’re not HALF as stressed as before with you here! You’re good medicine, Lyra Heartstrings.”

“Ohhhh...” Lyra sighed appreciatively, as her pent-up tension slowly melted under the white unicorn’s attentions. Having so much champagne in her system probably didn’t hurt as a muscle relaxer, either.

“But now let’s review the details of next year’s sabbatical!” Rarity said, gently pulling Lyra’s hind legs out from beneath her. With her arms, she was working her way along Lyra’s left hind leg... with magic, she was massaging Lyra’s right hind leg. “This time, instead of you alone, all five of us will be journeying together as a family! We’ll be traveling to high, faraway Mt. Longhorn, in order for that minotaur grandmaster friend of yours... what was his name?”

“Brass Knuckles,” the aqua unicorn breathed, almost sleepily. Behind her back, Twilight and Lero grinned at one another.

“Yes... in order for Brass Knuckles to develop a unique martial arts, tailored for our stallion’s one-of-a-kind body.” Rarity thought a moment. “What’s more, this style is intended NOT for him to defend himself against other humans, but strictly for beings shaped nothing like himself!”

Lyra levitated the champagne bottle over to her lips.

“Just consider all the sentiments behind this trip you’re planning! It perfectly encapsulates just about everything lovable about you, Lyra!”

“How so?” Lyra asked, sipping the last splash of champagne in the bottle... not in sadness, this time, but contentment.

“Well, for one thing, the fact that you’ve gotten all us to agree to set aside several months out of our busy, busy lives... in order to share an exciting experience, broaden our horizons, and bond together as a family!”

Rarity shifted her body upward, focusing her ministrations on the back of Lyra’s neck, along her crest and withers.

“But even so, we won’t simply be gallivanting to this other country as some frivolous pack of vacationing tourists, either! We’ve set a mission for ourselves! We’re seeking to solve a unique problem: can two of the finest minds in martial arts devise a working unarmed combat style for an alien being? Even if you WEREN’T in love with him, Lyra, that requires confidence, creativity, brains, and skill!”

Lero and Twilight watched Rarity’s relaxing strokes of magic spiral along Lyra’s horn, and knead the base of skin, muscle, and fur where the horn was rooted into the rest of Lyra’s head.

“But you DO love Lero. In doing this, you’re looking out for his best interests, as every mare ought to be looking out for her stallion’s! By teaching him unarmed self-defense, you’re seeking to give Lero a skill he can save himself with in case the very worst should happen: him being attacked when he’s all alone, without us! No, there’s more to it than even that! Lero is the lynchpin of our herd; by keeping him alive, you help keep ALL of us united as a family!”

Rarity finished by pressing the whole of her body against Lyra’s back side, treating her to a lovely hug from behind. Her smile spread at Lyra’s lovely sighing beneath her.

“I’m so glad you fell in love with Lero! I’m so happy Lero fell in love with you! And I’m even happier I fell in love with you, too, my sweet songbird.”

Rarity rose off Lyra’s back. The aqua unicorn spun herself around, with her back against the bedcovers. So much like a cat in need of a belly rub, except her expression was yearning and almost heartbreakingly vulnerable. Especially with her tear-streaked eyes.

“Rarity... would you kiss me?”

Rarity dipped her head downward. The kiss she gave her lasted for several seconds; Twilight and Lero watched Lyra’s tail whisk back and forth underneath the white unicorn.

“Wow...” Lyra exhaled, as her Swapped herd-sister broke the kiss. “Would you kiss me again?”

“Only if you actually kiss me back this time,” Rarity answered.

Lyra grinned. “Rare... that won’t be a problem.”

Hotter and heavier, the two mares kissed, Lyra wrapping a foreleg around Rarity’s neck, pulling her closer. In half a minute, the two of them were fighting for control, fighting to set the pace for the steamy lovemaking that was to come. And then Twilight joined in, approaching from the side to kiss Lyra’s cheek, then she and Lyra joined lips, then Rarity kissed Twilight, and Lero sat back and watched three unicorn mares get it on, realizing that he was, in true fact, the luckiest man in the world.

Then he joined the fun as well.

* * *

Among his many, many other powers, Discord possessed the ability to make himself imperceptible. Not simply invisible, but also un-hearable, un-smellable, un-tasteable, and untouchable. It was entirely possible for Discord to give a person a great bear hug in the middle of town square, and that fellow wouldn’t feel it. When imperceptible, Discord gave off no heat signature, either; not even psychics with sixth, seventh, and eighth senses could detect him when Discord wished not to be detected. (Though he still wasn’t entirely certain about Pinkie Pie… well, when she was herself, instead of an Apple Farmer.)

Within the dining room of Rainbow Dash’s cottage, Discord revealed himself to Rainbow Dash. ‘BLARG!’ he shouted to the rainbow-maned pegasus, while stretching both his cheeks out like rubber, and waggling his tongue childishly.

“Ahhh!” Dash started at the sudden appearance, before recovering when she recognized her caller. “D... Discord?” exclaimed the startled lady of the house. “What’re you doing here?”

Discord struck a pose. “Well, I just bought this AMAZING outfit from Applejack, not too long ago, and I wanted a good friend’s opinion on it!”

“Bought it?” Rainbow Dash saw that he was clutching two full shopping bags in one hand; each bag bore the logo of the Carousel Boutique. “With actual money?”

“Of course! I have an bank account here in Equestria! Be honest, what do you think?” The draconequus spun around slowly on his tiptoes, displaying all of his outfit.

Dash decided to avoid the obvious question of how he got money to put in the account; odds are she’d not care to know. Rather, she focused her attention on the outfit. If Lero’s outfit had been an clash of coloration, then Discord’s outfit was an argument of grays. He wore a grey wrestler’s singlet, leggings that had been made of of a burlap potato sack, (the picture of a potato could still be seen through the silver spray paint,) slate-colored knickerbockers, ashen clogs on his feet, and a teakettle helmet. Literally; this piece of headwear had started life as a teakettle, but Applejack had carved the metallic bottom out, so it could be worn as a hat.

“I like it!” said Rainbow Dash, sitting up and smiling for the first time in hours. “It really suits you!”

“Thanks!” said the draconequus. Several flash bulbs from nonexistent cameras shone in Discord’s smiling face as he went over to her table. “I have to say, I love how your own dress complements your cutie mark, Rainbow Dash! It looks absolutely radiant on you.”

Rainbow Dash turned towards the Grand Galloping Gala gown which Applejack had made her all those years ago... and gave it her coldest look. “Does it? I ought to burn it.”

“Why?” asked Discord, the curly spout on his teakettle helmet giving a concerned toot.

“I was a giant jerk in it the last time I wore it, and I was a giant jerk this time, too!”

And she slumped her head down against the tabletop, and squeezed her eyes shut to try and stop further tears, as she’d been crying for all the hours since Lero and Spike had left her house. To Discord, it was like watching some four-legged Miss Havisham from Great Expectations, mere hours after her ruined wedding. Especially in that gown of hers.

But Rainbow Dash looked up at the sensation of some icy cold object pressing against the side of her head, and looked up to see Discord’s holding out a large ice cream sundae towards her.

“If you don’t eat it quickly, it’ll melt!” he warned her kindly.

The sundae had two ice cream scoops, each a different flavor. Having taken food from her draconequus friend before, Dash sniffed at the sundae uncertainly, as though it were an unfamiliar vegetable from a faraway land. She gave it a quick taste.

“I don’t believe it!” she said, brightening. “The whipped cream tastes like whipped cream! The chocolate sauce tastes like chocolate sauce! The sprinkles don’t taste like nacho cheese!”

“I don’t do this for just ANYONE.” Discord stated, giving her an indulgent smile.

She ate from the first scoop of ice cream. “Mmmm! This one’s rose petal sorbet! THANK you! But what’s THIS one?” And she gave an uncertain look to the other scoop of ice cream, next to the sorbet scoop.

“The flavor’s called Pretzel Caramel Crunch.”

Her expression curdled a bit. “Pretzels in ice cream? Dude, that sounds more up YOUR alley.”

“Give it a try!” he encouraged her.

Reluctantly, she did. Her face lit up. “Hey, wow! You know, I would never have gotten this on my own, but it tastes terrific! I’ll remember this one!”

In the days before the Swap, rose petal sorbet had been Fluttershy’s all-time favorite ice cream flavor. Rainbow Dash’s had been Pretzel Caramel Crunch. Discord had gone back in time, just to check, and was delighted to see the swapped version of Dash enjoy them both equally.

“Now what’s wrong?” he asked, patting her.

She stopped eating. “It’s just... it’s just...!”

“It’s Lero, isn’t it?” he said, coldly. “He’s the reason you’re crying, right?”

Rainbow Dash nodded.

“Why, the NERVE of him! I’ll tell you what... I can bring him back here with a snap of my fingers! We’ll teach that uncouth cad a hard lesson about making girls cry!”

When he snapped his fingers, there appeared a startled-looking Lero. Suddenly, Discord was wearing boxing gloves, gym shorts and had a mouthguard in his jaws. Jab! Jab! Hook! Uppercut! The howls and groans of pain Lero gave with each blow put Dash vividly in mind of all the times her animals had attacked him whenever he came over.

“NO! STOP! Don’t hurt him anymore!” Pulling Discord away by the arm, she put herself between him and Lero. “Please! He’s already been hurt so badly because of me.”

And she hugged him in a tender, consoling way.

“That’s not really Lero, you know.” Discord’s tone was quiet and apologetic.

“It’s not?”

“Yeah, it’s just a stupid fake magic prop of mine. I promise.” Another finger-snap from him, and ‘Lero' collapsed into a punching bag with his facial features drawn on it. Startled, Dash released it, and it fell to the floor.

She stared at it for several seconds before sighing. “I guess I should explain what happened.” Rainbow Dash said, seating herself again.

And she did. Discord listened to her entire tale, sympathetically, nodding when it was appropriate and adding occasional prompts to show he was listening. As though he hadn’t witnessed the scene himself, firsthand, from right next to them all as it happened. As though he hadn’t been keeping close tabs on her, on Lero, and all her dearest friends this entire month.

“...This wasn’t what I wanted! I never meant to hurt him! There’s so much that I still want to tell him!”

“Like what?” he asked.

“Like... Like.... I don’t know... I just...” Once again, she looked like she was on the verge of tears.

“Dash, let’s do something therapeutic for you.”

He snapped his fingers. A knock came at the door. Dash automatically got up, opened the door, and it was LERO. Lero, wearing a normal set of jeans, and a button-down shirt. Lero alone, without Spike.

“Hi, Dash. May I come in?”

“L... Lero!” was all Dash could say as he stepped into her house, sitting next to Discord.

“Actually, Dash, I should warn you; this isn’t REALLY Lero Michealides, either. Well, he’ll answer to that name, certainly, but he’s not the one who’s been helping you out. This is an imitation I made, a puppet of mine, formed of magic. Just like the punching bag.”

A glassy, vacuous look slipped into the Fake Lero’s eyes as he sat. To Rainbow Dash, it looked as though the Fake had just eaten some psychotropic mushroom, and was enjoying some blissful light show of a hallucination.

“Well, your magic’s impressive as ever, Discord, but what am I supposed to do with a Fake Lero?”

He shrugged, pouring himself a cup of tea from the spout on his hat. “Same thing you do with any fictional creation: suspend your disbelief. Treat it as if it’s really him. I’m hoping this’ll help.”

“Discord, I don’t...”

“Hey, Dash? The Fake Lero rose from his stupor as easily as a movie star switching emotions, regarding Rainbow Dash with focused, friendly interest. “A friend of mine told me that you were upset over something, and that you wanted to talk to me. What is it? Whatever this new problem is, you know I’m here for you, Dash.”

It was this last sentence that REALLY got to her. With a shuddery breath, she spoke to the imitation. “Lero... when I said the things I said, the last time you were here, all I wanted to do was impress you. I NEVER meant for you to go home feeling like garbage.”

The Fake Lero’s lips set in a hard line. “Well, I won’t pretend that I wasn’t hurt by the things you said.”

“Please understand me... I’m no speechwriter!” she pleaded. “Usually, I’m too shy to even TALK to pon... others. Everything just came out wrong.”

“I see.”

“I’m just amazed at how much you’ve come to mean to me in just one month! Back when my animals were still out of control, each day pretty much began with you stepping inside my door. When you came by, that’s when I knew things wouldn’t hurt as much. In my head, I can still hear the strange little songs that you’d whistle to yourself as you helped me chase the animals around, and tried to get them to behave.”

“Oh? You mean like...” And the Lero whistled a certain tune. Rainbow Dash smiled and nodded along to the familiar melody. “Yeah! Yeah, that’s one of them! Been meaning to ask, does that song you’re whistling have a name?”

“Separate Ways, by an old rock band from Earth called Journey.”

She pointed at his grin. “That’s another thing I love about you: your smiles. You always found a reason to smile when you came over. Even those worried little frowns were nice, in a way... because you only seemed to get upset when I was hurt. You never delighted in my pain, not like my animals. When I was sad, you’d be there to hold me and console me. When the animals hurt me, you always had your first aid kit ready. You were a true buddy, Lero, someone always there for all my ups and downs. Only a month... and you and me... US together, practically feels like second nature to me now. Like breathing in and breathing out.”

“Maybe you SHOULD have been a speechwriter.” Lero laughed.

She would’ve shrugged, but was too busy gazing into his gentle, kind eyes. “When I said what I said, I wanted to show you that I was strong again, strong like I used to be! I could manage all these animals all on my own, I could manage myself on my own again! I wanted to show I could be strong like YOU always are! I just... wanted you to be PROUD of me!”

“But I am proud of you, Rainbow Dash!”

With a lifted heart, she drew forward, settling herself closer against him than she ever had with any boy. “I’ll tell you one thing... that night where you offered to take to take me to live with you for a while at your house... I realize now I should’ve said yes!”

And then she kissed Lero as she might’ve kissed him on that night, if the other mares of his herd hadn’t been present. Longer. Sweeter.

“You’re right, Discord,” she said, calmly pulling away. “This isn’t the real Lero at all.”

“Not that I was ever pretending it WAS to begin with, but what makes you say that?” asked the Chaos God.

“That one time we kissed? It was brief, but Lero KISSED BACK.” Seeing how his conjuration wouldn’t be needed anymore, Discord snapped his fingers and the Fake Lero transformed into a lifeless human marionette on Rainbow Dash’s chair.

“Kissing Lero’s kind of like taking a nibble of some new fruit for the first time: you’re surprised by its deliciousness!” she informed him with a dreamy sigh. “I wanted more! It was like... feeling his lips against mine awoke something within me! Some part of me deeper than my cutie mark!”

“‘Deeper than your cutie mark?’” the draconequus repeated, lifting a shaggy white eyebrow, which levitated up off his head by a few inches. “What an odd way of phrasing it!”

“Well, that’s what it felt like! And this part of me hasn’t really stopped crying since he walked out that...” Rainbow Dash went abruptly silent.

“...Door?” said Discord, never the world’s biggest fan of unfinished sentences, though, admittedly, that was a much more rational way to end than he would normally be tempted.

“I’m in love with him, aren’t I?” She held a hoof to her head. “Celestia help me, but... I think I am.”

“It certainly sounds like it.” She would’ve sat on the floor if Discord hadn’t slid a giant can of tomato paste under her rump; the great tin cylinder somehow soft as a pillow and a suitable substitute for a chair.

“I thought I’d never fall in love like this in my life,” she confessed. “I thought I’d die an old gray mare with just my animals. Probably that’s what my friends thought too, huh?”

“Actually, many of them were betting you’d ultimately end up with Big Macintosh.”

“Big Mac?”

He smirked at her. “I hear tell that he was ready to pursue a certain shy filly doggedly, before he got well hung… up in the hospital!”

She thought it over: her and the stalwart draft pony.

Shortly after she’d taken up temporary residence in that barn at Sweet Apple Acres, Pinkie’s older brother had shown up at her door... and apologized to her. Mac explained that he’d heard of how much trouble Dash had been having, of late. If not for being laid up, he'd have been there to help her, just like Lero had! But now that his injuries had been treated, he was ready to offer his assistance with anything she needed. It had struck her as odd: Mac apologizing to her for being hurt. While she’d insisted that she be left entirely in charge of her animals, she had accepted Big Macintosh’s help in getting needed feed and equipment into the barn. His quiet, strong presence had been a huge comfort that whole day, especially in Lero’s absence…

And the following night, when she’d accepted Pinkie’s offer to share some hard cider (though it took the Apple siblings a bit of convincing to get her to drink), Big Macintosh had even gotten a bit snuggly with Rainbow afterwards, (but then again, so had Pinkie. That cider was strong stuff!) and it made her feel… safe. Comfortable. Relaxed. In retrospect, she realized that she could have easily settled for that once, maybe even let it grow into more given the right circumstances…

...But not anymore. Her time with Lero had ignited something more, more intense, more passionate, something that made her feel like she was burning from the inside out with need… Something she couldn’t pass on. Of course, then another part of Rainbow Dash reminded her what good friends Mac and Lero both were. The two of them were rather cute together whenever they were out and about town, having fun with one another...

She shook her head violently to dispel the sudden lurid mental images that assailed her. No, Bad Dash, she really shouldn’t be thinking about the two of them like that!

...One thing at a time, at least.

“Y’know... I could actually see it working out between me and Mac... in some other lifetime. Or maybe if I could convince him to be a second stallion... But right now, all I can think about is Lero.”

“What a difference a month makes, eh?” grinned Discord.

“But Lero’s not even a stallion himself, though!” she protested.

Discord waggled a finger at Dash. “Oh, Rainbow Dash, my dear friend, what good is THAT kind of attitude?”

“Huh?”

“Perhaps it comes as a natural part of being a Chaos God, or being a patchwork conglomeration of a variety of species, but I’ve ALWAYS had a soft spot for ‘odd couples.’ Why, once I even officiated over a wedding between a gyrfalcon and a killer whale! Oh, how PASSIONATELY in love the two of them were... and STILL are! You should see the house they built for themselves!”

“...How did THAT happen?”

“Well, it... MIGHT’VE been helped along with a little bit of brainwashing by me. Bear in mind, this happened back in that shameful part of my life, not too long after I’d discorded you and your friends... but that’s beside the point! Besides, afterwards I went back and removed my magic, and they decided to stay together after all! True love! Or something. Maybe the sex was good.”

Rainbow Dash snorted in amusement, but nodded; they wouldn’t even be talking today if she hadn’t been able to forgive all the past sins Discord had committed against her and her friends.

“RARITY certainly sees nothing objectionable about her human stallion.”

“But that’s another thing!” Dash objected. “Lero belongs to RARITY, not me!”

“BELONGS to her?” For all of ten seconds, ghostly, holographic images of Lero and Rarity appeared before Rainbow Dash. “Funny, I don’t remember seeing wedding rings on either of them. Or leashes, for that matter.”

Rainbow Dash stared through them at the draconequus. “You know, I’m almost beginning to think you WANT me to go after Lero!”

“The question is not what I want,” the embodiment of chaos told her. “What matters is what YOU want.”

Rainbow went very quiet. Suddenly, Discord was startled to find himself being hugged tight by a cyan pegasus.

“Thank you.” She said.

Discord hid his hand behind his back, pressing the thumb and forefinger together tightly.

* * *

Fluttershy's Replica was tired.

Back in that mad pocket of existence between realities, Discord’s realm, her, plus her other Replica friends, all in a giant daycare-center-for-adults. Five mares... adult in body, but foals in spirit, all causing a great ruckus. Lately, she’d noticed the girls had started talking more, and able to think more clearly. Apparently, his near-constant surveillance of the swapped ponies had slowly started to entrench a bit more respect and affection into Discord for the girls, but they were like young children, which meant they tended to make messes and get into trouble with their antics… causing her care for them to be nearly a full-time job and she could use some help.

Applejack and Pinkie Pie had brought in mud from outside to make mud pies with, Pinkie rattling off stupid jokes, and Applejack laughing uproariously.

“Why is six afraid of seven? Because seven eight nine! What’s brown and sticky? A stick! What’s red and smells like blue paint? Red paint! What did one snowman say to the other? ‘Hey, what smells like carrots?’ What did zero say to eight? Nice belt! Why can’t you hear a pterodactyl go to the bathroom? Because the ‘P’ is silent! What does a nosy pepper do? Get jalapeño business! What’s red and bad for your teeth? A brick! Where do alien otters come from? Otter Space! What do you call a fish with no eyes? A fsh! What do you call a bear with no teeth? A gummy bear! What do you call a fake noodle? An impasta!”

It was hard for Fluttershy to think.

Twilight was pretending she was some valiant unicorn knight she’d read about in a book: smacking a wooden sword against anything that crossed her path: couches, giant teddy bears, even the TV!

“Ha! Take that, Evil Lord Grogar! You too, Evil Vizier Lavan! You too, Evil… Guy Tirek!” SMACK SMACK SMACK!

Rarity was drawing pictures on the wall with crayons, and Rainbow Dash kept bouncing on a trampoline, trying to launch herself high in the sky.

It was all the Replica of Fluttershy could do to chase after them, trying to get them to behave themselves, all by herself.

Suddenly, a great sound reverberated through the daycare; the snap of Discord’s fingers. Five of the mares looked about in confusion, but Rainbow Dash went quite still. For her, it was like a switch had been flicked. Then, coming back to her senses, Dash landed on the ground next to Fluttershy.

“You heard Fluttershy!” Rainbow Dash told all her childish friends. “Come over here, and behave yourselves, all of you!”

As they others came over, the Twilight Sparkle Replica suddenly started crying. “I hit my head with my Blazitron Blade! And it HUUUUUURRTTS!”

“Awww... let’s take a look at it...” Rainbow Dash said, flying over to her unicorn friend. “Ooooh, yeah,” she said, examining the spot Twilight had knocked herself. “This is a VERY SERIOUS injury.”

She looked at Fluttershy. “Blazitron Blades are capable of slicing through mountains made of solid diamond. Did you know that, Fluttershy?”

“No,” said the yellow pegasus. “I didn’t!”

“Well, they do. So it’s only natural that Twilight, here, gave herself a serious owie when she hit herself with it. So now let’s have a look.”

And the Fluttershy Replica was very happy that in the Rainbow Dash Replica, she finally had a fellow adult to talk to and help care for her less-mature friends.

* * *

Lero and Twilight lay asleep against each other on the bed, disheveled and sweaty, held tightly together by Lero's arm curled over her barrel and up between her forelegs. Their soft snoring broke for a moment as Lero held Twilight tighter and curled himself around her, and a little sleepy smile played across Twilight's lips.

Though Lyra also had her eyes shut, she was not asleep, no more than Rarity was. Her songbird was playing her clàrsach, eyes closed, as deep into the life of her music as can be. The instrument floated by Lyra’s shoulder in a haze of the aqua unicorn’s magic, the strings almost seeming to pluck themselves. The tune was serene enough that their other two herdmates would not be awoken by it.

Rarity lay herself down near enough to hear better, but not so close as to disturb Lyra. But as soon as Rarity did so, however, Lyra’s music subtly shifted and the passion of it grew and breathed.

Closing her own eyes, Rarity was soon surprised to hear Lyra adding her sweet voice to the music in a language Rarity didn’t know herself.

"Un Arcobaleno a metà, una Rarità a metà,

Sei nata dal caos di un disastro imprevisto.

La metà di due anime separate fuse insieme.

Un Arcobaleno a metà, una Rarità a metà,

Sei una principessa anche per me!"

The foreign words filled the air with their soft, romantic sound, the lyrics sung without rhyme or even a consistent meter. And yet they worked. The sensuality playing at her thoughts through words she couldn’t understand was almost magical.

"Il tuo principe t'ama!

La tua maga t'adora!

Il tuo piccolo drago t'ammira!

Ed anche il tuo usignolo t'ama.

Il mio prezioso vecchio e nuovo amore."

Rarity could feel her pulse race with the increasing tempo, and her hooves curled inward with a sublime tension at the sweetness of Lyra’s voice at tonal odds with that of the clàrsach. Her mouth opened and her deep breaths sighed out, miraculously timed with the ebb and flow of the music of the strings.

"Niuno di noi pensava te potessi esser così forte in 'ste miriadi di modi!

Niuno di noi pensava te potessi essere così affettuosa!

Ma anch'il tuo usignolo è forte, ed anch'ei t'ama.

Sarà lì per sostenerti, a prescinder da tutto.

Quindi benvenuta a casa nostra!"

The music built and Lyra’s voice lifted and carried a high, clear, sweet note, finally fading under a waterfall cascade of notes plucked softly from the strings.

"Finché ci amerai, noi ameremo te."

As the last deeper notes of the clàrsach faded, Rarity felt soft touch of a pony’s lips on hers, and she felt her body demanding to leap forward and wrap her arms around the pastel green pony.

The light pressure of a hoof brushing down her neck and held against her chest convinced her to stay, to accept that kiss, just as a sweet note plucked from the clàrsach should resonate on its own. Her voice caught in her throat as Lyra began ever so slowly to pull back; a high, sweet sound that grew to slowly fill with desire and pleading as Rarity stretched her neck to keep her lips pressed to Lyra’s.

She opened her eyes as the kiss ended to see Lyra gazing at her with those astounding golden eyes; playful and serene and passionate all at once.

“Oh my dear, sweet songbird,” Rarity breathed, “that was beautiful. What... may I ask what it was?”

Lyra smiled softly and kissed Rarity again before finally answering. “It's how I see you, Rarity.”

Rarity was speechless.

Author's Note

Special thanks goes to WolfeTrax, for writing about 60-70% of this chapter. Wolfe... I could not be more grateful.

Also, Rikmach and SpinelStride. It was FUN editing this chapter together with you guys; all four of us, all at once!

And now, the translation of Lyra's song to Rarity in proper English. Much thanks to Devas for providing a better Italian translation than what I'd originally written!

Divided Rainbow, Divided Rarity,
You were born from the chaos of an unforeseen disaster.
Half of two separate souls fused together.
Divided Rarity, Divided Rainbow,
You are a princess to me too!

Your prince loves you!
Your enchantress reveres you!
Your little dragon idolizes you!
And your songbird loves you, too.
My precious new old love.

None of us thought you could be so strong in so many ways!
None of us thought you could be so affectionate as you are!
But your songbird is also strong, and she loves you, too.
She'll be there for you to rely on, no matter what.
So welcome to our home!

For as long as you all love us, we shall love you.

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Twenty-One: Three Diamonds

On the thirty-second day after a certain spell had swapped the cutie marks of five ponies, Lero Michaelides awoke, surprised to find himself alone in bed.

“Rarity?” he called. “Twilight? Lyra?”

No answer.

He yawned and glanced at the wall clock: it was already after ten! By this time, Rarity was probably out doing her weather work, while Twilight was probably with Lyra at her special place in the forest. The girls must all have decided to let him sleep in.

Lero sat up and stretched, slowly letting himself wake up, and with a deep breath the mixed scents of his mares filled his senses, and the memories of yesterday – and last night – began to fill his thoughts. He savored that one floral scent that hadn’t been there a month ago — that mixture of lilac and lavender. Instead of the dread he’d used to associate with it, the smell made him feel content and happy; happier than he’d been in what felt like forever. It wasn’t a replacement for the scent that had been lost, but definitely now a welcome addition. He breathed in the fragrance again before finally pushing himself up to stand and start the day, as late as it was.

After showering, grooming, and dressing himself, Lero decided that rather than join Lyra and Twilight for their exercising, meditation, and discussion, it was time to begin seriously focusing on helping the last two swapped ponies whose lives still lacked equilibrium. But it was difficult for him to settle on which one to go for first.

Applejack or Fluttershy? He asked himself, while descending the stairs.

Fluttershy or Applejack? He pondered, while entering the kitchen.

Spike stood atop a chair in front of the sink, busily washing yesterday’s dishes. With all that had gone down the previous day, no one had given a thought to cleaning.

“Morning, Spike,” he said, striding past the little guy towards the fridge.

CLUNK.

Lero flinched at the loud noise. He turned around. With unnecessary loudness, Spike had dropped the newly washed-and-dried saucepan down on the countertop. Lero recalled using that saucepan while cooking salmon en croute for Rarity last night.

Disregarding it as an accident, Lero opened the fridge, considering his options. Hmm. There was still a lot of early anniversary cake left over from last night! Certainly wasn’t balanced-breakfast material, to be sure... but, oh what the heck! It was closer to noon than not, right? And what was wrong with a little self-indulgence every now and again? Especially today. So he brought out the cake plus the jug of apple juice... just to be a LITTLE on the healthy side! And soon enough, Lero was enjoying a very sweet meal indeed.

“Fluttershy or Applejack? Applejack or Fluttershy?” he asked himself out loud this time, tapping his fork against his chin. “Three mares under my belt, two left. Which lucky lady shall I tackle next?”

THUNK!

Lero looked over, baffled: This time, it was the popcorn bowl he’d brought upstairs when he and the girls had been watching that Pony Chicks movie. This was increasingly unlikely to be an accident.

“Hey, Spike,” the human commented dryly, “Is there a reason you have to be so noisy about washing dishes?”

Spike stopped and stood very still. He didn’t turn away from the sink. He said nothing. After some seconds he resumed dishwashing.

So Lero shrugged and returned to his brainstorming. “And how best to start the ball rolling... break the ice and get down to business?”

He thought some more, spinning his fork around in the middle of his half-eaten slice of cake.

“Hey, Applejack!” he spoke, imagining the swapped palomino mare was with him. “As bad luck has it, I’ve come down with a bad case of unemployment. But the good news is, I’ve always been the biggest fashion ace ever to walk the earth since needle first met thread! Yes, I know it might’ve SEEMED like my interest in fashion was lukewarm-at-best for all the years you’ve known me... but hey, I was JUST BLUFFING the whole time! So! Maybe we could be of mutual assistance to each other?”

SLAM!

The ceramic plate came down on the countertop with such force, it was a marvel neither of them broke.

“SPIKE!” Lero thundered. This was clearly intentional and reckless, so his voice was at full angry-parent volume. “What the HELL is going on?! It’s one thing to be loud, but now you’re almost breaking them! Didn’t you hear me?”

Spike still had yet to turn around to face the human. But his little claws clenched into fists and his head looked down into the water.

“...didn’t you hear me, Lero...?” Spike’s voice sounded... off, somehow. A little fainter than normal. Unnatural. He almost had to strain to hear him. Lero had a strong intuition that Spike’s question had nothing to do with dishes.

“What do you mean?” the human asked.

“And we definitely won’t be letting young dragons interrupt us in the foyer!” the dragon exclaimed. His voice was lowered, a mocking little-boy tone that tried to match that of Lero, himself. And then the dragon’s voice went higher and feminine, a mock imitation of Rarity. “That was very embarrassing.”

Lero burned with sudden embarrassment and... regret. He heard?! Spike had HEARD them?! Lero’s stomach dropped. Even though both feet were still firmly planted on the floor, it still felt like his body was plummeting down a chasm.

The end of Spike’s tail gave a slight twitch to one side as he picked up a champagne flute and dunked it into the dishwater.

“That’s what you think of me, huh? BOTH of you. Spike the Interruption. That’s what I am.”

“Spike, what were you — no! That’s not what I meant! That’s not what EITHER of us meant!”

Lero stood up and took a step around the table, reaching out to Spike.

“Stay right where you are!” Lero froze in place, feeling ashamed and trying desperately to think. There HAD to be SOMETHING he could say to set all this right!

Spike turned back and pulled a champagne glass out of the dishwater and rubbed it with a rag.

SQUEEEEK----UUUUUHHHHH----SQUUEEEEEK---UUUUUUUUHHH....

“Heh heh heh heh heh... did you know I was crying into my pillow last night until long after midnight? Heh heh heh heh... of course you didn’t. You and Rarity were too busy with OTHER THINGS.”

SQUEEEEK----UUUUUUUHHH----SQUUEEEEEK---UUUUUUUUHHH....

The sound produced by that dishrag dragging across the glass of the champagne flute filled Lero with a vague, uncertain dread.

“Gotta hand it to you, big brother, NOBODY bounces back from loss and tragedy quite as fast as YOU do! And then Lyra and Twilight came home, and OH what a PARTY the four of you had! I heard every bit of it through my bedroom walls while I was crying and crying and NOT ONE OF YOU CARED. NONE OF YOU CAME TO CHECK UP ON ME. NONE OF YOU GIVE A FLYING FEATHER ABOUT ME.”

“That’s not true!” Lero cried, imploringly. “We LOVE you, Spike! All of us love you with all of our hearts!”

“Like you loved Rainbow Dash with all your heart?!” The stem of the champagne flute snapped and crunched in the young dragon’s clawed grip. Its glass cup fell and shattered sharply on the floor. Spike ignored it, casually brushing away the glass shards embedded in his scaly hands.

“Movies! Popcorn! Music! Cake! And let’s not forget: plenty and plenty of K-I-S-S-I-N-G! Yesterday, you and Twilight and Lyra CELEBRATED Dash being gone... like she was Star Sparkle or Honeydew!”

“It wasn’t a celebration of losing Dash...!” Lero started, a tiny bit of heat in his voice.

“SHUT UP!” snarled Spike, cutting him off. At last, Spike turned around. He clearly hadn’t gotten a wink of sleep last night. His bleary, teary red eyes held tremendous pain. Lero felt scummier with each passing second he looked into them, and he tried not to look away in shame. “And you took my girl, Lero. I mean, you’ve got THREE GIRLS ALREADY, and you just helped yourself to the ONLY ONE that I loved! You know, they call us DRAGONS greedy, but we’ve got NOTHING on YOU, big brother!”

Spike dropped from the chair and fell to his knees among the glass shards, weeping on the floor, and the dragon’s terrible words forced Lero to remember the vision Rarity had granted him; the vision of Rainbow Dash on the beach, telling him that it would all be okay.

Was it wrong? Was it right? A lustful, conniving femme fatale of a unicorn would’ve conjured a pretty, seductive mirage for Lero to fall for, just to get in his pants. But Rarity was not that girl. Rarity had fought and nearly died for him, and for all the members of his herd, she’d done nothing but love and give. For all the turmoil she’d bought into their lives, Rarity was uncategorically on their side. And so Lero believed, all the way to his core, that the vision had been real. Though Lero doubted Spike would agree.

And yet... there was one thing Spike was 100% right about. One thing to which there was no moral ambiguity.

From the time he had returned home from Rainbow Dash’s cottage and watched the heartbroken young dragon race to his bedroom... Lero truly HADN’T spared a single thought for Spike. He HADN’T considered the boy’s feelings. Caught up in the moment, he had simply repeated the same awful mistake he’d made with Twilight: he’d put so much importance on his Swapped friends — their feelings and their happiness — that he’d ignored his own Unswapped family. And once again, they had suffered for it.

God forgive him.

Words failed Lero... until he looked up and saw what was billowing from Spike’s nostrils and mouth.

“Spike?” he asked, in a faltering voice. “Is that you? What are you doing?!”

It poured from Spike’s mouth and nostrils like a campfire. The dragon rose to his feet, with a dismaying reptilian glare of coldness. When he spoke, his voice no longer had any aspect of the young boy. It was all menacing dragon, however small he was. “So what if it is?”

“Spike... I know you’re upset, but you have no right endangering our home!” Lero said, suddenly angry again and pointing his finger sternly. “Now calm down and...” He started with a reconciling tone.

FWOOOOM!!!

PAIN! Reflexively Lero jerked his hand away. Fire! FIRE! Dense and red and hot, an inferno dancing all over his hand! The ancient, primal fear filling him, Lero screamed and backed away in horror.

“DON’T YOU DARE POINT THAT FINGER OF YOURS AT ME!” Spike raged. “LIKE YOU’RE IN THE RIGHT!”

It burned! It burned! Oh God, it burned so bad!

As he screamed again and clutched his hand, he looked at Spike... and it didn’t matter that Spike was three feet tall and not as big as a mountain top, it didn’t matter that Spike was just a couple dozen pounds, instead of heavy as a house, and it didn’t matter that Spike’s mouth wasn’t big enough to gobble him down whole like the dragons of fairy tales. His eyes dripped hatred. His sharp claws were out. His pointed teeth were bared. And flames and smoke roiled and churned in his maw.

The little boy had disappeared. Before Lero now stood a creature of myth. On Earth; a metaphor for the unending destruction of fire, the fear of the alien reptile, and the unending consumption of greed. In Equestria; very real, capable of chewing rubies and bathing in molten lava. And here Lero was, soft and cookable, in a house made of wood and filled with thousands upon thousands of very flammable books. Spike had the power — he had ALWAYS had the power! — to burn this whole house down around him, with Lero in it, and he could just walk away unharmed from the blazing wreckage.

“If you EVER point those fingers at me like that again,” seethed the dragon whose greatest treasure Lero had stolen, “I swear on everything Rarity was that I’ll BITE THEM RIGHT OFF!!!”

His index finger had gotten the worst of it; it pained him most, and looked ugliest. But the rest of the burn on Lero’s right hand was only slightly less of a blistered, swollen red mass. The nerves in his hand were still screaming in agony at him, the fire might as well still be upon it.

“What... what are you going to do, Spike?” he asked, attempting to keep his voice steady, but the strain and shakiness from his pain and fear relentlessly seeping in. He backed away slowly from the enraged baby dragon now stalking towards him. “Are you gonna kill me?”

“Oh, the thought HAS crossed my mind.” Seething billows of hot smoke poured from between Spike’s tightly clenched and very pointy teeth. Lero could vividly imagine his throat being simultaneously clamped down upon and chargrilled.

“Spike, please, you’ve got to listen to me...!”

The jet of flame Spike shot from his jaws came mere inches from cooking Lero’s left ear; he felt the heat rush past it and smelled the stench of singed hair. He jerked his head away, throwing himself awkwardly to the floor. It was not a small flame, either. They were lucky nothing had caught fire. Especially him.

“THAT was a warning shot,” Spike growled to the human. “Now you’re going to shut up and do what I tell you to! Nod if you understand.”

Lero nodded.

“Good. Now, hands in the air.”

Lero awkwardly got to his feet, raising his hands. His adrenaline was pumping so hard through his veins that his hand’s throbbing felt distant, like it was happening to someone else.

“You’re going to turn around and walk into the bathroom. SLOWLY. No sudden movements, or tonight I’m serving Bellerophon Flambé for dinner!!” he snarled, exactly like a thug during a stickup.

“Alright, Spike, alright.” When Lero turned around, he heard Spike grab something that gave a small, metallic-sounding scrape. Step by careful step, Lero headed towards the downstairs bathroom, his hands in the air. “See? I’m cooperating nicely! Peacefully! We don’t have to resort to anything drastic, do we?”

“I said shut up!” Spike snarled from right behind him. When Lero finally entered the downstairs bathroom, the angry young dragon remained by the door and shut the human inside. Lero heard a key turning in the door’s lock.

“Spike? Spike?!” Lero now could hear the sound of dragon feet running away from the bathroom. He tried the doorknob, but it was well and truly locked. He pounded on the door. “Spike! Whatever you’re planning, you don’t want to do anything you’re going to regret later on!”

From the next room over, the dragon gave a loud, evil chuckle that raised every hair on Lero’s back, neck, and arms. “Oh, don’t worry! I’m not going to regret a THING I’m about to do to you, Lero!”

Lero’s burned hand throbbed worse than ever... and Lero imagined what it would be like to experience that pain across all the rest of his body, as well. He heard Spike’s feet padding back towards the bathroom door.

“Are you ready, Lero? Heh heh heh...”

“NO!” he cried. “PLEASE!"

“Dear Princess Celestia...”

“DON'T… What?!” Lero could hear a quill scratching across paper.

“Last night, I learned some valuable lessons from Twilight, Lyra, Rarity, and especially from Lero.” Spike called through the door, narrating his own writing. “First, they taught me that grownups make their most important life decisions based on what’s between their legs; a lesson I intend to make good use of, well into my own adulthood.”

All sorts of shame crashed down upon Lero’s head.

“What do you think so far? I learned an awful lot writing all of those letters for Twilight, Lero!” Spike taunted. “But even more importantly, they taught me the most valuable lesson about family and friends! Namely; to recognize when they don’t actually respect you.”

Lero slammed his good fist against the door. “We DO respect you, Spike! We LOVE you!”

“YOU CAN TRY,” Spike bellowed, angrily raising his voice above Lero’s, “to be reasonable and understanding about what your other family members are going through during a weird situation. Particularly if it involves a certain Swapped pony hitting on everyone else BUT you. You can try to find a middle ground with them, to keep things from going too far. But last night I learned that if one pony’s offering herself while the other isn’t... guess which one’s family? Guess which one isn’t?”

“Spike... please...” The weight of Lero’s growing guilt felt like it would crush his heart. He flinched when Spike leaned hard against the door and hammered at it with his dragon fist.

“I know you must’ve thought I’d just put up with your horse apples forever and ever!” Spike shouted at him, “That you being older than me makes you KING... But last night, you and everyone else went too far! INCLUDING Rarity!”

Then Lero heard Spike pick his quill and paper up again, and resumed dictating his vitriolic letter.

“But here’s some good news, Princess Celestia! My four herdmates will never have to worry about that pesky baby dragon walking in on their fun ever again! Why? Because I’m moving out! I’ll be running off straight through the Everfree Forest until I find some magical place to TRULY call home! A place where there are no Swapped ponies to tiptoe around! I’m fed up with my emotions being toyed with, every which way! I’m sick of no one REALLY caring about anyone else! And I’m SO done with being treated like a slave... PARTICULARLY with having to be the one to wash their stained, musty bedsheets! I’m sick of the Swap, sick of Twilight, sick of Lyra, sick of Rarity trampling all over my heart, but above all else, I’m sick of the dirty, thieving APE they all love!

Best Wishes,

Spike.”

Lero tried calling Spike’s name again, shouted demands that the little dragon unlock the door... but he only heard Spike run off, and soon the front door opened with a bang and slammed shut behind him with a louder bang. The human felt his body slide against the bathroom door towards the floor. He’d never imagined Spike would’ve ever hurt him.

Nor had Lero ever imagined he’d hurt Spike so badly. The little guy really, truly, HATED him. No tears fell from his eyes, but the human’s heart felt hollow and crushed as he thought about Spike’s tears, and Spike’s teeth, and the fire he’d hurt him with.

Him and Spike: enemies. He felt like a wicked stepfather. Lero felt like he could roll over and die...

For a few angry seconds, resentment flared inside him. What a HYPOCRITE that little dragon was! The ONLY reason he was upset was that it’d been Rarity! If it’d been ANY of the other Element Bearers who’d swapped into Dash’s role... Spike wouldn’t have raised a peep, would he?! Spike would’ve acted like some side character in a sitcom, dropping clever quips every now and then, as Applejack or Pinkie Pie or Fluttershy treated his older herdmates like longtime lovers. Then he’d have gone chasing after Rarity the Farmer, or Rarity the Animal Caretaker, or Rarity the Party Queen... just as surely as he’d always chased after Rarity the Fashionista! Half the domestic drama he’d suffered was thanks to that stupid dragon’s puppy crush!

But then Lero thought of how Spike had cried yesterday, when they’d been walking back from Dash’s cottage. Spike could be immature and selfish as hell... but he really HAD loved Rainbow Dash. And it would’ve hurt him to lose her as a sister, regardless of who’d taken her place.

He shook his head. Enough! He was wasting time. Spike was running away from home, running towards the Everfree Forest! Lero needed to catch up with the dragon before he REALLY had something to wallow in misery over! His burned hand hurt as he used it to prop himself up to a stand.

Lero looked about the room, from the door to the window. Now to solve the bewildering mystery of how he was going to escape this bathroom. Yell for help? Break down the door? Worth a shot: he tried ramming the door with his shoulder.

SLAM!

“Ow.”

* * *

Blazing resentment ate at Spike’s heart as he ran through the streets of Ponyville. Every few steps a little choked sob leaked out, but every time it happened he crushed it down, letting anger and hate fill the empty space that was burned away in his heart, and his little clawed hands clenched with rage.

That human! What a selfish, heartless, dream-crushing, sleazy, two-timing home-wrecker! And his name was dumb, to boot! The worst day of Spike’s life was when Twilight made the mistake of falling for that ape — even if Spike hadn’t known it at the time! What a JERK!

It was one thing for Twilight to fall for Rarity... and Lyra too! Girls falling in love with other girls was, like, normal. A natural part of ponies forming their herds. But for LERO, the ‘stallion’ to place himself at the center of that, for him to take advantage of Rarity offering herself when he KNEW she wasn’t in her right mind, for him to steal away Spike’s future girlfriend...!

Oh, Spike should’ve KNOWN better than to even let Lero enter their home. That slimeball! All those days watching him and Rarity grow closer and closer... Well, they could HAVE each other now! What did HE care?!

Spike sniffled and unclenched and reclenched his fists, as if relentlessly squeezing something, growling in furor. Smoke leaked from his mouth and nostrils. Ponies walking nearby got out of his way in a hurry, stepping across the street from him and breaking into a quick trot... away from the grumbling, smoking dragon.

Rarity! Spike would never be able to think anything good of that mare ever again! So what if she was under a spell?! So what if she ‘didn’t TRULY understand’ how her actions, her infatuation of that stupid human affected him?! There were only so many times a guy could put up with a girl ‘unintentionally’ ripping his heart apart before reaching his limit! And Twilight! Ha! What would she even do without him? Forced to reorganize all her own books herself! Forced to write her own checklists! Forced to wait for the POSTAL SERVICE to deliver her friendship reports to the Princess, instead of being able to have instant-access to her! Wouldn’t THAT be funny?! Wouldn’t SHE be distraught?!

Well, serves her right! Serve them ALL right, for forgetting about him! He’d show them all he could be just as heartless as they were! And he’d be more SUCCESSFUL in life than all of them put together! He’d find some BETTER ponies to take him in, somewhere on the opposite end of the Everfree Forest, put himself to use for them, and Twilight’s herd would BEG him to come back home, and he’d tell Twilight to hatch a new egg for herself before laughing in all their faces: ha ha ha ha HA!!!

Midway through the marketplace, however, Spike ran out of breath. Damn it! He was out of shape. He shouldn’t have scarfed down so many sapphires and rubies this month: corundums were notoriously fattening! (Not to mention all the cookies and cakes and doughnuts he’d been helping himself to, as well.)

Spike found himself a bench to sit down and catch his breath, panting as he gave his leg muscles a chance to cool and stop feeling so weak and wobbly. However, as he sat, attempting to relax his legs, he found his temper slowly cooling off, and suddenly this all started seeming less and less like a good idea. He set his mind to reviewing everything he’d done since blowing up at Lero.

How stupidly he was going about this. Running away from home was all fine and dandy, but he hadn’t taken any money with him! No food, either! All he’d brought from home was his stupid quill and inkwell, and the letter he’d written to Celestia. Really, he’d already tried to run away once, he should have been better prepared for the second time.

Remembering the letter, Spike held it up, unfolded it, and skimmed it over a second time. Huh. While writing these words, Spike thought he’d been witty and scathing. It was still scathing on the second read-through, but witty? Not so much. It sounded more... petty. Nasty. Childish... and not in the good way that a child like him could be proud of. Did he really want to send Princess Celestia a letter like THIS?

He would’ve burned it to ash, except this might’ve accidentally mailed it to Celestia. So instead, Spike tore the letter up into the tiniest pieces he could, and tossed them all in a nearby marketplace rubbish bin.

As his anger had calmed, the smoke he’d been huffing out steadily faded away as he sat there and thought. Now what was he going to do? Was he really going to enter the Everfree Forest? He didn’t know how to navigate through the wilds, even if he was just cutting through to another town! He remembered there being a dragon living in a cave somewhere in the Everfree... but he’d been mean, and most certainly unwilling to welcome a baby dragon. Come to think of it, an awful LOT of dragons tended to be mean, and most ponies seemed to know that.

So where could he go? Who would take him in? Who would give him a chance? Hard to say. What would become of him, all alone, especially in a worse-case scenario? Would he be a thief? A beggar? Another foul-tempered feral dragon, living in the forest?

Dead?

No! It would never come to that. He was the number one assistant of Princess Celestia’s faithful student; it was only a matter of time before somepony freed Lero from that bathroom, or Lero freed himself. If he wasn’t free already. Simply a matter of time before they sent search parties after him, before Twilight, Rarity, and Lyra, themselves, went looking for him. And they were ‘only’ three of the strongest, smartest, most magical unicorns he knew of. Frankly, Spike had never been great shakes at hide-and-seek to begin with.

Ponies passed Spike by as he sat on his bench. Happy mothers with happy foals. Happy herds. Happy individuals Spike knew had come from happy herds. It made him feel more alone than ever.

...Would it really be THAT horrible, continuing to live with his family? They’d proven themselves to be selfish, last night, but they’d never been all-around EVIL. Not even Lero. Maybe they didn’t care about him as much as he thought they cared, but they cared SOME.

Spike remembered little Ruby Pinch, who was the same age of the Cutie Mark Crusaders. She thought the world of her drunkard mother, Berry Punch. Little Ruby could always be counted on to defend her mother, even as Berry’s progressively worsening boozing had caused her to start to neglect her daughter more and more. Maybe he could stand to live with bad parents, as well. Maybe. Even if it was just to get by.

...He loved Twilight so much. Even if he couldn’t have Rarity... they still had something special, didn’t they? He was her number one assistant, after all, and she always said it with the nicest smile, like she really loved him and really meant it. When he came home, maybe she’d at least pretend to understand where he was coming from.

But wow, they’d all be so MAD at him when he got back home! And even if he grit his teeth and bore it, their bedroom shenanigans with Rarity would NEVER be a thing Spike could stomach easily. Wasn’t there ANYTHING he could do to make this situation more bearable? Less painful to deal with?

He looked to the quill and ink he still carried, then to a poster on a wall: LOST PUPPY: ZIPPY. And he realized; yes, there was something he could do. One last compromise to try.

Spike ripped the poster off the wall, and composed another, better message on the back side:

Dear Princess Celestia,

Since the days I was young enough to write words for Twilight onto paper, I have served you and your faithful student faithfully. Everything from sorting books to sending super-important messages between you and Twilight. I do what I do with almost no complaint. I don’t ask for much in life. A sturdy roof over my head, a soft bed to sleep in at night, a serving of precious gemstones to get me through the day... nothing extravagant or unreasonable.

So now I have a huge favor to ask, in honor of all my dutiful dutifulness. I want my name removed from Discord’s exemption list. I want him to Bewitch me. Dealing with all this insanity has become almost more than I can bear! It’s changed my whole family! It’s gotten to the point where I don’t think I can even stand to live with any of them, unless I get Bewitched!

Please, Princess, I’ve done so much for you, and I don’t want to have to run away from home! Can’t you find it in your heart to do this for me?

Your Obedient Servant,

Spike

There! Perfect! Before he could let himself change his mind, he breathed a blast of green fire at the rolled up message. He watched the smoke curl up in the air and whisk it towards Celestia’s palace. He tried not to feel too pleased with himself; after all, it wasn’t like he had a real choice. The only way he could see himself dealing with a Rarity who loved Lero was to forget he ever had special feelings for her. This way, he could look upon Rarity kissing Lero, and feel as even-keel about it as if she really HAD been Rainbow Dash, herself. The Swap was ALREADY turning his life into a lie. Might as well go all-out!

He waited. And waited. And waited. Discord did not come. Spike considered the possibility that Discord HAD come, invisibly, but Spike knew his memories hadn’t been altered. He still remembered the days of Rarity being a fashionista.

“C’mon, c’mon!” He grumbled under his breath.

He waited.

“COME ON!!!” He shouted at the sky.

He waited some more. His spiked tail thumped the ground. His little claws balled into fists in frustration.

“What’s TAKING you so long?!” He shouted at the ground.

“I know you’re here!” He yelled into a drainpipe (with Discord, you just never knew!) “I know you’re watching me! You’re watching ALL of us, all the time! I’m ASKING you to come change my brain! Why would you POSSIBLY be dragging your heels?! Or is it just not FUN for you when the victim’s willing?!”

“Spike?”

The young dragon turned from the drainpipe spout. From a few yards away, Applejack stared at him with alarm and worry. Newly-bought groceries sat in the saddlebags she wore.

* * *

It was the first time Spike had set foot in the Carousel Boutique since Rarity had begun living in his house. Looking from ponyquin to ponyquin was so mind-boggling an experience, it was enough to drive his unhappiness away for a little while.

“Ah see they caught yer eye,” Applejack said, shrugging the grocery bags off her back, right in the middle of her showroom. “So which one d’ya like best?”

Spike first considered the ponyquin farthest to the left. Sheer white silk shimmered like the sun, draping gracefully backward and swelling into wide, full skirts. Matching golden shoes complemented it perfectly. A multicolored veil draped back from the neckline, so light as to float in the air.

"This one’s fantastic, Applejack, but I think a fat-flanked Celestia costume is a little too daring, don't you?" Spike suggested.

“Celestia costumes are timeless... never REALLY go outta style; haven’t fer centuries. Though Ah agree; Ah might’ve given a bit too MUCH leeway on the flank, though. Ya think it might not be too late ta do alterations on it?”

“Worth a try,” Spike said, diplomatically, and looked over at the next set of ponyquins to the right.

Black plates gleamed with an ominous oily sheen as the light played across them, each forcefully warped and worked into shape, leaving countless horseshoe-shaped dents across its otherwise-ungiving surface. The unholy hybrid between a coffin and a hockey mask seemed to have little in the form of cloth or articulation about it, though its heavy hinges clearly showed it was meant to open rather like an iron maiden. No limbs marred its unique cocoon-like appearance. No openings but for a small slit for the eyes, and a small grille for the snout.

"Missus Cake'll never have to worry 'bout Pound Cake gettin' hurt with those li’l numbers! Soon, every mother'll be wanting one for their foals," Applejack proudly announced. "Ah lined it with lead, too."

“Lead?”

“Fer protection,” she explained. “And don’t you love how they match the one Ah made fer Mrs. Cake, herself?”

Spike gave his best show of an approving nod, while looking at the next one. It was... boxy. Very boxy. Actually made out of wooden boxes for the most part, in fact. Lero would have recognized the pattern immediately, painted mostly in reds and blues, with an open-faced box over the head and more boxes on each leg.

“Transformative, ain’t it?” asked Applejack.

“Transformative... it certainly... IS that!” Spike agreed. “Optimally so. Prime, even."

Applejack was silent for a brief moment. “Why thank yew kindly, Spike! Ah might just have to borrow that name from ya! So you like that one best?” the former farmer asked, hopefully.

“I think so!” Spike could actually remember designing an outfit like this for himself, long ago, when pretending to be a daring fairytale knight. It had even been made of boxes, like this was. He’d used up a wealth of grey crayons, coloring the cardboard ‘armor!’

Applejack beamed at her young dragon friend. “Come inta the kitchen with me, Spike, lemme give yew a treat!”

She picked her grocery bags up in her mouth, and Spike followed her into the Carousel’s Boutique’s kitchen. What he saw stopped Spike in his tracks, and he gasped and felt cold all over again.

With the Carousel Boutique’s showroom, you would be appalled by the sheer horrific tastelessness of the dresses on display. But at least the showroom had been kept CLEAN, for whatever few customers had happened by. But the kitchen... the kitchen was appalling for its sheer FILTHINESS.

Trash cans overflowing with refuse were the first thing Spike saw. Then his surprised eyes darted from one horrifying spot to the next. More trash, empty boxes, dishes and flatware, and the molding remains of past meals were piled across the countertops. He walked across the floor, and discovered it was... sticky. An overripe stench hung in the air; old rotten banana peels and coffee grounds, mostly-empty cat food cans, and a few other equally pungent, um, things. Spike knew he couldn’t run and he couldn’t hold his breath for long, so the fire-breathing dragon started taking desperate, shallow breaths. He was starting to think of a really positive use for his fire at this moment.

Rarity had always been a fastidiously neat, cleanly sort of girl, and she remained so even after her Swap. (Just one small part of what made her so lovable!) Whereas Applejack, (especially in direct contrast with Rarity) was not. Yet Spike knew that what he was seeing went far beyond Applejack’s high tolerance of dirt. Even before the swap, Applejack knew to throw garbage out, and keep her home clean. Sweet Apple Acres might be a farm where ponies sweated and toiled and got dirty all day long, but their house was always clean and homey. So no, this was a clear indication of how far Applejack’s dressmaking addiction had consumed her. Particularly given what sat in the center of this room.

“Why... Applejack, why did you bring your sewing machine into the middle of your kitchen?” Spike questioned.

Applejack shrugged while pulling open the refrigerator door. “Inspiration room weren’t givin’ me the right inspiration no more. Bedroom weren’t givin’ me the right inspiration either. Thought Ah’d give the kitchen a shot.”

Spike saw the fridge was an empty as the day it’d first been bought; nothing but stains inside. It was a relief to see Applejack loading groceries into it.

“Can I ask what yew were hollerin’ about, out’n the streets?” she asked him.

“I was yelling for Discord,” said Spike, because his tongue was just thirty times faster than his brain today.

A bag of snap peas fell out of Applejack’s mouth. “Discord?”

“Y-yeah,” the dragon said, trying to think quickly as he ran to scoop the fallen pea pods back in their bag for AJ. Ick, the floor was still sticky. “S...something happened that REALLY upset me, and I wanted Discord to... to wash it right out of my brain.”

“What were yew tryin’ to forget?”

“IT’S PRIVATE!” he growled, with anger he did not need to fake. “Please, Applejack, for the love of... EVERYTHING, just don’t ask me, okay?! I don’t even want to remember that it happened, let alone open up about it. Please.”

“Okay, okay. Ah understand.” Then, from soft reassurance, Applejack’s tone switched to whispered warning. “But Ah will say this: yew don’t want ta go ASKIN’ things of Discord like he’s sum kinda god yew go ta pray ta fer stuff! VERY risky, even if... or maybe ESPECIALLY if... he IS in a helpin‘ mood!”

The little dragon nodded grimly. He hadn’t forgotten Lero’s story about his own first encounter with Discord. It’d been ridiculously easy for the human to attract Discord’s notice; Spike seriously doubted Lero had even had the draconequus in mind when he’d screamed his drunken wish to be insane.

Discord had ended up helping the human, yes, but Lero’d had to go through a smorgasbord of lunacy, first, that could’ve just as easily gone real bad for him. But Spike only needed to remember the noises that’d come from that bedroom Lero and his mares all shared to remind himself: getting bewitched was worth any risk.

Really, it was just LIKE Discord, turning his back on him when he was on his knees, begging! Maybe he was safe, after all...

“Still, not like he’s ALL bad, anymore!” Both of them gave a tense look around the kitchen, each wondering if the Chaos God was with them right now, watching. If he was, it was impossible to sense his presence. “Discord actually bought some clothes from me yesterday!”

“Really?”

“Yeah, though he’d disguised himself as a unicorn. Called himself ‘Zany Antics!’” They both laughed as she set several wine bottles in the fridge. “Like Ah couldn’t see straight through ‘im!”

Then she shut the door, turning towards Spike. “Ah’m sorry ta say yew caught me at a time when Ah’m plum outta jewels. But please have some cookies, instead! Yer welcome ta as many as ya please!”

And she handed him a box of coconut macaroons so delicious, Spike didn’t even mind that they weren’t gems. As he ate, she strode over to the sewing machine at the other table, and sat down herself down.

Clacka-lacka-clacka-lacka-lack...

“It's so mighty good ta see ya here again, Spike,” he heard her say, far more subdued and softer than he could ever remember from her. “Ah really missed havin' ya around.”

“...Around?” Spike repeated, after gulping down a particularly tasty macaroon. This was only his first time here, with her.

She kept to her work. She kept her back towards him. She did not turn her head around. Up and down went the needle on her machine: Clacka-lacka-clacka-lacka-lack.

“Ya've given me so many wonderful memories. Ah remember when ya helped me dig up those gems in that Diamond Dog territory. Ah remember how ya looked after Opal when me an’ the other gals needed ta go up ‘n’ see Princess Cadence and make sure the Crystal Empire got to be picked ta host the Equestria Games, and yew did it fer a tiny, tiny sliver of a jewel.”

A great pit opened within Spike’s mind, and every word from the orange-coated mare was filling it up with bombshells. His eyes shot towards Applejack’s flank, and stayed locked upon it, mesmerized. They slowly widened...

“...Yew always helped me out with whatever Ah needed help with. Ev’ry li’l thang.”

Three diamonds. Three gorgeous diamonds. Rarity’s soul. The missing part he’d yearned for all this time!

“...And yew were so sweet about it too, Spike, even lettin' me use yew as a pincushion once, and yah never once complained...”

Sweet Celestia, he was the stupidest dragon ever. How had his brain not made this connection until now?! They all knew what the Swapped were! Spike had always known on a SUPERFICIAL level that Applejack now had Rarity’s mark, and that she spent nearly every waking hour in this Boutique cranking out dresses, but why had it taken THIS LONG for him to think deeper and consider what that really MEANT...?!

“...Always a perfect li'l gent of a dragon... remember that fire ruby yew gave me?”

It instantly struck Spike that for all Applejack's youth... she sounded and acted like some grandmother, forgotten by her family after they shut her up in an old folks' home. To see strong and vibrant Applejack reduced to this, to hear the terrible loneliness in her voice...

“Ah used to be flocked with customers, had lots of suitors all vyin’ fer mah hoof in marriage...” Sadness crept into the mare’s voice and grew as she continued to work, her eyes fixed blankly on her sewing. “Biggest must-know names in all Equestria... but none of ‘em was ever good enough fer me. Ah wasn’t settlin’ fer anythang less than a great big gold medal of a stallion, a prince from a fairy tale, a prince even better than what Rarity’s got...”

Looking at those three diamonds, STARING at those three diamonds... it felt like the cutie mark itself was speaking directly to Spike right from that orange-coated flank, like the REAL RARITY was speaking to him...

“...And now Ah’m lucky ta have clowns and chaos gods buyin’ from me, cuz no one else will,” she said quietly, and a gleam of wetness began to form at the edge of her eyes. “Ya know, mah dresses were once the talk of Canterlot, and now no one else will LOOK at the ugly thangs. That’s all mah threads’re fit fer: clowns ‘n’ chaos gods.”

“...And humans,” Spike found himself saying before he could think.

Applejack paused in her work and gave a shuddery laugh. “Lero... bless that fellah’s heart...”

Spike’s claws dug into his palms. Bad enough having ONE part of Rarity singing Lero’s praises...

“Hey, Spike?” Applejack resumed her sewing: Clacka-lacka-clacka-lacka-lack... “Yew wanna know what the funny thang is? The thang Ah’ve come ta miss most, more’n all the celebrities, all the publicity, even all the money Ah made... was yew. Yew comin’ by. Have yew found sum other gal? Some filly yer own age?”

“I... uh... I...” It was hard to form words while watching Applejack wipe her arm across her eyes.

“Mah sweet li’l Spike, growing up! So proud a‘ yew. Who is she? Ah know it ain’t Sweetie Belle, she’d’ve told me! Can Ah guess? Is it... Apple Bloom? That Twist girl, maybe? Ah’ll admit, Spike, Ah’m jest the tiniest bit jeal... AAAHHH!!!!!”

The mare jerked her hand away from the sewing machine, Spike seeing a flash of bright red as she did, she rapidly cradling one hoof in her other hoof, her breath hissing out between her teeth.

“Rar... Applejack! What happened!?" Spike jumped up and rushed to her side, but the mare shifted away from him.

“Now, now, nuthin’ to worry yerself about, just got nicked by tha’ sewing machine.”

Spike glanced back over to the sewing machine, seeing the sewing needle still glimmering with a darkening red. “It wasn’t nothing. Show it to me.” He said firmly.

“But...”

“No arguments.” He insisted.

“Faihn. Sweet of ya, but yer makin’ a mountain out of a molehill, Spike.” She extended her hoof to him; the blood dripping off didn’t add much to her argument.

He carefully examined the wound, his mind flashing back to all the first aid books Twilight made him read, in case of accidents like this. “Okay, this is pretty bad, but it shouldn’t need stitches, but it needs to be properly bandaged.”

“Ah kin take care of tha...”

“No!” Spike shouted. Just a glance around at the filthiness of their surroundings caused him to shudder at the thought of leaving herself to it. Then he noticed the odd look Applejack was giving him. “I mean… Please, AJ, let me help you.” He gave her the best pleading look he could manage.

“Ah… Alright.” She finally decided.

“Here.” He grabbed the half-mangled wedding dress off the sewing machine. “Sorry… but it wasn’t exactly your best work, anyhow. Hold this to the wound and keep pressure. Where do you keep your first aid kit?”

“Bottom drawer in the bathroom,” She said, following his instructions, as he skittered off. “And Spike?”

He paused, looking back. “Yeah?”

“Thanks… Thanks fer carin’ about me.”

“...Always.”

* * *

Tall, twisted trees with thick trunks encased in gnarled, scratchy bark seemed to practically enclose around Lero. Strange birds called through branches; cawing crows, screaming hawks, and the guttural hissings of turkey vultures, and other he couldn’t even begin to identify. Nothing that the Fluttershy of old would’ve ever included in her songbird choirs, he was sure. For his part, Lero was giving calls of his own.

“SPIKE!” he shouted for the fortieth time, cupping his fingers through his hands. “SPIKE! COME ON OUT!”

At least it was still bright with daylight. Had this disaster had taken place in the middle of the night... well... Lero assured himself he’d find Spike before it got that dark! He’d continue sticking to the well-trodden dirt trails for now. He peered through some of the surrounding foliage, searching for a glimpse of purple scales. Be a pain to have to go bushwhacking through all that. Did they even sell proper bushwhacking machetes in the marketplace?

“PLEASE, SPIKE! SPIKE!”

Some animal that sounded like a wild dog bayed in the distance, and his hands went to his pockets for a weapon he hadn’t actually brought. This was getting to be a real bad habit of his: racing towards danger without bringing anything to increase his survival odds! Was it too late to race back home and get some of that stuff? He stumbled on a tree root, but managed to right himself before falling flat on his face like some airhead bimbo in a slasher flick.

“You’re only going to get hurt if you stay here.” Even before turning around, Lero recognized the voice as Rainbow Dash’s.

What’s SHE doing here?! Was the first wild thought that ran through his head. But Lero calmed as he then remembered how Fluttershy had always gone out to the Everfree Forest for her wildlife care stuff, so of course, Dash would be doing that, now. Plus, he HAD been shouting his lungs out for Spike, so he’d attracted her attention. All very straightforward and logical.

The rainbow-maned pegasus stood against the side of an elm, as if she were still unsure whether to stand out in the open or hide behind the tree. Around Dash’s neck hung the same whistle she’d worn yesterday, when he’d visited her cottage with Spike. For some reason, she also had a baseball cap on her head: blue with a white-colored visor.

“Sorry, what did you say?” Lero asked.

“I said, you’re only going to get hurt if you stay in this forest,” said Dash, stepping out into the open. “For... for all you’ve helped me with my animals, you’ve never been the outdoorsy sort, Lero. If you don’t end up getting lost and hurting yourself... you’ll get hurt by the animals here. And that’s the last thing I want to have happen to you.”

“I don’t care about that!” Lero insisted. “I’m looking for Spike.”

“Spike?”

He looked downward by a sprig of poison sumac. “We... got into an bad argument. He swore he’d run away to the Everfree Forest, so I’m trying to find him here.”

The pegasus came closer, eyes widening at his burned hand. “What happened to you, there?!”

“...Like I said, Spike and I got into a BAD argument.” Lero heard an angry sound come from the pegasus’ throat.

“Well, he’s not here!” Rainbow Dash told him. “I saw Spike just a few minutes ago, he was at the Carousel Boutique!”

“The Carousel Boutique?!” The human gave a disgusted sort of laugh. “Of course. Of COURSE he’d be there! Thanks, Dash.”

He started running towards the direction of Ponyville.

“WAIT!” He looked back at her, confused. “Do you... do you wanna... would it help if I gave you a lift?” She was bending, offering her back for him to mount on, with a trepidatious sort of look. It almost made Lero feel trepidatious himself.

But in the end, he said, “Actually, if you don’t mind, yeah, that’d be great! I’d rather catch back up with Spike as soon as possible.”

But when he climbed on Dash’s back, she went tense, almost as stiff as a board as her wings flared up erectly.

“Come on, Dash!” he pleaded. “Please! If you want to help me, then help me! Spike could leave the Boutique at any moment!”

“S-sorry!” she said. All throughout their flight to the Carousel Boutique, Lero was ready to swear he could feel Rainbow Dash’s body heat rise sharply beneath him, even through the cold air whisking past him!

But he had to be imagining things; Dash couldn’t have REALLY grown hotter just because he’d climbed on top of her! That was a thing of the old days. And even if she had, it was clearly an effect of Fluttershy’s chaste shyness and nothing else.

Rainbow Dash the Animal Caretaker had made her feelings about him painfully plain, after all.

* * *

Dash landed right outside the Carousel Boutique. It had been a fast but well-controlled flight this time around.

“Thank you for helping me look for Spike,” Lero said, as he dismounted her.

“Anytime,” she replied.

“Now, we’ll want to be careful,” Lero warned Dash, before they went in. “If we do find Spike here, there’s a chance he may... still feel aggressive. Especially towards me.”

She gave another hard look at his burned hand and nodded. No one was there to greet them in the showroom when they entered. They needed to call out.

“Applejack?!”

“Spike?!”

“Welcome tew the Carousel Boutique, where everythang’s sheek, yew-neek, and mag-niff-feek!” Applejack recited, before even fully stepping out. Then, seeing who had come in, she grinned.

“Lero! Oh, good ta see ya, pardner! How’s that Fifth Doctor outfit workin’ for ya?”

“Fifth Doctor?” asked Rainbow Dash, in puzzlement.

“The super-colorful one.”

“It’s the Sixth Doctor,” the human muttered under his breath.

“Oh! Yeah, I saw that one,” the pegasus said. “The day he came in wearing that... that was an UNFORGETTABLE day.”

And her eyes immediately went to Lero, flashing him a look of deepest regret. Lero looked at her, confused...

“Say, Rainbow! Are ya looking’ fer sum threads fer yerself?” Applejack asked.

“Uh...”

“Cuz Ah got JEST the getup fer YEW!” And she pointed a hopeful hoof over to a certain ponyquin. “D’ya like it? Twilight ‘n’ Lyra stopped bah mah Boutique the other day, and they talked ‘bout how yew came by their place ‘n’ flew Lero out ta yer house! It inspired me ta make this!”

It was close to being wearable; heartbreakingly close, really. The rainbow pattern matched Rainbow Dash's colors perfectly, and it wasn't made out of anything absurdly impractical for a material. There were just two major problems with it. Instead of the colors arranged in stripes from front to back, the stripes were vertical, starting with violet at the neckline and shifting until it highlighted her rump in bright red. It clashed terribly with Rainbow Dash's mane, but that wasn't the critical flaw. It had an integrated ornate saddle, one suited for Lero to ride in, even, but it lacked the vital element of any possible way for Rainbow Dash's wings to extend.

For a few seconds, the pegasus struggled to find words to soften the blow of rejection. In a moment, she found the perfect distraction. “Applejack, what happened to your hoof?”

She raised up the bandaged hoof. “This ‘ol thang? Taint nothin’, jest a sewin’ accident. Spike bandaged it right nice, now, too...”

Lero cut in. “Spike? I’ve been looking all over for him! You’ve seen him?!”

The orange pony appreciated the gravity of their situation at once. “Yeah, Ah’ll take yew right to ‘im.”

She led them right into her kitchen, which Spike was in the middle of cleaning. The floor was still wet and smelled lemony. A mop and bucket filled with grey sudsy water sat in the corner of the room. Sunlight shone through the drawn curtains and the freshly-sparkling windowpanes. Spike, himself, was diligently washing dishes. He turned upon hearing them all enter the room, hands on a plate dripping soapy water.

“Oh, uh, hi Lero.”

The vengefully violent fire-beast who well might’ve murdered Lero earlier today appeared to have used up his anger. All that remained was this sorry-looking little boy of a dragon, who wasn’t going to be attacking him or running away from home.

“Er... would you mind giving me a couple more minutes before bringing me home? I just want to finish AJ’s dishes for her and...”

“Spike? NOW,” Lero commanded.

Spike dropped the dish in his hand gently into the water. Wordlessly, he crossed over to Applejack and hugged her legs tightly before following Rainbow Dash and Lero out through the Boutique’s front entrance. The three of them walked towards Golden Oaks Library on foot... as Rainbow Dash was too angry to carry the little dragon back home on her back.

“You BURNED Lero, Spike?!” she seethed, as the three of them walked. “You actually BURNED Lero?!”

“Uh... yeah,” Spike admitted. He tried to look away from the other two, but Dash simply fluttered to his other side to glare into his eyes.

“Why?” She was showing an awful lot of teeth at Spike now. She poked him in the chest with a hoof. “What’d he do to you? Punch you in the eye? Toss you down the stairs? Swing an axe at you?! What?!”

“Uh, no...” he said, very discomfited. “Nothing like that, Dash...”

“What, then?!” she barked. “What did he do to deserve getting his hand fried?!”

“I can’t tell you! It’s... private!” Spike would’ve moved to put Lero between himself and her, but she brought a hoof down rather firmly on his tail.

“No! I wanna know! Now!”

Lero couldn’t have been more rattled if he’d seen the ghost of his grandmother blow him a kiss. Dash looked absolutely furious. Her anger, her protectiveness of him, it felt like a step backwards in time, like he was seeing her OLD self. Especially the way she’d been with that one colt... what was his name? Cognac? Bourbon? ....Absinthe! That was it, Absinthe! God, that was SO long ago… However, he quickly realized that this line of inquiry could only lead to bad places.

“Dash!” Lero interjected.

She looked up at him, surprised. “Huh?”

“It... what Spike got angry about really IS a private matter for us, something we don’t discuss outside our family.”

“But Lero didn’t do anything physical to me,” Spike assured the pegasus.

While she stepped off Spike’s tail, Rainbow Dash backed him against the side of a building, so they stood forehead against forehead, with the back of Spike’s head against a brick wall. The little dragon let out a yelp.

“Then you had no business, no RIGHT burning Lero!” Knees quaking, the little dragon never blinked at Rainbow Dash, who glowered at him like a sheriff glowering at some thuggish delinquent. “He shouldn’t have to be afraid of being attacked in his own home by his own family! I ought to bring you over to the place Angel Bunny is right now! Then we’ll see where your fire gets you!”

“Dash, please! Spike’s NOT Angel Bunny!” Lero begged. “Lay off him!”

Dash backed away reluctantly, still looking furious.

Spike was quite shaken up. Lero saw fear, yes, but the human was struck by how greatly overshadowed that fear was by sorrowful distress. He could read the thoughts in Spike’s eyes: A month ago, we were family, yesterday, we were ‘just friends,’ and today we’re enemies?!

Welcome to the club, Spike.

But the little guy stepped up to Lero, fixing him with his soberest and sincerest expression, wanting to show that his apology came straight from the heart, rather than the evil eye Rainbow Dash was shooting him. “Lero, I am really sorry for overreacting and lashing out at you, and for... for burning your hand. I was wrong. Being with Applejack helped put things in a new perspective for me. I’m sorry.”

Spike was still due for a punishment, and Lero let his face show that. But instead of anger or yelling, he simply nodded sternly at the little guy, the way a proper parent should.

“Apology accept—”

Spike waited seconds for the ‘ed’ but it didn’t come. He stared at the two figures.

“Lero? Rainbow Dash?”

Even after he’d called out their names several times, they did not respond. They did not move one iota. Spike watched very carefully and saw that their lungs weren’t even drawing in air. He reached out and poked both their legs. Dash’s fur didn’t even feel like real fur. Lero’s pant leg didn’t feel anything like cloth. Instead, their texture reminded him of hardened glue.

Spike’s own breathing, the slight shifting of his body sounded very loud to his ears. Why? He looked around and realized that every other pony around them, all the townsfolk and passers-by, had gone just as still. He spotted a frozen Cheerilee; with three of her legs held still in the air like that... even a statue couldn’t hold that position and not topple over! (Not without being propped up, anyway.) There was even a bird above him, wings spread in the air, but motionless as a mere illustration of a bird.

What the heck was happening?!

Then the young dragon felt a telltale fiery heat building inside his stomach. It grew and grew and suddenly he convulsed and belched out green flames, instinctively reaching out his hand. When the flames cleared away, there sat a scrolled letter in his palm. He unrolled it.

Dear Princess Celestia,

“I believe these were YOUR words, little Spikester?” a malevolent voice echoed around him.

Spike hadn’t even had a chance to blink; the letter in his hands had folded itself up into a perfect likeness of Discord’s head, glowering at him. The young dragon let out a startled shriek, and Discord’s paper lips peeled back delightedly, revealing sharp, papery teeth.

If the normal laws of physics had been working, the paper head would’ve been flung against the wall when Spike threw it from his hands. Instead, it floated in the air and laughed wickedly at him. Page after page grew out from the base of Discord’s head, like a time-lapse film of whipping, fast-growing tree from a seed, until the whole of Discord stood before him in paper form. Every page of paper that made up draconequus’ body was a perfect copy of Spike’s letter to Celestia: both the front, where his actual writing was, and the back, which showed Zippy the lost puppy.

“So! Our pwecious baby dwagon got his fwail, fwagile widdle heart bwoken in two, and he just can’t take it anymore! Not to fear!” He announced, the origami nightmare taking on a heroic pose. “DISCORD is here!”

Spike turned and ran from Discord as fast as his stubby little legs would go. Ten seconds passed, and the little dragon cried out as he found himself hoisted up to Discord’s eye-level by his tail.

“My breath’s not THAT bad, is it?” he asked, as as a spearmint plant suddenly sprouted out of the ground, as tall as Discord himself. He breathed on the plant and it grew another few feet taller. “Doesn’t seem like it!”

Burn him! Spike’s survival instinct urged him, as the draconequus began ingesting the spearmint plant. He’s made of paper!

But the rest of his brain quickly overruled this stupid, panicked idea. That’ll just make him mad! Or worse, it’ll amuse him, and he’ll turn it into a game!

“Please, Discord,” Spike begged. “I...!”

The draconequus leaned forward, his eyes like twin abysses, hungry to swallow Spike’s mind. The young dragon squeezed his own eyes shut against their cavernous stare. Discord merely touched a claw to the center of Spike’s forehead.

Aaah, Applejack, sweet and breathtaking Applejack... forever the apple of my eye...

It took great force of will for the little dragon to keep his eyelids shut: if he opened them, he really would be lost to those mind-bending eyes of Discord’s. The voice Spike heard in his mind was and wasn’t his own. This was the voice of the Spike From The SWAPPED Universe...

...The Spike which Rarity the Weathermare and Rainbow Dash the Caretaker and Pinkie the Farmer and Apple Bloom, her sister, and all the rest THOUGHT they were speaking to, each time they talked with him...

...The Spike he felt himself being transformed into.

Always have I loved you, Applejack, always, from the first time I saw you in town hall, putting up those ribbons...

“No!” Spike cried, shaking his head. “That wasn’t AJ! That was Rarity! Rarity!”

Rarity? Rarity was outside, making sure the weather would be clear for the Summer Sun Celebration. We met her first, just before entering town hall.

“No! RAINBOW DASH was in charge of the weather! Dash knocked Twilight into that mud puddle, and the way she ended up washing and drying her mane inspired Rarity to bring her to the Boutique to fix it...”

Are you nuts?! Applejack invited Twilight to the Boutique as... well... as a way to ingratiate herself with Princess Celestia’s representative, and Twilight was too kind a pony to refuse her! Then when Applejack was showing off her dresses, and they got to talking, that was when Applejack decided she really DID want to be Twilight’s friend for real! Applejack didn’t NEED to do anything to fix Twilight’s mane!

“No!” Spike argued. “That’s not how it went! That’s not how it went at all!”

But the voice of the doppelgänger in Spike’s head only gave a wistful sigh.

Oh my darling Applejack, how I’ve always adored you... every bit of you! The silken quality of your gorgeous orange coat!

White! The mare I love has a WHITE coat! Spike tried to remind himself. But when he tried to evoke the memories back of Rarity’s coat... all he could see was orange. Orange like a sunset. Orange like a leaf being toyed with by a playful autumn breeze. Orange like a passionate flame. White was such a BORING color, such a BLANK color, such a NOTHING-color...

Those breathtaking green eyes of yours...

Again, Spike fought to remember the amethyst hue of Rarity’s eyes... even the memory of Rarity The Weathermare would do! But no: gorgeous green irises, shimmering and bedazzling... emeralds, lucky clovers, lush meadows, the freshness of springtime! To gaze back into such eyes when Applejack looked upon you with a favorable smile... Spike could feel the flutter back in his heart all over again...

The enticing yellow of your mane!

Yes, that lovely mane of gold, a sight sweeter than honey! To watch it bounce on the back of her head was to gaze into the glow of a sunrise... NO! No, his love’s mane was colored purple! PURPLE!

Purple? Purple is TWILIGHT’S color, through and through! Honestly, I could never feel comfortable having romantic feelings towards any mare who reminded me of my older sister...

I’ve NEVER had problems differentiating between Twilight’s purple and Rarity’s purple, and you know that! You KNOW THAT!

Even so... Rarity’s already spoken for. She’s Twilight’s girl! She’s LERO’S girl. And YOU know THAT.

Spike gave an unhappy cry.

It’s not like I DON’T like Rarity. I love her, in fact! As an older stepsister. As my herd-mother. So Lero and Twilight are quite welcome to her! Besides, Earth Ponies are WAY more exotic than any unicorn could ever be.

“Exotic?!” Spike balked. “Earth Ponies?!”

Yeah! Between Twilight and Rarity and Lyra, I deal with unicorns every day of my life! I love them all, but unicorns are boring and mundane. It’s EXOTIC loving an Earth Pony, it’s EXOTIC having a girl who DOESN’T use magic to get around! I can’t use magic, either, no more than I can fly, so I’ve always identified with Earth Ponies more than either of the other pony races. Oh, if Applejack fell in love with me, I’d be the luckiest dragon in the world...

Discord, for his part, was getting a real kick out of watching Spike’s face; it alternated between a screwed-up look of torment and a blissful lovey-dovey reverie. Mind alterations were ALWAYS were always really cool, through and through, as troublesome as they were to maintain afterwards.

Right now, Spike’s memories were like a digital manuscript on the computer of an author from Lero’s old world. And he’d hacked into that file and was going to town with the find-replace function. Find every instance of the phrase “white coat” and replace it with ‘orange coat!‘ Find every instance of ‘amethyst eyes’ and replace it with ‘emerald eyes!‘ Find every memory of Spike saying ‘I love Rarity,’ and replace it with ‘I love Applejack.‘ Then go and apply a touch of creativity here and there to fill in some of the ‘plot holes‘ and embellish what was there.

Nothing quite like a mental overhaul!

“Why fight this?” Discord asked, whispering into Spike’s ear in a perfect replication of Spike’s own voice.

Not that Spike COULD fight this. No matter HOW much willpower Spike had, he was doomed to succumb to Discord’s bewitchment.

“Does it really matter if the girl you’re crushing on has a horn or not? If her eyes are purple or green? If her name starts with the letter A or R? She’s still going to be a fashionista! She’s still going to be the girl of your dreams! Your odds of winning her love are no better or worse than before! So what’s the big deal? Besides, if nothing else, remember that you asked for this, Spike! You DEMANDED it!”

“I want to be the one to bring equilibrium to Applejack!”

The Chaos God gave a small start. In his own voice, he asked, “What did you say?”

“I said I want to be the one to bring equilibrium to Applejack!” the dragon wept. “But I need to remember what she really is! Even if your bewitchment makes me gaga for AJ and convinces me SHE’S always been my #1 girl... no matter how many times I come over to help her, I... I’ll never be able to fix what’s TRULY wrong with her if you make me forget what the REAL problem is: that inside, she’s two ponies, not one! Please, Discord! Please!”

Discord pulled away the finger he’d placed on Spike’s forehead. Then he placed it gently inside Spike’s ear, using it as a vacuum cleaner to suck away all the rewritten memories he’d just inserted into Spike’s brain. Through it all, Spike kept his eyes squeezed shut.

“...You can open your eyes, Spike. I promise I’ll leave your memories untouched. May the Elements of Harmony strike me down if I lie.”

As the young dragon opened his eyes, Discord set him down on the ground. He was a flesh-and-blood being again, and not made of paper.

“Spikester, I want you to imagine something for me, okay? Imagine you’re a cook, and a customer has just commissioned you to create a ten-layer wedding cake, with all the trims and fittings. So you gather up all the ingredients, you’re preheating the oven and are about to begin baking, when the customer calls back: the wedding’s off! Don’t need the cake no more!”

He leaned in.

“How do you feel, Mr. Cook?”

“I... I think I’d be a little irritated... maybe?” Spike guessed, smiling nervously as he dried his eyes.

“I agree! And as it just so happens... I am irritated. At YOU. Just who do you think you are, DEMANDING that Celestia call ME in to fix YOUR unhappy life, you SCRIBBLER?! You scaly, spiny, gem-guzzling, fork-tongued fax machine?!”

Spike shrank away. “Ah... w-what’s a...?”

“Never mind,” Discord huffed, not wanting to get into a discussion about faxes. “The important take-home message is this: as a Chaos God, I’m NOT a big fan of Order. But if there’s one thing I loathe MORE than Order, it’s being Ordered Around! As though I were your plumber! Your carpet cleaner! Your MAID! JUST because I’m powerful, JUST because I’m immortal, doesn’t mean MY TIME ISN’T VALUABLE!”

“I’m sorry! I’m so sorry!”

Discord calmed a little as Spike quivered on the ground. “I hate to tell you this, Spike, but I just can’t let you off with a warning. If I let ONE guy get away with this kinda thing, everypony ELSE will expect me to do it for them, too.”

But the draconequus placed a comforting hand on the dragon’s trembling head.

“That said, I do promise to go easier on you than I would for some other schlub. Partly because you’re still just a mouthy, snot-nosed BABY dragon, who hasn’t grown up yet. But also... you did two things a lot of ADULTS wouldn’t’ve been able to do.”

“What?” asked Spike, finally looking up at Discord.

“You were able to recognize you were asking for something stupid before it was too late AND you’re putting someone else’s best interests ahead of your own happiness. Can’t help but admire that, especially since I’ve recently come to learn how hard that is. The old Rarity and Applejack would both be proud. The new ones would be, too, come to think of it.”

If Discord hadn’t just threatened to punish him seconds ago, Spike might’ve smiled at the compliment. As it was, he asked, “W... what are you going to do to me?” At that moment Spike recalled Lero asking him the same question only a short time ago, and a chill ran through him as he remembered his own response. “What’s my punishment?”

The grin Discord gave was like that of a sadistic feline. “Oh no, that would be telling. Really, the better question is: WHEN’S my punishment? And I’m not telling that, either.”

With that, Discord pulled a magazine out of his neck, opened to the middle of its pages, and dived inside. His paper body scrunched and crumpled tightly, quickly disappearing into the open pages. The magazine flopped to the ground. Spike went over to see that the magazine was actually a comic book issue. Gnarly Gnarls.

He stepped cautiously around it, as though it were a broken beaker of hydrofluoric acid. Even if Spike were anywhere near a comic-reading mood, the last thing he wanted to do was bring home an object he knew contained Discord.

“—ed.” said Lero, blinking in confusion. “Spike? How’d you get over there?” he asked.

* * *

Lero, Rainbow Dash, and Spike walked the rest of the way in relative silence, until they had reached Golden Oaks Library.

“Well, thank you for all your help, Dash,” Lero sighed, careful to open the door with his unburned hand. “I really appreciate it.”

“Anytime, Lero!” she said, brightly. “Any time at all.”

He saw Rainbow Dash stare past him through the open doorway, as though curious to see if Rarity or Twilight or Lyra was there. They weren’t. This brought a new thought... when Twilight and Lyra DID come home, he’d need to inform them about Spike’s tantrum, wouldn’t he?! AND the reason for it. Wasn’t like this could be swept under the rug.

Wonder which of us is going to get chewed out hardest? Lero brooded miserably, turning to enter his house. Me or Spike? And what’re we gonna tell Rarity?

“Lero!” the pegasus called out, with such urgency that he and Spike both wheeled around.

“What is it?”

Rainbow Dash suddenly seemed unable to hold herself still, squirming in place where she stood as though a giant bee were threatening to land on her body while her hooves were glued to the ground.

“L... Lero, when I... when I said... uh... that... you know, when I was wearing the pretty gown thing, and you... I, um, well, I’d, you’d...”

Several lumps seemed caught in her throat at once. Her tongue tasted the corners of her mouth in rapid little darts. Her eyes never quite connected with his.

“...Been a month, and, well, erm, here we both are! You know? Uh... and I’d always be doing the whistling and doing the smiling... uh, no, no, YOU were whistling and smiling, Lero... that’s what I meant to say, and... gosh, you know I’m not a speechwriter, but what I’m trying to get to is...”

Politeness was the only thing keeping Lero smiling. Listening to the pegasus babble made him feel like a small, cold square of refrigerated butter, scraaaaaapeeed hard against an over-toasted bread slice.

Somehow, clenching her eyes completely shut, was what Rainbow Dash needed to squeeze real words out of herself. “W... when I said the things I said the last time you came by my place... the last thing I wanted was for you to go home feeling like garbage. I just wanted you to be proud of me.”

“Dash, I know you weren’t trying to hurt me. And I already am proud of you.”

To think, he’d been so full of energy this morning. So psyched, so confident, high as a kite. Ready to pop the hood on Applejack and Fluttershy’s heads, fix them both lickety-split, and still be home in time to dictate a smug letter to Celestia about how awesome he was, well before the old girl lowered the sun.

Flash forward about three hours later from that point in time... and here Lero could not remember feeling more worn out. Unmotivated. Completely used up. Old, even. He was tired of having to deal with it all. His family. Animals. Weather. Cutie marks. Equilibrium.

Magenta eyes gazed earnestly into his hazel. “You sound so tired, Lero. Like you’ve got the weight of the world on your shoulders.”

Shoulders slumping, Lero managed a wan, limp smile. “Not the whole world. Just a few ponies.”

It was still early afternoon, at this point in the day... but right now, Lero wanted nothing more than to shut the door gently on this wearisome animal caretaker with the butterflies on her side, drop into his chair and just do NOTHING for once.

He didn’t want to sleep. Lovemaking wouldn’t help, even if his girls were around to offer it. Wasn’t particularly hungry. Had no interest in discussing his feelings. Didn’t want to drink himself into a stupor either, this time... well, perhaps ONE bottle of beer.

All he wanted to do was just sink into a chair, give into fatigue, settle in, and veg. Maybe play solitaire, or draw doodles in a sketchpad or bum a comic book off of Spike. Been a while since he’d read comics. Maybe tomorrow he’d be up to try helping Applejack or Fluttershy, but for now he just wanted to get his mind off his life and speak to no one. What was the name of the guy that’d said, “The quickest way to make yourself miserable is to try making everyone else happy?” What a smart man that’d been!

Heh... first Twilight, now Spike! All that was left was Lyra... and he’d have screwed over every member of his family!

“You’re not alone, you know,” Rainbow Dash told him.

“Huh?”

Rainbow Dash only stammered twice this time. “Lero, I’m looking at you right now, and your eyes... those are the loneliest pair of eyes I’ve seen in forever. It breaks my heart just to look at them. But you have to know that you’re not alone. Believe me, I know what it’s like having a zillion things needing to be done. And when the ones you share your home with suddenly decide to hurt you, despise you, make an enemy of you... no one knows how painful that is better than me!”

Spike was standing right behind Lero. For him, the most demeaning part about listening to this was how Dash never once looked his way. Unworthy of even a fleeting scowl from her. She hadn’t forgiven him.

“It’s easy to think you’re completely alone! But you’re not! Others still care about you! They care lots! YOU taught me that, Lero! Others... others wanna be there for you... if you’re willing to let them!”

A silence fell between them, but she just kept focused on him.

Her eyes...

...those heartfelt eyes of hers...

...that look she was giving him, it was almost like...

...it was EXACTLY like...

They had been talking and laughing merrily together; two figures laying sprawled on the Equestrian grass, just stopping to rest. She’d flopped down half atop him, with her head and one foreleg across his chest and a wing spread across his torso. With one hand, he’d idly stroked her mane while they both cheerfully discussed the pickup hoofball game they’d just finished in the village green. His arm eventually moved to half-embracing his pegasus friend, elbow pressed against her lower shoulder.

There they’d lain there for several minutes, cheerfully bickering over who’d done more to secure victory in the game, fencing verbally with each other as the best of friends.

And Lero had felt himself grow quizzical as Rainbow’s voice had inexplicably trailed off, distracted for some curious reason. He’d met her eyes questioningly... and she’d looked back at him for a few wordless seconds, an odd look in her rose-colored eyes...

The same odd look, the same odd silence... right before Rainbow Dash had leaned in and kissed him for the very first time.

Weariness flared into panic. Stomach-dropping, gut-freezing, wild PANIC.

“MaybetomorrowgottafixmyhandandpunishSpikeforburningmeyouknowhowkidsarethanksagainbye!”

Lero felt absolutely terrible for slamming and locking the door on Dash, even as he was doing it. As though Rainbow Dash were some kind of bloodthirsty undead ghoul. It was an irrational knee-jerk reaction. But it was just too much. It was just too damn much!

“She’s cursed!” he babbled to himself, between rapid gasps. “Rainbow Dash has always been cursed... from the VERY MOMENT that damn Swap happened, and she let you fall into those thorns. Yeah, she’s innocent, yeah, it’s unintentional. But the fact remains, Lero: you’ve been hurt, every time you’ve gone to see her! It’s a jinx. The Swap has jinxed her. Anything you do with her’s doomed to end in more pain. Maybe a lot of pain, maybe a little, maybe from her, maybe from her damn animals, but I just can’t take it anymore! Besides, that look doesn’t mean what you thought it meant. It couldn’t have!”

From outside, Lero heard the sound of pegasus wings flapping away. He breathed a sigh of relief, hating himself for it.

“Hey, Lero,” Spike called out from right outside his bedroom. “Come up here to my room.”

Lero glared up the stairs. “You are in SO much trouble, Mister! Just wait’ll I think up a good punishment for you! Just wait’ll Twilight gets home!”

“Yeah, yeah, you’ll have time to punish me later.” Spike told him. “For right now, come up to my bedroom. It’s important. I promise.”

* * *

Once upon a time, Spike the dragon baby had slept in a basket by the foot of Twilight Sparkle’s bed. Then came a new day where Twilight began sharing that bed of hers with one of her truest friends, plus her human coltfriend, and later Lyra Heartstrings, and the four of them all got cozy with each other in ways no child should bear witness to.

And so, Spike was given a bedroom of his very own.

It was impossible to be a member of Twilight Sparkle’s family and NOT have some of her bibliophilia rub off on you. Spike’s personal bookshelf contained several reference guides to gemstones and minerals, books on dragon culture and dragon physicality, some young adult novels, a cookbook for gem recipes, a couple books on pony fashion, and many, many comics and graphic novels. Mostly superhero-themed.

Action figures and toys lined some of the shelves. Posters of superheroes, superhero teams, and a few recent movies adorned the walls. There were some family photos... and more than a few photographs simply of pre-Swap Rarity which Spike hadn’t had the heart to mail to Celestia’s vault. (Rarity, of course, saw Applejack in those old photographs instead of herself whenever she stepped into Spike’s room.)

“Okay, Spike, this BETTER be good.” Lero grumbled, entering in.

“Patience, patience!” The little dragon was pulling something out from a bottom drawer of his dresser: a small box full of medical supplies, then quickly stepped out and stepped back in with a bucket full of fresh cool water.

“First, I want you to dunk your burned hand in this water, and we’re going to let it soak for a while.”

A small bit of Lero’s anger reluctantly faded away as he sat, cross-legged, and dropped his red, blistered hand in. This was nice.

“So how DID you escape from the bathroom?” Spike asked, looking up at the human.

No remorse. No embarrassment. Fine.

“The window was open.”

“Oh. Now, we’ll give it a few minutes,” said the dragon, who also sat cross-legged. “I got an interesting story to tell you. I talked to Discord today.”

“Discord?!”

“Keep your hand in the water!” Spike urged him. And the dragon told him his story, about the letter to Celestia he wrote, about Applejack bringing him over to her house, about the realization he experienced while staring at her Diamond Mark, everything about Discord and ending with the moment Lero and Dash came to, and found Spike suddenly a few yards away from where he ought to’ve been.

“You idiot! Do you have ANY idea what you almost DID?! Discord’s NOT someone you try and push around!” Spike could tell even though Lero’s tone was angry and critical, there was a definite undercurrent of worry to his tone.

“Yeah, he made that very plain to me,” he said, lifting Lero’s hand out of the bucket, then setting the bucket off to the side. “He said he’ll get back at me for it at some point.”

Then from his box of medical supplies, Spike pulled out a squat-looking, blue-colored container. “This is burn ointment. Strongest stuff on the market. Now I’m usually in control of my fire,” Spike met Lero’s eyes with a little challenge, “so I haven’t had to unscrew this lid in years. Hope it hasn’t dried up or anything.”

He opened it. “Oh, good!” The dragon immediately been rubbing the gelatinous stuff all over Lero’s hand, careful not to scratch Lero with his claws. It smelled of aloe vera.

“You know, that’s another thing I worry about! Discord punishing you! I mean... the things he could do to you are far worse than anything I ever could! The possibilities are endless!”

Spike shrugged his shoulders, wiping the ointment off his own hands with a piece of paper. “Maybe he’ll turn me into a penguin. Maybe he’ll make my jaws and stomach as weak as yours so I can’t eat gems.”

“You sound very nonchalant about this!” Lero snapped. He was halfway sure he was being mocked.

“I choose to be nonchalant,” Spike said evenly. Now Lero was positive he was being mocked. “Besides, whatever magic Discord uses on me, I doubt it’s anything Twilight can’t fix. And we know he won’t do anything too bad that it’ll mess with Twilight finding the cure.”

Lero snorted and shook his head. “He doesn’t have to cast a spell on you, you know.”

Then Spike started wrapping a dry gauze bandage loosely around Lero’s hand. “Whatever. But when I told him that I wanted to be the one to bring equilibrium to Applejack... I was drop-dead serious about it. I want it so badly... it actually hurts a little.”

“Well, that’s noble of you,” Lero told him. “Maybe tomorrow or sometime, we could both go down to the Boutique and...”

“NO!” Spike shouted, standing up. “I said that I want to be the one to bring equilibrium to Applejack! Me and NOT you! There is no ‘we’ to this!”

Lero stood up too, showing how much he towered over him. “Spike, you listen to me...!”

“NO, YOU LISTEN TO... I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to get angry and shout at you all over again.” Spike drew a long breath, and Lero heard him count to ten in a whisper before speaking again. “Look, I don’t want to be an ‘Angel Bunny’ to you, Lero. I know there’s been a lot of confusion in this house, but I want us to go back to being brothers. After seeing Applejack, things are a lot clearer to me now.”

“How are they clearer?” asked Lero, only vaguely aware of how soothing the ointment was feeling.

Spike looked over flatly at one of his pictures of Rarity with the correct cutie mark on her. “That mare... that unicorn with the rainbow cutie mark... she really ISN’T the girl I love, not underneath. All that’s left is her name and a few old mannerisms. Residue. No different than... than pouring blueberry juice into an empty milk jug without rinsing the jug out first. She really IS just Rainbow Dash repackaged... slightly milky blueberry juice. Simple as that.”

Lero fumed. His new love, residue? “It’s not as cut-and-dried as you think, Spike—”

“SIMPLE as THAT,” Spike repeated loudly. “Since Miss Rainbow-Thunderbolt Mark has always been YOUR marefriend, you’re free to do with her as you like, I guess. But Applejack? Applejack contains the TRUE soul of the girl I’ve always loved. I’ve just been way too sidetracked by, well... by the beauty of Rarity’s body up until now. In a way, I should almost thank you, Lero, for helping me face the truth.”

Spike picked the picture of Rarity up, holding it in his hand like a wounded bird. The picture showed Rarity at a side angle inside the Carousel Boutique’s showroom. The smile on her face was one of her pleasant, everyday sort of smiles.

“And so I’m going to be the one to bring equilibrium to her.” Spike vowed. “What you were to Rainbow Dash, I’m going to be to Applejack. I’ll visit her every day! I’ll help her in every way! And I WON’T EVER be some limp-wristed no-show like I was with Rainbow Dash. I’ll make up for that terrible mistake!”

Spike’s increasingly manic smile, coupled with the zealous gleam in his eyes unsettled Lero greatly.

“I’ll be the one to restore balance to the real Rarity’s heart, Lero... and when I do, she will LOVE ME for it! Just like Rainbow Dash loves you now!”

“‘Loves me now?!’” Lero bristled, while his heart rate sped up. “Rainbow Dash does NOT love me! Are you blind?! Didn’t you see how it went yesterday at her cottage?! Didn’t you see the butterflies still on her flank?!”

“Yeah,” said Spike. “But I ALSO saw how fiercely she came to your defense, buddy! And didn’t YOU see the way she looked into your eyes at the doorstep? I know that look well; it’s the same sort of look your girls give you!”

That horrible panic welled back up again inside him. “I didn’t see anything but a girl trying to be a friend!”

His voice must’ve come out a little too anxious, a little too quick, for Spike just smiled mockingly. “Then YOU’RE the blind one, Lero! Or maybe you’re just too much of a FRAIDY-CAT to see the love for what it is!”

Lero was just about ready to flip the brat over his knee and tan his purple scaly hide.

“...Or maybe I am wrong, and you are right,” Spike conceded with a sly smile that held no actual fear of Lero. He shrugged. “Doesn’t really matter anyways.”

The dragon began gathering all the medical supplies and putting them back in their box.

“Listen, Spike, about Applejack... I understand where you’re coming from, believe me, I do. I didn’t think about your feelings when I... was with Rarity last night, and I’m sorry. I truly hate myself for how that made you feel, for how I dismissed your feelings. But helping a Swapped Pony isn’t the sort of thing you can do entirely on your own!”

“Yeah?” Spike scoffed, slamming the medical supplies back in the drawer. “Pull the other one, Captain Equilibrium!”

“I couldn’t have fixed Pinkie Pie without help from Rarity, Big Macintosh, and Apple Bloom.” Lero reminded the dragon evenly. “With Rainbow Dash, EVERYONE was pitching in: me, Twilight, Lyra, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, and Apple Bloom! Even with Rarity... I talked about it with her, and she said what saved her were memories of all FOUR of us showing her kindness and love: you, me, Lyra, and Twilight!”

For one moment, Spike’s face registered uncertainty. Then it left. “Well... there’s always a first time for everything! I can and WILL fix Applejack all by myself!”

“Spike... I’m sorry, but for Applejack’s own good, I can’t let you do this. You’re gonna be doing this the wrong way and for the wrong reasons!”

Lero’s larger size had never intimidated Spike. Barely anything about the human ever did. Since Lero’s bare, fleshy skin was so very burnable, the dragon would’ve usually felt extremely confident about beating the human in a fight. Usually.

But today, Lero’s eyes blazed with ominous intensity. It actually scared Spike. His eyes said that if Spike were to set his whole body on fire, Lero would just ignore the agony and beat him to a pulp as a human torch.

“...It’s completely within your power to forbid me from seeing Applejack,” Spike admitted softly. “You’re the grownup and I’m the kid, after all. Whatever you tell me to do, I promise I’ll be a good boy and obey this time.” Then he fixed his own hard look upon the human. “But I’ll tell you something, Lero. If you take this away from me, if you take APPLEJACK away from me the way you took away Rarity... then I really will never forgive you for it. I will go on hating you until the day I die. Is that what you want?!”

Lero could have wept. The good relationship he had always had with Spike now teetered on a precipice.

Over the course of this mad catastrophe, Spike had been selfish and petty and childish in a lot of ways. But the kid had a heart, a good heart: and he was being traumatized by a huge psychological triple whammy. He’d decisively lost Rainbow Dash as a sister, and felt personally responsible. His fear of Lero making love to his dream girl had come horribly true. And now came this thing with Applejack. Realizing that he’d forgotten all about the ‘real Rarity’ inside Applejack — and permitting his beloved to suffer — that couldn’t have been easy for Spike to bear.

Lero would be stupid not to cut Spike some slack... allow the kid SOMETHING he could cling onto. The chance to redeem himself. The desperate hope of proving himself a hero to his sweet ladylove, and winning her heart. If not... well, Lero knew what it was like when family members bore lifelong grudges against each other. Aunts, uncles, and cousins of his had done that to each other: sons hating fathers, sisters not talking to brothers, year after year, until one or the other was shut in a coffin.

“You know... I think I can probably give Fluttershy my full attention for now.” Lero said, backing off. “At least until I’ve found equilibrium for her.”

“Yeah. Fluttershy. You do that,” said Spike.

Perhaps Spike just needed some time to calm down. Hopefully, by the time Lero DID help Fluttershy find equilibrium, his temper would’ve cooled enough to allow others to help him. If nothing else, Spike could be counted on to treat Applejack right, help her in every way he could, and not let her feel lonely.

“And in the meanwhile, you’re going without supper tonight!” Lero finished.

Spike shrugged, as though to say he could afford to go supper-less for one night.

“...AND you’re grounded until this...” He held up his hand. “Is fully healed!”

“Fair enough,” said Spike. “I suggest you show Twilight that hand as soon as she’s back home. We’ll both want that burn gone as soon as possible, huh?”

With that, Spike went over to his bookshelf and pulled out a book titled A Beginner’s Guide To Clothing by Ballpoint Needle. He hopped up on his bed and turned to the first page.

Author's Note

Kudos to SpinelStride and VelvetHeart for coming up with the some of the dress designs for Applejack in this chapter!

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Twenty-Two: Comedy Coaches

Lero had sworn to Spike he would remain grounded until his hand was healed, and here in this house and herd, your word was your bond, right down to the letter.

The strong, paternally parental part of Lero Michealides had wanted to refuse to let Twilight Sparkle cast her healing spell on his burned hand. Tough out the pain, allow nature to take its course, so that Spike’s grounding would last a while, and the little dragon would have sufficient time to really REGRET what he’d done.

But this was overruled by the purely pragmatic, (not to mention pain-hating) side of the human. The way Lero rationalized it was this: between Diamond Hailstorms, glufferflorks, Discord, and what’d just happened with Spike, there was just no telling WHAT kind of curveballs the future still had to throw at him. And with two more ponies still left to help find equilibrium for... wouldn’t it be smarter to face those curveballs with two working hands instead of one?

Very fortunately, Twilight and Lyra arrived home earlier than Rarity. Explaining what had happened was no fun for any of them. Neither of them had even stepped inside Spike’s bedroom yet.

“Spike, I can’t... can’t believe... He’s overreacted to things before, but never like THIS!” Twilight Sparkle exclaimed, teeth clenched angrily even as her horn spread curative magic over his burns.

Restoring his hand from a burnt and bandaged crisp to fixed and healed was the work of just a few minutes for Twilight. He tested his fingers; good as new.

“Still... I feel so bad for the poor little guy.” Lyra said. “That’s an awful lot for any kid to take!”

Lero gave a deep sigh. “Lyra?” he asked. “Would you be willing to promise me one thing?”

“Sure,” she said. “Anything.”

“If I ever hurt you the way I’ve hurt Spike, I want you to just come right out and tell me so: ‘Lero, you’re hurting me just like you’ve hurt Spike and Twilight.’ Because I’m clearly too STUPID to pick up on subtle cues.”

“I...” The Still Way grandmaster put a hoof around his shoulder. “Okay, Fingers, I promise I will.”

“Lero... it’s not fair to hold yourself responsible for me losing my cool,” Twilight quietly told him. She’d been looking self-conscious since Lero had said ‘Spike and Twilight.‘ “That was wrong of me to do that to all of you, and to myself.”

He reached out, scratching fondly around her ear. “It’s okay, Twilight, you’ve got a big responsibility and a lot of stress on your plate.”

“But that’s not the way to handle it, though!” Twilight insisted. “There are ways to deal with stress and ways not to deal with it, and it’s high time we reminded Spike of that!”

So she’d marched into Spike’s bedroom, and Lyra and Lero had followed behind her. There followed a lot of angry shouting from Twilight, and a lot of calm responses from Spike. With tranquility bordering on indifference, the little dragon owned up to every bad thing he’d done to Lero, apologized to them all once more, and promised it wouldn’t happen again. Twilight furiously revoked several privileges of Spike’s. Until further notice, he’d be going without an allowance, he was getting all his comics locked away, and he wouldn’t be allowed to eat any gems tastier than a topaz. (He wouldn’t have been getting those, either, except that Twilight -- even in such an angry state -- was conscientious of a baby dragon’s nutritional needs.)

Spike had shrugged blithely and told her he’d comply with it all. He even helped Twilight gather up all his comics and lock them away. Later on, when Rarity had returned home, the excuse they settled on for why Spike was being punished was that he’d unintentionally burned several books, and Lero had gotten his hand burnt trying to put the fire out. Spike immediately corroborated the story when the white unicorn had asked him about it.

Before going to bed, another thought came to Lero, and he visited Spike in his room for one last time that night.

“Hey, Spike!” he called in. “Got a little last-minute addendum to our deal.”

“Yeah?” The dragon looked to be on the final chapter of that book he’d begun reading.

“Yeah. I have the right to stop in the Carousel Boutique any time I want and ask Applejack about you! Whether you’re truly being a help or not! And if you aren’t, then I have the right to pull you away and forbid you from seeing her! And you won’t flip out over it! Are we clear?!”

He glared hard at the young dragon on the bed.

“Sure. That sounds perfectly reasonable and fair. If I’m being a pest to Applejack, if I’m being unhelpful, if she doesn’t want me around, then by all means, stop me. I promise I won’t even hate you for it,” the dragon told him, with such aggravatingly imperturbable evenness, to the point he wondered if he was taking Still Way lessons from Lyra. “Just a little more incentive for me to treat her right. Don’t you worry, though. Soon enough, my sweet fashionista will be making you clothes no one will laugh at you for wearing... and you’ll have ME to thank for it, Lero.”

Lero stared hard at Spike for a moment, then sighed. “You know what, Spike. I really hope you’re right.”

* * *

The next day, at around half past nine, Lero paid a visit to Sugar Cube Corner. He purchased a golden raisin and pecan muffin from Mrs. Cake. Then he asked Mrs. Cake if he could see Fluttershy, but she told him Fluttershy was now strictly a back-room worker, kept away from the customers.

At a quarter to eleven later that same day, Lero returned to Sugar Cube Corner. After buying an apricot strudel, he sat by Fluttershy, who was having her lunch break. He politely endured two jokes from the yellow pegasus, (the first involving what one stinkbug said to the other stinkbug, the second asking what you got when you crossed a hydra with ten tons of pico de gallo) before getting down to business. He informed her of why he had come; the service he was hoping to offer her, and if she was interested in his assistance.

She listened to his every word with increasing excitement and delight. By the time he was done speaking, Lero needn’t have even asked if she’d accept his offer.

She did. She very, very, very, very, very much DID.

She accepted Lero’s offer as though she were some greasy spoon waitress who’d always dreamed of hitting it big in showbiz, and he were a talent scout for the sequel of a multimillion-dollar Cellywood blockbuster, searching for a lead actress.

After she’d gotten her breath back, they agreed to meet with each other fifteen minutes after Fluttershy’s work schedule ended at three.

A blue parrot glowering from a high branch watched Lero head back home to prepare himself.

* * *

Lero was glad he and Fluttershy had picked the village green as their meeting place. It was the perfect location, the perfect time, and the perfect weather to make a guy glad to be alive. The grass was especially verdant this day, with only a few small scatterings of dandelions to interrupt the greenness. It was a place that begged passers-by to spread out a blanket and have a picnic. Then maybe lean back and decide what the clouds were shaped like, until they fell asleep under the gentle sunlight.

Lero had brought a blanket and a few things to snack on, in his backpack, but he wasn’t there to sleep in the sun. He’d also brought several books from the library which had looked helpful. These included: How To Be Funny by Harlequin Aid, A Study Of Humor by Rise Able, and Stand-Up Comedy: Yes, You Can Do It! by Ponyacci.

While he had no intention of ‘going Twilight Sparkle’ with his research material, he just felt better having these books with him. So he spread out his blanket and began browsing How To Be Funny, until the blare of a party horn jolted him out of his reading. He looked up to see a yellow-and-pink streak zoom over his head... and suddenly confetti was snowing upon him.

Fluttershy banked hard and came in to land on Lero’s blanket, blowing a kazoo while twirling a noisemaker, and spinning in a circle all at the same time. He almost felt like he was scoring a touchdown.

“Are you excited, Lero?” she gushed.

“Yeah!” he said, letting her beaming smile spread to him. “Absolutely, positively, one hundred percent excited! Aren’t you?!”

“No. I’m not excited. I’m super-duper-blooper-hooper-cooper-whooper-scooper-squadala-loop-de-looper THRILLED to have you teaching me comedy, Lero!”

Lero gave it a four out of ten on the Pinkie Pie Scale of Silly Sayings, but it had a lot of heart behind it.

“Here, I brought cupcakes, just for you!” she said, pulling a box of them out of her saddlebags.

What a contrast Fluttershy was! With Twilight’s friends -- Rainbow Dash worst off, then Pinkie Pie, Applejack and Rarity -- defeat and hopelessness had dragged at them like lead weights around their necks. Not so with Fluttershy! There wasn’t JUST hope in her eyes, there wasn’t JUST faith, there was CERTAINTY. While she was unhappy when her jokes failed, she hadn’t let it drag her down. She grinned like a blinded woman absolutely guaranteed to have her sight back; she pranced around him as though the sun had dawned after thirty days of night!

It was enough to swell Lero’s head AND send a shock of performance anxiety through him at the same time.

“Oh! I see you brought books!” Fluttershy said, looking at Lero’s small pile. “So did I! Figured it’d be smart to show you where I was getting all my current crop of jokes from!”

She set down several books in a stack. Lero looked at the titles. Bestest Jokes of Yucky Yolks, Volume 1. Underneath it was Bestest Jokes of Yucky Yolks, Volume 2. Volumes 3, 4, 5, and 6 were underneath that.

“So... how many volumes are in this series altogether?” Lero asked.

“Forty,” said Fluttershy.

“Forty!” said Lero, with a very well-faked air of respect. “Such a prolific author this Yolks fellow is!”

Each book in this series seemed to be around 300 pages. Lero flipped to a random page in Volume 4:

Q: What do masseurs eat for dinner?

A: SPA-ghetti.

Reminding himself how Twilight did not condone damaging or destroying books, (even with justification like this,) Lero gently set the book down and asked, “And how many of them do you own?”

Fluttershy held up the first Yucky Yolks book as though it were a four-leaf clover. “I found the whole set in this dingy used bookshop a little over a month ago. It was like they were calling to me! The bookseller sold me all FORTY of them for just twenty bits, can you believe it?”

Those twenty bits could’ve bought you one helluva nice sandwich. Lero stopped himself from saying. He should have paid you the twenty bits to haul them away as kindling...

“Yucky Yolks is amazing! I’ve disciplined myself to read through her joke books for two hours straight, every night before I go to bed, and memorize as much as I can and...!”

He held a hand up in front of her. “Alright, Fluttershy... time to assign you your homework for tonight.”

“Huh?! Homework already?! But we’ve barely started!”

Shrugging, Lero said; “Part One of your homework... is to get rid of all your Yucky Yolks books.”

“Get rid of them?!” she balked, as though he’d demanded she dump every baking ingredient in Sugar Cube Corner, all at once.

“Yes!” Lero insisted. “They are a perfect model of how not to tell a joke. They are anti-humor. Our first few lessons will probably focus on undoing the damage they’ve already done! Sell them, bury them, fling them from a catapult into the Everfree! I don’t care how you do it, as long as they are no longer in your possession by the time tomorrow’s class starts. I want your word of honor that you’ll actually DO this, and not just pretend to do it. So I want you to Pinkie Promise me...”

Fluttershy frowned. “Pinkie Promise? What do you mean by ‘Pinkie Promise?’”

Lero could’ve slapped himself in the face. Smooth move, Michaelides. Asking one of the Swapped to make a Pinkie Promise. You ought to have her give you an Applejack Avowal, while you’re at it!

“Uh… That’s a human thing, but you don’t exactly have a pinkie finger,” he lamely said, waggling the smallest finger on his left hand. “I meant, uh…”

He stared at Fluttershy’s Balloon Mark. Think! In place of the Sonic Rainboom, the Swap had come up with the Diamond Hailstorm. In place of the Pinkie Promise, the Swap would come up with...???

“Like a Fluttershy Forswearing, you mean?” the pegasus suggested.

“Yes!” said Lero. “Yes. A Fluttershy Forswearing. Of course that’s what I meant!”

The pegasus sat back on her haunches, lifting a hoof in the air like a child reciting the Pledge of Allegiance: “Cross my wings, hope to cry, pluck my feathers if I lie.”

Though short, the poem was delivered with great solemnity. The village green suddenly felt surprisingly profound.

“Good,” said Lero, after a breath. “Now, Part Two of your homework is to go to the best bookstore in town, ask one of the staff to lead you to the finest joke book they have for sale... then buy it, and study THAT instead.”

Lero braced himself. He was expecting Fluttershy to fight him on this, maybe even physically! He was expecting her to shriek bloody murder and cling to her horrible Yucky Yolks books like a life preserver. And all the while, her Balloon Mark would spasm and jitter and drive the most peaceful pegasus in Ponyville into a raging froth...

There was a trash can just a short distance from where they sat. Fluttershy fluttered over and dropped in the entire collection with nothing more than a mildly regretful sigh. She came back with a pleasantly amazed expression, ears pricked high as though listening for something.

“Wow!” She held her hoof to her head, as if feeling for headache pains that had just vanished. “I... I actually feel a little funnier already, after doing that! Just a smidgen of a smidgen funnier... but still!” She smiled at her human friend. “And I totally understand why you had me do that, Lero! Nopony actually enjoyed Yucky Yolks’ jokes, did they?”

Lero shook his head with a smile. “It’s just like baking a cake, Fluttershy: the very first step is to start with the right ingredients.”

The human could feel enthusiasm lighting in his heart. True, they’d only just begun, but so far, things were going GREAT! Unlike the others, Fluttershy was willing to cooperate with him right off the bat! And the fact that (at least for the moment) Fluttershy’s whole shtick was telling jokes... that was a bonus in itself!

Humor, by its very nature, would be a FUN subject to research. Lero would be learning new jokes AND a few things about delivering stronger punchlines right along with Fluttershy. Certainly a good skill to brush up on! But more importantly, these were only jokes, nothing more. Jokes weren’t something that came with things like glufferflorks or savage animals attached to them, right?

Yes, actually training Fluttershy to be a legitimately hilarious girl would be a brain puzzle worthy of Einstein, Edison, and Mel Brooks... but compared to the three Swapped Ponies who’d come before her, this’d be a brisk jog in the park. Lero belatedly hoped he wasn’t tempting fate, but decided that knocking on wood might just get fate’s attention...

“Uh... hey guys...”

Fluttershy and Lero turned.

“Hi, Dashie!” Fluttershy greeted.

Once again, Rainbow Dash was wearing that baseball cap, and the whistle around her neck. She took a step forward, but flinched, as though scared of coming any closer. It reminded Lero of seeing Fluttershy, in her un-Swapped state, trying to talk to other ponies… though she’d never hesitated to come right up to him.

“Hello, Dash,” said Lero, keeping anxiety from entering his voice. “What can we do for you?”

Dash’s lip quivered, the way ‘old Fluttershy’ would have quavered at the idea of intruding, even on her friends. “I... I see you’re together and... and it looks like you’re having fun! Can I... can I have fun with you too? Please?”

Fluttershy looked up at Lero. Can Dash come and be with us? Her eyes asked. Or would that disrupt our lessons? The yellow pegasus seemed willing to go with whatever Lero thought best.

She’s a jinx, she’s bad luck, she’s a cruel trick Starswirl laid for me! She doesn’t love me; inside she’s nothing but Fluttershy in a different skin, and Fluttershy only loves animals, she doesn’t even love ponies, much less people...

And then an older memory resurfaced in Lero’s head:

“But strictly speaking, Dash hasn't forgotten who you are,” Twilight told him. “She does know you, and she’s still your friend... but now, it’s only to the same extent that Fluttershy was your friend.”

“And now I feel stupid for not having formed a much closer bond with Fluttershy,” he, himself, said.

Raw as Lero’s feelings still were... he still remembered the heartfelt tears in Dash’s eyes when she’d told him, “You’re one of the most INCREDIBLE friends I’ve ever had!” Looking into her eyes now... that moment clearly still pained her, just as it pained him. Could he really deny sweet, lovable Fluttershy the chance to mend fences and make up for a mistake? Maybe... maybe this could be his chance to develop that closer bond with the Element of Kindness, as he should’ve done long before the Swap.

“Sure thing,” he told Rainbow Dash. “Come on over here and join us.”

“Yay!” Fluttershy enthused, giving Dash an eager hug and pulling her towards them. Seems like there was still plenty of Pinkie in her.

Dash’s thankful, happy smile made him feel like a bigger man. She came to seat herself by his right side, with Fluttershy seated to his left.

“Thank you, Lero! You won’t even know I’m here!” Rainbow promised.

He chuckled. “Oh, don’t be that way! You’re too bright and colorful to fade into the background on me! What’s the fun in that?”

“Yeah!” agreed Fluttershy, with a happy flap of wings. “It’s funner to take part in things! Here! Have a cupcake!”

She pushed the box of cupcakes over towards Rainbow Dash, who took a blue one. It didn’t quite match her coat. Lero decided he’d have a green.

“Hey, Dash?” Fluttershy asked as they chewed. “I’m pleased as punch that you’re here with us... but who’s watching your animals right now?”

“No one.” Dash told her. “They’re all by themselves in the cottage.”

“Oh! Uh... and you’re sure they’ll won’t get unruly with you gone?” Fluttershy asked, sounding ever-so-slightly like her old self. “Or maybe try to escape?”

With a last swallow of cupcake, the rainbow-maned pegasus flashed a wicked-looking grin at Fluttershy. “They’re free to leave any time they want! And they know what they’re in for if they do. Be braver of them than I’d give the little cowards credit for!”

That grin... it was pure old-school Rainbow Dash! He could SEE her old Wonderbolt-loving self through it. To Lero, it came as a sharp reminder that, in spite of everything, this wasn’t simply Fluttershy-in-Rainbow’s-skin, the way he’d told Lyra. The remainder of Rainbow Dash’s soul... the part missing from Rarity... was still there. Even if it wasn’t the part that loved him, Lero felt a bit happier still for letting Rainbow join him and Fluttershy on this lesson.

Speaking of which...

“Fluttershy, I think it’s high time we get started.”

“YAY!” she squealed, and some startled birds flew off. Heh, Pinkie bubbling up again, he couldn’t help but smile.

“So I want to begin by laying out everything you can honestly expect of me, as a teacher... and what you can’t,” he said, sitting up straighter on his blanket. Both the mares gave him their full attention.

“Now, Fluttershy, I know you have a lot of high expectations of me, I know that I’ve been doing well at helping other ponies... in situations comparatively similar to your own. It’s been rough for a lot of ponies lately.”

Fluttershy grinned, watching Dash and Lero each pass a nod to each other.

“But let me be clear: I’m not a fairy godmother, I’m not a genie, and I’m not Discord. I can’t wave my wand or snap my fingers and poof! The problem’s gone. When I went to help Rainbow Dash, I wasn’t going as some crackerjack lion tamer. I knew next to NOTHING about animal care. Everything I know now about tending to animals, I learned on the fly. I’ve been helping her for... three weeks? Four?”

“Something like that, yeah,” Rainbow Dash agreed.

“Either way, it took a month, give or take, and it’s only been recently that she’s gotten her cottage in order again.”

He looked Fluttershy square in the eye.

“By the same token, Fluttershy, please keep in mind: I’m not some five-star humorist. I know a couple of jokes. I can make a witty observation, here and there. But a TRULY top-of-the-line comedian can keep you in stitches all night long. And I’m really not that guy.”

Fluttershy’s expression was unwaveringly attentive as he spoke.

“That said, let me tell you what I can do for you,” Lero went on. “I can listen. I can offer an outside opinion. I can distract a mob while you run away, if you try telling any more Yucky Yolks jokes. And you’ll find that I am utterly, unrelentingly devoted to helping you. So if you accept my assistance...”

“If I accept?” Fluttershy interrupted. “There’s no ‘if’ to it, Lero. I’ve already accepted you. I’d rather have the guy who’s with me now and willing to help than the five-star comedian who isn’t here and wouldn’t have time for me anyway.”

And she leaned over, giving Lero a small, sweet nuzzle. “You helped Rainbow Dash get her critters under control without being an animal expert. You helped fix Rarity’s weather problems, and humans can’t even affect the weather. You solved Pinkie’s farming issues, and you’ve never farmed a day in your life outside of the times she hired you when you were looking for odd jobs back when you first came here.”

She pulled away.

“But in my case, you have something you’ve never had with my other friends: a leg up! You can TELL good jokes from bad jokes, you HAVE a working sense of humor... while mine’s on the fritz, and yes, of course I know it. Who could miss the groans or the pained looks instead of laughter? With you on my side, my funny bone’s as good as fixed!” She nodded firmly, then scrunched her eyebrows in thought. She patted her left shin with her right hoof. Then her right shin with her left hoof. “Which one’s the funniest bone, anyway?”

Yesterday, Spike had made Lero feel like some faithless, adulterous lech. Today, here and now, Fluttershy was making him feel like some glorious hero. Glancing at Rainbow Dash, he saw deep admiration in her eyes as well... and decided he’d go ahead and feel good about himself again. Plus, he knew this one. “Gotta be the humerus.”

Fluttershy laughed. “See? And believe me; I can be patient,” Fluttershy promised him. “I don’t care whether it takes a month or a decade, I want ponies laughing at me again! The way they USED to laugh!”

“Not at you, ‘Shy, with you.”

“Yes! You’re absolutely right!”

“Well then, let’s get to it!” said Lero, opening the first page of How To Be Funny.

* * *

“Introduction,” the human read aloud. “Folks, I know you’re raring for me to show you the funny, but I’d like us to take five minutes to be serious about humor. Why does it exist in the first place?”

“Humor exists because there’s too much in the world worth laughing about!” Fluttershy interjected.

“Shhh!” said Rainbow Dash.

“Look at the animal kingdom: the birds, the beasts, the fish, the bugs... every creature the government can’t get to pay taxes. Lucky ducks. Study zoology for long enough, and you’ll see that several species share certain traits in common with us higher life forms.”

Rainbow Dash was definitely listening in with more interest.

“The birds and the bees construct homes for themselves in the forms of nests and hives. Primates use tools. And any pet owner will tell you how their little darlings show a full range of emotions, ranging from joy, loneliness, love, fear... all emotions except one: humor. Ask yourself: ‘Self, when was the last time I saw a coyote chortle? A salamander snicker? A giraffe guffaw? A walrus whoop?’”

“Hyenas laugh!” Fluttershy pointed out.

“And for all you chuckleheads who bring up the hyena, let me put it to you straight: even if it sounds like laughter to our ears, it isn’t in Hyena-ese.”

The bafflement on Fluttershy’s face gave Rainbow Dash the giggles. “It’s true!” she told her pink-maned friend. “When hyenas ‘laugh,’ it’s not because they find something funny. They usually do it just before they’re about to attack or BE attacked by lions or other hyenas.”

“Well, you’re the animal expert,” Fluttershy conceded with a pout. She stuck her tongue out at Lero as she saw him visibly restraining a laugh of his own.

“Dogs and cats don’t laugh,” Lero continued. “Neither do koalas or buzzards or badgers or porpoises or rabbits. Which is something of a blessing, when you come right down to it. Can you imagine reaching out to pet a bunny, and he suddenly bursts out into hoots at how silly he finds your face?”

A dark memory resurfaced in Lero’s mind; he could see it on Dash’s face as well. While it was true that Angel Bunny had never voiced a laugh, the nasty rabbit had loved to sneer cruelly at them, which had always felt as good as bullying laughter. Really, it was amazing how expressive the faces of most Equestrian animals were... especially compared with their counterparts from Earth.

“Laughter is the exclusive dominion of sapient beings: ponies, zebras, donkeys, griffons, minotaurs and all the rest. Why is this? What evolutionary benefit did laughter give the nomadic pony herds of antiquity? Surely the wandering herds could not laugh away the predators hounding them across the prehistoric savannah!”

“They could giggle at the ghosties!” At this point, Lero was beginning to believe that Fluttershy might’ve inherited a bit of the old Pinkie Pie’s hyperactivity, but he let it pass.

“Well, according to one school of thought, (the research team of Waxwing, Tallyho, and Raspberry Ripple) laughter is a crucial survival trait. They claim that humor evolved primarily as a way for the sapient brain to detect mistakes, faulty beliefs, and illogical reasoning. Humor is the very mechanism that permits sapient brains to excel at practical problem solving. Thus, even in our earliest times, humor had an intrinsic survival value because it allowed sapients to recognize and break away from rigid, inflexible, faulted thinking. Just think where bumblebees might be today if they had the capacity to laugh at their queens!”

“The queen’zzzz a big fat joke!” Rainbow suddenly burst out, adding a funny bee-like buzz to her voice. “Boo! Hizzzz!”

The other pegasus started cracking up, then was both shocked and delighted when Rainbow reached out and ruffled her mane in a noogie. So was Lero.

“So when you laugh, know that you are part of an exclusive club, the club at the top of the food chain, the superior species.”

The book’s introduction had been like a pep talk to Fluttershy. She looked at him with shining eyes, clearly feeling a lot more superior than she had been before.

* * *

Rather than be interrupted every paragraph, Lero instead decided he’d skip ahead to one of the exercises.

“Exercise #1: Inventiveness. Step 1: grab a pencil, some paper, a timer and a set of objects. The objects can be anything; paper clips, bookmarks, house keys, whatever you have lying around your home,” he recited. “Step 2: Select an object to be Item A.”

Lero had already brought pencils, a clipboard, and paper with him. He turned out his pockets while the girls frisked through their saddlebags, coming up with a pile of odds and ends. They looked through it a bit... but what ended up catching Lero’s eye was a long yellow feather that had come loose from Fluttershy’s wing.

“Could we use this?” he asked, pointing at the feather.

“Sure!” said Fluttershy. “That can be Item A.”

He almost reached for the yellow feather, but then the sight of Rainbow Dash brought up a thought.

“You, uh, don’t mind if I grab this, right, Fluttershy?” he asked, anxiously fingering the cyan feather he wore by his ear: the feather which Dash and Fluttershy (and everyone else not on Discord’s exemption list) saw as an enchanted white rose. “I know there’s a lot of romantic significance when a guy accepts a feather from a pegasus girl…”

The mares’ jaws both hung, before they both burst out laughing.

“Aw, Lero, you really ARE everything Rarity says you are,” Fluttershy gasped, grinning even as she got herself back under control. “No, no, the feather’s yours. Treat it like any old pigeon feather. It’s not like you’re braiding it in your mane or anything!”

“Right,” he agreed, hiding a moment’s unease as he held the feather.

“I’m impressed,” Rainbow Dash said. “I mean, you knowing about an old pegasus tradition like that, when everypony in your herd’s a unicorn.”

“I think Lero’s getting ready for something, huh, Dash?” Fluttershy nudged her fellow pegasus’ side and winked at the tease to their human friend. Dash’s cheeks went pink, and Lero fought down another urge to squirm.

“I read about it in one of Twilight’s books,” he muttered quickly, before getting back to the lesson. “Step 3: set a time limit of no greater than three minutes and write up a list of as many uses for the selected object as possible. The catch is: you MUST disregard this object’s intended use, (example: toothbrushes being used for brushing teeth.) Practicality and plausibility is not an issue.”

“I say we give ourselves the full three minutes, since this is our first try,” Lero suggested. “Dash, would you watch the clock for us?”

“I’m on it,” said Rainbow Dash, and Lero took off his wristwatch and handed it to her.

“Then I’ll write the list,” he said, bringing up the clipboard. “Ready when you are!”

“Gimme a minute,” Dash muttered, poking at Lero’s watch with a primary feather. “Who makes teeny little buttons like these anyway? Fingers, sheesh, showing off… Okay... go!”

“Well, feathers are used for flying, so that’s what we disregard.” Fluttershy said. “What else can a feather be used for?”

About twenty or so seconds passed with not a sound from any of them. For no particular reason, all three of them seemed to be drawing blanks, as though they were trying to remember yesterday’s breakfast.

“Quills!” Dash suddenly spoke, eyeing the pencil in Lero’s hand.

“Quills? Oh yes, very good!” He scratched the word on the paper.

“They’re good for stuffing pillows,” Fluttershy remembered.

“Arrows.” Seeing the others’ puzzled looks, Lero explained; “You know... bows and arrows? They always add a little bit of feather to the end of the arrow, though I don’t remember off the top of my head what that’s called.”

“Fletching?” said Rainbow Dash.

“Yeah, that’s it!”

Another stretch of silence passed. How’s all this supposed to make us funnier? Lero wondered to himself. And then the memory of an old cartoon cliché came back to mind: a bare foot being brushed by the tip of a feather.

“You could... tickle someone with a feather,” Lero said, smiling.

“Ooh! That counts,” Fluttershy agreed. “You could also use it for a feather duster.”

“A feather duster from one single feather?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Well, if it’s a really SMALL countertop!” Fluttershy countered.

Lero nodded in agreement with Fluttershy. “Remember, Dash: practicality and plausibility are not an issue!”

“You could... um, you could... use it as a unit of measurement!” Fluttershy proposed, excitedly. “Like, ‘My mane is 20 feathers long!’”

She grinned to see Lero write that down. Now the ideas were coming in fast and quick.

“Use it as a spoon and stir the cream in your coffee with it,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Be good as a really, really quick candle,” Fluttershy giggled. “Like... if you only need two seconds’ worth of light. Or you could use it to light the fuse on a cannon!”

“Be terrific if you needed to vomit,” Lero said.

“What?” Both the pegasi looked sickened.

“Okay, okay, let me paint you a picture. Let’s say you take accidentally drink some poison and you NEED to throw it up, right away! Not to worry! Just pull out the old poison ejector,” He picked up the yellow feather, “stick it in your mouth and tickle your uvula with it and... PRESTO!”

“Eewwwww,” Fluttershy laughed.

“That’s SO gross!” Rainbow Dash snickered. “Ooh, I know. Cleaning out the gunk in your eye in the morning!”

“Stick it in your ear, and it’d be a decent earwax remover.” said Fluttershy.

“Dye it the right color, and glue it over your upper lip, and you’d have a handsome mustache,” said Lero, bringing the feather against his own mustache, so that it sort of looked like he’d grown a blonde handlebar.

Rainbow Dash checked the wristwatch. “Shoot! Time’s up,” she announced, regretfully.

Looking at the cyan pegasus, Lero thought up another usage an instant too late: braid it in your hair. Quietly, he snuck that in on the list.

“That was FUN!” Fluttershy said, breathlessly. “So what now? Did we earn points?”

“Step 4,” Lero read from Harlequin Aid’s book. “Select a second object to be Item B and repeat the process, making a new list.”

“How about a cupcake?” Fluttershy suggested immediately, holding one up from the box. “Cupcakes are GREAT!”

The other two agreed, and soon they were spilling out ideas almost faster than Lero could write them down.

“Ant bait!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash.

“Paperweight,” said Lero.

“Food fight ammunition!”

“Clothing!” The other two gave Fluttershy a look.

“Clothing? How would you WEAR a cupcake?” Dash asked.

“Give it to Applejack. SHE’LL make it wearable.”

They ALL chortled at that. None of them could help themselves! Through his laughter, Lero watched the yellow mare’s face. Fluttershy did not merely smile. Seeing them laugh, being able to join in their laughter, all from a genuinely funny and original joke seemed to fill Fluttershy up with nourishment. She honestly looked healthier than she had a second ago. And her Balloon Mark gave a jolt of excitement.

“More! More!” the yellow mare chirped. “I can think of more!”

So they all came up with more things you could do with a cupcake besides eat it, and when time ran out again, Fluttershy cried, ”Let’s do this again!”

Lero checked the book again. “Actually, there’s one more step. Step 5: Write a list thinking up as many ways as possible to combine Item A with Item B in a useful manner.”

“Quillcushion!” Fluttershy squealed, before Rainbow Dash even began taking time. “Instead of a pincushion, you use the cupcakes to store your quills in."

“You could write your letters in frosting,” Lero said. “Ink is SO last season.”

“Get enough feathers, then have either Twilight or Discord cast a spell, and you’d have a flying cupcake,” Rainbow Dash said.

It was like he wasn’t even an adult anymore; he was back to being a little kid. No beard, no job, free from the demanding pressures of sex and romance. Just a wet-behind-the-ears goofball, having fun with his classmates, letting his imagination run wild in the playground. Anything was possible, anything could work, as long as you could dream it, it didn’t matter how silly it was. Grownups might call it insensible, but grownups were lame.

At Fluttershy’s insistence, they repeated the exercise two more times, from Step 1 to 5, finding dozens upon dozens of bizarre uses for whistles, socks, empty cupcake boxes and rubber bands, each more laughable than the last.

“Comedians must be able to see everything in the world from an outside-the-box perspective; both to maintain originality and surprise.” Lero read. “The ability to combine at least two elements in funny and unusual ways is the foundation of everything from quick one-liners to the feature-length comedy films. For example: ‘What do you get when you cross poison ivy with a four-leaf clover?’”

“Um... itchy luck?” Fluttershy guessed.

“A rash of good fortune!” Lero read.

Fluttershy fell into giggles, before seeming to wilt a bit. “I should’ve thought of that...” she lamented.

Lero continued narrating the first chapter, which focused on surprise. The book could not overemphasize how absolutely vital surprise was in comedy: “Ultimately, we NEVER laugh UNLESS there’s surprise. Without that all-important swerve, the most clever wordplay becomes nothing more than audacious commentary. In order to properly set up a surprise, you have to mislead the audience; a verbal sleight-of-hoof. Get the whole theater staring at your left foreleg, when the dove’s up your right sleeve. Make them assume they know how things will end.”

Fluttershy ended up borrowing Lero’s clipboard and taking notes for herself as attentively as Twilight Sparkle would have; writing in smaller letters as the book went on, warning strongly against what it called ‘telegraphing the punchline.’

“For example, which is a funnier version of this joke?

VERSION ONE: September is the month where millions of smiling faces, radiating happiness, turn towards school... waving as their foals go inside!

VERSION TWO: For parents, September is a month of celebration... especially on the day school starts!”

“The first version,” both mares agreed.

“If you said the first version, then you’re right. But now ask yourself: what fatal flaw did Version Two make? The answer is in the first two words: ‘For parents.’ Version One surprised us by getting us to think it was taken from the foals’ point-of-view, up until the reveal at the end. Version Two tells us right away this joke was taken from the parents’ point-of-view, telegraphing what the surprise is going to be. You’d do just as well to reveal who the murderer is on the first page of a whodunit.”

Lero nearly laughed out loud at how much more impressed this tip left Fluttershy than Rainbow Dash.

“But even the most well-written jokes can fall flat if the comedian telegraphs the punchline non-verbally. Think of it like a poker game. When you’re sharing a joke, does your body give a ‘tell?’ Do your eyes blink when you’re nearing the punchline? Maybe a hoof of yours taps the floor?”

Lero decided to test and see. He called Fluttershy over, whispered a couple one-liners in her ear to memorize, (one thing to be said in Fluttershy’s favor: she had a near-photographic memory for new jokes), and had her perform them for Rainbow Dash.

“I have a condition that renders me unable to diet: I get hungry! An onion just told me a joke: I don’t know whether to laugh or cry! I broke up with my gym the other day: we just weren’t working out.”

Rainbow Dash did chuckle a bit, but she gave Fluttershy a look and said, “When you get near the punchline, your tail flicks and you grin extra-big.”

“I do?” asked Fluttershy.

“Yeah, I noticed it too,” said Lero.

For the rest of their time together, Lero and Rainbow Dash focused on trying to break Fluttershy’s habit of tail-twitching and over-grinning. At times, the yellow pegasus got disheartened, because she kept doing it unconsciously, but by the time they all decided it was time to call it quits for the day, they had gotten her to diminish the habit by a marginal amount... and it DID help with her joke delivery.

* * *

“So... tomorrow at the same time?” Lero asked Fluttershy, once the lesson was finished.

“You bet,” said Fluttershy, clutching her stack of notes, happy as a dog coming back from a long, satisfying walk. “I’ll be there!”

When the yellow pegasus flew off, Lero turned to Rainbow Dash. “Dash, I’d like to thank you for being here. Your presence really helped.”

It had honestly surprised Lero how handy Dash had proven to be! At first, she beamed at the compliment, but then some of her shyness seemed to reassert itself as he folded the blanket back up.

“Would you like me to come by tomorrow too? Y’know, when you’re training Fluttershy...”

He looked up. She’d lowered the brim of her cap in such a way that it hid her right eye... similarly to the old Fluttershy’s trick of peeking shyly at others from behind her curtain of pink mane.

“Aw, you don’t have to go out of your way...”

“No! I’d love to come!” Dash insisted, raising her head and showing both eyes. “I mean... you helped Pinkie Pie get through her issues, and she was able to help me with the glufferflork. Now you’re helping Fluttershy with her problems, and I wanna be there for you. And Fluttershy.”

“That... that...” He gave into the urge to hug her. How could he have forgotten, even briefly, what a sweet-natured girl Rainbow Dash was? And, hell, Fluttershy, too. “That would be awesome of you, Dash. Alright, then! I’ll see you tomorrow at three-fifteen.”

He gave Rainbow Dash another hug, placed his comedy books back into his backpack with the blanket, slung the backpack over his shoulder and turned to return home.

“W...wait!”

He stopped to look back at Dash.

“Lero would you, um... like to go to a movie with me?” she asked, a hoof raised up to the brim of her cap, stopping just short of tilting it back over her eyes.

“A movie? Which movie? When?”

“W... whichever one you like,” she answered. “I didn’t pick one. And, uh, right now, I guess. Unless now’s a bad time.”

The look in her eyes... it was almost an even match for the one she’d given him at the doorstep of his home. The one she’d given him just before he’d shut the door in her face. ‘It’s the same sort of look your girls give you!‘ Spike had sneered.

Mentally, he compared the face Rainbow Dash was giving him, setting it next to that of Lyra’s at her most amorous, especially back when they’d first begun dating. There were... MANY similarities. But still, Lero didn’t want to jump to conclusions. After all, Rainbow Dash had said what she’d said, that day at the cottage. And girls weren’t flighty creatures; they didn’t change their minds overnight. Especially not when it came to an important matter like love.

All the same, Lero’s curiosity had been sparked. The same curiosity which had led him to ask Cloudchaser and Flitter why a unicorn was their boss, the same curiosity which had inspired him to bring a Sweet Apple Acres apple pie to the Carousel Boutique, just to see what Applejack’s reaction would be, led Lero to say, “Alright, sure.”

* * *

Lero and Rainbow Dash stood outside the movie theater and looked at all the movie posters. It had been ages since he’d last seen a film, so all the titles were unfamiliar to him.

House Of No Escape: an obvious horror film whose poster showed a scary-looking house at night.

Youthful Discretions: seemed to be a romance flick between a herd of teenage pegasi.

Eyewitness: a courtroom drama that seemed to be the sort of thing Big Mac would’ve enjoyed. The poster showed a nervous-looking stallion taking the witness stand.

Woogums And Noogums: This one appeared to be some kind of family-friendly film with live-action animals; a kitten and a bear cub.

Dream Engagement: It showed two grooms and five brides, getting married to each other.

X-bionic: A science fiction piece. It showed what seemed to be interplanetary colonists caught in a shootout against robots.

I’m Too Weird!: A kid’s animated film. It showed a dopey goofball of a griffin chick.

Our Unicorn Nephew: Showed a flustered-looking pair of Earth ponies opening the door to find their titular unicorn nephew.

Dear Mister Edelweiss: A very heavy-looking dramatic piece. Showed a shriveled, but smiling old Earth pony stallion on his deathbed. The sun shone in on him through a window.

A Nightmare Beyond Understanding: Another horror film, showing a close-up of an extremely terrified eye.

She Is Not Evil: All it showed was an unquestionably ominous-looking pegasus mare, with scarily outstretched wings. Hard to tell which genre this movie was even supposed to be.

Strongest Samurai: This poster promised a lot of fun; an Earth pony mare in samurai armor with a katana clenched in her mouth, backed into a blood-spattered corner!

Lero looked to Rainbow Dash. “What do you think about Woogums And Noogums?” he asked her, charitably. Woogums And Noogums looked like the sort of movie that might not even have any sapient creatures as actors. Once, on Earth, he had sat through part of an old movie called The Adventures Of Milo And Otis while channel-surfing; and Woogums And Noogums gave off that same sort of vibe.

She looked conflicted, almost stepping towards it, as though she could pull the kitten and bear cub straight out of the poster and cuddle them. But then he saw her expression harden at the animals, as though they were two of her own.

“Too uncool! I have enough namby-pamby animal stuff in my own real life, I’m in the mood for something that’ll get my blood pumping!” It was almost like listening to the old Rainbow Dash talk down the old Fluttershy.

“...That is, unless you really WANT to see Woogums and Noogums...”

“No, I don’t,” Lero said, grinning wide. Honestly, the only reason he’d suggested the animal movie in the first place was because he was afraid that some of the movies he really wanted to see would be too intense for a girl with Fluttershy’s sensitive sensibilities. He reconsidered the movie posters.

“Been a while since I’ve seen a good sci-fi flick. X-bionic okay with you?”

“Sure,” said Rainbow Dash. “It looks awesome!”

When they got to the ticket booth, Lero reached for his wallet, but Dash was quicker. With a fast flick of her wing, she brushed her feathers against his arm, gently pushing his wallet away. She smiled nervously as she pulled out her wallet and paid for the tickets. Interesting...

Inside, they waited in line at the concession stand to buy popcorn and soft drinks. Lero again reached for his wallet... and again felt the soft pressure of Dash’s feathers against his arm.

“Um... I can get this for you,” Rainbow offered quickly.

“Are you sure?” Lero asked her.

“It’s really no problem. Honest!” she told him, with a powerful blush. Very interesting...

They entered the theater, and took their seats.

“I really hope you like this movie, Lero,” she said, as anxiously as if she, herself, had produced, written, and starred in this film.

He reached out and gave her a friendly pat. “Even if we don’t, even if it’s corny... we can always make fun of it, afterwards. That’s always been the beautiful thing about movies, so it’s a win-win.”

As she smiled, the theater darkened and the first of the previews started. They sat through them, sharing the popcorn bucket between them. Every now and again, Lero and Rainbow Dash would reach for more popcorn at the same time, and as she bent her head, her lips would just happen to brush against the back of his hand. She’d pull away, blushing, but Lero would smile and say nothing.

Soon enough, X-bionic began.

* * *

INT. BIONIC BARRACKS - DAY

A LARGE HERD OF BIONICS encircle QT-3.14, who stands on a table, whipping up her fellow BIONICS into a furious, bloodthirsty frenzy.

QT-3.14
Ponies are MEAT SACKS and should be MELTED DOWN like SCRAP! Today is the day the Bionics take control! Atomize every pony on this pathetic planetoid! And let’s throw The Autocrat straight into the heart of the Liquitron!

BIONIC #1
(wild, murderous)
Affirmative! Affirmative!

BIONIC #2
Grind pony flesh! Grind pony bones!

INT. CORRIDOR #20-G - DAY

ZAP! ZAP!

Plasma beams are blasted towards the screaming PONIES, ricocheting everywhere; occasionally, a good shot silences one of their screams. Havoc has been unleashed.

BUBBLEGUM and TOFFEE CUBE duck behind a steel crate, as QT-3.14 roars above the crossfire, her steely lobster-hooves clacking angrily.

QT-3.14
Vaporize the ponies! Atomize the ponies!

QT-3.14 aims a stolen Electrorifle at a pair of Earth ponies. With a BZZZZ-ZOWIE they’re flung back against the wall, instantaneously reduced to flash-fried ash.

Angle On: Bubblegum and Toffee Cube, cowering behind their steel crate as enemy fire whizzes overheard.

BUBBLEGUM
I told you the Bionics were gonna revolt. Didn’t I tell you, Toffee Cube?! But you didn’t believe me!

TOFFEE CUBE
Yes, yes, you were right and I was wrong, rub it in my muzzle later! We gotta make tracks!

BUBBLEGUM
Got that right! Our safest bet would be to head to Substation J.

Their horns shine, and both mares draw their Laser Shooters out of their Space Suits.

BUBBLEGUM
Ready?

TOFFEE CUBE
As I’ll ever be.

BUBBLEGUM + TOFFEE CUBE
GO TIME!

They jump to all fours, spring out from behind the steel crate, galloping down the hallway while firing their Laser Shooters behind their backs. Miraculously, they manage to hit a few Bionics, which go down in sputtering spurts of sparks.

The door to the adjacent corridor, (#20-H) opens for both the ponies, who race on in...

INT. CORRIDOR #20-H - CONTINUOUS

The moment the door’s shut behind them, Bubblegum spins around, and fires a heat blast at the Auto-Door, welding it shut.

BUBBLEGUM
There! I’ve fried the Auto-Door’s openation circuitry.

TOFFEE CUBE
Bubblegum! You’re BLEEDING!

They look down at Bubblegum’s wounded right hind leg, oozing blood.

BUBBLEGUM
Heh... one of ‘em got me. And healing spells haven’t ever been my forte.

Close-up on Bubblegum’s injured leg as she attempts a healing spell. For a second, her wound closes feebly, before bursting back open like an overstuffed suitcase. Blood gushes out worse than ever.

BUBBLEGUM
GAAHH!!!!

She takes several deep breaths, then looks hopefully at Toffee Cube.

TOFFEE CUBE
Don’t look at me, I spent too much time learning techno-magery to be a medic!

The POUNDING of metallic hooves and the WHINE of electronic and plasmatic gun blasts reverberate against the other side of the welded door.

QT-3.14
Bash down the door! Atomize all ponies! Puny pony meat cannot stand against the strength of chrome!

The attacks upon the door redouble. It starts to buckle.

Toffee Cube levitates her injured friend upon her back, and gallops towards the next room.

INT. CAFETERIA - DAY

Chaos and carnage all around. More Bionics are battling against their pony masters; this time against soldiers. BULLETS PING and SPATTER everywhere, as Toffee ducks to a crouch, trying to sidle along the wall with Bubblegum on her back, doing her best not to be seen by any of the fighters.

Just then, COMPU-SPRITE flutters out of Toffee Cube’s Space Saddlebags.

COMPUTO-SPRITE
Alert! Beep-beep! Alert!

TOFFEE CUBE
Ergh!

BUBBLEGUM
(from Toffee’s back)
Not NOW, Computo-Sprite!

COMPUTO-SPRITE
But it’s beep-beep-beep, Super-Duper, Priority-One, Code-Purple Important!

SOLDIER #1
AAAAAAGGGGHHH!!

They watch a SOLDIER get blasted over a dozen times by plasma fire and his head flies off. Toffee races around the corner to where it’s the tiniest bit safer.

COMPUTO-SPRITE
Beep! The Bionics have -- Beep! -- destroyed the Air-O-Mizer 4000! Beep!

Another pony soldier crawls across the floor, not quite able to hold his guts in. A Bionic brings his chromium hoof down upon his skull.

BUBBLEGUM
But without the Air-O-Mizer 4000, no more new air will be generated for the entire planetoid!

TOFFEE CUBE
(face darkening)
And Bionics are machines, and machines don’t NEED to breathe, do they?!

Her front hoof comes down on something squishy. She lifts her hoof to see it’s the corpse of TINFOIL, his throat ripped open.

BUBBLEGUM!
No! They got Tinfoil!

TOFFEE CUBE
Ssh! Bubblegum!

BUBBLEGUM
(still sobbing, but softer)
Best partner at Space Whitewater Rafting EVER...

They duck into the kitchen, as debris rains around them.

INT. KITCHEN - DAY

They hide behind a giant FOOD DISPENSER, large enough to conceal five ponies standing snout-to-tail.

TOFFEE CUBE
Computo-Sprite! How much air do we have left?!

COMPUTO-SPRITE
Beep-beep! Computing! Computing! Computing! Beep! Computations indicate that six hours’ worth of air remains on this planetoid.

TOFFEE CUBE
(thinking it over)
Six hours? If we’re careful, that might be enough for us to sneak our way out to the escape shuttles!

At that moment, scary-looking GREEN GAS seeps out from the air vents, overhead.

* * *

“...And the best bit where the head robot held the gun to that one pegasus’ head and was all, ‘How many ponies are in Substation J?’ And the pegasus was like, ‘A thousand, all waiting to pound you into sheet metal!’ And then the head robot was all, ‘No. There’s less than twenty.’ BLAM! ‘And now one less outside as well.’”

He was on Rainbow Dash’s back again, soaring high above the rooftops.

“Nuh-uh!” said Rainbow Dash. “The best bit was where all the lizards were scrambling out of that hole, while the laser blast was ricocheting seventy bajillion times off all that glass before finally hitting that one robot!”

Lero laughed. “Well it’s still been a long time since I saw a really good sci-fi flick, but I have to admit this was a blast.”

“I gotta give you props, Lero; that movie was so deliciously cheesy, you could’ve melted it over a pizza pie!”

“And that acting! Would you like a huge ham to go with all that cheese, ma’am?”

“What’s ham?” she asked. “Is that a human thing?”

“Very human,” he told her.

It felt so good being up here, laughing and having a good time with Rainbow Dash again. He missed the whoosh of a pegasus’ wings catching the air. The cap on her head had flown off her head at one point, but Dash had circled around and caught it, and Lero had put it back on her head at a tighter notch. She’d thanked him.

All too soon, she’d landed on his house’s front lawn, and he had to dismount. “Thank you, Rainbow Dash,” he said. “I had a lot of fun with you today.”

This was no understatement. Privately he was amazed. Not a thing had gone wrong. Not one! So much for Rainbow Dash being jinxed.

“Me too,” she said, with an uplifted smile. “I, uh... if I were to take you out to have some more fun with me, some other day... would that be cool with you?”

“It’d be very cool with me,” Lero told her.

“Awesome!” She licked her lips. “Well, I... guess I ought to skedaddle.”

But instead of turning around, Rainbow Dash stood on the doorstep, licking her lips again, giving him a prolonged gaze, as though trying to think of something else to say.

Or maybe she’s thinking of kissing you! Spoke a voice in Lero’s head that sounded very much like Spike.

But if that were the case... Rainbow Dash must’ve decided that a first date was too early for that sort of thing.

“But before I go,” the pegasus said, “Could I borrow one of those comedy books of yours? I think I’d like to read it over at home. Y’know, cuz we’re having our next comedy lesson with Fluttershy tomorrow, and I want to be prepared.”

“You’re a regular Twilight Sparkle,” he chuckled, pulling A Study Of Humor from his bag and placing it in her saddlebag for her.

“Just pull that giant star off her flank, put it on mine, and call me an egghead, then!” she laughed, before saluting him with a wingtip and flying off.

Well, that’d be ONE way of bringing you home, Dash, he thought to himself, wryly.

* * *

That night, Lero had another strange dream.

He was standing before a castle made of books. It wasn’t simply one of Twilight Sparkle’s crude book forts, something drawn from her childhood; It was an all-out castle, a fortress complete with turrets, parapets, battlements, bastions, and all the rest, as big as the one Princess Celestia lived in.

“Go away, Lero!” cried a voice from within. “Just go away...”

“No!” he thundered. “I’m not going away!”

He searched for a way in, but everywhere he looked it was a solid wall of books, stretching far away and too high to climb. Well, that wasn’t going to stop him! Using his hands, he began digging through the castle wall, ripping books free as easily as if they were stacked in a shelf. Texts and novels and great dusty tomes all fell around him as he dug his way into the side of the fortress, flinging books behind him as he went.

“You hate me!” It was Twilight Sparkle’s voice, a little lower-pitched than normal. “Everyone hates me! I caused all this mayhem with that spell! I’m a monster! I’m to blame!”

“Come on out of there!” he demanded, ripping out five encyclopedias at once and tossing them behind him. “I refuse to talk to you through a wall!”

There came another wail from within. “All I wanted was some help! All I want is to see that this unfinished spell gets finished! I can’t do it on my own! I can’t! And I’m so sorry! I could’ve helped you more, I could’ve DONE more, but instead...!”

“I am helping you!” he practically screamed. “All of us want this insane spell fixed!”

The tunnel seemed endless. He turned back and saw a dim light far behind him. He growled and dug, and dug with unstoppable energy. No guards came to attack him. None came to arrest him. And when he finally broke through to the castle’s inner sanctum, he found... he had tunneled right into the library he lived in.

Lero saw the cutie mark on the mare’s flank. The Star Mark belonged to Twilight Sparkle. But the pony who wore it was no unicorn. It was Celestia.

The white alicorn lay on the floor. She wore no crown or any other jewelry.

Celestia looked up from the book she was reading, tears streaking her eyes. He’d know that ancient book anywhere: it was Starswirl’s spell book. She’d even turned it to the final page, where that dreaded unfinished spell was written.

“Oh, Lero... can you ever find it in your heart to forgive me?”

He was too dumbstruck to answer. Celestia’s voice sounded like she was giving her best impersonation of her student. Her mane was flat and pink, with a two-tone purple streak in it, like a photo negative of Twilight’s.

“One moment, I just need to write this report.” The Swapped alicorn levitated a sheet of paper over, and began to dictate her own letter.

“Dear Princess Twilight Sparkle...”

* * *

“So you dreamt that I was the ruler of the sun while Celestia was my faithful student?” Twilight asked.

They were in the shower together, and Twilight’s human stallion was washing her mane and body, much to her delight. She purred at the feeling of more than just the water, warm against her sides. She always loved the way Lero's hands felt working her up to a lather... and he was good at shampooing her coat, too.

“Pretty much,” the human sighed, reaching forward to tilt the shower head down at a better angle. “It’s funny, really. Switcheroos and role reversals feature a LOT in my dreams these days.”

“How so?” Twilight asked.

Lero stalled. “I warn you: these are really WEIRD dreams.”

She turned to nuzzle the side of his smooth body. “Dreams are usually weird, anyway, Lero. You can tell me.”

Lero closed his eyes and reopened them. “I dream things like, oh, intelligent kangaroos are the dominant species, and ponies and humans are their pets. I dream that Equestria’s gender ratio is reversed. You and Dash and Rarity and Lyra are all stallions, and I’m the woman. No, really! I dream that you’re all human females, and I’m an honest-to-goodness stallion. I dream that ponies live on Earth, and humans are native to Equestria. I dream that guys are the ones who give birth. I dream that young prepubescent kids go to jobs, pay mortgages, send their parents to grade school and daycare, and read them stories at bedtime. I dream that you’re all dragons and Spike’s the pony. What do you suppose it all means, Twilight?”

“I think,” Twilight responded after a moment, “that it’s your brain’s way of dealing with the Swap,” she told him.

“Well, that clears everything up.” Smiling, he ran her fingers down her slender barrel and laid his hands on her flanks, caressing her cutie marks as he rinsed the suds out. “What about you, Twilight? Had any ‘swap‘ dreams of your own?”

Her mind cast backwards to a certain memory of two weeks ago. She took several seconds to dwell on it, before finally speaking. “Lero?” she asked, “The next time you’re going out on equilibrium business... would you please take me along?”

Lero’s fingers quit scrubbing her body. “Where did THIS come from, all of a sudden?”

“You’d asked about me having swap dreams,” Twilight said. “I once dreamt that the two of us swapped with each other, Lero. I got out of bed, dressed head to hooves in shoes, socks, underwear, shirt and pants, and went around town doing all sorts of stuff to save my friends, while you stayed naked in the library, reading books on psychology, old magic, and cutie marks.”

She looked up to see that he was considering her with fascination. “Now, these clothes you were wearing, were they fit for your body? Or for mine?”

“Mine, of course,” said Twilight. “I knew I was a mare, I knew I was a unicorn... but I believed your parents were mine, that I had come from Earth... everypony treated me like an alien, while you WEREN’T... you had to keep teaching me how to act properly among ponies, and you served me a big raw slab of cow meat for dinner, and I gobbled it up like fresh oats and kissed you after I was done eating.”

“How was our sex together?” her human then asked, with a saucy smile.

She smiled back. “Excellent as ever. Being undressed by you was exciting.” Unlike real life, it never stopped at just at kiss. Never in her dreams, and they both knew it.

“And how was the steak?"

She rolled her eyes. "Ridiculously delicious at the time, but I had to brush my teeth six times when I woke up before I could even think about breakfast, so no, I am not going to that griffon place in Canterlot, period."

He made a showy tut of disappointment. “So what do you suppose your dream means?”

“I checked a dream interpretation book, and from what I can gather from it, I'm probably dissatisfied with what I'm doing and fantasizing about living your life,” she told him.

He shut off the shower water, grabbed two towels off the rack, and handed one to her. After they both dried themselves, Lero lowered the towel from his face, looking rather cute with his mane all scruffy. “So what you’re saying is that you want to help me with equilibrium?”

She gave her human a very firm, “Yes.”

“But what about the Cure?” asked Lero.

She stomped a resounding, silencing hoof on the bathroom tile. “The Cure will come. I swear it will! But I’ve been thinking things over a lot. What happened between you and Spike helped put my situation in a new light. I’ve been behaving like a foal and not a grown mare.”

She almost hung her head... but then faced Lero strong and squarely. “For an entire month, I watched you go to Rainbow Dash’s cottage and come back home with all sorts of scratches and bites. But what’d I ever do to help?”

“I came right to you for healing spells, each night,” Lero reminded her.

His expression was so earnest, she couldn’t help smile back at him. Yeah, you did, Lero, she remembered. Unless Rarity spotted you first and beat me to the punch.

“But how many times did I come along with you to the cottage? My magic could’ve been a tremendous asset in getting those animals under control. Dash was… is... just as much MY herdmate as yours. Instead, what’d I do? I stayed at home and I let myself grow... grow ENVIOUS...”

And what a bitter taste that word left in Twilight’s mouth!

“...and I used the Cure as an excuse to build walls between us.”

Both of them gave a hard swallow.

“The other day,” Twilight continued, “I saw how deeply Spike regretted refusing to help you with Dash, because of jealousy. How distant and aloof he’s already become. And I realized that I, myself, did nothing different than Spike. Imagine if you, me, and Spike had all kept going to Dash’s cottage together, working on taming her animals as a team, rather than letting YOU do all the work. How much pain might’ve been avoided? How much quicker might the problem have been solved?!”

“You... you can’t hold it against yourself, you were busy trying to research the Cure...” he told her, almost nervously. “For all we knew, the answer might’ve been in the very next book, like you were always saying.”

That excuse sounded as limp and lame to Twilight’s ears as it must’ve sounded to Lero’s, all those times she, herself, had said it.

“I know that you’re just trying to spare my feelings, Lero...”

“Of course I am!” the human suddenly blurted. “You don’t react well to guilt! The last thing you need is more of it!”

Immediately after saying this, Lero clapped his hands over his mouth in horror. At first, Twilight only gaped at him. Then she did something which astonished her sweet human. She smiled, then cast a telekinetic field over Lero’s arms. With her magic, she gently pulled the hands from his mouth, opening his arms up, as she pressed herself against the front of his body. Then she closed his arms back around herself in a hug.

“And that brings me to another thing that’s been on my mind, Lero: I’m as good as a wife to you. Heck, I will be a wife of yours, one day, just like Rarity keeps reminding us. And no husband of mine deserves a weak wife who falls to pieces when the pressure’s on. Mares must be strong for their stallions! For their families!”

She pulled away from the hug.

“Besides, I’m tired of being the passive one. Tired of just reading, tired of talking... I want to face the Swap one-on-one. Maybe your original idea was right on the money, Lero. Maybe once we equilibrate my other two...”

She stopped at Lero’s scrunched look. “Equilibrate?”

Twilight blinked. “Yes. ‘Equilibrate.’ Meaning ‘to bring into a state of equilibrium.‘ You wish to equilibrate Fluttershy and Applejack the same way you’ve already equilibrated three of my other friends.”

“...I had no idea that ‘equilibrium’ even had a verb form,” he muttered. “Color me surprised.”

Giggling softly, she pressed her head against him. “So, anyway, getting back to the point: from now on, I’d like to tag along and help you with your equilibrium stuff.”

“And I’d like that too.” Once more, she felt his lovely arms encircle her. “Lyra, too. Don’t want anyone feeling left out!”

“No, we don’t!” she agreed. He raised his arms, and Twilight went over to the bathroom mirror, putting toothpaste on her toothbrush.

“‘Equilibrate’ is such a STRANGE word, wouldn’t you say?” observed her stallion behind her, slipping into a set of clean underwear. “‘I equilibrate Fluttershy.’ Makes me think I’m performing math problems on her or something.”

* * *

Twilight Sparkle flipped over to the next flashcard in her deck. “Parody!” she read out.

“Um... um... uh... oh wait!” fumbled Fluttershy. “Parodies are spoofs.”

“Yes, spoof is another name for parody, but what IS it?” Twilight pressed.

“The... the... the recreation of a film, book, or play for humor,” the yellow pegasus recalled.

Twilight Sparkle, Lero Michaelides, Rainbow Dash, Lyra Heartstrings, and Fluttershy were all seated in a circle at the village green.

“Good.” Twilight flipped to her next flashcard. “Improv.”

“Comedy that’s created on the spot,” Fluttershy said.

“I’ll accept that,” Twilight told her, going to the next flashcard. “Physical comedy.”

“Slapstick!” said Fluttershy, but her purple unicorn friend shook her head.

“I’m sorry, I’m not accepting that as an answer.”

“Why not?” argued Rainbow Dash, from right beside Fluttershy. “Slapstick TOTALLY is physical comedy.”

Twilight set her stack of flashcards down. “Let me put it this way, Rainbow: would you agree that ‘all adverbs are words, but not all words are adverbs?’”

“Yeah,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Same principle. All slapstick is physical comedy, but not all physical comedy is slapstick. Believe me, I studied up on this. For example, if I were to pull a silly face...”

Here, the rest of them giggled as Twilight Sparkle crossed her eyes, flared her nostrils, pulled her lower jaw forward in an great underbite, while flopping her ears about.

“That’d be an example of physical comedy that wasn’t slapstick. Slapstick requires violence with no serious physical repercussions. Some horrible thing happens to me; I’m electrocuted, I stumble blindly into a tree, I trip down a long spiral staircase, a dragon burns my whole body black, a grand piano falls onto my head from the sky...”

At this last one, Twilight Sparkle flinched and cast a wary look upwards.

“...And I’m able to get back up and walk off without needing to be hospitalized: that’s slapstick.”

“Yeah… I remember the last time I tried doing slapstick,” Lero said. “Ended up needing Rarity to pull me out of a giant spider cocoon.”

“I’m glad you can at least joke about it, now, Lero…” Twilight commented.

“I know,” said Fluttershy. “That’s part of why I don’t prank you nearly as much as my other friends, and when I do, I only use my gentlest practical jokes.”

He frowned at her. “I’m not THAT delicate…”

“Say, Twilight,” Fluttershy said innocently, “would being clonked on the head with a giant mallet count as slapstick?”

“Why, yes, Fluttershy, I suppose it...”

From her saddlebags, the yellow pegasus produced an inflatable toy mallet whose hammer-end was larger enough to hide a treasure chest in; and pounded it over Twilight’s head: whap, whap, whap, whap, whap!

“Good one, Shy,” Lero called over the other’s chuckles and Twilight’s indignant cries. “But you’ll want to be careful; you kinda telegraphed your punchline again.”

“I did?” Fluttershy’s mallet popped and deflated on Twilight’s horn as she brought it down one final time. “Oh, I suppose I did,” she said, disappointedly.

“I’m glad you all found that amusing,” Twilight sniffed, levitating a comb to her mane.

“Humor’s cruel,” Lyra reminded her. “The way I learned it: comedy equals pain plus time.”

“Or distance. Happening to other people. ‘Tragedy is when I get a papercut. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die,’” quoted Lero.

“How profound. But now, back to business,” Twilight said, turning back on Fluttershy with her flashcards. “Comedy made without changing one’s facial expression.”

Rainbow Dash raised a foreleg. “Don’t you think you’re holding them backwards?”

“No,” insisted Twilight, eyes fixed on Fluttershy, repeating; “Comedy made without changing one’s facial expression. What is it?”

“Er... unchanging-face comedy?”

“Deadpan comedy,” Twilight corrected, putting that flashcard aside in its own separate pile, with the rest of the ones Fluttershy needed to review. “Comedy focused on disturbing subject material such as war, death, and disease.”

“Blue... no, no, BLACK comedy! Black comedy,” Fluttershy stumbled.

“That’s right. Blue comedy is a completely different bale of hay,” Twilight informed her friend, flipping to the next one. “Comedy that relies on ridiculous props or everyday objects used in ridiculous ways.”

“Uh... uh... um...” In the end, Fluttershy just shrugged helplessly.

“PROP comedy. It’s in the description! Comedy relying on props is prop comedy. When you hit me with that hammer, that was prop comedy.”

“Gosh, Teach, is this all going to be on the final exam?” Rainbow Dash quipped.

“No, but it’s on the pop quiz.” And to the yellow pegasus’ horror, Twilight pulled out a multiple-choice quiz sheet she’d made last night, and stuck a Number 2 pencil in Fluttershy’s mouth.

* * *

“Aaaaaand… TIME!” Twilight announced, looking up from Lero’s watch. “Set your pencil down and turn your quiz over to the face-down position.”

Sweating, shaking, Fluttershy did as asked, whimpering as the quiz floated over to Twilight. “The bubbles… so many bubbles to fill in…”

“Where the heck did Equestria develop scantron standardized testing anyhow?!” Lero whispered to Lyra and Rainbow Dash, who both shook their heads cluelessly. Twilight made for quite a sight: a quill dunking in red-colored ink, then weaving all up and down the quiz sheet, lightning-quick, checking it against her answer sheet.

Soon enough, the purple unicorn had finished grading, and passed the quiz back to Fluttershy.

“Sixty-five percent?!” she cried, lip trembling. “JUST sixty-five percent?!”

“I’m sorry, Fluttershy,” and Twilight truly sounded sincere about that, “but you missed a lot of easy ones. For example, the answer to Question 13 is ‘low comedy’ not ‘high comedy.’ For Question 29, a burlesque is not ‘a genre where shortcomings, follies, and vices are ridiculed with the intent of shaming their targets into improvement.’ And looking at 45, it’s pointedly clear you completely forgot what a pastiche is. Let me ask -- and please answer honestly -- were you just filling in bubbles, willy-nilly, hoping you’d skate by on pure luck?”

They’d seen Fluttershy smile, both in genuine joy and desperation. They’d seen her disappointed, and defeated. They’d seen her near tears. Now, for the first time in a long while, they now saw the yellow pegasus upset and indignant.

“No, I wasn’t!” Fluttershy snapped back. “I really put thought into answering those quiz questions. Guessing at random’s not going to make me funnier. Even if I get the answers right, it’d only be by accident, and getting a good grade won’t do me any good by itself.”

“Y-yeah.” Twilight concurred, with an uneasy step backwards. “That’s the right way to look at it.”

“I need to be funnier,” Fluttershy insisted, a harsh flare in her teal-colored eyes. “I need to be funnier, I need to be funnier, I need to be funnier! I’m the Element of Laughter, dang it! What good is an Element of Laughter who can’t get ponies to laugh? Who doesn’t know a thing about comedy…” Her bared teeth gave way to sadness, as her Balloon Mark shook behind her. “I need to be funnier. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll try anything, everything, for as long as I have to. I need to be funny.”

“Well, it’s not like you won’t get into your choice college if you do badly on this. All this quiz goes to show you is what you need to brush up on, the holes in your knowledge that you need to fill.”

Fluttershy let out a long exhale, and her cutie mark quit trembling. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right, Twilight. I’ll get to work on patching those knowledge-holes right away. And the next time you pop a quiz on me, I’ll be ready for it.”

And Fluttershy threw her quiz and all the notecards in her saddlebags and flew off, deaf to all her friends’ pleading not to leave.

Twilight sank down to the grass. Lero set an arm over her back and gave her a calming caress.

“That wasn’t how that was supposed to go,” Twilight muttered.

“So what lesson did you learn?” Lyra asked, scooting herself in on Twilight’s other side.

Twilight sighed. “Dear Princess Celestia, today I learned that not everypony likes standardized tests as much as I do, and I shouldn’t let my social skills get rusty or else I might hurt my friends by accident. Also, I knew this one already, but Fluttershy is scary when she gets mad…”

Lyra and Lero hugged her.

“Well, you’ve just weaned yourself off the company of books, after spending waaaay too much time with them,” the Still Way grandmaster reasoned. “Don’t take it too hard on yourself.”

“There’s always tomorrow,” Lero assured her. “Don’t worry. This is your first time trying something like this. All things considered, you still did way better than the very first time I set out to, uh, help one of our friends.”

He darted the quickest of glances at Rainbow Dash, remembering Discord.

“If you stick with it, if you don’t lose faith in yourself, it all gets better from here.”

As Twilight beamed at him and nodded, they all heard the sound of hooves stepping backward.

“So, uh, Lero, I guess we… may have to take a rain check on our, uh…”

Twilight and Lyra eyed the bashful animal caretaker with marked interest. “A rain check on your what?” Twilight inquired.

The cyan pegasus shrank a bit, looking at Lero’s herdmates with some skittishness, like a filly caught with her muzzle in the cookie jar. “Nothing! Nothing much, y’know, just a… just a nothing-thing…”

The longer the other two mares eyeballed her, the redder her cheeks got. And that did not escape anyone’s notice.

“Dash wanted to spend time with me,” Lero explained to them, ignoring the strangled cry of alarm from Rainbow. “Just her and me, one-on-one.”

“One-on-one, huh?”

Twilight looked at Lyra. Lyra looked at Twilight. They both nodded.

"That sounds like a lovely idea," Twilight told the surprised pegasus, with the warmest of smiles.

"You could use a good, long, hard… stretch of friendly time together," Lyra agreed.

Dash blushed sharply. Well, even more deeply than before.

“Have lots of fun together, you two!” Twilight said, trotting in the direction of her house in a suddenly-uplifted mood, and motioning for Lyra to join her. Which she did. If Lero knew his girls, (which he did,) the unicorns were both set to spend hours discussing and speculating upon this few seconds of blushing and stammering.

Dash was entirely lost for words, until Lero sat himself comfortably on her back.

“So… where are we off to now, Dash?”

* * *

Before the Swap, there hadn’t been all that many occassions where Rainbow Dash had flown Lero over the Everfree Forest. This time, they were headed in a direction she’d never taken him before.

“Been meaning to ask…” he called down to her, “What’s with that baseball cap you’re wearing, Dash?”

“My cap?” she asked.

“Yeah!” He cringed against her as a flock of strange birds flew past. “I mean, I can understand the whistle, since you’re an animal trainer. But the cap… I think this is, what, the fourth day in a row I’ve seen you wearing that thing?”

“I dunno. Saw it in the marketplace a few days back, and decided I’d buy it. Makes me feel like a sports coach. Coaches rock.”

No arguing that point.

Far below them, the great expanse of trees gave way to grittier, more arid territory, until a great yawning crack opened up into the ground below, deep enough to fit several blocks of skyscrapers inside.

“Did an earthquake happen here, or something?” Lero asked.

He felt her head shake back and forth under him. “Far as I know, Longdrop Gorge has always been here, Big Guy.”

Then her body veered downward… she was heading straight into the gorge!

“Don’t worry!” she said, before he could even breathe out the word ‘wait.’ “We’re coming to a soft, safe landing at a nice, steady speed. Easy does it...”

The walls of the chasm were deep, wide and sheer. Without Dash, it would’ve meant hours descending with rock-climbing gear. Or rather, a ten-second drop to his death, since Lero had zero experience mountain climbing.

“What’re we doing down here, Dash?” Even with the sun shining overhead, it was growing darker and more shadowed the deeper they descended.

“You’ll see!” she called back cheerily. “I told you it’d be nice, and I really do mean it.”

As promised, she brought him to the softest landing possible on the canyon floor. Here at the bottom, there were some weedy scatters of vegetation, some ant colonies, and a couple of broken-looking animal skeletons. Though they’d been picked clean, it appeared gravity, rather than predation, had been their undoing.

“Tell me there’s buried treasure down here,” he muttered.

Dash chuckled a bit. “I’d’ve brought shovels if there were.”

RRREEEOOOOWWWWWKKKKZZZTT….

The noise put Lero right on the defensive. It had been the call of some kind of animal… an unnatural one at that. Sounded like a cross between a tomcat and a modem’s squeal. Like a thing that was part-machine.

“Dash!” he called, arms raised in what was not-quite a boxer’s stance. “There something here!”

She turned to regard him; smiling and completely at ease. “I should hope so!” Then her eyes focused on something past him. “Oh good, there she is.”

Why did the simple act of turning around have to raise so many goosepimples?

At the first second, Lero’s mind told him: adult panther with extra-large teeth. Then he registered the additional fifth and sixth legs. The pair of tentacles undulating out from the panther-thing’s back, and visible tines in its ears that reminded him of antenna… he had at first thought this to be a mirage, but they refused to vanish no matter how many times he rubbed his eyes.

“Rrrrreeooooooooozzzz….” it went. Its voice was so tinny, so computerized-sounding, it might’ve come from a cyborg of a cat… except it was entirely flesh and blood. Nary a plate of metal to it… not that Lero wanted to go anywhere near it!

“Dash,” he spoke softly out of the corner of his mouth. “Don’t make any sudden movements. I’m going to hop on your back, then we fly out of here as fast as we can!”

But she smiled at him. “Not happening.”

“Not happening?!” He was only just able to keep from shrieking.

“Sassy, here, is the whole reason we came,” she patiently explained.

“Sassy?!” cried Lero, before it hit him. Oh. Oh, Of course. How could he forget the old Fluttershy’s habit of befriending ‘misunderstood’ forest beasts like manticores and grizzly bears?

“So, uh, what is Sassy?” he asked, edging closer to Dash. The black-furred beast was stretching its limbs in a sleepy yawn, the claws on its forepaws fully retracted, and its tentacles whipping the ground.

“Well, there are two names for what Sassy is, the same way ‘mountain lion’ and ‘cougar’ refer to the same cat,” Dash informed him, as though they were at a safe zoo. “One name’s spelled C-O-E-U-R-L, but its other name is easier to say: ‘displacer beast.’”

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He couldn’t believe her calmness! “But... but how are we supposed to handle a tentacled panther-thing?”

She scratched under her jaw. “How do you handle it? You just pretty much pet about seven feet to the left of where you see her. Like this!”

What happened next looked, to Lero, like some kind of serious CGI animation error.

Rainbow Dash didn’t approach the displacer beast directly, instead she trotted up to to a point seven feet to the creature’s left. And she reached up a hoof… and started to stroke the open air, tenderly, at a point parallel to the beast’s head. There was some sort of odd visual distortion as she did, as if part of her hoof was bending through space as she did, Lero suddenly intensely reminded of seeing the image of a straw being bent when inserted into a clear glass full of water.

It was as if Dash had gone nearsighted or lost her hoof-to-eye coordination. It was like watching a mime. No, it was like watching TWO mimes: her AND Sassy, both, and him having some sort of bizarre hallucination while watching them. Dash seemed to be pantomiming like she was petting Sassy; the tentacled cat was simultaneously pantomiming being petted by Dash, its back arching, leaning in, at a point seven feet leftward of where Dash’s hoof stroked, which somehow seemed to be right on her head but several feet distant at the same moment even as he watched..

“What in… what on Earth?!” he asked, as the cat-thing rolled over on it back, purring.

A broken-off tree branch happened to be laying nearby, twice as long as a typical broomstick. Pure astonishment overrode the primal fear of being mauled, and he thrust it forward towards the cat-thing’s body.

The branch failed to hit anything, seeming to go off an odd angle, never reaching the beast, as if the laws of perspective were being completely violated..

Lero didn’t feel the branch fall from his hand. “Is it a ghost?”

“No, it’s a displacer beast,” Dash giggled, now on her haunches and using both hooves to massage the air. “Come over next to where I am.”

Lero was only brave enough to get about six feet from Dash, instead of right next to her.

“Take a look at the ground.” she told him. “Notice where the dirt is being kicked up: is it here or there?”

She ran a hoof down sideways. Across from them, seven feet away, Lero saw the phantom-cat-thing stretch a hind leg out… and now that Dash brought it up, at an angle like that, the leg should have dug into the ground a bit.

Instead, Lero saw it happen right close to where Dash was; a tiny dirt trench kicked up from thin air. And now that Lero looked closer, he could see a trail of pawprints leading up to the point where Dash sat, rather than from seven feet to the right.

“Is Sassy invisible?” he asked her.

“Kinda,” Dash told him. “Like I said, Sassy’s a displacer beast. She’s capable of displacing her image. Right now, it may look like she’s seven feet to our right, but she’s actually right here.”

And again, she stroked Sassy’s invisible face, and Lero watched the visible image of Sassy lean into it, nuzzling against Dash’s petting hooves from several feet away, causing the odd visual distortion again.

“Displacer beasts are amazing creatures,” she told him. “They can bend light, so when it bounces off them, their image appears elsewhere. Right now, Sassy’s image is seven feet to the right of where we are, but if she wanted to, Sassy could make it look like she’s standing two feet directly behind herself, or ten feet to her left, or whatever, to confuse enemies and prey. She can even overlap the image of herself with where she’s actually standing. Isn’t that amazing?”

“Yeah… wow!” Lero had to agree; Sassy WAS a truly mind-boggling animal.

“Would you like to come here and pet her with me?”

Shooting a look over at the displaced image, Lero saw jaws and teeth more than capable of biting his arm off.

“N-no, that’s okay!” he said, not bothering to hide the quaver in his voice. “You look like you know what you’re doing, Dash, I-I’m amazed enough from right where I’m standing.”

He grinned skittishly, trusting she’d understand and accept his fear. Instead, her ears drooped in the most dispiriting way.

“I know Sassy’s unusual, and she may look a little scary, but trust me, she’s one of the biggest sweethearts in the Everfree Forest. Are you sure you don’t wanna try petting her? I know she’ll love you for it.”

Animals are mean, animals bite, animals are nasty, animals sabotage, animals bring pain, through and through, and that’s the DOMESTICATED ones…

“I-I’m sorry, Dash, but I just don’t think I’m in an animal-petting mood right now… or ever again.”

The last three words had come out as an embarrassing slip of the tongue. He looked up at Dash, hands clasped together in an apologetic way.

Surprisingly, the look she gave back was no longer hurt and downcast. It was patient and entirely sympathetic. Like that of a good therapist.

“Sassy won’t hurt you. I know my animals put you through Tartarus and back, but not all animals are as mean and treacherous as mine were. Lots of them are perfectly friendly. That’s why I brought you out here, cuz, well, I wanted to remind you of that. I just… just… the animal caretaker in me hates the idea of you doing so much for me, only to walk away with a great big critter phobia for all your trouble.”

Sweat touched the corners of his lips. What Lero wanted to ask was: couldn’t we have gone to a little pet shop and played with a puppy, instead? Maybe a sweet baby panda, or even a skunk? What came out was: “Well, eh heh…”

She fixed a strong look on him. “I won’t let any harm come to you. Trust me.”

And she brushed a circle in Sassy’s fur.

All his emotions seemed to rebel against him as he sat by her. Slowly, he brought his hands down until his hands felt fur, and saw the slight distortions off his hand as he touched. This seemed to be the displacer beast’s midsection. He spread out his fingers and swept them through the invisible fur, remembering the old joke about the three blind men feeling the different points of the elephant. Then it struck him that he didn’t NEED to fumble around like a man in the dark. He had a visual reference… it was just over there.

The huge cat stretched and relaxed under his hand. The fur was a different texture from a pony’s coat - longer hairs, and a leaner frame underneath. After all his time as a masseur, he couldn’t help but feel the tension in those feral muscles - and feel it melting away as the oversized cat purred in the presence of Rainbow Dash. He could feel the vibrations running up his arm, and it felt bizarrely comforting. He’d never owned a cat -- neither on Earth or Equestria -- but the sound of those staticky deep rumbles was oddly reassuring.

“See? She likes you,” Dash told him.

Lero couldn’t disagree. “How’d you ever meet something like this?” he asked instead.

Dash’s eyes went blank and thoughtless for a moment, then came back to focus on Lero. “Oh, I’ve known Sassy for ages,” she said. “Ever since she was the cutest little kitten in the Everfree!” Lero had to jam down a sudden burst of fear at that momentary hiccup, that reminder that the Bewitchment was still creating false memories to keep everything in sync.

The displacer beast managed to look abashed, but not too dismayed. She had two admirers tending to her fur, after all. She raised her chin, and Dash moved her hoof to rub underneath it. Lero moved his hand back more, finding the creature’s shoulder, then its back. His wrist bumped the base of those slowly-waving tentacles, and he used those as a tactile reference point to rub its back. The purring deepened, and Lero felt a pair of tentacles rubbing along his arms.

“I told you you’re safe,” Dash said smugly.

The longer Lero ran his fingers through Sassy’s fur, the more they both relished the sensation, and the more relaxed they grew with one another. He couldn’t believe how enjoyable this was. It was like being a kid at a petting zoo, only WAY better!

Sassy leaned in to run a strong, sandpapery tongue against Dash’s mane, making it curl up into the air as though a slow, stiff breeze had just hit her, and then she gave Lero’s cheek a matching lick. And then she got to her feet, stretched luxuriously, and strolled away, tentacles flicking overhead.

Lero had to shake his head. “You have some of the strangest friends, Rainbow Dash.” He bit down an urge to add ‘Starting with Pinkie Pie.’ Fluttershy the Comedian wasn’t nearly as oddball now as Pinkie usually was, and Pinkie the Farmmare was positively normal.

Dash laughed, and stepped over to nuzzle his side. “You are one of my strange friends, Lero,” she pointed out. “I’m so glad I found you.” She paused, then blushed delicately. “... Also, um, I'm pretty sure that 'between the tentacles' is just as sensitive as it is on a pegasus, so you just made that kitty verrry happy.”

Lero decided to play dumb, rather than get into where he'd learned that particular detail already. "Oh? Between the wings is sensitive on pegasi?" He set his hand on her back, right in that spot where she always liked it, and began to slowly work his knuckles across the muscles that met there.

Dash sighed blissfully. "Yeah..."

Lero grinned. "Should I stop?"

Dash’s cheeks went from a dainty pink to a distinct red, her wings slowly spreading. But what she said was, "Please don't…”

So he felt at a few spots at her neck, then lifted the cap off her head, teasing behind her ears and combing through her mussed-up tangles in the red and orange and yellow of her mane, cherishing the long-missed familiar sound of her sigh. Then he reached between her forelegs, fingers trailing smoothly up the fur of her upper chest, where it was safe to touch pegasi. She angled into his touch, and he saw her lips soundlessly form the words, ‘oh, Lero...’ Growing bolder, he sent a finger grazing up the line of her feathers, smoothing them down, deftly and comforting.

“I… I think that’s enough, Lero,” He heard her say, softly. “No more, please.”

Abashed and stammering apologies, his fingers jerked off from Rainbow Dash as though she’d turned into red hot metal.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to touch you where you didn’t want to be…!” But the human stopped when he felt her head rest against him.

Her wings were still stiff, but she'd been the one to stop him, and he'd reluctantly complied. At the moment, at least, he had to remind himself, she wasn't in his herd. No matter how strong his sudden urge to just tell her everything and bring her home, right now.

"That rose," she said quietly, lifting her head back up and looking up towards his ear.

"Yeah?" Lero cautiously responded.

"You really love her a lot, don't you? You'd never take something like that off, no matter what." She turned her head, and her eyes looked simultaneously distant and bright.

Lero looked back into her eyes. He could have sworn he saw a tricolored lightning bolt there for just an instant. "Never," he promised. Dash closed her eyes and leaned into him.

* * *

6:57 P.M.

Lero drummed his fingers impatiently on the tabletop. Today was the first day they had allowed Spike to go out to help Applejack at the Carousel Boutique. The little dragon had left the house at about nine in the morning.

A tired part of him wanted nothing more than to put Spike out of his mind… but that’d been what’d caused this mess in the first place. Spike was still his family, and he wasn’t going to be a neglectful parent. He had to let Spike know he cared about him. ...What was TAKING him so long?! Surely he hadn’t run away for real? Or could it be he was thinking of sleeping over Applejack’s place?!

Seven o’clock. He’d give Spike until exactly seven o’clock, then he was putting on his jacket, marching out to the Carousel Boutique, and dragging him back home.

6:59 now. He waited for each tick of the second hand’s clock. Six more seconds. Five more seconds. Four…

He left his chair as he heard the front door open. “I’m home!” Spike called.

The human marched out to the foyer. “And just where have you…?!”

He left the sentence unfinished. All his crossness with the little dragon vanished. Spike looked absolutely bone-weary, dragging his heels, slumped forward like a caveman. Yet there was a look of savage triumph in his eyes all the same. At that moment, Spike was like a weightlifter back from a grueling twelve-hour workout, flush with the victory of having pulled through and gotten stronger for it.

“Uh… have you eaten dinner?” Lero found himself asking, listening to Spike pant. “Could I fix you up a grilled cheese sandwich?”

After one more pant, Spike looked up at the human, smirking at him as though he’d won a bet. “Why, thank you, Lero,” he told him. “Grilled cheese sounds like it would really hit the spot. And while you’re at it, how about I make a nice cup of tea?”

So in the kitchen, Lero started up the oven, pulled out bread, cheese and butter, while Spike poured water into their kettle and added teabags. While Lero grilled the sandwich, Spike held the kettle over his head, and blew a steady stream of fire until it got to whistling. It was almost like he was showing off.

Lero had ended up making two sandwiches, and gave them both to Spike.

“Not hungry?” The dragon asked, stirring in two lumps of sugar for Lero’s tea.

“Already ate,” Lero told him.

So they sat at the table. Spike ate without drinking while Lero drank without eating.

“How did things go with…?” both of them asked at the same time.

“You first, Lero,” Spike invited, taking another crisp bite of his sandwich.

Lero chose not to tell him anything about the times Rainbow Dash had taken him places to hang out together; he wanted to think of them as dates, but still didn’t know if that was correct. The rest he shared: the lessons he’d been teaching Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash taking part, even Twilight deciding to lay off her research to help with equilibrium (though he didn’t divulge a thing about how Spike’s bad behavior had been the inspiration for Twilight.)

“So you grownups all sat around on the grass and practiced telling jokes, huh?” Lero’s fist clenched under the table… the dragon sounded SO patronizing!

“That’s good!” Spike said, with a glowing smile. “That sounds like JUST like sort of thing a girl like Fluttershy needs most! If anyone can come up with something, it’s you!”

Or… maybe he wasn’t being condescending after all. Though Lero was trying to treat him kindly, he knew he was definitely still a bit sore at Spike. His fist unclenched, willing himself to cool down.

“So what about you, Spike?” Lero asked, sipping his delicious tea. “What’d you do at Applejack’s?”

That savage satisfaction returned to Spike’s face. “What’d I do? I worked, Lero, that’s what I did! You have no idea how badly poor AJ’s let herself go. Did you know that the showroom’s the only room she keeps clean nowadays, and that’s only for the customers that never come? The rest of the place looks like… like… like one of my post-apocalyptic comics! You can’t imagine the filth. The smell. The garbage and discarded dresses! Sweetie Belle doesn’t even live there anymore; she’s moved back in with her parents. I spent the entire day cleaning the place, room by room, and I’m not even halfway done!”

What astounded Lero most was how this wasn’t even any sort of bellyaching on Spike’s part. This was a boast. This was gloating. He might as well be listening to Spike narrate how he outwrestled a rhino.

“Wow… God…” Lero put a hand on his head. “Now I’m sorry I left Applejack by herself for this long, instead of squeezing in more time for her.”

“I’m not,” Spike laughed. “The worse off Applejack is, the more there is for me to fix for her! Every time she smiles at me while I’m helping her out, I’m getting her to love me all the more. Oh, I wish you could hear the conversations we have, Lero, it really is the real Rarity inside her…”

Lero clapped his hand over the dragon’s mouth. “Don’t ever use those words ‘real Rarity’ in this house!” he whispered. “What if RARITY heard you?”

“Oh!” exclaimed Spike in a wide-eyed hush. “Oh, right! Sorry! Is Rarity here?”

Lero shook his head. “We’re very lucky: her bosses called on her to create some late-night rainfall over by the Mayor’s place.”

“Alright. Point taken.” Then Spike stretched, yawned, and hopped out of his chair. “Well, better hit the hay early! Got another big day ahead of me at the Boutique tomorrow, and I wanna get my rest in. Thanks for the sandwiches, Lero.”

But before he headed upstairs, Lero set a hand on his shoulders. “I’m glad you’re helping Applejack, Spike, but don’t forget, you’re doing this for HER, not you.”

“Oh, you don’t need to worry!” Spike laughed again. “Do you think I’m going to take advantage of her? No, no, no, I’m going to be a perfect, honorable chivalrous knight for her. That’s how I’m going to win her love; by doing everything just like you did, Lero.”

And he headed up to bed.

Just like I did, huh? Lero thought to himself, miserably. All those days I spent helping Rainbow Dash… was THIS what it felt like for you, Spike? And Twilight too?

* * *

“Eighty-five,” Twilight pronounced, tucking away her red pen and handing the sheet back to Fluttershy. “You did much better this time.”

“I studied all morning,” Fluttershy said proudly. “And I haven’t told a single Yucky Yolks joke all day.” Then she shuddered. “It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. But I was looking after the baby Cakes, and they like silly faces more than jokes anyway.” She ducked her head down and ran her hooves over her face, then looked up. Lero had a brief and unfortunate flashback to when one of the Pinkie-clones from the Mirror Pool had done the same thing. Somehow she’d got her muzzle to seem to swell up and extend, with her eyes squinted down to look smaller and more widely separated…

Fluttershy shook her head, and the bizarre look snapped back to her usual features. “They didn’t like that one very much,” she confided. “I think I’ll skip it in the future. It feels kinda… old-fashioned, anyway.”

“Old-fashioned? Try ‘unbelievably creepy,’” Rainbow Dash said, shuddering. “Lero’s ‘horse’ jokes suddenly hit home all at once.”

“How about this one?” Fluttershy said eagerly -- but Lero reached out a hand to stop her. “I think we’d better get started on the lesson, don’t you?” he asked.

Fluttershy gave him a wide, beaming grin. “Okie-dokie-loki!”

It made Lero pause and think. If sweet, bashful Fluttershy had been a monster to make Nightmare Moon look like, well, Fluttershy, there couldn't have been a more personal, private Hell than being condemned to constantly make a public spectacle of herself. No, worse - a royal jackass, forced to seek others out for the purpose. That timid, hesitant, fearful pony would have been traumatized for life. It was the first mercy Lero had seen from the Swap, now that he thought about it - from the moment he'd met Swapped Fluttershy, she'd never shown a moment of fear, not an instant of worry that other ponies might not like her. She had enough clarity to know they didn't like her jokes - but she hadn't once been afraid they didn't like HER.

“Today’s lesson is on interactive comedy. Puns, visual gags, things like that can all be done by yourself,” Lero told her. “But sometimes, you’ll have someone to work with who’s in on the joke. Sometimes they’ll make jokes back at you, sometimes they’ll just say things you can make jokes off of, and sometimes both of you will pretend to take the entire conversation seriously and let your audience figure out the funny bit on their own.”

Fluttershy giggled. “Oh! Like Quill Pen and Never Tell. They do a magic act, but it’s a comedy routine at the same time. I saw them once.”

Lero nodded. “Just like them, yes.” He mentally added one to his infinite list of Puns Ponies Made But Will Never Get and continued on. “There, one of them is making verbal humor, mostly, while the other does some physical comedy and plays a never-talking straight man.”

“Straight pony, anyway,” Rainbow Dash pointed out, wingtips fluttering in glee. “So we’re gonna demonstrate. I’ll be the straight pony, ‘cause when else am I gonna be able to do that?”

Fluttershy laughed aloud and settled herself in to watch. “Last time you were in heat?” she merrily noted.

Rainbow Dash blushed sharply. “Coolers don’t count.”

Lero chuckled and rubbed Rainbow Dash between the ears. “I bet some of them do. Novelty ones with a clicker in the base, maybe.”

Dash eeped. It was an adorably little Fluttershy-ish sound. “I thought we were doing interactive comedy, not blue jokes.”

Lero winked. “If you’re involved, how can it NOT be blue jokes?”

Dash rolled her eyes. “I’ll ‘blue’ you.” Then facehoofed. Fluttershy laughed before Lero could even deliver the punchline.

Lero beamed. “Twilight, is that okay with you?”

Twilight quivered in place, looking at Rainbow Dash, and had to nod instead of speaking out loud. Lero fought back an urge to go over and console her. We’ll get OUR Rainbow Dash back, Twilight. We will. I believe in you.

“Are we going to get around to the routine any time soon?” Dash asked, tail flicking.

“Doesn’t ‘routine’ in Ponyville involve rebuilding half of the town?” Lero pointed out.

“Only when Princess Celestia sends us on adventures,” Dash retorted.

Lero tapped his chin. “You think she does that on purpose?”

“Does what on purpose?” Dash asked.

“Sends you out on adventures instead of just sending Royal Guards. I’m pretty sure you’ve been a boon to the construction industry,” Lero explained. “Not to mention a boom to various buildings.”

“Hey, we’re not that bad,” Rainbow Dash protested. “Derpy does way more property damage than we do. Less of it at a time, but ALL. THE. TIME.”

Lero pictured Derpy getting Swapped with Twilight. Dear God, there wouldn’t be a Ponyville left after a day. There might not be an Equestria left. “And she does it without magic necklaces, too. You think she’s got a trick? Maybe a secret agenda?”

Dash blinked. “What do you think Derpy’s agenda is?”

“Pretty a-sure she’s a mare, Dash,” Lero replied airily. “Why, are-a we going back to coolers now?”

Fluttershy burst out laughing. “Okay! Okay! I get it! Stop, before I laugh my wings off! I need those for feathers to tickle the baby Cakes with!”

Rainbow Dash blinked several times, opened her mouth as though about to say something, then shut it again. Lero waited, but she didn’t try again. So he spoke instead. “Then for the next part of the lesson, I want you to sit down with Twilight and try to write out a comedy routine of your own, and you’ll deliver it with her. Try to swap roles, so you give some straight lines and some jokes. Okay?”

Fluttershy grinned. “Okie-dokie-loki!” she repeated.

Twilight tugged out a quill and a scroll from her saddlebags, and moved herself next to Fluttershy to write. “I’ll give suggestions if I have some ideas, but you’ve got to do most of this,” she warned her friend. “I’m mostly here to write. And to make sure I don’t end up with a cream pie in the face.”

Lero patted Rainbow Dash on the flank, well away from any ‘interesting’ spots. “We’ll step aside so we can see what you come up with, without hearing any of it ahead of time,” he said. Fluttershy was already deep in thought, but Twilight nodded to them.

As they put some distance between themselves and Twilight and Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash looked over to Lero.

“Hey, uh... something I’ve been meaning to ask you about, Lero,” the cyan pegasus asked, at a soft volume.

“Sure,” Lero said, also softly. “What is it?”

She sat down and Lero followed suit. “I know how, well, you’re capable of liking ponies romantically.”

Did the three unicorns in my herd tip you off? He was tempted to say. Instead, he settled on a plain and simple: “Yeah.”

She slid a bit closer to him. “I’ve been curious... what do you... what do you think of Fluttershy?”

“Fluttershy?”

They both eyed the yellow pegasus, who was too busy in discussion with Twilight to even look their way.

“Y...yeah!” Dash said, looking self-conscious. “When you go to help her, the way you were always helping me... you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to... but do you feel anything ‘click’ for you when you’re with her?”

Lero considered very carefully how he was going to answer her question. Essentially, one half of Fluttershy’s soul was asking him to tell him what he thought of her missing half, still in her old body. And he didn’t want to speak badly of Fluttershy straight to Fluttershy’s face, no more than he wished to disparage Fluttershy behind Fluttershy’s back. No doubt, any insult of her would come back to bite him if Twilight managed to cure the Swapped, and Shy’s two soul fragments reunited. And yet... Rainbow Dash was looking with anxious expectation.

“Here’s what I have to say about a certain friend of ours with balloons on her flank,” he replied. “When I look at her, I see a... charming-enough girl. It’s sweet of her how she wants to be everyone’s friend. And I certainly won’t deny she’s pretty.”

Rainbow Dash gulped, and a morose smile played up her face. “Y-yeah. She’s... pretty…”

But then she was surprised to feel Lero’s hand settle upon the back of her neck, as they both faced Fluttershy. “But in spite of all that, no. Nothing clicks for me when I’m with our cupcake-baking friend.”

And now she found herself being pulled closer towards him. “If... hypothetically... I were to fall in love for a fourth time, it’d be with someone more like... you, Rainbow Dash.”

“Me?” she asked, looking up into his face, and trying to play it off-the-cuff. “Why me?”

“Well, when it comes to love, I’m a pretty picky guy,” He told her, patting her body. “When I give my heart to a lady, I prefer she be, well, a lady. Mature, grown-up, and adult-minded.”

“So you think I’m mature?” Rainbow asked, and his heart sped up.

“Absolutely. I mean, just think: our friend, the Element of Laughter... her biggest gripe is that she’s not telling jokes right.”

And he lowered his hand, cupping the whistle that the cyan pegasus wore around her neck.

“You, though, you’ve taken it upon yourself to be the caretaker of... exactly how many animals live in your cottage?”

“I can’t even think how many right now.” Out of the corner of his eye, Lero saw Twilight watching them with intense interest, as Fluttershy jotted down ideas of hers.

“Well, there’s a lot of them. And you’re caring for them all, each day. Even when things were at their lowest, even when they’d all turned on you, you stood your ground. You never chickened out.”

Rainbow Dash turned a flat look at her cutie mark. “There were times I would’ve LOVED to chicken out…”

If not for this Butterfly Mark forcing me to be there, I’d’ve ran away from that cottage long ago… Lero heard in his head.

“But in the end, push came to shove and you didn’t,” He told her, determined to cast the situation in the finest light possible. “That takes a lot of maturity, responsibility, and strength. Not to mention... loyalty. And that’s the kind of girl I have more respect and love for.”

Her wings came halfway open as she looked upon him with a shining smile.

“And... remember what I said about our party-throwing friend being charming, sweet, and pretty?” Once she nodded, he leaned in as close to her ear and whispered, “You outshine her in every way.”

He pulled away to see what effect this had on her.

Rainbow Dash’s eyes were watery. Her lips trembled in enraptured happiness. Her tail swept the ground from where she sat on her haunches. There was now no room for doubt. No possible possibility of misinterpretation. She looked ready to melt into a puddle of love for him.

“Though I do appreciate her as a friend!” he assured her in a glib, offhanded way.

“Huh? Oh, yes! Yes, I do too,” she chimed in.

“I wouldn’t hear a word spoken against her,” he assured her.

“Never in a million years,” she nodded along rapidly.

“And we’ll both continue to be there for her, to help fix her funny bone. You and me, Rainbow Dash, til the end.”

“Til the very end,” she repeated excitedly. “Magic of Friendship, and all.”

And then her wings enveloped him in one of those hugs of hers he had so dearly, dearly missed.

“Say, Dash,” he whispered in her ear, “Where do you thinking we should go this time, after lessons are over?”

* * *

The soft ambient music they had playing on the record players had always put Lero in mind of movie soundtracks when the hero entered a peaceful African village. Hearing that bell jingle above him when he came through the door, smelling the sandalwood incense… it all brought him back. The humidity hit his body, even though this was just the waiting room.

Lotus looked up towards him from where she sat at the receptionist’s counter. “Velcome to ze… Lerro!” She exclaimed in delighted surprise. “Und Rainbow Dash!”

“Hiya, Lotus!” said Rainbow Dash, beside him. “Long time no see!”

“Aloe! Aloe, come zee who it iz!” Lotus stepped out, reappearing with her sister. When Aloe saw them both, she swept out from behind the counter to give them each hugs.

“Välkommen!” she greeted, slipping into her native tongue. “Hur mår du?”

“We’re doing great, Aloe, just great!” Lero told her.

“Are yoo looking to be rehired?” Lotus asked Lero hopefully. “Because eef yoo are, that vould be vonderful!”

Rainbow Dash shot the human a stunned look. “Wait… ‘rehired?’ Don’t you work at this place, Lero?”

And it suddenly turned a lot more awkward, with the twins avoiding looking at him, neither wanting to speak out of turn.

“I used to,” he told her, shifting his weight while scratching the back of his head. “Up until a little over a month ago. But then something came up, something more important than making bits.”

“What?”

And he put a hand on the pegasus’ head. “A different kind of hands-on work.”

Understanding filled Rainbow Dash’s eyes… understanding, and a certain level of awe.

“I’m sorry to tell you this, but I’m not here for a job, not quite yet,” he said, turning back to the sisters. “Still gonna be a while before I can afford the time for gainful employment. Right now, both of us are here as customers.”

“I see,” said Aloe. “Vell, it is gud to see yoo back, vhatever the reason! Vill yoo be paying separately or together?”

“I can pay for my own, this time, if you like,” he told Dash.

“No!” she declared, adamantly. “Definitely not this time.”

Then, to Lotus, she plunked down some money at the counter, and gave her hat to Aloe for safekeeping. “Give the both of us my usual! When can we make it happen?”

“Ve are free right now, if yoo like!” said Lotus, holding the door open for them.

* * *

For Lero, there was a great irony about working in a pony spa, something of a private, unspoken joke that never quite got old. Ponies, (and pretty much all sapient beings who lived in this world) were completely comfortable going everywhere in the buff; it was not unheard of for ponies to go their entire lives without donning a stitch of clothing.

But when you were a customer at a spa… now THAT’S when you got dressed up. The twins adorned them both in robes, and Lero changed behind a folding screen. Lero’s had been specially tailored by Rarity, long ago. Rainbow Dash’s was sleek, fluffy, and monogrammed… with a cursive letter F.

“It REALLY has been too long,” Lotus told Rainbow.

Undoubtedly, they all saw that ‘F’ as an ‘RD.’ Honestly, it was times like this where Lero found himself wishing he had a special set of ‘Swap-O-Vision’ glasses. It’d be fun going through scrapbooks with them on, and see for himself what his ‘white rose’ looked like.

Rejuvenation began with a nice stay in the sauna. Ladle in mouth, Aloe came in, pouring water on the tray of heated stones. Thick steam fogged the room, and Lero felt the first stirrings of real relief from where he sat on the wooden bench. The heat washed over him, relaxing him, as Rainbow Dash lay herself half-on, half-off of Lero’s lap, and allowed Lero to just run his fingers through her mane. He thought about calling for a brush, but decided he couldn’t quite stand to go that far and then stop again.

Because they’d spend the past set of days researching comedy, studying comedy, and practicing comedy, they were both still on something of a comedy kick. So while this was going on, they bandied jokes between themselves; the best ones they found while studying the humor books.

“A mother lives next door to an elderly widow, but she hasn’t heard so much as a sound from the old lady’s house in days, so she’s worried something might’ve happened to her.” Lero started. “She tells her son, ‘I’d like you to go next door and see how Old Mrs. Watermoss is.’ A few minutes later, the son comes back and says, ‘She’s fine, but she’s annoyed at you.’ ‘At me?’ asks the mother. ‘Whyever for?’ ‘Well,’ the son says, ‘Mrs. Watermoss says it’s none of your business HOW old she is!’”

“A lion’s strutting around the jungle, all pleased with himself,” Rainbow Dash countered. “He finds a monkey. ‘Who is the king of the jungle?!’ he roars. ‘Y-you are, mighty lion!’ the terrified monkey says. Then the lion tromps up to an antelope. ‘Who’s the king of the jungle?!” ‘T-there is no question you are the king!’ Now he’s feeling on a roll, so he goes up to the elephant. ‘Who’s the king of the jungle?!’ The elephant just grabs the lion with his trunk, slams him against a tree, stomps on him and heads off. So the lion pops his head up from the footprint he’s in and says, ‘Sheesh, just because you don’t know the answer, you don’t have to get so upset.’”

Once they were done with the sauna, they were brought to the most familiar part of the spa for Lero Michealides: the massage parlor. It hadn’t changed at all… except for an all-new masseur who came up to them alongside Patchouli, one of the part-timers.

“Hello, my name is Gerhard and this is Patchouli, and it would be my pleasure to…” Gerhard stopped, as so many often did when first seeing a human face-to-face.

“Oh! You’re HIM,” said Gerhard. “You’re the reason I got a job here!”

Gerhard was a male griffin with a powerful-looking body; both his eagle-half and lion-half were trim and athletic.

“Pleased to meet you, Gerhard. I take it you’re my replacement?” Lero said, considering the digits of the griffin’s talon as he shook it in his hand.

“Oh, yes!” said Patchouli. “Everypony still asks about you to this day. They loved those fingers of yours so much… The spa would practically be out of business if it wasn’t for Gerhard.”

“Please… hold your applause,” Gerhard said, more in good humor than vanity. He approached Rainbow Dash. “So I understand that somepony was interested in our Five-Finger…”

“Actually, Gerhard, if you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you could let ME handle this,” Lero told him, firmly but politely.

The griffin frowned at him, sitting on his leonine haunches and folded his feathery arms. “Sir, with all due respect, this isn’t some bring-your-own-masseur day! We have rules and it’s not worth my job.”

“Let him do it, Gerhard!” Aloe called back to them from up front. “It’s okay!”

So the griffin threw up his arms, and stood aside. But Lero got the impression that Gerhard was secretly glad that Lero had gotten his way, for he watched the human at work with marked interest.

When ponies walked through the door to be massaged, one didn’t simply scratch their backs like dogs. No, Lero took great pride in being good at what he did. But today, his dear Rainbow Dash was getting the royal treatment. Better than royal, even; it wasn’t like he’d be giving Princess Celestia a rubdown any time soon. Maybe Luna.

He started with the legs. On his first pass, he worked upward from the hoof in gentle, gliding motions. Then on his next pass, he repeated the process, only this time using his knuckles to push upwards, nice and firm. He did not have Rainbow Dash remove her robe; the only exposed part of her body were the limbs he was working on. He moved down to the hooves, rotating the ankles this way and that, and she let out a wondrous oooooh. Once he finished with the lower legs, he set a pillow under both sets of her knees.

Next, he focused on Rainbow’s upper back. From where her neck met the shoulders, he pressed, stroked, and stretched, working in a crisscrossing maneuver, using just his thumbs on the shoulders, themselves, really working them in.

“You know,” she sighed dreamily, “I had to’ve had a reason why I never tried you out as my masseur after that first time, Lero. Can you imagine what it could possibly be?”

“I’m sure you’ll remember eventually,” he told her, pouring grape seed oil in his hands. “But it doesn’t really matter. One thing I’ve come to learn, recently, is that memories can be rather silly, nonsensical things.”

As a professional, Lero preferred grape seed oil because it didn’t feel as gross and goopy as many other oils could be, and he’d always used it unless his client specifically asked for something else. He worked down the pegasus’ back, kneading the oil into her fur like a hair lotion, his fingers reaching for the skin beneath, unlocking her many hardened strands of muscles; stretch and release, stretch and release. He could feel several of the still-healing scars under her fur. Then he returned back to the top of her back, and treated her to a soft, rhythmic beating of her back using just the edges of his hands.

With her wings, Lero was his gentlest, using butterfly-light touches and slight squeezing strokes along the tendons, not even dislodging so much as a feather. With her head, on the other hand, Lero was his roughest. He applied deep finger pressure along all sides of her cranium, rubbing in firm, circular movements, lifting and kneading, touching and pulling, stimulating circulation to her scalp. Through it all, her eyes kept softly shut, until he pulled away and asked, “So on a scale of one to ten, how would you rank that?”

“Marry me…” she breathed, snuggling into her pillow.

Gerhard clapped his talons. “Well done!”

“The secret’s all in the wrists,” Lero told him.

“I’m sure,” he said, clacking his beak. “Now the only question is, which of us would you like to perform your massage?”

The human looked over at Rainbow Dash, who’d fallen asleep, then between Patchouli and the griffin. “Oh, what the heck, I think I’ll try you, Gerhard. Kinda miss being massaged by fingers.”

“Alright,” said Gerhard, motioning him towards an empty massage chair. “I trust you know the drill…”

* * *

Aloe and Lotus had picked a fine replacement for him; Lero’s body felt so relaxed. Next up was a hooficure, which Lero sat out for obvious reasons. As far as fingernails went, Lero had always been on his own. Minotaurs were the only other sapient beings on this planet that had them, and theirs were still much thicker than his. He’d had to get a set of nail scissors custom-made.

The whole experience was so wonderful. Everything was all coming back to him, the longer he stayed by this loving pegasus. All the sweet little things. Like the time he’d gotten in the bathtub right after saving Honeybee from drowning, and she’d told him ‘Don’t leave me again.’ Or the time she and Twilight had bought him zucchini flowers so there’d be a flower he, too, could eat. Even the times when he came home waaay late, drunk out of his mind, and Rainbow Dash was there to greet him with her furious glare… He’d MISSED all that from her.

At last, they came to the final stop, the communal baths. They all looked so inviting, but right off the bat, he saw most of them had others occupying them. Were there any which were completely empty…?

“Rainbow Dash! Lero? Fancy seeing the two a’ yew here!”

The feeling was very mutual. Neither of them had expected to see Applejack here, or Spike!

“Uh… hi!” Rainbow Dash called to them.

“C’mon in!” Applejack invited, tapping the water she was in. “Water’s fine, ‘n’ there’s more’n enuff room.”

With no reason not to, the both of them stepped inside the hot tub. Spike was keeping a fair, respectable distance from AJ; two other ponies could’ve fit in the space between him and her. The palomino mare had taken her hat off. It sat on a nearby lounge chair, right on top of a robe with a monogrammed letter R.

Lero sat right next to Spike, greeting him with a super-chummy, ‘Hiya, there, tiger!’”

“Hiya, big brother!” he greeted back with an equally big we’re-both-pretending-I-never-burned-your-hand grin.

When he was close enough to whisper in his ear, the human asked, “What’re you and Applejack DOING here?!”

“I managed to find a loophole with Applejack!” the dragon whispered back, gleefully. “Like you, with Rainbow Dash and walking her dogs, remember that?”

Lero stared at Spike. Perhaps he’d underestimated the little guy. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, such as what the loophole was, and why he’d bring her HERE, of all places! But of course, it would have to wait. There were only so many seconds of furtive whispering others were willing to put up with before it became a social faux pas. So instead, he said, “We’ll talk more later!”

And they both turned their attention back to the two mares.

“Hoo-wee! It’s plumb fantastic seein’ mah favorite spa partner again!” she said, patting Dash’s back.

“Likewise, AJ!” said Rainbow Dash. “Remember when we used to do this every week?”

“Those were the days!” the Earth pony sighed.

Ahhh, what a delightful little card the Swap was! Applejack and Rainbow Dash; both of whom had always considered this place too froufrou and fancy for their tastes, and had only gone along to this spa when their other four friends had roped them into it! If only they could see themselves now; these two mares who’d once been the Element Bearers’ most rough-hewn physical fighters!

“So what’s new with yew?”

“Well, a lot!” Rainbow said excitedly. “Right now, we’ve got this thing going on where me, Lero, Twilight, and Lyra are all teaching Fluttershy how to do comedy.”

“Comedy?” Applejack repeated. Suddenly, an intense look entered AJ’s eyes. When she stood out of the hot tub, Lero could see her cutie mark quaking. “Comedy… maybe a dress that’s half-circus clown, half-jester, half-chicken costume! Yes, surely they’ll…”

“Say, Applejack!” Spike swiftly spoke. “Remind me; what letter of the alphabet comes after L?”

Applejack blinked at him, dazedly. So did Lero and Rainbow Dash.

“M!” The orange pony answered. “M comes after L! Yew oughta know that, Spike!”

“Oops, sorry!” said Spike, splashing the water in an adorable, cutesy way. “You know I’m just a BABY dragon, and sometimes babies forget these things!”

“Huh. Uh… what was Ah saying?”

Rainbow Dash looked at her friend in concern. “You’d mentioned…”

“NOTHING important,” Spike butted in. “RAINBOW DASH was talking about how they were teaching Fluttershy comedy. And you interrupted her.”

“Oh.” At that moment, strong, dependable Applejack reminded Lero of nothing more than some lost old woman, prone to bouts of senility. Before she sank back into the water, Lero saw her Diamond Mark was no longer shaking.

You clever, cunning fox. Lero thought, peering over at the baby dragon. But then, with the Swapped, you need to be a cunning fox. Maybe… maybe Applejack’s in good hands after all.

And he gave Spike a thumbs-up. Spike gave him a thumbs-up back.

“So anyway…” Rainbow Dash began.

And she went on, describing how the comedy lessons were going. Applejack seemed to be listening, but with only half an ear. But when Rainbow reached the part about Twilight and her flashcards, the orange pony sprung out of the water again, two legs already out of the pool.

“Flashcards!” she ranted. “Of course! A tuxedo made entirely of flashcards! It’ll turn all of fashion upside-down! Ah need ta get back to mah sewing mach…”

“Hey, Applejack!” Spike interrupted again. “If you had a choice between watching three rotten movies with your best friends or three stupendous movies with a group of ponies you hated, which would you pick?”

Half-in and half-out of the pool, Applejack paused to think again, dripping water over the floor.

“Ah’d rather see them crummy movies with mah friends,” she decided. “Ya’ll can make fun a’ bad movies afterwards. But when ya go out with ponies ya dislike, odds are it’ll completely ruin the great movies for ya.”

“Hey, yeah!” Dash said, turning around to Lero. “Lero had the same idea when we went to see that X-bionic movie! Remember that, Lero?”

The human smiled. “Yep! We found a LOT to laugh about.”

And then came a sorely-missed old favorite for Lero; Rainbow Dash kissing him with a hoof around his shoulder. Not a quick peck, either; this was a REAL kiss! DAMN, had he missed this!

Lero saw how very genuinely happy Spike was to witness this. The little guy’s face showed the same elation of a child watching his beloved mother and father fall completely back in love, and call off their divorce.

The kiss has also gotten Applejack’s attention. She stepped back fully into the hot tub.

“Wow, Rainbow that there’s… quite a smoochin’ ya gave ‘im.”

“Yep! Lero’s WONDERFUL for smooching,” said the pegasus mare, turning and smooching him again. Mmmm...

“And yew said ya both went ta a movie together?” Applejack asked.

“Yep!”

“Did ya’ll do anything else together? Jest him ‘n’ yew?”

What had changed? To Lero, the Earth pony fashionista suddenly didn’t look the slightest bit befuddled or senile. Quite the contrary: her hawkish eyes were like that of a shrewd young judge. Like her old farmer self.

“We’ve gone out and doing stuff with each other every day, right after Fluttershy’s comedy lessons!” Rainbow said. "The first time it was the movie, the second time, I took him to see a real-live displacer beast in the Everfree Forest, and today, we’re here at the spa!”

“And does Rarity know ‘bout all this?”

That brought Rainbow up short. The others around her sat stunned. The water around them suddenly felt twenty degrees cooler.

“Now Ah don’t wanna imply anythang… untoward,” Applejack said. “But Ah know that Rarity’s a good girl. Gotta heart big as all Ponyville. What’s more, she’s way more deserving of her Element a’ Loyalty than Ah ever was with mah Element a’ Generosity. Specially recently. And whether it’s jest perfectly innocent, friendly fun or… sumthin else… t’aint right for one a’ her best friends, and her dream-stallion, her prince, doin’ stuff behind her back. T’ain’t right. Both a yew are better than this, and Ah know if Ah were Rarity, it’d break mah heart in two.”

Rarity… Rarity… It was all so backwards! She was supposed to be ‘Rainbow Dash,’ but then the REAL Rainbow Dash had… he had come to think only ONE portion of the cyan pegasus’ soul contained the part capable of loving him. But now BOTH did?

First, this all really wasn’t fair to Rarity.

Second, Rarity loved him.

Third, he loved Rarity.

Fourth… Rainbow Dash was pulling away from him, moving over by where Applejack sat. Looking downcast into the water. Ashamed of herself, as much as he was of himself.

The magic was gone now. This day was as good as over. Spike sat with the look of a boy whose beloved parents had un-cancelled their divorce.

Well, at least one silver lining was there to be found. Whatever mistakes they’d made, he and Rainbow Dash were both honorable souls at heart. With their situation being what it was, their love for each other had hit a glass ceiling. It could go no further than this. So that left Rarity, by default.

That dream of his, from weeks back, about being forced to choose between Dash’s heart and Dash’s mind… thank goodness it would never come true.

* * *

Merely being ludicrous does not a comedian make. Realism is also an important factor. Realism is the preamble before the actual joke. As your audiences mentally nods in agreement with your introduction, that’s when you hit them with the true joke: exaggeration.

It was the day after Lero had gone to the spa with Rainbow Dash. Today, he was sitting out in his front yard, reading more of How To Be Funny, thankful for the string of sunny days he’d been able to enjoy, thus far. But he probably ought to have a talk with Fluttershy and the others. They needed to decide on another meeting place for when Rarity and the rest of the weatherponies made it rain. The village green just wouldn’t do forever. Maybe the library… or maybe a café, or a diner, or a restaurant where they served really nice food…

Using realism as a launching point, the humorist seeks to find how far in any direction the truth can be stretched, while still preserving credibility.

Thoughts of food were seriously distracting Lero. Keeping focused on research was getting difficult.

Realism is funniest when taken to its most farfetched exaggeration possible. Imagine a joke centered around two inmates sharing the same jail cell. If Prisoner A refers to Prisoner B as her cellmate, that’s blah. If she refers to her as her ‘suite mate,’ that’s comedy!

The human checked his watch; it was nearly noon. Three fifteen was still hours away, so he might as well get himself a lunch. He really didn’t feel like eating at home, though. So he thought about all the good restaurants in walking distance, and decided he’d go with Hollandaise’s.

The restaurant was just a few blocks away. It’d been a while since he last stepped into a Hollandaise’s. It was a regular sort of sit-down restaurant, with a rather casual dining atmosphere, decorated with pictures of sauces, saucepans, and sauce bottles. It was mostly known for its breakfast menu, but its lunch menu was okay, too. A place where a guy could refuel on decent-tasting food without spending a lot of money.

The sign posted just inside the restaurant told him to seat himself, and so he did. A waitress came by to his booth, asking to take his beverage order, and he ordered water with lemon juice in it. The waitress left to fetch his drink.

“...and I thought about what Applejack said all through the night when I was home with my animals. And I when I woke up this morning, I knew I had to come clean to you, Rarity...”

Lero’s whole world flew out of orbit. He looked to his right at the two ponies sitting at the booth across from him.

Rarity and Rainbow Dash. The pegasus looked contrite and humble. The unicorn showed no emotion at all. His first instinct was to get up and try to sneak away, out of Hollandaise’s…

“Lero,” Rarity called, spotting him, “would you come over here, please?”

Running wouldn’t have done any good anyway, he reflected as his feet brought him over to their booth. Not when the cat’s out of the bag like this.

“Why don’t you have a seat? Right next to me,” Rarity’s voice was as flat as a floorboard. Poker players would envy a facial expression like hers. Looking into those eyes, Lero couldn’t tell just what the white unicorn was feeling.

He sat, and without a hint of response at his presence, Rarity turned her gaze to the pegasus.

“Now, Rainbow Dash, please do continue with what you have to say.”

Time to face the music.

Author's Note

Rarity... Rainbow Dash...

Her heart and memories?
Her mind and body?

Stay tuned for the next chapter.

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Twenty-Three: Cards On The Table

The waitress returned to Lero’s booth with his water, but Lero was no longer there. She was as used to the sight of Lero as any other Ponyville pony. So when she turned to see him at the booth across, she sniffed and moved on, annoyed to have lost a tip to whoever was serving the white unicorn and the cyan pegasus.

Really, it was just as well. At this precise moment in time, the human was all but guaranteed to choke on anything he might’ve tried to swallow. His throat clenched and unclenched inside him like a fist.

Several times, he tried to flit looks at Rarity and catch her eye. On any other morning, the white unicorn would’ve been delighted by the attention. Today, though, Rarity’s eyes were quite uncatchable. She focused straight ahead on Rainbow Dash.

“Well... that’s my whole story, Rarity,” Dash said. “After I realized what I had to do, I came to you and, well, here we all are.”

“Yes. Here we all are,” Rarity repeated.

Her deadpan gaze, her refusal to look his way... all of it rattled Lero far worse than any amount of shrieking or growling could. Was this the calm before the storm? Memories of Mr. 7 spilled through the human’s brain.

Part of him would’ve liked to scream at Rainbow Dash. You blabbermouth! he could have yelled. I'm dead. I am so, so dead. Dammit, Rainbow Dash, why couldn't you have been Fluttershy and been patient? I could've smoothed things out with Rarity when the time was right. Why couldn't you trust me to deal with this? Now Rarity's going to hate me, if she doesn't snap out of the Bewitchment entirely. My entire family might be ruined, OUR family might be ruined, all because you couldn't wait!

Rarity took a cool sip of her own water. “I think it would help to know when it was that both of you began feeling this... infatuation for each other.”

Lero’s mother and father had always been so inseparably devoted to one another; he’d always been proud of them for that. Conversely, he’d always disdained husbands and wives who had extramarital affairs, and pitied their poor families. Since the moment Lero knew that Rainbow Dash was The One for him, he’d done everything he could to stay true to her always. Even given the complications that polygamy threw in. It’d taken him a long while to get comfortable with the concept, even with her explicit approval. Now here he was, cheating on Rainbow Dash with... herself.

“Well, let me say this,” Rainbow Dash said, “For all the time Lero came to my house to help me with my animals, he was an absolute perfect gentlestallion, from beginning to end. He was always very sweet to me, but he never hit on me or made passes at me, unlike all those mares and stallions who practically threw themselves at me back when I was a model, just because I was pretty and famous. He hugged me, but only when things got difficult, and I needed the emotional support. I could ALWAYS count on Lero for emotional support.”

The pegasus took her cap off, squeezing it nervously between her hooves. “I think… the moment I fell in love was when I invited him over to show off how obedient my animals now are. I insulted him and made him feel worthless without meaning to. Those sad eyes of his, the pain in his voice when he told me how wonderful and awesome I was… they wouldn’t leave my head. He was even trying to tell me how great I was, when I hurt him… I couldn’t stop thinking about him; how perfectly he’d treated me, how sweet and selfless he’d been from the moment you guys brought him back from the Bramblewood Forest. No colt had ever cared about me so much before. I didn’t know it at the time, but that was when. Losing him in that way was what made me realize I’d fallen in love with him.”

Lero felt like he was on trial in a courtroom. No, bigger than even that. It felt like he’d just died and his soul was being assessed: Heaven or Hell? With Hollandaise’s in the role of the Pearly Gates, Rarity as St. Peter, holding the keys to Heaven… and Dash as the guardian angel who’d been assigned to him since birth, delivering a full report on all the deeds he’d done in his life; good and bad.

Everything was on the line. Absolutely everything.

“And what about you, Lero?” Rarity asked, turning to face him finally. Her gaze was cool, without any signs of hatred, or forgiveness either. Neutral, impassive, calculating; the perfect vision of an incorruptible, unbending judge. “Did you kiss her in the spa?”

“Yes,” he admitted. How could he pretend otherwise?

“What led to that moment, pray tell?”

There was a pause where they all had to stop and smile at the waitress who came to deliver garden salads to the two mares and refill their waters. She also asked if Lero would be having anything; he politely declined. It gave Lero time to think carefully about how he’d answer.

“Back at the very beginning, when I first came here, Rainbow Dash found me, and helped me out a lot during the first few tough weeks. She and I were close friends back then,” he started. “But then… between one thing and another… we grew distant. We each had our own lives, without a lot of overlap. And yet, I’ve always felt in my heart that if not for Dash simply being there for me at the very beginning of it all… my life would be so much poorer now. If not for Dash, I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t even have your love, Rarity. Hell, maybe I’d not even be alive right now. I even said to Twilight, not long ago, how stupid I felt not keeping up our friendship.”

Dash was listening to him with such emotion plain in her eyes. From Rarity, he only caught a flicker of… something... before the unicorn’s stoicism reasserted itself. Had it been sympathy? Or disgust? Neither mare was touching her salad.

“So when I first started going to Dash’s cottage, the last thing on my mind was romance,” he told her. “I knew that Dash wasn’t even remotely interested in that, and really, neither was I… at least, not at the time. After I'd gotten back from Bramblewood, all I could think about was how Dash was looking worse and worse every time I saw her. I was afraid that at the rate she was going, she’d die. And everypony else was so wrapped up in their own crisis, they didn’t have time to help her. So I made time.”

“He begged me to let him help me,” Rainbow Dash sniffed, not even shedding a tear. “On his knees. He was crying when he begged me.”

“I remember you telling me,” Rarity replied.

“Every day I visited her, I had one goal in mind: help Dash get control of her life. Be as helpful as I possibly could. And then that day finally came when she told me she didn’t need me any more. It was an emotional moment for both of us... I’d gotten really fond of her, and now we didn’t have a reason to be around each other anymore. I left, feeling sure that that would be that, basically.”

Now he wished he had a glass of water in front of him.

“But then when I began helping Fluttershy, Dash started hanging around me, and kept taking me places. I honestly wasn’t sure whether she was just trying to be friendly or whether she wanted something more, but I went. I missed spending time with her, and wanted that again, regardless of pretext. Until yesterday. I just got swept up in the emotion of the moment, and then Applejack talked some sense into us both, and…”

He clasped his hands contritely before the unicorn mare. “Rarity, I’m sorry. Part of me wasn’t sure if it was anything that big, I didn’t know until the end whether Dash's feelings were that serious, but it was wrong not to tell you what was going on.”

“Please forgive him!” Dash beseeched. “He’s a human, there’s so much he probably still doesn’t know about proper pony dating etiquette! If anything, blame me. I should’ve come to you, Rarity. You’re the lead mare. I guess… I just had to see whether or not Lero cared for me the way I’ve come to care about him, before approaching the rest of you guys.”

“Do you love Rainbow Dash, Lero?” Rarity asked.

And here it was. The moment of truth.

Lying to Rarity had become second nature to Lero at this point. Mostly out of being a necessary evil, of course. He could find a way out of this. Yes, he could! Some magic string of words that would pull him back from this teetering cliffside, restore the balance in his life, bring back equilibrium.

He was so afraid, so deathly afraid of losing everything. His family unravelling. Losing the love of Rainbow Dash… the side of her he’d seen in Rarity! That was the Rainbow Dash that mattered most, right? Her emotions! Her heart! Their memories of being together! Priceless treasures he could never afford to lose! The part that had stayed with him!

But wasn’t Rainbow Dash... also Rainbow Dash? Just as much Rainbow Dash, even in a different way? Didn’t the pegasus retain as many ‘Dash’ idiosyncrasies as Rarity had now gotten? If he broke her heart, would it be Fluttershy or Dash whose heart broke? Or both?

And what was it that had driven him to quit his job and run off to help her in the first place? He couldn’t bear to turn his back on any side of her. Not her heart and memories, nor her mind and body. He had fallen back in love with Rainbow Dash, because Rainbow Dash had fallen back in love with him. Missing memories and all, she loved him again. Wasn’t that a treasure too?

But was the body just a shell? Did the mind just amount to a computer, an operating system that executed the commands given from the heart?

Tick, tick, tick… the girls were waiting for an answer. Worst thing to do would be to delay too long, be just as bad as jumping up from his seat and sprinting out the door!

What could he say? What could he say? Surely it didn’t matter THIS much; once Twilight found the Cure, he’d have everything back in the same one girl!

Say something clever! It had to be clever! He couldn’t afford to lose! Not here at the moment of truth!

Moment...

Moment of…

Moment of Truth...

Lero’s mind conjured an image for his heart to reflect upon. Not of Rarity or of Rainbow Dash, but of Applejack. Specifically, her eyes. Those hard, piercing, cut-the-bullshit eyes. The eyes that’d gotten him to back away from Rainbow Dash at the spa... because having a relationship behind Rarity’s back, having these feelings for the pegasus behind Rarity’s back was wrong.

Wrong to Rarity, wrong to Rainbow Dash, and ultimately the biggest wrong was to himself.

...Shouldn’t a guy be truthful at the moment of truth?

“Yes,” he told the unicorn. “I love Rainbow Dash.”

He thought of Lyra, and tried to establish inner oneness with the universe: it was Rarity’s move now. Just face the music with dignity. Rainbow Dash was the one who spoke up, sounding delighted.

“So, yeah,” the pegasus said to Rarity, flashing a very glad smile towards the human who loved her. “Basically, well, I guess what I was trying to tell you is... is... I see what you see in him now. Lero’s come to mean the world to me. And with your permission, as his lead mare… I’d like to start dating Herd Bellerophon."

The emotionless brick wall that’d been Rarity’s face lifted into a beaming grin. “That’d be wonderful, Dash!” she said, spearing a lettuce leaf and levitating it to her mouth. “Speaking for me and all the rest of the girls, we’d be thrilled to date you.”

HUH?! Lero silently felt at his chin to see that it hadn’t dropped.

And his loving white unicorn laughed and threw her arms around the human in a fond hug. “Perhaps all this tension is my fault. After all, I brought in Twilight, and it was Lyra that approached us... so I never taught you the proper way for a stallion to bring in a mare! Oh, Lero, this takes me back. Remember when we were still dating Twilight?” Leaning forward towards Rainbow Dash, she confided in a soft stage whisper, “He was so nervous about having a third member enter our happy herd. I’ll never forget the first time he made love with her.”

“Him? Nervous? With Twilight?” Rainbow asked.

“The Human World is a monogamous society,” Rarity explained, in a lower hush. “So that first night, I was right beside Lero, nuzzling and kissing him as he and Twilight made love, helping him work past that adorable notion of his that he couldn’t love Twilight without betraying me.”

“Rarity!” Lero hissed, blushing. “We’re in a restaurant!”

As Rarity giggled and nuzzled him, Rainbow Dash wore a downright mawkish smile, as though Rarity had told her that, as a child, Lero been hugging her legs in separation anxiety the very first day she’d driven him to the daycare center.

“Now look at you!” she boasted, tapping his chest lightly with a hoof. “Going out and getting girls all on your very own! You’re becoming more and more a proper Equestrian stallion each day. Just imagine; in two years’ time, I daresay we’ll both be sharing the same salt lick!”

A memory of Lero’s resurfaced. Back when Lyra Heartstrings had first began courting him, Rainbow Dash had told him: ‘Dude, you know if you wanted to bring another unicorn home you only had to say so. I mean, I may not be into mares myself but just look at those haunches.’ And she’d said those words with the same easygoing mellowness that a human woman might’ve told her husband, ‘Oh, go right ahead and buy that extra puppy in the window, darling. We can afford it!'

It had frankly boggled his mind back then, almost as much as this situation boggled his mind now. The tables had turned, and Rainbow Dash, herself, was now the outsider coming in, benefitting from her own welcoming heart.

“Well, who knows?” he laughed, in as much real relief as pretend offhandedness. “But I’m definitely drawing the line at walking on all fours.”

“Oh, heavens, yes, I agree,” said Rarity. “Quadrupedal walking doesn’t suit you at all, my love. Those lovely, delicate hands of yours simply aren't suited to bearing your weight, after all, and your spine isn't even the right shape for it."

Polygamy. The institution of polygamy had saved him.

How differently would this whole scenario have played out, if this Cutie Swap madness had afflicted human women instead of ponies?

* * *

It had been the most delicious meal he’d ever eaten at Hollandaise’s, though he suspected that sheer joy at this wonderful turn of events had helped flavor the food. Even after their lunch was done, and they had paid the bill, the three of them chatted for a couple more hours about all sorts of things in that little booth. At one point, Lero had commented that this practically felt like a date in and of itself. To which Rarity replied that it didn’t ‘really count’ as a herd date, unless Twilight and Lyra were there as well.

But Lero was keeping a close eye on the clock, and before he knew it, 2:45 was rolling by.

“Rarity, Rainbow Dash, I’m sorry, but I’m going to need to cut this short. Much as I’d love to continue on, three-fifteen is coming on soon, and Fluttershy needs her comedy lessons.”

“Oh! Oh, yes, I need to be there, too!” said Rainbow Dash, placing her cap back on.

“Of course,” said Rarity. She already knew about how Lero was helping Fluttershy; they’d discussed it over dinner days ago.

“Why don’t you come with us, Rarity?” Rainbow invited, as they were stepping out of the restaurant. “It’s fun learning comedy with Fluttershy, and she loves an audience!”

“Not today, I’m afraid,” Rarity said gently. “I have a teaching appointment of my own, with Scootaloo. Perhaps next time, though.”

“Well, we’d love to see you when you do have time, Rarity,” Lero told her.

She didn’t answer back at first, just gazed mistily into his eyes. Then, before he could even ask ‘what?’ she said, “I’m sorry, it’s just… you’ve helped Pinkie Pie, you’ve helped Rainbow, you’ve been so supportive of me, Applejack’s been asking about you every time I see her, and she always says the nicest things about you! And now you’re helping Fluttershy… and even Rainbow’s fallen for you…”

“No one gets left behind,” he told her reflexively, without even really thinking about what he was saying.

The words surprised her for a second. But then she stood on her hind legs and treated him to one of the most heartfelt hugs she’d ever given him.

“The day I finally marry you,” she told him, “will be one of the proudest in all my life.”

She spoke with such tenderness, that his heart swelled with love for her. The kiss she gave him was one of her best, always something Lero delighted in these days. Dropping back down to the ground, she turned to Rainbow Dash.

“I almost forgot to ask; when would be a good time for our herd date?” she asked the pegasus.

“Would this Thursday work for you? Say… seven o’clock at night?”

“Seven works wonderfully,” said Rarity, after looking back to Lero and seeing him nod. “At our house, how does that sound?”

“Awesome.”

And then Rarity gave Rainbow Dash a foxy seductress’ smile. “Well, Dash… I look forward to it.”

Rarity closed her eyes steamily, and suddenly Dash’s ears flattened back in alarm. The unicorn stretched her neck closer, and the pegasus broke into a cold, nervous sweat. Rarity’s lips puckered…

“W-wait!” she shouted out. “I-it’s too early for that, Rarity! We haven’t even had our first date yet!”

Rarity drew back. But then she smiled. “Of course, of course. Proper etiquette must be observed. Forgive me, Rainbow, I forgot myself. We’ll just have to save that for... when we get to know one another better.”

As Rarity strode off with a showy flick of her tail, Lero could see both sets of the pegasus’ knees knocking together. The look in her eyes was like that of a person who’d been excited about her first bungee jump… and then got a good, long look down the chasm she’d be leaping from.

Had the original Fluttershy been a straight girl? Lero had always suspected so, beneath all her shyness, but it no longer mattered. For all this had been a fresh reminder that Rainbow Dash the Caretaker was every bit as bent a mare as Rainbow Dash the Weathermare had been. The thoughts running through her head might as well be written over her face:

It’s not just Lero… it’s the whole herd! I’ll need to be a lover to all of them! I’ll have to make love... to three other girls!

The poor rainbow-maned pegasus was skittish and nervous all throughout their next lesson with Fluttershy, where they reviewed satire. Twilight Sparkle and Lyra were there, but Rainbow was suddenly uncomfortable being around the unicorns, and all but hid from them behind Lero, with a troubled, guilty smile.

* * *

“We’re dating her?!” Lyra exclaimed to Lero, as she, he, and Twilight headed home from the village green.

Fluttershy’s lesson was done for today. While it turned out satire was far from her forte, the yellow pegasus had still grasped the concept of it fairly well, and Lero planned to continue covering more of it tomorrow. They had agreed to start meeting at Golden Oaks Library instead of the village green from here on out.

“Yeah,” Lero confirmed. “This Thursday at seven at our house.”

“And Rarity’s okay with it?” Lyra asked, even more excitedly.

“Absolutely! Ask her yourself, next chance you get.”

Lyra skipped around her herdmates in a circle of glee. “This is amazing! You know, I thought it was weird that Rainbow was suddenly such a shrinking violet with me and Twilight today. Especially since she was completely cool being around us yesterday.” Then she performed a midair somersault. “It’s because she was imagining us all being marefriends together, wasn’t it?”

“You’re going to want to be careful, though!” Lero warned. “Never count your chickens before they hatch, not with the Swap! Always remember: Rainbow is being influenced by Fluttershy’s personality. Like you say, she is going to be a shrinking violet with us. Take it from the guy who’s been dating her one-on-one. We’ll want to be welcoming, but NOT come onto her too strongly.”

“Right, right,” said Lyra who slowed down to a walk. “I am tranquility,” chanted the Still Way grandmaster. “I am serenity. I am levelheadedness. I am quiescence. I am ataraxia. Rainbow Dash, DATING us! Ooooh, I wanna hug her and kiss her on her cheek again, like she always used to let me!”

Lero couldn’t help but laugh. “Lyra, I haven’t seen you this excited in ages!”

Lyra grinned. “Because I am! And I don’t have any reason to hold back!”

They entered their house.

“But speaking of… You’ve been rather quiet,” Lyra commented to Twilight, shutting the door. “Aren’t you happy about all this?”

“Don’t I look happy?” asked the purple unicorn.

The other two considered her face.

“No, I can’t say you do,” Lyra told her. “If anything, I’d say you look more lost-in-thought than anything else.”

“Well, there’s a reason for that.”

Twilight suddenly stopped walking, planting her hooves firmly on the floor. She lowered her head and a bright light gleamed from her horn, as she gave a tremendously large smile.

“I’m ecstatic,” Twilight said, in a very well-controlled tone of voice. “Between being able to help Fluttershy and learning that Rainbow Dash is interested in being part of our herd again, I’m absolutely over the moon. In fact, I’m so ecstatic, I’ve been struck by a burst of great inspiration.”

Her horn glowed continuously. Soon, objects began floating in from other rooms; a quill, an inkwell, a stack of blank pages, and a rhyming dictionary.

And then came… THE book. Starswirl The Bearded’s big black spell book. Lero flinched away from it and Lyra glared as it hovered towards the purple unicorn, who observed it evenly.

“It’s time to enter the Experimentation Phase,” Twilight announced, trotting into the next room. The objects all floated around Twilight’s head like nighttime fireflies around a lamppost.

With confused looks, Lyra and Lero followed after her.

“Experimentation Phase?” Lero asked, as Twilight set the items down on a table and sat.”

“Yes,” said Twilight, turning Starswirl’s book to its final page. “Remember earlier on, when I was reading through all those books? That was my Research Phase. Then all those time I was talking with Lyra and sorting out all the information I’d learned, that was my Discussion Phase.”

Dipping her quill in ink, The lavender unicorn copied the Swap Incantation onto a blank sheet of paper -- from one to another, another to one, a mark of one’s destiny, singled out alone, fulfilled -- then drew a line underneath it.

“Now I feel ready for the final phase. The Experimentation Phase. The one where I roll up my proverbial sleeves...” she nodded at Lero, “and get hooves-on with Starswirl’s unfinished spell, and experiment to find the words and the magic to FINISH it, and thus cure my friends!”

“Whoa,” said Lero, who was starting to feel a touch of nerves. “Are you sure it’s safe?”

“Safe?” asked Twilight, with a downright cynical smirk. “Who said anything about safe?”

Then she opened the rhyming dictionary, copying down every word that rhymed with ‘fulfilled’ -- billed, build, chilled, distilled, drilled...

“Let me tell you what I’m planning,” she continued. “From here on out, I have three priorities. Priority One is helping you with your equilibrium, Lero.”

The human blinked. “Twilight, I…”

“Every time you’re busying yourself with equilibrium matters, I want to be right next to you at all times,” the mare insisted.

Twilight turned to a different part of the rhyming dictionary. She wrote another note for herself: ‘Destiny’ has no direct rhymes. May need to use phrasal rhymes instead. ‘Best tin knee?’ ‘Zest in me?’ ‘Got to be?’ Frowning, she scratched that last one out.

“Priority Two is socializing with my friends and family,” she continued. “And Priority Three is experimenting with the Cure. Ideally, I’d like to devote a portion of each day to all three priorities.”

“Shouldn’t Priority Three be Priority One?” Lyra asked.

Twilight shook her head. “I’m sick of being distant from my friends, especially the ones who need help the most. I want to pull them out of their ruts. I can always cure them afterwards.” Then she sighed. “This won’t be quick, after all. I have a LOT of trial and error ahead of me!”

“I’ll bet!” said Lero. The human recalled an unforgettable passage he’d read in a biography of Thomas Alva Edison: 'I have not failed. I've just found ten thousand ways that won't work.'

“The first thing I’ll need is a laboratory to conduct my experiments,” Twilight mused.

Lyra sat next to her. “But you already have a lab, down in the basement.”

Twilight set her quill down. “Not happening. I need a different laboratory altogether. Someplace far away. Remember; this library is where we’re keeping the Elements of Harmony! Reciting that spell while standing next to the Elements was what triggered the Swap in the first place. So this time, I wanna be far away from them! At least for the preliminary set of experiments.”

“Also, Golden Oaks Library is a public library,” Lero pointed out. “Imagine some pony coming in to borrow a book while she’s dabbling with identity-altering magic down in the basement!”

“Maybe you can use that barn of Pinkie’s?” Lyra suggested. “The one in the cornfield?”

"I hate to suggest this." Lero said hesitantly, "But there's always the abandoned lab at the edge of town."

"No." Twilight said firmly. "I'm not going to disturb that place, out of respect of the de..." She cut herself off. "...harmonized."

Lero thought about it a bit more. “How’s this for an idea…”

* * *

Rainbow Dash! Rainbow Dash, of all possible ponies.

If somepony had told Rarity yesterday that her sweet Lero had grown besmitten of a fourth mare, she’d have suspected Vinyl Scratch or Lemon Hearts or Sea Swirl. Maybe even Twinkleshine, that one friend of Lyra's who'd also been a bridesmaid at Princess Cadence's wedding.

But Rainbow Dash wouldn’t have even been the last pony on her list of guesses. And here, Rarity thought she had her prince’s taste in mares down to a science!

For starters; between Twilight, Lyra, and herself, Rarity had honestly come to believe that Lero only had eyes for unicorns. Some ponies were selective like that! But also: she, Twilight, and Lyra were all very ladylike girls. Strong and assertive; mares not to be trifled with. But Rainbow Dash? The only way she could be more tomboyish would be getting a competitive streak! It was amazing how old Photo Finish had been able to dress her so daintily (not to mention Applejack, back at the Grand Galloping Gala).

Equally amazing was the fact that Rainbow had fallen for Lero! Long before Rarity, herself, had come to love him, Lero and Rainbow had fallen out of touch with one another. Since then, they’d remained friendly acquaintances for years, neither showing any interest in the other, not until VERY recently. Not that Rainbow had shown interest in ANY pony. Part of Rarity had thought that Dash simply was too intimidated by romance to ever try it.

Simply an astonishing turn of events!

Yet she’d seen the earnest love in her pegasus friend’s eyes. Rainbow Dash had to have really cared deeply for Lero to overcome her natural shyness and ask to date Herd Bellerophon. And their whole story was soooo romantic. Love blossoming from gratitude and the ironclad desire to shield the other from pain! Rainbow was so naturally timid. Rarity knew she’d never so much as dated before, and might not ever again, if Lero didn’t work out. One chance for romance was all the poor girl might ever give herself. How could Rarity say no to a herd date?

A girl who broke the mould, a girl who flipped all Rarity’s expectations on their head… she’d be looking forward to seeing her this Thursday!

So it was with a gladdened heart that Rarity returned to her home. Twilight was there to greet her at the front door.

“Have I got news for you!” Rarity announced, after exchanging sweet welcome-home kisses with her Sparkle-kitten.

“Does it have something to do with a certain animal-loving pegasus coming to date us?” Twilight asked.

“Oh, drat it all,” Rarity pouted, “Lero’s already told you everything about it, hasn’t he?”

Spoilsport!

“Mmm-hmm, and I want you to know that Lyra and I are both really excited about it!” said Twilight, nuzzling her side as they both walked further into the house. “We all got a really nice feeling that Rainbow will make a wonderful addition to our home!”

“I hope so, but let’s not get ahead of ourselves,” Rarity cautioned her. “We’ll see how well she fits with us with this date!”

“‘Don’t count your chickens before they hatch,’ huh?” Her sweet herdmate let out a sigh. “I suppose you’re right.”

“All the same, I intend to make this a most splendid occasion,” Rarity assured her. “I’m planning on enlisting Applejack and Fluttershy’s help with the decorations and the food.”

While Herd Bellerophon went out and had fun times together, Rarity had honestly thought she’d never again go out on a date! And Rainbow Dash wasn’t just anypony, she was a dear friend, so she deserved splendidness more than most!

“Hey, Rarity?” Twilight suddenly asked, after a pause. “I have a special favor to ask. A favor that’s a bit bigger than most.”

“Sure! What is it? You know you can ask me anything!”

Twilight Sparkle sat down at a table that had a black book on it, and Rarity sat beside her.

“You know that cloud home of yours, Rarity?” she asked. “The one you used to live in before we became a herd?”

“Yes, of course, what about it?” Was Twilight thinking of hosting the date there? If so, it would complicate all the party arrangements...

“I want to use it as a laboratory.”

“A laboratory?” She hadn’t expected this swerve at all; it was like she’d opened her bathroom door and stepped onto a tennis court. Then Rarity caught sight of the black book on the table, and realized she knew it. “Twilight, this wouldn’t have anything to do with that spell Princess Celestia gave you a while ago?”

The purple mare set her hoof atop Starswirl’s book. “It has everything to do with that spell.”

Rarity licked her lips nervously. “Twilight, you… please don’t take this the wrong way, my sweet Sparkle-kitten, but sometimes I worry about you and that spell.”

“And I’ve given you every reason TO worry about me,” Twilight admitted up-front. “I’ve been obsessive. I’ve been secretive. I’ve isolated myself and gone through long periods of depression, and you’ve always done your best to cheer me up. Sometimes successfully, sometimes not. But I’ve never given you a good explanation of WHY. You’ve probably been afraid for my sanity.”

“Oh, I wouldn’t go that far…” Rarity said, but she couldn’t quite meet her herdmate’s eye. At times, the weathermare had come within inches of trying to talk Twilight into seeing a therapist. Thank goodness Lyra had finally come home!

But then her lovely lavender mare fixed her with her gravest stare. “Rarity, what I’m about to tell you… you must NEVER tell anyone else. I’m putting so much at risk just by letting you in on this secret.”

After a worried laugh, Rarity said, “You’re making it sound so… cataclysmic!” But Twilight wasn’t laughing along.

“This ancient, defective, unfinished spell of Starswirl The Bearded’s… is what caused Princess Luna to turn into Nightmare Moon, long, long ago.”

“Nightmare Moon?!”

“Sssh!”

Sheer shock left Rarity numb. It was all coming back to her: the cold slit-eyes, the horribly fanged teeth, the swirls of dark magic, her vindictive cackling as the sun was banished, the dreadful fear that the dawn would never again return…

“Sweet Celestia… you… by all the Alicorns…”

Twilight hung her head. “For the longest time, I’ve been too terrified to even BEGIN working on that spell. What if it backfired on me? What if I caused some innocent pony to undergo that kind of transformation? So I stalled and buried myself in books, searching for an easy answer. The sheer immensity of it all left me feeling powerless!”

All Twilight’s sadness, all her high-strung worry, all that literature she’d drowned herself in! “So many things make sense, now…” Rarity whispered.

Twilight got out of her chair, nuzzling her cheek against Rarity’s. “I wanted to be able to tell you, really I did! But a secret like this threatens the stability of our whole world.”

“Of course it does!” Rarity exclaimed. “If word reached the ears of some genocidal madmare that there was a spell that could turn her into another Nightmare Moon…!”

Both mares let that horrifying possibility hang in the air between them.

