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Aku was having a pretty good day.
All was right in his (well, it was his, now,) land. The foolish samurai had been cast far into the future, where Aku could properly prepare to face the magic-sword wielding warrior. But by that point, Aku was sure to be far more powerful than even the mortal man could comprehend.
Stretching his aching inky black back and beginning the long journey from the trap in the red crystal filled cavern that he had laid for the samurai, the ancient demon allowed himself a toothy grin.
Not quite a fully gloating smirk, that could wait until after his bubble bath of victory.
If there was one thing that Aku had learned, it was to never gloat in front of your opponent. Enemies who gloated in front of their opponents were always cut down.
So long as Aku maintained his cleverness like today, the samurai was sure to never win. And that make Aku grin a little bit wider, so much so that he almost didn’t notice that the tiny wormhole to the distant future began to rip back open.
Almost.
“What?” he blanched in horror, expecting the samurai to return with a vengeance. “Impossible!”
“Inconceivable, even!” the most horrifying amalgamation of animals that Aku had ever seen blasted out of the wormhole just as it snapped shut. He jumped in surprise, obviously… well, surprised. That literally had to have been the very last – actually, Aku never would have expected this at all. It was difficult to even describe what he was looking at.
The peculiar creature looked to be part goat, part dragon, part bat, part pony, part lion, part too many things.
“What?” Aku blinked again, unable to immediately comprehend what he was seeing.
“Inconceivable!” Discord repeated, spiraling into the air and twirling around, floating lazily through the air. “And then there’s the really big mistake. Killed his father, dude. Prepare to die.”
“… What?” Aku shook his head furiously. “What on earth are you?”
“Who, little old me?” the bizarre creature beamed, grappling Aku’s shadowy black claw-like hand and shaking it in earnest. “Why, I’m Discord, of course! And who might you be?”
"Aku, but -"
Before Aku had the chance to respond further to the madly grinning draconequus, only just noticing that his eyes were clearly mismatched and misshapen, Discord cut him off by springing into the air. He cracked his neck, a handful of popcorn falling out, which he proceeded to crunch on whilst speaking.
“So, anyway,” Discord said idly, stuffing his face full of popcorn. “There I was, surfing the Saddle Arabian desert on a washing board, when all of a sudden this rift opens up, smack dab in the middle of an alternate time stream – ”
“Whoa, whoa, whoa!” Aku stopped the freakish thing, evidently displeased. “Stop, stop. What happened to the samurai? How did you get here? What are you?”
“Very good questions!” Discord stated cheerfully, pulling a large wineglass from behind Aku’s ear. Discord hocked and coughed, eventually twisting his antler and turning his nostril into a faucet that filled the glass with chocolate milk.
Aku had seen a lot of strange things.
Aku had done a lot of strange things.
Discord topped them all, and it almost hurt to watch. It was like trying to peer into the very core of madness itself, and to be honest, he was relatively annoying.
Aku also noticed that Discord wasn’t actually answering any of his questions.
Fed up with the bizarre, reality-warping draconequus, Aku dropped all plans of using the creature’s powers for his own goals. It was becoming more and more appealing to simply obliterate Discord, and so that’s what Aku did.
The demon scowled, warping his fist into the shape of a large boulder-sized hammer and pummeling the wretched draconequus, putting an end to him once and for all.
With a small sense of satisfaction, Aku allowed his limb to return to its normal size – only to discover that Discord was nowhere to be seen.
“Best two out of three?” Discord leaned on Aku languidly, throwing his arm over his shoulder and sipping loudly on the chocolate milk.
Aku let out a long, tortured sigh of anguish.
“You’re immortal, aren’t you.”
It wasn’t so much of a question as it was a statement.
“See, I love sharp guys like you!” Discord cackled condescendingly as Aku pushed him roughly away, his new tormentor following him out of the crystal filled cave.
Aku promptly transformed his opposite fist into a bundle of razors, punching Discord as hard as he could in the face.
“How’s that for sharp?”
Discord, however, simply stretched backward with the blow. His face expanded like putty, stretching until Aku gave up. The draconequus blew a raspberry, his face flopping springily back to its original form.
“I should have guessed it wouldn’t work,” Aku deadpanned miserably, plodding toward the exit. The fight with the samurai had taken too much out of him, and he just didn’t have the effort to continue attempting to destroy the wretched draconequus.
“Aw, don’t feel so down on yourself, Apu!” Discord clapped the angry demon on the back heartily.
Aku’s head slowly twisted and turned, creaking and clanking with a rusty, metallic sound. Discord was met with eyes full of fire and hate, and the demon was on the verge of abandoning all pretense and stomping the creature into the ground until one of them died.
“My name is Aku!” he bellowed, casting out his arms as dark shadows blasted from behind him, and he towered over the draconequus. “I am a great demon, and you shall show respect! You shall obey Aku, you shall bow down before Aku, you shall fear what just happened?”
And, as Discord was pulling the shadows from the wall with his claws, he recognized that as a very good question as well.
Aku was smack dab in the middle of attempting to look terrifying when Discord began chewing on his shadow, giving him a significantly less terrifying look.
More hypnotizing to Aku, however, was that his shadow simply shrugged at him in confusion.
“Stop that!” Aku slapped the draconequus away futilely.
Discord threw his arm over Aku’s shoulder again, a goofy grin on his face.
“Sure thing, pal!” he said cheerfully, guiding the ancient demon from the cave. “Few bajillion years in a time stream makes a guy kinda hungry, I’m sure you understand. Wanna grab a bite?”
“Stop touching me, or I’ll tear your arms off,” Aku replied flatly, furrowing his eyebrows. Or, at least, he tried to.
It took him a bare moment to realize that Discord had sneakily pulled his eyebrows off.
“… What the…? Give those back!” he scowled, watching as Discord stuffed one of the flaming eyebrows into his mouth. He slurped it down like one big noodle, and belched loudly with a little puff of smoke.
“Whoo! Spicy,” Discord huffed while Aku snatched his one remaining eyebrow back from the mad god, desperately struggling to stick the red eyebrow back onto his face.
He finally managed to glue it back on with enough effort, although he now only had a unibrow.
“Hey, you gonna eat that?” Discord eyed the other eyebrow with a leer, prompting Aku to sigh dejectedly.
“No.”
“Can-?”
“NO, you cannot eat my other eyebrow!” Aku shouted in his face, resisting the urge to scream in frustration at the impossible-to-kill oppressor. This was even worse than the dreaded samurai!
“Aw!” Discord slumped disappointedly. He perked up again immediately afterwards, and asked in a conversational tone “Say, you ever get the urge to just eat whatever’s in front of you?”
Aku’s remaining eyebrow twitched viciously.
“So, anyway, totally unrelated note, I got fired from this gynecology job…”
Aku’s tortured screams of anguish could be heard for miles.
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