Chapter 11: Chaotic
While Robert was retrieving everything he needed from the Icarus, Lyra guarded the place, using her magic to wield Robert’s weapon. She was relieved when she saw him emerge. He brought many artifacts whose use was unknown to the unicorn.
“Is that everything we need?” she asked.
“I hope so,” he scratched his head, “I checked Kato’s notes which explained the process, but this is not my field so I can’t be sure. I also took some of her clothes so you have something to wear if mine are too big for you and her technoglove for you to use.”
“Tomorrow we will perform the changing spell, right?”
“Indeed. We should depart as soon as possible, and we must have energy to protect ourselves from those black creatures. I will take the second and fourth watch, you take the other two.”
They passed the night without incidences, but terribly scared of the monsters that lurked in the darkness.
The next day they crossed the desert without facing any creature. Even so, they never lowered their guard. When they finally reached the cave, they were a nervous wreck, and they only trusted each other because they had always been together, so it was impossible for the creatures to supplant them. Only when Robert deactivated the turret and they were covered by the stone walls did they relax.
“Alright, I’m going to show you how you use all of these” Robert said, pointing at the medical devices, “so you can do it when we swap.”
They spent the next hour doing that, until Robert thought Lyra was ready. Then he pulled Discord’s fang, which had no trace of rock.
“Alright, if we both hold it at the same time it should do everything by itself. Are you ready?”
“Yes,” she replied with determination, “I have performed all the spells and I have not found any curse hidden, so let’s do this.”
She held one end with her mouth while he grabbed the other with his right hand. After a few seconds, the fang began glowing with a golden light, which grew stronger by the seconds. When the light was almost blinding, both of them heard a loud *POP* and they had swapped.
“What the fuck?” said Robert as he fell to the ground, no longer able to stand on two legs.
“Puh!” Lyra spitted Discord’s fang. “Am I human yet?”
Robert rose his head and looked at Lyra. She was lying down in fetal position with her eyes closed. He looked down and saw his two pink forelegs.
“What the hell?! I am PINK!!!” he shouted, “oh, and you are a human now.”
Lyra slowly opened her eyes, and the first thing she saw was her two hands curled into fists, so she shouted like a hysteric girl.
“HANDSHANDSHANDS!”
“Lyra.”
“HANDSHANDSHANDS!”
“Lyra.”
“HANDSHANDSHANDSHANDS!” She was so excited that she managed to stand on two legs, but as soon as she realized it she lost her balance and fell on her rump. “Oof!”
“Lyra!”
“What?”
“A little help, please?” he asked, as he was entangled in his human clothes. Lyra crawled towards him and clumsily grabbed the clothes with her hands, releasing him after a few struggles. As soon as he was free he managed to stand on his four legs.
“Good, now get dressed.”
“Do I have to?” she asked with a frown, “it’s going to be hard to do it by myself.”
“Do it, please,” Robert insisted, ‘she still has green hair, and not only on her head!’ he thought, blushing under his coat.
“So... How do I look?” she asked as she struggled with her underwear.
“Disturbingly sexy.“
“What was that?”
“Well, you still have green hair and golden eyes, which aren’t natural colors for humans. Other than that, your body is totally human. And well... You are pretty sexy...”
Lyra’s bare skin didn’t hide her blush. However, after nearly suffocating herself with the shirt until she managed to stick her head out of it the blush had extended to the whole face, which was crimson.
“My turn, how do I look?” asked Robert.
“Well, you are an unicorn, your coat is pale pink and your mane is black... It’s kind of funny, your coat is kind of similar to human skin and your mane is like your hair.”
“Yes, but... Piiiiink” he whinnied, “wait, you said I have a horn?” He touched it with his hoof, “woah.”
“Oh, your cutie mark is...” she frowned, “I don’t know what it is.”
“I have one of those?” he turned his head, which was a dizzying experience due to his new long neck, and saw a symbol he knew too well.
“ACTION MAN?! WHAT-THE-FLYING-FUCK?!”
“You know what that is?”
“Something like G.I. Joe, but cooler.”
“What?”
“It’s a human thing. I guess the spirit put this on the spell to mock me.”
“Okay, but what does it mean?”
“It’s the logo of Action Man, an action figure for boys. It was very popular a few years before I left Earth.”
“... You humans are weird.”
