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!