The following is a summary of Dropping In, the story upon which this is based, and also written by me. If you want a better summary, go read it. This summary doesn't do either story justice, though I do urge you to read on. If you've read Dropping In beforehand, go to chapter one. This story's a multple crossover, just to let you know. Each part after the first starts with a synopsis of the last one, so if you don't enjoy a particular crossover, the basic events of that part of the story are summarized for you, the reader, so you can skip it. Though, again, if you want a better summary, read this story in its entirety. It'd be much appreciated if you'd leave any thoughts about this story, especially the negatives; I need more negative feedback.

Previously...

I'm Zach, and a brony, and a high school student. Mostly normal stuff, I'm nothing special. There's something I'll tell you. I'll also say that I have been to Equestria. In fact, I can go there whenever I want. I can go anywhere I want. No, that'd be inaccurate. It'd be more accurate to say that I can move from universe to universe. I don't like using this power very much, afraid of what might happen to me if I use it too much, or end up in the wrong place, or at the wrong time. So I only use it sparingly for going and coming back from Equestria. How did I get this power? Why am I, of all people, in possession of an Element of Harmony or... something? I'll tell you all about it. Well, briefly.

I fell. It was a fall, a drop. I landed on Sweet Apple Acres. What had I been doing? Walking home from school, of all things. Luck of the draw, I supposed. It hurt, as one can well imagine. I'd dismissed it as a dream, and slept under an apple tree for a while... until Applejack asked me to leave the property, as could only be expected of her--it was rude to sleep on someone else's property, after all. From there, my first--and apparently not final--adventure began. It was a big one, and definitely not one of the mundane things that would usually happen to someone like me. Again, luck of the draw. So I met all of the Mane Six, and Twilight volunteered to help me get home. I was introduced to Ponyville, as it was, in all of its fictional glory. Then I went back to Twilight's house.

The entire issue was far larger than just me being stuck in another universe, as we found. I was merely one of the billions at risk. What Twilight had found was a text on magical barriers, specifically, the ones keeping my universe and that of Equestria. What was in that book were details of a great tragedy, the destruction of entire universes--mine or theirs--unless I could stop it. Before Celestia and Luna could banish him the first time, Discord used his powers to disrupt the magical barrier, and it was starting to fail now. What did I have to do? I had to be heroic, that's all I had to be to fix it. There lay the problem. I wasn't a hero, I was a fourteen-year-old brony with not a marketable skill to speak of. So, the Mane Six became my allies. This was in part because they were already heroes, and that I'd need help--a lot of it--and another part that was more obvious; if we failed, everything would be gone. We travelled to Canterlot the next day so we could present the dangers to Celestia in person.

Canterlot, to our surprise, had already had a human visitor. Not a very friendly one, though, not at all. His first interaction with the citizens of Equestria was shooting a pony. Celestia heard our case, and Luna took us to see the poor human, who was clearly insane. He thought he was dreaming, and escaped into Canterlot Castle's gardens, and decided to make things worse, climbing onto Discord's statue. Despite attempts at magical intervention, he jumped off the statue, the ensuing chaos enough to free the very embodiment of it; Discord was free again. He resurrected the dead man, and sent him to another universe. He flew off without causing further trouble, promising to help us fix his mistakes. I spent the night at Canterlot Castle, daunted by the task I had to fulfill. I had no heroics to perform, and if I didn't do any soon, the entire universe could be destroyed. An opportunity would present itself, however, the next day.

Princess Celestia entrusted me with the man's weapon; a semi-automatic pistol, with six rounds in it, just in case. I didn't know at the time how much I needed that gun at the time, as I would soon learn. We returned to Ponyville by noon, and the Mane Six split off to do their work, resume their lives until a call to assist in this world-saving endeavor was given. I stayed with Twilight, and we found out that three local ponies had gone missing; Trixie, Derpy, and Time Piece. I had to assume that they had fallen into my world like I had into theirs. Twilight and I returned to the library, only to be ambushed by Discord. He revealed that all of the humans lost in this universe were gone, that I was the last one, and that his game could not begin until all of the missing pieces were returned. I managed to fire at the beast, but he hurled us through one of his portals, this one into my world, our efforts to resist fruitless. He'd instructed us to round up the lost ponies.

And so we did. These three ponies had made their mark on human society already, and bronies were going to converge on my hometown in droves. We wasted no time in getting them into our group. We took the same way I got into Equestria the first time to get back--a universal rift caused by the damage. It was decided that we'd head to Canterlot, to stand vigil in case Discord began his games, which we soon found to be already in progress. We didn't know the Lord of Chaos' motives, however, as we ventured to and through Canterlot with the assistance of Time Piece, Trixie, and Derpy as well as Spike and the Mane Six.

We found that we had no way to get to the regular objects bearing the Elements to stop Discord, so we ventured to the Canterlot Archives, and located a spell to enchant an item with all six Elements. The only item that was usable was my gun, and so we used it to channel the Elements.

As we left the Archives, we were knocked out by a mysterious airborne agent, and subjected to a dream by Discord. He let me escape my own dream, for unfathomable reasons, and allowed me to release Spike, Derpy, Time Piece, and Trixie before we awoke. The three ponies and a dragon that I'd freed and I woke to find the Mane Six to be missing. We went into Canterlot Castle, and found them in Celestia's empty throne room. Something was wrong, though.

The Mane Six had been subverted by Discord's magic, and were now conditioned to consider me their mortal enemy. And so, with Time Piece and Trixie at my side, we engaged the Elements of Harmony in combat. It was a near-loss, and in the end I was wounded fairly badly by Twilight, and the gun was lost, but the Mane Six were back to normal. Without any object through which to channel the Elements of Harmony, I volunteered to be imbued with the Elements myself. They possessed my body for a short while, procuring replacement objects for each of the Mane Six, and granting me the Element of Order for some reason. Though I might be an ordered individual, I believe its purpose to be different, separate from the others. With these superweapons at our disposal, we freed the Princesses Luna and Celestia from Discord's grasp, and uncovered the true nature of the draconequus' actions.

Discord had been helping us the whole time. The entire attack on Equestria was a ruse, something for us to stop, to give us something heroic to do. He granted me the power to travel between universes at will, and revealed one thing that would be the cause of many more adventures yet: the humans he removed from Equestria were not on my Earth, they were scattered throughout the multiverse. Princess Luna volunteered to search the universes with her magic in hopes of finding those lost. The universal barrier was restored, but was weak enough to send letters with dragonfire through. So Twilight gave me a bottle of dragonfire, and l left Equestria to return to my life as a normal fourteen-year-old. I frequently communicated by letter with the denizens of Equestria, telling them about my world and its differences. Three weeks passed, and I've recieved a letter from Twilight instructing me to come to Equestria again, as Luna has located one of the lost humans. The following are my adventures, the adventures of the Trans-Universal Recovery Team. For me, fiction was about to become real. Repeatedly, and not for the first time.