“But the thing is… I’ve found my courage, Rarity,” And there was, indeed, resolve in Twilight’s voice. “I’ve delayed long enough. The Princess gave me this task, and I absolutely must not fail her. Just like with Discord and King Sombra and the original Nightmare Moon. As long as this spell remains unfixed, it represents a clear and present danger to everypony. But I need a place that’s spacious and private to conduct experiments and I think a place like the cloud house would fit the bill! Will you help me?”

Rarity got up and left while Twilight remained at the table. There was a key rack in the laundry room wall. Rarity selected a greyish-white key that wasn’t made of any metal, but rather permanently solidified cirrus cloud. She returned to Twilight’s table, but before actually giving it over to her, Rarity said, “Promise me you won’t shut yourself away from us all in that cloud house.”

“I promise,” the other mare said solemnly. “When I conduct these experiments, I want my mind to be fully alert at all times; so I can’t afford to spend too long there and run my nerves ragged. But in return, I need you to promise me you won’t tell this to anypony.”

Rarity sat on her haunches. “Cross my wings, hope to cry, pluck my feathers if I lie.”

“You don’t have any wings,” Twilight said with an amused smile, for Rarity had spoken the vow while crossing her front hoof over a set of imaginary wings on her back.

To this, Rarity could only shake her head, almost admonishingly. “Oh, my sweet enchantress, how could you have forgotten? You are my wings. You, Lero, Lyra, and Spike.”

Twilight’s darling eyes went so moist and dewy, one would think Rarity had never spoken these words to her before! Then she drew closer, and they began kissing each other softly, again and again. Her poor, brave, overwrought darling kitten.

Meanwhile, from the upstairs hallway, Lyra and Lero had been eavesdropping on this entire exchange like children snooping on their parents. Lyra extended her left foreleg towards the human at her side while Lero formed his right hand into a fist and the two ‘hoof-bumped.’

Author's Note

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Twenty-Four: Visions Of Elsewhere

“Simply dashing,” the Fashionista said, smiling wanly over her cupcake. “You always do decorate these divinely.” Her multicolored mane hung limply down her back. “Perhaps we ought to try designing a line together? It can’t do much worse than my own efforts lately.”

“Aw, thanks, sugarcube,” the Party Pony said, forcing a smile of her own onto her face, and she gave her friend an encouraging nuzzle. “Don’t be so down on yerself. Yew told us all how the critics loved yer new stuff, right?”

“Yes, and it seemed like it was going so well!” Rainbow Dash moaned. “But ponies simply aren’t buying my outfits anymore. No matter how wonderful I make them, they’re simply too awesome for daily use, they say.” She reached up to adjust her hat. She always dressed in style, of course.

Twilight Sparkle’s head felt like it wasn’t just splitting, but had already split outright. She could see the mug of cider on the table in front of her, her… fifth? Sixth? Something like that. Her many-th of the day already. But at the same time, she seemed to be looking at the whole room from the side, watching herself and her friends. She wondered if she ought to get back home to Sweet Apple Acres, but she just couldn’t bear the idea of going back and spending another night trying to sleep through the inevitable, incessant, unbearable headaches.

Fluttershy leaned against the wan, haggard, quiet biped at the table with them. He’d run himself ragged for weeks, trying to help everypony with their sudden spate of problems, ever since Rarity got that spellbook from Princess Celestia. Her stallion just was such a great guy, he couldn’t leave everypony in such a slump, but then she’d lost her job with the weatherponies after one too many bright sunny days in a row, and he’d had to go back to the spa, and finally raise his prices. He had an endless string of rich Canterlot ponies coming through nowadays.

The other pony at the table, quiet, flat-maned, bright pink, hadn’t even nibbled at her cupcake, nor said a word. She just huddled to herself, glancing between her erstwhile friends on the infrequent moments when she looked up enough to see them. Nopony but Lero could get her to even leave her cottage these days; when most of her animals abandoned her, she’d become convinced that everypony, everyone, and everything hated her, and only her few remaining animal friends, Lero included, could get through to her at all.

“Maybe you could try selling them to another market?” Lero tiredly suggested to Rainbow Dash. His own decline had been the reason Fluttershy and Rarity tried to get their friends together. He’d been working so very, very hard, and lately he seemed to have almost entirely given up… on everything. He barely even commented on Twilight’s drinking anymore. Making a suggestion to Rainbow Dash was more than he’d done in a week.

“Another market, you say?” Rainbow Dash responded, trying to put an inviting look on her face. She might be near to losing the Boutique, but a smile cost nothing, after all. She could still give those away. “Where might I sell my designs, if not to the Canterlot upper crust?”

“Try a youth movement, maybe?” Lero said. Fluttershy and Rarity tried not to let their discomfort show. Why was it that their stallion still mustered himself to try to help their polychromatic friend when he’d even given up on giving them any more reassurance than a tired hug every now and then? “See if you can start a new trend for the teenage rebels…”

“It couldn’t hurt to try,” Rainbow Dash agreed, and looked down to her cupcake. Twilight somehow was sure that the culinary gift from the Cakes was the only thing the pegasus had eaten all day, but she continued daintily nibbling at it. “Fluttershy, do you think your little shadow might try modeling?”

Fluttershy winced. “Scootaloo’s… been real busy with schoolwork,” she transparently fibbed. “She might be outgrowing the whole hero-worship thing anyway. I mean… even for a pony as awesome as me.” She could only manage to put a crooked smile on. “Lots more time to practice for the Wonderbolts now, though, right?”

Nopony had the heart to remind her how silly her lifelong dream was. The Wonderbolts were aerobatic demonstrators. Pegasi might appreciate Fluttershy’s skill at slow-flight, but for Earth ponies and unicorns, she just wasn’t much of a show.

Twilight drank down her mug. The cider buzzed through her system. She felt like the part of her that was watching from across the room was horrified at her, but she didn’t care. Anything that made her head hurt less was good. “Yeah, tha’s jes’ it, shugahcube,” she drawl-slurred to Fluttershy. “Yew jes’ keep on pers… purse… perses… persnicking with that…”

“Persisting,” mumbled Rarity, her eyes half-closed, leaning on Lero’s other side. She was utterly convinced that everything had simply gone wrong since Princess Celestia had sent her Starswirl’s unfinished spell, but her efforts to cast it to find out what it was even supposed to do had met with nothing but failure. She’d lost weight in her monomaniacal efforts, and a lot of it, but was no closer to casting the spell than she’d been that first night. She knew she had the power, somewhere; when she was a filly, she’d transformed her entire school play stage into the Ponyville Playhouse, STILL the grandest performing theater in Equestria, but somehow she’d never been able to tap into that level since. And that letter Princess Celestia sent to her… telling her to put aside Starswirl’s spell and try to get on with her life… it was the most crushing thing she’d ever read. Princess Celestia, infinitely patient Princess Celestia, wisest pony in Equestria… didn’t believe she could do it. Didn’t believe that the bearer of the Element of Magic could figure out a single spell. Had failed her, even if she was too gentle to actually say so outright.

“Yeah,tha’ too,” Twilight agreed. She looked into her mug. Someone had drunk all of her cider again. Probably her, she guessed. Not like it’d be the first time. Stupid magic. Stupid horn. Bane of her life. Blew up that fancy school her parents tried to take her to. Made her leave Canterlot, leave her family. That’d driven her to Sweet Apple Acres, at least. She couldn’t imagine what she’d have done otherwise, but something in those wide open spaces, work to do, freedom to try to get a grip on her over-loaded magic without anypony getting blown up, it just called to her. She could pick the whole place in ten minutes, and wasn’t that a fine feeling? Even made the headaches go away for a bit. But then she’d build up too much magic again an hour later, and then she wouldn’t have a farm left to pluck clean anymore.

Applejack lifted her own mug. She’d barely sipped from it. “Here’s to th’ good ol’ days,” she said. “Ah remember when Ah first came t’ Ponyville… Saw that rainboom o’ yours, Rainbow Dash, clear from Manehattan. Brightest, shiniest thing I ever did see. Ah jes’ knew Ah had to make other ponies’ lives as bright and shiny as yew made mine that day.” She sighed and took a swig. “Guess Ponyville jes’ ain’t the place fer me ta do it no more.”

“Don’t be so glum, darling,” Rainbow Dash said, and extended a wing to brush against Applejack’s back. “I remember that day so vividly. Such… color, such glory, I just knew I had to find some way to take it and give a little piece of it to everypony, to let everypony know what it felt like to have something like that be part of them.” She brushed a hoof against her carefully-curled prismatic mane. “Perhaps you’ll spend some time with me before your move, Applejack? Please? I just have this feeling that if you come spend some time with me in the Boutique, we’ll both be better off.”

“Ah’ll try,” Applejack promised, and tapped her mug to Dash’s. They both drank.

“I wish I could rainboom,” Fluttershy said, looking out the window at the heavy downpour. Somewhere out there, Thunderlane was trying to get enough rain to make up for all of the unscheduled sunny days Fluttershy had caused. She felt her blood boiling at the sight. Stupid clouds. Stupid stupid clouds. She’d hated them for so long. Ever since one had taunted her with the promise of safety that day, when she was falling all the way from Cloudsdale, only to burst to bits when her hooves hit it. So she got worked up doing weather duty, so what? It made her the hardest working weatherpony anyone ever saw. She’d just… lost a little control these last few weeks, gone into a few too many cloud-bucking rages. Personally caused the worst drought Ponyville had ever experienced, nearly dried out all the farms for miles around.

Fluttershy pressed her head to Lero’s side. She wondered why his fingers shook a little when she said that about wishing she could rainboom... but he was there. He might have grown more distant lately, been paying more attention to Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle than to his own mares, but at least he was there. The only stallion for her. The only one who’d ever really cared more about her than about her body. She could still remember that day, remember when it hit her.

He wasn’t a pony at all, but he liked her. He couldn’t be sticking around because he wanted her body, could he?

“Hey, Lero,” she said. “I’ve got a question for you.”

“Oh?” he’d said. “What’s that?”

“Have you thought about what you want to do? Here in Ponyville, I mean?”

She remembered the feel of his hand on her back. Oh, he was so good at that, and he didn’t even know he was doing it. Her wings spread gloriously to the sides. “There’s got to be something I can do with my hands that wouldn’t be so well-suited to hooves,” he’d said.

She’d moaned outright. “Oh, I know just what you can do,” she’d told him. “You give the best… rubs… I’ve ever felt.”

“Massage, huh?” he’d responded, entirely missing her point. “That could work.”

She remembered laughing. “Oh, Lero, it's always such a relief to come be with you. Everyone's always hitting on me all day long while I'm trying to do my weather work."

"That must get pretty tiresome."

"Oh, you have no idea. My dock hurts from holding my tail up all day, I ended up having to use half of the rainclouds in town for showers, and that cumulus over there was a thunderhead before we *ahem* painted it white."

She remembered the LOOK on his face.

"... Just kidding you, Lero. But it is nice to meet someone who's not just after my body." And then she’d kissed him. “Do you mind if I come after yours instead?”

“I remember that day,” Pinkie whispered, bringing Fluttershy out of her reverie. It was the first thing any of her friends had heard from her in weeks. They all stopped to listen. She was looking up at the ceiling, as though watching all over again. “The rock farm was so cold and grey that day, but then the rainbow came, and all those… those beautiful butterflies came dancing across the field…” For just a moment, the tiny shadow of a smile crossed her lips. “I danced with them. My very first friends.”

And then her eyes dimmed and her face dropped. “Butterflies don’t live very long. They’re all gone now. All of my first friends. All of my friends…”

“We’re still here, Pinkie, darling,” Rainbow Dash said.

But Pinkie Pie just pushed herself away from the table and fled, running out into the rain. Nopony followed her. Lero watched the door bounce off the wall and then slam shut, and a little more light died in his eyes.

Twilight Sparkle found more cider in her mug, from somewhere. She didn’t much care where it came from. She drank it. Her head felt heavy, so she put it down on the table. The watching part of her was disgusted at her, and she thought she probably agreed.

The room was quiet. Applejack finally broke the silence by saying, “Ah better get Twilight back home. It was good ta see y’all.”

Twilight was just shy of passed out, but part of her watched the others walk out into the rain, Lero’s clothing soaked right through in seconds. He’d lost weight too. They all had. Even Applejack’s constant binging on fritters hadn’t kept her from dropping some pounds to worry lately.

It made Twilight that much easier for Applejack to carry, at least. That disembodied part of her watched Applejack trudge down the long road to Sweet Apple Acres, a semiconscious soused unicorn draped over her back. She could hear Applejack talking, more to herself than to Twilight.

“Where’d it all go wrong? We were all so happy jes’ a month ago. Then we all jes’… lost it, all at once. Maybe Rarity’s right, maybe that book is cursed. Maybe… maybe…” She shook her head. “Aw, who’m Ah kiddin’? Even Princess Celestia knows Rarity ain’t gonna be able to cast that spell an’ get everythin’ workin’ right agan.”

The party pony sighed again and set Twilight Sparkle down underneath an apple tree at the edge of Sweet Apple Acres. “Ah’m gonna miss Ponyville, but Appleloosa’s where ponies like mah kinda shindigs. Real shame.” She ran a hoof along the tree over Twilight’s head. “Ah’m even gonna miss this place, an’ Ah hardly even come out here ‘cept ta visit Twilight.”

And then tears began to run down her cheeks. “BUCK IT ALL! WHY’S EVERYTHING HAVE TO GO SO WRONG?” She spun around, planted her forehooves in the ground, and bucked that tree like it was the source of all her problems, and the apples poured down like the rain beating on Applejack’s hat. Applejack stared, her eyes widening, and then an apple hit Twilight Sparkle squarely on the head, and…

* * *

“It’s my fault, Applejack, it’s all my fault!” gasped Twilight as her eyes snapped open. She glanced around the room. This wasn’t her room, this wasn’t Sweet Apple Acres!

Then she felt warm bodies against her, and the shreds of the dream fell away. The soft sounds of Lyra, Lero, and Rarity breathing helped her heart rate slow, the feeling of their bodies relaxed in sleep against her. She stared up at the ceiling. She hadn’t done that, at least. She hadn’t made everything that bad. She hadn’t made it so bad that Lero couldn’t save her. That her stallion couldn’t save her friends while she wasted weeks and weeks accomplishing nothing.

Twilight carefully extracted herself from the bed, slowly tugging herself away from Lero’s sensitive hands, from Rarity’s happy sleep-nuzzles. She knew from long experience that trying to get back to sleep after a nightmare like that would just result in her thinking over the entire thing, over and over, all night long, and leave her a worn-out wreck in the morning. She hadn’t had one that bad in ages, though.

And Princess Celestia wasn’t just down the hall to go running to, not anymore. She couldn’t hide from the nightmares under the snowy white feathers of an alicorn’s wing. She’d have to try the next best thing.

A nice hot cup of tea.

She was halfway down the stairs when she heard the teakettle whistling. She almost fell the rest of the way when she reflexively started to take a step backwards, but caught herself. She reached up to touch her horn, to make sure she hadn’t put the kettle on herself from afar without thinking. Unconscious casting would be just the thing to make her life really, really wonderful right about now. She knew without boasting that if she started casting unintentionally, there wasn’t a unicorn in Equestria who’d be able to contain her. And she thought she’d have good odds taking on at least one of the alicorns, if it came to that… even if she wasn’t trying to, even if Shining Armor would insist that Cadence was every bit the alicorn that Celestia and Luna were. But no, her horn was dark; she hadn’t lost her self-control. Which simply raised the question, who was making tea?

The click of claws on the wooden floor answered that, so different from Lero’s quiet footsteps or the brisk clop of hooves. “Spike?” she called softly. “What are you doing up so late?” She heard water being poured into a cup, and continued down.

“Somepony told me you needed help,” Spike’s voice returned from the kitchen. “And she still has trouble getting into Lero’s dreams, so she came to me. That’s why we’re on the List, isn’t it? To be here for you?”

Twilight entered. Spike was there, wearing a nightcap and fuzzy slippers, but he’d put her tea out for her on the table, just the way she liked it. She swept him up into a hug. He didn’t resist; far from it. He pressed his head against her. She felt the tension in his chubby little body, and fresh guilt blazed through her. Poor Spike. She’d been neglecting him, too, not just her friends and mates, hadn’t she? No wonder he’d lashed out at Lero.

“Twilight?” he asked her, still pressing his scaly face against her chest.

“Yes, Spike?” she responded, running her hoof down along his back. He was trembling a little.

“It’s okay, right? That I can help Applejack. It doesn’t have to be Lero every time, right? He… he isn’t the only one who can help?”

“Hey,” she said, and knelt down, pulling him more tightly against her. “Everypony can help. You can help Applejack, you can help me, you can help anypony you want to.” She squeezed. “None of this is your fault. Nothing that happens is your fault. It’s all mine. You’re being the best assistant ever, Spike, and it’s my fault I didn’t give you enough attention and..”

“Nuh-uh,” he said, and she felt his claws pricking through her coat as he held her tightly. “Don’t you go blaming yourself for what I did. I was mad and I hurt Lero, and I’m sorry I did it. You’re gonna fix everything, Twilight. I know you are. You’re gonna fix it all. But in the meantime, I’m gonna keep helping Applejack.” He sniffed, and loosened his grip enough to look up into her eyes. “Don’t tell Lero, all right? I was doing so good today, but then I had this dream that I messed her up because only Lero can make it work…”

Twilight kissed him on the forehead. “It was just a dream, Spike. You’re doing great, and you’re digging Applejack out of the hole I made for her.”

Spike rested against her chest in silence, then said, “Don’t blame yourself like that, Twilight. Please. You couldn’t have known.”

She was quiet in turn after that. He buried his face into her coat, and she felt his hot tears. “Even if I didn’t know, it’s still my fault,” she said to him.

“No!” he cried. “Stop saying that! It’s not your fault, and you’re going to make everything better! Promise me! You’re going to make everything better again!”

Twilight smiled, just a little. “Pinkie Promise,” she told him. Using that felt more real than the silly Fluttershy version. It wasn’t like she even had wings to cross or feathers to pluck. “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”

But Spike shook his head and pulled away. “No. Not good enough. Not this time,” he said, looking up at her.

“A Pinkie Promise isn’t good enough?” Twilight asked, ears lifting. “You know nopony breaks a Pinkie Promise.”

“Not good enough,” Spike repeated. He reached his hands up to hold her head, looking into her face. “This time, I just want you to look me in the eye and mean it.”

Twilight looked back at him. She looked at the desperation on his face, the tiredness. She thought about what it meant that he was up in the middle of the night for her, when usually it was a chore to get him out of bed before library hours opened. She thought about what it meant that Luna was watching her dreams and sending her help.

She thought about what Spike meant to her. And Lero. And Lyra. And Rainbow Dash, and Rarity, and Fluttershy, and Pinkie Pie, and Applejack.

“I promise,” she said, looking him in the eye. “I will find a cure.”

He looked back up at her, then nodded. “Okay.” He let go of the hug. “Your tea’s getting cold.” He yawned, sharp teeth opened wide.

Twilight smiled at him. “Get to bed, Spike. I think I don’t need the tea now, anyway.”

* * *

“Super-duper splendaroonies!” the Fashionista exclaimed, beaming over her cupcake. “You always do decorate these divinely.” Her bright pink mane was an artfully styled thicket of curls down her back. “Perhaps we ought to try designing a line together?” She giggled. “I’ve been doing a lot better with collaborations lately.”

“Oh, darling, you’re simply being silly now, and isn’t that my job?” the Party Pony said, a smile of her own swirling into its accustomed spot on her face, and she gave her friend an encouraging nuzzle. “Your latest lines have been the hit of Ponyville, even if the critics have been sticking their thoughtless snoots in the air. Why, after what that cad Jet Set wrote about your swimwear collection, I put him onto my no-parties list very first thing!”

Twilight Sparkle mock-gasped. “The no-parties list, Rarity? That’s harsh! How many ponies have you got on that list?”

Rarity tossed her frizzy purple mane. “Just the one. But really, Twilight, you should have seen the awful things he said. Frivolous, indeed! Hmph!”

Twilight let out a guffaw. “You’re just mad because that’s your style he panned, Rares!”

Rarity stuck out her tongue. “I am not! I am quite sure that I have retained every ounce of style, and Pinkie has brought her own talents to bear on the world of fashion. Lero, back me up here.”

Lero laughed, running a hand down Rainbow Dash’s mane. “It’s a mix, Rarity,” he told her cheerfully. “You were never so… exuberant before, and Pinkie was extremely random. You’re making parties with style, she’s making fashion with fun.”

“As opposed to what, Lero? Parties with fun and fashion with style?” Rainbow Dash asked, arching an eyebrow. “I don’t know about you, but I always enjoy Rarity’s parties, and Pinkie’s designs are wonderful.”

Twilight snickered and magically picked up a spoon to bop Rainbow Dash on the nose. Dash flicked a feather, and the air swirled to catch the spoon before it could land, settling it neatly back on the table. “Oh, you know what he’s talking about, Dash. You remember that one party Rarity did, right? Where it was just all-out wild bouncing off the walls all night? And Pinkie’s Gala dresses, those were way more classic than her usual kind. Just picture it like Rarity doing those parties every time, and Pinkie always making dresses like that.”

Rainbow Dash gave that due consideration. “Lero, are you entirely sure the Swap wasn’t in self-defense?” she asked. “A town full of ponies in Canterlot styles, all right, but how would we survive parties like that every week?”

“Pinkie’s always been very conscientious of doing proper cleanup afterward,” Lero explained. “And they’re usually more… gleeful than riotous.”

Pinkie winked at Rarity. “See? Even when I’m you, I do my homework!”

Rarity laughed and reached a hoof over to boop Pinkie’s nose. “I forget to clean up your Boutique one time, and I never hear the end of it! I got the main room, didn’t I? And honestly, your little ‘inspiration room’ just needed a touch of creative chaos to it.”

“Bravo! Bravissimo!” declared Discord, daintily sipping the spoon out of a cup of tea from the adjacent table. “You see, Twilight? Even Rarity agrees with me, you ponies do need more chaos in your lives.”

Twilight rolled her eyes. “Like duh! Things around here would be totally boring if we didn’t have the wild weather from the Everfree coming in all the time, and all these adventures to do.” She smirked at the chaos spirit. “You were talking to ‘old Twilight’ again, weren’t you?”

Discord laughed. “I was at that. You’ll simply have to forgive me, the resemblance is uncanny.” He demonstrated by holding up a large tin can, bearing the label “Old Twilight” on it, and an irritated-looking purple unicorn underneath the words glowering at Discord. She waved a hoof and yelled something, but labels can’t talk. He set the can down, and it vanished.

“Well, I suppose I can’t argue either,” Rainbow Dash admitted. “If it weren’t for random luck, none of us here would exist right now? As we are, that is.” She smiled, then bent her neck to nuzzle at Twilight. “Even if I’m supposed to be a weatherpony, I’m glad I’m getting the chance to learn to be you instead, Twi.”

“You’re a fast learner, my little egghead,” Twilight teased, but nuzzled back fondly. “Just a couple of weeks ago, it was so funny watching you flail around, trying to remember how to make your spells work, and now look at you. I betcha you could even take me in horn-wrestling again.”

Dash laughed. “Yeah, yeah, and you were up three nights in a row trying to get that one cloud ‘just right’ until Lero hauled you home.”

Twilight glanced out the window and made a face. “Still not awesome enough. There should be at least a couple of thunderheads and maybe some extra cirrus.” Her horn began to glow.

Lero’s free hand reached over to stroke two fingertips along that hard length. Twilight gasped, cheeks heating. “Hey! We’re in public, big guy!” She tugged her head back, horn blinking out.

Lero grinned at her. “So I found a great way to distract you. Are you really complaining?”

“Cutie Mark Compulsion Disorder is a very serious condition, whether it comes from the Cutie Pox or, in our case, a spell,” Rainbow Dash agreed soberly. “Fortunately, Lero is completely immune, so he can keep us from indulging inappropriate ooh, Lero, stop that!” She blushed in turn and squirmed as Lero’s hand drifted dangerously low on her neck. “I wasn’t even casting anything!”

“You were sounding a little extra-Twilighty there,” he said with a grin. “I wouldn’t want you to go building a bookfort.”

“Booknest,” Dash reminded him. “Books don’t stack high enough for a comfortably elevated ceiling.” She ahemed. “Fluttershy? Applejack? Are you two all right over there?”

Applejack sighed rapturously. “Oh, yes, darlin’, absoluuuutely peachy.” She took another blissful bite of the apple pie Fluttershy had brought from the farm. “Sorry if y’all wanted me ta talk more, but Fluttershy’s jes’ such a good cook. Every time Ah try her apples, it just takes me home again. Ah know Ah’m too quiet...”

“Y’all’re always welcome t’ come back, Sugarcube,” Fluttershy told her friend with a smile. “Jes’ cause y’all live in that cottage of yours don’t mean you can’t come back to see yer family more.” She rolled her eyes. “Ah promise, there’s days Ah’m glad Ah can remind mahself that Apple Bloom’s supposed ta be your problem.”

“Ah’m sorry,” Applejack apologized, ears wilting. “Ah know that, but if Ah don’t run herd on all mah animals, y’all know they jes’ run wild over Ponyville.” She gave Lero a grateful look. “Like they were doin’ right after that spell, ‘til Lero set us straight. Once Ah started herdin’ em instead of tryin’ to sweet-talk ‘em all, things got right back where they oughtta be.”

“Well, maybe Spike could stop by and give y’all a break,” Fluttershy said. “He knows how ta keep them critters behavin.’” She chuckled. “Ain’t like on the farm, where Ah can jes’ give ‘em a good talkin’ to and keep the peace.”

Rarity giggled and clopped her hooves. “Ooh! Oh! Hey, that gives me an idea! Lero, we’re all Swapped around, right? So yooooou…. don’t know how we got our cutie marks! Do you? And neither does Princess Luna!”

“Princess Luna? What’s she got to do with anything?” Lero asked, confused.

Rarity just waved at one of the walls, then giggled. “She’s really curious, and if she wasn’t before then she is now! I’ll start!” She was almost bouncing in her seat. “So I was working on my school play when I was a little filly with no cutie mark and of course I didn’t have a cutie mark because this is the cutie mark story, but anyway…”

She paused and took a deep breath.

“Oh, goodness me. Terribly sorry, I just can’t seem to tell stories as fast as usual these days.” She tittered. “Almost as though I haven’t been working on lung capacity for my whole life, isn’t it? I bet that comes from you, Pinkie, doesn’t it, Lero? You said we’ve our own bodies, after all, and that’s a physical training issue.”

“Yes, that’s definitely a ‘Pinkie thing,’” Lero said, pushing a laugh down into a smile. “Just keep going and we’ll try to keep you on track.”

“Ahem! Well! At any rate, I was working on the school play, and you know how foals are with crafts, like the costumes and stage design. I was feeling terribly depressed about how drab it all was, and I was even debating finding our teacher to admit defeat and plea for help. But then, then I saw it!”

“The rainboom?” Lero asked.

Rainbow Dash’s eyes lit up. “You mean, that’s not Twilight’s? Really? The rainboom is mine?” Her wings fluttered on her back, and she admitted, “I… assumed that Twilight was the one to bring us all together. If normally I’m… just a normal pegasus.”

Lero bent to kiss his multicolored mate firmly. “You are never ‘just’ anything. You are Rainbow Freakin’ Dash, the most awesome pony to ever live, the first to rainboom in a thousand years if the history books are right about it happening then, and you are one hundred percent part of my herd regardless of which parts come from Rainbow Dash and which parts come from Twilight Sparkle.”

“SECOND most awesome pony to ever live,” Twilight Sparkle firmly corrected Lero, and leaned in to nuzzle Dash again. "Sorry, egghead, but c’mon, look what you’re competing with. Sure, pegasus who figures out how to tap into her magic and cast with her wings is itself totally amazing, but that’s gotta match up against the first unicorn Wonderbolt.”

Fluttershy giggled. “Aw, Twi, you’re not a unicorn Wonderbolt yet, are ya? So you can let ‘Old Rainbow Dash’ have the title for now, right?”

Twilight snorted. “Fiiiiiiine. I got all the awesomest bits anyway. Sheesh, Lero, sometimes I still think you’ve got everypony in town working together to prank us.”

“Yeah, Miss Dances-With-Lightning cooped up with me all day in the library?” Dash agreed. “That would seriously cut into your ‘awesome’ time, Twilight.” Then she facehoofed. “Oh, sweet Celestia, I’m the one with the ‘awesome’ obsession, aren’t I?”

Everypony laughed, even Discord, who was finding it remarkably pleasant to bathe in friendly bickering and teasing. Not as deep and rich as genuine anger, to be sure, but a more delicate, refined form of disagreement. Rather like the difference, he supposed, between drinking a spoon that had been sitting in a cup of coffee for a week, and one that had merely been used to briefly stir a cup of Earl Grey tea, piping hot.

“Aaaaanyway,” Twilight continued, “Mine was pretty similar. I was a filly, going to this stuffy ol’ school for noble unicorns…”

Pinkie swooned dramatically. “Twilight, darling, Princess Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns is not a ‘stuffy ol’ school,’ and it does not restrict itself to noble unicorns… Duchess.”

“Yeah, yeah, I’ll find a way out of that,” grumbled Twilight, blushing. “Maybe Shining can be Duke instead. He can multi-task. Aaaaanyway. My parents were taking me to this entrance exam for this unicorns-only school, and they’d just brought in this big ol’ egg and told me to hatch it. So I’m looking at it and thinking, ‘What, am I supposed to sit on it or something?’ But I couldn’t just say that, ‘cause even if I didn’t really wanna go there, I wasn’t gonna fail at it. Twilight Sparkle doesn’t fail. But all of a sudden, there’s this big explosion, and color streaming in through the windows, and I watch the egg crack right open in front of me. But before I could say ‘Hey, that was me,’ all of a sudden it was me. Not the egg, but a big surge. My horn went off so hard it turned Spike giant and set half the room on fire. Fortunately, Spike broke right through the ceiling, and I could see some clouds up there, so I just reached up and grabbed ‘em, and put out the fire with those. I didn’t know unicorns aren’t supposed to be able to do that! So they had me split time between Princess Celestia’s school and Flight School, doing all the magic classes and the weather classes together.”

Rainbow Dash smiled. “And that’s where we met,” she told Lero. “Because while Twilight was doing magic classes and weather classes, I was doing magic classes and weather classes too. I was Princess Celestia’s personal student, and she always had time for me, but no pegasus ever learned how to cast magic like me before, so even Princess Celestia didn’t always know what to do with me. So she thought I should get a mix of education. Then once I had things figured out, she wanted to take me out to privately tutor me.”

Twilight leaned happily back in. “Sappiest thing ever,” she said fondly. “This little blue pegasus, right in front of Flight School, just got told she’s ready to stand next to the freakin’ Princess as her personal student, and what’s she say? ‘Not without Twilight Sparkle.’ I just about dropped off the clouds right there, you had me so surprised.”

Rainbow Dash smiled back and gently kissed Twilight’s cheek. “Hay. Lero says I used to have Loyalty. Guess I’ve still got some of that in me. I wasn’t gonna leave the most awesome unicorn ever to be alone up there. That was the scariest thing I ever did, the first time I ever told Princess Celestia ‘no.’ So she looked down at me, and then over at Twilight Sparkle…” She sighed rapturously, remembering that look. “... And then she said, ‘Well, I think she can keep up.’” Dash winked at Twilight. “And you remember what we did then?”

Twilight facehoofed. “You really wanna do that? In here?”

Dash just nodded, beaming. Twilight sighed ruefully. “All right, all right. Only for you, Dashie, only for you.” The two mares got to their hooves… and then began to hop ecstatically around the table as though it was Princess Celestia, squealing, “Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!”

Rarity giggled. “It was the cutest thing we ever saw!”

Dash stopped in her bouncing, and Twilight ran into her backside. The two fell over, and Dash spluttered, “Rarity, that’s silly! We were up in Cloudsdale when that happened, and even today you don’t know a cloudwalking spell. How could you have seen it?”

Rarity beamed. “‘Cause you did the same thing when you asked Lero to be your herd’s stallion and he said ‘yes’ too! You were bouncing all around him together and then you took him back to the library and then you were totally trying to keep it a secret for a few days but it was the worst-kept secret ever because everypony saw you bouncing home together! And all the magic-boomies coming out the windows were flashing all night, and Twilight’s a screamer!”

Twilight’s face went bright red and she started to try to sink down under the table. It didn’t work too well; quadrupeds have a lot of legs to fit under there already and there wasn’t much room left.

Fluttershy laughed and leaned back. “So y’all probably figured out Rainbow Dash got her mark when she did that rainboom, and only a pegasus with her crazy-intense focus on her wings could muster enough magical control to make it through the barrier - and then to use that control on other stuff. Ah wouldn’t try that for all the apples in Equestria. Probably yank mah feathers right out just from th’ wind. Ah ain’t ever been what you’d call a strong flier. Matter of fact, that’s what got Rainbow doin’ the Rainboom in the first place. Ah was gettin’ picked on, an’ Dashie stood right up there and challenged those bullies to a race to get ‘em off me. An’ Ah missed the whole thing ‘cause Ah got so startled by the start that I fell right offa the clouds! Came right down into an apple tree on Sweet Apple Acres…”

She blushed. “An’ despite what y’all say, the apple that convinced me Ah never wanted to leave was a Red Delicious, not Big Mac! Though, uh, Ah won’t deny that Ah’ve been mighty glad Ah met him when Ah did. We’ve been the happiest ponies in Ponyville together, an’ that ain’t no lie an’ that ain’t no secret. But Ah fell in love with Sweet Apple Acres first, then Big Mac.” She smiled at Applejack. “An’ Ah’ll stop there, on account of AJ does her own Big Mac impression if Ah start talkin’ more about him.”

Applejack’s cheeks went red anyhow. “Some things a pony jes’ don’t wanna hear about her brother,” she squeaked. “Anyhow, Ah wasn’t really so done in by the Rainboom, unlike the rest of y’all. See, Ah was on mah way ta Manehattan to visit mah Aunt and Uncle Orange on account of Ah was real torn up about…” She stopped, and rubbed her eyes. “Well, Ah was real torn up an’ Ah jes’ couldn’t bear to be around the farm right then. But Ah was goin’ right through Whitetail Woods, an’ what happened but Curly the Bear was in an awful grouchy mood, an’ he came right up an’ roared at me! Ah was so surprised Ah turned right around and bucked ‘im square in the belly. An’ when he got up, he was so sorry he’d roared at me, an’ I jes’ knew somepony had ta start takin’ better care of all th’ animals around Ponyville. Ah saw the rainboom, but that was a couple days later, an’ Ah already had mah cutie mark by then.”

Applejack paused, then asked Lero, “How’d it go… normally? Ah mean, when Ah’m… Fluttershy?”

Lero smiled at her. “Well, to me, you are Fluttershy right now. But normally, you made it to Manehattan, then the rainboom showed you the way back home, and you knew where you belonged.”

Applejack wiped at her eye. “So… Ah… was already goin’ there in… in the real world too?”

Fluttershy leaned in to give her sister-in-law a hug. “Lero’s told us it only changed us, AJ,” she said softly. “Yew bein’ me didn’t... make that happen. Some things just are, and ain’t no spell can change ‘em. Ah’ll tell you as many times as you need to hear it, Applejack, it ain’t your fault and your home’s always waitin’ for you to come back.”

Applejack leaned into the hug. “Ah’m sorry, Fluttershy, Ah don’t mean ta be such a wimp.”

Twilight Sparkle snorted. “‘Wimp,’ she says. Wrestles bears, hydras, and Cerberus himself, and calls herself a wimp.” She floated a cupcake over in front of Applejack. “Losing ponies hurts. That doesn’t make you a wimp. It makes you appreciate the ponies you still have left.”

Applejack smiled. “Ah’m sorry Ah called mahself a wimp, then,” she said softly. “Ah’m really glad Ah’ve got all mah friends to be there when Ah’m feelin’ down.”

“My turn, my turn!” Pinkie cheerfully interjected. “Before we get into being total drama llamas and groany ponies! So there I was! Crawling through the barbed wire, trying to not make a sound so the sentries wouldn’t know I was there, when suddenly, it all went south! ‘Pinkie,” my dad said, ‘Quit rolling around in the dirt and get your chores done.’ I was about to explain just why it was so important to get into the secret lab when BOOM! Rainboom, all across the sky. Daddy was so amazed he dropped his wheat stalk, and we only got six of those a year for him to chew on, so that was a really big deal.”

Pinkie smiled, looking up at the ceiling. “And I just stared at it. It was the most beautiful thing I’d ever seen.” She looked over to Dash and smiled again. “It still is, I think. Even the Crystal Empire just can’t compare. So perhaps I can’t create quite such a splendid display, but I dedicated my life on the spot to doing what I could to share such beauty with all of Equestria. And my experience on the rock farm did mean I was quite good at locating rich gem deposits, so when I came to Ponyville I found the local Diamond Dogs and came to an agreement with them. They’re quite fond of me, you know. ‘The Shiny Pony,’ they call me, and they even made me an honorary packmember.”

“Ugh, we know, we know, you’ve told us all that story a thousand times,” groaned Twilight.

Pinkie sniffed. “I’ve told you a thousand times, perhaps, and I remember telling Lero all about it, but we’re none of us in our right minds right now, and I rather think I like knowing that some part of the life I remember will carry on in Lero. Of course it’s terribly awkward trying to deal with everypony else remembering the… other us, and I wouldn’t dream of keeping ‘Old Rarity’ and ‘Old Pinkie Pie’ from returning… but I can like who I am for now, can’t I?”

“Aw, don’t worry, Pinkie!” Rarity happily told her. “We all like you! And somepony else likes you and she’ll make sure we still exist just like we are now even if it’s not out in the real world and we’ll show some other ponies just how happy we are right now so they won’t feel so bad and then when that’s done we’ll go back behind the scenes but we’ll keep going even then, so keep your chin up, Twilight!”

“Ack!” Twilight said, wiping at her chin. She had frosting on it. She blushed. “I was trying to follow all of that,” she said, and took a revenge-bite out of the dessert to punish it for getting frosting on her.

“Rainbow?” said Spike, sitting up woozily. “I think I ate too much ice cream again…”

Rainbow Dash laughed and crouched down. “Hop on up, squirt,” she told him fondly. “Sorry, everyone, I think I’d better take little greedy-guts here home.” Lero and Twilight Sparkle got up as well, to escort their herdmate home.

“Just a moment, girls,” Discord commented. “There is one more thing you ought to know, don’t you think?”

“Discord, you know Ah don’ like it when yew get that look on yer face,” Applejack warned him, but the draconequus just smirked.

“Oh, silly little Applejack. I know no such thing. You know that, and you remember so on and so forth, but for me? I’m afraid that my friend isn’t here right now, and without her, well, I am a spirit of chaos, aren’t I? Being prone to random whims is simply in my nature, just the same way Fluttershy here gets such urges to rush back to the farm and buck apples, or Twilight Sparkle’s fixation on clouds. And it does occur to me that at the moment, muddled up as you are, you’re not really able to use the Elements of Harmony on me, are you? You’re all switched and swapped around, none of you left with the simple purity that the Elements require.”

Discord stretched and snapped his fingers. The pastries behind the glass counter sprouted legs and began to stretch, then bark at the ponies. “And it has been a rather long time since the last Age of Discord…”

“Hold that thought,” Rainbow Dash said. She flicked her wings up, and the Elements teleported right out of their case at her library. “You don’t think we can use these, do you?”

“Well, of course not!” Discord chortled. “You and Twilight Sparkle, Rarity and Pinkie Pie, Fluttershy and Applejack, you’re each half of two separate Elements. You just haven’t got what it takes to use them right now! … Erm, what are you doing?”

The mares had pushed back from the table and lined up in front of Discord. Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, and Applejack had their front hooves on the table. Rainbow Dash was behind Twilight, hugging her. Pinkie was behind Rarity. Fluttershy was behind Applejack. Each pairing had their forelegs together, both right arms through one necklace (or, in one case, a tiara), both left arms through the other.

“Not our usual formation, but it’ll do,” Rainbow Dash commented smugly. “You didn’t think we hadn’t thought of that, did you? Two halves make a whole, you know.”

“Oh, poop,” muttered Discord. “Wake me up when Fluttershy’s back, then, would you?”

“We’ll think about it,” Twilight Sparkle sneered.

And Sugarcube Corner filled with rainbow light.

“Gyuhhhh… What just happened?” asked Rainbow Dash, pulling one hoof back, out of Twilight’s Element of Magic. “Did we just zap Discord? Why are we all piled up like that? Was he doing something?”

Lero let out a grateful sigh. “No, I think in his own way, he was trying to help,” he said, looking at the resigned expression on the statue’s face. “Twilight? Do you remember that Starswirl spell?”

Twilight Sparkle looked down at the Element of Loyalty still hung around one of her hooves, holding Rainbow Dash atop her. She looked up at Lero. “You’re going to have to tell me the results of the experiment, I guess.” She lifted her head to nuzzle Rainbow Dash from below. “Something tells me it’s a pretty awesome story.”

Dash chuckled. “Yeah, I bet that’s gonna make a great report to Princess Celestia.”

Without thinking, she flicked a feather, and a cupcake flew over for her to take a bite from it. Lero’s eyes widened, and then he smiled. “I think she might want to see for herself,” he said.

“We’re back! We’re back!” chanted Pinkie Pie and Rarity, each clopping her forehooves together. Then Rarity blinked. “What exactly are we back from, Pinkie?”

Pinkie beamed at Rarity. Rarity shook her head and laughed. “Oh, very well. We’re back! We’re back!” And she resumed cheerfully celebrating with no real understanding why. It just felt right to let herself be a little bit Pinkie now and then, she thought.

* * *

Twilight smiled in her sleep, snuggling tight to her herdmates. She didn’t awaken the rest of the night.

* * *

“I had a thought,” Lyra commented to Twilight and Lero, the next morning.

It was just the three of them at this household. Spike and Rarity had left; the dragon to go put in some hours helping Applejack, the unicorn to her job. But Rarity had assured them she’d be getting off work early today, while Spike promised it really WOULD be just a FEW hours, this time. Lyra, Twilight, and Lero were gathering stuff to be brought up to Rarity’s cloud house, and putting it in boxes.

“What if these dreams Twilight had last night aren’t just mere dreams? Twilight, what if you’re being shown a window into some of those alternate universes? The ones that Discord mentioned to Lero?”

Twilight had woken up in a good mood, and remained cheerful all that morning, but wouldn’t specify why until Rarity had left. Then she’d recounted her dreams to Lyra and Lero, who had both listened very intently to every detail.

“You know what?” Lero said. “I think it’s a theory worth considering. Between Discord, The Swap itself, and Spike mentioning Princess Luna last night… maybe someone’s trying to send us a message. What do you think, Twilight?”

“Might be something, might be nothing,” Twilight spoke. “But if nothing else, it’s at least a fun thing to talk about while we’re packing.”

“Alright then,” said Lyra. “Let’s assume that these dreams are real: actual alternate versions of Equestria, of the Swap. What are we to conclude?"

They all stopped what they were doing, just to think.

“Well, what intrigues me is that a few of the rules seem open to change from one world to the next, for whatever reason.”

Twilight added another book to her current box. “Like with that happy dream I had. Discord didn’t even have a Bewitchment in place… and yet the Swapped Ponies there DIDN’T go insane, and even managed to create happy lives for themselves.”

“Not to mention The Swap didn’t just make Rainbow Dash think she was Celestia’s student… Dash was able to USE actual magic,” added Lyra.

Chuckling, Lero set down his current box by a column four-boxes high, starting a new stack. “A pony who’s able to fly AND cast magic… isn’t that an alicorn, by definition?”

“Rainbow as an alicorn, wouldn’t that be rich?” Lyra said. It was too perfect a picture: the horned, cyan giantess-among-ponies showing off at the Summer Sun Celebration; every sunbeam upstaged by a rainbow! “But no, I think you need the horn too, or the crown might fall off.” Twilight let out a laugh at Lyra’s straight face.

“But if the Swap’s willing to bestow magical powers upon a non-unicorn in order to convince her she’s the Element of Magic maybe…” Lero shot Twilight a look.

“I see where you’re going with this, Lero,” Twilight said, grabbing a rag and wiping the spiderwebs off a first aid kit. “‘Maybe my slot machine theory could work after all.’ I mean, look at Rarity. She always had lots of raw magical power. Remember how she was always animating everything in Carousel Boutique to make her dresses?"

The other two nodded in remembrance.

"But the focus of her talent prevented it ever developing very far past that point. Here, though, she remembers being trained in weather magic, so she knows weather magic. She remembers me teaching her how to teleport, so she can teleport. She remembers creating the Diamond Hailstorm, so she can now create the Diamond Hailstorm. So definitely the swap empowers those affected by it so they can live the lives they remember. So the slot machine theory's an idea I mean to test, once everything’s set up in the cloud house.”

Then the purple unicorn looked to the ceiling as a new thought struck her. “Is it the Swap, though?”

“Beg your pardon?”

“Is it the Swap that ‘gave’ Rainbow her magic? Inserted it into her, like milk poured into tea? Or was it there all along?”

Lyra and Lero looked at each other. “I don’t think we’re following you,” Lyra said.

“Did the Swap ‘give’ Rarity her weather powers for that matter? Or did she always secretly have the capacity to command climate so masterfully, latent and tucked away? And if so… could it potentially be that pegasi might have the innate capacity for magic...?”

“Twilight, that's getting a little... farfetched, don't you think?" said Lyra. "I mean, yes, of course pegasi have magic, but it's tied up in cloud-shaping and things like that. Even if there is a way for pegasi to use their magic for something else, and I'm not saying there isn't, you don't actually know how she did it in your dream, do you?”

Twilight seemed to shake herself out of a funk. “Of course! Of course. What was I thinking? Pegasi casting magic… it was only a silly dream, anyway.”

But looking into her eyes, Lero thought he could divine the focus of Twilight Sparkle’s next set of experiments, when and if the Swap Cure was found.

“So then… what’s the second dream trying to tell us?” asked Lyra. “That we don’t actually have to worry about the Swapped going mad if they learn they’re Swapped?”

“I don’t know. There was no indication that there WASN’T a bewitchment in the FIRST dream.” Twilight reminded them.

Lero’s face tightened. “I’ll tell you one thing, Twilight, the Me-In-Your-First-Dream seriously disgusts me. Here we all are, about to really reconnect with Rainbow Dash-as-Fluttershy, while that loser can barely bring himself to hug Fluttershy-As-Rainbow Dash! And to allow an absolute sweetheart like Rarity to languish in feelings of worthlessness… I just… how COULD he?!”

“Maybe things were just impossible for him…” Twilight reasoned.

Lero swept an arm up in dismissal. “There HAD to have been a way! I dunno, I’m just galled by the idea that there was some arrangement, some reassortment the Swap could’ve made that I wouldn’t have been able to think my way past.”

“You can’t win ‘em all, Fingers,” said Lyra.

Drawing a long breath, her human stallion set a hand on the back of her neck. “I’m sorry, Lyra, I know you mean well when you say that. Maybe you’re even right. But it’s just… I can’t afford to think that way. I can’t afford to tell myself, ‘Oh well, I wasn’t able to do anything for Applejack. Can’t win ‘em all. She wasn’t the most important pony to me anyway.’ They all need to be saved.”

Twilight listened to him with admiration, while Lyra felt a certain level of pity.

“I know I’m being silly about this,” Lero continued, “but after all I’ve been through with Rarity, I feel so bad for Fluttershy, knowing that if SHE’D gotten Dash’s cutie mark, I wouldn’t have been able to love her.”

“Not necessarily.”

Lero turned to face her. “What do you mean?”

Twilight levitated a piece of paper and a pencil over, writing out a factorial equation:

6! = 6 x 5 x 4 x 3 x 2 x 1 = 720

“Ignoring all other variables and assuming Starswirl’s spell was guaranteed to only effect Element Bearers that one time I tried it… there are a grand total of 720 different ways that spell might’ve rearranged the six of us,” the purple unicorn explained.

“Including one where nothing happened.” The other two stared at the human cluelessly. “What? You don’t see it? I look at this equation, and it appears we’re assuming that when Twilight cast the spell, it didn’t so much BYPASS her as ‘reassign’ her right back into her old role.”

“Is that what happened to me?” Twilight lifted an astounded hoof to her forehead. “Is that part of why I’ve been so overwrought for so long? I was secretly a sixth Swapped Pony all along? Swapped back into myself?”

Personally, Lyra thought it was nothing more supernatural than an overabundance of stress.

“Well, if that IS the case, there HAS to be one world where all six Bearers were also reassigned back into their own roles, just like you were,” Lero contented. “And thus, for all practical purposes, absolutely nothing happened.”

“Lucky stiffs,” the purple unicorn groused.

"Or not," Lyra pointed out. "Imagine Applejack losing her perspective and getting as obsessive with her basic chores as, well, you were with your research, Twilight. Probably be just as much trouble as Pinkie was having. Wouldn’t be any better if you’d all kept your identities, but your cutie marks were compelling you to muck up your lives, regardless."

"'Cutie Mark Compulsion Disorder,' Dash called it," Twilight murmured.

None of them were even pretending to pack right now.

“At any rate, I think what Twilight’s trying to say is this; in all these 720 versions, there isn’t just ONE world where Fluttershy’s the Element of Loyalty,” said Lyra, “Maybe things didn’t work out in Version #113, where Fluttershy’s the Weathermare and Twilight’s the Farmer. But maybe in Version #114, where Fluttershy’s the Weathermare and Twilight’s the Fashionista… maybe you were able to show Shy the same love you’ve been able to give Rarity here. Just circumstances than might prevent otherwise in one world or another.”

Lero smiled gratefully. “Now I feel better, at least a little.”

She and Twilight shared a wry look. “You really are a softie, Fingers.”

Twilight’s face turned pensive again. “Another curiosity I noticed. Here in our world, all the Swapped were made to believe they were born into completely different families… you know; Rarity believing she was born in Cloudsdale, and so forth.”

“I know! I was able to exploit that with Pinkie Pie, to bring her equilibrium. If not for the fact that Pinkie sincerely believed the Apples were her family, it wouldn’t have worked when I showed how her Apple Mark really represented the love for her family.”

Twilight nodded heartily. “But in both the good dream AND the nightmare I had, that wasn’t the case.”

“In both versions, it seemed like all your lives were the same as here, up until the moment of the Sonic Rainboom. Then your destinies took a huge detour,” Lero noted.

How would things have gone for our Pinkie — Pinkie the Farmer — if her false memories were more like that of the Swapped in my dreams? Twilight wondered. If Pinkie were still at least aware that she was a daughter of the Pie family, not the Apple family? How might Lero have found equilibrium for her, then?

“So what does it all mean?” the aqua unicorn pressed. “What’s it all add up to? All these strange divergences and discrepancies?”

Lero threw his arms up. “Maybe, in the end, it means we’re three bored individuals who’re overthinking a bunch of dreams Twilight had.”

Twilight stood up. “Even if these 719 other parallel universes really exist...”

Lyra was actually sure that number was greater still, when factoring in all the variables which Twilight had ignored. She bet there was one where she got swapped with Bon Bon. Until she’d joined the herd, they’d been that close.

“...we have no way of reaching them. And even if we did… frankly, I wouldn’t bother going to visit them. Not right now, anyway. My own friends come first.”

She and Lero nodded.

“Still, you’ve got to admit, the Rainbow Dash and Twilight in your good dream sound like awesome ponies to live with,” Lero said. “I wonder if they thought to…”

The sentence went unfinished as Lero’s eyes lit up in merry amusement.

“What?” demanded Twilight, over his sniggering sputters.

“Hey, Twilight?” he said, suppressing his laughter. “Before we head out to Dash’s cottage, like you said we’d need to, there’s something I’d like you to help me with.”

“What is it?” she asked.

“A prank.”

“A prank? Not on Dash!”

“A purely good-natured prank!” he assured her, with an impish twinkle in his eye.

“I dunno, Lero. I’ve heard it said that Fl… uh, ‘our animal-loving friend’ might be sensitive to pranks.”

“I guarantee you, she’ll absolutely love this one!”

Twilight groaned. “Just what are you planning, you mischievous monkey, you?”

But when he explained his idea, Twilight and Lyra both had to agree: it was a good prank.

* * *

When Rainbow Dash opened her front door and saw that it was Twilight Sparkle who’d knocked, she first felt the old gladness of seeing her dear friend again. The next microsecond later, this gladness was beaten down by a tidal wave of dread as Rainbow remembered this dear friend of hers was also part of Herd Bellerophon.

She’d be... she’d be… GOING OUT with this MARE!

And it wasn’t even Thursday yet! She wasn’t anywhere near emotionally ready! In pure panic, Rainbow Dash almost slammed the door in poor Twilight’s face, before she thought better of it, and reopened the door fully.

“H… hi, Twilight,” she said.

“It’s good to see you, Rainbow Dash,” Twilight said in her usual pleasant, friendly way, as if nothing was different. “Could I please come in or is this a bad time?”

Yes! This IS a very bad time! Just you being here is making me all jittery!

“No, no, no, it’s not a bad time at all!” the pegasus ended up saying, opening the door.

When Twilight Sparkle stepped inside, Rainbow saw that her friend had, for some reason, brought an empty wooden cart with her and left it on her front yard. This puzzled her, of course, but she was sure Twilight would explain herself.

Shutting the door, Rainbow turned to see that her friend was cuddling with a few of her wirehair cats.

Say something! her mind demanded. We’re not ‘just friends’ anymore. She’s part of a package deal; she comes with Lero. Acknowledge that in some way, right now!

“Twilight? You’re… um… hot,” Rainbow Dash said uneasily from across the room, shrinking backward against the wall as Twilight lifted her head. “You’re, totally a hot, hot hottie of hotness. Especially your… er… uh… pastern. And tail! You have a totally hot tail.”

Quick! Pretend you’re getting the stiffies from her! "Ooh, ooh baby,” she said, lifting her wings up limply.

Twilight Sparkle gave the pegasus a giggle. “Why, Rainbow Dash, are you trying to seduce me?”

That caught her off guard, “No! Yes! ...Maybe?”

The unicorn gave her a kind smile. “Thank you, Rainbow Dash. That’s so sweet of you.”

This was no good, this was no time to be weak! No time to let the jitters get the best of her! Rainbow needed to put herself back in an Iron Will frame of mind!

“So, Twilight!” she started, more bolder. “What brings you out to my home? Is there something I can do for you?”

Lovergirl, you can start, the scary part of Rainbow’s imagination spoke in Twilight’s voice, by opening that sweet little mouth of yours and letting me tickle your tonsils with my tongue. We’re getting at least to second base; right here, right now. And you’d BETTER convince me you’re enjoying every second of it! You’d damn well BETTER! Otherwise, it’s all over. I won’t be your friend anymore, Rarity won’t be your friend anymore, and I’m not letting you come anywhere near Lero ever again!

Instead of saying any of these horrible, horrible things, Twilight Sparkle took a seat on her couch. The look she gave Rainbow Dash was the same look Princess Celestia gave right before detailing an important mission she’d be sent on with her friends.

“Rainbow Dash, there’s something I need to tell you about a certain spell that Celestia mailed to me.”

And the pegasus listened in astoundment to the story Twilight told, about the Princess appointing her friend to correct the very spell which had turned her sister into Nightmare Moon. She gladly Fluttershy Forswore herself to secrecy when Twilight asked her to, all her dread about physical intimacy long since forgotten.

“But now I’m in a real jam,” Twilight told her, uncomfortably. “I really, really need test subjects that I can cast the spell on to see if it’s fixed or not…”

“You need lab animals,” Rainbow Dash said neutrally.

Twilight nodded. “I wouldn’t want to use ponies unless I absolutely had to…”

“Of course you wouldn’t!” agreed Dash. “I mean, wow, if worse came to worst, I bet it’d be a lot easier dealing with a Nightmare Chinchilla than an all-new Nightmare Moon.”

“So then you understand…?” asked Twilight, hopefully.

“Well… I’m not eager to have my animals tested on, but…” Rainbow Dash tilted her cap up at her friend at its coolest angle. “Just tell me whatever you need from me.”

“Oh, thank you, Dash, thank you! You don’t know HOW much you’re helping me out!” And then Twilight went over and opened the front door, stuck her head out and called, “She’s agreed!”

Dash didn’t have long to be confused. In came a chestnut-coated Earth pony stallion; clean-cut, strikingly tall, and good-looking.

The stallion gave her a slightly rascally smile. The pegasus’ tail end thudded on the floor. Normally, the pegasus wasn’t one to fall for a pretty face, but something about this stallion — not just the looks, but his expressions and the way he moved — was doing things for her. The only stallion who’d ever come close to this for her was Big Mac. However, she shut down that line of thought as he approached, and she scrambled back to her hooves, and fought to bring her wings back down by flooding her mind with a deluge of unsexy thoughts.

“Rainbow Dash, I’d like to introduce you to a close, personal friend of mine,” said Twilight, pointing towards the stallion. “Close Personal Friend Of Mine, Rainbow Dash.”

“Always a pleasure to see you, Rainbow Dash.” The stallion spoke in a pleasing baritone.

“Don’t worry,” said Twilight, “He’s in on the secret.”

Very rarely had Dash seen anything like this pony’s mane and tail: fiery reds and burnt oranges, with a strain of gold running through it, curling at the very end. She wondered if he were related to that one Wonderbolt... what was her name? Spitfire?

“Uh… I… hi there… mister,” the pegasus squeaked.

The stallion smiled gently at her. “You don’t need to be shy around me, Dash.”

Such deep hazel eyes…

“Well, come on, Twilight!” he said, trotting past the caretaker. “Let’s pick out the animals we need! What were you thinking of getting for our lab animals, Twilight? Mice? Gerbils?”

“I’m thinking one mouse, a cat, a dog, and two other completely different animals,” Twilight said, catching up to the stallion. “Hopefully, we won’t need more than that.”

“I dunno,” said the stallion, “You’ll probably want a few spares, just in case…”

Shaking out of her daze, Dash dashed to catch up with the stallion. Why was he so… alluring? Did she know this guy from somewhere? Maybe if she got a look at his cutie mark…

But when she saw him from the back, she was confused to find his cutie mark hidden.

“What are you wearing?” she asked him, the absolute bafflement clear in her voice.

“Swimming trunks,” he answered.

“Trunks?” she asked, thinking of luggage.

“They’re what a guy like me puts on before taking a swim.”

“You wear clothes to go swimming?” Dash asked. What pony DID that?

“Mmm-hmm!” said the hazel-eyed stallion, with a flick of his tail. “Had this specially-made for me at the Carousel Boutique.”

“Ohhhh, the Boutique,” said Dash. That makes a little more sense, then! “So you said you were looking for mice? They’re right…”

“Over this way,” the stallion finished, taking a turn towards a set of neatly-arranged and well-kept mouse cages. Some of the mice were running on wheels, some were eating their pellets, some were just squeaking.

“Twilight, let me introduce you,” said the stallion in trunks. “Starting at the top-left, there’s Whiskers, Whiskerton, Whiskerovitch, Contessa von Viskeria, Whisk, Ker, Wormtail and Incisors.” The stallion directed his line of sight at the next cage to the right. “And over there, we have Squeaks, Squeaker, and Scabbers, Mousey, Wousey, Blousey, Esuom, and Bubonic...”

The mice were all packing at the side of the cages, twitching their little noses at this strange stallion reciting their names.

“...Gadget and Fievel, Walt, Tanya, Jerry, Jaq... and Basil’s the one fighting Jaq for that scrap of cheese... Templeton, Rizzo, Gus, Brisby… Mr. Ro and Mrs. Dent, (who kept her maiden name)...”

Rainbow Dash approached this stallion from the side to gape at him, but he seemed to be adamantly not seeing her. Not because he was oblivious to her presence. He was teasing her, she could sense it!

“...Chuck E., Chuck F., Splinter, Matthias, Cluny, Cheddar Chomper, Gorgonzola Gorger, and last but certainly not least, the Illustrious Sir Whitefur the Grey!”

“The brown-coated one, you mean?” asked Twilight, squinting into the cage.

“That’s the one,” said the stallion, and turned to Rainbow Dash. “I must say, Dash, I can barely recognize them all when they’re so well-behaved, not that that’s a complaint.”

“Who are you?” Dash asked.

The stallion rolled his eyes. “Like you don’t know. I visit your house all the time.”

“No, you don’t!” Dash exclaimed.

“Actually, yes he does,” Twilight told her, in complete seriousness.

The pegasus shot a stupefied look towards her unicorn friend, but she didn’t answer, so she redirected it at all her rodent cages. Half of her mice seemed just as confused as she was. The other half, incredibly enough, almost seemed to recognize this stranger! What was she missing?

“So if you were looking for a lab animal,” the stallion told Twilight, both turning back towards the mice. “I’d recommend either Mr. Ro or Sir Whitefur, simply because they’re better behaved.”

“Aren’t they male, though?” Twilight asked.

The stallion snorted. “They’re called ‘Sir’ and ‘Mister’ for a reason.”

“Well, I’m sorry, but male specimens aren’t going to do me any good. I need females exclusively for these experiments.”

“Then maybe Gadget or Wousey or Tanya,” said the stallion, pointing them out again to Twilight. “Give it some thought, see which one you like.” And so Twilight Sparkle peered into each of their cages, like a Canterlot window shopper looking through at the ponyquins.

This whole scene was frustrating Rainbow Dash to no end. She was beginning to think that she SHOULD know this infuriating stallion, something about his voice was familiar… like something on the tip of her tongue…

“Someday, love will find you, break those chains that bind you…”

The song was sung quietly, not precisely in any sort of whisper, yet still quietly, and directed more at the floor than the mares who were by him.

“One night will remind you, how we touched and went our separate ways…”

The pegasus felt her brain jolt. That music! That melody that’d always been whistled but never sung!

“If he ever hurts you, true love won’t desert you!”

How dumb could she be? The clothes, Twilight’s trust of him, even his voice was the same!

“You know I still love you, though we touched and went our separate ways!”

“Lero?!” she exclaimed.

And Lero turned around with a soft smile. “Knew that’d get you to recognize me.”

* * *

Twilight had tried asking Rainbow to let her compensate her for everything she was taking out of her cottage. And to be fair, it was a lot.

First, and most important: five animals. A schnauzer puppy named Ruffles. A ragamuffin kitten named Purrbox. Wousey the mouse. One of the chickens, called Cluckabell. And last, a turquoise-colored parakeet named Tweetums.

In addition to the pets; their cages they were being kept in; things like bedding, toys, a scratching post for the kitten, a leash for the puppy, enough food and treats for each animal to last a month, plus a more-than-generous helping of pet odor remover. “TRUST me on this,” Dash had said.

Had they bought all this stuff from a pet shop, it would have cost quite a bundle. But Dash absolutely refused to accept any money from Twilight or Lero.

“Someday soon, we might be all be part of the same herd,” the pegasus had said, looking happily at Lero and only a little tensely at Twilight. “Hopefully, anyway. So what’s mine is yours!”

Plus, her cottage would be that much quieter with even just five less animals to tend to.

“That’s so sweet of you,” Twilight said, while levitating it all onto the cart she’d brought. When she came over, the hug she gave Dash was filled with such gratitude, the pegasus didn’t even remember to flinch or worry. It was a hug. Just like Twilight had always hugged her before.

“Yeah, you’ve made a great contribution to a very important cause,” said Lero, hitching himself to the front of the wagon with Twilight’s help.

Dash had more questions to ask them, but worried it might be rude, so she just exchanged goodbyes with her new coltfriend and marefriend (or was it too early to call them that yet?) As Twilight and Lero headed off back to their home — Twilight trotting beside Lero, whose stallion physique, temporary as it was, was better suited to pulling the wagon — Dash stifled the questions she was still dying to ask and waved at them from her doorstep, and they each paused to wave back from afar.

She thought the urge would die away once Twilight and Lero left. But immediately after they’d left her sight, the questions only burned worse. It was like swallowing salt while plodding through the desert. So Rainbow Dash wheeled on the animals that were in the cottage with her, and gave them a glare that would send a kraken scurrying to the ocean depths, screaming for its mother.

“BEHAVE,” she warned, and then was out the door, shooting after Twilight’s cart with that speed she used to hate herself for until recently, and landed by a surprised Lero.

“I’m sorry, but there’s still so much I gotta know!” she said, walking alongside them.

“Rainbow, no!” insisted Twilight, glaring at her sharply from Lero’s other side. “There’s nothing more we have to say about the you-en-eff-eye-en-eye-es-aitch-eee-dee es-pea-eee-el-el! Especially not in the open like this!”

“The…?” Rainbow Dash shook her head. “That’s not even what I wanted to ASK about.”

“Oh sure, it may LOOK like we’re alone, but you see that mosquito buzzing around over there? What if it was actually an evil warlock trying to spy…?” And then Twilight’s ears caught up with her need to lecture. “...You’re not?”

“No! I wanted to know more about Lero suddenly being a real stallion. You can’t just drop something like that on me and just expect me to be all hunky-dory with, ‘It was just a prank.’”

Lero shrugged inside his yoke. “Sure thing. What would you like to know?”

Now the questions were crowding in her head like dogs at the door. She couldn’t pick which was most important; she just went with the one that scurried out fastest.

“Why are you wearing that?” she asked, pointing at his trunks.

“Well, when we were planning out that prank on you, Twilight was suggesting I go completely bare naked, so I wouldn’t, uh, ‘telegraph the punchline,’” Lero explained. “I actually agreed with her. But as it turned out, I pulled up short at the idea of any more than going barefoot and barechested in swimming trunks in public. Just couldn’t do it.”

“But you’re a PONY, now! Why’s that BUG you still?” Rainbow Dash said, trying to hard to remember what little she knew about the effects of transformative magic on transformed ponies’ brain. Something about the mind being a plaything of the body, or was that the other way around? She should’ve listened more carefully when Twilight talked about them before, but it wasn’t like SHE could cast such spells anyway.

Lero shrugged. “That just goes to show how deeply ingrained the nudity taboo is with human beings. Or at least with me.”

Behind him, Rainbow watched Twilight give an epic roll of her eyes, and she giggled. Lero giggled with her.

“How does being a pony feel like for you, Lero?” Rainbow next asked. “Especially when compared with being human?”

Lero slowed his pace a bit, giving the question due thought. Twilight listened in carefully.

“Well… I’ve thought it over pretty often, actually. And, viewing the matter as objectively as I can… I have to say that it’s a mixed bag. I genuinely like certain things about being a pony. Other things I’m not crazy about.”

“What kind of things?” Rainbow asked.

The transformed human drew a hesitant breath. “Promise you won’t be too offended or insulted by anything I say?”

“Sure thing,” said Rainbow Dash.

“As a non-pony, it would be fascinating to hear your objective opinion of being a pony,” Twilight added. “So go ahead and speak totally honestly.”

Lero smiled at them both gratefully. “Well, the single most difficult adjustment about being a pony can be summed up in one word: hooves.”

He lifted one of his own.

“For me, hooves are like having your hands permanently clenched into big, bulky fists. You see something on the ground, you reach down to pick it up, and you either smash it to smithereens or squash it into jelly.”

“Duh!” said Rainbow Dash, “That’s what your MOUTH is for!”

The Earth pony snorted. “Trust me on this: mouths cannot compare with fingers. Plus, there’s the whole matter of getting your saliva all over everything, or accidentally swallowing the object you’re trying to pick up...”

Rainbow Dash laughed. “Only foals, no, YEARLINGS make those kind of mistakes! Didn’t Twilight ever teach you the trick to not doing that? You have to take in a deep, cold breath and dry your mouth out.”

Lero didn’t respond to that. “Pony tails are a LITTLE better, being prehensile and all, but it’s a pain having to turn and watch your rear end, and just… GRAB stuff from back there.”

“But hands are such wimpy, delicate things,” Dash argued. “Those ‘feet’ of yours, too. I’m always extra-careful about where I step when I’m with you, because I know I’d crush them into pancakes. And everypony who’s around you is the same way!”

“Dash!” Twilight scolded her friend. “We promised we wouldn’t be insulted by what Lero says.”

“I’m not insulted,” Dash countered. “But that doesn’t mean I’m not gonna defend my species.”

The look Lero gave her was very approving. She felt like… no, that was silly, she could never bear to enter the Best Young Fliers competition, even if she wasn’t such a crasher in the air. But she felt like she was getting applauded by a whole stadium anyway, and it felt good, not scary, somehow.

“Also… the whole quadruped thing, the long, low way my body stands is also weird. Like I’m constantly squatting or something. I used to constantly bump into things and knock them over with my butt, especially when I was just trying to learn how to spin around.”

The mares both laughed so hard at that, Lero was almost too embarrassed to continue talking any further.

“Omigosh!” Rainbow gasped. “I… I… can’t… can’t even BREATHE!!!” and she doubled up in longer laughter. “Presenting: Lero! The Bull In The China Shop! Bwahahahahaha!”

“Try ‘Drunken Bull In A China Shop With Four Left Legs! You should’ve been there, Dash!” Twilight also guffawed. “So many bookshelves: TIMMMMMBBEEEEERR!”

“Wanted Dead Or Alive for wanton destruction of propety: Lero’s butt! HA HA HA HA HA!!!”

And Lero made the wise decision NOT to detail how difficult it had been, relearning how to use a toilet as a pony. “I still say Derpy’s is worse, and you manage to survive that,” he defended himself instead.

“That’s not exactly a tough thunderhead to buck. But… go on!” Rainbow told him, waving a hoof in a go-forward motion through her snorts. “What else?”

"Remind me to point and laugh when Twilight finds a way to invert the spell and it’s your turn to flop around on the floor,” Lero grumbled. “Anyway, uh, I also wish that pony legs were as limber as arms were,” he said, as though there were nothing else for it but to keep on going. “You know, arms have better REACH.”

“Does it really matter that much?” asked Dash.

“When a bug lands on your flank, and you wish you could just squash the damn thing, yes, reach matters.”

“Y’know what? Fair point,” said Dash. “I’ll concede that.”

He nodded. “What else, what else…I’ll say some of the good things, now. Vision is… Well, a mixed bag, so good transition point. First, I can’t see things in the distance anywhere as well as I normally do, and my depth perception isn’t quite as good… but my field of vision is wider, and I can see things close up much better, especially movement. Also, I don’t mind having all this fur. Since so many ponies are nudists, it’s probably best you have it. It’s no secret that I’m not comfortable with my own nudity, in general, but since your society’s clothing-optional I can work around it. Having ears you can flick around...”

And Lero flattened his ears, rotated them backwards, wiggling them in all directions pony ears could go.

“...is actually pretty nifty. It’s COOL being able to aim my ears in any direction. I can hear better and they let me feel more easily how I’m expressing myself. Having a neck that’s as long as this is also fun, once you get used to it. I enjoy the flexibility.”

“Aw, come on,” said Rainbow, “You’re not even mentioning the COOLEST part about being a pony.”

Lero titled his head. “Which is…?”

“Wings,” declared Dash, spreading out her own.

“And horns,” added Twilight. Not to be outdone, she lit hers up brightly.

“Being an Earth Pony’s just NOT gonna give you the complete picture.” Dash looked past Lero, at Twilight. “C’mon, Twilight, turn him into a pegasus for a little while. I’ll teach him how to use his wings myself. See if he still wants to even BE a human after a fly in the sky!”

Lero’s face brightened at the prospect. But the unicorn shook her head. “I’d love to, but I can’t.”

“Whaddaya mean you can’t?”

“I can’t,” Twilight repeated. “I’ve never been able to turn Lero into a unicorn or a pegasus. The Pony Transformation spell always, always, ALWAYS transforms him into an Earth Pony.”

“Why?” asked Rainbow Dash. It didn’t make sense. Why wouldn’t there be a specific Change-To-Pegasus or Change-To-Unicorn spell on the books? Why couldn’t a unicorn like Twilight Sparkle, strongest, smartest unicorn in Equestria by a long ways, (as far as Dash was concerned,) just whip up a spell that would work right?

“I suppose the spell thinks a guy like me ‘translates’ better into an Earth pony,” Lero reasoned. “Must be my down-to-earth personality.”

Rainbow Dash snorted.

“But I will tell you two things I enjoy best about being a pony,” Lero told them. “First; the strength. I have more raw physical strength as a pony than I ever did as a man. I mean, my human self wouldn’t ever be able to pull this cart, or not for long, anyhow. And my kicks have MUCH more kick!”

And he stopped to kick in the air, like he was pretending to be part of the Apple family.

“The other thing I like? The speed.”

Rainbow Dash went still. “Speed?”

The transformed human gave a long look at how attentive Rainbow Dash had suddenly become… and grinned. “Twilight, do me a favor? Would you mind taking the cart over for me the rest of the way home?”

“What? Why?” she asked, even as Lero unhitched himself, and shrugged off the yoke.

“Because I’m challenging my good pegasus friend to a race!” he said. “First one to reach my house wins. On the ground, no wings. You game?”

Race. For some unknowable reason, the very word made her legs itch in the most thrilling way.

The pegasus could feel something stir inside her from deep, deep, within. A race? He wanted a race? Races had always seemed so stupid to her before. But right here? Right now? The idea felt strangely… invigorating.

“Yeah,” she grinned confidently. “I’m game.”

“There’s no way you’re gonna beat me,” he told her, a cocky grin on his face. “No way, no how. Never gonna happen!”

“You think so?!” Dash sassed back, feeling that spark of something… of competition, she was eager for competition? What the hay was Lero doing to her? But she was caught up in it, riding the rush like that tornado. Yeah. That was the feeling, like when she’d come in and helped finish the tornado!

“Well, let’s just see if your legs are half as fast as your mouth is, buddy! Readysetgo!”

And away she sped.

“Oh no you don’t!” he said, galloping after her.

Author's Note

Special thanks to SpinelStride with this one. He's the one who wrote both of Twilight Sparkle's dreams!

I'd like to say a quick word to Zontargs. Ahem... Zontargs, in one of the comments, you'd asked when Princess Luna would finally be appearing, and I told you 'Chapter 25.'

Unfortunately, I ended up coming up with so much material for this chapter, that I had to split it in three. So it's going to end up probably being Chapter 27, instead. Sorry!

And Merry Christmas, everyone!

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Twenty-Five: Taking Things To The Next Level

Rainbow Dash laughed as she sped like a lightning bolt away from Lero. She heard him curse as he started to chase after her, and she smiled... until she heard the discordant thunder of his hooves finally come together in a fast, natural rhythm. He wasn’t gonna take it easy on her! But she could sense her hooves touching the ground more lightly than his, more naturally, and she was a pegasus; she was lighter and smaller and she knew she’d be faster than him.

A hum of electricity seemed to thrill through her body and reach the tips or her tail and wings and hooves, real excitement at the thought of actually racing. It was so... cool!

The blue pegasus’ wings twitched and lifted a feather-width from her body, and she had to keep forcing them down to at her sides as she powered down the orchard road. She wasn’t used to running, and definitely not racing, but she was being chased by a big, hot-looking stallion...

My stallion. I hope. Uh oh, he’s catching up!

As much as she wanted to run with Lero, he’d surprised the heck out of her with his challenge and lit a fire in her, so it was a LOT more fun right now to think of him right behind her than—

Stop that, wings! That’s not what I was thinking.

Her cheeks burned in the cool air, and she yanked her wings tight to her sides with a little growl. But she couldn’t help smiling. This was awesome!

She turned her head just a little to gauge his closeness—

* * *

Lero powered up to only a few yards behind Rainbow Dash, hooves a blur and a dust trail lifting low behind him. This was the athletic mare he loved, ready and excited for the challenge. Especially the challenge of a race.

As he drew closer, something made him hang back. He stared forward and realized at last that all of his attention was being drawn to her flashing chromatic tail as it curled and whipped a little in the wind. His eyes fell to her muscular, sky-blue flanks and... Lero’s face colored as he continued to stare at her hindquarters and damn, she looked great!

At that moment Rainbow’s wings twitched visibly, and without a pause she turned her head and looked up a little into his eyes... Their faces glowed brighter together, and they each laughed nervously. Lero put on a burst of speed and pulled up along Dash’s right side.

* * *

“See something you like?” Rainbow Dash teased. Lero smirked at her, then he looked forward down the narrow road. His breath huffed with the constant exertion.

“Even if you could beat me,” he challenged between even breaths, “I think I’d still be the winner here!”

Dash laughed. “Yeah? Maybe you should take the lead so I can get some win in, too, big guy.” The spark of excitement fueled Dash’s new-found challenging spirit, and she leaned over and nudged Lero playfully with her muzzle. “Before I beat you!”

Lero laughed and drew closer to Rainbow, bumping up against her until they ran side-by-side, warm bodies touching and muscles working against each other through their coats. Her wing twitched against his side, and their tails and manes lashed and curled over and around each other. It was dangerous running so close like this, but the thrill of it threw away their caution and left it behind them in the dust.

The stallion nuzzled Dash’s cheek, then focused forward again and put more power into his legs – he’d only really been pacing himself next to her. He began to pull away from the mare, grinning with a stallion’s confidence.

“Oh you can’t beat me, Rainbow Dash!” Lero chided, pouring more energy into his strong earth pony legs. He smiled harder as he heard Dash’s old-self snort of disdain, but in a second he really was pulling away from her, now one pony length, and then another, and her disdain turned to surprise.

“Hey!” she shouted ahead lamely. Rainbow’s newfound confidence waned as she watched Lero pull away so easily from her. Damnit, she really had underestimated him! Now he was three lengths ahead and still pulling away. Doubt crept in, and for a few hoofbeats she started wondering what the heck she was doing thinking she could beat another pony in a race, especially a hoofrace like this!

Arrrg, that feeling! She hated it. She’d gotten tired of losing a long time ago, tired of feeling like a loser, tired of being a loser. That thought cleared her head, and she remembered...

She didn’t like Iron Will when she first started listening to all those self-help tapes – he was kind of a jerk – but one of the first, best things she learned from him just popped into her head.

“Run the day or the day runs you!”

The pegasus snapped out of her pout. Maybe she could win this race if she tried, but she’d definitely lose it if she didn’t try.

Rainbow Dash stared forward and her eyes narrowed on the earth pony in front of her. Any other time she would have enjoyed the view of such a gorgeous stallion, but now it was all she could do to think of anything else but her hooves hitting the dirt and propelling her forward faster. Her wings twitched; they ached to spread wide and lift her and catch her up to Lero, to pass him and win, but that would be cheating! That wasn’t the kind of win she wanted.

Just ahead of the two ponies and on their left, a small break in the forest appeared – one that she knew well – and Rainbow grinned and growled in her throat as she got an awesome idea.

“Think you might fail? Then blaze a new trail!”

Oh yeah, she couldn’t cheat, but she could bend the rules...

The grounded pegasus surged forward with new-found confidence, catching her up to within a couple of pony-lengths of Lero. His gorgeous tail fluttered enticingly in front of her, and those flank muscles, wow...

‘Stop it!’ she chided herself. She pulled her wings to her sides again and ignored the distraction.

They neared the obvious gap between the forest trees, and she shouted out loud to Lero as she steered sharply off the road.

“This way, Lero!” she called out. Let’s blaze a new trail together, big guy!

Lero heard Dash’s cry and looked over to see her leaving the country road, darting like an arrow for what looked like a worn path through the forest. He almost passed it by the time he reacted. He changed direction, a sharper turn than Dash needed to make, and cursed loudly as his hooves broke free of the loose dirt road. He almost lost control as he power-slid for a few lengths and finally got his hooves under control again.

He savagely thumped his hooves in a rapid cadence as he reached the grassy verge of the road and tried to catch up. He was several pony lengths behind the pegasus as he steered in a sharp curved sprint to intercept her.

“That’s cheating!” he yelled.

“No, it’s not!” Dash returned with a hard laugh.

And then she was through the borderline of trees and charging into the forest at full speed.

* * *

This forest wasn’t like the Everfree; it was safe. Sure, it was a little darker now than it was on the road, but the sunlight shined freely on light-colored leaves through the thin overhang. The lofty white oaks spread wide and sparse enough through the forest to allow light to fall on the maples along the hoof path, so it was more than bright enough to light a pony’s way through the forest... even if that pony was racing through it like they were being chased.

Rainbow Dash grinned as she was chased through the forest, kicking up a small cloud of fallen maple leaves and listening to Lero occasionally spit out a leaf and growl behind her.

It wasn’t a straight path by any means; it twisted and turned like a stream here and there through the natural path created by the trees. Dash sped along it almost freely, but she could tell by the cursing behind her that Lero frequently had to dodge around pesky underbrush and beneath low-hanging branches. Heh heh!

Lero might be faster, but Rainbow knew this trail like she knew the feathers in her wings. Many of her little animal friends lived here, but right now their homes were just a sun-dappled blur behind her, punctuated as she passed by the occasional dopplered squeak of recognition and the growled curse of a gorgeous earth pony Lero racing behind her.

He spit out another leaf and barely kept up with the blue pegasus. Lero knew he was only able to keep up with Dash because his earth pony senses were helping to lead him along the path. He could feel his way through the forest, and almost shut his eyes to test that before he realized how critically dumb that would be.

“You liking the view back there, big guy?” Dash shouted to the side, and she giggled.

She couldn’t help it! She was totally feeling her oats now, her confidence returned in force as she led the way through the forest. She was in love with Lero, and he was right behind her, almost riding her tail, dangerously racing after her on a forest path because – she knew – he loved her too!

Rainbow was happy.

“Pah!” Lero said, spitting out another leaf along with some soil. “Remind me to set some stricter rules for our next race!” he huffed. “No cutting through forests. Phhhhhtt!”

The pegasus laughed, and then in an instant there was a tree stump right in front of her. No choice! Rainbow’s wings snapped out like a parachute opening at terminal velocity and she soared over the dangerous obstacle. She landed with a surprised gasp on the other side and instantly pulled her wings to her sides. It was way too dangerous to fly in this place. Besides Lero was still—

“Oh shit!” Lero shouted, and then the sound of his hoofbeats stilled behind Rainbow for a terrifying, timeless moment... until a solid two-beat thumping of hooves and another curse announced his safe landing on the other side of the stump.

“Dash!” he yelled, pressing on behind her. “You almost killed me! Give a guy some warning.”

“Sorry, Lero! I forgot about that,” the mare called back, feeling briefly guilty.

But there was no room for regret, now. The light up ahead was getting brighter, and Rainbow Dash knew exactly what was coming. She sped up, pouring nearly everything she had into her legs and thundering along the straighter, widening trail, and the green ahead reflected bright in the sunlight and the sky shined blue above and then she was through!

Rainbow Dash blasted from the bordering line of trees and into the wide grassy plain, chased closely by a big, determined Earth pony stallion.

* * *

“Yes!” Lero grunted. Finally free of the forest, he threw on the power he’d held back from his hooves. He was two lengths behind Dash, breathing so hard that her fascinating mare scent drove into his nostrils, filling his lungs and senses and spurring him on even faster. Part of him wanted to stay right behind her all the way to the finish, but Lero had a race to win.

The two racing ponies jetted across the grassy field, leaving a darker arc of crushed hoofprints behind them. By the time the curve of their path returned to the road, Lero had caught up with Rainbow Dash and once again they raced side by side.

The library tree stood like a finish line marker in the distance, and when the pegasus and the earth pony saw it, and they really began to race. Their legs blurred and their hooves struck the road in an unbroken thunder of sound; their long necks held lower, and their tails and manes stretched straight behind them.

They sprinted toward the finish, and Lero knew he was going to win. He threw more power into his legs, and caught Dash’s surprised look out of the corner of his eye as he easily pulled ahead of her.

Rainbow was pissed. She loved Lero, but after all of this, second place was still the first loser, and there was no way she was gonna let him win! She grunted and growled and leapt forward, catching up to him.

“I am SO gonna win this race, big guy!” Rainbow shouted.

Lero’s eyes narrowed and he shot her his most determined I already showed that I can beat you look. Then he smirked, and his legs began to pull him ahead of the mare.

“Oh yeah?” he shouted. “Prove it!”

Rainbow Dash almost faltered as she saw Lero take the lead again. But somewhere inside her a connection clicked brightly into place.

Her cutie mark felt weird. It pulsed and throbbed on her flanks, but it wasn’t a distraction. The feeling was more like throwing fuel on a fire, and she smiled.

Prove it! You are THE Rainbow Dash, and nopony is going to beat you!

It didn’t give her any more power than she already had, but it showed her that she’d always had far more power than she ever believed possible.

“I love you, Lero,” the pegasus shouted with a determined grin, “but I will win this race!”

And with that, Rainbow shot forward, impossibly fast.

Earth pony Lero only had time for the briefest glimpse of a faded rainbow lightning bolt overlaid like a transparency atop the butterflies on her flank, before Rainbow Dash blew his mane and tail forward for an instant and literally left him in the wake of her dust.

A disbelieving Lero continued to gallop at full speed, but then he smiled as he realized that he’d lost the race far from the finish line… But perhaps had won a much more important prize.

“That’s my girl,” he huffed quietly. He coughed and moved over so he could watch his Rainbow instead of running through a cloud of dust.

* * *

Rainbow Dash sprinted down the length of the road, and in a few eternal seconds the library tree grew and grew, and then took it up the whole view of one side of the road.

As much as she wanted to just keep running, the pegasus panicked, flinging out her wings and throwing all four hooves forward in a Full Emergency Stop. She squeaked as she spun wildly in the dirt road right past the library, skating uncontrolled circles on her hooves with wings fully extended. She laughed brightly as she finally came to a glorious spinning stop well past the home of Herd Bellerophon.

With a Cheshire cat grin, Rainbow flapped her wings and trotted happily back to the entrance of the library. As she saw Lero slow and approach from the distance, the blue pegasus leapt into the air with a shout, wings spread wide, flipping with acrobatic ease to land gracefully on her hooves. Three times!

Lero trotted up to Dash, sweaty and dusty, panting and still full of earth pony energy. Before he had a chance to say anything, Rainbow leapt to the air and flew at him. She collided with Lero and hovered in the air, wrapping her forelegs tightly around his neck and shouting triumphantly past his ear.

“I won! I won!” Rainbow crowed. She pulled back a little and stared intensely into Lero’s eyes.

He laughed with her, for her. He lifted a hoof and stroked her mane. “I’ve never been so happy to lose a race, Rainbow. You were awesome, and I’m very proud of you.”

Rainbow’s eyes brightened. She pressed forward and pulled him close, smiling and wings flapping gently, and locked her lips to Lero’s in a happy, passionate victory kiss.

* * *

Rarity stood stock-still in the kitchen, suddenly feeling... odd. For no apparent reason her breath quickened and a little hum of excitement thrilled through her body. She lifted a hoof, pressed it to her chest, and felt her heart beating faster.

She felt giddy, happy, triumphant, and she let it take hold of her for a few long moments. It was almost... sexual. Not an unfamiliar feeling, certainly not unwelcome, but just having it pop up out of thin air like this...

Wait, she wasn’t due for estrus for a while, was she? She turned her head to look at the calendar on the fridge. Not for… well it was getting closer, wasn’t it? But not just yet. Then she heard faint shouting drift down into the kitchen from outside. Rarity’s curiosity got the better of her, and she pulled her tea kettle from the stove and made her way up the stairs.

She navigated past the trappings of Twilight’s latest important project in the foyer, and looked out the window.

The unicorn mare was surprised to discover Rainbow Dash passionately kissing her Lero right outside the door. Far from upsetting her, she felt the stirrings of desire grow again as she watched the two, and she smiled. Well, this looks quite promising!

Still, it would likely only embarrass the poor girl if Rarity made any kind of scene, bad or good. Rainbow always was a shy thing... So she stood back quietly and let the new lovers have their moment, at least until their kiss finally ended.

After affirming her intent to have Lero in the bedroom as soon as possible, Rarity composed herself behind the door, and stepped outside.

* * *

“Well, well, well…” purred Rarity. “And who might you be, handsome stranger?”

When she stepped out of the door, the movement of her legs was even sleeker than normal, sashaying towards Lero.

When the stallion stood up, both mares could see the bump of Lero’s tongue inside his grinning cheek. “Me? Oh, no one special, really. Just some lonely out-of-towner, far from the land of his birth.”

“Do my ears deceive me?” Rarity asked. “A stunning stud such as yourself... and he’s lonely? Unattached? No mare to love him?”

He stood perfectly still, chest puffed out, allowing Rarity to circle around him and get an eyeful of every angle, as though he were a priceless statue. It was hard to say which of their grins was coyer.

“Well, don’t worry, your tragedy ends here! There’s no finer place than Ponyviille for a stallion’s loneliness to come to an end!”

“Any names you’d recommend?” Lero asked, as Rarity gave his swimming trunks a small, playful tug… Rainbow Dash almost thought she was going to slip them off.

“Oh, you might want to try looking up a girl called Rarity,” she answered, circling around to face him. “I’ve heard she has a bit of a thing for out-of-towners.”

Lero and Rarity could only look each other in the eye for a few seconds, before they laughed and kissed with enough passion to melt battleship steel.

“You’re a fine sight for sore eyes, princess,” Lero said.

“You’re a fine sight, no matter what form you take, my prince. Wouldn’t you agree, Rainbow?”

Just when the shy pegasus had come to think the two herdmates had forgotten she was there, Rarity lifted her hoof and blew her a kiss that froze her solid. To Dash’s relief, Rarity turned a more serious eye back to Lero.

“Did something happen, Lero? Weren’t you supposed to be bringing some animals over?” Rarity asked, with a somewhat circumspect look at Rainbow Dash. “I mean, I’m sure Twilight must’ve said something about how we… well, were interested in having a few more pets over the house...”

“We don’t need to play pretend around Dash, Rarity,” Lero told her quietly. “Twilight let her into her confidence. She knows what kind of project Twilight’s been busy with.”

Rarity looked at Rainbow Dash with new eyes. The pegasus faced her with equal seriousness, her blush receding.

“I see,” the white unicorn said. “Nonetheless, my question stands: shouldn’t you be bringing Twilight’s new lab animals here?”

“Well, the thing is…” and the two of them explained how they got caught up in racing each other, leaving Twilight Sparkle with the cart.

“Lero, Lero, Lero, what am I going to do with you?” Rarity sighed. “Some days, you’re the most sensible pony in the room… other days, you’re nothing but a silly colt who drags otherwise right-minded mares into your immature games.”

Rarity saw Rainbow Dash slump a little, and quickly reassured her friend, “I’m not singling you out on this, Rainbow! He’s done it to me, too! Believe me!”

And under her breath, he heard Rarity grumble, “‘Discoteers,’ indeed!”

“I just have an uncanny sense of when it’s time to let loose a little.” Lero replied.

She rolled her eyes at that. “At any rate, why don’t we all make ourselves useful while waiting for Twilight to arrive and bring some stuff from inside out onto the front yard?”

She opened the door and they went inside. The foyer was crowded with so much stuff, a stranger might be forgiven for thinking they were moving into a new house.

“Let’s begin!” said Rarity, levitating a set of packed chests out the door.

Rainbow Dash watched Lero bend and grab several important-looking books with his teeth and set them on his back, then walk out the door with them.

“Y’know, Lero, I gotta say… for a guy who walks on two legs 99.9% of the time, you seem pretty comfortable getting around as a pony.”

Outside, he bent his back, allowing the books to slide off nicely onto the flat surface of one of the chests.

“Let’s just say this isn’t the first time they’ve transformed me. Otherwise I’d have been too busy tripping over my own legs to run a race. I face-planted a lot the first couple of times.” the stallion said.

Rainbow Dash blinked. “So how many times have you been, er, ponified?”

“How many?” Stopping, Lero turned to look at Rarity, who was also outside at this point. “You know… I can’t even think of any exact number. Can you?”

Rarity shook her head. ‘I’m pretty sure, though, that it’s been more than a hundred times.”

“At least,” Lero agreed.

“A hundred? Why?!” asked the pegasus. “I don’t understand why you would do such a thing.”

The grin traveled slowly up Rarity’s face.

“Oh, I don’t know,” drawled the unicorn, approaching Lero from behind. “It has to be something...”

And then Rarity clambered atop her stallion, mounting him in playful gesture, rolling her head to rub her cheek affectionately atop his head.

“Surely, there must be some explanation why three unicorns mares would see fit to repeatedly transform the guy they love into a stallion.”

She did not grind herself against him. She simply draped herself over Lero; a white blanket upon his back, smiling towards Rainbow Dash through half-lidded eyes.

“Now whatever could that reason... be?” she asked, nibbling the transformed human’s ear.

Lero felt his body heat rising. Rainbow Dash went as pink as Fluttershy’s mane. Rarity laughed.

“Oh, Rainbow! You’re so absolutely adorable! More and more, I’m coming to understand what Lero sees in you! I really can’t wait to take this relationship further!”

She eased herself off Lero with levitation, then went back into the house to bring out more stuff.

“Um… Lero?”

“Yes, Dash?”

“Are you… are you okay with them all using you like that? Turning you into something you’re not?”

Lero suddenly really didn’t want to talk about this with Dash. He sensed that all this sex-talk was casting him and his family in a very bad light. All the same, the pegasus didn’t look like she’d play ball if he tried to discreetly change the subject.

“...You don’t understand, Dash. I don’t mind. I honestly don’t. Hell, I volunteered. They’re not doing it for just puerile reasons. I mean… it’s not like they don’t also love me as a human.”

He motioned for Dash to follow him in. Together they helped each other lift a bulky magical arcane thingamajig.

“But do you like it when they turn you into a pony?” Dash persisted.

“Yes!” Lero insisted. “Yes. First off; I live for making the girls in my life happy, in every way I can.”

They set Twilight’s bulky magic doodad down.

“And it’s not like I only turn into a pony for sex. Sometimes we go out to restaurants. Sometimes we visit new towns, and we explore them while I’m a pony. Other times, I do it when they need an extra strong back, like when I was pulling your cart. It’s nice. What can I say? Every once in a while, it’s REFRESHING not to be ‘the alien.’ It’s good being a pony in a pony’s world, at least sometimes. Just for a change of pace. And I’m glad my girls are able to give me that experience. I certainly don’t begrudge them the chance to enjoy my pony body like that. Hell, I have fun, myself!”

Dash thought it over, imagining being the one pony in Lero’s old Human World. ...Yeah, she could see herself wanting to try being human.

“Have you ever considered just… STAYING a pony?” she asked. “Y’know, forever? You’d REALLY be able to fit in then.”

Lero shook his head. “Wouldn’t work. The transformation spell isn’t permanent, remember? Six hours, and then Twilight either has to re-cast the spell on me, or else let it wear off. You might see it yourself if you stick around long enough; it’ll start with my ears trailing down to be in line with my eyes.” Rainbow Dash resisted the urge to cringe at that. “It’s okay, though. Fitting in isn’t everything. And I’m rather attached to having hands.”

He licked his lips. “There’s one more aspect to it though. When my girls transform me… it’s not simply for their own gratification. Or really mine, for that matter. It’s a way of honoring me.”

“Honoring you?” asked Dash. “How so?”

“They, well… they all want to be the mothers of my children. My foals. Whatever. We’ve never succeeded yet, but they’re always trying. It… well… how can I describe it…? What we have between us is true love, and the girls all want that true love to bear fruit. Even though they could easily dodge parenthood, with me being human and them being ponies, they’re all willing to go through all this… just to honor me. Honor us, and what we’ve made together. There was even a point where I told them if they really wanted to be moms, I’d be okay with them getting some other stallion to be the… be the sperm donor. But they want it to be mine.”

He shrugged. “So on the days I stand on four legs, I stand with pride.”

Rainbow Dash thought back on all the times Rarity had mentioned wanting to someday be a mother. What she’d name her foals, how she’d raise them, which school she’d send them to. She imagined Lero Michaelides as a dad, caring for foals. It made for a lovely mental picture, and brought a warm feeling to her heart. A daughter or son who took after a father like him would be a wonderful thing for a girl to bring into the world.

“Lero! Rainbow Dash!”

They turned to see a rather cross-tempered Twilight Sparkle pulling the cart up towards their door.

“I hope you two had fun had fun with your little race, because now, you two can unload this stupid cart!”

* * *

Lero Michealides had always loved the undeniable splendor of the mansion-like cloud house. Its streams and waterfalls of pure liquid rainbow had always been especially fantastic. Had he been born a pegasus instead of a man, he might well have moved in here, instead of Golden Oaks Library, and cajoled Twilight and Spike to move all their books in with him and Rainbow Dash.

He was still an Earth pony when he disembarked from the cloud platform with Spike on his back, but he’d put on more clothes before coming here: jeans, a sweatshirt, and a pair of slip-on shoes, (shoelaces and ponies did not go along well together.) All clothes that Rarity had tailored for him in her fashionista days.

The transformed human lowered himself to a sphinx-like sit, and the dragon baby tentatively stepped down onto the springy surface of the cloud ground, relieved that it held his weight.

“So… here we are!” said Twilight, also stepping off, with Lyra. This time, it had been she, and not Rarity, who’d cast the cloudwalking spell on him and Spike, and been their cloud platform pilot. (Rarity was a good teacher, and Twilight was an excellent student.)

“And here’s the stuff, Twilight,” said Lyra, pointing forward.

Lero thought of it as a ‘cloud van,’ though it didn’t have wheels. It was based off the same principle as the cloud cage Rarity had made when saving Dash’s animals from the glufferflork. Rarity hovered up to their level atop a huge box of a cloud, big as an RV. Rainbow Dash was also there; she’d hitched herself to the front of the van.

Together, Rainbow Dash and Rarity landed the cloud van close to where Lero, Twilight, and Spike stood. Then Rarity dimmed her horn, and the van dissipated. Everything it contained was left behind: all Twilight’s boxes of stuff, plus Cluckabell the Chicken, Ruffles the Dog, Purrbox the Cat, Wousey the Mouse, and Tweetums the Parakeet, who respectively barked, meowed, squeaked, clucked, and squawked to be let out of their cages.

“There, there, it’s okay, little ones,” cooed Rainbow Dash, channeling the Fluttershy side of herself. “My brave little volunteers. Twilight’s going to be treating you right.” Then she looked towards her purple-coated friend. “You will be treating them right, won’t you?”

“Don’t worry,” Lero answered for her, “These aren’t inhumane experiments at all.”

“Er… ‘inhumane?’”

“He meant to say ‘inequine,’” Rarity explained, looking up at ‘her’ old home wistfully. Then she said, “Everypony, grab something and bring it inside.”

Although everyone in Herd Bellerophon enjoyed coming here, it had been months since their last visit. At the first sight of dust coating the floor, Rarity had decreed, “Oh, no! This won’t do at all!”

So the very first order of business was to open the box containing the cleaning supplies and make the place ‘fit for habitation.’ One thing to be said about cloud homes; they weren’t the sort of places which insects and vermin could infest easily. But dust was still everywhere. Long-expired food had to be thrown out of the fridge and then the fridge thoroughly cleaned. The bed had been left unmade.

Once the house was clean, it was time to unpack. Twilight had planned it out like a survivalist preparing a bunker for a tornado attack.

New food in the fridge. Supplies in the pantry. Toiletries in the bathroom. A few sets of clothes for Lero.

“Something I’ve always wondered about,” Spike said at one point, scrunching the cloud-stuff between his clawed dragon toes. “How is it that, you know, everyday objects like that box of books over there on the floor… how come none of it sinks through the floor? Did you cast spells on every strip of bubble wrap or something?”

“Nothing quite so tedious as that,” Rarity explained. “Pegasus houses are made from what’s called ‘construction-grade clouds.’”

“Stronger than the average cloud, right?” Spike guessed.

“Naturally,” said Rarity. “Construction-grade clouds are solid enough to support moderate amounts of non-magical weight; but their carrying capacity is limited. They can even make some clouds strong enough for non-pegasi to walk on without a cloudwalking spell... but that's a very difficult and expensive process! Maybe, say, a really fancy Cloudsdale hotel for non-pegasi would have it. The Magnificent Balloon Basket, for one.”

“Huh.”

“I can’t explain the science behind it, but basically, a place like mine can support a reasonable amount of weight from inanimate objects without problems. But for some reason, the, well, ‘aura’ of living beings can disrupt its magic, thus necessitating cloudwalking spells. This is why you and I remain at risk of falling through the floor if we’re not careful, while this refrigerator of mine with all its food will stay right where it’s always been.”

Once the whole house was clean, Twilight went through each room to decide which would serve as her laboratory. She ended up picking the attic.

Most of the time, attics were the sort of place you never actually wanted to enter into. Cramped, old, dusty, stuffy, unlivable crawl-spaces, often infested with bats and rats, where you stored old family relics to never be seen again. This was as true in Equestria as on Earth. But pegasus attics? That was a different matter.

On ground level, some folks had set up cool basements for themselves. Here in Cloudsdale, attics served that purpose. Rainbow Dash’s was a personal gym.

“Huh,” said Rainbow Dash, looking around from the leg extension machine, to the well-used bench press, to the deadlifts, to the rack of dumbbells, to all the rest. “Never pegged you for a weightlifter, Rarity… Ra...”

None of the rest of them said anything as they all watched Rarity go blank-eyed for a few seconds. Rainbow Dash went just as frozen in place, just as blank, only recovering right after Rarity did.

“It was my father’s,” the white unicorn explained, once she was back among them.

Moving all the massive, unwieldy exercise equipment out of the attic and down into a couple of the spare rooms was absolute murder, even with three potent unicorns, one extraordinary pegasus, and Lero’s temporary Earth pony strength. They wouldn’t have even bothered if Twilight Sparkle hadn’t absolutely insisted that the attic space would be ideal for her stop-Nightmare-Moon-from-ever-happening-again experiments. It took loads of time, grunting, and yelling. When they were done, they all flopped on the floor and Spike fetched soda for everyone from the fridge.

“I’ll tell you something,” panted Rainbow Dash, “I think we all deserve a stained-glass window in Celestia’s palace just for lugging those things downstairs.”

“Yeah, she definitely owes us,” Lero agreed.

Then Rainbow’s eyes popped, and she stood up, staring towards him as though some extremely venomous insect had flown into the attic, and was buzzing around his head.

“What is it?” Lero asked.

“Your ears…!”

He looked over in one of the attic gym’s full-length mirrors. From pointy and flexible, they were taking on a stiff and rounded form.

“Oh,” he said. “Don’t worry about it, Rainbow, nothing bad’s happening.”

“Yeah,” said Lyra, just as casually. “Lero’s starting to change back into a human.”

“Doesn’t even hurt me. Whoever designed this spell really knew what he was doing.” Lazily, he rose to a stand. “Hey, does anyone remember which room my human clothes are in?”

Rarity sipped her soda. “They’re in my room, darling.”

“Right. Be back in a few,” he said, feeling his tail start to retract inward as he headed for the door.

“Wait! Stop!”

All of them gave a hard start. It was the sort of yell one would give when some idiot was about to rest his elbow straight on top of a big red self-destruct button. Rainbow Dash spun towards all the unicorns.

“Don’t let him change back, not just yet! Please?” Her tone was so desperate, so plaintive, that without even thinking, Twilight automatically aimed her horn at Lero. A tingling beam of light struck him, and he felt his tail grow back out and his ears sharpen back to a point.

“What is it? What is it?!” Lero asked Dash.

All the others crowded around the pegasus, worriedly awaiting an explanation.

“I… I want to know what cutie mark you have,” she admitted in a Fluttershy-quiet voice.

“Cutie mark…?”

The others all gave her droll or bemused looks as Lero smiled and turned himself to the side.

There was a trick Earth Ponies had for pulling their pants on and off, on the rare occasions when they wore them. Pony pants were made with a special circular loop in the back, perfect for a prehensile tail. Lero set his inside the loop and tugged downward just enough to show off his flank.

“But there’s… nothing there!” Dash said, staring at the patch of fur where a cutie mark ought to have been. She lifted a hoof and timidly poked his bare hindquarter.

Lero smiled again. “That’s right. I’m a total blank flank.”

“But… why?”

Pulling his pants back up, he shrugged. “I never got a cutie mark, did I? My guess is that this is the most the Transformation Spell was willing to go. Maybe you need to be a natural-born pony in order to qualify for a cutie mark, simple as that.”

“But… but you’re an adult. It’s like the spell’s saying you have no special talent. You are special… and you’re not talentless!” Now angry and upset, Dash turned to Twilight. “Can’t you magic a cutie mark on him?”

“If I could do that,” the purple unicorn answered kindly, “don’t you think I’d have done it to the Cutie Mark Crusaders long ago? Heck, I tried with Apple Bloom once; it just kept fading away. They have to be earned.”

Rainbow Dash looked from unicorn to unicorn, and then at Lero with helpless sadness, as though this were a birthday party and they’d completely run out of cake before he got to have a slice.

“It’s okay, Rainbow.” He nuzzled her. “I don’t mind. Really, I don’t.”

She looked at him strangely. “If any pony were to reach your age and not have a cutie mark by then… it… well, it wouldn’t sit well with him at all. How could you not mind?”

Lero looked from Rainbow Dash’s Butterfly Mark, which had compelled his poor pegasus to forget her family, and shut herself up away with a bunch of animals who did nothing but torment her. He looked over to Rarity’s Rainbow Mark, which had compelled the poor white unicorn to forget everything about her fashion work, and ruin her reputation among everyone around her with ‘creative weather.’ And then he looked at his own bare patch of fur which wasn’t compelling him to perform any sort of self-damaging behavior. And which, well, he’d never exactly worried about growing up the way ponies did.

“Blame it on my humanity, I guess.” he said, with a smile twice as wide.

Rainbow Dash could only shake her head at the nonsense of it all. “Of all the stallions I could’ve fallen in love with…”

He came over and kissed her cheek. “...You went and picked the best one.”

She kissed him back. “Yeah, you are the best.”

Six more hours in stallion form, then.

Now that all the bodybuilding stuff was put away, the final step was transforming this attic into the laboratory that Twilight Sparkle needed it to be. First, all three of the unicorns proceeded to inscribe all sorts of mystical runes and hieroglyphics all over the walls, floor, and ceiling. Amulets and talismans were hung over both sides of the door and windows with care.

It was not a quick process, and Rainbow Dash had time to fly out and buy pizza for them all while Lero and Spike played chess. Spike won quickly… and repeatedly.

“Checkmate!”

“How do you keep doing that!?” Lero groused.

“Are you kidding me? I grew up with Twilight Sparkle. I think this was the first game she taught me. I never even heard of Tic-Tac-Toe until we got to Ponyville and Pinkie taught me.”

Soon after their pizza break, they called in the non-unicorns to help bring in the last of the stuff: Twilight’s papers, reference books, spell books, a file drawer, a table and some chairs, pet toys, pet food, pet bowls, and then the pets themselves.

“There you go, little buddy!” Spike said, freeing Ruffles from her cage. The dog scrambled out of the cage, looked this way and that, then sprang upon Spike, licking his face with gusto. “Easy! Easy!” He laughed as he hugged and petted the pooch. “Awww, now I wanna keep her for myself!”

“Maybe after Twilight’s done with her experiments,” said Rarity.

Regretfully, the little dragon set Ruffles on the floor. The white unicorn tried to hug him consolingly from behind… but Spike stiffened coldly in Rarity’s embrace, and scrambled out of her hug.

“Spike? What’s wrong?” asked Rarity, with a wounded look.

“Ah… nothing, Rarity, I’m just not in a huggy mood right now,” Spike told her. “So! I assume that’s about everything, Twilight? You’re ready to begin experimenting?”

Twilight came up close to Spike’s ear and whispered words. Spike nodded conspiratorially at her when she drew away.

“Actually, there is one more thing,” she said to the room as a whole. “Lyra, Rarity, Rainbow Dash… in case the very worst should happen, in case this spell backfires on me and I turn into Nightmare Penumbra or whatever, I’ll need to be stopped. The Elements of Harmony will need to band together and fire the Rainbow of Light at me to return me back to my old self.”

“But if you’re a Nightmare, then we won’t have an Element of Magic!” Rainbow Dash pointed out.

Twilight levitated a sealed envelope over to Lyra Heartstrings. “This contains the name of the pony I want you to use as my replacement Element of Magic.”

“I understand,” said Lyra, taking the envelope into her own levitational field.

“Apart from that, yes that is just about everything,” Twilight told everyone. “Thank you all for every bit of your help. I’m probably going to be just a few hours for the initial experiments, and then I’ll be right home. But I’ll be keeping Lero with me as my lab assistant for today.”

“Well… okay.”

Rarity shot Lero a disappointed look, as though to say she’d been looking forward to spending more time with Lero in his pony form. The wink he gave her back promised they’d still have time for that later. Rarity grinned at him happily.

Lero and Twilight saw Spike, Lyra, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash to the door, waving goodbye to their herdmates as they descended towards the earth below.

“You really go the extra mile to make the ruse believable, don’t you?” Lero said.

“I’d be stupid not to,” she answered.

“So whose name did you put down to be your replacement?”

* * *

A flick of Spike’s foreclaw, and the envelope was opened.

“Why, Lyra!” Rarity exclaimed, as they all gathered round the scrap of paper inside, halfway to the ground. “This is your name!”

* * *

They had returned to the attic lab. Twilight was getting her papers in order, while Lero set about pouring food into all the animals’ bowls; a trickier task as an Earth Pony. The purple unicorn was working rather slowly.

“It’s 3:51,” she spoke.

From scooping birdseed into Tweetum’s food bowl, Lero glanced over at same clock Twilight was eyeing. “3:52, now.”

“Spike should be back at home by now.” Purrbox wound a figure-8 around Twilight’s legs as she came over and opened a cat food can for Lero. “Do you know what’s supposed to happen at 4 o’clock sharp?”

“No, what?” Usually, Lero would have followed up a feeding by petting Tweetums’ head with his fingers. But the parakeet’s head was walnut-sized, while his hoofs were so very much larger and harder.

“Spike’s going to send me a letter on whether or not the Elements of Harmony have changed color. Meaning that I have to cast one of my prototype spells by 4 o’clock sharp.” Twilight looked up at her stallion. “So much could go wrong, you know.”

Lero didn’t think she could have spoken that sentence more ominously if she’d been voicing the trailer of a first-rate horror film. “I can only imagine… or rather, I don’t even want to imagine,” he answered, scattering dry corn kernels on the floor for Cluckabell the Chicken.

“We can’t leave this up to imagination!” Twilight insisted. “We have to be mentally prepared for all the different contingencies!”

“Twilight…”

“For example, there’s always the chance that none of these protective wards will work.”

They both looked around the room, with all its downright otherworldly-looking glyphs and runes, thicker than grafitti on the walls of an inner city subway station.

“I’ve tried my best to arrange it so these prototype spells I’m testing will only affect these animals, rather than my friends or any pony… but it’s possible that all my friends’ identities will be reshuffled. In spite of my best efforts.”

That first time Twilight Sparkle had cast this spell… he and Rainbow Dash had flown so many miles and hours away from Ponyville, almost all the way to Bramblewood Town. Just how far away did you have to BE to escape this spell’s range? The moon? Another dimension? Or maybe it was that the Elements had no range limit, bound to their wielder, and the spell just affected them?

And now Lero was imagining it happening: a re-Swap. Applejack recast into the role of the weathermare who was all over him! Pinkie Pie as the animal caretaker who’d fallen for him, and was about to date him! And suddenly, once again, their skill set didn’t match up with their memories...

“I’d have to find equilibrium for them all, all over again...” the stallion stated, his voice filled with dread.

“The Swap might even include me as well, this time,” said Twilight, petting the dog.

Nervously, Lero considered this possibility. If Twilight were to be swapped with one of the other Bearers… she’d surely leave him stranded in this cloud house, just as poor Rainbow Dash had left him stranded in the Bramblewood Forest. And between Twilight’s ability to teleport and her being a magical wunderkind in general, how could he hope to prevent her from leaving? Would the cloudwalking spell last long enough for somepony to come rescue him…?

“Say, Twilight, we wouldn’t happen to have brought any parachutes with us?”

Twilight Sparkle shook her head. “No, and we don’t have time to get one. I’m sure whoever gets my mark will realize you’re up here and do everything in her power to get you down safely. IF that happens.” She wrote huge words on the side wall, over a large set of thaumaturgic symbols she’d already drawn: ALLOW FOR THE POSSIBILITY THAT YOU ARE NOT WHO YOU THINK YOU ARE.

“If Lero says I’m not who I think I am, I’ll trust him over my memories,” she chanted to herself, with her eyes closed. “If Lero says I’m not who I think I am, I’ll trust him over my memories. I say this with all my heart, in the hopes that if one of my friends replaces me, she’ll know to be open-minded too…”

...Come to think of it… Discord probably wouldn’t be all too happy with them, if they made him rewrite the memories of everyone under his Bewitchment after a second Swap...

Then Twilight refocused on Lero. “This spell may also backfire on us even if the containment wards work.”

“Meaning you and I could swap with each other, Twilight?”

He tried to imagine this: him Swapped with Twilight. Would having half of Twilight’s soul make him yearn to be taken by a stallion? But Rainbow Dash was still bent, and Rarity was anything but, so… probably not. Still...

She sighed. “Yes, that could happen, but I’m actually thinking of something even WORSE than that.”

“Worse?!”

“Imagine this scenario, Lero: I cast this new modified spell of mine, and it affects all seven of us in this room. Not just the animals, but us as well. I swap with that cat, there, while you’re swapped with the dog. So there I am, licking my own fur and coughing up hairballs, and there you are barking and chasing your own tail… while Kitty and Puppy conduct scientific research on us. Then when it’s time to go home, Kitty and Puppy lock us up in those animal cages, and head on home to be with the rest of Herd Bellerophon, and all of us think that it’s always been this way.”

Quite suddenly, Twilight burying herself under an avalanche of books seemed twenty times less irrational an action. It might be nice if she had an extra month of research. Maybe twelve.

“3:56,” Twilight noted, looking back at the clock. “Well, there’s nothing else for it! I promised Spike I’d try casting one of my spells by 4 p.m. sharp, and Celestia help me, that’s what I’m going to do. I’ve delayed long enough!”

"Oh God, oh God, oh Jesus..." Lero shuddered.

Twilight levitated a stack of papers up. Lero could read the title of the first sheet: Finished Spell Prototype #0001.

“Lero!” Tears shimmered in her eyes as she turned to him. “In case my memories are rewritten, I want you to know that I, Twilight Sparkle, Bearer of the Element of Magic, love you with all my heart. You’re the best stallion I could’ve ever asked for. Never forget that!”

“I won’t,” Lero choked, feeling guilty that his tear ducts chose not to shed tears of his own. “I love you too, Twilight.”

The stallion and mare kissed as though the planet was moments from imploding. The time was now 3:59.

“Here goes nothing!” Clearing her throat, she read her first prototype incantation:

“From one to another,
Another to one
A mark of one’s destiny
Singled out alone, fulfilled
From that someone to other
The other undone
And then we invest in thee,
To the right body build!”

* * *

Even before hesitantly reopening his eyes, Lero checked to see if any foriegn, not-himself desires were present in his mind. The desire to bat around a ball of yarn? The desire to run around on Wousey’s mouse wheel? The desire to read a zillion books?

“Quick, Lero!” Twilight cried, and he opened his eyes the rest of the way. “Tell me: am I the student of Princess Celestia? Is my cutie mark the one I’m meant to have?!”

She turned, but he didn’t even need to see her Star Mark to know. Deeply relieved, Lero ran to run a hoof through her mane. “Yes, Twilight, yes! You’re the right pony with the right mark and the right memories! My Twilight…”

“My Lero…” She blinked.

“So this means everything’s okay?” he asked, as they hugged each other dearly.

“Well… as far as we know… and just because we’re okay doesn’t mean the other five are!”

And then a newly-materialized scroll dropped on the floor between them. It read:

Dear Twilight,

It’s now 4:01 and the Elements of Harmony haven’t changed color at all. What a relief, huh? Well, I’m heading off to AJ’s. Don’t blow anything up!

- Spike

Lero and Twilight had only a moment to feel relief, when they hear the strangest sound:

“Arffeeeeowww…”

They looked over and screamed openly. The animals… all five of them looked like Discord had gotten ahold of them, and warped them into his image! They saw a creature whose upper half was a cat’s, and whose bottom half was that of a chicken’s. They saw a thing that was... speckled, for lack of a better term; furry spots of mouse, here, feathery blotches of parakeet there.

“Cleak! Cleak! Squuck, Squuck…” the splicing of chicken and mouse cluck-squeaked.

“Tweeuff! Tweeeuffff!” went the Frankenstein mishmash of dog and parakeet.

“Failsafe!” Twilight cried, her horn flashing with the rapidly cast spell.

Seconds later, the chicken was all chicken, the parakeet was all parakeet, and so forth with all the rest of the animals.

“Well, that was extremely disturbing and made me glad I don't eat chicken very much anymore," Lero said. "Maybe I should read the next one first before you cast it?"

“You don’t need to worry,” Twilight said, writing the words REJECTED, NEVER USE! on Prototype #1’s page. “Prototype #2 is going to be much, much better.”

“I don’t know, Twilight, the rhyming for that last incantation was as weak as jokes from Yucky Yolks.”

“Oh, hush!” she growled, flipping to the incantation for Finished Spell Prototype #0002. Lero got right behind her.

“From one to another
Another to one
A mark of one’s destiny
Singled out alone, fulfilled
Bringing hearts together,
Together sharing fate
By horn and hoof and feather
That we all better relate.”

A very long and wide cone of light shot forth from Twilight’s horn, much more like a lit flashlight than a focused, line-like laser beam. All five of the test animals were hit at once.

However, at the same moment, Purrbox the Cat had apparently decided that Wousey the Mouse looked tasty, and it was time to be a huntress about it. She hunkered down, wiggled her tail end in a pounce, leapt, Wousey squealed in alarm… and then all five of them froze up and went blank-eyed in the middle of what they were doing. Purrbox’s jump finished in a graceless crash into the wall, but when she rose to her feet, she was too empty-eyed to show any signs of pain.

Lero and Twilight Sparkle watched as the animals switched places with each other, like a soulless cast of actors being told by their director to stand in each other’s spots. The mouse went scrabbling at the table legs, trying to clamber up to where the parakeet had be perched until Twilight took pity on it and gave it a lift. Ruffles the puppy wandered over to the door - and then kept leaning on it until Twilight opened that, too. Ruffles walked outside - and a shiny black beetle flew in.

Tweetums the Parakeet gave a squawky “Rrrroaw!” and pounced on the cat. The cat gave a hard squeak, curling up in a ball as the parakeet toyed with it, batting the kitten around with its wings in a very feline fashion. Meanwhile, the mouse dipped its face repeatedly into the parakeet’s birdseed bowl, while the chicken clamped its beak upon a knotted piece of rope, and thrashed it about.

To the pony’s further astonishment, a fresh egg then came out of Cluckabell. The egg managed to not crack on the cloud-formed floor, but the chicken ignored its existence, too busy worrying the bit of rope. Instead, the one who climbed up and laid upon it to provide the egg with warmth… was the beetle.

“Whoa,” said Lero.

“Unbelievable,” Twilight said, and drew a table for herself on a fresh sheet of paper. “Apparently, this version needed a sixth target.” She took a deep breath, then let it out. “And apparently we had a hitchhiker on the cart who made a better target than us. At least, I hope so. Even though the first prototype worked only on the five I hit. That’s important information.”

Prototype #0002 Experiment; Attempt #1
Animal → Behavior Of
Beetle → Chicken
Cat → Mouse
Chicken → Dog
Dog → Beetle
Mouse → Parakeet
Parakeet → Cat

“Let me try that one again!” Twilight said. “From one to another, another to one…”

And after she’d recited the entire incantation, the beetle crawled off the hen’s egg. Ruffles walked back inside and climbed on. There was a cracking noise, and then the ponies saw raw egg puddling under the doggy’s tail end. The mouse scampered over towards Lero and lay upon its belly, tongue lolling out as her wormlike tail wagged back and forth, aching for a belly rub.

“Huh. Didn’t change them back,” Twilight noted. As the cat leapt winglessly from the parakeet’s perching place, and landed smack on her underbelly, she drew a new table for herself.

Prototype #0002 Experiment; Attempt #2
Animal → Behavior Of
Beetle → Cat
Cat → Parakeet
Chicken → Beetle
Dog → Chicken
Mouse → Dog
Parakeet →Mouse

“You know, I get the sense that this spell is exactly like the original Swap spell… except you can target whoever you want, instead of just the Elements of Harmony exclusively.” Lero noted, feeding Wousey a crumb from a dog biscuit. “So be careful where you point that thing!”

“Yes, I agree,” said Twilight, making a note to that effect on her clipboard.

“So I guess it’s on to Prototype #3?”

“Hmm? No, not quite. I said I wanted to test that slot machine theory you came up with, and I meant it. No doubt, it’ll be tedious, but hopefully, it’ll prove to work as a last-ditch resort.”

Twilight continued with various tests. They tried casting on only two of the swapped animals: just the parakeet and the chicken. Twilight aimed her horn at just the two birds while Lero kept the other four animals behind him. But it made no difference: all six swapped with one another regardless.

Later, Twilight shut Lero and the dog, (who at this point was acting as the cat) inside a locked bathroom while casting the spell. He observed that the dog remained in a ‘soulless’ state, first pawing at and then beating its body against the door while also trying to scramble for the doorknob. The chicken seemed to be doing much the same from its side of the door. This went on for about ten minutes before Lero finally took pity on the creatures and opened the door so they could trade places with each other.

Later, the swap results came back like so:

Prototype #0002 Experiment, Attempt #9
Animal → Behavior Of
Beetle → Chicken
Cat → Mouse
Chicken → Dog
Dog → Beetle
Mouse → Parakeet
Parakeet → Cat

“But it’s exactly the same as the first rearrangement!” Twilight protested. “The Swap can DO that?!”

“Hmm? What’d you say?” Lero was having too much fun tossing a rubber ball for Cluckabell the chicken-dog to fetch. “Twilight, do you think we could KEEP her this way? Get some different animal for testing? This is the coolest chicken EVER, and I want her as a pet.”

“Absolutely not!” Twilight told him.

“Awww.”

Finally, Lero looked outside to see that the sun was close to setting. Both ponies agreed it was time to go home. Twilight returned the swapped animals to their cages, the cat insisting on going into the thankfully large parakeet cage, the mouse insisting on going into the dog pen, and so forth with the rest - and the dog seemed content to be brought inside and put alongside the mouse. Then she recast the cloudwalking spell on all six of them, followed by a spell that put them all to sleep.

“That wasn’t just any regular slumber spell,” Twilight explained, as they left the cloud house. “With this spell, this animals will STAY sleeping, come what may, until I return to cast the counterspell.”

When they were back at Golden Oaks Library, Lero spent the remainder of the day having a much-needed good time with his girls as long as he was still in pony form, and changed back into a human at some point while he slept in bed.

* * *

This was the first day they’d held Fluttershy’s comedy lessons at Golden Oaks Library, and so far, it was working out wonderfully, although a lot of things were different for today’s class.

Today, Rarity was sitting in, listening and participating to today’s class. And they had begun at ten a.m. instead of 3:15. Normally, the lesson would’ve gone on for a long as two hours or so. But just forty-five minutes in, Lyra caught Lero’s eye from across the room. The aqua unicorn stood by a small container of cleaning supplies. She levitated a small clock over while pointing at it, and then towards Rainbow Dash.

“I’m very sorry to say this, Fluttershy, but it seems that we’re going to need to cut this one short,” he said, shutting the book he had opened.

“Oh, drat,” Rarity sighed, a hoof thrown theatrically across her forehead, slightly below her horn. “Just when it was getting sophisticated. Who’d have thought there was such highbrow depth and cultivation to be found in fart jokes?”

“It’s one of the few truly universal forms of humor - there’s not a culture that doesn’t find it funny,” Twilight commented.

“It’s all in how you approach it, Rarity,” said Lero, turning to the yellow pegasus. “Again, I am truly sorry for cutting this short.”

“Oh, don’t worry. I know it’s for a good cause. Today’s a very biiiiiiig day, after all! Ain’t that right, Dash?” Fluttershy asked, nudging the cyan-coated pegasus to her left.

Lero beamed at Rainbow Dash. Yes, it was indeed a special day. Today was Thursday, the day of Herd Bellerophon’s big date with its long-lost prodigal pegasus!

“Speaking of which…” Fluttershy frisked through her saddlebags. “Did I leave all my party decorations at home? Horse apples! I’m even more off my game than I thought. Be right back!”

And she flew out the door.

“Oh, that reminds me! I gotta go get AJ so she can help Fluttershy with decorations,” said Spike, also hurrying out the door.

Rainbow peered downward. “You don’t… there’s no need to make a huge production out of all this…”

“Oh-ho-ho-ho-ho, Rainbow Dash!” Rarity laughed. “All these comedy lessons must be rubbing off you. First impressions are always the most important impression, especially where romance is concerned, and we mean to make ourselves absolutely irresistible.”

The smile on Rainbow’s face stayed frozen in place as Rarity whipped her mane back. When the white unicorn left the room, Rainbow came up to the human.

“Lero?” she whispered. “Could I talk to outside for a moment? Just the two of us, in private?”

“Sure, Dash.” he said, frowning at her earnest look.

They stepped out of the library door, heading far enough away so they were at the very edge of the library’s backyard.

“What was it you wanted to talk about?”

Dash’s head hung like a dead thing. “I… I think I might not be dating you guys after all,” she said in her softest voice.

“Wha...?!” He started in utter disbelief.

“Ssh!” she snapped, darting a look towards Lero’s house. Neither of them saw any unicorn pressing her head against the window.

“Is there something I did wrong?” They had been so close together, they’d kissed, that race they’d had as ponies couldn’t have gone better if he’d written the script himself! What had he done?

She hugged him fiercely. “Nothing! You’ve done everything right, you’ve always done everything right with me.”

Again, she looked towards the house, and Lero had a new thought. “You don’t like Twilight? You don’t like Rarity or Lyra?”

“I do like them; they’re great girls, but the thing is I’m…” When Rainbow Dash swallowed, it sounded like she was forcing a long-spoiled egg down her throat. “I’m bent, Lero. I only like stallions.”

And here, she looked at Lero with deepest misery, a forlorn keen in her throat.

He tried to catch up with the sudden shift. “You think they suddenly won’t like you because you’re bent?”

“I know they won’t like me because I’m bent!” she cried, turning away from him, setting her head against the trunk of a tree.

Sometimes it was tough to not smile. To not laugh in relief. Acting was a tougher profession than he ever gave movie stars credit for. Especially when there were so few chances to slip offstage and take the mask and costume off. If only you could’ve seen yourself two months ago, our happy home...

“Dash, I’m bent, and they love me!”

Rainbow turned back toward him with a smile both sweet and lonely, the smile that worldly, experienced ponies give to the naïve.

“Oh, Lero, it’s not the same when you’re a colt! Between all the different ways of being bent, a stallion like you has got it easiest. A colt who prefers mares is more or less doing the socially-acceptable thing anyhow. Many herds are lucky just to have ONE stallion, bent or straight, since guys are, y’know, scarcer.”

“The scarcer sex,” Lero sighed. Among ponies, it was as irritatingly timeless a phrase as ‘what doesn’t kill you makes you stronger.’ They’d keep calling guys that long after they turned his skeleton into a museum piece.

“Yeah,” said Rainbow Dash, seating herself. “Now, a filly who only prefers fillies is reducing the competition for stallions; nopony minds her. Sometimes, a filly like that enters an all-female herds. Sometimes she can fit into regular families, when that’s the case, her relationship with the stallion is less wifey and more brother-sister, y’know? Now, a colt who only prefers other colts… Well, that’s a bit worse even, it’s taking a stallion off the market -- two if he insists on monogamy -- those guys are particularly reviled. Most of ‘em find another stallion they really like to herd with, and ‘does his duty’ when the mares go into heat…”

Dash drew a breath.

“And a filly like me who likes stallions but not mares? I’m 'selfish' for not wanting to ‘help’ my herd-sisters!” Out came the tears which had been threatening to spill this whole time. “The moment they really stop and think about it, I know they’re gonna hate having me around!”

Lero considered her as she wept. Twilight and Lyra were already tight in Dash’s corner, even if Dash’s perceptions were too altered to remember it. Rarity, though? That was the real wild card. Would Rarity prove to be the mare that Rainbow Dash feared her to be? Would her bentness ultimately prove to be a dealbreaker? Sex was no small trifle for his white unicorn princess. And she was his lead mare, besides.

In the end, there was a fifty-fifty chance that Rarity would have second thoughts. But something deeper was bugging him about this whole business, something that didn’t have to do with Rarity or any of his other mares at all.

“You’re not being fair,” he told the pegasus. This time, he didn’t even stop to dry her tears. He felt too much like a teacher about to deliver an important lesson.

“It’s the situation that’s unfair,” she sniffled. “I mean, if you were a single, unattached stallion, I’d snatch you up in a heartbeat…”

“No, that’s not it! You’ve decided, ahead of time, that you’re going to fail at this, that you can’t possibly find love.”

She sputtered at that. “I didn’t say it’s impossible…”

Her looked her firmly in the eye. “Now, maybe you might have something to worry about if this were some other herd. But this herd, my herd, is special. They fell in love with me, the bipedal alien. You think being bent is too much for them to deal with? You already have a deep bond with Twilight and Rarity, a special place in their heart. The three of you are Elements of Harmony. You’ve been through things I can’t begin to imagine! You’re ALREADY a very dear sister to them.”

“What about Lyra? What if she doesn’t want to share her stallion with a mare who won’t love her too?”

He almost proceeded to assure her that Lyra would never do any such thing, but thought against it. He didn’t wanted to risk making Herd Bellerophon sound too good to be true. She might come to think it was, and back out after all.

“Lyra… is really laid back and accepting, but I can’t say she won’t be disappointed. So, let’s say she is against you,” Lero said. “So what? Four against one, Dash. Think about it. For once… the numbers are on your side!”

Rainbow Dash fell silent. After all those weeks of being overwhelmed by so many animals, that statement had an impact on her.

“Go on this date with us, Dash. Just one date, I promise! Take a chance on us. Take a chance on yourself. Have I ever led you astray?”

She did not smile. She still looked pessimistic. But she said, “No. No, you haven’t. Not once.” One more time, she looked to the library with just a little more bravery now. “I’ll be there tonight. You’ll see me at seven.”

“Fantastic!” Lero said.

* * *

Rainbow Dash had spent lots of time in front of her mirror before setting hoof outside her cottage door. It’d been a long, long while, since the last time she went all-out like this, even locking her animals out so she could prepare. Perfume. Mascara. Lipstick. Nether gloss, (a royal pain for a girl to apply to herself when she lived alone and wasn’t a unicorn). She even took the time to style her mane in a more traditionally feminine manner; like Rarity, like Twilight, working out the tomboyish tufts and tangles of her multicolored locks. She was amazed she still remembered how to use the hair straighteners.

This was very first herd date. She had to make it count!

The finest dress she owned was still that Grand Galloping Gala dress of hers. But since there were too many bad memories attached to that dress, she went with the second-finest thing she had to wear. It was lacy and forest green, and trailed all the way down to her ankles.

She did not fly to Golden Oaks Library, for fear that the rush of air would ruin all her hard work. Or that, as usual, she’d forget to concentrate and start speeding, and end up crashing through a window or something. As usual. But she started down the road at a good time, where she’d arrive punctually. As she walked the way to Lero’s house, Rainbow Dash recited some of the best Iron Will-isms for an occasion like this:

“When out on a date, remember you’re great!”

“Smile while at dinner to show you’re a winner!”

“If you’re snubbed by the waiter, show them you’re greater!”

Yeah, Iron Will was a sage among sages. Even though that last one didn’t specifically apply to this situation.

When she reached Lero’s home, there wasn’t any need for her to knock. Lero had spotted her coming through a window, and came out on the porch to greet her himself.

“It’s great to see you, Rainbow Dash. You look very lovely.”

He was back in his familiar human form, wearing black shoes, black socks, a white button-down shirt, and dark khaki pants. His hair and beard looked freshly trimmed, moist with recently-applied hair gel. The sight of his smile was a welcome and happy reminder of why she was doing this. What she stood to gain.

“It’s great to be here,” she told him. “You look really handsome.”

She lifted up to her hind legs. He crouched. They clasped. Every time the two of them hugged each other… it was like some part of her had always secretly longed to be hugged just that way. It felt so natural.

“Come on in!” he said, motioning her inside. “Don’t be shy.”

Easy for him to say.

She stepped into the foyer. Applejack and Fluttershy had done a magnificent job decorating this place. Fluttershy’s balloon animals, especially, were a nice touch.

“Hey, Rainbow!” called Lyra, coming in from the next room with Twilight. “Make yourself right at home.”

Lyra wore a soft, iridescent yellow dress that ended above her knees, with a slight detailing around the withers. Twilight Sparkle’s dress was floor-length and deep blue, with a very frilly neckline.

“We’re all so excited to have you over!” Twilight said.

The pegasus gave a slightly bashful smile. “I hope I can live up to everypony’s expectations!” She looked around. “Where’s Rarity?”

“I’m right here.”

What Rarity wore was brash, perhaps, but quite fetching. The train of the dress was most ostentatious of all: fabric striped in every color of the rainbow, with a hemline that looked like white clouds. Her hooves sat in sandals. Golden laurels rested upon her head, and there was a clasp at her neck shaped like a bunch of purple grapes. Of course Dash recognized it at once; Applejack had made this for Rarity for the Grand Galloping Gala. It was a masterpiece of modern fashion and classical pegasus style. She hoped this wasn’t a sign of bad luck.

“Our house is your house,” the white unicorn proclaimed, with a genteel sweep of her arms.

Dash sniffed at the air. “Mmm, is that dinner? Wow, it smells really nice!”

“Well, then, I hope you brought your appetite,” Rarity said. “The dining room is right this way.”

* * *

A wide, circular table awaited the five of them. Dash saw sterling silver flatware, gilded china plates, crystal glassware… wow, they had really gone all-out for her. Some of it looked kind of familiar. Her eyes widened for a moment. Had... had Twilight borrowed the table set from Princess Celestia?

They all took seats. Dash sat at Lero’s left, while Rarity was at Lero’s right.

“Oh!” she exclaimed. “Before I forget…”

It had taken effort simply finding flowers that matched her shade of cyan. She’d had to do a lot of asking around, and fly to another town to buy them. Now Dash brought out the cyan orchids and passed them around to the other four, feeling a sense of accomplishment when each of them accepted theirs with thanks and smiles.

“Wow. That’s… really nice of you to wear them,” Dash said. “Was this the right time to give those out? I’m sorry, I’ve… well, I’ve never dated a herd before.”

“Well, you have to start somewhere,” Lyra said, taking a long sniff of her orchid before setting it behind her ear. "Might as well have your first herd date be the right one, right?"

“Y-yeah. There’s always beginner’s luck, right?”

Rainbow Dash could’ve kicked herself. Beginner’s luck? It was one thing to be a first-time dater, it was another to sound like a complete moron!

But Lyra gave a perfectly warm and gentle laugh as her horn shone. A great bubbling pot of soup floated in from the kitchen… yes, this had been the source of that wonderful smell. She ladled vegetable soup into everyone’s bowls without spilling a drop.

“Actually, you did it perfectly, Rainbow. Might I tempt you with a glass of Côte de Boulonnais?” asked Rarity, showing her a fancy-looking bottle of wine. “It’s a very excellent vintage. Unless you’re more of a red wine kind of girl, in which case, we happen to have some Cabernet de Ardennais. No one does wine like the Prench!”

“I don’t…”

Rainbow stopped herself from saying ‘drink alcohol.’ Rarity seemed to have forgotten that about her. Her bentness was enough of a black mark against her. Why make things worse by looking like some teetotalling prude to boot?

“...think the Co-tay de… uh… The first one you mentioned doesn’t sound half bad.”

“I think I’ll have some myself,” said Lero.

The pegasus congratulated herself as Rarity popped the cork and filled her glass. Even if she didn’t drink a drop, just having a glass of wine in front of your plate automatically made anypony 20% more sophisticated. And if there was one thing Rarity respected, it was sophistication.

Twilight also ended up also getting the white wine, while Lyra went for the red. Lero dipped his spoon into the soup, and dinner began.

“This soup is really delicious,” Dash said, after her first spoonful. They’d put in just the right amount of onion.

“Yes,” said Lero. “Spike’s really outdone himself.”

“Spike did this?” She heard the faint clack of little claws on the floorboards, and saw Spike poke his head in from the adjacent room.

The baby dragon wore a very warm and hopeful smile. “I really, really, hope you like the soup, Dash.” Then he ducked back shyly into the kitchen.

In the same instance, Dash felt bad for being rough with Spike that one time after he’d run away from home, yet glad that all the fences were apparently mended, all hatchets buried. In fact, not only did Spike seem to have completely forgiven her… he seemed to be on her side. In her corner. If only she could feel so sure about the rest of them...

“Hey, Lyra?”

“Yes?” The Still Way Grandmaster moved a candelabra aside to make better eye contact with Dash.

“Lyra... is it, I mean, do you mind that... I'm sorry I didn't ask before I fell in love with Lero…”

Lyra gave a little light laugh. “It’s okay. No harm done. It’s not like you planned it. Frankly? I’m happy things happened the way they did.”

“Happy?” Dash asked. “Why happy?”

"You're the shyest mare in Ponyville, Dash. The feelings you have for our stallion came from a lot of nurturing and hard work. They’re founded on something real, they’re genuine. They wouldn’t have been worth acting upon if they weren’t. Plus, letting things blossom naturally over time? That's very Still Way. I can't imagine us not getting along as herdmates, Dash.”

She gave a quick glance to Twilight and Lero.

“Honestly, it feels like we're herdmates already!”

Rainbow Dash had come to this library expecting either to crash and burn, or else have to perform the courtship equivalent of flying through fiery hoops in order to prove herself worthy of their love. But being with these ponies wasn’t like an aggressive cross-examination at all! Rather, their presence and attitude was welcoming and enjoyable, giving her the feeling of having entered relaxing spa waters more and more with each passing moment.

“Might I ask a question of you, Dash?” asked Lyra. “What are you doing with yourself now that your animals are behaving?”

“Well, you know about how I’m helping Fluttershy, and I’ve been, y’know, spending time with Lero…”

“Yes, of course,” said Lyra. “Anything else, though? Anything that I wouldn’t know about? Oh, and would you like more soup?”

Lyra proffered the pot towards her.

“No thank you,” said Rainbow Dash. “Well, aside from the usual animal care stuff, I’ve taken up exercising, so next time my adorable pets decide to act up, I’ll be in shape to deal with them.”

“Do you go to a gym or exercise at home?” Twilight asked.

“At home. Gyms are a little crowded for my tastes. Works out better for me that way, anyways. I can’t explain why, but exercising just comes naturally to me for some reason.”

Dash went on to describe her usual daily workout, and in turn, Lyra described her own set of workouts, and this led to Rarity sharing stories about some of the friendly magical spars she and Lyra engaged in. Honestly, Dash was starting to feel like she could tell these ponies anything, and it would be alright...

“Shouldn’t we be serving the main course?” Twilight asked.

Huh? Well, how about that! Their soup bowls were all empty. How long ago did that happen?

“One second,” Rarity called. This time, she was the one to levitate in several magnificent silver platters from the kitchen. Three of them were fish dishes, for Lero, Rarity, and Rainbow Dash. The other two were vegetarian fare for Lyra and Twilight.

More specifically, Dash was looking down at some kind of still-sizzling fish cutlet, next to buttery servings of mashed potatoes and zucchini wedges. The smell of it was absolutely mouth-watering. She took a bite. Heaven!

“Mmm--mmm! Did Spike do this, too?”

“Actually, this one was me,” Lero said.

On another day, particularly one where she’d have hungry predators sitting on the rafters of the cottage looking hungrily at her plate, Rainbow Dash might have wolfed this delicious meal down a lot faster, but tonight, she figured it best to eat at the same unhurried pace Rarity was eating.

“Let me guess, it’s some special exotic fish, right? Where’d you import it from?”

His smile showed amusement. “From the far-off reaches of the marketplace. It’s just regular whitefish. Pan-seared whitefish baked in a lemon-pepper sauce.”

“Whitefish, eh?” She swallowed some of it down. “That’s a favorite of yours? Whitefish?”

“Well… as far as seafood goes, it’s pretty good, yeah. Some of my better favorites are things like salmon, shrimp, tilapia, swordfish, char…”

“Char!” Rarity sighed. “I’ve always cherished the taste of good arctic char. Such a robust flavor. It deserves to be far more famous than it is.”

Rainbow grinned at Lero’s lead mare. “I know! I just can’t get enough of it, especially when it’s cooked the way they cook it at Crispy’s.”

“All flaky and crunchy on the outside and soft and moist on the inside?” Rarity asked.

“That’s the one! Char’s right up there with one of my other favorites: blue marlin!”

“You’re fond of marlin too?” Rarity breathed a fluttery and excited gasp. “Oh my stars, it’s like we were born with the same taste buds...!”

And Rarity and Rainbow Dash gabbed about all kinds of fish to each other as excitedly as the nerdiest pair of gourmets in the world; how many different kinds of seafood each of them had eaten, which types were flavorful and which weren’t, which ones went best with what sauces, which fish were reasonably priced by the fishmongers, and which were rumored to sell catches that caused food poisoning or contained deadly bacteria. Through it all, Twilight and Lyra mostly kept an awkward silence and tried to follow along, unable to contribute anything to this conversation. Not that it mattered. The rapport building between the cyan pegasus and the white unicorn was like watching a light glowing brighter. Lero added comments off and on, but mostly just noted how the two of them weren’t noticing that they were both commenting about the exact same memories.

“...I mean, it’s just so nice having some other pony I can tell these kind of things to!” Rarity gushed.

“I know! We really should have gone out to fish places together back in the day!” Rainbow Dash agreed, having long since finished her second helping of whitefish.

“You know… the Wonderbolts are having another derby in a couple days!” Rarity suddenly said. “Would you like to come with us? I know the Wonderbolts have never been your cup of tea, Dash, but there’s this divine fish place right next to the stadium where the Derby’s being held…”

Race. Memories of the run she’d just had with Lero flashed through her mind; the rush of adrenaline, the heated thrill of winning….

“Actually, I’d go just to see the racing.”

Twilight’s concentration broke, and a piece of broccoli speared on a fork dropped back on its plate. “You would?”

“Racing’s fun. It’d be great to watch the best racers compete.” Rainbow grinned as though she were a Wonderbolt, herself.

“Rainbow, you are speaking my language,” said the white unicorn, with a telekinetic clap to the pegasus’ back.

From there, they all talked about this and that. They made her feel so homey, and they seemed to know just how to make her feel like she belonged. Rainbow even took a sip of her wine, hated it, but swallowed it down anyway.

“So, Twilight, something I’ve been dying to know: that whole time where Celestia was your teacher… was there ever a point where you kinda… had a crush on her?”

Twilight half-smiled as they all listened in closer. “Wow, that question really takes me back. Lot of tabloid journalists tried to make it really scandalous when Celestia took me in as her student, especially when she let me live in her castle with her. And then, all throughout my adolescence, other foals my age would often ask that very question. Not to mention more of those muckrakers.”

“But did you?” Rainbow Dash pressed. Part of the pegasus could hardly believe her own audacity, while the rest of her was reveling in her newfound boldness. “I promise I won’t be telling anypony!”

She smiled at her. “I trust you, Dash. Well, while I loved her, she was more like a second mother to me. So it was that kind of love. Um... aside from a really, really, really embarrassing couple of hours in my very first heat..."

First Dash, then all the rest of them had a laugh, as Twilight flushed in embarrassment.

“Come on, come on, we shouldn’t be laughing!” Lyra said, shushing them all. “I’ve been through that myself.”

“You have?” asked Lero.

“Yes. Celestia? She’s big, elegant, graceful, beautiful, powerful, refined, just, caring… When I was much younger, there was a time where I used to fantasize about Princess Celestia gliding through my window while I was in bed, and she’d uh… y’know… lemme get cozy with her...”

“That mane of hers really is something else, isn’t it?” Rarity sighed. The others barely noticed the slight shudder Lero gave.

“...But that’s just natural, really!” Lyra said quickly. “In fact, I don’t think there’s been a stallion or mare in a thousand years who hasn’t had naughty thoughts about Celestia at least ONCE in their lives.”

Rarity nodded, saying “I’ll drink to that,” and Twilight sighed in relief.

But Rainbow Dash let out a scoff. “Speak for yourself, Lyra. You’re forgetting the bent colts and bent fillies like me who just aren’t into mares.”

Oh no. Oh no, no, no, no, no. This was the other reason, besides her klutzy speed, that she’d grown up into such a loner: her big… dumb… stupid… MOUTH. That had come out so snooty and snobbish, too: ‘Speak for yourself, Lyra!’ She very well couldn’t blame them for casting her out of their house after this. It was Lero and Spike visiting her at her cottage all over again; her driving her friends away. Just where did a loser like her find all these hidden reservoirs of arrogance?

“Rainbow Dash?” A cloth napkin was floating her way, levitated by Rarity. “You’re crying.”

As if she didn’t know it already.

“I…I’m only really… into stallions,” she told them, before taking the napkin. High time she came right out and said it.

“We know, Rainbow,” said Lyra at her calmest and most soothing. “We’ve known for quite a while.”

Dash lowered the napkin from her eyes, looking over to Lero, alarmed.

“I didn’t tell them,” he said, raising his hand in innocence.

“It was kind of obvious,” Lyra went on to explain. “We’ve seen you looking at Big Macintosh in that way, and then at Lero, but never at any mare.”

"Oh, don't worry, Dash," Twilight said, rising from her seat to go over and give her friend a nuzzle. "We wouldn't ask you to join in that part right away, or ever, if that’s how you want it. We understand."

Dash's eyes went wide and her ears laid flat. "You... understand?" she breathed. “You’re not… angry that I was only interested in your stallion like that, and not you girls?”

“Aren’t we your friends?” Twilight asked.

“Of course!” Dash exclaimed. How could they even think she thought any less of them? After all they’d been through together, all the adventures, big and little? “You and Rarity are like sisters! And Lyra’s awesome, too, with her cool martial arts and music and calm, collected coolness…”

In surprise, Dash quietly passed her napkin over to Lyra, who’d begun crying glad tears. “So… you, say, love us like sisters, yes?”

“Uh… yeah...” said Rainbow Dash, though this was her first time considering the idea of Lyra Heartstrings as a sister of hers.

After a few seconds thought, she decided it sounded like a really cool idea.

“Yeah!” She enthused.

“Did it ever occur to you that maybe we’d be happy to love you back, as sisters?”

The pegasus’ gaze shifted onto Rarity, eyes asking: What about you? What does Lero’s princess decree?

“How long have we known each other, Dash?” the white unicorn asked.

“Uh… a really long time?” Maybe she wanted her to be more specific. “Since we were in school together?”

“That’s right. We go a long way back,” She stood and turned, her magic lifting the train of her dress. “I even owe my cutie mark to you, in part.”

Rainbow felt like Rarity’s rainbow-thunderbolt mark was staring at her, like a separate living thing.

“I knew you when you were a shy, withdrawn filly. I watched you become a shy, withdrawn mare. I would’ve liked to set you up with somepony to fall in love with, but you always seemed so intimidated… I thought you didn’t have any interest.”

“A major part of me really didn’t,” the pegasus admitted. “Not for the longest time. Or… convinced myself I didn’t.”

“Then one day, you, my dear friend -- who I knew since I was young, who helped me get my cutie mark, who fought in battles with me -- not only had you fallen in love; you were willing to do something about it. I never thought I’d see the day.”

Rarity sat back down. “Back when we were in Hollandaise’s, and you asked if you could date us all… Can you guess why I said yes?”

Rainbow Dash did give her answer serious thought. “Is it because Lero loves me?”

“Yes, there is that,” Rarity admitted, hugging Lero’s arm. “I spoil my stallion rotten. But the other more important reason, Rainbow Dash, is that I was finally seeing you come out of your shell… finally wanting others to love you… and I figured my herd would be good for you. And you would be good for us. Sex or no sex.”

With that, Rarity got back out of her chair, and came over to where Rainbow sat. “Nonetheless, I will, however, insist on greeting you with kisses every now and then, because I must ensure that your greetings to Lero are sufficient..."

Rainbow Dash went red again, right through her cyan coat. She swallowed hard. Rarity laughed and hugged her. "Not tonight, dear. May I kiss your cheek instead?"

Dash swallowed again. "Well, okay," she mumbled, and then her blush faded to pink as Rarity pecked her delicately on the cheek.

"There. Our first kiss," Rarity pronounced. "And until you choose to start the next, I shall use hugs instead."

"Hugs?" Dash said, hesitantly... and Rarity promptly bearhugged her.

"Hugs!" she confirmed. And after pulling back, Rarity asked, “Now who’s ready for dessert?”

* * *

“Cheese!”

Rainbow Dash rubbed the back of her neck. “Okay, you got your pictures. Can you leave us alone now?”

The pegasus photographer gave her a smile, hovering over the surface of the cloud where Twilight had landed the balloon. “Will do, Miss Dash. Thanks! You still have fans out there, hoping you’ll come back to the runways, you know.”

Rainbow Dash shook her head. “I’m done with that. I’m here on a date today, so if you don’t mind?”

The camerapony oohed. “Lucky mares,” he said, giving Twilight, Rarity, and Lyra a wink. Rarity was the only one to wink back. “And quite an impressive bodyguard you picked up! He’s got to be as tall as Princess Celestia.”

Dash blinked and looked back at her dates. Lero rolled his eyes. Lyra looked inscrutably amused. Twilight looked up at Lero, making the mental comparison, and nodded. Rarity was the only one to take umbrage, but she restrained herself to a mere “Hmph!’

“Uh… Oh, look, there’s the Multispecies Milers Championships about to start, gotta go!” Dash blurted, and gestured at the others to follow, as she hurried away from the paparazzo.

“Got your eye on a griffon, Dash?” Lyra commented once they were out of the other pony’s hearing. “You could have a kitty and an eagle at the same time,” she teased.

Dash swallowed. “And get that attitude with them? No thanks.” In a quieter voice, she admitted, “I just wanted to get away from him before he said anything even more uncomfortable.”

Rarity had the good grace to blush. “Gilda was… perhaps more brash than the average griffon, Dash.” Then she brightened. “But they do make for an exciting race. Not to mention exciting racers. Let’s get to our seats!” She led the way with the ease of much practice along the cloud surface while pegasi flew by overhead, swarming into the racetrack for the Wonderbolts show. Several other races were scheduled for the day; the Yearling Championships had started everything off, and watching the pegasi foals flutter determinedly around the track then led into several other age categories.

The seats were, as usual, not suited for Lero’s proportions. Outside the house, he was used to that. The train ride to Canterlot was a special kind of torment, having to sit in a particularly contorted posture the entire way. But the arena’s seats were cloud-based, and a brief glow of Rarity’s horn reconfigured their box (right at the finish line, no less) into something far more comfortable. Lero’s seat turned into a half-reclined plush chair, with four benches angled next to it, two to a side, letting all of his mares sit by him. Rarity claimed the spot by his right side, cuddling into his torso, and Lyra and Twilight nudged Rainbow Dash to take the left side. Twilight’s spot left her with her forelegs against Lero’s right thigh, and Lyra took the remaining seat on the left.

“Attention! Attention! The Multispecies Milers Championship race is about to begin! The betting is now closed on the Multispecies Milers Championship!” A mare’s voice sang out through the arena from her spot on a cloud hovering in the center of the track. “In lane one, from the Crystal Mountains, winner of the Northern Equestria Thestral Division, Comet Streak!” A batpony trotted up to the line, chin lifted defiantly, as though daring the overwhelmingly-pegasi audience to comment on her presence. The sound of the audience’s chatter didn’t notably change. That the Wonderbolts were exclusively a pegasus organization was a rankling fact to the batponies, but tended to go unnoticed by the pegasi.

“I like to root for the hippogriffs,” Rarity cheerfully confided while the announcer declared the other entrants in the race. “Poor things are sterile as mules, and so rare. Finding a griffon and a pony who love each other that much is quite a trick.” She winked at Lero. “Outside of certain comedies, anyhow.”

Lero laughed and ran his fingers through Rarity’s mane. The back of it, not the more-visible front, and carefully following her curls, though. He more casually brushed at the back of Rainbow Dash’s head on the other side, and being free to just ruffle her mane again made the day all the brighter. Which was a trick, considering they were already on top of the clouds. “Are there any racing today?”

Rarity pointed with a hoof. “Lane six. I spotted her on the sheet.” She waved a hoof at the starting line. “Go, Goldenrod!” The eagle-headed and eagle-winged equine in lane six apparently heard; she gave Rarity a startled look, then broke out into a broad beaming smile and hunched down, wiggling her shoulders at the line. Twilight wished she had a brush and easel. And several years of art lessons. One shout of encouragement from a total stranger, and the rare pony/griffon crossbreed was the perfect picture of Renewed Determination, deserving to be captured in oils forever.

“... Wait a minute, what’s he doing here?” Twilight said in a strangled voice, pointing to lane eight… where a mismatched collection of body parts was pulling off a track suit. “Somepony please tell me that Discord isn’t entering this race. Please.”

“What?!” exclaimed the other four. Rarity pulled up the day’s sheet. “... Lane eight, Discord, draconequus. … He appears to have entered entirely legitimately.” The dismay in her voice was palpable.

“What are you up to, I wonder?” Dash muttered, giving the multi-species contestant a curious look. He winked and waved back from his spot, and blew her a kiss. His nose and lips flew over and placed a loud wet smooch on Dash’s nose, then flew right back toward him.

Once the competitors were lined up, the announcer didn’t waste time. Such as time for Discord’s lips to make it back to his face. “Ready! Set! Go!” And they took off - literally, as the mile race included takeoffs as a required element. Landings, too - the finish line was at cloud level for that race, and crashing was a disqualifier, even after passing the finish line. To Rarity’s delight, Goldenrod came in second, behind Discord. Discord’s face came in ninth. A loud argument promptly ensued regarding whether Discord’s face ought to be considered a separate contestant, whether he should be ruled on when his nose crossed the line instead of his body, and whether he should be disqualified entirely for using magic.

The ultimate ruling was for disqualification, leaving Goldenrod the official winner. The stands were heavily divided on the outcome. Some pegasi argued with everypony around them that Discord’s magical flight was no different than anypony else’s. Others supported the judges. Others argued that he shouldn’t have been allowed to compete in the first place - and a number of wits argued back that he was the perfect competitor for a multispecies race.

Dash just shook her head as she watched him smugly stroll off through the clouds. “He did that on purpose,” she said. “I guess creating a controversial ruling and then accepting the judges’ decision is a safe and healthy way for him to make some chaos…”

To her surprise, the others agreed with that assessment. Even Rarity declared it an example of unexpected good sportsmanship - even if done with deliberate intent to cause arguments. While the debate continued, the next event was getting set up. The main event.

“Attention! Attention! The Wonderbolts Derby is about to begin! The betting is now closed on the Wonderbolts Derby!”

“Oh! Here we go!” Rarity gasped - and such was the intensity of her gaze at the starting line that the rest of them stared right along with her. Lero felt feathers brush against his hand as Rainbow Dash tensed in excitement beside him. He smiled. One of those feathers jostled against his fingers, and he knew it’d be coming out soon. He remembered the day she molted the feather he’d worn in his hair ever since.

“Welcome to the Wonderbolts Derby!” the announcer’s voice echoed through every loudspeaker. “The competitors are taking their places at the starting line, and our race will begin momentarily!”

It was easy to forget that the Wonderbolts weren’t regular everyday pegasi at heart, same as the ones filling so many seats of this very stadium. At times like this, it was more like they were scientifically bioengineered superbeings of bliss and awe. Rarity’s eyes were fixed on those iconic outfits, the athletic wings flexing in readiness.

“Someday,” she breathed to herself. Lero still heard it. He smiled down, then glanced at Rainbow Dash. She was staring at the Wonderbolts with the exact same expression. He thought he might have imagined hearing the blue pegasus repeat “Someday” in her quietest whisper yet.

A trumpet sounded, and all eyes went to the starting line. The Wonderbolts’ hooves were already off the ground, their legs tucked hard against to their underside of their chests, staring intently forward. In their matching full-body uniforms and goggles covering their eyes, the only way Lero had of telling one Wonderbolt from the next were their manes and slight differences in body build. Lero recognized Soarin’, Spitfire, Rapidfire, and a few others, but Rainbow… er, Rarity would know the full roster by heart.

The stallion in the referee shirt blew his whistle, brought down his checkered flag, and Lero checked the time: two o’clock to the second.

And they were off. So fast! What pure speed! Even the slowest of the Wonderbolts had accelerated into a streaking blue blur, the crowd cheering and stomping their hooves as the racers lunged around the turns.

“Come on, Fleetfoot!” Rarity called.

“Come on, blue-maned stallion!” screamed Rainbow Dash, even louder, hooves cupped to her mouth. She was really keyed up, waving her forelegs up in the air as though hoping one of them would spot her and blow her a kiss. Her wings were fanning wildly without even lifting her off the ground.

Lero could feel his own pulse building to a rush as the Wonderbolts whizzed around the racetrack again and again, faster than a frenzied…

“And it’s Soarin’, by a nose!” called the commentator, as the referee swept his flag down. The whole stadium erupted in an rumbling stampede of stomping hooves, chanting Soarin’s name.

What?! But… but…

Lero checked the time again on his watch: 2:00:10 P.M.

“Ten seconds?!” he exclaimed in incredulity, as the four mares around him cheered and jumped in the air. “Just ten seconds?!”

“I know!” cried Rarity, happily squeezing his hand. “Wasn’t that gripping?!”

Lero was torn between being amazed and feeling cheated. To clear that kind of distance in ten seconds was an incredible feat, make no mistake. But it’d still been a mere ten seconds from the time that referee had signaled the start to its finish!

Ten seconds! Back on Earth, he’d witnessed solar and lunar eclipses that’d taken longer than that. The Kentucky Derby was said to at least take over a minute or so. But ten seconds?!

The tickets to this race weren’t cheap, and it’d certainly taken a lot longer than ten seconds to fly out here to Canterlot, wait in line, thread their way through hundreds of equines and buy popcorn, soda, and hay fries. Thank God he hadn’t blinked! At least with the earlier races, he felt like he’d gotten his money’s worth. But this was supposed to be the Wonderbolt Derby’s big feature attraction! A single sprint? Couldn’t they have lengthened the race an extra couple of miles? Multiple heats? Something?

But as he looked around, no other soul seemed bothered by such thoughts. All he could see were bleachers full of happy, celebrating race fans; the only glum or sour faces belonged to ponies who were forking over money to other ponies they’d clearly lost bets to.

It had to be a pony thing.

And then Rainbow Dash flew in front of his face. If happiness had been light, her smile would’ve blinded him. “Lero, this has been the awesomest date I’ve EVER, EVER been on!”

And just like that, the human’s discontent was gone. Ten seconds flat.

Dear Mental Diary, Lero thought.

Today I got Rainbow Dash to fall back in love with the Wonderbolts. Granted, it wasn’t quite as glorious as getting her to fall back in love with me, but it was still a day extremely well spent.

* * *

“I can’t even explain it!” the pegasus gushed.

She and Rarity were at the head of the pack, making their way towards the fish place Rarity had mentioned, while Lero, Twilight, and Lyra brought up the rear.

“I mean, as far back as I can remember, the Wonderbolts didn’t do anything for me, not when I was a filly -- and I attended a couple stunt shows of theirs when I was young! -- or anytime after… complete apathy at best, when the thought of flying fast wasn’t making me cringe outright. Today, I see them in action, and KA-BLOOIEEE! Something came to life inside me! I could feel it! I’m converted! I’ve seen the light! The Wonderbolts ROCK!”

“Well, it takes a certain level of refinement for a pony to appreciate such athletes as the Wonderbolts,” Rarity told her.

“YEEEEEEEEAAAHH!!!” screeched an obese puce pegasus standing in their way. She’d painted most of her fur in drippy blue and yellow. “BOLTS FOREVER! BOOOOLTS FUR--EV-VARRR!!!”

She stuck two beer bottles in her mouth and chugged them down both at once. Herd Bellerophon walked around her, trying to pretend she didn’t exist.

“...I mean, what an exhausting pace! Such stamina! Each one, the peak of pegasus physique! Ohhh, every time I see them, a part of me wants to grow wings right then and there!”

“I almost feel that way myself!” Twilight said.

“Rarity, I wanna know everything about the Wonderbolts. Everything!” Rainbow Dash demanded. “I feel like I’ve got a LIFETIME of catching up to do!”

Behind Rainbow and Rarity, the non-swapped, exempted members of Herd Bellerophon shared a delighted look between themselves.

“Like, what was the name of the blue-maned stallion who won the race?” Rainbow asked.

“His name is Soarin’, spelled with an apostrophe after the N instead of a G,” Rarity told her. “He’s one of the few Wonderbolts who’s male, so of course, BIG fan base. Average wingpower of 15.5, cutie mark of a lighting bolt with wings, favorite food is pie.”

“Do the Wonderbolts have some kind of Head Wonderbolt?” the pegasus asked.

“Of course!” said Rarity, “Spitfire, the mare with the fiery-colored mane, has a phoenix for a cutie mark, average wingpower of 16.1. She’s captain, and even teaches Wonderbolt cadets at the Wonderbolt Academy.”

“Whoaaaa,” breathed Rainbow Dash. “And what about the one with the icy-blue mane?”

“She’s…”

“Hold that thought!” the pegasus said, stopping at a stand selling Wonderbolts memorabilia. “I’ll take this and this and this…” Moments later, bits were exchanged, and Rainbow Dash sported a Wonderbolts-themed saddlebag overflowing with Wonderbolts posters, a Soarin’ plushie, an illustrated official guidebook on all things Wonderbolt from their founding to present day, and a Rainbow Dash-sized flight suit.

“Watch out! We’ve created a monster,” Lyra laughed. She gave Lero a cheerful wink.

Dash gave a laugh of her own, but then looked at Lero with concern. “Lero! Your flower! What happened to it?”

He reached a hand up towards his ear. The flower Rainbow Dash had given him… it was gone!

“Must’ve fallen off,” he said, looking at his other girls, who were all still wearing theirs.

“Quick!” Rainbow Dash cried. “Let’s go back to our seats, maybe we’ll find it there!”

They were just about to turn around, when Lero had a better idea.

“How about this, instead?” His hand reached out and sought out that feather he’d felt on Rainbow Dash’s wings. She gasped in surprise, then started to relax as the ongoing itch in her wing eased. But she went silent, her mouth ajar, as he took that feather and braided it into his hair; a partner to the feather that was already there.

“Would you look at that!” Rarity said faintly. “My white rose and your blue feather, side by side!”

A camera flashed. The pegasus photographer from before had made a return appearance, just in time to catch Lero displaying the feather. Rainbow Dash said nothing, and the paparazzo flew off.

The re-emerging Wonderbolt fangirl had lost her voice. She stared at Lero’s new feather with glistening eyes. For all the way through lunch at the fish place Rarity knew, and then the whole balloon ride back to Ponyville, Rainbow Dash had a lot less to say than she had right after Soarin’ had won the derby. The basket was big enough for six ponies to ride comfortably, and even with Lero’s longer frame it was still roomy. But with Rainbow Dash stretching her wings to brush against her new herdmates’ sides and her cheeks surprising them with spontaneous nuzzles, it felt as cozy as cuddling together in bed.

Author's Note

Merry Christmas, everyone.

Also, while you're here, I strongly encourage you to check out this spin-off: Into The Hedge.

Twenty-Six: Sextet

Between brush strokes to her mane, Rarity opened her copy of Feedbag magazine on the counter of her vanity, and flipped to Page 3. The large shot of Lero tucking Rainbow Dash’s feather into his ear at the Wonderbolts Derby, as Rainbow looked on in heartfelt amazement held Rarity's attention for several seconds before she began reading the article underneath it.

FOURTH TIME’S THE CHARM by Big Shot, photojournalist

Enthusiasts for off-beat herds, stand up and take note! For a fourth time running, Bellerophon Michealides (that enigmatic alien from beyond Equestria) has proven he’s got love to spare! Last Friday afternoon, the extraordinary immigrant was spotted at the 48th Wonderbolts Derby in the company of his herd of three unicorn mares: Twilight Sparkle (Princess Celestia’s celebrated pupil), Rarity (bearer of the Element of Loyalty), and Still Way Grandmaster Lyra Heartstrings, plus one extra lucky lady!

Her name is Rainbow Dash; pegasus mare, national hero, bearer of the Element of Kindness, and former runway supermodel, with a strong devotion to animal welfare and naturalism.

“So far, we are all very happy with Rainbow,” says Rarity, famed lead mare of Herd Bellerophon…

KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK! KNOCK!

“What ever could be so important?” Rarity grumbled to herself as she trotted down the stairs. She was halfway across the library’s main floor when she opened the door. “The library doesn’t open for...” she started to say.

“WHERE’S LERO?” yelped a wild-eyed Rainbow Dash, bursting into the library, flitting like a hummingbird into the kitchen, downstairs, upstairs, then back in front of Rarity. “QUICK! I have never needed a stallion so much in my LIFE!” Her hind legs twitched in midair and her buzzing wings fanned the scent of aroused mare through the room.

Rarity blinked. “...Well, this is sudden,” she said blankly. “No warning, Dashie?”

Dash shook her head. “None! Woke up this morning in the worst heat I’ve ever had. Like my body thinks I should have a stallion ready to pull out of my broom closet, and is just as mad at me for waiting as all my animals were, a couple of weeks ago. Now where’s Lero? Please! I know I’m just dating the herd, but this is an EMERGENCY!”

Rarity shook her head, snapping herself out of a haze of bemusement. “Ah, I’m terribly sorry, Dash, but Lero’s taken Twilight, Lyra, and Fluttershy off somewhere for those comedy lessons. Poor Fluttershy’s been in such need of refreshers, it’s been doing the world for her.”

“Yeah, well, right now I need the world doing ME!” the cyan pegasus very nearly howled. “Seriously, this is driving me nuts!” She shuddered in midair, and then a light bulb went off. She grabbed Rarity’s cheeks and Stared into her eyes. “YOU’RE GOING TO LOVE ME. HARD. NOW.”

Rarity gasped, her cheeks pinkening. She closed the library door with a quick glow of magic. “Dash! Friends do help out, yes, but I do know that you’re bent. I wouldn’t want to do something you’ll regret later.”

Dash pressed her nose against Rarity’s. “I. Don’t. Care. What happens in heat doesn’t COUNT. You KNOW that. Now pull the bucking cooler on and MOUNT ME.” Her eyes were boring into Rarity’s. Her will and her urgency were making Rarity’s heart race.

Rarity kissed her. Hard. Right on the lips. “In that case, present yourself. Head down, legs open, tail high, and say that again.”

Dash didn’t hesitate a heartbeat. She spun, spread, dropped her head and raised her dock. “Mount me!” she pled.

Rarity smiled brightly. “I suppose the rest of us will be in this boat in a few days as well, so far be it from me to abandon a friend in her time of need.”

Dash let out a strangled noise as Rarity’s tongue found her blue-furred cleft. Her wings snapped out to the sides so hard she flicked a feather into the wall like a knife.

“Goodness!” Rarity exclaimed, giving that projectile a glance. “Erm… I’ll dispense with the playful banter for a few minutes, if you don’t mind.” Her horn glowed as she hastily altered her plans, tugging out a cooler from where it was poking out of Dash’s saddlebags. She pulled the toy about her hips and all but jumped on top of the needy pegasus.

* * *

Females put up with a lot from their bodies, regardless of which species they are. Human women of Earth must endure the menstrual cycle. Pony mares of Equestria have a different sort of cycle to bedevil them: the estrus cycle. Which cycle is the biggest imposition is a matter for debate best left to females, since wisdom demands that males steer well clear of the discussion in mixed company.

Estrus, or more colloquially, ‘heat,’ occurs when a mare’s body becomes fertile. However, a pony mare’s fertility is not something that suggests itself meekly. It does not engage in compromise. It would never allow a mare to deny it entrance into her life and then shut the door in its face.

Estrus rams down the door and burns all defensive fortifications to the ground. It sucker-punches a mare, straps a saddle on her back, sets a bit in her mouth, then pulls the reins and rides her ragged for days on end.

Straight mares, bent mares, asexual mares, mares with truly bizarre fetishes… it doesn’t matter what a filly usually is. Under heat, the one and only thing that can quell the fire within them is phallic penetration of their marehoods, the sensation of hot liquid squirting in them, coupled with the feel of another body pressing against their own. Anything else a mare might care to try from masturbation onwards would be like attempting to extinguish the heat of tabasco sauce by drinking habañero sauce.

Some mares utterly despise their estrus. The loss of control. The descent from a civilized being into a slavering, needy animal. They face upcoming heats with a werewolf’s dread of the full moon. Other mares revel in their heats, look forward to them like a holiday, gleefully riding the carnal roller coaster to wherever it led. Spurs optional.

Either way, the heat is as indomitable and all-consuming as any Swap-induced obsession. Yet estrus, itself, is not the whole story.

Before human women experience menstruation, they first undergo a pre-menstrual phase, as their body goes through the effort of preparing for a potential child. Before entering estrus, mares go through a similar phase called proestrus. Colloquially known as ‘the calm before the storm,’ and also, ‘the hurricane warning,’ its biological function is to act as a heads-up, to alert mares to find a stallion.

‘Heed me, and mark it well, daughter of ponykind!’ Proestrus whispers in the minds of every mare it visits. ‘Very soon, in but a few days’ time, the Great Lust shall be upon you once again. The time has come to make preparations! Set your affairs in order before it is too late!”

A few mares are completely deaf to the call of proestrus, such as poor Rainbow Dash. Almost every one of her heats had ambushed her completely by surprise, ever since she began HAVING heats. Fortunately, mares in most areas came into estrus around the same time, so sometimes she had some warning. Unfortunately for her, in heat as in so many other things, even after getting she'd gotten synced on ‘Ponyville Time,’ Rainbow Dash tended to be early.

All the rest, save a few exceptionally stubborn fools, did both hear and heed proestrus’ warning. Especially because, according to experts on the heat, THIS coming heat would be an EXCEPTIONALLY powerful one. The mares, themselves, could feel in their blood, spread throughout every unicorn, pegasus, and earth pony who’d passed puberty: a latent epidemic of lust, biding its time to spring to life.

It was due to be the biggest heat wave to hit Ponyville in decades. So every mare who wasn’t a complete dunderhead did prepare themselves. And most of the dunderheaded ones, too.

For the next set of days, shoppers stormed the stores and certain items flew off the shelves. Lubricant. Chocolate. Liquor and wine of every sort. Cosmetics. Smooth jazz albums. Every copy of both the Kamare Sutra and 6,000 Spells Every Unicorn In Heat Should Know. Stamina booster potions for the stallions. Plastic Mask’s costume shop (as well as the Carousel Boutique… normally) did some of their best business these times of year. Nurse costumes, maid costumes, Celestia costumes, Celestia’s guard costumes, cop costumes, Daring Do costumes, pleather bondage fairy costumes, all the old favorites… there were even a few who got themselves ‘human costumes.’

Costumes aside, mares also took the moment to bring out their boxes of adult toys, and check whether they needed to be replenished or replaced at the Chillbox or Mattress Mambo’s Adult Toy Shop. Wealthy ponies, (including the parents of Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon) got in touch with their travel agents and booked trips to luxury liners or tropical islands. Other ponies who either couldn’t afford such extravagances, or who were more homebodies at heart, stocked up on food as though preparing to be snowed in, (and indeed, many weren’t planning on setting hoof outside their homes.) Shy teenage colts and stallions who just weren’t up to it went quietly into hiding.

Appointments of every sort were either rescheduled or cancelled altogether. Once the heat actually hit, business, commerce, and government would be reduced to the barest of bare-bones skeleton crews in Ponyville, usually manned by the elderly, the exceptionally responsible youth, or the aforementioned disinterested stallions and shy teenage colts. Much like Christmas Day, back on Earth, but week-long.

By far, though, there were two factors in preheat preparation more important than anything else.

The first most-important factor was picking partners. Ponies already in established herds were in the clear. Those who wanted to have foals (or make a few more) would find no time more opportune than now. But for everypony else: especially for all the mares who weren’t up to pregnancy, for all the mares still not part of any herd… now was the time to find a friend. Preferably female. As wonderful as colts could be; all it took was one time to get pregnant, and during heat, you were especially vulnerable. What good were contraceptives when a mare needed to feel that squirt inside her to begin to relax?

She had to be a pretty good friend. Somepony you’d be willing to spend a few days with. Somepony you’d still feel comfortable with when she strapped a cooler to herself, mounted you, then pounded away at your most feminine area, playing the stallion, until your body had been tricked into cooling down. And then you had to go return the favor to her.

It was okay, though! Coolers were a timeless tradition, passed down through the ages, generation after generation. Culturally speaking, fillies using coolers on each other during a heat didn’t even qualify as sex. Really, all it amounted to was just two friends helping each other out. No different than them zipping the back of each others’ dresses before a party.

As long as everything was conducted cleanly, and the girls were free of disease, there was no social stigma whatsoever. Every girl had been there before; you weren’t really yourself during a heat. And there were no long-lasting commitments expected, either. The fact that a large number of ‘cooler buddies’ ended up joining in the same herd was just a nice coincidence.

The second most-important factor was getting the foals away. Someplace where the innocent young eyes of colts and fillies too young for the heat wouldn’t see their Daddies and Mommies at it like rabbits. Someplace where their delicate virgin ears wouldn’t hear moans down every street they turned. Someplace else far from where stallions and mares could get it on in peace, for heats were notoriously slow to cool down. Or, more significantly, someplace where someone could watch out for them while not being completely distracted.

So school was cancelled for the week to come. Foals lucky enough to have relatives in distant cities where estruses weren’t taking place suddenly found themselves packing their bags for a visit. Another popular option was sending the kids off to camp.

* * *

Back when Spike and Twilight lived with Celestia, and Twilight started having heats of her own, there had always been palace attendants or Celestia herself to look after him. However, once they moved to Ponyville, it’d been one of two things whenever the heat rolled by: Granny Smith as his babysitter, or camp.

Camp Mountain Peaks, specifically. A ski camp in winter. A wilderness camp every other season. This would be Spike’s third time going.

“So, Spike!” Lero was saying cheerily, “Off to wilderness camp! Are you excited?”

“Yeah! Kinda,” said Spike, who had already decided he'd be a good sport about it all. Complaining wasn’t going to help anyway.

Once again, he stood with a backpack on his back in front of two long rows of yellow-painted pony-drawn wagons. A camp counselor had been hitched to every wagon. Spike was beginning to recall some of their names, including Trail Mix and Insect Repellent. So many other foals were all around him; some had come with their entire families to see them off. Spike just had Lero and Lyra this time, which wasn’t all that bad a thing.

“We’re so thrilled for you,” Lyra chimed in. “It’ll be such an adventure, being able to get out of the house, reconnect with nature…”

“Guys,” the dragon spoke dryly. “This isn’t the first time I’ve been sent off to wilderness camp.”

Seeing their abashment was downright satisfying. As though they were two of the parents here who’d been painstakingly hush-hush and clandestine about what they did in the bedroom. As though he was one of the foals here who honestly didn’t know what this camping trip was really all about.

But they were starting to look guilty, like some of the wounds were about to be reopened, so he quickly said, “Which isn’t to say that I mind. Fact is… I’m happy for you guys, it’s good that you’ll be busy with each other while I’m gone. I mean, everyone’s going to be preoccupied… including Applejack.”

Sighing, the little dragon stared down at his toes. One of the counselors was calling for attention so he could welcome every camper, new and old, to Camp Mountain Peaks. But Spike wasn’t really listening to him, since he’d heard the speech before.

“She’s been making her own arrangements, same as Pinkie Pie, same as Fluttershy, and same as you guys,” Spike continued. “And I’m happy about that too. It’s great AJ’s gonna be taking this train ride to Canterlot, great that she’ll have something that’ll force her to stop thinking about dressmaking, even for just a while. And as much as I’m trying to be there for Applejack… I think we can all agree that there are certain things I’m just not ready to help her with. So it’s probably for the best that I go away for a little while.”

“...Yeah,” said Lyra softly.

Spike looked up Lyra. Out of all his ‘older herd-sisters,’ she’d always been easiest to get along with. “What’s it like? The ‘hurricane warning?’ How’s it feel for you, Lyra?”

It wasn’t his place to ask about the heat, itself. But perhaps she wouldn’t mind talking about the calm-before-the-storm, since it wasn’t as nasty or naughty a thing. Unless it was. Then she had every right not to answer.

“You know what it’s like, mentally, when you have a blinding flash of brilliant insight?” Lyra asked.

“You mean, like a big ‘Aha!’ moment?” said Spike, pointing a finger brightly into the air. “Yeah, I know.”

“Well, imagine that… but without any actual brilliant insight, and the ‘blinding flash’ sensation not going away.”

“That’s what proestrus feels like? Just… constant trepidation, anticipation?” asked Lero.

“Pretty much,” said Lyra. “It’s not bad, really. There are worse psychological states for a girl to be stuck in.”

At the front, they could all hear the head counselor working the foals up into a cheering frenzy; ‘I can’t hear you!’

“I understand that Rainbow Dash might be joining in... when you’re all busy,” Spike said.

This wasn’t something Spike was supposed to know… but back when Fluttershy had been Caretaker, she’d always get either Pinkie Pie or Appjeack as her cooler buddy during her heats. Whichever one it was, they’d have to come over her house, (never the other way around) because there was no way the yellow pegasus could leave her animals by themselves for as long as a heat lasted.

But Rainbow Dash had done something different. She’d put her animals in pet hotels and animal reservations for the week, and had plunked down a hefty sum of money for the privilege.

Lero and Lyra both nodded. “Yeah,” Lero said. “There’s a very good possibility of that.”

Spike let out a happy, relaxed breath.

“Guys, I know that before… this whole Starswirl thing... Dash and I weren’t as close as we could’ve been, family-wise. We got along well enough, we shared the same house, she was cool to hang out with. But that day she wore Fluttershy’s gala dress… it made me realize that I really do miss her. Not a day goes by that I don’t regret doing more with Dash when she was still part of the family. Or doing more for Dash when she needed help most.”

He felt it really was all his fault, deep down. If he had done more for Rainbow Dash when he had the chance, he could’ve prevented her from breaking Lero’s heart. If Lero’s heart hadn’t been broken, he wouldn’t have given up on Rainbow Dash. And if Lero hadn’t given up on Rainbow Dash, he wouldn’t have turned to Rarity, and they wouldn’t have…

...they wouldn’t have...

“This spell of Starswirl’s… I really, really, REALLY feel horrible when I say this, but I don’t know if Twilight’s gonna be able to fix it. We may have to live with these changes for good.”

Lyra came over and wiped at his eyes when the tears started coming. As they fell, he looked past the aqua unicorn, at Lero.

“So Lero, I… I’m counting on you. You’ve gotten so far with Rainbow Dash. This is your moment. Pull her the rest of the way back. Work your magic on her. I want my big sister back so badly! I don’t care what mark she has on her. I’ll help her with her animals. I’ll be a better little brother to her… the little brother I should’ve been!”

Sweet Celestia, he hoped he could get himself to stop crying before he got on board one of those wagons. Stop thinking about what his stupidity had cost him, what he was counting on the human to win back for him.

“I promise I will, Spike,” Lero vowed with a hand over his heart, as Lyra embraced him. “But in return, there’s something you’ve got to do for me while you’re at camp.”

“What is it?” Spike asked.

And the human pointed one of his scaleless hands at the line of camp wagons. “When you’re there at Camp Mountain Peaks, I want you to be there completely. I don’t want you going to this place and spending your whole time fretting about what’s happening to the rest of us back home. Don’t even think about me or Twilight or Rarity or Applejack or Rainbow Dash or Lyra. Put Ponyville completely out of your mind.”

He put both his hands on Spike’s smaller shoulders.

“Treat this like the vacation it’s meant to be. Climb a tree, swim in a lake, skin your knee, get a few grass stains, make new friends and poke some fun at the camp counselors. Catch a frog, do arts and crafts projects, compete in games, take some interesting rocks and leaves to bring home, pick a few wild berries and eat them if your counselors say they’re edible, build a campfire, sing the songs, tell your scariest ghost stories, roast some marshmallows…”

“...Without sending them to Celestia,” Lyra teased.

Spike sniffed and laughed. “Thanks for the idea! I might just send a few to the Princess. By accident.”

Lero laughed. “Yeah, just have fun. Just be a kid, Spike.”

“And don’t worry about whether any of it’s lame or corny. Just go with it,” Lyra encouraged. “Every problem you’re trying to fix here in Ponyville will still be there when you come back. If you obsess over it…”

“I’d be just like the Swapped, right?” How wonderful; the tears had stopped, and he could smile again. It would’ve been so embarrassing to climb aboard one of the wagons with those other kids and keep on crying.

It was all good advice. A lot of foals, especially the really spiteful ones, loved to consider themselves above-it-all when they came to this camp, or treat this place as little better than a prison, (though it didn’t help that most of the counselors tended to baby them.) But this time… yeah, he really had been through the wringer, and he could use a vacation.

“I’ll do what you say,” he told the human. “I promise. From one Equilibrium Seeker to another.”

“Equilibrium Seeker?” the human scoffed. “God, could you sound any more comic booky?”

“Hey, comic books are awesome!” Spike protested, but he saw his good friend Button Mash was getting on board the wagon, and he didn’t want to miss out on sitting next to him. With a wave back, he hustled over, and managed to land the best seat. Thank goodness. He didn’t spend enough time with Button Mash as it was.

Once every foal was aboard, the wagons started leaving in caravan formation. One last thought struck the dragon, and he turned around to shout at Lyra and Lero.

“Applejack’s still mine, though! Mine, do you hear me?! Off-limits to you! I don’t care if she howls outside your door like a dog this week! If you go near her, I’LL KNOW!” Then he smiled and waved cheerily. “Have fun with Rainbow Dash!”

“Yeah, yeah.” Lero replied, rolling his eyes.

“I can’t believe you’re still crushing on Applejack,” said Button Mash, as Spike sat back down.

“What can I say?” the dragon shrugged. “Gorgeous blondes are my weakness.”

* * *

After dropping Spike off, the remainder of the day proceeded fairly unremarkably. Rarity was there when Lero and Lyra returned home; she’d opened the windows to let some fresh air in and she’d also given herself a fresh showering. Then Twilight came home from her experiments up in the cloud house, and the four of them went out for some last-minute shopping. Tomorrow, the marketplace would be shut down except for the essentials. All the buzz between merchants and customers was on the heat due to strike them.

Then Herd Bellerophon returned home, tidied up the house and turned in for the night; each one giving the other soft goodnight kisses before tucking into their accustomed spots in the large bed they shared and drifted off.

The next morning, Lero was still asleep, face-down upon the mattress, when magic lifted him a quarter-inch off the bed. All 177 pounds of him were flipped over as effortlessly as a playing card. Then came the feel of a light-framed body settling upon his chest.

Long hair tickled the skin of his face. A large, moist, flat nose pressed against Lero’s smaller, drier, pointier one, followed shortly by a set of well-licked lips kissing his. Instinctively, he kissed back. But when he felt Twilight Sparkle’s larger tongue re-acquainting itself with his own, he woke up.

The heat was on. There was a roughness in the way Twilight Sparkle panted as she drew away from him. They’d had sex before. She’d turned lustful eyes upon him before. But when estrus struck, she looked at him like she’d spent too long under the sun and he was a box of popsicles fresh from the freezer.

“I want to feel your heart beating against mine again…” she told him, in a voice shaking with huskiness.

The whole room was swimming in the smell of the girls’ excitement; Twilight’s most strongly, but Lyra’s and Rarity’s as well. During heat, however, there was a certain something more mixed into the usual scent of the musk, ‘a pinch of pepper,’ as Lero liked to think of it. Whenever he was transformed into a pony, this perfume made them downright irresistible.

But just as Twilight Sparkle bent forward to give Lero more, she found her tail enveloped in a green aura of telekinetic magic, dragging her backward, out of the bedroom.

“No! No! NO!” she cried, all legs scrambling towards her human as she was pulled out of the room. Through the doorway, Lero saw Lyra give him the aching look an alcoholic gives a freshly poured shot of whiskey, before resolutely shutting the door on him and locking it.

“Let me through, Lyra!” the human heard Twilight beg from behind the door.

“NOT before Rarity returns with Rainbow Dash.” the Still Way grandmaster insisted. “We want him to be fresh, clean and untouched for Rainbow’s ‘first time’ with our stallion, not all sweaty, disheveled and used-up! It’s proper and respectful.”

“Just a little bit of fun!” Twilight pleaded, as Lero pulled himself from the bedsheets. “Just one eensy weensy little orgasm to tide myself over! We can clean up right afterwards!”

“No!”

“Greedy!”

“How am I being greedy?!” Lyra rebutted. “I’m not enjoying him either yet!”

“Well, who knows how long Rarity’s gonna take to bring Rainbow over?!”

“You think Rarity’s gonna drag her hooves about being with Lero? During a heat?”

Twilight had nothing to say to that.

“Everything okay in there?” Lero asked, knocking on his side of the door.

The two unicorns each gave gasps.

“W-we’re fine!” said Twilight.

“Yeah!” said Lyra. “Hey, it’d probably be best if you just didn’t come out until Rarity comes back. She’s bringing Rainbow with her… Rainbow’s having her heat, too.”

“I figured.” said Lero. “So I guess I’ll just freshen myself up, then?”

“Yeah,” said Lyra. “Go get yourself as… uh… presentable as you can.”

“How does he do it?!” Twilight sounded almost like a whiny child, or the old Pinkie Pie at this point. It was too adorable for words. “How does he manage to sound twenty times more masculine and rugged and stallion-y when it’s heat season?!”

“I don’t know!” Lyra whimpered back. “Our hormones are just playing tricks on our ears!”

“Hey, girls,” The tone of Lero’s voice was no more rugged than any other day, but he could sense them listening closer at the earnestness in his voice. “I know we’re all chompin’ at the bit to get to the good stuff, but let’s take one moment to think clearheadedly, while it’s just the three of us. Heats come and heats go… and believe me, I have every intention of making this as intense and steamy as the rest of them… but Lyra’s right.”

Twilight Sparkle gave a soft, disappointed moan at that.

“Twilight, this isn’t a dig at you, so please don’t take this the wrong way, but we have to think long-term and worst-case-scenario about this. We have to prepare for if you can’t find a cure. Now, things have been going really well with us dating Rainbow Dash so far… and I’ve just got a really good feeling about this heat! This may be just the ticket to bring Dash completely off the fence, and make her want to join our family for good! We have to put her needs first!”

“You’re right,” Twilight said, sounding more like herself. “I think we can all agree that Rarity’s been a wonderful, excellent, marvelous addition to our herd… but it’s just not the same without Rainbow Dash in it.”

“Definitely,” Lyra concurred.

“Here’s one thing I was thinking about,” Lero went on, “When Dash lets us get intimate with her, let’s not be too perfect about how we handle her body. Rarity will be watching us, and it may raise too many questions, if we know where all Dash’s sweet spots are right off the bat. According to the Swapped version of things, this’ll be my first time ever making love to a pegasus since, y’know, I’ve only done it with unicorns up until now. I think the same applies to you, Twilight.”

“To be fair, he raises a good point,” the purple unicorn noted, after a pause. “But I could always tell Rarity I ‘researched’ how to handle a pegasus in the bedroom.”

“And as for me, we’re all aware I used lived a very, uh… wanton lifestyle before I embraced the path of the Still Way.” Lyra added. “Suffice it to say that phase of my life featured a few frisky nights with some pegasus mares. So what we have are the most effective aspect of a good lie; that is, being true.”

Lero shook his head, feeling like the guy who’d drawn the short straw. “So I guess what I’m saying is once things get steamy, I’m going to deliberately fumble a little bit with Dash, especially with her wings. Because I’m the only one without a good excuse.”

Lyra sighed. “To think… even in this, we still have to uphold this mad masquerade.”

“The show must go on,” said Lero. “Anyway, that’s it. No telling how quickly Rarity will be back, so I’m going to freshen up as fast as I can. Think I should even bother putting clothes on?”

“Absolutely,” said Lyra. “After all, Rainbow’s gonna need to relearn everything she’s forgotten about how a mare undresses her human.”

When Lero got out of the shower, he found breakfast waiting for him on a dish set on the bathroom countertop. Some scrambled eggs, several pieces of jellied toast... and four large vials of stamina booster potion; passion fruit-flavored, and serviceberry-flavored.

Lero regarded the potions wryly. Once again, between the Swapped and Unswapped members of his family, he was really going to have his hands full, making sure everyone else’s needs were fulfilled. Once again, he had a long set of days ahead of him, and his loved ones were going to work him to the bone. Such was the lot of a proper herd stallion in Equestria.

So he downed the potions first before starting in on his breakfast.

* * *

“We’re home!” Lero heard Rarity call up to him from downstairs. Just as Lero had predicted, it hadn’t been that long at all, but the human had still had all the time he’d needed to get ready.

The girls were all gathered in the foyer. When four fine ladies fixed their fawning eyes upon a guy as he descended the stairs, it could be rather challenging for him to stay humble.

“You look ravishing, darling,” Rarity declared. Her tail swished vibrantly behind her.

“Well, you know me. Always dressing for the occasion.”

Actually, he hadn’t worn anything special this time. Nothing either too kinky or ‘princely.’ Such outfits might intimidate the ‘Fluttershy’ part of Rainbow Dash, and he wanted her to feel comfortable with him. So he just cleaned himself up as nice as he could, and wore his best set of everyday clothing.

“I-I’m so happy you want to be with me, Lero,” Rainbow said, stepping forward. “I can’t tell you how often I think about you when I’m alone.” Lero could still feel a trace of nervousness when they hugged, but only faintly. She was growing ever-more comfortable around him and the other girls.

“So! Uh… when we do this, will you be a human or in pony form?” Rainbow looked to Twilight, as if she’d give the answer.

“You know what, Dash?" Lero spoke. "Since this is your first time, you get first pick. I really don’t mind either way.”

The pegasus thought a bit. “I’d rather you be your real self for our first time.”

The human felt a flush of gladness for her.

“It’s still him, either way,” Lyra said. “Don’t worry. You know how long heats last… there’ll be plenty of time to enjoy both his forms.”

Dash grinned at these words.

“Well then, let’s get to it.” Lero said.

The five of them all hastened upstairs, as one. Lero almost didn’t need to look to tell who was doing what to him.

Rainbow Dash was the one at his left, nuzzling against his hand. Lyra was doing the same at his right, kissing his fingers, while pressing telekinetic hooves onto the back of his shoulders and neck. Directly behind, nudging him gently with her head was Twilight Sparkle, careful not to poke him with her horn and nipping him playfully through the thin fabric of his jeans. Of course, the one with the telekinetic fingers reaching down the front of his pants to cup and caress his manhood was Rarity.

They entered the bedroom. The huge bed had never looked more inviting.

“So how does it work?” Rainbow asked, as she climbed on top with the other girls. “Doing it with a human?”

“Well,” Rarity told her, shifting up on her back hooves to give Lero a one armed-hug, “as Lyra and Twilight and I all know, making love with a human is a very convoluted procedure. You see, when a human achieves arousal, his body reverts to a semisolid state; about the same consistency as tapioca pudding. At that stage, one of us has to pull out a calculus book and…”

“Ha ha ha ha ha,” the animal caretaker said, flatly, while Rarity let out a real laugh and Lero gave a disgusted snort.

“Forgive me! I couldn’t resist.” Gathering herself, Rarity gave Rainbow an apologetic kiss on the cheek. “He’s a mammal. It proceeds much the same way it does for all the mammals you care for, Rainbow. Unusual though his body may be, Lero’s never been THAT much of an alien. At most, he has a bit of a preference of doing it face-to-face.”

The pegasus looked between Rarity and Lero. “But… well, coolers are one thing, but this is my first time being with a real stallion, and I want to do it right.”

The white unicorn regarded her worried friend, and set a comforting hoof upon her shoulder. “Then let me be the voice of experience.”

She turned towards Lero, who was seated on the bed with his legs outstretched, kicking his socks off. “What I’m about to show you, Rainbow, is the most basic of the basics. What the peanut butter sandwich is to the culinary arts, this is to sex.”

Rather than use her teeth this time, Rarity tugged Lero’s pants and underwear down with magic. Unless something went horribly wrong today, there’d be time, later, to teach Dash how she could do pull down his zipper and buttons with her mouth.

“There it is, Rainbow,” said Rarity, her voice approaching a whisper. “That which has been hidden to so many, and witnessed by only a select trusted few. Including you, now.”

“Whoa,” said the animal caretaker.

“Do not be the least bit afraid or intimidated by it,” Lero’s lead mare told her. “This is our friend, every bit as much as all the rest of Lero is.”

“It’s so… mushroomy.”

Twilight and Lyra giggled and even Lero chuckled softly despite the awkwardness he felt at being used almost as an anatomical display. Rarity merely smiled. “Believe me, you will grow to love this shape. Now the first step to this technique is to have Lero assume this position you see him in now.”

Instead of going straight for Lero’s partially-erect penis, Rarity wrapped an arm around Lero’s shoulder, drawing him closer and kissing his lips lovingly.

“First, you kiss this part of him,” she instructed Dash, bringing her lips to his a second time. “Remind him how dearly he’s loved, before anything else. Treating him as if he’s simply here to please us is not acceptable. And when that’s done you do this…”

Graceful as a swan, her head swooped down as she took him in her mouth.

“Woike uh ohfikkul… ohwee ennfed uf twoyung tuh git ut tuh mehwult, yuh uhim uz tuh muike im wok-huhd.”

Rainbow turned her uncomprehending look towards Twilight and Lyra.

“Rarity said, ‘like an oatsicle, only instead of trying to get it to melt, your aim is to make him rock-hard,” Twilight translated.

For his part, Lero could barely register that words were being spoken. His whole world had suddenly gotten a lot smaller: Rarity’s mouth so tight and wet, her saliva building up around him the more her large tongue coiled over and around him, drawing him in further and further towards the back of her throat… Damn, it was always unbelievable how good she was at this, how fast he got close with those potions; it was a struggle to resist coming right now….

“Y’know, that’s one thing girls don’t really ever do to each other with a cooler,” Dash noted, faintly, watching her go down on him.

“Not unless they’re really committed roleplayers,” Twilight said.

“Or just odd,” said Lyra. None of them were really blinking, and their breaths were louder and faster.

Lero wouldn’t come, he wouldn’t come in her mouth again, if that was what she was trying for. He refused, even if the potions gave him a bit of a ‘hair trigger,’ he wouldn’t, not with the other girls watching… he’d done it for Rarity but never for any of them…

Rarity’s mouth came off his penis, smiling to see it jut up like a flagpole. “Perfect,” she pronounced.

Then to Rainbow Dash, she said, “Once he’s sufficiently hardened, your next step is allowing him to penetrate you. For a beginner like you, I’d recommend sitting inside Lero’s lap, with your back against his chest. Now, watch me carefully. As I’m seating myself, I’m lining myself up with him; his manhood with my marehood, steadily, steadily… ahhhhh, there we go! Now, as you can see, at this point, Lero will most likely wrap his arms around the back of you, and then you… ahhh! Both rock against…. mmmm!!! Each other until you sehh….hettle into a rhy...hythm, until…. untiiiiilll!”

Until the moment came when Lero crushed Rarity against him chest, and exploded inside her with a deep groan. Normally, he’d last longer, but the combination of the stamina potions’ initial effects making him raring to go along with Rarity’s talents made the demonstration regrettably short... though more than enough for Rarity’s immediate needs.

“Thank you, darling.” Her inner muscles gave him an extra-loving squeeze, while the rest of her relaxed utterly. “I’ve been needing that since this morning.”

“Anytime, princess.” And there’s the first one. He thought to himself. Wonder if I should keep count this time?

Once she had pulled off him, Rarity looked at Rainbow Dash. “Now it’s your turn. Just do exactly as I instructed.”

* * *

As Rainbow Dash approached him, Lero extended his legs back in the spread-out position he’d assumed for Rarity. The pegasus had an intense look in her eyes, that same heated stare he’d seen her wear back when he’d learned about estrus from her in the first place. And hadn’t that been an interesting lesson...

He was feeling a bit self-conscious. His penis was wilting after he’d come inside Rarity, all covered in a mix of her inner juices and his own semen. The stamina potions were, he hoped, effective as usual, because without those he hadn’t a hope of keeping up with the sheer biological needs of his mares. Truth be told, he was feeling a bit self-conscious about it, and was of half a mind to ask if she’d wait for him to towel himself off. He didn’t want her to find anything about him off-putting.

“I’m yours if you want me, Dash,” he told her. “Either way, you don’t have to be afraid.”

But then she swept forward, her kiss just as aggressive as it was intimate. “Afraid? Ha! Those days are over and done with, big guy. Rainbow Dash doesn’t do afraid any more!” Puffing her chest and wings out, she kissed him again… but where the first kiss held strength and a dominating bravado, this second kiss was pure soft sweetness. There was a definite delicacy to her voice when she said, “Especially not with someone as wonderfully caring as you for my stallion.”

Then she bent to take him into her mouth, and he arched with a groan.

Lero couldn’t usually say that Dash’s fellatio was fascinating on an intellectual level. Normally he was much too caught up in the simple thrill of having her agile tongue vigorously carresing along his manhood. But today was different. She kept switching gears on him. It was like the old, unswapped Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash were taking turns. One moment she was giving him the rushed rough-and-tumble style he’d always been used to, with the tips of her teeth scraping the sides of his shaft. The next, she was going for slower, gentler, and daintier, his shaft swimming in saliva as she suckled him as softly as a lollipop. The next moment after that, it was back to fast and furious, and she was just about slurping on his shaft.

It didn’t take long for him to come back to a full salute, and she pulled away to stare at the erection she’d caused.

“Whoa. You really enjoyed that, didn’t you?”

“Yeah,” he gasped, stroking her mane and face.

“I enjoyed it myself,” Lyra commented lustily.

She and Twilight sat watching them go at it longingly, mesmerised and already sweating. Lero flashed them looks of great apology. Both of them were being extremely patient and considerate of Rainbow’s bentness, shyness, and ‘unfamiliarity’ with his body. For them, this had to be like being shut out of the family banquet, until he, Rarity and Rainbow Dash had gotten first dibs on the main course. The aqua unicorn had a hoof lifted underneath herself, quietly but openly stroking between her legs.

But Lyra smiled and shook her head, signaling she was okay, while Twilight spun her arm in an impatient motion that said, ‘Just get on with it!’

“Okay, so now, I turn around, like this?” Rainbow asked, rotating herself and lifting her tail.

“Y-yeah,” said Lero. “And now I’m gonna put my hands on your hindquarters, just like this, and you’re going to lower yourself down, down… er, maybe take a half-step forward, and… ahhhh…”

“Oooooohh…” she agreed, plunging all the way down upon him.

The very first time Lero Michealides made love to Rainbow Dash the Weathermare… it was a whirlwind; two lonely spirits swirling round each other and finding a common center to unite them.

The very first time Lero made love with Rarity the Weathermare… it was like melody meeting harmony. She was just so completely attuned to him, so experienced, it was like finding the figure skating partner he never knew he had. Then again, for her, it wasn’t the first time - and Lero didn’t want to think about how much of that experience might have come from Starswirl’s spell.

Now, he was making love to Rainbow Dash the Caretaker… and she was acting like Alice getting her first eyeful of Wonderland. He entered her, and all she did was drop her jaw, make amazed gasps and stare in wonderment. In a wall mirror before them, he could see her eyes expand. It was immediately clear that she had no idea what she should even do next at this point.

He would have to do all the work for this one.

First, he lifted his arms up from her hindquarters and wrapped them around her shoulders, squeezing them tightly around her. Pressing her further back against him, he rocked against her steadily.

“Oh my gosh! This is… this is nothing like a cooler…” Rainbow Dash murmured.

And then it sunk in. He was making love to Rainbow Dash. The coarseness of her hair, the weight of her body against him, the husky pitch of her breathing and voice. How he missed it all. All those precious little nothings that made Rainbow Dash unique, irreplaceable, and nonexchangeable. Like the old saying went: absence really did make the heart grow fonder.

“...It’s warm… it’s real… it’s alive… oh yeah...”

His eyes happened to catch Rarity’s at that moment: attentive, proud, and frisky. She was not merely enjoying the show, but delighting in that unique pony sentiment of: my dear friend is sharing my coltfriend; I love them both all the more for it. This was when Lero remembered his own earlier warning to Twilight and Lyra about not handling Dash’s body too flawlessly… so he moved a hand over to a certain area along her primaries, and stroked upward, so that he was rubbing them the wrong way, going against the grain.

“Hey!” Dash exclaimed, turning around awkwardly. “Watch it! Those are delicate!”

“I’m so sorry!” he said. “Was I not supposed to touch there? I didn’t know! I’m not used to feathers, and yours are just so pretty, Dash...”

He wondered if maybe he'd gone too far. But then Dash favored him with a pleased, Fluttershy-esque smile of forgiveness. “It’s okay. I’m your first pegasus, after all, aren’t I?”

Lero smiled gratefully. “Yes, ma’am. The very first pegasus I’ve ever been intimate with.” He saw Rarity turn and lift an eyebrow at the slight giggle Twilight gave. “Can we continue? I promise to avoid touching your feathers until I'm more familiar with them.”

“Oh yes, thank you, Lero,” said Dash.

He set his hands back upon her flanks… but as his fingers trailed down towards her cutie mark, something he saw caused his brain to skip a beat.

The Butterfly Mark… was it… was it fading?

Could this be the Cure?

He grabbed the pegasus’ hindquarters with sharp force, and Rainbow Dash cried out sharply as he pistoned into her, not wasting any more time. Again and again, he kept flicking looks down at the mark. Each time, with each thrust, each push against her body, the butterflies were growing fainter, the blue of her fur underneath was clearer to see!

“Um… Lero? Darling?” Rarity asked, with a note of worry. “You need to be a bit gentler with her, sweetheart, it’s her first time… this is Rainbow Dash we’re talking about, she’s a fragile flower…”

“NO! Don’t you DARE slow down, Lero!” Rainbow suddenly shouted. Her voice had a rasp to it, a lovely, exciting wildness. To Rarity, she said, “I LOVE it this way! I love rough and fast! I’ve… Ah! I’ve ALWAYS loved it this way best!”

Always. Was Rainbow Dash remembering then? Was it starting to come back to her? Perhaps Dash’s mind couldn’t remember the way things used to be, but maybe her body, maybe her muscle memory was responding to the feel of them together, jogging OTHER memories, besides! She was even rocking back against him now, no longer playing the limp rag doll. They ground together in a primal rhythm, the pink of Fluttershy’s cutie mark giving way to pure blue! And so the human plowed into her all the fiercer: the butterflies were the gorgons he needed to slay, and sex would be his sword!

“Lero… Lero… LERO!”

He hilted himself in her and groaned loudly as his body gave one momentous shudder, and then came sweet release for them both, her juices coating his shaft, his shaft erupting and spattering her insides, until they each tapered off. Rainbow leaned back against him, breathing harshly, as he twisted to get a better look at the cutie mark.

Three transparent outlines of butterflies… rapidly filling back in with pink. UN-fading, UN-vanishing. Damn it!

Rarity trotted over and gave the breathless Rainbow Dash a quick kiss. “Congratulations, Rainbow Dash. Your thunderhead’s been well and truly bucked. Your garden’s been tilled and your… Twilight, darling, isn’t there a unicorn equivalent? Odd of me to ask, I know, but really, I am a pegasus in all but form…”

“Er, I’m probably not the one to ask.” Twilight said. “Maybe ‘your hymen has been penetrated?’”

“That’s… already happened to me... and about every other filly… back when I first started needing coolers...” Rainbow wheezed.

Lyra rolled her eyes. “Your mana pool’s had a horn dipped in it, your spell’s been cast, and your twat’s been stuffed,” the more experienced unicorn supplied. “In other words, congratulations, Rainbow Dash. You’ve had bona fide non-cooler sex, and are officially no longer a virgin.”

“Yaaaay, me…” the pegasus sighed, her maresex squelching as she withdrew off the human’s shaft.

* * *

Happier than he’d felt in weeks, Lero hugged the pegasus to him as Rarity wiped the sweat off his brow.

“So… um, Rarity’s gone, I’ve gone, whose turn is next?” Rainbow asking, looking between the aqua and purple unicorns, even as she snuggled against her human stallion.

Twilight passed Lyra a sly look. “How about all four of us at the same time?”

“Huh?” asked the pegasus, even as the rest of them all gave murmurs of approval.

“What’re you thinking, Lyra?” Twilight asked.

Lyra considered the human with a smile. “How about… Hmmm… Yes, that should work. On your back, Fingers, and spread out!” Lyra commanded, pointing her hoof downward.

So Lero lay himself on the floor, spread-eagled, face-up. As though he were about to make snow angels, or were trying to impersonate a starfish.

“Alright. Rainbow, you start by sitting down on Lero’s face,” Lyra instructed.

“Gently, if you please,” Rarity added. “Our sweet Lero’s face is flat enough as it is, don’t you think?” Lero laughed.

Slowly and with great care, Rainbow Dash obeyed. It was now impossible for Lero to see what the girls were doing with his view darkened and obstructed by the extreme closeness of Dash’s maresex. His nose was already partially up it, and she smelled of her own freshly-released fluids.

“This is so backwards,” he heard the pegasus say. “Mares topping stallions, and me sitting down for sex instead of lifting up my hindquarters."

“Day One’s still young, Rainbow. We’ll have time for traditionalism later.”

“Day One for YOU, maybe,” Dash grumbled. “I’ve been going out of MY mind for two days already!”

“In the meantime,” Lyra continued. “I’ll take the left hand, Rarity can take right.”

“And I get the seat of honor?” Twilight asked, eagerly.

Lyra must’ve nodded, for Twilight squealed in delight. This was really generous of her to let herself go last… he wondered if some kind of Still Way endurance training played into it. From underneath Dash, he heard the clopping of hooves as the girls all rearrange themselves in their assigned places, and he felt the sexes of the three unicorns settle against his left hand, right hand, and penis as they lowered their haunches.

“I think I see where this is going.” Rainbow said. “This… there’s not a stallion alive who could do something like this.” There was a fascination in her voice that sounded halfway between Rainbow Dash’s own excitement and Fluttershy’s interest in a new animal species.

“Ready, my prince?” Lero lifted his hand out from beneath Rarity, shows the thumbs-up, then slid his hand right back underneath her again. “Three, two, one, go!”

At moments like this, Lero liked to imagine he’d have been an excellent one-man band player. Pleasuring three… no, it was four mares now… at the exact same time was no trick for amateurs. On top of everything else, it was impossible to see what was happening; he had to navigate his girls’ bodies through touch and sound, alone.

Thank goodness he was no amateur. A big part of pulling off everything perfectly was knowing each of his girls well enough to tailor it to their personal preferences. For instance, as far as hands went, Lyra loved it when he ghosted his fingertips across her winking lips, adding more and more fingers as he went. Rarity, he had come to learn since the Swap, preferred having him insert one finger into her right away, then use the remaining four to explore the rest of her, especially around her clit. Both their tails wrapped as tight as ropes around either of his wrists.

And when it came to penetration, Twilight Sparkle had always preferred a slower, measured pace, especially when compared to the old Dash. Since he could feel a tail brushing his chest, he knew she had to be facing away from him this time, as her innermost folds clamped down upon him tightly. Since his entire upper body was otherwise occupied, he tried his best to clamp back with his thighs. Usually, she wouldn’t be bouncing up and down on him quite so vibrantly as this, but then again, this WAS the heat. He hoped his hipbones could take it.

And then there was Rainbow Dash. Normally, with cunnilingus, she’d always preferred he go straight to the licking. But today, he couldn’t resist kissing that part of her, a little over a dozen times. It was the sentimentalist in him. Without even any real sense of lust, he simply kissed this part of her as if these were the set of lips that could smile and say she loved him.

The pegasus responded with so much delectable squirming and wiggling, wings flapping excitedly. The noises from her throat were somewhere midway between giggles and gasps. She was responding well to it; perhaps this was the caretaker part of her.

Her lips were growing deliciously puffier, glistening with dampness, so he got to work, lapping at her cleft, exploring her labia. Pampering Rainbow Dash in all ways possible with his tongue. Swirling it around, gingerly teasing the moistening skin, massaging her from within.

Twilight came in tandem with Lero, and they were both the first. But Lero didn’t lose his stride, keeping at it with all the rest until they’d all achieved release, and their juices gushed all over him.

As he felt Rainbow Dash rise off his face, Lero’s eyes immediately went to her flank. But there wasn’t the faintest bit of faintness this time: the Butterfly Mark was as solid and opaque as any cutie mark should be. It almost felt like their earlier bit of fun had been like a vaccination of sorts… and now the Butterfly Mark was immune to further lines of attacks from that angle.

It’s probably just as well, Lero consoled himself. If sex was the Cure, I’d be honorbound to make love to Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and Fluttershy, too. That’d REALLY get awkward.

He took a long breath inward. The air in this bedroom had already taken on a muggy quality. They were all trying to regain their breaths. But long experience had taught Lero that it wasn’t over yet. The girls were still all capable of standing after all. A lot of fun work was still ahead of him. And indeed, he didn’t have to wait long at all before the flames of passion were surging up again.

* * *

“Lyra, darling, my sweet songbird, I think I really need to ask the teensy-weensiest of favors,” Rarity said, nuzzling into Lyra’s cheek.

“I’m not letting you go again before I get a turn,” Lyra said firmly.

Rarity pouted. “But it’s back again, already! This is no warm summer breeze this time, dear. This is a veritable firestorm. A tornado of need! A hurricane of heat!”

“And mine is driving me completely insane,” Lyra insisted. “I waited for all three of you to get your turns first, and I do not have the patience to keep waiting. My turn!”

Dash swallowed, watching her old friend diving head-first into a heat-fuelled argument with Ponyville’s resident Still Way Grandmaster. Sure, Rarity was a unicorn too, and Lyra had amazing control, and they were herding together so they probably argued all the time anyway, but she still felt intensely out of place watching it. She pressed herself against Twilight Sparkle’s side, more for friendly reinforcement than for any sort of physical desire.

“Lyra’s got a point,” Twilight interjected. “Round-robin scheduling is inherently fairest in these circumstances.”

“Sparkle-kitten, not now,” Rarity sweetly cooed. “Lyra, my beautiful, talented, patient, controlled sweet songbird, I really must insist.”

“Do I get a vote?” Lero asked, starting to sit back up. He was feeling the strain… or at least the start of chafing. Wet as they were, his girls were enthusiastic. The potions were helping, even easing the soreness, though they were really giving him a short fuse, so to speak.

“No,” all four mares chorused, even Rainbow Dash. Lyra and Rarity each snapped the word out, gazes narrowed at each other. Twilight and Rainbow Dash were closer to laughter in their responses, though.

Shifting to hug Rainbow Dash, Twilight turned to Lero, explaining; “Classic movie line, Lero. It’s called Herd Of Me?, and it’s about a stallion feeling unappreciated by his mares.” She kissed Rainbow Dash’s cheek, and the usually-bent pegasus found that at the moment, with such a pleasant warmth in her loins and still at least partly cooled by Lero’s efforts, she didn’t mind the kiss at all.

“Yeah, mares in heat kinda get a little… old-fashioned, shall we say,” Dash agreed. Then she smiled down at Lero. “Everypony loves you, big guy. It’s just that at the moment, we love one particular part of you a whole lot more than usual, and it’s very distracting.”

Lero laughed. “I’ll keep that in mind,” he said, and Dash leaned over so he could ruffle her mane.

Meanwhile, Lyra and Rarity had continued bickering with increasing heat while Twilight and Rainbow Dash had explained the joke to Lero. “Listen, my darling sweet talented beloved musical brilliant delightful giving generous loving understanding patient songbird,”Rarity pushed out between her teeth, her chest heaving. “You know I dislike putting matters quite this way, but I am asserting lead mare’s privilege!”

Lyra went very still. “Oh. Lead mare’s privilege, is it?”

"Glrk," Rarity said, and her eyes crossed as she fell over on her side.

Lyra gave a bright cheerful smile. "'Lead mare' goes out the window during heat," she said, trotting over the gasping white unicorn. "You don't seem to be complaining about this, so I'll just take the next turn. Don't worry, you'll stop orgasming when I’m done with Lero."

Lero saluted. “On it, your highness!”

Lyra licked her lips. “You’d better be. She might cream herself all the way out of heat if I keep this up long. Now let’s see, for our next bit, I’m thinking… turn it around.”

“You want to do that again?” Rainbow Dash questioned.

“Not what you’re thinking,” Lyra told her. “What we did before was Lero working on all of us at once. Completely different.”

“How?”

“Because we’ll be pleasuring him. With our mouths. You, Rainbow, will take Lero’s mouth again. Give him a lot of kissing and a lot of tongue.”

Dash saluted the aqua unicorn. “ Aye-aye, Cap’n Heartstrings!”

“Twilight and I will take him from below.”

“Together?” Twilight asked, incredulously. “Need I remind you that Lero’s a mammal, not a marsupial, so his penis doesn’t…”

“Us working on him,” Lyra reiterated. “Weren’t you paying attention? I’ll take his carrot, while you take his berries!”

“That I can manage!” Twilight and Lero both were grinning.

“Normally, I’d’ve assigned Rarity to take Lero’s hands, but…”

They all looked to where the white unicorn thrashed on the floor. Every time it looked like she was going to return to a stand, she’d spill a little more of herself, and flop back over again.

“I’ll… oooohh… get you for this, Heartstrings… nnnngggh…. so help me!”

Cockily, the Still Way grandmaster trotted over, swiping Rarity face with her tail; teasing and tantalizing at the same time. “I look forward to it… Fearless Leader. Places, girls!”

Lero was already assuming the spread-eagle pose as Lyra returned to him.

“Aaaaand…. begin!”

Lero absolutely loved this pose. Twilight Sparkle took his testes in her mouth and nursed on them like a foal on teats while Lyra engulfed his manhood whole. It was wet and messy, a hurried, anxious pace. The two unicorn’s faces were mashed so tightly together that sometimes their tongues accidentally slipped together as they bobbed up and down on him. He also saw them each break to clear their throats, and intentionally slide their tongues together, and it made his breath come hard.

It quickly became impossible to hold still under their ministrations, and he kept thrusting himself into their faces, but they just rolled with it. Meanwhile, with his hands free, Lero was able to reach up and behind him and cup Dash’s face in his hand as she kissed him, her tongue snaking in his mouth with her old boldness, intertwining with his.

“Ooh!” Lyra cried, lips popping off his shaft wetly. “I think he’s ready! Give me room, Twilight, I’m taking my turn!”

Twilight backed away, watching as Lyra straddled him; both his shaft and her marehood pulsating against each other, him within her. Lero’s toes curled as pressure built inside them both. At last, Lyra’s patience was rewarded as with one final quake, Lero came inside her. They screamed together, Lyra’s horn shooting sparks that fell onto the human’s damp skin and fizzled out.

“Wonderful as ever, Fingers,” Lyra said, rising off him. Her horn glowed as she turned to Rarity, who rose with a gasp, like she’d come close to drowning. A rather thick puddle had formed on the floor around where her tail had been.

“That… was… mutiny!” she groaned to Lyra.

The Still Way grandmaster was the very picture of repentance. “I’m sorry, Rarity, I just… I needed my turn. I was desperate. You understand, don’t you?”

“Please, princess…” Lero begged, hoarse-voiced. “Let’s not fight. Please?”

The white unicorn closed her eyes. They heard her groan again. “Do you have any idea how maddening it is to climax like that, again and again, and still be in such need? It felt lovely, yes, but wildly insufficient.”

“I’ll make it up to you, Rarity. I swear.” Lyra said, nuzzling her.

“I’ll hold you to that,” the white unicorn told her. Then blew out a breath. “I suppose it did help some,” she grudgingly admitted. “I’m not quite so… urgent.”

Letting his head fall backwards, Lero stared up at the ceiling in relief. It was never just raw sex when you were the stallion. You also had to juggle egos. Make sure every mare got a fair turn with you. Infighting was a scary enough prospect without the level of magic power these girls wielded.

Lero rolled his eyes towards the girls. “Could I have a drink?”

“Of course,” said Rarity. “What would you prefer? Some wine? Brandy? More stamina potions?”

“A glass of ice water, thanks.”

Rarity tended to the water herself, floating the glass up from the kitchen, then conjuring a tiny cloud right inside it that spewed both a miniature downpour and nuggets of ice.

Of course, there were days where he and his girls had sex while drunk. But this wouldn’t be one of them. He couldn’t afford any sort of alcoholic sloppiness or sleepiness. He had to be alert, he had to be on his A-game, especially because Rainbow Dash needed more.

“What next? What next?” Dash was hopping in place, even as he drank down his water tiredly.

“I... think we ought to wait,” Twilight judged, looking Lero over.

* * *

Dash kept prancing in place, her hooves thudding on the wooden floor. “What do you mean, we have to wait?”

“Well, collectively, Lero’s given us… one, two, six, nine orgasms.” The purple unicorn reminded the pegasus. “Give the poor boy a minute to breathe.”

“Twilight, please! This is the heat we’re talking about! It’s less patient than… than Angel waiting for dinner!” she pled. “Lero’s got the stamina potions, four isn’t too many, he’s doing fine, so what’s the hold-up?” She caught Twilight’s cheeks in her hooves. “If I’m not being clear enough, let me spell it out! I want him to put his penis inside me again!”

At times like this, Lero could appreciate why some herds had multiple stallions. Mares were just insatiable in this state. He’d do it, though, he’d power through, for as long as...

Twilight pressed forward and kissed the frantic blue pony. This caught Dash entirely by surprise; sure, Twilight was as much her friend already as Rarity was, and sure, she was dating the entire herd… she just hadn’t ever expected Twilight Sparkle to use that much tongue. It felt oddly nice. And did a very good job at quieting her down.

Twilight drew her head back. “Can I talk now?” Dash nodded her head, though her hooves kept drumming on the floor. “Good. Now, fantasies aside, and I promise I’m having them too, even the randiest stallion in Equestria can’t actually keep going all day all heat long. Lero is the hottest stallion in Equestria as far as we’re concerned, but he’s a long way from the horniest – and he’s just not built to keep up with us all without the stamina potions. And even with those, he needs some ‘downtime’ or we’re going to leave him hurting in a very unpleasant way. You wouldn't want that, would you?"

"N... no..." said Dash.

"And since none of us can actually trust ourselves to not pounce him, and I happen to be feeling abnormally aggressive right now due to a heavy surge of hormones, I’ve taken it upon myself to guard Lero’s rest period.”

Rarity giggled. Lyra’s efforts had indeed helped push back that incredible need. Not resolve it, not by a long shot, but push it back. “You are adorable when you’re looking stern, Sparkle-kitten. You want it so very badly, but that lovely sense of duty and self-control makes you such a little paladin when you’ve got a mission. So what is it you plan to do as Lero’s self-appointed guardian for the next… half hour or so?”

Twilight gave her lead mare an unusually toothy grin. Well, she normally showed her teeth when she smiled, but this time she seemed to be pulling her lips back more than she normally did. “I’m a very powerful unicorn, Rare-bear,” she purred. “Normally I don’t like to show off. Normally I like to study quietly. But right now, I’m feeling a very strong urge to… let loose a bit.”

Lyra’s eyes opened slightly, and her horn started to glow. Trying to counter spells with a lust-crazed Twilight Sparkle would go about as well as trying to duel her under normal conditions, but…

“Oh, relax,” Twilight scoffed, and Lyra gasped as Twilight’s lavender aura encased her horn, binding her magic as surely as any constable’s horn-wrap. “I’m not going to turn you into anything, cast any mind-altering spells, or anything like that.” Twilight’s aura surrounded Lyra the rest of the way, lifting her and bringing her over for a firm kiss of her own. “At least not yet. Right now, I’m just going to do something… complicated.”

Rainbow Dash gaped at the sight of Lyra pinned in midair in Twilight’s magic. The most dangerous mare in Ponyville, the Still Way Grandmaster… completely neutralized as easily as flicking her tail. … Dash realized her wings hurt. When exactly had they gone stiff like that again? “Uh… Twilight?” she squeaked. “You’re kind of scary like this…”

Then she swallowed. No. Got to be Awesome Dash. No being scared, no being shy. “... Please stop?”

The aura settled Lyra to the floor and vanished. Twilight turned to look at Rainbow. Twilight’s tail flicked and a smile poured across her face. Dash had her head down, but not submissively – she was actually trembling, but she was braced to charge. She looked so much like the old Rainbow Dash facing off against a threat that Twilight forgot her heat for a moment. “Okay, Rainbow,” she said. She let her magic trace along the pegasus’ wings instead, and Dash gasped. “If you want me to stop, I’ll stop.”

“W… well… not this part,” Dash gasped out, her knees shaking with arousal. Then she gasped as Twilight’s magic ran down her back and between her legs, an invisible softness stroking at her. “T… Twilight…” Her body shook, and then she moaned. “Tw… Twilight… You’re… you’re just… gonna have some fun, right?”

Twilight smiled. “Of course, Rainbow. I promise, everypony’s going to have a very good time.” She kissed Dash’s cheek, gently. “All at once. Because I can do that. And I think you’re going to like what I have in mind.” She looked into her once-and-future herdmate’s eyes. “Do you trust me?” Her magic caressed the pegasus’ wet cleft again.

Dash groaned, an aching, heartfelt sound of need. “Ah… all right. All right! If you need to do it and everypony else is okay with it!”

“Far be it from me to deny my Sparkle-kitten a chance to let out her inner tigress,” Rarity said, a sly smile curling at the edge of her lips. “I admit to being curious, in fact.”

“I’d rather let her go now instead of waiting to see her scream in frustration, catch on fire, and cast her Want-It-Need-It spell between her legs, myself,” Lyra agreed.

Dash tried to imagine that for a second. Her estrus-addled mind quickly switched to fantasizing about that spell on her own crotch instead. Visions of herself with her rear high in the air and a dazedly satisfied look on her face danced through her head, picturing every stallion in Ponyville lined up for miles…

She shook her head to clear it. Oh sweet Celestia, she could almost feel them on her. She was soaked; her fluids were dripping down her legs. “Okay! Just get started,” she moaned. “Anything to pass the time until Lero gets hrrrkk!”

A trio of steel bits slid into place, one in Rainbow Dash’s mouth, one in Rarity’s, one in Lyra’s, each surrounded by a lavender glow, attached to a bridle. The straps tightened neatly, not too hard, just enough to hold, and all three of Twilight’s herdmates floated into the air.

Twilight smiled at them. “Holding three ponies at once while neutralizing their magic is a good start. Most unicorns would be straining just with lifting one,” she happily said. A quartet of coolers floated into the air. “Then there’s this part. Four more fine-precision bits of control at the same time. This ought to be enough to keep us all occupied.”

Dash felt the wall against her back, the magic pulling her forelegs up and her hindlegs down and spread, her wings pinned flat to the wall. She moaned into the gag as the telekinetics stroked at her feathers, then gasped as the cooler’s tip flicked quickly between her spread legs. She tried to move and found she had absolutely no freedom at all. Her hooves might as well have been glued in place.

Rainbow Dash would have sworn that the idea of being tied up, or magically pinned, would be terrifying to her. Even heated, even with a trusted friend. She could therefore hardly believe how good it felt. How exciting. Then the cooler drove in, and Rainbow Dash let out a SCREAM of climax that rattled the windows.

Sitting himself back against the wall, grateful to be overlooked for once, Lero looked down at his groin and groaned. "Come on, you, this is when you're supposed to be resting..."

Twilight Sparkle licked her lips, looking below heavy-lidded eyes at her herdmates, past and present combined all at once... and all pinned to the wall, legs splayed, bodies writhing as her purple field drove coolers into all of them at once. Herself included, though she did have to be careful. If she brought herself to climax, after all, she’d be unable to keep her spells going for a while. And as powerful as she was, self-control had been a constant in her life. Even now, with seven distinct objects and three sets of magical abilities to counter, she wasn’t really exerting herself. But it felt… good to let the mana flow.

And it was for a good cause. Her stallion, of course. He needed a little break. So that he could tend to her properly. And she wasn't going to let anypony, even her beloved herdmates, get in the way. And it wasn't like they were objecting... not that they were currently capable of that, not with those bits pressed into their mouths. Sometimes, she reflected, it's GOOD to be the ubercorn.

* * *

They were all sipping from glasses of ice water now. All four of the girls, panting, enervated. Each one was a mess. Each one needed a shower, and was hungry to have some solid food in their bellies.

“Is it lunchtime or suppertime?” Lyra rasped.

“Midway between the two meals... I think,” said Rarity.

“How many calories… do you think we burned off?” asked Twilight.

“Didn’t peg you for a calorie counter, Twilight,” Rainbow Dash laughed. “Feels like ten thousand, doesn’t it? Whaddaya say we hit the showers, and…?”

“One more,” Lero said, standing up tall. “Just one more.”

“Lero, please…”

“Just one more, and then we break,” he promised, licking his lips eagerly. “I’m feeling my second wind, and I don’t want to waste it. I’ll cook lunch myself afterwards.”

The girls all looked at each other.

“Well… I’m still yearning to feel your sword in my sheath one more time, my prince,” Rarity said, standing back up, and grinning her old grin.

“You’re lucky you’re so cute when you’re horny, Fingers,” Lyra said, joining her.

“ONE more,” Twilight said, “And then I don’t think I’ll have any more in me until nightfall, at least.”

“What position’s this one gonna be?” Dash asked curiously. “Like, is there one where we’re all forming a pony pyramid while standing on our heads or something?”

“We can save the Upended Ziggurat for later,” Lero told her, “I’m thinking of something simpler. What do you say to a wild rumpus?”

“You’ll need to walk me through that position,” Rainbow Dash told him.

“There’s nothing to walk through, Rainbow, darling,” Rarity told her. “It’s not a position at all. The wild rumpus is just a free-for-all, nothing more. Watch.”

And then Rarity’s magic shoved Lero backward against the bed. She clambered on, wrapped herself against her human stallion. Just as the two of them began sliding themselves up and down each other, Lyra climbed onto the both of them at once, then Twilight, at a sideways angle. Getting the idea, Rainbow climbed on herself, joining the hodgepodge.

All rhyme and reason took a hike. They were just layered against each other, a smashed sandwich of heated bodies, desperate lips and loins sliding over, into, and against every surface and orifice open to them.

To Lero, it was just a flurry of fur, horns, tails, wings, and mouths latching and sucking and groaning, legs reaching and coiling and stroking, vaginas winking, squirting, rubbing, being rubbed, and licked, and engulfing his own manhood… all in a senseless blur of aqua and white and purple and cyan and rainbow stripes. Inevitably, amidst the wild tangle of hooved limbs, there were a few unintentional kicks and scrapes, but Lero put up with it. When you were the stallion of a herd this big, kicks and scrapes during estrus were like stings to a beekeeper. Plus, Twilight was always trusty with her healing spells.

Finally, at some point, it was done, and the five bedmates wearily disentangled themselves from each other. All their come had gone… at least for now.

Lero tilted his head to the left, and there he saw Rainbow Dash’s Butterfly Mark. It almost felt like the butterflies were staring back at him, perhaps considering the wisdom of fluttering off Dash’s flank and landing on his fingertip. Even in the face of this supremely marvelous day, a trickle of the old bitterness still leaked out through his otherwise-overwhelming bliss.

Those butterflies, which had caused Rainbow Dash to leave in the first place. Those butterflies, which kept him from just telling her the truth about everything. Those butterflies, which he’d almost been able to get to vanish, which had always been his and Dash’s enemy…

Stop already. Lero chided himself.

And stop he did. What was the point? All the energy he’d waste resenting the cutie mark would only get in the way of loving Rainbow Dash. Besides, to whatever extent the Butterfly Mark actually was his and Dash’s enemy… between the both of them, it had been completely brought to heel, as surely as every one of Dash’s animals.

Better to forgive it. Better to accept it as a natural part of who Dash the Caretaker was. Better to make peace with it… as any good victor should with the vanquished.

So Lero rolled over on his side, set both hands upon the pegasus’ flank, and kissed each of her butterflies, one by one, silently thanking them for allowing Rainbow Dash to fall back in love with him.

She came awake with a gasp. “H-how’d you do that?!”

“Do what?” he asked.

“When you kissed my cutie mark, how’d you do that?!”

“I puckered my lips and pressed them down on the pink parts of your flank,” he told her.

“Well, I felt that kiss way, way down inside me. I’m not even talking about in my body, I felt it touch... touch the core of who I am,” she breathed.

“You’ve never felt like that before when your cutie mark was touched, have you?” they both heard Twilight ask, sleepily reopening her eyes. “I’ve heard of ponies with sensitivity on their marks…”

“Well, no,” said Rainbow Dash. “When I’ve gone to the spa, I get massaged right over the cutie mark, and I don’t feel anything, usually. Lero kinda caught me by surprise… but it was wonderful,” she sighed. “That kiss made me feel loved all the way down.”

“Dash… you ARE loved all the way down.” Lero told her plainly.

Never in his life had Lero seen his sweet Rainbow Dash smile more beautifully, even as she tripped on her words, as incredulous as she was joyful. “Lero… you… you’re just so nice!” She turned around, looking at the rest of them. “All of you are all so, so, so nice to me! All the time! I feel like the luckiest girl in the world!”

“We’re the lucky ones, Rainbow,” Twilight told her.

“I only regret it took this long for us to realize how perfectly we all fit together,” Lyra said, nuzzling Rainbow’s side. “I feel like this should’ve happened years ago.”

And then came Rarity. “You’ve been a blessing, Rainbow. One of the most surprising blessings in my life since I fell in love with my prince. I’d never have thought our relationship would’ve taken this turn, but ever since it did, I’ve seen an overwhelmingly positive response from all my herdmates… even Spike! I can’t help but fall in love with you too,” the white unicorn said. “In fact, the more I come to know you, the more reason I have to fall in love with you.”

Tears of gratitude spilled from Rainbow Dash’s eyes. “I think... I’ve found my new home.”

“What?” asked Lero.

“Can I sleep in this big bed with you all tonight? Can I sleep with you all every night? I love this house and everyone in it with all my heart!” the pegasus proclaimed. “I want… I want to be a full-fledged member of Herd Bellerophon. I want to be a part of this family. I want this to be my home!”

She stopped, and then gave a twitch. Lero watched the butterflies… not quite flash, but almost. “... If… you’re… okay with pets…” she added, hesitation catching in her voice at the last.

Lero reached for Rainbow’s arm, clasping her hoof in both her hands. “Then on behalf of all of us in Herd Bellerophon, let me be first to say: welcome home, Rainbow Dash.”

Beaming with joy, Rainbow Dash hooked her arms around Lero and brought him to her chest, as Twilight and Lyra cheered.

Starswirl’s unfinished spell had seen fit to steal his love and replace her with another in some mad equivalent exchange... but he’d circumvented all that. He’d won Rainbow Dash’s love back, fair and square. She was back in his family, and not thanks to any spell or counterspell or hypnotism from Discord, but of her own free will.

And what makes this moment so unbelievably sweeter, Lero thought, as he reached out towards the white unicorn, is you, Rarity.

Dear, sweet, magnificent, marvelous, darling Rarity now cuddled lovingly against the other side of his chest. So warmhearted and wholehearted and truehearted from the very beginning, that she had become an indispensable part of Herd Bellerophon… every bit as precious and irreplaceable to all of them as Rainbow Dash, herself.

And things hadn’t come to a heart-rending ultimatum between one or the other, as he’d feared. He’d gotten both. He’d beaten the Swap at its own game, left it holding the short end of the stick, armed with nothing more than his own human ingenuity and his own human heart.

The Swap had threatened to unravel the threads of his whole family unit… but in the end, they hadn’t allowed that to happen. They had all pulled together. And now, after all they had been through, their bonds were like a muscle: stronger than ever after being torn. One member stronger, besides: six instead of five.

It didn’t even matter if Twilight found a cure or not. If the Swapped were cured, Rainbow Dash would be sure to know that he had left no part of her unloved, (no matter which way she sliced it.) If the Swapped stayed Swapped… then he could happily live out the rest of his days in the company of these fine four mares. And Spike.

Rainbow Dash might be missing her old memories, but they’d forge new ones together from the ground up. And he’d happily build further upon the rewritten memories Rarity now had; true memories they could both look back on with fondness.

As he reflected upon all these fabulous victories while Lyra and Twilight also cuddled up against him and Dash enveloped them all in her wings, Lero Michealides found himself unequivocally, unconditionally genuinely grateful that the Swap had happened... for the very first time ever. His life would’ve been so much poorer without it.

* * *

Rainbow Dash lay there. She felt… sore. Extremely sore. In some ways, even more sore than when Angel Bunny was leading her animals in tooth-and-claw attacks all over her body. Even when they’d landed a solid bite back there it hadn’t felt sore like this.

But the same time, it was a good kind of soreness. Satisfied. Worked over, relaxed. And it was actually nice, laying there in a warm pile of bodies, Lero against her on one side, somepony else cuddled up behind her.

The pony behind her felt her stir. “Good morning, my sweet hummingbird,” Rarity cooed in her ear. “Ready for more?”

Dash felt a warmth in her cheeks. Of course she knew what she had been doing. For days in a row. Coming out of heat didn’t make the memories go away. Oh, no. They were extremely vivid. She just… couldn’t imagine continuing to act that way. “Umm… I think I’m good now, if that’s okay,” she breathed.

“You’re… oh,” Rarity sighed. “Are you sure? Not one more day?”

“I definitely think I’m all out of heat now,” Dash confirmed. “I’m sorry…”

Rarity nuzzled her ear lightly. “I don’t suppose you might have had a… change of heart?”

Dash started to say no, but Rarity sounded so… hopeful, she just had to make sure. She thought about it. Even Lero hadn’t been able to bring her off as hard as Rarity did (even if Lero was waaaaaay more effective at actually cooling her down). Hugging against Rarity, kissing her, trading mountings with a cooler, using mouths… yes, it had felt wonderful. But…

“I’m sorry, Rarity,” she apologized. “I’m pretty sure I’m still bent.”

“A mare can dream, love. Do you think you might find it in yourself to help me out again, regardless?” Rarity nipped lightly at Rainbow Dash’s mane, but high atop her scalp instead of down low on her neck. “I’m quite sure my heat is some ways from breaking, and Lero needs all the rest he can get.”

Dash felt a shiver of panic run through her. Now that her head was clear, was she really going to… well, act like it wasn’t?

Rarity felt the shiver and promptly pulled back, letting go of Rainbow Dash’s sides. “Oh, I’m so sorry, darling, I’m pushing too hard on my delicate hummingbird. You don’t need to do a thing you’re not comfortable with.”

Rainbow Dash carefully worked her hoof free from where it was caught under Lero. Then she rolled herself over, ending back against Rarity, belly to belly. She hugged her this time, and moved her head in.

It wasn’t a kiss like Rarity’s kisses, strong and determined. It was delicate, dainty. But it was on the lips, and it was just as heartfelt.

“Just because I’m bent doesn’t mean I’ll leave you in need,” Dash promised. And she hugged the white unicorn tighter. Rarity gasped softly at the surprising strength in those powerful forelegs.

“I wanna be with you, Rares. All of you. Even if I don’t want to sleep with all of you, I want to be with you. I’ll be there for whatever you need me for, and for every second you need me for it. That’s the way things work in good ol’ Herd Bellerophon, right?” She smiled. “Trust me; a couple hours from now, none of you will even remember I’m bent.”

Rarity closed her eyes and laid her cheek against Rainbow Dash’s. The swelling joy in her heart beat out everything else, even the incessant demands of her body.

But only for a few heartbeats. “In that case, lover, I hate to ruin the moment, but I really, really need you to get the cooler again, please.”

Dash gave her a playful smile. “I think I remember this part. Something about head down, legs spread, tail raised, and repeating that?”

Rarity snorted quietly and nipped at Dash’s nose. “That is for you. I, on the other hoof, have grown extremely fond of Lero’s dolphin-style positioning. Now, if you wouldn’t mind?”

Dash giggled softly. And went to find the cooler.

Author's Note

I hope you all really enjoyed this one.

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

And I strongly encourage every true fan of this story to check out this Divided Rainbow spin-off: Into The Hedge, strongly approved by Yours Truly.

Twenty-Seven: Parent-Teacher Conference

"To which we did respond, 'Sooth, sirrah, dost thou always work beneath a podium?'"

A polite ripple of laughter rolled around the booth as Princess Luna concluded her tale, though in truth, she seemed a little disappointed at the response. Nevertheless, she smiled at each of her companions in turn, reserving the broadest and warmest for the stallion at her side and the mare next to him. The latter seemed more interested in her drink than anything going on around her. The smile faded a little as the mare failed to give any response.

"Were you not amused, Professor Sparkle?"

Star Sparkle flipped a hoof at her mane, raised her pink face (slightly pinker than usual thanks to the alcohol) and stared at Luna for quite some time, holding the Princess's gaze with her own for nearly a full minute, until she belatedly remembered that alicorns had no need to blink.

"It seems a little contrived to me," she said, turning her eyes back to her glass.

"We – I assure you the events did occur exac–"

"Oh no, no I'm sure it all happened just as you said," Star replied, cutting off Luna with a wave of her hoof and prompting a scandalised gasp from another of her companions across the table. "I just thought it all seemed a little... silly."

Luna's eyebrows rose a fraction. "Silly."

"That's what I said, isn't it? You'd think someone who had spent thousands of years running an entire continent would have learned how to listen to other ponies occasionally–"

"Star," the stallion to her left rumbled.

"Yes, Lucent, my dear?"

Lucent lifted a hoof to Star's drink and gently pushed it away."I think perhaps you've had enough."

"Oh, I'm just getting started," Star shot back, grabbing the glass with both hooves and pulling it close to her chest. She glared at Lucent and then at Luna, daring them to contradict her. Neither did, likely afraid of the explosion that would result otherwise.

With the immediate threat to her drink neutralised, Star's gaze turned across the table to the rest of her herd, or at least those who had been able to show up. Glint was watching her like a gazelle would watch a sleeping lion, even as he nosed at the all-too-fancy cocktail in front of him. Twilight Velvet had her eyes closed and was shaking her head, and Crincile, sweet young Crincile, had suddenly found something very interesting on the far side of the crowded dance floor their booth faced.

Of course, she could have been staring at the two bulky guardsmares trying to blend in with the crowd, something they might have been able to achieve if not for their prominent bat wings and the fact that one was still wearing her helmet. One of the many dubious perks of being courted by a princess. Star found herself idly wondering whether a Thestral's wings were as entertaining as those of a pegasus. She pushed the thought aside. It was getting in the way of her anger.

"Star? Did you hear me?"

It was also getting in the way of her hearing. Star turned to Glint and glared at him, as if that would have an effect on the brainless – but that wasn't fair. Of course he simply grinned at Star, possibly proving her right.

"I said, ‘you've been out of sorts ever since you came back from your visit with Twiley.’" He toyed with his glass and a distant look came into his eyes. "I've rather missed all of them since the last time, especially that wonderful weather mare."

"You barely even talked to Rainbow Dash last time."

"Rainbow... no, the weather mare, Star. Rarity. Wasn't she an absolute stunner? Oh, she could pull off a wet mane without even trying! I was half inclined to call up Luvvie and get her on a shoot with me. The way she moved and talked, you'd almost think she was born to be on the catwalk, not chasing clouds around in some two-bit backwater... Star, are you alright?"

The glass between Star's hooves creaked ominously, her glare intensifying with every word Glint spoke. She pushed the drink aside before a tragic spillage occurred and placed both her hooves very carefully on the table. "Are you telling me that you've fallen for this nonsense as well?"

"Nonsense?" Glint laughed nervously and looked at the others, frowning. "What nonsense?"

"This insane idea that my Twilight would have any sort of inclination toward that stuck-up wannabe princess! It's bad enough that white-coated nitwit's deluded about it, poor Twilight was beside herself with worry when I was there, but you..." The table rattled as she pounded her hoof against it. All her herdmates were staring at her with no comprehension. "If this is some idea of a joke–"

"I have no idea what you're talking about," Glint shot back, turning to the others for support. By his side, Twilight Velvet raised a hoof to his shoulder and returned Star's glare with one of her own.

"I think Lucent's right, you've had enough. Rarity is a perfectly decent young mare." Velvet leaned her head against Glint's neck and nuzzled at his cheek. "There there, it's okay," she crooned, eyeing Star all the while. "You're just disappointed that your daughter didn't go chasing pegasi the way you do."

"She did seem rather cultured," Crincile added with a little smile of her own. "And she's one of the first unicorns to work in the Equestrian weather service! I think that's rather special, it shows we don't need to limit ourselves just because of who our ancestors might be."

"’Special’ isn't how I'd put it," Star muttered as she reached for her drink once again. She felt a warm breath against her ear and looked up at Lucent. "Luci, tell me you at least remember?"

"I remember that Rarity was a perfect gentlemare. And I remember that you kept staring at her rump."

"She wasn't the only one," Glint murmured, winking at Lucent and wiggling his eyebrows. Lucent rolled his eyes and sighed.

"You ponies are all crazy," Star muttered. She slammed back the remainder of her drink and shuffled out of the booth. "I'm going home."

"But milady Star..." Luna reached across the table and gave Star a pleading look. "I ordered a round of 'nachos' and they have yet to arrive! Wouldst thou not stay to partake of this treat?"

"Cheese gives me gas," Star muttered, before turning and plunging into the crowded dance floor. Of course she took the opportunity to brush against one of the guards as she went, just to satisfy her curiosity. They were surprisingly warm, those wings. Star gave the confused guard a wink as she passed, and was surprised to see a slight blush form on her cheek.

But her heart wasn't in it. Not really. Star threaded through the crowd and out into the relative peace and emptiness of the lobby. Free of the stares of her companions she sat down on the floor and rubbed both her eyes. Confusion and anger were battling beneath her chest; was this how Twilight had felt? She'd been holding up surprisingly well if that were the case, intimate dalliances aside.

Sighing, Star resumed her trek toward the cloakroom. The mare attending barely gave her a second glance as she retrieved Star's belongings; Star was briefly amused to note that the little idiot had to stop chewing her gum when she walked.

"Milady Sparkle, a moment please."

Star halted in the dimly lit foyer, halfway between the cloakroom and the exit with her scarf and cloak floating around her head. She looked over her shoulder at her interlocutor and rolled her eyes.

"I'll have to assume you did that creepy smoke thing to get through the door without me hearing you, Your Highness."

"We– I would prefer Luna, milady."

Star nodded slowly, knotting the scarf around her neck as she turned to face one half of the diarchy and her potential future herdmate. "I know this may seem indelicate, but no mare has referred to her courted lead as milady for nearly five hundred years."

"It is the custom to which we are accustomed, so to speak, but if you wish me to change–"

"Oh no no no, dear, I find it all very charming. At my age there's something to be said for a little bit of respect from another pony. Especially one as powerful and well-travelled as you."

"It is kind of you to say so, milady."

"Of course I can only take so much of that tripe before I want to kick down a door." With her scarf smoothed and secured Star let her cloak gently lower around her shoulders and then left it, ignoring the tassels and ties as she turned her full attention to Luna. "So. What does a princess of the realm want with a lowly mad professor such as myself?"

Luna hesitated for a moment, wings briefly flaring as she pawed at the ground until she finally spoke. "Reassurance."

Her voice was quiet, almost so quiet that Star didn't hear her, which was something of a first. The lunar princess was known far and wide as the loud and brash youth of the diarchy, though youth was more Cadence's thing these days. Star tilted her head back and grinned without mirth.

"If you're worried that I'll object to your courting–"

"Do not misunderstand us, milady Star. We find Lucent most pleasing and fearest thee not, nor thy ire. In that stead we wish to reassure thee; madness suffer thee not, nor the affliction of our sphere."

"Uh... could you step forward a few centuries?"

"Forgive us." Luna bowed her head and smiled just a little. "It is our habit to resort to such archaisms in times of stress. Your fears are unfounded, Star Sparkle. When we heard you speak of Twilight Sparkle and her herd we could not quite believe it were so: that you are aware of the truth that Rarity has taken the place of Rainbow Dash in the herd of your daughter."

Star looked up from fiddling with her cloak ties and frowned at Luna. So she wasn't alone. Interesting. "Is that so?"

"Myself, Princess Celestia, Twilight and her–" Luna paused and frowned, her lips moving slightly as she tried out a few words.

"It's just that much simpler to call him a stallion," Star cut in. She waited for Luna's smile and nod before going on. "Besides, Twilight made it clear how she feels about 'monkey-boy' and I haven't had time to think up another."

With the princess distracted for a moment, Star set back to work on her cloak, her thoughts briefly flittering to the earth pony who had tailored it for her. He'd sewn with his mouth, he remembered, using his tongue to put an odd little twist into the stitch that still gave her a peculiar feeling in the pit of her stomach whenever she looked at it. Maybe she should teach Lucent to stitch...

"Left over right or right over left," she muttered as she tried to tie the final knot. Her eyes strayed to Luna, who apparently found her trial of the toggles fascinating. "You know, I thought I was going crazy at first? I'm quite sure Twilight has. The question is, what are you two going to do about it?"

"I am not sure what might lead you to believe–"

"Oh don't play games with me, Your Highness." Star growled. She gave up on the cloak. It was tied well enough for her purposes and it wasn't as if she ever had a reputation for a neat appearance anyway. "I know I'm not a good mother, but even I can see this is tearing my daughter apart. I will not see her driven insane to satisfy another one of your sister's silly schemes."

For a moment it seemed as if Luna would simply turn away, which would have fit Star's expectations quite well. The younger diarch was something of an unknown, despite Lucent's long infatuation with her and Star couldn't help wondering if she was just Celestia Lite.

She didn't turn. Instead, Luna cracked a slight smile and bowed her head. "I understand your concern, Star Sparkle. My sister and I have disagreed over such things in the past."

"That explains a few things," Star muttered under her breath, but if Luna heard her she gave no indication. "So, again, what will you do about it? Because frankly if I have to put up with any more of this rubbish I may commit regrettable acts upon your sister's person."

"I would advise against it, lest you wish to visit the Mare Lubus," Luna demurred. She took a few steps, short for her, yet they brought her right around Star and close to her head again. With an affection Star found surprising Luna leaned forward and nuzzled at her ears and mane. "There may be a solution. We, my sister and I, have knowledge of the spell Twilight cast, particularly related to its first 'victims', for want of a better description."

"And you haven't just told her this? She's going– if this is Celestia playing her stupid games..."

"It is not," Luna replied, lifting her head suddenly from Star. She closed her eyes and shook her head. "I wish it were so. I would tell Twilight immediately had not Celestia chosen otherwise. If you wish, I shall speak to my sister on this matter and attempt to convince her to release the information, but I fear it shall be for naught. I too am aware of the great risk involved in letting any other know of it. Were it any other pony..."

She lowered her head again. Star let her, not wanting to risk anything that might change Luna's mind. Besides, she had a nice, if rather unusual scent with a faintly acrid undertone, like the smell of a match just struck. It was exotic and unusual, both of which Star would readily confess to being her weakness.

"Shall I assume you do not wish to return?"

The question was out of nowhere. Star pulled away from the princess and shook her head. "No. I need to go home and get myself good and drunk without blowing the entire family fortune on swanky cocktails."

"I believe I understand," Luna replied. "I shall convey your apologies. And I shall speak to Celestia on the morrow," she added quietly. Star nodded. After a silent moment they both smiled just a little awkwardly and turned away.

* * *

There was something to be said for being the head of a department devoted to the eternal study of the past. She could set her own hours, lecture on subjects she usually enjoyed and she could even pick some of the brighter students for some one-on-one study, though she'd had to cut back after that last very stern letter from the Dean's office. It wasn't if she'd done anything immoral.

Not more than once, anyway.

Unfortunately, there were downsides. She had to actually attend her lectures, unlike some of her colleagues who could fob them off to a teaching assistant. Worse still, she had to be sober when she did so lest the faculty take away her drinks cabinet again, a punishment far worse than any other they might have meted out.

To cap it all off, she wasn't allowed to simply toss students out her her classes for being stupid, much as she would have enjoyed it. With a sigh she turned to the body of students behind her – rather truncated now that the true imbeciles had been weeded out by the weight of required skill – and glared at a young mare in the middle of the crowd with her hoof raised.

"If this is going to be about the shape of Kuur inscriptions again–"

"No ma'am Professor Sparkle, uh, ma'am. It's about..." the mare rifled her papers, which at least meant she'd been taking notes, and lifted up a tattered sheet covered in crude copies of the illustrations Star had made the previous week. "You keep mentioning the Kuur as having controlled the weather over their major population areas to better manage their crops, but surely weather control was only introduced to the area when we arrived?"

"You mean ponies?" The mare nodded and smiled. Star didn't bother to return the favour. "Of course, the sort of weather control we're used to has always been the exclusive realm of the pegasi in Equestria, hasn't it."

The student nodded again, soaking up the implicit praise for being so very smart. Star smiled just a little.

"The Neighponese use a combination of pegasi and unicorn magic," the student added, gaining a couple of bonus points for knowledge. Star gave her a small nod. "The griffins only manage their weather enough to divert extreme events. And the Zebra..."

"They don't bother, as I found out on my first trip to Bokswana," Star replied with a slight smile.

"But your point was the Kuur."

"It– it was, yes," the student replied. She hesitated for a moment. "I don't see how they could have controlled the weather at all. They–" she bit her lip. "They were donkeys."

"And donkeys have no functional magic," Star supplied with a curt nod.

"They don't even have earth pony magic–"

"Not any more, no," Star cut in. She turned to the vast blackboard at her back, raising a piece of chalk to its surface, ready to start a new set of notes. "Have you ever heard of the concept of 'selective genocide?’"

Before the student could answer, there was a loud crash as the doors of the lecture hall flew open. As one, the student body turned to stare at the doorway, which filled briefly with a deep blue mist that solidified into the shape of Princess Luna. A flurry of gasps echoed around the hall, accompanied by a half-formed mutter about Nightmare Moon possibly being a better teacher than the current incumbent. Star decided to let that one slide.

"Greetings to all," the princess loudly declared. Her voice echoed around the now silent chamber. "Star Sparkle, we require thy attention forthwith!"

With a smile Star very slowly lowered the chalk that hovered by her head, before slowly setting about her notes. She stacked them once, then shuffled the papers and stacked them again before sauntering from the podium and toward the door, letting her hips swing provocatively all the way.

The confused whispering of her class when she pressed herself against Luna's side was music to Star's ears.

"Would you like to take this outside, Your Highness," she said, pitching her voice just loud enough to be heard across the room. "Or should we do it right here?"

Luna shifted on her hooves and glanced at the extremely attentive ranks of students. "The implications of your question are amusing without doubt, Star Sparkle, but we only wish to talk."

When the windows on the far side of the room ceased rattling, Star shook her head back and forth a few times. The princess had obviously tried to pitch her voice at a stage whisper, but equally obviously she was still having some trouble working out just where the volume control was. She rolled her eyes at the students and ushered Luna out into the corridor.

"I never get to have any fun around here any more," Star muttered as she pushed the door closed. Luna had made her way across to a notice board on the far side of the corridor and was carefully examining an outdated notice about a visit from Equestria's 'sole ruler.’ "I assume this is about our conversation the other night?"

Luna turned her head from the notice board. "Indeed, it is," she replied. She faced Star, but refused to meet her gaze head-on, preferring the sight of her delicately engraved shoes.

"Well?"

"My sister does not feel she can afford the risk," Luna replied. This time her voice was genuinely quiet, almost too quiet for Star to hear, though the ringing in her ears didn't help matters all that much.

"The risk? Did she spin that 'all of Equestria' bull pucky–"

"That Equestria is at risk from this information was never in doubt, Star Sparkle. We both–" Luna turned away, snorting and growling all at once, her hooves tramping on the cold stone floor. "It is information that threatens our very nature."

"That tells me plenty all by itself, 'Your Highness,’" Star grumbled. "Why don't you tell Twilight?"

