Lero had sworn to Spike he would remain grounded until his hand was healed, and here in this house and herd, your word was your bond, right down to the letter.

The strong, paternally parental part of Lero Michealides had wanted to refuse to let Twilight Sparkle cast her healing spell on his burned hand. Tough out the pain, allow nature to take its course, so that Spike’s grounding would last a while, and the little dragon would have sufficient time to really REGRET what he’d done.

But this was overruled by the purely pragmatic, (not to mention pain-hating) side of the human. The way Lero rationalized it was this: between Diamond Hailstorms, glufferflorks, Discord, and what’d just happened with Spike, there was just no telling WHAT kind of curveballs the future still had to throw at him. And with two more ponies still left to help find equilibrium for... wouldn’t it be smarter to face those curveballs with two working hands instead of one?

Very fortunately, Twilight and Lyra arrived home earlier than Rarity. Explaining what had happened was no fun for any of them. Neither of them had even stepped inside Spike’s bedroom yet.

“Spike, I can’t... can’t believe... He’s overreacted to things before, but never like THIS!” Twilight Sparkle exclaimed, teeth clenched angrily even as her horn spread curative magic over his burns.

Restoring his hand from a burnt and bandaged crisp to fixed and healed was the work of just a few minutes for Twilight. He tested his fingers; good as new.

“Still... I feel so bad for the poor little guy.” Lyra said. “That’s an awful lot for any kid to take!”

Lero gave a deep sigh. “Lyra?” he asked. “Would you be willing to promise me one thing?”

“Sure,” she said. “Anything.”

“If I ever hurt you the way I’ve hurt Spike, I want you to just come right out and tell me so: ‘Lero, you’re hurting me just like you’ve hurt Spike and Twilight.’ Because I’m clearly too STUPID to pick up on subtle cues.”

“I...” The Still Way grandmaster put a hoof around his shoulder. “Okay, Fingers, I promise I will.”

“Lero... it’s not fair to hold yourself responsible for me losing my cool,” Twilight quietly told him. She’d been looking self-conscious since Lero had said ‘Spike and Twilight.‘ “That was wrong of me to do that to all of you, and to myself.”

He reached out, scratching fondly around her ear. “It’s okay, Twilight, you’ve got a big responsibility and a lot of stress on your plate.”

“But that’s not the way to handle it, though!” Twilight insisted. “There are ways to deal with stress and ways not to deal with it, and it’s high time we reminded Spike of that!”

So she’d marched into Spike’s bedroom, and Lyra and Lero had followed behind her. There followed a lot of angry shouting from Twilight, and a lot of calm responses from Spike. With tranquility bordering on indifference, the little dragon owned up to every bad thing he’d done to Lero, apologized to them all once more, and promised it wouldn’t happen again. Twilight furiously revoked several privileges of Spike’s. Until further notice, he’d be going without an allowance, he was getting all his comics locked away, and he wouldn’t be allowed to eat any gems tastier than a topaz. (He wouldn’t have been getting those, either, except that Twilight -- even in such an angry state -- was conscientious of a baby dragon’s nutritional needs.)

Spike had shrugged blithely and told her he’d comply with it all. He even helped Twilight gather up all his comics and lock them away. Later on, when Rarity had returned home, the excuse they settled on for why Spike was being punished was that he’d unintentionally burned several books, and Lero had gotten his hand burnt trying to put the fire out. Spike immediately corroborated the story when the white unicorn had asked him about it.

Before going to bed, another thought came to Lero, and he visited Spike in his room for one last time that night.

“Hey, Spike!” he called in. “Got a little last-minute addendum to our deal.”

“Yeah?” The dragon looked to be on the final chapter of that book he’d begun reading.

“Yeah. I have the right to stop in the Carousel Boutique any time I want and ask Applejack about you! Whether you’re truly being a help or not! And if you aren’t, then I have the right to pull you away and forbid you from seeing her! And you won’t flip out over it! Are we clear?!”

He glared hard at the young dragon on the bed.

“Sure. That sounds perfectly reasonable and fair. If I’m being a pest to Applejack, if I’m being unhelpful, if she doesn’t want me around, then by all means, stop me. I promise I won’t even hate you for it,” the dragon told him, with such aggravatingly imperturbable evenness, to the point he wondered if he was taking Still Way lessons from Lyra. “Just a little more incentive for me to treat her right. Don’t you worry, though. Soon enough, my sweet fashionista will be making you clothes no one will laugh at you for wearing... and you’ll have ME to thank for it, Lero.”

Lero stared hard at Spike for a moment, then sighed. “You know what, Spike. I really hope you’re right.”

* * *

The next day, at around half past nine, Lero paid a visit to Sugar Cube Corner. He purchased a golden raisin and pecan muffin from Mrs. Cake. Then he asked Mrs. Cake if he could see Fluttershy, but she told him Fluttershy was now strictly a back-room worker, kept away from the customers.

At a quarter to eleven later that same day, Lero returned to Sugar Cube Corner. After buying an apricot strudel, he sat by Fluttershy, who was having her lunch break. He politely endured two jokes from the yellow pegasus, (the first involving what one stinkbug said to the other stinkbug, the second asking what you got when you crossed a hydra with ten tons of pico de gallo) before getting down to business. He informed her of why he had come; the service he was hoping to offer her, and if she was interested in his assistance.

She listened to his every word with increasing excitement and delight. By the time he was done speaking, Lero needn’t have even asked if she’d accept his offer.

She did. She very, very, very, very, very much DID.

She accepted Lero’s offer as though she were some greasy spoon waitress who’d always dreamed of hitting it big in showbiz, and he were a talent scout for the sequel of a multimillion-dollar Cellywood blockbuster, searching for a lead actress.

After she’d gotten her breath back, they agreed to meet with each other fifteen minutes after Fluttershy’s work schedule ended at three.

A blue parrot glowering from a high branch watched Lero head back home to prepare himself.

* * *

Lero was glad he and Fluttershy had picked the village green as their meeting place. It was the perfect location, the perfect time, and the perfect weather to make a guy glad to be alive. The grass was especially verdant this day, with only a few small scatterings of dandelions to interrupt the greenness. It was a place that begged passers-by to spread out a blanket and have a picnic. Then maybe lean back and decide what the clouds were shaped like, until they fell asleep under the gentle sunlight.

Lero had brought a blanket and a few things to snack on, in his backpack, but he wasn’t there to sleep in the sun. He’d also brought several books from the library which had looked helpful. These included: How To Be Funny by Harlequin Aid, A Study Of Humor by Rise Able, and Stand-Up Comedy: Yes, You Can Do It! by Ponyacci.

While he had no intention of ‘going Twilight Sparkle’ with his research material, he just felt better having these books with him. So he spread out his blanket and began browsing How To Be Funny, until the blare of a party horn jolted him out of his reading. He looked up to see a yellow-and-pink streak zoom over his head... and suddenly confetti was snowing upon him.

Fluttershy banked hard and came in to land on Lero’s blanket, blowing a kazoo while twirling a noisemaker, and spinning in a circle all at the same time. He almost felt like he was scoring a touchdown.

“Are you excited, Lero?” she gushed.

“Yeah!” he said, letting her beaming smile spread to him. “Absolutely, positively, one hundred percent excited! Aren’t you?!”

“No. I’m not excited. I’m super-duper-blooper-hooper-cooper-whooper-scooper-squadala-loop-de-looper THRILLED to have you teaching me comedy, Lero!”

Lero gave it a four out of ten on the Pinkie Pie Scale of Silly Sayings, but it had a lot of heart behind it.

“Here, I brought cupcakes, just for you!” she said, pulling a box of them out of her saddlebags.

What a contrast Fluttershy was! With Twilight’s friends -- Rainbow Dash worst off, then Pinkie Pie, Applejack and Rarity -- defeat and hopelessness had dragged at them like lead weights around their necks. Not so with Fluttershy! There wasn’t JUST hope in her eyes, there wasn’t JUST faith, there was CERTAINTY. While she was unhappy when her jokes failed, she hadn’t let it drag her down. She grinned like a blinded woman absolutely guaranteed to have her sight back; she pranced around him as though the sun had dawned after thirty days of night!

It was enough to swell Lero’s head AND send a shock of performance anxiety through him at the same time.

“Oh! I see you brought books!” Fluttershy said, looking at Lero’s small pile. “So did I! Figured it’d be smart to show you where I was getting all my current crop of jokes from!”

She set down several books in a stack. Lero looked at the titles. Bestest Jokes of Yucky Yolks, Volume 1. Underneath it was Bestest Jokes of Yucky Yolks, Volume 2. Volumes 3, 4, 5, and 6 were underneath that.

“So... how many volumes are in this series altogether?” Lero asked.

“Forty,” said Fluttershy.

“Forty!” said Lero, with a very well-faked air of respect. “Such a prolific author this Yolks fellow is!”

Each book in this series seemed to be around 300 pages. Lero flipped to a random page in Volume 4:

Q: What do masseurs eat for dinner?

A: SPA-ghetti.

Reminding himself how Twilight did not condone damaging or destroying books, (even with justification like this,) Lero gently set the book down and asked, “And how many of them do you own?”

Fluttershy held up the first Yucky Yolks book as though it were a four-leaf clover. “I found the whole set in this dingy used bookshop a little over a month ago. It was like they were calling to me! The bookseller sold me all FORTY of them for just twenty bits, can you believe it?”

Those twenty bits could’ve bought you one helluva nice sandwich. Lero stopped himself from saying. He should have paid you the twenty bits to haul them away as kindling...

“Yucky Yolks is amazing! I’ve disciplined myself to read through her joke books for two hours straight, every night before I go to bed, and memorize as much as I can and...!”

He held a hand up in front of her. “Alright, Fluttershy... time to assign you your homework for tonight.”

“Huh?! Homework already?! But we’ve barely started!”

Shrugging, Lero said; “Part One of your homework... is to get rid of all your Yucky Yolks books.”

“Get rid of them?!” she balked, as though he’d demanded she dump every baking ingredient in Sugar Cube Corner, all at once.

“Yes!” Lero insisted. “They are a perfect model of how not to tell a joke. They are anti-humor. Our first few lessons will probably focus on undoing the damage they’ve already done! Sell them, bury them, fling them from a catapult into the Everfree! I don’t care how you do it, as long as they are no longer in your possession by the time tomorrow’s class starts. I want your word of honor that you’ll actually DO this, and not just pretend to do it. So I want you to Pinkie Promise me...”

Fluttershy frowned. “Pinkie Promise? What do you mean by ‘Pinkie Promise?’”

Lero could’ve slapped himself in the face. Smooth move, Michaelides. Asking one of the Swapped to make a Pinkie Promise. You ought to have her give you an Applejack Avowal, while you’re at it!

“Uh… That’s a human thing, but you don’t exactly have a pinkie finger,” he lamely said, waggling the smallest finger on his left hand. “I meant, uh…”

He stared at Fluttershy’s Balloon Mark. Think! In place of the Sonic Rainboom, the Swap had come up with the Diamond Hailstorm. In place of the Pinkie Promise, the Swap would come up with...???

“Like a Fluttershy Forswearing, you mean?” the pegasus suggested.

“Yes!” said Lero. “Yes. A Fluttershy Forswearing. Of course that’s what I meant!”

The pegasus sat back on her haunches, lifting a hoof in the air like a child reciting the Pledge of Allegiance: “Cross my wings, hope to cry, pluck my feathers if I lie.”

Though short, the poem was delivered with great solemnity. The village green suddenly felt surprisingly profound.

“Good,” said Lero, after a breath. “Now, Part Two of your homework is to go to the best bookstore in town, ask one of the staff to lead you to the finest joke book they have for sale... then buy it, and study THAT instead.”

Lero braced himself. He was expecting Fluttershy to fight him on this, maybe even physically! He was expecting her to shriek bloody murder and cling to her horrible Yucky Yolks books like a life preserver. And all the while, her Balloon Mark would spasm and jitter and drive the most peaceful pegasus in Ponyville into a raging froth...

There was a trash can just a short distance from where they sat. Fluttershy fluttered over and dropped in the entire collection with nothing more than a mildly regretful sigh. She came back with a pleasantly amazed expression, ears pricked high as though listening for something.

“Wow!” She held her hoof to her head, as if feeling for headache pains that had just vanished. “I... I actually feel a little funnier already, after doing that! Just a smidgen of a smidgen funnier... but still!” She smiled at her human friend. “And I totally understand why you had me do that, Lero! Nopony actually enjoyed Yucky Yolks’ jokes, did they?”

Lero shook his head with a smile. “It’s just like baking a cake, Fluttershy: the very first step is to start with the right ingredients.”

The human could feel enthusiasm lighting in his heart. True, they’d only just begun, but so far, things were going GREAT! Unlike the others, Fluttershy was willing to cooperate with him right off the bat! And the fact that (at least for the moment) Fluttershy’s whole shtick was telling jokes... that was a bonus in itself!

Humor, by its very nature, would be a FUN subject to research. Lero would be learning new jokes AND a few things about delivering stronger punchlines right along with Fluttershy. Certainly a good skill to brush up on! But more importantly, these were only jokes, nothing more. Jokes weren’t something that came with things like glufferflorks or savage animals attached to them, right?

Yes, actually training Fluttershy to be a legitimately hilarious girl would be a brain puzzle worthy of Einstein, Edison, and Mel Brooks... but compared to the three Swapped Ponies who’d come before her, this’d be a brisk jog in the park. Lero belatedly hoped he wasn’t tempting fate, but decided that knocking on wood might just get fate’s attention...

“Uh... hey guys...”

Fluttershy and Lero turned.

“Hi, Dashie!” Fluttershy greeted.

Once again, Rainbow Dash was wearing that baseball cap, and the whistle around her neck. She took a step forward, but flinched, as though scared of coming any closer. It reminded Lero of seeing Fluttershy, in her un-Swapped state, trying to talk to other ponies… though she’d never hesitated to come right up to him.

“Hello, Dash,” said Lero, keeping anxiety from entering his voice. “What can we do for you?”

Dash’s lip quivered, the way ‘old Fluttershy’ would have quavered at the idea of intruding, even on her friends. “I... I see you’re together and... and it looks like you’re having fun! Can I... can I have fun with you too? Please?”

Fluttershy looked up at Lero. Can Dash come and be with us? Her eyes asked. Or would that disrupt our lessons? The yellow pegasus seemed willing to go with whatever Lero thought best.

She’s a jinx, she’s bad luck, she’s a cruel trick Starswirl laid for me! She doesn’t love me; inside she’s nothing but Fluttershy in a different skin, and Fluttershy only loves animals, she doesn’t even love ponies, much less people...

And then an older memory resurfaced in Lero’s head:

“But strictly speaking, Dash hasn't forgotten who you are,” Twilight told him. “She does know you, and she’s still your friend... but now, it’s only to the same extent that Fluttershy was your friend.”

“And now I feel stupid for not having formed a much closer bond with Fluttershy,” he, himself, said.

