"Sorry, Kratos," Applejack grimaced. "If Ah'd known that my sister an' her friends had gotten into Nurse Redheart's supplies, Ah wouldn'tve let them near you. Even so," she added carefully, "you seem a mite shook up over the whole thing."

Kratos glared, holding his head high. "It was a perfectly natural reaction."

"You went an' knocked a hole in the wall big enough for a manticore."

"Yes." Kratos glanced back momentarily at the tree house. "That is a perfectly natural reaction for someone who does not wish to experience torture more than they already have."

"More'n they already—" Applejack stared. "Oh. Oh! Golly, sugarcube, Ah didn't know! Ah never knew you were—"

"That's because I didn't say anything about it." Kratos' eyes showed a reflection of sorrow. "I'm not one for lying outright; there's nothing honorable about it. What I do is just another form."

"Ah'm awful sorry, Kratos."

"I don't need your pity." Kratos looked away. "I've made many others suffer just as much as I have. Some of it was justified." Kratos' thoughts turned briefly to Ares, to Hades, to many of the monsters he had slain. "Most of it wasn't." A flood of faces, named and unnamed, assaulted him at the mere mention.

Applejack shook herself. "Ah… Ah was expectin' honesty, an' maybe some bad history, but Ah didn't expect this."

"I shouldn't say anything else." Kratos turned. "I've seen things… donethings… that I wouldn't want anyb— anypony here to experience. You've been right to suspect me."

Applejack stared for a moment longer, then allowed a small smile. "Sugarcube, Ah believe you jus' learned a lesson in honesty."

"…What?"

"You just broke down an' told me somethin' you ain't told nopony else in your life. Not only that, but you admitted yer weakness an' told me flat out that Ah wasn't wrong to distrust you. You spoke from yer heart right there, an' that's what honesty boils down to: bein' truthful with everypony, yerself included."

Kratos' brow furrowed, the gears in his mind turning. "That… actually makes sense," he said finally, albeit begrudgingly. "Thank you, Applejack. You're wise beyond your yea—" The Spartan froze. "How old are you, anyway?"

"Didn't yer mama tell you t' never ask a lady's age?"

"I would prefer to not discuss my mother." Kratos' expression was dead serious.

"Well, alrighty then," Applejack replied with a somewhat uneasy look. "It's gettin' close t' noon. You might wanna hurry over t' town."

Kratos looked up at the sun, realizing how much time had passed. "So I might," he said, beginning to gallop off. "You have my thanks, Applejack!"

The orange workhorse watched Kratos run off towards town, then shook her head. "Poor fella. Musta been through a lot already, an' he still ain't prepared for what's gonna hit him."

~/~/~/~

By the time Kratos arrived at the Ponyville Café, Fluttershy had already sat down, and was currently ordering. "Carrot stew," he announced to the waiter, sitting down. "Perhaps with less of the green things this time."

"You mean 'cilantro?'" the waiter sniffed.

"Yes, that. Whatever it is, I don't like it."

The waiter scribbled it down, took the menus, and, with his head held high, walked back into the café.

"Oh, hi Kratos," Fluttershy smiled. "And how was your lesson on Honesty?"

"It was… productive," Kratos said at last.

"Oh, that's great!" Fluttershy exclaimed softly.

The waiter returned with their food, shooting Kratos an angry look as he left.

"So," Kratos began, looking up as he ate his stew, "any idea who's next?"

Fluttershy swallowed her bite of daisy salad. "Well, Rarity still needs—"

"Besides Rarity."

"Oh." The pegasus stared for a moment. "Well, Rainbow Dash has been busy lately. I mean, she says busy, but it's probably not work. Not that she's bad at her job, she just spends a lot of time practicing. And napping. Anyways," Fluttershy continued, "Twilight has been trying to find some way to teach earth ponies magic, but she hasn't found anything yet."

"Who does that leave?"

