Here's How I Began This Delightful Little Train Wreck!
It was a warm summer day in Canterlot, with not a cloud in the sky. At least, not a normal cloud in the sky. In a small, clearly marked field surrounded by a fence with plenty of signs indicating the field's purpose, a large number of cotton candy clouds gave a heavy downpour of chocolate milk. In the center of the field an inside out umbrella slowly filled as it protected a floating upside down table and three floating chairs, upon which sat Discord, Discord, and Discord. The chairs were all the same, but each Discord was different. One wore a top hat and a suit, and stared at the cards in his hand through a monocle. Another Discord wore sunglasses and a classic Hawaiian shirt, and while his eyes were hidden, the large smirk on his face hinted that he had a good hand. The third wore no clothes, but upon close examination, would reveal to be a life size wooden puppet of Discord, with thin strings going from his joints and face up into the cotton candy clouds, where they seemed to disappear.
The Puppet Discord glanced at his cards, a blank expression on his wooden face, and casually pushed three cupcakes towards the center of the table. At this, Fancy Discord's face fell. Literally fell of his head and landed onto the green and purple checkered ground.
"I fold." His face spoke from the ground in a dejected tone, and his body placed his cards face down onto the table before picking his face off the ground and slapping it back on. Vacation Discord gave an even bigger smirk at the news, and slowly pushed four cupcakes towards the center of the table.
"Well I call your bluff." Vacation Discord said as he slammed his cards onto the table face up. "Full house!" He declared with a laugh, motioning to the 13 cards he placed. Rather than a number, each of them held a picture of some odd combination of a fruit and a piece of furniture. Puppet Discord finally broke his blank expression with a grin as he placed his own 13 cards onto the ground.
"Bingo!" Puppet Discord shouted, as his cards proceeded to EAT the other cards, and Puppet Discord began to reach towards the cupcakes, a smirk on his face as Vacation Discord watched in stunned silence.
"You cheated!" Vacation Discord declared, recovering from his earlier shock, and slapped Puppet Discord's hand away with a fish.
"Cheat? Me? Why, I'm shocked you'd accuse me of such a horrible crime." Puppet Discord said, his voice dripping with sarcasm, and earning himself a slap in the face with another fish.
"I'll teach you to cheat when playing against ME!" Vacation Discord said, slapping the two fishes together, causing a chain to connect their tails and forming a set of fish nunchucks. Before any more words could be said, Vacation Discord leaped at Puppet Discord, and the two began to battle, slowly leaving the area of the field protected by the inside out umbrella.
The battle was very one sided, with Vacation Discord using the fish nunchucks effectively against Puppet Discord, and slapping him in the face multiple times. Eventually Puppet Discord leaped back, chocolate milk rain hitting his face.
"That's it, I'll teach YOU what happens when you fish slap ME!" With that, Puppet Discord reached behind him, and pulled a giant toy hammer out of nowhere.
"No! Wait! You can't use that! You'll destroy us all!" Vacation Discord said, dropping the fish nunchucks. "I surrender!" He said, raising his hands and falling to his knees.
"IT'S TOO LATE TO SURRENDER NOW, FOOL!" Puppet Discord said, and without further comment flattened Vacation Discord into the ground.
The impact created a shock wave, however, and caused the table to flip over so it was no longer upside down, causing the cupcakes to fall to the floor, where they promptly exploded from the impact. The table served to contain the explosion, but was launched up like a rocket, and smacked against the giant inside out umbrella, which slowly teetered, chocolate milk sloshing inside it.
"Oh my." Fancy Discord said from his chair, pulling a smaller inside out umbrella and using it as a shield as the giant one finally toppled over, slamming Puppet Discord with a flood of chocolate milk rain, which covered the entire field but stopped at the fence surrounding it.
After a few minutes, the chocolate milk began to sink into the green and purple checkered earth, and once it disappeared, none of the three Discords remained, and neither did the table, the umbrella, or the floating chairs. The cotton candy clouds also stopped raining, and slowly began to fade away, as the Original Discord slowly levitated down from above the clouds.
"Now that was some entertaining chaos." Discord said with a grin that quickly turned into a frown. "Though it isn't as great the 10th time around."
Discord had ceased his evil uncontrolled ways and was undergoing rehabilitation under Princess Celestia's slightly paranoid and almost constant supervision. Following Fluttershy's advice, the Princess had given Discord a place where he was free to use as much chaos as he liked, provided he didn't alter anything that would affect anything outside the field. He could control the weather and create or destroy or do whatever he wanted so long as it was inside the fence of the field. The field was a few acres big, and Discord appreciated having his own place to let loose, and occasionally show off the few times ponies were curious enough to wander over here and watch, but after a few weeks the field was beginning to feel constricting, and he found himself repeating the same skits on occasion.
