Thiemo sprinted past Rupie and out of Fine Cut’s store and looked around. A few ponies turned around to the human who had sprinted at high speed and now stood still in the road. “Eris! I know that you’re here. Show yourself, you cowardly chimera!” Almost losing a very beloved body part had gotten the human going. His face was red as he spun around on the spot. “Come out!”

The ponies around him began to whisper but were soon back on their way. Thiemo waited for a few seconds, but Eris was and remained gone. Sighing, he went back to the store and grabbed his old jeans out of the air that Cut passed him. “Thanks.” Quickly, he began to put it back on.

“Do you really think that was Eris?” asked the visibly nervous Rupie. His laughter must have died when his thoughts drifted to the creature of chaos. “I will alert the princesses immediately.” He quickly trotted to the door.

Thiemo, to put it mildly, didn’t care what his companion did. If Eris was here, that meant nothing good for him. The last time she had played with him, he had landed naked in a dungeon. He had to find out quickly what she was planning, and it didn’t help a bit that reality seemed to bend to her will. He would never figure it out thinking logically. And there were still the preliminaries.

“Of course!” Thiemo slapped a hand against his forehead. “The preliminaries.”

“Uh, come again?” Fine Cut tilted her head, as she thought she had been addressed.

“No, I mean I know where Eris will strike next. I’ll pick up the clothes tonight!” Thiemo ran out of the door again and past Rupie. Eris liked fights and the tournament was probably one of the most well-known one in all of Albion. Where should she be if not at the stadium?

Amaryllis flinched as the diamond dog slammed his fist into the soft stomach of the stallion who was his opponent. The crystal pony collapsed on the ground and moaned in pain. If there hadn’t been a spell on the arena, such a strike surely would have caused internal bleeding.

“That must hurt,” Auralia commented, covering her eyes with a foreleg but at the same time trying to look past it.

“Well, what did you expect?” Both Amaryllis and Aura looked around to the new voice. Behind them sat a dark brown unicorn mare with silvery hair who was eating a banana. She shoved the last piece of fruit into her mouth and gulped it down without much chewing. “This is a combat tournament after all. You don’t just get a smack on the flank.” Finished with talking, the mare threw the banana peel into the air so that it skilfully landed on her back. Amaryllis took a closer look at the mare, as she hadn’t noticed her coming closer, which was unusual. Ironically, a banana peel was on her flank as well. What really confused her was that the white in her eyes had a hint of yellow in them, while her irises were of a bright red. Something in her shuddered, but she didn’t know why.

“Excuse me, Miss…” Amaryllis began but noticed that she didn’t know her name.

“Peel, Banana Peel. I take my bananas shaken, not stirred.” The grin on her face was eerie to say the least.

“Uhm... what?” was all the princess could say. But then she realized something. She remembered a similar character she had already met. Pinkie Pie! That was the pink madness, but this time in brown.

Auralia stood up and patted her chest with a hoof. “I’ve already fought. I know that it isn’t that easy.” The brown mare rolled her eyes and looked past them.

“I think I am needed elsewhere.” Amy turned back to the arena, where the stallion was just carried out of the ring, having lost against the diamond dog. Said dog was greeted by howls from his pack as they waited for him at the edge of the field. The judge looked down on his notepad and called out the next two numbers. “Here,” shouted Banana Peel in a singsong voice and calmly trotted into the arena. That only raised another question for Amaryllis. How did she know that it was her turn before the judge had even read out the numbers?

Her opponent was a pegasus, who directly flew into the ring. He wore iron boots around his forehooves, similar to those that Cadance always wore, only that there were two claws at each end. Furthermore, he wore custom-made armour, also similar to that of a Royal Guard that Amaryllis had seen in Equestria. The difference was that it wasn’t golden but made out of a dark silvery metal. She could see the judge saying a few words to Banana Peel, who then turned her back to him and presented the banana which was still placed on there. Then the judge turned to the pegasus, who just shook his head. She would have loved to know what it was about, but the barrier was already in place. It looked like Peel was saying something before she prepared for the fight, just like her opponent. Then the signal came.

