Xenophilia: Further tales.

by TheQuietMan

33: If you follow me we'll put our differences aside (Xenophoolia part 1of6) (MMC)

Xenophoolia - A trilogy in six parts.

Part 1of6 - “If you follow me we'll put our differences aside.”
Part 2of6 - “But I look a little closer and it starts to feel familiar too.”
Part 3of6 - “I'm just like you and you're just like me.”
Part 4of6 - “Everything is turned around, this crazy world is upside-down.”
Part 5of6 - “Helped me to see all the possibilities.”
Part 6of6 - “I couldn't see what was right there in front of me.”

The day was just starting to wind down as Lero finally made his way home for the evening.

Shifting his tool bag from one shoulder to the other, he rubbed a thumb against his brow, hoping against hope that it would do something to drive away some of this killer headache that had been dogging him for days now.

It didn’t.

Business had picked up quite dramatically since Quickfix’s ‘accident’ the winter before last and it was on days like this that Equestria’s sole human really wished he had an assistant or apprentice to help him out with his ‘handyman’ job.

Yeah, an apprentice would be great. Or even a real, honest-to-goodness workshop of his own, somewhere he could work when the weather was bad without taking over either the kitchen table or big chunks of Twilight’s basement laboratory.

Not for the first time Lero pondered buying the now disused mechanic’s workshop on the other side of town and asking RD and Lyra to drag it over beside to his house on Zweibrucker Street. Now that they had four adults living in his little house pretty much full-time they could certainly do with the extra room it would bring, and give him somewhere out of the way in which to work.

As an added bonus it would give him a place to store what was becoming an impressive collection of tools. He still wasn’t sure how Twi had managed to ‘accidently’ enchant one of the screwdrivers he’d idly left on a countertop but even now, months later, it still did weird things to anything not made out of wood. On the other hand though it was miles better at picking locks than a handful of hairpins anyday so he couldn't complain too much.

The space, to be honest, would be something of a godsend. As much as RD insisted - and she did quite regularly - that her cloudhouse was totally safe, both Lero and Lyra repeatedly insisted they’d feel a whole lot better with something a tad more substantial than solidified clouds under their feet... hooves... whatever. Lyra claimed it was an earth pony thing, that as a tribe they just didn’t feel comfortable with any real distance between their hooves and good old dirt and mud, and on this Lero found he had to agree.

And - as if he needed any more incentive at this point - if he did buy Quickfix’s old place then young Scootaloo would benefit from the money from the sale. Even if she couldn’t touch it until she was old enough to leave the orphanage in a few years, it’d easily cover a few years of higher education if she wanted it or even go some way to setting her up with a place of her own.

It was a shame about the kid, really, it was; orphaned at such a young age, still weak when it came to flying and even now, as she approached her fourteenth birthday, still blank on the ol’ flank.

Poor kid, if only there was more we could do for her.

But, not like there’s anything I can do to help anyone get their cutie marks.

“I fell into a burning ring of fire, I went down, down, down as the flames went higher,” Lero sang idly to himself without even realising it as he turned the corner into the town square, “and it burns, burns, burns, the ring of fire, the ring of fire.”

As it had so many times in the last couple of days, the headache hit him again like an unexpected two by four to the skull, rocking him on his feet as he struggled to stay upright.

Between bouts of nausea and shaking vision, Lero spotted an empty table outside a nearby cafe, and quickly — or as quickly as he could manage — shuffled over towards it. Slumping his ass onto the oversized toadstool, he let his toolbag fall to the floor as he leant forward, letting his face fall into his palms, trying to massage the pain away with his fingertips. It didn’t work.

It never bloody works.

Dr Chart over at Ponyville General was at a loss as to what these sudden headaches the human had been suffering could entail, attributing them to stress for want of a better cause, something Lero would readily admit he was having more than his fair share of this week.

It had all started the night after the big party over at Sweet Apple Acres. Twilight had been virtually chomping at the bit all throughout the party to get back to the library, just so she could get her nose back into some ‘priority’ research that she’d accidentally overlooked some time before. Eventually she’d skipped out - both figuratively and literally - well before the end of the party, leaving her herdmates to head on home without her. The next morning however she’d burst into the house, shouting and screaming and getting herself into a complete tizzy about how she’d ‘ruined everything’ and how she ‘had to keep her distance’ and so on before hiding under the bed and refusing to come out.