"Well," Fluttershy hesitated, eyes averted. "Pinkie Pie said she wanted us to come and pick up some, uh, cupcakes whenever we're available."

"Cupcakes?" Kratos stared. "What's a cupcake?"

"Oh, it's a dessert."

"So, what's wrong with picking up cupcakes?" Kratos looked mildly confused.

"Oh, nothing. Just, um, be prepared."

"For what?"

"…Anything?"

~/~/~/~

After lunch, Kratos and Fluttershy walked towards Sugarcube Corner. The building stood out rather prominently, apparently being made out almost entirely out of sweets. Kratos stared for a moment before following a very nervous-looking Fluttershy inside.

The first thing that Kratos noticed was that he had stepped into a dimly lit room with stone walls and flooring, with torches acting as the only illumination. The second thing was that the door was promptly slammed behind him.

Just as Kratos' eyes adjusted, he heard a voice cry out: "TRIANGLE!"

The Spartan ducked just in time to feel something massive swing past where his head had previously been. Before he could properly respond, the voice spoke again: "X! Hit X!"

Kratos rolled, dodging what must have been a swarm of arrows and darts, only to feel a huge weight thud onto his back. He strained to hold himself up, to no avail. Just as his legs began to buckle… "SPAM CIRCLE! SPAM CIRCLE!"

As if gaining power from some other source, Kratos suddenly found the strength required to shrug the weight aside, heaving it onto the floor. Again, before he could see what it was, his thoughts were interrupted. "TURN THE ANALOG STICK! COUNTER-CLOCKWISE! GO GO GO!"

Kratos only stared, confused. In his one moment of inaction, he was promptly knocked off his feet by a mighty force that smelled of sugar and fruit.

As he landed on the ground, the Ghost of Sparta attempted to contemplate his situation when the voice sighed. "It's always the analog stick parts that nopony sees coming. Hey, I bet that counts as a surprise! SURPRISE!"

With that, the room brightened, and Kratos was surprised to see that the stone was in fact a very elaborate wallpaper design, and, on top of that, a few dozen ponies were currently milling about the room, socializing.

A flash of pink arrived in his field of vision, and Kratos suddenly found himself staring into two startlingly blue eyes. "Hi, remember me? You probably don't, because according to that scene in Canterlot you didn't bother remembering our names! But then later, we'd apparently explained it on the trip back home, so you have no excuse for forgetting, you silly willy nilly!"

Kratos stared for a moment, reeling. "I… take it you're Pinkie Pie?"

Pinkie gasped with shock. "Oh my GOSH! You do remember my name! This is so great! Y'know what would make it more great? If you had fun at this party!"

"…Party?"

"Of course!" Pinkie Pie backed off slightly, allowing her to gesture broadly with her hoof. "It's not every day somepony new comes to Ponyville, and it's super-duper rare for visitors from other worlds to come here, let alone a franchise like yours! I bet you're the only interdimensional traveler in all of Ponyville!"

Kratos noticed, out of the corner of his eye, that a brown Earth pony with an hourglass cutie mark looked somewhat offended. "It's an honor," the Spartan said flatly. "Now, might I ask why you were trying to killme?"

Pinkie Pie giggled. "I wouldn't kill you, silly! I just thought it was a while since you'd had any quick-time events, and we needed something resembling an action scene to hold everypony over!"

"Then… what…" Kratos looked back. A bag of flour was dangling over the door, right where he had dodged the swinging object. He saw a multitude of fake tails embedded in the wall; what they were for, he couldn't guess. An anvil— a gods-be-damned anvil!— was right where Kratos had tossed it. He felt the area of impact on his side, then sniffed at his hoof. "…Cherry?"

"Yep! Cherry pie, to be exact!" Pinkie Pie bounced all about. "What, did you think I'd really try to kill anypony? Because believe me, I probably couldn't kill somepony even if I wanted to! A lot of ponies act like I'm one step away from snapping and heartlessly torturing my friends, but really, that's just silly! Now go on and enjoy your party!"

