None of Lero’s other dreams that night featured Twilight Sparkle, Luna, Celestia, Starswirl the Bearded, civil wars or celestial death rays. He felt thoroughly refreshed and clear-headed when he awoke the next morning.

He looked over to see Twilight Sparkle next to his bed, already cleaned and groomed and engrossed in a book. When she saw him open his eyes and stretch, she stopped reading.

“Good morning,” he said.

“Good morning, Lero.” She lay down next to him on their bed. “The… um… well, the heat’s over.”

“For all four of you?” he asked, shifting up to get out of bed.

“Yeah. I talked with the other girls, and every one of them agrees: we’re all completely spent.”

“Oh, you’re completely spent, are you?” he asked wryly; groaning and rubbing his back as the sore ache in his thighs, back, and legs came awake as well.

She laughed, and hopped over to his side, nuzzling his cheek. “Oh, come on. We all enjoyed ourselves.”

“Never said I didn’t.” He smiled, giving her a quick peck on the cheek.

Twilight drew back a bit. “Last night, I had a dream where the moon was on fire.” She watched him carefully, closely observing his response.

“You don’t say,” he spoke offhandedly. “A burning moon? That sounds uncannily similar to a dream I dreamt last night. And you were there.” He refrained from going further into a pop culture reference she’d not grasp.

She pressed up against him. “So you remember?” she whispered in his ear.

“Yes. Everything,” he whispered back in her own ear. “Celestia the Moon Princess. The eclipse. Lumina. The Tyrant Sun. Talking with Starswirl…”

“Sssh,” Twilight shushed, pressing her hoof to his lips. “No more for now. Not while Rarity and Rainbow Dash are still in the house.”

Lero understood, and when he came down the stairs after showering and dressing, he found Rarity braiding a swatch of Rainbow Dash’s mane in the style that every mammalian member of Herd Bellerophon wore.

“How do I look?” Dash asked, turning her new braid towards him.

“Like part of the family,” he answered.

The hug she gave him was soft and tender. She settled her head against the crook of his neck and it felt so good.

“Today is going to be such a momentous day for us!” Rarity grinned from behind them. “I’m exhilarated beyond words!”

* * *

Yesterday, Rarity had gotten in contact with her bosses at the weather service and explained to them about the new herd-sister that would be moving into their home. While they wouldn’t give her the entire day off, they were willing to reduce her hours for today.

Once she and Rainbow Dash had each left, Lero and Twilight Sparkle were able to share their story to Lyra Heartstrings.

“But Luna’s pelt is too DARK for her to have started as a Sun Princess!” Lyra had said.

Just to be doubly sure, the three of them had moved to the secrecy of the basement to have this conversation, locked the door, and placed a silencing charm on the room.

“We saw what we saw,” Lero told her. “But really, is coat color THAT big a deal? I mean, cutie marks are bad enough. But do you look at Applejack’s coat color and think she should’ve been a tangerine farmer instead?”

“Hey, it’s not like orange-hued apples don’t exist!” Lyra argued.

“So you don’t believe us?” Twilight asked sadly.

That brought Lyra up short, and she paused, crossing her hooves and tapping her chin, actually considering. “Actually, I think I do. It sounds just LIKE our Swap.” She unfolded her arms. “And to think; we were all convinced the first swap happened to some OTHER gang of six ponies!”

“Looking back, the evidence was staring us right in the face,” Twilight said. “Celestia and Luna had been Elements Bearers since they beat Discord. The Elements are the common factor. Being immortal, they would never have had reason to pass the Elements onto other ponies… not until Nightmare Moon.”

The couches down in the basement were kind of old and second-rate, and it was hard for any of them to seat themselves comfortably.

“And isn’t it incredible how profoundly this stupid spell shaped our whole society?” Lyra said, eyes looking over a bookshelf filled with nothing but history volumes. “We really are playing with fire, here.”

Now I am become Swap, destroyer of worlds. Lero thought to himself, only half-jokingly.

Lyra fixed her eyes back on Twilight. “But... this spell you say Starswirl’s ghost taught you…”

“Let’s make sure it’s real.” Twilight Sparkle went over to a book sitting on a table, set her forehead atop it, and her horn glowed. Lyra recognized it as an inscribing charm, it allowed a Unicorn to inscribe a spell in a book simply by casting it. Twilight’s aura shifted, casting the spell, it inscribed in the book as expected… but Lyra could not have been more transfixed if she were hearing music from a space alien’s instrument.

“The aura of that spell… it’s so… different,” the aqua unicorn spoke in awe. “So unusual. Gives me goosebumps.”

Twilight Sparkle lifted her head off the book. Lero couldn’t help wondering what effect it would have if she were to cast Soul Synthesis on some Unswapped individual. Like himself.

“I could do it.” Her horn was still glowing with the Soul Synthesis spell as she said this. “I could trot on over to the Carousel Boutique right now, and cast this spell on Applejack, and she’d make lovely dresses from that point on. Oh, probably a bit more wild and earthy than Rarity, but they’d be good. And then I could go around to my other four friends and do the same to them. And that’d be the end of it.”

“Is that what you’re planning to do?” asked Lyra, wide-eyed.

Twilight shook her head, and the glow on her horn faded. “No. I’m not willing to give up on either my friends as they were, or in figuring out this spell. As far as Soul Synthesis goes, my plan is to keep it in reserve as a last resort, just like Starswirl wanted. I’m not going to throw in the towel just yet!”

Lero twisted his hands together uncomfortably. “Twilight… what if some of our Swapped friends’ souls have already been, um, synthesized?”

“What do you mean?” Twilight asked him.

His nails were beginning to dig into his skin, so he went over and lit another of the lamps to give his hands something to do. “After all that stuff Luna showed us, I’ve been thinking about me trying to help the Swapped function in their new lives and... well, it’s worked VERY well, all things considered. Pinkie Pie, Rarity, Rainbow Dash… they’re balanced. How can we really tell whether or not it’s actually caused their souls to fuse together permanently? What if my ‘equilibrium’ is Soul Synthesis, achieved through mundane means?”

Twilight gaped at him. Then she laughed. "Silly Lero! My sweet, silly stallion! What would I ever do without you?”

Lero felt flummoxed as she kissed him in good-humored apology. “I’m sorry for laughing, but it’s not the same thing at all! Equilibrium and Soul Synthesis are two completely different bales of hay!”

“How?” asked Lero. “How are they different?”

“Through ‘equilibrium,’ you're effectively teaching my friends how to do the jobs they're plainly ill-suited for. Wait, no, it’s even better than that: you’re teaching them how to teach themselves!”

She smiled brightly at him.

“But suppose I were to cast Soul Synthesis. Then my friends would become bonded with their cutie marks and assimilate the lessons of their memories fully. They’d be super-talented at their new jobs; as if it had been their destiny all along.”

“I’m still not sure,” said Lero. “Let’s say you never cast Soul Synthesis on the Swapped, but also fail to find a cure. Let’s say they coast by on Equilibrium for the rest of their lives. What then?”

Twilight considered the question. “Well, without Soul Synthesis… given enough time, yes, they might grow to be super-good at their jobs. They have the cutie mark giving them an edge, and with enough practice, anyone can be good at anything. But they'll never have that... spark. They'll be driven to do those jobs, but deep down, it’ll never be their true desire. In spite of everything the Swap’s forced them to believe."

“Really? You sure?”

“Yes!” said Twilight. “I did all that research on cutie marks, remember? I know how it works!”

“I’m with Twilight on this one, Fingers.” They turned to Lyra. “The thing is… between everything else we have going on, I’ve managed to squeeze in time to watch our Swapped friends at their Swapped jobs for myself. I’ve seen Pinkie at the farm, Rainbow at her cottage, yadda yadda…”

“...And…?” prompted Lero.

“Well, one thing I’ve been keeping track of is when the Swapped are most… vibrant. Most alive, and happy. Particularly the ones with equilibrium. Take Pinkie Pie. Now, on one hoof, she’s not a bad farmer anymore. She certainly does take pride in her farm work, and she IS committed to seeing Sweet Apple Acres thrive. But when is she most vibrant? When she’s smiling with her fam… with the Apples. When she’s baking. When she’s socializing with others at the marketplace. Ultimately, as much as she’s incorporated part of Applejack into herself, she’s still Pinkie, for the most part.”

Lyra telekinetically pulled one of the feathers from Lero’s braid, looking it over. It was the fresher, newer one from the Wonderbolts Derby.

“And Rainbow Dash, bless her heart… she’s an even more obvious example!” Lyra continued. “Fluttershy never demanded her animals perform tricks like Rainbow does… for the most part, she was perfectly happy just giving her critters a place to stay so she could adore them and take care of them. In fact, seeing them thrive in the wild, untamed was just as important to Shy.”

“Fluttershy did have her bird choirs,” Lero insisted. Rainbow Dash had even kept up that ‘tradition’ after her equilibrium.