Luna's head tilted back and she stared at the ceiling, an odd little smile playing across her lips. She rolled her eyes toward Star and raised an eyebrow. "Would you take that risk in my position? While it is extremely unlikely to come to that, I do not relish even the possibility of another exile to the moon. She is stubborn, she is not easily angered, but this..." Luna shook her head. "I cannot convince her. And I dare not take the issue into my own mouth. It would– it would not end well."

"Fine," Star grunted. She rifled through the memory of her spellcraft and settled on the old family favourite. "If you can't convince her, I will."

"Star, do not act in haste–" But before Luna could finish the thought, Star had disappeared in a flash of light. Luna tipped her head forward and nosed at the air where she had been, examining the spell she had used. It seemed rather more refined than Twilight's teleporting and certainly left none of the burn marks.

She was just preparing to leave when the air rippled and Star reappeared with a loud bang. The now rather haggard-looking professor tossed a book at Luna and winked at her, her horn glowed, preparing the next teleport spell. "If you wouldn't mind taking my class while I'm gone, we're on page ninety-six. "

"But–"

"Don't let Cookie Cooker distract you from the lecture. She's wily but she doesn't take mockery well."

"Star–"

"And don't erase the board, whatever you do!"

Star frowned for a moment. Then with a satisfied nod she disappeared again, leaving Luna gripping a book she had never read and facing a potentially very interesting afternoon. With great care she cracked open the book and peered at the indicated page.

"Pre-unification history? We know of this era like none alive this day! Let the education commence!"

* * *

If there was anything at all that Star would refuse to give up about herself, it was the ability to teleport. Few unicorns could do it reliably, fewer still could manage the feat over long distances. Teleportation – and magic in general – ran powerfully in her ancestors. The skill was as embedded in her blood as being an insufferable ass seemed to be buried in Velvet's.

The look on Luna's face as Star had tasked her with teaching her students had been fascinating. The look on the guard's face as Star abruptly appeared in front of him directly outside the great hall of Celestia's throne room was simply hilarious. He gawked at her, his eyes bulging and swiveling as he sought some form of assistance.

A moment later the terror was gone, the guard's knitted brow uncreasing like ironed cloth. The spear at his side flashed forward to rest its tip a mere inch from Star's chest and the guard leaned toward her, lowering his snout to appear more threatening.

"State your–" he squeaked. Then he cleared his throat and tried again. "State your business."

"Oh, I'm just here to browbeat Her Highness into granting me three wishes," Star replied, raising her snout and pushing the spear to one side. "Just like all those halfwits behind me." She glanced over her shoulder at the growing crowd of snoot and privilege milling around the room. "No offence, you understand, your nobleships."

They didn't reply, either out of shock at being so rudely treated or because they recognized her and didn't want another taste of her rock-blunt wit. Come to think of it, she'd had more than a few of them through her classes. Star rolled her eyes and turned her attention back to the guard, who was carefully trying to poke her with his spear without actually touching her.

"Are you going to let me in?"

"Ma'am, you can't just expect to teleport into the throne room unannounced–"

"Of course not, there are wards around it to prevent that." Star smiled at the guard. He shied back and bit his lip. "That's why I'm going to walk in."

And she walked past him, ignoring his half-hearted protests and the distant clatter of hooves as his compatriots stormed toward the room. Three minutes, that was probably all she had. At least for now. With a huff, Star kicked open the enormous doors of the throne room and stepped through. She spotted no other supplicants in the throne room, meaning that she’d managed to either catch the Princess in a break between her meetings with the various nobles… Or she had been expecting her just this moment. Star couldn’t decide which was more likely.

Brief memories of her prior visits to the palace flashed through Star's mind, the most potent being Twilight fast asleep in front of Celestia's throne with Smartypants clasped to her chest while Celestia carried on the business of the court around her. Everypony had remarked on how darling the image was, but all Star had been able to see was her child sleeping at the foot of her mistress' throne like some sort of pet. To say it had coloured her relationship with the monarch would be something of an understatement.

"Good morning, Star. A pleasure, as always."

It didn't help that she was so damn congenial all the time either.

"The pleasure is all yours, I'm sure."

To her credit, Celestia didn't pause for even a moment as she descended from her throne, though the smile had faded from her lips by the time she reached the foot of the dais. She glanced up at the guards now clattering through the doors, then raised her eyebrow at Star.

"I won't ask what you did to upset my guards. You may leave," Celestia added to the guards, her gaze turning to the commander at their head. He shuffled his forehooves and glared at Star, but then turned and dismissed his squad. With a bow he backed from the room and closed the doors.

Celestia circled Star and walked toward a low table by the far wall, where a pitcher of water and a few small glasses stood, shaded from the sun that fell through the stained glass windows opposite by a carefully placed standard.

"So. I assume you're responsible for Luna's little–"

"Yes, I am, no, I didn't threaten her, yes, I am here to change your mind. Can we skip the pleasantries and get to the point?"

Celestia's brow raised again. She poured a glass of water and raised it to her lips, then paused, frowned and lowered the glass again. "The point?"

"Twilight needs something and you're hiding it from her."

Celestia's eyes narrowed. She swirled the water in her glass and stared at it as she spoke. "You must surely be aware that there are some secrets that cannot be told, no matter the cost."

"I'm aware that I would never tell anyone how to find the secret stock of gin in my office," Star replied. She sidled over to the table and Celestia's side. Smiling just a little as she poured herself a glass of water, Star let her eyes wander over the brightly decorated walls of the throne room.

"The location of your drinks cabinet does not have the potential to plunge the entire world into a new age of darkness."

"Nor would keeping it hidden drive my daughter to madness," Star replied quietly, wandering across the room to the foot of Celestia's throne. She sat down on the step and glared at Celestia. "This isn't one of your games, Your Highness. Twilight's sanity is at stake and right now that's far more important than some hypothetical risk that she might get ratted and blather your silly little secrets to the newspapers!"

"I trust Twilight to reach the correct solution in time."

"Really." Star stood again, leaving her water on the step as she circled the dais. Her eyes wandered to the throne itself and for a moment she paused, smiling, before continuing her path. "If you trust her so much, why are you hiding the solution from her?"

"What information I choose to reveal to Twilight is not your concern, Star Sparkle," Celestia replied. Her wings flexed and eyes followed Star closely as she climbed the steps toward the celestial throne, but the princess made no move to stop her. "Who are you to tell me otherwise?"

Feeling a sudden heat in her belly, Star whirled to face Celestia, her eyes blazing. "I'm her mother, you manipulative, self-righteous... princess! I may not be the best parent, in fact, I know I've been a terrible one, but she is my only daughter. My own flesh and blood! Do you understand that? Can you understand? You sit up there with her licking your damned hooves for a few years and that makes you think you have the right to drive her insane?"

"That is not–"

"Did you ever think what would happen if she did lose her mind? Hmm? Or did you just decide to ignore the consequences of what you did to her when you gave her that stupid spell book?"

Star sat down right at the foot of the throne, raising her chin and gazing down on Celestia. "You're supposed to be the one who sets events in motion centuries before you need them. You, Princess, are supposed to be able to see problems coming decades before anypony even realizes what's going on, but you seem to have neglected that foresight of yours this time. Did you ever stop to consider what might happen if that dear daughter of mine did go truly insane? My dear, beloved daughter who is so powerful that she nearly blew Canterlot off the side of the mountain when she was a filly and could probably mind-bend the entire country into worshiping her dock if the mood took her? The filly who you fear so much that you've placed wards on your throne room specifically to block her magic?"

"If you're going to start throwing around conspiracy theories–"

"Oh please," Star growled. "I can see them as clear as day."

To demonstrate the point she let a flash of magic flow from her horn and spread around the room to reveal a filigree of delicate spellwork embedded in the walls. It pulsed with a lavender light before disappearing again.

"She wasn't the only magical prodigy in the family," Star said, lidding her eyes a little. She stared at Celestia and then tipped her head briefly to one side. "I just had more practical ambitions."

"Be that as it may..." Celestia's voice sounded steady as she replied, but there was an undercurrent, a very slight tremor. Her wings fluttered again. "We are not discussing a filly's private diary or a secret crush. The information you wish divulged has implications far beyond anything you could conceive. It is hidden because to reveal it would threaten the the stability of our entire world. It is a secret because it must be. I cannot reveal it. Not even to Twilight."

"So the secret stays secret, my daughter goes mad and the world ends anyway, is that it? And they say you're a benevolent ruler."

"I sincerely believe Twilight Sparkle shall find a solution long before there is any risk of your overblown fantasy becoming a reality," Celestia replied. She took a step toward Star, her wings flaring briefly. "This secret shall remain so. Forever."

"Your Highness, no matter how hard we may try to hide our secrets, there's a strange quality about them."

Star stood up and kicked out at the throne. A door popped open beneath her hoof, until then so perfectly hidden that even a detailed search wouldn't have revealed it, unless the searcher knew exactly what they were looking for. It swung wide as she pulled her hoof away. Star leaned in and extracted a small bottle and tumbler, pausing a moment to hmm at the extremely pricey label. She popped the cork and poured herself a drink, then turned to Celestia and raised the glass in a mocking toast.

"They tend to be found out."

The princess simply stared, her mouth forming a line so straight it could have been used to level concrete. She watched as Star took a taste of her drink, her lips smacking appreciatively at the very expensive liquor.

"Nothing can remain hidden forever, princess. Some enterprising pony will figure out your little secret one day. Come to think of it, the chances are high that it'll be my Twilight who does it."

Star levitated her now empty glass back to the secret cabinet and closed it carefully. Once sealed she could almost believe it had never been there in the first place. She took a few steps off of the dais until her head was level with Celestia's.

"And what do you think will happen when she discovers this great secret that could have helped her solve her current predicament?" Shaking her head, Star continued down the steps, passing Celestia without a backward glance as she headed to the door. "If she's not angry before that point, she certainly will be afterwards."

She was almost at the door when she heard Celestia's wings flutter again and the ring of golden shoes on stone. Celestia stood beside her, frowning, her eyes fixed not on Star but on the door itself. Her jaw clenched and unclenched, an uncharacteristic show of emotion from a pony who only ever seemed to smile.

"I built that cabinet three hundred years ago, by my own hoof," Celestia said quietly. She sat down on her haunches, a rare enough sight at the best of times. With her rear legs folded to one side and her wings flat against her body she seemed that much smaller. "I spent nearly a century designing it to be impossible to detect. How did you know?"

Star smiled and shrugged modestly. "Every office has one. This might be bigger and more gaudy than most, but it's still an office and you’ll still have those days when you're stuck in here late in the evening with nothing to do and a need for a good stiff drink." She looked over her shoulder at the throne and leaned toward Celestia, lowering her voice to a whisper. "Don't tell anyone, but my secret stash is hidden in my chair as well."

Celestia pursed her lips, nodding slowly. After a few moments she stood again, her body reverting back to its regal grace as she made her way back toward the throne. "I shall consider your advice, Star Sparkle."

"Is that so?"

Seated on her throne again, Celestia merely smiled and nodded. For a moment her eyes strayed down to the hidden compartment beneath her seat, before returning to rest on Star. The smile narrowed just a fraction along with Celestia's eyes, but before Star could process the change it was gone again. Star wanted to say something, maybe get in a final jab, but some part of her realised that it might be counterproductive. Instead she turned and pushed her way back into the outer court, not even taking the time to look back as the doors closed on the silent throne room.

Celestia did not call the guards back in, for she knew the conversation wasn't over. She moved up, and sat on her throne.

"Discord, come out."

"My, my," came the familiar voice. With a pop, a pair of mismatched eyes formed into existence next to her. "Getting a bit big-headed, are we?" With another pop, his infamous visage appeared, sans body – and massively larger than normal – with his eyes still their usual size. It was very off-putting to look at. "Reformed or no, you know you can't command me." Thankfully, while he spoke, there was a noise like a balloon inflating, restoring his eyes to large, but proportionally accurate size.

She looked at him, faintly amused. "It wasn't a command. It was... a request. Besides, I knew you were there."

He hmmmed. "Odd," he replied, a loud clicking and grinding noise sounding as the rest of his body slowly popped out of the bottom of his head, one section at a time, as if it was some sort of mechanism unfolding. "Am I becoming predictable?" he asked, his still massive form lounging about the throne room as he tapped his chin. "That doesn't sound like me." His visage shifted into the images of several other beings of a wide variety of species - including other draconequi, each with a different combination of animal parts, all still massive, and occupying most of the room.

"You wouldn't miss out a chance to watch one of my subjects give me a dressing-down," she replied, used to his antics by now. "Especially not one you arranged yourself."

"Moi?" he said, utterly failing to look innocent, whatever the halo levitating above his head implied. "Whatever could you be implying?"

She gazed evenly at him. "I believe I told you the exemptions should be myself, Luna, Twilight's herd, and–"

"–Anyone who could help Twilight Sparkle complete this task," Discord interrupted, taking her form to finish her quote for her. Celestia frowned at her yellow-eyed doppelgänger, whom responded by winking suggestively back at her. "Note the emphasis on the words 'Twilight Sparkle' there," said the purple now-unicorn, Discord fluidly shifting form to form as he spoke.

He was abruptly seated on a massive throne next to Celestia's, Twilight’s form slowly sliding back into Discord’s. The throne was strange, looking like it was made out of swords that had been melted together. "Nowhere in that request was there a rider about hiding your dirty laundry."

Suddenly, the Day Court was full of clotheslines -–countless copies of her crown jewels – her tiara, necklace, and golden horseshoes hung from them... as well as a certain coronation dress that she had commissioned, but didn't actually exist yet. "So I put the one person on the list who I knew would care, would be deeply motivated to act, to in some way to make up for her past mistake of being a quite frankly miserable parent, and on top of that, who I knew would have the Rocky Mountain Oysters to tell her God and Ruler what a foolish idiot she's being, for refusing to give her student all the information on the subject."

"But we don't know if this information could actually help Twilight–" Celestia started.

"–But we don't know if it won't, either," he finished. "See, while I didn't get to see the whole series of events – considering I had a seat in the ‘transformed to stone’ section..." he said, and he was abruptly carved out of stone, but still animate. He ate his entire drink, jaws stretching impossibly to fit it in, then crunching it in his stone jaws. "But from what little I did see, I know for a fact you have just as many skeletons in your closet from that time as Little Luna does." Nonexistent closet doors opened up all over the room, skeletons pouring out – she recognized ponies, griffons, Minotaurs, and dozens of others, including one that she assumed, based on its shape, was a human’s. She idly wondered if these were just random imaginary skeletons, or Discord-created duplicates of people she'd known throughout the ages. They became tangled up in the clotheslines, many taking amusing or inappropriate poses as they did.

"I get where you're coming from, Celly – you're afraid. You hide it behind your ‘I'm a thousand years old, the only emotions I have are faint amusement and mild disapproval’ thing, but we were archenemies when you were just coming out of fillyhood!" The skeletons suddenly shrank to child-size, the clotheslines retracting, causing the rather disturbing visual of child skeletons being dragged off through the doors, which vanished. "I know you too well to hide it from me."

Celestia looked at Discord oddly – one thing she'd learned from spending time with him 'peacefully' was that overtly reacting to his antics just encouraged him – and he did tend to clean up after himself, at least these days. "And with your incredible insight, what are you proposing I am afraid of?"

He casually gestured with his hand. "Oh, lots of things. But I think the biggest one is losing Twilight's respect."

Suddenly, they were surrounded by dozens of Twilights.

"You tricked me!"

"You weren't there when I needed you!"

"You hurt me and those I love!"

"You're the worst mentor ever!"

"I hate you!"

"You used me!"

"I was stupid to think you were on my side!"

"I never want to see you again!"

Celestia slammed a hoof against the ground, causing a deafening crack to echo through the room. She glared at Discord. "Stop it," she practically growled.

"Fine." He snapped a finger, and the Twilights disappeared with a pop. "Now that I've had time to watch you all... One of the things I find the most ironically hilarious is how terrified Twilight Sparkle is of losing your approval – when you're just as scared of the opposite. You just hide it better."

"It's not just her – what we've kept secret could lead all of the residents of Equestria to question our stability, and the legitimacy of our rule."

"Oh, it was that bad, was it? My, my, my." He paused, turning on her. "Let me offer this insight: It would be far worse for you if Twilight failed because you held back information than if you told her everything and she still failed. Because then you would have betrayed her. You gave her a dangerous task without telling her absolutely everything you knew about it. I know it's important that she figure it out herself – but if nothing else, telling her how others failed will at least prevent her from going down the wrong paths... and as for the rest – you trust her. Twilight Sparkle and her herd will keep this secret to their dying day. You know that."

There was a long silence as Celestia stared at the creature next to her, who had assumed a relaxed, slumped posture as he talked. "...Discord, why are you being so helpful?"

"I'd say out of the goodness of my heart, but I know there's no way I could keep a straight face. Simple: There's something in it for me."

"Fluttershy."

"Yes. Now–" With a snap of his fingers, he and the throne vanished, the Day Court returning to how it once was. "–go to your sister and tell her what you decided." His disembodied voice finished.

Celestia harrumphed, and stood. "You can't command me, either."

However, she left to do just that.

Author's Note

God bless Archonix. He wrote this for me a long while back. (Well... except for the tail end of this chapter... I have someone else to thank for that.)

A special explanation deserves to be given to all of you. Originally, this chapter you've all just finished reading was amounted to a sort of 'Scene 1' for the much larger chapter that is to follow.

But I got to thinking about Star Sparkle. Considering what sort of lady she is, her deeds here are huge. I decided to break off this segment into its own chapter because I felt our Star deserved a moment of distinction, a chance to shine for once... rather than have her be quickly overshadowed by all that is to come in the upcoming chapter.

A toast to you, Star Sparkle! May misfortune follow you the rest of your life, but never catch up, and may the grass on your road to hell grow long from lack of use!

Please stay tuned, everybody. We'll soon be taking a fateful dive into the past; you won't want to miss this.

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

And I strongly encourage every true fan of this story to check out this Divided Rainbow spin-off: Into The Hedge, strongly approved by Yours Truly.

As well as Ends Of The Spectrum, by SpinelStride.

Twenty-Eight: Sunshade And Moonshine

Contentment.

That was the word.

The past few days had been filled with many positive emotions; joy, love, anticipation, glee, satisfaction...

But as he felt his mares sleeping around him, cuddled tight to him and each other, Lero felt, for the first time since this had started, content.

Lyra had been a rock, supporting everyone, but it filled his heart with joy to see how happy she was about what had happened, in the moments she let it show to him (she needed, after all, to seem not too eager). The problem wasn't solved, but Twilight was filled with new energy towards solving it, and no longer punished herself for her role in the events. And how unexpected Rarity had been - loving and caring, despite how distant they'd been before this all started.

But most of all... Rainbow was back. All of her. In their arms, in their hearts, and them in hers. He chuckled slightly, the four ponies pressing up to him tickling a memory of Dash... right before they left for Bramblewood, back when Dash had been the one wearing Rarity's mark.

“Well, Dash,” he murmured quietly, before kissing the sleeping pegasus on the forehead gently, “we lived up to your promise. The next time we were all under the same roof, I was the sandwich. It took a lot longer than expected, and with an extra ingredient, but I think it still counts.”

He watched her smile in her sleep. With that, he leaned back, and relaxed, able to fall into an untroubled slumber for quite some time.

* * *

Hot, steamy shower water cascaded down both their naked bodies.

Okay, maybe not. Lero thought to himself. However, the pony he was cuddled up with this time was definitely not the cyan-coated, rainbow-maned, winged one from the last time he had this dream. She was was much more distinctly lavender. Amusingly, Twilight still seemed to be dozing, cuddled up to him in the same pose she was in bed.

“Heh, nice of you to join me in the shower, Twilight,” he said, stroking her wet mane gently.

“Nnnnf.” She rubbed her head with her hoof, eyes opening blearily as she peered about, as if genuinely awakening. “Weird. None of my dreams ever looked like this before.”

“Your dreams?” Lero inquired, amused. “What makes you think this is your dream?”

“...Because I'm dreaming.” She and Lero stared at each for a moment, before Twilight went, “Alright, who should pinch themselves first?”

They both heard the noise of a throat clearing. “Mayhap I can offer insight into your situation.”

Both their heads jerked up, eyes wide. Lero immediately recognized the figure.

“Princess LunaAAAA!” Twilight's exclamation of surprise shifted to alarm as Lero unexpectedly grabbed her and pulled her into his lap.

“Greeting, Princess Luna. How can we help you?” Lero asked politely, still making every effort to hide his lower body behind Twilight.

Luna raised an eyebrow. “I was expecting some surprise stemming from my sudden appearance, but...”

“It’s Lero, Princess. Remember; he has a nudity taboo.”

“Ah! His nudity taboo... yes, yes, of course. So much like the Saddle Arabians, in fact!"

"I wouldn't know," said Lero, but Luna hadn't seemed to have heard him.

"How rude of me to be dressed more than my host. Forgive me, Sir Michaelides." With a smooth motion, the Royal Attire clattered to the ground. "Better?" the princess asked.

"No, Princess, it..." started Twilight.

"...It'll be fine," Lero cut her off. Twilight looked quizzically back at Lero.

"But Lero..."

"Luna's a friend. Besides, I'm not going to needlessly correct one of the two alicorns I can look in the face without breaking out into a cold sweat," he whispered back. "Just... stay in front of me, okay?"

She nodded, and with that, looked over to Luna. “Forgive me, Princess. To what do we owe the, ah, visit?”

“My apologies for offering no warning, but my sister was convinced to provide you with a particular piece of information about… well, ourselves, that mayhap could provide some added insight into your current situation.”

“Er. Not that I’m not grateful, but why now?” Twilight asked. “And why here?”

“Because the information I am about to reveal is an Equestrian state secret. We ask, and in this case, must command, your discretion in this matter, of course. As for ‘why now,’ it is only of extremely late that my sister was… convinced to reveal this information to you.”

"Convinced?” Twilight paused. “...By whom?”

“By your dam, Twilight.”

“Ah,” she said flatly. “Of course. Made a gigantic scene, I bet.”

“I was not present, but I have heard that she perturbed a few of the guards. Beyond that, the matter was private.”

“Well, that’s a small relief. Wait, she convinced Celestia…? Wouldn’t you need to be convinced, too?”

“Actually, Twilight… I favored entrusting you with this knowledge from the start, but in matters this sensitive, both of us must grant our approval.”

“I… Why?” Twilight asked plaintively.

“Why would I trust you… more than your own mentor trusts you, Twilight?”

“Yes.”

“...Do not think uncharitably of my sister, Twilight. It is not an issue of not trusting you, it is a question of protecting her people. This day is no longer a time where we face mighty evils in battle, and our people follow behind us simply that they might survive. Now many ponies put their own interests over the wellbeing of our nation. I have learned that peace can be more treacherous than the more overt perils of war. I have… ever been the risk-taker compared to Celestia. And… Twilight, you saved me from my madness, and returned me to my beloved sister. I am… biased in your favor, perhaps on a deeper level than my sister.”

“...I… Thank you, Princess Luna.”

Lero cleared his throat. “Forgive me for asking but… Why am I here? Especially in regards to state secrets?”

Luna turned towards him. “The entire reason for the Exemption List was that there be those who could understand and aid Twilight in her efforts.”

Lero thought a moment. “I get it. In other words, when Twilight wakes up from this, tomorrow morning, I’ll be able to say, ‘It wasn’t just some meaningless dream. I saw it all too, so you'd better take it seriously.”

Luna nodded. “We would've included more on the Exemption List, but it was imperative to limit the number involved and… my sister wanted to give you a show of trust, Lero.”

Lero paused. “...She’s still trying to get me to forgive her, isn’t she? I already have.”

“She believes that you think that. But then you quake when she draws near.”

Lero sighed. “I can’t help that.”

“She knows. But is it not in her nature to stop. She is the Sun,” she said, as if that explained everything. “But as for why you are here? There is scarcely a place more resistant to eavesdropping than a dreamscape called into existence by my power.”

“...You called into existence? This was my drea... Were you spying on me?” Lero sputtered, though there was very little anger, more bafflement and surprise.

“It… is not my intent to spy. I am Princess of the Night; it is my duty to ensure the wellbeing of my subjects as they dream. As Celestia extended citizenship to you, my responsibility extended to your dreams as well. And you have proven yourself a conundrum most interesting, Lero.”

“How so?”

“You… do not dream like ponies. I cannot step into your dreams as easily I can a pony’s, and when I do, you always seem to notice that I am there — but you interact with and remember me as you would any other element of your dream. That is, doing as you wish, and most poorly, respectively. Ponies never see me unless I wish it, and always remember when I address them... after all, what would be the point of speaking to them in dreams of which they remember naught?”

“So… what’s that have to do with ‘dreamscapes?’”

“A compromise. I find that should I pull your dreams into my dream realm, I can interact with them as I would a pony’s.”

“Is that why I’ve been having these… vivid dreams lately?”

“Mayhap. I believe to your mind they seem as though real experiences instead of dreams.” She paused, as if to say more, but unsure if she should.

Lero, however, alleviated the need to. “...Were you trying to tell me something in those dreams, Princess?”

“...It was my effort to provide advice and guidance, yes. I knew how fraught with peril this was for you here, and I wanted to provide assistance without tipping my hoof too much.”

A moment of silence passed between them before Twilight cut in. “So! What are you going to show us?” Lero smiled slightly. She couldn’t hold down her urge to learn for long.

“I am going to reveal to you the story of the first swap.”

“I… first swap? So this did happen before! Just like we theorized, remember, Lero?”

“Not quite in the same way, but yes… Though with far worse consequences. There were reasons we took the precautions we did this time around.”

“But how could you let this even happen a second time!?” Lero interjected. “If you knew how dangerous the spell was, how could you sit back and let Twilight cast it!?”

“Because, Bellerophon,” Luna responded, with a notable firmness in her voice, “My sister has given us sufficient evidence to convince us that one day the fate of Equestria may depend on Twilight finishing that spell. We did not agree to this lightly, but once convinced, we did not ‘sit back.’ This is as much on our head as it is our sister’s.” She sighed. “But knowest that we take no joy in your suffering. It pains our hearts to see you all in such a state — especially mine, as you will see why…”

Luna shifted back dramatically, spreading her wings, the dreamscape shifting around them. “The tale begins shortly after Celestia and I had obtained the Elements of Harmony…”

* * *

The three dream-travelers found themselves in a strange terrain, one that was familiar to Twilight and Luna; to Lero, it was simply bizarre. The ground was a purple checkerboard pattern. Card houses rose to the height of palaces.

“...Where the hell is this? Wackyland?” Lero commented, as a school of cuttlefish swam upside-down through the air nearby.

“Discord,” Twilight said, with a pointed stare at the cotton candy clouds overhead. “This must be one of the times he ruled…”

“Indeed. The first, in fact.” Luna added. “Such a long, long time ago, it was...”

“I feel like Ebenezer Scrooge in A Christmas Carol,” Lero said, shifting a little closer behind Twilight. “If only I had his pajamas on me.”

However, before the Moon Princess could inquire into the human’s strange reference, the voices of three newcomers caught their attention.

“Hark! There he rests, atop yonder hill!” called a masculine voice.

“Knave and beast! He sits atop a throne, instead of hiding his face in shame at the chaos he hath wrought!”

“‘Tis the King of Chaos, himself, sister. Not a whit cares he for shame. Even such an unnatural sight as this is pleasing to him.”

“Wait!” cried Twilight, as they all turned around towards the trio of ponies who had spoken. “Luna, that’s Princess Celestia! And you!” They watched the Moon Princess nod at her past self. “And...!”

“Starswirl the Bearded!” Twilight and Lero chorused the name, but with vastly differing tones. Luna briefly boggled to hear such intense admiration from her and such deep contempt from him, spoken in tandem.

It was impossible for Lero or Twilight to mistake this unicorn stallion for anyone else. They knew his face well from illustrations in the many history books Twilight had pored through: wizardly robes, a long, flowing beard, and a belled pointy hat that jingled with each step.

However, before Luna’s two guests could further their exclamations, she continued her role as guide. “Indeed it is. I have brought you to witness a momentous event of the far past: the day I confronted Discord and ended his mad reign alongside my sister.”

The Alicorn Princesses and Starswirl the Bearded stood yards away from an enormous throne. Though it faced the opposite direction, Lero could see a distinct horn and antler visible over the top of the throne. Just when it seemed they would approach Discord as a trio, Starswirl came to a resolute stop.

“Take courage, goodly Sisters,” Starswirl told the young alicorns. “I’ve versed the both of ye in my strongest magics. But alas, here I must remain: I cannot go with ye.”

“Coward,” Twilight heard Lero hiss behind her.

“I fear I would be naught but a target for Discord’s fell hexes and be made into a lever fer him to use against ye,” Starswirl went on. “Trust in yourselves. Trust the Magic of Harmony. Gird your hearts against any fell lies and half-truths yon beast might sayeth to corrupt thy spirits. Never lose sight of your task. Were this Emperor of Chaos to realize how dire a threat the Elements are unto him… methinks we would likely never have another chance.”

“Verily, we shall triumph, teacher,” spoke Celestia. “And all thanks to thee.”

The two Princesses pressed their faces against him in a close nuzzle, one that Lero himself recognized as one that ponies gave to those that they were close to. Much to the human’s surprise, he noted Starswirl seeming discomforted and embarrassed by this show of closeness.

Finally, it seemed like too much for the unicorn to take. “Enough!” declared Starswirl, stepping back and ducking his head down. “Off with ye! Discord shan’t be smited if you both dawdle the day away with an old stallion.”

The young alicorns looked disappointed, but nodded, turning to stalk towards Discord, who sat on his distant throne.

“Old stallion? He barely looks out of his thirties here!” Twilight protested as she, Lero, and Luna followed behind the sisters, who approached their foe at a slow gait. Lero took a second to sneer coldly at the wizard lingering behind, sitting out the final battle.

“And yet, history tells of Starswirl’s many deeds from before the unification of the three pony tribes, does it not, Twilight Sparkle?” Luna commented idly.

Twilight blinked, that obvious fact clicking with her. “Hey, yeah, how is that possible...?”

“In good time,” Luna replied.

“...Wait, where are your cutie marks?” Lero suddenly exclaimed, focusing on the sisters’ bare flanks.

“There was an earlier battle where Celestia and I attempted to end Discord’s reign simply by overpowering him with our Alicorn might,” explained Princess Luna. “He spared our lives but stripped our cutie marks from us to remove our special talents, in hopes that such would end our efforts against him. And to amuse him greatly, as is his wont.” Suddenly, she motioned for silence, as the sisters drew near the chaotic throne.

The high-backed horned throne suddenly spun about to face the sisters, revealing the beast himself, Discord, in all his mismatched glory… laughing at the alicorns.

“Oh ho ho ho! This is so much fun! How about a game of pin the tail on the pony?” He taunted, holding up a certain familiar pastel rainbow of an astral tail.

Alarmed, Celestia gasped, looking back at her doubly-defiled rear, before glaring back at the creature. “This will be an end to thy games, Discord!”

“Oh, I doubt that,” he responded with a careless shrug. The draconequus was snacking on some black pellets from a bag he’d procured somewhere, letting out a brief shudder of delight as he swallowed one. Then he offered a handful of the pellets to the princesses in a grand gesture, clumsily scattering them everywhere as he did. “Hungry?”

The princesses did not respond; they simply glared at him stoically as a few stray pellets bounced off their heads.

“Suit yourselves.” He shrugged, hungrily, messily, and obnoxiously devouring them like popcorn.

Wordlessly, the princesses used their telekinesis to undo their saddlebags, each levitating three gems each out. Celestia’s gems were colored orange, red, and a spiked lavender. Luna’s were blue, purple and pink.

“Oooooh!” While spreading his arms in surprise, Discord carelessly dropped his bag of pellets, scattering its contents everywhere, especially the ground beneath their feet. ”What have you got there?” he asked, rubbing his chin.

“The Elements of Harmony!” Celestia replied definitely.

“And their powers be thy end!” Luna added.

Discord collapsed sideways onto his throne, laughing uproariously, before finally regaining control over himself. “You should see yourselves right now. The expressions on your face. So intense. So sure of yourselves. Ah ha ha! Hilarious!”

He wiped his eye, sitting up, the Princesses aura’s expanding, the elements of harmony starting to whirl around them, starting to glow in power, not even flinching at his mockery. “You know, you two are taking this too seriously. You two really really need to relax, unwind a little… Oh, I know the perfect thing... a song!” He stood up, and cleared his throat, a bandstand forming behind him. Discorded ponies, living instruments, coherent vortices of noise, braying warped animals, and various chaotic bric-a-brac struck up a discordant tune, and the Lord of Chaos… began to sing.

And once again, you're facing me,
with horns all glowing bright,
except you know I'll swap them 'round
give you horns on your behinds!
You've tried before and so you know
there's only one way this can end
with you all humiliated
and sobbing for your friends!
You know it's right, but you come back,
to try your luck once more,
and beneath those scowling brows,
I think I know the score!
Why would you come face me again,
when you'll just end up dismayed?
The answer is quite obvious,
you're hoping you'll get laid!
So put aside the pretense, mares,
and hike those tails up high,
because Discord can take care of you
and that heat you feel inside!
And if you weren't feeling it
when you woke up today,
you might be wondering just why
right now you really want a lay!
I may have lent a helping hand
to help you defeat your prudery,
just gave you two relentless heat
for an entire century!

However, during his musical number, the magical aura surrounding the two sisters reached its peak, and as they touched their horns. A vibrant explosion of color — a rainbow of light — erupted from them, arcing through the air toward Discord.

"Gorge thyself upon the full might and fury of the unfettered spectrum, contestor of thine own sire's herd!" Luna exclaimed loudly. However, the target of her ire was completely absorbed in his song, holding the final note so long, he was caught in a pose of holding his chest with one hand while making a grand gesture with the other, head back, mouth open, eternally cast in song as he was rendered into stone.

Lero was the one to finally break the silence amongst the observers. “That… was a hell of a song.” He paused. “...Princess, did you just call Discord a motherfucker?”

The Princess of the Night blushed furiously. “I was much more… colorful with my language when I was younger.”

“I’m confused.” added Twilight. “Why is almost everyone speaking in Archaic Equestrian? That wasn’t the common language of the time.”

“Indeed, They are speaking in Old High Equestrian. I am translating for ease of understanding.”

“Then why the archaic forms of speech?” Twilight persisted.

She blushed against. “It is… the one I am the most comfortable with.”

“Y’know, I’m noticing a distinct lack of ‘thees’ and ‘thys’ in Discord’s speech patterns,” Lero interjected. “What gives?”

“He always spoke as such,” Luna said. “Yet we could always understand him. One of his many oddities.”

“...As weird as that is, is there a chance you can translate the rest of this back to Modern Equestrian?" the human asked. "Otherwise, it can a bit hard for us to follow this story you’re trying to tell.”

“I... shall try.” Luna said. Her horn glowed, and Twilight and Lero each felt alicorn magic buzz around their ears.

“Guys? Something’s happening.”

Lero was right. The distorted scenery was warping back from its insane checkerboard landscape back into a simple pony village. Chaos faded, harmony returned to the land, and most notably, stolen cutie marks and mystical powers radiated back to all ponies everywhere.

“Discord’s changes are undone.” Celestia declared. “Only the most ancient of his tricks, the ones that the Magic of Harmony incorporated into itself remained. Most notably, here...”

A Sun and Moon cutie mark swirled about the sisters, finally, the Moon settled on Celestia’s flank, and the Sun on Luna’s.

The dark Alicorn practically hopped with joy. “Tia! Tia! Our marks are back!”

“Indeed they are, Lumina,” agreed Celestia, with a fond look back at her cloudy crescent moon mark. “Come, let us return to Starswirl, there is a victory to be celebrated!”

With a cheer, the Sun-flanked Luna followed her Moon-flanked elder sister back in the direction where their bearded mentor awaited them.

There was a long silence between the dreamwatchers. It was finally Twilight that spoke up.

“WHAT. THE. FUCK!?”

* * *

Lero’s face was an unemotional, stony mask.

Mostly because he was trying really hard not to laugh at Twilight’s complete over-the-top reaction. She’d been sputtering incoherently for the past several minutes, sentences shattered to fragments as they each fought to come out her mouth. Luna likewise simply waited patiently for Twilight to stop.

Lero leaned over to Luna, and murmured in her ear, “You just picked that moment for the most dramatic possible reveal, didn’t you?”

Luna just smiled, as it looked like Twilight was finally winding down.

“But — History, and the — Books! Every historical document ever… Sun and Moon — The swap! But how!? Couldn’t have — what did — Discord’s? But when… HUNH!?”

“Do you wish to let me explain?” Luna commented, not quite managing to hide all of her amusement.

Twilight was speechless for several moments, before inhaling deeply, collecting herself, exhaling, and nodding. “Yes, Your Majesty, I would love an explanation.”

“By now, you have probably deduced the simplest explanation. That I was once the Goddess of the Sun, and my sister, the Moon… and when Starswirl’s unfinished spell was first cast, we were its first victims.”

“But… how is that possible?”

“That question will be the focus of the next part of my story.”

And she led them away, the scene melting away into a wash of dreamscapes. From there, Lero and Twilight witnessed centuries of Equestrian history fast-forward alongside them as they walked behind Luna.

The Moon Princess was not without a sense of good theatrics. Every so often, the onrush of time would slow down to showcase landmark moments in pony history; the three pony tribes uniting under the Princesses, the construction of the Two Sisters’ Castle in the then-tame Everfree forest, the spread of Equestrian civilization, and contact with other races: most peaceful, but in some cases (most notably the griffons) not.

Lero kept having to nudge Twilight forward to keep her from staring at these in wonder as they passed.

Ponies came and went as the three dreamwalkers marched on. But one figure remained, ageless and constant as the Alicorn princesses... until near the end. This was Starswirl the Bearded, royal advisor and court mage.

“Wow... I never thought I’d see this myself…” Twilight commented. “I remember reading about Starswirl’s time as Court Mage. What was he like?”

Luna’s horn shone. The view shifted from a surge through time, to a collage of moments from Starswirl The Bearded’s life.

Scenes of Starswirl consulting the princesses. Scenes of him teaching unicorns. Scenes of him aiding the kingdom with powerful spells. And several scenes of him spending time with the Princesses.

Twilight could not quite overlook how darkly Lero glowered at each new appearance of Starswirl, baring his teeth.

Usually, Starswirl appeared embarrassed whenever the princesses openly showed him tenderness, cringing or blushing noticeably whenever they nuzzled him, hugged him, or — heaven forbid — kissed him on the cheek.

“You stonehearted, loveless block of ice…” Lero growled.

But though they weren’t as frequent, there were also moments where Starswirl’s guard was down, fully returning the princesses’ gestures of affection.

“Peh,” the human huffed.

“Starswirl was wise, skilled, powerful... the best advisor we ever had,” Luna told them. “This is not to cast aspersions on the fine ponies who took on the mantle of Court Mage after his passing. There was simply none like him. And Starswirl was… a friend. To my sister and I, at least. However, with everypony else, his gruff, aloof nature… well…”

A montage of scenes formed before the dreamwalkers, each showing the moon-flanked Celestia attempting to speak with Starswirl.

“My dear teacher,” she spoke, as they the two of them strolling together through a rose garden. “You don’t suppose that the company of other ponies may aid you in your studies?”

“Nonsense, Celestia,” answered Starswirl. “Others would only get in the way of my work.”

“Starswirl, hear this,” Celestia said at a later point in time, peeking into the stallion’s room as he studied. “Bluebell is hosting the most lively...”

“Leave me be!”

“Starswirl, this is a royal proclamation,” Celestia warned, while the bell-hatted stallion channeled a spell in an elaborate chalk circle. “As Princess of the Moon, I hereby order you to go out there and make some friends.”

“No.”

“...Not so much,” concluded Princess Luna.

“...Reminds me a bit of myself when I was in Canterlot… Who had time for friends? I… I’m not sure how to feel about what I just saw.” Twilight shook her head. “So... yeah. How is he doing that? You and Princess Celestia are ageless, but… How is he not getting older?”

“If you look closely... he is. Just at a snail’s pace.”

She summoned up an image of an elderly-looking Starswirl; Lero placed him at about ninety years old. “You should be able to figure this out yourself, Twilight. What was one of Starswirl’s specialties?”

“...Time magic.”

“Indeed.”

As they watched, the ninety-year old Starswirl cast a spell... and became young again! About thirty-five years young, Lero estimated.

Then time flashed forward for Starswirl, returning him to the age of ninety. But the old wizard just cast the youthening spell again, and he fell to the age of thirty-six.

Then fifty-four years passed in a few seconds. Old Starswirl cast his youth spell, and was returned to a thirty-seven-year-old.

Then fifty-three years passed in a blink, until Old Starswirl recast the youth spell, becoming a thirty-eight-year-old…

...A forty-year-old…

…A fifty-year-old...

“It’s… not working as well each time?” Twilight inquired.

“Indeed. Time magic doesn’t reset your age, just pushes back the years.”

“...And each time, more years to push back,” Lero reasoned. “Eventually it would catch up to even as powerful a mage as Starswirl.”

“Yes,” said Luna. “And that was what led to all this.”

A new scene faded in from the darkness. The two princesses were walking alongside Starswirl down a castle corridor. Age was clearly wearing on him, and the princesses shared looks of concern with each shaky step their old teacher took.

“We… fear for your health, Starswirl. Perhaps it is time for you to retire? Live your last years in peace?” Celestia suggested. “Working as Court Mage is taking much power away from you that could be used to maintain your health.”

“Or perhaps we can offer our assistance?” the sun-flanked Lumina offered. “We may not be as versed in Time Magic as yourself, but you said yourself that Alicorn magic exceeds your own.”

“Nonsense! I would not take your power for myself, nor hold back in the service of my nation!” He paused, seeing the worried and slightly hurt expressions his monarchs wore. His expression softened. “Do no worry, my dears, I have been studying the Magic of Harmony, and I believe I have discovered a certain magic that will solve our problems. I am certain I am on the cusp of completing it.”

“Then we will assist you!” Lumina enthused.

“No. This is my magnum opus, the pinnacle of my mystical achievement. Truly, all after will pale in comparison. I must do it myself.”

“If it must be so, old friend, then do it. You have our support,” Celestia replied, her sun-flanked sister nodding eagerly.

The old stallion smiled. “Thank you, sisters. I must take my leave.” They nodded, stopping as they reach the door to a tallest tower in the castle.

“Do you think he can do this, Tia? I… do not want to lose him. He is our oldest friend.” Lumina asked.

“As he is our friend, we must put our faith in him,” replied her moon-flanked older sister. “Come, Little Luna, it is time for you to set the sun, and for me to raise the moon.”

Nodding sadly, Lumina walked away with her sister.

"I'm sorry," Lero suddenly blurted out to Luna, staring at the alicorn sisters' cutie marks as he watched them go. "You say that you and Celestia were the first victims of the Swap, and I can believe that, but... are you sure that hasn't happened to you already?!"

"Quite sure," said Luna. "Does it looked like we've been swapped?"

"Well, with all due respect, Princess Luna... yes, it does," Twilight admitted. "Albeit, after achieving an equilibrium, like Rarity and Rainbow have. I mean, you look at Celestia, with all her bright, sunshiny colors, and, well, you wouldn't think she'd be suited to be in charge of the moon."

"And by the same token, I — with my mane and coat in such darker, nocturnal shades — make for an equally unlikely and unexpected Sun Princess, do I not?"

Bashfully, her two mortal companions nodded. Luna smiled, shrugged her royal shoulders, and looked back at her own cutie mark.

"Sometimes, there's a great cosmic irony to these sort of things. Believe me, you two were hardly the first to have that reaction to us. And you're just more used to seeing me and my sister as we are now. But come, now, why stand around talking when we can see what happened for ourselves?" spoke Luna, guiding the dreamwalkers with her, to show them a new point in time. Starswirl stood in a beautiful domed enclosure atop a tower.

“Whooooooa….” Twilight enthused, looking about. Magical equipment was everywhere, with chalkboards covered in arcane equations, mystical sigils glowing with power. “So this is Starswirl’s lab? I never dreamed I’d see it in person!”

“...That is what I think it is, isn’t it?” Lero said flatly, peering over Starswirl’s shoulder as the venerable old unicorn pored over a familiar black tome.

“That is, indeed, his last journal.” Luna replied, as he finished inscribing words on the final page.

“And... complete!” Starswirl said, walking over to a spell circle, placing the book on a stand before him.

Twilight’s ears flipped up in alarm. “Wait, he’s not about to do what I think he is?” She asked, horror tingeing her voice.

“Ruining everyone’s lives? Yeah, that’s what he does,” Lero said dryly. “Starswirl The Bearded: the author of all our woes.”

“That was never his intent,” Luna said flatly. However, before they could bicker further, Starswirl began his incantation.

“From one to another,
Another to one,
A mark of one’s destiny
Singled out alone, fulfilled.”

The power that built as he cast the spell released itself as he finished. He stood there expectantly, silently. The unseen watchers from the far future held their collective breath.

“...Nothing happened!?” Twilight exclaimed.

“Nothing happened?” echoed Starswirl, looking over his still-ancient body. “That’s not… Have I made a miscalculation? I was so sure…”

Suddenly, the shadows all around them lengthened noticeably, all light dimming. “...What?” Starswirl looked outward…

...and his eyes widened in alarm at what he saw. The sun in the heavens was still alight. But instead of a sphere, the great fireball had now taken the distinctly crescent shape of a waxing moon. The sky, itself, had turned the murky maroon of a late evening. Every star and constellation twinkled visibly.

“...No. No, no, no, no, no! This is wrong! How did this happen? Why would the Princesses... The Princesses!” Wheeling about, Starswirl charged downstairs, as fast as his tottery old legs would allow for, hat jingling all the way.

Lero and Twilight almost followed after, but Princess Luna had not budged. She stood silent and transfixed by the diminished glow of the crescent sun. It unsettled Lero to see her stare straight at it for so long.

“...Princess Luna? Are we going to follow him?” Twilight asked.

“Yes, just… give me a moment. No need to hurry, we’ll catch up. It’s just this… this moment heralds the beginning of the very worst part of my life.”

“I… Oh.” With that, Twilight fell silent. After several awkward moments, Luna finally straightened up.

“Let’s go.” And under the star-strewn sky of early afternoon, they went.

* * *

Starswirl raced past the high balcony of the castle, only to pause, and backtrack when he realized that a white-coated Alicorn sat there, her horn glowing with a golden hue as she finished bringing up the crescent sun. “There. I don’t know why that was so hard today…” she murmured.

“Princess!” Starswirl exclaimed, striding up to her. “What are you doing!?”

“Ah! Starswirl, finished so soon?” Starswirl started to speak, but interrupted himself as he did a double-take at the sun mark now nestled on her flank. “Or did you just miss me?” replied Celestia, impishly, noting his look, but misreading his meaning. Starswirl simply stared at her, startled at the subtle, serene moon goddess’ overt flirtations, more worthy of her sister.

“But… pray tell, what did you mean when you asked ‘what am I doing?’” she asked, bringing him back.

“The sky! The twilight taking place an hour after noon, the stars sharing the sky with a crescent sun!” he replied vehemently.

“Starswirl, what are you talking about? The stars are all right where they’re supposed to be at this time of day. It’s always been this way.”

There was a sharp intake of breath from the cross-temporal audience at that line.

Her expression shifted to concern. “Are you alright, my friend? Did something go wrong with your spell?”

“No! Well, yes, but that’s not why I’m asking this! The sun is supposed to be a complete sphere!”

Celestia frowned. “It will be a while before it comes time for a Full Sun phase, Starswirl.”

Starswirl tilted his head so far left, his hat fell right off his head, landing with a flat, dull noise. “What do you mean, ‘Full Sun phase?’ The sun’s supposed to be a round ball all the time! Not have phases!”

Celestia’s look of concern deepened considerably. "Of course the sun has phases. Don’t you remember, Starswirl? I just finished my latest Third Quarter Sun, but that’s now done with, so I just switched the sun to a Waning Crescent. No different than I’ve always done since time out of mind.” She paused for a beat. “Well, except for right now, yes?” she replied, jovially, but frowned again as the only response she got was a disbelieving stare.

She pointed her horn towards the sun in the sky.

“Then, a few days from now, I’ll be making the sun vanish from sight, because it’ll be a New Sun phase..."

Starswirl the Bearded gave her such a look of utter horror, it was as though she declared she’d be extinguishing the sun entirely in a few days’ time. So she was quick to assure him, “But I'll bring it right back for its Waxing Crescent phase. Next will come the Third Quarter Sun, then the Waxing Gibbous Sun, and then a nice round Full Sun that you’re suddenly so anxious for. All I ask is a little bit of patience on your part.”

“Why… Why would you do that? Why would you hide the sun?”

“Because…” Celestia trailed off, suddenly staring blankly for a few seconds.

“...Princess…?” Starswirl ventured, concerned.

“Because otherwise it’d get far too hot for my little ponies!” she concluded, as if the interruption never occurred. “Why, could you imagine? Living day after day under a Full Sun? This world would dry up into one giant desert in no time! It’s plain for anypony to see that the sun needs to be given in carefully measured doses.”

“...But what of the plants and the animals? How will they cope with this change? We depend upon our crops for our survival!”

Princess Celestia furrowed her brow in confusion at the question. “They will thrive as they always do. What change are talking about, Starswirl? You’re suddenly asking strange questions about commonly known things. Are you... absolutely certain nothing is wrong with your memories?” Her look of concern was absolutely genuine, taking Starswirl even further aback. How could this be real?

It was then he spotted a large, dark figure walking down an adjoining hall. “...Never mind!” He turned and headed after the younger alicorn, leaving the confused Celestia. When out of earshot, he hissed, “Princess Lumina, wait!” to the retreating Sun Goddess.

Moon Goddess, now. He mentally amended, spotting the crescent mark on Lumina’s flank. However, the Princess failed to respond, neither speeding up to flee, nor slowing down to accommodate him. This did not put her out of reach, but the elderly mage had to struggle to catch up. “Lumina!” he hissed again. No response.

“I… Have to ask, Princess… 'Lumina?'” Twilight Sparkle looked questioningly to her princess.

“Lumina… was my name.” She smiled slightly. “Well, one of them.” She looked up and to the side, remembering. “Celestia of the of the Night Sky, Lumina of the Sunny Day... that's who we used to be. But after this… Well, I am Luna of the Moon, now and forevermore.”

“I… see.” Twilight replied before a more strident call distracted her.

“LUMINA!” Starswirl barked at he reached her side. She still failed to respond, her gaze blank, her actions measured, mechanical. “...Princess, what is wrong with you? Can you hear me? Princess!”

Silence.

“...Where are we going?” he mused to himself, as they started to climb a tower side-by-side, the Princess still unresponsive. After several more twists and turns, he realized where they were going. “...These are Celestia’s chambers.”

Several slightly baffled guards watched Starswirl and Lumina pass, but did nothing to stop the Diarch or the Archmage from entering.

“Princess, what are you doing?” he asked, as she strode into the room, mechanically levitating her crown, shoes, and necklace off her body, and stowing them away in drawers. Then she stepped into the bed, pulling the covers over herself, and the zombie-like blankness in her eyes finally faded… as she promptly closed her eyes.

A moment passed, then she began to emit tiny, cute snores. Several moments of disbelieving stares later, Starswirl walked over to the bed.

“LUMINA!”

“GYAH! IT WAS GLASS WHEN I GOT THERE!”

These exclamations resulted in several moments of confused blinking.

“Starswirl… What are you doing in my chambers?” the confused princess asked.

“...Lumina, these are Celestia’s chambers.” Starswirl was quickly getting used to that stare. The one adults usually reserved for small children who said something incredibly insightful but staggeringly rude, or for the mentally disturbed ranting nonsense, or for the person who just revealed that he had a second head.

“...Starswirl, that is patently absurd,” she said, stretching out in a yawn. “And why do you mangle my name so?”

“Mangle your name?”

“Yes, this ‘Lumina’ nonsense. It sounded like your tongue was swollen up like a...”

“...Lumina is your name.”

Luna righted herself, drawing to her full height. “Enough of this, Starswirl. If this is a joke, I do not understand it. I am Luna! Princess of the Night!”

That caused it to click. The hints that Celestia had dropped, laid bare here. “...You think you’re her.”

That rewarded him with another stare. This one blank. “...Beg pardon?”

He gazed at the Moon Mark upon the dark alicorn’s flank. “You think you are Celestia, Princess of the Night.”

“...I’m afraid I must submit it is you that are confused. Our sister Celestia has always been Princess of the Day.” She paused, vexation shifting to concern again. “Are you feeling well, Starswirl?”

This again. “I’m fine.” Starswirl mumbled, busily ruminating to himself. The spell was supposed to bring the elements together; perhaps they’d done so more literally than he intended… If so, convincing the Royal Sisters of the truth would require more than just chatter. “Forgive me for disturbing your sleep, Princess Lum- Luna. I must go.” With that, he quickly departed the room, leaving an utterly baffled Alicorn behind him.

“Get some rest, my friend!” she called after him. “You work far too hard!”

Then she drifted back to sleep.

Starswirl, meanwhile, chased down a scribe, who was staring, slack-jawed at the sky. “You, come with me. We have several letters to draft.”

At every window they passed, ponies stood gaping at the sun.

* * *

“Come.” Luna led her two companions away from the moment. “While much happens now, the most relevant scene happens later…”

As before, they crossed thousands of miles in a mere couple footsteps, over and over again. They witnessed panic seizing hold of earth pony serfs and nobles alike when they looked up towards the alien skies. Pegasi struggling to control the weather due to sudden temperature shifts. Unicorn sages burying themselves in fruitless research and theorizing. Griffons, Saddle Arabians, and Minotaurs in their respective lands, arguing amongst themselves about what the transformed sun might signify. Many petitioners, pony and foreign alike, from mobs of unwashed peasants to the wealthiest of aristocrats, demanding audience with the princesses, getting only polite confusion in response.

Twilight wasn’t able to contain her questions anymore. “How did you deal with all those petitioners? How long were you two like this? How did it affect your relations with other nations?”

Luna responded before she could go further. “We dealt with them as best we could. It was extremely confusing and upsetting being barraged by questions and demands that, to us, made no sense, but yet were delivered with such genuine fear and anger. However, as we were scions of the sky, all eventually bowed to our will. This… negatively impacted our relations with other nations. However, I was not around, in the long term to see how those resolved. Nor was the disruption long enough to prompt significant response at that time.”

"Did Starswirl hide his involvement in your change, or own up to what he did to other ponies?"

“Yes… and no. As you will see, he revealed his involvement to specific parties, those relevant to resolving the situation but let it spread no further — for the same reason Celestia chose to hide it from everyone else later. It would have been counterproductive for it to be made general knowledge. What was the phrase my sister used…?”

“A strict need-to-know basis?” the unicorn guessed.

“Yes, that was it. Thank you, Twilight Sparkle.”

“Heh. Cloak-and-dagger stuff.” Lero chuckled ruefully. “Funny how that stuff exists here, in a world of ponies.”

Twilight smirked at him, remembering his stories of conspiracy and scandal amongst his world’s governments. “I guess one more similarity between our worlds.”

“I suppose. Though oddly, your scandals are fewer… but more dire,” Lero replied, continuing to watch the chaos unfold.

Twilight paused at that, but as Lero seemed to have nothing further to say, she turned back to Luna. "Do you think ponies and everything else on this world could have eventually come to adapt to Solar Phases? Given time?"

She was thinking about how the Apple family had eventually come to adapt to a Pinkie Pie that bucked apples, how Rainbow Dash had eventually come to adapt to being a caretaker, and how she, herself, had adapted to a Rarity who was their herdmate...

Luna smiled at her sadly. “It was, ultimately, never a question of the ponies, or other people adapting. It was that of nature. Continued disruption of the natural cycle would have had cataclysmic effects on the plants, animals and weather of Equestria. It would end inevitably in disaster.”

“Oh…” Twilight responded, before shaking her head, returning to more immediately relevant queries. "Did you see yourself in each other's places in old family photos?"

Luna laughed. “There were no cameras when we were young. Much less photographs of us. Not that there were no depictions of us. After we ascended into royalty, there were many an illuminated folio, paintings, sculptures, and of course, you know of my sister’s fondness for stained-glass windows. Though we did not see ourselves as one another, we did always see the wrong cutie mark.”

"So you didn’t suddenly see yourself as the elder sister, Luna? And Celestia your younger?" asked Lero.

Though she smiled in good humor, Luna shook her head.

“Weird,” Lero mused. “Feels like it shouldn’t be that way. Like the Swap went and forgot some of its own rules.”

“You think so?” asked Twilight. “I disagree. To me, it makes perfect sense that the princesses would still remember the order of their birth.”

“Why?”

“Imagine Applejack and Apple Bloom swapped with each other,” Twilight proposed.

“Oh boy,” said Lero. Just the thought of it; an Applejack-sized Apple Bloom…

Twilight smiled. “Now, we’re all aware how the Swap likes to stretch believability to its limits, right?”

Lero nodded.

“Well, I could imagine Swapped Apple Bloom with AJ’s three-apple mark and hat. I could see her being a very adult-minded little girl who’s committed to farming and remembers being my friend and an Element of Harmony. And, on the flip side of the coin, I could picture Applejack as a child-minded blank flank mare who spends her free time with Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle, trying to finally get her cutie mark.”

Twilight took a breath. “But I don’t care HOW brainwashed you are; no one’s going to buy that Apple Bloom was born before Applejack. Not even them!”

Lero grinned wryly. “Well, they could always say there was some kind of accident with a time machine and a prophylactic. Or that the Apples have a history of growth hormone disorders.”

Twilight snorted. “Please forgive my monkey, your majesty. He imagines he’s witty, at times.”

“Not at all, not at all!” Luna laughed. “But, yes, I knew I was the younger sister, though everything else was… misattributed. Whom did what, whose possessions belonged to whom, our taste in food, our hobbies, who was whose friend, our…”

"How many doomsday prophets came out of the woodwork over this?" Lero interjected.

Luna’s mouth quirked at that. “Quite a few. However, as I understand it, Celesta ensured the prophecies they spouted did not endure beyond this age. At least, not about anything regarding crescent suns. Enough. We are here.”

They now stood in the Council Chambers of the castle; and there was an audience.

* * *

While the room itself was unfamiliar, the layout wasn’t: It closely resembled the rarely-used audience chamber of the Equestrian Council; the council that saw to various tribe-specific issues, or conflicts arising between the tribes, as well as other minutia beneath the Princesses’ notice. In modern times, it was rarely used outside of brief, routine sessions, and was almost never full.

This time, there wasn’t an empty seat in the house.

“Princess.” Twilight was frowning, looking from face to face. “I don’t recognize any of these council members, and I’ve read up extensively on all the ones we’ve ever had!”

“Then I can only suppose their identities were lost in my sister’s zeal to purge this incident from the annals of history,” Luna commented.

She pointed to two important-looking pegasi, both wearing ceremonial armor. The larger was a muscular, yellow-pelted mare with notable scars and a blue mane, whose tail was conspicuously missing. Beside her was a smaller, thinner, but more animated white Pegasi with fiery red mane.

“Commander Sirocco, and her aide-de-camp, Private Pepperpot, representing the pegasi,” Luna informed her companions. “Lost her tail in a battle against griffins, as I recall.”

The alicorn’s foreleg shifted over to point to a far more regally-dressed white unicorn. A diadem was perched on this unicorn’s head, embedded with light, shimmering green gems that were a perfect match for her mane. She appeared quite elderly, but with brilliant eyes. Her gown and makeup did their best to give her a youthful appearance, but the age lines were beyond any hope of masking. Beside her sat a mage-robed companion, with sunken eyes standing out against her lavender fur.

“Princess Peridot and her advisor, Equinox, who was Starswirl’s final apprentice. Both representing the unicorns.”

And lastly, the princess pointed out a pair of earth ponies. Next to the crowned unicorn’s finery, the earth ponies looked hopelessly plain. Apart from the hat shaped like a pastry. The wearer of this hat was a large mare, truly fat. Caramel-brown fur stuck out from her barely-fitting uniform in places it was carelessly tucked. A caramel-brown mane peeked out from under her absurd hat. Beside her was a much skinnier mare, her fur a dull red and mane slate gray.

“And Chancellor Treacle Tart and her Secretary, Claypan, representing the Earth Ponies.”

Sirocco, Peridot, Treacle Tart and all their attendants and subordinates claimed every seat, looking expectantly up to the one who had summoned them here: Starswirl the Bearded.

“I’m surprised to see you being the one to call us to session, Starswirl,” observed Princess Peridot. “I believe this is the first time, isn’t it? Usually you’re too busy mouldering up in that ancient tower of yours… Instead of say, in a field, where you belong.”

Starswirl's expression barely changed at the taunt, though there was a fire in his eyes, like a warrior spotting his favorite opponent. "Oh, Princess Peridot," he noted, in the flattest tone they'd ever heard. "How awful to see you again. You're looking hideous, as always. I hope you've been in bad health since I saw you last.”

Twilight was stunned. “What…!? How could she talk to Starswirl like that!?”

“Well, he was never exactly a model of congeniality…” Lero noted.

But Princess Luna shook her head. “The Unicorn nobility… vacillated in its attitude toward Starswirl. Some celebrated his talent, his accomplishments, his incredible longevity, others felt it… inappropriate for a stallion to have his station and skill. Peridot is amongst the later.”

“Enough of this.” Sirocco snapped. “Peridot, the fact that Starswirl would see fit to summon you, in addition to the madness of the sky should impress upon even you how serious this is!”

“Hmmmph.” Peridot’s wrinkled face screwed up in annoyance with them both, but finally, she conceded to their point. “Very well. Proceed.”

“Thank you, Commander, Princess.” The archmage moved up to the podium, looked out over the crowd, and began. “First, I must remind you that every word spoken here is to be held in utmost confidence and can never leave this room. That said, it should be painfully obvious why I have called you all here. We only need to look at the sky. We only need to see our leaders’ confusion in regards to it... not mention the shifts in their behavior.”

“And their cutie marks!” spurted out Equinox.

“Yes, of course, of course,” said Starswirl.

“Hopefully, our esteemed court wizard was competent enough to have uncovered the source before bothering to drag us all here,” interrupted the rotund Earth Pony leader. “Something more substantial than more groundless guesswork… oops! I meant ‘working hypothesis!’ That’s what you highbrow horn-heads like to call it, right?”

Grinning, she waved a flabby, fleshy foreleg at both Starswirl and Equinox.

“Don’t worry, this meeting won’t keep you long from your sweets, Treacle. And yes, the source is already known: it was me. I, Starswirl the Bearded, am directly responsible for all this.”

The chambers immediately erupted in exclamations and accusations and various shouts of surprise and dismay.

“Treachery!” shouted one.

“This is what comes from allowing a stallion this much free rein!” cried Princess Peridot.

“You demon!”

“Chop his horn off!”

“Chop his horn off and send him to the gallows!”

“SILENCE!” Starswirl’s magically amplified voice echoed around the chambers, and caused the room to shake. His audience went still, with nothing to be heard but dust drifting down from the rafters.

”...I gotta remember that spell.” murmured Twilight.

“Before you continue on bellowing at me, no, it wasn’t intentional,” the old stallion told them. “This I vow, on all my honor.”

“In other words: ‘Please show mercy, everypony! This wasn’t high treason! Just a feeble old stallion’s porridge-brained idiocy!” jeered Treacle Tart.

“My spell wasn’t even designed to affect ponies, much less the Princesses!” the wizard retorted. “It was experimental magic. The alterations was an unforeseen side-effect due to Their Majesties being bonded with the Elements of Harmony.”

“Wait… are we to understand that you used experimental magic on the Elements of Harmony!?” Sirocco balked.

“Yes, I have!” thundered Starswirl, sidling towards the window. “Many times before! Not only with the Princesses’ permission, but on their explicit orders. They felt it hardly befits us to depend on a set of magical artifacts to defend ourselves, when there’s so much we don’t know about how they function.”

Curiously, Starswirl pulled aside a small corner of window curtain to peek outside; a momentary glance, then his full attention was back on his audience.

“Before now, altering the Elements in any way seemed beyond even my grasp. Thus, the possibility of affecting the Elements’ wielders by proxy was — I repeat — an entirely unforeseeable side effect. Now that the issue of blame is done with, let’s get on to the far more relevant issue of fixing the problem.”

The three leaders looked at Starswirl, then each other, and nodded. “Agreed,” Peridot responded, disgruntled. “But you’ve not heard the last on this.”

“I’ll happily submit to your slings and arrows, once this is over. Because if we do not act….”

His horn glowed, as he yanked the the curtain behind him, revealing the sky. A starless, lavender expanse unveiled before them; however, the thing that drew their eyes and collective gasps was the moon. Which was now quite a far cry from its familiar, calm, soft, silvery glow.

As with the sun, the moon had also gone through its share of recent changes. Whereas the sun now cycled through phases, the moon now remained its fullest and roundest each and every evening. It was with good cause that ponies now swore that the moon had robbed the sun of its glow.

Astronomers had calculated that the moon had grown fifty times brighter than it had ever been known to shine… for the first week after the princesses had mysteriously exchanged cutie marks. The second week, it was two hundred times brighter.

Thereafter, nights were no longer a time where darkness blanketed the heavens. Even a ‘Full Sun’ was a tragically dimmer source of light than the moon now was, often compared to a dark and smouldering ember. Ponies could actually now gaze upon the sun for as long as they pleased without any fear of ruining their eyes… not so with the moon, though!

Tired ponies who were ready for sleep when the hour was late were lucky if their homes had basements or cellars to move their beds into. Otherwise, it was often a question of ponies keeping their eyes squeezed shut against the flickering glare of moonlight. Or thicker curtains for their windows.

This, though… what they were all witnessing now was new. A new step downward into further madness.

“She’s set it aflame,” spoke Private Pepperpot. “All of it. The whole moon.”

If not for the sun, it would’ve been the single largest fireball any of them had ever known. High above, in the luminous depths of the bright azure night, the whole surface of the moon blazed.

Its dark side.

Its bright side.

Every crater, mountain, and waterless sea.

All the moon burned: a sun that should never have been. All the ponies watching could scarcely have been more horrified if a population of Moon Ponies had been living up there.

“This will be our night sky forevermore. Or at least… until we’re left with a giant burnt-out cinder floating over all our heads for all eternity.”

That settled the mood of the conference, the burning moon casting a grim pall over the assembled.

“The first order of business is to establish how much time we have,” Starswirl pronounced. “Treacle? Can you brief us on the plants and animals’ reactions?”

She was silent for a moment as Claypan whispered into her ear. “Not well,” Treacle admitted solemnly, looking pointedly at some of the refined-looking Canterlot unicorns. “What’s befallen the sun and moon has been hard enough on us ponies, in terms of trespassing on our sleep, I think we can all agree.”

The fat pony waited a second for enough nods from the others around her, many of whom indeed looked worn and insufficiently-rested.

“But it’s been absolute bedlam for the animals of the wild,” she finished. “Just as an example, many of the nocturnal burrowers have been seen staying in their holes for days sometimes, awaiting a darkness that doesn’t quite come… until hunger finally draws them into the open, and then they’re desperate, starved, frantic, and foul-tempered, attacking whatever crosses their path, including ponies. The, er, day-loving animals haven’t been any better, really.”

“And the plants?” asked Starswirl.

Treacle Tart nodded at her assistant, Claypan, who informed the assembled ponies, “The more sensitive plants are starting to wilt. There are plants which thrive in direct sunlight and plants which flourish in the shade. With the sun so inconsistent, all these plants are suffering; many of which we use for food and medicine.”

“What about the weather?” Starswirl inquired, looking towards the pegasi.

“The rapid temperature shifts are not only playing havoc with the weather we create, but have spawned new, unpredictable weather fronts in areas we do not control, such as in Zebra and Griffon lands, or the sea, which often spill into our territory.” Commander Sirocco reported. “It’s taxing the weather services to their limits, to the point they’ve started recruiting civilian and military aid. We’re holding it together, but barely. Before long, it will spiral out of control, and we might see devastating weather events unlike any we’ve witnessed in centuries.”

“In short, we don’t have long before serious, possibly irreversible damage is done to our world,” Starswirl commented. “Less than a year, at most, by my reckoning. Therefore, it would be folly for us to wait for the princesses to ‘right’ themselves, even if we were sure that would even happen.”

There were nods and murmurs of agreement all around, particularly those whose attention kept drifting back to the moon, burning brightly through the still-open window.

“Then, let’s look at our most immediate option.” He glanced toward the elderly unicorn princess. “Princess Peridot? Would the Unicorn nation, by your and Equinox’s estimate, be able to take control of the sun and moon again, at least on a temporary basis?”

Peridot froze for a moment, before turning to Equinox, and whispering fiercely to her. They shot back and forth with hissed whispers for several moments before Peridot looked up, cleared her throat, and regained her composure. “That is an… interesting… and unexpected question, Starswirl. The simple fact of the matter is, our people simply haven’t practiced manipulating the heavens in generations. We’ve left that duty to the princesses for so long, it is now something of a lost art.”

“Not quite,” Starswirl said, using magic to stroke his long, white beard. “I may not be quite the immortal that Their Majesties are, but you still have one unicorn alive who still knows the old spells. It took untold thousands of us unicorns working in tandem, back in the day, but I remember what it was like to move the sun. Glorious.”

His hat jingled as he gave a little bow. “How long would it take to organize your people, Princess Peridot? I could school them in the old spells our kind once used to move the celestial bodies. Our lost art will be learned anew.”

For a second, the others looked hopeful. But then Equinox spoke up; “A question, Teacher. Do the old spell books contain spells for controlling a burning moon?”

Starswirl paused, thoughtful. “Well, no. No spellcrafter would ever have anticipated such a thing. And the fact that it’s on fire, yes, it would throw off the calibrations of the magic. But after some adequate experimentation and modification of the Moon Moving spell, surely…”

“Which would significantly delay efforts,” Equinox commented as Peridot sighed. “Not to mention organizing an entire nation of unicorns and educating them in magic is a Zebrantine production.”

“And by the time all that was done, we’d most likely be past the point of no return,” Princess Peridot lamented. “Worse, it’s doubtful we could wrest control, especially if the princesses would choose to fight us… which I suspect they would. I imagine Their Highnesses would most likely view our attempt to usurp the heavens from them to be slightly… treasonous.”

Starswirl sighed. “I figured as much… Which leaves us with only one other immediate option: I’ve been magically examining the spell itself, and its effects on Their Majesties’ minds. It’s solid, but not impregnable. There’s no question the princesses’ minds are deluded, but it might be possible to convince them of the truth, if we present a strong enough case.”

“Then why haven’t you already done this!?” Peridot interjected.

Starswirl sighed. “Imagine if the truth of your world was revealed to be a lie. If your conscious mind and your heart were suddenly in absolute conflict. Imagine being beset with conflicting impulses, neither of which you can ignore. It would be very… traumatic. Possibly maddening. You can see the reason for my hesitation.” There was a moment of sobering silence before he continued. “That said… I have studied various therapeutic mental magics, and I believe I can alleviate the negative impact. But I will not take such risks without the council’s approval. So, unless there’s an alternate proposal, I suggest we vote…”

Not other options were presented. The proposal was quickly passed.

“Then we need to get to work.” Starswirl announces, before his image froze, and wavered.

“Time to move on.” Luna said, as the meeting room vanished into the realm of dreams.

“What?” Twilight said, startled by the abruptness.

Luna paused. “This… is where things go truly wrong.”

Author's Note

Rikmach, thank you.

Twenty-Nine: War Of The Heavens

The scenery shifted away in the fashion of dreams, images spinning around them again in the chaos of the dreamworld; images of the counselors petitioning the princesses for a meeting, and organizing and arguing over the case they were about to present to the princesses swirled about the dreamwalkers as the Princess of the Moon led Lero and Twilight Sparkle on.

“It took them three days to organize their presentation, and actually successfully petition us for a private meeting. As you could guess, we had many frustrated petitioners at the time, and while we could not ignore the council, since we didn’t realize its nature, we could easily delay it bureaucratically for a bit. Not that I think they minded, at the time… I think all involved dreaded the possible results.”

Twilight frowned at some of what she saw. “There’s more people I don’t recognize,” she said, pointing out several non-ponies amongst the organizers, and let out a frustrated sigh. “I understand Celestia’s need for secrecy, but it bothers me how much history was lost.”

“Perhaps more introductions are in order?” Luna asked.

Twilight nodded. “Please.”

“That zebra looks awfully small…” Lero commented.

Luna smiled toward the zebra in question, who could not have been older than twelve. “That is Enyinaya, ambassador from the Zebra tribes. They believed she was the latest reincarnation of one of their greatest shamans, who formed a line back to the founding of their nation. As she had completed her training, but was not yet old enough to take her place as their leader, her parents made her an ambassador to learn of the world and their allies.”

“If she was a reincarnation, wouldn’t she already know those things?” Lero interjected.

“I’m not sure that’s how reincarnation is supposed to work, regardless of whether or not you believe in it,” Twilight contended.

“Ah, yes,” said Lero, starting to remember his Religious Studies class from college. “In some traditions you’re supposed to be reborn with a ‘clean slate,’ regardless of who you were… um, ‘recycled’ from. So to speak.”

Luna laughed. “Zebras believe souls have wisdom, not knowledge, which is parlance of the mind. And to be honest, I have never met another being who was such a combination of sagely wisdom and childlike wonder.”

“So, how’d they know it was her?” Twilight asked.

“Her cutie mark,” Luna replied, pointing at it.

“What.” Lero stared at the zebra’s mark, his tones flat.

“She was born with that cutie mark.”

Twilight frowned. “What is it? Zebra marks are so maddenly vague and abstract. It looks like… a clockwork gear or maybe... a spider web?”

“Could it be a roulette wheel?” Lero suggested. Really, zebra marks were as good as Rorschach inkblots to him, as well.

Luna shrugged. “I, sadly, cannot claim to know. But... moving on?”

The two nodded.

“That is Brunhilda,” Luna said, pointing to a griffon. “Brunhilda was the first female General Diplomat griffon. Griffonkind’s nobility and patriarchy had almost completely ceded power to their current ideals of absolute meritocracy at this point in time. She proved herself not only a clever tactician and brave warrior on the battlefield, but a canny negotiator at the diplomatic table. As such, she was assigned to the most important and — to them — risky and dangerous post: Envoy to the Alicorns.”

“Risky and dangerous?” Twilight asked, disbelieving.

“We were the only nation they had fought who defeated them. Not to mention my sister and I are powerful immortals who control the sun and moon. And aren’t griffons. You could see why they would hold us in such… regard. The only reason, I think, that they do not fear us is that we have never attacked them, only defended ourselves.”

Twilight nodded, soberly, never having thought of the griffons’ perspective of Equestria.

Luna pointed to the minotaur. “And that…”

He was hulking, like so many of his kind; however, he seemed to be a bit more...rotund than most. Judging by how he moved, Lero didn’t doubt that this minotaur still had muscle, but it had to strain to be visible under the layers of fat. Notably, instead of the minimal clothes like he was used to seeing on that kind, this minotaur was clad in rich and elaborate robes with golden highlights and jewelry. His gemmed nose ring and golden caps on his horns practically screamed, ‘Look at how rich I am!’

“...Is Copper Coin, master merchant and diplomat from the Minotaur Republic. They had been at peace with us and their neighbors for some time now, and were more interested in strengthening trade. Hence the merchant. Coin was a decent enough fellow, but he was always trying to figure out how to turn every situation into profit.”

“And that is… Frederico.” Luna’s tone shifted slightly as she said his name, in a way neither of her companions could quite identify.

“What, no titles?” Lero inquired.

“He insisted. He said that he was no greater than any other donkey, he had merely been chosen to represent them. As such, he felt titles were inappropriate.”

“So, this is his first time more than a few miles away from his home, sounds like?” Lero retorted.

“Perish the thought! Frederico is one of the most well-traveled beings I’d met, even visiting places that Celestia and I had never a chance to go, and seen much not well known to the rest of the world. Indeed, his exploits are near-legendary.”

“Legendary?” asked Twilight. “What sort of legends are completely forgotten to history?”

“The kind that fall into the gap between ‘history’ and ‘story,’” Luna said with a wry smile. “Simply put, those who never met Donkey Frederico refused to believe any being, let alone a donkey, could have accomplished any one of his exploits, let alone all of them.” She gestured with a hoof at him. “He ran with the minotaurs in Tramplona — in the opposite direction, and emerged unharmed. He invited an entire Dragon Migration to tea, and introduced them to the concept of pleasantries. Ask me not how, but he crossed a rainbow to young Cloudsdale with neither wings nor magic.”

“How is that even...” began Twilight.

“I said, ask me not how,” reminded Luna, with a slight shrug. “I was with him when he revolutionized the Neighponese sport of sumo, and I still have no inkling how he was able to talk them into opening their ports for us in the first place. I was told he romanced a windigo and am to this day unable to deny that if anypony could have done so, it was Donkey Frederico. I could go on and on about him...”

Just then, the entire council chamber went still as the double doors at the far end of the room opened up.

“But they’re about to begin.” Luna announced, silencing further discussion.

* * *

At this point in history, the alicorn sisters had already been acting as princesses for untold centuries. Every facet of proper royal deportment, all the expectations and pomp and circumstance thrust upon them as diarchs… such things were now as natural to them as a military march is to a four-star general.

When the princesses entered the council chambers, there was a tired, sloping quality to their bodies. Their smiles were forced and wooden. A pegasus mare, golden-coated with streaks of red along her flanks and a purple flower for a mark, followed them in, discreetly setting a tea service on a small table between the two. The cups sat empty.

“Hail and well met,” Celestia greeted all in attendance. “Though I am unsure what could possibly necessitate such a… diverse audience.”

“Indeed.” Luna scanned the assembly of council members and foreign diplomats. “Rarely do we see this many when we ask for an audience.”

It was several seconds before someone spoke. Tension hung in the air like an festering stench.

Finally, Starswirl gave a cough.

“Apologies for the unprecedented event, Your Majesties,” he said. “But the situation demanded it.”

“What ‘situation’ would that be?” demanded Luna, not blind to the several sets of eyes flicked over towards the open window, where her moon blazed.

“Perhaps, Princess, you would recall a petition brought by myself, on behalf of the pegasi?” Sirocco asked.

“About the sun?” Celestia shut her tired eyes momentarily. “I thought we had already settled this...”

“Forgive the interruption,” young Enyinaya spoke up. “But perhaps you recall a petition on lunar disruption?”

Princess Luna’s smile took on a cringing quality. “Why? You know what we have to say on the matter. Why bring this up again?”

“Because of this, Your Majesty.” This time, the speaker was Treacle Tart. Perhaps it was because the princesses were speaking kindly, perhaps it was the tiredness they saw in Their Majesties’ eyes, or perhaps the mortals had a sense of ‘strength in numbers.’ But one by one, the others were discovering their courage.

Treacle nodded to her assistant, Claypan, who held up a scroll and let its bottom drop to the floor. It rolled open…. foot after foot rolled out, past both princesses’ tails, longer than any bridal train.

“These are 20,000 signatures about the issue from the capital alone,” Claypan informed Luna.

Then the Earth Pony brought up a small chest from under her chair, opening it to show dozens more scrolls. “These are from every other civilized nation. Hopefully, this is enough to make our point about the changes you’ve made.”

Celestia and Luna’s smiles — already forced to begin with — disappeared completely before the sea of intent mortal eyes, all willing them to see it from their point of view. The sisters shared a look, their expressions hard.

“We agree,” said Celestia, turning back to the assembled. “Your point is made. Something has changed.”

Somepony in the back let out a loud relieved breath.

"My sister and I have thought about this whole… contention you have about the sun and moon for a long while,” Luna pronounced. “and though it pains us, there is no other reasonable conclusion... we traced the wrongness to that VERY DAY… with Starswirl.”

The princesses’ eyes fixed upon those of their venerable old mentor, who hung his head in silent shame.

“Good ladies and gentle lords, hear us out!” Celestia beseeched. “There is a confession we must make. My sister and I authorized Starswirl to perform highly experimental research on the Elements of Harmony, in an effort to better understand them! We believe that his efforts resulted in a disastrous outcome, that warped the perceptions and memories of everyone else in the world but the two of us.”

“Wow, the Swap has no idea how dumb that sounds, does it?” Lero commented.

“It would not have been the first time my sister and I were proof against powerful magic, Lero,” Luna said quietly.

“Fight it!” Luna begged the crowd. “Fight this witchery that has ensnared all your minds! Open your eyes! Deep down, you know nothing has changed! I believe in you!”

The outcry from the crowd was one of indignation, even anger, peppered with a few brays of incredulous laughter. The princesses shrank back away from it.

“Silence!” Starswirl boomed, and the room fell still.

“Your Majesties,” the bearded old stallion begun in his most conscience-stricken tone, “The ladies and lords of this council have already been informed of my experiments with the Elements of Harmony. That I had crafted a defective spell which had the side effect of conjuring a false reality in the minds of its victims. That is why we are here! But it is this council’s solemn belief that the victims of this spell are yourselves, Your Majesties.”

“Including yourself, Starswirl,” noted Celestia.

Then Starswirl surprised her, and all the rest of the people there.

“Princess Celestia, Princess Luna… As a gesture of good faith in this proceedings — and in acknowledgement that I am not infallible or immune to my own magic — I am willing to allow for the possibility that you are correct, and the rest of us have been deceived.”

“You are?” asked Celestia, plainly surprised.

And Starswirl had to raise his voice over the confused and troubled murmurs from the council behind him.

“I know is that if I were the one under an illusion, I’d want to have it be proven to me as soon as possible. If I were to be obdurate and un-convinceable, I would only be strengthening the illusion’s power. That is how they function, after all,” he reasoned. “Now, can all of us agree that a powerful illusion spell has been cast… yes or no?”

He waited for those around him to grudgingly agree ‘yes.’

“Therefore, if our noble princesses are indeed in the right… then it would only be reasonable that we extend them enough benefit-of-the-doubt to prove themselves, as I’m sure they would for us, if the opposite situation were true.” He tipped his hat towards Celestia and Luna. “Do you concur, Your Majesties?”

Again, the sisters looked at each other, then at Starswirl.

“Yes,” said Luna. “It’s clearly imperative that we get to the bottom of this fiasco at once, peacefully and reasonably. Elsewise, matters would sure descend into violence.”

“Thank you,” breathed Starswirl. “The sooner we establish exactly whom my spell has victimized, the sooner we can begin working on an appropriate countermeasure.”

“And once Luna and I prove that we are in the right?” questioned Celestia. “Then what?”

Starswirl broke out into a sweat, yet said; “If you can prove what you say, logically and reasonably, I vow to do everything within my magical power to make the world see you are in the right.”

“Hold on a minute,” interrupted Lero. “What’s Starswirl saying? That he… that he’d… if he couldn’t convince you and Celestia of the truth, he’d cast some kind of bewitchment on the world?!”

Beside him, Luna nodded sadly. “I believe so. He’d have done it for the sake of peace. ”

“Still, this hardly seems fair,” Celestia noted. “You’ve clearly had time to prepare your arguments, we have not.”

“Let me ask you something, Princess Celestia: You believe that, without a shadow of a doubt that you are correct, yes?”

“Absolutely.” the Sun Princess affirmed.

“Then, whatever convoluted theories or test we come up with should be easily disproven or passed by you, yes? As long as we all keep an open mind, we can get to the bottom of this, once and for all.”

“Hmmm. Fair enough. You may begin.”

* * *

“Then let’s start with a few simple ones.” Starswirl said, stepping back, gesturing to the stained-glass windows dominating the far end of the room. Most notable were the depictions of the sisters themselves; Celestia with a prominent Moon on her flank, and Lumina with the Sun.

“Please tell us,” requested Starswirl, pointing to a window showing the Princesses first being coronated, “what cutie mark is on your flank, Celestia?”

“A sun, of course.”

“And Princess Luna?”

“The moon, naturally.”

“I see.” From within his robes, Starswirl pulled out a large manuscript titled The Chronicles Of The Royal Sisters.

“Ever read that one?” Lero asked Twilight, as Starswirl opened the book.

“I’m sorry to say I haven’t,” Twilight told him, as the court mage proceeded to flip through the pages.

Lero was surprised. “Really? Sounds right up your alley.”

“I’ve never even seen a copy!” Twilight protested.

“Since the time of my return, I’ve not seen one, either. I assume it was lost in Celestia’s efforts to hide our old selves…” Luna commented. “I have seen… ‘revised’ editions, though.”

The manuscript contained many beautiful illustrations of moments in the alicorn sisters’ lives: them unifying Equestria under them, defending it from evil… Starswirl stopped at a picture of them moving their respective celestial bodies; Lumina the Sun, Celestia the moon.

“And which celestial body are you moving, Luna?” he asked, holding the illustration up for all to see.

“The Moon.”

“And Celestia?”

“The Sun! I hope there is a point to this?” The now-Sun Goddess replied, a note of impatience entering her voice, especially when the rest of the council started up their mutterings again.

“Please, grant us this indulgence; there is only one other question along this line.” He produced a scroll, unrolling it and presenting it to Luna.

“Interesting that you would choose to submit this letter as part of your evidence, Starswirl,” Luna commented, as she glanced it over.

Starswirl smiled slightly at her. “It’s not the contents of this letter we need concern ourselves with, Your Majesty. In fact, I deliberately selected one of the most innocuous letters I had for this.”

“What did it say?” Twilight asked the Luna who wasn’t being interrogated.

The Moon Princess smiled slightly and froze time for them so they could walk over and read the letter for themselves.

Dear Starswirl,

For your birthday cake this year, would you rather we have the chefs bake you red velvet or chocolate ganache?

Princess Lumina

“I still remember he ended up asking for a sesame and poppy seed cake.” Luna told her companions. “Can’t believe he even kept that letter.”

“Why? I keep copies of all my correspondence.” Twilight replied, which just elicited a chuckle from her companions. “...What?”

“Princess Luna? This letter, which you signed your name to, was sent to me about five months ago. Is that correct?”

She looked over the signature of ‘Princess Lumina’ on the letter, and nodded. “That is correct.”

“Can you read the signature aloud for us?”

“Princess Luna.”

“I see. Can you sign your name again, below it? Try to keep it as close to the original as possible.”

So, telekinetically accepting the proffered quill, Luna wrote her name. A perfect copy, except missing two letters.

“And those look identical to you?” Starswirl asked. “Same length?”

“Of course.”

“Hmmm. And you, Princess Celestia?”

“They are identical, yes. What are you getting at?” Celestia asked, as Starswirl passed the two signatures around for the rest of the council to see.

“Because to us, Princess Celestia, the stained-glass window showed your cutie mark as the moon, hers was the sun.” He pointed at Luna. “That illustrated manuscript showed you moving the Moon, and Luna the Sun. And what’s more, the document reads “Princess Lumina” on top and “Princess Luna” below.”

“Ugh, that name again.” Luna rolled her eyes.

“Why do you hate it?!” Treacle Tart called out. “Luna’s just a nickname!”

An expression of complete bafflement crossed Luna’s face. “What are you talking about!?”

“You know, she brings up a good point,” Lero noted. “Was there any reason the Swap made you change your name like that?”

“I suspect on some level, it felt that ‘Luna’ was just more, well, lunar a name than Lumina,” the princess said.

“Please!” Starswirl said, turning to the rest of the council members, who were still passing around the letter, “Good lords and ladies, I beg you; if I give false testimony, if you see these things in a different way, speak out!”

“You speak true, Starswirl!” shouted Sirocco, and many in the audience echoed her sentiments.

“I could offer you a fantastic deal on eyeglasses, Your Highnesses,” offered Copper Coin. “All your vision problems will be a thing of the past!”

Celestia stomped a hoof, and silence fell. “Then this proves nothing,” she insisted.

“No one really expected it to be this easy,” Starswirl sighed. “But we need to start somewhere.”

“Perhaps I can be of assistance?” Frederico came forward, and Starswirl stepped to the side. “First, Princesses: Let me thank you again for inviting me to the Grand Galloping Gala this year. It was an enchanting evening; a memory I shall carry with me until the end of my days.”

That such a lavishly seductive voice could ever have belonged to a donkey was astonishing to Lero; low and breathy, seasoned with a hint of Spanish-sounding accent. That no less than the alicorns, themselves, were so obviously enamored of him left the human amazed. As if reading his thoughts, Luna explained, “Frederico wasn’t just any donkey, he was THE donkey. There hasn’t been another like him since.”

“Such a shame…” Twilight sighed behind him. Lero managed to resist rolling his eyes.

“Why, thank you, Frederico!” Luna smiled.

“But why bring it up?” Celestia asked, curious.

“Because I would like to ask you: what were you each doing during the Gala?”

“Oh, that’s simple,” Luna started. “We greeted the guests and dignitaries, then...”

Both Princesses stopped, staring blankly. Several moments passed.

“Your Majesties…?” Frederico asked, confused.

“I’ve… seen this before.” Starswirl responded, to the troubled and worried audience as a whole. “I think it occurs when they’re asked something they’d not be able to remem-”

At which point he was cut off.

“...I spent the evening sampling the exotic delicacies from around the world.”

“Exotic cakes, you mean,” Celestia teased.

“They certainly were!” Luna laughed. “Bienenstichs and Schwarzwälder Kirschtortes from Germaney! Petit fours and mille-feuilles from Prance! Spekkoeks and tompouces from the Neightherlands!”

The dark alicorn’s tongue flicked across her teeth, as though tasting these strange-sounding desserts all over again, too caught up to even note her sister’s ribbing.

“And, Frederico, I’m surprised you could forget!” Celestia gave the donkey a suggestive grin that practically made her look like a downright normal mortal girl with a normal mortal girl’s needs and desires, rather than the deific mother-goddess of the entire pony race.

“I spent most of the evening with you, dance after dance! Oh, Rico, you made me a lucky mare that night; there’s never been a soul alive who can dance the saltarello as lively as you!”

Frederico’s ears flattened back. “Well,” he laughed weakly, “That much is certainly true.”

“And after our legs were finally too weary for dancing,” Celestia continued breathlessly, “we went out by the balcony and you regaled me with all your tales of adventure. How you fought an evil volcano and won. How you prevented a war with your grandmother’s secret gazpacho recipe. Not to mention your amazing year as King of the Manticores...”

The donkey came up to Celestia, giving her an apologetic kiss to her cheek. “Alas, while I wish I could say I both literally and figuratively danced the night away, it was not you, Celestia, who I was with. It was Lumina.”

Poor Celestia looked crushed and heartbroken. As if Frederico had spat in her eye. She flashed her sister a look of jealous fury, but Luna only shrank back with a clueless shrug of her shoulders.

There were several nods of assent. “Heck, I even talked to you over the cakes,” Brunhilda told Celestia, as Frederico backed away.

“Oh, Celestia…” sighed the Luna of the present day. “I wish you could’ve enjoyed him for real. How I wish… just once in your life… you could have let yourself step down from your pedestal and open yourself up to that kind of love, instead of always being the unreachable star.” Lero and Twilight looked at each other, uncertain how to respond to such a personal comment. Before they could decide, the moment passed.

“I’m certain we could summon several other ponies to confirm your whereabouts…” began Starswirl.

“Which would prove nothing!” Celestia’s voice was almost shrill, clearly starting to lose patience with the proceedings. “Just that all your memories and your eyes have been tampered with by this horrible spell of my idio… my teacher!”

“Sister! Calm yourself, please,” Luna beseeched. “I know that they are telling the truth, as best as they know. We must see this through, otherwise we breed resentment.”

Celestia exhaled slowly, then regained her calm demeanor. “Fair enough,” the elder sister replied. “Proceed.”

There was a long pause. “Forgive me, Princess Luna, but how are you so certain we are telling the truth?” questioned Sirocco.

Luna’s brow furrowed. “Because I’m the bearer of the Element of Honesty, of course.” There was a long and awkward pause as the petitioners exchanged glances. Luna let out a sigh. “Let me guess; something else that is ‘wrong?’”

“Yes, but… something we’d not previously been aware of,” Starswirl replied.

“I suppose you’re about to say that I’m supposed to be the bearer of the Element of Honesty, instead of Luna, yes?” Celestia asked tetchily.

“Well, actually… yes,” the archmage admitted.

Celestia gritted her teeth. “If my sister and I were to exchange every single possession we own, would that make the whole world happy again?”

“Listen,” Starswirl cut in, in a conciliatory tone. “As we’ve not prepared any questions in regards to this matter of the Elements, why don’t we move on to other things? And we’ll trust that Princess Luna will act as a good caretaker for the Element of Honesty in the meanwhile.”

The council as a whole seemed content with this arrangement.

“Question!” Equinox piped up, raising a hoof in the air. “Your Majesty? Princess Luna? Shouldn’t your Element of Honesty be able to sense what’s factual and what’s not?”

"You’re forgetting there’s a difference between Honesty and Facts,” Starswirl answered for Luna, easily falling into lecture mode for his old student. “Honesty is speaking from the heart. Not deliberately lying. Telling what you believe to be true. It’s possible for a gambler to honestly believe he’s winning his card game, only for the facts to prove him wrong.”

“Quite,” Luna assented. “Or otherwise we’d have already resolved this long ago.”

“Now… moving on to more convincing material,” Claypan announced. “I trust the Princesses are familiar with our most recent weather and crop reports?”

“Yes, we are aware, and are concerned,” Celestia confirmed.

“We’re already devising plans to counteract these effects,” Luna added.

“Hey, if you need funding, maybe we can work out exclusive licensing rights for the whole ‘Crescent Sun’ and ‘Burning Moon’ thing you’ve come up with. They’re brilliant! I’m sure they’ll sell like hotcakes. Say, a 70-30 split?” Copper Coin interjected, before trailing off when he realized everyone was glaring at him. “We’ll talk.” He grinned, stepping back.

“Anyhow, plans aside, aren’t you curious about the cause of this change?” Claypan persisted.

“Of course we are! If we knew the cause, we could deal with it," Celestia replied.

“Then I would like to suggest a theory. While the premise might sound absurd, I pray you tolerate it.”

“Proceed.” Luna nodded.

“Equinox, if you will?”

The mage noded, and his horn flashed. An image of Equestria was projected over all their heads, with a full, gleaming sun and a phase-changing, unburnt moon rising and lowering. “Imagine if the sun was a steady source of both heat and light. Imagine that the moon was a diminished source of light,” Equinox started, both of the princesses frowning.

“Now, imagine if the Moon suddenly became a source of heat,” Claypan said, the image of the moon bursting into flame. “And the heat from the sun was reduced, but not eliminated.” The sun started showing phases.

“This would result in a net heat increase... the sun would about halve its energy output, but the moon would more than make up for it,” Equinox continued.

“Which, in turn, would result in a net increase in temperature Equestria-wide,” Claypan concluded.

“Wow,” Lero interrupted. “Not for anything, but between the 3-D projections and terms like ‘net heat increase’... are you sure we’re still in medieval times?”

Twilight Sparkle and Princess Luna gave the human flat looks.

“First, while we’ve already discussed the technological… disparity between your and my world…” Twilight began... and they had; ‘human innovations’ was a favorite subject of hers.

“Yeah. Schizo tech. You’ve got horse carts next to video games,” Lero replied.

“Don’t get me started on the subject, we don’t have the time.” She shook her head. “That said, you give the ponies of the past too little credit. Their understanding of astrophysics was very sound, even back then. Especially with such knowledgeable sources as Luna and Celestia helping fill in the blanks. What’s more, unicorns have been using image projection magic since before ponies started to paint drawings on cave walls.”

“And you, yourself, requested that I modernize the language,” Luna said. “Would you rather I cancel that effect? I warn you; Claypan and Equinox’s original wording was considerably more… long-winded.”

Lero shook his head. “Nah. Keep it modernized.”

“It’s a well-established fact that weather is produced by energy. Usually for us, it’s crafted in the weather foundries and by Pegasi Magic,” Equinox explained. “However, in areas not controlled by ponies, the weather forms from ambient energy, such as raw magic… or temperature.”

The image of the sun and more faded away, replaced with a detailed graph showing the change in temperature over time.

“As you can see here,” Claypan picked up where Equinox left off, “temperatures have been increasing in incremental but steady amounts since this date.”

“...The date of Starswirl’s spell.” Celestia’s eyes widened as Starswirl continued to look abashed at his failure.

“So his magic caused this as well!” Luna concluded.

Claypan and Equinox’s faces fell. “Yes, except the point was that this change could have come about by a change in the sun and moon… from a bright sun to a dimmed one, from an, er, ‘unlit’ moon to a burning one.”

”That’s all well and good, but the moon’s always been on fire.”

Claypan and Equinox looked at each other askance; they’d thought their argument was foolproof. “Can someone get a book on the moon?” Equinox asked, grasping at straws.

“Let’s skip ahead to when they retrieve it.” Luna said, as the dream shifted to when Private Pepperpot returned to the council chamber with The Stargazer’s Guidebook by Heliopause.

Equinox and Starswirl both quickly perused the book a little, before deciding on a promising passage.

“Now this book was written thirty years ago,” Starswirl announced, before bringing it over to Luna. “If you would be so kind, please read aloud starting from the top of page 103. I’ll tell you when to stop.”

Luna held the book open. “We have it on the authority of Princess Luna,” she narrated, “That the surface of the moon is thoroughly suffused with an atmosphere of pressurized gasses, which intermingle with other gasses constantly issuing forth from the moon’s core through porous perforations in the lunar crust. These gasses burn at a temperature of…”

“That’s enough! Stop, stop, stop!” Starswirl cried. He almost looked ready to tear his own beard out by the roots, as he thrust The Stargazer’s Guidebook into Brunhilda’s talons. “Please… you read what’s on page 103!”

So Brunhilda did. “We have it on the authority of Princess Celestia,” the griffin read, “That the moon would’ve been a smooth and featureless landscape, if not for the existence of meteors. Because the moon lacks any sort of atmosphere…”

“Lacks atmosphere?!” Luna balked, but Brunhilda read on.

“...There is nothing to prevent even the tiniest of meteors from leaving their marks on the moon. This is why its surface is so marred with craters of every size; from miniscule to gargantuan. Newer, fresher craters impact over the older ones…”

“No more!” Celestia shouted, looking out over the room in real anger. “I can tell what’s really going on here! This is a coup! This whole room reeks of treachery! You’re nothing but a vast confederacy of serpents! Trying to usurp power from my sister and I through fraud! By making us out to be lunatics!”

“You ARE lunatics, and you must be dealt with soon!” exclaimed Enyinaya, springing up to a stand. “Before you do to our world what you did to the moon!”

The council chamber boiled over in outrage and senseless yelling, some siding with Brunhilda, others doing their best to defend the honor of their princesses.

“Sister, please!” Luna cried over the tumult. “There is no fraud at play here! No deception! These people are victims of a spell; I swear it on the Element of Honesty, itself! As princesses, it is our duty to help them see it!”

As Starswirl banged for silence, a shame-faced Celestia needed to shout loudly several times in order to beg the council’s forgiveness.

“To think,” Luna whispered in horror, while the noise died down. “The illusion goes so deep as to affect the written word!”

As this chaos ensued, Starswirl flipped despondently through the pages of the astronomy book, looking for all the world like a stage actor who’d blanked out on every one of his lines. However, he suddenly stopped, hoof on a random page.

“Princess Luna, would you mind describing a total solar eclipse? What happens? And how does it appear, visually?” Even as he said all this, the archmage was clearly half-distracted, struggling to think up a better argument.

Luna drew a lengthy breath. “Well… high up in the heavens, my moon will pass between my sister’s sun and our world so that the moon completely blocks the view of the sun for everyone living on this world. That’s what a total solar eclipse is.”

“And visually, it looks like a big black circle, ringed by a haze of bright light from my sun’s corona.” Celestia added. “The whole sky goes dark when an eclipse happens, but it still can be dangerous for mortal eyes to look upon.”

Starswirl snapped erect, slapping shut his book, looking at his princesses with naked astonishment. “R-really?! You are certain of this? Both of you?”

“Quite,” said Celestia.

“Pray tell, Starswirl, what do total solar eclipses look like to your eyes?”

“Exactly the same as you just described them!”

The sisters were quite surprised to learn this.

“Well, well, well. Common ground at last.” Luna smiled wearily. “I was beginning to think we’d never see the day again!”

“I’m almost disappointed,” Celestia said. “I was rather hoping his version of eclipses would involve floating green manatees.”

Their mentor went over to the window, where the moon blazed like a great vanilla candy flung into the fire. Opening up The Stargazer’s Guidebook, he flipped back to the chapter about eclipses, glancing back and forth between it and the burning moon.

“Princess Luna, Princess Celestia.” He turned from the window and shut the book. “I think I have the answer. Decisive proof! But in order to show it, I will need you to create a total solar eclipse for us.”

The sisters shared a long look between themselves. Was it really, truly worth it? This wasn’t just some fireworks Starswirl was asking for, this wasn’t just some magic display, this was rearranging the heavens.

“Fair enough,” Celestia finally said, “On one condition: that this be the final test. However it turns out, this must be the deciding factor. No more stalemates. Have we got a deal?”

“Princesses, I am confident enough of this to make such a wager. Any disagreements?” There was some muttering amongst the gathered, but ultimately, they consented.

“Then perhaps it would be best if we adjourn from this chamber and all move outside, so as to more easily view the eclipse?”

“Agreed.” Starswirl assented, “All of you, this way, please.”

Everyone in the room began to file out behind Starswirl, letting him lead the way.

Luna inhaled deeply. “This is it. Come along.”

* * *

The three dreamwalkers found themselves in the castle’s royal courtyard, a few yards away from the alicorn sisters. The princesses stood in the middle of the courtyard, staring intently towards the sky, waiting for the rest of the procession to gather around them.

“What’s Starswirl doing?” Lero asked.

“He’s casting a light protection spell on everypony’s eyes so they can safely watch the eclipse. Well, everypony except for us, as Alicorns are beyond needing such things.”

“Hunh,” Lero commented, watching the darkened shapes form over their eyes. “Look kinda like sunglasses.”

”Are we ready?” Celestia asked to the surrounding crowd as the last spell was cast; there were murmurs of assent. “How long would you have us keep this eclipse in the sky, once we’ve created it?”

“Not long, just enough to confirm its appearance,” Starswirl replied. “Merely a minute or two at most. Afterwards, you’re free to return the moon and sun back where they were.”

“Good. This thrice-accursed spell of yours has gotten everypony in such a state over the simple day-to-night cycle. I dread to think how they’ll react to this eclipse.” Celestia shook her head.

“Let’s just be done with it, sister,” Luna insisted.

“Very well.” Celestia’s horn shone with an almighty glow, Standing opposite of her, Luna’s horn ignited with matching luminosity. Up rose the sun in the east, so blackened throughout its main body that it almost looked to be dying.

At the same time, its counterpoint, the burning moon, arced upward from where it sat low in the west. Both climbed higher and higher. All eyes were glued to the celestial bodies, as slowly but surely, they intersected each other at a zenith in the sky.

The expected black circle with a halo of light did not appear. Instead, the sky burned with a fiery orb with a faint yellow halo about it. The princesses stared at this apparition in utter confusion for several, long seconds.

“You remember your words?” asked their mentor.

All eyes turned to Starswirl.

“I beg your pardon?” asked Luna.

“‘Visually, it looks like a big black circle, ringed by a haze of bright light from the sun’s corona,’” Starswirl quoted. “Do you both still remember that?”

“Of course we remember what we said!” Celestia snapped.

“Oh good,” Starswirl said, chummily. “I was afraid that your memory might’ve fogged over on us.”

“Maybe… maybe we did it wrong?” suggested Luna.

The sun and moon drew apart, and then reconverged at a different angle.

“Come now!” Starswirl’s voice was gently teasing at this point. “You clearly remember what a total solar eclipse is supposed to look like! This is scarcely the first time in history you’ve ever made one happen!”

The diarchs turned away from the other, to try again at making a proper eclipse. But this met with failure, so they tried again. And again. And again.

“At the risk of sounding stupid,” Lero spoke up, “Could someone please tell me why this isn’t working for them? In simple layman’s terms?”

Twilight was all too happy to play the knowing teacher. “Well, think of it this way, Lero: when the moon covers the sun during an eclipse, it decreases the light. Just like putting a lampshade over a lamp, right?”

“Well, yeah, I understand that, but…”

“So what happens when you set the lampshade on fire?” Twilight asked. “How much light gets decreased then?”

Lero Michaelides looked at the two great fireballs in the sky and laughed out loud.

“Your Majesties...” Starswirl began.

“Silence!” hissed Celestia as she focused on her efforts upon the sky, beginning to visibly sweat and shake.

“Ha! Score for Starswirl!” Lero grinned, before realizing his two companions were staring at him. “What? Take it from the guy who helped Farmer Pinkie, there’s a definite satisfaction that comes from outthinking the Swap!”

The Moon Princess gave him a grave look. “While I sympathize with your position, Lero… This was not a victory. Or if it was, a pyrrhic one. Catching the Swap in a lie it cannot refute does not mean it surrenders. Like an army that refuses to let their enemy profit from their conquest, it burns the cities and salts the earth in its wake,” Luna replied.

“You mean...” Lero started before the dream cut him off.

“IT’S WRONG!” Celestia screamed abruptly, tears of fear and horror streaming from her panicked eyes.

“IT’S ALL WRONG!” echoed Luna, practically sobbing as she stared forlornly and disbelievingly at the false eclipse.

“Itswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrongitswrong…”

The two princesses sobbed and babbled in utter despair as the Swap that enthralled them finally snapped under the pressure of its own lies, laid bare.

“...Holy shit.” Lero said in horror.

Everyone was backing away from the alicorns. “Your Highnesses!” cried Sirocco.

“Mad… they’re MAD…” spoke Princess Peridot, her horror echoing Lero’s own.

“It’s all over! Flee for your lives! The Demon Alicorns will slay us all!” shrieked Brunhilda, taking flight as fast as her wings could carry her, heading for the distant mountains.

“YOU!” Both Princesses snapped to attention suddenly, the utter despair in their faces replaced by something more terrifying: Absolute and utter fury.

“You did this to us!”

Little Enyinaya burst into tearful, terrified wailing on the spot, jarring, as it was the first moment her otherwise disciplined countenance revealed the young child she was.

“I’ll kill you!” the princesses echoed in disturbing concert. “I’ll kill you all!” and they charged at those around them, horns lowered like infuriated rhinos, seeking to gore all those present.

“Equinox, now!” shouted Starswirl.

The two unicorns sprang into action. Both the master and his apprentice had spells readied for just this possibility, which burst from their horns at the princesses. The alicorns’ charges terminated into boneless flops as they collapsed, insensate, to the ground.

“We shouldn’t have done anything,” Treacle Tart insisted, wildly looking between the sun and moon and the alicorns. “We should’ve left well enough alone…”

“There was nothing ‘well enough’ about any of this, Lady Tart, no matter how it went,” Claypan replied, sorrowfully, her hoof patting the recovering Enyinaya comfortingly.

“Are they alright?” asked Copper Coin, looking deeply concerned that his licensing deal might be in peril. Oh, and that the princesses might be hurt.

“They’re fine,” Starswirl insisted, watching them breathe. “As I suspected, forcing them to see the truth caused a mental breakdown. Equinox and I prepared spells made for the treatment of such mental illnesses for this possibility. Give them a few moments for the spell to kick in, and they should be right as rain. Ah, here they go.”

Nervously, everyone else gave the princesses even more space, as their eyes fluttered, and they slowly but steadily righted themselves.

“What… happened?” Celestia asked gently.

Starswirl bowed. “Forgive us, Your Majesties, but you were afflicted by a mind-altering spell which caused you to exchange cutie marks and several memories. A spell for which no counterspell existed. We had to cause the spell to break… though there might still be some lingering mental trauma. How do you feel?”

“...like someone dropped a mountain on my head.” Luna muttered, rubbing her head, but her eyes widened. ”But... oh, yes, I see now... the spell is gone! The confusion of how things are is no more.”

“Are you, ah, sure the spell is entirely gone, Princess Lumina?” Private Pepperpot asked. She was gazing at both Celestia and Luna’s flanks. Soon enough, everypony else was too, for both cutie marks still remained on the wrong bodies.

“‘Luna,’ if you please. I still feel more comfortable with that name...” Luna replied, placing a hoof to her head. “Starswirl… I still have both memories.”

“Both memories?” he repeated.

“I can now clearly remember dancing with Frederico at the Gala,” Luna said. “Yet… I can still also remember the taste of all those cakes I indulged in. Those memories haven’t gone away.”

“Nor have mine,” Celestia said. “I can remember being a Sun Princess AND a Moon Princess.”

“I’m certain I can fix that in time,” their teacher assured them. “But perhaps you can fix the heavens right now?”

“Ah, of course.” Celestia and Luna closed their eyes, their horns glowing. The moon extinguished, and disappeared towards the west, while the sun regained its full luminance and drifted to its proper position in the east. “Better?”

A great cheer rang out from everyone around them. Happy tears were shed; ponies hugged one another; Sirocco and Private Pepperpot flew up into the air spiraling about each other in jubilation while their fellow ponies reared up and kicked their forehooves in joy. Joy that unquestionably must’ve been shared by all living beings, everywhere under the sun.

“And… then what? That… seemed to resolve almost everything,” Lero noted, as Starswirl began to lead all the others back inside the castle.

“Yes, seem is the key word, here,” Luna replied. “While Starswirl nullified the immediate threat of our psychotic break, it didn’t not resolve the fundamental underlying issue; that fractions of our souls were torn off and exchanged, and were now held together with the thinnest of threads. The spell you saw Starswirl and his apprentice cast on us prevented us from falling back on rampant hysteria as an outlet. The psychological equivalent of stitching up a gaping wound without disinfecting it first. This resulted in… subtler expressions of our internal conflicts.”

“That…” Twilight started. “... does not sound good.”

“Indeed not. We held together for several months, but… well, let me show you the conversation where I feel things went downhill.”

With that, they were elsewhere.

* * *

The dreamwalkers found them outside of the palace, on the familiar balcony where Starswirl first confronted Celestia. Luna stood there, Her eyes towards the heavens. Her horn glowed, the moon rising in the sky, the world darkening as night began. She looked out over the surrounding city for several moments, the lights slowly flickering off as people went home or went to bed, few staying awake to celebrate the night. Her ears lowered, and her face fell as the pony world prepared for sleep.

“Princess Luna?” Lero asked.

“Yes?”

“Why do you still have swapped jobs? I mean, I thought your swap was broken?”

“It was. However, the results of it were not. Our talents and cutie marks were still swapped. Not until later was Celestia able to move the moon. If she could push it away at any time, how would have Nightmare Moon’s threat of eternal night been anything but laughable?”

“Oh. I see,” Lero replied, as they turned their attention back to the scene.

The younger princess slowly strode inside, still looking despondent, the dreamwalkers following her, as she made her way to Celestia’s office. Her older counterpart became visible. Celestia, her brow furrowed, sorting through piles of paper, frustration clear on her face.

“I don’t know how you do it, Luna,” she said, not looking up. “The Night Court usually only had a few dozen petitioners a night, if that. Now from dawn to dusk, I’m inundated with ponies wanting my attention on endless manner of things. There’s scarcely time to think. And most of it is pointless minutia they could easily resolve on their own.”

“They’re our ponies, Celestia. They need us,” she sighed, glancing outside. “Or, at least, they need you. Honestly, I don’t know you deal with it. The night is so… isolated.”

“Peaceful, more like it,” Celestia retorted, her voice more on edge. “Maybe they need us, but perhaps they shouldn’t.”

“What do you mean?” Luna asked.

“They’ve grown soft and coddled under your rule of the day. Someone needs to bring the stick along with the carrot. Teach them some independence. Or if, failing that, obedience.”

“You would mistreat out ponies!?” Luna exclaimed.

“No. Discipline. Why would you care? These are the same ponies that, as you put it, ‘abandoned’ you.”

Luna winced as if she were struck. “I...”

“No, Luna, this isn’t the time for softness or half-measures. This needs action. Now, if you’ll excuse me… I have a kingdom to run.” With that, she telekinetically resorted her desk, summoning a quill, and began to write proclamations, clearly dismissing her sister.

With that, Luna strode out, her face hardening. As the door closed behind “Not if I take it from you…”

From the corner of his eye, Lero spotted two figures on the far side of the room where it faded into the haze of the dream realm. Their forms we indistinct by from what he could tell there was an alicorn... and a human? But as quickly as the two had caught his eye, their forms vanished from view, blending into the dark of shadows as if they had never been.

“Lero?” Twilight asked, spotting him staring off in the distance.

“It’s nothing.” He turned back. “What happened then?”

“After that…” Luna sighed. “It was shocking to see how quickly it all unraveled. Particularly with hindsight.”

Historical moments flashed by in fast succession; Celestia imposing more rules, curtailing freedoms, and micromanaging her subjects’ lives. Curfews, restrictions on travel and employment, regulations on many aspects of business, and setting up new layers of bureaucracy between her people and herself. When they came to the Night Court to petition Luna for relief, the younger alicorn happily granted it... only for a furious Celestia to clamp down with even more punitive restrictions.

“That is how I garnered favor with a good portion of the populace: exploiting Celestia’s growing madness to appear to be the ‘good guy’ while subtly inspiring rebellion against her,” Luna explained. “Not that everyone did. The nobles, the rich, many in the military, those who otherwise saw benefit of her policies putting more power and bits in their hooves still backed her. However, the working pony, the downtrodden and dispossessed saw much appeal in my potential single rule.”

As they passed through scenes of change, they saw a poster reading "Working Ponies of Equestria Unite! New Lunar Republic" before it was torn down by one of Celestia’s guards. “I, of, course, denied all knowledge and association with these rebels… which, at first, was true. But it was not long before Celestia started to crack down upon them, and start her own counter-propaganda campaign.”

They saw rows of posters, some of a stern image of Celestia, that read "OBEY," while others had slogans such as "Strength Through Purity Through Celestia."

The three of them happened to spot a small colt painting Luna’s cutie mark and ‘NEW LUNAR REPUBLIC!’ over these posters before fleeing as Celestia’s guard spotted him and yelled at him to halt.

“What were you doing all this time?” Twilight inquired.

“Well… if there’s one thing the history books got correct, it’s that I planned to make it eternal night, so ponies would have to appreciate my night. But the history books made me look… more shortsighted than I was. Even in my madness, I knew the world, as it was, would not survive eternal night. So, I sought to… change things.”

Luna walked through remote corridors of the castle, a large number of pegasi following behind her, many of whom Twilight and Lero recognized as being among the New Lunar Republic supporters in earlier glimpses of history. One of them, he saw, was heavy with foal.

Luna led them to a dead end, but her horn glowed, the corridor inverting itself, revealing a magical lab back out the way they had come, similar to Starswirl’s, but… darker. Scorpions, rodents, cockroaches and other nocturnal beasts watched them everywhere from their cages.

“I experimented with several different kinds of creatures,” the Princess told Twilight and Lero. “Owls, badgers, wolves… but when I tried to splice them with ponies, what resulted was either too animalistic or else just… inviable. Then finally, I somehow struck gold with bats and pegasi.”

Luna led her faithful to a raised platform, surrounded by arcane apparatuses connected to several caged bats. Luna’s horn and eyes glowed with terrifyingly familiar purple-black magic as she activated the device, the energy channeling through the bats, then focused onto the Pegasi. Their bodies shifted as they writhed in pain. Feathers fell out, replaced by leathery wings, their pupils constricting to slits, and their teeth extending into fangs...

Twilight was agog. “So… you created Thestrals!”

“This is true. I did create my night children… and it is the only thing that I did then that I am proud of. They were better than their maker deserved.”

Luna paused, remembering a point.

“Actually, the name of ‘thestral’ was one they came up with for themselves at some point after my banishment. At the time, I simply referred to them as ‘bat-pegasi’ or ‘bat-ponies’. And they would’ve been just the beginning. I intended to eventually do the same thing to all the other equine races as well: bat-unicorns, bat-earth ponies, bat-zebras, bat-donkeys… maybe even make a few breeds of bat-dogs so they would have pets. Eventually, an entire ecosystem of eternal night.’

“Bob Kane would’ve been proud,” Lero muttered.

“Well, at least… I would have, if bats were more compatible with any of the other equines. If bats had proved completely fruitless, there were dozens of other nocturnal animals out there to try.” Then Luna sighed. “But then, that is neither here nor there. I was banished before my experiments were complete, so I couldn’t find nocturnal animals compatible with earth ponies and unicorns before... Well, you know.”

“But… you were using dark magic!” Twilight protested, confused. “What…!?”

“You are a student of magic. You know that living beings resist permanent transformation.”

“Yes. Most living beings revert back, given time, depending on how complex the transformation is, and how much power is in the magic that caused the transformation.” To Lero, she explained, “Permanent change is possible, but hard, as living being’s spirits always seek to maintain their natural physical forms. A defense inanimate objects don’t have.”

Luna nodded. “Dark magic allows you to do things that violate the natural order. For example, if you wanted to do such transformations en masse…”

“Forgive my ignorance... again... but if they were made from dark magic, shouldn’t Thestrals be… you know… evil? I mean, I don’t know many, but they seem like decent folk…” Lero asked.

“Dark Magic is dark because it violates certain boundaries set by the natural world. The results of it aren’t inherently any more evil than any other use of magic,” Luna told him.

“There are actually Dark healing spells,” Twilight contributed.

“However, the cost on its user is… more dire.” Several more glimpses of Luna’s experiments flashed by, her coat growing steadily darker as weeks passed…

Time shifted again; a throng of protesters in front of the palace, openly wearing New Lunar Republic colors, holding burning effigies of Celestia and chanting, as the Royal guard, armed, faced them down.

“This… is the moment it began. where the war started.”

Tensions ran high on both sides. The guard were motionless, but sweat beaded openly on their foreheads as they readied their weapons, while the disgruntled peasants’ shouts grew louder and angrier. Finally, the image of Celestia’s head was projected from the palace, large and imposing.

“This gathering is illegal! All complaints must be filed at the appropriate offices. Disperse now, lest you face my wrath!”

It wasn’t clear who threw the rock; even from the dream, it arced out of the crowd with no obvious source. It arced through Princess Celestia’s image, causing it to flicker, before striking a guard’s helmet.

Celestia’s features contorted with fury. “Strike them down!”

Celestia’s guards charged, some flinging spears. But as they struck, the skies darkened, clouds rolling in as a squadrons of fliers appeared, led by the Princess of Night herself; her thestrals struck back against the guard and her royal voice echoed over the city.

“DOWNTRODDEN OF EQUESTRIA; YOUR PRINCESS ANSWERS YOUR CRIES! NOW IS TIME TO THROW OFF THE TYRANNY OF THIS CELESTIAL EMPIRE! COME TO ME AND FIGHT FOR YOUR FREEDOM! FOR THE NEW LUNAR REPUBLIC!”

A deafening cheer arose behind her, and the ponies charged, and the battle engaged.

“Then the war was on,” Luna narrated, her tone dismal. “The first battle here was a fiasco. Untrained civilians against a veteran military force with only a single squad to support them?”

The crowd slammed into the guard, sparks flying as improvised weapons struck enchanted armor. They held... and shoved back, knocking ponies off their hooves, stabbing with their spears. Cries of agony filled the air along with sprays of blood. Several guard paid for their brutality as thestrals pounced from their air, moving out of formation to make killing blows, their own screams joining their victims, Luna literally crushing one guard beneath her feet as she landed.

The guards flinched back from the alien appearance of the bat ponies and their imposing Princess. Suddenly, the sky opened up and the sun, glowing brighter, burned away the clouds. Looking up, the unicorn captain pulled out his sword, holding it up so it glinted in the light.

“Slay the beasts! Celestia is with us!” the Captain called, the troops rallying, charging amongst the rebels. A chaotic melee ensued; Pegasi clashing with Thestrals, guards being dragged down by mobs, Luna pulling out two crescent silver blades from their sheaths with her telekinesis, slashing through foes like a farmer reaping wheat, heads and limbs shorn off behind her. However, the screams of the rebels’ pain and death grew as they were steadily overwhelmed by the better armed, armored, and trained guard. Luna spun around, gritting her teeth, her horn’s glow intensifying, and with a flash, they vanished, leaving the puzzled guard among the bodies of the slain.

“I teleported them away after enough of them had died to infuriate them, but not demoralize them. All very calculated. They became the core of my military, as we began recruiting, training, staging guerrilla strikes... eventually capturing villages at first, then towns, then cities and repelling Celestia’s attacks…”

More scenes flowed by, disjointed but all flowing along the same theme. Death and destruction reigned rampant. A granary exploded as thestrals drove thunderclouds on it in the night. An isolated farm burned, a sobbing stallion reaching back toward the flames before the chain about his neck forced him away. That same stallion, body bloated and black, looked up in death from the reservoir his corpse was tainting, bare flesh showing on his flanks where once skin had supported a cutie mark. Silver blades flashed and dark hooves crushed skulls and snapped wings, the viewpoint sometimes shifting to Luna’s own perspective.

Cloudsdale did not fall — but it was severed. The great cloud city literally tore in two as pegasi on one side and pegasi and Thestrals on the other sought to claim it for their own. A white-coated pegasus with the mark of a leg in a cast flew up to help another pegasus with an injured wing. The other pegasus called out, “Boneset!” And then when the doctor neared, the injured pegasus’ wingblades flashed, slicing through his throat. “Wrong side,” the falling warrior hissed, and fell to her death. When Celestia’s pegasi had the battle all but won, the Lunar forces drove their section forward before fleeing. Two masses of cloudcrete met, and in a single day of battle the great pegasus capital had been reduced to a third of its former size. Feathers floated on the wind around it for days.

Ponies ran screaming through the streets of a small, nameless town as dark-shrouded unicorns blasted apart walls and doors. Any building that showed a sun in any form in its decoration was lit on fire. The Solar forces had been thorough since they recaptured the town a few weeks ago, putting Celestia’s mark anywhere it could go. Soon there was nothing left but dying cries and sizzling ash on the edge of the dangerous Everfree Forest.

“It was a war unlike any previously known. Pony fought Pony, not based on tribal lines, on ideology and loyalty to a ruler… Unicorn, Earth Pony, and Pegasi died on both sides, Sun versus Moon… ”

The shadows of Pegasi soldiers criss-crossed the battlefield, cruelly sharp hooks worn on all four of their ankles, bent inwards. They swooped down, snagging earthbound enemies by the back, the ankle hooks driven into their flesh to allow a better grip. They lifted their foes up six or seven stories high, then dropped them like hungry eagles dropping turtles, shattering their bodies against the rocky ground. Others guided controlled storm fronts, raining down sleet, hail, lightning, and even tornados against their foes.

One of the swoopers spotted an easy target; an injured earth pony limping towards rubble to hide behind. The swooper veered down, faster and faster… only to scream out in agony as powerful telekinesis grabbed her wings, her own momentum tearing out her flight feathers… her scream cut off by a horrific crack as she slammed full speed into the earth.

Her unicorn assailant laughed in victory, summoning her feather trophies to her…. a costly mistake, as an enemy earth pony sprang out of nowhere, kicking the unicorn so powerfully in the forehead, it drove her own horn straight through her skull like a dagger. Her agonized writhing was gruesome to behold.

“"Even the peaceful and wise were caught up in the madness. The most contemplative of ponies would gird herself with her mother's armor to avenge the deaths of her foals."

Long ropes were tied around all four of Commander Sirocco’s legs, stretching her body into a very unnatural X-formation. At the end of all four of these ropes was an earth pony, awaiting a signal from their leader. Sirocco’s wings, broken first, then plucked bare, wept blood onto the ground below her. Her remaining eye wept with agony, but she would make no sound of surrender, even then.

“Behold, your ‘hero!’” Treacle Tart sneered to the gathering of conquered villagers. The fat pony’s eyes were alight with murderous zealotry. “See the fate that befalls those who would see fit to betray her glorious Solar Majesty and snuff out her precious light!”

Then Treacle Tarn blew on a horn, and the four executioners ran: southwest, northeast, northwest, southeast, all at once. It wasn’t long before Sirocco’s limbs tore loose, bones snapping and muscle ripping free. Even the determined pegasus could not keep from screaming, a high and horrible note of pain. The only saving grace was that it did not last long.

The horrific tableau of war continued to spread before them. “Luna,” Twilight said hoarsely, sounding like she was fighting down the urge to be sick. “Luna, please…” was all she managed before she had to close her mouth and swallow hard.

Lero, however, knew exactly what she wanted to say, because he felt it himself. “Let’s get the hell out of here!” He turns to look at the princess of the night. What he saw almost caught him short. Pain, sorrow, shame, loss — she was lost in the moment.

“Luna!” he called, his hand alighting on her side, snapping her out of it.

“...Yes. Yes, of course.” She shook her head and the image of the world collapsed about them, leaving nothing but the distant sparkles of the dreamscape.

“...Forgive me.”

Lero couldn’t tell if she was apologizing to them for being lost in the moment… or to the world for being the cause of what they witnessed.

* * *

They all sat there in silence for several moments. Finally, Twilight spoke up. “Tell me it gets better.” It was an absurd request, as all present knew it, but all of them understood the need for reassurance. Lero simply hugged her, while Luna raised her head and looked up to her.

“It does. It gets worse before it does, but it does get better — and much of it is because of you, Twilight Sparkle.”

Twilight blinked. “Freeing you by vanquishing Nightmare Moon, you mean.”

Luna nodded. “And restoring the Elements, and much more besides. And, Celestia hopes, fixing Starswirl’s spell. There’s a reason we entrusted this task to you: you proved to be more than equal to every other challenge presented to you. It seemed only right that you be the one to fix the last remaining thread of this dark time.”

“One question,” Lero interjected.

“Yes?” Luna asked.

“Where was Starswirl during all this!?”

“He was trying to complete his spell and correct the effect it had on us. Speaking of which, that is where we must go next.” Before any further response could come from Lero or Twilight, the dreamscape whirled around them, revealing a now-familiar locale: Starswirl’s lab.

“No no no No NO NO!” Twilight and Lero started at the sudden outburst of noise, only further intensified as the speaker flung a book across the room. “Why can’t I get this right!? Why isn’t anything working!? Why can’t I fix this!?”

Twilight scanned the lab; rather than the organized, if esoteric testing chamber it used to be, it was a wreck. Notes, equipment, books and the detritus of failed experiments were strewn about everywhere. Also, failed experiments were running circles around the laboratory, honking like geese. She peered at several of the notes, blinking hard. Many of them resembled some of her own, stuff she’d written up in the cloud house. “He’s… trying to fix the swap spell and failing, isn’t he? Just like I am, right now...”

“And having even less success than you, it seems,” said Luna, over the sound of another spell shorting out and Starswirl’s anguished cry.

“This is impossible!” the wizard growled, sweeping his latest failure off the table, ignoring its outraged bleating as its cage clattered to the floor. “...Impossible…” Starswirl slumped down, looking off into the middle distance.

Seeing the stallion she’d idolized her almost entire life, defeated, hopeless, left Twilight staring in horror. “Luna… If you knew that the spell was capable of… all this...” she gestured to Starswirl, as well as the glow of distant fires visible through the windows; fighting and villages being razed, “...how could you have agreed to let it be cast again!?”

“I consented to it precisely because I know what the spell is capable of. We believed you, above all others, could solve this problem, succeed where even that accursed spell’s creator had failed. You saw all the pictures of apprentices my sister had in the past. You know how long she searched for someone who had it all. Talent, intelligence, raw magical prowess, trueheartedness, dependability… and most importantly, a solid comprehension of the magic of friendship. Only a pony like that had the potential to finally end all this.”

While the two debated, Lero had walked closer to Starswirl, glared down at him — then stopped short.

He recognized the expression. He’d seen it on his own face, reflected back at him in the window of Foamy Lager’s store, before he’d gone in to try and make it disappear with booze: utter loss and hopelessness, hurt deeper than most could imagine — even worse, he saw the same guilt and self-blame that he gotten used to seeing on Twilight’s face as well. A beaten, broken man.

Disgust, and much to his surprise, sympathy for the stallion warred within him. He knew Starswirl couldn’t hear him — he was just an image from the past. Nonetheless, he leaned in, and in a whisper, hissed, “Get up. You can’t give up. People are depending on you. You can’t give in. Even if this doesn’t work, you just find another way! Get up!”

Suddenly, the tower rocked, startling Starswirl out of his fugue. He stood up, looking out over the castle ground, and the residence beyond - Amber-red light flickered through the morning light, the city alight from siege and bombardment. His expression shifted to grim determination.

“Enough!” he shouted, bringing Luna and Twilight out of their conversation. Though he spoke not to them, nor Lero, but the madness outside. “If I cannot solve this, I will end it, one way or another!”

“Damn straight!” Lero couldn’t help but agree.

His telekinetic aura lit, reorganizing the entire lab, pulling several books out of the air to the table he’d settled before, ink and quills and parchment — and the infamous journal — landing before him.

“Wait, what’s he doing... Hey, I recognize those books!” Twilight said, scanning several as they passed. “Momentous Magicks For Mental Maladies, A Soul Distorted, Advanced Psychomancy… those are all books about mental illnesses and their cures — whether natural, chemically induced or… magically created.”

“Indeed… If one cannot reverse a spell, heal its effects,” Luna commented.

“But… you and Celestia are mixed up with one another, like the Swapped. If he did that to you, you’d…” her eyes widened in realization, “...become the mares I know now.”

Lero snapped his fingers. “I get it! Princess Luna… I think I finally understand what this is really all about!”

Luna furrowed her brows curiously at him. “Hmm?”

“What do you mean, Lero?” Twilight asked.

“Don’t you see?” Lero continued, excitedly gesticulating. “The reason Celestia and Luna are so intent on us researching the Swap and uncovering a cure is because they, themselves, have been swapped all along! And they desperately want to be cured of it!”

Twilight blinked in surprise. “Cured…?” She tilted her head at Luna. “ ...Could it be…?”

“Of course! Think about it! After so many centuries living each other’s lives, after all the hundreds of thousands of miles walked in each other’s shoes… it’s clear that what these two are most desperate for is to be themselves again. Their true selves! They want us to find a cure for them so Celestia can finally go back to being a Moon Princess and Luna a Sun Princess!”

Luna’s shamefaced expression conflicted with Lero’s bright and self-satisfied look. “I’m so sorry, Lero. But you are completely mistaken.”

His face fell, confusion spreading over his features. “Huh?”

“Celestia and I are who we are now. The inversion you suggest to try to return us to our old selves…. would be a new swap for us, just as disastrous as the last, not a cure. Your task is not for you to fix past mistakes.”

“But… but… I mean, if you’d wanted to be your old selves all along, it would almost justify everything we’ve been put through! But to have us struggle so hard to create a cure that you’re not even going to use?!” Before she could give any response, an outburst distracted them.

“There! ‘Soul Synthesis’ is complete!” announced the wizard.

Twilight blinked. “That was… fast.”

Luna smiled. “I did say he was good. But fine-tuning a spell to solve a malady using established techniques on a known ailment is significantly easier than an experimental spell using magics never before attempted.”

“Tell me about it,” Twilight concurred.

“Uh, ladies? He’s leaving,” Lero noted.

“Just as well. Come, we must see what happens next outside.” Luna led them on, until they were outside the tower. Approaching Lunar forces were visible in the background.

“They’re moving to take the capital,” Twilight observed. Luna nodded, looking up. Twilight blinked, shading her eyes. “The Sun’s so bright…”

In fact, it was slowly growing steadily brighter.

“What’s going…?” Lero started, but before anyone could say anything further, the doors to the tower burst open and Starswirl sprinted out — only to stop dead in his tracks. The same aberration of light blinded him as he emerged from the darkened interior. All eyes, past and present, gazed up at the sky in wonder and horror.

The Sun.

The fiery disk hung massive in the sky, far closer than it ever should be. As they stared in confusion, they saw something they'd never imagined they would see.

The sun cracked.

Or, more accurately, unfolded. Ancient runes glowed along ancient seams, closed for time beyond memory; Slowly, the glowing surface pulled back and locked into place, revealing the core of ancient, magical fusion empowering the massive artifact — as well as the tines of magical golden metal meant to focus its power to a point.

The conclusion was inescapable: A weapon.

“This is insanity…” Starswirl muttered, before ducking his head down and charging towards the center of the castle, to the throne room.

The trio followed. “Luna, what’s happening!? What happened to the sun!?” Twilight sputtered.

“The Lunar Republic’s forces are close and strong enough to make Celestia feel threatened. She is deploying the sun to… smite them.”

“Smite them!? Excuse me, but since when was the sun a Doom Cannon!?” Lero interjected.

“It always has been. In addition to bringing light and life, the Sun was made to be the weapon of last resort to fend off threats to Equestria from… Elsewhere.”

“What kind of threat would need an Orbital Death Ray!?”

“...Lero, you of all people would understand the sort of horrors that await between worlds.”

“...” Lero had nothing to add to that.

“But… How does this make any sense?” Twilight asked. “Using it against Equestria… This seems like… overkill.”

“By several orders of magnitude, Twilight. It was never intended to be fired at Equestria. Hence Starswirl’s haste. My sister had become quite… unhinged by this point.”

As if to emphasize the point, they shifted into the throne room. Its decor was subtly altered; the once harmonious interplay of light and dark, gold and silver was entirely replaced by gilt, all darkness banished by large mirrors placed strategically to channel light from the outside.

And the centerpiece was Celestia herself, seated on her Solar throne. The Lunar throne was every bit as gone from the room as the Lunar princess was. Attired in armor not worn since the last Griffon war centuries ago, Celestia’s horn glowed with golden radiance as she channeled massive mystical power.

The doors to the throne room burst open, Starswirl barreling inside. “Princess Celestia, stop this madness at once!”

Her eyes opened. Rather than the kind, familiar purple eyes Twilight and Lero knew, the entire orbs glowed with a yellow light, as if the sun itself burned in her brain.

“Ah, Starswirl! Glad to have you here — I wished for an audience.” She smiled in a way that would terrify most. “And you are right: it is time to stop the madness of Luna’s rebellion against me!”

“By firing the Apollion cannons at them!? You’ll burn all of Equestria down to its molten foundations!”

Celestia frowned. It was a heart-freezing moment, seeing the expression on that face. “So what if I do? I am the Sun. I bring light and life, as much as fire and drought. If I must burn the world down and then remake it to stop this foolishness, then so be it!”

“You would kill your loyal followers and your friends!?”

There was a moment of silence. “Do you know what some of my own people have begun calling me, after I instituted martial law to protect them from those Lunar Republic subversives? The Tyrant Sun. I work to protect them, and they call me a tyrant.” She bared her teeth. “Of course, the rebels took it up. ‘Fight against the Tyrant Sun!’ All very inspirational, I’m sure.”

Anger seethed in her voice, restrained but audible, unlike anything anyone present had ever heard from her. “Then, if a tyrant is what they want, then they shall have it! You will have ETERNAL DAY! No evil shall have darkness to hide under again! No deviant will be unshamed! Peace and Order will reign — AT ALL COSTS!” She ended with a snarl, before settling down, to a whisper. “Even if it means ending them all.”

“Celestia.” The tone was undeniable: master to student. “I have served Equestria longer than you, before it truly existed. It was created to unite the ponies to live in peace. Your reign exists because they trusted you as a leader to guide them wisely... not to use and break them as if they were your playthings. Despite your power, Equestria is greater than you or your sister. I will not see it burned down over a conflict between you both. Please, stand down, let me help you find a way to end this — for the good of all.”

There was a pause. “And if I do not?”

“Then I will do as I have ever done: serve and protect Equestria from threats from without…” He looked firmly at her. “Or within.”

There was a long moment of silence, she closed her eyes, before. “So. You, too, my old friend, would betray me.”

“No. My actions are dependant on yours. You can only betray yourself.”

Her eyes flared open, leaning forward aggressively, baring her teeth. Her helmet obscured her eyebrows, making it impossible to tell if she was a vision of fury, or simply the gaze of madness, the anger revealing that the raw power she was channeling was causing her horn to crack and char, reddening as if molten, steam and heat distortion radiating off it.

“I am the sun! You would seek to alter my course across the sky! You will meet the same fate of all those who show such arrogance: You will be cast down in flames!” There was a blinding flash of light, as solar flames engulfed the spot at which he stood. As the fires relented, there was nothing but a scorch on the floor.

“But… That’s impossible!” exclaimed a stunned Twilight.

Celestia seemed to agree, looking about in confusion. “Starswirl!” she called. “Do not try to hide! I know the greatest unicorn mage in history would never be so easily felled!”

“Indeed,” came the response, as the mage strode out of one of the side quarters. “My body may be weakening, but my mind and magic are sharp as ever, student. Might I remind you, for all your power, you have yet to best me in a magic duel?”

“In sparring, yes, but now you face the true power of an Alicorn! Nothing held back!” The Princess unleashed a withering storm of bolts of burning fire… through which the Unicorn walked towards her, casually dodging every shot with what seemed only slight movements. To Celestia’s frustration, echoes of him were stuck down, before fading away in the never-were timelines they spawned from, Starswirl’s time magic letting him select the timeline where she missed every shot. However, at the moment he was about to reach her, she flared with the brightness of the sun. Starswirl cried out in pain, but his magical reflexes were too fast, and he vanished in a flash of teleportation before her attempt to strike him down with an armored hoof could succeed.

“You can’t escape!” She followed his astral trail, teleporting into — she looked around — the castle garden, and he wasn’t in sight. “Come out, Starswirl! Don’t think I won’t burn down this castle around us to get at you!”

“You just tried to crush my skull with your hoof. I have very little doubt as to what you are capable of,” Starswirl said, appearing across the garden from her.

“I am an Alicorn! Not just the magic of an Unicorn or the flight of a Pegasus! The strength of an Earth Pony is mine as well! I could crush your bones like twigs!” She blinked, her eyes narrowing as she peered at him. “Your eyes…”

His eyes were covered with the distinct black of a Light Protection spell. She glowered at him. “Contingency spell.” He smirked slightly. “Wizard lesson: always be ready for when your foes try to take your senses.”

“Then what about your mobility?” Sunlight surged about them, inundating the greenery with energy, the plants exploding with growth, entangling the wizard in a single smooth motion. She charged, lowering her head to spear him with her horn. With a flash, he cast a spell at the plants, making them swell and explode, slicking the ground with botanical ichor. Celestia’s hooves’ slipped on the slime, forcing her to raise her head and spread her wings to counterbalance. With a tiny telekinetic shove, Starswirl toppled the overbalanced Alicorn over, slamming her to the ground with a titanic crash due to her armor.

“I’ve always found balance more important.” He approached her, his horn glowing. “Now hold sti-” He was cut off by wings lashing out, buffeting him away, the princess leaping from the earth, taking to wing. She hovered over the stunned mage, and had just one thing to say:

“BURN.”

Bolts of fire rained down on the mage, singeing his trademarked beard and hat, before his magic made time and space warp about him. He leapt behind ancient rock faces that had long since eroded away, and then hopped up to structures yet to be built by some future aristocrat. The Sun Princess screamed in frustration as ancient and future structures flickered into the present just long enough to provide cover for and support of the mage, shattering beneath her wrath, but never long enough for a clear shot.

“ENOUGH!” With a cry of fury, a blinding blast of fire erupted from her horn, annihilating the pan-temporal structures before her. She flapped her wings, hanging in the air, panting in exertion. Silence, no movement — had she won?

“Do know the most important aspect of magic is?” whispered a familiar voice in her ear. Celestia whirled about, catching a glimpse of the mage standing on a cross-time ledge next to her before he cast a spell. Her weight instantly quadrupled as gravity’s grip on her increased; she flapped fruitlessly for a fraction of a second, knowing it was hopeless: she could not stay aloft.

“Timing,” the mage said. And she fell. She focused her power inwards, protecting herself. She crashed through the roof of her throne room, stone, metal and glass debris raining down around her as she smashed through, before finally impacting the ground, the marble cracking and giving way into a crater beneath her.

She struggled to move, finding herself unable to shift under the weight of herself and her armor… and floating down light as a feather, his cape billowing out as he floated down, Starswirl alit atop her, his singed hat jingling down after him, floating through the air, fluttering like a leaf before plopping perfectly down on his head.

“Man, he just can’t not show off even when he’s fighting Celestia, can he?” Lero snarked, rolling his eyes, only to be shushed by Twilight, who watched rapturously.

“Now to end this.” Magic focused at the tip of his horn, as he paced up toward Celestia’s head.

“No… You can’t beat me! I am the sun! I give light, life, and heat... and I can take it back!” Celestia rasped — and in a horrible sight, her magical aura inverted, light and heat being pulled from the room, until the only light left was that being emitted from Starswirl’s horn. With terrifying rapidity, ice coated the room, thickening with shocking speed. Starswirl struggled against the ice freezing about his very body.

“No,” he gasped, the cold rasping his lungs. “I will not fail Equestria…” his hooves froze against Celestia’s armor, his neck stretching out towards her head. “Or you…” he let out, before the ice cover his mouth, finding one final burst of movement — and the tip of his horn touched her forehead, the power flashing into her mind.

Celestia’s eyes widened as she gasped, the spell purging the mystical taint, soothing her agitated and artificial neurosis, and sealing the fractures of her soul. No longer was she Celestia of the Night, or Lumina of the Day. She was, finally, truly, Celestia of the Sun.

She blinked, seeing the world with new eyes — and they widened in horror. “Ohnoohnoohnoohno, Starswirl!” She burst free of her armor; her aura burned with light, this time tender and warming, melting the ice, and restoring the elderly stallion as he slumped against her. Her wings enfolded him, pressing him tight against her. “Please don’t die, I’m sorry, I’m sorry…” Outside, the brilliance of the Solar Cannon faded, as it closed, retreating into the sky, Celestia pressing her muzzle against Starswirl. Suddenly, the archmage gasped for air. “Praise the Maker! you’re alive!” And she pressed a grateful kiss against his lips. It was unclear if he was reciprocating, or too insensate to resist.

There was a long, awkward pause as it continued for several seconds. “Uh.” Lero started. “This is… sweet, and all. But why are we staying here?”

“Because…” Luna replied. “This… is where I come in.”

“Oh, how sweet,” came her voice — but now behind them, dripping with venom.

Celestia looked up. “Luna!”

* * *

Out of the corner of his eye, Lero watched Luna... his Luna... shrink, almost as if collapsing in upon herself as her past self strode forward onto the platform that once held her throne. Pain, shame, and horror etched her face as she watched her ancient self.

Celestia stood, stepping towards her sister, Starswirl slumping down to the floor as she did. “Not another step!” hissed the dark princess, and Celestia hesitated.

“Sister, please...” Celestia started before being interrupted.

“Did you really expect me to stand idly by while they all basked in your ‘precious light?’” She sneered the last part, giving a significant glance to the still retreating sun.

“Luna, this isn’t...” Celestia tried again before being cut off.

“There can only be one one Princess in Equestria!” Luna announced, stepping to the podium between thrones. “And that Princess…” she began, rearing up, “WILL BE ME!” She smashed her hooves down, shattering the podium, her eyes flashing with lunar light.

As all onlookers watched in horror, the impact traveled up the wall behind her, cracking and weakening it. A cloying, shadowy darkness that was unlike the absence of light that had just moments ago occupied the chamber flowed over it, the wall shattering, revealing the still retreating sun. Luna raised her hooves to the sky and took flight, and the moon answered, rising in the sky, overtaking its sibling, casting the room in shadow once again: a horrific return of the total solar eclipse.

In the alien shadows, the worst horror was yet to come. Luna landed, and the darkness whorled about her, as if alive. A brief expression of confusion and fear crossed her face before the darkness closed about her, spinning as an orb so fast that it glowed with a dull red incandescence before being fully engulfed in darkness — which seemed to collapse in upon Luna. With an alien howl, it erupted, revealing a transformed alicorn.

Her coat was now as black as night. She was attired in silver armor that mirrored Celestia’s fallen golden armor. Her eyes opened, and her pupils receded to slits. She began to laugh maniacally, her teeth sharpening horrifyingly to points, her wings spread, blue-black energy sprinkled with dotted light flowed from her, obscuring the room as the figure of darkest night was born.

Nightmare Moon.

Lero fell Twilight shrink back in…. Fear? Dismay? He wasn’t sure. He himself had been caught up in the moment, fascinated. He had not experienced the childhood horror stories or the fateful clash against Nightmare Moon as Twilight had. Nor was it a deep, shameful memory, tainted with grief and regret like it was for Luna. He had caught himself watching in deep fascination. While he was a masseur and handyman, he was also something of a historian. Thus, seeing history — however terrible — come to life like this was nothing short of riveting. What brought him out of it was... well, he would’ve sworn he saw Luna looking at him intently out of the corner of his eye, but when he turn to look, her gaze was elsewhere. So instead he hugged Twilight to him, and let this scene continue to unfold.

Nightmare Moon collected herself, and an icy black-purple lance of energy emitted from her horn. Her first act was to obliterate the statue of Celestia, the blast continuing on and tearing through the already damaged ceiling, causing rubble to smash to the ground. The dream audience flinched as it passed through them. She strode through the rubble, dust clearing as she strode towards Celestia.

“Luna! I will not fight you! You must lower the moon! It is your duty to Equest...” But she was sharply cut off by Nightmare Moon.

“No! No more ‘Little Luna’ for you, Celestia! I am Nightmare Moon!” She glowered at Celestia. “And I have but one royal duty now!” She reared back, her horn charging with power. “To destroy you, Tyrant Sun!” Her beam of power lanced out at Celestia, who fled into the air.

“No! You can’t escape!” she hissed, leaping to flight after, continuing to fire cold, blue lances of energy after her sister, who desperately dodged each shot. Each effortlessly tore holes in the stonework, arches collapsing as their supports were blown away when Celestia dodged behind them.

“Luna, please!” Celestia begged. “Stand down! Do not let it come to this!”

“Do not call me that!” Nightmare Moon screeched, taking advantage of the opening Celestia left to speak with her, striking her in the chest. Celestia’s scream of pain tore at the hearts as much as the ears of her audience as she fell down to the throne room once again, Nightmare Moon’s taunting laughter following her down as it echoed about the courtyard.

“Celestia!” Twilight tore herself out of Lero’s arms, racing over to her fallen mentor, as an ominous crimson stain started to spread from her injury, marring her white coat. Twilight reached her side, only to find her intangible, the stuff of dreams. She recognized the absurdity of it, but couldn’t help but say, “Please, be okay.”

Nightmare Moon landed, walking over to the downed Celestia, who struggled to find her feet. “Now to end this.”

“Sister, no…” Celestia pleaded… though, oddly, it didn’t seem to be for herself.

It was that moment that Nightmare Moon noticed something missing.

“Wait, Where’s Starsw...”

Her question was interrupted by a mage teleporting on her back, tapping her on the head with a spell, and teleporting off before she collapsed, her eyes rolling up in her head...

“Wizard lesson: Never count a foe out until you confirm it yourself.” He stepped over to Celestia, casting a healing spell, starting to seal up her wound. “Are you alright, my Princess?”

She nodded, finding her feet. “Yes, now.”

“Oh, thank goodness,” Twilight breathed. And then suddenly looked intensely embarrassed when she realized what she’d done.

“Do not feel poorly, Twilight. Emotions run strong in dreams,” Luna assured her, sounding strained herself.

She frowned, concerned, looking over at Nightmare Moon, thrashing as the spell glowed about her head. “Is she… alright? I don’t remember it being as rough for me…”

“I detected large amounts of Dark Magic in her… she’s been busy. It’ll take a lot more effort to undo all she’s done to herself, compared to you.”

Nightmare Moon finally righted herself. Her slit eyes returned to roundness, her fangs retreated. No longer was she Lumina of the Day, or Celestia of the Night. She was, finally, Luna of the Moon...

“Welcome back, sister,” Celestia said with a tearful smile.

“Celestia… Help…” Luna pleaded

“Celestia, get back!” Starswirl warned frantically.

...and was then swallowed by the nightmare of her own making.

An explosion of darkness knocked Celestia and Starswirl away.

“NO!” a furious Nightmare Moon bellowed. “You will not be rid of me that easily, Starswirl!” She wheeled about, recognizing her true threat, blasting her ice-cold energy at him... only for him to blink away.

“Remember our lessons, Luna,” echoed his voice through the chamber.

“Do not call me that!” She wheeled about, looking for him. “I am Nightmare Moon!” She spied Celestia, starting to aim at her instead... only for Starswirl to teleport in between them.

“A good mage can teleport himself,” he stated. Her only response was to fire at them both — only for both of them to vanish.

“Blast you!”

“A better mage can teleport others with him,” he continued, as if lecturing a particularly disruptive student.

“Come out!” bellowed the queen of the night.

“And the best mages…” With a flash of light, Nightmare Moon vanished, replaced by Starswirl and Celestia. “...can teleport others away.”

“Where is she?” Celestia asked.

“A couple miles outside of city limits. She can’t sneak back in past the wards now that she’s transformed, so she’ll most likely rally her forces into an all out attack. That means we don’t have to long to stop her.”

“What happened to her? It looked like the spell worked!”

“I’m not sure, I only saw it for a moment… an invading presence taking advantage of her corruption. I suspect it to be a fractured fragment of her own psyche forming its own mind; deep, subconscious jealous desires so amplified by darkness they could no longer be controlled… well, it could be that or dozens of other things.”

“Then we must use these.”

Celestia’s horn glowed, and a square of the throne room's floor slid back, revealing (after much mechanical grinding,) the hiding place of the Elements of Harmony, carefully posed in an orrery, the other five Elements rotating around the central Element of Magic. “My link is not as strong without her, but It is enough to use it at least once. We will purify her by simply blasting the corruption from her.”

“No,” Starswirl replied. “I saw it for but a moment, but I know that the nightmare’s hold on her is deep, as she placed the hooks there herself. While I have restored Luna’s mind, and the spell will seek to reinforce it, simply tearing the nightmare from her now would shred her fragile mind apart.”

“Then… What shall we do? I... I do not know if i could… end my sister, and she is too strong for us to hope to hold.”

Starswirl frowned, his brow furrowed in thought. “The spell will continue to work. It won’t stop trying to free her from the corruption until it succeeds. We just need to give it time.” He glanced out the damaged wall, into the garden, spying the statue “...Can you imprison her? Like Discord?”

“...Not exactly like him, but… she now has my former affinity to the moon. I could exile her to it. Bind her to it.” She looked down at him. “How long would it take?”

“To be absolutely sure? Given the corruption I observed…” Starswirl tilted his head, clearly making mental calculations. “A millennium.”

“...A thousand years!?”

“I’m sorry.”

“...Then we should get this started as soon as possible.” Stoically, the princess levitated the Elements to herself, striding out the door, followed by Starswirl. As she disappeared, the dreamwalkers heard her voice calling the guards to attend her, before fading entirely in the distance.

There was a long pause.

“...Princess?” Twilight looked over at Luna, who was still looking down.

“...May I ask a favor of you two?” the Moon Princess asked quietly.

“Yes…?” Lero asked hesitantly.

“May we please… skip this next part? It has little to do with the spell… and you know how it goes… and I would rather not… relive it, if I can avoid it.” Despite her best efforts, her voice had an audible quaver in it.

Twilight walked over to her, putting a comforting hoof on her shoulder. “Of course, Princess.”

“Thank you,” the Princess of the Night responded. After a brief pause, she found a set of lavender arms around her, hugging her — and a few moments later, a pair of human arms joined them from her opposite side. She blinked, her eyes glimmering. “...Thank you both so much.” They stayed in that embrace for several moment, before Luna lifted her head. “We must go, there is more left to see.” They nodded and released her, and she stood, leading them through the dream.

Despite her reluctance, moments of history still flashed by; Celestia, staring mournfully into the sky, tears streaming down her cheeks as the Elements of Harmony fell to the ground around her, now lifeless stones. The sky filled with pegasus feathers, torn from warriors in battle, flittering through the air, caught on updrafts, slowly falling to the ground like a horrific rainbow snow. Thestrals were attacked and driven into hiding as Lunar loyalists before Celestia recovered from her shock and grief enough to realize what was going on and forbid it — too late, all of them dead or hidden beyond hope of finding.

The silence was broken by Twilight. “Princess Luna?”

“Yes?”

“This… doesn’t make sense. It doesn’t even come close to what I’ve read in history books. Not even the old obscure ones in the Canterlot archives,”

“From what I understand, my sister made… a concentrated effort to conceal the details of our actual conflict from both historical record and memory. Even magical attempts to scry this point in time will give an edited account of the events of that age. I believe our conflict was reduced to a single, bloodless fight rather than the protracted conflict it actually was.”

“Well… that explains how Celestia knows everything, even if she wasn’t there,” Lero reasoned. “But how do you know about it, Luna?”

“I saw them.” They finally stopped; it was a familiar room once again. Starswirl’s tower — but now, everything was put away, equipment stowed and locked, shoved to the side of the room, books in place on their shelves, even his once-crowded blackboard wiped clean. Dominating the room was… a single bed, Starswirl’s, with him resting in it, looking far older than any of them had seen before. Celestia sat beside it, one hoof resting gently on his. “...In her nightmares,” Luna finished, looking at Celestia.

“Is there anything I can get for you?” Celestia asked quietly. “Tea? Something to eat? Anything…”

“Water would be nice.” Starswirl’s voice, always rough, now almost creaked, the age obvious even there. In fact, the entire room seemed weighed down by age, as if a subtle pressure of time was bearing down.

“Of course.” She smiled at him softly, and fetched a cup telekinetically, dipping it in a nearby basin, then holding it to his lips, where he drank it down.

“Ah…” he said, when finished. “You are too kind to an old stallion.”

“Never…” Her hoof resumed its position atop his. “Are you sure there’s nothing I can do?” Pain and concern flashed across her face briefly.

“No. My time has come, Celestia,” he responded slowly.

“Oh no…” Twilight whispered, putting a hoof to her mouth.

“My age is great enough that not even my power can hold it back any longer. Even your power would give me but a few more decades… and I will not risk the kingdom again.”

“But a few more decades could…”

“Could what? Leave me with more aches and pains, more times when I forget what I was doing, or where I am? I’m mortal, Celestia. As much as I’d wish otherwise... time claims us all, even with my mastery over it.” He paused, looking up at her face, reaching up to stroke her cheek. “I’m sorry. I really made a mess of things, didn’t I? The most famous wizard in the entire history of Equestria, and the only one who shows up to his deathbed is the Princess… And not just because she’s the Princess… She’s the only one who is his friend… Mostly because of her dogged persistence.”

“That’s not true, Starswirl, Luna...”

“Is banished to the moon, because of me!” he shouted, only to have his outburst cut off by a fit of coughing. Celestia patted him gently until it subsided. He looked up at her. “And worse, I took her from you. The only person you could depend upon to be there… gone. For a thousand years. And getting her back depends on luck and chance, finding someone else who can wield the Elements…”

“It will happen. I was bonded with them, I know they’ll return when needed.”

“...You mean that. You know that.” She nodded to him.

“Thank you for putting at least one of this old stallion’s fears to rest.” He looked up at her. “You shouldn’t be alone. Promise me, you’ll find at least one pony to be close to. I know it’ll hurt when they leave, but no one should be alone, especially one who’s surrounded by so many ponies. Take an apprentice. By Tartarus, set it up like a school for gifted unicorns and pick the best if it’d otherwise look like favoritism. Something. Promise me?” He gazed up at her through rheumy eyes.

“Of course, Starswirl.” She leaned down, resting her cheek next to his. “You’re… on your deathbed, and you’re worried about me.”

“Of course. My worries will soon end. Yours won’t.” He let out a slow sigh, his breathing slowing. “I’m a fool. I wasted my life.”

“No, don’t say that. You’re the greatest wizard ever known. You put our understanding of magic forward uncountable years! You were vital to the creation and maintaining of our nation. And I daresay none will ever scoff at the idea of a stallion wizard again.”

Starswirl laughed at that, which erupted into another fit of coughs. He stared up at the ceiling. “Yes, but… There were so many other things that in retrospect, I should have done… Start a family, fall in love, make friends…” He looked back down to her. “Magic was so easy for me… and people… so hard. I never knew what to do, or say. Magic was simple, reliable, never made me feel nervous or stupid. So I shut others out or drove them off as much as I could… But you… and Luna… kept at it. Didn’t just keep me as your advisor, you made me your friend, whether I wanted it or not.” He closed his eyes, his breathing labored. “Thank you… for being… my friend, Celestia. I think… I finally… understood… what you were… trying to show me… That not all magic… is in books… or spells… Forgive this... stubborn old fool… for taking this long… to see it...”

With a slow hiss and rattle, he breathed no more.

Celestia leaned forward, looking down. “Of course, old friend,” she whispered, before pulling the sheet up over his head.

Then she wept.

* * *

The light of the dream faded until nothing was visible but the dreamers, huddled together in the darkness, silent for a long while, no words needed.

“That was… Wow.” Lero said, finally, as the silence approached awkwardness. “I came in this expecting more reasons to hate the guy, but… Damn.”

“So, now you know why Celestia worked so hard to keep this hidden. Not one, but two heads of state were held in magic-induced madness. And the spell still exists. In a way, we are both still under its influence. My sister feared that if the truth were known, not only would her government be destabilized, but that more wars might erupt between those who would seek to depose her and those who were loyal to her. Even if she attempted to peacefully step down from her throne, it still might incite a war.”

Twilight nodded soberly. “I understand.. Not that I’m… ungrateful, Luna, but… What was with showing us Starswirl’s… passing? Why show us something so heartwrenching? It… didn’t have much to do with the unfinished spell, did it?”

“Because sometimes answers are in subtleties… and because it is the best way to reach the final part of this dream.”

“Final part?” Twilight asked.

“She means me,” came a familiar voice. Lero and Twilight looked over, then performed a spontaneously synchronized double take. Starswirl the Bearded stood there, in his prime, as when they first saw him. Incredibly, Starswirl looked to be a solid, healthy, flesh-and-blood being; nothing about him was vaporous, translucent, or the least bit cadaverous.

“What... but how!?” Twilight sputtered out.

“What is death but an eternal sleep?” asked Luna, walking towards him. “As the Princess of Dreams, I can reach out to those who have passed. Whether it is truly the souls of the dead, or the impression of their minds left behind in the dreamscape, even I do not know. But I can bring them into dreams. Not often, and not easily, but it is within my power.” She smiled welcomingly. “Hello, again, Starswirl.”

“Hello, Luna. I’m glad you’re home and safe.” They leaned forward and pressed their necks gently together, rubbing gently against each other. “Forgive me,” he murmured, looking down at Luna’s cutie mark.

“I already did, long ago,” she replied, perking up. “Ah! Formal introductions! Twilight, Lero, this is Starswirl the Bearded, Archmage, Professor of the Arcane Arts, innovator in the fields of time magic, and former advisor and Court Mage to the Diarchy. Starswirl, this is Twilight Sparkle, Mage, Apprentice to Celestia, and the bearer of the Element of Magic. And this is Bellerophon Michaelides, refugee from another world, stallion to Twilight’s herd, and as I hear told, a skilled handyman and masseur.”

Starswirl raised an eyebrow and stepped forward, walking around Lero, looking at him from all sides, while Lero awkwardly positioned himself behind Twilight. “I recognize the form. He escaped from them, didn’t he?” Luna nodded in confirmation.

“I’m a human, sir,” Lero felt obliged to say, but Starswirl disregarded him.

“Centuries we spent, sniffing out their portals and freeholds! Whenever those serpents tried to slither their way in, we ponies always dealt with them speedily and sealed up their verminous burrows into our world!” the deceased archmage kvetched. “How were they able to reach us again? Has Celestia allowed the bindings to weaken?”

“Blame not Celestia; she performed the rituals as you specified, and all of the known portals are unbreached. I checked them all personally. Alas, I know not whence this one came from. I have been back less than two years, and have not yet enough time or power to research how such a breach was made, and am further hindered by the fact the area such a portal most likely originated is already awash with wild, uncontrolled magic. However, we can talk later, Starswirl. This is not why I summoned you.”

Starswirl nodded, turning to Twilight. “Yes, of course, this is all for your sake. Tell me, little pony, what are your magical accomplishments?”

Twilight’s startlement rapidly shifted to delight. “Oh! Well, first, I’d like to say what an honor it is...”

“Of course it is.” Starswirl interrupted curtly, causing Lero to scowl at him. Which was once again ignored. “But as Luna implied, our time together is far from infinite. I’m here to help you with a problem that has eluded both myself and the alicorn sisters, some of the most powerful and learned spellcasters in existence. So, please: your qualifications.”

“Now see here, you…” Lero started with a growl.

“Lero! Please.” Twilight looked up at him. “He’s right. Besides, I always wanted to see how I measured up to my idol!”

Lero let out an exasperated huff. “Fine.”

“Thank you.” When she smiled at him, Lero couldn’t help but return it. “Anyhow! Most Esteemed Archmage Starswirl the Bearded, Sir...”

“‘Starswirl’ will be fine.”

“Oh, right! Um, well, to start with, when I was a foal, I was reading even before I got into school, and when I was, I placed highest in reading comprehension, including in magical basics.”

“Hmmm. When I was young, I was apprenticed as a cooper, and during that time, I taught myself magic by trial, error, and whatever scrap of knowledge I could steal, con, copy, or cajole from the mares in charge.”

“Oh… I had read that you had difficulties but... Wow, you were teaching yourself magic by then…?”

“...Cooper?” Lero asked, his head suddenly filled with the image of a raccoon-striped bearded pony thief.

“Barrel-maker,” Twilight explained.

Starswirl cleared his throat, pulling her attention back. “Go on.”

“Oh, right. Uhm, then in my early adolescence, I got accepted into Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. I managed to hatch a dragon’s egg! And, uhm, accidentally turned my parents into potted plants and levitated the instructors in the air…”

“Hmmm. I think it was about that time that I had managed to win my independence and recognition as a mage by defeating the strongest unicorn mares of the time in wizard duels.”

Twilight’s jaw dropped. “I read about that... but as a foal!?”

“Yes. It might have borne more dramatic weight had I waited until a later age, but… I was impatient. And I really hated making those barrels! Also, it wasn’t that great of an accomplishment. There were only three of them. While they were all much stronger than me, their arrogance and self-assurance going against a self-taught stallion foal left some extremely wide and easy-to-exploit holes in their defenses. Remember: the strongest mage isn’t the one with the most power, but the one with the knowledge to apply his power most effectively.”

“Wizard lesson,” Luna broke in, smiling, and Starswirl favored her with a short smile back. His gaze shifted back to Twilight, his stern countenance returning.

“Er… Oh, in my first year, I’d memorized the entire spell catalogue in Canterlot front to back, and cast my first spell before the finals of the year, which no student had before!”

“I believe at roughly that age, I was creating many of those spells.”

Twilight started to wilt, as Lero reddened angrily at the mage. Starswirl, however, remained inscrutable, waiting for her to continue.

“Uhm… By my second year, I’d already learned advanced mental magics, including the ‘Want It, Need It’ spell…” she continued, enthusiasm flagging visibly.

“Hmmm. I believe roughly about then, I had invented an all-new branch of magic.”

“Yeah, time magic.” Twilight sighed, lowering her head. “Big fan, after all.”

“Okay, that’s enough!” Lero exclaimed. “Listen here, you rancid old goat…!”

“Lero, please!” She looked at him pleadingly.

“...Fine.”

She turned back towards Starswirl. “But there is still a topper on that… During my last year as Celestia’s apprentice in Canterlot, I became the Bearer of the Element of Magic, defeated Nightmare Moon, and helped return Princess Luna to her rightful throne. A year later, I defeated Discord with the help of my friends!”

There was a pause. “Hmmm. I do give you credit: those are all impressive deeds. As for myself; I personally trained countless apprentices. Including two alicorns. I helped found the nation of Equestria, supporting it through several conflicts. I discovered the Elements of Harmony, and orchestrated the downfall of Discord... but that was over centuries of life.” He paused again. “I think I’m beginning to understand what Celestia saw in you, young lady.”

“...Starswirl…” She managed to bite down on the ‘sir’ she’d been about to say. “This… everything you’re saying, right now… it’s not just to demean me, or edify yourself, was it?

There was a slight tinkle of bells as Starswirl’s head dipped in a nod.

“Then what is this line of inquiry about, really?”

"Isn't it obvious?"

"...Yes, I think so, but I'd rather be sure than suspect."

That finally rewarded her with a small smile. "Heh. Good girl. If it were about anything besides the crazy thoughts in my ancient spectral skull, I'd tell you to set up an experiment to confirm your hypothesis. But let me tell you this: if I know Celestia, she’d have already trained thousands of unicorns before you over the centuries between my death and whatever point in time this is.”

Twilight nodded in the affirmative.

“She’d have even taken several to be her personal apprentices. And since ‘there’s always a bigger fish,’ odds are some of them were stronger than you. Some were smarter. Some were braver. Some learned faster. Some crafted ingenious new spells you, yourself, would’ve never thought to create in a thousand years. Some might’ve even had a firmer grasp of the conflict of good versus evil. But..."

"But…?" Twilight prompted, after a few seconds.

"You are the first she trusted with my final spell. From what I've seen and heard here, your methodology involves reading, theorizing, and experimentation. I admire it — it's what I'd do. But the problem is — I did that already. And I failed. You've done amazing things — but I think the academic approach is the wrong path to go down. Don't try to outdo me. Figure out what's so unique about yourself that Celestia would have entrusted you to fix my greatest failure. Find your path. That's where the real solution lies, Twilight Sparkle."

“I… I think I understand. Thank you, Starswirl.”

He smiled as she gave a sincerely respectful bow. “However, as glad as I am to offer you my insight. I am here for your benefit. What questions would you ask of me?”

Twilight thought. “Well, first, what was your spell supposed to do? I mean, how will we be able to know when this spell is ‘properly’ finished?”

“What it will actually do isn’t clear. Magic this experimental is highly unpredictable. My intent was to harness the magic of harmony to empower the caster, using the Elements of Harmony to serve as focal points. How exactly such a thing would manifest... I have no clue.”

Lero cut in suddenly. “Can it think?”

Starswirl frowned. “Pardon me?”

“The Swap. Dealing with…”

But the human stopped short at the wry smirk on the archmage’s face.

“The Swap,” repeated Starswirl, as though it were a particularly comical pun. “What a… charming little nickname for my final spell. Did you come up with it yourself, sir?”

“Honestly? I can’t even remember at this point,” Lero admitted.

“Well, no matter. The Swap… yes, I think I like that term. Simple and apt. But I digress… you were saying?”

Lero took a breath. “Dealing with the Swap often feels like I’m grappling with a wily opponent. Is it a thinking entity? Or an unthinking force, like fire or the ocean?”

“Yes, it can think; in the context that all magic can.”

“...What!?” came the response from both Lero and Twilight.

“Magic is shaped by the will of the caster and the degree of power he or she invests in it. For any magic to obey a caster’s will, it needs to at least be smart enough to understand their intent. As a byproduct of this, all spells inherently imbue themselves with enough intelligence to do their job.”

“Wait, you said ‘to obey a caster’s will’… so are we to understand that you wanted this to happen!?” Lero accused.

“No,” Twilight interrupted. “That’s not how it works. It’s just that… in this case, Starswirl hadn’t found the proper way to ask the magic correctly. That’s a problem you often face with experimental magic. Established spells are well-worn grooves, the question and answer well-established. Experimental magic is forging a path in the wilderness, figuring out how to ask the right question to get the answer you want. Spellcrafting can be a very dangerous art, full of dead-ends, detours, and pitfalls.”

“Again, well done,” Starswirl replied.

Lero nodded. “Like your experiments... they’ve never quite done what we wanted, right?”

“Exactly,” Twilight confirmed, ruefully.

“Well, then… How big a factor is time?” Lero persisted.

“In what sense?” Starswirl responded.

“Are there long-term negative effects on the Swapped? If this spell’s intelligent, is it possible for it to change or evolve over time? Are we looking at a ticking clock?”

“As for its intelligence and capabilities, the ‘Swap,’...as you call it... would only do what it needs to maintain its effects. Ironically, it’d be you tinkering with it that’d make it expand and develop more than anything. As for detrimental effects… not really.”

“Nothing beyond the minor annoyance of the Swapped being ruinously bad at each other’s jobs, you mean,” said Lero, arms folded.

“Er, yes, but that goes without saying.” The archmage coughed. “These… ‘Swapped’ individuals… er… how many have been altered this time around?”

“Five,” said Twilight. “The other Element Bearers. My five best friends.”

“Five?” Starswirl the Bearded gave the unicorn mare a truly remorseful look. “Well, the five of them are having new memories conjured in their heads on a continuous, ongoing basis. Effectively, they’re slowly becoming new people. But it’d only be irreversible after they’d accumulated the same amount of life experience while swapped as they had unswapped. Doing naturally what the Soul Synthesis spell does instantly. So one could argue there’s a ‘ticking clock,’ as you put it, but it’s a rather generous one.”

“Well… That’s a relief. Sort of,” Lero replied. “So that gives us somewhere between two decades to a quarter-of-a-century, more or less.”

“Should we focus on trying to come up with good rhymes?” Twilight asked Starswirl. “Most advanced spells, including many of yours, rhyme.”

“But not all of them, yes? Rhymes are patterns, and magic tends to respond to patterns. However, not all magic need or wants rhyming. As I said, do what feels like the right thing to you.”

“Well…” Lero interjected. “You’ve had all your death to think back on this incident. Any solutions you could suggest?”

“No.”

Twilight frowned. “Haven’t you been watching our progress from the afterlife? ...At all?”

Starswirl let out a long, slow, exhale. “To be honest? I have no idea, one way or the other. I don’t recall anything after my death.”

“What?”

Luna interjected. “That is a quirk of this magic. In these Dream Worlds of mine, the souls of the dearly departed hold no remembrance of what lies beyond the veil of death. In fact, as I know I mentioned before, we cannot be certain if this truly is Starswirl’s spirit, or perhaps the Dream World’s ‘memory’ of him. I personally prefer the former…”

“...As do I…” Starswirl spoke.

“...but there’s no real way to be sure.” Luna looked sadly at Starswirl, but he just gave her another reassuring nuzzle.

“Well… That cuts off a lot of inquiries.” Lero sighed, suddenly looking deflated.

“Lero…?” Twilight asked, looking up at him, concerned. “What’s wrong?”

“Oh… No, it was silly.”

She nudged him insistently. “No, tell me.”

“Well… I kinda wanted to find out if ponies and humans end up at the same place when they died… and maybe ask if he’d heard from my grandparents.”

“I’m… I’m sorry, Lero.” She nuzzled him, and he shook his head.

“No time right now.” Twilight blinked at his response, and nodded, turning back to Starswirl.

“Uhm… Actually, I think I’ve exhausted my questions about the Swap. Though I got a feeling I’ll come up with thirty more I should’ve asked when I wake up from this,” Twilight said with a quick, bashful laugh. “But there is something else I want to ask, Starswirl; is there any favor, or any ‘unfinished earthly business’ you’d like us to perform on your behalf?”

“There were only two things that I truly regretted leaving unfinished, and…” He glanced at Luna. “You’ve already corrected one of them, and are hard at work at the other.”

“I have one last question.” Lero said firmly. “After everything that Celestia and Luna went through, why didn’t you just rip out that last page of your book, and burn that damn spell to ashes before you died?”

Twilight gasped at the thought of desecrating Starswirl’s work in such a way, but Starswirl’s reaction was different. His expression was… sympathetic?

“Your name is Lero, isn’t it?”

“Yes.”

“There were times that I was sorely tempted to do just that, Lero. But it was never my place. Princess Celestia forbade me from destroying that spell.”

“Why?” asked the befuddled human.

“For reasons of her own,” the wizard explained. “Reasons she never chose to share with me. At any rate, the magic belonged, ultimately, to Princess Celestia. After all she and her sister had suffered from it, I determined it was her place to decide its fate. If it helps, I am sorry.”

Lero stared at him for a long time. “Alright. Fair enough.”

After several more moments of silence passed between them, Luna cleared her throat. “I believe our time runs short. Starswirl, I must show these to back to their bed. I will be back as soon as I can afford the power.”

But the archmage took a long look at Twilight Sparkle, removing his hat.

“Before you bring them back, Luna, please let me do one thing first. Allow me to give this one a gift.”

And Starswirl the Bearded set his horn against Twilight Sparkle’s forehead.

“From soul to soul,
From heart to heart,
A scrap of wisdom
I now impart.
A special skill
You’ll get from me
Writ on your mind
Eternally.”

Blazing blue light shone from Starswirl’s horn. Twilight let out a pained wail.

“OW! OWWWW!! Sweet Celestia, that… OW, OW, OW, OW—WOW-OWWWWW!!!!”

“Twilight!” Starswirl the Bearded withdrew from her before Lero could knock the dead stallion away. “What did you do to her?!”

“He… he… I...” Twilight took a deep breath, her eyes widening. “I know Soul Synthesis now. I know it perfectly.”

“Perfectly?” repeated Lero.

“Any spell crafted by Starswirl the Bearded is a thing of power,” Princess Luna said, with deep pride. “Strong and built to last.”

“I figured the least I could do is offer you a last resort you can fall back on, if all else seems lost,” Starswirl explained, more humbly. “Should your five friends grow so unbalanced that they turn murderous… as poor Luna and Celestia had… let Soul Synthesis be your salvation.”

Twilight rubbed at her forehead. “Feels like you took a branding iron directly to my cerebral cortex. I bet I have scarring tissue in there. Owww… couldn’t you think of a less brutal way to teach a spell?”

“Well, yes, but we hardly have time for rote memorization,” said Starswirl, returning his hat to his head. “Luna, I believe there’s not much more I can do to help. Go ahead and return them to their beds. Best of luck to you! Oh, and Luna? When you come back, could you bring Celestia with you, perchance? It would warm my heart to see her again.”

She nodded at her beloved old teacher. “We will both be back if we are able.” She turned to the two dream-travellers. “This way, you two.” As they followed, the starry backdrop of the dreamworld closed, Starswirl disappearing behind them, stars forming stairs — or something like them as the definite sensation of descent flowed over them.

“That was… something,” Lero commented.

“I know. I so want to write it all up. But I know I’m not supposed to and won’t,” Twilight responded, shifting tracks when she earned a glance from Luna.

“If you feel it absolutely necessary, you can share the information with the others on the exemption list, if you trust in their ability to keep it secret.”

“So... definitely not my mother.” Twilight scowled.

“Or Discord,” Lero commented. “Not to disparage the… guy, but this is definitely not something he could keep under his hat, metaphorically or literally. Assuming he doesn’t know already, that is.”

“And… I’d rather not include Spike. Not that I don’t trust him, but I’d rather not burden him with… all this.”

“As you see fit. This is where our journey ends,” Luna replied.

Lero let out a small snort as he recognized that they were back in the expansive shower. With so much steam, the floor was effectively invisible.

“And I bid you a good night.” Luna moved to leave.

“Luna!” Twilight interrupted.

“Yes?” She turned to face Twilight — only to find herself in a hug.

“Thank you. For trusting us, and showing us all this. I know how hard it was for you.”

Luna froze up for a moment, before returning the embrace. “It was my pleasure. If… If you need help in the future, know you can call on my aid, not just my sister’s.”

Twilight smiled, releasing the embrace. “Of course. Good night, Princess Luna.”

“Good night, Luna,” Lero echoed.

“Good night, my little pony and my…” The Moon Princess paused. “Hah. Habit betrays me. Hard to call you ‘little’ when you can look me in the eye.”

“You know you can call me Lero.”

“Of course. Goodnight, my Lero, and sleep well.” With that, she vanished.

Twilight and Lero looked at each other, and shared a laugh before the infinite shower around them gently dissolved into normal dreams.

* * *

“How did it go?”

Luna hadn’t expected an audience upon her return to the waking world. Her eyes opened fully to the sight of her bedroom: its lazulite walls, its furniture and curtains colored to match the finest shades of eventide.

“Celestia,” she greeted her sister, rising from her bed. “You’re up late. Not convinced I could manage this?”

The Sun Princess sighed. “No, it’s not that. I just… want to know if I’m going to be getting an angry or upset letter from Twilight tomorrow… or ever again.”

The lights were low in her room, and Celestia had wiped her eyes dry, but Luna could still see how red and puffy her sister’s eyes were. How damp the handkerchief beside her was.

“Fear not, my sister, you still have your faithful student. She was shocked and saddened by what she saw, but I think nothing could shake her faith in you. Not even seeing you at your worst moment.”

Celestia let out a shaky breath, but managed a smile. “I am heartened to hear that. I feel downright… relieved… that someone else knows about how things used to be for us. Let us hope it provides Twilight with the information she needs.”

And she drew closer to her sister’s ear.

“You may not believe this, Luna, but to this day, there’s still a part of me that sorely misses how your mornings look,” she whispered. “Each day you raised the sun, our world knew true beauty. As much experience as I’ve gotten, I’ve never quite been able to replicate it.”

“Perhaps I ought to try it again, just for one day,” Luna whispered back. “Simply for old time’s sake.”

“I’ll make it your next birthday present,” Celestia promised.

The sisters drew away from whispering proximity, facing one another. “There is one other thing of significance,” Luna continued. “I took Twilight and Lero to see Starswirl’s spirit, and Starswirl ended up teaching Twilight the Soul Synthesis spell using Brainscribing.”

“Brainscribing?!” Celestia raised an eyebrow in surprise. “I didn’t know that he could do that, postmortem.”

“Neither did I, sister,” Luna admitted.

Celestia’s bright mane continued to ripple in the air as she went over to Luna’s window. “I wish Starswirl hadn’t done that. But perhaps it’s for the best. This whole experience has been absolutely brutal on poor Twilight. If nothing else, she now has an easy way out.”

“Indeed,” Luna joined her sister, both of them staring out at the pony cities and villages spread out below, across the land of Equestria. “But will she take it? That still remains to be seen.”

Author's Note

Hoo, wow. This was a trip. Hello, Divided Rainbow readers! I’m Rikmach, Mike’s editor and occasional idea man- which is how this all came about. I was busy as I usually am, editing Mike’s work, pointing out the occasional plot hole, and pitching suggestions on how to patch them, when I found myself putting together a surprisingly large backstory, linking together loose threads in DR and the show itself. Mike, as he is wont to do, said, “Hey, how about you write it?” I- possibly foolishly- agreed, and the last three chapters are a result- while I didn’t write the first half of the first one, all the broad strokes of plot were my idea. I’m eager to see how you all react and like my ideas here, and my takes on Luna, Celestia, and Starswirl. Lastly, I want to thank Mike, Spinel Stride, and TheQuietMan, who contributed much help in getting this done. I hope you guys like the trial scene, getting that written was like pulling teeth. From a shark’s mouth. While it was eating you.

Thirty: Unsavory Sorts

None of Lero’s other dreams that night featured Twilight Sparkle, Luna, Celestia, Starswirl the Bearded, civil wars or celestial death rays. He felt thoroughly refreshed and clear-headed when he awoke the next morning.

He looked over to see Twilight Sparkle next to his bed, already cleaned and groomed and engrossed in a book. When she saw him open his eyes and stretch, she stopped reading.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning, Lero.” She lay down next to him on their bed. “The… um… well, the heat’s over.”

“For all four of you?” he asked, shifting up to get out of bed.

“Yeah. I talked with the other girls, and every one of them agrees: we’re all completely spent.”

“Oh, you’re completely spent, are you?” he asked wryly; groaning and rubbing his back as the sore ache in his thighs, back, and legs came awake as well.

She laughed, and hopped over to his side, nuzzling his cheek. “Oh, come on. We all enjoyed ourselves.”

“Never said I didn’t.” He smiled, giving her a quick peck on the cheek.

Twilight drew back a bit. “Last night, I had a dream where the moon was on fire.” She watched him carefully, closely observing his response.

“You don’t say,” he spoke offhandedly. “A burning moon? That sounds uncannily similar to a dream I dreamt last night. And you were there.” He refrained from going further into a pop culture reference she’d not grasp.

She pressed up against him. “So you remember?” she whispered in his ear.

“Yes. Everything,” he whispered back in her own ear. “Celestia the Moon Princess. The eclipse. Lumina. The Tyrant Sun. Talking with Starswirl…”

“Sssh,” Twilight shushed, pressing her hoof to his lips. “No more for now. Not while Rarity and Rainbow Dash are still in the house.”

Lero understood, and when he came down the stairs after showering and dressing, he found Rarity braiding a swatch of Rainbow Dash’s mane in the style that every mammalian member of Herd Bellerophon wore.

“How do I look?” Dash asked, turning her new braid towards him.

“Like part of the family,” he answered.

The hug she gave him was soft and tender. She settled her head against the crook of his neck and it felt so good.

“Today is going to be such a momentous day for us!” Rarity grinned from behind them. “I’m exhilarated beyond words!”

* * *

Yesterday, Rarity had gotten in contact with her bosses at the weather service and explained to them about the new herd-sister that would be moving into their home. While they wouldn’t give her the entire day off, they were willing to reduce her hours for today.

Once she and Rainbow Dash had each left, Lero and Twilight Sparkle were able to share their story to Lyra Heartstrings.

“But Luna’s pelt is too DARK for her to have started as a Sun Princess!” Lyra had said.

Just to be doubly sure, the three of them had moved to the secrecy of the basement to have this conversation, locked the door, and placed a silencing charm on the room.

“We saw what we saw,” Lero told her. “But really, is coat color THAT big a deal? I mean, cutie marks are bad enough. But do you look at Applejack’s coat color and think she should’ve been a tangerine farmer instead?”

“Hey, it’s not like orange-hued apples don’t exist!” Lyra argued.

“So you don’t believe us?” Twilight asked sadly.

That brought Lyra up short, and she paused, crossing her hooves and tapping her chin, actually considering. “Actually, I think I do. It sounds just LIKE our Swap.” She unfolded her arms. “And to think; we were all convinced the first swap happened to some OTHER gang of six ponies!”

“Looking back, the evidence was staring us right in the face,” Twilight said. “Celestia and Luna had been Elements Bearers since they beat Discord. The Elements are the common factor. Being immortal, they would never have had reason to pass the Elements onto other ponies… not until Nightmare Moon.”

The couches down in the basement were kind of old and second-rate, and it was hard for any of them to seat themselves comfortably.

“And isn’t it incredible how profoundly this stupid spell shaped our whole society?” Lyra said, eyes looking over a bookshelf filled with nothing but history volumes. “We really are playing with fire, here.”

Now I am become Swap, destroyer of worlds. Lero thought to himself, only half-jokingly.

Lyra fixed her eyes back on Twilight. “But... this spell you say Starswirl’s ghost taught you…”

“Let’s make sure it’s real.” Twilight Sparkle went over to a book sitting on a table, set her forehead atop it, and her horn glowed. Lyra recognized it as an inscribing charm, it allowed a Unicorn to inscribe a spell in a book simply by casting it. Twilight’s aura shifted, casting the spell, it inscribed in the book as expected… but Lyra could not have been more transfixed if she were hearing music from a space alien’s instrument.

“The aura of that spell… it’s so… different,” the aqua unicorn spoke in awe. “So unusual. Gives me goosebumps.”

Twilight Sparkle lifted her head off the book. Lero couldn’t help wondering what effect it would have if she were to cast Soul Synthesis on some Unswapped individual. Like himself.

“I could do it.” Her horn was still glowing with the Soul Synthesis spell as she said this. “I could trot on over to the Carousel Boutique right now, and cast this spell on Applejack, and she’d make lovely dresses from that point on. Oh, probably a bit more wild and earthy than Rarity, but they’d be good. And then I could go around to my other four friends and do the same to them. And that’d be the end of it.”

“Is that what you’re planning to do?” asked Lyra, wide-eyed.

Twilight shook her head, and the glow on her horn faded. “No. I’m not willing to give up on either my friends as they were, or in figuring out this spell. As far as Soul Synthesis goes, my plan is to keep it in reserve as a last resort, just like Starswirl wanted. I’m not going to throw in the towel just yet!”

Lero twisted his hands together uncomfortably. “Twilight… what if some of our Swapped friends’ souls have already been, um, synthesized?”

“What do you mean?” Twilight asked him.

His nails were beginning to dig into his skin, so he went over and lit another of the lamps to give his hands something to do. “After all that stuff Luna showed us, I’ve been thinking about me trying to help the Swapped function in their new lives and... well, it’s worked VERY well, all things considered. Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Rainbow Dash… they’re balanced. How can we really tell whether or not it’s actually caused their souls to fuse together permanently? What if my ‘equilibrium’ is Soul Synthesis, achieved through mundane means?”

Twilight gaped at him. Then she laughed. "Silly Lero! My sweet, silly stallion! What would I ever do without you?”

Lero felt flummoxed as she kissed him in good-humored apology. “I’m sorry for laughing, but it’s not the same thing at all! Equilibrium and Soul Synthesis are two completely different bales of hay!”

“How?” asked Lero. “How are they different?”

“Through ‘equilibrium,’ you're effectively teaching my friends how to do the jobs they're plainly ill-suited for. Wait, no, it’s even better than that: you’re teaching them how to teach themselves!”

She smiled brightly at him.

“But suppose I were to cast Soul Synthesis. Then my friends would become bonded with their cutie marks and assimilate the lessons of their memories fully. They’d be super-talented at their new jobs; as if it had been their destiny all along.”

“I’m still not sure,” said Lero. “Let’s say you never cast Soul Synthesis on the Swapped, but also fail to find a cure. Let’s say they coast by on Equilibrium for the rest of their lives. What then?”

Twilight considered the question. “Well, without Soul Synthesis… given enough time, yes, they might grow to be super-good at their jobs. They have the cutie mark giving them an edge, and with enough practice, anyone can be good at anything. But they'll never have that... spark. They'll be driven to do those jobs, but deep down, it’ll never be their true desire. In spite of everything the Swap’s forced them to believe."

“Really? You sure?”

“Yes!” said Twilight. “I did all that research on cutie marks, remember? I know how it works!”

“I’m with Twilight on this one, Fingers.” They turned to Lyra. “The thing is… between everything else we have going on, I’ve managed to squeeze in time to watch our Swapped friends at their Swapped jobs for myself. I’ve seen Pinkie at the farm, Rainbow at her cottage, yadda yadda…”

“...And…?” prompted Lero.

“Well, one thing I’ve been keeping track of is when the Swapped are most… vibrant. Most alive, and happy. Particularly the ones with equilibrium. Take Pinkie Pie. Now, on one hoof, she’s not a bad farmer anymore. She certainly does take pride in her farm work, and she IS committed to seeing Sweet Apple Acres thrive. But when is she most vibrant? When she’s smiling with her fam… with the Apples. When she’s baking. When she’s socializing with others at the marketplace. Ultimately, as much as she’s incorporated part of Applejack into herself, she’s still Pinkie, for the most part.”

Lyra telekinetically pulled one of the feathers from Lero’s braid, looking it over. It was the fresher, newer one from the Wonderbolts Derby.

“And Rainbow Dash, bless her heart… she’s an even more obvious example!” Lyra continued. “Fluttershy never demanded her animals perform tricks like Rainbow does… for the most part, she was perfectly happy just giving her critters a place to stay so she could adore them and take care of them. In fact, seeing them thrive in the wild, untamed was just as important to Shy.”

“Fluttershy did have her bird choirs,” Lero insisted. Rainbow Dash had even kept up that ‘tradition’ after her equilibrium.

Lyra shook her head. “She never took it to the level Rainbow Dash has. Really, the choir was her organizing her friends to do something beautiful, not commanding them. Fluttershy never demanded her animals be that obedient and disciplined.”

The aqua unicorn smiled as she rebraided the feather back into Lero’s hair. “At this point, we might as well stop referring to her as ‘Rainbow Dash The Caretaker,’ and start calling her ‘Rainbow Dash The Trainer.’”

* * *

Granted, it wasn’t the strangest sight the ponies of Ponyville had seen in recent memory. Comparatively speaking, it was pretty tame.

“Mush!” cried the cyan pegasus, with another blow to her whistle. “Mush!”

All the same, Rainbow Dash’s neighbors goggled and gawked to see all those animals dragging their caretaker’s cottage through the streets of Ponyville. Usually, this sort of task was best left to a team of draft ponies.

“Hey! I don’t see you mushing, Mr. Schnuggles! Let’s pick up the pace!”

It was something the town would remember for decades to come. Many ponies would ask, (both while the cottage was being pulled and afterward) ‘Rainbow Dash, who did you get to make yokes small enough to fit on all those wasps and bees of yours?’

And she would answer, “Discord, of course. He’s my friend, and he made them all for me.”

And they would nod in understanding, and ask, ‘But how did you manage to to get all those animals to cooperate? The dogs are understandable, they do dogsledding up north and all. But the birds? Those bears? That manticore doesn’t look too happy about being bridled.’

And she’d look over at all those ropes fastened around all those parts of the house, like strings wrapped around a balloon seller’s hoof at a carnival. That vast throng of animals large and small, straining to drag this great cottage, block by block. And she’d tell them, “I have my ways.”

‘It seems like an awfully big thing to hitch bunnies and iguanas to,’ her neighbours would comment.

‘Nah,’ Dash would say, ‘I emptied the place out first, so it’s okay. Believe me, you don’t need to feel sorry for the bunnies or the iguanas.’

‘But if you had someone like Discord for your friend, couldn’t you have just had him snap his fingers and teleport your cottage?’

And Dash would respond, ‘Discord isn’t a wish-granting genie. He helps at his own discretion. Besides, when we get to where we’re going, I want all my little animal friends to be glad we’ve arrived.’

At around four in the afternoon, the cottage had arrived at the library. The whole herd… her whole herd, was gathered out in the front to welcome her! Well, maybe not quite all of them. Camp hadn’t ended for Spike yet… but it still felt like the little guy was here in spirit.

Rainbow Dash took a moment to look past her herdmates and consider the new house she’d be living in. The bright rainbow that arched over Golden Oaks’ topmost leaves was such a nice touch of Rarity’s. But for once, she ignored the more eye-catching library tree, and focused on the other part of it: Lero’s old house, attached at the right side.

How long had Lero actually gotten to live in that place on his own before moving right back in with Twilight? Two months? Three?

For the most part, it just sat there nowadays, ignored and rarely used, to the point where passers-by hardly noticed its existence… including herself. Like some forgotten wing of an excessively large mansion.

Rarity had told Rainbow she had plans for it later down the road, though. It’d be where ‘some of the foals’ would have their rooms.

...Will some of those foals be my own, perhaps?

Foals. She’d cross that bridge when they came to it. For now, there were her other set of babies to see to. Now they’d have a wing of their very own where they could play and eat and sleep and be looked after.

She blew on her whistle. “Company… HALT!” The animals all stopped. They fell over on the ground, some wriggling out of their yokes and collars.

The cottage was now directly left of the library, both as closely adjacent to one another as could be. Pity she’d had to leave the basement behind. She just have to get the moles and the groundchucks and some of her other burrowing friends to help dig out a new one for her.

Lero was setting out all sort of water bowls for her animals when she came up to him. He kept looking at her cottage uneasily, like it were a haunted house that maybe might not’ve been thoroughly exorcised.

“How’re you feeling?” she asked him, and he turned back towards her.

He turned that wondrous smile on her again, still the slightest bit bowlegged after their busy week together. But then again, so was she.

“Just the slightest bit… nervous.”

Together they looked at all the animals.

“This is nothing we can’t handle,” Dash said.

“That’s the spirit!” Lyra cheered.

Twilight cleared her throat emphatically. “Alright, let’s get this ball rolling. Lero, Rarity, everypony, please keep those animals away from me while I’m working, make sure they don’t get restless and brush up against me or anything, I’ll need full concentration.”

“You’ve got it!” said Rainbow Dash.

The purple unicorn bent her head, and her horn glowed with power. Bark from the left side of her library’s tree trunk began to peel outward.

* * *

“Atten-SHUN!”

The rows of animals snapped as smartly to attention as any squadron of boot camp conscripts. Good. Dash thought.

When she’d brought her animals out to those pet hotels and animal reservations, she’d warned the ponies in charge about how her animals had severe disobedience problems.

“I want you all to look to your right,” she instructed.

A couple hundred heads look to the right.

“Now look to your left.”

They did.

“Now face me,” she told them. “Face us.”

The critters of the cottage turned, their eyes first not-quite-meeting their caretaker’s, then skimming over the human and three ponies behind Rainbow Dash. Lyra gave a slight cough.

“We’re not living next to the Everfree Forest any more,” Rainbow Dash declared. “We’ve moved our house here, to this place. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, particularly to all our burrowers and the dogs with toy bones buried in our old yard. But Mommy’s entered a new phase in her life. She’s fallen in love and got herself hooked up with a herd.”

Rainbow Dash spread a wing towards Lero, Twilight, Rarity, and Lyra.

“These are Mommy’s new herdmates. You all know Lero already, he’s your new Daddy.”

Lero gave the animals a nod.

“But there’s also Auntie Rarity, Auntie Twilight, Auntie Lyra, and Uncle Spike.” Dash continued. Rarity almost seemed ready to say a few words, but the pegasus cut her off. “Uncle Spike may not be back home from camp just yet, but you all know him, and he still totally counts. Now, because Mommy’s part of a herd, when it’s time for her to sleep, she’ll sleep with her herd in the herd-house.”

Dash pointed towards Golden Oaks Library when she said ‘herd-house.’

“But all of you,” she pointed first to the animals, then to the cottage, “will be sleeping in the old house. Don’t worry, though: Mommy will still be coming by the old house every day to take care of you all. But setting foot inside the herd-house is a privilege, not an entitlement. You’ll need to earn our trust and respect.”

Then she stared down the brim of her cap at them, giving the animals a now-familiar look they’d first been exposed to inside Pinkie Pie’s barn.

“One more thing. You’ve all been very well-behaved girls and boys lately, and Mommy’s proud of you for that. But if you fall back into bad habits, if you’re mean to your aunts, uncle and dad without provocation, if you damage our things, and especially if you deliberately aim to sabotage Mommy’s love life, Mommy will make you sorry! Are we clear?”

“Clear! Clear!” Jabbers squawked, flapping his wings. None of the other animals raised a complaint. Even Rarity gave a slight gulp.

“Good,” the pegasus said. “Now, moving onto our next order of business. Obviously, we couldn’t bring the basement with us, so we’ll have to form an excavation team and start digging a new one. I want all my burrowers front and center; moles, voles, woodchucks, bunnies…”

* * *

There was so much to buy.

Flea collars. Tick shampoo. Surface rollers for picking loose fur off the upholstery. Dog treats made with real marrow and liver. Tartar-reducing sticks of knotted rawhide. Little green toothbrushes that all her canines went wild over for some reason.

Bags of kitty litter claiming to suppress ammonia odors nearly five times longer than the leading brand. Disposable litter boxes. Toy mice stuffed with catnip. Soft bedding made from naturally reclaimed wood pulp. Wormers. Cat food said to be scientifically formulated to reduce hairballs.

Cans of farm-raised snails for her amphibians and reptiles. Millet and seed blends for her birds. Freeze-dried mealworms, grasshoppers and crickets for her insect-eating friends. Apple wood chews for her gerbils and guinea pigs.

The Happy Whiskers Pet Emporium wasn’t even located in Ponyville, but there wasn’t an employee there who didn’t know Rainbow Dash’s face. It was her one-stop shop for all her pet care needs.

It wasn’t at all like the outdoor marketplace back home, with its rows of merchants under tents and behind kiosks. But the sort of setup here suited her better. Everything indoors, everything a caretaker like her could possibly ask for, all under the same roof, instead of having to hunt it down in a large market.

It was only a matter of knowing which aisle to look down, and even then, all of the ponies who worked here were so nice and helpful! Happy Whiskers even had shopping carts for their customers! That meant a lot to Rainbow Dash, because she always bought so much, and it was already enough of a hassle bringing it all back to her cottage, by herself.

Except I’m not ‘by myself,’ anymore, am I? the pegasus thought with a smile. I ought to remember to bring one of my herdmates next time! They’re always so thoughtful and helpful.

She turned her shopping cart down an aisle with all sorts of sweaters and cute hats and costumes for dogs. Rainbow loved to imagine some of her own animals in them, but such things were too much of a luxury, it’s not like she was made of...

“So, Rainbow Dash… how many animals have you fornicated with today?”

...The words were like a heavy stone thrown at her body, bashing her out of her train of thought. “W… what?!” she yelped, turning around towards the mare who’d spoken behind her. “How many animals have I… what?!”

* * *

While Rainbow Dash was out shopping, Lero had a different task to put a dent in.

The day before hitching her animals up to the cottage, the pegasus caretaker had first emptied out all her furniture and belongings with the help of her new herd. Now it was time to bring all that stuff out of Lero’s old home and back into the cottage.

Moments like this were one of millions where Lero felt lucky having Twilight as one of his girls. When bringing the cottage’s bed back into the cottage’s bedroom, not only could the purple unicorn levitate the bed, she could also temporarily shrink it down so it fit between doorways.

Lero was carrying some of the lighter bedroom-boxes in. He’d opened the third one, removing the pillows and spare pillowcases when he heard the creak.

The human turned to see a loose floorboard quickly lower itself down at level with its fellow floorboards. He waited to see whether whatever-was-under-there would peek back out again.

“Is that you, Mrs. Catslunch?” he called out. “Mr. Pinny-Gig?”

He had to check. Wouldn’t be the first time one of those little idiots had gotten themselves stuck or hurt under the floorboards. So he bent and lifted up the loose one, hoping it wouldn’t be Hissy the Asp. She was no fun.

It wasn’t the asp.

Angel Bunny flattened himself back against the farthest point of his hidey-hole at the first sight of the towering human’s eyes. It was dark and nasty-smelling down there. Lero could see a small pile of half-rotted lettuce next to a small plastic water bottle halfway full of cloudy water, which must’ve been swiped from one of the hamster cages.

He’d never expected to see a rabbit with two black eyes before; it surely must’ve hurt to hold his eyes open so wide. So much filth clung to what little patches of fur still remained on Angel’s skeletal body; none of it was even white anymore. Quite a few of those cuts and bites looked grossly infected.

When Lero reached down into the hole to pull the bunny out, Angel didn’t run or bite or kick. Either the rabbit was just too weak, petrified stiff, or had simply accepted his fate. The one half-whisker still left by his nose shook like a leaf. Lero could feel Angel’s tiny heartbeat beating a mile a minute in the palm of his hand.

* * *

“Fornicated with,” repeated the green-coated earth pony mare. “Is that word unfamiliar to you? I’m asking how many hamsters you’ve humped. How many doggies you’ve deflowered. How many birdies you’ve bumped uglies with. Just today, I mean, otherwise I’m sure the answer would take hours.”

Loathing bubbled in her green eyes, like twin pools of boiling acid.

“What is wrong with you!? I don’t DO that sort of thing to animals!” The pegasus exclaimed, struggling to remember who this mean pony with the dyed blonde mane even was.

Somehow, she sensed this was someone from back home in Ponyville, a face in the background, but who? No one she interacted with on a regular basis. Not that she ever WOULD go near a pony like this. Usually, Dash only stuck around ponies this mean just long enough to learn that they were this mean, and then did her best never to interact with them again.

“You’ve mated with the monkey, haven’t you?!” Her voice cut like glass, and several of the puppies for sale whimpered in their cages.

The mare’s teeth clamped upon the edge of a magazine in her saddlebags, and she flung it on the floor between them. Rainbow recognized it at once; the latest issue of Feedbag. Friends and neighbors had been showing her it all the time. The magazine even came open to the start of the article that was about Herd Bellerophon, with Lero putting her feather on at the Wonderbolts Derby.

“You’re his fourth conquest!” Rainbow Dash backed a step away; and the mare stepped forward, a hoof stomping down on Lero’s face in the magazine photo, ripping the page. “You spent your entire heat with Herd Bonobo! You even went so far as to join your house with theirs, for all the town to see! He wears your feather! You wear his braid! I can smell his odiferous touch on you, even as we speak!”

Ponyville’s marketplace… Rainbow Dash thought she could remember who this mare was now. Her cutie mark showed a slice of honeydew melon… there was a certain stall Dash always walked past whenever she needed to buy fruit: a stall that sold melons. Honeydew melons, primarily.

It wasn’t like Rainbow Dash had stuck around to watch or given it much thought before now... but she remembered that this mare used to have steady a business as any other in the stall. Once. But she vaguely recalled as of late business seemed to have petered, fewer and fewer ponies showing up to buy her wares. Most ponies always seemed to trot past this mare, even when she smiled nicely out at everypony in the crowd, even when she sang her sweetest.

Rainbow Dash remembered something else. Sometimes, during get-togethers, Rarity or Twilight or Lyra would gripe about a certain insufferable mare who’d hassle, heckle and harass Lero at every possible turn, and never had a nice word for the mares who loved him, either. Even some of the funniest stories about this mare’s antics had been distressing to Rainbow Dash… and this’d been before Lero had become so incredibly special to her…

“Is your name Honeydew?”

Honeydew looked upon Rainbow Dash like her body was made of diarrhea. Her undisguised revulsion for her only deepened from there. “You know, this explains a whole lot more about the type of pony you are, you chicken-livered skulker. Everypony already knew you never preferred the company of your own kind, but to think… all those creatures… your own private bordello…”

“I’m NOT like that!” There must’ve been quite a fierceness about her, for that horrible shrew of a pony flinched away as Dash shouted back. “And Lero is not just some monkey, no more than you’re a horse!”

“You don’t know how right you are, you disgusting disgrace. He’s not just ‘some monkey.’ He’s a menace.” Honeydew insisted, her voice picking up speed and volume. “A menace to end all menaces. He’s out of control, his carnal appetites are deepening, more and more, as I always suspected they would, only I can see him for the baboon-devil he really is…”

“Oh, no. She’s at it again!” said somepony else nearby.

“Oh, for Celestia’s sake… Leave that poor girl alone, Dew!” shouted somepony new. “For Celestia’s SAKE, leave them ALL alone!"

Two earth ponies ran over, planting themselves between Honeydew and Rainbow Dash. One was a stallion, the other a mare, and Dash recognized neither of their faces.

“Widescreen…!” Honeydew began, addressing the stallion.

“No, please, Honeydew... don’t talk.” Widescreen told her, his voice a combination of exasperation and tiredness. “Just don’t say anything, you’ll just make it worse!”

The mare turned to Rainbow Dash, her eyes full of embarrassment and pleading. “I am so sorry for her, miss. Whatever she said I am so, so, sorry.”

“Who are you ponies?” asked Rainbow Dash.

The mare had a black mane and a white coat; she looked a little younger than Honeydew. Her cutie mark was a set of piano keys; two black keys and three white ones.

The stallion was a bit plump. His coat was the yellow of buttered popcorn, and a movie ticket was his cutie mark. His mane was two different colors; red on the left and blue on the right. It put Dash in mind of a set of 3-D glasses.

“I’m Ivory Keys and this is Widescreen,” the white-coated mare introduced. “We’re Honeydew’s herdmates.”

Herdmates?! Again, Rainbow Dash thought back to all the stories that Herd Bellerophon had told her of Honeydew. They’d never mentioned a thing about her being in a herd.

On the other hoof, they’d never explicitly said that Honeydew was single, either.

Ivory Keys didn’t even seem to know how to apologize. “Honeydew’s just… she has issues, she and the human… no one really thinks you do bad things to animals… here…”

And she overturned her purse and let bits fall to Dash’s feet. As though Dash were some kind of shopkeeper, and Honeydew had broken some fragile figurines she’d had for sale.

“Now you’re giving away our hard-earned bits because she let a monkey have his way with her?!”

“STOP IT!” snapped the stallion. “Honeydew, I love you, but no one wants to hear it anymore! Day in, day out, it’s ‘human’ this, and ‘bonobo’ that… we are ALL sick of it! This is it, Honeydew: turn around and leave, or so help me…”

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Honeydew said her head starting to hang, and it was hard to credit how subdued her voice had become. “Let’s… let’s leave. You know I love you.”

They nodded, and moved up on each side of her, pressing their flanks to hers- whether it was for closeness, or to ensure she left, or both, was unclear as the trio left together, Ivory giving her one last apologetic glance before they stepped outside.

Rainbow Dash didn’t breathe until Honeydew’s herd had left the store. She left Ivory’s money on the floor.

* * *

Mechanically, Dash put the pet supplies away in her cottage’s storage cellar, her confrontation with Honeydew plaguing her mind. While she knew most ponies had initially mistrusted and feared Lero… but he’d proven himself dozens of times over since his arrival, until the ponies of Ponyville had all come to treat him as one of their own. Or so she’d thought.

The concept of someone holding such a paranoid grudge against Lero so hard and so long was bizarre. And it was more than a little frightening to think such a person would come after her as well! But she’d be strong. Especially for Lero’s sake. He was worth anything, even dealing with scary, crazy ponies.

As she finished up, she heard noise coming from Golden Oaks Library, right next door. Her ears perked up; at this time of day, and with Spike still at camp, that probably meant Lero! Smiling, Dash trotted into the library house.

“Lero! Lero, where are you?” She called out.

“I’m up in the bedroom!” His voice responded from above. She flicked out her wings, and fluttered up to the second floor; she needed practice learning to navigate her new home, so might as well start now.

She flit into the bedroom. “Hey, Lero, you won’t believe who I ran into at the pet shop…!” Dash stopped dead. An impossible tableau lay before her: A freshly bathed rabbit nestled in Lero’s lap. She could still smell pet shampoo coming off the bunny from where she hovered, as Lero continued to rub him with the towel. She could not for an instant believe he would do such a thing to her.

“Who?” Lero asked, not looking up, intent on his care for Angel Bunny.

It took several seconds for Rainbow to register she’d be asked something, and several more to find her voice again. “Huh!?”

Lero blinked and looked up. “Who’d you run into at the pet shop?”

“What…” She replied, slowly. “What is going on?”

Lero frowned in confusion. “With what?”

“With that rabbit! What do you think you’re doing?”

Lero frowned slightly, then shrugged. “I just gave him a bath.” Lero reached over to a nearby plate, grabbing some shredded alfalfa, holding it cupped in his hand for the rabbit to eat from his palm. Soon, there was the faint rasping noise of a chewing rabbit as Angel ate contentedly. “Poor thing was hiding, scared for his life. All the other animals have been pretty much abusing him, any chance they get.”

Dash could hear the iciness in her own voice. “They know the worst mistake they ever made was listening to him.” Angel winced, pulling away from Lero’s cupped hand, retreating back into his lap, curling up into a tiny ball, cowering as if trying to vanish from sight.

“Dash… come on.” Lero took a conciliatory tone. “I mean, yeah, Angel was a rotten bunny, and I won’t pretend I’m not glad he got his just desserts… but there’s a point where it stops being punishment and starts being cruelty. Enough’s enough!”

“I seem to recall a rabbit I once knew who didn’t care about stopping when it came to cruelty.” The bitterness in her voice was practically venomous. She felt bad about talking to Lero like this, but she was so angry…!

“Dash…” he started pleadingly.

“Did you know what he did to Dr. Tenderpaw, when I needed somepony to look after my animals while I was gone?” she said. “He tried to stage another coup against her. And I was actually sweet to him when I introduced them to each other!”

“Please…”

“Angel Bunny is a monster,” she insisted, flatly, cold fury dancing in her eyes. “And sometimes the other animals know what’s best. How to deal with a monster. I tried being nice! Oh, CELESTIA, how I TRIED that! And you SAW where it got me! You SAW!”

Lero stared at her a moment. He’d heard of Fluttershy’s anger. While he’d never seen the yellow pegasus lose her temper firsthand, he was suspecting he was seeing a bit of it now... mixed with Dash’s stubbornness. He sighed, and nodded.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did see.”

Dash pointed her hoof at the cowering rabbit. Her lip curled. “Do you believe for one moment that coddling him like this’ll turn him into a loving pet? He’s just biding his time! That rabbit is a worthless, useless, lost cause. What could possibly make you think that doing what you’re doing right now is a good idea?” She was practically snorting in anger.

“Discord,” he responded simply.

That brought her up short. “Discord?” Her eyes widened. “Did he… did Discord touch your head with his finger, Lero!?”

Lero now found the conversation veering in a direction he wasn’t expecting. “Huh?” He responded, dumbfounded.

She huffed, charging ahead with that line of logic. “Oh, that big jerk! He’s REALLY crossed the line this time!” She landed, walking over and taking his hand in her mouth, tugging him up and towards the door. “Don’t you worry, big guy, Discord did the same thing to me too, once! He made me be mean to everyone! Come on, I’ll bring you to Twilight, she has a spell that’ll set your memory back right…” She spoke clearly around his hand -- it always impressed Lero how well they could do that.

However, he tugged back before she got him fully upright and dumped Angel onto the floor, removing his hand gingerly from her mouth, taking her hoof and tugging to sit beside him. “No, Dash, Discord didn’t come by and brainwash me, I promise! It’s just… well…”

He took a deep breath.

“I wasn’t here for a lot of stuff you girls went through. I wasn’t there for you when Nightmare Moon un-banished herself from the moon. I wasn’t there for you when Discord broke out of his statue prison, and turned Equestria into some loony wackyland. And y...Twilight and Rarity insisted I stay at home the second time Discord was set loose at Celestia’s request, while you Element Bearers dealt with him. I wasn’t there for you any of those times.”

He let that hang in the air for a few moments, looking down at Angel Bunny.

“But I am here for this.” Angel Bunny whimpered softly, and Lero reached down to pet him. “You might well be completely right about Angel. Maybe he still remains an unrepentant bad guy, even after being punished. Maybe he’ll go right back to his bad old ways the first chance he gets. Just like Nightmare Moon went right back to forcing eternal night on Equestria after a thousand years on the moon, and Discord went right back to casting the world into chaos after a thousand years in stone.”

Rainbow frowned, her wings drooping slightly, starting to realize where he was going with this. “Lero…”

“Let me finish, please?” He asked, and Dash nodded. “I got to thinking, and two things occurred to me. First… however much Angel might deserve this… It’s not you. You’re not the kind of person who deals with people who treat you badly by being just as bad back to them. I know Angel hurt you, and because he was close to you, this all felt like a deep, personal, betrayal… But you can’t let that change you.”

Dash’s eye widened at that. “I…” She started, before catching herself and stopping.

“And second… While you helped seal Discord back into stone… That didn’t stop you when you were asked to help him. You reformed him and taught him how to be a good person.” He looked up into her eyes. “Which makes me curious, Dash… Which of those two moments gave you greater satisfaction?”

How did he keep doing this? She was the Element of Kindness, and here he was showing more kindness than she could bring herself to show, and reminding her that she was capable of being better than this. “I… I… well, that is, I just… when he…” she stammered in a surging inner conflict. Part of her suddenly wanted to immediately forgive Angel Bunny, and another insisted that she could never trust that rabbit again.

Lero finally brought her out of her internal turmoil. “So… who did you see at that pet store, anyway?”

She let out an exasperated groan. “Ergh! I don’t even REMEMBER anymore!” She spread her wings and flapped out of the room in a huff.

Lero watched her leave silently, staring after her a few moments, before turning back to Angel, who finally cautiously uncurled. He spoke in a kind, reassuring tone. “Give her time, she’ll forgive you. And treat her with the respect she deserves from now on! You hear me?”

Angel’s head nodded, but whether it was in affirmation or sleepiness was unclear, as he yawned, snugged back into his lap and dozed off.

* * *

The sky over Rarity’s head was cloaked in a vividly cheerful shade of turquoise as she and Lero set out from their house. They had made such gentle weather this morning… Rarity had to credit Princess Celestia every bit as much as the weather ponies on duty today: immaculate rays of glimmering gold bathed everything in the sun’s tender warmth. Powderpuff clouds rolled by on the back of the sighing wind.

Truly exquisite.

Even at this moment, Rarity could feel the telltale touch of a thermal column on her coat as she strode through a darker patch of earth, rising past her head and helping to form the cumuluses floating above. When her sweet Lero walked through the same patch of earth, she could tell he hadn’t sensed a thing. Rarity briefly entertained the thought of Lero being raised by pegasi in Cloudsdale, as she’d been. Perhaps, then, they could have sensed the thermals together!

"Hey, Rarity," said Lero, as they entered the marketplace. "You know, we're running a little low on food at home. Maybe we ought to pick a few things up while we're here."

Shrugging, Rarity went over with him to the celery vendor's stall, and Lero began picking out a couple stalks to buy.

“Do you think Spike and Rainbow Dash will get along?” Rarity asked Lero.

This question had actually been weighing silently on Rarity’s mind for days.

Today was the day in which all the foals were scheduled to return from Camp Mountain Peaks to their homes. She could’ve easily crafted another cloud platform and flown herself and Lero off to the location where the camp counselors would be dropping their little campers off for their parents to pick up. But since they weren’t scheduled to arrive for a couple hours yet, and there were so many Spike-related worries on her brain, she and Lero were walking instead.

“Of course they’ll get along!” Lero told her with great matter-of-factness. He seemed downright surprised that she’d even think to fret about such a thing. As though she were worrying that the ocean might run out of water.

Lero’s knee-jerk optimism about this made Rarity want to hug him… but she held back, and gave him an uneasy look.

“It’s just that… I’ve been glancing through a few childcare books about how there can be friction between foals and new herd-parents that are brought into the family…”

Some of the things she’d read on this subject were enough to keep her up at night. Particularly one account of a six-year-old griffin lad whose widower father remarried into a pony herd. The little one had developed issues with his five new pony sisters...

“Spike’s not like that!” Lero contended, after paying for the celery. “I mean, think about it! Remember how it was in the beginning? It used to be just him and Twilight, living on their own! When Twilight fell in love with you and me and we moved into their home, Spike never acted all ‘troubled child’ with us, did he?”

“No, he didn’t,” she realized. She hadn’t thought to even consider this angle!

She and Lero, first settling into Golden Oaks Library… funny how long ago that felt like now! But, yes, it was just as Lero said. Spike had been warm and welcoming as could be, helping to carry their things into their new bedroom without a peep of complaint, trying so hard to play the nonchalant ‘cool guy,’ in between excited bouts of chattering on how cool it was going to be having new family members and be part of a herd!

Lero’s smooth hand found that spot on the back of Rarity’s neck and rubbed it lightly, as they moved over to Carrot Top's stall and began picking out carrots.

“So he and Dash’ll get along like bread and butter. You’ll see. I mean, just a few weeks ago, she was showering him with kisses from helping out with her animals! You worry too much, princess.”

“I do worry,” she admitted, unhappily hanging her head. “Spike’s as good as a son to me, nowadays. But I know I haven’t been giving him the attention he wants from me, and he’s grown so distant...”

There had been so many times in the recent past where Spike had shot her looks of immense sadness and anguish. It pained her to think back on all of them. Sometimes, the source of his distress was understandable. Other times, the most inexplicably random things would set him off into quiet tears or flashes of petulant distemper. The worst had been when he’d burned Lero’s hands. For a while after that, Spike had treated Rarity with chilly coldness, spent most of the day at Carousel Boutique, and snubbed her as much as he possibly could.

“It’s not your fault.” Lero insisted. “If anything, blame me.”

“You?” Rarity asked. By now, they had moved onto Nutcracker's nut stand, and were picking out cashews, hazelnuts, peanuts, walnuts, and pecans.

“That unpleasantness at Bramblewood messed with my mind, and we had to work on tearing down that weird psychological wall in my head to get back to how we always were,” he reminded her. “Then, on top of that, I fell in love with Dash, so between everything, I’ve been monopolizing your attention.”

“I hope Spike can forgive me.” Rarity sighed. Being a good mother was one of her ultimate life goals, and with Spike, she was failing. No child of hers should ever have to feel neglected and sidelined like this.

“He will,” her stallion assured him. “Just be patient. All kids go through phases like this.”

She’d apologize to Spike once he was back. She’d set time aside for her little dragon son today, and let him know how special he was to her.

“What time it is?” she asked Lero. By now, they'd definitely done enough shopping.

He checked his wristwatch. “11:12.”

“Want to get a sandwich?” she asked. They were right by a small restaurant, and the young campers wouldn’t arrive home until one o’clock. A little comfort food would be just the thing to help perk her back up.

“Sure,” said Lero, with a shrug.

* * *

Whenever a non-pony (and non-cow, non-donkey, or other such familiar sights) came into Ponyville, it naturally drew everypony’s attention. This applied just as much to residents of the town who were themselves non-ponies, such as Lero and Spike. Though they usually drew smaller crowds, out of familiarity.

So when Lero entered the restaurant with Rarity, his eyes were immediately drawn to the griffon sitting by herself in the booth, as several ponies were already looking, drawing attention that way.

She seemed about Rarity’s age. The lion portion of her body was tawny-colored, as were the feathers that made up her wings. The plumage of her eagle half was mostly as white as a bald eagle’s head, except for the light-purplish circles around her eyes. Her crest formed a stylish fringe that hung ahead of her face. Her small, sharp beak was clamped upon the neck of a beer bottle, drinking with a surly expression. She hadn’t seemed to have ordered herself any food.

Lero might’ve walked past the stranger and taken a table, but Rarity was staring at the griffin for a length of time she, herself, would have called ‘rude.’ She walked up close to the griffin, who pulled the beer bottle from her beak, and they eyed one another, up-close.

“Is this lady a friend of yours, Rarity?” Lero asked.

The griffin slammed her beer down loudly on the table. “Who’re you calling a lady, you giant plucked ostrich?!” Her voice was angry and rasping.

“Who’re you calling an ostrich, buzzard breath?!” Rarity retorted at once.

All at once, the tension was taut enough to bounce on like a trampoline.

“Your haunches have really ballooned out, Big R,” the griffin sneered. “Still hittin’ the full-course fine-dining scene, huh?”

“Well, you’re looking a bit… undernourished, G. What’s wrong? Can’t afford three square meals every day? No... I bet you’re going completely overboard with the bunny meat again.”

“You mean THIS bunny meat?” The griffin… her name couldn’t really be ‘G,’ could it?... pulled out a plastic snack bag marked ‘Chipotle Cottontail Chews,’ opened them and tossed a dark chunk of jerky into her beak.

“Ugh! You love that stuff way too much, even for a predator race!”

“Rabbit’s perfect!” G said with a smile. “Not only is it tasty as hell, I love how I can chow down on rabbit ‘til my gut’s one wafer-thin mint from blowing up, and I still feel like I haven’t eaten a damned thing!”

“That’s called rabbit starvation, you idiot!” Rarity snapped. “This isn’t even the first time I’ve TOLD you about it!”

G glared, and stubbornly kept popping the chews in her mouth, rabbit starvation or no rabbit starvation. Rarity made a disgusted noise, but still swept a courteous arm from where Lero stood to where G sat.

“Lero, this is Gilda, an old friend of mine. Gilda, this is Lero, the stallion of my herd.”

Gilda looked Lero over, crushing her empty snack bag in a ball and dropping it under the table. “So you’re him, aren’t you? The space alien they keep mentioning in magazines?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Lero said, straight-faced.

“An alien… heh heh… that’s so wicked.” Gilda finished off her bottle of beer. “Ha ha… Take me to your leader! I come in peace! We are not alone in the universe!”

“I ought to bring you aboard my starship sometime,” Lero quipped.

Gilda’s head swung back up at him in a wide-eyed double take. “You have a starship?” she asked the self-admitted alien with a dropped jaw.

“Of course!” Lero smirked, rolling with it. “How do you think I got to Equestria? She’s called the Hudsucker Proxy and her warp drive reaches up to six thousand kiloscrids-per-second. If you’ve got twenty minutes to spare, I’d love to fly you to the moon and let you play among the stars. Let you see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.”

Gilda gaped at him, as though all the wildest science fiction fantasies of her youth were about to be fulfilled, right here and now. Then Rarity, rolling her eyes, told her, “He doesn’t really have a starship, Gilda.”

“He doesn’t?”

Lero laughed. “No, sorry, yanking your chain. The truth is, I got into this world through some kinda weird interdimensional portal that closed right behind me as soon as I crossed over.”

Punching his shoulder, Gilda said, “Heh! You’re alright. Had me going there for a bit, there. Pull up a chair, you two, why don’t you?”

A waitress spotted them sitting and trotted over to their table. “Hi, there! Welcome to Curly Fries, what can I get ya?”

Rarity glanced over the menu. “I’ll have the tuna sandwich with an iced tea.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad, actually. I think I’ll have a tuna too, with a side of curly fries and a Colta-Cola,” Lero decided.

“And I’ll just have two more of these brewskis,” said Gilda, holding up an empty bottle of Novemberfest-brand beer.

“We’re paying separate bills,” Rarity told the waitress.

“Separate bills, my beak!” Gilda looked at the waitress. “I’m paying for all of us here at the table!”

“G, you don’t need…”

“I’M PAYIN’, and that’s FINAL!” Gilda squawked.

The waitress managed a smile as she wrote down their orders.

Gilda glanced over to Lero. “So, fish?”

Lero looked puzzled. “Sorry?”

She gestured at the retreating waitress. “You ordered fish, like the cool ponies do.”

“Oh! Yeah, humans are omnivores, we like meat as much as plants.”

“Ha! Meat-eating aliens. I bet that flipped out so many ponies!” Grinning, Gilda glanced back at Rarity. “R, you know how to pick ‘em.”

“...Thank you?” Rarity replied, not knowing how to take that.

Lero ducked his head. “Yeah, a lot of ponies were afraid of me at first. It took them a long while to get used to me.”

Gilda reached over and punched him again, chummily in the chest, like they’d been pals for years.

“Hey, to hell with ‘em. You’re who you are, who gives a damn who doesn’t like it, right? We griffons get enough flak about eating meat as it is, I ain’t gonna be cool with them bugging another race about it, am I right?”

Lero smiled and rubbed his ribs. “If you say so. It’s nice to hear someone arguing for me eating meat.”

“Damn straight! Hey, I know this great griffon-run place up in Canterlot, I should show you it, sometime, they got great meals if you like meat. Oh, and you, too, R, if you think you can stomach it. Hah! Remember the last time I took you to a griffon place? You turned green the moment you saw the steaks on display!”

Gilda laughed uproariously, as if it was the best joke, ever. She paused, seeing Lero unamused. “Guess you had to be there.”

Rarity winced. “Sorry, the memory of… a patron gnawing a bone clean…” She shivered.

Lero put a hand on her back. “You wouldn’t have to come, you know. Heck, I don’t.”

“No! No, far be it from me to forbid it!” The white unicorn waved off his objections. “If you and G want to have a meat-eaters’ meal, you are certainly welcome to it.”

“So… you comin’ too?” Gilda asked the unicorn.

Rarity stiffened for a moment, then nodded. “Of course! Lero is my stallion, I should share every part of his life.”

“Well, alright, then!” Gilda grinned as Rarity shivered again.

The waitress returned with their beverages. Gilda turned to Lero, already popping the top off her new beer.

“So, Lero, does Rarity ever mention me these days?”

Lero looks to Rarity, wordlessly asking for some hint how he should answer Gilda. Rarity just shrugged indifferently, and he decided to go with the honest response.

“Honestly, Gilda, your name doesn’t come up that often.”

Back in the pre-Swap days, Rainbow Dash might’ve mentioned Gilda a handful of times for as long as he and the pegasus had been together. And it was always either in the context of describing griffons in general, or when she needed an example of what a bad friend was like.

“Lame.” The griffon took a swig of beer. “So what’re you even doing with your life these days, Big R? Still stuck here in blah, humdrum loserville-Ponyville?”

“I wouldn’t classify it so much as being ‘stuck’ as ‘thriving.’” Rarity told her, sipping her iced tea daintily. “My job’s stable. My love life and family life are sweet and lusciously steamy…”

Here, she leaned against Lero’s side.

“...And one of the local fillies has taken to hero-worshipping little old me. She’s started a Rarity fanclub -- can you believe it? -- and become practically my kid sister. Also, not only has my weather art been improving, I’ve been having talks with some ponies to make some sort of artistic performance of it… oh! And you won’t believe who’s become my newest herd-sister, G, she’s SUCH a dear…”

“Yeah, yeah, totally bodacious of you, R.” Gilda’s tail whipped hard against a chair leg behind her. “Absolute Thrill City if junk like that floats your cloud. As for me, I ain’t got no attachments. I’m like the wind, baby, livin’ high, livin’ large, and livin’ FAST! In short: the same Gilda you’ve always known.”

“Sounds like it,” Rarity said, sounding sad. “So what do you do for a living these days?”

Gilda slicked her fringe back with a talon. “Well, been bouncing from job to job for a time, ‘til I finally found a gig fit for my natural gnarliness. I’m a courier!”

“A courier?”

From under the table, Gilda brought up a large bag. It showed the logo of a winged lion.

“Yep! I’m with the Flyin’ Lion Express. I fly to all sorts of places, delivering long-distance packages. Pegasi don’t have the same endurance we griffons do, so it’s a niche we’re in demand for. Ponyville just happened to be one of my stops today. And the best part is, I’ve managed to hold onto this job for four whole months so far. That’s an unbroken record for me!”

Rarity smiled weakly. “Four whole months? Well, keep up the good work.”

At this point, their waitress brought their meals. The tuna sandwiches were lightly toasted, thickened with creamy mayonnaise, onions, and cucumbers. Lero’s fries were steaming spirals of golden-brown… and Gilda reached out and helped herself to them right away.

“Shoot, Rarity, what happened to you?” Gilda asked. “You used to be hip. The only other girl who could keep pace with my swag! For years, it used to be just us…”

“Did you two used to be lovers?” Lero blurted out, the thought going from brain to mouth without checking if it was a good idea on the way. Lero remembered Rarity discussing how many lovers she used to have before he had entered her life. But Rarity and Gilda both looked taken aback at his outburst.

“Lovers?” Gilda’s expression seemed to suggest she wasn’t sure if she should be insulted by the implications, or simply amused by the absurdity of the suggestion.

“Us?” said Rarity. “Oh, no, no, no, darling, perish the thought! We weren’t like that at all.”

“You said it! Once upon a time, R and I were as tight as black on a crow, but we were never lovebirds. Kept each other firmly in the friendship bucket. Most we ever did was be each other’s cooler buddy a couple times, when the heat hit, but that was all.”

Lero fought down the image that invaded his brain. It just never failed to amaze him how cavalier all the girls in this world were about cooler sex.

“Forgive me for asking, but do griffins even enter heats?”

“Forgive me for answering,” she mocked his politeness pitch-perfectly, “but yeah, bud, they do. Comes from the lion-half of our bodies.”

She patted her own rump. “Birds do something else entirely. I ain’t even SURE what.”

They lay eggs. Lero said in his mind, surprised that a griffon would be that ignorant of something that’s literally a part of them. Maybe all that beer was getting to her. But then again, he hadn’t known a thing about bonobos until Rarity had gone and read that book on them...

“When did you and Rarity even meet?” he changed the subject.

“Oh, I’m sure Gilda wouldn’t want to get into boring old…” Rarity started.

“...You know about the Diamond Hailstorm, don’t you?” Gilda asked, grabbing more fries.

“Uh, yeah,” Lero said. He bit into his sandwich; It was a good sandwich, the mayo was especially delicious. He’d never had homemade mayonnaise back home, but now he couldn’t imagine going back to store-bought. Well, human store-bought.

“Well, about two years before that actually happened, my deadbeat dad suddenly got his act together, and before we knew it, he became a Griffon Ambassador.”

Lero was willing to bet good money that in the Unswapped version of things, Gilda’s deadbeat dad had stayed deadbeat.

“Dad was also doing a lot of touring around the pony kingdoms, and I had to tag along. Then, Big R did her Hailstorm, and Celestia sent her on her royally-sanctioned weather tour of Equestria, and wouldn’t you know it… Dad and Rarity happened to be taking the same route most of the time, so we kept running into each other as we traveled from country to country.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Rarity agreed, sipping her iced tea daintly. “Gilda and I ended up playing together a lot of time time simply because there wasn’t really anyone else.”

Gilda pulled Lero’s fries completely out of his reach, grabbed a squeezable bottle, and proceeded to drown the fries in ketchup.

“Hey, remember all the pranks we used to pull, R? Heh! Remember when we were in Coltenhagen, and you used your remote-control power with the clouds on that stodgy old pegasus fart?”

“Oh-ho-ho, do I ever! Poor fellow kept thinking that it had to be some pegasus brat who was zapping him, and kept hunting the skies for the ne’er-do-well…”

“...Never realizing that it was really the li’l unicorn filly on the park bench with the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth look!”

The two of them laughed over that. Gilda ate a well-ketchuped fry, and Lero was put in mind of a bird eating an exceptionally bloody earthworm.

“And, hey, remember the first time I got you to eat REAL meat?”

Lero turned to Rarity. “You ate REAL meat?”

The white unicorn had already finished her sandwich. “I was sixteen. We got REALLY drunk.”

“At sixteen?”

“It was legal in that country!”

“So what kind of meat did you eat? Chicken?” He looked over at Gilda. “Rabbit?”

Rarity looked like she would rather be having her teeth pulled. “It was a mouse.”

“A… a mouse?!”

Gilda curled her claws in a catlike way. “Caught the li’l squeaker myself. Hey, don’t wig out, there, buddy, we cooked it! Deep-fried all the germs right off the li’l sucker.”

“But still… a mouse… how could you eat mice?!”

“Like candy,” she told him. Lero’s disgusted look surprised her. “Don’t tell me the big-bad meat-eating alien is put off by mice?”

“Ugh… I can still remember the taste to this day.” Rarity gulped down the rest of her iced tea to wash that awful-tasting memory off her tongue. “Yech. Give me filet of swordfish any day.”

“Oh, and remember us being in Junior Speedsters?” Gilda turned to Lero. “R was so miserable about it at first. Y’know, cuz, her being a unicorn, she couldn’t fly on her own and her clouds just weren't speedster-level fast. Then Rarity came up with the idea of going to Junior Speedsters as a trainee staff member.”

“A staff member?” Lero repeated.

“Indeed.” Rarity held her chin up proudly. “I could use my large-scale cloud-sculpting abilities towards setting up raceways and obstacle courses much more efficiently than the regular pegasi.”

Gilda swallowed the last fry. “Those were the days, R!”

“That they were, G.”

Only the Swap could’ve brought these two together as friends. Lero thought to himself. Take away Starswirl’s spell and Discord’s bewitchment, and it was hard for him to imagine Rarity, (all etiquette and elegance) and Gilda, (grungy punk that she was) giving each other more than one single disapproving glance, and then passing quickly on their way, never to cross paths again.

“What happened to us?” the griffin asked. “What happened to G and R against the world?”

“R grew up,” Rarity told Gilda. “R realized that the world’s a pretty big thing to set yourself against."

“Yeah, whatevs.” She snorted, rolling her eyes, and downed her beer.

Lero drank some of his Colta-Cola, which tasted nothing like Coca-Cola did. More like root beer and Dr. Pepper poured into the same glass.

“Stupid flip-flopper. ‘Element of Loyalty,’ my BEAK.”

“See, this is why things soured between us, Gilda. This, right here. So what if I have other friends?” Rarity asked.

“You just don’t get it do you, huh? You found your dweeby pony friends, and the first thing you do is ditch me, cause I’m a griffin!” The rasp in Gilda’s voice had roughened; she gripped an empty beer bottle like she wanted to throw it at the wall.

Rarity’s lip curled. “Really? You’re going to paint me as some intolerant bigot? Really, Gilda?”

“Whatevs, Rarity! What-EVS. So why don’t you just… just prance off to another pretty pony party with all your prissy pony pals here in plain pathetic podunk Ponyville and take your tall, gangly two-legged bearded emu with you!”

Rarity stood up.

“You know what? That’s a marvelous idea, Gilda. Come on, Lero, we need to go to the train station!”

Rarity left the restaurant with her head held high. She didn’t so much as look back at her estranged friend, but Lero did. And he saw Gilda fold her arms in her seat as tightly as arms could be folded, her body swaying in place, so as to mock the way the white unicorn’s body bounced as she strode out.

“I’m not gangly, am I, Rarity?” he asked Rarity, once they were outside, trying to disrupt her train of thought.

“Of course not,” she assured him. “My prince is blessed with a very strapping figure, and he should never forget that.”

“Aw, thanks, princess.”

Back when they'd dropped off Spike, it'd been just off the side of a dirt road where the town ended and a long stretch of open fields began. Today, they'd be picking him up from the train station.

Several parents from other herds were also here; there’d be more the closer it got to one o’clock, sitting on benches, or killing time at the newsstand a little distance away. He and Rarity took a bench.

“What’s on your mind?” the human asked.

“I was just thinking… what an amazing stroke of serendipity it was that when you arrived in our world, you appeared in the Everfree. I mean, but for want of the proverbial nail, you could’ve just as easily landed in some griffin village, instead…”

“...And fallen for some griffin girl?” finished Lero.

“Maybe even Gilda.”

“Nah. Possibly SOME griffin girl, maybe, but never Gilda. I’m just way too uncool for a chick as hip as she is.” They both smiled wryly at each other.

Lero let himself contemplate Gilda a little while longer. The griffon had left a bad aftertaste in Rarity’s mouth; he only had to look at his weatherpony princess to see she was still trying to clear her out of her mind. Personally, he hadn’t disliked Gilda too badly. She’d been funny, and had seemed to like him for the most part. He could see why Gilda and Rainbow Dash had once been pals. Attitude-wise, the brash griffon was so much like the Rainbow Dash of old.

If Dash had been more of a sleaze. And had the habit of inebriating herself before the clock struck noon.

“So what IS springtime like on… where did you say, again? Jupiter and Mars?” By her playful smile, Lero could tell Rarity was imagining some idyllic exotic resort. Probably one with a spa.

“Suffocating, in both cases. Jupiter’s a gas giant, so you’d be falling through a sea of toxic fog until the gravity crushed you. Mars is a big red rock with almost no atmosphere whatsoever, so you’d be choking on thin air with no oxygen.”

Rarity absorbed this information in quiet fascination before snuggling into his lap. “Well then… aren’t you glad you wound up landing in Equestria instead of those places?”

He kissed her cheek. ‘Every day, princess. Every day.”

“Mr. Michaelides?”

They turned to see a new pony standing beside them; a pegasus mare.

“Yes, hello!” Lero greeted.

“Such a pleasure to meet you!” said the pegasus. “Waiting for that dragon of yours to come home, I take it?”

“Yes, that’s right,” said Rarity, lifting her head off Lero’s chest.

“That’s great!” said the pegasus.

Was this mare a mother of one of the foals? Maybe somepony’s distant aunt from out-of-town? Either way, Lero was pretty sure he didn’t know her. Her mane was done in a bob, and her coat was the color of almonds.

“Do you have a moment to speak in private?” asked the pegasus.

Rarity and Lero looked at each other. “Well, I kinda…”

“Ultimately, I’m sure things will still work out if you don’t have time to help me, but would you? It’d make things ever-so-much easier.”

“I suppose we could at least hear you out.” Lero decided, and Rarity slipped off his body.

“First, could you and I move over there, Mr. Michealides?” The pegasus pointed a wing at a spot farther away from the other parents, and Rarity. “I really don’t want others overhearing.”

“Anything you have to say to Lero, you can say to me as well.” Rarity let the stranger know.

“Guess that’s fair.”

They followed her away from the other ponies.

“Another human just appeared,” the mare told him.

“Another…?!”

“Ssh!” the mare said.

“Another human?” Lero whispered.

The pegasus mare sat. “Here’s my story. A few hours ago, I was walking through town when I heard crying and screaming in this old building. I went to check it out, and on the upper floor, I found a human, no mistake! It was female, too! She told me so herself!”

“Who was she?” asked Lero carefully, “Did she tell you her name?”

Ever since Lero’s story had first become known to the public, it had given birth to a frustrating and humiliating trend: ‘Human Sightings.’ Which went along much the same lines as Bigfoot sightings and Loch Ness Monster sightings back on Earth.

Ponies in the remotest parts of the world would SWEAR to have seen honest-to-Celestia human beings (that weren’t Lero Michealides). These humans would often scurry into the bushes like spooked rabbits the moment ponies called out to them from afar, leaving only scraps of ‘human-cloth’ on thorny bushes, and footprints in the ground.

Occasionally, Herd Bellerophon had actually gone out to investigate some of these claims, often traveling great distances to do so. To date, there had been exactly ONE case that wasn’t a hoax, ONE instance of another human being having been legitimately transported to this world. And Gus Wainwright wasn’t living in Equestria anymore, to put it kindly.

“Sadly, I wasn’t able to get as much information out of her as I’d’ve liked,” the pegasus pony said, continuing her story. “She was a bit xenophobic. The sight of me terrified her, especially when I started talking. I’m sure she was expecting a fellow human. She also kept pointing some strange alien weapon at me and firing warning shots. She wouldn’t let me be in the same room as her when I wanted to talk with her.”

A gun?

“All the same, my heart went out to her completely,” the pegasus said plaintively. “Both her legs were broken, after all.”

“Broken?!” cried Rarity.

“She couldn’t move from her spot. Although she refused to give me her name, I’ll share everything she WAS willing to tell me. Apparently, she’d been teleported directly into that room from some other world entirely. A really horrible one, from what little she was willing to tell me. She looked liked she’d escaped from a war!”

“That poor, poor thing…” Rarity whispered.

“I know that deep down, there’s a sweet girl under all that fright and fear,” the pegasus said. “The last thing she needs is more ponies coming to see her. She’s not far. I think if a fellow human were to talk to her…”

The mare trailed off, looking up into the human’s eyes.

The most elaborate Human Sighting hoax Lero remembered involved an actual chimpanzee skeleton. They’d put the skeleton in clothes tailored for to fit it, and then carefully damaged the skeleton such a way as to suggest the ‘human’ had been savaged by wild animals. One of the most insulting hoaxes had turned out to be a scarecrow.

And yet… all the same… there HAD been Gus Wainwright… and this mare sounded awfully sure of herself…

“Lead the way, ma’am,” said Lero Michealides, standing up.

* * *

It wasn't a long walk at all before the pegasus brought Rarity and Lero to a two-storey building that looked somewhat in disrepair, with long grass in the front yard.

“Give me a minute to let her know you’re here,” the mare told Lero and Rarity. “She’s on edge, and I don’t think she likes surprises.”

Lero’s mind worked as they waited on the porch for the mare to return. If the pegasus had been able to talk with this woman, that meant she spoke English, so that’d be something, at least. She was supposed to be armed… he wondered what kind of gun she had. A revolver or a magazine-fed semi auto? Or something deadlier, like a rifle? Surely it wouldn’t be anything like a submachine gun, would it? Maybe he’d be lucky, and it was just a toy or an actor’s prop, or she didn’t actually have any bullets.

The pegasus mare opened the door, waving the two inside. They stepped into a dim foyer.

“Straight upstairs, then straight down to the door at the end of the corridor,” the mare told Lero.

“I could wait here until you’ve calmed her down a little,” Rarity offered. “Then you can call me over and she’ll be able to see ponies aren’t something humans need to fear.”

“Good thinking,” the pegasus mare said.

Lero gave a strained smile. It wasn’t that the mares were wrong, it was good thinking, but it’d come right when he’d had the idea of having Rarity cast a forcefield on him. Did Rarity know the forcefield spell? He couldn’t recall ever seeing a unicorn other than Twilight, her brother, or a Princess cast one.

The mares watched from the foyer as Lero ascended the stairs. He started down the corridor. Three doors at Lero’s left, another three on his right, with one extra seventh door directly forward of him, from the far end of the corridor.

“Hello!” he called out. “Can you hear me down there?”

“Who’s that?!” a female voice called back from behind the farthest door. “Who are you? Are you one of those weird ‘pony’ things?”

“No,” said Lero. “My name’s Lero Michealides.”

The floorboard creaked as he took a step. He was so certain she’d panic and fire her gun that he had to stop himself from diving to the floor. He dared another step… and the creaking noise actually sparked an inspiration.

“Can you hear my footsteps? I repeat: footsteps. Not hooves. Not horseshoes.”

He stepped forward again, demonstrating how his legs did not produce any sort of clip-clop noise.

“I’m human. And I understand you’re human too.”

“I am!” the woman called back.

“I also understand that you have a weapon. I want you to know I’m a friendly guy, and I’d like not to be shot, okay?”

“Come closer and let me have a look at you.”

He drew closer, feeling he ought to say more to prove he was a human from Earth. “I was born in the United States.”

“I’m from there too!”

“What part?”

“The West,” she answered.

“The West is a lovely area. Are you from California? Oregon? Washington?”

“Washing Town!” she answered, as Lero’s hand settled on the knob. “I’m from Washing Town!”

The doorknob turned easily in Lero’s hand, and he was able to open the door. But when he tried to step into the room, he found his hand stuck firmly to the knob, and he lost his footing, falling on his shins. He tried to wrest his hand free, but it was as though his fingers were magnetically locked onto that old brass knob.

Then it clicked. “‘Washing Town?" Son of a bitch! It was a trap!

From downstairs, Lero heard Rarity scream and then a body drop to the floorboards.

Lero couldn’t think clearly from panic. He looked into the room he had opened. It was a bedroom that looked completely empty until a closet door opened and a unicorn mare stepped into open view. She was the ‘woman’ he had been talking to.

“Who are you people?!” Lero blurted dumbly.

The unicorn stood where she was, the silver light on her horn was making Lero feel so sleepy.

“Shush. You go take a nap now.”

* * *

Lero was the first to awaken, experiencing double vision for nearly a minute after opening his eyes. His head felt like a brick had been his pillow. Something rattled and clinked when he moved his limbs. He waited until his eyesight cleared before he was forced to acknowledge that he had been chained up.

Manacles bound his wrists and ankles. Lero could only stretch his arms and legs about a foot apart. Worse still; a thick iron collar encircled his neck, keeping him chained to an enormous statue of a gorilla…?

The hell…?

Lero’s sense of confusion and dread only doubled when he spotted Rarity, who was still out cold. She lay on the floor of an enormous birdcage.

“Rarity! RARITY!”

His chains had enough leeway for him to pound against the bars of her cage until she woke.

“W-what? Lero!” She stumbled a little, but came to her hooves. “Lero, are you hurt?!”

“A little, I guess,” he said, feeling his head and the back of his neck. “Banged up a bit, but overall, I still feel okay. You?”

“I’ll manage,” she told him, giving her head a shake as she turned to face him. “My face feels weird… is there something on it?”

He hissed a breath through his teeth. “Yes… they’ve put a horn wrap on you.”

Take as a whole, the device was vaguely bridle-like in its construction, with buckled strips strapped around Rarity’s face, but they were only to make sure the most important part stayed attached. The key bit was the cork-like cylinder the rest held jammed onto her horn with steel rods.

“Maybe I can…” Her face contorted with effort as she willed magic into her horn.

But it was no good. What blindfolds were to the eyes, and gags were to the voice, horn wraps were to unicorn horns. Lero had seen horn wraps many times in movies, when some unicorn was either under arrest or taken captive. But he’d never dreamed he’d be seeing Rarity wearing one.

Again and again, Rarity strained to summon her magic… blast the cork off her horn like a violently-shaken bottle of champagne, to no avail. Letting out an unladlylike snarl of frustration, she began to beat her head against the floor and the bars of the cage, attempting to smash the wrap.

“Rarity, stop!” Lero cried. “That’s not gonna work!” The horn, itself, would snap off quicker than the horn wrap would. The rods holding and protecting the cork were built to be stronger than unicorn horns.

She shook her head. Lero recognized Rainbow’s short temper mixing with Rarity’s indignation. He was increasingly aware of how their personality traits intermeshed, and wondered if this was a problem. Rarity’s anger steadily grew as she tried bucking the bars of her big birdcage, kicking like a mare possessed. But those bars would’ve held in a maximum security penitentiary, and after several minutes of futile effort, she fell to an exhausted sit.

“What… is this place?” she gasped, and they both looked around.

Rarity and Lero now found themselves in the center of a very spacious indoor enclosure of some sort. Lero’s first guess was that they had been brought to some kind of stage, because spotlights were shining down on them from a high catwalk, just like those in a theater. Without these spotlights, it would’ve been pitch dark.

Then Lero realized there was way too much enormous old machinery pushed against the walls, and a railing over which he could make out a lower floor beneath, and no curtains, no proscenium, no backstage, no rows of chairs for an audience that wasn’t there.

Or… was there? Peering hard through the blackness behind the glaring spotlights… Lero now he thought he could see the shapes of living beings.

“Hey!” he called. “Is someone there?!”

“Just us,” answered a female voice from the back. “Sleep comfy?”

“Where are we?!” Rarity shouted, standing back up.

“You’re beneath the sky and atop the land, sweet pea.” the voice replied unhelpfully.

A few other voices in the darkness chuckled at that.

“Why have you kidnapped us?” Rarity demanded. “What’s going on?! How long have we been out for? What’s with the gorilla statue? Who’s in charge of this?”

“The one in charge,” spoke the voice. “We’ve gone to fetch her. Let her know that you two are both awake. She’ll be the one who’ll…"

The voice broke off at the rusty rumble of mechanisms. Lero was almost ready to swear it had to be a very old elevator rising up...

"Ah! Welcome, boss!”

It was an elevator; a cargo elevator. One of the spotlights spun around as its doors opened, to shine upon a pair of mares striding up to where Lero and Rarity stood bound and caged. The mare on the left grinned and waved flippantly as though she were a movie star walking down a red carpet, even going so far as to blow kisses to imaginary fans. The mare on the right, beside her, had eyes only for Lero and Rarity. Unbelievably, it was somepony they both knew. A pony from Ponyville.

“Honeydew?!” Lero spoke, he knees failing him, and falling backward on his rear.

Honeydew wore clothing. Not just any clothes, either; she was dressed as a high school cheerleader. There was no mistaking the leotard-like bodysuit or the pleated ultra-mini-skirt. There were even a set of pom-poms worn at the middle of both her forelegs, attached with armbands. Her dyed blonde hair was set in a set of girlish twin pigtails.

The whole ensemble did not have the intended effect; it contrasted against her increasingly lined fate and the black circles under her eyes, serving only to make Honeydew look even older and more haggish than ever before. The look she gave them was like Captain Ahab driving his harpoon deep into the blubbery flesh of Moby Dick, scoring the killing blow.

And then there was the large, stocky, well-muscled unicorn mare beside Honeydew. A complete stranger to him.

Living in pony society for so many years had taught Lero a lot of interesting words for describing exotic equine coat coloration; words he almost certainly would never have learned on Earth. Some of the more bizarre-sounding of these words included ‘pangare,’ ‘rabicano,’, ‘overo,’ and several others.

This mare’s coat was none of these things. Hers was what was called ‘skewbald,’ which was to say she was marked with large white patches atop a predominantly bay-colored coat. Her mane was also bay-colored.

She, too, had not come unclothed: she wore a thick, dark double-breasted jacket, as well as a porkpie hat on her head. Grey eyes gleamed at him behind thin-rimmed spectacles.

“MISTER Moichealoides!” Though high-pitched, this mare’s voice scarcely even seemed feminine, and was heavily accented in a way that Lero could not immediately place.

The skewbald unicorn’s body tilted in a way that allowed Lero a look at her cutie mark. It showed a jagged outline, filled with red, giving the vague impression of an injury. Emerging from its center was a magenta ray, its luminescent color giving the impression of an unicorn’s mystic aura.

“What a FECKING pleasure et tis teh foinally make yar FECKING acquaintance at long, long last!”

Author's Note

Guess what, folks? I'm bringing Honeydew right back to her roots.

Back to how we saw her when she first debuted in the original Xenophilia.

Only more so.

And while we're on the subject of Honeydew, you might want to check out the latest Ask The Swapped Ponies.

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Thirty-One: Human Stallion

In terms of the incantation, there was no denying that Finished Spell Prototype #0005 was just a miniscule readjustment from Finished Spell Prototype #0002. However, Twilight was still testing it, because, first, it was proper scientific procedure. Second, because she thought it would be helpful to see how sensitive the Swap was to miniscule readjustments. Third, perhaps the least scientific reason, she liked the way #0002 had rhymed; she’d really been poetically inspired with that one!

So Twilight had held up her paper and recited:

“From one to another
Another to one
A mark of one’s destiny
Singled out alone, fulfilled
Joining hearts together,
Together sharing fate
By hoof and horn and feather
That we all better relate.”

The cone of light from her horn hit Ruffles the Dog and Wousey the Mouse. Once again, Twilight waited while the affected animals came over to be where the other had been standing. As Wousey’s tongue hung out in a pant, Ruffles scurried over towards a set of metallic wheels, suitable for rodent-style exercise.

The smaller one was the size of Twilight’s own hoof; a genuinely mouse-sized exercise wheel. She had cast a magical spell on the other wheel to expand it to a size that a dog like Ruffles could fit into.

There was a moment where Ruffles seemed unsure. Ruffles almost approached the wheel that her body would fit into. Then she had a second thought, and tried to jam her snout into the mouse-sized wheel, instead.

It was that moment of hesitation, of consideration, that fascinated the lavender unicorn. The swapped dog had almost picked the wheel that it would’ve suited it. Perhaps a TOUCH more tweaking of Prototype #5; maybe even an extra stanza or two to the incantation….

She yawned and shook her head. She’d been at this for a while. Time for some tea! She stepped out of the magical wards in the lab, when green smoke suddenly floated in front of Twilight’s muzzle, coalescing into solid paper. Not a neatly rolled-up scroll like was customary for Spike, but rather a small lined yellow page… one that could’ve been torn from a cheap notepad.

Dear Twilight,

I’m not sure if you’ll get this before I arrive. I’m on Rainbow Dash’s back. We’re flying up to the cloud house to meet you.

Spike

Twilight felt gladness: Spike was back home! She cast the sleep spell over all the Swapped animals and locked the laboratory up properly before heading downstairs quickly enough to reach the door before there came knocking from the outside.

She opened the door, and there, indeed, was Rainbow Dash; a whistle around her neck, a cap on her head, and Spike on her back.

“Hey… Twilight…” Rainbow greeted.

“Welcome back, Spike!” She nuzzled her little dragon’s face. He was wearing an adorable T-shirt that read ‘Camp Mountain Peaks Junior Muskrat,’ and had the cutest cartoon muskrat ever drawn. It had cost her a little extra money to make sure the camp had a shirt that’d fit a biped like Spike. But, hey, he deserved a little doting with all he’d been through as of late. “Well, come in! Come in! No sense standing outside! I want to hear all about it!”

Rainbow Dash licked her lips and stepped inside the house quietly. Rather than jump off, Spike kept on the pegasus’ back, with a very troubled look.

“Spike, why’re you still on… oh, silly me!” And Twilight cast the cloudwalking spell on Spike’s body.

“Now tell me all about how camp went,” she invited brightly, motioning towards a puffy white couch.

Spike still remained on Rainbow Dash’s back hugging her around the neck tighter than ever. There was a definite bleak note in his voice when he finally spoke.

“Camp? Oh, camp was a blast. But when they finally brought me back home to Ponyville, Lero and Rarity weren’t there to pick me up. Even though you’d wrote in that letter that they’d be there. Even though everypony else’s parents were there.”

“Rarity and Lero weren’t there?” Twilight repeated, stunned. “They should have, I saw them leave…!”

“I waited for them. I waited hours. I thought about going home by myself, but it was such a long walk…”

Twilight checked the clock. Lero and Rarity were supposed to have been there at one o’clock. It was 5:33 pm.

“After the first hour, I ran to the closest store and bought this notepad,” Spike continued, holding the notepad up, “and tried flame-mailing Lero and Rarity to remind them I was waiting for them. But they never showed up. So twenty minutes later, I sent them a new message. And twenty minutes after that, I tried flame-mailing them again.”

Rainbow Dash moved towards the couch. Spike got the message and sat down on it while she nuzzled him consolingly.

“At first, my letters at least seemed to be arriving wherever it was Lero and Rarity were. But after the fourth letter I sent…”

Bringing out a pen, Spike quickly jotted words on the notepad;

Lero,

COME HOME!!!!

Spike

Then he tore the note off and breathed green fire on it. Twilight expected to see it fly through the open front door… but it didn’t go anywhere. The smoke spun about, like it was lost or confused, making circles in the air, before returning and rematerializing into paper by Spike’s shoulder and dropping to the floor. Long seconds passed.

“So then Spike finally thought to write a letter to me…” Rainbow Dash timidly added, as Twilight stared at the unsent mail with great distress. “and I came and picked him up right away.”

“They’re in TROUBLE, Twilight!”

* * *

“Laugh at me.” Honeydew dared the evil bonobo.

“Huh?” Those small little eyes were filled with hopeless blankness. Hazel was such a nauseating color.

“Laugh at me,” she challenged him again. “Laugh. Laugh at Honeydew. Like you always do! I want to hear your laughter, my sublime stallion.”