With that, the pink earth pony sped away in a blur. The party turned back to its regular din of conversation, and Kratos looked around. He caught a familiar pastel pegasus in the corner, and approached her.

"You said we were coming here to pick up cupcakes."

Fluttershy cringed. "Well, yes. I mean, Pinkie told me to tell you that, but, you see, most ponies in Ponyville know that Pinkie Pie loves throwing surprise parties, and, well…"

Kratos nodded slowly. "What am I supposed to do now, then? This is a far cry from parties where I'm from!"

"I... don't know," Fluttershy admitted. "What did you normally do at parties?"

The Spartan reflected on his travels, namely what he did for leisure between each bloodbath. He glanced around briefly, and excused himself in an uncharacteristically quiet manner.

He muttered to himself. "These are ponies. They're horses. I couldn't do that. I mean, even if they talk... No, I've made a point to only... dothatwith humans, or at least humanoids." He glanced back at his new body. "Then again, this form isn't the best for humans."

Kratos sighed, walking towards a blue unicorn mare. "When in Crete," he grumbled.

"Excuse me," he said, glancing over the mare's form, "What's your name?"

The unicorn's eyes stared from underneath her spiky, two-color mane. "Colgate."

"Colgate..." Kratos presented what he was sure to be a charming grin, at least for him. "A name the Muses themselves could shower thousands of praises upon! A name of grace, of beauty, of..." He sniffed the air, mildly confused. "Of mint."

Colgate allowed a small smile. "Oh, thank you."

"Olympus may hold no power here, but would you care if we made tribute to Aphrodite regardless?"

"...What?" Colgate stared at Kratos, not quite understanding the line that had wooed so many women's hearts before. Another mare approached, a purple earth pony with grapes and a strawberry adorning her flank. "You all right, hon?" she asked.

Colgate turned. "Oh, hey Berry. Yeah, just, uh, leaving. You ready?"

With that, the two mares departed. Kratos noted that the two of them stood awfully close to each other, their flanks occasionally rubbing against each other.

Kratos stared for a moment longer. "...Oh," he said at last, his expression one of mild shock. He sighed again. "That doesn't matter. I'll find an appropriate lover soon enough. They can't all prefer other mares."

~/~/~/~

"They don't all prefer other mares," Kratos seethed, "but apparently, that doesn't matter!"

Eight mares. He had asked eight damned mares to consider bedding with him, and while another two had "other" interests, the others outright rejected him, saying something about "manners" or "hygiene" or "What does that even mean?". He'd used all of his best techniques: flexing, bragging about previous conquests, claiming that the mare in question excited his heart like the promise of battle. Not one of them worked. Kratos was not used to rejection, and he seriously began to consider his usual revenge tactics on the next one to reject his advances. Then, Pinkie Pie arrived again.

"Silly Kratos," the party pony giggled, "you can't just go butchering ponies because they don't want to play minigames with you!"

Kratos glared. "Well, what do you have in mind?"

Pinkie grinned. "Weellllllllllllllll," she began, in a singsong voice.

"PonieshereinPonyvillearenotquiteasrelaxed
Aboutthingslikedeathandwarandalsobeastieswithtwobacks!
Sobeforeyougokillanypony,Isuggestyoustop,
Andiftheneedreallygrowstoogreatthengotobedandcl—"

Pinkie Pie found a hoof shoved rather forcefully into her mouth. Kratos took a deep breath. "I don't know what you were just doing," he said, his voice dangerously low, "but it irritates me."

Pinkie just giggled more, backing away so she was out of the Spartan's reach. "I knew you were going to be all grumpy-wumpy, so I decided to take your mind off of it with a song! Everypony loves songs!"

"Singing isn't going to work," Kratos rumbled. "I always hated theater."

"Of course it worked! You don't want to kill everypony here anymore, do you?"

Kratos blinked. "...No," he said, a look of confusion crossing over his face. He was still angry— that was a constant— but his previous thoughts of murder were turned off, even before the bridle could activate. "How did you do that?"

