The King Who Would Be Man

Chapters

Prologue: Family Problems
A Day In The Life
Show You The World In My Eyes
Lest Old Acquaintance Be Forgot
The Calm Before The Storm
Pool Party
The Quality of One's Enemies
Games Without Frontiers
You Can Never Be Free of Your Past
Destiny's Not All It's Cracked Up To Be

Prologue: Family Problems

Fluttershy had given Discord a bedroom. This was utterly ludicrous, of course; he could make a place for himself anywhere he chose, and he didn't sleep anyway, and yet, with Fluttershy asleep and the house boring as mud, somehow he found himself spending time here. Not all his time; he had things to do, he wasn't so pathetic that he needed to spend all his time hovering around this tiny little cottage. But as ridiculous and unnecessary as the gift had been... he found himself strangely moved by the fact that she'd given him one at all. No one gave him gifts.

It was unnerving.

In the beginning he'd let his imagination run riot in the tiny room, inverting and subverting the laws of physics, nature and good taste to the greatest extent he could without making the room fatal to ponies, mostly to try to irritate Fluttershy into throwing him out, which she had never done. Discord was willing to admit how much that impressed him. He wasn't used to being surprised at the outcome of anything, or losing any game he chose to play, and this particular defeat at Fluttershy's hands had been both less predictable and had had considerably less annoying long-range results than Twilight Sparkle beating him had. It was a better victory, too. He'd given Fluttershy a real challenge, and she'd still beaten him. Not like the other times. He'd underestimated Sparky and her friends and given them far, far too many chances. Maybe the others were right and he was slipping. First failing to notice that one of the humans he was testing was actually a Betazoid empath, letting what should have been a difficult and challenging test turn into a cakewalk, and then failing again with the humans, underestimating Picard's hold on the one he'd tried to recruit (and possibly underestimating the Continuum's willingness to tolerate the attempt at recruiting new blood in the first place, though really, if they didn't bring in anyone new the place would simply collapse of stagnation... not that that was his problem anymore)... and then flat out giving Sparky and pals a free shot. He was never going to admit this to anyone, but... yeah, he was a little worried. The occasional mistake was one thing but this level of screwing things up was new. Maybe the others had a point.

Naah.

He'd let the room go back to mostly normal, now. The truth was he had a much higher tolerance for "normal" than he was ever going to admit to his ponies. This was the place where he got to cut loose, where his role and identity let him push the boundaries of his own whims and imagination in ways he never got to anywhere else, and if they knew how well he could fake "normalcy" in other places and times, they'd know that when he cut loose he was doing it on purpose and not because he couldn't help himself. It wasn't nearly as much of a hardship for him as he pretended it was to not turn the room into a funhouse mirror of every rule in operation on this planet, and it made Fluttershy more comfortable when he made things almost normal, and for some reason that he was deliberately not engaging the tiniest fraction of his vast intellect in trying to understand, he actually cared how the little yellow ball of fluff felt. So at the moment, the room had a bed and a desk and a dresser and a mirror, and he was sitting on a chair in front of the mirror building a hypercube. It was supposed to be a really amazing toy, full of educational traps carefully designed to be non-lethal, chock full of wordplay and clever visual gags, something really amusing he could suck Sparky into exploring for hours or days on end where she'd come out a wiser, smarter, and vastly more annoyed little pony. His heart wasn't in it, though. Sometimes the Muse was just with him, and sometimes it went out to a party and left him at home to mope and think about who he could go bother now. Maybe Luna. Luna had been hilarious to tease the past few days, but he had to keep himself restrained with it or Celestia would get irritated enough to declare him a public enemy again, and while that could be a lot of fun and he'd spent many long hours fantasizing about the marvelously entertaining fights he was planning to get into with the Bearers of the Elements once Fluttershy gave up on him... the fact that she never had kind of spoiled the fantasy. If he backslid and ended up in a fight with the Bearers now it would put him up against Fluttershy and that... didn't actually sound like fun anymore.

Definitely slipping. He'd be the laughingstock of the Continuum if they were watching...

...which, if he didn't mistake what was happening to his mirror, they were trying to.

He turned to the mirror in great irritation, tossing his hypercube into a box and then making the box turn into a smooth, seamless bouncy ball, which bounced away. The image in the mirror was another draconequus, with tan fur on his chest instead of brown and clear blue-grey eyes instead of yellow. "Do you mind?" he snapped at the image. "Last I checked this was still my territory."

"Ooh, fierce," the other said in that really annoying voice that made Discord sincerely wish he could drop-kick his fellows into a black hole as easily as he could put Yar in a penalty box, or dress Celestia in a dancer's costume and force her to escape from a giant cake. "Relax, buddy, I'm not on your turf. Just making a phone call here."

"Yeah, well, I don't recall inviting you to do that either."

"Good thing for me I don't wait for invitations. Nice digs. I see you're not in a palace."

"Not that it's any of your business, but no. They're boring. Been there, done that, sick of it."

"So you're slumming, huh? Heard you got yourself a new pony pal for a roomy. How's she managing to put up with you?"

"I'm sure it's difficult for her to adjust, but my fantastic wit and charm provides some compensation for my zany antics, no doubt. Does this have a point or is this a purely social visit?"

"Oh, you know. Just wanted to look in on you, see how you were doing. Last time I checked up on you here you were a rock."

"Laugh it up, buddy, I'm sure they love you just as much on Deltivia since you lost their asteroid belt."

"You always gotta bring that one up? You must have pulled, like, nine hundred stunts I could use for an example of how annoying you are, and you always bring up that one asteroid belt like it means something."

"In all fairness, it was a pretty enormous example of massive and ludicrous failure on your part."

"Whereas getting turned into a rock again was just good clean fun?"

Discord shrugged. "As you can see, I got better. Now, I have things to do, so unless there's a point to this tedious conversation—"

"Oh, I just had some news to give you, that's all. Figured you might be interested to know, but if you don't care—" The other in the mirror raised his eagle talon, ready to snap.

Discord held up his own paw. "Wait. Are you actually suggesting you might be helpful for once? Because if so, I'm all for it."

The other's grin was predatory. "I just figured I'd call up and let you know not to get too comfortable where you are."

Discord leaned forward into the mirror, scowling. "Exactly what do you mean by that?"

"Just what I said. It's coming to a verdict. Soon."

Despite himself his heart beat faster with a painful mixture of hope and terror. He didn't want to beg, to humble himself in any way before the other one, but... what choice did he have? "So... any hints you willing to drop me on which way the wind is blowing?" he asked, trying painfully hard to sound casual.

The smile on the other draconequus in the mirror grew, turning into a cruel mocking grin. "Just that if you had anything you really, really wanted to get around to doing one of these days, and you've been too busy to get to it so far... you might want to make time within the next year. Or less."

All the blood drained from Discord's head. Which thankfully was a lot less visible in a form with fur, but he knew, humiliated, that the other knew anyway. "A year?" he whispered, feeling like he'd been punched in the gut.

"Or less," the other one said. "'Course, maybe the outcome won't go the way it's leaning now... but me, I wouldn't bet on it."

And then the mirror cleared, and Discord's own reflection was all that was visible in it again. He sagged down into the chair.

A year. Or less. Right after he'd found friends among these mortals, begun to make a new home for himself.

Well. Wasn't that ironic.

He started to chuckle, because bitter irony was funny no matter whose life it destroyed, and he'd be a terrible hypocrite if he couldn't find the humor in his own misfortune. And then he took a deep breath, and got to his feet again, staring at himself in the mirror.

This changed nothing. He'd already decided, he wanted these ponies to accept him as a friend. For some reason. Maybe because somewhere in the back of his mind he'd known all along the verdict wasn't likely to go in his favor. And because Picard had said no, and he had to have somewhere to go, and being the bad guy hadn't been nearly as much fun as he'd remembered it being from a thousand years ago.

Nothing was certain except that his older brother was an ass and would enjoy twisting the knife, after the number of times he'd warned Discord something like this might happen. Discord privately thought the other one was actually on his side, defending him to the others, but he knew better than to think the other would ever admit that to him. Maybe it wasn't going to go badly. Maybe it wasn't going to come as quickly as his brother was suggesting. Nothing was actually any different than it had been ten minutes ago.

He wasn't going to let the news ruin his time with his new friends. Especially if the news really was as bad as it sounded, and the time he had was a lot less than he'd thought he'd get.

Author's Note

Man, it is a pain in the butt to re-order chapters on this site. I decided I needed a prologue, and owie.

A Day In The Life

One of Fluttershy's cabinets was knocking.

At this point she wasn't particularly fazed by things like that. It could be that one of the animals had snuck in and then been unable to get back out, or it could be Discord trying to use her cabinet for a door. She walked over and pulled it open.

Pinkie Pie stuck her head through. "WHERE IS DISCORD?"

Fluttershy blinked. "Has he done something bad?"

"Yeah, he's hiding too well! How are we gonna play Hide and Go Seek if he's gonna hide this well?" Pinkie pulled herself out of the cabinet. "My Pinkie Sense tells me he's around here somewhere."

Fluttershy had stopped trying to play Hide and Go Seek with Discord a month ago for pretty much exactly this reason; she'd play all sorts of ridiculous games she'd never heard of before, including Fizzbin, Donkey Pong, Moebius Race, and whatever that game had been where the whole world had turned into little squares and she had to dig things out of the ground to use to build some kind of machine that fired portals that let her go back to the real world, but nobody but Pinkie Pie was random enough to ever find Discord in a game of Hide and Go Seek. She enjoyed watching them play, most of the time, when Pinkie wasn't walking through her cupboard. "Oh, dear, is that a hoofprint on my tea cup?"

"Oh, I'm totally sorry, I promise I will clean up any tea cups I accidentally stepped on, or near, or however I got a hoofprint on it, which was probably due to the flour all over my feet so I'm really sorry about that. I will be your dishwashing buddy for a week! After I find Discord."

"That's flour? It's purple."

"Yeah! Purple flour is the best for baking grape flavored cupcakes. If you actually bake a grape into a cupcake it doesn't work because grapes are too squishy, but if you use dried grapes that's a raisin so it's not even a grape, not that raisins in cupcakes aren't awesome but they're not grapes, so when I told Discord that it's no fun to just snap cupcakes into existence all the time because sometimes it's nice to just bake them and he didn't believe me so I made him help me bake a cupcake and he said white flour was boring so he made me some grape flour and it is awesome! Best cupcakes ever. Well, best cupcakes this week, anyway." She was peering inside jars, teapots and the salt shaker. "So I am almost willing to forgive him for the fruit salad but only almost! I have to yell at him first but before that I have to find him. I am totally sure he's in your kitchen somewhere, Fluttershy. You're not using your oven, are you?"

"No..."

"Ok, good, because I don't think the oven being on could really hurt him but who knows!" She opened the oven door. "Wait, no, not there. Oh wait, I know, I gotcha!" She ran over to where Fluttershy kept the sugar bowl and pulled the lid off.

There was no sugar inside. Instead, there was a very tiny Discord. "Oh, Pinkie. You got me again! Will I ever defeat your amazing prowess at Hide and Go Seek?"

"You find me all the time too. And where is all Fluttershy's sugar, mister? Did you eat it all up on her, huh? Did you? Because she and I will totally make you go to the dentist if you're gonna eat whole sugar bowls full of sugar!"

"Of course I didn't eat it... all. Remember when I told you two that I was out annoying spiders?"

"Uh... yeah..." Fluttershy said.

"Well, you cannot imagine how annoying spiders find it when they find a nice juicy fly in their web and then, dear me, it turns out to be made of sugar."

"That's not very nice," Fluttershy said. "Spiders can't eat sugar." She considered what he'd told her the last time he'd told her he was annoying spiders. "Or chocolate pudding."

"How are they going to know until they try it? I thought spiders might enjoy the opportunity to sample a pudding-filled fly." Discord vanished out of the sugar bowl and reappeared in the kitchen at full size. "Besides, would you rather I go annoy ponies, or spiders?"

"Spiders, " Pinkie said. "Definitely spiders."

"Why do you have to annoy anypony?"

"My dear, if I don't go annoying something, they'll take away my Disharmony Card and then where will I be?"

"What's a Disharmony Card?"

"It's like a library card, except that instead of checking out books it allows me to check out chaos. Which reminds me, some of what I've got is overdue and I'm going to have to return it before I can check out any more."

"You are not going to go drop off overdue chaos until I have had words with you, mister!" Pinkie said. "What were you thinking, covering my entire bedroom with fruit salad?"

"...That you like fruit?"

"But there was no pineapple! Not even one teensy little bit of pineapple! How can you even call that a fruit salad when there's no pineapple in it?"

Discord considered. "I could call it a chaotic fruit salad."

"No, covering my bedroom in it made it a chaotic fruit salad! Leaving out the pineapple just made it totally YUCKY! I'll tolerate all kinds of chaotic fruit salads, buddy, but you make me eat a yucky fruit salad one more time and it is gonna be ON."

"I didn't make you eat the salad."

"Yes you did! You knew that if you covered my bedroom in fruit salad I would have to eat it even if you didn't put any pineapple in it! And besides you fed all of Fluttershy's sugar to spiders and they don't even like sugar! You better say you're sorry, buster."

"You're sorry, buster," Discord said promptly.

"Yeah, and say it like you mean it or I will never make you another cupcake all day!"

Discord rolled his eyes. Metaphorically. Fluttershy had seen him do it literally once too often and had finally admitted to him that it creeped her out. "Oh, the horror," he said. "Fine. I am sorry for the lack of pineapple in your salad and the next time I fill a random location in your home with fruit salad I will be certain to make sure there is pineapple."

"Oh! And also those bright red mariachi cherries!"

"Maraschino cherries?" Fluttershy asked, surprised that the queen of dessert would get that wrong.

"No, mariachi cherries. Like they blow horns! And they've got maracas!"

"Yes, yes, mea culpa, I will make sure the next pineapple salad has mariachi cherries in it. Although now that you're expecting them, I'll just have to do my best to make sure you're not expecting them when they show up."

"I wouldn't expect a bunch of mariachi cherries to appear right here on Fluttershy's counter and dance around until I eat them all," Pinkie Pie said, with a hopeful note in her voice.

"And nor should you! Because we were just talking about them, so that would make sense, and when do I ever make sense? Besides which your cupcakes are burning."

"Oh no! Yikes! I totally forgot I left them in the oven! Bye, Fluttershy! Bye, Discord! Bye, everybody else!" She jumped back in the cabinet and the cabinet door slammed.

"Discord, it's ok about the sugar but you should have told me I was out because I might have wanted to make some tea."

Discord sighed. "You're not out of sugar. I put it in the pepper shaker."

"In the... so where is the pepper?"

"Well, you're out of that, because I ate it." He stuck his head in the cabinet. "Oh, Pinkie Pie, I feel just terrible about your cupcakes burning. Do you want me to fix them for you?"

Fluttershy couldn't hear any response, which was normal, because his head was inside a cabinet and there was actually no visible opening inside it that might lead to Pinkie Pie's kitchen, but he said, cheerfully, "Done! No problem at all," and pulled his head back out. "There we go. Cupcakes are saved! How would you like to go scuba diving, Fluttershy?"

"Uh, maybe, but not really right now and if we go I don't want to do it so close to nightfall and I don't want it to be on the bottom of the ocean with all those giant sea serpents even if some of them are really nice once you get to know them?"

"Okay, then how about—"

They were interrupted by Pinkie Pie sticking her head back out of the cabinet. "DISCORD! I made chocolate cupcakes with vanilla pudding filling and cherries and you made them into chocolate cupcakes with mustard filling and OLIVES! And that is totally gross!"

"... No one would have eaten a burned cupcake anyway. And how do you know they're gross unless you try them?"

"How do you think I know they're gross? I DID! Yuck!"

"Well, if you don't like my culinary masterpiece you can always give it to me."

She glared at him. "This is not my cupcake. This is the Cakes' cupcake. I have to sell these things. For bits. Do you have any bits?"

"I don't understand why you ponies are so obsessed with tiny little pieces of metal. I can make tiny little pieces of metal any time I want!"

"Yeah, but Celestia won't let you make bits."

"Spoilsport princess. She says it would crash the economy. The economy ran just fine when I used to make money rain out of trees."

"So what you're telling me is you don't have any bits to buy these nasty mustard olive cupcakes off me."

Fluttershy sighed. "I'll buy the cupcakes for him, Pinkie."

"Oh no! You don't have to do that. You should make him do some work to earn bits or something."

"Do you remember the time he went to your house because he said he forgot his hat, and then you two came back and you'd been to Neighpon and you were raving about rice balls with red bean paste?"

"Uh-huh..."

"Well, right before he left for your house he enchanted a broom and a mop to clean the house for me because I told him to clean the house, but after they were done they started chasing Angel and a bunch of other animals around and trying to sweep them up like they were part of the mess, and I had to get Twilight Sparkle to fix it for me because you guys were so late getting back."

"In my defense, I am a spirit of chaos. Not housecleaning."

"Well, you are also obviously a spirit of nasty mustard filled cupcakes and so I'm not gonna give you any! I'm gonna save them for a prank. Thanks, bye!"

Discord flopped down on a cloud that was suddenly sitting in the kitchen. Though at least it was a normal cloud, not a cotton candy one. "I never thought I'd say this, but that little pony can tire me out. I am all out of chaos for at least the next twenty minutes. Want to play a game?"

"I was actually coming in to make dinner..."

"Oh, Fluttershy. Didn't you make a schedule that says it's my turn to make dinner?" He snapped his fingers and the table was suddenly set with plates of heaping, delicious-smelling spaghetti. That happened to be green, with peanut-butter-colored sauce that probably wasn't actually peanut butter. Probably. It smelled like alfredo sauce, actually.

"I did make a schedule but it was my turn today. Yours was tomorrow."

He shrugged. "I have such difficulty keeping track of time. Try my spaghetti!"

Tentatively Fluttershy did. "It's... it's actually really yummy. Do I want to know what's in it?"

Discord grinned. "Can you keep a secret, dear Fluttershy?"

"Uh... yes..."

He leaned in and whispered in her ear. "It's not chaotic at all, it just looks that way. That's spinach fettucine and spicy peanut sauce with a lot of cheese mixed in. You could buy the ingredients at a fancy-schmancy grocery shop in Canterlot if you wanted to."

She giggled. "That's... pretty funny. I would never have expected you could really make green spaghetti with peanut butter sauce that smells like cheese without using magic to make the ingredients."

"That is my entire purpose in existence. To do things that nobody would expect. You see –" He snapped his fingers, and a group of brightly shining red cherries appeared on the table, playing horns. "No one ever expects the mariachi cherries after Pinkie Pie goes home."

Angel Bunny sniffed experimentally at his plate, then pulled out a piece of carrot and displayed it at Discord, a questioning look on his face.

Discord shrugged. "I'm in a generous mood, little bunny. Enjoy it while it lasts."

"You... made Angel Bunny his own special spaghetti? With carrots? That is so sweet!" Fluttershy hugged him, causing Discord to recoil, an exaggerated expression of distaste on his face.

"Please, Fluttershy, I was using that pancreas."

She nuzzled her nose against his chest, largely because he was sufficiently tall that even when he was sitting down on a cloud, she couldn't easily reach his face unless he bent it down to her. "Oh, you complain and complain but you like it when I hug you, really."

"Well, maybe I would like it if the sugar overload weren't killing me."

"Like the guy who makes cotton candy clouds doesn't like sugar?"

"Well..."

She released him. There was a fine line to walk with Discord, and she'd figured it out after spending time with him. He really did like affection and friendship, but he really did think they were weaknesses and that admitting to liking them would make people look down on him, or something, so she couldn't give him too much. Just enough to make him both pleased and embarrassed, and then she could pretend she was embarrassing him on purpose like it was a prank so he could pretend his emotions weren't as affected as they actually were. Over time, she thought, she might be able to get him to actually admit to liking it. And then he'd be well on his way to being able to make more friends besides just her. Already he and Pinkie Pie were great buddies, and both Twilight Sparkle and Rarity treated him as a sort of frenemy, Rarity engaging him in arguments about fashion every time they ran into each other (according to Rarity, Discord's taste was absolutely appalling but it couldn't be denied that he had a powerful sense of style) and Twilight Sparkle... well, it was really hard to describe exactly how that relationship worked, except that they were always getting into low-stakes magical battles of a weird kind where Discord would cast some sort of spell out of one of Twilight's books, except he'd make major modifications to it so she wouldn't easily be able to figure out which one, and challenge her to figure out how to undo it. And Twilight seemed infuriated by this behavior but she always played along.

She thought he might be making friends with Princess Luna as well – he didn't sleep, so he usually went out at night while Fluttershy was sleeping, and when he wasn't annoying spiders or going deep into the Everfree Forest to find a woodchuck so he could learn how much wood would a woodchuck chuck if he bespelled it so it could chuck wood (at his head, apparently, and she was pretty sure he had deliberately held off on healing it so she would put ice and a bandage on it for him, but on the other hand, things in the Everfree were pretty impervious to magic so maybe the amount of chaos magic it had taken to make a woodchuck chuck wood had also made it capable of actually hurting a god of chaos with the wood it chucked at his head), he was teleporting to Canterlot to talk to Luna. Or so he said, but she believed him because it would be just too easy to check on. Applejack and Rainbow Dash still couldn't stand him and neither could Spike and he and Princess Celestia seemed to have some sort of weird old thing between them that made the two of them avoid each other, but the Cutie Mark Crusaders had started treating him as some kind of weird fun uncle, possibly accepting him as Not Evil so they could stop feeling guilty about accidentally releasing him the first time.

As she nibbled at her surprisingly tasty spaghetti, Fluttershy watched Discord eat his. His plate was actually covered in just one single, incredibly long, strand of spaghetti, which he slurped up in a single prolonged slurp, and then his plate started unraveling as if it, too, was made of the same one strand of spaghetti and he slurped it up as well. She grinned. It wasn't like he never did anything inappropriate or seriously annoying, and he made messes all the time and never cleaned them up and when he tried it just made matters worse, but he was funny and entertaining and surprisingly considerate when he wanted to be. She'd taken on befriending him as a challenge from Princess Celestia, and when she'd first declared him to be her friend it was really more like she'd been trying hard to find things about him to like than that she'd actually liked him... but she knew a lot about taming scary animals. If you kept treating animals, or ponies (or, she guessed, draconequii if that was really how you pronounced the plural), like they were your friends, if you kept acting like you liked them and wanted to be nice to them, they would almost always come around to returning the favor. Unless they were very hungry, in which case they might try to eat you. Which didn't apply to Discord because he didn't eat ponies.

At this point the door slammed open and Twilight Sparkle stomped in. "DISCORD!"

"Sparky! How about a hug?"

"I'm sorry for disturbing your dinner, Fluttershy, but I have to talk to this—this—"

"Incredibly handsome devil?"

"Devil, I'll agree with," Twilight snapped, and slammed a book down on the dinner table. "The spell you said was in here is not anywhere in this book! You lied to me!"

"I'm hurt, Sparky. Would I ever lie to you... unless it was funnier that way? Which, for the record, it isn't, because the fact that you cannot find that spell in the spellbook I got it out of just yesterday is COMPLETELY HILARIOUS."

"The only thing even remotely like the spell you did is the one that ends a transformation, with true love's kiss, and I know for a fact you would never, ever use a spell that requires true love's kiss."

"I did tell you I modified it just a bit."

She stomped over to him. "You did lie to me! There's nothing in this book that could be modified to turn ponies into dogs!"

"Yes, because the youthful unicorn student of magic is positive to have every bit as much experience with modifying spells as the ETERNAL GOD OF CHAOS." Discord leaned back on his cloud and sipped at a chocolate milk that hadn't been there a moment ago. "Would you like to try this again from the top?"

"This is serious, Discord! I'm done jumping through your little riddles. Turn the Cutie Mark Crusaders back into ponies or so help you I'm going to modify a transmogrification spell so it uses just five Elements of Harmony and ends up with a cake instead of a statue, and then I'm going to eat it."

Discord clapped his hands. "Wonderful, Sparky, wonderful! We'll make a Chaos mage of you yet, just you wait!" He leaned forward. "Or, possibly, you're on the verge of turning into The Terrible Doctor Twilight?"

Twilight glared at him, but before she could say anything, Fluttershy whispered, horrified, "You... turned the Cutie Mark Crusaders into dogs, Discord?"

"Oh, relax, they're having a blast. Maybe they'll get cutie marks in being dogs—" He fell backward off the couch as Fluttershy shoved him through the cloud, and tumbled onto the floor backwards. "Hey, that was uncalled for!"

Fluttershy directed The Stare at him. "Turn. Them. BACK."

"Can't. They did it to themselves. But Twilight Sparklepie here can do it! The spell's right here in this book!" As The Stare continued, Discord sighed. "Fluttershy, they can talk. They've still got wings and horns and blank flanks and annoying little voices and all the other things they normally have, they're just puppies instead of fillies. And they really did do it to themselves. I provided them with the spell, I told them it would turn them into puppies, and they quite voluntarily and eagerly activated it."

"They told me they had no idea how you did this to them!" Twilight snapped.

"Well, would you tell your older sister's good pal and the protégé of Princess Celestia that you took a spell off the Spirit of Chaos and activated it because you wanted to see if you could get your cutie mark if you turned into a dog for a little while?" He got back to his feet. "They're not hurt. And if you must know, the spell will wear off on its own, eventually, so if you really insist on declaring defeat and throwing yourself at me in abject surrender declaring, 'Oh, Discord, great Lord of Chaos, I am obviously a complete idiot and totally unable to solve the simplest of magical problems, please solve all my problems for me by telling me the answer so Great Princess Celestia doesn't realize what a total nitwit I am—'"

Twilight lowered her horn at him. "Cake, Discord. I even know the spell to use."

"Marvelous, I always wanted to be a cake. So much fluffier than a giant stone statue."

"I'm serious."

"You're always serious. You wouldn't be Twilight Sparkypoo if you weren't serious." He leaned forward. "Fine. Do we need a wittle wesson in wogic, Sparkypants?"

"A lesson in logic from you?"

"Yes, what is this world coming to. Cats and dogs living together! The spirit of Chaos having a better comprehension of what makes sense than the Terrible Doctor Twilight! I—"

"Never call me that again, Discord. I am completely serious about this. You know that a spell that traps a pony in an illusion is dark magic, right? And you know I never told the Princess about that book, and what you did to me with it?"

"Technically that thing was a friendship spell."

"A friendship spell and a fear spell and you twisted them all together and you made it dark. I don't think the Princess would be impressed by your technicalities."

It had been a month ago. Twilight had been gloating at Discord that she'd found a book he'd missed eating the reforming spell out of, and if he didn't watch his step, she had it memorized now. Discord had appeared quite alarmed, and had given her a book which he claimed would tell her about the many issues with reforming spells. What it had actually been had been a spell which forced a pony to relive their own life as if it had been another pony's... not to live that pony's life, but to suffer the same kinds of events that that pony had. So if the spell caster was an orphan, the reader of the book would live through an illusion in which their own parents died. If the spell caster had had a turbulent marriage, the reader of the book would see their own special somepony in the role of the spouse. And if the spell caster was the spirit of Chaos...

It had been a horrible nightmare for Twilight. From what she'd told them all about it, the story—which she'd had to live through as if it were actually happening – had been about her growing up in a world where no one trusted books or knowledge, and everyone hated and feared her for her love of those things, and when she made mistakes with the spells that she'd learned from books, her family and friends and even Princess Celestia had turned on her and ostracized her horribly. Surrounded by people calling her evil for the thing she loved, the thing she lived for, she had turned evil, becoming a madmare who experimented on other ponies in horrible ways in her quest to learn forbidden magics. She'd taken over the kingdom, ruled it with an iron hoof, brought death and destruction in her quest for knowledge, and been taken down by her best friends, turned to stone, with Celestia wielding the Element of Magic instead of her. Maddened by centuries in stone, she'd been even crazier when she'd gotten out, and unleashed horrors against Equestria, until the now-adult Cutie Mark Crusaders had used a reforming spell on her, which had made her hate books and knowledge and turn against everything she'd ever loved. Except that the lying happiness that the spell imposed on her was only a veneer, and every so often her true self got free enough to see what she'd become, the complete opposite of what she had been, the thing she had loved most in life and defined herself by torn out and replaced with a fake devotion to others that left her utterly hollow, and one day she got free long enough to kill herself.

The spell hadn't just been based on rewriting the spellcaster's life experiences so that the book's reader would live through them as if it happened to them, with friends and hobbies and talents replaced by what matched the reader's life. It finished off by bringing the spellcaster's worst fear to life and integrating it into the reader's nightmare.

Twilight had cried for days afterward, and some of the others, particularly Rainbow Dash and Applejack, had thought that the very fact that Discord would trick her into experiencing that spell meant that she should use the reforming spell... but it had, in fact, worked as Discord had intended. It had taken his life experiences, and his greatest fear, and translated them into terms that Twilight Sparkle could relate to, and made her experience them so she would understand why no attempt to actually reform him could work if the threat of a reforming spell was on the table, anywhere. It had upset her so badly that Fluttershy had had a screaming match with Discord about what he'd done to Twilight... but in the end, Twilight had explained, she couldn't even hate him for it, because the illusion he'd made her live through was her version of exactly what he had lived through, followed by the thing she had threatened him with. He hadn't done anything to her that he hadn't endured himself... except for the horrible ending, which was exactly what she'd just threatened to do to him.

Also, because the book had had enough logical inconsistencies that she'd been able to suspend her belief in it enough to maintain her sanity. Such as, how could the Cutie Mark Crusaders have possibly survived several hundred years to be around to cast the reforming spell when the Terrible Doctor Twilight was released from her stone prison?

That was how Twilight and Discord had begun their strange competition. Discord had told Twilight that the spell he'd tricked her into triggering was in one of her own books, and he'd even given her which book it was, and she'd had to figure out what modifications he'd made to it. It turned out that the spell had started life as a friendship spell where you could bespell a book with your own memories and give it to a friend to experience, plus a spell that was supposed to draw out the target's own worst fear so that friends could see it and understand it and help the target deal with it. Twilight had known that particular one could be weaponized, despite being in a manual of friendship spells, but it had taken her two days of studying what Discord had done to combine the two spells to figure out how he'd made them both into a weapon. Discord didn't usually use procedural magic, the kind one could learn from books, but his natural magic didn't lend itself well to producing well-organized, consistent effects, so when he actually wanted a consistent result he'd grab a spell out of a book and then completely rewrite it so it did what he wanted it to do... and picking apart his spells, figuring out how he'd made his modifications and why, was teaching Twilight a lot about magic that she'd never managed to get from either books or Celestia's tutoring. So he kept playing elaborate pranks on her with modified spells – none as devastating as The Tale of the Terrible Doctor Twilight had been, but then, he'd done that one in self-defense to protect himself from the thing he feared most in all the world – and she kept rising to the challenge, angrily.

This did not, in Fluttershy's opinion, justify turning the Cutie Mark Crusaders into puppies, even if they had wanted to be turned into puppies. "Discord, what you've done is really frightening Twilight and upsetting her," she said sternly. "She's afraid that if she can't figure out what spell you used, she can't counter it, so what if they get stuck that way?"

"They won't get stuck. I am not a fan of getting stuck. Trust me. Would this face lie to you?"

"Yes," Twilight said.

"Well, then I guess it is, indeed, time for our logic lesson." He stood up, suddenly wearing a tweed suit and horn-rimmed glasses, pointing at a chalkboard that hadn't been there a moment ago with a long wooden pointer that also hadn't. As he spoke in a strange accent, chalk wrote on the board, by itself. "Let us propose, there are two possibilities here. One, Discord is lying, and the spell isn't in the book. Two, Discord is telling the truth. So, if the first possibility is true, this leads to the possible consequence that Twilight Sparkle will successfully persuade Fluttershy to use the Element of Kindness in concert with her pals, which would be deeply unpleasant for Discord, plus, how would that even be funny? I mean, 'It's in the book, except it's really not! Haha, what a knee slapper!' How jejune. No style at all! Whereas if the second possibility is true, again we have a fork in possibility! First, the possibility that Twilight Sparkle is too stupid to possibly figure out the correct spell! In which case the Princess Celestia would look like an utter maroon for choosing such an idiotic protégé, wouldn't she, and we wouldn't want to diss the Princess. Plus, since Twilight Sparkle successfully defeated the great and powerful Discord, we can logically assume that either she is very smart or that Discord is an idiot and I am quite certain none of us want to go there, no?"

"Maybe not so many insults if you're trying to explain something to someone who's mad at you?" Fluttershy said, looking at the expression on Twilight Sparkle's face with some trepidation on Discord's behalf.

"What would be the fun in that? Besides, I didn't insult the dear Sparklypin, quite the contrary! I said rather that her great intelligence and ability to solve this puzzle can be assumed from the fact that if she doesn't have such abilities, both Celestia and I are idiots and I would certainly never want to say that. Well, maybe the part about Celestia, but not moi. So! If I am telling the truth and the spell is in this book, and Twilight Sparkle is smart enough to figure it out, and yet she has not figured it out because she is convinced that there's only one spell in there that it could possibly be and that's the wrong one, once again we have two possibilities! I love statistics. Did you know that statistically, if you flip a coin 7,212 times, and each time it comes up heads, then the odds of it coming up heads again are still fifty-fifty? But I digress! Either the spell is the one Twilight Sparkle thinks it might be, and whatever she sees as the impediment to the possibility is in fact no impediment at all and she just needs to look at it from a different angle. Or, it's a different spell and Twilight just hasn't figured out which one yet." He leaned forward into Twilight's face. "Which means, it's there in the book, Sparky. Figure it out."

Twilight glared at him even harder. "The only spell that it could possibly be by any stretch of the imagination is the one that undoes a transformation by true love's kiss. Firstly, this was a transformation, not an undoing of a transformation, and secondly, there is no way you would cast a spell that had true love's kiss involved, and besides, they're fillies, they're way too young for true love."

"You're forgetting something," Discord caroled.

"No, no, I'm not. You modified it. I know that. But I looked at your actual spell, not just the result, and I deconstructed some of the magical pattern, and it's definitely a transformation."

"Well, that's the interesting thing about undoing a transformation," Discord said. "Technically, undoing a transformation is a transformation. And under most circumstances, true love's kiss is typically coming from a member of one's original species. I mean, it's theoretically possible that when the beautiful pony princess kisses the transformed frog prince, and he returns to his true self, he might just be a giant chicken, and let me just add that that is a fantastic idea and oh, if only I weren't reformed I would love to bespell a giant chicken into a frog, particularly the prince of the giant chickens, but what was I talking about again? Oh yes! How often does that actually happen? Isn't it the case that generally, one's—" he made a gagging expression—"special somepony is, well, a pony? And not a giant chicken? Although that really ought to happen more often than it does."

"Ohhh." Twilight had lost the glare, her eyes going wide. "Oh, so if it's a transformation spell it doesn't work by undoing the original spell, it turns you into whatever it is your true love is... which is usually what you are too, so... that's kind of a cheap shortcut, but it would work 90% of the time, and then if you modified that... but where does true love's kiss come in?"

"Define your terms." Discord shrugged. "Rumor has it that most ponies just love puppies..."

"Oh – of course! If you're talking about a 'true love', meaning a love that isn't false, rather than 'true love' as in 'one true love', then it could be any kind of love! And puppies love everypony! Well, everypony that's nice to them, but Scoot and Sweetie Belle and Applebloom love puppies too, so if it's a kiss from a puppy... which is to say, a lick from a puppy, because that's how dogs show love... oh, I see what you did there. Uh-huh. You put the spell on them and told them it would be activated if a puppy kissed them and they went and found a puppy and got it to lick them."

"It was more than one puppy, if you must know."

"So how do we undo it? That tells me how you did it, but if we used the exact same spell in its unmodified form to turn them back into ponies it might have a bad reaction to the modified spell, so I need a spell that can actually undo your spell. How do I unravel it?"

"Excuse me, I'm sorry. You seem to have mistaken me for 'Mr. Easy Answers' or perhaps 'Mr. Gives The Whole Game Away.' I'm actually Discord, spirit of chaos and disharmony! Pleased to meet you."

This brought the glare back. Fluttershy turned her own Look on Discord. "Discord. Give her some help, please."

"Oh all right." Discord plopped himself down on his cloud couch again. "How do you undo a thing you've done?"

"You do what you did, but backwards."

Discord pulled an exaggeratedly horrified face. "That's disgusting, Twilight, they are fillies! Oh, I thought better of you. Wait till Celestia finds out how perverse you are!"

"What are you talking about?" Twilight demanded.

"Well, I can only think of a few ways to perform a kiss backward..."

The book on the table flew up and hit Discord in the nose as Twilight turned bright red. "That is not what I meant! Get your mind out of the gutter!"

"My mind? I am not the one who suggested that innocent young fillies might engage in some backward kissing. Really, Twilight—"

"Discord!" Fluttershy snapped.

"Your friend is an utter pervert, Flutterling, for shame—"

This time Fluttershy picked up the book with her hoof and bonked Discord on the head with it. "Discord. Help. Her."

"If you insist," he said, grinning broadly. "Sparklepire, two roads diverge in a yellow wood. You take the one less traveled by, by which I mean to say the left one but actually you ought to have gone right. How do you fix it?"

