Divided Rainbow

Xenophoolia - A trilogy in six parts.

Part 1 of 6 - “If you follow me we'll put our differences aside.”
Part 2 of 6 - “But I look a little closer and it starts to feel familiar too.” (YOU ARE HERE)
Part 3 of 6 - “I'm just like you and you're just like me.”
Part 4 of 6 - “Everything is turned around, this crazy world is upside-down.”
Part 5 of 6 - “Helped me to see all the possibilities.”
Part 6 of 6 - “I couldn't see what was right there in front of me.”

It was a quiet morning in the Carousel Boutique, and there were no browsing patrons present to notice the sudden breeze that pushed and pulled at the display ponyquins, ruffling the frills and ribbons of the display stock and knocking to the ground what could only be called a ‘hat’ if one was seriously understating this most elaborate of chapeaus.

With a hiss, a large spark jumped between two of the ponyquins, followed quickly by another, then another. Within seconds the space between the dressmaker’s dummies was filled with numerous arcs of tiny lightning bolts, each converging on the same spot roughly a pony’s head height from the ground, where they merged into a glowing ball made of pure energy.

Suddenly, the ball expanded in size until it was approaching at least two body lengths in width before vanishing just as quickly as it had arrived, leaving behind no trace it had ever existed. What it did leave behind though were a pair of beings that were handling the situation of their instantaneous — and rather undignified — arrival in this specific plane of existence in remarkably different ways.

The first being, a creature made up of a complete mishmash of different body parts — and known by almost as many names, not all of them polite — was completely unfazed by their sudden and unannounced mid-air arrival. Hovering as he was, he casually stretched and extended his legs towards the ground and then let them shrink back to normal — ‘normal’ being somewhat of a relative term when it came to the God of Chaos — gently lowering his body to the ground as he did so.

His traveling companion — not being a Chaos God, a pegasus pony or indeed any other kind of creature endowed with the powers of either magic or flight — swiftly found out just how much of a harsh mistress gravity really is as he proceeded to plummet to the ground with all the grace and poise of a large house brick.

From his now supine position on the showroom floor, Lero Michaelides, dimensional traveller and foreigner to this version of Equestria, groaned and griped as he gingerly pulled himself into a sitting position.

“Really nailed that landing there, my boy, I’ll give you... six out of ten,” Discord chortled from where he stood above the floored human, “You’d think that by now you’d be a dab hand at cross-reality travel. I mean, this is far from your first-ever pan-dimensional portal.”

“Maybe,“ Lero replied as he rolled a shoulder that he was sure would be developing a nasty bruise pretty soon, “but it’s not as if I can remember the others though. Not sure I want to either.”

“True, true” Discord nodded sagely, “So, would you like a hand?”

“Please,” Lero held up a hand so that Discord could pull him up. As he grasped at the draconequus’ proffered limb he was only mildly surprised when it turned out to not be connected to the rest of Discord’s body.

“Sorry,” Discord grinned, “old habits die hard.”

As the chaos god reconnected his errant limb, and then used it to pull the unamused human to his feet, Lero finally got a good look at their surroundings. The first thing he noticed was where they were — which was the home and trading establishment of the town’s resident fashionista — but it was the second thing he noticed that really jumped out at him.

On the other side of the room, totally oblivious to the presence of the new arrivees, was a pair of ponies Lero knew quite well — a white unicorn mare with a striking indigo mane and a pale blue pegasus mare whose own tresses were positively polychromatic.

But what was really surprising was the rather familiar looking human standing beside them.

“Oh dear God! I can’t believe it… it’s me. This really is an alternate universe! And look! Rainbow’s got RD’s cutie mark on her! Look!”

Discord watched the human pointed at the multicolored thunderbolt on Rainbow Dash’s flank.

“And…” Lero’s eyes popped as he saw Rarity, and what cutie mark the white unicorn wore. “Diamonds?”

Maybe pulling Lero from one week after the damage had been done hadn’t been his best move. Perhaps going further back in this Lero’s timeline, and plucking him from one-month-before-Twilight-cast-the-spell would yield better results.

“Why diamonds? What’s going on? Why’d you bring me to the boutique? What’s with the bizarre humanoid mannequin?”

“Now come on!” Discord chuckled. “That’s a pretty harsh way for a guy to speak about himself!”

And he gave a friendly noogie to the Lero-who-belonged-here, who didn’t so much as blink. The glare he got from his human guest was too sour not to love. To heck with better results: Discord was sticking with this Lero, and seeing him all the way through!

“That really IS me, huh?” One Lero stood in front of the other, trying and failing to catch his other self’s oblivious eye. Even poking and pinching the other guy did nothing to attract his notice. “So, really, what IS going on?”

“Try opening your ears and closing your mouth, instead of the other way around.” Discord suggested. “You’ll learn more.”

With another surly look, Lero went quiet.

“You’ve been watching waaaay too many weird shows at the movie theater lately,” said the Lero-of-this-world to Rainbow Dash, who only laughed and reared back on her hind legs to embrace him.

“Awww, you know I’m only kidding! I love my human stallion, clothes and all! You’re like a birthday gift I can unwrap every night, and those FINGERS of yours... mmm, they’re just too MAGICAL to get rid of!”

Lero’s cheeks went pink as he watched his other self cuddle with Rainbow Dash.

“So, Lero,” Discord questioned, as the man and pegasus began kissing each other. “This wouldn’t happen to be stirring any...?”

“None of your business!”

“...Memories, I was going to say.”

The Chaos God had to hide a smile behind a lion paw as the human beside him muttered something about how this was all ‘only some weirdo alternate universe anyway.’ Then Lero’s attention turned to Rarity, and he let out a sigh.

“So that’s what Rare’s mane looks like when it’s long,” he said, coming up behind the unicorn. “It looks so nice! I should ask her to grow it out one of these days.”

And he took two big handfuls of Rarity’s elegantly styled mane and lifted it to his nose for a big whiff, as though it were a rose bouquet, even as she continued chatting with the other Lero and Rainbow Dash.

“Mmm! Lavender and… lilac, I think! Yes, lilac. It smells wonderful. Usually, RD likes using shampoos that are ‘Tornado’-scented and ‘Squall’-scented, and ‘Dust Devil’-scented…”

“Ah-HEM.” Discord coughed, giving him a very forbidding glower. “This NOT why I brought you here, Mr. Michealides!”

“Sorry! Very sorry!” Lero said, coming over and grinning apologetically. “Shutting up now!”

Rainbow Dash, Rarity, and the local Lero were now in the middle of talking.

“This is not to be repeated…” the local Lero told the ponies, “But just last night, Twilight got this special package from Princess Celestia. It contains an unfinished spell from this really ancient... uber-magical... wizard... Gandalf-fellow, from the days of yore. Starswirl the Bearded.”

“Never heard of him,” Rarity admitted.

“Well, to hear Twilight go on about him, you’d think he was the Fourth Alicorn that time forgot.” Rainbow Dash snorted.

“He's that big a deal?” Rarity asked, pouring herself a cup of chamomile tea.

“Oh, you have no idea,” Discord muttered, rubbing at his eyes.

He hadn’t really been around to see this part of things, back when they first were happening. Princess Celestia had kept him on standby until Twilight Sparkle had actually cast the spell.

“Yeah,” the local Lero said. “Anyway, this Starswirl guy apparently came up with a big spell of some sort, but he only got so far with it before he died. Princess Celestia wants Twilight to see whether she can complete his work... finish his unfinished masterpiece. But Twilight wants us out of the house first. She refused to even look at Starswirl’s spell to see what it’s supposed to do... didn’t want to risk this dodgy, unfinished ultra-spell hitting anyone in her herd.”

“I think I know what spell they’re talking about,” Discord’s guest commented at his side. “Comes in an old black book with a swirly thing and a bunch of silver stars on the cover, right?”

“That’s the one,” Discord said.

“Well, my Twilight Sparkle, from my world, has the same book. She tried to cast the spell they’re describing about a week ago, but nothing happened.”

“I see.” Discord made a slight swirl with a pinky finger, and the entire scene dissolved into mist.

“So that’s it? We’re done?” Lero asked.

“No! I’ll TELL you when I’m done! That was just the first part of it! Don’t be so impatient!” Discord snapped. “I’m merely ‘transitioning to the next scene,’ to put it in filmmakers’ parlance. After all, the quality of a storyteller’s story hinges as much on his sense of editing as his actual content, right? Or would you rather I show you the unabridged version?”

“No, no!” said Lero quickly. “Short and sweet suits me fine!”

So Discord bent his index claw, and the mist re-solidified into a vision of a beauteous skyscape. Discord and his guest each rode on their own floating surfboards, (well, his human guest wrapped himself around the board, hugging it for dear life, while Discord really knew how to hang ten… or at least three and a hoof) tailing a pair of high-flying lovebirds, cavorting through the sky: Rainbow Dash and the local Lero.

It was impossible for Discord to miss the thunderstruck astonishment on his guest’s face, as he witnessed Rainbow Dash show off her remarkable repertoire of aerial acrobatics… finally culminating in a bird knocking the local Lero off Rainbow Dash’s back.

“Watch her cutie mark!” Discord said, grabbing his guest’s cheeks from behind and tilting the human’s head as though it were a camera, making it follow Rainbow Dash’s flank. “Watch her cutie mark, watch her cutie mark, watch her cutie mark!”

As her human stallion plummeted towards a Bramblewood Forest Bramble Tower, the pegasus shot down to catch him with all the speed she could muster and a look of desperate terror in her eyes…

...But the rainbow thunderbolt cutie mark vanished. And with it, Rainbow’s look of desperate terror. And with THAT, all her efforts to save Lero’s life. The last thing Discord and his guest saw on the local Lero’s face was absolute shock before he was swallowed up into brambles.

“That… that’s IT?!” The local Lero sputtered. But Discord refused to let go of his head until he’d witnessed three butterflies emerge on her flank, heard her murmur, ‘My animals,’ and then fly off in the direction of Ponyville. “That’s the big, humongous mind-blowing revelation you wanted to show me?! Rainbow murdering me by dropping me into a Bramble Tower?!”

“Oh no,” Discord told him. “You survive.”

And from there, Lero watched his local self crawl out, slowly, painfully, from the bottom of the Bramble Tower, a living pincushion of thorns, weeping blood from practically every pore.

“Holy Christ…” the human whispered, looking down at his own unbloodied skin, and feeling a rush of gratitude.

He and Discord followed his poor local self, stumbling through the woods a little while, before coming across a living nightmare.

“Meet the Bramblewood Titan Spider,” Discord introduced.

It was an arachnid a little over six feet high and fifteen feet long, with a gory, infected stump where an eighth leg should’ve been. It sprang on the local Lero, stuck his fangs in him, envenomed him, cocooned him, dragged him all around the forest and jabbed his sharp, spindly legs past the cocoon silk into his flesh, repeatedly, unceasingly, making the guy scream and scream and scream…

“Those are MY screams…” Lero breathed through the fingers clamped over his mouth.

And the spider just kept dragging his human captive around to different parts of the forest, keeping him screaming, screaming, screaming nonstop to attract prey that he could ambush and feast upon.

“So gross… just look at how that thing EATS…” Lero was white as a sheet as he watched the spider slurp up a mountain lion’s liquified intestines.

On and on it went, at times, Lero could almost swear he felt those arachnid’s legs upon his own body, as the spider kept his other self screaming, until he literally had no voice left to scream with…

“AAAAAAIIIEEEEEE!!!” Some many-legged thing had landed on the back of Lero’s neck! Lero whirled around, slapping the nape of his neck, hoping it wasn’t poisonous or paralyzing…

...Discord held a stick. On the end of the stick, a string was tied. And on the end of the string dangled a little rubber spider.

“What?” he asked peevishly.

Punching the draconequus was not an advisable move, but Lero punched Discord anyway.

“Make it stop!” Lero begged, pointing at the cocooned version of him. “That’s me that’s screaming! I’m going to die!”

“Wait for it…” Discord said.

Sweet salvation came in a cave, when the local Lero was on death’s doorstep; no voice left, about to die or be eaten by the very angry and frustrated giant spider.

“Woo-hoo! That’s it! That’s IT! Eviscerate him!” Lero cheered, as a very muddy and disheveled unicorn mare stepped into the cave, full of bearish wrath, and quickly frying the spider to a crisp as only a warrior weather-sorceress like herself could.

“That’s my girl!” he said, blowing the muddy unicorn a kiss of his own, as he saw her deliver a kiss to the local version of himself.

“And look!” he said, beaming at the mark on Rarity’s flank, a little later, after Rarity washed the mud out of her coat. “RD’s cutie mark is back on the flank it was meant to be! All’s well that ends well!”

“RD?” Discord repeated. “Wait a minute. Time out. Let me get this straight once and for all, Lero: exactly who are you referring to when you say ‘RD?’”

Lero pointed again at Rarity. “Her!”

“She’s RD?”

“Absolutely!” said Lero. “My sweet Rare Deluge, who else?”

“Rare… Deluge.”

Discord bit his lower lip. He snapped his fingers, and the setting around them changed from a spider cave to what seemed to be a cop’s office at a police station.

The fluorescent light overhead flickered dully on the white-painted walls, playing over a bulletin board where a series of pictures were marked with "Two Weeks To Retirement," "Getting Married In Three Days," and "Fresh From The Academy." Six of the pictures had red X's over them. The old steel desk in the center of the room was dented and scarred, covered in forms and paperwork.

Lero now found himself seated in a chair before this desk, and Discord was the officer behind it. The draconequus wore a button-down shirt and a novelty necktie with police badges all over it. Both looked frumpled enough to have been slept on. A second ‘Discord,’ dressed in tweeds, sat in a corner of the room, holding a pencil and a large sketch pad.

“Lero, buddy, bear with me as I ask you a few dumb-sounding question, mmkay?” He picked out a glazed violet-colored doughnut from a doughnut box. “Does the name ‘Rainbow Dash’ mean anything to you? Anything at all?”

“No,” said Lero. “Only Rainbow I know is Rainbow Connection, the wife of my best friend, Big Macintosh.”

Discord nodded his head with noticeable slowness.

“So this... this ‘Rainbow Connection’ girl… she wouldn’t happen to be a blue-coated, rainbow-maned pegasus mare, would she?”

The sketch artist draconequus quickly sketched up a drawing, showing Lero. It was Rainbow Dash with three pink butterflies on her flank.

“Yeah, of course! Her mane looks a mess… she never actually wears it that tomboyish... but yeah, that’s her! In fact, you saw her toss me into the brambles just before her right cutie mark appeared and she left me for dead! Always the quiet ones…” the human finished in a mutter.

“Mmm-hmm.” Officer Discord took a full coffee carafe off the percolator and emptied every last drop of java into his mouth. But before actually swallowing, he dropped in several unopened packets of artificial sweetener and non-dairy creamer and swished it around. “I’m gonna go out on another limb and guess that Ms. Connection is also a big animal lover and an Element Bearer, besides? Kindness, maybe?”

“AND she’s the one that one who turned YOU from an uncontrollable chaotic monster into an uncontrollable chaotic jerk,” The look on the human’s face was questioning why Discord was playing the dumb newcomer: this was stuff he should know!

But Discord flashed him a flattered smile. “Oh-ho-ho, I do try! After all, controllable chaos is no chaos at all, am I right?”

Abruptly, the scene around them transformed…

* * *

...And the next thing Lero knew, he was exiting a bathroom stall, heading towards the sink. But the sight in the mirror stopped him.

Reflected back at him was a young boy’s face… HIS face! Himself at around the age of twelve. Shorter, less developed, and clean-shaven… except that wasn’t quite the right word, was it? He hadn’t even needed to shave this early in his life.

Then his eyes were drawn to the digital sundial on the wall and those thoughts scattered like marshmallows in a colander. Good heavens, it was almost learn o’clock! Quickly, the boy turned on the faucet, scrubbing his hands under a stream of strawberry syrup until they were sparkling clean, then stepped out.

For the next couple of minutes, Lero’s body entered a sort of autopilot state; his legs moved one foot in front of the other without his really willing it. Oddly, his mood was calm and untroubled in spite of this loss of control, and in spite of what sort of school he now found himself in.

To the same extent that Equestria was a pony’s world, this place, (whatever its name) was undeniably a draconequus’ world. Which wasn’t to say that the draconequui here were all clones of Discord. They weren’t, any more than Equestrian ponies were all copies of Twilight Sparkle.

Lero saw three young draconequus boys by a drinking fountain, all trying to see which of them could blow his head up the funniest. An overweight draconequus janitor was wiping down the rows of school lockers with a toothbrush the size of a mop.

And there was also a smartly-dressed lady draconequus tacking notices on the bulletin board. Her goat horn and crocodile tail were almost an exact match for his own mother’s…

Wait, what?

But by then, Lero’s feet had led him into what he somehow knew to be his classroom. Every desk was filled with draconequus children his age, except for one empty one, toward which Lero made his way. As with Equestria, Lero seemed to be the one and only human in this strange place.

The one common factor between all the chimera-children was a combination of dragon and horse features. Apart from that, they were even more varied than ponies were. There was a seagull-footed, turtle-shelled video game addict playing a muted handheld system behind his schoolbook. Also a lemur-tailed, dragonfly-winged girl dressed in trendy clothes, a rooster-winged, crab-legged muscular guy, dressed in a varsity calvinball jacket...

Discord, of course, was at the front of the class, as teacher.

“Alright, pop quiz, hotshot!” he said, pointing at Lero as soon as he sat. “For 10 points, give the name, job, and physical description of the mare who bears the Element of Generosity for me!”

“Diamondjack!” Lero answered smartly. “Blond mane, orange coat, Earth pony, always wears something fancy! Runs the Jack of Diamonds clothing boutique.”

“‘Diamondjack,’ eh? Kinda catchy, actually!” And a small cookie materialized on top of Lero’s desk: it had chocolate chips that spelled out the number 10.

Clapping his hands together, Discord then looked around at the entire classroom. “And for 20 points, who can name and describe the Element of Honesty for me?”

“Me! Me! Me! Pick me!” All sorts of arms shot up eagerly in the air: wolf paws, lobster pincers, bat wings, reindeer hooves, elephant trunks, seal flippers, everyone wanted to be called on!

“How about… Mr. Michealides again!”

Caught by surprise, Lero swallowed the bite of cookie he was in the middle of eating.

“Pink Lady Apple. Pink mane, pink coat, Earth pony; she farms at Sweet Apple Acres.”

God, had his voice really sounded that high-pitched back then?

A larger cookie with a big 20 in icing materialized before Lero. He bit in.

“These are good, by the way.”

“Mmm-hmm,” said Discord, copying all of Lero’s answers down on the blackboard.