Raw as Lero’s feelings still were... he still remembered the heartfelt tears in Dash’s eyes when she’d told him, “You’re one of the most INCREDIBLE friends I’ve ever had!” Looking into her eyes now... that moment clearly still pained her, just as it pained him. Could he really deny sweet, lovable Fluttershy the chance to mend fences and make up for a mistake? Maybe... maybe this could be his chance to develop that closer bond with the Element of Kindness, as he should’ve done long before the Swap.

“Sure thing,” he told Rainbow Dash. “Come on over here and join us.”

“Yay!” Fluttershy enthused, giving Dash an eager hug and pulling her towards them. Seems like there was still plenty of Pinkie in her.

Dash’s thankful, happy smile made him feel like a bigger man. She came to seat herself by his right side, with Fluttershy seated to his left.

“Thank you, Lero! You won’t even know I’m here!” Rainbow promised.

He chuckled. “Oh, don’t be that way! You’re too bright and colorful to fade into the background on me! What’s the fun in that?”

“Yeah!” agreed Fluttershy, with a happy flap of wings. “It’s funner to take part in things! Here! Have a cupcake!”

She pushed the box of cupcakes over towards Rainbow Dash, who took a blue one. It didn’t quite match her coat. Lero decided he’d have a green.

“Hey, Dash?” Fluttershy asked as they chewed. “I’m pleased as punch that you’re here with us... but who’s watching your animals right now?”

“No one.” Dash told her. “They’re all by themselves in the cottage.”

“Oh! Uh... and you’re sure they’ll won’t get unruly with you gone?” Fluttershy asked, sounding ever-so-slightly like her old self. “Or maybe try to escape?”

With a last swallow of cupcake, the rainbow-maned pegasus flashed a wicked-looking grin at Fluttershy. “They’re free to leave any time they want! And they know what they’re in for if they do. Be braver of them than I’d give the little cowards credit for!”

That grin... it was pure old-school Rainbow Dash! He could SEE her old Wonderbolt-loving self through it. To Lero, it came as a sharp reminder that, in spite of everything, this wasn’t simply Fluttershy-in-Rainbow’s-skin, the way he’d told Lyra. The remainder of Rainbow Dash’s soul... the part missing from Rarity... was still there. Even if it wasn’t the part that loved him, Lero felt a bit happier still for letting Rainbow join him and Fluttershy on this lesson.

Speaking of which...

“Fluttershy, I think it’s high time we get started.”

“YAY!” she squealed, and some startled birds flew off. Heh, Pinkie bubbling up again, he couldn’t help but smile.

“So I want to begin by laying out everything you can honestly expect of me, as a teacher... and what you can’t,” he said, sitting up straighter on his blanket. Both the mares gave him their full attention.

“Now, Fluttershy, I know you have a lot of high expectations of me, I know that I’ve been doing well at helping other ponies... in situations comparatively similar to your own. It’s been rough for a lot of ponies lately.”

Fluttershy grinned, watching Dash and Lero each pass a nod to each other.

“But let me be clear: I’m not a fairy godmother, I’m not a genie, and I’m not Discord. I can’t wave my wand or snap my fingers and poof! The problem’s gone. When I went to help Rainbow Dash, I wasn’t going as some crackerjack lion tamer. I knew next to NOTHING about animal care. Everything I know now about tending to animals, I learned on the fly. I’ve been helping her for... three weeks? Four?”

“Something like that, yeah,” Rainbow Dash agreed.

“Either way, it took a month, give or take, and it’s only been recently that she’s gotten her cottage in order again.”

He looked Fluttershy square in the eye.

“By the same token, Fluttershy, please keep in mind: I’m not some five-star humorist. I know a couple of jokes. I can make a witty observation, here and there. But a TRULY top-of-the-line comedian can keep you in stitches all night long. And I’m really not that guy.”

Fluttershy’s expression was unwaveringly attentive as he spoke.

“That said, let me tell you what I can do for you,” Lero went on. “I can listen. I can offer an outside opinion. I can distract a mob while you run away, if you try telling any more Yucky Yolks jokes. And you’ll find that I am utterly, unrelentingly devoted to helping you. So if you accept my assistance...”

“If I accept?” Fluttershy interrupted. “There’s no ‘if’ to it, Lero. I’ve already accepted you. I’d rather have the guy who’s with me now and willing to help than the five-star comedian who isn’t here and wouldn’t have time for me anyway.”

And she leaned over, giving Lero a small, sweet nuzzle. “You helped Rainbow Dash get her critters under control without being an animal expert. You helped fix Rarity’s weather problems, and humans can’t even affect the weather. You solved Pinkie’s farming issues, and you’ve never farmed a day in your life outside of the times she hired you when you were looking for odd jobs back when you first came here.”

She pulled away.

“But in my case, you have something you’ve never had with my other friends: a leg up! You can TELL good jokes from bad jokes, you HAVE a working sense of humor... while mine’s on the fritz, and yes, of course I know it. Who could miss the groans or the pained looks instead of laughter? With you on my side, my funny bone’s as good as fixed!” She nodded firmly, then scrunched her eyebrows in thought. She patted her left shin with her right hoof. Then her right shin with her left hoof. “Which one’s the funniest bone, anyway?”

Yesterday, Spike had made Lero feel like some faithless, adulterous lech. Today, here and now, Fluttershy was making him feel like some glorious hero. Glancing at Rainbow Dash, he saw deep admiration in her eyes as well... and decided he’d go ahead and feel good about himself again. Plus, he knew this one. “Gotta be the humerus.”

Fluttershy laughed. “See? And believe me; I can be patient,” Fluttershy promised him. “I don’t care whether it takes a month or a decade, I want ponies laughing at me again! The way they USED to laugh!”

“Not at you, ‘Shy, with you.”

“Yes! You’re absolutely right!”

“Well then, let’s get to it!” said Lero, opening the first page of How To Be Funny.

* * *

“Introduction,” the human read aloud. “Folks, I know you’re raring for me to show you the funny, but I’d like us to take five minutes to be serious about humor. Why does it exist in the first place?”

“Humor exists because there’s too much in the world worth laughing about!” Fluttershy interjected.

“Shhh!” said Rainbow Dash.

“Look at the animal kingdom: the birds, the beasts, the fish, the bugs... every creature the government can’t get to pay taxes. Lucky ducks. Study zoology for long enough, and you’ll see that several species share certain traits in common with us higher life forms.”

Rainbow Dash was definitely listening in with more interest.

“The birds and the bees construct homes for themselves in the forms of nests and hives. Primates use tools. And any pet owner will tell you how their little darlings show a full range of emotions, ranging from joy, loneliness, love, fear... all emotions except one: humor. Ask yourself: ‘Self, when was the last time I saw a coyote chortle? A salamander snicker? A giraffe guffaw? A walrus whoop?’”

“Hyenas laugh!” Fluttershy pointed out.

“And for all you chuckleheads who bring up the hyena, let me put it to you straight: even if it sounds like laughter to our ears, it isn’t in Hyena-ese.”

The bafflement on Fluttershy’s face gave Rainbow Dash the giggles. “It’s true!” she told her pink-maned friend. “When hyenas ‘laugh,’ it’s not because they find something funny. They usually do it just before they’re about to attack or BE attacked by lions or other hyenas.”

“Well, you’re the animal expert,” Fluttershy conceded with a pout. She stuck her tongue out at Lero as she saw him visibly restraining a laugh of his own.

“Dogs and cats don’t laugh,” Lero continued. “Neither do koalas or buzzards or badgers or porpoises or rabbits. Which is something of a blessing, when you come right down to it. Can you imagine reaching out to pet a bunny, and he suddenly bursts out into hoots at how silly he finds your face?”

A dark memory resurfaced in Lero’s mind; he could see it on Dash’s face as well. While it was true that Angel Bunny had never voiced a laugh, the nasty rabbit had loved to sneer cruelly at them, which had always felt as good as bullying laughter. Really, it was amazing how expressive the faces of most Equestrian animals were... especially compared with their counterparts from Earth.

“Laughter is the exclusive dominion of sapient beings: ponies, zebras, donkeys, griffons, minotaurs and all the rest. Why is this? What evolutionary benefit did laughter give the nomadic pony herds of antiquity? Surely the wandering herds could not laugh away the predators hounding them across the prehistoric savannah!”

“They could giggle at the ghosties!” At this point, Lero was beginning to believe that Fluttershy might’ve inherited a bit of the old Pinkie Pie’s hyperactivity, but he let it pass.

“Well, according to one school of thought, (the research team of Waxwing, Tallyho, and Raspberry Ripple) laughter is a crucial survival trait. They claim that humor evolved primarily as a way for the sapient brain to detect mistakes, faulty beliefs, and illogical reasoning. Humor is the very mechanism that permits sapient brains to excel at practical problem solving. Thus, even in our earliest times, humor had an intrinsic survival value because it allowed sapients to recognize and break away from rigid, inflexible, faulted thinking. Just think where bumblebees might be today if they had the capacity to laugh at their queens!”

“The queen’zzzz a big fat joke!” Rainbow suddenly burst out, adding a funny bee-like buzz to her voice. “Boo! Hizzzz!”

The other pegasus started cracking up, then was both shocked and delighted when Rainbow reached out and ruffled her mane in a noogie. So was Lero.

“So when you laugh, know that you are part of an exclusive club, the club at the top of the food chain, the superior species.”

The book’s introduction had been like a pep talk to Fluttershy. She looked at him with shining eyes, clearly feeling a lot more superior than she had been before.

* * *

Rather than be interrupted every paragraph, Lero instead decided he’d skip ahead to one of the exercises.

“Exercise #1: Inventiveness. Step 1: grab a pencil, some paper, a timer and a set of objects. The objects can be anything; paper clips, bookmarks, house keys, whatever you have lying around your home,” he recited. “Step 2: Select an object to be Item A.”

Lero had already brought pencils, a clipboard, and paper with him. He turned out his pockets while the girls frisked through their saddlebags, coming up with a pile of odds and ends. They looked through it a bit... but what ended up catching Lero’s eye was a long yellow feather that had come loose from Fluttershy’s wing.

“Could we use this?” he asked, pointing at the feather.

“Sure!” said Fluttershy. “That can be Item A.”

He almost reached for the yellow feather, but then the sight of Rainbow Dash brought up a thought.

“You, uh, don’t mind if I grab this, right, Fluttershy?” he asked, anxiously fingering the cyan feather he wore by his ear: the feather which Dash and Fluttershy (and everyone else not on Discord’s exemption list) saw as an enchanted white rose. “I know there’s a lot of romantic significance when a guy accepts a feather from a pegasus girl…”

The mares’ jaws both hung, before they both burst out laughing.

“Aw, Lero, you really ARE everything Rarity says you are,” Fluttershy gasped, grinning even as she got herself back under control. “No, no, the feather’s yours. Treat it like any old pigeon feather. It’s not like you’re braiding it in your mane or anything!”

“Right,” he agreed, hiding a moment’s unease as he held the feather.

“I’m impressed,” Rainbow Dash said. “I mean, you knowing about an old pegasus tradition like that, when everypony in your herd’s a unicorn.”

“I think Lero’s getting ready for something, huh, Dash?” Fluttershy nudged her fellow pegasus’ side and winked at the tease to their human friend. Dash’s cheeks went pink, and Lero fought down another urge to squirm.

“I read about it in one of Twilight’s books,” he muttered quickly, before getting back to the lesson. “Step 3: set a time limit of no greater than three minutes and write up a list of as many uses for the selected object as possible. The catch is: you MUST disregard this object’s intended use, (example: toothbrushes being used for brushing teeth.) Practicality and plausibility is not an issue.”

“I say we give ourselves the full three minutes, since this is our first try,” Lero suggested. “Dash, would you watch the clock for us?”

“I’m on it,” said Rainbow Dash, and Lero took off his wristwatch and handed it to her.

“Then I’ll write the list,” he said, bringing up the clipboard. “Ready when you are!”

“Gimme a minute,” Dash muttered, poking at Lero’s watch with a primary feather. “Who makes teeny little buttons like these anyway? Fingers, sheesh, showing off… Okay... go!”

“Well, feathers are used for flying, so that’s what we disregard.” Fluttershy said. “What else can a feather be used for?”

About twenty or so seconds passed with not a sound from any of them. For no particular reason, all three of them seemed to be drawing blanks, as though they were trying to remember yesterday’s breakfast.

“Quills!” Dash suddenly spoke, eyeing the pencil in Lero’s hand.

“Quills? Oh yes, very good!” He scratched the word on the paper.

“They’re good for stuffing pillows,” Fluttershy remembered.

“Arrows.” Seeing the others’ puzzled looks, Lero explained; “You know... bows and arrows? They always add a little bit of feather to the end of the arrow, though I don’t remember off the top of my head what that’s called.”

“Fletching?” said Rainbow Dash.

“Yeah, that’s it!”

Another stretch of silence passed. How’s all this supposed to make us funnier? Lero wondered to himself. And then the memory of an old cartoon cliché came back to mind: a bare foot being brushed by the tip of a feather.

“You could... tickle someone with a feather,” Lero said, smiling.

“Ooh! That counts,” Fluttershy agreed. “You could also use it for a feather duster.”

“A feather duster from one single feather?” asked Rainbow Dash.

“Well, if it’s a really SMALL countertop!” Fluttershy countered.

Lero nodded in agreement with Fluttershy. “Remember, Dash: practicality and plausibility are not an issue!”

“You could... um, you could... use it as a unit of measurement!” Fluttershy proposed, excitedly. “Like, ‘My mane is 20 feathers long!’”

She grinned to see Lero write that down. Now the ideas were coming in fast and quick.

“Use it as a spoon and stir the cream in your coffee with it,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Be good as a really, really quick candle,” Fluttershy giggled. “Like... if you only need two seconds’ worth of light. Or you could use it to light the fuse on a cannon!”

“Be terrific if you needed to vomit,” Lero said.

“What?” Both the pegasi looked sickened.

“Okay, okay, let me paint you a picture. Let’s say you take accidentally drink some poison and you NEED to throw it up, right away! Not to worry! Just pull out the old poison ejector,” He picked up the yellow feather, “stick it in your mouth and tickle your uvula with it and... PRESTO!”

“Eewwwww,” Fluttershy laughed.

“That’s SO gross!” Rainbow Dash snickered. “Ooh, I know. Cleaning out the gunk in your eye in the morning!”

“Stick it in your ear, and it’d be a decent earwax remover.” said Fluttershy.

“Dye it the right color, and glue it over your upper lip, and you’d have a handsome mustache,” said Lero, bringing the feather against his own mustache, so that it sort of looked like he’d grown a blonde handlebar.

Rainbow Dash checked the wristwatch. “Shoot! Time’s up,” she announced, regretfully.

Looking at the cyan pegasus, Lero thought up another usage an instant too late: braid it in your hair. Quietly, he snuck that in on the list.

“That was FUN!” Fluttershy said, breathlessly. “So what now? Did we earn points?”

“Step 4,” Lero read from Harlequin Aid’s book. “Select a second object to be Item B and repeat the process, making a new list.”

“How about a cupcake?” Fluttershy suggested immediately, holding one up from the box. “Cupcakes are GREAT!”

