Zzz...
Gah! Dios! Hijo de- @#$%!
Huff! Huff! OK, painkillers are kicking in...
Oh... nothing wakes you up like a busted rib. Well, there are plenty of things, but many involve sharp-slash-pointy things or massive organic failure.
Where was I? Oh, right, I had just succeeded my 'Trial by Orbital Friendship Cannon' and was about to go on to the less active, more talk-y stuff. What, thought I would just skip over it? No! I learned things about what sort of trouble I would face just for being me; it's waaaaay too important to skip over!
Back to the throne room.
"Sorry if I said... that." I apologized. "It's just that... something kept pushing me to speak my mind, which was suddenly filled with those words."
"D-don't be." Celestia said, still shaky. "Discord, too, kept complaining that his powers were hard to manipulate, that they fed on his subconscious, and then..."
"He stopped complaining." I made a guess, and Luna's sigh told me I was right.
Chaos lesson Número Uno: I'm going to be more impulsive since my new powers possess, while not self-consciousness nor awareness, a form of 'instinct' that'll push me to do things; restraining them too strongly and at the wrong moment causes 'leaks' were they do what I wish would happen but 'logical thought' says it would be bad to let happen.
Not restraining them is liable to make me go insane.
"Well, I have no intention of ending up like that. Princess, do you think you can call off the state of emergency? Maybe Twilight can help you write a speech or something."
Luna eyed me strangely, and I could guess why. "Look, princess, I am willing to cooperate, but I am going to need help. Among other things, I need to know what you know about humans; stories, myth, fact, fiction, anything you have. Please."
"Dude, can't you like, answer a few questions first?" Yup, Dash was still high. It couldn't have been too bad of a spell if the Lisa Frank treatment worked on me yet didn't get rid of it.
"If you're talking about the 'survival' thing, for me it basically means that now I'll survive by doing a little chaos magic or removing order, at least with small acts." I had to be really tactful with my explanations; I can't just say that they are screwing up the world with their magic!
Would be awfully inaccurate, too.
"The other is that ponies don't use as much chaos in their magic as they do order, and, coupled with other details about 'nature', the world is -as Discord said- 'rotting at the seams'."
That got a reaction. Pinkie's jaw dropped -up until that point she was uncharacteristically silent, then again, if her grandparents told her stories, she most likely heard stories about humans... those aren't exactly flattering.
"Princess. Emergency? Guards running about looking for Discord?" And that sent Celestia... ambling away with Twilight in tow. Dang, she was sad; implying that she just used Twilight at her own convenience really upset her.
"Great, I'm charged with the balance of nature and I can't even balance my emotions." I slumped on the floor, under one of the glass windows. "And the rest of the ponies avoid me like the plague because I'm human. I'm going to have a blast."
"Chill dude, it's alright." Boy, stoner Dash is cool, then again, she is Dash. "Humans are cool in my book."
This was met with a chorus of 'you can't be serious!' or 'Dashie! Did you forget the stories?' and similar.
"What stories?" Guess who asked that, go on.
Luna was... reluctant to enlighten me on the subject, thinking that I wouldn't appreciate the stories. Which I don't.
It has been a couple thousand years since the last confirmed event with a human in Equestria, whereas there have been reported instances of pony-human contact on isolated cases and 'Big Foot'-esque sightings. The first kind is the one we are going to pay attention.
Simply put, the humans in the stories are the scum of society. Serial killers, mad wizards, greedy conquerors and blood-crazed berserkers are the majority of Equestrian myths and legends. There are some where a human fights alongside the ponies, but those are to take some terrible revenge on another human.
My theory -and I explained as much to them after the fourth or so 'monster' comment- is that they got the overlord that was banished through a crack in time and space, the wizard whose experiments botched a teleport, demented psykers that messed their transfers pretty horribly... but that's not the only factor. See, if I close my eyes and try to think of home, I can see vague shapes; I discovered this trick by accident, when trying to explain that no, normal people aren't like that.
So I thought 'is there something in-between the worlds?' and closed my eyes. Short answer would be 'yes'.
I got a headache just looking at it.
Me.
I was rebuilt for this stuff, and it gave me a headache.
So! If you are flung through the Pathways without being actually in them and without protection, it's likely that you will go through the Collective Unconscious (relatively safe as long as you don't get anywhere near nightmares) or the chaos of the physical Collective (which is bad) or the Void (which is worse).
I spent five of their minutes looking at stuff beyond, I spent an indeterminable amount of my time trying to see how screwed you'd be if you went there unprotected.