Lero, though, happened to look to the side… and sitting directly to his left was a draconequus girl: squirrel tail, matching jaguar legs, and fixing him with coquettish eyes, blowing him a kiss, holding a webbed frog hand up to her ear as though it were a phone and mouthing the words ‘call me!’

He nearly choked with horror.

“Finally, for 50 points, Lero, give me the skinny on the mare who bears the Element of Magic!”

Lero folded his arms and leaned back in his chair. “Twilight Sparkle, purple unicorn, Celestia’s student and my wife!”

The draconequus girl who blew Lero a kiss ran out of the room in hysterical, jilted tears.

And suddenly, the classroom and all of Lero’s classmates disappeared, and Lero was an adult again, standing atop an infinite polka dot-patterned nothingness.

Discord paced around in a tight circle, looking for all the world like Sherlock Holmes chewing over a juicy clue.

“So in THIS Equestria, it alters their NAMES as well,” he said, puffing a pipe that let out miniature confetti bursts. “Intriguing. At least Twilight still remains her old self, so at least she’s not under any bewitchment…!”

Lero brought his foot down atop a polka dot that squeaked under the impact and ran off. “Okay, enough’s enough. Just what the hell you’re talking about?! What’s ‘altering names?’ Why are you asking me about the Elements of Harmony like you don’t know them? Why would you think Twilight’s been bewitched?”

“The Swap.”

Lero frowned. “The Swap?”

“The. Swap. Two small, simple words… and they answer every question you just asked.”

Reality shifted once more. Now Lero found himself inside a once-elegant hotel room, gone to ruin. With its warped wood and peeling wallpaper, its moth-eaten lace and dusty furniture and especially the dramatic thunderstorm booming outside, it looked perfectly suited to be part of a haunted house.

Yet somehow, the circular mirrored glasses Discord wore over his eyes, coupled with the black leather trenchcoat over his body suggested something different from a ghost story.

“The Swap is everywhere,” Discord declared. He and Lero sat across from each other in cracked burgundy-colored leather chairs. “It's all around us, especially right here in your mind, Lero, and the minds of practically every creature alive on this bright and colorful pony-world. You can see it in family photographs and newspaper clippings. You experience its touch when you pay visits to your best friend’s farm, or buy crullers from your local bakery. And you’ll see it especially in the eyes and hearts of two of the mares who share your home. It is the world that has been pulled over your eyes to blind you from the truth.”

Bursting into laughter, Lero clapped his hands as though at terrific comedy. “Great line read, there, Morpheus!”

The dried leather creaked as Discord leaned forward. “I’m being dead serious, Lero. I meant every word of what I just said.”

Lero locked eyes with Discord, but only saw himself, reflected in those mirrored lenses. The Chaos God’s gaze was even and steady enough to unsettle him.

“So you’re saying this Swap thing is… kinda like the Matrix?”

Discord’s razor-thin smile could’ve cut glass. “Well, it’s a false reality enforced by magic on top of the real one, not a separate existence altogether, but essentially, yes. You get the idea.”

“Whoa.” Lero contemplated this uncomfortably, then scoffed. “Even if this were true, why come to me? Do I look like Keanu Reeves to you? I don’t even like you, Discord. Why would I even matter to you?”

“Because, well… because…” Sighing, the draconequus removed those mirrored sunglasses for a second, so Lero could see his real eyes. “Because it matters to me. In the unfathomable enormity of the multiverse, there exists one very special version of Equestria. An Equestria which I am not only sworn to protect, but one which I dearly love revisiting for its own sake. And in this Equestria, Lero, you and I are friends.”

“Friends? Us?!” asked Lero, amazed and skeptical.

“Yep,” said Discord, placing the glasses back over his eyes.

“And which version of Equestria would that be?”

From a coat pocket, Discord pulled out a remote control, aimed it across the room at a television that looked to have been bought in 1978. It switched on, showing the Lero of an alternate universe inside what looked like some kind of weird pink church. He was chasing Discord, and trying to stab him with a broken bottle. The shirt this other Lero wore read ‘University of Idaho.’

“You’re free to not like me,” Discord told the Lero seated across from him. “But I respect HIM…”

He pointed a talon at the Lero on TV, who was waltzing out of Diamondjack’s boutique wearing… Good Lord, was that Colin Baker’s outfit from Doctor Who? Why?

“...So much, that I just couldn’t stand to let the Swap have a complete no-contest, won-before-anything-begun victory over YOU, Lero. You at least deserve something of a fighting chance.”

Discord switched the TV off. Doubt and worry were beginning to nibble at Lero’s heart.

“But you’ll need to show me you want that fighting chance. Hold out your hands.”

Instinctively Lero obeyed. In the human’s right hand, Discord dropped a large red cookie shaped like the number fifty. In the human’s left hand, the draconequus dropped a blue cookie, also shaped like a fifty.

“You eat the blue cookie and the story ends. You wake in your bed and you believe whatever the Swap wants you to believe. You eat the red cookie and we begin to lift the fog from your eyes.”

The cookies in Lero’s open hands reflected perfectly in Discord’s glasses.

“One word of warning,” said Discord, steepling his fingers as he leaned backwards. “I’m not just being some Wachowski Brothers fanboy with all this, and this isn’t some silly late-night parody skit. There’s a REASON I’m using Matrix symbolism and imagery. It’s a quick, crude metaphor, just so you can BEGIN to comprehend what manner of sorcery now enthralls this world. And the consequences are exactly what I say they’re going to be. So pick your cookie carefully.”

The human stared between the two cookies he held.

On one hand, part of him felt foolish at just the the idea of trusting Discord. He’d be better off investing his money in a Ponzi scheme.

But on the off-chance that all this was real… if this Swap thing really was like The Matrix, did he really have it in him to be a superhero on par with Neo? He seriously doubted it.

Then again, Mr. Thomas A. Anderson started off as an office worker and computer hacker who was a bit of a loser...

For as long as he could remember, Lero Michealides had been a low-key, go-with-the-flow-and-don’t-rock-the-boat kind of guy, more or less the exact opposite of the thrill-seeking daredevil his beloved RD was. It was a big part of what had won him the love of his girls in the first place!

Yet for all that, he’d die of shame before allowing himself to be so close-minded, cowardly, unadventurous, and incurious as to swallow the blue pill.

I can at least hear what Discord has to say. Lero reasoned. Not like I’m signing on to fight on the front lines of World War III or whatever.

The red cookie tasted like pomegranates, raspberries, strawberries, watermelon, tomatoes, cranberries, cherries, and rhubarb all at once.

“Marvelous!” said the Chaos God, pulling a white rabbit from out of his ear. The bunny was as big as an adult collie, and Discord dropped him. Even BEFORE hitting the old wood beneath their feet, the rabbit dug, dug, DUG downwards, faster than Xenomorph blood through the floors of the Nostromo.

“And so our tour of the multiverse continues!” crowed Discord, diving headfirst with him down the bottomless rabbit hole while pulling a very surprised Lero in after him by the front of his shirt. They achieved light speed within seconds.

* * *

“I don’t believe I’ve mentioned this yet, but you have good instincts,” Discord commented.

Lero’s eyes were clamped tightly shut against the rush of air. “What?” he asked.

“Oh, some of the things you see on the way between worlds have a tendency to inspire insanity,” Discord said breezily. “Not always, of course, but every now and then. I find it refreshing. But you’ve got enough to do at the moment without having to escape from a padded cell first, and the worst we passed on this trip was Far Too Much Gak. But once we do arrive, I have something very important for you to keep in mind.”

“And what would that be?” Lero inquired. Keeping his eyes shut felt like an even better idea. Watching the light red-shift as they accelerated had been much more disturbing than science fiction had led him to believe.

“Don’t open your eyes just yet, Lero. But when we’re in these alternate Equestrias, I want you to always, always be paying special attention to every pony’s cutie mark.” Lero felt Discord flick a claw against his hip.

He wasn’t sure if he wanted to know whether he’d suddenly developed a cutie mark right there, or what Discord would have applied if he did. “Cutie marks?” he asked, but Discord just made an amused snort.

“Well, I wanted to call them Boring Destruction Of The Entire Concept Of Free Will Marks, but the ponies said it was too hard to sing, and they came up with something shorter. I mean, imagine being shackled to a single thing your entire life! Part of the reason I like you is because you have the good sense to not have one."

"I can't get one," Lero reminded him.

"No point bragging about your natural advantages to me, Lero, I’m free of them too. Oh, and you can open your eyes, we’re here now.”

Lero opened his eyes. It was a long, long way down, but he wasn’t falling. After a moment of disorientation, he realized there was a belt around his waist. He looked over his shoulder and saw a fishing line attached to the back of the belt, going up to the rod in Discord’s hand. The draconequus was flying along in a seated position, wearing a hat with hooks in it and with an... ice chest next to him, flying with little wings.

Lero could see Discord smirking and made a mental note to never even think of ice chests as ‘coolers’ ever again. Just to be on the safe side.

Then the fishing line snapped. Lero sucked in a breath to yell — and then realized that he still wasn’t falling. The belt vanished, but Lero continued flying along just the same. He looked to the sides and realized that they weren’t alone. Rainbow was flying rapidly, wearing a harness. The harness was pulling something that looked halfway between a cloud and a chariot, with Twilight Sparkle and Miss Heartstrings riding in it. The three mares had looks of grave intensity on their faces.

Lero stared. It wasn’t the sight of Rainbow pulling the others that was so odd. It was the purple star on her flank, and the tri-colored lightning bolt on Twilight Sparkle’s, and the harp on the third mare, beside Twilight.

“... Is this a dream?” Lero had to ask.

Discord raised a finger, then stopped, tilted his head, and hmmmed. “You know, that’s actually a very good question. I don’t believe you’d care for the answer, so I’ll just say ‘no.’ Oh, and just a reminder: once again, as far as they’re concerned, we’re not really here. No touching, they can’t hear or see us, and so on.”

“Rrrrrgh!” grunted Twilight Sparkle from the chariot. “Come on, Rainbow, faster! I can hold it together, I promise!”

“I’m going as fast as I can, Twilight,” the pegasus said, strain roughening her voice. “I can’t exactly rainboom with this much aerodynamic drag behind me.”

“We’ll make it when we make it,” the aqua mare said, then added, “I just hope it’s in time.”

“What’s the plan, Rainbow?” the purple unicorn asked.

“Why’s Twilight asking Rainbow Connection for a plan?” Lero asked Discord. “And since when does Rainbow fly this fast? Are they trying to rescue a baby bird or something?”

Discord rolled his eyes. “None so blind as those who will not see, except the ones who got sriracha sauce in their eyes, because then you end up with a runny nose and lots of screaming that makes it even harder to pay attention,”

“Normally I’d want to have everything ready by now, but this time I think we’re going to have to go with a Sparkle Special,” the blue pegasus admitted. “Charge in blindly and try to react.”

“Whoooo!” Twilight Sparkle bounced in place in the cloud-chariot, then grabbed the edge to hold on tighter. “I love it when no plan’s the plan! You ready, Lyra?” The harp-flanked unicorn nodded.

“What.” Lero stared, not believing what he’d just heard from his beloved patron saint of checklists-checked-thrice herself. “Discord, you’ve done something to her, right? And did you fix Miss Heartstrings’ eyes?”

“Not a thing in the world,” Discord assured him. “Different Equestria, and a very blatantly obvious lesson you’re trying so very hard to ignore.”

“Good, because we don’t have any time to make up a plan anyhow,” the harp-flanked unicorn said, and pointed. Pink fluffy sugary cotton-candy clouds were floating across the sky, drifting away from a large house, really a mansion, where the windows were pouring out endless streams of that impossibly buoyant treat.

Discord cleared his throat. “I do hope it’s sufficiently obvious that this is not my doing, but a different version of me, Lero, yes? Yes, of course I could be down there and up here at the same time, but for the moment I’m not. I also am down there, and not, and will be, and was, and have a variable probability at any moment of being him or me. Honestly, I won't bore you with the complexities of conceptual avatar consciousnesses. But I’m not at the moment. That would be rather rude of me, intruding like that.”

“Well, I should hope so,” agreed a passing cloud, manifesting a pink fuzzy copy of Discord’s face. The ponies seemed to not notice.

The full version of Discord held up an old-fashioned boombox and pressed the Play button. Music began to pour out, and the two chaos spirits sang.

[Discord, you made many, many ponies mad,
We realize, of course, that it was all in good fun,
But now we feel a little bad.
So why don’t we try being friends with a small pony?

If they had been kidnapped!
Daidle deedle daidle,
Daidle deedle daidle daidle dumb,
Then we’d go to save them!
For our friend Fluttershy,
For Applejack and Lero,
Daidle deedle daidle,
Daidle deedle daidle daidle dumb.

For they have been kidnapped
By some daidle deedle daidle scum!

We’d put on capes and spandex with pouches by the dozen,
with improbable anatomy,
to give this hero thing an honest try,
for they know our friend’s persona’s split
between the two of them right now,
and they’d take the monkey, just to be sure.

And we’d surrender to save our good friends,
though you seem unlikely to believe,
that we’d let them bind our powers,
for little ponies.

“Discord, please! Discord, help!”
we hear their cries ring out,
as if to say, “We need your friendship!”
Oy!

For they have been kidnapped!
Daidle deedle daidle,
Daidle deedle daidle daidle dumb,
And we’d go to save them!
For surprising friendship.

And we might have to surrender,
Daidle deedle daidle,
Daidle deedle daidle daidle dumb,

Just to save our friends the ponies,
And a daidle deedle daidle man.

I see my friend, Fluttershy,
looking frightened for her life,
with her wings all bound in ropes up,
and whimpering at a knife!

I see Applejack at their mercy,
and sobbing in her fear,
Oy! What a horrid situation,
and her captors would me bind.

They think my reform’s a false front,
they demand more security,
a spell worse than a statue,
“We don’t trust Discord,”
“No way, Discord,”
warded against my powers with spells,
ya va voy, ya va voy voy vum.

And it won’t make one bit of difference,
if I answer right or wrong,
Chaos spirits they think they’ll never trust.

So though it’s much to our own surprise,
we’ll go and do as they command,and save our friend Fluttershy,
and Applejack and Lero too.
And if we pay a heavy price,
it somehow isn’t quite as bad.
Oy!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pl7BVr36bbs)

Lero gaped at the two iterations of Discord. Finally, he said, “I think I preferred not hearing the music.”

“Everyone’s a critic,” the two chaos spirits chorused. The cloud returned to its normal puffy shape and the remaining Discord picked it up to take a bite.

“In any case, Lero, that’s the situation. A local band of ponies decided to take matters into their own hooves because they simply didn’t trust that their version of me was really and truly reformed. The Order of Chaos they called themselves, adding insult to injury.”

“Wait a minute,” Lero protested. “You mentioned ‘our friend Fluttershy and Applejack,’ in your singing just a second ago… well, I don’t even know those ponies!”

Discord sighed. “Diamondjack and Flutterpie, to you.”

Lero had mentioned Flutterpie’s name during their long plunge down the rabbit hole.

“Here, they’ve simply swapped with each other directly. You’ll catch on. Eventually. I hope. In any case, Fluttershy is my dear friend, and she exchanged life roles and quite a few memories with Applejack. The Order of Chaos decided to take both of them and use them as hostages to demand my local variant surrender himself to let them cast various thoroughly insalubrious spells on him to limit his fun.”

“And?” Lero asked.

Discord pointed. Rainbow had gone into a dive while Discord was singing his self-duet to Lero, and Twilight Sparkle’s horn was glowing brightly. Thick, dark clouds were forming behind the cloud-chariot, crackling with electricity.

“And they do have other friends — and, at least transitively, so do I. The rescue party is on the way. Rainbow Dash and Twilight Sparkle, the two students of Prissy Princess Pink Plot herself. And their annoyingly serene friend. Let’s watch the action!” Discord opened the co… ice chest and pulled out a beer, and handed another to Lero.

Twilight Sparkle jumped out of the chariot while it was still fifty feet in the air. Dark clouds formed under her hooves, and a pair of lightning bolts shot out of the thunderheads she had formed behind them — and in a literal flash, Twilight was on the ground, skid marks behind her hooves and a manic grin on her face.

“.... She just rode a bolt of lightning to the ground instead of waiting to land,” Lero said blankly, staring at the mis-marked mare, while Rainbow Dash landed and flicked her wings, dispelling the chariot and her harness.

“She’s fun like that,” Discord agreed, and swigged from his beer. “This version, at least.”

“CHAAAAAARGE!” screamed Twilight Sparkle, lowering her horn and racing toward the door. Rainbow Dash flung her wings wide, and the door was surrounded by a rainbow aura, then torn from its hinges and thrown to the side. Lyra’s horn glowed in readiness, and she took smooth steps, hooves swinging in steady half-circles along the ground, never actually lifting up more than a half an inch.

“... Wait, what the heck just happened?” said Lero, gaping. “She’s a pegasus! How the heck did Rainbow Connection just do that? That was… Whaaa?”

Discord chuckled. “It’s Rainbow Dash. The Element of Magic.”

Lero just rubbed his eyes and kept watching.

“Ooof!” Twilight declared immediately after entering, and then an annoyed, “Who just leaves a stool right in the… running around… in… the…” Her voice trailed off.

Discord and Lero dove through a wall; Lero’s reflexes made him bring up his arms defensively, but they were every bit as intangible as Discord had said. Inside, Twilight had gone sprawling over a footstool, which had retreated to a corner and was waving its legs at her and hissing.

“They’ve got Discord, remember?” Rainbow Dash reminded them, entering more cautiously. “The whole place could be booby-trapped with all sorts of chaotic effects. Sorry, Twi, no charging in after all.”

“Awww,” grumbled the lavender unicorn, righting herself. “No Sparkle Special? I’m already working inside, now I can’t even get up a good head of steam? This is gonna be tough to make it a totally awesome rescue under these conditions.”

“Just concentrate on making it a rescue in the first place,” Lyra advised. “Be ready for anything.”

Rainbow Dash flicked a feather, and the next door opened.

Lyra nodded through the doorway. “Like that.”

A sobbing green pegasus was on the floor in front of a teapot, which was puffing out endless streams of pink cotton candy that floated out through the windows. “Make it stop, make it stop, make it stawwwwwwwwwp,” he wailed, hooves over his face. “Make it staaaawwwwwp…”

A pale orange pegasus was cackling to herself and chasing a glint of sunlight around the room. Every so often she let out a loud “MEOW!” before a pounce. She wore a set of fake cat ears on a headband, and a bell on a collar around her neck.