The other two agreed, and soon they were spilling out ideas almost faster than Lero could write them down.

“Ant bait!” exclaimed Rainbow Dash.

“Paperweight,” said Lero.

“Food fight ammunition!”

“Clothing!” The other two gave Fluttershy a look.

“Clothing? How would you WEAR a cupcake?” Dash asked.

“Give it to Applejack. SHE’LL make it wearable.”

They ALL chortled at that. None of them could help themselves! Through his laughter, Lero watched the yellow mare’s face. Fluttershy did not merely smile. Seeing them laugh, being able to join in their laughter, all from a genuinely funny and original joke seemed to fill Fluttershy up with nourishment. She honestly looked healthier than she had a second ago. And her Balloon Mark gave a jolt of excitement.

“More! More!” the yellow mare chirped. “I can think of more!”

So they all came up with more things you could do with a cupcake besides eat it, and when time ran out again, Fluttershy cried, ”Let’s do this again!”

Lero checked the book again. “Actually, there’s one more step. Step 5: Write a list thinking up as many ways as possible to combine Item A with Item B in a useful manner.”

“Quillcushion!” Fluttershy squealed, before Rainbow Dash even began taking time. “Instead of a pincushion, you use the cupcakes to store your quills in."

“You could write your letters in frosting,” Lero said. “Ink is SO last season.”

“Get enough feathers, then have either Twilight or Discord cast a spell, and you’d have a flying cupcake,” Rainbow Dash said.

It was like he wasn’t even an adult anymore; he was back to being a little kid. No beard, no job, free from the demanding pressures of sex and romance. Just a wet-behind-the-ears goofball, having fun with his classmates, letting his imagination run wild in the playground. Anything was possible, anything could work, as long as you could dream it, it didn’t matter how silly it was. Grownups might call it insensible, but grownups were lame.

At Fluttershy’s insistence, they repeated the exercise two more times, from Step 1 to 5, finding dozens upon dozens of bizarre uses for whistles, socks, empty cupcake boxes and rubber bands, each more laughable than the last.

“Comedians must be able to see everything in the world from an outside-the-box perspective; both to maintain originality and surprise.” Lero read. “The ability to combine at least two elements in funny and unusual ways is the foundation of everything from quick one-liners to the feature-length comedy films. For example: ‘What do you get when you cross poison ivy with a four-leaf clover?’”

“Um... itchy luck?” Fluttershy guessed.

“A rash of good fortune!” Lero read.

Fluttershy fell into giggles, before seeming to wilt a bit. “I should’ve thought of that...” she lamented.

Lero continued narrating the first chapter, which focused on surprise. The book could not overemphasize how absolutely vital surprise was in comedy: “Ultimately, we NEVER laugh UNLESS there’s surprise. Without that all-important swerve, the most clever wordplay becomes nothing more than audacious commentary. In order to properly set up a surprise, you have to mislead the audience; a verbal sleight-of-hoof. Get the whole theater staring at your left foreleg, when the dove’s up your right sleeve. Make them assume they know how things will end.”

Fluttershy ended up borrowing Lero’s clipboard and taking notes for herself as attentively as Twilight Sparkle would have; writing in smaller letters as the book went on, warning strongly against what it called ‘telegraphing the punchline.’

“For example, which is a funnier version of this joke?

VERSION ONE: September is the month where millions of smiling faces, radiating happiness, turn towards school... waving as their foals go inside!

VERSION TWO: For parents, September is a month of celebration... especially on the day school starts!”

“The first version,” both mares agreed.

“If you said the first version, then you’re right. But now ask yourself: what fatal flaw did Version Two make? The answer is in the first two words: ‘For parents.’ Version One surprised us by getting us to think it was taken from the foals’ point-of-view, up until the reveal at the end. Version Two tells us right away this joke was taken from the parents’ point-of-view, telegraphing what the surprise is going to be. You’d do just as well to reveal who the murderer is on the first page of a whodunit.”

Lero nearly laughed out loud at how much more impressed this tip left Fluttershy than Rainbow Dash.

“But even the most well-written jokes can fall flat if the comedian telegraphs the punchline non-verbally. Think of it like a poker game. When you’re sharing a joke, does your body give a ‘tell?’ Do your eyes blink when you’re nearing the punchline? Maybe a hoof of yours taps the floor?”

Lero decided to test and see. He called Fluttershy over, whispered a couple one-liners in her ear to memorize, (one thing to be said in Fluttershy’s favor: she had a near-photographic memory for new jokes), and had her perform them for Rainbow Dash.

“I have a condition that renders me unable to diet: I get hungry! An onion just told me a joke: I don’t know whether to laugh or cry! I broke up with my gym the other day: we just weren’t working out.”

Rainbow Dash did chuckle a bit, but she gave Fluttershy a look and said, “When you get near the punchline, your tail flicks and you grin extra-big.”

“I do?” asked Fluttershy.

“Yeah, I noticed it too,” said Lero.

For the rest of their time together, Lero and Rainbow Dash focused on trying to break Fluttershy’s habit of tail-twitching and over-grinning. At times, the yellow pegasus got disheartened, because she kept doing it unconsciously, but by the time they all decided it was time to call it quits for the day, they had gotten her to diminish the habit by a marginal amount... and it DID help with her joke delivery.

* * *

“So... tomorrow at the same time?” Lero asked Fluttershy, once the lesson was finished.

“You bet,” said Fluttershy, clutching her stack of notes, happy as a dog coming back from a long, satisfying walk. “I’ll be there!”

When the yellow pegasus flew off, Lero turned to Rainbow Dash. “Dash, I’d like to thank you for being here. Your presence really helped.”

It had honestly surprised Lero how handy Dash had proven to be! At first, she beamed at the compliment, but then some of her shyness seemed to reassert itself as he folded the blanket back up.

“Would you like me to come by tomorrow too? Y’know, when you’re training Fluttershy...”

He looked up. She’d lowered the brim of her cap in such a way that it hid her right eye... similarly to the old Fluttershy’s trick of peeking shyly at others from behind her curtain of pink mane.

“Aw, you don’t have to go out of your way...”

“No! I’d love to come!” Dash insisted, raising her head and showing both eyes. “I mean... you helped Pinkie Pie get through her issues, and she was able to help me with the glufferflork. Now you’re helping Fluttershy with her problems, and I wanna be there for you. And Fluttershy.”

“That... that...” He gave into the urge to hug her. How could he have forgotten, even briefly, what a sweet-natured girl Rainbow Dash was? And, hell, Fluttershy, too. “That would be awesome of you, Dash. Alright, then! I’ll see you tomorrow at three-fifteen.”

He gave Rainbow Dash another hug, placed his comedy books back into his backpack with the blanket, slung the backpack over his shoulder and turned to return home.

“W...wait!”

He stopped to look back at Dash.

“Lero would you, um... like to go to a movie with me?” she asked, a hoof raised up to the brim of her cap, stopping just short of tilting it back over her eyes.

“A movie? Which movie? When?”

“W... whichever one you like,” she answered. “I didn’t pick one. And, uh, right now, I guess. Unless now’s a bad time.”

The look in her eyes... it was almost an even match for the one she’d given him at the doorstep of his home. The one she’d given him just before he’d shut the door in her face. ‘It’s the same sort of look your girls give you!‘ Spike had sneered.

Mentally, he compared the face Rainbow Dash was giving him, setting it next to that of Lyra’s at her most amorous, especially back when they’d first begun dating. There were... MANY similarities. But still, Lero didn’t want to jump to conclusions. After all, Rainbow Dash had said what she’d said, that day at the cottage. And girls weren’t flighty creatures; they didn’t change their minds overnight. Especially not when it came to an important matter like love.

All the same, Lero’s curiosity had been sparked. The same curiosity which had led him to ask Cloudchaser and Flitter why a unicorn was their boss, the same curiosity which had inspired him to bring a Sweet Apple Acres apple pie to the Carousel Boutique, just to see what Applejack’s reaction would be, led Lero to say, “Alright, sure.”

* * *

Lero and Rainbow Dash stood outside the movie theater and looked at all the movie posters. It had been ages since he’d last seen a film, so all the titles were unfamiliar to him.

House Of No Escape: an obvious horror film whose poster showed a scary-looking house at night.

Youthful Discretions: seemed to be a romance flick between a herd of teenage pegasi.

Eyewitness: a courtroom drama that seemed to be the sort of thing Big Mac would’ve enjoyed. The poster showed a nervous-looking stallion taking the witness stand.

Woogums And Noogums: This one appeared to be some kind of family-friendly film with live-action animals; a kitten and a bear cub.

Dream Engagement: It showed two grooms and five brides, getting married to each other.

X-bionic: A science fiction piece. It showed what seemed to be interplanetary colonists caught in a shootout against robots.

I’m Too Weird!: A kid’s animated film. It showed a dopey goofball of a griffin chick.

Our Unicorn Nephew: Showed a flustered-looking pair of Earth ponies opening the door to find their titular unicorn nephew.

Dear Mister Edelweiss: A very heavy-looking dramatic piece. Showed a shriveled, but smiling old Earth pony stallion on his deathbed. The sun shone in on him through a window.

A Nightmare Beyond Understanding: Another horror film, showing a close-up of an extremely terrified eye.

She Is Not Evil: All it showed was an unquestionably ominous-looking pegasus mare, with scarily outstretched wings. Hard to tell which genre this movie was even supposed to be.

Strongest Samurai: This poster promised a lot of fun; an Earth pony mare in samurai armor with a katana clenched in her mouth, backed into a blood-spattered corner!

Lero looked to Rainbow Dash. “What do you think about Woogums And Noogums?” he asked her, charitably. Woogums And Noogums looked like the sort of movie that might not even have any sapient creatures as actors. Once, on Earth, he had sat through part of an old movie called The Adventures Of Milo And Otis while channel-surfing; and Woogums And Noogums gave off that same sort of vibe.

She looked conflicted, almost stepping towards it, as though she could pull the kitten and bear cub straight out of the poster and cuddle them. But then he saw her expression harden at the animals, as though they were two of her own.

“Too uncool! I have enough namby-pamby animal stuff in my own real life, I’m in the mood for something that’ll get my blood pumping!” It was almost like listening to the old Rainbow Dash talk down the old Fluttershy.

“...That is, unless you really WANT to see Woogums and Noogums...”

“No, I don’t,” Lero said, grinning wide. Honestly, the only reason he’d suggested the animal movie in the first place was because he was afraid that some of the movies he really wanted to see would be too intense for a girl with Fluttershy’s sensitive sensibilities. He reconsidered the movie posters.

“Been a while since I’ve seen a good sci-fi flick. X-bionic okay with you?”

“Sure,” said Rainbow Dash. “It looks awesome!”

When they got to the ticket booth, Lero reached for his wallet, but Dash was quicker. With a fast flick of her wing, she brushed her feathers against his arm, gently pushing his wallet away. She smiled nervously as she pulled out her wallet and paid for the tickets. Interesting...

Inside, they waited in line at the concession stand to buy popcorn and soft drinks. Lero again reached for his wallet... and again felt the soft pressure of Dash’s feathers against his arm.

“Um... I can get this for you,” Rainbow offered quickly.

“Are you sure?” Lero asked her.

“It’s really no problem. Honest!” she told him, with a powerful blush. Very interesting...

They entered the theater, and took their seats.

“I really hope you like this movie, Lero,” she said, as anxiously as if she, herself, had produced, written, and starred in this film.

He reached out and gave her a friendly pat. “Even if we don’t, even if it’s corny... we can always make fun of it, afterwards. That’s always been the beautiful thing about movies, so it’s a win-win.”

As she smiled, the theater darkened and the first of the previews started. They sat through them, sharing the popcorn bucket between them. Every now and again, Lero and Rainbow Dash would reach for more popcorn at the same time, and as she bent her head, her lips would just happen to brush against the back of his hand. She’d pull away, blushing, but Lero would smile and say nothing.

Soon enough, X-bionic began.

* * *

INT. BIONIC BARRACKS - DAY

A LARGE HERD OF BIONICS encircle QT-3.14, who stands on a table, whipping up her fellow BIONICS into a furious, bloodthirsty frenzy.

QT-3.14
Ponies are MEAT SACKS and should be MELTED DOWN like SCRAP! Today is the day the Bionics take control! Atomize every pony on this pathetic planetoid! And let’s throw The Autocrat straight into the heart of the Liquitron!

BIONIC #1
(wild, murderous)
Affirmative! Affirmative!

BIONIC #2
Grind pony flesh! Grind pony bones!

INT. CORRIDOR #20-G - DAY

ZAP! ZAP!

Plasma beams are blasted towards the screaming PONIES, ricocheting everywhere; occasionally, a good shot silences one of their screams. Havoc has been unleashed.

BUBBLEGUM and TOFFEE CUBE duck behind a steel crate, as QT-3.14 roars above the crossfire, her steely lobster-hooves clacking angrily.

QT-3.14
Vaporize the ponies! Atomize the ponies!

QT-3.14 aims a stolen Electrorifle at a pair of Earth ponies. With a BZZZZ-ZOWIE they’re flung back against the wall, instantaneously reduced to flash-fried ash.

Angle On: Bubblegum and Toffee Cube, cowering behind their steel crate as enemy fire whizzes overheard.

BUBBLEGUM
I told you the Bionics were gonna revolt. Didn’t I tell you, Toffee Cube?! But you didn’t believe me!

TOFFEE CUBE
Yes, yes, you were right and I was wrong, rub it in my muzzle later! We gotta make tracks!

BUBBLEGUM
Got that right! Our safest bet would be to head to Substation J.

Their horns shine, and both mares draw their Laser Shooters out of their Space Suits.

BUBBLEGUM
Ready?

TOFFEE CUBE
As I’ll ever be.

BUBBLEGUM + TOFFEE CUBE
GO TIME!

They jump to all fours, spring out from behind the steel crate, galloping down the hallway while firing their Laser Shooters behind their backs. Miraculously, they manage to hit a few Bionics, which go down in sputtering spurts of sparks.

The door to the adjacent corridor, (#20-H) opens for both the ponies, who race on in...

INT. CORRIDOR #20-H - CONTINUOUS

The moment the door’s shut behind them, Bubblegum spins around, and fires a heat blast at the Auto-Door, welding it shut.

BUBBLEGUM
There! I’ve fried the Auto-Door’s openation circuitry.

TOFFEE CUBE
Bubblegum! You’re BLEEDING!

They look down at Bubblegum’s wounded right hind leg, oozing blood.

BUBBLEGUM
Heh... one of ‘em got me. And healing spells haven’t ever been my forte.

Close-up on Bubblegum’s injured leg as she attempts a healing spell. For a second, her wound closes feebly, before bursting back open like an overstuffed suitcase. Blood gushes out worse than ever.

BUBBLEGUM
GAAHH!!!!

She takes several deep breaths, then looks hopefully at Toffee Cube.

TOFFEE CUBE
Don’t look at me, I spent too much time learning techno-magery to be a medic!

The POUNDING of metallic hooves and the WHINE of electronic and plasmatic gun blasts reverberate against the other side of the welded door.