"You go back – and no, I am not suggesting anything perverse! You're the one making these analogies--"

"Fine, fine, the yellow wood was the wrong analogy. Suppose you're on one of those horrible gridlike rectangular blocks you find all over Manehattan and you've taken a left turn and it's one way, so you can't go back. How do you go the other way?"

"You take three left turns and that brings you back to the beginning," Twilight said slowly.

"Excellent. Wonderful. Now go someplace. Poor Fluttershy here was trying to eat her dinner before you so rudely interrupted."

"So they have to receive three kisses from a pony that loves them?"

Discord rolled his eyes (metaphorically again.) "It's an analogy, Twilight. Not necessarily three turns—but you know what, you're on the right track. Now go run along and solve the thing before I decide to give you a really challenging one."

She took a deep breath. "All right. But if I can't get them turned back into ponies by nightfall, you are in trouble." The door didn't exactly slam when she left, but it was close.

Author's Note

"The Tale of the Terrible Doctor Twilight" is one I'm working on.

The pineapple thing is a shout-out to my brother Noel, who wrote a surrealist comedy years ago in which a terrorist group led by a five-legged intelligent zebra was trying to stop some mysterious villain from turning world leaders into fruit salad, solely on the grounds that the fruit salad didn't contain pineapple. It's also kind of inspired by Pinkie's line in "Keep Calm" where she yells at Discord because he didn't make any whipped cream to go with his chocolate milk rain.

Regarding tags, I couldn't quite come up with a combo that made sense for me. "Tragedy" isn't quite right, but it wouldn't let me combine "sad" and "comedy" and I can't not include "comedy" in a story that features Pinkie Pie yelling at Discord about no pineapple in her salad and Twilight Sparkle dropping a piano on his head... but I can't really call it "dark" either. Let's just say it's a very tragic thing when you totally piss off all of your godlike friends and relatives to the point where they want to take your powers away, and leave it at that.

Show You The World In My Eyes

Fluttershy looked hard at Discord. "What were you thinking? You can't turn children into puppies! Even if they want to be puppies!"

"Whyever not? One time in the old days, I dropped in on a class full of them and took them with me to explore an ant hill, and a coral reef, and the moon, and they loved it. It was a delightful science lesson that permanently imprinted on their little minds vitally important information like how boring anthills would be if you had to live there, and all of them were utterly thrilled. Well, except for the little orange colt with the ridiculously curly mane who kept whining. If I recall correctly his name was Carrot or something like that but he really struck me as more of an Arnold so that's what I called him."

"Well, ok, maybe they did have fun, but how did their parents feel about it?"

"Who cares? I was there for the children. Children are so delightfully chaotic, Flutterbug, they actually enjoy my games. Well, as long as their misguided parents haven't taught them to run away screaming as soon as they see me, but I would never harm a child. They're far too much fun." He grinned. "Your little pals will return to pony form when the moon rises, or Twilight frees them, whichever comes first. I told them when I gave them the spell that I could undo it or Princess Luna could any time they wanted to get out of it, and that it would only last until nightfall in any case, but that they weren't to tell their Aunt Twilight that because we were playing a wonderful prank on her and I had permission from Princess Celestia."

Fluttershy looked at him askance. "You seriously had permission from Princess Celestia?" she asked skeptically.

"Some time ago Celestia asked me to offer her student my advice and guidance in her magic studies. Which of course was perfectly appropriate, because I am approximately several hundred times more knowledgeable about how magic works than Celestia and Luna put together, and besides, Sparky is just so much fun to tease. She's so serious! Don't you just want to chuck her under her little chin, and pinch her cheeks, and turn her mane vermilion and neon green polka dotted?"

"I thought you didn't like her."

"Perish the thought! I love my little Sparkiepoo! Why, when she gets that 'grr' face on like she seriously does want to turn me into a cake and eat me, it is so adorable! Reminds me of Celestia. Or... actually, it reminds me of quite a few overly serious, pompous, stuffed shirt, nauseatingly noble and ethical creatures I've met in my life... you know, I can never resist that type. Something about the absolute certainty of somepony's own righteousness... they're just irresistable. I absolutely have to come in and shake up their whole worldview. Puncture their balloon of smug superiority and pie them in the face, as it were." He sighed. "Of course, they're never nearly as interested in me as I am in them, so I'd imagine Twilight doesn't like me very much, but she voluntarily seeks me out and asks for my help, which is better than... I usually get."

"Did Princess Celestia really tell you you could turn fillies into puppies as a test for Twilight?"

"Well, no, but Celestia knows perfectly well I don't perform when I'm micro-managed, so we actually haven't discussed the content of my exercises for Twilight at all. But really! The fillies wanted to try being puppies, I wanted to turn them into puppies, Twilight wants to learn how to really analyze and take apart hostile magic, Celestia wants me to teach her without actually fighting her, it's win-win all around! A bit of harmless chaos, fun for everyone, and it all goes back to normal at nighttime even if Sparkleberry can't figure out my spell, which, really, she should not have needed anywhere near so many hints to do. Maybe the poor dear's under too much stress. Celestia can be quite a slave driver, you know."

Fluttershy sighed. The mariachi cherries, which had gone silent while Twilight was here, picked up a peppy tune again. "Just... be careful, okay? Doing that kind of thing is, I mean I guess it's okay if no one is getting hurt and the kids agree to it, but it's so upsetting when anything seems like it might even be a little bit threatening to foals, so you've got to be careful so ponies don't get really, really mad at you."

He sighed. "I suppose if I'm trying to be reformed, I have to actually care if ponies get really, really mad at me?"

"Yes. You do." She cleared her own plate and Angel Bunny's, since Discord had eaten his.

"Oh, don't do your tedious washing up now, Fluttershy. I've been asking all day if we can play a game!"

"How about I save the washing up for later and we talk for a little while? I'm not feeling much like playing a game right now."

"Ugh, talking? Haven't we been talking all day?"

"It's just..." She sat down next to him again. "I've known you for a couple of months, but I really don't know anything about you. I've made a couple of guesses, but who knows if they're right or wrong? So... I'd like to learn more about you."

"I'm the god of chaos. What's more to know?"

"No, you're not," Fluttershy said. "Well, I mean, maybe yes you are, but it's not like... it's not like you're not somepony. With a history, and thoughts and feelings of your own. I mean, you're immortal, you can do pretty much anything, you like to cause chaos, but... there's a lot more to learn about somepony than their hobbies and abilities."

"I suppose."

"Like, I didn't know you liked children! You never like things that are cute."

"Oh, I don't like children because they're cute, Fluttershy. I like them because they are tiny little monstrous balls of pure concentrated chaos that all the rest of you think are cute. Why, you voluntarily give birth to them, and feed them, and let them live in your houses, when in fact they are almost as good as I am at causing disharmony, radical personality changes and total nonsensical chaos and they don't even need magic to do it. Of course, you folks usually spend all your time trying to knock that out of them and make them grow up into staid, stable, boring members of society, but at least while they are little they will do things like make a pie out of mud and then try to eat it, or draw all over the walls, or cover themselves completely with foal powder and then remove their diapers on the floor and run naked through their parents' dinner party. And as I said earlier, they generally appreciate my talents far more than their parents do. Admittedly, they're complete idiots, but you can't have everything."

"I guess they can be pretty chaotic sometimes."

"Sometimes? Try all the time! You remember that little stunt I pulled on you and your friends, well, of course you do. But that trick doesn't work on children, and do you know why? They're much too chaotic for my magic to be able to make them into the opposite of what they are, because that's going to happen anyway. Take the sweetest, most loving baby filly you can imagine. Now deprive her of her nap, and you'll have a shrieking banshee on your hands who hates everyone. Or, imagine the nastiest little bully you've ever met, some bad little colt who sticks fillies' manes in inkwells and shakes down littler foals for their lunch bits and ties cans to dogs' tails. Let the right stallion come along to play a game of kickball with him and take him out for ice cream, and he'll magically transform into an adorable little sweetheart doting on his daddy figure. The very nature of children is that their nature constantly changes."

"I never really thought of it that way," Fluttershy said.

"I'm surprised you didn't, after it was the Cutie Mark Crusaders that let me out of that dreadful statue the first time." He leaned back against the cloud, tipping his head upside down over the side, as a glass of chocolate milk manifested in midair, tipped over and poured its contents down his now-open mouth. As soon as the glass was empty, it sprouted butterfly wings and flew off. "Want some?"

"Maybe later."

"You’re missing out." He sat back up. "And the best part about children, the absolute most wonderful thing, is that when I rile them up with sugar and chaos and get them to the point where they're refusing to nap and bouncing off walls and just starting in with the annoying whines... I get to hand them back to their parents so I don't have to deal with any of the annoying parts! Everything about them is a win!"

"Oh, so I guess you weren't thinking about having any of your own, then."

Discord snorted. "Oh good gracious no. Besides, I couldn't even if I wanted to."

"Oh." Fluttershy felt a sudden surge of pity for him as she realized the likely reason for that. "Oh... I'm so sorry. You're... I guess you're like a mule, only worse?"

"What?" He stared at her as if the thought never occurred to him.

"Well, when a pony and a donkey fall in love and get married, their babies are mules, and when mules grow up they can't have any children of their own without magical help. I guess... they call you a draconequus, so I thought maybe you look like that because you're half pony and half dragon? And then the chaos added on the other parts or something? So you're like a mule, except so much that even magic couldn't help you?"

He was still staring at her. "Where do you get these ideas? No, I am not the result of a mommy pony and a daddy dragon loving each other very much, thank you."

"Then... then are you the last of your kind? I mean... no one has ever heard of a draconequus that wasn't you, so..."

Discord shook his head. "No. Not the last of my kind, either." He'd gone much stiller than usual. Plainly something was bothering him. She didn't want to rub his face in something that bothered him, but if she didn't know what it was bothering him, she wouldn't be able to help him with it.

"There... there are others? So you... do you have a family?"

He looked straight ahead, not meeting her eyes. "Had."

"Oh, Discord! I'm so sorry... did something happen to them?"

"Oh, no, nothing happened to them." His tone turned bitter. "They're all perfectly fine. But if I took it into my head to go back to the ancestral manse for a bit of the comforts of hearth and home... well, the best case scenario I could expect would be to be rapidly re-introduced to the pavement outside, end first. They decided that I don't have family anymore. Not me."

"Oh... I'm so sorry..." She was not going to cry for him. It would just embarrass him. She was not going to cry. Fluttershy snuggled next to him, putting a forelimb around him and nuzzling him again. "That's so cruel. They shouldn't do that to you."

"Yes, well, tell them that."

"Can I? Could you take me there so I can tell them they should give you another chance?"

He sighed. "No, Flutterling. No, I can't, and you can't, and they wouldn't listen to you anyway."

"But that's so mean!" A horrible thought occurred to her. "Are they... are they all chaotic, like you?" Had her attempt to reform him driven a wedge between him and his family? Had she made them reject him, because he wasn't chaotic enough for them anymore?

But he snorted. "Oh, I could only wish." He shook his head. "Some of them... could be entertainingly fun, on occasion, but most of them are dreadfully dull, dull, dull with a capital D U L L. No sense of humor what-so-EVER."

"So... is that why you can't have children? Because... because your family rejected you, so the other draconequuses did too?"

"Oh, you're still on that, Fluttershy? No no no. I could never have had children, not that I'd ever have wanted to, because... we just don't. We're immortal. Why would we need to have children? On the rare occasions when we feel we need to fill out the ranks, we select a mortal we consider promising and elevate them to our plane of existence. Transform them into one of us." He considered. "Well, there was the one time those two decided to take the form of mortals – not ponies, it was a different species – and live among them, and they actually did manage to have a child, but we executed them and we have no idea if the child's going to turn out to have any magic at all."

"You executed them? For having a child?"

"For living among mortals as if they themselves were mortals, while still using their powers, actually."

Fluttershy went cold. "Discord... isn't that exactly what you're doing right now?"

Discord chuckled darkly. "It's different for me, Flutterbug. They've told me not to come home. They're not going to kill me for refusing to return when they're the ones that threw me out." He sighed. "At least I don't think so."

"They can't! That would... that would just be wrong! How could they tell you you're not allowed to come home and be with your own kind but you're also not allowed to be friends with anypony else, unless you stop using your powers, when they're so much a part of you? I mean, would any of them want to do that?"

"Oh, I don't know, Glory runs around pretending she has no powers all the time. And Isis never tells any of her mortal coltfriends what she really is. And most of the others don't actually spend any time with mortals anyway."

"Are they your sisters? Glory and Isis?"

He looked at her for the first time since the conversation had turned to his family. "You're... getting the wrong idea."

"I... wrong idea?"

"We're all family. All the... beings like me. We're not... it's not like you mortals, with a mother and a father. We're spirits. Glory and Isis are... yes, you could call them my sisters. Especially Isis, she's treated me like a little brother for, oh, billions of years. But Glory and I were... well, once we were rather closer than that, in ways that generally speaking are not brotherly and sisterly, if you get my drift."

"Glory was your... special somepony? Or special draconequus, I guess?"

"I think she manifests as a dragon, actually. We don't all look the same. My form represents Chaos. Isis... she'd be whatever the species she appeared to happened to be. She's... more like the Spirit of Motherhood. Well, and the Spirit of Love since what happened to the actual Spirit of Love, and you know what, I think this conversation has officially ended because I'm not talking about her."

"About the Spirit of Love or about Isis?"

He stood up. "Fluttershy, how would you like to see something nopony but Celestia and Luna have ever seen before?"

"Uh – like what?" This was not the first time Discord had ever abruptly changed the subject, but it was the first time it seemed to Fluttershy that he was doing it for emotional reasons than because he'd simply gotten bored.

"Like something amazing! That only they have ever seen! Don't worry, it's not a scary something."

She wasn't entirely sure Discord actually knew what she would find scary, but he sounded so enthusiastic, and she wanted to cheer him up after accidentally getting him onto a topic that seemed to hurt him so much. "I... ok? I guess?"

And then suddenly everything was dark, and there were stars all around her, and she was falling, and when she beat her wings nothing happened. She was still falling. Fluttershy screamed.

"Fluttershy, Fluttershy, don't be scared. It's all right, no harm will come to you as long as I'm with you."

"I'm falling!" Fluttershy screamed. "Discord, please, help me!"

"You're not falling."

"I am! My wings aren't working, I'm still falling, help me!"

And then there were oddly shaped limbs around her, holding her. "You're safe, Fluttershy. Look down."

She looked down at the blue and white ball far under her hooves. "What... what is that? Where are we?"

"That is your world. We're in the space between the moon and the planet. There's no gravity here, that's why you feel as if you're falling."

He let go of her. She beat her wings frantically. She wasn't moving anywhere... but she still felt that she was falling. "No, I am falling, I am! Why don't my wings work, WHY CAN'T I FLY?"

"Oh... of course. A flighted creature expects to be able to not fall. I should have realized." He snapped his fingers, and she suddenly felt the weight of air filling her wings again, felt that when she beat them she could hover. "Is that better?"

"Yes... yes, much better. Thank you." She looked down again. "That's... the whole world? It looks like... a toy. A children's ball."

"Yes, it does, doesn't it?" She looked over at Discord. His wings weren't beating; he was effortlessly floating in mid-air. His lion's paw was stroking her mane, almost unconsciously, as if he didn't quite realize he was doing it. It was soft, much softer than a pony's hoof. "Look up," he said, and she did.

"The Moon! It's... it's so big!"

"Indeed it is. We're much closer to it than we are when we're on your planet."

"But... but the Sun is so tiny! How can that be?"

"It's not tiny at all. The Sun is enormous. It's just very, very far away."

"But if it's so far away how does Princess Celestia..."

"She doesn't." Discord smirked. "The sun doesn't go around the planet, and Celestia doesn't move it. What she does is to move the planet. Now, Luna really does move the moon; moons go around planets, that's why they are moons. And she helps a bit with the planet-moving, during the night, but... it's rather jerky and uneven. There are places on your planet where life is barely holding on, where nopony can live because it jerks back and forth between day and night too unevenly, because the planet doesn't rotate smoothly. Celestia and Luna spin it, and since Luna has the moon to manage, she doesn't do so well with the planet. That's why generally Celestia has to raise the sun... Luna can't maintain the momentum on her own, unless she really concentrates."

"I... really? That doesn't... that doesn't make any sense! If Princess Celestia is just moving the planet, how could that make the sun rise?"

"It doesn't. The sun just appears to rise as she turns your part of the world to face it. What they really need is a third alicorn to help out with it to smooth out the rotation... a Princess of the Twilight, as it were." His smirk grew wider. "Of course they do have a third, but... planetary rotation isn't really where her special talents lie. So, technically, I suppose what they need is a fourth alicorn." He shook his head. "Dear me, I never thought I'd be saying that."

Fluttershy looked down at her world. "It's so small, Discord. It looks... so fragile. Like it's made of glass. It looks so easy to... to break it."

"Yes," he said. "It is, you know. Shockingly easy. Which is, I suppose, what you and your friends are for. To make sure no one breaks it."

"Is Equestria right below us?"

"Yes, I suppose you've seen maps of the continents and oceans. We're above Equestria."

"Where do your people live down there?"

He snorted again. "We don't. We live in an entirely separate realm, a Continuum of our own, and we travel to any of the worlds we wish, when we wish. All those stars out there?" He waved his eagle talon. "Those are suns, like yours, but so far away they appear as tiny dots of light. And many, many of them have worlds of their own. And I've been to most of them. Maybe someday I'll take you to one of them. And Sparkypoo, I'm sure she'd appreciate the perspective."

"Do all those worlds have ponies like us on them?"

Discord laughed. "None of them do, Fluttershy. You're quite unique. Some worlds have creatures that look a great deal like you, with significantly less color variation, but they're dumb animals and they have no magic whatsoever. Very, very few worlds have beings with magical powers on them at all, let alone the level of power you ponies can wield. On most worlds, the creatures that live there are nothing at all like you ponies. But many of those worlds do have thinking, feeling beings, like you ponies are. They might look more like animals than ponies to you... but I'm sure you'd make friends with them anyway."

She grinned. "Yeah, I bet I would."

And then suddenly they were standing outside her house. The sun was going down and night was falling. "Well?" Discord was bouncing up and down, which, at his size, looked utterly ridiculous. "What did you think?"

"I... I liked seeing it. It was... it was so tiny and fragile looking, but... so beautiful. But why is it blue, Discord? Shouldn't the world be green? Or was that the sky?"

"No, that was the oceans. The brown parts were the land you walk on. That high up you can't see very much of the green."

"But there was so much ocean! I didn't know the world had so much ocean in it!"

"Well, now you do." He leaned down into her face. "And you know what else?"

"What?"

He plucked at her muzzle. There was no pain, but she was stunned to see her nose in Discord's eagle talon. "I've got your nose!"

Fluttershy put her hooves to her face in dismay and shock. There was no blood, no pain, no rawness... it was as if she were made of clay and he'd just plucked off the tip of her muzzle. "Discord! Give that back!"

"You're going to have to catch me!" He took a few half-dancing steps backward, and then began running, backward, waving her nose in his talon. "I've got Fluttershy's noooose! I've got Fluttershy's noooose!"

Fluttershy launched herself at him, infuriated. "It isn't funny, Discord, give me back my nose!"

He launched himself into the air, flying upward. "It is so! It's totally hilarious! Oh, Fluttershy, you should see what you look like without a nose!" The ground beneath her feet turned into a giant mirror; she could still feel grass and dirt under her hooves, but when she looked at it, it was a mirror. Her face looked freakish, a smooth depression in her muzzle where her nose ought to be.

"I need my nose!"

"Oh, fine, here you go!" He snapped his fingers. Now she had a rabbit nose perched on top of her muzzle.

"My own nose!" Fluttershy launched herself into the air after him. She wasn't a very good flyer... but she was very, very motivated, and Discord was laughing too hard to fly very fast, so she collided into him and knocked him into the ground within moments. Within another few moments, she was sprawled across his chest, pinning his eagle talon with her front hooves and his lion's limb with the other so he couldn't move either of his forelimbs. He had stretched the talon out as far as it would go, holding her nose away from her. "Give me back my nose!"

"But you look so adorable with the bunny nose—"

She leaned her face into his, which, given that she was stretched across his chest trying to pin his limbs, involved some contortion and actually hurt her neck, but she needed to do it to deliver The Stare. "Discord. My own nose. NOW. Or I will... I'll eat yours!"

"I'll bet it tastes like chicken," Discord said, still laughing.

"NOSE. NOW!!"

"Oh, oh, very well. You did catch me, after all." He snapped the talon holding the nose, and the nose reappeared on her muzzle, exactly where it belonged.

And then Fluttershy started laughing because the whole situation was so completely ridiculous. Here she was, lying on top of the spirit of chaos, the dread danger that had terrorized all Equestria for so many years, pinning him to the ground because he'd stolen her nose. And both of them were laughing hysterically.

After a few minutes, the laughter wound down, and Fluttershy realized that the position she was in was more than slightly awkward. She blushed. "Oh... oh dear..."

"Is this the part where the comedy turns into a romance, and we start kissing passionately and pledging to love each other for all eternity?" Discord asked, still chuckling. "Because if it isn't, you might want to get off of me before the readers get the wrong idea."

Fluttershy yelped and leapt off him. "I, uh, no! Discord, I'm your friend, but I don't—"

He sat up and clasped his paw and talon over his heart, with an exaggeratedly sad expression on his face. "Friendzoned again! Oh, why am I perpetually doomed to pine after mares from afar, never to be anyone's special somepony? Maybe I ought to take some tips from those pick-up artists..."

"I—I'm sorry, but I just don't—"

Discord started laughing raucously. "Oh, my dear Fluttershy! Oh, that was almost as funny as getting your nose was. Oh, my dear." He got to his feet and patted her head with his lion paw. "Relax. We're just friends, and I am more than delighted to keep it that way. I'm just teasing you."

Fluttershy sighed, relieved. It could completely wreck a friendship if one pony started to have romantic feelings and the other didn't, and that was not how she saw her friend the Spirit of Chaos.

She looked up. The moon had risen. "I guess the Cutie Mark Crusaders are themselves again?"

"Oh, that happened a few hours ago. Twilight figured it out as soon as she got back. All they needed was to have their older sisters –or older sister figure in Scoot's case – kiss them to turn them back into ponies. That nonsense about true love being one true love is perpetually laughable; anyone who really could love only one person in their entire existence would have a much harsher and more painful existence than even those who love no one. Even without my chaotic modifications, the spell never depended on romantic love; it's just a foolish social convention that made anyone ever think it did." He sighed. "And to think I used to be able to come up with challenging puzzles. Maybe I'll get Scootaloo to turn herself into a giant chicken."

"...Why Scootaloo?"

"Well, she has wings, silly. How can you be a giant chicken if you don't have any wings?"

"That... isn't really a good idea, Discord. It's, uh, it's kinda mean."

"I suppose so. I'd have to come up with something interesting for her friends to turn themselves into, or they'd feel left out. You never know, maybe they'll get their cutie marks in Chaos magic."

"I don't think they really want to get their cutie marks in Chaos magic."

"But the poor little things are desperate, Fluttershy. They tried being garbage collectors. How desperate do you have to be to try to find out whether your special life talent relies in garbage collecting?"

"It's... it's hard, when you don't know what it is you're really good at, or where you're going to go with your life."

"I suppose. Never a problem I had, so I can't relate." He opened the door to the house and eeled in, lowering his head almost to the floor and snaking it forward and up again. "I must do something about your door."

"I guess you always knew what you were good at?"

He turned back toward her, smiling, but there wasn't any actual happiness in his smile. "I've always known what I was for, Flutterbug. The part that took me time to figure out was that no one actually wants what I'm for, however badly they need it. Including those that made me to do what I do. They recognized they needed it, they made me to do it, and then they decided they really didn't like it."

"That's not always true... your chaos is really funny sometimes, and everyone likes to laugh."

"But I'm not just Chaos, Fluttershy." His cloud had melted into a puddle while they were out; he snapped his fingers and reformed it into a cloud again so he could sit on it, although this time it was purple, which probably meant it was going to rain grape juice. "I'm Discord. I'm disharmony. I'm argument, and conflict. I upend the normal order of things, I challenge the status quo, I afflict the comfortable and poke the afflicted. I test, I question, I turn your beliefs upside down and shake them to see what dark things you might have hidden inside. I push the button and erase your master tape. I am your brain on a frying pan, I'm every secret you had brought to light and written with letters of fire across the sky. I sold the emperor his new clothes. I'm the one who'll be the villain you can rally against when you need to become a hero."

"But you're more than that, I can tell. You can be a friend. I've seen it. You don't have to be nothing but disharmony. You can be chaos that's good chaos."

He sighed. "I know," he said, "but do you know how unbelievably rare it is that anyone is willing to accept 'good chaos' when I offer it? People don't like to make friends with the guy who makes a point of arguing with them and poking them in their weak spots, even if my goal was to make them stronger. And... friendship often gets in the way of what I'm trying to do, anyway. I spent a thousand years training my perfect enemy to stand up against me, and because she'd once considered me a friend, she refused to do what she was supposed to do and instead she turned me into stone."

"You mean Princess Celestia? She considered you a friend once?"

He smiled sardonically. "For whatever good it did either of us, which is to say, none whatsoever. But look at the time!" Discord leapt off the couch. "Speaking of Celestia, I absolutely must go have a conversation with her before she falls all the way asleep and becomes a complete crankypants."

"I thought you were avoiding Princess Celestia."

"I'm avoiding annoying Princess Celestia. Most of the time. With entertaining exceptions. But I do have to go have a conversation with her, oh, and then I simply must turn some owls into chickens, because do you have any idea how stuck-up owls are about the fact that they can see in the dark? Besides if I don't turn somepony into a chicken it's likely to sneak out behind my back and happen while I'm trying to do something boring, which, by the way, is why no one should try to get me to do things that are boring, because if I'm bored and daydreaming about giant chickens, well let's just say I need to be careful what I daydream about and get the ya-yas out of my system in a controlled way or the result could be complete, uncontrolled chaos." He stopped in the middle of his rant. "Which, why am I avoiding that anyway?"

"Because you're reformed and you want to have friends?"

"Oh, yes! I almost forgot. Thank you for the reminder, Fluttershy. Isn't it your bedtime?"

"In a little while, yes."

"Well, I won't be here when you go to bed, because I'll be conversing with Celly Belle and possibly some chickens that used to be owls, so so long, farewell, auf wiedersehen, good night! I'll see you in the morning!"

Fluttershy gave him a hug. This time he didn't even make a face. "Good night, Discord. Please don't annoy the princess too much, and turn the owls back when they're sick of being chickens?"

"Cross my heart and hope to die, stick my eye in a cupcake. Wait, that doesn't rhyme. Perhaps I should stick my eye in a pie?"

She gave him a brief nuzzle. "And can you put that cloud back outside?"

"Well, I don't want to waste the grape juice. How about I put it in Applejack's bathtub? Then she can mix it with some apple juice and make grapple!"

"Or how about you make a whole lot of pitchers in the apple orchard and make it rain into them, and then Applejack won't have a problem taking her shower in the morning?"

"Ugh, really?"

"Yes, really," Fluttershy said firmly.

"All right, fine." He snapped his talons and the cloud disappeared. "See you tomorrow, Fluttershy." And then he disappeared as well, in a flash of light.

Author's Note

My son has a chicken named Scootaloo.

Glory, Spirit of Righteous Warfare, known better to Star Trek fans as Lady Q or Suzy-Q, appears in her MLP incarnation in my story "The Princess and the Dragon". Isis, Spirit of Motherhood, and the unnamed Spirit of Love, were both OCs I created in TNG Q stories.

I am not the first person who, in melding the universes of MLP and TNG, speculated that what Celestia's really doing is rotating the planet. I think I first ran into that in Kane Magus' "The Quandary of DisQord".

For those of you who know some of Q's story arc from Trek, but not as well as I do: yes, Q did eventually have his own child, but before that happened, it was apparently believed by the denizens of the Continuum that this was impossible unless they were in mortal forms, and not particularly desirable then, either. So at this point Discord believes it's literally impossible for him to have a child. Discord's reference to a child whose parents were executed is to the TNG story "True Q". His current status as an exile was established in TNG "Q Who" while he was trying to get Picard to let him join the crew.

Null gravity, also called free fall, feels exactly like falling. My suspicion is that this would freak out a flying creature even more than it does a tall monkey, because a creature with wings expects that if they're falling, they can just fix the problem by beating their wings... which won't work in space. Discord fixes this for Fluttershy by applying just enough gravity and expanding the air bubble around her so she feels like her wings are beating against something.

Ten points to anyone who knows the ref for the bit with Discord taking kids on science trips.

Lest Old Acquaintance Be Forgot

"CELLY!"

Celestia opened her eyes and restrained her first impulse, which was to jump out of bed and prepare for an attack. "Discord. I suppose it doesn't make any difference to you that I am trying to sleep?"

He was bouncing up and down on the end of her bed, which should have made the entire bed tip over from his size and weight, but he was either making himself lighter or the bed heavier, so it didn't. "Oh, come now, Celestia, it's been over a thousand years since I last teleported into your bedroom while you were trying to sleep! Don't you think I'm overdue?"

"No." She did climb out of her bed and get to her feet, tiredly. This wasn't an attack. If Discord actually meant to attack her, he'd do it when she was wide awake; he was perfectly happy to annoy sleeping ponies, but he was far too arrogant to attack one. It'd be beneath him, implying that he had felt he needed such an advantage. "Is there a particularly good reason why you're here?"

"Do I really need a reason? I'm Chaos."

"You have reasons for everything you do, Discord, even if half of them boil down to 'because you felt like it.'"

"But I have to deliver you my Twilight Sparkle report! I was having so much fun stealing Fluttershy's nose, I completely forgot about it."

"I hope you gave her her nose back."

"I certainly did. She defeated me fair and square. But then I realized, oh dear, the moon is up and Celestia may even have gone to sleep and yet I have not given her my report for the night!"

"You could have sent me a letter."

"And I could have written the report in tendrils of mist in the fog! Or cleverly arranged burning bushes! Or I could have made every foal's alphabet block in Equestria come here and do a little dance for you before settling down into the pattern of my report! Or I could have made the furniture speak to you in my voice! You'd have enjoyed that, wouldn't you have, Celly? I know you love my voice."

"I know someone in this room loves your voice," Celestia said wearily, "but it isn't me."

Discord whipped his head around. "Who? Who? Do I have a secret admirer concealed in your closet? You must tell me, Celestia, I'm dying to know!"

"Never mind. If you've come to give me a report, you may as well do so."

He flew over to a chair and perched on the back of it, which was basically impossible because one of his feet was a hoof and shouldn't have been able to perch on anything, but impossible was a word with no meaning when it came to Discord. "She needs higher stakes."

"Why do you say that?"

"Oh, I don't know, let's see." He began to tick things off on the claws on his paw. "Defeated Nightmare Moon. Defeated me. The Changelings. Sombra. Give her an actual battle, and she does remarkably well. But the moment she's told, 'This is an exercise', she gets... not lazy, but sloppy. Has a hard time thinking outside the box. I basically had to lead her to the answers like I was pulling on her reins."

Celestia shuddered slightly. "I wish you would not remind me of reins."

"I wish you would not remind me of statues, but your garden's still full of them and you won't let me make them go dance, so there." He climbed down from the back of the chair. "Besides. Every so often maybe someone needs to remind you of what I did for you ponies, and since Luna was a kid and barely remembers it, the only one around to deliver the reminder... is me."

"I've never forgotten."

"Are you sure about that?" His head curled around, looping over her body to murmur in her other ear. "You'd think that if someone saved you from mind control, and then from execution, and then made you immortal, and then helped you achieve everything you'd dreamed of since you were a tiny filly and made you a princess, you might possibly not want to turn him into stone."

"You're not nearly so knowledgeable as you pretend to be if you think I ever wanted to do that," Celestia snapped. "I had two ways I could stop you and they were both awful, and I tried for nearly a thousand years to find a third way. I tried persuading you, I tried begging you, I tried reason, I tried emotion..." She shook her head. "It doesn't matter, anymore. I was sorry for doing it even before it was done, and I spent a thousand years mourning what I'd done to you, but it was the only way."

"Well, except for the other way."

"Which I believed would kill you."

"It's a rite of banishment. I'm an immortal spirit. How do you get the idea that banishing me kills me?"

"You are not merely a spirit," Celestia said. She put her hoof against his chest. "A heart beats in there, Discord. Yes, I know, you have no mortal weaknesses. You don't sleep, you eat only because it amuses you, but still, you wear a form made of flesh and blood. I have seen you feel pleasure, and pain. And when we perform a rite on a flesh and blood body which vaporizes it in magical fire and banishes the spirit within it to another realm, never to return to this world... under most circumstances we'd call that 'murder'. Did you want me to burn your flesh and banish you forever from this world? Did you really never see how similar that would have been to killing you?" Her eyes might have filled with tears if she had not finished with tears for Discord so many centuries ago. "My oldest friend. Was I supposed to kill you rather than turn you into stone?"

He sighed. "It would have made life simpler." Discord flopped backward onto her bed. "I took Fluttershy into space today to look at the world."

Celestia took a deep breath. "You're not planning anything with her, are you? She's an ordinary pony, you know."

"Ordinary?" He chuckled. "She's a pegasus whose flight talent can be measured in the single digits, she has no magic to speak of, she's scared of everything, I know, I know. She's not the smartest pony that ever lived. She has no great destiny. But if you think that the first living being I've found in millennia to be both willing and capable of befriending me when I'm actually trying to annoy the living daylights out of her is ordinary... "

"None of the bearers of the Elements are truly ordinary, it's true," Celestia said. "And yes. Fluttershy's ability to see beneath your mask is all the more amazing when you consider how often I have seen beneath your mask, and yet I could never have done what she did. But... she's mortal."

"I don't have any intention of changing that," he said softly. "Well, unless I think that Sparkypoo needs her pals to anchor her through eternity, given that she hasn't got a little sister and immortality's not on the agenda for her bro... which reminds me, what's Can't Dance thinking? Hasn't she been around long enough to know what you don't do with mortals?"

"No. She hasn't." Celestia sighed. "He's a unicorn. He could survive a long time, with magic. But in the end, you're correct; he won't remain. Twilight... might need support, but that will be my call to make, and the choice of those affected by the decision, not yours. You have a bias."

"You think I've never seen a mortal friend die?" Discord said mockingly.

"I think you have seen so many that it made you close your heart to friendship," Celestia said simply. "And now that it is open again I don't know what you'll do, because neither do you."

Discord sat up. "Score one for the alicorn," he said. "Very well, then. I won't make any more ponies immortal unless you approve. It's not as if my track record thus far is impressing me, after all." A twisted, unhappy smile appeared on his face. "Besides, the point might be totally moot! I may not even be around to see it."

"What do you mean by that?"

"What do you mean what do I mean? You're the one who had the conversation with Glory. She won't even talk to me."

"She said you had been exiled, and they would not free you from the stone this time, and you would eventually go mad if forced to remain within it, and then you'd destroy our world and be destroyed for it yourself."

"Huh. Probably true. But she didn't tell you anything else?"

"She told me that she loved you."

"Oh, Celestia, you're such a bad liar."

"She didn't speak those words, Discord. What she said was that she had loved you, and I think she was trying to convince me, or perhaps herself, that she no longer does. But I have met a few mares in love with stallions who break their hearts, in my time. And she may have appeared to me as a dragon, but I know that the heart of a dragon is no different from the heart of a pony... and the heart of a spirit has always seemed remarkably similar as well. What did you do to her?"

He shrugged. "I might possibly have suggested that spending time with her was so boring it was making me want to spork my own eyeballs out?"

"Oh, Discord."

"What? She's clingy. And jealous. I never promised her eternity and I never even implied monogamy. Love doesn't put you in a cage."

"Sometimes..." she said softly. "Sometimes love has no choice."

He snorted. "No. Necessity might put you in a cage despite what love would rather do, but it isn't love putting you in a cage, or else it's not love. Glory wants to be able to own me. No one can own a spirit, not even another spirit, and most especially no one can own me. She calls it love, well, maybe it is, but if love is a prison then I can do without it."

"I thought your love was the Spirit of Love, not the Spirit of Righteous Warfare." As soon as Celestia said it, she felt bad about poking what was undoubtedly an old wound. Glory had told her that the Spirit of Love had tried to kill Discord and had been punished by being stripped of her magic and immortality. Discord's track record with his loves among the spirit kind seemed to be fairly similar to his track record of friendship with anyone else.

He stiffened. "Things change. Not even I always find that they change for the better, all the time."

"So you lost your first love among the spiritkind, and did your best to drive away the second. I wish I could say this surprises me." She paced. "The first time I told you that you were alone, during your reign of chaos, you laughed at me and said you were used to it, and you didn't even seem bitter. But when I said that to you while the Element Bearers were in the labyrinth, when you were trying to taunt me, it hurt you. You tried to hide it, but I saw. You weren't truly alone before, were you? You had the other spirits. Your... family. And now you don't."

"Is there a point to this or are you just trying to get some licks in now that you can?"