Lyra shook her head. “She never took it to the level Rainbow Dash has. Really, the choir was her organizing her friends to do something beautiful, not commanding them. Fluttershy never demanded her animals be that obedient and disciplined.”

The aqua unicorn smiled as she rebraided the feather back into Lero’s hair. “At this point, we might as well stop referring to her as ‘Rainbow Dash The Caretaker,’ and start calling her ‘Rainbow Dash The Trainer.’”

* * *

Granted, it wasn’t the strangest sight the ponies of Ponyville had seen in recent memory. Comparatively speaking, it was pretty tame.

“Mush!” cried the cyan pegasus, with another blow to her whistle. “Mush!”

All the same, Rainbow Dash’s neighbors goggled and gawked to see all those animals dragging their caretaker’s cottage through the streets of Ponyville. Usually, this sort of task was best left to a team of draft ponies.

“Hey! I don’t see you mushing, Mr. Schnuggles! Let’s pick up the pace!”

It was something the town would remember for decades to come. Many ponies would ask, (both while the cottage was being pulled and afterward) ‘Rainbow Dash, who did you get to make yokes small enough to fit on all those wasps and bees of yours?’

And she would answer, “Discord, of course. He’s my friend, and he made them all for me.”

And they would nod in understanding, and ask, ‘But how did you manage to to get all those animals to cooperate? The dogs are understandable, they do dogsledding up north and all. But the birds? Those bears? That manticore doesn’t look too happy about being bridled.’

And she’d look over at all those ropes fastened around all those parts of the house, like strings wrapped around a balloon seller’s hoof at a carnival. That vast throng of animals large and small, straining to drag this great cottage, block by block. And she’d tell them, “I have my ways.”

‘It seems like an awfully big thing to hitch bunnies and iguanas to,’ her neighbours would comment.

‘Nah,’ Dash would say, ‘I emptied the place out first, so it’s okay. Believe me, you don’t need to feel sorry for the bunnies or the iguanas.’

‘But if you had someone like Discord for your friend, couldn’t you have just had him snap his fingers and teleport your cottage?’

And Dash would respond, ‘Discord isn’t a wish-granting genie. He helps at his own discretion. Besides, when we get to where we’re going, I want all my little animal friends to be glad we’ve arrived.’

At around four in the afternoon, the cottage had arrived at the library. The whole herd… her whole herd, was gathered out in the front to welcome her! Well, maybe not quite all of them. Camp hadn’t ended for Spike yet… but it still felt like the little guy was here in spirit.

Rainbow Dash took a moment to look past her herdmates and consider the new house she’d be living in. The bright rainbow that arched over Golden Oaks’ topmost leaves was such a nice touch of Rarity’s. But for once, she ignored the more eye-catching library tree, and focused on the other part of it: Lero’s old house, attached at the right side.

How long had Lero actually gotten to live in that place on his own before moving right back in with Twilight? Two months? Three?

For the most part, it just sat there nowadays, ignored and rarely used, to the point where passers-by hardly noticed its existence… including herself. Like some forgotten wing of an excessively large mansion.

Rarity had told Rainbow she had plans for it later down the road, though. It’d be where ‘some of the foals’ would have their rooms.

...Will some of those foals be my own, perhaps?

Foals. She’d cross that bridge when they came to it. For now, there were her other set of babies to see to. Now they’d have a wing of their very own where they could play and eat and sleep and be looked after.

She blew on her whistle. “Company… HALT!” The animals all stopped. They fell over on the ground, some wriggling out of their yokes and collars.

The cottage was now directly left of the library, both as closely adjacent to one another as could be. Pity she’d had to leave the basement behind. She just have to get the moles and the groundchucks and some of her other burrowing friends to help dig out a new one for her.

Lero was setting out all sort of water bowls for her animals when she came up to him. He kept looking at her cottage uneasily, like it were a haunted house that maybe might not’ve been thoroughly exorcised.

“How’re you feeling?” she asked him, and he turned back towards her.

He turned that wondrous smile on her again, still the slightest bit bowlegged after their busy week together. But then again, so was she.

“Just the slightest bit… nervous.”

Together they looked at all the animals.

“This is nothing we can’t handle,” Dash said.

“That’s the spirit!” Lyra cheered.

Twilight cleared her throat emphatically. “Alright, let’s get this ball rolling. Lero, Rarity, everypony, please keep those animals away from me while I’m working, make sure they don’t get restless and brush up against me or anything, I’ll need full concentration.”

“You’ve got it!” said Rainbow Dash.

The purple unicorn bent her head, and her horn glowed with power. Bark from the left side of her library’s tree trunk began to peel outward.

* * *

“Atten-SHUN!”

The rows of animals snapped as smartly to attention as any squadron of boot camp conscripts. Good. Dash thought.

When she’d brought her animals out to those pet hotels and animal reservations, she’d warned the ponies in charge about how her animals had severe disobedience problems.

“I want you all to look to your right,” she instructed.

A couple hundred heads look to the right.

“Now look to your left.”

They did.

“Now face me,” she told them. “Face us.”

The critters of the cottage turned, their eyes first not-quite-meeting their caretaker’s, then skimming over the human and three ponies behind Rainbow Dash. Lyra gave a slight cough.

“We’re not living next to the Everfree Forest any more,” Rainbow Dash declared. “We’ve moved our house here, to this place. I apologize for any inconvenience this may cause, particularly to all our burrowers and the dogs with toy bones buried in our old yard. But Mommy’s entered a new phase in her life. She’s fallen in love and got herself hooked up with a herd.”

Rainbow Dash spread a wing towards Lero, Twilight, Rarity, and Lyra.

“These are Mommy’s new herdmates. You all know Lero already, he’s your new Daddy.”

Lero gave the animals a nod.

“But there’s also Auntie Rarity, Auntie Twilight, Auntie Lyra, and Uncle Spike.” Dash continued. Rarity almost seemed ready to say a few words, but the pegasus cut her off. “Uncle Spike may not be back home from camp just yet, but you all know him, and he still totally counts. Now, because Mommy’s part of a herd, when it’s time for her to sleep, she’ll sleep with her herd in the herd-house.”

Dash pointed towards Golden Oaks Library when she said ‘herd-house.’

“But all of you,” she pointed first to the animals, then to the cottage, “will be sleeping in the old house. Don’t worry, though: Mommy will still be coming by the old house every day to take care of you all. But setting foot inside the herd-house is a privilege, not an entitlement. You’ll need to earn our trust and respect.”

Then she stared down the brim of her cap at them, giving the animals a now-familiar look they’d first been exposed to inside Pinkie Pie’s barn.

“One more thing. You’ve all been very well-behaved girls and boys lately, and Mommy’s proud of you for that. But if you fall back into bad habits, if you’re mean to your aunts, uncle and dad without provocation, if you damage our things, and especially if you deliberately aim to sabotage Mommy’s love life, Mommy will make you sorry! Are we clear?”

“Clear! Clear!” Jabbers squawked, flapping his wings. None of the other animals raised a complaint. Even Rarity gave a slight gulp.

“Good,” the pegasus said. “Now, moving onto our next order of business. Obviously, we couldn’t bring the basement with us, so we’ll have to form an excavation team and start digging a new one. I want all my burrowers front and center; moles, voles, woodchucks, bunnies…”

* * *

There was so much to buy.

Flea collars. Tick shampoo. Surface rollers for picking loose fur off the upholstery. Dog treats made with real marrow and liver. Tartar-reducing sticks of knotted rawhide. Little green toothbrushes that all her canines went wild over for some reason.

Bags of kitty litter claiming to suppress ammonia odors nearly five times longer than the leading brand. Disposable litter boxes. Toy mice stuffed with catnip. Soft bedding made from naturally reclaimed wood pulp. Wormers. Cat food said to be scientifically formulated to reduce hairballs.

Cans of farm-raised snails for her amphibians and reptiles. Millet and seed blends for her birds. Freeze-dried mealworms, grasshoppers and crickets for her insect-eating friends. Apple wood chews for her gerbils and guinea pigs.

The Happy Whiskers Pet Emporium wasn’t even located in Ponyville, but there wasn’t an employee there who didn’t know Rainbow Dash’s face. It was her one-stop shop for all her pet care needs.

It wasn’t at all like the outdoor marketplace back home, with its rows of merchants under tents and behind kiosks. But the sort of setup here suited her better. Everything indoors, everything a caretaker like her could possibly ask for, all under the same roof, instead of having to hunt it down in a large market.

It was only a matter of knowing which aisle to look down, and even then, all of the ponies who worked here were so nice and helpful! Happy Whiskers even had shopping carts for their customers! That meant a lot to Rainbow Dash, because she always bought so much, and it was already enough of a hassle bringing it all back to her cottage, by herself.

Except I’m not ‘by myself,’ anymore, am I? the pegasus thought with a smile. I ought to remember to bring one of my herdmates next time! They’re always so thoughtful and helpful.