QT-3.14
Bash down the door! Atomize all ponies! Puny pony meat cannot stand against the strength of chrome!

The attacks upon the door redouble. It starts to buckle.

Toffee Cube levitates her injured friend upon her back, and gallops towards the next room.

INT. CAFETERIA - DAY

Chaos and carnage all around. More Bionics are battling against their pony masters; this time against soldiers. BULLETS PING and SPATTER everywhere, as Toffee ducks to a crouch, trying to sidle along the wall with Bubblegum on her back, doing her best not to be seen by any of the fighters.

Just then, COMPU-SPRITE flutters out of Toffee Cube’s Space Saddlebags.

COMPUTO-SPRITE
Alert! Beep-beep! Alert!

TOFFEE CUBE
Ergh!

BUBBLEGUM
(from Toffee’s back)
Not NOW, Computo-Sprite!

COMPUTO-SPRITE
But it’s beep-beep-beep, Super-Duper, Priority-One, Code-Purple Important!

SOLDIER #1
AAAAAAGGGGHHH!!

They watch a SOLDIER get blasted over a dozen times by plasma fire and his head flies off. Toffee races around the corner to where it’s the tiniest bit safer.

COMPUTO-SPRITE
Beep! The Bionics have -- Beep! -- destroyed the Air-O-Mizer 4000! Beep!

Another pony soldier crawls across the floor, not quite able to hold his guts in. A Bionic brings his chromium hoof down upon his skull.

BUBBLEGUM
But without the Air-O-Mizer 4000, no more new air will be generated for the entire planetoid!

TOFFEE CUBE
(face darkening)
And Bionics are machines, and machines don’t NEED to breathe, do they?!

Her front hoof comes down on something squishy. She lifts her hoof to see it’s the corpse of TINFOIL, his throat ripped open.

BUBBLEGUM!
No! They got Tinfoil!

TOFFEE CUBE
Ssh! Bubblegum!

BUBBLEGUM
(still sobbing, but softer)
Best partner at Space Whitewater Rafting EVER...

They duck into the kitchen, as debris rains around them.

INT. KITCHEN - DAY

They hide behind a giant FOOD DISPENSER, large enough to conceal five ponies standing snout-to-tail.

TOFFEE CUBE
Computo-Sprite! How much air do we have left?!

COMPUTO-SPRITE
Beep-beep! Computing! Computing! Computing! Beep! Computations indicate that six hours’ worth of air remains on this planetoid.

TOFFEE CUBE
(thinking it over)
Six hours? If we’re careful, that might be enough for us to sneak our way out to the escape shuttles!

At that moment, scary-looking GREEN GAS seeps out from the air vents, overhead.

* * *

“...And the best bit where the head robot held the gun to that one pegasus’ head and was all, ‘How many ponies are in Substation J?’ And the pegasus was like, ‘A thousand, all waiting to pound you into sheet metal!’ And then the head robot was all, ‘No. There’s less than twenty.’ BLAM! ‘And now one less outside as well.’”

He was on Rainbow Dash’s back again, soaring high above the rooftops.

“Nuh-uh!” said Rainbow Dash. “The best bit was where all the lizards were scrambling out of that hole, while the laser blast was ricocheting seventy bajillion times off all that glass before finally hitting that one robot!”

Lero laughed. “Well it’s still been a long time since I saw a really good sci-fi flick, but I have to admit this was a blast.”

“I gotta give you props, Lero; that movie was so deliciously cheesy, you could’ve melted it over a pizza pie!”

“And that acting! Would you like a huge ham to go with all that cheese, ma’am?”

“What’s ham?” she asked. “Is that a human thing?”

“Very human,” he told her.

It felt so good being up here, laughing and having a good time with Rainbow Dash again. He missed the whoosh of a pegasus’ wings catching the air. The cap on her head had flown off her head at one point, but Dash had circled around and caught it, and Lero had put it back on her head at a tighter notch. She’d thanked him.

All too soon, she’d landed on his house’s front lawn, and he had to dismount. “Thank you, Rainbow Dash,” he said. “I had a lot of fun with you today.”

This was no understatement. Privately he was amazed. Not a thing had gone wrong. Not one! So much for Rainbow Dash being jinxed.

“Me too,” she said, with an uplifted smile. “I, uh... if I were to take you out to have some more fun with me, some other day... would that be cool with you?”

“It’d be very cool with me,” Lero told her.

“Awesome!” She licked her lips. “Well, I... guess I ought to skedaddle.”

But instead of turning around, Rainbow Dash stood on the doorstep, licking her lips again, giving him a prolonged gaze, as though trying to think of something else to say.

Or maybe she’s thinking of kissing you! Spoke a voice in Lero’s head that sounded very much like Spike.

But if that were the case... Rainbow Dash must’ve decided that a first date was too early for that sort of thing.

“But before I go,” the pegasus said, “Could I borrow one of those comedy books of yours? I think I’d like to read it over at home. Y’know, cuz we’re having our next comedy lesson with Fluttershy tomorrow, and I want to be prepared.”

“You’re a regular Twilight Sparkle,” he chuckled, pulling A Study Of Humor from his bag and placing it in her saddlebag for her.

“Just pull that giant star off her flank, put it on mine, and call me an egghead, then!” she laughed, before saluting him with a wingtip and flying off.

Well, that’d be ONE way of bringing you home, Dash, he thought to himself, wryly.

* * *

That night, Lero had another strange dream.

He was standing before a castle made of books. It wasn’t simply one of Twilight Sparkle’s crude book forts, something drawn from her childhood; It was an all-out castle, a fortress complete with turrets, parapets, battlements, bastions, and all the rest, as big as the one Princess Celestia lived in.

“Go away, Lero!” cried a voice from within. “Just go away...”

“No!” he thundered. “I’m not going away!”

He searched for a way in, but everywhere he looked it was a solid wall of books, stretching far away and too high to climb. Well, that wasn’t going to stop him! Using his hands, he began digging through the castle wall, ripping books free as easily as if they were stacked in a shelf. Texts and novels and great dusty tomes all fell around him as he dug his way into the side of the fortress, flinging books behind him as he went.

“You hate me!” It was Twilight Sparkle’s voice, a little lower-pitched than normal. “Everyone hates me! I caused all this mayhem with that spell! I’m a monster! I’m to blame!”

“Come on out of there!” he demanded, ripping out five encyclopedias at once and tossing them behind him. “I refuse to talk to you through a wall!”

There came another wail from within. “All I wanted was some help! All I want is to see that this unfinished spell gets finished! I can’t do it on my own! I can’t! And I’m so sorry! I could’ve helped you more, I could’ve DONE more, but instead...!”

“I am helping you!” he practically screamed. “All of us want this insane spell fixed!”

The tunnel seemed endless. He turned back and saw a dim light far behind him. He growled and dug, and dug with unstoppable energy. No guards came to attack him. None came to arrest him. And when he finally broke through to the castle’s inner sanctum, he found... he had tunneled right into the library he lived in.

Lero saw the cutie mark on the mare’s flank. The Star Mark belonged to Twilight Sparkle. But the pony who wore it was no unicorn. It was Celestia.

The white alicorn lay on the floor. She wore no crown or any other jewelry.

Celestia looked up from the book she was reading, tears streaking her eyes. He’d know that ancient book anywhere: it was Starswirl’s spell book. She’d even turned it to the final page, where that dreaded unfinished spell was written.

“Oh, Lero... can you ever find it in your heart to forgive me?”

He was too dumbstruck to answer. Celestia’s voice sounded like she was giving her best impersonation of her student. Her mane was flat and pink, with a two-tone purple streak in it, like a photo negative of Twilight’s.

“One moment, I just need to write this report.” The Swapped alicorn levitated a sheet of paper over, and began to dictate her own letter.

“Dear Princess Twilight Sparkle...”

* * *

“So you dreamt that I was the ruler of the sun while Celestia was my faithful student?” Twilight asked.

They were in the shower together, and Twilight’s human stallion was washing her mane and body, much to her delight. She purred at the feeling of more than just the water, warm against her sides. She always loved the way Lero's hands felt working her up to a lather... and he was good at shampooing her coat, too.

“Pretty much,” the human sighed, reaching forward to tilt the shower head down at a better angle. “It’s funny, really. Switcheroos and role reversals feature a LOT in my dreams these days.”

“How so?” Twilight asked.

Lero stalled. “I warn you: these are really WEIRD dreams.”

She turned to nuzzle the side of his smooth body. “Dreams are usually weird, anyway, Lero. You can tell me.”

Lero closed his eyes and reopened them. “I dream things like, oh, intelligent kangaroos are the dominant species, and ponies and humans are their pets. I dream that Equestria’s gender ratio is reversed. You and Dash and Rarity and Lyra are all stallions, and I’m the woman. No, really! I dream that you’re all human females, and I’m an honest-to-goodness stallion. I dream that ponies live on Earth, and humans are native to Equestria. I dream that guys are the ones who give birth. I dream that young prepubescent kids go to jobs, pay mortgages, send their parents to grade school and daycare, and read them stories at bedtime. I dream that you’re all dragons and Spike’s the pony. What do you suppose it all means, Twilight?”

“I think,” Twilight responded after a moment, “that it’s your brain’s way of dealing with the Swap,” she told him.

“Well, that clears everything up.” Smiling, he ran her fingers down her slender barrel and laid his hands on her flanks, caressing her cutie marks as he rinsed the suds out. “What about you, Twilight? Had any ‘swap‘ dreams of your own?”

Her mind cast backwards to a certain memory of two weeks ago. She took several seconds to dwell on it, before finally speaking. “Lero?” she asked, “The next time you’re going out on equilibrium business... would you please take me along?”

Lero’s fingers quit scrubbing her body. “Where did THIS come from, all of a sudden?”

“You’d asked about me having swap dreams,” Twilight said. “I once dreamt that the two of us swapped with each other, Lero. I got out of bed, dressed head to hooves in shoes, socks, underwear, shirt and pants, and went around town doing all sorts of stuff to save my friends, while you stayed naked in the library, reading books on psychology, old magic, and cutie marks.”

She looked up to see that he was considering her with fascination. “Now, these clothes you were wearing, were they fit for your body? Or for mine?”

“Mine, of course,” said Twilight. “I knew I was a mare, I knew I was a unicorn... but I believed your parents were mine, that I had come from Earth... everypony treated me like an alien, while you WEREN’T... you had to keep teaching me how to act properly among ponies, and you served me a big raw slab of cow meat for dinner, and I gobbled it up like fresh oats and kissed you after I was done eating.”

“How was our sex together?” her human then asked, with a saucy smile.

She smiled back. “Excellent as ever. Being undressed by you was exciting.” Unlike real life, it never stopped at just at kiss. Never in her dreams, and they both knew it.

“And how was the steak?"

She rolled her eyes. "Ridiculously delicious at the time, but I had to brush my teeth six times when I woke up before I could even think about breakfast, so no, I am not going to that griffon place in Canterlot, period."

He made a showy tut of disappointment. “So what do you suppose your dream means?”

“I checked a dream interpretation book, and from what I can gather from it, I'm probably dissatisfied with what I'm doing and fantasizing about living your life,” she told him.

He shut off the shower water, grabbed two towels off the rack, and handed one to her. After they both dried themselves, Lero lowered the towel from his face, looking rather cute with his mane all scruffy. “So what you’re saying is that you want to help me with equilibrium?”

She gave her human a very firm, “Yes.”

“But what about the Cure?” asked Lero.

She stomped a resounding, silencing hoof on the bathroom tile. “The Cure will come. I swear it will! But I’ve been thinking things over a lot. What happened between you and Spike helped put my situation in a new light. I’ve been behaving like a foal and not a grown mare.”

She almost hung her head... but then faced Lero strong and squarely. “For an entire month, I watched you go to Rainbow Dash’s cottage and come back home with all sorts of scratches and bites. But what’d I ever do to help?”

“I came right to you for healing spells, each night,” Lero reminded her.

His expression was so earnest, she couldn’t help smile back at him. Yeah, you did, Lero, she remembered. Unless Rarity spotted you first and beat me to the punch.

“But how many times did I come along with you to the cottage? My magic could’ve been a tremendous asset in getting those animals under control. Dash was… is... just as much MY herdmate as yours. Instead, what’d I do? I stayed at home and I let myself grow... grow ENVIOUS...”

And what a bitter taste that word left in Twilight’s mouth!

“...and I used the Cure as an excuse to build walls between us.”

Both of them gave a hard swallow.

“The other day,” Twilight continued, “I saw how deeply Spike regretted refusing to help you with Dash, because of jealousy. How distant and aloof he’s already become. And I realized that I, myself, did nothing different than Spike. Imagine if you, me, and Spike had all kept going to Dash’s cottage together, working on taming her animals as a team, rather than letting YOU do all the work. How much pain might’ve been avoided? How much quicker might the problem have been solved?!”

“You... you can’t hold it against yourself, you were busy trying to research the Cure...” he told her, almost nervously. “For all we knew, the answer might’ve been in the very next book, like you were always saying.”

That excuse sounded as limp and lame to Twilight’s ears as it must’ve sounded to Lero’s, all those times she, herself, had said it.

“I know that you’re just trying to spare my feelings, Lero...”

“Of course I am!” the human suddenly blurted. “You don’t react well to guilt! The last thing you need is more of it!”

Immediately after saying this, Lero clapped his hands over his mouth in horror. At first, Twilight only gaped at him. Then she did something which astonished her sweet human. She smiled, then cast a telekinetic field over Lero’s arms. With her magic, she gently pulled the hands from his mouth, opening his arms up, as she pressed herself against the front of his body. Then she closed his arms back around herself in a hug.

“And that brings me to another thing that’s been on my mind, Lero: I’m as good as a wife to you. Heck, I will be a wife of yours, one day, just like Rarity keeps reminding us. And no husband of mine deserves a weak wife who falls to pieces when the pressure’s on. Mares must be strong for their stallions! For their families!”

She pulled away from the hug.

“Besides, I’m tired of being the passive one. Tired of just reading, tired of talking... I want to face the Swap one-on-one. Maybe your original idea was right on the money, Lero. Maybe once we equilibrate my other two...”

She stopped at Lero’s scrunched look. “Equilibrate?”

Twilight blinked. “Yes. ‘Equilibrate.’ Meaning ‘to bring into a state of equilibrium.‘ You wish to equilibrate Fluttershy and Applejack the same way you’ve already equilibrated three of my other friends.”

“...I had no idea that ‘equilibrium’ even had a verb form,” he muttered. “Color me surprised.”

Giggling softly, she pressed her head against him. “So, anyway, getting back to the point: from now on, I’d like to tag along and help you with your equilibrium stuff.”

“And I’d like that too.” Once more, she felt his lovely arms encircle her. “Lyra, too. Don’t want anyone feeling left out!”

“No, we don’t!” she agreed. He raised his arms, and Twilight went over to the bathroom mirror, putting toothpaste on her toothbrush.

“‘Equilibrate’ is such a STRANGE word, wouldn’t you say?” observed her stallion behind her, slipping into a set of clean underwear. “‘I equilibrate Fluttershy.’ Makes me think I’m performing math problems on her or something.”