“You know what’s weird? Moving your ears is weird,” he said as he wiggled them, trying to change the subject.
Lyra, now fully dressed save for the bare feet, tried to stand, but failed.
“How do you stand on two legs?”
“Use the walls for support at first. I’m still trying to walk without stumbling.”
They spent the next hours practicing until they got used to their new bodies. Lyra learned to walk slowly without support and to use her hands with dexterity. Robert managed to walk and trot with ease, but he didn’t dare to gallop, and he levitated a pebble a few centimetres, which he proclaimed a magical feat to Lyra’s amusement. They also learned how to perform the activities of daily living, which Robert called “a dirty and embarrassing but necessary affair to avoid dirtier and more embarrassing situations during the next days.”
Twilight Sparkle was re-re-re-checking the new organization of the books (or rather, Spike was doing it while she supervised him) when she heard the noise she dreaded most: papel being ripped. She ran to the source, and found that the enchanted needle that was marking Robert’s location was shredding the map.
“What’s going on?” asked Spike.
“It’s impossible! My spell has lost Robert!” she explained as she stopped the needle, “how could this happen? He can’t teleport or travel in time, so how has he disappeared?!”
“What do we do?”
“I can’t write a letter to Princess Celestia. She will know I used blood magic and she will be disappointed and I won’t be her student and she will send me back to... MAGIC KINDERGARTEN!!!” she added, her mane suddenly more disheveled and her eyes twitching.
“You DO need professional help with that foalhood issue,” Spike muttered.
“Did you say something?”
“Eh... Why don’t you research about the spell you used? Maybe you will find a list of causes for that,” he pointed at the shreds of paper that had once been a map.
“You are right! Spike, this is very important, so I won’t be able to supervise you.” she returned to a safer and less volatile mood, “You think you can finish checking those books by yourself?”
“Don’t worry, I will manage,” he said with heavy sarcasm, which was unregistered by the purple unicorn.
“Lyra, stop doing that. You can’t do that in public, it’s gross.”
“But it feels so good!”
“I don’t care, you can’t just put your finger in there whenever you feel like it.”
“Do you know how HARD it is to do something like this without fingers? It’s easier for unicorns, but fingers are a lot more precise than magic. It’s like they were meant to do this!” she exclaimed, causing him to groan.
“At least use a tissue or something to clean yourself when you are done.”
A few moans of pleasure later, Lyra stopped picking her nose and waited until Robert finished his levitation exercises. His magic was already as powerful as Lyra’s had been, but his total lack of magical knowledge and practice made him struggle to perform the easiest tasks at first.
“How long will it take until I am as good as you with magic?” he asked for the umpteenth time.
“It takes years for foals to achieve their full potential, but that’s because they have to wait for their horns to fully develop. You should be proficient enough in a week or two if you keep practising.”
“It’s late already. I’m going to reactivate the turret, so be careful with that,” he tried to put his hoof inside of his glove, and groaned in frustration before activating voice commands.
That night sleep didn’t come easy for any of them. Robert studied magic until late hours and Lyra kept fiddling with Kato’s technoglove.
The next morning they decided that it was time to perform the first embryo transfer. Lyra did it all under Robert’s supervision. The process had been greatly simplified over the years since its creation, allowing someone like Lyra to do something that decades earlier required a medical doctor and some luck.
“Well, that was anticlimactic,” said Lyra when she was done.
“Yeah, we should... Celebrate or something.”
“How?”
“Hm... We could cook something for each other, and you should start eating meat,”
Lyra frowned.
“I know you must find eating meat disgusting, but you need it to be healthy, a cave in a forest isn’t a place where you can find substitutes for meat... Would you rather eat fish? You may find them less... Relatable.”
“Okay, I’ll try fish,” she said, sighing, “but how are you going to catch it??
“It’s too dangerous to go alone, specially with those bugs around, so we’ll go together and gather whatever we need.”
Robert discovered that day how insultingly easy it was to fish with magic. He only had to spot a fish and levitate it out of the river. He cooked a salmon for Lyra, who prepared a salad and sandwiches.
“Wow!” exclaimed Robert while cooking, “the smell of salmon being cooked is the same as ever, but now I find it disgusting. It’s such a strange sensation, I hate its smell but I remember that I liked it.”
“Same here. I tried to eat a daffodil on the way back and I had to spit it.”
“Those are toxic for you now. I think we should keep on cooking for each other until we learn what we can or cannot eat.”
