Meta Gamer in Equestria: Odyssey

by reflective vagrant

Chapter 21. World of Loathing, Part 5.

The next morning I did my best to help Fluttershy along with the chores, knowing she had a full plate that day trying to find a new Senior RRE officer to take us on.

The animals surprised Fluttershy a little when they were cooperating with me properly, instead of simply putting up with me. Though it was still clearly harder for me to do each chore than it was with Fluttershy due to a sheer lack of experience and natural talent with the animals, with us both tackling them Fluttershy managed to leave about an hour earlier than expected to head into town for her daunting task.

That left me alone in the house to twiddle my thumbs after fetching the mail for the day. No, literally. A part of the speak with animals spell I knew actually involved me twiddling my thumbs at one point. Now that I had the approval of the animals, I wanted to see if I could talk to them. Sadly... its ability to mix with the amulet was... limited.

I had seen Fluttershy talk to the animals on multiple occasions, and she gave me permission to talk to Angel and one or two other "mild mannered" animals that wouldn't get offended when I told her I wanted to try this.

The good news was that I managed to get the amulet to work for communication coming in no problem, even though most of the gibberish managed to translate to "Treat!? Belly Rub!?" The bad news was that even when I pressed my amulet, my words couldn't survive the two step process of translating from English to Equestrian and then into animal. It was by sheer luck I managed to say "stop" in my rough facsimile of Equestrian and got the hyperactive seal pup to understand my commands and sit still.

But the bigger part of what made me realize my animal translation couldn't survive a two step process is when I absentmindedly asked Angel to hop on the table and he responded.

"Wait, you can hear me?" I asked in curiosity, leaning forward.

"Well yea!" Angel snickered at me, almost like he wasn't expecting me to understand, "You're speaking plain Equestrian, fish head!"

I stared at him blankly for a moment before snapping out of it. "Hey! What would Fluttershy say if she heard you calling me names!?"

He looked at me in sheer shock. "You can... You can understand me too? But mother is the only pony that knows how to understand me."

"Mother?" I commented with a bit of approving sarcasm. "You really do love her."

At this he quickly got angry, pressed his ears down, jumped up onto my lap, stared me backwards and got onto my chest. "Yes! More than you ever will!"

The bunny clearly wanted to look intimidating to me, but I just couldn't find myself particularly frightened of him.

Much to his dismay, I could only ask "How is it you can understand when the other animals can't, Angel?"

I saw him back up in frustration, and puffed up for another go at intimidating me, only to slowly look upwards with an look of dread growing on his face, then tumble down off of me when he lost his balance.

"That's because he's been awakened, druid." I heard a deathly cold voice call from behind me.

Turning around, I saw something I could only describe at that moment as a jigsaw puzzle nightmare come to life.

I could try to list the parts this creature was made of, but the yellow eyes that positively glowed with power as it stared at me was all I needed to know on sizing this thing up. I was at its total mercy, though it looked to not have any today. I seemed mesmerized by his gaze, despite the fear, and I couldn't look away.

Continuing in the same tone, the creature built up a sense of dread in me, almost as if it were a wall or prison being made brick by brick. "The bunny can understand you because it understands Equestrian. Many the animals of this world do have a bit of a heightened intelligence compared to other realms. It's still relatively rare, but some are even blessed with the ability to understand a language or two. That wicked little bunny is one of those cases. That little trinket Starlight made you works great for translating our words for you, but she had to pull a lot of strings and jump through a lot of hoops to make its outgoing abilities function at all. The spell it's built on simply wasn't designed for it. The end result is that its effects break down when anything else is added to it. Even a spell as harmonious as that ritual you were casting through the Animus Mundi can't link up to the outgoing side."

At this point my focus came back out from his eyes, and I found myself on the ceiling with a teacup in my hand. Oh, and I was upside down as he pored tea from a kettle upwards into my cup. And yes, I knew I was upside down because while I seemed to be... "grounded" to the ceiling along with the table and tea set, my firs were dangling towards the floor I was seeing at the top of my vision. I was so freaked out, I didn't even want to move. I didn't know what it would do.

Suddenly the creature's tone gave a quite insincere and overly dramatized host like courtesy. "I was so hoping Fluttershy would have the chance to introduce us soon, but sadly it seems she has her hooves full with the rather distasteful task of finding a new paper pusher for all this babysitting she's been giving you. So I decided to just take the initiative and introduce myself."

The creature took his own tea cup and clanked it against the one in my hand, then guzzled down the tea. The tea cup in his talon then promptly lost its reverse gravity and splashed on the floor as if it where a liquid, barely missing Angel as he dashed out of the way.