* * *

Twilight Sparkle flipped over to the next flashcard in her deck. “Parody!” she read out.

“Um... um... uh... oh wait!” fumbled Fluttershy. “Parodies are spoofs.”

“Yes, spoof is another name for parody, but what IS it?” Twilight pressed.

“The... the... the recreation of a film, book, or play for humor,” the yellow pegasus recalled.

Twilight Sparkle, Lero Michaelides, Rainbow Dash, Lyra Heartstrings, and Fluttershy were all seated in a circle at the village green.

“Good.” Twilight flipped to her next flashcard. “Improv.”

“Comedy that’s created on the spot,” Fluttershy said.

“I’ll accept that,” Twilight told her, going to the next flashcard. “Physical comedy.”

“Slapstick!” said Fluttershy, but her purple unicorn friend shook her head.

“I’m sorry, I’m not accepting that as an answer.”

“Why not?” argued Rainbow Dash, from right beside Fluttershy. “Slapstick TOTALLY is physical comedy.”

Twilight set her stack of flashcards down. “Let me put it this way, Rainbow: would you agree that ‘all adverbs are words, but not all words are adverbs?’”

“Yeah,” said Rainbow Dash.

“Same principle. All slapstick is physical comedy, but not all physical comedy is slapstick. Believe me, I studied up on this. For example, if I were to pull a silly face...”

Here, the rest of them giggled as Twilight Sparkle crossed her eyes, flared her nostrils, pulled her lower jaw forward in an great underbite, while flopping her ears about.

“That’d be an example of physical comedy that wasn’t slapstick. Slapstick requires violence with no serious physical repercussions. Some horrible thing happens to me; I’m electrocuted, I stumble blindly into a tree, I trip down a long spiral staircase, a dragon burns my whole body black, a grand piano falls onto my head from the sky...”

At this last one, Twilight Sparkle flinched and cast a wary look upwards.

“...And I’m able to get back up and walk off without needing to be hospitalized: that’s slapstick.”

“Yeah… I remember the last time I tried doing slapstick,” Lero said. “Ended up needing Rarity to pull me out of a giant spider cocoon.”

“I’m glad you can at least joke about it, now, Lero…” Twilight commented.

“I know,” said Fluttershy. “That’s part of why I don’t prank you nearly as much as my other friends, and when I do, I only use my gentlest practical jokes.”

He frowned at her. “I’m not THAT delicate…”

“Say, Twilight,” Fluttershy said innocently, “would being clonked on the head with a giant mallet count as slapstick?”

“Why, yes, Fluttershy, I suppose it...”

From her saddlebags, the yellow pegasus produced an inflatable toy mallet whose hammer-end was larger enough to hide a treasure chest in; and pounded it over Twilight’s head: whap, whap, whap, whap, whap!

“Good one, Shy,” Lero called over the other’s chuckles and Twilight’s indignant cries. “But you’ll want to be careful; you kinda telegraphed your punchline again.”

“I did?” Fluttershy’s mallet popped and deflated on Twilight’s horn as she brought it down one final time. “Oh, I suppose I did,” she said, disappointedly.

“I’m glad you all found that amusing,” Twilight sniffed, levitating a comb to her mane.

“Humor’s cruel,” Lyra reminded her. “The way I learned it: comedy equals pain plus time.”

“Or distance. Happening to other people. ‘Tragedy is when I get a papercut. Comedy is when you walk into an open sewer and die,’” quoted Lero.

“How profound. But now, back to business,” Twilight said, turning back on Fluttershy with her flashcards. “Comedy made without changing one’s facial expression.”

Rainbow Dash raised a foreleg. “Don’t you think you’re holding them backwards?”

“No,” insisted Twilight, eyes fixed on Fluttershy, repeating; “Comedy made without changing one’s facial expression. What is it?”

“Er... unchanging-face comedy?”

“Deadpan comedy,” Twilight corrected, putting that flashcard aside in its own separate pile, with the rest of the ones Fluttershy needed to review. “Comedy focused on disturbing subject material such as war, death, and disease.”

“Blue... no, no, BLACK comedy! Black comedy,” Fluttershy stumbled.

“That’s right. Blue comedy is a completely different bale of hay,” Twilight informed her friend, flipping to the next one. “Comedy that relies on ridiculous props or everyday objects used in ridiculous ways.”

“Uh... uh... um...” In the end, Fluttershy just shrugged helplessly.

“PROP comedy. It’s in the description! Comedy relying on props is prop comedy. When you hit me with that hammer, that was prop comedy.”

“Gosh, Teach, is this all going to be on the final exam?” Rainbow Dash quipped.

“No, but it’s on the pop quiz.” And to the yellow pegasus’ horror, Twilight pulled out a multiple-choice quiz sheet she’d made last night, and stuck a Number 2 pencil in Fluttershy’s mouth.

* * *

“Aaaaaand… TIME!” Twilight announced, looking up from Lero’s watch. “Set your pencil down and turn your quiz over to the face-down position.”

Sweating, shaking, Fluttershy did as asked, whimpering as the quiz floated over to Twilight. “The bubbles… so many bubbles to fill in…”

“Where the heck did Equestria develop scantron standardized testing anyhow?!” Lero whispered to Lyra and Rainbow Dash, who both shook their heads cluelessly. Twilight made for quite a sight: a quill dunking in red-colored ink, then weaving all up and down the quiz sheet, lightning-quick, checking it against her answer sheet.

Soon enough, the purple unicorn had finished grading, and passed the quiz back to Fluttershy.

“Sixty-five percent?!” she cried, lip trembling. “JUST sixty-five percent?!”

“I’m sorry, Fluttershy,” and Twilight truly sounded sincere about that, “but you missed a lot of easy ones. For example, the answer to Question 13 is ‘low comedy’ not ‘high comedy.’ For Question 29, a burlesque is not ‘a genre where shortcomings, follies, and vices are ridiculed with the intent of shaming their targets into improvement.’ And looking at 45, it’s pointedly clear you completely forgot what a pastiche is. Let me ask -- and please answer honestly -- were you just filling in bubbles, willy-nilly, hoping you’d skate by on pure luck?”

They’d seen Fluttershy smile, both in genuine joy and desperation. They’d seen her disappointed, and defeated. They’d seen her near tears. Now, for the first time in a long while, they now saw the yellow pegasus upset and indignant.

“No, I wasn’t!” Fluttershy snapped back. “I really put thought into answering those quiz questions. Guessing at random’s not going to make me funnier. Even if I get the answers right, it’d only be by accident, and getting a good grade won’t do me any good by itself.”

“Y-yeah.” Twilight concurred, with an uneasy step backwards. “That’s the right way to look at it.”

“I need to be funnier,” Fluttershy insisted, a harsh flare in her teal-colored eyes. “I need to be funnier, I need to be funnier, I need to be funnier! I’m the Element of Laughter, dang it! What good is an Element of Laughter who can’t get ponies to laugh? Who doesn’t know a thing about comedy…” Her bared teeth gave way to sadness, as her Balloon Mark shook behind her. “I need to be funnier. I’ll do whatever it takes. I’ll try anything, everything, for as long as I have to. I need to be funny.”

“Well, it’s not like you won’t get into your choice college if you do badly on this. All this quiz goes to show you is what you need to brush up on, the holes in your knowledge that you need to fill.”

Fluttershy let out a long exhale, and her cutie mark quit trembling. “You’re right. You’re absolutely right, Twilight. I’ll get to work on patching those knowledge-holes right away. And the next time you pop a quiz on me, I’ll be ready for it.”

And Fluttershy threw her quiz and all the notecards in her saddlebags and flew off, deaf to all her friends’ pleading not to leave.

Twilight sank down to the grass. Lero set an arm over her back and gave her a calming caress.

“That wasn’t how that was supposed to go,” Twilight muttered.

“So what lesson did you learn?” Lyra asked, scooting herself in on Twilight’s other side.

Twilight sighed. “Dear Princess Celestia, today I learned that not everypony likes standardized tests as much as I do, and I shouldn’t let my social skills get rusty or else I might hurt my friends by accident. Also, I knew this one already, but Fluttershy is scary when she gets mad…”

Lyra and Lero hugged her.

“Well, you’ve just weaned yourself off the company of books, after spending waaaay too much time with them,” the Still Way grandmaster reasoned. “Don’t take it too hard on yourself.”

“There’s always tomorrow,” Lero assured her. “Don’t worry. This is your first time trying something like this. All things considered, you still did way better than the very first time I set out to, uh, help one of our friends.”

He darted the quickest of glances at Rainbow Dash, remembering Discord.

“If you stick with it, if you don’t lose faith in yourself, it all gets better from here.”

As Twilight beamed at him and nodded, they all heard the sound of hooves stepping backward.

“So, uh, Lero, I guess we… may have to take a rain check on our, uh…”

Twilight and Lyra eyed the bashful animal caretaker with marked interest. “A rain check on your what?” Twilight inquired.

The cyan pegasus shrank a bit, looking at Lero’s herdmates with some skittishness, like a filly caught with her muzzle in the cookie jar. “Nothing! Nothing much, y’know, just a… just a nothing-thing…”

The longer the other two mares eyeballed her, the redder her cheeks got. And that did not escape anyone’s notice.

“Dash wanted to spend time with me,” Lero explained to them, ignoring the strangled cry of alarm from Rainbow. “Just her and me, one-on-one.”

“One-on-one, huh?”

Twilight looked at Lyra. Lyra looked at Twilight. They both nodded.

"That sounds like a lovely idea," Twilight told the surprised pegasus, with the warmest of smiles.

"You could use a good, long, hard… stretch of friendly time together," Lyra agreed.

Dash blushed sharply. Well, even more deeply than before.

“Have lots of fun together, you two!” Twilight said, trotting in the direction of her house in a suddenly-uplifted mood, and motioning for Lyra to join her. Which she did. If Lero knew his girls, (which he did,) the unicorns were both set to spend hours discussing and speculating upon this few seconds of blushing and stammering.

Dash was entirely lost for words, until Lero sat himself comfortably on her back.

“So… where are we off to now, Dash?”

* * *

Before the Swap, there hadn’t been all that many occassions where Rainbow Dash had flown Lero over the Everfree Forest. This time, they were headed in a direction she’d never taken him before.

“Been meaning to ask…” he called down to her, “What’s with that baseball cap you’re wearing, Dash?”

“My cap?” she asked.

“Yeah!” He cringed against her as a flock of strange birds flew past. “I mean, I can understand the whistle, since you’re an animal trainer. But the cap… I think this is, what, the fourth day in a row I’ve seen you wearing that thing?”

“I dunno. Saw it in the marketplace a few days back, and decided I’d buy it. Makes me feel like a sports coach. Coaches rock.”

No arguing that point.

Far below them, the great expanse of trees gave way to grittier, more arid territory, until a great yawning crack opened up into the ground below, deep enough to fit several blocks of skyscrapers inside.

“Did an earthquake happen here, or something?” Lero asked.

He felt her head shake back and forth under him. “Far as I know, Longdrop Gorge has always been here, Big Guy.”

Then her body veered downward… she was heading straight into the gorge!

“Don’t worry!” she said, before he could even breathe out the word ‘wait.’ “We’re coming to a soft, safe landing at a nice, steady speed. Easy does it...”

The walls of the chasm were deep, wide and sheer. Without Dash, it would’ve meant hours descending with rock-climbing gear. Or rather, a ten-second drop to his death, since Lero had zero experience mountain climbing.

“What’re we doing down here, Dash?” Even with the sun shining overhead, it was growing darker and more shadowed the deeper they descended.

“You’ll see!” she called back cheerily. “I told you it’d be nice, and I really do mean it.”

As promised, she brought him to the softest landing possible on the canyon floor. Here at the bottom, there were some weedy scatters of vegetation, some ant colonies, and a couple of broken-looking animal skeletons. Though they’d been picked clean, it appeared gravity, rather than predation, had been their undoing.

“Tell me there’s buried treasure down here,” he muttered.

Dash chuckled a bit. “I’d’ve brought shovels if there were.”

RRREEEOOOOWWWWWKKKKZZZTT….

The noise put Lero right on the defensive. It had been the call of some kind of animal… an unnatural one at that. Sounded like a cross between a tomcat and a modem’s squeal. Like a thing that was part-machine.

“Dash!” he called, arms raised in what was not-quite a boxer’s stance. “There something here!”

She turned to regard him; smiling and completely at ease. “I should hope so!” Then her eyes focused on something past him. “Oh good, there she is.”

Why did the simple act of turning around have to raise so many goosepimples?

At the first second, Lero’s mind told him: adult panther with extra-large teeth. Then he registered the additional fifth and sixth legs. The pair of tentacles undulating out from the panther-thing’s back, and visible tines in its ears that reminded him of antenna… he had at first thought this to be a mirage, but they refused to vanish no matter how many times he rubbed his eyes.

“Rrrrreeooooooooozzzz….” it went. Its voice was so tinny, so computerized-sounding, it might’ve come from a cyborg of a cat… except it was entirely flesh and blood. Nary a plate of metal to it… not that Lero wanted to go anywhere near it!

“Dash,” he spoke softly out of the corner of his mouth. “Don’t make any sudden movements. I’m going to hop on your back, then we fly out of here as fast as we can!”

But she smiled at him. “Not happening.”

“Not happening?!” He was only just able to keep from shrieking.

“Sassy, here, is the whole reason we came,” she patiently explained.

“Sassy?!” cried Lero, before it hit him. Oh. Oh, Of course. How could he forget the old Fluttershy’s habit of befriending ‘misunderstood’ forest beasts like manticores and grizzly bears?

“So, uh, what is Sassy?” he asked, edging closer to Dash. The black-furred beast was stretching its limbs in a sleepy yawn, the claws on its forepaws fully retracted, and its tentacles whipping the ground.

“Well, there are two names for what Sassy is, the same way ‘mountain lion’ and ‘cougar’ refer to the same cat,” Dash informed him, as though they were at a safe zoo. “One name’s spelled C-O-E-U-R-L, but its other name is easier to say: ‘displacer beast.’”

He couldn’t believe what he was hearing. He couldn’t believe her calmness! “But... but how are we supposed to handle a tentacled panther-thing?”

She scratched under her jaw. “How do you handle it? You just pretty much pet about seven feet to the left of where you see her. Like this!”

What happened next looked, to Lero, like some kind of serious CGI animation error.

Rainbow Dash didn’t approach the displacer beast directly, instead she trotted up to to a point seven feet to the creature’s left. And she reached up a hoof… and started to stroke the open air, tenderly, at a point parallel to the beast’s head. There was some sort of odd visual distortion as she did, as if part of her hoof was bending through space as she did, Lero suddenly intensely reminded of seeing the image of a straw being bent when inserted into a clear glass full of water.

It was as if Dash had gone nearsighted or lost her hoof-to-eye coordination. It was like watching a mime. No, it was like watching TWO mimes: her AND Sassy, both, and him having some sort of bizarre hallucination while watching them. Dash seemed to be pantomiming like she was petting Sassy; the tentacled cat was simultaneously pantomiming being petted by Dash, its back arching, leaning in, at a point seven feet leftward of where Dash’s hoof stroked, which somehow seemed to be right on her head but several feet distant at the same moment even as he watched..