An off-white unicorn mare was crying openly and trying to squeeze her horn with her hooves. “Get out, get out, get out, get out, please, please, get out, get out, get out,” she sobbed, then tossed her head, then hit her horn against a wall — then lit her horn up and smacked it against the wall again, which made her let out a scream of pain, but then she did it again. Twilight Sparkle and Lyra winced at the sight.

Rainbow Dash carefully twitched a wing, and the teapot stopped emitting its pink puffy ‘steam.’ The green pegasus’s head lifted. He stared at the re-normalized teapot. Then he prodded it with a hoof. The teapot jumped at him, blasting hot chocolate in his face. The unfortunate pegasus screamed and batted at it, but it stuffed its spout into his mouth and poured. His stomach promptly swelled up until it extended beyond his hooves… and then the teapot dropped out of his mouth and clattered to the ground. The stallion groaned and clutched at his liquid-swollen belly.

“... I’m going to say these guys aren’t going to put up a fight anyway,” Rainbow Dash concluded. “Let’s keep going.”

Lyra opened the next door.

Fluttershy waved happily to the rescue party from the next room. “Howdy, y’all!” she cheerfully called out. “Sorry we didn’t wait for ya, but these fellers just weren’t bein’ all that friendly.” She was sitting atop an unconscious blue earth pony mare whose hooves had been tied together and who had two prominently blackened eyes, along with a number of other highly visible bruises. Four other mares were sprawled against the walls, unconscious.

“Awesome!” Twilight gushed, and sprinted in. Applejack blushed and waved a hoof, and Discord politely saluted them with a cup of tea. Earl Grey, piping hot.

“They were bein’ awful ornery, an’ they were gonna do somethin’ downright mean to ol’ Discord here, so Applejack an’ Ah figured we’d give ‘em a little friendship lesson courtesy of Kicky McGeecutty and Bucks McGill here,” Fluttershy explained, and kissed her hooves.

“Fluttershy was really amazing,” Applejack said. “She was just like an action movie mare.”

“Aw, don’t you sell yourself short, sugarcube!” Fluttershy declared. “Yew gave ‘em everything they could handle and a mite more besides. Yew wrestle bears, AJ, they oughtta have known you’d be tougher’n a ten-year-dried apple!”

“Really, I’m just glad things all turned out so nicely,” Discord commented. He gave Fluttershy and Applejack a smile. “You do know I was ready to surrender myself to those Order of Chaos ruffians for you, yes?”

Applejack nuzzled the draconequus. “We shore do. An’ that’s the sweetest thing Ah think Ah’ve ever seen.”

Fluttershy nuzzled him from the other side. “An’ if that don’t prove y’all’re the most reformed villain we ever did face, Ah jes’ don’t know what could. Yer a hero, Discord.”

Discord reached down and pushed a buzzer that spontaneously appeared on the tabletop in front of him. A grey mustache manifested on his upper lip as well. “I’ll take ‘Things I Never Thought I’d Hear Or Would Actually Like Hearing for two hundred, Trebek,” he said.

Lero blinked at him, then at his own Discord. “... Did he just… did you…”

Lero’s Discord chuckled. “This version of me is far too far reformed for a proper chaos spirit, but still, he does seem to be enjoying himself. Perhaps one day I’ll give it a try like that. Maybe I can get a national holiday for it.”

“This is...” Lero muttered, then shook his head. “Wait a minute, where am I? I mean… where is the kidnapped me?”

A toilet flushed. Water ran. Footsteps creaked on floorboards. And another version of Lero walked into the room. His face lit up. “Twilight! Rainbow! Lyra!” he cried out, and opened his arms. The three thus-named mares sprang forward, tackling him onto his back in their relief to see him. They laughed, holding him tight as they kissed him, his hands moving to rub at their necks as fast as he could.

Lero blinked repeatedly, looking down at the sight of himself being so lovingly assaulted by the town mailmare and Big Mac’s lead mare alongside his own Twilight Sparkle — mismatched though their marks were. He swallowed, feeling a sudden heaviness in his chest. They looked so… happy together like that. But all this wasn’t how it was supposed to be! Was it?

“I do believe this calls for a proper celebration!” the Discord between Fluttershy and Applejack declared. “Music, refreshments, dancing…”

Twilight Sparkle facehoofed. “Please, no.”

Discord beamed at her. “Please, yes!” He snapped the fingers of his bear paw. The floor abruptly became brightly-flashing multicolored lights, speakers manifested on the walls, and bass-heavy music began thumping through the room. Twilight, Applejack, and Fluttershy were abruptly adorned with garish green-and-purple sequined outfits, while the local Lero was in a black tuxedo and Rainbow Dash was in a white polyester leisure suit with a series of gold chains around her neck.

Rainbow Dash laughed. “Come on, Twi, it’s fun!” She struck a pose, up on her hind legs, one hoof lifted skyward.

Twilight Sparkle kept her face in her hooves. “I cannot watch this. Not again. Not again. This is the uncoolest thing Equestria has ever seen.”

And Rainbow Dash began to dance to the music. Lero joined in with loud chuckles. Though ‘joined in’ in this case meant ‘tried to keep from being knocked over by the spastic flailings of an enthusiastic pegasus with absolutely no concept of rhythm or what dancing was supposed to look like.’ He was moderately successful in the attempt.

“... Okay, that is a point in favor of Rainbow there ending up with some of Twilight’s characteristics,” Lero said to Discord, watching the pony he knew as a shy animal caretaker spastically bouncing around the floor in high spirits. Why she thought sticking out her tongue was part of ‘dancing’ he’d never know.

Twilight turned her face away and groaned. In a thoroughly transparent effort to change the focus of everyone in the room, she loudly asked, “So, Lero, what did you do while AJ and Fluttershy were kicking flank and taking marks?”

“Shoulda seen him, too,” Fluttershy cheerfully announced. “You ain’t ever seen a mare look so surprised as that purple gal over in the corner did when she got herself thrown over Lero’s shoulder by the tail. Ah thought he was gonna start swingin’ her around ta hit the others with.”

“There’s not nearly enough room in here to swing a cat, let alone a pony!” the local Lero laughed out. The music did stop, and the decor returned to normal. “Not without hitting you, at least.”

“So… what’s with those three out there?” Twilight Sparkle asked, and gestured with horn through the door. “That didn’t look like ponies who’d been beaten up to me!”

“Those were the Order’s leaders, of course,” Discord said, sipping neatly at his tea. “Once I arrived and everypony had escaped already, Applejack agreed I really was quite justified in leveling a bit of punishment on them. Something suitably ironic. Which, in this case, was giving them precisely what they were each afraid I’d do.”

Lero looked up to his own Discord, who gave him a pointy-toothed grin. “Even ‘nice’ versions of me don’t care to put up with attempts on our freedom,” Discord told him. “Voluntarily cooperating is bad enough.”

“Err… what exactly was that, then?” Rainbow Dash asked.

The tea-sipping Discord smiled. Also pointy-toothed. “The green one was afraid I’d bring out the cotton candy clouds again. The orange one was frightened of being turned into a dumb animal. And their not-quite-white friend had a particular phobia all of her own devising. She was afraid I’d put a worm inside her horn.” He held up his bear paw. “I didn’t! It’s much more amusing if she simply thinks I did.”

“Ah think mebbe it’s time y’all undid that, now,” Applejack said. “They’ve learned their lesson an’ they ain’t ever gonna do it again, right?”

Discord smiled fondly down at her. “Really, Applejack, and I honestly can't believe I'm saying this, but be practical. If I don't make a show of these morons getting punished for making an attack on me, even if indirectly, then I'll be putting up with that sort of garbage the rest of my very long life. And I assure you, I do not deal well with constant annoyances. No, this isn’t just about them, It’s about the next ponies to get an idea to try to use my friends to hurt me.”

“They’ve gotta at least be able to get reformed,” Applejack insisted. “We gave yew that chance, didn’t we?”

Discord hmmmed. He set his teacup down. “Well. I suppose you did at that. Very well, the least I can do it is.” He snapped his fingers, and the sobbing from the next room… did not stop, but eased in tone. “That’s not to say they won’t remember, and I am not the Elements of Harmony to just make everything all better. But they can have their chance at reforming. Just be sure to make it known the next bunch won't be as lucky."”

Discord patted Fluttershy and Applejack atop the heads. “There. The least I could do. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I think I’ve provided all the mercy I have in me today, and you’d hate to see me building up a backlog of revenge. And I’m late for an appointment I planned to make, so off I go!” He snapped his fingers, and vanished in a flash of rubber duckies.

“He’s taken quite an interest in the Cutie Mark Crusaders,” the remaining Discord confided to Lero. “They really are an amazing form of chaos. Friendship and wanton destruction all rolled into one. I do believe he plans to join them.”

“... At least some things never change,” Lero said, after a long pause.

“Okay, everypony, Twilight and I will get this all cleared up,” Rainbow Dash declared. “Lyra, you send up the flares, and the Guard will get here soon. Lero, AJ, Fluttershy, you keep an eye on our ‘new friends’ here, and make sure they stay tied up tight.” She flexed her wings, and a rainbow-colored flash teleported all the ponies (and their copy of Lero) save Twilight and Rainbow Dash out of the room. Discord and Lero followed.

Lero and the local copy ended up both sitting next to Discord. The local one blinked his eyes a few times, then looked up. Lero could see yellow swirls in the other him’s eyes for a moment, and then the local Lero cleared his throat.

“So. Uh. Hi. You’re… probably wondering just what’s going on here,” he said sheepishly, and gestured. Purple and rainbow flashes were going off inside the mansion.

“Wait, you can see us now?” Lero asked his other self.

“Only for the moment, only for a little chat,” Discord said. “You still don’t care to hear it from me, but perhaps hearing it from yourself will get through that thick primate skull of yours.” He rapped Lero on the head, and the sound echoed.

“Hearing what from myself?” Lero asked.

“Erm… hearing that things are a little messed up right now, probably,” the local Lero guessed. “Twilight was doing this spell, and, well… Dash ended up switching with her, and the same with Fluttershy and Applejack, and with Rarity and Pinkie Pie. They were all very confused at first, but we got it all sorted out and everyone in town is being really helpful.”

Lero pointed at the windows. “Rainbow… ‘Dash’ is doing magic. What kind of spell makes a pegasus do magic?”

“Um… well, that actually is a good question,” his doppelganger said. “Rainbow has theorized that just maybe Starswirl’s spell didn’t give her magic powers, but helped her to access the magic pegasi naturally have, just in a different way. So it’s been really interesting for her. We’re hoping all her studies don’t vanish when they fix this. Or her magic, for that matter.”

Lero pressed his hands to his temples. It felt like there was something swelling inside his skull, threatening to explode. And then… it eased. Not an explosion, but like a slow leak letting the pressure deflate. He took a deep breath, then let it out. “Oh...kay. So. They… got exchanged with each other. Here. Their marks switched. Rainbow ‘Dash’ got magic, Twilight Sparkle became a daredevil. Okay. Okay. I can take that idea.”

“Very good,” said Discord smugly. “Maybe at this rate, you’ll wrap your head around the rest before I give up and start amusing myself again.”

Lero shuddered at that idea. “I’ll… work on it.”

Heavy hooffalls announced the arrival of a contingent of Royal Guards — with Big Macintosh and Apple Bloom outpacing them all. Big Mac swept Fluttershy into his grip, and Apple Bloom leaped onto Applejack. Lero was sure he could hear Fluttershy’s wings creak from the strength of Big Mac’s hug, but the yellow pegasus didn’t make so much as an eep.

“Wait a minute,” Lero said, blinking. “If the ones who swapped are Applejack with Fluttershy, why is Big Mac still…”

“She ended up with him either way,” the local Lero explained, as they watched Fluttershy and Big Macintosh kiss. “Fluttershy was already herding with Big Mac, and pregnant with his foal the day the Swap happened. Her swapped self just remembers meeting him a lot sooner now, and under slightly different circumstances, than she did before.”

Big Mac lowered his head, pressing his ear against Fluttershy’s side. She smiled and stroked his ears with a wing. “Now there’s the stallion Ah married,” she said softly. “Carin’ for all those little’uns. Don’t yew worry, Mac. Our foal’s safe as safe can be. And she’s gonna have one whopper of a story ‘fore she’s even born.”

The door to the mansion opened. The local Lero’s eyes flashed with yellow swirls again, and he stood up, walking right through Discord with no sign of noticing. Rainbow Dash and Twilight came walking out; Dash’s wings were drooping a bit at her sides and Twilight was definitely trudging tiredly, but they shared a look of satisfaction as they came over to nuzzle at Lyra and Lero.

“All the chaos effects are gone,” Rainbow Dash reported, watching as Apple Bloom hugged Fluttershy just as enthusiastically as she’d hugged her birth-sister. Applejack gave her siblings and her sister-in-law a shy, sad smile and started to back away, but Big Mac grabbed her and pulled her in.

“Eeeenope,” he told her. “Not this time, AJ. Only one who doubts you’re an Apple to the core is you, sis.” And Applejack squeezed him so tight that this time it was his ribs Lero could hear creaking.

“Well, now, isn’t this getting downright nauseating,” Discord said, and patted Lero on the shoulder. “Reminds me why I don’t visit here so often. Honestly, utopias are just the dullest things. But that spell isn’t always such a pleasant experience. Your own version is coming out on the higher end of things, in fact.”

“Mine isn’t bad at all,” Lero said weakly. “Everyone’s happy… aren’t they?”

“Oh, perhaps momentarily,” Discord said. “Give it time. Or don’t. This is a very dangerous situation, one that can rapidly go so far downhill that it ceases to be fun in the other direction.”

“... How bad are we talking about?” asked Lero.

“You’ll see,” Discord promised, and the world dissolved into a spray of broken light fixtures and novels without the letter E in them.

* * *

Strictly speaking, the streets of this once-beautiful city were not empty. Abandoned trucks, cars, and minivans of every color congested the roadways, several crashed into each other, or into apartment buildings and convenience stores. Small flocks of scavenger birds hopped about around dry old bones, as an eastern wind rustled up dust and debris. And of course, there was the stench of rotten flesh hanging in the air, courtesy of the meandering dead prowling the streets. Directionless, mindless, until their attention was drawn by livelier sounds, from the approaching south.

Jogging. Two individuals, both male, running briskly alongside each other, as though for a simple morning exercise. The one on the left was a living human, just as they had all once been. The taller one, on the right, was much harder for anyone to classify.

“Hey, Discord?” asked Lero Michealides, without breaking his stride.

Discord drew a small bottle out of the pocket of his pants. “Yeah?” He asked, after a quick swig of the purple stuff inside.

The sight and sound of the live ones stirred new ferocity in all the ghouls’ appetites. From all directions, they lurched towards the newcomers with opening jaws and outstretched fingers.

“That other version of me… I mean, I know that I would’ve been really, totally freaking out of my mind if a second Discord and a second me suddenly appeared in front of me with no warning...”

Directly ahead, four of the ghouls were closing in on the two of them. But Lero’s index fingers were already on the triggers of his Berettas as he lifted them up.

“...but you did something to that other me’s mind to make him think everything was hunky-dory…”

Four bullets later, the ghouls bodies lay still, but the human dodged away from their mouths as he ran, just in case.

“It’s called a bewitchment,” Discord explained, pulling the Mossberg off his back. “Bewitchments...”

BLAM! went Discord’s shotgun.

“...alter perceptions and memories…”

BLAM! The scatter shot ripped the nearest zombies’ heads off from the nose-up.

“...and your entire sense of what’s strange versus what’s normal.”

BLAM!

“Take what we're doing right now. Normally, you'd be quite disturbed at all this, but with a little Bewitchment to help put you in the right mindset, you're a practiced gunman. Fun, isn't it?"

The human listened in fascination, hearing the draconequus’ words quite audibly over all his shotgun blasts.

“When a group of two or more people fall under a Swap, three things always happen to them. First, all their souls are cut in half, then crudely spliced with one of the other Swap-ees, so their new personality is half-their-old-self and half-someone-else’s.”

As more undead hordes stumbled out from alleyways ahead and behind them, Lero sensed that his clips had run dry, so he yanked two more off his bandolier, easily skipping over the grasping hand of a ghoul pinned under a convertible’s tire.

“Second, they’re each compelled to take on Mr. or Miss ‘Someone Else’s’ old role in life.”

Lero nodded while chambering the new rounds into his sidearms.

“Third, the Swap invariably casts SOME manner of bewitchment on them…. rewrites their memories, so they think their new sense of self is natural, that ‘it’s always been this way.’”

They turned a corner and a great mob of ghouls was waiting for them.

“For example... remember that first world I showed you, where you saw Rarity save you from the spider?”

“Yeah?”

Pulling onward, the human and draconequus duo slaughtered all the undead their shooting irons could bring down.

“In that world, Pinkie Pie served as the Element of Laughter and Ponyville’s party planner, while Applejack was Element of Honesty and apple farmer on Sweet Apple Acres. At least, up until Princess Celestia sent Twilight Sparkle a certain unfinished spell of Starswirl The Bearded’s.”

“Again, she’s called Applejack instead of Diamondjack!” Lero muttered to himself, hefting one of his Berettas over his shoulder, and blasting the shambler right behind him. To Discord, he said, “I’m assuming ‘Pinkie Pie’ is supposed to be that world’s version of Pink Lady?”

“How’d you ever guess?” asked Discord, sweeping his dragon-tail at one of the zombies and knocking it clean off its feet.

“Name similarity,” said Lero.

“Right.”

At this point, Discord and Lero had reached the very thing they’d been running towards: the bookmobile that would serve as their getaway car. Discord took the driver’s seat and Lero took shotgun: both the side seat, and Discord’s firearm.

“Anyway, after the Swap was cast, half of Applejack’s soul fused with Pinkie’s,” said Discord, searching for the keys. “And Pinkie not only took up Applejack’s old job as Sweet Apple Acres farmer, not only did Pinkie now insist she’d always been the Element of Honesty, instead of Laughter, but she believed that pretty much Applejack’s whole life had been her own. She even believed that Apple Bloom and Big Macintosh were her blood kin. Literally; that the three of them had been born from the same mother and father.”

“And what did the Apple family have to say to that?!” asked Lero, pulling the keys out of the glove compartment and handing them to Discord.

“Nothing. I bewitched the Apple Family into thinking Pinkie was right.”

Lero was stunned. In his own world, Pink Lady Apple was fully aware that she hadn’t been born an Apple. She’d been born to a family of rock farmers who’d disowned her when she developed an interest in proper organic farming… and so the Apples had taken her in.

“So then what happened when Scootaloo and Sweetie Belle came over to play with Apple Bloom, and found their best friend was living with the wrong sister?” Lero asked, as Discord revved up the bookmobile and they both buckled their seat belts.