"It's why I thought you might be willing to open your heart to Fluttershy," Celestia said. "Because Glory told me enough that I realized that now you are truly alone. Now, you need a friend, more than ever before." She reached out to him again, stroking his back with her hoof. "I find it telling that when you're exiled, you choose this place to be your home."

"Ha, that's what you think. You were my second choice. I had other candidates. I went aboard a ship, where I'd had dealings with the captain and crew, and offered them my friendship, and my services as a guide."

"And what did you do to them when they said no?"

"Celestia, you think so little of me! What makes you think they said no?"

"Aside from the fact that you're here and not there? I know you, Discord."

He sighed. "I introduced them to a force of ultimate order and perfect harmony."

That might have sounded like a good thing... coming from anyone but Discord. Celestia shuddered on behalf of these unknown ponies, or whatever they had been. "Did they survive it?"

"After their captain recognized how utterly helpless he was to handle the threat without me, yes. I saved all their lives, thank you very much. Well, mostly all."

"Mostly all."

"Hey," he said defensively. "When you're facing a force of ultimate order and you only take 18 casualties out of a crew of a thousand, you're doing really well. And now they're forewarned and can prepare for the forces of order's inevitable attack. They thought they were ready for anything, and they would have gotten trampled if I hadn't taught them otherwise. Now they've got a fighting chance."

"And eighteen dead that you did not need to allow to die."

"And if no one had died, they would have thought it was all a game." His look was cold and hard, far more so than she usually saw from Discord. "Folks don't always take me seriously. For some reason."

Celestia sighed. "I feel sorry for them," she said. "And I wish I could have spoken to them, to warn them of you and your temper, but what's done is done, even for you."

He looked away. "For what it's worth... I do feel just a little bit sorry for that. I... don't like to do things just because I lost my temper. The results... don't always end up with what I would have wanted."

"Well. I'm not sorry you chose to come here for your exile, then. I've much more experience with your temper tantrums than I imagine others would, and we have better tools to manage your behavior. And... I did miss you."

"But you wouldn't have let me out if Glory hadn't come and told you I was likely to go crazy and blow up your planet to get free," he said mockingly.

"If all she had told me was that you would go mad, I would have tried to find a way. If all she had told me was that you were exiled, and now alone without your own kind, I would have understood that you might have been willing to make concessions for friendship, now, and I would have tried to find a way. If she had never come to me, then you're correct, I'd have had no reason to believe either that being bound would do you more harm than it already had, or that you'd be any more amenable to reason than you were any of the other times. It doesn't mean I wasn't sorry for the necessity." She sighed again. "That, too, is in the past. I find myself... glad that you're here now. For some reason." She smiled, teasing.

"Well. They say home is the place where, when you go there, they have to take you in. I suppose, by that definition... Equestria's my only home now."

She sat next to him for a moment in companionable silence, before she realized he'd successfully dodged her question. "But you never answered me. What did you mean by you might not be around to see it?"

He squirmed. "It's... hardly important. Probably will come to nothing. And it might be millennia yet before they reach a decision, and it's not as if any such decision is written in stone, yet."

"What, Discord? Tell me."

"Well..." He looked away. "The main reason they told me to take a hike is that I'm sort of on trial."

"Wait. That makes no sense. You are on trial, so that they exile you so you cannot speak on your own behalf?"

"Yeah, that's how it works. They've got all the facts in front of them, Celestia. They're gods. They're basically omniscient. But they don't want me trying to influence the decision with—" He pulled a mocking face. "—friendship. So they're all in a secret meeting for however many centuries it's going to take them to decide what they're going to do with me, and maybe it's going to be absolutely nothing and I'll be pardoned and they'll fall all over themselves apologizing to me for the inconvenience!... but somehow, I doubt it."

"What do you think they will do?"

"The options on the table are, a pardon so nothing, I go home, all's forgiven, la la la; stick me in a big rock, like you did, until I break down and promise to be good, but that's less than likely considering the number of times they've done it before and it never took; indefinite exile, like I've got now; stripping me of my magic and immortality; or just straight up execution. To be honest, both those last two are really the same thing, it's just about whether they're going to drag it out to incredibly tedious lengths or not."

"Oh, Discord. Is there anything I can do, or that anypony can do?"

"Aside from letting me turn the rivers into pink lemonade and make Cloudsdale into a roller skating derby rink and make all the sliding boards into Moebius strips?"

"I'm not even seeing how that would help you."

"It wouldn't, but it might distract me from my troubles for a little while."

"Well, I can't allow you to do any of that, but I can try to be your friend again, for as long as they allow you to remain."

He sighed. "That's actually more than I could expect of anypony, so... hey, Celestia, let's go ocean skating! I don't even have to turn it into ice, we can just use magic to skate around on the top. Or right under the top! Have you ever been upside down under water and looked up at the sky?"

"Yes. The time that you made everyone in Canterlot a fish."

"You were a sea horse. Not a fish."

"And I'm afraid I have duties."

"I could handle the planetary rotation for you."

"At normal speed?"

He made a face. "Isn't that kind of dull? I mean think about it, everypony wishes they could get some more sleep at night, don't they? And more done during the day? So why don't I just make them longer than usual? That wouldn't be all that chaotic at all, really."

"That's exactly why I haven't asked you to help with the planetary rotation."

"Well, Sparky's not ready yet."

"I am aware of that."

"But you're going on a vacation with me as soon as she is. She can manage the day cycle for a week with Luna's help and you and I can go to another planet entirely! We can spelunk through ice caves, and fly over mountains you've never seen before, and go skiing around the gravity well of an alien sun, and it would be marvelous. Come on, you know you want to."

She smiled wryly. "Come back to me with the suggestion later, once Twilight has ascended, and maybe I'll say yes."

"It's a date, then!"

Celestia yawned. "But now I need to sleep, Discord. Some of us are closer to being mere mortals than you are."

"Why do you all do that? So boring. Close your eyes and end your consciousness for a time. Isn't that really just like being dead?"

"You don't awaken from being dead," Celestia said. "And... I would have given much to give you the gift of sleep, as we did the alicorns we bound with the Elements. They don't suffer, in stone; they only sleep. I hoped the same for you... the guilt near-crushed me when I realized you were awake and trapped."

He sighed. "Do you know I have actually developed a phobia of closed-in spaces?" he said. "Have you any idea how ridiculous that is?"

"It doesn't sound ridiculous."

"It's completely ridiculous! I'm a spirit of chaos! I'm virtually omnipotent! Aside from those ridiculous Elements I never should have given you the raw materials to build, nothing can restrain me! Why should I be afraid of anything, much less being somewhere where the walls are too close?" He closed his eyes. "I push myself. Pinkie Pie likes to play Hide and Go Seek, and that sense of hers intrigues me. Her magic goes sideways to the rest of you; she's much more like me than you realize. So I play a game, and I put myself in tiny places and wait for her to find me, because it's a game, right? I'm the master of games. A game can't possibly harm me."

There was nothing she could say to that except, "I'm sorry," softly.

"Ah, I'll get over it sooner or later. Or I won't. Time will tell." He got up. "Well. I suppose I need to take my leave of you before I start telling you all about my childhood traumas and my relationship with my mother."

"Discord, you can tell your friends your problems. Even if you think they're irrational. And why would your problems need to make any more sense than your whims do?"

He glared at her. "If my problem was that the grass outside is entirely too green, and it is mind-numbingly dull and in desperate need of some purple and orange to liven it up, and also it lacks wheels and I am really quite certain it needs some, then I would have a problem that makes no sense. If my problem is that I'm irrationally afraid of tiny rooms and low ceilings and narrow passageways because I spent many, many years trapped inside my own skin and now I've started to panic at the thought of being trapped anywhere, even though I cannot be trapped anywhere because hello, godlike powers of chaos, that is not a problem that makes no sense. It makes perfect sense. It is just incredibly stupid."

And he vanished.

Celestia stared at the space he had occupied, eyes unfocused slightly, too many memories crowding in on her mind. "I'm sorry," she said again, though he wasn't there. "You never gave me any other way. But still, I am sorry."

Author's Note

A lot of the conversation between Celestia and Discord might make slightly more sense if you read "The Princess and the Dragon." I am also planning a lengthy "Celestia and Discord's history of pissing each other off" story called "My Perfect Enemy" which will end up going into a lot more detail about the hints they are dropping.

The Q don't sleep, per "Deja Q".

I'm not going to insult anyone's intelligence by explaining the identity of the "force of ultimate order and perfect harmony".

In "Deja Q", Q says "Hey, I'm claustrophobic, I don't like it in here" when forced to go in a turbolift with Worf. This is usually taken by everyone about as seriously as his claim in that episode to have an IQ of 2005, largely because it's hard to imagine why an omnipotent being would have a phobia of closed-in spaces. Well, if he's Discord... he's got a really good reason, so I've decided that for this series I'm taking that comment seriously.

The Calm Before The Storm

Twilight Sparkle was having a nightmare about misfiled books. She was running down the stacks in the library, trying desperately to get all the books filed, except that everywhere she turned, books were in the wrong places and she couldn't find the correct places for anything. And Spike had turned into a full-grown dragon and gone away and she was never going to see him again and he couldn't help her, and she couldn't defeat the Changelings if she didn't put all the books away. She cantered around a stack, the cart she was pulling tipping dangerously behind her but not falling over because she willed it not to fall, and encountered Discord sitting in front of the checkout desk, smoking a cigar.

"This is your fault!" she shouted at him. "I should have known you were still a villain! You can't smoke in a library!" With a pulse of magic, she snatched the cigar from him.

He leered at her. "Twilight, your dream symbolism is entirely too revealing. Really? You're going to steal my cigar? A bit of... magic envy there?"

"Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar, Discord," she snapped.

"And sometimes it's a goldfish," he said, and it was. "You're really going to have to wake up. I came here to have a rational conversation and besides, sweet little Loonie's going to have conniptions if she finds me on her turf."

Twilight blinked, and took a deep breath. She was at home. In bed. At night, with the library locked up tight and Spike sleeping in his own bed and everything the way it ought to be, including the Cutie Mark Crusaders being ponies again and the books all filed. It was just a silly nightmare.

A pair of yellow eyes hung down in front of hers. "Boo."

"AAAAAH!" Instinctively Twilight cast a protection spell, flung herself out of bed, and threw herself into a defensive stance. She could barely even see the draconequus in the darkness of the room. How could somepony that massive disappear into the shadows so completely? If it weren't for his eyes she still wouldn't be certain he was even there.

"Nice scream. Lots of 'hero launching herself at the villain' in there, only a tiny touch of 'little filly shrieking for her mommy'. I give it a 9.2."

"Discord, is there a reason I am not summoning my friends to turn you back into a statue right now?"

"Because I haven't done anything to threaten you, and you'd look absolutely ludicrous if you tried to explain to Celly Belle that you had to stone me again because I said 'boo'?"

"You appeared in my bedroom while I was sleeping! You invaded my dream!"

"It's hardly my fault you dream so loudly. I'm surprised Luna wasn't down here yelling 'OH FOR OUR ROYAL SISTER'S SAKE, WILT THOU KEEP THE RACKET DOWN THERE, TWILIGHT SPARKLE? WE ARE TRYING TO RULE THE NIGHT, NOT BE DEAFENED BY IT.'"

"It is your fault you're in my bedroom at night when I have distinctively not invited you."

"Does that mean I'm invited to your bedroom in the morning? Twilight, I'm flattered, but I'm much too old for you—"

She hit him in the head with the books from her nighttable that she'd been reading before bed. "Discord. You woke me up. If this is some kind of stupid prank, you're going to regret it."

"What if it was a very, very clever prank?"

"Then you'd regret it even more."

"What're you going to do, tickle me? Oh, I know, you're going to make me write another friendship report with thinly disguised threats. Or, or! I know! You're going to become the Terrible—"

With a silent apology to the music teacher, she reached out with her magic, grasped the music teacher's piano, and dropped it on Discord's head. He went down like a stone balloon, amidst a horrible crash of musical notes. I'll repair it with my magic afterward and return it before morning, she promised herself.

Discord pulled himself free from the wreckage of the piano, staring at Twilight as if she'd just grown a second horn, or maybe a second head, and then began laughing uproariously. "Sparky, Sparky, that was brilliant! Oh, I didn't know you had it in you. That was amazing. Why, if I were actually here to threaten you, that little bit of slapstick would've amused me so tremendously I'd have agreed to hold off on any dire assaults of chaos at least until morning, just to reward you for the laugh." He started snickering again. "You, Twilight Sparkle, teleported a piano and... and dropped..." Now he was laughing too hard to keep talking.

"What did you do to Spike, Discord?" Twilight asked coldly, holding her magic at ready.

"Why, what makes you think... oh, my... oh, I think I might actually have hurt my rib... a piano..." Anything else he might have said dissolved into his laughing fit.

She summoned a spell, her horn starting to glow. "Discord. Spike didn't wake up even though I dropped a piano on you, and he's not waking even though you're laughing loudly enough to wake the entire street. I am asking for the last time, what have you done to him?"

"I'm just making sure he gets a peaceful night's sleep, Sparklepie. After all, I came here to ask you for a favor, and it would be terribly rude of me to let our negotiations disturb your friend's rest! He's a growing dragon, he needs his beauty sleep." He stood up, started brushing himself off, caught sight of the piano again and re-started laughing. "You dropped a piano... on the god of chaos... ohhh. Ohh, I needed that. That was... you've made my whole night, Sparky. That was hilarious."

"Glad you approve," Twilight said shortly. "If Spike doesn't wake up tomorrow in exactly the condition I'd normally expect, it's going to be something a lot more painful than a piano next time."

"Oh, relax! Your wittle dragon baby will be just fine. Truth is, I haven't actually put him to sleep... I really do not have the patience to maintain a sleep spell worth casting. I just took us out of time."

She relaxed. "Oh, well, that does explain – YOU DID WHAT??"

"Stopped time, locally. You and I are in a little bubble. While the world all around us is frozen between moments, you and I are the only creatures still stirring. Oh, and that Doctor fellow, but he's got bigger tomatoes to fry at the moment than widdle old me." He chuckled. "Honestly you know that makes the piano even more impressive? You had to pull it across a time differential. Quite a lot of power there."

"I was motivated. What do you want, Discord?"

"Why, what makes you so sure there's something I want? Maybe I was just looking for a bit of entertainment."

"Do you not listen to yourself? You said just a minute ago that you were here to ask me for a favor."

He slapped himself in the forehead. "Of course! How could I have forgotten? It must have been that bump I took on the head."

Twilight took a deep breath. "Well, it's going to have to wait until I fix this piano." She concentrated her magic on repairing the piano. Since she wasn't an expert on pianos, it was going to take a lot of focus. Maybe a book on piano repair. She couldn't just undo what she'd done, since it wasn't magic that had destroyed the piano but gravity; she had to actually put it back together as if she were assembling it.

Discord snapped his fingers and the piano suddenly stood in front of her in pristine condition.

"Or, I guess that works," she said. "Wait, does it actually work now? Or does it play horns or something?"

He rolled his eyes. "I'm here for a favor, remember? Yes, the piano works in exactly the incredibly dull way pianos are supposed to work. Though I'll let you put it back where you got it from, after we're done here, because after all, you must remember that even the most hilarious prank isn't consequence-free."

"That's rich, coming from you," Twilight said.

"Au contraire," he said. "I have far more expertise than you do in the consequences of playing hilarious pranks." He sat down on her bed.

"Like being turned into a statue?"

"Like that," he said, a wry smile tugging at his mouth, with just a hint of something... bitter? Sorrowful? It was so hard to tell; Discord's face was incredibly expressive, but exactly what he was expressing was frequently unclear since he seemed to have the ability to display four or five different emotions at the same time, all of them contradicting each other to some degree. "Or... other things."

"Well." Twilight pulled up a chair and sat down at the piano, since there was no room to sit anywhere else and she sure as hay wasn't going to sit next to Discord on the bed. "What favor do you want, and why do you think I'm going to do you a favor?"

"You're going to do me a favor because of the magic of friendship, of course!" Discord announced cheerfully. "And also the commutative property of algebra."

"What does the commutative property of algebra have to do with your favor?" she sighed.

"It doesn't, directly. But the commutative property of algebra applies to friendship. Fluttershy is your friend, and Fluttershy is my friend, and therefore by the commutative property of algebra we can cancel Fluttershy out of the equation and declare that you are my friend, and that's why you're going to help me!"

"Friendship is not an algebraic equation."

"Maybe it's not." He leaned forward. "But if you don't help me, the consequences to your friends might be... unendurable. And no, that is not a threat. Believe me or don't, but I'm trying to prevent something bad from happening to Fluttershy."

"Well, of course I'll do anything I can to help Fluttershy. You should have said that in the first place! What is it you need?"

"I need to know how badly everypony on this planet wants me dead."

Twilight blinked. "You... what?"

"Let me rephrase, since I didn't... exactly limit my activities to ponies, in the old days. And there may actually be some dragons around who still remember me, personally. You're the researcher, you have practically all the books ever written on this planet stashed somewhere around here—"

"Well, that's a little bit of an exaggeration—"

"Perhaps not. I could give you all the books ever written on this planet, if it would help."

He actually sounded serious. Discord never sounded serious. "What do you need me to research?"

"Exactly what I said. How badly do the beings on this world want me dead? Who remembers me, and holds sufficient hatred toward me that they'd be willing to try to kill me if they thought they actually could?"

"Probably everyone," Twilight said without thinking.

Discord didn't move for a moment. He drew a deep, slow breath. "Well. That's... rather what I expected, actually." He got up. "I—"

"Wait!" As he looked down at her, Twilight said hastily, "I was just talking off the top of my head. I don't actually know. Why do you need to know? How does this affect Fluttershy?"

"Well. Let us say, hypothetically, that I have received word that... there is a possibility... that..."

He was looking away, at the floor, as if he was ashamed. Discord being ashamed of anything was new, and frankly, odd. "A possibility that what?"

"Let's just say that my grasp of the power of Chaos is possibly more precarious right now than I would have ever imagined it becoming." He sat back down again. "Twilight. If I... if I no longer had all my power... if those who despise me and want to destroy me learned that their ambitions might actually be achievable... how much danger would Fluttershy be in?"

"What's wrong with your power?" Twilight asked, alarmed. Not that she didn't think he absolutely deserved it if his power levels dropped drastically, but the thought of Discord's enemies coming after Fluttershy to get to him was a horrible notion. "Maybe there's something we can do."

"There's nothing wrong with my power," he snapped defensively. "Right now. And there's hardly any certainty that there ever will be. This is... a hypothetical. A... possibility... with a statistical probability that's risen to non-zero. I just... I'm quite certain it's going to be nothing and I'll end up smacking myself in the forehead for having even the tiniest concern, but... well, you wouldn't want me to take the slightest risk with Fluttershy, would you?"

"Well, no."

"So. I need a realistic assessment, Twilight. Most of the beings I... um, tormented a bit, back in the day... well, few beings on this world live a thousand years. And I hardly had time for more than a little harmless fun and games before you six spoilsports locked me up again, the last time."

"It wasn't exactly harmless fun and games, Discord."

"It also wasn't the sort of thing that leads anypony to declare their eternal hatred and swear to spend the rest of their lives seeking vengeance. Whereas... some of the other beings on this world... have possibly even less of a sense of humor than you ponies."

"And a longer lifespan?"

"Yes, you see my concern there." He shrugged. "Possibly no one remembers me except as a story to tell their children. But... ponies are not the only beings with the potential to live a very, very, very long time, and... some beings have a better collective memory than ponies do. If, hypothetically, I were... unable... to defend myself... or anyone else... I need a quantitative assessment of the danger."

Twilight looked at him hard. "For Fluttershy's sake, of course. Not your own. You're not worried about the danger to yourself one little bit."

He laughed. "Now, Twilight, don't go putting words in my mouth, or you might wake up my appetite and I'd have to go snack on some more of your spells. Obviously I'm concerned with the danger to myself, I'd be foolish not to be. But why would you care about that? One thing we can both agree on is that neither of us want to see Fluttershy threatened by anypony coming after me. And if the information that you give me in order to help protect her ends up helping me protect myself as well, I'm sure you'll consider that a small price to pay to ensure your friend's safety."

"You're despicable. You'd hide behind Fluttershy so that we'd all protect you?"

His eyes narrowed, and his voice was cold. "Say of me what you will in any other regard, Twilight, but question my desire to keep Fluttershy safe again and I may break my personal resolve not to turn ponies into stone, are we clear? There's absolutely nothing wrong with my powers right now." Discord stood. "I would really rather not leave my new home and the first being in millennia to reach out to me and offer friendship when they had no reason to believe I'd return it. Particularly not if I've... become... vulnerable, in any way. But if my presence would endanger her, then should worst come to worst, I'll go. And that's what I need to know. Before... anything... bad happens."

"I... I'm sorry." Maybe he was using his magic, maybe he was manipulating her, but Twilight found she couldn't believe he was anything other than sincere. He really didn't want to lead his enemies to Fluttershy's door. "You... if it came to it, couldn't you take refuge in Canterlot? I'm sure Princess Celestia could protect you from pretty much anything."

His smile didn't reach his eyes. "I'm sure she could. But I would very much prefer to know what the odds are before I go begging to her with hat in hand."

"All right." Twilight got up, pushing the chair away from the piano. "I'll do your research. For Fluttershy's sake if for no other reason. I mean, she's a lot tougher than she looks, but she's so kind and sweet, she'd never abandon a friend in danger... so you're right, if someone came after you she'd be right there in the line of fire, and if you didn't have your magic who knows if you could get a message to the rest of us in time?"

"Thank you, Twilight Sparkle, it's been delightful doing business with you." He lifted his eagle talon to snap it, and then stopped. "Needless to say, I would appreciate you keeping this particular task to yourself, along with the potential necessity for it. I'd hardly wish to worry Fluttershy... or tip off any residents of Ponyville who found my games particularly unamusing that there's any possibility they could... express their displeasure, in the near future."

Twilight nodded. What he said made sense. "But I'm going to tell Princess Celestia. Because if this is some kind of elaborate trick I just can't see through, she'd be more likely to see it than me, and if you're honest... you can't say the Princess can't keep a secret, or that she wouldn't deserve to know."

He smiled sardonically. "She already knows, but by all means, Twilight, report on me to your shining spymaster. Reassure yourself that this isn't some elaborate plot of mine to make you do wholly unnecessary work, exhaust yourself, and wind up with a nasty head cold. Or whatever you thought my dastardly plot might be. " There was now a fedora on his head, and he tipped it to her. "I'll bid you good night. Don't go waking up your little dragon to send Celestia a letter, I've already woken her up once tonight and at her age, she really needs her beauty sleep."

"I'll contact the princess in the morning. She might have some books I'll need to check into anyway."

"Good. Let me know what you find out. Don't bother sending a letter, I'll hear you if you just call my name. Unless things have gone farther than I'd expected, in which case the point will be moot."

He vanished. Twilight leaned on the piano, sagging. Without adrenaline driving her, it was going to be really, really hard to teleport this piano back, and she should have known better than to do it in the first place. The fact that Discord had approved of her dropping a piano on his head was simply even further proof that she should never have done it. But she didn't look forward to trying to explain to the music teacher in the morning what the piano was doing in her bedroom, either.

She sighed. She was never going to get back to sleep tonight. After she moved the piano, she might as well get to work. Researching all the beings that hated Discord seemed like a task that could possibly take a very, very long time.

There was somepony lying next to Fluttershy.

Her heart jumped into her throat, which seemed to have the effect of making her throat freeze, so she couldn't scream. Her body felt equally frozen. There was somepony lying in her bed with her, curled up against her like a... like a coltfriend or something, except... wait. There was a feathered wing lying across hers, and something softer than a hoof laid over her shoulder and against her foreleg, and... a tail curled around her feet... a very long tail...

Some, although not all, of the sheer terror left her then, and she took a deep breath. "Discord?"

"Hmm?"

Another deep breath. So she was right, it was him. In the dim light of the moon shining through her window it was hard to see anything. "Why are you lying in bed with me?"

"You're cuddly."

"I'm... I'm serious... this is kinda weird, you know."

"Only 'kinda' weird? I must be slipping."

"Discord, why are you laying in my bed?"

"If I were laying in your bed, there'd be an egg in it."

"What?"

"Nevermind. Wordplay's not your strong suit, I see." She felt a nuzzle at the top of her head. "It's all right. You're tired. I understand."

"I don't. I'm trying to ask you, why are you in my bed?"

"How else am I supposed to spend time with you while you're sleeping?"

She rolled slightly, onto her legs so she could get up off the bed, though his wing was folded over her body, making it hard to manuever. She didn't remember Discord's feathered wing being big enough to do that. "I, uh, this, this isn't a good idea. I don't think, uh, I don't think this is really, uh, appropriate..."

"You have sleepovers with your friends all the time."

"They're mares."

"Oh, sex discrimination now? I thought you ponies were beyond all that."

"It's, uh, it's just weird, Discord. I'm a mare, and you're, well, I guess you're not a stallion but you're male, so..."

"Would it reassure you if I told you I was only interested in my own species?"

"Is that true?"

"Not even slightly, but I'll lie about it if it will make you feel better."

Fluttershy stiffened with a tiny "eep!" Discord made an annoyed noise and raised his head. "Fluttershy, weren't we just over this tonight? I have absolutely no inappropriate intentions toward you, any more than you'd have toward Angel. Wait, if you do have inappropriate intentions toward your bunny rabbit, don't tell me. Let me keep my illusions."

"I don't!"

"Then we're good." Discord lowered his head again. "Unless you're so overwhelmed with lust for me that you're afraid my proximity may overwhelm your common sense, I think it's fairly safe to say both our virtues are entirely safe from one another. There's exactly one pony on this planet I have ever had any such intentions as you're implying toward, and you're not her." He started to get up. "But I should have known this 'friendship' thing only goes so far. You don't want me next to you while you're sleeping, because of some bizarre rule of social propriety, fine--"

"Wait... you don't have to get up... were you even sleeping? I thought you didn't sleep."

"I don't. I was watching you sleep."

"Isn't that boring?"

"You'd have been mad at me if I woke you up." He sighed. "Even I can want peace and quiet on occasion. Am I not allowed to want to lie still for a bit?"

"Well, of course you can, but... why are you in my bed?"

She felt Discord shrug. "You're warm."

He could manufacture clothing, or fire, or weather conditions at will. He could be any temperature he wanted. He wasn't here because she was warm.

And then Fluttershy realized, and felt embarrassed that she had taken this long to figure it out, when it had actually been the first thing he'd said. Admittedly, it seemed out of character for Discord for that to have been anything other than a joke... but he didn't sleep, he didn't need somepony to keep him warm, and he wasn't interested in her romantically, so the only possible explanation that made any sense for why he'd been lying in bed snuggled against her, holding her like she'd have held Angel Bunny, was that he'd wanted somepony to cuddle. He was Discord; he was never going to admit that and make it sound like he was telling the truth, but he was perfectly capable of telling her the truth in a way that made it sound like a joke so she wouldn't realize it was the truth. "I'm sorry, Discord," she said, settling back down on the bed. "You just startled me. You can lay next to me if you want."

He settled back down against her back again, his tail curled around her legs and the end of it twitching, his wing folded over hers. "It's all right? You're not going to panic and run screaming out of bed again?"

"I... I didn't really run screaming..."

"Oh, but it was close. You were seriously considering it."

"It's just... you're not really someone I'd expect to want to cuddle anypony."

"I'm large. I contain multitudes. If I never get to do anything that seems completely out of character, then I'm predictable, and how could I ever bear to be predictable?"

Now that her racing heart was slowing down and she was relaxing again, she realized that this was actually surprisingly comfortable. Discord had moved her so that her head was pillowed against his chest, where his brown fur was thicker and softer than the gray fur on his neck, and her back was snuggled against his underbelly. Since he was much, much longer than she was, and obviously much more flexible, he'd bent himself into a semicircle around her, his feathered wing covering her like a down blanket (and yes, now that she was paying attention, it was much bigger than usual... as if he'd enlarged it precisely so he could fold it over her. He'd also reversed the positions of his forelimbs, so now his lion's paw was on the same side as his feathered wing.) He was very, very warm, almost as hot as Spike, but the fur distributed the warmth better than Spike's scales did so he felt more like an enchanted heated blanket and less like, well, a dragon.

Fluttershy giggled. She was small enough in comparison to Discord that she was practically a teddy bear to him. Then she thought about the reasons why she sometimes slept with Angel Bunny, and felt troubled again. "Are you sad?" she asked softly, remembering the discussion about his family.

He chuckled. "No. I'm not sad." The tufted lion's tail end of his tail swished restlessly for a moment before going still. "Go back to sleep, Fluttershy."

"I just want to know you're okay."

"I'm just peachy."

Fluttershy sighed. She didn't believe him. But whatever it was that was bothering him, he was plainly not willing to open up about it. Maybe he'd be willing to talk about it later, in the morning; for right now, if the only thing she could do for him was be a warm body to cuddle for comfort, she could do that.

His heartbeat was loud. And fast. Surprisingly so for a large creature who was lying down. "Does your heart always sound like that?" Fluttershy murmured.

"Like what?"

"So fast. Like – like a foal, or a bird, or a bunny rabbit, but... like it's racing."

"Stop trying to dissect me with your brain, Fluttershy. I swear you're as bad as Sparky sometimes."

"I just worry about you." Large creatures had big hearts, physically, and therefore, slow heartbeats. A fast heartbeat in a large creature usually meant adrenaline. Fight or flight or meet or mate; it was the sound of arousal or excitement or anger or fear. Discord was uncharacteristically quiet and still at the moment, so it was very unlikely that he was angry or excited, and given his indignation at her fear that he might see her in a romantic light or be making advances on her, it seemed unlikely that he was aroused; it was possible, given how he'd mocked the very concept of friendship up until the moment she made him realize he needed it, but Fluttershy thought she knew Discord well enough to know that if he wanted her and didn't want to admit it, he would be making fun of her rather than being indignant.

Was he scared of something?

She didn't know how to bring it up. She knew all about being scared, oh yes, and she herself wasn't too proud to admit it... fear was her greatest weakness, something too powerful for her to hide or pretend not to feel. But she had friends who would hide it if they could. Rainbow Dash and Rarity were both very proud ponies, in different ways, and neither of them would easily admit to fear. And Discord was so arrogant, and so powerful, and so rarely faced with anything to fear, and so new to the concept of friendship and the idea of confiding feelings in anyone. If she said anything to him, she was afraid he would immediately throw up defenses, make a joke, pretend there was nothing bothering him. She had to wait for him to come to her.

She lay against his side, eyes open in the darkness, trying to be there for him, trying not to be lulled back into sleep by warm soft fur against her face and neck and light fluffy feathers spread over her. It was hard, almost too hard. She was on the verge of falling asleep again when she heard a quiet voice in the darkness murmur, "Fluttershy?"

Fluttershy startled slightly – since she had been almost asleep, and his voice, though quieter than she'd ever heard from him, was still louder than the silence of the room had been. "Uh—yes?"

Another moment of silence, during which she wondered if she'd dreamed him speaking. And then he said, "You're mortal."

Well, obviously. "Uh... yeah?"

"Do you... you must, I'm sure, but I never thought about... do you think about dying?"

"I guess every mortal does," Fluttershy said, "but, you know, we grow up knowing we're going to die someday and it'd be silly to worry about it all the time, so we don't think about it too much." Was that what this was about? Had it just sunk in that he'd made friends with someone who'd be dead in an eyeblink by his standards? "Discord, are you worrying about me? That's so sweet!" She scooted herself back so she could get her own forelimb up over his neck to hug him.

"That's not... exactly..."

"You mustn't worry about it," she said. "I know it must bother you to think about a friend dying, when you're immortal and everything, but death is a part of life and it's just natural. It's just the way things are. But I'm still a young pony and I promise you I'll be here for you for a good long while, okay?"

He sighed. "You have an entirely too flattering picture of me, I'm afraid. I'm not... well, I do, but... that's not what I was... you know what, never mind."

"You can talk to me about anything, you know that? That's what friends are for."

"I wouldn't even know where to begin."

"You open your mouth and start talking, silly, that's how to do it."

Again he was silent for a minute. Finally he said, "No, I was right the first time. It's nothing, Fluttershy, don't worry about me. Just go back to sleep."

"But if something's bothering you or frightening you... a burden shared with a friend is a burden cut in half."

"Is it? In my experience it's a burden doubled."

Fluttershy sighed. "But how much experience do you have with having friends?"

"Well, it's not like I've never had any friends before, ever, in all of eternity."

That wasn't what he'd said that day with the ice skates, but she let it go. Discord was both prone to exaggerating the facts and downplaying them depending on how he felt at the moment; maybe he'd had friends once upon a time and he'd said she was his only friend ever because of how long it had been, or maybe he'd never had friends before now and he'd just decided he no longer wanted to admit to that now that he was willing to admit he liked having friends. "All of eternity was a long time ago, though, wasn't it?"

"I suppose it was."

More silence. She finally said, "Did you... did you want to talk about it?"

"You know what? No." He lifted his head slightly and spoke sharply. "What I want is to lie down in peace and quiet and pretend that nothing is wrong. Can I do that? Am I allowed to not spill my guts and blather on about my feelings about something that neither you nor I have the power to change? Can I just possibly simply lie here and not think about it? If that's quite all right with you?"

Fluttershy trembled. "I... I'm sorry... I didn't mean..."

Discord sighed. "Fluttershy. I'm not angry with you. I just... don't want to talk. Can I just... be here, without having to talk about things?"

"Of course you can," she said. "I... I just thought... maybe you would like to?"

"Not really, but thanks for the thought." He settled his head back down on her bed.

"You know... you know if you change your mind... you can always talk to me, right?"

"Yeah. I know." His lion paw tightened slightly around her, pulling her closer. "Just... go back to sleep, okay? You're a pony, you need your sleep."

"Okay."

She didn’t actually intend to do that just yet, not when she was worried for a friend who wouldn't talk to her about whatever was obviously bothering him; she was hoping if she stayed awake, maybe Discord would change his mind and open up to her about whatever was on his mind. But his rapid heartbeat slowed, turning deep and regular, and his breathing evened out. Probably the only things about him that were ever in a consistent rhythm for any length of time. His wing was surprisingly light and fluffy, and his fur was soft and his body warm. Lulled by comfort, Fluttershy slipped back into sleep again.

When she woke, he wasn't there, and there was no evidence he'd ever been. There was a note on the cabinet with no letters on it, just an imprint of lips, and when she went over to inspect it the lips spoke in Discord's voice. "Gone swimming! Come to Mane Street in Ponyville if you want to join in!" it said cheerfully, and then the lips vanished and it was nothing but a piece of paper.

There was no swimming pool anywhere near Mane Street. Fluttershy sighed. Probably she had to go check this out, as Discord's more-or-less supervisor to make sure he didn't do anything terrible. She fed all her animals, left a note on her door so ponies with injured pets would know where to find her, and headed to Mane Street.

Pool Party

Mane Street was a swimming pool.

Well, it wasn't completely a swimming pool. Discord had divided the street, so both lanes of traffic were as wide as they had previously been, plenty of room for a pony to walk even if she was pulling a cart. He seemed to have bent space somehow to do it, because when she tried walking in the alley behind the buildings they were exactly the same distance away from the other buildings that they'd always been, and all the other streets were still straight, and when she looked in the shops they had the same dimensions they'd always had. But the lanes now bent widely around a gigantic median ellipse occupied by a big swimming pool. There was a fence around the pool, but it was the kind made of metal links that you could easily see through. Pinkie Pie and at least a dozen other ponies, including two elderly retired mares who were always giving Fluttershy extra vegetables for her animals, were splashing in the water. Other ponies were lying on pool chairs, taking in the sun. Tentatively, Fluttershy pushed the gate open and entered the pool area.

"FLUTTERSHY!" Pinkie jumped up in her face... which given that 10 seconds ago Fluttershy had seen her swimming, was a little weird, but that was just Pinkie. "Did Discord tell you what he did?"

"He, uh, he said he was going swimming on Mane Street..."

"He made a pool for everypony! With really awesome slides, come on, you have to slide on the slides, they're like a roller coaster or something!" Pinkie tugged at Fluttershy.

"I, uh, I'd really... I'm kind of scared of roller coasters..."

Pinkie let go of Fluttershy. "Oh. Yeah. Right. Haha, I forgot about that! Well, at least you can go swimming, right? I mean, the water isn't even deep, except in the deep end where the slides are! Oh, and did you have any breakfast? Because I told Applejack and the Cakes to come set up food vending here and I gotta go back and help the Cakes but Applejack's already here and she has fritters and apple pancakes! Apple pancakes for breakfast! And I told Discord not to make any food right now so the vendors can sell stuff but he said then that I have to throw a party tonight so he can make food because of course you never sell the food at a party so it won't cut into any vendor sales whereas if he made the food now then the vendors couldn't sell anything and that would be bad for the Cakes and Applejack!"

"Where is Discord now, actually?"

"I actually don't know! I wonder if I have to go play hide and seek with him! Or maybe he's at the bottom of the pool in the deep end! He's been doing that and then going boo to the ponies who go down the slide and I actually wish he wouldn't keep doing it because it's kind of mean even though it's also funny, but he doesn't know the ponies here well enough to know who likes to get a little scare and who's gonna be totally freaked out so maybe you can talk to him?"