“What in… what on Earth?!” he asked, as the cat-thing rolled over on it back, purring.

A broken-off tree branch happened to be laying nearby, twice as long as a typical broomstick. Pure astonishment overrode the primal fear of being mauled, and he thrust it forward towards the cat-thing’s body.

The branch failed to hit anything, seeming to go off an odd angle, never reaching the beast, as if the laws of perspective were being completely violated..

Lero didn’t feel the branch fall from his hand. “Is it a ghost?”

“No, it’s a displacer beast,” Dash giggled, now on her haunches and using both hooves to massage the air. “Come over next to where I am.”

Lero was only brave enough to get about six feet from Dash, instead of right next to her.

“Take a look at the ground.” she told him. “Notice where the dirt is being kicked up: is it here or there?”

She ran a hoof down sideways. Across from them, seven feet away, Lero saw the phantom-cat-thing stretch a hind leg out… and now that Dash brought it up, at an angle like that, the leg should have dug into the ground a bit.

Instead, Lero saw it happen right close to where Dash was; a tiny dirt trench kicked up from thin air. And now that Lero looked closer, he could see a trail of pawprints leading up to the point where Dash sat, rather than from seven feet to the right.

“Is Sassy invisible?” he asked her.

“Kinda,” Dash told him. “Like I said, Sassy’s a displacer beast. She’s capable of displacing her image. Right now, it may look like she’s seven feet to our right, but she’s actually right here.”

And again, she stroked Sassy’s invisible face, and Lero watched the visible image of Sassy lean into it, nuzzling against Dash’s petting hooves from several feet away, causing the odd visual distortion again.

“Displacer beasts are amazing creatures,” she told him. “They can bend light, so when it bounces off them, their image appears elsewhere. Right now, Sassy’s image is seven feet to the right of where we are, but if she wanted to, Sassy could make it look like she’s standing two feet directly behind herself, or ten feet to her left, or whatever, to confuse enemies and prey. She can even overlap the image of herself with where she’s actually standing. Isn’t that amazing?”

“Yeah… wow!” Lero had to agree; Sassy WAS a truly mind-boggling animal.

“Would you like to come here and pet her with me?”

Shooting a look over at the displaced image, Lero saw jaws and teeth more than capable of biting his arm off.

“N-no, that’s okay!” he said, not bothering to hide the quaver in his voice. “You look like you know what you’re doing, Dash, I-I’m amazed enough from right where I’m standing.”

He grinned skittishly, trusting she’d understand and accept his fear. Instead, her ears drooped in the most dispiriting way.

“I know Sassy’s unusual, and she may look a little scary, but trust me, she’s one of the biggest sweethearts in the Everfree Forest. Are you sure you don’t wanna try petting her? I know she’ll love you for it.”

Animals are mean, animals bite, animals are nasty, animals sabotage, animals bring pain, through and through, and that’s the DOMESTICATED ones…

“I-I’m sorry, Dash, but I just don’t think I’m in an animal-petting mood right now… or ever again.”

The last three words had come out as an embarrassing slip of the tongue. He looked up at Dash, hands clasped together in an apologetic way.

Surprisingly, the look she gave back was no longer hurt and downcast. It was patient and entirely sympathetic. Like that of a good therapist.

“Sassy won’t hurt you. I know my animals put you through Tartarus and back, but not all animals are as mean and treacherous as mine were. Lots of them are perfectly friendly. That’s why I brought you out here, cuz, well, I wanted to remind you of that. I just… just… the animal caretaker in me hates the idea of you doing so much for me, only to walk away with a great big critter phobia for all your trouble.”

Sweat touched the corners of his lips. What Lero wanted to ask was: couldn’t we have gone to a little pet shop and played with a puppy, instead? Maybe a sweet baby panda, or even a skunk? What came out was: “Well, eh heh…”

She fixed a strong look on him. “I won’t let any harm come to you. Trust me.”

And she brushed a circle in Sassy’s fur.

All his emotions seemed to rebel against him as he sat by her. Slowly, he brought his hands down until his hands felt fur, and saw the slight distortions off his hand as he touched. This seemed to be the displacer beast’s midsection. He spread out his fingers and swept them through the invisible fur, remembering the old joke about the three blind men feeling the different points of the elephant. Then it struck him that he didn’t NEED to fumble around like a man in the dark. He had a visual reference… it was just over there.

The huge cat stretched and relaxed under his hand. The fur was a different texture from a pony’s coat - longer hairs, and a leaner frame underneath. After all his time as a masseur, he couldn’t help but feel the tension in those feral muscles - and feel it melting away as the oversized cat purred in the presence of Rainbow Dash. He could feel the vibrations running up his arm, and it felt bizarrely comforting. He’d never owned a cat -- neither on Earth or Equestria -- but the sound of those staticky deep rumbles was oddly reassuring.

“See? She likes you,” Dash told him.

Lero couldn’t disagree. “How’d you ever meet something like this?” he asked instead.

Dash’s eyes went blank and thoughtless for a moment, then came back to focus on Lero. “Oh, I’ve known Sassy for ages,” she said. “Ever since she was the cutest little kitten in the Everfree!” Lero had to jam down a sudden burst of fear at that momentary hiccup, that reminder that the Bewitchment was still creating false memories to keep everything in sync.

The displacer beast managed to look abashed, but not too dismayed. She had two admirers tending to her fur, after all. She raised her chin, and Dash moved her hoof to rub underneath it. Lero moved his hand back more, finding the creature’s shoulder, then its back. His wrist bumped the base of those slowly-waving tentacles, and he used those as a tactile reference point to rub its back. The purring deepened, and Lero felt a pair of tentacles rubbing along his arms.

“I told you you’re safe,” Dash said smugly.

The longer Lero ran his fingers through Sassy’s fur, the more they both relished the sensation, and the more relaxed they grew with one another. He couldn’t believe how enjoyable this was. It was like being a kid at a petting zoo, only WAY better!

Sassy leaned in to run a strong, sandpapery tongue against Dash’s mane, making it curl up into the air as though a slow, stiff breeze had just hit her, and then she gave Lero’s cheek a matching lick. And then she got to her feet, stretched luxuriously, and strolled away, tentacles flicking overhead.

Lero had to shake his head. “You have some of the strangest friends, Rainbow Dash.” He bit down an urge to add ‘Starting with Pinkie Pie.’ Fluttershy the Comedian wasn’t nearly as oddball now as Pinkie usually was, and Pinkie the Farmmare was positively normal.

Dash laughed, and stepped over to nuzzle his side. “You are one of my strange friends, Lero,” she pointed out. “I’m so glad I found you.” She paused, then blushed delicately. “... Also, um, I'm pretty sure that 'between the tentacles' is just as sensitive as it is on a pegasus, so you just made that kitty verrry happy.”

Lero decided to play dumb, rather than get into where he'd learned that particular detail already. "Oh? Between the wings is sensitive on pegasi?" He set his hand on her back, right in that spot where she always liked it, and began to slowly work his knuckles across the muscles that met there.

Dash sighed blissfully. "Yeah..."

Lero grinned. "Should I stop?"

Dash’s cheeks went from a dainty pink to a distinct red, her wings slowly spreading. But what she said was, "Please don't…”

So he felt at a few spots at her neck, then lifted the cap off her head, teasing behind her ears and combing through her mussed-up tangles in the red and orange and yellow of her mane, cherishing the long-missed familiar sound of her sigh. Then he reached between her forelegs, fingers trailing smoothly up the fur of her upper chest, where it was safe to touch pegasi. She angled into his touch, and he saw her lips soundlessly form the words, ‘oh, Lero...’ Growing bolder, he sent a finger grazing up the line of her feathers, smoothing them down, deftly and comforting.

“I… I think that’s enough, Lero,” He heard her say, softly. “No more, please.”

Abashed and stammering apologies, his fingers jerked off from Rainbow Dash as though she’d turned into red hot metal.

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to touch you where you didn’t want to be…!” But the human stopped when he felt her head rest against him.

Her wings were still stiff, but she'd been the one to stop him, and he'd reluctantly complied. At the moment, at least, he had to remind himself, she wasn't in his herd. No matter how strong his sudden urge to just tell her everything and bring her home, right now.

"That rose," she said quietly, lifting her head back up and looking up towards his ear.

"Yeah?" Lero cautiously responded.

"You really love her a lot, don't you? You'd never take something like that off, no matter what." She turned her head, and her eyes looked simultaneously distant and bright.

Lero looked back into her eyes. He could have sworn he saw a tricolored lightning bolt there for just an instant. "Never," he promised. Dash closed her eyes and leaned into him.

* * *

6:57 P.M.

Lero drummed his fingers impatiently on the tabletop. Today was the first day they had allowed Spike to go out to help Applejack at the Carousel Boutique. The little dragon had left the house at about nine in the morning.

A tired part of him wanted nothing more than to put Spike out of his mind… but that’d been what’d caused this mess in the first place. Spike was still his family, and he wasn’t going to be a neglectful parent. He had to let Spike know he cared about him. ...What was TAKING him so long?! Surely he hadn’t run away for real? Or could it be he was thinking of sleeping over Applejack’s place?!

Seven o’clock. He’d give Spike until exactly seven o’clock, then he was putting on his jacket, marching out to the Carousel Boutique, and dragging him back home.

6:59 now. He waited for each tick of the second hand’s clock. Six more seconds. Five more seconds. Four…

He left his chair as he heard the front door open. “I’m home!” Spike called.

The human marched out to the foyer. “And just where have you…?!”

He left the sentence unfinished. All his crossness with the little dragon vanished. Spike looked absolutely bone-weary, dragging his heels, slumped forward like a caveman. Yet there was a look of savage triumph in his eyes all the same. At that moment, Spike was like a weightlifter back from a grueling twelve-hour workout, flush with the victory of having pulled through and gotten stronger for it.

“Uh… have you eaten dinner?” Lero found himself asking, listening to Spike pant. “Could I fix you up a grilled cheese sandwich?”

After one more pant, Spike looked up at the human, smirking at him as though he’d won a bet. “Why, thank you, Lero,” he told him. “Grilled cheese sounds like it would really hit the spot. And while you’re at it, how about I make a nice cup of tea?”

So in the kitchen, Lero started up the oven, pulled out bread, cheese and butter, while Spike poured water into their kettle and added teabags. While Lero grilled the sandwich, Spike held the kettle over his head, and blew a steady stream of fire until it got to whistling. It was almost like he was showing off.

Lero had ended up making two sandwiches, and gave them both to Spike.

“Not hungry?” The dragon asked, stirring in two lumps of sugar for Lero’s tea.

“Already ate,” Lero told him.

So they sat at the table. Spike ate without drinking while Lero drank without eating.

“How did things go with…?” both of them asked at the same time.

“You first, Lero,” Spike invited, taking another crisp bite of his sandwich.

Lero chose not to tell him anything about the times Rainbow Dash had taken him places to hang out together; he wanted to think of them as dates, but still didn’t know if that was correct. The rest he shared: the lessons he’d been teaching Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash taking part, even Twilight deciding to lay off her research to help with equilibrium (though he didn’t divulge a thing about how Spike’s bad behavior had been the inspiration for Twilight.)

“So you grownups all sat around on the grass and practiced telling jokes, huh?” Lero’s fist clenched under the table… the dragon sounded SO patronizing!

“That’s good!” Spike said, with a glowing smile. “That sounds like JUST like sort of thing a girl like Fluttershy needs most! If anyone can come up with something, it’s you!”

Or… maybe he wasn’t being condescending after all. Though Lero was trying to treat him kindly, he knew he was definitely still a bit sore at Spike. His fist unclenched, willing himself to cool down.

“So what about you, Spike?” Lero asked, sipping his delicious tea. “What’d you do at Applejack’s?”

That savage satisfaction returned to Spike’s face. “What’d I do? I worked, Lero, that’s what I did! You have no idea how badly poor AJ’s let herself go. Did you know that the showroom’s the only room she keeps clean nowadays, and that’s only for the customers that never come? The rest of the place looks like… like… like one of my post-apocalyptic comics! You can’t imagine the filth. The smell. The garbage and discarded dresses! Sweetie Belle doesn’t even live there anymore; she’s moved back in with her parents. I spent the entire day cleaning the place, room by room, and I’m not even halfway done!”

What astounded Lero most was how this wasn’t even any sort of bellyaching on Spike’s part. This was a boast. This was gloating. He might as well be listening to Spike narrate how he outwrestled a rhino.

“Wow… God…” Lero put a hand on his head. “Now I’m sorry I left Applejack by herself for this long, instead of squeezing in more time for her.”

“I’m not,” Spike laughed. “The worse off Applejack is, the more there is for me to fix for her! Every time she smiles at me while I’m helping her out, I’m getting her to love me all the more. Oh, I wish you could hear the conversations we have, Lero, it really is the real Rarity inside her…”

Lero clapped his hand over the dragon’s mouth. “Don’t ever use those words ‘real Rarity’ in this house!” he whispered. “What if RARITY heard you?”

“Oh!” exclaimed Spike in a wide-eyed hush. “Oh, right! Sorry! Is Rarity here?”

Lero shook his head. “We’re very lucky: her bosses called on her to create some late-night rainfall over by the Mayor’s place.”

“Alright. Point taken.” Then Spike stretched, yawned, and hopped out of his chair. “Well, better hit the hay early! Got another big day ahead of me at the Boutique tomorrow, and I wanna get my rest in. Thanks for the sandwiches, Lero.”

But before he headed upstairs, Lero set a hand on his shoulders. “I’m glad you’re helping Applejack, Spike, but don’t forget, you’re doing this for HER, not you.”

“Oh, you don’t need to worry!” Spike laughed again. “Do you think I’m going to take advantage of her? No, no, no, I’m going to be a perfect, honorable chivalrous knight for her. That’s how I’m going to win her love; by doing everything just like you did, Lero.”

And he headed up to bed.

Just like I did, huh? Lero thought to himself, miserably. All those days I spent helping Rainbow Dash… was THIS what it felt like for you, Spike? And Twilight too?

* * *

“Eighty-five,” Twilight pronounced, tucking away her red pen and handing the sheet back to Fluttershy. “You did much better this time.”

“I studied all morning,” Fluttershy said proudly. “And I haven’t told a single Yucky Yolks joke all day.” Then she shuddered. “It was a lot harder than I thought it would be. But I was looking after the baby Cakes, and they like silly faces more than jokes anyway.” She ducked her head down and ran her hooves over her face, then looked up. Lero had a brief and unfortunate flashback to when one of the Pinkie-clones from the Mirror Pool had done the same thing. Somehow she’d got her muzzle to seem to swell up and extend, with her eyes squinted down to look smaller and more widely separated…

Fluttershy shook her head, and the bizarre look snapped back to her usual features. “They didn’t like that one very much,” she confided. “I think I’ll skip it in the future. It feels kinda… old-fashioned, anyway.”