“Oh, I bewitched the two of them, too,” the draconequus answered, both of them falling back into their seats as Discord floored the gas pedal.

“But what about their par…”

“Bewitched them.”

“But what about…”

“Bewitched ‘em, bewitched ‘em, bewitched ‘em, bewitched ‘em.”

The draconequus turned on the radio, and on came a snazzy-sounding tune Lero had never heard before. “Just to be on the safe side, I bewitched nearly EVERYONE on that planet so that their memories matched the Swapped’s, leaving only a select few exempted. What’s more, I did the same thing on the greater majority of all these other realities, as well.”

[‘I'm skating with a seal

The tarantula, the fly, the broken ring

The dusty little flea

An ugly giant, a disappointed child,’](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gnlb2mNp41M) sang the vocalist on the radio.

“So how many people did you bewitch on MY world?” asked Lero, as the lower half of an especially rotten ghoul flew off their left bumper. Their bookmobile was not just riding over all sorts of zombies, but much larger vehicles that were far bigger than it.

“Zero.”

“Huh?”

“That’s the thing of it!” Discord yelled, and Lero was struck by how genuinely troubled the draconequus looked. “On your world, I’m pretty sure that Starswirl’s spell, in addition to bewitching the Swapped, bewitched the whole rest of your world, to boot! And that’s what alarms me.”

“Why?” asked Lero. “You should be happy. It sounds like this thing did your job for you.”

Discord sighed. They were riding into an underground tunnel, and he switched the radio off, just as the song was talking about ‘you are your own prison.’

“Let’s suppose you are Twilight Sparkle.”

Suddenly, Lero felt something within him shift. It felt like something had happened to his body; he was seeing through the windshield at a slightly lower angle than he had a second ago.

Discord tilted the rearview mirror down so Lero could get a look at himself: his body has been transformed into Twilight Sparkle’s!

“Now picture this happening to you…” Discord said, as their bookmobile reached the light at the tunnel’s end...

* * *

Twilight Sparkle yawned loudly while stretching out her four legs, her telekinesis already lifting the sheets and blanket off her body. Wow, what a weird set of dreams she had. Especially the last one, where Lero had been running through a town blasting zombies with Discord like they were both main characters in a Robert Kirkman story.

“Lero?” she asked, gently shaking the still-blanketed figure beside her. Heh heh… Lero ought to get a kick out of how every one of her dreams featured him!

And Discord turned over in bed to face her, smiling dreamily as he opened his eyes to the sight of her face. “Mmmm… good morning, schmoopy-hooves. You were simply magical last night.”

Twilight scrambled off the bed. It was as though she wasn’t in control of the words her mouth formed, when she said, “Eek! Eek, I say! Begone from my bedchambers and my property, libertine cad!”

“Whatever do you mean, moofy-muzzle?” asked the draconequus, studying her in deepest concern. “It’s all my property too! You and I have been husband and wife for the past ten years!”

Then a talking hamburger floated by, distracting Twilight. “So then you go to your friends for help evicting this unwanted intruder. However, everywhere you go, and no matter who you talk to…”

Discord jumped down in front of Twilight, his head transforming into Rarity’s.

“But…” said Rarity.

And then Discord’s head turned into Pinkie Pie’s, who said, “...Discord’s…”

The next second, it was Applejack’s head. “...Telling…”

“...The…” said Fluttershy.

“...Truth!” said Rainbow Dash.

“The…” said Apple Bloom.

“...Two…” said Cranky Doodle Donkey.

“...Of…” said Scootaloo.

“...You…” said Cheerilee.

“...Have…” said Sweetie Belle.

“...Been…” said Mr. Cake.

“...Married…” said Big Macintosh.

“...For…” said Princess Cadence.

“...Years.” said Star Sparkle.

“Twilight…” said Queen Chrysalis.

“Are…” said Gustave le Grand.

“...You…” said Shining Armor.

“...Absolutely…” said Pipsqueak.

“...Certain…” said King Sombra.

“...There…” said Flam.

“...Is…” said Chief Thunderhooves.

“...Nothing…” said Trixie.

“...Wrong…” said Bonbon.

“...With…” said Lyra.

“...Your…” said Spike.

“...Memories?” finished Lero.

The purple unicorn was given a second to stare into the face of the hazel-eyed human head atop the draconequus’ body, before the eagle fingers gave a snap. Discord’s head returned back to its own proper form, while the purple unicorn’s body transformed back into that of Lero Michealides.

“Twilight Sparkle’s word against that of the whole rest of the world,” said Discord, helping Lero to his feet. “That’s the reason I left a select few exempted from bewitchment in so many of the other worlds; so she’d have touchstones to remind her of how life was before the Swap. But here? Not so much as a single family member who remembers the past the way she does. How do you think that’s affected your Twilight?”

Lero’s brain needed a second to re-establish his own sense of identity. Thinking he’d been Twilight had been JARRING.

“But why all the secrecy and bewitchment in the first place?” he asked at last. “Just let the Swapped know they’re Swapped. After all, the first step to any healing process is identifying the problem, right?”

Quite suddenly, they were at their next destination.

* * *

They were inside the cottage at the edge of the Everfree forest, the home of the animal caretaker. Specifically, this was the foyer. But something horrible had happened here… or was still happening. Lero knew this the moment he saw the nanny goat; the lower half of its body had been sliced apart from its upper.

Worse and worse horrors were there to greet Lero’s eyes, the more he took in. Bashed ferrets, trampled rabbits, foxes and chickens with their heads ripped off...

“I think I’m gonna be sick,” he declared. “Did some bloodthirsty wild animal get in here?!”

“Yes,” Discord muttered, looking at a mangled kitten floating inside an aquarium.

Then they hear a sprightly-sounding mare’s voice from the next room over. “Wake up! Wake up, sleepyhead! Dinner’s almost ready!”

They entered the kitchen. This cottage… it could no longer pretend to be any sort of animal sanctuary. This was a butcher’s den now. Piles of dead creatures littered the room: deer, dogs, pigs, lynxes, badgers, quails, bats, goldfish, catfish, swans, dormice, lemmings and even two adult bears, all haphazardly heaped together in miniature mounds of fur and bloody dead flesh. Already, the place was choked with flies.

Lero felt himself immensely relieved nobody here could see him; any more than the characters on a movie screen could see their audience. Not the flies… and especially not the canary-yellow pegasus.

“Come on,” she was saying, “Wake up now!”

The person she was speaking to was the Lero Michealides native to this world; he wore a yellow T-shirt. “Nnnghh… Fluttershy?” he asked, coming to.

He sat at a table set for dinner, lit by ‘romantic’ candlelight, shackled VERY tightly to a metal chair; he wouldn’t be able to escape. All his bruises seemed to indicate him losing a recent fight.

Fluttershy wore a Wonderbolts outfit… one that was torn-up, and stained with blood, mud, grass, and vegetable broth. The non-native Lero could see RD’s cutie mark through a sizable rip on the side of the uniform; twitching and spasming erratically every other second.

When Fluttershy smiled at Lero, she showed teeth caked with animal blood.

“I hope you’re hungry, sweetie!”

She kissed him on the lips while he was still groggy, before returning to an enormous cast-iron cauldron, stirring its steaming, bubbling contents with something like a large oar. Whatever was stewing in the cauldron was really, really thick; for it required all of Fluttershy’s strength just to keep stirring the pot.

“Hey, I think I recognize that cauldron,” Lero whispered to Discord, as though Fluttershy might hear them. “Doesn’t it belong to Zecora?”

“Formerly,” the draconequus told him.

“I… I’m alive?” spoke the shackled Lero in the yellow shirt. “Rainbow Dash... Fluttershy, where’s Rainbow Dash?!”

Wordlessly, the lightning-marked Fluttershy pointed first at her bubbling cauldron, as she stirred up a recognizable blue wing, then at a raggedly-torn-off chunk of flank with pink butterflies on it, stuck on a countertop.

“Rainbow Dash!”

The non-native Lero felt every bit as sick as the local Lero looked. “You didn’t NEED to kill her, did you? You didn’t NEED to do THIS to her!”

Then he began to weep.

“Things have been so different for me, since Twilight came and proved the truth about what I am,” said Fluttershy. “What we all are. I now completely understand why you were chasing after Dashie for all this time… it’s because this mark of mine originally came from her! SHE was your original marefriend, not me!”

The yellow-shirted Lero tried to rise, but his shackles were just too tight. “Please… please don’t kill me…”

“Kill you? No, never!” She again stared at the part of Rainbow Dash sticking out of the stewpot. “You know, I was originally gonna find Rainbow so we could slice off each other’s cutie marks and stitch them back onto each other’s flanks...”

“Eeeeeuuuuhh!!!” Lero grimaced, beside Discord.

“...But then I saw what she was about to do to you and I had to kill her. She was starting to grow quite mad, you know. Two seconds from smashing your face into jelly, but I came and saved my sweet stallion right in the nick of time! Quick as a Wonderbolt!”

Discord shook his head sadly as Fluttershy did a loop-de-loop in the air.

“But don’t you worry, Lero, I’ll keep being your marefriend! Somepony has to, and I’m glad it’s me!” She came over and kissed him again. “What’s more, I finally understand what I need to do to balance things out in my mind!”

“What do you mean?” asked the yellow-shirted Lero.

Fluttershy returned to the stewpot, giving it another stir. Morbid curiosity compelled the unbound Lero to come over by her side and sneak a peek inside the open pot. A decision he immediately regretted.

In addition to Rainbow Dash, the cauldron was CHOCK-FULL of other slaughtered animals, jam-packed in with each other, along with as much vegetable broth as Fluttershy had managed to be able to pour inside between their packed-in bodies. It was truly gross. Especially because this was clearly the work of a herbivore who had only the dimmest inkling of how humans liked their meat cooked. In other words: Fluttershy hadn’t skinned any of the corpses or anything. She’d just chucked the animals into the broth like they were so many cobs of corn. Fur, eyeballs, noses, tongues, claws, bones, organs, tails and all.

“Well, I’ll try to explain as best I can,” said Fluttershy, sprinkling in a pinch of seasoning. “The ‘Rainbow Dash’ side of me and the ‘Fluttershy’ side of me are having a non-stop war in my head. My ‘Fluttershy’ side insists I’ve got to love all my animals. My ‘Rainbow Dash’ side insists I’ve got to love you. So I figured out a compromise! First, I kill all my animals… then I feed every one of them to you!”

Then she fished out the poorly-stewed body of one of her raccoons by the scruff of its neck. It landed with a thud when she dropped it on Lero’s dinner plate, a soggy, dripping dead thing with its skull caved in. More readily classified as ‘carrion’ than ‘anything Lero would be able to stomach.’

“By feeding all my animals to you, Lero, they become PART of you!” she nuzzled his side. “So it’ll be just as good as taking care of both you AND them at the same time!”

The Lero who was invisible to Fluttershy took another horrified look at the piles of carcasses stacks throughout the kitchen. All told, there had to be literally a few tons’ worth of dead animal. Maybe even more.

Then, with surprising strength, she pulled out Rainbow Dash’s body, and set the dripping thing splayed sloppily atop her own dinner plate. Both sets of Rainbow’s legs dangled over the table like the tablecloth, itself.

“And I’ll eat Rainbow Dash, and the rest of her will become one with me, so you won’t have to miss her at all, because you’ll be loving us both!” She gave a soft titter. “Really, it couldn’t be more logical!”

“I can’t… I can’t eat this…” whispered the yellow-shirted Lero.

“Sure you can!” She nuzzled her beloved human once more; the shackled Lero was clearly too frightened of her to protest. “Oh, my poor Lero, it must’ve been so ROUGH on you, denying the carnivorous side of your nature for this long, restricting yourself to just fish because ponies are so judgmental about these sort of things! But don’t worry, you’ll always have all the meat you could ever want with me, so dig in!”

“No, I can’t… please, I really can’t…”

Fluttershy gave him her scariest Stare. It made even Discord and his guest cringe. “You’re starting to upset me, Lero. I went to a lot of trouble to prepare all this yummy food just for you, so you’d BETTER EAT.”

Completely cowed, and with his hands bound, Lero had no choice but to open his mouth and lean forward to dig into the raccoon’s furry flesh with his teeth alone, as though he had the jaw strength and dietary needs of a jackal.

Fluttershy smiled. “There’s a good boy.”

“We’ve seen enough,” Discord said, turning himself and his guest away from the dinner table as Fluttershy bent to eat as well. “I can’t bear to watch this part.”

“HALLELUJAH!” Lero yelled.

With one last sad look backwards at Fluttershy, Discord shook a large-barreled cannon out of his armpit, loaded himself and Lero into it, and fired them both out the window.

“I mean, JESUS CHRIST, Discord! Thanks a billion for the nightmares I’m gonna have!” the human shouted as they went sailing over Ponyville. “Was it absolutely necessary to show me that?!”

“I’m sorry,” Discord said. “I know I use that phrase a lot less often than others would like, but yes, I am, in fact, sorry. And yes; it was necessary as a warning.”

“A warning of what?!”

“Certain actions are good ideas in all these different parallel dimensions. Being adaptable. Being strong of heart. Not giving up on your family. But telling the Swapped they’re Swapped? That’s an EXTREMELY risky crapshoot, even if you manage to get them to believe you. Odds are things won’t turn out as rosy as they were in that other world we visited. Odds are much, much greater that the Swapped will turn very homicidal.”

They sailed over Sweet Apple Acres: large sections of the orchard had been set ablaze, and while he passed too fast to be sure, he swore he saw spatters of red stains in various spots on the ground. They passed over Sugar Cube Corner: the building slumped, as if knocked off its foundations, and large volumes of toxic-looking purple were pumping out from inside it. They passed over Carousel Boutique: sections of the wall were blown out and smoking, and there seemed to be a ferocious magical battle taking place inside it, while a large posse of worried-looking cops and royal guards had surrounded the place.

"Look, I need to cheer up a little now!” Discord exclaimed. “Mind a little side trip? I'll keep it on theme."

* * *

Discord and Lero were in a shadowy chamber. It was arranged like an indoor stadium, with comfortable, tiered, bleacher-style seating extending several levels down. There was even some sort of giant Jumbotron-like globe floating a few feet down from the center ceiling. Looking around, Lero felt a moment’s self-consciousness because he wasn’t wearing a white robe or a mask, like every other individual filling the seats.

The masks were wide and varied, but all completely concealed the face. A few masks were of things Lero recognized like clowns, devils, butterflies, even the timeless tragedy and comedy masks symbolizing drama. But quite a few masks were of things Lero couldn’t place. Or rather, things best described as having come from outer space. Because the greater majority of the people here WERE, themselves, space aliens. Unmistakably so.

“OH MY GOD, DISCORD! ALIENS!”

Discord rolled his eyes. “Screams the human living on the Planet of the Ponies.”

There wasn’t quite as much variety as there’d been in the infamous Mos Eisley cantina scene, but even with all the masks and robes, Lero could still discern quite a lot of bodies that were limbless and serpentine, some bodies that didn’t touch the ground, even if their robes did, as well as a number of Equestrian ponies in attendance. No humans, though.

Whoever this group was, they didn’t seem to be on the up-and-up. They all seemed to be champing at the bit for something. Well, some of them did, mostly those with four hooves.

But every single one of them were paying strict attention to the three figures down at the ‘center stage’ of this... this...

"Discord, what the hell is this place?" Lero hissed. He stared at the increasingly agitated crowd. "It almost looks like a some kind of sporting event."

"Why, this is the Legal Arena, of course!" He spread his claws and paw out wide to encompass the crowd. "These... ALIENS! as you call them, are all here to participate in their wonderfully chaotic modern legal system. Such as it is." He turned and grinned at Lero.

Lero grimaced and looked down at the three figures standing before the crowd. They were the only ones who were unmasked, here, and one of them was this world’s Lero, himself.

The outfit the Lero-of-this-world wore was the plainest blue jumpsuit and boots anyone could’ve asked for. There were two podiums formed of long crystalline prisms, and he occupied the one on the left. The handcuffs around his wrists looked to be made of solid laser beams.

From four rows away, Discord’s Lero stared in awe at his counterpart, who stood amazingly trim, rugged, and steady, with the cool and fearless gaze of One Tough Hombre locked on his opponent.

“Damn! I look GOOD!” The Lero in the stands grinned wildly. The human suddenly remembered the old Steven Spielberg movie Catch Me If You Can. Was this how Frank Abagnale Jr. felt when he learned that Leonardo DiCaprio would be playing himself? Only in Lero’s case, this actually WAS himself, so it was even better!

“Llllllladies and gents!” trilled the second figure, next to the handcuffed Lero. One of the aliens! Lero hadn’t always wondered what a sea anemone would look like after it gained sapience, six feet in height, and the ability to live on dry land, but now that unsuspected curiosity was fulfilled.

“The crimes for which Bellllllllerophon Micheallllllides stands accused are beyond bellllllief!” the sea anemone thing declared. “Lllllarceny! Llllllibelllll! Llllllitering! Lllllloitering! And conspiracy to commit murder in the first, second, third, sixth, and ellllllleventh!”

“Just declare the hominid guilty and have done with it, Judge Xrugh!” barked the third figure at the crystal podium opposite Lero.

“Order! Order!” The hundreds of tentacles around Judge Xrugh’s oral cavity flagellated angrily. “The prosecution willlllll stand down! I won’t have my triallllllll reduced to a lllllludicrious spectaclllllle!”

“Thousand pardons, Your Honor. Thousand pardons,” apologized the prosecutor, who resembled nothing more than an oversized pancreas, floating like a toy balloon, with piggy little eyes and an oily smile, dressed in a bright orange suit. Lero disliked this fellow on sight.

Judge Xrugh turned to the masked audience. “I ask you, members of the jury, how are we to decide this case?”

From the throng around Discord and Lero came an overwhelming cry of ‘COMBAT! COMBAT! COMBAT!’

“Wow, tough crowd,” muttered Lero. Discord shrugged.

“Then so shalllllll it be,” Judge Xrugh declared, body swaying weirdly and bonelessly where he stood. “Triallllll by combat it is: to the death! Belllllllllerophon Michealllllllides versus Pse Cnaar.”

For the first time, This-World’s-Lero smiled at the pancreatic prosecutor. He flexed his hands, loudly cracking his knuckles one fist at a time. His intentions were entirely clear: the prosecutor was someone he could and would love to take down!

“A question, Your Honor?” asked Pse Cnaar, shuddering. His little eyes whipped back and forth between his opponent and the judge as he wiped some gunk off his brow that could’ve been sweat. “I understand that I’m entirely within my rights, in this neck of the quadrant, to call for an attorney to represent me in this trial. Is that correct?”