She turned her shopping cart down an aisle with all sorts of sweaters and cute hats and costumes for dogs. Rainbow loved to imagine some of her own animals in them, but such things were too much of a luxury, it’s not like she was made of...

“So, Rainbow Dash… how many animals have you fornicated with today?”

...The words were like a heavy stone thrown at her body, bashing her out of her train of thought. “W… what?!” she yelped, turning around towards the mare who’d spoken behind her. “How many animals have I… what?!”

* * *

While Rainbow Dash was out shopping, Lero had a different task to put a dent in.

The day before hitching her animals up to the cottage, the pegasus caretaker had first emptied out all her furniture and belongings with the help of her new herd. Now it was time to bring all that stuff out of Lero’s old home and back into the cottage.

Moments like this were one of millions where Lero felt lucky having Twilight as one of his girls. When bringing the cottage’s bed back into the cottage’s bedroom, not only could the purple unicorn levitate the bed, she could also temporarily shrink it down so it fit between doorways.

Lero was carrying some of the lighter bedroom-boxes in. He’d opened the third one, removing the pillows and spare pillowcases when he heard the creak.

The human turned to see a loose floorboard quickly lower itself down at level with its fellow floorboards. He waited to see whether whatever-was-under-there would peek back out again.

“Is that you, Mrs. Catslunch?” he called out. “Mr. Pinny-Gig?”

He had to check. Wouldn’t be the first time one of those little idiots had gotten themselves stuck or hurt under the floorboards. So he bent and lifted up the loose one, hoping it wouldn’t be Hissy the Asp. She was no fun.

It wasn’t the asp.

Angel Bunny flattened himself back against the farthest point of his hidey-hole at the first sight of the towering human’s eyes. It was dark and nasty-smelling down there. Lero could see a small pile of half-rotted lettuce next to a small plastic water bottle halfway full of cloudy water, which must’ve been swiped from one of the hamster cages.

He’d never expected to see a rabbit with two black eyes before; it surely must’ve hurt to hold his eyes open so wide. So much filth clung to what little patches of fur still remained on Angel’s skeletal body; none of it was even white anymore. Quite a few of those cuts and bites looked grossly infected.

When Lero reached down into the hole to pull the bunny out, Angel didn’t run or bite or kick. Either the rabbit was just too weak, petrified stiff, or had simply accepted his fate. The one half-whisker still left by his nose shook like a leaf. Lero could feel Angel’s tiny heartbeat beating a mile a minute in the palm of his hand.

* * *

“Fornicated with,” repeated the green-coated earth pony mare. “Is that word unfamiliar to you? I’m asking how many hamsters you’ve humped. How many doggies you’ve deflowered. How many birdies you’ve bumped uglies with. Just today, I mean, otherwise I’m sure the answer would take hours.”

Loathing bubbled in her green eyes, like twin pools of boiling acid.

“What is wrong with you!? I don’t DO that sort of thing to animals!” The pegasus exclaimed, struggling to remember who this mean pony with the dyed blonde mane even was.

Somehow, she sensed this was someone from back home in Ponyville, a face in the background, but who? No one she interacted with on a regular basis. Not that she ever WOULD go near a pony like this. Usually, Dash only stuck around ponies this mean just long enough to learn that they were this mean, and then did her best never to interact with them again.

“You’ve mated with the monkey, haven’t you?!” Her voice cut like glass, and several of the puppies for sale whimpered in their cages.

The mare’s teeth clamped upon the edge of a magazine in her saddlebags, and she flung it on the floor between them. Rainbow recognized it at once; the latest issue of Feedbag. Friends and neighbors had been showing her it all the time. The magazine even came open to the start of the article that was about Herd Bellerophon, with Lero putting her feather on at the Wonderbolts Derby.

“You’re his fourth conquest!” Rainbow Dash backed a step away; and the mare stepped forward, a hoof stomping down on Lero’s face in the magazine photo, ripping the page. “You spent your entire heat with Herd Bonobo! You even went so far as to join your house with theirs, for all the town to see! He wears your feather! You wear his braid! I can smell his odiferous touch on you, even as we speak!”

Ponyville’s marketplace… Rainbow Dash thought she could remember who this mare was now. Her cutie mark showed a slice of honeydew melon… there was a certain stall Dash always walked past whenever she needed to buy fruit: a stall that sold melons. Honeydew melons, primarily.

It wasn’t like Rainbow Dash had stuck around to watch or given it much thought before now... but she remembered that this mare used to have steady a business as any other in the stall. Once. But she vaguely recalled as of late business seemed to have petered, fewer and fewer ponies showing up to buy her wares. Most ponies always seemed to trot past this mare, even when she smiled nicely out at everypony in the crowd, even when she sang her sweetest.

Rainbow Dash remembered something else. Sometimes, during get-togethers, Rarity or Twilight or Lyra would gripe about a certain insufferable mare who’d hassle, heckle and harass Lero at every possible turn, and never had a nice word for the mares who loved him, either. Even some of the funniest stories about this mare’s antics had been distressing to Rainbow Dash… and this’d been before Lero had become so incredibly special to her…

“Is your name Honeydew?”

Honeydew looked upon Rainbow Dash like her body was made of diarrhea. Her undisguised revulsion for her only deepened from there. “You know, this explains a whole lot more about the type of pony you are, you chicken-livered skulker. Everypony already knew you never preferred the company of your own kind, but to think… all those creatures… your own private bordello…”

“I’m NOT like that!” There must’ve been quite a fierceness about her, for that horrible shrew of a pony flinched away as Dash shouted back. “And Lero is not just some monkey, no more than you’re a horse!”

“You don’t know how right you are, you disgusting disgrace. He’s not just ‘some monkey.’ He’s a menace.” Honeydew insisted, her voice picking up speed and volume. “A menace to end all menaces. He’s out of control, his carnal appetites are deepening, more and more, as I always suspected they would, only I can see him for the baboon-devil he really is…”

“Oh, no. She’s at it again!” said somepony else nearby.

“Oh, for Celestia’s sake… Leave that poor girl alone, Dew!” shouted somepony new. “For Celestia’s SAKE, leave them ALL alone!"

Two earth ponies ran over, planting themselves between Honeydew and Rainbow Dash. One was a stallion, the other a mare, and Dash recognized neither of their faces.

“Widescreen…!” Honeydew began, addressing the stallion.

“No, please, Honeydew... don’t talk.” Widescreen told her, his voice a combination of exasperation and tiredness. “Just don’t say anything, you’ll just make it worse!”

The mare turned to Rainbow Dash, her eyes full of embarrassment and pleading. “I am so sorry for her, miss. Whatever she said I am so, so, sorry.”

“Who are you ponies?” asked Rainbow Dash.

The mare had a black mane and a white coat; she looked a little younger than Honeydew. Her cutie mark was a set of piano keys; two black keys and three white ones.

The stallion was a bit plump. His coat was the yellow of buttered popcorn, and a movie ticket was his cutie mark. His mane was two different colors; red on the left and blue on the right. It put Dash in mind of a set of 3-D glasses.

“I’m Ivory Keys and this is Widescreen,” the white-coated mare introduced. “We’re Honeydew’s herdmates.”

Herdmates?! Again, Rainbow Dash thought back to all the stories that Herd Bellerophon had told her of Honeydew. They’d never mentioned a thing about her being in a herd.

On the other hoof, they’d never explicitly said that Honeydew was single, either.

Ivory Keys didn’t even seem to know how to apologize. “Honeydew’s just… she has issues, she and the human… no one really thinks you do bad things to animals… here…”

And she overturned her purse and let bits fall to Dash’s feet. As though Dash were some kind of shopkeeper, and Honeydew had broken some fragile figurines she’d had for sale.

“Now you’re giving away our hard-earned bits because she let a monkey have his way with her?!”

“STOP IT!” snapped the stallion. “Honeydew, I love you, but no one wants to hear it anymore! Day in, day out, it’s ‘human’ this, and ‘bonobo’ that… we are ALL sick of it! This is it, Honeydew: turn around and leave, or so help me…”

“I’m… I’m sorry,” Honeydew said her head starting to hang, and it was hard to credit how subdued her voice had become. “Let’s… let’s leave. You know I love you.”

They nodded, and moved up on each side of her, pressing their flanks to hers- whether it was for closeness, or to ensure she left, or both, was unclear as the trio left together, Ivory giving her one last apologetic glance before they stepped outside.

Rainbow Dash didn’t breathe until Honeydew’s herd had left the store. She left Ivory’s money on the floor.

* * *

Mechanically, Dash put the pet supplies away in her cottage’s storage cellar, her confrontation with Honeydew plaguing her mind. While she knew most ponies had initially mistrusted and feared Lero… but he’d proven himself dozens of times over since his arrival, until the ponies of Ponyville had all come to treat him as one of their own. Or so she’d thought.