Yeah, I speculated that if you are unlucky and awake and your sense of self is neither super-strong nor nigh-disposable... your sanity and heart are going to be eroded into nothing. That, or you are going to be reduced to a few fundamental parts of your personality, essentially becoming a parody/exaggeration of yourself. Discord... didn't need to knock me out, since he could protect me just fine on his own and he was following a Pathway, he did it to be a jerk.
Luna admits this theory of mine made sense. And Dash, who showed a similar disdain for the pony stories, said it explains the griffin stories.
I saw a shape, something out there -not human, wrong shape- be eaten by another. I figured it was enough peering at the vast expanse of mishmashes and mingling ideas leaked from the different realities.
I took a little glass of magic to see if it did something, and I felt better, princess Luna said the powers of Harmony made me 'reassert (myself) into this reality, or something'.
Back to the stories. There is probably not a single griffin kid that doesn't hear stories about humans at some point, but theirs are radically different. Dash knew a couple of tales, possibly because Gilda mentioned them to her and she looked into them by herself later.
Seems like they got the other end of the spectrum: The wizard that threw himself into the rift to seal it from 'the other side', the warrior who tackled the Big Bad into the big swirling portal of doom he intended to use to summon eldritch horrors from beyond, the psychic that held together the decaying Pathway while the rest of the party made its way through. These guys have heroic ballads written for them.
The other ponies were still a little wary of me, however.
I knew how to deal with it.
To make the ponies stop worrying, since they have been doing so for like... three-maybe-four hours already, I asked. "Hey, Pinkie, is your Pinkie Sense telling you I'm scary?"
She began to think deeply, scrunching her face adorably and stroking her chin. Her tongue poked out from between her lips as she... I dunno, listened to whatever it is that governs the Pinkie sense.
Then she tackled me with enough force to make any gym teacher gape and proclaim her God's gift to Football. Lucky for me I had a few powers of my own, so I just angled myself from the impact, then righted back up -kinda like Michael Jackson would (only backwards instead of forward). She hugged me.
She smells of sugar, no surprise there, and she's soft and cuddly to a degree. She is an Earth pony, and one that is very, very active at that, so there is quite a bit of muscle underneath the fluffy coat of fuzz.
I was then subjected to an original Pinkie Pie rant (TM). So I just hugged her some more to shut her up.
I... might have gotten carried away for a bit and held her there for a while. Still, getting to hug a pony made my worries just... sort of... melt away. I knew then that being around ponies would be a significant part of the method to help me keep my new power under control.
Of course, Dash (now sober) asked the question that could shatter perceptions of reality. "How do you know about the Pinkie Sense?"
I was prepared, of course.
"Well, it seems that there are many more events that open those inter-dimensional 'Pathways' I spoke of, only that nothing physical crosses them. Ideas and images do, and people 'catch' them and attribute it merely to an active imagination. Hence, we have a show- basically, stories you see like in a movie- about things that happen here in Equestria." I said, carefully ignoring the equally-valid possibility of 'their imagination gave birth to your world, backstory and all, by sheer virtue of the incredibly random things I saw in the Collective as well as the magic found there'.
I spoke a little about the show, just enough to let them know they have legions of fans (Fluttershy nearly fainted, but I managed to assure her that she's well-loved and that her kindness is like a beautiful light that has touched thousands of human hearts and inspired them to better themselves).
Might as well say what I told the others... Dash's bravery and confidence, as well as her loyalty to her friends, not to mention 'awesomeness' won her many fans. Pinkie's energy and positivism is nigh-literally infectious, and her songs meet their goal with tremendous success - she spreads smiles left and right. Rarity's regal attitude and ability to treat everyone as she wishes to be treated herself has men praising her the world over. Applejack's down-to-earth personality and warm disposition earned her her own legion. Twilight (still gone) has that adorable dork charm to her, and she's one of my personal favorites.
And Luna... she was touched when I told her that she has had the sympathy of the fandom since day one (The Mare in the Moon) and that there are those who would want nothing more than give her a hug and their friendship. Same for Celestia.
Oh, and I did just that, by the way. Her mane feels like hair underwater, rippling and waving around my hand, and her stars tickle slightly. She smells of exotic oils, mostly lavender, and probably applied after each bath she takes and the reason her coat is so smooth.
I had to hide for a bit when one of the guards brought news of the cancelled search, and that there was going to be a public speech the following day concerning the situation.
Celestia and Twilight came back, and we would relay what we learned of each other. Oh, and I learned a couple more bits about how to handle my new magic without harming myself or others.
If you excuse me for a moment, I need some breakfast.