As she walked by, Twilight Sparkle shook her head. "Don't ask," she told Kratos flatly, continuing towards the punch bowl.

"Oh, that Twilight!" Pinkie merely laughed at the unicorn's interjection. "Now," she said, looking around, "let's get you partying!"

"That's what I was trying to do," Kratos huffed.

The party pony let out an exaggerated sigh. "Really, Kratos. There's more to parties than minigames, no matter what Nintendo thinks!"

"...What?"

Pinkie proceeded to enter deep thought, a hoof to her chin. "Now, all we have to do is get grumpy old Kratos here to lighten up!" Her eyes lit up. "Ooh! How about a joke?"

"A... joke?" Kratos quickly attempted to estimate his chances of escape. He considered, briefly, the possibility of just bucking Pinkie straight through a wall and charging for the front door, bystanders be damned, but even without the bridle hindering him, deep down Kratos knew that the pink mare was somehow unkillable. For now, he'd have to endure whatever happened at this party. "Fine."

Pinkie began excitedly. "Okay, so there's this magician, right? She's got this whole 'Great and Powerful' routine, but she just does illusions and stuff. And she worked on a cruise ship—"

"Cruise ship?"

"It's like a super-duper huge boat that ponies party on!"

Kratos nodded. "Explains how you know about it."

"Right, so this magician did the same show eeeevery time, with all the same tricks! But she didn't have to worry about it, because the audience was never the same! But then there's this phoenix that lives on the ship, and it watched all of the magician's performances until it figured out her tricks. Then the phoenix went and told the audience how the magician did it, and ruined her show!"

Kratos stared. "Why?"

Pinkie did pause for a moment to consider his question. "Because phoenixes have nothing better than mess with everypony and occasionally burst into flame! Anyway, the magician got really mad at the phoenix, but it belonged to the captain, so she couldn't do anything.

"Then one day, the ship sprang a leak and sank, and the only survivor was the magician. She clambered onto a plank of driftwood, and who was to be perched on the other side... but the phoenix?

"For three days and three nights," Pinkie continued, almost in a conspiratorial whisper, "the two survivors just stared at each other, never speaking, never moving, never blinking. Then, on the morning of the fourth day, the phoenix sighed and said, 'Okay, I give up. Where'd you put the ship?'"

There was a brief moment in time where the Spartan stallion simply stared at the pastel pink party pony. Pinkie's smiled faltered briefly as Kratos' eyebrow gained a slight twitch.

Kratos' mind was reeling. He never bothered with humor, neither as a child nor in his adult life. Now, suddenly confronted with the conflict of a phoenix and a magician, something that managed to slip through a mountainous cultural barrier, his thoughts were in a rush to sort out this new development. All the Spartan interpreted from these events was a throbbing headache and mild loss of control of his facial muscles.

Kratos noticed that Pinkie Pie was staring at his face. "What is it?" he barked, a hint of worry betraying itself in his voice. "What's happening?"

Pinkie Pie grew an enormous, toothy grin on her face. "I'll tell you what's happening!" she declared. "You're smiling!"

Kratos glanced at a window. In the vague reflection, he could see that his mouth was, indeed, locked in an upturned direction. He had cracked a smile at the joke. Kratos knew that smiling was hardly laughter, but it was progress, and progress was what he desired the most. It would mean another Element of Harmony conquered, and therefore it would mean another step towards returning home and gutting Zeus like the coward he was.

He turned, eyes locked onto the pink mare. "Quick, the smile is fading. Tell more jokes!"

Pinkie Pie giggled. "Okie dokie, Loki! No, wait," she said suddenly, "he's Norse! Anyway, here's a grrreat one I learned a while ago! Okay, so there are these two colts talking at school. The one says to his friend, 'I know this great way to make some bits off of your folks. It'll sound weird, but trust me: all you have to do is go up to one of them and say that you know the whole truth...'"