“But of course!” Judge Xrugh turned to Lero first. “Woullllllld the defense allllllso llllllike to calllllllll an attorney?”

Wryly, Lero-The-Defendant looked over the expanse of masked faces. Then he looked over to Pse Cnaar, who was grinning smugly now, confident of whoever he had for his legal representative.

“I’d LIKE to,” the handcuffed human said, “but I think I’m completely alone on this one.”

Then the hooded figure that had been seated right next to Discord and Lero this whole while stood up, throwing off her monkey mask and robe.

“Ah humbly beg ta differ.”

The orange Earth Pony mare was dressed in some kind of futuristic power armor from the neck down; even her tail was armored. Red stripes ran down the legs of her black metallic suit. The logo on her chest read N7 ARMAMENTS™. When she’d worn her hood and mask, Lero had figured her to be yet another alien. But now he could see that what he’d taken to be an oddly-shaped head was merely the cowboy hat she’d been wearing underneath.

Her suit didn’t clang noisily at all, as he expected. Instead she descended down towards the center of the courtroom, sleek and silent as the rest of the audience fell into agitated whispering. From his vantage, Lero could see that a certain image had been painted expertly on the flank of her armor. The image of a very familiar cutie mark: his RD’s Mark.

“Yes, that’s the cutie mark she has underneath that armor, too.” Discord said. He stuck X-ray glasses over his guest’s eyes, so the human could see the actual Rainbow Mark on the Earth pony through the layers of titanium alloys. But Lero gave a sharp gasp at what else he saw: numerous scars, clearly earned in battle, and with the current technology level clearly implying healing without scarring, they were worn like badges of honor.

“How’d you find this place, Applejack?!” Pse Cnaar asked nervously, as the armored mare strode past him. “I don’t even know where I am!”

“"That sounds about like yew, Cnaar,” Applejack answered curtly. “Yer usually lost in yer own self-importance, ain’cha?"

She only stopped when she stood before the handcuffed Lero, ignoring Cnaar’s angry sputters at her remark.

“I…” the human said, before Applejack reared up and headbutted him.

“Owwww!” he cried, the cuffs preventing him from reaching his aching forehead.

“Now that’s fer bein’ stupid and gettin’ yerself kidnapped!” Applejack snapped. The whole audience broke into louder noise as she headbutted him a second time. “And that’s fer causing yer whole herd two weeks a’ sleepless worry that was completely avoidable!”

“Trouble in paradise, Lero?” Pse Cnaar chuckled, now in much better spirits.

Then something happened that made the Lero up in the stands drop his jaw. It was lucky no one but Discord could hear him cry out.

“Is she… are a pair of HUMAN ARMS growing out from her shoulders?!”

“Of course not, don’t be ridiculous!” said Discord. “Those are Equin-arms, a thought-controlled cybertronic gizmo. Ponies hereabouts have all been using them for centuries. Well, retroactively, anyways. Got the idea from minotaur prosthetics.”

A strong pair of artificial hands cupped Lero’s head with surprising gentleness, as Applejack leaned forward, kissing Lero deeply.

“And that’s cuz Ah’m gladder than glad mah sweet stallion’s alive ‘n’ well,” Applejack sighed softly.

“Pardon me, Mr. Michealllllllides,” Judge Xrugh spoke, interrupting whatever loving reply had been on the defendant’s lips. “Equestrian ways are very strange to me, but is this femallllllle an attacker or your attorney or what?”

Lero and Applejack shared a look. “Yes,” said the human. “I want Applejack to represent me in this trial by combat.”

“Smart move, sugar-britches.” The Lero-beside-Discord sputtered in shock upon hearing the pet name.

“Do me a favor and hang onto this fer me?” One of Applejack’s Equin-arms took her hat off.

“Will do, Jacky,” said Lero, bending. After placing her hat on his head, she stepped back, giving him an admiring look. The look a cook might give a banana split after setting the cherry atop the whipped cream. Or perhaps… like how she might’ve admired the twinkle of an engagement ring she’d just slipped on his finger.

“Hey, Discord?” asked the hatless Lero. “Got a question. What’s the deal with that hat? Where did it even come from?”

“The cowboy hat?” asked Discord, and they both looked down at the man on trial. As loudly as the worn, dust-colored Stetson clashed with the bright blue space-age jumpsuit… he somehow didn’t look ridiculous wearing it.

Discord pulled out a remote from nowhere, and pressed a button on it. Two huge green vertical lines appeared flashing slowly in midair, as Discord paused reality for everyone else in this universe.

“Well that’s only slightly creepy,” Lero muttered, looking around through the dead silence of the statue-still audience.

“Haven’t you ever seen Diamondjack wear it?” he inquired.

“Never,” said Lero.

“Not once?” Discord asked, twirling his beard in intrigue. “What about Pink Lady, then? She ever wear it?”

“Not her, and not anyone else in my version of Equestria, either.”

“Really?”

“Yes!” Lero said, irritated by Discord’s fascinated tone. “I promise you, I am completely unacquainted with the sight of that hat! And yet, this is now the SECOND time I’ve seen her wear it! Two different universes, two different cutie marks, same hat on the same head. What gives?!”

And suddenly, Discord was dressed like a caricature of a Wild West peacekeeper, with an orange 20-gallon hat and a duster jam-packed with sheriff stars, all the way down to where the long coat scraped the ground.

“That Stetson’s quite the enigma, ain’t it?” he asked, rocking back and forth on a wooden rocking horse. “Get this: that hat’s always been the rightful property of our mutual Earth pony pal, long before Starswirl’s spell entered the picture.”

He unholstered a pair of squirt gun revolvers and fired them at the masked figures around them. Many of their white robes got sopping wet, but they paid no mind.

“By all rights… or at least, in keeping with the Swap’s kooky logic… she ought to have left it behind, along with her family, her job, and all her other worldly possessions. Instead, in nine hundred and ninety-nine cases out of every thousand, Applejack keeps that hat. And here you say that hat never existed at all, where you’re from?”

“No!” Lero suddenly felt worried. “...Do you think that hat’s magical in some way?”

And then a blue-shirted Discord had the hat in his hand, scanning it with a tricorder straight from Star Trek. “Damnit, Lero, I’m a Chaos God, not a scientist! As far as I can tell, it’s just a completely ordinary hat,” he said, tossing it perfectly onto the other Lero’s head. “Which only makes it more of an anomaly, doesn’t it?”

With a snap of his fingers, the giant flashing pause symbol vanished, along with his blue shirt. Reality resumed.

“Then I suppose it’s time I called forth my OWN legal aide,” Pse Cnaar said.

The other Lero would’ve supposed Cnaar’s attorney to be some flamethrower-wielding bear, a T-Rex with Gatling guns for arms, or a killer robot constructed of some impenetrable super-metal. Cnaar seemed exactly the type to have that sort of henchman in his pay.

Instead, when Pse Cnaar clapped his stubby warty hands; a second pony unmasked herself, coming to stand by his side.

She was a pegasus whose mane was a rainbow of six different grays. A dark olive-colored vest hung over her khaki-coated body, and a pith helmet sat on her head.

“Who’s that Daring Do cosplayer supposed to be?” both of the Leros asked at the same time.

“I am Daring Do!” the pegasus snapped, raspberry red eyes narrowing.

“She is Daring Do,” Discord declared.

The hat-wearing Lero gaped incredulously, while the hatless Lero exclaimed, “No she’s not! The Daring Do series are all works of…!”

“...Autobiography,” Discord cut in.

“They’re written by a lady called A. K. Yearling!”

“Daring’s pseudonym.”

In addition to the pith helmet and vest, Daring Do had come wearing one other accessory: power armor that covered the lower half of her body like a set of pants. As with Applejack, Daring had painted her compass rose cutie mark on the armor’s flank.

Applejack, for her part, had gone as still as a stone, jaw set, eyes swimming with dismay, even as Daring stared her down coolly. “Miz Do… or is it Miz Yearling?”

“‘Daring,’ if you please,” said Daring. “I am about to kill you and sentence your…”

She looked over and waved an indifferent hoof toward Lero.

“...client to death. That’s worth first names, wouldn’t you say?”

“Darin’... Ah… before this happens, Ah have somethin’ ta say,” Applejack’s Equin-arms went and covered her heart, showing Daring eyes full of deepest regret. “‘Fore a friend a’ mine showed me yer books while Ah was laid up in the hospital, Ah never really liked readin’ at all. But yew inspired me. Yer words ‘n’ yer story spoke ta me inna way no other book did… yer one a’ mah biggest heroes…”

“But it was RD who was in the hospital, she read those books…” said the hatless Lero up in the stands. Then he looked at the Jumbotron, which was showing the cutie mark on Applejack’s armored flank.

“So because Di…. Applejack now has RD’s mark, the memory of that experience was swapped over to her…?”

“Now you’re starting to get how it works,” Discord told him.

“...So, Darin’, Ah want ya ta know that when Ah kill ya, it’s NOT ‘nothin’ personal.’ It’ll smash mah heart inta applesauce, bein’ the gal ta end yer wonderful series... and end YEW. Not ta mention the whole Darin’ Do fanbase will hate mah guts ‘til the end a’ time.”

Applejack shot an unhappy glare back at her Lero, as though to say, ‘I hope you appreciate what I’m giving up for you!’

“Ah only do this cuz mah Lero’s jest THAT precious ta me. Mebbe if he were somethin’ of a lesser stallion, less of a sweetheart… who knows?”

“I understand,” said Daring Do. “I’m deeply moved, in fact. But don’t worry, Applejack, my saga will continue on, even though you won’t be around to see it.”

“Llllllllllet’s get this trialllllll underway!” shouted Judge Xrugh.

Guards came out, escorting Xrugh, Cnaar, and the hat-wearing Lero out from the colosseum’s center; only Daring and Applejack remained as the crystalline podiums sunk into the floor. The floor itself quickly slid away before them: a false bottom opened, and beneath a hard plas-crete surface appeared.

The two mares were undergoing a transformation as well as they stepped onto the plas-crete platform. The armored pants Daring wore quickly began to extend forth over her body into a full-suit of power armor, over her olive safari shirt, up and over her head. A side pocket automatically opened up in her armor, and Daring snapped her pith helmet in the air and placed the suddenly-collapsed square inside.

“You know, I think I’ll have room to fit this duel of ours in my next book,” said Daring, drawing a glowing white energy whip out with her own set of Equin-arms. “I’m feeling generous; five pages ought to cover it. I’ll write you as a sympathetic antagonist; how does that sound?”

From the neck of her power armor, Applejack’s helmet retracted from over her head. “Sounds like the role of a lifetime, sugarcube,” she drawled as she pulled out a glowing red lasso. “Ah sure do hope yer ghostwriter's takin’ notes.”

As both mares became completely encased in their battle armor, a huge, transparent domed force field shimmered and snapped into place around the arena, cutting the combatants off from the influence of the audience.

“Begin!” called out Judge Xrugh.

With both of them bearing Equin-arms, watching Applejack clash against Daring Do became less like watching a traditional fight between ponies, and more like what a fight between two centaur ladies might resemble.

“Neither of them are using their mouths to hold their weapons…” Lero mused, watching Daring’s robotic hand flick out to crack her whip towards Applejack.

“Once Equin-arms came into popular, worldwide usage, ponykind suddenly became a LOT more germ-conscious, and all but abandoned using their mouths as a stand-in for hands. The germiest place on any body IS the mouth, don’t you know?” Discord smiled at Lero, who nearly tripped backward at the sight of HUGE bacteria, crawling all over his teeth, gums, and tongue like ants over dropped marshmallows.

“How did it come to all this… WHOA!” shouted Lero, for not only had Daring Do taken to the air, but so had Applejack. Daring's natural wings were encased in special armor, while Applejack soared high on an artificial wings that retracted from the sides of her suit.

“The Swap.”

“The Swap did THIS too?!” Lero balked, as the two mares flew in circles around each other like dogfighting warplanes, searching for a weakness to strike at.

“The story behind THIS version of the Swap’s a real sock-knocker-offer!” Discord laughed. “Ahem. Once upon a time, in a bright and colorful fairytale kingdom of talking ponies, there lived a man, his pegasus sweetheart, and the other members of their family. One of these members was assigned by her boss to fix an incredibly dangerous spell, so the man and his mare flew out to the Bramblewood Forest to give her some space. Sounding familiar?”

“Yeah,” said Lero. Above them, Daring’s whip had wound itself around Applejack’s neck while AJ’s lasso had tightened around Daring’s midsection.

“Well, here’s where it takes its own detour,” Discord went on. “Yes, when the Swap was cast, the Element Bearers ended up switching places with each other here, as in everywhere else. But the big difference is that THIS Swap ended up doing something even MORE profound: it warped this entire reality. It swapped this bright and colorful fairy tale kingdom of talking ponies out for a bright and colorful space opera confederacy. Of talking ponies.”

Both sets of super-rope were squeezing down like anacondas on steroids; crushing the armor they were coiled around.

“So you’re saying the Swap flung this Equestria into the future?”

“The future? Not at all. Today’s date here is no different than your own world’s,” Discord said, showing him a calendar. "Same month, same year, same day of the week. It’s just… name me a couple of the most prolific inventors to have ever lived.”

Lero’s mind skimmed back over old human history. “You mean like Nikola Tesla? George Washington Carver?”

Discord nodded. “They’ll do. Now imagine Tesla and Carver both being born in the year 0 A.D., with all their inventiveness going full throttle throughout all their lives. Then imagine Tesla and Carver keep getting reincarnated, generation after generation after generation, each time building upon their previous selves’ accomplishments, all the way up until present times.”

Then Discord held a paw out flat in front of Lero; a small holographic video played out right above the draconequus’ palm. First, it showed Lero flying through the air atop Rainbow Dash’s back; they passed by a sky chariot hitched to a pegasus. The video continued focusing on the sky chariot, after the pegasus-riding human had passed out of frame.

“Anyway, after this world’s Applejack hustled out to Bramblewood to save you from certain doom, she brought you back to a Ponyville where everypony you knew was still there: Big Macintosh, Mayor Mare, little Pumpkin and Pound Cake still the same adorable infants you left them…”

Then the sky chariot seemed to vaporize, pegasus and vehicle literally transforming into a cloud of gas. It looked strangely painless.

“...except they were all suddenly ten thousand times more techno-savvy.”

Then the cloud re-solidified… into a new, upgraded version of what it had previously been. Now the sky chariot was a hovercraft. The pegasus sat inside the vehicle, steering it with some kind of state-of-the-art wing interface.

Lero looked to Daring and Applejack, who were flying around each other, pounding each others’ helmeted faces with their robo-fists.

“You fight like a pegasus!” Daring Do exclaimed, her miniature rocket thrusters accelerating her natural speed.

“Aw, Darin’, yew say the nicest thangs!” Applejack grinned while jetting underneath her sucker punch. “Ah do try ‘n’ make mah Mama and Papa proud!”

“...But why would the Swap do this?!” Lero asked.

“Because it’s an ultra-powerful, world-shaking, and completely unstable piece of incomplete magic!” Discord told him. “Duh!”

Lero could really have done without seeing Discord with his eyes crossed, jaw dropped down, and protruding buckteeth on display for emphasis.

The two mares were now on the ground just whaling on each other with their robotic fists. One punch from Daring Do actually managed to crack the visor in Applejack’s helmet.

“Quit toying around with her, Daring!” called the odious voice of Pse Cnaar. “Just finish that mare off!”

At that moment, there was a huge noise, and the crowd rocked in their seats as the entire building gave a jolt.

“What’s happening?!” cried one of the masked aliens.

“Earthquake!” another yelled, in a panic.

That one guessed wrong. The tremors didn’t originate from the ground beneath their feet, but rather the wall of the building. As though a great boulder had been catapulted into it from outside. Or perhaps a missile. Either way, the force field around the pony combatants cut out like a unplugged desk lamp.

Applejack and Daring Do grinned at each other.

“Now?” whispered Daring.

“Now!” shouted Applejack.

The two of them stood up, wheeling on the audience. Daring Do raised what seemed to be some kind of high-tech flare gun into the air…

...And then the hatless Lero found his eyes, ears, nose and mouth covered from behind by multiple copies of Discord’s hands.

“Discord, what…?!”

“Shush! I don’t want you blind for what’s next!”

Then it happened. Even through the strange hands pressed over his eyeballs, Lero saw brilliant whiteness. Even with the fingers plugging his ears, he heard a strange ringing. It felt swelteringly hot, and his nostrils filled with a cloying peppery odor. The masked jury let out alien cries of confusion and panic.

In time, the light died down, and Discord pulled his hands off Lero’s face. Applejack and Daring Do had vanished!

“An S.O. bomb!” coughed Judge Xrugh.

“S.O. stands for Sensory Overload,” Discord explained. “Light, sound, heat, smell, electronic scrambler, plus several OTHER senses you’d have no knowledge of… it’s the ultimate ninja smoke bomb.”

He was momentarily wearing purple, red, blue, and orange headbands all at once, and had a bo staff slung over his back, sais and nunchuks at his sides, and a katana in his hands.

“How did this slllllllip past security?!” Then Xrugh observed something more distressing. “Michealllllllides! They’ve taken him with them!”

“Daring Do, you VILE BETRAYER!” howled Pse Cnaar, floating around with surprising speed, looking from exit to exit. “Well, they’re not escaping THIS time!” he declared, lifting a device towards his mouth that looked rather phone-like.

“And now it’s time for us to catch up with yourself!” Discord announced, pulling Lero inside a motorboat that shot off like a bullet. Like a pair of ghosts, they phased through all sorts of solid matter, including many aliens, stairs, and the walls… until they were suddenly motoring alongside Daring Do and Applejack, who carried her human stallion on her back.

“So you’re really Daring Do?” asked the human, to the pony flying alongside his and Applejack’s right.

“The one and only!” said Daring. “Often imitated, never duplicated.”

“And you’re helping us?”

Daring didn’t miss the suspicious look Lero shot between herself and one of the larger cracks in Applejack’s armor. “Yeah, I’m part of the team.”

“Lot’s happened since yew got yerself shanghaied, sugar-britches,” said AJ.

“I have so many questions,” sighed the human, staring unhappily at the laser handcuffs still on his wrists.

Up ahead, security guards were taking position behind cover, blasting searing bolts at the ponies.

“Now’s not the time to ask them!” shouted Daring, as miniature turrets opened up from both ponies’ armor, returning fire. “In the immortal words of Pharaoh Kontitatakum: ’ ليس هناك وقت للشرح;’ there is no time to explain. Not until we’re safely aboard your ship.”