“Agreed.”
Lunchtime arrived and they both stared at their meals. Robert began eating the salad first, which he enjoyed greatly. A few seconds later, Lyra ate a small piece of fish.
“This... is... delicious!” she exclaimed, and she continued eating with care, as Robert had warned her about the bones.
They spent the rest of the day practicing with their new bodies, but always on guard against the black pony-like insects. That night, bizarre events transpired.
“You won’t believe this.”
“Believe what, Robert?”
“John’s luggage has tons of booze!”
“What is booze?”
“Alcoholic beverages.”
“Like cider?”
“Not at all... Everclear?! This is very strong stuff. I guess transhumans need higher quantities of alcohol to get drunk... Hm... I wonder...” a glint of mischief appeared in his eyes. “Lyra, it’s time to find out who can drink more: humans or ponies.”
And so, they got drunk. So drunk that they didn’t notice any change in their alcohol tolerance.
“You know, Robert? *hic* You are pretty cute now that you are a... a... horned pony.”
“Well, you are the prettiest human in Equestria!”
“You tell the same to all the humans in... Hold on a second...”
They exploded in laughter and took another shot of Everclear. That was the last thing Robert remembered of that night.
Robert woke up to one of the worst hangover he had ever suffered.
“Just like college’s days” he muttered to himself.
He felt warmness between his leg and noticed that he was hugging Lyra.
‘No. We did not do THAT... Right?’ he thought with a mix of fear and curiosity. ‘There’s no way it would work, it would be easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle.’
Then he realized that he was being hugged, too. Slowly, very slowly, he lowered his gaze and saw a hole-ridden, black and chitinous foreleg hugging him. He turned around and found himself face to face with the creature, its blue eyes fully awake and its fangs exposed in a grin.
“Hi there, hot stuff,” it said.
They both stared at each other, not even blinking.
“Weird,” it continued, “all the ponies I have met are freaking out by this point. Well, I better leave now before the others start missing me.”
The creature rose and prepared to take off.
“Wait!” exclaimed Robert, “what are you and what did just happen?”
“I’m a changeling. The rest is better left unsaid,” its translucent wings buzzed as he flew out the cave, “thanks for the dinner!” it shouted as it disappeared in the woods.
Ten minutes later, Robert came out of his stupor.
“That never happened. There was only two of us and we just slept. Nothing else happened. Nothing. At. All.”
Lyra woke up several minutes later.
“Oooooooh, my head,” she complained.
They spent three days without further incidents since then. Lyra embraced her omnivore diet, while Robert discovered the wide variety of vegetables that had become edible for him. Other than that, those days were rather monotonous, as they spent most of their time practicing near the cave. But on the night of the fourth day, a few hours before the sunrise, the sound of the machine gun opening fire woke them up. In a couple of seconds they were both aiming at the entrance with their rifles. The machine gun ran out of ammo and a tense silence ensued. They saw saw a few branches as thick as his legs being pulled out of sight by an unseen creature over the cave entrance.
“Shit, they used a decoy. It must be those flying creatures,” muttered Robert, then he shouted, “STAY AWAY OR WE WILL ATTACK!”
They heard the flapping of leathery wings instead of the buzzing of changelings, and suddenly three dark forms charged in, too fast for Lyra and Robert to react in time. Robert found himself pinned down by a strange pony, similar to a pegasus but with bat-like wings, vertical pupils and a more aggressive look. The stress weakened his magic, so when he fired he hit the batpony’s leg instead of the head, forcing it to fly to avoid being shot again. He quickly turned and found Lyra protecting her head from another pony’s hooves while more batponies came in. He forced them to cover with his weapon while he charged the one that was attacking Lyra. Robert tried to impale the other pony with his horn, but that proved to be a mistake, as the sudden impact against the armor stopped his magic and stunned both ponies. Lyra took that chance to stab the pony in the neck, which was not covered by the armor. Before any of them could get up, the remaining ponies surrounded them and attacked at the same time. Robert tried to cover his head with his forelegs, but it only blocked a few of the impacts. When he felt his jaw being broken by a kick he was sure that he was going to die, but suddenly everything stopped, including the pain he was feeling. He tried to move, but he discovered that he could only breathe and move his eyes. The other ponies were in the same predicament, some of them floating mid-air.