“Old-fashioned? Try ‘unbelievably creepy,’” Rainbow Dash said, shuddering. “Lero’s ‘horse’ jokes suddenly hit home all at once.”

“How about this one?” Fluttershy said eagerly -- but Lero reached out a hand to stop her. “I think we’d better get started on the lesson, don’t you?” he asked.

Fluttershy gave him a wide, beaming grin. “Okie-dokie-loki!”

It made Lero pause and think. If sweet, bashful Fluttershy had been a monster to make Nightmare Moon look like, well, Fluttershy, there couldn't have been a more personal, private Hell than being condemned to constantly make a public spectacle of herself. No, worse - a royal jackass, forced to seek others out for the purpose. That timid, hesitant, fearful pony would have been traumatized for life. It was the first mercy Lero had seen from the Swap, now that he thought about it - from the moment he'd met Swapped Fluttershy, she'd never shown a moment of fear, not an instant of worry that other ponies might not like her. She had enough clarity to know they didn't like her jokes - but she hadn't once been afraid they didn't like HER.

“Today’s lesson is on interactive comedy. Puns, visual gags, things like that can all be done by yourself,” Lero told her. “But sometimes, you’ll have someone to work with who’s in on the joke. Sometimes they’ll make jokes back at you, sometimes they’ll just say things you can make jokes off of, and sometimes both of you will pretend to take the entire conversation seriously and let your audience figure out the funny bit on their own.”

Fluttershy giggled. “Oh! Like Quill Pen and Never Tell. They do a magic act, but it’s a comedy routine at the same time. I saw them once.”

Lero nodded. “Just like them, yes.” He mentally added one to his infinite list of Puns Ponies Made But Will Never Get and continued on. “There, one of them is making verbal humor, mostly, while the other does some physical comedy and plays a never-talking straight man.”

“Straight pony, anyway,” Rainbow Dash pointed out, wingtips fluttering in glee. “So we’re gonna demonstrate. I’ll be the straight pony, ‘cause when else am I gonna be able to do that?”

Fluttershy laughed aloud and settled herself in to watch. “Last time you were in heat?” she merrily noted.

Rainbow Dash blushed sharply. “Coolers don’t count.”

Lero chuckled and rubbed Rainbow Dash between the ears. “I bet some of them do. Novelty ones with a clicker in the base, maybe.”

Dash eeped. It was an adorably little Fluttershy-ish sound. “I thought we were doing interactive comedy, not blue jokes.”

Lero winked. “If you’re involved, how can it NOT be blue jokes?”

Dash rolled her eyes. “I’ll ‘blue’ you.” Then facehoofed. Fluttershy laughed before Lero could even deliver the punchline.

Lero beamed. “Twilight, is that okay with you?”

Twilight quivered in place, looking at Rainbow Dash, and had to nod instead of speaking out loud. Lero fought back an urge to go over and console her. We’ll get OUR Rainbow Dash back, Twilight. We will. I believe in you.

“Are we going to get around to the routine any time soon?” Dash asked, tail flicking.

“Doesn’t ‘routine’ in Ponyville involve rebuilding half of the town?” Lero pointed out.

“Only when Princess Celestia sends us on adventures,” Dash retorted.

Lero tapped his chin. “You think she does that on purpose?”

“Does what on purpose?” Dash asked.

“Sends you out on adventures instead of just sending Royal Guards. I’m pretty sure you’ve been a boon to the construction industry,” Lero explained. “Not to mention a boom to various buildings.”

“Hey, we’re not that bad,” Rainbow Dash protested. “Derpy does way more property damage than we do. Less of it at a time, but ALL. THE. TIME.”

Lero pictured Derpy getting Swapped with Twilight. Dear God, there wouldn’t be a Ponyville left after a day. There might not be an Equestria left. “And she does it without magic necklaces, too. You think she’s got a trick? Maybe a secret agenda?”

Dash blinked. “What do you think Derpy’s agenda is?”

“Pretty a-sure she’s a mare, Dash,” Lero replied airily. “Why, are-a we going back to coolers now?”

Fluttershy burst out laughing. “Okay! Okay! I get it! Stop, before I laugh my wings off! I need those for feathers to tickle the baby Cakes with!”

Rainbow Dash blinked several times, opened her mouth as though about to say something, then shut it again. Lero waited, but she didn’t try again. So he spoke instead. “Then for the next part of the lesson, I want you to sit down with Twilight and try to write out a comedy routine of your own, and you’ll deliver it with her. Try to swap roles, so you give some straight lines and some jokes. Okay?”

Fluttershy grinned. “Okie-dokie-loki!” she repeated.

Twilight tugged out a quill and a scroll from her saddlebags, and moved herself next to Fluttershy to write. “I’ll give suggestions if I have some ideas, but you’ve got to do most of this,” she warned her friend. “I’m mostly here to write. And to make sure I don’t end up with a cream pie in the face.”

Lero patted Rainbow Dash on the flank, well away from any ‘interesting’ spots. “We’ll step aside so we can see what you come up with, without hearing any of it ahead of time,” he said. Fluttershy was already deep in thought, but Twilight nodded to them.

As they put some distance between themselves and Twilight and Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash looked over to Lero.

“Hey, uh... something I’ve been meaning to ask you about, Lero,” the cyan pegasus asked, at a soft volume.

“Sure,” Lero said, also softly. “What is it?”

She sat down and Lero followed suit. “I know how, well, you’re capable of liking ponies romantically.”

Did the three unicorns in my herd tip you off? He was tempted to say. Instead, he settled on a plain and simple: “Yeah.”

She slid a bit closer to him. “I’ve been curious... what do you... what do you think of Fluttershy?”

“Fluttershy?”

They both eyed the yellow pegasus, who was too busy in discussion with Twilight to even look their way.

“Y...yeah!” Dash said, looking self-conscious. “When you go to help her, the way you were always helping me... you don’t have to answer this if you don’t want to... but do you feel anything ‘click’ for you when you’re with her?”

Lero considered very carefully how he was going to answer her question. Essentially, one half of Fluttershy’s soul was asking him to tell him what he thought of her missing half, still in her old body. And he didn’t want to speak badly of Fluttershy straight to Fluttershy’s face, no more than he wished to disparage Fluttershy behind Fluttershy’s back. No doubt, any insult of her would come back to bite him if Twilight managed to cure the Swapped, and Shy’s two soul fragments reunited. And yet... Rainbow Dash was looking with anxious expectation.

“Here’s what I have to say about a certain friend of ours with balloons on her flank,” he replied. “When I look at her, I see a... charming-enough girl. It’s sweet of her how she wants to be everyone’s friend. And I certainly won’t deny she’s pretty.”

Rainbow Dash gulped, and a morose smile played up her face. “Y-yeah. She’s... pretty…”

But then she was surprised to feel Lero’s hand settle upon the back of her neck, as they both faced Fluttershy. “But in spite of all that, no. Nothing clicks for me when I’m with our cupcake-baking friend.”

And now she found herself being pulled closer towards him. “If... hypothetically... I were to fall in love for a fourth time, it’d be with someone more like... you, Rainbow Dash.”

“Me?” she asked, looking up into his face, and trying to play it off-the-cuff. “Why me?”

“Well, when it comes to love, I’m a pretty picky guy,” He told her, patting her body. “When I give my heart to a lady, I prefer she be, well, a lady. Mature, grown-up, and adult-minded.”

“So you think I’m mature?” Rainbow asked, and his heart sped up.

“Absolutely. I mean, just think: our friend, the Element of Laughter... her biggest gripe is that she’s not telling jokes right.”

And he lowered his hand, cupping the whistle that the cyan pegasus wore around her neck.

“You, though, you’ve taken it upon yourself to be the caretaker of... exactly how many animals live in your cottage?”

“I can’t even think how many right now.” Out of the corner of his eye, Lero saw Twilight watching them with intense interest, as Fluttershy jotted down ideas of hers.

“Well, there’s a lot of them. And you’re caring for them all, each day. Even when things were at their lowest, even when they’d all turned on you, you stood your ground. You never chickened out.”

Rainbow Dash turned a flat look at her cutie mark. “There were times I would’ve LOVED to chicken out…”

If not for this Butterfly Mark forcing me to be there, I’d’ve ran away from that cottage long ago… Lero heard in his head.

“But in the end, push came to shove and you didn’t,” He told her, determined to cast the situation in the finest light possible. “That takes a lot of maturity, responsibility, and strength. Not to mention... loyalty. And that’s the kind of girl I have more respect and love for.”

Her wings came halfway open as she looked upon him with a shining smile.

“And... remember what I said about our party-throwing friend being charming, sweet, and pretty?” Once she nodded, he leaned in as close to her ear and whispered, “You outshine her in every way.”

He pulled away to see what effect this had on her.

Rainbow Dash’s eyes were watery. Her lips trembled in enraptured happiness. Her tail swept the ground from where she sat on her haunches. There was now no room for doubt. No possible possibility of misinterpretation. She looked ready to melt into a puddle of love for him.

“Though I do appreciate her as a friend!” he assured her in a glib, offhanded way.

“Huh? Oh, yes! Yes, I do too,” she chimed in.

“I wouldn’t hear a word spoken against her,” he assured her.

“Never in a million years,” she nodded along rapidly.

“And we’ll both continue to be there for her, to help fix her funny bone. You and me, Rainbow Dash, til the end.”

“Til the very end,” she repeated excitedly. “Magic of Friendship, and all.”

And then her wings enveloped him in one of those hugs of hers he had so dearly, dearly missed.

“Say, Dash,” he whispered in her ear, “Where do you thinking we should go this time, after lessons are over?”

* * *

The soft ambient music they had playing on the record players had always put Lero in mind of movie soundtracks when the hero entered a peaceful African village. Hearing that bell jingle above him when he came through the door, smelling the sandalwood incense… it all brought him back. The humidity hit his body, even though this was just the waiting room.

Lotus looked up towards him from where she sat at the receptionist’s counter. “Velcome to ze… Lerro!” She exclaimed in delighted surprise. “Und Rainbow Dash!”

“Hiya, Lotus!” said Rainbow Dash, beside him. “Long time no see!”

“Aloe! Aloe, come zee who it iz!” Lotus stepped out, reappearing with her sister. When Aloe saw them both, she swept out from behind the counter to give them each hugs.

“Välkommen!” she greeted, slipping into her native tongue. “Hur mår du?”

“We’re doing great, Aloe, just great!” Lero told her.

“Are yoo looking to be rehired?” Lotus asked Lero hopefully. “Because eef yoo are, that vould be vonderful!”

Rainbow Dash shot the human a stunned look. “Wait… ‘rehired?’ Don’t you work at this place, Lero?”

And it suddenly turned a lot more awkward, with the twins avoiding looking at him, neither wanting to speak out of turn.

“I used to,” he told her, shifting his weight while scratching the back of his head. “Up until a little over a month ago. But then something came up, something more important than making bits.”

“What?”

And he put a hand on the pegasus’ head. “A different kind of hands-on work.”

Understanding filled Rainbow Dash’s eyes… understanding, and a certain level of awe.

“I’m sorry to tell you this, but I’m not here for a job, not quite yet,” he said, turning back to the sisters. “Still gonna be a while before I can afford the time for gainful employment. Right now, both of us are here as customers.”

“I see,” said Aloe. “Vell, it is gud to see yoo back, vhatever the reason! Vill yoo be paying separately or together?”

“I can pay for my own, this time, if you like,” he told Dash.

“No!” she declared, adamantly. “Definitely not this time.”

Then, to Lotus, she plunked down some money at the counter, and gave her hat to Aloe for safekeeping. “Give the both of us my usual! When can we make it happen?”

“Ve are free right now, if yoo like!” said Lotus, holding the door open for them.

* * *

For Lero, there was a great irony about working in a pony spa, something of a private, unspoken joke that never quite got old. Ponies, (and pretty much all sapient beings who lived in this world) were completely comfortable going everywhere in the buff; it was not unheard of for ponies to go their entire lives without donning a stitch of clothing.

But when you were a customer at a spa… now THAT’S when you got dressed up. The twins adorned them both in robes, and Lero changed behind a folding screen. Lero’s had been specially tailored by Rarity, long ago. Rainbow Dash’s was sleek, fluffy, and monogrammed… with a cursive letter F.

“It REALLY has been too long,” Lotus told Rainbow.

Undoubtedly, they all saw that ‘F’ as an ‘RD.’ Honestly, it was times like this where Lero found himself wishing he had a special set of ‘Swap-O-Vision’ glasses. It’d be fun going through scrapbooks with them on, and see for himself what his ‘white rose’ looked like.

Rejuvenation began with a nice stay in the sauna. Ladle in mouth, Aloe came in, pouring water on the tray of heated stones. Thick steam fogged the room, and Lero felt the first stirrings of real relief from where he sat on the wooden bench. The heat washed over him, relaxing him, as Rainbow Dash lay herself half-on, half-off of Lero’s lap, and allowed Lero to just run his fingers through her mane. He thought about calling for a brush, but decided he couldn’t quite stand to go that far and then stop again.

Because they’d spend the past set of days researching comedy, studying comedy, and practicing comedy, they were both still on something of a comedy kick. So while this was going on, they bandied jokes between themselves; the best ones they found while studying the humor books.

“A mother lives next door to an elderly widow, but she hasn’t heard so much as a sound from the old lady’s house in days, so she’s worried something might’ve happened to her.” Lero started. “She tells her son, ‘I’d like you to go next door and see how Old Mrs. Watermoss is.’ A few minutes later, the son comes back and says, ‘She’s fine, but she’s annoyed at you.’ ‘At me?’ asks the mother. ‘Whyever for?’ ‘Well,’ the son says, ‘Mrs. Watermoss says it’s none of your business HOW old she is!’”

“A lion’s strutting around the jungle, all pleased with himself,” Rainbow Dash countered. “He finds a monkey. ‘Who is the king of the jungle?!’ he roars. ‘Y-you are, mighty lion!’ the terrified monkey says. Then the lion tromps up to an antelope. ‘Who’s the king of the jungle?!” ‘T-there is no question you are the king!’ Now he’s feeling on a roll, so he goes up to the elephant. ‘Who’s the king of the jungle?!’ The elephant just grabs the lion with his trunk, slams him against a tree, stomps on him and heads off. So the lion pops his head up from the footprint he’s in and says, ‘Sheesh, just because you don’t know the answer, you don’t have to get so upset.’”

Once they were done with the sauna, they were brought to the most familiar part of the spa for Lero Michealides: the massage parlor. It hadn’t changed at all… except for an all-new masseur who came up to them alongside Patchouli, one of the part-timers.

“Hello, my name is Gerhard and this is Patchouli, and it would be my pleasure to…” Gerhard stopped, as so many often did when first seeing a human face-to-face.

“Oh! You’re HIM,” said Gerhard. “You’re the reason I got a job here!”

Gerhard was a male griffin with a powerful-looking body; both his eagle-half and lion-half were trim and athletic.

“Pleased to meet you, Gerhard. I take it you’re my replacement?” Lero said, considering the digits of the griffin’s talon as he shook it in his hand.