Their delightful little bookworm had always been a bit... highly strung, but it seemed that everything their herd had tried on that morning to calm her down had only made her worse. Eventually it had got to the point where the lavender unicorn had fled back to the library and barricaded herself inside her lab. Eventually RD had had enough and threatened to drag her fellow unicorn home by the horn, which had almost erupted into a fight. Unfortunately Lero had been too slow - and much too headachey - to do his stallionly duty and step in between the two unicorns, giving Twilight time to telekinetically toss her herdmates out on their ears and magically seal the library’s doors.

Come on, Twi, how can we help you if you won’t even talk to us?

RD, of course, hadn’t taken it at all well, and it looked like her work was starting to suffer because of it. By now it had got to the point where she couldn’t even manage to keep a single raincloud under control for more than five minutes. It was a good thing she’d spent years developing one of the most competent weather crews in all of Equestria as she’d at least been able to temporarily pass the reins over to Cloud Kicker and Blossomforth, promising to attempt not even a single stitch of weather-work until she got her head straight again, for which poor Time Turner and BonBon - and their extremely sunburnt flanks - were eternally grateful.

Lyra had taken it upon herself to try and talk some sense into their erstwhile herdmate, planting herself outside of the library’s front door for hours on end, just trying to get Twilight to come out and talk. Whether it was down to the earth pony’s natural reservoir of patience, or the many years of training in the art of Shattered Stone, no pony knew. Either way, she was probably still there right now.

The only time Lero had ever seen his super-sedate mare lose her cool was during the last few weeks running up to their herd’s public wedding a few months back. That complete di... tool Prince Blueblood had been complaining - yet again - about whatever it was that had put his snout out of joint about the whole thing that particular day. He’d made yet another stupid comment about how two of the nation’s most eligible unicorn bachelorettes were throwing away their heritage by marrying a mere earth pony and a monkey.

If the ‘earth pony’ jibe hadn’t already had Lyra’s jimmies rustled to breaking point then the ‘monkey’ line had pushed her right over the edge, and the only thing that had stopped her from throwing her drink over the arrogant tosser and then giving him the dressing down of his life was the fact that Rare Deluge had beaten her to it.

Prince Blueblood had learnt a valuable lesson that day, mainly that one should never insult earth ponies in front of a unicorn element bearer without first checking which tribe her own father hailed from. While it was true that Lero’s fabulous weathermare wife could accomplish many extraordinary magnificent feats, holding back when some idiot insulted her friends or family just wasn’t one of them.

On the upside, not only did Magnum have a fantastic story to tell about how his daughter had defended the nobility of earth ponies everywhere but the Foal Free Press had also published a full colour picture of the event in that day’s late edition. Word on the street was that it was their best ever selling edition.

Rocking back and forth on the edge of the toadstool table for a moment - and completely oblivious to the nervous looking waiter slowly edging his way closer and closer to the human’s side - Lero was glad to feel the headache subside, even if it was only by a tiny amount. The slightly decreased throbbing wasn’t helped though by a sudden flash of light, and what sounded like an associated crack of thunder, coming from the other side of the town square.

As the human looked up, trying to find the source of the noise - and praying that it wasn’t RD letting loose with another ‘teeny-weeny little light shower’ gone badly wrong... again - Lero was momentarily blinded by another flash and accompanying bang. As he instinctively moved a hand to defend his eyes, blinking to clear the blotches that now danced in his vision, a third flash and bang assailed his senses as a large, fast-moving metal chariot appeared directly above the town square’s large water feature.

Plummeting to the ground and bouncing once, twice, three times, the hurtling carriage slid to a shuddering halt a scant few feet from where Lero sat. In the pair of small trenches the oddly wheelless conveyance had left carved in the ground behind it twin trails of flames flickered. As the human watched, the strips of fire turned into two long clouds of small pink and red butterflies which then flew off into the otherwise clear sky.

Oh no, please, tell me it isn’t...

A head made up of mismatched features came into view as a figure jumped from the chariot, confirming Lero’s worst fears, that HE was here.

Oh crap... It is.

Bounding his way across the dirt towards him - dressed in an odd ensemble of tan labcoat, a bright red Hawaiian shirt, hi-top lace-up basketball sneakers and a pair of wrap-around silver reflective sunglasses - was the one creature in Equestria that Lero would freely admit he didn't like one little bit, the one being that actively annoyed the usually mild-mannered human to the point of irritation.

Discord.