"Oh, but I can't go down to the deep end of the pool..."

"Well, I'll check to see if he's there and if he is I'll tell him to go talk to you! He wanted you to come but he didn't want to wake you up early and is it true that he took you to the Moon last night? Because normally I wouldn't believe a thing like that but if it's Discord, sometimes he says things that are true that nopony's gonna believe because he thinks it's funny to do that, which it kind of is sometimes, and he could go to the Moon if he wanted to but on the other hand sometimes he says things that aren't true because he thinks that's funny too!"

She wasn't sure she wanted to tell Pinkie about going into space just yet. "We didn't go to the Moon, no..."

"Oh, okay! So I have to get some peanut butter because I told him I will dump a jar of peanut butter over his head if he's lying to me, but he has to get out of the pool first because peanut butter in a pool? That's just gross!"

"Pinkie, please don't dump peanut butter on Discord's head just because of something I said..."

Pinkie slowed down from her usual manic bounciness slightly. "It's not mean, Fluttershy. He likes that kind of teasing. I've been trying to teach him he's gotta know his audience. Some ponies like the physical comedy and the slapstick like that, like he does, and some like it but only from their best friends, and some don't like it at all, and you have to know who's going to like it before you do it because if they hate it, that's just not funny. He's had a hard time getting it, but I think knowing you is helping a lot because he really doesn't want to upset you and you're a lot different than he is. I don't think he's used to caring what ponies who think differently than he does think about, well, anything."

"Well, uh, there aren't really many ponies who don't think differently than he does..."

"Yeah, so that there is a big part of his problem." Pinkie grinned. "But I think he's starting to get it. A little bit. At least, when I tell him a joke is mean, he doesn't usually repeat it. And I think that's because he knows you don't like it when he's mean." She flopped down in a chair. "Can I tell you something, Fluttershy?"

"Sure, anything!"

"Peanut butter tastes really horrible with mane in it!"

Fluttershy blinked. "Oh... ok?"

"Wait, no, that isn't what I wanted to say." Pinkie put her hoof to her chin, lost in thought. "Oh yeah! I wanted to say, there's two kinds of ponies who pull pranks. There's bullies and pranksters. Bullies, they pull a prank on you 'cause they want you to cry. The funny part, for them, isn't the joke itself, it's that it hurts you. So they don't like it when you prank them back and they get mad if you come up with some clever way to dodge the prank. But pranksters, for them the funny part is the unexpectedosity of it." Fluttershy didn't think that was a word, but Pinkie didn't let her get in a word edgewise to say so. "So if you prank a prankster, and it's a good prank, they laugh. And if you do something unexpected to dodge out of their prank, they laugh at that too. It's not about who got hurt, it's about it basically being funny."

Fluttershy wasn't a big fan of pranks of any kind, but she could at least follow this logic when she thought about ponies like Rainbow Dash pulling pranks, or Pinkie herself. "Okay..."

"So here's the thing. Discord laughs if you prank him."

"I know, " Fluttershy said.

"Well, we didn't, right? Before the Princess asked you to reform him we didn't know that because we didn't do any pranks on him, we fought him, and no one who's fighting is gonna be glad to lose 'cause that's when it's serious and you gotta win. But you thought you could reform him like she asked. And I didn't, because he's a big meanie and I thought he was a bully, even though I can forgive a lot for chocolate milk rain, but you can't reform a bully, they just either grow out of it or you have to scare 'em out of picking on you. But bullies don't laugh when you prank them. So you were right all along." She got up. "There's two parts of not being a mean prankster, and that's knowing what other ponies think is mean, and caring about not being mean. And Dissy's got a long long way to go with the knowing part but I think we are actually making some progress on the caring part! A little bit."

"I'm really glad to hear that."

"So I'm gonna go back and help the Cakes! Applejack's got a really long line over there and I bet it would help a lot with the line if there was another vendor for breakfast! Bye!"

As Pinkie bounced off, Fluttershy murmured, "But... you were going to help me find Discord if he's at the bottom of the pool..."

The water by the side of the pool heaved up as if a sea serpent was rising out of it. Fluttershy shrieked and jumped backward, sliding on the wet concrete and falling on her rump. "Ow!"

"Fluttershy, it's just me," the very large draconequus with a tail that looked a whole lot like a sea serpent tail said, exasperatedly. "You were just looking for me! How do you get startled when the being you're looking for pops up out of the place you were going to look for him in?"

"I'm sorry..."

"Never mind," Discord said. "I'd thought that living with me might have given you a slightly higher setting on your Startle-O-Meter than that, but I suppose not." He leaned on the edge of the pool, the elbow of his paw bent and the paw itself supporting his head. "I take it you got my message?"

"Uh, yes, I did."

"Splendid! Come dive in!"

"I was, actually I was just going to look for you and make sure everything was okay... I have to get back and feed the animals breakfast and everything..."

"No, you don't." Discord snapped his talon. "Problem solved."

"Did... did you just... what did you do?"

"I fed them! Every single lost soul living on or in or around your property has a nice healthy breakfast in front of them now. Have you had breakfast?"

"Discord, you didn't feed them all cake, did you?"

He sighed. "I actually know exactly what you feed your animals, Fluttershy. If I was going to feed them cake it would be while you were there to see the joke. I'm trying to save you work so you can come swimming with me. And you didn't answer my question about breakfast."

"Oh, no, I haven't yet, so I was going to go over and ask Applejack..."

"But just look at that line!" Discord snapped again, and Applejack suddenly appeared by the side of the pool.

"Tarnation, Discord! Ah'm in the middle of frying a fritter and it's gonna burn! What the hay do you want!"

"Consider your fritter fried. I want you to make Fluttershy breakfast."

"Oh, no!" Fluttershy put a hoof to her face, deeply embarrassed. "Discord, I was going to go stand on the line! You just pulled Applejack away from her kiosk!"

"Pretty sure her giant lug of a brother can handle the orders for the few seconds it takes for you to give her your order."

"That ain't how we do it around here, Discord. There's ponies already in line."

"So you would prioritize strangers with bits over your dear, dear friend here?" Discord slithered up out of the pool and pulled Fluttershy into a sideways hug faster than anypony that big ought to be able to move. "Look at this sweet face. Don't you think your friend deserves breakfast?"

"It's all right, Discord, I'm ok with getting on line—"

"Fluttershy may be first in mah heart of all the ponies eatin' mah food for breakfast, Discord, but Ah still can't let her jump to the front of the line just for being mah friend, 'cause that just ain't fair to all the other ponies who're standing in line. If you're gonna sell goods to ponies, you can't play favorites to your friends or they're gonna be the only customers you get."

Fluttershy was bright red. "It's all right, I don't have a problem with the line—"

"Well I think it's just ridiculous that the magic of friendship can't even get Fluttershy a fritter on a timely basis. For shame. Do I have to feed her? Am I the only friend Fluttershy has who cares that she's hungry?"

"You don't know a darned thing about retail and sales, do ya?"

"Not in the slightest." Discord flopped down on his belly on the concrete around the pool, grinning cheerily.

"If you get your customers mad, like maybe if you spend ten minutes arguin' with an ignorant draconequus instead of takin' their orders, or if you play favorites, you ain't gonna be able to make a living in mah business. Not that you'd know anything about makin' an honest living, either."

"Guilty as charged. Completely ignorant of the subject." His grin got bigger.

"Well, Ah'll give you some advice for free, if you ever find yourself needin' to? Don't go into sales. Yer pony skills are appallin' and you're likely to scare half yer customers away just with how you look, and the other half of them with how you act. You need good pony skills to get ahead in a sales-based business."

Discord lost his smile completely. "I'll be sure to keep it in mind, in the vanishingly unlikely event that it should ever prove to be relevant," he said sourly.

Applejack looked over at the line. "Fluttershy, Ah tell you what. Ah'll take your order now—"

"But that's unfair to all the ponies in line!"

"No, it ain't, 'cause Ah won't start cookin' it until that guy—" she pointed at the last stallion in the line—"gives me his order. That way it'll be just like if you did stand on the line. You won't go afore anypony else who was supposed to go afore you, but Ah'll already have your order so you won't have to stand in the line." She turned and glared at Discord. "And then this useless lump a'chaos here can let you know when your order's done cookin' so you don't have to come over to the booth till it's ready for you to get it."

"I am a very useful lump of chaos, I'll have you know."

"I—I guess that's fair. I just wanted a couple of your apple pancakes?"

"That's no problem, Fluttershy, no problem. Ah'll just head over there and take orders till Ah get to that guy."

"Make me one too," Discord said offhandedly.

Applejack glared at him. "You gonna buy one off me? You got any bits?"

Discord put on a pair of sunglasses he hadn't had a moment ago. "Applejack, do you really want to ask me a question whose answer might end up being, 'No, I actually don't, perhaps I need to earn some,' which results in me setting up a kiosk selling exotic breakfast treats right next to yours, given that I am not only capable of creating an infinite supply of much tastier food than yours, but I can make the booth, the equipment and the perky salesponies to move the product, with a snap?" He sat up. "Celestia won't let me make bits, but she's never restricted me from making anything I could sell for bits. And while I'm sure you're correct that I should never personally attempt to sell anything, you have no idea how many desperate salesponies are out there looking for a job who'd be willing to staff my kiosk in a heartbeat."

"Please stop arguing," Fluttershy pleaded.

"So what you want from me's a free pancake."

"Well, they say there's no such thing as a free lunch, but this is breakfast."

"Even though you can make any food ya want appear just like that."

"That's right."

"I'll pay for his pancake, Applejack," Fluttershy said.

Both Discord and Applejack looked at her at the same time and said, "You will not!" And then glared at each other.

"But it's the right thing, you ought to get paid..."

Applejack sighed. "Even though this varmint does not deserve a pancake, any pancake, and especially not a free pancake, Ah will make him one so we can quit arguin' about this and Ah can get back to mah line of customers. You ain't gonna pay for him, Fluttershy. And it ain't because Ah'm afraid of you competing with mah booth, Discord, it's because Ah don't wanna upset Fluttershy." She started toward her booth, and then turned back. "Although, if your exotic breakfast treats are so much better than mah cooking, why don't you make yourself one?"

"I'm trying to share a friendship experience with Fluttershy," Discord said, a comically innocent expression plastered on his face. "You know, sharing a meal together, isn't that supposed to be one of those bonding moments? Or am I mixing up breakfast and rubber cement?"

"Could you please stop..." Fluttershy whispered.

"You lie like a rug, Discord. You just want me to make you a free pancake."

"I could have asked for a sammich."

Applejack squared her shoulders. "Well, all right then, 'cause Ah just thought of somethin'. Ah was wrong to say you don't deserve a free pancake. You made this swimming pool and gave mah family the opportunity to run a booth here; it ain't market day, so we wouldn't be sellin' any apples or apple product right this minute if it weren't for you, and you didn't ask for rent. So Ah'll make you two pancakes, with syrup, as rent for the pool space we got the booth on, so they ain't free pancakes, they're pancakes you got comin' to ya fair and square. We good now?"

"Wonderful," Discord said. "Enjoy your fritter frying." He snapped his talon again, and Fluttershy saw Applejack reappear behind the booth counter.

"Why did you want a pancake?" Fluttershy asked.

"Eh, no reason. Come on in and swim, Flutters!"

"Oh, no, I really couldn't, right now..."

"If you wait until after you eat you'll have to wait an hour after that," he caroled. "Come in while the going's good now."

"Oh, no, I just... I mean maybe later if I can ease into the water, but..."

He sighed deeply, and then made puppy dog eyes at her. "Could you at least come give me a backrub? It's getting bad again."

"Sure!" Giving comfort and medical treatment was much more familiar ground than swimming pools. "There are plenty of pool chairs, but I don't see any big enough for you to lay down in. Where would you like to lay down?"

And then there was sudden disorientation, and vertigo, and then she was standing on a rock which was rocking, like a boat. "Eep!" Fluttershy flapped her wings, trying to regain her footing. "Discord, we're in the middle of the pool!"

"Yes, I know, I teleported us here."

"But we're in the pool!"

"Don't worry, this rock is very stable."

"No it's not! It's going back and forth... Don't you think so?"

"Well, of course it is, Fluttershy." Discord was sprawled out on the rock, on his belly, limbs stretched wide, wings lying straight and flat draped over his back and sides, and his tail uncoiled. The tip of his tail hung into the water and his nose was barely an inch from the waves; it was a long rock for a long creature to stretch out on. "What else would you expect? It's floating."

"We're on a floating rock in the middle of the swimming pool? Why not a boat or something?"

"That's what I wanted to know!" Pinkie Pie yelled, jumping up from the water and leaning on the rock with both forelimbs. "I said what about a nice inner tube, and he says—"

"When was the last time you saw a dragon in an inner tube?" Discord asked.

"Yeah, that's exactly what he said!" Pinkie turned to Discord. "And the answer is, last summer when Spike came to the beach with us."

"Let me rephrase, when was the last time you saw a dragon who didn't think he was a pony in an inner tube?"

"But you're not even a dragon, you're a dragon pony goat lion eagle bat thing!"

"The technical term is draconequus."

"But that just means dragon pony! What about all the other parts? Are you ashamed of the other parts, huh? Didn't want to have a word that had all the other parts in it?"

"Well, if I called myself a draconaquileoequus, it would be a bit of a mouthful, don't you think?"

"And it would also be missing the part about the bat and the goat!"

"The point is, I'm part dragon, therefore I'm basking on a rock. Not an inner tube. Don't you have a booth to set up?"

"Oh yeah, I almost forgot!" Pinkie dove back into the water.

Discord sighed. "There's chaos, and then there's complete pointless noise, and sometimes I think Pinkie doesn't know where the line is. Or possibly that there even is a line."

Fluttershy smiled. By now, she had figured out how to balance properly on the floating rock. "Why don't you tell me where it hurts?"

"Everywhere," Discord moaned dramatically.

"Big baby," Fluttershy teased, and knelt down next to him, running her hooves over his back. She could easily feel the knots in his muscles. "Where does it hurt the worst?"

"Tuesday?"

"Never mind, I'll just do the whole thing."

She dug her hooves into a particularly tense spot. Discord gasped. "Fluttershy. You are an angel of mercy. There need to be – ohhh – there need to be choirs of little foals in white gowns singing in harmony about how wonderful you – oh yes please right there under the wing, no, the bat wing, oh, that is incredible." He closed his eyes. "I'm going to pretend that I'm a creature that sleeps now. Agh. Do you think it would help if I traded in my skeleton for a new model?"

"I kind of don't think so? Because you can never get rid of it just by shapeshifting and then turning back, and you'd think that would work. Maybe if you went around being a little more symmetrical it would help?"

"Blasphemy. Tell Rarity to shave her mane, it's more likely."

"Well, if Rarity's mane was hurting all the time because it was too long... but I don't think any different form you have is going to be any different."

"What if I was an invertebrate? Then my back couldn't hurt."

"You turned yourself into a whole flock of dragonflies and it didn't help in the long run."

"Well, the back I didn't have when I was a flock of dragonflies didn't hurt while I was a flock of dragonflies."

"Do you want to go around being a flock of dragonflies all the time?"

"Not really, no. Ohhh. Earth sun and sky how are you finding these things, I didn't even know how badly that one hurt until aggghhh yes there."

"I'm just feeling for where the muscles don't feel right."

"I'm not sure any of them feel right." He sighed, and then lifted his head, tensing up and ruining a lot of her work. "Oh, hey, breakfast's ready!" He snapped the talon without removing it from its position outstretched across the rock, and Applejack was suddenly standing on the other side of the rock, a serving platter tied around her neck with two plates on it. She wobbled.

"Discord! What the hay are you—" She looked down at Fluttershy. "Okay. Tell me Ah'm not seein' this."

"Seeing what?"

"Fluttershy, what the hay are you doin' down there?"

"I'm giving him a back rub." Discord moaned in a combination of agony and relief as she found another one of the really bad spots, this one above his tailbone. "His back really hurts him."

"Ah'll just bet," Applejack said slowly. "Hay, you! Loser!"

Discord opened his eyes and turned his head. "Are you addressing me?"

"You mind tellin' me why the hay a guy who can take his eyeballs outta his head and roll'em on the ground, turn into a hoop and hula around a pony, and shapechange into pretty much anything, needs to get a backrub from his mare friend? 'Cause Ah am callin' bull puckey."

Fluttershy flushed red. "It's not like that, Applejack!"

"Well, Fluttershy, Ah'm sure you don't think so. Ah'm positive this varmint told you he was in a lot of pain and needed his back rubbed. But in mah experience, a stallion askin' a mare for a back rub, well, maybe he hurt his back with a lotta hard work, but if he ain't done any hard work a day in his life? Or if he can take off his head and put it back on again and other crazy stuff? Ah'm thinkin' he's lookin' to get something else rubbed, if you know what Ah mean."

"Applejack!" Fluttershy was completely mortified, the worse so because Discord was snickering. "It's not like that at all! It's psychosomatic pain!"

"Psychosomatic? You been spendin' too much time with Twilight again?"

"It means pain in the mind making pain in the body," Fluttershy explained.

"Ah know what it means, it just don't sound like the kinda word you use all the time."

"Fluttershy thinks it's rude to just say my pain is all in my head," Discord said, half-growling. "And Fluttershy, if I wanted to whine to somepony who turned me into a stone statue about what that's done to me, I'd have done it to somepony who cared. Which I did. Which was you. Not Applejack."

"But she was acting like—I couldn't let her think we were – or that you were the kind of stallion who would—no!"

"For the record," Discord said, closing his eyes again, "if I were looking for a special somepony to give me a different sort of rub, I'd be in your Princess's bedroom right now. She totally wants me."

"You would what?"

"You are a filthy liar, Discord, and someone oughta wash your mouth out with soap."

"Which Princess do you even mean?" Fluttershy asked frantically.

Still with his eyes closed, Discord was grinning broadly. "Oh, I suppose I misspoke, it's so hard to keep track of the time. Celestia's working right now. I'd have to wait till evening for the happy ending."

"Ah'm gonna shove these apple pancakes in your ears 'cause your lyin' mouth ain't good enough for mah pancakes."

"Discord, that joke is really tasteless," Fluttershy said sternly. "You just can't talk about the Princesses that way. Besides, Princess Celestia is still in mourning for Prince Trueblood! She never marries a new husband until the old one's been dead at least fifty years."

Discord chortled. "What part of 'Celestia totally wants me' makes you think she wants to marry me? Do I look like the sort of colt you bring home to your mama? Celestia only marries the good colts, the knights and paladins, the Colt Scouts, the stallions of impeccable virtue and niceness and boringness. I'm the kind of guy she hides in her bedroom when Luna's too busy with the moon to notice and everypony else is asleep."

"She does not!"

"Didn't you ever wonder how she got custody of a baby dragon? Spike's dad, well, I'll just bet he thought he'd died and gone to Dragon Heaven when she showed up in his cave."

"The Princess is not Spike's mother!" Fluttershy said frantically. Applejack was simply spluttering, turning redder and redder.

"'Course not, Spike's a dragon. Fellow was married to a dragon mare. To be absolutely fair, I think his blushing bride and her tragic demise shortly after laying Spike occurred a few hundred years after Celestia got down and dirty with him, but you know your Princess, she's all about the magic of friendship. Especially the friendship with benefits."

Applejack kicked Discord, hard, with her front hooves. "Ah am gonna buck you to Fillydelphia if you don't stop with the lies about the Princess. You are not her coltfriend!"

"Never said I was. She made it awfully clear that the invitation was open any time I wanted, but you know... she's so white. Practically glows in the dark. Doesn't that seem just a little, I don't know, embarrassing? I mean, most ponies prefer a bit of shade for their intimacy, hides all the little imperfections, you know, and here's the BLAZING LIGHT OF THE SUN demanding that you buck her like a—"

At this point, Fluttershy shoved Discord off the rock before he really could provoke Applejack into bucking him to Fillydelphia. He splashed into the water with a cry of surprise, and sank.

"I apologize for Discord, Applejack," Fluttershy said, breathing hard. "I embarrassed him when I told you about why his back hurts, so he must have decided to get back at the both of us by saying all those mean things about Princess Celestia."

Applejack shook her head. "It ain't that they're mean. If they were true, there'd be no shame in the Princess bein' a little xeno, if that's how she swings. Ah mean, she's the Princess, she's thousands of years old, Ah ain't gonna tell her she can't have a dragon warm her up on a cold night if she wanted. But they're lies, and Discord's just sayin' them 'cause he thinks we would be ashamed of our Princess for bein' a bit xeno, like the hay it matters who she loves, long as it's love. Ah mean, maybe the part about Spike's dad is even true. But there is no way Princess Celestia would give the time of day to Discord." She sighed. "Ah shouldn't let him get to me, but he tells me mean lies after he made me a mean liar, it's just like wavin' a red flag to a bull."

"Well, we're not racing bulls. Discord can wave a red flag or a checkered flag or any kind of flag he wants, but we shouldn't let him get to us. He's just playing. And I should've known he'd be embarrassed for you to know about the psychosomatic thing."

"Ah'm not even sure Ah understand."

Fluttershy peered into the water. Discord had apparently swum off entirely and was now pretending to be a climbing structure for the little foals in the kiddie pool. Which actually might help his back some. "He has psychosomatic pain. He says he's pulling against stone that isn't there, all the time, and it wrenches his back. He can use his powers to fix it, but his powers are controlled by his mind and it's his mind doing it to him, so it never works very well."

"Huh. Wouldn't've thought bein' turned into a statue could actually mess up a spirit enough to keep hurtin' his back."

"He had a really hard time admitting it to me in the first place. Discord doesn't like to admit to needing help with anything." She sighed. "I wish you hadn't said that stuff, Applejack. I mean, I know you were just looking out for me and I really appreciate it, but Discord isn't interested in me like that. He's more like a really annoying but also kind of sweet older brother."

"Ah just don't want him takin' advantage of you, Fluttershy," Applejack said. "And it's true, stallions ask mares for back rubs or offer 'em up when they're thinkin' about, you know. Getting with her."

"Yes, but stallions don't ask me for back rubs, but sometimes bears do, and one time a monkey, so trust me. Discord's a good friend to me, really, but, but I'm not really xeno, I mean I love all creatures but not that way, so really there's nothing there except friendship. He might as well be a mare. A mare with a very stalliony voice." She giggled.

"Well, just 'cause you ain't xeno don't mean he ain't."

"He says he is, actually, Which I guess is good for him, because are there even any other draconequuses? I asked him about his family but they're all spirits and they have different kinds of bodies and the one who used to be his fillyfriend is a dragon so I guess he has to be xeno or he'd never find someone to love?"

"Ah think he's got bigger problems findin' someone to love than what species they are, Fluttershy," Applejack said. "Think first he'd need to figger out how to not be a total jerk. And if you know he's xeno, how are you so sure he's not goin' all creepy on you?"

"I just know," Fluttershy said. She thought of bringing up the fact that she had slept against Discord's flank for half the night last night and he had been a perfect gentlestallion, cuddling against her but not doing anything misconstruable as sexual, the whole time. But she thought Applejack might turn that one around and take it as evidence for her side too.

Discord rematerialized on the rock, sitting this time. "Why are the two of you so obsessed with my sex life?"

"Ah ain't, Discord. Ah just wanna make sure you ain't gonna hurt Fluttershy."

Discord sighed, heavily. "As if I can't break her heart into tiny little pieces without romance being involved? Or the other way around? I'll never comprehend why you ponies think friendship with sex is somehow so much more fraught with peril than friendship without sex. I do not desire Fluttershy. She is a very beautiful little pony and my dear friend and someday when some stallion comes calling to her door I will probably turn him into a newt unless he proves he won't hurt her, but she is much too young for me and I am frankly getting somewhat offended at the implication that I'm such a cradle robber. What, you think I'm desperate?"

Applejack shrugged. "Ain't seein' you gettin' with much of anypony else, and it ain't likely given your history. Also that somepony would have to be real xeno to be into you."

Discord smirked. "There is actually no shortage of ponies who are really, really xeno, Applejoke. If I wanted a lover, I could find one. I don't. I have a friend. Right now, at this stage of my existence, I find that preferable. But I promise you this, o Element of Honesty, if I do hook up with a pony who's got a taste for extreme xeno, I'll give you a blow by blow description afterward in graphic detail, since you seem to be so very interested in my love life."

Applejack shook her head. "There's honesty, and then there's TMI, and then there's the brain bleach Ah do not have enough of to get that image out of mah head, Discord. Please shut the buck up and eat your pancakes. They've gotten all cold."

Discord grinned at her and flicked his talon, and she reappeared at the booth, sans the two plates. Fluttershy sat down with her fork and knife, and found that the pancakes were as warm as if they'd just come off the grill... that one was probably Discord's doing. Discord ate his like they were flies and he was a frog, shooting his long snake tongue out to stick to a piece of pancake and then pulling it back, which was just totally weird enough to be not quite gross but more like watching an animal eat.

"You shouldn't get so upset when anypony hears about your problems," she said to him softly, returning to work on his back after finishing her pancake. "We just all want to help you."

"As if," Discord muttered.

Author's Note

So a bunch of things I am trying to do with this chapter (which actually went on way too long because I was having much too much fun with the dialogue).

Pinkie Pie actually has a brain. Maybe she doesn't use it that often, but she's capable of good insight about ponies, particularly within her bailiwick. From listening to comedians talk about their art, I have always thought a good comedian actually understands a lot about what they are doing, so I think, while Pinkie may not have a sophisticated vocabulary to describe it, she understands the different types of humor and the different types of ponies who employ them, very well.
Trying to establish Discord's relationship with members of the Mane 6 who he genuinely doesn't really care about personally... he actually *likes* Twilight, though she doesn't like him, but he has no interest in Applejack and the feeling's mutual. Applejack's one of the three that I personally have a hard time with because she's so far removed from my own personality, so I may have gotten her entirely wrong. What I'm going for here is, the Element of Honesty is tactful with her friends but brutally blunt with ponies she doesn't like if she doesn't need to be tactful; but she's also hung up on fairness, because fairness is part of honesty. She won't make Discord a free pancake because that's not fair, but she'll acknowledge that he's done her a favor and therefore she can give him a pancake on that basis. I may have overdone her accent; I haven't done phonetic accents since X-Men fandom and nowadays I usually consider them a bad idea, but they seem to be what's done in this fandom.
Fluttershy's a veterinarian. She's not stupid either. In fact, in a world where almost all the animals are near-sentient and there are multiple full sentient races, I'm thinking what she really is is a xenomedic, not a vet.
A bit about pony sexuality. In a world where there are so many sentient races, inter-species sexuality between sentient beings is a thing. Xenophilia, like homosexuality, is probably something that's been considered everything from evil and immoral to slightly scandalous to no big deal. I wanted the conversation about xenophilia to sound a bit like a modern conversation about homosexuality, where the characters don't have a *problem* with it but it has enough historical stigma to carry baggage.
How does Prince Blueblood have an immortal aunt who has only one sister who was on the moon when he was born? Answer: aunt through marriage. In my view, Celestia gets married probably every other century or so; Trueblood, unlike his biological nephew, was probably a really nice guy, too bad his nephew's an ass. Alicorns can't reproduce (if there is canon contradicting this I need to know *real* soon), so Celestia doesn't *need* to get married from a political, produce-an-heir, perspective, but she's a pony like everyone else, she gets lonely. The reason it never comes up that she is or was married is that her last husband died like twenty years ago or so and Celestia refrains from remarriage for a long time after her husbands die. And yes, they are all kind, loving, sweet, handsome, brave, loyal, princely sort of guys, because Celestia knows that politically, marrying any other kind of stallion won't fly.
Discord and Fluttershy are not romantically interested in each other at all, but Discord has no one else to seek even platonic physical affection from, which gets misinterpreted by almost everyone. The fact that Discord thinks these misunderstandings are hilarious, unless they come from Fluttershy herself, does not help.
When you're an immortal omnipotent being, virtually nothing can hurt you. Unless you're screwed up in the head. Because the mind and the will are the source of Discord's powers, he cannot actually use his powers much to influence his own mind and will. So things like psychosomatic pain and claustrophobia are effects he can actually suffer, whereas straight-up physical injury is not.
I don't know if the bit about racing bulls came across. The expression "red flag to a bull" comes from bullfighting, which is obviously not something that would be practiced on Equestria. So I thought that on Equestria, the red flag is what's used to signal the start of a bovine race, whereas the ponies use checkered flags. "Red flag to a bull" means the bull will charge forward blindly because the race has just started. :-)
Everything Discord says about Celestia is actually true, but he says it because he knows no one will believe him and that's what makes it funny.

The Quality of One's Enemies

By the time Twilight was sure her answer was reasonably comprehensive, it was night time. She headed out , planning to go to Fluttershy's house to find Discord, since summoning him by calling his name seemed just... creepy. Almost immediately, she observed that it was far too light out.

The moon was up. The sun was down. Where was all the light coming from?

Possibly from those three extremely bright glowing red orbs hovering over the center of Ponyville?

Twilight followed the light to Mane Street, turned the corner, and stopped in shock.

Everything that was supposed to be on Mane Street, was. Each lane of the street was the same width it had always been. But now, impossibly, the lanes of the street split and bent into a circle, and in the center of the circle, there was a gigantic fenced-in swimming pool with multiple open gates, in which there seemed to be a raucous pool party going on. The three red orbs floated over the pool, leaving the night sky still mostly visible but lighting the area of the pool. It was bright enough to be almost like daylight, but the red light made all the colors strange and it didn't blot out the night sky like actual daylight would have.

As Twilight approached one of the gates to the pool, Pinkie Pie rushed up to her, dragged her up onto her hind feet and started pulling her with a forehoof clasped around Twilight's foreleg. "Twilight it's so great you're finally done for the day and you can come SWIMMING! You should see the swimming pool Discord made, it's so awesome! I could spend the whole day sliding on those sliding boards! They go upside down! And loop-de-loop! Just like an amusement park, except it's like what if you combined a roller coaster and a log flume and you were just doing it on your own rump instead of in a log and there are fish in the pool! And Rarity was showing off a whole bunch of new bathing suits and Fluttershy brought all her animals after lunch but she just left to put them to bed and Discord asked me to throw a party at nighttime because during the day it was just everyone having fun at a pool but it wasn't a party, and I couldn't throw a party because I was working because we had food vending and the Cakes had a booth, although I did take some breaks to go swimming, but now it's night so I'm throwing a nighttime pool party and everypony's invited! Though the foals have to go home before midnight 'cause it's a school night and besides that's when we're going to break out Applejack's really good cider if you know what I mean—"

Despite Twilight's best attempts to pull free of Pinkie, she was completely unable to stop the hyperactive earth pony from dragging her to the edge of the pool. At that point Twilight balked, pulling herself loose from Pinkie's grip and going back onto the stability of four feet again. "Pinkie, I just came here to investigate, not to go swimming. Also to talk to Discord, although I guess he's here somewhere."

"Last I saw he was in the middle of the pool lying on his giant floating rock. I don't know why he wants a rock! I told him an inner tube would be more comfortable but he said he's part reptile so he wants to sun himself on a rock and I said but the sun isn't even up anymore and you can't get a tan from those mini-suns he put up there and he said yes but the rock is warm and the inner tube would be chilly! But I think he could make a warm inner tube if he wanted to but he decided he wanted a sun-warmed rock so he's just making it float in the middle of the pool except actually it looks like he's not there."

At this point, someone shoved Twilight's rump, hard, and she skidded forward. She had time to note that the ground was impossibly slippery even for wet concrete – she was sliding forward as if it were ice, or glass – and then she pitched forward into the pool with a shriek.

As she came up, spluttering, she saw Pinkie Pie yelling at Discord, who was standing there with sunglasses and a brightly colored short-sleeved buttondown shirt on. "...not nice at all! If you're gonna push someone into a pool the least you could do was jump in after them so you're all in the pool together, otherwise it’s just mean!"

"Oh? Is that how it works?"

"Yes, it is!" Pinkie declared.

"Well then." Discord grabbed Pinkie in his mismatched arms, leapt into the air yelling "CANNONBALL!", rolled himself into an actual ball in mid-air with a shrieking Pinkie in the center of the ball, and landed next to Twilight in the water before she had a chance to swim, duck, or teleport away. What appeared to be half the pool splashed over her head from the weight of a ball-shaped draconequus hitting it.

Pinkie and Discord came up from under water just about at the time Twilight had managed to wipe enough of the water out of her face to see. "That was awesome!" Pinkie was yelling, waving her forelimbs wildly. "Let's do it again!"

"Naah, I hate repeating myself." He smirked at Twilight. "Do enjoy the water, Sparky."

"I came here to talk to you, you big jerk!" Twilight spluttered. "Because you asked me for a favor!"

"And so I gave you the opportunity to come swim in my swimming pool! One day only, open to all ponies and anything else that agrees not to eat ponies while here, disappears at dawn so pool party hard while you can!"

"I did not come here to go swimming," Twilight snapped.

"Whyever else would you come to a pool party?"

"It could have been for cake!" Pinkie Pie said. "Twilight, did you want some cake? Because we've got some really awesome cakes up there! Also we have nachos and dip and there's a ton of apple stuff and cheese and you need to try the pretzels! And we did have mariachi cherries, but they're all eaten now."

"No, I came to talk to Discord," Twilight said, climbing out of the pool. "I'm guessing there is no point to asking why there is a swimming pool in the middle of Mane Street."

"Oh my gosh, Twilight, we thought you knew! Discord said you weren't here because you were busy researching something but I thought you knew about the pool and you'd just decided not to come but if you didn't even know about it and you spent the whole day doing research when you could have been at a pool! I am so sorry! I should have told you!" She grabbed Discord's beard, dragging his head down to her level. "YOU! You let us think Twilight already knew!"

"What are you blaming me for? Spike showed up in the afternoon and he could have gone and told her."

Twilight facehooved. "He did. He said there was a swimming pool and he was going to go because we'd already been working all day and he thought Pinkie might be having a party, except I was deep in an ancient text in an unusual dialect of Equestrian that was hard to translate so I wasn't paying any attention and I forgot. I didn't realize it was Discord's swimming pool, though."

Pinkie released Discord's beard. "Ok, mister, but I have my eye on you."

Discord smirked down at her. "Do you really expect me to run with such an incredibly obvious joke?"

"I was actually hoping not because it's rude to take people's body parts without permission even when it is really really funny because it's also sort of gross. Fluttershy told me about you stealing her nose and yes, I can picture that in my head and I bet it was the funniest thing ever, but you still shouldn't have done it because it's more funny-mean than funny-fun unless she was okay with you doing that. I mean, ponies are kind of attached to our noses."

There was a quick drumbeat riff and a cymbal crash. "Oh, come on, Discord," Pinkie said, rolling her eyes. "I don't actually need a sound effect for my jokes!"

"For a joke as terrible as that one, you needed all the help you could get," Discord said. "But now I fear I must have an incredibly dull conversation with Sparky here about her tedious research topics, so why don't you go stop Berry from getting into the good stuff this early in the evening? The Apples seem to have actually let their manes down to do some swimming, which is marvelous but it does mean no one's guarding the cider."

"Oh, yeah, I guess I better do that! Twilight, I'll see you around! Try the snacks, they're great!" With this, Pinkie swam off at improbable speed.

"My tedious research topics that you more or less begged me to look into?" Twilight said.

"Well, if I'd implied they were interesting, Pinkie might not have chosen to leave so easily. She's going to come back and demand you have some fun, you know. To be honest, this isn't a good time for this discussion."

"You seemed to think it was a pretty high priority."

"It is." Discord snapped his talon. Suddenly they were in the library, Twilight was dry, and the moon was much higher in the sky. Discord was dripping all over the floor, though.

Twilight restrained her first impulse, which was to complain about Discord being soaking wet all over her library, and went to the window instead. From the position of the moon and stars, it was very, very late at night. "What did you just do?"

"I jumped us to a more appropriate time. Don't worry, I'll take us back when we're done. But I don't like to mix partying with unpleasantness, so I've taken us to the day before yesterday... or rather, the night before yesternight."

"Wait, so am I here already?"

"Asleep in bed, yes. You're not going to wake up and see yourself. I've stopped time again." He sat down on one of the chairs, which suddenly transformed from being a tiny wooden chair to a large plush armchair. "Give it to me straight, doctor, will I ever play the violin again?"

Twilight sighed. "You want the good news or the bad news first?"

Discord considered. "Good news. I am definitely a proponent of eating dessert first."

"Mostly everyone seems to have forgotten you."

Discord's mismatched eyes widened ludicrously. "That's good news?"