The concept of someone holding such a paranoid grudge against Lero so hard and so long was bizarre. And it was more than a little frightening to think such a person would come after her as well! But she’d be strong. Especially for Lero’s sake. He was worth anything, even dealing with scary, crazy ponies.

As she finished up, she heard noise coming from Golden Oaks Library, right next door. Her ears perked up; at this time of day, and with Spike still at camp, that probably meant Lero! Smiling, Dash trotted into the library house.

“Lero! Lero, where are you?” She called out.

“I’m up in the bedroom!” His voice responded from above. She flicked out her wings, and fluttered up to the second floor; she needed practice learning to navigate her new home, so might as well start now.

She flit into the bedroom. “Hey, Lero, you won’t believe who I ran into at the pet shop…!” Dash stopped dead. An impossible tableau lay before her: A freshly bathed rabbit nestled in Lero’s lap. She could still smell pet shampoo coming off the bunny from where she hovered, as Lero continued to rub him with the towel. She could not for an instant believe he would do such a thing to her.

“Who?” Lero asked, not looking up, intent on his care for Angel Bunny.

It took several seconds for Rainbow to register she’d be asked something, and several more to find her voice again. “Huh!?”

Lero blinked and looked up. “Who’d you run into at the pet shop?”

“What…” She replied, slowly. “What is going on?”

Lero frowned in confusion. “With what?”

“With that rabbit! What do you think you’re doing?”

Lero frowned slightly, then shrugged. “I just gave him a bath.” Lero reached over to a nearby plate, grabbing some shredded alfalfa, holding it cupped in his hand for the rabbit to eat from his palm. Soon, there was the faint rasping noise of a chewing rabbit as Angel ate contentedly. “Poor thing was hiding, scared for his life. All the other animals have been pretty much abusing him, any chance they get.”

Dash could hear the iciness in her own voice. “They know the worst mistake they ever made was listening to him.” Angel winced, pulling away from Lero’s cupped hand, retreating back into his lap, curling up into a tiny ball, cowering as if trying to vanish from sight.

“Dash… come on.” Lero took a conciliatory tone. “I mean, yeah, Angel was a rotten bunny, and I won’t pretend I’m not glad he got his just desserts… but there’s a point where it stops being punishment and starts being cruelty. Enough’s enough!”

“I seem to recall a rabbit I once knew who didn’t care about stopping when it came to cruelty.” The bitterness in her voice was practically venomous. She felt bad about talking to Lero like this, but she was so angry…!

“Dash…” he started pleadingly.

“Did you know what he did to Dr. Tenderpaw, when I needed somepony to look after my animals while I was gone?” she said. “He tried to stage another coup against her. And I was actually sweet to him when I introduced them to each other!”

“Please…”

“Angel Bunny is a monster,” she insisted, flatly, cold fury dancing in her eyes. “And sometimes the other animals know what’s best. How to deal with a monster. I tried being nice! Oh, CELESTIA, how I TRIED that! And you SAW where it got me! You SAW!”

Lero stared at her a moment. He’d heard of Fluttershy’s anger. While he’d never seen the yellow pegasus lose her temper firsthand, he was suspecting he was seeing a bit of it now... mixed with Dash’s stubbornness. He sighed, and nodded.

“Yeah. Yeah, I did see.”

Dash pointed her hoof at the cowering rabbit. Her lip curled. “Do you believe for one moment that coddling him like this’ll turn him into a loving pet? He’s just biding his time! That rabbit is a worthless, useless, lost cause. What could possibly make you think that doing what you’re doing right now is a good idea?” She was practically snorting in anger.

“Discord,” he responded simply.

That brought her up short. “Discord?” Her eyes widened. “Did he… did Discord touch your head with his finger, Lero!?”

Lero now found the conversation veering in a direction he wasn’t expecting. “Huh?” He responded, dumbfounded.

She huffed, charging ahead with that line of logic. “Oh, that big jerk! He’s REALLY crossed the line this time!” She landed, walking over and taking his hand in her mouth, tugging him up and towards the door. “Don’t you worry, big guy, Discord did the same thing to me too, once! He made me be mean to everyone! Come on, I’ll bring you to Twilight, she has a spell that’ll set your memory back right…” She spoke clearly around his hand -- it always impressed Lero how well they could do that.

However, he tugged back before she got him fully upright and dumped Angel onto the floor, removing his hand gingerly from her mouth, taking her hoof and tugging to sit beside him. “No, Dash, Discord didn’t come by and brainwash me, I promise! It’s just… well…”

He took a deep breath.

“I wasn’t here for a lot of stuff you girls went through. I wasn’t there for you when Nightmare Moon un-banished herself from the moon. I wasn’t there for you when Discord broke out of his statue prison, and turned Equestria into some loony wackyland. And y...Twilight and Rarity insisted I stay at home the second time Discord was set loose at Celestia’s request, while you Element Bearers dealt with him. I wasn’t there for you any of those times.”

He let that hang in the air for a few moments, looking down at Angel Bunny.

“But I am here for this.” Angel Bunny whimpered softly, and Lero reached down to pet him. “You might well be completely right about Angel. Maybe he still remains an unrepentant bad guy, even after being punished. Maybe he’ll go right back to his bad old ways the first chance he gets. Just like Nightmare Moon went right back to forcing eternal night on Equestria after a thousand years on the moon, and Discord went right back to casting the world into chaos after a thousand years in stone.”

Rainbow frowned, her wings drooping slightly, starting to realize where he was going with this. “Lero…”

“Let me finish, please?” He asked, and Dash nodded. “I got to thinking, and two things occurred to me. First… however much Angel might deserve this… It’s not you. You’re not the kind of person who deals with people who treat you badly by being just as bad back to them. I know Angel hurt you, and because he was close to you, this all felt like a deep, personal, betrayal… But you can’t let that change you.”

Dash’s eye widened at that. “I…” She started, before catching herself and stopping.

“And second… While you helped seal Discord back into stone… That didn’t stop you when you were asked to help him. You reformed him and taught him how to be a good person.” He looked up into her eyes. “Which makes me curious, Dash… Which of those two moments gave you greater satisfaction?”

How did he keep doing this? She was the Element of Kindness, and here he was showing more kindness than she could bring herself to show, and reminding her that she was capable of being better than this. “I… I… well, that is, I just… when he…” she stammered in a surging inner conflict. Part of her suddenly wanted to immediately forgive Angel Bunny, and another insisted that she could never trust that rabbit again.

Lero finally brought her out of her internal turmoil. “So… who did you see at that pet store, anyway?”

She let out an exasperated groan. “Ergh! I don’t even REMEMBER anymore!” She spread her wings and flapped out of the room in a huff.

Lero watched her leave silently, staring after her a few moments, before turning back to Angel, who finally cautiously uncurled. He spoke in a kind, reassuring tone. “Give her time, she’ll forgive you. And treat her with the respect she deserves from now on! You hear me?”

Angel’s head nodded, but whether it was in affirmation or sleepiness was unclear, as he yawned, snugged back into his lap and dozed off.

* * *

The sky over Rarity’s head was cloaked in a vividly cheerful shade of turquoise as she and Lero set out from their house. They had made such gentle weather this morning… Rarity had to credit Princess Celestia every bit as much as the weather ponies on duty today: immaculate rays of glimmering gold bathed everything in the sun’s tender warmth. Powderpuff clouds rolled by on the back of the sighing wind.

Truly exquisite.

Even at this moment, Rarity could feel the telltale touch of a thermal column on her coat as she strode through a darker patch of earth, rising past her head and helping to form the cumuluses floating above. When her sweet Lero walked through the same patch of earth, she could tell he hadn’t sensed a thing. Rarity briefly entertained the thought of Lero being raised by pegasi in Cloudsdale, as she’d been. Perhaps, then, they could have sensed the thermals together!

"Hey, Rarity," said Lero, as they entered the marketplace. "You know, we're running a little low on food at home. Maybe we ought to pick a few things up while we're here."

Shrugging, Rarity went over with him to the celery vendor's stall, and Lero began picking out a couple stalks to buy.

“Do you think Spike and Rainbow Dash will get along?” Rarity asked Lero.

This question had actually been weighing silently on Rarity’s mind for days.

Today was the day in which all the foals were scheduled to return from Camp Mountain Peaks to their homes. She could’ve easily crafted another cloud platform and flown herself and Lero off to the location where the camp counselors would be dropping their little campers off for their parents to pick up. But since they weren’t scheduled to arrive for a couple hours yet, and there were so many Spike-related worries on her brain, she and Lero were walking instead.

“Of course they’ll get along!” Lero told her with great matter-of-factness. He seemed downright surprised that she’d even think to fret about such a thing. As though she were worrying that the ocean might run out of water.

Lero’s knee-jerk optimism about this made Rarity want to hug him… but she held back, and gave him an uneasy look.