“There is nothing funny about you,” he responded, flatly.

Honeydew grinned. While she usually had a hard time reading his expressions, today she was sure the monkey was daunted, at a loss for what to do. It all took her back to the early days. Back when the ape had nopony, back when she and Honeybee and Honeysuckle were real sisters with each other, united against a common foe. Before the monkey had shacked up with the first of his guard dogs, when he cowered and fled when he saw them coming...

“And I don’t find anything funny about this either — not yet!” snarled the pugnacious poodle, herself. “But I’ll tell you what I will find amusing; opening tomorrow’s newspaper and reading about you being thrown behind bars!”

“Rarity, please…” sniveled her cowardly excuse for a coltfriend. “Don’t…”

“This is kidnapping, this is abduction, this is unlawful imprisonment!” She snapped, ignoring him.

“Oh!” exclaimed Exit Wound, stepping ahead of Honeydew. “Oh, me sainted mother’s smoile! Please, please, please don’t press charges on us! Me and teh gang, we was just having a wee bit o’ sport with yeh!”

The skewbald unicorn removed her hat, looking so apologetic, it was like watching Rainbow Dash, after that skinny, garish loser had spoken out of turn.

“Et was Honeydew; she roped us inta doing this! We never meant ta take et this far. Kidnapping’s evil, and teh last thing a Sicklefin girl wants is ta act against teh l… against teh law… haw haw HAW!”

Many of the other Sicklefins chuckled along as their underboss brayed with laughter, all of them drawing closer to where the spotlights shone.

“Feck! Oi’m SHITE as an actress! Couldn’t keep me giggles down fer a full minute! So much for me showbiz dreams! Eee hee hee hee haw haw haw!”

* * *

Gone.

How could they be gone? That was the question that plagued Twilight’s mind as she paced in a circle, threatening to wear a trench into the cloud house’s floor.

Rainbow Dash was faring only a little better, her cyan wings fluttering at her side as she worriedly rubbed her forehooves together.

Spike’s incessant questions were not helping. “What does this mean, Twilight?”

“I don’t know, Spike,” said the unicorn, her eyes hardly lifting from the floor.

“You don’t know?!” The small dragon jumped in front of her, bringing her pacing to a halt. “But the... you’re the Element of Magic! How can you not know?!”

“I… I just don’t!”

“What if they’re hurt?!”

“I don’t know!”

“What if they’re dead?!”

“I don’t know!”

“Wh-What if… What if it’s that Lady, the one Lero was so...”

“NO!!” came the sound of two shrill voices. Spike found his jaws clamped shut by two sets of hooves, one violet and the other cyan. He made to struggle and shout when he was suddenly confronted by Twilight’s wide-eyed visage.

“Never. Ever. Say that name,” she whispered.

Silence hung over the cloud house for a small eternity. Both Rainbow and Twilight’s eyes occasionally darted about and their ears swiveled, as if in expectation for some unseen attack.

Rainbow began to hyperventilate, the cloud house becoming too small. Tears gathered in the corners of her eyes as the creeping dread of a force she could not...

“Rainbow!” yelled Twilight. The unicorn flung herself against the pegasus and wrapped herself tightly around her. “Stay with me!”

Twilight’s plea was enough to bring Dash out of her waking nightmare. She returned to the favor and hugged Twilight as tightly as she could, wrapping both her forelegs and her wings around her new herd sister.

“I-I-It’s n-n-not Them,” she whispered, as if too much sound would summon whatever beings they were so fearful of, “is it?”

“No, no, no,” repeated Twilight, as if she were trying to also convince herself. She held onto Rainbow more tightly.

They stayed like that, clasped against each other, for a small eternity. They quietly reassured each other with trembling nuzzles and soft coos. They allowed their breathing to sync, felt their hearts hammer against each other, and breathed in each other’s scent.

In and out.

“Okay,” breathed Twilight. The scholar took another deep breath, repeating the exercise Cadence had shown her.

In and out.

In… and out…

“Okay,” repeated Twilight. She finally pulled back from Rainbow Dash, sufficiently assured that both of them were calm and both were safe here. Then she let her mind go to work.

Rainbow and Spike recognized the analytical look in her eyes. “I… I am fairly certain that they are not dead.” Rainbow’s eyes lit up in hope. “If they were, the spell would not have been able to activate at all and the message would have simply burned away like from regular fire.”

“Oh, yeah...” Spike said. “Like that one time when you had me keep mailing letters to Professor Milkcap before we learned that she’d died in that horrible accident, a few hours earlier…”

Twilight glanced between Dash and Spike. “The magic is behaving as if it has a valid target, but can’t find it.” She stood up and walked over to her workbench. Grabbing a quill and a blank sheet of parchment, she began to scribble furiously. Spike and Rainbow Dash both wandered over to see what she was doing. Spike’s eyes widened in recognition.

“Is that…?” he asked.

“The Dragon Fire Spell, yes,” said Twilight, her eyes never leaving the parchment.

Twilight had sketched out the complete thaumaturgic formula for the spell; the spell matrix, mana flow patterns, everything. It was an intricate piece of work, one first developed in ancient times when the first dragon had lived amongst ponies. Twilight had created such a complete and detailed diagram of the spell’s working processes and in such short time, that any university would have hired her on the spot and grant her full tenure.

Of course, Twilight was focused on a much more important task.

“Okay, let’s see here,” she said. Her eyes darted across the page in silence as she ran several scenarios in her head. She was silent at this point, hardly moving at all. After a few minutes, the tension had begun to return to the room.

Rainbow Dash began to fidget again. She didn’t like standing still while Lero and Rarity were in such big trouble. She… she needed to move! She needed to get out there and do something! Lero could be really hurt. He could be dying! Her thoughts went to that dark corner of her mind as she envisioned him somewhere far away and bleeding…

“Rainbow,” said Twilight. Her herdmate’s words snapped Rainbow Dash back to reality, the dark thoughts chased away. “I want you to take Spike with you to the library as quick as you can. Spike, when you get there I want you to pull me a copy of Verneighsus’ Wards and Shields, as well as Shadow Hoof’s Unseen Tactics.” She turned to her family and saw their confused looks.

Spike began to say, “But Twilight, those are…!”

“I have a theory, Spike,” interrupted Twilight with a raised hoof, “but I need to be sure. Just be quick about it. I’ll lock things down here and meet you at the library as quick as I can.”

Rainbow felt like she should complain, but she knew the importance of the research Twilight was conducting up here. She also knew that something worse might happen if the experiment here got out of hoof.

‘Though I can’t imagine something worse that losing Lero,’ she mused.

“You got it, Twilight!” Rainbow Dash grabbed Spike and flung the surprised drake on her back. Before he could even get in a word of protest, Dash was out the door and zooming to her new home.

Twilight waited until she was sure they were gone before she let out a stuttering breath. As she turned to put away her notes and equipment, she silently prayed that she was wrong about her theory.

* * *

Returning her hat to her head, Exit Wound came in to have a closer squint at the primate through her thin-rimmed glasses. “So THIS is teh monkey? OOGLY fellah! More loike a monkey’s miscarriage!”

Exit Wound’s humor could sometimes be hit-or-miss, but Honeydew had a great laugh at that, especially since Rarity looked ready to pop a blood vessel or ten. Until she saw that the monkey was looking past them both at one of the other Sicklefins who were drawing closer to watch the show.

“You… isn’t your name Glitter Dust?” he asked a peach-colored unicorn off to the left.

Glitter Dust raised an eyebrow. “Been a while, hasn’t it, vine-swinger?”

“Fine.” Honeydew remembered snapping at her treacherous sister. I’ll handle this on my own. Maybe Glitter will help, since you guys won’t.”

And Glitter Dust, bless her, HAD helped. Glitter had always been a friend of hers. In the early days, the unicorn had sometimes tagged along and helped Honeydew and her sisters give the monkey the treatment it deserved. And she had remained a true friend after Honeysuckle and Honeybee had fallen for the ape’s charms, and turned traitor on her.

Glitter Dust had been the one to connect Honeydew to all these helpful ponies.

But right here and now, Honeydew could not bring herself to feel any of her usual gratitude. The gibbon was snubbing her again, ignoring her, like he so often did when he hurried past her stall in the marketplace, as though he were BETTER than her…!

To reclaim his attention, Honeydew spat straight into the lemur’s face; he had to blink away a lot of phlegm.

“Bit o’ advice, lad, when a girl pulls all the fecking stops out ta set up a memorable get-together with yeh, yeh don’t fecking want ta go getting distracted by other mares,” said Exit Wound.

“Just what are you supposed to be?!” Rarity retorted. “Honeydew’s yes-mare? Her second-in-command?”

Exit’s smile dropped instantly, replaced with a scowl.

Honeydew didn’t have a svelte figure like Rarity. Of all the Honey sisters, she had always been largest and most imposing, and her martial arts training has given her muscles to spare. But by comparison, Exit Wound made Honeydew look like a trim and dainty ballerina. It really was something to watch Exit’s muscles pulse angrily under the jacket she wore.

“Got quite a mouth on yeh, huh, yeh barrel-arsed face-in-a-fit?!”

Rarity sputtered at the insult. If she knew what was best for her, she’d shut up. But then, if Rarity knew what was best for her, she’d have never gotten in bed with the orangutan.

“How could you even have pulled all THIS off?!”

Oh, speaking of the orangutan, it’d finally found its voice!

“You’re just a melon seller! You sell cantaloupes and watermelons and honeydews outdoors at a tiny little stall!”

Earlier on, when the gorilla’s capture had still been in the planning stages, Exit Wound had asked Honeydew whether she’d wanted to proceed right away with the ‘down-and-dirty,’ once he was conscious. Honeydew had declined. Because then, the clueless, unsuspecting ape couldn’t have asked that lovely question, and she couldn’t have smirked back at him and said;

“And YOU, Mr. Masseur, are just an over-glorified backscratcher. In fact, I remember when you were less than that! I remember you as a weed-puller, a log-splitter, a window-washer, and just an all-around odd jobs charity case. Yet somehow, someway, we both managed to make so much more of ourselves than all our neighbours would’ve ever predicted, hm?”

“Oh, to be sure.” Rarity sniffed haughtily. “I don’t think anypony would’ve predicted to see you touting a pair of pompoms, Honeydew. Really moving up in the world.”

Honeydew felt some of the wind leaving her sails. Though in all honesty, she hadn’t expected her current state of dress to go uncommented-on. But Exit Wound wasn’t helping things at all when she started rubbing herself against Honeydew very crudely and lewdly.

“D’ya loike et?” she asked, licking the side of Honeydew’s green and gray ensemble. “This here ain’t just some cheap thirty-bit Noightmare Noight rag. What Dewy’s wearing… a company that makes genuine varsity hoigh school cheerleader uniforms stitched this up fer me!”

Why did Exit have to pull this on her? Here? Now? Right in front of all her underlings and Honeydew’s sworn enemies? Hadn’t she indulged her enough?

“Oi’m a fecking animal fer cheerleaders,” Exit Wound boasted to Rarity and her chimp. “Specially teh blondes. Mmm-MMM! Blonder teh better.”

Exit Wound began nibbling at one of Honeydew’s pigtails, which felt gross. The sort of thing a one-month-old would do. Self-consciously, she looked over at Rarity, who was peering at her once-green mane, no doubt taking note of how blonde it had been dyed all the way through to the roots.

“Could’ve at least done a better job on the dye, Dew.” Rarity muttered.

“Ey! Dewy!” Exit suddenly pulled back before she could respond. “Do teh song and dance Oi taught yeh!”

“In front of the SICKO MONKEY?!” she balked.

Exit pointed at one of her own subordinates; a sinewy weasel of a mare. “Yeh’ve fecking done et in front o’ Doublehead, and with all teh molestin’ she’s ever done, Oi’m sure she’s been in prison more toimes than teh warden!”

Yes, Honeydew said in her head, But only because you insisted on it. As the gangster boss was insisting now. And if Exit Wound didn’t get what she wanted, it might cost Honeydew a few teeth. Or worse; she might actually put Rarity and Lero under a sleep spell, then smuggle them back to their bedroom, safe, sound, and untouched. Purely out of spite. So Honeydew took a deep breath.

* * *

Lyra Heartstrings had just poured a cup of tea to help settle her mind when Rainbow Dash came crashing through Golden Oaks’ window. The pegasus’ less-than-graceful entrance caused many of the new animals Lyra had allowed in the house to panic and dash about to try and find cover in a chorus of barks, screeches, and meows. Lyra instantly reacted. Her horn was enveloped in a golden glow that matched her narrowed eyes. Rainbow Dash quickly found herself halted in midair, the sudden cease of movement nearly causing her to black out.

Spike was not so fortunate, as his momentum continued to carry him forward in a tumbling ball that struck a large pile of boxes.

“Lyra!” shouted Rainbow Dash.

“Rainbow?” said the surprised unicorn, who dropped her magical grip and allowed Dash to hover in midair. “What in Equestria...?”

“Spike! Find those books!” ordered Dash.

The dragon popped up from the pile of boxes and gave a sharp salute. “On it, Dash!” He ran on all fours towards the one of the bookshelves, his small claws digging into the wood as he scaled up and across like a gecko.

“Guys, what’s going on?” asked Lyra.

Rainbow turned back to Lyra and spilled everything. “Lero and Rarity are missing and we can’t find them so we went to Twilight because we can’t get a message to them at all and then Twilight sent us here to find some books that might help and...”

A bright flash signaled Twilight’s arrival. Ignoring the shallow scorch marks in the floor, she turned instinctively to her assistant. “Spike! Do you have those books?”

Spike had just plucked the second bound volume from the shelves. “Right here, Twilight!”

Twilight grabbed both books with her magic and brought them to the central table. Pages turned in midair and opened to very specific references as Twilight levitated the arcane diagram. It was all a flurry of motion to Rainbow and the others and lasted no more than a few seconds.

Finally, Twilight set everything down and let loose a shaky breath.

“They’ve most likely been kidnapped or otherwise imprisoned,” she said. “The messages aren’t getting through because somepony has cast one of Verneighus’ wards on them. I recognize the thaumic pattern when the spells fail to find the target.”

“Kidnapped?” said Rainbow. Her eyes suddenly narrowed and her teeth grit together. Her wings gave a single great pump and soon she was in the air. “I’m gonna crush ‘em! How dare they do this to my herd?! I’m going to find them all and feed them to Mr. Braun for breakfast!”

A golden aura surrounded her and brought Dash back to the ground. “Dash, listen to me,” said Lyra calmly. “I know you want to go out there and beat whoever did this thing. Trust me, I’m right there with you. But we can’t do much until we figure out who took them.”

This visibly deflated the pegasus and soon she was back down on the floor and shaking, both at the prospect of Lero and Rarity’s kidnapping, but mostly at what she had just threatened to do. She was ready to willingly hurt — to kill — somepony for what they had done. What kind of Element of Kindness would do that?

“I...” she began.

Lyra came close and gently nuzzled her. “It’s okay, Rainbow,” said Lyra. “We will find them, won’t we, Twilight?”

Twilight looked uneasily towards the tomes. “...yes,” she said, “but it won’t be easy. Normally a spell this unique and complex would have a very specific thaumaturgic signature I could scan for. But Verneighus specifically crafted this one to be extremely difficult to detect; it made it more effective for ancient espionage.”

Twilight levitated over a fresh quill, ink pot, and blank parchment. “I think I might be able to find a work-around method, but it may take a while… I’ve never attempted anything like this.” As she scanned her own diagram for the Dragon Fire spell and the one in the old tome, she soon realized that it might take days. And that was assuming that whoever was using this jamming spell was using the original, not the easier-to-cast but less effective knockoffs.

Whoever was doing this was good.

Lyra sensed her worry but stayed silent.

With nothing else to do, Spike said, “I’ll uh, I’m just going to get something to eat. Does anypony else want something?”

“Thank you, Spike,” said Lyra. A moment later, she came up to him and wrapped the little dragon in a warm hug. “Welcome home.”

Spike returned the hug. “Thanks, Lyra.”

“Come on. I’ll help you make some sandwiches.” The two walked off into the kitchen, leaving Twilight and Rainbow in the main room.

Dully, Spike went through the motions. As he opened up the cabinet, he mind went through scenario after scenario of what fate may have befallen Rarity and Lero. Were they being tortured? He couldn’t imagine who would do such a thing; there were no major threats to Equestria right now. What about being held hostage? Word had already spread about how the Throne had granted all of the Element Bearers all that money. Maybe someone wanted to hold them for ransom? Or a mad scientist who’d wanted to steal Lero to experiment on him? What if it was Chrysalis? Had she come back? Were they going to drain Lero and Rarity of their love and...?

“Argh! Why can’t I find anything?!” Spike suddenly exclaimed, pounding his tiny fists into the wooden shelves.

Lyra had just set down a large plate and had pulled out the bread knife. “Spike?”

“Did you guys change the pantry system again while I was gone?” Spike pointed to some vacant spots on the shelves. “I can’t find bread or anything.”

Lyra smiled. “Oh relax, Spike. We’re just out of that. I’m sure one of the… others…” Lyra stopped and stared into the cabinet’s empty space. The bread knife clattered to the floor.”

“Lyra?”

“Oh, Horny, you are such an idiot!” Lyra turned and dashed back into the main room, Spike following quickly on her fetlocks.

“Girls!” Lyra shouted. “I know how to get to Lero!”

Immediately the room was all ears.

“Both Lero and Rarity would have seen that we needed more food earlier today, and since they would want everything ready for you you got back, Spike, they probably would’ve gone to the market before picking you up at the train station, right?” At their nods, Lyra continued. “And since nothing is amiss here, the door isn’t smashed, the lock isn’t forced open, and I’ve been here for a while, they must have been taken while they were at the market!”

Twilight’s eyes widened in understanding. “We don’t need a spell to find them,” she said. “We just have to follow their trail!”

Dash leapt up into the air. “Well what are we waiting for?” she grinned. “Let go get them!”

And with that they were off.

* * *

Proper cheerleading was more than just slipping into a skimpy miniskirt and then shaking pompoms while swinging your hindquarters around. Honeydew had been a cheerleader during her own high school years. She still helped teach cheerleading to high schoolers as an assistant coach at her daughter’s high school.

True cheerleading was not an art or a sport fit for a solo performer, any more than synchronized swimming. It was all climbing and stunting and mounting in order to form pyramids with bases and climbers. It was about ponies allowing you to stand tall on their backs, then allowing other teammates to stand tall on yours. It was about letting some other girl use your body as a springboard, in order to pull off some incredible gymnastic sure to thrill the crowd. It was about keeping your balance while teetering ten feet up upon two different mares’ outraised hooves.

Honeydew respected cheerleading much like she respected the martial arts. Done right, it combined athleticism, theatrics, singing, beauty, trust, and most valuable of all: teamwork.

Fetishist that she was, Exit Wound had acted sympathetic, when she’d brought this point up with her, some time ago.

”Don’t worry, Dewy,” Exit had crooned, that night at the hotel. ”Stick with me, and before yah know et, yeh’ll have a full roster o’ squadmates, and yeh can all dance yer pretty little dances, all fer me. Yeh can be fecking team captain, Dewy.”

And as she felt the shaft of unicorn magic push around her nethers, Honeydew pretended such news delighted her.

But in the here and now, Honeydew did the very best she could by herself. On her own, she felt like a one-stringed guitar and a single-keyed piano. Nonetheless, she faced the mobsters and gave it her all. Looking each one of them in the eye as she walked crabwise, she shook her pompoms and her booty while leading the Sicklefin cheer.

“Two! Four! Six! Eight!
We like to assassinate!
S-I-C-K-L-E-F-I-N!
All of that spells Sicklefin!
We’re the terror of the Emerald Isles!
Coming at ya with our sharky smiles!
We thirst for blood! We thirst for gore!
Can’t get enough! Need more, more, more!
Shoot to kill! Aim for the head!
Coat the floors with lots of red!
Rah! Rah! Sis-boom-bah!
Hack ‘em up with an old hacksaw!”

Honeydew’s unrestrained excitement was irresistibly infectious. In no time at all, the Sicklefin gangsters were cheering and stomping their hooves like hoofball fans at a stadium. Exit Wound’s smile was downright goofy. Honeydew may not have her youth, but one thing no one could take away from her was her spirit. Even Rarity and her monkey were gaping at her with awe.

“Sickle... fin?” Rarity asked.

“Et’s a fecking type o’ shark.” Exit Wound had explained. ”Sharks were teh big ‘in’-thing, back when we had teh pick a name fer ourselves. Woulda called ourselves teh Hammerheads or teh fecking Great Whites, probably, but they were already taken by other gangs. Which we all deep-sixed, later on.”

Honeydew hoped Rarity would say that ‘Sicklefin’ was a dumb-sounding name. She really hoped it.

“Why the hell do you hate me this much?!” the monkey begged to know. “This completely?!”

"Pleased to meet you, Honeydew.” The tall, toned minotaur lowered himself down onto one knee, extending one of his strange, monkeyish forelimbs out in a handshake… as though she had a hand to shake back with. “My name is Bronze Bell, and I’m a good friend of your mother’s.”

* * *

As Dash darted back and forth far overhead of the waning afternoon market crowds, trying to spot her new lovers from on high, Twilight, Lyra, and Spike went from vendor to vendor in hopes of finding someone who saw the missing pair. They made quick progress. Though Lero had lived among the ponies for several years now, the biped was still considered an odd sight amongst the citizens, one that most were quick to spot and remember seeing on a given day.

“Oh yeah,” said the celery vendor, “I saw those two just before eleven in the morning, I think. They bought a few stalks from me and made some chitchat then went that way.” She pointed further down the road.

“Thanks, Green Stalk,” said Twilight and the group continued running down the street.

A few minutes later, Spike spoke up. “Maybe they went to get something to eat?”

“That’s true,” said Lyra. “It would have been getting close to noon so they...”

“Hey, you! Yeah, you! The dweeb duo!” Twilight and Spike turned to the belligerent voice and felt their stomachs drop. Standing just a few yards away from them was a very familiar griffon hen with a brown and white coat and purple highlights. They had only met her once at a party, what felt like a lifetime ago now, but Gilda had managed to make a distinct impression on them.

Too bad it was the wrong impression.

Gilda was currently glaring at Twilight and Spike through one of her small, predatory eyes. Or at least trying to, as she wavered slightly on three wobbly legs with the fourth clutching a beer bottle.

“Yeah, I remember you two,” she said, before taking another swig of beer and throwing the bottle towards a nearby trashcan. The bottle missed and ended up overshooting the can before clattering off into an alley. “You were there, at that stupid party that sissy pegasus threw.” Gilda’s glare narrowed. “You laughed at me…”

“Oh Sisters,” said Twilight, pressing a hoof to her forehead. “We do not have time for this horse-apples.” She returned Gilda’s glare. “Look, I’d love to stay and tell you you’re wrong about this, but we’re busy right now, so if you could just...”

“You laughed at me!” Gilda pointed an accusing claw at the pair and took several aggressive steps towards them. “Someone should have told you not to ever laugh at a...”

Gilda’s rant was cut off when her claw was suddenly surrounded by a golden glow. The hen squawked in surprise as her wrist was bent back at a severe angle, her body folding under the simple motion on the sensitive pressure point. Lyra took this chance to come around from behind Twilight and Spike, her annoyed expression betraying her usual enigmatic grin. Gilda wide eyes watched in fear as more pressure was applied to her wrist and bit back another shriek.

“Miss… Gilda, is it?” she asked. “I’m sure you probably couldn’t tell before, but the three of us are in a hurry. And since I can control your entire body through the manipulation of this...” another increase in pressure finally caused the hen to drop full to the ground and give a rather pathetic squawk, “...single pressure point, not to mention you attempted to assault an Element of Harmony, I would highly recommend that you leave well enough alone and let us be on our way.”

A smart griffon would have submitted at this point and nodded their head. But Gilda had always been known to be more prideful and stubborn than smart. “Freakin’ ponies,” she hissed. Lyra’s eyes hardened as she prepared to apply one last bit of torque to the joint. “I don’t why I ever thought R would be cool again, especially with now she’s with that two-legged alien...”

“Wait!” shouted Spike who hopped off Twilight’s back and ran directly in front of the prone griffon. “Did you mean ‘Rarity’? Have you seen her?”

Gilda’s confusion fought through the haze of pain. Lyra eased off slightly, allowing the hen to speak. “Yeah I saw her, her and that freaky ostrich-monkey she calls a...”

Another bout of pain shot through her. “I would be very careful what names you call my stallion, Miss Gilda,” the grandmaster advised.

“Argh! Fine, okay!” Gilda looked back to Spike. “Yeah, pipsqueak, I saw them. We had lunch together around elevenish.”

“And?” asked Twilight.

“And what? I ain’t gotta say nuttin’ to you, you dweebs ain’t...” Another bit of pressure was applied. “ARRGH! Okay okay okay! Fine! I tried to talk to R, get her to be cool again like back in the good ol’ days. But the stupid flip-flop wouldn’t budge! Tried to act all ‘mature’ and ‘adult’ like some sorta lame-o!” Gilda gave a few short gasps. “That’s the last I saw her. After that, they left and I went across the street for a few more drinks.”

Lyra eyed the intoxicated griffin before asking, “And she didn’t say where she was going after that?”

“She said she was going to the train station. That’s all I know, I swear!”

Somewhat satisfied, Lyra released her magical grip on the hen’s wrist. Gilda instantly brought it to her chest and cradled it, trying to coax some semblance of life out of it. She glared back up at the two unicorns. “What are you, her nags or something?”

“We are her family,” said Twilight, allowing Spike to get back onto his usual perch. “And if you ever had anything that remotely resembled a shadow of a friendship with Rarity, you would be helping us. She’s gone missing, along with Lero.”

“Missing?” asked Gilda as she slowly stood up.

“Somepony took her and we’re going to get her!” said Spike with a puffed out chest.

“Wait what?!” Gilda’s wings flared at her sides. “Why the pluck didn’t you dweebs say so?! I’m coming with you!”

Even through her fog of inebriation, the griffin’s expression was just too earnest to be anything but real. None of them had the heart to refuse her.

* * *

“You know something, my wondrous stallion?” Honeydew answered. “There’s one thing even I can’t help admire about you. When you go chasing tail, you don’t settle for some dishwasher, some gravedigger, some streetwalker! No, you go straight for the GOLD, straight for our world’s finest heroes! Not one, not two, but THREE mares who are Elements of Harmony Bearers, plus a Still Way grandmaster!”

“Shocking yeh don’t have Celestia, her-feckin’-self, as a notch on yer belt!” quipped Exit Wound, to Honeydew’s great aggravation.

“Twilight Sparkle in particular… she’s as good as a daughter to our fair Sun Princess… making YOU as good as an actual prince!”

Exit Wound dropped into a mocking and showy kowtow. “All hail Prince Moichaeloides! Bow before his magnificence! Teh Ape Prince o’ All Ponies!” Then, angrily, she looked over her shoulder at all her thugs and yelled, “‘Ey! Oi fecking told yeh skangers ta BOW!!!”

All the ponies except a VERY furious Honeydew dropped to a sardonic bow before the chimpanzee.

“All Hail Prince Michaelides!” echoed several voices.

Exit Wound took off her hat respectfully, putting it to her chest. “What be thy bidding, soire?”

“...Would it be too much to expect asking you to release us would work?”

Exit Wound snorted at that, and laughed. “Not an earthly chance o’ et, princey-poo. We got plans fer yeh yet, we do!”

Even the pseudo-respect was infuriating to Honeydew. Why wouldn’t Exit take things seriously for once?! At the rate things were going, this primate’s face would be on all the money — all currency in all countries all around the world — come next spring!

“Must be nice, being so untouchable,” she scowled. “Having such powerful mares to always hide behind!”

“Oh, believe me, Honeydew, my herd-sisters and I were more than happy to thwart your attempts to grind our stallion into pulp!” Rarity snapped from her cage.

It wasn’t worth responding to, even if it got her hackles up, old wounds aching at the sound of her stupid voice... that particular cat had been declawed.

“And of course, you’re such an absolute cult of personality, that no law-abiding citizen would ever DREAM of so much as uttering a disfavorable word against you! The nifty space alien from his nifty space alien galaxy! The homeless interdimensional refugee in need of pony charity and pony compassion! The gold-hearted do-gooder! The fairy tale social climber who rose from rags to royalty in the space of a few short years! Inspiration of an groundbreaking line of scientific inquiry and speculative fiction! Launcher of a million new pornographic fetishes!”

With each word, she stalked closer, each word louder, more violent, she watched him flinch as furious flecks of her spit spattered on his disgusting face. Behind her, Exit Wound give a signal, and she stepped aside. With guffaws, her goons flung magazines, paintings, books, even statuettes and… toys.

* * *

“Oh yes, I saw them earlier today,” said Ticket Ride. The train station attendant was just clocking out of his little booth. “They were both here for a little bit with the crowd waiting for the foals to get home. Then they go up and wandered off with another mare.”

“Who?” asked Twilight. “One of the other moms?”

“No, I don’t think so,” continued Ticket as he packed his briefcase. “She didn’t look to be from around these parts, else I would’ve recognized her.” He took his time card in his mouth and punched out, just as his replacement punched in with a polite tip of his blue cap.

“Can you describe her?” asked Lyra.

“Well she weren’t nobody’s mom, I can tell you that. Young thing, maybe ‘bout your age. Almond color coat and black mane, all done up in a bob like them Manehattan gals like it.”

“But you’re sure she’s from out of town?”

“Yep, though I don’t think she came in on the train. Would’ve recognized a pretty gal like her. Eyes were as red as rubies, yes ma’am.”

“Wait,” said Gilda. “Red eyes? Brown coat?”

“Yeah. Almond shade of brown, actually, miss,” said Ticket, ignoring the griffon’s worried look.

“What was her cutie mark?” asked Gilda, a sense of dread creeping into her voice.

“A pair of sickles, actually,” said Ticket. “Must be a wheat farmer or something, though I never heard tell of a pegasus farmer ‘round these parts.”

Gilda’s wings began to flutter anxiously at her sides.

“Which way did they go?” asked Twilight, her own sense of dread began to grow.

“I saw them take the road along the tracks out of town. Looked like they were headed up to the old Boulder place.”

“‘Boulder’?” asked Twilight.

Ticket Ride gave a small chuckle. “Long before your time here in town, Miss Sparkle. Old Boulder owned a quarry outside of town, built herself a decent-sized house for herself and her herd. The quarry did well for itself, ‘til that granddaughter of hers made it go under. Family moved out of there ‘bout ten years ago and it’s been sitting there ever since. Shame too. Used to be a real cozy place.”

“Thanks, Mr. Ride, but we have to run!” Twilight and the other soon dashed off, leaving Ticket Ride shaking his head and mumbling about young ponies always being in a hurry.

* * *

Lero flinched in horror, recognizing the less… savory part of the “Speculative Human Fiction” movement that had started since his arrival. The part for those inclined for more… sensual tastes, including the one that started it all: Pink Palette’s Pornographic Pamphlet.

Some of the erotica was human-on-human. But the majority of the others were human-on-Equestrian. Ponies, primarily, but also human-on-griffin, human-on-minotaur, and even a few human-on-donkey, (whatever the pairing, most of illustrators clearly had no clue how human beings were supposed to bend, and NONE knew how they looked naked.) Lero had always found it horribly embarrassing, much to the amusement of his herd. So he’d never looked into any of it too deeply... but now, some of the images pitched at him included stuff that really WAS dark and wrong. He cringed, attempting to look away as some of it bounced off him.

The skewbald unicorn with the atrocious accent gleefully joined in the pornographic barrage with her telekinesis. “Oi shudder ta think what foul, heinous, deviant misdeeds would ensue if our world and teh Human World were ever ta establish a permanent working portal between themselves! Just think o’ teh wee little ankle boiters! Teh pornograpahers certainly did! Eee hee hee!”

Lero couldn’t stay silent at that. “That’s monstrous…” he said, horror in his voice.

* * *

The Boulder house may have been cozy once, but now it looked like the only things keeping it together were happy memories and the termites holding hands. It was to Twilight’s advantage however; the thick layers of dust provided all the clues they needed. There was a distinct set of bipedal shoeprints going inside and then drag marks showing that the owner was dragged back out back along with another pony. There were signs of a brief struggle and Twilight could taste the hint of ozone in the air where spells were cast. Several other sets of hoofprints were out back and a set of fresh wheel tracks marked the group’s exit.

The track led north, towards the old quarry.

“There were a lot of them,” remarked Lyra, glancing at the collection of hoofprints. “Maybe eight? Nine counting the driver?”

“There’s over a dozen of them,” said Gilda.

“Really?” asked Twilight. “Because I only count about...”

“That pegasus mare would be traveling with over a dozen. That’s how many there were when I saw them.”

Everypony stopped and stared at the hen. Gilda made a noise sounding halfway between a sigh and growl. “And before you say anything, no, I didn’t mean I saw them today.” She turned back towards the others. “It was maybe a year ago.”

The griffin pulled up an overturned chair and sat in it.

“I’ve worked a lot of jobs, but this was one of the bad ones. There was this bar I got a gig as a bouncer back up at the Manehatten docks. Sailors can get pretty rowdy so they were looking for a tough griffon to break up fights. Easy money. Most the time, you pony dweebs are such pansies that just having a griffon in the bar is enough to make you think twice. And even some minotaurs know better than to mess with us.

“Anyways, one night, this gang comes in and pretty much takes over the place. I mean they knew how to party hard. Mares were up on the tables doing shots, whistling at any stallion that walked past them, lotta yelling and cursing and crap, they were a real wild bunch. I was waiting for the boss to make me toss them out, since usually that kind of stuff wouldn’t fly normally. I didn’t care. I actually thought to myself, ‘Hey, these ponies are actually kinda cool. Maybe I could hang out with them.’

“Then some stupid colt came up and tried to hit on one of the mares that didn’t want to be hit on. It was that same one that ticket puncher told us about: almond coat and black mane. I’ll never forget her… she was just really angry about something, but kept in her seat and barely spoke a word as she drank. The old guy had it all wrong. Those sickles weren’t there because she’s a plucking farmer. It’s what she uses to gut things with!”

Spike and Twilight gave a sharp gasp while Lyra remained neutral.

“That mare turned the colt into a gelding just like that!” Gilda snapped her claws to emphasize the point. “Right in the middle of the bar! And as that stupid kid was on the floor holding his bloody… stuff together, the rest of the gang just laughed like it was the funniest thing in the world! Especially the boss! That mare is completely nuts!”

“And what’s worse was that my boss, the bartender, told me not to interfere! Had this look in his eyes that said he’d seen this before. He sure as Tartarus didn’t like it, but he knew there was nothing he could do, not unless he ended up on the floor in a pile of his own giblets!”

Gilda gave the rest of the group a hard look. “And that’s who took R and your stallion. The Sicklefin gang.”

* * *

“I’LL TELL YOU WHAT’S MONSTROUS!” Honeydew shrieked at him, much to the goons’ surprise, and Exit Wound’s amusement. She breathed hard, regaining her composure. “You are. It’s not right. It’s not natural. And I’m not even talking about the whole sexual aspect of it all, this time: NO ONE is THAT charismatic! NO ONE is THAT adored!”

She stalked back and forth in front of that hated beast, her words coming faster, her suspicions that she’d kept inside for so long spilling out all at once. “Not unless… something else is at play. Some magical mind-controlling glamour. Some undetectable alien monkey pheromone you’re secreting that compels others to love you, one which only I remain immune to! You even took my sisters from me!”

Her train of thought was interrupted by an annoying, snide little voice she so wished she could stomp to pieces! “And so because ‘no law-abiding citizen’ would give a girl like you the time of day… you turned to criminals for help, didn’t you?” Rarity asked.

She stared at Rarity several moments, seething at her. How could a hero of Equestria be so weak to fall? Finally, her brain registered the question. “Of course! I couldn’t do it alone, I couldn’t do it without help! Thanks to you. I hate you for this, as well, driving me to a desperate act like this! But action must be taken… no sacrifice is too great!”

In her fury, she threw her pompoms to the ground before she snapped her attention back to the monkey.

“You’re softening us up… all of ponykind into complacency! You’ve even gone so far as to turn our greatest heroes — the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony — into your besotted love-slaves, so that the Rainbow of Light cannot be deployed against you!”

She stalked up to him, grabbing him by his collar, shaking him. “When will the Human Invasion commence?! When do the motherships arrive?!” she screamed heroically in his dastardly face.

“LET HIM GO!” Rarity bellowed, throwing herself against the bars of the cage.

Honeydew glared at Rarity for several moments, before letting go, his head impacting with the hard ground, causing him to grunt in pain. “Loyal, aren’t you? Is that your Element talking, or the alien mind control?” She stalked away, shaking her head, before pausing, with a smirk.

“What kind of mare are you?” For the first time, Honeydew was actually seeing Rarity crying; hot, angry tears. “All this to… to hurt a stallion?! Have you no honor?! Mares aren’t ever supposed to attack stallions like this, not even ones they don’t like! And Lero’s just so absolutely lovable, the sweetest, kindest, friendliest, most helpful and noble-hearted prince of a stallion…”

Honeydew sneered at Rarity. “...What a wretched mare you must be, Rarity, knowing that your ultra-stupendous ‘stallion’… isn’t.”

The marshmallow fluff of a pony shook her head fiercely. “I’m not wretched at all! I’m perfectly fine with how my stallion is!”

Honeydew leered at her. “Oh, really? There’s a funny story, I heard it on the grapevine, something about how our resident Element Of Magic actually managed to transform your Super Simian into an actual stallion… a true equine! More than a few times, in fact.”

Rarity glared at Honeydew. “And your point is?”

“Now why would yeh go do a thing loike that if teh shape o’ his body didn’t bother yeh?” Exit Wound cut in.

The caged pervert bared her teeth, anger flashing in her eyes. “What we choose to do in our herd is none of your business!”

Honeydew rolled her eyes. Disgust dripped from her voice as she explained. “It’s because the mares of Herd Bonobo are keen to give birth to foals with alien monkey blood in their genetic code. What a thing to unleash upon the next generation’s dating pool!”

Exit Wound nudged Honeydew with her hip. “Heeeey, yeh ever seen Prince Mandrill, here, in stallion form, Dewy?”

She shook her head. “Not with my own eyes, no. But in between all the bouts of fornication, I heard they’d actually set aside time to take our magic-made stallion pal out to fancy restaurants and movies and such! There’ve been no shortage of witnesses, so don’t try to deny it, Rarity.”

“And why would I? I wouldn’t be taking him out in public if I were ashamed of him!”

Honeydew smiled at Exit Wound and Exit smiled back.

“Ashamed?” asked the Sicklefin underboss. “We weren’t suggesting anything o’ teh sort!”

“Huh?” asked Rarity.

“Not at all!” Honeydew professed, in the same sweetly innocent tone of voice. “Personally, I feel that all these repeated transformations demonstrate a subconscious, unintentional admission on your part, Rarity: that when you’re a mare, there’s simply no substitute for a real stallion. Which is to be congratulated!”

Rarity and her monkey regarded them with confusion and an admittedly understandable lack of trust.

* * *

After hearing Gilda’s story, Spike was silent for a moment before saying, “Well, then we have to hurry!”

“What? No, pluck that!” shouted Gilda as she took to the air and hovered unsteadily around the group. “I told you idiots about those psychos so you would know to leave this alone! You can’t go up against these guys!”

“We’ve faced worse before,” said Lyra with cold determination.

“And I thought you were Rarity’s friend!” accused Twilight. “How could you just abandon her to those ponies?!”

“I may have been her friend once,” countered Gilda, “but not so much that I would go after an armed gang of thugs like the Sicklefins!” She gained a little more altitude. “If you crazies want to go get yourselves killed, fine by me!” At this Gilda turned away. “Just leave me out of it!”

And with that, she was gone, veering back southwest towards Ponyville. A blur of bright color caught their eye and Twilight and Lyra saw Rainbow Dash approaching from the south. The pegasus came to a full stop in front of them.

“Girls!” she shouted. “I heard you came out here! Did you find anything?! Are they here?! And… was that Gilda just now?!”

Lyra and Twilight looked at each other and then back to their herd sister. “We think we know where Rarity and Lero are,” said Twilight.

“It’s not a worst-case scenario,” said Lyra, “but it’s pretty bad, Rainbow.”

* * *

“The problem, as I see it,” Honeydew continued, “is that you and your herd-sisters have tried transforming your ape into a stallion multiple times, but he keeps changing right back, doesn’t he? The transformation doesn’t stick.”

“Stick?” repeated the baboon, clearly disliking the inflection Honeydew had placed on that word.

“We thought we’d help with that.” Exit Wound told him.

Today, the bonobo was clad in a vomitous green shirt and fecal brown pants. The white color of his shoes and socks put Honeydew immediately in mind of cobwebs and spider eggs.

Exit Wound officially ended the preliminary banter and got the main event going by lowering her head and firing a magical blast at the primate’s torso. A circle of fire the size of a cookie ignited at once on the center of his pukey shirt.

Yelping ridiculously, the bonobo then attempted to beat the fire out just by slapping at it with his bare hands… and actually succeeded. Undeterred, Exit Wound then shot more fire-blasts at other parts of his stupid shirt; along the collar, near the lower belly, by the left armpit.

“Strip it off, hot stuff! Strip it ALL off!”

And the other gangsters behind them started up a chant: “Strip! Strip! Strip! Strip!”

Suddenly, the ape’s eyes went unfocused for a moment before his panicked expression vanished startlingly fast, and he proceeded to strip off his clothes. Exit Wound didn’t even have time to set his footwear or socks on fire while they were on his body; she had to wait until they’d been thrown on the floor. Then he divested himself of his pants. To Honeydew’s surprise, had a set of white underclothes beneath those pants, but off it went, all in a pile that Exit Wound set to burning.

“Hey!” cried out Gabby the griffin in the back. “Someone’d better do something about those clothes before they set the smut rags on fire!”

So the monkey’s clothes were levitated safely away.

Much to her surprise and annoyance, the bonobo wasn’t in a state of self-conscious panic, not seeming at all horrified at having nothing to wear in front of so many eyes but his sweaty, fleshy birthday suit.

“Well?” he asked Honeydew, coldly, arms akimbo. “Is it everything you ever hoped for?”

“Why, you…!!!” Honeydew started, before being cut off.

“Ladies!” the Sicklefin underboss crowed. “Take yersevles a gander at teh sexual tyrannosaurus we got here! Hung loike a field mouse, he is!”

The room shook with uproarious laughter and snide remarks. Honeydew relished every second of it. At last, she UNDERSTOOD why he wore clothes: shame that his gonads could not measure up to his own hype! Or even the most average of stallions! Just as she’d suspected from the beginning!

“So TOINY!” Exit Wound cackled. “So shriveled into his scrote! EEE HEE HEE HAW HAW HAW!!! Haw haw haa... oh, bollix, Oi think ya done made me broke meself! Eee hee hee! Hey, Coconuts! How much ya wanna bet me CLIT’S bigger than yer puny splutterpump?!”

Exit turned around, looking to have more than half a mind to have one of her mares fetch a ruler or some measuring tape.

“Hey, Miss Big Clit, answer me this: were you a colt BEFORE becoming a mare? Or are you planning on MAKING yourself a colt for your next birthday?”

Exit Wound spun like a teacher struck by a spitball. “Teh FECK?!”

“Well, as long as we’re descending to vicious, low-blow potshots,” Rarity explained from her birdcage, “I’m asking if you’re happy with the gender you were born into. I mean, there’s tomboyish mares, and then there’s YOU.”

“Yeh’d better shut yer mouldy gowlflaps, ya bottle-squatting swamp donkey!” Exit Wound seethed. “Else, Oi swear on me solemn oath, yer whole body’s gonna look loike a changeling’s’ legs!”

“Admit it, why don’t you?!” Even Honeydew felt a certain awe at Rarity’s suicidal fearlessness. “This gang, the crime, the money... it's all to hide it! Your biggest ambition in life is to be some mare’s saddleblanket!"

To herself, Honeydew could admit she’d reached much the same conclusion about Exit Wound within ten minutes of their first meeting. But aloud, she didn’t dare to say a thing, as Exit’s head bent and shot a thin, fast beam through the birdcage bars. It hit Rarity’s right foreleg, just above the hoof.

Screaming gloriously, Rarity fell to a squat, partly in pain and partly to stem the bleeding.

The baboon finally reacted, a look of panic crossing his face. “Rarity!”

Exit Wound span to face the ape so fast, her thin-rimmed glasses flew off her face, and she had to catch them with magic.

“QUOIET, both o’ yah! Chitchat toime’s fecking over and done with!”

The two captives fell silent, eyeing Exit Wound like the dangerous alligator she was, as she smiled her cruel smile.

“But now… that’s no way for any proper colt ta look! All bare bald skin, loike some koind o’ fecking piggy! SCREWS! Get up here, Screws!”

Tight Screws was one of Exit’s oldest gangsters, both in regards to her actual age, and how long she’d served as a Sicklefin. She trotted up with a large box, and opened its lid. The box was completely filled with ordinary tallow candles.

“Take a load off!” Exit invited the monkey, who jerked up into the air in a telekinetic field.

Honeydew knew all too well how much unicorns loved to show off with their magic. In this way, Exit Wound was no different than Rarity or Twilight Sparkle. What might’ve been fifty candles rose high into the air, along with the bonobo himself, so that the candles floated over his body like a frozen volley of arrows. No amateur mage could’ve pulled off a stunt like this, and the whole room was properly awed.

Then, in a twist of new magic, all the floating candles melted STRAIGHT into bubbling waxen blobs, all at once. Exit gave the chimp a few seconds to regard the floating tallow puddles and close his eyes before she let the hot wax splatter all over his front. Into his face and beard it dropped, coating his torso, arms, legs, and crotch. There was a muffled groan of pain as he kept his mouth shut to prevent it from being swamped with wax. Rarity’s shriek was far more satisfactory, though.

Then, Exit Wound’s telekinesis flipped the monkey’s body over like shish kabob meat on a griffin’s roasting spit. However, as the torture continued, the biped suddenly stiffened, then seemed to relax, as if suddenly indifferent to the pain. More candles were levitated, melted, and a second coat of hot wax fell upon the biped’s back side.

“...What’s with this buzzkillin’ ballbag?” Honeydew heard Exit mutter under her breath, before rotating him around so they were face-to-face. “Well...?”

“Rarity?” The gorilla said calmly, looking levelly at Exit Wound.

“...Yes?” she asked.

“When the big scary head honcho mobster gets back, could you tell her that her Grandma tried working me over?”

Exit Wound glared at the insolent beast. “Hey, Shoes! Yer up!”

Another gangster, whose full name was Cement Shoes, levitated several metal trash cans into the spotlight, and opened them, showing how they were filled to the brim with shaggy masses of pony fur.

It was hardly a traditional use of a crime boss’ connections and resources, but all this fur had been painstakingly gathered from the floor sweepings of many, many, many barbershops and hair salons. Thus, the fur was a kaleidoscopic ragbag of every conceivable pony color: bright and dull, pastel and solid, glossy fur, oily fur, rough and scratchy fur… EVERYTHING. Along with no small amount of dirt, grit, and other nastiness that the beauticians’ brooms had swept up as well.

Like a griffon chef turning a raw chicken breast in breadcrumbs, Exit Wound rolled the monkey in pony fur, so that it clung to the sticky wax coating his body.

“Stand up, and let’s fecking have a look at teh shape o’ yeh!”

She cancelled her magic while the gorilla was still in midair, so Rarity’s pet fell on its face. He got to his feet, bleeding a little from his nose, looking like nothing more than a giant technicolor dust bunny. However, his level glare hadn’t stopped.

“Whaddaya think, Dewy?” Exit had to speak loudly over the hysterical laughter of her gang.

“I think with such a handsome pelt as that, you don’t have to worry about being naked, don’t you, Mr. Stallion?”

The primate just glared at her coldly, even though his new fur did an admirable job of covering up the male parts he was so rightfully ashamed to let others see.

“DON’T you, Mr. Stallion?!” How she hated the way he always did his best to ignore her, not speak to her, treat her like a nonentity.

“JUST YOU WAIT ‘TIL I’M OUT OF THIS CAGE!” Rarity shrieked, kicking once again at the bars of her cage. “FIRST, I’M GOING TO RIP THAT HORN OF YOURS OUT FROM YOUR SKULL AND SHOVE IT UP YOUR ROTTEN SNATCH AND TWIST IT TO YANK OUT YOUR MISBEGOTTEN WOMB, WHICH I WILL FORCE-FEED YOU UNTIL YOU CHOKE ON IT! AND THAT IS NOTHING, NOTHING, COMPARED TO WHAT I’LL DO TO HONEYDEW! NAMELY…!!!!!”

The white weather-witch proceeded to describe, in very lurid detail, what she intended to do first to Honeydew, and the whole Sicklefin gang, all while the two-legged fuzzball just examined them with a cold glare. The level of hostility astounded even Exit Wound, who turned to face Honeydew.

“Oi’m startin’ tah think maybe yah’ve got more in common with that headwrecker than anyone would’ve guessed.”

“COMMON?!?! ME?!?!” Honeydew exploded. It was the very first time she had ever startled Exit Wound. “I HAVE NOTHING IN COMMON WITH THAT PEGASUS-BORN-IN-THE-WRONG-BODY!!!! I AM THE SWORN ARCHENEMY OF ALL MANKIND, AND SHE IS ITS MOST SLATHERING, SLOBBERING, SALIVATING LICKSPITTLE!!!”

Seething with fresh anger, she span around on the two-legged creature. “Just LOOK at you! Standing there on those misshapen legs of yours like that extra bit of height makes you BIGGER than all us ponies! BETTER than us ponies! Well, if you want to BE a stallion so badly, then you can STAND like stallions do!”

Then she ran behind the chimp and kicked him in the back of the legs, so that he fell forward onto the flat of his hands and his feet.

“Not so tall NOW, are ya?!”

“Folded loike a feckin’ newspaper!” Exit chortled from where she stood, all smiles again as she took a step forward, horn gleaming again.

“Hmmm… let’s see, now, the transformation’s certainly comin’ along noicely, Lero… d’ya mind me callin’ yeh ‘Lero?’... but we’re not there yet. Cuz Oi’m seeing ratty li’l digits wrigglin’ at teh end o’ yer limbs where there oughta be nothin’ but noice, solid, undivided hooves.“

This time, Exit Wound didn’t bother with any of her minions. Her own magic levitated another box forward, and brought out a mass of obsidian. Watching her mold it straight over Lero’s hands and feet was as mesmerizing to Honeydew as it was agonizing to the bonobo. The obsidian hooves were downright beautiful when Exit was finished; no jeweler could have made them so undeservedly handsome.

The bonobo muttered something. “What was that?” Honeydew snapped.

He looked up at her, with an odd gleam in his blue eyes. “I said: 'please, Brer Pony, please don't fling me in dat dere briar-patch!'”

Honeydew smashed her hoof into his smug face. “What’s that even supposed to mean?!”

He spat out blood, turning to look back at her. “It means: ‘please, ma’am, may I have another?’”

Honeydew yelled in anger, smashing him in the face over and over. “I AM TIRED OF YOUR SMUG NONSENSE!”

“Stop it! STOP IT!” shrieked his puffy white consort.

Suddenly, Honeydew was held back by a hoof: Exit Wound’s on her shoulder.

“Now, now, Dewy, ease up, me auld flower. Don’t forget who’s got the upper hoof on who tonoight! Still got lots of fun planned before we’re done with ‘em!”

“I think I finally get you,” Rarity spoke to Exit Wound. “You’re not simply a masculine girl. You’re a throwback straight to our Dark Ages. At least my sweet stallion is his own free thinker… but you? You’re only useful to this mare…”

Here, the white unicorn’s eyes flashed at Honeydew.

“...As a source of hard labor and sexual gratification. And, sadly, not only do you not have any proper stallionhood of your own… but you’re doing this all for Honeydew, of all possible mares. Talk about atrocious taste!”

Above everything else, Exit Wound was two things: a sadist and a sharpshooter. Thus, when she opened fire on her, she did not aim for any part of Rarity’s body that would cause instantaneous death. Rather, she shot to inflict agony. She shot so that the noisy banshee would watch her life bleed away from dozens of ghastly new holes. Honeydew had seen it happen before.

Over and over, Exit shot; steadily and unhurried. One could’ve almost timed her blasts on a musician’s metronome. Not a single hit missed.

“Stop! Don’t you dare kill her!” the bonobo roared.

“Feck yeh and teh tree yeh were born in!” Exit retorted, and Rarity’s right shoulder took its third magic blast. “Oi’m a croime queen, and Oi kill who Oi want!”

“If you kill Rarity, or any of the other five Element Bearers… you might as well be slitting the throats of everyone here, including your own!”

The icy certainty in the human’s powerful voice gave Exit Wound pause. It gave the whole room pause, as well, including Honeydew. No one wanted their throats slit.

“Alroight, Oi’ll boite,” Exit said, turning to face him. “Pray tell, what in teh bloody name of fecking are ya on about?!”

The human stood back on two legs instead of four.

“I wasn’t there in person the first time Discord got free from his stone prison,” he began. “That was before I got here. But everypony I’ve asked remembers that day with crystal clarity. ‘The Day Of Chaos,’ they call it. The day the sun and moon chased each other like greyhounds at a racetrack. The day where houses flew, the ground turned to checkerboard, and cola and chocolate milk rained from the sky.”

The whole room went silent and wide-eyed.

“I see none of you have forgotten, either.” The human looked over at his pony bedmate; even Rarity listened intently to his words.

“Princess Celestia sent the Element Bearers out to stop Discord and he… touched my sweet Rarity’s mind. All the other Bearers’ minds too. Changed them into ponies they weren’t. And I know for a fact that they weren’t the only ones. My neighbors, Big Macintosh and Granny Smith… so many others…”

For a naked man with all colors of pony fur stuck to him, it was uncanny how much dignity he was able to muster out of nowhere.

“How many of you did he also touch that day?” he asked the lot of them.

The suddenly-toothy cobblestones had snapped resentfully at Honeydew’s hooves as she ran atop them, desperately dodging winged saxophones that swooped down on her like angry crows. Then HE had appeared, in a thick poof of playing cards.

“Well, well, well!” He had said, eyeing her snidely. “Looks like this one's got a truckload of emotional baggage just begging to be played with! Let’s see…” and then he snapped his fingers.

Then the next thing Honeydew knew, she was a fourteen-year-old again, trapped in something resembling a time loop, or an endlessly repeating film. She was returning home after having just watched that Pony Chicks movie at the theater, and was letting herself in through the front door of her house.

Then voices from upstairs had drawn her attention, voices she recognized as her mother’s and a strange male. Up the stairs Honeydew went, silently as hooves would allow for, until she stood before the door of the bedroom her beloved father and mothers slept in. It was unlocked when she nudged it open.

There sat Honeymoon, the mare who’d given birth to her and Honeybee and Honeysuckle, in the lap of that great gorilla-ish minotaur, Bronze Bell. The two of them ground together in tandem. The homewrecker gave a shuddery moan as he exploded inside Honeydew’s heroic mother, his thick monkey hands coiled around her forelegs.

Her mother’s eyes snapped open, staring at her horrified daughter with shock and dismay. And then time looped backwards on itself, and Honeydew was returning home after having just watched that Pony Chicks movie at the theater, and was letting herself in through the front door of her house, and when she reached the part where she walked in on her mother with that bull-headed ape, the pain hadn’t dulled but was fresh, fresher than before, and then time looped backwards on itself, and Honeydew was returning home after having just watched that Pony Chicks movie at the theater, and was letting herself in through the front door of her house…

...Again and again and again… and if Discord had gotten his way, Honeydew might well have been stuck reliving that moment endlessly for all time, but the Elements of Harmony had prevailed, Order and Sanity were restored to Equestria, and Honeydew was free to live her life.

Except, in one sense, she hadn’t been freed at all. In one sense, Honeydew was still reliving that horrible moment, again and again. To this day.

Honeydew had not stopped reliving that moment since the night it had actually happened to her, back when she was fourteen years old.

“Why’re yah bringing that auld pigshit up now?!” Exit Wound snarled, the heat in her voice revealing that a nerve had been touched. “What does that motherless wankshaft have ta do with anything?!”

“Well, as you know, the only thing capable of beating Discord is the Rainbow of Light. Making the Rainbow requires all six Element Bearers,” the human explained.

Then he pointed at Rarity.

“The Bearers are the only thing keeping Discord in check.”

All the other gangsters were moaning and muttering and hugging themselves and exchanging worries between themselves. Discord had visited MILLIONS of people on his Day of Chaos to toy with their minds: from Ponyville to Bitaly to Saddle Arabia. The human had no idea how fortuitous he was to have skipped all that.

“Teh… Teh… Celestia… Celestia, she can just…” Exit Wound stammered.

“…Hold auditions and cast an Element of Loyalty understudy?”

It was like the human was some hopelessly clever schoolteacher admonishing a dunce pupil with failing grades.

“What, you have another thousand years to wait around? That’s how long it took to find these Bearers. And that’s after the Elements rejected Princess Celestia herself! Celestia served her people loyally for over a thousand years despite having the powers of a goddess. Can the world count on the Sicklefin Gang to find someone more loyal than that, while Discord’s running amok?”

It was like no torture had taken place at all. Exit Wound seemed to be choking. All around Honeydew, the other gangsters’ troubled noises built and built.

“Kill Rarity, and Discord’s got no leash,” the human proclaimed, standing upright on his obsidian hooves with barely a wobble. “Kill Rarity, and you’ve made us all draconequus playthings for all the rest of eternity. And even if he’s not feeling up to messing with us, who’s to say the next power-mad tyrant isn’t something worse, like a magic-eating monster or something?”

Exit Wound’s second-in-command approached. “Boss… what’re we gonna do?” Blunt Trauma asked. “Does this mean we have tah keep this mare alive?!”

“Shut et, Blunt! Oi’m THINKING!” With her magic, Exit took off her hat and wiped away sweat as she looked at her badly bleeding captive. “For now, nopony touch her!”

And with great nervousness, Exit Wound sent waves of healing magic over Rarity.

“Oi won’t let him scramble me brains again!” Honeydew heard Exit mutter feverishly. “Oi WON’T send meself inta teh poorhouse a second toime! Me money’s moine! MOINE! Them thieving leukemia charities and soup kitchens won’t bankrupt me ever again!”

But you’re no Element of Harmony. Honeydew thought at the human darkly.

Rarity must’ve read her mind, for she took one look her way, and started blubbering, “Lero… I can’t… I can’t let them hurt you… my sweet prince… I can’t let my sweet prince be hurt…”

“It’s okay, princess.” The human licked his lips. “Rarity, your life is the one that’s most important. Not mine. Everything you just heard me say… I wasn’t just blowing smoke. You’re an Element Bearer, and the whole world depends on you to stand strong with the other Element Bearers and defend it from the forces of evil. If you died, no one could ever replace you.”

“What about you?” Even with Exit closing her wounds, she looked more wretched than ever, and her voice shook. “Who could ever replace YOU?”

The human shrugged. “I don’t matter,” he told her calmly. “I never really mattered. This world would’ve gotten along perfectly fine without me and will keep doing fine when I’m gone. When’s all said and done, I was never anything more than a curiosity in this world.”

The weathermare stared at the human she loved, eyes overflowing with tears, and strangled keening noises from her throat.

“You have to live,” the human continued. “These thugs…”

And he shots sharp glowers at Exit, Honeydew, and all the other gangsters behind him.

“...they know what’s at stake if you die. They value their self-preservation, so they’re going to keep you alive. Don’t antagonize them. Don’t make a single noise they don’t want you to make. You’re the Element of Loyalty. You have so many bigger things to be loyal to. Celestia, Luna, Equestria, Ponyville, all your friends, and our family. You need to be strong for them all. They’ll need you. Whatever happens to me… just live happy and strong, my love.”

The human’s smile was soft and genuine. Honeydew could scarcely bring herself to credit the selflessness he had spoken with. Her heart throbbed and her lungs seized up to hear it, leaving her stunned straight to her core. This was who she’d been fighting? This person?

What for?

What was it all for…?

“What? What is with this, Bee? You suddenly think it’s okay for ponies to hump monsters? You turning into Mom or something? I mean, you got her wings, maybe you got some more, too...”

“Don’t you say that!” Honeybee had snarled back at her. “Don’t you dare, sis. This has nothing to do with Mom, I’m not abandoning you two…

Honeydew stared down at the cheerleader uniform on her body, at the pigtails that didn’t belong on a mare her age. Dyed blonde. Because blonde was how Exit Wound preferred her hookers.

Honeybee…

Honeysuckle…

Widescreen…

Ivory Keys…

Her sweet little foals…

Had she betrayed them all for absolutely nothing?!

Red rage roasted her heart. Ponies were shouting words at her, but there was too much fury for her to hear as she knocked the demon bonobo down to the ground, biting down on his heinous face with a pit bull’s fury. His screams only made her dig her teeth in harder. The venomous snake! Planting doubts in her mind!

Where did this Archfiend of Lust get the GALL, acting all valiant and purehearted?! He was just MOCKING her and everything she’d suffered and sacrificed for this moment! She had sensed his malevolence from the start! He had forced her to become what she was now! Well, she’d show him! She’d bring him down! She’d show him true pain!

“You’re going to die without a shred of dignity,” she swore, standing up and spitting out putrescent primate blood, as his hooved hands covered his bitten face.

“Scrounger! Scrounger! Scrounger The Dog! Get over here!”

“Already, Dewy?” asked Exit, incredulously. “But we haven’t nailed teh horseshoes onta his new hooves! We ain’t even fecking stuck his new tail up his tailhole!”

“Don’t care!” Honeydew yelled. “It’d just get in his way! SCROUNGER!”

* * *

Off to the side, a door opened in the darkness. The footfalls of the newcomer who’d been patiently waiting all this while were slow and markedly soft, especially compared to the clatter hooves made. A soft, padding step and the faint clack of claws on the floorboards. All the same, he wasn’t exactly noiseless. Not with the excited snuffling from his wet nose. Not with his deep, heavy open-mouthed panting. Not with the way the claws on his forearms scraped and dug across fur and skin.

Every single gangster all but flattened themselves against the far wall. Even Honeydew and her sugar mommy gang boss eyed the newcomer with no small amount of dread. The skewbald unicorn glanced upward and gave a signal to one of the ponies on the upper catwalk. It was almost with a sense of squeamish reluctance that this pony brought her spotlight to shine on the Diamond Dog who had entered.

Diamond Dogs repulsed Lero Michaelides. ‘Cave trolls spliced with canines,’ he’d called them once, (and how Rainbow Dash had laughed!)

Admittedly, part of it was their general physical unattractiveness: the lack of any of the cuteness so characteristic of their four-legged cousins. But what repulsed Lero most was how they could have made something of themselves.

Diamond Dogs had just as much sapience as ponies… and himself, for that matter. They’d been blessed with hands that could’ve crafted ingenious inventions. A capacity for spoken language, which could’ve given voice to poetry, love songs, and groundbreaking philosophical insights. Had they simply put their minds to it, Diamond Dogs could easily have done as minotaurs had, and crafted their own respectable civilization. Possibly even founded an empire! Just where had their race gone so wrong?

But this one… the one they were shining the spotlight on, the one sizing him up…

“Don’t you think Scrounger The Dog’s beautiful?” questioned the dog.

Lero might’ve lied. Or he might’ve gone for brutal honesty.

“Don’t you look at Scrounger The Dog’s body and think: gorgeous dog! Breathtaking and bedazzling dog! Loveliest dog in all dogdom!”

Lero was too sickened to ask himself which breed of regular dog Scrounger closest resembled. But his head was a big, squarish thing, and so was his muzzle; his ears were floppy and hung low. He stood at almost the same height that Lero did, with a dense pelt of cream-colored fur.

And Lero had first taken him for an undead creature. An actual zombie, brought back by a necromancer’s magic. The possibility that this ghoul of a Diamond Dog might actually still be living came slowly, and intensified the human’s horror. If this dog was alive: HOW?! In his condition, how could he even bring himself to stand upright? Why was he here, and not in a hospital? Or a hospice? Or better still, under quarantine? This Diamond Dog was a code red health hazard to everyone within a two-mile radius!

For the body of Scrounger The Dog amounted to nothing but a walking, breathing, self-aware incubator of innumerable diseases. Even if Lero were a doctor, he didn’t know if it were possible to count just how many infested this dog.

Scrounger’s obscenely long and dangling canine tongue swelled with bulbous verrucas. Cold sores abounded along every inch of his gums. The dog’s fangs showed not the faintest trace of white, all black and brown and mustard yellow. Lesions circled his mouth.

The left half of Scrounger’s face hung limp and slack from some form of partial facial paralysis, though his right half was curled up in a horrible smile. Vile predatory intentions shone at Lero through Scrounger’s vastly bloodshot, herpes-infested eyeballs.

“You make such a foxy stallion,” panted Scrounger the Dog, wincing ever-so-slightly with each step. There were rashes on the dog’s feet, and he walked with a strange limp, as though the nerves within his legs weren’t what they should be. More rashes gloved his forepaws as well, which were scratching along the many, many dermatological nightmares pervading his outer body. Particularly the places where the fur was thinnest or had fallen out entirely. Scrounger bled very easily, even from the lightest scrapes of his claws. All sorts of different fluids oozed out of the Diamond Dog.

“Scrounger’s heard how you liked to fiddle around with all the ponies, Mr. Human,” Scrounger The Dog told Lero. “Fiddle and diddle every one of them you can lay your paws on.”

Pus, thick as tomato soup, dripped from purple pustules. Grayish-white curds of what Lero might’ve mistaken for cottage cheese clung to fur beneath a row of nipple-like cysts. Frothy bluish-grey mucus discharged from cauliflower-like lumps. Thin reddish-pink fluid wept from watery blisters.

“Scrounger The Dog’s just the same as you. Scrounger’s fiddled. And Scrounger’s didded.”

Arguably, Scrounger’s body odor was his second-grossest physical trait. He reeked of decaying tuna, cloying ammonia, and rotted onions, of soured milk, spoiled garlic, bad eggs and moldy bread, of pungent mushrooms, algae, and sopping wet medical waste, of dog feces, dog urine, dog vomit, and wet dog. Lero’s eyes watered harder the more of Scrounger he had to breathe in.

“And after Scrounger’s done with you,” The Diamond Dog promised, stopping directly in front of him, towering from Lero’s position on all fours, “Soon enough, you’ll be every bit as pretty as he is! And then you can pass that prettiness onto all your ponies friends when you fiddle and diddle them.”

There’d been a few times, in his chats with the Swapped Five, where Lero Micheadlies had felt he wasn’t actually conversing with ponies, (even deluded ones) so much as the cutie marks, themselves, which used their new hosts’ bodies as their flesh-and-blood sock puppets.

Similarly, the longer Lero listened to this creature talk, the stronger it seemed that the one actually speaking wasn’t the canine, but the sinister collective of STDs which dwelt within Scrounger The Dog. A illogical, irrational, nutso thing to think, no question. Yet still pervasive, somehow, and every bit as repugnant as it sounded.

“Ravage him, Scrounger,” Honeydew commanded. “I want to see you to ravage every hole on him.”

“The ears too?” Scrounger asked eagerly. “The nose too?”

“Go ta fecking town on ‘im, Scrounge,” said the porkpie-wearing unicorn Honeydew stood next to. “Give ‘im a few new bloody holes ta remember yeh by. S’wot Oi’d do.”

“Scrounger’s pretty sure he’ll never see such a nose or such ears ever again…”

His paws clamped down on Lero’s cheeks, and he started off by bending forward and licking the human’s face with gusto and no end of slobber. Scrounger’s stumpy tail wagged vigorously behind him.

“Oh, oh, this is so wonderful!” Lero heard Honeydew say. “At last, I finally feel like I can be completely happy again!”

“Et was worth every weird thing Oi jammed up yar tailholes?” asked the skewbald unicorn.

“Oh, yes! Oh, yes!”

“Even teh moice?” asked the Sicklefin underboss, saccharine sweet.

Honeydew spoke no answer. Under other circumstances, Lero would have loved to have seen the look on her face… but that would require opening his eyelids. And he could not afford such to risk that bumpy, disease-ridden tongue touching his eyes. He kept his mouth tightly shut for the same reason, and even tried his best to squelch his nostrils together.

“Open your mouth!” Scrounger demanded, between fervent licks. “Open your mouth for me! Scrounger wants to taste your tongue!”

All it takes is a transfer of fluids, Lero heard his old sex ed teacher warn in his mind.

One single ‘love bite’ from a guy like Scrounger...

Suddenly, Lero could no longer feel the dog’s putrid mouth on his face. Scrounger’s paws were still holding his cheeks, he could feel the claws and the whitlows at the tips of the dog’s paws, but that was it. What was going on? With bated breath, he dared to crack open an eye.

Lero Michealides was not the sort of man who enjoyed gaping at male genitalia, even on the best of days. In this society of nudists, he’d always taken pains to aim his eyes everywhere but that area in the company of stallions.

The twisted, half-necrotic, knotted organ between Scrounger The Dog’s legs, with its jungle of unspeakable venereal growths rooted into it, was exponentially more gut-wringing than all the rest of him put together, six times over. Up it rose, until it was pointed straight at him. As much a promise of a grisly end as the barrel of any gun.

“This is gonna hurt,” Scrounger The Dog whined somewhat miserably as he hardened. “Fiddling always hurts sooo much now. Not like the old days. But when’s the next time Scrounger’s gonna be able to diddle a human?”

“LERO!”

Down from the catwalk flew a pegasus mare no one was expecting to show up. A mare with a cyan-colored coat, a rainbow mane and tail, magenta eyes, and three butterflies on her flank, who wore a sports cap and a whistle around her neck. She landed by Lero’s side, startling Scrounger The Dog into stumbling a few steps backwards.

How had Rainbow Dash found this place, wherever it was? How had she snuck into this room, under all these gangsters’ noses?

But the next second, Rainbow found a large, bespectacled, and very furious skewbald unicorn jabbing the glowing point of her horn against the center of her throat, as though it were the tip of a spear.

Author's Note

The human stepped aside, and Rainbow quickly summarized what Honeybee had told her, ending with, “...so I just wanted to warn you. Be careful, big guy.”

He nodded soberly. “I’m not going to let [Honeydew] scare me, but I’ll remember and be careful.” The human smiled at her. “Thanks, Dash. I promise I’ll watch my back.”

She nodded, and let him turn to head back to help Spike. Yeah, and I’ll be watching your back, too, she promised silently, glancing at Lyra and nodding. We all will.

...The very last words that AnonAuthor wrote for his Xenophilia series were of Herd Bellerophon swearing to all be vigilantly on their guard against Honeydew.

The way I figure... there HAD to be a reason.

I'd like to thank everyone on my team for helping me with this, once again. Rikmach, Southpaw, SpinelStride, and BadWolf9510, to whom I owe special thanks for writing an important segment of this chapter for me.

Please give his spinoff story, Into The Hedge, a look.

And help keep Divided Rainbow's TV Tropes Page page updated.

Thirty-Three: That We All Better Relate

As Twilight Sparkle lay face-up on the floor, staring at the fevered eyes and quaking cutie mark of Rainbow Dash, her rapidly-working mind jumped to thoughts of Spike and Discord.

Spike had gotten angry that one time and wrote to Celestia asking for Discord to put him under his Bewitchment. Through some means, Celestia had contacted Discord after getting Spike’s letter. And Discord had come to Spike to alter his memory.

Her conclusion: she needed to get to Spike, pronto, and have him write to Celestia, asking to have Discord alter Rainbow’s memories. The draconequus had already done it once… back after Lero had tried going to Rainbow’s cottage to show her all her old Wonderbolts and weatherpony stuff.

“Okay, Rainbow Dash,” said Twilight, in her most pacifying tone, getting up back up to a stand. “We’re… we’re going to get to the bottom of this. We’re your herdmates, there’s no need to lash out at us...”

“It’s wrong!” Rainbow moaned. “It feels like acid’s been poured onto my skull! Those moves… those moves I used on Honeydew… how could I have possibly…?”

“Don’t think about any of it,” Lyra told Rainbow firmly. “Just do not let yourself think about it. Refuse to.”

Rainbow’s face scrunched up, as if she was trying to shove the offending thoughts away… before she let go an anguished cry. “I can’t!”

A screaming Sicklefin ran past the three of them into the next room, her entire hindquarters on fire.

Their gazes followed the horrific sight, before Twilight snapped out of it. “Look, girls, this isn’t the place for chatter. Rainbow, Lyra, get yourselves up against me. I’m going to teleport us outside this building; then we can talk.”

The other two mares pressed themselves as closely against either side of Twilight Sparkle as they could. It was downright unnerving, how Rainbow Dash shivered against her as if she were standing in a freezer. As though to be extra-sure, Lyra Heartstrings wound her tail tightly around Twilight Sparkle’s. Rainbow Dash saw this happen and wrapped her own tail around Twilight and Lyra’s as well. The unicorns gave the pegasus reassuring looks.

Twilight Sparkle let her horn fill up with a large amount power. In her mind, she pictured the exterior of the quarry mill. When teleporting, it was always important to visualize a vacant, unoccupied area, away from other living beings… in order to avoid the horror that was ‘teleportation splicing.’

There had been a point southeast of the mill’s front entrance, a point that was quite a few yards away from where Corporal Wolf Pack and the ponies in her squadron would probably be standing. Wildflowers had been there...

* * *

Perhaps Twilight’s own agitation had distracted her. Perhaps Exit Wound had cast some sort of spell on the quarry mill, itself, preventing magic users from teleporting in and out of the building. Perhaps all her recent injuries and fighting had fatigued her. Whatever the case, Twilight Sparkle and her herd-sisters now found themselves standing inside some sort of office instead of a small grove of wildflowers. Twilight knew immediately that she was still within the Boulder & Daughters Quarry Mill because she could hear Sicklefins in other rooms, yelling loudly.

This side office was a very unimportant-looking room; a metal desk, two filing cabinets, and lots of undisturbed dust. The door was closed, so the strange cold mist hadn’t crept inside. Twilight had a hunch that they could hide in this place successfully for a long time if they all kept quiet. But Rainbow Dash wasn’t really cooperating on that account.

“It’s wrong, it’s really wrong, the whole thing doesn’t make sense,” the pegasus was saying, baring her teeth in a hostile way, like one of her animals, breathing hard, foaming spittle building along her lips.

Cozy Flow’s Dreamless Doze; yes, that’d be the spell to use on Rainbow Dash. Not only was it a powerful slumber spell, Rainbow Dash’s sleep would need to be a dreamless one. With her sanity crumbling like this, Twilight didn’t want to think what kind of nightmares her subconscious might concoct.

“No matter how I look at it, I don’t understand it…!”

Then Twilight could levitate Rainbow onto her back and try teleporting again. This time, she’d try appearing at the quarry mill’s front entrance, and then…

“Of course you don’t,” Lyra told Rainbow Dash, reasonably. “You’re lacking a vital piece of information. Information I have.”

Both Twilight and Dash snapped their heads around at their aqua-coated herd-sister. “You have?” they responded in baffled unison.

When Lyra placed her hoof on the Swapped pony’s shoulder, she was not attacked for it. Rainbow’s attention focused on her, desperate for the explanation. “Now, Rainbow, I need you to keep it together, and stay with me on this. Can you do that? Because I am telling you the information you need.”

When Rainbow Dash nodded at Lyra, the look in her eyes put Twilight in mind of a suicidal earth pony who’d just been convinced to take a single step backward from the edge of a cliff. But now Twilight felt panic… it almost sounded like Lyra was about to confess everything about the Swap!

“Do you remember when I’d just gotten back from my sabbatical, and we were all eating at Crispy’s, and I was telling you all about those three grandmasters I went and visited?”

Huh? Cozy Flow’s Dreamless Doze slowly depowered from off the tip of Twilight’s horn.

“That… wow, that was a REALLY long time ago, but I kinda vaguely remember it…” Rainbow said.

“Do you remember me speaking about Master Hushpuppy, who turned out to be a changeling? A changeling who passed on a couple of secret, forbidden techniques to me, right before she died?”

It was impossible to tell whether Rainbow did or didn’t remember; the pegasus’ face was all anxious attentiveness. For her own part, Twilight Sparkle could scarcely recall anything about what Lyra had said about Hushpuppy at Crispy’s. Too much else cluttered her mind.

“Changelings, as you know, focus on mimicry. But through intense training and meditation, Master Hushpuppy was able to take all that to a whole new level, far beyond anything her fellow changelings are capable of.”

“What do you mean?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“It’s simple. The ability to learn anything, to absolute mastery, instantly, and permanently.”

“Huh,” said Rainbow. “So what cool new powers did you get for yourself, Lyra?”

“For myself? Not a thing,” the Still Way grandmaster said. “But for you, Rainbow Dash, I got you a mastery of the Lightning Strike, Feather Leaf, and Rolling Earth fighting styles, plus a smattering of Vortex and Windblade thrown in, just for good measure.”

Both the other two mares’ breath stopped for several seconds.

“Yes, Rainbow,” Lyra Heartstrings said. “I’m the reason you’re suddenly a master in several martial arts.”

“But... how? When?” Rainbow babbled.

“It wasn’t that many days ago. We were all still in the middle of our heat. Had to be around three or four in the morning. A nightmare had woken me up, but the rest of you were still sleeping. I looked down at you, Rainbow, and made my decision. While you slept, I set up a zero state connection to your mind, just as Master Hushpuppy taught me, and funnelled those martial arts directly into your brain.”

“Why?!”

“I foresaw the need,” said Lyra, with a pointed look at the bloodstains on the pegasus’ coat; both Honeydew’s and Rainbow’s own. “You’re an Element Bearer, Rainbow. Evildoers will want you dead. And you’ll need to be able to defend yourself when the bad guys corner you while you’re completely alone.”

“I…” Throughout Lyra’s story, Rainbow Dash had been growing calmer. Her unbalanced mind finally had a straw to grasp onto, but based on the twitching of her mark, and eyes, it still needed more to put itself at ease.

“...Okay.” The pegasus let out a long, slow, deep breath. “...Say I believe you. Say that’s true. How’s that even work!? You’re not a telepath! You can’t feed the information into my mind, or somehow magically give me years of training.”

Lyra didn’t even skip a beat. “Of course. You’re entirely correct.” There was one single doorway leading out of this office room. Twilight watched Lyra peer at it as though suspecting a Sicklefin might be listening in on a great secret she was about to unveil.

“Rainbow,” Lyra turned back to her, her voice low, “are you familiar with the Collective Unconscious?”

The pegasus’ face looked as if she’d swallowed a spoonful of soup heavily seasoned with a completely unfamiliar spice. “Uh… I think… isn’t that some kinda psychological concept thingy by whatshisname, Thick Cigar?”

“Actually, you’re thinking of Shadow Aspect,” came Twilight’s absolutely needed correction. “Honestly, ponies attribute everything psychological to Thick Cigar, as though he were the only therapist to have ever…”

“The reason I bring this up,” Lyra interrupted, “is because the Collective Unconscious is not just some psychoanalyst’s concept. It’s a real place, Rainbow. Real as this very room all of us are standing in.”

With those words, Twilight experienced the fleeting sensation that her life had transformed into a young adult fantasy novel. One of the ones that involved crawling into the space under the bed in order to enter other worlds.

On a different day, Twilight Sparkle would have quickly spoken out and refuted this malarky, or she might’ve laughed at its sheer ludicrousness. What stopped Twilight was the look of immersion on the Swapped pony’s face.

“The Collective Unconscious is a mental state that organizes all the experiences of a given species. There is a section of the Collective Unconscious where you can find all the different abilities and talents a pony could ever have. And Master Hushpuppy taught me how to tap into it through a truly one-of-a-kind meditative technique known as the zero state,” Lyra continued to explain.

“The zero state?” Rainbow Dash repeated, tilting her head in confusion.

“Yes,” said Lyra. “If you were to capture a changeling and try and force her to reveal everything she knew about the zero state, she wouldn’t know what you were talking about. If you were to go to any Still Way practitioner… any martial artist, they’d tell you that the zero state was nothing but a bunch of horse apples. That’s just how big a secret the zero state is!”

Twilight realized how extremely lucky they were that this had all happened to Rainbow Dash instead of Rarity. There were certain less-than-true things that unicorns could tell pegasi and earth ponies that’d never fly with other unicorns. Lyra Heartstrings was always such a spiritualistic soul, almost holy-seeming, at times. Coming from her, it was easy to believe the Collective Unconscious truly was a real place unicorns could visit. Twilight could never have pulled it off, not even with Dash’s sanity at stake. She was too grounded in magic as a science. She’d be cracking up halfway through this gobbledygook.

“Whoa,” Rainbow breathed. “So, wait… let’s say I went into this ‘zero state’ thing myself…”

“Which you couldn’t, since you’re not a unicorn…” Lyra quickly amended.

“I could browse through all these different abilities and, say, snag myself some xylophone-playing skills, easily as a book from a library?”

Lyra gave a single nod. “Yes. And then you’d be a xylophonist virtuoso. Instantly. Which is how you’re a master martial artist now.”

Twilight slowly shook her head, but said nothing. What was the name of that first Still Way grandmaster whom Lyra had visited before Master Hushpuppy? Strawflower, yes, Master Strawflower, the one who was going to be in that new Bay Breeze movie. Lyra had almost missed her calling in life. She’d have done equally as well in the performing arts as the martial ones. However much screen time Lyra ended up getting, Bay Breeze had definitely underused Lyra in her film.

Slowly, the crazed tightness in Rainbow’s muscles relaxed. Her cutie mark was ceasing to spasm. She went so far as to smile gladly. “Well, thank Celestia you DID that, Lyra!”

In short, Rainbow Dash had deemed this tale of Lyra’s to be an acceptable means of explaining away the paradox that had been threatening to consume her.

“Wow… that zero state thing sounds really useful! You oughta go give Rarity some martial arts too! I got a hunch she’d LOVE them!”

And indeed, Rainbow spread her wings, looking ready to put Lyra on her back and fly her out to Rarity immediately, so she could zero-state their lead mare into a multiple martial arts champ, as well.

Oh no. Oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no oh no… Twilight almost moaned.

“Actually, Rainbow, it’s not quite as easy as all that.” Lyra’s grave face melted Rainbow’s ebullience at once. “There’s a terrible price to be paid for instant gratification. You see, for every new skill you acquire through the zero state… you sacrifice one year of your life.”

“WHAT?!” Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash both exclaimed together.

“Yes,” said Lyra, with stoic acceptance. “If, before, I was fated to die of old age at 110, I will now instead die of old age at 106. Three years for the Rolling Earth, Lightning Strike, and Feather Leaf… plus a year for the Vortex and Windblade, since they’re only ‘smatterings.’”

“But… four years…” Twilight remembered Spike and Lero describing the look of guilt that had appeared on Rainbow Dash’s face, the day they visited her after her cottage had been rebuilt. Their description matched what she was seeing now.

“Lyra, I would never, ever, EVER ask you to do something like that for me! Not even if I was desperate!”

Lyra Heartstrings got nose-to-nose with Dash, staring her down like drill sergeants stare down green new recruits.

“Let me tell you something. If that psychotic Sicklefin boss were to appear here right now, I’d take a magic blast through my BRAIN for you, Rainbow… I’d sacrifice ALL the years in my life for you in a heartbeat, if it meant you’d live one millisecond longer! Why? First reason: you’re an Element Bearer. Our whole world NEEDS YOU far more than it needs me.”

At that moment, smoke snuck in through the space beneath the door, floating in front of Twilight’s eyes, and forming into a piece of paper. For now, Twilight set the message from Spike on the desk without reading it, waiting for this confrontation to complete.

“Second reason: you’re my herd-sister and I love you. How could I ever do anything less?”

Everything Lyra had told Rainbow just now was no lie. Not even an exaggeration. Twilight knew Lyra too well. Lyra Heartstrings really would lay down her life for Rainbow Dash’s sake, if the moment called for it… Even if that wasn’t Plan A. And because Twilight knew Rainbow, too, she could see how deeply moved the pegasus was by these words.

“But still… four whole years… how can I ever repay you for that?”

Lyra put a hoof on Rainbow’s shoulder and looked her steady in the eye. “Simple. Live, Rainbow Dash. Make the most of what I’ve given you!” she bade her. “Live fully and love life! I did NOT sacrifice those years of my life so you could sink in a quagmire of guilt and self-recrimination!”

Rainbow Dash folded a wing across her eyes and began to cry into it.

“You guys are the best,” she sniffled. “The BEST. I can’t believe I ever, ever doubted we were right for each other.”

Nudging Rainbow’s wings aside, Lyra came up and hugged Rainbow Dash. Twilight was quick to join them, hugging both her herd-sisters. Very soon, Rainbow was hugging them back.

“But… still, one more thing that’s bugging me,” said Rainbow Dash, rubbing the last of the tears from her eyes. Twilight winced as she saw a faint twinge from the Butterfly Mark. “That big nasty mare with the glasses and the really thick accent… she said that I was an empath. That I have some freaky sixth sense-reaction to my animals’ deaths. Remember that, Twilight?”

It was funny how, with certain elephants-in-the-room like Dash’s empathic link to her animals, the Swapped Five failed to acknowledge their existence for as long as they could get away with. Until their noses were forcibly smashed against them, the way Exit Wound had with Rainbow Dash. Twilight wondered: did the Swap blind all them to it? Or was it a form of willful obliviousness on their part? Like an overweight pony refusing to recognize her obesity?

“How did I even GET that?!” Rainbow asked.

“It may be you have what’s called a latent ability,” Twilight Sparkle told her, having a genuine contribution. “It has been known to happen sometimes. There’s a famous case about a mare named Sticky Syrup who suddenly acquired precognitive abilities when she was a great-grandmother. I’ll show you the story when we’re back in the library.”

Sticky Syrup wasn’t a made-up character Twilight had imagined up on the spot. She’d been a real pony, who really had developed startlingly potent prophetic abilities in her dotage. Her amazing predictions had all centered around her grandchildrens’ marriages and love lives, (the oldest of whom had been ten years old at the time of Mrs. Syrup’s passing.)

But what really mattered was this: the madness that had been flickering in the pegasus’ eyes had been diminishing this whole time. Now Twilight Sparkle saw the spark extinguish completely.

“Whoa. Cool,” Rainbow said with a grin. “Don’t worry, Lyra, your secret’s completely safe with me!”

Even if Rainbow Dash were to go and do some fact-checking in the future, this was a pretty solid cover story she and Lyra had devised, which would hold up to scrutiny. But Twilight Sparkle didn’t see any real scrutiny happening.

For one, neither the pegasus’ ‘Rainbow Dash’ side, nor her ‘Fluttershy’ side had ever had much interest in detective’s work. For another, Twilight doubted the Swapped Pony would seek to disprove the story that was keeping her sanity intact like tightly-wound gauze around a nearly-severed neck. Credulity seemed to be an important psychological defense mechanism which Starswirl’s unfinished spell had instilled the Swapped Five with.

“I’m… really sorry about all this,” the pegasus told the other two. “Don’t know what got into me.”

Their smiling shrugs told Rainbow Dash: forget about it.

“Hey, it looks like Spike sent us something,” Lyra said, turning her eyes upon the note on the desk. Twilight opened it up, and the three of them read it.

“Wow… GALLOP, huh?” said Lyra, after they all reached the end.

At that moment, they heard a shrill, angry yell, and Spike’s message was dropped.

“Holy… that sounded like Rarity!” exclaimed Twilight.

“It probably is Rarity,” said Rainbow, turning towards the door with a cocky grin. “Angel must’ve freed her. Good boy.”

“Angel?” Twilight repeated.

Rather than answer, Rainbow Dash rolled the muscles in her legs, loosening them up.

“Well, Lyra, you gave up four years so I could be a whiz at five different martial arts,” Her attitude was like it had been before the Swap. “Be a shame if I didn’t use them, right?”

“A crying shame,” Lyra agreed.

“Let’s go save our stallion,” said Twilight.

They opened the door and stepped out into the mist and snow.

* * *

Snow packed the entire floor. All around and beneath Greasy Frog’s hooves, chilling the very underside of all four of his namesake frogs. Outside, it was a moderately warm evening. Within the Boulder & Daughters Quarry Mill, it was an indoors blizzard. The size of individual snowflakes varied from specks all the way up to the size of doilies.

If Greasy Frog had been a unicorn, like one of those nasty Element Bearer dames that’d magicked this snowstorm in here, he could’ve probably cast some kind of warming spell on himself or something. But he was an earth pony, so he just had to bend his head and trudge forward. Snow blanketed Greasy’s coat and soaked in. Maybe the human had been onto something; some days, it really didn’t pay to be naked.

The mist made it nearly-impossible for Greasy to see where he was going. From somewhere else within this damned mill, he could hear the shouts and cursing of his fellow Sicklefins. Blind luck brought him to a door and he decided to try it, but thick, thick ice bonded the door to its frame; bucking it down was the only way to enter.

The new room Greasy Frog stepped into was a wider, more open space, but it was just as snowy and foggy as the room he’d just been in. Still, he had to move forward, if for no other reason than to keep away the frostbite. One hoof in front of the other, one hoof in front of the other… urgh, now on top of the snow, there was also freezing sleet and even hailstones pelting him…

Something very fast and pony-shaped bolted past him, and when it did, blood spilled from Greasy Frog’s left flank. It didn’t even feel like a proper kind of knife; more like an icicle with sharpened sides. The earth pony caught sight of the pony-shape as it flew forward ahead of him.

Greasy almost wanted to describe it as being ‘dressed like a Wonderbolt,’ except the uniform’s color was wrong. Purple instead of blue. Winged skull logo instead of a winged lightning bolt. It had a horn and wings. It grinned at Greasy in a way that spoke not of joy or glee, but a grin promising terrifying horrors.

The Not-a-Wonderbolt circled around then swept in from another swipe, moving like the wind, itself. Another slicing cut, this time on his right. Greasy turned and fled for his life. The Not-Wonderbolt came up behind him, like a hammerhead after a lone swimmer.

Greasy Frog had already seen what’d happened to Brass Hooves when he had done this, but the earth pony was scared and acting on simple equine instinct. Greasy Frog wasn’t one of the Sicklefins’ big bruisers like Lumpy or Cosh or even Bruiser, herself… but when the Not-Wonderbolt got close enough behind him, Greasy reared his hind legs back and bucked her in the face.

Except his hooves didn’t meet with bone and flesh. It wasn’t like kicking a thing made of meat. It was like kicking an equine-shaped electrical bomb. The pony-like illusion vanished into vapor, a few shards of ice fell into the snow, and electricity travelled up Greasy’s steel horseshoes into his body. Enough volts to restart the heart of a stallion who’d gone into cardiac arrest.

Greasy fell sideways into the snow, twitching and hurting, his heart spasming painfully for several seconds before finding its regular rhythm. When the swirling, snowy wind around him whistled and whipped around him, its sound was like breezy, frigid laughter. Shaking, the Sicklefin rose back up. And to his left, he saw a section of the damned fog amass together, thickening, taking on a purplish color, forming into…

...The same damned Wonderbolt-thing.

Greasy Frog broke into a gallop. The Fog-bolt thing flew behind him at a slower pace than before. Every so often, it would shoot lightning from its horn, many near misses, but several blasting him with jolts of electricity. Lightning would nearly hit his right side and he’d have to veer left, down a hallway. Lightning would nearly hit his left side, and he’d have to veer right, through a door. All too late, Greasy realized what was actually occurring here: he was being herded. The damned Fogbolt was the sheepdog and he, the sheep.

But by then, the Fogbolt had brought Greasy where it wanted him to be.

Before her.

Her horn wrap was off. She levitated in the air, held upright by wind and cloud, horns and eyes alight with a blue glow as she channeled the power to engulf the place with this hellish storm, her hair whipping about her head in the wind, giving the impression of a purple halo, an angel of weather, a demon of the storm.

Not only was she out of her birdcage, the cage, itself floated beside her, held aloft in a miniature-sized tornado. Well… miniature for tornados, at any rate. And the cage wasn’t empty, either. Other Sicklefins were stacked inside the birdcage like flapjacks, underbelly upon back. Not only were their legs partially encased in dense ice; this ice was also frozen horribly against the cage bars. The unicorns seemed to be completely unconscious, while the pegasi and other earth ponies probably only wished they were. Greasy Frog recognized Tight Screws, Ghillie, Jail Break, Ice Pick…

A monstrously-sized chunk of hail; not so much a hailstone as a hail-cannonball dropped down onto Greasy Frog’s head from above. Snow went up Greasy’s nose as he fell forward, dizzying pain bursting in his skull. Then unicorn levitation lifted the earth pony up, bringing him all the way to the Element of Loyalty. Greasy felt like a worm on a hook being eyeballed by a furious fisherpony.

“Do you know why this building is still standing, Mr. Sicklefin?”

Her voice echoed with thunder. The white unicorn’s horn, glowing with its immense power, actually hurt Greasy Frog just to look at it… or maybe that was just sleet getting in his eyes.

“Do you know why you and all your fellow felons aren’t buried under four tons of rubble?”

“It’s cause ya ain’t that powerful, weather witch!” shouted Ghillie recklessly, before something jabbed into her face.

It wasn’t even a bit of the weather witch’s weather. Greasy Frog’s eyes needed to focus a bit more before he could make out… a rabbit atop the Element of Loyalty’s back. Greasy hadn’t even seen the rabbit at first because it was a white-furred little critter riding upon a white-coated mare with snow blowing violently in all their faces.

The rabbit had a long, sharp, thin stick of wooden debris clutched in his mouth, as though it were a ridiculously long cigarette. Ghillie bared her teeth at the rabbit for jabbing her face with it. That greatly amused the rabbit.

“It’s because somewhere in this facility, my prince is still alive,” said the Element of Loyalty. “And I’d like to know where he is.”

“Prince?” Greasy Frog asked blankly. “I dunno no princes.”

“Lero!” snapped the wicked witch of the weather. “The human. My stallion. The one you chained to a gorilla statue and tortured!”

This blizzard which she had conjured around them didn’t seem to bother her in the slightest. In fact, the white witch seemed right at home in all this cold; like a polar bear.

“I dunno where your monkey’s at, ma’am...”

A sharp shot of electricity hit Greasy Frog again. It wasn’t even from the white unicorn’s horn; one of those damned Fog-bolt things had circled back around and done it for her.

“...Dude, do you want me to get you a shovel?” quipped Jail Break.

“...S-s-shovel?” Greasy Frog replied blankly, still wincing and shivering.

“You know, for the hole you’re digging yourself into.” Jail Break responded.

“I’m not looking for a monkey!” the Element of Loyalty seethed. “Lero is not and never has been a monkey! Now for the last time, tell me where Lero is, you slimy toad!”

“L-l-look, lady, I just launder the m-m-money!” Greasy whimpered, through chattering teeth. Even looking at her was like looking at a snarling polar bear. “I d-d-didn’t even laugh that hard at the g-g-uy!”

“Here’s a thought!” sneered Ghillie. Like the boss’ moll, Ghillie had way more bile than sense. “It could be your two-legged sweetie-pie died from the extreme cold! Wouldn’t that be just… YOWCH!!!”

This time, Greasy saw the bunny jab his stick straight into Ghillie’s pink gums.

“You long-eared, buck-toothed, lint-tailed weasel!” Ghillie yelled. “I’ll make a hat outta you!”

Then a green fireball suddenly appeared in front of the Element of Loyalty. She jumped back from it reflexively, but then seemed to relax, and even recognize what was happening as the fireball turned into a piece of paper.

“Wait…” Ghillie suddenly said, as the white witch went over and started to read it. “Didn’t the boss cast a spell on this place to prevent that dragon of theirs…?”

Dragon? Greasy Frog wasn’t sure what Ghillie was even talking about. All he knew what that he didn’t like the way that Element of Loyalty was smiling as she read the message.

“...local Royal Guard reserves outside… yes, yes… GALLOP, hmm?” she said, letting the letter drop.

To Greasy’s right a frozen window crashed apart as a metallic canister catapulted through, leaking thick greenish gas into the air.

The white witch cackled like some vicious aristocrat, wind swirling close to her face in a bubble to protect her (and the rabbit that now snuggled up into her mane) from the gas, while Greasy Frog felt his eyes begin to water...

* * *

Equine nomenclature is often complex and interesting. When a Donkey and a Pony Mare have a foal, it’s called a Mule. When a Zebra and a Donkey have a foal, the offspring is known as a Zonkey. When a Pony and a Zebra have a foal, it’s called a Zony. Captain Tiger Stripe of the GALLOP forces was a zony, (although if you called her a pony, she’d not correct you.)

Others often compared the GALLOP captain to an actual tiger even before learning her name, for she looked like one in equine form. The orange of her coat had been inherited from her pony father. Her distinctive pattern of black stripes was a gift from her zebra mother. Tiger Stripe even had a few sharp fang-like teeth in her jaws. Once they’d been all been square, but then she’d gotten her teeth cracked in a fight, decided she liked the look, and then had a thestral dentist cap them as canines.

Of course, this was all difficult to appreciate today, since Cpt. Stripe’s distinctly tigerish coat coloration was impossible to see under the tactical suit covering her body, as well as the gas mask over her head. But then, Tiger Stripe wasn’t wearing anything different than any other pony in her squad.

The gas masks, in particular, were designed to protect the GALLOP ponies from all the weeping gas they’d catapulted through the windows of this mill. To the naked eye, the weeping gas appeared as murky as smoke. But through the lenses of the GALLOP’s specially-enchanted gas masks, the gas just lent a greenish coloration to the room.

“I’m worthless! Just wor-hur-hurth-less!”

Ah… here was the first of the Sicklefins. A glacier blue mane, and a coat as white as the snow she was lying upon, with an ice cube for a cutie mark. “Nothing but low-down, no-good criminal scu-huh-hum!” she continued to bawl.

Some of the ponies on Tiger Stripe’s team took prescription antidepressants. Weeping gas could be thought of as the polar opposite of an antidepressant. It induced depression -- a truly crippling level of nihilism, self-loathing, and general malaise -- in anypony who breathed it in, both chemically and magically. It incapacitated most beings, rendering them unable to resist arrest.

“Police!” yelled Tiger Stripe, pointing her weapon at the mare. “I want all four of those legs where I can see them!”

“Guh-go ahead,” sniffled the Sicklefin with the ice cube mark, holding her arms out. “I’m nothing but a mon-hon-hon-ster…”

Tiger Stripe gave a nod to her right at Thunder Maul, and the pegasus soon had the perp cuffed. Then their teleporter, Ghost Flash, stepped up and set her hoof on the back of the perp’s neck. Flash’s horn shone, and then both she and the Sicklefin winked out.

Tiger Stripe’s team circled the space where Ghost Flash had been a moment ago, weapons at the ready, giving Officer Flash time to evac the perp in the paddy wagon outside this facility. But thankfully, none of the Sicklefin’s buddies came to attack them, and soon enough, Ghost Flash reappeared back in the same place on the snowy floor where she’d disappeared from.

Another victory for the General Assault Limited Liability Operational Patrol.

Before proceeding into the next room, Tiger Stripe pressed herself by the door and used a special tactical mirror -- a small oval glass on the end of an extendable stick -- to check to see whether the coast was clear. It wasn’t.

Three Sicklefins were in the next room. There was a pegasus and an earth pony, both of whom were crying miserably into the snow, but also a unicorn stallion.

“Quit yer bawling, ya poxy munter!” the unicorn stallion was shouting at his pegasus cohort.

The unicorn had made excellent use of his magic. A dome of continuously swirling wind encircled his head and kept out the weeping gas, as efficiently as a deep-sea diver’s spherical helmet kept the seawater out.

“Buh-but life’s meaningless!” wept the pegasus. “Don’t that make ya sad?”

“Bugger me up every hole!” the unicorn growled. “You’re an useless as tits on a bull! As tits on that human… I saw him when he stripped, big hairless ape, and he got TITS on ‘im. Wonder if that white mare MILKS him from there…”

Strangely enough, Tiger Stripe was almost willing to swear that the unicorn’s wind magic seemed to be growing stronger the more he spoke.

“Puh-probably the muh-milk tastes awe-haw-ful!” the weepy pegasus cried.

Tiger Stripe gave a signal to his fellow GALLOP ponies, and then kicked the door the rest of the way, and then rushed in.

“Hooves in the air!” barked Tiger Stripe. “Lights off on that horn of yours, bub!”

“And breathe in all THIS arse gas?! Go jam it up yer clunge!” sneered the unicorn, his horn’s power shining all the brighter.

The unicorn shot a fireball straight at Tiger Stripe.

“Incoming fire!” Her team all dodged the fireball thanks to months of training.

“Spunk-stained twonkers!” the foul-mouthed unicorn uttered in an exhale, and not only did his wind shield reform twice as powerful, every new fireball he cast seemed successively bigger with each new profanity he spat. If this were true, Tiger Stripe knew some scientists who would be fascinated to study this punk.

The next second, though, the trash talker’s eyes got treated to a nice triple whammy.

Cloudglass was a fragile variant of cloudcrete, the material which pegasi used to build their cloud homes. Cloudglass was mostly used for building their windows. The GALLOP ponies all averted their eyes as Thunder Maul’s prehensile feathers dug into a side pocket and lobbed a ball of cloudglass the size of a robin’s egg at some hard ice by the trash talker’s forehooves. The cloudglass shattered.

The trash talker was deafened by a clap of thunder, that muted everything else.

And he was blinded by overpowering light.

And also electroshocked by a minor quantity of lightning.

It was the light and sound of a lighting bolt from the moment of its creation. ‘Thunderblasts’ were what they were called.

As the trash talker sucked in a large lungful of weeping gas, Ghost Flash teleported behind him. Not only did she cuff his hooves, she also brought out a horn wrap and secured it to his horn before escorting him outside with his buddies.

And all of the GALLOP ponies were packing many, many sets of horn wraps, cuffs, and wingbands.

* * *

The trio of mares navigated their way through the now-disorienting mill, filled with a miasma of fog and weeping gas, which Twilight guarded them against as soon as she recognized what it was.

"In here! It looks clear!" Lyra called, figuring that Lero would head someplace clear. It'd be a good place to start, anyway. The herd-sisters found themselves in a large cafeteria with a sizable dining area, a serving area, and what seemed to be a kitchen beyond that.

However, it became clear that they weren’t alone. In the middle of the dining hall stood a maroon-coated, sandy-maned unicorn mare, dressed in a pinstripe jacket and bandoleers holding dozens of knives which she now levitated out. The myriad of blades orbited around her, several switchblades popping in and out of their sheaths as she played with them. “Well, well, look what we have here!”

“Stop right..!” A knife embedded itself in the wall next to Twilight’s head, causing her to reflexively jerk away. “Whoa! That nearly hit my eye!”

Twilight Sparkle saw words written on the blade of the knife: PROPERTY OF SWITCH BLADE. She quickly returned her attention to the knife’s owner.

Switch Blade turned her acid-green eyes towards them, peering out from under her fedora, and let out a brief chuckle. “Always go for the eyes in a fight!” She snapped open one of her remaining blades to emphasize. “Mmmmm… I’m gonna put a nice, big, leaky red grin across all your throats, right after I stab your peepers out.” She cooed, licking the edge of her knife as she taunted them.

Various expressions of horror and disgust crossed the other mares’ faces. “Euuuugh! Why does everyone in your gang have to be so completely horrible?!” Rainbow bleched at her.

Switch Blade let out a snort. “Sorry. You must’ve confused us for all them family-friendly gangsters.” She slowly stepped towards the mares, the clop-clop of her hooves being emphasized by the snick-snick of her blades. “You wanna know who I’d really like to sink these carvers of mine into? Your human. Oh, not for the reasons you think. Not for insane racism, like Honeydew, and not for glory, like Exit Wound… See, I know these rich apothecaries way out east. Y’know, the ones that sell powdered armadillo shell as a cure for baldness and mashed jackalope tongues to fix arthritis. It’s mostly nonsense, but hey, they fetch a high price.”

Rainbow Dash looked like she was going to be ill. “Those… those monsters! Slaughtering all those animals, and for what? Quack remedies!”

Switch Blade let out an amused, disturbing peal of laughter. “Yeah! Right on the money! Anywho, one of the big-name apothecaries got it into her head that your human would be the ultimate aphrodisiac, bigger than even dried phoenix sphogum! A single human toe would fetch a fortune in those circles.” Switch Blade sharpened her blades against one another, causing an audible scritch-scritch noise, a contemplative look crossing her face. “How much do you think they’d pay for his-”

Finally, it was too much. “THAT’S IT!” Rainbow snarled, charging hoof-first at Switch Blade.

“Rainbow, Wait!” Lyra called, moving after her, Twilight right behind.

It was the moment Switch Blade was waiting for, dodging to the side, preparing to lash out with her namesake at the right moment. If she timed it right, the fool would practically gut herself...

The blade was snapped out of the Sicklefin’s aura by a stronger, more practiced mint-colored one.

“Hey!”

Only to have it jammed into her mouth when she opened it.

The telekinesis slammed Switch Blade’s mouth shut, only for an aqua hoof to smash into it seconds later. She felt her teeth give way, and...

click

Switch Blade felt blinding pain and saw the metallic glint mixed with crimson as the switchblade erupted from her cheek. She let out a muffled squeal of pain and collapsed to the ground, squeaking again as she cut her hoof as she moved it to the source of pain instinctively.

All hell promptly broke loose. Bay-colored auras cover the exit doors, slamming them shut, locking them tight, Sicklefin after Sicklefin revealing themselves hidden in the room.

Lyra mentally reviewed each face as they appeared from the “Most Wanted” lists she kept up-to-date on as a Guard Reserve. There was Exit Wound herself, of course. By her side was Blunt Trauma, a teal-coated, eggplant-maned unicorn mare who was Exit’s second-in-command. Her wrench cutie mark let her often disguise herself as a mechanical expert, when in fact, she was more prone to strike people with such an instrument. Cement Shoes, the amber-coated, straw-maned unicorn mare whose cement-coated horseshoe cutie mark spoke of her talent of disposing the Sicklefins’ victims without a trace. Doublehead was another unicorn mare with a dirt-hued coat and a rust-colored mane; and the less said about her whip cutie mark, the better.

Those were from Exit Wound’s inner circle, but she’d brought plenty of enforcers. A trio of her biggest brutes. Cosh, who was large for a unicorn mare with a blonde coat and brown hair, with a quick temper, fast to bash you with whatever was convenient, her crowbar cutie mark representing the first object she used to brutalize some poor pony. Then there was the duo of Lumpy -- short, squat, but extremely muscular and horribly deformed, with a lumpy face only a mother could love -- her light pink and dull red mane complimenting her brick cutie mark. There was also Lumpy’s handler, Bruiser, tall where Lumpy was broad; her large, muscular frame would give Big Macintosh a run for his money, her cutie mark of a broken bone telling you pretty much all you needed to know about her.

Then, emerging from the kitchen was Cobra, A unicorn stallion, copper-coated and black maned, with a coiled snake for a cutie mark; the Sicklefin’s poison expert, with toxic spells to match. Aside him was Warm Needle, carmine red mane and champagne-coated unicorn mare with a pincushion cutie mark; she’d been a renowned acupuncture expert until someone crossed her and she killed them by superheating the needles.

Another duo; Chains and Spikes, fraternal earth pony twins, a pale blue stallion with ash grey mane and mare with the same coloration, whose cutie marks and weapons of choice match; chains and spiked horseshoes. Constantly bickering, they hated each other more than anything. Except one thing; everyone else.

Lastly, two of the few pegasi members; a wiry young mare with a silver coat and dark red mane with a thermometer cutie mark, named Mercury. Usually, she acted as lookout, but she was clearly here to fight. And lastly, Keen Edge, A persimmon-coated, forest-green mare with a knife cutie mark, indicating her talent with wingblades that were clearly strapped on and ready.

Lyra let out a low whistle. “Wow, feels like almost half the gang’s here. You must really be serious about this, Exit Wound.”

“Roight. Lemme tell et ta yeh straight from teh fecking shoulder; quit foighting us and surrender, and et’ll only be yer legs we break. See, teh way Oi figure et, yeh Elements only need ta be aloive ta control Discord, and if yeh fecking resist, yeh’ll be begging us ta kill yeh stone dead.” She looked over the three of them. “Well? What’s et fecking gonna be?”

“Hmmm.” Lyra looked around. “Well, I’m a grandmaster martial artist with guard training, but there’s enough of you that…”

“...We could beat yeh senseless from all fecking angles, and yeh’d look loike a pack o’ goiant chewed-up toffees before ya could say ‘spoider’s eyebrows.’” Exit Wound responded.

“...With the firepower you brought, that’s probably true. I’m not invulnerable, after all. However, we also have one of the most powerful unicorns in history...”

“...Who don’t know half teh combat spells Oi do, and clearly was never schooled for any proper BRAWL.” Exit Wound responded, looking over at Twilight. “Oi’ve tangoed with worse foighters than yeh, Sparkle, but Oi’ve kilt better too. Yeah, yer powerful, but that only goes so far.”

“But we still have...!”

“...A fecking animal caretaker with no animals? That’s yer ace? Without her fecking pet shop platoon, she don’t look loike she could kick snow off a ditch. What were yeh planning on doing ta me, yeh little sparrow fart?”

“THIS!” Rainbow Dash rocketed into the air. All of the Sicklefins’ gazes were tracking her, several unicorns summoning their spells…

Until the spell that Lyra and Twilight wove on her in preparation went off. Lavender-aqua light peaked to a blinding luminosity in picoseconds, causing shrieks of pain as the Sicklefins were blinded. Several Sicklefin spells went off, but without sight, their poor shots were effortless to dodge.

“That was totally awesome!” Dash enthused.

“Maybe we’ll call it ‘The Fantastic Filly Flash,’ quipped Lyra.

Rainbow paused. “...I don’t know why, but I really like that!”

“Enough chatter, girls, we’ve got criminals to deal with!” Twilight reminded them. “Divide and conquer!”

“Ack, Hey!” Rainbow found herself under rapid assault by the pegasi; adapted to dealing with flashes from lighting strikes, they recovered from the blinding first. She barely dodged Keen Edge’s wingblade, twisting out of the way so Mercury’s hoofblow only grazed her cheek instead of striking her head on... her martial arts training showing through.

“Rainbow!” Twilight called. “Try to fly around them really fast!” she finished, as spells leapt out at Rainbow.

Rainbow responded immediately, not even calling back, trusting Twilight knew what she was doing. She focused on the Feather Leaf training that came to her so easily now, dodging blows, fluttering around her foes effortlessly, like a leaf on the wind... when suddenly, she noticed the attacks stopping, and she looked back. The rainbow streak that trailed her having somehow been made tangible by Twilight’s spell, wrapping the two criminals up in the air, who fell to the ground with painful-sounding cracks and moans of agony.

“WAUGH!”

“LUMPY BASH!”

Twilight found herself under assault by the still half-blinded bruiser, following the sound of her voice, only managing to teleport away last second to avoid becoming an ugly smear under her hooves. Lyra spotted her reappearing in the kitchen, as she’d been looking that direction as she had been deflecting venom-filled spell bolts, (shaped like actual snakes, no less) and superheated needles being shot by the blinded unicorns who’d been positioned there.

The two Herd Bellerophon unicorns exchanging wordless communication with a glance, Lyra shouted, “Hey, this way, you stupid brute!” while moving towards the kitchen. Lumpy roared and charged behind.

“Oh, dammit, Lump!” Bruiser called, attempting to catch her wayward charge, but it was too late. Lumpy had a full head of steam -- plowing into the blasts that Lyra effortlessly dodged. Lumpy let out a roar of agony as she was hit by the blasts, and attempted to stop. Bruiser slammed into behind her, forcing them both… onto an ice slick created by Twilight. Lyra went into a controlled skid over its surface that left her off next to Twilight, but Lumpy and Bruiser’s momentum slid them inside the freezer which Twilight slammed and locked behind them.

“Two more down!” Twilight cheered, before teleporting away, when he spotted several venom bolts incoming, nearly hitting her as she vanished, a now clear-eyes Cobra stalked towards the the now alone Lyra. “Ah, there... the mage is away, now just the fighter.” Lyra lashed out with precise telekinetic strikes, only to find them dispersed to nothing, by just a flick of magic. “...You’re trained as a spellcaster, as well.” Lyra frowned. One of the weaknesses of Still Way was that trained spellcasters could negate the magical aspect; part of why the physical aspect was still emphasized.

“It comes down to this, doesn’t it?” Cobra hissed. “Taken apart by your superior, spell…” He unleashed a venom bolt which she leapt back away from it. “...by spell. Oh, dodging will give you time, but you know how this will end.”

“Perhaps. But there’s one thing you didn’t account for.”

“What’s that?”

“You broke open a gas line when you were blind firing.”

Cobra’s eyes widened as his head swiveled towards the faint hissing noise that was now so obvious.

A spark. A spell so simple there was simply no time to stop it.

The gas hadn’t much time to leak, which prevented the explosion from being too massive, letting Lyra leap behind cover. Cobra’s proximity allowed no such luxury.

Lyra smirked, brushing herself off while Cobra lay dazed. “The most important skill you learn is improvisation.”

Moments earlier, Dash’s jubilation for taking out the first of the Sicklefins was cut short by a table telekinetically slamming into her.

“Hah! Gotcha!” Cosh hooted, striding over to the pegasus under the table. As she lifted it up, she jerk back as Rainbow Dash blew her whistle as hard as she could. Cosh slapped it out of her mouth. “Smartass! There’s no way that’s going to help you now, the doors and windows are shut!”

Punch-drunk, Rainbow Dash giggled. “Yeaaaah, but you diiiiiidn’t reinforce the flooor!” she chanted in a sing-song voice.

“What...” Is what Cosh managed to get out before the ground exploded, and the Quarry Eel burst out from under her hooves.

The Eel’s name was Lee; he was a dear old friend of Rainbow’s ever since she’d helped him out with a toothache, years back. Lee had been the one responsible for doing the tunneling so her animals could infiltrate this quarry, and right now, his massive jaws were slamming shut around Cosh the Sicklefin, her scream cut shot as she vanished down its gullet.

“Oh, feck this for a game o’ soldiers!” Exit Wound snarled. “Blunt! Cement! Doublehead! Get on over, we gotta poleax this fecking eel! The rest o’ yeh, yank yer heads out of yer useless twats and take them out!”

"But there's only four of us left!" Warm Needle protested. Then there was a loud BOOM from the kitchen. "...three. Three of us left."

“Feck!” Exit wound swore, dodging aside a vicious bite from an eel before returning fire. “Handle et!”

“On it, boss!” Spikes and Chains chorused, before glaring at each other. “Suck up.” They snarled at each other, before charging at Rainbow and Lyra.

“Handle it… right.” Warm Needle shook her head, pulling out more needles, heating them up, so she could support her more physical comrades, when a purple unicorn popped into existence in front of her.

“Hey! Did you know momentum, a function of mass and velocity, is conserved between teleports!?” The unicorn informed her her.

Warm Needle didn’t hesitate, launching the needles at the unicorn, only to see them vanish in flashes of purple light… and a fraction of a second later, she heard matching pings behind her, before burning agony lanced into her body as she was struck by her own burning needles. She collapsed, screaming.

“In laymare’s terms: speedy thing goes in, speedy thing comes out.” Twilight finished.

Elsewhere, Spikes charged at Dash, while Chains lashed out with Lyra. Quick, sweeping blows of the chain lash out, Lyra attempting deflect it with a spell, only to find it grounded out, forcing her to leap back, evading the strike, which cracked open the floor where it struck.

“It's enchanted, huh?” Lyra commented.

“Yah don’t kill many unicorns without a little magic of yer own.” Chains grinned.

Meanwhile , Dash was surprised with how quickly the bulky stallion moved, causing her to dodge back again and again to avoid being gouged by the spikes, close strikes causing bits of down to be torn from her feathers. She took to the air, evading him entirely. “Ha! Can’t get me here!”

He promptly bit down on a chair and threw it at her.

“Ow! Jerk!”

“I don’t have to play fair if you fly! Hell, I don’t have to play fair at all!”

“Alright, that’s it!” The pegasus mare fumed and charged him!

“I’m actually impressed.” Lyra commented, repeatedly forced back by chain strikes. “Most non-unicorn thugs I've encountered tend to prefer mundane weaponry over any of the enchanted stuff.”

“Sounds like you fight a lot of rubbish gangs!” The Sicklefin cracked her chain, and it arced downward to smash on Lyra, at a longer range than she can dodge back, and too wavy to accurately dodge to the side.

CLANG!

Lyra had yanked off Keen Edge’s wingblade, blocking the enchanted chain, it wrapping around the blade. “Still, sometimes you just have to use what’s at hand.”

Whipping the wingblade around, Lyra yanked Chains off her hooves, wrapped her weapon around her legs, and flunging her over her head.

“Ow!” Rainbow jerked back, finding her hoof parried by Spikes’ horseshoes.

“You’re new at this, aren’t you?” He taunted, stalking ominously towards the pegasus, still tending her injured hoof.

“And you’re a bit overconfident,” she commented mildly, grabbing him as he approached, spinning in the air, and executing a perfect Vortex throw, flinging him of her shoulder.

Spike and Chains impacted with each other, then slammed into the ground.

“...Trade?” grumbled Chains.

“...Yeah.” Spikes replied.

Lyra was ready. Spikes charged. A volley of telekinetic blasts struck out at him, only to be batted aside, his spiked horseshoes glowing as their enchantment activated. Enough force was applied that Spikes was forced to a halt. However, he just wagged his hoof, tsking. “I’m not sure why you expected that to work.”

Lyra sighed. “You’re right. Which is why I’ll do this.” Lyra kicked off into a leap, spinning hoof-first at the earth pony. The blow struck home, but Spikes sprang around, using the momentum to come in for a grab, snatching Lyra out of the air, slamming her to the ground so hard it rattled her teeth. She only avoided getting her head smashed in by an incoming hoof by telekinetically propelling herself along the ground out between the legs.

Spikes attempt to smash her with his back hoof, but the opening led to a perfect punch to a delicate location, causing a yelp of pain and him to stumble away.

Lyra righted herself. “Too bad you didn’t think to protect that.”

Gritting his teeth, the Sicklefin glared at Lyra. “Hilarious,” he snarled. “You know what’s even funnier?”

“What?”

“Loose floorboards.”

Spikes stomped down on the floorboards beneath his hooves, which see-sawed up underneath Lyra and flung her into the air.

Rainbow weaved effortlessly around Chains’ weapon, her flight pattern shifting rapidly, evading the erratic whips of the chain with just-as-erratic flutters, rapidly closing in on Chains, smashing hard into her face with her hoof. Rapidly pummeling her with Lightning Strike blows, Rainbow was gathering up an electrical charge, finally unleashing the strike... only for Chains to pull up her chains and intercept it, reflecting the charge back upon her. Rainbow yelped, jerking back away, shaking her head.

“Not just unicorn magic!” Chains taunted, her chains lashing out and wrapping around the recovering pegasus.

“Hey!” She protested, as the mare yanked her in, smashing her with a blow, and knocking her away again with powerful force, before yanking her back, again and again, like a vicious yo-yo. Then with one final jerk, Rainbow wiggled her wings free, flared them outward, and reoriented the momentum to smashed her backhoof into Chains’’ face, kicking off, bouncing against the chain’s limits, before smashing back at her. Roaring in anger, Chains spun around, jerking Rainbow over her head, flinging her into the likewise aerial Lyra.

“Mff. Rainbow?” Lyra asked, wiping blood from her mouth.

“Yeah?” She coughed slightly.

“I think we’re going about this wrong.”

“How so?” she asked, their opponents closing on them.

“Perhaps it’s not time for divide and conquer anymore.”

Rainbow blinked, then grinned. “Let’s do it.”

“Hey!” Spikes and Chains chorused, as the Herd Bellerophon duo charged. Spikes was driven back, blocking rapidly, but it was only a matter of time, before blows made it through, smashing into him, and-

CRACK!

The chain cracked, knocking away the mares. Chains strode up to her brother, helping him up. “No one beats my brother but me!” she snarled. Rainbow and Lyra shook off the blow.

“Well, then, how about... Duo versus Duo?”

“Bring it!” chorused the siblings. “Stop copying me!” They immediately snarled at each other, only to be brought to yelps of pain as Lyra and Rainbow struck them in unison.

Righting themselves, the siblings struck back, only to find the two Herd Bellerophon mares flowing between the blows, dodging in unison, striking together, again and again, provoking openings and letting the other exploit it. The criminal duo found themselves unable to land a blow, as their fighting style had no allowance for protecting the other. While Lyra and Rainbow defended one another, synchronizing their attacks.

“It’s light fighting a mare with three forehooves!” Spikes exclaimed.

“Shut up and get them!” Chains responded, only to be struck.

And struck again.

And again.

And again.

Lyra and Rainbow pulled back together, forehooves glowing with telekinetic force and electricity respectively, and slammed them down, exploding against their foes, sending them flying, smashing through tables and chained, before they slammed into the kitchen serving counter, finally going limp.

“Hmph. Serves them right.” Lyra said..

“Hey, girls!” Twilight called. as she popped over to them, glancing over to the four Sicklefin unicorns engaged with the Quarry Eel. “Ready to wrap this up?”

At that moment, a bloodied Lee retreated from the sustained assault of the quartet of Sicklefins with an agonized roar.

"Oi’m really off me game... Can't kill a fecking jumbo lamprey, makes me madder than a midget with a yo-yo!" Exit Wound seethed, frustrated beyond measure that the Eel's thick skin had prevented them from dealing a killing blow. "Now, c’mere, and Oi’ll kick teh heart outta... eh?”

Rather than the ongoing fight she was expecting, or the clear win she was hoping for, Exit Wound found the rest of her gang down or worse, and three angry mares about to strike.

She opened her mouth to speak, to mock, taunt, threaten them, throw them off their game.

“NOW!”

She wasn’t given the chance.

The pegasus shot forward, enveloped into dual auras, Mint and Lavender.

“Force f.... no….” Exit called to her team, unable to finish before the pegasi stuck home, causing a kinetic explosion, Rainbows blending in with precision-focused blasts of lavender and mint, as the pegasus bounced between them, sticking with the force that could level buildings.

If anyone on Exit’s crew were a fraction of a second slower on pulling up their shields, they’d probably have been reduced to sacks of shattered bones. As it was, their shields shattered deflecting the force, leaving the shockwaves to flings them back against the walls. the force field holding the windows and doors flickered off as Exit lost concentration, windows shattering from the force.

Out of the corner of his eye, Exit Wound saw a figure moving through the smoke; a familiar profile, a uniform.

GALLOP.

She’d tangled with them before, she’d come out on top, but not by enough. But them and this trio? The situation was going rapidly downhill. The four of them were the strongest casters in the gang, they stood a reasonable chance of taking the three of them, but with GALLOP as backup? Not good odds.

With that, Exit Wound realized the scheme was up. She righted herself, snarling. “That hashes et! Oi’m gonna to kill everyone, burn your damn village down, and salt teh fecking earth!”

“Yeah? Well, bring it!” Rainbow called, readying for another strike.

With a bay-colored flash, Exit Wound and her lieutenants teleported away.

“...Hunh.” Responded Rainbow Dash after a beat.

* * *

Silence fell over the room, except for the moaning of the downed Sicklefins and the girls’ heavy breathing. The tranquility was shattered by a door being bashed off its hinges. “POLICE!” Several figures charged in the room, their leader bellowing, “SPELLS, HOOVES, AND WINGS DOWN!”

For a fraction of a second, the adrenaline still running through their veins caused them almost to lash out; but recognition registered before action. GALLOP was a famous elite peacekeeping force, and their uniforms were instantly recognizable. The girls stood down, spells vanishing before they cast. “Thank Celestia you’re here!” Twilight Sparkle responded, her shoulders slouching in exhaustion and relief.

As GALLOP officers spread throughout the room, securing the downed Sicklefins, keeping a wary eye on the trio, one stepped forward, approaching them. “Twilight Sparkle? Rainbow Dash?”

Twilight nodded. “Yes, that’s us.”

Rainbow Dash self-consciously shifted behind Twilight and Lyra, ducking her head shyly. “Uh, hi.”

Then Twilight nodded over to the mint-colored unicorn beside her. “And this is Lyra Heartstrings, another herdmate of ours.”

The GALLOP pony nodded. “Yes. That little dragon of yours told us about you, Miss Heartstrings. I’m Captain Tiger Stripe, of GALLOP. We’re here to rescue you.”

Another GALLOP pony stepped forward, clearly a unicorn. “Ladies… I’m Lieutenant Ghost Flash, I’ll be your teleporter for the evening. All of you, please come up to me. Lean yourselves against my body. I’ll bring you to safety.”

Rainbow Dash and Lyra started to move up to Lt. Flash before Twilight spoke up. “Wait! Have you found Rarity and Lero? Are they already rescued?”

Tiger Stripe shook her head. “Not yet, But we will rescue them.”

Twilight took a stance that Lyra immediately recognized: Resolute stubbornness. “Here were go…” Lyra muttered.

“Then I’m afraid I won’t be going anywhere.” Twilight stated firmly.

Tiger Stripe was glad the gas mask hid her exasperated sigh. “Please, Miss Sparkle, you have to come with us. Extracting you Element Bearers is our primary objective here.”

Twilight Sparkle shakes her head firmly and authority. “I’m afraid I can’t do that, Captain. I appreciate your dedication to your mission, but saving Lero and Rarity is mine."

Rainbow Dash stepped towards her. ”Twilight… maybe we oughta do what these ponies say. They are professionals; they know what they’re doing. I’m sure they can find Rarity and Lero.”

“How sure? Enough to put our stallion at risk? We’re professionals, too, Rainbow Dash. We’ve faced down far greater enemies than Honeydew and Exit Wound.”

Rainbow paused. “Well… That is true.”

“Ladies, I cannot allow...” Tiger Stripe started, before Lyra cut her off.

“Captain Tiger Stripe? I know we’ve been introduced, but I’m Lyra Heartstrings, Reservist of the Royal Guard. I know you were commissioned by the Princess to rescue them, but I’ve seen Twilight like this before; she’s not going to give in, and having to deal with an upset Element of Magic is simply going to make your job more complex. So I will assign myself to be her bodyguard; it’ll be my job she sees this through safely, not yours anymore. I’ll take any flak from the Princesses. Is that acceptable?”

Tiger Stripe nearly ground her teeth together. “I am not happy about this… but yes, that would be acceptable.”

Lyra turned back to her herdmate. “Now, Twilight, if Rainbow would rather not be in danger anymore, maybe it’s for the best that she…”

She was interrupted by Rainbow slamming her hoof down hard on the floor. “Forget it! I’m not going! Element Bearers stick together! Herd Bellerophon sticks together!” She smiled at the mares in her herd, finding the same smiles -- and determination -- reflected back at her.

A clearing throat from Tiger Stripe broke up the moment. “Ladies? Shall we continue with this train wreck? We have an Element of Loyalty and the world’s only human to rescue, and lawbreakers to foil.”

With a loud whoosh of wind, the door opposite of them blew open, revealing a white unicorn mare walking astride a tiny storm like a titan, a white rabbit astride her back, and a cage crammed with villainy behind her. “My dear, lovely, handsome GALLOP members, I believe I can help you finish some of those goals!”

* * *

“NO!” Came an anguished cry. “Glitter! No, Glitter, no, no, no, not you… Not you!”

Honeydew’s voice reached Exit Wound after she finished her teleport, and she followed the noise of her wailing, blowing aside mist, snow, and weeping gas with wind magic. Blunt Trauma, Cement Shoes, and Doublehead were right behind her. When they found her, Honeydew was bent over the body of Glitter Dust, which was wasn’t breathing and thoroughly, unnaturally swollen.

“Snake got her, eh?” Exit asked casually, eyeing the multiple fang marks on Glitter’s legs.

“Looks like it,” Blunt Trauma agreed.

“She was my friend! She was my FRIEND!” Then, even through all the sadness which the weeping gas intensified, Honeydew’s face screwed up in a glare of vengefulness. “I shall avenge you, Glitter Dust! The one responsible for your death… I shall make her pay!”

“Sounds fun! How ‘bout Oido teh honors, Dewy?”

And Exit Wound reared her hind legs back and SLAMMED Honeydew in the face with them, really letting the hobnails on her horseshoes sink into the miserable mare’s flesh.

Exit pulled out a cigarette out of her jacket and smoked it deeply as Honeydew cowered away, blood trickling down her face.

“Weren’t YEH teh one who said Miss Koindess’ snakes would be nothing but harmless li’l wrigglers?”

“I… I…”

“YER who’s ta blame for yer dear friend, there, being a fecking corpse. Yer the reason many, MANY good ponies are fecking corpses today. Or are goin’ ta teh hoosegow.”

She snuffed out the cig on Glitter Dust’s lolling tongue.

“Please, Exit, please…!”

“Honeydew, honey… don’t. Just don’t.” Exit strode closer to the mare responsible for all this ruination. “Oi’d cut teh lungs outta yeh for all teh apeshite ya put me gang through, but beyond all belief, yeh’ve proven capable inna foight. Oi still need ta leg et outta here, and Oi’m rapidly running out o’ backup.” She stepped closer. “Practicalities. That’s what saved yeh.” She leaned close. “But don’t push et. Or Oi’ll peel yer face off.”

A familiar look of terror crossed the face of the mare she’d dressed as a cheerleader, filling Exit with amusement. Honeydew made to rise up, but she stumbled on a hoof with a rather curious injury.

“Now who did that ta yeh?” Exit inquired. Blunt and Cement stopped behind her.

“Rainbow Dash,” Honeydew answered. Immediately afterward, her face burned in shame.

“Koindess gave yeh this here booboo, did she?” Exit Wound couldn’t help it; she burst into laughter. Not the deliberately hurtful kind, (though Exit didn’t at all mind the deepening shame on Honeydew’s face,) this was an honest burst of good-humored laughter. Her cronies chimed in, automatic and unnatural.

“Eee hee hee…. Celestia’s blistered bowels, what a bone-breaking wrecking ball that merciless li’l slip of a filly’s been, eh? Oi shoulda been fecking Element o’ Koindess!”

“Yah, boss!” agreed Cement Shoes, even as her boss hurried onward into the next room. “You’d have been a great Kindness! Great!”

Honeydew followed after them.

* * *

The device took up half of a very large storage room. Originally, there had been a lot of junk had been left behind in this place, and it had taken Exit Wound’s crew several days of hard, resentful grunt work just to remove it all. Then several more days were needed to construct the device, according to the blueprints Exit had successfully pilfered from the black market some time ago, for a moment just like this.

Compressors linked to gas turbines, which connected to pneumatic motors through all sorts of pipes and conduits to seven large jet-black crystalline columns surrounding a raised octagonal dais, colored a lovely shade of yellow.

“I’ve been meaning to ask; what is this contraption of yours?” Honeydew question, limping awkwardly on her three good legs.

“Shut your hole, you stupid little…!”

Exit Wound silenced Cement Shoes with a look.

“Et’s called a Teleportation Amplifoier, me auld flower,” she explained, coming up to Honeydew’s side.

“What’s it do?” Honeydew asked, curiously running a hoof along one of the turbines.

“Precoisely what ets name says et does: amplifoies teleportation spells. By a metric feckton.” Exit pointed at her three goons. “Blunt, Cement, Doublehead, let’s get this doojigger powered up.”

The four unicorns each stood in front of one of the seven dark crystals, pointed their horns, and began channeling magical power into them. Bit by bit, the crystals began to glow with an increasingly dark luminosity.

“Oi think even fecking Celestia can only manage a max o’ ten miles when she teleports from Point A ta Point B,” Exit continued to speak. “Somepony clocked et, when they was doing one o’ them world records lists, Oi think. But if auld Celly had THIS little gimcrack amplifoing her teleportation abilities, she could ‘port herself ANYWHERE. En-knee-wear. Any country. Any part of teh world. Teh moon, too, probably, or maybe even teh Human World. All with one single porting spell.”

“And we can port ourselves safe and sound back home in the Emerald Oisles!” said Doublehead, whose accent wasn’t quite as thick as Exit’s.

Exit Wound nodded. You didn’t attack a celebrity like Lero Michealides without a backup plan in place. In her peripheral vision, Exit could see Honeydew first grin in excitement, then look behind her shoulder at the door they just came in from, where the ponies they were trying to flee would soon be storming in.

“But, well, Exit, I hate to bring this up, but Twilight Sparkle’s no dummy. If anypony can figure out how to operate this contraption after we’ve left, it’s her. What’s to stop her and all the GALLOP ponies from using it to chase us to the Emerald Isles?”

“Oh…” said Exit, “Let’s just say et’s set ta self-destruct roight after we’ve used et.”

Honeydew came closer to where Exit was, eyeing the Teleportation Amplifier. “So… it’ll melt into slag or something? Like in the spy movies?”

“...Yeah. Yeah, let’s go with dat.”

Honeydew frowned at that phrasing, but didn’t push the issue. She was on thin ice already with these ponies.

The magic within the crystal felt close to overflowing, so Exit Wound raised her head and backed away a step, admiring the look of the magic churning within it, the way it gleamed with such gorgeous darkness. Then she looked to the right at Cement Shoes, Blunt Trauma, and Doublehead, still working to fill up their crystals. Stuff like this was why she was leader...

“Freeze!” commanded a loud voice.

A thunder of hooves, and in they came. The GALLOP ponies in their black uniforms. The Element Bearers that were involved in this mess: Twilight Sparkle, Rainbow Dash, the one who’d called herself ‘Element of Surprise’, or something, and Rarity, with some white bunny on her back for some strange reason.

A little earlier, Doublehead had told Exit that she’d seen the Element of Loyalty attacking and collecting Sicklefins in the very birdcage they’d shut her in. If so, Exit bet the birdcage must’ve been left behind somewhere, its new prisoners most likely escorted by the GALLOPs to a different cage outside the quarry mill.

“Barriers up, ladies!” Exit barked. “'Doublehead, keep powering up them crystals! All seven need ta be at full power!”

Blunt Trauma and Cement Shoes threw up forcefields, being skilled enough to weave them as a whole uniting their magic power together, blocking off the entire half of the room. It might not’ve been anywhere near as strong as what Twilight Sparkle’s infamous brother, Shining Armor, (or even Twilight herself,) was capable of, but they kept up against everything that was shot and thrown at them well enough.

As withering blasts of arrows, magic, fire, hail, lightning, and hoofstrikes hit the forcefield to no effect, The call of “Drop your forcefields NOW!” was barked by the GALLOP captain, after the first unsuccessful salvo of projectiles failed to penetrate.

“Feck me for a ten-bit prostitute, Oi knows that voice!” Exit suddenly exclaimed, turning to look at the captain. “Toiger Stroipe, yeh auld jizz-guzzler! Ain’t see yeh since that business in Whinnypeg! How’s that fecking partner o’ yers enjoying loife on just teh one leg?”

“You villain!” screeched the Element of Loyalty, as though she were a character in a bard’s ballad, back in the days of yore.

“You’re going down, Wound!” roared Tiger Stripe, with an admirable amount of wrath.

This entire time, Twilight Sparkle had stopped short, not even bothering to attack, her eyes tracing over the strange machinery, her brow furrowed in concentration as her eyes suddenly widened in horror and recognition. “Everypony! Please listen to me!” Twilight Sparkle yelled. Her herdmates and GALLOP turned to look at her. “You need to destroy that Sicklefin machine right away!”

Feck, Exit Wound mentally cursed. She knows.

“The machine, Sparkle-kitten?!” asked the Bearer of Loyalty, in confusion. “Why?”

“It’s called a Teleportation Amplifier. It strengthens the power of teleportation spells to an unbelievable extent, but it’s illegal because the underlying principle it operates on is inherently flawed!”

Exit Wound frowned as they talked, focusing, her horn glowing only faintly, scratching a few marks in the ground with her horseshoe- which also glowed.

“What, it doesn’t work?” the Element of Kindness asked. “So what?”

“No, it DOES work, that’s part of the problem! It supercharges the teleport spell, allowing the caster and her passengers to transport anywhere they want in the world. But the teleportation works by bending space and time so two locations briefly touch... bending spacetime that much causes it to snap back into place violently!”

“How… How violently?” Everyone’s attention snapped back to the other side of the barrier; Honeydew had been the one who asked.

Twilight blinked in surprise at the question, but still answered. “Depend… Depends on how far the teleporter goes and with how many ponies. Odds are though, this place won’t be known as Ghastly Gorge anymore, but instead Ghastly Crater.”

“The Emerald Isles,” Honeydew replied.

“What?”

“Exit Wound is transporting us to the Emerald Isles.”

Many of the Sicklefins gave Honeydew ugly, warning looks for volunteering such information to the enemy. Meanwhile, the expression on Twilight Sparkle's face was that of the special kind of horror reserved for those making the calculations that answer the question: ‘How many will die?’

“There won’t be much of Ponyville left!” she finally concluded.

“Is this true?!” Honeydew turned, looking in horror at Exit Wound.

Exit spared a moment to grin back at her. “Yeh bet yer granny’s dusty twat et is! Et’s a getaway that kills anyone chasing us, and destroys all teh evidence o’ a crime! Fecking. Gold.”

Honeydew’s eyes widened, and she she sat down in shock, he jaw slack, the horror of the situation overwhelming her.

“WHAT?!” squawked the Bearer of Kindness, as the rest of the ponies gasped.

“Double time, ponies! Take down that force field!” The GALLOP ponies pounded with all their force against the force field, which shimmered, but held; Blunt Trauma and Cement Shoes grunting from the effort.

Twilight Sparkle stepped forward, glaring at Exit once again. “I’ll handle this!”

"Twilight, wait!" Lyra shouted, but it was too late.

That was the moment Exit Wound was waiting for. When the purple unicorn winked out in a teleportation flash, it came as no surprise to her. What was a surprise, to everyone but her, was the paralyzing trap she’d etched in the ground while everyone was distracted.

“G-g-g-uuhh!” Twitched Twilight as she was caught up in its shocking grasp, held in the air with its paralyzing electricity.

“Using me own tricks against me? That teh fecking plan, numpty-noo? Lemme show yeh what fecking happens when yeh fecking try out-Exiting Exit.”

Exit telekinetically pulled a knife from her coat, raising her hoof to slice her frog. Blood welling from it, she twirled the knife in it, and with practiced effort, used the tip to paint a pattern on Twilight’s face and horn, which her glow spread along... and to Twilight’s horror, shifted into a sickly purple-green glow.

“T-t-that’s B-blood sac-sacrifice and D-d-dark Mag-ic-ic!” stammered Twilight Sparkle.

“Roight yeh be!” crowed Exit. “Funny story ta that; when yeh boot a talented spellcaster out o’ magic school, and leave her hoigh and dry, she’s loiable ta foind no end o’ bad eggs willing ta teach her all sorts o’ savage hexes! Loike this one,”

Then Exit lowered her head, touching her horn against Twilight Sparkle’s, and cast her curse.

“For twenty-four hours, yeh’ve cast some spells,
And that’s all very keen!
Encore! Encore! Cast ‘em all again,
Loike a lunatic slot machine!”

An aura of skewbald-colored light tainted with purple and green shone around the purple Element Bearer’s body, most especially her horn; like a section of a room which received four coats of paint, where every other part of the wall just got one. Twilight’s limbs were already limp as noodles, so Exit lifted the girl up with her telekinesis.

“Blunt! Cement! Lower teh barrier fer just half-a-fecking-tick, alroight?”

And they did so, just long enough for Exit to levitate and unceremoniously shove the Element of Magic outside the barrier before it resealed behind her.

“Miss Sparkle!” shouted one of the GALLOP ponies. “What’s… AAAH!”

For Twilight had suddenly conjured a gigantic hammer into being and used it to smash the GALLOP goon through the air, and straight out the room.

“Twilight, what are you doing?!” screamed the snake-loving Element of Kindness.

“Teleporter down!” called another of the GALLOP ponies.

“I did not mean to do that! I didn’t do that!” Twilight Sparkle screamed back in even greater dismay.

“Ha!” laughed Exit, as the magic hammer vanished. “Oi remember needing ta dodge that one!”

“No… stop!” Twilight told her own horn as it glowed brighter with involuntary power. She tried to at least turn away from her friends, but found she couldn’t; she found herself controlled, helpless, like a puppet; Twilight’s next spell then struck the floor between the Sicklefins and the GALLOP ponies, causing wooden and stone shrapnel to spray over them.

“What kind of spell was that, Exit?!” Honeydew whispered in horror, barely moving, still almost frozen.

Exit couldn’t really resist an awestruck admirer. “That, me auld flower, was an ‘E.W. Slitbleeder Special #23.’ E.W. stands for Exit Wound, ‘course. Coz Oi invented et.”

“What have you done to her?” Honeydew asked, with a faint rasp, as she was having a hard time remembering how to breathe.

The segment of floor which Twilight’s spell had struck was beginning to shift and crack as though some buried beast were emerging from underneath it.

Exit Wound continued to take her subdued behavior as awe and admiration rather than the sickening, creeping horror it was. “#23’s a real fatherfecker ta have cast on yeh, if yer a unicorn,” Exit explained. “See, yer compelled ta recast every single bit o’ magic you’ve used in teh last twenty-four hours, for twenty-four hours. At random. ALL whoile having yer body under me corporeal puppetry.”

“Corporeal…?” asked the dazed Honeydew, as stone and floorboard wood wrenched itself out of the floor, forming into a gorilla shape.

“Et means…”

“My body’s under Exit Wound’s control!” Twilight sobbed loudly as the floor golem proceeded to attack the Element Bearers and the GALLOP ponies.

“...just what she said!”

Exit Wound had a hearty laugh, her minions joining in a second behind, busy as they were. Honeydew just kept looking on, wide-eyed as Twilight’s horn then charged up with a big fireball spell, which she then aimed at Exit Wound’s foes, even while they were trying to shoot the rampaging golem down.

“...And as yeh can see, Miss Magic’s been dishing out some hoigh-caliber razzmatazz these past couple hours.”

“You let her go!” the Element of Surprise screamed at Exit.

“Save yer fecking breath ta cool yer porridge, ya gormless fecking window licker!” Exit screamed back, perfectly secure; their shield was now spared further attacks, now that GALLOP has other concerns.

Making the Slitbleeder cast the spells at random had been a stroke of genius on Exit’s part; it made it completely unpredictable. Not even Twilight Sparkle would have any clue which spell would be coming out of her horn!

“Ponies!” yelled Cpt. Stripe, “Aim knockout blasts at Twilight Sparkle! I repeat: shoot to stun!”

“In fact," Exit went on, "since our gal Twoiloight can’t control her spellcasting speed… et wouldn’t shatter me gray matter ta learn that her poor ickle horn’s getting a wee bit worn down…”

Pressing her advantage, Exit Wound disgorged spell after spell out of Twilight’s horn, its glow beginning to look disturbingly incandescent, as if it were heating up, tears forming in the Element of Magic’s eyes. “S-S-STOP IT!” she howled, her voice filled with pain.

“You misborn witch!” cried the Element of Surprise, precise blasts of magic striking the shield, seeking weaknesses.

“But… won’t the Elements of Harmony… die?” Honeydew finally found her voice. “And then won’t Discord…?”

“Dizzy will inherit this world,” Exit told the stunned earth pony mare.

* * *

Lero had spent the past several minutes sneaking and hiding, knowing that being found meant capture, death, or worse. It might have meant it taking a bit longer to be found by his allies, but alone, he simply couldn’t risk it. Thankfully, between one chaotic thing and another, no one really noticed Lero as he found the unconscious form of Lieutenant Ghost Flash, lying on the floor. He’d overheard what Twilight had yelled out to everypony, and knew what he had to do to stop this madness in its tracks, once and for all.

Rifling through the GALLOP pony’s gear would’ve been so much easier if his hands weren’t still encased in obsidian, but luck seemed to be on his side. He managed to pull out one of the horn wraps which Lt. Flash had been using to arrest unicorns with.

He was sure that the GALLOP pony would probably understand.

* * *

“Oi’ve thought et over, and Oi don’t even fecking moind if he turns me back inta a gives-away-all-me-money-bleeding-heart anymore,” Exit Wound continued. “What good’s money gonna even fecking BE in a world where teh oceans are made o’ orange marmalade?”

“But… but…”

“Aaagh!” screamed Twilight Sparkle as she shot a spell which shrank Captain Tiger Stripe down to nothing.

But before anypony could do Exit a favor and crush the GALLOP captain like a tiny jelly bean, the one who’d called herself ‘Element of Surprise’ shouted, ‘Uh… uh… Shigeru Miyamoto!”

And with those weird words, Tiger Stripe regrew back to her proper height.

“Lemme put this ta yeh in simple terms, Dewy; Oi tried everything Oi could ta keep them Element Bearers aloive. And they all fecked me over for et. And when yeh feck Exit Wound, Exit Wound fecks back, twoice as hard.”

By now, Honeydew knew all too well how Exit Wound thought: she was not afraid to die. Exit had even been taken by the idea of going down in a blaze of glory against Celestia’s forces. ‘A far better way o’ clocking out than a surproise knoife ‘cross me throat some toime in the future,’ as Exit, herself had once said.

But with all she’d already invested in this scheme against Lero Michealides, Exit was afraid of losing. If this worked, it would be a cowardly way of winning, but it would at least be a win. But as important as that was for Exit, it was steadily mattering less and less for Honeydew.

“Hey, look on teh broight soide: teh human won’t survoive this. That’s what really matters most, don’t et? And Oi’m gonna be so famous fer this… DEWY?!”

Honeydew always knew this might end in her death and imprisonment; taking down the alien monster was important enough to risk herself… but part of the reason she’d insisted on the remote location of the quarry was to not involve others. But rapidly, it looked like the only way to get at the human, now, was to sacrifice her home and family and countless innocents.

They very thing she’d sought to prevent by defeating the bonobo in the first place.

Never.

She looked up at the crystals. Doublehead had done a good job; they were now nearly charged to the top. Probably enchanted. Probably harder than steel.

But in the end stone was still just stone.

Honeydew leapt into action, channeling all her might into her uninjured forehoof. In an instant, she felt the microscopic fractures within the crystals, found the perfect shearpoints, the perfect position to strike -- everything she’d learned from Shattered Stone.

She drew back her hoof, her focus far past the surface, and unleashed the Shattered Stone Strike -- a blow that could plow through meters of solid stone or powder her living foe’s bones. Then she struck the crystal with a single, focused goal: Break this enchanted stone.

The crystal cracked. Honeydew saw a bright flash, but closed her eyes just in time, expecting it to happen -- feedback from the spell matrix being disrupted. She felt her hair singe and skin burn from the flash of energy, but while it was bad merely being close to an uncontrolled magical discharge, it was far, far worse being connected to it.

Doublehead screamed. Wild magic lanced through her in jagged blue-white arcs, convulsing her body and ripping bizarre strangled sounds from her throat. The crystal finally exploded, hurling her away from the device and slamming her against the wall. The wall cracked and gave way as her body struck, leaving Doublehead embedded limp and unconscious within it, her horn still smoking.

Even before Honeydew came down, she uses the momentum from her strike to push herself away, and spin around, time seeming to move slowly as she fell down between Blunt Trauma and Cement Shoes.

She waited for the perfect moment- their heads turned to follow Doublehead’s movement and...

She snapped out a split kick with her hind legs the moment she was between them. Blunt Trauma was looking away, the kick caught her square in the back of the head; they tumbled ass-over-teakettle, landing on a heap.

Cement Shoes, on her other side, facing towards her, was less lucky. She heard the snap of bone, and felt his horn give way- the shriek of agony was deafening as he collapsed, horn sheared off at the roots.

The force field vanished with a pop.

Landing, Honeydew span around, assuming the Shattered Stone stance. She leveled a glare at Exit Wound that would rival one of Exit’s own. “Everything I did here was to protect ponies, to ensure that proper Order was put back in place, and that the taint of the ape wouldn’t spread any further -- but most of all I did it all to protect my family! I won’t let anyone hurt them -- not the bonobo, not Discord, but especially not you. I’ll fight with everything I have to keep them safe!”

Exit Wound treated Honeydew to a glare that could only be called ‘murderous.’

“Yeh FECKER!!!!!” she screamed, and she was upon her.

* * *

Exit Wound’s focus on Twilight dropped, but the spell did not end. Undirected, she spun around, out of control, showering the room randomly with spells, forcing GALLOP and the Elements to take cover.

Lero saw his moment from the doorway; Twilight spinning away from their side of the room while the others ducked. Running on pure adrenaline, he went into an all-out sprint, vaulting off the back of a startled GALLOP Earth Pony, flying through the air, landing on Twilight’s back, scrabbling with his impaired hands to put the horn wrap on Twilight’s while avoiding her magical blasts, not realizing in which direction his efforts had pointed her horn..

* * *

Across the room, the scene was even more chaotic; Honeydew made powerful strikes, only to find them deflected by shields, precision blasts striking at her legs and sides. Within mere moments, she was bleeding from a staggering number of wounds. However, anyone who knew even passing knowledge of pony anatomy would recognize the strikes were meant to hurt, not cripple or kill... Exit Wound was intentionally toying with the focus of her rage.

“As soon as we’re back on teh Emerald Oisles, Oi’ll skin yeh aloive and dismember yeh slowly, Honeydew,” Exit promised. She sounded deranged, even to herself, but didn’t care. “Then… then there’s this zoo Oi know of! Et’ll serve as yer secret grave. After Oi bury yeh alive there, bonobos’ll walk over yeh, empty their bowels over yeh, and do what bonobos do best. Over where yer buried. Forever!”

“Twilight!” spoke a male voice, “Relax, now! It’s gonna be okay!”

Honeydew and Exit Wound both looked over, seeing the human fitting a horn wrap on Twilight Sparkle’s head. But before it could completely slip over… one final spell escaped the Element of Magic’s horn. A strange cone of light which shone upon the figures of Exit Wound and Honeydew at the same time.

* * *

“From one to another

Another to one

A mark of one’s destiny

Singled out alone, fulfilled

Joining hearts together,

Together sharing fate

By hoof and horn and feather

That we all better relate.”

These were the words which Honeydew the Human Hater and Exit Wound the Sicklefin Underboss heard in both their heads, resonating without end.

* * *

One moment, Exit Wound and Honeydew had been battling one another, tooth, horn, hoof and blood. In the next instant Twilight’s spell struck them, and suddenly they just… stopped. In mid-brawl. Their fury disappeared as their faces went slack. Eyes glazing over, empty and emotionless, lifeless, the two mares collapsed face-forward into the floor like discarded puppets.

Twilight Sparkle stared in paralyzed shock as the two thugs fell limp to the floor under the bright aura of her spell. Lero had finally, blessedly, secured the horn wrap over her aching horn. Twilight’s body still glowed with an ugly skewbald aura, and she could still feel spells form involuntarily from her horn, but with the horn wrap strapped on, it was like champagne in a shaken bottle trying to escape its cork: no effect. Which was good, because her horn was throbbing in pain, the rapid-fire involuntary spellwork starting to cause serious damage. She suspected her horn might be strained...

‘Yer compelled ta recast every single bit of magic you’ve used in teh last twenty-four hours, for twenty-four hours,’ she’d overheard Exit Wound bragging. She felt herself leaning weakly against Lero, held up by his arm around her. This was going to be exhausting! It’d seriously deplete her magic reserves which she was already heavily dipping into in this fight.

“Boss! Boss!” screamed one of the Sicklefins, even ignoring the fact that two GALLOP officers were clapping cuffs on her legs and roughly strapping a wrap to her horn. “Yer a blank flank, boss! Sweet Dark Lady Luna, they’re BOTH blank flanks!”

Everyone’s eyes shot back to the fainted ponies, their collective gaze landed staring in awe at their flanks. Honeydew’s cutie mark had been a slice of honeydew melon. Exit Wound’s mark was best described as a messy bloodstain. But now both marks were gone, their flanks as vacant and barren as their dolls'-eyes.

“What’ve you done ta Exit, ya witch?!” seethed the Sicklefin. Hate and disgust painted her face. “Yeh killed her special talent, didn’t ya?!”

But before Twilight Sparkle could form a response, somepony else shouted with clear relief, “No, wait, look! Their cutie marks are coming back!”

And so they were. From nothingness, the Bloodstain Mark faded back into being… upon the body of the melon seller. Simultaneously, Honeydew’s Melon Mark made its own reappearance… on the flank of Exit Wound.

“Me legacy…” Honeydew spoke, dull but clearly heard. She lifted herself to a stand on shaking legs.

“Me vendetta…” Exit Wound said, rising with Honeydew.

“Oh sweet Jesus, Mary, and Joseph…” Lero Michealides gasped in realization.

Exit Wound’s words echoed horribly again in Twilight Sparkle’s head: ‘Yer compelled ta recast every single bit of magic yeh’ve used in teh last twenty-four hours...’

How long had it been since she’d been in Rarity’s cloud house, casting the prototype spells on the animals? Five hours? Seven? Ten? She’d lost track of time. Whatever it was, it certainly hadn’t been longer than twenty-four hours.

Oh Celestia, I’ve Swapped another set of ponies. Twilight understood, feeling cold, numb, horrified. I’m watching their Swap happening right now, before my very eyes. This is what I did to my friends.

Twilight, Lero, and even Lyra all turned to look at Rarity and Rainbow Dash. Their Swapped herdmates seemed just as shocked as everypony else.

“But that’s... oh my gosh, that’s not Honeydew’s cutie mark!” Rainbow Dash said in a choked voice.

The horror show continued unabated. The two newly-Swapped ponies now stood facing each other, jaws hanging slack, eyes still and lifeless, and proceeded to discard the clothes they wore.

When Twilight’s beloved human stallion undressed, she usually found it sexy and alluring. But there was nothing erotic about this. The two ponies’ motions were utterly spiritless. Their gaping, thousand-yard stares bore right through one another, giving no evidence of a soul.

Exit Wound used her telekinesis, and off came her thin-rimmed glasses, her double-breasted jacket, and her hat. Honeydew just scrambled out of her outfit bodily, shaking off the pleated miniskirt, the cheerleader’s top, even the bands that held her dyed blonde mane in pigtails. Then the two Swapped ponies reached down for each other’s clothing... and began to re-dress themselves.

Nopony else even moved. Not the criminals, not the GALLOP ponies or any of Twilight’s herdmates, or even Angel Bunny upon Rarity’s back. It was all too surreal, and they could hardly have been more horrified if Honeydew and Exit Wound had ripped their own heads off from their necks and exchanged those, as well. After all, these weren’t just some purely cosmetic icons, some minotaurs’ spur-of-the-moment tattoos.

Every pony knew what a cutie mark truly represented: It was a badge of immense pride worn for everypony to see since foalhood; evidence of a discovery of themselves, their very soul revealed in a magical, glowing moment upon their own bodies. A cutie mark was something so personal and individual that it transcended any thought of covering it in a pony’s daily life. Clothing simply couldn't compete with the wearing of their personal marks for everypony else to see.

Honeydew had a much more slender physique than Exit Wound, so Exit’s expensive and battle-damaged jacket hung baggily on Honeydew’s frame. In contrast, the cheerleader costume which the Sicklefin underboss originally had Honeydew wear, squeezed down on Exit’s larger body so tightly, it surely had to be cutting off a great deal of circulation.

Then some unicorn behind Twilight Sparkle fired two magic blasts, each of which hit the newly-Swapped ponies in the heads, and knocked them down to the floor. All eyes turned to the attacker.

“Sorry!” said the GALLOP mare defensively. “Those two were really creeping me out.”

However surreal the scene, one pony wasn’t put off her grudge: Rarity, her face still etched with the anger that only a lead mare whose stallion was threatened could manage, walked up to where Honeydew lay blinking. “I ought to shave you completely bald with a rusty straight-razor, except maybe for the mane on your head. Then chop your tail off with pruning shears. Then I ought to have Twilight cast a spell on your body to reshape your skeleton so that standing on four legs isn’t natural any longer, and walking on two legs is...”

“Uh, Rarity,” Rainbow Dash whispered, coming up to the white unicorn’s side, “You… might not want to say such things in front of the GALLOP ponies…”

“...Followed up by another spell to transform your hooves into those hands and feet you so hate, then cover your bare naked skin in clothes from my friend Applejack’s boutique!” Rarity finished.

“Yeh’d fikkin make me human?” asked Honeydew.

“No, I won’t make you human. I’ll turn you into a mockery of humanity. You are unworthy of their beauty or ours… wait, what was that word you used?”

“Yeh fikkin dint fikkin hear de fikkin word ‘fikkin’ comin out me fikkin mouth?” In astonishment, Rarity backed away from Honeydew and her new accent. “That fikkin frosts me lucky charms, et does!”

Honeydew lowered her head in what appeared to be a well-practiced way. Almost as though some biological protrusion were positioned in the center of her forehead, just above her eyes. A protrusion capable of shooting a wide variety of deadly blasts at Rarity.

And the earth pony mare honestly seemed utterly shocked that nothing was emerging out.

“Fikkin come on! Fikkin come on! Yeh banjaxed me magic, dint yeh!?” She snarled at Twilight as GALLOP ponies forced Honeydew into irons. Meanwhile, Exit Wound’s eyes snapped awake, locking onto Lero instantaneously.

“LEMUR MONKEYLOIDES!!!”

She leapt into the air, murder in her eyes, attempting to spin around in the air in a forward roll, in an attempt to bring down her full weight on Lero's head. It was a Rolling Earth finishing moment, meant to knock strong opponents unconscious. On weaker targets, it could easily kill.

Thankfully, Exit Wound did not possess the flexibility that years of martial arts practice had given Honeydew, and ended up falling far short, and gracefully face-planting on the ground, landing on her legs wrong. Ponies winced at the obvious sprain as the dazed Exit Wound cursed and wailed in confusion. “Agggh! Get off me!” She cried as GALLOP officers tackled her, putting her in restraints and a horn wrap.

Quick, Twilight! Screamed a desperate, madcap impulse in Twilight’s brain. Recast the prototype cure spell on these two! It’s just two of them, not five different ponies! They’ll have no choice but to Swap back into one another! Never mind the explanation; have Lyra tell everypony else the Collective Unconscious made you do it!

Unfortunately, Twilight was wearing a horn wrap for a reason. It wouldn’t be until tomorrow that she’d have control over her own horn again. She might even unintentionally recast the Swap spell on some third set of ponies, if not more… Not to mention, she might not be able to. She’d probably have to see a horn specialist after all this was over to see if there was any serious injury to her abused horn.

“Me eyes!” Exit Wound then screamed, trying to rub at her eyes with her hoofs. “Me vision’s off! What have yeh done ta me eyes, yeh baboon banger?!”

“Now yeh fikkin mention et, me fikkin eyes feel a snitch fikkin wrong too.” Honeydew noted, squinting down hard through Exit’s glasses. It was prescription eyewear, Twilight was sure. Until she’d gotten herself Swapped, Exit had never removed them, not even when the battle was at its thickest.

“Yer a real poundstretcher, Twoiloight Sparkle, no fikkin two ways about et!”

Exit’s accent is so thick, there was enough for the both of them. Twilight thought to herself. Just like with Pinkie Pie and Applejack.

“Get them out of here!” Captain Tiger Stripe barked to her squad. “Get them all out of here! And get a medic for Ghost Flash, and find that dragon and have him write another letter to the Princess; tell her Majesty that we need some specialists to have this thing dismantled, ASAP!” Tiger Stripe pointed to the Teleportation Amplifier. The GALLOP ponies saluted their captain, and the good guys and bad guys alike were escorted out of the quarry mill.

Author's Note

Victory for the heroes, vanquishment for the villains!

And now, a special word of thanks to all the amazing readers who contributed Sicklefins to this chapter, including...

Quantum Shift for Greasy Frog
SIGWolf for Ghillie
Flink for Bruiser, Cosh, Lumpy, Cobra, and Mercury
Blazing Sword for Jail Break, Chains, Spikes, and Switch Blade
Aether for Warm Needle
Super Big Mac for Curse Mark
Zer0prototype for Ice Pick and On Ice

...As well as all the contributors whose Sicklefins didn't make the cut; I'm still thankful and happy you submitted!

And let's not forget all the awesome guys on my writing team: you rock!

Happy Halloween to you all!

Thirty-Four: Cat's Out Of The Bag

The sun wasn’t even up when Pinkie Pie arose in her bed at Sweet Apple Acres, smiling. Vaguely, she remembered the dream she’d just woken up from: she’d been at a party. Somehow, this didn’t feel like the first time she’d had that dream.

Pinkie gave a quick look over at her clock. Soon enough, the sun would be shining and when that happened, the roosters would wake the others up with their crowing. She felt too well-rested to return to sleep. Why not give her family a wonderful breakfast to wake up to?

* * *

She found herself singing softly to herself as she prepared the food. The tune was something that just came to her out of nowhere…

“...Baking these treats is such a cinch,

Add a teaspoon of vanilla…”

“Granny! Big Macintosh! She’s done it again!” came the delighted squeal of Apple Bloom. Pinkie Pie peeked out through the kitchen door just long enough to see her little 'big' sister canter downstairs. The little filly must’ve just woken up; she hadn’t even put that pink bow she loved so much in her mane.

Apple Bloom approached the table, eyeing everything that sat upon it. “Whoa, Nelly…”

“There’s jest a little more left ta bring out, Bloomy,” Pinkie told her sister. “Wanna help me finish makin’ it?”

“That’d be swell!” Apple Bloom said, hurrying into the kitchen.

Before long, Big Macintosh also came down the stairs and Granny Smith had emerged from her own bedroom to find that the table was fully stocked.

“Jest look at this spread!” said Apple Bloom, immediately loading up her plate with pancakes and apple cinnamon buns, and an apple crumb muffin.

“Eeeyup!” agreed Big Mac, helping himself to some buttermilk biscuits and fried potatoes, pouring coffee for himself.

Pinkie served Granny her oatmeal, bran muffin, and apple juice before pouring her own cup of coffee. She took hers with five creams and five servings of sugar; (it amazed her how Macky or anypony for that matter could drink the stuff black.) Before starting in on her breakfast, Pinkie held back to savor the lovely sight of her family eating, together and happy, then took her first bite of her ooey-gooey apple cinnamon bun, soft and moist and still hot from the oven.

“How’ve ya been doing with yer school stuff?” she asked Apple Bloom. There were times where the love Pinkie felt for the little filly was more maternal than sisterly. If she were to one day have a daughter who was like Apple Bloom, she’d count herself a blessed mare, (and how many girls could say such a thing about their sisters?)

“Gotta B+ on mah last homework project!” Apple Bloom told her.

“Atta girl, Bloomy!” Pinkie told her, and they hoof-bumped.

“Yer not gonna believe this, but last night, Ah dreamt Ah’d gotten mah cutie mark in being an astronaut!” Apple Bloom announced.

Pinkie Pie smiled as she thought about that: Apple Bloom in a rocketship! Well, who really knew? By the time Bloomy grew to her own age, maybe the technology would reach the point where they could actually send ponies into space!

“Ah dreamed Ah was back with Grampy Smith,” sighed Granny. “Ya youngins remember yer Grampy?”

“Eeeyup,” said Big Mac.

Pinkie didn’t want to admit that she barely remembered a thing about Grampy, so she swallowed more coffee and told her family, “Ah dreamt Ah was throwing a party.”

For some reason, Pinkie found herself looking at one of the apple crumb muffins, imagining it being topped with vanilla icing and sprinkles. Would that make it a cupcake, then…?

At that moment, a green cloud of smoke formed over the center of their table, turning into a letter. It briefly startled the family of earth ponies, before they realized it could only be from Spike.

“Seems a bit early in the day fer Spike to be sendin’ letters…” Pinkie thought aloud, looking over at the clock.

“Mebbe it’s a super-secret mission the Princess is sending ya on!” said Apple Bloom, eagerly pushing the letter over towards her sister.

She took the letter and read it. It wasn’t a mission from Princess Celestia. Horror filled Pinkie’s heart. “L… Lero…”

“What about Lero?” asked Apple Bloom.

Still stunned, Pinkie passed the letter over to Big Macintosh, so he could read what happened to his friend, dimly taking another bite of her cinnamon roll. It was still solid in her mouth, sliding down through her esophagus when she swallowed and filling her belly. But now the taste was of nothing.

* * *

As the human was not yet able to take visitors, Pinkie Pie had thrown herself into her farm work. What had happened to her friend hadn’t affected her anywhere as badly as the aftermath of the glufferflork attacking her brother. Yet, for all that time, everything her eyes fell upon would remind her of Lero.

She bucked apples off her trees, and remembered that day Lero and Twilight had come by her farm, before Lero had gotten his voice back… her leg muscles had felt so weak back then…

A few little weeds were springing along the roots of her trees. As Pinkie pulled them out deftly, she remembered hiring Lero to do weeding for her, back when he was first starting out in Ponyville.

She fed her chickens and cleaned out their coops, while recalling what it had been like chasing them in the rain with Lero.

She went to her tool shed and decided it could do with a touch of cleaning. It didn’t really take long, either; these days, it was a tool shed to be proud of! Polished tools were organized on their racks; the hay bales squarely stacked, and the jars of apple preserves already boxed up in their specially compartmentalized crates.

“POISON, Pinkie Pie!” echoed Macky’s voice in her head. “That’s the stuff of the Flim Flam brothers, not the Apple Family!”

How horribly messed up she’d been back then. Thank Celestia’s golden sun Lero had brought her to Big Macintosh for a talking-to.

She loaded her apple preserves onto one of the pull carts and went over to their stand in the marketplace, taking over for Big Macintosh, who gave her a brotherly nuzzle on the cheek before returning to the farm. As usual, several of her customers took a moment or two to share gossip.

“...Have you heard any new news about what’s happened to your human friend...?” asked Davenport.

“...We always knew Honeydew had it in for Lero, but this...!” said Rose.

“...And to think you’re always warned against the quiet ones…” said Noteworthy.

“...They say it happened at the old Boulder & Daughters quarry mill… one of my own mothers used to work there...” said Sandstorm.

“If this is a mob that’s involved, do you think there’s going to be some kind of retaliation?” asked Fuschia Fizz.

“...Heard Twilight did something weird to Honeydew’s cutie mark in a fit of rage…” said Bottlecap.

“I heard Lero’s already dead,” said Mayor Mare.

Pinkie didn’t remember eating dinner that night; she was only left with just a vague recollection that her family had been with her at the table. When she was done eating and the dishes were washed and put away, she went straight up to take a long shower, and thought about Lero some more.

Careful there, Pinkie… she thought to herself wryly, as the hot water spilled down her mane. Keep going at this rate, and you might as well start calling Rarity and Twilight and Rainbow Dash your herdsisters.

She laughed a little at the thought. Laughter and smiles came so naturally to her these days, (though, perhaps, she could be forgiven for not being as upbeat on this particular day.) No doubt Lero would need some of that cheerfulness, down in that hospital room they had him in. She’d stop by the hospital with Big Mac, Apple Bloom, even Granny, if she were feeling up to it, and pay her human friend a visit as early as Lero’s doctors and nurses would permit.

Having soaked herself thoroughly, Pinkie looked behind her in search of the soap, pausing to consider her own cutie mark. How wonderful they looked; those three red apples upon the pink of her pelt. How grateful she felt that Lero helped her remember what her cutie mark truly meant: that she was working hard not just for hard work’s sake, but FOR her family. It spelled the difference between misery and wasted effort, and glad spirits in a happy, thriving home. No golden medal could have made Pinkie prouder than those three apples, for there was no finer family to be a part of than the Apples.

No, she wouldn’t trade this wonderful life of hers for any other out there.

* * *

Another Swap. Another Swap. Another Swap, and here he was recuperating in another hospital right after it’d happened, to boot. Déjà vu at its worst. And for the new Swap-ees to be Honeydew and Exit Wound, of all possible ponies…

...Well, those two had given Lero such an endless banquet’s worth of food for thought, that at no point while he was at Ponyville General Hospital was he ever truly bored. Distressed, saddened, self-pitying, worried, angry, and terrified, perhaps. But at least not bored.

For the first couple days, Lero received no visitors apart from his physicians. Not because nopony wanted to come in and see him. Bodyguards stationed outside his door kept turning them away. They weren’t taking any chances that there’d be any follow-up attacks from Sicklefins who hadn’t been present at the quarry mill. Or someone else with strong anti-human sentiments. They had also informed him that he’d been set all sorts of letters and cards in the mail, but they weren’t ready to let him see any of them yet.

Checking for the Equestrian equivalent of letter bombs or Anthrax, Lero thought to himself, briefly ruminating on what sort of mischief could be committed via post with magic, before promptly discarding the train of thought as too worrying.

At least his doctors and nurses were good company. He especially enjoyed getting to see Dr. Vital Signs, who was the doctor who first examined Lero after his arrival in Equestria, and who he always went to for checkups, and thus, the doctor with the most intimate, in-depth knowledge of the human body in all Equestria, as well as someone he trusted and considered a friend.

The third day in, Lero was finally permitted to see his first batch of guests. Rainbow Dash, Lyra, Rarity, and Applejack came as well, walking in right next to Spike.

“Heya, Lero!” Applejack greeted, stepping in front of the others to set a gift-wrapped present on top of his chest.

“What’s this?” he asked, guessing it was clothes.

“Open and see!”

He unwrapped the present. Clothes were inside. Well, arguably they were clothes.

“It’s a gown,” he said, unfolding the garment.

“A hospital gown,” Applejack told him.

“And you went and made an actual gown out of it,” he said, examining its sleeves. “With a bodice and frills on the collar and it’s floor-length and everything.”

“She, uh, worked hard on it,” said Spike. At this moment, none of the ponies in Lero’s herd seemed to want to look at the gown, or Lero, or Applejack.

“Whaddaya think, Lero?” Applejack sounded so proud of herself. As though expecting him to slip into the bathroom to try it on, right at this moment.

He set Applejack’s gift aside. “For the sake of the doctors, I’ll keep the hospital gown I have on for now, and save this little number for another time.”

The 12th of Never sounded like the perfect date to wear it.

“So, where’s Twilight?” He asked, changing the subject.

“Still being patched up, her horn’s strained very badly.” Spike replied. “We visited her before you. Princess Celestia’s still with her.”

“...Princess Celestia?” he asked, mildly.

“Yeah, said she wanted to talk to Twilight privately.” Spike finished.

He nodded. It was all just as well. He wasn’t sure if he was up to seeing Princess Celestia yet.

“So, how are you holding up?” Dash asked. “I can’t imagine you’re feeling very good after all you went through.”

“All things considered… It could have been a lot worse. It was almost kinda cool, getting rescued by those GALLOP ponies,” Lero admitted, trying to find a bright spot in spite of everything that’d preceded that rescue.

“Just the GALLOP ponies?” Lyra sniffed. “What are we, chopped stinkweed?”

Lero laughed. “You girls are nothing less than a flock of guardian angels,” he told them.

Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and Lyra all came forward towards his bed, lips puckered to kiss their stallion, unpleasantly surprised when he held out both his hands out to stop them. “Please, girls, don’t come up to me,” he said. “Don’t kiss me.”

“Are you still feeling weak, Lero?” asked Lyra, sadly.

Lero clutched the objects in his hand a little tighter. “I... please… would someone mind telling me what’s been going on these past few days? They haven’t really told me any news about what’s been happening; Dr. Signs said it ‘might disrupt the healing process.’”

Rarity was the one who spoke. “Lero… everything that happened to us when we were kidnapped… ponies are still talking about it. All over the world. You’ve been front-page headlines these past few days.”

“And, well…” Lyra started to add, only to leave the sentence hanging. “Spike, just show him.”

Spike took a newspaper off the chair, came over, and gave it to Lero.

SHOCKING NEW DETAILS UNVEILED:
ANTI-HUMAN HATE CRIME MASTERMINDS SWAPPED CUTIE MARKS DURING SHOWDOWN!

Ice chilled Lero’s spine. Directly beneath this headline were four photographs. On the left side were two ‘before’ shots. One was of Honeydew walking with her sisters, Honeysuckle and Honeybee; the photo offered a good look at her melon slice cutie mark. Beside it was a picture of Exit Wound entering a nightclub, her bloodstain mark prominent in the shot.

On the right side were the ‘after’ photographs. Another side angle of Honeydew, in a jail cell, wearing the Sicklefin leader’s glasses, and the Bloodstain Mark. And then one of Exit Wound, in a different cell, with her new Melon Mark.

...the photographs shown above have not been doctored in any way…

…speaking on condition of anonymity…

... “The boss called it the ‘Special #23’… she used it once before, in Hoofington, designed it herself. It basically works by ...

...When asked whether it could be reasonably inferred that Twilight Sparkle had to have cast this mark-exchanging spell within a 24-hour timeframe relative to being controlled by the so-called ‘Special #23,’ , Ms. Doublehead answered, ‘Well, yeah. That ought to be very…

...both mares demonstrate severe identity confusion…

...Ms. Sparkle unavailable to comment on her use of…

Lero’s eyes bounced over the paragraphs like a stone being skipped across a lake. He lowered the paper to look at Lyra.

“I would figure...” he said slowly, “that a situation like… Rarity, please, you don’t want to get near me... a situation like this would warrant the Princess putting a gag order on everyone involved.”

“She did order that this information was to be confidential,” Lyra replied. “But the information was leaked, regardless.”

“Who?!” cried Lero. “Why?!”

Lyra shrugged. “We suspect one or more of the GALLOP ponies who were at the scene. Or perhaps one of the Sicklefins managed to escape. As to ‘why’… maybe they were bribed by the press, or sold the information, or perhaps they were caught up in the big media frenzy. Or the why for the later possibility is obvious. We’re still looking into it.”

“Ah’ve never seen anythang like it,” said Applejack, staring intently at his blanket. “But then, when there’s only one human in the whole wide world, and he’s got so many fans, and then some crazy mobster-ponies try and murder him, well, Ah imagine it’d be tricky sweeping it quietly under the rug.” Then she looked at Lero. “Were their cutie marks really swapped?”

“Yeah, they were,” Dash told Applejack. “Saw it happen with my own eyes.”

They know. Lero thought in horror. They all know! Count our blessings that they still don’t yet know that five-sixths of the Element Bearers are Swapped Ponies... but now everyone, everywhere knows what a Swap is, and what Swapped Ponies ARE… goddamn Exit Wound and goddamn Honeydew… oh man, Rarity’s lips feel sweet… Discord should be out modifying memories left and right, what’s he doing? And should I be worried that I’m starting to sound like a George Orwell villain? Mmm, yeah, Rarity, right… no, NO!!!!”

“I TOLD YOU NOT TO TOUCH ME!” Lero exclaimed. Applejack and all of Lero’s family shrank back.

“Lero, what’s the matter?” Lyra asked.

“What have I done wrong?” Rarity cried, with the exact same look she would’ve worn if he’d slapped her across the face.

Opening his hand, Lero showed them all a pair of cyan pegasus feathers, completely munged up with candle wax and all sorts of gross fur. He’d’ve still had them braided into his hair, except he was now too bald for that. Very sadly, Lero held the feathers out towards his girls.

“My rose!” Rarity recognized, looking at the feathers. “And your feather, Rainbow!”

“Rarity, you were there, you saw what happened! Honeydew bit my face; I was bleeding. Then that big Diamond Dog, the one they sent to violate me…”

The word was out of Lero’s mouth before he remembered that little Spike was listening in...

“...He licked my face all over. That horrible tongue of his, all over my bleeding face. All it takes is a simple transfer of fluids with those kind of diseases. It’s in my blood now. Every disgusting illness he had is living within me now. Swimming in my veins.”

He began to cry, remembering the misshapen ugliness of Scrounger The Dog, the difficulty he had walking and breathing, even just the stench coming off him.

“So, girls, I love you with all my heart… but I’m tainted goods. I’m completely doomed. It’ll only be a matter of time before those diseases really take root inside me and start destroying my body. I’m so sorry.”

Lyra walked up to the side of Lero’s bed with tears in her eyes. It was she who had begun crying first, before Rainbow Dash or Rarity. Lero turned his head and saw that she looked like she was ready to start...

*SMACK!*

Lero’s head snapped to the left. The right side of his face was stinging.

“Lyra!” shouted Rarity.

“How dare you, Lero?” hissed Lyra, ignoring the other unicorn. Her hoof was still raised. “Do you think so little of us?”

Lero was stunned. “Lyra, wha…?”

“Where do you get off thinking that something as small as this is going to make us give up on you? Huh?!” Lyra leaned in close to the human, their noses almost touching.

Lero tried to back away on the bed. “Lyra, you can’t come near...”

“You don’t get to make that call!” This time the tears were falling. “You don’t just get to decide that you can push us away. Not after everything… after everything we’ve been through. And if you think that something like this is going make us stop loving you, then, mister, you have another thing coming.”

Lyra surprised everyone by hopping into the bed and latching onto Lero’s torso, burying her head into his chest. Lero had never once seen the collected grandmaster react like this to anything.

“I don’t care if you get ugly and swollen. I don’t care if you end up not being able to leave the house. I don’t care if you have to spend the rest of your life in a bed. I don’t care. We’ll be there for you. To wash your wounds and keep you safe. Even if this does mean the end for you, you sure as Tartarus aren’t going to meet it alone.”

Lyra gazed up at him with teary, red-stained eyes. Lero felt that golden warmth fill him from within. Despite the crying, Lyra held onto her trademark smile.“We’re a family, Fingers. We stay together, no matter what happens.”

* * *

Twilight fidgeted in her bed, resisting the urge to touch her bandaged horn. While the sprain bothered her, it wasn’t what was making her uncomfortable. Princes Celestia had asked to have a word with her in private, but after everyone left, she had yet to say a word. She’d simply been staring at the ground, with a distant look in her eyes, as if she was miles away.

As the awkward silence extended uncomfortably long, Twilight’s nervousness and uncertainty began to fade… replaced with something else: anger. How could Celestia put her through all this? Drop this awful spell upon her back without a word of warning, and now stand there, in silent judgement of her? It was beyond the pale! How stupid she’d been to stand up for the princess whenever her stallion had grumbled about her: Lero had been completely right about Celestia all along! Twilight gathered her courage -- surprisingly easy with the resentment building behind it -- and spoke.

“Princess, you and I need to have words.” She was startled by the edge in her voice. But before she continued, that seemed to snap the Princess out of her reverie.

“...I’m sorry,” whispered the alicron. “I’m so, so sorry.” Her voice was quiet but thick and heavy with emotion, which brought up Twilight’s building anger short.

“What?” she asked, confused, before managing to articulate, “What are you sorry about?”

“Everything,” Celestia said, huskiness still audible in her voice. “For putting so much pressure on you. For putting the fate of the world on your shoulders, again and again. For withholding help when you needed it. For not considering how my test might impact your family.”

Celestia looked up at Twilight, who let out a brief gasp upon seeing the tears drip out of the corners of her eyes. The Princess gave her a wry smile. “Honestly, I never expected it to become an issue. You passed all my tests before, always surpassing my expectations, indeed, my wildest hopes… I almost expected you to have wrapped the spell up in twenty minutes.”

“Then… If you’re so sorry, why did you do it? Any of it?” Twilight persisted. She didn’t want to lose all of her steam all at once, not when it had taken this long to build it up.

There was a long pause; Celestia seemed to be contemplating how far back she should go. “Twilight... if I could have cured my sister myself, do you think I would have put the task to my untested apprentice, however talented and promising she was?”

Twilight blinked. “I… I never thought about it.”

Celestia gave Twilight a genuine smile. “Of course not. You hold me in… such esteem. How would it occur to you that you exceed me in so many ways?”

“...E-exceed you? Princess, I’m just your student-”

“Stop.” Celestia held up a hoof. “You’re not ‘just’ anything. I, of all ponies, understand. The idea of being a hero, a public figure, something larger than life. Someone expected to always save the day.” She paused, looking down again. “It took more than a thousand years for me to get used to it.”

“Princess… Celestia… What are you saying? Surely, you could have handled any of those larger problems you chose to delegate to me and my friends.”

“Handled?” Celestia levitated the crown off her head and held it at eye level, regarding it broodingly. “Yes. I could have beaten Nightmare Moon in battle… I had a thousand years of experience on her. But to purify her and bring back my sister? That is now beyond me. I could easily drive off a dragon, but make him agree to leave in peace? Not so much.”

Twilight had never seen her teacher like this, ever.

“...Luna and I might have been able to devise some means to defeat Discord; but most likely at a far greater cost. Probably a huge war. And… there is no question you are better at uncovering changeling infiltrators than I am.” Celestia finished, replacing her crown.

Twilight wasn’t quite sure how this was happening. She’d been ready to unleash a great verbal barrage on Celestia, but the alicorn had turned it around, and now Twilight was starting to feel bad for her teacher once more. “Princess…”

“I could certainly have banished Sombra again, but to break his curse completely and restore the Crystal Empire? That was you, Twilight. And Spike.” She smiled proudly at the last bit. “I could have also subdued a certain out-of-control showmare who’d taken Ponyville hostage. But you, Twilight, figured out how to get her to willingly remove the magic item corrupting her… without having to end her life.”

Twilight’s voice caught in her throat at that last implication. “Would you have…?”

Celestia let out a long, shuddering sigh. “My little ponies need to be protected. And when they can’t protect themselves, their Princess must do what she must.” She let out a bitter laugh. “Not my first choice…”

“But… Princess, we’ve had a thousand years of peace under your reign!”

Celestia nodded, her face dropping again. “Yes. A thousand years of maintaining a status quo. A happy one, yes, but one that I had to struggle hard with, just to maintain. Negotiation, subterfuge, shows of force… whatever it took to keep my little ponies safe. A thousand years alone at the top, more or less. Knowing that at any moment, one of the ancient horrors Luna and I locked away might escape, and I would be without her… or the Elements to fight them.”

She then looked up at Twilight, giving her a genuine, warm, smile.

“Then this wonderful, unbelievable filly comes into my life, after a thousand years seeking and training exceptional unicorns… She’s smart, she thinks on her hooves, she’s a natural leader… and when encouraged, a wonderful friend. She returns my sister to me, and defends my little ponies, even when my own resolve fails. She makes things better, after a thousand years of treading water.

“And then I push her too hard. Saddle her with a challenge which is finally too difficult and overwhelming… a challenge I haven’t even properly prepared her for, ahead-of-time. And I hurt her, and the ones she loves… when that’s the last thing I ever wanted.”

After the longest silence yet, Twilight cleared her throat. “Princess… I’m s-”

“No.” Celestia interrupted, putting the crown back on her head. “I am the one in the wrong here, I am the one who is sorry… Though I appreciate the sympathy.”

“Then… what now? Can you… undo all this?” Twilight asked, with desperate hope.

Celestia’s smile could not be sadder. “As you know, no counterspell or cure has ever been discovered yet. I genuinely thought you could solve this with little effort. I can offer one possible suggestion, though.”

“What?” Twilight asked, furrowing her brow.

“The Soul Synthesis spell.”

That was it. A way out. End the swap by making it permanent. And now her teacher was offering it, so she no longer had to worry about upsetting her, or failing the test. It would mean no threat of insanity. Rainbow and Rarity, as they were now, part of her herd. No more worries. The easy way out. The offer, alone, meant a lot; Celestia was putting her happiness above her plans. But even still...

“May I… Take some time to think about that, Celestia?”

“Of course, Twilight. Take all the time you need.”

A knock came on the doorframe, and they heard Lyra’s voice. “Hey, Twi, we just wanted to say goodbye, since we’re heading out.”

“I’ll let you two alone.” Celestia said, stepping out past Lyra, who bowed low as the princess past her.

“Thanks, Lyra. Where’s Rainbow and Rarity?” Twilight asked, frowning at their absence.

Lyra sighs. “They’re… consoling each other. Things got a bit emotional with Lero.”

“What? Why?” Twilight’s concerned deepened.

“He… thinks he’s going to get horrifically sick due to Scrounger licking his wounds.”

“HE THINKS WHAT!?” Twilight’s cry practically echoed through the hospital. She suddenly attempted to lurch out of bed. “Let me get to the library, I-”

“WHOA.” She finds herself being held down by Lyra. “Steady there, Twilight... you’re not going anywhere until the doctors clear it. The last thing we need is your horn to be permanently injured.”

Twilight struggled a brief moment before sighing. “Yeah, you’re right. I don’t want to permanently compromise my magical ability. But as soon as I get better, I’m going to be teaching our stallion a lesson on biology, and you’re helping.”

“...Alright?” Was Lyra’s confused response.

* * *

Around nine o’clock, the next day, Pinkie Pie stepped into Lero’s hospital room alongside her brother and Fluttershy, who had joined them on the way there. They found Spike sitting next to Lero’s bed, talking excitedly.

“...And so the next game the camp counselors showed us was even MORE fun!” the little dragon was saying. “It’s called Air Raid Race, and here’s how it works: first, there’s a starting line and a finish line, and all the unicorn and earth pony foals have to race from start to finish.”

“What about the pegasus foals?” asked Lero.

“That’s where the Air Raid part comes in! They’re all up in the sky, pelting us with water balloons! And the counselors give out cool prizes not just for which ground-bound pony comes in first, but which one is the dryest, plus a prize for whichever pegasus is able to score the most hits with their water balloons!”

“How’d you make out?” asked Lero; Pinkie saw him spot herself, Big Mac, and Fluttershy out of the corner of his eye.

“Turns out I’m REALLY good at dodging! All the times Twilight grabbed a book with her telekinesis without checking if I’m in the way made for good training, I guess.”

“THINK FAST!” screamed Fluttershy, throwing some kind of object at Spike’s head. The little dragon bent to the side as a chocolate chip cookie flew past him and broke into crumbs against the wall.

“Fluttershy?! What…?”

“Oooh, you weren’t kidding; you really ARE good at dodging, Spike!” said Fluttershy. Before Pinkie or anyone else here could think to say anything to that, the yellow pegasus pulled decorations from her saddlebags and rapidly began filling up the ceiling with balloons.

GET WELL VERY SOON, SO WE CAN STUDY COMEDY AGAIN! read both the cake Fluttershy dropped on Lero’s lap and the banner she ran along his wall.

“Would you like me to sing you a get-better song?” Fluttershy offered.

“I appreciate the thought, but I’m not in a musical mood,” said Lero, smiling at all three of them as a group. He looked almost like a completely different person with his head bald like that. “Pinkie, Mac, Fluttershy, it’s really great to see you all.”

“Aw, shucks, Leery, it’s us that’re glad ta see yew!”

“Eeeyup!” her brother agreed.

“Granny and Apple Bloom wanted to be here too, but it’s a long walk fer Granny, and Bloomy’s having school. Although… Bloomy might still try and stop on by here with her crusader friends at some point. Not sure jest what they’re planning, but Ah think Ah heard Bloomy say, ‘holistic healing,’ at some point.”

“I’ll keep my eyes peeled. And my guard up,” Lero promised with a faint smile that hurt Pinkie’s heart to look upon.

“Though this is from all of us in the Apple Family.” Pinkie pulled out a greeting card Macky had bought yesterday. Everyone in the family had written their well-wishes inside it. She watched Lero tear open the letter, hoping that their words for him might bring him cheer.

“I brought you something to read too!”

Pinkie was starting to regret bringing the party pony along. The book Fluttershy lay upon Lero’s bed was titled Advanced Lessons in Funniness.

“Have you, um, been reading this?” Lero asked Fluttershy, who was ignoring the troubled looks Big Macintosh and Spike were giving her, as well as Pinkie’s own glower.

“Barely anything at all,” Fluttershy told him, nudging the book even closer towards the human with a hoof. “I’ve come to learn that I’m not real good at being my own teacher. I need someone else. And you’re the best I’ve got, Lero.”

Poor Lero seemed rather shaken to hear that. Everyone in the room could see it but Fluttershy, who almost seemed to expect the human to crack open the book, and school her in comedy, right then and there.

“Fluttershy,” Spike said slowly, “You realize that Lero’s in recovery, right? It’ll take time for him to be ready.”

“Well, how much longer could he possibly need?!” asked Fluttershy, with a peevish frown. “I mean, first, ever since he and Rainbow Dash started really getting serious, he’s put my comedy lessons on the back burner! I didn’t like that, but at least we were still having the lessons.”

“Fluttershy, uh…”

“Then the heat came... and I suppose that wasn’t Lero’s fault, nothing anypony could have done about that… but that was still a week without being able to study comedy properly! “And then Lero and his herd needed time to attach Rainbow’s house to theirs, and then comes this malarkey about him getting kidnapped, and NOW he’s recovering for some really long period of time?!” The part of Fluttershy’s flank, right along by where her cutie mark sat, was twitching in a weird way that just made Pinkie’s skin crawl.

“Are you EVER going to help me properly like you said you would, Lero, or are you just going to delay, delay, delay forever?”

Lero began shivering where he sat in his bed.

“I mean, even when Pinkie and I were in the middle of our heat together, there was this moment where we’d just finishing going Appaloosian-style on each other...”

To her right, Pinkie Pie heard Big Macintosh make a high, dry choked noise, while little Spike turned bright red to almost match her brother’s coat. There had to have been a time where she’d felt more embarrassed than this, but right now, Pinkie couldn’t remember.

“...and I started telling Pinkie the one about the Appaloosian farmer who couldn’t stop burping, and Pinkie…”

Fluttershy’s voice died away as she caught sight of Pinkie. “Are yew on drugs, today, Shy? Or are ya OFF yer meds?”

“N-no,” Fluttershy said, “I’ve never done any kind of drugs, ever, nothing bigger than an aspirin, unless it was prescribed by my doctor! Drugs are Bad with a capital B…”

“Well then, Ah’d say it’s high time ya finally got yer screwy lil’ head checked,” Pinkie told her coldly, pointing back at Lero. “Ah think Twilight’s wrote yew about what happened to Leery. Ah know she wrote ta me and Applejack. Somethin’ involving a Diamond Dog; that ringing any bells?”

“Y-yes,” said Fluttershy, stepping back behind a chair, expressions fighting back and forth on her face. Lero had an impression she realized that what she was doing wasn’t quite right, but couldn’t help herself, and was attempting to rationalize it to herself. “And I really feel bad about what happened to him; that’s why I baked him a cake! I just wanted to know when he was planning on teaching me more comedy.”

“Maybe never!” shouted Pinke, “Maybe Lero’s funny bone done shattered into dust fer good! Bad things can do that to a pony, and Lero’s been through a very, very bad experience! Whatever he did for yew, he did out of the goodness of his heart. But guess what, Shy? He’s got his own life! Yet yew have the nerve ta waltz in here and demand that he jump right back into comedy school with yew like yer some kinda hall monitor catching a colt playin’ hooky?”

She took in a breath.

“Grow up, ya silly party maniac. Please jest do all ponykind the biggest favor ever, and jest finally, finally grow up.”

“Hey,” Lero said from his bed, “come on, Pinkie. Fluttershy’s a good girl, she didn’t mean it like that…”

“No,” whimpered Fluttershy, beginning to weep. “Pinkie’s right. I did mean it like that. Lero, I’m so sorry, I don’t…”

Watching Fluttershy run out into the hallway while crying produced mixed feelings in Pinkie: guilt alongside a stony satisfaction that the silly-headed filly had been made to realize what a selfish thing she’d just done.

“Fluttershy! Fluttershy!” Spike hurried out the door; they saw him standing in the middle of the hall.

“Big Mac! Help me! We need to find her!” Spike called to her brother. The urgency in the little dragon’s voice suggested he was worried what Fluttershy might do if someone didn’t talk to her.

“Eeyup,” said Macky, letting Spike climb on his back, and then he hustled down in search of their yellow pegasus friend.

Pinkie Pie looked back at Lero. Before her outburst, the human had at least been been wearing a ghost of a smile, just for the sake of enjoying their company. Now, as his hands clutched at the blanket covering him, his unhappiness was plain to see.

“Sorry ‘bout that, Leery,” said Pinkie softly. “Really, Ah am.”

Lero mumbled something Pinkie didn’t quite hear. She back towards the door.

“Maybe Ah oughta go try help ‘em find Shy and apologize ta her…”

“Please don’t go,” Lero asked in a clear voice, looking straight at her. “I’m glad you came, Pinkie.” Pinkie watched the human lick his lips. “You’re the Element of Honesty, right?”

“Yeah. Well, Ah’m Honesty’s Bearer, Ah ain’t the jewel.”

“Good,” said Lero. “Do me a favor, please, and lock the door.”

“Huh?”

“It’ll only be for a little while. I promise,” Lero said.

What was going on? Though she felt a touch of unease, Pinkie turned and locked the door for Lero, whose sad look had given way to a gravely serious one.

“I need to know something, Pinkie,” the human said. “And I need you to set aside your bias and answer me honestly, answer me as the Element of Honesty: if I had never come to Equestria in the first place… would everyone have been better off?”

Even though she was standing perfectly still, Pinkie felt completely thrown off-balance. By the question, and by his dejection.

“Lero, why would ya even say such a thing? Yer one of the nicest fellas Ah know!”

“Pinkie… I know I’m nice. I know I’m friendly. This isn’t about that. This is… this is about… this is about the Swap.”

“The Swap?” she repeated. Why had Lero seemed so reluctant to say that word? And why did he flinch when she said it?

‘What happened to Honeydew and that gangster boss she was with… their cutie marks were swapped. Have you heard about it?”

“Ah don’t thank there’s a pony alive who hasn’t,” said Pinkie, remembering the newspaper showing the two mares with each others’ cutie marks, and all the curious gossip in the marketplace.

“...Yes. It’s… it’s been weighing very heavily on my mind.” His mouth shut suddenly, as if afraid of that something awful might spill out. “God, Pinkie, you have no idea how hard it is for me to find words to express myself in a way you can understand…”

“Jest speak yer mind, sugar,” she said, settling herself into a chair.

Lero’s hand shook when he drank some water from a nearby cup. “Let me try starting from the very beginning. Because I came to Equestria, everypony became fascinated with me, and Ra… Rarity fell in love with me. Because Rarity fell in love with me, Twilight and Lyra eventually did too. But I also caused the Honey sisters to hate and fear me. Because the Honey sisters hated and feared me, we became enemies.”

“Ah remember yew saved Honeybee’s life, though. Yew jumped into that lake or whatever ta save her from drowning.”

But Lero did not smile. “Honeybee would never have been in danger of drowning in the FIRST place, if not for me.”

“What d’ya mean?”

Lero closed his eyes in remembrance. “On that day, Honeybee had been flying over my head... I don’t know whether she intended to do something to me or to… to Rarity, but Rarity ended up striking Honeybee’s wingtip in a glancing blow. That ended up sending Bee careening into that lake. That would never have happened to begin with, there would have never been a feud, if I hadn’t been in the picture.”

“But yew dove in and pulled Honeybee out of that lake!” Pinkie said again, now starting to really worry. “And she and her sister Honeysuckle both stopped hatin’ yew after that.”

“Well, they at least learned I wasn’t out to hurt them, and that pursuing their vendetta was pointless and self-destructive. But Honeydew DIDN’T,” Lero said, his self-disgust unmistakable. “Because I saved Honeybee’s life, Honeydew grew estranged from her sisters because they refused to continue persecuting me, and that drove her even further bonkers, because I had ‘gotten’ to them. Her obsessive hatred of me just built and built and built… to the point where she resorted to an insane, desperate scheme to destroy me. Now her cutie mark’s swapped… and I have all sorts of horrible diseases germinating inside my body, thanks to that Diamond Dog. It’ll only be a matter of time before I start showing symptoms. My four wonderful mares have all vowed to stay by my side, no matter how sick I get. I wouldn’t have wished such a thing on any of them.”

Sick… There had been many open doors Pinkie had passed on her way over to here. Many patients lying in bed with conditions so hideous, part of her wanted to cry, while another part of her wanted to flee the hospital like a haunted house and scrub herself down. Was that was her human friend was going to look like? Would anypony in Ponyville even want to be around him after this?

“I feel… I feel sorriest for Rainbow Dash,” Lero went on. “She’s only just recently fallen in love with me, and now she’s committed herself to play nursemaid for me as I just get sicker and sicker. It probably would’ve been better if we’d never crossed paths in the first place.”

“Lero… if not fer yew, Rainbow Dash prolly woulda gotten eaten alive by her crazy critters. And if not for yew, Ah’d’ve still been farming all wrong!” she exclaimed. At this rate, Pinkie was worried she would have to tell Twilight to hide all the sharp objects and make sure her stallion didn’t go anyplace high, just in case he got the urge to jump...

The smile Lero gave Pinkie was downright condescending. “Oh, you give me WAY too much credit! It wasn’t me who finally got those critters tame again; Dash did that all on her own! And as for you, Pinkie, yeah, I dragged you to a hospital, and made a few observations and suggestions… but after that, your family did far more to help you than I ever did! And that spell Honeydew was hit with, that spell that Swapped her… that was something Twilight’s been working on. A prototype to fix an old unfinished spell Celestia assigned her.”

Pinkie didn’t understand why Lero’s voice dropped to a near-whisper, what about this unfinished spell intimidated the human even more than the diseases or the mobsters who’d threatened his life.

“She’d’ve been much farther along on it by now but... there have been some family dramas at home, and that’s gotten Twilight’s emotions in a tizzy for the longest time. If I had never come to Equestria, if we’d never formed a herd… I think she’d have much more clear-headed, she’d’ve found the answer she’s been looking for WAY earlier.”

“Ya can’t know that!” Pinkie snapped. “And so what if this spell… whatever it is… takes a short time or a long time ta fix? No dusty, old, broken spell’s more important than someone else existing! Spell’s lucky it’s GOT a girl like Twilight working on it; let her patch it up in her own time!”

But Lero shook his head, pushing his fingers into his forehead. “I try and I try, and keep bending over backwards, but in the end, I’m not the solution to anything. All I do is complicate things needlessly. Like Honeydew.”

“Yew ain’t NOTHING like that horrible mare!” snapped Pinkie, suddenly outraged with Lero for playing straight into that wretched mare’s hooves.

“Am I?” Lero contended. “Psychotic as she was, Honeydew was also convinced that what she was doing was only best for everyone.”

For a moment, Pinkie has the impression that Lero was eyeballing her cutie mark for some reason, before he looked back at her face.

“So I’ll ask you again, Pinkie, and I want you to be as honest as possible: would everypony have been better off if I’d never come to Equestria in the first place?”

Silence hung in the air. Then Pinkie sighed and an old and very tired smile came to her face. Lero had seen that smile before, on the face of the Apple matriarch. On several occasions in the past, Lero had come out to Sweet Apple Acres to perform a variety of jobs; fence work, plumbing, even helping raise the barn more than once. And on several of those occasions, Lero had overheard the matriarch give the youngest member of the Apple clan a lecture. Always with that same tired, but wise smile.

"Seems to me," began Pinkie, "that y'all are worrying about something that can't be changed. Granny's told us plenty o' tales 'bout folks who worry 'bout 'what if?'. 'What if Ah took a left 'stead of a right?' 'What if I stayed the night with 'im?' 'What if Ah didn' yell at 'im that night?'

“Well, Mr. Handy, let me tell you right now, asking 'What if?' don't do you a lick o' good." The earth pony mare took on a solemn look. "After... after Ma 'n Pa passed, Ah nearly tore myself apart asking that same question. 'What if Ah did things different? They might still be alive.' Ah blamed myself fer the longest time. And I always wondered, 'What if?'"

Lero didn't say anything; he was never really close with Applejack, their relationship more professional than friendship. He had long suspected that the farm mare had never really approved of his relationship with Rainbow or any of the mares in his herd. But now that he was hearing such intimate details from Pinkie the Farmer, he had to wonder. Could these really have been AJ's thoughts?

"But the past is the past, Lero. Ain't nothing we can do ta change it. Now you've done right by me 'n my kin, so I'm gonna give you the honest truth: y'all one o' the best things that happened to this town."

“What in particular makes you say that?” asked Lero, more curious than disbelieving.

Pinkie rubbed her chin with a hoof. “Let me put it to ya this way. When ya get right down to brass tacks; Ah have one main objective in mah life: ta keep Sweet Apple Acres thrivin’ ‘til the day Ah die. An’ see it passed on to Apple Bloom, or some other deservin’ Apple when Ah get too doddery. Maybe even to some daughter of mah own…”

“That’d be good.”

“Huh? What would?”

“You having a daughter. Any child of yours is gonna be the pride and joy of the whole Apple family.”

Pinkie flashed a happy smile at Lero before continuing on.

“Anywho, one fine day, along comes Miz Twilight Sparkle into mah life, and BOY HOWDY, did she ever complicate thangs! Suddenly, Ah’m an Element Bearer! Suddenly, Ah’m being sent on all sorts of weird missions, savin’ the world and all that. Now, yew know mah story, Lero, and yew could certainly make the case that Ah earned mah Element by volunteerin’ ta help Twilight stop Nightmare Moon, way back when she first moved in. Wasn’t exactly drafted inta the service against mah will.”

Lero nodded slowly, wondering where she was going with this...

“Ah, but supposin’ Princess Celestia had chosen ta hold that fateful Summer Sun Celebration in Hoofington instead of Ponyville, and it was a bunch of Hoofington gals that got ta be Bearers instead. Why, then it would’ve stayed a simple ‘n’ straight-shot farmer’s life fer me, just like it still is fer Big Macintosh! But now here’s the big question, Leery; do Ah resent Twilight Sparkle?”

“I’m guessing you’re going to say ‘no,’” said Lero.

“Darn tootin!” With a start, Pinkie realized she’d been cutting into the cake Fluttershy had brought, and had served herself a slice without even thinking about it. But Lero didn’t seem to mind at all. Despite that, she started serving him up a slice as well, after relocating it to his beside table.

“Scary as it was facing Nightmare Moon, Ah’m glad to’ve helped bring back Princess Luna. Twilight can be annoying, sometimes, but she’s taught me a lot about accepting help from others, and that yew can’t run away from your problems and hide when yew don’t do as well as yew hoped, and that prissy fashionista who runs the Carousel Boutique can actually be a purdy good friend when she ain't too wrapped up in herself. Ah’d never have learned any of that without her. And Ah also jest like her company, and Ah’m proud to’ve helped get her ta understand the value of friendship.”

Pinkie paused, in surprise at herself. Had she always been able to speak so fast? But Lero seemed to be keeping up with everything she was saying just fine.

“So now we come ta yew, Mr. Human. Yeah, yer a bit of an ‘acquired taste.’ Takes some getting used ta a fella like yew; the sight of yew, yer weird habits. No denying yew HAVE complicated thangs. But lemme ask my next question: why’ve yer mares stuck by yew as much as they have?”

“Because I… try to be loving to them?”

She giggled. “Yeah. You’re very loving. I mean, jest look at Rainbow Dash. Ya think she fell for ya because she’s into aliens?”

Lero smile was faint, yet there was a spark of humor.

“Because yew were there for her, ya won her heart. Simple as that. Yew taught her what true love means; something that might never’ve happened on her own.”

‘‘Better to have loved and lost than to not have loved at all,’ right?”

He said it like the doctors had given him one month to life.

“It’s more than even that: Rainbow Dash is stronger and more confident about herself since yew became a big part of her life. But it ain’t jest Dashie, either, yew have that effect on LOTS of ponies. Strengthen their spirits. Ah should know.”

To think that an honest-to-Celestia alien planet had produced someone like Lero gave Pinkie hope for the universe as a whole.

“So yeah… things would’ve been simpler for us ponies if yew’d never popped into Equestria. But Ah don’t care what all the Honeydews say: Ah’m glad to share mah world with ya. Ah could hardly be prouder of ya if yew were mah own brother.” There was a long pause. Pinkie chewed her lip, suddenly feeling like a nervous filly. “Can Ah hug yew?”

The human opened his arms up.

“You don’t ever need to ask me permission for that, you sweet, sweet girl. Every hug from you is a gift, and I’m glad of each one you give me.”

It was the nicest thing anyone had told Pinkie in a while, so the hug she gave him was extra-exuberant.

* * *

A little later along, Big Mac and Spike brought Fluttershy back to Lero. It took over a dozen times for Lero to tell the yellow pegasus she was forgiven before she actually heard him through all her dismayed apologizing. Then they all had slices of the cake she had brought, and drank soda pop from disposable cups, and then about an hour after that, the two Swapped mares and Big Mac all bade him goodbye and headed out.

“Well, Lero, ol’ buddy,” said Spike, hopping out of his chair, and stretching himself. “If you don’t mind, I think I might as well be moseying on outta here too. I’ll stop by tomorrow!”

“Spike.”

The young dragon stopped. “Yeah, Lero?”

“Tell me a joke.”

“Uh… okay. What kind of joke?”

“A funny one,” said Lero, staring the little guy down with painfully flat seriousness.

Spike looked to the ceiling for inspiration. “Hmm, lemme see… have you heard the one about the broken pencil? I’d tell it to you, but it’d be pointless.”

“I said funny, Spike,” said Lero, with a harder edge to his voice.

“Okay, okay, uh… wanna know why I renamed my dog ‘Ten Miles?’ It’s so I can brag to everyone how I walk Ten Miles every day!”

“Goddammit, Spike!” Lero snapped, “Fluttershy tells better jokes than that nowadays!”

“Hey! That was a pretty good one!” After a cold silence from Lero, Spike’s grin faded away. “Look, buddy, you’ve been through a lot, you’re just not in a laughy ha-ha mood, it’s okay…”

Lero broke eye contact with Spike. He didn’t mean to be harsh with the little guy… but this was important.

“I need to get over this, Spike,” he told him. “Three down, two to go, but I’ve been focused on myself -- on my love life -- for far too long lately. It’s time to finish what I’ve started. I swear, I’m going to help those other two ponies find their equilibrium if it’s the last thing I ever do in my life… and all things considered, it just might be. I’ll do it before all these diseases really take root inside me! But there’s no way I’m ever going to be able to help Fluttershy become a proper joke-teller if I’m stuck as this unsmiling, traumatized ball of misery, so come on! Break me out of this funk! Hit me with your best shot!”

Twice, the dragon looked backward at the door, as though thinking of trotting out some excuse and leaving him here. Instead he turned to face him.

“I was saving this one for a rainy day…”

“It’s a downpour, Spike. Please.”

“So there’s this teacher in the middle of teaching class, and she asks little Green Horn; ‘Suppose you walk in your house and find three rats scurrying around your floor and you shoot one dead with your horn, how many rats are left?’ ‘None,’ says Green Horn. ‘The shot scared the other rats off.’ Teacher says, ‘That’s wrong, two rats are left, but I like how you’re thinking.’ So then Green Horn turns around and asks, ‘Suppose you walk into an ice cream store and spot three beautiful unicorn babes sitting around a table, enjoying their ice cream cones. One’s licking her ice cream, one’s sucking her ice cream, one’s biting her ice cream. One of these three are married; which is it?’ Teacher says, ‘The one sucking her ice cream.’ ‘No,’ says Green Horn, ‘It’s the one wearing the wedding ring on her horn… but I like how you’re thinking!’”

The laughter exploded out of Lero and kept on until he was wheezing like an asthmatic.

* * *

===
From the Office of Dr. Disjunctive Syllogism
Interview Transcripts:
Subject: Honeydew
Earth Pony
Female
Age: 36

DS: Good morning, Ms. Dew. My name is Dr. Syllogism. Are you comfortable right now?

H: ~~Cozy as Oi’m~~ Cosy as I’m ever gonna going to f[expletive] get, I suppose. Least the hind leg restraints ain’t too tight.

DS: They’re there for your protection. You were very agitated when you came to us earlier this week. I don’t know if you knew this, but you struck one of the nurses before you had to be put under.

H: Of course ~~Oi~~ I was aware! What, did you think I had some kind of f[expletive] blackout or something? Some alter ego took over?

*Honeydew laughs, then briefly adopts a mocking, higher-pitched voice.

H: No, ~~et~~ it weren’t me that did all them killings, ~~voiolence~~ violence gives me tummyaches! It’s Mrs. Stabbity’s fault, she keeps taking the reins, and I’m always waking up in broom cupboards, all clueless and coated in fresh blood.’

*Here, Honeydew taps the side of her head with a forehoof.

H: Seriously, though, doc; it’s all a one-mare show up in this gorgeous head of ~~moine!~~ mine! I broke that bloated orange nursey’s face ~~cuz~~ because she said I ‘weren’t nobody special.’ Woulda SHOT her, if I coulda. That ~~Twoiloight~~ Twilight Sparkle better PRAY ~~me~~ my magic comes back…

DS: That’s a very unique accent you have there. Would you mind telling me where you’re from?

H: Didn’t you read my dossier? It would’ve told you that already: I was born in Dunlin, on the Emerald ~~Oisles.~~ Isles.

DS: Our files have you listed as coming from… Ponyville?

H: Ponyville? Nah, me being in Ponyville’s a recent thing, a temporary thing… or at least, that was the original intent. Get your facts right, you stupid f[expletive] shrink: I’m from the f[expletive] Isles. Everypony knows me there.

DS: Did one of your parents immigrate from the Emerald Isles?

H: Immigrate? Both my parents are still IN the Emerald Isles, and neither of them has ever left, except on business and a few vacations. In Mum’s case, she’s staying there permanently. She’s dead as yesterday’s dogsh[expletive], you see.

DS: Yes, a guard report mentions an airship accident. You would have still been a teenager. It must have been very difficult for you and your sisters.

H: (faintly) Airship?

*Here, Honeydew inexplicably enters a fugue state: silent, unblinking.

DS: Ms. Dew? Are you alright?

*Estimated 10 seconds pass; Honeydew emerges from her fugue.

H: You really need to ~~foire~~ fire whoever did your research for you, toots. It weren’t no f[expletive] airship. Someone put a hit on Mum, a punk from the Hammerhead Gang did her in, back when there WAS a Hammerhead Gang. I ain’t telling you a single f[expletive] thing that’s ain’t been in the newspapers; not that making the front page headlines is anything new to me!

DS: I’m afraid we don’t get newspapers from the Emerald Isles here, Ms. Dew. You should know that.

H: F[expletive] backwater donkeys. And by the way, what’s this ‘Ms. Dew’ nonsense? You giving me a twee little nickname, are you?

DS: Huh? No, I mean, isn’t that your name?

H: My name’s ‘Honeydew,’ all one word, ~~loike~~ like the fruit, not Honey Dew with a break in between! If it were f[expletive] Celestia here instead of me, would you call her ‘Ms. Lestia?’

DS: I’m sorry, Ms. Honeydew, it was a mistake on my part.

H: Nah, we’re cool. Ponies get my name wrong like that all the f[expletive] time. I ain’t even mad about it. Got a cig I could bum off you? My lungs feel wrong, like I never lit me a coffin nail in my life.

DS: I don’t smoke. But perhaps after we finish here, I’m sure something could be arranged.

H: That’d be smart of you. Believe me, you WANT me as your friend.

DS: A friend? While I do seek to foster a healthy relationship with my patients, tell me why would I want to be your friend?

H: Because being an enemy of mine could be extremely unlucky. Not good for whatever future prospects you have ~~fer~~ for yourself. Friendship, though, friendship pays big, when it’s me who’s your friend.

DS: This is an interesting insight into how you see other ponies, Ms. Honeydew.

H: I’m a big mare, and everypony wants to be chums with me; but there’s only two ways you get there: fork over the cash, or work for me. That’s how it goes when you’re in charge of an operation like the Sicklefin Gang.

DS: Alright, why don’t you tell me about this ‘gang’ you run. The Sicklefins?

H: You wouldn’t even NEED to be asking me such a stupid, ignorant question if this were happening back in the Isles. I suppose it’s no secret what we’ve done… well, what we TRIED to do to the human. That should give you a pretty good idea what we’re all about. We also dabble in smuggling, drug running, numbers, a few other gigs, but it’s the assassination jobs that’ve always been my favorite.

DS: And you’re the leader?

H: Aunt Entrance is leader of the Sicklefins. Seriously, I’m a very important pony; did you even give any of my files so much as a passing glance?

DS: I’ll get them to update the files. Tell me about your Aunt.

H: Ever hear the term ‘stone-cold killer?’ That’s my aunt, Entrance Wound, through and through. I’ll give her this: she IS a clever leader, and deadly as anything you could ask for in a gang boss. But Aunt Entrance ain’t just stone-cold when she’s killing, she’s stone-cold in casual chitchat, stone-cold when she’s eating food, stone-cold when somepony’s paying her millions in cash. I don’t think of her as a mare so much as a f[expletive] robot who happens to have been built of blood and bone, instead of metal.

DS: I take it there’s some bad blood between you and your Aunt?

H: Well, we’ve had our share of clashes, but I don’t think she hates me. That would require emotion. And she aggravates me plenty, but I pity the old nag way more than I hate her. Because at least I can emote.

DS: Tell me about the human. Why target him, specifically?

H: Cause he’s one-of-a-kind. There are KINGS and QUEENS who’re less famous than that two-legged superstar. You know, the ones who rule over countries no one can remember the names of. Nopony’ll ever forget the human, and nopony’ll ever forget the mare who killed him. Or TRIED to kill him, at any rate.

DS: So you wanted to be remembered. Is that something important to you?

H: If you ain’t remembered, you weren’t no one to begin with.

DS: And what do you think ponies will say about you now, in the aftermath of this failed murder?

*Honeydew’s answer is to glare as coldly as possible.

DS: That cutie mark of yours… how long have you had it for?

H: Since I was eleven. Seriously, so many ponies have been asking me about that...

*A photograph is brought out, showing the faces of the three Honey sisters: Honeydew, Honeybee, and Honeysuckle. It is shown to Honeydew.

DS: Can you tell me who the mare is in the center of the picture is?

H:: Sure. That’s Exit Wound.

DS: Exit Wound?

H:: The horn on her head’s kind of a giveaway.

*A second photograph is brought out. This one is also of Honeydew with her sisters, but taken from further back so that the sisters’ cutie marks are all visible. It is shown to Honeydew.

DS: And how about this picture?

H: Exit Wound, again, and I’m going to guess those two are those sisters of hers she’s always griping about. Not much in the way of family resemblance, is there?

*A third photograph is brought out. This one shows Honeydew with the members of her herd: Widescreen, Ivory Keys, and their two foals.

DS: And this one?

H: Ha ha ha! What an ugly stallion! The foals ain’t nothing to write home about, neither.

DS: Do you know their names?

H: Let’s see… there’s Exit Wound, the stallion’s called Clown Mane, the mare’s named Prissy Hooves, the filly’s called Squinky and the colt’s name is Kidney Stone the Fourth.

DS: That’s what you believe their names are?

H: Huh? You actually f[expletive] thought...?

*Honeydew laughs.

H: Hey, doc! Word has it there’s been this groundbreaking new discovery called ‘sarcasm.’ Ever hear of it?

DS: I think I just did.

H: Ooh, I'd better be careful! That almost sounded like humor!

*Honeydew points at the photograph.

H: But, seriously, Exit Wound’s the only face here I recognize. Exit never discussed her home life much, and I wouldn’t have been interested. Family’s nothing but a crock, anyways.

*At this moment, Honeydew leans forward too much and the eyeglasses she wears falls off her face.

H: [Expletive!] [Expletive,] if my magic were working right, I could’ve levitated them right back on.

DS: Ms. Honeydew? I want you to close your eyes. Now run your hoof along your brow. Tell me what you feel.

*Honeydew does so.

H: I feel me brow. Is this supposed to be… what do you call it, a spiritual enlightenment thingy or something?

DS: Do you feel a horn at all?

H: Of course not!

DS: So can you tell me how you could cast magic without a horn in the first place?

H: Ever since I was a wee filly, I had the power to tap into my earth pony magic.

DS: Earth pony… magic? What, their ability to channel mana to become stronger and tougher, or to manipulate plant life or the earth?

H: What are you talking about, doc? I mean REAL magic! Levitation! Teleportation! Fireballs! It’s in the ninety percent of everyone’s brain they never use. Except for me! Not only am I smart enough to use it, I do magic better than most unicorns! THEY might as well have been born the Earth Ponies! I tell you, there ain’t nothing like blasting a hundred holes into into somepony who irritates you; it’s the cornerstone of who I am as a person.

DS: Let’s take a break. I’ll get the nurse to come in and give you something to relax a little and clear your head.

H: Some whiskey, you mean? Be very much appreciated, I’ll tell ya that! You should have some yourself, Doc, yeh look like yeh could use a sip!

-transcript ends-

* * *

The following day, Lero was surprised to see his entire herd arrive. Apparently, Twilight had been discharged, though her horn was still bandaged… plus, there was a very unexpected additional guest whom Lero fixed on at once.

“Fancy seeing you here, Princess Celestia,” Lero greeted from his hospital bed.

Twilight gave him a troubled look, as though not sure how he’d respond to the sight of Princess Celestia. Lero wasn’t sure how he should be feeling himself. Maybe he really wasn't afraid of her anymore. Maybe he was too tired to give a damn. Though he wasn't ashamed to admit, her aurora hair still gave him chills when he saw it, even if the mare attached to it didn't as much anymore. At least he no longer locked up in terror at it. Either way, seeing the Princess was a bit of a surprise.

She had come with her mane as flat as those of all the mortal ponies accompanying her; not wavering in that special ethereal way which put Lero so ill-at-ease. “It really has been a long while since we’ve spoken face-to-face, hasn’t it, my friend?” asked Celestia, speaking for them both.

“It has,” the human agreed, albeit stiffly. “Truth be told, I’m surprised you had time to come see me.” Twilight made a soft, uncomfortable noise but seemed unwilling to dare intrude in their conversation.

“How are you feeling, Lero?” Celestia then asked. “Are you sleeping well?”

Lero sat up straighter in bed, smiling. “I’m much better than I was a few days ago, Your Majesty. And my sleep has been excellent. I’m sorry your sister’s not here; then I’d be able to thank her in person for that.”

These past few days, the Moon Princess had been bending over backwards to keep Lero’s sleep nightmare-free. For some of the dreams he’d had, she’d insert herself blatantly. Scrounger The Dog would have his filthy paws on him again, and down Luna would descend from the heavens, like an avenging goddess and smite the diseased creature with lightning. It struck him as faintly amusing having a literal quasi-deity delivering a Deus ex Machina.

Other times, she acted more behind-the-scenes. A bear-sized Honeydew would be pursuing him through a dark labyrinth made of primate cages, firing Pinkie Pie’s lye shooter at him like a minigun, when suddenly he turned a corner, and found himself celebrating a very happy birthday with the Element Bearers in Sugar Cube Corner.

Lero was very, very, certain Princess Luna had even went so far as to personally craft several sweet dreams for him to enjoy. He could see her hoof in all of them. He vividly remembered one where he was back on Earth with his parents. And his father had greeted him with a hearty, “Fair tidings to you, goodly son of mine!” and his mother had brought out a bale of hay for them all to eat. Apparently, Princess Luna's information about his home was limited to whatever details he'd dreamed, and had filled in the rest with her own experiences.

Even so, every moment of these dreams had been delightful, and he was deeply touched that Princess Luna would’ve gone to so much trouble for him.

“Is there anything I could get you?”

The human rubbed his shaven dome. “Some hair would be nice,” he told her, running his hand over his shorn head. His hair had been removed during the initial stages of treatment, and only a faint stubble starting to regrow.

Celestia’s horn titled the slightest bit downward; Lero could see a faint trace of mirth in her eyes. “That is something I can do. My mastery over hair growth is more extensive than my student's current mastery of moustaches.” She couldn't help but give Twilight an amused glance.

Lero leaned back slightly at the sight of the overly large horn drawing closer to him. “On second thought, I’d rather let it grow back on its own. Thanks, though.”

The alicorn’s horn lifted back up so that she and the human were staring eye-to-eye. “I owe you many apologies, Lero. For my deplorable lack of foresight. For arrogantly failing to suspect that any of my ponies would’ve been capable of such malevolence, fanaticism, and audacity. For not keeping a closer eye on you, and protecting you better from those who’d seek to do you harm. For this, and every other foolishness I’ve been showing so often…”

He noticed how Celestia’s eyes darted to all the ponies right behind her; Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Spike, Lyra, and Twilight Sparkle.

“...I beg your forgiveness.”

When Celestia bowed her head, her humility and regret were genuine. A dark part of Lero, seeped in resentment, found it all too convenient that Princess Celestia would have Rarity and Rainbow Dash next to her when she finally deigned to speak to him in person. There was so much they couldn’t talk about in front of Swapped ponies!

Yet, he also found himself imagining the way things might’ve gone if this situation had been reversed; if some Equestrian stallion had found himself stranded on Earth and the United States government had offered him citizenship. How long would it have taken some well-armed extremist to decide he was a threat to humanity?

“I’ll forgive you on one condition,” Lero told her.

“Lero, please…” Twilight begged under her breath.

“Tell me what you’re planning to do so that this never happens again.”

Twilight looked over to her mentor, who sat herself, and began to speak.

“I’m going to assign a team of elite agents of mine to keep watch over you. Not all the members of the Sicklefin gang were at that mill. It’ll be extremely important that you be guarded these first few weeks, especially in case one of them should try to attack you, or perhaps even an unaffiliated copycat killer, taking it upon herself to finish what the Sicklefins could not. Also, I intend to renegotiate agreements with several surrounding nations, especially in regards to criminal activity. My stance in regards to other nations in how they pursue criminals entering and leaving their nations has been rather laissez-faire, for the sake of peace and friendly relations. Unfortunately, it's clear it has allowed significant criminal organizations to thrive when they otherwise would not. Now that one made an attempt on your life, it clearly can't be allowed to continue.”

Lero shuddered. It felt like his life was turning into some kind of political espionage thriller. He pictured himself flanked by a pair of Secret Service ponies in suits and sunglasses. Agents who’d keep every pony at arm’s length at all hours of the day. Ponies who would follow him into the bathroom, check everything before he could use it, and wait right outside the stall, in case some terrorist had strapped a bomb to the toilet.

“I appreciate what you’re trying to do, and to a certain extent, I agree with what you’re saying, but could we please not have bodyguards? Not for any of my family, and especially not for me. It might get in the way of… me helping out my neighbors.” He said vaguely, not point in letting anyone overhear there were other swapped ponies, bewitchment or not.

The princess nodded at Lero, a knowing look on her face. “Not to worry. The ponies I’ll send will blend right into the background; you’ll never know they’re even there. You didn't realize Lyra had been assigned to watch over you until you were told, did you?"

"...That's a fair point." Lero supposed that was the best he’d could possibly ask for, given the circumstances. So he extended his hand towards Princess Celestia. “Then I forgive you for this Sicklefin fiasco.”

The relief on Twilight’s face as Lero shook Celestia’s hoof showed just how badly she’d been afraid he’d lash out in open anger at her.

“That said…” Twilight finally intervened. “I have something to show you, Lero.”

“Oh?” asked Lero, putting his food tray aside.

Twilight nodded. “Lyra, set it up.”

Lyra sighed, unfolding a stand out of her saddlebags, and placing several diagrams on it. “I still say this is excessive,” she said, levitating out a pointer.

“You said you’d help. Besides, I’m not supposed to use my magic except when necessary.”

“Fine.” Lyra replied, pointing out diagrams as Twilight talked.

“Alright, Lero! Remember when you first got here? Remember all the extensive tests and studies I put you through?”

Lero blushed slightly. “...Yes.” One of the first things she learned was his nudity taboo as she attempted -- repeatedly -- to get him to strip for a more thorough examination.

“Well, I made a few discoveries back then that were a deciding factor in Celestia letting you walk freely among the populace. Lero, I want you to think back,” Twilight said. “Think back all the way to your first day coming here... Can you ever remember getting sick? Ever?”

Lero frowned at her. “Sure, I’ve gotten sick! I’ve woken up with real skull-pounding hangovers!”

“Alright, hangovers, but those were from alcohol,” said Twilight. “Have you ever gotten sick?”

“Yes! I’ve been in the hospital before! Remember Bramblewood? That spider Rarity saved me from? Or how about right here and now?! Or any other couple of times I've been hurt?” Lero pointed around at everything, especially his bed with all the medical attachments it came with.

“Well… okay, yes, you’ve sustained your share of physical injuries, and you were injected with spider venom, but poisons don’t count at what I'm getting at!”

“They don’t, huh?” asked Lero, folding his arms skeptically.

“No, they do not,” answered Twilight, pointing her hoof very firmly at a pie chart, which showed a listing of the reasons for his visits to the hospital. Check-ups, injuries... And not much else. “Really think back on this, Lero. Can you remember one time since coming to Equestria where you came down with a fever? The flu? One case of the common cold? Any illness that can be directly attributed to viruses or bacteria?”

Lero gave it some real thought, casting his mind back to stumbling out through the thorns, and mentally fast forwarding through his life from there.

“It… it HAD to have happened at SOME point…” Lero murmured, thinking back on all the times he’d spent in bed. All those snowy winters where he ought to have caught a cold. All the hooves he’d shaken in friendship, all those objects ponies had placed into his hands with their mouths…

“The thing is, Lero, I don’t think it ever did. Or will.”

Twilight Sparkle sat down by him.

“Before coming to Equestria, Lero, you’d lived in not just one world but two: Earth and… the other place.” She spoke the last part in a tiny voice, and quickly continued on. “Think of what that means on a microscopic level! Imagine how many different cultures of microscopic organisms must’ve been crawling all over your skin, the day you arrived in Equestria! How many strains of bacteria? How many viruses?”

Lero’s stomach twisted. The day he’d crossed over into Equestria, he’d unleashed a Pandora’s Box of diseases upon this entire world. Suddenly, all Honeydew’s wild paranoias around him didn’t seem the least bit groundless now.

“Jesus, what have I done…?!”

Twilight’s hoof stopped his hands from covering his face. “Nothing. Nothing whatsoever. Want to know why? Because the pathogens which afflict sapient bipeds of Earth and those that afflict Equestrian ponies are too completely dissimilar! So you can rest assured, Lero, absolutely no harm has been done.”

“Uh… I hate to be the guy to ask this, but how can you be sure about that, Twilight?!” asked Spike, creeping towards the open door.

“Think about it, Spike. Have millions of ponies died from the untold number of alien diseases Lero brought into Equestria? Has Lero died from the untold number of diseases-alien-to-him which are floating in the very air we breathe?”

“Er… no,” said Spike, pausing awkwardly at the doorway, shutting the door.

"What's more, while I suspected it at the time, Gus Wainwright's research clinched it: human being have a different basis for their biology. You evolved in a magic-poor environment, so you never incorporated magic into your biology, like we ponies did. And like all our illnesses did, as well." Lyra pointed out a diagram Lero had seen before in Gus' lab, demonstrating how magic had incorporated itself in the pony nervous system.

"But wouldn't lacking magic make me more vulnerable to a magical disease?” Lero argued. “I'd have no defense!"

"No. While magic can affect you, like it could an object, you lack fundamental systems our diseases are dependent on to function. Let me give a nonmagical example."

She nodded to Lyra, who switched to a new diagram, showing two molecules. They seemed identical, contains the same atoms, connected in the same pattern, except they were flipped, like in a mirror. "See, it's possible to create any non-symmetrical molecule in a mirrored fashion; this is called ‘chirality.’ Or hoofedness- like being right-" one molecule was pointed out, "-or left hoofed." Then the other. "Though on Earth, I suppose they'd call it 'handedness'."

"That's... interesting, Twilight, but what does that have to do with me not getting sick?" Since this was a life-or-death matter, he was really trying to wrap his mind around the science lesson Twilight was trying to teach him.

"Everything! If you took an Earth disease and put it on a wrong-hoofed... Handed world, it'd be helpless. To even function, it'd need to somehow be able to break down every molecule it encountered, and reassemble it in a mirrored fashion. While not impossible, such an arrangement would be so energy-intensive as to be impossible to realistically maintain. Not even the sturdiest viruses could survive in such circumstances. Or to put it inversely, Lero, if we rebuilt you at the molecular level to have reverse-handed biology, you'd be immediately immune to all Earth diseases... but you'd be unable to extract nutrition from Earth food.”

Lero, who was right-handed, looked at his left hand in amazement. Never would he have dreamt how much potential for disaster it contained.

“Equestrian diseases face a similar dilemma in your body; there's simply not enough innate magic in your tissues for them to successfully infect you."

As Twilight spoke, Lyra revealed a comic-style depiction an anthropomorphic bacteria (equinomorphic?) being confused after being transported to to a universe of backward amino acids. It sampled the local cuisine, spitting it out in disgust, then slowly wasted away. He wasn't sure if seeing a cute bacteria reduced to skin and nonexistent bones was funny or disturbing. Lero decided to go with 'both'.

"Okay... I kinda follow you. but I've heard of diseases jumping between species before, why can't that happen here?"

"Ah..." Rainbow spoke up, everyone turning to look at her. She shied away for a moment, before steadying herself. "I can answer that."

Twilight hadn't done the research for that specific question, so she ceded the floor. "Go on?"

"Um, what you're talking about is something called a 'zoonotic', illness, and they're, ah, really rare. It has to do with the type of illness and how closely related the species involved are. Most illnesses are specifically adapted to their environment... that is, the species they infect. That’s why a dog licking a cut is less likely to cause infection than, say, a pony mouth -- or a human’s, in your case. It’s not that the dog’s mouth is clean -- they got as much bacteria and whatnot in there as a pony -- or a human’s mouth. It’s just they’re all adapted to living in dogs, not ponies or humans so infection is less likely.”

Lero had to fight down amazement as he listened to the rainbow-maned pegasus say all this. Yet still he had to wonder… had the Butterfly Mark been compelling Rainbow Dash to read all sorts of zoological science books during her spare time? Or was it possible that Dash was tapping directly into the Old Fluttershy’s memories and experiences?

“Bacteria and viruses do change enough that it's possible to jump species, but when they do, they usually are much, much weaker and easily handled by the immune system, since they’re not adapted to fooling or fighting that particular immune system. Self-contained organisms like fungi or parasites have the easiest time making the jump, but they're the easiest to treat, too. The more pernicious organisms, like viruses and bacteria have a much harder time doing so... And it's further complicated by how different organisms are. Jumping between a pony and a donkey is pretty easy... A pony and a pig? Just a bit harder... Pony and a lizard? Now that's hard. Pony and a tree? Nearly impossible. It has to do with how closely related they are... And Lero, you're not related to any of us at all."

What a far cry from Daring Do this all is, Lero thought, then forced himself to refocus on purely on the science, and whether it sounded believable.

“There's some exceptions to that, with certain magical illnesses,” Dash went on, “as they prey on the magic that's in all Equestrian species but it's already obvious how that's a non-issue for you, so I rest my case. So I think we can safely conclude that whatever diseases you might’ve picked up from this Diamond Dog… they have no idea where to even BEGIN inside your body!”

Lero was staring at a half-finished glass of milk on his lunch tray, remembering a very old science lesson he’d learned in high school.

“Edward Jenner… that was his name…”

“Who?” Lyra asked, putting down the pointer.

“Well, on Earth, there’s this disease called smallpox. I don’t know if it even exists in Equestria…”

Everyone looked over to Twilight.

“Can’t say I’ve heard of it,” she told them all.

“Well, it was a killer. Smallpox caused the death of millions of people over many centuries. It killed about thirty percent of those who contracted it. The survivors weren't left untouched, either. A third of the people who survived it went blind, while the rest were just left with horrible scars. But then came this doctor named Jenner, and he observed that milkmaids who worked with cows got this similar disease called cowpox…”

He saw all his girls wince.

“Ooh, cowpox, THAT’S a name we know…” said Rainbow Dash, cringing.

“Poor Moooira and Mooona… you know it was the cowpox that got them both…?” Rarity whispered to Lyra.

“Anyway,” Lero continued, “cowpox, or at least its nonmagical equivalent, exists on Earth. But when a human catches cowpox, he gets only slightly ill, and quickly gets over it.”

“Why?” Lyra asked.

“Because… because cowpox doesn’t know what to do in a human body. It was ‘made’ to infect cows.”

He was starting to see where Twilight was coming from with her argument. It was just like Twilight said: if he could get sick from pony diseases, he would've been dead in his first week here, and his own germs, the ones his body was relativelly familiar and resistant to and, in some cases, even depended on? Those would have been scorching a plague across Equestria by now.

"Dr. Jenner noticed that milkmaids seemed immune to smallpox, but occasionally got cowpox blisters on their hands, so, he took material from a milkmaid's cowpox blisters, and innoculated an 8-year-old boy with it. The boy only suffered a mild fever. Then later, when the boy was exposed to smallpox, he proved immune. Because his immune system knew how to fight to off by dealing with its weaker ‘cousin,’ cowpox."

The mares in the room all perked up hopefully; it sounded like they were all on the same page! But Lero frowned, remembering another historical tidbit.

“But still, even if I’m immune to everything Scrounger The Dog put inside my body... That doesn't mean there's no danger. There’s another Earth story I can tell you about: a woman named Mary Mallon who was infected with an illness called typhoid fever. Mary, herself, wasn't affected by the disease… but she unwittingly infected people she came in contact with! Girls, you’re all not immune! I’m not safe for you to be around, I could be a carrier of all sorts of nastiness I'm immune to, just like Typhoid Mary…!”

"No, you're not." Everyone looked up to see Dr. Vital Signs standing in the doorway. "I hate to interrupt your truly epic spiel of doom and gloom, but I felt it prudent to inject an actual medical opinion." He said dryly, as he walked over, handing a sheaf of paper to Lero.

"Your test results, Mr. Michaleides. After it became clear what you'd been exposed to, we ran every test we had for every known infectious disease. Even a few tests designed to find new ones."

Lero looked over line after line reading NEGATIVE in green lettering. "Let me guess, nothing?"

Dr. Signs nodded. "Clean as a whistle. Oh, well, we found the same Earth-based microorganisms that were present when you first arrived, largely unchanged -- they tend to die quickly outside your body -- but not a readable presence of our local microscopic fauna." He paused, looking over the rest in the room. "You should consider listening to your herd more often, Mr. Michlaides, they're smart mares."

“I… uh, thank you, Dr. Signs? Are you absolutely sure…?”

“Absolutely. Normally, I might suggest a quarantine for a pony just to be sure, but not even our deepest magical scans found anything even potentially dangerous. Coupled alongside the fact that you're effectively immune to our pathogens, such an effort would be pointless. And since you’re well on the mend, I’m going to be discharging you later today. I recommend some extended rest, so just take it easy for a week, avoid heavy lifting and hard labor, and I’ll prescribe a small amount of painkillers to help manage your healing.”

He paused, looking at the four eager mares. “And kissing your mares before they mob you. I deem it not only safe, but healthy.”

Lero blinked and laughed, “Alright, girls, if it’s safe, come here.” There was a happy cheer, and the four of them jumped up on his bed, showering him with kisses. Spike rolled his eyes, while Celestia and Dr. Signs let themselves out.

After several minutes of eager kisses and cuddles, Rarity sent Dash a meaningful look. “Lero, my darling… Rainbow and I had a little gift for you.”

“Huh? Oh, yeah, yeah, we do!”

Rainbow Dash came over by Rarity’s side, as Rarity levitated a small gift box into Lero’s hands. Opening it, he found a fresh new feather from Dash. And a white rose.

Lero couldn’t help but marvel at the white rose in particular. To see it was like seeing someone else’s invisible friend brought to life. Rarity had picked a gorgeous, double-flowered one in full bloom. Its pearly petals were soft to the touch, so dainty and enchanting to smell… the perfect shade of Rarity.

“Princess Celestia herself cast the same longevity spell on that rose, so it’d be just as resilient as a pegasus feather,” said Rarity. “She told me that she cast the spell doubly-strong this time, so it’d be even more resilient against… gunk.”

Lero began laughing suddenly, twirling the rose back and forth between his fingers. “It’s almost nostalgic, isn’t it, princess? That very first rose you gave me, back at that movie theater, Honeydew went and destroyed that too, didn’t she?”

“She did!” Rarity remembered. “Talk about déjà vu!”

“Well, third time’s the charm, I guess,” said Spike. “I seriously doubt that nutjob will be ruining any more roses anytime soon when she’s doing hard time.”

The rose’s stem had been clipped just short enough to be perfect for Lero to braid into his hair.

Guess it’ll have to wait until I have hair again. Lyra gave a pronounced cough, and she and Twilight stepped forward.

“Uh… Lero, we have something more to add, as well…”

Twilight levitated another small wrapped gift to Lero.

“Wow, so many gifts, has my birthday come early?” He opened their present. “Huh? What’s this?”

“Those are strands of hair cut from both our tails; Lyra’s and mine,” explained Twilight, a little bashfully. “We were hoping you could... braid them into your mane along with Rainbow’s feather and Rarity’s rose.”

“Twilight was all for getting flowers of our own to give you, but I talked her out of it,” said Lyra. “Told her it’d get a little crowded in your mane.”

Plus, a guy having that many flowers on him just looks… florid. Lero did not say aloud.

“Girls, I’m honored,” he told them.

They all watched as Lero used both Lyra and Twilight’s tail strands to tie the rose securely to the feather, all while humming a tune to himself.

“If you’re going to San Francisco, be sure to wear some flowers in your hair, if you’re going to San Francisco, you’re going to meet some gentle people there…”

“It looks lovely!” sighed Rarity, when he was done. “Such a perfect symbol of our togetherness!”

“What do you think we ought to call it?” inquired Twilight.

“Huh?” asked Lero.

“Well, I mean, ‘feather-and-flower-tied-up-with-tail-hairs’ is quite a mouthful, so what do you think we ought to call what you just made?”

Lero thought it over, recalling terminology of similar decoration worn this way. He rejected ‘brooch’ and ‘emblem’ before settling on a name. “How about ‘unity crest’?”

“Sound good to me,” said Spike.

“It’s beautiful.” Twilight said. “I can’t wait to see it in your hair when it grows back.”

Lero smiled. “Me, either.”

* * *

===
From the Office of Dr. Disjunctive Syllogism
Interview Transcripts:
Subject: Exit Wound
Unicorn
Female
Age: 34

DS: Alright, Ms. Wound. I’ve spoken with the Consul. You are facing some very serious charges. Murder, racketeering, smuggling, kidnapping… not to mention high treason. They are willing to make a deal though if you cooperate.

EW: ~~Oi~~ I’ll try me my best…

DS: Tell about the Sicklefins. How long have you been running them?

EW: Running the Sicklefins? Uh, I think you have it wrong, miss. I’ll admit, even I’m still a bit shocked how much influence I was able to exert once I got into Honeydew’s good graces, but in the end, it was still Honeydew’s gang; SHE was running the show!

DS: Don’t be coy now, Ms. Wound. We have a very extensive dossier on you. Born in Dulin, mother murdered by a rival gang...

EW: What? Dunlin? I was born in PONYVILLE; ask anypony who’s lived there! And what’s this about ~~me~~ my Mom being murdered by a ‘rival gang?’ How dare you! Mom was many things, but she weren’t never a gangster! Mom was a hero.

DS: Then how DID your mother die? Who was she?

EW: Her name was Honeymoon. She was a firefighter, she saved ponies from burning buildings. I wanted to be just like her… but then Mom had an adulterous affair with a minotaur lover. Bronze Bell. I was the one who walked in on her while they were… at it. I fled the house, and they did too. Ran off, disappeared from the face of the world. Then, several months later… this airship explodes over Las Pegasus, the Cloud Whale… and they were able to identify Mom and that two-legged monster by their dental records. I can still remember asking Mom: ‘why would pegasi ride around in airships when they have wings?’ And she answered, ‘why do earth ponies ride around in carriages if they have legs?’

DS: Are you angrier at the minotaur or your mother?

EW: I thought my mother was a hero until she proved she was nothing but a disgusting pervert. But I’ll never forget that minotaur, because he was the one who turned her towards perversion. Turned her against her own kind, her own family. Scooped her up those freaky monkey-arms of his, and she was gone from our lives. Monkeys are the worst, the WORST…

DS: That’s a very interesting cutie mark you have there, Ms. Wound.

EW: Huh? Oh. So you find melon slices ‘very interesting?’ You must not have had any lunch yet.

DS: How long have you had that mark for?

EW: I must’ve been… nine? Ten, maybe? Yes, ten years old.

*Exit Wound is shown a picture of Honeydew with her biological sisters, Honeybee and Honeysuckle.

DS: Tell me what you see in this photo.

EW: That’s me with my sisters, in happier days. Before ‘Lemur Monkey-lides’ (sic) came. And ruined everything. And flung his wormy feces all over everything pure and good in my life. The ape’s a destroyer...

DS: I need you to focus, Ms. Wound. Tell me about your sisters.

EW: What about them?

DS: Anything you feel like sharing.

EW: Honeysuckle and Honeybee have no part in this Sicklefin business. They’re innocent. We had a tragic falling-out, ever since the evil gorilla and his mares played a terrible trick on them. That unicorn, Rarity wanted Honeybee to drown, so she hurt Honeybee while they were both in the air, and Bee crashed into a lake. But the biped decided Bee was more useful dead than alive, so he dove in and secreted his alien pheromones all over Bee while she was helpless in his clutches, underwater. When Bee resurfaced, she’d become just another of the monkey’s drones, and she even tricked Honeysuckle into turning against me… I still cry about it at night. It’s not like Monkeylides needed more fawning flank-kissers, he did this just to spite me.

DS: And you have a herd, yes? Herd… what was it again?

EW: Widescreen.

DS: Who’s in your herd?

EW: There’s Ivory Keys, my herd-sister, and Widescreen, himself, he’s our stallion. We’ve been herding for over ten years now. Oh, and I can’t forget our two little foals, either.

DS: What kind of foals?

EW: You know, I’m really surprised you’re not asking more questions about what happened at the quarry mill. I almost rid the world of the evilest entity ever to invade our lands.

DS: In time. Meanwhile, what kind of foals do you have?

EW: Our firstborn’s a pegasus filly; she’s Ivory’s. She’s a teenager, with creamy mane and a dark brown coat; she has an espresso shot for a cutie mark. Mine’s the younger one… a colt with a bright green coat, and bright green mane. Hasn’t even got his cutie mark yet. I had to ground him for over a month because he snuck off and spoke to that two-legged meat-eater against my wishes.

DS: Quick side question: what kind of pony are you?

EW: What kind…? I know ponies think I’m insane, but I haven’t forgotten I’m a unicorn!

DS: Good. On a scale of one to ten, with one being ‘very low,’ and ten being ‘very high,’ where would you rank your magical aptitude?

EW: Oh, I’d give myself a two, and that’s being generous with myself! I’m rubbish with spells; I’ve always been that way. Most days, I can barely levitate a cantaloupe without it wobbling like a drunken butterfly. Ponies have always joked that I should’ve been born an earth pony. I wouldn’t have minded that.

DS: What does your family think of the human?

EW: They… well, they don’t support me. In spite of all the evidence I present to them, day and night, none of them are convinced that the human’s dangerous.

DS: Does that make you feel betrayed?

EW: Yes. But then, that filthy bonobo’s got the whole world hoodwinked into adoring his ugly, bald-legged, no-snout mug.

DS: Does that make you feel jealous? His celebrity status?

EW: That’s a common accusation ponies love to hurl in my face; that I’m ‘jealous’ of the chimp. Jealous of his social stature. Jealous of his ‘happy family.’ Jealous I don’t have a bonobo of my own, sticking his digits inside me.

DS: Are you jealous?

EW: No. Let the rich and famous be happy with their fame and riches. If Twilight Sparkle, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Lyra Heartstrings had chosen to herd with a regular stallion, you’d never have heard a peep from me. Even a griffon would’ve been tolerable. Barely.

DS: But not Lero Michealides. Why not? If they all love each other, why should you care?

EW: Because that demon is nothing but an incubus! How else could such a hideous aberration have sexed his way to where he stands?! Power! Worldwide adoration! He whispers his insidious lies into the very ear of Celestia, herself, and she laps it up like pudding!

DS: Miss Wound! Stop this behavior! Sit back down!

EW: He is a corruptor and defiler of heroes! And when heroes are corrupted, they turn their backs on all who once loved them! Don’t you see? Can’t anypony but me see the truth?!

-transcript ends-

* * *

“Ahhh… It’s good to be home.” Lero stretched out on his favorite couch at Golden Oaks Library, Twilight cuddled up by his side. “Thank you, Lyra,” he said, accepting drinks for him and Twilight.

“Remember,” cooed Rarity, as she settled behind Lero to rub his shoulders, “if I ever get hurt, I expect to be just as pampered.”

“Oh, of couuurrrsee, Ooooh, yes, Rarity, right there…” Lero mmmed happily as the other unicorn massaged him with her telekinesis.

“Dinner’s almost ready!” Rainbow Dash called from the kitchen.

“Excellent,” Twilight murmured, her eyes closed.

The smell of the meal wafting into Lero’s nostrils was nothing short of mouthwatering. Dash was such a good and enthusiastic cook. Lero struggled to recall if her old pre-Swap had ever cooked anything… usually she’d left that up to him…

“I don’t see why I have to fan them with a palm frond,” Spike grumbled.

There was a long pause, and Twilight opened her eyes. “...Spike, no one told you to do that.”

“Yeah, Spike, I thought you were doing that for comedic value,” said Lero, blinking. Where had Spike even gotten his hands on such a tropical thing as a palm frond?

“No, Twilight, you told me to... I’m now fanning you with Discord, aren’t I?”

“Indeed you are, my clever boy!” said Spike’s palm frond, which had sprouted a familiar pair of eyes and wings as he’d spoken. “I just thought I’d drop by and see how my favorite human was doing.”

With a snap, Discord was reclined on the couch, and Twilight, Lero, Lyra, Rarity, and Spike were now all fanning him. “Ah, that’s perfect.” He said, making himself comfortable, putting on sunglasses as a beam of sunlight came out of nowhere.

“Discord!” Rainbow scolded from the kitchen. “They’re recovering! Put them back!”

“Oh, I don’t know, what could be more relaxing than waiting hand and foot for wonderful little old me... OW! OW! Hey! Ow ow ow! Stop that!” Discord began to ask, before his 'servants' started to hit him with the palm fronds. “Okay, fine!” With a snap, Twilight and Lero found themselves on a super-comfy couch, wrapped in comfy, warm blankets, and hot soothing drinks in their hands, a put-out looking Discord levitating above them. “Better?”

“Much.” Twilight replied, snuggling in.

“...This hot chocolate tastes like fettuccine alfredo with cream sauce.” Lero commented, smacking his lips, eventually deciding its taste ranked three out of five stars.

“But of course! Can’t have everything normal.” Discord replied. Then he grinned over at Rarity. “I heard you enjoy fish.”

Rarity, who hadn’t touched a drop of her own hot chocolate, quickly said, “I enjoy eating fish,” as though Discord might transform her into a fish, if she’d simply said ‘yes.’ Then she looked at him warily, as though he still might do that.

“Ever sampled monkfish?”

Then the draconequus produced a ghastly aquatic creature with a squashed, dark, mottled toadlike head and a wide mouth full of many carnivorous teeth.

“Is it... edible?” questioned Lero. “I don’t think I remember ever seeing anything like that for sale at any fisherpony’s market.”

“Oh, fisherponies do sell these little guys,” Discord informed him. “It’s just that they mostly chop their heads off beforehand, since -- I’ll admit -- a cartoonist would be hard-pressed to make a marketable mascot from a face like this!”

Lero looked at the monkfish again and thought: if I were in the water, and I spotted this thing swimming at me, I’d be every bit as terrified as if it’d been a shark.

“But they are delicious, with a unique flavor and texture… so, Rarity, would you do me the kindness of bringing it to Rainbow Dash, along with this recipe for cooking it? My little treat!”

Unless it was liable to bite you or explode in your face, declining a gift from Discord was generally a bad idea. Knowing this, Rarity took the monkfish and the recipe in her telekinesis. “Thank you, Discord… I suppose I’ll be… in the kitchen helping Rainbow Dash prepare this fish… away from you.”

She left the room, clearly revolted to be handling the hideous creature even through magic.

Discord snapped his fingers, and the audio of the room subtly shifted. “I thought they’d never leave.”

Knowing magic when she saw it, Twilight furrowed her brow. “What was that, Discord?”

“Oh, just a simple audio-alteration spell.” Discord replied, with no further explanation.

“You know, Discord, something that's been on my mind about you: I’m surprised you didn’t make a personal appearance at that quarry mill,” said Lero.

“Hmm?”

“I mean, you were the name on everyone’s lips! You were the reason why the Sicklefin Gang didn’t kill Twilight and Rarity and Rainbow Dash outright. It’s really surprising that you didn’t join in the fighting.”

Discord patted Lero’s head affectionately; the way an uncle would pat the head of an adoring young nephew who suggested he ought to run for president.

“Well, I’ll tell you one thing, my little publicist pal, I was there. I scurried on over as soon as I heard the wackiness was going down. I was just…” And then Discord’s body turned invisible.

“...incognito.”

The invisible draconequus walked a circle around Lero; they could all hear his clawed feet on the floor.

“But as to my being highly conspicuous by my absence… well, let me put it this way. When you’re an immortal chaos god, and you see lovely pandemonium unfolding before you, you have two options. Sometimes you join in the fun, other times, you just kick back and pull out the popcorn.”

“And this was one of those ‘popcorn’ times, was it?” asked Lero.

The next second, Lero saw Discoteer hats on all his family’s heads, and felt one on his own.

“Lero, m’boy, between the snakes and the snow and the incredible growing-and-shrinking Lyra, you were supplying quite a lot of chaos without my help,” said Discord, no longer invisible. “True, you were amateurs, and an expert like moi could’ve livened it up even more. But for amateurs, you were all so spirited, so thrilling and spontaneous, I didn’t have the heart to intrude and steal your thunder. I wanted to see where you took things on your own!”

“So, what you’re saying… You didn’t help us… because you were enjoying the chaos!?” Twilight snapped. “I know this is a stupid question, but are you crazy!? Lero could have died!”

There was a very, very long pause, before Discord responded. “People die every day.” The mirth was gone from his voice. “What would you have me do? Do you really wanted the Lord of Chaos, the Master of Mayhem to serve as the Grim Reaper? Decide who stays, and who comically slips on a banana peel, falls ass over teakettle into an open sewer and croaks?”

“I… Never really thought about it.” Twilight replied, hesitantly.

“Death isn’t fun. Death’s when the fun stops. But the thing with nigh-omnipotence is that if anything happens, it’s because you allowed it take place, because you didn’t stop it. But what fun is that? That level of responsibility? I only ever agreed to use my powers as Celestia asked, and refrain from too much disruption of you ponies. And she did not ask me to put a stopper in death. Unfortunately, if I intercede to save one person… well, soon, everyone expects to have a turn.”

“And you’re no one’s genie.” Lero commented.

Discord snaps his fingers, Lero’s Discoteer hat morphing into a Mortarboard. “Give the boy a prize, he can learn!” The cheerful tone returned as he performed some weird yoga pose along the wall. “So anyone I save -- or not -- is purely at my own discretion, thank you, and I think Celestia would begrudgingly grant me that. You don’t see her wandering around making other ponies immortal like her, do you? Besides, just because someone invokes my name a bunch of times doesn’t automatically mean I’ve got to drop everything and show up. Who do they think I am, Bloody Mary? Mortals are ALWAYS trying to manipulate you in some way… when they’re not out to slay you.”

Suddenly, Lero was holding a broken beer bottle that had literally appeared in his hand out of nowhere. But Discord looked at him with good humor, and the next second, the broken bottle had transformed into a large slab of chocolate, on which the words ‘Friendship Is Magic’ had been written.

“So, how about them new swapped ponies, eh, Lero? You all were looking away to fix swapped ponies, but ended up making TWO more! Ain’t that a kick in the pants?”

Everyone in the room cringed.

“Yeah,” the human agreed, “a real punch to stomach.” He set the chocolate aside; not even tempted to bite into any of it right now.

Discord chuckled. “Seriouslly, you should see their psyche evaluations. It’s comedy gold!” With a snap of his fingers, Interview transcripts conducted by a 'Dr. Syllogism' appeared in front of them.

“Why am I not surprised you’re spying on them, too?” Lyra murmured, flipping through them.

“Relevant to my duties, so to speak.” Discord replied.

“And speaking of those two, Discord, can you tell us what’s happening right now, with the Sicklefin gang? Aren’t they going to be put on trial?”

“Trial?” After a long and overly obnoxious laugh, Discord elbowed Twilight playfully. “Naive know-nothings say the darndest things, don’t they?”

Then he turned back to Lero. “No, there’s been a news leak about the Swap, so Celestia’s going to want to keep this close to the chest as much as she can. The cat's out of the bag, so now it's time to get rid of the bag and deny it was ever there.”