The pegasus immediately shot into the air to create as much room as possible between him and his opponent and to figure out the best way to attack her. Meanwhile, Peel just stood there and seemed to watch him with a bored look. Her opponent eventually took a sharp turn, just before he reached the upper end of the arena, and dived down at her. Forelegs with the claws stretched out and aimed at Banana Peel, he shot downwards, directly towards her. In the last second, the unicorn ducked and pushed herself off with her hind legs so that her flanks shot upwards and the banana peel was lifted into the air. The pegasus soared over her head and the peel directly landed on his face. With his vision blocked, he was no longer able to keep on course and quickly tried to get rid of the annoying trash, but it was too late already. Just as the peel was out of his face, he flew over the line of the arena. And to make matters worse, he landed in the sand directly behind it. “The fight is over!” resounded the voice of the judge through the megaphone in his hooves. “Number sixty six wins with ten points.”

With a happy grin, the unicorn mare rose from the ground and calmly trotted over to her opponent. “I think this belongs to me,” she said and levitated the peel off the ground next to the pegasus. She wiped it clean from the sand before putting it back on her back.

Amaryllis noticed how quiet the stadium was. Usually the cheering drowned out everything that was said in the ring, but now it was dead silent. As she thought more about it, she also knew why. The fight hadn’t even lasted for thirty seconds and all she had used to win was a banana peel.

“Wow! That was awesome!” Auralia exclaimed, waving her hooves around excitedly. “Did you see that? Taken out with just one attack.” Of course she had seen it, but that didn’t mean that she also understood what just happened. She didn’t have that much combat experience, but that almost seemed surreal. Something wasn’t right with that pony. She hadn’t even used her magic as one would expect of a unicorn. Her little acrobatic act reminded Amaryllis more of an earth pony than anything else.

“Wuha!” the changeling princess disguised as a unicorn yelped as the object of her thoughts stood muzzle against muzzle with her.

“So there is someone home. You looked like you were trying to stare holes into reality.” Again the eerie smile on her lips, only something was different. This time it gave her the feeling that this strange mare knew exactly what she had been thinking about. Only once had Amaryllis experienced something like that: during the day she had entered the castle of Canterlot for the first time.

“Eris…” she mumbled to herself.

“Did you say something?” Banana Peel asked and slightly tilted her head. “Do you want a banana too?” And with that, she levitated one of said fruits next to her and skilfully placed it on Amaryllis head in such a way that it didn’t fall down. “If you need something else, I’m gonna take a rest in the atrium. Ta ta….”

It took a whole minute before Amaryllis blinked for the first time again. A few other contestants meanwhile began to throw some strange looks at her since she stood there like rooted to the place with a banana on her head as a small orange filly was trotting around her, trying to wake her up.

Banana Peel had disappeared, or should she say Eris? She was almost certain that the unicorn mare was Eris. It surely wasn’t out of her capabilities to shapeshift into a pony. The question was rather why she had done it so obviously? Did Eris want her to see through her disguise?

“Amy! Amy!” Aura’s voice reached her ears. “Hey!” Then something hit her left foreleg, causing her to jerkily look down. The face of an angry filly with puffed up cheeks stared at her. “Finally. What’s going on? You suddenly looked like you were a statue.”

Amy looked up and around. “Nothing, it’s just…” Didn’t she say she was going to the atrium? “I have to go somewhere quick. I’ll be right back.” Hastily, she ran off towards the exit and left the filly with a quizzical look behind. Usually she wouldn’t do that – after all, she had promised Applejack and Thiemo to look after Aura. But this was an emergency. The last meeting with the draconequus still sat in her bones. But she wasn’t the same changeling as back then. No, she was a pony, right? This time she wouldn’t walk away with her tail between her legs.

She stepped down the stairs out of the arena and into the entrance room of the stadium, which was almost empty. A few other contestants had retreated back here as well to buy refreshments from the counter or to just be alone with their thoughts. At one of the bar tables stood Banana Peel, who was eating – as one might have guessed – a banana as a book was levitated in front of her. As Amaryllis came closer, she could see the title. It was the name of her aunt, written in strange cursive letters, which wasn’t that strange. It was more the fact that it was in English. Amaryllis could count off the ponies that could speak the language of the humans on one hand of her loved one. If she hadn’t been sure before, she was now.

Amaryllis stepped opposite to Banana at the table and waited for a few seconds to see what would happen. Also because she had no idea on how to start this conversation. “Can I help you?” the mare asked without raising her eyes from the book.

Since she hadn’t come up with anything yet, she decided to do it like Thiemo would do it: directly and like a bull in a china shop. “You are Eris, right?” It wasn’t eloquent or anything, but had its effect. Banana lowered her book onto the table and looked at her with an empty expression.