“It’s just that… I’ve been glancing through a few childcare books about how there can be friction between foals and new herd-parents that are brought into the family…”

Some of the things she’d read on this subject were enough to keep her up at night. Particularly one account of a six-year-old griffin lad whose widower father remarried into a pony herd. The little one had developed issues with his five new pony sisters...

“Spike’s not like that!” Lero contended, after paying for the celery. “I mean, think about it! Remember how it was in the beginning? It used to be just him and Twilight, living on their own! When Twilight fell in love with you and me and we moved into their home, Spike never acted all ‘troubled child’ with us, did he?”

“No, he didn’t,” she realized. She hadn’t thought to even consider this angle!

She and Lero, first settling into Golden Oaks Library… funny how long ago that felt like now! But, yes, it was just as Lero said. Spike had been warm and welcoming as could be, helping to carry their things into their new bedroom without a peep of complaint, trying so hard to play the nonchalant ‘cool guy,’ in between excited bouts of chattering on how cool it was going to be having new family members and be part of a herd!

Lero’s smooth hand found that spot on the back of Rarity’s neck and rubbed it lightly, as they moved over to Carrot Top's stall and began picking out carrots.

“So he and Dash’ll get along like bread and butter. You’ll see. I mean, just a few weeks ago, she was showering him with kisses from helping out with her animals! You worry too much, princess.”

“I do worry,” she admitted, unhappily hanging her head. “Spike’s as good as a son to me, nowadays. But I know I haven’t been giving him the attention he wants from me, and he’s grown so distant...”

There had been so many times in the recent past where Spike had shot her looks of immense sadness and anguish. It pained her to think back on all of them. Sometimes, the source of his distress was understandable. Other times, the most inexplicably random things would set him off into quiet tears or flashes of petulant distemper. The worst had been when he’d burned Lero’s hands. For a while after that, Spike had treated Rarity with chilly coldness, spent most of the day at Carousel Boutique, and snubbed her as much as he possibly could.

“It’s not your fault.” Lero insisted. “If anything, blame me.”

“You?” Rarity asked. By now, they had moved onto Nutcracker's nut stand, and were picking out cashews, hazelnuts, peanuts, walnuts, and pecans.

“That unpleasantness at Bramblewood messed with my mind, and we had to work on tearing down that weird psychological wall in my head to get back to how we always were,” he reminded her. “Then, on top of that, I fell in love with Dash, so between everything, I’ve been monopolizing your attention.”

“I hope Spike can forgive me.” Rarity sighed. Being a good mother was one of her ultimate life goals, and with Spike, she was failing. No child of hers should ever have to feel neglected and sidelined like this.

“He will,” her stallion assured him. “Just be patient. All kids go through phases like this.”

She’d apologize to Spike once he was back. She’d set time aside for her little dragon son today, and let him know how special he was to her.

“What time it is?” she asked Lero. By now, they'd definitely done enough shopping.

He checked his wristwatch. “11:12.”

“Want to get a sandwich?” she asked. They were right by a small restaurant, and the young campers wouldn’t arrive home until one o’clock. A little comfort food would be just the thing to help perk her back up.

“Sure,” said Lero, with a shrug.

* * *

Whenever a non-pony (and non-cow, non-donkey, or other such familiar sights) came into Ponyville, it naturally drew everypony’s attention. This applied just as much to residents of the town who were themselves non-ponies, such as Lero and Spike. Though they usually drew smaller crowds, out of familiarity.

So when Lero entered the restaurant with Rarity, his eyes were immediately drawn to the griffon sitting by herself in the booth, as several ponies were already looking, drawing attention that way.

She seemed about Rarity’s age. The lion portion of her body was tawny-colored, as were the feathers that made up her wings. The plumage of her eagle half was mostly as white as a bald eagle’s head, except for the light-purplish circles around her eyes. Her crest formed a stylish fringe that hung ahead of her face. Her small, sharp beak was clamped upon the neck of a beer bottle, drinking with a surly expression. She hadn’t seemed to have ordered herself any food.

Lero might’ve walked past the stranger and taken a table, but Rarity was staring at the griffin for a length of time she, herself, would have called ‘rude.’ She walked up close to the griffin, who pulled the beer bottle from her beak, and they eyed one another, up-close.

“Is this lady a friend of yours, Rarity?” Lero asked.

The griffin slammed her beer down loudly on the table. “Who’re you calling a lady, you giant plucked ostrich?!” Her voice was angry and rasping.

“Who’re you calling an ostrich, buzzard breath?!” Rarity retorted at once.

All at once, the tension was taut enough to bounce on like a trampoline.

“Your haunches have really ballooned out, Big R,” the griffin sneered. “Still hittin’ the full-course fine-dining scene, huh?”

“Well, you’re looking a bit… undernourished, G. What’s wrong? Can’t afford three square meals every day? No... I bet you’re going completely overboard with the bunny meat again.”

“You mean THIS bunny meat?” The griffin… her name couldn’t really be ‘G,’ could it?... pulled out a plastic snack bag marked ‘Chipotle Cottontail Chews,’ opened them and tossed a dark chunk of jerky into her beak.

“Ugh! You love that stuff way too much, even for a predator race!”

“Rabbit’s perfect!” G said with a smile. “Not only is it tasty as hell, I love how I can chow down on rabbit ‘til my gut’s one wafer-thin mint from blowing up, and I still feel like I haven’t eaten a damned thing!”

“That’s called rabbit starvation, you idiot!” Rarity snapped. “This isn’t even the first time I’ve TOLD you about it!”

G glared, and stubbornly kept popping the chews in her mouth, rabbit starvation or no rabbit starvation. Rarity made a disgusted noise, but still swept a courteous arm from where Lero stood to where G sat.

“Lero, this is Gilda, an old friend of mine. Gilda, this is Lero, the stallion of my herd.”

Gilda looked Lero over, crushing her empty snack bag in a ball and dropping it under the table. “So you’re him, aren’t you? The space alien they keep mentioning in magazines?”

“Yeah, that’s me,” Lero said, straight-faced.

“An alien… heh heh… that’s so wicked.” Gilda finished off her bottle of beer. “Ha ha… Take me to your leader! I come in peace! We are not alone in the universe!”

“I ought to bring you aboard my starship sometime,” Lero quipped.

Gilda’s head swung back up at him in a wide-eyed double take. “You have a starship?” she asked the self-admitted alien with a dropped jaw.

“Of course!” Lero smirked, rolling with it. “How do you think I got to Equestria? She’s called the Hudsucker Proxy and her warp drive reaches up to six thousand kiloscrids-per-second. If you’ve got twenty minutes to spare, I’d love to fly you to the moon and let you play among the stars. Let you see what spring is like on Jupiter and Mars.”

Gilda gaped at him, as though all the wildest science fiction fantasies of her youth were about to be fulfilled, right here and now. Then Rarity, rolling her eyes, told her, “He doesn’t really have a starship, Gilda.”

“He doesn’t?”

Lero laughed. “No, sorry, yanking your chain. The truth is, I got into this world through some kinda weird interdimensional portal that closed right behind me as soon as I crossed over.”

Punching his shoulder, Gilda said, “Heh! You’re alright. Had me going there for a bit, there. Pull up a chair, you two, why don’t you?”

A waitress spotted them sitting and trotted over to their table. “Hi, there! Welcome to Curly Fries, what can I get ya?”

Rarity glanced over the menu. “I’ll have the tuna sandwich with an iced tea.”

“That doesn’t sound too bad, actually. I think I’ll have a tuna too, with a side of curly fries and a Colta-Cola,” Lero decided.

“And I’ll just have two more of these brewskis,” said Gilda, holding up an empty bottle of Novemberfest-brand beer.

“We’re paying separate bills,” Rarity told the waitress.

“Separate bills, my beak!” Gilda looked at the waitress. “I’m paying for all of us here at the table!”

“G, you don’t need…”

“I’M PAYIN’, and that’s FINAL!” Gilda squawked.

The waitress managed a smile as she wrote down their orders.

Gilda glanced over to Lero. “So, fish?”

Lero looked puzzled. “Sorry?”

She gestured at the retreating waitress. “You ordered fish, like the cool ponies do.”

“Oh! Yeah, humans are omnivores, we like meat as much as plants.”

“Ha! Meat-eating aliens. I bet that flipped out so many ponies!” Grinning, Gilda glanced back at Rarity. “R, you know how to pick ‘em.”

“...Thank you?” Rarity replied, not knowing how to take that.

Lero ducked his head. “Yeah, a lot of ponies were afraid of me at first. It took them a long while to get used to me.”

Gilda reached over and punched him again, chummily in the chest, like they’d been pals for years.

“Hey, to hell with ‘em. You’re who you are, who gives a damn who doesn’t like it, right? We griffons get enough flak about eating meat as it is, I ain’t gonna be cool with them bugging another race about it, am I right?”