He snapped his fingers and suddenly they had a television set sitting in the middle of the room.

“That means no courtroom and no judge...” started Discord.

“Wait, no judge? They’re not getting due process?” Lero interjected.

Twilight shrugged. “The Princesses are the highest legal authority in the kingdom, Lero. They effectively are judges, so their decrees can hold the same legal weight.”

Lero frowned, remembering some of the more abusive monarchies from his own world. “So they’re not subject to their own laws?”

Twilight shook her head. “Of course they are! You saw the council dealing with them in the past when they had functionally become derelict in their duties. There’s specific provisions in the legal system to handle if they ever become suspects of a crime that they can’t legally influence.”

Lero frowned and shrugged. “Sorry, sometimes it’s still a bit weird dealing with the fact I’m not living in a democracy anymore.”

Discord loudly cleared his throat. “If we can continue?” He asked, turning on the TV with a remote control. “This is being handled by internal government investigators working at places that don't exist. They bring you in, put you in a box, and ask questions.”

Discord’s TV was showing one such questioning session taking place inside a small, nearly-featureless room.

“State your name, please,” a unicorn interrogator instructed, sitting at a table.

“I-I’m Absinthe.”

Absinthe… Absinthe… “Y... you eat meat, right?”

The name and the voice echoed back into Lero’s head from so long ago. The colt he was seeing on-screen… bright green coat and mane, blue eyes, still no cutie mark… it was the same kid. The second-to-last pony that the Old Rainbow Dash had ever spoken to before she’d been Swapped...

The interrogator wrote Absinthe’s name on a document. “And you are the son of Honeydew, is that correct?”

“Yes,” said Absinthe, sadly. “Honeydew’s my mom.”

“Oh, and... and have you EVER eaten pony m...?”

“Alright, Absinthe. Two months ago, you had seen your mother tear up a piece of paper and shove it into the trash. A piece of paper which you then pulled out of the trash and taped back together. Is this correct?”

“I… I…”

Absinthe’s family… Honeydew’s family... was with the little colt. Including Honeybee and Honeysuckle, too. It seemed they were all being interrogated together. Widescreen, the herd’s stallion, put an arm around his son. “It’s okay, Absinthe. Go ahead and tell the nice pony what she wants to know.”

“Yeah, Absinthe,” said a teenage mare; Absinthe’s sister, who had also been there on that long-ago day. “It’ll be okay.”

“Both our herd-mothers are furious with you, Absinthe! Especially your own!"

Lero was aware Honeydew was part of a herd, but had never dreamed she’d been a mother, as well. Then again, it only made sense that the super-xenophobic mare would’ve gone to great pains to hide her children from a ‘monster’ like him for this long. It must’ve taken an extraordinary amount of courage for Absinthe to finally approach Lero after all the years he’d been living in Ponyville.

Honeydew… why did she have to hate him THIS much?! Take things to THIS extreme? It was just… it was just...

“How could this have even happened?!” the human exploded out loud. “I mean, I’m still bowled over by it!”

“By this new Swap?” asked Discord.

“That, and by this whole snafu with the Sicklefins and Honeydew in general! I mean, it still feels like it came completely out of nowhere for me… and this is the LAST thing we need right now, there’s no reason for it to have even happened while we haven’t finished sorting out Twilight’s first Swap…”

Discord hit a button on the remote and the interrogation paused. The draconequus looked Lero square in the eye; as a parent would look at a spoiled, presumptuous kid.

“Lero, my friend, take it from me -- a guy who’s only just recently discovered an appreciation for goodness and friendship after untold eons: do you really think the bad guys care? Did you seriously believe that all the wrongdoers of this world would politely put their schemes on indefinite hold, while you and Twilight sorted out the Swap? Count yourself incredibly lucky they’ve been as low-key for as many months as it’s been!”

He pointed a warning finger at Lero.

“But evildoers will rise again to spread havoc, as they always do. Whether it takes the form of a psychotic neighbor, a gang of mobsters from the Emerald Isles, a tinpot dictator with a brand-new weapon of mass destruction, space aliens, Celestia’s evil twin from a parallel universe, or…”

* * *

The wizened centaur in his black hooded robe suddenly experienced a prickle down his impossibly ancient spine. From his spot on the forest floor where he was crouched low, the old fugitive rose and spun around. Apart from a few birds in the trees, no one was around. The centaur’s mind had been playing tricks on him. No great surprise, there. What was the Sun Princess playing at?

Cerberus leaving his post all those months ago had been an incredible stroke of fortune, and the centaur had not squandered the opportunity. Surely his escape from Tartarus hadn’t really gone unnoticed by Celestia, had it? No, he couldn’t afford to drop his guard, not even after all this time. Soldiers of hers had to be hunting him. He needed to focus on restoring himself back to full strength.

But even as Lord Tirek bent back down to suck in more of the life essence from the pheasant on the ground, he couldn’t quite shake the weird surety that someone had spoken his name from a distance.

* * *

“...Something else entirely… they won’t be pulling their punches. If I were standing in your beat-up shoes, Lero, I’d take this experience as a much-needed wake-up call.”

“You’re right, Discord,” said Twilight Sparkle. “You’re absolutely right. All of us Element Bearers are going to need to be ready for anything. All six of us will need to have our minds set right, one way or another.”

“Absolutely,” said Lero, and cleared his throat. “Although, Discord… while we’re on the subject of Swaps and government cover-ups, I couldn’t help but notice how you seem to be sitting this one out. You’ve chosen not to include these two new Swapped Ponies in your Bewitchment.”

“That’s right.” Discord changed the channel on his TV, and now they were seeing a stressed-out Celestia in some kind of special situation room, looking unhappily at photographs of Exit Wound and Honeydew, while conversing with a small body of her most trusted advisors. “Celestia’s a big girl; she can handle this one herself.”

“Is there any way I could convince you to change your mind on that?” Lero asked quietly.

When the channel changed again, it wasn’t an intentional thing. Discord’s finger had slipped in surprise. No one here had expected Lero to say this.

“I mean, I know it’ll be a humongous inconvenience for you, Discord, but it’s just... well…”

“When will the doctors be able to fix my Mom, Miss?” Honeydew’s son begged to know. “How long will they need?”

There was a long pause from the investigator. “I’m sorry, Absinthe, I don’t know that, I’m not a doctor,” he replied. “Could you please continue answering the questions?”

Tears started streaming down Absinthe’s eyes, as he began to sob.

“I just want my mom back! But she’s been changed! She’s a different pony now! She doesn’t recognize me at all! Not me, not Dad, not Mama Ivory, not even Triple! I told her I loved her, and she… she laughed and said all sorts of horrible things to me! All sorts of awful swear words in that weird accent! I just want her to remember! I just want her to remember!”

Lero turned back to Discord, pleadingly.

“Look, I’m not asking you to have Honeydew and Exit Wound not go to jail. There’s no denying, they NEED to be locked up. But…”

He looked forward at the members of Herd Widescreen and Honeydew’s two sisters, all tearful, even as they sought to calm Absinthe down. “...I feel so bad for that poor family. They didn’t deserve this. At least, if they were Bewitched... it’ll be a little bit easier on their hearts, wouldn’t it?”

But Discord only laughed. “Really, Lero? Seriously? And give up this…” he gestured to the trial, “...entertainment?”

“Discord…” Lero said, pleadingly.

The draconequus let out a snort. “You are disgustingly forgiving, you know that? Look, while I am all-powerful, I am not perfect. As the Avatar of Chaos, the very concept of perfection is an abomination to me, anyway. So while I could easily take more Swapped souls under the wing of my Bewitchment… the more there are, the more likely some sort of flaw might be introduced, from a tiny, nagging inconsistency to a full-blown, mind-breaking paradox.”

Then his eyes narrowed, a deep, frightening scowl crossing his face; Lero suddenly recognizing the danger possible from someone he normally regarded as his friend. "And I am not that forgiving. I will not endanger my friends -- and, I suppose, acquaintances -- to protect them. In fact, I want those two to understand a certain truth: more than ever before, no one sees things the way they do."

“Hate to say it, Fingers, but I’m with Discord on this one,” said Lyra. “The situation’s far from ideal, but at least these two horrible mares will at least be able to see things from a much-needed new perspective. Not the perspective they NEED, perhaps, but a new perspective nonetheless. At least that psychopath, Exit Wound, now has a worldview where she actually loves other ponies… and Honeydew has one where she doesn't regard Lero as evil incarnate. So who knows? This swap might do them some good, in the end.”

“I agree too,” sighed Twilight. “Fixing those two isn't the priority. Whatever limited spell casting I can currently manage should be focused on helping our friends, not criminals, especially considering how critical the Element Bearers are to Equestria. Even though I do feel absolutely terrible for the little colt.” She finished, miserablly.

Lero looked over at Spike. Although it was a longshot, maybe Spike might understand where he was coming from, since he and Absinthe were both young…

“Maybe if this had been Mr. and Mrs. Cake instead of Exit Wound and Honeydew, I’d’ve been right with you, Lero, and helped you try and talk Discord into at least including them in the Bewitchment,” said Spike, pausing to imagine how the Cake parents’ Swap would go. “But those two? No. Once we get the swapped fixed, Yeah, okay. Just… For now? They’re criminals, and we can let the cops deal with criminals for now. That’s their job.”

And to that, Discord raised a glass of what looked to be mercury.

“So here’s to a pair of horrible mares

Long in jail may they rot!

Which one’s which? The two made a switch!

And both deserved what they got!

Zum Wohl!”

Lero thought it over as Discord drunk his mercury. Maybe they were right. He was being way too lenient on these despicable ponies. He looked back at Herd Widescreen, and at Honeysuckle and Honeybee. Yes, it was regrettable, and they’d be going through a lot of pain. But Bewitchment or no Bewitchment, nothing changed the fact that an insane mare was getting locked away, and they’d be one family member short.

Lero thought back on every cruel word Honeydew had ever spat at him. All the times she’d ever tried to attack him. And to think, she’d been planning this for months, if not longer! Not to mention that Diamond Dog… on one hand, it was true that none of Scrounger’s diseases would’ve been compatible with his body. But there was no denying what Honeydew’s intention had been. To Hell with her. He needed to focus on what was really important, just like Twilight.

“Thus, Miss Exit Wound and Miss Honeydew have been jointly declared incompetent due to mental instability induced by magical curse,” an important-looking pony on Discord’s TV was saying. “Until further notice, both mares are to be held in the Merry Meadows Psychomantic Trauma Research and Rehabilitation Facility for the Criminally Unwell. Reevaluation shall take place upon the breaking of said curse."

“Dinner’s ready!” sang Rainbow Dash from the kitchen. “Come get it while it’s hot!”

The TV disappeared into smoke as everyone got up. Lero glanced at the clock as he strode towards the kitchen with the others. In a couple hours, Fluttershy would be coming over, and they’d be having the first of their new comedy lessons together. He could hardly wait.

* * *

“BLOIND! Yer all BLOIND! That carnivore’s clouded yer perceptions! Yer lost in his maze o’ illusions and LOIES!”

The foam-padded Orderly Golems used to treat ‘danger criminals’ as they put it, escorted Exit Wound down the corridor, failing to respond to anything she was saying. Yet still, she had to keep trying. The world depended on her continuing to try.

“Oi AIN’T a gangster boss! Oi ain’t from teh Emerald Oisles! Oi grow melons and sell ‘em in teh market! Oi’m a sister! Oi’m a mother! Oi’ve got herdmates! And Oi’ve never had a cutie mark different than this one! Et’s always been this way!”

They had treated her like a stranger. Widescreen, the love of her life, Absinthe, the sweet young colt born from their love… Ivory Keys, who shared Honeydew’s stallion and who had always been a wonderful, loving herdmother to Absinthe, even if Exit, herself, hadn’t been quite so wonderful to Triple Espresso… she HAD tried. And Honeybee and Honeysuckle too. She’d been fighting for all their sakes, especially.

The shrink who’d interviewed Exit had brought her family in to see her to ‘test something.’ To ‘validate a theory’ she had. Exit’s family had given their permission to be recorded. Exit had been prepared to be screamed at. She’d been prepared for anguished tears. She’d even been prepared to be disowned from the herd. They had all insisted that she’d never been part of their family in the first place. The real mother, the real herdsister, had been HONEYDEW… according to them. That foul, profane, murderous, self-absorbed brute of a sexual deviant crime queen.

It had devolved into a screaming match. The more Exit had tried to make her family remember the truth, the louder they screamed back how insane she was. The foals hadn’t been able to take it; they’d ran out of the room, wailing… only for Absinthe to return five minutes later with a still-tear-streaked face, and beg Exit to give his ‘real mom’ her cutie mark back.

“But don’t think Oi dunno what’s really going on! Oi know who’s ta blame for me family not recognoizing me! Oi saw what Monkeyloides did at teh quarry! Spinning Twoiloight Sparkle’s head around… that weird spell that hit me… THAT’S what caused this! He did et! He’s teh real criminal, not me!”

The sterile white walls of the facility were occasionally interrupted by bright murals painted on them. No actual paintings that patients could pull of the wall and attack someone with. All were sweet, cloying images where everyone was happy, cheerful, friendly, and smiling, almost to the point of being eerie and unsettling.

Floral-scented disinfectant almost-but-not-quite covered the disturbing scents the naturally came with being a medical facility that housed the mentally ill. The overwhelming cloying scent carried a faint undercurrent of unpleasantness matching the 'Nice-but-not-right' of the visuals. Quiet, peaceful, symphonic music played, only occasionally interrupted by muffled incoherent screams, yells, howls and barks emitted by patients in the high-security wing she was being escorted into.

Exit shuddered. She needed to get away from this place, she NEEDED to make the bonobo pay for what he’d done… if only she could wriggle out of this straightjacket and horn wrap somehow...

“Open yer eyes: he ain’t just some harmless civilian!! He rewroites reality and scrambles ponies’ brains as he sees fit, loike his pal, Discord! They’re probably BROTHERS! Who knows WHAT his true endgame is? Who knows WHAT he’s really capable o’ doing? And we’re just playing roight inta his filthy bonobo paws! Praising him for every second he screws us over more!”

The white-padded Orderly Golems came to a stop before a door. One of them brought out a key and fitted it into the keyhole. Panic welled within Exit Wound. Why did she always have to be so alone? Why couldn’t anypony give her the help she really needed?

“Yeh… yeh HAVE ta let me go! Oi need ta put a stop ta this! Et’s what Oi was meant for! Lemur Monkeyloides is me entoire reason for being! Hating him, revoiling him, badmouthing him, foighting him, ending him… this is why Oi exist in this world! Just as anteaters exist to eat ants! Just as Celestia exists to move teh sun! Please, yeh HAVE ta let me go! He’s poison and Oi’m teh antidote! He’s a voirus and Oi’m teh vaccine! Only OI can end him, for Oi, alone, can see through his trickery! In teh name o’ sanity, yeh HAVE ta believe me and let me fulfil me destiny!” She struggled violently, attempting to wrench herself from their grip before they shoved her into her new room.

One of the two Golems spoke up, its glowing eyes flickering as it spoke, the rigid smiling mouth not moving at all. "Relax, Patient Exit, this is a normal and healthy part of the recovery process! Here, take a deep breath of lovely lilac-scented sleepygas! And remember, Patient Exit: you are loved!"

A cloud of gas hissed out of a tiny nozzle hidden in its mouth. She gasped, unintentionally inhaling, feeling pleasantly woozy as they escorted into her padded room, the walls painted with reassuring, empowering phrases such as “You can do it!” and “Heal Thyself!” and “You are loved!” Smiling faces and idyllic vistas surrounded her. once she was seated, the golems exited, shutting the door behind them, leaving her in the brightly-lit hell of happy reassurance.

Thoughts sluggishly passed through her drugged haze. She’d lost. She had truly and decisively lost. They thought she was crazy. They thought she wasn’t herself. She was shut away in here, cut off from the rest of the world, with no way of contacting good, normal ponies just living their good, normal lives, and warning them of the danger they were in and inspiring them to take action against the insidious mind-warping demon in their midst. The Elements of Harmony could save no one; they were accomplices enthralled to the great enemy. With her out of the picture, the human was completely free, to revamp pony society howsoever he saw fit.

Her family and friends were at his twisted mercy. The world would not be saved.

Everything within Exit Wound needed to be fighting the human, and the human had won.

She felt her cutie mark begin to clench.

Author's Note

Merry Christmas, everyone!

Thirty-Five: Gem Hunters

The moon had risen by the time Spike got home from the Carousel Boutique. He wasn’t just feeling tired; he was more exhausted than usual, and with good reason. When he opened the door, though, he saw Lero with Rainbow Dash, reading aloud to her from the comedy book Fluttershy had given him at the hospital. And Spike went over and sat right up against Dash, listening along to Lero while sometimes scratching the head of an animal that nudged his hand or sat in his lap for a pet.

Recently, Lero had taken to wearing a hat. It was always on his head these days. This wasn’t any hat Applejack had made, but an old blue cap Twilight had lent him. It used to be Shining Armor’s before he’d joined the Royal Guard. Anyone who cared to look through the hole in the cap where Shining’s horn had poked out from would see how much hair Lero still had yet to grow before the human felt confident about going hatless once more.

Lero was frequently breaking his own narration of Advanced Lessons in Funniness to make observations on some paragraph he had just read, or ask Dash whether she thought Fluttershy would respond well to a certain comedy exercise, or to pause so they could laugh at some punchline from the book. Through it all, Spike offered his own thoughts and recommendations to what he was hearing… but more than anything else, the young dragon found himself happy that Dash was back.

Having Rainbow Dash here… back in the family again, his older sister again, was great. Reflecting on all his past actions, he realized what an unappreciative brat he’d been… and not just of Rainbow Dash. Before, Twilight Sparkle had been the only one in this household Spike had loved all the way to his core. All the others, he’d treated more or less like glorified roommates… he’d never really taken the time to really bond deeply with them, younger-brother-to-older-sister, and make their relationship special. Not Dash, not Lyra… perhaps he should even give some thought about letting this new version of Rarity more into his heart -- as she was now, not how he wished she was.

Spike snuggled against Rainbow Dash, and she snuggled right back without a second thought (or the smallest sputter of self-consciousness on the ‘uncoolness’ he might’ve expected from Dash’s old self,) and when Lero closed his book, Spike went and helped Dash tend to her animals a little, and he went to see what he could do with Lyra to continue his family bonding efforts, only to find she had turned in early this evening, and to be further stymied when he found Rarity likewise unavailable as the weather service had needed Rarity to work a late shift tonight.

All this effort at ‘sister appreciation,’ it hadn’t exactly come from out of the blue. Everything Spike had been through today had left its effect on him. It would be important to carry this feeling with him tomorrow, with everything he and Applejack were preparing for.

Spike snagged himself a quick snack and went up to his bedroom. He was so weary, and tomorrow would be a such a big day at Carousel Boutique… yet he wanted to reward himself for being such a good, selfless little dragon today. Some comics would be nice. Twilight had given Spike his graphic novels back a few days ago. And with Rainbow Dash returned, he wasn’t ashamed to read them. Tired as he was, even fifteen minutes would be enough. Which would he pick?

Spike looked at his bookshelf. There was Lieutenant Antihero, that might be cool to reread. Power Ponies… hm, nah, not tonight. Maybe The Unbelievable Lynxmare, or The Sisterhood Of Justice wouldn’t be a bad pick. Rainbow Dash had bought him an entire ten volumes of Sisterhood Of Justice graphic novels right after that thing with the glufferflork… might be good to get started on that…

Then another wave of tiredness rolled over the young dragon, and he turned back toward his bed, only for something to catch his eye. A newspaper had been left on his bed, seemingly by accident, beside a bottle of glass cleaner. Today’s newspaper, Spike saw, when he came closer.

The funnies section… Spike thought to himself with a smile. It had been ages since he’d read newspaper comics… why not?

So he flipped to that section, and was quickly reminded why he’d quit reading newspaper comics: none of the funnies could live up to the name. Not the one with all the young foals whose “hip” and “happening” slang-talk was all “written” in “quotation marks.” Not the preachy, badly-drawn ones with paper-thin caricatures of politicians. He remembered Herd-Done-By; four spiteful spouses who did nothing but spit poisonous one-liners about each other, day after day after day... It got disturbing, after a while. Definitely not the one where the characters were all old, miserable smirking curmudgeons dying of cancer. The only genuinely funny one was Walnuts… how sad was that? How long ago had Walnuts’ creator passed away? They should either hire a new cartoonist to carry on the story, or give some newcomer a chance. It was as empty as eating costume jewelry...

--swap--

The word jumped out at Spike from the opposite side of the newspaper page, inside an editorial.

Here’s a question to all my fellow Ponyville ponies: any of you got pictures of our ex-neighbor, Honeydew? In a town like ours, with so many head-turning notables as Twilight Sparkle, Lero the Human, and Spike, the world’s only civilized dragon…

Spike felt a warm flush of pride, and knew he’d be cutting this one out and keeping it…

...Honeydew’s had lots of competition. But still, has anyone GOT them? Because if you do: you’ve got a valuable commodity on your hooves. Several sources, from journalistic to scientific are looking for 'before' photographs of her to corroborate the reported magical alteration of her cutie mark, a feat previously thought impossible to modern science and magic.

The Crown's official statement is that it was the result of a misfire of a highly experimental spell, only able to be cast by Alicorns or the highest level Unicorn magi, similar to age magic. They strongly recommend against any independent research in this area, due to typical risks of such high-level experimentation, such as spell misfires, or catastrophic horn strain. However, the very possibilities such magic being viable has resulted in many interested parties, and they are willing to pay handsomely for photos of Honeydew. Ponies such as...

Spike felt his eyelids grow heavy. He blinked, and tried to find his place on the article, only to find his eyes draw to a line further down.

If there was somepony else you’d swap lives with, who would it be?

* * *

“So, Lero!” Spike was saying, cheerily. “Off to wilderness camp! Are you excited?”

The young human boy Spike had brought to this drop-off point nodded without real enthusiasm. “Yeah. Kinda.”

Lero was a real small boy, not even ten yet, and barely came up to Spike’s waist. He was dressed in a pair of jean shorts, a T-shirt with the Power Ponies on it, brown shoes and a blue hat.

From where he sat on the bench next to Lero, the six-foot-tall dragon stretched out his long, well-developed, muscular arms as pony parents waited with their foals for the camp counselors to declare that it was time for the campers to climb on the wagons and get ready for adventure. “You know, it’s been forever since I’ve gone camping.”

The hat wasn’t something Lero normally wore. It used to belong to Twilight’s brother, Shining Armor, way back when Shining had been Lero’s age. Spike, himself, wore absolutely nothing. He preferred it that way, as did his mares.

One of the fillies glanced at Lero as she strode past him with her family. The little boy cringed instantly, pulling his cap down harder over his head, as though it were a construction worker’s hard hat and there might be falling debris.

“Did you really need to wear this?” Spike huffed, pinching the top of the kid’s hat between two claws.

“What’s the big deal?!” snapped the boy, pushing Spike’s fingers away. “AJ wears hers practically 24/7!”

“If it were just the hat, I wouldn’t say anything. But day-in, day-out, you cover your upper body AND your lower body AND your feet. I mean I get the feet, with how soft they are, but really, now your head, too?” Spike grinned sardonically. “Keep up at this rate, and I’ll tell you what your next birthday present’s gonna be: a swanky new hazmat suit!”

“Ha ha ha.” Lero glowered one of his patented nobody-understands-me-cause-I’m-a-human glowers.

“Seriously though, lose the hat, Lero,” Spike said. “It ain’t winter.”

“I’m BALD.” This was very true, regrettably. It wasn’t just the hair atop his head; Lero didn’t have so much as an eyelash grown back yet. The doctors had needed to remove all his hair. The look didn’t suit him at all.

“Hair’s overrated,” the older dragon insisted, trying again to play it cool. “Look at me! Not a follicle on me, and you don’t hear ME complain.”

“Yeah, but you got those cool spines!” Lero objected.

“Okay, fair enough.” Spike replied. Out of the corner of his eye, Spike could see a mare grin excitedly at the way the sunlight glinted off his spines. It was enough to reignite his eagerness for tomorrow, when he and his mares could…

“And some of us don’t have skin made of awesome shiny scales that can withstand lava and which all the mares seem to go for!” The pipsqueak snapped. “What do I got?!”

Both of them went silent as a number of curious ears flicked in their direction. Lero turned away from Spike. “My body’s hideous,” the boy said in a soft, trembling voice. “I hate it. I look like an ape with the mange. Like a two-legged pig. No one should have to look at it.”

Spike had always suspected this to be the reason why Lero always wore clothes. Back when Lero hadn’t been a part of Herd Spike yet, back when he’d only lived with Spike’s sister, Twilight, as her adopted son... Twilight had once tried teaching Lero to be comfortable about being the buff. Like any proper civilized being. But there’d apparently been some mean bully colt who’d teased the human boy viciously about his body for weeks… and Lero had never gotten over it to this day. But with all the sick, sick, things that twisted mare Honeydew had put Lero through when she’d kidnapped him… she’d probably been spewing taunts like this at him all while she’d been doing it.

The dragon’s blood boiled just thinking of Honeydew… he almost felt mad enough to start a forest fire. If she hadn’t already been captured by the time he’d gotten to her, he was fairly certain she’d have not made it out of that quarry alive, like several of the Sicklefins didn’t. He would’ve given anything to have a unicorn horn for just one minute so he could magic Lero’s hair back on his head, and give the poor kid his dignity back.

“Spike? I don’t really want to go to camp. Isn’t there any way I can stay at home with you guys?”

Spike forced a lighthearted smile, not really bothering to hide the fact that it WAS forced. “Come on, Lero, don’t be that way. You’re going to have lots of fun at this camp. There’ll be games, and hiking, and swimming, and campfires, and... “ He trailed off, seeing Lero’s serious, unimpressed expression. “...stuff.”

“Spike, look, I know what happens during a heat,” said the boy, matter-of-factly.

Spike sighed. He would have to have a talk with his sister. While Twilight acted as a doting and loving mother to her adopted human son, she had a bad habit of treating him too much like an adult. Teaching a child Lero’s age about heat was premature, no matter how clinical or matter-of-fact it was presented. But Twilight probably couldn’t find it in herself to deny Lero learning, now matter how inappropriate. Now Spike had to deal with a small child who thought he was on the same maturity level as himself! The grown dragon tilted his head down, practically daring the kid to get into specifics with so many four-year-olds in close earshot.

“...But I’m okay with that! “ Lero said. “You can just shut me in the basement with my comic books and my games and enough food and drink to get along with… and you and the girls can go and.... have fun with each other upstairs for however long you need. I promise, I won’t mind at all!”

Uncomfortably, Spike turned around, hoping to see his mares come by; they were better at explaining this sort of thing to Lero, and helping him accept it. But they still hadn’t come yet.

“Sorry, but it doesn’t work that way, First, Twilight wouldn’t be there to help you if anything went wrong. She’s got her own heat, so she’ll be out with other herdless girls. Second, me and my girls are either going to be occupied or too tired to help. It’d be irresponsible of us to just leave you down there by yourself without anyone to help, if something goes wrong. It’s not just about our privacy, but your safety.”

“Please! I’m so scared, Spike!” And he truly was. Considering how much the little guy loved to downplay problems with some flippant bit of snark, it was all the more jarring to see the naked fear on Lero’s face.

“I don’t wanna leave here… the Sicklefins could be anywhere! They could follow me to camp and drag me into the woods while I’m asleep in my tent, and what then?”

It was enough to make Spike felt really guilty and have second thoughts. What if camp was a mistake? What if the best thing for Lero would be to go along with what he wanted? Bring him back home, and then check in on him every so often...

“I won’t bother you at all, I won’t act grossed-out by whatever I hear you do. Just, please… let me be with you guys. I won’t feel safe when I’m so far away from all of you. Please, let’s just go back home. Please?”

Spike thought it over a little longer… he was almost tempted. Lero never begged him for anything.

As if in answer, the memory of his mares’ sultry eyes flashed into Spike’s head. That was all the dragon needed to understand what the truly right thing to do was.

“Lero… I know this might be hard for you to understand… But letting you go home and hide is the worst thing for you right now. What Honeydew did to you was terrible, and I understand you being scared, but if you decide to hide from the world because of her… That’s what she wants. It means she steals your whole life from you. Making you so scared of the bad things she and other ponies can do that you never go out and live your life and meet good ponies and let good things happen to you. I promise you’ll be fine,” he said with his most calming smile. “Remember what Celestia said? You’ll be under protection, and you won’t even know who’s doing the protecting!”

Lero looked around at all the other foals. Four was the minimum age that Camp Mountain Peaks accepted for their campers.

“You think that some of the other kids are secretly grown-up ninja ponies in disguise or something?” the human asked.

“Maybe! Wouldn’t put it past Celestia!”

From disbelieving, Lero’s face shifted into a look of forlorn sadness. The face of an unwanted child, being booted out of the house on any flimsy excuse.

“Look, Lero,” said Spike, “This Swap… it’s really thrown a spanner in the works, hasn’t it? Things got really thorny between us for a while.”

Lero nodded.

“I won’t lie to you: you really got on my nerves at some points. Sometimes you can be a really selfish, snide, unhelpful, opportunistic little stinker.”

“Gee… way to not sugarcoat it for me.” Lero muttered.

“But I also came to see how much heart you have. How much strength. I’ve really come to admire that about you. You’re a good little guy who’s just trying to help set things right. You’re my brother. I wouldn’t have bothered to help save you from the Sicklefins if I didn’t want you around.”

It was good to see his kid brother grin again. “Yeah... you ran in and beat up half of that whole gang… I won’t be forgetting THAT anytime soon!”

Nor would Spike. It’d been a while since he’d gone all-out on a group of enemies like that… but when his brother’s life was on the line, there was no way Spike would ever just stand where the cops wanted him to stand: away from danger.

“And, Lero, I do want to be a better brother to you. I want to start right now, but… you’ll understand this more when you’re my age, kid… but when it comes to girls, you got to do things on THEIR TIME. And there ain’t anything more ‘their time’ than a heat, except giving birth.”

Spike bent down a bit, letting his own plaintiveness show on his face. “Please, Lero… I need to do this. I’m so close to having Rarity… the other half of her… fall in love with us. Having her part of our herd again, the way it’s supposed to be. I know you don’t mean any harm, but trust me when I say you’d just get in our way. Please say you understand. Okay?"

Lero nodded. “I think… if it were me and Rainbow Dash instead of you and Rarity or AJ… I probably wouldn’t do a thing differently from what you’re doing, Spike.”

The boy trailed off, tapping his index fingers together anxiously a few times, before finally taking in another breath.

“Dash is just awesome. I loved her when she had her old mark. Her bravery, how fast she flew through the sky, I loved hearing her stories… she was like a comic book hero come to life! I was always really rooting for her to actually make the Wonderbolts, right alongside Scootaloo… back when Scoots remembered things right. Even now, with her new mark, I’m always happy to go to her cottage and help her, the way you’ve been helping Rarity, Spike…”

Lero fell silent once again, and who could blame him? It had been emotionally wrenching for the kid to see Rarity take on so many of Rainbow’s personality traits after her Swap, and then watch Spike win her heart. Lero had been so upset. It had almost been like Spike had stolen Rainbow Dash, herself, away from him. No boy should ever have to go through such a thing, But what choice did he have?

“...Dash really appreciates me being there for her. And going to her place has really helped to toughen me up. We’re getting a lot better about putting our heads together and coming up with strategies to undermine Angel Bunny. Someday, we’ll get the best of that nasty rabbit for good, you’ll see!”

“Sure you don’t need any help?” Spike offered, not for the first time.

“No. I’m going to help her like you did with Mama AJ! Like you’re helping Rarity now! I’ll do it all by myself!” Lero insisted, a bit defensively.

“Alright, Lero, but you know where to come to when you need help, right?”

“...Yeah, I know.”

Spike put a comforting arm around Lero, careful not to let his claws cut the kid’s skin. “Look, little brother… You’re young, and life is complex. I’m sure as you get older and girls start being a real concern, you’ll be able to sort it out. and I’ll be there to help you. And one thing you can be sure of: Twilight will love you, no matter what. Take it from the other guy she took into her family when he didn’t have anyone.”

There was a long pause, and Lero smiled up at him. “Thanks, Spike.” And the dragon suddenly found himself with the human child’s arms wrapped around his back.

The kid was all heart. Smiling down at him, Spike was all too happy to wrap his own arms around Lero and hug him right back, feeling that small little face press against his chest. “I promise you, Lero, once things have cooled down… we can start being proper brothers again, okay?”

Lero squeezed Spike a little tighter. “You’re the coolest dragon ever, Spike! There’s no way I could’ve asked for a better big brother than you!”

Spike leaned to nuzzle Lero’s head through his hat. “And you’re the best brother I could ask for. Big or little...”

Then Spike caught movement out of corner of his eye, and glanced straight upward. There they stood, on Rarity’s cloud platform; the mares of his herd.

“Hey, there’s my two favorite boys!” Twilight was the first to disembark once Rarity’s cloud was close enough to ground. His adoptive sister nuzzled him affectionately, which Spike returned. He still shared a home with Twilight despite his expanding herd. After all, Spike was still the number one assistant to the Element of Magic; separate homes would have made that difficult. Not that his mares minded. Twilight was a best friend of theirs and a fellow Element Bearer.

The other two mares sidled up to Spike, one to either side, snuggling up to him. “And how fares mah shining knight?” AJ asked, giving him a quick kiss on the cheek.

“Are you ready for tonight, Hot Stuff?” Rarity whispered.

Spike gave a small smirk, and flirty puff of flame. “Absolutely.”

"And there you are, Lero, my little miracle." Twilight had given Lero that affectionate name in regards to his nature; a child from beyond their world. His arrival here truly was miraculous.

“Hi, Twilight,” Lero greeted her. Balancing carefully on three legs, she wrapped an arm around Lero, hugging and nuzzling him as Lero reciprocated with equal affection.

Briefly, Spike tried imagining if he and Twilight had been ten years apart instead of just one year, whether she’d have doted on him like that. Somehow, he didn’t think so. Even if he were even smaller and cuter than Lero was, he’d probably always be her number one assistant to her.

Twilight pulled back from Lero, levitating a small sack into his hands. "I packed you some tasty, healthy snacks for the trip there, and wildlife and wilderness guides for you to read. Remember, leaves of three...”

“Let them be. Thanks, mom.” Lero responded.

“Right!” Twilight favored him with another nuzzle. “Stay safe, okay? Don’t wander off alone, and don’t hesitate to run to the camp counselors if you see or hear anything out of the ordinary, okay?”

Lero nodded. “Don’t worry, mom, I’ll be fine. Are you going to be okay this next week? “

Twilight nodded. “Oh yes! I’ll be with Cheerilee and Nurse Redheart this time around. We’ve got quite the itinerary planned!” She looked on the verge of expounding when she was nudge gently by Applejack’s flank.

“Ah’m sure that’s all the details lil’ Lero wants ta know. “ AJ said pointedly.

“Right, of course.” Twilight ducked her head, embarrassed.

AJ had come dressed in a sporty outdoors outfit, a loose cotton blouse and khaki shorts, all subtly colored and cut in a very complementary fashion, with subtle stitch-work adding small artistic flairs. It even worked with her ever-present stetson. More than a few heads were turning in her direction. The work that Spike had put in to help her find equilibrium was clear, as this entire incredible-looking outfit had been made with her own hooves.

Smiling at Lero, Applejack pulled out a package from her (matching, naturally) saddlebags, and handed the package over to Lero.

“Heah you are, mah sweet li’l dandy, all the extra campin’ clothes ya could want. Swim trunks, shorts, thick socks, those hikin’ boots you wanted -- and ya might wanna check out the new hat!”

Lero shuffled through the package, pulling out a reasonable facsimile of a ball cap with the words ‘Team Spike’ embroidered on it… the hat was in Spike’s own colors; purple and green. Spike was deeply moved by the grin Lero wore when he pulled off Shining Armor’s cap for the one with his name on it. He was moved further when he met eyes with Applejack and she mouthed the words, ‘Ah love yew.’

He patted her Diamond Mark lovingly.

Thanks, Mama AJ!” An orange arm wrapped around Lero close as he squeezed her tight. “You didn’t have to do all this!”

“Ah know, but Ah’d do it all again in a heartbeat, Lero. Yer family. An’ how many stallions or foals like clothes the way yew do? Yer a joy fer yer Mama Applejack.”

Rarity let out of huff. “No one told me we were supposed to bring gifts! You two are making me look bad.” Rarity strode over to Lero, ruffling his hair with a hoof. “Hey, there, little dear, I’ve noticed you’ve not shown up to watch me with Scootaloo in a while. She’s starting to get worried she’s lost her sidekick!”

“I…” Lero stammered a bit. “I’m sorry… I’ve been busy helping Rainbow Dash!”

“Oh! That poor dear, she’s been having so much trouble lately! And I’ve been so busy with my weather and Spike, I’ve hardly had a moment to visit her.”

She paused thoughtfully, with what all the adults recognized to be her matchmaker’s smile. “Say, perhaps after you’re back from camp, maybe I can come over to help? Maybe even bring along Scootaloo?”

Lero’s face brightened. “That’d be great!”

Spike gave Lero an amused look that said ‘all by yourself, huh?’

To which Lero shot him a glare that clearly read ‘Shut up.’ Spike just smirked and shrugged.

Rarity paused awkwardly, missing the exchange as she glanced around, as if looking for what to say. “Oh!” She said, suddenly, as she noted a cloud overhead, looking down to Lero. “I know I didn’t bring a present you could hold in your hands, but I have something even better!”

Lero perked up at that. “Really? What?”

“I have a lot of pull in the weather service; I could pull a few strings, and make sure you have perfect weather for your whole camping trip!” She glanced at Spike; he immediately recognized she’d need to send dozens of letters to pull this off, pronto. And there was no faster way than dragonfire. He grinned at her and gave her a confirming nod. Nothing but the best for his girl!

“Really? You’d do that for me?” Lero was truly stunned.

“Nothing’s too good for my little dear.” To Rarity's surprise, she found herself enveloped in the human's arms in a tight hug. She smiled down at him and returned it. "It's the least I can do..."

“Rarity?” Lero responded. “I’m glad that Spike’s… become so special to you. It… it means you’re family, and I’m glad you’re a part of my family now.”

Rarity, struck speechless by this, just hugged him tighter. After a few moments, she releases him, wiping away what clearly aren’t tears, and finally says, “Thank you, Lero, that’s… one of the sweetest things anyone’s said to me.”

“Uh, Mama AJ? Where’s Sweetie? I’m kinda surprised you didn’t bring her along with.” Lero asked, wearing that expression that was unique to young boys who were hoping that they might see someone they were close to, but at the same time dreading it because it was (functionally) their annoying sister.

"Oh, ah, mah folks are outsida Ponyville so often these days that Ma's, uh, not on the same ''schedule" as the other mares here anymore. So Ma ‘n’ Pa thought now’d be a perfect time to take Sweetie on a trip with them."

Spike smiled at the thought of little Sweetie Belle. Back when he and Rarity had finally connected as ‘stallion’ and mare, Sweetie had pretty much been part of the package deal, more of a stepdaughter of his than anything else… considering how devoted Pearl and Magnum were to their vacations. Then they’d welcomed Twilight and Lero into their home. Sweetie had been ecstatic at having someone she could be ‘big sister’ to, (so much so, Lero had needed two months to stop calling her ‘evil stepsister’ behind her back.)

“I-It’ll be good for Sweetie to go with Grandma Pearl and Grandpa Magnum,” said Lero. “They’re her birth parents and they love each other, so it’s good they have a chance to touch base like this.”

"Well, don't be too worried." Rarity replied. "I'm sure you won't be too lonely."

Lero frowned. "What do you mean?" Nearly immediately he was answered by rapid hoofbeats and a two voices chorusing a greeting.

"LERO!" Lero managed to swivel his head to spot the incoming fillies before he was tackled into a hug by Apple Bloom and Scootaloo, managing an 'oof' as the air was driven from his lungs.

"Don't be afraid! We're here now!" Apple Bloom announced.

"Yeah! We'll protect you from the bad guys!" Scootaloo added.

"An' we'll follow you everywhere, an' do all the same stuff ya do, and never let ya out of our sight!" Apple Bloom continued.

"Yup! That way you don't have to worry about anything this entire trip!" concluded Scootaloo.

"CUTIE MARK CRUSADER BODYGUARDS YAAAAAY!!!!!" They finished in a chorus.

Spike spotted a glance pass between Rarity and Pinkie Pie who stood in the distance, apparently having escorted the fillies here. He nodded in acknowledgement to her, and she tiredly returned the gesture. He glanced back over at Rarity quizzically, to which she just gave him an enigmatic smile. He turned back to Lero, sandwiched between the two hugging fillies, his expression is the most conflicted one he’d ever seen. Relief, gratitude, annoyance, disgust, and probably quite a few other emotions fought for space on his face, because he finally let out a wheezy “...Thanks?”

There was a shrill whistle as camp counselors drew attention to the arrival to the wagon to camp. “Alright, Campers! All aboard!” Called the camp counselor in the “Camp Mountain Peaks” Cap.

“All right!”

“Let’s go!”

The two Crusaders start to drag off Lero, only to be halted by a purple force field. “One moment, girls.” Twilight walked over to the trio. “You two watch out for him, okay?” She said, in a half-serious, half-joking tone.

“Yes, Ma’am!”

“All over it!”

Leaning down, she pressed her muzzle against Lero’s forehead. “Take care of yourself, okay, Lero? I love you.”

He nuzzles back, giving her a quick peck. “Love you, too, Mom.”

The two Crusaders went awwww at that, to which Lero gave them death glares, before finding himself spirited up on the wagons. The adults wave as it departs with the children, until it rounds a bend and vanishes from sight.

“Well… Best not to keep them waiting. See you around, guys.” Twilight said, giving a sisterly nuzzle to Rarity, AJ and Spike, before teleporting away. The three started heading back to the cloud platform, Spike feeling the tingle of the Cloud Walkeing spell envelop him as Rarity cast it. He glanced at her.

“I get the feeling that you had something to do with Lero’s predicament over there.” He said, stroking her back

Rarity gave airs of innocence. “What, little old me? Perhaps certain fillies just overheard certain conversations held coincidentally in their presence.”

“You did!” He said, clambering up on the cloud platform, and helping his mares up on it.

“Well, someone has to look out for his future. Besides, they look adorable together!”

AJ let out a hearty laugh. “Yer matchmakin’!?”

“Well, the Crusaders adore him already, and his crush on Dash, while adorable- and the poor dear needs all the help she can right now- he needs to start looking at mares his age, as I judge he’s getting close to when it’ll start to matter.”

Spike put his arms around his mares. “That’s awful sweet of you, Rarity- but I think for the moment we should start thinking about our own matchmaking- maybe right about now?” The two mares giggle, leaning in for a kiss,..

* * *

RRRIIIIIIIIIIIINNNGGGGG!!!!

Spike muttered curses as he shut the alarm clock for waking him just as the dream was about to get good. But Twilight Sparkle had not raised him to be a late sleeper, after all. Before Lero had entered their lives, most of his days would start with Twilight’s voice telling him to get up, or nudging his face with her nose. Still, it was an hour earlier than he was used to rising.

But that was fine. Today was going to be a big day after all, for him and for Applejack. An important pony would be coming over.

* * *

To cheer herself up, Sweetie Belle tried to think of worse places she could be standing in front of.

School? Well… on one hoof, it was the place where she was forced to be classmates with Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon, and homework could sometimes be a drag. But Sweetie’s fellow Crusaders also went there, and many other cool foals her age too, and she’d never been the sort of filly who hated learning, especially with such a nice teacher as Cheerilee.

The Everfree Forest? Well, she’d had a few scary experiences there, once or twice, but nothing so bad that it’d stop her from going back to those woods if Apple Bloom thought up a way it might get them their cutie marks. There was always something new and exciting adventure in the Everfree! The thrills were what made it so great to go back to. Plus, that was where Zecora lived and she was really nice.

The dentist’s? The drilling wasn’t pleasant at all, and Sweetie hated being told she had cavities, but at least she only had to go see her dentist twice a year. And besides, Colgate was nice, if a bit... overenthusiastic.

Tartarus?

...Okay, she had a winner. Sweetie Belle could definitely say that returning to the Carousel Boutique would be better than Tartarus. But as her mother knocked on the boutique’s door, Sweetie found herself having second thoughts about even that. She only knew of Tartarus by reputation, after all. Maybe it wasn’t as bad in reality as most ponies made it out to be. And maybe, just maybe, Applejack would NOT be inside her stupid boutique… please, Celestia, let Applejack not be here…

Spike the dragon was the one who opened the door. “Pearl! Magnum!”

He and Sweetie’s parents greeted each other like family; her mom hugging the dragon at once in one of her most affectionate squeezes.

“Spike,” Mom was saying, “it’s so good to see ya!”

“It’s really great to see you too, Pearl!” Spike told her, hugging her back tenderly, like they were nephew and aunt. “Though it’s not like we haven’t seen each other in a while.”

This was true. It was only last night, in fact, that Spike and Applejack had stopped by to help move Sweetie’s things out of her bedroom and pack Mom and Dad’s luggage for them, all while assuring them both, once again, that Sweetie would be okay at the Boutique this time.

“Well, it’s GONNA be awhile ‘til we see each other again, Spike-o!” Sweetie’s dad laughed, noogie-ing the dragon as though that was a ruffly mane on top of the dragon’s head instead of that… whatever-you-called-it. “So we might as well get our goodbyes out of the way.”

“Well, I’m happy for you and Pearl!” Spike told him. “You two have earned yourselves a little R-and-R...”

Sweetie Belle had to bite her tongue upon hearing Spike say ‘earned.’

“... just be sure to take lots of pictures when you’re down in Domineighca!”

“Actually, it’s Mareuba we’re headin’ ta, Spike-o,” said Magnum. “Domineighca’s three months from now. But, yeah, we’ll be takin’ all sorts o’ pictures! The sunsets and waterfalls down there are said to be like no other!”

Another vacation. Another vacation. Mom and Dad were treating themselves to another trip, another tropical tourist trap for two… and leave your daughters at home! Applejack had once said that when she’d been Sweetie’s own age, Dad and Mom had really struggled trying to run a sporting goods store, and they’d been been really parental parents with AJ. It had always been hard for Sweetie to imagine that last bit.

“And it’s good to see you too, Sweetie Belle!” said Spike, noticing her last of all, like the receptionist at some pet hotel finally smiling down at the puppy. Sweetie stiffened coldly, when the scaly little brown-noser came up and hugged her around the shoulders. “We’re very glad to have you back over.”

She and Spike were the same age! Where’d he get off treating her like some kinda dopey little kid? Just because he cleaned way more messes than he made! Just because he once saved the Crystal Empire from an evil king! Just because he could watch over all of Rainbow Dash’s animals and sort all the books in Twilight Sparkle’s library, and had filed all of AJ’s taxes for her last week!

And SPEAKING of which… here came the great clotheshorse, herself, right behind Spike!

“H--hh---howdy,” Applejack grinned, but her ears were pulled back. Her hoof-steps were practically as soft as Spike’s scaly little feet. Even her tail was tucked like a dog’s. “Everythang okay?”

“Perfectly fine,” Mom said. “Couldn’t be peachier.”

“How ya been, Jackie?” Dad asked. “Holding up good?”

“Yup!” said AJ. “Every day’s better’n the day before.”

Sweetie supposed she ought to say something, if she didn’t want to be scolded for being ‘rude and ungrateful,’ but boy, was it tough fighting her anger down.

“Hi, AJ.”

“It’s real, real, wonderful havin’ ya back at the boo-teek, Sweetie.” AJ actually took that dopey cowgirl hat off her head and held it tenderly over her heart while she said this. “Really wonderful.”

“I’ll bet,” Sweetie said.

AJ looked back up at their parents. “Ya’ll wanna step inside and have yerselves some cookies and a cuppa joe ‘fore ya head out? Ah’ve got Bitalian Roast, fresh as can be, ‘n’ them lemon-vanilla wafers things ya love so much, Ma.”

“Sweet of you to offer, but no thanks, AJ. I’m on this new diet, and I don’t want to be tempted with cookies,” said Mom.

“Besides, it’s not too long before the cruise ship sets out,” said Dad. “No sense running late. So...”

First Dad, then Mom bent and kissed Sweetie Belle on the nose. Then they each turned and gave hugs and kisses to AJ as well.

“You girls be good to each other, you hear?” said Dad.

“Ma… Pa… Ah love ya both so very, very much,” AJ whispered.

It was so weird… nowadays, whenever the moment called for Applejack to trade hugs with Mom and Dad, it was never just a social courtesy, anymore. Applejack embraced each of them with all her heart, as though they were war heroes brought back from the dead. The first few times, it had surprised them both; but these days, they just happily took it in stride.

“Awww… Jackie, you lil’ cuddle bug,” crooned Dad. Then he turned to Spike. “Keep up the good work, Spike-o!”

Sweetie watched her Mom and Dad climb back into their carriage and take off for the docks, wishing she could go back in a time machine and let all her grandparents know they were making a mistake, naming these two work-dodging workaphobes as the beneficiaries in their will.

“So, um… would you like to come inside?” asked Spike. “They’re really good cookies.”

No, she didn’t. She didn’t want to be in this place. And she frankly wasn’t feeling too keen about Spike, himself, the guy was responsible for talking her parents into giving Applejack another chance. If not for him, they’d have cancelled this vacation of theirs altogether!

“Got any ice cream to go with those cookies?” she sighed, still looking at the tracks her parents’ carriage had left.

“Oh yes!” piped Spike. “Five flavors, in fact: amaretto, dulce de leche, mojito sorbet, cherry cosmopolitan, and brownie batter.”

“Brownie batter?” repeated Sweetie.

When Spike said ‘yes,’ a tiny speck of Sweetie’s resentment died. Brownie batter ice cream was one of her all-time favorites.

“Let’s go,” she said, turning into the boutique with Spike.

First was the showroom, the all-important showroom. Spotless as ever. Every ponyquin just-so. The dresses on the ponyquins….

...they weren’t weird. No terrycloth raincoats. No army camouflage-patterned gymslips. Not so much as a single pink-and-silver duffle coat. The selection still wasn’t pretty, but it was a regular, everyday kind of not-pretty. Fashion designed by somepony who was at least attempting to eventually fit into the fashion world.

“What do you think?” asked Spike, seeing her taking in the sights. A little further ahead, AJ had also paused, looking behind her shoulder to see what her little sister would say.

“I swear I passed out those flyers to everypony at my school!” Sweetie Belle yelled.

“EVERYPONY?!” sneered her sister. “Well, it’s jest as well ya ain’t getting yer cutie mark in mail service, cuz Ah ain’t seen NOPONY come by! Now here’s a fresh stack, Ah expect yew ta put one o’ these in every mailbox in Ponyville. Don’t even bother coming back ‘til yew do!”

“It’s nicer,” Sweetie admitted, doing her best not to shiver at her memory. “Are you getting any more business these days?”

“Let’s go into the kitchen!” Spike evaded, as Applejack turned back forward, so Sweetie could only see the back of her head.

Sunlight brightened the clean hallways. There had been so much dust the last time Sweetie had walked down them. Back then, Applejack had kept all the windows shut and the drapes firmly drawn, so nopony could see inside. The door to the bathroom was partially opened…

“AJ, I… I was crusading with Scootaloo and Apple Bloom, and I fell from a tree… please help me… where are all the bandages? Where’s all the gauze?!”

“Ah wove them all together ta make a hat! Jest wait right there, and Ah’ll show it to ya…” Then Applejack left the bathroom, only to step back into give her sister a second look. “Yew really oughta have a doctor look at all those cuts, Sweetie Belle…”

The kitchen was a picture of hominess. No dishes in the sink. No garbage in the garbage cans. Opal was curled up on her cushion, batting a toy mouse around. Everything scrubbed clean. Sweetie Belle actually felt choked up inside: for the first time, she was overtaken by the sense that she really had come home, rather than the hostile, unwelcoming place the boutique had become by the time she'd left.

The table had been set up in preparation not just for Sweetie, herself, but her parents as well. A fresh, teapot and coffeepot sat steaming out on a silver tray, along with the extra tea bags and the sugar bowl and such. Applejack hadn’t overdone it by setting out the really fine china; but it was still one of her nicest cup sets. It was almost enough to make Sweetie regret that she prefered juice and soda pop.

And of course, there were the cookies! As promised, there were the lemon-vanilla wafer ones that their Mom loved best, (Mom could eat through a whole packet of them within two days, tops... you had to be quick to get any!) But there were also other types: little shortbread ones, square sandwich ones and jam-filled ones, even little gingerbread ponies, too!

Apart from the wafer ones, none of these yummy-looking cookies were the types sold in stores. Not Sugar Cube Corner, nor any of the boxed brands they sold out on the marketplace. And she knew AJ’s cooking well enough to say they hadn’t been made by AJ, either. So where…?

“Go ahead, please have one!” said Spike. When Sweetie sat at the table,the dragon took the chair next to her, watching as she helped herself to one of the jam-filled ones, topped with a small little slice of cherry. The fact that it wasn’t stale made it taste so much better. Then Sweetie realized something.

“You made these, didn’t you, Spike?”

With a proud little chuckle, Spike finally bit down on one of his own cookies. “You pick up a few things when you work for Twilight like I do!”

Sweetie glanced over at Applejack, who was standing off to the side, watching them both with that anxious, silent smile. It almost felt as though AJ were hoping that Spike could charm Sweetie into liking the Carousel Boutique and herself again all on his own.

“Uh… did ya want that ice cream ta go with them cookies, SB?”

Sweetie could see into Applejack’s fridge when AJ opened it up. She saw oranges, lettuce, a carton of milk, pears, peaches, bread… it was fully stocked…

“Why isn’t there any food in this place, AJ?!” Sweetie exclaimed. The fridge was barren. BARREN. Even that one old red-green stain on the second shelf seemed to have been licked off.

“Money’s tight, ya pampered lil’ princess! Learn to tighten the belt!” growled Applejack, feeding another piece of gold lamé into that sewing machine of hers.

Sweetie Belle ate the ice cream Applejack served her quietly. Not even bad memories could make brownie batter not delicious. AJ, herself, scooped herself some of that cherry cosmopolitan stuff. And when they’d all eaten their fill, Sweetie left her chair and said, “I’m just gonna head up to my room, I think.”

“Don’t ya’ll have ta be heading to school at some point?” asked AJ, as she and Spike followed Sweetie up the stairs.

“Today’s Saturday,” Sweetie replied.

“It is?” Applejack said. “Oh, well, heh heh… didn’t know. The days tend ta blur inta one another after a while…”

Sweetie peeked into her room. Spike and Applejack had done a great job moving everything back in. Some of the furniture had been rearranged, so it wasn’t exactly as it had been the last time she’d been here; but everything was still there. All the stuffed animals on her bed, her special desk with all its arts and crafts supplies, the wardrobe with all the dresses her sister had made for her…

“No!” Sweetie howled. “Applejack! Stop! Please let go of me! I don’t WANNA wear a prairie skirt with that many octopuses on it! You CAN’T MAKE ME!”

“Oh, yer gonna WEAR it, alright!” AJ vowed, with that awful twitch near her eyes again. “This here skirt’s the wave of the future! Ya’ll WEAR it, and yer little school friends’ll git JEALOUS, and ya’ll tell ‘em it’s me that makes ‘em… and then Ah’ll FINALLY be bringing some dough in!”

“Octopuses aren’t even green!”

When Sweetie Belle turned away from her room to look at Applejack, she saw her older sister looking fidgety. AJ’s eyes kept darting impatiently, hungrily, to her own bedroom. To the sewing machine that sat by her bed, its needle still lodged in some half-finished frock. Nothing had changed. Nothing had really changed.

“Well, I think I’ll just… settle back into the old place on my own,” Sweetie Belle said, deciding on a polite smile. “I’ve... taken up enough of your time.”

“H-huh?” Applejack tried to shake herself out of it, almost turning away from her sewing machine. “Naw, c’mon, Sweetie Belle, Ah’ve set aside so much time ta be with yew…”

“No, no, You’re a busy, working girl, AJ, and you’ve got a lot to sew. Told me so yourself many times.” Sweetie replied sweetly. “I wouldn’t want to be a distraction to you.”

And she ducked behind her bedroom door and shut it. Applejack didn’t try to follow her in. She trotted over to her bed and sank upon it. Not crying, and certainly not falling asleep, but just feeling miserable about herself all over again.

This was all Spike’s fault. Later on, she’d have to find time to go and corner Spike and finally ask him: what it the name of Celestia’s golden sun did he see in Applejack? Really, what did he see? Yeah, AJ was a pretty mare, but Sweetie, herself, was no swamp toad! And it was just weird and creepy that he’d be fawning over a mare old enough to be his mom since the day he first set eyes on her!

Not that Sweetie had any interest whatsoever in making the dragon her coltfriend. No, sir, none at all! One fine day, Applejack would work up the nerve to stop ‘sparing his feelings,’ and let Spike know that it just would never work out between them. Maybe THEN he’d start looking at Sweetie with the same goo-goo eyes he looked at AJ with. But if he ever asked, Sweetie Belle intended to flat-out tell Spike to find some other filly; she wasn’t anypony’s consolation prize. Especially not one of her big sister’s cast-offs!

Applejack! She was such a… such a…!

Not for the first time, Sweetie Belle thought back to that one Sisterhooves Social. For one all-too-short afternoon, she’d had a good older sister, one worth being related to! She should’ve been born an Apple. A farmer’s life wouldn’t’ve been bad at all! No pony in her right mind would want Applejack as part of her family. It was a shame Sweetie couldn’t swap AJ out for Pinkie Pie. Pinkie would never, ever…

"...Called me a screwup, said Ah was worse’n ten gadflies, and that the only thang Ah was good fer was runnin’ ‘round town with yew and Scootaloo, bein’ giant nuisances ta everypony, and findin’ fifty new ways ta NOT find mah cutie marks each ‘n’ every day!"

Apple Bloom had been so heartbroken back when she’d told her and Scootaloo all this. The memory was like water splashed in Sweetie’s face, and she lifted her head off her pillow. She got off the bed entirely when she heard knocking.

“Hey, Sweetie?”

It was Spike. She went over and answered the door.

“I, um, was wondering if you’d be interested in playing a card game with me.” Sweetie could see Spike was holding a deck of playing cards. “We could play crazy eights or war, or… do you know baccarat? That’s actually a personal favorite of mine.”

Although Spike was smiling, he didn’t truly seem hopeful that she’d say yes.

“Sure,” she told him, “War sounds good.”

They both sat down in the middle of the room.

“Hey, Spike?” Sweetie asked while Spike shuffled the deck. Fingers were kinda cool things to watch in action.

“Yeah, Sweetie?” He was dealing cards back and forth; one for him, one for her, another for him, another for her.

“When you think about it… there’s been a lot of, uh… ponies-losing-touch-with-their-talents going around, hasn’t there? My sister. Apple Bloom’s sister. Rainbow Dash. Rarity. Fluttershy, too, I think.”

“Don’t forget Twilight,” said Spike.

“Twilight?”

Both of them now had twenty-six cards each. If only Sweetie Belle’s magic was stronger, she’d have been able to levitate her cards like a proper unicorn. But since she was still a relatively young filly, her horn could barely give small, fizzling sparks, even after great strain, she had to play war the earth pony way. Meaning she had to flip the card off the top of her deck with her nose.

Spike waited so they could both flip their cards over at the same time. Three of diamonds for Spike and… dang it! Two of spades for herself. Spike took both their cards, and added it to his deck.

“Yeah, Twilight,” said Spike. “Shut herself up in her library for a while. Wouldn’t stop reading. Wouldn’t come out at all for anything at all.”

It took Sweetie a few seconds to even remember her cards. Spike had been going through this same thing, himself? Spike’s older sister had also become a shut-in, like Applejack?

“So this has affected Twilight too…” she said softly, turning over the eight of hearts while Spike showed the ten of diamonds.

It was starting to feel like pieces were coming together in her head.

“What’s affected Twilight?” Spike asked, giving her an uncertain sort of look.

“This… talent-loss thing!” Sweetie told him. “When you think about it… it all started going wrong for everypony around the same time. Right after that one vandal broke my sister’s door.”

“Uh… vandal?”

Sweetie Belle was about to remind Spike about the late-night vandal who’d kicked a hole into the Carousel Boutique’s door a few months ago... when Spike seemed to remember on his own.

“Oh yeah! That vandal.” His nine of clubs lost to her queen of clubs. “Did they ever catch whoever did it?”

Sweetie shook her head. “Everypony lost interest in the case pretty quickly, since nothing really came of it, and there were never any repeat vandalisms.”

“Could’ve been somepony just felt… angry one night, and just needed to let out some steam, and your sister’s door just happened to be there.”

“Maybe.” The next win was hers as well: her jack of clubs over his four of spades. “But I remember the policemare saying that whoever did it was somepony with powerful legs.”

Sweetie shuddered a bit at that. They were all super-lucky this troublemaker just left it at the door, rather than barging in and stealing her sister’s stuff… or worse!

“...And the fact that all that talent-loss happened the very next day…!”

But Spike gave her a teasing smile. “So… a pony kicks a hole in a door one night, and as a direct result, Applejack and her friends are all cursed to become hapless ninnies.”

The laughter that burst out of Sweetie was refreshing. “When you put it THAT way, Spike, it does sound pretty silly!”

They continued playing their card game in silence for a while.

Her three of spades against his six of diamonds…

Her seven of clubs against his five of clubs...

Her ace of spades against his king of hearts...

“Hey, Sweetie? Won’t you at least try to give AJ a second chance? Please?”

Sweetie looked up from her cards. “Why do you care so much?”

He scratched the back of his head. “Well… y’know…”

“No. I don’t know,” Sweetie told the dragon, sitting up straighter. “Listen, Spike, I’m really trying to see where you’re coming from on this. You’ve got Applejack entirely to yourself. Just you and her, alone in this boutique!"

"Ah!" Spike gave out a little cry, as though some well-kept secret had been revealed. Sweetie just pressed on.

“Applejack depends on you now. You’ve got her eating straight out of your hand. So why did you want me back here so badly that you came to my parents’ place over and over and had all those talks with Mom and Dad? Wouldn’t I just be getting in your way? What do YOU get from me being here?”

“...The girl I… care about isn’t helpless or dependant at all,” Spike answered her. “She can stand on her own four hooves. She’s a self-made mare. I want so badly to bring that girl back. One that wants me around because she enjoys my company, not because she desperately needs my help."

Sweetie had never heard Spike speak like this.

“She’s been alone for quite a long time now,” he continued, with a backward look at the door. “It’s only recently that I’ve started helping her like this. I… got too wrapped up with what was going on with my family to notice what was happening to AJ. And after you went home with your parents, she was all alone, and no one noticed for weeks. We were all too wrapped up in our own problems. Things got bad around here, worse than even you saw. Both for the Carousel Boutique… and for her. I’ve done allot to turn things around, but I want to show her that other people care about her besides me. I was hoping you could help with that, Sweetie Belle.”

What impressed Sweetie most was not so much more the sincerity in Spike’s voice, but the resignation and the weariness he was trying to hide. Spike was committed to this. He’d keep coming back and coming back and coming back to her sister’s boutique for as long as AJ kept opening the door for him. They weren’t family or even the same species. And he was doing it all for free.

Sweetie wondered what that said about herself as a pony.

"Pinkie ‘n’ Ah were a real dynamite duo against that flork last night! Sweetie suddenly remembered Apple Bloom telling her with great pride. Best sister evah! Ah’m so glad Ah was able ta help her!"

Suddenly, Sweetie’s ear perked up, listening intently for a sound. The click-a-clack sound of a sewing machine’s needle. It wasn’t there. Sweetie couldn’t hear it. This whole time she’d been playing this card game with Spike, Applejack hadn’t been running her sewing machine.

“Uh…” said Spike as Sweetie stood up. Abandoning her cards, she walked out of her bedroom and into Applejack’s, to see what was up.

AJ sat at her sewing machine. Her hooves were on a piece of fabric. Muscles around her three-diamond cutie mark seemed to be twitching like absolute mad. But the rest of Applejack’s body seem completely locked up. Muscles seized tight. AJ was staring straightforward at the wall, blinking oddly. Every so often, her shut lips would quivering in downward jerks.

“Hey... Applejack?”

It was as if AJ had gotten a hard pinch. “Sweetie…?”

“Spike and I were starting a card game, but we need a third player. Would you like to join us?”

The smile that spread up Applejack’s face made Sweetie Belle feel ashamed of herself and heartsick. “It’d mean the whole world ta me, Sweetie Belle.”

* * *

Young as he was, Spike the dragon could appreciate that he’d been born to a girls’ world. Even without the Alicorn princesses there to tip the scales, even if this world had been more like Lero’s old one, where the sun and moon apparently rose and set by themselves…

...Well, Twilight had taught Spike his history. And he had to give the ponies, all equines really, credit. They had taken their skewed gender ratio and their herd system, and milked them both for all they were worth. Multiplying like rabbits all across the globe. All the other sapient races had to thank their lucky stars that ponies didn’t go for things like genocide and enslavement.

Spike grinned as his thoughts briefly drifted to a certain old novel Twilight kept in her library: Sons of the Sun Prince. Spike had never read it himself, and didn’t really intend to until he was older… but he knew of it by reputation.

Sons of the Sun Prince was the story of a pony world in which the ratio had been skewed the opposite direction; with stallions outnumbering the mares five to one, with a ‘Prince Solaris’ ruling instead of Princess Celestia.

A Swap of genders, in other words.

The story was at least sixty or seventy years old, and was still loved as a must-read classic by book-lovers everywhere.

Lero, himself, had actually read Sons of the Sun Prince… only to lose interest in it halfway through. Spike had overheard the human muttering a weird nonsense words when he’d put it back on the shelf, ‘yowie fangirl-topia.’ Twilight Sparkle had read the whole thing, of course, and Spike was even sure she’d enjoyed it, though she called it a ‘male power fantasy.’

Sometime later… Spike had sat down next to this book-loving stallion who was a frequent visitor of Golden Oaks Library. Spike sometimes chatted when him when he came by, and one day, they happened to be talking about Sons of the Sun Prince.

“It’s actually a well-written story, with pretty fun characterization,” the stallion had told Spike. “But you want to know what’s always ruined it for me? Ponies somehow still make up the majority of the world’s population in this stallion-world as they are real life.”

“Well, why wouldn’t they be?” Spike had asked.

“I’ll put it this way, Spike: imagine an oat farmer who has five acres of fertile land to his name. Just one guy. Now imagine the opposite: a team five oat farmers who’re all on one acre of land. Between the two, the team will have to do a lot less work… but the one farmer with more acres of land will be able to sow more of his oats… he’ll end up with a much bigger yield than the five farmers who’re sharing the one acre of land. Do you catch my meaning?”

Spike had nodded. He had caught his meaning, and it had made sense.

When it came strictly down to ‘yield,’ ponies were a class unto themselves. Even races with equal 50/50 gender ratios, such as griffins, couldn’t compare. Ponies simply had a much larger number of available mothers than anyone else; mothers that were terrific at protecting the fathers, and didn’t mind sharing. So in a ‘Prince Solaris’ world, with way-more-dads-than-moms… wow, it would’ve been bad for ponies, wouldn’t it?

But Spike was getting way off-topic, wasn’t he?

At any rate… in a world like Spike’s, where there were way more girls than boys, there were inevitable way more girly movies playing in theaters than boy-movies. In several of the girlier comedies Twilight had brought Spike to, they’d sometimes trot out this old stock gag where the heroine’s best friend(s) would watch the heroine pull out all sorts of goofy outfits from her wardrobe, and try them on, one by one, in a montage.

Today, Spike, Applejack, and Sweetie Belle were living the reality of that stock gag. With Spike and Sweetie playing the ‘best friends’ while Applejack was ‘heroine.’ Spike cast a dull look at the clock on the wall; their ‘hilarious montage’ had just entered its fourth hour running.

“But it’s soooo comfy ta wear!” In the past, Spike would never have known AJ to whine like this, unless she was mocking some other whiner, even after her Swap. Now she’d been doing it left and right.

“It’s a onesie,” Sweetie said, flat as can be.

“Yeah! Remember back when Ma used ta dress ya up in onesies? Yew were jest adorable…” But AJ’s little sister shook her head. “C’mon, SB, Pa still keeps that frame pictured of yew in his…”

“I know which picture you’re talking about, AJ. And you’re right. I looked cute in that onesie. But I was also a yearling when that picture was taken. What’s more... what you’re wearing isn’t the kitty one I had on. It’s not a puppy or a teddy or a bunny, either. It’s a skunk. You are wearing a skunk onesie.”

Spike could only nod his head in agreement. With some black and white face paint, Applejack could’ve played the part of Sniffy D. Skunk in an amateur production of Chippy Munk Meets The Scariest Screech Owl.

“Skunks’re cute too,” the fashionista pouted, her big brushy onesie skunk tail flicking behind her. “Got that purdy white stripe going down theirs backs….”

“Skunks stink,” stated Sweetie. “And onesies are for one-year-olds. I haven’t even got my cutie mark yet, but I’m still trying everything I can, every day, not to look like a baby.”

Turning around, Applejack shuffling back towards her changing room. Spike hated seeing her like this.

“I’m getting a drink from the fridge,” he told Sweetie, hopping off his chair. “Want anything?”

“Do we got any Jitter left?”

“I’ll check.”

Today was gonna be another long slogger. But at least they did indeed still had plenty of ice-cold Jitter in the fridge when he opened it. Just looking at the bright orange-green of the aluminum cans brought back a memory of Twilight.

“Absolutely not!” Twilight Sparkle had told him, when he’d pointed to a six-pack of Jitter in the marketplace. “I’ll buy soda for you if you want, but energy drinks are way too expensive! And Jitter’s the worst of the bunch, they’ve got the most caffeine of all!”

He popped open the can and guzzled his Jitter down, tasting cranberries and taurine. Even after drinking it, Spike barely felt energized at all. If this kept up, he just might have to switch to that disgusting ‘espresso’ stuff that Applejack relied on so much. Then he got another can for Sweetie, poured the drink into one of those larger handled cups, and brought it to the little white unicorn. Applejack hadn’t returned yet.

“Are you really sure we’re going about this the right way, Sweetie?” he asked in a whisper. “I don’t want to crush her spirit or anything.”

She stuck her hoof through the cup’s hoof-handle and sipped just a bit off the top, like it was hot tea. “I don’t really like this either. But I know what I’m doing, Spike. I know my sister, and this is what she needs. I’m going to cure her of this problem just like Apple Bloom cured Pinkie Pie.”

The two youngsters heard Applejack’s hoofs, and looked forward as she came back into the room so they could behold her next attack upon their innocent young eyes.

Saggy, draggy tie-dye leggings with heavily embroidered knee pads over her hind legs. Strips of crushed, stapled-on polyester and velvet spiralled up one rear leg while large sheer panels were sewn into the other. Her jacket was made of some funky, fuzzy faux mohair with googly eyes glued upon the shoulders whose pupils shook like maraca beans with each movement of her body, making her look like a bushy puppet in psychedelic colors. Spike needed to ask what the material over her tail was called.

“Neoprene,” he was told. “Same material they use ta make wet suits fer deep-sea scuba divers.”

The neoprene literally covered her tail like a sword’s sheath.

The worst was what sat on her head. He really needed to STARE to determine that it wasn’t actually a lopsided green wig, but a hat with a visor. Tiny toy koalas, each no bigger than Spike’s own fingers, had been sewn onto the edge of the visor. The whole ensemble had been liberally sprinkled with kindergarten arts-and-crafts glitter.

“Ah must admit, Ah’m rather fond of this one,” Applejack told them. “Whadda yew think, Spike?”

“I… um… I…” he squirmed in his chair but spoke with regretful honestly. “The outfit is ugly, unflattering, and I don’t think it knows what it wants to be.”

AJ sniffed. “Well, taste is entirely subjective. Style is personal.”

“Where would you wear it, though?” Sweetie Belle protested. “On what sort of occasion would you actually want to go out and wear a thing like that?”

The fashionista bit her lower lip. “Ah admit, this ain’t fer the faint of heart. It takes rock-solid backbone ta snub the status quo and slip inta somethin’ as hip and experimental as this. It’s bold, it’s darin’, it’s brave…”

“Say, Applejack?” Sweetie suddenly interrupted. “Remember that one stage magician you took me to see that one time?”

The young filly’s perky smile threw Applejack off her train of thought. “Huh? D’ya mean the Great ‘n’ Powerful Trixie?”

“No, no, the other one we saw before Trixie came. What was her name...? Mystika the Astounding!”

Applejack did seem to know who Sweetie was referring to, while Spike turned and listened in interest. This ‘Mystika,’ whoever she was, had to have come to Ponyville long before he and Twilight had moved in.

“Anyway, remember that big glass tank Mystika escaped from? The one her assistants kept filling up with all that water? Remember the hoofcuffs and that horn wrap Mystika put on herself before she stepped inside? THOSE were ‘bold’ to wear, wouldn’t you say? Oooh, but how about that one kerosene-soaked bathrobe she put on before running the steeplechase-of-fire? I mean, if there’s a more ‘daring’ thing a girl can wear, I don’t wanna KNOW what it is!”

Sweetie pointed at AJ’s outfit.

“This, though… this isn’t bravery. Wearing lousy clothing doesn’t make you ‘brave,’ any more than eating lousy food or watching a lousy movie. It’s just doing yourself a disservice, nothing more. ”

Applejack said nothing to this in a way that hurt Spike’s heart to see. She turned and left to try on her next outfit.

Getting Sweetie Belle’s help had been a very good call. Where Spike felt weary and drained after all these hours, Sweetie had made for an absolutely tireless critic. It had been like watching a tiny little lumberjack hack away at a giant old redwood.

AJ’s next outfit that had Spike and Sweetie both sitting up in instant alarm.

Some timberwolf had been hiding in the changing room, and he’d tried to bite Applejack apart, limb from limb! ...At least, it seemed to be that way for two seconds, until Spike considered a number of things. There hadn’t been any sounds of a struggle, Applejack had come out of the room unbloodied, at a showy strut instead of running for her life. But even so…

“Ah know what yer thinking, Spike,” said Applejack, “‘Ain’t that denim, jest like what Lero’s blue jeans are made of?’ Good guess, but no, it’s actually chambray. Thinner, lighter, softer material fer a gal who ain’t afraid ta flaunt her delicate side.”

“I’m pretty sure that what me and Spike were thinking is,” Sweetie Belle said, “why are you wearing a blouse and pants you’ve ripped to tatters like that?”

“It ain’t ‘ripped up!’ protested Applejack, though some of the holes were literally big enough for Spike to stick his whole head through. “It’s distressed!”

Spike rubbed a throb at his forehead.

“Distressed?” the young filly repeated. “As in ‘damsel in…?’”

Applejack gave a disgusting, you-just-don’t-get-it scoff.

“‘Distressed,’ as in… yer tellin’ the world how different yew are from them other gals who’re too busy pamperin’ themselves at all waking hours ta do anythang meaningful with their lives. Unlike those self-sheltered snots with way more money than sense, yeh’ve been places and done thangs. Wear ‘n’ tear’s jest the clothing version of scars on a soldier! Shows ya aren’t scared ta get yer hooves chipped, and yew don’t have time ta fret about lookin’ perfect and keepin’ every thread undamaged ‘cuz everyone’s unpleasable anyway, and yew’ve got millions of thangs on yer to-do list all at once, big worries, constant problems... yer jest so hopelessly far behind in everythang yew intended ta do with yer life, new stresses every day, piling on top of the old stresses… this stress and that stress, all wearing ya ragged, tearing ya like the claws of animals, til ya know it’s actually yer MIND that’s got all the real holes…!”

“Applejack….?” Sweetie Belle spoke in a hush.

The two youngsters got off their chairs as Applejack fell to her haunches, trembling as though she’d just spent the past hour trapped in a walk-in freezer.

“Help me!” she begged in a small voice.

Spike went and got a pot of tea brewing while Sweetie Belle murmured soft, soothing words to her sister and nuzzled away the tears. After he’d come in and set the cups of steaming chamomile down in front of the sisters, Sweetie Belle told him, “I think she’s ready.”

Knowing what she meant, Spike left and came back a second time... with the large, thin, blue folder Sweetie had picked out from his sister’s old files last night.

“Hey, AJ? Let’s have a look at some of these, why don’t we?”

Spike had been helping Applejack at the Carousel Boutique for quite a while now. In all that time, he’d never seen the Swapped pony outline her ideas for garments beforehand. She’d just grab whatever rolls of fabric or whatever struck her fancy, pile it up next to the sewing machine, and get to work.

So it was a bit nostalgic for him seeing page after page of finely-dressed ponies, even without Rarity’s signature in each corner. Every mare was drawn with such curvy, inky grace, it was like calligraphy made illustration.

“Remember this one, AJ?” asked Sweetie, turning one page.

Applejack smiled at the sketch, not even blinking as Sweetie brushed away a new tear. “Y...yeah. That li’l camisole put bread on our table fer five whole months!”

“Or this one?”

Applejack giggled down at it. “Don’t ever tell anyone,” she said, “But that one Ah based off a poster fer an ol’ film noir flick!” Spike looked over their shoulders; immediately guessing this had belonged to the movie’s femme fatale.

“Or how about…” Sweetie Belle turned the page once more. “THIS?”

It looked to be some sort of blue ball gown, woven of sleek shimmery fabric, and best of all, it was heavily jeweled. Perhaps not as jeweled as it could be, only half the amount needed for that unforgettable Sapphire Shores piece a few years back… but that was still a lot of gems; front, sides, and back. He had to hand it to the old Rarity; she had a real gift for stirring a dragon’s appetite.

“You ought to try making this again,” Sweetie suggested, in a would-be casual way. “I think it’ll be a hit!”

Spike watched the Swapped mare pause… perhaps ‘remembering’ what kind of profit this gown had won her. Having checked through her sales ledger ahead of time, Spike, himself, already knew, (of course, he had gotten AJ’s express permission beforehand.)

“This… was popular,” AJ said. “But… well, lemme put it this way, Sweetie Belle. Ponies’ll want their favorite brand of ketchup tastin’ exactly the same fer all their lives. And no inventor’ll ever needed ta upgrade the humble roll of duct tape. But fashion’s a slippery li’l shapeshifter. Today’s chic is tomorrow’s passé. So if Ah put this back on mah shelves, it’ll jest look dated and unoriginal.”

“Not necessarily,” Spike said, cozying up next to AJ. “I may not be a huge fashion fanatic, myself, but I even I know that trends go in and out of style. Otherwise, stores would never ever sell anything ‘retro.’ I don’t look at this dress and think ‘dated.’ I think: revival.”

“Revival...” Applejack sounded genuinely enticed when she repeated that word. But then Spike saw her cutie mark twitch again. “Ah dunno. Fashionistas can’t ever be running dry on creativity… they’ve always gotta be rollin’ out all-new, all-original, never-before-seen threads…”

The Swapped mare was beginning to fidget…

“It may be an older design, but it’s still your design, AJ,” Sweetie contended. “Besides, at this stage, wouldn’t you rather at least try something you already know was a big hit once? Even just to get a little money back?”

AJ considered it. The muscles around her cutie mark seemed to want to clench... but could only manage a faint waver.

“Only one problem.” Applejack went over to a chest, nudging it open with her snout. Nothing was inside. “Had ta pawn off all mah jewels ta buy more fabric.”

“No problem!” Spike said, puffing his chest out like a hero. “I’ll gladly donate every one of the gems I have at home to you, AJ!”

“Spike, that’s jest... swell a’ yew.” While he smiled at the compliment, glad AJ understood how sincere he was, the Swapped pony took the sketch of the jeweled gown, and placed it in his hand.

“D’ya got enough at yer place fer this fer one of these dresses?”

The young dragon reconsidered the picture, ignoring how absolutely lovely and appetizing the gown looked for the total number of gems which Rarity had written in a little box in the picture’s bottom-right. He then thought back to the stash of jewels he kept in his pantry at home, as well as his own toy gem chest hidden in his bedroom closet.

“...Honestly, I don’t know.” he admitted. It’d be a LOT of gems. Maybe, just maybe, if he were to break them all up into small-enough pieces…

“Now consider this, Spike: Ah’m NOT gonna git meself outta the red with jest ONE single dress. Ah’ll need ta sell several of ‘em.”

Dang it… he hadn’t thought of that! Applejack patted Spike’s shoulder when he hung his head. “Mebbe we could get away with imitation rhinestones...?” she wondered aloud.

“Absolutely not!” Both the girls were startled; Spike’s look bordered on anger. “If there’s one thing the Carousel Boutique is respected for, it’s the 100% authentic gemstones it uses in its clothing! Cheap costume jewelry would be nothing short of sabotaging our big comeback!”

“Well, sorry, but the good gems cost quite a few bits!” Applejack huffed, “Bits we jest ain’t got!”

Spike glanced at Applejack’s empty gem chest, then gave a longer look at the sketch in his hands. At the artistic signature just under the dress: Rarity.

“...There is ONE place I know of where we could go to get all the gems we need. For free.”

Applejack took a step back. “Ya don’t mean…?!”

* * *

“But why wouldn’t you want me coming with you, Spike?” Sweetie Belle exclaimed. “You’re a boy, aren’t you? Wouldn’t you want as many girls around you as possible to protect you when you’re out in the Diamond Dogs’ territory?”

It had taken twenty more minutes of careful, well-reasoned arguing until Spike had gotten Applejack to finally… reluctantly... agree to his plan.

Tomorrow, he and AJ would be returning to the same rocky stretch of land he’d gone to with Rarity, back when Sapphire Shores had needed all those bejeweled costumes for that Zeigfilly Follies concert of hers.

And here was Sweetie, probably seeing this as yet another chance of getting her cutie mark, even if she wasn’t saying so out loud. She needed to appreciate the real danger they were headed into.

“...You know about how Lero got kidnapped?”

“Yeah,” Her eyes widened, and sympathy entered her voice. “Oh, Spike, I’m so sorry about that. Lero’s always just the nicest guy to me and Applejack. Is he okay?”

He nodded. “He’s much better these days. But here’s my point: that gang had a Diamond Dog with them. And what that dog almost did to Lero was just the evilest thing ever.”

“What?”

Those eyes of Sweetie’s… so innocent...

“Forget I said anything.”

“What?”

Spike went and shut Sweetie’s bedroom door a little firmer after checking the hallway to see that Applejack wasn’t standing outside it.

“He tried to infect Lero with, like, fifty of the worst diseases ever, all at once.”

“He was a mad doctor?” asked Sweetie.

“A mad…? Yeah. Yeah, that’s exactly what he was. A mad doctor performing a crazy medical experiment on Lero, with test tubes, petri dishes, and a giant, nasty syringe. Nailed it in one, Sweetie Belle.”

Sweetie grinned; delighted to have guessed ‘correctly.’

“The whole thing’s made me really appreciate how lucky me and your big sister got off, with those Diamond Dogs we met that first time. Now, I don’t know Diamond Dogs well enough to say whether they’re ALL that evil. But this particular pack? They’re all rotten to the core.”

Sweetie continued listening as Spike glanced at a stuffed toy puppy on her bed.

“If those dogs see us back in their territory, well, they won’t have forgotten everything your sister put them through last time. They might try and kill us. But what I’m most scared of is… they may try doing what that one dog nearly did to Lero.”

Spike could almost see the crackling electrodes, atomic brains, and mutant cyborg guinea pigs that Sweetie had to be envisioning. How he wished his own imagination were conjuring something so clean as a mad doctor's laboratory!

“We’re risking a lot, but to put your sister back on track, anything’s worth trying. If things get hairy, I’ve got my fire and AJ can be quite the fighter, in a pinch. But you, Sweetie? I’m sorry, please don’t take this the wrong way, but you’re not there yet. You wouldn’t even BE here, at the Boutique, if not for me. It’d be all my fault.”

If anything happened to this sweet girl, he’d never be able to forgive himself, ever.

“So please, Sweetie, please… tomorrow, just stay home. Just let us handle this, okay?”

After a long pause, Sweetie Belle reached out and hugged Spike tight. “Hey… thanks for being worried about me. It’s really sweet. Most colts wouldn’t even care. But as my mom says… you can’t live life by being afraid to live it. I know it’s dangerous, but I can’t just sit by and not help my sister!”

Wow, he could actually respect something like that. But still…

“Tell you what, Sweetie,” he said after a bit of thought. “Why not go ask Applejack? If she has no problem with you coming along, then you can come.”

Spike thought that’d put an end to it. But Sweetie’s completely confident smile put the worry back on the young dragon’s face.

* * *

The next morning, Spike started cooking up an expansive breakfast, a dozen scrambled eggs, several slices of buttered toast, a fruit medley consisting of grapes, apples, oranges and bananas over cottage cheese. He served himself up half, leaving the rest for his family when they woke up. He hadn’t even been all that hungry when he’d woken up, but he forced himself to keep shoveling in food, until he started feeling stomach pains.

“Whoa, sure you can get that all down, Spike?” Speaking of the rest of his family, a bleary-eyed Lero walked in, observing his meal.

“Hey, Lero.” Spike replied. “There’s food on the counter if you want some.”

“Thanks.” He said, serving himself some. “What’s with the big portions on your part?” He asked, as he sat down next to Spike.

“I’m going on a gem hunt with Applejack and Sweetie Belle.” he replied. “If find any, I don’t want to feel a trace of hunger, so I won’t be tempted to so much as nibble a fleck of topaz! That’s why I’m stuffing myself to the gills.”

Lero raised an eyebrow. “I wasn’t around back then, but I heard about the… Diamond Dog problems you had last time. You sure you don’t want any help?”

Spike heard the hesitation in his voice, and internally winced at the sensation of deja vu. “No," he said, "I can do this by myself.”

“You sure?” Lero persisted. “Doesn’t have to be me, I’m sure Lyra or Twilight or even Dash or Rarity would be happy to help.”

Spike shook his head, articulating the thoughts that had been bouncing around in his head. “No, Lero… this isn’t for me. This is for her, proving that she can do this one her own- Me and Sweetie are just there for support, working for her, not leading her around. Adding more people would take away from that.”

Lero paused and smiled. “That’s… that’s actually a pretty mature way to look at it, Spike, I’m impressed.”

“Thanks!” Spike grinned.

“Honestly, I think you’ve probably got this… But I have two questions…”

“Hmmm?”

“How’s this going to work? I thought Rarity found gems with magic? How will that work with AJ?”

“Well… Either I figure that the Swap will figure out some way for her to get the knack… Or, well, I’ve been reading up on geology, so I could probably fake it. It’ll take longer, but better than nothing.”

Lero shrugs. “Fair enough. And second… What do you plan to do if a Diamond Dog shows up?”

“Well, that’s the other reason I’m eating so much…”

“Yeah?”

“Takes a lot of calorie to breath dragonfire.”

* * *

The ground under Spike’s feet was almost a perfect softness; the type farmers and gardeners would sell their eyeteeth for. Soft like sand in a playground’s sandbox. Soft like cocoa powder. Very diggable.

Well-dug. Spike thought with a shudder.

Like the last time he’d come out with his beloved fashionista, Spike had brought his red toy wagon, to carry all the gems they found. The squeak of its wheels kept Spike on edge. But unlike before, he had also brought something of a trump card along this time. It was a letter for Celestia he’d written last night:

Dear Princess Celestia,

If I’ve sent this to you, that means Applejack, Sweetie Belle, and me (Spike) are all in super-big danger. The three of us went out into Diamond Dog territory to dig up gems. If you’re reading this, then that means Diamond Dogs have attacked us. PLEASE HELP US RIGHT AWAY!!!

Love,

Spike

Spike kept this letter clutched in his other hand like he’d clutch garlic in a vampire-infested forest, as he followed behind AJ with Sweetie Belle. The little white filly had been humming half-finished, unfamiliar tunes to herself. Her humming was eerie to listen to, yet still so undeniably beautiful, Spike couldn’t bring himself to ask her to stop.

“Hey, Applejack!” Sweetie Belle called out suddenly.

“Ssh!” Spike shushed. “Do you have to be that loud?!”

Sweetie gave Spike a quick apology, then trotted up alongside her big sister.

“Applejack?” It wasn’t a whisper, but it was still spoken softly. “Are you getting any hunches?”

The older mare glanced down uncertainly. “Hunches?”

“Yeah! Y’know, remember your story of how you found your cutie mark? You followed a hunch all the way out to that huge rock! And Spike, remember the day AJ brought back all those cartloads of jewels, and you told me all about what happened?”

“Yep!” Spike said, immediately jumping onto the Swap’s fiction. “No forgetting a thing like that!”

“Right!” Sweetie Belle agreed. “You used to find gems all the time!”

“Remember? Before the Diamond Dogs kidnapped you, I was following your hunches and they showed me where a bunch of gems were, right?” Spike reminded AJ.

“Uh… mebbe try here?” Applejack pointed at some dirt.

Spike bent down and began digging with Celestia’s letter in his mouth. Careful not to let his breath ignite. Careful not to let saliva soak the paper.

“You look a little nervous, Spike.” Sweetie observed.

The young dragon pulled the letter from his mouth and dug one-handed for a while. “More than a LITTLE, actually,” he admitted.

“Well, I’m not seeing any Diamond Dogs around,” the unicorn filly said, turning her head this way and that at the small bits of plant life around them.

“They hide in bushes and they hide in trees,” Spike reminded her, and they all looked around at the bits of greenery around them as he said this. “But what’s worse is they’re really top-notch tunnelers. Could pop up from the ground at any time.”

In fact, with each handful of dirt that Spike scooped, he could envision a Diamond Dog’s paw shooting up and latching onto his arm like a graveyard zombie, before he was dragged under.

Sweetie bent closer to Spike, whispering. “Don’t worry! Don’t be telling AJ, but last night I snuck out to the Apples’ farm, and I got Apple Bloom to show me how to buck properly. Practiced kicking for a whole hour! So you’re gonna be okay.”

“Whew!” said Spike. “That’s a load off my mind. Now I know I feel protected!”

As smart-alecky as Spike felt inside… to Sweetie, he was a portrait of sincerest relief. The little filly shut her eyes in a happy smile, which Applejack watched without comment.

“T… that’s enough, Spike,” Applejack said, after Spike had dug for ten minutes. “Ain’t nuttin’ there, after all.”

The orange mare turned away as Spike climbed out of his hole.

“Applejack?” asked Sweetie Belle, in concern. “Why…?”

“Don’t worry, Sweetie,” said Spike, dusting himself off. But it was clear she was worried, all the same. “Look, we already know AJ’s… a bit off her game with her dressmaking. Now we know it’s her gem hunches too!”

Spike caught a tight, displeased glare from the fashionista, herself, looking back over her shoulder. The little dragon quickly turned all his attention on Sweetie Belle, but kept speaking at a volume that Applejack would hear clearly.

“But I know she’ll be back to her old self once we help her out of this rut! But if we can’t rely on hunches right now, maybe we could try trial-and-error.”

Sweetie and Applejack both nodded.

“We should split up, to cover more ground!” Sweetie declared.

Split up?! Spike was already nervous enough as it was. Digging for gems here felt like fishing in shark-infested waters, only they didn’t even have the protection of a boat. But splitting the group up in the scary place? That was what the stupid teenagers always did in horror movies. Spike didn’t even watch any horror movies, and he knew that.

“Over there looks good!” declared Sweetie, galloping off to the west.

“No, Sweetie, don’t!” called Spike, running after her. “Don’t go wandering off on your own!”

Sweetie Belle stopped in her tracks. The frown she shot at Spike as she came up to him said; Oh, I see how it is. I’m just the dumb, klutzy kid sister, huh, Spike?! Can’t do anything right, and gotta be looked after like a little foal. Might as well keep me on a toddler’s leash, why don’t you?!

In many of the ‘rescue romance’ movies Spike had watched, the love interests, whether male or female, had a certain attitude to them, as recognizable as a villainous sneer. The easiest way Spike knew of describing this ‘attitude’ was ‘like the old Fluttershy, but ten times less able to take care of themselves.’

He decided to try this out with Sweetie Belle, putting on a meek and vulnerable face, while hugging his tail for security. For an added flourish, he snuffed a meager little puff of smoke from his nostrils, as though to say; my flame’s nowhere near as big or hot as I wish it were.

“Please, Sweetie, I… I’m trying my best to be brave, really I am, but most of it’s just an act,” he told her softly. “It’s hard to be strong. Couldn’t you stay with me? Pretty please? I know I’ll feel safer with you around.”

He felt dumb the moment the words were out of his mouth. If he were Sweetie, he’d have yelled at himself and gotten angrier and more insulted.

But the real Sweetie Belle’s eyes widened enormously at Spike, and her body just froze up for a few seconds. Not even breathing. This, in turn, caused Spike to freeze up and not breathe as well, staring right back at her with the same wide eyes.

What had just happened?

“It’s okay, Spike,” she told him, turning herself around to face the wide, dangerous world ahead of them. “You don’t need to pretend to be brave any more. I’ll be brave for you. I’ll be strong for you. I’ll be right here.”

Spike knew at once that Sweetie Belle wasn’t quoting any movie’s screenplay. Not even the type that wannabes wrote for themselves in their own heads. This was completely off the cuff and from the heart, which made it all the more unreal. Of course, there were times when Sweetie Belle could be annoying, troublesome and bratty, like any other kid, including himself. But for the most part, Spike knew this filly to be as sweet, likeable, and easy to get along with as a bowl of ice cream.

Now, though… was this how Lero felt whenever Rarity the Weathermare stepped in front of him to play the gallant bodyguard-knight? He thought maybe it was. He tried not to think about Sweetie too hard as he got to digging again.

The last time he’d been here with Rarity had been before Shining’s wedding. Before Lero. Before even Discord. He and the sweet unicorn fashionista had come out here, because the ground was known to be rich with precious stones. But was that still true today? After being occupied for so long by Diamond Dog packs?

Maybe all his worrying really was over nothing. There weren’t any Diamond Dogs to fear because there weren’t any diamonds, (or any other gemstones whatsoever) left to keep them around. In other words: this had probably been a giant waste of time.

“Hey, Spike?” Sweetie asked. “Do you really think I’m a brave girl?”

At this point, Spike had already committed himself to the role of the ‘vulnerable colt,’ and he did not intend to break character until they were back in Ponyville.

“Well, yeah!” he improvised in an admiring voice. “I always thought that it was incredibly gutsy of you and your Crusader friends, the way you never give up on get your cutie marks, and are willing to try absolutely everything… I wish I could be that courageous, but what good would it even do me? One day, you’re going to get your cutie mark, while I never will.”

After hearing these word, Sweetie Belle held herself higher and stronger, putting Spike even more in mind of a small white guardian lion cub.

“Don’t sell yourself short, Spike,” she told him, “You’re plenty awesome yourself.”

“You think so?” he asked with unfeigned surprise.

“I know so. And don’t be scared: nothing’s gonna happen to you on my watch.”

He could almost believe it. She seemed ready to take on Queen Chrysalis and Exit Wound themselves... for his sake. If only a brave heart automatically gave you rock-solid combat experience.

“This ain’t right,” Applejack suddenly said.

Spike and Sweetie looked over at her. “What isn’t?” Spike asked.

“Mah muse goin’ all winky-funkerbunk on me’s one thang. Artistic inspiration has been known ta get weird after a while, sometimes. But mah gem hunches, though? That’s a whole different string of pearls! Now, these past few minutes, Ah’ve been tryin’ and tryin’ ta reach inside mahself and jest kick them fool hunches of mine back awake, but it’s like they weren’t there at all!”

“Well,” Spike began, “When…”

“Yeah, yeah, don’t think Ah don’t know what yer about ta say, Spike. ‘Brain injury.’ ‘Fell outta bed one night the wrong way.’ Trust me; Ah’ve thought it mehself. Except that… even a deaf ear still leaves an ear, don’t it? Even a missing leg leaves a stump! But Ah’m not even feeling any phantom limb sensation…”

“AJ, you’re making absolutely no sense!” Sweetie told her.

Releasing a long breath, Applejack reached a hoof up to rub at a spot under her hat. “What Ah’m lookin’ ta say is… when Ah try ta find that hunch-place deep inside me, it feels like Ah’m searching mah soul fer somethin’ that weren't never there in the first place. Like mah head’s orderin’ mah body ta retract its cat claws or wiggle its fingers or breath dragon fire, or waggle some other appendage mah body ain’t got!”

The two youngsters gave each other worried looks. “You DO still remember following that hunch to that mountain when you were a filly, right?” Sweetie asked.

“Yeah, Ah do,” said AJ. “But still… if mah hunches never really existed… mah dresses, mah boutique, mah entire adulthood weren’t nothin’ but a great big LIE!”

Then the former Bearer of the Element of Honesty stamped a hoof down hard.

“IF AH ACTUALLY AIN’T ABLE TA DETECT GEMS THE WAY MAH MEMORIES SAY AH AM, THEN THESE THREE DIAMONDS REALLY DON’T BELONG ON MAH FLANK AT ALL!!!”

Right after that outburst, Applejack’s pupils went impossibly wide.

Spike had seen moments like this before, of course. Moments where one of the Swapped Five -- confronted with huge gaps or contradictions in their memories -- would enter a state of mental blankness as the Swap performed what Lero called an ‘infodump’ to fill in its own plot holes.

What was happening to Applejack right now was nothing less than an extra-strength version of that. Not a ‘dump,’ but an avalanche.

This time, Applejack’s head didn’t just cock to the side. Her body attempted the contortionist’s trick of bringing her forehead to touch her ankle while standing upright. Sweetie Belle and Spike both screamed sharply as she toppled over.

“AJ!!!” Sweetie shrieked, rushing to her sister’s side. AJ lay on her side like a mare shoved off a roof. “What’s wrong?! What happened?! Speak to me!”

Applejack actually was speaking already.

“....diaspore tektite violane kunzite anyolite jargoon wiluite spodumene fluorspar chloromelanite nuummite spessartine carnelian morion essonite kyanite heliodor pezzottaite gahnospinel sugilite orthoclase zoisite dumortierite cymophane larimar variscite roscina jeremejevite sphene pyrope achroite sardonyx rhodochrosite oligoclase prehnite chrysocolla idocrase…”

Somewhere in the world there had to be champion speed reader whose eyes could whip from right to left and left to right again as fast as Applejack’s were going. As well as some silver-tongued fast-talker whose mouth could form words as rapidly and articulately as this orange-coated mare’s.

Spike saw plenty of dismay in Sweetie Belle’s eyes as she listened to all this. Probably thought her sister had fallen into some insane, gibbering not-language. But Spike, having crammed several geology textbooks last night, was in a unique position to appreciate that none of these words were gobbledegook. In fact, he felt pretty sure about what The Swap was now doing (or trying to do) to Applejack’s brain. And he was all the more terrified for it.

He looked down at the Swapped mare’s cutie mark, alarmed all the more to see that the three diamonds had expanded over twice their normal size. Two seconds later, they shrank small enough to fit inside one of Lero’s shirt buttons. Sweetie Belle was so focused on her sister’s face that she saw absolutely none of this.

Applejack fell silent; eyes shutting and reopening. Her cutie mark returned to normal size.

“Ah’m okay,” she announced groggily, getting back to a stand while wiping drool off her lips. “Ah swear Ah’m okay again now.”

“You… you… you REALLY SCARED ME, AJ!!! Don’t EVER do that!!!”

And as the little filly flung herself against her sister foreleg and sobbed noisily, he tentatively came up and hugged her other leg.

“Ah’m sorry,” she said, hugging the both of them back.

When they broke the hug, Sweetie looked up at her older sister with great seriousness, “Applejack... . when we’re back to Ponyville, you need to make an appointment with a head doctor. And I’m not even talking about a psychologist, I mean somepony who’ll look at your actual brain.”

“Y-yeah,” Applejack agreed in a subdued voice. “Ah think there ain’t no…”

The Swapped pony had shifted to better her balance, putting one hoof on the solid earth as she leaned back to look Sweetie in the face, her eyes suddenly widening as the hoof sunk into the earth. She looked outward, as though she’d heard an odd sound.

“Over there, Spike,” she said, pointing straight at the first hole Spike had dug up. “Dig over there.”

“But we already tried that spot!” he reminded her.

“Dig deeper,” Applejack told him.

“AJ… You ok? How’s your head feeling?” Sweetie Belle asked. AJ just shook her head, watching Spike intently as he went over to the first hole, and pulled up more and more dirt…

...until his claws scratched against something stony. He called out excitedly to the two girls as he carefully unearthed a cluster of sky-blue sapphires. Ten of them!

“H-how’d you know?!” asked Sweetie in amazement, as Spike placed the gems in his wagon.

Applejack titled her nose up, smiling proudly. “Call it a hunch.”

And then the mare pressed her hooves into the earth, focusing a moment, then her head snapped up, looking over to another, spot, trotting over to it, about twenty paces northwest of where Spike stood. “Now dig here, please,” she said, scratching an X into the dirt with a forehoof.

Ten minutes later, he’d unearthed a single red-orange stone.

“Oooh, what a pretty ruby!” Sweetie Belle cooed.

“This ain’t no ruby,” said Spike. When he rubbed the dirt off the gem, and turned it around in the sunlight, it gleamed with fiery color three times brighter than any diamond. “It’s… I think it’s called, spuh… uh...”

“Sphalerite.” Applejack might as well have been an award-winning geologist for how naturally that word rolled off her tongue.

“Yeah,’ said Spike, turning back to Sweetie. “This is a super-rare gem, a collector’s gem! I’ve never even seen one, myself, outside of the books Twilight’s given me! What’s it even doing in this part of the world?!”

Gazing at it took Spike’s breath away. The sphalerite was such a soft little beauty; unsuitable to be fitted into golden rings and such, so Spike was careful not to squeeze it too tightly in his palm. But the gem’s remarkable luster… the unbelievable SHINE refracting off every cubic crystal, gold would’ve only gotten in the way. Not to mention the smell it gave off… zinc and sulphide, mmm….

...NO. No. Spike put the gem into the wagon, hiding it under the pile of sapphires. “Show me the next one, AJ!”

“Right this way!” The way the fashionista’s lovely blond tail swished back and forth against those three diamonds… he quickly hid a blush. “Now it’s startin’ ta feel like ol’ times again!” she proclaimed.

To think… Applejack had browbeaten the Swap into giving her actual ‘gem hunches.’ There was just no other way of interpreting what had just taken place. (And she’d done it on a subconscious level, to boot!)

Spike knew plenty about gems, himself… the same way a sandwich connoisseur knew about different breads and cheeses. For one of his birthdays, Twilight had given him a book titled Every Jewel Throughout The World. To date, it was one of the only reference book he’d read as eagerly as his comics, and was in fact, one of the books he’d read up on before this trip. So when AJ had been babbling all those words, earlier… Spike knew what she’d been talking about.

Kyanite? Idocrase? Jeremejevite, for laughing out loud? These weren’t the kind of rocks buccaneers swung cutlasses over in pirate adventure tales! Yet Applejack’s pronunciation of each gem’s name had been flawless.

The Swap must’ve dug its talons back into her brain, reconfiguring her mind, instincts, and Earth Pony magic so she had a sixth sense awareness of every form of stone which jewelers were willing to slap a price tag on, (including the more well-known ‘mainstream’ gems, such as rubies and emeralds, not just the obscure ones.) It was even possible that AJ’s new skill might even be stronger than the old Rarity’s gem-finding spell. Spike felt happy for her.

But it had still been TERRIFYING for him and Sweetie to watch, and no doubt WORSE for Applejack to have to go through. He’d thought AJ’s brains were going to melt straight out of her ears, and glad the Swap hadn’t hurt her. He hoped that neither Applejack, nor any of the other Swapped Five tried pushing their luck like that ever again.

Huh? Why wasn’t his wagon moving? He looked backward, prepared to pull its wheels out of whatever hole it had gotten stuck in...

“I’ll be taking those pretty gems, dragon-baby!”

He didn’t recognize this particular Diamond Dog at all. Its head poked out, mole-like, from a hole that’d suddenly popped out by the wagon’s wheels. Its arm was latched onto the metal handle which Spike was dragging the wagon around by.

Spike stared into the dog’s dirty grin, remembering that he still held his letter to Celestia in his free hand. But the Diamond Dog lifted himself further out of the ground and made to swipe all the jewels out of the wagon… and the little dragon found himself yelling something while dragging his own claws across the dog’s snout, giving the great mongrel a scratch that would’ve made Opalescence proud.

Yipping, the Diamond Dog momentarily ducked back under his hole, clutching his nose, and Spike just grabbed his wagon handle and ran, completely forgetting the Diamond Dogs’ other trick of hiding themselves behind lots of thick leaves, until the second Dog leapt at him from a bush he thoughtlessly ran past. This Dog might’ve snagged him, if not for Sweetie Belle, who charged at the dog valiantly with her nubby little horn, and actually scored a sharp poke just under the mutt’s knee, causing him to yelp in surprise and pain, and take a tumble to the ground.

“Applejack!” Spike screamed, but AJ was dealing with a third dog, who seemed to be chasing her around in circles around a tree.

These were a completely different trio of dogs than the ones that’d kidnapped Rarity. Yet their pelts were equal parts dirt as fur, and they bore the same kind of sinister, crooked smiles as those first guys. On one hand, none of them came remotely close to being of ‘purebred’ stock. On the other, for each of these mutts, a distinctly recognizable ‘breed’ dominated over the rest of their heritage.

The first one, who’d tried to ambush Spike from underground, reminded Spike of a Deerhound, with his rough, wiry bluish-grey coat. The second, who’d jumped out from those bushes, was a lot closer to a Boxer than anything else, with his great buggy eyes, jutting underbite, and stumpy little tail. The third was still chasing after Applejack, and in spite of being the tallest and most muscular of the three, with the deepest and lowest bark, his face still resembled that of a tiny little Shih Tzu, albeit one whose fur was all in dirty, twisted tangles.

“Run, Spike!” Sweetie shouted. As the Boxer recovered and bared broken fangs at her, the little filly actually managed to force a few extra-large motes of magic through her horn. “Run for Ponyville! I’ll hold them off!”

It wasn’t as though Spike would’ve ever fled to begin with. But that Diamond Dog was so large, and, and...

“...Even though I know that Scrounger dog is dead… he’ll still live on in my nightmares, Lyra.... all his raving about ‘fiddling’ and ‘diddling’...”

...And as his memory brought up this conversation between Rarity and Lyra he’d eavesdropped on one night, Spike wondered whether this Boxer might be related to that Scrounger dog. Or if not a relative, then a kindred spirit.

Spike ran forward to save Sweetie, letting the familiar heat build up in his throat…

...Only to feel a thick, grimy padded paw close around his neck and lift him off the ground.

“Trouble breathing fire, little dragon-baby?” the Deerhound asked in Spike’s ear, closing his paw tighter upon his windpipe. “Trouble breathing?”

Spike’s body wasn’t a weak one: his scales could withstand all sorts of things that would outright kill most mammals. But the Deerhound was a big dog, and in his powerful grip, Spike could only let out a small, choked cloud of smog. At least it wasn’t enough to actually strangle him, but that could change.

“Let him go!” Sweetie squealed, just before she, herself, was picked up by the Deerhound as well.

“Awwwwwwww… adorable! Such a pretty head! Such a glossy coat!” Sweetie managed to bite down on the Deerhound’s other well-calloused forepaw, but he didn’t even flinch, chuckling as though Sweetie were just a teething kitten. “Think I’ll bring you down to my sister… she’s great at obedience training! Then I’ll bring you home! My litter will love you! You’ll be our family pet!”

“Hoooooow could yeeeeeeeeew deeeeeeeew thiiiiiiiiisssss?!”

The Deerhound yiped.

“My ears!” screamed the Boxer.

The Shih Tzu had stopped chasing Applejack, backing away, tail tucked.

“It’s jeeeeeeeeeest soooooo meeeeeeeeean of yeeeeeeeeew!”

“That voice!” gasped the Shih Tzu.

“That mark!” The Boxer was pointing at AJ’s cutie mark, as if it were some notorious killer’s tattoo.

“Meeeeeeeeean, meeeeeeean, meeeeeanieeeeeees, that’s what yeeeeeeew all arrrrrrrrrre!”

“The legends were true!” shrieked the Shih Tzu.

“It’s the Unpleasable Demon-Pony of a Thousand Demands!” They chorused in horror.

The Deerhound continued holding Spike and Sweetie, Staring at AJ with unmitigated terror, while the Shih Tzu and the Boxer bent down together to dig up an escape tunnel. Spike had never seen faster excavators: their paws tore through the earth like it was nothing but dried leaves. Yet the Diamond Dogs still weren’t fast enough to escape Applejack’s voice.

“Ah had a buuuuuusy buuuusy schedddd--u---elll Ah worked soooooooo haaaaaaaard ta maaaaaaake, but nooowwwww mah puuuuurddy, purrrrrdy pelt’s gonna git soooo iiiiicky and duuuurty cuz Ah’ll be hoooooounnding yeeeeeeew dawwwwwwgiiiieess throooough evvvvvvvery hooooole yeeeew diiiiiiig! Daaaaaaay and niiiiight if neeeeeed beeee!!!”

Back when Rarity the Fashionista had first told the story about how she’d literally whined her way into dominance over the Diamond Dogs, he and Twilight and everypony else in their circle of closest friends all had a laugh. But now, being subjected to The Whine in person… well, it was the difference between watching an actor tumble down some stairs in a movie, and taking an actual fall down a flight of stairs, yourself.

What was issuing from Applejack’s lungs was every bit as dreadful in its own right as The Stare of Fluttershy’s pre-Swap days. If an evil banshee had made itself a home the deep South, and picked up the local accent before magically fusing itself with the shrillest and most overindulged rugrat ever to unwrap the wrong toy for her birthday present...

“Then Ah’ll hafta wear mah daaaaaaaainty litttttttle hoooooovsiiiies doooooown ta the nuuuuubs, poundin’ yew puppies inta puuuuuuuudiiiiiingggg and giiiiiiit mahself all sweaaaaattay and naaaaaastay and huuuunngrayy and tiiiiiiired, haulin’ ya’ll doowwwwwn teeeeeew maaaah basement where Ah can CAAAAAAGE YEEEEW UHHHPPPPP!! Then ya’ll always git ta listen ta what’s botherin’ me, EEEEEVVVVVERRYY TIIIIIME AHHHHHH FEEEEEEL SAAAAAAAD!!!!”

“The stories..!” screamed the Boxer abandoning his digging to shove his paws into his ears, as Sweetie Belle whimpered softly. “The stories didn’t say enough! Not NEARLY enough!”

The Whine stretched out vowels like fingers slammed into a door. On its surface, it was a punishingly drawn-out wail that perfectly matched the orange mare’s sobby, pouty facial expression. But like an injured gator in crystal clear waters, it was impossible to miss what lurked in the undertones of that infantile noise: the Applejack of Old, threatening to rise back up from deep beneath, and exact retribution.

“And if either of ‘em young’ins should git so much as a SCRATCH on ‘em…!”

The Deerhound THREW Sweetie Belle and Spike at Applejack as though the two of them were demonically cursed ragdolls. Spike got back up okay, but Sweetie yelled ‘Ouch!’ when her head got a small cut after she’d hit the ground.

“Ohhhhh, HORRORS! A SCRATCH! A greeeeeat, biiiiiiig, uuuuuuugly SCRRRAAAAAAATTTCH on mah dear sister’s HEEAAAAAAAAAAD….!!!!!”

All three Diamond Dogs threw themselves flat on the ground, now all whimpering as only canines can.

“Please!” pled the Shih Tzu, through his high keening. “We beg of you, O Eternal Enemy of Eardrums…”

“‘Miz Applejack,’ will do, thank ya kindly.”

“Have mercy, Miz Applejack! Surely there must be something we lowly dogs can do for you! Anything! Name it! Just stop the horrible wail that haunts the nightmares of our pups!”

Applejack scratched her chin with the bottom of a forehoof. “Hmmmm…”

* * *

Once Applejack had persuaded them properly, the Diamond Dogs had been very helpful. Spike had gotten to rest his arms and clean himself off while the pooches had done all the gem-digging for them, wherever Applejack had pointed. In no time at all, the three of them were practically kicking themselves for not thinking to bring something larger than a child’s toy wagon to store it all in, but Applejack did have her saddlebags on her, so they were able to fit in quite a few more pounds of diamonds, emeralds, and rubies, and other gems.

At one point, Spike had hunkered down next to the Boxer and asked, in a quiet voice that the two ponies couldn’t overhear, whether he knew anything about another dog named Scrounger. The Boxer had immediately bristed.

“We know of that awful piece of soap,” the Boxer snarled the word ‘soap’ as if it were a far viler sort of four-letter word, ‘but we do not speak of him. He was banished! Do not insult your breath speaking of him, Not-Dog!’”

He didn’t pry further. If there was something a Diamond Dog didn’t wish to speak of, Spike was certain it wasn’t worth talking about. And knowing what Scrounger was like, he didn’t blame them. At this point, the little dragon wanted to have preserved at least a smidgen of his own innocence by the time he came of proper dating age. Though if Scrounger was a pariah amongst other Diamond Dogs, it made him feel a bit better about Diamond Dogs as a whole.

“Is Scrounger back?” the Boxer whispered to Spike, in an even quieter voice, the tone convoying more horror and disgust than mere words.

“He’s dead,” Spike told him.

“Really?”

“Really.” The coroner had even mailed them a copy of Scrounger’s death certificate at Rarity’s request.

“...One less beastie to threaten our pups. You ponies did good.” And the Diamond Dog flashed Spike a truly likeable smile.

Once Spike, Applejack and Sweetie Belle had finally loaded up all the gemstones they were capable of carrying, Applejack turned to the three of them. “Now, yew three did a good job, helpin’ me out here, so yer gonna get your dues” She pulled something out of her saddlebags, presenting it to them.

At first, the three of them flinched. “Please, Miz App- Oh.” The Boxer said before getting a good view of what she was offering- three large gems. “...For us?” he asked hesitantly.

“Yep! I never let hard work go unrewarded. I’da paid ya more, but you did kinda attack us. So this is all ya get.”

“No complaints!” the Deerhound affirmed as they each snatched their gem.

“Next time, ask me when you see me, and we’ll work out yer pay if’n you want ta help. And no one gets complained at then, Y’hear?”

“We hear, Generous, helpfuls, kind, non-complaining Miz Applejack!” the Shih Tzu replied, practically bowing as he replied.

“Heh, ‘till next time, then.” AJ replied. The three of them waved goodbye to Bandit the Deerhound, Shadow the Boxer, and Trapper the Shih Tzu, (Sweetie Belle had thought to ask what their names were,) before heading back to the Boutique.

To the kids’ surprise, AJ only wanted lock their gems away before she brought them both straight to the ice cream shop to reward them. Sweetie had a strawberry shortcake parfait, AJ had two scoops of mint delight… Spike had been about to order himself a simple cookies and cream scoop, but Applejack saw how his eyes lingered over the Jumbo Dreamboat on the store’s menu, and ordered that for him instead, right away.

Ice cream had never tasted quite so sweet.

The next phase of things required Spike’s mighty jaws to crunch up the nugget-sized, (or larger) gemstones into smaller fragments, suitable for sewing into a dress.

All for her. Spike had to remind himself, looking at Applejack’s face and Applejack’s cutie mark every time his treacherous appetite begged him to swallow just a shard of that yummy ruby, one tiny little shard shouldn’t matter… It’s all for her.

The fragments were then passed over to Sweetie, who was in charge of cleaning the gem fragments with citrus-scented antibacterial soap, (so they’d be free of dirt and dragon mouth-germs,) which she then put in a large bowl by Applejack’s side, while she sewed.

* * *

The first few hours of the following morning passed in a groggy blur for Spike. He got up, showered, ate… but he didn’t truly become fully awake, fully himself, until he found himself stepping into the kitchen of the Carousel Boutique.

“Hi, Spike! Did you have breakfast yet?”

Sweetie Belle sat at the table next to a cereal box and a empty bowl with milky residue, with an open newspaper in front of her. Even just a few moments ago, coming through the Boutique’s door and walking through the showroom to get to hear felt foggy to him.

“No thanks, I ate,” he said, failing to remember what he’d eaten for breakfast.

“What’s that you’re reading?” he asked, as Sweetie looked back at her newspaper.

“I’m not reading! I’m doing the crossword puzzle!” she told him. “Maybe I’ll end up getting a crossword cutie mark!”

“Well… cutie marks are stubborn little things, but you gotta just keep working on ‘em,” he said, coming to sit by her side. “Gotta crack through at some point.”

Frankly, it was great hearing Sweetie refocus on her cutie mark crusade again. Almost like things were back to normal. Sweetie nodded with a pleased smile before frowning down at her puzzle.

“Say, Spike? What’s a three-letter word for ‘self?’

The little dragon scooted his chair over by Sweetie, so he could also look down at her crossword. She was tapping down at a particular line of squares: 19-Across. He tried to think of every word he knew that also meant ‘self.’ Not ‘I,’ Not ‘ME,’ definitely not ‘MYSELF.’ Maybe it was ‘YOU?’”

Except, when he glanced over at the crossword puzzle’s clue list, the one for 19-Down read: ‘NOT WEST.’ So Spike grabbed another pencil and wrote in ‘EAST’ for 19-Down, meaning that 19-Across started with an E. Dang it, there wasn’t any…

But he thought some more. “Ego,” he said. “As in ‘egotistic,’ and ‘egomaniac’… ego means self!”

Sometimes, living with a bookworm really paid off! Sweetie happily wrote in EGO for 19-Across.

“Ooh, and what about 37-Across? ‘GAGGLE MEMBERS?’”

Spike was pretty sure he knew this one two. “Geese!” he said. “A gaggle of geese!”

But from there, the questions started getting hopelessly hard.

“Spike, what does ‘tannic and boric’ mean?”

“I dunno, sounds sciencey.”

“What’s the ‘final stanza in a poem,’ Spike?”

“I don’t even know what a ‘stanza’ is!”

“Did Twilight ever tell you if there’s a ‘tree that yields chocolate substitute?’”

“Okay, this is horse apples. I ain’t even much of a chocoholic, but there ain’t NOTHING that can taste like chocolate BUT chocolate!”

In disgust, Spike’s eyes wandered off the crossword a little to a different part of the newspaper …

--insists that Cutie Mark Dysmorphic Disorder, or CMDD, is a very real and prevalent syndrome among a considerable percentage of ponykind. “This issue transcends all the usual dividing lines found between tribes, ages, gender, and all levels of the social hierarchy. Mainstream society prefers to dismiss CMDD as a ‘foal’s problem’ which needs to be ‘grown out of.’ But the so-called ‘Humanapping Incident,’ [involving the now-notorious criminals Honeydew and Exit Wound] has served to spark an ongoing--

“Hey, Spike?” Sweetie asked, while the dragon felt ice under his spines. “For 5-Down, what’s a four-letter word that means ‘Exchange?’”

Sweetie Belle forgot her crossword altogether when there came a knocking on the Boutique’s front door, and she dashed to answer it. The newspaper lay on the table. Feeling disquieted, Spike decided to leave it there, and followed her into the showroom. It appeared Apple Bloom had been the one who’d knocked; she had already stepped inside, chatting with Sweetie Belle.

“So ya think ya CAN go an’ crusade with us after school?” Apple Bloom was asking, as Spike came within a closer listening distance.

“Pretty sure!” said Sweetie. “AJ’s doing much better, after all! This time, I’m thinking we could try for puppeteering cutie marks, after we were done with school! C’mon! Let’s go!”

School? Oh, right. Today was Monday. When pony foals started their school week. It would be different without Sweetie around. It’d only been two days since she’d returned to the Carousel Boutique, and already she’d been an enormous help.

“Uh... forgettin’ somethin’?” asked Apple Bloom, with a roll of her shoulders so that the school bags she wore gave a bounce.

“Oops! Be right back!”

And Sweetie headed up towards her room to find her school bags.

“Hey.” The little dragon gave a start… that hadn’t been Apple Bloom who’d said that!

“Scootaloo?” he asked, whirling around. She had been here too? How’d she snuck up on him?

“Hi, Spike,” said Scootaloo. “Rarity asked me to pass along a message to you the next time I see you. She says that she’d like you to come home earlier because she wants to spend more time with you.” Then before he could properly respond to that, her expression turned more serious. “Are you being a bad kid with Rarity, Spike?”

“No!” Spike told her. “I swear I’m not!”

“Good!” snapped Scootaloo. “Cuz Rarity doesn’t need anyone making her sad! You’d better not be acting bratty with her or else…” She paused to think up what would make a good ‘else.’

“...Or else you’d be doing a super-uncool thing! And nopony likes to be super-uncool, do they, Spike?”

“Of course not,” He sighed a little. “Scootaloo… the next time you see Rarity, could you please tell her that…”

“No!” Scootaloo interrupted. “You tell her! You’re the one who gets to live in the same house with her! That’s how it works, if you don’t want to be super-uncool!”

Clearly looking to diffuse the situation, Apple Bloom looked over at the three ponyquins standing front and center of the boutique. “Hooo-weee! Those are a LOT of gems!”

“D’ya like ‘em?” asked Applejack, finally stepped into the showroom.

It wouldn’t have surprised Spike if Applejack had only woken just twenty minutes earlier. While she didn’t appear unkempt or drowsy in the slightest, she looked very worn out.

“Well, there’s no question, it’s the nicest thang ya got in this store, Miz AJ!”

Spike certainly couldn’t disagree with Apple Bloom on that count. Applejack must’ve worked straight through all of yesterday night to crank out these three outfits. Part of Spike had wanted to stay by her side for every moment of it… but when it was getting close to eight o’clock, he had to relent. As much time as Spike had been spending here, the Boutique wasn’t his home, he had his own family, and they would be hurt if he didn’t come home at some point.

“Found my bag!” Sweetie Belle called, reappearing with her school bags on her back. “See you tonight, Applejack!”

And the Cutie Mark Crusaders hurried off to their school.

Applejack had meant to sew a total of six bejeweled dressed, and sure enough, Spike heard the sewing machine start up once again.

The little dragon looked over at the three finished dresses on their ponyquins one more time. thinking it could be better. The stitching was a little shoddy. Plus, the original sketch of this jeweled dress had called for a certain type of silk. But since they couldn’t dig up free silk for themselves, they had to go with a less expensive fabric. However, it was clear AJ had painstakingly followed the instructions, and as a result, it didn’t look terrible. Really, it was head and shoulders above anything else in the boutique. In fact, if somepony were to walk in right now, she’d probably…

“Oh my! Aren’t they all lovely!”

A unicorn lady had just stepped inside the Boutique. Hers was a new face. Maybe around her mid-thirties. He couldn’t think of how to describe her mane except that it was extremely big, elaborate, unique and pretty, and probably cost a small fortune in hairspray alone.

The ring of the door’s bell brought the sewing machine’s clacking to a stop.

“Howdy, pardner!” AJ said, stepping back into the showroom. “Welcome ta the Carousel Boutique, where everythang’s sheek, you-neek and mag-niff-feek! What can Ah do ya for?”

The unicorn lady’s eyes locked upon all three of the jeweled dresses at once. “You can do me for these! Look at how they all glitter! And sparkle!”

Applejack blinked several times as though to prove to herself that she hadn’t dreamt this customer up. “If ya’ll like ‘em, lemme lead ya over here, so ya can see how they look on yew.”

But the customer shook her head when AJ motioned towards a changing room. “No need! Beauties like these speak for themselves! I’ll have the lot of them! How much are you asking for?”

“ Uh… welp, between the quality of the materials and the amount a’ TLC put inta their makin’, Ah can’t rightly ask fer less than 8,300 bits fer each dress…”

“Sold!” And just like that, Spike found himself watching moneybags float out of the unicorn lady’s saddlebags. They split like water balloons when they hit AJ’s countertop, spilling coins out all over the counter and the floor. The customer waited patiently as Spike and AJ gathered it all up and counted out 24,900 bits.

“T-thank ya! Do come again!”

Spike walked over to AJ when the customer had left. “How are you feeling?” he asked her.

“Stunned,” said AJ. "And happy.”

She was smiling like a mare who was only just realizing that her spell of sickness had ended. “Gettin’ happier, in fact! Ah feel lighter. Ah feel brighter,” She spun in a little circle. “Like Ah know what Ah have ta do, and Ah can do it!”

Was it Spike’s imagination, or was that Diamond Mark on her looking a little fainter than it had a second ago?

Applejack got out from behind the counter, walking over to the window and Spike joined right next to her.. “Boy, Ah’ll tell ya, there’s somethin’ beautiful ‘bout watchin’ yer customers head outta yer shop, with their new… what… in… tarnation…”

From the window, Spike and Applejack watched the unicorn lady levitate the dresses out of the bag Applejack had put them in. She had to be one strong, well-focused magic user: because her next spell… her next spell separated all the dresses gems from the fabric they’d been stitched to, all at once. She ripped all the stones straight out. It felt like the ugliest sound Spike had ever heard.

“She…” Spike wanted to turn Applejack’s head away. He wanted to turn away himself from what he was seeing.

The dresses were all left as ‘distressed’ as that one chambray thing from the previous day. It looked like a family of rats had chewed it up.

“She didn’t… like them dresses at all.”

From her saddlebag, the unicorn lady levitated out something that might’ve been a coin purse, and placed all the gem pieces inside it. As for the fabric… that she bunched up into one big ball of cloth, directly in front of her face. The next second, Spike was watching it burst into flame, which the unicorn lady used to light a cigarette.

“Only them gems had any value.”

It was just dresses. Cloth was not skin, nothing had been maimed. Lifeless stones had been torn out. Not eyelids or teeth. Who cared if this horrible mare -- whom Spike hoped would try eating all those gems she’d plucked out -- had destroyed them? Wasn’t like she’d stolen anything. She’d forked over a good bundle of money to torch some fabric. Over a dozen more bolts it sat in the storerooms. Joke was on her!

This devastation Spike was feeling had no business being in his heart!

But just as he drew breath to cheer the Swapped pony up, the unicorn mare outside threw the flaming ball into a nearby puddle of wet mud, which snuffed out the fire. And Spike was only able to catch a glimpse of tears leaking out the sides of Applejack’s eyes before the orange mare had fled the sight of it. As though it were the Carousel Boutique, itself, that had gone up in flames, instead of one single garment.

He heard her hooves up the stairs, and her bedroom door lock.

How dare this mare… how DARE she! Didn’t even have the decency to wait ‘til she got home to start yanking gems out; she had to rip apart it right outside the store’s entrance! As though the Boutique’s reputation hadn’t suffered enough! The little dragon returned to the window, with every intention of letting the unicorn mare know what a rotten creep she was, if she was still standing out there!

And the lady was. Looking straight at Spike through the window. Her smile raised many questions in his head.

For example: why had only he and Applejack reacted? Shouldn’t he have found it peculiar that no one else outside had given so much as a single startled word when some stranger began setting clothes on fire? There were plenty of bystanders and passersby to be seen, but they appeared downright oblivious to the stranger’s presence. Walking around her as though she were just some mailbox that happened to be posted right in the middle of the road.

Then he noticed her eyes.

They were yellow.

Even when the loud and enormous zipper pulled down from the center of her forehead, and her whole body opened up like a purse on legs, no one let out a cry. Not even after Spike, himself, did.

From her forehead, the zipper went all the way across her underbelly, then back up her tail end and across her spine. Out stepped Discord the draconequus, grinning.

“...No.”

Frozen, unable to say anything more than he desperate, begging denial, Spike just watched as the Chaos God held out that coin purse, and all the gem fragments flew out and swarmed together in the air, forming letters. Forming words.

YOU HAVE NOW BEEN PUNISHED.

Then Discord sucked the gems all into his mouth with downright dragonish delight, munching them all up before transforming himself into hundreds of coins, raining down amongst the ponies in the street, who cheered in confusion and delight, scooping them right up.

When Spike ran upstairs, he found that Applejack had left her door locked.

“AJ! AJ, please let me in!” he pleaded, while hammering on her door.

“Spike, get out,” she told him through the door. “Ah am absolutely serious. GIT OUTTA HERE. NOW.”

Her voice was like red hot coals spilled onto the floor: it’d burn you if you tried to reach out to it. Spike tried reaching out to Applejack anyway.

“It’s not what you think!” he cried. “That customer wasn’t even a real pony! It was Discord in disguise!”

“Discord…?”

“Yes! I saw him! I swear it was him, on my own life! Playing another of his dirty rotten tricks! AJ, please, I know how upset you must feel. Please let me come in there, I want to help talk to you!”

“Ah… Ah’m afraid Ah’ve hit mah limit,” she told him. “Ah just can’t deal with yew, Spike. Ah’m tired and upset and Ah want ya gone.“

“What did I do?” he sputtered in anguished disbelief.

“Ah’m fed up with yer voice. Ah can’t stand yer face. Ah’m SICK TA DEATH of bein’ mothered ‘n’ babied BY a baby.”

Baby?! An unwise spurt of indignation flared to the surface of Spike’s emotions. “S… so that’s it, then? This is how your lifelong dream goes out of business? One jerk acts jerky, and you shut yourself away in your bedroom?”

AJ unlocked her door and Spike took an involuntary step back. To Spike, it felt like the all the scorn and contempt adults through every corner of the world felt towards children had been consolidated into a single tear-soaked, red-eyed, piercing glare.

“Look…” she started, trembling with the effort of not exploding. “Ya made me a LOT of money jest now… Ah ain’t unthankful, boy. But ya see mah cutie mark?”

The Swapped pony pivoted to show her mark. Even though it gave off no light, Spike still felt the crazy instinctual impression that those diamonds were now giving off a diseased glow.

“THIS AIN’T THE MARK OF A JEWELER! Ah am a FASHIONISTA. If ponies are only interested in buyin’ ROCKS from me, and not clothes, then Ah’m doing mah job more wrong than evah! So now jest march on down those stairs and take a long hike from me, yew annoying lil’ pest. Yew ain’t givin’ me the help Ah REALLY need.”

“Applejack,” he tried, in a cracked, watery voice. “Please. Don’t do this… let’s put our heads together...”

But the Swapped pony was truly done. She bit down on the scruff of his neck like some frustrated mother cat, hustled down the stairs, and all but flung him out the boutique’s door.

Spike was certain the worst sound in the world was that of the lock clicking shut behind him.

* * *

Spike was having some problems opening the door to his home.

Mostly because it was remaining stubbornly blurry.

He blinked rapidly, trying to clear his vision. Stupid tears.

As he finally pushed open the door, he heard voices in the living room. He ears picked up Lero, Rainbow, and Fluttershy’s voice, talking back and forth.

Oh. Right. Comedy lessons.

He was certain his presence would do nothing to help foster a sense of humor. And he wasn’t finding much to laugh about right now. He started to sneak off to his room…

“HI, SPIKE!”

Damn Pegasus hearing.

He rubbed his eyes, put on his best fake smile, and turned around. “Hey, Fluttershy.”

Fluttershy flapped over to him cheerfully, stopping short as she saw the redness in his eyes. “Oh! Are you feeling well, Spike?”

“I… Kinda had a rough day. But I’m fine!” He said with false cheer.

He saw Lero frown, a concerned look being exchanged between him and Dash from over on the couch. Spike knew they could tell he wasn’t ‘fine’. However, before they could intercede, Fluttershy spoke up again.

“I know what’ll help!” she enthused. “A good joke! Even if you’re fine, it’ll make you feel better!”

Spike paused. He really didn’t want to hear a joke… but… He didn’t want to screw up someone else’s equilibrium. Just a few fake laughs, and he could be out of there. and maybe she was right, maybe it’d make him feel better.

“A mare’s just come home from an antique shop, bitter about her breakup with the stallion who’s now her ex,” Fluttershy started. “She pulls out the lamp she just bought, start to rub it clean, and out pops a genie! ‘I’ll grant you three wishes,’ the genie tells her, ‘But there’s a catch. Whatever you ask for, your ex will also be getting, twice over.’

“‘I wish for a million bits!’ says the mare. And a huge pile of bits now lays at her hooves. ‘Bear in mind: your ex is now two million bits richer,’ said the genie.

“‘I wish for a mansion on my own tropical island!’ the mare says. ‘Granted,’ the genie tells her, ‘But know that your former coltfriend now has two mansions to his name, each sitting on a tropical island.’

“‘The mare thinks hard about her final wish. Then she smiles and says, ”For my last wish... I want to give birth to triplets!’”

That was the straw that broke the camel’s back. Was that what AJ would've wished on him? For him to suffer just like this ex in the joke? But then… he'd never been an 'ex' himself, had he? Never even been a coltfriend of hers...

Tears and sobs broke through Spike’s false cheer, and with a cry, he fled the room.

“But… but I thought… What did I do wrong!?” Fluttershy cried, her eyes tearing up.

“Nothing.” Warm arms embraced her, startled to find Lero giving her a tight, reassuring hug. “The joke was funny, and you meant well. I think.. .Spike’s just had a really bad day, and no amount of joking is going to help it.”

“Oh… Ok… I’m… sorry,” Another pair of arms hug her, Rainbow Dash on the other side. “Don’t worry. It’s fine. You two, keep up at the lessons. I’m gonna make sure the little guy’s okay.”

“You sure?” Fluttershy asked. “I don’t want to impose…” Despite what she said, her cutie mark twitched.

Rainbow shook her head. “Nah. We’re not going to kick you out when you had the day planned with us. I can handle it.” She flapped away leaving the two to their lessons.

Rainbow knocked on Spike’s door. She only heard muffled sobs. She pushed open the door, finding Spike face-down. Bawling into his pillow. She closed the door behind her, walking over to him, putting her hoof on his back.

“Spike…”

“I don’t want to talk about it!” Came his muffled protest.

She slide her hooves around him, hugging him tight. “You don’t have to.” Is all she said.

He shifted, and hugged her back as he cried.

* * *

Fluttershy’s lessons ended a bit early that day, shortly after noon when Rarity came home for lunch. Lero called a family meeting, and soon the herd clustered in one of the reading rooms, waiting for Spike and Dash to arrive. Before long, the pegasus came down, the young dragon clinging to her side, still sniffling.

“Spike!” Twilight and Rarity both called, immediately rushing up to him.

“Are you okay!?”

“What happened!?”

“Girls? Can you give him a little room? At least enough to let him sit down?” Lero asked. They paused and nodded, letting him get to the couch. Dash settled down on one side, and Rarity the other, Twilight sitting on the floor in front of him to be close.

“Okay, Spike, relax.” Lyra said. “Tell us what happened. No rush, whenever you feel up to it. We’re here for you.”

Spike nodded. “Y-you all know h-how I’ve b-been helping Applejack, right? Well…” Then the story started tumbling out. Cleaning up the entirety of the Boutique, forcing AJ to care for herself, convincing Sweetie Belle to return, (which was a shock to several members of the herd who hadn’t even realized Sweetie had ever left the Boutique). convince AJ to use ‘her’ old designs, the trails in finding the gems, then…

“So this uncouth customer destroys Applejack’s dress just outside the Boutique... and then she flipped out at you for it?” asked Twilight.

“She didn’t really call you an annoying pest, did she?” Rarity asked.

“A-ask her!” sniffled Spike. “G-go ahead and a-ask her! I know she’ll at l-least be honest!”

“I think I will.” Rarity stated, with rather stony starkness. Lero could foresee a lot of freezing rainfall in Applejack’s near future.

“I-I-I ruined everything!” Spike blubbered. “Absolutely everything! I even dr-dragged Sweetie Belle into this, because I thought I had th-th-things u-under control! What kind of sister is Sweetie gonna come home to tonight?!”

Lero, Lyra, and Twilight exchanged glances. Spike had managed to flash them a look they immediately recognized. There’s more to this story I want to discuss when the Swapped aren’t around, this look said.

“Well!” declared Rarity. “That can be dealt with later. In the meantime, Spike, you are our priority. We are going to do absolutely everything to make you feel better!”

Spike blinked. “R-really?”

“Yeah!” The herd chorused, Spike finding himself in a group hug.

“Aww… thanks, guys…” He said, gratefully, with only a small sniffle.

The rest of the day was almost a blur. Lyra played his favorite music. Lero told him cool stories from his world. Dash let him play with her animals. Twilight made his favorite gem-cake. The entire herd played his favorite board games together. And Rarity… Rarity, went above and beyond. She sat and listening to Spike as he discussed the sort of things he’d been doing for Applejack this whole while in greater detail, cuddling him close. She even brought him to the bathroom, so she could ‘freshen him up.’

Being reptilian, Rarity couldn’t give Spike a fancy haircut. But she still seemed to know just what to do in lieu of that: drawing up a soothing bath for him to sit in -- a bubble bath, just like he liked it -- then rubbing down all his scales with a relaxing, sweet-smelling cream and then a wax, both warmed to a soothingly high temperature, which gave his scales a glistening sheen.

“There!” Rarity said, when she was finished. “What do you think?”

“I think I can see my reflection in his armpit!” Lyra joked.

Spike hugged Rarity. “You’re a really, really great herdmother, Rarity. I’m so happy you’re in my family. Thank you for always being so kind and sweet to me.” Then, after a fretful pause, he finally came right out and said it: “I… I love you, Rarity. I love you lots.”

She gave him a sweet kiss. “I love you right back. You’re my sweet little boy, Spike, as good as my own firstborn, and that’ll never, ever change. I’m only sorry I haven’t set aside time to properly show you that more often.”

“No way,” said Spike. “I’m the one who should be sorry… I’ve been treating everyone so distant lately with all the stuff that’s been going on, including you.”

“Well, I forgive you, as long as you promise never to do it again.”

Spike smiled. “Deal.”

“Speaking of not neglecting my herdmates… I see three mares in my herd that I haven’t lavished my styling talents on. Lyra, Rainbow, Twilight? It’s your turn.”

“Uhm,” Lyra said, surprised.

“Er.” Dash said, cautiously.

“Really?” Twilight inquired.

“Absolutely. I need an assistant. Spike?”

Spike smiled broadly. Like old times, sort of. “At your service, milady.”

“Oh, Spike!” she giggled. “You’ll be such a wonderful prince to some lucky mare someday!”

The duo of them bathed, trimmed, and styling their manes, Spike handing Rarity her requested tools and supplies, and sweeping up swatches of cut hair off the floor. When they finished up, the sun had set.

“Oh, my, that was refreshing! How about a nice dinner and we pop off to bed?” Rarity asked, to which the herd agreed.

Much later, at around 11:30 P.M., Lero woke Spike up with a soft knock on his bedroom door. The dragon came out yawning and hugging a pillow.

“We could tell you had more to say about what happened today with Applejack,” said Lero.

“What about Rarity and Rainbow Dash?” asked Spike.

“They’re fast asleep in bed,” said Twilight, who was standing next to Lero. “I cast that sleep spell of mine where they won’t wake up until I cancel the spell. C’mon, let’s make sure they don’t overhear in their dreams.”

The four of them headed downstairs into the reading room, when Spike put it quite simply.

“It was Discord.”

“Wait… what?” Twilight asked, baffled. “Who?”

“The patron that bought the dresses, and tore out the gems… He said it was… punishment for ordering him around earlier.”

“And to think I was actually coming to like that helter-skelter jumble heap!” grumbled Lyra. “I thought he was supposed to be on our side, helping us help the Swapped!”

“Well, there’s something he’s made clear to me, from our conversations…” Lero responded. “That there’s nothing more he hates than being ordered around. And he’s new at this ‘friendship’ thing, so he may not grasp the concept of ‘proportional response’.”

“That’s hardly an excuse!” Twilight replied.

“I know, and I intend to bring it up with him- but I doubt he’ll be interested in what I have to say on the subject.” Lero sighed.

“I worked so hard with AJ for so long!” Spike said. “If he wanted to get back at me… I dunno, change me into a giant walking, talking ukulele, but don’t hurt Applejack to get to me!”

Lero agreed. “This sets us back weeks, most likely. Spike could’ve actually been on the verge of finding equilibrium for her!”

“Hmmm, but that’s not in violation of the agreement he made with Celestia. All that’s important is that I figure out a way to fix the spell. Equilibrium doesn’t matter to Discord, and messing it up doesn’t break his agreement, as long as it doesn’t make them genuinely crazy.” Twilight pointed out.

“It’s still a rat thing to do.” Lyra groused.

“Lero…” The little dragon got down from his couch, onto his knees before the human. “Please Lero: help Applejack. Save her! She’s always so lonely! It’s been so hard and painful for her this whole time! I tried to do it myself, I really DID try, but I’m too young, too stupid… too much of a baby dragon. I love her so much, but I don’t even care about winning AJ’s heart anymore just…work your human magic on her and SAVE HER! I don’t want those horrible diamonds destroying her any more, I don’t want her trapped within herself! I want to see her LIVE again!”

Lero hunkered down. “First thing, Spike: You’re not stupid. You tackled the problem in ways I probably wouldn’t have thought of, and with a dedication most people never find in their lives. You did good, okay? You got a lot closer than most people ever would.”

“Okay…” He nodded Solemnly. “But what about AJ?”

“I won’t save her,” he told Spike. And just as a stricken look of pain came on the young dragon’s face, he added. “We’ll save her. All of us here. And that still includes you, Spike. We’re a team, and we’re going to do everything we can.”

Spike’s voice came in a choked-out squeak as he said, “Thank you.”

Lero clasped Spike's smaller fist within his own. He brought the union close between their chests, their free arms clasping around their backs. For Spike, the motion came naturally though this was the first time he made it. He had never done this with Lero before, never even seen this before. Spike had the sudden feeling that this was a ritual that humans did only with those they trusted most.

It was a different sort of hug. A hug only he and Lero were even capable of, in all Ponyville. A hug between comrades.

A hug shared between brothers.

“Hmmm… Hey, Spike,” said Twilight, settling on a couch. “Didn’t you say at some point when you were first telling the story that you thought the stitching on those jewel-dresses AJ made could’ve been better?”

“Yeah, that’s right,” the dragon said. “They were... okay enough, but even I could see it was still a bit amateurish. In spite of all the insane amounts of practice she’s put in at that sewing machine of hers. What made it really shine was the gems.”

Lyra asked, “You know the old saying, ‘practice makes perfect?” When Spike nodded, she said, “Well, it’s wrong. Practice only makes perfect, if you're practicing doing it right. Practicing doing it the wrong way just makes you perfectly wrong.”

“Well said,” said Twilight. “Yeah, I think what AJ needs most is a teacher. In the same way that Pinkie Pie was able to improve after Apple Bloom helped teach her proper farming… Applejack could probably be a good seamstress with a little bit of guidance.”

“But to bring AJ up to Old Rarity’s level, she’ll need a really good mentor.” Lyra added. “It can’t just be some middle school home economics teacher; she’ll need to be fashionista-level good. If not better.”

“But who do we get, then?” wondered Twilight. “Apple Bloom was able to help Pinkie because she’s a pretty good farmer for a kid her age, but Sweetie Belle’s terrible at sewing. And Rarity, herself, is right out, of course.”

They all thought it over.

“Maybe we could look into somepony else from out-of-town?” asked Spike.

“Possible…” said Twilight.

And then, suddenly, Lero recalled something which Twilight Sparkle had said quite a long while ago…

“Did you know that Fluttershy was highly talented at sewing, in addition to being good with animals? It’s true! She sewed a dress for Rarity once; Rarity’s DREAM dress! And Rarity wore that dress proudly to the Grand Galloping Gala! Why, I have no doubt in my mind that if SHE’D been the one swapped into being the dressmaker, instead of Applejack, Fluttershy would've gotten along in that role as nicely as peanut butter and jelly!”

He stared forward at Twilight’s mane, which Rarity had trimmed and styled with as much talent and care as she did for his own hair…

“They all still have their other skills!” He exclaimed to the others. “Don’t you see?! Rarity’s able to give us all first-rate haircuts, even though the Old Rainbow Dash had only a bare bones understanding of mane care! Dash is able to perform all those different martial arts, even though Old Fluttershy was never interested in fighting! I’ll bet you anything that Fluttershy still knows how to sew a dazzling dress which even a fashionista could love! Even if Shy doesn’t know she knows! SHE'S the teacher Applejack needs!”

Their eyes lit up in excitement. But then Twilight protested; “But the fact that ‘she doesn’t know she knows’ could backfire on us horribly. What if we end up causing a ‘plot hole paradox’ in Fluttershy’s mind, just like what happened when Rainbow Dash remembered all her martial arts at the Sicklefin fight? Remember me telling you about that?”

Lero nodded soberly.

“What if we do what I did with Rainbow Dash preemptively?” Lyra proposed.

“What do you mean?” Twilight asked, her brow furrowing.

“We cook up some kind of ‘cover story’ for Fluttershy knowing how to sew in advance. Tell her something along the lines of, ‘Say, Fluttershy, I remember you telling me the story of how your beloved late grandmother taught you to sew, back when you were on the rock farm!’ Knowing the Swap, if it can’t think up something for itself, it’ll latch onto any halfway-believable excuse we give it, and craft really elaborate memories from it!”

Twilight thought that over. “Even if we do all that, there’s still one problem: Fluttershy’s still completely obsessed with jokes.”

They all paused. That would be a problem. There was simply no way Applejack would be able to tolerate Fluttershy as a teacher while the pegasus would surely fixate on being an insufferable class clown through all her lessons.

“Then let’s focus on that,” said Lero, excitement returning to his voice. “That’s how we’re going to solve this! Once Shy’s mind is balanced, she’ll become a more properly focused teacher. The key to getting equilibrium for Applejack is getting equilibrium for Fluttershy first.”

“It’ll practically be two equilibriums for the price of one!” Twilight cheered.

“But how do we GET her equilibrium?!” Lyra sighed. “We’ve been trying for AGES to turn Fluttershy into a good comedian!”

They all thought some more.

“Maybe… maybe we’ve been looking at Fluttershy’s problem from the wrong angle, this whole time.” Spike suggested. “Maybe there’s a different approach.”

“What do you mean?” asked Lero, scratching under his hat.

“Well, it’s just like with Pinkie the Farmer: there was more to her situation than just the farm chores she was obsessed with: What really made AJ what she is is family. So there’s got to be more to Fluttershy The Jokester than jokes. Think about it, guys! What was the OTHER big thing, besides being funny, that the Old Pinkie Pie was best known for?”

A long, awkward pause between the four of them. It was interrupted by a thunk as Twilight planted her hoof in her face. “It’s so obvious!”

Lyra frowned. “It’s been staring us in the face this whole time.”

“How could we have missed that!?” Lero boggled.

They looked at each other and said it together.

“Parties!”

Author's Note

CROSSWORD SOLUTIONS
'Tannic and Boric' = ACIDS
'Final stanza in a poem' = ENVOI
'Tree that yields chocolate substitute' = CAROB

…Any suggestions for whose party it should be, folks?

P.S. - I'm also working on the next Ask The Swapped. Don't think that I've ignored it!

Thirty-Six: Fluttershy Hosts A Party

Surprise was as vital to laughter as air was to the lungs; after all, who laughed at jokes when they saw the punchline coming? So when Lero and all the members of his herd: Lyra, Rarity, Spike, Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash all showed up at Sugar Cube Corner just as it was closing for the day, and told her that they wanted her help to throw a party, what could she do but laugh? And then they gave each other such goofily confused looks, and Fluttershy laughed some more!

Then when Fluttershy had gotten herself back under control, she asked, “So who’s this party gonna be for, anyway?”

“Uh, well,” said Lero, scratching the back of his mane with those funny little fingers of his! “We were hoping you could help us pick out somepony, Shy.”

“Huh?” said Fluttershy, after a double-take.

“We… uh… it could be one of us, if you want!” Lero offered awkwardly. “If it’d make things easier! We could make up a reason for celebrating, no problem!”

Such an unexpected answer! Giggles overcame Fluttershy. “Oh, I get it! You don’t even care! You just want to celebrate for celebration’s sake! Oh my goodness… I’m rubbing off on you!”

“WAAAAAHHH!! WAHHH!”

“Oh!” Hearing sweet little Pound and Pumpkin wailing, Fluttershy turned to the others and said, “Sorry, everypony, please give me a minute!”

Then she ducked into a side pantry, pulled out one of the premixed dough bags inside, and settled it on her back. She gave it a pat as she backed out and threw Lero an apologetic look as he read the bag’s label.

“Don’t let anypony know it’s premixed, okay? I’ll get my knack with the kitchen back after I get my jokes going again, promise. But this stuff is okay, even if it’s kinda pricey. But my audience awaits!” And with that, she trotted into their nursery with it on her back.

Pound and Pumpkin were crying in their crib, the precious little dears. While her Herd Bellerophon friends waited and watched politely from the hallway, first she checked their diapers but no, they weren’t soiled. Next, she tried feeding them from their bottles, but they just pushed them aside. Fluttershy knew what this meant, and her smile spread wide.

She’d been right! They’d been crying from boredom! Yay!

The little ones’ eyes were already upon her as they heard the bag being ripped, and looked up at her as she positioned it over her head. Then she span it upside-down and let the mix spill all over her; getting all into her coat, her mane, her wings… and the babies laughed and laughed their wonderful, heartfelt, rejuvenating laughs. And she had to laugh along. She was suddenly now white when she should have been yellow! Goodness, what had happened to all her color?!

Feeling inspiration from a powdery itch in her nose hairs, Fluttershy stretched out her face ridiculously as she snorted the ticklish flour deeper into her nostrils before belting out several large and exaggerated sneezes:

“Waaaa-CHOOOO! Waaaaaaaa--CHOOOO!!!”

Oh, this one was their best laugh ever!

“Quick, Rarity!” she begged her friend, “Storm me!”

“Er… right here?” Rarity asked, caught off-guard. “Don’t you have a shower you can step into?”

“Showers aren’t as funny as stormclouds!”

Soon enough, Fluttershy felt rapid raindrops pelting her pelt. Predictably, the dust expanded to a doughy mash, and that just made Pound and Pumpkin’s laughter even double what it was! Rarity was creating a small-but-powerful wind along her hooves that was catching the globs before they could land on the floor, so Fluttershy caught them and juggled them… so maybe this was even a triple laugh!

“Now, a thunderbolt!” shouted Fluttershy gleefully.

“Wait, what?” was Rarity’s reply.

“I’m waaaaaaiting!” she crowed. Rarity rolled her eyes; the tiny storm cloud roiled up its force before unleashing it in a single blast of electricity, arcing through Fluttershy’s (thankfully, lightning-tolerant) Pegasus frame… leaving the dough flash-cooked in a crispy crust that covered Fluttershy entirely, With a flex, she broke out one side, only slightly singed around her edges, leaving a pie-crust silhouette standing behind her.

“Ta-daaah!” she cheered happily at the hysterically-laughing babies, whose squeals only rose when the Fluttercrust statue toppled over and shattered to pieces.

Fluttershy’s heart swelled with love for both of the babies. It was all so simple with Pumpkin and Pound. No need for memorizing joke books or studying humorism theory with these two. Just dump some flour on your head, and you’d have lovely, lovely laughter running over you! Or bread mix. And trying something new almost always got you a bigger laugh. For now, anyways. While the babies were still young. They still hadn’t developed any appreciation for higher-brow humor. Like joy buzzers.

Whoo, had THAT been a mistake.

Fluttershy blinked as she felt a scrubbing at her pelt. She turned her head and saw Rainbow Dash rubbing her down with a towel.

“How about I keep watch over the little ones here, while you guys plan out that party?” Lyra suggested, sitting herself by the babies’ crib.

“Party?” Fluttershy asked dimly, still focused on that wonderful sound the babies were making. If only it were possible to bottle such a noise like soda in a jug, then open it up and spill it straight into your ear like…

“Yes! A party!” Spike smiled. “Why, think of how much more joy and laughter you could be bringing to dozens of ponies at once, if you threw a party!”

Gasping at Spike’s incredible genius - baby dragons were just so smart! - Fluttershy exclaimed, “Right, of course! Right this way!”

Bubbling over with new excitement, like way too much bubble bath soap in your bubble bath, she flew into her bedroom. Where was her pink journal? Where was her pink journal? Aha! Right here, by her wind-up chattering teeth and her snakes-in-a-can!

While her other friends were packing themselves into her room, one by one, Fluttershy was flipping through her journal, looking at the names after glancing at her calendar. No, not him right now. Not her… or her, either, they’d be out of town too long. Maybe… oooh!” She looked up at her friends. “If we’re going to throw somepony a party, could it be Berry Punch and Ruby Pinch?” Fluttershy asked the others.

“Berry and Ruby?” Lero asked.

“Didn’t you know?” Fluttershy asked. “They share the exact same birthday! Berry gave birth to Ruby upon her very own birthday! So it’ll be a DOUBLE birthday bash! Ruby will be six and Berry will be twenty-eight!”

Berry really loved her little girl, too. Fluttershy remembered her once saying that Ruby was ‘the best birthday present I’d ever given myself. Oh, it’d be such a fun challenge for a fun and funny party planner like her, planning a funnily funtastic party for a mom and her girl at the same…

“I just don’t get your humor anymore…”

“So lame…”

“I’ve seen ponies being funnier getting hit in the head.. No, wait, don’t actually do it!”

“I think I remember hearing that joke when I was a kindergartener…”

“You used to be the coolest pony ever, Fluttershy. What happened to you…?”

It was such a strange feeling. Like ice-cold vines had sprung up out of some deeply buried place within her, wrapping themselves around her heart. So completely unlike her usual self. But all her confidence of moments before, all the eagerness that had driven her to find other ponies and make them smile had just collapsed. Like an empty can under a hard hoof.

“Or… then again… maybe that’s a little too ambitious for me right now,” she said, much fainter. “I’ve been making such a nuisance of myself these past few months… nopony would possibly come to any of my parties…”

“Fluttershy?” she heard Rainbow Dash ask.

She looked back up and forced herself to smile. “Of course, I always have you guys, right? Maybe a small party with just us in it might be all right…”

The others were all looking at her with worry and sadness. Except for Lero, who was looking at her cutie mark. She almost wondered if she still had some dough on it or something. When she glanced at it herself, she saw that it was clean. Just the same as it ever was.

“Actually, Fluttershy,” Lero said, “Let me talk with Berry. See if I can’t win her over.”

“Really?” Gratitude and dread filled Fluttershy. “But what if Berry won’t do it?”

“If not, then I come back, we take another look at that journal of yours, and see who else in town is gonna have a birthday soon,” said her comedy coach, coming over and putting a reassuring hand on her withers. “All we have to do is just keep at it.”

* * *

Berry Punch’s Wine and Liquor Shop wasn’t even a full block away from Sugarcube Corner, and it was still the middle of the day. The members of Herd Bellerophon almost all went there as a complete group like they had just done for Fluttershy… but at the last moment, Twilight Sparkle thought better of it.

“Poor Berry would probably think we were all ganging up on her or something!”

"Well, then, who should go?" Lyra asked.

"Well, we'd need a group big enough to seem convincing, without being overwhelming. About three?" Rarity offered.

"Well, it's mostly Lero's show, so he should definitely go." Spike suggested.

"Perhaps our little hummingbird should come along?" Rarity suggested, nudging Rainbow.

"Me?" she squeaked. "I have a hard time talking to ponies, much less convincing them to agree to something."

"That's what makes it more genuine! The effort you'd put into it! Besides, who would doubt the intentions of the Element of Kindness?"

"Um, okay," she conceded.

"And lastly, we need someone who's good at convincing ponies to do things that sound weird, dumb or terrifying at first glance." Lyra commented. "So I nominate Twilight."

"What!?" Twilight sputtered.

"Hey, you somehow convinced five random townsfolk who'd only known you for a few hours to go on a suicide charge into a deadly forest to fight an ancient nightmare goddess."

Twilight opened her mouth to object, but finding no reasonable objections, closed it and muttered, "Fair enough."

"We'll be waiting for you at home, then, darlings, we eagerly await tales of your success!" Rarity smiled at them, before leading the others back to the library.

Walking into Berry’s store was almost like walking into a well-lit wine cask. The floors, the walls, ceiling… even the shelves holding the merchandise seemed to be made of that exact same cut of wood. Possibly even out of boards that had once been part of barrels.

“Fancy a free sample?” they heard Berry ask.

Turning to the right, they all saw Berry Punch just a single body length from her cash register. There was a small tray with plastic sampling cups beside two partially-full wine bottles.

“This one’s from an all-new winery,” she explained, nudging the tray forward. “Local place, only a few miles outside of Ponyville, just started shipping their first vintages! It’s called Grullo Grove, and this is a sample of both their white and red. Please try one!”

“Well, Berry…yeah, sure,” and Lero drank one of the little cups of red wine. The highly tannic taste would linger on Lero’s tongue for all the rest of his conversation with this mare.

“Excellent!” he exaggerated, “Thank you, Berry! Say… I heard from a friend that you’d soon be turning twenty-eight? And Ruby Pinch will be six?”

“Wh… yes!” said Berry in surprise. “Yes, that’s right. I’m… kinda surprised you knew? Pinchy’s probably talking it up all around town, I bet.”

“Yeah, sure, that’s the ticket!” Rainbow Dash responded earnestly. Lero had to suppress a chortle- apparently, that phrase didn’t quite have the same implications in Equestria, as Berry didn’t immediately become suspicious.

“But, anyhow, Berry, we wanted to make an offer.” Lero explained.

“Yeah?” Berry tilted her head curiously, putting down her platter of drinks.

“Yes, we’re like to throw a party for the two of you!” Twilight finished cheerfully. Lero could feel she was getting into this... maybe it’d been too long since she’d just done something nice for another pony?

This, however, was what made Berry Punch suspicious; her eyes narrowing and regarding them as though Herd Bellerophon might be trying to set up some kind of nefarious scheme worthy of a murder mystery.

“I’m… honored, I guess, but I still don’t understand why you’d want to throw this party for me. I mean, you’re a nice guy and all, Lero, but we’re not exactly besties or anything.”

“Lero’s the kind of stallion who’ll go completely out of his way for ponies, even when they’re not close friends!” Rainbow Dash replied firmly. Lero could spot a tremor in Dash’s legs, as though they wanted to bring her to hide behind Twilight or Lero again, but her face was too busy looking at Berry Punch square in the eye. The human felt a little honored.

“Well, in all honesty, we’re doing this more for Fluttershy’s sake than anything else.” Lero admitted to Berry.

“You have Fluttershy as the party planner?” Berry perked up. “Wow, we haven’t had a Fluttershy bash in ages. Not since she decided telling terrible jokes was a better idea.” Berry paused, eyeing the well-known pegasus mare who had not long ago, lost all control of her animals and her life, only to regain stronger control over both with Lero’s help. She clearly put two and two together. “I’m not sure that’d be such a great idea to do that big a party right out the gate, hmmm? What you ought to do is just have Fluttershy throw a smaller party at your own place, Lero.”

Lero laughed slightly. “Yeah, Fluttershy suggested that herself, actually. But, well, I’ve been helping ponies… work through certain issues of theirs for quite a while now. And one thing I’ve noticed is that the best way to cause a breakthrough is with a certain amount of… pressure.”

Bringing Pinkie Pie to Big Mac in that hospital had been an emotional ordeal, but it had caused her to realize the true meaning of the Apple Mark she now bore. And Lero had talked with both Rarity and Rainbow Dash after they’d achieved equilibrium, and both of them had told him that everything the glufferflork had put them through had forced them to re-examine their lives.

“A small party at my place won’t do Fluttershy any good,” Lero told Berry. “Just half-assing it won’t work.”

Berry snerked. “Have to use the whole ass, huh?”

“Yeah!” Lero laughed, and nodded. “A small party is too safe, too contained, too low-key… I mean, you aren’t really riding a bicycle until the training wheels come off, right?”

“Bi… cycle? What in… wait,” Berry was squinting as though struggling to recall a story some drinking buddy might’ve told. “Isn’t that the name of some kinda minotaur doohickey?”

“...Yeah,” said Lero, suddenly feeling very dumb for using a saying that would be meaningless to ponies.

“Human metaphors asides,” Twilight spoke up, “We can make this party into something big for you and Ruby, Berry! We’d be pulling out all the stops! You’d be helping us, Fluttershy especially, as much as we’re helping you.”

Lero did not miss the sympathy in the shopkeeper’s eyes. Berry Punch might not be regarded as a model citizen, but when all was said and done, she truly was a Ponyville pony. And Ponyville wasn’t some gritty, eat-or-be-eaten cutthroat’s ghetto, but a kindly community where everypony knew one another and neighbor helped neighbor.

“...Though we’d have you meet with us for lunch or something, so we plan everything out, so everything meets the needs of you and your family! We really do want to help Fluttershy make your birthday super-special, Berry!”

“Is that so?” Grinning, Berry Punch ducked under her counter and pulled out a hidden bottle of stronger-looking liquor, pouring herself a small bit. “Well, if there’s one thing ol’ Berry Punch can appreciate, it’s a party! Me and Shy have always had that in common!”

She drank it down, head swaying as though she could already hear a DJ’s dance beat. “A full-out first-rate Fluttershy Fiesta for me and Ruby…hey, is this gonna cost me anything?”

Twilight scoffed dismissively. “Come on, Berry! You know Fluttershy better than that! Has she ever charged anypony one rusty bit for her parties?”

“Only when someone hires her,” said Berry. “Otherwise… no, she parties for partying’s sake. Or, heh, for other’s sake. I once saw that girl break out her noisemakers and confetti to celebrate a duck quacking.”

“We… um, thought that poor Miss Mallardly had lost her voice forever,” Rainbow Dash said. “But then one day, she quacked properly, and it was so wonderful, and I can tell nopony’s interested... “

“Money is no object with us,” Lero told Berry Punch. “However much this ends up costing, we’ll foot the bill. But I give you my word, Berry; this won’t just be some mediocre cake-and-candles deal. We’re gonna help Fluttershy make this a celebration to remember.”

“We’ll even buy gifts for Ruby Pinch if you tell us what kind of stuff she likes!” Twilight promised. “Millionaires will be envying how much pure fun you and Ruby and your whole herd and all your friends will be having! I swear this on the name of my mentor, Princess Celestia.”

Berry looked at them all, rubbing her head several times as though to make sure booze wasn’t tricking her senses. “On one condition. On top of everything else, you guys are also entirely responsible for cleaning up this party when it’s over.”

“Deal,” Lero agreed.

Berry suddenly left her counter, waltzed up to one of her store shelves and pulled down a prestigiously elegant crystal-clear bottle. She brought it back and held for Lero to take from her mouth.

“Oh…” The bottle read Vintage Gold Standard 120 Proof Karabahk Vodka, and its price tag was one hundred and fifty bits. “Berry, this is far too…”

“Take it,” she said. “My gift.”

He ended up putting it in Twilight Sparkle’s saddlebag.

“Gotta be honest with you, Lero, I don’t think this party of yours is gonna fix Fluttershy’s problems the way you’re hoping it will. I’ve seen that girl; she’s MESSED in the head. But you’re gutsy for taking this risk. And even if you’re only able to deliver half of what you’re promising… well, when ponies are willing to screw themselves over that much so I can have a good time, the least I can do is treat them to a nice drink.”

* * *

Comedy lessons had stopped entirely for now to put Berry and Ruby’s birthday party on the front burner. Everyone in Herd Bellerophon was resolved to help Fluttershy through every step of the way.

Planning everything out came first.

For the longest time, Berry Punch had been one lone mare raising her little girl all on her own, but almost a year ago, that had changed. Nowadays, both of them were part of Herd Caramel: a fairly happy herd of four. The other two members were Caramel and Honeybee.

Caramel couldn’t exactly be called a close friend of Lero’s, but the two guys were pals with each other nonetheless. Honeybee was the sister of Honeydew. While Lero wasn’t exactly her favorite person, ever, the fact that Lero saved her from drowning a few months back, plus her estrangement with Honeydew made her much more tolerant of the human, though Lero didn’t expect that to extend much beyond ‘not actively objecting to the party.’

Time was of the essence, so Herd Bellerophon and Fluttershy only had time to meet up with Herd Caramel twice. First was at a restaurant in the early evening one night, where Fluttershy went over some of the major ideas she had; it was there they decided the party would be held at Herd Caramel’s home. The second was when they invited Fluttershy and her ‘junior party planners’ over to scout the place out, determining where the food should be placed, how much room there was outside versus how much was inside, and so forth.

Then the set designers, once they finally arrived to Ponyville four days before the birthday, demanded an all-afternoon visit so they could sketch the decorations, which ended calling to pretty much remodelling all of Herd Caramel's front lawn. Tempers even began flaring because it soon became clear that the lawn was simply insufficient for a party that expected an attendance of fifty children and almost as many adults, plus the staff working the party itself. The situation was thankfully solved by the 'magic' of Lero's checkbook, which quickly arranged the rent of the neighbours' lawns two properties both up and down the street. His checkbook even sweetened things at City Hall, with a significant 'donation' ensuring that nopony would question Herd Caramel's front lawn suddenly sporting a two-storey galleon-themed kiosk that even spilled beyond the property lines.

Honeybee didn’t show up at all, either time. Caramel had made a single limp excuse about her needing to see to her beehives when they’d met at the restaurant, Lero and Twilight had told him they understood, and very little was said about Honeybee after that. Once all the plans were made… then came the shopping. The decorating. The cooking and baking. The assigning of roles. The writing of invitations, (how Lero wished Equestria had photocopiers as he wrote them out next to Spike!) and their delivery into everypony’s mailbox.

All at breakneck speed. In picking Berry and Ruby, she had essentially given herself and her friends less than a week to pull everything off.

In the old Pre-Swap days, they’d all let Pinkie Pie shoulder so many of the duties of putting these parties together. It was how Pinkie Pie functioned, after all: take an eye off her a moment, and a party happened. For once, being Swapped wasn’t proving much of a hindrance for Fluttershy, as far as arranging this party went. The yellow pegasus was coming up with a lot of inspired ideas worthy of her Balloon Mark’s original owner. And yet, behind it all, behind every smile, every excited idea she put forth… Lero could sense worry. Lero could sense gloom.

Anypony could invite some friends, whip up a cake, buy some soda, chips, and a few quarts of ice cream, and sing Happy Birthday To You to the birthday boy or girl at a table. But those were parties thrown by ponies who didn’t want to go to too much trouble throwing a party. Which was fine, it was always great getting together with friends and loved ones to celebrate, no matter how much effort was put into it. But to make it truly special, to raise your party up from generic-level... one of the many things a party planner had to consider was its theme. They had talked a bit with Caramel and Berry about what sort of things little Ruby was into. Turned out it was a lot: princesses, superheroes, cooking… but her biggest interest, right now, was pirates.

“Think it’s that one pirate book they’ve been selling in bookstores; Cap’n Mizzenmast,” Berry Punch told them. “You know the one, right?”

They hadn’t; not even Twilight, (who swore she’d speed-read the book, the first chance she got.) Cap’n Mizzenmast turned out to be a recently-published bestseller for young readers. All of its fans were very excited about the promised sequel.

“Ruby’ll also pull out some of my bottles of ‘piratey’ booze, just to draw the logos on ‘em. I oughta show you some of her drawings of the Rummy Freebooter. Nearly got that one down perfect.”

Pirates, huh? Lero had thought to himself.

* * *

Some days, when Lero Michealides looked back on his past, he sometimes thought about how much patience and effort it had taken for him to establish a good name for himself in this intelligent equine society. Show this world that he was truly a ‘friendly alien,’ without any devious long-term invasion schemes...

“Spike, write this down,” the human said. His little dragon brother lifted up his pen, seeing the focused intent in Lero’s eyes, dipped his quill tip in fresh ink and lifted it over the page.

...From there, even without his connection to pony royalty through Twilight Sparkle… being not just a friendly alien but the only member of his entire species had proved quite lucrative. Especially after the subject of human movies had come up. Eventually leading to big-name movie directors asking about filming their takes on such movies. Memorable movies worth adapting for pony audiences.

Dear Sundance,

It’s been a while since we’ve talked, hasn’t it?

Upon first arriving in Equestria, Lero’s subconsciousness had taken great pains to psychologically block out his memories of the terrible beings that had abducted him from Earth, and their equally terrible world. But Earth, itself, he could recall just fine. Its people. Its history. Its mythology. And its movies, especially the good ones. Those memories had given rise to Terminator: Equestrian Edition, Alien: Equestrian Edition, Back To The Future: Equestrian Edition, and The Sound Of Music: Equestrian Edition. He’d brought it all to Equestria, and there were more in the works.

Between a whirlwind of domestic difficulties in my home life and getting kidnapped, things have been absolutely crazy for me. I’m sure you understand. But if I may cut to the chase; Sundance, I’d appreciate it if you could do me a favor. A huge favor. I’d need you to contact several specialists you’ve worked with on my behalf, to help me with a very special personal project of mine.

I know that this comes at very short notice, and we’d need to work fast to put it together. But if you agree to help me, I promise you and everyone else involved will be very well-compensated for your troubles. This includes me giving you exclusive rights to a certain human cinematic masterpiece which I know would be right up your alley, Sundance. It’s called ‘Rear Window.’ Here’s a quick summary:

Lero was good for the money. But even with the lure of something as good as Rear Window, there was a chance that Sundance would turn him down flat once he had to admit that this was for a birthday party. She was that kind of mare. But it was at least worth making the offer. That special showbiz razzle-dazzle would give Ruby and Berry’s party some extra power.

Normally, Lero wasn’t the sort of man for huge extravagance. But this was not just some jaunty little splurge, not ‘celebration for celebration’s sake,’ as Shy had put it. It was a psychological rescue attempt by extraordinary means. For if Fluttershy’s situation was as Spike had theorized; if parties and not jokes were the real key to helping her, then Lero wouldn’t be pulling his punches. He intended to treat the yellow pegasus’ Balloon Mark to the pirate party equivalent of the Hiroshima bomb.

After completing his letter, Lero had Spike breathe his fire on it. Now the ball was in Sundance’s court. He fixed himself a sandwich but was only able to bring himself to nibble bits of it, before finally going over to the toy store to buy gifts for Ruby Pinch. If Sundance accepted, this’d be a serious drain on his bank account. Part of him almost hoped Sundance would turn him down, in her firm, brusque way. It’d almost be a relief if that were so, as the expense and complexity would be much more manageable without her involvement... though far less epic.

That evening, Lero received Sundance’s answer through the express mail. He opened up the envelope, read her letter over and smiled.

* * *

Today was Berry Punch’s and Ruby Pinch’s birthday.

On this day, the longer you spent on Herd Caramel’s property, the easier it became to almost forget that Ponyville was a landlocked village. Strategically-placed speaker systems around Herd Caramel’s house were constantly broadcasting background ambiance noises befitting an oceanside harbor town. The screech of seagulls. The wash of waves upon a beach, rocky in some places, sandy in others. The wooden groan of docked vessels. The distant ringing of ship’s bells, the whoosh of wind in sails, and the occasional blare of a foghorn.

Not that long ago, Herd Caramel had had a fairly well-kept lawn, all around their house. Today, you couldn’t see so much as a single blade of grass underneath all the authentic coastline sand, (courtesy of Twilight Sparkle, who had plenty of contacts of her own.) Creaky, weather-beaten wooden walkways had been set up for guests who didn’t care to get any of the stuff stuck under their hooves. And there were many guests, some still arriving. The invites they’d sent had encouraged everypony to come dressed as pirates, which the majority of them had, especially the foals.

Fluttershy, herself, wore a knitted cap, hoop earrings, and an algae-green vest of some kind. She, and the all the members of Herds Bellerophon and Caramel had been specially outfitted for this day, by a pair of mares who’d designed costumes for over a dozen different theatrical releases.

“Look! Look! Look at all the animals!”

Fluttershy did find herself looking, even though the little colt she was responding to had been speaking to his mother, not her.

Rainbow Dash had set up a small petting zoo underneath the shade of several palm trees. Mulch had been laid down and a temporary length of steel wire fencing had been rolled out and posted so that the none of the animals would wander off. Keeping true to the party’s pirate theme, the animals were marked with names like ‘Sea Lambs,’ and ‘ ‘Plunder Bunnies,’ ‘and ‘Crow’s Nest Chicks,’ and the ‘Cat O’Nine Tails,’ which managed to be an absolutely loveable little kitty, despite being born with nine tails. Several of the foals were having the time of their lives, frolicking with the adorable little things, and nuzzling their heads as their parents watched off to the side or took pictures or even stood inside the pen, nuzzling the animals as well.

And Rainbow Dash stood in the center of it, carefully watching the foals and animals alike, seeing that neither of them grew too rambunctious with one another. Her party costume was a simple grass skirt and a brightly colored lei and seashells braided in her colorful mane… less ‘pirate’ and more ‘native island girl whom a pirate would terrorize.’ Fluttershy found herself struck by the peaceful happiness of Rainbow Dash. This gentle maiden of the forest, among so many animal friends. So unlike herself in every way, and yet...

Fluttershy’s attention was drawn in particular to one of the little chicks. A tiny little beaked ball of buttery yellow, just hopping around everypony’s hooves. The way it chirped out its ‘Cheep! Cheep! Cheep!’ was just pleading for her to come and be scooped and huggled in her arms. Fluttershy almost gave into this urge, but put it out of her mind as an unimportant flight of fancy: she had a party to be a part of, after all!

So turning her back on the petting zoo, she trotted past a line of foals who’d forgotten to dress piratically but now wanted to, (all receiving their choice of bandannas, vests, eyepatches, and toy cutlasses,) heading straight into Herd Caramel’s house. ‘DEAD MARES TELL NO TALES,’ proclaimed the long banner over Herd Caramel’s front door. It was made of actual sailcloth, and written in something that did a really good job of looking like dried blood.

The set designers had been just as imaginative and fast-working on the house’s inside as the outside. Fluttershy almost couldn’t remember what this place has looked like as a regular home. Stepping into this part of Herd Caramel’s house was like stepping into the cargo hold of some scurvy seadog’s schooner. Those set designer friends of Lero’s had really gone above and beyond.

Circular portholes had been constructed around the windows. Fluttershy saw crates labelled CONTRABAND, little golden statuettes that looked like idols crafted by shamans in Polyneighsian tribes, and treasure chests galore. Some shut with thick rusty padlocks, others flung wide open, overflowing with gold bullion and gold coins. A life-sized cannon waited by one of the portholes, next to a stack of cannonballs and open-lidded barrels of black powder. All of it completely foal-safe, pure works of stagecraft.

“Splice the mainbrace! BRAWCK! Weigh anchor and hoist the mizzen! BRAWCK! Rattle me bones!”

...Well, perhaps not all of it. Jabbers the parrot was real enough, and Fluttershy was not the only pony amazed how many piratey sayings his caretaker had been able to teach him in such a short amount of time.

“Can you believe all this?!” Somepony had suddenly to turn towards her and start up a conversation. I mean, this party is incredible! You would never expected somepony like Berry to go all-out like this, eh?”

It wasn’t anyone Fluttershy recognized... perhaps a friend of Berry’s from out-of-town. How was she supposed to even respond to something like that? Agree? But wouldn’t that maybe be insulting Berry, saying that she never went ‘all out?’ But wouldn’t this pony feel insulted and defensive if she were to disagree? But she had to respond, she had to say something!

“So two pirates who each came from two different pirates ships sit down next to each other to drink in a pirate bar,” Fluttershy began, just going with her gut instinct. “‘Boy,’ says Pirate One, ‘You’re looking a little down in the mouth.’ ‘That I am, me hearty,’ says Pirate Two. ‘I’ve just got the worst captain ever!’ ‘How so?’ asks Pirate One. ‘Well,’ says Pirate Two, ‘I brought my captain down to my bunk to show her all the roaches crawling around inside it, and do you know what she did? Keelhauled me for keeping pets!”

It wasn’t that the other pony didn’t laugh. He did, but it was the wrong kind of laugh. Not even a forced laugh, just very disbelieving. The wrong kind of surprise.

“Ah ha ha… wow, miss, that was… quite a bizarre little non sequitur… aha.”

When she found she couldn’t meet his stare, suddenly Spike the dragon had popped up between them. “Ahoy there, landlubber!” he greeted the stallion. “Welcome aboard the birthday party!”

“No way!” said the stallion. “Are you a little dragon?!”

“I sure am!” Spike blew a nonthreatening spurt of fire, so tiny it didn’t even fly past his own snout, just to further prove his dragon-ness. “I see you’ve met our navigator, Miss Fluttershy. She just tell you a joke?”

“Yeah!” laughed the stallion, in a nicer, more relieved way that made Fluttershy start feeling sharp resentful pinpricks in her stomach. “Bit of a non sequitur too! Threw me off guard.”

“I… well, I… I…”

“Aw, she don’t mean any harm by it, matey!” Spike answered for Fluttershy, with a poor attempt at a stereotypical ‘pirate’ accent. “Joking’s just Fluttershy’s special way!”

“Oooh, special, is she? Say no more, kiddo. I’ve got myself a sister that’s ‘special’ in the same way.” said the stallion, who was now looking at Fluttershy as though she were three years old. “She’ll be about your age, in fact!”

“I’m not a dummy,” Fluttershy insisted.

“Never said you were, Miss Butterfly,” smiled the stallion. “You heard me laugh, didn’t you? Takes focus to tell jokes like that! Ahahaha… my sister, now… her big focus is folding towels. Champion towel folder, my sister. Ask her to do anything else, though, absolutely anything else, hahahaha… Celestia bless her, we all do love her so.”

“I hear you! Wanna balloon?” asked Spike, offering one from the bunch he held in his hand.

The stallion shook his head and moved towards a circle of other ponies whom he seemed to recognize. And Spike winked Fluttershy as though he’d prevented further embarrassment. It took effort for her not to frown too hard at him.

“What’re you wearing, Spike?” she asked.

The costume lady had made a fancy little pirate outfit for Spike. Instead, he was now wearing clothes that made him look like some sort of carnival worker. Blue pants, simple-looking brown shoes, but also a colorful beanie cap with blue and red vertical stripes that perfectly matched the color of his short-sleeved shirt.

“Do you like it?” He span the propellor on his cap with one of his little dragon fingers. “Applejack made this for me a while ago.”

“That’s nice, but it kinda goes completely against the theme, doesn’t it?” she snapped.

“Applejack… made this for me a while ago,” he repeated in a slightly sadder voice. “When she comes in and joins the party, I want her to see me wearing it.”

Fluttershy paused, then sighed, knowing herself how hard a time Applejack was having. “Okay, I understand. Just… try not to stand out too much?” She asked.

“You got it!” He responded, his attitude picking back up again as he went to find more people to offer balloons- at least the balloons themselves had pirate themes and designs on them.

Fluttershy left the obstinate little dragon to hand out more balloons, feeling a bit more sour as she entered the dining room.

Herd Caramel did have tables and chairs of their own, but the set designers from Lero’s ‘film crew’ had replaced them with oak barrels with flat wooden surfaces nailed to their tops, with rough sheets of burlap for tablecloths. The chairs all looked rustic enough to have been carved out by a marooned castaway over a good couple weeks, to celebrate her first half-year on a deserted isle.

Instead of regular drinking cups, they had tankards and sets of beer and wine bottles with the labels peeled off, (and thoroughly washed, inside and out.) Drinks were on tap in miniature barrels, marked: (root) BEER, (ginger) ALE, (soft) CIDER, (ice-cold, refreshing) WATER RATIONS, (limeade) SCURVY CURE, plus (chocolate ice cream, chocolate milk, and root beer) BILGE MUCK from Berry Punch, as well as a special never-before-seen human concoction which Lero had made, called a SHIRLEY TEMPLE, (ginger ale, lemon-lime soda and grenadine.) Lero had brought this in a more traditional punch bowl.

The food tables were loaded. There was a big selection of fruit slices: bananas, mangoes, oranges pineapples, papayas, and kiwis that circled around a ship-in-a-bottle. Beneath a Wanted poster of Ruby Pinch sat an array of snack food, including ‘POLLY’S FAVORITE,’ (saltine crackers,) ‘HARDTACK’ (actually very soft and freshly fluffy buttermilk biscuits.) Though they hadn’t brought out the birthday cake for Ruby Pinch yet, there were still no shortage of sweets to munch on. Chocolate gold coins, white marshmallow skulls, little toy galleons whose decks were loaded with rock candy ‘gems,’ (that’d actually been cut to resemble real jewels,) cupcakes with parrots and starfish and treasure chest fondant toppers...

Off to the side were a trio of musicians dressed as pirates. One played the fife, one played the fiddle, and one was on an accordion, and all three of them had been singing sea shanty after sea shanty. It was incredible how many of them they knew. Fluttershy lingered to listen to one in full.

“Come, messmates, pass the bottle ‘round,
Our time is short, remember,
For our grog must drop and our spirits stop
On the first day of September.

Farewell, old rye, ‘tis a sad, sad truth
But alas, it must be spoken
The red wine cup must be given up
And the demijohn be broken

Yet memory oft will backward turn
And dwell with fondness partial
On the days when gin was not a sin
Nor cocktails brought court-martial

All hooves to splice the mainbrace, call,
But splice it not in sorrow,
For the spirit-room key will forever be
Laid away upon tomorrow!

For tonight, we’ll merry, merry be
Tomorrow we’ll all be sober!”

Sailors really had some funny lingo for themselves, didn’t they? Wondering to herself what a ‘demijohn’ might be, and whether there might be a regular ‘john’ or even a ‘superjohn,’ she moved on from all the food tables, slowing when her ears caught a familiar voice.

“Well, it’s not like I’m trying to be rude to you or anything, Pinkie Pie,” Twilight Sparkle was saying, “But I couldn’t help noticing how you seem to be, well, lost in thought. Ever since you came to this party.”

“...Thought?” Pinkie replied, in a murky way. She seemed less her usual self, for some reason. Half in a fog, distracted by everything. The music, the food, the other party guests… Fluttershy had definitely stopped moving entirely, perking her ears up, and listening in on her two friends from a distance.

“Are you… feeling like your old self, Pinkie? Being at this party?” The look on Twilight’s face was hard for Fluttershy to describe. Something between worry and… hope?

The farmpony seemed to emerge from her fog at that point. “A’ course Ah feel like mah ol’ self!” she said with a laugh. “Who else would Ah be feelin’ like?”

“Who indeed?” agreed Twilight.

Fluttershy watched Pinkie rub at her forehead. “Beg yer pardon, Twi… guess Ah must be workin’ mahself harder’n Ah thought down at the farm. Not like me ta be spacin’ out like that. ”

Twilight then carefully asked, “Would staying at this party be the best thing for you, Pinkie Pie?”

It struck Fluttershy that there were less weirder ways of wording such a question. Pinkie clearly thought that too; for she gave the purple unicorn a look before saying, “Whoa there, filly! Sounds like yer thinkin’ mah chores’ve tuckered me out so bad, Ah’m gonna slump over like a scarecrow off its post! If that’s so, then yer seriously underestimatin’ the Apple clan’s natural grit and sense of fun!”

Twilight Sparkle gave a laugh. “Sorry. Didn’t mean to.”

“Pinkie Pie ain’t no ‘all work ‘n’ no play’ kinda gal! Them days’re over ‘n’ done with… and good riddance to ‘em!” Here, the farmer girl gave such a hot huff out her nostrils, it was like she was trying to snort out dragon smoke. “Ah’ve always helped mah family throw hootenannies, and Ah’ve always tried ta go ta most all o’ the shindigs Ah was invited ta. Partying’s jest a natural part o’ the Apple lifestyle!”

“...Never thought of it that way…” Fluttershy heard Twilight say in a slightly quieter voice, before the purple unicorn turned and spotted her. “Oh! Fluttershy, hi!”

“Hi, Twilight.”

“Hey, Pinkie, could you give us just a quick little minute?”

“Sure thang,” said Pinkie.

And Twilight Sparkle trotted over by Fluttershy. “I want you to know you don’t have a single reason to worry. Everything’s covered.”

“Covered?” the yellow pegasus repeated.

“Completely covered!” With a bright and perfect grin on her face, Twilight gave Fluttershy a friendly, encouraging nuzzle. “With us on the job, this birthday party’s as good as wrapped up with a nice and neat bow on top! Or ‘unwrapped,’ as the case may be! It being a birthday party and all!”

Fluttershy made herself chuckle along with her friend’s poor comedy. “Yeah, I’m really... glad that I have you guys around…”

* * *

“Me! Me! Me! My turn!” crowed all the little pony foals, clamoring around Lero as he returned little Peachy Petal to the ground. Of course it was a sunny afternoon… one of Rarity’s contributions, bless her... and it was glaring brightly into his one uncovered eye. The black eyepatch had actually been somewhat fun to wear for the first ten minutes. Now Lero just wanted it off… only he wouldn’t actually allow himself to remove it. Not until this party was over. At least the swarthy buccaneer’s do-rag covering his head was surprisingly comfortable.

He stuck his hands on his hips and squinted down at the pack of foals in a salty way. “Alright, me fine young sea urchins… the next one ta get a piggyback ride’s gonna be…”

He cast his eye over all the little foals. Zipporwhirl, Mint Flower, Bee Bop, several unfamiliar foals, most likely from out of town… but the one hopping up and down with the most energy was that chubby colt, Truffle. Though he had a sad, pleading look in his eye, because Lero had been overlooking him for all this time. Poor kid.

“Truffle! Step on up, ya little scallywag!”

Ignoring the bright clicking of cameras from the parents further back, (especially those of Truffle’s father,) Lero bent to hoist the pudgy earth pony colt onto his back.

“Off we go!”

Herd Caramel had a very spacious backyard. He and Fluttershy, and his herd, and especially the film crew had been able to fill it with all sorts of swashbuckling decorations. A very convincing-looking pony skeleton with a harpoon sticking through its ribcage, still clutching a dagger in its teeth. A surprisingly large prop lighthouse. A fortuneteller’s tent. Actual palm trees with a hammock swinging between two of them!

“This is so cool!” Truffle whooped, while Lero’s muscles seared in protest.

“Is it really?” Lero had to ask.

“Well, yeah!” I mean, look at the big picture. How many more ponies are gonna be able to say they rode on a human’s back a hundred years from now?” said Truffle, giving Lero an unwelcome fresh reminder of his own mortality.

All sorts of games and entertainment had been set up for the kids. This included the artsy-craftsy ‘Design Your Own Pirate Flag’ and ‘Design Your Own Pirate Chest.’ The ‘Dig For Buried Treasure’ game had been a brilliant idea of Fluttershy’s, where they had buried several plastic treasure chests in a patch of soft dirtwhere at the last second she suggested filling with sand and spare props the pit left behind by the temporary removal of some flowering bushes , and the kids got to have fun digging them the random junk up. There was also a walk-the-plank game where they’d set up a plank as a balancing board, and foals got to walk across it to the opposite side over a picture of hungry sharks in the ocean drawn from a bird’s-eye view. And there was also that while the designers had wanted to board up the neighbours' small pool, Fluttershy rather suggested to drain the water, fill it up with rubber foam bricks, and even produced a dozen shark plushies out of seemingly nowhere. This last act made Herd Bellerophon especially excited, as it had been months since anybody had seen any of old-Pinkie's unexplainable shenanigans.

“Hey… why do you call this a ‘piggyback’ ride, anyway?” asked Truffle. “Is this the way you’d carry a pig, Mr. Human? On your back?”

“I… never had to carry a pig,” huffed Lero. “Wouldn’t ever really want ta. But probably not. I mean, would YOU want to have a piggy on your back like this, kid?”

“Eeeewww, no!”

There were more fun attractions, besides. That casting director friend of Sundance’s had supplied them with several talented performers. There were the musicians, inside, singing their sea shanties, but also there was a young actress; one whom the casting director claimed to be ‘talented enough.’ She was playing as Cap’n Mizzenmast, herself from the books, regaling a very spellbound bunch of foals with tales of her adventure while simultaneously teaching the youngsters how to tie all sorts of different nautical knots. Apparently, this was true to Cap’n Mizzenmast’s character from the book.

But by far, the piece de resistance of it all had to be the huge a second pirate ship being dragged ‘underwater’ by the purple tentacles of some huge sea squid, two property lines up the block. A setup room and a resting lounge had been needed for the party's crew and performers, and none on Herd Bellerophon had had the heart to say no when Fluttershy enthusiastically suggested to mask it as a second vessel attacking their own. The tentacles had been specially enchanted to flex and tighten around the wooden sides of the vessel. At least the Herd had saved a few nits when Twilight herself offered to perform the animation enchantments on each and every one of the tentacles...

But still… Oh dear sweet God, Lero suddenly thought, What the HELL possessed me us to spend THIS kind of money?!?!

The ‘film crew’ that Sundance had helped send his way hadn’t really been a pleasant bunch of ponies, for the most part. They were consummate professionals, but once they’d learned that this ‘special project’ of Lero’s was actually some average family’s birthday party instead of a movie, not even they could completely hide their reactions.

To put it in food terms, they were like a team of five-star chefs, who’d somehow gotten themselves hornswoggled into working for a week at a Burger King. Their expressions of dismay, alarm, and annoyance were quickly covered, But Lero was certain they were griping about the situation to each other out of his and the guest’s earshot.

The set designer, in particular, she was a true wizard of her craft; doing everything Lero had asked, plus more, giving their pirate party a realism like a classic epic brought to life. But he could clearly hear a hint of annoyance in her tone and the jerkiness of her movements.

Going back to the cooking comparison, it was if the Burger King manager had instructed one of his 5-star chefs to make a cheeseburger. But rather than so much as touch any of the ingredients from Burger King’s refrigerator… the hamburger meat had been carved out from the chef’s private stock of authentic Japanese Kobe beef, on which a slice of genuine stravecchione Parmigiano-Reggiano had been been set to melt.

And every so often, the set designer had treated Lero to a look which said, I am so far above the level of this rinkydink party.

Of course, this had worked in their favor. Everyone was enjoying the party all the more because of how much unexpected effort and expense had gone into it. Still, it was an unforgivably huge blow to his family’s bankbook. If this failed… would he have to throw another party of such a giant scale, in order to give Fluttershy a second shot?

This party WILL work! Lero assured himself, his body on autopilot as he switched out Truffle for the much easier-to-carry Key Lime. How can it fail? And remember: this isn’t JUST for Fluttershy alone. Fixing Shy will lead directly to fixing Applejack, just like we talked about with Spike and Lyra and Twilight!

That was right. Money could be earned back, even if they ended up having to put that one trip to the minotaur lands on hold for a little while. But fixing all five members of the Swapped Five would reduce the Swap, itself, to a toothless, clawless tiger. And from there, Twilight could go ahead and…

...his white unicorn… how wonderful it felt having her in his family….

...Could…

...well, it wasn’t sensible to think TOO far ahead about such things. For now, he needed to smile. Shine with inner cheer. Before Fluttershy came by, picked up on his gnawing tension, grew distressed, and all was ruined.

It was right about then that he came to a realization: he really had to pee.

So Lero finished the piggyback ride he was in the middle of as quick as he could, then apologized to the other little foals for needing to take a quick break for himself, but promised he’d be back soon enough. Hurrying inside Herd Caramel’s house, he wove his way around several party guests, including some more foals who were busy with the scavenger hunt. (“I found the peg leg!” he heard one say.)

Since he’d come to this house several times to help set up the party, he knew where the bathroom was. But he found the door locked when he tried to open it.

“Who’s there?” Lero heard from the other side. He knew the voice was Caramel’s; the namesake of Herd Caramel. Ruby Pinch’s stepfather, and Berry Punch’s boyfriend.

Stallion. He mentally corrected.

“It’s Lero,” said Lero. “You, uh, gonna be finishing up in there soon, buddy?”

“Honestly? No. Sorry.” Caramel sheepishly admitted, in a slightly strained voice. “Listen, if you need a bathroom, go ahead and use the one upstairs.”

“You sure?”

“Least I can do,” said Caramel. “Turn left at the top of the stairs, and it’s the second door down. Right next to the bedroom.”

The upstairs was roped off to guests. But Lero stepped over the rope without anypony really noticing. He found the bathroom easily enough and did his business. Too much of Berry’s ‘Scurvy Cure.’

“Hey! What are you doing up here?! Get out!”

Lero started at the voice, it was one Lero would know anywhere: Honeybee. It had the same vicious edge to it that he was used to hearing in the bad old days when she’d tormented him with Honeydew, her eldest sister. It was a bizarre sensation, as he’d not heard it in years. A stammering apology was already halfway out of his mouth, when he realized she wasn’t anywhere nearby that he could see. He heard someone else respond to Honeybee. Someone unfamiliar.

“Aw, come on!” The voice was female. “We were just taking a look through your scrapbook! Ain’t nothing wrong with that, is there?”

“What are you even doing up here, Miss Honeybee?” asked the voice of another stranger; a male. “Berry and Caramel told us that you ‘weren’t able to make it’ to your herd-daughter’s party.”

“That’s none of your…!” Honeybee’s indignant reply was cut off.

“Oooh, look! I found one! I finally found one!” exclaimed the female voice.

Deciding to leave the toilet unflushed for now, Lero opened the bathroom door quietly and peeked out into the hallway. The door to Herd Caramel’s master bedroom was open. He could see a unicorn mare and a pegasus stallion: the unicorn was showing off some sort of photograph to the pegasus proudly.

“Had to really flip back quite a ways… but it’s definitely her! Honeydew! And the angle’s just perfect, you can see Honeydew’s melon cutie mark, plain as day!”

Honeydew’s melon cutie mark. Lero experienced a strange mental sensation; like riding downward in a fast elevator and coming to an unexpected sharp stop.

Lero caught a glimpse of Honeybee’s hoof through the doorway. “You’ve got five seconds to give that back and leave!”

“But I thought you disowned Honeydew as your sister, Honeybee. Isn’t that right?” asked the stallion.

“Y… of course that’s right!” The stallion had gotten Honeybee on the defensive. “Dew’s no sister of mine anymore!”

“So then you surely wouldn’t mind, wouldn’t have any emotional connection, to a picture like this?” reasoned the stallion.

“Well… that is, I…” She stammered, clearly upset, but not sure how to respond.

“Really, you ought to be thanking us, for removing such an unpleasant reminder of your non-sister from your house!” spoke the mare.

Lero could no longer see Honeybee, herself, through the doorway… though the unicorn mare’s face was visible… smiling as she levitated the photograph of Honeydew under her black tricorn pirate captain’s hat.

“So… I have to ask… what was it like, seeing your sister with some other mare’s mark on her flank?” the mare then pressed.

Maybe it was the acoustics of the house, but Lero had a hard time hearing the stammered response Honeybee gave as well as the mare and stallion, who both just smiled. As though at a child who’d told an adorably transparent lie.

”Oh, come now… don't try to kid us with that ridiculous cover story! Eyewitnesses spotted you boarding one of Celestia’s sky carriages! Don’t deny it!”

When they felt his shadow over them, all three of the ponies turned around, seeing Lero in the room.

“Excuse me, you two, but the party’s downstairs.” Honeybee looked dispirited by the mere sight of Lero, while the two pony strangers grew even more creepy-eyed with delight.

“Oh Celestia… it’s him! The human, himself!” This was the unicorn mare who’d spoken. Her cutie mark seemed to be a strip of flypaper, loaded with dead flies.

The pegasus stallion grinned at Lero. It took the human a second to realize what his cutie mark even was: a thoroughly blackened banana peel. “Hi buddy! I’ve heard everything there is to hear about you being captured by the Sicklefin gang! Horrible, truly horrible!” The pegasus' grin widened with every word. “They say you were one of the ones who watched it happen with your own eyes: a pony acquiring an honest-to-goodness new cutie mark!”

“Oh? Is that what ‘they’ said? These ‘they’ ponies?” Lero replied, dryly.

“Of course, Mr. Lero!” said the flypaper unicorn wearing the pirate hat, either not getting or ignoring his sarcasm. “Hey, could you tell me, when Twilight Sparkle did it, when she switched Honeydew and Exit Wound’s cutie marks, did she recite any sort of incantation first? Can you remember how the incantation went? Even a partial memory might be enough for me to…”

A partial memory… a partial incantation… an incomplete spell…

The picture of Honeydew wasn’t inside the black tricorn hat when Lero backhanded it fiercely off the startled unicorn’s head. So he had to snatch it from her mane.

“This isn’t yours,” he all but growled, holding the picture. “You have no business being here: the upstairs is off-limits to guests. Either get back to the party or leave. Before I do something you’ll both regret.”

They didn’t stick around to find out what he meant by that, but hurried straight out of the bedroom. Lero was glad. Later along, after he’d returned back downstairs, he would discover that the flypaper mare and the blackened banana stallion had left the birthday party entirely.

Honeybee’s room looked ransacked. The photo album the two unwelcome strangers had been hunting for lay open on her bed. Lero took a second to look the picture they’d meant to snatch. He could see Honeydew at an angle that showed off her cutie mark clearly.

It had been brightly sunny on the morning this picture had been taken. She was gardening in her melon patch at her home… a place that Lero had never visited. Honeydew was wearing a straw hat to keep the sun out of her eyes. She was smiling back over her shoulder towards the photographer with a completely unfamiliar smile of friendliness. She almost could’ve been one of Big Macintosh’s many cousins.

“Here,” he said, handing it back to Honeybee. She carefully bit down on a corner of it, and just set it on top of her scrapbook. She stood there, all sorts of raw emotion effervescing in her silence.

“I… uh… I needed a bathroom, but the downstairs one was being used. Caramel told me I could come up here,” said the human.

“I see.”

He felt more and more like an intruder the longer he stood here.

“Do you need help cleaning this…” He started before Honeybee cut him off.

“This stupid party of yours was the last thing I ever wanted. Did you know that?” she snapped.

Lero shut his mouth, looking at her.

“We could’ve thrown a perfectly enjoyable birthday party for Ruby and Berry without your help,” she continued bitterly. “But then you and those mares of yours went and got Berry super-jazzed about this mega-party of yours. And so she went and got her daughter all jazzed about it too, and they went and worked on Caramel, and so I was completely outvoted, wasn’t I?”

“It wasn’t about you. I’m sorry if it overstepped, but it seemed like an opportunity to make a lot of people happy.” She gave him a brief glare. “I just wanted to do a good thing,” he told her, helplessly.

Her eyes wandered down to the picture of Honeydew.

“You know, I remember back when she had that mane-style!” Honeybee suddenly laughed. “I wore it that way too. Dew used to dream about hitting it big, did you know? We’d have a factory. And sell melons and honey and potpourri and stuff made from Honeysuckle’s flowers all over the world. We used to talk about it all the time…”

With a flick of her forehoof, Honeybee flips her sister’s photo upside-down. “You and Dew… I can never truly get away from you two, can I?”

“Honeybee, I’ve always done my best to do right by you and give you space.” Lero protested.

It was true that after he’d rescued Honeybee from drowning in that lake, things had turned friendlier between them, (as well as with Honeysuckle.) But to call what they had a full-out friendship was a stretch at best. Even when Honeydew wasn’t physically present, she was still there in all their memories. Honeydew with all her darkest accusations.

And since the business with the Sicklefins, things had grown even frostier between himself and the younger Honey sisters. Even when they spotted each other from across the marketplace.

“Today’s just a special occasion,” Lero assured Honeybee. “As soon as this birthday’s over…”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” she sighed. “Put it this way: ponies know Cheerilee is Cheerilee the Schoolteacher. Bonbon is Bonbon the Candy Maker. But me? Know what I am? Not Honeybee the Beekeeper or Honeybee the Honey Salesmare, no matter how sweet my honey or how much of it they buy. No, I’m Honeybee the Ex-Human-Bully-Who-Knew-When-To-Call-It-Quits. Only now, on top of THAT, I get to be Honeybee the Psycho-Criminal’s Sister for the rest of my days.”

“I’m sorry, I never wanted you or anyone else to be a part of this.” he said, wishing he could give the poor mare something more substantial.

“Not like it’s your fault. It’s Dew’s. Wish she were here right now so I could give her face a good kick.” Honeybee took the turned-over photo of her sister in her teeth, and returned it back into the laminated pocket of the scrapbook it’d been pulled out from. Still turned-over. “What about you, Lero? Do you feel that way too?”

Lero thought back to the quarry mill, when Twilight had shot that modified Swap spell at Honeydew and Exit Wound. As well as all those scenes Discord had showed him on his TV, of both those mares being interrogated. When he heard the name ‘Honeydew’ it was hard for his brain to pick which mental image to settle upon. The earth pony with her weird new Emerald Isle brogue and insistence that she’d ‘always’ been able to perform magic? Or the unicorn... heartbroken that her ‘family’ no longer recognized her at all?

“The last time I saw Honeydew, I saw a mare so utterly, utterly wrong in the head… what could a guy like me even DO to her that could top what she’s done to herself? Is no doubt still DOING to herself, down in that...?”

He stopped himself from saying the word ‘nuthouse.’

“...At this point, she’s destroyed herself so much, it’s hard to feel anything but pity for her.”

“I like the way you think.” Honeybee half-smiled at him. He half-smiled back.

“Hey, Honeybee… I think I’m going to go back downstairs now. There’s quite a few foals who still want their shot at riding the human, and Fluttershy needs my help too. You should come down too. Ruby Pinch’s a good little filly, she should have BOTH her moms with her celebrating! I’d never want to get in the way of that. I promise I’ll give you a lot of space, and so will everyone else in my family.”

Honeybee looked back at her photo album for a second.

“Those ponies who were just in here… they’re not the first ones who’ve been like that, you know? Asking way too many questions about that whole cutie mark thing with my sister and that mobster mare. Super-curious for all the wrong reasons. Both of us know that there’s only pain on the path they’re trying to take.”

* * *

Spike and Lero were mostly in charge of helping to keep the foals entertained. Spike had something of a leg up on Lero, being a child, himself. But Lero was a nice, playful, patient sort of stallion, gifted with a good sense of humor, as Fluttershy knew. He had always been naturally good with foals. They entertained them and helped come up with games and even gave out prizes to winners.

Twilight and Rarity were mostly in charge of conversation. One key part of an extremely good party was being sure the guests were all mingling well enough with one another, consistently and happily. This would become a much more important factor later tonight. The day was given mostly given over to all the little colts and fillies, who were having the time of their lives with all the games and attractions, and many of their parents were busy watching over their young ones.

Yet even this early, there were still older relatives and such who were happy to just sit at the tables, eat and take it easy, while the young ones wore themselves out, and Rarity and Twilight were doing their best to keep their conversations lively, and introduce ponies to one another for the first time, inciting even more happy conversations.

Lyra was in charge of maintenance, making sure nothing broke down or ran out for long, and Rainbow Dash was consistently helping her with that. Frankly, Rainbow Dash was amazing. When she sensed that the foals’ interest in her animals had reached a minimum, she only needed to speak a single command, and all the critters went to sleep right away, right on the spot; freeing Dash to go help her other herdmates after locking her critters up behind their fence. The animals… but it was perfectly pointless for Fluttershy to let her mind dwell upon animals, especially Rainbow Dash’s animals, for even a half-second longer than absolutely necessary. Perfectly. Pointless.

Anyway, when an empty keg of ginger ale needed to be exchanged for a full one, when somepony accidentally dropped their cupcake on the floor, when a colt tripped and scraped his knee, when some filly’s balloon floated too far away into the sky… Lyra and Rainbow were on the scene, to restock, to clean, to tend, and to recover. But each member of that family were all ready to help each other with whatever at a moment’s notice. Yes, it was just like Twilight said: Herd Bellerophon had Berry Punch and Ruby Pinch’s birthday party completely covered.

So much so, there was nothing for Fluttershy to even DO. She might as well just be another guest.

And she felt so upset about it all. So mopey. And bitter. And... cheated. This was supposed to be her moment, her special day, her chance to make up for it all, and she couldn’t do a thing! Nor did she dare gripe about it. Not after everything Herd Bellerophon had done to help her.

Why? Why did this have to happen? Something HAD to give at some point, if she just tried hard enough, right? Just like Lero was always saying? Oh, why couldn’t things just go back to being like they’d used to? When Fluttershy tried mingling with guests, the mood still felt rather frosty, no matter how long or hard she tried breaking the ice. The yellow pegasus found herself feeling so horribly awkward around both familiar faces and strangers. None of her old social graces seemed to be coming back to her at all. Nothing but her dumb, stupid, stupid jokes.

Well, might as well try, try again. Fluttershy needed to hear somepony laugh, even for something stupid. Laughter of any sort would brighten her mood. So she came up behind some tawny-colored lady from behind… what an unusual-looking tail she had…

“So two pirates are having an argument,” Fluttershy began. “The first pirate says, ‘When you die, I’m gonna be dancing on your grave!’ And her shipmate says, ‘Good! Cause I’m gonna get buried at sea!’”

Fluttershy didn’t hear any sound of hoof-clopping from the lady’s legs as she turned herself around to face her, rather a more menacing click-click. “The real joke is: you’ve gotten to be an even lamer dweebazoid than I remember you being, Flutterstink.”

The yellow pegasus took a step back. This wasn’t a pony.

“Bet ya don’t even remember who I am, do ya?”

“Of course I do, silly-billy!” replied Fluttershy, hoping a cheerful smile would brighten the mood. “I remember everything about you! You’re Gilda! You’re Rarity’s friend!”

The griffon had actually gone and gotten herself a pirate costume to wear to this party. Certain creases along the pantaloons, especially, showed that this pony-intended outfit wasn’t fitting Gilda’s griffon body quite as perfectly as she properly would’ve liked. But it looked pretty good on her all the same. Especially the undersized, eyepatch-wearing plastic parrot clipped onto her shoulder. Hopefully, Gilda hadn’t stolen it.

“I used to be Rarity’s friend. But that’s all past tense now. All thanks to you, Butter-brain.”

“Uh.... That’s not quite how I remember it. I think you kinda told her all her new friends were lame, and that she should ditch them… I don’t think trying to force her to choose between friends made her happy.” She blinked, watching Gilda’s expression shift. On one hoof, since beaks didn’t have teeth, it’d be wrong for her to say that Gilda was baring her teeth at her. But with such a ferocious-looking beak… it looked like teeth could spring right out from inside it at any moment.

And then the snarl was gone, and Gilda was flashing Fluttershy that ‘too cool for school’ smile that Rarity had admired about her. Used to admire.

“No worries. R’s, like Queen Dummkopf VII, herself, if you’ll pardon my Germane,” The griffin looked around, disappointed Rarity hadn’t wandered by just in time to hear that. “You helped me to see what a flip-flopper she was. So no hard feelings, girlfriend. Put ‘er there!”

Gilda held out an arm. When Fluttershy held a foreleg out, and let Gilda’s talon encircle it… a sharp electrical shock shot through her body.

“Gotcha!”

“Ouch! W-what!?”

“Aw, come on, Fluttershrimp!” Gilda rotated her talon, showing Fluttershy the joy buzzer. “You remember my party, don’t ya? All those practical jokes you pulled on me? I do. So I just had to make a quick pit stop at the joke shop before making the scene here, cuz one good zap deserves another! Ha ha ha!”

Gilda’s laughter… such laughter… Fluttershy just HAD to do something to hear even a little more of it.

“Ha ha! Good one! Say, speaking of jokes… one day, a griffin diver was enjoying diving in the sea at a depth of twenty feet. Then she notices another griffin at the same depth, but with no scuba gear on! The diver decides she’ll swim down another twenty feet, only to look over, and the the same griffin’s next to her! Finally, the scuba diver takes out her board and marker and writes, ‘How are you able to stay underwater this long without equipment?’ The other griffin grabs the board and marker and writes, ‘I’m drowning, you moron!!!!”

The griffin’s laughter was indeed rewarding to hear. “Nice! Got a joke of my own, right back atcha: your face.”

“Huh?”

Very suddenly, Fluttershy found herself grabbed. Before she could think to pull away from the griffin, she found herself all but dragged over to the punch bowl, and Gilda plunged her head straight into the ice-cold Shirley Temple. Now she was definitely doing her best to struggle. Sticky, sugary, cold liquid was choking her… she might drown like that other griffin in her joke!

As a girl who’d pranked others and been pranked in turn, Fluttershy knew what a joy buzzer felt like. But when Gilda pressed her hand against the back of Fluttershy’s soaking head… she was beginning to think she might really die, right up until Gilda yanked her head out herself.

“Your face!“ screeched Gilda, as Fluttershy sucked in sweet, sweet, air. “Hahahahahaha!!!”

Her laughter was like an ice cream brain freeze. Fluttershy could hear several ponies screaming in panic, and even a few foals were sobbing. “J-just what (*cough*) are you doing (*wheeze*) here, Gilda?!”

“Oh, not much,” said Gilda, backing away, and giving all the alarmed ponies around her a wry shoulder shrug that said, ‘What, can’t you lamers take a joke?’ “I was draggin’ my tail home from getting pink-slipped, when I heard word about some kinda pull-out-all-the-stops-birthday blowout that you were in charge of. So I just had to invite myself. Boy-oh-boy, they weren’t kidding. You’ve really outdone yourself with this one, Cap’n Shybeard.”

“What do you want here, Gilda?!”

This was spoken with much more authority and aggression; it was Rarity who’d spoken. She’d stepped inside the room, head lowered with a powerful frown.

Gilda’s smile widened bitterly. “Me? Oh, I’m just here to party down.”

“Come, come, me jolly mates, the wind’s abaft,
Brisk gales our sails shall crowd,
Then b…!”

Fluttershy could only suppose that the musicians had tried starting up another of their sea shanties in hopes of restoring the festive atmosphere and calming things down. Instead, they just advertised themselves as a tempting target for Gilda, who grabbed one of the cannonballs and threw it, scoring a direct hit on the accordion player’s head. Even though the cannonball cracked apart into harmless fragments of well-painted papier-mâché, it had been thrown with great force, and Gilda had succeeded in startling all the musicians, who flat-out fled the room when the griffon then picked up the great cannon.

“What’s happening?!” exclaimed Carrot Top.

“What, you got a problem with someone having a good time?” sneered Gilda.

“Someone call the cops!” cried Davenport.

“No cops!” Rarity cried, horn flashing. “I’ve got it handled!” and in no time at all, Gilda found her body enveloped in a telekinesis field, being dragged towards the white unicorn like a fly-fishing fisherpony reeling in a great big trout. And Fluttershy knew how powerful her weatherpony friend was at magic; they still talked about when she brought Pinkie Pie to that hospital! But Gilda reached a leg out… and even with the telekinesis field in place, she still snagged one of her claws on two different tablecloths.

Fluttershy had to credit the quick horn-to-eye coordination of all the unicorns in the room, including Rarity. Even the older foals helped. Thanks to them, only a fourth of the food clattered down to the floor, instead of all of it. All the same, so many pretty snacks and fruit were lost, and even one of Berry’s barrels broke open on the floor! Foals were crying and screaming all around Fluttershy, and they were insisting ‘I wanna go home!’ and it was all Fluttershy’s heart could do not to break apart.

Fluttershy hoped Gilda would flee; at this rate, somepony probably had galloped off to fetch the police, and the griffon was just so outnumbered! Already, some of the bolder ponies looked like they’d be getting over their shock sooner rather than later, and from there, it’d just be a question of who caught her first; the cops or the guests.

Gilda seemed aware of this too. Nonetheless, she got back to all fours and took to her wings, scraping a claw against the wall, so that all sorts of piratey decorations that had been hanging up their all fell to the floor as well; maps, buoys, pulleys, netting and more, dumping it on startled unicorns, breaking their concentration and tangling them up.

“Why are you doing this?!” Fluttershy cried, leaping up into the air and daring to fly alongside her, each of them circling around the other

“Cuz it’s what I oughta’ve done at that party you threw ME!” Gilda shot back, shoving a chandelier straight at the yellow pegasus. She dodged, but not well enough, and it banged really hard into her wing. Feathers flew, and she went careening into a wooden figurehead, knocking her silly. Gilda’s chortle was poisonous, completely overwhelmed by the worried shouts of the guests.

But even through her worry and pain, Fluttershy’s ears flicked as she heard a new song from a few rooms over. Not the singing the pirate musicians, either; these was regular ponies; parents and foals.

“Happy birthday to you…”

“...Oh ho ho! Perfect target!” Gilda grinned maliciously, barrelling through through packs of ponies, roughly tossing them aside with her greater size and strength as she made her way towards the singing. Fluttershy did her best to catch up to her, apologizing hurriedly to everypony she bumped.

“Happy birthday to you…”

The lucky birthday girl sat at the head of the table with at least twenty other foals filling the other chairs. All sorts of colorful presents were piled atop a table right behind her, waiting to be unwrapped.

And then came the cake. All eyes, young and old, locked on it in awe, as it was being wheeled towards Ruby Pinch. It was three different cakes stacked atop each other. The largest one, forming the base, was a creamy coconut cake. The middle-sized middle cake was rum raisin, which the smallest cake, on top, incorporated pineapple and banana.

Fluttershy couldn’t take credit for the icing: Lero had gotten a true artist to work on that; and her talent showed. To look upon these cakes was like circling around an ancient urn in a museum. The biggest cake showed pirates ships sailing at sea. The middle cake showed a swordfight between two pirates. From a twelve o’clock position, you could see the red swordfighter parrying the blue one; at the one o’clock position, the red was dodging the blue fighter’s thrust, all the way until the eleven o’clock position, where the red stood victorious over the defeated blue. The last cake was a giant pile of treasure: gold and gems… especially rubies. And from a top-down bird’s eye view, was Ruby Pinch’s face, recreated with a large number of close-set rock candy ‘rubies,’ topped with six black candles, made to look like little masts, complete with miniature skull-and-crossbones mainsails.

“Happy birthday, dear Ruby…”

Before any of them could register what was happening, Gilda had shoved a small colt off his seat, so she could grab his chair. As she raised it up directly over the great dessert, Gilda spared only a single snide smile backward at Fluttershy and Rarity. Everypony screamed as the griffin swung the chair downward… everypony save Ruby Pinch, who gazed up into the pitiless intruder’s eyes with tears she never would’ve dreamed she’d be shedding at this moment in time.

The rainbow streak shot forth from behind the throng, like an arrow fired from a well-concealed archer. It caught Gilda square in the side, tackling her out of the room, the now-unheld chair clattering to the floor, cake unharmed.

* * *

The rainbow and brown streak smashed through the back door and into the backyard. Ponies shouted and screamed in alarm as tables were knocked aside and upended as the two combatants tumbled through. Rainbow Dash was slammed to the ground as Gilda spread her wings open to wing-brake, the larger surface area allowing her the leverage to do so. Dash promptly bucked the griffon in the gut, kicking her off and slamming to earth behind her.

The hell just happened!? Gilda thought to herself. Just a moment ago, she was having a grand time wracking one of the loser namby-pamby pony parties, then someone jumped her. When her eyes focused on her assailant, she almost laughed.

“You!?” She exclaimed at the rainbow-maned, cyan-pelted Pegasus pony... dressed, amusingly, in an island girl outfit. All of this was made even more comical by the fact she seemed to be moving in some sort of goofy stance. “I remember you! Vaguely, anyway. Weren’t you that wimpy mare leading a buncha ducklings down main street and rammed into me?”

“It was a family of ducks. The mamma and the pappa duck too. “ She did not sound soft or timid like the first time they met, but cold and hard. Probably trying to put up a brave face.

“Psssh, shyeah, whatever, lame-o, I remember you crying and running at the tiniest little ROOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAR!” She let loose her loudest bellow, expecting the pegasus to turn tail and flee.

She found herself wondering why she was suddenly doing a backflip and why her beak hurt so much.

Gilda landed in an uncomfortable heap. She straightened herself up, and blinked at the stream of crimson flowing from her nare. A quick claw touch to her beak confirmed it: she was bleeding.

"You hit me!" she cried, incensed.

"There's foals around. Keep scaring them and you'll get more of the same." The cyan pegasus replied, flatly.

A tough girl act, huh? However, the griffon knew these types too. This pegasus wouldn’t be the first jellyfish Gilda had seen suddenly grow a spine. But she’d still have a soft, gooey center under that new hard exterior. They always did.

“Nuh, weally! Ey dink yuh kwaked meh beak!” She included a nice, realistic sounding whimper at the end. Nice and pathetic, the blockhead was sure to buy it…

Bingo. A look of horror and concern spread across her little horsey face, “Oh, gosh! I’m so sorry!” Her fighting stance dropped, she moving closer, raising a hoof. “Here, let me see, I can hel...”

Bingo! Gilda grabbed her arm, flipping the pony over, slamming her into the ground. “Light’s out, dweeb!” She drew her claw back to bring down on her…

She only saw a brief flash of cyan wings before she was spiralling up into the sky, battered by a vortex of winds. What the frip!? she wondered in confusion, What the heck hit me!?

Gilda landed with a thump, immediately tangled in something... it wasn’t until the animatronic kraken’s tentacles constricted around her did she realized where she’d landed; right in the ship-shaped stage set up for the pirate show!

The damned pegasus flew up to her, an actual damned smirk on her face! “Ready to give up?”

Gilda strained against the animatronics. That’s stupid, grinning doofus! Wait, there’s some give… “Not when I can do this, loser!” She gave a pull, and with a snap, a tentacle broke loose, slamming into the pegasus, knocking her for a loop. This gave Gilda enough time to untangle herself while the musclehead attempted to regain her equilibrium.

“Tag, wimp!” Gilda cried, slashing at the distressed pegasus. A flash of red informed the griffin she’d struck home, but when she shifted to capitalize on the swipe, the lamer shifted and whirled her wings, and out of nowhere, a swirling gale of wind blasted her away!

Gilda recognized what was happening. Back when they’d hung out, she and R used to watch martial arts tournaments. Griffon versus pegasus matches tended to be the most intense. This was clearly Vortex style. Growling as she slammed into the rigging of the ship, Gilda still managed to grab hold. “How does a chicken-livered milksop like you learn martial arts!?”

The pegasus winced, touching her injured side, but then faced Gilda with an eager grin that would’ve looked much more at place on R’s face. “I had a really good teacher!”

“Well, then, bring it, Wussmaster Prime! I ain’t going down to the likes of you!” That did it; the pegasus charged. Perfect. Gilda shifted aside, letting the pony tangle herself in the riggings. Damn, this was weird, The rainbow-maned meathead was using martial arts moves like a lifelong pro, yet at the same time, she kept falling for obvious ploys. Like she was all skill, no experience.

Not that it’d stop Gilda from kicking her in the side while she was stuck.

A snapping noise and a sudden pain in her leg caused a squawk to escape Gilda’s beak. The rigging snapped away as it was cut... “Awww, crud, you know Wingblade, too!? What kinda freak are you!?”

“The kind that’s gonna kick your feathery butt!” snapped the incensed pegasus, charging Gilda in a spiral charge, a vortex of wind spiraling around her, Gilda had enough time to recognize it as a Vortex Crusher as it slammed into her chest, flinging her up into the sky.

The worst part was hearing all the stupid ponies cheering below. Followed very closely by the intense pain in her chest.

Gilda’s wings desperately sought for a grip in the air her talons instinctively reaching out to do so as well.

Surprisingly, it was her talons that found purchase first.

Cloud. Her mind registered, She grabbed ahold, pulling herself inside, hiding while she re-caught her breath, and recovered from her aching chest. A quick glance outside showed she’d shaken the pegasus off her trail. She could spot the dweebmeister stumbling, disoriented.

Guh. How is she this terrible, yet kicking my ass so hard? She lost track of me because she was got disoriented from spinning. How can she use that strong a skill and fudge up its use so bad!?

Gilda caught her breath, and readied herself… wait for the right moment, right when she’s under you. And... pounce!

She slammed into the blue pegasi with bone-rattling force, slamming her into the cloud below him, her limited griffon cloud-shaping ensuring it had force. “Gotcha!” she growled triumphantly, attempting to pin her down and start pounding her silly.

The griffon managed to only get a few blows in, before the damned slippery pegasus wormed her way out of the hold. She swung around attempting to catch her again, only for find that she’d already wrapped her hooves around her in a hold.

“Ha, that won’t work on me! I’m Gilda!” Gilda strained against the hooves; they didn’t release. “Okay, let go!” She struggled back and forth, still unable to get out. “Seriously, this is starting to piss me off!”

“I’m not letting go until you agree to leave everypony in our party alone!”

“Ha, what’ll you do if I don’t? Hurt m-Gurk!” her taunted was cut off as the pony tightened her grip. Roaring in anger, she resisting as best she could, until…

POP!

They both heard an audible pop, and intense pain shot through Gilda’s back. The pony release her in shock. “Omigosh, are you okay!?”

“Ow, ow, ow, ow, That really…” Gilda blinked. After the initial burst of pain, her back began to feel relieved, even really good. “...Good, jeez, that got knots out of my back that I didn’t even know I had!”

The doofus laughed. “Guess I used one of my bear-wrestling moves on accident. Have to pin them down to work out the kinks they get after hibernating.”

It took a few seconds to register. “Wait, you wrestle BEARS!?”

The pegasus nodded. “Yeah, part of their care and training.”

“Jeez, No wonder you’re so tough. Huh. Maybe I got you wrong, lamebo- Er… what was your name?

“Rainbow Dash.”

“You’re pretty awesome, Rainbow Dash.”

“Heh.” Rainbow rubbed the back of her head. “Thanks, I-”

“THERE SHE IS, OFFICER!” A call came up from below. Several police ponies were obvious below. Dammit, someone actually did call the cops. Worse... some of them were pegasi.

“Ah, dammit, It’s the fuzz! I gotta cheese it!!”

“Wait!” Rainbow Dash called out, seemingly alarmed.

“What, gonna tell me to turn myself in? ‘Do the right thing?’ Just when I was thinkin’ you were cool, Lamebow.”

“I... uh… Know someplace you can hide.” She nervously waved her hooves around. “I’ll give you a head start, so it looks like I’m chasing you, okay? They won’t be in as big a hurry to keep up if they think someone’s already after you, 'specially an Element of Harmony.”

...Of all the miracles in the world, this was not one Gilda was expecting. “Heh. You’re alright, RD.”

* * *

Gilda raced from the policemares, while Rainbow Dash raced after Gilda as well, and all the little foals who had been watching from ground level around Fluttershy cheered and kicked up their hooves with delight.

“Did ya see that?! Did you SEE what happened?!” asked Ruby Pinch.

“I sure did!” exclaimed Scootaloo, from right beside Fluttershy. Her little wings were almost lifting her up in the air. “I never, ever, EVER thought I’d hear these words coming out of my mouth, but… Rainbow Dash’s the COOLEST PONY EVER!”

Then, no doubt fearing that word would get back to her unicorn weathermare hero, Scootaloo backtracked, saying, “Y… you know, just for that one moment. Her time to shine.”

Rarity smiled at her protegee. “She is and awesome mare, Scootaloo, even when she’s not in a fight. Why do you think I’m herding with her?”

Scootaloo blinked at this point, and nodded. “Oh yeah! Yeah, that makes a lot of sense!”

Then Fluttershy spotted Lero, who stood looking lost for words on those two long legs of his, and decided to go over and talk to him. But Berry Punch was faster.

“Tell me that was all part of the show!” Berry hissed, in a low voice so that was meant to not be overheard by any of the foals. “That griffon punk that almost smashed a chair through my girl’s birthday cake, you’d BETTER…!”

“It was all part of the show!” The human told her. “J... just an extra stunt show set up in an advance! I mean, what’s a pirate party without a villain to fight?” Lero spiled broadly, obviously attempting to sound earnest.

Despite his smile, Fluttershy could tell Lero was lying. Pretty good odds that Berry Punch could tell too. But it was a lie Berry wanted to hear. So she turned towards her daughter and all her little friends, forcing fun-filled frivolity back onto her face.

“Heeeey there, fillies and colts! I think we’ve almost forgotten the biiiiiiig cake with candles that still need blowing out!”

At any other party, Fluttershy would’ve followed the special birthday girl and all her special birthday friends into the house to join in singing the Happy Birthday Song and cheer after the candles were blown out and taste all the different flavors of the cake! But Fluttershy found her attention focusing on the blood on the ground. Blood that nopony else was really looking at, right now.

It wasn’t a lot of blood, really. Could’ve been much worse. More likely than not, some pony would come by, later on, and quietly kick clean dirt over all that ugly little red. Griffon blood and pony blood. Blood from one of Fluttershy’s bestest friends, and the ex-best friend of one of her other bestest friends.

“Fluttershy? H-hey, Fluttershy? Where are you…?”

It was Lero who was stammering out these questions. The poor stallion was confused why she had spread out her wings. Why she was running out, leaping forward, and taking to the skies.

“Fluttershy, stop! Please stop! Come back!”

Fluttershy felt so, terribly, awfully, horribly sorry for Lero. But as the poor human stallion ran underneath her, yelling at her to stop and come back, it was all Fluttershy could do to beat her wings quicker and quicker, until the whooshing of air running past her could drown out Lero’s fading voice. Partying didn’t matter to Fluttershy. Not right now. She needed to find both Gilda and Rainbow Dash, wherever they had flown off to. If she had to search and search until long after midnight to find them, then so be it.

* * *

“...Then after I blew my whistle and the big gangster pony knocks it out of my mouth, she says, ‘there’s no way that’s going to help you know, the doors and windows are shut!’ But then I go, ‘yeaaah, but you didn’t reinforce the floor!’ And that’s when my Quarray Eel friend came out from right underneath her hooves!”

Gilda let her lower beak drop. “No. Flapping. Waaaaaay.”

“Yes. Flapping. Way,” the animal trainer said, mimicking Gilda’s voice in a way that would’ve seriously iced the griffon’s primaries any other day of the year.

“I mean, taming bears and stuff I can almost buy, cuz they do that in circuses and junk, but a Quarray eel? Dag spanky, girl! Howzat even DONE?!”

The pegasus across the table smirked like a mascot for a new brand of soda pop. “Trade secret.”

Gilda had no idea why, but for some reason, it almost seemed like this ‘Rainbow Dash’ was transforming into a bolder and boastful pony the longer she spent in her presence. Had to be all that A-grade shwanginess Gilda was giving off like heat from a bonfire. Yeah, Dasherino was totally sponging her bodaciousness up like… like… what was that mondo-dweeby word her old science teacher used? Osmose? Osmic? Osmometry? Osmidrosis?

“Far out, lion scout. I just GOTTA come over to your pad sometime! See all these animals of yours!”

Dash smile grew a little. “This kinda is my pad already, G...” she said, spreading her arms out at the dusty old library they were sitting in. Honestly, Gilda woulda rather had this happen at a decent bar or something… but it was kinda brilliant of the Dashster to hide her from the cops in the one place she’d never actually set paw or talon in otherwise.

“...But I know what you mean. And I think I’d like that. Just so happens that I got all them all in my old place, right next door.” Here, Dash glanced out a window at a very grandmotherly-looking cottage place, just outside. “Had the little scamps drag it out from where it used to be, right next to the Everfree Forest.”

“N-no way! That was YOU?!” Gilda had heard all sorts of talk from the local yokels about a small army of animals dragging a house through town…

“Um… hi,” said a small, meek voice from the front door.

Gilda looked over. Fluttershy had let herself in through the front door. “Oh, it’s you. How’d you find us, lamestain?”

Choosing not to see the giant stinkeye Dash shot her, (ponies were just SO hung up on their stupid pony friends all the time,) Gilda rolled her eyes at her own sweet self for forgetting how the Flutterdingus operated. Chyeah, she’d tried everything she could think of to shake that yellow wastoid off her tail back on that day, but she kept seeming to find them, like some psychic or something.

“You and Dash were bleeding. You’re still bleeding.” Gilda looked down at herself and her new homie.

“Awwwww… bogus,” Gilda sighed. Dang if the doofus wasn’t right: their cuts still hadn’t closed.

“I don’t believe this!” Rainbow Dash cried, looking over at Gilda. “You were bleeding all this time, and I didn’t even notice?”

“Here, let me help.” Fluttershy piped up.

In the middle of following Gilda and Rainbow Dash’s trail of blood, it had occurred to Fluttershy that it might do good to pick up a first aid kit. Good thing she’d listened to that thought!

“It’s just a little cut! I can take care of it on my own time.” Gilda squawked as Fluttershy began putting iodine over the cuts. The griffon looked like she wanted to do a lot more than yell at her… only Rainbow Dash was giving her a very forbidding stare. “Geeze, don’t you have a party to be at or something?”

“Ruby Pinch’s and Berry Punch’s birthday will go on fine without me.” She let out a small sigh. “For whatever it’s worth, I don’t think you’ve done any irreparable damage, Gilda…”

She’d done what she could for Gilda. She moved onto Rainbow Dash.

“...All the other guests will laugh and sing and dance and eat… and Herd Bellerophon’s got everything under control.”

“Fluttershy! C… c’mon, this party…” Rainbow Dash dipped her head. Fluttershy could see much of her trademark shyness reasserting itself. “This party, well, um, I mean… this party was thrown for you.”

Fluttershy dropped the gauze she was holding. Rainbow was right… whole party was for her own sake. Even Berry Punch agreeing to let her help with the party had been an act of charity on her part. What was wrong with her? How could she have forgotten? Now she felt worse that ever!

“Fluttershy!” came a familiar voice.

“There you are, Fluttershy, dear!” came another.

Rarity and Twilight stepped into their library. Through the closing door, Fluttershy was able to spot the cloud platform they’d rode in on. The two unicorns took a second just to take in the scene before them: the two fighters who’d caused such a violent scene, sitting across from each other casually at a table, and Fluttershy tending their wounds.

“What’s…?!” They started together.

“Barf me out the door!” Gilda suddenly spat, cutting them off, looking angrily at them, Rarity especially. “Seriously, what the flaming flying flamingo flock?! The whole flappin’ party being relocated over here or what?!”

“I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I’m really, really sorry!” How Fluttershy wished she could’ve said this without her eyes leaking like this. But the tears were coming now, and there was no way to un-cry them.

“This is all my fault! You guys arranged this whole party for me because I’m so pathetic! But then… but then Gilda came and made a mess of things and got into a fight with poor Rainbow Dash. Because of me! Gilda did all that only because she was so upset at losing Rarity’s friendship! If not for me being a big nosy, pushy intrusivepants, Gilda and Rarity would still be friends today! But when I saw how Dash was bleeding… I just HAD to come out here to try and patch things up… but I had to leave the party, and now you’re all upset with me, and all I ever wanted was for everyone to be happy together and nice to one another and LAUGH! But I can’t do ANY of that, especially not the laughter! Comedy’s not just hard, it’s IMPOSSIBLE!”

Twilight Sparkle moved over to the poor, distressed, mixed-up pegasus, and said no words, just hugged her tightly. Only holding onto the Swapped Pony with consoling tenderness, listening to her crying. At some points, it came out a loud wet bawl, like how Pinkie Pie’s used to be. Other times, it with softer and more whimpery, like her old self. Twilight felt so horrible for both portions of her friends’ divided, forced-together souls.

She looked up at the sound of a hoof shyly scraping the floor. To her surprise, it wasn’t Rainbow Dash who was doing it. It was Rarity, looking down at some dusty crack in the floor. Gilda was looking away as well. Between them both, and all of Fluttershy’s crying, a good deal of hot, fiery animosity had died down. Abashment seemed to have taken its place.

The griffon finally spoke up her voice, oddly, sounded a bit softer and less gruff. “Y...y’know, R, it’s not like I hate ponies or anything. It’s just… I guess… I dunno, that day I came by your place to visit you… I wanted you all to myself, y’know? That was supposed to be our time. Didn’t wanna share you with some other friend.”

“Maybe I should’ve been a bit more... perceptive and attuned to your feelings, G,” Rarity said. “Fluttershy’s just such a fun, wonderful pony, I’d was sure you’d come to love her as a friend just as quickly as I did.”

“But friendships are special things!” Gilda retorted, with a shadow of her old belligerence. She was finally looking at Rarity straight in the eye again. “Friendships are meaningful. They’re deep. You don’t pass out friendships to just anyone, like… like they’re party invitations! That’s why you’re the one and only friend I’ve ever had in my life.”

Rarity stared at Gilda as though the griffin had just finished quoting a passage from a myrmecology textbook, verbatim.

“Do you even hear the way you sound, Gilda? ‘The one and only friend I’ve ever had in my life?’ Listening to you right now, I feel like I’m listening to my own sweet Lero, whenever he talks about all the widespread monogamy on the human world of Earth!”

Twilight watched Gilda blink in surprise.

“...Even if that was how things worked here,” Rarity continued, “Even if monogamy was the way of our world, this is friendship we’re talking about, not matrimony!”

That was definitely a cringe on the griffin’s beaky face.

“...If being an Element Of Harmony has taught me anything, Gilda, it’s this; you’re not supposed to be miserly about making friends! That’s the exact opposite of how friendship works! Yes, some friendships you form are inevitably going to be deeper and more meaningful than others. All the same, you’re supposed to make as many friends as you conceivably can! That’s the real beauty of friendship!”

“Gilda’s friends with me,” Rainbow Dash spoke up.

Everyone looked over at the rainbow-maned pegasus. “Really?” Rarity asked Gilda.

“Um… yeah, I guess, kinda…” Gilda said, scratching uncertainly at her fringe.

“Well… maybe there’s hope for you yet, then.” She held out a hoof. “What do you say, G? Up to giving me another chance?”

There were a few moments where Gilda was visually stunned, before she puffed out her chest feathers. “Way to keep it real, Rarity.”

And the griffin’s fist bumped the pony’s hoof.

“You and me and all our other friends against the world!” said Gilda.

“...Well, close enough.” she smiled.

It was a flimsy sort of repair. One that could snap apart at the smallest provocation. But it seemed Gilda and Rarity were now back on good terms with each other. Fluttershy smiled with tearful happiness at the sight of the mended friendship. This did not go unnoticed by Twilight.

“Fluttershy, you… you're really such a kind pony, you know that? Amazingly, incredibly kind.”

Fluttershy’s reaction to this intrigued Twilight thoroughly. “...Kind?” she repeated, with the gaping stare of a pony watching her bag of groceries transform into a portal to another dimension. Without Discord’s help.

“Well... I dunno if I’d go THAT far,” said Gilda the griffon, with a flick of her wrist. “I mean, she’s kinda bubbly ‘n’ friendly and stuff, but Shyster’s really more of a joker than anything else. Real dyed-in-the-wool chuckle junkie, if ever I saw one.”

“Then it’s clear you’ve really never understood my friend’s humor!” Those words had pretty much jumped out from Twilight’s mouth without her planning on them being there. Like an improv actress blurting out the first words that came to mind.

“What’s there to understand?” Gilda retorted, but Rarity and Rainbow Dash also looked curious. Fluttershy was listening to Twilight more intently than anyone else in the room. Twilight couldn’t just improv this blindly any more. But she thought… no, knew, somehow, that she was on the right track, that this was important, somehow.

Kind… Kindness… Kind… Kindness… Laughter… Pinkie Pie… Fluttershy… What was the connection? Twilight felt like some comedian, given a feather, a cupcake, and some other odds and ends, and told to create a joke from them. Kind… Kindness… Kind… Kindness… Fluttershy… Pinkie Pie… but both of their Unswapped selves were kindhearted ponies in their own right…

For a second, Twilight Sparkle’s eyes widened just as large as Fluttershy’s, before she mellowed her expression down. She saw a connection now. And what a connection it was!

“If you don’t mind, Gilda, I’d like to answer that by telling you a quick little story. That okay?”

Shrugging, Gilda slouched down into a ‘cool girl’ posture. “Yeah, sure, whatever.” Thirty years down the road, some chiropractor would surely net quite a fun island vacation for herself, if Gilda kept slouching in chairs like that.

“I’ll never forget the day I first came here to Ponyville. I was brought in on a sky chariot. It was a nice sunny day, but I was feeling pretty crabby inside. I didn’t actually want to be Ponyville, but I wasn’t going to be a whiny little filly about it either. And who should the very first pony I ran into be, the moment I stepped off my chariot… but this pink-maned mare with a sweet little smile. I said ‘hello.’ And she made this weird little startled sound and then suddenly skedaddled.”

Rarity laughed, and so did Gilda. Even Rainbow Dash chuckled softly a bit. Fluttershy wasn’t even distracted.

“It was strange, but I just more or less put it out of my mind and spent the whole day going around town, meeting all sorts of new ponies. When it was getting late, I went home. But when I opened my door, I found, to my amazement, a lot more ponies who were all throwing me a big surprise party.”

“Led by Fluttershy,” Gilda guessed flatly, whirling her finger in the air in false elation.

Twilight smiled gently, and nodded. “Led by the same pink-maned mare I’d first met in Ponyville. She explained to me that she’d done this because I was new and she didn’t want me to feel lonely or anything so she set this party up so I’d have friends.”

“Hmm. Well, I wouldn’t s…” The griffon started.

“Think about all that, for a second, please?” Twilight asked Gilda. “I was a complete stranger to her at the time. First day in Ponyville. Only got to say one word to her. She didn’t even know my name. And yet her first worry was that I’d feel alone and friendless and unwelcome. So to fix that, she rushed to arrange this big surprise party for me, so I’d have lots and lots of friends. And wanna know something else? She will do this for anypony, Gilda. At any time. Heck, she even did it for you, in case you forgot, even when you were mean to her and her friends. Why? Because she is just that sweet-natured and kind.”

Glancing to her side, Twilight witnessed a huge shiver run throughout the whole of Fluttershy’s coat.

“Yeah?” Gilda snorted through the nares on her beak. “Well, those pranks she pulled on me at MY party didn’t feel kind! Like that joy buzzer? The dribble glass? Or that hot sauce…!”

Gilda stopped at Twilight’s laugh. “She actually played the hot sauce trick on me at my own party! And I won’t lie, it really WAS a tongue-scorcher!”

“Gilda? Just a reminder… Those pranks were mine.” Interjected Rarity. “Fluttershy was entirely innocent, she just wanted you to feel welcome and have fun with us... The pranks was supposed to be fun, too, like the stuff we used to always do to each other. I suppose it was my fault again, for not realizing how upset you were feeling then.”

Gilda’s thoughtful expression told Twilight that she never saw it this way before.

“Comedy really is a funny little subject, isn’t it?” she asked the griffon. “Some comedians and clowns simply don’t care what they use for material. Whether dark, cynical, crude or cruel, inappropriate, or just plain idiotic.”

The griffon bristled as though sensing a personal dig. “What’s the matter? You too good for those kinda jokes or something?!”

“Not at all,” the purple unicorn answered. “That type of comedy does have its place in the world. But Fluttershy’s never been like that. Her humor’s always focused on joining others together. Sharing joy. Strengthening bonds.”

Twilight applied a gentle tug of telekinetic magic on Fluttershy’s body, pulling the yellow pegasus up against herself. Placing her arm around the Swapped pony’s shoulder, she smiled at her with fond pride.

“That’s what makes my friend so special. All the Laughter she’s always anxious to share? That’s just how she expresses the bottomless reservoirs of Kindness, deep within her heart.”

* * *

“Wow. When you put it that way, Twilight... makes me feel like one lousy Element of Kindness.”

“Now, now, you shouldn’t take it so personally, Rainbow,” Rarity told her. “There’s more than one way to be kind.”

There were more words, but they washed over the yellow pegasus like the twittering of faraway birds. Fluttershy was deep, deep, deep in thought about that big day, years ago, when she and Twilight had first met. Only her attention was zeroed down on one single aspect of that memory: the emotions that’d been driving her. Doing that was kind of weird. Like sitting in a chair and watching a movie with the volume shut off. Or sitting in a chair and facing the opposite wall while listening to the movie.

Curiosity upon spotting that chariot from almost mile away; the surer she grew that it’d be landing in Ponyville, the harder she’d worked her wings. Gladness at seeing somepony new, face-to-face, especially one with such nice manners about her! Hope that she could make her feel welcome. Shock as she realized that this poor, poor mare had NO FRIENDS in Ponyville! NONE! Well, yes, there was herself, that went without saying.

But when you were all alone, who’d want to make just one friend in a day, when it was possible to make a whole town of friends in the same day? That’d be like being lost and starving in the forest and picking just a single berry off the berry bush! And Fluttershy knew no faster way for a pony to make the most friends in the shortest time than through parties.

Resolve had come next, as she’d flown from neighbor’s door to neighbor’s door, entreating them to drop whatever plans they had for that night, and instead be part of yet another party she was throwing for a complete stranger. Focus had been needed, as she diligently worked herself: baking, decorating, buying… working speedily through the day without rushing into sloppiness.

Ponies often accused Fluttershy of being lazy, immature, and frivolous with all the parties she threw. But it was easy to forget how much work went into parties when you weren’t behind-the-scenes. Yes, Fluttershy enjoyed playing games and eating cake and dancing the night away, but creators ought to enjoy the fruits of their labors, oughtn’t they? Ponies often confused attending many parties with arranging many parties. It was about the same difference as watching many award-winning musicals versus creating many award-winning musicals.

And much like a creator of musicals, Fluttershy had her share of both hits and flops in her party oeuvre. In the end, Twilight Sparkle’s first party had been a teensy bit on the flop-side, what with Twilight locking herself up in her room and refusing to interact with her guests for nearly the whole shebang. But now Fluttershy was able to remember why she’d done it all in the first place. Because newcomers ought to feel welcomed when they came to someplace new.

And from Twilight Sparkle, Fluttershy’s memories jumped further back to the very, very, very FIRST party she’d ever thrown. Because of the joy she’d felt at the sight of a beautiful rainbow. Because of the need she felt to share that joy with the most precious ponies she knew. Her family. The Pies. Daring to hope that it would shake them out of their lifelong dismalness, even for a hour. What a kind and thoughtful deed she’d done. And her incredible success she’d had with Ma and Pa and Marble and Limestone and Maud had been what had set her life’s course and made her cutie mark appear.

SO WHEN EXACTLY HAD SHE LOST SIGHT OF ALL THAT?

Fluttershy couldn’t rightly say. But for these past few months… she really hadn’t been kind. She hadn’t been thoughtful. Nothing whatsoever like the pony Twilight Sparkle had just described to Gilda. Like she’d suddenly transformed into a completely different pony overnight or something. A cheap copycat of her own self. As good as some watered-down cash-in sequel movie made by a director who really didn’t get what made the first film great.

All her dumb, stupid, self-centered focus on jokes. Limp giggles and cheap gags… that’s what she’d been obsessing over! Anything for a laugh. How selfish and needy she’d been. Insensitive to others’ feelings and pain. How had anypony even been able to stand her? Especially her friends, with all she’d put them through?! Fluttershy felt like she could cry forever…

‘Don’t you see you can be a better pony now that you’ve realized your mistake?’

This was a voice Fluttershy heard in her mind. It sounded like... her own. A friendly voice which Fluttershy felt she’d like to get to know better. Almost kinda felt like it was speaking from a deep, far-off, long-forgotten place within herself.

‘But what can I do to fix this?’ she asked it.

No response. Then again, maybe the answer had already been given: be a better pony now. If she had been unkind, then the first thing to do was start being kind. Starting, most importantly, with herself. ...Felt kinda tingly!

Twilight really was right. She’d panicked after hitting something of a humor slump, and overcompensated for fear of no longer being qualified to bear the Element of Laughter. Lero had been able to help improve her technique a bit with all his coaching. But it’d never really been about being the most hilarious wisecracker in the room, had it? What mattered was uniting others through the marvelous miracle of mirth. Forming new bonds and strengthening old ones. The Bearer Of Laughter SHOULD be that kind of a kindhearted pony. Otherwise Laughter wouldn’t properly be an Element of HARMONY, would it?

Throughout Fluttershy’s uncharacteristically long and introspective silence, (mostly unnoticed by the others in the room, who were all chatting between themselves)… Twilight Sparkle had been keeping a discreet eye on her friend’s flank. And then she watched the phenomenon happen with her own eyes.

The Balloon Mark faded briefly on the pegasus’ body, coming just shy of vanishing altogether, before returning right back. Exactly how Lero had described.

* * *

“You see this cut on my ear!” The pony who’d just said this to Lero this was a very frightful-looking earth pony stallion. And not just because he was some actor wearing the costume of some oceans-roving marauder. More because he was very muscular and genuinely angry. Apparently, the fight had pushed the tensions to the point they weren’t willing to keep up a professional veneer. “You can see the cut, Mister M! I got from when I fell down after that griffon broad knocked me down!”

“L-look!” said Lero, holding up his hands, “My girl Twilight is pretty talented with healing spells, just wait for her to get back...”

“It ain’t about that!” snapped the earth pony.

“...It ain’t?” Lero responded reflexively.

“Naw, it ain’t!” cut in one of the others; the mare playing Cap’n Mizzenmast, herself. They’d all cornered Lero in this small little room; all the actors. “Broken Legs, over there, overheard you talkin’ to Miss Punch about how that crazy griffon doll was ‘just an extra stunt show set up in an advance!’ Ain’t that right, Broke?”

“Yeah, that’s right! Heard it loud and clear!” said Broken Legs.

“Thing is, though… I would’ve remembered there being a griffon listed on our call sheet, the morning,” said Cap’n Mizzenmast.

“Uh… well... Gilda wasn’t actually an actress or anything! She was just a... uh… well… um...“ He trailed off, stammering.

“Blanked out on your lines, did ya?” asked the muscular earth pony. “So which of us are you lying to, Mr. Human? Us? Or the lady of the house?” Accusation obvious in his tone.

Scowling as they were, dressed as brigands of the sea, the human almost felt like he was about to be carved up into chum. It suddenly felt very soggy and itchy under the do-rag on his head.

“You know,” he said, “It suddenly struck me that all of you are such a fine troupe of performers, that you all deserve bonus checks right here and now!”

“What a smart thing for you to say,” said Cap’n Mizzenmast. Pretty much all the other actors shared the stony look on her face.

“And I promise you all; you won’t need to worry about any other surprises. Please just… let me through.” They made way for Lero, his arms slumping defeatedly to the sides of his ridiculous costume pantaloons. “Wait right here. I left my checkbook with my real pair of pants.”

“Go ahead and fetch it. We won’t be moving from this spot until you do.” They still glaring at him as he turns to leave.

None of the other actors contradicted Cap’n Mizzenmast, as they watched the human turn the corner before the mare behind Broken Legs asked, “Do you think the thing with that griffon really was an extra stunt show? Or just some crazy gatecrasher?”

“Stunt show,” answered the other pony. “Definitely a stunt show. Moves were too well choreographed.”

“Yeah!” said a tall blue-coated one. “Remember that rainbow-tailed girl who fought the griffon? She’s part of Mr. Two-Legs’ herd, ain’t she? Bet you anything Miss Rainbow Tail herself got bit by the acting bug, then brushed up on all her best Vortex moves, before pulling this off!”

“But why keep us in the dark about it, then?”

“Added realism,” said her friend, darkly. “Just like that one sociopath of a director I told you about, remember? The one who locked me in a sauna for three hours and filmed it all? When the regular guests and the actors are all equally shocked, really raises the drama, doesn’t it? And since Sundance is part of the party… I’m thinking this whole birthday is just one big martial arts superstar audition!”

“She wants to be the next Graceful Crane!”

“Do you want to know what galls me most?” asked the actress playing Cap’n Mizzenmast. “That mother. I mean… I know she sells alcohol for her job, but what a weasel! Did you see how those barrels were marked? The beer bottles they use as cups? All those drunken sea shanties she makes us sing? Wonder why she doesn’t just quit trying to be subliminal about it and pour her stinkin’ hooch straight down their little underaged throats?”

“Bite your tongue!” said the muscular earth pony. “But that said, I’ll tell you one thing; I would never let my own colt within five miles of…!”

“Ohhhh, WOW!” All the actors looked over and saw that weird yellow pegasus jokester standing in the door. “Wow, wow, WOW! I thought I recognized all of you! I just realized where I remembered you guys from! Now you’re all together in the same room! Can I have all your autographs? Please, please, please?” She spoke very fast through a pen and a book clamped in her jaw, until she spotted a small table in the room that she was able to set these things down on. Flipping past several pages full of signatures, she came to a blank page, and looked up to the actor closest to her with a delighted gasp.

“You! You’re Spaghetti West!”

“That… yeah, that’s right,” said Spaghetti West, who hadn’t been expecting any recognition.

“I remember you from The Snail That Ate Equestria!” Fluttershy told him. “Would you sign my autograph book, Mr. West? Date it too, if you please.”

Spaghetti West went ahead, taking the pen in his mouth and writing in today’s date and his name. Fluttershy thanked him and then looked over at the next actor.

“Oh my goodness! Broken Legs!”

“You know me?” asked Broken Legs.

“Of course!” said Fluttershy. “You were in Unexpected Expectations 2!”

“Heh… yeah,” laughed the stallion, “for about nine seconds of screen time!”

“But it was such an amazing nine seconds! You totally stole that scene!” Fluttershy insisted.

“Oooh…we’d best watch ourselves, everypony!” one of the other actors, further back, joked. “We got a real cinephile in our midst!”

Some of the other actors smiled, some rolled their eyes, but even the eye-rolled seemed pleased by the attention Fluttershy was giving them. The yellow pegasus then gave a nervous sort of swallow. “Could you… would you say the line from that again, Mr. Legs? Pretty please?”

A guilty-looking smile wormed its way up Broken Legs’ face, before he adapted a disaffected attitude. “Vhatever. Dat vas not MY schnitzel anyvay, schweinhund!”

Several of the other actors giggled at the sheer corniness of his Germane accent. He very gladly put his name into Fluttershy’s autograph book.

“And you I remember from…” Fluttershy frowned a bit at the green-coated mare now she had now turned towards. “...from, uh…”

“I’m not from anything,” this mare informed her. “Done some theater, but I’m very new to the feature film scene. Haven’t had a chance to be part of any movie production yet.”

To the entire troupe’s astonishment, Fluttershy’s eyes only shown with ever more starstruck light at hearing this. As though learning that a lovely necklace she’d thought to be stainless steel was actually sterling silver.

“Ohmygosh, ohmyGOSH!” Fluttershy breathed. “Then I have to get your autograph!”

“Er… okay…”

As the green-coated mare wrote down the name ‘Panorama’ and the date, the actress playing Cap’n Mizzenmast tromped up to Fluttershy with a scowl. “Okay, what is this? More of your stupid humor?”

“I’m not sure what you mean by that, Miss Roadshow,” answered Fluttershy, startling ‘Cap’n Mizzenmast’ with knowing her real name. Before her current breakout role, she was an unknown, and even big fans tended to refer to her by her character’s name.

Roadshow narrowed her eyes at this, smiled coldly, suspecting they were being buttered up. “This whole time we’ve been setting this party up, you’ve haven’t really done anything to try to get to know us, unless cracking those jokes of yours is supposed to count somehow. Now, all of a sudden, you’re being all palsy-walsy?”

Fluttershy sat down. “It took me a while to remember who each of you were, and which movies I’ve seen you from. I’m actually super-good at learning lots and lots of ponies’ names. I never really forget any name, even if I’ve seen it just once! And nopony deserves to be forgotten. That’s why I always sit through the credits at the end of movies. I’ve always been that way!”

“Please! Even if you’re the biggest film nerd to’ve ever been born, we’re nothing but a bunch of extras! Background characters!” All around her, Roadshow’s fellow performers were hanging their heads or scowling in frustration and shame. “Not like Sundance would send her A-listers for some dumb filly’s birthday… why are you smiling, you crazy yellow birdbrain?!”

“Because I’m just so excited about collecting all your autographs before you’re all A-listers yourselves! Y’know, you’ll all be so rich and famous, that you’ll come to hate signing stuff. So it makes sense that I get all your autographs while autographs are still a new, fresh and exciting thing for you. I mean…”

And Fluttershy sidled up next to Panorama while flipping open her autograph book.

“I got The Panorama’s autograph before she even performed in her first movie! She dated it for me and everything! How cool is that?! Do you guys know how valuable this is gonna be in a couple years? Not that I’d ever sell it, it reminds me of the time we met!”

Panorama, herself, blushed a bright pink, while all the other ponies -- these movie extras who’d been pressed into performing for a birthday party -- stared. Transfixed, because Fluttershy had touched upon a nerve they all shared: the desperate dream of stardom that had brought them all together here. Until the silence was finally broken by somewhat nervous laughter from Spaghetti West.

“Ha ha ha… you sound so certain of yourself when you say that, miss. Almost like you just came back from the future in a time machine…”

“A time machine?” Fluttershy shook her head. “Why would I need a time machine? It couldn’t be more obvious right here and now that you’re all gonna be big stars.”

“Don’t patronize us!” Roadshow nearly snarled, looking ready to do even worse than Gilda had tried to do.