“Oh, yes!” said Patchouli. “Everypony still asks about you to this day. They loved those fingers of yours so much… The spa would practically be out of business if it wasn’t for Gerhard.”

“Please… hold your applause,” Gerhard said, more in good humor than vanity. He approached Rainbow Dash. “So I understand that somepony was interested in our Five-Finger…”

“Actually, Gerhard, if you don’t mind, I’d appreciate it if you could let ME handle this,” Lero told him, firmly but politely.

The griffin frowned at him, sitting on his leonine haunches and folded his feathery arms. “Sir, with all due respect, this isn’t some bring-your-own-masseur day! We have rules and it’s not worth my job.”

“Let him do it, Gerhard!” Aloe called back to them from up front. “It’s okay!”

So the griffin threw up his arms, and stood aside. But Lero got the impression that Gerhard was secretly glad that Lero had gotten his way, for he watched the human at work with marked interest.

When ponies walked through the door to be massaged, one didn’t simply scratch their backs like dogs. No, Lero took great pride in being good at what he did. But today, his dear Rainbow Dash was getting the royal treatment. Better than royal, even; it wasn’t like he’d be giving Princess Celestia a rubdown any time soon. Maybe Luna.

He started with the legs. On his first pass, he worked upward from the hoof in gentle, gliding motions. Then on his next pass, he repeated the process, only this time using his knuckles to push upwards, nice and firm. He did not have Rainbow Dash remove her robe; the only exposed part of her body were the limbs he was working on. He moved down to the hooves, rotating the ankles this way and that, and she let out a wondrous oooooh. Once he finished with the lower legs, he set a pillow under both sets of her knees.

Next, he focused on Rainbow’s upper back. From where her neck met the shoulders, he pressed, stroked, and stretched, working in a crisscrossing maneuver, using just his thumbs on the shoulders, themselves, really working them in.

“You know,” she sighed dreamily, “I had to’ve had a reason why I never tried you out as my masseur after that first time, Lero. Can you imagine what it could possibly be?”

“I’m sure you’ll remember eventually,” he told her, pouring grape seed oil in his hands. “But it doesn’t really matter. One thing I’ve come to learn, recently, is that memories can be rather silly, nonsensical things.”

As a professional, Lero preferred grape seed oil because it didn’t feel as gross and goopy as many other oils could be, and he’d always used it unless his client specifically asked for something else. He worked down the pegasus’ back, kneading the oil into her fur like a hair lotion, his fingers reaching for the skin beneath, unlocking her many hardened strands of muscles; stretch and release, stretch and release. He could feel several of the still-healing scars under her fur. Then he returned back to the top of her back, and treated her to a soft, rhythmic beating of her back using just the edges of his hands.

With her wings, Lero was his gentlest, using butterfly-light touches and slight squeezing strokes along the tendons, not even dislodging so much as a feather. With her head, on the other hand, Lero was his roughest. He applied deep finger pressure along all sides of her cranium, rubbing in firm, circular movements, lifting and kneading, touching and pulling, stimulating circulation to her scalp. Through it all, her eyes kept softly shut, until he pulled away and asked, “So on a scale of one to ten, how would you rank that?”

“Marry me…” she breathed, snuggling into her pillow.

Gerhard clapped his talons. “Well done!”

“The secret’s all in the wrists,” Lero told him.

“I’m sure,” he said, clacking his beak. “Now the only question is, which of us would you like to perform your massage?”

The human looked over at Rainbow Dash, who’d fallen asleep, then between Patchouli and the griffin. “Oh, what the heck, I think I’ll try you, Gerhard. Kinda miss being massaged by fingers.”

“Alright,” said Gerhard, motioning him towards an empty massage chair. “I trust you know the drill…”

* * *

Aloe and Lotus had picked a fine replacement for him; Lero’s body felt so relaxed. Next up was a hooficure, which Lero sat out for obvious reasons. As far as fingernails went, Lero had always been on his own. Minotaurs were the only other sapient beings on this planet that had them, and theirs were still much thicker than his. He’d had to get a set of nail scissors custom-made.

The whole experience was so wonderful. Everything was all coming back to him, the longer he stayed by this loving pegasus. All the sweet little things. Like the time he’d gotten in the bathtub right after saving Honeybee from drowning, and she’d told him ‘Don’t leave me again.’ Or the time she and Twilight had bought him zucchini flowers so there’d be a flower he, too, could eat. Even the times when he came home waaay late, drunk out of his mind, and Rainbow Dash was there to greet him with her furious glare… He’d MISSED all that from her.

At last, they came to the final stop, the communal baths. They all looked so inviting, but right off the bat, he saw most of them had others occupying them. Were there any which were completely empty…?

“Rainbow Dash! Lero? Fancy seeing the two a’ yew here!”

The feeling was very mutual. Neither of them had expected to see Applejack here, or Spike!

“Uh… hi!” Rainbow Dash called to them.

“C’mon in!” Applejack invited, tapping the water she was in. “Water’s fine, ‘n’ there’s more’n enuff room.”

With no reason not to, the both of them stepped inside the hot tub. Spike was keeping a fair, respectable distance from AJ; two other ponies could’ve fit in the space between him and her. The palomino mare had taken her hat off. It sat on a nearby lounge chair, right on top of a robe with a monogrammed letter R.

Lero sat right next to Spike, greeting him with a super-chummy, ‘Hiya, there, tiger!’”

“Hiya, big brother!” he greeted back with an equally big we’re-both-pretending-I-never-burned-your-hand grin.

When he was close enough to whisper in his ear, the human asked, “What’re you and Applejack DOING here?!”

“I managed to find a loophole with Applejack!” the dragon whispered back, gleefully. “Like you, with Rainbow Dash and walking her dogs, remember that?”

Lero stared at Spike. Perhaps he’d underestimated the little guy. There were so many questions he wanted to ask, such as what the loophole was, and why he’d bring her HERE, of all places! But of course, it would have to wait. There were only so many seconds of furtive whispering others were willing to put up with before it became a social faux pas. So instead, he said, “We’ll talk more later!”

And they both turned their attention back to the two mares.

“Hoo-wee! It’s plumb fantastic seein’ mah favorite spa partner again!” she said, patting Dash’s back.

“Likewise, AJ!” said Rainbow Dash. “Remember when we used to do this every week?”

“Those were the days!” the Earth pony sighed.

Ahhh, what a delightful little card the Swap was! Applejack and Rainbow Dash; both of whom had always considered this place too froufrou and fancy for their tastes, and had only gone along to this spa when their other four friends had roped them into it! If only they could see themselves now; these two mares who’d once been the Element Bearers’ most rough-hewn physical fighters!

“So what’s new with yew?”

“Well, a lot!” Rainbow said excitedly. “Right now, we’ve got this thing going on where me, Lero, Twilight, and Lyra are all teaching Fluttershy how to do comedy.”

“Comedy?” Applejack repeated. Suddenly, an intense look entered AJ’s eyes. When she stood out of the hot tub, Lero could see her cutie mark quaking. “Comedy… maybe a dress that’s half-circus clown, half-jester, half-chicken costume! Yes, surely they’ll…”

“Say, Applejack!” Spike swiftly spoke. “Remind me; what letter of the alphabet comes after L?”

Applejack blinked at him, dazedly. So did Lero and Rainbow Dash.

“M!” The orange pony answered. “M comes after L! Yew oughta know that, Spike!”

“Oops, sorry!” said Spike, splashing the water in an adorable, cutesy way. “You know I’m just a BABY dragon, and sometimes babies forget these things!”

“Huh. Uh… what was Ah saying?”

Rainbow Dash looked at her friend in concern. “You’d mentioned…”

“NOTHING important,” Spike butted in. “RAINBOW DASH was talking about how they were teaching Fluttershy comedy. And you interrupted her.”

“Oh.” At that moment, strong, dependable Applejack reminded Lero of nothing more than some lost old woman, prone to bouts of senility. Before she sank back into the water, Lero saw her Diamond Mark was no longer shaking.

You clever, cunning fox. Lero thought, peering over at the baby dragon. But then, with the Swapped, you need to be a cunning fox. Maybe… maybe Applejack’s in good hands after all.

And he gave Spike a thumbs-up. Spike gave him a thumbs-up back.

“So anyway…” Rainbow Dash began.

And she went on, describing how the comedy lessons were going. Applejack seemed to be listening, but with only half an ear. But when Rainbow reached the part about Twilight and her flashcards, the orange pony sprung out of the water again, two legs already out of the pool.

“Flashcards!” she ranted. “Of course! A tuxedo made entirely of flashcards! It’ll turn all of fashion upside-down! Ah need ta get back to mah sewing mach…”

“Hey, Applejack!” Spike interrupted again. “If you had a choice between watching three rotten movies with your best friends or three stupendous movies with a group of ponies you hated, which would you pick?”

Half-in and half-out of the pool, Applejack paused to think again, dripping water over the floor.

“Ah’d rather see them crummy movies with mah friends,” she decided. “Ya’ll can make fun a’ bad movies afterwards. But when ya go out with ponies ya dislike, odds are it’ll completely ruin the great movies for ya.”

“Hey, yeah!” Dash said, turning around to Lero. “Lero had the same idea when we went to see that X-bionic movie! Remember that, Lero?”

The human smiled. “Yep! We found a LOT to laugh about.”

And then came a sorely-missed old favorite for Lero; Rainbow Dash kissing him with a hoof around his shoulder. Not a quick peck, either; this was a REAL kiss! DAMN, had he missed this!

Lero saw how very genuinely happy Spike was to witness this. The little guy’s face showed the same elation of a child watching his beloved mother and father fall completely back in love, and call off their divorce.

The kiss has also gotten Applejack’s attention. She stepped back fully into the hot tub.

“Wow, Rainbow that there’s… quite a smoochin’ ya gave ‘im.”

“Yep! Lero’s WONDERFUL for smooching,” said the pegasus mare, turning and smooching him again. Mmmm...

“And yew said ya both went ta a movie together?” Applejack asked.

“Yep!”

“Did ya’ll do anything else together? Jest him ‘n’ yew?”

What had changed? To Lero, the Earth pony fashionista suddenly didn’t look the slightest bit befuddled or senile. Quite the contrary: her hawkish eyes were like that of a shrewd young judge. Like her old farmer self.

“We’ve gone out and doing stuff with each other every day, right after Fluttershy’s comedy lessons!” Rainbow said. "The first time it was the movie, the second time, I took him to see a real-live displacer beast in the Everfree Forest, and today, we’re here at the spa!”

“And does Rarity know ‘bout all this?”

That brought Rainbow up short. The others around her sat stunned. The water around them suddenly felt twenty degrees cooler.

“Now Ah don’t wanna imply anythang… untoward,” Applejack said. “But Ah know that Rarity’s a good girl. Gotta heart big as all Ponyville. What’s more, she’s way more deserving of her Element a’ Loyalty than Ah ever was with mah Element a’ Generosity. Specially recently. And whether it’s jest perfectly innocent, friendly fun or… sumthin else… t’aint right for one a’ her best friends, and her dream-stallion, her prince, doin’ stuff behind her back. T’ain’t right. Both a yew are better than this, and Ah know if Ah were Rarity, it’d break mah heart in two.”

Rarity… Rarity… It was all so backwards! She was supposed to be ‘Rainbow Dash,’ but then the REAL Rainbow Dash had… he had come to think only ONE portion of the cyan pegasus’ soul contained the part capable of loving him. But now BOTH did?

First, this all really wasn’t fair to Rarity.

Second, Rarity loved him.

Third, he loved Rarity.

Fourth… Rainbow Dash was pulling away from him, moving over by where Applejack sat. Looking downcast into the water. Ashamed of herself, as much as he was of himself.

The magic was gone now. This day was as good as over. Spike sat with the look of a boy whose beloved parents had un-cancelled their divorce.

Well, at least one silver lining was there to be found. Whatever mistakes they’d made, he and Rainbow Dash were both honorable souls at heart. With their situation being what it was, their love for each other had hit a glass ceiling. It could go no further than this. So that left Rarity, by default.

That dream of his, from weeks back, about being forced to choose between Dash’s heart and Dash’s mind… thank goodness it would never come true.

* * *

Merely being ludicrous does not a comedian make. Realism is also an important factor. Realism is the preamble before the actual joke. As your audiences mentally nods in agreement with your introduction, that’s when you hit them with the true joke: exaggeration.

It was the day after Lero had gone to the spa with Rainbow Dash. Today, he was sitting out in his front yard, reading more of How To Be Funny, thankful for the string of sunny days he’d been able to enjoy, thus far. But he probably ought to have a talk with Fluttershy and the others. They needed to decide on another meeting place for when Rarity and the rest of the weatherponies made it rain. The village green just wouldn’t do forever. Maybe the library… or maybe a café, or a diner, or a restaurant where they served really nice food…

Using realism as a launching point, the humorist seeks to find how far in any direction the truth can be stretched, while still preserving credibility.

Thoughts of food were seriously distracting Lero. Keeping focused on research was getting difficult.

Realism is funniest when taken to its most farfetched exaggeration possible. Imagine a joke centered around two inmates sharing the same jail cell. If Prisoner A refers to Prisoner B as her cellmate, that’s blah. If she refers to her as her ‘suite mate,’ that’s comedy!

The human checked his watch; it was nearly noon. Three fifteen was still hours away, so he might as well get himself a lunch. He really didn’t feel like eating at home, though. So he thought about all the good restaurants in walking distance, and decided he’d go with Hollandaise’s.

The restaurant was just a few blocks away. It’d been a while since he last stepped into a Hollandaise’s. It was a regular sort of sit-down restaurant, with a rather casual dining atmosphere, decorated with pictures of sauces, saucepans, and sauce bottles. It was mostly known for its breakfast menu, but its lunch menu was okay, too. A place where a guy could refuel on decent-tasting food without spending a lot of money.

The sign posted just inside the restaurant told him to seat himself, and so he did. A waitress came by to his booth, asking to take his beverage order, and he ordered water with lemon juice in it. The waitress left to fetch his drink.

“...and I thought about what Applejack said all through the night when I was home with my animals. And I when I woke up this morning, I knew I had to come clean to you, Rarity...”

Lero’s whole world flew out of orbit. He looked to his right at the two ponies sitting at the booth across from him.

Rarity and Rainbow Dash. The pegasus looked contrite and humble. The unicorn showed no emotion at all. His first instinct was to get up and try to sneak away, out of Hollandaise’s…

“Lero,” Rarity called, spotting him, “would you come over here, please?”

Running wouldn’t have done any good anyway, he reflected as his feet brought him over to their booth. Not when the cat’s out of the bag like this.

“Why don’t you have a seat? Right next to me,” Rarity’s voice was as flat as a floorboard. Poker players would envy a facial expression like hers. Looking into those eyes, Lero couldn’t tell just what the white unicorn was feeling.

He sat, and without a hint of response at his presence, Rarity turned her gaze to the pegasus.

“Now, Rainbow Dash, please do continue with what you have to say.”

Time to face the music.

Author's Note

Rarity... Rainbow Dash...

Her heart and memories?
Her mind and body?

Stay tuned for the next chapter.

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