“Took you long enough,” she just said and raised the book in front of her face again. Amaryllis, who had gone through every possible escape spell during the time where she had lowered the book and said the words, just blinked. There wasn’t much else the perplexed princess could do.

“So… why are you here?” she asked timidly.

Eris sighed, folded over the edge of her current page of the strange book, and closed it before it vanished into thin air. “What do you think? I’m here to fight.” This time, it was the princess who looked at her with a blank stare. “Yes, okay. Not even I believe that, but it is true. At least to an extent,” she added and circled her hoof in the air. “Like many other countries, Equestria received an invitation for the tournament, including a reserved spot. Our all-beloved Celestia has asked me to fill it. And since Fluttershy is here as well…” She shrugged. “Let’s just say I didn’t have anything better to do.”

“So you aren’t here to make us trouble again?”

“Well, if you put it that way…” And there it was again, that grin on her face. “Maybe a little. Not like I didn’t do so already. But so that we can both keep our peace of mind, let’s make a bet in exchange for you not telling anyone who I am, of course.”

“Uh huh…”

“It’s simple really. If you manage to win the tournament, I will grant you two something fantastic.”

“Who else?” Amaryllis did have to admit that she was a bit curious. “And what do you mean by ‘fantastic’?”

“Well, you and your play thing, the human,” Eris explained and looked out of the large open entrance of the stadium. Then she raised her right foreleg and stared at it for a few seconds. “Mhmm, I think I need a new watch:” She shook her head. “Where was I? Oh right, of course. I thought that you two could probably use a holiday. So I just booked a cruise on the beautiful H.M.S. Earth.” Amaryllis felt her eyes almost pop out of her skull. Did Eris just say that she would send Thiemo and her to Earth if she won?

“But didn’t you say that that was…”

Eris snorted. “You’ve been hanging around with the pony folk too much, it seems. There’s a great invention; it’s called a lie. I should know since I basically invented it. Plus I already told you that I had been there.”

“And all that I would need to do is not tell anyone who you are and win the tournament?” Eris nodded, this time a soft smile on her lips.

“I take that as a yes?” For a moment, Amaryllis considered it all. This was all too good to be true. She didn’t trust Eris a bit, but she just didn’t see where the catch was. Her disguise was rather bad, and surely her aunt and the others would simply see through it, just like herself. Her parents would not be fooled either. For a second, her thoughts stopped. That was the first time she thought of Shining Armor and Cadance as just her parents.

Shaking her head, Amaryllis directed her thoughts back on the current subject. “Okay, I’ll play along.”

“Great,” Eris said and reached out a hoof to seal it with a shake. Carefully, the princess accepted the gesture and her white hoof touched the brown one of Eris. “And for the whole bet to work, you should head back into the arena. You’re up next.” Amaryllis’ eyes widened. “And remember, not a word to anyone about this!” Eris shouted after her.

As quickly as she could, she ran up the stairs again and into the centre of the stadium. Didn’t that mean that she would sooner or later have to fight against Eris? Or against Thiemo? And she couldn’t explain what it was about without revealing Eris’ disguise. “Buck,” she quietly cursed as she just barely heard her number being called.

Out of breath, Thiemo came to a halt on the wide walkway and braced himself on his knees. The stadium was not even a hundred metres away, and since it was still in one piece, not upside down, overrun with black vines or turned into a giant toilet, he still had a glimmer of a hope that he had gotten here before Eris, or that he was wrong. “Yep, no chance. She’s here,” he said to himself as he stood back up and stretched his back. His damp hair fell into his field of view while a pleasant crack came from his spine. “You’d think that wandering years over the planet would give you more stamina.”

He threw a look back at the houses of the city. The stadium was in the second ring, as Thiemo called it. To get a better orientation, he had named the districts of the city. The outer circle was basically the suburbs of the Empire, still in the shield but far enough on the outside to have enough room for all kind of plantations and fields. It also was the largest circle, spanning over many kilometres. The second circle he had named the Concrete District. It was basically various middle-sized buildings containing just about anything: apartments, stores, and even some small factories for jewellery, carpentry, or Fine Cut’s store. A good comparison would be a smaller Fillydelphia, only that the store of the fashion adept changeling was on the other side of the round town. “Well, maybe I’ve built up a bit of stamina.” Even if he had run through downtown, comparable to a small Manhattan made out of crystal buildings and the third circle with the skyscrapers, the castle, and everything, that would have still been a few kilometres. He was gasping for air, but something inside of him told him that he could run the whole way again if he really wanted to.