Fluttershy’s smile only softened to a faint thing. But it was there. Strong with faith and conviction.

“None of you are gonna be small actors forever,” she told them all. “Just like all the little colts and fillies at this party won’t be small foals forever. You’re all going to grow and grow much bigger! Beyond anything anypony would’ve ever expected! And someday, when these very colts and fillies are all grownups themselves, they’ll point to the posters of the blockbusters you’ll be starring in. And they’ll tell their foals, ‘I knew those ponies.’ And the foals will be all ‘No WAY!’ but they’ll be all, ‘YES, way! I saw them performing live, when they were just starting out! Coolest pirates ever.”

* * *

The checkbook wasn’t in Lero’s old pants. The checkbook wasn’t in the bag he’d stowed his pants in. It wasn’t in the room he’d left the bag that contained his pants. And Lero was careful about looking. While he searched, lifting sofa cushions and pushing sofas, his mind cast back to something he’d seen just a few rooms away; Spike crouched in a corner, unhappily hugging himself. Lero would have liked nothing more than to go over and try and do something to cheer the little dragon back up. But it was all he could do to hurry past and overhear his little brother’s quavering, distraught realization; “With Fluttershy gone... Applejack won’t...’”

These rotten actors had to come first. They’d gone on strike, and if he didn’t fatten their wallets, guests would notice. Then this whole birthday party would be further down the sinkhole than it already was. Gilda tearing the place apart and scaring everypony had been appalling enough. But now Lero had needed to remind himself that he’d dealt with much worser things that this, like glufferflorks and Sicklefins. Fluttershy had just flown off from the huge expensive party that was supposed to bring her equilibrium, nothing more! Thing could be vastly worse. After all, nobody had died! Twilight and Rarity would surely find Fluttershy and bring her back before the party ended, and everything would be fine, fine, fine! As long as there was life, there was hope, of course!

And if worst comes to worst, three Swapped Ponies out of five is still pretty good, right?

At the very least, he had to keep the party going for Berry and Ruby’s sakes, even if Fluttershy was a complete bust. They didn’t deserve to have their big special day go down in flames, just because his goals weren’t going well. It was all on him, he had promised. He was the stallion, after all. The pillar who held the rest up. The lynchpin who held the rest together. Just needed to keep it together and things wouldn’t fall further apart and no one would hate him and goddammit, where was that stupid checkbook?! Felt like he’d been searching for it for an hour now…!

Oh. Here it was. Right in the front pocket of the pirate pantaloons he was wearing. Yes. He was a giant idiot.

Feeling wobbly and shaken, Lero started back to the room where the actors had been gathered. He startled at what had seemed to be a flash of pink and yellow… but when he looked about, he didn’t see anything- except Spike was now gone. He shook his head, confused, but continued outside… He stopped short when he found the spot in the yard he’d left them to be empty. No actors?! Had they all just up and left?! He hadn’t taken that long finding his checkbook! Repressing a foul string of profanity, he hurried into the main party hall… which he discovered to be only slightly less abandoned than the actors’ room had been.

“Hey! W-where is everypony?” he asked the two mares still hanging around the snack tables. One of them pointed towards the right before returning to gorging herself on cookies.

Lero went right. He was starting to hear a lot of voices. A lot of noises. It seemed to be all coming from…

...the backyard.

“First row of cannons… fire!” bellowed Spaghetti West. A trio of the other pirate actor lit a trio of fuses: BOOM! BOOM! BOOM!

Lero was momentarily shocked until he realized that nothing had actually come out of the cannons except smoke and bright flashes. Even the loud booms hadn’t quite matched up with the cannon blasts; they’d probably been supplied by some foley artist.

“Scupper me boatswain, Captain!” cried Panorama, who seemed to be playing a first mate. “Our cannon balls have jest bounced offa thar hull! We bein’ boarded!”

“Aaaaaaaaarrrrrggggghh!” cried Spaghetti West. “Look alive, ye scabrous rats!”

And in they rushed from ‘stage right,’ (for lack of a better term.) A few costumed adults, but all the young foals who were Ruby Pinch’s age, including Spike and Ruby, herself.

Spike… Spike had taken off that ‘carny boy’ outfit AJ had made for him, and was wearing the swashbuckling pirate lad outfit. If Spike was still heartbroken over Applejack not being here, he was doing one damn fine job of hiding it; because that was one cocky smirk! He and all the other children had their blades drawn: made of plastic and yellow foam and bright pink balloons.

“Rudder me crow’s nest!” the evil pirate captain swore with a fearsome stamp. “Tis that rotten li'l sea urchin: Cap’n Ruby Pinch and her Foal Flotilla!”

“Avast! Tis I, Ruby the Redstained!” proclaimed Ruby adorably, in her high, squeaky voice. “I want yer gold coins and booty!”

“Somehow, I be doubtin’ ye be stained HALF as red as Captain Bloodhoof, little Ruby!” laughed Spaghetti West evilly. “This cutlass o’ mine has slaughtered countless foul whelps like yeself! Our ship has ransacked thousands of villages! I’m feared across every ocean, sea, bay, quay, wharf, river and puddle! I am also known for killing everything I see!”

“Then why don’t ye go look in a mirror, ya great ugly cuttlefish?”

She swung onto the scene like Tarzan on his vine, clenching the rope in her teeth until it was time to release it, and landed action heroine-style: Cap’n Mizzenmast, as enthusiastically portrayed by Roadshow the actress.

“Methinks we’ll be taking back all of Ruby’s rubies ya helped yerself to!” said Mizzenmast, pointing her sword tip at a giant treasure chest just behind Bloodhoof.

Captain Bloodhoof finally drew his own weapon. “Yarrrrrr, ye won’t be gettin’ the treasure so easily as that! I’ll hang ya by the yardarms! I’ll make ye walk the plank! I’ll send ye to the bleakest, blackest bowels of the bottomless briny blue!”

“Don’t be so sure!” retorted the pirate heroine, turning to the kid dragon. “Mr. Spike? A smokescreen, if you please!”

“Aye-aye, Cap’n Mizzenmast!” answered Spike, with a deep inhale.

Spike was a dragon with excellent control of his breath. Mailing fire, incendiary fire, harmless smoke... he never had problems switching between any of them. But he was still far too small of a dragon to produce this much smoke! There had to be some specially-placed smoke machine, or a unicorn stagehand casting a spell, for it covered nearly the entire backyard!

And through the concealment of the stage smoke came the cartoonish yipes and yowls of a thuggish pirate crew getting their flanks handed to them by colts and fillies not yet out of elementary school. Armed with toys. And all around Lero, the parents in the audience were just eating it all up; laughing and laughing and laughing fit to burst!

What was going on?! Lero happened to spot a couple actors nearby, who weren’t part of this production, and he quietly sidled over to where they were, asking them.

“Puttin’ on a show, like were were hired to.” The actor replied.

Lero frowned slightly. “Uh, I finally found my checkbook,” he whispered. “What do you think would be a fair amount?”

He wondered why they started trading such uncomfortable looks.

“Listen, Mr. M,” began the muscular actor, “it’s okay. You’re already paying me more than enough, I don’t need any more.”

Before Lero could even say ‘Huh?’, the orange-maned actress beside him added, “Yeah, I mean, we’re all here for the little foals’ sake, aren’t we?”

Lero was left more flummoxed than ever.

First these actors demanded more money, then suddenly, they were okay? Could he even trust what they were saying at face value? They were actors, after all. Fakers. Pretenders. What if they had cooked up some mean-spirited plan, and this show of niceness was just a setup? He had to watch them carefully, he couldn’t let his guard down, he couldn’t risk any…!

“You’re doing it wrong, you know.” When had Fluttershy gotten to his side so quickly?! He hadn’t even heard her wings flap, it was like she’d teleported or something!

“Wrong?” he repeated, trying to hide his surprise.

“You’re trying your best to make this party perfect,” Fluttershy stated, matter-of-factly. “But you’ve gotten high-strung, Lero. Completely stressed out too, and worst of all, you’re not enjoying yourself. Guests want to see that the ones hosting the party are having the most fun of all! Otherwise, it’s like having to read a book authored by somepony who never wanted to write it!”

“I…”

“Don’t feel bad, though. It’s an easy thing to forget. Take it from somepony who’s been there.” Then Fluttershy spread her wings out. “Just relax and enjoy my show.”

As Lero quieted down beside the yellow pegasus, watching the performance finish with Ruby Pinch open up her giant chest of rubies beside Cap’n Mizzenmast to thunderous applause, all while all of Bloodhoof’s pirates walked the plank… it occurred to him that Fluttershy hadn’t even tried to say anything remotely comedic. Then a voice behind him called his name: “Lero!”

It was Twilight. She trotted forward, and he opened his arms to receive her. She was smiling with a pride in herself he hadn’t seen in far too long.

“Four down, one to go,” Twilight Sparkle whispered into her human stallion’s ear.

And Lero Michealides laughed.

Author's Note

This one was a LONG time in coming, for many reasons. I'd moved to a new state, adjusted to a new job, and had to research a LOT about parties, in order to properly elevate this one above "generic cake and candles."

Lots of thanks, once again, to all my editing team: Bad Wolf, Spinel Stride, and Rikmach, especially.

And huge thanks to all of you, my patient readers. I hope you liked this one.

Thirty-Seven: Forbidden Knowledge

Berry Punch and her daughter, Ruby Pinch, had both been born on the same calendar day. When they’d brought that giant cake of hers out, Berry had sung Happy Birthday right next to Ruby. She had blown out the six candles together with her daughter, eaten two slices, and enjoyed every second of it, (Well, except the part with the griffon.)

That said, the extravagant cake hadn’t really been both their cake. Not a one-dessert-for-both-mother-and-daughter kind of cake. That specific cake had really been Ruby’s alone. Berry Punch had her own birthday cake. Unfortunately, Ruby wouldn’t be able to share it, because Berry’s party was strictly adults-only.

Herd Caramel had sent out double invitations to all their guests; one for Ruby’s party in the early afternoon, and the other for Berry’s party from sunset-onward, with special instructions to RSVP which of the parties they’d be willing to attend. Each invitation assured parents that a special supervised camp had been set up for their foals to sleep through the night, (should they choose to make use of it,) freeing them to continue on through the night.

Some members of the hired help who had assisted with Ruby’s party were dragging their hooves at this point. A second shift of helpers arrived on time to relieve them. Under more normal circumstances, everypony on the first shift would’ve been altogether glad to switch out and return home. Instead, only a quarter of the first shift helpers left, and most with considerable reluctance. The rest were happy to stay on after their shift. Why?

Fluttershy. Lero watched her in action, (heck, they were ALL watching her in action, Exempted and Bewitched alike,) and it was like watching a certain young Kent boy moments after he had discovered his ability to fly. Coupled with all the happy, friendly, enthusiastic joy-for-life of Ebenezer Scrooge upon that glorious Christmas morning.

Calling it a ‘second wind’ would be misleading: her energy was just far too boundless. Before, Fluttershy had only been able to bungle her way into provoking reluctant, mostly-uncomfortable laughter from ponies around her. Now, like a butterfly in a flower field, she was flitting easy from pony to pony and group to group. To anyone watching her from a bird’s eye view, it might almost seem like she bouncing between them all with no rhyme or reason: a pinball on wings.

However, what it really was... well, she seemed to’ve picked up an uncanny, nearly telepathic sense of when it was exactly the right time to approach ponies. And then insert herself into their conversations, (or drum up conversations, in the case of individuals.) Young or old, male or female, introverted or extroverted.

She’d easily get guests to talk about whatever fascinated them, or share things that fascinated her, and leave them eager to learn more. She’d introduce ponies to one another: ponies who would’ve otherwise remained perfect strangers for the rest of their lives, were finding themselves opening up to one another like lifelong pals. She’d suggest the best cookies and snacks to taste for indecisive eaters.

For the remainder of Ruby’s party, she must’ve come up with at least five different pirate-themed games, on the spot, that the colts and fillies really got into. All naturally, even subtly, without ever stealing the spotlight away from either of the birthday girls.

In short, for a party that was already the best which money could buy, Fluttershy was breathing fresh new life into the whole celebration and everyone participating in it. Brightening everything she touched. Joyous, inexhaustible, and thirsty for more. So different than the stilted, awkward mare from before; the yellow pegasus might as well have been born anew.

Eventually, though, Celestia lowered her sun down once, again, and all the youngsters were assembled by the front door with at least one herdparent, (including Spike.) There, Cap’n Mizzenmast informed them she’d be escorting all her ‘fine young shipmates’ to the dorm that had been set up for them, (or rather, the “Crew’s Quarters.”) A few other foals were brought home, if they lived nearby or their folks chose to leave the party, or to the inn, for out-of-towners if they chose not to utilize the dorm for the foal. Of the parents that chose to leave Herd Caramel’s house, pretty much all of them were regretful.

New guests started trickling in; those without foals, or simply weren’t comfortable bringing them, attendees of Berry Punch’s party specifically. Frequent customers, business connections and drinking buddies who wouldn’t have had any place at a kid’s party.

There were definitely far fewer guests attending the mother’s party than the daughter’s. That suited Berry Punch just fine. And it wasn’t as though the hired help would need to switch the decor over to a space station or a haunted mansion or anything. Berry was perfectly content to maintain her daughter’s pirate theme. But where Ruby Pinch had been the adventuring swashbuckler, Berry Punch would be playing the role best suited to her: The tavern wench.

Out went the games and activities, and in came the booze. Swill fit for the saltiest shipload of scofflaws on shore leave. Grog, rum, rye, mead, brandy, and whiskey, in kegs and bottles, in stiens, and mixed into so much of the food.

“Designated Cart Pullers” -- those family members who’d assumed responsibility of carting their drunken loved ones home, in case they chose not to bunk at the house in provided cots -- hadn’t been forgotten. A special table had been set aside for them, full of virgin cocktails, tap water, and unspiked food. All tasty, and yet there were hints of mockery in the birthday girl’s eyes whenever she glanced at that table: a boozehound’s scorn for teetotalers. Still, they had their uses- more ponies partying thanks to them.

For everypony else, there was a practical menagerie of booze. Such as a giant fishbowl full of ocean-blue liqueur. Gummy fish floated within this liqueur, along with a cute rubber octopus whose tentacles dangled out of the fishbowl’s sides. Plum rum cakes too. Key lime pie spiced with mulled wine. Ice-cold sangria in hollowed-out coconut shells and pineapple husks, not to mention Berry Punch’s birthday cake!

Berry had picked out a ‘Rum Runner Cake’ for herself. Three times smaller than the goliath that’d been baked for her daughter… but what the delicious buttercream rum cake had lacked in size, it made up for in liquor: it contained black rum, coconut rum, blackberry brandy, and banana liqueur.

The last time Lero Michealides had let himself drink freely, it’d been a very different scenario; drowning his sorrows after terrifying poor Rainbow Dash into locking him out her bedroom, and by extension, her life. He proceeded to make a royal ass out of himself and terrify a family of innocent bakers until the point a certain Draconequus took pity on him. Tonight was a very different night, though.

“You sure you don’t wanna taste of this, Dashie?” he asked the rainbow-maned pegasus seated beside him.

With a soft shake of her head at the cup he held out, she said, “No thanks. I’m good with what I have.” And she sipped up some more virgin strawberry daquiri through a straw.

Lero peered at the liquid he was drinking. “So pirates used to drink this here rumbo stuff?” Tiny waves and ripples formed when he span the cup about.

“‘Bumbo,’ And yes, they did. I consulted several reference guides on the era of piracy which this party draws inspiration from,” said Twilight, as though Lero would award her extra credit for it. “There’s a modern variation, but I had them use the historically accurate recipe: rum, sugar, water, and nutmeg.”

“You’d think such a rough-and-tumble bunch as pirates would’ve come up with a less sillier-sounding name,” observed Rarity, who’d been sporting a lopsided smile ever since she’d eaten that third vodka-soaked tart thing.

“Yeah. ‘Bumbo’ is just… dumbo. Jumbo dumbo. What a clown calls himself, not a drink.” And Lero swigged down the rest of his bumbo. ”I am drinking liquified clown.”

Giggling, Rainbow Dash leaned against the tipsy human. “You’re terrible, Lero. Absolutely terrible.”

“The worst there ever was,” he agreed. The rainbow-maned pegasus leaned into him more, and the two shared a smooch.

“Y’know, Gilda should try some of this hooch!” he decided, looking past all the other mares with him at his table. Be cool to see what Miss Griffon thinks! Where is Gilda, anyway?”

Twilight, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Lyria all exchanged looks.

Lero wasn’t quite sloshed enough to miss this. “...What?”

“She’s… She’s in jail, Lero.” Rarity replied. “We convinced her to turn herself in.”

“Jail?” asked Lero, wondering if he heard right over some of the other boisterously loud drunks also talking at their own tables. “What? Why? How?”

“Well… This is how it happened…” Twilight started.

* * *

“So, think we can still sneak back into the party?” Gilda asked. “I can't believe how much booze they were loading up in the back on my way in! I sure as heck want to be there when they tap those.”

The ponies looked uncomfortably at each other. “You’d… be kinda conspicuous.”

“Er, yes.” Rarity concerned.

“Actually…” Rainbow Dash chewed her lips. “You… you should probably, um, well, turn yourself in. Cause you're kinda, well, wanted by the cops.”

“WHAT?!” Gilda squawked, her wings spreading angrily. “You guys claim to be my friends, and now you want me to turn myself into the pigs!? “

“Well!” Fluttershy responded. “It’s because we want to keep being friends!”

Gilda blinked in confusion. “...What.”

“Gilda, you’re wanted by the cops!” Rarity replied. “If you turn yourself in right now, we could get you clemency by saying it was all a misunderstanding, especially with Lyra backing us up.”

“And after the party’s over, It’d be easy to convince Berry not to press charges, especially since you just made the part super-dramatic and didn’t cause any real damage!” Fluttershy chirped in.

“Yeah, but I’d still spend a night in the Pokey, what could possibly make it worth it?” She snapped.

“Because… If you don’t, you’ll be a wanted criminal here in Ponyville, and the police will be after you every time you visit.”

“And that’d make it really really really hard to be friends!” Fluttershy added.

“Yeah. Getting arrested for drinking in a saloon…” Rarity started.

“...or pranking people…” added Fluttershy.

“...or sparring…” included Rainbow Dash.

“...really puts a crimp in a good time.” concluded Twilight.

Gilda paused, staring at the ponies, and sighed deeply, grumbling some very unkind things under her breath, finishing with something that sounded like ‘stupid ponies making sense’, before she let out a loud sigh. “Fine. Fine. I’ll turn myself in. I’ve spent a day in the joint for worse reasons.”

“Great!” Flutteshy proinked over, and before she could react, wrapped her in a big hug. She started to protest, but before she could, she found herself hugged by Rainbow Dash as well, then Rarity.

“...The things I do for you ponies.”

* * *

“So, after that, we took her to the police station.” Twilight finished.

The mood was somber, all the ponies looking downcast. So was Lero. Forgiving Gilda for everything she’d done at this house was amazingly easy for him, once he’d learned what a crucial factor she’d been towards helping Fluttershy achieve her equilibrium. They had a lot to thank the griffon for… and a trip to the slammer felt like a lousy way to repay all that! All the same, though, crimes were crimes.

“We gotta help her get out in the morning right away, otherwise we’re a bunch of jerks.” he noted.

“Yeah, we’ll make sure.” Twilight nodded.

All of a sudden, Lero felt a little bit silly; getting this mopey over Gilda of all people, especially over problems she brought on herself. Sure, they owed her one, helping with Fluttershy’s Equilibrium, but they were at a party. Not a time for being a gloomy gus right now. Worry about the griffon tomorrow.

“Hope you girls don’t mind, but I think I’m gonna grab myself a few extra snacks,” he said, with a warm smile. “Maybe mingle with the other guests a bit too.”

“Nah, have fun, Big Guy!” Rainbow Dash and the others shifted their chairs and gave him space to find his feet as he left their table.

Lero got himself some cannonball cookies from the designated cart-pullers’ table. Food slowed down the body’s absorption of alcohol, after all, so he ate them without sitting down. The same pirate musicians from Ruby’s party were still playing at Berry’s, over by front wall. They weren’t singing sea shanties anymore, it was just a mellow, tropical-sounding instrumental piece fit for a Hawaiian-themed restaurant back on Earth.

Of course, the other guests were drinking. They even had a burly earth pony standing off to the side whom Lero recognized as a local bouncer. But there was also lots of lively, happy chat taking place at their tables, too. The liveliest was Fluttershy’s; twice as many ponies were packed around her table as there were seating arrangements.

Lero wasn’t nearly close enough to eavesdrop on their conversation, but there were two sad-looking older biddies, whose faces grew less and less sorrowful the longer Fluttershy talked to them. Finally, the biddies hugged each other, and the whole table burst into that same breed of laughter that had been erupting on and off since early afternoon. Laughter that didn’t even need a punchline. The natural laughter that came when careworn hearts found themselves surrounded by kindly friends, old and new. The kind of laughter that asked: What was I so worried about? So fearful of? Did I really think I was so alone?

Lero could tell how pleased Fluttershy was by this reaction. These eyes met, and she gave him a tiny wave and a wink. Lero waved back, but decided he’d come by later and talk with her when she was a little less crowded.

Then his eyes turned to all the card players. There were more than a few tables and which card games were taking place. A blackjack game, a poker game… and one lone unicorn mare at her own table, shuffling a deck of her own. Like she was about to start a solitaire match with herself. Deciding that this mare could probably use some friendly company, Lero came up to her.

“Can I join?” he asked, sitting across from her. “Maybe we could play a two-player game?”

It was only then that Lero properly noticed the crystal ball cutie mark she sported.

“Ahhhh, greetings, fate seeker.” Her voice was a cat’s purr of a Slavic accent. “You stand before Madame Amethyst, to whom the cards reveal all.”

Then Madame Amethyst did a neatly theatrical telekinetic trick. All the cards she’d been shuffling fanned out behind her in the formation of a peacock’s tail-feathers. No spades, no clubs, no diamonds or hearts… but Lero did see coins and wands and cups and swords, plus a few unusual ones that weren’t of any suit… Lero suddenly recognized what he was looking at: this was a pony Tarot deck.

The human stopped short in surprise before remembering that this lady was one of the actresses they’d hired. She’d been cast as the fortune teller; Lero had passed her tent several times while giving piggyback rides to foals.

“I… I’m sorry, I thought this was, y’know, a card game…”

Pouting in disappointment, the fortune teller dropped her accent. “Aw, come on, please?” Her real voice was much more ‘American midwestern’ instead of Slavic, and higher-pitched. “I’ve done ponies, I’ve done griffins, but this might be the only chance I ever get to tell a human’s fortune! I’ve been hoping all day long you’d step into my tent, so… pretty please?”

How strange. Even if the ‘mystic gypsy’ routine was just a performance, this actress lady seemed to take her card readings seriously! After a moment's thought… well, why not? It was all in good fun!

“Was my coming foretold?” he asked her wryly.

“Your coming was inevitable, fate seeker,” she assured him, all Slavic silkiness again. “Be seated, please.”

Lero sat before ‘Madame Amethyst.’ The way she shuffled her cards was so fast, so unfollowable, he knew he’d’ve been just as spellbound if he’d been born a unicorn himself.

“Pick three cards,” she instructed, laying them face-down on their table.

Lero did so. Madame Amethyst pushed these three cards closer towards Lero, while the remaining ones were reshuffled back into Madame Amethyst’s deck. Lero really wasn’t that familiar with the Tarot, though he knew that one of its cards was Death.

“Reveal the first card, fate seeker. The card that reveals your past.”

Gamely, Lero flips the first card over. It was titled ‘The Lovers’ and showed a mare and stallion intertwined with one another lovingly. But the card was also completely upside-down. He reached forward to flip it the right way around, but Madame Amethyst stopped him with a hoof upon his hand.

“No. Leave it.”

“But it’s…”

“Upside-down, yes, I know. But that is no accident, fate seeker.” The fortune teller insisted, lifting her hoof and straightening in her seat. “In the proper upright position, The Lovers represents unity, harmony, affection, good relationships, and yes… romantic love. Inverted, as you see it is now, it signifies the exact opposite. Separation instead of unity. Disharmony, friction, divisiveness... also duplicity, serious internal conflict, possibly even infidelity.”

The fortune-teller’s amethyst-colored eyes pierced right through Lero.

“Did you, perhaps, experience a bad breakup in your past? Strife within your family?”

“...Both,” said Lero, stunned, immediately hating himself for blurting this out.

She nodded, then pointed to the middle card. “Turn over the next card, fate seeker. The card which illuminates your present.”

The next one was not upside-down.

“Ahhh… The Magician, is it?” She sounded impressed as she studied the unicorn shown on the card… Lero frowned at he noted a familiar silver beard and belled hat...

“I don’t know why I got this. I’m not magical.”

Madame Amethyst rolled her eyes. “If I had five bits for every time an earth pony, griffon and donkey that said that to me when they drew The Magician…” She let out a breath, recollecting her mystical mystique.

“In the same way that The Lovers represents more than love alone, The Magician stands for much more than mere conjuration. It also represents great effort and determination in the pursuit of a goal. Working with energy and energizing others. Taking risks, seizing hold of your own potential… and creating a most magical miracle as an outcome.”

By now, Lero was almost ready to suspect that this might be Discord in disguise, like he'd done with Spike. Except he was pretty certain Discord would have broken character by now, or else gone completely over-the-top.

“It would seem you’ve been… busy lately. Striving to fix the problems of all the most precious people in your life, I wouldn’t doubt.” Here, she tapped the upside-down Lovers card.

“Pretty much,” he said, remembering all the strength and endurance he’d needed to dredge up from within himself… how amazingly different all their lives looked now, compared to when the Swap had begun.

“Ponies who draw the upright Magician in the present are always real go-getters. Chariots are like that too. I tend to like them. Now, turn over the third card, O Strange Wayfarer From Realms Unknowable! Let us lift the veil of secrets surrounding your future!”

He was too nervous to laugh at her hamminess. He felt halfway certain that he was going to draw the Death card; it’d be just like that one stupid B-movie he once saw! Instead, the title of the upright-facing card he drew was…

“Oooh! Judgement, huh?” a perky, bubbly voice asked from right by his ear. His skeleton felt ready to jump out of his skin. He turned around in his chair and came face-to-face with Fluttershy. How long had she been standing there, listening in?”

“Does that mean somepony’s gonna be passing judgement on you, Lero?” Fluttershy asked. “Or that you’re gonna have to be making a big judgement soon? Ooooh, maybe you’ll get falsely accused of murder, and Philomena will be the only one who believes you and she’ll be your lawyer! The Phoenix who’s Right!” She let out a giggle like she’d told an incredible joke.

Her face was pure kindness, and almost childish innocence, but Lero felt himself on edge. Like some chief of police on a cop show, cornered by a very nosey and dangerous reporter.

“Atten...shun all you wallyscags!” Berry Punch hollered out, managing to slur her words despite yelling at the top of her lungs. “Aghast, me smarties!”

Quickly enough, everyone stopped what they were doing and turned to face the lady of the hour. Berry had donned a huge, gaudy pirate captain’s hat, that went poorly with her tavern wench getup. Even after everyone else had quieted down, she delayed a few more seconds to roughly rub a hoof against her temple. When she spoke again, it was with less mangled words.

“I’d like to thank all you for being at my birthday. Great seeing so many old familiar faces here and… I’ve drunk way too much to really remember how the rest goes, but I’m supposed to thank Herd Deep Pockets over there, for digging deep into their moneybags for lil' ol' me.”

She pointed straight at Lero, frowning to see that he was with Fluttershy and the fortune teller, eventually finding his four mares at their own table and waving at them. “All this you did for me and Ruby too was… nice. Super nice. Supernice, that’s what you are! I’ll knock the lights outta any pony who says otherwise! That’s a promise!”

“Big round of applause for Herd B!” Fluttershy cheered.

The party room filled with the stomping of back hooves and the clapping of forehooves. All the members of Herd Bellerophon smiled politely around at the other guests.

“Now that’s done with...” Berry continued, as the applause was dying down. “I’d like to challenge you all to the big main event I’ve been really excited about: the Drinking Contest of Ultimate Destiny!”

Then Berry pointed at a pirate actress who’d been quietly standing off to the side. This was a young pegasus; Lero remembered her name being Take Three.

“She says the rest now,” Berry mumbled, then tottered over to her chair. Her butt very nearly missed it, and she had to scoot to center herself on the seat.

Take Three had either drunk very little alcohol this night or none at all, for she faced the audience with clean sobriety in her eyes; intently in character. She spoke to them with the contemptuous sneer a pirate would use on a bunch of captured navy sailors while leading them to the brig.

“That’s right! To all you sorry sons of stingrays and all you dim-witted daughters of dogfish in this room who believe yourselves to be better drinkers than our unsinkable Cap’n Berry Punch...! Fillies and colts, the birthday girl challenges you prove yourselves in the Drinking Contest of Ultimate Destiny!”

They all looked over to the birthday girl, who was nodding fiercely as she dipped her head down towards another slice of cake.

“Who among you has the brazen audacity to stand up and participate in this tumultuous tournament of tosspots?” Take Three asked. “If your spine’s not made of jellyfish jelly, stand up and stake your claim!”

A banana-yellow out-of-towner rose at once. “It’s on, Berry!”

“Right behind ya!” said a pea-green pegasus next to her.

“I’ll drink you under the table, Berry!” vowed Mrs. Cake, with a big aggressive smile that left Mr. Cake and everypony else who knew her flabbergasted.

He spotted Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash, both motioning him over towards their table.

Hey, Lero? an inner voice of his asked himself. After all the challenges you’ve already faced, you’re not gonna take the wallflower’s way out on this challenge, are you? Chickening out would be a bad habit to get back into, wouldn’t it? Come on! It’s just a drinking contest!

Lero stood up with his hand raised. “Yeah, count me in!”

“Lero?!” he heard Twilight exclaim from her table.

“Aw, c’mon, Twi, let Fingers have some fun!” Lyra giggled deeply right while she kissed Twilight on her lips.

“Me too!” said Pinkie Pie, rolling her shoulder muscles as she stood. “Ah’m beat’n ya’ll at yer own game, Berry!”

After a few more guests volunteered, all the contestants were instructed to sit together at a long table up by the front of the room. Two treasure chests were floated out from behind a door; one footstool-sized, the other enormous. The smaller chest was opened first.

“Behold! The Barkeep’s Bonanza!” Take Three stood back so the audience could see how chock-full of folded up paper slips it was. “The Barkeep’s Bonzana contains a treasure trove of cocktail recipes, assembled from every ocean where the skull and crossbones fly!” she explained to everyone, before turning to face the contestants. “Now here be the rules, mateys! First: Before each round, we’re gonna shake the Barkeep’s Bonanza up, and Cap’n Berry’s gonna reach in and select a piratey cocktail at random to serve you all.”

From behind all his many bottles, the mixologist they’d hired gave a quick little wave at everyone around him.

“I’ll be acting as referee,” Take Three continued. “You’ll all have fifteen seconds to drink each cocktail fully. Meaning there ain’t nothing left in the cups. Anything spat out, barfed up, or spilled out, and you’re disqualified.”

Pinkie Pie sat next to Lero, smirking like a big sister smirked at a little brother who’d bitten off more than he could chew.

“All competitors must be seated and awake in their chairs throughout the contest. Fall asleep and you’re disqualified. Fall out of your chair, and you’re disqualified. Leave your chair, and that’s a forfeiture. That includes having to take a leak! You hold it while on my watch!”

Lero was aware he was already drunk. But it was still at the level of a pleasant buzz. Some of his competitors were already nodding off, as though for one of Twilight’s more boring lectures.

“We’ll keep this up until only one pony’s still standing. That pony will be known as Cap’n Berry’s Worthy Rival, who then gets to participate in a final drinking duel against Cap’n Berry, herself! Winner gets to walk home with the pricelessly invaluable booty contained within the Chest of Mysteries.”

On cue, several of the other actors surrounded the larger chest, and went, “Oooooohhhh!” passing each other intrigued and highly curious looks.

“Everypony got that?” Almost all the contestants nodded at Take Three. “Then, Cap’n Berry, will you start us off?”

The handles on the ‘Barkeep’s Bonanza’ were suitable for a pony mouth to clamp down on. Watching Berry Punch shake it about put Lero in mind of a dog shaking a knotted rope about. Then Berry set the chest down, nosed it open, and picked out one of the papers.

“First up is ‘Anchors Aweigh!’ Triple sec, bourbon, peach brandy, cherry brandy, and a touch of half-and-half!”

A unicorn floated the recipe from Berry over to the mixologist. Soon enough, Lero Michealides and everyone else competing to be Berry’s worthy rival had thick, peach-colored drinks served to them. Take Three didn’t bring out a stopwatch or anything; she just counted down verbally from fifteen.

Lero downed the sweet smoothie of a cocktail in one motion, first across the proverbial finish line. A cheer went up from the mares of Herd Bellerophon, and quite a few other ponies, besides. Every one of the others also slugged down their Anchors Aweigh within the time limit.

“Well done, my prince!” Rarity’s voice rang out.

“Wish I could’ve tasted some of that! But there’ll be plenty good drinks left once my worthy…” Then Berry’s eyes briefly glazed over before she shook herself back awake. “...once my worthy rival is revealed! Won’t compete against anyone but a champion drinker, not on my special birthday, no sir.”

While Berry moved to shake up the Barkeep’s Bonanza chest again, Lero felt his cheeks begin to glow; all that brandy and bourbon was taking its effect.

“Next cocktail is ‘Mare Overboard!’”

Thunk! The banana-yellow mare had fallen off her chair. She came back awaken at once, and scrambled back up to her hooves, but Berry laughed and called out, “Lucky we’re not really at sea! Then it really would’ve been ‘Mare Overboard!’ Ha ha! Sorry, Butter Stick, you’re gonna have to go!”

Once Butter Stick had staggered back to the table she’d been sitting at, Berry read off her paper slip again: “Mare Overboard,” which's got pomegranate juice, herbal liqueur, sugar, cognac, and more triple sec!”

Lero swigged down his second cocktail with the same confidence he’d felt with the first drink, (which had tasted better, in his opinion.) But then he went to set his cup down, and almost dropped it on the floor, managing to catch it just in time. Laughter rang out from just about everyone, but he managed to give a sloppy smile.

“Now we have ‘Mutiny!’” Berry announced, once she had the third recipe slip drawn. “Vermouth, dark rum, and bitters. Took me a dog's age to like bitters.”

The third cocktail tasted flat-out terrible to Lero. He managed to drink it all properly, but only barely, swallowing down the alcohol much more slower than before. As the room began to spin, Lero began to experience the sensation of both his brain and eyelids growing heavier.

“Miss Three?” he heard Berry saying. “Would you please go over to that potted plant that's right by that light orange stallion, there, and sniff at the dirt? Tell me what it smells like?”

Lero’s half-glazed eyes flicked over to Take Three. Or at least they tried to. The pony… and everything else, seemed to suddenly be splitting into two of themselves. Also, why was he sweating so much?

“Why, Cap’n Berry, it smells like… a fine cocktail we just served up has been spat into the dirt!”

“Ha! Thought you were being clever, huh?” Lero guessed Berry was talking to the light orange pony, but it was hard focusing on anything for an extended length of time. “Well, you just walked straight into my trap, cheater!”

“Hey, Leery?” he heard Pinkie whisper softly by his side, while the light orange pony made a fruitless attempt at protest. “D’ya think ya had enough? D’ya need me ta walk ya over ta where Twilight and yer other mares are? Ain’t no shame in knowin' yer limits.”

“I’ll be fine!” he said with all the nonchalance he could muster, bracing himself on the table with one hand and pinching his arm very hard with the other.

Berry laughed merrily at the next cocktail recipe she drew. “Guys, I’ll admit this next one ain’t 'piratey' at all; it’s just an all-time personal favorite of mine! It’s called “The Liver Transplant...”

* * *

Everything was fuzzy. This concerned Lero, as it would be upsetting if everything had turned to yarn when he wasn’t looking. He wished the room would stop spinning so he could focus long enough to check. A blur of blue and rainbows moving nearby drew his attention, but then slipped from view. Damn spinning.

“Nnnnmmmm… izzat… izzat Dainbow Rash…?”

Wow! After all those cocktails Fluttershy had watched him chug, Lero had gotten back to semi-coherent speech already! He was even sitting back up in the pull cart they’d placed him inside! And though he seemed to really need to struggle to keep his eyes open and pointed in the same direction, it was a fight he was clearly determined to win. Humans really were just incredible!

“Which ons’s you’s... Rambo… Rocko… rainbow?”

When Lero’s line-of-sight swiveled blearily in Fluttershy’s direction, she helped correct him by chanting, “Colder, colder, icy, arctic…” Gradually, very gradually, Lero understood, and turned his head towards the right pegasus. “Warmer, warmer, warmer… HOT!”

“‘Mmmm drunk, r’n’t I?” he asked Rainbow, slurrily. “Drunk ‘s a skunk zat stunk uppa bunkadunk.”

“...And then plunked some funky junk into a clunky trunk with a punk and a monk,” agreed Fluttershy.

“Kinda guessed cuz’m seeyun six a’you, Rainy-girl,” he said, pointing his finger at five invisible Rainbow Dashs and one visible Rainbow. “Dint wintha constest, huhh?”

“Nnnnno,” said Rainbow, finally speaking at last, though looking really uncomfortable about the whole situation. “I’m sorry, but… you lost.”

“Berry won her own contest!” said Fluttershy; Lero wouldn’t have known because he’d been conked out for so long on the couch. “She was so thrilled about it! too!”

But she saw her human friend wasn’t interested. As the crickets chirped in the grass around them, and Berry’s party raged on behind them, in the house, Lero licked his lips and fixed his gaze steadily on Rainbow Dash.

“Will… will you’n Rarity still be stayin’t my place? E’en ferjust... one more night? Please?” His eyes were so full of poignant pleading. She also noticed, for no apparent reason, Twilight tensing up at his question.

“Of-of course!” Rainbow Dash told him. “Rarity’s always been with you, and me… your home’s is now my home too!” Hunh. Twilight relaxed at that reply.

Lero shut his eyes. His smile couldn’t have been more grateful. “Mmm so happy, so happy yer staying… thank ya…”

Settling himself back on the small bed of hay they’d lain down for him, Lero fell back asleep. He didn’t even look like a proper drunk. More like a colt who’d nodded off in the middle of a lovely bedtime story. Dreaming happy dreams.

“What a guy,” Fluttershy said, suddenly wishing she had fingers of her own to pinch those cute rosy cheeks of Lero’s!

“He’s amazing. So strong in some ways, and so tender and vulnerable in others.” The way Rainbow’s voice quivered, that wasn’t sadness, was it?! Oh no, it was! Full-out sobbing!

Twilight’s eyes widened. “You okay, Dash?”

“Yeah. Wanna know something?” she asked between her tears. “I’ve heard him talking in his sleep... and it was only a couple days ago I was able to get him to open up what kind of nightmares he’s been having. Fluttershy, he dreams about being all alone! About us… all of us in his family, just up and leaving him! Walking past him, out the door, like he’s furniture! Can you even imagine?”

Fluttershy could only suppose that Lero still felt insecure about being a human in a pony’s world.

Twilight winced. “Ouch. That’d never happen, though! But… nightmares don’t care, do they?”

Rainbow shook her head. “And he’s so loving, and he puts everypony else ahead of himself, trying to make their lives better first, and still he thinks we’d...!” Rainbow nuzzled his face. “I’m gonna give him some special attention tomorrow.”

“You know he’s gonna have quite the hangover,” Fluttershy replied.

Twilight nodded. “Yup… fatigue, thirst, headache, nausea, light and sound sensitivity, and dizziness.”

“Huh? Oh! I… I suppose he is!” She pulled away from him, drying her eyes on her arm. “Sorry, it’s just been a very emotional day, hasn’t it?” Recovering herself, Rainbow then said, “Well, then I’ll have to nurse him back to health. Treat him to a whole lot of tender loving care.”

“Ever treated a hangover before?” Fluttershy asked carefully, remembering how crabby ponies could get in that state. Herself included.

“No… not really,” Rainbow admitted. “I almost never even drink, myself. But I’ve always been pretty good about treating all sorts of different animal illnesses, so Lero will be in good hooves! And one of the good things about living in Twilight’s library is she’ll have a book that’ll tell me what to do!”

“Yup! I’ll help find a few books before we go to bed. Okay, Dash?”

Dash nodded happily. “Alright!”

“Hey, speaking of your animals… where are they?” asked Fluttershy.

“Oh, as soon as Ruby’s party ended, I brought them all back to my cottage.”

“Really?” asked Fluttershy, looking forward at the spot where the petting zoo had been: only some mulch remained. “I don’t even remember! You’d’ve had to be really fast!”

By now, Rainbow Dash had hitched herself fully to the pull cart, next to Twilight, who had already been strapped in. The grin she gave... Fluttershy was still not used to Dashie showing that much confidence.

“Oh, but I’ve always been a fast girl, Fluttershy. Always.” Then she turned to her right. “Time to go, Rarity!”

Rarity, who had lying on a bench this whole time; had fallen asleep while waiting, thanks to her own drunken slumber.

“Huh? Whazzat? Oh, home time, yes…” Clambering off the bench unsteadily, she staggered over and hefted herself up onto the cart, and lounged across Lero’s lap like a cat, dozing off in a few moments.

Fluttershy had no doubt that if Rarity had been the designated cart-puller for Lero’s herd, they would be using her cloud platform. But once they reached a certain age, all pegasi were strongly warned by their teachers about the dangers of intoxicated flying. Given where she grew up and how deeply anchored she was in the pegasus lifestyle, Rarity wouldn’t’ve been any stranger to those lessons either. Certainly, if Lero or any other herdmate of hers had fallen off her cloud platform while she was drunk, Rarity would’ve been inconsolable.

The yellow pegasus watched Herd Bellerophon canter away, before the music and lights and activity drew her back inside to the party. Applejack might swear by her spa sessions, but good parties had always rejuvenated Fluttershy in a way that nothing else ever could.

“Miss Fluttershy?” a voice asked at her right, when she stepped in the door.

She stopped and looked over at a fairly buff pegasus stallion with tomato-red mane, and a coat that was such a light shade of yellow as to nearly be white.

“Brick Oven, right?” she asked.

His smile was delighted; what a wonderful thing it was to have a great memory for names! “I must’ve made quite an impression on you!”

She smiled back because it was a happy party, and every guest ought to feel special. “You’re one of Berry’s friends, right?” she asked, since Berry had been the one to mention his name to her.

“Actually, I’m Caramel’s. Dorm buddies from college, me and him,” said the stallion. “Went on to become a manager of a pizzeria down in Roan Oaks. But this shindig’s jammed-packed full of Berry’s friends, so I don’t blame you for thinking I was one. But I don’t dislike Berry, so I guess you’re right! I am a friend of hers after all!”

He gave a loud laugh that wasn’t natural. He knew it, Fluttershy knew it, and he knew she knew it.

“Look, Miss Fluttershy… I, uh, um, I’m new here, and we’re strangers, but … Well, ever since I walked through that door, you’ve been amazing. So fun and funny and pretty and smart and… um… but, I’m new here, and we’re strangers,” Brick Oven awkwardly said again, as a song ended behind them. “But, but you make me wish neither of those things were true. I wish I’d come to Ponyville much earlier! And I wish I knew you better! Um… guess what I’m trying to say is… would you mind us going out to a movie together tomorrow?”

The stallion stood by as she considered his awkwardly-delivered offer.

Fluttershy was… surprised. Shocked, really. Oh, certainly, she wasn’t a stranger to stallions; being eager to spread happiness meant you took every option open to you. And there was an advantage to having a body that got heats; you knew when you weren’t getting pregnant, in case you weren’t interested in starting a family yet. But mares were the aggressors. She couldn’t ever remember a stallion asking her out, unprompted. This was a bit too much to pass up!

“Sure, Brick, we can go out! How does the day after tomorrow sound?”

Brick Oven then made such a cute face of happiness! The musicians in the back started up another song, and she asked, “Would you like to dance?” He ended up dancing poorly but happily. She danced poorly but happily right along with him through several songs.

She began to wonder why after a while. Then it dawned on her: ever since that talk with Twilight and Gilda and Rainbow Dash… she’d been feeling like a new mare. Like something worthless and unhelpful had inside her had broken away, letting wonderful things flood into her. And because of Rainbow Dash, too. A shy and timid girl like Rainbow, managing to hook a guy like Lero? Have him begging her never to leave? Fluttershy could go for some of that in her life! It was time this pegasus tried her own luck with stallions!

“To heck with how it’s ‘always’ done!” Fluttershy told herself, after Brick had to leave the party. “It’s time to try something new, before it’s too late to! Brick might work out, or he might not. But pizza and parties sure go well together, don’t they?”

“Kinda makes me wish you’d had pizza at this party.”

Oh! She’d spoken aloud again, hadn’t he? She turned and saw it was Honeybee who’d just spoken out to her.

“You’re still sober, huh, Fluttershy?” Honeybee asked. “Are you a designated cart-puller?”

“Well, if somepony asks me to be, I won’t say no!” answered Fluttershy.

Honeybee laughed wryly. “Careful, Berry might take that personally! Not drinking at a party this big? Be like you’d refused to sing ‘Happy Birthday’ with the rest of us when they brought out her cake!”

Berry’s herd-sister was sitting on a couch by herself, with a half-drunken cocktail and some kind of photo album in front of her.

“It’s not like this is my very-ever first adult party! I’ve been to every sort of celebration! I’ll probably go drink something in an hour or two, but I wanted to be able to help the party as much as I can before I get too tipsy.”

She just had to spread her wings out, and flew around Honeybee’s couch.

“Well, this whole party is all about getting ‘plastered,’ and ‘sloshed,’ and ‘buzzed.’ But me… I feel like I’ve already reached my buzz! The busiest, buzziest buzz of them all! I’m actually worried that drinking might dampen the happiness I’m feeling! I mean, alcohol is a depressant, right?”

“Yeah, it is,” said Honeybee, idly observing a thoroughly schnockered Caramel and Berry help each other to their bedroom. “You’re a lucky girl, Fluttershy.”

“Oh, I knooooww!” Fluttershy sang, peeking down at the scrapbook. “Hey, whatcha doing there, anyway, Honeybee?”

Fluttershy almost thought something dark flicker across Honeybee’s face. “Something happened earlier that put me in a nostalgic mood. Now here I am, flipping through old scrapbooks.”

“Can I see too?” When Honeybee nodded, Fluttershy sat next to her on the couch.

“These ones were from when me and Caramel were first dating,” said Honeybee, showing her a page full of Caramel and Honeybee at an amusement park; together on a ferris wheel, trying to dunk a clown at a dunk tank…

“Those are honey caramels he’s giving me, right in that one.”

“They look delicious!” said Fluttershy; the tray of freshly baked candy squares was setting her mouth watering, in spite of all the candy she’d already eaten! “Who took all these pictures, anyway?”

“My sister, Honeysuckle, mostly.”

Honeybee’s sister had tagged along on their dates? “Er… what’s Caramel running from, over here?”

“A few of my bees. He’s always been scared of insects.”

“Looks like he’s screaming at the top of his… oh, I get it!” exclaimed Fluttershy, conking her head with a hoof. “Honey CARAMELS! Because you’re a beekeeper and his name’s Caramel, ooh, that’s clever!”

With a smiling roll of her eyes, Honeybee turned to the next page.

“These ones… I’d told Caramel that I wouldn’t take things to the next step unless he showed he was really serious about committing to me. Next day, I’m busy with my beekeeping, when he waltzes straight up to me -- in the middle of my apiaries, no protective clothing or anything -- and he asks: “How’s this for showing I’m serious about you?”

“And he’s scared of insects?” asked Fluttershy, noting how shaky Caramel’s knees looked in the picture.

“Terrified of insects,” The picture on the next page, Honeybee doting over to a teary-eye Carmel’s stung hoof. “Told him not to gallop away so fast. He stepped on one when he wasn’t looking.” She giggled, turning the page

“...And these were from when the two of us started dating Berry!”

Fluttershy pointed towards one of the pictures, which had been taken at a nightclub. “That cocktail kinda looks like the same one you’re drinking right now, Honeybee!”

“It is the same. It’s called a ‘Gold Rush.’ You make it with bourbon, lemon juice, and honey. Berry taught me how.”

Flipping the page again, Honeybee knocked off her Gold Rush. It smelled like she’d used a fairly powerful brand of bourbon.

“Oh, and look, Fluttershy! Here’s you! You were at this party too!”

Fluttershy meant for it just to be a quick glance. But her eyes jerked to a halt, as her train of thought suddenly jumped the tracks, obliterating a peaceful village of notions.

What.

Whhhh… What? What? Her cutie mark…

But… Pinkie? No apples… and her cutie mark?

It felt like she would never be able to look away. Dry-throated, suddenly, and she wondered if she might grab a drink for herself after all.

Emergency crews arrived at the scene of the derailed train of thought, rescuing surviving notions and clearing debris, slowly letting thought train services resume.

It was just… just… that wasn’t… How could this even BE?!

“This was… around two years ago or so, when this picture was taken, if I remember right.” Honeybee smiled at Fluttershy. “My, how time does fly!”

* * *

In proud American tradition, Lero Michealides had experienced his first hangover on the morning after his twenty-first birthday. He’d always remember the first cognizant moments of it most strongly. Before even properly opening his eyes, there had been POUNDING, unbelievable POUNDING from his parents’ feet just walking across the hallway floor.

He realized, now, how much easier his twenty-one-year-old self had had it. His parents may not have exactly been tiptoeing around his room, but the floor had been carpeted and they’d both had regular human feet. Not hooves.

When hungover, the noise of a human footfall had felt like his head getting smacked with a sock full of sand. Hooves were a whole different ballpark of pain. And all the floors of his home were a quaint rustic hardwood, straight from the tree this library had been hollowed out from. And his four lovely mares translated to sixteen pounding hooves… clip-clopping back and forth between the bedroom, the bathroom, the stairs, the kitchen! It felt like daggers lovingly being inserted into his skull. Plus the clack-clacking of his little dragon brother’s foot-claws; like iron nails dragged lightly into his scalp!

Lero rather felt like Julius Caesar, if all those treacherous Roman senators had chosen to assassinate their emperor with daggers for his skull, instead of to his chest and back.

“Please, Twilight! You’ve GOT to have some kind of hangover pain-ending spell!” he begged, through a mouth that felt like it was made entirely of cotton. Which had been used to soak up a puppy’s piddle.

“I do…” Twilight admitted, from where she stood in the bedroom doorway. “I also have spells which will prevent you from feeling sleepiness. Or hunger. Or indeed, the sensation of fullness. Ponies have asked me to perform all sorts of spells on them. Spells which no normal unicorn could cast.”

“So just cast the hangover cure on me!” Lero thrust his forehead out towards Twilight as far as he could while still remaining in bed. “Cast it!”

“...Try to understand where I’ve coming from with this, Lero. Alcoholics have asked me to cure their hangovers before. And when I do, many of them go straight back to drinking again, right then and there. Denying their bodies the chance to heal themselves. Worsening the damage, because they don’t feel any pain. So, no healing magic unless you’re actually genuinely hurt.”

“You know me, Twilight! I’m no alcoholic! Last night was just special!” The volume of Lero’s own voice felt like it splitting his head open. “Gaaahhh, In fact, I’ll swear, I’ll never touch anything you need a license to drink! Ever again!”

He felt personally offended at how Twilight Sparkle shook her head sadly.

“Our neighbors will be well aware how much you had to drink at last night’s party, though. And Berry Punch is not the only pony in Ponyville with a drinking habit. If they see you up and about so soon, after you got yourself completely inebriated, soon enough, they’ll expect me to fix their own hangovers too… and it’ll be like spring vacation at the School for Gifted Unicorns all over again!”

Besides. The thought came to her. I promised to let a certain blue pegasus play nursemaid for you.

“No pony will see me!” Lero swore. “I’ll hide in the basement for a week! Please, have pity on me!”

But Twilight turned her back on him. “I have to leave. You did promise Berry Punch we’d clean everything up after her party was over. I’ll explain how you’re feeling too unwell to come today; I know she’ll understand.”

Lero moaned miserably, barely managing to restrain an urge to vomit.

“I really am sorry, Lero. Please get well soon.”

And Twilight left Lero to his throbbing temples and the white and blue splotches pulsing in his vision. At some point, Rarity stopped by. It seemed the Hangover Fairy had decided to skip her, in spite of all the drinks Lero remembered her having last night.

After several moments' pause, she finally spoke. “Rest well, my Prince, and feel better soon. We’ll be back before you know.” Finally, Rarity just kissed his aching forehead, then his lips, and left. A short while later, his over-sensitive ears picked up the sound of a cloud platform forming downstairs, followed by several ponies and one little dragon boarding it.

“Um… hey, Lero.”

Rainbow Dash’s hooves didn’t crash down quite as thunderously upon the unforgiving floor as the others’ had. Lero saw she was wearing little pink hoof slippers. She was speaking to Lero while clutching a tray between her teeth, like the kind used by waitresses.

“I’ve read through this one medical book, and it says there’s never been a hangover that’s lasted over twenty-four hours.” she said, after setting it down by his bedside. The tray held a glass of water, a glass of orange juice, two bananas, and two slices of freshly toasted toast. There was also a cold compress as well.

“So you’re gonna have this one not-so-great day, but after that, you’ll be okay.” He felt reassured by her smile. “We’re gonna get through this, big guy. You and me.”

For a girl who admitted to not having treated a hangover before, Rainbow Dash turned out to be quite good at it. Maybe it had something to do with her having to constantly play veterinarian to so many different species… but she had no problem following the medical book’s instructions. Soon enough, he was able to fall asleep. When he did, Dash lay down next to him, and he cuddled up unconsciously.

Lero’s hangover didn’t need twenty-four hours to pass. Just a mere nineteen, then his head felt as good as new.

* * *

The previous day, Twilight Sparkle had led Lyra, Spike, and Rarity back to Herd Caramel’s house to clean it, as Lero had promised they would. Berry Punch had been very understanding when Twilight had apologized for Lero and Rainbow’s absence, explaining that Lero was recuperating from a hangover, and Rainbow was taking care of him. At least, Caramel had reported Berry would be understanding. Once she recovered from what she’d called “The Unholy Demon Queen of All Skull Smashers.”

Even with all of Twilight, Lyra, and Rarity’s magic, as well as the clean-up crews they’d hired, it took a while to get it all back to how it had looked in a single day. But they had managed. Fun as it had been, it was wonderful to have that party finally behind them.

The next day, Twilight and Lero were snuggled against each other in one of the reading rooms. Rarity and Rainbow Dash had gone to plead to Berry Punch not to press charges on Gilda. He slowly grazed on a bowl of popcorn while reading, while Twilight had been quiet for several minute in thoughtful contemplation, having put down her book moments before. It was brought to an end when she spoke up. “I think I’ve come up with a hypothesis about The Swap. Specifically how equilibrium works, and why ponies are so hopeless before it happens.”

“Oh?” said Lero, with an easy smile. “Yeah, sure. I love hearing your thoughts on our dear old friend.”

That pet name made Twilight roll her eyes, but Twilight snuggled against him a bit more. “Remember how lazy the Swap is? Particularly in terms of revising the personal histories of the ponies it swaps?”

“Lazy and shallow,” Lero reminded her. “Don’t forget shallow.”

Twilight smirked, nosing his chest, as his arm slid around her. "Believe me, I haven’t!" She leaned over, sneaking a bite of the popcorn Lero held in his hand. "I’m pretty confident that when Swapped Ponies are freshly swapped, their original memories are immediately repressed, only available as subconscious inklings, at best. As for their new lives, the Swap only starts them off with enough memories to be immediately functional in their new roles. Additional memories are only provided when something or someone else makes them remember more details.”

Lero hmmed. "Interesting. But Twilight, it sounds to me that you believe the Swap only functions in terms of short-term immediate-present needs.”

Lero's skeptical tone caused Twilight's eyebrows to raise. "You don’t?"

Lero shook his head. "No, I think the Swap’s at least capable of some degree of planning and foresight. Like… do you remember Rarity talking about her pegasus parents? Wouldn’t you say her story felt rather… prepared?"

Twilight hmmed at well, rubbing her chin with a hoof. "Yeah, you’re right… But on the same note, it was something that'd have to be known to explain her basic functioning in Dash's place. So yeah, it can have foresight, but only bothers in areas where it has to."

Lero nodded "Why wouldn’t it? I mean, the Cutie Mark was one of the most pivotal moments of their life; that's not something it could fake or withhold, right? I spent an entire day interviewing the Swapped Five for stories on how they got their cutie marks, and they didn't seem to hesitate at all."

Twilight held up a hoof. "Right, right, but let’s get back on track. In spite of their new memories, Swapped Ponies still retain much of their own personality, right?"

Lero paused thoughtfully, and nodded. "Mostly, yes."

Twilight nodded back, smiling the way she did when she thought she was onto something. "You see, I think that’s why they come off almost as parodies of the ones they’ve exchanged lives with! Especially early on: they're acting the way the original ponies subconsciously thought their counterparts acted!"

Lero opened his mouth to reply, but then paused, furrowing his brow in thought, before replying slowly, "Let me make sure I’m getting this straight, Twilight... You’re saying that Pinkie The Farmer went and turned herself into that... workaholic, because that’s who the Real Pinkie subconsciously thought the Real Applejack was, at heart? Just some farm chore maniac?”

"Pretty much. Remember her own experiences with farming? 'No talking, no smiling, only rocks'?" Twilight pointed out.

"And the Original Applejack thought that the Original Rarity was just somepony who spent all her time sewing weird clothes?" Lero continued.

"To put it bluntly." Twilight nodded.

"And the Original Rarity felt that the Original Rainbow Dash was just some…” the next part was very hard for him to say, “…super-xenophile?"

Which was why she adored me and everyone in Herd Bellerophon with such an exaggerated, cartoonish degree of passion? Even for a committed, loving family girl? he couldn't quite bring himself to say. It was such a cold, cutting feeling for Lero.

"Well, not only that, but... remember how focused she is on weathermaking? That's not Dash at all. Sure, that's her job, but it's always been a sideline to her dream of joining the Wonderbolts. But Rarity's always been a career-focused girl. And, as a unicorn, becoming a Wonderbolt just isn’t an option. Therefore, it'd make sense for her to interpret Dash as ‘a weathermaker’."

"In short... you’re saying the Swap forced those five into becoming the very caricatures they devised in their own heads for their best friends, beforehand. Wow… that’s just unbelievably cruel."

"Well, more like, 'inevitable result of it's own minimal-effort behavior..." Twilight started.

"Laziness." Lero interjected.

"...Laziness." Twilight corrected. "And the girls’ own subconscious prejudices. But, yeah, if it was intentional, It’s like something Discord would’ve cooked up, before his reformation."

"And to think, the five of them never really knew each other on any meaningful level. Their friendship was all shallow, superficial, narrow-minded presumptions." Lero said, matter-of-factly.

Twilight winced at his harsh cynicism. "That's hardly fair, Lero. After all..."

Lero frowned at her pause. "...What?"

"...Lero, you like dogs, right?"

That caught him off-guard. "Uh, yeah! Dogs are great. Very lovable, wonderful pets. ...Why do you ask?"

"Well..." she drew out. "Dogs have all sorts of funny little habits, don’t they? Burying bones. Barking at the moon. Needing walks…"

"Mmm-hmm. " Lero replied, idly wondering where she was going with this.

"But can you personally relate to all that, Lero? Have you, yourself, ever felt the same need to mark your territory as a dog does? Hmmmm?" She looked hard at him.

"Wha... NO!" he denied.

Twilight wore that smug smile she got whenever she was making a point. "Can you explain why dogs, themselves, have that need?"

Lero was lost. He was a historian, masseur, and handyman before he was a veterinarian or biologist. "Uh... Well… dogs, they, er..."

But Twilight waved him off. "Biologists have filled books answering that question, of course. But here’s the short answer: that’s how dogs operate. Because they’re dogs. It’s always been that way. Yet we honestly love dogs. And they love us back."

Lero nodded slowly. "...Right."

Twilight relaxed against him, snuggling her head up under his chin. "Even between two beings as as intelligent as you and me… people can be awfully quirky, can’t they? Imagine asking Fluttershy a year ago why Pinkie Pie does all the unusual things she does. Heck, imagine trying to answer that question yourself."

Lero made the attempt. "Um… well, she’s just… Pinkie’s being Pinkie, you know? She’s just high-spirited and… very random. Thinks outside the box. Really imaginative."

Twilight shrugged, her shoulder rubbing against his chest as she did. "Perhaps you’re right and they never really did ‘understand’ each other. Each one of them had certain habits and ways of thinking that baffled the other four. Stuff they couldn’t personally relate to. Stuff they’d never incorporate into their own lives. But their friendship was still real, Lero. You don't have to perfectly understand someone to care about them... and how many people do you get to really, truly know in the course of your life?"

"Not many." Lero admitted after a moment's thought.

"In fact, let me bring up one of the traits I find most admirable about you, Lero. Even when you didn’t fully grasp what their problem was, you never let that lack of ‘understanding’ stop you from going over and being a true friend to them all, in their time of need." She sighed, slumping against him. "Unlike me. And they were always the same way with each other. So please, Lero, don’t EVER use words like ‘shallow’ or ‘superficial’ to describe their friendship.”

Realizing how harsh his words must have been, Lero slumped his shoulders. "Twilight, I’m very sorry. Please forgive me."

She smiled. "Always." She shifted up, embracing him, which she returned, sharing a quick kiss.

"Oh!" Twilight said suddenly. "In fact, we’ve gotten quite off-track, haven’t we? I almost forgot about the second part of my theory!"

Lero eyed the pony who was still in lecture mode, despite still in a close embrace. He let out a small chuckle. "Second part?"

She nodded energetically "Yes! I believe that the more revised memories are generated within a Swapped Pony’s brain, the more she’ll start to understand -- and thus, emulate -- the pony she’s been swapped with. Equilibrium represents the moment that they truly 'get' the other pony on a fundamental level, and make the link between themselves and their own element- and the element and pony which they're swapped with. And this allows them to better function in the role of their counterpart."

It clicked in his head. "The moment kind Old Fluttershy finally saw all the Kindness that’d always been in Pinkie Pie…"

She nodded. "...Or, the moment Pinkie, herself, was able to see the Laughter and good cheer in hardworking Applejack’s heart… and so forth with all the rest of them..."

A knocking at the door stopped them.

“Hey, Twilight!” called the voice of Lyra from outside. “Just me and Spike out here, and no one else!”

“Hi, Lyra! Hi, Spike!” Twilight called back. “Just me and Lero in here, and no one else!”

Just us Exempted here, Lero translated to himself, And no one else. Especially not any Swapped Ponies.

Twilight let Lyra and Spike in. The little dragon immediately saluted his big human brother like a proud junior cadet.

“Mission accomplished, Captain!”

“It went off without a hitch.” Lyra agreed.

“Details, please! Details!” asked Twilight. The Still Way grandmaster and the little dragon each took a seat beside her and Lero.

“It was about 11 o’clock when we found her,” Lyra began. “I think she must’ve had the day off at Sugar Cube Corner, because we found her playing jump rope with some fillies out by the park.”

“We ended up joining their jump rope game for a couple minutes too!” Spike stood up and hopped in place, reliving the moment.

“Then we invited Fluttershy to eat lunch with us at Hollandaise’s,” said Lyra, while Spike sat down rather red-faced, for having gotten so excited about the story. “ She agreed on condition that she be the one who paid the bill for us…”

“...For a welcome change of pace…” Lero couldn’t help muttering under his breath. Twilight heard him, though, and she gave him a soft but pointedly disapproving elbow to his ribs.

“We all ordered sandwiches!” Spike proclaimed,

“And we sat and talked for a while about this-and-that; how well she’d been getting along with everypony, whose birthdays were coming up… but at some point, I managed to turn the conversation around to sewing. And I turned to Spike...”

At this point in the story, Lyra was just as enthused as Spike; both of them faced towards each other to better recreate the moment.

“...and I said, ‘Hey, remember that time Fluttershy told us all about how her grandma taught her how to sew, back when she lived on the rock farm?’”

“And I was like, “Yeah, totally,” Spike added. “That was a GREAT story.”

“How did Fluttershy react to that?” Twilight asked.

“Well, at first, she was quite confused,” said Lyra. “Didn’t know what we were talking about.”

“But we kept at it!” said Spike. “We were all, ‘Oh, no, no, no! Yes, we’re sure this was you. You’re such a kidder, Fluttershy; that story of yours was unforgettable.’”

“And Fluttershy’s head did that little tilt-thing.” Lyra imitated the head tilt, looking like a confused green dog. Twilight let out a pleased laugh. “It was actually really cute to see!”

“And when Fluttershy came outta her cloud, she was way more, uh… what’s the word… ‘open-minded?’ Not-incredulous?” asked Spike.

Dupable. Lero thought to himself.

“Anyway, she asked us, ‘‘What was the story I told you again?’”

“And we told Fluttershy about how her Granny Pie taught her how to use a sewing machine when she was just a little filly. And how she went on and took time to develop sewing skills on her own for years in her free time. And how she’s actually skilled enough at dressmaking in general to rival Applejack, but she just chose to pursue baking and partying as her livelihood, instead.”

“Then what happened?” asked Lero.

“Well, she was pretty quiet through all the rest of the meal,” said Spike. “Ate her food slowly. Didn’t really tilt her head again, but she still looked kinda in-her-own-zone. She was still like that after she paid for the meal and we split up.”

“I’ve sometimes seen that same sort of look in the eyes of other musicians,” said Lyra charitably. “Especially when they’re composing elaborate symphonies in their heads.”

“Excellent! The seed’s been planted. I say we give it a day to germinate.” Twilight suggested

Lero checked his wristwatch, then leaned back against his couch, grinning like the ingenious mastermind he felt like. “Exactly as planned. I’ll bet you all anything that I know precisely what Fluttershy’s doing right now. She’s up in her bedroom, sitting in a comfy chair. Quietly ‘reminiscing’ on her dear sweet Granny Pie. A lovely show of mental cinema, produced and directed by none other than that most fabulous of fabulists: The Swap.”

He even went so far as to steeple his fingers directly underneath his smirk. Everything really was going according to plan.

“The Swap’s got its work cut out for it! Forced to dig through Fluttershy’s psychological strata, and unearth a skill of hers it’d meant to keep buried forever! All while weaving a heart-stirring masterpiece of grandmotherly bonding for Fluttershy. Embellishing the details of that story of ours, tailoring them to fit all the unique quirks of the grandma, herself.”

Lero let himself imagine The Swap as a fat and slovenly deadbeat of a pony, seething in spoiled-brat fury and cursing the name of Lero Michealides as it found itself buried in desperate, detailed work. God, he wished he had a cat in his lap to stroke right now. Instead, he satisfied himself by stroking Twilight.

“Perhaps later in the day, Fluttershy might go to Mrs. Cake or some other mare, and ask to borrow her sewing machine and some fabric. And she’ll bring it to her room, and set it up, and to her incredible amazement, discover that yes: she IS good at dressmaking!”

“Wow, Fingers, sometimes you can get really…”

A knock on their door shut them all up immediately. Odds were very, very good that wasn’t another Exempted who was there.

Twilight was the one who answered the door. “Oh! Hi, Fluttershy! Fancy seeing you here!”

“Hi, Twilight!” As the yellow pegasus stepped inside, her wing reached into a set of saddlebags she was wearing, seeming to be looking for something, only to then stop and laugh at herself. “Ha ha! I was about to turn in my homework to you, but then I just realized… I don’t need to take comedy classes from you guys anymore, do I?”

“Nope!” said Lero. “Graduated with honors!”

“Diploma’s in the mail!” quipped Spike.

“Although, you should never forget that learning is its own reward, so don’t let any ‘graduation’ prevent you from continuing to seek knowledge!” said Twilight, pointedly ignoring the head shakes and the eye rolls from her other family members.

“So, Fluttershy, what brings you here? Are you looking for a book? Or did you want to just hang out?”

“Uhm… Just a moment?” She replied, glancing behind her. They watched the yellow pegasus make sure the door is shut. Then lock it. Then shut every set of curtains this room had. Then flew past them, through what sounded to be every room throughout the house, shutting each door noisily.

“Actually... I’m hoping you could help with something,” Fluttershy said, once she was seemed sure that no library patrons would walk in on them. “And I feel bad about it, because you guys just FINISHED helping me out with something, but I don’t know who else to turn to about this!”

This prompted many questions from everyone around Fluttershy, but the yellow pegasus held up her hoof to silence them before rummage through her saddlebags again.

“I’ve been visiting all my best friends’ homes, taking photographs with my camera, here!”

She suddenly pulled the camera out, snapping a bright flash at Lyra that left the grandmaster blinking, before returning to to her saddlebag.

“Photographs of photographs, mostly. Pretty ‘meta,’ huh?”

“Fluttershy, what…?”

“Here we are!”

She finally brought out what looked to be a recently-developed stack of photographs. Pulling from the top of the stack, she gave each of them exactly one photo.

“Let’s start with you, Twilight!” Fluttershy said. “Would you please look at the photograph I gave you, and describe to me what you see?”

Twilight fixed Fluttershy, herself, with a good appraising look first. The pegasus’ smile said ‘Don’t worry, this is just a game,’ but her eyes spoke a different story. Then she turned her attention to the photo. Just as Fluttershy had said, this photograph was of another photograph: a framed one. The rustic-looking wall it hung from could only have come from one household.

“This is a picture of Apple…” Just in time, Twilight stopped herself; what a close one! “...trees! And standing right by the apple trees, I can see Pinkie Pie with a big smile! She looks like she’s ten or eleven, here.”

“I see,” said Fluttershy. “Lero? What about you? Describe your picture for me, please.”

Lero held his up. “The Apples at one of their Apple family reunions.”

“Could you name the ponies you recognize?” Fluttershy asked the human.

“Big Mac, Granny Smith, Apple Bloom, Pinkie Pie, Braeburn, Candy Apple, Golden Delicious, Apple Fritter… and I’m afraid I don’t know the rest.”

“Mmm-hmmm,” said Fluttershy, with a look of great interest. “And you, Lyra?”

“Pinkie Pie, participating at a rodeo. At least I think it’s a rodeo. She seems to be wrestling another mare in a great mud puddle. Lots of other ponies are cheering her.”

“Spike?” asked Fluttershy.

“Mine’s just a family shot of Pinkie Pie, Granny Smith, Big Macintosh, and Apple Bloom,” the little dragon told her. “Kinda generic for what it is, really.”

“I see. Well, now I’m sure of it.” And Fluttershy’s smile fell into a gaze of open dismay. “Twilight, I think something might be wrong with my eyes! Or my brain! Probably both!”

“Why? What’s the matter?” asked Twilight, as she and her family listened in growing worry.

“In all those photos, I swear I’m seeing Applejack where Pinkie Pie should be!” Fluttershy insisted. “Well, except for the one Spike’s holding… everyone’s where they should be in that one.”

Spike held his photo out for the others to see. It honestly did show the Swapped Pinkie Pie with the rest of the Apples; he hadn’t even needed to lie. That photograph must have been taken recently.

“Er… Applejack, Fluttershy?” inquired Lero, brow furrowed in the manner of a perplexed psychiatrist. However, several panicked glances passed between the four of them.

Miserably, she nodded her head. “Mmm-hmm! It’s APPLEJACK with all the Apples at the Apple Family Reunion, and Sweetie Belle’s not even with her! APPLEJACK’S getting her pretty, pretty coat and mane all muddy and dirty in a rodeo… and that’s not all!”

All of Fluttershy’s other photographs had been set on a nearby table. She gave them a light nudge, knocking them out of their stack. From there, she set her hooves to work spreading the snapshots out into neat little rows, so each one could be seen.

“This set, here, is from Applejack’s place! But I see Rarity in all these old fashion magazine pages, Rarity being credited as the fashionista in charge of Applejack’s boutique! Rarity in this picture next to Sweetie Belle, with Spike making lovey-dovey eyes at her…”

A very gawkish, ungainly look crossed Spike’s face then. “Fluttershy, maybe you’re…”

“And here,” Fluttershy indicated a new row of photos. “I’ve taken shots of my stuff from my own bedroom! My party cannon, my party journal, but as you can see... they’re all marked ‘property of Pinkie Pie!’ Even in my diary, about nine-tenths of the pages are signed, ‘Love, Pinkie Pie!’ And even weirder, here, are the pictures in Sugar Cube Corner showing Pinkie as Employee of the Month over and over starting from January of this year… and she’s got my cutie mark! My balloons!”

Lyra forced a shaky, unconvincing laugh out of herself. “G...glad I can’t see any of that! Ha ha!”

“But that’s nothing, nothing compared to what I found in Rainbow Dash’s cottage!”

Twilight Sparkle choked on a mysterious new obstruction lodged in her throat. “...Dash’s…?”

“This was on her mantlepiece. It shows ME. I’M with her animals. I’m wearing HER cutie mark. And this one…!”

But a magical spell fired from Twilight’s horn prevented Fluttershy from saying anything more. The blast struck the pegasus square in the forehead. Down fluttered the picture she’d just been holding in her mouth: a picture of the six Element Bearers in a group shot. All with their original cutie marks.

“Twilight?!” exclaimed Lero, backing away. “You…!”

It looked like a murder scene. The poor yellow pegasus lay sprawled across the table. Photographs lay under her motionless body, and were also scattered on the floor. Though Twilight Sparkle was drawing in many deep, heavy breaths, her lungs felt like balloons being squeezed by thick, meaty hands. About to pop altogether. The rest of her felt like she’d been sucked into a cyclone, spinning and spinning faster and faster, no control.

“She’s not dead. She’s NOT dead,” Twilight insisted. “Just my strongest sleep spell, that’s all.”

As if in confirmation, the yellow Pegasus let out a loud snore.

The herd let out a relieved sigh, before Twilight spoke back up. “Come on! I need your help, you three!”

* * *

“Please no… light… if I send… not again…”

Fluttershy’s head felt like it had the morning after Berry Punch’s party, only she was recovering much more faster.

“You HAVE to, Spike!” Twilight Sparkle was begging. “I’m really, really sorry, but you MUST! For Fluttershy’s sake! Please!”

Fluttershy’s bleary vision focused quickly on the sight of Spike clutching a paper of some kind tightly in his hand. He looked very scared, and was being very careful not to bring it anywhere near his mouth.

“I swear I won’t let him do ANYTHING to you,” Twilight told Spike as she stood over him.

“You can’t… you know what he’s capable of!” Spike defined her. “What he DID the last time I sent Celestia a letter, demanding he come and help! And he went EASY on me!”

Fluttershy looked around, recognizing this place as a room on the basement level of Golden Oaks Library. A science lab, filled with indescribable machinery, blinking lights, electric sparks and bubbling chemicals. She’d been here before, hadn’t she? She... Suddenly her senses blocked out as memories came flooding back, almost like seeing a movie. Flutter Sense. Twilight. Experiments. Flowerpot on head. The Doozy. She blinked, senses returning, remembering the last time she’d been here... back when Twilight attempted to make sense of her Flutter Sense..

“Do you think it’s evolving?!” Lero was asking, with a surprising amount of sweat running down his face. “Or entering some kind of advanced phase? The way cancer does?”

"Maybe this is a good sign, Lero!” Lyra said, jittery with nerves and forced optimism. “Like… the symptoms are wearing off! Their illusions are fading away on their own!”

Every word coming out of that family’s mouths drew Fluttershy’s curiosity like the smell of baking cookies. She would’ve moved closer, but came to find that she’d been tied rather tightly to a chair.

“Guys?” said Spike. “Fluttershy’s awake.”

There other heads turn to face her, synchronized. It’d have almost made her giggle, if not for the fear and dread squirming in all their eyes and expressions. She wished she knew why.

“Hi, guys!” she greeted.

“Uh, er, hello, Fluttershy.”

Fluttershy smiled as big as her mouth would let her. “Hey, Twilight!”

“How are you... how are you feeling?” She asked, eyes still wide with what was clearly fear.

“Pretty curious, more than anything else,” Fluttershy told her.

“Not about anything murder-related, I hope!” As Twilight gave a cracked, rattled laugh, her mane and coat started to frazzle themselves again. Which was to say, individual hairs on Twilight’s body rose up like for some static-charged balloon, then curling and split-ending themselves.

Chewing thoughtfully on her upper lip, Fluttershy looked towards at her own forehead in a show of intense self-analysis. “Mmm… nope. Not curious about murder. Hey, Twilight? Lero? Guys? These ropes are reeeeallly digging into my wings. Would you pretty please loosen them? Or better yet, untie me?”

Fluttershy gave them all the pleading puppy dog look, as she tried stretching her wings against the hard rope. Poor Twilight looked even more distressed.

“I’m really sorry, Fluttershy. We just can’t afford to take chances. Please just don’t struggle. Oh, and my lab has a soundproofing spell on this room, so please don’t start screaming for help, you’ll just hurt your throat.”

“Okie-dokie! Not thinking of screaming!” she promised, with her gentlest smile. And she really wasn’t. If warned to not think of green gnus, Fluttershy had always been the type of filly who had no problem whatsoever locking her thoughts onto white wallabies.

“She sounds so normal…” Lyra murmured, as Fluttershy shifted herself as comfortably as she could on her chair. “Well… what became normal, yesterday.”

“Too normal,” Lero murmured back. It hurt Fluttershy’s feelings how much suspicion she saw in her comedy teacher’s eyes. How deeply he scowled! And that large frying pan he’d been gripping this whole time… Fluttershy was starting to think he didn’t intend to actually fry anything with it.

Something was deeply distressing this wonderful family, so Fluttershy was all too happy to be as pleasant and eager to please as possible. Someone needed to help the poor dears, after all. For a while, Twilight and Lero and Lyra busied themselves trying to talk Spike into breathing his fire on that piece of paper he was holding, but he seemed very reluctant!

Twilight kept glancing over at Fluttershy. Somehow, her unicorn friend seemed to find her very stillness quite troubling. She eventually looked over and said, “Listen, Fluttershy, I give you my word, we don’t intend to do you one bit of harm or anything! We’re just trying to get in contact with Discord.”

“Discord?” repeated Fluttershy. Maybe this was his doing! He’d just been playing chaos tricks on her eyes, the big ol’ rascal, making her see things and scaring poor Herd Bellerophon.

“Discord’s gonna perform a teensy little memory wipe on you, then we’ll remove these ropes, and it’ll be like none of this ever even happened!” Twilight said, repeatedly bouncing the crumpled-up message to Celestia against Spike’s firmly shut mouth.

“I am not a mail slot!” He protested, biting down on the scroll, yanking it from her hoof, and scurrying away… behind herself, Fluttershy was surprising to note.

Fluttershy almost made her chair fall. “Oooh, I see. Hey, mind telling me what it is Discord’s gonna erase?”

“Erm…”

Lyra sighed. “Oh, let’s go ahead and tell her. Why not? Not like she’ll be remembering any of this anyway.” And before Twilight Sparkle could stop her, Lyra said, “It was those photos.”

“Photos? OHHHH, you mean those photos I showed you! Where’d you put them, anyway?” asked Fluttershy, looking around for them.

“We burned them,” said Lero, inclining his head towards Spike.

“You sent them to Princess Celestia? I didn’t know they were that good! I just thought they were weird!”

“Er… No, we burn-burned them.”

“Aw.”

Twilight approached Fluttershy with the look like a mommy would wear while telling her foals that daddy wouldn’t be recovering from his illness. “Fluttershy, this probably won’t be easy for you to understand, but you weren’t supposed to see those photos the way that you saw them.”

“You mean with my Element Bearing friends being in the wrong families and the wrong jobs with the wrong cutie marks?” All four of the others flinched. “And you think that purging that from my memory’s gonna help me?”

“That’s right, we do,” said Lero. “Don’t worry, Fluttershy, it’ll all be okay! We only want to erase your memories of the photographs, nothing else!”

“Well… maybe us tying you up like this too...” Lyra added.

“Oh!” Fluttershy drew an uncomfortable breath through her teeth. “Well, uh, I hate to bring this up, guys, but I think one teensy-weensy little snag I don’t think you’ve thought of.”

“What snag?” asked Twilight.

“Well, those photographs your burned? Those were photographs of photographs, remember? Photographs that were in our other friends’ homes. On their walls. Their mantelpieces. Their bedrooms. You can go wipe my mind, but it’ll only be a matter of time before Pinkie Pie or whoever invites me over to visit. And I’ll see one of those photos of theirs, and you’ll need to call Discord to wipe my mind all over again. Not to mention all the stuff that's in my own bedroom!”

There was a dead silence. Fluttershy was certain she’d be able to hear a pin drop, if one of the poor dears fell over.

“And…” Lyra Heartstring started, her voice actually sounding shaky. She took a deep breath and steeled herself. “And it’s not like Ponyville's the ONLY place she’d find such photos…” Lyra swallowed in open horror. “You Element Bearers are worldwide celebrities, acclaimed heroes, you’ve been in newspapers, magazines…”

“Celestia’s stained-glass windows…” Twilight whispered, falling to all four knees.

Oh no… oh no! Fluttershy was witnessing Twilight Sparkle’s frazzlement reach never-before-seen levels! Less than a minute seemed to have passed before her beautifully-kept mane had gone from split-end city, to bedhead, to grunge punk! By the look of things, it was speeding dangerously towards homeless ghetto junkie!

And the hollow look in her eyes was that of a unicorn who’d just realized she had absolutely no way of preventing herself from getting eaten alive by fire ants. It lasted for all of ten seconds.

“Send it!” she demanded suddenly, turning towards Spike with a blazing glare.

“Send it!” The crumpled-up paper Spike had been holding disappeared in a poof of unicorn magic.

“SEND IT! SEND CELESTIA THE LETTER, DAMN YOU!” Twilight snarled. Fluttershy had a second to see that Twilight had teleported the crumpled-up letter directly onto Spike’s tongue, before she forced the baby dragon’s jaws shut and even looked to be pinching his nostrils shut.

“TWILIGHT, STOP!” Fluttershy screamed.

“I have to do this!” Twilight swore. “It’s the only way to keep you from going insane!”

Fluttershy looked over at her friend’s now-scraggy looking hair and feverish-looking eyes and thought better of stating the obvious. Lero and Lyra both stood frozen in worry and uncertainty.

“Twilight, you’re scaring all of us!” Fluttershy pleaded. “Please, just tell your old friend Fluttershy what this is all about!”

“I can’t!” she wailed, losing enough to concentrate that Spike was able to breathe again and spit the letter to Celestia out of his mouth. “That’s the whole point! If you knew, you’d go mad! You’d attack me!”

“I’d never…!” exclaimed Fluttershy.

“Just like Rainbow Dash went mad and attacked me!”

“Rainbow Dash attacked you?” Now Fluttershy was really getting scared too!

With startlingly sober sorrow, Lyra said, “Yes. Rainbow Dash attacked Twilight. I was there, I saw it.”

“She couldn’t handle the real truth!” Twilight moaned, as Lero helped her to her hooves. “Discord warned us it would happen, and it did! But I don’t think there’s any way we can fib our way out of this one like we did with her, so we need to have Discord wipe all this from your mind, Fluttershy!”

“I don’t wanna have my mind wiped!” Fluttershy yelled. “I wanna understand what’s going on! I want to help you, Twilight!”

Twilight shook her head fiercely, as though some nasty impish beast had hooked its claws into her scalp. “You can’t, Fluttershy! You… you have a condition! The same condition Rainbow has! I don’t want you turning into a rampaging psychopath!”

It felt like they were arguing in circles. Taking a deep breath, Fluttershy softened her voice and her overall mood as soothing as she could.

“Twilight, I know you’re scared. I can see you’re scared. You should see the hairs on the back of my neck standing up! My Flutter Sense tells me whenever my hair stands up on the back of my neck, my friends are scared! Oh, and sometimes me, too. But that’s not the point! I’m scared too! Everyone here’s scared. But we’re all still friends, right?"

From the chair she was tied to, Fluttershy gave Twilight her very friendliest smile.

“And I know you think you can’t solve this problem, and it’ll wreck everything if you can’t... but… I’m okay! Yes, I see things I ‘shouldn’t’ be seeing, but even if it’s all a bit confusing, it doesn’t hurt. And I’m not broken. I don’t understand any of this, either… but you trusted me before when I knew things that neither of understood… why is this any different?”

Lero and Spike and Lyra all turned towards Twilight as she in bewilderment. “...neither of us understood… neither of us understood…” she muttered. It seemed Twilight recognized what Fluttershy was talking about in a general sense, but her panicked mind was having problems pulling up any specific details.

“Remember that time that hydra was chasing us, Twilight?” Fluttershy told her. “And we came to that big mountain drop, and I told you you’d need to take a ‘leap of faith?’”

Twilight gasped, her gaze snapping up, looking at Fluttershy, wide-eyed.

“I’m asking you to take another leap for me,” Fluttershy told her.

* * *

One apologetic untying later, Herd Bellerophon assured Fluttershy that the picture of Rainbow Dash was something that’d been taken recently. It showed Dashie inside her cottage. Her animals were all around her; she’d been in the middle of tending to them. The stance of her body showed her usual bashfulness… yet there was also a big, adorable smile on the cyan pegasus’ face, as though she’d just been paid a lovely compliment.

The second picture, which Lero set down next to the first, showed herself, in the cottage, as the cottage caretaker. Moments ago, Lero had just went into Rainbow’s cottage and unhooked this picture off one of the walls so Fluttershy could see.

The body language of this photographed Fluttershy was all ‘shrinking violet.’ Painfully unlike the way Fluttershy had always known herself to be. And though this ‘caretaker Fluttershy’ was smiling, it was clearly forced for the camera’s sake.

On both their flanks was the same cutie mark of three pink butterflies.

“So this… was the original version of myself?” Fluttershy asked.

They had already provided the story about the Swap. All it had done; how Discord and Celestia were involved in it, and all the secret work Lero and Twilight and Spike and Lyra had been doing to counter it.

“You absolutely cannot tell anypony else about this,” Lero warned. He still was holding onto that frying pan of his, though she noticed, not as tightly, his knuckles no longer white from the tightness of his grips. Insurance, she supposed. Perfectly reasonable, now that she understood.. “Nopony. Not the Cakes. None of the Pie family. And especially not Rainbow Dash, Rarity, Applejack, or Pinkie Pie.”

“Y… yeah. I completely agree.” Fluttershy nervously scraped the floor with a hoof. “My Flutter Sense starts going mad if I even think about telling them, that if I were to blab about this to any of those four, they’d take it very poorly. Just… bad mojo, there!”

“Are you remembering anything right now, Fluttershy?” Spike asked. “About how you used to be? Your ‘caretaker’ memories?”

Fluttershy shook her head, looked over a third picture that’d been set down earlier on this tabletop: the six of them with different marks. Well, five, anyway.

“So why’s YOUR mark the same in both versions, Twilight?” she asked. “Didn’t you get Swapped too?”

“Starswirl’s swapping spell is one of the types that excludes the caster,” Twilight said, as Fluttershy helped herself to another cookie. “Well… I think. I haven’t cast the original since that first time.”

“I’ll bet this all sounds too crazy to be believed, right?” Lyra said, with the ghost of a smile.

“Actually… it makes perfect sense to me,” said Fluttershy. "These past few months, I felt like I wasn’t myself, that I didn’t get myself. This explains why! I was never supposed to be this pony to begin with. All this time, I felt like… like…”

Looking at Lero, Fluttershy found a good metaphor to use.

“...Like a hand forced to wear a shoe. Like a foot forced to wear a glove.”

“Fluttershy, I’m sorry,” said Twilight.

The yellow pegasus made a smile. “Oh, it’s…”

“No, I’m very serious. I’m so very, awfully, HORRIBLY sorry. I should’ve gotten Swapped too. I deserve to suffer exactly the way I made the five of you suffer.”

Fluttershy looked at Twilight and understood she had reopened one doozy of an emotional wound.

“Twilight…” Lyra said, she and Lero moving to comfort her.

“No!” she steps out of their grasp. “I don’t deserve…” She hung her head, letting out a deep sigh. “I didn’t mean for any of this to happen... Never! I was just trying to test what an old spell did! But I still hurt you all so badly… my best friends… every second of every minute of every day! And I lied to you. Played this huge charade. It was just random bad luck that you ‘lost touch’ with your talents, and couldn’t get ‘back on track!’ All five at the same time. And it was me, it was ALL ME! I did it! I’m to blame! And I was so afraid of driving you insane, I couldn’t even admit it you! Not until now.”

“Well, you said you’re trying to fix us, right?” reasoned Fluttershy, as Lyra moved to nuzzle Twilight, who this time didn’t move. “With this Cure thing?”

The noise Twilight made was a sob mocking the sound of a laugh. “Oh yes. The Cure. The bitterest, most unswallowable pill in the entire damn jar.”

Lero held an arm out. “Twilight, whatever you’re about to say…!”

“No! She needs to hear this!” And Twilight faced Fluttershy again. “I have really come to love all you Swapped Ponies. And when I say that, I mean that I love you all as your own distinct and unique individuals. Separate from your old Unswapped selves. Does that make sense?”

Fluttershy thought it over. “You mean like… in the Megamare comics, where Megamare had to go through all the alternate universes, and she eventually teamed for a long time with the alternate universe version of herself from the Dinosaur Zone?”

“Oh yeah!” Spike chimed in. “Dinosaur Zone Megamare was all kinds of awesome! She stuck with Team Megamare for way more issues than the writers originally intended, and the spinoff…”

Lero cleared his throat very loudly on Twilight’s behalf.

“Yes, Fluttershy, it’s... it’s just like that. Especially with Rarity.” Fluttershy couldn’t remember a more desolate-sounding sigh than the one Twilight gave just then. “My sweet, beautiful Rare Bear. She’s become so special to me. She’s everything a herd-sister should be. I love everything about how she treats me. And Lero, and Lyra, and Spike, and Rainbow Dash. All of us. And I’ll just come right out and say it: she’s an absolute lioness in bed, too!”

Fluttershy tried her best not to cringe the way Lero and Lyra were. Spike gave a small jump as if something had bitten him from underneath, (and what a bizarre thing it’d been learning that spike had crushed on RARITY in the ‘real world!') Twilight Sparkle was spilling her heart out to her, but Fluttershy hoped there wouldn’t be any more intimate details…

Lyra let out a small cough. “Uh, Twilight, Spike’s here.”

She closed her eyes. “Yeah. I know, sorry. One more thing I’m screwing up, right?”

“Twilight…” Lero started, and stopped as Twilight shook her head violently. in response.

“No, don’t. I…” She closed her eyes. “I’d love nothing more than for that precious one-of-a-kind unicorn weathermare to stay in this herd forever. Grow old with her. Help her raise our foals together, once I figure out a way to let Lero do it... Now, you want to know something, Fluttershy? Every time I sit down at my lab to research the Swap Cure, it always feels like I’m plotting to murder her.”

To Fluttershy’s side, Spike was burying his head against Lyra’s body. Lyra was patting his back and doing her best to whisper soothing things, though she couldn’t keep the hitch out of her own voice. Lero sat with his elbows on his knees, hiding his face in his hands, until a point where he let them drop away.

“You Swapped Five… maybe your memories are jumbled about between yourselves. But I know the friendship you feel for me is every bit as real and strong and heartfelt as those of my Unswapped friends.” Twilight continued. “In a life-or-death disaster situation, I know any of you would die for me. Just as I’d die for any of you! And yet, to pick you five over your original selves…”

She shuddered.

“How I wish I could have all TEN of you at once! Swapped and Unswapped, coexisting together!”

“You mean… clone ‘em?” Lero asked weakly.

Twilight shrugged. “I’m damned, Fluttershy. The moment I honestly do discover a Cure, I’ll have to decide what to do with it. Use it, and I’ll obliterate all my Swapped friends from existence. Don’t use it… I’m consigning all my Original friends to a living, lifelong burial within their own psyches. Either way, I’m doomed to sentence five of my truest friends to effective death.”

Right now, one of the things really leaving a strong impression on Fluttershy was how smoothly this was all coming out of Twilight. Of course, a well-read book-lover like Twilight would be great with words. But there were no hesitating ‘ums’ or ‘uhs.’ So much of it seemed well-rehearsed. And not even in the sense of an actress delivering a memorized monologue.

More like... Twilight Sparkle had given herself lots of time for self-reflection on this Swap. Organize her thoughts. Select the best metaphors. Watching how her family had been reacting… most of it had shocked them. Stuff like how the cure research felt like a murder plot to Twilight. This stuff had been ricocheting endlessly in Twilight Sparkle’s mind for who-knew-how-long. And she’d never shared with anyone at all. Until now.

“I must confess that I feel like a monster,” Twilight finished with a tiny voice, and red, red, eyes that hadn’t stopped leaking tears.

Fluttershy opened her arms and hugged Twilight to her. The gesture surprised her, but she did not fight it. “Smile, Twilight. Go on. Smile. You’re no monster. I promise you aren’t.”

“You… you forgive me, then?” asked Twilight, with no small amount of awe.

“Well, duh!” said Fluttershy. “You expected a super duper double-strength kind-meister like me to hold grudges?”

Several minutes needed to pass before Fluttershy sensed it was a proper time to speak again. For Twilight had been completely overtaken by a wracking fit of weeping. An inner part of herself -- the Fluttershy she had ‘always remembered’ being -- was encouraging her to stop Twilight’s sadness pronto, by singing her a song or pass out cupcakes.

But a different side of her -- the side she suspected was buried deep within her mind -- had told her to just be there with Twilight, and let the crying run its natural course. This turned out to be the right choice. Fluttershy’s chest fur did a nice job of soaking up all the tears and the volume, until her friend eventually pulled away.

“Besides, it sounds to me like you’re as much a victim in this as any of us Swapped Ponies. Maybe even bigger than us! I mean, between making a huge unfunny nuisance of myself with my neighbors and an impossible decision like you’ve got, Twilight… well, I’d say I got off very lucky! So please, no more horrible punishment fantasies about getting Swapped yourself. You’d probably have to leave your family then, and think of how sad they’d be!”

Her unicorn friend turns around, looking at all her herdmates, who had been listening intently. Spike looked especially emotional.

“I… I would be sad, Twilight!” Spike snapped, crossing his arms with adorable anger. “I’d hate it if you left us. Hate it if you were ever to look at me and not see your brother. Hate it if one of your friends ‘took over’ for you, and I had to pretend she’d ‘always’ been my special big sister! Be ten thousand times worse than losing Rainbow Dash!”

“Ditto,” said Lero.

Lyra also nodded, levitating over a small cloth, and wiped away the last tears from the corners of Twilight Sparkle’s eyes. At last she smiled.

“There we go!” cheered Fluttershy, clapping her hooves together. “Yeah, I’m looking inside myself, and I’m pretty sure both sides of me agree that they much rather see you happy!”

They all came in and shared a lovely group hug around Twilight.

“But… guys, I’m still not getting how this even happened in the first place?!” Spike exclaimed. “Why is Fluttershy suddenly able to see all the old pictures as they really are and stuff?!”

The four of them looked at each other in bafflement.

“Uh…” Fluttershy suggested.

“Er…” Twilight added.

Just like when Lyra looked ready to open her mouth and proclaim it an unsolvable mystery, Lero asked, “Hey, Fluttershy… the very first time your felt your, ah, ‘perceptions’ had changed was at Berry’s party after that thing with Gilda?”

“Yes, that’s right!” said Fluttershy. “In fact I remember just before I’d left Sugar Cube Corner to go to Berry and Ruby’s birthday party, I looked over at the wall where all the Employee of the Month pictures hang, and they were all of me! But when I came back, they all showed Pinkie Pie with that weird curly mane!”

“I see,” Lero nodded. “Then I think it might’ve been your equilibrium that brought this about.”

“But that doesn’t make sense!” Lyra protested. “That time Rainbow Dash was teetering on the verge of madness… that happened AFTER her own equilibrium!”

Lero shrugged his shoulders, but still went on. “I admit, it’s just a theory. A mere guess. But… we all remember how Pinkie Pie used to be, right? She had a very unique mindset back when her mane was curlier, can we agree?”

They all did, even Fluttershy, who had already read through a couple of the old Pinkie’s diary entries.

“Well, here’s my personal diagnosis of the situation. When Fluttershy… with the Old Pinkie’s unique mindset… underwent her equilibrium, it affected her mind in a very unique manner. Maybe… Pinkie’s mind, when no longer buried, is just too much for the bewitchment. She sees things like they really, are, or at least more like they really are? Fluttershy’s now ...infected? ...Possessed?”

“Claimed?” Fluttershy suggested.

“...Claimed by Pinkie’s unique perspective.” Her concluded.

Fluttershy thought it over. She had no way of telling for sure, but it seemed like Lero was on the right track with this ‘fourth wall awareness’ idea. She thought of actresses, who were able to balance both the fictional ‘reality’ of their on-stage personas, and the real reality of their true selves as performers. Like an actress, Fluttershy felt she was now able to see all the painted backdrops and forced perspective for what they really were.

Then it hit her. “Oh! Oh! Oh, man, I get it! My Flutter Sense! Nothing's made it go off... Heck, I hadn’t even thought of it until today!”

“Pinkie Sense.” Twilight corrected reflexively.

“Well, since this IS Fluttershy, maybe it is her Flutter Sense!" Lyra said.

“And there we have it.” Lero said.

“Well, then, why didn’t she go bonkers?” Spike interjected.

Lero blinked. “Well, Pinkie can handle all sorts of craziness, like her Pinkie Sense. Maybe she can just handle things like the Swap?”

“Hey, Fluttershy?” said Twilight, interrupting these thoughts. “I know it’s been hard on you… all the humor stuff. Old Pinkie’s lifestyle. So what would you have me do? I haven’t come up with a Cure yet, I swear, but if you want to go back to being your old Bearer of Kindness self, I promise I’ll work towards that! But if you really would rather stay THIS way…”

It felt like a piano had fallen on top of her head. “I… I… Hey, Lero? Rainbow Dash, she’s still a shy pony, isn’t she?”

“Huh?” said Lero. “Well, she’s gotten a lot better than she used to be, but yeah. She is still kinda shy. Nothing like what Dash used to be.”

Fluttershy gave a long sigh. “I see. Twilight, I’m sorry, but it’s way too hard to decide! I’m too much of two minds. And I’m not trying to even be punny or anything! Honest!”

“But… but… surely….”

“You are right, Twilight; that great big comedy obsession of mine was the pits. But you want to know something? These past two days made up for everything. Everything. I couldn’t be joking LESS.”

And Fluttershy began twirling all around the room, like an excited ballerina, feeling new energy swell in her heart.

“This equilibrium thing’s super duper keen! I love it! Love this feeling of wanting to be around other ponies! Love having other ponies want to be around me! I feel so liberated, Twilight! Like every shackle and wall I ever built for myself in my mind is gone forever!”

As she twirled and cavorted, Fluttershy wondered where she’d subconsciously been referring both to her Unswapped life and her Swapped life? Probably! But then her eyes happened to catch sight of that recent picture of Rainbow Dash sitting meekly with her animals, and the urge to dance was done.

“But It look back on my memories of Rainbow Dash, that the Swap made for me. How intimidated she is by other ponies. All the time she spends alone in that cottage, or out in the woods to be with animals. That’s supposed to be MY life?!”

The whole idea felt like something out a freaky nightmare. Like waking up and finding yourself to be the size of an ant. Or only being able to speak in limericks. Why couldn’t life just be the way she’d always remembered it?!

“Though… she did look happy with her animals…” She let that thought hang for a moment, before shaking her head, turning back to Twilight.

“And yet…staying like this…” Fluttershy’s lip quivered and her ears folded down in guilt, “it’s like I’ve stolen something from my bestest friend Pinkie Pie: her life! And that I’ve saddled my other bestest friend, Rainbow Dash, with a burden that she should never have had to bear: my own crippling shyness! And every time I happen to see an old picture on somepony’s wall, I’ll have to remember that all over again.”

Lyra took a step forward. “Fluttershy, do you think… maybe you just need more time to think this all through? It IS a huge dilemma…”

But Fluttershy shook her head. Putting a smile on, she bounced over right next to where Twilight Sparkle stood, and exclaimed, “I’ll tell you what, Twilight; I’ll let YOU make the choice for me!”

“M-me? Are you sure about that?”

“The way I see it… this all came about because of a magic spell, right? Spells are unicorn things. And up in here…” Fluttershy tapped at the side of her head. “I’m 50% pegasus, 50% earth pony, and 0% unicorn. So I’m 0% qualified to make the call on this.”

But Twilight frowned very deeply at this line of reasoning. As though Fluttershy had said something very offensive and small-minded. “That’s not true! In fact, that kind of logic’s the stuff you hear from unicorn supremacists!”

Oh horse apples. Fluttershy was forgetting her history lessons on all the old civil rights movements; how non-spellcasters had just as much right to weigh in on magical matters as spellcasters. (It'd been a big issue back in the day. She recalled one old quote from her old school books, where a unicorn protestor had said: "Letting non-spellcasters decide what magic we can cast would be like letting deaf ponies pick the music we can listen to!")

“W-well, if this were some simple coat coloration changing spell… that’d be one thing. But… y’know... this is a major brain twister spell of STARSWIRL’S that HE couldn’t figure out! Or even Celestia!”

Then Fluttershy gave Twilight a hard, accusing stare. “Plus… either way, I’m not really choosing just for myself, am I? Admit it! You see me as the ‘Swapped Spokespony,’ don’t ya? I’d be deciding on behalf of all five of us at once, right? Having a real hard time seeing myself swapped back into my old caretaker role without the other four also swapping into their old roles too. But how am I supposed to know whether or not they’re happier in their new lives? I can’t even ask them properly, since they’d… you know…”

“They’d go cuckoo,” said Spike.

Fluttershy tried hard not to imagine what this would like, facing Twilight Sparkle once more. “The bottom line is… I’m not comfortable living at the cost of two other ponies, And I’m not comfortable deciding for four other ponies’ what’s best. That’s not what Pinkie or Fluttershy would do, I’m sure of it. What I’m here for… I’m here to be your friend, Twilight, and support your decision here. I know Celestia gave you this spell for a reason. She has faith that you’ll make things right for everypony. And so do I. So whichever you think I oughta stick with for good -- butterflies or balloons -- I promise I’ll cooperate with you 100%. In fact, I’ll do more than just promise, I’ll Fluttershy Forswear it! Ooh, in fact, I’ll do better than just Forswear, I’ll…! Hey, did Pinkie have her own Forswearing?”

“Pinkie had ‘Pinkie Promises,’” said Lero. He seemed amazed that he still remembered that. “Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”

Fluttershy loved the rhyme. “Wow. You’re right, Twilight… now I’m sorry you can’t have all ten of us together at once. I’d’ve liked to meet the Party Pony Pinkie Pie!”

“You’d have gotten along like two peas in a pod,” Lyra laughed.

And so Fluttershy sat back and recited the Fluttershy Forswear and the Pinkie Promise; “Cross my wings, hope to cry, pluck my feathers if I lie, and cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.”

Fluttershy could feel the power of the double-vow within her own heart. Twice as strong, twice as binding… and more magical for incorporating this strange other version of Pinkie Pie. A sacred oath from a separate dimension of reality. How cool was that?!

“What do you intend to do now, Fluttershy?” asked Lero.

“What else? Go back to living my life!”

“As a… party pony?” said Lero.

“Yup!”

The human shook his head in amazement. “Just like that, huh? Even with everything you know about yourself?”

“Well, what else can I do? Tell myself ‘snap out of it?’ Splash cold water in my face? Whack my noggin against the wall? Would that bring my old memories back?”

They all shared small, sad chuckles.

“According to you guys, half of my ‘real’ soul’s now inside Rainbow Dash. Even if I could flap my wings and absolutely all of my animal-loving memories flew right back into my head…”

“...You wouldn’t feel confident about stepping into Rain… your old cottage and just picking up where you left off, huh?” asked Lero.

“...No, I wouldn’t.” She sighed.

“Guess it’d probably still feel like a poor fit, wouldn’t it?” sighed Twilight, glumly. “And I bet you’re rather sick of feeling that way.”

“Yeah. I wouldn’t even know where to start with animals, any more than I knew where to start with the jokes.”

Another uncomfortable silence. Fluttershy was really itching to leave this basement at this point. She wanted to fly, brisk and breezy under the sunlight, and eat a banana split, and give herself some private time to think this all through.

“May I ask…?” Twilight started.

“Hey, Twilight?” Lero cut in, with a hand on her back. “ Why don’t we save it for another day? I think maybe Fluttershy’s had enough bombshells dropped on her head for one afternoon.”

Fluttershy let out a grateful breath.

“You can stop by my place, tomorrow or something, and we can talk about this some more!” as they all started up the stairs. “Believe me, I wanna get to the bottom of this whole Swap business just as much as you guys!”

“Sure!” said Twilight. “Fluttershy, thank you for being so understanding and kind about all this.”

“You’re a very kind pony, yourself, Twilight,” she replied, as they reached the front door. “Don’t forget that.”

Laughing slightly, Twilight said, “That’s a really nice thing for you to say, but…”

“‘But’ nothing!” And the yellow pegasus stopped in her tracks. “I’m serious about what I just said. Kooky things can happen to a pony when she forgets her own kindness. Take it from a girl who’s been there. So don’t be a forgetter, okay?”

“Whoa,” Lyra breathed, as though Fluttershy had just done some super martial arts spinny kick thing.

“So if there are any more… unusual new developments up here…” Lero pointed at his head. “Or if you get any helpful ideas, or if you just need someone else to talk to about what you’re going through, you know where to go, right?”

Then Lero found himself tackle-hugged, being nuzzled by Fluttershy like a cuddly teddy bear of an uncle.

“You bet I do, Lero, you great big two-legged super-sweetie! Right here, with all you guys! You’re all just such… incredible friends!”

Then she hugged Lyra and Spike the same way, so they wouldn’t feel left out. “Well, bye-bye for now! Parties to plan, cakes to bake, and smiles to spread! Be seeing you!”

She let herself out the library’s front door. Seconds later, she re-opened it and came back in.

“Felt a brainwave, guys! I just thought back to earlier today, when I was talking to Spike and Lyra about my dear old Granny Pie and how she taught me how to sew, and for some weird reason, my mind jumped from there over to Applejack. And I realized: AJ hasn’t gotten any of this wonderful equilibrium stuff herself, has she?”

At these words, Lero sat back on his chair. Smiling a fox’s smile. “...Now that you mention it, no. She hasn’t. Yet.”

“Then I have an ideeeea!”

Author's Note

I have a lot of friends to thank for their help with this one.

NachoTheBrony, with his professional expertise in parties, was a big help in pointing out how Berry's party ought to go. You should also all expect a few small touch-ups to the previous chapter as well, in the coming days, (would've done it earlier, but I focused all my efforts on getting this chapter out!)

Rikmach, for his awesome editing skills, combing through the whole thing. I appreciate all that you do for me, man.

BadWolf, for a certain recommendation he gave, which turned to be right.

Last, but certainly not least, SpinelStride. Long ago, Spinel recommended I have this all happen to Fluttershy. I was iffy at first about making this exception to my Bewitchment rule, but he talked me into it, and I'm glad he did. This was a wonderfully dramatic chapter to write.

By the way, all the cocktails that feature in Berry Punch's party are real. These include: Anchors Aweigh, Mutiny, the Gold Rush and even The Liver Transplant. Though while there isn't an actual 'Mare Overboard,' there is a 'Man Overboard.' Please drink responsibly.

One Swapped Pony left to equilibrate, folks.

Thirty-Eight: Applejack Partners Up

Platform horseshoes.

Applejack closed her eyes, Much to her chagrin, she found herself welcoming the urgings of her Muse. Welcoming them! Welcome was the last emotion she thought she’d be feeling towards her Muse. Especially… especially since...

...Well, with everything that’d been happening these past couple days, what with her and Sweetie Belle and Spike going out to where the Diamond Dogs were, her Muse had fallen mercifully quiet. When her Gem Hunches had reawoken inside herself, it’d felt like a good omen. By the time she’d gotten all her bejeweled dresses up on those ponyquins, she had been convinced that this just might’ve silenced it for good!

Platform horseshoes. Platform horseshoes. Platform horseshoes. Platform horseshoes.

And then, just moments ago… that troglodyte of a walk-in customer! Plucking her jewels off that dress she’d labored so hard to sew! Like grapes off a grape stem!

Now she had a good-for-nothing baby dragon wailing and hammering his fist on the other side of her boutique’s door, begging to be let back inside. Wanting to lead her to another soul-crushing failure.

“Please, Applejack, please!”

So at this moment, it was a rare relief to have her Muse back inside her head. Taking the reigns. Monopolizing her mind. Drowning out all other distractions, loud as ever…

You will make a line of platform horseshoes designed to enhance their wearer’s height by three feet and ten inches. Except for that of the left foreleg; that one shall be four feet, one inch, making them always in a dynamic pose! You shall use hobnails, all glued together, to make these horseshoes of yours, for a standout statement that will have heads turning and tongues wagging.

“PLEASE, AJ! Don’t shut me out!” the voice of Spike begged from outside. Applejack’s door rattled from the pounding.

Platform horseshoes. Platform horseshoes. Platform horseshoes are what you will now focus on making. You will now make platform horseshoes. Hobnails will be what you will use for these horseshoes. You will find glue.

“We can still make this work!” Spike was yelIf you have run out of glue, you shall need to leave the house for a brief timespan and shop at the store and buy more for the sake of making these platform horsesh“Don’t give up on yourself like thi!You will use this glue to unify these many hobnails together into horseshoe shapes. And then you will glue more hobnails onto this base and “Don’t give up on MEEEEEthen paint all the right foreleg platform horseshoes and left hindleg platform horseshoes to be boysenberry-colored.

Applejack felt like a pincushion welcoming the pins back inside her as she rose up, away from Spike and towards her storage room. She was pretty sure she still had enough boxes of hobnails left over from the time her Muse had her make pantyhose.

Whilst the right hindleg platform horseshoes are to be colored cinereous. The left foreleg platform horseshoes are to be left unpainted. Twelve tablespoons of milk of magnesia are to be stirred into each can of paint you use for the platform horseshoes, for an ultra-modern finish with serious it-girl flair.

Three-seventeen came to Applejack before she even knew it, and with it came her sister, Sweetie Belle. She didn’t even respond when she heard her store’s bell jingle, though when her little sister called out, “Applejack! Hey, Applejack!” Applejack stopped and looked up as Sweetie entered the room.

“Did ya have an okay school day, Sweetie?” she asked.

But the look in Sweetie Belle’s eyes wasn’t that of a filly with school on the brain. “Why’s the Carousel Boutique’s sign You will focus on your workbeen switched to CLOSED?”

She blinked, shaking her head, attempting to push away the muse’s interruptions and focus for a moment on her sister. As she shrugged out of her school saddlebags, there was so much disapproval Sweetie Belle was affixing on her. Applejack steeled herself, stopping from flinching or frowning at the audible venom.

“Cuz customers ain’t welcome jest yet,” she said with a haughty sniff. “Not that that’s any concern of yers, Sweetie.”

“Ain’t…” After an eye roll, Sweetie Belle restarted her sentence, “...didn’t any of Spike’s dresses sell?”

Now, that cut. Applejack did allow her irritation to show as a scowl crossed her face. She picked up one of the hobnailed horseshoes and dropped it in one of the cans of boysenberry-colored paint. Hobnails were absolute murder on the mouth.

“Ah’ll have yew know them dresses were mine. Mah design. Mah making! Mine from the start! That dragon baby just had a dumb notion.”

“But did the dresses sell?” Sweetie persisted, eyeing all the ponyquins closest to the storefront windows. They were all bare, these ponyquins, none wearing a bejeweled dress.

“All a’ ‘em sold,” the elder sister had to admit. “But You will wrap up this insipidly unfashionable conversation. that ain’t the point.” She twitched slightly.

“That’s… funny,” Sweetie Belle said, with what had to be the unfunniest, narrowest look of watchfulness her eyes were capable of. Aimed at the platform horseshoes Applejack was making. “I figured that was the point. Selling dresses. Not just making them, but selling them. Since you’re running a business. And no one will see them outside of your shop unless someone buys them. Nor will you be able to afford to make more if you don’t sell them. And Spike helped you to do all that. Super-unselfishly. But now, where is he?”

Applejack wasn’t liking this at all; no sir, no ma’am. The longer she and Sweetie talked, the more Applejack felt like she was being cross-examined in a courthouse. Or grilled by a police detective.

The silence hung in the air. “You’re avoiding the question, AJ.” Sweetie stated, with a stamp of her little white hoof. “Where is he?”

“Ah don’t believe Ah’m liking the tone a’ yer voice, li’l lady.” AJ let her know, as she bent down and retrieved the horseshoe she’d dropped inside the paint can. Boysenberry-colored paint dribbled all down her muzzle.

A happy hammering on the door drew both sisters’ attention away from each other.

“Sorry! We’re closed!” Applejack called to the person outside, dipping her muzzle quickly into a large bucket of clean water.

“We ain’t here ta shop, Miz AJ!” answered the voice of little Apple Bloom. “We jest wanna pick up Sweetie Belle!”

AJ’s younger sister unlocked the door for her friends. The other two Cutie Mark Crusaders scampered in.

“Yew fillies look like yer goin’ butterfly catching.” Applejack noted, screwing a look of pleasantness onto her face. Scootaloo and Apple Bloom certainly had those sorts of nets strapped to their saddlebags. The extra one sticking out of Apple Bloom’s saddlebags was probably meant for Sweetie Belle.

“Butterflies, grasshoppers, inchworms… any kinda awesome-cool insect will do!” Scootaloo declared, grinning like a Wonderbolt.

“We’re gonna get our cutie marks in bug catching!” agreed Apple Bloom. “Ya ready, Sweetie?”

The younger and elder sister traded looks. Applejack was honestly of half a mind to forbid it from happening; to tell Apple Bloom and Scootaloo, ‘Sorry, but Sweetie Belle’s been disrespectful to me, so as punishment, you two are gonna have to go have fun without her.'

However, that’d mean keeping her here, and she really would rather not have the distraction. Instead, Applejack said, “Ah think some time outside with yer friends sounds like jest the ticket! Maybe a good seven hours, Ah’m sure that’ll git yer cutie mark on ya! Go on! Git yerself some crickets!”

It wasn’t long, but the glance Sweetie Belle gave her was both scornful and pitying. Almost before it could register, Sweetie’s attitude brightened as she told Apple Bloom, “You bet I’m ready!”

“CUTIE MARK CRUSADER BUG CATCHERS! YAY!” they all exclaimed, before galloping out to whatever swamp the bugs were thickest in. Applejack wouldn’t know herself. She was far too urbane of a lady.

Before she stepped out and closed the door, Sweetie Belle glanced back. “We’ll talk about this later,” she said in a tone that reminded Applejack of their mother when she was particularly disappointed in one of them. Before she could respond, Sweetie was out the door.

Why, that disrespectful little filNew idea. New inspiration. interrupted Applejack’s Muse, about three hours into producing her platform horseshoes. Quelle idée merveilleusement ingénieuse cela est!

Applejack sat herself down and listened, because what other choice did she even have?

You will now create an elongated georgette maxi skirt. The pattern on the maxi skirt shall be inspired by expressionist frescoes painted on foreign continents. A larger number of them will be faithfully recreated onto the garment to the absolute fullest extent of your artistic talent and intermingled with crayon scribbles worthy of preschool coloring books and large soup stains, as the contrast will bring out the best of both! Around both the neckline and the end of every sleeve, you shall stitch in well-remembered mottos from anti-Celestia revolutionaries. Except that every time the letters P, W, B, or N occur, they are to be switched with one another at random, for an innovate, unique addition to the wardrobe that oozes preppy appeal.

She dragged herself upstairs. With her Muse’s voice ringing in her head, every muscle and thought felt forty years older. Forty years weaker.

Applejack did have a little library of her own. It was nothing next to Twilight Sparkle’s vast collection, but it suited her personal purposes. She went over herself to her bookcases, and she found something on painters, in between all the fashion and sewing books; and yes, it had a pretty lengthy chapter on expressionism. However, being a mare who loved her princess, she had no such books on “anti-Celestia revolutionaries.” What incredibly bad luck; this she’d have to go to visit Twilight’s library. Where Spike would be.

Memories of the little dragon made Applejack’s stomach burn and her heart sink. She tried to shoo away these thoughts.

She must have spent about two hours in her bedroom reading up on expressionism. How it differed from impressionism. The philosophers and playwrights who served as its precursors. It took the book’s author a while before she even got to any actual artwork. At least the paintings were nice to look at. A mare without a Muse like hers would’ve skipped right TO the pictures of the paintings. But Applejack didn’t want to risk her Muse objecting for whatever reason.

Eventually, though, she had burned the images of the expressionist paintings into her mind. It was almost a shame that it was now time to fetch her stock of georgette. Maybe the book’s writing had been dull, but it had been so relaxing on her aching limbs just doing something passive like reading. With a smile, Applejack’s thoughts drifted to Twilight Sparkle. More than once, she’d tried to rope her and the other four into joining into a book club.

“It’ll be like being study buddies, only better!” Twilight had proposed to her and the other four. “We’ll read for fun!” And right now, that was sounding mighty tempting. Applejack missed Twilight. She missed everypony, so badly. But... Twilight would still be in that library of hers, same as ever. Maybe she should drop on by, say hi and they c…

Her. Elongated georgette maxi skirt! Damn. Elongated georgette maxi skirt! Cutie. Elongated georgette maxi skirt! Mark. Elongated georgette maxi skirt! Went. Elongated georgette maxi skirt! Epileptic. Elongated georgette maxi skirt! And. Elongated georgette maxi skirt! Apoplectic.

So yet again, Applejack’s only choice was to gather up her all her equipment, haul it up into her bedroom, and plunk her hindquarters in front of the sewing machine, once more. And georgette certainly wasn’t the easiest fabric to work with, either. So slippery and delicate; hard for a mare to pin down with her hooves, and easy to rip.

This would’ve been so much simpler if she’d been born a unicorn. It wasn’t something Applejack was proud of, but a corner of her brain had always pined for a magic horn, like a phantom limb. (For some reason, the diamonds on her flank tingled weirdly anytime Applejack had such thoughts.) Hooves were such oafish, indelicate things to have at the end of your limbs. Might as well be rocks. And after a while, using your mouth to handle everything got a little messy… and bad tasting.

She and Sweetie Belle should’ve almost been born as each other. Most days, Sweetie might as well not have a horn at all… and Applejack just knew in her heart that she’d’ve taken to magic like a pegasus to the skies.

And speak of the devil… AJ could hear Sweetie Belle downstairs, right now. Had enough time passed for them to finish their insect-hunting venture? Opening the door and letting herself in... saying goodbye to Scootaloo and Apple Bloom. Applejack rose off her chair to go down and give Sweetie a proper welcome back…

You are absolutely forbidden from stopping your masterpiece midway, over such a triviality. To do so would be to jinx yourself beyond every concept of misery and lucklessness, and then every day can be elongated georgette maxi skirt day!

Her Muse was right: She couldn’t afford to lose her inspiration. She got to it. The hour was getting late, but she’d be able to at least put a good dent in the consarned maxi skirt. Downstairs, she could hear her little sister fix herself dinner. Maybe she should take a break and join…

You ate an enormous breakfast this morning, Applejack. Eat any more today, and you shall surely grow fat. Fashionistas must never be fat. More importantly, each bit of money you save on food, is money you will use towards buying more sewing supplies, with which you’ll bring this whole countryside into high-end fashion!

...What a pain it was when her Muse made so much sense. What had she eaten for breakfast this morning? She couldn’t remember anything. Oh well, she’d definitely eat something tomorrow, and Sweetie would have to eat alone tonight. Hey, maybe it’d be a good idea to send Sweetie to fetch a book on anti-Celestia revolutionaries! That way…!

Applejack’s ears flicked. What kind of noises were those, coming from downstairs? Chains being dragged across the floor? Couldn’t be, could it?

“Sweetie Belle!” Applejack called up. “What kinda horseplay are ya up to?”

That heavy-sounding scraping...

“What’n the name a’ glitz ‘n’ glamour’s goin’ on down there?!” she shouted. “Answer me!”

No answer came from downstairs.

“Don’t yew make me come down there!” Applejack barked, rising out of her chair.

Sit down at once! boomed Applejack’s Muse. The night is oh-so-very young, and you have so many sartorial triumphs, weeping to be made real!

Aw, horseapples.

* * *

The next morning, Applejack awoke to find the grayest, dreariest downpour beating at her boutique she’d seen in quite a long while. Peering through the window, past her property line, she could see that the rest of her neighbors were enjoying a very sunny day.

This… incongruity puzzled her for several second before she realized what the case must be: Spike must have told Rarity how she’d treated him. And this was her unicorn weathermare way of petty revenge and showing displeasure. Truth be told, Applejack was feeling more than a bit upset at herself, now that she’d had a chance to cool down and sleep on it. She wished she could take back all she’d done and said, but what was done was done.

For breakfast, Applejack had one of Sweetie’s sugary cereals. She ended up eating two bowls, though the marshmallows stayed stale, even in milk. This would turn out to be the only remotely pleasant thing that would happen to her that day. The real trouble began when she went into her supply closet to fetch more georgette fabric.

All the cabinet drawers and chests where she kept her sewing things were chained up and had padlocks on them.

“SWEETIE BELLE!” She hollered out, fully furious with her sister. “AH AIN’T LAUGHIN’ AT THIS HERE PRACTICAL JOKE A’ YERS! AH’M GIVING YEW TA THE COUNT O’ THREE TA GIT ON DOWN HERE! ONE! TWO! TWO AND A HALF! TWO ‘N’ THREE QUARTERS! THREE!”

No Sweetie Belle. Applejack couldn’t even hear the patter of her little hooves from any part of the house.

“Suit yerself! When Ah find yew, Ah’m whupping the pelt offa ya, lil’ missy, and that’s a promise!”

She still didn’t come. With a snort of anger, Applejack set her teeth upon one of the chains and got to work trying to yank it off, as though it were a weed in her garden. But after a while, it showed no signs of giving, and her teeth were feeling sore.

Kick it! Break it! Her Muse demanded. You must have access!

Applejack reared back her leg and aimed for the largest drawer. Neither the chain nor the padlock got in the way of her smashing it in. But in addition to the crunch of the wood, AJ also heard a brittle, glassy shattering noise she knew she shouldn’t be hearing from this drawer.

Applejack worked the busted drawer open. Her last roll of georgette fabric lay inside, and it was crawling with bugs, so very many BUGS!

What?! Where did these vermin come in from?!

By the look of things, it was from the glass bottle which Sweetie must’ve slipped inside this drawer before chaining and padlocking it up. Applejack could still see creepy-crawlies squirming their way over the glass shards towards her costly fabric, to join their friends.

She recognized what kind of bugs these were, at once. They were universally loathed by every tailor, seamstress, and clothier throughout the whole fashion industry, just as rats were loathed by restaurant owners.

Large, brown and maggot-like, with the speed and stomachs to rival those of parasprites. Except that where parasprites had a bottomless hunger for regular food, these guys craved fabric.

They were known as ‘weaveaters.’ And already, they were making a big buffet out of her roll of georgette. Had she been a unicorn, Applejack would probably have burned it with magical flames. But she was an Earth pony, and there wasn’t enough time to get a safe, mundane fire going. So, running fast as her hooves could carry her, Applejack grabbed herself a shovel and a big plastic garbage bag.

Scooping the georgette roll into the garbage bag, and tying it tightly, she raced outside into her backyard, dug a hole, and buried the infested thing.

“Wanna know the biggest thing that’s been standing in the way of your success?” asked Sweetie Belle, stepping out into the backyard. “You, Applejack. You, yourself.”

“Where did… when did…” she stammered in flabbergasted fury.

“Yesterday, when I was bug-catching with Apple Bloom and Scootaloo, I stumbled upon this mother lode of weaveaters out in the fields,” Sweetie Belle explained. “I scooped up a whole bunch of them up in my net brought them home with me.”

“Eeeewww.” Was all Applejack managed at the thought of handling those disgusting creatures.

“I know. That was kinda gross.” Sweetie said, looking sheepish before her attitude hardened again. “From there, I transferred those weaveaters over to a bunch of those super-fragile glass bottles I’d made when I tried becoming a Cutie Mark Crusader Glassblower. Then I taped a bottle inside each and every one of your supply drawers, so that it’d be sure to break apart if you tried to force it apart, and then chained and padlocked them all shut.”

“Where’d ya get all them chains ‘n’ padlocks, anyway?!” Applejack asked.

“I took apart that chains-and-padlock sweatpants you’d made a while back, I mean, they were kinda sitting around doing nothing since they weren’t exactly hot sellers.” Sweetie told her.

Applejack bristled as her own stupidity, for not simply leaving her room last night and stopping her sister when she’d heard her, loud as thunder. Meanwhile, Sweetie was turning around and picking up some kind of notebook in her mouth.

“Did you even know those padlocks still had their lock combinations all stickered to the backs of them?” Sweetie asked, speaking through the book. “Of course, I’ve already removed those stickers and I copied all the combinations down in this little notebook of mine!”

“Gimme that!” Applejack ran up and snatched the notebook from Sweetie Belle, who didn’t offer any real resistance. She brought it inside the house, set it on the nearest table, and peered through it. The first few lines read:

LOCK #01 = ☼ Ω ☾
LOCK #02 = ⭐ ❀ ♪
LOCK #03 = ✂ ♦ ☂
LOCK #04 = ☄ ⚓ ☼
LOCK #05 = ♡ ♛ Ω

On and on it went. Feeling in a daze, Applejack looks over at some of the padlocks. Of course, there were no cutesy symbols on any of them. Just numbers, zero through thirty-nine.

“Nice code, huh?” asked Sweetie. “Came up with it myself, when me and my friends tried being Cutie Mark Crusader Cryptographers! Only I know how to read it.”

“...Why?” asked Applejack, in a shaky breath. All those many, many times that she’d looked to the heavens and prayed that her little sister might grow some real competence, why now? Why with THIS?! “Just… why, Sweetie Belle?!”

“Don’t get me wrong,” Sweetie said softly. “I didn’t WANT to have to do this. I’m not a bad filly, just doing this to hurt you. But you’re out of control, Applejack. First you mistreated me so horribly, I had to move in with Mom and Dad, and now you drove Spike out of our house! After he did nothing but bend over backwards to help you! So you forced me to resort to extreme measures.”

“Spike… the thing with Spike… he might’ve helped make us some money, but… well…”

The ideas jumbled around in her head he’d gotten in the way of her artistry, her vision, so he had to go She interrupted her own train of thought. No, darnit. He had only been trying to help.

“Apple Bloom’s sister went through a similar problem to what you’re going through,” said Sweetie Belle, sounding like a principal at a parent-teacher conference. “Pinkie Pie just suddenly couldn’t farm right, the way you suddenly can’t sew right. But then Lero went and told Apple Bloom she’d need to become the ‘big sister’ for Pinkie for a while. And that’s what fixed Pinkie. So now it’s clear to me that I’ve got to become the big sister for you.”

Inside her, Applejack could hear fearful, puppy-like whimpering from her Muse.

“So now, AJ, I want to hear you say, ‘Sweetie Belle, I promise I’m going to let you take over for me as big sister until I’m better. And I’ll be good and do whatever you say until I’m ready to be responsible and mature again.’”

Applejack was breathing so heavily, her shoulders were bobbing up and down. It felt like some very ancient force within her was uprooting itself from deep inside herself. When she spoke, her accent came thicker than ever.

“If yew think fer one apple-picking minute Ah’d agree ta somethin’ like that…!”

Do it! Right now! sobbed her Muse. Not only was Applejack experiencing a spastic, spasming clenching around her cutie mark… the same clenching was happening to her throat muscles. Capitulate to her demands! You cannot risk losing all your precious fabrics, that’ll be the end of everything! All your dreams! All your hopes! Everything your cutie mark stands for!

“...Then yer absolutely right, as it turns out.”

Her heart and her shame had never felt heavier as she removed her hat and held it over her heart. As though for a lost loved one.

“Sweetie Belle, Ah promise Ah’m gonna let yew take over fer me as big sister until Ah’m better again. And Ah’ll be good and do whatever yew say until Ah’m ready ta be responsible and mature again.”

Applejack’s eyes were squeezed shut in humiliation as her tiny younger sister came over and gave her a warm nuzzle.

“This really is for your own good. Don’t worry. We’re going to beat this horrible Muse of yours that you’ve always been talking about. You and me, little sister.”

* * *

Giggling, Fluttershy turned the next page of Pinkie Pie’s diary while biting down on her cupcake. Mmm! Triple cinnamon sugar with a marshmallow fluff center!

Dear Diary,

Ugh. Even after resting, I’m still feeling pretty wiped out. And bummed out. Because a day like today isn’t the sort of day that you really want to write up about any more than a schoolfilly wants to write up a big essay on why her last school project flopped so bad. More like a rather-everyone-forget-this-day-ever-happened-especially-me kind of day. But they won’t forget, and I don’t think it’s fair to them or myself if I forget today, either. Because then I’ll also have forgotten the important life lesson I learned at the end of this super-embarrassing disaster day. And if I forget the life lesson, I might end up repeating this same exact mistake at a later point in time! (This sort of thing happens to ponies more often than we’d like to acknowledge.) So in the interest of making sure this day never, ever happens again…

Do you remember me telling you about my Nana Pinkie’s legend of the Mirror Pool? The one which you activate by saying, “And into her own reflection she stared, yearning for one whose reflection she shared, and solemnly sweared not to be scared at the prospect of being doubly mared?” Well, it all started when...

Part of Fluttershy worried that reading the diary was invading the… Other Pinkie’s privacy, but another voice told her not to be silly, and she had every right to read her own diary. After all, Twilight Sparkle had said that half of Fluttershy’s soul was the old Pinkie Pie… so really, it was like reading her own diary. And it was like that! It REALLY was so much like she was reading her own diary! Kinda-sorta. It was also a little bit disturbing that her internal narration sounded like Pinkie’s voice without her accent when she read, but on another level, it was oddly reassuring.

Flipping through this diary’s pages was like the written equivalent of hearing a brass band performing a familiar old tune specifically written with woodwind instruments in mind. With occasional segments skipped and completely new bits freestyled in. As she drank in the story of Curly Pinkie and the Mirror Pool, (with an enthusiasm to do Twilight proud!) Fluttershy was swept back through her own memories of the Duplicate Fluttershies, who had been every bit as featherbrained and self-absorbed as the ones Curly Pinkie had made of herself.

When all was said and done, the Duplicate Pinkies had been a much easier problem to deal with than the Duplicates of herself. Because earth ponies couldn’t fly, her friends had been able to round the Pinkies all up much quicker, and the Pinkies hadn’t been able to perform quite as much mischief as the Fluttershies. So much junk that hadn’t been spilled over so many rooftops and heads… Fluttershy was almost jealous of how less calamitous things had turned out!

Fluttershy was just getting to the part where Twilight Sparkle had opened the curtain to reveal the wall of drying paint, when Mrs. Cake called up from downstairs.

“Fluttershy! Fluttershy, dear! There’s, er, somepony at the door, wants to see you!”

Fluttershy set Pinkie’s diary aside… though, since her Swap, she’d been using it as her diary too. Fluttershy had been naturally compelled to pick up where old Curly Pinkie had left off; writing her own entries. Now that she’d gotten her Equilibrium, she was still undecided whether she should continue on with that. Though perhaps it was best to; the other Pinkie deserved to know what happened to her cutie mark if things were ever ‘fixed.' She shouted “Be right down!” and was right down within less than half a minute.

She’d’ve expected it to be Lero or somepony from his herd, come for a secret Swap-related powwow. It was almost ten o’clock at night, after all. But instead of Herd Bellerophon, this late-night caller at her door was a handsome, white-coated pegasus stallion, wearing armor that marked him as a member of the Day Guard- Princess Celestia’s elite soldiers.

“Miss Fluttershy,” he began, “Princess Celestia would like for you to come to her castle at once.”

“Of course!” she responded brightly. She was always happy to see the princess. That said… “What for?” she asked, a note of worry in the question, noting the unusual hour and nature of the request, while eyeing the sky chariot behind the soldier. The other soldier still hitched to it was looking up at her.

“I don’t have the liberty to say, I’m afraid.”

“Is it anything I should be worried about?”

“I don’t have the liberty to say, I’m afraid,” repeated the soldier.

She thought about it. It took less than a second. “Okiedokie!” she decided, and flew herself inside the chariot. “I’m ready to go!”

* * *

There were lots of larger buildings Fluttershy could name that got creepy or haunted-looking after the sun went down. But the royal palace failed to be such a place. It had always been just as majestic after dark as it always had been during the day, and had grown even more so since Princess Luna’s return. The Night Court’s activity gave it a soft luminescence and elegant features reminiscent of the night princess. From her sky chariot, Fluttershy looked from the palace to the full moon, and was unable to say which was the prettier sight.

When she’d first stepped aboard, she figured they were going to fetch her other five Element-bearing friends as well… but instead, she was flown straight to the castle, alone. And instead of delivering her to the front entrance, the charioteers banked around to the opposite side of the castle, landing by a much smaller and rougher-looking side door which Fluttershy had never seen before. Dark though it was, she could read a sign that said ‘Servants’ Entrance.’ The whole area practically screamed stark efficiency compared to the beautiful ostentatiousness of the main entrances and public areas. She was faintly reminded of the preparation and working areas she’d — Pinkie’d — had access to during the preparation of Cadance and Shining Armor’s wedding.

“Pr… ah,” Though they were alone, the chariot-puller who’d started speaking gave a nervous look around, turning the ‘pr’ sound into a gentle cough, and restarted his sentence. “Miss Fluttershy, you’re to enter the castle through those doors.”

“Is that where I’ll be meeting with Princess Celestia?” she asked him.

With a wince, the poor stallion looked around as though journalists might be eavesdropping behind the creeping vines. “I don’t have the liberty to say, I’m afraid.”

Fluttershy faced the door. Just before opening it, she turned around and told the stallion, “You oughta get yourself some liberty sometime. It’s gooooood stuff!”

Then she stepped in through the servants’ entrance.

* * *

Fluttershy remembered a phrase she’d read in one of Applejack’s glamour magazines. Words she’d committed to memory for their sheer weirdness, then had later gotten Twilight to define. Learning what this phrase meant had been nifty, but she never thought she’d ever have been using it in real life. Until tonight. Because there really was no better way of describing this place than an elysian dreamscape.

Multiple waterfalls were in front of her and to her side. Except water wasn’t what fell from any of them. Lavender liquid from one, peach-colored from another, and from another still was the green of aloe vera. None of it could even be properly be described as ‘watery;’ it was as thick as anything a pony would squeeze over a bowl of ice cream. The liquids collected together in a single river and were gently borne downstream, with no single color clashing with another.

Bubbles served for clouds up in the sky; which were almost the same pastel yellow as her own coat. The ground beneath her was a strange sort of turquoise-gray. She dragged a hoof across the ground. It felt kinda rocky and moderately firm. Yet there was nothing truly earthy about the ground, or anything else, beautiful as it all was! What WAS this place?! The door she’d just walked through wasn’t even at her back!

This was when Fluttershy’s nose finally caught up with her wonderstruck eyes, and she realized what she’d been smelling all this time: Soap. Shampoo. While none of the scents were of any brand-name she recognized, the fact remained: the large bubbles in the air were really soap bubbles! The colorful waterfalls were actually shampoofalls! Even the ground under her hooves felt like those scratchy pumice-based bars used to scrub out serious grime and grease.

And yet at no point did this smorgasborg of scents ever feel overpowering to Fluttershy; the way it could sometimes get in perfume shops. At all times, the very gentlest and most temperate of breezes danced around Fluttershy’s nose, allowing in just the right amount of aroma to be alluring, while buffeting away the rest.

“Toot-toot! Tootle-toot!” An adorable red toy tugboat popped out of the river, spurting shampoo out of its smokestack. She used to have a tugboat like this as a bath toy, long ago. “Follow meeeee!” it said.

Giggling, she followed the toy to a large castle built of white, brick-shaped soap bars. A series of shower curtains pulled opened for her, one after the next, as she came in through the front doorway.

“Sooo, Fluttershy, my dear,” purred Discord. “Like the ambiance?”

He was inside an open shower, pouring bottles of turpentine over his body to scrub himself under a stream of orange juice, which poured upward from the shower drain at his feet and was sucked up into the shower head above his horns.

“My first instinct was creating a candyland… but I realized how overdone those are, especially by about ninety percent of candy shops. Besides,” Discord continued, looking at Fluttershy’s balloon mark, “I daresay you must be thoroughly sick to death of candy. Considering how much of it you’ve already been compelled to eat these past few months.”

And then Discord raised a curious eyebrow at Fluttershy. “Or… are you?”

He clenched a talon out in front of Fluttershy, unclenched it, and there were cookies and gumdrops in his palm. Shrugging blithely, Fluttershy helped herself to a gumdrop.

“What is this place?” Fluttershy asked. “Am I still inside the castle? Did you redecorate this room, Discord?”

“No, my little pony,” came the melodious voice of Princess Celestia. She was off by Discord’s left, inside a green clawfoot bathtub shaped like a cartoon bullfrog, frothing over with bubble bath bubbles.

Celestia’s darker-coated sister looked over at her elder sister from the whirlpool hot tub she was sitting inside.

“Am I dreaming?” Fluttershy asked Princess Luna. “Have I fallen asleep?”

Both the princesses stepped out of their respective bathing pools; their bodies instantly dried as soon as all four hooves had been pulled out of the water.

“Nay, young Fluttershy,” proclaimed Luna. “Thou art wide awake.”

“Think of this place as a ‘pocket dimension,’ Fluttershy,” Celestia continued, flinching as a trout-shaped shower head spritzed her with water. “One completely separated from Equestria altogether. Made just for this meeting.”

“Ah!” Fluttershy exclaimed. Well, that made as much sense as anything here. “Well, what’s this all about, then, huh? Some kinda bathtub party? Oooh, you should’ve told me! I’d’ve brought my pool noodle.”

“Not exactly,” Discord smirked, “All the same, we would rather you be comfy.” And he conjured up a poofy pink tuffet which Fluttershy was happy to sit on.

“My dear Fluttershy,” Celestia began, stepping forward. “I understand that, earlier today, you had a very eye-opening discussion with Twilight Sparkle and the other members of her herd. Is that right?”

“Mmm-hmm! Well, except for Rarity and Rainbow Dash.”

Princess Celestia shut her eyelids regally. “But of course. Right after you had left her house, my faithful student did the responsible thing, and wrote to me; alerting me to this new development right away.”

“Is it true, then?” Princess Luna asked. “The blinders placed upon you by that abysmal miscarriage of a spell… they have indeed fallen from your eyes?”

After a heavenly whiff of patchouli and juniper, Fluttershy said, “If you’re asking whether I can see the old pre-Swap pictures ‘n’ stuff, yeah, I totally can, just fine! Are you going to have Discord erase my mind?”

“I’d prefer very much not to need to,” said Celestia, ignoring all the oddments Discord was now jamming into his giant blender. “Twilight and I are both hoping you could help her provide insight into your condition, as someone she can approach directly.”

“Oh, gladly!” said Fluttershy, rocking back a bit.

“But first, we wish to ask of you a few questions,” said Luna.

Then Celestia fixed Fluttershy with the sort of grave expression Fluttershy remembered her having the very first time she’d ever brought up the subject of Discord, and what a threat he represented to everyone.

“Before even that, we want your absolute solemn word of honor that you will not breathe a word of this meeting to anyone.”

“Remember: this never happened,” said Discord, suddenly dressed in a chef’s apron and toque, stirring up a big bowl of pasta in marinara sauce. “Capiche, mia ragazza carina?”

“Sure!” Fluttershy said. “My lips are zipped! Fluttershy Forswear AND Pinkie Promise!”

“...Forswear?” Princess Luna asked, just as Fluttershy was about to begin her Forswearing.

“It’s her personal version of the Pinkie Promise,” chuckled Discord, bending forward, smiling down at Fluttershy, hands over his knees. “Hey, Fluttershy! Wanna know something nifty? I’ve seen alternate universes where they’re also dealing with their own Swaps!”

“Really?” she asked. “Real alternate universes, like in the comic books?”

“What’s the difference?! If you want, I’ll teach you all the OTHER special vows your friends have come up from those other Equestrias, where they’re supposed to be the funny party-loving baker girls instead of you! Such as the Rainbow Dash Declaration!”

And in a twirl, Discord had morphed himself into a version of Rainbow Dash with hilariously frizzy hair, and an exact replica of her own Balloon Mark on her flank.

“Or how about the Twilight Sparkle Swearing?” this Rainbow Dash asked, now transforming into a silly Balloon-marked Twilight Sparkle. One whose mane was the floofiest afro you could ask for, and a friendly smile brimming with rib-busting comedy, that Fluttershy was dying to hear from her. But poor Celestia didn’t seem to like the look at all, cringing at this ridiculous version of her faithful student.

“And let’s not forget, the Applejack Avowal or the Rarity Resolution!” said Discord, changing into goofy versions of Applejack and Rarity.

“I’ll be super-sworn times six!” Fluttershy squealed. It would be as though not just herself, not just the old Pinkie Pie, but the spirits of four other Elements of Laughter from other universes were tied into this sworn oath. Watching her from afar, like a host of angels. Plus, she’d be performing this in front of Princess Celestia, Princess Luna, and Discord.

Vows did not get more solemn, binding, groovy, or downright sacred than this. And Fluttershy intended not to disappoint any of them.

One by one, Discord transformed himself into each of the other Elements of Laughter, and taught Fluttershy their respective vows. She committed them each to heart, then recited all six before the princesses.

First Rainbow Dash’s: “Eat my dust and search the sky! Pluck my feathers if I lie!”

Then Applejack’s: “Boop my nose and shake my tail, gonna do it without fail!”

Then Twilight’s: “Tail to horn and nose to hoof, what I say will be the troof!”

Then Rarity’s: “Shiny hiney, muddy shoe, spank me if I fail to do!”

Then Pinkie Pie’s: “Cross my heart and hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye!”

And last, Fluttershy’s own: “Cross my wings, hope to cry, pluck my feathers if I lie!”

When she had finished, Princess Celestia let out a deep breath. As though the main reason why Fluttershy had been brought out here had been settled, and her biggest worry had just been put to rest.

“Say, Discord?” asked Fluttershy. “Got a question.”

“What is it?” he asked, ears growing enormous as he leaned in closer.

“My memories… my Swapped memories... say that Rainbow Dash was the one who reformed you from evil to good. But that’s not true, is it? I was originally the Element of Kindness, so… I was the one who really reformed you, wasn’t I?”

“Y… yes,” said Discord. “That’s right.”

“I became your friend?”

For a wonder, Discord turned bashful, staring at his index fingers while pressing their tips against each other. Celestia ended up answering for him.

“You’re quite right, my little pony. You befriended Discord.”

“Would you like to still be friends?” He looked up at her in amazement, and suddenly she felt a small touch of what must’ve been her old shyness. “My mind’s a bit different from what it was. Guessing I’m a lot more giggly than I was back then, huh? But you’re a pretty cool guy, when you’re not making the world all crazy-cuckoo-bird! And no one ought to lose their first-ever friend if it can be helped, so… friends again?”

Smiling from the heart, he took her hoof in his hands. “Friends forever, Fluttershy.” He took a second to brush away something by his eye. “Could I stop by your place and visit you at some point?”

“Anytime!” Fluttershy grinned. “Oooh, any chance you could take me to see the other Swaps, in those alternate universes?”

“Um…” said Celestia. “I don’t think that would be w…”

“Of course I will, Fluttershy!” Discord crowed, over Celestia’s protests. “We’ll make a long weekend of it!”

Celestia shook her head in disbelief while Discord and Fluttershy gave each a hoof-bump: Discord transforming the end of one limb into a hoof, in order to make this happen.

“Lady Fluttershy?” Princess Luna then asked, with a look of concern. “We wish to know, how fare thee, now that the truth be known?”

“I feel a-okay, Your Majesty!” Fluttershy promised her. “Part of me wishes it could remember what it felt like being my old self… another part of me’s afraid of remembering. But when all’s said and done, I’m okay with where I am in life right now. I feel joyful, and free, and smart!”

“Smart?” asked Luna, curiously.

“Yes!” said Fluttershy, “‘Smart’ in the sense that I know how to live my life well, and what to say to other ponies to make them happy and like me. But also ‘smart’ as in ‘informed.’ I understand what’s really going on, and it feels good, not being confused anymore.”

“Prithee, Fluttershy: what dost thou intend to do?”

Fluttershy looked from Discord, down to her own hooves, and back to Luna, taking a big breath that smelled of the loveliest passion flowers and vanilla extracts.

“I haven’t entirely decided quite yet,” said Fluttershy. “Well, except for the very first part; that I know. The very first part is to help my friend Applejack. Get her out of her rut.”

“That is a very mature, very responsible course of action to take, Fluttershy,” pronounced Princess Celestia. “It’s important that a truehearted friend should always be mindful to…”

“Celestia.” The white alicorn monarch stopped short, speechless, one foreleg raised in shock.

Not just from the entirely unexpected interruption. Fluttershy hadn’t called her Princess Celestia. Or ‘Your Highness,’ or ‘Your Majesty,’ or any of those other titles. Just plain ‘Celestia.’ As though her ruler were every bit her equal as Rarity or Lyra were. And Fluttershy didn’t feel the slightest bit sorry. In fact, she looked extremely serious. Almost to the point of looping back around to being silly. Almost.

“Tell me why you felt the need to do all this,” Fluttershy asked, her tone clear that this wasn’t a request.

“To… to do what?” asked Celestia, managing to barely keep her regal bearing.

“To have this Swap happen to us,” the yellow pegasus specified. “Me, Applejack, Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and Pinkie Pie.”

Fluttershy’s voice was still bright, perky, and peppy. Her face was still smiling. But inside, it felt like all the natural sweetness within her was freezing up into one giant popsicle. And that popsicle, in turn, was being sharpened into an icy shiv. And she knew that Celestia could hear that edge.

“When Twilight Sparkle wrote to you after we talked at her house…did Twilight tell you how she broke down in tears? About how attached she had become to the five of us? And how searching for the cure felt like plotting our murder? I had to hold her in my arms and promise her she wasn’t a monster.”

The sun princess winced, closing her eyes, her hoof lowering to the ground. “She... didn’t go into any of that in her letter. But I knew it had happened, thanks to Discord. He watched the whole thing.”

Discord shot Fluttershy a look, but she didn’t so much as glance back at him. It was really amazing how dirty Celestia looked to her right now, in this wonderland of soap and suds.

“We Swapped Ponies suffered a lot. But speaking personally, I think that what really appalls me most about this whole mess is how Twilight suffered. I mean, Twilight didn’t really HAVE friends like us, before we five came into her life, right? But then after all these years of living in Ponyville, after she went and turned herself into Equestria’s biggest friendship scholar for your sake… and you made her feel like she has to be an executioner to the first five friends she’s ever made. What kind of princess… what kind of teacher… what kind of mother figure would DO such a thing to a mare like Twilight Sparkle? There must be SOME reason! Please, Princess Celestia, help me to understand: what greater good could justify all this?”

The longer Fluttershy talked, the stiffer and more upright Celestia’s body became, until she looked like one of her own fountain statues you might find in some town square. Yet she wept. Fluttershy could see how shocking the tears were to both Luna and Discord; as though they hadn’t seen such a sight from Celestia’s eyes for centuries.

“Go ahead,” Fluttershy encouraged, “You can tell me. I’ve already sworn myself to secrecy.”

In spite of the tears, Celestia answered Fluttershy with flawless vocal composure. “The first thing you have to understand, Fluttershy, is that Alicorns aren’t limited by the normal magics of most ponies, even unicorns. Our natures often expand our capabilities in ways that go beyond mere spells. For example, since they are part of Luna’s domain of the night, my sister can enter and master dreams.”

“Oh! Neat! Does Cadence have anything like that?”

Celestia chuckled lightly, in spite of her tears. “She’s young yet, for an Alicorn, and has not fully matured into her power yet. So, no, not quite yet for her.”

“Oh! Well, then, what about you?”

“Many things. But of foremost relevance, I am capable of foreseeing the future.”

Fluttershy tilted her head in curiosity. “You’re an oracle? Ooh! Do you use a crystal ball? Read tea leaves? Watch roosters peck at grains?”

“I have prophetic dreams.” answered the princess.

“Tis true,” spoke her younger sister. “Whilst I do not seek to spy on my sister in her nighttime hours, I yet have glimpsed several of these dreams as they occurred, auguring events yet to come.”

“For example, Fluttershy, do you remember when I assigned you and your friends the task of reforming Discord, back when he was a mere statue?” asked Celestia. “Do you remember me saying, ‘Now where is Fluttershy? I believe she may know best how to begin reforming Discord?’”

Fluttershy sighed. “Well… I remember you saying ‘Rainbow Dash.’ But yes, I remember.”

“Ah,” said Princess Celestia, head drooping. “My apologies.”

“No, no,” said Fluttershy, resigning herself to this weirdness. “We both know that it’s my memories that’re wrong.”

Celestia nodded. “Did you wonder why I singled you…. her… out, despite my tasks usually going to Twilight?” Fluttershy nodded. “It was because I foresaw the outcome. That you... or your former self, at least... alone among your friends, had what it took to reach Discord and befriend him. That incident is just one example of the many other things I foresaw, and took action to bring about, for a better future for ponykind.”

Fluttershy nodded thoughtfully. “So... you have prophetic dreams. Did you dream of the Swap happening?”

“In a sense,” Celestia told her. “Several months ago, I had another prophetic dream. It told me that finally completing Starswirl’s old, unfinished spell would be vital for Equestria’s future… and that Twilight Sparkle would be the pony to do it.”

“Why?” asked Fluttershy.

“They’re foretellings, Fluttershy, not documentaries. My dream made it more than clear it was vital, but it didn’t show me how or why.”

Out of the corner of her eye, she thought she spotted Luna’s expression shifting as Celestia spoke, but when she glanced over, her expression was as neutral as before. Fluttershy looked between the two alicorns. “So is all this… this whole Swap... is everything still going according to your dream, Your Majesty?”

“No,” said Celestia, with a hard breath. “Honestly, truly, no. Things haven’t gone the way I foresaw, at all.” Fluttershy heard, almost felt an edge in Celestia’s voice — one she thought she’d never hear from such a wise, ancient being — the tone of someone completely lost. “It’s gone off-course almost from the beginning, and I have no idea why.”

Luna rose from her bath, and went over to her sister’s side, and nuzzled her comfortingly.

“I did foresee that Twilight would struggle with a ‘Swap’ situation, but my dream showed her restoring the five of you back to your right minds, relatively quickly. Or at least, in much less time than it’s taken here in the real world.” She shook her head helplessly.

“Well… then have your visions ever gone wrong in the past?” Fluttershy asked.

“Ponies have free will, my little pony. If I do not act to bring about my visions, they never come to be. And often, details change. But nothing’s ever gone astray to this large of a scale before.”

“Well, then, what changed?” Discord asked, lounging on a cloud of bubbles floating by.

“Nothing.” Celestia answered.

“Nothing?” Luna inquired.

Celestia shook her head.

“Are you certain?” Fluttershy pried.

“Nothing that I’ve conceived of.” Her shoulders sagged. “I… just don’t know what went wrong,” she said in a small voice.

There was an awkward moment of silence before Fluttershy cleared her throat. “Well, then, maybe we can work backwards! Was there any time where something important happened that you didn’t see coming?”

“Well, yes, many things, for given values of ‘important’. I don’t see everything, just what’s important to the future of my little ponies.”

“Well!” Fluttershy replied. “Then let’s do a mental list. Check off every world-shaking event, and list off everyone you didn’t foresee.”

“...Two of them are in this room. I did not foresee the emergence of Nightmare Moon… which is to say, the day Luna first transformed into her. Nor either of the times Discord brought chaos upon this world. Beings that equal or exceed my power are beyond my vision.”

Fluttershy glanced at them. “Did either of you do anything to change this outcome? With the Swap?”

Luna shook her head. “Despite my misgivings, I have stayed largely out of these events, as my sister requested.”

“Don’t look at me!” Tiny yellow rubber Duckcord protested. “Outside of some tiny, harmless, thoroughly-deserved soul-crushing shenanigans very, very recently, I’ve kept entirely on the straight-and-narrow, following my orders to the T! I certainly wasn’t the cause of this nonsense. Do you think I want to lose my Fluttershy?”

“No, no, of course not.” Fluttershy pet the rubber Duckonequus, as Celestia frowned and quirked her brow at the mention of ‘shenanigans.’ Before she could ask, Fluttershy sat up, cuddling the not-duckling. “Right! But anything else?”

Celestia paused, closing her eyes, flashes of centuries flashing before her eyes, muttering “No. No. No. No.” Over and over again, as she mentally eliminated possibilities from over a thousand years of life. Just when she was on the verge of becoming annoying, Her eyes flew open. “Oh my.”

“Sister?” Luna intoned.

“Princess?” Fluttershy asked.

“This is gonna be good,” quacked a certain rubber bath toy.

“There is one thing… one unexpected, world-changing event that I never foresaw.”

“And that is, my sister?” Luna asked.

“Lero,” she said.

“Ha!” Discord popped into his normal shape, tangled about Fluttershy, who mmmphed slightly. “I knew it!”

“You… knew that Lero was responsible for this?” A certain deadly edge lay in Celestia’s voice.

Discord froze, slid off Fluttershy, and straightened up, “Ahem. When I said ‘knew’ I meant it in the colloquial sense of ‘suspected’ once things started going off-kilter. I did not meant to imply that I was hiding pertinent information before the fact. And… that’s not how I work, anyhow. I don’t really get the whole ‘prophecy’ shtick. Predestination isn’t a ‘chaos’ thing, you know? I see all possibilities, but I never know which will come true. Up until you said ‘Lero,’ I saw an infinite number of other futures where you said someone else’s name. Even ones that made no sense! Those were silly dimensions.”

Celestia paused, then nodded. “I believe you, Discord.” She sighed. “Now that I think about it... none of my dreams included Lero. Even after he arrived, even while he was here, walking among us. But prior to now, he never got involved in major events. It never involved…”

“...His family.” Luna concluded. “This time, he could not stand by. He had to act.”

“And every time he did, every time he got involved, every time he changed things…” Discord prompted.

“My vision went further awry,” Celestia confirmed

“So… Lero is responsible,” Luna suggested.

“No, I am responsible. I did not have the wisdom to notice the inconsistency of my visions, nor the foresight to realize the inevitability of this outcome.” Celestia shook her head. “I had become so used to my visions near-infallibility that I became dependent and over-certain… and brought this on those I cared about.”

There was a long, somber pause. Fluttershy coughed and perked up. “Well, then, now we need to figure out why, right, so it doesn’t happen again?”

“Oooh! Oooh! I know! I know! Pick me!”

Discord had just transformed himself into the dweebiest school student imaginable, with glasses like huge square dinner plates, tacky pants that clashed with his tackier shirt, and a bucktoothed overbite that bounced on the top of his school desk when he spoke.

“It’s because Lero’s an alien, right? Your prophecy dreams just don’t like aliens!”

Celestia looked flatly at Discord while he got to work polishing a golden apple. She shook her head.

“Actually, Discord, while I’d not use the phrase ‘doesn’t like’, I’d daresay that’s you suggestion is exactly the case. Lero is not native to Equestria, nor does he have an innate magical field, nor does he hear the music of harmony.”

“Mayhap… those who kidnapped Lero from the world of Earth could be to blame for this…” Luna mused quietly.

“For that, and most likely many more reasons,” Celestia quickly continued, “my prophetic dreams fail to take him into account. As far as they can perceive, he’s not there. They simply take the world-as-it-is, and extrapolates the future as if he never existed. Previously, it never mattered, since Lero never got himself directly involved in great heroics.”

Fluttershy knew this was true. Against big baddies like King Sombra and Discord in his evildoing days, Lero had been like the spouse of a soldier; remaining at home while his sweethearts galloped out to confront the great enemy.

“But this Swap? It involved his family on a more domestic scale. So he intervened... and thus, things changed. Henceforth, I shall need to be careful about trusting my visions on anything Lero could potentially involve himself in.”

“Well, now that we realize what the problem, what can we do about it?” asked Fluttershy.

“In the future, it’s something I’ll take into account and modify my plans around. As for the current crisis?” The princess of the sun hung her head, and sighed. “At this point, it really is all in Twilight's hooves.”

* * *

Fluttershy yawned. It was nearly an hour later, after her meeting with Discord and the Princesses, but she shook off the tiredness. She still had a job to do! Fluttershy entered her bedroom, lying down on her bed, flipping open Pinkie’s diary, flipping back to her early days, her time with her family, and as was suggestion, began trying to ‘remember’ her grandmother teaching her how to sew, and the Swap filled her mind with memories...

* * *

“Alright, dearie,” came Nana Pinkie’s voice, through the darkness of Fluttershy’s own closed eyes, “You may open your eyes now!”

Fluttershy squealed at the top of her voice when she did so. There, upon her sweet grandmother’s table, stood an adorable stuffed toy. A jester; an earth pony with two mismatched button eyes, the most adorable smile, and that unique little cap jesters wore; the one that had always reminded Fluttershy of a bunch of weirdly-painted bananas.

“Oh, she’s WONDERFUL!” she exclaimed, hugging the jester against her face. The bells on her cap were real and they all jingled. “I love her, I love her, I LOVE her! I think I’m gonna name you Jestful Jests!”

And she bounced Jestful Jests between one wing and the other, just to hear the bells jingle more, before catching her in another hug. “Which toy store did you buy her at, Nana Pinkie?”

“Toy store?” Nana Pinkie gave a proud little scoff. “That doll wasn’t bought, my sweet yellow cupcake. I made that doll for you! Sewed her together with my own cotton on my own sewing machine!”

Fluttershy gasped. It was possible to make such a wonderful doll as this from stuff in the house?!

“I wanna sew too! Oh, Nana Pinkie, can you teach me? Please, please, pluu--leeezzeee??? I wanna know everything there is to know about sewing!”

Nana regarded her with some surprise. “You really want to learn sewing?”

“Yes, Nana, yes!” said Fluttershy, throwing Jestful Jests high up towards the ceiling so she could catch her, mid-fall. “I wanna sew all sorts of things!”

And she did. After all, what was a jester with no one to bring smiles to? Jestful Jests would be given a queen and king to perform for! And princesses and princes! Dukes and earls! Even a silly elephant she could dance on top of! She’d sew it all!

Nana Pinkie smiled down indulgently at her six-year-old granddaughter. “I’ll tell you what. “Go outside in the backyard and play with Jestful Jests for about half an hour or so. Give me a chance to pull all my sewing things out. Alright?”

* * *

“Whatever had happened to good old Jestful Jests?”

Fluttershy pondered this to herself the next day, as she restocked the display cases at Sugarcube Corner.

Of course, on a deeper level, Fluttershy understood perfectly well that there never had been any Jestful Jests. That the Swap had invented her completely, as a plot device in its narrative. But the yellow pegasus had deliberately chosen to keep all her disbelief in very firm suspension. As such, she could hijack the Swap’s obsessive urge to ‘explain’ things to effectively craft new memories for herself. She was surprised it hadn’t caught on to the fact she knew the truth; maybe it ultimately wasn’t that smart.

Seconds later, the answer came to Fluttershy! She remembered how her Ma had spilled her smoky quartz moonshine all over it, before kicking it into the fire. Accidentally, on account of being tipsy. Not even a week after Nana Pinkie had sewn her together. How Fluttershy had cried, that day!

Aww. That memory was sad. Maybe the swap was punishing her for pushing it too hard? However, before more thought could be put to it, Fluttershy’s attention was drawn towards the front door, as two familiar ponies entered in.

“Yew really brought yer A-game today, Macky!” Pinkie Pie cheered, thumping her big brother proudly on the shoulder. “Ah ain’t seen salesmareship like that in a dog’s age! Wait’ll Granny and Apple Bloom hear ‘bout this!”

“Eeeyyup!” said the big red stallion, holding his head as high as a king.

“Hiyas, you two! What’s all the commotion?” Fluttershy asked the brother and sister as they came up to her counter.

“Ask us how many apples we jest sold,” Pinkie Pie told her.

“Twenty?” guessed Fluttershy. “Thirty?”

“Try forty-five bushels of Red Delicious!” Pinkie answered, with a cocky flip of her long, straight mane.

“Whoa! Who bought it?” Fluttershy asked.

“Some ponies in charge of a wedding. Big one, too, by the sound a’ thangs. We’re talking seven brides ‘n’ grooms, plus all their extended families!” Pinkie then grinned up proudly at her brother while Fluttershy oohed. “And Mr. Smooth-Talker here’s the stallion who convinced them ta buy extra! So now comes the part where we ask you, what’s today’s special, down here at Sugarcube Corner?”

“Could I interest you in some apple strudel? It’s freshly made!”

Pinkie’s lip curled. “Ah’m sure it is, Shy. But Mac ‘n’ me jest spent the last several hours sellin’ off apple pies, apple juice, applesauce, apple preserves, and over a hundred pounds of apples in the raw.” She peered over Fluttershy’s head at the menu for herself. “Ah think Ah’m hankerin’ fer one a’ yer banana walnut cupcakes.”

“Okies!” It was a bit odd for Pinkie to turn down anything apple-related, but she definitely didn’t have a problem with her enjoying others of Sugarcube Corner’s delicious treats!

However, the pink mare wasn’t even close to done. “Along with a peppermint bark cupcake with extra peppermint, a salted caramel cupcake with extra sprinkles, a chocolate chip and mascarpone cupcake, extra chocolate chips, and a glazed triple toffee brownie. Extra everythang.”

Fluttershy let out an impressed whistle. “Somepony’s got herself a sweet tooth today!”

“Somethin’ ‘bout this place keeps puttin’ me in a sugar-cravin’ mood, every time Ah pass it on the street. This place is dangerous fer me!” Pinkie laughed. “Dangerous fer any gal lookin’ ta keep her slim figure!”

“Ah’ll jest have a bear claw,” Big Macintosh finally said.

Fluttershy went to collect all the goodies the siblings ordered. But as the yellow pegasus turned, she caught sight of the wall where all the Employee Of The Month pictures hung. So many curly-maned Pinkie Pies grinned down at her. February’s Pinkie, especially, felt like it was piercing through her with the happiness of the life she’d been living. The life Fluttershy was now enjoying.

“Hey, um… Pinkie? Pinkie?”

The flat-maned Pinkie Pie turned from her brother, looking over curiously to Fluttershy.

“Let’s suppose, just for supposing’s sake, that I turned out to really be Rainbow Dash. would you take over at Sugarcube Corner for me? Since I had to go and be Dash?”

The former Element of Laughter just rolled her eyes, showing the yellow pegasus how used she was to her goofball antics. "Sure, Ah guess Ah would," she answered. By her flippant tone of voice, Fluttershy knew she might as well have asked the pink mare, ‘If we both transformed into fishes right this second, would you swim in the same school as me?’

“Why’re ya askin’?” asked Big Mac.

“For future reference, I guess,” Fluttershy sighed, giving Pinkie her tray of food. “Here’s your order!”

“Yummy!”

* * *

An impeccably stylish organza playsuit, ruched in all the right places with no less than six layers of translucent ruffles for the ultimate party piece that’ll be the very definition of laid-back luxe!

Sweetie Belle’s codebook, which contained all the combinations to the padlocks, had been left atop her pillow when Sweetie had went off to go to school. Practically daring Applejack to flip But this alone is not enough, not nearly enough, there must be more! it open and read it. And flip it open Applejack did, as soon as her younger sister could no longer be seen from her window. She had become so horrible at impulse More embellishment! More, for that runway-worthy look! control...

After about half an hour, AJ had made several discoveries. First, Sweetie Belle had come up with forty different symbols corresponding to the forty different numbers on the padlocks, (which were all of identical make and model.) Dolphins, shooting stars, kitty cats… all girly things.

Though Applejack searched long and hard for some kind of cipher Of course! A print pattern based on board games to send your clientele reminiscing about cozy rainy days! that could tell her what all the symbols stood for, she found nothing. Not within the codebook, nor hidden anyplace within the rest of Sweetie’s room. It was possible one was in the Crusaders’ But which board game should it be? clubhouse… but Applejack’s Muse didn’t like her leaving her boutique on the best of days. It would be especially angry with her if she snooped around the place and found nothing.

Sweetie would be angry, too.

Instead, Applejack Eureka! Ponies climbing down ladders! ...Dagnabbit! Her Muse made concentrating on anything that wasn’t sewing near-impossible at times! What had she been doing, again?

Oh, yeah, she went over to one of the padlocks. Sweetie Belle had placed new numerical stickers over them all. She picked #11, just at random. A look at Sweetie’s codebook informed her that the combination for #11 was a strawberry, followed by a pretty flower and a teddy bear.

They made safecracking look so easy in all the old movies. Ponies scrambling up chutes! Just press your ear up against the safe, and spin the dial, listening for the telltale giveaway noises. Or was it ‘snakes?’ Oh, what silliness! But padlocks were just horrible. It was tricky enough just getting a good grip on the dial with your teeth, then twisting it with your tongue. Even when you managed that trick, well… your own snout got in the way of even seeing the padlock’s No need for there to limit the imagination with ‘or’ when ‘and’ allows for more! tiny numbers unless you tilted your neck at a certain unnatural angle.

If only she were a unicorn. Opening these locks would be THAT much easier! Her flank twinged again at the very thought of having magic; she felt so deprived, so sick of being an earth pony Ladders, chutes, AND snakes… and hippos on surfboards, too! as she made herself focus on the task before her.

0, 0, 0…

...Nope!

0, 0, 1…

...Nope.

“Come on, AJ,” she whispered to herself, “If ya do this, that’ll be like gettin’ the first three letters of Sweetie’s new alphabet! Be easier ta figure out the rest of it once ya get past this first hurdle!”

0, 0, With the hemline riding high for a sensuous portrait! Consarn it! Which number had she been on? Maybe she should start over from the beginning, just to be safe...

* * *

...13, 1, 19...

...13, 1, 20...

...13, 1, 21...

Applejack’s mind had shifted over into a hazy zone where no hours or minutes or seconds existed. Though there were numbers. One set after the next, each as Organza playsuit with chutes and ladders and snakes and surfboarding hippos! futile as the one before it. Video game addicts were said to enter a similar mental state, Applejack vaguely remembered reading from somewhere. Except that the video gamers were at least enjoying some amount of fun from their games, Organza playsuit with chutes and ladders and snakes and surfboarding hippos! weren’t they?

...13, Why aren’t you sewing?! 1, 26…

You need to be sewing with organza. 13, 1, 27…

...13, 1, Every moment you’re not sewing is a moment closer to your death, Applejack. And all those brilliant, fashionable, moneymaking strokes of genius will die with you, doomed to forever rattle around in the mind of your ghost, especially this organza masterpiece… 28...

Ah’m TRYING ta GET the organza! Applejack screamed back, mentally. Even though it did no good arguing with the Muse when she was like this. It was just like starving in a wasteland, and telling your stomach that you were TRYING to get food...

The boutique’s bell rang. “I’m hoooome!”

Huh?! Already?! Applejack let go of Lock #11, and hurried out to greet Sweetie Belle with her gladdest and most sisterly smile.

“H… how was school today, Sweetie?” asked Applejack, getting her panic under control.

“School was nice!” said the tiny little tyrant, dropping her bookbag on the floor. “Today in school, we were taught a science lesson all about ocean tides and why they happen. Gotta do a paper on it now. Did you know that Luna’s indirectly responsible for them? I wonder if that means she’s in charge of the sea?”

As Sweetie cantered into her bedroom to get started on her homework, Applejack went into the kitchen to wash the taste of metal out of her mouth. Doing her best to remember that she loved her sister, no matter how infuriating she was at the moment.

“Say, AJ?”

Applejack turned from the kitchen sink, drying her mouth on a foreleg. Her sister stood in the doorway.

“Got a question. When I left for school this morning, my codebook was face-up on my pillow. I get home from school, and find my codebook face-down on my vanity. You wouldn’t happen to know anything about that, would you?”

“Ah… no. Not a thing,” insisted Applejack. “Ya sure yer rememberin’ thangs right?”

“Yes,” said Sweetie Belle. “Also, it seems that Lock #11 is absolutely slathered in somepony’s spit. It’s still dripping onto the floor, in fact. Still warm.”

“Ah’m sure that whatcha think is spit is gotta be condensation from the moisture in the…”

Sweetie narrowed her little eyebrows. “Lie to me for one moment longer, little sister, and you’ll leave me no choice but to enact the Omega-Z Judgement Day option on you!”

“NO! Ah’m sorry, Sweetie! Ah’m so, so, sorry!” They had discussed what the Omega-Z option meant, and the very thought chilled every inch of Applejack’s cutie mark. “Ah’ll admit, Ah was tryin’ ta break inta mah drawers, but Ah jest wanted ta do a little bit of unsupervised sewin’!”

Sweetie motioned for Applejack to follow her out of the kitchen, and AJ came. “You’ve been a bad girl today, little sister. Bad girls need to be punished for their bad deeds. You know what that means.”

“Please… can’t we talk this out?”

“Omega-Z Judgment Day,” Sweetie Belle warned again, with stonehearted finality.

They had come before the locked drawers Applejack had spent the whole day in front of.

“Lock #11 was the one you were trying to open, right?” Sweetie Belle asked, even as saliva dangled from its bottom like a slimy icicle.

“Right,” said Applejack in a tremulous, small voice.

“Then that’ll be the one, little sister.”

With joyless resignation, Applejack went over and took careful aim at the drawer which Lock #11 was keeping locked. Careful not to also hit any of the neighboring drawers, this time. Her hoof crashed through the eleventh drawer’s wood with great power. She and Sweetie both heard the bottle inside crack, and the weaveaters escape, consuming the organza fabric she’d been trying so desperately to get all day long. AJ clenched her entire body as her muse screamed.

DAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOUKILLHERDAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOUKILLYOURSELFDAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERKILLYOURSELFDAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOUKILLHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOUDAMNHERDAMNYOU!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

* * *

Alright, then, enough dawdling! Time to go from theory to practice! “Mrs. Cake? Can I borrow your sewing machine?” Fluttershy asked, flittering into the Kitchen happily.

Cup Cake looked up from the cookie dough she was rolling with a surprised look. “Oh! I’m sorry, Fluttershy dear, it slipped a gear a few days ago, so I had to send it to the shop, it’ll be back and right as rain in just a week or two!”

“Oh! Oh, ok, Thanks!” Hmmm, A week. Maybe two? No, no, far too long! She needed to get another one! Hmmm. Where, though? Applejack definitely possessed a sewing machine… but of course, she was really busy using it, wasn’t she? There was a possibility Twilight or Lyra (but not Rarity) might have an older model tucked away in some dusty corner of Golden Oaks Library, but even if they did, the yellow pegasus didn’t want to work with an antique.

It occurred to Fluttershy that she could go and convince Rainbow Dash to let her borrow the sewing machine she knew would be in her cottage. The sewing machine which had been used to make the dress their mutual fashionista friend had so proudly worn to the Grand Galloping Gala. The sewing machine which already technically belonged to Fluttershy, herself, (just as much as the Carousel Boutique technically belonged to Rarity.)

But Fluttershy decided not to. Leaving her original sewing machine in Rainbow’s care, she instead went and bought herself a fresh new model at the nearest arts and crafts shop — ironically, the one where Mrs. Cake’s was being worked on — along with a few rolls of fabric, and a sewing kit. The Cakes had both looked so surprised to see her carry these things up into her bedroom!

“So, uh, I take it you’ve taken up an interest in... tailoring?” asked Mrs. Cake, as she caught sight of the sewing machine.

“Yeah!” she agreed, as Mr. Cake helped her bring the cumbersome thing up into her bedroom. “A renewed interest, I guess you could say.”

“Renewed?” Mrs. Cake repeated, as they set it gently on a table.

“I actually used to be very good at sewing,” Fluttershy let her know. “Spike and Lyra helped me remember that, a little while ago. I’d like to give it another shot! See if I still got the knack for it.”

“I see,” said Mrs. Cake.

“Well, We’ll leave you to it, then! Have fun, and let me know how it goes!” Mr. Cake said. As they left Fluttershy’s bedroom, the yellow pegasus heard Mrs. Cake mutter, “Learn something new about ponies everyday…”

Fluttershy took all her newly-bought sewing supplies and dumped them from their shopping bags onto her bed; spools of different-colored thread, boxes of pins, shears, pincushions, a seam ripper, all the essentials the store clerk had recommended, plus two rolls of fabric just for starting out with: one green, the other white. She cut off a towel-long length of green fabric from its roll, and brought it over to the sewing machine.

Sewing machines were just so weird-looking, when you got right down to it. Almost like a bizarre mechanical bird! Very out of place on her table, really. She was afraid to move the buttons or touch the dials. It all looked so delicate!

How to even properly begin…?

* * *

An hour later, after sharing half the jokes she knew with Jestful Jests out by her grandmother’s flower beds, Nana Pinkie called Fluttershy back inside and told her to come meet her in the living room.

She found Nana Pinkie’s sewing machine resting on the table, right beside Nana, herself. Strips of wheat-colored masking tape labeled different parts of the machine. Unfamiliar words like “SPOOL CAP” and “BOBBIN PIN” and “FEED DOG.” Everything was labeled; even the hoof petal down on the floor was marked “HOOF PEDAL.”

* * *

...Ahhhh, yes! So first you sat yourself on the chair, like so. And you tucked the fabric under the bobbin pin, like so, while placing your forehooves on the fabric, just like this, and your right hind hoof on the hoof pedal, like that…!

When she closed her eyes, Nana Pinkie continued to instruct her.

* * *

“But won’t it ruin the dress if we were to chalk it up?” the little six-year old pegasus asked her grandmother.

“This is special dressmaker’s chalk,” Nana Pinkie explained patiently. “Disappears on its own in five days, or even earlier, when washed in water."

* * *

Clacka-lacka-clacka-lacka-lack...

She was like a cook given a cookbook filled with amazingly all-new recipes. Or a kid given a thrilling new video game.

Sewing was FUN! Okay, it’d never replace partying, of course! Yet this was still an art she could really sink her teeth into! Already, Fluttershy was planning costumes to make for herself, once Maredi Gras and Nightmare Night rolled around! Thank goodness she’d thought to have Nana Pinkie teach her these skills! Or rather, thank goodness the Swap was reteaching it to her, in Nana’s name!

As the bobbin pin bobbed up and down on her wonderful new machine, Fluttershy giggled as she tried to imagine how Twilight would react to all this. “How do you justify embracing all this?!” she envisioned her purple unicorn friend exclaiming. “Why aren’t you having the mother of all psychological meltdowns, right now?!”

Fluttershy reflected on this question while feeding more fabric into the machine.

Part of it is was that she really did enjoy being in the ‘role’ of The Element of Laughter, as an actress would. Once you had proper equilibrium, being a party pony was a fun and even spiritually fulfilling role to play! Every new memory the Swap sent her was like having a scriptwriter sending her screenplays to read. And since Old Pinkie Pie was such a joy-focused pony, most of those memories were sweet.

Yes, the Swap was a liar. But even in lies, there was always a grain of truth. What were stories but truth in the clothing of lies? Being the Element of Laughter offered a new outlook on her life. It was uplifting for her to realize that she, too, had always been just as capable of spreading happiness and feeling confidence the way Pinkie always must have. The only thing that had ever stopped her was herself.

Fluttershy felt like a stronger pony for being able to know The Swap for what it was and cooperate with it... rather than either rejecting it as ‘pure illusion’ or burying herself in the Swap's comforting lies. Because life, itself, was like that. A tightrope walk. An elaborate balancing act, the best of both possibilities.

* * *

”You want your thread color to be slightly darker than your fabric for a good match,” Nana Pinkie advised. “Also be sure you pay attention to how the fabric feels upon your body. Is it comfortable to wear? Does it drape well and keep its shape? Is it too heavy? Too light?”

* * *

Feeling thirsty, Fluttershy paused for a water break. As she drank, her eyes snagged on an odd sight: the photos of the old curly-maned Pinkie Pie in this room. For a brief moment, she saw herself overlaid on the pink mare, a superimposition of what was true and what the Swap showed her when she'd been fully under its spell. As she looked at the odd sight of a Pinkie and a Fluttershy in the same space and time, it faded back to the pink mare.

Hmmm. Must be an effect of using the Swap so much; it let it push its false truth on her a bit more before fading back on her realization of the true truth.

Another mare in her situation might be tempted to take these photos down… just as a mare moving into a Manehatten apartment complex might take down photos left behind by the previous tenant. But for as long as she had balloons on her flank, these pictures would remain where they were, for all to see. Even if she moved out of the Cakes’ home, someday, into a new house with a new herd… Fluttershy would be bringing all these photographs along. As reminders of some of the other reasons why she was letting herself grow comfortable in living the old Pinkie’s life.

Part of it was that she saw herself in the role of both house-sitter and babysitter for the Old Pinkie Pie. Circumstances had thrust her into ownership of all Pinkie’s possessions and life role. Up until she’d attained equilibrium, she’d ruined so much for Pinkie. Now she owed it to her to repair that damage. Restore the good name of the mare who planned the parties for Ponyvyille, and served as Element of Laughter. Maybe even make her life a little better.

Part of it was Fluttershy saw no point in melting down in existential despair over what about herself was real and fake. She had so many better things to do with her life.

* * *

“So-called ‘bargain’ threads they’ll sell you in textile shops are made with short fibers which get lumpy and fuzzy very quickly,” Nana Pinkie warned. “Never bother buying them.”

* * *

Part of it was knowing how deeply all her other friends’ mental health depended on her staying strong and stay sane, whether they knew it or not: Applejack, Rarity, Pinkie Pie, Rainbow Dash, and Twilight Sparkle too. Indeed, this whole world, which relied so heavily on the Element Bearers! If Fluttershy lost her mind, it would result in the most horrific domino effect in the whole history of dominoes.

* * *

“Good pressing tools can spell the difference between a dress that looks good, and one that looks great. That means you’ll want to have an iron and an ironing board at the ready.”

* * *

Part of it was simply that she made a promise. And Fluttershy might be many things, but a promise breaker would never be one of them. Ever.

With all that said, there was one important thing she had to acknowledge: she truly did realize that almost anypony else would not be capable of adapting like this. Especially her other Element Bearing friends; it would break their minds and crush their spirits.

Loyalty would feel like she’d be betraying her ‘old self.’ Honesty would hate ‘living a lie.’ Generosity would feel the need to give it all back. Kindness would feel obligated to help the ‘old her.’ Laughter, though… good old Laughter knew how to look at the lighter, brighter side of things, and just enjoy the moment.

Fluttershy smiled to herself. So many wonderful blessings to count!

Clacka-lacka-clacka-lacka-lack, clacka-lacka-clacka-lacka-lack...

* * *

No fair...

No fair...

Applejack was remembering Hoity-Toity. Remembering all those atrocious custom-ordered dresses her friends paraded around in front of the esteemed fashion critic. Remembering how Rainbow Dash had then went and sewn her dream dress for the Grand Galloping Gala with skill to rival Applejack’s own, as a way to make amends. And now this… this from kooky, silly Fluttershy, of all ponies…

It was a simple little sundress, made from green and white cotton. Yet it was fashioned with such skill, such expertise, Applejack’s first inclination was to accuse her party-loving friend of taking credit for something Rainbow Dash must’ve made. But Applejack was very experienced with sewing at this point in her life. Enough to recognize that the stitchwork was not Rainbow Dash’s. A closely similar style, perhaps (no doubt Rainbow had given the other pegasus some pointers,) but still distinctly, uniquely Fluttershy’s. And the dress looked so good. So wearable.

So unfair!!!

“Ooooooh! It’s reeaallly pretty!” squealed Sweetie, hopping up and down in excitement. “Fluttershy, could you make one for me too?! One my size?! I’ll pay you for it!”

For once, her tyrannical little traitor of a ‘big sister’ had the decency to act chagrined when Applejack shot her an angry, betrayed glower.

“Actually, Sweetie Belle, you wouldn’t want this,” said Fluttershy, a little sadly. “I kind of botched it up.”

“Botched it?” Applejack and Sweetie repeated in disbelief.

Fluttershy span around so the sisters could see the tail end, which was badly stitched; barely hanging onto the rest of the dress.

“The truth is, I used to sew when I was a filly. Figured I’d give it another shot, just for fun! But it turns out I got quite a bit to relearn. And what better place for a refresher course on sewing than our very own local fashionista, Applejack!”

“Ah don’t… know if Ah’d actually be the best gal fer…”

“Come on, AJ!” Fluttershy insisted brightly. “We’ll have TONS of fun together, I know it! I even brought my own fabric!”

“Yer own fabric?” Applejack was so tempted. That horrible little brat hadn’t just locked away all the textiles, but EVERYTHING. The dishrags. The bathroom towels. The shower curtain. The paper napkins, for crying out loud! Oh, what a lovely little jacquard she’d made out of napkins, that one time...

“Rats! This couldn’t come at a worse time!” Sweetie huffed, looking towards the clock. “I’ve got to get to school, right now! You sure you can handle yourself with her?”

“I don’t think there’ll be any problems, Sweetie Belle,” the yellow pegasus told her.

As Sweetie Belle slipped on her school saddlebags, she narrowed her eyes at Applejack. “I’m warning you, little sister, you’re gonna be one sorry filly if you misbehave while I’m gone!”

Then Sweetie Belle galloped out the door. Had Fluttershy cracked one of her jokes at that point, especially with Sweetie’s scolding as the punchline, AJ might well have demanded she leave… fabric or no fabric. But as her yellow friend strode past Applejack, it again struck the fashionista how skillfully woven all the rest of the dress was, apart from that back end.

Next to the perfect execution of the majority of the dress, the shoddiness of the back end almost seemed too stupid a mistake. Almost as if… no, no, that was impossible. Fluttershy really was just an amateur seamstress. No chance at all that the bad tailoring had been a deliberate error.

* * *

“So you think that a leopard-print yoke would be a hit with the likes of Big Macintosh?” Fluttershy asked.

They two of them were in Applejack’s downstairs sewing room; the one with the humannequin in it. They were both working on repairing Fluttershy’s dress.

“Not jest the likes of Big Macintosh!” said Applejack, obediently parroting the words her Muse spoke in her head. “Everypony’s gonna wanna have their own! Why wear one that’s plain, when yew can get yers in an exhilarating design, all dun up ta look like the fur of a zoo critter, ta dazzling effect! Ah’ll also hammer in pumpkin-shaped studs, which’ll make fer an exquisite final note!”

“But barely anypony wears yokes if they’re not pulling plows,” said Fluttershy. “Except for Big Mac, but I think he’s gotten so used to having that yoke on him, he’s forgotten that it’s even there.”

Applejack laughed a bit at that.

“Besides, good clothes are ones that suit the place their wearer’s at; and I would think leopard print would clash in a farm environment.”

Peasant! Applejack heard her Muse screech. Churl! Uncultured yellow yokel! Switch over to a lazy daisy stitch!

Fluttershy frowned as she observed Applejack do just this. “You’re going for a lazy daisy all of a sudden?”

“Sorry, Fluttershy,” said Applejack, dropping her needle. “Ah was jest bein’ spurred by the whims and whimsies of mah Muse. Probably ya wouldn’t understand…”

“You’re wrong, Applejack.” Her unusual tone of quiet seriousness grabbed AJ’s attention at once. “I understand perfectly well what it’s like to have a Muse.”

“Y... ya do?” she asked as you will resume with a fishbone stitch Fluttershy nodded emphatically.

“Sure! I may not have called it a ‘Muse,’ but it was a nagging voice in my head that was always making me go completely over-the-top. It was REALLY domineering, let me tell you! Every time it spoke, it was like having big red letters carved into the inside of my brain with the sharpest pencil ever! And sometimes my cutie mark felt like it was trying to rip itself right off my flank from all the shaking! Sorry if that was a little gross of me.”

Applejack let out a breath of relieved now a ladder chain stitch amazement. To think, there’d been somepony out there who KNEW what it was like! Somepony she could talk to! And it was one of her best friends!

“No! No, it’s okay! If’n ya don’t mind mah sayin’ so, Fluttershy, ya seem way more in control o’ yourself than the last time Ah seen ya. Ah mean, basting stitch here ya all making dresses, and everythang, and ya ain’t been at all, y’know, jokesy.”

“Jokes are just one way of spreading joy to other ponies,” Fluttershy told her. “And it’s impressive that you know such a wide variety of different stitches, but you might want to stick to just the buttonhole stitches we’ve been using, instead of all the different ones, one right after another.”

Suppressing an urge to swear, Applejack bent to grab the seam ripper so she could undo what she you will not listen to her you will disregard all her asinine suggestions which are all bad idiot comedy, clowns have no place in a boutique of high repute and you will move onto a whipstitch, then a topstitch, then a...

“This is the way Ah’ve gotta be!” she hollered, picking up her needle, and starting up with an extremely sloppy whipstitch. “As a true fashionista and as the Element of Generosity!”

Fluttershy made a face like an unknown smell had entered her nose. “Mind running that by me?”

Applejack tucked her hat down so that its brim covered her eyes.

“Ah’ve got ta give ponykind the finest, highest-end and most innovative lineup of clothes ever made. Nothing less than full effort! And Ah’m willin’ ta try anythang, experiment with everythang, until Ah git a brainwave that’ll change all fashion! It’ll be the ultimate Generosity: a gift given to the world! Fer that purpose, Ah’ve sacrificed so much time, so much business, so much exposure ta open sunlight… and mah relationship with friends ‘n’ family have suffered, but…!”

The fashionista felt a hoof on her shoulder. “I had the exact same problem you’re having now, AJ. I’d forgotten what my Element of Laughter really meant. I thought I just wasn’t telling good-enough jokes. But Twilight and Lero and the others helped me, and now I can see the forest from the trees again!”

“So what’s the big secret, then?” Applejack asked, turning around and pushing her hat back up. “What can Ah do?”

Fluttershy thought a bit. “Wellllll… I’m not an expert on generosity, but, well- It’s about more than just giving.”

AJ stared at Fluttershy. “Now, Fluttershy, I don’t know how else to say this, but that plain don’t make no sense.”

“No, no, stay with me! It’s about receiving, too.”

“Now… correct me if I’m wrong, Fluttershy, but receiving stuff seems to be the exact opposite of generosity.”

Fluttershy giggled at that. “No, no, not you getting, others getting!”

That garner a blank stare. “Meaning what?” asked Applejack.

“I mean, you need givers and receivers. I mean, it’s really wonderful that you’re trying to be this big generous giver. But if nobody’s wants what you’re trying to give, then that’s not generosity at all. That’s waste. Wasted time. Wasted effort. Wasted resources. Like throwing a big jamboree nopony wants to attend. And waste isn’t what you’re all about, right, AJ? Waste isn’t what your cutie mark is all about about, either, right? And, and, and, if there were other things you could give that others wanted, and you don’t give them that because you’re so busy with the thing they don’t want… isn’t that a bit selfish, too? I mean… there’s a little filly that needs a big sister to be… big sisterly! and friends that need your friendship. And you’ve been a teeny bit miserly with those lately...”

And Applejacks eyes were opened.

* * *

What orotund claptrap. What fustian drivel. This is not worth listening to. Her dress is not worth any more of your invaluable time. You shall instead focus on a new project. It shall be psychedelic lurex stretch pants with a contrasting brown satin panel across the front, and you will also work in an asymmetrical neckline for a different approach to eveningwear that’s such to make an impact!

No. answered Applejack, now seizing her seam ripper.

What do you mean, “no?”

Ah mean it sounds wasteful. So Ah won’t do it. she replied, tearing through all the stitches the Muse had made her sew with a vengeance.

Applejack felt her Muse try to squeeze down on her brain. She imagined her brain heating up like a lump of coal in a furnace, too hot to handle! Her Muse withdrew.

Ah remember yew saying something’ ta me earlier on, Miss Muse. “Fashionistas must never be fat.”

That’s right. Piggishness is unbecoming of any true fashionista.

Fair ‘nough. But lemme float a new idea yer way, now. Metaphors ain’t mah strong spot, Musey, but all this extravagance a’ yers, all this excess... ain’t THAT a kind of ‘fat?’ Pourin’ junk all over a dress and hopin’ it’ll look pretty sounds just as dumb as pourin’ junk inta yer body and hopin’ it’ll look pretty.

The georgette... the organza… the lurex… the gold lamé…!

...Don’t instantly make good outfits. As we both well know.

So what are you suggesting?! Slipshod needlework?! Bargain bin fabrics?! Threadbare merchandise worthy of some third world factory’s assembly line?!

Didn’t say that. Ain’t like “fat” and “bare bones" are mah only choices. There’s also “muscle.”

Muscle?! The word sounded unnatural and mispronounced in her Muse’s prissy, froufrou voice.

Yeah, muscle.

That wonderful word sounded very natural in Applejack’s own voice. Almost like calling out the name of a long-lost friend.

Ponies should always have more muscle than fat, Ah reckon. Mah clothes should be practical, like muscles. Durable, like muscle. Also gorgeous to look upon, and wonderful ta have lots of. Like muscle. Form follow function. And function is elegant, precise. Beautiful.

Mentally, it felt to Applejack as though her Muse were trying to force a bridle into her mouth. Shrieking an angry stream of epauletted cheongsam crepe gaucho ombré pleated brocade appliquéd maillot filigreed tartan tankini!!! barely comprehensible noise. Which didn’t even sounding like legitimate words any longer. More like A-grade psychobabble.

But AJ was having NONE of that. She bit right through her Muse’s bridle like it was so much hay.

* * *

Fluttershy was amazed at how Applejack was restitching her dress with the dead-set look of a brawler in a serious fight. The yellow pegasus almost missed how AJ’s diamond cutie mark faded for the briefest second before returning back.

* * *

Ah am NOT yer sweatshop worker, buckaroo! Applejack snarled to the thing that had never been her friend. If Ah am gonna be a fashionista, Ah wanna be a STRONG one, in all senses of the word! So if we’re gonna continue workin’ together, Muse, ya’ll need ta repeat after me: “Ah’m gonna hafta change fer yew, Applejack, cuz yer in charge and Ah ain’t.”

I… I’m Ah’m going to gonna have to hafta… STOP! STOP THIS! WHAT ARE YOU YEW DOING?! HOW ARE YOU YEW DOING THIS?! HOW?!

Applejack was remaking her Muse. Pounding her furiously into a newer, more manageable shape. The Muse was like soft clay. Like raw dough.

Like uncut cloth.

Yew don’t even SOUND like me, Musey! Ya sound like some completely different mare who ain’t me! So now, while Ah work on this dress with mah good friend, Fluttershy, yer gonna try it again ‘n’ again ‘n’ AGAIN, ‘til yew git it RIGHT! So once again: “Ah’m gonna hafta change fer yew, Applejack, cuz yer in charge and Ah ain’t!” SAY IT, LOUD ‘N’ CLEAR!!!!

* * *

A sign has been posted out front, on the door of the Carousel Boutique, which Lero, Lyra, Twilight Sparkle, and Rainbow Dash were now reading:

TEMPORARILY CLOSED AT THIS LOCATION
PLEASE VISIT US AT THE PONYVILLE MARKETPLACE
GRAND REOPENING COMING SOON!

“I don’t know about this,” Twilight said nervously. “The Carousel Boutique closing? That’s the opposite of what we wanted to happen!”

“Fluttershy told us that everything was ‘peachy keen’ with Applejack. Besides, the sign says it’s only a ‘temporary’ closing here,” Lero said, tapping the word ‘temporarily’ with his finger.

“Let’s just look for Applejack at the marketplace!” suggested Rainbow Dash, since that had been the original plan to begin with.

Once they were there, it took a little bit of searching, but they soon came upon an large and entirely-new tent. A tent with one of the Carousel Boutique’s ponyquins inside it… and two mares acting together as merchants. Not just Applejack but Fluttershy, as well.

“Thank yew very kindly, ma’am,” AJ said to the mare whom she had rung up on her cash register. There were five other ponies behind her in line, and five more browsing through the merchandise.

“Please come back again!” Fluttershy added, right next to AJ.

“Whoa…” said Lero. He started forward towards Applejack and Fluttershy’s tent, but feels a gentle pull of unicorn magic tug his arm back.

“They’re selling snacks at that tent over there,” Lyra told him. “Why don’t we buy some and just wait a few minutes? It seems they’re in the middle of some pretty big sales.”

So the four of them bought snacks, and sat at a nearby bench. Even after Lero had eaten through his bag of potato chips, it took a while for the crowd inside Applejack’s tent to die down.

“Howdy, y’all!” AJ greeted, as they came inside. “Welcome ta the Carousel Boo-teek!”

“Where we’re sleek with mystique!” said Fluttershy. “Come sneak a peek!”

“Good to see you, AJ!” said Twilight. “You’re looking much better since the last time I saw you.”

This was very true. In addition to her usual hat, Applejack was wearing jeans, a flannel shirt, and barely any makeup. And she looked impossibly younger than she had the last time Lero saw her. Well-rested and vibrant. Practically her original self.

“Thanks, Twi!”

“Why’ve you set up shop here in the marketplace, AJ?” asked Lero.

For the first time today, Applejack gave a little frown. “Well, one of the first rules of good salesmareship is: location, location, location. And fer right now, the Ol’ Boutique’s jest a bad location. Ponies associate that buildin’ with stupidity and bad fashion, so they won’t even step inside.”

“So I suggested we move out here, to the marketplace, where customers could get a good eyeful of the goods!” said Fluttershy.

“But mark mah words,” said Applejack, pressing her hat even firmer against her head, “we’ll reopen the Ol’ Boutique again, once ponies know that ‘Carousel’ once again means ‘quality.’”

As Lero looked around at the merchandise, he definitely had to agree. These clothes were a completely different breed from those the Old Rarity had fashioned. Or the “Old” Applejack, for that matter.

He saw clothing for both mares and stallions: jeans, cargo pants, long-sleeved shirts, T-shirts, some jackets. A few colorful striped designs seemed to show Fluttershy’s contribution. But even the most feminine of the dresses, blouses, and skirts were beautiful for their very simplicity, their conservatism. Especially after all the grotesque circus costumes Applejack had made under the influence of her ‘Muse.’ Their utilitarianism however, didn’t imply they lacked artistry. While Rarity’s style often went for the obvious or ostentatious, the beauty here was simple and subtle; tiny hints of embroidery here and there, cuts and styles that emphasized the natural beauty of its wearer rather than its own.

Applejack beamed with pride at the approval in all their eyes. “Had a bit of a brainwave,” she explained. “When ya get right down to it, Ponyville’s a very homey, agricultural community. So instead of makin’ all sorts of artsy threads for highfalutin’ ponies way out in Canterlot, jest go with clothes that homey, agricultural folks can use in their day-to-day lives. More practical, ain’t it?”

“Sure is!” said Rainbow Dash. “But Fluttershy, why are YOU selling dresses?”

Applejack slung an arm around Fluttershy’s shoulder. “Didn’t she tell ya? She’s mah part-time partner now!”

“Really?!”

“Yes-sir-ree-bob-a-roonie!” agreed Fluttershy, who looked so cute in the pink T-shirt and shorts she wore. When she assumed a sitting position, Lero could see the front of her T-shirt read: BE KIND & LAUGH LOTS. “We’re business partners! I’ve discovered I have a real talent for fashion, and I’m be interested in developing it a little further! Don’t worry, though; I haven’t quit working at Sugarcube Corner, and I’ll still be every bit as gung ho about parties as everypony remembers me being!”

She gave a quick glance at her Balloon Mark.

“Gotta stay true to that side of myself, after all!” Then she looked back up at Herd Bellerophon. “But I also want to stay true to this newly discovered side of me too. The one that developed these dressmaking skills long ago. So… maybe a couple less parties, y’know?”

“Are you sure you’ll be able to juggle all that?” Lero asked her.

“You betcha! It’s all a matter of keeping balance in your life. Keeping equilibrium.”

Then Applejack looked around, past Lero. “Is that…?”

Lero turned in time to see something small, scaly, and purple duck behind the back of some other merchant’s tent. Applejack had definitely spotted it too. She left her own tent, and went over, uncovering Spike behind the other tent’s flap. The little dragon cowered back from her, shaking and in tears.

“Please, AJ… I know you can’t stand the sight of me. I know you hate having me around. I promise I’ll go, I just needed to see that you’re okay. I’m sorry.”

Now Applejack started tearing up as well. “Oh, yew sweet, sweet boy,” she said softly, enveloping Spike in a huge hug, and planting a heartfelt kiss on his forehead. “Yew done nothing but good, li’l guy. It’s me that did ya a great big wrong for blowing up on yew, so unfairly. And Ah’m fifty kinds of sorry.”

She held him for several more seconds. “Ah want yew ta know that yew ain’t never gonna be unwelcome at the Carousel Boutique, ever again. And yer always gonna hold a warm and special place in mah heart.”

Smiling, Spike stretched out and kissed Applejack on her nose. She smiled back.

“C’mere, ya li’l scamp. There’s a special present Ah’ve been meaning ta give ya.”

“A present? Really?” asked Spike, following her back to her tent.

“Yes, sir! Oh, ‘n’ yew too, Lero!”

“Me?”

Applejack gave Spike and Lero each a shopping bag, full of clothes. She motioned towards a changing room, right near the cash register. They stepped inside.

“Now, if them duds Ah made ya ain’t to yer likin’, yew can jest give ‘em back,” she called inside the changing room. “Ah won’t mind one bit.”

“I… look… AWESOME!!!” Spike crowed.

Spike and Lero both stepped out into the open, dressed in the new clothes AJ had made for them. Smartly embroidered denim pants, long-sleeved, simple-checkered pattern button-up T-shirts, with a complimentary colored bandana around the neck, with a perfectly-tailored duster over it all. Despite the similarities, lots of subtle details gave each personality and individuality.

The embroidery on Spike’s pants was more angled and pointed, while Lero’s was more looping and flowing. Spike’s shirt’s hatching was an angled shepherd's check, colored green, with a matching paisley-patterned bandanna, that he'd tied with a visible knot on the right side; the left widening and ruffling out as it wrapped around his neck. Lero’s red shirt was a straight-oriented gingham check. His bandanna was solid red, folded evenly around his neck with no visible knot.

Both dusters were brown, but Spike’s was cut specifically to allow his spikes and tail through, while Lero’s had larger, utilitarian pockets. Lastly, large-buckled belts topped them off, Spike’s was gold with inlaid rubies in a familiar pattern, while not fire-rubies themselves, they took on a striking resemblance to the original heart-shaped gem that Spike had given Rarity, but now was in AJ’s possession. Lero’s was similar gold, but the image was of a mother-of-pearl white rose and a turquoise feather, encircled with wires made of precious metal, colored purple and green.

Lero would say that he looked like a modern-day cowboy; the best-dressed hombre on the dude ranch. The outfit came without any hat, or campiness, or even a whiff of bad taste. Looking over at Spike, it was clear that no superhero’s cape and tights could’ve have made him happier. Lero already had a hunch it might be days before Spike would take these clothes off to be washed. He had once owned a Star Wars shirt like that, long ago when he’d been Spike’s age.

“AJ, you… you didn’t need to do this for me.”

“Hogwash!” laughed the fashionista. “That there’s mah show of thanks fer wearing mah clothes when no one else would. Fer all ya did fer mah other friends… ‘specially Fluttershy. And fer bein’ such a fine role model ta Spike.”

“Role model?” Lero repeated.

“I dunno whether yew guys are like brothers or dad ‘n’ son…”

“A little of both, really…” Spike said, looking up to him.

“But yer both good for each other.”

“Shucks,” Lero bent, hugging Applejack and Spike as well. But at this point, other ponies were passing them by, entering into Applejack and Fluttershy’s tent, drawn to the fine clothing on display.

“Applejack, Fluttershy, why not come over our place later tonight?” Twilight suggested.

“Sounds good!” said AJ, returning to behind the cash register.

“We can make a party of it!” said Fluttershy.

As he walked away with his family, Lero whispered to Twilight: “Five down, zero to go.” It had been a long time since he felt so accomplished.

“Lero!”

The human looked up. Rarity was above him, floating on one of her cloud platforms. Lightly licking her chops.

“My, that’s quite the outfit you’re wearing! It makes you look so very…”

“Princely?” he suggested.

Rarity laughed. “Rustically ravishing.”

“Whoa!” He felt Rainbow Dash scoot underneath him, his rear end touching the center of her back. Then he was hanging onto Dash as she flew into the air, bringing Lero over to Rarity’s cloud.

“Figured you two might wanna talk closer to each other,” Rainbow Dash said.

Once again, Rarity’s horn lit up, and Lero felt the cloud-walking spell on his body. Sitting on the cloud felt about as good as sitting on his couch at home. And with Rarity snuggling into his right and Rainbow Dash doing the same on his left, oh man…

“You helped her too, didn’t you?” Rarity asked, leaning over the side of the cloud platform, to stare down at all the bustling activity taking place down by Applejack and Fluttershy’s tent.

“Applejack?” asked Lero. “Well, it was more of a team effort, this time. Spike and Fluttershy took the lead, with her.”

“But wasn’t it your idea to have Fluttershy help Applejack?” asked Rainbow Dash, nestling in by him closer. “That’s what Spike told me.”

“It was,” said Lero. “But…”

“Looks like it worked out well,” Rarity said. There was a strangely distant, dreamy quality to her voice as her eyes stayed focused on Applejack’s tent. “...wonder what it must be like, running a boutique… bet it’s not a bad life...”

“Rarity?” Lero asked.

Rarity blinked and looked over to him. “Sorry. Just idle thoughts.”

He looked over curiously at Rarity’s cutie mark, which appeared as solid as ever. “Rarity, are you… happy?” he asked, awkwardly. “You know, with your life as it is?”

Her smile brought so much warmth to his heart. “You make me incredibly happy, Lero,” she told him. “I couldn’t imagine life being any happier.”

“Hafta disagree with you there, Rarity,” said Rainbow Dash.

Lero meant to check Rainbow Dash’s butterflies, but found himself looking at her wonderful smiling face first.

“The way things have been going here in Herd Bellerophon, I think that tomorrow’s gonna find a way to be even better than today, and the day after tomorrow’s gonna be better than that. Don’t know how, but it will.”

Laughing merrily, Rarity said, “I love how you think, Rainbow Dash! Yes, I quite agree: the next day will be even happier.”

Lero leaned backward until he lay completely against the cloud platform like his bedroom mattress.

“Then that’s how we’re gonna take it,” he told the two ponies with him. “One beautiful day at a time, together.”

Lero Michealides stared upward, basking in Celestia’s shining sun, and observing a pair of bluebirds circle around each other in the azure sky. Only for his vision to fill with the faces of Rainbow and Rarity, both bending down to pepper him with kisses.

* * *

By the look of the moonlit sky outside, Princess Celestia could tell that her sister was having fun this particular night. Celestia, herself, was experiencing the beginnings of a large headache. Her mind felt like an egg being beaten against the side of a pan.

“Your Highness?”

Celestia turned back towards her guest, increasing the gentleness of her smile. “Sorry, it’s just that your words were giving me much to ruminate upon. Please continue, Mr. Clang, you were saying something about how you don’t like cymbals anymore?”

Cymbal Clang was a gray-coated earth pony stallion. If you really focused your eyes, it was possible to make out the outline of the cymbals on his flank that Mr. Clang had painstakingly painted gray, so as to blend in with his coat. Making him look like a fully grown blank flank.

“I don’t just ‘not like’ them!” he snapped. “I think cymbals are horrible, evil contraptions! Unfit to be regarded as musical instruments! I’ve burned every musical recording I own where I can hear a cymbal crashing! Every day I wake up, I am filled with new shame by my youthful indiscretion, of being so beguiled by that awful noise-producer as to have it stamped on my body!”

“And you instead wish to pursue birdwatching?” asked Celestia.

“Oh, yes!” said Cymbal Clang, in rapturous tones. “Ornithology is divine.”

“So go ahead and watch birds. Your cutie mark isn’t stopping you, is it?”

“You misunderstand my point!” Cymbal Clang growled, turning his painted-over mark towards the sun princess. “This icon is not a part of who I am! It is an insult to me now! I want it off! Removed! Replaced with something more representative of who I really am!”

And there it was. Her headache, fully hatched, and shooting pain through her mind. She allowed herself to rub at it with a hoof.

“Your Highness, I’m just trying to help you have a better understanding of what it means to have Cutie Mark Dysmorphic Disorder. All the many, many ponies I speak on behalf of have stories just like my own!”

“What happened?” Celestia asked suddenly.

That caught Cymbal off-guard. “What?”

“You got your cutie mark using cymbals. You don’t get a cutie mark just by stumbling into something you’re good at. Cutie marks might represent a ‘special talent’, but it’s special not just because you’re good at it, but because it’s special to you. What changed that for you, Mr. Clang?”

Cymbal Clang stared at Celestia in silence for several seconds, dumbfounded, before finding his voice. “That’s… not relevant for the point at hand. What the point is, is the discomfort and distress my cutie mark creates for me now.”

Celestia had to repressed the urge to roll her eyes and unleash a long-suffering sigh. Instead, she attempted a more conciliatory deflection. “I feel for you,” she empathized, “But you know there is no magical means for ponies to change their cutie marks…”

“Oh, but we believe there is,” countered Cymbal Clang, with a shine in his eyes that Celestia did not care for at all. “Which is why we CMDD sufferers are desperate for full disclosure on what happened when the hu…”

The stallion stopped mid-sentence. There were a number of ponies in the world used to the sight of green dragon fire materializing from out of nowhere and producing mail; and Mr. Cymbal Clang was not one of them. It could not have come at a more fortuitous time… and it was a lot of mail, at that!

“Please forgive me, Mr. Clang,” said Celestia, turning her back on the stallion. “These letters represent a matter of national security I need to look into at once. I’m afraid we’ll have to cut our meeting short.”

“Of course, Your Highness,” said Cymbal Clang, with an undeniably forced look of understanding.

Once he was gone, thank goodness, Celestia breathed a sigh of relief, before counting the envelopes Spike had sent her. There were nine of them, in total. One from all six of the Element Bearers, plus Lyra Heartstrings, Lero Michealides, and Spike. The envelope containing Fluttershy’s letter had the words ‘PLEASE READ ME FIRST’ underneath her name.

* * *

Dear Princess Celestia,

Hello! No doubt you’re really surprised to be getting nine letters at once. Don’t you worry, though, nothing bad’s happened to us at all! Me, Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and everyone in Herd Bellerophon are all together at Twilight’s library, having ourselves a good old-fashioned slumber party! Even Lero and Spike are in on it (though we’re not making them do any of our girly stuff if they don’t want!)

We got to talking, and we realized that it’s been a LONG time since any of us wrote to you about important friendship lessons we learned! So in between our s’mores-cooking and games of spin-the-bottle, we’ve all written to you! Our little way of sharing the joy! So without further ado, heeeeeerrrre’s Fluttershy’s!

I’ve learned there’s more than one way to get ponies to smile and be happy: Kindness! Sometimes, the simplest show of Kindness can lift your friends out of a bad mood better than the funniest joke you know. In fact, I find it’s important to infuse your comedy with Kindness. Otherwise, your jokes can turn pointless, or selfish, or even hurtful!

Hugs and Smiles Forever,

Fluttershy

* * *

Dear Princess Celestia,

I’ve learned that while it’s important to take your work and your chores seriously, there’s a point where you can just take it too far and it turns into something ugly. You mess yourself up because you’re so miserable; doing all the work wrong and taking it out on your family, which only makes you more miserable so you do more of your work wrong and treat your family worse, and the vicious cycle keeps on spinning you further and further down, like a drill. Ain’t no way to live, no way.

Working hard is important, but feeling good is important, too. You gotta spend some moments for smiles and hugs and Laughter.

Your Faithful Subject,

Pinkie Pie

* * *

Dear Princess Celestia,

I’ve been lying to myself in a lot of ways, these past few months. My artistic inspiration had gone completely off the rails. I still don’t quite get what caused it to go bananas, and maybe I never will, but that’s all probably besides the point. Where once I created gorgeous masterpieces of fashion, I could now only create eye-scalding messes. That, in itself, was terrible enough.

But I think I made it all a billion times worse by being in denial. I went along with every screwball idea my inner muse cooked up, telling myself that this new eyesore would be the one that’d turn my luck around, even though I knew better deep down. This cost me untold thousands of bits. But I also took out my frustration on my sister and Spike, convincing myself they were ruining me, when nothing could be further from the truth. And I made out like these were all generous acts I was doing! I was lying to myself, to them, and everypony else.

I’ve learned that Honesty really is the best policy, especially with yourself! Not just as a general rule, but especially when you’ve lost your way in life. Honesty is what gets you back on track with your life. Honesty is the first step to rediscovering your true self.

Very Sincerely,

Applejack

* * *

Dear Princess Celestia,

I’ve learned, from watching my beloved Lero, how many different ways you can show Generosity. You can be generous with your time; as Lero did when he spent a great many hours helping my friend, Rainbow Dash with her animals, on a daily basis. You can be generous with money, as Lero did when he financed that extravagant birthday party for Berry Punch and Ruby Pinch. You can be generous with your heart, as he is every day with all of us in Herd Bellerophon.

And yet, Generosity is a gruelingly demanding road to travel. Helping Rainbow Dash exhausted my sweet prince, and the animals were far from kind to his body. I can’t bring myself to write how much money it cost to hire all those actors and special effects ponies for the party. And I know that giving up so much for others has been emotionally fatiguing, as well. But I suppose true Generosity requires some degree of sacrifice. Otherwise, it’s more like dispensing with a surplus, if that makes sense.

I am proud to write, though, that all his Generosity bore beautiful fruit. All the goodness he’s shown Rainbow has resulted in us gaining a lovely new addition to our herd, (well, several hundred, actually, if you include all her animals!) Both he and I agree that it was worth every bit we spent on the party. Not only did it help Fluttershy out of the state she was in, I daresay, she’s become better than ever! (The party was something of its own reward, too!) And of course, we all return the love he shows us.

I believe I will resolve to become a more generous pony, myself, in the future.

Yours Loyally,

Rarity

* * *

Dear Princess Celestia,

I went through a living nightmare in which all the animals I had come to know and love went wild, turning completely disobedient and mean. No matter what I did, I was jinxed, I felt completely alone! I couldn’t even bring myself to leave my own house!

Then help came from the very last person I expected it from: Lero. He told me it was because he remembered how I had helped him out and taken him in when he had first arrived in our world. I suppose you could call it ‘historic’ in its own way. But it really wasn’t any huge out-of-the-way thing for me, and I know neither of us were in love with each other back then.

I’ve learned from Lero that Loyalty can be a funny, unpredictable thing, sometimes. The ones who you expect would be most loyal to you, (including those you’ve raised since infancy,) can turn on you viciously. And others, whom you would expect very little Loyalty at all from, will turn out to be the most dependable of all.

It’s important to learn who’s really loyal to you and who isn’t. Fortunately, I know who all my most truehearted friends are: the eight other ponies who’ve also sent letters to you in this bundle! I look forward to an entire lifetime of showing them an equal amount of Loyalty!

Your Devoted Subject,

Rainbow Dash

* * *

Dear Princess Celestia,

Several months ago, I began a long sabbatical, visiting three of the most renowned grandmasters of the Still Way, and share in their wisdom. Never would I have dreamt that my real learning would’ve begun when I arrived back home in Ponyville!

I won’t go into all the details here in this letter, but some of my greatest lessons was the importance of keeping cool and composed, especially while your loved ones are falling apart at the seams. That a few white lies, here and there, can help keep the world from plunging into chaos. That ‘all the world’s a stage, and we are but players,’ to quote what a very wise human once said.

With Deepest Respect,

Lyra Heartstrings

* * *

Dear Princess Celestia,

I’ve learned it’s an easy mistake to put your own wants and needs ahead of your family. And taking your family for granted is an even easier mistake! Recently, we in Herd Bellerophon came very close to losing a member of our family for good. Once the reality of that sunk in, I’ve never felt more horrible about myself.

Looking back at all the days I could have spent being with her, but instead was busy being self-absorbed with my own stuff, I felt like a really rotten dragon. We’re very lucky, though, and she’s still with us now. And I’ve learned to appreciate everyone in my family and put them first, and spend more time hanging out with them.

Because it’s always possible for something freaky to happen, and you could lose family members at any time. So be good to your family while you have them, because it’s not worth regretting the great relationship you could’ve had with them once it’s too late and they’re gone.

Yours Truly,

Spike

P.S. - I also learned that Discord is a gigantic snothead… but everypony knew that already.

* * *

Dear Princess Celestia,

Over the course of my recent studies, there have been some outcomes which I could not have foreseen; outcomes which have left me very regretful. But when I look back on it all from this point in time, there’s one thing I regret above everything else. I let myself grow completely overwhelmed by fear and shame, to the point where I had effectively paralyzed myself.

This was a mistake, because those nearest and dearest to me were going through terrible ordeals. They didn’t need a Twilight Sparkle who was scared stiff and had shut herself away from the world. They needed a Twilight able to lend a helping hoof in their time of need. It took me a long while, but I realized how foolish I was being and did what I needed to do.

My studies are still ongoing. While I cannot guarantee that there will never be another unforeseeable outcome, I have learned how to handle myself better, even under dire circumstances.

Your Faithful Student,

Twilight Sparkle

* * *

Dear Princess Celestia,

This is my first time writing one of these letters to you. It’s honestly hard for me not to feel a little childish about it, I almost feel like I’m back in elementary school, writing an assignment for a teacher, something I thought I’d left behind long ago. Yet when I think back on all I’ve been through, I have learned a lot, and I really can’t think of any finer recipient to pass these lessons onto than you, Your Royal Majesty. So here goes:

Sometimes, the world you know gets flipped, turned upside-down and shaken all around, turning completely topsy-turvy. People you thought would always be strong turn weak. And those you figured weren’t so strong prove you wrong. Everyone’s suddenly thrust into all-new roles. Roles they never asked to be in. Roles they aren’t remotely suited for. Life’s funny that way. And as much as you’d like to set everything back to how it was before, you aren’t the one capable of fixing the problem the way it needs to be fixed: someone else is.

Yet it’s still important that you roll up your sleeves and take an active stand against the epic tidal wave of garbage. Giving it your all, every single day, makes a major difference. I’ve learned that, in doing so, you still accomplish a lot. You surpass everyone’s expectations of you and the expectations you have of yourself, going beyond what you thought were your limits.

Adjustments can be hellishly brutal to deal with. But strength comes from how you endure and how you adapt to all the challenging weirdness life throws your way. And change isn’t always bad, either. You see new sides of yourself, and you see you new sides of others that might’ve never come to the surface. Sides you come to cherish and adore.

Even in a topsy-turvy world, it’s possible to create happiness.

Your Faithful Subject,

Bellerophon Michealides

* * *

Celestia felt ice tickle the inside of her throat. The letters all fell from her telekinetic grip. Why… by the sound of things, it seemed as though her faithful student and all her family had come to terms with this state of affairs! Perhaps even not just ‘come to terms,’ but had learned to embrace this madness! No, surely not. Surely Twilight hadn’t given up on finding a cure for her friends! Surely Twilight would still find a way to complete Starswirl’s dangerous unfinished masterpiece! Surely she wouldn’t be satisfied with letting this be the end?

Author's Note

I apologize to EVERYONE for this chapter taking so long to write. I was moving into a new state, adapting to a new demanding job... and frankly, the intricacies of sewing was very tough for me to wrap my head around. I hope it was worth the wait! My thanks, again, to Rikmach and SpinelStride for all their help.

Forty: Jockeying For More Swaps

“I am more committed to finding a cure to the Swap now than I ever was before,” Twilight Sparkle told Princess Celestia.

Celestia’s expression was very briefly surprised, just long enough for Twilight to catch it. “That… is a relief, my student. Might I ask why?” Her expression shifted back to a more neutral interest. Twilight had seen it before, one when the princess didn’t want to give away her feelings. It felt… odd seeing it directed at her.

She inhaled a deep breath. “Because of all these other ponies,” Twilight explained. “The ones who fell afoul of those prototypes I created. I mean… certainly it’s awful enough that my five friends should suffer. But all of us Element Bearers… after all we’ve been through, we’re kind of like soldiers. ...Maybe heroes is a better word. We can take it. But now… it’s like a monster that’s broken free of its cage, running amok among the general public. Ruining the lives of defenseless ponies.”

Twilight shut her eyes momentarily.

“The Swap is heartless and soulless. It doesn’t care. It’ll switch a mother with her son. It’ll switch a beetle with a dog. Anything with anyone. It’ll be trickier than ever, coming up with something to reverse the effects of all these different versions of Starswirl’s unfinished spell. Both my own prototypes, and these new ones crafted by these desperate fools. But I swear on… on the very Element of Magic, that I will triumph over the Swap! I don’t care how long it takes, or even if you, Celestia, were to tell me to stop! All I need is the right insight!”

Celestia relaxed to hear these words, almost smiling again.

“Honestly, that is a relief to hear… If you had no wish to continue… I would have had to take on the burden myself for that very reason. I’m uncertain whether I could come up with anything, but for my little ponies, I would need to try. But that does leave one question…”

“...Yes?” Twilight asked after a moment of Celestia leaving the question in air.

Celestia paused, letting out the tiniest sigh, as if she dreaded asking the next question. “Once you do discover the Cure, will you be using it on your fellow Element Bearers?”

Now Twilight faltered. “I… I… that is to say...” Her thoughts went to Rarity in particular. They ate together. Fell asleep in the same bed. Shared the same stallion. Shared each other. And now, today… this talk of marriage… But was it really what she wanted?

Marriage. To uncaring, self-serving ponies such as her mother, Star Sparkle, it amounted to nothing beyond a silly, overpriced party. Not her, though. With marriage, she was of the same school of thought as her brother. Twilight Sparkle believed in the sanctity of marriage; the sacred vow of eternal devotion. Holding yourself to a higher standard of faithfulness and love.

She had told Fluttershy that she’d wanted nothing more than to live out the rest of her life with Rarity, but now Twilight found herself second-guessing herself. Was this really what she wanted her life, her home, her family to be like, ‘til the end of her days? Being compelled to play the role of Rarity’s herdsister was one thing, when it was in the name of keeping her sane. Growing to love her was forgivable. But could she bear to keep this great and terrible truth from Rarity and Rainbow Dash unspoken, even to her last breath? Was it even right? What did she want?

“...And what if she won’t?” Celestia and Twilight both turned at the sound of Lero’s voice.

The human strode forward, stopping right beside Twilight Sparkle. Glaring at Celestia with eyes like frozen, hazel-colored steel. Blinking much less than normal.

“What if Twilight Sparkle feels that her five fine friends simply do not require any ‘curing?’ What will you do then, princess? Banish her to outer space?”

Lero’s tone was like silk on fire. Smooth yet with a hotness that most of Lero’s party guests would’ve found outright terrifying. It was certainly frightening Twilight Sparkle.

In the past, Twilight had stood beside Celestia in diplomatic summits and watched foreign ambassadors threaten war upon Equestria with the same quiet and refined fury that Lero was showing now. Celestia’s response was just the same as it was with those ambassadors: straightening herself to her tallest, and looking down her muzzle at Lero without outright frowning.

“I would never ask her to act against her conscience,” she told Lero.

Lero also held himself straighter. “We bent over backwards, we jumped through hoops of fire to bring those five to this state of happy equilibrium.”

“And I thank you for your efforts toward helping relieve their suffering.” She nodded softly to him. “But all I wanted to do was to remind Twilight that this is merely a treatment of the symptoms of a larger syndrome, not a cure… and leaves us with a more complex moral quandary to deal with.”

“Syndromes?! Symptoms?! Is that what you think of them as?!” Twilight knew when Lero was barely able to hold himself back from attacking someone else… and thank all goodness, this was NOT such an occasion. Enraged as Lero Michealides was, he stood with his feet planted like a defense attorney in the court of law, contending against the royal prosecution.

“None of them behave as their true selves.” Celestia clarified. “As much as they behave much like unique people, it is the effect of a spell.”

“So what?” Lero retorted. “They’re all living, thinking individuals! Capable of love and thought and emotional growth! Doesn’t matter that they were born of magic! They have as much right to life as anypony conceived by a mother and father!”

Celestia let out a long sigh, and nodded. “This is very much true, which is what makes this situation so vexing. If they had been conjured into existence from a stockpile of magical ingredients, or indeed, pure raw magic… I would never even think to bring this possibility up. But those five exist entirely at the expense of their original selves, which is the problem we now face.”

“Waaaaaaait…” Twilight remembered Fluttershy saying, “If I focus, I can hear something through the balloons. A voice… It sounds like… my own.”

“Twilight?” Celestia asked.

She shook herself out of her reverie. “Yes?”

“I know you must not be completely comfortable with things being like this, yes? Otherwise, you would have cast Soul Synthesis.” reasoned Celestia, turning towards Twilight.

“...Soul… Synthesis?” repeated Twilight in a daze.

Celestia frowned ever-so-slightly. “Yes,” she replied. “After her visit with you, my sister informed me that you learned Soul Synthesis from our dear old friend.” She leaned down, looking her in the eyes; Twilight realized there was genuine concern in them. “Twilight, if… If you truly do prefer these versions of your friends over their original selves, why keep their sanity at risk and not cast Soul Synthesis upon them?”

It had been months since Twilight had even given half a thought to the Soul Synthesis spell. Yet for such an arcane piece of magic she’d learned so long ago in a dream, it all came back to her as instantly as the alphabet, as it had literally been inscribed on her brain.

“Twilight?”

“I… it… I…”

The princess sighed, closing her eyes. “I know why you won’t,” Celestia’s voice had drawn to a whisper. “Because it would feel like you were killing them. And it effectively would be. The day Starswirl cast Soul Synthesis on me, my old self was as gone as if she had never been.”

Twilight’s imagination produced something awful at that moment: her five original friends with their five original cutie marks; each locked within dungeon cells, deep underground. And then, with just a quick casting of Soul Synthesis… the ceilings of their cells completely caved in with grim finality.

“To keep things the way they are,” Celestia continued, “Is the only way all ten of them can coexist. And I won’t deny, the five new ones all have perfectly lovely personalities. But theirs comes at the cost of the lives of others.”

“Don’t you… don’t you DARE…” Lero growled.

At that moment, Celestia’s attitude completely thawed. From her high tallness, she seemed to soften down to a less-imposing, kinder stature, and at the same moment, looking much tireder. “Lero, allow me to say something. Out of everything you’ve done with respect to those five, the thing which has personally impressed me most was how you managed to get Rainbow Dash the Animal Caretaker to fall in love with you. To rejoin Herd Bellerophon.”

“Thank you,” he said, with a wary look.

“...And by an incredible stroke of good fortune, she’s even gotten to become a Wonderbolt cadet again. Why, apart from a vast wealth of animals and a shortage of braggadocio, she’s practically her old self. And I daresay that everyone in Herd Bellerophon — Rainbow Dash included — is happier that she’s become closer to her old self! So why not go all the way? Why not simply fix her, and all the rest of them?”

“Rarity…” Lero stammered out.

Celestia nodded sadly. “That would be it, wouldn’t it? Rarity loves you now, and you’ve come to love her. And that is truly wonderful. But… that’s just one pony out of ten. How would the original Rarity, herself, feel? And as much as they love Pinkie now, I’m certain that everypony in the Apple Clan would love to have Applejack back among them, if not for Discord’s efforts, which keep them in the dark. After all, you remember how miserable all of you in Herd Bellerophon were until you had gotten Rainbow Dash back among yourselves? Don’t you think Sweetie Belle would want her actual big sister back? Suppose the worst were to happen, and Discord’s bewitchment failed? They would want their family back… and how do you think they’d react if they knew you wanted to stop that?”

“He’s not… Princess, you wouldn’t tell Discord to stop!” Twilight exclaimed, surprised in the direction Celestia’s comments were going in.

“No. I wouldn’t,” Celestia told her gently. “But even Discord has his limits, and… this was never intended to take this long. It’s something to consider.”

“Rarity’s happier the way she is now,” Lero insisted stubbornly.

“Rarity the Weathermare is, certainly, if for no other reason than comparison. After all, she didn’t exist until recently.” The Princess drooped, a morose air in her tone. “But Rarity the Dressmaker? She had her own dreams, her own goal — becoming a fashionista par excellence.” She paused, looking to Lero. “Lero, could you tell me in all honestly that Rarity, as she formerly was, would have ever taken her relationship with you this far?”

Lero’s mouth opened, as if he was going to say something, the anger in his eyes fading into confusion, his mouth working several times as if to speak, but nothing came out.

“...though, is that why there’s the hesitation? You… don’t wish to see how it might hurt Rarity when she’s back…”

“STOP IT!”

Celestia’s great mane froze up, as she looked in surprise and alarm at her student now shouting at her.

Tears formed in the corner of her eyes. “We’re doing the best we can with what happened! We know that this isn’t right, but every other way was worse! We know it’s not right to keep them as they are, but putting them back isn’t right either! Unless you really asking me to kill her…?” Her question was cut off by a quiet sob.

Celestia stepped over to Twilight, putting a wing around her. Part of her wanted to pull away, but she couldn’t resist the familiar comfort, pressing into her wing. “I could never ask you to do that. If...”

“Ssh! Quiet!” Lero suddenly said. “Quiet, both of you! Listen!”

They did. What they heard were hooves. Approaching hooves, nearby. It turned out they belonged to six ponies, who were curious where the princess, her faithful student, and the man of the hour had gone off to. By the time they found them all, Twilight, Celestia, and Lero had all put on proper smiles. By all appearances, it had been nothing more than a friendly little chat between the three of them.

* * *

Lero Michealides kept his face screwed in a happy mask as he returned to the party. Laughing along to jokes ponies told him. Participating in more of their games and their conversations. Feeling shaken, all the while.

“Lero?” Rarity asked him at one point.

“Yes, what is it, Rarity?” They were both sitting next to each other at the table.

“You look like you have a lot on your mind.”

“Do I?” Lero was surprised. He thought he had put on his best ‘having fun’ face.

“I can tell you’re trying to hide it.”

“You know me too well,” he said, with something between a laugh and a sigh. “I guess… I’m looking back on the past. Thinking about where things started. And how I got here.”

“You have been through a lot,” she agreed, leaning against him while glancing towards Rainbow Dash. “I can’t even begin to imagine how utterly bizarre the whole experience has been for you.”

“Got that right,” he said, as low as he could.

Rarity licked her lips. “Lero? I… remember you telling me, at one point, how humans also give rings when they want to get married?”

He had been looking outward at Applejack having a chat with Big Macintosh that he was too far away to hear. Now his full attention snapped back to Rarity. “Where did this come from?”

A shrug was her answer.

“Well… yeah. They do. Far as I can tell, wedding rings work pretty much just the same with humans as in Equestria.”

“Where do humans wear their rings?” Rarity then asked.

Since Lero had never been the type of man to wear jewelry, it made sense why she wouldn’t know this. And yet, it was such an unexpected question, and she was trying just a little too hard to sound offhanded.

Lero held up his hands up, and wiggled his fingers, “Traditionally, humans wear their rings on their fingers. In fact...” He extended the finger between his middle and his pinky, specifically the one on his left hand. “See this?”

Rarity watched the whole production with rapt fascination. “Of course, darling.”

“Humans, in fact, call this their ‘ring’ finger. It’s where the ring is traditionally worn when you get married.”

“On the finger,” repeated Rarity, in a marveled voice, as though a finger were an ingenuous substitute for a horn. “Isn’t that clever!”

Lero put his arm around her, hugging her close. “Isn’t it just?”

* * *

Part of Lero would’ve liked several stiff drinks, but he touched no more alcohol at the party. After all, there was that old Latin chestnut to consider; in vino veritas. And the last thing he wanted was for anypony to hear any veritas from him.

The depressed part of Lero made plans to get himself hammered later at night, then just go to bed. But when it came time, all he could bring himself to do was sip at his first and only beer. And stare into the fire, crackling away in the fireplace. Up until he heard a set of hooves descending the stairs.

“Lero?” Twilight asked him. “What are you doing up so late?”

He turned around cautiously. “How’s…?”

“Asleep,” she assured him. “Rarity and Rainbow Dash are asleep.”

He turned his eyes back towards the fire as she came over to his side. “Originally, I set out to fight the Swap. Remember that? I was gonna mop the FLOOR with that evil curse of a spell. Now look at me; defending it to Celestia! I’ve become its biggest ally, its biggest advocate!”

Laughing a soft, sad laugh, the human sipped his flat beer like it was piping hot tea.

“My life,” he said, “has become an endless series of mad reversals. How about you, Twilight?”

“Same,” she said, massaging his shoulders with her magic.

He relaxed for a minute. Then abruptly he stood up, pacing the room. “And THEN there’s those Jockey ponies… those stupid Swap Jockeys idiots! First they obsess over that whole thing Honeydew and Exit Wound, like they were aliens who crash-landed in Roswell… and now they’re swapping with each other left and right! They SEE what kinda chaos happens when ponies cast those damn spells on themselves, they HAVE to be reading about all them in the papers…”

“Lero, ssh, keep it down!”

“...And yet more of those Swap Jockeys keep turning up right and left, every day!” Lero exclaimed, in a quieter voice. “Why is this happening?! When did switching cutie marks suddenly become a fad?! Is The Swap casting some kind of weird hypnosis over society at large?! Compelling them to do this?”

Twilight levitated herself a glass of water over. “I think,” she said, “a large part of it has to do with envy.”

“Envy?” Lero repeated.

Twilight nodded. “As long as envy exists in the world, as long as there are ponies who are dissatisfied with themselves, as long as they’re convinced the grass is greener in somepony else’s yard, as long as they feel they’ve got to trade away their very identities — what makes them them — to achieve true happiness… there will always be ponies desperate enough to attempt those mark-swapping spells.”

Lero sunk into his chair with a defeated look.

“I... can’t help you help them. All those Jockey ponies. I can’t help you with them all like I helped with the Swapped Five.” He laughed unhappily. “Heh… ‘Swapped Five.’ Ain’t exactly just five of them anymore, is there? Suppose we’ll have to think up a new nickname, huh?”

“Suppose so,” said Twilight.

“But yeah, I’m serious. They’re all strangers to me, and there’s just so many of them. So I don’t think I’d be able to help them find equilibrium. I’m sorry.”

“It’s not your fault,” Twilight said. “We probably don’t want them to get equilibrium, anyway. If they did, we'd just wind up more embroiled in the ‘is the cure murder?’ dilemma. Problems if we do. Best just keep them isolated and safe until I figure out the cure.”

Lero looked back toward the fire. “I’ve been thinking about everything Princess Celestia said. Turning it over and over again in my head. And God help me… but I really love Rarity. I don’t even know what that MAKES me, anymore… all things considered. And that scares me. But I hate the idea of losing her.”

She hugged him tenderly. “Of course. I don’t want to lose Rarity either.”

Eventually, Lero went over and poured what was left of his beer down the kitchen sink.

“Let’s go to bed,” Twilight nodded to him, following him up to where the rest of the herd was sleeping, they drowsily parting to let them in before dropping back off to sleep.

Soon enough, he managed to fall asleep. Twilight was not so lucky. She stared up at her ceiling, thinking about Celestia, about her five Element Bearing friends, and about the Cure… wishing that her brain would stop her eyes would just finally get tired of staying open.

Then she heard and felt stirring next to her in bed. Rarity was sitting up.

“Ssh,” the white unicorn said to Twilight, levitating a quill, inkwell, and paper from a drawer, and length of measuring tape from under her pillow. From there, Twilight watched Rarity lift up their sleeping stallion’s hand, measure the finger right next to the pinky, jot down the measurement onto a piece of paper, then levitate all the items back in the drawer. Then with a loving kiss to the finger she’d just measured, Rarity snuggled up beside her sweet prince and fell asleep for real.

It took Twilight even longer just to shut her eyes. Things were happening so fast…

* * *

===
Secret Interview Transcript:
Subject: Spike
Dragon
Male
Age: 8

DS: So was your ice cream yummy, Spike?

S: Yeah. Really delicious, miss! Thank you very much for buying it for me!

DS: Oh, believe me, it was my pleasure! It’s not every day that I get to speak to a unique boy like you!

S: And by “unique” you mean “dragon,” right?

DS: Well, I wouldn’t put it like that.

S: Hey, it’s okay, lady. I don’t mind. I get it all the time from ponies like you, in fact. If I were in your horseshoes, I’d find me “unique” too!

DS: Would you care for some more ice cream?

S: Oh, thank you, but I wouldn’t want to be greedy.

DS: I insist. Just name the flavor.

S: Alright, you’re twisting my arm, but… I’ll have a banana and a black cherry!

*The ice cream was purchased and quickly eaten by the subject.

S: Oh, wow. I don’t think I could eat another bite.

DS: I’d bet you never gotten to eat so much dessert in one day with Twilight Sparkle.

S: You’d be surprised, lady. When Pinkie Pie’s one of your closest friends, there’s enough sweet stuff for twelve of me. And that’s at any one given party of hers.

DS: What’s it like working for Twilight Sparkle?

S: It’s great! She’s a wonderful boss. Not that I get to slack off -- work my tail off every day!

DS: Do you like her?

S: I love her. She’s like a mom and an older sister wrapped up in one pony. Without her, I’d probably be just another fire-breathing jerk, barely fit to live in a cave. So if you’re out to butter me up and get me to ditch Twilight to come work for you, then I’m sorry, but you’re wasting your time.

DS: That’s not what I’m here for.

S: Oh? Well, I get that all the time too. You’d probably be amazed how many job offers I get. It’s ‘cause of my flame mail breath; all the businessponies want it.

DS: I understand that Twilight Sparkle is hard at work on a certain spell. A spell that affects cutie marks.

S: Oh. Ohhhhh. So this is the real reason why you bought me all that ice cream. You’re one of those Swap Jockeys, aren’t you? Are you already Swapped?

DS: No, I’m not Swapped.

S: Yeah, I suppose you wouldn’t be. You’re far too much in control of yourself and you’re not in the middle of causing any major property damage.

DS: Don’t you think you’re being a little closed-minded?

S: No, I think I’ve got my eyes open! I mean, have you even heard of one case of that not ending in disaster? Look, you seem to be a nice-enough mare. I want to help you. Let’s talk this out. Maybe I could help you see things clearly.

DS: Well, I would like to talk, Spike.

S: Yeah, so let’s talk. If you’re one of the big Swap fans, I don’t need to tell you what huge disasters Swaps are to everypony who’s tried them.

DS: Spells can be tinkered with. Reworked and fine-tuned by spellcrafting experts into something useful and controllable.

*Here, the subject, Spike shakes his head firmly.

S: Maybe, but there’s not evidence that swaps will ever work that way. Look, would you mind explaining to me why anypony would ever want to swap their cutie marks in the first place?

DS: There are all sorts of cases I could name. All sorts of reasons.

S: Name three. And I mean really good ones.

DS: Imagine a pegasus who absolutely loves flying, and got her cutie mark based on her love of flight. But then she loses her wings, from illness or accident. Instead of being saddled with a talent she can never make use of ever again, wouldn’t it be kinder on the wingless pegasus to exchange her unusable flying talent for something else? Like pottery? And then give that A-grade flying talent to some other pegasus who can actually make use of it?

*The subject looks surprised and thoughtful at this point.

S: Wow. Okay, I have to admit, that’s a pretty good one.

DS: Here’s another one: are you familiar with the 'A Hymn of Frost and Flame' book series?

S: By Large R. R. Garden? Of course I’m familiar! You’re talking to a kid who works in a library. Those books never stay on our shelves for long!

DS: Are you a fan of the Frost and Flame books?

S: Yeah. They’re great, even though they’re ginormous doorstoppers.

DS: If you’re a fan, at this point, you’d know that at this point in time, Mr. Garden’s only on Book Five of what’s supposed to be a seven-part series.

S: Believe me, I know. He’s kept loads of fans waiting for years.

DS: His shortest book is five hundred pages long. And when he writes, he only writes three hundred words a day. Mr. Garden’s a stubborn old mule, well settled in his twilight years.

S: He’s also really fat! Have you seen pictures of him? Ha! I mean, no wonder that whenever his characters sit to eat, it takes three pages to describe each meal, right?

DS: So I think you and I would agree that between his age and his weight, there’s a pretty fair chance that this author might up and die early on, and his saga will remain forever unfinished.

S: Sheesh. You’re almost as brutal as Large R. R. Garden, himself, when it comes to death.

DS: But now let’s suppose Garden’s cutie mark were to be swapped to some younger pony? Then that pony would acquire all of Mr. Garden’s literary talents, and he’d know how to finish the saga!

S: Well, um, okay, that would definitely make all the fans happy.

DS: Thousands of fans. Very happy.

S: Though I’m not 100% sure it'd work that way. He’d have Garden's talents, but not his ideas, I don’t think? Also, wouldn’t it better for this younger pony to discover his own unique talents rather than have someone else’s forced upon him?

DS: Well, as said, the spell’s tweakable. But that’s not the point. What if the younger pony’s talent turns out to be something trite and meaningless? Like washing dishes? Wouldn’t it be better that he get a talent that has a ‘known value?’ Predetermined worth? And is it worth letting genius die for?

S: Look, lady, I don’t know what to tell you. Maybe there is a spell out there for ponies like you with cutie mark issues, but I know enough to tell you that this spell Twilight’s working on isn’t what you’re looking for.

DS: I agree, the spell’s broken as it currently stands, but I can tell that all it needs is readjustment. Completion. Don’t you think Twilight Sparkle would appreciate having as many minds helping her work on this spell as possible? Wouldn’t you want this spell working perfectly, for Twilight’s sake?

S: Wait, what exactly do you mean by “Twilight’s sake?”

DS: You’re very lucky to be a dragon, Spike. You have a long lifespan ahead of you. Unlike us ponies. Barring misfortune, you’ll be alive for centuries, while Twilight Sparkle won’t be. But why don’t we suppose something new? Suppose, after Twilight reached a certain age, one could Swap her cutie mark upon some younger pony? Effectively, ‘Twilight Sparkle’ would never die. And for as long as you lived, Spike, you’ll always have a pony around who’ll love you in that special ‘Twilight’ way.

S: That’s... That’s monstrous. You’d be subverting countless mare’s individuality for one pony! Neither me nor Twilight would ever be selfish to use ponies essentially as vessels for Twilight’s ghost!

DS: Don’t you see that to not keep ‘Twilight Sparkle’ alive forever is the truly selfish thing?

S: Pull the other one!

DS: I’m serious. First, do you know your history? Are you aware who the previous bearers of the Elements of Harmony were? The one before these current six?

S: Duh. Princess Celestia and Princess Luna. Everypony knows that.

DS: Between the princesses and the contemporary Element Bearers, approximately one thousand years have passed.

S: I’m assuming there’s a point at the end of this interminably convoluted diatribe of yours.

DS: Please bear with me.

*The subject folds his arms.

DS: The current six Element Bearers are mortal. Fated to eventually die a few decades from now. But Discord, Nightmare Moon, and many of the super-powered super-villains whom the Elements Of Harmony are meant to be used upon aren’t mortal.

*Here, Spike quits rolling his eyes and suddenly freezes in place, eyes wide.

DS: Our alicorn princesses, while immortal, are far from invincible, and can no longer wield the Elements. Celestia, especially, is no longer in her prime.

S: What do you mean “not in her prime?” Okay, so she needed Twilight and her friends to beat Nightmare Moon for her, and maybe Discord too, and King Sombra. Which was actually my achievement, really.

DS: You see my point, Spike. Let me play devil’s advocate for a second. If I, myself, were an evil immortal draconequus, just as Discord is—

S: Used to be.

DS: —Yes, of course. But back to the point. If I was a draconequus eager to wreak havoc and mayhem after hundreds of years of inactivity, can you guess what my first move would be?

S: Attack Celestia?

DS: No, that’d just paint a big target on myself. I’d look out into the world and see how there were these six mortal Element Bearer mares, capable of defeating me. Then I'd go underground. Hide for another century, until all six of them died. Then Equestria would be a complete sitting duck, wide open for conquest. For all we know, there might be some deathless demons out there doing that right at this moment!

S: Well, I can’t say it ain’t alarming just how many old enemies of Celestia’s dig themselves back up. But—

DS: And remember; it took Celestia a thousand years to find new ponies suited to wield the Elements of Harmony. No surefire way for ponies to select a new batch of Element Bearers. UNLESS!

S: Unless what?

DS: Unless ponies make an official practice of SWAPPING the cutie marks of the current Element Bearers every few generations onto new mares! So no matter what else happens, ponykind will ALWAYS be guaranteed of having ponies whose mentalities are compatible for Element Bearing.

*Here, the subject is clearly thunderstruck.

S: You want to keep swapping Twilight and her friends over and over again? Forever and ever without end?

DS: Not just me, but the group I represent. Our plan may be the only true way of ensuring peace and safety against deathless, all-powerful eldritch horrors for all time. That’s why we need all the information we can get on this spell!

S: So, your idea to ensure our safety against deathless horrors… is to turn my friends into deathless horrors.

DS: I wouldn’t put it like that—

S: I’ve listened to enough of this! Now, you listen here, Miss, uh, what did you say your name was?

DS: I actually never did.

S: Miss I actually never did, I’m not cooperating with you in any way!

DS: You sound serious. That’s a great shame. I would’ve hoped that the wellbeing of Twilight Sparkle and all of Equestria might’ve moved you to do what’s right, but I suppose even civilized dragons can be counted on to be stupid and selfish.

*At this point, the subject becomes noticeably agitated.

S: Get out of my town.

DS: Your town? A bit possessive, aren’t we?

S: Get out before I call the guard.

DS: For what, Spike?

S: Conspiring against the crown! What you’re discussing is not only monstrous, I'm pretty sure it’s expressly forbidden by Celestia, you, you, you black-coated, blue-maned kook!

DS: Shall I tell you something, Spike? My coat isn’t actually black. My mane isn’t really blue. This isn’t even how my real voice sounds like.

S: ...Disguise magic?

DS: Indeed. Oh, I see several other ponies edging closer towards me. Celestia’s secret bodyguards, I take it?

S: Look, lady, you should just—

*But this is the point where my compatriot cast the smoke spell, and I was able to make my getaway.

* * *

The library had never sounded so starkly silent as it had after Spike had finished his story. Neither he nor Twilight Sparkle could bring themselves to speak for over a minute.

“To think…” Twilight said, with a dry mouth and throat. “The six of us… always swapping… to think…”

In her fretful imagination, Twilight could see it all playing out. A group of Swap Jockeys approaching Celestia and petitioning her to make this mad plan an official government policy. Celestia being won over to their way of thinking, over all of Twilight’s most desperate objections. Celestia sitting down for a one-on-one talk with Twilight and convincing her to go along with it. Persuading her, with her regal motherliness, that it really was all for the greater good of all Equestria. That the greatest heroes were the ones who made the greatest sacrifices...

“It kinda reminds me of that one story Lero told us about,” Spike mentioned. “Doctor Whoever, or whatever he’s named. Remember him, Twilight? All his regenerations? Remember Lero saying how its writers just kept the story going and going and when one Doctor got too old to play the role any longer, they had him switched out with some other guy?”

...And then, fifty or sixty years down the line, she and her friends would all be old, withered nags. And late one night, the six of them would be whisked away in sky chariots to a clandestine rendezvous in Celestia’s castle. There, they’d be brought to a top secret chamber, where six healthy young fillies in their late teens were awaiting their arrival. Then one of the royal magicians would chant the spell, ‘From one to another, from another to one...’ And Twilight would finally learn for herself what it really felt like to have her mark swapped.

Part of her would eventually die of old age: an ancient mare with a teen girl’s memories and mindset. But the rest of Twilight Sparkle; everything which a cutie mark contained, would find new life in this fresh new body. As would her five fellow Element Bearers. There’d be a period of difficulty as the Swap once again filled their minds with false memories and mad compulsions.

But Celestia would’ve learned from Lero’s example. Even after her sweet human stallion was long dead in his grave, Celestia would have specially-trained therapist handlers at the ready, to continue Lero Michealides’ tradition of helping the Swapped find their equilibrium. And once they were equilibrated, the six of them would then be fit to face whatever tyrant or monstrosity needed to have a superpowered rainbow shot at it. Until they grew a little too old. At which time, there’d be a new tradeoff, with six new young ponies.

Being the Element of Magic, Twilight, herself (or at least her cutie mark) was pretty much guaranteed to always be given a unicorn’s body. But maybe there’d be a couple swaps where the powers-that-be found that a stallion would be the finest Element of Magic vessel during that particular generation. But with her other five friends… any of them could be stallions, mares, pegasi, earth ponies, unicorns…

And as long as Celestia remained princess, she would keep this arrangement in place. It would be as much an institution as the Weather Service, only more secretive. And as long as Discord remained her ally, both the public at large and the Element Bearers themselves would stay bewitched and blissfully ignorant. And no matter what century it was, there’d always be ponies with a Star Mark, an Apple Mark, a Balloon Mark, a Diamond Mark, a Butterfly Mark, and a Rainbow-Thunderbolt Mark who were as tight a team of heroes as they were friends.

A deathless eternity of Swaps. An infinite struggle with madness, obsession, and an endless cycle of new bodies and new identities. Of the six of them continuously convincing themselves that it had always been that way.

“Wanna… wanna hear something horrible?” Tears were falling from Spike’s eyes. “Part of me was tempted to go along with that Swap Jockey mare. I know you’re gonna die someday Twilight, and I’ll live on… but I don’t want that! Maybe instead of ‘Twilight Sparkle’ your name will be ‘Bookmark’ or ‘Butter Batter’ or whatever, maybe your coat will be red or green instead of purple. Maybe you’ll even be a zebra… I mean zebras have magic of their own, right? But no matter what, I’ll always have somepony who remembers bringing me up in a library, and who knows just how to hug me when I’m down. I’m so sorry.”

Hugging Spike brought warmth back to Twilight’s troubled heart. The longer she held the hug, the more her appreciation for Spike, for everyone grew, and the more she realized she was being ludicrously paranoid. Celestia had crossed the line on a few things, but Twilight knew her teacher, and she’d never go so far as what that Swap Jockey wanted.

Would she...

A cloth suddenly covered Twilight’s eyes. “Guess who?” an elegant female voice from behind asked teasingly.

In spite of herself, Twilight smiled. “Rarity.”

“Wrong-o!” sang Lyra. Dropping the cloth she’d levitated up, the Still Way grandmaster came around and gave Twilight a kiss. “It was me.”

Laughing from behind them all, Rarity came up from behind them all with a shopping bag. “Is Rainbow here?”

“No,” Spike said, “She’s in her cottage, taking care of her animals.”

“Well, could you be a dear, Spike, and fetch her here?” asked Rarity. “Lyra and I just bought the most darling makeup kits for t… Spike, have you been crying?”

The young dragon hurriedly rubbed his tear-streaked eyes. “Stubbed my toe,” he told Rarity.

The swapped unicorn smiled kindly. “Was that why you were hugging Twilight?”

“Yeah, I’m better now, though. I can be such a baby about these kind of things sometimes!” he told her, smiling. “Well, I’d better go find Dash.”

And Spike ran out of the room. Twilight, meanwhile, had gone to check what was in Rarity’s shopping bag. She pulled out a set of four makeup kits, gasping when she recognized what an expensive brand her herdsisters had brought home.

“I know,” Rarity said. “Took a big chunk out of my personal savings. But it’s worth it. We’re worth it, girls! And Lero’s most certainly worth it. Tomorrow’s going to be a big day.”

“Tomorrow?” Twilight said, feeling something akin to lightheadedness. “It’s tomorrow?”

“Of course! Says so right on our tickets and everything! Tomorrow’s going to be such a big day,” the white unicorn repeated.

* * *

The dirigible was named the Cirrus. It floated over a thousand feet off the ground, in a cloudless stretch of airspace. Today was the first day the Cirrus had ever had a human passenger aboard. And Lero Michealides was having the time of his life; along with the mares in his herd.

They ate gelato and drank affogato at a Bitalian bistro. They luxuriated at a spa even better-furnished than the one Lero worked at. They drank specially crafted beer and creative cocktails at the gastrolounge, while a jazz band played. They gambled just a little at the casino. They chitchatted with other rich passengers who were also enjoying this blimp cruise. The captain gave Lero and his mares a personal tour of the blimp, including the helm, some of the crew’s quarters, and the special room where they kept the magic crystals that kept all of this afloat.

They swam in the pool, then cleaned themselves off in their stately stateroom, which offered a lovely view of the stratosphere. For dinner, they ate marinated cucumbers and roasted cauliflowers on beds of sesame sticky rice and galangal, then watched a raunchy comedian do a spectacular one-mare performance of a popular play which Lero had never seen, (yet he enjoyed her fifteen-minute parody of it, all the same.) Then the five of them finished the day watching the sunset on the Cirrus’ terrace.

“This has to be one of the best times we’ve ever had together!” Twilight Sparkle sighed.

“I’ll say!” agreed Lero. After another sip of his mimosa, he looked around at the ladies of his herd and asked, “Now, would one of you girls mind telling me what this is really all about?”

“Whatever do you mean, darling? And whyever are you looking right at me when you ask that?” asked Rarity, with far too much innocence.

“Come on, Rarity,” said Lero. “This whole day has your hoofprints all over it. I mean, not that I object to a surprise day of fun, but we just celebrated the anniversary of me coming to Equestria. And we’re not exactly a bunch of billionaire playboys… so please, no more giving me the runaround. What’s going on?”

The mares all looked at one another.

“I think you ought to be the one to tell him, Rarity,” said Rainbow Dash, at last.

The wind picked up as the Cirrus made a gentle turn.

“I… I… I…” Rarity began, uncharacteristically tongue-tied. “I am such an incurable fantasist, aren’t I?”

“Y…”

She held up a hoof. “Please let me say my piece, Lero. This is important. I promise you; you’ll have your own chance to respond.”

She drew a fresh breath.

“Ever since I was a little filly, I can always remember loving fairy tales. Particularly stories of princes and princesses falling in love with one another. I’ve always dreamed of experiencing that for myself, it’s something that’s stayed with me to this day. When I first fell in love with you… I wanted to be there for you, the way that princesses were always there for their princes in the stories…”

“You’ve been wonderful about that, Rarity,” Lero told her, surprised by the hitch of emotion in his own voice. “Everything that’s happened to me, everything I’ve had to adapt to… it would’ve been so much harder and I’d’ve been so much lonelier if you hadn’t been there to love and support me.” He looked past Rarity to his other three girls. “The same goes for all of you, as well… Twilight, Rainbow, Lyra…”

“You’re a treasure to us,” Lyra told him, and the other mares nodded.

“We’ve all been very happy, living together in this herd of ours, haven’t we?” said Rarity, looking around at her herdmates, who all nodded again and made murmurs of agreement. “But you know how fairy tales go, Lero. They always end with the prince and princess marrying each other and living happily ever after. That’s another thing I’ve always wanted for myself, at some point down the line.”

Marrying. Lero felt his eyes pop wide open at that word.

“You are all my herdsisters,” Rarity went on, “And you are our stallion. I feel complete, being with you all. I always want us to be together, as a family. I know that, in a way, we’re already doing that. What I’m about to propose is almost superfluous. Gilding the lily, as it were. But again… I’ve always, always, dreamed of marrying a handsome, caring, and all-around charming prince. And there’ll simply never be another stallion more princely than you are.”

Suddenly, Rarity let out a self-conscious laugh. “Listen to me prattle on! Making this all about myself! Girls, this is your moment too. If you have anything you’d like to add…”

Lyra nodded and faced Lero. “Lero, I love you for how you’re always opening my mind in so many ways, to thoughts, ideas, and wisdoms that would’ve never occurred to me on my own. You have this wonderful sense of balance in your life that I admire. Balance for yourself, and balancing out problems. And if not for you, I’d’ve never developed this special bond with Rainbow Dash, and Twilight and Rarity.”

Then Twilight spoke. “You’re a strong stallion,” she said, “I know that we mares are supposed to be the strong ones, the protectors, and we do try. But when all’s said and done, you’re the pillar that holds us up. The glue that binds us together. I’m always impressed by how committed you are to this family. It makes me… it makes us all the happier being committed to you. Also, I’m an heiress, and sooner or later, my family was going to get on me to make this all official anyhow...”