“Speaking a’ which…” And there came a sound from within Applejack’s helmet, like a telephone’s ringtone. “Spike? Spike, ya there? We got Lero…”

“Awesome, AJ!” they could hear the young dragon’s voice.

“What’s yer status?” Applejack asked Spike.

“Got a couple patrol guards on my tail, but they’re nothing I can’t shake off. And you?”

“Same,” said Applejack. Ahead, security guards were trying to activate a force field to block Daring and Applejack’s escape… but all that came out was purple-colored sparks, as they both rushed through.

“Well, you just focus on getting up to the docking port, pronto,” Spike encouraged her, as they came into a wide-open reception room, almost like that of a four-star hotel.

“Roger that, li’l buddy! We’re almost there, anyway.”

Daylight shone outside through clear, translucent doorways. Spacecraft of all sizes were visible through those doorways, parked in neat rows.

But then, just as they were about to step into daylight, some invisible something SNATCHED Lero clean off Applejack’s back.

“Aaahhh!!!” the human screamed, suddenly reeled upwards like a fish from the water.

The invisible thing which had grabbed Lero wasn’t able to turn the human invisible too. Even if it could, Lero was screaming too noisily to hide his location. So it deactivated its cloaking device, and revealed what it was: a giant mechanical spider with WAY more legs than any arachnid should rightfully possess.

Hanging upside-down from the high ceiling as though it weighed no more than a paper chandelier, the mechanized spider dangled Lero in front of its segmented robotic eyes.

Some of the security guards ALMOST ran into the reception room at this point, took one look at the spider, and ran back the way they’d come. Moments later, a thick blast door came crashing down.

"Scream for me, Mr. Michealides," bade the spider, caressing the side of his face almost lovingly with the spindly end of a leg. It voice was dulcet and female, the voice of an automated operator who announced things like, ‘The number you have dialed has been disconnected.’

“Oh Christ, not again!" Lero groaned, as the end of the leg that had just stroked him transformed into a spinning drill.

“LERO!” For her part, Applejack appeared even more horrified than the human. In a blast of jet fire, she rocketed over, meaning to grab her sweetheart back from the spider’s clutches, but the spider just passed the handcuffed human over to another leg.

And suddenly, a large screen along the reception room turned itself on.

“I’m pleased to see that this MRS-23 is proving a bit more… problematic for you than that paltry MR-7 archanodrone of mine,” laughed Pse Cnaar.

“That… the MR-7 was YER doing, Cnaar?!” Applejack cried, snapping towards the screen. “Lero… mah poor stallion he nearly… Yew MONSTER!”

“AJ! FOCUS!” The MRS-23 would’ve crushed the earth pony under its sizable thorax, if Daring Do hadn’t body-slammed Applejack out of harm’s way.

Several of the MRS-23’s twenty-three legs transformed into guns, shooting wildly at the ponies, who struggled to dodge them. Daring’s own gun locked onto one of the MRS-23’s legs and shot it off… but the leg magnetically reattached itself to its stump moments later.

“Oh, and I think you should know: this arachnodrone’s programmed with all the combat data we were able to salvage from the memory banks of that MR-7 you scrapped!” added Cnaar smugly.

Then Applejack glared at the mechanical monstrosity. She reached an arm up and adjusted her helmet, tilting it just-so. Her forehooves planted themselves onto the ground, and actually sank into the metal plating of the floor. Daring’s eyes opened wide and she got clear of the ground.

“A Seismic Roidbuck?” the adventurer called out. “On a planet? AJ, even you can’t… There’s ponies living here!”

Applejack ignored her. Her hind legs lifted into the air, in a form that a Shattered Stone grandmaster would have wept to see. And then her hind hooves struck down. That same grandmaster would have fallen to her knees and begged the orange earth pony to take her on as apprentice there and then. The sound of the impact roared, and a ring of orange light coruscated outward from the contact point.

“Ah ain’t breakin’ the whole thing. Jes’ this lil' bit of it,” she declared. And lifted off.

The whole room rattled. First the lights flickered, then cut out, then fell, along with all the chairs and furniture. It was an earthquake, a REAL one this time, and the floor split wide open, like a piece of bread being pulled apart from the middle, right under the spider’s over-numerous legs.

The pit yawned beneath the MRS-23.

“And THAT’S how Ah earned my cutie mark!” AJ called to Daring. Both of them were out of harm’s way; flying along the high ceiling.

“AJ!” The voice was Spike’s, coming from Applejack’s helmet. “Why aren’t you outside? Something happen?”

“Yeah, Spike! Big bad robot… ain't got time ta explain!”

All the robo-spider’s legs scrambled just to find footing, except for the one still holding Lero. The human was being whipped around through the air like a flagpole in a patriot’s hands.

“P…!” Applejack cut off the transmission. Eyes locked on her beloved human stallion, she waited for just the right moment, then swept out to pull him to safety.

But the MRS-23 was quicker still; it shot a web-string from its spinneret which attached to the wall, pulling the spider and its hostage back to the ceiling like a grappling gun.

“Time to party, Mr. Michealides,” said the MRS-23, driving its whirling drill straight into Lero’s thigh.

It had just pierced the skin when the drill suddenly pulled out of the human altogether. Mystical pink energy surrounded all twenty-three of the MRS-23’s legs, which all suddenly curved inward on themselves, lengths of metal being twisted and even knotted into balloon animal formations.

“A party?” called a familiar voice from ground level. “You’re throwing a party and you forgot to invite me?”

From his ghostly motorboat, the other Lero gawked at the newcomer who stepped in through the reception room’s broken front doors. “Pink Lady?!”

“Pinkie Pie,” Discord corrected.

This time, Lero’s eyes shot straight to Pinkie’s flank. Painted on the pink pony’s particularly pink power armor were the multiple stars that rightfully belonged to Twilight Sparkle.

“And I thought it was bizarre seeing a pegasus casting spells,” the human said.

“Well, if ever there was an earth pony who deserved to be Element of Magic…”

“You...”

Pinkie’s haunches were raised like a cat prepared to pounce. A magical pink-colored glow surrounded her tail as she spun it continuously, like a pinwheel in a steady breeze, and the spider’s voice died in a garbled burst of static.

“You know, there are so many different kind of parties and celebrations that exist,” she told the spider. “I read all sorts of books, and many of my favorites are about parties. I also get to attend lots of different festivals, thanks to me being President Celestia’s faithful student.”

The hat-wearing Lero was levitated gently onto Pinkie’s back. Daring Do and Applejack flew over behind the pink mare, who dangled the arachnodrone helplessly on its web.

“But I think one of the most fascinating celebrations I’ve heard of doesn’t even take place in this galaxy, but on faraway Planet Earth,” Pinkie continued. “There, they have a country called the Kingdom of Unity…”

The Lero in the motorboat turned to Discord. “The Kingdom of Unity?”

“The United Kingdom,” Discord told him. “She's a bit less detail-obsessed than your Twilight."

“Long ago, there was a big old meaniepants who tried to kill his king, James the First, who was a very beloved man. Just like my Lero’s a very beloved man.”

Magical floating kerosene canisters materialized all around the MRS-23, drenching the arachnodrone with their contents, then vanished the moment they’d emptied themselves.

“But the assassination of King James failed. And everyhuman in the Kingdom of Unity was so very, very happy they made a holiday of it, celebrating with the finest pyrotechnics every fifth of November for centuries to come.”

No more kerosene canisters appeared.

“Say, Applejack! What might today’s date happen to be?”

“Er… June the 26th,” said AJ.

There was small gawkish pause.

“Close enough,” Pinkie Pie decided.

As her shimmering tail spun faster, like a helicopter propeller, a giant Guy Fawkes mask formed in front of the MRS-23. Guy Fawkes opened his mouth and flames flew out, turning the arachnodrone into a great blazing ball. The web caught fire until it broke, dropping the MRS-23 through the earthquake-crack in the floor. Pinkie’s tail then spun counter-clockwise, closing the fissure back together, squashing the arachnodrone like a soda can in a recycling machine.

“Happy Bonfire Night, you stallion-stabbing sadist.” Then her tail dropped and Pinkie turned to the others, beaming. “Now come on!”

They hurried outside and were almost immediately swept up into a spaceship’s tractor beam. There was just enough time for Lero to see it was shaped much like a traditional flying saucer, and that it bore the name Hudsucker Proxy, before it was off, and a dozen other spaceships shot after it like hounds after a fox.

SLUUUUUUURP.

Lero turned to look at Discord. Their motorboat’s motor wasn’t rumbling. They were just floating in place. Discord had brought out a tea set, and was sipping noisily from a steaming cup.

“Aren’t we going to follow them?” asked Lero. “Or something?”

“Cor blimey, guv’nor!” cried Discord, waving a tiny Union Jack straight in the human’s face. “It’s bloody Bonfire Night, ya cheeky Yank tosser! The most British holiday on the books! Give a chap a chance ta sip ‘is cuppa brown joy in peace, there’s a good lad! God save the Queen!”

It felt like hours before the draconequus finally set his empty cup aside and snapped his fingers, and they were inside the spaceship.

* * *

Lero could tell at once that this vessel was not simply a spacecraft. Not even an ultra-cool, technologically astonishing one.

The first thing that greeted Lero’s eye was a large and gorgeously colorful mural, an enlarged replica of a photograph, etched into the very metal of the spaceship wall.

It showed himself, Spike, Pinkie Pie the Mage, Applejack the Space Badflank, and Lyra Heartstrings all grinning and hugging together in a tight happy ball of family togetherness, on some planet where all the ground resembled sea corals, and the sky was spirals of unearthly indigo, orange, and green.

HERD BELLEROPHON. Lero read. FOREVER LOYAL, ALWAYS LOVING.

“I live on this spaceship, don’t I?” Lero breathed, eyes flicking to the sturdy-looking window right next to the mural; he could see ringed planets floating in the starry vastness of outer space.

“Well, this universe’s version of you, anyways.”

“All of them are clothed,” Lero noted, marveling at the sundress that Lyra was pictured wearing. “As clothed as I am, top and bottom. Even Spike.”

Discord gave another laugh. “What can I say? The ponies here are so advanced, that they even discovered modesty. But let me draw your attention to their flanks once more. As you can see, the need to showcase one’s cutie mark is so deeply ingrained in the pony psyche, that they either make that part of the garment out of translucent fabric, or have their marks replicated onto the clothes they own. Very easy to do with modern technology. But, come on, now, you don’t want to miss the rest of this.”

The artificial gravity aboard this ship felt about a half-degree lighter than Lero was used to, so there was a definite jaunt in both their steps. Down the corridor they went, seeing homey, personalized touches everywhere.

They passed shelves of valuable first edition hard copy books, and Lero slowed to read a few of the titles. The Neuroscience of Laughter. Why Smiling Matters. Celestia’s Apprentices And What They Did With Their Lives. Parties: From Prehistory To Present Day. 10,000 Valuable Spells. How To Be Funny. How Bonobos Say Hello. The Ultimate Cupcake Cookbook. So You’ve Hatched A Dragon Egg But Aren’t A Dragon Yourself. A Mage’s Guide To Party Tricks. Understanding Primates (a book Lero remembered Twilight reading when they’d first begun dating). And the entire Daring Do saga.

They saw all sorts of eye-catching space-age hardware and databanks all throughout the ship. They passed a well-equipped and well-used science bay, and an impressive array of well-kept weather gizmos mounted on locked racks. There was a side room decorated in a mind-bending meld of ‘Tennessee watering hole’ and ‘Wonderbolts fan shrine...’

“Hang on a second” Lero said, “Weren’t there a bunch of enemy ships chasing this ship a while ago? Shouldn’t we be dodging photon torpedoes or something?”

“Hm, gosh,” said Discord, taking another sip of tea. “We must’ve missed that bit, and skipped forward to the part where Spike managed to shake them off.”

They had come to the helm… or was it was called the cockpit? Hopefully, this-world’s-Lero had a stronger grasp of spacefaring jargon. At any rate, this was definitely the place where the pilot sat. Namely, Spike, who wore blue jeans and a denim jacket under a puffer vest. The spaceship wasn’t accelerating in any direction under its own power, because the dragon had stopped to have some sort of face-to-face chat with Rarity.

“...But mah hooves’re all cracked ‘n’ dry from workin’ on the field!” she protested, with a drawl even thicker than one of the Apples. Lero could see a barn behind her. “And mah mane’s full of dust ‘n’ split ends!”

If only Lero’s own sweet RD could see what he was seeing! The grungy straw hat. The overlarge overalls with the patchy three apples sewn on the rump, stained with fresh muck! He didn’t know whether to cringe or chortle.

But Spike sounded downright suave as he leaned forward and told her, “Like I said, beauty products can only embellish what’s already there! Put lipstick, rouge, and eyeliner on a N’khad mole-rat, you only give it a new dimension of hideousness. But a Rarity without any of that remains a beauty.”

“Ah’m wearing droopy drawers,” she pointed out glumly, turning around to show how pachyderm-like they hung on her body.

“You’re a farm girl, a little rustic roughness is part of the charm!” He showed her a winningly confident smile. “C’mon, I thought you were trying to convince me you’re ugly! Hit me with your best shot!”

Lero was disturbed to see the white unicorn’s flank start to spasm, almost as if it had been angered. Rarity’s expression turned deeply pained as she shrieked, “I luv bein’ covered in mud!”

She looked about to cry. But instead, Spike gave a friendly grin and told her, “Me too!”

The spasming died away.

“Ah’m surprised, Spike! Ah thought yew’d be THE guy who put fanciness first! All them times yew went ta the Boo-teek ta sigh over Twilight Sparkle…”

Spike winced at that. “Yeah, me and… Twilight… Let’s just say my tastes have matured.”

He’s not bewitched. Lero realized. Spike knows the truth of things.

But it was still so weird! On one hand, it made sense that Spike would wince at the Swapped pony’s assumption that he was in love with Twilight Sparkle, who was as good as a herd-mother to him. On the other, he was still hitting on RD...

In spite of everything against her, all the cloddishness and the slovenliness and grime, when she smiled, Farmer Rarity really was every bit as beautiful as Spike claimed. “Thank yew fer all them times yew’ve been callin’ me, Spike. Ah needed these talks, it’s helped given me sum kinda… kinda… a balance in mah head, an, an…”

“An equilibrium?” said Spike.

She shrugged. “Good a word as any. Next time yer in the area, why don’t cha drop on by Sweet Apple Asteroids, and Ah’ll bake yew a fresh apple pie!”

“Rarity, I’ll gladly eat every bit of pie you’re willing to give me.” Spike promised, as Applejack, Daring Do, Pinkie Pie, and Lero all came in through the door.

“While yer at it,” Applejack called out to Rarity, “When we do come by, could ya also have a case of cider ready fer us along with that pie?”

All the mares were out of their power armor. In addition to her cowgirl hat, Applejack now wore a sort of jumpsuit colored very similarly a Wonderbolts’ uniform, but with fringes down the legs and a bolo tie at the neck. She knocked back a long swig from a bottle labelled ‘Sweet Apple Asteroids’ Finest.’

“Woo-wee! Can’t NEVER git enough a’ this stuff!”

“Ssh!” shushed Pinkie Pie. “You’re interrupting Daring’s story!”

Pinkie Pie wore a collared shirt and tie, smartly tucked under a V-neck sweater, a pleated skirt, and a thin, snug robe that hung down to just below her knees. Every stitch of it was in pretty shades of pink.

“Well, there’s not much more to tell,” said Daring Do, who wore safari pants to match her safari shirt.

As Spike ended the transmission with Rarity, Daring said, “Basically, in addition to us all uniting against common enemies, there’s just so much intrigue surrounding you. Why was Trenderhoof murdered? What was Coco Pommel’s role in the Incla Valley bombings? Why has Cheese Sandwich joined forces with Suri Polomare? Where is the real Lyra Heartstrings? Why has Agent Honeydew been keeping me under surveillance this whole past year? And how do the Elements of Harmony play into all of it?”

The human shook his head, “We wish we had those answers ourselves, but I got a good feeling we’re going to learn together.”

His hand shook her hoof. “Welcome aboard the Hudsucker Proxy, Daring!”

“Technically, I’ve been on the Proxy for the past week, but thank you for the warm reception, all the same. Now if you’ll excuse me, it’s been an eventful day, so ‘A.K. Yearling...’

And Daring Do took off her pith helmet and donned a pair of large bookish glasses.

“...needs to update her manuscript.”

She left the room. Applejack and Pinkie Pie stared after her with a sort of fangirlish yearning. Pinkie actually grabbed Daring’s hat, seeming to fight off the temptation to don it herself.

“It’s been a week and I’m still amazed…”

“The Darin’ Do, yeah…” Applejack breathed.

“Wouldn’t it be something if she and we were to…” Pinkie swallowed nervously. “Y’know…”

Applejack blushed, but shook her head.

“If she puts the moves on us, that’s one story. But we don’t wanna put the moves on her. Ah’d MUCH rather us stay friends than spook her away with unwanted advances. ‘Sides, we don’t wanna be fergettin’ ‘bout Lyra ‘n’ making such decisions ‘fore we find ‘er again!”

“Agreed,” said her herd-sister, putting down Daring’s hat respectfully on a countertop, and turning to her beloved human. “Not that we’re forgetting you either, Lero!”

Applejack stared down the brim of her hat at him. “Naw, we ain’t forgotten Lero.”

She straddled herself atop him while he sat in a chair.

“Ah’m still a little sore at yew, buster,” she told him, and he hung his head.

“I suppose I’ve earned that.” Smiling contritely, he looked back up. “This hasn’t been a total bust, though. While I was being held captive, I was able to discover something from a fellow prisoner, a way of helping Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, like I’ve helped you and Pinkie…”

“There ya go again,” sighed Applejack tenderly. “Always… always puttin’ everypony else first before yerself.” Their kisses were soft at first, before building up gusto, her strong, muscular legs clenching his powerfully.

“Sweet Celestia, Ah’m about ready to ride yew off into the sunset! Ah missed ya so much, mah sweet stallion…”

Pinkie Pie popped in on Lero’s other side.

“Mine too!” Her tail twirled again… and the shirt he was wearing magically transformed.

“Pinkie? What’d you do to my shirt?” It had turned wet and goopy against his skin in a way no cloth should ever feel. Pinkie ran her tongue from the center of Lero’s shoulder to his collarbone, licking up a mass of what Lero finally recognized as a mixture of cake frosting and freshly-diced apple squares.

“I made it edible!” she said quite clearly, before plunging her sugar-coated tongue into Lero’s mouth and swirling it around.

“Hey, come on, guys!” Spike called from his control console. “ You’ve got a kid here! Go up to your bunk for that sort of thing!”