Lero smiled and rubbed his ribs. “If you say so. It’s nice to hear someone arguing for me eating meat.”

“Damn straight! Hey, I know this great griffon-run place up in Canterlot, I should show you it, sometime, they got great meals if you like meat. Oh, and you, too, R, if you think you can stomach it. Hah! Remember the last time I took you to a griffon place? You turned green the moment you saw the steaks on display!”

Gilda laughed uproariously, as if it was the best joke, ever. She paused, seeing Lero unamused. “Guess you had to be there.”

Rarity winced. “Sorry, the memory of… a patron gnawing a bone clean…” She shivered.

Lero put a hand on her back. “You wouldn’t have to come, you know. Heck, I don’t.”

“No! No, far be it from me to forbid it!” The white unicorn waved off his objections. “If you and G want to have a meat-eaters’ meal, you are certainly welcome to it.”

“So… you comin’ too?” Gilda asked the unicorn.

Rarity stiffened for a moment, then nodded. “Of course! Lero is my stallion, I should share every part of his life.”

“Well, alright, then!” Gilda grinned as Rarity shivered again.

The waitress returned with their beverages. Gilda turned to Lero, already popping the top off her new beer.

“So, Lero, does Rarity ever mention me these days?”

Lero looks to Rarity, wordlessly asking for some hint how he should answer Gilda. Rarity just shrugged indifferently, and he decided to go with the honest response.

“Honestly, Gilda, your name doesn’t come up that often.”

Back in the pre-Swap days, Rainbow Dash might’ve mentioned Gilda a handful of times for as long as he and the pegasus had been together. And it was always either in the context of describing griffons in general, or when she needed an example of what a bad friend was like.

“Lame.” The griffon took a swig of beer. “So what’re you even doing with your life these days, Big R? Still stuck here in blah, humdrum loserville-Ponyville?”

“I wouldn’t classify it so much as being ‘stuck’ as ‘thriving.’” Rarity told her, sipping her iced tea daintily. “My job’s stable. My love life and family life are sweet and lusciously steamy…”

Here, she leaned against Lero’s side.

“...And one of the local fillies has taken to hero-worshipping little old me. She’s started a Rarity fanclub -- can you believe it? -- and become practically my kid sister. Also, not only has my weather art been improving, I’ve been having talks with some ponies to make some sort of artistic performance of it… oh! And you won’t believe who’s become my newest herd-sister, G, she’s SUCH a dear…”

“Yeah, yeah, totally bodacious of you, R.” Gilda’s tail whipped hard against a chair leg behind her. “Absolute Thrill City if junk like that floats your cloud. As for me, I ain’t got no attachments. I’m like the wind, baby, livin’ high, livin’ large, and livin’ FAST! In short: the same Gilda you’ve always known.”

“Sounds like it,” Rarity said, sounding sad. “So what do you do for a living these days?”

Gilda slicked her fringe back with a talon. “Well, been bouncing from job to job for a time, ‘til I finally found a gig fit for my natural gnarliness. I’m a courier!”

“A courier?”

From under the table, Gilda brought up a large bag. It showed the logo of a winged lion.

“Yep! I’m with the Flyin’ Lion Express. I fly to all sorts of places, delivering long-distance packages. Pegasi don’t have the same endurance we griffons do, so it’s a niche we’re in demand for. Ponyville just happened to be one of my stops today. And the best part is, I’ve managed to hold onto this job for four whole months so far. That’s an unbroken record for me!”

Rarity smiled weakly. “Four whole months? Well, keep up the good work.”

At this point, their waitress brought their meals. The tuna sandwiches were lightly toasted, thickened with creamy mayonnaise, onions, and cucumbers. Lero’s fries were steaming spirals of golden-brown… and Gilda reached out and helped herself to them right away.

“Shoot, Rarity, what happened to you?” Gilda asked. “You used to be hip. The only other girl who could keep pace with my swag! For years, it used to be just us…”

“Did you two used to be lovers?” Lero blurted out, the thought going from brain to mouth without checking if it was a good idea on the way. Lero remembered Rarity discussing how many lovers she used to have before he had entered her life. But Rarity and Gilda both looked taken aback at his outburst.

“Lovers?” Gilda’s expression seemed to suggest she wasn’t sure if she should be insulted by the implications, or simply amused by the absurdity of the suggestion.

“Us?” said Rarity. “Oh, no, no, no, darling, perish the thought! We weren’t like that at all.”

“You said it! Once upon a time, R and I were as tight as black on a crow, but we were never lovebirds. Kept each other firmly in the friendship bucket. Most we ever did was be each other’s cooler buddy a couple times, when the heat hit, but that was all.”

Lero fought down the image that invaded his brain. It just never failed to amaze him how cavalier all the girls in this world were about cooler sex.

“Forgive me for asking, but do griffins even enter heats?”

“Forgive me for answering,” she mocked his politeness pitch-perfectly, “but yeah, bud, they do. Comes from the lion-half of our bodies.”

She patted her own rump. “Birds do something else entirely. I ain’t even SURE what.”

They lay eggs. Lero said in his mind, surprised that a griffon would be that ignorant of something that’s literally a part of them. Maybe all that beer was getting to her. But then again, he hadn’t known a thing about bonobos until Rarity had gone and read that book on them...

“When did you and Rarity even meet?” he changed the subject.

“Oh, I’m sure Gilda wouldn’t want to get into boring old…” Rarity started.

“...You know about the Diamond Hailstorm, don’t you?” Gilda asked, grabbing more fries.

“Uh, yeah,” Lero said. He bit into his sandwich; It was a good sandwich, the mayo was especially delicious. He’d never had homemade mayonnaise back home, but now he couldn’t imagine going back to store-bought. Well, human store-bought.

“Well, about two years before that actually happened, my deadbeat dad suddenly got his act together, and before we knew it, he became a Griffon Ambassador.”

Lero was willing to bet good money that in the Unswapped version of things, Gilda’s deadbeat dad had stayed deadbeat.

“Dad was also doing a lot of touring around the pony kingdoms, and I had to tag along. Then, Big R did her Hailstorm, and Celestia sent her on her royally-sanctioned weather tour of Equestria, and wouldn’t you know it… Dad and Rarity happened to be taking the same route most of the time, so we kept running into each other as we traveled from country to country.”

“Yes, that’s right,” Rarity agreed, sipping her iced tea daintly. “Gilda and I ended up playing together a lot of time time simply because there wasn’t really anyone else.”

Gilda pulled Lero’s fries completely out of his reach, grabbed a squeezable bottle, and proceeded to drown the fries in ketchup.

“Hey, remember all the pranks we used to pull, R? Heh! Remember when we were in Coltenhagen, and you used your remote-control power with the clouds on that stodgy old pegasus fart?”

“Oh-ho-ho, do I ever! Poor fellow kept thinking that it had to be some pegasus brat who was zapping him, and kept hunting the skies for the ne’er-do-well…”

“...Never realizing that it was really the li’l unicorn filly on the park bench with the butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth look!”

The two of them laughed over that. Gilda ate a well-ketchuped fry, and Lero was put in mind of a bird eating an exceptionally bloody earthworm.

“And, hey, remember the first time I got you to eat REAL meat?”

Lero turned to Rarity. “You ate REAL meat?”

The white unicorn had already finished her sandwich. “I was sixteen. We got REALLY drunk.”

“At sixteen?”

“It was legal in that country!”

“So what kind of meat did you eat? Chicken?” He looked over at Gilda. “Rabbit?”

Rarity looked like she would rather be having her teeth pulled. “It was a mouse.”

“A… a mouse?!”

Gilda curled her claws in a catlike way. “Caught the li’l squeaker myself. Hey, don’t wig out, there, buddy, we cooked it! Deep-fried all the germs right off the li’l sucker.”

“But still… a mouse… how could you eat mice?!”

“Like candy,” she told him. Lero’s disgusted look surprised her. “Don’t tell me the big-bad meat-eating alien is put off by mice?”

“Ugh… I can still remember the taste to this day.” Rarity gulped down the rest of her iced tea to wash that awful-tasting memory off her tongue. “Yech. Give me filet of swordfish any day.”

“Oh, and remember us being in Junior Speedsters?” Gilda turned to Lero. “R was so miserable about it at first. Y’know, cuz, her being a unicorn, she couldn’t fly on her own and her clouds just weren't speedster-level fast. Then Rarity came up with the idea of going to Junior Speedsters as a trainee staff member.”

“A staff member?” Lero repeated.

“Indeed.” Rarity held her chin up proudly. “I could use my large-scale cloud-sculpting abilities towards setting up raceways and obstacle courses much more efficiently than the regular pegasi.”

Gilda swallowed the last fry. “Those were the days, R!”

“That they were, G.”

Only the Swap could’ve brought these two together as friends. Lero thought to himself. Take away Starswirl’s spell and Discord’s bewitchment, and it was hard for him to imagine Rarity, (all etiquette and elegance) and Gilda, (grungy punk that she was) giving each other more than one single disapproving glance, and then passing quickly on their way, never to cross paths again.