"It is when you don't want the ponies who remember you to kill you," Twilight said. "Right now, general public opinion of you is that you are annoying but mostly harmless. The Preakers down in Baltimare were calling for your head for turning Pimlico into a beach, but after Fluttershy got you to shrink it down to an inner sand track paralleling the main track, they're actually pretty grateful. Apparently you're right, running on sand is good leg training." Earth ponies held an annual race in Baltimare every spring, and the racers, called Preakers, would train on the track year round. Discord had originally turned the track into a sandy beach on the bay, never mind that the track was actually nowhere near the bay, claiming that it would be helpful on the grounds that ponies who trained on sand would be much stronger and faster on packed dirt than ponies who trained on packed dirt. This had not endeared him any to the Preakers, but once he'd turned it back into their race track and gifted them an inner sand track in place of his beach, now his popularity in Baltimare was surprisingly high. Possibly because he visited them rarely. "Ponyville parents still believe they should advise their children not to play with you or take candy from you, but stunts like the cheese fest last week or I guess like your swimming pool today have gone a long way to gaining you forgiveness for your chaos outbreak last year. Cloudsdale did not appreciate the tornado, and no one but foals are happy about the snowstorm that closed the schools last week, but apparently pegasus foals really enjoy training on the occasional cotton candy clouds you toss up, and their parents appreciate that, at least."

Discord smirked. "Why, it sounds as if I'm becoming quite popular."

"I wouldn't go that far. In Canterlot they're still highly suspicious of you, and your frequent meetings zxwith Princess Luna are both helpful and harmful; most ponies think better of you for being on good terms with at least one of our princesses, but some are concerned you're corrupting her back into being Nightmare Moon."

"We're actually just pointing and laughing at really absurd dreams ponies have."

Twilight found that difficult to believe. Well, not that Discord would point and laugh at absurd dreams, but that Luna would join in. "However, everypony's seen Celestia tolerate you, and that does help. There are some bizarre rumors that you and the Princess have a thing, which is just weird."

"A thing, Twilight?"

"You know. A thing thing. Like a romantic thing?"

"Ohoho. Bizarre indeed! Hmm." Discord stroked his beard. "I wonder if that could be because of the wedding invitations I sent?"

If Twilight had been drinking anything she would have spluttered. "Wedding invitations?"

"Yes, the ones inviting everypony to my wedding to Celestia! That could possibly be the basis of the rumors, do you think?"

This had to be a joke. "When was that?"

"Oh, twelve hundred years ago? Who can keep track?"

A horrible suspicion was poking at Twilight's head. "You didn't... you and the Princess aren't... really married, are you?"

Discord made an exaggerated expression of distaste. "Sparky. Didn't you ever notice that commitment is a term we use for locking up the crazy ponies in the happy house? Do you seriously believe I'd ever marry anyone?" He folded his forelimbs behind his back, clasping his paw in his talon with an expression of innocence as exaggerated as the expression of distaste had been. "My advisors were pressuring me to legitimize my reign with a political marriage. Why, I had to send out those invitations or they'd have pestered me endlessly. Fortunately, the wedding was canceled on account of a sudden oobleck storm."

This was a setup, but Twilight had to ask, "What's oobleck?"

"You mean you don't know what oobleck is?" Discord asked her, eyes wide.

"No, I don't know—"

Abruptly a large quantity of sticky green slime fell out of nowhere and poured all over Twilight. Discord howled with laughter. "That's oobleck!"

Twilight scowled, wishing she had the ability to fire bolts of destructive magic from her eyes, and also that the bolts of destructive magic she really did have the ability to fire from her horn were likely to do anything whatsoever to Discord. "Are you done being completely foalish now?" She couldn't pull her hooves free of the sticky gunk. Great.

"Fine, fine. Be a spoilsport." He snapped his talon and made the oobleck vanish. "So who else loves me?"

"That's pretty much what I've got for right now. It doesn't appear, from any modern references, that anypony who's come to know you since you first broke out of the stone wants you dead."

"Delightful."

"That doesn't mean it can't happen. Everypony knows you're impossible to harm without the Elements. If somepony in Ponyville did want you dead for something awful you did the day you broke free, they'd most likely assume it to be impossible, and not talk about it or pursue it. If they then found out you were powerless..."

"Then I'd still be three times their size and significantly stronger." He considered. "But ugh, fitting into rooms if I didn't have my powers to reshape perspective would not be fun. Maybe I should consider being a pony?"

"Well, there'd be pros and cons," Twilight said. "No one would recognize you, but you would have no experience at all with the true body of a pony... shapeshifting spells only go so far. Should I be assuming that this is something you think might happen to you slowly over time, or all of a sudden? And if it happens suddenly do you expect advance warning?"

He sighed. "I'm actually hoping it doesn't happen at all. This is just a contingency, Twilight. But it sounds like it might be workable, if worst comes to worst. If no one hates me all that much—"

"I didn't say that. Remember I said good news and bad news?"

Discord sank back into his chair. "Oh. Right." He took a deep breath. "All right then, what's the bad news?"

"Well, the good news is that the bad news isn't all that bad. I searched ancient texts looking for references to any long-lived creatures or wholly supernatural creatures that might be holding a grudge against you. First one I found was a reference to a dragon named, uh, Horsefeathers."

Discord burst out laughing. "Good old Horsefeathers! I remember that guy. What'd he do, swear eternal vengeance on me?"

"Yes, actually." She blinked at Discord. "Why is a dragon named Horsefeathers?"

"Oh, it wasn't. It was something fancy-schmancy like Smeathor or Alguin or something like that. Horsefeathers was what everyone started calling him after I turned his wings into pegasus wings."

"...Why?"

"Well, isn't it obvious? Really, Twilight. Horsefeathers because his wings are covered with feathers like a pegasus! Did I really need—"

"No, why did you turn his wings into pegasus wings?"

"See, it was all part of an important educational initiative I was promoting in dragon lands, called 'If It's Powerful Enough To Turn You Into A Fish, For The Sake Of All You Hold Holy Don't Start Insulting It For Being a Chimera.'"

"You gave him pegasus wings because he insulted you."

"It was for the honor of all chimeras everywhere. He was just a bigot."

"You got mad at a dragon for insulting your looks so you gave him pegasus wings. Can a dragon even fly with those?"

"With a little magical assistance, certainly. And I didn't get mad at him for insulting my looks. If you must know, the thing that irritated me was that he wasn't taking me seriously. I mean, it's perfectly all right to look at me and shriek, 'Help! A monster!' and throw things at me, but to stare a god in the face and insult him for having an unusual appearance? It really takes some arrogance to pull that one off. He honestly thought that expressing his opinion was more important than not irritating the omnipotent being." Discord grinned. "Good old Horsefeathers. I'd forgotten about him. Is he even still alive?"

"Fifty years ago a dragon called Horsefeathers published a book about the magical weaponry of Equestria and the dragon lands, so... quite possibly. Who else would have a name like that?"

"Interesting. Probably not a serious threat, though. Any others?"

"Another dragon, Etain Basilica, is reported as wanting to personally turn you into stone. Legend has it she helped the Princesses in their quest to find the Elements of Harmony."

"Etain Basilica was the creator of the basilisks. Rather powerful mage, that one. But no sense of humor."

"What did you do to her?"

"Oh, nothing much." He stood up, and spoke in a dragon-accented variation of the Canterlot Royal voice. "WE ARE ETAIN BASILICA, DRAGON OF THE WEST, ANCIENT OF DAYS! LOOK UPON OUR WORKS, YE MIGHTY, AND DESPAIR! Hey, did someone just change the color of my scales and ruff so I look like I'm wearing pony clown makeup and a poofy red wig? INFIDEL! YOU MAKE ETAIN BASILICA LOOK LIKE AN EVEN BIGGER IDIOT THAN THE GREAT AND POWERFUL TRIXIE THAT I DON'T EVEN KNOW ABOUT YET BECAUSE THIS WAS ELEVEN HUNDRED YEARS AGO! I SHALL DESTROY YOU! Eeeek! Mice! Mice living in my ruff!"

"You made the inventor of the basilisk look like a clown and put mice in her ruff?"

"I was heroically protecting Equestria from the mad dragon's evil plans for world domination."

"With clown makeup?"

"There are two ways to intimidate your enemies, Twilight. Demonstrate your ability to do something awful to them by doing something awful to them, or to someone else so you show off your capability. Or do something that makes them look like a fool, while at the same time demonstrating that you could have done an awful thing, if you hadn't mercifully decided to make fun of them instead of replacing their heart with a baked potato." He stroked his beard. "What was that recipe again? Oh, right, basilisk paprikash. Delicious. Probably not safe for ponies to eat, but dragons do love meat."

"Basilisk paprikash?"

"For some reason it was the cooking her little creations in a delicious spicy stew and serving them to her as a peace offering to apologize for the clown makeup that really set her off. She'd made pets of those things." He shuddered. "Nasty creatures. And I thought so before I spent centuries being turned to stone."

"You made her a stew of her pets and made her eat it?"

"I didn't make her eat it. She tucked right in! And why do you keep repeating my stories back to me? I can't stand repetition."

"Is that why she swore to destroy you?"

"No, that's why she threw everything in her magical arsenal at me then and there. I think the swearing to find a way to destroy me happened after I turned her into rubber and dropped her from the stratosphere. I think she was bouncing across the landscape for days." He chuckled. "The rubberization wore off after the bouncing stopped, of course, I don't permanently transform intelligent creatures into anything that can't move its own body parts. Is she still alive?"

"Rumors suggest... maybe?"

Discord sighed. "Well, that would be less than pleasant, but she's two thousand years old. Even for a dragon with a lot of magical experience, that's getting on in years. I'm sure if someone came up to her and said 'Hey, did you know Discord's living in Ponyville?' she'd probably respond with 'WHAT'S THAT SONNY? PULL THIS CORD FOR SOME VAUDEVILLE? I LIKED THE SHOWS IN THE OLD DAYS WHEN WE MADE PONIES DANCE BEFORE WE ATE THEM! THESE MODERN PERFORMANCES ARE JUST AWFUL!'"

"Did dragons really do that?"

"Did dragons really kidnap ponies to be their slaves, demand entertainment from them, and then eat the ones who weren't sufficiently entertaining or obedient? Yes, they did. Until Celestia sat them at high noon for three weeks. And I bounced Etain Basilica off the landscape. Oh, and who else, that's right, Borgorath! What a war monger he was. Had the oddest phobia of drowning. I imagine he must have gotten over that eventually after I turned him into a sea serpent." Discord smiled with way too many teeth. "For some reason they respected the borders of Equestria after that, and stopped taking slaves."

"I haven't seen any references to Borgorath."

"You wouldn't. He got eaten by sharks about two centuries after I made him a sea serpent."

"Well, those are the two major ones I've found who appear to possibly still be alive. Most of everything else I've found is just rumor or legend or obvious tall tales, like the pony with all its organs on the outside of its body."

Discord went very still. "The what?"

"It's a legend. There's supposed to be a necromancer called the Horrorse, with all his organs on the outside of his body, and either he steals children to feed them to you, or he steals children to feed them to Nightmare Moon, and in one version of the legend he says he was a Chaos worshipper who was so evil you banished him to Tartarus, or possibly to the realm of the spirits, and now he walks the world in eternal pain and devours the souls of living ponies and he cannot rest until he destroys the god he once worshipped, which apparently was you. Kids tell each other the Nightmare Moon version of the story on Nightmare Night, but the older books all have the version where it involved you. The legend that he was a Chaos worshipper actually only appears in fiction, but it appears in two different fictions by two different authors, so unless they were plagiarizing each other they were probably both drawing from the same oral myth of the time period." Twilight looked up from her scroll, observing Discord's rigid posture, his eyes staring into nothing, for the first time. "Discord? Are you all right?"

"Why is that legend an obvious tall tale, Twilight?" Discord asked, not looking at her. "A lot of myths and legends revolve around things that really happened. How do you know about this one?"

"I don't know for certain, but it's illogical and ridiculous and obviously just intended to be creepy. I mean, a pony with all his organs on the outside? How could he live? And if he worshipped you why would you have killed him or sent him to Tartarus? Plus these stories were written as if they were contemporary, but six hundred years apart. How could anypony but an alicorn live that long?"

"It's just a legend," Discord said, but he was breathing slightly harder and his voice was slightly higher pitched. "As you say. Just a creepy story to frighten foals on Nightmare Night. Nothing else."

Twilight's eyes narrowed. "Discord, you're not acting like it's just a legend."

"It has to be. I... I killed them all. I... the same day Silver Eyes asked me to. I sent them into nothingness. None of them could have possibly come back."

"Discord, are you saying the Horrorse is real?"

"Was real," Discord said distantly. "Until Silver Eyes asked me to release them."

"Who was Silver Eyes?"

For the first time in several minutes Discord focused on Twilight. "Your ancestor."

"Me?"

"No, the ancestor of the other Twilight Sparkle in this room." He sighed. "She had her own daughter after I was already locked in stone, so I never met the child you descend from. Silver Eyes was... a story for a different time. So! Anything else?"

"Is this thing actually something we need to worry about, Discord?"

"No. Probably not. I mean, there isn't any way. I destroyed them all. Only another god could have brought one back, and..." He trailed off.

"And what?"

"And nothing! There's no reason to believe anypony would have interfered with Equestria while I was... restrained from involving myself here. No reason at all. None."

"Discord..."

"It's just a story, Twilight. When I kill things, they stay dead."

"You've said you don't kill ponies."

"I don't kill ponies for fun, because killing things isn't any fun. What's less chaotic than death? Only living things can get up and move around and do things."

"Actually, death is the ultimate chaos. Entropy is the destruction of information," Twilight said, "and an increase in disorder. When the order that allows life to exist is disrupted, that's when death happens, so isn't death inherently chaotic?"

"You're confusing chaos with entropy, my dear."

"They're synonyms."

"So says the little unicorn to the god of chaos. Trust me, I think I know what I am talking about."

"But entropy is a decrease in order! And chaos—"

"Is not a decrease in anything. Order is a decrease in chaos. Entropy results in stasis. All things come to equilibrium. You know, the moon is very peaceful. Very harmonious. No pesky life forms to interrupt the cool perfection of the moon, not now that Luna's back down here anyway. Everything on the moon is a rock. Very orderly." Discord was pacing. "Everypony makes this mistake and I'm tired of it. Chaos comes first. Chaos is plenipotentiality. No rules, nothing's stable, but the possibilities are endless. Then order imposes rules, and lines, and laws, and well I suppose some of them are all right, like gravity occasionally, but why does it have to always be on? What's wrong with a little variety? But chaos is potential. Order is realized, expended potential. Entropy... is nothing. It's decay." He leaned down into her face. "Entropy is a decrease in energy! Not order! It takes energy to maintain order, but not nearly as much as it takes to maintain chaos. Everything comes from chaos!"

"So... it takes energy to maintain order, so a decrease in energy causes a decrease in order, thus, chaos. How is that not how it works?"

"Argh!" The draconequus yanked at his horns in frustration. "It doesn't work like that because it doesn't work like that. There are three states. Chaos, order, and entropy. Look here." He snapped his finger and there were buckets of paint all over the floor of the library. He picked one up and swung it at a rack of books. "Whee!"

"Discord! Stop it! You—you're creating a temporal paradox and you're RUINING THE BOOKS!"

"Glad to see you've got your priorities straight," Discord said. "But I'm not doing either, because reasons. Wait and watch!" He sploshed another can of paint onto the floor. "Chaos! All the colors, in potential. They can be anything! There are no rules constraining them, no reason you can't have green and blue and chartreuse all mixed together in giant blobs. Every possibility is here!"

He then handed Twilight a glowing paintbrush. "Okay, avatar of order, strut your stuff."

"What?"

"Make something out of the paint. You don't like giant blobs of paint all over the floor and the books, do you?"

Twilight discovered that the paintbrush was magic – when she channeled just a tiny amount of her own magic through it to activate it, she could point it at the paint and make the paint take the form of any picture she could visualize. She couldn't get rid of the paint, but she could at least make it look like something. She painted Spike and Princess Luna, since the colors Discord had tossed on the floor were various shades of green, purple and blue.

"There we go. That's order. First we had beautiful chaos that could possibly be anything whatsoever. Then we have orderly paintings, which are paintings. They'll never not be paintings. You can't take that paint back and make something else with it; order has structured the paint and now it will never be anything other than that painting."

He snapped his talon. The paint started to crack and peel. "Until it becomes nothing."

A wind blew in the library. The paint faded, and the wind got at the cracks, pulling peeling sections off, until in a few minutes there was nothing but dust. "And that's entropy. The disorder that follows the energy running out isn't chaos. Chaos can be anything. Entropy... can only be nothing." He sat back down in his chair. "And that is why I don't kill ponies unless they really, really, really need to die."

"And how do you define ponies really needing to die?"

"Murdering your daughter to sacrifice her to a god of chaos counts. Especially if said god of chaos emphatically does not want ponies to be sacrificed, to him or to any other god."

Twilight had to acknowledge that if there was ever any good reason to kill a pony, that sounded like it. She sighed. "I still think you're using those terms wrong."

"I still think that if mere mortals get into a dispute with the spirit of chaos over what the terms chaos and entropy mean, only an idiot agrees with the mortals."

"Well, I guess you have a point." Something he said clicked. "Wait, did the Horrorse sacrifice his daughter to you? Is that why you killed him?"

Discord looked at Twilight with eyes that were suddenly very cold and hard. "Yes and no," he said, and there was for once no joking in his tone. "There were six, and they sacrificed seven. Silver Eyes was the only unicorn out of the foals they killed, the daughter of two of the cultists. And I didn't kill them... then. I'd planned to give them eternal life, actually, but Silver Eyes asked me to release them."

"Wait, you just said Silver Eyes... didn't you just say they sacrificed her?"

"They did. She got better." He closed his eyes. "Chaos opposes entropy as much as it does order. It's the natural way of things for ponies to die and stay dead, but I really didn't think that was fair. She was just a filly. There was so much chaos left for her to create! So many pranks and messy rooms and broken hearts and shattered paradigms she had yet to produce in her lifetime, so much candy to eat and broccoli to refuse and broken curfews and stolen road signs and, given her level of power, absurd magical mishaps. So I fixed it. And her six friends, but they weren't unicorns. They just went off and lived their earth pony and pegasus lives. Silver Eyes became a mage, so she... lived a long time."

"I didn't know you could bring the dead to life," Twilight said, feeling slightly cold. She knew Discord was powerful... but that powerful?

"I can do lots of things, Twilight. Most of the things I don't do, it's because I choose not to, not because I can't. However, for the record, I cannot make a rock so heavy I can't lift it. Believe me, I've tried."

"So... if you saved the children who was sacrificed... why would you have wanted to give the cultists eternal life? I don't understand."

Discord smiled. It was perhaps the most terrifying smile she had ever seen on his face. "What was that description you gave of the Horrorse again, Sparky?"

"He's a necromancer with... his organs on the outside..." It clicked finally. "Oh Celestia."

"Celestia had nothing to do with it, she begged me to just let them die. But she wasn't the one they tortured to death. Silver Eyes was. So when she asked me for mercy for them... I dispersed them into nothingness. So you see they cannot possibly still be around looking for me. I disintegrated them. And the only magic that was keeping them alive after I inverted them was mine, anyway."

"You're evil," she whispered, thinking of ponies with their skin turned inside out and all their organs on the outside of their bodies, in perpetual agony, unable to die. Yes, a pony who could sacrifice a foal to a Chaos God deserved death, probably. At least, Twilight would have understood executing them. But nopony deserved that.

"Sometimes, Twilight. Sometimes I am, yes." For the first time, ever, he looked to her old and exhausted, a creature worn down by his own past.

And then he took a deep breath and looked back up at her, face animated and mismatched eyes wide and cheery again. "So! Is that all of them? The entire We Hate Discord Forever club roster, as far as you know?"

"Not exactly. The nation of Sibearia has been rattling sabers, threatening Princess Celestia that since she released you, they may release Bearba Yaga."

"Oh, do the bears really think I'm gonna mess with them worse than she would? Have they forgotten my treaty with Koschei so soon?"

"You actually made a treaty with Koschei the Deathless?"

"I was, technically, considered the ruler of Equestria for nearly a thousand years."

"Yeah, but I have a hard time imagining you doing something as orderly as signing a treaty."

"Well, it wasn't so much a treaty as we got drunk together and agreed not to mess with each other's territory. Much." Discord shook his head. "Nopony has ever drunk me under the table before. I know he's deathless, but sun and sky, so am I and I've never seen any entity hold their liquor like that. Pretty sure we might have agreed to a whole lot of other things, too, but honestly neither of us remembered any of them, which is probably just was well because neither of us really wanted to know why he was sleeping on top of a flagpole with my underwear on his head."

Twilight reflexively rejected that image on the grounds that Discord didn't wear underwear and therefore it was just a joke and therefore she didn't have to break out the brain bleach. "Well, Koschei was deposed a hundred years ago by the Communursist Revolution, so they probably don't think you consider yourself bound by the treaty anymore."

"They deposed him? Good for them! Did they find his heart or something?"

"I don’t know very much about the bear nations. I know there used to be three of them, Sibearia, Bearussia and Bearalus, but now they're the Ursoviet Union. However, it's specifically Sibearia where Bearba Yaga is supposedly imprisoned under the ice, and they've threatened to release her to maintain the balance of power."

"That would be hilarious. Firstly because only in the mind of bears would Bearba Yaga ever be a match for me on her best day – I mean, ok, she's more powerful than an alicorn but only because she's a lot meaner – and secondly because she would cause so much wonderful, beautiful chaos in the Ursoviet Union that I'm half tempted to go mess with them just so they do release her, except then Celestia will whine at me and who needs that. And you forgot the Urskraine, but don't worry, everyone else does too."

"So that's probably not going to happen, then?"

"It's not an issue. As long as I have my powers, Bearba Yaga's no match for me, and if I didn't, Sibearia would be fools to release her. And since bears can't talk in Equestria, it hardly seems likely that they'd send a team of assassins or something."

"Do you know why that is?"

"Why they might feel like they need the power of speech before they undertake a dangerous mission?"

"No, why bears are talking creatures in the rest of the world but they can't talk when they get to the borders of Equestria. I was talking with Harry the Bear – he makes paw gestures, Fluttershy says it's called sign language and she was translating – and he said he comes from Bearussia originally, and when he came to Equestria he lost the ability to talk, but he wanted to be here anyway because this is the home of the sun. I always thought it was because of different races, like the pony races; Equestria has the brown bears, most of the Ursoviet Union is black bears and polar bears so I thought possibly they talk and brown bears don't. But Harry's a brown bear. And what about Ursas?"

"Ursas can't talk because they are magical monsters, not fully sentient creatures. They're not actually related to bears, they just look that way. Rather like windigos were not actually related to ponies."

"Oh, that makes sense... but then why can't bears talk in Equestria?"

"Because bears never shut up otherwise."

Twilight blinked. "Discord... did you do something?"

He whistled, looking at the ceiling.

"Discord. Are you responsible for taking speech away from talking creatures? Do you know how awful that is?"

"No, I only lost the power of speech for years and years because I was a stone statue, obviously I can't imagine how horrible it must be to be able to walk around and eat and stretch and see the sights but not be able to talk except with your paws, that you can actually move around because you aren't made out of stone. Can't comprehend at all."

"Why did you deprive bears of the ability to talk in Equestria?"

"Because they'd have invaded otherwise. Bears are as social as ponies, and some of them have as much magic as any unicorn, but they're bigger, stronger and more carnivorous. Dragons can't get along with each other well enough to invade anyone usually and griffins have less magic than ponies, so when the griffins go to war with Equestria it's just hilarious because they're totally outclassed. They think, ooh, we're predators, we can defeat these little herbivores no problem, and then they get their tailfeathers kicked, and then two generations later they forget and start the whole thing over again. But bears have sufficient numbers and magical strength and ability to, bleah, harmonize with each other that they can give ponies a run for their money, and they're omnivores so they're capable of savagery that puts anything a pony can muster to shame. Oh, and they don't care about Celestia's greatest weapon because they're used to going without sunlight for months at a time... and without nightfall for just as long. Anywhere else in the world, she can threaten to deny them the sun or keep it shining on them long enough to destroy them... the bears just laughed at her when she tried."

"Why do they go without the night for months at a time? I know they hibernate so I figured that's how they go without sun... but even if you're awake at night, it's still night."

"I could tell you magic... but you're actually capable of comprehending the real explanation, except that I don't feel like teaching you basic astrophysics right now, so remind me one of these days. Or ask Celestia. The point is, the bears were dangerous. I was perfectly happy to let any other creature invade Equestria so I could watch my little ponies kick some serious backside, because watching ponies fight is wonderfully entertaining. But if I'd let the bears invade Equestria they could possibly have won. So..." He shrugged. "Hard to organize an army when you can't talk, and no one wants to take territory they can't live in without losing speech. I might have taken the restriction off in a century or two except somepony decided it was a good idea to turn me into a rock, and I don't trust the Communursists enough to take it down now." Discord stood up. "How about now, is that everyone?"

"There's only one other thing. I talked to Princess Cadence, because even though she wasn't around when you were controlling Equestria and she's not too much older than me, she's learned a lot of Equestrian history. She didn't know anything from Equestrian history, but she did say that the Changelings worship a Spirit of Love, who supposedly created them, and they believe you drove their goddess away from this world and that's why they have to steal love to feed instead of just feeling it. You were a statue at the time, so it didn't come up much, but she was trying to talk to them, to find out what they believe and what drives them, while she was a prisoner, and they told her that story. If they really do believe you drove their goddess away, they might have a grudge against you."

"I'm sorry, my mind goes blank anytime anyone mentions the Spirit of Sappiness. Can you actually tell me what the point you were making was?"

Twilight sighed heavily. "Changelings have a legend that you drove their goddess away from this world, and so they might have a grudge against you."

"Now are we done?"

"Yes, that's everything my research was able to identify. As I said, it's not a huge number of potential enemies given how much trouble you've caused over the centuries, since a lot of beings who might have hated you from your past days probably died while you were still in stone. But it's enough that you probably need to be careful."

He nodded. "Thank you, Twilight Sparkle, you've been an enormous help." He snapped his talon.

And Twilight suddenly found herself in midair above the deep end of the swimming pool.

"No, no, NO!—" she shrieked as she fell, managing only to twist her body enough that when she plunged into the pool, it was mostly sort of face first and not a belly flop. She struggled frantically in the water for what felt like a very long time before finally managing to break the surface. Discord was floating in the air where he'd popped her back into reality, laughing uproariously.

Twilight shook the water out of her eyes as best she could, and glared upward. "DISCORD!"

Author's Note

I live in Baltimore, where they ruin my whole weekend every May by holding the Preakness at Pimlico, in North Baltimore near where I live. Since the Preakness is a horse race, I had to add it and Pimlico in.

Koschei the Deathless is a Russian legend of a tyrant mage who couldn't die because he hid his heart away. Given that Cerberus and other creatures have the same name in the MLP world as they do here, I didn't feel I needed to give him a name that was a pun. Bearba Yaga, however, totally wrote itself.

Oobleck comes from Dr. Seuss' "Bartholomew Cubbins and the Oobleck", but the scene in which Discord introduces Twilight to it is parodying something else. 10 points to whoever gets it.

The business about chaos not being entropy is something I picked up from White Wolf games twenty years ago and I still think it applies. The disorder of plenipotentiality is not the same as the disorder of nullipotentiality. Scientifically, chaos and entropy might be considered the same thing, but entropy is the destruction of information; chaos contains disorganized information, which with a sufficient input of energy could become organized and useful. At least as Discord uses the terms, chaos is not synonymous with entropy... and whether you consider him to be correct or not, Discord is faithful to his *own* interpretation of chaos.

The story of Silver Eyes will eventually be told. And possibly also the Spirit of Love and the changelings. I hadn't originally intended to tell the story of Etain Basilica, but the image of Discord dropping a rubber dragon from the stratosphere while she's howling curses at him is so hilariously Bugs Bunny I may just have to.

Games Without Frontiers

Author's Note

Remember this one?

After so long, I feel the need to add a reminder (possibly for my own sake as much as anyone else's): while most of what I've written this year falls into the "Last Draconequus" continuity, this is a completely separate continuity. The "Next of Kin to Chaos" series is based on the premise that Discord is Q, and everything from Return of Harmony up to Twilight's alicornization is taking place between the Star Trek Next Generation episodes "Q Who" and "Deja Q". (Timelines are a bit uncooperative here so I invoke timey-wimey stuff.) Also, since I started writing this with Applejack's ridiculous phonetic accent, I feel the need to continue to do so for consistency's sake, though maybe I'll go revise the whole thing to take the phonetic accent out.

Games Without Frontiers

Fluttershy didn't see Discord in the morning. She knew he'd planned to hold his pool party until dawn, and he was... not bad at telling time, precisely, but very bad at caring about time, so it was entirely possible he was still there. It took a few hours to finish her rounds of feeding the animals and treating the sick and injured ones, though, and in all that time, she still didn't see him.

This wasn't necessarily good. Discord disappearing for most of the day usually meant he was doing something that pushed the boundaries of what he could get away with. Last week it had been jellybean snow in Fillydelphia – not snow that tasted like jellybeans, but jellybeans that drifted to the ground as lightly and delicately as snowflakes would have, so nopony had been injured, but only because the city's mayor had been smart enough after the jellybeans had stopped falling to declare that only trained snow-clearing earth ponies should be out on the roads and that pegasi and unicorns with levitation spells should stay in the air until the roads were clear, because somepony could easily slip on jellybeans.

When she'd lectured Discord about that, he'd been genuinely embarrassed; he'd made the jellybeans fall slowly and lightly and had thought that was all he needed to do to prevent injury. For a being as smart as he was, sometimes Discord was remarkably dumb. She worried about him. If he did something that caused any serious damage to anypony, Princess Celestia would punish him, Fluttershy feared. She wasn't actually sure what the Princess would do, given that Fluttershy herself was an essential component of Equestria's best weapon against Discord and she wasn't going to use her Element on him, but she knew the Princess had something.

After Discord had tricked Twilight into living through the Tale of the Terrible Doctor Twilight, Princess Celestia had come to Fluttershy's to talk to him, and she'd looked angry. Fluttershy had begged the Princess not to order her to use her Element against him; she'd been furious with Discord herself, but it had been self-defense, and he'd been genuinely frightened when Twilight had threatened him with the reforming spell. Given what Discord was capable of, given that she'd seen him be truly afraid, Fluttershy's anger had been tempered with understanding, and she'd been terrified that the Princess would order her to use her Element to turn him to stone and she would have to refuse her sovereign, with all the terrifying possibilities that that implied. Princess Celestia had smiled at her with that gentle, wise smile that made nearly every Equestrian look at her as a loving mother figure, and reassured her that she would never ask Fluttershy to choose between her friend and her Princess, and that she had means of dealing with Discord beyond the Elements. That had actually been reassuring, until it had sunk in that that meant Princess Celestia could, possibly, do something awful to him to punish him and Fluttershy couldn't prevent it.

So she spent the day worrying, wondering if she should go over Twilight's to have Twilight scry for him just to check up on him, but if he was actually up to something mischievous she didn't want to listen to Twilight telling her how terrible he was and how much he deserved to be a statue again, but then maybe she needed to know about it if he was doing something naughty so she could do damage control, and also give him a good talking-to, but what if he wasn't doing anything of the sort? He might be out annoying spiders again, or something. For some reason Discord had a thing about spiders. He wasn't afraid of them, but he'd declared them to be his sworn nemeses because spiders tie things down in webs of order, or something like that. It had sounded a lot like a joke, but he had, in fact, gone out of his way to annoy spiders on multiple occasions, so maybe there was some truth to the silliness.

Fluttershy made a trek into the Everfree Forest to gather supplies, go see Zecora to restock on some herbs, and check for any injured animals. It was entirely uneventful, as were most of her trips into the Everfree, and she'd had Grayscale the snake and Matilda the wild turkey along as bodyguards and assistants of a sort... not that a snake and a wild turkey could hold off many of the threats in the Everfree, but Grayscale was venomous and Matilda had a much better sense for when there might be something big and threatening in the area than Fluttershy did, so they'd been happy to accompany her. They were Everfree creatures themselves, not Fluttershy's pets, though Matilda came by the house frequently for handouts and she'd first met Grayscale when she'd treated his tail for an injury, so she considered them neighbors and friends. The fact that other ponies couldn't even figure out how she could converse with them, let alone persuade them to help her, had never particularly bothered Fluttershy.

Then there was noon meal for the animals who ate then, and collecting the eggs, and a trip out to the dairy farm to talk with Bessie about her issues with the ponies who milked her and sold the milk for her, and to check on her sore udder, and pick up milk, cheese and butter. Then there was a negotiation with a colony of rats living in an abandoned house that was suddenly no longer abandoned now that the previous owner's son had come back to Ponyville to renovate his mother's old place and sell it, and of course he wanted the rats gone and was even talking about hiring an exterminator, so Fluttershy had to convince them to move, and find a good place for them to move to. By mid-afternoon, she was feeling a bit tired out from all the trotting, and was looking forward to having a nice shower, eating her own lunch, and relaxing a while, at least until Discord showed up.

These plans were put on hold as soon as she got home and found a large draconequus sprawled out on the ground in front of her house, limbs and tail stretched out as if he was deliberately trying to take up the most possible space, looking up at the sun. "Discord! Don't you know you need to wear sunglasses to look directly at the sun? You'll hurt your eyes!" Fluttershy said, relieved to find him back and all right, although rather annoyed at the fact that she would have to fly over him to get to her own cottage door.

Discord started laughing hysterically, as if what she'd just said was the funniest thing ever, but when she asked him to share the joke, he just started laughing harder. Sighing, Fluttershy did fly over him, heading for her cottage door, only to find herself fluttering in the air on the side of him she'd started from again. She landed. "Discord! I am trying to go in the door; do you mind?"

"I do, actually," he said. "Stay outside with me a few minutes? I invited your friends over."

"You what? Oh, no! I haven't been home all day, I know I'm going to have to clean the place up..."

"No, you're not. I made Angel Bunny do it."

Fluttershy looked down at him skeptically. "Exactly how did you make Angel Bunny clean my house?"

"Simple. I turned him into a tall, coatless monkey with a flat muzzle and a mane and told him to use his new opposable thumbs to make your house spotless or I'd leave him that way. He thinks I don't know he used said opposable thumbs to open the door to my bedroom and pee all over everything, of course, but what he doesn't know is I've stored up a little raincloud in a box and the next time he goes out of his way to annoy me, well, let's say he'll get his present back in full measure." Discord was smirking. "That little monster relies entirely on being small and cute to get his way. Opinions of every other brony you hear from to the contrary, I'm quite certain that pony reactions to his new species would mostly consist of running away, or pointing and laughing, or pointing and running away. Or possibly pitchforks. And he knows it. So your house is positively sparkling now."

Fluttershy sighed. "Discord, you're not doing me a favor if you're mean to other creatures to get them to do me a favor, because then it hurts me that you were mean to them." She ignored the parts of his statement that made no sense; it was safest that way when dealing with Discord.

"Yes, but he peed in my room."

"Because you turned him into a weird monkey creature! You started it, Discord!"

"But now he's cleaned your entire house and learned an important lesson about pulling his own weight around here. You, my dear, are entirely too forgiving. That rabbit takes shameless advantage of your kindness."

"Some ponies say you do the same thing, but that doesn't mean I'd like it if they made you do something you didn't want to do by threatening you."

"I do take shameless advantage of your kindness," Discord said, closing his eyes. "Your friends are quite correct. But I am trying to learn how to be a proper friend, whereas that insufferable lapine thinks he already is one."

She sighed, again. "Did you turn him back yet?"

"Oh, absolutely. I also persuaded your chickens to clean up their own coop. Really those creatures are quite filthy, I don't know how you stand it."

Fluttershy was almost afraid to ask. "How did you get them to clean up their own coop, Discord?"

"Fingers!" he chortled. "Two plus a thumb on each wingtip. Though I'll have to undo it later, it would be a horror if that musician came by here, saw fingers on the chickens and started pestering me about hands. Again."

"Discord..."

"What? She's annoying."

"I'm not worried about Lyra, I'm worried about my chickens."

"Oh! They loved it, Flutters. Chickens are so industrious and detail-oriented. It just never occurred to them before to particularly care about... well, their own detritus. Once I made them see the value to you in cleaning up after themselves, they were more than willing. Why, the little red one was even fired up about the idea of baking you a loaf of bread using her new fingers, but she tried to recruit help from the other animals and sad to say, none of them would help her mill the wheat."

"I do have flour already..."

"Chickens are not very bright, Fluttershy."

She never knew if she was supposed to take his stories seriously or not. He probably really had given fingers to the chickens and told them to clean up their coop; Discord could apparently communicate fluently with any animal in Equestria, which sadly didn't translate to any more concern for their well-being or happiness than he'd had for ponies before she'd reformed him. She was trying to get him to care about other living creatures, but it was hard. As nearly as she could tell, Discord divided all living creatures into two categories: beings he had personal affection for, and toys for him to play with. And the category of beings he had personal affection for was much, much smaller than the category of toys, and had occasional unfortunate overlaps with that category.

Well. At least he had a category of beings that weren't toys, now. That was a vast improvement over how he used to be. "If everypony's coming over I'm going to have to make dinner..."

"Already taken care of. I made surprise rolls! I am also fairly certain Applejack's bringing stew because she doesn't trust my surprise rolls."

"Um, I'm not sure anyone would really want to eat a roll when they have no idea what's in it..."