He stood 'up' and bowed dramatically. "I am the Purveyor of Pandemonium, Spirit of Chaos and Disharmony, begrudged ally to the princesses of Equestria-"

At this point he was clearly getting full of himself, building up suspense, "-and most of all, an old and dear friend to the lovely and kind hearted Fluttershy, Discord!"

He then looked up at me and spoke in a way that was as sincere as anything else he said, but somehow struck a cord inside me in a way I didn't like.

"Might I ask, ^Wh_at ⁱs _yo^ur _na^me?"

The hair on the back of my neck stood on end with one of the strongest good luck charms I'd had since I figured out how to know what kind of luck charms I had when I wake up each morning. In spite of my best efforts and my best luck trying to resist his magic, I found myself compelled to answer him.

"@#^$#*Moss" I blurted out with a sharp pain in my chest. It was like a burp coming up at the same moment you swallow some water, pushing right at the sides of esophagus with both things traveling through demanding the other get out of its way. That, except no burp at the end.

"Hmm... It seems you are bewitched after all. This has so many possibilities I'll have to look into. I'm sure we will meet again."

He snapped his talons and in a flash I found myself back where I was on the floor. I almost thought it was just a hallucination trip until I heard a voice coming from the teacup still in my hand.

"Oh, and while you might think the bunny isn't that scary," I saw his face in the reflection of the tea's surface. "I can promise that you will be begging for me to rip your heart out and eat it in front of you as you die with what I'll do to you if I ever find out you hurt Fluttershy again like you did in the forest."

He smirked and gave a final goodby in a menacingly sweet tone, "Have a nice day."

He then drank the tea in my cup from inside the reflection and was gone. It was a good ten minutes before I even dared move. I think I just sat there on the sofa for the rest of the time Fluttershy was out, staring at the empty cup.

* * *

When Fluttershy got home, she wasn't nearly as tired as I expected. I feared she would be because even with being so shaken, I didn't know if I would have been able to ask her what I was about to if she was.

"Fluttershy, do you know a spirit that calls himself Discord?"

She stopped in her tracks at that name, and we discussed much. I described the ordeal I went through with him and she told me about their history. She told me about how they met and how she was assigned to help reform him, which wound up being a part of what qualified her to become an RRE officer, how he continued to be a good friend and that she was still helping him learn how to get along with others.

"I hope he didn't rattle you too much. I was hoping to introduce you to him next week."

"To be honest, had I met him my first few weeks here, I probably wouldn't have made it. Just discovering..."

I looked at Fluttershy with a lump of shame in my throat. "The zebras and ponies of my home world are considered animals. Just discovering that they can talk here the same as any human almost broke me."

I hung my head down. "My home world works differently. If there is magic, it isn't common knowledge outside of stories and legends. Things like griffins, unicorns and pegasi are just myths. I hate to admit it, but not a day goes by were I don't at least ponder briefly on whether I've lost my mind."

Fluttershy gave an expression of mixed emotions when I finished.

"I'm sorry this has been so hard for you. I guess his chaotic nature would have scared you anyway. But I'm glad he didn't harm you. Come on, let's get you moving. Sitting around sulking isn't healthy. Come help me feed."

With this, we got up and went outside for the evening chores as Fluttershy continued.

"He seemed to be in fairly good control of himself, considering he knew you threw me back then. I'm going to have to scold him for not waiting, but I'll have to tell him I'm proud of him for handling it better than he's done in the past, provided he doesn't take it out on the invaders instead."

"Take it out on the invaders? What do you mean?"

"Discord is a spirit of chaos. Chaos can do good in a peaceful nation, but it is hard for him to do it without causing harm too. With the war, he has been allowed to use some of his old tricks to throw off enemy troopes and gather information for us. But we've asked him not to go too far with it, or he might undo all the progress he's made in changing his behavior. As bad as the war is, having him lose the progress he's made could be worse."

We managed to get to feeding bin for the meat eaters. I grabbed some fish for the ground based animals as Fluttershy opened the worms for the birds.

"Its the same reason Thorax and the Changelings aren't being asked to aid the war by fighting. They've only recently given up their old ways and are going through a phase of rediscovery. Asking them to fight could bring out the worst in them again. So they help in other ways."

With this she grabbed some worms and flew off to feed some of the birds.

I just managed to get the ferrets to take the fishes from my hands as I saw a few fillies come into the yard. I recognized the three that tried to approach me the other day with a fourth friend that had a little tiara on top of her head joining them. They strayed off the path to the cottage and came up to me eagerly, pen and notepad still in tow.

"Hey there! We heard you were one of the nice invaders."

"He's not an invader if he's nice! They say he just looks like them!"

"Is it true you're part fish? What's it like in the ocean?"

At this point, I changed gears from welcoming a few eager kids, to climbing onto the nearest object too high for them to follow.