Taking a short break, he was able to get his heart rate and breathing under control. With slow steps, he walked the rest of the way down to the large entrance at the side of the stadium. It was nothing special and was barely different, except for the material, from a stadium on Earth. Similar to a hat with visor the canopy of the atrium was reaching a bit out of the oval body of the building, supported by a multitude of pillars. Between these pillars was glass that separated the ponies in the atrium from the outside. Only in the middle, between the two thickest crystal pillars, was a large door, also out of glass. Since they had neither handles nor hinges, he was sure that they were of magical nature. Thiemo had just been too lazy to check that.

Through the glass, he could already see that only a few spectators were out. A smattering of ponies and diamond dogs sat outside on the benches and enjoyed the sun. Others sat inside and ate what must be their lunch. Breakfast was a couple of hours ago after all, and Thiemo was completely clueless about how long he had taken on the way here.

He came to a halt in the doorway and thought about what the easiest way to find Eris would be. The first idea was to just call her by name and walk around the field. Either would she hear him or someone might have seen her. After all, no one could say that a strange dragon-snake-pony-whatever thing wasn’t suspicious.

Idea two was to search for her with his magical sight, but with keeping her power in mind, he didn’t really want to risk it. When he had been looking for Twilight and the others in the darkness after the fall into the archive, he had almost been blinded by the aura of the alicorn. He didn’t even want to think about how much it would have burned to directly look at her. No, the danger of looking directly into the sun would be too great.

Just as he was about to think about a new plan, something in the corner of his eye caught his attention. At one of the bar tables stood a mare who looked grimly at him. Nothing unusual, as she was a beige unicorn and therefore probably from Equestria and didn’t think much of humans. “Is she wearing a banana peel on her head?” he mumbled to himself since he had no clue on how to compute the visual input.

Then it struck him. A banana as hat? That could only be Eris’ doing. Surely the elderly mare was one of her victims. At least she looked like she was older, with her dark silvery mane. Even if she didn’t like him, surely she would like to tell the nice monster where the other monster had gone so that they could eat each other. With a smirk, Thiemo reached for his arm and went to draw Protes. When he only felt his own arm, he remembered that Aura now wielded his loyal staff. He would have loved to smack the self-proclaimed god of chaos over the head with the metal.

Without further ado, he headed towards the sullen mare and was about the open his mouth, but she was quicker. “You are late,” she said and snorted. “I had to wait here ten minutes longer than I would have liked.”

Perplexed, Thiemo turned around, expecting to see another pony who she had to be addressing But no, there was no one. “Are you talking to me?” he asked her and pointed his right thumb at his chest.

“Who else, or do you see anyone else here?” Hold on! He knew that voice…

“Eris!” he yelled. “What was that whole thing earlier about?! What’s your problem?” He took a step towards her, but before his foot could even set on the ground, Thiemo found himself in a cage. His face made acquaintance with one of the metal bars.

The pony in front of him giggled. “Ah ah ah, not so fast. Is that how you greet an old friend?”

“I wouldn’t even admit that I know you if someone asked. You’ve caused me nothing but trouble.”

“You wound my tender heart,” she said, throwing her hoof over her head in an obviously fake attempt to look hurt. “Isn’t it because of me that you are here now? That you had the time to get closer with your loved one?”

“As if that was your intent,” he murmured and tried to squeeze himself between two of the bars, which then just moved closer to each other, jamming him in between them.

“Is that important? That still happened thanks to me.” How much he would have loved to wipe that wide grin with a fist to her face. “So at least act like you’re thankful while I act like I care about your gratitude.” Just as she had finished talking, the cage vanished and Thiemo fell to the floor. Quickly he stood back up, with the help of the table, and stared down at the pony that actually wasn’t one. “So, do you want to smack me now or not?” Thiemo followed her gaze down to his hand, which was resting in the form of a fist on the table.

After a moment, he relaxed and put both hands flat on the table. “So, what do you want here? Aside from seeing the fights?”