“Great idea! AJ, Lero, both of you hang tight!”

The other two pressed tightly against Pinkie as she pinwheeled her tail. Spike shielded his eyes from a flash of pinkness, and then there was only smear of frosting on the back of the chair that Lero had been sitting in. Soon enough, he could hear distant giggling and the creaking of a bed.

“And they’re off to the races again,” With a great eye roll, Spike turned on some music to a loud volume. "If only they'd install some soundproofing so I didn't have to listen every time.” Taped to the console was a group photo of this world’s Herd Bellerophon with the other four Elements of Harmony. Spike smiled with brotherly regret at the fashionista in that picture.

“Guess there's SOME upside to you being off the ship, Twilight; that was always even more uncomfortable hearing YOU in there..." Then he frowned at a message on his touchscreen reading ‘Incoming Transmission.’ Spike pressed ‘Answer.’

“Hello,” greeted a smartly dressed mare in front of a featureless grey wall, “Is Mr. Lero Michealides available?”

“Lero’s busy, I’m afraid. Can I ask who's calling?” said Spike. At the very edge of his hearing, Spike could almost swear he heard Pinkie squeal, 'Look, AJ! Now his britches really are all sugary! Mmmmm!' And he cringed a bit.

“My name is Civil Virtue, and I’m calling on behalf of the Swirled Star Exchange…”

“Well then, we definitely don’t have time!” Spike snapped, a bit of smoke puffing from his mouth. “We’ve dealt with your Exchange before… you people are WEIRD! Goodbye, and please don’t call back!”

But as he reached forward to end the call, Civil Virtue begged, “Please! It’s important! Starswirl himself wishes to speak with Mr. Michealides!”

That stopped Spike. “Starswirl…?”

“Starswirl,” she repeated, as he leaned back in his seat. “Starswirl the Bearded. He’s a pony who’s famous for… “

“Oh, believe me, we know all about Starswirl on THIS ship!” the dragon cut in. “And you’re saying he wants to talk with Lero? News flash, sister: Starswirl’s quite a few centuries dead!”

She shook her head very pleasantly. “No, Starswirl never actually died, he merely flung himself forward in time, to this very moment.”

“Pull one of the other ones.”

“Starswirl’s genius is beyond all measure,” she declared. “If not for him and his brilliant magic, we wouldn’t be able to enjoy the level of technology we experience today. I can show you him right now.”

Civil Virtue disappeared momentarily… and returned with a stern old unicorn in a belled, wizardly cap.

“Aaaaaaand that’s all we have time for!” Discord said, showing his guest a clock.

“What? No!”

But the spaceship they had been in had vanished. It took a couple of seconds for Lero to recognize what he was now sitting inside: a bathysphere whose heavy metal hatch sealed behind them with a heavy, grinding squeak.

“I let that go on for WAY longer than I should’ve,” Discord sighed, sitting back “I REALLY needed to clean that Psycho-Fluttershy out of my head. It’s time to move on.”

“But it was JUST getting good!” Then he looked at the chaos god with hopeful eyes. “Say, Discord, is there any chance MY Swap will turn ME into a space adventurer?”

“Maybe if you’re really, really good,” the draconequus said. “...Well, no, not good. Maybe if I think it’ll be really, really funny.”

* * *

Countless bubbles floated up against the porthole as the bathysphere plunged into deep water.

“Gotta say, Discord, you really know how to boost a guy’s ego!” Lero chuckled, marvelling at the odd schools of cuttlefish that swam past. “I mean, I understand that this is the multiverse and we’re looking at infinite possibilities, but in every world we’ve been in, I’ve got the ladies wrapped around my little finger. Like I could’ve picked any one of them, and they’d all be equally loyal.”

Across from him, Discord raised an intrigued eyebrow, as though the human had brought up a point he hadn’t thought to consider.

“Yes… and no. Think, Lero: all the girls who were most besmitten with you shared one constant commonality. Can you guess what it was?”

Reluctantly, Lero turned from the porthole, reviewing them all in his head. That rough-and-tumble ‘Rainbow Dash’ who flew him through the sky. ‘Rarity’ the Spider Killer. Twilight the Daredevil. Applejack the Space Hero. Even that psycho Fluttershy girl.

“They all had the same cutie mark.”

“Bingo!” Discord cheered, handing him a gold trophy shaped like RD’s mark.

“And… come to think of it, between Rainbow the Mage and Pinkie the Mage… they acted more like Twilight Sparkle because they had Twilight’s cutie mark…?”

Discord gave him another thumbs-up for another correct conclusion.

“So what lineup of girls will we be seeing in the new world, Discord?” Lero asked, with a sophomoric, immature smile. “Lemme guess: Zecora-Spitfire-Trixie? Maybe even Cadence-Celestia-Luna?”

“It’s actually going to be Rarity-Twilight Sparkle-Lyra Heartstrings,” Discord told him, as the waters outside grew steadily darker. “And…”

“And?” asked Lero.

“And it isn’t so much a ‘new’ world as one we’re revisiting.”

The draconequus stood up, moseying over to a bathtub inside their bathysphere that wasn’t there a moment ago. One with a cheap plastic shower curtain. Discord entered it.

“Right this way!” he said, motioning him over. “Chop-chop!”

Lero moved over and stepped into the bathtub next to Discord, who closed the shower curtain.

Hold on! Lero thought. I’ve gotten inside a tub with another guy! And it’s Discord!

His face flushed and panic set in. But instead of turning on the faucet or telling him to undress, Discord merely grinned and reopened the shower curtain.

* * *

“...and Lavender Blush and Seasong and Tropical Spring…”

It was nighttime, and the poofy-haired pink Earth pony with the three-balloon cutie mark was in her bedroom, sitting at a small desk and writing a list of ponies she’d need to invite to her next party. The bathtub with the human and the draconequus in it was completely invisible to her.

“Drizzle couldn’t come to my last party because she was sick with the pony pox,” she noted to herself, with the pencil still in her mouth. “So I’ll definitely have to invite her!”

As she scribbled down Drizzle’s name, Lero instinctively moved to step out.

“Please keep your arms, legs, and all other body parts inside the bathtub until further notice,” Discord told him.

Then the pencil dropped from her mouth, rolling off the desk and to a corner of the room as Pinkie Pie’s eyes went unfocused. The mare tumbled sideways off her chair, as though she’d inhaled knockout gas.

“Pay special attention to her cutie mark!”

She’d fallen over at a good angle to allow for that. It took a few short seconds for those three cute little balloons to fade away, and it was a dreadful thing to see.

Like watching someone fall into a coma. Or a soul being sucked out.

The fact that the vibrant curls of her mane and tail were deflating into straight, flat strands only made it worse. Then, suddenly her flank was no longer bare. A trio of red apples materialized in place of the trio of balloons.

The mare rose to her feet without so much as a grunt of pain. Her eyes showed only emptiness when she opened them.

“Mah farm…” she muttered the words in the same accent they all used down at Sweet Apple Acres.

Pink Lady’s accent...

The pink mare with the Apple Mark turned at the sound of hooves ascending the stairs just outside her room. In came a familiar canary-yellow pegasus mare, with the very same Balloon Mark on her that’d been on the pink mare’s own flank until moments ago.

But the pink mare gave no sign of recognizing her old cutie mark. Neither mare gave the faintest hint of recognizing the other as they wordlessly strode past each other. The Earth pony left her room and headed down the stairs, while the pegasus went to retrieve the pencil that’d dropped on the floor, and sat before the list her friend had been in the middle of writing.

“...Oh, and Orchid Dew and Strawberry Sunrise,” said Fluttershy, adding those names in, “can’t forget them…”

Discord shut the shower curtain, then reopened it.

They were in Applejack’s bedroom at Sweet Apple Acres. The orange pony slept with her hat still on her head, her blanket covering most of her body, but not her cutie mark. Or rather, her sudden lack of one. Lero Michealides got to watch three diamonds appear over the orange blankness, and the blonde-maned pony arose, glazed-eyed, from her bed.

“Mah dresses…”

The flat-haired Pinkie came in. As before, the two friends offered no greeting, no more than one zombie ever gives another. As they slipped past each other, Pinkie Pie made to gently take Applejack’s hat in her teeth. The orange pony wouldn’t let her; sidestepping the pink mare’s mouth, and exiting the bedroom at a fast trot.

The pink mare seemed to consider running after her friend with the Diamond Mark. Apparently, though, she decided it wasn’t that valuable a hat, so Pinkie Pie just slipped into her friend’s bed, her body curling in the exact same position Applejack had been sleeping in.

Discord closed the curtain. Discord opened the curtain.

“My stallion…”

And now Lero was watching Rarity change places with Applejack in the Carousel Boutique.

One last flash of curtain, and Lero got to see Rainbow Dash, marked with three pink butterflies, fly into the cottage at the edge of the Everfree Forest holding Gummy the baby alligator.

It’s almost like I’ve watched Pinkie Pie become Pink Lady. Lero thought to himself. And Fluttershy become Flutterpie. And Applejack become Diamondjack, and Rainbow Dash become Rainbow Connection and Rarity become… RD.

The thought made him shudder.

“For all the alternate universes we’ve seen, Lero, there are trillions more in which you never came to Equestria at all, my friend. A world where Rarity fell in love with Prince Blueblood and became a duelist. A world where Princess Cadence was corrupted into her own version of Nightmare Moon and called herself ‘Decadence.’ A world where I succeeded in my original goal of beating the Elements of Harmony and throwing Equestria into chaos; that’s a fun one to visit. Even a world where Sweetie Belle became a ghostbuster.”

Privately, Lero supposed this makes sense. The odds of him arriving in Equestria at ALL were phenomenal enough.

“And yet, in all the Equestrias where you DO show up, there are certain constant commonalities in all versions, sure as there always being air for you to breathe.”

Another yank of the shower curtain, and Lero was again seeing himself be rescued from the seven-legged spider by the Rarity with the rainbow-thunderbolt cutie mark.

“But of all the Lero Michealideses who came to Equestria,” he said, pointing to the cocooned human the spider and pony were fighting over, “HE was the first to have to wrangle with the Swap.”

Another curtain pull; and Discord and Lero saw the Lero in question at his own house… a shoddy welcome home party, and he was circling his table of pony guests and staring in bewilderment at their mismatched marks.

“He was the trailblazer,” Discord informed him. “The first domino to fall.”

The curtain shut and the curtain opened multiple times, and through it all, Discord and his guest watched the Lero of this world do many astonishing deeds.

Lero saw his other self go around Ponyville with Twilight Sparkle, observing the Swapped Ponies fail miserably at their new lives. He was pulled into Discord’s own body, and accepted an olive branch from the draconequus after a fight.

They watched Rarity console this Lero as they both lay in bed, assuring him she’d never stop loving him. They watched Lero fend off Angel Bunny and all the animals of the cottage for hours on end, just so that Rainbow Dash could get some sleep; watched Lero dance and sing in the rain beside Rarity, a tearful Pinkie Pie embracing Apple Bloom inside a hospital bathroom...

“How long has it been for this guy?” asked the Lero witnessing all this.

“Oh, I’d say about… a month and a half so far, give or take. More than I thought he’d manage. And he’s still fighting the good fight.”

“Am I gonna have to put up with this Swap thing for that long?” he asked, appalled.

“‘Put up with,’ hmmm? Well, who knows?” Discord shrugged. “Maybe tomorrow when you wake up, your Twilight will have the cure to the Swap figured out in time for pancakes. If so, more power to you!”

They continued watching: the Apple Mark briefly fading from Pinkie’s flank as she rediscovered a desire to spread smiles, everyone banding together to save Rainbow Dash from a huge slime beast… tears being shed after Rainbow declared she no longer had need of Lero’s help, (a few were Lero’s own)… Lero and several of his family studying comedy with Fluttershy… Lero braiding a second feather in his hair at the Wonderbolts Derby…

“Would you like to meet him?” Discord asked. “This version of yourself?”

“Yes,” said Lero. “Yes, I really would.”

* * *

They appeared in front of Golden Oaks Library’s front porch.

“Wait right here for one moment.” Discord told him. “I’ll be right back.”

And he hopped down the library’s chimney in a single bound.

The place was bright with daylight, and the sun was warm on Lero’s face. A pegasus neighbor waved cheerfully to Lero from above, and Lero waved back. The flowers in the garden gave off a sweet scent.

Everything was so familiar, so peace-inspiring, that for a moment, it was as though Lero was right back home in his own world.

“You can come in now, Lero.” Discord said, opening the door for him from within.

Lero stepped inside. All the books were set neatly on their shelves, the place smelled lemon-scented, and everything looked freshly dusted and swept. The way it always was at his own house, whenever they were preparing to have guests over.

Then three figures stepped forward toward Lero. Spike, Twilight Sparkle — and boy, was Lero happy to see her Star Mark right in its proper place — and himself.

“Can you all see me?” he asked them. “Can you all hear me?”

He waved both his hands at them, as though they were standing at opposite ends of a football field. They smiled and chuckled.

“Yeah, dude, you’re a very visible ninja,” Spike snarked.

Lero straightened self-consciously. “Yes, well…” He held out a hand. “Let me introduce myself. My name is Lero Michealides, and I’m from an alternate universe.”

This world’s Lero came up. He wore a red shirt and two blue feathers braided into his hair.

“Good to see you, Lero,” he said, the two selves shaking hands. Wow, he had a firm grip. “My home is your home.”

Then Twilight held out her hoof, and he shook that, grabbing it in both hands.

“You look beautiful, Twilight.”

Lero meant this with all his heart. Just seeing Twilight Sparkle with an honest, happy smile on her face after so many days of her acting uptight and isolating herself… it felt like a weight had been lifted off him.

“Thank you so much, Lero. You look very handsome yourself.” Then she reared up, and he instinctively caught her and brought his lips to hers.

“Mmm, you even kiss the same!” The other Lero rolled his eyes in good humor as she got back down to all four hooves. “Oooooh, I have all sorts of questions to ask about the Equestria you come from, and about your journey here… I hardly know where to begin!”

“I’ll be glad to answer everything, as always!” he assured her.

But before she could pose her first question, Spike cut in front of her. “So you really ARE from an alternate universe, huh? Wow, you look WAY too much like OUR Lero. I dunno, I was hoping you’d have, like, an eyepatch or a samurai sword or a supervillain cape, or twenty billion more bits in your bank account!”

“Well, if you don’t mind my saying so, I’m amazed that you guys aren’t MORE amazed to see me here.”

Lero looked towards Discord as though to ask ‘did you bewitch them?’ Strangely, the draconequus was nowhere to be found.

“Well, the truth is, we were expecting you,” said the Lero with the two-feather braid.

“Expecting me?” Lero asked, after a careful look at floor and ceiling, failing to uncover where Discord was suddenly hiding.

“Discord told us all about you a couple days ago, and how he wanted to help you. We were all for it, so we got the house ready to welcome you as our guest,” Twilight explained, turning around. “Come on! Let’s go to the kitchen; we’ve prepared all your favorites. Or at least all HIS favorites.” She and the human she lived with shared a smile with each other.

“That sounds great,” said Lero, meeting eyes with his other self again. “Somehow, I think we’ll share many of the same tastes.”

* * *

Lero felt like a movie star in his own home as he ate lunch with Twilight, Spike, and his other self… and not just because of all the fine treatment. A few feet away was a carefully balanced old-style movie camera, filming the four of them as they ate and conversed. In case the movie camera somehow failed, a cassette player had also been placed in the center of their table, recording the audio of this moment. Finally, there was a regular photograph-snapping camera, which Spike was in charge of.

“To immortalize the moment,” Twilight had explained. “Especially since this is truly a phenomenal, well… phenomenon.”

“Seems risky, though,” Lero had said.

“Don’t worry,” Twilight had assured her guest. “First, the four of us have this place entirely to ourselves for the entire day; no one else will be coming by. Second, I’ll be dragon-mailing all this footage to a special vault of Celestia’s right away, after you’ve left.”

Lero hadn’t minded at all. It was Twilight being her regular self again, and it was great seeing her like that. He and his other self had goofed off a bit for the cameras; singing duets with each other, giving each other hive-fives and fist bumps and putting ‘bunny ears’ on each other’s heads.

Then they’d shared their stories, first comparing and contrasting the differences of the respective worlds. For instance, here, there were a couple shops in the marketplace that existed under different names, or were owned by other ponies in his own world. All three of his hosts were fascinated to hear Lero’s tale about how Big Macintosh married Rainbow Connection; the Big Mac of this world was still single.

Next, they talked about each others’ families. Throughout the discussion, Twilight Sparkle showed Lero several family photos. The cutie marks on the ponies were visible on each other. First was a recent snapshot of this-world’s-Lero with the Swapped Rarity, hugging each other.

“I’ve actually seen your Rarity in action,” he told them, wishing he’d brought pictures of his own. “She’s just like my RD, but with 20% more refinement and 80% less tomboyishness. Right down to her smile.”

The next photo was another recently-taken one, showing Lero with Rarity, Twilight, and Lyra-the-Unicorn all together.

“I’d like you to take a moment to listen to this,” Twilight said, putting a record on the turntable. “This is something our Lyra made.”

“Did your own Lyra compose this same music?” the other Lero asked, over the beautiful harp music that filled the room.

“This sounds to be in my-Lyra’s style, but I don’t remember my-Lyra ever making this particular melody.” Lero told them.

Then they showed Lero two photographs: an older photo of this-world’s-Lero with Rainbow Dash the Weathermare, and a much newer one of him with Rainbow Dash the Animal Caretaker. They made for very striking before-and-after images.

From there, his hosts went on to describe more of what the Swap had put them through and how they’d dealt with it. In turn, Lero told them about his journey with Discord, and about how his own Twilight, back home, was dealing with Starswirl’s unfinished spell.

“So let me take a second to review, Lero,” said Twilight. “You’re saying that the me-of-your-world DID try casting Starswirl’s spell? As a test-run?”

“Yes,” said Lero. “And absolutely nothing happened when she did.”

“Of course. Of course,” Twilight smiled. “And did your Twilight Sparkle ever recast that spell after the initial test?”

“Er… no,” Lero saw Spike and his-other-self nod at each other in a way that irked him.

“Any attempts at tinkering with it?” Twilight pressed. “Modifying it?”

“Not to the best of my knowledge, no,” he admitted.

“Because she’s shut herself off from you.”

“Yes.” Lero could feel his muscles clench.

“And she’s buried herself in research and the few times you see each other these days, she can barely stand to look any of you in the eye, because she’s so wracked with guilt, but won’t give you a simple, straightforward explanation as to why,” Twilight voice had dropped to a near-whisper, and there was an unsettling openness to her eyes. “Not to you, not to Rarity, or to Bon Bon…”

“Their names are Rare Deluge and Lyra,” Lero reminded them.