"But that's the fun of it, Fluttershy! The unexpectedness! The mystery! Are you going to get savory mushrooms and carrots? Sweet cream? Mustard and olives? Sweet cream and olives? I promise you, not one single substance that ponies find inedible or generally unpleasant-tasting was used in the creation of my rolls." He didn't get up, but his neck was long enough that when he raised it off the ground and craned it in her direction, his face was at eye level with her. "Come on! Live a little!"

"Where were you today?"

He lost his grin. "Not causing chaos. And I don't want to talk about it."

"Were you doing something that would make ponies mad?" she asked sternly.

"What part of 'not causing chaos' did you not hear? I was trying to find some things, or confirm that they don't exist. And I still don't want to talk about it. So I invited your friends over to play tag!"

"To play tag? Isn't that kind of... well, silly? I mean, I'm sure it'll be fun, but it's a little foalish for Rarity or Applejack..."

"Ah, but you haven't heard about the wonderful prizes."

Fluttershy was liking this less and less. "You're giving my friends prizes?"

"Only if they actually tag me." Discord got to his feet, grinning. "Did Twilight ever tell you about our invigorating little game of 'try to hit the draconequus' a couple of weeks ago?"

"Twilight attacked you?" Fluttershy gasped.

"No, no, no. It was a game. I told her to try to hit me, and eventually, after draining nearly all her magic and engaging in the basest of trickery and deceit, she did." He grinned. "She pretended she was having a heart attack or something, and zapped me when my guard was down. It was the most hilarious thing. So I thought, why not get all of you in on the fun? It's true, Rarity was going to be a giant spoilsport because the idea of running around your yard trying to tag me is so uncouth, dear me, she might even get a tangle in her mane! So I offered her some truly unique fabrics if she manages to tag me, and now I'm certain she'll get into the spirit of it."

"I'm... I guess I'm not quite getting exactly what you're doing here. Doesn't tag usually mean there's one pony running around trying to catch the others?"

"Yes, but it would hardly be a challenge for me to chase you six down, after all, and as amusing as I might find it to watch you chase each other, you all positively refuse to compete with each other around me, as if I'm trying to use a friendly game to turn you all against each other again or something. So I reversed it."

Fluttershy nodded. That was actually something they'd all agreed on; Discord loved games and seemed to have an endless supply of new and interesting ones to suggest, but Twilight had suggested that Discord might try to use their natural competitive desires to drive a wedge into their friendships if they played against each other in his presence, unless it was something really sedate like a board game. Fluttershy didn't think Discord would consciously do a thing like that, not anymore, but she had to admit to herself, he wasn't called the Spirit of Disharmony for nothing; even when he was trying to be friendly and well-behaved, he couldn't seem to resist making some attempt to stir up trouble. "Okay, so instead of one pony tagging everypony else, it's we all try to tag you? What happens when we catch you?"

"What do you mean 'when'?" Discord laughed. "If one of you manages to tag me, you get a prize and the game ends, unless the losers want to go another round, but I honestly expect one round will take quite some time and probably wear you all out. Oh, here's Spike now!"

"That's Rainbow Dash, Discord."

"Silly me, always confusing the two of them."

Rainbow came in for an abrupt landing. "Fluttershy! Did this jerk have your permission to invite us all over to your house? ‘Cause if he didn't I can totally go tell the others that we should leave you alone if you wanna be left alone!"

"Um, no, Rainbow, it's fine. I, uh, I always like seeing my friends, even if I wasn't expecting you to come over today."

"But he didn't have permission?"

"Now, now, Rainbow Crash, you heard her. She likes seeing her friends. She's perfectly happy with me inviting you all over! Isn't that right, Flutters?" He was suddenly sitting next to her, his lion paw wrapped around her middle, squeezing her close in a sideways hug.

Fluttershy sighed. "I like seeing my friends, so this is a nice surprise," she said. "But if I was really tired or I'd had a bad day or something then I might not like to see all of them at the same time, and maybe I might have wanted to take a nap or something, so, um, please ask next time?"

Twilight trotted up to them. "Hi, Fluttershy, hi, Rainbow. Discord, what exactly were you thinking, inviting everypony to Fluttershy's house without even asking her first? You know she's shy."

"It's okay, Twilight--"

"It's not okay for him to take advantage of your kindness to just do whatever he wants."

"Dear me," Discord said, fake-sniffling. "And here I thought I was doing my dear friend a favor by inviting her friends over to see her! I even made dinner and cleaned her house for her!"

"Now this I gotta see," Rainbow Dash said skeptically.

Twilight's eyes narrowed. "What's the catch, Discord?"

"I believe the catch of the day is tuna," Discord said, and tossed a very large fish at Twilight, who grabbed it with her magic, startled. "Or perhaps swordfish?" He tossed another one.

"Discord, put those fish back where you found them right now," Fluttershy said sternly.

"But I found them on the back of a griffin fishing boat! Surely you don't want me to put them back there?"

"Put them back in the ocean. Or wherever they live."

"Fine, fine." Rolling his eyes (not literally), he snapped his talon, and the fish vanished.

"I don't believe it!" Rainbow Dash said, coming out of the house. "It really is clean!" She lunged at Discord and grabbed his beard, pulling him into her face. "You're a changeling, aren't you! You're impersonating the real Discord!"

Discord snickered. "Oh, how delightful! I'm finally the lesser of two evils!"

"He made Angel clean the house," Fluttershy said, and looked at Discord. "Which, um, wasn't very nice to Angel, even though I do understand wanting the house to be clean for my guests, and at least you did think of that."

"Oh my!" Rarity came into view. "Did I just hear that Discord was showing some consideration, and arranged for Fluttershy's house to be cleaned? I must say I am pleasantly impressed! I'd never have imagined him capable of thinking of such a thing."

"I'm right here," Discord said, sounding slightly irritated. "And what do you mean I'm not capable of thinking of such a thing? I'm capable of thinking of anything, Rarity; that's part of the definition of chaos, isn't it?"

"Well, darling, you may have a point, but one must agree that ‘chaos' and ‘cleanliness' are not concepts that normally go well together."

"Why does everypony find it so hard to comprehend that I might like to do something nice for Fluttershy from time to time?"

"'Cause of the part where the word ‘nice' is describing something you're doing," Rainbow said.

"Oh, you're so very harsh, Rainbow!" Discord stood, pressing his paws to his chest. "You've wounded me! I'm truly hurt! Rarity, may I borrow your fainting couch?"

"I don't believe I can stop you," Rarity said.

Discord snapped his talon, causing the fainting couch to appear behind him, whereupon he collapsed into it, his lion arm thrown over his eyes in a histrionic gesture. "Oh, cruel world, full of such barbs and slings of misfortune!"

"Discord, is there a reason you're pretendin' to faint on Rarity's couch, or are ya just being a big old drama llama again?" Applejack asked as she strolled up.

"Rainbow Dash doesn't believe I'm capable of doing something nice for Fluttershy!" Discord cried out dramatically. "My one, true, dear friend in all the universe, and Rainbow thinks I can't even clean her house for her!"

"Um, you had Angel do it, remember?"

"It's the thought that counts, though, isn't that what you ponies always say?" Discord sat up, apparently bored with his own dramatics. "So! Now that everypony's here, we're just about ready to begin!"

"So just so we're all on the same page," Twilight said. "You've invited everypony over to Fluttershy's house because you want us to play tag with you."

"After that marvelous game you and I played together, how could I possibly resist inviting all our friends to join the fun?" He was suddenly on his feet, holding a microphone. "Discord! Tell our contestants about the wonderful prizes we have for them today!"

A second version of him, with a pencil mustache and a business suit, spoke up from behind the group. "That's right, Discord, we have some amazing prizes for our contestants today," he said. "For Rarity, this wondrous mood responsive fabric!" A light shone on a plinth, on which a glass case stood, and inside the glass case was a pile of shimmering cloth. The Discord with the mustache reached his hand into the case and drew out some of the pieces of cloth. "The color changes in response to the pony's mood. Note the color of exasperation!" He tossed the cloth onto Rainbow Dash, where it changed to a dark grayish blue. "Timidity!" He dropped a piece on Fluttershy. She craned her head back to watch the fabric change to a light yellow. "Annoyance!" A bolt of cloth dropped on Twilight's head, turning dull red.

"It looks quite lovely," Rarity said, "but I must insist that you stop annoying my friends."

"But how else am I expected to demonstrate the properties of this fabric?" the original Discord, who was no longer holding his microphone, said.

"Maybe if you tried actually makin' ponies happy instead of annoyed, you could demonstrate the thing you wanted t' demonstrate without annoyin' anypony," Applejack said, snorting.

"Well, then your prize should make you happy, Applejack!" Discord held out a multicolored apple, which was almost the same colors as a zap apple, except that all of them looked yellower, somehow. "This beauty is a hybrid of a Golden Delicious and a Zap Apple. The hybrids aren't quite as zappy as a true zap apple, but they grow on ordinary Golden Delicious trees, without any special care required to give them that zap. What's more, the trees that come from these hybrids produce about a fourth of their crop as true zap apples... but they still require no more specialized care than a Golden Delicious would."

Applejack stared. "You gotta be kiddin' me."

"No joke," Discord said. "Manage to catch me and this beauty's all yours, with all the seeds inside it just longing to be planted in your orchard."

"There ain't no way you can make a zap apple grow on an ordinary apple tree!"

"Excuse me, did you just claim there's something I can't do? Discord, Lord of Chaos, master of impossibilities? I thought you liked making sense, Applejack. Really, shouldn't you know better?"

"And all we have to do to win prizes is tag you?" Rainbow Dash asked.

"Absolutely! Land any part of your body or any object propelled by magic on me, and you win! For you, Rainbow Dash, I have an astonishing prize." He was in the air above her, dangling down to look into her eyes upside down. "How would you like to meet the real Daring Do?"

Rainbow Dash stared at him. "But... isn't Daring Do a made up character?"

"Maybe she is and maybe she isn't, but either way it's no object to me. Wouldn't you like to find out?"

Rainbow looked over at Twilight. "Uh... Twilight, you're the bookworm! Is there any chance Daring Do's real?"

"I... never thought about it," Twilight admitted. "My mom worked with A. K. Yearling on the first few books in the series, so I'd have thought it would be entirely fictional, but... I mean, Discord does illusions a lot so I'd assume that no, she's not real..."

"It'd still be awesome to meet her, though," Rainbow said. "Even if she's not real. But wait, you read the books?" She glared at Discord.

He grinned. "Oh seriously Rainbow, they're written for the age level of the Cutie Mark Crusaders. Do you think I'd have any trouble reading them if I wanted to?" He turned toward Pinkie Pie. "For you, my dear, the prize is--" he dramatically pulled a black tarp off a large, unwieldy sculpture-like thing that hadn't been sitting on Fluttershy's lawn a minute ago "--a DRINKING FOUNTAIN!"

Unlike the sort of fountains sodas came out of, this was a sculpted fountain, a marble-lined pool with a statue of Pinkie Pie dancing, hooves thrown up in the air, in the center. On the top of the marble ring around the fountain there were multiple colored levers. Discord pulled the pink one, and chocolate milk shot out of the forehooves of the Pinkie statue, up into the air, to splash down into the center of the pool. "I was considering giving you a much more attractive statue in the center, but statues of myself give me the willies for some reason." He shuddered graphically, as if he'd turned to jello.

Pinkie glared at him. "And where is the whipped cream, mister?"

"Right here!" Discord pulled an orange lever, and one of the two Pinkie-statue hooves in the air began spraying whipped cream instead of chocolate milk. "Other levers produce cola, tomato cola, orange soda, grape soda, raspberry soda, boysenberry soda, mango pineapple cherry juice, chocolate apple juice, daffodil juice, cactus juice, tree juice, soy milk, coconut milk, peanut milk, goat milk, monkey milk, turkey milk, screwdrivers, hammers, apple cider, orange cider, garlic cider, maple syrup, chocolate syrup, banana syrup, coffee syrup, and snow syrup. Also purple honey, marshmallow fluff, cotton candy fluff and Celestia mane fluff." He demonstrated by rapidly flicking the various levers, causing different liquids to shoot out of the hooves and produce an incredibly bizarre smelling concoction in the pool.

Pinkie dove into the pool and came back up, smacking her lips with a weird expression on her face. "That's... definitely different! I think I'd rather just do one or two at a time most of the time though!"

"You can use as few or as many of the flavor varieties as you like, if you can tag me first," Discord said in his best carnival barker voice.

"Okay!" Pinkie leaped unexpectedly, wrapping her hooves around Discord's neck. "Tag!"

Discord pulled her free and put her down with an exasperated expression. "After the game actually starts, Pinkie."

"Okie dokie!"

"Um... isn't this essentially having us compete against each other though?" Fluttershy asked. "Shouldn't the prizes be one team prize, not individual prizes?"

Discord rolled his eyes. "There's nothing stopping you from using teamwork," he said. "If two of you tag me at the same time, you'd both win your prizes."

"Okay," Fluttershy said, "but I do still feel like maybe it's a bit too rough for me. So, um, I'll stay out of it." At Discord's crestfallen expression, she quickly added, "But I can be the referee!"

"Oh, must you?" The genuine expression had been replaced with an exaggerated pout of disappointment. "Are you sure, Flutters? And here I had such a wonderful prize lined up for you!"

"But you do nice things for me all the time because you're my friend." She hugged him, so he wouldn't think her objection was to him -- she just didn't see the point in even trying to compete in a physical contest against the fastest pegasus, strongest earth mare, most agile pony of any kind, most dextrous unicorn and most powerful unicorn she'd ever met. There was no way Fluttershy could possibly win such a competition unless one of her competing friends, or Discord himself, threw the contest for her, and that was a terrible way to win anything. "You even got my house cleaned for me, even though I do wish you'd been nicer to Angel when you did it. So I don't need any prizes from you, just your friendship." She rubbed her cheek against his side, above his goat leg. Discord facepalmed.

"Fluttershy, do you really mean for all of us to get stuck in sap like the Cutie Mark Crusaders? Because that has to be some of the gooiest, thickest sap I've ever heard."

She grinned up at him. "But it's true-ue," she said in a singsong voice, teasing him. "I like your gifts, but I'd like you just as well if you didn't give me anything. Because we're friends."

"Fine! You can be the referee! Just stop destroying my pancreas!" He made a one-handed gesture of pushing away or holding something off, similar to the two-handed one he'd been frozen in when they'd turned him back to stone, with his other hand flung over his eyes, his expression a perfect cariacture of a colt refusing his spinach, or maybe more accurately, refusing the presence of fillies on account of cooties. "Here lies Discord, spirit of Chaos. What Pinkie Pie's pastries couldn't do, Fluttershy accomplished with just her voice!"

Rainbow Dash, who wasn't about to turn down an opportunity to rib Discord, laughed. "Oh, yeah, you hate it sooo much! It's not like you ever covered Equestria in sugar yourself -- oh, wait, you did!"

Discord scowled at her. "You want to play this game and win prizes, or do you want to go back home and take yet another nap?"

"Bring it, oldster!"

He turned to Twilight. "Well, since we can't begin without revealing the prizes for all the contestants, let's move on! For you, Twilight, the prize is knowledge. Any three questions you want to ask, truthful and complete answers, to the limits of your comprehension."

Twilight's eyes narrowed. "What do you mean, to the limit of my comprehension?"

"Would you have any idea what I was talking about if I started comparing the pros and cons of electronic, ionic, or positronic intelligence? Or the effect of quantum uncertainty on the multiversal nature of the cosmos? Or heliocentric stellar dynamics for binary star systems where one of the partners is a blue-white giant?"

"Um," Twilight said. "I'm guessing that heliocentric stellar dynamics means the motion of stars around a sun, rather than motion around a planet as in a geocentric system like ours?"

Discord laughed. "Good guess, but no. There are things it would take you years to learn, Sparky, and there are things you'd never be able to comprehend however hard you try. Your prize includes the guarantee that the information I give to you will be something you can comprehend, for your three questions." He smirked at her. "This is a one-time offer. All rights reserved. Void in the Crystal Empire and Griffonia. Contents packed by weight, not by volume. Objects in mirror may be closer than they appear."

Twilight didn't even seem to notice the sudden spout of nonsense. Her eyes were wide. "Any three questions?"

"But only if you can tag me." He wagged a finger of his lion paw in her face. "And don't expect to catch me with that ‘feigning a heart attack' trick again, my dear. This time, you'll have to work for it."

"This time, I have my friends with me," Twilight retorted. "Trust me, Discord, one way or another you're going down."

"Promises, promises." He grinned toothily. "Well then!" He snapped his talon, and Fluttershy found a tilted table, like a lectern or display plinth, boxing her in on three sides. Each side had a display window, but instead of showing something inside the table, they showed the very scene in front of her, from different angles. The one right in front of her showed her straight down, as if she were peering over the edge of a cloud. The one on the left showed the group from the back left, and the one on the right showed them from the right side, from her perspective. "Can't be a referee without being able to see the whole field, hmm?" He winked at Fluttershy.

"Um, I guess so," she said. "So what are the rules I'm referring, if, um, you don't mind me asking?"

"Rules? There are no rules!" Discord said, throwing his arms wide. "You five may attempt to tag me by striking me with magic, your body parts, objects you have thrown, or objects you are directing with magic. Air currents do not count but rain or lightning would. I will remain in this general vicinity, within possible line of sight of at least one of you, the whole time. The game ends when one of you tags me or when one of you forfeits from exhaustion. I win if any of you quit."

"What if you're the one who gets too tired?" Pinkie demanded. "Then what?"

Discord rolled his eyes. "Then the sun blows up, because that's just as likely. I don't do ‘tired', Pinkie, I'd have thought you'd have noticed."

"Let's make things more interesting," Twilight said. "If we have a forfeit condition, so do you. When you wanted me to hit you, you promised not to do anything to defend yourself except dodge. I want the same rule in place here; you don't do anything to anypony to stop them from hitting you."

"But I can do things to the things they're trying to hit me with?"

"Yes, you can redirect magic but not back at the one who fired it, and you can redirect or block any objects you want. But if anypony gets hurt, you forfeit."

"Now that hardly seems fair. What if Pinkie stubs her toe? What if Rainbow deliberately bonks herself on the head to fulfill the ‘anypony gets hurt' condition and force me to forfeit?"

"Like I'd do anything like that," Rainbow said derisively. "I don't need to cheat to beat you, Dipcord!"

"Um, that would be my job because I'm the referee," Fluttershy said. "If somepony gets hurt and it's deliberate and their own fault, then I call it for Discord winning. If somepony gets hurt for any other reason, Discord loses and has to hand out all the prizes, and also heal whoever got hurt."

"Fluttershy, that's totally unfair--"

"No, it's fair." She looked up at him, directly into his eyes. "You want to play a game that's kind of dangerous, more dangerous than most games ponies play. It has no rules and it involves throwing things around. That's chaos, and you're the master of chaos, so I think you should be able to keep anypony from getting hurt. But if the game you wanted to play, that you invented and didn't give any rules to, ends up hurting somepony, even by accident, then I think that's your fault and you'll have to pay a forfeit."

"You're making this much more challenging for me, Flutters," he grumbled, and then brightened. "But I do love a challenge. Very well, Umpire, I accept your terms!" He didn't snap, but Fluttershy was suddenly dressed in a black and white striped shirt and a black baseball cap, with a whistle around her neck.

Fluttershy brightened. She wasn't personally athletic at all, but it was probably entirely impossible to be raised as a pegasus and not have enthusiasm for sports, at least as a spectator. "Oh my, this looks nice," she said, grinning. "Is that all of the rules?"

"Most certainly, I'm hardly thrilled we have to have any," Discord said.

"That's all I have," Twilight said.

"Ah'm okay with what Twilight and you added, Fluttershy," Applejack said. "Ah got nothin' to add."

"I'm cool, let's go!" Rainbow said.

"I agree, these sound acceptable." Rarity was busy tying her mane into a kerchief. "But do please wait until I've secured my mane, I don't want to ruin it."

"LET'S DO THIS!" Pinkie was bouncing up and down rapidly.

"Okay," Fluttershy said. "Um, if everypony could go out some distance, maybe in a circle, and Discord in the middle? A little farther, Rainbow... Pinkie, you shouldn't be straight across from Rarity because if you do a running leap you might actually run into her if she's also coming forward... okay, I think that's good... three, two, one, go!"

The ponies had arranged themselves in a staggered circle, where no pony was directly opposite any other pony, leaving them all a fairly clear shot at Discord. Rainbow was the first to charge in, flying in so fast she was practically a blur, and pulling up short as Discord vanished. Pinkie spun and threw a number of bouncy balls. Discord materialized directly above the balls, grinned cheekily at Pinkie, and vanished again, to appear directly above Applejack, who flung a lasso at him. He dodged that without teleporting, and then eeled sideways with a look of surprise on his face. "Why, Rarity, that is quite a lot of sewing needles!"

"Yes, it is, isn't it?" Rarity replied sweetly, with a broad smile on her face. Fluttershy couldn't even see her needles except as occasional glints of light in the air, but Discord plainly could. The glints in the air blinked and reappeared as large iridescent dragonflies, which flew off as Rarity gaped in startlement. "Oh, very clever, Discord, but now it is on."

Rainbow came in for another divebomb, slower this time because she was carrying Pinkie on her back. As Discord vanished, Pinkie shouted and pointed. "Twitchy thataway!" Rainbow changed course before Discord had even reappeared, and came within inches of him as he reappeared, before he vanished again with an undignified yelp. Again Pinkie pointed and again Rainbow changed course. This time he appeared on the ground some distance away from all of them, but closer to Applejack than anyone else. Applejack charged, and Rainbow and Pinkie circled around to approach him from another direction. He disappeared again, and appeared on top of a tree stump, pulling his legs up off the stump and out of the way just as Rarity flung the bouncy balls Pinkie had released earlier toward him. A twist in midair, and he narrowly avoided one of the bouncy balls hitting him in the outstretched wing.

He was grinning so widely it looked as if his face might split. "Good start, girls, but you'll all have to step up your game if you want to win!"

Fluttershy felt strangely proud of all of them. He was so fast, so agile and flexible, traits that every pegasus was taught to value. And her friends were so smart and quick on the uptake, and worked together so well, taking advantage of openings as Discord dodged one of them to move in on him. Rarity had so many small objects in the air, dancing around intricately and separately, controlling them all. Pinkie's leaps and bounces were amazing, as if she were made of rubber. Applejack did things like sweeping her lasso toward him in a direction that, if he didn't teleport, he'd be forced to dodge directly into Rainbow's charge or Rarity's sewing supplies and bouncy balls or one of Pinkie's impossible bounds. Rainbow was making hairpin turns and pulling aerial stunts that Fluttershy knew were very dangerous, this close to the ground, and her heart was in her mouth but Rainbow seemed to be in total control of her own trajectory.

But why wasn't Twilight playing?

She looked over at where Twilight was standing, removed from the rest of the group. Twilight's horn was glowing and her face held a slight frown of concentration, but she didn't appear to be doing anything. Fluttershy knew better, though. Twilight wouldn't back down from a challenge any more than any of her friends would. She was planning something, doing something, but what?

The first thing Twilight had done as the game had begun was to cast Accelerando on herself. This was one of Starswirl's more advanced spells, and potentially quite dangerous if overused; it sped up a unicorn's mind and reflexes tremendously, to the point where even Rainbow looked as if she was moving leisurely to Twilight, and everypony else seemed to be in slow motion. She couldn't hold the spell for more than five minutes, and it wouldn't actually make her body or her magic any faster, so it would have been of limited value in a direct attack on Discord, given how unbelievably fast she already knew he was... but that was all right, because that wasn't what she was after.

She was watching Discord's magic.

Everything magical in Equestria generally did one of two things to use magic, or else they did both. They drew from a pool of internal mana, or they drew on the available energy of the world. Dragons drew internal mana, which meant they needed to eat substances containing magic -- gems, which held some amount of static magic frozen within them -- to keep their supplies up. Earth ponies and pegasi used a relatively small pool of internal magic to draw in more magic from the environment and manipulate it, guiding it. Pinkie was an exception to this; she had a relatively large pool of internal magic, close to unicorn-sized, and the magic of the environment she manipulated wasn't the energies earth ponies worked with. Twilight had little idea what Pinkie was doing, but she knew what she wasn't.

Unicorns had a large pool of internal mana, and reserves that they could draw the energy of the world around them into for a temporary increase in power, but for the most part they didn't manipulate the magic of the environment, they manipulated their own. Diamond Dogs drew energy from gems and channeled them into a few specific talents, one of which was digging. Zebras could see the magic of the world all around them but couldn't directly manipulate it in any way, which meant that zebra shamans learned an incredible amount of lore around plants and animals and crystals so that they could gather and mix magic from all sorts of natural substances to create any number of effects. Gryphons had small internal reserves that they used to manipulate air currents just enough to allow them to fly the way pegasi did.

Discord didn't do any of those things. He had an enormous pool of internal mana that he almost never used, but Twilight had never been able to see him pulling energy from anywhere else, either, so she had never been able to figure out how his powers worked. Now, with Accelerando cast so she could perceive the world in slow motion, and her senses fully opened to the flow of magic so it looked like pegasus contrails floating in the air everywhere, she was finally able to see what he was doing. It raised as many more questions as it answered, but it gave her some ideas.

Immediately before any of his effects, Discord would send out a very, very quick pulse of mana to... somewhere. Twilight couldn't see where it was going; it appeared to vanish into nowhere. The pulse was almost certainly a fraction of a second long -- even with Accelerando cast on her, Twilight was barely able to see him do it. And then, almost instantaneously after the pulse, a flood of energy would appear out of nowhere and Discord would manipulate it the same way unicorns manipulated their own magic. He wasn't drawing on his internal mana and he wasn't drawing on the environment because he was literally summoning magic from nowhere. This violated so many laws of physics and magic that Twilight was tempted to try to put hoofcuffs on him, but what had she expected from the god of Chaos, after all?

The important thing was that, for a creature of chaos, Discord was following a repetitive pattern. He was always summoning energy out of nowhere and using it to perform his effects. And he was always doing it the same way. The microsecond pulse, and then the energy suddenly became available. More importantly, the pulse was always within a certain frequency range. It appeared to be coming from his head, but not his horns, more like a field effect that appeared around his head for the microsecond before the energy of the pulse vanished and the surge of new energy appeared.

Alicorns drew energy from specific external sources, not necessarily the energy of the environment itself. Celestia drew from the sun, Luna from the moon, Cadance from emotional auras of love that radiated from ponies. Changelings drew on that love energy much more directly, depleting the life force and emotional capacity of the victim. Chaos was everywhere -- was Discord summoning energy from everywhere in the world at once, so there was no visible draw on the local environment? Was he pulling energy through the side dimension that ponies, and presumably Discord himself, used to teleport? Twilight didn't know, and couldn't think of an experiment that could tell her, but what she did know was that Discord seemed to need that energy -- unlike alicorns, who did most of their general magic from their large internal mana pools and only drew on their element when they needed very high levels of magic, Discord was drawing from this invisible pool every single time. So he could theoretically perform magic forever without exhausting himself -- given how much internal mana he had and how little he was using in his micro-pulses, it might be centuries or millennia before he could run out even if he had no way to replenish, and of course simply being alive replenished the mana pools of most creatures who had them.

But it gave him a vulnerability that ponies didn't have. Maybe. Assuming he couldn't quickly switch to using his internal energy, or assuming his internal energy could be bound the way a unicorn horn could be.

She hadn't talked her friends into participating in this game of Discord's so that they could win prizes -- though admittedly the prize he'd offered her was awfully tempting. She'd done it so she could see Discord using his magic a lot, at near combat capacity, in an environment where she could step back and watch him and the others would keep him distracted while he was doing it. He'd flashed her a grin when she'd first cast Accelerando on herself, obviously aware of what she'd just done, but since then he'd been too busy to actually look at her. He didn't need his eyes to see with -- she'd seen that he could view what was happening behind him without turning his head -- so he might well be watching her, but if he was she couldn't tell.

Twilight took a deep breath. Something to disrupt the pulse -- a stronger pulse of harmonized energy set to an inverse frequency so it would cancel his pulse, turn it into noise. Ironically, disharmonize it. Then the spell that was embedded in unicorn horn rings, the one that disrupted the flow of magic, cast around his head. Without an anchor like a horn ring, it couldn't last -- at her full power she estimated she could hold it between two and ten minutes. Bu that might be long enough to knock him unconscious, in a real combat situation, and Discord used his magic for everything. He might not have a strategy for what would happen if it suddenly wasn't available.

The disadvantage of testing it in mock combat was that it would alert Discord that that trick existed, making it much harder to use if it was actually needed. But she couldn't possibly rely on it working in a life or death situation if she'd never tested it, and given that Discord's biggest weakness was his carelessness, she could see numerous ways she could trick him into thinking she was incapable of casting the spell when she was in fact able. She took another deep breath, prepared the spell in her head -- and froze.

Discord was almost exclusively in the air, or teleporting, or using his magic to deflect things that might actually hurt him if they hit him when he had no magic. If she cast it now, he could actually get hurt. She didn't know if he could literally get hurt, but she strongly suspected that disrupting his magic would make him essentially just another creature for a few minutes, which meant he could be hurt if he didn't have access to his magic -- and whether it was his doing or just her friends being really careful, so far nopony had gotten hurt despite the total chaos of airborne objects and charging ponies all over the place. He was keeping his end of the bargain. She couldn't use this spell at a moment when it might hurt him, not during a friendly game, not when he might well be using his powers to keep her friends from hurting each other accidentally. That would be cruel, and rude, and just wrong to do to anypony, especially somepony who claimed to want to be friends with you.

Twilight sighed. She couldn't use the trick to win the game. The game had to end before she could test it. It wasn't safe otherwise. She'd promised the others, aside from Fluttershy, that if they distracted Discord for her during his game, she would do her best to figure out a way to temporarily suppress his powers, and then all of them would pin him down and give him a makeover for a prank. Rainbow Dash wasn't much for makeovers, but the thought of playing a prank on Discord had been irresistable to her, and the others had been on board from the moment she'd suggested it. But a prank wasn't funny if it ran the risk of getting somepony, or somedraconequus, hurt. All of them would just have to wait.

She'd gotten what she'd come for, but now that she knew what the prize was, she was going to try to win this. She let go of Accelerando, but kept up the spell that let her see magic trails. As Discord dodged the various missiles and ponies flying his way, laughing giddily, Twilight took aim and fired a simple bolt of telekinesis. Discord melted into a puddle, sank into the ground, and came back up right behind her. "Aha! Twilight Sparkle enters the fray! Now the serious entertainment starts!"

Twilight fired at him again. He laughed as he vanished, reappearing in the midst of the other ponies, who rushed him and came very close to banging into each other. Rarity sent a shower of small pebbles at Discord, and when he dodged up, they split apart, so she was controlling multiple pebbles independently, forcing Discord to duck and weave and finally teleport. Twilight whipped her head sideways and managed to catch the glow of Discord's magic appearing before he did. She fired, but somehow, despite being mid-teleport, Discord must have been able to tell, because when he materialized he was bent backward, doing the limbo, and her bolt went over him. She fired again at his feet, but he flipped himself into the air, so his head was floating but down and his legs and tail were flying upward, and then teleported again as she fired again. This time Applejack was waiting for him where he reappeared, behind Twilight. As Twilight spun to watch, she saw the lasso almost catch Discord's horn -- it was actually closing around the deer antler when Discord shrank, turning small enough that he slid out of from under where the lasso was contracting before it had actually finished closing around him.

Rarity's pebbles swooped down at him. Laughing, Discord teleported up, going back to full size, and twisted his body to barely avoid Rainbow Dash's charge. Twilight fired at him as soon as Rainbow was past, but his torso split in half, making a giant donut hole that her bolt went right through. Applejack tried to fling her lasso through the hole, but Discord was gone again, teleporting to the middle of the meadow.

And then Pinkie landed on his head. "Gotcha!"

Fluttershy blew her whistle. In the sudden quiet afterward she was barely audible. "Um... Pinkie wins?"

"So she does," Discord said, extricating Pinkie from his horns with his magic. He set her down on the ground and bowed to her. "Excellent match, most honorable opponent!"

Pinkie bowed back as Twilight tried not to let her eyes bug out of her head. How had Pinkie gotten into the air in the first place? She'd barely even noticed Pinkie while she'd been trying to hit Discord herself. Pinkie could jump pretty high, but Discord had been standing at full size, floating a head off the ground, and Pinkie's trajectory had looked like it was coming from way up in the air, not a mere jump from the ground. It's Pinkie. Don't question it, she repeated to herself, remembering what had happened the last time she'd tried to figure Pinkie out.

"Ready for your grand prize, my dear?" Discord asked.

"Nope!" Pinkie jumped onto Discord's tail, and as he pivoted with a puzzled expression on his face, she used it as a platform to bounce up to his shoulders again, planting herself piggyback-style. "I couldn't have done it without my friends! So I want you to give them their prizes!"

He turned his head to look at her, which was only possible because of his extremely long neck and still looked like a rather painful contortion to perform. "But don't you want your drinking fountain?"

"It's a great drinking fountain! But I could make any of those crazy drinks myself if I wanted to! Well, except for the turkey milk, I don't even know how you'd milk a turkey! But the prizes you were gonna give my friends are things they can't make for themselves, and besides, we had a stratagery!"

"A strategy?"

"One of those too! I told Dashie and Applejack and Rarity to leave the middle open and just keep chasing you and sooner or later you'd teleport into the middle and then I could catch you! I was gonna tell Twilight too but she looked all concentraty and I didn't want to mess her up and anyway I knew Twilight was smart enough not to ruin my stratagery, so the only reason I won was my friends cooperated with me! And if that one hadn't worked then we'd have all left something open with some of Rarity's stuff in it so she could get you as soon as you teleported there, and we'd have done the same kinds of things with Dashie and Applejack and Twilight so sooner or later one of us would have won, but only because of teamwork because you are very slippery, mister! So because we won because of teamwork I want you to give the rest of the team their prizes!"

Discord removed Pinkie again, but kept her hovering in air so she was still at approximate eye level to him. "One friend's prize."

"Three!"

"Two."

"Okay, two! But you have to pick which two because I can't pick between my friends!"

"Well, obviously, Rarity and Applejack." He smirked. "After all, Twilight wasn't even privy to your strategy."

"But Dashie was!"

"And by not giving her a prize today, I give her an incentive to play me again! I'm so very curious to see if the supposed World's Fastest Pegasus can actually tag me, ever."

"I'll tag you right now in the face," Rainbow threatened.

"That wouldn't be very sporting, now would it, Dashie? Pinkie just won, game over. You'll have to wait until next time." He snapped his paw, and Fluttershy's referee table disappeared, while a bucket of not-quite-zap-apples and an open box of neatly packed iridescent fabric appeared in front of Applejack and Rarity, respectively. Pinkie drifted gently to the ground, giggling.

Applejack tasted one of the apples. "Ah gotta say, you weren't jokin' about these. Ain't got nearly so much zap as a real zap apple, but I can still taste it in there."

"Well,"´Rarity said, inspecting the fabric. "I must admit, I'd never expected to receive a gift from you of all creatures, Discord. This is a pleasant surprise!"

"Now how can you be so cold, Rarity? I gave you a gift the first day we met? Don't you remember when I introduced you to Tom?"

Rarity glared at him. "I still have some sewing needles. If you'd like to keep them out of your ear, I'd suggest you be careful what you talk about."

"He's just joking, Rarity," Fluttershy said quietly. "But Discord, it's not very nice to joke about a thing like that. You were really mean to all of us that day, and if you're trying to be friendly it's not nice to bring up those memories."

Discord sighed. "You're all so oversensitive."

"And you're not sensitive at all," Twilight said. He was standing still, performing no direct acts with his magic. "Maybe we should fix that."

She fired the spell. Disruption wave to keep him from pulling power from wherever he was getting it, and the unicorn horn suppression spell around his head. Discord hadn't even been looking at her, at least not as far as she could tell. Now his eyes went wide and his head, which as usual had been bent over to bring it closer to the ponies' heads, shot up, his neck straightening. Twilight grinned broadly -- and then lost the grin immediately.

"What -- no!" Discord sounded completely panicked. "You can't do this -- not now! Not without warning! This is -- you were supposed to give me a choice! You can't do this now, I'm not ready, please! Aren't I supposed to come home and face you first? You can't just sentence me, without -- I have rights! You can't do this!"

Everypony was staring at him in shock. He wasn't looking at Twilight -- he was looking up at the sky, a pleading, desperate note in his voice that Twilight had never heard from him. He dropped to his knees, still looking up, as the ponies watched in increasing discomfort, and in Twilight's case some slight amount of horror. "Please, you have to at least tell me -- let me say something for myself! Don't just -- if this is termination, please, don't do this in front of them..." He fell to all fours, ears pinned back, still looking up at the sky.

Twilight found her voice. "Discord, calm down! This isn't what you think! I cast that spell!"

Discord blinked, and turned toward her. "...What?"