Princess Celestia also began showing Discord how he could use his powers in a constructive way, by giving him an hour every other day to fill requests any ponies in Canterlot had that his powers could fix. Discord certainly enjoyed how grateful everyone was when he used his powers to fix or improve a house or airship or some other thing, but the requests were often all very similar and Celestia and Luna were both very hesitant to let him fulfill a request that wasn't something they could easily do themselves. It was necessary though, or at least that's what they said. The general population still needed some time to adjust to Discord being a good guy. Centuries of being a renowned villain weren't undone in a day, or even a month. Probably not even a year.
Discord didn't think he could stand this for a year, though.
If there was anything that really got under Discord's skin, it was the realization that everything around him, and even including him, was beginning to become repetitive.
Still, as he said once before, Friendship is Magic. He was genuinely reluctant to harm the friendship he had with Fluttershy and Pinkie Pie(who was quick to befriend him once she began to believe he truly turned over a new leaf), and the friendships he was beginning to make here in Canterlot, all for a brief taste of unrestrained chaos.
Discord had a mental battle going on in his head, as the part of him desiring friendship fought the part of him demanding more chaos. For now the side of friendship was winning, but he doubted it would last much longer.
He could always ask Princess Celestia for a bigger field, or for bigger requests to fulfill, but he doubted either of those would work for more than a few weeks. What he needed was to do just one big, absolutely insane thing, that wouldn't threaten or terrify anyone, at least not to the point where he couldn't get away with claiming it was meant to be a harmless joke. Something to add some more chaos into his day to day life without raising any alarms.
For weeks he plotted the perfect plan to push his power to its limit. It would have to be something incredible, something that he never even imagined possible before. It also needed to be something subtle, that could blend into the world around it when needed. Last, and most important, the result would need to be unpredictable. He wanted to be just as surprised by what his chaos did as anyone else would be if they ever found out about it. His mind was constantly at work on devising the perfect scheme as he went about his life, and as he created the Puppet Discord again to prepare for another skit to pass the time by, inspiration finally struck.
"It's brilliant! Positively brilliant!" Discord declared, throwing his puppet self into the air in triumph as the plan revealed itself in his mind.
"I'll create life. True, sentient, fully free thinking life! I've altered enough preexisting minds to know how they work, but I've never made one entirely from scratch before! This is so exciting!" Discord said to himself, his voice much quieter now to prevent anyone from overhearing. He picked up his puppet self again, which had fallen to the ground while Discord spoke his plan aloud, and looked into the puppet's hollow eyes.
"Of course, a mind needs a body. I could use this, but a second me constantly running around is hardly subtle. A Pony body, on the other hand, would be perfect. It could blend into the crowd when necessary, and no one would instantly suspect me for any crazy thing it decided to do. Now I just need to decide what to use for the pony's body." Discord said, dropping the puppet again and putting a hand on his chin, appearing to be in deep contemplation. Puppet Discord got back on its feet of its own accord, and mimicked his original's stance for a few seconds before snapping with his right hand. With a small flash of light, a large boulder appeared in the air above the center of the field, and fell to the ground with an audible thud.
"Why, that's perfect!" Discord said, patting his puppet self on the back. "What better tool to use for a new experiment than the one I used to trick the Element of Generosity? I can easily sculpt a pony out of this!" He said, throwing the boulder into the air at the last word, and keeping it hovering a meter above him once it had begun falling. He took a second to give a~~n evil~~ mischievous chuckle, but was quickly brought out of it by his Puppet self, which elbowed him an pointed to the small crater the boulder had made when it landed onto the ground.
"What? What is it? What are you pointing at-oh!" Discord said, sounding annoyed until the end, at which point his tone and expression changed to one of surprise.
"What do we have here?" Discord asked rhetorically, as he levitated the object from the crater. It was an old, raggedy, now mostly flattened doll, with one of its button eyes hanging off its face, and with bits of dirt in its mane. "I remember you." Discord said with another ~~evil~~ mischievous chuckle.
Discord didn't sleep the first time he had been turned to stone, and he didn't sleep the second time either. Shortly after returning to his stone form, something in Ponyville had caught his attention. He could sense the potential chaos that had begun to build as Twilight had started to panic in her desperate attempt to avoid becoming tardy, and had seen the chaos Twilight had caused with the spell she placed on her old doll. Discord reflected on the entertaining memory for a few seconds, before realizing the meaning behind the presence of both Smarty Pants and the boulder once known as Tom.
"You want me to create TWO ponies, don't you?" He said with a glance at his puppet counterpart, which only nodded sagely in return. "You sir, are a GENIUS! I can't believe I hadn't thought of this myself." He said, despite the fact that he DID come up with the idea. His copies were often no more sentient than the boulder currently hovering above him, but they did on occasion act upon thoughts and ideas he himself hadn't decided to act upon just yet. The puppet didn't come up with the idea of making two ponies, or of having them be made from two objects previously used to cause chaos either intentionally or accidentally, but it HAD decided that the idea should become reality, which the original Discord had still only been considering. His impulsive yet not actually sentient alter egos were a concept that Celestia still couldn't quite wrap her head around, which suited Discord just fine. It would hardly be fun to use them as often as he did if they were easy to make sense of.