"ladies, please," I pleaded as soon as I could press my amulet, "I'll be happy to try to answer some of your questions, but you need to calm down."

The fourth one with the tiara shouted, "Hey! I didn't bust you out of that fake sleepover my mom forced on us just to let you maul him! Give him some space. You're scaring him."

With this, the other three backed up and the other met me as I climbed back down.

"Sorry," the one with the tiara said.

"It's OK. Eager faces are a welcome change to what I normally get around here." I sat down on a nearby stump and tried to steady my breathing. "Just a little too much too fast."

The one with the tiara shook her head. "I mean sorry for what my mom did to you. She has a way of being mean and wants me to be just like her, but I hate being mean. It never got me any friends. So, sorry."

It looked like she wanted to cry, waiting for me to respond.

I felt a feeling in my chest that I had almost forgotten about. It had been so long since I had seen it. A normally unpleasant feeling, but one that was closer to normal than I had felt in a while, so it kinda felt good at the same time, if only a little. The bitter feeling of seeing someone feeling bad about themselves, empathy.

"Hey," I called to her as I knelt down.

She looked up meekly as I spoke to her. "We all have to live in the shadows of those that came before us. I'm not exactly proud of my..." I paused, deciding to fudge the technicalities a little, substituting another term for my race. "-my father. He wasn't the best person, and I shared a lot of those same traits that are a part of what made him bad. But I learned one thing that rings true to this day."

"I saw the bad in him and decided to learn from his mistakes early on. I still fear what sins I might commit on my own, but I know that I do not have to be trapped by my father's sins and I have the power to strive to be better than that if I choose to be. So I'm certain it can be the same with you and your mom."

Her eyes glimmered with an uncertainty as I smiled at her. "Apology accepted. Think nothing more of it."

The rest of that afternoon with the four fillies was filled with questions. Some were easy. Some were hard. Some were awkward, but I muddled through them. When I said I was running low on charges, the unicorn filly was willing to do her best to top me off again so they could finish up. I could tell it was hard for her, though. So I told her to stop and that I would work with whatever number of charges she did get me. Though I wasn't sure if it did get me any. I had no way of checking until I used them.

"So, you've never been to the ocean?"

"I've seen the ocean of my home world once in my life from a distance while traveling, or so I was told it was the ocean. But no. I've never been there."

"Huh... odd." The one with a bow in her hair piped in. "So, we've got everything for our report. Just one last question to add a little flare to our paper, if you're willing?"

"As always, I'll try but no promises."

The one with the horn took her turn. "So... what do you plan to ask for when you go to Miss Berrytwist's sentencing?"

I just stared at them in confusion.

"What?"

"You know, for the Astral Judgment?"

All of a sudden, memories flashed through my mind. I recalled hearing Starlight describing the regulations that kept Astral Judgement from being abused. "Finally, only the officer assuming responsibility of the prisoner may submit the form for Astral Judgement."

My mind then jumped forward to when I saw the head guard at the prison without her armor and something on her horn being called into the doctor's office, escorted by multiple armed guards. "Only the officer assuming responsibility."

My face must have went pale, because they asked if I felt alright.

"I'm sorry, but I can't answer. I have to go now."

With this I did a brief goodbye and practically dashed to the cottage.

I looked for the letter from the day before that Fluttershy had said was to me. I did my best to check and make sure it was the right one, double checking with the sign out front to see if it was my legal Equestrian name on it. Once I was as sure as I could get, I hurried to where Fluttershy was behind the cottage with the bear's shoulder rub session.

When she saw that it was important, I gave her the signal to finish and caught my breath. I knew better than to get the bear angry. Once that was over, however, I went right up to her.

"Miss Shy, if it's not too much bother, I need you to read this to me, now."

Author's Note:

Someone's been arrested for wronging you. Jeff Foxworthy misquote/meme: "Now that is information you need!"

for those wondering, what happened when Discord compelled him:

when a save against an effect (magical or otherwise) is needed, a creature must make a "saving throw" with a D20. Some beings have saves so high that even getting a max 20 on the role, which gives an auto success and critical damage for attacks, isn't always enough to land a saving throw. A stat modifier is needed to push past 20 and into higher numbers. (Which can be done with the right builds, but the protagonist's character doesn't have a strong enough build in the stat needed for this save. Discord is just that powerful.)

Comments

[Who cares]

Given the fact that Discord probably is at least at the level of a demi-god it would be pretty surprising if he succeeded even with the major luck boost it sounds like he got.

[reflective vagrant]

9143369
it's not so much a luck "boost" as it is a way of making sure his target performs on the high end of normal (or low end depending on what he has that day.), but yea. He did basically max out what his saving throw could be. Discord is pretty powerful in this universe.