“What happened to us?” the griffin asked. “What happened to G and R against the world?”

“R grew up,” Rarity told Gilda. “R realized that the world’s a pretty big thing to set yourself against."

“Yeah, whatevs.” She snorted, rolling her eyes, and downed her beer.

Lero drank some of his Colta-Cola, which tasted nothing like Coca-Cola did. More like root beer and Dr. Pepper poured into the same glass.

“Stupid flip-flopper. ‘Element of Loyalty,’ my BEAK.”

“See, this is why things soured between us, Gilda. This, right here. So what if I have other friends?” Rarity asked.

“You just don’t get it do you, huh? You found your dweeby pony friends, and the first thing you do is ditch me, cause I’m a griffin!” The rasp in Gilda’s voice had roughened; she gripped an empty beer bottle like she wanted to throw it at the wall.

Rarity’s lip curled. “Really? You’re going to paint me as some intolerant bigot? Really, Gilda?”

“Whatevs, Rarity! What-EVS. So why don’t you just… just prance off to another pretty pony party with all your prissy pony pals here in plain pathetic podunk Ponyville and take your tall, gangly two-legged bearded emu with you!”

Rarity stood up.

“You know what? That’s a marvelous idea, Gilda. Come on, Lero, we need to go to the train station!”

Rarity left the restaurant with her head held high. She didn’t so much as look back at her estranged friend, but Lero did. And he saw Gilda fold her arms in her seat as tightly as arms could be folded, her body swaying in place, so as to mock the way the white unicorn’s body bounced as she strode out.

“I’m not gangly, am I, Rarity?” he asked Rarity, once they were outside, trying to disrupt her train of thought.

“Of course not,” she assured him. “My prince is blessed with a very strapping figure, and he should never forget that.”

“Aw, thanks, princess.”

Back when they'd dropped off Spike, it'd been just off the side of a dirt road where the town ended and a long stretch of open fields began. Today, they'd be picking him up from the train station.

Several parents from other herds were also here; there’d be more the closer it got to one o’clock, sitting on benches, or killing time at the newsstand a little distance away. He and Rarity took a bench.

“What’s on your mind?” the human asked.

“I was just thinking… what an amazing stroke of serendipity it was that when you arrived in our world, you appeared in the Everfree. I mean, but for want of the proverbial nail, you could’ve just as easily landed in some griffin village, instead…”

“...And fallen for some griffin girl?” finished Lero.

“Maybe even Gilda.”

“Nah. Possibly SOME griffin girl, maybe, but never Gilda. I’m just way too uncool for a chick as hip as she is.” They both smiled wryly at each other.

Lero let himself contemplate Gilda a little while longer. The griffon had left a bad aftertaste in Rarity’s mouth; he only had to look at his weatherpony princess to see she was still trying to clear her out of her mind. Personally, he hadn’t disliked Gilda too badly. She’d been funny, and had seemed to like him for the most part. He could see why Gilda and Rainbow Dash had once been pals. Attitude-wise, the brash griffon was so much like the Rainbow Dash of old.

If Dash had been more of a sleaze. And had the habit of inebriating herself before the clock struck noon.

“So what IS springtime like on… where did you say, again? Jupiter and Mars?” By her playful smile, Lero could tell Rarity was imagining some idyllic exotic resort. Probably one with a spa.

“Suffocating, in both cases. Jupiter’s a gas giant, so you’d be falling through a sea of toxic fog until the gravity crushed you. Mars is a big red rock with almost no atmosphere whatsoever, so you’d be choking on thin air with no oxygen.”

Rarity absorbed this information in quiet fascination before snuggling into his lap. “Well then… aren’t you glad you wound up landing in Equestria instead of those places?”

He kissed her cheek. ‘Every day, princess. Every day.”

“Mr. Michaelides?”

They turned to see a new pony standing beside them; a pegasus mare.

“Yes, hello!” Lero greeted.

“Such a pleasure to meet you!” said the pegasus. “Waiting for that dragon of yours to come home, I take it?”

“Yes, that’s right,” said Rarity, lifting her head off Lero’s chest.

“That’s great!” said the pegasus.

Was this mare a mother of one of the foals? Maybe somepony’s distant aunt from out-of-town? Either way, Lero was pretty sure he didn’t know her. Her mane was done in a bob, and her coat was the color of almonds.

“Do you have a moment to speak in private?” asked the pegasus.

Rarity and Lero looked at each other. “Well, I kinda…”

“Ultimately, I’m sure things will still work out if you don’t have time to help me, but would you? It’d make things ever-so-much easier.”

“I suppose we could at least hear you out.” Lero decided, and Rarity slipped off his body.

“First, could you and I move over there, Mr. Michealides?” The pegasus pointed a wing at a spot farther away from the other parents, and Rarity. “I really don’t want others overhearing.”

“Anything you have to say to Lero, you can say to me as well.” Rarity let the stranger know.

“Guess that’s fair.”

They followed her away from the other ponies.

“Another human just appeared,” the mare told him.

“Another…?!”

“Ssh!” the mare said.

“Another human?” Lero whispered.

The pegasus mare sat. “Here’s my story. A few hours ago, I was walking through town when I heard crying and screaming in this old building. I went to check it out, and on the upper floor, I found a human, no mistake! It was female, too! She told me so herself!”

“Who was she?” asked Lero carefully, “Did she tell you her name?”

Ever since Lero’s story had first become known to the public, it had given birth to a frustrating and humiliating trend: ‘Human Sightings.’ Which went along much the same lines as Bigfoot sightings and Loch Ness Monster sightings back on Earth.

Ponies in the remotest parts of the world would SWEAR to have seen honest-to-Celestia human beings (that weren’t Lero Michealides). These humans would often scurry into the bushes like spooked rabbits the moment ponies called out to them from afar, leaving only scraps of ‘human-cloth’ on thorny bushes, and footprints in the ground.

Occasionally, Herd Bellerophon had actually gone out to investigate some of these claims, often traveling great distances to do so. To date, there had been exactly ONE case that wasn’t a hoax, ONE instance of another human being having been legitimately transported to this world. And Gus Wainwright wasn’t living in Equestria anymore, to put it kindly.

“Sadly, I wasn’t able to get as much information out of her as I’d’ve liked,” the pegasus pony said, continuing her story. “She was a bit xenophobic. The sight of me terrified her, especially when I started talking. I’m sure she was expecting a fellow human. She also kept pointing some strange alien weapon at me and firing warning shots. She wouldn’t let me be in the same room as her when I wanted to talk with her.”

A gun?

“All the same, my heart went out to her completely,” the pegasus said plaintively. “Both her legs were broken, after all.”

“Broken?!” cried Rarity.

“She couldn’t move from her spot. Although she refused to give me her name, I’ll share everything she WAS willing to tell me. Apparently, she’d been teleported directly into that room from some other world entirely. A really horrible one, from what little she was willing to tell me. She looked liked she’d escaped from a war!”

“That poor, poor thing…” Rarity whispered.

“I know that deep down, there’s a sweet girl under all that fright and fear,” the pegasus said. “The last thing she needs is more ponies coming to see her. She’s not far. I think if a fellow human were to talk to her…”

The mare trailed off, looking up into the human’s eyes.

The most elaborate Human Sighting hoax Lero remembered involved an actual chimpanzee skeleton. They’d put the skeleton in clothes tailored for to fit it, and then carefully damaged the skeleton such a way as to suggest the ‘human’ had been savaged by wild animals. One of the most insulting hoaxes had turned out to be a scarecrow.

And yet… all the same… there HAD been Gus Wainwright… and this mare sounded awfully sure of herself…

“Lead the way, ma’am,” said Lero Michealides, standing up.

* * *

It wasn't a long walk at all before the pegasus brought Rarity and Lero to a two-storey building that looked somewhat in disrepair, with long grass in the front yard.

“Give me a minute to let her know you’re here,” the mare told Lero and Rarity. “She’s on edge, and I don’t think she likes surprises.”

Lero’s mind worked as they waited on the porch for the mare to return. If the pegasus had been able to talk with this woman, that meant she spoke English, so that’d be something, at least. She was supposed to be armed… he wondered what kind of gun she had. A revolver or a magazine-fed semi auto? Or something deadlier, like a rifle? Surely it wouldn’t be anything like a submachine gun, would it? Maybe he’d be lucky, and it was just a toy or an actor’s prop, or she didn’t actually have any bullets.

The pegasus mare opened the door, waving the two inside. They stepped into a dim foyer.

“Straight upstairs, then straight down to the door at the end of the corridor,” the mare told Lero.

“I could wait here until you’ve calmed her down a little,” Rarity offered. “Then you can call me over and she’ll be able to see ponies aren’t something humans need to fear.”

“Good thinking,” the pegasus mare said.