The complexities of his copies would pale in comparison, however, if he managed to make fully sentient free thinking ponies, and this caused another short chuckle.
"I suppose I should get started." Discord said, popping his knuckles and making a large clock appear on the ground in front of him. He only got a glance before the boulder above him fell diagonally on top of the clock and crushed it, but a glance was all he needed.
"I only have an hour left before Celestia summons me for another hour of ridiculously boring requests, so I better make this quick." He said, and the puppet and crushed clock remains disappeared as he drew in every ounce of chaos he could. He felt a one liner would be appropriate right about now, but through a combination of being pressed for time and eagerness to get the experiment started and to let loose with the chaos, he reluctantly decided to skip it, and instead only took a cautious look around to make sure no one was watching nearby before holding his hands out towards the boulder and puppet now only a foot away from each other, and sending a large blast of chaos energy right at them. The sheer amount of energy he was using made it become visible, and the beam switched from various patterns and colors every few seconds, at first being a red and white spiral, then a black and white checkerboard, and third being a blue lightning bolt with an orange background. The patterns and colors continued for what felt like a solid minute, and Discord found himself sliding back across the ground, as he began to near the limits of his strength, he could feel that the chaos hadn't fully taken hold yet, and with a determined look he began walking forward against the pressure pushing him back.
"You are going to work, you hear me? I'm Discord, Master of Chaos! You. Will. WORK!" With that, and a final surge of strength, the beam doubled in width, becoming as wide as he was tall, and changed into a broken mix of various patterns and colors, making the previous patterns look organized by comparison. Finally, with a sound like thunder, what appeared to be a nuclear explosion occurred within the field, the mushroom cloud dissipating at the edges of the fence. Discord was sent flying back several feet but quickly recovered, as the blast had been more sight and sound than actual pressure. He waited for the large cloud of smoke contained in the field to slowly dissipate, and resisted the desire to simply make it go away. He still held a small amount of chaos energy within himself, just enough to probably complete any tasks Celestia had for him. The sight and sound he could easily explain away as his usual antics if Celestia asked about it later, but if during his hour of fulfilling requests she noticed him trying to get out of using his powers or failing to do any of his usual antics when he was around her, she would likely become suspicious. The only plus side to his temporarily small level of energy was that he almost KNEW the trick had worked. He wouldn't quite believe it till he saw it, but he thought he felt the fabric of reality finally bend to his will at the end.
As the smoke finally cleared, he noticed that while the boulder still looked the same, the doll now held the shape and size of a normal pony, and upon closer inspection, he noticed it was also breathing.
"YES!" Discord said with volume just below a shout as he jumped into the air. "I did it!" He said much quieter than before, still wanting to try to be subtle despite the fact that he knew Celestia couldn't hear him from Canterlot Castle, the explosion, sure, but not him shouting unless he was intentionally amplifying his voice.
He waited as the young mare slowly opened her eyes, and noticed that they were the same two different colors as the buttons. In fact, the only differences Discord noticed from the doll and the pony's appearance was change in size, the absence of patches, a mane and tail slightly longer in proportion to her pony form than they had been in her doll form. He also noticed, with a held back laugh, that her cutie mark was the image of the same pair of pants that the doll had been wearing.
He waited as the doll turned pony continued to blink and rub her face with a hoof, as if she was still trying to wake up and her vision wasn't yet in focus. Discord forced himself to wait patiently until her eyes finally focused on him, and once they did, he grinned and waved.
"Hello there, my little pony." He said with a short laugh. "Welcome to Equestria. I am Discord and I," he said with emphasis, his voice suddenly a bit deeper and ominous. "Am your father." With that, he gave a round of pretend villainous laughter. While he did so, the newly created pony stood up, her height about three inches shorter than the average adult mare. Once she was on her feet, she did something even Discord hadn't expected to happen.
She frowned, narrowed her eyebrows, and with an annoyed tone, said her first words.
"What? No you're not."
Author's Note
Here we go. The train wreck of this story has officially begun. With any luck you'll enjoy watching it all unfold!
I gotta say I honestly REALLY didn't plan on writing so much of Discord before he began creating Smarty Pants and Tom, but I REALLY enjoyed the fun at the beginning of the chapter, and I don't think it all turned out too bad!
Let me know what you all think, and if I broke canon in any major way. I'm aware he doesn't really make copies of himself all that often (he only did it that one time in Keep Calm and Flutter On and that was only for a few seconds) but I like the idea of him being able to make 'mostly fully under his conscious control' copies, and I don't think it'd be impossible for him (especially if in this story he's able to create LIFE) and I can totally see him doing it a lot more due to boredom, a growing desire for friendship, and restraints on how far he can go with his chaos.
ANYWAY That's enough ranting. Later!