~/~/~/~

Fluttershy walked carefully and quietly towards the snack table. She had finally mustered up the courage to wade through the thick crowd of ponies, memories of the last party's desserts giving her the strength she needed.

The pastel pegasus had just begun to reach for a piece of berry cobbler when a loud, gravelly noise rumbled through Sugarcube Corner. Fluttershy only had time to allow a small squeak before cowering under the table. She poked her head out from the tablecloth to locate the source of the sound.

Her search managed to find Kratos, grinning widely, his head shaking. Over the din of the crowd, she could hear his voice: "Oatmeal? That is most certainly insane!"

Fluttershy emerged slowly, walking towards her friend. "K-Kratos?"

The Spartan turned. "Ah, Fluttershy! Good news: I believe I've discovered the Element of Laughter! I believe young Pinkie here has slain many years of scowling."

"Oh, that's great!" Fluttershy smiled. "So, what was that about the oatmeal?"

Pinkie Pie cut Kratos off before he could speak. "We do not speak of the oatmeal to innocent ears!" she hissed.

The other two stared as Pinkie bounced off. Kratos glanced at Fluttershy. "It's... A long, long story. Now if you'll excuse me a moment," he said. "After what I've heard about this 'pin the tail on the pony' game, I'm not about to pass it up."

With that, he trotted off into the crowd, but not before casting a look about Sugarcube Corner, as if he detected something. Not seeing anything of concern, he resumed his trip towards the party games.

~/~/~/~

Outside Sugarcube Corner, a lithe white pony flitted about the windows of the sweet shop on rapidly flapping wings, about the size of Princess Luna. He snuck away without anypony seeing him, shooting up to a cloud high in the atmosphere.

Once he landed, the smallish horn on the alicorn's head flashed, and a small portal appeared. Zeus, in his human form, stood on the other side.

"Hermes, you have something to report?"

Hermes, messenger of the gods, bowed as gracefully as he could on four legs. "Father, Kratos is learning faster than we expected. He has made much progress in Honesty and Laughter today. Kindness has been gradually rising in its Bearer's presence. The others... nothing yet, but there will likely be an increase soon enough. Celestia may soon enough make him our problem again."

Zeus scowled. "How? He's nothing but a hollow killer."

"I suppose in this world he's just a big softy, isn't he?" Hermes flashed a bright grin.

"Show respect!" Zeus instinctively raised his hand. "This is the man that killed your uncles, your siblings! Control your foolishness!"

Hermes flinched. "Of course, father. Shall I incapacitate him?"

"...No," Zeus decided. "Let us see just how Kratos does on his own. Knowing him, it will not be long until he once again destroys what he cares about. If not, then we'll help him fail."

Hermes bowed again. "Yes, father." With that, the alicorn dissipated the portal and flew off, his glowing orange mane creating a comet-like aura as he flew towards the setting sun.

~/~/~/~/~/~/~/~

Wassup, everypony? ToonNinja here. Since you're reading this and NOT my dA OR the Docs version, I thought it only right that I give you guys the same low-down.

Yes, I justified Kratos' apparent fear of the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Guy's been through a lot of sh*t, and his history with kids isn't great either. Point is, both Applejack and I managed to turn it into a lesson about honesty, so there you go.

The party scene was something I've been looking forward to for a long freaking time, so you can imagine my apprehension in realizing that Kratos probably didn't partake in many parties (at least, parties that didn't involve copious amounts of sex). That said, Kratos DID lighten up a bit: why an omnicidal maniac is capable of doing so may just be explained later.

Also, story elements. Because if there's one constant in God of War— in all of Greek mythology— it's that Zeus is a prick. I'd worship Celestia over him any day. If I didn't already have a religion, at least.

As per usual, there's a small treasure trove of references to, well, whatever was on my mind at the time, mostly other fics. Go crazy if you're up for a scavenger hunt: if you find a vague connection, good chance it was on purpose.