“Oh, I won’t just be seeing them. I am the official represent for Equestria.” The human could basically feel all the colour leaving his face. If that was true, then it suddenly looked very grim for his victory. “Now don’t look so down. I also want my share of the fun, so I won’t go too hard on you. You know what? I’ll even give you some motivation. If you should win, not only the dirty princess give you all the raunchy love you want, but I as well. If you win, I will send you back home.” Thiemo raised a brow but lowered it again. He had been hanging around these ponies that it had become a bad habit. “Of course, I have a condition.” Of course she had. “Nothing overly dramatic. I’m not Celly or Lulu after all. Only silence from your part. You aren’t allowed to tell anyone who I am. I like this disguise and would hate to change it.” Thiemo let all her words run twice through every part of his head. “So, what do you say?”

“Or to put it differently, I’m not allowed to tell anyone about our little… bet either?” The grin sent shivers down his spine.

“Clever boy. Not a single word. And believe me, I’ll know if you talk. Or rather, Pinkie will know. Pinkie Promise.” She looked at him as if she was expecting something. It wasn’t his reaching out his pinkie. “No, you grape nut with marzipan. Say after me: Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye.” At first she drew a cross above her chest with a hoof, then raised it into the air and finally put it on a closed eye.

“Any reason you said that in English?”

She shrugged. “Not really.”

Sighing, Thiemo recited the oath, which sounded dangerously like something first graders would say on the schoolyard, and repeated the movements. “And that should keep me from talking? What happens if I still do it?”

“Oh, you don’t want to know. Trust me.” Eris raised her left foreleg and looked on it. “Oh, if you hurry, you can watch the rest of the first fight of your marefriend.” Thiemo turned away and took a step before looking back at Eris again. She had pulled a book from somewhere which was called ‘Twilight’, which only motivated him to walk away faster.

Skipping every second step, he walked up the stairs. In the arena stood dozens of contestants: diamond dogs, ponies of all kinds, and so on. In the closest arena to him fought two griffons. In the second one, a human was busy with a young dragon. He would have loved to see that fight as he hadn’t gotten the chance to speak with many humans on Albion. Meena came to his mind and maybe the old man in the bar. Aside from that, it had stayed with rather short encounters.

Since another fight was more important, he made a short sprint towards the last arena, where a couple of spectators had also gathered. He spotted Auralia between them and quietly stepped behind his daughter, who was too busy watching the events on the field to notice him. At first he couldn’t understand why, but then it became clear. Amaryllis stood against a dark blue unicorn stallion. On his flank was a dark circle upon which a white star was illuminated. The stallion was busy dodging one magic missile after another which seemed to come out of nowhere, while Amaryllis just stood there with eyes closed to keep her spell going. Even without his magic view, which would have been blocked by the barrier around the combat zone anyway, he knew what was going on. His marefriend had bundled magic into balls and spread them all around the entire field.

Thiemo knew that she knew a lot about magic and surely wasn’t unskilled, but what she was showing here took a lot of mental control. Compressing all that magic and controlling it was an enormous task. The missiles weren’t any different than the ones which usually directly came from her horn, but paired with the unpredictability of where the attack was coming from made that a whole lot more dangerous for her opponent. Surely an idea from Shining Armor. Against opponents like Twilight Sparkle or him, who could see the balls if he were in the arena, it wouldn’t be optimal, but against the ones who couldn’t see magic, it was more than effective. And she herself didn’t need to see it since she was creating the balls and therefore could feel them with her magic. To put it simply, it was genius.

The unicorn tried to charge at Amy after another barrage of her missiles, but was immediately under fire by more balls, some of which hit him. “The fight is over!” sounded the voice of the judge. “Ten points for number forty two and three for twenty one.”

Her opponent slowly rose back from the ground where he had gone down in the volley of hits. Amaryllis stepped towards him and helped him back on his legs. They exchanged two words before she turned towards them. As she spotted Thiemo behind Aura, her eyes widened and she quickly trotted over to them. Confused why Amy did that, Aura turned around as well. “Dad!” She jumped from the ground into his arms, and not a second later Amaryllis was leaning against him as well.

Author's Notes:

I hope you guys noticed what Eris did there. If you didn't, read it quick over again. She didn't offer Amaryllis and Thiemo the same deal. There is an important difference.

Also, while not related to Journey, I finished a new chapter for "The Impossible" yesterday and it should be in translation right now. And I'm working on the next one already.

Thanks to Gron for translating this chapter.
Special thanks to JBL for proofreading and editing.

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