“Lero, my boy!” the chaos god cried, clapping both a paw and a claw onto the human’s weary shoulders, “Good to see you. You're just the fellow biped I was looking for.”

“Oh great, it’s you. It’s been a long time... not long enough though,” Lero sighed. “How have you been? I've been really busy not missing you. You know, after the last time you messed everything up for us... So, nice seeing you, it's been fun. Don't come back.”

Shrugging off Discord’s... hands? Let’s go with ‘appendages,’ shall we? Lero lifted himself from his impromptu chair and started to walk away.

“Oh, come now,” Discord called after him, “surely you can’t still be sore over our last little adventure?”

Lero stopped in his tracks before turning slowly and jabbing a finger in Discord’s direction, which, as the chaos god had floated along the ground after him, meant that the human actually poked him square in the nose. Lero tried to ignore the small honking noise that the finger-on-snout contact caused.

“Sore?” Lero seethed, “You turned me into some kind of super-evolved dog-type werewolfy thing.” He poked Discord in the nose again for good measure, which this time elicited a loud ‘quack’ that in any other situation would have been funny. Today, however, Lero was in no mood for jokes.

“Canis sapien actually. Quite a clever social lesson, I thought.” Discord pulled a rubber duck from his nose, stared at it like somehow it was responsible for Lero’s bad mood and then casually tossed it over his shoulder where it promptly turned into a real duck and flew away.

“Clever?” Lero threw his hands in the air, “I had fur and fangs and claws and... things. I ended up sleeping all day, howling at the moon, chasing chariots and...” awkwardly he used three fingers to scratch a sudden itch behind his left ear, “...stuff. Ponies were terrified of me! The foals were petrified!”

“Really?” Discord raised an eyebrow, which in turn raised its own eyebrow and so on, “I thought the little ones took to you quite well. Must have been some other happily screaming youngsters riding all over town on your big furry back then... hmm? And giving you belly rubs?” Twisting the top of his body, Discord tied his torso in knots as his eyes - literally - roamed all over the town square. They were just in time to catch sight of an eagle flying past carrying a somewhat disappointed-looking duck in its talons.

“By the way, where are those delightful little troublemakers?” Discord asked as a snap of his bear paw fingers turned a smug looking eagle into a startled-looking squirrel which quickly plummeted - fowl-based cargo and all - towards the ground. “I haven’t seen my Cutie Mark Cohorts in aaaaages! We really must catch up.”

“You leave them out of it,” Lero demanded, once again poking the chaos god in the nose, though this time being rather surprised by both the lack of sound effect and the fact that he’d already started to expect one. “They’ve got enough trouble to deal with without you corrupting them as well.”

“Moi?” Batting away Lero’s hand, Discord put on his best display of innocence, which nopony ever ever ever fell for, so one had to wonder why he even tried. “Oh please, I couldn't corrupt those three delightful little chaos-neutrals if I tried. And anyway, you have to admit that once I changed you from a hyper-evolved wolf back to your usual... semi-evolved monkey-”

“I’m an ape!” Lero shouted, really wishing by now that Discord would just... hop off.

“-yes, yes. You just keep telling yourself that, deary,” Discord grinned. “Anyway, ever since I changed you back, I notice you’ve had to deal with a lot less in the way of negative reactions to your tree-climbing, lice-eating, poop-flinging heritage. Why, I bet now that Mister Wolfie’s gone, they’re just as pleased as punch to have stinky old monkey boy back. I was just trying to help, you see.”

With fire in his eyes, Lero stepped up to the draconequus, a feat that not many in their right mind would dare try. Currently though, Lero’s head - and the associated aching which was making a steady comeback - just didn't give two flying figs about how dangerous a riled up chaos god could be.

“You. Gave. Me. Fleas!” the human growled, before turning on his heel and stomping away.

As the human drew level with Discord’s abandoned chariot-

What do Equestria’s nutters have against wheels anyway?

-a mini-Discord draped himself around Lero’s shoulders before settling down for the ride.

“Now, now. Don’t be like that.” Mini-Discord squeaked, “We’re still friends, aren’t we?”

“No, you're probably thinking of some other hairless ape. Last time I checked, the only friend you had was Rainbow.” Lero scowled at his miniscule passenger. “Though as you didn’t even bother to turn up for her petitioning last week, I’m not even taking bets on that still being true either.”

“Rainbow?” Mini-Discord squeaked in puzzlement, “Oh, yes, she’s playing Fluttershy in this world. Many apologies, I’ve been busy. But that’s why I’m here now... You really need to come with me.”