Finally, Rainbow Dash began with a faint blush. “You… know I’m not one for big speeches.”

Lero smiled and reached out, putting his hand on her hoof.

“You know, when you get right down to it,” Rainbow went on. “This whole ‘marriage’ thing feels more like a… like a reaffirmation of what we already have, more than anything else. But that’s okay! Good things need to be reaffirmed. And you’re such an incredible thing to’ve happened to all of us, Lero. We’re all so happy and lucky having you in our lives.”

“So at this moment, we have just one question for you,” spoke Rarity.

And the four mares of Lero’s herd all bent into a kneel. Rarity’s magic floated a small, ornate box out from where it had been hidden. It opened within Lero’s reach, revealing a golden ring with a diamond.

“Lero… will you marry us?”

Memories of Celestia came into Lero’s mind at that moment. Doubts buzzed in his head… or at least they tried to. He looked into the eyes of the Unswapped Ponies. Twilight, who had also been there with the princess. And Lyra, whom knew about their encounter with Celestia, when they told her in private. Yet here they both were; proposing marriage, right alongside their Swapped herdsisters, who at least had the excuse of not knowing any better.

Lero looked into Rainbow and Rarity’s eyes. So hopeful. So yearning.

He knew that he should come up with some excuse. He needed to think about how the Apple Clan and Sweetie Belle and her mom and dad and the Pie Family would want deep down, just like Celestia had said… but he couldn’t bring himself to. Couldn’t at all. Twilight and Lyra would understand, but Lero just couldn’t bear the thought of how confused and hurt a rejection would leave Rarity and Rainbow Dash. In the end, he just didn’t want to fight this. Because he loved them back.

“Yes,” said Lero, with tears in his eyes. “Yes, I will marry you girls!”

When he reached for the engagement ring, it was lifted out of its box with telekinesis, and slipped lovingly over his ring finger under the glorious sunset.

* * *

Princess Celestia’s head drooped in weariness as she finished setting the sun. Only her sister saw, but Luna politely said nothing as she stepped around the elder alicorn, and set to work raising the moon. It had been a long day with Cadence and her husband. They had asked so many uncomfortable questions about Twilight and Starswirl’s spell, and what ought to be done about that minister and his family. Celestia had only been able to answer about a tenth of their questions, advising that the minister bring his family to a good psychiatric ward and everypony had been unhappy and then Star Sparkle had dropped in unannounced, and…

...Now one of her servants was galloping inside. “Your Majesty!” He was breathless and was dropping into a very troubled bow. “I have terrible news of greatest urgency to report!”

“What is it now?” She asked, letting some of her tiredness show, for once.

He looked from left to right, seeing that they were alone. She instantly locked the doors and activated the soundproof spell on this room.

“It’s the Merry Meadows Psychomantic Trauma Research and Rehabilitation Facility for the Criminally Unwell!” he said.

Celestia frowned blankly for a moment, before remembering. “That’s the asylum where Exit Wound is being held.”

“Not anymore, I fear!” said the servant. “There’s been a break-in! A gang of ponies attacked the Merry Meadows Facility… blasted straight through the wall, is what I heard... and broke Exit Wound out of her cell! Worse, all the evidence point to the Swap Jockeys who did it!”

Author's Note

I'll bet you're asking just who is "DS?" Well, you've seen her before. See if you can go back and find her! :trollestia:

Also, take a look at Lex Divisia, a fun little spinoff of Divided Rainbow!

Forty-One: Common Foe

The evening after Lero and his mares spent together aboard the Cirrus... Lero had head downstairs to work on breakfast, while Rarity had headed over to the Weather HQ to give some last-minute instructions she’d forgotten, and Rainbow had left to prepare for the Wonderbolts Academy. Twilight and Lyra, on the other hand, found themselves awoken from sleeping in by a certain purple Drake, having apparently gotten the news from Lero. “So. We’re gonna get married. You girls are becoming ‘wives’ and Lero’s becoming a ‘husband.’ What about me? What do I get to become, once we’re all married?”

“Our little scaly son.” Lyra answered, as they headed to his room to talk, to ensure a bit more privacy.

Spike half-grinned. “So basically, things pretty much stay the same for me, personally.”

“Pretty much,” agreed Twilight. “ If Lyra, Dash, Rarity, or Lero were of noble families, and you were female, inheritance issues might crop up…” Twilight suddenly blanched. “I, uh, on that note, I should probably file the proper forms to officially make you my son.”

“Wait... I’m not officially adopted by you!?” Spike exclaimed.

“You were born a ward of the state." Twilight explained. "Your egg was the property of Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, remember? And when I was made your caretaker, I was too young to adopt you...and, I, uh, never corrected that oversight since It didn’t occur to me until just now. Realistically, it’s not much of a problem, since technically, Celestia is your legal guardian, I’d just rather not have it up in the air in case the worst happens. But as it is, you’ll still be part of our family, though you won’t be affected by our marriage. It’s kind of an ‘adults only’ thing.”

“It’s just as well,” said Spike, “I’m saving myself for Applejack, anyway.”

Lyra’s laughter at that sounded weak.

“Maybe... I ought to research more about weddings,” Spike yawned, stretching himself out. “The only marriage I’ve ever really seen was Shining Armor and Princess Cadence’s. Twilight, do you think you could recommend some books?”

“I’ll look into it,” she told him. “Though I’m not entirely certain Applejack would go for marriage… as she’s not part of a noble family where it’d be needed.”

“She might go for it for the romantic charm, like Rarity did.” Lero pointed out.

“True. Though I’m from a noble family, so my parents would insist we go through with it eventually, anyhow. As for our fashionista friend, I guess it depends on which half of her wins out on the issue. Rarity would definitely want to, but AJ would probably see it as a silly waste of time, money, and effort to reaffirm something that should be self-evident.” Twilight shrugged. Lyra looked discomfited, scuffing the sides of her hooves together.

“You know, Twilight, part of me’s still in shock that we went ahead and did this,” Lyra said quietly. “Went ahead and let Rarity sweet-talk us into getting engaged. Especially after everything Princess Celestia had said.”

“What else could we have done?” Twilight asked, her smile having vanished.

“We could’ve delayed,” Lyra contended. “Found some excuse…”

“No.” It wasn’t a yell. They all knew better than to be yelling about something like this. But it was firm and insistent. “We’ve been over this already, Lyra. You have to consider how Rarity thinks of us, as a herd with herself in it. Both the made-up history that the Swapped have in their heads of us, pre-Swap… and the real-life one we entered into, after the Swap happened and Rarity began living with us. We’ve always loved each other. Immensely. Backing off now would be unbelievable to her. And we’d be stuck with the same problems we had before going along with her being in the herd.”

“We had one small awkward period where some of us were ‘standoffish’ around Rarity in the beginning,” Spike reminded them.

‘“Exactly, and we all saw how distressed that made her. Since then, we’ve held nothing back in terms of love. So answer me this: why wouldn’t we all be just as eager as Rarity to bring our relationship to the next step? There’s just no logical or emotional justification! Anything we might try to say would just upset Rarity and Rainbow Dash! And it could even raise too many questions we just don’t need them asking! So for the sake of everyone’s sanity, it’s really better this way.”

Not one of them could look either of the other two in the eye.

“Well, at least she’s terrific to live with,” Lyra said. “And we’ll be guaranteed to have a stylish marriage.”

Lumps rose in Twilight’s throat. “Yes and no,” she said.

Lyra and Spike both looked up at her. “What that’s supposed to mean, ‘yes and no?’ Either we’re having a wedding or we aren’t!”

“Well, a lot goes into weddings. Especially the first-class sort of perfect fairytale wedding which Rarity’s gonna want. So I… made a little bargain with myself.” Twilight began to explain. “If I discover the cure before the wedding, I will use it on Rarity, Rainbow Dash, and the other three. If I discover the cure after we’re married… then I keep all five of them Swapped, and use the Soul Synthesis to make it permanent and stable. Because once we’ve wed, then I’ll have made a sacred vow. ‘For as long as we all shall live.’”

“Til death do us part.’” Spike spoke up. “Pretty sure Lero said that’s how humans put it, anyway.”

After a long breath, Lyra said, “Well, that’s… a plan for going forward. I can get behind that.” Spike was also nodding. “Though I have to ask, haven’t we already made a vow? I mean, this engagement we’ve all entered into… haven’t we already promised ourselves to each other?”

“Lyra,” snapped Twilight sharply, “An engagement is a non-binding agreement to enter into the legally binding contract of marriage. There’s a time and a place for semantics, and this isn’t it!”

“‘Semantics’?” Lyra Heartstrings repeated in an incredulously.

But that conversation could continue, they all heard hoof-steps on the floor outside, and put on quiet smiles as Rarity opened the door.

“So!” the white unicorn said, facing Spike as she stepped in. “Did they tell you the big news?”

“They sure did!” Spike answered.

“Well? What do you think?”

Hopping off his bed, Spike came over and gave Rarity a big hug. “I’m super-excited, Rarity! Not every herd takes this step.”

“Well, we’re certainly not ‘every herd!’”

“No! We sure aren’t! Bet it was a real hard sell, getting Lero to say ‘yes’ to you!” Spike teased, with a little poke to her front.

Rarity laughed. “Oh, yes, it was quite the debate! We spent hours weighing the pros and cons of marriage… waffling back and forth, overcoming skepticism…”

“So what happens now?” Spike asked.

“I’m glad you asked!” Then Rarity floated in what looked to be a newly-bought notebook. “There’s a lot we’ll need to do over the coming months, but I thought we could make a good first step by starting off on our guest list.”

Twilight made a hesitating noise. “I dunno… is this really the best time for this? I need to get some research done for the princess, maybe later tonight…”

“But… we’re all here together, and I have to work a late shift,” said Rarity. “Please? Can’t it wait just a little while, Sparkle-kitten?”

Rarity’s loving eyes were so pleading. This all meant so much to her, bless her heart…

“I guess it can, Rare Bear,” answered Twilight.

Smiling, Rarity hunkered down on the floor of Spike’s bedroom and opened her notebook to its first blank page. Twilight felt absurdly younger, somehow, as she also knelt down with Lyra and Spike. Almost as though she were at a sleepover with her friends, making a list of the cutest colts in school.

“Here! I’ll do the note-taking,” Spike offered, taking the notebook.

“Very first ones on the list should definitely be our other Element Bearing friends,” said Twilight.

“Applejack… Fluttershy… Pinkie Pie,” murmured Spike, as he wrote them all in.

“Oh! And I’ll definitely want to have all of my parents attending,” Twilight added.

“Definitely Bon-Bon and her mom!” added Lyra. “Her whole family, really.”

“I suppose that I’ll need to invite my father for this,” Rarity said, somewhat reluctantly. “Let’s hope he can behave himself and not say anything too offensive…”

“Don’t forget Shining Armor and Cadence!” said Spike, struggling to keep up with everypony’s ideas.

* * *

The cadet uniform felt a little bizarre and strange on Rainbow Dash’s body. Part of her wanted to call it ‘constrictive,’ which was what all clothing ultimately felt to her, by default. Except that when Rainbow had a chance to actually fly around in this, she couldn’t deny that it did precisely what everypony insisted: it made her more aerodynamic. She’d cut through the air like a hot knife through butter. To think that flattening your fur against the sides of your body could actually make you fly faster!

Even so, it had taken a while for Rainbow Dash to stop looking at herself when she had this thing on and seeing a silly filly in a Nightmare Night costume. The other Academy cadets certainly weren’t just playing dress-up at a fan convention. They could all really fly!

There was Bulk Biceps, who had gone above and beyond to develop his body past the peak of physical perfection. Whitewash, who could bring himself to a midair stop smoother than any other cadet here. Sunshower Raindrops was terrific with loop-de-loops. Thunderlane could fly upside-down. Lime Jelly was one of the quickest at learning new moves. Sightseer was great at inventing new stunts.

And Rainbow, herself?

“Hey. everypony!” called out Sightseer. “Look alive! The Superpony’s back among us!”

And several of her classmates called out to her as she flew onto the field.

“How’s it goin’, champ?” asked Thunderlane.

“Awesome work, yesterday!” said Whitewash. “What’s your secret?”

“The Dashsta’s in da HOUSE!” Lime Jelly crowed, like some rapper.

“YEEEEEAAAHH!” bellowed Bulk Biceps.

“Er… thanks, guys.” Outwardly, Rainbow was all big grins and polite little laughter. Inwardly, she was groaning. Again, they were putting her in the spotlight! It was almost like Photo Finish all over again. If there was one thing Rainbow Dash couldn’t stand, it was having loads of attention thrust upon her. Thankfully, the crowds weren’t as large, and none of them were flashing photos in her face. But even that, there was something else that made it almost as uncomfortable. A ‘something else’ named Lightning Dust, glaring at her from afar with those poison-filled eyes of hers.

Thankfully, her classmates’ interest in her dissolved once they all got started with their warm-up exercises. Back bends, shoulder rolls, wing rotations… and frankly, it still amazed Rainbow how nice it felt to be stretching herself. Because she couldn’t remember enjoying gym exercises this much back in her school days.

Soon enough, Spitfire entered with a blow of her whistle... flanked, as always, by her two assistant instructors, Rapid Fire and Fleetfoot, whose wings looked especially well-groomed today. All of them hustled into a straight, smart line, and Spitfire started the morning peering narrow-eyed at every pony she passed.

“I was startin’ to see some slacking off from you sorry lot, the other day,” she began, pacing up and down the line. “Not gonna name names today. But you know who you are, and you’d better believe I know who you are too!”

Rainbow caught sight of quite a few ponies gulping. She, herself, could barely keep her knees from knocking. There was a lot about Spitfire she liked, but why did she have to be loud and bossy and critical everytime she taught? Didn’t she realize how intimidating she appeared to all her students? It almost felt like she was a different person when she was instructing. It was all Rainbow Dash could do to not cringe away.

After Spitfire was done spooking the dickens out of everypony, it was the usual five hundred laps around the track. That sounded like the sort of thing that should’ve been tortuous, but it wasn’t. Honest to goodness, it wasn’t! Rainbow found that flying came to her… more naturally than ever, now. She didn’t know why she used to think she was bad at it.

“Heh…” gasped Lime Jelly. “You breezed through that like it was nothing, Rainbow!”

Rainbow smiled, slightly guiltily. “Heh, yeah… Guess I’m a natural?” She said, bashfully.

As Spitfire blew her whistle again, Lime looked at Rainbow again. “Well… you ready to get down to business, partner?”

“I think so!” said Rainbow.

When Rainbow Dash had first joined this class, Spitfire had determined she’d be one of the wingponies. And boy, was Rainbow grateful for that! Being a lead pony would’ve meant way too much pressure. And on top of it, she’d been partnered up with such a nice, friendly mare like Lime Jelly, who was always happy to show her the ropes!

Together, the two of them moved onto some of the other old Academy favorites. Zigzagging around floating flagpoles. Practicing synchronized flight formations. Sharp downward dives. Sharp upward liftoffs.

“Rainbow Dash, Rainbow Dash,” chanted the taunting school-foals in Rainbow’s memories, “Rainbow Dash can only crash…”

How WONDERFUL it felt showing all those dumb no-nothing elementary school meanies that actually, Rainbow Dash could do a HECK of a lot more than crash! This stuff wasn’t just easy, it was invigorating! The burn of exertion on her lungs and wings! The wind whooshing through her mane as she maintained these incredible speeds!

It was just like discovering true love all over again. Flying here at this academy really was like when she’d first came to love Lero and the others: like uncovering some new, unexplored side of herself. Rainbow would never have thought she could’ve flown so fast and with such precision any more than she once thought she could have ever loved other ponies passionately and cherish being in their herd. Yet here she was; once again happy to have been so wrong about herself.

“Corkscrew for two hundred laps!” Spitfire would bark to them all, and Rainbow Dash would do it. “I wanna see you all volplane left!” She’d shout, and Rainbow would be volplaning, right with the best of them.

Sometimes, her skills were almost scary. Absolutely everypony was aware that she had been welcomed into this class mid-semester, and yet she was always able to keep up with the best of them! Her classmates always had their eyes on her.

“You’ve just GOT to do badly at SOMETHING, at SOME point,” Lime Jelly had put it best to her, one morning, in the locker room.

“Do they want me to fail?” Rainbow had asked Lime, with drooping ears.

“No, no, no!” Lime had laughed. “They’re just amazed, is all. Keep this up, and you’ll really make the history books: Rainbow Dash, the Super-bolt from outta the blue. ”

At times like this, Rainbow Dash had to remind herself that everypony else really meant well at heart when they called her things like ‘Super-bolt’ and ‘uber-filly,’ and ‘wunderkind’ and stuff like that… they weren’t trying to make her uncomfortable. Though she was just as amazed as the rest of them. It was enough to make her wonder whether Lyra might’ve used the zero state connection to insert these abilities into her, along with all those martial arts. But that didn’t make sense, right? She already knew how to fly. Or maybe Lyra could take anypony’s skills and put them in her head? She needed to have a talk with that mare about it at some point. But who would she have gotten super-flying skills to insert from?

Of course, not everypony here was so welcoming. Even when keeping perfectly silent, even when keeping a wide distance from the crowd, Rainbow Dash could still see the anger simmering on Lightning Dust’s face.

Lightning seriously creeped Rainbow out. She wasn’t just a jerk, she wasn’t just a bully. Under Lightning’s eyes, Rainbow felt — weirdly enough — like some delinquent filly being watched by an angry teacher during detention. Like a slimeball being watched by some suspicious cop… a would-be shoplifter always edging a little too close to the stealable valuables. It wouldn’t be entirely honest to say that Lightning Dust was watching her at all times when they were at practice together. The teachers kept them all pretty busy with drills and such, allowing Lightning to indulge in her all-time favorite activities: learning tricks and showing off.

But it was every class. And Lightning was willing to do more than just observe silently. In the past, she’d insulted Rainbow Dash behind her back. She’d also insulted her straight to her face. Once, Lightning Dust had straight-out attempted to drive Rainbow Dash off with a physical assault as she was flying home from the academy. Only once, because after Rainbow had struck Lightning with a few of her hardest-hitting Lightning Strike moves… “twice” had never come.

But the next day, Lightning had begun challenging her to races. Risky, potentially dangerous races. Anytime Dash refused to race, Lightning would harass her, and call her a “chicken” and “unworthy of being a Wonderbolt” and many other things to anyone who would listen. A few times, Dash had tried letting Lightning win… but Lightning would always see through this, and turn even louder and angrier. But the few times when Rainbow lost honestly, Lightning would turn insufferable; crowing like a rooster to her and everyone else, making sure everypony knew how badly she’d lost. Dash’s only recourse was to win her races with Lightning Dust. It was the only way to make Lightning slink away. Sometimes, she’d even not look at Dash for a couple days after a really good win. Looking over at Lightning now, Rainbow wondered where they’d be racing today.

“Rainbow Dash!”

Spitfire had landed right next to her. Bristling. The tight, close-lipped outrage in her eyes was enough to make the pegasus wish she had all her friends to hide behind.

“My office. Now.”

As she followed the Wonderbolt. Rainbow Dash caught sight of Lightning Dust… and how big her grin stretched.

* * *

Awards, medals, magazine covers, posters, even a few advertisements… they all covered the walls of Spitfire’s office. Rainbow Dash felt boxed in and pressed down by all the signs of glory and greatness surrounding her. Considering what kind of training they all went through as cadets, Spitfire must’ve really gone above and beyond to make it to this level.

The mare, herself, went behind her desk. “Have a seat.” Rainbow could very clearly tell from the tone that it was an order, not a request.

Rainbow sat in a hurry. Gravity suddenly felt heavier on her body. Especially around the shoulders.

Spitfire pushed her shades down a little, so that she was staring at Rainbow over the top of the rims. “Let’s talk.”

“Uh… sure thing!” said Rainbow Dash, feeling more and more like a dangerous pathogen under a microscope. “What sort of things would you like to talk about?”

Spitfire stared at her for several seconds, letting out a sigh, taking off her glasses, carefully folding them, putting them in her instructor uniform’s pocket. “There’s two ways to play this, cadet. You can volunteer information, point out the other ponies involved, and if you’re very lucky, you might get out of this with just a serious demerit.” She said that last part in such a way that it was clear she didn't want to be unlucky. Which was making Dash increasingly nervous as she had no idea what Spitfire was talking about. “I don’t think this sort of thing is something you’d do yourself. This feels more like something you were forced into. So I’m giving you the benefit of the doubt.” She lets that hang in the air for several moments.

“Now.” She said slowly. “Is there anything you want to tell me about?”

Rainbow trembled, trying her hardest to control her voice. “W-wh-what’s th-th-this a-about, M-Ma’am?” she managed to stammer, her voice cracking and squeaking at several points.

“Your locker.”

“W-what about it?” she blinked. “Is… Is it okay!? D-did something happen to it?”

“What sort of stuff do you keep in your locker?” Spitfire questioned.

Rainbow was completely lost. “Uh, um… my wallet! Er, The keys to my house? Toiletries for cleaning myself up after practice…?” It was a slim hope, but maybe that was what she was looking for?

Spitfire slammed a hoof down on her desk, ending Rainbow’s guesses. She saw a flash of disappointment before anger replaced it. “How about speed potions!?” she growled, pointedly.

What. “Speed potions?”

“Yes. Speed potions.” Spitfire almost hissed.

What. “What.”

It took a moment, but the Wonderbolt regained her composure. The Wonderbolt opened a desk drawer, brought out a folded piece of paper.

“We recently received a note, an anonymous tip-off, saying that you were bringing speed potions into your locker and drinking them before coming to practice. “

“What? What?!” Rainbow was incredulous and aghast. “That’s crazy!”

Although Spitfire pushed the note forward across her desk ”Read it yourself.” Rainbow shook her head. She couldn’t bring herself to so much as touch such libel.

Spitfire shrugged. “Suit yourself.” She gave Rainbow an evaluating look. “You’ve got Twilight Sparkle for a herdsister, don’t you?” asked the Wonderbolt. “Heard she’s no slouch when it comes to the magical sciences.”

Spitfire was accusing Twilight of making speed potions?! “Twilight didn’t!” Rainbow insisted, all stammering and hesitation vanishing the moment it came to defending someone she loved “She wouldn’t! Twilight would never...”

“Then save yourself some grease and name someone!” Spitfire snapped back

Rainbow boggled. “I can’t, because there isn’t anyone!”

Spitfire rubbed her forehead. “Dash…. You’re not making this easy on yourself. I’m not doing this for fun. You understand why I have to look into this, right? It’s a very serious charge. The integrity of the Wonderbolts is on the line. Us Wonderbolts take pride in having built ourselves up to the highest heights of stunt flying entirely on one hundred percent A-plus-grade pegasus talent and pegasus training. And that means we’re zero percent the result of magical enhancements! No potions, no spells, no mystic trinkets, nothing! I know we invited you into our ranks, and whatever you did on your own time is your own business, but once you agreed to join, you swore an oath to uphold our standards, and illegal magical enhancements are definitely not in line with that!”

Spitfire realized she’d leaned forward over her desk as she spoke. She paused, straightened herself, and leaned backward, sitting straight. “So, Rainbow, I want you to be honest with me now. If you’re honest, I can promise things will go much easier for you. Are you or are you not taking speed potions? “

“No.” Rainbow said flatly.

After letting that hang in the air a moment, Spite intoned “No?” Disbelievingly.

“No!” Part of Rainbow was getting angry at this. She knew that Spitfire was giving her chances to admit her wrongdoing, so she could go easier on her, but she didn’t have any wrongdoing to admit! She rose a hoof. “I swear on Celestial and my herd that I am not taking magical enhancers.”

Spitfire paused, looking closely at Dash, before reaching into the same drawer, bringing out a photograph, sliding it in front of Dash. “We also got this with the tip.”

The photograph showed two flasks sitting at the bottom of an otherwise-empty locker, in the girl cadets’ locker room. One was filled completely with bright indigo liquid. The other was only about one-eleventh full of bright indigo liquid… mixed with what looked to be extremely frothy backwash.

“Is that your locker, Rainbow Dash?” Spitfire asked sternly.

“I don’t know,” Dash shrugged.

“You don’t know?” Spitfire asked, incredulous.

“No. I’m sorry, but how could I even tell?” asked Dash, agitated. “I can’t see the locker’s number in this picture, and outside of that, all the lockers look the same, and the shot doesn’t show enough of the locker room to figure out where it is to get an idea that way. That could be anypony’s locker!”

Spitfire blinked, looking back at the image, caught short. “I suppose so.” She said after a minute of examining the photo closely. At least Spitfire sounded honest when she said this; that she really was giving her the benefit of the doubt on this locker in the picture not being hers!

But Rainbow was still Somewhere in the middle of furious and panicking, feeling as if different parts of herself were fighting to express themselves. Part of her actually wanted to hit Spitfire in the face for accusing her — worse, accusing Twilight! — and another part of her wanted to run away, hide under her bed and never come out again. In a few more seconds, she would be sweating worse than she ever had at any practice drill. How could this have happened?! What was going on?! Could it even be possible that this really WAS her locker, in the picture? Could she have left it unlocked at some point? When? Who would have put those things inside it and why? What was going to happen to her? What would she do if she was found guilty of drinking speed potions? What would everyone say? That she needed to cheat to fly with the pros? How would she live with herself?! What would her family say? How could she deal with this?!

Her eyes fell upon the the photo, focusing on the flask which had been drunken from. The one with the bubbly backwash in it. She never left backwash in anything she drank. She never had drank any speed potions to begin with! None of this made any sense!

Wait…

“Um… I had a thought…” she said to Spitfire. “Well, if I’m supposedly the type of pony who needs to drink speed potions, then shouldn’t it still be in my body?”

Spitfire nodded and stood up. “Seems we’ve got the same idea. Now, privacy laws mean we can’t force you to take a test, but if you volunteer...”

Dash nodded fervently. “Yes, absolutely!”

Spitfire nodded, then she called out, past Rainbow Dash, in the direction of her office door. “Hey! You can come in now! We’re ready for you!”

The door opened. It gave Rainbow a small shock of surprise, seeing a unicorn up here in such a pegasus-y place as the Wonderbolts Academy.

“Hello, Rainbow Dash. My name is Dr. Test,” Now Rainbow dimly recalled seeing Dr. Test a couple times before; she was one of the academy’s medics. They’d never really spoken to each other before. “I’m going to need you to open your mouth for me.”

Rainbow Dash held her mouth open, and Dr. Test scrutinized her gums, teeth, and tongue long enough for her to begin wondering if she was about to have dental work done. Then the doctor sniffed at her breath when she exhaled. Finally, Dr. Test’s horn glowed pinkish, bringing it close to her mouth, almost nearly brought it inside Rainbow’s mouth. Her gums tingled as the magical aura extended into her mouth.

“Mmm-hmm. Mmm-hmm. Alright, you can close your mouth. Now I’ll need you to just hold still.”

Rainbow Dash did her best not to look too nervous or tremble as Dr. Test ran her horn along both sides of her barrel, and even circled close to her tail. Finally, she turned to Spitfire.

“She’s completely clean.”

“Are you sure?” Spitefire frowned. “Is there any way she had some kind of anti-scanning spell cast on her or something else that could have blocked your scans?”

Dr. Test snorted in derision. “What kind of amatuer do you take me for? I checked for all known bio-scan blocking spells. Anything stronger, she’d either look hollow or we’d have trouble seeing her. As I said she’s clean, and she’s clean! Nothing inside her but digesting food! Or would you rather go fetch that magenta-maned moron for a second opinion?”

“No. No, we’re good,” Spitfire sighed. “Thanks for coming, Litmus.”

“Just doing my job, Spitfire,” said Dr. Test, shutting the door behind her.

Already, Rainbow Dash could feel the atmosphere in this office turning friendlier.

“I’m sorry about putting you through that, Dash. We have to take these accusations seriously, and… well, I hate to say it, magical enhancement would be a logical explaination of how an incredible flyer came out of nowhere after they previously washed out of Flight Camp. But…. I didn’t want to believe it. And I’m glad it wasn’t true. You always struck me as a good filly, Rainbow Dash.”

“I… try to be, I guess,” Rainbow breathed. “Being here, learning and being with the other cadets, is just lots of fun. Fills up a special little niche in my heart,” she said, smiling straight from that niche of hers, deep within.

“Mine too. But now… it seems you’ve got somepony who really has it out for you, Rainbow. Any ideas who it might be?”

In her mind, Rainbow Dash again saw that grin on that light turquoise face. She was about to open her mouth when Spitfire held up a hoof.

“Wait, no. Don’t even answer. Call it telekinesis, but I think I have an idea whose name you’re going to say,” and she gave a surprisingly awkward-sounding laugh. “We teachers aren’t as blind as we sometimes seem, you know.”

“Telepathy.” Rainbow reflexively corrected, having been around a brainy herd sister enough to know the words for minds-reading and moving objects with your mind.

“What?” Spitefire asked, blankly.

“Ah... never mind, not important! Good luck finding out who set this up!” Rainbow said, quickly excusing herself.

* * *

===
Secret Interview Transcript:
Subject: Exit Wound
Unicorn
Female
Age: 34

DS: Alright. Let’s revive her.

UM: Here we go.

* Here, the slumber spell is lifted, and Exit Wound comes back awake.

EW: Monkey. Monkey. Monkey. Monkeys.

*She looks around.

EW: That filthy bonobo, where is he? And where the hell am I?

VJ: You’re in a place of safety, Miss Wound.

EW: That tells me nothing! This whole asylum is a “place of safety!”

DS: I can assure you; we’re very, very far away from the Merry Meadows Asylum.

EW: Pull the other one, you slimy sifaka!

DS: Slimy what?

EW: You’re one of the doctors here. The first I spoke to! Gibbon. Gibbon. I remember you were the mare who interviewed me the day I was brought here, Dr. Syllogism! With that tape recorder of yours on the table again, recording everything I say.

QQ: We’re friends. We’re the ones who arranged to get you broken out of that place.

EW: Quit staring at my cutie mark, you diseased pervs!

QQ: It really isn’t your original cutie mark at all! It doesn’t match the one in the old newspaper photos from the Emerald Isles! It’s a melon, not a bloodstain!

EW: I’m not from the Emerald Isles! Never even visited the place, ever! I’m no crime boss! Colobus. How many times and how many ways am I gonna have to tell ponies this?

DS: Exit--

EW: It was Honeydew! Honeydew! She’s the real gangster!

DS: Alright, Exit. Alright. No need to scream.

EW: Tell me you believe me. Tell me you believe that I’m just a melon seller who got mixed up with the wrong ponies. Grivet. Grivet. That’s who I am.

DS: We’re here to listen to what you have to say. All of us are gathered here, all of us went out of our way to bring you here, because we really want to know more about you that much.

VJ: That’s right.

QQ: Definitely.

UM: The only reason I was staring at your cutie mark for so long was because I’ve never seen one vibrate like yours. Looks painful. How long has it been like that for? I’d get a doctor to look at that.

VJ: Ssssh!

EW: I’m really not in the nuthouse no more?

QQ: Nope. You aren’t.

EW: Then where is this?

QQ: We’re close to the town of Brindleburg.

EW: Brindleburg. That’s about thirty miles south from Ponyville. Monkeylides is still living in Ponyville, isn’t he?

VJ: Monkey — you mean Michealides? Lero Michealides, the human?

EW: Yes. Him. Him. Him.

QQ: I’m pretty sure he is.

EW: I see him in my dreams. And I see him when I’m awake. That monster. Every day, throughout the day. Every night, throughout the night. While I’ve been wrongfully locked up with the schizos and psychos, he hunts down ponies under the cover of darkness. Torturing them. Making them scream and bleed. With his awful gorilla fingers. With his ugly chimp teeth. And with his disgusting bonobo maleness. Sometimes those mares of his take part in his evil. Sometimes he does it alone. He and that little dragon monster love to eat up the corpses together as a grand finale. Eat them up like pigs. His actions grow more depraved by the hour.

UM: Holy. Wow.

EW: How long have I been cooped up in the crazy house for? How long has it been?

DS: You were committed to Merry Meadows about three months ago.

EW: Has he opened a portal to the human world?

DS: No, Exit. I can’t say that’s ever happened.

EW: Then the outside world hasn’t been completely overrun?

UM: Overrun by what?

EW: Primates, of course. Primates of every sort, just like I’ve read in my books, only they’re all the size of Diamond Dogs. I’m talking bushbabies, orangutans, macaques, baboons, slow lorises, slender lorises, uakaris, guerezas, lutungs, aye-ayes, muriquis, kipunjis, angwantibos…

VJ: I’m sorry, but what language have you switched to?

EW: The same one I’ve been speaking!

DS: Well, Exit, you’ll be pleased to know that no such portal has come into existence.

EW: Oh thank goodness. Thank goodness. I saw it so clearly so many times. He is a sorcerer, you know. All that stuff about him being unmagical is a lie. He’s broken into my room in the asylum more than once. Monkeylides is able to walk through walls and floors and even float down through ceilings. He can make himself invisible to the doctors and the orderlies. The things he’s said to me, the things he’s done to me! I hurt all the time because of him!

*Exit Wound begins weeping. Also, at this point, I realize that I need to take my pills, but I had left it outside in a different room.

DS: I’m very sorry, everypony, but I need to take some prescription medication for myself. Please excuse me, I will return shortly.

*I leave the room. Because of this, I was not physically present to see what happened next. But my tape recorder continues to record the audio.

VJ: Miss Wound? Can we cut to the chase?

*Exit’s sobbing starts to die down a bit here.

VJ: The reason that we brought you here is because we want to learn more about the spell that was cast on you and Honeydew in the quarry mill, by Twilight Sparkle.

EW: Why is everypony so obsessed with that spell? It ruined my eyesight a bit, that’s all! But I don’t need glasses, I swear. I’ve never needed them before. I’d look nerdy in them. My eyes just need more time to get back to the way they’ve always been.

UM: This is painful to listen to.

VJ: Miss Wound, we believe that the spell cast on you in the quarry mill is the original version of a spell which switches cutie marks--

*Here, Exit Wound begins talking over what she doesn’t want to hear.

EW: My cutie mark—

VJ: And for the good of the world—

EW: Has always been—

VJ: And for the sake of making many ponies who are miserable with themselves happy—

EW: A slice of melon—

VJ: Not the least of which are myself and my associates, here—

EW: It has never, ever—

VJ: So we need you to remember the exact wording—

EW: Been a damn bloodstain—

VJ: Of whatever incantation Twilight Sparkle chanted—

EW: There was never any incantation!

VJ: Yes, there was! You’re just remembering things wrong!

QQ: We’ve gotten a hold of several different failure versions of that Swap spell! But no matter which we try or how we attempt to fine-tune them, it always end in disaster whenever we try a Cutie Mark swap! But we’re confident once we know the true original, we’ll have better luck!

EW: You’re daft! You’re all bonkers!

VJ: Just tell us what the incantation was.

EW: I already told you; there never was any incantation!

QQ: Don’t worry, Exit. You’re not the first Swapped to remember things wrong. But I have something that can help out with that.

EW: What is that? What’s that weird blue stick you’re floating at me supposed to be?

QQ: Something of a heirloom in my family. The Rod of Remembrance. Does exactly what the name says: helps you remember stuff.

SPECIAL NOTE: The Rod of Remembrance is rumored to be one of Meadowbrook’s Eight Enchanted items, its whereabouts having been unknown for several hundred moons. Some research after the fact revealed Quiet Question to be a distant descendant of Meadowbrook's, herself, giving credence to his claim of it being an heirloom. The rod’s reported properties were the ability to restore lost memories regardless of physical, psychological, magical, or any other limitations. Quiet Question neither disclosed his possession of this device, or consulted me on his plan to use it on the subject.

*At this point, a chime of magic can be heard. Assumed to be the sound made by the Rod of Remembrance.

EW: “From one to another, another to one, a mark of one’s destiny, singled out alone, fulfilled... Joining hearts together, Together sharing fate, by hoof and horn and feather that we all better relate.”

QQ: Success!

VJ: This is great!

UM: You wrote that all down, didn’t you?

VJ: Of course!

EW: It’s wrong.

UM: What? Excuse me?

QQ: Are you saying the incantation’s wrong?

EW: It’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s swrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong,g it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong,g it’s wrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrongwrong--

*There is the noise loud report of a magical blasting discharge, presumably from the subject’s horn.

QQ: I’ve been shot! I’ve been shot!

VJ: What are you doing?! No! No, Miss Wound! Don’t!

*At this point recording cuts off, as the Rod of Remembrance was driven through my tape recorder with some force, having first been driven through one of my other companion’s body, as part of her bloody rampage that left them all deceased, as I found them upon my return, The recorder is unrecoverable, but thankfully, the recording managed to survive intact. The same cannot be said at all about my three comrades, alas.

*Nonetheless, our noble endeavor continues on, in spite of all setbacks. Our world and our future depends on us mastering this spell.

* * *

Thankfully, Lightning Dust hadn’t actually drunk any of the speed potions she’d snuck into the locker room. There wasn’t even a moment’s temptation to do so. She was a self-made mare, damn it, the very picture of everything a Wonderbolt should be! The potions had only been a prop for her picture shoot. Most she’d done was to swish some water and food coloring around in her mouth, spitting it into a half-emptied potion bottle (the other half down the sink,) to reinforce the idea that the speed potions had been drunk by Rainbow Dork. She’d scrubbed her hooves with the harshest soaps, and washed her mouth out with both soap and mouthwash, in the hopes of obliterating any trace of magic that might have transferred while handling and opening the bottles.

Turned out she’d been right to take all these precautions.

It had been a huge shock seeing Rainbow Dash not just returning to the training field, but not showing so much as a single downcast look. And then Spitfire had called her into her office. Once she got there, Spitfire brought in Dr. Litmus Test to poke her ugly spike of a horn all along Lightning’s body and nearly jamming it between her teeth. Thank Celestia and Luna and Whatshername… the third one… that her precautions had paid off!

Once Spitfire had dismissed Dr. Test, she had questioned Lightning extensively on the speed potion pictures and Lightning had denied, denied, denied. No, she didn’t know anything! No, she hadn’t seen anything! Or heard anything, either!

But even after the questioning had finally stopped, Lightning Dust was still sitting in hot water with Spitfire.

“Even if you aren’t the mare responsible for trying to frame Rainbow Dash… I’ve still seen the way you’ve been treating her… or rather, mistreating her. Been meaning to chat with you about this for quite a while now, Lightning, and I should never have put it off this long. Frankly, it disgusts me how you seem to always be out to bring Rainbow down at every possible turn. Such behavior is beneath the Wonderbolts, we’re here to support each other and bring each other to greater heights! aAnd I… we all expected much better from you!”

Any other time, Lightning Dust would have protested very angrily. But right now, she was just too shook up, and too relieved Spitfire couldn’t pin anything on her. ...Right? She’d left no witnesses. Didn’t she? She’d been too careful about cleaning up the evidence! ...Or was Spitfire just waiting for her to spout something self-incriminating, that’d bury her even deeper?

Lightning Dust had only skimmed through the Wonderbolts Cadet Code of Conduct book once, on the day that she got it, and was now wishing she had it, to check whether bullying, in itself, was enough to get you kicked out of the Wonderbolts. It hadn’t been THAT severe.. Of course not! It might be that she was only getting off this easily with Spitfire because she was her ace pupil. Or at least… had been her ace, up until today.

That being the case, Lightning didn’t nothing to defend how she’d been with Rainbow Dash, and agreed to leave her alone, and agreed that she deserved to have her “lead pony” status revoked, and given over to Meadow Flower. When Spitfire allowed Lightning to rejoin the others, she didn’t so much as look in Rainbow’s direction, let alone taunt her. Rainbow and all her other classmates had the good grace to do the same to her. Lightning felt content and relieved with it all… right up until the time class was over, and she was back in the locker room. That was when all the nagging thoughts of worry whined again inside her brain.

It’s already beginning to happen! Lightning’s inner worrywart moaned. You’re not Spitfire’s favorite anymore. You’re a bad egg in her eyes. Now she loves Rainbow Dash and she hates you. Soon it’ll be just like the visions… oh no… the visions will all come true…

“No, they won’t!” Lightning Dust hissed to herself, twisting her shower nozzle all the way to the right, and thrusting her head under the icy cold water, in hopes that it’d freeze the bad thoughts dead, the way cold showers were supposed to. But the visions played on, straight through the chill.

“Name’s Lightning Dust,” Lightning Dust saw herself saying within her mind.

“Rainbow Dash!” she answered back.

This had never happened, of course. She and Rainbow Dash already had a first meeting between themselves, and it had gone nothing like that. Even the way that Rainbow Dash had stated her name in the vision had been wrong, ratting it off like a confident hotshot. Nothing like her real self.

Nonetheless, Lightning’s visions continued, as she left the Academy, heading off to her favorite bar, the Watering Trough...

“Um… Lightning Dust?” Rainbow was saying. “Next time, maybe we don’t cut the other team off like that.”

But Lightning Dust had brushed that namby-pambiness off, telling Rainbow, “...I mean, it’s not our fault we’re so much better than these other guys! Not every pony is destined to become a Wonderbolt. Only the best of the best, right?”

In almost all these weird visions involving Rainbow Dash, Lightning was treating the Wonder Wallflower like she was some kind of pretty-cool kid cousin of hers. And they were partnered up as wingpony and lead pony. The only thing matching how things were in real life was that Rainbow Dash was a wingpony… just not Lightning’s. She was some other pony’s problem, thank Celestia.

“A hoof bump? Seriously?” Rainbow Dash was staring her down with a seriously cold frown, until Lightning eventually lowered her hoof. “You made me clip my wing. You sent half of our class into serious tailspins on the obstacle course. You unleashed a tornado that nearly demolished my friends!”

“Yeah, and?” Lightning retorted, with her usual amazing outstandingness.

“And I get that you want to be the best. So do I! But you're going about it in the wrong way.”

“The Wonderbolts don't seem to think so,” Lightning said, ignoring all her other unworthy classmates, who stared at her with what could only be jealousy. “After all, Spitfire did make me the leader and you the wingpony.”

Rainbow Dash sighed. “You're right. She did.”

Beer after beer after beer went down Lightning’s angry throat… she literally felt the anger on the inside of her throat! Really, the hoof bump… the idea that she’d extend her hoof in a gesture of buddyship with that rainbow-tailed rat, that really got Lightning’s goat more than any holier-than-thou preaching she might’ve given.

Especially since Lightning had made a point of never ever being friendly with Rainbow. The little turd had only made two attempts at “mending fences” with Lightning. Both times, Lightning had made her sorry she’d tried. Rainbow ought to count herself unbelievably lucky that a champ like Lightning would even have unwanted thoughts about hoof-bumping a loser like her!

“The Wonderbolts are looking for the best flyers in Equestria, but you were right.” Rainbow Dash had been about to quit the Academy, and leave with her friends, after she’d went to Spitfire and said things to make Lighting look bad. But Spitfire had come and stopped her before she could fly off. “Being the best should never come at the expense of our fellow ponies. It's not just about pushing ourselves. It's about pushing ourselves in the right direction. You've shown that you're capable of doing just that." And ol’ Orange and Yellow had brought Lightning along so she'd be in earshot while she sang Rainbow’s praises. Right before stripping Lightning Dust of her badge and bucking her out of the Academy entirely.

Now here Lightning was, at her favorite bar. Seated at her favorite booth, drinking mugs of her second-favorite brand of beer, as the jukebox cranked out a dopey tune about a lover leaving his poor gal heartbroken. Logically, there shouldn’t’ve even been any problem. The visions got so much wrong about how she and Rainbow weren’t friends, weren’t partnered up… on and on. Rainbow didn’t even act quite right in the visions; too! Lightning Dust was almost sure that Rainbow’s body was a little different in her visions, some part of her might’ve been… colored wrong. Though she couldn’t quite put her hoof on what.

Except the visions kept coming back. Ever since she’d learned that Rainbow Dash would be entering the Wonderbolts Academy, the visions kept coming back to Lightning Dust, all the time. And the worst of it was, although there was a lot about them that might’ve seemed dreamlike on paper… they didn’t feel the way dreams felt at all, when Lightning experienced them. Not night dreams or daydreams. More like memories. The most important memories of all.

And it was freaking Lightning Dust up out royally. As the jukebox switched over to an even sappier song about lovers prancing in sugar lump wishes, she felt herself going a little bit crazier trying to once again figure out what was happening to her. How could she ‘remember’ something that hadn’t even happened? Could it be that she was experiencing something psycak? Or psychal? Whatever it was called? Normally, Lightning Dust had never held much stock in foreseeing the future. Fortune tellers who pulled that hooey were nothing but mumbo jumbo scam artists, everypony knew that. Magical scientists had said for years that predicting the future accurately was impossible.

But the same set of freaky visions kept reappearing in Lightning’s mind, at least twice an hour. Even without them, every time Lightning Dust looked at Rainbow Dash, she felt, at an instinctual level, like a chicken being forced to allow a fox to live with her in her henhouse.

Rainbow Dash was dangerous. Bad luck, all around. Worse and worse things would continue to happen to Lightning the longer Rainbow stayed at the Wonderbolts Academy. Lightning had worked her whole life to reach this stage of greatness — lots of effort, lots of sweat — the Wonderbolts were everything to her, not becoming a Wonderbolt would make her an utter failure at life, she couldn’t go back to working her old housekeeping job at the motel, she’d rather die… what right did Rainbow Dash have to intrude and try to snatch that away from her? Lightning hoped that her and all her stupid friends really DID get demolished by a tornado, or whatever, something had to be done, something HAD to be done…

By the time Lightning Dust was sick of being in the bar and was ready to return home, she felt like, instead of drinking alcohol, she’d had about five energy drinks while watching an horror movie marathon. Full of truly terrifying horror movies.

It was dark. Past midnight, maybe. Normally, she’d not stay out this late, but she’d gotten caught up in drowning her troubles. Lightning Dust lived in the Wonderbolt training barracks currently, but she didn't want to return there. Didn't want to risk Spitfire or any of her classmates seeing her like this. No choice, then, but to crash at her old place.

Lightning's old apartment was located in a seedy, urban area like something out of a film noir flick, and thus her favorite bar and old stomping grounds required her to pass through the area. Where every other business catered to some kind of vice, and 70% of the neon lights were either In the throes of flickering death or burnt-out dead. She shrugged off a bum begging her for change, and then another bum offering to show her a good time for 50 bits. Then a scream cut the air. A scream from down an alley. It had been a seriously scary scream, and it was a seriously scary-looking alley that Lightning was staring down.

On a different sort of night, the sensible part of Lightning Dust would probably have told herself; Just keep walking. This ain’t none of your business. If somepony’s really in trouble, let the cops deal with it.

Not tonight. Because she’d had a lot of alcohol, yes. But also… she’d already spent nearly this whole day working on her fear of Rainbow Dash. Was she gonna be afraid of every other little thing as well? To hell with that; Lightning wasn’t letting Rainbow get the best of her! She was gonna be a Wonderbolt! Wonderbolts weren’t scared of nothing! Not flying through thunderstorms! Not mile-high dives! Wonderbolts were heroes! It was time for Lightning Dust to be a hero!

Down Lightning galloped, through the alleyway, snorting against the stink of garbage.

“Hey!” she called out. “Somebody there?!”

It was a mare’s body, fallen onto a set of trash bags. An earth pony, with big circular hole bored straight through her head. Lightning tasted her own stomach acids in her mouth. It all flew out… and some of her teeth nearly flew out with it, when a metal garbage can slammed into the back of her head, and she went down.

Then Lightning, herself, screamed out as she felt a hoof slam down upon the back of her left wing. Just as she was beginning to scramble, she heard the telltale tinkly sound of a unicorn’s horn charging up. An oddly familiar sensation washed over Lightning Dust. She had to struggle to remember what it was from: the time where she’d broken her right hind leg attempting a Maelstrom Maneuver back in middle school, and the doctors had needed to operate on her.

It was a sleep spell.

* * *

“From one ta another, from one ta another, from one ta another, from one ta a Monkey.”

When Lightning Dust’s eyes started working again, she saw she was in a dark bedroom of some kind, flat on the floor. A lot of ruined dolls were strewn all around the place; only a few were still untouched. The hoofprints on some showed they’d been trampled. Many others were full of holes from a unicorn shooter’s magic blasts. From her position, she could only really see the bottom of the bed’s legs and and the end of some disheveled, bloodstained blankets.

“Monkey, Monkey Monkeyloides…”

Lightning, herself, would’ve loved nothing more than to get up and get out of this horrible place, but she was bound, wing and legs shifted to get up, only to find unexpected resistance. Her hooves were bound together, and her wings in binders.

She hear noises. Her senses flooded back, the nonsense of blearily heard sounds slowly regaining coherent sharpness so her brain, slowly losing the magic-induced sleep fog, could make sense of what she was hearing.

Immediately, she wished it hadn’t.

Somepony was being tortured,. It was the only explanation of what she was hearing. Not very far away, somepony... female and young. Lightning could hear the victim screaming plainly, mingled with darkly tinkling sounds of magic — like malicious little bells — and the strange cries of her tormentor. The screams sounded animalistic; Lightning could easily imagine such howls coming from the back rooms of a griffon’s butcher shop. Where were they? How long would it take for the police to get here?!

Then, suddenly, there was silence. Relief washed through Lightning Dust until she heard the sound of hooves moving in the direction of this room; and the athlete realized what the silence really meant.

A key turned into a lock from outside this bedroom. When the madmare step inside, Lightning was able to get a better look at her.

She was a large unicorn. Her skewbald-patterned coat was stained with an awful amount of blood. Her victim in the other room might well have exploded upon her.

“Who are you?!” Lightning asked, hating the sound of terror edged in her voice.

“Ah, yer awake, good. Me name’s Exit Wound.” the mare told her, in a thick accent. “Oi’m an Earthicorn mare from teh Emerapony Villes.”

“You’re a… what from where?”

“Oi’m wanted by tetha coppers fer multiple counts o’ melon selling in teh first degree.” Normally, Lightning would’ve taken this to be a criminal’s sinister sarcasm. But there was too much seriousness in the lunatic’s voice.

“Wanna hear teh story ‘bout how Oi got me cutie mark, then?” Even though she turned her hindquarters so Lightning could have a look at it, this place was too dark to make out what kind of cutie mark she had, except that it seemed to be some kind of crescent-shaped thing.

“Is… that what you want?” Lightning asked Exit carefully. There was too much scary brightness in the mare’s eyes, and too much scary brightness building up on her horn, as well. “To talk about your cutie mark?”

“NO!” Exit Wound screamed, with freaky joy. The magic that had building up on her horn shot off into the ceiling, and chunks of plaster fell onto the floor. “IT AIN’T WHAT OI WANT!”

Then the skewbald unicorn bent down closer. “What’s yer name, pegasus?”

“Lightning Dust,” she admitted.

“Well, Dusty, lemme just come roight out and say how much et royally pisses me off, that nopony wants ta talk about anything else ‘round me, ‘cept me fecking-ficking mark! All them quacks at Merry Meadows! Teh nutters wantin’ ta swap cutie marks around too… oh, teh world’s WELL rid o’ THEM feckers! Even me family…”

The skewbald unicorn went stone cold quiet for a few moments. “D’ya… d’ya wanna hear about me family, Dusty?”

“Is that what you want?” She tried not to flex to obviously with the lunatic watching, but the ropes weren’t actually as strong as Lightning had first thought. And she wasn’t a weak mare. Maybe if she tried to will the adrenaline to her body… except that just as the pegasus thought that, Exit Wound’s horn flared while her face tightened with anger, and with it, the coils of rope around Lightning’s body tightened just as furiously… digging deep, deep, DEEP into her skin until it gave way and began to bled. Only for the ropes to dig in ever deeper still.

“Tryin’ ta be me therapist, now, are ya?!” the skewbald lunatic shrieked. “‘Oi’ve had et up ta me SNOUT with ponies treatin’ me loike that! Me mums and dad raised me ta be a good killer, top-notch, jest like all the rest o’ me sisters, but ever since that bonobo came ta Ponyville, Oi kept makin’ more ‘n’ more enemies, all of ‘em out for me blood, teha more Oi killed, not jest the bounties, not jest the ones who were marked for ... but then me sister fell inta the water and then she AND me other sister took teha monkey’s soide, and et was about after Oi shot that police chief down in Connemara, an’ that one triggermare with teh bad teeth nearly oiced me that Oi realoized…”

On she went, rambling out this utterly cracked story, sounding like bits and pieces of two other stories stitched together, characters and places bleeding into each other, scenes flowing into others that had no connection.Lightning Dust fought just to think… some way to escape Exit Wound. Maybe if she fired a shot, Lightning could twist her body in just the right way, lightning-fast, so that the shot would cut through the ropes binding her. No, that was a stupid idea, she wasn't an action hero in an action film. Maybe instead, she...

“...Sicklefins…”

When Exit Wound spoke this name in the midst of her babbling, something clicked in Lightning Dust’s head.

“You’re THAT Exit Wound! The one who attacked Rainbow Dash and her family! I overheard her talking about you in the locker room with the other cadets! You nearly killed her!”

“Rainbow Dash…” the skewbald unicorn growled. “That miserable poile of rat spooge! That bushbaby’s plaything!!!! What Oi wouldn’t give ta rip ‘er throat open roight in front o’ that bonobo and laugh in ‘is ape-face before Oi started on Twiloight Sparkle! Teh mare what REALLY fecked me over a…!”

“What I wouldn’t give for you to do that too!”

It was a such a surprising thing to hear from somepony she was about to kill horribly that Exit Wound stopped short. Her victim-to-be was looking up at her from the floor as though she were a giant bag of gold. A bag of gold she intended to use to buy a very dark and satisfying revenge.

“Roiley, nah?” She asked.

“I’m serious,” said Lightning Dust, deepening her smile. “You want to get to Rainbow Dash and her family? I’m your golden ticket in, sister. I got an in with that rainbow-colored rat and her sick little brood. I want you to have fun with her.”

“Well, then, mebbe we can do bizness…” Lightning Dust found her smile mirrored back at her. Part of her was horrified, but the rest of her didn’t care.

* * *

Applejack opened her sketchbook and passed it over to Lero. He smiled at the little Lero she had drawn. His hands and his face were cutely cartoonish. But the tuxedo he wore, and even the shoes… they were just shy of photorealistic. Never would he have guessed AJ to have such artistry in her. He almost felt like he could pluck the outfit off the page.

The tuxedo was as white as snow. White as Rarity. The notched lapels were especially silky, and almost seemed to shimmered beneath the light.

“D’ya like the vest?” AJ asked, right next to him. “Ah’m plannin’ on makin’ it from imported satin. The pockets’ll be real, and the cummerbund’s gonna be…”

He let Applejack ramble on a bit longer without really paying attention to her words. In her picture, Spike stood next to him, wearing a smaller dragon-shaped version of his outfit. It was the most dapper he’d ever seen the little guy.

“It’s all very good,” he told Applejack, when her spiel was winding down. “I especially love the lapels; I think Spike would like this design too! Of course, I don’t want to make any final judgment just yet without the rest of my girls here. When it comes to our wedding outfits, we want this to be a matter of unanimous consent.”

“Yer a good stallion,” she said, taking the sketchbook from him. “Wanna sneak peek through some of the ideas Ah’m considerin’ fer yer mares?”

“By all means!”

Applejack pulled more sketchbooks from a drawer, and presented them to Lero. He sat and looked through practically all there was to read through.

Page after page of wedding dress after wedding dress. Dresses with ribbon belts, others with beaded belts, others with tiaras or flower garlands. Dresses adorned with pearls and gold, with vintage lace and floral appliques. Dresses with gauzy veils and hoofmade silk flowers. Dresses whose bodies were covered in exquisite embroidery. On and on.

“Have y’all decided whether ya’ll want all four brides wearin’ matchin’ wedding dresses?” AJ asked, as Lero turned to a strapless design with a form-fitting bustle. “Or d’ya want ‘em each ‘specially customized?”

“Right now, the girls are kind of tied on that. Lyra and Twilight want each of their dresses to be ‘identical,’ while Rarity and Rainbow want them ‘unique.’” Lero gave a little laugh. “When there’s an even number of mares in your herd, there’s never a tiebreaker.”

“There’s you, Lero,” Applejack reminded him,, poking his chest. “You’all can be tha tiebreaker.”

“Me?” Lero asked. “I’m not gonna be wearing these dresses!”

“But it’s still gonna be yer wedding,” Applejack reminded him. Not too far away, there sat a ponyquin, with a half-finished white gown wrapped around her. “Yer opinion matters. What would yew like ta see yer lady-loves wearing on yer special day?”

Lero gave it some thought; not for the first time. He, and all the other girls, had gone through enough of Twilight’s wedding books to know that both schools of thoughts had equal standing: half of the herds who got married liked uniformity in their wedding outfits, while the other half liked distinction.

“Well… when you get down to it… I’m on Rainbow and Rarity’s side on this. I like the idea of variety.” He frowned slightly. “Though maybe a compromise? Same base gowns, with personalized customizations?”

He went back to flipping through the pages of Applejack’s sketchbook. “Did Fluttershy help you with any of these?”

Applejack shook her head, very proudly. “Ah got Shy ta let me tackle this one all on mah own. If this were jest some customer’s weddin’, Ah’d have no problem letting her put her two bits in. But this is mah three best friends gettin’ hitched ta each other, plus yew, Lero. The threads ya’ll wear… Ah want this ta be all me, same way Shy wants the party arrangements ta be all her. With Herd Bellerophon’s input, a’ course!”

His eyes drew back to the sketches. “Gotta say, AJ, these are all very regal.”

This was a little bit of an understatement. The wedding outfits were so elegant, it was as though Applejack were fully channelling the ghost of the Old Rarity. Pure, undiluted, unadulterated Rarity, back among them to plan and craft this one last masterwork. Lero could see nearly nothing of AJ’s usual homespun, countrified sensibilities interwoven in these designs.

Laughing a little, Applejack turned and gave her Diamond Mark a glance. “Ah jest… have a really good hunch what sorta threads mah friend Rarity’s gonna want for her big special day. Plus, need Ah remind ya that Twilight is Princess Celestia’s faithful student?”

“Nope,” said Lero. “I’ll never need to be reminded of that.”

Applejack glanced out the window, in the direction of the sun, climbing up in the sky. “Even if the wedding’s NOT gonna be held in Canterlot… which Ah highly doubt… Celestia, Luna, Cadence, Prince Shining Armor, they’ll all be in attendance. Kinda HAS ta look regal for their sakes, right?”

When Lero left the Carousel Boutique, he looked from neighbor to neighbor as he made his way home. With some, he offered a friendly hello, others he gave just a nod or a smile, but he made offer to give at least a small acknowledgement to everypony, even the ones who weren’t looking his way. But when Lero got within ten yards of his house, he had to stop.

Turn away, turn away, turn away...

It surrounded Golden Oaks Library like the globe of a snow globe; shimmering with golden light. It was gorgeous with the power of its magic. Even now, Lero watched a dragonfly idiotically fly straight into the magical barrier surrounding his home, get turned into stone, then fall onto the grass. The barrier was kinder to sapient beings and larger animals; it whispered words of warning directly in their minds...

Turn away, turn away, turn away...

Growing more and more dire as ponies got closer, and it was something Lero had quickly grown thoroughly sick of, very shortly.

“Hey, there!” a voice called to Lero from above. An unfamiliar pegasus mare landed by Lero’s side. She had a turquoise coat and golden mane done up in a sharp do, and wore saddlebags. “That your house?” she asked, nodding towards Golden Oaks.

“That it is!” he said, conversationally.

“Interesting bit of magic you’ve got surrounding it,” said the mare, squinting slightly, as though for a mild headache. “And that voice I’m hearing inside my head… the one saying ‘turn away, turn away’... I take it you don’t like strangers?”

“Usually, we’re pretty good with strangers. But now’s not a good time for us.” Lero explained, since she struck him as a kind-enough sort of gal… almost like the old Rainbow Dash, in a way. “You see… believe it or not, there’s this really nutty criminal mare who’s on the loose. She’s… well, she’s after us.”

“How awful!” exclaimed the mare. “Sounds like something right out of a horror movie!”

“I know,” said Lero. “That’s why we’ve set up this special magical barrier to make sure she can’t sneak into our home. We’ll be taking it down as soon as she’s arrested again.”

“How do you even get into your own house?” asked the mare.

If Lero knew the mare like he knew Pinkie Pie or Fluttershy, he might have explained to her about how the barrier was specially enchanted to recognize him and his family, and many of the other finer points Twilight had gotten into. But since they were still strangers, what he said was; “There’s a trick to it. I’m not magical enough to know how to explain it.”

The turquoise mare nodded.

“I don’t believe I’ve introduced myself. I’m Lero Michealides,” said Lero.

The mare looked a little bit hesitant. It was not an expression Lero would’ve really expected to see on her face at all. “I’m… a classmate of Rainbow Dash’s. Up at the Wonderbolts Academy.”

“Oh?” asked Lero. “You’re a friend of Rainbow’s?”

Now she looked downright chagrined. “Actually… Rainbow and I have… had our differences, I guess you could say. But I’m hoping to clear things up between us. Is Rainbow at home? I’d love it if I could apologize to her.”

The human glanced towards his house. “She might be. Or might not be.” Lero honestly wasn’t sure… Rainbow had said something earlier about bats in a cave somewhere with tummyaches, and he wasn’t sure whether she was done with that or had even started.

The turquoise mare then brought an envelope out of her saddlebags; one that hadn’t quite properly been sealed. “Even if I can’t go in and see her, would you please bring this to Rainbow Dash so she can read it and know how sorry I am? It’d really mean a lot to me.”

To Lero, the turquoise mare looked like a pony who wanted to be forgiven. So he was sure whatever this vague issue between her and Rainbow Dash was, Rainbow would be kind enough to forgive her.

“Come with me,” he told the mare, with a friendly smile. “We’ll go and see her together. You can give her that letter in person, or just tell her what’s in your heart.”

“Are you sure?” asked the turquoise mare. “What about the magic barrier?”

“Just press yourself up against me as we walk.” Lero said. “Since I recognize you as a friend, the barrier won’t harm you.”

“That works out nicely,” the turquoise mare smiled.

* * *

If there was one single solitary good thing Exit Wound could say about her stay at the Merry Meadows nuthouse, it was that it’d given her a whole lot of time to reminisce on everything that’d gone wrong for all the Sicklefins at the quarry. There’d been a lot, of course. But one point that’d especially stuck out in Exit’s mind, more than anything else, had been that trick Twilight Sparkle had played to sneak in Lyra, that herd-sister of hers. A clever move, no denying. But again: Exit had wound up with a lot time to reflect upon how Twilight could have pulled such a stunt off: all the specific magical mechanics.

Time well spent, as it turned out, especially when she had needed to brainstorm a good infiltration method with Lightning Dust. Here and now, Exit felt a cold flicker across her body, both from worry and from the barrier she was passing through. Sneaking by earlier and studying this barrier had really paid off. She’d guessed correctly about how it had been enchanted to work, and now she was passing through without being turned to stone!

* * *

Lero spotted Spike upstairs when he and his guest entered the house, and he waved up to him. “Hey, Spike! Is Rainbow in?”

“Yeah! I think she’s in her usual spot,” answered the young dragon, pointing in the direction of the room Rainbow enjoyed hanging out in. Then Spike gave a quizzical look over towards their pegasus guest, asking, “Haven’t I seen you somewhere before?”

The turquoise-coated pegasus gave Spike a proud, haughty sort of look. “I fly with the Wonderbolts, kid, so yeah. You doubtlessly HAVE seen me ‘somewhere before.’”

And she trotted into the sitting room that the little dragon had pointed towards. Lero and Spike both stared after her a bit, before Spike gave him a look that asked: Just who did you bring into our house? All Lero could do was shrug, giving back a glance that said: She seemed nice enough before.

They followed their guest into the reading room, where Rainbow Dash sat surrounded by a good number of her animals. Lero guessed she must’ve been reading through the bridal magazine that was near her, while cuddling with some of her critters. But when Lero and Spike entered the room, they could see the alarm and even dread on Rainbow’s face at the sight of their guest.

“L… Lightning Dust?” She rose to a stand with a downright wary look.

Lero gave a small start; he knew that name. Rainbow Dash often complained about what a horrible pony Lightning Dust was after she came home from the Wonderbolts Academy, though occasionally, she’d sometimes brag about beating Lightning in some race or other. (Well, ‘brag’ wasn’t really the right word, though. Rainbow would announce her wins against Lightning to her family as though declaring that a delicious pie had finished baking.)

This mare was that same Lightning Dust?

“What are you doing here?! What do you want?!”

Lightning turned and spat out the letter of apology she’d had in her mouth so that it landed on the floor next to her, before facing Rainbow Dash.

“Hey, Rainbow,” she said. “Just wanted to tell you there’s a lot that I’m sorry for. I really haven’t treated you as good as I could’ve and I wish that I could turn back the clock and I shouldn’t’ve let my bad feelings get the best of me, and you’re a hatchet-faced, knob-gobbling chimp-loving skiprat and we should let bygones be bygones, and…”

When the apology started, Rainbow looked taken aback and perhaps a bit hopeful, but that vanished due to the line in the middle, replaced by confusion and a bit of anger. “Wait, what did you just call me?” Rainbow Dash asked, not yet seeing the weird glow from within the envelope which Lightning Dust had lain aside.

* * *

Hatchet-faced, knob-gobbling chimp-loving skiprat.

Back at the quarry, Twilight Sparkle had used “Shigaroo Miya…” whatever-the-feck. And she and Lighting had settled on hatchet-faced knob-gobbling chimp-loving skiprat.

This had been a lunatic plan; even she wouldn’t bother pretending there was any sanity to this! But Exit Wound was a lunatic mare, so it fit felt right. Shrinking herself down to teeny-tininess. Having Lightning Dust seal her inside the envelope. She was just as magical, just as skilled, no, MORE magical and skilled than Twilight Sparkle! Two mares could play at the same game!

But so much could’ve gone wrong, though. Monkeylides or anyone in his herd could’ve noticed the tiny hole Exit had poked into the side of the envelope with her horn so she could breathe. The ape could’ve snatched the envelope from Lightning and opened it up right outside the barrier. Or he could’ve stuffed it in the back pocket of his pants and sat in a chair. But the bonobo hadn’t done any of that… and Exit had succeeded in infiltrating the lair of the enemy.

When Lightning Dust spoke the Trigger Word, Exit felt herself grow; ripping straight through the envelope she’d been smuggled in, faster than a balloon inflated by a helium tank. As all the members of Herd Bonobo screamed in shock, Exit Wound smiled a terrible smile.

Author's Note

I am SO INCREDIBLY SORRY, so regretful and ashamed, that it took me THIS LONG to get this chapter out to you all. I really can't claim I have ANY good excuse for delaying the writing of this chapter for this long... just a poor one: I got completely caught up in keeping track of the 2016 Trump/Clinton presidential election, and all the politics, all the worry over America's future, drove me to absolute distraction.

From now on, though, I'm really going to buckle down on myself, and work on this story right. Thank you ALL for continuing to read it.

Merry Christmas to you all.

Prologue: Most Outspoken Supporter

Rainbow Dash and Lero.

Lero and Rainbow Dash.

What a fascinating couple they make. Oh, and Lyra and Twilight too. Mustn’t forget them.

On one hoof, they’re such a happy, loving herd. I’m happy for their loving relationship. I will always support them.

And yet... and yet... this is something I would rather die than ever voice aloud, EVER, but whenever I look at Lero’s herd... I feel like I’ve dodged a lightning bolt.

How had it even happened? Rainbow falling in love with the human?

I remembered Rainbow describing the moment they officially became coltfriend and marefriend: “I told him I was a skinny, garish, over-muscled freak... and then he turned it around on me. He said I wasn’t skinny, I was ‘slender.‘ He said I wasn’t over-muscled, I was ‘athletic,’ and I was 'colorful,' not garish...”

I have nothing but respect for the human for such generous sentiments, for seeing the best in my friend, for accentuating the positive. Because Rainbow Dash is NOT an ugly pony, by any means. To see herself as THAT unattractive, that was just being too harsh on herself!

And yet... and yet...

I briefly stopped what I was doing to shut my eyes and imagine myself in Rainbow Dash’s horseshoes.

“I’m a pegasus, not a unicorn.” I spoke softly, as a hypnotist would speak to a pony she was hypnotizing. “I’m an athlete, not a fashionista. The Wonderbolts are my idols. My goal in life is to become the fastest precision flyer ever, and joining the Wonderbolts is my dream. Also, I have rainbow-colored mane.” I opened my eyes, and looked in a mirror, picturing this new me, this new rainbow-maned Rarity. And even with these different goals, I still couldn’t ENTIRELY empathize with what my friend had made of herself.

If Rainbow DID happen to be skinnier and more muscular than the regular mare, whose fault was that? A number of Wonderbolt mares managed to be athletic AND retain their girlish figure. All Dash would’ve needed to do was research different exercise programs, different diets. As for ‘garish,’ I agree with Lero; there’s nothing wrong with Rainbow’s coloration. Dyeing such a one-of-a-kind mane would’ve been a crime against fashion! An absolute felony! But if anything WAS ‘garish’ about Rainbow’s mane, it was that she kept it so unkempt and uncared-for. Would it have KILLED Rainbow Dash to have put a dab of styling gel in her mane, in between all those midmorning naps?

Of course it would’ve. Because hair care's 'froufrou.' And the ultra-awesome Rainbow Dash doesn’t do froufrou. And look where that had gotten her: a body she wasn’t 100% proud of, a terrible self-image! For all her boasting and bravado, Dash was probably so fraught with insecurities about her looks, that she probably hadn’t planned on APPROACHING stallions until she’d made Wonderbolt Captain.

Talk about overcompensation. Talk about dodging a lightning bolt! How lucky and smart I was to have never gone so anti-froufrou! Poor Rainbow Dash had probably come to regard herself as such a freak... no wonder the first guy she’d formed a heartfelt personal connection with would be the alien biped from another world.

“I’d have been an even better Rainbow Dash than you, Rainbow,” I chuckled at my reflection.

But then... how had Twilight come to fall in love with the human? Unlike Rainbow Dash, Twilight’s problem had never been embracing the softer side of femininity.

I thought it over a bit. Eventually, I came to a conclusion that Twilight's issue had been the same one which brought her to Ponyville in the first place: she was bad at socializing. I mean, come on! A girl like Twilight, who was as good as a daughter to our sun goddess? Suitors had to have been tripping over themselves to catch her eye! Instead, she buried her nose in books for her entire fillyhood.

As much as Twilight has improved since moving to Ponyville... there’s a world of difference between platonic friendships and romance. Must’ve scared her. Given the choice of doing things ‘by the book,’ or forging her own path, Twilight always prefers the former. I suspect that once Rainbow Dash had taken the actual risk of courting Lero first, Twilight must’ve been attracted by the prospect of a herd-sister who could 'show her the ropes' on how to handle a coltfriend who’d already been ‘broken in’... so to speak.

Insecurities... So many blasted insecurities! My poor friends. Well, Lero would be an ideal catch for an insecure girl. The human is just so... nonthreatening.

Fillies do love to think of themselves as the stronger gender — myself included — what with all our ‘superior numbers’ and such, our instinctive need to safeguard the scarcer sex... Yet no girl wants to admit just how much POWER stallions can truly command over us when they want to; physically and psychologically. But what does Lero actually have?

No wings. No magic. He does have a pair of hands, and from what I had already seen of Spike, hands made for an adequate-enough substitute for magic... but even little Spiky-Wikey has claws on the end of his! Lero is no layabout, he keeps in shape... but even so, a pony would need to be very young, very old, or very sick to lose a tug-of-war with the human. Same principle applies to running; in terms of both speed and endurance. Some of his teeth might be pointy at the end, but how well would THOSE stand against a solid buck to the face? My own cat has scarier fangs.

And THEN there is the matter of pregnancy. How ecstatic Rainbow is to have a “stallion” that can bring her to the throes of ecstasy at every estrus, with no risk of ever winding up with foal! On one hoof, it’s for the best — if motherhood isn’t right for Rainbow Dash, better she stay childless. Still, the fact remains that in the battle of the sexes, impregnation is perhaps one of the greatest weapon in a boy’s arsenal. And in this world, Lero is incapable of it.

So even if — Celestia forbid — Lero WANTED to transform into the Coltfriend From Hell, (a route which FAR too many of my own ex-coltfriends have gone...) what could the human do? Especially when you factor Twilight into the equation. If he were to ever break the heart of Princess Celestia’s protégé badly enough, there’s nowhere under the sun he could run to.

To be the one human in a world of ponies is to be neutered in every way except the most literal!

...

...I am suddenly very deeply ashamed at the direction my own thoughts have taken. It’s a good thing I’m quietly sorting out my thoughts in the privacy of my own bedroom, rather than voicing them in public.

I know Mr. Bellerophon Michaelides, and the LAST thing he deserves is scorn. He’s blessed with a truly noble heart, nobler than a great number of the nobleponies at Canterlot. (I’m not going to name names, but one in particular starts with ‘B’ and ended in 'lueblood.' Or was it ‘itch?’)

I can’t really fault Lero for falling in love with mares any more than I can fault Spike for falling in love with me. Spike and Lero’s situations are both so similar: the only ones of their kind, surrounded by ponies. But at least if Spike ever yearned to mingle with his own species, there ARE other dragons in Equestria. Lero’s not even born of this world.

I sympathize with his plight. I really do. If our roles were reversed, if it were me, stranded in his human world, I’d imagine I‘d barely be functional. I’d be a basket case, always pining for Equestria. But Lero didn’t give into homesickness, he adapted to an alien world.

He helps so many of us; you could hardly ask for a finer neighbor. I don’t think there’s an unkind bone in that human’s body. He has done everything within his power to fit in with pony society, become one of us... with the notable exception of clothing. (Not that this is a complaint, on my part. Lero may not be an aficionado of haute couture, but a clothier like me certainly can appreciate a returning customer!)

Best of all, he has made two of my dearest friends genuinely happy.

An individual like that doesn’t deserve to live in loneliness. He deserves the love and support of fine ladies.

Take Lyra, for instance. I’m fully in favor of HER hooking up with Lero. She’s just so very... unique, that I could hardly imagine her with anypony else.

But why oh WHY couldn’t it have just been her, (or maybe some of Lyra’s OTHER friends?!) Why did he have to drag two of MY best friends into it?!

It’s not that I have anything against interspecies romances. Perhaps it’s just a touch of psychological projection, because I just don’t swing that way, myself. Non-ponies do nothing for me. (Though Spike’s not ready to know that yet. He’s just a baby, after all, and I couldn’t bear to break his loving little heart.)

I’m just afraid that one day, years from now, when the novelty and the thrill of the exotic has died away, Rainbow and Twilight will wake up, see the... the BEING sleeping next to them in bed, and think: what did I marry?!

But I am grown-up enough, and open-minded enough to recognize that what they have together is true love. I am no racist bigot, like that horrible Honeydew mare is. It is for these reasons that I am, and will always remain, the most outspoken supporter of Lero and all his herd.

Well, that’s enough idle thinking for now. Time for bed! After all, Dash and Lero will be stopping by tomorrow to have a look at my little surprise. I hope they like it!

Author's Note

[AUTHOR’S NOTE: Greetings to all the Xenophilia fans of the present and future! This story takes FULL advantage of the fact that it’s a recursive alternate-universe fic, (so please be ready for a few discrepancies that probably won’t mesh with the main Xenophilia canon!) The focus of this storyline is the final episode of Season 3, “Magical Mystery Cure,” and how such events would play out in the Xenophilia world. Please enjoy!]

Please support the Divided Rainbow TV Tropes page, and help keep it updated!

Twelve: Through Any Kind Of Weather

One of the things Lero had learned rather quickly was that almost all ponies could outpace him easily, even if he was running at a dead sprint. However, catching up to Rarity proved to be no challenge at all, as the weight of unhappiness slowed her pace to a fraction of what was normal for her. Before speaking, he glanced upward. The rainbow rain was a lukewarm temperature, showering down mildly instead of at a hard pelt. Yeah, he could take this easily.

"Hey again, Rarity!"

Her pace slowed to a standstill, as she turned around in surprise. “Lero?!”

He smiled at her. “You walked off before I could say hello!” When he caught up to her, he gave her head a gentle stroke. “No need to stop on my account! Silly for us to stand out in the middle of the rain like a pair of statues. You have places to go? Let’s go together!”

Too startled to come up with a coherent response, she just nodded and continued her walk, her beloved human right alongside her. For a minute, she waited in vain for him to say something, but Lero simply kept walking with his arms folded behind his head and a smile on his face. As though they were strolling through a meadow on a brisk cloudless afternoon.

“Forgive me for asking the obvious question, but... what are you doing here?” Rarity finally inquired.

“Well, Rarity, do you remember when you summoned that rain cloud, and everybody ran away from you?”

From puzzlement, Rarity’s expression reverted back to its original gloom. “I’m afraid you’ll need to be a bit more specific than...”

“...Including myself,” He added quickly, attempting to head off the return of her despondent mood. “I feel awful about what I did; running away from you when you were calling out to me. So now I’m gonna make it up to you.”

Even tinged with sadness, her laugh really was a beautiful-sounding thing. “Oh, Lero, sweetie, there’s nothing you need to ‘make up’ for. You weren’t doing anything different than what any other stallion or mare would do.”

“What 'any other stallion or mare would do' doesn't matter.” he insisted. “This is about what I should do. That means I am going to stick by you!" He paused, then rather anticlimactically asked, "Uh... actually, would you mind waiting for me for just ONE second?”

She couldn't help letting out a small chuckle at that, pausing as Lero rushed inside a store. Hastily, the human purchased an umbrella for himself, and opened it over his head as he returned to Rarity’s side, resuming their walk.

“Unnnghh.... ugggh!!” Suddenly, her horn glowed orange, her eyes squeezed shut, and the wind picked up, first flipping the umbrella inside-out, then tearing it from his hands and blowing it across the road.

“You’re right,” he told her. Not even the faintest shred of sarcasm, wryness, or derision lay in his voice. “Umbrellas are SO overrated.”

Rarity let out a startled gasp, and caught the umbrella with telekinesis before it flew completely out of reach, and returned it to him, insisting, “I didn’t mean to do that! I swear!”

Some soaked, disgruntled stallion down the street yelled, “You’re a crazy space case, lady!”

“So’s your mom!” Lero shouted back at him, lifting his umbrella back over his head.

Scowling, the stallion vanished indoors.

“Lero, dear, don’t you think you should go home?” Rarity suggested quietly, eyes fixed towards her hooves.

He stroked her side affectionately. “Oh, I will be going home. At the exact same moment you do, my dear.”

“Lero, I’m sorry, but I’m going to keep bringing in the rain! And I’m afraid it’ll soak completely into your clothes, and you’ll catch your death of pneumonia!”

“...Says the mare who’s standing in the same downpour I am!” the human shot back. “At least I can take my clothes off at the end of the day, princess! That pretty coat of yours is attached to your skin!”

“Yeah?! Well... WHAT’S THAT BEHIND YOU?!” Rarity suddenly cried, pointing frantically with her hoof.

So alarmed were her eyes that Lero span around, expecting to see Angel Bunny riding a puma’s back, except there was nothing but more falling rain. He heard a mystical-sounding jingle, and when he turned around, Rarity has vanished.

“You... you... I can’t believe I FELL for that!” he sputtered. “And since when have you been able to teleport?!”

For around a quarter of an hour, he stubbornly continued wandering around, looking everywhere for the white-coated unicorn, all the while getting more and more drenched. Then he heard hooves from behind, and felt a nudge by his arm.

“Oh, hello again,” he responded with the same lack of sarcasm, wryness, or derision. “What brings you back?”

“Guilt. Just like you.” The unicorn admitted, letting out a sigh. “I’m not going to get rid of you, am I?”

“No more than I’m ever going to get rid of you!” he said, with a playful tap on her nose. She let out a small smile, nuzzling his hand in response. So again, they continued on, side-by-side. It was hard for Lero to tell whether Rarity had a particular destination in mind. She looked morose and resigned, especially as passers-by shot her looks of great disfavor.

“Hey, Rarity?”

“Hmmm?”

[“Those raindrops are falling on my head,

They keep falling,

But there’s one thing... I know...

The blues they send to meet me

Won’t defeat me.

It won’t be long ‘til happiness steps up to greet me.”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WuAwv1j8VA)

He paused to ask her; “Have I ever sang that one to you before?”

She shook her head. “No. Never.” It had only been a few stanzas, but her low spirits had given way to instant enchantment. In honesty, he’d never sung that song to Rainbow Dash or Twilight, or anyone else in Ponyville, either... or even to himself, before right now. It had taken the sight of Rarity, so sad and rained-upon, to dredge it up back from his memory, after all these years.

“It’s absolutely lovely, though,” she told him. “Please, is there anything more to that song?”

“Actually," He smiled, seeing the delight and eagerness in her eyes. "There is.”

It was, in his opinion, one of the finest songs ever written, bar none, and he sang it all the way through for her. At Rarity's insistence, he gave about six more encore performances, until the lyrics had sunk into her head, so both could sing it as a duet:

[“Raindrops keep falling on my head

But that doesn’t mean my eyes will soon be turning red

Crying’s not for me

Cause... I’m never gonna stop the rain

By complaining

Because I’m free

Nothing’s worrying me.”](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WuAwv1j8VA)

“Lero!” she suddenly interrupted, “That umbrella you’re holding... it’s been inside-out this whole time! Didn’t you even notice?”

Blinking in surprise, he looked up, responding, “No, I didn’t! I was too busy serenading you.” The umbrella now had a translucent faintly brown liquid in it, as all the rainbow colors had mixed. However, it didn't look unpleasant or dirty... just like someone had carelessly dumped a bunch of different food coloring into the water. Giving Rarity a playful grin, he tipped the ‘bowl’ of the inside-out umbrella towards his lips and drank all the rainwater that had pooled inside there in one gulp, (some spilled down his front, but what of that? He was soaked enough already!) Rarity let out a surprised gasp of laughter.

“Mmmm, that hit the spot! Singing’s thirsty work! This whole day’s been thirsty work for me.” Smacking his lips, he waved his arms around at the overhead clouds. “Thanks for the drink, Rarity!”

“Oh, you’re quite welcome, my love!” she giggled. “In fact... let me give you a refill!”

And a new small rain cloud of hers formed over his umbrella, filling it up as quick as a faucet. He took a drink and was amazed.

“Rarity, you... I don’t believe it! Ice-cold, peach flavored tea!" He smacked his lips. "Perfectly sweetened, too. Wow...” He took another sip. “Here, you got to try some yourself!”

Carefully, he tilted it towards her mouth. Very few girls could pull off drinking from an umbrella in the rain with such poise and refinement. As though it were a martini glass. “Mmm-hmm,” she simply said, then snuck a happy kiss on his lips.

Then, like a loud ill-timed fart that ruins a epic soliloquy, a venomous, bitter voice cut through their romantic moment. "Thought I smelled diseased perversion in the air. Shoulda known it could only be you, monkey-lover.”

Both of them turned from each other towards the unwelcome newcomer. The Earth pony mare’s coat was just a shade darker than Lyra’s, but her mane had been styled to be choppy, excessively layered, with fringes around the edges. Dyed blonde, to boot... that was a new thing. Her lime-colored roots seemed almost intentionally visible. Her cutie mark was a slice of honeydew melon, which at times almost vanished into the green of her coat.

“Well, you, Rarity, and the other two pervs you bunk with,” Honeydew continued with her unpleasantness.

Girls like Rarity could pull off the ‘wet mane’ look and look absolutely ravishing. This mare appeared to have been fished out of a stagnant well after a seven-day stay. The intensely fervid gleam in her eyes wasn’t winning her any beauty contests, either.

Lero just rolled his eyes at her, while Rarity’s nostrils crinkled as though catching scent of an uncleaned fish tank. “Charming as ever, Honeydew. Never change.”

Honeydew let out a derisive snort. “Same to you, ape-banger. And your bonobo buddy too.”

Lero and Rarity traded confused looks. “I’m sorry... ‘bonobo?‘“ Rarity asked Honeydew. “Was that supposed to be an insult? Or did you just make up that word on the spot?”

Honeydew looked positively gleeful to hear this. “You REALLY don’t know what a bonobo is?! YOU of all ponies?!”

“Should I?” queried Rarity, lifting up and examining her forehoof disinterestedly, refusing to dignify the mare's efforts with genuine interest.

Honeydew hammered the ground with a hoof as she sniggered and snortled. “Dah ha ha ha ha ha!!! Oh my STARS!” She was bringing her hoof down right in the middle of a puddle, splashing muddy water everyplace.

“Rarity, I do believe our friend Honeydew's gone completely off her melon." This produced an amused snort from Rarity, while fetching a glare from the Earth pony mare. "Honeydew, I'm afraid I agree with Rarity on this one. It sounds to me like you’re getting all supercallifragilisticexpialidocious with all your talk of bonobos." Lero let himself be a bit childish for a moment. He knew it was wrong to lower himself to Honeydew's level, but it’d been a very long day, and frankly the mare sorely needed some mocking. She'd been getting increasingly angry and bitter these past few months. He had to hand it to Honeydew's sisters: at least they had quit harassing him and his herd.

“No one asked you, shit-flinger!” Honeydew snapped at him. Then, turning to Rarity, Honeydew persisted, “Hey, do me a favor: go ahead and look bonobos up in that treebrary you live in! B-O-N-O-B-O. Read a book about them!”

Honeydew’s smile was a sallow thing that one of life’s losers give the successful when they flounder. “Probably gonna get you wetter than you are now. Probably want to trade THIS little knuckle-walker for one of them, next time the circus rolls into town!” She wiggled her tongue at Rarity nastily.

“Do you kiss your family with that toxic little mouth of yours?” Lero retorted, fed up with her antics.

Honeydew’s ears couldn’t have flattened back any flatter. First she drew in a breath as though to deliver a snappy comeback. Then her mouth shut, and he could see saliva building up against the front of her teeth, as though preparing to spit at him. Whatever she was planning, Rarity simply crossed in front of Lero, head bent, horn glowing warningly.

“Get away from my stallion.”

The Earth pony looked Lero over. Facial muscle by her eye and snout were clenching and unclenching hard beneath her furry skin. “Your ‘stallion.’ Unbelievable. That’s what you truly THINK of him as?! How you see him in your head?! For real?! A ‘stallion?' One of us?!” She snarled, the saliva making her look as if she was frothing.

Rarity horn flared brighter. “The details of my love life are of no concern of yours, Honeydew. They never were.”

Honeydew swallowed the spittle in her mouth... and then smirked, brushing past them both with a flick of her tail that might’ve looked flirtatious, if one were just walking in and hadn’t heard everything else that’d preceded this scene.

“Fine, then. Take care, Rarity.” Honeydew smiled over her shoulder at Lero. “You too. Keep on enjoying the company of your deluded, uppity little lapdog-bitch... my 'stallion' friend.”

They were just as happy to turn their backs on Honeydew as she was on them.

“Ugh. Don’t let her antics get to you, Rarity.”

“I won’t,” said the unicorn. “I don’t. Honeydew’s just scum.”

He sighed. "Honestly... It's just kind of sad. She blames us for the wedge that's been driven between her and her sisters, and she can't see that it's because she values her hate more than them."

At this point, they’d walked to a part of town where it wasn’t even raining. Lero turned to comment on this, but as he did, he caught Rarity examining him critically. “Darling... what exactly happened to you? Why is your shirt all ruined? And your mane?”

“I was with Rainbow Dash, helping her sleep,” he replied reflexively.

“You were SLEEPING with Rainbow Dash?!” Came Rarity's startled reply.

Between polygamy, itself, and all the weirdness the Swap had played upon his love life, Lero hadn’t even stopped to think how a sentence like this would’ve sounded in Rarity’s ears. It was only now that Twilight Sparkle’s words echoed back in his head:

Cheating’s a wicked, awful thing to do. Especially when it’s against your herd.

Breathing rapidly, Rarity stared at Lero, her eyes wide with hurt and suspicion and perceived betrayal. Quickly, he said, “I repeat: I was with Rainbow Dash, helping her TO sleep.”

Not even bothering with telekinesis this time, Rarity bit down very firmly on Lero’s wrist dragging him over beneath a store’s awning. “Lero... you... if you’ve...!” she sputtered.

Don’t panic, you’ve done nothing wrong. Don’t panic, you’ve done nothing wrong!

After all: he HAD done nothing wrong, not by any measure! So Lero leaned in close to her, presenting himself calmly. “Do I look like I’ve been sleeping with Rainbow Dash? Do I smell like it?”

She blinked at this, but the nostrils on her snout flared as she sniffed him out. Ponies were a far cry from canines in the olfactory department, yet still above humans. Most noticeably when it came to their own pheromones.

“No. No, you don’t,” she admitted. “I barely smell Rainbow on you at all." She ducked her head apologetically. "Forgive me. With how these past few days have been going... well, I was expecting even more disasters. I overreacted." She paused, continuing to sniff. "What I do smell is dogs and cats and rabbits and several different birds... a number of furry mammals I can’t readily identify and...” she sniffed him again, “Reptiles, too... frogs and toads...” Now she was looking him over more closely. “And you’ve got bite marks and claw marks on your ears and your face and your hands... some of them VERY deep, indeed... and they didn’t come from any pony and... Lero, what have you been DOING down there?”

Lero sighed. “Yesterday, I went around to all your friends to apologize for leaving their welcome home party early.”

“You had nothing to apologize for!” Rarity insisted. “You’d just been hospitalized, you...”

He raised his hand, indicating he should let her finish. “But the fact is, I went, and when I reached Dash’s place, I saw that ALL the animals in her house had become unmanageable,” he paused, shaking his head. “ No, worse than that: they’d TURNED on her. She hasn’t slept in DAYS. Twilight saw it too. So I had to come back and offer her a hand. Good thing I did, too it’d gotten WORSE.”

“So you went to help her? I’m just amazed that you’d go to that much trouble for RAINBOW, of all ponies!” She said.

Lero had to laugh. “Rainbow felt that way too. So, I just reminded her that she was the pony that found me, and one of the first that tried to be my friend, so I had a bit of a soft spot for her. I also told her how much she was a dear friend of you and Twilight, and that I couldn’t stand the thought of any pony in such great pain. Not her. Not Twilight. And not you either, Rarity.”

“Me? In pain?” Just like Rainbow had, Rarity tried to smile the accusation away. "Whatever would give you THAT silly idea?”

Before Lero could get a word out, they were once again interrupted. “Hey! YOU! Weathermare!” A unicorn mare ran up to Rarity. She wore a set of saddlebags and had a spanner for a cutie mark. Lero vaguely remembered her name being Quick Fix. “What’s the big idea?!” Quick demanded.

“I... have no idea what you’re talking about!” Rarity replied, head held high, acting as though she couldn't see how sopping wet all Quick’s fur was.

“Oh really?!” Quick Fix opened her saddlebag, and drew out a small brochure. “Here, take a look at this week’s weather schedule! Show me where it says that we’re supposed to be having rain at this time today, Miss Weathermare! Much less, rainbow-colored rain!”

Rarity gave a feeble smile. “S-sometimes things just... come up... you know? But what’s so wrong with a little bit of rain, anyway?” She said, with a flip of her damp mane.

“I’ll tell you what: your stupid rain completely flooded my basement! And I had several valuable books laying out on the floor!” Quick Fix levitated fourteen waterlogged hardcover books from her saddlebags, shaking them in Rarity’s face so that droplets splashed on her eyes and nose.

“Why were your books on the floor?” Rarity asked, incredulous. “Why not put them on bookshelves?”

“If I’d KNOWN we had rain scheduled at this point in the day, I WOULD’VE put these books back on their shelves! But since no one informed me about this rain, SOMEPONY’S gotta pay me back for all my ruined books, and I say that SOMEPONY should be YOU!”

Now Rarity spoke with some authority. “Madam, speaking on behalf of all Weather Ponies, we all do our part to minimize property damage... but with weather being weather, certain unfortunate incidents are bound to occur. Princess Celestia, herself, has recognized that you can’t hold Weather Ponies accountable for every such incident as this, any more than you can hold a hoofball coach accountable for every hoofball injury.” Lero swore she was reciting this. Hell, maybe with all the issues lately, she'd had to memorize it verbatim.

“Is that so? Well, then, I’ll be writing to your bosses at the Weather Board to see what THEY have to say about this! Or, heck, maybe if I’m angry enough, I’ll take you right to court!” Quick Fix thundered, levitating it all back in her bags. Her voice became steadily harsher and angrier as she continued to rant. “Trust me, Rarity, just pay me what I’m due. Easier for all of us. I’ll be sending you a U-O-ME in the mail, and I’ll give you three days to come up with the money.”

With that, she spun around, and left. By the time Quick Fix began trotting back home, Rarity had been reduced to a wide-eyed quivering pack of tears. Lero ripped off another strip of his already-ruined shirt, offering it out to her as a hanky.

"Don't worry, hon, I'm sure we can manage, even if she does drag it to court."

“Oh, you know she won’t be the only one!” she sobbed. “And it's not even that! Everyone's so furious at me, even when I'm doing my best!”

He waited a bit for her to finish blowing her nose on his shirt strip. “Hey, Rarity? When you cast those weather spells... mind telling me what’s going through your head?”

“I don’t know if you’d understand,” she said, floating the hanky into a trash bin outside one of the shops. “It’s... artistic.”

“Try me,” he invited.

He put on his most encouraging face for her. It seemed to do the trick.

“Well... as you know, I’m an artist, through and through. Artists need inspiration in order to create art. Now, inspiration comes in different forms and different ways to different artists. With me so far?”

“Mmm-hmm.”

“For me, myself, Inspiration comes like... like a powerful sneeze. Sudden, powerful, and irrepressible. And when I say ‘irrepressible,’ I mean that I can only hold my Inspiration back for about five minutes at most, if I really try and truly must. I think the longest time I’ve gone uninspired was when I was with you in that hospital. My mind was just that focused on seeing you get well again.”

Lero thought about all the times he’d been at a party or a crowded car, and tried NOT to sneeze. He’d always failed, and it’d ALWAYS been a relief to expel that itchy ticklish sensation from his nose.

“Because I’m an artist, I need to feel that Inspiration. I need to create! And the clouds and winds and such are my paintbrushes, while the sky is my canvas.”

Lero nodded. “I’ll bet that on a day like today, it’s like being allergic to pollen and strolling through a dandelion field!”

“Exactly! You DO understand! ...The only one in Ponyville, so far,” she finished, glumly.

As Rarity hung her head, Lero peered up at the colorful clouds behind them.

“It’s pretty, I’ll give you that. But this is nothing like that checkerboard pattern I saw you do yesterday. What are you trying to create this time? Abstract art?”

Her head lifted back up. “Me? Abstract? Almost never. I’m using the clouds to spell words in the sky, connect-the-dots style. We’d be able to see it better if we were high up from a pegasus-eye-view.”

“Since we’re not, mind telling me what those words are?” Lero asked.

“Find The Generosity Within Yourself.”

Lero stopped short at that. He was suddenly imagining the old Rarity — Rarity the Dressmaker — trapped behind a brick wall, deep within this new Rarity’s subconscious, screaming at the top of her lungs to be found, but only fragments of echoes were making it up to her conscious mind.

“Funny, isn’t it?” she commented. “I’m the Element of Loyalty, after all. If anything, it should be Applejack who’s Generosity’s spokesmare...” She shook her head at the oddity of it all.

“It’s not like Applejack has a monopoly on Generosity, just because she has that element,” Lero suddenly found himself arguing her point.

“Hmm?” Rarity looked up at him in confusion.

“I mean, look at you, Rarity! Yeah, your loyalty speaks for itself, of course, but you ARE very generous, too: you give a lot of yourself.” He licked his lips a little anxiously, as a new smile began forming on her face, which gave him the confidence to continue. “You’re also kind, you’ve always been as honest as you can be with me, you’ve got a great sense of humor, and you’re definitely magical.”

“I’m the whole package, then?” she beamed.

“AND a bag of chips!” He agreed.

She giggled, lifting a hoof and holding herself regally erect. “Girls, put all you necklaces around my neck! Sparkle-kitten, your tiara, please! I’ll handle this villain myself!”

When they were finished laughing, Lero continued. “But the same goes for all of your friends. It’s not like Applejack is dishonest. It’s not like Rainbow Dash isn’t loyal... So I guess, I guess what I’m saying is that you’re right. You DO need to find the Generosity within yourself, Rarity!”

She listened in interest. Suddenly, fear and memories of Discord shot through Lero, as he saw her mark wasn’t changing; if Rarity were to find her ‘inner Generosity’ with the wrong mark still on... well...

“We all do!” he finished confidently, hoping to head off anything ruinous.

In the middle of her nod, Rarity clenched her teeth and shot magic from her horn, causing a new rainbow cloud to form. “There!” she breathed. “Just finished the N in Within.”

Rainbow rain burst out of the new cloud immediately. It amazed Lero how the raindrops weren’t staining any pony’s coat or clothes, as though its color were just an illusion.

“What do you think you’re doing?!” a pony called out to her, before hurrying indoors.

“Is this some kind of game to you?! Huh?!” shouted another from a window.

“Go back to weather school!” said a passing, drenched Pegasus.

As Rarity shrunk backwards with each fresh show of umbrage from her neighbors... Lero found himself growing resentful. They were all so insensitive to Rarity’s condition! It wasn’t right! What spoiled ponies they all were, with their 100% reliable weather forecast! They ought to try spending a month in Seattle... just to remind themselves how good they had it here!

“They hate me... they all hate me, all I’m doing is... unggh!” Another glow on her horn... if only she would just stop for just a b...

...do not stop Rarity from performing her weather magic...

He looked around. Some of the ponies inside were glaring at Rarity from their closed windows with a deplorable level of contempt. And this was JUST a colorful drizzle, really... wasn’t like she was erupting volcanos on them!

He looked back at Rarity, whose horn was building with light.

Well... if it needs to happen anyway...

“Hey, Rarity?” he whispered in her ear. “Don’t fire that just yet.”

“Huh?” She opened her eyes. Her horn was still glowing; holding her magic back was causing her to sweat.

“Let me ask: do you do requests? Like, if I was to ask you to conjure a certain KIND of artistic weather, could you do that?”

“I... wha... what did you have in mind?” She blinked in interest, and the effort of holding back lessened from her mental engagement.

Again, his thoughts took him back to the draconequus. To the stories Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash had told him about the Chaos God’s first appearance...

“I want you to bring a whole MASS of clouds in, and color them cotton candy pink. But when they rain, I want the rain to be colored milk-chocolate brown.”

The weather mare reacted as though he’d suggested dumping twelve cans of gasoline out on the open road and setting fire to it.

“L... Lero, my love,” she gulped. “Are you sure you know what you’re asking for?!”

“You wouldn’t deny your true love his artistic inspiration, would you?” He grinned. “Trust me; I know what I’m doing.”

"...Alright." With reluctance, Rarity cast the spell. It didn’t take long. Puffy pinkness clogged the heavens... it really did look like solid cotton candy up there! When the chocolate-colored rain came pouring down Lero extended his tongue to taste some.

“Hm... not exactly real chocolate milk... more like a powdered mix poured into water,” he commented, thoughtfully. But if Lero’s attitude was glib, all the other passers-by reacted as though Godzilla, himself, had dropped from the sky. Like Rarity, they too hadn’t forgotten what Discord had done to them and their town the first time around.

“It’s Discord! DISCORD!” one mare shrieked at the clouds.

“No, NO!!!” screamed a stallion. “I won’t go back to being a Breezie swarm! I WOOOOOOONNN’T!!!!”

Within seconds, the whole block was thrown into a silly panic, some throwing themselves back in their homes, others racing for the hills. Rarity watched in astonishment.

“They though it was him! They actually thought it was Discord!”

Lero clapped her on the back. “You gotta do what you gotta do, right, Miss Artist? But the way I figure, if you GOTTA do it, at least have fun with it!”

“I...” she winced. “Oh goodness, I feel another one starting to build...”

“Then let’s get a move-on!” said Lero, “This way!”

They quickly made their way to another section of Ponyville, where the sun was still shining on the streets. They found hiding places in an alley. Rarity looked ready to burst, her horn glowing warningly.

“Now this time,” the human said quickly. “I’m thinking we could make a fog, except...” And he whispered the rest of the details in her ear.

No pony saw the beam of magic shoot out from the alleyway. A bright pink fog rolled down the boulevard, forming ladders and long stairways to nowhere. One curious Earth pony attempted to climb a stairway, but she passed through it like it was, well, fog. Ponies stepped out onto the street to observe the phenomenon and feel the fog with curiosity. As they watched, all the fog lifted into the sky, forming large words:

Chaos Rules! Disharmony Forever!

The cry rang out again from some mare in the crowd. “Discord! He’s back!”

The chaos erupted almost immediately. “Call the mayor!”

“Every pony for herself!”

“He wouldn’t flood my house with chewed bubblegum TWICE would he?!"

“Mommy, Mommy, I don't WANNA sneeze out Wonderbolts action figures again! An' Fluttershy isn't even IN the Wonderbolts!”

Peering at them all from behind the corner of their alleyway, it was all Rarity and Lero could do to stifle their giggles.

“Okay, okay, Rarity, now follow my lead!” And as they left the alley, Lero screwed up his face into the same look of hysteria all the rest of them wore out in this street.

“OH MY GOD, THIS IS TERRIBLE! TERRIBLE, I SAY!” he exclaimed to Rarity.

“It’s a disaster! A calamity! How could this have happened?! Nothing could be worse!” she chimed in.

The two of them were completely hamming it up... and yet they were blending in PERFECTLY with the rest of the neighbors, both trying to out-frantic the other.

“He’ll turn the house into gingerbread!” Lero cried. “It’ll be crawling with ants!”

“He’ll make all the fishes breath air!” Rarity wailed. "And the birds will swim underwater!"

“He’ll turn Celestia into a hockey puck!” Lero rejoined.

“He’ll trap all of us in hamster balls!” Rarity opined.

“He’ll make Dadaism into a worldwide way of life!” Lero declared.

“He’ll make junk food healthy and health food fattening! ...Wait, actually...” Rarity ruminated.

“Won’t somebody think of the children?!” Lero questioned.

“Oh yes! The children! Who knows what’s happened our babies, Lero?!” As the two of them raced away, Rarity cried out, “Don’t worry, my darlings! Mommy and Daddy are on their way!”

Once they were far enough away, Rarity laughed like a very young filly after her first-ever roller coaster ride, skipping about in place!

“Oooh, this is so wicked of us!” she sang. “So absolutely wicked! Better than the pranks I play on Nightmare Night! Quick, Lero, hop on my back!”

Lero nearly did a double take. “Huh?”

“Hop on my back, we’ll get there faster!" She grinned, swishing her tail end, playfully trying to make it look enticing.

Lero shrugged and climbed on, and she galloped to the next part of town where unsuspecting ponies were just going about their daily lives.

“Here we are! Into this restaurant!” Rarity declared, Lero getting off and the two ducked inside. The restaurant was mostly-empty.

“Hello!” they were greeted, “Welcome to the...”

“We’ll just have that window seat, there, if you don’t mind!” Rarity interrupted, motioning towards a table. They sat themselves, settling in and trying to play it natural, gazing out the window at the busy marketplace just outside.

“Hi there!” said a waitress, quickly setting down silverware, glasses of water, menus, and a breadbasket. “My name’s Pleasant Greetings, I’ll be your waitress, do you know what kind of beverages you want?”

“Water for both of us,” Lero smiled at her.

“Okay, then, I’ll give you a chance to look over your menus!” the waitress said, walking away.

As Lero helped himself to a slice of complimentary bread, Rarity lifted up the large, fold-out menu, concealing the glow of her horn. “Three... two... one!” she whispered. Her next shot of magic passed straight through the glass of the restaurant’s window as smoothly as a beam of light, leaving it unharmed and completely unseen.

Her cotton candy fog once again swept out, but it was small and low to the ground, only covering the pedestrians’ ankles. Over the top of her menu, Lero saw Rarity squint. Her horn glowed a different color, and when the chocolate rain poured from the cloud, it gushed UPWARD towards the sky! Lero noted that Rarity wasn’t powerful enough to make it defy gravity completely: twenty feet up, and the rain fell back down to earth. Not that any pony noticed.

“What is it?!” cried a pegasus outside.

“What’s happening?!” said another patron.

“What’s going on?!” asked their waitress. Everyone in the restaurant, including the kitchen staff, had gathered around their table to watch out their window.

Cobblestones flew everywhere as a truly gigantic box pushed up from the center of the road, as though shifted up by a tectonic plate. Lero blinked at Rarity.

"Isn't me." she murmured, just as perturbed as the rest. The pedestrians outside backed away from it in alarm. A hand crank was attached to the box’s side, and music proceeded to play as it rotated itself. Lero, immediately recognizing the tune, sung along with a growing sense of foreboding. “All around the cobbler’s bench, the monkey chased the weasel....”

POP!!!! Like the old snake-in-a-can gag, out Discord the jack-in-the-box sprang at the ponies, wearing a gaudy jester’s cap.

“It’s... DISCORD!” He announced cheerfully, and with a snap of his finger, all the ponies in attendance were suddenly wearing bizarre horned hats. Every filly, colt, stallion and mare screamed. They were almost trampling over each other to get away; Lero had never seen streets empty so fast. And Discord just span around and around in the middle of the air, like a single towel in a dryer, clutching his side in a big belly laugh.

Only Rarity and Lero remained, sitting in this emptied restaurant. They rose up and left in quiet mortification. They’d just stepped outside when Discord boogied over in front of them.

“Ohhhh, bravo! Bravo!” the draconequus chortled, clapping his hands together. “Brava, bravura, bravado, bravissimo, braggadocio, benzoate! Magical mischief and mayhem on Main Street! Panic, perturbation and pure pandemonium perpetrated by... guess who? None other than Ponyville’s most popular biped, and one of Celestia’s cherished champions, the Element of...”

Discord gave a noticeable pause to wink at Lero, and smile slyly at Rarity.

“...Loyalty. Didn’t think you had it in ya! I take my hat off to you both!” And Discord removed a stovepipe hat off his head, and gave a deep genteel bow to them both. Then, very suddenly, he jammed the stovepipe completely over Lero’s head, past the chin, so for a second, the human could only see black. Then he did the same to Rarity.

When the stovepipe came off Rarity’s head, Lero saw there was a hat on her head... he recognized it as the same he'd distributed earlier to the screaming crowd. It almost reminded him of the Mouseketeer ears they sold at Disneyland... except it was a deer antler and goat horn, instead of black mouse ears. When she turned to look at him, Lero saw words circling the horn-hole in her hat: DISCORD IS BEST CORD. Lero reached up, feeling the same hat on his own head. The antler and goat horn felt like the real deal.

“To think! I have imitators! Copycats! Eager young Discoteers idolizing me and wishing to follow in my footsteps!” The happy teardrops Discord wiped off his face shot up into the sky and exploded as miniature fireworks.

“H...hello, Discord,” To Lero, it sounded less like a real greeting, and more like Rarity was woking to find her voice again. “We... when we did this, we were just...”

“...Trying to have a good time amidst a pack of uptight, straitlaced, order-obsessed sticks-in-the-mud!” said Discord, nodding knowingly. “Believe me, out of everyone in this world, I know how it is!” He smiled at her. “Before I go, please permit me to congratulate you on your impeccable taste in men! On top of all his other fine qualities, I can see Bellerophon’s been a great influence on you!”

Lero couldn't tell whether Discord was being snide or sincere. Either way, "Your approval fills me with shame," he deadpanned.

That netted a uproarious belly laugh from the lord of chaos. He gave his trademark toothy smile, replying simply, “So, an enchanting evening to you both, you wonderful weathermare and you excellent Earthling!”

He pinched both their cheeks, cooing at them, before back flipping into his jack-in-the-box box. As soon as he shut the lid, the box robo-morphed into a starship which shot towards outer space.

“Well...” said Rarity, watching it disappear.

“...That happened,” said Lero.

For several blocks, they walked on in silence, without any more Inspiration coming to Rarity. Then, Lero took off his stupid Discoteer hat, holding it in his hands.

“Rarity... I’m really sorry. I was a total idiot. I took it too far,” he apologized.

“WE took it too far. But all the same, I won’t pretend I didn’t have fun with you. I’m glad you’re with me.” And she was smiling at him. “Let’s go home, I’m done for the day.”

But up ahead, Lero spotted the Carousel Boutique. There were signs outside advertising a clearance sale. “Um, one second, if you don’t mind,” he told Rarity. The boutique’s damaged front door had gotten replaced. He tried to go in, but the store was locked. He knocked.

“Sorry! We’re closed for the day!” Applejack called from within, only to then mutter, “Aw, who’m kidding?! Like Ah can afford tah turn down a customer!” The door was unlocked and pushed open for him. “Hey, Lero! Lookin’ tah buy?!”

“Depends what you got.”

He stepped inside.

The moment he’d laid eyes upon Applejack, Lero’s mind immediately began comparing and contrasting her with Rainbow Dash. Between the two, Dash still ranked first place for worst off. Unlike Dash, Lero could tell Applejack had given herself the chance to actually sleep every night. Yet he didn’t need to be Sherlock Holmes to see how the hollow look in her eyes, and the band-aids over her hooves bespoke of many long hours toiling at her sewing machine, well into the wee hours of the morning. Makeup had been applied around her eyes, no doubt to hide the dark circles. Also, beneath her flimsy smile, Applejack gave off the selfsame vibe of dejection that he’d just spent so much effort trying to keep Rarity from slipping into.

Also, though this wasn’t exactly a symptom, per se, there were something else worth noting about the Carousel Boutique’s new proprietress. Before the Swap, Applejack the Farmer had always given off earthy scents; sweat, dirt, applewood, apples, (both fresh and rotten) plus some of the other produce they grew on their farm. Applejack the Dressmaker smelled like none of these things. She smelled like good-quality cosmetics: orange-scented shampoo, and orange-blossom perfume. She’d also taken a little more effort with her mane. Just a little. It was nowhere near the ornately curled coiffure that Rarity still wore to this day... but it was noticeable.

Though the cowgirl hat still on her head blunted the effect.

“...aaaaaAAAAAAeeaaaah!!!!!”

Rarity had followed him inside the boutique. Her eyes darted from garment to garment with the same horrorstruck look he himself would’ve worn, upon stepping into the locked shed of a psychopath who performed live autopsies on captured animals with rusty scalpels, and nailed the open bodies to the walls.

Lero felt deep pity for whatever remnants of Rarity’s old fashionista self that still lingered inside her psyche.

Here was a muumuu made entirely out of belts and zippers. There was a garment which was naught but the buttoned pockets of cargo pants all sewn to each other in a blouse-like formation. On this pony mannequin: a set of parachute pants so slack and saggy, one could leap off a cliff in them and be assured of a safe glide back to earth. On that pony mannequin: dungarees dyed in the whimsical hues of smashed caterpillars and cockroaches.

Applejack seemed downright incapable of replicating any one of her bad designs twice, for no two abominations were precisely alike. A ballroom gown sewn out of green and orange bathroom towels and towelettes. Black silk trousers in which the fabric at the base of the pant legs pooled out over the wearer’s hooves, so that it looked they’d melted together into a puddle of oil. A fringed kimono-like thing whose lower half looked to have gone halfway through a paper shredder before jamming up the machine.

“...outside...” Rarity squeaked in her tiniest voice, eyes squeezed down against the sight of it all as she backed out. “...be waiting for you outside... my love...”

When the door slammed, Applejack went so quiet for so long, Lero had to touch her shoulder to bring her back to attention.

“So... Applejack... I came to see, were you able to make any of those outfits I commissioned from you?”

“Y-yeah,” she said, stepping into her back room to bring out a set of clothes. He unfolded them, looked them over, then headed to one of the dressing rooms, shut the door, and tried it on.

It fit.

It fit!?

It fit his body as smoothly as the socks on his feet. The fabric wasn’t even itchy or anything. Truly, for Applejack, this was progress. But when he looked in the dressing room’s mirror... egad!

"Hey, hows it goin'? Ah used tha' humannequin thing this time, Ah'm sure Ah got tha' right number of arms." Came AJ's voice suddenly, from outside.

A tiny part of him he wasn't proud of wanted to tell her it was an abomination: It was mostly scarlet, and in all ways resembled the outfit worn by Austin Powers in his movies. It even came with its own snap-on cravat, attached at the neck level. Only... the outfit seemed to have been fashioned from painters‘ drop cloths. Especially messy painters who had painted with many clashing colors. And because it fit him, Lero didn’t have the excuse of ‘I can’t physically wear this‘ to fall back on.

"Uh... yeah, AJ, it... it's a huge improvement." Lero replied in the most honest manner he could, stepping out into the open.

In all candid honesty, Lero had come to Applejack’s boutique because he needed disposal clothing. Shirts and pants he wouldn’t feel torn up about losing when the cottage critters tore them up. Since Rarity’s tailoring days were on indefinite hiatus... Lero now had precious few clothes he’d be proud to wear in public. But could he let Rainbow Dash see him in THIS?!

"Great! Ya gonna buy it?" She inquired. He noted a very faint trace of desperation under her cheeriness.

With a little more thought, though, Lero decided that Rainbow Dash needed an animal assistant far more desperately than a well-dressed man. In addition... Applejack needed some business. So he changed back into his original clothes.

"Definitely." he replied, paying for the outfit.

“Bless ya, Lero!” said Applejack, gazing at the bits he paid her like a starving beggar would. “Ah’m so glad Ah let ya in!”

“Pleasure doing business with you, AJ.”

Applejack peered at his current clothes while bagging the Austin Powers suit. “Ya know... why not wear these clothes ya bought home? If ya give me those torn-up threads a-yours, Ah think Ah can make somethin’ nice of it!”

“Nah, I’ll pass this time. Might start raining again... wouldn't want to ruin my brand-new threads!” It was a plausible excuse, but really, he didn’t want to risk upsetting Rarity by changing into this.

“Point taken. Weather forecast's been a bit off lately. Do come again.”

“Sure will.” Lero almost left, but a sudden curiosity struck him, and he turned back. “Hey, Applejack? Where’d you get that hat of yours?”

She blinked. “Mah hat?”

“Yeah. Where’d you get it?”

Honestly, this wasn't even an effort to dismantle a swapped pony’s illusions. He was genuinely curious as to what bizarre and unlikely story Applejack would come up to explain why a fashion designer wore a cowboy hat, day in and day out.

He watched her examine herself and examine her hat in one of her mirrors. She was silent for a while, but he didn’t even see her eyes glaze over the way Rarity’s had earlier that morning. Then she turned back toward him.

“Honestly? Ah don’t rightly remember.” She concluded, putting the hat back on.

Lero was surprised by this. “You don’t?” He persisted.

“Well, Mr. Handy, when Ah try to remember gettin’ this hat, mah mind just goes all fuzzy and blank. Maybe... maybe Ah picked it up somewhere when Ah got mahself real, real drunk. Though Ah ain’t totally sure if that’s so.” she shrugged.

Lero nodded slowly. “Huh. Well, why are you always wearing it, if it’s... just some hat you can't even recall getting?”

She took the mane off to study it more, and he could see the rest of the golden mane that was always hidden underneath, now actually coifed into a bun, rather than flowing wildly. “Ah wear it, cuz... cuz Ah like it! It jest makes me feel good!”

He admired this kind of answer.

“Although... ya thank Ah should leave it off? A fancy dress shop like mine... and beat-up ol’ country hats like this ain’t exactly the talk of the glamor rags.”

“No,” said Lero. “I like that hat, too. Keep it on, it’s right where it ought to be.”

"Heh, sure thing, Lero. Have a good night!"

And he left the boutique, promising himself he’d one day get Applejack to tell him the true story of that hat- when all of this was fixed.

* * *

As they headed towards home, he felt his eyes kept drooping, despite his best efforts to keep them open. Rarity must’ve noticed, as he suddenly felt his feet leave the earth; his whole body suddenly afloat in the air. His eyes flew open, his hand reflexively moving to break a fall — before realizing he was caught up in Rarity’s telekinesis, which then planted him on her back. Her horn glowed very lightly, but instead of causing a storm... Lero felt a soft tingling around all the lower half of his body, a violet-colored and semi-translucent aura of magic before fading from sight.

“Now what’s this?” He asked.

“A spell I should’ve cast back when we were flying in the air,” Rarity answered.

“What?” He didn't rem... Oh, wait, that was Rainbow, so Rarity would remember it being her. Damn, he was tired.

“This spell prevents you from falling off my back. Effectively, your body is now magnetically attached to mine,” she explained. “Between me and Rainbow Dash, you’ve had a long day, my prince. So if you want to nod off, then do so. I’ll carry you home safely.”

“Rarity, come on, you don't have...”

He trailed off as the cyan feather braided in Lero’s hair brushed his skin again. A memory surfaced;

’M a skinny, garish, over-muscled freak…

“Hey, Rarity? Do the other ponies ever hit on you?” Lero asked. “You know, when you’re out and about town, doing your thing?” There had been no accusation or possessive jealousy in his voice, just pure inquisitiveness.

“Where did that come from?” she asked, tilting her head slightly to glance back at him.

“I dunno. Guess I’m tired, but... I’m just curious how much other ponies realize how beautiful you are. How beautiful you see yourself.” He almost began to wish he hadn’t asked her such a stupid thing, when she answered.

“I do know I’m pretty. I’ve always known that. Sometimes, there’s a part of me... a little voice in my head... that insists I waste time making myself pretty. I never listen to it. I like being admired by other ponies, and I always do my best to give them as much to admire about me as possible. In my actions, in my words, and in my looks. Otherwise, I wouldn't be confident about myself, and I’ve always hated that.”

It occurred to Lero that if Rarity had ‘always’ been this confident about her looks, her version of how they met together, how they fell in love, might diverge considerably from how it’d happened in reality with Rainbow Dash, as she lacked Dash's body issues. He’d have to have her tell that story, later on when the time was right. It’d probably be fascinating to hear.

“Other ponies do notice. I do get looks, the occasional catcall, offers to go to dinner or movies,” Rarity continued.

“From who?” He asked. It surprised him that any pony tried, knowing she was in a herd.

She hmmmed thoughtfully, looking up as if mentally reviewing them. “A few of the other weathermares. Sometimes one of the townsfolk or a traveler.”

“Are you ever tempted?” Lero asked, leaning forward so it was easier for her to look at him.

“Mmm... very briefly, at times. Until I remember how happy I am with my herd as it is.” She favored him with a smile.

Lero couldn't help smiling back. “A girl like you could’ve gone with so many other ponies... and I’m the one you picked.”

“You’ve never given me a single reason to regret that, Lero.” And she pulled him slightly forward to give him a quick kiss.

* * *

Lero had actually kept awake throughout the ride back to their library home. They found Twilight at a table, next to a large pile of books and some newly-opened cardboard boxes.

“What’s all this?” Lero asked.

“Books!” Twilight told him brightly.

“Yeah. I see you got a lot of them.” Lero glanced over some of the titles. The Question Of Free Will by Inevitable Outcome. Magic And Memory Modification by Spell Bound. Identity Formation by Self Concept.

“I got fifty!” Twilight boasted. “I special-ordered them through a different library!”

“So you think these books will provide the answer you need?” Rarity asked.

“If not, I’ll order fifty more books from some other library!” There was a feverish look in Twilight’s eyes which Lero instantly disliked. “Oh! Also, there’s a package here for you, Rarity!”

Twilight levitated a smaller package onto the table. Once Rarity had read its return address, she tore it open with gusto. “Ah, finally!” she said, bringing out an ID card, and several documents.

“So you got a new ID card, then?” Lero asked.

“Yes!” said Rarity. “This morning, when I couldn’t find my old ID, or any of my paperwork, I flew straight to the Weather Board to replace what I was missing!” She leaned her head in, laying the dramatic tension on thick. “You’re not going to believe this, but when I got there, it turned out they had NO FILES on me AT ALL. NONE.”

“No files at all?” asked Spike, who’d been sitting next to Twilight, chewing on a piece of beryl. “You mean like... you were never actually part of the Weather Ponies to begin with?”

“Exactly!” Rarity breathed, with the full suspense befitting a first-rate ghost story. “It was the spookiest, eeriest thing! I mean, I’ve been working as a Weather pony for YEARS, long before I ever met any of the rest of you! And for all that documentation to simply VANISH...!”

“What did your bosses have to say?” asked Twilight.

“Well, Valley Breeze — she’s the head — was completely at a loss to explain it! She apologized very earnestly, and promised she’d personally get to the bottom of this! Valley even teased me a bit, saying I was ‘practically part of the infrastructure’ of the Weather Factory, and we both laughed about our time as trainees together! All the same, I ended up spending the rest of the morning filling out registration forms and such — as though I were some brand-new arrival! — but now that’s over and I’m back in the system, and thank Celestia for that!”

Rarity’s horn glowed, they heard water being poured into a glass, then it levitated over from the kitchen for Rarity to drink. “Still, I’m just... FLOORED. I mean, did somepony at the filing department just flush it all down the tubes?”

“I blame spies,” said Spike, taking his last bite of the beryl.

“Spies?” Rarity’s eyes widened. “Spies! Of course! Undercover agents, seeking to erase evidence of my existence for their own nefarious ends! It’s the only logical explanation! We have a snake in our midst!”

“Huh?” chorused Spike and Lero.

Twilight glanced up from her book for a second. "Spies? Really, Rar..." Twilight started, before being cut off by Rarity, now in full swing.

“Spike! Take a message!” But just as the young dragon automatically drew out his quill and scroll, she reconsidered. “No... no, if this is a matter of espionage, then this’ll have to be very CAREFULLY worded...!”

And she grabbed Spike’s scroll, quill and inkwell from the little dragon and ran upstairs to her bedroom with them.

“Well,” said Spike. “The Princess sure’s gonna have a fun read ahead of her.”

“Mmm-hmm,” hummed Twilight, immersed back in Magic And Memory Modification.

“Hey, Spike?” said Lero. “I need your help for a second. Where do we keep our books on animals? Particularly pet care?”

Spike raised a scaly eyebrow at the human. “You’re going to go back to Dash’s cottage tomorrow, aren’t you?”

“Of course I am! I was finally able to do something meaningful for her today... but I need to do more. Much more. I need to figure out a way to get those animals under control. Dash’s too overwrought, too caught up in her vicious cycle to step back and actually LEARN how to care for animals, herself.”

Spike nodded and hopped out of his chair. “Right this way!” he said, leading him to a bookshelf in a different room.

Lero looked over the titles. Yes... to the extent that book-learning could help him, everything he’d need was here. Where to start, though? Dogs? Nah... he already knew enough about dogs to be getting by with. Cats? But then his eyes fell on a bunny book. He thought of Angel Bunny, and drew out The Secrets of Excellent Rabbit Care by Creme D’Argent, and sat on one of the nearest couches.

Introduction

There’s no greater joy than having a pet rabbit. Adults and foals alike find endless joy nurturing and playing with these adorable furry creatures. When rabbits are treated as members of the family, you cannot help being grateful for all the delight and happiness they bring. Just imagine when they start to breed; you will soon have as much as a dozen of these tiny fuzzy creatures in the nest box...

Lero recalled all those bunnies hopping up and down on Rainbow Dash as if aiming to break her bones. Resisting the urge to rip out the introduction, he instead flipped ahead to a page that offered more practical guidance.

“Though rabbits love sweets,” he read aloud in a mutter, “make sure you feed them in very small amounts, as too much sugar can lead to obesity and other health problems. Never feed chocolate to your rabbit, as chocolate contains theobromine which is toxic to rabbits.”

Dang it... he’d need to take notes. This was like school all over again.

“Hey, Spike!” he called out, and the dragon came back. “Could you give me some paper and a quill-and-ink set too? I got a lot of studying of my own to do.”

“Sure thing,” said Spike. “Incidentally, if you’re looking for advice with the animals, you could always talk to me. Back before the Swap, Fluttershy would have me pet-sit all her animals when she needed to leave the cottage, after I proved myself as a pet-sitter. After all, SOMEONE needed to watch them all, whenever she went out with Twilight and the other four on Elements of Harmony business. So I know how to take care of them.”

“Alright, cool. I’ll keep that offer in mind, but for now, I’d like to wait, wait, wait... hold the phone!” The human dropped his book as his brain finally caught up with mouth.

“Spike... my wonderful little friend who is as good as a kid brother to me... did I just hear you right? You just say that you’ve babysat Fluttershy’s animals? All of them?! By yourself?! You know how to take care of them all?!”

Spike could see where this was going from the eager, almost pleading, expression on the human's face. "...You're gonna owe me big on this, Lero."

Author's Note

For those of you who care, I don’t think of the swapped ponies in terms of portmanteau names, (e.g. ‘Dashity’ or anything similar) because to me, those all sound like shipping names. Rather, I differentiate the ponies from their former selves in terms of their jobs... and if you’ve noticed, so does Lero. For example:

ORIGINAL VERSIONS: Applejack the Farmer, Rarity the Dressmaker, Rainbow Dash the Wonderbolt, Fluttershy the Caretaker, Pinkie Pie the Party Queen

SWAPPED VERSIONS: Applejack the Dressmaker, Rarity the Weather Pony, Rainbow Dash the Caretaker, Fluttershy the Joker, Pinkie Pie the Farmer

The more you know!

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Xenophoolia: (2 of 6) But I Look A Little Closer And It Starts To Feel Familiar Too

Xenophoolia - A trilogy in six parts.

Part 1 of 6 - “If you follow me we'll put our differences aside.”
Part 2 of 6 - “But I look a little closer and it starts to feel familiar too.” (YOU ARE HERE)
Part 3 of 6 - “I'm just like you and you're just like me.”
Part 4 of 6 - “Everything is turned around, this crazy world is upside-down.”
Part 5 of 6 - “Helped me to see all the possibilities.”
Part 6 of 6 - “I couldn't see what was right there in front of me.”

It was a quiet morning in the Carousel Boutique, and there were no browsing patrons present to notice the sudden breeze that pushed and pulled at the display ponyquins, ruffling the frills and ribbons of the display stock and knocking to the ground what could only be called a ‘hat’ if one was seriously understating this most elaborate of chapeaus.

With a hiss, a large spark jumped between two of the ponyquins, followed quickly by another, then another. Within seconds the space between the dressmaker’s dummies was filled with numerous arcs of tiny lightning bolts, each converging on the same spot roughly a pony’s head height from the ground, where they merged into a glowing ball made of pure energy.

Suddenly, the ball expanded in size until it was approaching at least two body lengths in width before vanishing just as quickly as it had arrived, leaving behind no trace it had ever existed. What it did leave behind though were a pair of beings that were handling the situation of their instantaneous — and rather undignified — arrival in this specific plane of existence in remarkably different ways.

The first being, a creature made up of a complete mishmash of different body parts — and known by almost as many names, not all of them polite — was completely unfazed by their sudden and unannounced mid-air arrival. Hovering as he was, he casually stretched and extended his legs towards the ground and then let them shrink back to normal — ‘normal’ being somewhat of a relative term when it came to the God of Chaos — gently lowering his body to the ground as he did so.

His traveling companion — not being a Chaos God, a pegasus pony or indeed any other kind of creature endowed with the powers of either magic or flight — swiftly found out just how much of a harsh mistress gravity really is as he proceeded to plummet to the ground with all the grace and poise of a large house brick.

From his now supine position on the showroom floor, Lero Michaelides, dimensional traveller and foreigner to this version of Equestria, groaned and griped as he gingerly pulled himself into a sitting position.

“Really nailed that landing there, my boy, I’ll give you... six out of ten,” Discord chortled from where he stood above the floored human, “You’d think that by now you’d be a dab hand at cross-reality travel. I mean, this is far from your first-ever pan-dimensional portal.”

“Maybe,“ Lero replied as he rolled a shoulder that he was sure would be developing a nasty bruise pretty soon, “but it’s not as if I can remember the others though. Not sure I want to either.”

“True, true” Discord nodded sagely, “So, would you like a hand?”

“Please,” Lero held up a hand so that Discord could pull him up. As he grasped at the draconequus’ proffered limb he was only mildly surprised when it turned out to not be connected to the rest of Discord’s body.

“Sorry,” Discord grinned, “old habits die hard.”

As the chaos god reconnected his errant limb, and then used it to pull the unamused human to his feet, Lero finally got a good look at their surroundings. The first thing he noticed was where they were — which was the home and trading establishment of the town’s resident fashionista — but it was the second thing he noticed that really jumped out at him.

On the other side of the room, totally oblivious to the presence of the new arrivees, was a pair of ponies Lero knew quite well — a white unicorn mare with a striking indigo mane and a pale blue pegasus mare whose own tresses were positively polychromatic.

But what was really surprising was the rather familiar looking human standing beside them.

“Oh dear God! I can’t believe it… it’s me. This really is an alternate universe! And look! Rainbow’s got RD’s cutie mark on her! Look!”

Discord watched the human pointed at the multicolored thunderbolt on Rainbow Dash’s flank.

“And…” Lero’s eyes popped as he saw Rarity, and what cutie mark the white unicorn wore. “Diamonds?”

Maybe pulling Lero from one week after the damage had been done hadn’t been his best move. Perhaps going further back in this Lero’s timeline, and plucking him from one-month-before-Twilight-cast-the-spell would yield better results.

“Why diamonds? What’s going on? Why’d you bring me to the boutique? What’s with the bizarre humanoid mannequin?”

“Now come on!” Discord chuckled. “That’s a pretty harsh way for a guy to speak about himself!”

And he gave a friendly noogie to the Lero-who-belonged-here, who didn’t so much as blink. The glare he got from his human guest was too sour not to love. To heck with better results: Discord was sticking with this Lero, and seeing him all the way through!

“That really IS me, huh?” One Lero stood in front of the other, trying and failing to catch his other self’s oblivious eye. Even poking and pinching the other guy did nothing to attract his notice. “So, really, what IS going on?”

“Try opening your ears and closing your mouth, instead of the other way around.” Discord suggested. “You’ll learn more.”

With another surly look, Lero went quiet.

“You’ve been watching waaaay too many weird shows at the movie theater lately,” said the Lero-of-this-world to Rainbow Dash, who only laughed and reared back on her hind legs to embrace him.

“Awww, you know I’m only kidding! I love my human stallion, clothes and all! You’re like a birthday gift I can unwrap every night, and those FINGERS of yours... mmm, they’re just too MAGICAL to get rid of!”

Lero’s cheeks went pink as he watched his other self cuddle with Rainbow Dash.

“So, Lero,” Discord questioned, as the man and pegasus began kissing each other. “This wouldn’t happen to be stirring any...?”

“None of your business!”

“...Memories, I was going to say.”

The Chaos God had to hide a smile behind a lion paw as the human beside him muttered something about how this was all ‘only some weirdo alternate universe anyway.’ Then Lero’s attention turned to Rarity, and he let out a sigh.

“So that’s what Rare’s mane looks like when it’s long,” he said, coming up behind the unicorn. “It looks so nice! I should ask her to grow it out one of these days.”

And he took two big handfuls of Rarity’s elegantly styled mane and lifted it to his nose for a big whiff, as though it were a rose bouquet, even as she continued chatting with the other Lero and Rainbow Dash.

“Mmm! Lavender and… lilac, I think! Yes, lilac. It smells wonderful. Usually, RD likes using shampoos that are ‘Tornado’-scented and ‘Squall’-scented, and ‘Dust Devil’-scented…”

“Ah-HEM.” Discord coughed, giving him a very forbidding glower. “This NOT why I brought you here, Mr. Michealides!”

“Sorry! Very sorry!” Lero said, coming over and grinning apologetically. “Shutting up now!”

Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and the local Lero were now in the middle of talking.

“This is not to be repeated…” the local Lero told the ponies, “But just last night, Twilight got this special package from Princess Celestia. It contains an unfinished spell from this really ancient... uber-magical... wizard... Gandalf-fellow, from the days of yore. Starswirl the Bearded.”

“Never heard of him,” Rarity admitted.

“Well, to hear Twilight go on about him, you’d think he was the Fourth Alicorn that time forgot.” Rainbow Dash snorted.

“He's that big a deal?” Rarity asked, pouring herself a cup of chamomile tea.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Discord muttered, rubbing at his eyes.

He hadn’t really been around to see this part of things, back when they first were happening. Princess Celestia had kept him on standby until Twilight Sparkle had actually cast the spell.

“Yeah,” the local Lero said. “Anyway, this Starswirl guy apparently came up with a big spell of some sort, but he only got so far with it before he died. Princess Celestia wants Twilight to see whether she can complete his work... finish his unfinished masterpiece. But Twilight wants us out of the house first. She refused to even look at Starswirl’s spell to see what it’s supposed to do... didn’t want to risk this dodgy, unfinished ultra-spell hitting anyone in her herd.”

“I think I know what spell they’re talking about,” Discord’s guest commented at his side. “Comes in an old black book with a swirly thing and a bunch of silver stars on the cover, right?”

“That’s the one,” Discord said.

“Well, my Twilight Sparkle, from my world, has the same book. She tried to cast the spell they’re describing about a week ago, but nothing happened.”

“I see.” Discord made a slight swirl with a pinky finger, and the entire scene dissolved into mist.

“So that’s it? We’re done?” Lero asked.

“No! I’ll TELL you when I’m done! That was just the first part of it! Don’t be so impatient!” Discord snapped. “I’m merely ‘transitioning to the next scene,’ to put it in filmmakers’ parlance. After all, the quality of a storyteller’s story hinges as much on his sense of editing as his actual content, right? Or would you rather I show you the unabridged version?”

“No, no!” said Lero quickly. “Short and sweet suits me fine!”

So Discord bent his index claw, and the mist re-solidified into a vision of a beauteous skyscape. Discord and his guest each rode on their own floating surfboards, (well, his human guest wrapped himself around the board, hugging it for dear life, while Discord really knew how to hang ten… or at least three and a hoof) tailing a pair of high-flying lovebirds, cavorting through the sky: Rainbow Dash and the local Lero.

It was impossible for Discord to miss the thunderstruck astonishment on his guest’s face, as he witnessed Rainbow Dash show off her remarkable repertoire of aerial acrobatics… finally culminating in a bird knocking the local Lero off Rainbow Dash’s back.

“Watch her cutie mark!” Discord said, grabbing his guest’s cheeks from behind and tilting the human’s head as though it were a camera, making it follow Rainbow Dash’s flank. “Watch her cutie mark, watch her cutie mark, watch her cutie mark!”

As her human stallion plummeted towards a Bramblewood Forest Bramble Tower, the pegasus shot down to catch him with all the speed she could muster and a look of desperate terror in her eyes…

...But the rainbow thunderbolt cutie mark vanished. And with it, Rainbow’s look of desperate terror. And with THAT, all her efforts to save Lero’s life. The last thing Discord and his guest saw on the local Lero’s face was absolute shock before he was swallowed up into brambles.

“That… that’s IT?!” The local Lero sputtered. But Discord refused to let go of his head until he’d witnessed three butterflies emerge on her flank, heard her murmur, ‘My animals,’ and then fly off in the direction of Ponyville. “That’s the big, humongous mind-blowing revelation you wanted to show me?! Rainbow murdering me by dropping me into a Bramble Tower?!”

“Oh no,” Discord told him. “You survive.”

And from there, Lero watched his local self crawl out, slowly, painfully, from the bottom of the Bramble Tower, a living pincushion of thorns, weeping blood from practically every pore.

“Holy Christ…” the human whispered, looking down at his own unbloodied skin, and feeling a rush of gratitude.

He and Discord followed his poor local self, stumbling through the woods a little while, before coming across a living nightmare.

“Meet the Bramblewood Titan Spider,” Discord introduced.

It was an arachnid a little over six feet high and fifteen feet long, with a gory, infected stump where an eighth leg should’ve been. It sprang on the local Lero, stuck his fangs in him, envenomed him, cocooned him, dragged him all around the forest and jabbed his sharp, spindly legs past the cocoon silk into his flesh, repeatedly, unceasingly, making the guy scream and scream and scream…

“Those are MY screams…” Lero breathed through the fingers clamped over his mouth.

And the spider just kept dragging his human captive around to different parts of the forest, keeping him screaming, screaming, screaming nonstop to attract prey that he could ambush and feast upon.

“So gross… just look at how that thing EATS…” Lero was white as a sheet as he watched the spider slurp up a mountain lion’s liquified intestines.

On and on it went, at times, Lero could almost swear he felt those arachnid’s legs upon his own body, as the spider kept his other self screaming, until he literally had no voice left to scream with…

“AAAAAAIIIEEEEEE!!!” Some many-legged thing had landed on the back of Lero’s neck! Lero whirled around, slapping the nape of his neck, hoping it wasn’t poisonous or paralyzing…

...Discord held a stick. On the end of the stick, a string was tied. And on the end of the string dangled a little rubber spider.

“What?” he asked peevishly.

Punching the draconequus was not an advisable move, but Lero punched Discord anyway.

“Make it stop!” Lero begged, pointing at the cocooned version of him. “That’s me that’s screaming! I’m going to die!”

“Wait for it…” Discord said.

Sweet salvation came in a cave, when the local Lero was on death’s doorstep; no voice left, about to die or be eaten by the very angry and frustrated giant spider.

“Woo-hoo! That’s it! That’s IT! Eviscerate him!” Lero cheered, as a very muddy and disheveled unicorn mare stepped into the cave, full of bearish wrath, and quickly frying the spider to a crisp as only a warrior weather-sorceress like herself could.

“That’s my girl!” he said, blowing the muddy unicorn a kiss of his own, as he saw her deliver a kiss to the local version of himself.

“And look!” he said, beaming at the mark on Rarity’s flank, a little later, after Rarity washed the mud out of her coat. “RD’s cutie mark is back on the flank it was meant to be! All’s well that ends well!”

“RD?” Discord repeated. “Wait a minute. Time out. Let me get this straight once and for all, Lero: exactly who are you referring to when you say ‘RD?’”

Lero pointed again at Rarity. “Her!”

“She’s RD?”

“Absolutely!” said Lero. “My sweet Rare Deluge, who else?”

“Rare… Deluge.”

Discord bit his lower lip. He snapped his fingers, and the setting around them changed from a spider cave to what seemed to be a cop’s office at a police station.

The fluorescent light overhead flickered dully on the white-painted walls, playing over a bulletin board where a series of pictures were marked with "Two Weeks To Retirement," "Getting Married In Three Days," and "Fresh From The Academy." Six of the pictures had red X's over them. The old steel desk in the center of the room was dented and scarred, covered in forms and paperwork.

Lero now found himself seated in a chair before this desk, and Discord was the officer behind it. The draconequus wore a button-down shirt and a novelty necktie with police badges all over it. Both looked frumpled enough to have been slept on. A second ‘Discord,’ dressed in tweeds, sat in a corner of the room, holding a pencil and a large sketch pad.

“Lero, buddy, bear with me as I ask you a few dumb-sounding question, mmkay?” He picked out a glazed violet-colored doughnut from a doughnut box. “Does the name ‘Rainbow Dash’ mean anything to you? Anything at all?”

“No,” said Lero. “Only Rainbow I know is Rainbow Connection, the wife of my best friend, Big Macintosh.”

Discord nodded his head with noticeable slowness.

“So this... this ‘Rainbow Connection’ girl… she wouldn’t happen to be a blue-coated, rainbow-maned pegasus mare, would she?”

The sketch artist draconequus quickly sketched up a drawing, showing Lero. It was Rainbow Dash with three pink butterflies on her flank.

“Yeah, of course! Her mane looks a mess… she never actually wears it that tomboyish... but yeah, that’s her! In fact, you saw her toss me into the brambles just before her right cutie mark appeared and she left me for dead! Always the quiet ones…” the human finished in a mutter.

“Mmm-hmm.” Officer Discord took a full coffee carafe off the percolator and emptied every last drop of java into his mouth. But before actually swallowing, he dropped in several unopened packets of artificial sweetener and non-dairy creamer and swished it around. “I’m gonna go out on another limb and guess that Ms. Connection is also a big animal lover and an Element Bearer, besides? Kindness, maybe?”

“AND she’s the one that one who turned YOU from an uncontrollable chaotic monster into an uncontrollable chaotic jerk,” The look on the human’s face was questioning why Discord was playing the dumb newcomer: this was stuff he should know!

But Discord flashed him a flattered smile. “Oh-ho-ho, I do try! After all, controllable chaos is no chaos at all, am I right?”

Abruptly, the scene around them transformed…

* * *

...And the next thing Lero knew, he was exiting a bathroom stall, heading towards the sink. But the sight in the mirror stopped him.

Reflected back at him was a young boy’s face… HIS face! Himself at around the age of twelve. Shorter, less developed, and clean-shaven… except that wasn’t quite the right word, was it? He hadn’t even needed to shave this early in his life.

Then his eyes were drawn to the digital sundial on the wall and those thoughts scattered like marshmallows in a colander. Good heavens, it was almost learn o’clock! Quickly, the boy turned on the faucet, scrubbing his hands under a stream of strawberry syrup until they were sparkling clean, then stepped out.

For the next couple of minutes, Lero’s body entered a sort of autopilot state; his legs moved one foot in front of the other without his really willing it. Oddly, his mood was calm and untroubled in spite of this loss of control, and in spite of what sort of school he now found himself in.

To the same extent that Equestria was a pony’s world, this place, (whatever its name) was undeniably a draconequus’ world. Which wasn’t to say that the draconequui here were all clones of Discord. They weren’t, any more than Equestrian ponies were all copies of Twilight Sparkle.

Lero saw three young draconequus boys by a drinking fountain, all trying to see which of them could blow his head up the funniest. An overweight draconequus janitor was wiping down the rows of school lockers with a toothbrush the size of a mop.

And there was also a smartly-dressed lady draconequus tacking notices on the bulletin board. Her goat horn and crocodile tail were almost an exact match for his own mother’s…

Wait, what?

But by then, Lero’s feet had led him into what he somehow knew to be his classroom. Every desk was filled with draconequus children his age, except for one empty one, toward which Lero made his way. As with Equestria, Lero seemed to be the one and only human in this strange place.

The one common factor between all the chimera-children was a combination of dragon and horse features. Apart from that, they were even more varied than ponies were. There was a seagull-footed, turtle-shelled video game addict playing a muted handheld system behind his schoolbook. Also a lemur-tailed, dragonfly-winged girl dressed in trendy clothes, a rooster-winged, crab-legged muscular guy, dressed in a varsity calvinball jacket...

Discord, of course, was at the front of the class, as teacher.

“Alright, pop quiz, hotshot!” he said, pointing at Lero as soon as he sat. “For 10 points, give the name, job, and physical description of the mare who bears the Element of Generosity for me!”

“Diamondjack!” Lero answered smartly. “Blond mane, orange coat, Earth pony, always wears something fancy! Runs the Jack of Diamonds clothing boutique.”

“‘Diamondjack,’ eh? Kinda catchy, actually!” And a small cookie materialized on top of Lero’s desk: it had chocolate chips that spelled out the number 10.

Clapping his hands together, Discord then looked around at the entire classroom. “And for 20 points, who can name and describe the Element of Honesty for me?”

“Me! Me! Me! Pick me!” All sorts of arms shot up eagerly in the air: wolf paws, lobster pincers, bat wings, reindeer hooves, elephant trunks, seal flippers, everyone wanted to be called on!

“How about… Mr. Michealides again!”

Caught by surprise, Lero swallowed the bite of cookie he was in the middle of eating.

“Pink Lady Apple. Pink mane, pink coat, Earth pony; she farms at Sweet Apple Acres.”

God, had his voice really sounded that high-pitched back then?

A larger cookie with a big 20 in icing materialized before Lero. He bit in.

“These are good, by the way.”

“Mmm-hmm,” said Discord, copying all of Lero’s answers down on the blackboard.

Lero, though, happened to look to the side… and sitting directly to his left was a draconequus girl: squirrel tail, matching jaguar legs, and fixing him with coquettish eyes, blowing him a kiss, holding a webbed frog hand up to her ear as though it were a phone and mouthing the words ‘call me!’

He nearly choked with horror.

“Finally, for 50 points, Lero, give me the skinny on the mare who bears the Element of Magic!”

Lero folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Twilight Sparkle, purple unicorn, Celestia’s student and my wife!”

The draconequus girl who blew Lero a kiss ran out of the room in hysterical, jilted tears.

And suddenly, the classroom and all of Lero’s classmates disappeared, and Lero was an adult again, standing atop an infinite polka dot-patterned nothingness.

Discord paced around in a tight circle, looking for all the world like Sherlock Holmes chewing over a juicy clue.

“So in THIS Equestria, it alters their NAMES as well,” he said, puffing a pipe that let out miniature confetti bursts. “Intriguing. At least Twilight still remains her old self, so at least she’s not under any bewitchment…!”

Lero brought his foot down atop a polka dot that squeaked under the impact and ran off. “Okay, enough’s enough. Just what the hell you’re talking about?! What’s ‘altering names?’ Why are you asking me about the Elements of Harmony like you don’t know them? Why would you think Twilight’s been bewitched?”

“The Swap.”

Lero frowned. “The Swap?”

“The. Swap. Two small, simple words… and they answer every question you just asked.”

Reality shifted once more. Now Lero found himself inside a once-elegant hotel room, gone to ruin. With its warped wood and peeling wallpaper, its moth-eaten lace and dusty furniture and especially the dramatic thunderstorm booming outside, it looked perfectly suited to be part of a haunted house.

Yet somehow, the circular mirrored glasses Discord wore over his eyes, coupled with the black leather trenchcoat over his body suggested something different from a ghost story.

“The Swap is everywhere,” Discord declared. He and Lero sat across from each other in cracked burgundy-colored leather chairs. “It's all around us, especially right here in your mind, Lero, and the minds of practically every creature alive on this bright and colorful pony-world. You can see it in family photographs and newspaper clippings. You experience its touch when you pay visits to your best friend’s farm, or buy crullers from your local bakery. And you’ll see it especially in the eyes and hearts of two of the mares who share your home. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”

Bursting into laughter, Lero clapped his hands as though at terrific comedy. “Great line read, there, Morpheus!”

The dried leather creaked as Discord leaned forward. “I’m being dead serious, Lero. I meant every word of what I just said.”

Lero locked eyes with Discord, but only saw himself, reflected in those mirrored lenses. The Chaos God’s gaze was even and steady enough to unsettle him.

“So you’re saying this Swap thing is… kinda like the Matrix?”

Discord’s razor-thin smile could’ve cut glass. “Well, it’s a false reality enforced by magic on top of the real one, not a separate existence altogether, but essentially, yes. You get the idea.”

“Whoa.” Lero contemplated this uncomfortably, then scoffed. “Even if this were true, why come to me? Do I look like Keanu Reeves to you? I don’t even like you, Discord. Why would I even matter to you?”

“Because, well… because…” Sighing, the draconequus removed those mirrored sunglasses for a second, so Lero could see his real eyes. “Because it matters to me. In the unfathomable enormity of the multiverse, there exists one very special version of Equestria. An Equestria which I am not only sworn to protect, but one which I dearly love revisiting for its own sake. And in this Equestria, Lero, you and I are friends.”

“Friends? Us?!” asked Lero, amazed and skeptical.

“Yep,” said Discord, placing the glasses back over his eyes.

“And which version of Equestria would that be?”

From a coat pocket, Discord pulled out a remote control, aimed it across the room at a television that looked to have been bought in 1978. It switched on, showing the Lero of an alternate universe inside what looked like some kind of weird pink church. He was chasing Discord, and trying to stab him with a broken bottle. The shirt this other Lero wore read ‘University of Idaho.’

“You’re free to not like me,” Discord told the Lero seated across from him. “But I respect HIM…”

He pointed a talon at the Lero on TV, who was waltzing out of Diamondjack’s boutique wearing… Good Lord, was that Colin Baker’s outfit from Doctor Who? Why?

“...So much, that I just couldn’t stand to let the Swap have a complete no-contest, won-before-anything-begun victory over YOU, Lero. You at least deserve something of a fighting chance.”

Discord switched the TV off. Doubt and worry were beginning to nibble at Lero’s heart.

“But you’ll need to show me you want that fighting chance. Hold out your hands.”

Instinctively Lero obeyed. In the human’s right hand, Discord dropped a large red cookie shaped like the number fifty. In the human’s left hand, the draconequus dropped a blue cookie, also shaped like a fifty.

“You eat the blue cookie and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever the Swap wants you to believe. You eat the red cookie and we begin to lift the fog from your eyes.”

The cookies in Lero’s open hands reflected perfectly in Discord’s glasses.

“One word of warning,” said Discord, steepling his fingers as he leaned backwards. “I’m not just being some Wachowski Brothers fanboy with all this, and this isn’t some silly late-night parody skit. There’s a REASON I’m using Matrix symbolism and imagery. It’s a quick, crude metaphor, just so you can BEGIN to comprehend what manner of sorcery now enthralls this world. And the consequences are exactly what I say they’re going to be. So pick your cookie carefully.”

The human stared between the two cookies he held.

On one hand, part of him felt foolish at just the the idea of trusting Discord. He’d be better off investing his money in a Ponzi scheme.

But on the off-chance that all this was real… if this Swap thing really was like The Matrix, did he really have it in him to be a superhero on par with Neo? He seriously doubted it.

Then again, Mr. Thomas A. Anderson started off as an office worker and computer hacker who was a bit of a loser...

For as long as he could remember, Lero Michealides had been a low-key, go-with-the-flow-and-don’t-rock-the-boat kind of guy, more or less the exact opposite of the thrill-seeking daredevil his beloved RD was. It was a big part of what had won him the love of his girls in the first place!

Yet for all that, he’d die of shame before allowing himself to be so close-minded, cowardly, unadventurous, and incurious as to swallow the blue pill.

I can at least hear what Discord has to say. Lero reasoned. Not like I’m signing on to fight on the front lines of World War III or whatever.

The red cookie tasted like pomegranates, raspberries, strawberries, watermelon, tomatoes, cranberries, cherries, and rhubarb all at once.

“Marvelous!” said the Chaos God, pulling a white rabbit from out of his ear. The bunny was as big as an adult collie, and Discord dropped him. Even BEFORE hitting the old wood beneath their feet, the rabbit dug, dug, DUG downwards, faster than Xenomorph blood through the floors of the Nostromo.

“And so our tour of the multiverse continues!” crowed Discord, diving headfirst with him down the bottomless rabbit hole while pulling a very surprised Lero in after him by the front of his shirt. They achieved light speed within seconds.

* * *

“I don’t believe I’ve mentioned this yet, but you have good instincts,” Discord commented.

Lero’s eyes were clamped tightly shut against the rush of air. “What?” he asked.

“Oh, some of the things you see on the way between worlds have a tendency to inspire insanity,” Discord said breezily. “Not always, of course, but every now and then. I find it refreshing. But you’ve got enough to do at the moment without having to escape from a padded cell first, and the worst we passed on this trip was Far Too Much Gak. But once we do arrive, I have something very important for you to keep in mind.”

“And what would that be?” Lero inquired. Keeping his eyes shut felt like an even better idea. Watching the light red-shift as they accelerated had been much more disturbing than science fiction had led him to believe.

“Don’t open your eyes just yet, Lero. But when we’re in these alternate Equestrias, I want you to always, always be paying special attention to every pony’s cutie mark.” Lero felt Discord flick a claw against his hip.

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know whether he’d suddenly developed a cutie mark right there, or what Discord would have applied if he did. “Cutie marks?” he asked, but Discord just made an amused snort.

“Well, I wanted to call them Boring Destruction Of The Entire Concept Of Free Will Marks, but the ponies said it was too hard to sing, and they came up with something shorter. I mean, imagine being shackled to a single thing your entire life! Part of the reason I like you is because you have the good sense to not have one."

"I can't get one," Lero reminded him.

"No point bragging about your natural advantages to me, Lero, I’m free of them too. Oh, and you can open your eyes, we’re here now.”

Lero opened his eyes. It was a long, long way down, but he wasn’t falling. After a moment of disorientation, he realized there was a belt around his waist. He looked over his shoulder and saw a fishing line attached to the back of the belt, going up to the rod in Discord’s hand. The draconequus was flying along in a seated position, wearing a hat with hooks in it and with an... ice chest next to him, flying with little wings.

Lero could see Discord smirking and made a mental note to never even think of ice chests as ‘coolers’ ever again. Just to be on the safe side.

Then the fishing line snapped. Lero sucked in a breath to yell — and then realized that he still wasn’t falling. The belt vanished, but Lero continued flying along just the same. He looked to the sides and realized that they weren’t alone. Rainbow was flying rapidly, wearing a harness. The harness was pulling something that looked halfway between a cloud and a chariot, with Twilight Sparkle and Miss Heartstrings riding in it. The three mares had looks of grave intensity on their faces.

Lero stared. It wasn’t the sight of Rainbow pulling the others that was so odd. It was the purple star on her flank, and the tri-colored lightning bolt on Twilight Sparkle’s, and the harp on the third mare, beside Twilight.

“... Is this a dream?” Lero had to ask.

Discord raised a finger, then stopped, tilted his head, and hmmmed. “You know, that’s actually a very good question. I don’t believe you’d care for the answer, so I’ll just say ‘no.’ Oh, and just a reminder: once again, as far as they’re concerned, we’re not really here. No touching, they can’t hear or see us, and so on.”

“Rrrrrgh!” grunted Twilight Sparkle from the chariot. “Come on, Rainbow, faster! I can hold it together, I promise!”

“I’m going as fast as I can, Twilight,” the pegasus said, strain roughening her voice. “I can’t exactly rainboom with this much aerodynamic drag behind me.”

“We’ll make it when we make it,” the aqua mare said, then added, “I just hope it’s in time.”

“What’s the plan, Rainbow?” the purple unicorn asked.

“Why’s Twilight asking Rainbow Connection for a plan?” Lero asked Discord. “And since when does Rainbow fly this fast? Are they trying to rescue a baby bird or something?”

Discord rolled his eyes. “None so blind as those who will not see, except the ones who got sriracha sauce in their eyes, because then you end up with a runny nose and lots of screaming that makes it even harder to pay attention,”

“Normally I’d want to have everything ready by now, but this time I think we’re going to have to go with a Sparkle Special,” the blue pegasus admitted. “Charge in blindly and try to react.”

“Whoooo!” Twilight Sparkle bounced in place in the cloud-chariot, then grabbed the edge to hold on tighter. “I love it when no plan’s the plan! You ready, Lyra?” The harp-flanked unicorn nodded.

“What.” Lero stared, not believing what he’d just heard from his beloved patron saint of checklists-checked-thrice herself. “Discord, you’ve done something to her, right? And did you fix Miss Heartstrings’ eyes?”

“Not a thing in the world,” Discord assured him. “Different Equestria, and a very blatantly obvious lesson you’re trying so very hard to ignore.”

“Good, because we don’t have any time to make up a plan anyhow,” the harp-flanked unicorn said, and pointed. Pink fluffy sugary cotton-candy clouds were floating across the sky, drifting away from a large house, really a mansion, where the windows were pouring out endless streams of that impossibly buoyant treat.

Discord cleared his throat. “I do hope it’s sufficiently obvious that this is not my doing, but a different version of me, Lero, yes? Yes, of course I could be down there and up here at the same time, but for the moment I’m not. I also am down there, and not, and will be, and was, and have a variable probability at any moment of being him or me. Honestly, I won't bore you with the complexities of conceptual avatar consciousnesses. But I’m not at the moment. That would be rather rude of me, intruding like that.”

“Well, I should hope so,” agreed a passing cloud, manifesting a pink fuzzy copy of Discord’s face. The ponies seemed to not notice.

The full version of Discord held up an old-fashioned boombox and pressed the Play button. Music began to pour out, and the two chaos spirits sang.

[Discord, you made many, many ponies mad,
We realize, of course, that it was all in good fun,
But now we feel a little bad.
So why don’t we try being friends with a small pony?

If they had been kidnapped!
Daidle deedle daidle,
Daidle deedle daidle daidle dumb,
Then we’d go to save them!
For our friend Fluttershy,
For Applejack and Lero,
Daidle deedle daidle,
Daidle deedle daidle daidle dumb.

For they have been kidnapped
By some daidle deedle daidle scum!

We’d put on capes and spandex with pouches by the dozen,
with improbable anatomy,
to give this hero thing an honest try,
for they know our friend’s persona’s split
between the two of them right now,
and they’d take the monkey, just to be sure.

And we’d surrender to save our good friends,
though you seem unlikely to believe,
that we’d let them bind our powers,
for little ponies.

“Discord, please! Discord, help!”
we hear their cries ring out,
as if to say, “We need your friendship!”
Oy!

For they have been kidnapped!
Daidle deedle daidle,
Daidle deedle daidle daidle dumb,
And we’d go to save them!
For surprising friendship.

And we might have to surrender,
Daidle deedle daidle,
Daidle deedle daidle daidle dumb,

Just to save our friends the ponies,
And a daidle deedle daidle man.

I see my friend, Fluttershy,
looking frightened for her life,
with her wings all bound in ropes up,
and whimpering at a knife!

I see Applejack at their mercy,
and sobbing in her fear,
Oy! What a horrid situation,
and her captors would me bind.

They think my reform’s a false front,
they demand more security,
a spell worse than a statue,
“We don’t trust Discord,”
“No way, Discord,”
warded against my powers with spells,
ya va voy, ya va voy voy vum.

And it won’t make one bit of difference,
if I answer right or wrong,
Chaos spirits they think they’ll never trust.

So though it’s much to our own surprise,
we’ll go and do as they command,and save our friend Fluttershy,
and Applejack and Lero too.
And if we pay a heavy price,
it somehow isn’t quite as bad.
Oy!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl7BVr36bbs)

Lero gaped at the two iterations of Discord. Finally, he said, “I think I preferred not hearing the music.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” the two chaos spirits chorused. The cloud returned to its normal puffy shape and the remaining Discord picked it up to take a bite.

“In any case, Lero, that’s the situation. A local band of ponies decided to take matters into their own hooves because they simply didn’t trust that their version of me was really and truly reformed. The Order of Chaos they called themselves, adding insult to injury.”

“Wait a minute,” Lero protested. “You mentioned ‘our friend Fluttershy and Applejack,’ in your singing just a second ago… well, I don’t even know those ponies!”

Discord sighed. “Diamondjack and Flutterpie, to you.”

Lero had mentioned Flutterpie’s name during their long plunge down the rabbit hole.

“Here, they’ve simply swapped with each other directly. You’ll catch on. Eventually. I hope. In any case, Fluttershy is my dear friend, and she exchanged life roles and quite a few memories with Applejack. The Order of Chaos decided to take both of them and use them as hostages to demand my local variant surrender himself to let them cast various thoroughly insalubrious spells on him to limit his fun.”

“And?” Lero asked.

Discord pointed. Rainbow had gone into a dive while Discord was singing his self-duet to Lero, and Twilight Sparkle’s horn was glowing brightly. Thick, dark clouds were forming behind the cloud-chariot, crackling with electricity.

“And they do have other friends — and, at least transitively, so do I. The rescue party is on the way. Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle, the two students of Prissy Princess Pink Plot herself. And their annoyingly serene friend. Let’s watch the action!” Discord opened the co… ice chest and pulled out a beer, and handed another to Lero.

Twilight Sparkle jumped out of the chariot while it was still fifty feet in the air. Dark clouds formed under her hooves, and a pair of lightning bolts shot out of the thunderheads she had formed behind them — and in a literal flash, Twilight was on the ground, skid marks behind her hooves and a manic grin on her face.

“.... She just rode a bolt of lightning to the ground instead of waiting to land,” Lero said blankly, staring at the mis-marked mare, while Rainbow Dash landed and flicked her wings, dispelling the chariot and her harness.

“She’s fun like that,” Discord agreed, and swigged from his beer. “This version, at least.”

“CHAAAAAARGE!” screamed Twilight Sparkle, lowering her horn and racing toward the door. Rainbow Dash flung her wings wide, and the door was surrounded by a rainbow aura, then torn from its hinges and thrown to the side. Lyra’s horn glowed in readiness, and she took smooth steps, hooves swinging in steady half-circles along the ground, never actually lifting up more than a half an inch.

“... Wait, what the heck just happened?” said Lero, gaping. “She’s a pegasus! How the heck did Rainbow Connection just do that? That was… Whaaa?”

Discord chuckled. “It’s Rainbow Dash. The Element of Magic.”

Lero just rubbed his eyes and kept watching.

“Ooof!” Twilight declared immediately after entering, and then an annoyed, “Who just leaves a stool right in the… running around… in… the…” Her voice trailed off.

Discord and Lero dove through a wall; Lero’s reflexes made him bring up his arms defensively, but they were every bit as intangible as Discord had said. Inside, Twilight had gone sprawling over a footstool, which had retreated to a corner and was waving its legs at her and hissing.

“They’ve got Discord, remember?” Rainbow Dash reminded them, entering more cautiously. “The whole place could be booby-trapped with all sorts of chaotic effects. Sorry, Twi, no charging in after all.”

“Awww,” grumbled the lavender unicorn, righting herself. “No Sparkle Special? I’m already working inside, now I can’t even get up a good head of steam? This is gonna be tough to make it a totally awesome rescue under these conditions.”

“Just concentrate on making it a rescue in the first place,” Lyra advised. “Be ready for anything.”

Rainbow Dash flicked a feather, and the next door opened.

Lyra nodded through the doorway. “Like that.”

A sobbing green pegasus was on the floor in front of a teapot, which was puffing out endless streams of pink cotton candy that floated out through the windows. “Make it stop, make it stop, make it stawwwwwwwwwp,” he wailed, hooves over his face. “Make it staaaawwwwwp…”

A pale orange pegasus was cackling to herself and chasing a glint of sunlight around the room. Every so often she let out a loud “MEOW!” before a pounce. She wore a set of fake cat ears on a headband, and a bell on a collar around her neck.

An off-white unicorn mare was crying openly and trying to squeeze her horn with her hooves. “Get out, get out, get out, get out, please, please, get out, get out, get out,” she sobbed, then tossed her head, then hit her horn against a wall — then lit her horn up and smacked it against the wall again, which made her let out a scream of pain, but then she did it again. Twilight Sparkle and Lyra winced at the sight.

Rainbow Dash carefully twitched a wing, and the teapot stopped emitting its pink puffy ‘steam.’ The green pegasus’s head lifted. He stared at the re-normalized teapot. Then he prodded it with a hoof. The teapot jumped at him, blasting hot chocolate in his face. The unfortunate pegasus screamed and batted at it, but it stuffed its spout into his mouth and poured. His stomach promptly swelled up until it extended beyond his hooves… and then the teapot dropped out of his mouth and clattered to the ground. The stallion groaned and clutched at his liquid-swollen belly.

“... I’m going to say these guys aren’t going to put up a fight anyway,” Rainbow Dash concluded. “Let’s keep going.”

Lyra opened the next door.

Fluttershy waved happily to the rescue party from the next room. “Howdy, y’all!” she cheerfully called out. “Sorry we didn’t wait for ya, but these fellers just weren’t bein’ all that friendly.” She was sitting atop an unconscious blue earth pony mare whose hooves had been tied together and who had two prominently blackened eyes, along with a number of other highly visible bruises. Four other mares were sprawled against the walls, unconscious.

“Awesome!” Twilight gushed, and sprinted in. Applejack blushed and waved a hoof, and Discord politely saluted them with a cup of tea. Earl Grey, piping hot.

“They were bein’ awful ornery, an’ they were gonna do somethin’ downright mean to ol’ Discord here, so Applejack an’ Ah figured we’d give ‘em a little friendship lesson courtesy of Kicky McGeecutty and Bucks McGill here,” Fluttershy explained, and kissed her hooves.

“Fluttershy was really amazing,” Applejack said. “She was just like an action movie mare.”

“Aw, don’t you sell yourself short, sugarcube!” Fluttershy declared. “Yew gave ‘em everything they could handle and a mite more besides. Yew wrestle bears, AJ, they oughtta have known you’d be tougher’n a ten-year-dried apple!”

“Really, I’m just glad things all turned out so nicely,” Discord commented. He gave Fluttershy and Applejack a smile. “You do know I was ready to surrender myself to those Order of Chaos ruffians for you, yes?”

Applejack nuzzled the draconequus. “We shore do. An’ that’s the sweetest thing Ah think Ah’ve ever seen.”

Fluttershy nuzzled him from the other side. “An’ if that don’t prove y’all’re the most reformed villain we ever did face, Ah jes’ don’t know what could. Yer a hero, Discord.”

Discord reached down and pushed a buzzer that spontaneously appeared on the tabletop in front of him. A grey mustache manifested on his upper lip as well. “I’ll take ‘Things I Never Thought I’d Hear Or Would Actually Like Hearing for two hundred, Trebek,” he said.

Lero blinked at him, then at his own Discord. “... Did he just… did you…”

Lero’s Discord chuckled. “This version of me is far too far reformed for a proper chaos spirit, but still, he does seem to be enjoying himself. Perhaps one day I’ll give it a try like that. Maybe I can get a national holiday for it.”

“This is...” Lero muttered, then shook his head. “Wait a minute, where am I? I mean… where is the kidnapped me?”

A toilet flushed. Water ran. Footsteps creaked on floorboards. And another version of Lero walked into the room. His face lit up. “Twilight! Rainbow! Lyra!” he cried out, and opened his arms. The three thus-named mares sprang forward, tackling him onto his back in their relief to see him. They laughed, holding him tight as they kissed him, his hands moving to rub at their necks as fast as he could.

Lero blinked repeatedly, looking down at the sight of himself being so lovingly assaulted by the town mailmare and Big Mac’s lead mare alongside his own Twilight Sparkle — mismatched though their marks were. He swallowed, feeling a sudden heaviness in his chest. They looked so… happy together like that. But all this wasn’t how it was supposed to be! Was it?

“I do believe this calls for a proper celebration!” the Discord between Fluttershy and Applejack declared. “Music, refreshments, dancing…”

Twilight Sparkle facehoofed. “Please, no.”

Discord beamed at her. “Please, yes!” He snapped the fingers of his bear paw. The floor abruptly became brightly-flashing multicolored lights, speakers manifested on the walls, and bass-heavy music began thumping through the room. Twilight, Applejack, and Fluttershy were abruptly adorned with garish green-and-purple sequined outfits, while the local Lero was in a black tuxedo and Rainbow Dash was in a white polyester leisure suit with a series of gold chains around her neck.

Rainbow Dash laughed. “Come on, Twi, it’s fun!” She struck a pose, up on her hind legs, one hoof lifted skyward.

Twilight Sparkle kept her face in her hooves. “I cannot watch this. Not again. Not again. This is the uncoolest thing Equestria has ever seen.”

And Rainbow Dash began to dance to the music. Lero joined in with loud chuckles. Though ‘joined in’ in this case meant ‘tried to keep from being knocked over by the spastic flailings of an enthusiastic pegasus with absolutely no concept of rhythm or what dancing was supposed to look like.’ He was moderately successful in the attempt.

“... Okay, that is a point in favor of Rainbow there ending up with some of Twilight’s characteristics,” Lero said to Discord, watching the pony he knew as a shy animal caretaker spastically bouncing around the floor in high spirits. Why she thought sticking out her tongue was part of ‘dancing’ he’d never know.

Twilight turned her face away and groaned. In a thoroughly transparent effort to change the focus of everyone in the room, she loudly asked, “So, Lero, what did you do while AJ and Fluttershy were kicking flank and taking marks?”

“Shoulda seen him, too,” Fluttershy cheerfully announced. “You ain’t ever seen a mare look so surprised as that purple gal over in the corner did when she got herself thrown over Lero’s shoulder by the tail. Ah thought he was gonna start swingin’ her around ta hit the others with.”

“There’s not nearly enough room in here to swing a cat, let alone a pony!” the local Lero laughed out. The music did stop, and the decor returned to normal. “Not without hitting you, at least.”

“So… what’s with those three out there?” Twilight Sparkle asked, and gestured with horn through the door. “That didn’t look like ponies who’d been beaten up to me!”

“Those were the Order’s leaders, of course,” Discord said, sipping neatly at his tea. “Once I arrived and everypony had escaped already, Applejack agreed I really was quite justified in leveling a bit of punishment on them. Something suitably ironic. Which, in this case, was giving them precisely what they were each afraid I’d do.”

Lero looked up to his own Discord, who gave him a pointy-toothed grin. “Even ‘nice’ versions of me don’t care to put up with attempts on our freedom,” Discord told him. “Voluntarily cooperating is bad enough.”

“Err… what exactly was that, then?” Rainbow Dash asked.

The tea-sipping Discord smiled. Also pointy-toothed. “The green one was afraid I’d bring out the cotton candy clouds again. The orange one was frightened of being turned into a dumb animal. And their not-quite-white friend had a particular phobia all of her own devising. She was afraid I’d put a worm inside her horn.” He held up his bear paw. “I didn’t! It’s much more amusing if she simply thinks I did.”

“Ah think mebbe it’s time y’all undid that, now,” Applejack said. “They’ve learned their lesson an’ they ain’t ever gonna do it again, right?”

Discord smiled fondly down at her. “Really, Applejack, and I honestly can't believe I'm saying this, but be practical. If I don't make a show of these morons getting punished for making an attack on me, even if indirectly, then I'll be putting up with that sort of garbage the rest of my very long life. And I assure you, I do not deal well with constant annoyances. No, this isn’t just about them, It’s about the next ponies to get an idea to try to use my friends to hurt me.”

“They’ve gotta at least be able to get reformed,” Applejack insisted. “We gave yew that chance, didn’t we?”

Discord hmmmed. He set his teacup down. “Well. I suppose you did at that. Very well, the least I can do it is.” He snapped his fingers, and the sobbing from the next room… did not stop, but eased in tone. “That’s not to say they won’t remember, and I am not the Elements of Harmony to just make everything all better. But they can have their chance at reforming. Just be sure to make it known the next bunch won't be as lucky."”

Discord patted Fluttershy and Applejack atop the heads. “There. The least I could do. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ve provided all the mercy I have in me today, and you’d hate to see me building up a backlog of revenge. And I’m late for an appointment I planned to make, so off I go!” He snapped his fingers, and vanished in a flash of rubber duckies.

“He’s taken quite an interest in the Cutie Mark Crusaders,” the remaining Discord confided to Lero. “They really are an amazing form of chaos. Friendship and wanton destruction all rolled into one. I do believe he plans to join them.”

“... At least some things never change,” Lero said, after a long pause.

“Okay, everypony, Twilight and I will get this all cleared up,” Rainbow Dash declared. “Lyra, you send up the flares, and the Guard will get here soon. Lero, AJ, Fluttershy, you keep an eye on our ‘new friends’ here, and make sure they stay tied up tight.” She flexed her wings, and a rainbow-colored flash teleported all the ponies (and their copy of Lero) save Twilight and Rainbow Dash out of the room. Discord and Lero followed.

Lero and the local copy ended up both sitting next to Discord. The local one blinked his eyes a few times, then looked up. Lero could see yellow swirls in the other him’s eyes for a moment, and then the local Lero cleared his throat.

“So. Uh. Hi. You’re… probably wondering just what’s going on here,” he said sheepishly, and gestured. Purple and rainbow flashes were going off inside the mansion.

“Wait, you can see us now?” Lero asked his other self.

“Only for the moment, only for a little chat,” Discord said. “You still don’t care to hear it from me, but perhaps hearing it from yourself will get through that thick primate skull of yours.” He rapped Lero on the head, and the sound echoed.

“Hearing what from myself?” Lero asked.

“Erm… hearing that things are a little messed up right now, probably,” the local Lero guessed. “Twilight was doing this spell, and, well… Dash ended up switching with her, and the same with Fluttershy and Applejack, and with Rarity and Pinkie Pie. They were all very confused at first, but we got it all sorted out and everyone in town is being really helpful.”

Lero pointed at the windows. “Rainbow… ‘Dash’ is doing magic. What kind of spell makes a pegasus do magic?”

“Um… well, that actually is a good question,” his doppelganger said. “Rainbow has theorized that just maybe Starswirl’s spell didn’t give her magic powers, but helped her to access the magic pegasi naturally have, just in a different way. So it’s been really interesting for her. We’re hoping all her studies don’t vanish when they fix this. Or her magic, for that matter.”

Lero pressed his hands to his temples. It felt like there was something swelling inside his skull, threatening to explode. And then… it eased. Not an explosion, but like a slow leak letting the pressure deflate. He took a deep breath, then let it out. “Oh...kay. So. They… got exchanged with each other. Here. Their marks switched. Rainbow ‘Dash’ got magic, Twilight Sparkle became a daredevil. Okay. Okay. I can take that idea.”

“Very good,” said Discord smugly. “Maybe at this rate, you’ll wrap your head around the rest before I give up and start amusing myself again.”

Lero shuddered at that idea. “I’ll… work on it.”

Heavy hooffalls announced the arrival of a contingent of Royal Guards — with Big Macintosh and Apple Bloom outpacing them all. Big Mac swept Fluttershy into his grip, and Apple Bloom leaped onto Applejack. Lero was sure he could hear Fluttershy’s wings creak from the strength of Big Mac’s hug, but the yellow pegasus didn’t make so much as an eep.

“Wait a minute,” Lero said, blinking. “If the ones who swapped are Applejack with Fluttershy, why is Big Mac still…”

“She ended up with him either way,” the local Lero explained, as they watched Fluttershy and Big Macintosh kiss. “Fluttershy was already herding with Big Mac, and pregnant with his foal the day the Swap happened. Her swapped self just remembers meeting him a lot sooner now, and under slightly different circumstances, than she did before.”

Big Mac lowered his head, pressing his ear against Fluttershy’s side. She smiled and stroked his ears with a wing. “Now there’s the stallion Ah married,” she said softly. “Carin’ for all those little’uns. Don’t yew worry, Mac. Our foal’s safe as safe can be. And she’s gonna have one whopper of a story ‘fore she’s even born.”

The door to the mansion opened. The local Lero’s eyes flashed with yellow swirls again, and he stood up, walking right through Discord with no sign of noticing. Rainbow Dash and Twilight came walking out; Dash’s wings were drooping a bit at her sides and Twilight was definitely trudging tiredly, but they shared a look of satisfaction as they came over to nuzzle at Lyra and Lero.

“All the chaos effects are gone,” Rainbow Dash reported, watching as Apple Bloom hugged Fluttershy just as enthusiastically as she’d hugged her birth-sister. Applejack gave her siblings and her sister-in-law a shy, sad smile and started to back away, but Big Mac grabbed her and pulled her in.

“Eeeenope,” he told her. “Not this time, AJ. Only one who doubts you’re an Apple to the core is you, sis.” And Applejack squeezed him so tight that this time it was his ribs Lero could hear creaking.

“Well, now, isn’t this getting downright nauseating,” Discord said, and patted Lero on the shoulder. “Reminds me why I don’t visit here so often. Honestly, utopias are just the dullest things. But that spell isn’t always such a pleasant experience. Your own version is coming out on the higher end of things, in fact.”

“Mine isn’t bad at all,” Lero said weakly. “Everyone’s happy… aren’t they?”

“Oh, perhaps momentarily,” Discord said. “Give it time. Or don’t. This is a very dangerous situation, one that can rapidly go so far downhill that it ceases to be fun in the other direction.”

“... How bad are we talking about?” asked Lero.

“You’ll see,” Discord promised, and the world dissolved into a spray of broken light fixtures and novels without the letter E in them.

* * *

Strictly speaking, the streets of this once-beautiful city were not empty. Abandoned trucks, cars, and minivans of every color congested the roadways, several crashed into each other, or into apartment buildings and convenience stores. Small flocks of scavenger birds hopped about around dry old bones, as an eastern wind rustled up dust and debris. And of course, there was the stench of rotten flesh hanging in the air, courtesy of the meandering dead prowling the streets. Directionless, mindless, until their attention was drawn by livelier sounds, from the approaching south.

Jogging. Two individuals, both male, running briskly alongside each other, as though for a simple morning exercise. The one on the left was a living human, just as they had all once been. The taller one, on the right, was much harder for anyone to classify.

“Hey, Discord?” asked Lero Michealides, without breaking his stride.

Discord drew a small bottle out of the pocket of his pants. “Yeah?” He asked, after a quick swig of the purple stuff inside.

The sight and sound of the live ones stirred new ferocity in all the ghouls’ appetites. From all directions, they lurched towards the newcomers with opening jaws and outstretched fingers.

“That other version of me… I mean, I know that I would’ve been really, totally freaking out of my mind if a second Discord and a second me suddenly appeared in front of me with no warning...”

Directly ahead, four of the ghouls were closing in on the two of them. But Lero’s index fingers were already on the triggers of his Berettas as he lifted them up.

“...but you did something to that other me’s mind to make him think everything was hunky-dory…”

Four bullets later, the ghouls bodies lay still, but the human dodged away from their mouths as he ran, just in case.

“It’s called a bewitchment,” Discord explained, pulling the Mossberg off his back. “Bewitchments...”

BLAM! went Discord’s shotgun.

“...alter perceptions and memories…”

BLAM! The scatter shot ripped the nearest zombies’ heads off from the nose-up.

“...and your entire sense of what’s strange versus what’s normal.”

BLAM!

“Take what we're doing right now. Normally, you'd be quite disturbed at all this, but with a little Bewitchment to help put you in the right mindset, you're a practiced gunman. Fun, isn't it?"

The human listened in fascination, hearing the draconequus’ words quite audibly over all his shotgun blasts.

“When a group of two or more people fall under a Swap, three things always happen to them. First, all their souls are cut in half, then crudely spliced with one of the other Swap-ees, so their new personality is half-their-old-self and half-someone-else’s.”

As more undead hordes stumbled out from alleyways ahead and behind them, Lero sensed that his clips had run dry, so he yanked two more off his bandolier, easily skipping over the grasping hand of a ghoul pinned under a convertible’s tire.

“Second, they’re each compelled to take on Mr. or Miss ‘Someone Else’s’ old role in life.”

Lero nodded while chambering the new rounds into his sidearms.

“Third, the Swap invariably casts SOME manner of bewitchment on them…. rewrites their memories, so they think their new sense of self is natural, that ‘it’s always been this way.’”

They turned a corner and a great mob of ghouls was waiting for them.

“For example... remember that first world I showed you, where you saw Rarity save you from the spider?”

“Yeah?”

Pulling onward, the human and draconequus duo slaughtered all the undead their shooting irons could bring down.

“In that world, Pinkie Pie served as the Element of Laughter and Ponyville’s party planner, while Applejack was Element of Honesty and apple farmer on Sweet Apple Acres. At least, up until Princess Celestia sent Twilight Sparkle a certain unfinished spell of Starswirl The Bearded’s.”

“Again, she’s called Applejack instead of Diamondjack!” Lero muttered to himself, hefting one of his Berettas over his shoulder, and blasting the shambler right behind him. To Discord, he said, “I’m assuming ‘Pinkie Pie’ is supposed to be that world’s version of Pink Lady?”

“How’d you ever guess?” asked Discord, sweeping his dragon-tail at one of the zombies and knocking it clean off its feet.

“Name similarity,” said Lero.

“Right.”

At this point, Discord and Lero had reached the very thing they’d been running towards: the bookmobile that would serve as their getaway car. Discord took the driver’s seat and Lero took shotgun: both the side seat, and Discord’s firearm.

“Anyway, after the Swap was cast, half of Applejack’s soul fused with Pinkie’s,” said Discord, searching for the keys. “And Pinkie not only took up Applejack’s old job as Sweet Apple Acres farmer, not only did Pinkie now insist she’d always been the Element of Honesty, instead of Laughter, but she believed that pretty much Applejack’s whole life had been her own. She even believed that Apple Bloom and Big Macintosh were her blood kin. Literally; that the three of them had been born from the same mother and father.”

“And what did the Apple family have to say to that?!” asked Lero, pulling the keys out of the glove compartment and handing them to Discord.

“Nothing. I bewitched the Apple Family into thinking Pinkie was right.”

Lero was stunned. In his own world, Pink Lady Apple was fully aware that she hadn’t been born an Apple. She’d been born to a family of rock farmers who’d disowned her when she developed an interest in proper organic farming… and so the Apples had taken her in.

“So then what happened when Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle came over to play with Apple Bloom, and found their best friend was living with the wrong sister?” Lero asked, as Discord revved up the bookmobile and they both buckled their seat belts.

“Oh, I bewitched the two of them, too,” the draconequus answered, both of them falling back into their seats as Discord floored the gas pedal.

“But what about their par…”

“Bewitched them.”

“But what about…”

“Bewitched ‘em, bewitched ‘em, bewitched ‘em, bewitched ‘em.”

The draconequus turned on the radio, and on came a snazzy-sounding tune Lero had never heard before. “Just to be on the safe side, I bewitched nearly EVERYONE on that planet so that their memories matched the Swapped’s, leaving only a select few exempted. What’s more, I did the same thing on the greater majority of all these other realities, as well.”

[‘I'm skating with a seal

The tarantula, the fly, the broken ring

The dusty little flea

An ugly giant, a disappointed child,’](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnlb2mNp41M) sang the vocalist on the radio.

“So how many people did you bewitch on MY world?” asked Lero, as the lower half of an especially rotten ghoul flew off their left bumper. Their bookmobile was not just riding over all sorts of zombies, but much larger vehicles that were far bigger than it.

“Zero.”

“Huh?”

“That’s the thing of it!” Discord yelled, and Lero was struck by how genuinely troubled the draconequus looked. “On your world, I’m pretty sure that Starswirl’s spell, in addition to bewitching the Swapped, bewitched the whole rest of your world, to boot! And that’s what alarms me.”

“Why?” asked Lero. “You should be happy. It sounds like this thing did your job for you.”

Discord sighed. They were riding into an underground tunnel, and he switched the radio off, just as the song was talking about ‘you are your own prison.’

“Let’s suppose you are Twilight Sparkle.”

Suddenly, Lero felt something within him shift. It felt like something had happened to his body; he was seeing through the windshield at a slightly lower angle than he had a second ago.

Discord tilted the rearview mirror down so Lero could get a look at himself: his body has been transformed into Twilight Sparkle’s!

“Now picture this happening to you…” Discord said, as their bookmobile reached the light at the tunnel’s end...

* * *

Twilight Sparkle yawned loudly while stretching out her four legs, her telekinesis already lifting the sheets and blanket off her body. Wow, what a weird set of dreams she had. Especially the last one, where Lero had been running through a town blasting zombies with Discord like they were both main characters in a Robert Kirkman story.

“Lero?” she asked, gently shaking the still-blanketed figure beside her. Heh heh… Lero ought to get a kick out of how every one of her dreams featured him!

And Discord turned over in bed to face her, smiling dreamily as he opened his eyes to the sight of her face. “Mmmm… good morning, schmoopy-hooves. You were simply magical last night.”

Twilight scrambled off the bed. It was as though she wasn’t in control of the words her mouth formed, when she said, “Eek! Eek, I say! Begone from my bedchambers and my property, libertine cad!”

“Whatever do you mean, moofy-muzzle?” asked the draconequus, studying her in deepest concern. “It’s all my property too! You and I have been husband and wife for the past ten years!”

Then a talking hamburger floated by, distracting Twilight. “So then you go to your friends for help evicting this unwanted intruder. However, everywhere you go, and no matter who you talk to…”

Discord jumped down in front of Twilight, his head transforming into Rarity’s.

“But…” said Rarity.

And then Discord’s head turned into Pinkie Pie’s, who said, “...Discord’s…”

The next second, it was Applejack’s head. “...Telling…”

“...The…” said Fluttershy.

“...Truth!” said Rainbow Dash.

“The…” said Apple Bloom.

“...Two…” said Cranky Doodle Donkey.

“...Of…” said Scootaloo.

“...You…” said Cheerilee.

“...Have…” said Sweetie Belle.

“...Been…” said Mr. Cake.

“...Married…” said Big Macintosh.

“...For…” said Princess Cadence.

“...Years.” said Star Sparkle.

“Twilight…” said Queen Chrysalis.

“Are…” said Gustave le Grand.

“...You…” said Shining Armor.

“...Absolutely…” said Pipsqueak.

“...Certain…” said King Sombra.

“...There…” said Flam.

“...Is…” said Chief Thunderhooves.

“...Nothing…” said Trixie.

“...Wrong…” said Bonbon.

“...With…” said Lyra.

“...Your…” said Spike.

“...Memories?” finished Lero.

The purple unicorn was given a second to stare into the face of the hazel-eyed human head atop the draconequus’ body, before the eagle fingers gave a snap. Discord’s head returned back to its own proper form, while the purple unicorn’s body transformed back into that of Lero Michealides.

“Twilight Sparkle’s word against that of the whole rest of the world,” said Discord, helping Lero to his feet. “That’s the reason I left a select few exempted from bewitchment in so many of the other worlds; so she’d have touchstones to remind her of how life was before the Swap. But here? Not so much as a single family member who remembers the past the way she does. How do you think that’s affected your Twilight?”

Lero’s brain needed a second to re-establish his own sense of identity. Thinking he’d been Twilight had been JARRING.

“But why all the secrecy and bewitchment in the first place?” he asked at last. “Just let the Swapped know they’re Swapped. After all, the first step to any healing process is identifying the problem, right?”

Quite suddenly, they were at their next destination.

* * *

They were inside the cottage at the edge of the Everfree forest, the home of the animal caretaker. Specifically, this was the foyer. But something horrible had happened here… or was still happening. Lero knew this the moment he saw the nanny goat; the lower half of its body had been sliced apart from its upper.

Worse and worse horrors were there to greet Lero’s eyes, the more he took in. Bashed ferrets, trampled rabbits, foxes and chickens with their heads ripped off...

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” he declared. “Did some bloodthirsty wild animal get in here?!”

“Yes,” Discord muttered, looking at a mangled kitten floating inside an aquarium.

Then they hear a sprightly-sounding mare’s voice from the next room over. “Wake up! Wake up, sleepyhead! Dinner’s almost ready!”

They entered the kitchen. This cottage… it could no longer pretend to be any sort of animal sanctuary. This was a butcher’s den now. Piles of dead creatures littered the room: deer, dogs, pigs, lynxes, badgers, quails, bats, goldfish, catfish, swans, dormice, lemmings and even two adult bears, all haphazardly heaped together in miniature mounds of fur and bloody dead flesh. Already, the place was choked with flies.

Lero felt himself immensely relieved nobody here could see him; any more than the characters on a movie screen could see their audience. Not the flies… and especially not the canary-yellow pegasus.

“Come on,” she was saying, “Wake up now!”

The person she was speaking to was the Lero Michealides native to this world; he wore a yellow T-shirt. “Nnnghh… Fluttershy?” he asked, coming to.

He sat at a table set for dinner, lit by ‘romantic’ candlelight, shackled VERY tightly to a metal chair; he wouldn’t be able to escape. All his bruises seemed to indicate him losing a recent fight.

Fluttershy wore a Wonderbolts outfit… one that was torn-up, and stained with blood, mud, grass, and vegetable broth. The non-native Lero could see RD’s cutie mark through a sizable rip on the side of the uniform; twitching and spasming erratically every other second.

When Fluttershy smiled at Lero, she showed teeth caked with animal blood.

“I hope you’re hungry, sweetie!”

She kissed him on the lips while he was still groggy, before returning to an enormous cast-iron cauldron, stirring its steaming, bubbling contents with something like a large oar. Whatever was stewing in the cauldron was really, really thick; for it required all of Fluttershy’s strength just to keep stirring the pot.

“Hey, I think I recognize that cauldron,” Lero whispered to Discord, as though Fluttershy might hear them. “Doesn’t it belong to Zecora?”

“Formerly,” the draconequus told him.

“I… I’m alive?” spoke the shackled Lero in the yellow shirt. “Rainbow Dash... Fluttershy, where’s Rainbow Dash?!”

Wordlessly, the lightning-marked Fluttershy pointed first at her bubbling cauldron, as she stirred up a recognizable blue wing, then at a raggedly-torn-off chunk of flank with pink butterflies on it, stuck on a countertop.

“Rainbow Dash!”

The non-native Lero felt every bit as sick as the local Lero looked. “You didn’t NEED to kill her, did you? You didn’t NEED to do THIS to her!”

Then he began to weep.

“Things have been so different for me, since Twilight came and proved the truth about what I am,” said Fluttershy. “What we all are. I now completely understand why you were chasing after Dashie for all this time… it’s because this mark of mine originally came from her! SHE was your original marefriend, not me!”

The yellow-shirted Lero tried to rise, but his shackles were just too tight. “Please… please don’t kill me…”

“Kill you? No, never!” She again stared at the part of Rainbow Dash sticking out of the stewpot. “You know, I was originally gonna find Rainbow so we could slice off each other’s cutie marks and stitch them back onto each other’s flanks...”

“Eeeeeuuuuhh!!!” Lero grimaced, beside Discord.

“...But then I saw what she was about to do to you and I had to kill her. She was starting to grow quite mad, you know. Two seconds from smashing your face into jelly, but I came and saved my sweet stallion right in the nick of time! Quick as a Wonderbolt!”

Discord shook his head sadly as Fluttershy did a loop-de-loop in the air.

“But don’t you worry, Lero, I’ll keep being your marefriend! Somepony has to, and I’m glad it’s me!” She came over and kissed him again. “What’s more, I finally understand what I need to do to balance things out in my mind!”

“What do you mean?” asked the yellow-shirted Lero.

Fluttershy returned to the stewpot, giving it another stir. Morbid curiosity compelled the unbound Lero to come over by her side and sneak a peek inside the open pot. A decision he immediately regretted.

In addition to Rainbow Dash, the cauldron was CHOCK-FULL of other slaughtered animals, jam-packed in with each other, along with as much vegetable broth as Fluttershy had managed to be able to pour inside between their packed-in bodies. It was truly gross. Especially because this was clearly the work of a herbivore who had only the dimmest inkling of how humans liked their meat cooked. In other words: Fluttershy hadn’t skinned any of the corpses or anything. She’d just chucked the animals into the broth like they were so many cobs of corn. Fur, eyeballs, noses, tongues, claws, bones, organs, tails and all.

“Well, I’ll try to explain as best I can,” said Fluttershy, sprinkling in a pinch of seasoning. “The ‘Rainbow Dash’ side of me and the ‘Fluttershy’ side of me are having a non-stop war in my head. My ‘Fluttershy’ side insists I’ve got to love all my animals. My ‘Rainbow Dash’ side insists I’ve got to love you. So I figured out a compromise! First, I kill all my animals… then I feed every one of them to you!”

Then she fished out the poorly-stewed body of one of her raccoons by the scruff of its neck. It landed with a thud when she dropped it on Lero’s dinner plate, a soggy, dripping dead thing with its skull caved in. More readily classified as ‘carrion’ than ‘anything Lero would be able to stomach.’

“By feeding all my animals to you, Lero, they become PART of you!” she nuzzled his side. “So it’ll be just as good as taking care of both you AND them at the same time!”

The Lero who was invisible to Fluttershy took another horrified look at the piles of carcasses stacks throughout the kitchen. All told, there had to be literally a few tons’ worth of dead animal. Maybe even more.

Then, with surprising strength, she pulled out Rainbow Dash’s body, and set the dripping thing splayed sloppily atop her own dinner plate. Both sets of Rainbow’s legs dangled over the table like the tablecloth, itself.

“And I’ll eat Rainbow Dash, and the rest of her will become one with me, so you won’t have to miss her at all, because you’ll be loving us both!” She gave a soft titter. “Really, it couldn’t be more logical!”

“I can’t… I can’t eat this…” whispered the yellow-shirted Lero.

“Sure you can!” She nuzzled her beloved human once more; the shackled Lero was clearly too frightened of her to protest. “Oh, my poor Lero, it must’ve been so ROUGH on you, denying the carnivorous side of your nature for this long, restricting yourself to just fish because ponies are so judgmental about these sort of things! But don’t worry, you’ll always have all the meat you could ever want with me, so dig in!”

“No, I can’t… please, I really can’t…”

Fluttershy gave him her scariest Stare. It made even Discord and his guest cringe. “You’re starting to upset me, Lero. I went to a lot of trouble to prepare all this yummy food just for you, so you’d BETTER EAT.”

Completely cowed, and with his hands bound, Lero had no choice but to open his mouth and lean forward to dig into the raccoon’s furry flesh with his teeth alone, as though he had the jaw strength and dietary needs of a jackal.

Fluttershy smiled. “There’s a good boy.”

“We’ve seen enough,” Discord said, turning himself and his guest away from the dinner table as Fluttershy bent to eat as well. “I can’t bear to watch this part.”

“HALLELUJAH!” Lero yelled.

With one last sad look backwards at Fluttershy, Discord shook a large-barreled cannon out of his armpit, loaded himself and Lero into it, and fired them both out the window.

“I mean, JESUS CHRIST, Discord! Thanks a billion for the nightmares I’m gonna have!” the human shouted as they went sailing over Ponyville. “Was it absolutely necessary to show me that?!”

“I’m sorry,” Discord said. “I know I use that phrase a lot less often than others would like, but yes, I am, in fact, sorry. And yes; it was necessary as a warning.”

“A warning of what?!”

“Certain actions are good ideas in all these different parallel dimensions. Being adaptable. Being strong of heart. Not giving up on your family. But telling the Swapped they’re Swapped? That’s an EXTREMELY risky crapshoot, even if you manage to get them to believe you. Odds are things won’t turn out as rosy as they were in that other world we visited. Odds are much, much greater that the Swapped will turn very homicidal.”

They sailed over Sweet Apple Acres: large sections of the orchard had been set ablaze, and while he passed too fast to be sure, he swore he saw spatters of red stains in various spots on the ground. They passed over Sugar Cube Corner: the building slumped, as if knocked off its foundations, and large volumes of toxic-looking purple were pumping out from inside it. They passed over Carousel Boutique: sections of the wall were blown out and smoking, and there seemed to be a ferocious magical battle taking place inside it, while a large posse of worried-looking cops and royal guards had surrounded the place.

"Look, I need to cheer up a little now!” Discord exclaimed. “Mind a little side trip? I'll keep it on theme."

* * *

Discord and Lero were in a shadowy chamber. It was arranged like an indoor stadium, with comfortable, tiered, bleacher-style seating extending several levels down. There was even some sort of giant Jumbotron-like globe floating a few feet down from the center ceiling. Looking around, Lero felt a moment’s self-consciousness because he wasn’t wearing a white robe or a mask, like every other individual filling the seats.

The masks were wide and varied, but all completely concealed the face. A few masks were of things Lero recognized like clowns, devils, butterflies, even the timeless tragedy and comedy masks symbolizing drama. But quite a few masks were of things Lero couldn’t place. Or rather, things best described as having come from outer space. Because the greater majority of the people here WERE, themselves, space aliens. Unmistakably so.

“OH MY GOD, DISCORD! ALIENS!”

Discord rolled his eyes. “Screams the human living on the Planet of the Ponies.”

There wasn’t quite as much variety as there’d been in the infamous Mos Eisley cantina scene, but even with all the masks and robes, Lero could still discern quite a lot of bodies that were limbless and serpentine, some bodies that didn’t touch the ground, even if their robes did, as well as a number of Equestrian ponies in attendance. No humans, though.

Whoever this group was, they didn’t seem to be on the up-and-up. They all seemed to be champing at the bit for something. Well, some of them did, mostly those with four hooves.

But every single one of them were paying strict attention to the three figures down at the ‘center stage’ of this... this...

"Discord, what the hell is this place?" Lero hissed. He stared at the increasingly agitated crowd. "It almost looks like a some kind of sporting event."

"Why, this is the Legal Arena, of course!" He spread his claws and paw out wide to encompass the crowd. "These... ALIENS! as you call them, are all here to participate in their wonderfully chaotic modern legal system. Such as it is." He turned and grinned at Lero.

Lero grimaced and looked down at the three figures standing before the crowd. They were the only ones who were unmasked, here, and one of them was this world’s Lero, himself.

The outfit the Lero-of-this-world wore was the plainest blue jumpsuit and boots anyone could’ve asked for. There were two podiums formed of long crystalline prisms, and he occupied the one on the left. The handcuffs around his wrists looked to be made of solid laser beams.

From four rows away, Discord’s Lero stared in awe at his counterpart, who stood amazingly trim, rugged, and steady, with the cool and fearless gaze of One Tough Hombre locked on his opponent.

“Damn! I look GOOD!” The Lero in the stands grinned wildly. The human suddenly remembered the old Steven Spielberg movie Catch Me If You Can. Was this how Frank Abagnale Jr. felt when he learned that Leonardo DiCaprio would be playing himself? Only in Lero’s case, this actually WAS himself, so it was even better!

“Llllllladies and gents!” trilled the second figure, next to the handcuffed Lero. One of the aliens! Lero hadn’t always wondered what a sea anemone would look like after it gained sapience, six feet in height, and the ability to live on dry land, but now that unsuspected curiosity was fulfilled.

“The crimes for which Bellllllllerophon Micheallllllides stands accused are beyond bellllllief!” the sea anemone thing declared. “Lllllarceny! Llllllibelllll! Llllllitering! Lllllloitering! And conspiracy to commit murder in the first, second, third, sixth, and ellllllleventh!”

“Just declare the hominid guilty and have done with it, Judge Xrugh!” barked the third figure at the crystal podium opposite Lero.

“Order! Order!” The hundreds of tentacles around Judge Xrugh’s oral cavity flagellated angrily. “The prosecution willlllll stand down! I won’t have my triallllllll reduced to a lllllludicrious spectaclllllle!”

“Thousand pardons, Your Honor. Thousand pardons,” apologized the prosecutor, who resembled nothing more than an oversized pancreas, floating like a toy balloon, with piggy little eyes and an oily smile, dressed in a bright orange suit. Lero disliked this fellow on sight.

Judge Xrugh turned to the masked audience. “I ask you, members of the jury, how are we to decide this case?”

From the throng around Discord and Lero came an overwhelming cry of ‘COMBAT! COMBAT! COMBAT!’

“Wow, tough crowd,” muttered Lero. Discord shrugged.

“Then so shalllllll it be,” Judge Xrugh declared, body swaying weirdly and bonelessly where he stood. “Triallllll by combat it is: to the death! Belllllllllerophon Michealllllllides versus Pse Cnaar.”

For the first time, This-World’s-Lero smiled at the pancreatic prosecutor. He flexed his hands, loudly cracking his knuckles one fist at a time. His intentions were entirely clear: the prosecutor was someone he could and would love to take down!

“A question, Your Honor?” asked Pse Cnaar, shuddering. His little eyes whipped back and forth between his opponent and the judge as he wiped some gunk off his brow that could’ve been sweat. “I understand that I’m entirely within my rights, in this neck of the quadrant, to call for an attorney to represent me in this trial. Is that correct?”

“But of course!” Judge Xrugh turned to Lero first. “Woullllllld the defense allllllso llllllike to calllllllll an attorney?”

Wryly, Lero-The-Defendant looked over the expanse of masked faces. Then he looked over to Pse Cnaar, who was grinning smugly now, confident of whoever he had for his legal representative.

“I’d LIKE to,” the handcuffed human said, “but I think I’m completely alone on this one.”

Then the hooded figure that had been seated right next to Discord and Lero this whole while stood up, throwing off her monkey mask and robe.

“Ah humbly beg ta differ.”

The orange Earth Pony mare was dressed in some kind of futuristic power armor from the neck down; even her tail was armored. Red stripes ran down the legs of her black metallic suit. The logo on her chest read N7 ARMAMENTS™. When she’d worn her hood and mask, Lero had figured her to be yet another alien. But now he could see that what he’d taken to be an oddly-shaped head was merely the cowboy hat she’d been wearing underneath.

Her suit didn’t clang noisily at all, as he expected. Instead she descended down towards the center of the courtroom, sleek and silent as the rest of the audience fell into agitated whispering. From his vantage, Lero could see that a certain image had been painted expertly on the flank of her armor. The image of a very familiar cutie mark: his RD’s Mark.

“Yes, that’s the cutie mark she has underneath that armor, too.” Discord said. He stuck X-ray glasses over his guest’s eyes, so the human could see the actual Rainbow Mark on the Earth pony through the layers of titanium alloys. But Lero gave a sharp gasp at what else he saw: numerous scars, clearly earned in battle, and with the current technology level clearly implying healing without scarring, they were worn like badges of honor.

“How’d you find this place, Applejack?!” Pse Cnaar asked nervously, as the armored mare strode past him. “I don’t even know where I am!”

“"That sounds about like yew, Cnaar,” Applejack answered curtly. “Yer usually lost in yer own self-importance, ain’cha?"

She only stopped when she stood before the handcuffed Lero, ignoring Cnaar’s angry sputters at her remark.

“I…” the human said, before Applejack reared up and headbutted him.

“Owwww!” he cried, the cuffs preventing him from reaching his aching forehead.

“Now that’s fer bein’ stupid and gettin’ yerself kidnapped!” Applejack snapped. The whole audience broke into louder noise as she headbutted him a second time. “And that’s fer causing yer whole herd two weeks a’ sleepless worry that was completely avoidable!”

“Trouble in paradise, Lero?” Pse Cnaar chuckled, now in much better spirits.

Then something happened that made the Lero up in the stands drop his jaw. It was lucky no one but Discord could hear him cry out.

“Is she… are a pair of HUMAN ARMS growing out from her shoulders?!”

“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous!” said Discord. “Those are Equin-arms, a thought-controlled cybertronic gizmo. Ponies hereabouts have all been using them for centuries. Well, retroactively, anyways. Got the idea from minotaur prosthetics.”

A strong pair of artificial hands cupped Lero’s head with surprising gentleness, as Applejack leaned forward, kissing Lero deeply.

“And that’s cuz Ah’m gladder than glad mah sweet stallion’s alive ‘n’ well,” Applejack sighed softly.

“Pardon me, Mr. Michealllllllides,” Judge Xrugh spoke, interrupting whatever loving reply had been on the defendant’s lips. “Equestrian ways are very strange to me, but is this femallllllle an attacker or your attorney or what?”

Lero and Applejack shared a look. “Yes,” said the human. “I want Applejack to represent me in this trial by combat.”

“Smart move, sugar-britches.” The Lero-beside-Discord sputtered in shock upon hearing the pet name.

“Do me a favor and hang onto this fer me?” One of Applejack’s Equin-arms took her hat off.

“Will do, Jacky,” said Lero, bending. After placing her hat on his head, she stepped back, giving him an admiring look. The look a cook might give a banana split after setting the cherry atop the whipped cream. Or perhaps… like how she might’ve admired the twinkle of an engagement ring she’d just slipped on his finger.

“Hey, Discord?” asked the hatless Lero. “Got a question. What’s the deal with that hat? Where did it even come from?”

“The cowboy hat?” asked Discord, and they both looked down at the man on trial. As loudly as the worn, dust-colored Stetson clashed with the bright blue space-age jumpsuit… he somehow didn’t look ridiculous wearing it.

Discord pulled out a remote from nowhere, and pressed a button on it. Two huge green vertical lines appeared flashing slowly in midair, as Discord paused reality for everyone else in this universe.

“Well that’s only slightly creepy,” Lero muttered, looking around through the dead silence of the statue-still audience.

“Haven’t you ever seen Diamondjack wear it?” he inquired.

“Never,” said Lero.

“Not once?” Discord asked, twirling his beard in intrigue. “What about Pink Lady, then? She ever wear it?”

“Not her, and not anyone else in my version of Equestria, either.”

“Really?”

“Yes!” Lero said, irritated by Discord’s fascinated tone. “I promise you, I am completely unacquainted with the sight of that hat! And yet, this is now the SECOND time I’ve seen her wear it! Two different universes, two different cutie marks, same hat on the same head. What gives?!”

And suddenly, Discord was dressed like a caricature of a Wild West peacekeeper, with an orange 20-gallon hat and a duster jam-packed with sheriff stars, all the way down to where the long coat scraped the ground.

“That Stetson’s quite the enigma, ain’t it?” he asked, rocking back and forth on a wooden rocking horse. “Get this: that hat’s always been the rightful property of our mutual Earth pony pal, long before Starswirl’s spell entered the picture.”

He unholstered a pair of squirt gun revolvers and fired them at the masked figures around them. Many of their white robes got sopping wet, but they paid no mind.

“By all rights… or at least, in keeping with the Swap’s kooky logic… she ought to have left it behind, along with her family, her job, and all her other worldly possessions. Instead, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand, Applejack keeps that hat. And here you say that hat never existed at all, where you’re from?”

“No!” Lero suddenly felt worried. “...Do you think that hat’s magical in some way?”

And then a blue-shirted Discord had the hat in his hand, scanning it with a tricorder straight from Star Trek. “Damnit, Lero, I’m a Chaos God, not a scientist! As far as I can tell, it’s just a completely ordinary hat,” he said, tossing it perfectly onto the other Lero’s head. “Which only makes it more of an anomaly, doesn’t it?”

With a snap of his fingers, the giant flashing pause symbol vanished, along with his blue shirt. Reality resumed.

“Then I suppose it’s time I called forth my OWN legal aide,” Pse Cnaar said.

The other Lero would’ve supposed Cnaar’s attorney to be some flamethrower-wielding bear, a T-Rex with Gatling guns for arms, or a killer robot constructed of some impenetrable super-metal. Cnaar seemed exactly the type to have that sort of henchman in his pay.

Instead, when Pse Cnaar clapped his stubby warty hands; a second pony unmasked herself, coming to stand by his side.

She was a pegasus whose mane was a rainbow of six different grays. A dark olive-colored vest hung over her khaki-coated body, and a pith helmet sat on her head.

“Who’s that Daring Do cosplayer supposed to be?” both of the Leros asked at the same time.

“I am Daring Do!” the pegasus snapped, raspberry red eyes narrowing.

“She is Daring Do,” Discord declared.

The hat-wearing Lero gaped incredulously, while the hatless Lero exclaimed, “No she’s not! The Daring Do series are all works of…!”

“...Autobiography,” Discord cut in.

“They’re written by a lady called A. K. Yearling!”

“Daring’s pseudonym.”

In addition to the pith helmet and vest, Daring Do had come wearing one other accessory: power armor that covered the lower half of her body like a set of pants. As with Applejack, Daring had painted her compass rose cutie mark on the armor’s flank.

Applejack, for her part, had gone as still as a stone, jaw set, eyes swimming with dismay, even as Daring stared her down coolly. “Miz Do… or is it Miz Yearling?”

“‘Daring,’ if you please,” said Daring. “I am about to kill you and sentence your…”

She looked over and waved an indifferent hoof toward Lero.

“...client to death. That’s worth first names, wouldn’t you say?”

“Darin’... Ah… before this happens, Ah have somethin’ ta say,” Applejack’s Equin-arms went and covered her heart, showing Daring eyes full of deepest regret. “‘Fore a friend a’ mine showed me yer books while Ah was laid up in the hospital, Ah never really liked readin’ at all. But yew inspired me. Yer words ‘n’ yer story spoke ta me inna way no other book did… yer one a’ mah biggest heroes…”

“But it was RD who was in the hospital, she read those books…” said the hatless Lero up in the stands. Then he looked at the Jumbotron, which was showing the cutie mark on Applejack’s armored flank.

“So because Di…. Applejack now has RD’s mark, the memory of that experience was swapped over to her…?”

“Now you’re starting to get how it works,” Discord told him.

“...So, Darin’, Ah want ya ta know that when Ah kill ya, it’s NOT ‘nothin’ personal.’ It’ll smash mah heart inta applesauce, bein’ the gal ta end yer wonderful series... and end YEW. Not ta mention the whole Darin’ Do fanbase will hate mah guts ‘til the end a’ time.”

Applejack shot an unhappy glare back at her Lero, as though to say, ‘I hope you appreciate what I’m giving up for you!’

“Ah only do this cuz mah Lero’s jest THAT precious ta me. Mebbe if he were somethin’ of a lesser stallion, less of a sweetheart… who knows?”

“I understand,” said Daring Do. “I’m deeply moved, in fact. But don’t worry, Applejack, my saga will continue on, even though you won’t be around to see it.”

“Llllllllllet’s get this trialllllll underway!” shouted Judge Xrugh.

Guards came out, escorting Xrugh, Cnaar, and the hat-wearing Lero out from the colosseum’s center; only Daring and Applejack remained as the crystalline podiums sunk into the floor. The floor itself quickly slid away before them: a false bottom opened, and beneath a hard plas-crete surface appeared.

The two mares were undergoing a transformation as well as they stepped onto the plas-crete platform. The armored pants Daring wore quickly began to extend forth over her body into a full-suit of power armor, over her olive safari shirt, up and over her head. A side pocket automatically opened up in her armor, and Daring snapped her pith helmet in the air and placed the suddenly-collapsed square inside.

“You know, I think I’ll have room to fit this duel of ours in my next book,” said Daring, drawing a glowing white energy whip out with her own set of Equin-arms. “I’m feeling generous; five pages ought to cover it. I’ll write you as a sympathetic antagonist; how does that sound?”

From the neck of her power armor, Applejack’s helmet retracted from over her head. “Sounds like the role of a lifetime, sugarcube,” she drawled as she pulled out a glowing red lasso. “Ah sure do hope yer ghostwriter's takin’ notes.”

As both mares became completely encased in their battle armor, a huge, transparent domed force field shimmered and snapped into place around the arena, cutting the combatants off from the influence of the audience.

“Begin!” called out Judge Xrugh.

With both of them bearing Equin-arms, watching Applejack clash against Daring Do became less like watching a traditional fight between ponies, and more like what a fight between two centaur ladies might resemble.

“Neither of them are using their mouths to hold their weapons…” Lero mused, watching Daring’s robotic hand flick out to crack her whip towards Applejack.

“Once Equin-arms came into popular, worldwide usage, ponykind suddenly became a LOT more germ-conscious, and all but abandoned using their mouths as a stand-in for hands. The germiest place on any body IS the mouth, don’t you know?” Discord smiled at Lero, who nearly tripped backward at the sight of HUGE bacteria, crawling all over his teeth, gums, and tongue like ants over dropped marshmallows.

“How did it come to all this… WHOA!” shouted Lero, for not only had Daring Do taken to the air, but so had Applejack. Daring's natural wings were encased in special armor, while Applejack soared high on an artificial wings that retracted from the sides of her suit.

“The Swap.”

“The Swap did THIS too?!” Lero balked, as the two mares flew in circles around each other like dogfighting warplanes, searching for a weakness to strike at.

“The story behind THIS version of the Swap’s a real sock-knocker-offer!” Discord laughed. “Ahem. Once upon a time, in a bright and colorful fairytale kingdom of talking ponies, there lived a man, his pegasus sweetheart, and the other members of their family. One of these members was assigned by her boss to fix an incredibly dangerous spell, so the man and his mare flew out to the Bramblewood Forest to give her some space. Sounding familiar?”

“Yeah,” said Lero. Above them, Daring’s whip had wound itself around Applejack’s neck while AJ’s lasso had tightened around Daring’s midsection.

“Well, here’s where it takes its own detour,” Discord went on. “Yes, when the Swap was cast, the Element Bearers ended up switching places with each other here, as in everywhere else. But the big difference is that THIS Swap ended up doing something even MORE profound: it warped this entire reality. It swapped this bright and colorful fairy tale kingdom of talking ponies out for a bright and colorful space opera confederacy. Of talking ponies.”

Both sets of super-rope were squeezing down like anacondas on steroids; crushing the armor they were coiled around.

“So you’re saying the Swap flung this Equestria into the future?”

“The future? Not at all. Today’s date here is no different than your own world’s,” Discord said, showing him a calendar. "Same month, same year, same day of the week. It’s just… name me a couple of the most prolific inventors to have ever lived.”

Lero’s mind skimmed back over old human history. “You mean like Nikola Tesla? George Washington Carver?”

Discord nodded. “They’ll do. Now imagine Tesla and Carver both being born in the year 0 A.D., with all their inventiveness going full throttle throughout all their lives. Then imagine Tesla and Carver keep getting reincarnated, generation after generation after generation, each time building upon their previous selves’ accomplishments, all the way up until present times.”

Then Discord held a paw out flat in front of Lero; a small holographic video played out right above the draconequus’ palm. First, it showed Lero flying through the air atop Rainbow Dash’s back; they passed by a sky chariot hitched to a pegasus. The video continued focusing on the sky chariot, after the pegasus-riding human had passed out of frame.

“Anyway, after this world’s Applejack hustled out to Bramblewood to save you from certain doom, she brought you back to a Ponyville where everypony you knew was still there: Big Macintosh, Mayor Mare, little Pumpkin and Pound Cake still the same adorable infants you left them…”

Then the sky chariot seemed to vaporize, pegasus and vehicle literally transforming into a cloud of gas. It looked strangely painless.

“...except they were all suddenly ten thousand times more techno-savvy.”

Then the cloud re-solidified… into a new, upgraded version of what it had previously been. Now the sky chariot was a hovercraft. The pegasus sat inside the vehicle, steering it with some kind of state-of-the-art wing interface.

Lero looked to Daring and Applejack, who were flying around each other, pounding each others’ helmeted faces with their robo-fists.

“You fight like a pegasus!” Daring Do exclaimed, her miniature rocket thrusters accelerating her natural speed.

“Aw, Darin’, yew say the nicest thangs!” Applejack grinned while jetting underneath her sucker punch. “Ah do try ‘n’ make mah Mama and Papa proud!”

“...But why would the Swap do this?!” Lero asked.

“Because it’s an ultra-powerful, world-shaking, and completely unstable piece of incomplete magic!” Discord told him. “Duh!”

Lero could really have done without seeing Discord with his eyes crossed, jaw dropped down, and protruding buckteeth on display for emphasis.

The two mares were now on the ground just whaling on each other with their robotic fists. One punch from Daring Do actually managed to crack the visor in Applejack’s helmet.

“Quit toying around with her, Daring!” called the odious voice of Pse Cnaar. “Just finish that mare off!”

At that moment, there was a huge noise, and the crowd rocked in their seats as the entire building gave a jolt.

“What’s happening?!” cried one of the masked aliens.

“Earthquake!” another yelled, in a panic.

That one guessed wrong. The tremors didn’t originate from the ground beneath their feet, but rather the wall of the building. As though a great boulder had been catapulted into it from outside. Or perhaps a missile. Either way, the force field around the pony combatants cut out like a unplugged desk lamp.

Applejack and Daring Do grinned at each other.

“Now?” whispered Daring.

“Now!” shouted Applejack.

The two of them stood up, wheeling on the audience. Daring Do raised what seemed to be some kind of high-tech flare gun into the air…

...And then the hatless Lero found his eyes, ears, nose and mouth covered from behind by multiple copies of Discord’s hands.

“Discord, what…?!”

“Shush! I don’t want you blind for what’s next!”

Then it happened. Even through the strange hands pressed over his eyeballs, Lero saw brilliant whiteness. Even with the fingers plugging his ears, he heard a strange ringing. It felt swelteringly hot, and his nostrils filled with a cloying peppery odor. The masked jury let out alien cries of confusion and panic.

In time, the light died down, and Discord pulled his hands off Lero’s face. Applejack and Daring Do had vanished!

“An S.O. bomb!” coughed Judge Xrugh.

“S.O. stands for Sensory Overload,” Discord explained. “Light, sound, heat, smell, electronic scrambler, plus several OTHER senses you’d have no knowledge of… it’s the ultimate ninja smoke bomb.”

He was momentarily wearing purple, red, blue, and orange headbands all at once, and had a bo staff slung over his back, sais and nunchuks at his sides, and a katana in his hands.

“How did this slllllllip past security?!” Then Xrugh observed something more distressing. “Michealllllllides! They’ve taken him with them!”

“Daring Do, you VILE BETRAYER!” howled Pse Cnaar, floating around with surprising speed, looking from exit to exit. “Well, they’re not escaping THIS time!” he declared, lifting a device towards his mouth that looked rather phone-like.

“And now it’s time for us to catch up with yourself!” Discord announced, pulling Lero inside a motorboat that shot off like a bullet. Like a pair of ghosts, they phased through all sorts of solid matter, including many aliens, stairs, and the walls… until they were suddenly motoring alongside Daring Do and Applejack, who carried her human stallion on her back.

“So you’re really Daring Do?” asked the human, to the pony flying alongside his and Applejack’s right.

“The one and only!” said Daring. “Often imitated, never duplicated.”

“And you’re helping us?”

Daring didn’t miss the suspicious look Lero shot between herself and one of the larger cracks in Applejack’s armor. “Yeah, I’m part of the team.”

“Lot’s happened since yew got yerself shanghaied, sugar-britches,” said AJ.

“I have so many questions,” sighed the human, staring unhappily at the laser handcuffs still on his wrists.

Up ahead, security guards were taking position behind cover, blasting searing bolts at the ponies.

“Now’s not the time to ask them!” shouted Daring, as miniature turrets opened up from both ponies’ armor, returning fire. “In the immortal words of Pharaoh Kontitatakum: ’ ليس هناك وقت للشرح;’ there is no time to explain. Not until we’re safely aboard your ship.”

“Speaking a’ which…” And there came a sound from within Applejack’s helmet, like a telephone’s ringtone. “Spike? Spike, ya there? We got Lero…”

“Awesome, AJ!” they could hear the young dragon’s voice.

“What’s yer status?” Applejack asked Spike.

“Got a couple patrol guards on my tail, but they’re nothing I can’t shake off. And you?”

“Same,” said Applejack. Ahead, security guards were trying to activate a force field to block Daring and Applejack’s escape… but all that came out was purple-colored sparks, as they both rushed through.

“Well, you just focus on getting up to the docking port, pronto,” Spike encouraged her, as they came into a wide-open reception room, almost like that of a four-star hotel.

“Roger that, li’l buddy! We’re almost there, anyway.”

Daylight shone outside through clear, translucent doorways. Spacecraft of all sizes were visible through those doorways, parked in neat rows.

But then, just as they were about to step into daylight, some invisible something SNATCHED Lero clean off Applejack’s back.

“Aaahhh!!!” the human screamed, suddenly reeled upwards like a fish from the water.

The invisible thing which had grabbed Lero wasn’t able to turn the human invisible too. Even if it could, Lero was screaming too noisily to hide his location. So it deactivated its cloaking device, and revealed what it was: a giant mechanical spider with WAY more legs than any arachnid should rightfully possess.

Hanging upside-down from the high ceiling as though it weighed no more than a paper chandelier, the mechanized spider dangled Lero in front of its segmented robotic eyes.

Some of the security guards ALMOST ran into the reception room at this point, took one look at the spider, and ran back the way they’d come. Moments later, a thick blast door came crashing down.

"Scream for me, Mr. Michealides," bade the spider, caressing the side of his face almost lovingly with the spindly end of a leg. It voice was dulcet and female, the voice of an automated operator who announced things like, ‘The number you have dialed has been disconnected.’

“Oh Christ, not again!" Lero groaned, as the end of the leg that had just stroked him transformed into a spinning drill.

“LERO!” For her part, Applejack appeared even more horrified than the human. In a blast of jet fire, she rocketed over, meaning to grab her sweetheart back from the spider’s clutches, but the spider just passed the handcuffed human over to another leg.

And suddenly, a large screen along the reception room turned itself on.

“I’m pleased to see that this MRS-23 is proving a bit more… problematic for you than that paltry MR-7 archanodrone of mine,” laughed Pse Cnaar.

“That… the MR-7 was YER doing, Cnaar?!” Applejack cried, snapping towards the screen. “Lero… mah poor stallion he nearly… Yew MONSTER!”

“AJ! FOCUS!” The MRS-23 would’ve crushed the earth pony under its sizable thorax, if Daring Do hadn’t body-slammed Applejack out of harm’s way.

Several of the MRS-23’s twenty-three legs transformed into guns, shooting wildly at the ponies, who struggled to dodge them. Daring’s own gun locked onto one of the MRS-23’s legs and shot it off… but the leg magnetically reattached itself to its stump moments later.

“Oh, and I think you should know: this arachnodrone’s programmed with all the combat data we were able to salvage from the memory banks of that MR-7 you scrapped!” added Cnaar smugly.

Then Applejack glared at the mechanical monstrosity. She reached an arm up and adjusted her helmet, tilting it just-so. Her forehooves planted themselves onto the ground, and actually sank into the metal plating of the floor. Daring’s eyes opened wide and she got clear of the ground.

“A Seismic Roidbuck?” the adventurer called out. “On a planet? AJ, even you can’t… There’s ponies living here!”

Applejack ignored her. Her hind legs lifted into the air, in a form that a Shattered Stone grandmaster would have wept to see. And then her hind hooves struck down. That same grandmaster would have fallen to her knees and begged the orange earth pony to take her on as apprentice there and then. The sound of the impact roared, and a ring of orange light coruscated outward from the contact point.

“Ah ain’t breakin’ the whole thing. Jes’ this lil' bit of it,” she declared. And lifted off.

The whole room rattled. First the lights flickered, then cut out, then fell, along with all the chairs and furniture. It was an earthquake, a REAL one this time, and the floor split wide open, like a piece of bread being pulled apart from the middle, right under the spider’s over-numerous legs.

The pit yawned beneath the MRS-23.

“And THAT’S how Ah earned my cutie mark!” AJ called to Daring. Both of them were out of harm’s way; flying along the high ceiling.

“AJ!” The voice was Spike’s, coming from Applejack’s helmet. “Why aren’t you outside? Something happen?”

“Yeah, Spike! Big bad robot… ain't got time ta explain!”

All the robo-spider’s legs scrambled just to find footing, except for the one still holding Lero. The human was being whipped around through the air like a flagpole in a patriot’s hands.

“P…!” Applejack cut off the transmission. Eyes locked on her beloved human stallion, she waited for just the right moment, then swept out to pull him to safety.

But the MRS-23 was quicker still; it shot a web-string from its spinneret which attached to the wall, pulling the spider and its hostage back to the ceiling like a grappling gun.

“Time to party, Mr. Michealides,” said the MRS-23, driving its whirling drill straight into Lero’s thigh.

It had just pierced the skin when the drill suddenly pulled out of the human altogether. Mystical pink energy surrounded all twenty-three of the MRS-23’s legs, which all suddenly curved inward on themselves, lengths of metal being twisted and even knotted into balloon animal formations.

“A party?” called a familiar voice from ground level. “You’re throwing a party and you forgot to invite me?”

From his ghostly motorboat, the other Lero gawked at the newcomer who stepped in through the reception room’s broken front doors. “Pink Lady?!”

“Pinkie Pie,” Discord corrected.

This time, Lero’s eyes shot straight to Pinkie’s flank. Painted on the pink pony’s particularly pink power armor were the multiple stars that rightfully belonged to Twilight Sparkle.

“And I thought it was bizarre seeing a pegasus casting spells,” the human said.

“Well, if ever there was an earth pony who deserved to be Element of Magic…”

“You...”

Pinkie’s haunches were raised like a cat prepared to pounce. A magical pink-colored glow surrounded her tail as she spun it continuously, like a pinwheel in a steady breeze, and the spider’s voice died in a garbled burst of static.

“You know, there are so many different kind of parties and celebrations that exist,” she told the spider. “I read all sorts of books, and many of my favorites are about parties. I also get to attend lots of different festivals, thanks to me being President Celestia’s faithful student.”

The hat-wearing Lero was levitated gently onto Pinkie’s back. Daring Do and Applejack flew over behind the pink mare, who dangled the arachnodrone helplessly on its web.

“But I think one of the most fascinating celebrations I’ve heard of doesn’t even take place in this galaxy, but on faraway Planet Earth,” Pinkie continued. “There, they have a country called the Kingdom of Unity…”

The Lero in the motorboat turned to Discord. “The Kingdom of Unity?”

“The United Kingdom,” Discord told him. “She's a bit less detail-obsessed than your Twilight."

“Long ago, there was a big old meaniepants who tried to kill his king, James the First, who was a very beloved man. Just like my Lero’s a very beloved man.”

Magical floating kerosene canisters materialized all around the MRS-23, drenching the arachnodrone with their contents, then vanished the moment they’d emptied themselves.

“But the assassination of King James failed. And everyhuman in the Kingdom of Unity was so very, very happy they made a holiday of it, celebrating with the finest pyrotechnics every fifth of November for centuries to come.”

No more kerosene canisters appeared.

“Say, Applejack! What might today’s date happen to be?”

“Er… June the 26th,” said AJ.

There was small gawkish pause.

“Close enough,” Pinkie Pie decided.

As her shimmering tail spun faster, like a helicopter propeller, a giant Guy Fawkes mask formed in front of the MRS-23. Guy Fawkes opened his mouth and flames flew out, turning the arachnodrone into a great blazing ball. The web caught fire until it broke, dropping the MRS-23 through the earthquake-crack in the floor. Pinkie’s tail then spun counter-clockwise, closing the fissure back together, squashing the arachnodrone like a soda can in a recycling machine.

“Happy Bonfire Night, you stallion-stabbing sadist.” Then her tail dropped and Pinkie turned to the others, beaming. “Now come on!”

They hurried outside and were almost immediately swept up into a spaceship’s tractor beam. There was just enough time for Lero to see it was shaped much like a traditional flying saucer, and that it bore the name Hudsucker Proxy, before it was off, and a dozen other spaceships shot after it like hounds after a fox.

SLUUUUUUURP.

Lero turned to look at Discord. Their motorboat’s motor wasn’t rumbling. They were just floating in place. Discord had brought out a tea set, and was sipping noisily from a steaming cup.

“Aren’t we going to follow them?” asked Lero. “Or something?”

“Cor blimey, guv’nor!” cried Discord, waving a tiny Union Jack straight in the human’s face. “It’s bloody Bonfire Night, ya cheeky Yank tosser! The most British holiday on the books! Give a chap a chance ta sip ‘is cuppa brown joy in peace, there’s a good lad! God save the Queen!”

It felt like hours before the draconequus finally set his empty cup aside and snapped his fingers, and they were inside the spaceship.

* * *

Lero could tell at once that this vessel was not simply a spacecraft. Not even an ultra-cool, technologically astonishing one.

The first thing that greeted Lero’s eye was a large and gorgeously colorful mural, an enlarged replica of a photograph, etched into the very metal of the spaceship wall.

It showed himself, Spike, Pinkie Pie the Mage, Applejack the Space Badflank, and Lyra Heartstrings all grinning and hugging together in a tight happy ball of family togetherness, on some planet where all the ground resembled sea corals, and the sky was spirals of unearthly indigo, orange, and green.

HERD BELLEROPHON. Lero read. FOREVER LOYAL, ALWAYS LOVING.

“I live on this spaceship, don’t I?” Lero breathed, eyes flicking to the sturdy-looking window right next to the mural; he could see ringed planets floating in the starry vastness of outer space.

“Well, this universe’s version of you, anyways.”

“All of them are clothed,” Lero noted, marveling at the sundress that Lyra was pictured wearing. “As clothed as I am, top and bottom. Even Spike.”

Discord gave another laugh. “What can I say? The ponies here are so advanced, that they even discovered modesty. But let me draw your attention to their flanks once more. As you can see, the need to showcase one’s cutie mark is so deeply ingrained in the pony psyche, that they either make that part of the garment out of translucent fabric, or have their marks replicated onto the clothes they own. Very easy to do with modern technology. But, come on, now, you don’t want to miss the rest of this.”

The artificial gravity aboard this ship felt about a half-degree lighter than Lero was used to, so there was a definite jaunt in both their steps. Down the corridor they went, seeing homey, personalized touches everywhere.

They passed shelves of valuable first edition hard copy books, and Lero slowed to read a few of the titles. The Neuroscience of Laughter. Why Smiling Matters. Celestia’s Apprentices And What They Did With Their Lives. Parties: From Prehistory To Present Day. 10,000 Valuable Spells. How To Be Funny. How Bonobos Say Hello. The Ultimate Cupcake Cookbook. So You’ve Hatched A Dragon Egg But Aren’t A Dragon Yourself. A Mage’s Guide To Party Tricks. Understanding Primates (a book Lero remembered Twilight reading when they’d first begun dating). And the entire Daring Do saga.

They saw all sorts of eye-catching space-age hardware and databanks all throughout the ship. They passed a well-equipped and well-used science bay, and an impressive array of well-kept weather gizmos mounted on locked racks. There was a side room decorated in a mind-bending meld of ‘Tennessee watering hole’ and ‘Wonderbolts fan shrine...’

“Hang on a second” Lero said, “Weren’t there a bunch of enemy ships chasing this ship a while ago? Shouldn’t we be dodging photon torpedoes or something?”

“Hm, gosh,” said Discord, taking another sip of tea. “We must’ve missed that bit, and skipped forward to the part where Spike managed to shake them off.”

They had come to the helm… or was it was called the cockpit? Hopefully, this-world’s-Lero had a stronger grasp of spacefaring jargon. At any rate, this was definitely the place where the pilot sat. Namely, Spike, who wore blue jeans and a denim jacket under a puffer vest. The spaceship wasn’t accelerating in any direction under its own power, because the dragon had stopped to have some sort of face-to-face chat with Rarity.

“...But mah hooves’re all cracked ‘n’ dry from workin’ on the field!” she protested, with a drawl even thicker than one of the Apples. Lero could see a barn behind her. “And mah mane’s full of dust ‘n’ split ends!”

If only Lero’s own sweet RD could see what he was seeing! The grungy straw hat. The overlarge overalls with the patchy three apples sewn on the rump, stained with fresh muck! He didn’t know whether to cringe or chortle.

But Spike sounded downright suave as he leaned forward and told her, “Like I said, beauty products can only embellish what’s already there! Put lipstick, rouge, and eyeliner on a N’khad mole-rat, you only give it a new dimension of hideousness. But a Rarity without any of that remains a beauty.”

“Ah’m wearing droopy drawers,” she pointed out glumly, turning around to show how pachyderm-like they hung on her body.

“You’re a farm girl, a little rustic roughness is part of the charm!” He showed her a winningly confident smile. “C’mon, I thought you were trying to convince me you’re ugly! Hit me with your best shot!”

Lero was disturbed to see the white unicorn’s flank start to spasm, almost as if it had been angered. Rarity’s expression turned deeply pained as she shrieked, “I luv bein’ covered in mud!”

She looked about to cry. But instead, Spike gave a friendly grin and told her, “Me too!”

The spasming died away.

“Ah’m surprised, Spike! Ah thought yew’d be THE guy who put fanciness first! All them times yew went ta the Boo-teek ta sigh over Twilight Sparkle…”

Spike winced at that. “Yeah, me and… Twilight… Let’s just say my tastes have matured.”

He’s not bewitched. Lero realized. Spike knows the truth of things.

But it was still so weird! On one hand, it made sense that Spike would wince at the Swapped pony’s assumption that he was in love with Twilight Sparkle, who was as good as a herd-mother to him. On the other, he was still hitting on RD...

In spite of everything against her, all the cloddishness and the slovenliness and grime, when she smiled, Farmer Rarity really was every bit as beautiful as Spike claimed. “Thank yew fer all them times yew’ve been callin’ me, Spike. Ah needed these talks, it’s helped given me sum kinda… kinda… a balance in mah head, an, an…”

“An equilibrium?” said Spike.

She shrugged. “Good a word as any. Next time yer in the area, why don’t cha drop on by Sweet Apple Asteroids, and Ah’ll bake yew a fresh apple pie!”

“Rarity, I’ll gladly eat every bit of pie you’re willing to give me.” Spike promised, as Applejack, Daring Do, Pinkie Pie, and Lero all came in through the door.

“While yer at it,” Applejack called out to Rarity, “When we do come by, could ya also have a case of cider ready fer us along with that pie?”

All the mares were out of their power armor. In addition to her cowgirl hat, Applejack now wore a sort of jumpsuit colored very similarly a Wonderbolts’ uniform, but with fringes down the legs and a bolo tie at the neck. She knocked back a long swig from a bottle labelled ‘Sweet Apple Asteroids’ Finest.’

“Woo-wee! Can’t NEVER git enough a’ this stuff!”

“Ssh!” shushed Pinkie Pie. “You’re interrupting Daring’s story!”

Pinkie Pie wore a collared shirt and tie, smartly tucked under a V-neck sweater, a pleated skirt, and a thin, snug robe that hung down to just below her knees. Every stitch of it was in pretty shades of pink.

“Well, there’s not much more to tell,” said Daring Do, who wore safari pants to match her safari shirt.

As Spike ended the transmission with Rarity, Daring said, “Basically, in addition to us all uniting against common enemies, there’s just so much intrigue surrounding you. Why was Trenderhoof murdered? What was Coco Pommel’s role in the Incla Valley bombings? Why has Cheese Sandwich joined forces with Suri Polomare? Where is the real Lyra Heartstrings? Why has Agent Honeydew been keeping me under surveillance this whole past year? And how do the Elements of Harmony play into all of it?”

The human shook his head, “We wish we had those answers ourselves, but I got a good feeling we’re going to learn together.”

His hand shook her hoof. “Welcome aboard the Hudsucker Proxy, Daring!”

“Technically, I’ve been on the Proxy for the past week, but thank you for the warm reception, all the same. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s been an eventful day, so ‘A.K. Yearling...’

And Daring Do took off her pith helmet and donned a pair of large bookish glasses.

“...needs to update her manuscript.”

She left the room. Applejack and Pinkie Pie stared after her with a sort of fangirlish yearning. Pinkie actually grabbed Daring’s hat, seeming to fight off the temptation to don it herself.

“It’s been a week and I’m still amazed…”

“The Darin’ Do, yeah…” Applejack breathed.

“Wouldn’t it be something if she and we were to…” Pinkie swallowed nervously. “Y’know…”

Applejack blushed, but shook her head.

“If she puts the moves on us, that’s one story. But we don’t wanna put the moves on her. Ah’d MUCH rather us stay friends than spook her away with unwanted advances. ‘Sides, we don’t wanna be fergettin’ ‘bout Lyra ‘n’ making such decisions ‘fore we find ‘er again!”

“Agreed,” said her herd-sister, putting down Daring’s hat respectfully on a countertop, and turning to her beloved human. “Not that we’re forgetting you either, Lero!”

Applejack stared down the brim of her hat at him. “Naw, we ain’t forgotten Lero.”

She straddled herself atop him while he sat in a chair.

“Ah’m still a little sore at yew, buster,” she told him, and he hung his head.

“I suppose I’ve earned that.” Smiling contritely, he looked back up. “This hasn’t been a total bust, though. While I was being held captive, I was able to discover something from a fellow prisoner, a way of helping Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, like I’ve helped you and Pinkie…”

“There ya go again,” sighed Applejack tenderly. “Always… always puttin’ everypony else first before yerself.” Their kisses were soft at first, before building up gusto, her strong, muscular legs clenching his powerfully.

“Sweet Celestia, Ah’m about ready to ride yew off into the sunset! Ah missed ya so much, mah sweet stallion…”

Pinkie Pie popped in on Lero’s other side.

“Mine too!” Her tail twirled again… and the shirt he was wearing magically transformed.

“Pinkie? What’d you do to my shirt?” It had turned wet and goopy against his skin in a way no cloth should ever feel. Pinkie ran her tongue from the center of Lero’s shoulder to his collarbone, licking up a mass of what Lero finally recognized as a mixture of cake frosting and freshly-diced apple squares.

“I made it edible!” she said quite clearly, before plunging her sugar-coated tongue into Lero’s mouth and swirling it around.

“Hey, come on, guys!” Spike called from his control console. “ You’ve got a kid here! Go up to your bunk for that sort of thing!”

“Great idea! AJ, Lero, both of you hang tight!”

The other two pressed tightly against Pinkie as she pinwheeled her tail. Spike shielded his eyes from a flash of pinkness, and then there was only smear of frosting on the back of the chair that Lero had been sitting in. Soon enough, he could hear distant giggling and the creaking of a bed.

“And they’re off to the races again,” With a great eye roll, Spike turned on some music to a loud volume. "If only they'd install some soundproofing so I didn't have to listen every time.” Taped to the console was a group photo of this world’s Herd Bellerophon with the other four Elements of Harmony. Spike smiled with brotherly regret at the fashionista in that picture.

“Guess there's SOME upside to you being off the ship, Twilight; that was always even more uncomfortable hearing YOU in there..." Then he frowned at a message on his touchscreen reading ‘Incoming Transmission.’ Spike pressed ‘Answer.’

“Hello,” greeted a smartly dressed mare in front of a featureless grey wall, “Is Mr. Lero Michealides available?”

“Lero’s busy, I’m afraid. Can I ask who's calling?” said Spike. At the very edge of his hearing, Spike could almost swear he heard Pinkie squeal, 'Look, AJ! Now his britches really are all sugary! Mmmmm!' And he cringed a bit.

“My name is Civil Virtue, and I’m calling on behalf of the Swirled Star Exchange…”

“Well then, we definitely don’t have time!” Spike snapped, a bit of smoke puffing from his mouth. “We’ve dealt with your Exchange before… you people are WEIRD! Goodbye, and please don’t call back!”

But as he reached forward to end the call, Civil Virtue begged, “Please! It’s important! Starswirl himself wishes to speak with Mr. Michealides!”

That stopped Spike. “Starswirl…?”

“Starswirl,” she repeated, as he leaned back in his seat. “Starswirl the Bearded. He’s a pony who’s famous for… “

“Oh, believe me, we know all about Starswirl on THIS ship!” the dragon cut in. “And you’re saying he wants to talk with Lero? News flash, sister: Starswirl’s quite a few centuries dead!”

She shook her head very pleasantly. “No, Starswirl never actually died, he merely flung himself forward in time, to this very moment.”

“Pull one of the other ones.”

“Starswirl’s genius is beyond all measure,” she declared. “If not for him and his brilliant magic, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the level of technology we experience today. I can show you him right now.”

Civil Virtue disappeared momentarily… and returned with a stern old unicorn in a belled, wizardly cap.

“Aaaaaaand that’s all we have time for!” Discord said, showing his guest a clock.

“What? No!”

But the spaceship they had been in had vanished. It took a couple of seconds for Lero to recognize what he was now sitting inside: a bathysphere whose heavy metal hatch sealed behind them with a heavy, grinding squeak.

“I let that go on for WAY longer than I should’ve,” Discord sighed, sitting back “I REALLY needed to clean that Psycho-Fluttershy out of my head. It’s time to move on.”

“But it was JUST getting good!” Then he looked at the chaos god with hopeful eyes. “Say, Discord, is there any chance MY Swap will turn ME into a space adventurer?”

“Maybe if you’re really, really good,” the draconequus said. “...Well, no, not good. Maybe if I think it’ll be really, really funny.”

* * *

Countless bubbles floated up against the porthole as the bathysphere plunged into deep water.

“Gotta say, Discord, you really know how to boost a guy’s ego!” Lero chuckled, marvelling at the odd schools of cuttlefish that swam past. “I mean, I understand that this is the multiverse and we’re looking at infinite possibilities, but in every world we’ve been in, I’ve got the ladies wrapped around my little finger. Like I could’ve picked any one of them, and they’d all be equally loyal.”

Across from him, Discord raised an intrigued eyebrow, as though the human had brought up a point he hadn’t thought to consider.

“Yes… and no. Think, Lero: all the girls who were most besmitten with you shared one constant commonality. Can you guess what it was?”

Reluctantly, Lero turned from the porthole, reviewing them all in his head. That rough-and-tumble ‘Rainbow Dash’ who flew him through the sky. ‘Rarity’ the Spider Killer. Twilight the Daredevil. Applejack the Space Hero. Even that psycho Fluttershy girl.

“They all had the same cutie mark.”

“Bingo!” Discord cheered, handing him a gold trophy shaped like RD’s mark.

“And… come to think of it, between Rainbow the Mage and Pinkie the Mage… they acted more like Twilight Sparkle because they had Twilight’s cutie mark…?”

Discord gave him another thumbs-up for another correct conclusion.

“So what lineup of girls will we be seeing in the new world, Discord?” Lero asked, with a sophomoric, immature smile. “Lemme guess: Zecora-Spitfire-Trixie? Maybe even Cadence-Celestia-Luna?”

“It’s actually going to be Rarity-Twilight Sparkle-Lyra Heartstrings,” Discord told him, as the waters outside grew steadily darker. “And…”

“And?” asked Lero.

“And it isn’t so much a ‘new’ world as one we’re revisiting.”

The draconequus stood up, moseying over to a bathtub inside their bathysphere that wasn’t there a moment ago. One with a cheap plastic shower curtain. Discord entered it.

“Right this way!” he said, motioning him over. “Chop-chop!”

Lero moved over and stepped into the bathtub next to Discord, who closed the shower curtain.

Hold on! Lero thought. I’ve gotten inside a tub with another guy! And it’s Discord!

His face flushed and panic set in. But instead of turning on the faucet or telling him to undress, Discord merely grinned and reopened the shower curtain.

* * *

“...and Lavender Blush and Seasong and Tropical Spring…”

It was nighttime, and the poofy-haired pink Earth pony with the three-balloon cutie mark was in her bedroom, sitting at a small desk and writing a list of ponies she’d need to invite to her next party. The bathtub with the human and the draconequus in it was completely invisible to her.

“Drizzle couldn’t come to my last party because she was sick with the pony pox,” she noted to herself, with the pencil still in her mouth. “So I’ll definitely have to invite her!”

As she scribbled down Drizzle’s name, Lero instinctively moved to step out.

“Please keep your arms, legs, and all other body parts inside the bathtub until further notice,” Discord told him.

Then the pencil dropped from her mouth, rolling off the desk and to a corner of the room as Pinkie Pie’s eyes went unfocused. The mare tumbled sideways off her chair, as though she’d inhaled knockout gas.

“Pay special attention to her cutie mark!”

She’d fallen over at a good angle to allow for that. It took a few short seconds for those three cute little balloons to fade away, and it was a dreadful thing to see.

Like watching someone fall into a coma. Or a soul being sucked out.

The fact that the vibrant curls of her mane and tail were deflating into straight, flat strands only made it worse. Then, suddenly her flank was no longer bare. A trio of red apples materialized in place of the trio of balloons.

The mare rose to her feet without so much as a grunt of pain. Her eyes showed only emptiness when she opened them.

“Mah farm…” she muttered the words in the same accent they all used down at Sweet Apple Acres.

Pink Lady’s accent...

The pink mare with the Apple Mark turned at the sound of hooves ascending the stairs just outside her room. In came a familiar canary-yellow pegasus mare, with the very same Balloon Mark on her that’d been on the pink mare’s own flank until moments ago.

But the pink mare gave no sign of recognizing her old cutie mark. Neither mare gave the faintest hint of recognizing the other as they wordlessly strode past each other. The Earth pony left her room and headed down the stairs, while the pegasus went to retrieve the pencil that’d dropped on the floor, and sat before the list her friend had been in the middle of writing.

“...Oh, and Orchid Dew and Strawberry Sunrise,” said Fluttershy, adding those names in, “can’t forget them…”

Discord shut the shower curtain, then reopened it.

They were in Applejack’s bedroom at Sweet Apple Acres. The orange pony slept with her hat still on her head, her blanket covering most of her body, but not her cutie mark. Or rather, her sudden lack of one. Lero Michealides got to watch three diamonds appear over the orange blankness, and the blonde-maned pony arose, glazed-eyed, from her bed.

“Mah dresses…”

The flat-haired Pinkie came in. As before, the two friends offered no greeting, no more than one zombie ever gives another. As they slipped past each other, Pinkie Pie made to gently take Applejack’s hat in her teeth. The orange pony wouldn’t let her; sidestepping the pink mare’s mouth, and exiting the bedroom at a fast trot.

The pink mare seemed to consider running after her friend with the Diamond Mark. Apparently, though, she decided it wasn’t that valuable a hat, so Pinkie Pie just slipped into her friend’s bed, her body curling in the exact same position Applejack had been sleeping in.

Discord closed the curtain. Discord opened the curtain.

“My stallion…”

And now Lero was watching Rarity change places with Applejack in the Carousel Boutique.

One last flash of curtain, and Lero got to see Rainbow Dash, marked with three pink butterflies, fly into the cottage at the edge of the Everfree Forest holding Gummy the baby alligator.

It’s almost like I’ve watched Pinkie Pie become Pink Lady. Lero thought to himself. And Fluttershy become Flutterpie. And Applejack become Diamondjack, and Rainbow Dash become Rainbow Connection and Rarity become… RD.

The thought made him shudder.

“For all the alternate universes we’ve seen, Lero, there are trillions more in which you never came to Equestria at all, my friend. A world where Rarity fell in love with Prince Blueblood and became a duelist. A world where Princess Cadence was corrupted into her own version of Nightmare Moon and called herself ‘Decadence.’ A world where I succeeded in my original goal of beating the Elements of Harmony and throwing Equestria into chaos; that’s a fun one to visit. Even a world where Sweetie Belle became a ghostbuster.”

Privately, Lero supposed this makes sense. The odds of him arriving in Equestria at ALL were phenomenal enough.

“And yet, in all the Equestrias where you DO show up, there are certain constant commonalities in all versions, sure as there always being air for you to breathe.”

Another yank of the shower curtain, and Lero was again seeing himself be rescued from the seven-legged spider by the Rarity with the rainbow-thunderbolt cutie mark.

“But of all the Lero Michealideses who came to Equestria,” he said, pointing to the cocooned human the spider and pony were fighting over, “HE was the first to have to wrangle with the Swap.”

Another curtain pull; and Discord and Lero saw the Lero in question at his own house… a shoddy welcome home party, and he was circling his table of pony guests and staring in bewilderment at their mismatched marks.

“He was the trailblazer,” Discord informed him. “The first domino to fall.”

The curtain shut and the curtain opened multiple times, and through it all, Discord and his guest watched the Lero of this world do many astonishing deeds.

Lero saw his other self go around Ponyville with Twilight Sparkle, observing the Swapped Ponies fail miserably at their new lives. He was pulled into Discord’s own body, and accepted an olive branch from the draconequus after a fight.

They watched Rarity console this Lero as they both lay in bed, assuring him she’d never stop loving him. They watched Lero fend off Angel Bunny and all the animals of the cottage for hours on end, just so that Rainbow Dash could get some sleep; watched Lero dance and sing in the rain beside Rarity, a tearful Pinkie Pie embracing Apple Bloom inside a hospital bathroom...

“How long has it been for this guy?” asked the Lero witnessing all this.

“Oh, I’d say about… a month and a half so far, give or take. More than I thought he’d manage. And he’s still fighting the good fight.”

“Am I gonna have to put up with this Swap thing for that long?” he asked, appalled.

“‘Put up with,’ hmmm? Well, who knows?” Discord shrugged. “Maybe tomorrow when you wake up, your Twilight will have the cure to the Swap figured out in time for pancakes. If so, more power to you!”

They continued watching: the Apple Mark briefly fading from Pinkie’s flank as she rediscovered a desire to spread smiles, everyone banding together to save Rainbow Dash from a huge slime beast… tears being shed after Rainbow declared she no longer had need of Lero’s help, (a few were Lero’s own)… Lero and several of his family studying comedy with Fluttershy… Lero braiding a second feather in his hair at the Wonderbolts Derby…

“Would you like to meet him?” Discord asked. “This version of yourself?”

“Yes,” said Lero. “Yes, I really would.”

* * *

They appeared in front of Golden Oaks Library’s front porch.

“Wait right here for one moment.” Discord told him. “I’ll be right back.”

And he hopped down the library’s chimney in a single bound.

The place was bright with daylight, and the sun was warm on Lero’s face. A pegasus neighbor waved cheerfully to Lero from above, and Lero waved back. The flowers in the garden gave off a sweet scent.

Everything was so familiar, so peace-inspiring, that for a moment, it was as though Lero was right back home in his own world.

“You can come in now, Lero.” Discord said, opening the door for him from within.

Lero stepped inside. All the books were set neatly on their shelves, the place smelled lemon-scented, and everything looked freshly dusted and swept. The way it always was at his own house, whenever they were preparing to have guests over.

Then three figures stepped forward toward Lero. Spike, Twilight Sparkle — and boy, was Lero happy to see her Star Mark right in its proper place — and himself.

“Can you all see me?” he asked them. “Can you all hear me?”

He waved both his hands at them, as though they were standing at opposite ends of a football field. They smiled and chuckled.

“Yeah, dude, you’re a very visible ninja,” Spike snarked.

Lero straightened self-consciously. “Yes, well…” He held out a hand. “Let me introduce myself. My name is Lero Michealides, and I’m from an alternate universe.”

This world’s Lero came up. He wore a red shirt and two blue feathers braided into his hair.

“Good to see you, Lero,” he said, the two selves shaking hands. Wow, he had a firm grip. “My home is your home.”

Then Twilight held out her hoof, and he shook that, grabbing it in both hands.

“You look beautiful, Twilight.”

Lero meant this with all his heart. Just seeing Twilight Sparkle with an honest, happy smile on her face after so many days of her acting uptight and isolating herself… it felt like a weight had been lifted off him.

“Thank you so much, Lero. You look very handsome yourself.” Then she reared up, and he instinctively caught her and brought his lips to hers.

“Mmm, you even kiss the same!” The other Lero rolled his eyes in good humor as she got back down to all four hooves. “Oooooh, I have all sorts of questions to ask about the Equestria you come from, and about your journey here… I hardly know where to begin!”

“I’ll be glad to answer everything, as always!” he assured her.

But before she could pose her first question, Spike cut in front of her. “So you really ARE from an alternate universe, huh? Wow, you look WAY too much like OUR Lero. I dunno, I was hoping you’d have, like, an eyepatch or a samurai sword or a supervillain cape, or twenty billion more bits in your bank account!”

“Well, if you don’t mind my saying so, I’m amazed that you guys aren’t MORE amazed to see me here.”

Lero looked towards Discord as though to ask ‘did you bewitch them?’ Strangely, the draconequus was nowhere to be found.

“Well, the truth is, we were expecting you,” said the Lero with the two-feather braid.

“Expecting me?” Lero asked, after a careful look at floor and ceiling, failing to uncover where Discord was suddenly hiding.

“Discord told us all about you a couple days ago, and how he wanted to help you. We were all for it, so we got the house ready to welcome you as our guest,” Twilight explained, turning around. “Come on! Let’s go to the kitchen; we’ve prepared all your favorites. Or at least all HIS favorites.” She and the human she lived with shared a smile with each other.

“That sounds great,” said Lero, meeting eyes with his other self again. “Somehow, I think we’ll share many of the same tastes.”

* * *

Lero felt like a movie star in his own home as he ate lunch with Twilight, Spike, and his other self… and not just because of all the fine treatment. A few feet away was a carefully balanced old-style movie camera, filming the four of them as they ate and conversed. In case the movie camera somehow failed, a cassette player had also been placed in the center of their table, recording the audio of this moment. Finally, there was a regular photograph-snapping camera, which Spike was in charge of.

“To immortalize the moment,” Twilight had explained. “Especially since this is truly a phenomenal, well… phenomenon.”

“Seems risky, though,” Lero had said.

“Don’t worry,” Twilight had assured her guest. “First, the four of us have this place entirely to ourselves for the entire day; no one else will be coming by. Second, I’ll be dragon-mailing all this footage to a special vault of Celestia’s right away, after you’ve left.”

Lero hadn’t minded at all. It was Twilight being her regular self again, and it was great seeing her like that. He and his other self had goofed off a bit for the cameras; singing duets with each other, giving each other hive-fives and fist bumps and putting ‘bunny ears’ on each other’s heads.

Then they’d shared their stories, first comparing and contrasting the differences of the respective worlds. For instance, here, there were a couple shops in the marketplace that existed under different names, or were owned by other ponies in his own world. All three of his hosts were fascinated to hear Lero’s tale about how Big Macintosh married Rainbow Connection; the Big Mac of this world was still single.

Next, they talked about each others’ families. Throughout the discussion, Twilight Sparkle showed Lero several family photos. The cutie marks on the ponies were visible on each other. First was a recent snapshot of this-world’s-Lero with the Swapped Rarity, hugging each other.

“I’ve actually seen your Rarity in action,” he told them, wishing he’d brought pictures of his own. “She’s just like my RD, but with 20% more refinement and 80% less tomboyishness. Right down to her smile.”

The next photo was another recently-taken one, showing Lero with Rarity, Twilight, and Lyra-the-Unicorn all together.

“I’d like you to take a moment to listen to this,” Twilight said, putting a record on the turntable. “This is something our Lyra made.”

“Did your own Lyra compose this same music?” the other Lero asked, over the beautiful harp music that filled the room.

“This sounds to be in my-Lyra’s style, but I don’t remember my-Lyra ever making this particular melody.” Lero told them.