“Jeez, that was close,” a voice Robert recognized said behind him.
‘Discord?!’ he thought.
“I can’t believe she really ordered you to kill these two,” Discord continued, its body floating between them, no longer trapped in stone, “I don’t turn ponies into stone, but I can’t let you go freely, can I? After all, you tried to kill my two friends! What should I do? Oh, I know! You are the lunar guards, so you are going to guard the MOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOONAAA!!!” A golden light surrounded the batponies and they disappeared. Discord scratched the side of his head.
“Luna created an atmosphere for the Moon, right?” he shrugged, “now, you two look like you need some fixing...”
Discord snapped his eagle claw and Lyra and Robert were instantly healed. They realized that they were also free to move again.
“Robert, what’s going on?!” asked Lyra, “Please tell me he is NOT the spirit who’s helping us.”
“Save the emotional traumas for later, we have to move before Celestia and Luna come here,” Discord said, grabbing them both.
Lyra tried to struggle, but Discord just snapped his claws again and they were thrown into a spinning world of confusing images.
“What are you doing?!” shouted Robert.
“Randomly teleporting so it takes them a lot of time to find us!” the draconequus shouted.
Suddenly, they were in a sunny tropical beach, along with most of the objects in the cave. Discord waited until both Lyra and Robert recovered. She just stared at the creature while Robert spoke.
“Why are you free?” asked Robert.
Discord pointed at his fang, which had returned to its original place.
“This little guy has been feeding me with the chaos around you since you left. That is a LOT of chaos. Enough for me to break free with some power. I would have waited a few months more to recover all my strength, but the lunar guard attacked you, forcing me to leave most of it behind.”
“Robert, do you realize you have released Equestria’s worst enemy?” asked Lyra, white-faced.
“Uh... I can explain?”
Something clicked in her mind, and she curled up into fetal position.
“What’s wrong with me?” she muttered to herself, “I was happy in Ponyville, and since I left I have killed creatures and ponies, the Royal Sisters want me dead and I’ve released Discord.”
“We should give her some margin,” said Discord.
He took Robert in his arms and flew until Lyra was too far away to hear them.
“We’re in trouble,” Discord stated, “I can’t defeat the princesses like this, and I won’t be able to hide you two from them for long. I have no more get out of jail free cards, short of unleashing the evils of Tartarus,” when he said that, his face changed between a dark frown and a happy grin a few times, until settling in a frown, “nah, doing that would only make it worse.”
“Can’t we reason with them?” That made Discord laugh while rolling on the sand for a few seconds.
“Luna might even listen to you, but Celestia will attack you the second she sees you.”
“So what do we do?”
“I’m thinking. You should try to comfort your girlfriend, if she doesn’t hate you already for helping me.”
The draconequus flew up to a cloud to think, leaving Robert alone. When he approached Lyra, she turned her back on him.
“I’m mad at you.”
“I didn’t know he would break free.”
“You never told me HE was the one helping you. That changes everything, you lied to me.”
“Yes, I know I did and I know I shouldn’t have. I’m very sorry, but he’s the only one who can help us.”
“Help us? He only used you to escape!”
“Then why did he save us from the lunar guards?”
She turned again, showing Robert her tear ridden face.
“Because that’s what he does! He is the spirit of chaos, he tricks, lies and manipulates. I am sure that everything he’s doing for us is actually part of his evil plan to...” her eyes dilated, “Oh no, oh nononononono.”
“What?!”
“T-The baby! He must have done something! WHAT HAVE YOU PUT INSIDE OF ME!” She started crying with desperation.
“Lyra, please calm down. I promise you, I won’t let anyone hurt you,” he said as he tried to touch her.
She pulled back at first, but soon her cries were reduced to whimpers and she let Robert hug her with his forelegs.
“It’s okay, we will find a solution to this,” he said to tranquilize her, “and if we get caught we will say we were hypnotised by Discord and forced to do all of this. They may buy it.”
“I can’t believe the Princesses want us dead, they are always so nice and kind in public. Who would believe that they can order their guards to kill just because they want to.”
“In public... In public! That’s it! You gave me the craziest idea, and it might even work! Discord, come here!” he shouted.
The draconequus appeared in front of them, grinning.
“What?”
“I’ve got a plan.”
((AN: Funny fact, here at Spain Action Man was more popular and had more toys than the G.I. Joes until they made that movie.))