"I'm sorry, it was just supposed to be a prank! I -- I just wanted to see if I could do it! I never meant to really hurt you or scare you like that! I'm so sorry, it was -- you keep trying to get me to use my magic in creative ways to beat you, and I thought -- I thought I'd figured out something I could do, and it would be temporary and we were just going to give you a silly makeover if I got it to work because it's only going to last like five or ten minutes and it was a prank and I thought you'd know it was me and I never meant to actually hurt you! I'm sorry, I'm really, really sorry..." She was on the verge of tears. Not because she was afraid of Discord retaliating for this after he got his powers back, although part of her thought maybe she should be, but the truth was, she was horrified with herself and with the reaction Discord had had to her prank. And now she was berating herself because he had warned her there was a possibility of his powers weakening... of course he'd thought that was what this was. But she hadn't expected anything like this. She'd gotten the impression Discord was worried about some sort of cosmic event or prophecy that he feared might weaken him or strip his power, not... not something he'd break down and start pleading with frantically. This had been supposed to be funny and instead she'd terrified him.

"...You did this?"

She nodded, tears welling up. "I'm so sorry, Discord, I never thought -- I never expected I could really scare you, or hurt you, or whatever just happened, it was just supposed to be a joke..."

His lips twitched. "Heh. Heh." He started to chuckle... and then something broke, and he started laughing hysterically, like he had the day she'd thrown him across the rock quarry. "Hahahahaha! Good one, Sparky! Oh, you got me. You got me good!" He grabbed her -- even without his magic, he moved fast -- and pulled her close. "This one -- hahahaha -- if you think about it, this one's even better than the piano! Hahahahaha hehe that was a zinger all right!" Discord booped Twilight's nose with one of the fingers of his lion paw. "Oh by the time I'm done with you you'll be a master prankster in your own right, Sparkle. I'm so proud of you!"

Discord squeezed her in a sideways hug. "You're -- squishing me--" Twilight panted, before realizing that with his magic temporarily disabled, she could just push him off herself.

"Oh, I apologize, without access to my power I don't know my own strength," Discord said, a malicious note in his voice. "But I suppose now's the time to find out!"

Without warning he pounced on Twilight, before she could summon up the magic to push him off again, and raised his lion paw, claws retracted, above her head, wiggling his fingers. "Because of course you know, Twilight, that this means war!" Before she had time to actually be afraid, he plunged his paw down to her exposed belly and started tickling her. Twilight shrieked, laughing, trying to bat his arm away with her forehooves because she couldn't concentrate enough to use magic like this.

"Big mistake, Dissy," Pinkie said behind Discord. "Big mistake."

Discord turned his head to look at Pinkie. "I'm not hurting her! I'm just tickling her!"

"Yes. Yes, you are tickling her," Pinkie said ominously. "Just remember, Discord... you're the one that brought the tickling in."

Applejack and Rainbow Dash both landed on his back, causing Discord to oof and twist his body, trying to free himself. This left Twilight free to scramble loose. Discord managed to twist himself onto his back, knocking the two ponies off him -- but it was a short-lived victory as Pinkie jumped onto his chest where it met his neck, pinning his arms down with her back hooves, and stretched herself out to tickle him under the chin with her forehoof. "Pinkie, what are you -- nehehe -- what makes you think I'm even tickli-hi-hish stop that!"

"I warned you," Pinkie said. "Everypony knows you're a tickling champ with your powers. But you started a tickle war without them, and you forgot, you mess with one of us, you mess with all six!"

"Five," Fluttershy said. "I'll still be the referee if that's okay with everypony."

Applejack and Rainbow Dash climbed back onto Discord. Applejack sat on the upper part of his tail, though enough below his hips to still be perfectly decent, and grabbed the frantically twitching end of it, bending it back to use Discord's own tail to tickle his belly with, while Rainbow sat on his chest, facing the opposite direction from Pinkie, and used her wing against his side. Rarity removed a small, soft styling brush, maybe for eyebrows or something, from her bag, and used her magic to run it over the palm of Discord's lion paw, holding his fingers open magically as well. "You wanted a war, you got a war!" Rainbow chortled triumphantly, as Discord twisted under her, laughing helplessly.

"Let go! I'm not even hahahaha heeheehee okay I admit it yes I'm -- not the tail! Applejack, what are you dohahahahahing stop hahahaha I'll get you all back for hahahahaha no feheheheheathers that's not faiheheheher hahahaha no not the paw HAHAHAHAHA stohahahahap it Pihinkie no not there dohahahahaha!" Pinkie shifted herself slightly so she could grab Discord's eagle talon, pin it to the ground up by his head, and then use her back hoof to tickle him under the arm, while she tilted her head with a huge evil grin and used her large fluffy mane to continue tickling his neck.

Twilight smiled wanly. After blocking his powers and terrifying him, she didn't think she should participate in the tickling, but this was just as entertaining a prank as giving him a makeover would have been, and, well, he'd started it. He didn't look angry or genuinely upset; you could usually tell when tickling somepony when you'd crossed the line and they'd started finding the experience sincerely unpleasant, because even though they might be laughing throughout, the eyes usually made it clear whether there was a genuine element to the laughter or not. Discord was struggling and demanding that they stop between bouts of laughter, but he was grinning even in the moments when he wasn't laughing.

His legs weren't designed well to be able to kick inward, toward his body. He tried to kick Applejack off his tail anyway, but missed completely, leading her to grab his goat leg, pull it up, and use his tail to tickle behind his knee. Rarity had a packet of small feathers in her bag, probably something she'd brought for the makeover, and in addition to brushing the fur of Discord's lion palm with the small brush, she started running a pair of feathers over his ears, ducking the feathers into them and wiggling a bit, then bringing them up to lightly brush against the topside of the ears. Discord was flicking his ears frantically, twisting his head, but Rarity was easily able to follow his movements. By now he wasn't even demanding they stop, just laughing hysterically and squirming desperately.

Fluttershy blew her whistle again. "All right, girls, that's enough," she said.

"Aw, come on, Fluttershy! He started it!" Rainbow said. "And hay, he likes laughing a lot, doesn't he? I bet he doesn't want us to stop."

"Wrohahahahang," Discord gasped out, still laughing so hard he could barely talk. "Fluhahahahahattershy hahahah hehelp!"

"I said enough, Rainbow," Fluttershy said. "You can't expect Discord to respect us when we tell him to stop if we don't listen to him when he says it."

"Oh, all right," Rainbow grumbled, and climbed off Discord. Applejack and Rarity had already released him.

Pinkie gave Discord a big grin. "Now see, I hope you learned your lesson, mister." She bounced to her feet, leaving Discord panting on the ground.

"Oh, I certainly have," he said, and got to a sitting position, still breathing hard. A big malicious grin spread across his face. "I learned I haven't made any of you nearly afraid enough of my retribution... yet."

Twilight backed up as Discord snapped his talon, his powers clearly back with him. Four small churning clouds of feathers, the size of a foal's head, appeared. "Twilight may have blocked my power for a bit, but she refrained from taking advantage of it, and Fluttershy rescued me from the four of you. I'll spare them my wrath. For the rest of you... no mercy."

What followed was a cacophony of shrieks and laughter as the feather balls chased the four ponies all over the meadow and surrounded them with a merciless cloud of tickling when they caught them. Rarity tried to hold her cloud off telekinetically, but there were too many separate feathers even for her to manage. Rainbow successfully flew out of her cloud and outran it four times, but the fifth time it caught her it stayed with her whatever she did, until she had to land, laughing and squirming too hard to fly. Applejack tried to stoically pretend she wasn't ticklish, and lasted about twenty seconds. Pinkie never seemed to make any attempt to escape or fight after her tickle ball had caught her, and seemed to be quite content to be tickled mercilessly.

Fluttershy blew her whistle again after a minute or two. "Okay, Discord, enough."

"That was not nearly as long as they were tickling me! And they were attacking me four to one! I should have four times as long as they had."

"No, Discord," Fluttershy said patiently, "ponies need to breathe. Also, um, ponies sometimes pee themselves if they're tickled too much..."

The feather balls promptly vanished. "Spoilsport," Discord grumbled.

Various ponies were lying sprawled all over the meadow, panting. Discord snapped his talon, and Twilight found herself suddenly lying down, leaning back against something warm and velvety, like a pony's coat. She turned her head to find that Discord was now lying sprawled on the ground with herself and all of her friends lying next to him or on him. Fluttershy was leaning against his middle where he could drape his wing over her, Pinkie was curled up in the crook of his tail, Rarity and Applejack were propped up against his back, and Rainbow Dash was sprawled over his side, her hooves next to Fluttershy's head. Twilight herself was lying against his neck where it met his shoulders, right above his talon.

She sighed. She probably wasn't nearly as tired as the others, but after the emotional whiplash of the game, and her prank, and Discord's awful reaction to it, and then the tickle war he'd plainly started because he didn't want anyone to dwell on his humiliating display... yes, actually, she was tired. Probably she shouldn't be lying against Discord like they were best buddies at a slumber party or something, but on the other hand, he'd initiated a group activity for all of them, played by the rules, and hadn't actually tormented any of them -- well, aside from the tickling, but she supposed they'd all had it coming after the prank she pulled on him. Between this and the pool party, it looked as if he was actually starting to learn something about friendship, trying to make emotional connections to ponies that didn't rely on him taunting or pranking them first. Maybe the fact that he'd piled ponies all over himself meant he really was reaching out to all of them, and she wasn't going to step on his gesture if that was the case.

"That was a good game," Rainbow said. "I'm not saying I trust you or anything, Discord, but you can play a mean game of Tag."

"Oh, be still my beating heart," Discord said, grinning. "Did Rainbow Dash just say something nice about me?"

"Yeah," Rainbow said. "It's not likely to happen too often so enjoy it while you got it."

Pinkie sighed contentedly and snuggled back against Discord's tail. "That was fun. I might need a nap."

"But I made surprise rolls."

"Well, if I fall asleep, be sure to wake me up for dinner, because I don't wanna miss surprise rolls! But if I find any with mustard inside they're going on your antler."

"Fluttershy, would I be able to trouble you to use your bathroom to wash up before dinner?" Rarity asked. "My poor mane is an absolute wreck now."

"Of course you can," Fluttershy said.

"Guess Ah'd best get to heatin' up mah stew," Applejack said. "In case of anypony not likin' to be surprised by their food, so much. Fluttershy, can Ah use your stove?"

"Of course."

As Applejack and Rarity trotted into Fluttershy's cottage, Twilight looked around. Rainbow, for all her declarations that she still didn't trust Discord, had fallen asleep on top of him; Pinkie was napping as well. Discord claimed that he didn't sleep, but his eyes were closed and his breathing even, so possibly he was faking it, fairly well. Or maybe the temporary loss of his power had actually exhausted him.

"Is he okay, Fluttershy?" Twilight asked softly. "I really didn't mean to scare him like that..."

She felt the muscles behind her back tighten. Discord wasn't actually asleep, then.

"I'm sure he knows that, Twilight," Fluttershy said. "And, um, if he didn't know it before then he probably does now, because he's not asleep, you know."

"Oh, thanks for blowing my cover, Flutters," Discord mumbled. "And here I was hoping Twilight might say all sorts of nice things about me when she thinks I can't hear her."

"In your dreams," Twilight retorted, and then softened. "But... seriously... you know I didn't mean to scare you, right?"

"Scare me? Ha, as if you could. It was a nice try, I admit, but you merely startled me."

"No, I didn't," Twilight said, puzzled. "You were really upset."

"Startled!" Discord got to his feet, unceremoniously removing Twilight's support so she fell back against the ground, along with Rainbow Dash, though he seemed to put more effort into cushioning Fluttershy so she didn't fall over. Pinkie, already curled up, didn't stir, and Rainbow simply glared, flew up to a cloud overhead, and flung herself onto it to continue her nap. "Merely startled. And now I believe I have some surprise rolls to bring out?"

He vanished. "He won't admit it," Fluttershy said softly. "Please don't push him."

"Do you know what he's afraid of?" Twilight asked.

"Not... really. But I know he's afraid. I mean I knew it before today." Fluttershy got up. "We can talk about this later when the others aren't around. Let's go set the table."

You Can Never Be Free of Your Past

(WARNING: Incoming Trekness and imports from a very complex headcanon. All will be explained in the author's note at bottom.)

It was nice to have a day of fun with friends, but Fluttershy could honestly take only so much of the company of other ponies, even her best friends. So she was looking forward to a nice relaxing evening after her friends all went home. Discord was up in the room she'd given him, doing... something or other. Probably rearranging physics, again. Angel had finally calmed down, having spent much of the day in an absolute snit because he hadn't enjoyed being forced to clean the house, so Fluttershy had made sure to give him an especially lengthy brushing and fluffing and a salad with all his favorite ingredients.

And then there was a knock on the door.

It was late. Fluttershy shrank back by instinct – who would come knocking on her door late at night? And then she heard Lyra's voice. "Fluttershy, are you there?"

Tentatively Fluttershy went to the door, opening it just enough to peer through. Sure enough, that was Lyra. "Um, yes, but, it's late..."

"A stallion from up by Saddle Lake came to my house asking for you. He says he's got a sick rooster."

"Oh dear!" Fluttershy opened the door. "Did he say what was ailing the poor creature?"

"No, just that he had a sick rooster and he needed your help. I tried to point out that Ponyville has a veterinarian, but she doesn't do house calls and he doesn't want to move his rooster. Saddle Lake's just a train stop up the way; he asked if you could head up there, and he'll meet you at the station."

Fluttershy frowned. "He's not going to go with me?"

"Oh, he turned around and headed straight back home the moment I agreed to come get you. Says his roo needs him. I don't know why anyone would want to keep a rooster as a pet, they don't even lay eggs. Maybe he needs to get up early in the morning."

"Or maybe the rooster is just his friend," Fluttershy said. "Not all pets are useful, Lyra."

She notified Angel Bunny of where she was going, left a note for Discord – if he really was playing with physics in there, she didn't want to knock on his door and disrupt his concentration, not to mention that if he'd made the room the size of a large island again he might not even hear her – and headed to the train station with Lyra. Not that Lyra really needed to accompany her, but it was late, and dark, and scary, and Fluttershy preferred the companionship at this time of day.

At least, until her companion, and the entire world around her, inexplicably stopped and went dead still.

There was only one other pony out on the streets of Ponyville, a stallion Fluttershy didn't really recognize, and he was standing completely still, hoof still in mid-step. Lyra's mouth was open – she had gone still in the middle of a word. Fluttershy looked around herself, growing more and more nervous. There was a flower petal, caught in the breeze, suspended unmoving. It was as if time had stopped for everything but her.

"D-Discord?" she whispered. "If you're doing this, p-please, it's n-not funny..."

"He is not, little pony," a female voice, resonant and deep, came from behind her. Fluttershy turned, and stared into the face of an immense, reddish-gold –

"D-d-d-DRAGON!" Fluttershy shrieked, and began backing up rapidly, wings beginning to flap frantically in preparation for a desperate takeoff. Except that gravity caught her back legs, making them inexplicably heavy, so she fell on her rump, tripping on her own back legs. "D-d-d-d..."

"Stop your mewling, pony, I have less than no desire to eat you," the dragon said, her voice a deep rumble but undeniably feminine. "Although if you keep up with that whimpering, I might change my mind."

Dragons didn't have the ability to stop time. "Are – are you – are you related to Discord?" Fluttershy forced out, her voice barely above a whisper.

The dragon smiled broadly. "A cowardly little thing you are, but not stupid, for a lower life form," she said. "Return home. There is no rooster."

"There's – what?"

"You've been lured away from your cottage. Go back home, and do as you would ever do. Hide in the shadows, and tremble, and observe. There are things he will never tell you that it's best if you knew."

"You mean Discord, right?" Fluttershy was calming down slightly. If this was one of Discord's kind, then she wasn't a real dragon. Fluttershy remembered some things Discord had said a few days ago, about the others of his kind. "Are you... Glory?"

"Neither Passion nor Discord know I am here, and they must not. Don't tell him I warned you." She shifted her wings slightly in almost a shrugging motion, as if squaring her shoulders. "I am not helping him in any material way, but the others might not agree, and he is being watched."

"I won't. But... if you don't mind... who is Passion? I've never heard that name before."

"And Discord will never tell you," Glory – Fluttershy was by now certain this dragon had to be the Spirit that Discord had referred to as Glory – said. "Passion was the Spirit of Love, before she and Discord destroyed each other. Some of her work benefited you ponies. Some of it... did not." She closed her eyes. "Go now."

And then there was no dragon there, and time had resumed.

"Fluttershy?" Lyra waved a hoof in front of Fluttershy's face. "You just zoned out for a second."

"Oh, Lyra, I'm so sorry to have made so much trouble for you," Fluttershy said. "I have to go back to my house for my chicken antibiotic kit! I don't know what I was thinking, leaving without it to go see a sick rooster!"

"Oh. Okay, well, I'll walk you back then if you want."

"No, no, I insist, I've taken up too much of your time. I'll go back and get it and then I'll have Discord teleport me to the train station at Saddle Lake. You can go back home. I'm sure Bon Bon is missing you."

"Wellll.... If you're suuure..."

"Nothing bad's going to happen to me in Ponyville," Fluttershy said reassuringly. "I'll be fine going home."

"But you wanted an escort to the train, so... shouldn't you get an escort back home?"

"I was just being silly. Sometimes I get scared and I want company, but I know I was really perfectly safe the whole time! Besides, sometimes Discord can be a little shy around ponies he doesn't know."

Lyra gave Fluttershy a look of frank disbelief. "Discord. Spirit of Chaos. Is shy?"

"Oh, you know, he pretends a lot, but he's really much more sensitive than you'd think," Fluttershy said.

"Didn't he make a swimming pool in the middle of town just a couple of days ago?"

"Thank you so much for all your help, Lyra, but I really have to run. That poor rooster needs me! Bye!" Fluttershy zipped off at her highest land speed, making a beeline for home.

Glory had said she should hide in the shadows and observe. And tremble, which might have been an insult or might have been a warning that whatever she was going to watch was dangerous. Could it be something dangerous to Discord? No, he was much too powerful. He could take care of himself. But then why had his (sister? ex-fillyfriend? what was Glory to him anyway?) told Fluttershy to go observe?

She circled around her home, creeping through hedges and sticking close to the woods, to approach from the other direction... and, as she crouched behind the trunk of the large tree she lived in, saw herself come skipping toward the door, a covered basket on her back.

Terror shot through Fluttershy. Changeling! Had to be. Glory had said there was no rooster, that she was being lured away. The Changeling was going to impersonate her to Discord... to try to bring him under their control? She had to stop it... but Glory had told her to watch. But Glory had also said she wasn't helping Discord. But she'd also said that the others of her kind would disagree. Would Discord be able to tell? Fluttershy resolved to watch and see how Discord reacted. If he thought the Changeling was her, she would come forth to stop it, but if he could tell the difference then there'd be no need. She snuck in through a knothole in the tree, gently pushing Ms. Robin's nest and her baby birds to the side so she wouldn't accidentally squash them, and watched through a gap in the wallboards that separated her living quarters from the tree proper.

The humming Changeling entered her house and called out, "Hello, Discord! I'm back!" She picked up the note Fluttershy had left for Discord with her hooves and crumpled it, then set her saddle basket down on the table.

Discord drifted down the stairs, upside down, head peering down through the staircase opening first before the rest of him came through. "Well, hello there!" he said jovially. "You must be someone stupid enough to think I'd think you're Fluttershy!" The duplicate suddenly went down on the floor, barrel pressed against the rug and legs splayed out around her, with an "oof". Discord's telekinesis usually had a yellow glow to it, but this time there was nothing. "Who are you really and where is Fluttershy?" Discord growled. "And you had better give me an answer I like, or you cannot begin to imagine what I will do to you."

The Changeling laughed, sounding slightly pained and out of breath. Her imitation of Fluttershy vanished in a wave of blue fire, leaving... Fluttershy caught her breath, frozen solid with fear. The creature on the floor was tall, her barrel and neck alone almost Fluttershy's height even with her chitinous, hole-filled legs splayed out under her. She had a mane, the color and texture of seaweed, and a long, pointed, somewhat warped horn. Chrysalis, Fluttershy thought, wanting to scream, but her voice was frozen.

"Don't worry about your little pony friend," Chrysalis chuckled. "She's just been sent on a wild goose chase – or a sick rooster chase, in this case, to get her out of the way. Not a single strand of her mane will be harmed."

"That had better be true."

"I've come to trade with you," Chrysalis said. "I need a service that only you can provide, and I offer information and a gift in exchange. Why would I risk offending you by harming your pet pony?" She breathed deeply. "Oh, I can taste the love you feel for the little thing even now, without her presence. You have so much magic, it amplifies everything you feel."

"Can you also feel how extraordinarily irritating I am finding you?" Discord asked, scowling. "Because if you can't, I could clarify it for you."

"You're hardly my favorite creature ever either," Chrysalis retorted. "But you have something I need, and I have something you don't know that you need, but I'm positive that once you know, you'll know how badly you needed it. Let me up so we can discuss this like civilized creatures."

"I don't know, I'm rather liking the look here," Discord said musingly. "Chrysalis the bug queen, squashed like a bug. Can you flap your wings a little? Maybe make a buzzing sound?"

"And to think you're supposed to be amusing," Chrysalis said, struggling to get up.

"I am amusing. You bugs just have no sense of humor."

"Would you like to hear about the plot to kill you or wouldn't you?"

Abruptly Chrysalis was standing, on her hooves, in a flash of light. "I'm all ears," said a pile of numerous animal ears in the general shape of Discord.

Chrysalis walked over to the basket and removed the cover. "I suspect you'll recognize this."

Discord, no longer made of ears, peered into the basket. His face went completely expressionless – which, on Discord's highly expressive face, was an expression in and of itself. "That's an M blade," he said quietly. "Where did you get that?"

"Lady Passion orchestrated my attempt to take over Canterlot." Chrysalis' voice was sour. "I won't pretend I was reluctant at the time. The thought of getting revenge on the ponies, of taking by force what they've denied to us, was very attractive. But I should have known better. I trusted Lady Passion. I should have realized that when she gave us all that we needed to capture the Alicorn of Love, her own creation just as we were it meant that we meant equally as little to her."

Discord's face was twisted in an expression Fluttershy had never seen on him, looking as if he was balanced on the knife edge between rage and breaking down into tears. "I don't want to hear that name."

"Then I'll never be able to tell you what I came to tell you." Chrysalis' eyes narrowed. "You still love her, Discord? Really? After all you did to her?"

"Shut. Up." Discord was breathing hard. Fluttershy had to control the desire to go to him, to hold him and try to soothe him. "All right. All right. Tell me what you want to tell me. You say Credenza was one of hers? I find that hard to believe. She was stripped of her power 300 years ago; Come Dancing's not that old."

"She placed the potential for power in the bloodline, before she lost her powers. A hundred years ago she came here, and we gave her sanctuary, and she advised us to take certain roles and perform certain acts so that Cadenza's grandparents, and parents, would meet and mate, and so that she would be educated in love magic even as a pegasus, and guided to become what she eventually became. After that Celestia stepped in and we had no further role, not until the Lady sold Cadenza out to us to fuel us for her plan. I was to impersonate Cadenza, feed on her fiancé, take over Canterlot... and then take that blade and plunge it into your heart. The Lady claimed the chaos would wake you, and that we needed to kill you to keep you from waking up and destroying everything." She tilted her head slightly. "Would it have killed you? Because at this point I don't necessarily believe anything the Lady says."

"It's an M blade," Discord said again. "No, of course it couldn't have killed me. She isn't an M, she isn't even a Q anymore. How could she have fueled it?"

"I was to fuel it. It needs to be filled with magic to work properly, I can see that for myself. She showed me the spell I would need to use, in my mind."

Discord frowned. "She... isn't a changeling, is she? I can't see how she could be..."

"No. She looks like a minotaur had a horrible accident with a taffy pull, and lost her horns in the process of being stretched. She has no real magic anymore, except the magic of speaking mind to mind, as I can with my royal daughters, except she can do it with anyone apparently."

"I can't sense her. I can't... I have no idea where she is on this world. I didn't even know she was here. How... oh, right." He laughed bitterly. "Right, that explains it. I can disobey my orders but I can't break the Continuum's geas, not now."

"She sold us out," Chrysalis said. "Once we were blasted away and I felt hundreds of my Changelings die or fall injured, the scales fell from my eyes and I saw. We could never have won. Celestia has a sister. And if we had... enslaving and cocooning ponies and using illusions to force love out of them would only have worked until all the ponies died. There was no plan for feeding them or mating them to ensure a continuing supply of love. There was also no plan for dealing with Luna. All the Lady wanted was for me to have enough energy and enough control over Canterlot that I could kill you for her."

"It probably wouldn't have, even then," Discord said. "I admit it might have made me a trifle uncomfortable, but the magic of this world isn't sufficient to kill me."

"I'm sure you'd tell me that even if it would have killed you... in fact, especially if it would have killed you. I wouldn't admit to such a weakness either. But she is preparing to try again." Chrysalis took a deep breath. "She came to us, where we lay broken and injured, and brought us food she had lured with her powers of the mind. She tended our injuries. I had already become disillusioned, but my daughters and many of my soldiers are more than prepared to believe the fault was mine, that the Lady has our best interests at heart and I am the one who failed. She has been telling them of how dangerous you are, how you will plunge all Equestria into a state where nopony can love another and all are filled with hate and disharmony. But my spies have told me a different story, that Celestia has you on a leash and it's you who fell to the power of love—"

"Friendship," Discord interrupted. "Friendship, not love. And I didn't fall to anything. And I'm not on a leash! I can still do whatever I want. I'm just... rethinking my goals in life, that's all."

"You just keep telling yourself that," Chrysalis said. "And I had spies in Ponyville the day you broke free. Your chaos wasn't nearly organized enough to systematically prevent love. A clever changeling could have taken advantage of the disorder you caused, and if you'd been out for more than a day, I would have had them do so. You're not nearly as dangerous to us as you are to happy, harmonious, idyllic pony life." She fairly spat the last words.

"Why, thank you, Chrysalis. That's the nicest thing you've ever said to me."

"We've never met before today."

"And while we're doing compliments, might I add that the chaos you caused at the wedding that day was the finest entertainment I got my entire second imprisonment? I especially loved the ending, where you and your Changelings nearly got destroyed by a fire hose of food." Discord chuckled. "Gives new meaning to the term 'food fight', wouldn't you say?"

"Stop trying to provoke me," Chrysalis hissed. "I want a new home for my Changelings, somewhere we can find food easily, and tend our wounds, without the Lady stirring up my children into some sort of suicide mission to try to kill a draconequus who's now all-powerful again. I believe it's in your interest as well; if you can feel love, or excuse me, friendship, you'll want to avoid collateral damage, and the Lady's been claiming that if someling were to kill somepony you loved and take their place, they could drain enough from you to kill you. Obviously, since you were able to tell instantly that I wasn't your precious Fluttershy, that won't work, but many of them will listen to the Lady before they listen to me, and it does you no good that you can detect a 'ling in your friend's place if your friend is already dead."

"Ah, well, forewarned is forearmed," Discord said, with an extra eagle arm under his lion one and an extra lion arm under his eagle one. The extra arms vanished. "I'm fairly sure I can protect my pals, now that you've warned me. But if all you want me to do is pick up the remains of your hive and dump it elsewhere, I can do that easily enough."

"Someplace with food," Chrysalis snapped. "The middle of nowhere, with no ponies around, won't be sufficient."

"I know a perfect place," Discord said. "A place that just radiates love and cheer! Your lings will love it there."

"Where?"

Discord grinned broadly. "Oh, you'll figure it out when you get there," he said, and snapped. Chrysalis vanished. "Enjoy the Crystal Empire! Say hi to Codependence for me if you run into her!" He looked down into the basket. "Best get rid of this too. Hmm. Oh, that's perfect!" Discord picked up the blade and vanished.

Fluttershy crawled backward out of her hiding place, and into her home through the front door, still shaking.

Elsewhere, Daring Do watched the magical holographic memory crystal skeptically. In the image, Discord was giving Ahuizotl a shining, plainly magical blade, with a broad grin on his face. Both their faces, actually, though Ahuizotl's grin was more sly; Discord just looked like he was having a great deal of fun. "No offense, Professor Pony, but how did you manage to come by this recording? I can't imagine either Discord or Ahuizotl making such a recording, and I'd think Discord at least would notice somepony else doing it."

"Actually, Discord gave it to me," the chocolate-brown unicorn said. "Since he's reformed, you see, and no longer wants a weapon that could potentially kill alicorns in the paws of a villain like Ahuizotl."

"If he's so reformed, why did he give the blade to Ahuizotl in the first place?"

"Oh, he did that the day he escaped from his statue, over a year ago."

"And Ahuizotl hasn't tried to use it yet?" Daring Do gave the unicorn her best skeptical look.

"Well, it does need to be charged with a great deal of magic to work," Professor Pony – who she'd never heard of before, but she'd checked out his references and they seemed legitimate – said. "But really, the safest place for that thing is in the heart of an active volcano. Even if Ahuizotl never gets his paws on a source of magic powerful enough to channel into the thing, the possibility that someone would steal it from him and charge it remains. After all, if you can routinely get through all of his deathtraps, it ought to be a cakewalk for a powerful mage!"

Daring Do glared. "I've worked with some of those mages. They're less talented than you think."

"Ah, yes, of course, no offense intended," Professor Pony said. He sounded smarmy and insincere, but a lot of academic-types did, when dealing with her. "So will you do it?"

"What's in it for you, Professor?"

"Just the knowledge that I've helped to protect Equestria and preserve the safety of our beloved Princesses," the professor said, one hoof over his heart, laying it on so thick there was zero possibility that he was sincere.

"Really." This smelled like a trap.

"Oh, all right," the Professor said, rolling his eyes. "I admit it. Discord is giving me a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to explore the oceans as a seapony if I act as his proxy in this. He didn't think you'd listen to him – and truth be told, he probably didn't want to hear a lecture about how irresponsible he was to give the blade to Ahuizotl in the first place, which I'm sure he totally understands and feels he doesn't need to hear any more about."

"Explore the oceans as a seapony?" Daring Do stared.

"Oh, I love to sail, and I've always wanted to be able to see what lies underneath the waves! It's a wonderful opportunity for me, and all he asked me to do was bring this crystal to your attention and give you the location of the mysterious temple that Ahuizotl's stashed the item in, and remind you it needs to be thrown into an active volcano to be destroyed and ensure the safety of our Princesses!"

"And he couldn't do this himself why?"

Professor Pony shrugged. "Who can understand why the lord of chaos does anything? My best guess is, he thought it would be more entertaining to watch you do it."

Daring Do sighed. It was probably a trap, or an elaborate game of Discord's, but she couldn't take the chance. A blade that could kill alicorns really was something that needed to be thrown in a volcano, given that Princess Luna had just returned from a thousand-year-exile on the moon for trying to kill her sister and therefore Daring Do couldn't actually trust the alicorn princesses to secure it themselves. One could go insane and try to use it on the other. As outrageous as the idea seemed, it had already happened, albeit a thousand years ago, and if Nightmare Moon had had an alicorn-killing blade to destroy her sister with, Equestria might even now be locked in eternal night.

"All right, Professor, I'll do it," she said. "Give me the information."

Fluttershy had barely finished putting Chrysalis' abandoned basket away – it really was one of her baskets, that she'd thought she lost a week ago – when Discord reappeared, to both of their startlement. "Eep!"

"Fluttershy! Is that you?"

"Oh, um, Discord, you startled me!" She took a deep breath. "Of course it's me, who else would... oh, I can't. Come down here, please. It's really me."

Discord, who'd materialized in air, landed, a puzzled expression on his face. Fluttershy flew up to him and put her arms around him. "Well, you're certainly affectionate today," he said uncertainly.

"Is there something you'd like to talk about?" Fluttershy asked, pressing her face against his fur, listening for his heartbeat. It was rapid again, and his breathing wasn't quite even. Which could be excitement – Discord frequently behaved as if he were in a constant state of manic excitement. Or it could be fear.

"No, why would there be—"

She looked up at him. "I know, Discord. I was watching the whole conversation through the knothole on the other side of the tree."

Discord sagged. "So you are all right. I didn't feel that anything bad had happened to you, but I was going to go looking for you next. I was just... making sure somepony responsible was going to deal with that blade."

"I'm glad," Fluttershy said. "It sounded very scary. Is it true that it could have killed you?"

Discord didn't say anything. He sank further down onto the ground, half-coiling around Fluttershy, half-holding her tightly. His breathing turned ragged, and his body was tense around hers, but he didn't speak.

"It's all right to be scared," Fluttershy said. "It could have, couldn't it? Would the plan have worked if we hadn't defeated the Changelings? Would Chrysalis have been able to—to—"

"It's not that," Discord whispered hoarsely. "I don't care about might-have-beens. They didn't happen. It's the future—" He stopped.

"But you said that now that Chrysalis warned you, you could protect us. And you sent her hive to the Crystal Empire. Will they really be okay there? They won't kill ponies and Princess Cadance won't try to get revenge on them?"

"That's up to Chrysalis." Discord was breathing hard. "If she lays low, if she gets her hive to assimilate into society – Sombra had so many slaves, working underground in cells apart from other slaves, spending their entire lives never knowing any ponies other than the ones they were chained to. It'll be very, very easy for the Changelings to take pony forms and pretend they're some of those slaves, seeking to assimilate into Empire society now that they're free. They'll be free to find love without having to impersonate any real ponies to do it, and the Crystal Heart amplifies whatever the ponies of the Crystal Empire are feeling, so there'll be enough ambient love and happiness and gratitude and other horribly harmonious emotions that the changelings won't starve. If they try to kidnap and impersonate actual ponies, though... Cadance will find out. She's paranoid, after what happened to her. She has pony counselors circulating through the city, talking to the crystal ponies, helping them to deal with what they suffered under Sombra and how to enter the modern age... and those counselors use code words, so when they check back up on a pony they saw a month ago, they can confirm that that's the same pony. So Chrysalis and her hive will only be safe if they do things in a way that ponies don't get hurt."

"That's good. That sounds like a win-win answer. I think Princess Celestia would be proud of you for coming up with that."

"Don't—don't tell her." His hug tightened for just a moment, a slight shudder going through him.

"Why not?"

"Because then she'll ask—and the only reason I can bear to think of it – it just happened and already I want so much to blot it out and forget, but I can't, not and keep you safe, but I can't—I can't talk about her, about... that one..."

"You don't mean Chrysalis. You mean—"

"Don't say her name, it hurts—"

"I won't," Fluttershy said, stroking his head, which had somehow ended up in her lap. His eyes were tightly closed, but teardrops squeezed out from underneath them anyway. "I won't. I promise."

"I've done things, Fluttershy, such terrible, terrible, things... not just to you ponies, that was, that was part of the job, but to my own—"

"It's all right. It's over now, and you've changed, and you won't do those things anymore, right?"

"Ponies are very forgiving," Discord said, his words partially muffled because he'd buried his head in the crook between her foreleg and barrel, where she'd swept her wing around to partially cover his head as she stroked him with the other foreleg. "The Continuum isn't."

"You have a home here," Fluttershy said. "Nothing can completely make up for your family throwing you out, I know. Believe me, I know." She nuzzled the top of his head. "But you can do what I did. You can find friends where you are, like you have. You can make a new home, here. Chrysalis said you loved me, as a friend. You know I love you as my friend too, right?" Tears started in her own eyes. "I was so scared that Chrysalis would find some way to do something to you. I know how powerful you are, but I didn't know if she could fool you."

"Oh, no, Chrysalis is nothing," Discord said, lifting his head. "She can be defeated with food. Just think, if Pinkie Pie turned evil and decided to defeat Celestia, and she did it by throwing so much cake at her that she ate it all and got too fat to fight back!"

"Princess Celestia doesn't like cake that much," Fluttershy said sternly.

"But wouldn't it be hilarious if she did?" He tucked his head back down, still shivering slightly, but chuckling as well.

"You don't have to tell me if you don't want to," Fluttershy said, and felt him tense again, "but, um, what is an M blade anyway, if you don't mind my asking?"

For several moments Discord was still, and she thought he wouldn't answer the question. Then he uncoiled, lifting his head and body to look down at her. "Do you remember the things we talked about the other day?"

"About... you and your family?"

"That, yes." Between his paws there was a galaxy of stars, and another, and another, orbiting around a seething sunlike monstrosity that was so bright it was painful to look at. "There are two kinds of spirits. My kind are... the best way to describe our name for ourselves is Questioners. We live next door to the Heart of the Storm," and here a small stylized red arrow pointed at the roiling ball of energy in the center, "the pure chaos from which all the universes come from, the source of magic and creation itself. We draw our power from that, and shield the rest of the universes from it. We study, we test, and we promote diversity and variety, amongst our own ranks as well as within the universe." He scowled. "Or we did, once."

"That's... chaos?" It looked beautiful the way a flame was beautiful, and very, very dangerous. Fluttershy felt nervous even being near the representation Discord had created, even knowing he wouldn't let it harm her.