Staring at the tiny chaos god, Lero stopped in his tracks.

“Go with you? I’m not going anywhere with you.” Lero stated, “The only one doing any ‘going’ around here is you, and if you could hurry up about it that’d be wonderful. ‘K, thanks, bye.”

As Lero was talking to the miniscule copy of Discord, the full size version had magicked himself up a metal trashcan from somewhere and had started rummaging through it. In turn he pulled out a number of objects which he scrutinised carefully before tossing each one into the back of his chariot. First out was a kazoo, then a cape that looked suspiciously like it belonged to one of the CMC, after which came a Rubik’s cube, the headset from a games console entangled around a bunch of bananas, a large map that had been folded into a hat and a potato which squeaked at him in a high-pitched voice.

“I’m a potato!” it cried.

“Oh, do be quiet.” Large Discord snapped as he tossed it into the cart.

“I don’t hate you,” came the plaintive response as the lone tuber disappeared under the pile of assorted junk.

Next came a large monkey wrench wrapped in a coil of wire, after that a bright blue apple, a teapot spewing cotton candy clouds, a headband with a pair of cat ears stitched onto it, a safari shirt and pith helmet, a judge’s gavel, a canoe paddle, a DVD, a broken light bulb and a rubber duckie. All were thrown into the back of the cart except for the light bulb, which Discord just dropped to the floor, his tail flicking it across the town square like a batter hoping for a home run. As soon as the bulb hit the ground, it span on its metal cap like a drill, burrowing into the dirt-packed street where, after a few seconds of huffing and puffing, it had quickly grown into a full sized set of traffic lights.

“Aha, just what I need to stop da-brain from going ka-boom,“ Discord triumphantly held aloft a roll of tinfoil which he quickly stuffed into the inside pocket of his brown lab coat. He then stuffed the entire trash can into the same pocket, leaving not a single bulge in the thin coat’s tastefully tailored lining.

“You're not going away are you?” Lero sighed. He held his hand to his face for a moment. “Okay, I’ll bite. What do you want this time?”

“Oh, not much. Just one teeny, tiny little favour.”

Lifting his sunglasses, the full-sized Discord gave a little sheepish expression - with actual ‘baaaing’ noises coming from somewhere, which wasn’t helping his case one bit - as he held out a pair of claws barely a horn’s width apart.

“Which is?”

“To come with me. Things are very very wrong around here, my dear monkey-”

Lero’s eye twitched.

“-and there’s no point just telling you about it, as your poor little brain would, at best, just block out everything I say-”

“What a shame,” the human deadpanned.

“Believe me, you really need to hear this,” Mini-Discord squeaked, “Things have to change... or rather, they have to change back. You can’t carry on like this. You must have felt it by now, you can’t be that clueless, surely?”

“Felt what?” Lero asked.

“The wrongness, dear boy,” Large-Discord added. “The feeling that world isn’t the way it’s supposed to be; the malaise, the being down in the dumps, the doldrums, the despair, disquiet, discomfort, depression-”

“Discord!” the human growled. “Get to the point, I’m in no mood for this.”

“Indeed you aren’t, and that’s part of the problem. Even if you don’t know why, you’ll have been grouchy and aggressive and generally not-at-all yourself these last few days, am I wrong? Look, you need to come with me now or risk being stuck like this forever.”

Lero had to admit that Discord had a point. He’d been in a foul mood these last few days and he’d had absolutely no idea why... apart from the random killer headaches, of course. He’d initially thought that it had to do with Twilight locking herself away in the library, or the way RD’s job hadn’t been going so well the last few days, or the way that he’d been going about his handyman job recently feeling like he was missing a pair of hands.

Whatever it was that was creating this feeling of malaise, it was affecting the whole herd, that was true. Even the ever sardonic and generally unflappable Lyra had been getting a bit rough around the edges these last few days.

“Why?” Lero eyed the chaos god suspiciously, “What’s wrong with me?”

“Nothing. That’s just it.“ Discord hopped from foot to mismatched foot, “It’s not you, not directly. It’s your wives, Lero, something’s got to be done about your wives.”

“My wives? What’s wrong with my wives?”

“Nothing, except for the fact that they’re the wrong ones!”

“What do you mean, the wrong ones?”

“I mean you're supposed to be married to Rainbow and Lyra.”