Then they showed Lero two photographs: an older photo of this-world’s-Lero with Rainbow Dash the Weathermare, and a much newer one of him with Rainbow Dash the Animal Caretaker. They made for very striking before-and-after images.

From there, his hosts went on to describe more of what the Swap had put them through and how they’d dealt with it. In turn, Lero told them about his journey with Discord, and about how his own Twilight, back home, was dealing with Starswirl’s unfinished spell.

“So let me take a second to review, Lero,” said Twilight. “You’re saying that the me-of-your-world DID try casting Starswirl’s spell? As a test-run?”

“Yes,” said Lero. “And absolutely nothing happened when she did.”

“Of course. Of course,” Twilight smiled. “And did your Twilight Sparkle ever recast that spell after the initial test?”

“Er… no,” Lero saw Spike and his-other-self nod at each other in a way that irked him.

“Any attempts at tinkering with it?” Twilight pressed. “Modifying it?”

“Not to the best of my knowledge, no,” he admitted.

“Because she’s shut herself off from you.”

“Yes.” Lero could feel his muscles clench.

“And she’s buried herself in research and the few times you see each other these days, she can barely stand to look any of you in the eye, because she’s so wracked with guilt, but won’t give you a simple, straightforward explanation as to why,” Twilight voice had dropped to a near-whisper, and there was an unsettling openness to her eyes. “Not to you, not to Rarity, or to Bon Bon…”

“Their names are Rare Deluge and Lyra,” Lero reminded them.

“Lyra Who’s-An-Earth-Pony,” Spike scoffed.

Lero stood up angrily. “Is that a crime all of a sudden?! Not being a unicorn?”

“No! I didn’t mean it like that!” Spike said.

“Who cares if my white unicorn sweetheart’s named ‘Rarity’ everywhere else?” Lero insisted, looking from one set of eyes to the next. “She’s Rare Deluge where I live. Every dimension has to have something to set it apart, right?”

His-other-self with the two stupid feathers in his hair quickly said, “Sure.”

“I mean, I just came out of Pony Star Wars, for crying out loud! Would someone turn that harp music off already? So it shouldn’t be THAT unbelievable, should it?”

“No, not at all.” Lero’s other self stood up, hands motioning downward, as though pleading with him to sit. “A rose by any other name smells just as sweet. Why, I’ll bet in the grandness of the multiverse, there must be an Equestria where I was born as Jim Johnson instead of Lero Michealides.”

Lero glanced over at some of the pictures they’d shown him: Rarity and Rainbow Dash with the same mark. “I just… I…”

“You love that white unicorn, don’t you?” the-other-Lero stated plainly. “Of course you do. She’s sweet and loving, brimming with confidence, charisma, and a strong, gutsy take-charge never-say-dieness. She’s pretty, witty, a wizard with weather, a natural-born family girl, who always give 100% of her heart to every member of her herd… and best of all, she’s crazy about you, Lero. Just as you’re crazy about her.”

The local Lero came over and patted his visitor self reassuringly on the back.

“Trust us,” said Twilight, levitating the picture of Rarity up with a fond smile. “We know exactly where you’re coming from.”

Lero slumped back down in his chair. “It’s not just RD, though. It’s Lyra. God, I love my Lyra so much. She's down-to-earth, sensible and almost impossible to get down. She makes me laugh and smile whenever she rolls out her sarcastic humor. Which is often. If my life was ever in danger, I know I’m safe with Lyra. Not only is Lyra just as loyal as RD, she kicks so much ass with that Shattered Stone style of hers, it’s not even funny. And she’s just so incredibly snuggly and affectionate, I feel blessed to sleep in the same bed with her, every night.”

“Sounds like the sort of girl I’d like too,” said his-other-self.

Lero grinned. “Now, don’t you get any ideas!”

Both of them shared a laugh.

“The thing is, I’m trying… I really, seriously am trying… but I just cannot remember there ever being a ‘Rainbow Dash’ in my life. Even as I’m speaking, I’m trying to scour through my memories, searching for anything that feels ‘fake’ or ‘distorted.’ But everything follows everything else nice and neatly, from A to B, B to C, and C to D, without anything shoehorned in.”

Sighing tiredly, he asked, “What should I do?”

“First, before anything else, I’d reach out to your Twilight Sparkle,” said Twilight Sparkle.

“Okay,” said Lero.

“She’ll be difficult, she’ll be evasive and aloof, she’ll try to shut you out, but don’t let it happen,” Twilight instructed him firmly. “Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer from her. Right now, the thing she needs more than ANYTHING is a friend. Someone she can open up to. She’ll be feeling even MORE alone than I did. Even if you don’t see eye-to-eye with her, Lero, at least give her the benefit of the doubt. Take it from me; your Twilight won’t be able to even BEGIN to make serious headway on what she needs to do before someone helps her get her head in the right place.”

Lero stared down at the pictures once again. “Let’s just… let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that I was Swapped… bewitched… magically brainwashed, whatever you call it. Is there still a way for me to recognize a Swapped pony as BEING Swapped? Even with my perceptions clouded?”

“It can honestly be VERY difficult,” his-other-self said. “Nopony’s better at crafting an alibi for themselves than Swapped Ponies. Especially when the magic’s gone global. And yet, even so, there is one thing, one tell that even the Swapped, themselves, can’t quite sweep under the rug: when they’re suddenly, inexplicably, bad at their jobs.”

“Particularly if it pertains to their cutie mark,” added Spike. “If the farmer suddenly can’t farm. If the joker suddenly can’t joke. Especially if they try and try obsessively, and keep making stupid mistakes. That’s a big tip-off.”

Lero felt an icy chill along his spine at these words.

“Well... that might explain a few things about what's been happening with the weather recently…” Then he looked at the other Lero. “Anything else?”

Suddenly the other Lero gave a light laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“It’s just… The fact that you know of the Swap, but can’t tell Swapped ponies from Unswapped ponies. Potentially, that could work even better for you than being exempted did for me… if you’re clever enough to know how to press that advantage.”

“Advantage?” asked Lero. “I don’t understand.”

“Well, when I first started taking action against Starswirl’s spell, I stupidly assumed all I’d need to do is focus on just helping the Swapped. That ended up hurting two of my dearest family members, because a thing as huge and life-altering as the Swap takes its emotional toll on everybody.”

And he flashed a look of apology to Twilight and Spike, whose faces were forgiving.

“Keep your eyes open, and be there to help ANYBODY when their lives go off-track,” Lero told Lero. “It shouldn’t take a magic spell. Help them restore balance to their lives, help them stand on their own hooves and be self-sufficient again.”

He hugged Twilight to him, and she gave a soft smile.

“In the end, the only one with a prayer of ending this thing for good is Twilight Sparkle, but your awareness, and your willingness to help others matter tremendously.”

Then the Lero-with-the-two-feather-braid gave his guest his gravest glare.

“Whatever else; do NOT let the Swap get the best of you. If you let it have the upper hand on you, it will never stop destroying you.”

Then he let out a breath and smiled.

“Well, that’s about everything. What do you say to a once-in-a-lifetime chance of playing chess against yourself, Mr. Michealides?”

Lero grinned. “You’re on, Lero!”

* * *

“Bet that felt good, beating him at chess,” Discord said, clapping him on the back.

This time, he and Discord were standing on an escalator, extending directly into the clouds. But Lero’s mind was elsewhere; he wasn’t really thinking about his surroundings. Or chess, for that matter.

“Soooo... why is it okay to tell ME about the Swap, if you think it's happened to me and everyone who finds out goes crazy?" the human asked.

“You're not native to Equestria. You don’t have a cutie mark. It won't have the same effect on you. Maybe.” Discord shrugged. “Even if you did flip out, you'd probably just start trying to treat them like horses or something, as opposed to going postal."

For a small while, Lero just shut his eyes and was quiet. “So all these different alternate universes… the Swap operates differently for each one, right?”

“For the most part,” Discord replied.

“What do you mean, ‘the most part?’” Lero asked, as they entered into a cloud so thick that neither of them could really see each other.

“It’s kind of like… kind of like… oh, what’s a good comparison? Ah! I got it! Vampire fiction from Earth.”

Then they got off the escalator, finding themselves in a creepy gothic castle crypt, lit only by the torch Lero was suddenly holding.

“I’m really not a big vampire fan at all…” Lero said, eyeing the row of stone coffins they were walking past.

“Well have you at least seen Dracula?” asked Discord, sweeping through a curtain of cobwebs.

“Of course,” said Lero. “I’ve actually read the original book that Bram Stoker wrote.”

He’d enjoyed Stoker’s masterpiece, too. Which was more than he could say for that ponderous thing Mary Shelley had penned.

“Good,” said Discord, stopping to place a necklace of garlic cloves around Lero’s neck. “Purely for the sake of my argument, let’s you and I agree that Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the root source for all vampire tales.”

"Ohhh-kaaayy….” A small voice at the back of Lero’s mind objected: there had to be other vampire tales even earlier than Dracula. But Lero decided he wouldn’t bring this up, for the sake of hearing whatever point Discord was trying to make.

“Now think of all the different vampires you’ve ever seen. Anne Rice vampires, I Am Legend vampires, Darren Shan vampires, sparkle-in-the-sunlight vampires…”

One by one, the coffins opened, each one containing a different sort of vampire who sprang out. Some were uglier than gargoyles, truly monstrous to behold. Others were disgustingly mopey-looking pretty boys.

“...And every vampire writer seems honor-bound to completely redefine what vampirism actually IS,” Discord continued. “Man, if only physicians did that with real-life medical ailments... wouldn’t it be marvelous if no two doctors could agree on what ‘malaria’ means?”

He sighed wistfully as a good number of vampires surrounded Lero, some repelled by his garlic necklace, others hungrily plucking off cloves and biting into them. Others still looked altogether bored by the sight of Lero, pulling bottles of ketchup from the pockets and jamming their fangs into them.

“But even so… every now and again, along will come a story that HONORS all the original vampire rules as laid down by Bram Stoker. That’s kind of like how it’s like with the Swap: the multiverse is so vast, there are even some places that’re faithful to the true source.”

Then suddenly, a side wall fell down and dawn shone in. Some of the vampires disintegrated into ashes on the spot, others were able to retreat into their crypts, shrieking, with severe burns, while a couple others checked their watches and ran out under the morning light before they were late for their day jobs.

“The true source…” Lero lapsed into an uncomfortable pause. “Discord… am I real?”

“Of course you’re real.”

“Are you sure about that?” Lero felt a hundred times more frightened about this than he’d been with all those bloodsuckers surrounding him. “I mean, that whole time I was in that last Lero’s house, eating his food and taking his advice and looking into his eyes… there was this tiny voice in the back of my head screaming, ‘I was here first! ME, not you! So you’re not the real Lero! I am!’”

Lero’s fingernails were digging hard into his palm, and it hurt. But that was okay. Pain was good. Pain was real.

“And yet… Discord, you’d said that his world was the first to experience this Swap thing. Funny thing is, I know in my heart that that’s RIGHT. I could feel it in my bones when I breathed that world’s air; that place FELT like a ‘true source’ of sorts, if that makes sense.”

Discord nodded, so Lero kept on babbling in his existential panic.

“So then which of us is REAL? Which one of us is really real? I mean, on one hand, I know that I existed before that Lero ever did, I just know it! But if my Swap came after Mr. Two-Feathers-Braided-In-His-Hair’s… then does it mean it’s nothing but a cheap knockoff of his Swap? And if so, would that then go to prove that I’m a knockoff, myself? By extension?”

Clasping his hands, Lero went to his knees before Discord, determined to have the truth of this, one way or another.

“Please, Discord, tell me! Who’s the real McCoy and who’s the fake? Is it me? Him? Or one of those OTHER Leros, somewhere else in the multiverse?”

The human’s eyes closed as he squeezed out a tear. He felt a talon pat his head sympathetically. And when the human looked up, he saw Discord dressed as Robin.

“You might as well ask some diehard Batman fanatic which version of Batman is the ‘real McCoy.’”

The human considered this. Lero Michealides was certainly no Bat fanatic. Nonetheless, he had already watched enough Batman cartoons and movies to know the answer: they ALL were.

He grinned at Discord. Discord grinned back.

A swarm of shrieking bats suddenly flapped down from the crypt’s ceiling, completely surrounding them like flies around a bug zapper. All Lero could see were dark swooshy bat wings, hideous bat heads; Lero hid his face from their bitey little fangs…

And then Lero and Discord were sprinting across the rooftops of a gritty, somber metropolis choked by urban decay…. Gotham City! What else could it be, with that Bat-signal shining so plainly into the full moon? From this height, it was possible to see all sorts of landmarks… the Iceberg Lounge, the GCPD HQ, hell, Arkham Asylum! It had been years, but it was coming back to him.

Heavy Kevlar boots pounded as Lero and Discord leapt to the next building; his boots! A long dark cape billowed in the wind behind him as he ran: his cape! They hustled past a particularly well-polished glass skyscraper; in its reflection, Lero Michealides could see his bearded face was covered by a dark cowl with bat ears sticking up… HE WAS BATMAN. Utility belt and all!

“Now, granted, you’re no more an exact duplicate for that last Lero Michealides than Christian Bale’s Batman is for Michael Keaton’s,” said Discord, who looked ridiculously colorful in that Burt Ward suit, but at least kept an even pace behind Lero. “Or Kevin Conroy’s Batman is for Diedrich Bader’s…”

“Diedr… who?” asked Lero. The wail of police sirens on the roads below brought back the bitter memory of his parents being gunned down in that alley. So young had he been, yet it haunted him to this day. No matter how long it took, he WOULD take back the night from those superstitious criminal cowards. This Lero swore on the names of Thomas and Martha Michealides.

“And yet… for all that sets them apart… the Bale version, the Conroy version, the Keaton version, heck, even the West version all still remain fundamentally Batman,” said the draconequus.

Discord and Lero brought out their grappling guns and fired them towards the top of a particularly imposing fifty-floor building — Starswirl Tower — and up they flew, cold air whipping past their masked faces.

“And in the end, all that anyone would ask of all these Batmen is that when their respective Jokers come around to wreck havoc… they ball up their fists, run out to meet them, and fight the good fight.”

They didn’t even have to climb onto the Starswirl Tower’s roof: Discord and Bat-Lero sailed four feet above it, landing lightly next to each other.

The top of Starswirl Tower was surreally enormous, once they were upon it. They had landed among an infinite number of Other-Leros-dressed-as-Batman, all packed together on the roof’s north side. But as with the real-life Batman media franchise, no two Bat-Leros looked completely alike.

One of the other-Leros was garbed in a particularly futuristic version of the Batsuit; Lero saw him take a quick swig from a bottle labeled ‘Sweet Apple Asteroids’ Finest.’ Then there was a Bat-Lero who looked to hail straight from the Stone Age; he was armed with a sharpened flint spear, and his Bat-suit looked to have been painstakingly crafted from the skins of real bats. There was also a Bat-Lero whose suit looked to be equal parts clockwork gears and armor, and had a definite Victorian-era flavor to it. Steampunk, wasn’t it called? Spike would know; he was the big comic fan of the family.

On the southern side of the roof: an equally large army of HIDEOUS, disparate pony abominations. Each one was a unique fusion of not just ‘the Joker’ but ‘Two-Face’ as well, with half-and-half faces. Some were divided by straight vertical lines, others joined horizontally, others diagonally, some in checkerboard patterns, others in jagged slashes… They all wore clownish and disturbing patchwork coats made entirely of mixed-and-matched cutie marks, cut in half, then crudely sewn together with some different half-mark.

Suddenly, one individual ‘Joker-Swap’ ran at a ‘Bat-Lero,’ and they squared off. The monstrosity was an evilly-smiling checkerboard mix of Rainbow Dash and Pie Pinkie, down to the mismatched eyeballs. No one else moved to assist either combatant, it was a strict one-on-one brawl.

“…Christian Bale had Heath Ledger to contend against…”

Another ‘Joker-Swap’ ran at another ‘Bat-Lero,’ and they brawled. And then another, and ANOTHER, each pairing off in mano-a-hoofo matches. One of them was an awful mixture of Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, where each piece of flesh looked to be chewed around the edges. It had beaten its own Bat-Lero with distressing speed, pinned him to the ground, and his belly was swelling, oh, it was swelling so sickeningly...

“...and Kevin Conroy had Mark Hamill.”

Discord and Lero both looked over at a distinctly familiar Bat-Lero with two blue feathers fastened securely by a pointy bat ear. This Lero was facing the First Swap, progenitor of all the rest. They flung each other to the floor.

“By the same token, that version of Mr. Michaelides you played chess with, has his version of the Swap to grapple with…”

Discord fixed a firm look on Lero, then pointed to the side.

“...And you will have your own.”

Lero followed Discord’s finger; HIS Swap was galloping right after him with a great big monstrous cartoon hammer raised to bash in his skull. One of the patches on the thing’s patchwork coat caught his attention: half showed a harp, half showed wrapped pieces of candy.

“...Beige and white and purple…”

The whole fight froze up.

“What? I’m sorry, that answer took me COMPLETELY by surprise. I’m actually a bit impressed!”

“My girls’ coats,” Lero explained. “I have YEARS worth of memories of that color combination: beige and white and purple. Waking up in that big bed of mine, all bleary-eyed, and the first thing I’d see is beige and white and purple, all snuggled against me. Eating meals with beige and white and purple. Making love at night to my beige beauty, my white beauty, and my purple beauty. All at once and individually. Consoling them when they were sad. Bonding together during the good moments. My girls all have the sweetest hearts and the cleverest minds. I can remember what it was like falling in love with each one of them. And you’re saying it’s NOT REAL?”

Gotham City disappeared around them.

“Not all of it,” Discord said. “Just two-thirds. Purple’s always belonged with you, it’s Beige and White that are the lie.”

“Unreal… you just waltz into my life, show me this surreal montage of mixed-up worlds, and I’m supposed to take it all at face value. That two of my girls are, are… swapped-out substitutes. And that my TRUE loves are the single-mother mailmare-with-a-daughter, and my best friend’s girl. I’m supposed to put my faith in you, Mr. Chaos King. Mr. Soul Corruptor. Mr. I-Came-This-Close-To-Turning-The-Whole-Planet-Into-An-Eternal-Worldwide-Madhouse.”

“And I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if not for those meddling mares!” Discord reflexively boasted.

The draconequus was no longer dressed as Robin.

“Tell me you wouldn’t find it HILARIOUS if I were to completely bulldoze my love life and Big Mac’s love life over nothing,” Lero challenged. “Over a silly dream you conjured around me as I slept.”

The chaos god snorted and chuckled. “I can’t,” he admitted. “That WOULD be hysterical. But I assure you that’s not the case with you. Every world I showed you and every word I spoke is nothing short of the absolute truth.”

Lero shivered. “That scares me even more! What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to THINK?”

No longer was he dressed in Batman’s armor. He wasn’t Kevin Conroy or Michael Keaton or Christian Bale, not so much as George frickin’ Clooney. Nor was he Keanu Reeves or Twilight Sparkle or a sharpshooting zombie apocalypse survivor.

Lero was just Lero. Plain old Bellerophon Michaelides. Masseur. Handyman. Human refugee, granted sanctuary.

“Don’t bother thinking,” Discord advised, pulling a large, white and rather sci-fi-looking tubular gun from a pocket that was much, much too small to have held it. “Nothing TOO deep, anyway, not just yet. Keep focused on learning, on observing, on feeling.”

As he pointed the gun at the floor, it gave out a loud ‘bloop’ noise and a bright orange flash shone from between the three prongs that surrounded its barrel.

“There’ll be time for cogitation later,” Discord commented as he motioned for Lero to hop into the large, orange-wibbly-wobbly-edged hole that had formed in the floor. “I know you’ve seen a lot already, but I still have more to show you first.”

Thirty-Two: The Sworn Archenemy Of All Mankind

“...Element of Kindness!”

“What?!” Exit Wound called back to her number two. The blue fur along the pegasus’ neck brought on an itching sensation against Exit Wound’s horn, as she continued to hold the intruder at hornpoint.

“I said, ‘Don’t kill her, boss! That’s Rainbow Dash; she bears the Element of Kindness!” Blunt Trauma cried again, pointing at the pegasus. “We ice her, we’d be just as bollixed as if we’d offed the white one!”

“Feck me pink and call me a flamingo!” Blunt could always be counted on to stay in-the-know about celebrities. Lowering her horn from Little Miss Kindness’ throat, Exit turned a scathing look at Lero Michealides.

“Dewy’s roight; yeh really ARE too shite-don’t-stink ta go ‘n’ rut an expendable nobody, huh, Moichealoides?”

But the human wasn’t paying Exit any attention. He was too focused on not looking at Little Miss Kindness.

“Lero… oh, Lero…” The pegasus looked like she was choking on a cube of ice. “What did they do to you, big guy?!”

The human kept his eyes on the floor.

“Do you like it?” asked Dewy, grinning at the Kindness Bearer as she leaned up against Lero. Her pleated miniskirt hitched up in the most titillating way when her tail swished. “Isn’t he studly? Isn’t he a hunk? The colt every filly dreams of? Don’t you just want him to plow you right now and have fifty foals off him?”

“You bit his face,” the Kindness Bearer said, stunned to see the blood on Honeydew’s teeth, along with the blood dripping down Michealides’ cheeks.

“He tasted awful,” Dewy sneered at her.

Blinking, Kindness finally seemed to see her friend Loyalty.

“Rarity!” Kindness cried. Even though the wounds Exit had given the mouthy snot weren’t bleeding anymore, they still made her quite a bit less pretty than she’d been earlier.

“Looks a bad soight, don’t she?”

Little Miss Kindness turned from the birdcage, facing Exit Wound.

“Oi got loads o’ questions for yeh, and Oi expect answers. Starting with how yeh snuck in. Yeh’d best cooperate, too. Otherwoise, yer two feck-buddies here'll be beauty queens compared ta what Oi’m gonna do ta yeh. Seriously, yeh’ll be looking loike yer face had been set on foire, and we had nothing but sledgehammers ta put et out with...”

“No, boss, no!” whined the diseased Diamond Dog off to the side. “Please don’t bash her and smash her! Not til Scrounger’s diddled her first! Yes, yes, oh yes… such a slinky face and such voluptuous rainbow mane! Scrounger’s certain it’s not even dyed…”

“You keep your filthy paws off her, you overgrown plague rat!” Lero warned, rising back up before Honeydew kicked him back down again.

“Well, Koindess?” Exit asked the pegasus. “What’s et gonna be? Me hooves? Scrounge’s diddle-stick? Or are yeh gonna start provoiding some answers?”

“Attention! Attention!”

“Who said that?!” Exit Wound snapped.

“You are completely surrounded! We wish to speak to whoever is in charge! You have three minutes to comply before we storm the building!”

The voice had been female and very loud… amplified, in fact. Either by magic or a megaphone.

“Twilight!” the Loyalty nag exclaimed happily, like a girl stuck on a burning building's roof spotting the firefighters.

The gears in Exit’s head spun fast.

“Glitter Dust!” she barked, shooting a dark look at Little Miss Kindness. “Go foind all them arse-for-brains that’re supposed ta be on patrol, and tell ‘em what they win after teh next intruder slips past ‘em: me feckin’ namesake through each of their oiballs!“

“Right away, boss!” Glitter said, galloping out the door.

“Oi want this perimeter secured, colts and fillies, NOW! All of yeh; armed and at yer stations!”

As her goons scrambled to comply, Exit turned to face the white earache in the birdcage. “Hey! When yeh said ‘Twoiloight,’ did yeh mean that was Twoiloight Sparkle whose voice we heard?”

The caged mare took a breath. Her face said she was preparing another scathing comeback. But then her eyes flicked to her primate love who’d wisely advised her not to make any noises Exit didn’t want her making.

“Yes,” Loyalty ended up saying. “that is correct.”

“Teh Element o’ Magic?” Exit pressed.

“She has that distinction, yes.”

“Attention! Attention!” Twilight Sparkle called again.

* * *

The building was situated along the thickly forested plateau that ran alongside Ghastly Gorge. Thankfully, the builders had the insight not to locate it near its perilous precipice, as it was situated well over a mile away from the edge towards the gorge. However, it was recessed into the ground.

It was an old, but very sturdily constructed two-story building in the middle of the forest. ‘BOULDER & DAUGHTERS QUARRY MILL’ read a huge old sign over its front entrance. The Boulder & Daughters Quarry Mill hadn’t done any business for years, and the dirt road leading up to it was halfway to being reclaimed by the forest.

However, many locations showed disturbed dust, recent scraps revealing ancient wood under the fragile paint, and many recent hoofprints around… Odd for what should’ve been a completely unoccupied building.

As soon as Twilight Sparkle had decisively ascertained that Rarity and Lero’s abductors weren’t unfathomably powerful superbeings on par with Nightmare Moon, Discord, or… The Others… that the culprits were ‘normal mortals,’ she had gotten Spike to write a letter to Princess Celestia, alerting her to the situation.

If this had happened closer to Canterlot, Twilight had no doubt that Celestia would’ve sent an elite tactical squadron directly from the palace, itself. But since it hadn’t, and time was of the essence, the team Celestia sent was a contingent from the local Royal Guard Reserves. They were led by a tough-looking pegasus who introduced herself as Corporal Wolf Pack.

Her team had the quarry mill well and truly surrounded, serviceponies stationed at every exit.

“You now have two minutes to comply before we storm the building! Don’t make this harder on yourselves than it already is!” Twilight warned, before lowering the magical megaphone from her lips.

“Corporal Pack?” she asked, at a normal, unamplified volume. “In your professional opinion, what do you think the chances are that these gang members will completely refuse to talk with us?”

“About 50-50, rough guess,” the corporal answered, smartly.

The corporal was an older mare, with a shaggy grey pelt, an uncommonly narrow muzzle, and three foreboding wolf heads as her cutie mark. She wore some armor and was equipped with tactical gear and weaponry, as were all the ponies serving her.

“I almost hope they DO refuse.” Spike spoke, from atop Twilight’s back. He was still wearing his Camp Mountain Peaks T-shirt, as well as a backpack. “I wanna see everypony here bust in and squash these grubs, and get Lero and Rarity out, ASAP.”

“Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” Twilight answered. “It’d be much better for everypony if we can get Lero and Rarity back peacefully, with no bloodshed. I just hope we can get these ponies to see that too.”

Beside them, Cpl. Wolf Pack was issuing instructions to the other serviceponies around the mill using Wing Signalling; which was comparable to the Sign Language that deaf minotaurs had developed for themselves, only with wings instead of hands. Made it that much harder for hostiles to discover what they were planning when they weren’t speaking aloud.

“Well, they’d better make up their minds quick, I’m pretty sure they have less than a… LOOK!” cried Spike, pointing up.

Directly over the rooftop of the Boulder & Daughters Quarry Mill, an image was being magically projected for everypony outside to see. It was somepony’s head; translucent, and enlarged to the size of a hydra’s. She was a unicorn mare of skewbald coloration, wearing a hat and a pair of thin-rimmed glasses, maybe a few years older than Twilight, herself. Nopony she could ever remember seeing before.

The skewbald mare’s great floating see-through head spun in a slow circle, taking everypony in.

“Well, fart in me face and call me Stinky!” Her thick brogue marked her as a mare who must’ve originally come from the Emerald Isles. She, too, had amplified her voice. “Yeh weren’t kidding. Oi really AM surrounded!”

Spotting the megaphone floating in Twilight’s levitational field, the skewbald unicorn focused her attention on her.

“What gives?!” She was affecting indignation now. “This is a perfectly legitimate business operation we’re conducting, here, and yer scaring all me personnel!”

“Oh, really?” asked Twilight. “Well, if that’s the case, surely a quarry mill worker like yourself would have no problem whatsoever explaining to me what the word ashlar means.”

The skewbald unicorn opened and closed her mouth. “Well, yeh have me now.” She sounded sincerely disappointed in herself. “Feck. Oi really do need ta look inta getting meself a drama coach.”

“Let’s cut the horse apples,” Twilight told her coldly. “I have just one question for you: are Rarity and Lero safe and sound?”

The unicorn’s huge projected head considered Twilight for a few seconds. Either one of the lenses in her great glasses could’ve served as a tabletop for a small family to eat dinner off of.

“Fer now. Them and the rainbow-headed one.”

Rainbow Dash?! Twilight thought, with a sinking sensation.

“‘Ey, there, ya three!” The head suddenly vanished, though her voice still carried, like a film actress who’d momentarily walked off-screen while still delivering lines. “Sing us a pretty ditty; your fecking purple sweetheart wants to hear yeh voices! Go on, yah fecking canaries; SING!”

Twilight’s blood ran cold as she heard three panicked-sounding voices: Rainbow’s, Rarity’s, and Lero’s. Perhaps shock was preventing her from hearing properly; Rarity and Rainbow’s words sounded incoherent to her ears; indistinct babble. But Lero’s voice cut through theirs loud and clear.

“It’s Honeydew, Twilight!” Lero yelled. “She’s here! Honeydew made this happen!”

“Honeydew?” repeated Cpl. Wolf Pack, turning to Twilight. “Is that a name we should know, Lady Sparkle?”

Twilight felt as though someone had scooped a portion of her brain out with a spoon. Honeydew? Honeydew made this happen?! What did she…? How could she be…?

“I… she’s… Honeydew’s a neighbor... lives in Ponyville…”

“She hates us a lot,” Spike supplied, a little more levelly.

“That’s enough!” called the voice of the thick-brogued mare. “Choke ‘em!”

Twilight felt Spike’s quick little breaths on the back of her neck, and his arms clinging to her for security as Rainbow, Lero, and Rarity’s voices were all strangled by what sounded like unicorn psychokinesis being applied to each of their necks, then constricting down upon their throats like nooses.

“Release them!” Twilight bellowed at once.

“Unit One, prepare entry!” Cpl. Pack barked to the ponies of Unit One. “All units, stand by for full breach!”

Just as Unit One was getting into position, they all heard the psychokinesis release, and Twilight’s three captured herdmates gasping for air. The vast head reappeared, floating over the quarry mill’s rooftop.

“Release them, and surrender peacefully,” Twilight struggled to not let too much emotion enter her voice, “and I promise no harm will come to you.”

“That’s a moighty koind offer,” the huge head answered, “But Oi think yer koinda looking through teh wrong end o’ teh telescope on all this, Miss Magic.”

“Miss Magic…?”

“Now Oi dunno how yeh feel about name droppers, Twoiloight Sparkle…”

Cringing as she would’ve cringed at Spike’s claws dragging across one of her chalkboards, Twilight decided she would MUCH rather be called ‘Miss Magic’ by this mare than ever hear her real name butchered so horribly again.

“...But here’s a name yeh moight wanna listen up for: Discord.”

Twilight jolted, and she wasn’t the only one. Ever since the Day of Chaos, the name of Discord was one all ponies dreaded as they had used to dread Nightmare Moon’s.

“Snagged yer attention, did Oi? What yeh and yer Element-bearing gal pals did ta stop Discord way back on teh Day o’ Chaos was utterly butterly aces.”

And the skewbald unicorn actually smiled and winked at her, as though she and Twilight were friends.

“But that Rainbow o’ Loight… yeh’ll need teh full set o’ six tah cast et again, won’t yah, Miss Magic? And wouldn’t yeh know et, Oi got Lil’ Miss Koindness and Miss Loyalty as me guests o’ honor! Shame if something were ta happen ta them. Then Discord would know there’s nothing holding him back!”

The head kidnapper let them all soak that information in. It felt like falling through thin ice over a lake in winter, and splashing into the frigid waters below.

“Discord… he’s not like that anymore… we reformed him…”

“‘Reformed,’ yeh say?” The way the skewbald unicorn made a show of adjusting her glasses while staring back reminded Twilight of a particularly obnoxious college professor she’d once had. “Funny thing about ‘reformed’ lawbreakers… they tend ta just be boiding their toime.”

Surely… surely Discord wasn’t IN on this? Surely he hadn’t masterminded this kidnapping?! No, Twilight was letting her fears get the best of her. If Discord had turned traitor, if Discord wanted chaos, he’d’ve probably started with cancelling the Bewitchment or something like that. Also, he’d not bother using ponies as intermediaries; what would be the fun of that? Not to mention there’d probably be a lot more bizarre things flying through the sky.

However, the kidnapper’s threat was taking root. Alarm and dread were infecting the ranks; everypony was looking more like terrified colts and fillies than a dauntless team of rescuers.

Discord had scarred so many ponies… and he was completely invulnerable to all conventional weaponry and magic.

“Y… you can’t… please, Miss,” she hated the quaver in her voice. “You CAN’T have forgotten what it was like during the FIRST Day of Chaos! You would REALLY want to bring that back?!”

“Why not?” The Sicklefin boss was growing bolder; it was clearly just now dawning on her what a wonderful prize had fallen on her back. “From where Oi stand, chaos offers a lot more open-ended possibilities than jail. Maybe even Discord’ll loike a change in career, an’ join me club! In fact, teh longer Oi cogitate on et, teh more Oi realoize that with these girls, Oi’ve got teh whole woide world by teh throat! So unless yeh want Discord ta have us all switch soizes with teh creepy crawlies in the beehoives and anthills or whatever, yeh wanks will do EXACTLY what Oi say!”

“….What is it you want from us?” Twilight asked through her megaphone. “A million bits? Two million bits?”

“PISS on yer bits!”

The Sicklefin boss’ jaw fell, seemingly stunned by her own brazenness. However, her jaw snapped shut into a ghastly grin.

“Oi can’t believe Oi just SAID that… but… YEAH!” She repeated, “PISS ON YER BITS! Piss on every coin! Drown all teh moneymakers o’ teh world in a LAKE o’ urine! Eee hee hee! Discord could probably DO that too!”

And Twilight watched the skewbald unicorn draw a long, calming breath, forcing herself to come down from her great power high.

“What Oi want… is YEW, Miss Magic.” Twilight actually saw some of the bespectacled unicorn’s arm point at her. “Oi’m gonna send a couple o’ me girls down ta put a horn wrap on yew, and yer gonna let them. Yer gonna surrender noice and submissive-loike, and they’ll take yeh insoide ta join yer herdmates. Whoile teh REST o’ yeh…”

Here, she looked outward past Twilight, addressing Corporal Wolf Pack and all the ponies in her units.

“...are gonna SIT STILL and DO NOTHING ‘cept AWAIT FURTHER INSTRUCTIONS. Ask me what’ll happen if yeh don’t.”

“What’ll happen if we don’t?” Twilight asked.

“Teh human doies.”

“DON’T SURRENDER! DON’T SURRENDER, TWILIGHT SPARKLE!” Twilight was shocked anew to recognize whose voice that was, speaking next to the Sickelfin boss’, even if she couldn’t see her face.

“Wha...?!” The disbelieving Sicklefin boss turned to her right. “Feck, Dewy, who’s soide are yeh… oh. OH. Oi get et. Eee hee hee… Dewy, me auld flower, if hate were food, we could ship yeh off ta Zebrabwe, and there wouldn’t be no starving zebra foals no more.“

Twilight glanced over at Corporal Wolf Pack. “May I have a little time to reach a decision?” she asked the gang leader.

“Sure!” the giant floating head answered cheerily. “Oi’ll give yeh ta ten whole seconds! NINE! EIGHT! SEVEN!”

“Don’t surrender, Twilight!” The emotion borne in Honeydew’s voice combined earnestly feigned camaraderie with a transparent attempt at reverse psychology. “I think she’s bluffing! Show her you won’t fall for stupid bluffs!”

“FIVE! FOUR! THREE!”

The face of her sweet human stallion, smiling as he held her head in those warm, loving hands of his, sprang into Twilight’s mind.

“I surrender!”

“Twilight, no!” cried Spike.

“I surrender,” she repeated again, soft and defeated. Her megaphone gave a long, piercing squeal of feedback.

“Knew yeh were a smartie,” said the Sicklefin ringleader before her enormous head finally vanished from sight.

Twilight Sparkle hunkered down to the ground.

“I’ll be okay, Spike,” she whispered to the dragon. “Write to Princess Celestia. Tell her what’s happened. She’ll know what to do.”

“I… I will.” He hugged her and got off her back.

Twilight stood back up as the quarry mill’s front doors opened, and two weaselly-looking ponies stepped out. One was a unicorn, holding a horn wrap in her telekinetic grip.

* * *

As much as she approved of her lackeys all calling her ‘boss,’ this wasn’t entirely true. Exit Wound wasn’t truly THE boss of the Sicklefin Gang. Not its founder, and certainly not its capo di tutti capi, (to steal the phrase those garlic-gargling Bitalian mafiosi were so fond of.) No, THE Sicklefin Boss was Exit Wound’s aunt, who was still busy managing the bulk of the Sicklefin power, way back home in the Emerald Isles.

Exit, herself, was just one of the underbosses.

Originally, Exit had been sent here to Equestria to spearhead a certain business venture on her aunt’s behalf, (which Exit was still managing, to this day.) And it was here, in Equestria, that Honeydew had made her fateful entrance into Exit’s life. One thing had led gradually to another, and they had come up with this mad, daring, unreal wondrous scheme. A scheme that would at last bring true greatness to the Sicklefin, and especially to Exit Wound’s name.

The life of a career criminal was one that, statistically, was practically guaranteed to be brought to a sudden and violent end, long before anything remotely resembling natural causes could kick in, (unless you were sentenced to life imprisonment.) Exit had often thought about how she’d be brought down. Maybe one of her penthouses would get bombed while she was asleep in it. Maybe she’d get shot in the back of the head while slugging down booze at a bar. Maybe it’d be a killer from the Barracuda Cartel, maybe a poison needle jabbed in her neck by somepony in the Unagi Clan from Neighpon, maybe some backstabbing Sicklefin, maybe even a cop. Regardless, no one would care. One less criminal in the world.

Exit Wound didn’t want to just be ‘one less criminal.’ She wanted to be a big shot for all time. Even if she was doomed not to live forever like those stinking alicorns did, at least her NAME could be immortal.

Just like Bellerophon Michealides.

Word had it that there’d briefly been some second man called Gus Wainwright, living in Ponyville. Briefly. But Gus had died due to an incurable terminal illness he’d had before crossing over to this world, according to the papers.

Since Mr. Wainwright’s stay in Equestria had been so short, (and he’d reportedly not had much of an emotionally engaging personality,) Gus had made very little impact on the pony worldview, outside of Academics and diehard Human Enthusiasts, who still fiercely debated Gus’ discoveries and ideas.

But now there was definitely only one human — ONE!!! — existing in this world. Celebrated, famous, adored, and connected all the way up to the top. A living legend who Exit could tell would continue to remain legendary 900,000 years after some taxidermist had stuffed him up and put his oh-so-unique carcass on display in a museum next to all the dinosaur skeletons for the rugrats to gawk at.

And she’d be the one to kill him. The world’s one and only human: NO other copycat killer would be able to copy THAT killing! Bigger than the infamous mares who assassinated royalty! She’d be famous forever! They’d have A-list actresses playing her in the biopics, painstakingly recreating this very moment in time she was now living through! The world would mourn the human’s death forever, as they would mourn the death of some religious messiah or world-famous rock star, and curse Exit Wound’s name for equally as long... and when they did, she would just laugh and laugh at them all forevermore from her little corner of Tartarus.

But it wasn’t enough just to simply murder him. The criminal underworld was choked with professional killers like Exit’s aunt who would’ve been all: headshot between the eyes, collect payment, call it a day. Exit Wound sincerely prided herself on her sharpshooting, and she was more than capable of hitting a target’s brain or heart or any other vital you’d care to name. Especially when her heart wasn’t really into the job.

But that’d never been Exit Wound’s style.

One of the most satisfying kills she’d ever performed had been on a mare out in a lonely forest in Conneight, back on the Emerald Isles. She’d blasted the filly’s liver to smithereens. It had taken over an hour for the sad sack to croak, and Exit had spent that entire time taunting the mare relentlessly from a few yards away while she tried uselessly to stop herself from bleeding to death, all while the toxins and poisons that her liver had been containing and nullifying spread throughout her body.

Absotively glorious.

If Exit’s aunt were here, she’d have told Exit to just snipe the human from the rooftop of an adjacent house in the dead of night and get on with her life.

Exit’s soulless stone of an aunt could go eat her own horn.

A once-in-not-just-a-lifetime-but-once-and-probably-NEVER-AGAIN target like Lero Michealides didn’t warrant cold, impersonal professionalism like he was just another fat politician or something!

The biographers would all pay more attention to Honeydew, then!

No, a legend like Lero deserved a legendary extravaganza of a death. Shameful and agonizing, just the way Exit Wound loved them. Once things had settled down a bit more, Exit would call Scrounger back to do what he did best. Scrounger would take aim, build up the power within himself, then fire his life-destroying shot deep inside his helpless prey.

(...Life would’ve been so much better if she’d been born a male unicorn…)

And not only had everything gone as planned: the BEST part was this development of getting the Element Bearers as hostages. Now Exit could demand a clean getaway back to the Emerald Isles!

After all, who else could possibly save everypony from Discord, if not the six Bearers? The Princesses? What a joke! Yes, Exit had indeed lived through the Day of Chaos for herself, and it was just like the human had said: Discord had taken Their Majesties’ sun and moon, and made them chase each other like racing greyhounds, and there hadn’t been one damn thing Their Majesties had been able to do to stop him!

Hee hee… to think, she’d be getting THREE of them! Once she was back on the Isles… Exit could even probably SELL one or two of these Bearers off to a freedom fighter friend of hers, while keeping one for herself! From then on, NOBODY would ever DARE refuse her anything, not with the threat of eternal chaos to keep them in line!

She’d be as good as a Queen Of The World For Life!

* * *

If ponykind had instilled itself with a huge human-style nudity taboo… the Sickefin gangsters now leading Twilight Sparkle to their boss would probably have thought to frisk the clothes she’d have been wearing for concealed weapons.

Since this wasn’t the case — since Twilight had come to them unarmored and without weapons holstered to her body, and now wore only the horn wrap they, themselves, had put on her — the Sicklefins assumed Twilight Sparkle had been rendered helpless.

None of them had any real idea just how powerful, skilled, and clever Twilight Sparkle really WAS at magic.

Shrinking spells were not the sort of magic an average unicorn could pull off. Thus, the gangsters didn’t suspect that there was a special surprise clinging to the hair in Twilight Sparkle’s mane, shrunken so small as to be nearly impossible to detect with the naked eye.

The particular spell which Twilight had used to shrink this special surprise of hers was a uniquely customized bit of magic. She had specially tailored it so that only two things would break her spell and restore the surprise to its true size. Either the passage of twenty-four hours, or the utterance of a special deactivation phrase.

Though this phrase was VERY exotic-sounding, it was not an incantation. These weren’t ‘magic words‘ of any sort. That had been a very purposeful choice on Twilight’s part.

It was called a ‘Trigger Word.’ A completely unmagical being could speak this string of syllables just as easily as a magical one, and still caused the shrink spell’s deactivation. Lero could’ve spoken them. Jabbers the parrot could’ve spoken them.

A unicorn whose horn was in a horn wrap could’ve spoken them.

Which was why the phrase she’d selected wasn’t anything commonplace, like ‘Nice weather we’re having.’ It was something unique to Lero’s home world, something no fellow Equestrian would think to say, to ensure it would only go off at the moment Twilight chose.

* * *

Though the melted wax on Lero’s body had cooled, the burns they’d caused were still painful. All the pony fur now attached to him was unbelievably itchy… nothing at all like how fur felt on him those times when Twilight had transformed him into a true stallion. Within his new obsidian hoofs, his hands were scrunched up very brutally.

The manacle chained around his ankle clinked and rattled as he drew his leg a little further in. The stony gorilla statue he was attached to stared down at him with an expression much like Honeydew’s, as though to say, ‘You’re just another dirty ape, exactly like me. Stop thinking you’re anything special.’

The jaundiced, herpes-riddled eyeballs of Scrounger The Dog stared at Lero as well, from where the human sat chained on all fours. Followed every slight shift and shuffle of his body. As though Lero were a squirrel up a tree. As though Lero were performing the most erotic pole dance in the history of all pole dancing, just for Scrounger.

Lero couldn’t bear to look over his shoulder at Scrounger again, for fear of exciting him all the more. But he could HEAR the Diamond Dog, oh yes. Lero’s ears had grown horribly attuned to Scrounger; the things he was doing cut over a lot of the other noise in the room. His panting. His drooling. The slimy squishy slapping of Scrounger pawing that festering meat between his legs.

Lero did his best to pretend it wasn’t happening. Every one of them was. But the difference between them and him was that Scrounger wasn’t looking to diddle any of them. But even Scrounger The Dog wasn’t the worst of it.

“A toast!” the skewbald unicorn crowed, pouring herself a stein of black-colored single-malt whiskey. “Ta our good friend, teh Chaos God!”

She lifted her glass. “Dizzy, if yeh’re listening in on all this roight now: may yer booze be cold and yer mares be hot, and may trouble slide off yeh, slicker than snot. Cheers!”

And though Discord did not appear, the Sicklefins all cheered, as their boss downed her drink while the members of Herd Bellerophon all held silent. Rainbow Dash was gritting her teeth. Hot, bitter tears squeezed out from under her clenched eyelids.

“Oi have PRINCESS CELESTIA’S PRECIOUS PET, teh ELEMENT O’ MAGIC, HERSELF wearing me horn wrap!” the unicorn went on, with a disdainful kick to the bars of Rarity’s birdcage. “Celestia can go lick me greasy, gaping SLIT!”

He’d meant to save Rarity’s life. Prevent her death. And now, she, Twilight Sparkle, and Rainbow Dash were the prisoners of this mare, who would hang them over the world like three Swords Of Damocles.

Honeydew snuggled into the hulking Sicklefin boss. “I can’t even imagine how proud you must be of yourself, Exit Wound.”

Exit Wound, huh? That was her name then? Incredibly fitting. It was enough to make Lero wonder why Honeydew’s mother had seen fit to bestow Honeydew with a name so deceptively charming. ‘Honey Badger’ would’ve been more appropriate. ‘Killer Shrew’ would’ve been even more on-the-nose.

“Fecking ROIGHT Oi’m proud!” retorted Exit Wound. “Oi’ve got teats o’ solid brass… no, TOITANIUM! Me clit’s a fecking DOIAMOND SHARD, so big that…!”

“Yes, indeed!” interrupted Honeydew, with an almost-imperceptible wince. “You’re great, you’re fantastic and…”

“Why’d yeh interrupt me there?” Exit Wound asked.

“I wasn’t interrupting!” said Honeydew. “I was agreeing with you!”

“No, no, no… you interrupted me, then,” said Exit Wound, and the overall mood just turned a little bit icier. “Do yeh fecking got something against mares with clits as gigantic as moine is?”

Honeydew’s wince was far more pronounced this time. “Oh, no, no, no!” she insisted. “I… the size of it is… truly impressive.”

“But…?” The suspicious way Exit Wound was eyeing Honeydew… it was almost as though she were half-expecting her cheerleader moll to whip out a badge and declare they were all under arrest because she’d been an undercover cop all along,

“But the only reason I’m uncomfortable is that, well… I remember reading in one of my books that female bonobos have huge clitorises. I think they’re estimated to be six times the size of gorillas’, and they’re, uh, ‘visible enough to waggle unmistakably as they walk,’ yes, that’s how the author put it. Bonobo females developed that way because they’re such disgustingly oversexual creatures.” She smiled at Exit. “So I just don’t want to hear you talking like you’re a bonobo, yourself, Exit. Neither of us want that, right?”

Predictably, talking about bonobos brought Honeydew’s mind back to Lero, himself. The sight of her eyes boring into his made his face throb, especially with Scrounger panting up a storm right behind him, waiting for…

...A horrific epiphany struck Lero at that moment.

Honeydew had bit his face. Bit him so hard that he’d bled.

Then Scrounger the Dog had licked his face. Lero had felt every verruca on that diseased dog’s tongue.

All it takes is a transfer of fluids, Lero’s tenth grade sex ed teacher echoed once again in his mind.

It was in his blood. All of it. Every disease Scrounger the Dog carried inside him, it was in his blood.

It didn’t even matter if that diddle-stick Scrounger was fiddling with even now snapped clean off in his paws like a burnt twig, (blackened, half-dead thing that it was,) Whatever else the Diamond Dog did to his body at this point would just be gilding the lily.

It was already in his bloodstream. Someone might as well shoot him in the head at this point. His life was as good as ended.

Honeydew watch these thoughts play across his face, and smiled as though inhaling the most exquisite cologne ever bottled.

“Speaking of which,” Honeydew turned back to Exit Wound. “Scrounger looks like he’s ready to pick up where he left off, what do you say we…?”

“Dewy,” Great anger simmered beneath the surface of Exit’s smile. It wouldn’t take much to bring it to a deadly boil. “This is me moment o’ glory. So do me a favor, after all Oi’ve done for yeh. Fer one day, just twenty-four hours, starting roight now, Oi don’t wanna hear yeh MENTION the word ‘bono…”

“YOU ANIMALS!”

All their heads snapped around. Rainbow Dash had lifted her head and bellowed in fury. Fear, like an ice-cold knife, scraped inside of Lero’s guts. The human wondered if this were Fluttershy’s infamous Stare he was looking at. It was possible Dash was doing it wrong. What Lero saw in the Swapped pegasus’ eyes didn’t make him want to freeze up. Rather, it made him want to run far away. And she was casting that glare at every Sicklefin gangster.

“You nasty, vicious pack of out-of-control animals!”

Twilight Sparkle and her megaphone had interrupted Exit Wound before she’d gotten a chance to properly pass sentence on Rainbow Dash. Without any prompting from their boss, two of Exit’s goons had taken the initiative of going over to Rainbow Dash’s side to loom over the pegasus threateningly while Exit was busy talking to Twilight.

Now, one of them kicked the Swapped pegasus in the stomach.

“Sounds like somepony needs a little attitude adjustment!”

When Dash answered, it was not just to the mare who’d kicked her, but the Sicklefins as a whole. What’s more, her voice came out slightly lower and gruffer than normal, as though she were imitating a strong and assertive minotaur bull.

“You cause my friends pain? Then you’ll get the same!”

Rainbow Dash’s whistle bounced off her chest when she thrust it out. She caught it in her teeth and gave a mighty blow.

TWEEEEEEEEEET!!!

* * *

Back in the bad old days when all of Rainbow Dash’s critters had been free to terrorize their caretaker and the human who loved her… the animals could pretty much be categorized into three danger levels.

First was the ‘mostly stationary’ animals. This included many of the older cats and dogs who slept all day, and the sloths. Stationary didn’t equal ‘harmless,’ though, any more than it did for cactuses. Nonetheless, the mostly stationary animals posed the smallest threat.

Next came the ‘vicious pets’. The rabbits, birds, mice, lizards, and younger dogs and cats. Bad individually, and worse when mobilized under Angel Bunny’s leadership.

And then there were the ‘misunderstood’ creatures, (as Rainbow Dash insistently called them.) The ones you’d never find for sale in any pet store. The ones that should never be brought out of the wild and into a house. The ones which big game hunters sought as trophies.

The ‘pets’ had been bad enough. But it had been nothing short of divine providence that a pair of inexperienced amateurs like him and Rainbow Dash had survived all the ‘misunderstoods’ that lived in Dash’s cottage.

Divine providence… and the fact that the animals had been more interested in tormenting him and Dash than murdering them.

Both of their hearts had been in their throats every time they had to feed any of the misunderstoods or clean up after them, or pass them in the hall. The cougars. The manticores. The boars. Mr. Braun and Mr. Schwarz. As well as all these legless reptiles now slithering up through the holes in the old floorboards.

“SNAKES!” shrieked a mare. “SNAKES ON THE FLOOR!”

As soon as the ponies caught sight of them, all the pegasi in the room flew up straight towards the ceiling… apart from Rainbow Dash, herself. Such was their initial shock, it was all the unicorns and earth ponies could do to freeze up or retreat into the adjacent room, or back away and scream. And with good reason.

For Lero knew all these snakes, both by name and breed. Hissy the Asp, Hoody the Forest Cobra, Shakes the Rattlesnake, Bandy the Many-Banded Krait, Midnight the Black-Necked Spitting Cobra, Ridgey the Saw-Scaled Viper, and quite a few others besides. All of them poisonous; none of Dash’s harmless snakes like Greenie the Gartersnake or Udders the Milk Snake seemed to have come along.

“C… call ‘em off!” Exit Wound demanded Rainbow Dash. “Feckin’ call ‘em off!”

As the nest of snakes made an undulating, sinuous beeline for their mistress, the animal trainer merely shot the skewbald unicorn a stony look. The two muscleheads at Dash’s left and right backed away from her very quickly.

In fact, practically all the ponies looked like they’d’ve liked nothing more than to do what domesticated horses from planet Earth would’ve done and stampeded away from the scary snakes. Lero rather hoped they’d listen to these primal instincts.

“Don’t just STAND there loike yer all halfwits waiting in loine ta feck a doorknob!” Exit Wound shouted at her minions, angrily charging up her own horn. “KILL TEH SCALY WORMS!”

Rediscovering some of their courage, the other Sicklefins began following their boss’ lead and went on the attack. The unicorns blasted piercing bolts of magic, while the Earth ponies tried to stomp the serpents underhoof.

Now, a pony’s hoof is a strong thing, especially when brought down with crushing force. But snakes were rather adept at dodging the legs of larger creatures. Plus, the unicorns were clearly not as used to firing on such quick, bendy, low-to-the-ground targets as they were with fellow ponies.

Still, Lero saw one gangster succeed in smashing her forehoof down powerfully on Bandy the many-banded krait’s midsection. But Bandy got this gangster to lift her leg back up by twisting around and sinking his venomous fangs into her ankle.

Lero could’ve told this mare that if she absolutely HAD to go kill such a poisonous snake as Bandy with her hoof, she should’ve tried aiming for his head, not his middle. But then, they weren’t exactly friends, now, were they?

The mare who tried to squash Bandy fell to the floor, shrieking bloody murder, and the rest of the gang went still with dread. All the snakes had made it to Rainbow Dash by this point, and they wound up all parts of her body.

Lero’s sweet Swapped love now made for a nightmarish sight. A death adder was coiled around Dash’s neck; his head poking out of her mane. More snakes hugged her barrel, her legs; their heads swaying back and forth in midair, hissing menacingly at all the enemy ponies surrounding them. It almost seemed as though Dash’s body was partially made of live snakes; especially since the glare in Dash’s own eyes was just as cold as her serpents’.

Lero watched Rainbow Dash quickly size up the large steel manacle keeping him chained to the gorilla statue, then the great birdcage holding Rarity prisoner.

“I’ll be back for you guys, I swear,” she promised them both, evaluating them as impossible for her to break.

She almost made it out the door without incident. But then came a piercing shot from Exit Wound’s horn that took off Hoody the cobra’s head; it fell next to Dash’s left hind leg, smoking at the neck. Rainbow Dash let out an agonized howl, as though her head had been clobbered with a wrench. Then she zipped out, fast as a Wonderbolt.

“Hoof!” cried one of the pegasi. “Hoof Sandwich, are you alright?!”

Hoof Sandwich — the mare Bandy had bit — let herself be helped up to a stand, but then faced her fellow gangsters with surprising pluck and confidence.

“I’m fine!” she told other Sicklefins. “Really sorry for scaring you all… just freaked out from being bit by that snake!”

“How do you feel?” asked the mare who’d helped her up.

“Fit as a fiddle, Blunt!” Hoof Sandwich proclaimed, with a firm stamp of her hoof and a lively intake of air. “A whole string quartet, in fact!”

“You aren’t…?”

“If I were dying, I’d tell you that, wouldn’t I, mates?” Hoof Sandwich said, extending her bitten leg for the others to see. “But the bite doesn’t even hurt, really, Just itches a bit, mostly numb, in fact!”

‘The snake with the most deadliest venom in the world is the black mamba.’ Lero remembered Dash warning him, way back before she’d gotten equilibrium. ‘Don’t worry; I don’t got any of THOSE. But Bandy’s what’s called a many-banded krait; his venom’s seventh-most-deadliest. No known antivenom. But unless your body’s allergic to snakes, usually it takes an hour for the symptoms to kick in. Unless it’s treated quickly, you could die in as little as thirty hours.’

“I feel like I could take on the world!” cried Hoof Sandwich.

“So… so we don’t even have to be AFRAID of being bitten by any of those snakes?” asked another of the Sicklefins.

“Of course not!” cried Honeydew suddenly. “Rainbow Dash is one of the biggest cowards in Ponyville; I’ve seen her be terrified by her own shadow! In fact, I doubt she’d’ve even been an Element Bearer if she didn’t have her five friends to hide behind! I should’ve known that a mare like her would never go a hundred yards of a truly dangerous snake! This was all just to SCARE us! That’s the one thing Rainbow Dash CAN do, in lieu of real fighting: SCARE others!”

Hearing this filled the Sicklefins with fresh new confidence.

“Ey! Breaking!” Exit Wound pointed to another of her goons. “Oi want yeh and Entering ta go gather whoever yeh need, catch Koindness, and bring her back here! Break her legs if yeh must, but do NOT fecking kill her, however tempted yeh may be!”

“You got it, boss!” said a unicorn mare who was apparently named Breaking.

“But stay on guard at all toimes!” Exit warned. “Little Miss Zookeeper could have more animal amigos loiying in wait fer us! For that matter, we moight already have a snake infestation of teh four-legged, hooved varoiety, if yeh catch me drift!”

“We’ll keep our eyes peeled!” spoke a second unicorn mare who looked like Breaking’s sister.

“I’m coming with you!” said Hoof Sandwich, the mare who’d gotten bit, nearly running into a second group of gangsters , who were bringing in another familiar face.

“Boss! Here’s Twilight Sparkle!”

Fresh guilt clenched Lero’s heart to see Twilight, of all ponies, with a horn wrap on her, flanked on either side by Exit Wound’s goons. If only he hadn’t been so stupid and gullible with that mare at the train station! Time after time, he kept thinking he had every angle covered, and every time, it wouldn’t be just himself who suffered from his stupidity, but those nearest to him.

“Welcome ta teh fecking party, Miss Magic! Here’s where all teh big nobs hang out!”

As Exit Wound drank more black whiskey, Twilight just looks around the room, and at Rarity and Lero, as though taking careful consideration of her surroundings.

“Well? Whaddaya got ta say fer yerself?”

Twilight Sparkle looked straight at the Sicklefin boss, and said, “Shigeru Miyamoto!”

* * *

There were times when Lyra Heartstrings wished she’d been born with hands like Lero’s.

Twilight Sparkle had shrunken Lyra down to the size of an insect, and then levitated her into the depths of her mane. Since then, Lyra had been clinging steadfastly to a giant swatch of Twilight’s fur, with the help of her telekinesis.

Because she was now so very small and hung upside-down like a slumbering bat, it was impossible for anypony to see Lyra — especially the steady, miniscule glow of her horn — with the naked eye.

It hadn’t even really been that long, However, most ponies were not capable of clinging to what was functionally ropes via telekinesis for long. If not for her intense Still Way training, Lyra would never had possessed the endurance to pull this off.

But now her herd-sister had shouted the name of that human video game maker Lero had told them about. And Lyra felt herself rapidly returning to her true height.

The Still Way grandmaster waited, bending her legs and when the moment was right, she sprang off Twilight. The expansion of her form exaggerated her momentum, allowing her to land a perfect flying kick to the face to one of the mares flanking Twilight. Kicking off, she swept around in the air in a spinning kick, striking the other mare in the back of the head with incredible force, and she collapsed under the force.

Pony martial arts were unique from human ones in a specific way. While they, like human martial arts, sought to perfect a warrior’s innate physical capabilities, many pony martial arts sought to build on innate mystical capabilities. Pegasi flight and weather control, Earth Pony strength and connection to the earth, heck, there was even an obscure martial art that capitalized on their ability to grow plants.

For unicorns, it was magic. However, unicorn martial arts was nothing like Twilight Sparkle’s style of combative sorcery. It wasn’t about learning arcane formula, building vast reserves of magical power, or amassing a massive repertoire of spells, but rather refining spells that come naturally, instinctively, to such a degree they become effective in the split-second of physical combat.

Such as light.

Most unicorns are so used to producing illumination with their horns, most don’t even think of it as a spell, much less something one could improve and make useful outside of it’s obvious practicality, nor did many other ponies consider that possibility, either.

And after that entrance, all eyes were on here, except Twilight, who she told what to expect.

Perfect.

Even before she hit the ground, her horn ignited with light, and in a fraction of a second, brightened its illumination to an unbearable luminosity. All the goons were blinded, jerking back instinctively away from the brightness, giving Lyra the opening she needed.

While shrunken, Lyra had done her best to listen in on everything others had been saying to Twilight… but at such a puny height, it had been like listening to thunderclaps converse with each other during a lightning storm.

She needed a second to get her bearings. From the thick lavender forests of Twilight’s mane, smelling so strongly of Twilight’s sweat and Twilight’s shampoo, Lyra now found herself in a large, dusty room with several exits, where the main source of light seemed to be a set of theatrical spotlights on an upper catwalk. Dangerous enemies surrounded her, briefly disabled. But most importantly, she saw her herdmates. Both her unicorn herd-sisters were wearing horn wraps, and Rarity was in a cage. And Lero…

Lero…

When her hooves touched the ground, she launched herself at the skewbald unicorn mare, striking her simply and solidly on her snout with her hoof, as she summoned her telekinesis to life.

“W… which fecking Bearer are yeh, then?” the skewbald mare asked, even as she was stumbling backwards. “What’re yeh the Element of?”

Projecting a physical force or grabbing and levitating inanimate objects with telekinesis was simple. Living beings were less so. What was truly difficult and took incredible focus was something that would be simple with a physical object:

Creating an edge.

She pressed the edge against the skewbald mare’s throat, just enough to cause pain, but not enough to spill blood.

“Me? I’m the Element of Surprise,” said Lyra. “And if I see you make one move, if that horn of yours gives so much as a flicker of light, if ANY of your thugs tries anything funny, it’s over for you. Say ‘yes’ if you understand.” Her voice was a controlled, warning tone, but those familiar with her might note the undertone of controlled fury.

Dazzled and feeling the familiar pain of a blade to the throat, Exit Wound responded in the affirmative. “Y-yeah, Oi got ya.”

“You’re going to follow my orders, exactly.” When the gangster mare failed to respond, she pressed the blade more firmly, a faint line of crimson red forming. “Understand!?”

“Feck! Yes!” She practically growled.

“First, I want that horn wrap off Twilight Sparkle. Right now.”

“Yeh crazy bint, She’ll blow us... gah!” The red line became a trickle, convincing the gang boss this was not a productive area of discussion. “Yeh heard teh mare! Take teh fecking horn wrap off!”

An earth pony closest to Twilight hesitated, before moving over to Twilight, nervously unstrapping Twilight’s horn wrap, sliding it off.

A low, sadistic chuckle suddenly emerged from Rarity’s cage; “Oh-ho-ho! Are you all in for it now…!” she cackled, as Twilight’s horn flickered to life, channeling her magic back into it experimentally.

Lyra favored Rarity with a smirk, before turning her attention back to Exit Wound. “Now…”

Her next order, however, was interrupted by a primal scream, a light green blur slamming into her side, causing her telekinesis to fail with a pop, the blow knocking her back and over the railing of the balcony where they all stood, dropping her into the darkness of the floor below, the blur following after her.

* * *

Exit Wound staggered to her hooves, attempting to reorient herself on the Element of Magic, but she was too late. They all saw the flash of a spell going off.

The gorilla statue had originally been a huge hunk of stone drawn directly from the bedrock of this very quarry. Exit Wound had been its sculptor.

Very few ponies would’ve looked at a cutthroat like Exit and think she might have an artistic side to her, but it existed; Honeydew could testify to that. From formless rock, the Sicklefin underboss had blasted and blasted away with unicorn magic until it had attained its current shape. This had happened during the planning stages of Lero Michealides’ capture, when they both agreed such a thing would be superbly ironic to chain the human to. Then Exit had celebrated her artistic creation with ‘a bit of the slap and tickle,’ (as she put it.) Honeydew had come very close to dislocating her jaw. Five times.

When Twilight shot her magic beam at the gorilla statue, Exit figured it would explode like a bomb. What the statue did was move.

With limbs that were no longer stiff and obdurate, the stone gorilla grabbed the iron chain connecting it to the human and snapped it apart, as though it were dying ivy.

“Fecking rock golem…” Exit hissed under her breath.

At the same time, Twilight Sparkle shouted out, “Lero! It’s okay!” when the rock golem grabbed the human and set him on its back, much like an actual mother gorilla would do with her young. “Just hang on tight!”

No doubt it would’ve been easier for the human to ‘hang tight’ if his hands weren’t encased in obsidian hoofs, so he had to make do by encircling his arms around the golem’s neck as firmly as possible.

“Yeh grotty twat!” Shouting at Twilight Sparkle had been a mistake; for the Element of Magic needed one glance at the Exit Wound brightening horn for her to vanish. When she did, the gorilla golem froze up lifelessly again.

“All o’ yeh!” Exit snarled at her Sicklefins. “Stop scratchin’ yer holes ‘n’ yer pink bits and BRING THESE PUKE FELCHERS DOWN!”

Then the gorilla was on the move again; gritty powder flaking off its body like dandruff with every shift of its stony limbs. Grabbing the long chain it had broken off the floor, the magically animated statue rose into its back legs. Its free left arm punched and smashed aside every gangster that came within reach, while the chain in its right arm cracked across faces and bodies with bone-breaking force.

The unicorn gangsters followed their boss’ lead and opened fire on the gorilla, taking huge chunks out. Many of their shots would’ve mutilated or killed a flesh-and-blood gorilla; they aimed for the head, the chest. But even when its face was completely blown off, the rock golem paid no notice. Like it was a coat of dried mud falling off on its own.

Exit had sculpted it too well.

But rather than attempt to beat them all down ‘til there were none left standing, the gorilla was fighting his way to the wall, his primate digits finding fingerholds in the mortar. The human hugged the golem’s neck all the tighter as it began scaling the wall upward.

“Take out ets limbs!” Exit shouted to her unicorn underlings, already trying her best to do just that. “Let’s dismember et! Can’t fecking climb if et ain’t got ets paws attached!”

Even as they had begun firing, Gabby the griffin flapped her wings and cawed out, “She’s on the catwalk!” while pointing upward. “Twilight Sparkle’s up on the catwalk!”

They all looked up. Even squinting against the spotlights’ glare, they could all see that this was where the Bearer of Magic had teleported herself. The Sicklefins who’d been operating the spotlights lay sprawled upon the catwalk’s grating; knocked out by some spell of Twilight’s, evidently.

Several Sicklefin pegasi flew up to attack Twilight Sparkle, but ended up crashing painfully into the force field she cast over herself. Not a small, cramped force field, either: Honeydew reckoned one could fit a respectable-sized gazebo inside that purple sphere.

The pegasi tried bucking it with their legs, they tried slashing it with wingblades, while a number of the unicorns down below turned their blasts on it. But the force field held.

Still, though, upholding the force field and controlling the rock golem at the same time was clearing straining Twilight’s resources: the gorilla was climbing slower. Exit was certainly not the Sicklefin’s sole sharpshooter, and the gorilla’s arms and legs were looking like thoroughly chewed-up pencils. But it kept climbing up the wall, towards Twilight Sparkle…

* * *

This wasn’t Twilight’s first time facing overwhelming numbers. She’d faced what felt like a small army’s worth of changelings back when Shining and Cadence had their wedding. But the swarm had overwhelmed her and her friends, so that was a terrible memory for her to draw inner strength from.

While the Sicklefins were fewer in number than Queen Chrysalis’ swarm, they made up for it by being a tougher class of fighter, (for a race of equinoids with horns and wings, changelings were rather weak, individually.) It showed in the way the gangsters attacked her force field. Given enough time, they’d wear her down, but she only needed to hold out for a couple more seconds for her statue golem to reach the catwalk. Perhaps she could shrink her own force field down halfway and cast a second one over her golem; it was already so whittled down by now, that…

“How’s tricks, Miss Magic?”

Twilight almost lost her focus. In a bright flash, the Sicklefin boss appeared directly in front of her, just outside the brim of her force field. With a meaningful look over her shoulder, her pegasus subordinates backed away.

“You know teleportation?!” It was a rare unicorn who could pull such a thing off. In fact, back when Twilight had first learned that Rarity now knew teleportation along with all her weather magic — that she ‘remembered’ Twilight training her in it — what a shock. Especially since Twilight had tried training Lyra in teleporting a few times before the Swap, but even Lyra could never quite wrap her mind around it, or summon sufficient magic to execute it.

“Oi’m a fecking exceptional caster o’ spells, Miss Magic,” the Sicklefin boss told her, suddenly directly behind her. “Didn’t yeh read me foile when yeh was with them fuzz?” she then asked, from a spot where the catwalk branched off to the side. “Oi’m Exit Wound.”

Twilight really hadn’t read any of the Sicklefins’ dossiers. Even if Cpl. Wolf Pack had brought them, she wouldn’t have been in any mood for reading.

“No word o’ a loie: Oi used ta be a student in Celestia’s School Fer Gifted Unicorns, but Oi didn’t get ta graduate,” she continued from the top of the force field’s dome, directly over Twilight’s head. “Expelled fer bad behaviour in me foinal year, by teh Princess herself! Bit o’ an overreaction, if’n yeh ask me,. What’s a few broken legs between classmates? Muckers should’ve known better than ta show me up.”

“You… You broke the other student’s legs….. because they did better than you!?” Twilight asked, aghast.

And with one final bright flash… the skewbald unicorn had teleported herself directly inside Twilight’s force field. Twilight has a second’s look at the the underside of the criminal’s hobnailed horseshoes, before she felt them connect with the side of her face, and then her head had smacked into the back of her own force field’s wall. Exit Wound gave a wicked smile.

“Heh, yah. Part o’ why Oi’m not one o’ Her Fecking Majesty’s biggest fans,” said the crime boss, brushing dust off her double-breasted jacket with telekinesis.

With her concentration completely broken, Twilight’s force field fizzled out. She had to blink a trickle of blood out of her eyes as her gorilla golem stiffened back into immobility and fell straight backward off the wall it’d been climbing. Lero screamed as he let go of its neck.

And the Sicklefin boss turned away from Twilight Sparkle to watch the human fall.

* * *

From down in her cage, Rarity felt her insides freeze as her prince plunged downward. Magic surged up into her horn as she instinctually tried to conjure a cloud platform to catch him and a cloudwalking spell to support him, but of course, her accursed horn wrap plugged off her every attempt.

Falling, falling … once again, Lero was falling, once again, she would not be able to save him, she was prevented from even chasing after him, only this time, she would watch from the ground instead of the sky. Rarity even found herself daring to hope that one of the Sicklefin pegasi would find it within themselves to at least catch Lero. None did.

At least this wasn’t a nine-thousand foot drop, this time… but that devastated gorilla statue was quite a huge cut of stone. How terribly would it crush her poor, persecuted Lero underneath once it landed on top of him? Please, just let him survive, at least let…

Her sweet, ingenious Sparkle-kitten teleported herself directly under Lero’s legs, so that he landed straddling her back, just as he did whenever one of them allowed Lero to ride her. Then, while still in freefall, Twilight’s horn flashed again, and she teleported over about five bodylengths to the right with Lero still on her back, magically slowing her plummet enough to land safely on her hooves. Five bodylengths to her left, what remained of the gorilla statue smashed into grey rubble on the floor.

“Oh, well done, Twilight!” Rarity cried, “Bravo!”

Rarity clapped her hooves and her adorable kitten had just started to turn her smile towards her when what could’ve easily been about ten enemy unicorn levitational fields latched onto her prince at once, and lifted him up off Twilight’s back. They weren’t exactly operating as a unified team, either. Levitational fields around his right leg, levitational fields around his left arm, levitational fields around his neck… effectively, it was as though a squabbling pack of three-year-olds were tug-of-warring for the same rag doll.

This was not doing Lero’s body any favors. Just as terribly, the Sicklefins were attacking Twilight like a swarm of hornets; Rarity outright lost count of how many times Twilight had needed to teleport to dodge unicorn blasts and the club of a particularly brutal earth pony, until the head Sicklefin, herself, the one Honeydew had called ‘Exit Wound,’ teleported right down from the catwalk next to her prince.

“Ease up!” Exit barked, and Rarity’s sweet stallion dropped like a stone at her hooves. “Don’t wanna fecking accidental...”

Zing! As the unexpecting Exit Wound flinched back, Twilight had appeared right by Lero’s side, and bit down on his arm, not hard enough to break the skin.

Zing! With bodily contact established, Twilight and Lero reappeared inside the very cargo elevator that Exit Wound, herself, had ridden up with Honeydew. Because cargo elevators had safety grates, as opposed to full-on doors, it made for a viable teleportation destination. Twilight’s hoof hit its button. Hot walls of protective fire shot up between the elevator and the Sicklefin gangsters, even before Twilight teleported herself in front of them.

The elevator rumbled downward with Lero on it. No doubt Lyra would be able to protect their stallion on that lower floor. After all, it was only Honeydew she’d be fighting.

Exit Wound sent a commanding look at the mare whom Rarity took to be her second-in-command. This mare shouted at some of the other Sicklefins to go follow her, and they all hastened through a side door. No doubt, they’d be taking the stairs down.

“Question fer yeh,” Exit Wound asked Twilight Sparkle, “Supposin’ Oi were ta blast that fecking horn off that pretty purple head o’ yers, would that disqualifoi yeh from being Element O’ Magic?”

Twilight’s forehoof scraped the ground challengingly as her horn charged up with power. “You and all your flunkies are welcome to try.”

* * *

The world blurred by Lyra as she tumbled through the air. Focus! she demanded of herself. Still. She managed to resummon her telekinesis quickly enough to cushion her fall, but the impact was great enough she still needed to tumble to avoid injury…

Which is when she heard the distinct whistle of a body plummeting through the air behind her. Reflexively, without thought, she leap clear — which was fortuitous, as Honeydew impacted behind her, the ground literally exploding beneath her hooves.

Lyra flinched away from the shrapnel, almost missing the blows that surged in behind it. She created telekinetic shields — not full bubble domes, the way Twilight made them. Bubble domes, while comprehensively protective, were huge power drains. Brief planes of force to deflect the blows away were far more efficient, albeit needing much faster reflexes.

Much to Lyra’s shock, the shrapnel followed the blows, swirling about her attacker’s hooves, striking secondary blows, wrapping past her shields, opening slashes on Lyra’s flank. Glaring, she shoved forward with her shields, smashing against her attacker’s face, focusing her power to follow up with a more decisive blow…

Only to find her foe retreating into the shadows with a clattering noise. A familiar clattering noise: that of the hooves moving rapidly using a certain martial arts technique... Lyra scanned the expansive floor they were on, the lowest one, the largest. On the side they were on, it was filled with rock, some cut cubes from the quarry, others cut into sheets and tiles, others ground to gravel and sand. They were stacked or collected into piles over a good chunk of the area, interspersed with processing machinery. She brightened her horn when she failed to spot her target.

Finally, Lyra’s opponent spoke, voice dripping with smugness. “You appear to be surprised, Heartstrings,” Honeydew taunted.

Lyra took a moment to check herself — light scratches, some blood, but nothing serious. “You’ve improved,” she told the earth pony mare icily.

The last time they had challenged one another’s skills was when Honeydew had flat-out attacked Lyra over a year ago; the melon vendor’s loathing of Herd Bellerophon overriding what little speck of common sense dwelt within her. For Honeydew, that fight had ended with her up a tree a block away with two black eyes and three busted ankles. For Lyra, it had ended with a lengthy outbreak of pungent sweat from exertion.

“Does it show?” Honeydew responded, with the exact same flattered, smiling coo as Lyra’s neighbor, Daisy, back when Lyra had looked Daisy over and asked if she’d lost weight. “Yes, I’ve put work into honing my Rolling Earth skills since our last little skirmish. With a particular focus on maximizing its effectiveness against the Still Way.”

“And I recognized a bit of Shattered Stone in there also.” Looking back, it now occurred to Lyra that Honeydew’s musculature had been growing steadily more defined, month after month. Now it suddenly made sense: she’d be preparing for this moment in every way she could; not just simply schmoozing up a mobster. It was actually a little impressive. But very, very disturbing.

“You noticed! I’m flattered. And a bit disappointed, to be honest. When I smash your bones to powder, I was hoping to make it a complete surprise.”

Lyra heard the grunt of exertion, the massive stone block across from her sliding at her at incredible speed, attempting to smash her against one of its brothers, she leapt towards it, lancing her telekinesis against it, using the momentum to launch herself up into the air, flipping atop the stone block... and spotting her rival on the other side.

“You have been a busy bee,” said Lyra.

“Leave Bee out of this, you sister-stealing slurper of a simian’s sweaty scrotum!” Honeydew shrieked, smashing her hooves into the ground, rocks and gravel launching into the air. With a blur of strikes, Lyra found herself dodging a hail of projectiles,.

Left. Block. Leap. Right. Duck. Lyra flowed through the assault. not thinking, merely acting, as the act of taking time to think would make it too late. Catch. Parry. Return. Strike, left leg, off balance, move to capitali-

She nearly missed it... while she stumbled from the strike, Honeydew rolled with it, tumbling over and flinging a rock at her in a single motion, but Lye instinctively noticed something off: a shine. Barely noticeable, but distinctly off to a sharp eye.

Lyra threw up a shield in front of her with all her might, attempting to reverse her movement, which suddenly became simple as the rock exploded with concussive force, flinging her away.

That’s an advanced Shattered Stone move. Lyra thought to herself. Just how much trouble am I in right now...?

She slammed against the stone block, but managed to find her hooves, telekinetically shoving herself aside, and tumbling any follow-up roll to evade any further attacks, which she heard clatter against the stone. She swiped her telekinesis through the air, blowing away the dust, looking for her opponent, only to find Honeydew gone, again.

...Lots.

She was far too used to Honeydew playing the inextinguishable hothead, pressing the attack event to her detriment, charging into mêlées to pound things into mush even against opponents who could take her out before she could reach them. Now, not only had Honeydew refined her skill to a dangerous level, she was retreating, attempting to reestablish surprise, evading being targeted, and attempting to strike at range.

Is she so hateful of Lero that she’s actually learned to fight well enough to win?

Lyra walked back to where she last saw her target... and spotted faint spatters on the ground. Blood? So she had hit her target. She followed the trail, stalking into the darkness, shadowy machinery looming above her as she went further into the processing section of the plant. Lyra dimmed her horn; in this environment, its glow would make her a target. She scanned the shadows with a sharp eye. There. She spotted a pony silhouette in the shadows. She launched herself at Honeydew, not wanting to give the flash of warning of a spellcast, smashing into it with her hooves…

...and experiencing déjà vu as a pony-shaped pile of rocks fell over. There was a sudden CLANG behind her as a huge bulk of ramshackle machinery swung around with a crash, cutting off the passage in which she’d just come.

A trap!? Lyra lashed out with a telekinetic strike, but only caught a glimpse of a blur moving to the left…!

Strike. Strike. Strike. All her telekinetic attacks were foiled by surrounding machinery, splashing uselessly against them as she tracked her target’s movement. Another loud CLANG as another piece of the machinery slammed into place, trapping her in a triangle formation.

Leap. She attempted to jump out of the trap, only to see a shard of rock flying upwards… Cutting free a heavy rock load suspended on a crane above her. Lyra redirected her shield upwards, cushioning the impact, but nothing stopped her from being slammed harshly back to the ground and stunned under the rubble.

CLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANGCLANG. The sounds of blows striking against the metal and stone trap about her echoed in her head. With a flash of light she summoned, Lyra spotted Honeydew hammering the metal equipment about her into odd shapes. Was she trying to crush her? She lashed out with her telekinesis, knocking Honeydew away, into the darkness.

“It’s just as well,” Honeydew taunted from the shadows. “I was done anyways!” Lyra attempted to use her telekinesis to shift the stone off herself… only to find it held in place by the metal hammered down on it. Likewise, the machinery was bent together.

She was trapped. Dammit! “Get back here!” She yelled, only to met with mocking laughter.

“What, and get back in shooting range? I don’t think so. Don’t worry, Heartstrings, I’ll make sure your monkey’s demise is loud and painful enough for you to hear it down here! Ta!” With another laugh, Honeydew fled.

Lyra swore to herself, starting the tedious process of finding weak points in all this metal to pry herself free...

* * *

The bodies of Sicklefins littered the floors. Twilight Sparkle and Exit Wound flung such fearsome spells at each other, that none of Exit’s accomplices dared fight alongside her, although a few of them fired arrows and magic blasts at Twilight from afar.

“Yeh don’t lack fer luck, Oi’ll give yeh that!” Exit shouted.

This had been her second heat-seeking shot she’d sent at the Element of Magic’s legs, and once again, Twilight Sparkle had intercepted it; this time by levitating a large old mahogany desk up to act as a shield.

“The way yeh zigged down ta catch yer ape when he fell… if yer toiming had been half-a-tick off, he’d have gone roight inta yer body when yeh teleported… in the PAINFUL way!”

Twilight Sparkle’s levitated desk caught completely on fire as though it’d been submerged in vodka this whole past week.

“Good thing I rely on my brains,” snapped the Element of Magic, tossing the desk at Exit, “instead of luck.”

A quick teleportation, though, and Exit had simply dodged it; the fiery desk went crashing through the door, its frame, and a good portion of the wall.

“Brains, yeh say?”

Exit shot again at Twilight’s legs as the Element Bearer walked toward her, but when the blast connected, Twilight’s body blurred, and then split into three! Shocked, Exit fired another blast, and soon enough, she had six Twilights glaring back at her!

“Not only did I graduate Celestia’s School For Gifted Unicorns with honors, Celestia herself became my personal mentor right when I got my cutie mark! I’ve solved practically every problem she’s thrown at me, from thaumatology quizzes to Discord… “

Exit winced at that mention of that name, even as she continued to fire at the Twilights, perhaps hoping that after enough doppelgängers built up, Twilight’s would’ve spread herself too thin, and the clones would fade away…

“Just like I’ll solve you!”

The section of flooring right underneath all four of Exit’s hooves formed themselves into unnervingly humanoid hands that seized tight onto the Sicklefin boss’ ankles.

“I don’t know where you get off taking pride in being a problem student!” The fifty-odd Twilight clones muttered as one.

“Teacher’s pet, are yeh?” Exit might’ve fallen over, but the firm grip on all four of her legs held her upright. “Fecking disgusting, especially at YER age.”

“I’d much rather be Celestia’s lapdog," the Twilights retorted, "than a cold-blooded shark like you, Miss Sickelfin!" Exit Wound swept her next attack across them all: a jet of fire that would’ve done a murderous teenage dragon proud.

* * *

Wood splintered. Metal rended. Stone shattered. Ponies and gryphons screamed and yelled and fought within the aged structure of the mill, the sounds reverberating off the hard and unforgiving walls until it was a cacophonous maelstrom that built upon itself, multiplying its intensity until it threatened to bring down the whole structure.

Or at least that is what it was like for Diamond Dog ears.

Scrounger tried to cover his poor ears with his large padded paws to drown out the assault of noises. He gritted his rotting teeth until they threatened to be pulverised in his own jaw.

“Graaaah!” he wailed, that high pitched voice sounding above the din of fighting. “Too much noises!!”

He couldn’t fiddle or diddle with all this around him. And he certainly couldn’t fiddle-diddle, no, not like this.

Scrounger swayed aimlessly, gripping his ears and whining loudly. Meandering like a drunken top, he came to the railing overlooking the processing pit below. He looked down and felt a malformed smile grow on his half-dead face.

Down below were mounds of stone and machines, all sitting idle, waiting for workers that would never return. Scattered amongst the remnants of industry were multiple large holes, dug upwards from the earth below.

Earth was good. Dirt was clean. It was quiet.

He could fiddle, diddle, fiddle-diddle all he wanted with the foxy human down below. And just off to the side was the distinct form of the human, crouching between a pair of large machines as if he thought he could hide from Scrounger.

Aside from financial difficulties, one of the reasons the Boulder & Daughters Quarry closed its doors was trouble from a growing community of Diamond Dogs. Normally, the mongrels were a nuisance, one that was typically passed off to the local guard garrison to have them run out of the area and given a light thrashing for good measure. If shown any kind of formidable aggression, Diamond Dogs often revealed their cowardly nature and were quick to retreat into their vast underground networks.

For the Boulder Quarry, however, it was not meant to be. The board of directors had long become quite dissatisfied with how the founder’s granddaughter had let the operation slide, with production at an all-time low and a very poor market for the materials to boot, and had deemed it not worth the hassle.

And so the quarry was closed down and the doors locked up. It was not even a major loss for the few remaining workers; they were all too aware of the poor management and were eager to find more prosperous jobs elsewhere.

Even the encroaching Diamond Dogs did not stay for long. There were no jewel deposits to be found there and they had no use for stone. They were also too primitive to make use of any of the machinery, aside from stripping what they could to reforge into their shabby armor. Eventually they too went on to find greener pastures.

But the tunnel system they had dug below remained. And it was large and dark and perfect for fiddle-diddle.

“Come here, foxy human!” yelled Scrounger as he leapt from the balcony. Scrounger easily grabbed a hanging chain and slid down until he landed in the dirt below. His joints popped loudly and more pus oozed from his many boils. His slacked face was curled once again in excitement and the necrotic member between his legs was already partially erect from the exertion. The terrified look on the human’s face was absolutely priceless.

“We go now,” said Scrounger. “Go below to have fun!”

Scrounger grabbed Lero by the ankles and began to drag him out of his hiding spot and towards one of the holes. The human, who had become completely panicked at this point, began to ineffectively fight back, using his encased fists to first pound at Scrounger’s paws. When that failed to produce any results, Lero desperately tried to crawl in the opposite direction. Once again the obsidian encasings proved no use aside from forming twin ditches in the bare earth behind him.

“Hey, where in Tartarus do you think you’re going?!” Scrounger turned and looked at the source of the loathsome noise. It was the bossy pony dressed as a cheerleader.

“You said Scrounger could fiddle with the foxy human,” he said. “Fiddle and diddle. So Scrounger is going to fiddle-diddle in quiet.”

“Not without me there to watch!” screeched Honeydew. “You’re staying right here until I finish with these bonobo-loving nags!”

“Graaagh! Bossy pony is too noisy! Ponies are too noisy! Scrounger can’t fiddle-diddle with all these noises! So Scrounger takes it under!”

Lero had seized the opportunity to try and fight again, this time landing a blow on the Diamond Dog’s knee. Scrounger yelped at the pain, then growled menacingly. He grabbed Lero’s head, wrapping the human’s face with a meaty, bleeding paw, and slammed it down into the ground. There was a resounding crack and Lero went limp.

Scrounger picked up the human by the ankles again and dragged him back to the hole.

“No! Get back here you canine freak of nature! You aren’t doing anything until I say so!” Her words did nothing to dissuade the walking collection of diseases, as Scrounger simply threw the unconscious human over his shoulder and hopped into one of the holes.

“DAMN YOU! GET BACK HERE RIGHT NOW OR I’LL THROW INTO ONE OF THESE GRINDERS AND SPRAY YOU WORTHLESS MEAT ALL OVER THE QUARRY!!”

Honeydew’s fury had been stroked to a raging inferno. She couldn’t lose, not like this, not when she was so close to ridding the world of that demonic ape! She had to be there! She had to be there to watch him suffer, to have him know that that it was her, not Exit Wound, her that was the architect of his demise!

She couldn’t risk having him face his punishment without her to witness it or worse have him escape! What if he got away? What if he made it outside?! Then everything she had done, all the things she had sacrificed would have been for NOTHING!

It was then she spotted two Sicklefin goons out of the corner of her eye. “You two!” she screamed, causing the pair of stallions to come to a halt. “Get your worthless plots down there and bring that disgusting ape back up here NOW!”

The two gangsters looked first to freshly dug hole, then to each other. “Eh,” muttered one of them, “I don’t think…”

“Of course you don’t think, you half-brained special school rejects! You do what I say, or I’m going to have Exit Wound skin your useless hides and wear them as a cape! Now get down there and bring him back up here! Alive! I want to be there to witness his moment of ultimate shame! And I want those worthless, monkey-loving nags to watch it happen!”

Honeydew had the two lackeys at the mention of Exit Wound. They cantered to the rim of the hole and gave it a wary look before they all dived into the darkness.

* * *

“What’ve you got against Lero, anyway?!” Twilight snarled, tried her best to flatten the Sicklefin with a mallet she’d conjured entirely out of telekinetic magic. “This whole gang… are you all just some kind of anti-human extremist league, bent on the annihilation of mankind?”

The magical mallet was an immense thing, large enough to flatten a full-grown buffalo into a flapjack.

“Sure,” said Exit Wound, teleporting away just before Twilight’s mallet could land a blow. “Let’s go with that.”

Slowing her swing, Twilight gave Exit an odd look. “...Go with…?” she repeated,

“Oi mean, since he’s just teh one bloke, teh result’s gonna be teh same, so maybe we are. All things considered.”

“All things consid…?” It was such an unexpected thing to hear, that Twilight let her hammer vanish. “For an extremist, you’re being rather halfhearted about all this! Especially considering all you’ve already done!”

“Look, even in a human-killing extremist league, not everypony can be fecking Honeydew," said Exit, pulling her hat off, to examine how good it still looked.

In the space of nothing, Twilight’s mallet had not only come back, but now had serrated spikes on all sides of its hammering end; each crackling with electricity.

“You don’t even care, you don’t even really CARE…!” Twilight raged.

But in the same space of nothing, Exit Wound had charged up an extra-large sphere of magic upon upon her horn; one as big as a basketball.

Quite a few crossbows and longbows floated in, like flying ants drawn to a broken sugar bowl. A good couple dozen. And for every bow, there had to be about thirty arrows surrounding it, like griffin soldiers around their general. Twilight even saw some harpoons and spears as well.

“Oi care enough.” Exit told Twilight. “That ape o’ yers, he’s gonna be me legacy.”

* * *

This place was cool. It was dark. But most of all, it was quiet.

The chaos of the fighting had faded back into a din as Scrounger bounded down the abandoned tunnels. Even with his pustulant and cataractous eyes, the canine’s dark vision was as sharp as ever; Scrounger was able to navigate with little problem. He did not know where exactly these tunnels would lead, but he did not care.

The noisy pony had looked angry that he wanted to fiddle with the foxy human. But then why did they get him in the first place? She had even told him to fiddle and diddle before the noises started, so why was she angry now? Bah, these ponies were noisy and stupid.

Scrounger’s ear swiveled. There were hoofsteps coming from behind him along with the faint glow of some unicorn’s magical light. He grinned. Ponies were really stupid and noisy. Did they want to bring him back to the noisy place? Well, he wouldn’t go back. The bossy pony would still be stupid and angry and may make the large killy pony kill him before he could fiddle-diddle and spread his beauty to the human.

Of course, not going back might mean that Scrounger might not get to fiddle with the rainbow pony, the cage pony, or even the pretty purple pony too. But they could be found again later. Then Scrounger would fiddle and diddle them and make them beautiful like him too. Then they would spread the beauty to all of their friends. Then everyone, everywhere, would be as beautiful as him.

Scrounger took a side tunnel, then climbed upwards to an opening in the ceiling. He threw down the unconscious human onto the dirt floor and stayed quiet.

“Where’d he go?!” shouted one of the stupid ponies. It was a pegasus with some of those funny knife things on its wings. “I thought I saw him go this way!”

“He must have gone down one of the tunnels,” said the other, this one a unicorn with a glowing horn.

“Shut your traps, you stupid thugs,” said the bossy cheerleader, who smacked them in the back of the heads. “Just take your brother and go that way! I’ll go this way! And you’d better find that orangutan or don’t even bother coming back!” The bossy pony went down another tunnel, leaving the two stupid ponies to glare at her retreating form.

“Come on,” Scrounger heard the stupid unicorn say. “Just keep moving or else that cunt Honeydew is going to rat us to the boss.” They soon galloped down the tunnel, away from Scrounger and the human.

Scrounger smiled and began to stroke his rotting member, his phlegmy breath becoming more ragged as his excitement began to build. Soon he would finally get to fiddle, finally get to diddle! He turned, grey drool dripping from his mouth and he was ready to—

CRACK!!

Bone and tooth splintered under the impact of something slamming into his face like a runaway train. Scrounger felt his dripping and pustulant nasal cavities shatter, spilling their diseased contents in a waterfall of blood and snot. He flew backwards into the opposite wall of the tunnel and his head slammed into the wall, the impact made him see spots.

Scrounger peeled off the cave wall and fell flat onto the floor with a wet thud. Pain assaulted his senses, not the pleasant pain that came from his excitement or the beauty he carried in his body. This was real pain! He had almost forgotten what it felt like.

He looked up at what could have caused him such pain. And then felt felt his diseased blood go cold.

There, in the dark recesses of the tunnel above him, were two burning blue eyes staring down at him. And a cold, hard voice that made poor Scrounger’s heart seize in his chest.

“Tá tú lobhadh,” said the thing. Scrounger couldn’t understand the words, which made his ears hurt more than any of the noises above. They felt like something trying to claw away at whatever was left of his mind, trying to tear him brain apart from the inside. Scrounger then heard the clinking of glass and caught flashes of hundreds of shining somethings in the dark around the thing. They began to whirl around the thing like leaves in the wind.

One shot outwards. Scrounger yelped as he felt it cut his arm, now bleeding a deep red. The thing made him hurt! It made him feel hurt that wasn’t because of his beauty! Scrounger looked back up at the thing and whimpered as it spoke again in that horrible voice.

“Agus ní mór lobhadh a ghearradh amach.”

* * *

“Who let the dogs in?” asked Breaking’s sister, Entering.

They could hear them, up on the floor directly above them. Large-sounding dogs; wolfhounds and maybe bigger.

“Who do you think?” snarled Hoof Sandwich. A chair happened to be in Hoof’s path, and when she kicked it, three of its legs snapped off. “The little snake charmer! The beast witch!”

The three gangsters could hear some of their chums fighting the dogs on the upper floor, each of them easily recognizing the voices of Warm Needle, Horse Head, and Keen Edge.

“Sounds like Keen’s having a rough time of it,” noted Breaking.

“Gonna smash that whistle of hers into her eyeball!” growled Hoof Sandwich, then stopped short at a pair of magenta eyes staring at her from behind the next doorway.

“There she is!” shouted Hoof Sandwich.

Hoof Sandwich charged into the next room, but by then, the animal trainer had only left behind a few swirls of dust in the air.

“Bugger all!” exclaimed Entering, while entering the room. “She’s a fast one, even for a pegasus!”

“Bet ya she’s got experience running from ponies who want to beat her up!” guessed Breaking.

“D-don’t…” croaked a new voice.

The three gangsters looked down. This was another Sicklefin mate of theirs, by the name of Speak Easy. An earth pony with a beer keg for a cutie mark. She was huddled in a corner behind a bulky old quarry machine of some kind. Thick sweating dribbled from her plum-colored mane.

“She… she didn’t just bring snakes…” wheezed Speak Easy. Usually she didn’t have this much trouble breathing. Not like Coffin Nail.

“Speak!” cried Entering. “Did you got bit too, Speak?”

Nodding her head, Speak Easy uncurled one of the legs she was sitting on, showing two bloody puncture holes, almost like what they showed in vampire films.

“They’re on the loose, stealthy little buggers… Feels like I’m dying…”

“You’re NOT dying!” Hoof Sandwich all but roared at Speak Easy. “I got bit by one of them snakes, and I feel fine! You’ve just got a placebo effect on yourself, Easy!”

“Hoof, I’m pretty sure that the placebo effect means you tricked yourself into making yourself getting better, not worse,” said Breaking.

“Fine! You’ve reverse-placeboed yourself, then! Geez, you’re worse than my old grammar teacher…” With her head, Hoof Sandwich tried nudging Speak Easy back into a stand, but the contraband smuggler wouldn’t budge.

“I’m not… I don’t feel right…”

“Fine! Just STAY there, you lazy placebo-putz!” Then Hoof gave a disgusted kick to Speak Easy’s stomach, after which Speak vomited. Quite a lot of blood came up with the puke.

“That’s a mean thing to do to a friend. She needs a doctor, not kicking.”

Hoof Sandwich might’ve retorted that Speak Easy wasn’t her friend, as most everypony under Exit Wound already knew. But the one who’d spoken was the Kindness Bearer, glaring at them from the next room. Nickering angrily, Hoof Sandwich once again charged into the next room, followed by Breaking and Entering...

“RRREEEOOOOWWWWWKKKKZZZTT….”

Breaking had always been a fan of science fiction films. In fact, a lot of recently-released blockbusters owed their very existence to the human, including Herd Mulberry Goes To Earth, Equestrian Cyberspace, Back To The Future: Equestrian Edition and Terminator: Equestrian Edition. (reportedly, the human had insisted that the moviemakers add ‘Equestrian Edition’ to their titles, because he didn’t want to be guilty of plagiarism.) So Breaking had felt a touch of sadness when the Boss had announced they had to snuff him.

When Breaking heard that noise, her mind jumped to Alien: Equestrian Edition. It was just that bizarre of a sound. Like an android and a tiger had been spliced together. She and Entering and Hoof Sandwich all turned around and what was that thing leaping down from the rafters?! Most of its body looked like some kind of jungle cat, but it had tentacles rippling up from its back. Surely this was some horror from beyond the stars: there was no way it could belong to this world.

“Snake… snake…. SNAKE!” cried Entering, pointing a forehoof at the writhing appendages.

One of the tentacles lashed out and coiled around Entering’s neck. At least, it appeared so, it almost seemed to be a trick of the light, like solid nothing had grabbed Entering, lifting her up into the air as though she were made of marshmallow, while at the same moment, the beast grasped empty space. Part of her brain informed her Entering’s neck and the tentacle somehow bent through space where they interacted, but the part of her brain that kept her sane told her that wasn’t happening and she should ignore it, causing her to stare, hopelessly confused.

For all the rest of her life, Breaking would regret remaining dumbstruck, failing to react. The cat-monster’s tentacle wrapped around Entering’s neck and head and twisted around like Breaking would twist the lid on a stubborn glass jar.

Crack! went her baby sister’s bones. Entering twitched a little bit before going limp, and the monster octopus-cat flung it against the wall; a move as easy as batting an eyelid.

It wasn’t real. It couldn’t be REAL. Both Breaking and Hoof Sandwich lost their nerve and ran in separate directions. Hoof Sandwich ran through the door straight ahead. Breaking turned and fled into the room on her right.

The nightmare-cat chose to pursue Breaking, somehow keeping up with her while seeming to move off at odd angles at the same time.

Never had Breaking galloped so fast. Not for her first heist at Mrs. Agate’s jewelry shop. Not after she bumped off Stump Speech, and all those pegasus cops were swooping down at her. This thing wanted to EAT her!

The rooms blurred as Breaking tore through them, all she could see clearly was the doorway to the next room, then the next room, but the tentacled mecha-cat loped just a few paces behind. Breaking turned and fired a quick salvo of blasts over her shoulder… only for nothing to happen. Her shots passed through the jaguar-thing as though she’d shot them through a waterfall.

WHUMP!

What just happened?! To Breaking, it felt like she’d rammed herself into a wall… oh, wait, that’s exactly what had happened. Running with your head turned backwards: never smart in the long-term.

Ears cocked forward, tail swishing along with all its undulating appendages, the beast stalked up to Breaking with a low, tinny growl. Once again, Breaking shot her horn at the creepy tenta-cat, and once again, each blast phased through or warped around with no effect. Was this an illusion?

Yes. None of this could be real. Snakes through the floorboards? Her sister, Entering, dead? Tentacles on a jaguar? Clearly, this was just a dream… too much witch weed, last night. Heh, how silly… even now, it felt like her head were suddenly inside a large, wet, mouth. Breaking could smell horrible fetid breath, feel warm saliva soak into her facial fur, a raspy tongue, and long fangs puncture her throat and skull like an ice pick driven through a soup can… but clearly this pain was only imaginary, only part of the nightmare. Or perhaps a result of sleeping on the bed in a weird position. Wouldn’t be the first time!

Yes, it FELT exactly like her head was inside a large mouth, and her skull was being crushed between its jaw, but the monster-cat was standing a few feet away. She could see him, despite the odd warps of light about its mouth! How surreal was that?! Any moment now, Breaking would wake up to real reality, and she’d walk into the next room, and Entering would be on the couch, still sleeping. Any mom—

CRUNCH

* * *

“Buck!” shouted Quick Edge. “Where the buck did they go?!”

“Shit, we lost them,” Quick Draw cursed.

“They couldn’t have gone that far. Come on. If we backtrack, we might just-”

A blood-curdling screamed resonated down the tunnel, one that made even the hardened criminals shudder in fear. It sounded again and again, pure agony lacing every painful wail. Quick Draw felt his eyes go wide and his legs tremble. To think that there was something like that that could scare a veteran like him. After a small eternity, the howling screams abruptly cut off with sick squelch. The tunnel shuddered and dust fell from the ceiling.

Blessed silence returned.

“Wha…,” whispered Quick Edge fearfully, “what in Tartarus was that?”

Quick Draw aimed his magical light down the tunnel they had just come. “It came back from there.”

They two shared a look, then slowly made their way into the silence, weapons drawn, ready for anything they might find.

“Sweet Celestia…” breathed Quick Draw as he covered his muzzle at the stench.

What they did find was the crushed and dismembered body of Scrounger the Dog. The canine was lying in a cooling pool of his own rancid blood, his body nearly torn to pieces. His pustulent and diseased flesh was lacerated all over but what nearly made the criminals vomit was the impalement.

Several large spikes of midnight obsidian had pierced the body from above and below and even from behind. The end result was a horrific crucifiction that left the poor creature a twisted, broken, and shattered upon the black rocks. Hundreds of loose shards of the glassy rock covered the dirt floor, some still covered in blood.

“Argh, Luna’s teats,” gagged Quick Edge. “And I thought he smelled bad on the outside.”

“Cave must have collapsed on the bastard. Can’t say I feel sorry for him though.”

“Look!”

Quick Draw aimed his light upwards. His blood ran cold when he saw the limp form of the human half-hanging out of another tunnel above them. Quick Draw gingerly stepped around the dead Diamond Dog, wisely giving as wide a berth as possible. Quick Edge gave a few flaps of his wings, hovering just in front of the human, and gave Lero an experimental poke with his hoof.

The human stirred, moaning in his deep voice, and the unicorn below breathed a sigh of relief. “Come on, let’s get him out of here,” he said. Using his magic, Quick Draw was able to levitate the human out of the tunnel and over the dead body.

“Hey wait,” said Quick Edge. “Something’s not right. Why isn’t he dead too?”

“Who the buck cares?”

“But wait, how was that dog…?”

“Who CARES?! Just be thankful that this guy is still alive. That sick bitch Honeydew is going to flip that she isn’t going to get her jollies watching that walking quarantine rut the monkey, so just shut up and let me do the talking, okay? There was a cave-in, the dog’s dead, and there’s nothing we could have done. The human is still alive, so at least that means that the boss still gets to kill him for her schtick, and we may still get to keep our heads.” He then pressed his snout up against his brother’s with narrowed eyes. “But we won’t if you keep shooting off your mouth!”

The pegasus nodded his head uneasily and pushed his thoughts back down. A cave-in. That’s right. Tunnels are old, it was bound to happen. Better Scrounger than them.

Quick Edge didn’t worry about how or why Scrounger had been cut up so badly. Or why it looked like he had been pierced from below. Or why the human’s obsidian hooves were chipped and grooved to look more like a pair of fists now…

...Clearly that, too, had been a result of the cave-in.

* * *

“C’mon, then!” the voice of Exit Wound called after Twilight Sparkle. “Thought yeh’d be ‘porting me straight inside a hydra’s gullet by now, Miss Magic! Thought yeh’d turn me inta a big fecking poile of pencil shavings then blow me out the window!”

Rounding a corner into the next room, Exit Wound checked all around. No snakes, no cat, no cops, no Sicklefins, no Twilight Sparkle.

“Don’t let me little arsenal put yeh off!” Exit chuckled, glancing up at all the sharp pointy projectiles over her head. “Yeh won’t doie. Oi’ve enchanted all these ta aim at yer LEGS, yeh understand. Dun want ta break me prize too much!”

Exit began stalking towards the door at her left.

“Seriously, though, much as Oi love playing cat-and-mouse loike this, Oi’m shocked yer letting ME play teh fecking kitty. Oi’d’ve thought yer ovaries were made o’ stronger stuff than whipped cream and rooster shite, but Oi guess…!”

As she proceeded through the doorway into the next room, the floor under Exit’s hooves glowed bright and hot, then a geyser of fire shot up, catching her in the back legs. The skewbald unicorn screamed, all her arrows, harpoons, knives, and spears clattering to the ground, and then Twilight Sparkle was galloping towards her, horn glowing.

Clever. Ambush, inflict enough pain to disrupt a spellcasting aura, then attack a helpless target. Worthy of herself. But it wasn’t for nothing that Exit Wound had attained her standing in the Sicklefins. A flash of her own horn, and she was able to reactivate ten of her arrows, all of which sailed straight and true into the Element Of Magic’s forelegs.

“AAAAAAGGGGHH!!” Twilight yelled, falling forward, skidding inches from Exit, herself.

Casting a rushed, sloppy healing spell on herself, just enough to regain her mobility, Exit shakily rose back up to a full stand, and set her hobnailed shoe atop the Element of Magic’s head, right over her horn, letting Twilight know she could crack it off like a candy cane. Perhaps that’d even be best…

“Boss!”

Exit turned, seeing Quick Edge and Quick Draw… and who should Draw be floating over, but Dewy’s favorite bonobo!

“No…” whispered Twilight Sparkle, and Exit stamped down hard on her horn and skull.

“Hey,” panted Quick Draw, “We got good news and bad news. Good news is we got the human.”

And Draw gave an indicative shake to Lero’s prone form.

“What do you want us to do with him?” asked Quick Edge.

“Give him here, lads,” said Exit, accepting the human from the Quick brothers, and placing him atop a tall piece of machinery behind her back. “Now, teh bad news?”

Quick Edge pawed the floor with a forehoof. “Scrounger The Dog’s… well, he’s…”

Just then, the Element of Kindness flew in through the doorway Exit had come through. “Sic ‘em, Sassy,” she said, pointing a hoof at the Sicklefins.

When the great tentacled puma-thing came bounding into the room, it phased through the wall next to the door, like some kind of ghost. Quick Draw did what every good Sicklefin ought to; he turned and opened fire on the threat.

It wasn’t that Quick Draw was a courageous gangster. He wasn’t. But when it came to the ‘fight or flight’ panic response, Draw was instinctively drawn to ‘fight,’ four times out of every five. He was true to his name.

When all Quick Draw’s well-aimed shots impacted against the wall instead of the cat, Exit stomped down on Twilight Sparkle again, taking this to be some sort of illusion the Element of Magic had cast. But then the cat whipped a tentacle downward and Quick Draw’s head snapped down as it was struck in a strange flicker, the tentacle seeming to completely miss, but somehow still be in the right position to strike at the last second. The cat lowered its head, charged the air like a hornless bull, which bowled Draw over, looking like a comical mime routine. It followed up by leaping in entirely the wrong direction, somehow landing upon the poor pony with its claws extended.

It was all wrong. Visually, the entire confrontation was very wrong. Alien. Exit Wound wondered if all the fighting had ruined her glasses in some way.

For Quick Draw was having his face and neck raked to tatters, but the actual cat seemed to sometimes be atop him, other times elsewhere in the room, away from the stallion being savaged, despite never moving. Such a bizarre sight, and between the cat’s roaring, Edge’s screams and Draw’s gurgles, it was hard even to think!

Nonetheless, when a spurt of blood from Quick Draw’s trachea arced began to arc upward, it suddenly stopped. It looked splattered. Hanging in midair, but the way the blood looked, it was if it were coating or staining something. A second later, the blood distorted and vanished, as though sucked in by some camouflage.

The Bearer of Kindness had to duck for cover behind a large broken-down contraption as Exit Wound started firing in a spray at at the downed stallion in a continuous, rapid-fire fusillade. But Exit’s blasts were hampered by being unable to target as precisely as she was normally capable, due to the fact that this cat and her image were two completely different things. However, several blasts still managed to strike home, the creature letting out an ear-splitting howl, and it turned to flee, rapidly limping for an escape as spatters for blood dripped from its hide at confusing angles.

One second, the tentacle-cat’s image was three feet to the left of where it’d been a moment ago. The next second, the image was four feet to the left, then nine and a half feet to the right. Reflexively, Exit kept targeting the image which ended up passing straight through the wall as phantasmically as it had appeared.

Exit bet the real cat had just gone through the open door.

Regrettably, Quick Draw had absorbed quite a few of his boss’ shots in the crossfire. What the cat had started, Exit had unintentionally finished.

Quick Edge went and checked his brother’s pulse.

“Why?!” Edge screamed right afterwards at Exit, with great hate.

“Et had ta be done, Edge,” Exit stated. “Oi had ta kill teh fecking cat.”

“The cat ain’t even dead, though!”

Then, just like that, Edge’s screams of fury broke down to heart-wracked sobs of grief. “Draw, just… just stay with me, brother!” Even from her pinned position, Twilight could tell that the stallion was clearly dead. Quick Edge tried to put pressure on a gaping wound to no avail. The wound had stopped pumping blood and had since merely, lifelessly oozed crimson.

Quick Edge didn’t seem to notice. Or, more likely, he did but his mind refused to accept it.

“Just stay with me, Draw, we’re leaving.” Quick Edge began to awkwardly drag his brother’s body towards the nearest exit while trying to keep pressure on the wound. He didn’t care if the guards outside would arrest him. He just needed to make sure that his brother would get a doctor. “Just stay with me, please just stay with me…” The mantra was repeated until he passed through the door.

Quick Edge never saw the tentacle wrap around his head. Nor did he feel anything when it constricted and burst his head like an overripe melon.

* * *

Surely Rarity’s eyes were deceiving her. Amidst all this torment and violence, surely her overtaxed emotions had concocted this fluffy white bunny poking his head out from one of the holes in the floor and hippity-hopping his way over to her cage. Why, if she didn’t know better, Rarity would swear that it was none other than…

“Angel?” she whispered, and the little bunny nodded his long-eared head, as he hopped closer.

Even though Rarity was now believing her eyes, she still couldn’t believe this situation. Why would Rainbow have brought a bunny to a battlefield? The snakes and such she could understand, but a vulnerable little fluffball like Angel…?

"That’s it, that’s it,” she encouraged, as the little rabbit slipped easily through the gaps in the bars. “Come over to Mama Rarity…”

She went down on her haunches as soon as Angel Bunny was in the cage with her, leaning down to nuzzle the rabbit’s soft face, who nuzzled her back with his tiny whiskered nose.

“I… I’m so glad you’re here… I’m so g-glad you’re part of my family now, Angel.” Tears of tenderness and misery seeped into her facial fur. “Don’t you worry, you can stay with me. Mama Rarity will protect you from the monster-ponies. She can at least do that much, still… w-what are you doing, Angel?”

Rarity was feeling Angel’s buck teeth scraping rapidly against her cheek, but not actually catching purchase on her skin. It was a disquieting sensation and she nearly shook the rabbit off her face, until it occurred to her what he was actually up to.

Her horn wrap… Angel Bunny was chewing through the straps!

“Keep going!” she whispered. “Mama’s so proud of you!”

Angel Bunny paused just long enough to give her a cocky grin. The intelligence in his eyes was almost equine. Then he returned to his gnawing.

Rarity cast a look around. No Sicklefins were in this room with her right now, but that could change at any moment. Rarity tried to face the back wall and did her best to bend her body as to offer Angel maximum camouflage value against the white of her own coat. But it really boiled down to how fast Angel could chew.

The straps were made of a thick, durable leather-like material, and Angel was gnawing at the one on Rarity’s right cheek like it was the juiciest, crispest carrot ever grown, even if his face told a different story. Assuming no Sicklefin walked in and caught him at it, Rarity would simply teleport out of this cage, like her Sparkle-kitten had taught her. It took a miniature eternity, but Rarity felt the first strap snap off, flicking her lightly in the face, a tiny trickle of power returning to her control.

Now then… vengeance.

* * *

Her serpent friends hadn’t just backed Exit Wound into a corner, Rainbow Dash had gotten them to disperse themselves throughout this room and a few of the adjacent rooms as well, in case the Sicklefin boss tried any of her teleportation.

“I don’t want to have to hurt you,” Rainbow Dash told Exit Wound.

“Sure," the Sicklefin retorted, kicking some grit on the floor at Shakes the Rattlesnake. "Not when yeh brung the whole fecking reptoile exhibit ta do yer hurtin’ for yeh, huh?!”

“Call off all your snakes and I’ll gladly call off mine,” Rainbow promised, while Shakes shook his tail at Exit, whose ears flattened at the sinister, maraca-like rattle.

The large skewbald Sicklefin seemed to consider this option before she yelled, “Go shite a hedgehog!” And she fired a shot at Shakes.

Agony ruptured in Rainbow Dash’s head; it felt like a tiny, tiny explosive no bigger than a pea had detonated in her mind, and she fell to all four of her knees.

All her snakes flinched at their caretaker’s outcry, while Exit Wound perked with inquisitiveness.

“Yeh… yeh did that before...” noted the Sicklefin boss, looking at the spent firecracker that used to be Shakes’ head. “...back when o’ killed yer other snake…”

And then the horrible unicorn with her bloodstain of a cutie mark discharged another murderous blast at Hissy the Asp that span at her like a razor-sharp boomerang, and this time, Rainbow Dash gurgled, pawing at her throat as she felt the sharp cut of some phantasmal blade slicing clean through her neck.

“Yer an empath,”said Exit Wound, as Hissy’s decapitated head fell by her forehoof.

“What’d you call me?!” Rainbow Dash snapped, so insulted that she could even ignore the sting in her throat.

The lead gangster guffawed. “Oi wasn’t even dissing yeh this toime, Koindness!”

Then Exit Wound levitated up Ridgey the Saw-Scaled Viper, while at the same time, conjuring a floating fireball the size of a watermelon directly to Ridgey’s right.

“Being an empath means yeh’ve got a ‘sixth sense.’ Koinda plucked off teh same bush as them clairvoyants or moind readers…” Exit explained, in the tone of a coarser, less-educated Twilight Sparkle. “Except that instead o’ eavesdropping on thoughts, empaths feel others’ emotions. Loike pain.”

The fireball blazed blue and Exit levitated Rainbow’s saw-scaled viper friend right inside it. No matter how much Ridgey thrashed or Rainbow screamed at the unicorn to stop, the levitated snake remained inside the flame to writhe in agony… but it wasn’t until Ridgey went limp and lifeless that Dash screamed in real physical anguish.

“Oi see,” said Exit.

Rainbow Dash’s fur and feathers weren’t withering up into sooty clumps of ash. Her skin wasn’t blackening and bubbling up with second-degree blisters. In spite of all her body’s array of nerve endings screamed to the contrary.

“Yer empath-ness is too dim and unfocused ta sense pain… but et CAN sense others’ DEATHS,” Exit went on, as Rainbow Dash stopped, dropped, and rolled to put out flames that weren’t actually there.

‘So teh critter keeper’s got an empathic link ta her critters… their deaths cause her pain…”

Dropping Ridgey’s charred corpse on top of Rainbow Dash’s face, Exit Wound grinned at all the snakes in the room, like the world’s most artistic chef would grin at piles of fresh fruits and vegetables.

“Oi’m seeing POSSIBILITIES, here!”

One time, Rainbow Dash had been with Lero in the marketplace when the human decided he’d buy some string cheese from Dairy Delights’ stall. After removing the plastic wrap, Dash had watched Lero stick his clever fingernails directly in the top-center of one piece of string cheese and ripped the wobbly cylinder of mozzarella completely in half, straight down the middle.

When Exit Wound grabbed Heady the Copperhead in her telekinesis, she did something horrifically similar to what her human stallion had done to that piece of string cheese. But instead of starting at the top, Exit began at Heady’s tail end, peeling her guts out in two wet, dripping once-living strips, with a horrible, wet ripping noise.

Moments ago, Exit Wound had called Rainbow Dash an ‘empath.’ A ‘dim’ and ‘unfocused’ one. If so, Dash had NO desire to develop this particular breed of ‘empathy’ any further, Bearer of Kindness though she was! Here was one knife she’d happily keep dull and unsharpened!

The agony of Heady’s demise... ‘excruciating’ didn’t even scratch the surface! She felt like she’d been sawed in two by a diabolical carpenter. Collapsing onto the floor, her scream nearly broke her throat. She would’ve passed out from the shock, except that a tiny part of her mind devoted to self-preservation prevented this. After all, falling unconscious before a monster like Exit Wound would’ve been suicide.

“Say,” said Exit Wound, holding up the gory snake halves and looking back at Lero, “If we were ta fry these on a pan fer an hour, d’ya think yer ape would eat ‘em?”

But even as she asked this, Exit was looking gleefully at all her other snakes. Somehow, Rainbow Dash’s trembling lips found their way around the mouth of her whistle.

TWEEEEET! TWEEEEEET! TWEET!

This was the signal to flee, and Rainbow Dash blew loud enough for all the quarry mill to hear.

“No! Wait! Don’t! Come back!” cried Exit, as all the snakes quickly slithered back under the floorboards. Above them, on the next floor up, they could also hear the dogs turning tail and racing back downstairs towards the hole that Lee had tunneled for all of them.

Rainbow really wished that she didn’t have to make her animals retreat. But she couldn’t take it. She just could not endure experiencing another death like that. These weird empath powers... where had they come from?! But there was no time for that kind of ponderation, because the hulking Sicklefin boss managed to grab onto poor Windy the Sidewinder, intent on one last act of sadistic butchery...

“FECK ME UNCLE!”

A pulsating ring of magical energy struck Exit in the shoulder, courtesy of Twilight Sparkle. During the distraction Rainbow Dash had provided, Twilight had been quietly pulling the arrows out of her legs and casting healing spells on herself, right under the skewbald unicorn’s enormous nose.

“Exit! Exit!” cried a most unwelcome Honeydew, stepping in through the door. “Are you okay?! Do you need my help?!”

Exit ignored Honeydew, laughing as Twilight got to her to her hooves. “Oh, yer TOUGH, Miss Magic! Fair fecks to yeh!”

But the Sicklefin’s tone was a lot less jovial when Rainbow Dash decided to take this opportunity to fly out, grab her poor stallion off the machine he’d been placed upon, and rocket out the door with him on her back.

“Don’t worry, Dash!” Twilight called, horn glowing as she faced the gangster boss. “I’ve got you covered!”

Behind her, Exit’s yells were an incoherent stream of filth in between the magic blasts she exchanged with Twilight. But Honeydew shrieked out a very distinct and piercing “NO!!!”

And in no time flat, Rainbow could hear Honeydew’s hoofbeats as the madmare raced after her.

* * *

Honeydew sprinted after the cap-wearing, rainbow-maned zoophile for all her legs and lungs were worth.

“C’mon, big guy,” Rainbow Dash begged her biped, flapping her wings as fast as she could. “Say something to me! Wake up!”

Yet there was an inescapable fact Honeydew had to face. Even with her Shattered Stone Step, Rainbow Dash was an impossibly swifter pony. Even with over one-hundred-fifty pounds of primate on her back. Even with every drop of Honeydew’s adrenaline surging through her blood.

“D-don’t you worry, Lero!” With so many circuitous hallways and doors between Honeydew and her targets, she couldn’t actually see the pegasus, though she could follow her voice well enough. “If you can’t get up just yet, that’s cool! Whatever they did to you… there are friendly ponies just outside, they’ll take you to the doctors, and everything will be alright!”

Things were really starting to spin out of control. She’d dragged out the monkey’s comeuppance too long!

“Doggone it! A dead end!”

But it seemed Lady Luck had just thrown Honeydew a lifeline! Light might still triumph over Darkness.

With a burst of new speed, the earth pony mare followed the clang of a metal door into a locker room.

This place must’ve been where the old quarry workers had locked up their belongings. It must’ve been a large workforce, once, for the room was spacious with lockers lining almost all the walls, just like in a gym. But the only door in or out was the one Honeydew was standing in front of.

And in the middle of the room stood the animal caretaker.

Honeydew kicked the door behind her. “Why not make this easy on yourself, you little frog fondler, and tell me which locker he’s in?”

Each locker was big enough to contain the human at a crouch. Honeydew bucked the nearest one and it caved right in like it was made of tinfoil. All those protein supplements she’d been taking this past year were so worth it!

“Why do you want to kill Lero anyway?!” the pegasus asked in a voice braver than Honeydew would’ve expected.

“Because this whole world’s been placed under a disgusting spell and only one thing’s ever going to break it: ME.”

The blue mare blinked. “So you think Lero’s some kind of evil, all-powerful warlock? That you’re the hero in some sort of epic conflict?” Her eyes narrowed. ”You’re nuts, lady.”

“Look who’s talking!” sniggered Honeydew. “What’re you doing still hanging around the battlefield, General Pet-O-Phile? You sent your army home! What good are you without any of your fanged fighters to hide behind?”

Then Honeydew stepped slightly to the right, sweeping a hoof toward the door, like a valet at a rich hotel.

“In fact, why not fly after them?” she offered, generously. “Go on. You know you want to. At home, you’ve got so many gophers to grope, so many ferrets to fellate, so many moles to molest… surely you won’t REALLY miss one measly monkey? It’s for the good of the whole pony race, you know!”

Honeydew swore she saw the blue mare’s hackles raise. Had she actually made the animal-loving pacifist angry? “After everything my stallion’s done for me… I’d rather die than let you touch him ever again!” she practically hissed.

Honeydew stretched and limbered up properly, assuming a Rolling Earth practitioner’s fighting pose. Hmmm. No, I won’t kill you... Can’t have Discord running around free… Just a light crippling.

Of course, she didn’t need to know that. “If you insist.” Honeydew let out a war-cry and charged the little vulture violator!

Only to find herself flying through the air as a clean throw sent her rolling over Dash’s shoulder and slamming into the lockers behind her.

If I didn't know better, I'd say that looked like a standard Rolling Earth counter... Honeydew boggled, but as she regained her hooves, she dismissed it as beginner’s luck, as the pegasus seemed as surprised about it as she was.

She shook her head. “Alright… Let’s try that again.”

Maybe she’s not as helpless as she looks… she supposedly drove off a dragon, once… Less of a reason to hold back! Rearing up with an epic shout, Honeydew channeled her might into a single hoof, smashing it into the ground, tearing up the concrete as a shockwave raced towards her target...

...who took flight to avoid it with a startled ‘eep!’

“Oh, come on!” She leapt repeatedly in the air, lashing out bone-breaking blows at the fallen hero, who weaved expertly out of the way, even as she cringed, pivoting impossibly on her wings, as if her body was weightless, staying just out of reach.

Honeydew was baffled. How is this possible? Are those… Feather Leaf dodges? No, that’s impossible. She must just have innate talents, like an Element of Harmony probably should. But it won’t save her! Honeydew raced under the rabbit ravager, who peered after in confusion, only to get a snoutful of hoof, as Honeydew leapt off the wall to gain the height on her.

“AAAAYOOW!” the squirrel screwer screamed in pain, lurching back. Perfect, Honeydew thought, her momentum moving her to grab the pegasus, and in a perfectly executed throw, flung her to the earth below, while canceling out her own momentum; putting her into the perfect position for a meteor strike. Honeydew channeled the power of the stone into her hooves, plummeting down upon the helpless pegasus, hoping to smash her as she almost had Lyra…

Only for the zoophile’s eyes to widen, and with a rapid flap of her wings, she skidded across the ground, allowing her to escape the impact. “Damn you!” Honeydew growled. “Stay still and fight!”

But the raccoon ravisher continued flapping until she slammed into the wall. “Ow!”

Perfect! Honeydew thought, charging at the fallen hero, aiming for her head as she sat up. Only to miss as the pegasus spotted her and slipped back down on her back, evading the attack, causing Honeydew’s blow to smash through the wall, revealing the overcast night outside.

Buck! Honeydew managed to think before hooves impacted her stomach, launching her into the air, immediately followed by a literally flying uppercut, Honeydew found herself literally stuck in the air, as her aerial opponent looped in the air for additional blows, fast enough to knock her higher each strike, more than counteracting the effects of gravity. There was a loud SMASH as Rainbow Dash smashed into a light bulb. And to her literal shock and horror, Honeydew saw the electricity flow out of the bulb into Rainbow Dash’s hooves, who, in a blinding flash, struck her with a blow that flung her across the room, burying her partway into the stone in a crater.

Her hair frazzled, standing on end, Honeydew swore she saw some of it smoking, faintly.

How is this possible? I swear that was a Lightning Strike finisher…! Honeydew wondered, before seeing her blue rival charge at her, apparently intent on following up on her massive blow. Narrowing her eyes, Honeydew focused herself, feeling the strength of the stone about her, pulling it into her, just long enough to-

KLONK!

“OW!” The pegasus jerked back, cradling her hoof, having struck skin that was suddenly, inexplicably, as strong as stone. Honeydew capitalized on this, smashing her over the head, and against her wing, knocking her out of the air, leaping down for a pin, but Rainbow Dash once again proved damnably agile as she squirmed away, trying to find her feet. Honeydew didn’t relent, her strikes drawing closer and closer…

KLANG!

Honeydew’s eyes watered as she punched the locker door Rainbow Dash had jerked open in desperation to block. Shattered Stone could let a pony punch straight through many things, but metal was not one of them.

“Ha!” she snorted, pointing at the hurt mare. “You-”

“SHUT UP!”

Honeydew shoulder-slammed the door, taking advantage of the pegasus’ unguarded moment, slamming her head in the door frame repeatedly.

* * *

A distant, repeated clanging, seeming to get steadily louder in Lero’s ears… and someone saying his name…

“Lero-”

SLAM

“Lero-”

SLAM

“Lero-”

SLAM

Lero’s eyes snapped open. He was inside a cramped locker, Rainbow Dash was looking in at him, held awkwardly in place by a light green hoof, rivulets of blood running down her face.

"Lero-" She hissed again, before being briefly interrupted by the slam of the door. "please-"

SLAM

"RUN!"

SLAM!!!

Every primitive part of him screamed at him to protect Dash, to strike out at her attacker, but he knew it’d be as pointless as attacking a brick wall mixed with an elephant. And worse, he knew that joining this fight would just make Dash try to defend him harder, putting her more at risk.

Not that there wasn’t a moment to take advantage of.

He braced himself against the back of the locker, and the next time it slammed, he kicked the door as hard as he could, making it bounce back in Honeydew’s face, which caused her to let out an angry squawk and go reeling. Lero sprinted out of the locker, heading towards the door as fast as he could orient himself.

“You can’t get away!” he heard Honeydew scream. She started sprinting after him, only to be tackled to the floor by Dash.

“I’ll get help!” he called back to Rainbow Dash as he ran out of the room.

* * *

No No No No No I can’t let her touch him! Rainbow didn’t even think, she just acted. She didn’t really notice when the spiraling winds from her charge executed a perfect throw on Honeydew and flung her away in a spiralling vortex of wind, just that her foe was suddenly across the room, looking dizzy.

Nor was she paying proper attention when the gusts of winds style hedging her foe in, just that she seemed unable to dodge properly.

She did, however, notice when the wind formed into a coherent, wind-blade of shearing force at the tip of her hoofstrike and sliced open Honeydew’s blocking hoof, causing crimson blood to spill out before her eyes.

A part of Rainbow Dash's mind screamed, causing her to come to an utter halt. She had to defend her stallion, yes, but... she’d hurt someone really badly, she had to stop...

Honeydew panted, holding her bleeding hoof tight, attempting to staunch the bleeding, staring at Rainbow Dash as if she were from another world, too, just like Lero.

“Rolling Earth… Feather Leaf… Lightning Strike… Vortex and Windblade, too!” panted Honeydew.

It brought Rainbow up short. Those words meant nothing to her. “Huh? What’s that supposed to mean? Are you speaking in code or something?”

“Those… Those attacks of yours… you used moves from five different schools of martial arts!” insisted the mare in the cheerleader outfit.

“I… I did?” Dash felt thunderstruck — how much blood had she lost — how many blows to the head? That couldn’t be right!

However, the conviction in Honeydew’s voice was unmistakable, and rock-solid. “In fact, some of those moves… I know I’m not mistaken: they were master-level techniques!”

The mental image of the wind forming a blade and slicing Honeydew replayed in Rainbow Dash’s head over and over and over again, like a horror show.

However, Honeydew did not relent. “But… YOU…. you of ALL ponies, Rainbow Dash… you’re the meekest pacifist I know! All your life, you’ve been a hoofmat, all your life, you’ve been a flimsy little pussywillow of a pony... always preaching at me about how I should sympathize with the rabbits that infest my melon patches, every chance you get! Heck, the worst thing you’ve been known to do is STARE at others in an upsetting way! And all this time YOU know five different martial arts?! When did THAT happen?!

She could almost hear the audible snap of something breaking in her mind. With a cry, she fled the room almost faster than Honeydew could track her.

* * *

In their course of their fighting, both Twilight Sparkle and the Sicklefin boss had fallen back to what Lero had once jokingly referred to as ‘teleport overdrive.’

ZING! She was in the next room.

ZING! She was in the middle of some stairs.

ZING! She was behind an opened door.

ZING! She was atop a toilet in a restroom stall.

ZING! ZING! ZING! ZING!

The fog had come at some point between all that. Greyish-white, like coffee cream poured into murky mushroom soup, and so deeply thick that she couldn’t see more than three paces in front of her. At first, she thought the Sicklefin boss had created it.

“If you think this fog is going to confuse me, Miss Wound, you’ve got another thing coming!” shouted Twilight.

But then, from somewhere else in the mill, she heard the head gangster calling back. “Yer fecking blaming ME fer this?!” Twilight grimaced: all of Exit Wound gratuitous profanity was getting really annoying to listen to. “Come on out o’ hiding, yeh fecking aul wan teacher’s pet! Teacher’s FILTHY, THIRSTY SLIT-LICKER! Oi’ll break yer face so et looks loike a bucket o’ smashed crabs!”

Twilight Sparkle considered actually giving Exit Wound her wish; finding her again and finishing their fight, but instead decided she wouldn’t. Reuniting with all her family was far more important than combat. Especially since things were taking a turn for the crazy.

So Twilight Sparkle turned and went in in the opposite direction of all Exit’s bellowing. Above her, on the upper floor, Twilight could hear screams and spells being cast, and felt a shiver of unease… helped along by the chill of the fog surrounding her.

Was that Lyra doing all that upstairs?

“Hey! Twilight!”

Twilight stopped short to find her grandmaster herd-sister trapped in a vaguely triangular formation of what looked to be mechanical debris, right in front of her.

Lyra was working to bend a thick metal beam out of the way with her magic. It was one of several.

“Mind giving me a hand?” she asked.

Both herd-sisters smiled faintly at each other at these words. You couldn’t live with a human in your family and not pick up a few sayings.

Eventually, Lyra could’ve freed herself on her own, of that Twilight had no doubt. But the difference between Lyra’s magic and Twilight’s was the difference between picking the lock and breaking the door down with an axe… or a battering ram.

Lyra’s impromptu prison bent like wet issue under Twilight’s will.

“And everypony thinks I’M ‘the muscle’ of our herd…” said Lyra, as she stepped out.

She and Twilight shared a quick, reassuring kiss. “You alright?”

“Yeah.”

“Who did this to you?”

Lyra set her teeth together. “Admitting this is painful, but... it was Honeydew.”

“Honeydew?!” Twilight remembered Honeydew had been the one who’d bowled into Lyra, sent her toppling down over that railing, then jumped down after her… but she shot a quick glance at the floor, surprised not to see Honeydew’s battered body lying there.

“Honeydew got the drop on you, Lyra?”

Lyra cast a look all around the both of them, at the gangsters’ lair they were in. “I’d say Honeydew got the drop on all of us, didn’t she?”

Lyra was right. It all made Twilight recall a little wisdom both Earth and Equestria shared: ‘Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.’ A wisdom she and all the rest of Herd Bellerophon had disregarded: they’d grown a little TOO distant from their hate-filled, xenophobic neighbor. ‘Out of sight, out of mind,’ that was another proverb their two worlds had in common.

And Honeydew had not been idle while their backs had been turned on her.

“Well, I’ll be sure to fight her seriously the next time I see her!” Twilight promised.

“And you won’t be alone!” Lyra told her, flexing a muscle. “Now where’s Lero?”

“Last time I saw him, he was on Rainbow’s back, and she was trying to fly him out of the building,” Twilight answered.

“Well, seeing how she’s still a speedster, I think we can count our stallion safe and sound. So that just leaves Rari…”

A heavyset mule charged out of the fog. Twilight pivoted in time to avoid getting struck in the head, but still suffered a hard buck to the shoulder.

“He’s already here, inn’t he?” the large wild-eyed mule babbled. There were lots of bleeding dog bites on his legs. “He’s already here, huh?! Snakes, dogs, walking gorilla statues, cats with tentacles, this damn fog, he’s already here! It’s the next Day of Chaos!!!”

The mule would’ve kicked Twilight again, but Lyra Heartstring’s legs were quicker, and the panicking john found himself hurled straight though several of the jagged metal beams that had, until just recently, helped imprison the Still Way grandmaster.

The mule’s hooves now didn’t reach the ground; the five beams that impaled him held him aloft.

“When you see Discord,” the mule gurgled, “Tell him that Horse Head asks to be reincarnated as a horse. He’ll understand.”

Those were Horse Head the Sicklefin’s final words before dying.

“There they are!” shouted a new voice.

“Right there!”

Though neither of these voices were Exit Wound’s arrows and magic blasts came flying at the unicorn herd-sisters all the same. Unable to see their attackers through the fog, they ended up retreating through a door.

“Twilight, can you do anything about this fog?!” Lyra shouted, both of them hugging the walls next to the door, pinned down by enemy fire.

Twilight tried a spell. For just a moment, all the mist around them evaporated, and they could even make out the features of their attackers shooting at them from the next room. But then it returned with a vengeance; twice as thick and twice as cold.

Twilight started to shiver where she stood. “No good!” she said. “This mist means business!”

“Heeeey, Twiiiiilight…”

Thinking that an enemy had snuck up behind them, Lyra and Twilight both gave a start. But they turned to see it was Rainbow Dash who had flown up behind them.

“Oh, good!” said Lyra, relaxing a little, even while turning back to return fire at the ponies who were shooting at them. “Is Lero safe?”

“Safe? I… I don’t know,” answered Rainbow.

“What do you mean, ‘You don’t know?’” asked Twilight in disbelief. She wouldn’t have thought Rainbow would’ve bothered rejoining the fight unless Lero was completely out of danger.

”I was fighting Honeydew,” said Rainbow Dash. Her voice and expression were very strained.

“Honeydew?” Lyra sacrificed a moment to glance Rainbow over more closely. “How badly did she hurt you?!”

“She… she… I hurt HER way worse than she hurt me. Used five different martial arts styles on her.”

“Did you? Way to go, Rainbow!”

More Sicklefins were coming up behind Rainbow Dash; Twilight and Lyra shot at them over the pegasus’ shoulders. One fell, and dragged herself behind cover; the other just fell.

“But how did I learn those martial arts in the first place?!” Rainbow’s voice was suddenly high-pitched and needy, like an overstressed kindergartener. “I mean, after that whole thing with the glufferflork, I started seeing things in a new light… but that was way less than a year ago, and before that, I didn’t even really believe in attacking others. I remember always believing in being nice and being gentle all the time, no matter what! And I remember I gathered a lot of animal friends to live with me in my home at a very early age, and taking care of so many animals takes many hours out of the day, and I kept letting more and more of them live with me as time went on, so even if I wanted to learn five different martial arts, when would I have found the time?! It makes no sense! If I was able to punch with lightning, dodge like the wind, or cut with the air itself, why would I have let Angel Bunny and all his friends do all those horrible things to me for so long?! No matter which way I look at it, I couldn’t have learned those martial arts, and yet, I beat Honeydew up with them, you can see I still have some of her blood on my arms and legs, and when she went and attacked me, it all came so naturally…”

A small segment of wall was blasted off, nearly taking Twilight Sparkle in the gut.

“Rainbow,” Twilight said, reaching over to put a comforting hoof on her, “I don’t know if you’ve noticed or not, but this isn’t the right time to worry about all that…”

But the moment Twilight touched Rainbow, she was flipped effortlessly over the pegasus’ shoulder, slammed hard into the ground before she could even blink. Rainbow had performed this counter on her herdsister reflexively, without a moment’s thought.

“Rainbow, no!” Lyra screamed.

“Help me, Twilight…” Rainbow Dash begged, “It’s all wrong, and none of it makes sense, it has to make sense, I need it to make sense, but it doesn’t, it refuses to, no matter how I look at it, it’s really wrong, the pieces aren’t fitting together right, and it’s all unravelling in my mind, Twilight, all the threads are coming undone, it’s so wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, it’s wrong, and I feel like I’m going to scream and break things if it gets any wronger, Twilight…!!!”

It’s wrong. Twilight’s blood ran cold at hearing the familiar mad refrain of the Alicorn sisters. It had found its way into Dash’s voice. In the Swapped pony’s eyes, Twilight Sparkle now finally perceived the spark of the same murderous madness which she’d seen overtake Princess Celestia and Luna shortly after Starswirl the Bearded had made them try to recreate a total solar eclipse.

A spark poised to flare into an inferno.

Author's Note

A spreagadh go láidir gach lucht leanúna fíor ar an scéal seo, a sheiceáil amach an scéal seo compánach do Roinnte Dhathach: Isteach An Chois Claí, cheadaigh láidir ag mise le Fíor.

Ahem. Special thanks and kudos to all the fan-contributed Sicklefins:

Hoof Sandwich: Flink.
Warm Needle: Aether
Horse Head: Zer0prototype
Keen Edge: Flink
Speak Easy: Zer0prototype

It's not too late, folks! Go ahead and suggest your own Sickelfins while you still can!

Big thanks to everyone on my writing team, especially Rikmach and Bad Wolf. Rik; you really came through for me. I owe you a big one, buddy. Bad Wolf: that was just a cool thing you wrote.

Thirty-Nine: Idyllic Equilibrium

Purrbox the Cat, Wousey the Mouse, Ruffles the Dog, Cluckabell the Chicken, Tweetums the Parakeet and Mr. B the Beetle had all been replaced by new lab animals about a week ago. It was a mortifying and tragic business… but Twilight Sparkle couldn’t deny facts. Over the course of the past several weeks, she had cast so many different prototypes of her Swap Cure, that none of them were any good as test subjects.

All six of their minds were hopelessly intermingled, like a stew. While she had attempted to use the swap spells to ‘reset’ them after each experiment, she found that it was ultimately useless. Each swap left a little behind, even when ‘reset’ to the right animals. And the lack of a counterspell meant that now each individual animal had about an equal amount of the other five mixed with its own essence. Each new casting of a new spell just tightened the impossibly gnarled knot. So Twilight had written once again to her mentor, and Celestia had come through. The Princess had sent a special pony to collect the six Way-Too-Swapped animals and replaced them with fresher specimens.

At least, Rainbow Dash had never ever asked where Wousey, Purrbox, Mr. B, Tweetums, Cluckabell, and Ruffles now were. She wouldn’t have had an answer for Rainbow, though the princess had assured her that they’d be well taken care of. One small solace for Twilight was that these were still just animals.

If it had been ponies, or some other sapient race, she’d be no better than a mad scientist. After all, that’s what animal testing was for, to ensure sapients wouldn’t have to suffer for the advancement of science.

Now, she had Greeny the frog, Brownie the dog, Mew Mew the cat, Pinknose the ferret, Sterham the hamster, and Wiggles the rabbit. All six of the animals were fast asleep as Twilight let herself into Rarity’s cloud house. A whiteboard by the door marked where they now stood, Swap-wise, in red marker:

Prototype #0167 Experiment; Attempt #3
Animal → Behavior Of
Rabbit → Ferret
Frog → Dog
Dog → Hamster
Hamster → Cat
Cat → Rabbit
Ferret → Frog

Prototype #167 had been such a bust. Affected the vocal chords so that a perfect dog’s bark would emerge from the frog’s throat, and so forth with the rest. Fortunately, a quick recasting of the spell, two at a time, set the animals back where #166 had left them all, though perhaps at a slightly different pitch. Twilight levitated some hay fries out of the refrigerator and quickly heated them to a steamy deliciousness with a spell. It was time to try and make a hundred-and-sixty-eighth prototype Cure.

She sat at her desk and pulled a blank sheet of paper, a quill and inkwell, and her trusty rhyming dictionary closer with more telekinesis. Taking her first bite of a fry, she lay the blank sheet of paper over earlier prototypes she’d be filing away later today, and began jotting in the beginning portion of Starswirl’s spell, which she now knew as well as a nursery rhyme…

“From one to another,
Another to o…

A wing. That’d been the noise of a wing flap she’d just heard. There was a ferret, a frog, a dog, a cat, a rabbit, a hamster, and herself that had a rightful place in this house right now, and none of those things possessed wings. And she’d come here alone.

Perhaps some bird had flown in accidentally? Except that a bird would’ve probably kept flying all around the room, searching for a way back to the open sky, wouldn’t it? And that wing flap had been just that: one single flap, not repeated flapping. As though the owner of the wing had been putting up with an itch that just HAD to be shaken out. Twilight’s pegasus friends got them all the time.

‘Hello?” she called out. “Is anypony there?”

Her lab animals continued to sleep under the magic spell she had them under. Nothing else stirred within the house.

“Rainbow Dash?” she called out. “Fluttershy?”

Still nothing. But it hadn’t been some trick of her imagination! Twilight knew she’d heard something!

Her horn lit up with magic, and she lifted how couch up. Wasn’t anything there. But then she lifted a large stack of pet food boxes, she threw open a closet door…

...She turned too late at the faint sound of galloping hooves on the cloudy floor. A large-bodied somepony rammed into her from the side, and she fell on her side, the wind knocked out of her lungs. From where she lay down on the floor, she glimpsed a pegasus in a dark gray hoodie and long dark gray pants, which covered up most of his body. Despite her awkward angle, Twilight could also see his face was covered by a red bandana, and his wings and tail were brown.

The suddenness of it all left Twilight stunned. The home intruder, whoever he was, seemed to be shocked by his own actions.

“I didn’t… I just… just need to…” He said, the tone of his voice confused and apologetic.

And then before Twilight could think to put him in his place with another spell, he spun around and grabbed the stack of papers on her table with his mouth and bolted. At first, the papers seemed like such a random thing to take… the sort of thing a dazed pony might grab from her house when she had exactly half a minute to evacuate it.

But then she remembered what she’d had written on all those papers: several of the failed prototype Swap Cure spells!

And she let out a scream and she got to her hooves and chased after the pegasus, shooting stun spells from her horn. But the thief was too fast a galloper, and he made it out of her cloud house as though fleeing a bear. And once he was outside, he just took to the skies. Twilight kept firing her spells in desperation, but she could only chase the thief so far before she was standing at the edge of the cloud Rarity’s home rested upon. Conjuring a cloud platform might’ve been an option if Twilight weren’t so slow at piloting those things!

So the chase stopped there. Her heart pounding in her ears, Twilight dashed back inside to write to Princess Celestia to inform her what had happened..

* * *

Seven hours later, the police found the culprit inside an abandoned warehouse, out in a nearby town called Whickerton. They were able to identify the thief as one Brown Mulch, a landscaper with no previous criminal history. He was still dressed in the same grey hoodie and pants Twilight Sparkle had described, with the bandana just a few hooves away, on the floor.

The police placed him under arrest, but it soon became clear that there was no point interrogating him. Brown Mulch’s memory had been obliterated by a magic spell. In fact, this was how he’d been apprehended: He’d been wandering around, dazed and confused, uncertain of where he was… and who he was. Whoever cast the memory spell on him wanted to make sure no one found them. Reconstructing his memory with a memory spell would be possible, but with the sheer extent of the damage, it’d be months of treatments before they’d even have so much as a lead.

None of Twilight Sparkle’s stolen papers were found on Brown Mulch’s person, or anywhere in the warehouse he’d been discovered in. and there was no trace left of whoever had been in the warehouse with him, either, the scene wiped clean, possibly with a cleaning spell. As to who had robbed the former landscaper of his memory and Twilight Sparkle’s notes… outside of the fact that there was a unicorn who knew memory magic and possibly cleaning spells, there were no solid leads.

Though the police hastened to assure Miss Sparkle and Princess Celestia that investigations were still ongoing.

* * *

“...And that’s the reason why I had to take everything out of Rarity’s cloud house, and have it moved into an all-new laboratory,” Twilight told Fluttershy, two days later. The two friends were walking alongside each other, going from Sugarcube Corner towards Golden Oaks Library.

“Really?” asked Fluttershy.

“Yes,” But a few seconds later, she drew closer and whispered to her yellow friend, “Well… actually I wasn’t the one who did the moving. Celestia sent some… super-secret friends of hers to help do all the real heavy lifting, in the dead of night.”

“Sneeeaky,” said Fluttershy, and Twilight shushed her. Then Fluttershy looked up toward a cloud where some pegasi foals were playing around. “Twilight, would you excuse me for just two teeny minutes?”

And she flew up towards the foals. Twilight sat off to the side of the road and watched as Fluttershy first exchanged a few words with the young pegasi, then had some kind of pegasus game with them. A kind of mock aerial dogfight, where they circled round and round each other in the sky with much goodnatured giggling. But it was a quick game, and soon Fluttershy had said bye and was back on ground level with Twilight.

“Sorry about that,” she said, as they both began walking again. “I’m actually helping throw a birthday party for that white filly up there, and I’m also making her special birthday dress with Applejack, and I wanted to make sure of a few things.”

“Sure,” said Twilight, before lowering her voice again. “Say, Fluttershy? Something I’ve been noticing. Rarity likes to focus a lot on flying and even her unicorn spells tends to be very, well… ‘pegasus-y.’ And I remember Applejack… more than once she’s told me she regrets not being born with a horn.”

“I’ve heard that from her too a few times!” said Fluttershy.

“But you… you’ve got an earth pony’s cutie mark on you, and yet, you seem to really enjoy flying! I mean, you’re even more comfortable up in the air than your old self was!”

“I dunno! Guess the ol’ Pinkie Pie would’ve been right at home with a pair of wings! I mean, it’s in her blood, after all.” Fluttershy grinned.

“In… her blood?” Twilight gave Fluttershy a cock-eyed look that she usually reserved for Pinkie.

“Yeah! Granny Pie herself was a pegasus! I… I mean, Pinkie looked up to her and loved her lots… Always wanted to fly with her. The swap tells me it’s cause my wings weren’t strong enough when I was younger, but now… I realize it was ‘cause she couldn’t fly at all.” She paused, looking sad for a fraction of a second, before shaking it off with a cheerful grin. “Boy howdy, was my old self missing out on a lot!”

“I suppose so,” said Twilight, picturing the old curly-maned Pinkie Pie sprouting a pair of pink wings from her back, and zipping about like a firefly on caffeine. She shivered. “But maybe it was for the best.”

Fluttershy spread her wings, and for the rest of the journey, she flapped a foot above the ground all the way into Twilight’s home.

“So you moved your lab inside your house?” asked Fluttershy, when they stepped in.

“Not exactly,” said Twilight, leading her to stand before a certain wall.

“You know, I don’t recall this full-length mirror being here before,” Fluttershy commented. “But it looks pretty! Did you buy it re…”

“Who can take tomorrow,” Twilight Sparkle intoned, “dip it in a dream, separate the sorrow and collect up all the cream?”

Fluttershy went quiet as every light in the room suddenly turned blue. And the full-length mirror shone an unearthly glow all over Twilight Sparkle’s body.

“You have been identified as Twilight Sparkle, both in body and soul,” the mirror told her in an echoing voice. “Of sound mentality, untouched by any mind-altering magics or substances. And of reasonably even-tempered emotionality, as well. Welcome, Twilight Sparkle, what may I do for you?”

“I desire passage,” Twilight told the mirror. “For myself, and that of a single guest: Fluttershy.”

And Twilight nudged Fluttershy in front of the mirror. It scanned her as well, with the same glow.

“You are indeed Fluttershy, and you are not holding Twilight Sparkle under any form of duress.”

“You could’ve just asked,” Fluttershy said, feeling insulted.

“Princess Celestia is now being contacted. Please wait patiently.” A moment later, the mirror said, “Princess Celestia bestows her permission to Fluttershy. You are both free to pass through.”

And the mirror turned into an opaque bronze color. Twilight stepped through and Fluttershy followed after her.

* * *

They entered a laboratory packed with all the same equipment that Twilight had brought into Rarity’s cloud house, plus a few things more. Such as scientific instruments so advanced-looking, they probably qualified as state secrets, in and of themselves. Also, other equipment she remembered being in Twilight’s sub-basement lab when her Flutter sense… Er, Pinkie’s... Pinkie sense? was being tested.

“Did... Discord make this place?” Fluttershy had to ask Twilight.

“No. This isn’t one of Discord’s chaos zones. We’ve been transported over to a real location. We’re in S…” Twilight stopped herself from saying the place’s actual name. “We’re inside a top secret blacklisted underground government research facility.”

“Ooh! Ooh! D’ya wanna swear me to secrecy?” Fluttershy eagerly asked.

“Maybe just before we leave.” Twilight proposed.

“In the meantime, why don’t we get down to business?” said a little brownish bunny-shaped thing by Fluttershy’s forehoof. One with a miniature goat horn and deer antler on his head.

“Discord!” Fluttershy smiled. “So great to see you!”

The draconequus returned to his real height and shape and flashed a cheeky grin.

“Discord, here, paid a friendly visit to Rainbow Dash the other day,” Twilight explained. “I was there, and I got him to agree to come meet us here today.”

“Hold on,” Fluttershy said, looking between Twilight and Discord. “Let me guess… he’s the one who’s gonna hypnotize me?!”

Twilight looked slightly chagrined. “Well, originally, I was gonna do it to try and do it to you myself… read up five different books on hypnosis techniques, but then I saw Discord and figured, well, y’know…”

“...Why not leave it to a pro?” Discord finished for Twilight, now wearing a broad turban, with the rest of his body cloaked in wizardly cloth.

“Unless you wouldn’t feel comfortable,” said Twilight, remembering what a horrible experience it had been for her friends that earlier time, when they had all been enemies with the draconequus. When he had gazed into each of their eyes and warped their entire way of thinking…

“Are you kidding?” Fluttershy scoffed. “Discord’s as much a friend to me as you are, Twilight! Go ahead! Let’s do this!”

The draconequus bent and placed his hands on both of Fluttershy’s shoulders. His eyes closed, and with a flash, they reopened, a swirling kaleidoscope of colors, Fluttershy was drawn in by the oh so colorful and swirly colorful swirls. Oh, now her eyes were colorful swirls! How delightful!

Twilight found herself being drawn into the swirls, even from where she stood. Then she blinked, and shook her head, willing her out of her trance with a jolt. Right after, she felt Discord’s hand on her own shoulder.

“She’s all yours, maestro,” Discord said, and Twilight dared opening her eyes. “Pick your words carefully, though. She’s very suggestible in this state.”

And he went over to the animals’ cages, pulled out Mew Mew the cat and sat down in a chair, stroking the cat slowly while he watched the ponies.

Looking into Fluttershy’s eyes was like looking into a pair of kaleidoscopes. She just stood looking outward and grinning vacantly, with those eyes like a mystical rainbow vortex.

“Fluttershy? Can you hear me, Fluttershy?”

“Loooud and cleeear,” Fluttershy told her, in a sleepy, distant voice.

“We’re… we’re going to take a journey to the very bottom of your subconscious, Fluttershy. We’re gonna see what it looks like.”

“Sooounds fuuun,”

“I want you to picture your subconscious as the sky,” said Twilight, who was finding it weird to maintain eye contact with Fluttershy when she’d ceased to blink. “And right now, we’re at the very top of your subconsciousness, Fluttershy. The top of the sky. And now you’re spreading your wings and you’re flying downward. And I’m right next to you.”

“How are you flyyyying, Twiliiight?” Fluttershy inquired, in that airy dreamer’s voice. “Yooou don’t have wiiiings.”

Twilight thought about dismissing the point as being meaningless to explain, for a second, but then decided maintaining Fluttershy’s belief in the vision was more important. “I’m flying on one of those cloud platforms Rarity taught me to make.”

“Ohhh. Ohh-kaaay. Thaaat maaakes seeeense.”

Twilight continued to narrate their ‘descent,’ lower and lower, through several layers of clouds, just as her hypnosis books had said. Every so often, Twilight would ask Fluttershy “can you tell if we’re at ground level yet?” And the yellow pegasus would either shake her head or say no, and it would be back to describing the plunge of flying downward, and all the birds they were veering around, until...

“Oh. Oh myyyy.”

“What is it?”

“I can seeee sooomethiiiing…”

“What? What?”

“It’s briiiight… colorfullll… Getting closerrr…”

“Can you tell me what it is…?”

“Oooonne mommmenntt… Oh.”

“Fluttershy…?”

“Sorry, Twilight,” said Fluttershy. “We haven’t reached bottom. I can tellll. But we cannnn’t go annny further dowwwwn.”

“Why not?” asked Twilight Sparkle.

“Balloons.”

“Balloons?”

“Bahh-looooooooons,” said Fluttershy, eyes weaving all around the room. “Trillions of them. Maybe even squintillions.”

Glancing at Fluttershy’s flank, Twilight got a hunch. “These balloons wouldn’t happen to be the same color as the balloons on your cutie mark, are they?”

“Why, yessss. They arrrre.”

Shaking her head, Twilight said, “Let’s just push our way through the balloons.”

Fluttershy screwed up her face, as though in effort. “Erngh… the balloons are like a walllll.”

“Isn’t there any way to go around them?”

“They completely cover this whooooolllle part of the sky like… they’re like a…”

“Like the glass dome of a snow globe.” And suddenly, there stood Discord, by Twilight’s side, holding such a snow globe in his hands. Only instead of a snowflake flurry, it was all blue and yellow balloons, packed up against the glass, blocking out any sight of whatever lay underneath. Twilight shot him a look, but the draconequus just shrugged as though to say, ‘it was a lucky guess.’

“Can’t you just… pop the balloons?” she asked Fluttershy.

A longer pause; Fluttershy outright squeezed her eyes shut for the first time in a quarter of an hour.

“They’re unpoppable.” Her eyes opened. “Waaaaaaait… if I focus, I can hear something through the balloons. A voice.”

A chill coursed through Twilight’s veins. “Whose voice?”

“It sounds like… my own.”

The chill intensified. “What’s she saying?”

“I can’t make it ouuuuut,” the swapped pony said, sadly. “It sounds weeeeeeird. Garbled.”

Twilight tried many different approaches for the rest of that hour, but this was as far as she could get. There was simply no way around or through this impregnable dome of balloons, and no matter how much Fluttershy strained to listen, she could not make out anything the voice on the other side of the balloons was saying.

“Fluttershy, I think that’s enough. I think it’s time for you to return to full consciousness. We’re turning around. We’re flying back upward…”

Gradually, Fluttershy’s eyes lost their kaleidoscopic quality. She returned to her full self.

“What do you think it all means, Twilight?” she asked, and was the purple unicorn glad that her pegasus friend no longer sounded so drugged out.

“I don’t know,” the unicorn said. “I’ll have to think it over.”

“I know in my heart there was more to see further down there, past the balloons. Are you sure there isn’t more we could try?”

Twilight smiled kindly. “I think… I think that’s all I can think to do for today. Discord, Fluttershy, thank you both for coming.”

At that, Discord clapped his hands together, as if this were a cue for a surprise party. “Well! If that’s all over and done with… Fluttershy, my dear old friend? Remember that long weekend I promised to treat you to, back at that one place?”

Fluttershy gasped in delight. “You mean… we’re really gonna go do it?”

“Oh, yes!” Came the response. Horror and alarm rushed through Twilight as Discord brought out a giant sledgehammer.

“N-now, Discord…” Twilight spoke in a sweaty rush to the grinning draconequus. “T-there’s a lot of expensive equip…!”

SLAM! Twilight scampered behind a chair. Only, inside of hitting the thaumaturgic disgronifier or her brainwave scanner, Discord’s hammer stopped at a midway point. When he drew his sledgehammer back, Twilight was agog to see a large crack just hanging straight in midair. As though he’d struck an invisible brick wall.

Again and again, Discord swung his hammer with gusto, scattering metaphysical debris everywhere... until he had formed a hole big enough for himself to walk through. A hole in the very wall of reality, it looked like… a hole to another reality!

Twilight came around behind Discord for a better look, instantly wishing the hole was much larger. She could see… Pinkie Pie? And Lero? And… herself? The other Lero was holding a large knife, and her other self had a spell building up on her horn… it appeared they were fighting off some enemy, though Twilight couldn’t see who it was.

But the other Pinkie Pie of this parallel reality was the most extraordinary sight of all. Here, Pinkie wore the Rainbow-Thunderbolt cutie mark. Along with a set of aviator goggles which looked to have seen a lot of use.

“Twilight?!” exclaimed the other Pinkie Pie. Whatever fight Pinkie was now in the middle of… Discord’s hole in reality had seized her attention, along with the other Lero and Twilight’s!

“Pinkie Pie?!” Twilight exclaimed, just as stupidly.

“Don’t you worry, Miss Sparkle!” Discord said, now wearing sunglasses, a straw hat, and a tacky T-shirt with parrots and palm trees. “I promise I’ll have her back in this reality by Monday morning at the very latest! C’mon, Fluttershy! Arrivederci!”

“Arrivederci!” she echoed, trotting after Discord through the portal.

Once they had both crossed over into the alternate Equestria with its alternate Swap, Discord snapped his fingers. Twilight Sparkle watched the debris from his hammer strikes settle back into the wall of reality, resealing the breach seamlessly.

* * *

Months ago, Pinkie’s herd-sister, Twilight, had been assigned by Princess Celestia to fix up some kind of weird old spell, (a task Pinkie was sure she was still working on to this day… but she was getting ahead of herself!) Twi-Twi had wanted everypony out of the house while she tested this dangerous spell. So Pinkie had contacted her bosses at the Weather Bureau and gotten a few days off of work. Then she’d pulled out her ol’ gyrocopter and hooked up her ‘Lero seat’ securely to its tail end.

The ‘Lero seat’ was something Pinkie had custom-designed to fit Lero’s unusual, (yet thoroughly sexy) derriere and his hands. If he wanted, he could help her with the pedaling, but if he was tired, he could let her pedal for both of them. (Years ago, Lero had been iffy about this, saying it wouldn’t be fair for him to be “dead weight” on her when they were both airborne. Pinkie had pooh-poohed it all; reminding him that she had strong legs and a strong back that were both in very great shape!)

Then Pinkie had set her trusty aviator’s goggles over her eyes, and made sure her Lero had his own set strapped on, and they were up in the air, in the wonderful sky, and Lero had once again sung that sweet little Earth song about somepony named “Daisy” and “a bicycle built for two” which he always sang at least once every time they were on the gyrocopter together… but then the real trouble started when a suicidal flock of birds had slammed into the propellor right over Bramblewood Forest. And Lero had gone flying off his seat, and so had Pinkie, and she’d LOST her goggles and the gyrocopter had crashed into a rushing river and been carried out to the ocean…

...Pinkie would never forget what it’d been like, stumbling into that cave after days of searching and finding her sweet snuggle bear nearly dead, wrapped up in cocoon silk and being tortured by that big mean spider. She remembered feeling her poofy pink mane fall flat and straight against her shoulders, in pure horror and sadness. And then Pinkie’s flat mane promptly developed a pair of lightning-shaped kinks in itself as the rage took hold of her, and she had pulled out her megaton hammer and her samurai sword from the place where she kept them, and made short work of the seven-legged monster.

Pinkie would also never forget what it had been like bringing Lero home after he’d been hospitalized. He’d been so disoriented, so… confused about a lot of things! Not quite like his old self. An effect of the bad fall and so much spider venom, as Twi-Twi had explained to her. To be honest, losing the gyrocopter had had a downright freaky effect on Pinkie, herself!

Then, between one thing and another, Lero had been chasing after Rainbow Dash down on her apple farm. And even weirder… he’d gotten her to fall in love with him and join Herd Bellerophon! Or rather… Herd Bellerophon had joined the Apple Family. Both at the same time, really!

And now here was another thing to definitely not-forget: Discord and Fluttershy from a parallel dimension coming in through a magic portal thingy last night, crashing at Golden Oaks, then sitting down at the breakfast table with them this morning!

“So, Shy, lemme make sure Ah understand yew right,” Rainbow Dash drawled, from where she sat. “In yer… in yer, uh…”

“Home reality,” Discord supplied, from his own chair atop the ceiling, sipping tea that somehow didn’t fall out of his upside-down teacup and shower them all with tea.

“Right. In yer home reality, ya say that Pinkie’s the one who’s the farm girl on Sweet Apple Acres, ‘stead a’ me?”

“Thaaat’s right!” Fluttershy said.

Pinkie rolled her eyes a bit as her rainbow-maned herdsister gave her a smirky grin that just said it all.

“...I already help plenty with the crop dusting and getting my pegasus friends to bring top quality weather to Sweet Apple Acres, all the time! I even apple-buck and other stuff when you ask me too!”

“Aw, c’mon, cuddle puff, you know she’s only just teasing!” this world’s version of Lero said. And the human rubbed Pinkie’s shoulders and the side of her neck until she smiled. It didn’t take very long.

“Yeah. All o’ yew in this new herd of mine are blessings,” said Rainbow, looking around the table from Lero to Pinkie to Lyra, past Big Mac and Granny Smith, to Twilight, and to Spike, who was seated next to Apple Bloom. “Sides, what else would Ah do with mahself if yew took mah spot as head farm-girl here, Pinks?”

“You could do what ‘my’ Rainbow Dash did, and take up animal care!” Fluttershy proposed.

Several of the others around the table laughed as Rainbow Dash nearly choked on her mug of cider. Once she was breathing properly again, she said, “No offense ta yer Rainbow Dash, but… okay, certain critters Ah can git along with jest fine. Chickens. Pigs. Lil’ doggies like Winona.”

The dog, herself, looked up at the sound of her name. Rainbow reached down and pet her head with a forehoof.

“But there’s thangs like polecats and pelicans and flamingoes and beavers at that there cottage. How’m Ah supposed ta tend ta consarned beavers? So no thanks; best leave that kinda thang ta gals that really love all the world’s critters. Like mah world’s Rarity and yer world’s Dash.”

“Really, though, not even our world’s Dash is THAT crazy about taking care of ALL those animals, despite everything,” said Discord. “She’s just really good at it.”

Rainbow Dash the Farmer nodded her head, as though hearing sanity. Then Pinkie smelled the air, and announced, “Oooh! Breakfast is just about ready!”

The oven dinged just as she was leaving the dining room. A few moments later, she was coming back with her huge platter of breakfast muffins she’d baked, and her other huge platter of apple slices with different stuff to dip them in. Oh, it was lovely, watching all those mouths water!

“Pinkie, you’ve outdone yourself,” Lero said in mid-chew, and she kissed the pineapple muffin crumbs off his adorable lips.

Discord made noises of agreement; magically growing his own strawberry muffin to ten times its original size. Lero looked as though he were about to try thanking the draconequus again for saving them all from that monster they’d been fighting last night. Then he seemed to decide it wasn’t worth interrupting Discord’s tiny, yet loudly gluttonous bites.

Twi-Twi also answered a knock at the door, apologizing to whoever had come that the library wasn’t open to the public yet; could she come back in an hour?

“You know it’s weird seeing Golden Oaks Library moved way out here in the middle of Sweet Apple Acres,” Fluttershy commented, looking out the window at the acres of farm, just outside.

“Still weird for us, too,” Spike admitted, biting into an emerald-and-cranberry muffin.

“Eeeeyup,” Big Mac concurred.

Rainbow Dash shrugged, giving Lero’s shoulder a loving thump. “Once Herd B decided it was gonna join me, well… Ah would’ve loved to’ve move ALL mah farmland over ta where the library was, but… there’s just so gosh-darn MUCH of it… we agreed this way’d be easier.”

“Hey, Spike,” Fluttershy said. “Would you mind flexing your muscles for me?” Spike did so, and Fluttershy let out a little gasp. “Wow! You’re MUCH more muscular than the Spike from my world!”

It was even somewhat true!

Spike flexed his bicep again, looking happier. “Well, it just goes to show what a little farm work can do for you! Bet the ‘me’ from your world just works on the books, right? Bet he’s all scraggly, right?”

“Mm-hm!” Fluttershy said, turning to Lero. “So how did you and Rainbow Dash fall in love with each other, here?”

“It took a lot of hard work,” Lero admitted.

“And by ‘hard work,’ Uncle Lero means ‘farm chores!’” Apple Bloom piped up adorably.

Rainbow Dash refilled her cup of cider, and looked into it wistfully. “Ah dunno what it was. Ah didn’t see mahself ever fallin’ fer someone who weren’t a pony, but... Mr. Handy, here, jest comin’ back and comin’ back at a time where Ah needed extra help. Nevah tired, ahlways wit’ a smile on his face… And that… clicked with somethin’ deep inside me.”

“We’re all so proud of Lero!” Pinkie beamed. “I remember when he was nervous about me bringing Twilight into our herd, and now he’s gone and gotten a mare for himself, all on his very own!”

“What about you?” Fluttershy asked Pinkie Pie, eyeing her rainbow-thunderbolt mark again. “How’d you fall in love with Lero?”

Pinkie hugged her snuggle bear’s arm. “I’ve always loved Lero for the wonderful stallion he is. But we first started bonding over stories of the super-fantastic flying machines they have on Earth! Y’know, the human world? I mean, it’s not just blimps and gyrocopters with them; it just really grabbed my imagination! They have these things called ‘helicopters,’ which are kinda like gyrocopters, except the pilot is enclosed and you don’t need to pedal; they have this thing called a ‘motor’ which spins the propellers for you, at a rate faster than any pony could manage; even me! And there’s another flying machine called an ‘airplane.’ Hundreds of ponies can fit into these things and be flown across oceans into other countries, keeping them up in the air for hours… sometimes nearly an entire day! Isn’t that right, snuggle bear?”

“Swear it on my life, cuddle puff,” Lero assured her, running a hand through the back of her mane.

“Oh! And they have spaceships, like in our sci-fi films, but unlike our sci-fi, human spaceships have flown to the moon for real! Just picture that: a flight to the moon without one speck of magic! Flying the earth pony way!”

“Flying the earth pony way…” Granny Smith repeated, her head shaking in disapproval.

Most of the others at the table looked abashed, though Twilight glared at Granny Smith, her mouth tight, but she restrained her tongue. In the silence, Pinkie had to hide how hurt Granny’s comment left her. Just when the pink pony thought nothing else would happen before breakfast was over, Fluttershy came and let herself in through the front door. Which was to say Pinkie’s Fluttershy: the yellow pegasus native to this reality!

Both Fluttershys stared upon the other, and everypony else stared at both of them, with Discord chuckling from his ceiling. The visiting Fluttershy stepped out from where she’d been sitting, offering the homeworld Fluttershy a look at her flank.

“It’s like staring into a funhouse mirror,” whispered the local Fluttershy. “You really are from a parallel dimension, aren’t you?”

“Pretty much!” the visiting Fluttershy said, with a perky nod.

“Is Laughter your Element of Harmony?” asked the local Fluttershy, running a hoof along the other’s balloons.

“Yes, it is!”

“And yet… I’ve heard that you’re also a dressmaker for the Carousel Boutique. Just like me.”

Even if their cutie marks had been blocked from view, it would’ve been easy for anypony to tell these two apart. Fluttershy the Fashionista’s mane and tail were so much more stylized, plus she had applied a light bit of makeup. Her smile was also not quite as big and boisterous.

“It was a favor to a friend! But I’m good at dressmaking!” Fluttershy the Party Queen proudly told her other self. “AJ needed a little help with her Boutique, so I jumped in to help her!”

The fashionista smiled in an intrigued way. “Mind giving me a demonstration? Come over by my boutique and sew a dress for me?”

“Only if you agree to sew a dress for me too!” the visiting Fluttershy said.

* * *

Fluttershy the Fashionista liked animal motifs. They were present in just about every piece of apparel within her boutique. Skirts with foxes. Gowns with swans. Dresses with frogs. Blouses with otters. That sort of thing. But none of her designs were the least bit kitschy or chintzy, but elegant and highly refined. The best way Fluttershy could think to describe it was a ‘subtle silhouette’ effect; you had to be more or less looking for the animals, or the light had to be shining on them just right.

“So there I was, falling towards the earth, with no clouds to catch me,” the other Fluttershy was saying, “And then, moments before I would’ve hit the ground, my fall was broken by a clothesline.”

“A clothesline?” Fluttershy the Party Pony repeated.

Both Fluttershy and the fashionista version of her were working on sewing machines across from each other in the back room of the Carousel Boutique, sewing dresses for one another.

“Yeah,” said Fluttershy the Fashionista. “A lady’s clothesline. And wouldn’t you know it, this darling little white chiffon thing with glittery diamond-like sequins caught me like a safety net. I was just a filly at the time, so it was several sizes too big for me… but the moment I looked in a window and saw how fabulous I looked inside it, the course of my life was pretty much set. From that point on, I always wanted to look that glamorous. And I wanted to help other mares look glamorous too.”

The Fashionista Fluttershy paused in her sewing to smile at the diamonds on her flank.

“So now tell me,” she continued, with a skeptical look at the balloons on the Party Fluttershy’s flank, “How did you come to become a dressmaker, in your world?”

“Well...” Without mentioning the secret of the Swap, Fluttershy the Party Queen explained to her fashionista self about how Applejack owned the Boutique in her home Equestria, and the problems AJ had been having with her ‘Muse.’ Fluttershy the Fashionista kept switching back and forth between hilarity and dismay, but when she got to the part where she formed a partnership with Applejack, her fashionista self got off her sewing machine and gave her a hug.

“Can I ask something?” said Fluttershy the Party Queen. “Did any of you guys experience anything like that? Where your ‘muses’ went haywire on you?”

The fashionista thought it over. “Now that I think about it… Pinkie Pie was off her game for a little while a few months ago. Some of the others too. But not me! I’ve always been skilled at dressmaking, so I never experienced any sort of problem like that!”

Tricksy as The Swap was, Fluttershy the Party Queen felt good about taking her other self’s word on that. She, too, had the same skill after all, and it showed in the swanky party dress she finished for her seamstress self. She knew her own body language well enough to tell the other Fluttershy genuinely liked it! In turn, Fluttershy the Fashionista had made a perfectly beautiful dress of her own, with a tiger motif. A bit too elegant for the sort of parties Fluttershy usually preferred, but hey! She looked dang good in it!

After that, Fluttershy went and visited Applejack, and shared cupcakes with her and party tips and showed off the Fluttershy Foreswearing while getting to see her perform the Applejack Avowal. Then she went to see Rarity at the cottage by the edge of the Everfree Forest. It was weird seeing Rarity’s level of refinement in an animal caretaker; the effect was like a more sophisticated version of one of those ‘crazy cat ladies.’ Only with all animals, instead of just cats.

She wasn’t quite sure how Rarity managed to keep the cats still long enough to style their fur.

Then Fluttershy returned to Sweet Apple Acres, where she met up with Pinkie Pie, who asked if she wanted to go for a flight together… as casually as most other earth ponies would’ve asked to join her for a jog.

“Sure!” Fluttershy said, and Pinkie led her to a side building attached to the side of Golden Oaks Library. A wooden building that didn’t exist at all in Fluttershy’s home reality: Pinkie called it a ‘hangar.’ The pink pony unlocked it and pushed open its doors. All sorts of heavy-duty tools and spare mechanical parts lined the walls. There were also pictures; fanciful drawings Pinkie had drawn of herself and other earth ponies flying through the skies and the stars, and photographs of her with her Element Bearer friends and photos of her with the others in Herd Bellerophon, and one that was just her and Lero in the cloud house. Pinkie was on her hind legs, kissing Lero deeply, and Lero had written on this picture: I love you to the stars and back, Pinkie - Lero.

And in the center of the hangar sat the gyrocopter: the pride and joy of Pinkie Pie the Pilot.

Pinkie flew that machine like she was born for it. At times, it was almost challenging for Fluttershy to keep up with her.

“...So then I looked up, and I saw Rainbow Dash’s Sonic Rainboom shooting by, overhead. I had never felt joy like that before! But the thing was, when I was looking up on that day, and at that minute, I was really looking up for the first time! Which is to say: that was the moment I fell in love with the sky! The Rainboom had looked so happy and wonderful, flying through the air like that, and I wanted to feel that exact same happy wonderfulness! It took a lot of trial and error, and maybe a few booboos, bruises, and broken bones, but I was able to build my first flying working flying device; an oversized kite! Boy, you should’ve seen the look on Pa’s face when I announced that I wanted to move to Cloudsdale…”

But he’s MY Pa… Fluttershy had to stop herself from saying, as she dodged a cloud. Well, kinda. My real Pa is… is… he’s… dang it! I’d know the answer to this if only Pinkie Pie had asked me about my real parents before we got ourselves swapped!

Later, once her flight with Pinkie Pie was over, and Pinkie was wheeling her gyrocopter back into its hangar, Fluttershy found Twilight Sparkle in her kitchen. She made sure they were alone before beginning to speak.

“Twilight? I’ve got to come clean about something,” Fluttershy said, “Somewhere in existence, there may actually be a Fluttershy who was legitimately born to the Pie family and grew up on their rock farm, the way I told you. Don’t get me wrong, though; I wasn’t lying about having those memories. It’s just that they’re swapped memories. Because I’m a Swapped Pony.”

And Fluttershy sat down and told the purple unicorn her real story.

The Twilight Sparkle of this world had many of the same reactions as the Twilight Sparkle of her home world. Guilt, first. Tearful apologizing on behalf of what her other self had done. But Fluttershy knew just how to calm her down, and soon enough, Twilight was asking many of the familiar old questions about what it was like being a Swapped Pony, which Fluttershy was happy to answer.

“What’s your Swap been like for you?” she asked Twilight at the end.

Taking a breath, Twilight Sparkle went over, pulling back a window curtain with her magic. They could both see Pinkie Pie’s hangar from here.

“When Rainbow Dash’s cutie mark was swapped over to Pinkie… flying and flying machines became everything to Pinkie,” she began. “Pinkie ‘remembers’ losing her ‘original’ gyrocopter over Bramblewood Forest. According to her swapped memories, it fell into a rushing river, so it’s understandable why no one will ever be able to find it. But when she came home to find her hangar completely ‘gone,’ she nearly lost it, because the Swap couldn’t adequately explain away its absence. Spike, bless him, he ended up coming up with a good cover story. Claimed that he accidentally burned the hangar down due to him sneezing fire while cleaning it. Took Pinkie a long while to forgive him. She still won’t let him clean in there.”

Fluttershy felt bad for Spike. The little dragon couldn’t catch a break anywhere, could he?

“But even so, her new cutie mark really kept her frazzled, during those early days of the Swap.”

“Because she HAD to fly, right?” said Fluttershy, understanding all too well.

“Yes,” Twilight nodded. “But Lero really came through for her. Gave her a lot of airplane rides.”

Fluttershy gasped. “Lero has an airplane-thing here in this world?!” Fluttershy wasn’t even completely sure what an airplane was, but Pinkie Pie had made it out to be something just below a spaceship in terms of coolness and complexity.

Twilight laughed. “No, no, by ‘airplane rides,’ I mean he’d hold her front left hoof in his left hand, her rear left hoof in his right hand, and spin her around in circles. Or sometimes he’d just hold her high over his head and sprint for a good number of yards.”

“Oh, that sounds SO FUN!” Fluttershy exclaimed.

“Pinkie thought so too. She loved him for it. Loved him for a lot of things… him and all of us! It hurt her that Lero had 'memory troubles' after the spider. She wanted to ‘go back’ to uh… being, uh…”

“Frisky?” Fluttershy suggested, remembering how things were with Rarity the Weathermare. Twilight was looking awfully flushed.

“Yes. Being as frisky with him as they ‘always used to be,’ but she was happy to just hug him and stuff while his ‘memory was coming back.’”

Maybe it was going a bit far, but Fluttershy couldn’t help asking; “Did she get frisky with you and Lyra?”

“Ah… Uhm… Er…”Twilight’s hesitant hemming and hawing through her smile, told Fluttershy all she needed to know, so Fluttershy waved off the question.

“Forget about it.”

“Right. Eventually, all of us in Herd Bellerophon ended up getting together and building the hangar ourselves. Then, once the gyrocopter parts arrived in the mail, Pinkie put the gyrocopter together herself, and she’s been taking joyrides ever since.”

“What about Rainbow Dash?” asked Fluttershy.

“She didn’t have nearly as much problems becoming a farmer. She’s strong and fast, and that translated well enough to farmwork. In fact, if you don’t mind me saying so, considering all that you’ve told me about your Swap, Fluttershy, I’d say mine’s been going much easier than your own.”

They got back into the subject of Fluttershy’s Swap. It amazed Twilight that ‘Fluttershy’s Lero’ had sacrificed as much money as he had for Fluttershy’s equilibrium. When Twilight muttered ‘dodged a lightning bolt, there,’ she pretended not to hear. But all the talk made Fluttershy recall something else.

“Hey, Twilight? Has Honeydew been, um, more troublesome than usual?” she asked. “And does the word ‘Sicklefin’ have any meaning to you?”

“Honeydew?” The name came out in understandable distaste. “Can’t imagine why you’d want to bring her up, but she’s been her same mean old self. And as for ‘sicklefin,’ is that a kind of fish? Has Honeydew taken up fishing or something?”

“You really do have it easier here,” sighed Fluttershy, and she went on to tell Twilight Sparkle all about Lero’s kidnapping by the Sicklefins, and everything she’d heard about the fight in the quarry mill. Including the swapping of Honeydew and Exit Wound. Twilight was appalled.

“...But that’s not all. Somepony ended up spilling the beans about Honeydew and Exit’s swap to the public at large. Because of that, my Twilight had a thief break into her cloud house and snatch your notes on the Swap.”

“My notes?!” repeated Twilight, looking ready to be sick.

“Nowadays, my Twilight’s moved her lab over to this super-secret place that’s accessible only by a special magic mirror. You might want to consider doing that yourself, and, well… maybe your Honeydew’s still a bit saner than mine, but you might want to see whether she’s made any criminal connections.”

“I’ll do both those things, With the Swap, there’s no such thing as too many precautions.” Then Twilight hugged her again. “Thank you so much, Fluttershy, you probably saved me and my herd an awful lot of trouble!”

“You’re welcome!” She grinned. “I’m gonna go outside and check out Dash farming, okay?” Twilight nodded as Fluttershy then wandered outside to watch Rainbow Dash the Farmer clear an entire field by ping-ponging from apple tree to apple tree at high speed; her wings working as energetically as her legs. From a higher altitude, Fluttershy could see that her pinballing sometimes formed deliberate connect-the-dot shapes, of things like squirrels and horseshoes and figure eights out of rainbow trails.

“Whaddaya think?” Rainbow called up, as she finished one of Fluttershy’s own head, more visible in the rainbow contrails her flying had left behind.

“Oooh, I like it!” she called back, while Rainbow motioned for her to come down.

“Come sit a spell! Help yerself to an apple or two!”

Fluttershy took herself up on Rainbow’s offer, picking the most delicious-looking Red Delicious out of the nearest basket. “Mind telling me the story of how you got your cutie mark?” she asked the pegasus. “What made you want to be a farmer, Rainbow Dash?”

Rainbow took an extra-slow bite of her own apple, chewing thoughtfully. “Back when Ah’d done mah rainboom, Ah was doin’ it over Sweet Apple Acres. Mah rainboom was so powerful that all them apples fell off the trees into buckets, and they was rainbow-colored ta boot! When Ah saw them change, Ah felt so pleased with mahself, Ah went right to Granny Smith to ask if she could do it again. Well, Ah kept comin’ back and comin’ back, and one thang led ta’ another, ‘til Ah was adopted into the Apple Family!”

Fluttershy wished she’d brought a tape recorder with her, just to see what the friends from her home reality would make of these stories.

“Now Ah got a question fer yew,” said Rainbow. “Which mares has Lero hooked up with in yer Equestria? Pinkie Pie and who else?”

“Um… it’s Rarity, Twilight, Lyra, and Rainbow Dash. The Lero of my world has no romantic interest in Pinkie Pie at all.”

Rainbow frowned. “But… it’s Pinkie… and she’s the farmer there. Plus, didn’t ya say that Ah tend to the critters where yer from? Why’d he want anythang ta do with that?”

Fluttershy almost didn’t swallow the bite of apple in her mouth, wondering how to explain this to Rainbow Dash, or whether it was worth explaining at all. She didn’t want to hint anything about The Swap...

“The thing is, Rainbow Dash… Lero’s not the sort of stallion who sets his sights on nabbing himself a farmgirl or an animal caregiver, or a rich heiress, or anything else. Jobs don’t matter that much to him. In my world,” she said, thinking of Lero’s family situation both before and after the Swap, “and in this world… and I’m super-sure this is a pattern I’ll see repeated in all the other worlds Discord takes me to see as well…”

Rainbow the Farmer’s jaw dropped. “Me? Me and… not Pinkie?”

“...It’s you he always goes after, Rainbow Dash,” Fluttershy told her. “It’s YOU he absolutely has to have.”

Rainbow Dash stared back at Fluttershy long and hard. Struggling with her amazement. Then who should walk over, but Lero, himself, pulling along a ladder and some spare buckets on his own cart. About half of his buckets were full of apples.

“Hey, Dash,” he greeted, wiping sweat off his brow.

“Lero?” asked Rainbow Dash. “Hey… would ya… would ya like ta call it in early t’day?”

Lero studied her in surprise, before looking towards the sun. “Early? You sure? I’m making good time so far, I should be done with my bit long before suns…”

“Ah know,” she said, in a gentler voice, flying up just high enough to give him a long kiss. “The apples’ll be here tomorrow. We’ll pick up where we left off. Ah jest… been thinkin’ ‘bout how special ya are ta me, Lero. How ‘bout we take some time off fer ourselves? Jest this once?”

And soon enough, Rainbow had the amazed yet happy human climbing on her back, flying off high into the sky. Heading for home, with Lero’s cart left behind. It left Fluttershy with a very warm feeling inside.

“Hey, Fluttershy!” spoke a winged apple with a familiar voice and yellow eyeballs. “Ready to move on and see another Equestria?”

“Not just yet, Discord,” said Fluttershy, hearing the impatience in his voice. “Let’s give it another hour or two. We’ll say our goodbyes after dinner.”

“Aww, but it’s so much more fun to just up-and-leave, Doctor Who-style!” Discord pouted.

“Well, I don’t know who this Doctor you’re talking about is, but it sounds to me like he needs a lesson in how to be a good guest!”

Discord turned and looked back at the TARDIS he’d conjured just for this trip out, and let out a little sigh. He dismissed it with a snap of his fingers.

* * *

“...And in this version of Equestria, the young get swapped with the old,” said Discord, going through more slides in his slideshow. “Applejack with her sister, Apple Bloom, Rarity with Sweetie Belle, Pinkie Pie with Pumpkin Cake, Rainbow Dash with Scootaloo, and Spike with Twilight Sparkle.” The last slide in this set showed Spike with Twilight’s cutie mark. He was lowering the spell book he was reading to chat with Fluttershy and Lero, while Twilight organized the bookshelves in the background.

“Twilight and Spike,” repeated Celestia, flatly.

“They were touching one another when Twilight cast Starswirl’s spell,” Discord explained, clicking the clicker he held. “And in this Equestria, not only did it swap the Element Bearers around, it also transformed all of Ponyville into griffins; Spike and Lero included. For reasons they’re still struggling to figure out.”

Princess Luna frowned from where she sat. “This feels like an awful lot of other Equestrias you’ve shown us, Discord.”

“Griffinville’s the twenty-ninth one we saw!” said the draconequus.

“You had time to visit twenty-nine different places, in one long weekend?” asked Celestia.

Discord giggled. “Well, back on Friday, I did promise I’d return Fluttershy here on Monday morning. And here we are! Monday morning, and Fluttershy’s back, safe and sound and right on time to help Mr. and Mrs. Cake open Sugarcube Corner! But… well, time’s hardly a constant between dimensions, and you know how these sort of things go in time travel stories, right? Fluttershy and I must’ve been world-hopping for a month or two in ‘real time,’ (or whatever you’d call it,) before I brought her back here to this wonderful Monday!”

Celestia shut her eyes for a heavy sigh. “You’re incorrigible.”

“Corriging’s for losers,” said Discord. “Oh! One more I just GOT to show you two! In THIS Equestria, Fluttershy’s swapped into the role of Sun Princess,” Discord pressed his clicker. “Ponyville’s village idiot; a mailmare by the name of Derpy Hooves, is swapped into caring for her animals,”

“Discord!” Princess Celestia snapped, sounding genuinely angry.

“Er… What?” Discord replied, startled at the sudden shift in her mood.

“Mrs. Hooves is certainly not the ‘village idiot’ or anything of the kind, and I won’t tolerate you refering to my ponies as such.” Celestia said sternly.

Discord paused, and shrugged. “Fair enough. I’ll refrain for calling her the vill-” he caught himself. “...that. Shall I continue?”

“By all means.”

“Well, then, the piéce de résistance! You, Celestia…” He clicked the projector again, “You deliver the mail.”

This latest slide showed Celestia wearing a mailmare’s bag, with her huge body somehow lodged inside a now-busted mailbox, with her eyes going in two different directions. In a way, the absence of her crown was even weirder than the bubbles now on her flank.

“You can bet that world’s version of me has his Bewitchment on at full power!” He chuckled devilishly.

Princess Luna couldn’t help herself from snickering behind a wing. But Celestia… laughed aloud. Openly.

“Ah-ha-ha-ha-ha! Look at me! I look… I look… ah-ha-ha-ha-ha!”

Neither Discord nor Luna had expected glad laughter from Celestia at such a sight as this.

“Do you have any other pictures of me from that world?” asked Celestia.

“Um.” He replied cleverly. “Uh… yeah. Yeah, I do.” With another click of his clicker, the three of them were looking at a picture of the swapped Celestia, laying dizzily on the ground. A small filly was kissing the large bump on her head.

“That little gray filly kissing your booboo, there, is Derpy’s daughter, Dinky Hooves,” Discord said, a little awkwardly now.

Celestia gasped in delight. “Me with a sweet loving daughter? Oh, this is a wonderful world! And I must say, Fluttershy looks majestic, indeed, wearing all my royal attire!”

Discord ended the slideshow there; the projection screen vanishing away, and the room the three of them were in lighting up.

“While we’re on the subject of my Bewitchment,” he told the alicorn sisters, “There’s something I should warn you about. This whole Swap business has been going on far longer than any of us intended it to…”

“As if I need another reminder of that…” Celestia sighed.

“…As such,” Discord continued, “There’s a good possibility that my Bewitchment will start manifesting flaws.”

Luna looked at Discord, askance. “Flaws? Do you mean to say it’s weakening?”

“Weakening?!” Discord looked indignant and affronted and almost ready to punch the darker alicorn. “I would never, never EVER let the Bewitchment weaken! Fluttershy and all her friends depend on my Bewitchment to keep them out of the nuthouse! I’ll only end it if Twilight finds that Swap Cure, or if all the Element Bearers die off… but otherwise, it’s full power for the entire ride!”

“My apologies,” spoke Luna, “It was not my intention to imply…”

But Discord had already calmed himself down, and he waved away her apology. “Keep in mind that the Bewitchment is formed of my chaos magic. Originally, it was a disruption of an existing order; that of the Pre-Swap days. But now the dust has settled. Everypony’s grown comfortable in their new roles. A new norm has been established; and chaos doesn’t like norms. So, again, there’s a good chance that flaws might start manifesting. Plot holes. Conflicting stories. That sort of thing.”

“Couldn’t you…?”

“It’s just the way my magic works,” said Discord. “So if it starts acting out in unpredictable ways, you need to be prepared for that. I’ll try and do what I can to smooth out the rougher patches, but I can’t fix everything.”

“Can’t or won’t?” asked Luna, accusingly.

Discord smiled. “Tell me, Luna, have you ever tried to separate yourself from your magic?”

“What?” The Princess of the Moon asked, baffled at the question.

“I am chaos. My magic is chaos. There isn’t a distinction between ‘can’t’ and ‘won’t’ here, because it is how I am and as such, how my magic is. Oh, don’t get me wrong. The idea of hurting Fluttershy is abhorrent to me, but there is part of me that will delight in the chaos, regardless of how guilty getting a shred of pleasure from it makes me feel. But I meant what I said. I will do everything I can to prevent it from causing damage… but after long enough, I won’t be able to stop it, any more than you can stop your wings from cramping up after a months-long flight.”

“...I see.” Luna replied, looking contemplative.

“All this on top of Twilight getting her research notes stolen…” Celestia sighed out.

“Fear not,” Luna assured, nuzzling her elder sister’s side. “I’m sure our agents will get to the bottom of this before any further complications arise!”

* * *

“Nnnngghh…”

Soapy Floors spotted Zinc Sulfate beginning to stir. Soapy had thought that she’d shot her up with enough serum that she’d be out cold for hours longer. She considered injecting her with a fresh dose… but perhaps things would be neater this way, instead. More satisfying.

Soapy watched Zinc’s eyes flicker open from her distance. Watched the other unicorn mare try to thrash against the chains crisscrossing her body, pinning her flat against the floor. To shake the horn wrap off her horn. To take in what she could see of the basement she now found herself in, with its cinderblock walls, its bowed beams, and near-nonexistent lights.

Then Soapy Floors decided to step into Zinc Sulfate’s field of vision. Her smile was so smug that Zinc immediately recognized that Soapy had to be her captor, and she screamed and screamed many useless screams.

“You have a remarkable talent, Zinc Sulfate,” said Soapy, when the beige mare’s voice had died down a little.

“W-what?” Zinc asked, her screams stopping.

“You have a remarkable talent,” Soapy Floors said again. “You are a masterful chemist. The pride and joy of Premium Industrial Chemicals, Inc. You’re so brilliant in the laboratory, always cranking out useful new products. Such a remarkable talent. An enviable talent. A desirable talent.”

Zinc Sulfate’s cutie mark showed a test tube full of orange liquid. Soapy Floors eyed this with such open hunger, that the chemist instinctively hid it with her long fluffy tail.

“Who are you?!” Zinc asked.

“You don’t recognize me?” Soapy sniffed. “It is because I’m not wearing the blue jumpsuit, or would that have even mattered?”

Zinc peered at Soapy’s flank. “You’re… one of our janitors?”

“How ever did you guess?” answered Soapy Floor, whose own cutie mark showed a dripping mop. “Cleaning is such an… empty sort of ‘talent’ to have, wouldn’t you say?” she continued. “Kind of like having a ‘talent’ for licking stamps. Or reciting the alphabet. Or opening doors. Why, it doesn’t even require any real talent at all. Anypony can do it!”

“It… it’s… somepony has to do the cleaning,” Zinc Sulfate said, straining against the chains again. “No one else complains about it. They’re good at what they do, and they seem… happy?”

“Perhaps,” Soapy consented. “But what if I’m not happy? Why does it have to be me? There’s no great honor in janitor work! I made a bad decision when I was very young, and now I’m paying the price for it! But if I had the expertise you have...”

“S… so you what are you talking about?” asked Zinc Sulfate. “Do you want me to train you in chemistry?”

Soapy shook her head. “I know it took you years to reach the skill level you now have! Years I do not have! Hell, even worse, I won’t ever have the same… talent with it as you. But there is a way! A magic spell!”

And Soapy Floors levitated a piece of paper in front of her face.

“Once I cast this… it’ll all come naturally to me!” she crowed. “All your skills will be mine, Zinc! And I’ll be able to begin a new life in a new town!”

And she began reading the incantation which would swap the booby prize on her flank for Zinc Sulfate’s grand prize of a cutie mark. It’d be just like what’d happened between Honeydew and Exit Wound, only better! Because unlike those two, she wasn’t a psychotic criminal!

“From one to another,
Another to one…”

* * *

“And… so then what happened?” Rainbow Dash asked Applejack. The animal caretaker and her fashionista friend were having one of their monthly spa sessions together.

“Well, the newspaper said that that the crazed janitor-gal went and swapped cutie marks with the chemist mare!” Then, frowning, AJ looked backward. “Now why’d ya go ‘n’ stop fer, Lero?”

“S… sorry,” said the human.

Rainbow’s wonderful stallion had gotten his old job back, just a few days ago. She’d tagged along to watch Aloe and Lotus welcome him back to this spa with laughter and open arms. Lero had walked into the sisters’ hugs as though he had returned from a war.

“Yew okay there?”

“I’m fine! Really, I am!” And with that Lero returned to massaging Applejack’s back before she could eye him with any more concern, relaxing slightly as the orange pony sighed out a happy sigh.

“Go on, though, go on!” Rainbow Dash told Applejack. “What happened after their cutie mark swap?”

“Hm?” Applejack reopened her eyes. “Well, the janitor jest went plumb loco! Went inta the lab where the chemist worked, mixed a buncha weird chemicals in a bucket of floor polish, then heated it over a bunsen burner and blew up the lab! Four times over!”

“Did she…?” asked Lero, from behind her.

“Survived, but she’s in the hospital, ‘n’ won’t be gettin’ out anytime soon… oh, yeah, Lero, that’s the spot…”

“But what about the… oooh, wow… what about the chemist?” Rainbow Dash’s own masseur was Gerhard the Griffin. She never would’ve supposed that the needle-like sensation of bird talons could’ve been so pleasant. Maybe she should look into acupuncture.

“Sad business,” said Applejack, stretching herself out on her table. “Claims she don’t know nothin’ ‘bout chemistry no more, insists she’s jest a janitor. Wouldn’t take her old job back or nothing, but insists that Twilight’s spell failed completely, that she’s ‘always’ had the mop mark on her. She’s in psychiatric care.”

Rainbow Dash frowned.

“Applejack, when you say ‘Twilight’s spell,’ it’s not… well, okay, Twilight did design those spells, but she explained to me that they were rejects. They were never supposed to see the light of day, let alone be used on ponies!”

“Yer preachin’ ta the choir, Rainbow, darlin’. We both know Twilight ain’t never woulda wanted this ta happen. That consarned idjit what stole them bad spells from Twilight’s lab… that’s who Ah blame fer what happened ta the chemist ‘n’ the janitor and all them OTHER ponies who went and did cutie swaps on themselves, too… ohhh, Ah needed this…” said Applejack, melting further into his touch. “Say, Lero? How’s it feel, having your ol’ job at the spa back?”

“Terrific!” said Lero. “Everypony’s been really happy to see me back… my old customers, my old co-workers, Aloe and Lotus… and Gerhard, here, might be new, but he’s a great guy too!”

“I’ve been here months,” said Gerhard, in between a lovely kneading of Rainbow’s withers. “You’re the new guy now, Herr Human.”

He and Lero did a hoof… no, rather a fist-bump.

“Really is great settling back into the old routine,” said Lero, breathing in the incense-rich air. “Didn’t realize how much I missed the place. What about you, AJ? How’s it feel being back in the Carousel Boutique?”

“It’s funny,” said Applejack, while he got busy rubbing at her frogs. “There used to be a time where the Boutique felt like… like being at the bottom of a well. A well with slick walls that Ah was always tryin’ ta scramble up from. Now, though? Feels like comin’ home. The tent in the marketplace was nice fer what it was, but… it’s time. And Ah’m happier for it.”

Lero nodded, looking pleased. “How’s your partner been?”

AJ chuckled. “Fluttershy’s been a blessin’. Always creative in the RIGHT ways, and always bringin’ in more business. If it weren’t for all her partying, Ah’d have problems keepin’ up with her! Jest came back from a weekend getaway with Discord a little while ago… and I’m still tryin’ ta break her of this habit of checkin’ ponies’ cutie marks before speaking to their faces! Even, no, especially with ponies she already knows well! Ah mean, c’mon! What’s it gonna do, fly off onta somepony else?”

Lero gave a weak little laugh.

“Hey, Lero? Rainbow? While we’re on the subject, Ah’m gonna be participatin’ in another fashion show in Canterlot. Yew and our other friends and the rest a’ yer herd’re more’n welcome ta come along, if ya’ll want.”

Lero looked over at Rainbow Dash. “We’d have to check our availability, but I, for one would be VERY interested, seeing what the fashion bigwigs think of your new lineup!”

“So’m Ah… ohhh, yeah… THAT’S the spot. Lero, ya got yerself a new returnin’ customer, and that’s a fact!”

* * *

“Well, since we’re all here, let’s introduce ourselves!”

“My name’s Hefty Axe. I’ve always been a lumberjack, but then my beautiful marefriend showed me that cutting down trees is evil and destroys our precious environment.”

“My name is Ricotta Gnocchi. For my job, I cook Bitalian food at Il Favoloso Ristorante… but I’ve been doing that for far, far, far, far too long. It’s gotten to the point where I’m sick of the taste of my own food.”

“I’m Straight Flush. I gamble. I’ve always been great at the casinos… except that I also have a teenage daughter, see? Always kinda hero worshipped her mom. And one night, she got it into her head that she’d inherit the same skill at poker as her old lady, here. Turns out it didn’t work that way, so she’s in massive debt. So I’m kinda hoping this’ll give me a new lease on life, so I can show her a better way.”

“I’m… oh, what is this supposed to be, some touchy-feely group hug therapy shlock? I don’t need to tell anypony my name! The scuttlebutt is that you’ve got some way to change your cutie mark.”

“That’s right. I do. It’s right here, on this sheet of paper.”

“Is that… the magic that Sparkle mare used on Exit Wound and Honeydew?”

“Yes! It was a little poorly written, to be honest, but I’m an expert spellcaster, so I spruced up the incantation a bit. Now it’s guaranteed to give us each the cutie mark we really need so we could all lead really fulfilling lives!”

“Sweet!”

“Now, everypony line up, so I can cast it on all of you at once!”

“My life’s finally gonna improve! Finally!”

“From one to another,
From another to one…”

* * *

As promised, Applejack and Fluttershy treated all the adults of Herd Bellerophon and Pinkie Pie to a trip out to Canterlot, where they’d be promoting Carousel Boutique’s all-new lineup of clothes. The eight of them watched from front-row seats. The swanky music played. The spotlights shone on the supermodel they’d hired to mince up and down the catwalk in blue jeans and a T-shirt AJ had made.

The reception of their new line could best be summed up as ‘mixed-negative.’ Words like ‘plain,’ ‘stark,’ ‘austere,’ and ‘unembellished,’ were being thrown around by the other high-fashion ponies who attended.

“Ah dunno,” sighed Applejack at the cocktail lounge she brought all her friends to, once the fashion show was over.

“What don’t you know?” Fluttershy asked her business partner.

Applejack took a sip of her apple margarita. “It’s jest… comin’ ta this place now, ‘specially since ya’ll got mah head straight, Fluttershy, Ah dunno what it was that made me idolize these Canterlot ponies. Why Ah wanted ta be workin’ here, so badly for as long as Ah can recall.”

“Well, they’re stylish, and graceful... a real cut above…” Rarity defended, with a distant, unfixed look in her eyes. “That fashion show was... something else. I felt…”

But Pinkie Pie shook her head. “Heard ‘em sayin’ AJ’s duds was ‘simple’ and ‘unpretentious’ like those were bad things!”

Rarity didn’t answer her farmer friend. With an almost-nervous shiver in her flank, she wrapped both her arms around Lero and stole a kiss from him, which he was happy to return. That relaxed the weathermare.

“Ya really like ‘em?” Applejack asked Pinkie, really brightening for the first time since coming to Canterlot.

“Yeah!” said Pinkie, swigging down her root beer float shooter. “Those jeans really spoke ta me! Ah could see mahself wearing them! Not that Ah’m some fancy-schmancy fashion expert...”

“No, no, no!” said Applejack, who was liking the idea of a farm girl like Pinkie Pie wearing her threads. “It’s good to hear!”

“Maybe you ought to reconsider who you’re marketing these clothes to,” Twilight Sparkle suggested. “I don’t think these Canterlot ponies will appreciate what you have to offer the way other ponies would.”

“Yeah, yeah, yer right, Twilight…” Applejack agreed, looking thoughtfully at Pinkie Pie again. “It’s much more suited for a different crowd.”

“Say, um, girls? Do you think we’ll have time to see the Wonderbolts?” asked Rainbow Dash, shyly. “I heard they were having some kind of convention, and I was thinking…”

“Fire!” screamed a pony, suddenly galloping in through the door. “FIRE! Fire at Il Favoloso Ristorante! Quick!”

* * *

Lightning Dust was loving this Wonderbolts convention. Especially the fans. Lightning relished their well-deserved slavish adulation they were showing everything Wonderbolts; from the goggles to the actual flesh-and-blood stunt flyers. Even looking at their pathetic, flabby, out-of-shape bodies just made all those hours practicing her stunt flying all the more worthwhile. The thought of all the health problems they were going to have later in life never failed to bring a grin to Lightning’s face. Take this sad, overweight, dumpy dump in front of her now!

“You’re really a Wonderbolt?” the eight-year-old chubster was asking her.

Meadow Flower cleared her throat next to Lightning. “Well, we’re just cadets in the Academy right now…”

“...And wimp-talk like that is why she’s always gonna be wingpony while Yours Truly is gonna be the next Spitfire,” Lightning cut in. “I know it, she knows it, heck, even Spitfire knows it!”

The little chubster chuckled. “You’re kinda cool!” And she brought out a picture of the most recent roster of the Wonderbolts. “Could you…?”

“Say no more!” And Lightning Dust dipped her forehoof in fresh ink and brought it down on the picture. The monogramming on her hoofprint showed beautifully and unsmudged in the ink: LD.

Meadow Flower gave her a slightly timid, cowed look as the chubby filly flew off. Lightning remembered the first time she’d seen this look; right after the two of them had made that tornado when she was just starting out in the Academy as a Wonderbolts cadet. Mostly, the tornado had been Lightning Dust, not Meadow. Spitfire had recognized that, right off the bat: “A bit excessive for cloudbusting, but judging from your time, it was obviously an effective tactic,” those had been her words.

Not that Meadow Flower had raised a peep about Lightning nabbing all the credit for that wonderful stunt. None of those other weak second-raters Spitfire also taught, either. By this point, all knew who Spitfire’s ace cadet was: Lightning Dust! Lightning was right where she needed to be at this point in time; standing next to Spitfire. Her apprentice in all but name.

It was kinda ironic. Fifteen-ish years ago, Lightning Dust had been merciless on all those brownnosing teacher’s pets, back in elementary school. Made them wish they’d never been born. And look at her now, kissing up to ol’ Orange-’n’-Yellow! Ah, but Spitfire and all the other Wonderbolts were the only ones worth turning herself into a pet for. It was only temporary, anyway. At the rate Lightning was climbing the ladder, she’d be on equal standing with Spitfire, Soarin’, and all the rest within a year, tops.

Lightning Dust gave a considering look at her own inky horseshoe. The monogramming still looked gorgeous as ever… yet now Lightning was sorry she hadn’t paid extra to have her whole name spelled out. Somewhere in the world, there were other ponies with ‘LD’ as their initials. Some of them might even her classmates! She barely knew any of those chumps’ names…

“All Wonderbolts!” barked the voice of ol’ Orange-’n’-Yellow herself. Lightning got from behind her booth and stood front and center, wowing the crowd with her speed! Meadow Flower, as always, made Lightning look a little better by being slightly slower. Same as the other cadets.

“There’s been an incident, and they need the Wonderbolts to assist,” explained Spitfire. “Move out!”

Along with clicking cameras, Lightning Dust heard murmurs from the convention fans, wondering if this was some sort of surprise stunt show. Too bad they didn’t know Spitfire like Lightning did! They all flew out, following Spitfire; both her fellow Wonderbolts, and cadets like Lightning.

“Here’s the situation,” Spitfire explained, when they were up in the sky. “Apparently, some madpony went into a Bitalian restaurant, locked all the customers inside, and began setting fire to the place. Our mission is to go in and help rescue survivors.”

“I think I see the restaurant!” somepony called out.

Lightning Dust could see it too; a fancy-looking building with torrents of smoke pouring out many of the windows. A team of weatherponies were flying around, gathering stormclouds to contain the blaze… and was it Lighting’s imagination, or was that a unicorn, up among all the pegasi?

Once they were closer, it turned out it wasn’t imagination at all; a white unicorn mare, on a cloud of her own. What a weirdo! On ground level, Lightning Dust could also see more normal unicorn firefighters, blasting flame-snuffing spells at the flames, while the earth pony firefighters had some kind of wheeled contraption with an enormous water tank and hose.

First, they landed in front of the unicorn firefighters. A brown mare came forward and began casting fireproof spells upon them, one by one, so it would be safe for them to enter the building. And Lightning flew in, like the heroine she was! Smoke and fire was just about everywhere; thank goodness that unicorn’s spell helped her breathe in all this and see clearly!

Lightning Dust looked through the smoke, and spotted this helpless old earth pony biddy hacking and wheezing by a blackened potted plant. With great awesomeness, Lightning grabbed the old lady and flew her out the high window! The crowds cheered and stomped their hooves and their cameras flashed at the heroic sight of her. Flush with pride, Lightning circled around them all, holding the old mare up high, as though she were a medal! She circled around them all, again in again, in a series of victory laps!

“What are you doing?”

Lightning stopped circling around the burning restaurant. A blue-coated mare with a rainbow-colored mane and tail, was now flying in front of her, looking at her as though pussywillows were sprouting from her ears.

The sight of this mare sparked a sudden, powerful feeling within Lightning Dust. Was it the unique color of her mane? Her fit figure? The way she was about the same age as Lightning, herself?

Lightning Dust hated this other mare. Hatred at first sight.

“My job, duh!” She finally answered the rainbow-tailed twit.

It was a completely irrational thing, this hatred. Nonetheless, Lightning Dust hated this other mare as though she’d swindled every bit out of her bank account. Lightning hated her as though she’d spat in her pie. Lightning hated her, without even knowing her name. It wasn’t as though they had met before, right?

“There’s still other ponies to save, dummy!” retorted the other pegasus.

“Please… lemme down… so dizzy…” This was the old biddy Lightning was still holding up high. With a hard snort, she returned the old bat down to the ground before returning up to where the rainbow mare had been.

“You think you’re hot stuff or something?” she snapped. “We’ll see about that! I challenge you to rescue more ponies than me! Winner gets to…!”

But the rainbow mare had already flown back into the burning restaurant. Lightning Dust almost wanted to shout ‘That’s cheating!’ But even that would be a waste of precious seconds, and she’d be damned if she was going to let some nobody with too many colors in her mane get the best of her!

So back in she went! There was a unicorn lady stumbling through the smoke; Lightning brought her out! Then a little earth pony colt! And his mother! Then his other mother! Then a waitress! The rainbow mare passed Lightning by with some middle-aged earth pony stallion on her back. Her fellow cadets were also busy with rescue efforts, and even some other strangers were participating. Such as two earth pony mares; a pink-coated girl with apples on her flank, and an orange one with diamonds on her flank! She also saw a yellow pegasus girl with balloons on her flank, a purple unicorn with stars, and a weird two-legged thing she almost mistook for a scrawny hornless minotaur, all working to bring ponies outside. Lightning had to act fast before she didn’t have any left!

Fortunately it was a big restaurant, and speed was her specialty! Three ponies! Six! Ten! Thirteen!

“Think that’s all of them!” called one of the firefighters. “We’ll take it from here!”

Lightning Dust found her opponent easily. Her mane and tail were very distinctive, after all.

“Thirteen,” she told her.

“I’m sorry, what?” asked the mare, looking baffled.

“Thirteen! I pulled thirteen ponies outta that oven! How many did YOU get?”

The rainbow pony shrugged blankly, as though Lightning had asked for an exact count of hair strands on her head. “I wasn’t keeping track! The only thing that matters is that everypony’s safe, right?”

Lightning Dust's dislike of the mare grew even further.

“One more!” called out one of the firefighters, teleporting a unicorn pony with very serious burns out in the direction of the medics. “I found this one right in the kitchen!”

“That’s HER!” called out the waitress Lightning Dust had saved. “She’s the loony who started the fire in the kitchen! I saw her soak a whole bunch of books in wine and then skewer them on roasting spits and try to cook them on an open fire! She’s the one who locked all the doors!”

“She’s got Ricotta Gnocchi's cutie mark!” noticed a toque-wearing cook. Though the fires had burned the rest of this mare’s body pretty well, the pasta mark on her flank had come out unscatched.

“You’re telling me this is another of them Swap Jockeys?!” asked a stallion.

The purple unicorn with the starry cutie mark turned towards the stallion. “I’m sorry, what did you say, ‘Swap Jockeys?’”

“Yeah! Swap Jockeys!” said the stallion. “Don’t tell me you haven’t heard of them! They’ve been up and down the news! Swap Jockeys are those wackos who feel the need to swap their cutie marks with other ponies, then go nuts!”

The purple mare went quiet with a shudder.

The police ended up placing the Swap Jockey arsonist under arrest, while the medics brought her to the hospital. As the firefighters fought off the last of the fire, and the rest of the authorities worked on crowd control, Lightning Dust turned as she heard Spitfire calling out.

“Hey, there!” But it wasn’t Lightning she was calling to, but the rainbow-tailed mare.

“Um… hello?” she asked, as Spitfire trotted up to her.

“I saw the way you handled yourself, flying all those ponies out. Impressive!” said Spitfire. “Gotta ask; were you ever part of the Wonderbolts Academy?”

“Uh... no…”

“You sure?” asked Spitfire. “Maybe you were a dropout or…?”

“No,” said the rainbow-tailed mare, shyer than ever. “That is, I’d remember being in the Wonderbolts, and that never happened.”

Spitfire removed her goggles and squinted closer to the mare. “Then where do I know your face from?”

“Um… well, I… I dunno,” the mare stammered. “Well, uh, I am one of the Bearers of the Elements of Harmony. Kindness is my Element. It could be that you’ve seen my face in a magazine or a newspaper somewhere with the other Bearers. Maybe.”

Spitfire nodded. “Yeah. That must be it. Anyway, I just wanted to say that you fly like a cadet at the Wonderbolts Academy. Both in terms of speed and style. Who trained you? Do you maybe have a relative at our...”

“Nopony trained me!” the mare insisted. “Although… well, I guess you could say I trained myself.”

“Trained yourself.” A smile crossed Spitfire’s face; a smile Lightning Dust loathed to see directed at Miss Butterfly Butt. “What’s your name, filly?”

“M… my name’s Rainbow Dash, Miss Spitfire,” said Rainbow Dash, cringing as though it might be too forward of her to already know the name of a celebrity.

“Then let me ask something, Rainbow Dash; would you be interested in developing your flight talents at our Academy?” Spitfire offered. “The Wonderbolts could use ponies with skills like yours! Whaddaya say?”

* * *

“You said ‘yes,’ right?” Lero asked her, five hours later.

Rainbow Dash was now at the dinner table with her other five family members. They were all eating a delicious, creamy pasta dish.

“I told her I’d need time to mull it over,” Rainbow Dash said, with a downturned half-smile.

“And what did she say to that?” asked Lyra.

“Spitfire said that she’d be sending me some kind of document in the mail. If I mailed it back to her with my name signed on it, she'd let me join the Wonderbolts Academy!” Rainbow bent forward, taking a big mouthful of the pasta. “She said I’d have a week.”

“Did you explain to her how many animals you’re taking care of, Rainbow, dear?” asked Rarity, neatly twirling a forkful of noodles with her magic. Then, at the sound of a large dog’s jaw snapping shut, she turned to Spike.

“Please, Spike, don’t do that! You’re teaching them bad habits!”

Enough time had passed where the rest of Rainbow’s herd was willing to let some of her better-behaved animals live in the library with them. Spike has been sneaking scraps of food off of his plate, and right now, he had an audience of eight dogs, whose eyes were locked upon the noodle in his little hand.

“Awww, c’mon, Rarity! They’re soooo cute!”

“No, Spike,” said Rainbow Dash, with a strict, forbidding frown that the canines cringed away from at once. “If you want to give them treats, do it after dinner, but not while we’re all at the table. They need discipline.”

Glumly, Spike put the food that was in his hand into his mouth, trying his best to avoid the pooches’ heartbroken gazes.

“Soooo, Rainbow… what do you think of becoming a Wonderbolt?” asked Twilight Sparkle.

Was it just Rainbow’s imagination, or had everyone else stopped eating, watching her like those dogs had been watching Spike’s noodle? Well, Rarity was still chewing her food normally… and the Wonderbolts were a big hold-your-breath sort of thing. Rainbow Dash could relate to that, very well.

“Part of me wants to. Like, really, really, really wants to,” she told the others quietly. Her mind went back to that stadium Lero had taken her to. “It’s hard for me to explain, but… ever since you guys got me into them, I’ve felt a weird excitement about the Wonderbolts. Something that’s always there, down at the bottom of myself, even if I don’t always pay it proper attention. And now, Spitfire’s offering me this chance to be a cadet, to be a Wonderbolt, and it’s like that glow that’s deep within me has gotten brighter! I’d love to be a Wonderbolt!”

“...bottom of myself… glow deep within me…” Twilight had grabbed a pencil and a napkin and seemed to be writing something on it, but Rainbow Dash was too focused on the Wonderbolts to really give it much thought. To be one of them… their speed, their stunts, the whole sense of being part of something grand!

But then her cutie mark twitched, and all her usual worries and inhibitions came back to the forefront. “But being a Wonderbolt would be an enormous commitment, wouldn’t it? What if I make a fool of myself in front of all those other ponies?”

“You won’t make a fool of yourself, Rainbow Dash!” insisted Lero. “You’re too skilled at flying!”

Then the otterhound gave a bark, and Rainbow realized, “Plus, I have all my animal friends that I need to tend to…”

“I’ll take care of your animals for you, Rainbow!”

Rainbow turned her amazed eyes on Spike. “You…?”

“Go ahead!” the little dragon encouraged. “Becoming a Wonderbolt is RIGHT for you, Rainbow Dash! I know it! Er… which is to say, I can ‘feel it in my bones!’ Let me watch over your animals for you while you’re busy being a cadet, okay?”

Rarity was seated right next to Spike, and she nuzzled him. “Oh, Spike... your heart is as big as a mountain, but Wonderbolts training is no mere side hobby! Why, for all we know, she might even be required to leave our home completely, and move into a dormitory for a few months, if not longer! And just think how MANY animals she has!”

Rainbow had to admit that Rarity was right. Even SHE didn’t have an exact count on how many animals she had, especially when she factored in the insects. To drop them ALL on Spike for months would be wrong.

“I’d be willing to help. It doesn’t all have to be Spike.”

Rarity gave her sweet prince a shocked look, and Lyra spoke up.

“Maybe we should just wait and see, Rarity. Maybe you’re wrong, and she won’t have to join a dormitory. It might be just like attending a regular school, where you get to come back home once classes are out! In which case, I might be able to help take care of the animals, too. We can work in shifts!”

“This is… quite the outpouring of support!” Rarity sputtered.

“Come on, Rarity!” said Lero. “Opportunities like this don’t just fall in your lap every day!”

“I understand, but we need to be sensible too…”

A knock came at the front door, and the conversation stopped. Rainbow Dash went and answered it.

“Seems I’ve come to the right house,” said the mare at the door. She was a pegasus about Rainbow’s own age, with an athletic build. Her coat was light turquoise, and her mane was mostly amber-colored, with golden stripes. Her cutie mark showed three stars and a lightning bolt. The one who’d challenged her to that ridiculous pony-rescuing contest.

“Uh, hi there!” Rainbow greeted. “I’m sorry, but this is kind of a bad time for me. I’m actually in the middle of dinner.”

“Yes, it smells like it!” the lightning-marked mare stretched her neck past the doorway, and took a big whiff of the air. “Mmm, is that pasta primavera I smell? Drenched in creamy, buttery white sauce?”

Miss Lightning Mark smirked at the sauce still smearing Rainbow’s muzzle. “What an extremely fattening and unhealthy choice of meal! Haven’t eaten that dish, myself, in years!”

“Excuse me?!” Rainbow asked, hastily licking it off her chops. “I beg your pardon?!”

“We’re both busy mares, so let me cut straight to the chase: did you get that letter from Spitfire? Are you actually planning on entering the Wonderbolts Academy?”

“Well, I h… actually, I’m sorry, but what business is that of yours?”

The lightning mare straightened proudly. “I’m the MVP this year at the Wonderbolts Academy. So if my teacher suddenly has some kooky idea to enlist new students this late into the semester… I’d like to know. I’m a good student, y’see.”

Deciding to just be honest, Rainbow told the rude mare, “No, I haven’t gotten the letter, and I haven’t made up my mind.”

The lightning mare’s smirk turned colder. “Let me give you a piece of advice, filly: don’t bother. Tear the letter up the moment it arrives. I’ve seen the way you fly, girl: you don’t have what it takes to be a Wonderbolt. You don’t have what it takes to be one of our janitors. But let’s say you ignore me. Let’s say I see you on our practice field in a cadet uniform in a few days. Filly, I will make your life a living hell. In and out of class.”

“J… just what have you got against me, anyway?!”

“You’re just bad news, girl. I can sense that. So you’d be a bad fit for the Wonderbolts,” the lightning mare answered, turning around on Rainbow Dash. “So I’d go inside, get yourself six scoops of ice cream, and chow down. Stick to goals you can achieve. Plus, it’d a good way for us never to see each other again."

The lightning mare left a blue and yellow thunderbolt streak in the air when she flew off. Rainbow might’ve called it ‘cool,’ but she was too resentful of its maker.

“Who was that?” Lero asked, as she re-entered the dining room.

Rainbow Dash looked at every member of her sweet, supportive family. She thought of her animals, when they had been unmanageable. She thought of Honeydew. She thought of the bully mare who’d just been at her front door. She thought about the grateful faces of all the ponies she’d saved. Then she thought of Spitfire and her offer.

“I’ve made up my mind,” she told her family, decisively. “I… I don’t know if I have what it takes to become a Wonderbolt. But I’d like to find out. So I’m joining the academy!”

This announcement was met by congratulatory cheers from Twilight Sparkle, Lero, Lyra, and Spike, who all came around and hugged and kissed her. Though it wasn’t until much later that night, when Rarity gave Rainbow her own hug, alone in the bathroom.

“It really is a marvelous opportunity, you know… attending the Wonderbolts Academy,” the unicorn weathermare said.

“Rarity, I… I don’t want to be selfish about all this, you’re right about my animals, and I don’t want…!”

“We’ll make it work, my sweet hummingbird,” Rarity assured her. “Truth be told, I was actually feeling a bit jealous of you.”

“Jealous?” repeated Rainbow Dash.

“I’ve never really brought this up, but did you know there’s… always been a part of me that yearned to join the Wonderbolts, myself?” For some reason, Rarity’s eyes travel back to her rainbow-thunderbolt cutie mark as she said this. “But it was never, ever to be. I’m not a pegasus, you see.”

Rainbow thought about Rarity’s past; being raised in the pegasus lifestyle up in Cloudsdale, and she snuggled up close to the other mare. “You’re a wonderful unicorn, Rarity. Don’t forget that.”

“Oh, don’t you worry about that,” said Rarity, snuggling back. “I’ve grown quite comfortable with my place in life.”

* * *

Bunny Bite’s cutie mark showed a brown rabbit nibbling a carrot. The color of Bunny Bite’s coat was a crisp carroty orange. Her mane, tail, and eyes were the same shade of green as carrot greens.

“But Ah always figured clothes were jest fer fancy Canterlot ponies, not farm gals like me,” Bunny Bite was saying to the other mare.

This mare could’ve almost been a sister of Bunny’s. She, too, was an orange-coated earth pony. Although she had three fancy diamonds on her flank, Bunny did like the way she wore her hat. Like it belonged there. She’d introduced herself as Applejack of the Carousel Boutique.

“Beggin’ yer pardon, ma’am, but that there’s an all-too-common misconception Ah intend ta correct,” said the salesmare. “Clothing’s fer everypony, everywhere.”

“Why so?” asked Bunny Bite.

“Well, fer starters…” Then Applejack stopped, apparently distracted by Bunny’s front hooves. “Y’know, them’s a very fine-looking set of horseshoes ya’ll’s wearing, Miz Bunny.”

Bunny lifted her legs, showing the horseshoes off. “Ah think so too! Made for me by Hammered Anvil, herself!”

“Ah’ve heard good things ‘bout Hammered!” said the salesmare. “Looks like them shoes do a fine job protectin’ yer hooves.”

“Indeed, they do!” They ought to have, for the price Bunny had paid for them.

“...In the same way we wear horseshoes to protect our hooves, don’t it make sense ta wear clothing ta protect the rest of yer body?”

“Protect…?” Bunny repeated. She supposed a metal suit of armor would be one thing, but cloth things like this salesmare was wearing were so easily torn. “Protect from what?”

“Where do Ah even begin?” Applejack said, looking all around the barn they were both standing in.

“Ah mean, Ah’ve been alive fer twenty-three years now, and for all that time, Ah’ve always gotten by nicely enough in mah birthday suit.”

“And such a fine-lookin’ suit it is, Miz Bunny!” the salesmare purred. “The orange of yer coat is such a warm, invitin’ color… suits ya to a T!”

Delighted and flattered, Bunny Bite did a little turn and fluttered her eyelashes. “Careful! Ah’m a herded mare, and Ah’ll have you know there ain’t room for any more herd-sisters in our happy home.”

“Aw, darn the luck!” said Applejack, with a playful smile. “But now, this here carrot farm a’ yers, it’s sure is a BIG one, ain’t it?”

“Ninety acres o’ land. Been in mah family fer generations.”

Both of the mares looked out Bunny Bite’s open barn door, at all the many neat rows of carrots peeking out of the ground. Not yet ready for harvesting, but soon. It was impossible for Bunny to miss the misty sort of look in Applejack’s face. Maybe she’d grown up on a farm of her own, as a filly?

“Bettin’ yew get yer share of botflies out here.”

Bunny Bite cringed, caught off-guard by the surprise turn this conversation had taken. “Uh… yeah! Those pests are jest ‘bout everywhere in this part of the world.”

“Ain’t it terrible how they always buzz around yew? The way they lay their eggs under yer skin, and ya think it’s jest a skeeter bite? Only for it to swell up all painful-like, and then ya have ta shave off a big patch of yer fur jest ta begin ta treat it, before the eggs…”

“Stop, stop, STOP!”

The truth was, Bunny Bite had actually had all this happen to her recently. One day when she was in a hurry, she’d forgotten repellant, and they’d swarmed her own afternoon, and she’d wound up with numerous botfly eggs planted all over her body. When the doctors had dug them out, it’d been painful. But for Bunny, the worst had been going around with bald spots all over her coat. It’d looked like she’d gotten the mange! But it’d have been even worse if they’d hatched!

“Mah apologies, ma’am. But there’s a reason Ah bring this up: a practical set o’ clothes can comfortably cover up ta eighty-five percent of yer body, if not more! And Carousel's clothing’s all about practicality!”

“So wearin’ these clothes-things makes ya botfly-proof?” the carrot farmer asked.

Applejack held her head up proudly. “Mebbe not proof, but makes it lots harder for ‘em to find vulnerable spots on yah. On top of that, clothes aren’t jest good fer insects, pardner! They’ll also help protect ya from thorns, burrs, poison oak and poison joak ‘n’ the like, mud, dirt, ‘n’ grit, even extreme heat and extreme cold!”

“Clothes can do all that?” Bunny asked, in awe. What had she been missing out on, her whole life?!

“Eyup! Clothes are the farmer’s best friend! The secret is in their washability and disposability. Would you rather all that filth keep gettin’ caught in yer coat? Or a set o’ threads that yew can shuck off ‘n’ wash, or jest toss straight in the trash, if need be?”

Applejack did a stylish turn.

“Plus they fit so snugly, you barely know they’re even on! And they make you look oh-so-stylish! Do correct me if Ah’m wrong.”

Bunny Bite certainly couldn’t correct Applejack. The clothes she wore did look fabulous on her. They… well, to be honest, Bunny Bite knew next to nothing about clothes, so she didn’t know words to even describe them. But the clothes were blue and you could see all four of the legs, unlike with… gowns? Was that the right word?

“But Ah heard word from mah stallion that clothes’ll cover up yer cutie mark…” Bunny recalled, trying to imagine what her herdmates would think if they came by and saw her with garments on her.

“Bad clothes will, yes. But none of mah brand, no ma’am! With me, yew have two options.” And the salesmare opened up the case she’d brought with her, unfolding two different sets of clothes, nearly identical, except…

“Option One: yew’d send me a photo of yer cutie mark and Ah’d sew on an appliqued copy onto the outfit. Or there’s Option Two: Ah cut out a circle of fabric so that yer mark can show openly.”

“Ah think Ah like Option Two better!” said Bunny Bite. Applejack, herself, had gone with that option on her own outfit.

“Fantastic! Whaddaya say we get yer measurements…”

It turned out that Applejack had an outfit that fits Bunny’s measurements perfectly. And her asking price for the clothes was very reasonable. Wearing the clothes felt… different. But it was the sort of different Bunny could get used to. She couldn’t say that about everything. Bunny ended up seeing AJ out with a batch of fresh carrots, as an extra gift.

“Ya know, Miz Applejack, Ah’ve met a couple other ‘tailor’ types once or twice before… and they ain’t nothin’ like yew! Ah feel like yew… ‘get’ me, y’know?”

Applejack took a big long breath of the farmstead air.

“...Ah’ve come ta admire yew farm folk. Ya’ll truly are the salt o’ the earth. It’s mah pleasure ta do mah small part as a fashion gal ta make what ya’ll do that much more fulfillin’ and enjoyable. Part o’ me’s kinda sorry Ah can’t do more.”

* * *

Bunny Bite and her other first few customers hadn’t been idle. Apparently, word of mouth travelled fast among farm ponies.

Orders started to trickle in.

Then they started to flow in.

Then they poured in.

Applejack honestly had a hard time figuring out how she was going to handle all the volume; travelling to farms to take measurements along had almost become a full-time job. Fluttershy, bless her heart, had cut the number of parties she was throwing (‘Just the essentials’, whatever that meant,) to spend time helping her. She’d even recruited her sister to help ferry around the materials - and Sweetie Belle had recruited her friends to her assist - and she was relieved they hadn’t departed when they hadn’t turned out to be “Cutie mark crusader seamstress assistants.”

But the real blessing had been Spike. She hadn’t needed to ask, but as things had built towards a fevered pitch, he’d appeared almost like magic, just in the moment she needed him, immediately reorganizing things to make the process much more efficient, and keeping nearly flawless track of all the orders and measurements which had been slowing her down with her less-than-perfect record keeping causing her to frequently lose minutes out of every work hour trying to hunt them down.

Now, while she was stitching together jeans (They’d proven to be her most popular items), he stood nearby, cutting fabric pieces from bolts of denim, his claws letting him cut the patterns just right, stacking the pieces up for her and Fluttershy to use. Fluttershy was out at the moment; apparently, one of the ‘essentials’ was a foal’s birthday party taking place today, but she’d promised to come back when it was over.

The Crusaders were out delivering finished orders to the post office, leaving just her and Spike working at the moment, the only sounds being the rrrp-rrrp-rrrp of claws cutting fabric, and the clack-clack-clack of a sewing machine.

“Applejack?” Spike asked.

“Mmmm?” She responded, focusing pm her work, so as to not to lose a stitch.

“Think once this order backlog subsides, maybe you’d like to go out to dinner? Wherever you like. I’ll even pay! Unless, you know, you’d like to. I know how important tradition is for you.”

“Whay, Spike, that sounds laik a wonderf-” her stitching suddenly came to a halt, as her train of thought suddenly caught up to what he said.

“Spike… Are… are ya askin’ me… out on a date?” she asked.

The little dickens just smiled at her, in a distressingly charming manner. “Depends on if you say yes, I suppose.”

Applejack was startled by how many emotions warred within her at the thought. On one hand, he’d always been adorable, smart, clever, generous, affectionate, helpful, and supportive… and more to the point, he’d been there for her in her lowest moments, even when her other friends weren’t able to help her, and stuck by her and never gave up on her, even after she’d treated him badly. It had honestly reached the point where she was having a hard time envisioning life without him.

So that left her with a question: did she love him? To be honest with herself, she did. How could she not? But was it a love of a friend to another, or… something more? Something that he obviously sought? Part of her desperately wanted to say “Yes!”, throw caution into the wind and embrace this wonderful person and all he had to offer her, but three things held her back.

First, he was a child. Secondly… there was no certain way of telling how fast dragons grew up to their titanic size. Or if they ever did, if they simply chose to never give into their infamous greed… (and a one-of-a-kind sweetheart like Spike just might be able to pull that off!) Either way, it wasn’t fair to him. Third, dragons lived long lives, while ponies didn’t.

She thought about deflecting his pursuit, like she had in his past, or accept his offer and be noncommittal about pursuing their relationship… but that tasted like dishonesty, and it felt wrong to continue behaving like that. It even came to the point where she was disgusted by her past self for leading the poor dear on like she had.

“Applejack?” Spike asked, and she suddenly realized she’d been staring at him silently for several second. “You okay?”

“Fahne.” She said. “Jez.... Thinking. Spike. Do ya know how long it’ll be ‘fore yer a grown-up dragon?”

“Well… No. Nopony knows. Dragons are too dangerous and too mean-hearted... there’s still so much that even the most committed pony biologists don’t know much about them,” he said, shamefully..

“That’s the problem, Spike. Ah do love you-” Applejack started.

“You do!?” The dragon sat up sharply, looking excited.

“But-” She attempted to continue.

“Oh…” He almost seemed to wilt.

“Spike, Listen to me! I’m not putting you off because I don’t want to be with you! But… Spike, don’t you realize… I could be long dead before yer a grownup too! That ain't fair for either of us.” She put her hoof gently on his claw.

He gripped her hoof tight. “But… But… Well, maybe I’ll grow up really fast! We don’t know!”

“We can’t hang our lives on maybes, Spike, especially not on something this important.” She gave him an apologetic nuzzle.

“Well… I thought you thought that True Love conquers all, and all that? That we’d be able to overcome all the obstacles in our way as long as we loved each other!” Spike stated, looking up hopefully at her.

She smiled, and sighed. “That’s a lovely idea… and honestly, a few months ago, I’d probably say that you were right… But… How my life’s been going lately… I don’t think it’s right going for long shots, no matter how lovely they are.”

“Well… How about a compromise?” He looked bright again.

“Ah… compromise.” She frowned not liking the sounds of that, but she wasn’t sure she could stand squashing his hopes again.

“Well… I don’t want to pressure you into anything- but right now, we’re not really in a rush, right? You’re young for a pony. Maybe we can wait a while, and see if things can work out…?” He paused, seeing AJ’s stricken expression. “...Look, AJ, I care about you… but if this really is that bad for you… I’d rather be your friend. I’m glad to be you friend, and I want to keep you as my friend, no matter what.” He drooped and sighed. “I was just… hoping to at least have a chance at my dream. That was selfish. I’m sorry.” He started to move away.

AJ pulled him into a hug, causing him to let out a startled shout before realizing what was going on, and hugging back. “Ah’m glad yer mah friend, too. Ah dunno what Ah’d do without ya.” She whispered, holding him tight, a tear leaking out of the corner of her eye. “Okay.”

Spike blinked. “Okay?”

“I’ll agree ta yer compromise. But only on one condition.” She said firmly.

Spike looked up. “Name it.”

“That ya don’t pin all yer hopes on me. Yew find a filly that’ll make ya happy, yew don’t hesitate. Ya get with her, okay? No passing up happiness fer me.”

“Alright, AJ. I promise. I won’t pass up a chance to be happy just for the possibility to be with you.”

“Eeee!” Sweetie Belle quietly squeaked in the next room over where she and the crusaders paused after they got back from their delivery and heared Serious Voices in the next room over, which they ‘accidentally’ overheard the conversation. “I have a chance!”

“Wait… ya laik… Spike?” Apple Bloom whispered.

“Sweetie’s got a coltfriend! Sweetie’s got a coltfriend!” Scootaloo taunted quietly.

“Quiet you two, they’ll hear!” Sweetie hissed back, as the two began talking again.

“So… Not tryin’ to look a gift lizard in the mouth, or anything... but how come ya'll showed up here all of a sudden?”

Spike suddenly looked abashed. “Oh, uh, I’ve kinda been trying to avoid the library lately. Things have gotten a bit more… intense with the herd lately, since everything has been going so well.”

“Oh?” AJ asked.

“Intimately intense,” he clarified.

There was a beat. Then AJ was enlightened. “Oooooooohhhhh…”

* * *

“Mmm! Nhhhaaa… LERO! Oh, LERO!” screamed Rainbow Dash.

“Faster, my sweet prince! Ohh, aaaahh!!” urged Rarity.

The hot snort with which Spike awoke would’ve set a regular bed on fire. But Spike’s sheets, blankets, pillows, and pillowcases were made of the same materials used by the brave members of Ponyville Fire Department, so that didn’t happen.

Blearily, the little dragon trying to count just how many of Dash’s cute little animals had snuggled up against him last night. Three cats, two dogs, a lizard… and those were the ones he could see. Quite a few furry bodies were pressed against his back side.

“Okay,” he called out. “Okay! Sorry, everybody, but I’m getting out of bed.”

About three or so of the animals actually moved at the sound of Spike’s voice. The rest remained put until Spike extracted himself off his bed, trying his best not to disturb any of the pets which wanted to remain asleep. The others who awoke with him looked at him expectantly. Wanting to be petted. Wanting breakfast.

Still sleepy, yet on his feet, Spike petted every little creature he could reach as he made his way to his dresser and pulled out jeans and a T-shirt, and slipped them onto himself in front of his mirror. Applejack had made them all well; he’d come to like the feel of his spines slipping through their proper holes on the back of his clothes.

Spike took a second to look at himself in the mirror. Ponies who saw him in the street said he looked very ‘human,’ walking all two-legged in clothes. One had even called him Lero’s ‘little purple son.’ Mostly, they meant it goodnaturedly. Frankly, Spike felt honored by the comparison. Honored to be associated with the ‘stallion’ oF Herd Bellerophon.

“Mmmm… MMMMPPHH!!!” Lero was sounding breathless while his mouth sounded full, and Rarity was making joyful noises.

...Well, most of the time. But Lero certainly wasn’t the only reason Spike liked wearing clothes these days; it was also because AJ had made them; specially for him. They fit no other soul in Ponyville. Every day he put them on, it felt like he was cloaking himself in her appreciation for him. Her affection. He felt more loved and heroic with them on than in the buff.

“Oh, Professor Michealiiiiiiides!” called Twilight. “I’ve been such a naaaaughty student!”

Ugh. Spike really loved all the grownups in his family, but did they have to be that loud when they were all playing with each other? And weren’t you supposed to save that sort of stuff for nighttime? The afternoon, at least? Oh well. At least he could be happy they were loving each other; it was much better than when there’d been friction.

Doing his best not to hear ‘Professor Michealides’ enact ‘punishment’ on Twilight Sparkle, Spike went downstairs. All the animals in his bedroom knew his routine and followed him down. Any animals that were still asleep downstairs, (in spite of what was happening up in the master bedroom,) came awake as they heard Spike opening the bags and cans of pet chow.

They were meowing and panting and barking so impatiently, Spike almost didn’t hear the knock at the door. When he went to go answer it; it was Scootaloo.

“Hey, Spike!” she said, eager as ever. “Can you believe today’s Take-Your-Foal-To-Work Day up at the Weather Factory?! Can you believe Rarity’s gonna be taking us both up there?!”

“I know,” he said with a smile. “You really came early, didn’t you?”

“Not too early, I hope!” Scootaloo said, as though hoping she could squeeze in another bonding moment with her favorite unicorn.

“Aaaaahhhhh!” exclaimed Rarity from upstairs. “Our sweet prince… ooooohh… makes for a simply divine seesaw, doesn’t he, Rainbow?”

“Yes!” cried Rainbow Dash. “Oh, yes, yes, YESSSS!!!”

Spike had never seen Scootaloo’s ears flatten back so fast.

“Why don’t you come back in an hour?” he told her, shutting the front door gently.

* * *

“I’ll tell you something, Lero; I had my doubts about Rear Window when you’d first described it to me in that letter,” said Sundance, the acclaimed filmmaker.

“Why?” asked the human. “It’s a solid story.”

“Theeeerrre IS the fact that the whole film hinges on a killer who doesn’t think to shut all his curtains while he’s committing murder and chopping up the body,” Sundance pointed out, sipping her whiskey sour.

“Well, in the original movie, everything was happening in the middle of a sweltering summer, which was why everyone’s windows were wide open,” Lero reminded her, stopping himself from describing how air conditioning units weren’t as commonplace in the 1950s, when it had been first filmed.

“If I were Thorwald, I’d think a little extra sweat’s a small price to pay for staying out of jail. I mean, if this were some lonely farmhouse out in the sticks, it’d be one thing. But this stallion’s in an apartment complex with LOTS of neighbors!” countered Sundance.

“Well, when everyone has their windows open, having it closed is more suspicious. On top of that, he was probably depending on his neighbors assuming the sounds of the murder and butchery were just the sound of a typical domestic disturbance, and none of their business... especially in the middle of an oppressive heatwave where you didn’t want to move, much less investigate a murder.”

“But that brings me to another fine point; why would the weatherponies allow a heatwave to last for THAT long? It’s unconscionable!”

“Weatherp…?” Lero looked blankly, never having thought of that, until Rarity spoke up next to him.

“You have to understand, Sundance, dear... Rear Window is a human story, and humans don’t have weatherponies in their world.”

“What about weatherhumans?” Sundance asked.

While Rarity laughed, Lero explained, “The weather’s wild in our world. It does what it wants. ‘Weather humans’ simply do their best to try and predict the weather.”

The gold-colored filmmaker shivered for a second. “Well, it’s not that big an issue. We added a bit into the script, and made it so Jeff’s recuperating in a city where the weatherponies are all on strike. Jeff reads about them in the news.”

“Well, at least it’s easy for you to film, right?” asked Lero. “I mean, almost all of it takes place in Jeff’s room…”

“What about all the neighbors he’s peeping on? The Songwriter? Miss Lonely Hearts? And let’s not forget the Thorwalds? Imagine you’re filming through binoculars and having to send a pegasus to fly out to the far apartments across from you, every time your actors need to do a new take!”

It was enough to make Lero wonder how Alfred Hitchcock, himself put up with it all.

“Still, the story really does grow on you. Jeff is the coolest voyeur I’ve ever seen. And I really dig Stella; she’s got such a smart mouth to her! And for a moron, Thorwald’s really good at ramping up the suspense. So yeah, I think once filming’s wrapped up, we’ve got another bit mint masterpiece on our hooves! Cheers!”

And Sundance and Lero clinked glasses together.

“So I was thinking about this…”

“Hey, Lero!” interrupted a new voice. Lero looked over and saw a gaggle of strange mares. “My friends and me… we’re all big fans of yours, and we were wondering, could you take a few pictures with us?”

“Sure! I’d be glad t...” Lero started, then turned back to the film director.

But Sundance just waved him away with a laugh. “Go ahead, Lero; we can talk about Rear Window later. Mingle with your fans. It’s your party, after all.”

And indeed it was.

Years ago, there had been a day where Lero Michealides had escaped from a horrible world into this better world of ponies. Today was nothing less than the anniversary of that day. They had made a surprise party of it; his family leading him to Sweet Apple Acres on some trumped-up pretext that the Apples needed extra help with the farmwork. And it touched Lero to the core of his heart how many ponies had shown up.

“Mr. Lero?” said little Ruby Pinch. “I drew this for you.”

When he’d been at Ruby’s party, he’d been costumed as one of the background deckhands. The picture Ruby gave Lero showed him as a pirate captain. With a peg leg, a hook hand, a skull-and-crossbones tricorn hat, his beard four times longer than usual, and a swashbuckler’s grin. For a six-year-old, Ruby could really draw.

In fact, Berry Punch had saved a fair number of the props from the big pirate party to reuse here... though they were only a small percentage of the decorations; more in honor of what he’d done for her and her daughter that anything else. Fluttershy had also made balloon men and set up banners that read HOORAY FOR HUMANS! and WE LOVE YOU, LERO! Some ponies had brought gifts, as though it were his birthday; (Spike had snuck him a secret gift of sausages and bacon he’d ordered straight from a griffon butcher; Lero happily promised to share) and next to them was a montage of all sorts of pictures of Lero; from personal scrapbooks, from magazines, and from off the walls of his own home.

Ponies asked Rainbow Dash to tell the story of how she had first discovered Lero, out in the woods. Normally, she disliked having the spotlight thrust upon her, but somehow, she had no problem opening up about Lero. He listened by Dash’s side, fascinated as everypony else but for slightly different reasons. Once again, he was listening for the differences between what the swapped pony remembered and what had actually happened with Fluttershy, who had been the one who’d actually found him in actual history.

Though there honestly weren’t that many divergences this time around… Rainbow Dash spoke with emotion building in her voice and moisture building in her eyes.

“...And then… and then he looks up and me, and he says, ‘please.’ A-a-and I’m so shocked to be hearing an actual w-w-w-word from what I thought, what I thought was just some dirty animal, I dropped what I had in my mouth and I said, ‘Please what?’ And he takes so long before he answers, I figure that’s, that’s just the noise he makes. Y’know, pigs go ‘oink,’ chickens go ‘cluck,’ and this thing went ‘please.’ B-b-b-but then he said, ‘Please, at least being h-h-h-honest with me. Are you p-p-planning on keeping me in a cage? Or f… feeding me to one of these animals?”

At this part in her story, Rainbow Dash was really tearing up.

“I’m sorry!” she sobbed, as Lero took her in his arms. “It’s just… especially after all we’ve been through, us being together… what sort of place did you… where you came out looking like that, and the first thing you ask me is if I…?”

“That’s all in the past now,” he consoled her. “Everything finally began getting better for me the moment you first became a part my life, Rainbow Dash. And it’s only gotten better from there.”

As they kissed, Lero distinctly heard a mare ask her stallion, “How come you never say stuff like that to me anymore?!”

Lero kept having fun. He bobbed for apples with the Cutie Mark Crusaders. He tossed horseshoes with Pinkie Pie. He played cards against Big Macintosh and Bonbon. It was even great seeing how many ponies were wearing clothes made at the Carousel Boutique; about three in every ten, including Pinkie Pie, who was wearing a fine pair of overalls over a T-shirt.

And Lero danced.

Pony dancing was unusual. Whereas human dancers would put their hands around each other, ponies generally much prefered necking each other, and sliding against the sides of each other’s bodies like cats. To say ‘he danced with many mares,’ wasn’t quite correct; more like ‘he danced next to many mares,’ who found the sight of him dancing a delightful oddity. Except for Rarity.

It was no ballroom waltz, but even with banjos, fiddles and harmonicas, the ponies of the Apple clan could play slow, romantic music as sweetly as any string quartet, even if it was with a bit of a twang. And when Rarity stepped out on the dance floor with Lero, she danced with him as a human woman would. On two legs, with her arms around his shoulders, stomach to stomach and cheek to cheek. Her back legs never so much as quivered, through all the steps they took. Many other ponies stared at the strange spectacle, but she didn’t seem to seem them. And as the music played on… Lero reached a point where he didn’t either. Rarity was just so sweet…

Then came a surprise none of them had expected. Two sky chariots came down from up above. All the ponies pointed and gasped, as not just Princess Celestia, but Princess Cadence of the Crystal Empire and her beloved husband, Prince Shining Armor stepped out.

As everyone, Lero included, fell to a respectful bow, Celestia surveyed them all with her gentle smile. “We heard that you were celebrating the day our extraordinary friend Lero first arrived among us,” she stated with melodious courtesy. “We, too, wish to celebrate, and hope you don’t mind that we weren’t formally invited.”

Of course nopony minded. Of course, they were all too honored to have so much royalty attending. Though they fretted over where Princess Celestia ought to sit, and Lero graciously offered his own chair at the head of the table, just to make things simpler.

“Twiley!” Shining Armor called out joyfully to his sister.

“BBBFF!” she called back, while hugging her brother.

Then, Shining Armor greeted his little brother with a friendly “Hey, Spike!” and a ruffle of his head, while Spike returned a “Hi, Shining!” To the human, he smiled and said, “So, how you’ve been holding up, Lero? Twiley hasn’t driven you insane yet, has she?”

“Eh, no more than usual,” Lero laughed before they both patted each other’s back, as brothers-in-law often did. “Hello, Cadence, you’re looking as beautiful as ever.”

“Oh, Lero, it’s been too long!” Princess Cadence said.

“I know! I haven’t seen you since your wedding!” he said, as they hugged.

Then the feasting began. There was a cake; a very large and wonderful s’mores cake which was basically just a huge s’more with dozens of smaller s’mores baked inside. It was deliciousness itself; but Lero didn’t eat too much of it. Pinkie Pie had invited all her extended family to come by to celebrate as well, and almost all of them had been glad to. Each family had brought something to eat, and Lero did his level best to sample at least a morsel of each of the pies, cakes, casseroles, baked vegetables, mashed potatoes, salads, and everything else that didn’t have hay in it.

Lero, Rarity, Twilight, and all the rest of his herd sat across from Celestia, Cadence, and Shining Armor. It amazed Lero how chatty Rarity and Princess Cadence were with one another. Back when Rainbow Dash had been lead mare… Rainbow and Cadence had gotten along as nicely as cousins who only saw each other at family get-togethers and had nothing whatsoever in common. (Privately, Lero supposed that if Cadence was more ‘action hero,’ the old Rainbow Dash would’ve taken a stronger interest in her.)

In contrast, Rarity and Cadence got along with each other like well-established best friends; chatting about dresses and food and their manes, and their stallions, and the weather… and through it all, Lero saw Rarity’s eyes keep returning to the wedding ring Cadence wore on her horn. Again and again.

“I must say, Cadence, dear, I still remember how glorious it was, the day you and Shining Armor tied the knot!” the white unicorn sighed at one point. “Do you think you would ever have a second wedding, once the two of you meet more of the right ponies?”

Shining Armor laughed. “If I had fifty bits for every time somepony asked us that, we wouldn’t need tax collectors!”

“We certainly have no shortage of would-be suitors,” Cadence admitted, with a slight eye roll.

“Hey, Lero?” Shining asked, looking across at the human. “I remember hearing that you used to be monogamous too, before you got converted.”

Lero shrugged. “Culturally, at least. What can I say? Twilight won me over.”

Though she blushed a little, Twilight blew him a small kiss from where she sat.

“Well,” said Cadence, “If we ever do find the right ponies, we’ll be glad to welcome them into our own herd!”

“The trick is finding anypony else I could bring myself to love as much as you!”

No storybook author could’ve written a more perfect kiss than the one Shining Armor and his wife then gave each other.

Though, once it finished, Cadence sighed. “Though it’s a legitimate concern for us. I wouldn’t ever want to put a fellow mare through being loved ‘second-best’.”

“Oh, of course.” Rarity replied, understandingly. Once more, Lero saw Rarity gaze longingly at the ring on Princess Cadence’s horn, before rubbing at her own horn with the side of her arm. As though feeling an absence.

A little further into the meal, though, when Celestia had gotten up to get herself more cake, Shining Armor asked his sister in a much quieter voice, “Hey, Twiley? I heard about the… well, the experiments you’ve been doing.”

“How… much do you know?” asked Twilight, very cautiously.

“Barely anything. Celestia’s been really tight-lipped. But the reason I ask is because, um…”

And he took a deep breath.

“Down in the Crystal Empire, there’s this mare who serves us as a minister, and is also a personal friend of ours. But she also has this teenage son, very immature for his age. And apparently, she was really dead-set on passing along her own common sense onto her son. Well, somehow, she managed to get ahold of one of those experimental spells of yours, Twilight…”

“Oh no,” said Lyra Heartstrings, speaking for all of Herd Bellerophon.

“...And, uh, now our minister friend and her son have each other’s cutie marks, and it’s hard to explain and nobody really understand it, but they’re both deluded, and the son seems to practically believe he is his mother, to the point where he’s tried to, ah, um… perform ‘wifely privileges’ with his own father...”

“A mother and her son,” Twilight spoke in an appalled whisper. “A mother with her son.”

“...And we’re wondering if anything can possibly be done for them, Twiley, because this cutie mark mixup is pretty much tearing that whole family apart…”

“Shining Armor,” said Celestia. She was suddenly right by the prince of the Crystal Empire, speaking down at him as though he were the captain of her guard, again. “This is no place for us to be discussing such things.”

“Yes, Princess Celestia!” Shining Armor said, with a knee-jerk salute.

And the table went quiet.

Rarity finally broke the silence. “Twilight, might I speak with you in private?”

“Of course.” Twilight said, eager to extract herself from the situation

* * *

“So what was it you wanted to talk about?” Twilight asked Rarity.

Her white unicorn herdsister had led her around to behind a tool shed, far away from everypony else.

Rarity hesitated for a few seconds, and almost looked ready to delve into a lengthy preamble, before she instead settled on a simpler one-word response: “Marriage.”

Twilight tried to blink but failed to. “Marriage?”

“I want us to have a wedding,” sighed Rarity in her lovely voice. “All of us in Herd Bellerophon. A big, beautiful wedding ceremony, just like the one your brother had with Princess Cadence. But without the changelings, of course. You’re the heir to your family’s title, after all. Eventually they’d insist on a proper marriage, sooner or later, I’m just… leaning more on the ‘sooner’ side.”

To Twilight, Rarity’s words felt like she either gone bankrupt or won several lotteries. Either at the same time, or maybe it was one or the other? For some reason, she couldn’t tell which.

“I love you all so much, and I want to elevate what we have beyond the traditional stallion-and-herdsisters arrangement. I want us all to be wives! I want Lero to be our husband!”

And Rarity leaned forward, treating Twilight to another of her mind-melting kisses that she had come to cherish so greatly.

“You know, there’s a part of me that’s always yearned to be married. I almost wonder why we delayed this long? Perhaps, on some subconscious level, we were all waiting for dear Rainbow Dash to join our happy herd. I must admit, our family feels so wonderfully complete with her in it!”

Twilight knew Rarity well enough to tell that this wasn’t a passing fancy. She was definitely determined about this. This was just the first word… but she’d work on her. She’d work on Lero, and she’d work on the rest of them. She’d bring all her charm, and exert all her influence as their herd’s lead mare and she’d make this wedding happen.

“I’ll be Mrs. Rarity Michealides... “ Rarity whispered. “Has a nice ring to it, wouldn’t you say? My goodness! I’ll have a last name of my very own! Me!”

“Excuse me? Twilight?” Both of them turned around.

Princess Celestia, in all her tall shining, solar grace, was not the sort of pony you could imagine coming up on you from behind, unnoticed. Yet here, she had managed it. Twilight stood stock still while Rarity fell into a bow.

“Forgive me, Rarity, dear. I hate to interrupt, but may I have a quick word alone with Twilight? I promise, it’s important, and I won’t be long.”

“Of course, Your Majesty,” said Rarity.

Student and teacher waited until the swapped pony was well out of sight and earshot.

“So… wedding plans?” asked Celestia, in much harder tones.

“I… Princess Celestia, I…”

Celestia only had to shut her eyes for Twilight to fall silent. “Just answer me one question, and be completely honest, please. Are you even truly trying to fix Starswirl’s spell any more? Or do you no longer even want that?”

Author's Note

This chapter marks the beginning of the end. Act Three of Divided Rainbow's story; the final act. Still got a bit more to go, though. Haven't quite settled on precisely HOW many more chapters I have left, but I know what's going to happen.

I'd like to thank Rikmach for all his help editing, and for SpinelStride for so many ideas, especially with the alternate universe Fluttershy and Discord go visit.

I also encourage you all to check out Lex Divisia, the latest Divided Rainbow spinoff by Qtip6! It's a fun one!

Also, I'm planning on getting back into Ask The Swapped Ponies, so if you have any new questions for the characters of this story, please send them there!

Finally, a call out to all you tropers: please help me bring Divided Rainbow's TV Tropes page back up to date. Thank you all so much!