“Lyra Who’s-An-Earth-Pony,” Spike scoffed.

Lero stood up angrily. “Is that a crime all of a sudden?! Not being a unicorn?”

“No! I didn’t mean it like that!” Spike said.

“Who cares if my white unicorn sweetheart’s named ‘Rarity’ everywhere else?” Lero insisted, looking from one set of eyes to the next. “She’s Rare Deluge where I live. Every dimension has to have something to set it apart, right?”

His-other-self with the two stupid feathers in his hair quickly said, “Sure.”

“I mean, I just came out of Pony Star Wars, for crying out loud! Would someone turn that harp music off already? So it shouldn’t be THAT unbelievable, should it?”

“No, not at all.” Lero’s other self stood up, hands motioning downward, as though pleading with him to sit. “A rose by any other name smells just as sweet. Why, I’ll bet in the grandness of the multiverse, there must be an Equestria where I was born as Jim Johnson instead of Lero Michealides.”

Lero glanced over at some of the pictures they’d shown him: Rarity and Rainbow Dash with the same mark. “I just… I…”

“You love that white unicorn, don’t you?” the-other-Lero stated plainly. “Of course you do. She’s sweet and loving, brimming with confidence, charisma, and a strong, gutsy take-charge never-say-dieness. She’s pretty, witty, a wizard with weather, a natural-born family girl, who always give 100% of her heart to every member of her herd… and best of all, she’s crazy about you, Lero. Just as you’re crazy about her.”

The local Lero came over and patted his visitor self reassuringly on the back.

“Trust us,” said Twilight, levitating the picture of Rarity up with a fond smile. “We know exactly where you’re coming from.”

Lero slumped back down in his chair. “It’s not just RD, though. It’s Lyra. God, I love my Lyra so much. She's down-to-earth, sensible and almost impossible to get down. She makes me laugh and smile whenever she rolls out her sarcastic humor. Which is often. If my life was ever in danger, I know I’m safe with Lyra. Not only is Lyra just as loyal as RD, she kicks so much ass with that Shattered Stone style of hers, it’s not even funny. And she’s just so incredibly snuggly and affectionate, I feel blessed to sleep in the same bed with her, every night.”

“Sounds like the sort of girl I’d like too,” said his-other-self.

Lero grinned. “Now, don’t you get any ideas!”

Both of them shared a laugh.

“The thing is, I’m trying… I really, seriously am trying… but I just cannot remember there ever being a ‘Rainbow Dash’ in my life. Even as I’m speaking, I’m trying to scour through my memories, searching for anything that feels ‘fake’ or ‘distorted.’ But everything follows everything else nice and neatly, from A to B, B to C, and C to D, without anything shoehorned in.”

Sighing tiredly, he asked, “What should I do?”

“First, before anything else, I’d reach out to your Twilight Sparkle,” said Twilight Sparkle.

“Okay,” said Lero.

“She’ll be difficult, she’ll be evasive and aloof, she’ll try to shut you out, but don’t let it happen,” Twilight instructed him firmly. “Don’t take ‘no’ for an answer from her. Right now, the thing she needs more than ANYTHING is a friend. Someone she can open up to. She’ll be feeling even MORE alone than I did. Even if you don’t see eye-to-eye with her, Lero, at least give her the benefit of the doubt. Take it from me; your Twilight won’t be able to even BEGIN to make serious headway on what she needs to do before someone helps her get her head in the right place.”

Lero stared down at the pictures once again. “Let’s just… let’s just say, for argument’s sake, that I was Swapped… bewitched… magically brainwashed, whatever you call it. Is there still a way for me to recognize a Swapped pony as BEING Swapped? Even with my perceptions clouded?”

“It can honestly be VERY difficult,” his-other-self said. “Nopony’s better at crafting an alibi for themselves than Swapped Ponies. Especially when the magic’s gone global. And yet, even so, there is one thing, one tell that even the Swapped, themselves, can’t quite sweep under the rug: when they’re suddenly, inexplicably, bad at their jobs.”

“Particularly if it pertains to their cutie mark,” added Spike. “If the farmer suddenly can’t farm. If the joker suddenly can’t joke. Especially if they try and try obsessively, and keep making stupid mistakes. That’s a big tip-off.”

Lero felt an icy chill along his spine at these words.

“Well... that might explain a few things about what's been happening with the weather recently…” Then he looked at the other Lero. “Anything else?”

Suddenly the other Lero gave a light laugh.

“What’s so funny?”

“It’s just… The fact that you know of the Swap, but can’t tell Swapped ponies from Unswapped ponies. Potentially, that could work even better for you than being exempted did for me… if you’re clever enough to know how to press that advantage.”

“Advantage?” asked Lero. “I don’t understand.”

“Well, when I first started taking action against Starswirl’s spell, I stupidly assumed all I’d need to do is focus on just helping the Swapped. That ended up hurting two of my dearest family members, because a thing as huge and life-altering as the Swap takes its emotional toll on everybody.”

And he flashed a look of apology to Twilight and Spike, whose faces were forgiving.

“Keep your eyes open, and be there to help ANYBODY when their lives go off-track,” Lero told Lero. “It shouldn’t take a magic spell. Help them restore balance to their lives, help them stand on their own hooves and be self-sufficient again.”

He hugged Twilight to him, and she gave a soft smile.

“In the end, the only one with a prayer of ending this thing for good is Twilight Sparkle, but your awareness, and your willingness to help others matter tremendously.”

Then the Lero-with-the-two-feather-braid gave his guest his gravest glare.

“Whatever else; do NOT let the Swap get the best of you. If you let it have the upper hand on you, it will never stop destroying you.”

Then he let out a breath and smiled.

“Well, that’s about everything. What do you say to a once-in-a-lifetime chance of playing chess against yourself, Mr. Michealides?”

Lero grinned. “You’re on, Lero!”

* * *

“Bet that felt good, beating him at chess,” Discord said, clapping him on the back.

This time, he and Discord were standing on an escalator, extending directly into the clouds. But Lero’s mind was elsewhere; he wasn’t really thinking about his surroundings. Or chess, for that matter.

“Soooo... why is it okay to tell ME about the Swap, if you think it's happened to me and everyone who finds out goes crazy?" the human asked.

“You're not native to Equestria. You don’t have a cutie mark. It won't have the same effect on you. Maybe.” Discord shrugged. “Even if you did flip out, you'd probably just start trying to treat them like horses or something, as opposed to going postal."

For a small while, Lero just shut his eyes and was quiet. “So all these different alternate universes… the Swap operates differently for each one, right?”

“For the most part,” Discord replied.

“What do you mean, ‘the most part?’” Lero asked, as they entered into a cloud so thick that neither of them could really see each other.

“It’s kind of like… kind of like… oh, what’s a good comparison? Ah! I got it! Vampire fiction from Earth.”

Then they got off the escalator, finding themselves in a creepy gothic castle crypt, lit only by the torch Lero was suddenly holding.

“I’m really not a big vampire fan at all…” Lero said, eyeing the row of stone coffins they were walking past.

“Well have you at least seen Dracula?” asked Discord, sweeping through a curtain of cobwebs.

“Of course,” said Lero. “I’ve actually read the original book that Bram Stoker wrote.”

He’d enjoyed Stoker’s masterpiece, too. Which was more than he could say for that ponderous thing Mary Shelley had penned.

“Good,” said Discord, stopping to place a necklace of garlic cloves around Lero’s neck. “Purely for the sake of my argument, let’s you and I agree that Bram Stoker’s Dracula is the root source for all vampire tales.”

"Ohhh-kaaayy….” A small voice at the back of Lero’s mind objected: there had to be other vampire tales even earlier than Dracula. But Lero decided he wouldn’t bring this up, for the sake of hearing whatever point Discord was trying to make.

“Now think of all the different vampires you’ve ever seen. Anne Rice vampires, I Am Legend vampires, Darren Shan vampires, sparkle-in-the-sunlight vampires…”

One by one, the coffins opened, each one containing a different sort of vampire who sprang out. Some were uglier than gargoyles, truly monstrous to behold. Others were disgustingly mopey-looking pretty boys.

“...And every vampire writer seems honor-bound to completely redefine what vampirism actually IS,” Discord continued. “Man, if only physicians did that with real-life medical ailments... wouldn’t it be marvelous if no two doctors could agree on what ‘malaria’ means?”

He sighed wistfully as a good number of vampires surrounded Lero, some repelled by his garlic necklace, others hungrily plucking off cloves and biting into them. Others still looked altogether bored by the sight of Lero, pulling bottles of ketchup from the pockets and jamming their fangs into them.

“But even so… every now and again, along will come a story that HONORS all the original vampire rules as laid down by Bram Stoker. That’s kind of like how it’s like with the Swap: the multiverse is so vast, there are even some places that’re faithful to the true source.”

Then suddenly, a side wall fell down and dawn shone in. Some of the vampires disintegrated into ashes on the spot, others were able to retreat into their crypts, shrieking, with severe burns, while a couple others checked their watches and ran out under the morning light before they were late for their day jobs.

“The true source…” Lero lapsed into an uncomfortable pause. “Discord… am I real?”

“Of course you’re real.”

“Are you sure about that?” Lero felt a hundred times more frightened about this than he’d been with all those bloodsuckers surrounding him. “I mean, that whole time I was in that last Lero’s house, eating his food and taking his advice and looking into his eyes… there was this tiny voice in the back of my head screaming, ‘I was here first! ME, not you! So you’re not the real Lero! I am!’”

Lero’s fingernails were digging hard into his palm, and it hurt. But that was okay. Pain was good. Pain was real.

“And yet… Discord, you’d said that his world was the first to experience this Swap thing. Funny thing is, I know in my heart that that’s RIGHT. I could feel it in my bones when I breathed that world’s air; that place FELT like a ‘true source’ of sorts, if that makes sense.”

Discord nodded, so Lero kept on babbling in his existential panic.

“So then which of us is REAL? Which one of us is really real? I mean, on one hand, I know that I existed before that Lero ever did, I just know it! But if my Swap came after Mr. Two-Feathers-Braided-In-His-Hair’s… then does it mean it’s nothing but a cheap knockoff of his Swap? And if so, would that then go to prove that I’m a knockoff, myself? By extension?”

Clasping his hands, Lero went to his knees before Discord, determined to have the truth of this, one way or another.

“Please, Discord, tell me! Who’s the real McCoy and who’s the fake? Is it me? Him? Or one of those OTHER Leros, somewhere else in the multiverse?”

The human’s eyes closed as he squeezed out a tear. He felt a talon pat his head sympathetically. And when the human looked up, he saw Discord dressed as Robin.

“You might as well ask some diehard Batman fanatic which version of Batman is the ‘real McCoy.’”

The human considered this. Lero Michealides was certainly no Bat fanatic. Nonetheless, he had already watched enough Batman cartoons and movies to know the answer: they ALL were.

He grinned at Discord. Discord grinned back.

A swarm of shrieking bats suddenly flapped down from the crypt’s ceiling, completely surrounding them like flies around a bug zapper. All Lero could see were dark swooshy bat wings, hideous bat heads; Lero hid his face from their bitey little fangs…

And then Lero and Discord were sprinting across the rooftops of a gritty, somber metropolis choked by urban decay…. Gotham City! What else could it be, with that Bat-signal shining so plainly into the full moon? From this height, it was possible to see all sorts of landmarks… the Iceberg Lounge, the GCPD HQ, hell, Arkham Asylum! It had been years, but it was coming back to him.

Heavy Kevlar boots pounded as Lero and Discord leapt to the next building; his boots! A long dark cape billowed in the wind behind him as he ran: his cape! They hustled past a particularly well-polished glass skyscraper; in its reflection, Lero Michealides could see his bearded face was covered by a dark cowl with bat ears sticking up… HE WAS BATMAN. Utility belt and all!

“Now, granted, you’re no more an exact duplicate for that last Lero Michealides than Christian Bale’s Batman is for Michael Keaton’s,” said Discord, who looked ridiculously colorful in that Burt Ward suit, but at least kept an even pace behind Lero. “Or Kevin Conroy’s Batman is for Diedrich Bader’s…”

“Diedr… who?” asked Lero. The wail of police sirens on the roads below brought back the bitter memory of his parents being gunned down in that alley. So young had he been, yet it haunted him to this day. No matter how long it took, he WOULD take back the night from those superstitious criminal cowards. This Lero swore on the names of Thomas and Martha Michealides.

“And yet… for all that sets them apart… the Bale version, the Conroy version, the Keaton version, heck, even the West version all still remain fundamentally Batman,” said the draconequus.

Discord and Lero brought out their grappling guns and fired them towards the top of a particularly imposing fifty-floor building — Starswirl Tower — and up they flew, cold air whipping past their masked faces.

“And in the end, all that anyone would ask of all these Batmen is that when their respective Jokers come around to wreck havoc… they ball up their fists, run out to meet them, and fight the good fight.”

They didn’t even have to climb onto the Starswirl Tower’s roof: Discord and Bat-Lero sailed four feet above it, landing lightly next to each other.

The top of Starswirl Tower was surreally enormous, once they were upon it. They had landed among an infinite number of Other-Leros-dressed-as-Batman, all packed together on the roof’s north side. But as with the real-life Batman media franchise, no two Bat-Leros looked completely alike.

One of the other-Leros was garbed in a particularly futuristic version of the Batsuit; Lero saw him take a quick swig from a bottle labeled ‘Sweet Apple Asteroids’ Finest.’ Then there was a Bat-Lero who looked to hail straight from the Stone Age; he was armed with a sharpened flint spear, and his Bat-suit looked to have been painstakingly crafted from the skins of real bats. There was also a Bat-Lero whose suit looked to be equal parts clockwork gears and armor, and had a definite Victorian-era flavor to it. Steampunk, wasn’t it called? Spike would know; he was the big comic fan of the family.

On the southern side of the roof: an equally large army of HIDEOUS, disparate pony abominations. Each one was a unique fusion of not just ‘the Joker’ but ‘Two-Face’ as well, with half-and-half faces. Some were divided by straight vertical lines, others joined horizontally, others diagonally, some in checkerboard patterns, others in jagged slashes… They all wore clownish and disturbing patchwork coats made entirely of mixed-and-matched cutie marks, cut in half, then crudely sewn together with some different half-mark.

Suddenly, one individual ‘Joker-Swap’ ran at a ‘Bat-Lero,’ and they squared off. The monstrosity was an evilly-smiling checkerboard mix of Rainbow Dash and Pie Pinkie, down to the mismatched eyeballs. No one else moved to assist either combatant, it was a strict one-on-one brawl.

“…Christian Bale had Heath Ledger to contend against…”

Another ‘Joker-Swap’ ran at another ‘Bat-Lero,’ and they brawled. And then another, and ANOTHER, each pairing off in mano-a-hoofo matches. One of them was an awful mixture of Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, where each piece of flesh looked to be chewed around the edges. It had beaten its own Bat-Lero with distressing speed, pinned him to the ground, and his belly was swelling, oh, it was swelling so sickeningly...

“...and Kevin Conroy had Mark Hamill.”

Discord and Lero both looked over at a distinctly familiar Bat-Lero with two blue feathers fastened securely by a pointy bat ear. This Lero was facing the First Swap, progenitor of all the rest. They flung each other to the floor.

“By the same token, that version of Mr. Michaelides you played chess with, has his version of the Swap to grapple with…”

Discord fixed a firm look on Lero, then pointed to the side.

“...And you will have your own.”

Lero followed Discord’s finger; HIS Swap was galloping right after him with a great big monstrous cartoon hammer raised to bash in his skull. One of the patches on the thing’s patchwork coat caught his attention: half showed a harp, half showed wrapped pieces of candy.

“...Beige and white and purple…”

The whole fight froze up.

“What? I’m sorry, that answer took me COMPLETELY by surprise. I’m actually a bit impressed!”

“My girls’ coats,” Lero explained. “I have YEARS worth of memories of that color combination: beige and white and purple. Waking up in that big bed of mine, all bleary-eyed, and the first thing I’d see is beige and white and purple, all snuggled against me. Eating meals with beige and white and purple. Making love at night to my beige beauty, my white beauty, and my purple beauty. All at once and individually. Consoling them when they were sad. Bonding together during the good moments. My girls all have the sweetest hearts and the cleverest minds. I can remember what it was like falling in love with each one of them. And you’re saying it’s NOT REAL?”

Gotham City disappeared around them.

“Not all of it,” Discord said. “Just two-thirds. Purple’s always belonged with you, it’s Beige and White that are the lie.”

“Unreal… you just waltz into my life, show me this surreal montage of mixed-up worlds, and I’m supposed to take it all at face value. That two of my girls are, are… swapped-out substitutes. And that my TRUE loves are the single-mother mailmare-with-a-daughter, and my best friend’s girl. I’m supposed to put my faith in you, Mr. Chaos King. Mr. Soul Corruptor. Mr. I-Came-This-Close-To-Turning-The-Whole-Planet-Into-An-Eternal-Worldwide-Madhouse.”

“And I would’ve gotten away with it, too, if not for those meddling mares!” Discord reflexively boasted.

The draconequus was no longer dressed as Robin.

“Tell me you wouldn’t find it HILARIOUS if I were to completely bulldoze my love life and Big Mac’s love life over nothing,” Lero challenged. “Over a silly dream you conjured around me as I slept.”

The chaos god snorted and chuckled. “I can’t,” he admitted. “That WOULD be hysterical. But I assure you that’s not the case with you. Every world I showed you and every word I spoke is nothing short of the absolute truth.”

Lero shivered. “That scares me even more! What am I supposed to do? What am I supposed to THINK?”

No longer was he dressed in Batman’s armor. He wasn’t Kevin Conroy or Michael Keaton or Christian Bale, not so much as George frickin’ Clooney. Nor was he Keanu Reeves or Twilight Sparkle or a sharpshooting zombie apocalypse survivor.

Lero was just Lero. Plain old Bellerophon Michaelides. Masseur. Handyman. Human refugee, granted sanctuary.

“Don’t bother thinking,” Discord advised, pulling a large, white and rather sci-fi-looking tubular gun from a pocket that was much, much too small to have held it. “Nothing TOO deep, anyway, not just yet. Keep focused on learning, on observing, on feeling.”

As he pointed the gun at the floor, it gave out a loud ‘bloop’ noise and a bright orange flash shone from between the three prongs that surrounded its barrel.

“There’ll be time for cogitation later,” Discord commented as he motioned for Lero to hop into the large, orange-wibbly-wobbly-edged hole that had formed in the floor. “I know you’ve seen a lot already, but I still have more to show you first.”