As Lero watched, Discord recoloured himself a cerulean blue while his mane and tail striped itself with all the colours of the rainbow.

“Rainbow? But she’s Big Mac’s mare.” Lero snorted. Discord had almost had him for second there but this was just ridiculous. “Look, I know they’re mostly polygamous and stuff around here and I can’t say it hasn’t been brought up before, but me and Mac, I know it might be a bit old fashioned or ‘traditional’,” Lero used two fingers on each hand to mime air-quotes in a way that still confused most ponies,“but we’re both kinda one-stallion-to-a-herd guys, thanks very much.”

Pausing for a moment, Lero added, “and hang on a second, I am married to Lyra.”

“No, not that one, the other one...” Discord’s body rippled as the blue faded away to be replaced with aquamarine, his mane fading to the same shade of green but with white stripes, “Lyra Heartstrings, the unicorn.”

“Miss Heartstrings?” Lero laughed. “The mailmare with the bad case of strabismus? She’s cute and all but I’m pretty sure we’re not married. It’s the kind of thing I’d remember.”

“That’s just it, you don't remember.” Discord clapped paw and claw against the human’s shoulders as he reverted to his normal colouration, “Deep down, your brain knows that there’s something wrong and is trying to fight it. But unlike in some other realities it just can’t win this one on its own, not without some help from moi, kindhearted thing that I am.”

A teeny tiny Discord slithered its way out from within one of Lero’s ear canals much to both Lero and Mini-Discord’s surprise.

“Not before it starts to dribble out of your funny-looking ears anyway.” Teeny-Tiny-Discord squealed as Mini-Discord gave it the death-glare to end all death-glares.

“Look, just come with me if you want to live... you know, happily ever after and all that kind of nonsense,“ Large-Discord said, releasing the human’s shoulders and turning to face a freestanding door that had silently appeared in the street behind him.

As the chaos god threw open the door, Lero could see that instead of showing the town square behind it, the door led to what some long suppressed gathering of synapses at the back of his brain were telling him was a dimensional portal.

Unfortunately, the same group of long forgotten neurons were screaming at him that dimensional portals were something any sensible human would get as far away from as soon as possible before something unspeakable tried to pull you through it.

Nonononono... get out of here, Lero, as fast as you can!

CAUTION! ACHTUNG! ABORT! RUN RUN RUN!

“I dunno where that goes,“ Lero started to back away from the doorway, his feet barely managing not to trip over each other in their haste to get away, “but there’s no way I am ever going through one of those ever again.”

“Trust me, “Discord said as he grabbed the human by the arm and threw him through the doorway, “It’s better than what’s in store for you if you don’t.”

As the chaos god followed the human’s rapidly receding screams through the portal, the door closed itself behind him before vanishing from existence.

Other than that, Ponyville was having quite a nice evening.

Author's Note:

Where will this lead? LIke Alice, you're just going to have to follow Lero down the rabbit hole to see where it goes.

Comments

[Chewierulz]

Not even joking, I refreshed and saw 6 new updates. Intrigued, I saw that they seemed to form either a cleverly concealed collaboration or story!
Now to read...

*AFTER READING*

Well, it definitely seems to be a collab! Characters and references from all over the Xenophilia Multiverse!
Some characters I don't know, but I guess I just need to read more of Further Tales.
As for the story itself, Discord messing with other alternate Divided Rainbow universes? Interesting...

The real question is which one of the authors came up with this idea and who put it all together?

[Kittamaru]

Er, wait... I'm confused - you mention Lyra and Earth Pony a couple times together - Lyra is a unicorn though?

Other than that, awesome as always!

EDIT - Nevermind, I forgot about the heritage heh

Double Edit - Wait, huh, what... d'oh.

I'm guessing this is tied into the whole Magical Mystery Malady thing?

[APS]

[mycarhasaMoustache]

Damn this is a cleaver blending of everything. Well done to everyone involved Nice work peeps

[Pvt PartyPooper]

so this is what those more cryptic chapters have been leading to. God damn this is exciting.

I enjoy the silly things you slipped in too, liked the nod to moonstuck. the lyrics from another song made me pause to snicker.

All in all interested to see where this all goes.

[BlueNinja]

“I don’t hate you,” came the plaintive response as the lone tuber disappeared under the pile of assorted junk.

“It’s not you, not directly. It’s your wives, Lero, something’s got to be done about your wives.”

Now you're making me picture Discord voiced by Christopher Lloyd.