Lero gave a strained smile. It wasn’t that the mares were wrong, it was good thinking, but it’d come right when he’d had the idea of having Rarity cast a forcefield on him. Did Rarity know the forcefield spell? He couldn’t recall ever seeing a unicorn other than Twilight, her brother, or a Princess cast one.

The mares watched from the foyer as Lero ascended the stairs. He started down the corridor. Three doors at Lero’s left, another three on his right, with one extra seventh door directly forward of him, from the far end of the corridor.

“Hello!” he called out. “Can you hear me down there?”

“Who’s that?!” a female voice called back from behind the farthest door. “Who are you? Are you one of those weird ‘pony’ things?”

“No,” said Lero. “My name’s Lero Michealides.”

The floorboard creaked as he took a step. He was so certain she’d panic and fire her gun that he had to stop himself from diving to the floor. He dared another step… and the creaking noise actually sparked an inspiration.

“Can you hear my footsteps? I repeat: footsteps. Not hooves. Not horseshoes.”

He stepped forward again, demonstrating how his legs did not produce any sort of clip-clop noise.

“I’m human. And I understand you’re human too.”

“I am!” the woman called back.

“I also understand that you have a weapon. I want you to know I’m a friendly guy, and I’d like not to be shot, okay?”

“Come closer and let me have a look at you.”

He drew closer, feeling he ought to say more to prove he was a human from Earth. “I was born in the United States.”

“I’m from there too!”

“What part?”

“The West,” she answered.

“The West is a lovely area. Are you from California? Oregon? Washington?”

“Washing Town!” she answered, as Lero’s hand settled on the knob. “I’m from Washing Town!”

The doorknob turned easily in Lero’s hand, and he was able to open the door. But when he tried to step into the room, he found his hand stuck firmly to the knob, and he lost his footing, falling on his shins. He tried to wrest his hand free, but it was as though his fingers were magnetically locked onto that old brass knob.

Then it clicked. “‘Washing Town?" Son of a bitch! It was a trap!

From downstairs, Lero heard Rarity scream and then a body drop to the floorboards.

Lero couldn’t think clearly from panic. He looked into the room he had opened. It was a bedroom that looked completely empty until a closet door opened and a unicorn mare stepped into open view. She was the ‘woman’ he had been talking to.

“Who are you people?!” Lero blurted dumbly.

The unicorn stood where she was, the silver light on her horn was making Lero feel so sleepy.

“Shush. You go take a nap now.”

* * *

Lero was the first to awaken, experiencing double vision for nearly a minute after opening his eyes. His head felt like a brick had been his pillow. Something rattled and clinked when he moved his limbs. He waited until his eyesight cleared before he was forced to acknowledge that he had been chained up.

Manacles bound his wrists and ankles. Lero could only stretch his arms and legs about a foot apart. Worse still; a thick iron collar encircled his neck, keeping him chained to an enormous statue of a gorilla…?

The hell…?

Lero’s sense of confusion and dread only doubled when he spotted Rarity, who was still out cold. She lay on the floor of an enormous birdcage.

“Rarity! RARITY!”

His chains had enough leeway for him to pound against the bars of her cage until she woke.

“W-what? Lero!” She stumbled a little, but came to her hooves. “Lero, are you hurt?!”

“A little, I guess,” he said, feeling his head and the back of his neck. “Banged up a bit, but overall, I still feel okay. You?”

“I’ll manage,” she told him, giving her head a shake as she turned to face him. “My face feels weird… is there something on it?”

He hissed a breath through his teeth. “Yes… they’ve put a horn wrap on you.”

Take as a whole, the device was vaguely bridle-like in its construction, with buckled strips strapped around Rarity’s face, but they were only to make sure the most important part stayed attached. The key bit was the cork-like cylinder the rest held jammed onto her horn with steel rods.

“Maybe I can…” Her face contorted with effort as she willed magic into her horn.

But it was no good. What blindfolds were to the eyes, and gags were to the voice, horn wraps were to unicorn horns. Lero had seen horn wraps many times in movies, when some unicorn was either under arrest or taken captive. But he’d never dreamed he’d be seeing Rarity wearing one.

Again and again, Rarity strained to summon her magic… blast the cork off her horn like a violently-shaken bottle of champagne, to no avail. Letting out an unladlylike snarl of frustration, she began to beat her head against the floor and the bars of the cage, attempting to smash the wrap.

“Rarity, stop!” Lero cried. “That’s not gonna work!” The horn, itself, would snap off quicker than the horn wrap would. The rods holding and protecting the cork were built to be stronger than unicorn horns.

She shook her head. Lero recognized Rainbow’s short temper mixing with Rarity’s indignation. He was increasingly aware of how their personality traits intermeshed, and wondered if this was a problem. Rarity’s anger steadily grew as she tried bucking the bars of her big birdcage, kicking like a mare possessed. But those bars would’ve held in a maximum security penitentiary, and after several minutes of futile effort, she fell to an exhausted sit.

“What… is this place?” she gasped, and they both looked around.

Rarity and Lero now found themselves in the center of a very spacious indoor enclosure of some sort. Lero’s first guess was that they had been brought to some kind of stage, because spotlights were shining down on them from a high catwalk, just like those in a theater. Without these spotlights, it would’ve been pitch dark.

Then Lero realized there was way too much enormous old machinery pushed against the walls, and a railing over which he could make out a lower floor beneath, and no curtains, no proscenium, no backstage, no rows of chairs for an audience that wasn’t there.

Or… was there? Peering hard through the blackness behind the glaring spotlights… Lero now he thought he could see the shapes of living beings.

“Hey!” he called. “Is someone there?!”

“Just us,” answered a female voice from the back. “Sleep comfy?”

“Where are we?!” Rarity shouted, standing back up.

“You’re beneath the sky and atop the land, sweet pea.” the voice replied unhelpfully.

A few other voices in the darkness chuckled at that.

“Why have you kidnapped us?” Rarity demanded. “What’s going on?! How long have we been out for? What’s with the gorilla statue? Who’s in charge of this?”

“The one in charge,” spoke the voice. “We’ve gone to fetch her. Let her know that you two are both awake. She’ll be the one who’ll…"

The voice broke off at the rusty rumble of mechanisms. Lero was almost ready to swear it had to be a very old elevator rising up...

"Ah! Welcome, boss!”

It was an elevator; a cargo elevator. One of the spotlights spun around as its doors opened, to shine upon a pair of mares striding up to where Lero and Rarity stood bound and caged. The mare on the left grinned and waved flippantly as though she were a movie star walking down a red carpet, even going so far as to blow kisses to imaginary fans. The mare on the right, beside her, had eyes only for Lero and Rarity. Unbelievably, it was somepony they both knew. A pony from Ponyville.

“Honeydew?!” Lero spoke, he knees failing him, and falling backward on his rear.

Honeydew wore clothing. Not just any clothes, either; she was dressed as a high school cheerleader. There was no mistaking the leotard-like bodysuit or the pleated ultra-mini-skirt. There were even a set of pom-poms worn at the middle of both her forelegs, attached with armbands. Her dyed blonde hair was set in a set of girlish twin pigtails.

The whole ensemble did not have the intended effect; it contrasted against her increasingly lined fate and the black circles under her eyes, serving only to make Honeydew look even older and more haggish than ever before. The look she gave them was like Captain Ahab driving his harpoon deep into the blubbery flesh of Moby Dick, scoring the killing blow.

And then there was the large, stocky, well-muscled unicorn mare beside Honeydew. A complete stranger to him.

Living in pony society for so many years had taught Lero a lot of interesting words for describing exotic equine coat coloration; words he almost certainly would never have learned on Earth. Some of the more bizarre-sounding of these words included ‘pangare,’ ‘rabicano,’, ‘overo,’ and several others.

This mare’s coat was none of these things. Hers was what was called ‘skewbald,’ which was to say she was marked with large white patches atop a predominantly bay-colored coat. Her mane was also bay-colored.

She, too, had not come unclothed: she wore a thick, dark double-breasted jacket, as well as a porkpie hat on her head. Grey eyes gleamed at him behind thin-rimmed spectacles.

“MISTER Moichealoides!” Though high-pitched, this mare’s voice scarcely even seemed feminine, and was heavily accented in a way that Lero could not immediately place.

The skewbald unicorn’s body tilted in a way that allowed Lero a look at her cutie mark. It showed a jagged outline, filled with red, giving the vague impression of an injury. Emerging from its center was a magenta ray, its luminescent color giving the impression of an unicorn’s mystic aura.

“What a FECKING pleasure et tis teh foinally make yar FECKING acquaintance at long, long last!”

Author's Note

Guess what, folks? I'm bringing Honeydew right back to her roots.

Back to how we saw her when she first debuted in the original Xenophilia.

Only more so.

And while we're on the subject of Honeydew, you might want to check out the latest Ask The Swapped Ponies.

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