"In its purest form, yes. Nothing can exist within the Heart of the Storm, but it gives birth to everything there is, all possibilities boiling off of it and falling into creation over the fullness of time." He stroked it with the tip of his talon. "I said the others are mostly not as chaotic as I am, and that's true, but simply by virtue of where we live and what we are and where our power derives, we are all at least next of kin to chaos." Discord rotated his miniature orrery, bringing a galaxy into focus so Fluttershy could no longer see his rendition of the Heart of the Storm. "The others think of their role as maintaining harmony. They treat the universe as a garden, to prune, and weed, and remove obstacles from. They might best be called—" here he simply hummed a single note. "Or, M. Easier to say. And if we're shortening names, you could call us the Q. Needless to say, we don't get along."

"Are these – M – are the Elements related to them?"

Discord laughed. "Oh no no no. The M's concept of harmony would suggest that alicorns shouldn't exist, because they could be dangerous to the rest of you. They would have a universe where nothing aspires to greatness, because if it's not already great, then it disrupts the balance by becoming so. And the Questioners are becoming just like them... well, that's neither here nor there." He sighed. "The blade you saw was an artifact from a war that was old when your planet was new. With the power of an M behind it, an M blade can kill a Q... but a Q can't kill a Q with it, and... she... was once a Q. Any spell she gave Chrysalis... well, it shouldn't work. She was never an M. And the war is long over; no M would dare risk starting it again by aiding a former Q against another Q."

"But... you're not sure?"

"No one's ever tried to stab a Q who was bound inside a rock with one, so no, I'm not sure. But it doesn't matter. I disposed of the weapon. Nothing bad is going to happen." He laid his head down on her lap again, still shivering, so she wasn't sure he was telling the truth about that.

"I'm sure you're right," Fluttershy said, stroking his head with her wing again, trying to calm him. "And nopony is going to turn you to stone again, so nopony would ever have the chance again, and I know you can take care of yourself as long as your powers are free."

"...someone must have given it to her..." Discord mumbled into her fur, or something like that.

"What? I didn't really hear that?" Fluttershy asked.

"Nothing, nothing." Discord sprang up suddenly, no sign of the emotions he'd just been racked with on his face or body. "So! All this has been very interesting, but it's getting later, and I am just about to miss my window to go play with Moony before she starts her dream rounds!"

"Um, if Princess Luna is on duty then I don't think she wants to play..."

"Pish posh, Luna's always up for a round with me. At least, whenever I show up with a game, she plays it." From his snaggletoothed grin, Fluttershy was guessing that the game in question was probably "Harass the Princess and Rile Her Up."

"Why don't you stay over here tonight? I'll make us some cocoa, and you can get a nice soak and float on the marshmallows again..."

"No, no, duty calls! I'll see you in the morning, Fluttershy. Don't worry about me!" With that, he vanished.

Fluttershy sighed. Of course she was worried. She was very, very worried, particularly after the events of this evening, but what could she do? She couldn't actually stop him, and maybe he'd share some of this information with Luna. If he wasn't willing to talk to Celestia, maybe Luna would help.

It was full dark now, and Luna had just finished poking the last few holes in the sky when several of them rearranged themselves to form Discord's face. "I think you missed a couple," he said, more stars forming a stylized talon pointing at a spot on the sky that was currently unadorned.

Luna gritted her teeth. It was an illusion for her benefit, she knew; he wasn't really disrupting the positioning of her stars, and she was the only one who could see him. Nonetheless, Discord was the last being she wanted to be reminded of while she was setting up the stars. "I choose which stars to show to ponies," she said. "Epilantha and Parachroos are too hard for the naked eye to see even when I expose them."

Discord appeared next to her. "Censoring the sky? Tsk, tsk," he said. "Or are you just getting lazy in your old age? Maybe after a thousand years' vacation from the job, you're not as interested in doing it right anymore."

"It was hardly a vacation," Luna snapped. "Unless yours to the sunny Canterlot Gardens was a vacation as well. And you have long lost the right to criticize how I put up the stars."

It haunted her to this day, whether it was the right thing to show the stars in the sky to ponykind, when the one who had shown her how to do it and had been most adamant that she take on the task had been him. But she wanted to believe he hadn't been evil, the first time he'd come to their world. She wanted to believe that her existence, the fact that she still lived and the fact that she had the power to do what she did, wasn't due to the senseless whims of a beast of chaos. He'd been helping them fight a revolution, then, had saved her sister from the prison for dissidents and the Reformation Spells that would have been cast on her to make her content with the regime. He'd given them both wings, and power. Back then Luna had been so young, a filly who hadn't even had her cutie mark yet when first she'd met Discord. The idea of the revolution had been exciting, and since their cause had been just and she'd believed herself immortal the way every foal did, it had never entered her mind that she could truly come to harm, or that any of her friends in the fight could, or that there could be anything wrong about what they'd been doing, at all.

Overthrowing the Alicorn Masters had been right. Ponies had been far, far happier when they were free to choose their own destinies. Just because later she and Tia had had to overthrow Discord himself didn't mean that the things he'd taught them or the things he'd helped them do were inherently evil... right? But she'd been so much more certain before Nightmare Moon. Now she second-guessed everything, now that her own thoughts and feelings had proven to lead her so far astray.

"Wouldst thou take pleasure to see the stars? The true stars, not these paltry few scattered dots on the night?"

The stars had fascinated Luna from the time she was a foal in diapers. On any given night, there were four, five or six visible dots of light in the sky. Why? What were they? Where did they come from? The unicorns who raised the sun and the moon under the direction of the Masters never spoke of the stars; were the stars simply things that were there, not created by any pony? "I would! And if it please you, I'd fain well see them now!"

He'd chuckled. "So demanding thou art. So unlike to thy sister the peacemaker. And yet thy dominion shalt be the peaceful night. Do the hopes and dreams of ponykind boil within thee so savagely, then, to drive thee to such passion?"

"Stars, Discord. You promised!"

"And so I did, and so I shall." And then they were in blackness, the moon impossibly huge at their backs, and so many glittering lights surrounding Luna, she thought she might go mad from joy and wonder. She flapped her wings but did not move, and didn't feel air flow over them, and it felt as if she were falling forever and yet she didn't move at all. "Stay thy wings, little one, there's no gravity here in the dark between the stars, and the air thou breathest circles solely roundst thy head. There is none for thy wings here."

"Wherefore can there be so many stars? How? What are they?"

"Listen well, little Luna. Each star is a sun, like the one adorning thy sister's flank, and many of those suns shine on worlds much like your own. The magic that blankets Equestria creates a thick fog in the uppermost of the heavens round your world, so that all thou, or anypony, can see are the scant few bright enough to shine through the fog, and of them most are worlds that are sister to your own, sharing your sun. Equestrians cannot see the true stars, and that has played into the hooves of thine oppressors, for ponies denied the stars are denied their hopes. Stars symbolize magic, and the drive to achieve. Stars are the frontier that lies always ahead, the focus of hopes and dreams. And as Alicorn of the Moon, and Dreams, in both wise do the stars fall within thy domain."

"Do you mean to say you have shown this to me before even Celestia? These are mine own?"

"Tis but the truth, little Luna. I shall not show these stars to Celestia; her dreams are for the betterment of your world, not for the drive toward others. 'Twill be thy task to show them to her, and to all ponies of Equestria."

He had shown her the spell to let her sense the position of the stars above, even through the thaumic field around the world, and the spell to connect the thaumic field to the positions of those stars, so she could make a pinhole tunnel that allowed the light of the true stars to shine on the world. Celestia had never learned how to do that; it had driven Nightmare Moon to even greater paroxysms of rage when she'd sensed that Celestia wasn't opening the thaumic field at all, that she was simply taking tiny bits of sun and dotting them around the sky in the exact positions they'd been in the night that Celestia had banished her. For a thousand years, the stars that ponies could see were fake, except for the five planets in their system and Evening Star, the only one bright enough to see through the field without a telescope. For a thousand years, none of the points of light in the night sky moved except the six that were really there.

Luna hadn't been strong enough to raise the moon, her first few days back on this world, but she had done the stars the right way the very first night after her return, even though it had exhausted her and taken her most of the night. She had been placing and reinforcing the holes that allowed ponies to see the real stars ever since, experimenting with spells that would let her keep the thaumic field solid – now that she knew what sort of Nightmares lurked out there – but transmit the light of the stars to the lower atmosphere where ponies would see them. And she was not going to let Discord criticize how she did it. Maybe he had given her the stars, and the charge to give them to ponykind, but he'd lost the right to tell her to do anything when a thousand years of chaos had taken all of ponykind's hopes for generations and ground them into the dirt.

"Touchy, touchy. And here I thought you'd appreciate the reminder."

"Their names are Forget and Faded, in the ancient tongue. There is a reason I don't bother with them."

"Someday ponies will have telescopes powerful enough to see all of them, and then you'll have to."

"Someday ponies will be able to put telescopes on small stars, like the false stars my sister created except made of earth and metal, not sunfire, and then they will be outside the field and be able to see all the stars, even the ones I cannot with alicorn eyes. Until that day, I will choose which stars are worth creating holes in our world's defenses to see, and which are not." She turned her head to glare at Discord. "Was that your plan from the beginning? Show us the stars, and allow corruption from entities beyond them to creep through, as we hold the gates open of our own volition because the stars mesmerize us with their beauty and we cannot take that from ponykind?"

"Would it entirely shock you to know that the Spirit of Chaos sometimes doesn't think things through?" he said, and he sounded strangely tired for a being that she knew never slept. "No, Luna, all I wanted to do was to have you give ponies the stars. I wasn't considering the slightest possibility of emotivore entities drifting through space being attracted to your world and invading it through the mini-wormholes you make for the stars. Even I can be taken by surprise on occasion, you know." He perked up. "Where did you get the idea for putting telescopes on false stars?"

"There have been several proposals to do so that my sister was ignoring. None of them had any thought for how to get the false stars into place except to propose that Celestia raise them there, and now, several have suggested I do so instead. I have been pushing for a more robust proposal. Unicorns used to raise the sun and moon—"

"Unicorns used to rotate the planet. Not quite the same thing."

"Indeed, but putting a small satellite into orbit should be less taxing."

"Well, I'm pleased to see you ponies are moving forward. Satellites will result in amazing things. Such as freeze-dried ice cream!" An assortment of small spots of icy cold something-that-wasn't-snow fell on Luna's head. Discord was levitating above her, shoveling handfuls of the little spheres into his mouth. "Delicious! I'll bet you can't wait!"

"Is there a reason you are here, aside from annoying me?"

He looked down at her with sunglasses that, given the hour, he had no reason to be wearing. "Loonie, when have I ever needed a better reason than 'annoying you'?"

"Then desist. I have work to begin."

Discord swung his legs down and stood on the ground again. "Actually, I came because I was hoping we might bury the hatchet."

She looked to his paws. "I see no hatchet. Have you really missed an opportunity for a ridiculous wordplay pun?"

"Well, given that you don't trust me, I didn't think it was a great idea to be carrying weapons, but here, if you really want a hatchet—" He was now holding a large balloon hatchet, similar to the balloon hammers sold at fairs and carnivals. "We could bury this one." He tossed it to the ground. More freeze-dried ice cream morsels poured onto the hatchet, forming a mound and completely covering it.

"I am not ready to forgive you, Discord." Luna turned away. "You have done nothing to earn redemption except to refrain from further villainy."

"I..." He hesitated. "I shouldn't have dragged you into the rebellion. Not at your age. Celly was completely against it."

Luna looked at him, shocked. "That's what you apologize for? After all these years?"

"There's a reason every civilized society frowns on the use of child soldiers. You should have had the opportunity to be a child. I gave you wings, and a war, and responsibility for stars, when you were far too young for any of them, but I didn't really understand childhood. I've been spending time with the Cutie Mark Crusaders, and it's made me realize—"

"Realize what? That you should have refrained from making me an alicorn, with the power to protect myself and others, in the middle of a revolution where my elder sister was the standard-bearer? Our parents disappeared in the night, and they were loyal to the regime. What do you think would have become of me if you had left me behind?" Luna shook her head. "You did not take my childhood. You took my adulthood. You made me raise up a revolt against you, when you were the one who made my sister and myself what we are. Yes, I became ruthless in the revolution, as child soldiers do. Yes, I killed. It was war. But I remembered how to laugh, and how to play. How to love and how to trust. It was those two you damaged when you became the villain we had to set ourselves against, for so many years. Celestia played along with you, to try to make you moderate your behavior, and in that you drove a wedge between my sister and myself, which may have contributed to the darkness that blossomed within me. I have second-guessed my own stars since my return, because it was you who gave them to me. Apologize for that if you would, but do not apologize for making me strong at the time that I needed to be, disregarding my youth at the time."

"I'm not going to apologize for chaos," Discord snapped, folding his arms tightly in front of himself. "You ponies were staid. Hidebound. You needed chaos. You needed to forget every part of your civilization that came from the Masters and rebuild from the ground up."

"Generations tormented? Our civilization crushed completely, turned into anarchy? Our history, lost, such that only Tia and I remember what was? No. I will never believe we needed those things."

"Then I suppose we'll have to agree to disagree, because I think you did."

"I am weary of this conversation, and I have much work to do. Go now." Luna pointed at the door imperiously.

"But I came to give you a present." He was above her head again, his own head dangling down to speak in her ear. She flicked it, wishing she could flick his whole head away.

"I have no need of a present from you, nor any desire to take one."

"Oh, but you'll like this." He dangled a multi-faceted crystal ornament in front of her. She lit her horn to bat it away – and the center illuminated, with stars, and some object within the stars, moving so swiftly they streaked by it.

Luna took the ornament, puzzled. The object was some sort of reverse tripod, made of silver, steel or some other metallic grey-white substance, and shaped like... well, like a creature, but no creature she'd ever seen before. It had a huge, flat, round head, a tiny cylindrical body, and cylindrical wing-like protrusions from its back, each almost the same size as the body was. "What is this?"

"A starship," Discord said. He tapped the crystal, and now she was peering into a large room, where a huge window dominated, showing the stars. Beings were seated in chairs, facing the window – some on a lower row, in the center or directly in front of the window, others on a raised balcony behind the center and separated with a railing. The beings were intelligent, for they wore clothing, and a matching piece of jewelry adorned each one's chest, but they were bipeds, vaguely reminiscent of minotaurs. None had horns, and only one had anything close to the upper body musculature of a minotaur, a dark-coated one wearing a yellow shirt and a shining bandolier. Though he had no horns per se, he had obviously horny crest ridges on his head in about the same location where a unicorn horn would be. The others had smooth heads. None had anything like wings. Luna wondered if the dark-coated crested one was something like a unicorn, and the rest were something like earth ponies. All of them had highly articulated, long-fingered paws with opposable thumbs, but no claws like dragons had. "And that is a view of their bridge."

"These are aliens?" Luna said, holding the ornament close with her magic so she could peer into it. As she turned it, the angle of observation changed, so she could see the entire interior of the bridge. "And they sail space as if it were a sea?"

"In much the same way, yes. You'd like the guy with the macro-head, Luna; he takes himself way too seriously, is obsessed with honor, and he's hilarious. Unintentionally so, but still."

"You know these aliens? Personally?"

"Why, yes, yes I do." Discord smirked. "Feel free to spy on their adventures as much as you'd like. Press the bottom of the crystal to get audio; I've placed a translation spell on it so you'll understand them."

"Have you their permission for this spying?" Luna demanded.

Discord made a sound halfway between a giggle and a snort that sounded like "snrk". "Please. They have no concept of magic. They couldn't even begin to understand how I'm observing them. Besides, they keep themselves under constant observation as well; image and audio recordings of this bridge are being made constantly and shipped back home to their superiors for their records. So it's not as if they expect any kind of privacy."

"If they have no magic, how exactly are they sailing the stars?"

Discord leaned down into her ear again. "When ponykind finds that out, Luna, oh, the glorious days ahead of you then."

And then he vanished.

Damn him. He'd hit her where she was weakest against temptation – in her curiosity. Of course she would want to know more of these creatures who sailed the stars. But she was the Princess of Dreams, and she had duties to perform.

She'd watch the crystal later, after she had safeguarded the dreams of her little ponies. Luna set the crystal down and lowered herself into a meditative posture. The stars were out, the moon was high, and all across Equestria ponies had either bedded down for the night already or were in that process now. It was time.

Author's Note

So I promised to explain stuff in the author's note at the bottom.

This series doesn't just use Discord-as-Q, it's Discord-as-my-Q, compliant with my other Q fanfics and extensive universe building. I don't expect anyone here to have read enough of my Q fanfics to get all the references, and Fluttershy wouldn't get anything that Discord doesn't explain anyway, so I'm explaining stuff here rather than within story:

"The Heart of the Storm" - Created by Peter David in the novel Q-Squared, which has since been jossed by canon, but I kept the Heart of the Storm because the idea of the Q living in a bubble of order next to the seething cauldron of chaos and raw energy that creates the multiverse (which was my personal interpretation of the Heart of the Storm, it was never explained exactly what it was in the book) resonated with me.

The M were in the novel by Peter David and John de Lancie, "I, Q". It was never explained exactly what they were, how they were different from the Q, or why they were called M, but the one representative of the species we met hated Q for, what else, spreading chaos and disruption. My interpretation of the M, why they exist, what they do, and the nature of their cold war with the Q, is all mine.

Passion, Spirit of Love, is a Q who in other fanfics of mine is called Azi, and sometimes is just called Q. She and Glory (who is Voyager's canonical female Q, and who I established in the story "The Princess and the Dragon" to have taken dragon form on Equestria and called herself the Spirit of Righteous Warfare) were, in my headcanon, in a love triangle with Q for millions of years.

As her name suggests, Passion was obsessed with love, wanting to merge more deeply with her Q lovers than was safe for the preservation of her identity. She fell in love with a mortal, and petitioned to have him join the Continuum. Q, both out of severe jealousy and out of the genuine recognition that the guy wouldn't have mentally survived the Continuum, argued against it, and won. Passion planned to do it anyway. Q went to stop her, and she tried to kill him, and almost succeeded.

For her crimes, Passion was stripped of her powers and made mortal, and of course she chose to join her lover's species, a very long-lived species of barely-humanoid anthropoids who look like Slender Man with faces -- they're extremely tall, skinny, and bendy. They're also telepaths. Q, torn to bits and barely sapient, was placed in a pocket dimension to recover. A pocket dimension with nothing else in it. Even in stone, he could use his Q senses, he just couldn't communicate, use his body or exert his powers. In the pocket dimension there was nothing, and he didn't know how to use his powers. He went insane.

In his insanity, Q, once he got free, tracked down Passion to get revenge, and tortured her lover to death, because how dare she have taken her punishment and turned it into happiness when he had suffered alone in the darkness for years? The Continuum intervened, a little too late. They recognized their own mistake in Q's madness, and essentially put a band-aid on him by ordering him to stop thinking of Passion, put a geas on him that he cannot use his powers on her and cannot use his powers to find her, and suggested he go talk to a Listener... which worked out very badly, as you probably know if you're familiar enough with Q canon to know about his relationship with Guinan.

In the Next of Kin to Chaos Equestria-verse, it seemed obvious to me that since I already had a godlike character with an obsession with love who has really good reasons to hate Discord, and who in the past had reasons to go to the planet he'd been ordered to leave to demonstrate how she could do things better, that Passion was likely responsible for both the Changelings and Princess Cadance.

Moving right along, there are references to the backstory Discord has with the Princesses in this verse, which bear no resemblance whatsoever to the backstory Discord has with the Princesses in my Last Draconequus-verse. Also, there being Star Trek physics at work here, Luna is not raising the stars, she is making them visible. Emotivores who feed on negative emotion and possess people are both a Star Trek thing and an MLP thing, and in Star Trek when they possess people it's by amplifying their negative emotions and the people can overcome it if they know it's happening, so I am assuming that Nightmare Entities are also a thing here and that they got Luna the same way the Gorgon got a bunch of little kids to kill their parents in Star Trek.

I suspect everyone reading this story knows exactly what was in the ornament Discord gave Luna, but just in case you really do know nothing of Star Trek and you're reading this fic because you love my work that much, that was the Enterprise-D, the one Q likes to visit and torment Captain Picard.

The interlude with Daring Do is just Q getting rid of a weapon that could possibly maybe kill him in as personally entertaining a way as possible. "Exploring the oceans" -- from Discord's perspective, this is just some random crap he came up with, but for me, it's a reference to the fact that John de Lancie's favorite hobby is sailing. He probably didn't actually go back in time and give the weapon to Ahuizotl; probably he just put it in one of Ahuizotl's standard booby-trapped swag stashes. Probably. On the other hand, betting on Discord doing something responsibly and not risking his life or the timestream is maybe not the safest bet.

Oh, and if you didn't realize, Chrysalis talking about taking by force what ponies have denied her changelings is morally equivalent to a dude threatening to rape a girl who won't be his girlfriend, not morally equivalent to a noble effort to stand up to an oppressor. The thing ponies have denied her changelings is love, in sufficient quantities that the ponies' health would be compromised. Her lings are not starving to death, she's just an aggressive asshole who doesn't see anyone but changelings as real people... but she's smart enough not to want to go up against Discord.

Also also! There's a reason why in Luna's flashback she calls Discord "you" and he calls her "thou". You was the correct term of address for your social betters. Luna is a child addressing her mentor, and while she may be a very pushy little filly, she has sufficient manners to know who she should thou and who she should you. Discord, being an adult talking to a child, was as entitled to use thou as a princess is entitled to use it with pretty much everyone she meets.

Destiny's Not All It's Cracked Up To Be

As usual, Scootaloo was the first one to make it to the clubhouse that morning. Which was kind of annoying, because Apple Bloom was bringing breakfast, but Apple Bloom always had a few chores to do in the morning. And Sweetie Belle slept as late as she could get away with.

She pulled out the homework she hadn't done last night because nothing was less cool than homework, figuring she'd get the living dictionary to help her with it, as usual. Sweetie Belle was a unicorn with money. That meant fancy tutors and lots and lots of books that she personally owned and had read, so she generally did better in school than Apple Bloom or Scootaloo did. Every so often her sister made noises about sending her away to some fancy-schmancy unicorn academy, but so far Sweetie Belle had always shut down any such discussion by tearing up and starting to cry at the thought of being sent away from her friends, and Rarity was apparently secretly a marshmallow. (Or not so secretly, given how much she looked like a marshmallow.) Scootaloo thought that crying was approximately the least cool thing to do in the universe – even less cool than homework – but she had to admit, Sweetie got results.

"Homework?" a voice behind her said dismissively. "How very tedious. Surely you can think of something better to do with your time than that!"

Scootaloo jumped, almost achieving flight in the tiny space of the clubhouse before crashing back to the floor and faceplanting. She turned around. "Don't do that!"

"Do what?" Discord asked, an expression of mock, exaggerated innocence on his face. "Don't laugh hysterically at you? Oh, see how good I'm being? I'm actually pulling that one off! Amazing, isn't it!"

"Don't sneak up on me like that!" Scootaloo said indignantly.

"Oh? How would you prefer I sneak up on you then?"

Before Scootaloo could formulate a proper answer to that ridiculous question, Apple Bloom arrived with a pack strapped to her back, the sweet smell of warm food wafting along with her. "Hi, Scootaloo, hope you didn't have to wait too long! Hay, Discord, what're you doing here?"

"What, I'm not allowed to drop in on my dear little friends?"

Apple Bloom's eyes narrowed. "You sure you ain't up to any trouble?"

"Who, me?" A halo appeared above his head. "I'm as pure and innocent as the driven snow."

"You know, once you drive a cart through it, snow gets real dirty," Apple Bloom said.

"Forget him. I'm hungry," Scootaloo said. "What's for breakfast?"

Apple Bloom knelt down, unbuckled her pack, and slid it carefully off her body. She then unlatched the sides of it and lifted the lid. "Waffles!"

"Oh, how uninspired," Discord sniffed. "Apple waffles with apple syrup."

"Not maple syrup?" Scootaloo asked, somewhat disappointed. She liked apples well enough, but apple waffles with apple syrup did sound kinda... overly apple-y.

"Granny was tryin' something new," Apple Bloom said. "We used extra tart apples in the syrup and sweet ones in the waffles. See if you can taste it."

Scootaloo piled some waffles onto one of the plates Apple Bloom had brought. "Don't I get to taste test any?" Discord asked.

"Sure, but you're gonna have to make your own plate," Apple Bloom said. "I didn't know you were gonna be here, so I didn't bring an extra plate for you. What're you doing here anyway?"

"Annoying us," Scootaloo said.

Apple Bloom shrugged. "He ain't too annoying so far."

"You do have an extra plate."

"That's Sweetie Belle's plate, Discord, and unlike you, she doesn't have enough magic that she can just magic up her own plate."

He made a terribly put-upon sigh. "If you insist." A swirling vortex of nothingness interspersed with glittering spots appeared in his paw. "Load me up."

"That's a mite rude. How're you supposed to ask?"

Discord rolled his eyes so hard they rotated backward into his eye sockets, causing a side of his eyeballs to appear that had little pictures of Discord rolling his eyes. "Pretty please with sugar and coconut on top and also exploding tree sap, could I have some waffles, Miss Apple Bloom, ma'am, if I could be so bold as to ask?"

"You surely can." Apple Bloom loaded three waffles onto his plate.

"I thought you said you don't need to eat that one time," Scootaloo said.

"I don't. I just like it when my friends feed me." He smirked.

Sweetie Belle arrived, somewhat out of breath. "Hi everypony! And Discord! Ooh, do I smell waffles?"

"You sure do." Apple Bloom plopped several on a plate for Sweetie Belle. "Sweetie, don't Rarity feed you none? You're always eatin' the breakfast I bring like you're starvin'. I mean if you just love my Granny's food that much, then that's all right by me, but—"

"Rarity always says ladies don't eat quickly, and if I wanted to get more breakfast than I have time to eat without eating quick, then I need to get up earlier," Sweetie said, in between stuffing her face.

"As charming as all this domesticity is, now that Sweetie Belle is here, I can finally talk to you girls about the entire reason I'm here today," Discord said. "How would you like to go on an adventure?"

"It's a school day," Scootaloo said.

"As if that ought to matter to you! Do you think Rainbow Dash would care that it's a school day if she had a chance to go on an adventure instead?"

"Rainbow Dash doesn't have to deal with my folks."

Discord tilted his head and gazed at Scootaloo cockeyed. "I thought you were an orphan living in a cardboard box in an alley somewhere. Or in an orphanage."

"Why would you think that?" Apple Bloom asked, dumbfounded.

"Because he doesn't think that, he's just trying to be annoying," Scootaloo said. "For your information, Mr. Draconequus, I live with my aunt, and there isn't even any such thing as an orphanage in Ponyville. Maybe in a big city or something, but in Ponyville, if your parents died or something, there's always going to be somepony who will take you in."

"And yet she lets you run completely wild?"

"It's a pegasus thing. If our folks are all crazy overprotective like Rarity and Applejack are – no offense, guys—"

"None taken," Apple Bloom said.

Sweetie Belle frowned. "Rarity's not that bad."

"—anyway, how are we supposed to learn to be awesome if our folks are too overprotective? So there's that."

Discord lifted an eyebrow. "Hmm. Perhaps I should consider being a pegasus, then."

"As if you'd ever wanna go without your magic."

"But if your aunt isn't 'crazy overprotective', then why would she stop you from going on an adventure?"

"Look, there are some things you just don't argue with my aunt about, and school is one of them. Why do you think I don't ditch to practice flying every day? Well, that and I get to hang with my friends."

"If you go on an adventure with me you get to hang with your friends."

"Discord, she's right," Apple Bloom said. "It's a school day. You have any idea how much trouble I got in the last time I ran off on a school day to go on an 'adventure'?"

"Yeah," Sweetie Belle said. "Besides, there's always after school!"

"Don't encourage him," Scootaloo said.

"Oh, Scootaloo. As if you weren't the first one champing at the bit to go visit the dragon lands."

"Yeah, and we almost got toasted."

"But you didn't! Because I was there to protect you!"

"Mr. Discord," Sweetie Belle said, "I think Scootaloo does like going on adventures, but you're... a little pushy. You offer to take us somewhere, but you don't let us pick where and you don't give us any control over what happens. We don't just want adventures, we want our cutie marks, and that's not going to happen if we just let somepony take us someplace. We have to be involved in doing the things and deciding what we do if we're going to get our cutie marks from it!"

Discord flopped on the floor, on his back, with one arm over his eyes. "Fine," he said sulkily. "I still don't understand why you three are so obsessed with your cutie marks, though."

"How can you plan for your future if you don't know what kind of pony you are yet and what it's your destiny to be?" Apple Bloom asked.

"Plus, Diamond Tiara won't shut up about it," Scootaloo grumbled.

"Diamond Tiara. Please." Discord sat up. "Do you realize, that much vaunted cutie mark she's obtained is as much a constraint as it is a benefit?"

"How do you mean?" Sweetie Belle asked.

"The sum total of her destiny is that she wears a tiara really well." Discord snickered. "Imagine having that for your future! 'My destiny is to look really good when I wear jewelry.' Yes, but what about your interests? Your skills? Your talents outside of being an attractive decoration? 'No, no, what's really important is that I look really good in a tiara!'"

Okay, that was funny. Scootaloo chuckled, and Apple Bloom giggled. Sweetie Belle frowned. "I dunno if it's that simple..."

"Or her friend, Silver Spoon. Whose cutie mark is, by great coincidence... a silver spoon."

"Her name was Silver Shine before she got her cutie mark," Apple Bloom pointed out. "And Diamond Tiara was Diamond Rich. She changed from her family name to her mark name when she got her mark."

"Whatever." Discord waved a dismissive paw. "The point is, Silver Spoon's entire talent is being born wealthy. That's all that means. A silver spoon means you were born to wealth. Which everypony already knew about her, so how is that even a talent? Or a destiny? Or anything that couldn't have been guessed from the brand name of the glasses she's wearing? How much do they cost again?"

"Like we'd know how much super expensive glasses cost," Scootaloo said.

"I do!" Sweetie Belle volunteered. "They're from Diamond Clarity's line – no relation to Diamond Tiara, of course! She makes the lenses out of diamonds so they can't crack. They're incredibly expensive. You could rent a boutique in Canterlot for three months for what those glasses cost." Scootaloo, Apple Bloom and Discord all looked at her. "What? Rarity teaches me these things! She sells lens diamonds to Clarity – not many, because the diamonds you can use for lenses are really rare, they have to be just the right shape to start with or Clarity's spell won't work to grind them right, and they have to be completely clear inside."

"Right. So my point is... what does her cutie mark even say about her that everypony didn't already know? At least Diamond Tiara now knows that wearing a diamond tiara is her special talent, but what did Silver Spoon learn about herself? 'I was born wealthy.' Yes, my dear, we know."

"I don't think it's that simple," Apple Bloom said. "When I talked to her about it at her cuteceñera, a few years back, she said it symbolized handling wealth with grace. Like, not being a brat just 'cause you're rich or shoving it in everypony's faces. Diamond does that a lot, but Silver Spoon just goes along with her... she doesn't brag about her own wealth."

"How does being friends with the only other rich pony in class sound like handling it with grace or whatever?" Scootaloo said, not entirely willing to let one of their enemies be granted a benefit of the doubt even if it meant letting Discord score a point in this... what even was this? It wasn't an argument, was it? Because if Discord was going to argue that Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon had stupid cutie marks and were jerks, he'd have 100% of Scootaloo's support, at least for his argument.

It wasn't that Scootaloo didn't like Discord. The adventures he'd taken them on to "reward" them for being so chaotic were honestly fun. And the personal apology he'd given them for the way he'd behaved toward them during his transformation of Ponyville into the Chaos Capital of Equestria, when he'd offered to do them a favor to repay them for letting him out of stone by fighting in front of him, and that "favor" had turned out to be putting a possessed beanie on Diamond Tiara's head and turning her into a completely different pony for a few hours, suggested that he really was trying to reform. More or less. Even if Fluttershy had been standing behind him, prompting him the whole time, he'd sounded kind of sincere about the apology. Anyway, she didn't hate him or anything. She just didn't trust him. She'd gotten in trouble with her aunt for missing school by going on one of Discord's adventures, and her aunt's response to things like getting covered in tree sap, nearly turned to stone by a cockatrice, or almost burning down Ponyville, had generally been on the level of "That's nice, Scooty honey, I'm glad to see you're getting exercise." It was seriously hard to end up in the doghouse with her aunt, but somehow Discord had gotten her there.

"That's not true," Apple Bloom said. "Sweetie's rich."

"I am not! My mom and dad are just middle class average unicorns."

Apple Bloom snorted. "Yeah, but you live with Rarity."

"What's that supposed to mean?"

"Those glasses you said that don't break? If you needed glasses, Rarity would get you those. If I needed glasses, or Scootaloo did, we'd never get ones made out of diamonds."

"Hay, I wouldn't even want any. Those sound heavy. Pegasus goggles are magically reinforced so they don't break either." Scootaloo briefly imagined herself needing glasses, and therefore having an excuse to go everywhere wearing flight goggles. Really awesome ones, in purple with yellow lightning bolts on the straps.

"You would too get that kind of glasses if you really needed them," Sweetie retorted. "Because Rarity is best friends with Applejack, so she'd buy you some. And because she sells gems for lenses to Diamond Clarity, she'd just work real hard to find a lot of gems so she could get several to sell and then she'd trade them for glasses for you instead of selling them and she'd get a really good discount. It's not because she's rich."

"She can go dig gems any time she wants with her special spell to find them, so how is she not rich?"

"Anyway Silver Spoon used to play with me when we were really little, but you know how ponies get when they get their cutie mark! Then they don't play with anypony who doesn't have one, and she was one of the first to get hers in our class."

"None of this is making me think cutie marks are nearly as special as you girls think they are," Discord said.

"But how do you know who you even are until you know who you're destined to be?" Apple Bloom asked, which sounded a whole lot like the same thing she said a few minutes ago.

"How do you know what you're destined to be is going to be any good for you?" Discord retorted.

"Don't be silly," Sweetie Belle said. "Getting your cutie mark is always good because now you know what your special talent is!"

"And what if your special talent is something that ponykind despises?"

"That couldn't happen," Apple Bloom said decisively. "Ponies don't get cutie marks in things like being bad ponies."

"Really? In the history of all of Equestria, no pony has ever gotten a cutie mark for theft, or arson?"

"If you had a cutie mark for stealing things, then maybe you could become a police officer and steal things back from thieves!" Sweetie Belle said. "And if you had a cutie mark for burning things down, maybe you could be a firefighter and set fire breaks so that forest fires can't burn down towns! There's something good you could do with any kind of cutie mark. You'd just have to think of it."

"Suppose you had a cutie mark for overthrowing governments," Discord said dryly. "Here in Celestia's eternal utopian tyranny, how would you ever use that in a way that ponies would approve of?"

"Um... get rid of corrupt mayors?" Sweetie Belle suggested.

Suddenly Scootaloo realized exactly what she thought Discord was talking about, because it was something she thought a lot about herself. "No, no, wait, I get it! Like what if you got a cutie mark in being a totally awesome soldier... except there isn't any war anymore in Equestria? What would you do with that?"

"Exactly!" Discord said triumphantly. "Scootaloo gets it." He then ruffled her mane. She glared up at him.

"Um... you could join the Royal Guard," Sweetie Belle said.

"Or a militia," Apple Bloom pointed out. "My brother does militia once a month. He says the farmer stallions have to keep in form in case something bad happens and nopony from Canterlot can get to us in time."

"Yeah, yeah, and you could join the Wonderbolts. They're a standby militia too. But none of that's, like, fighting a war. We still get a lot of weird animals coming out of the Everfree sometimes and some major league bad guys that Rainbow Dash and your sisters and the others have to put the smackdown on. No offense," she said to Discord.

"None taken. I fully understand."

He was such a drama prince. Scootaloo didn't even know if he was being sarcastic or not, but she went on. "But suppose the thing you're really good at is the war part? You're good at finding enemies and cutting them up with swords or shooting them with arrows or whatever. But we don't have wars anymore. The closest thing we ever got was the Changelings and if you were fighting Changelings then they could look like your best friends and then even the best soldier ever would have problems. You can fight magical monsters or whatever but it's not the same thing. So you never get to use your special talent, because there's peace."

"I get it," Sweetie Belle said. "And peace is good, so it's not like you can say 'Oh, I wish there was a war so I could use my talent!' That would be wrong."

"But you'd feel that way anyway," Discord said. "Even if it was wrong. Your desire to do what you love, what you're good at, what you're destined to do, will eventually be stronger than your desire to do what's considered moral and correct by society. And what is worse, everypony who saw your cutie mark would think, at best, that you're useless, because there aren't any wars; at worst, that you're a monster who doesn't belong in pony society, because what you're good at is being a murderer."

"Soldiers aren't murderers," Scootaloo objected.

"They kill sapient beings in war. Killing sapient beings is murder. Justifiable murder, to be certain, if the war is in defense and not a war of conquest, but it's still murder. Do you think ponies would really be comfortable with somepony whose special talent is for killing other ponies?"

"But... does that even happen?" Apple Bloom asked. "Or do ponies get a destiny they can actually fulfill? I mean if you had a special talent for growin' moon plants on the moon, but you can't go to the moon because that's science fiction unless you're Princess Luna, you'd be pretty miserable. But I've never met a pony with a destiny they can't fulfill."

"And you've met all the ponies," Discord said.

"Well, I do try to ask every grownup I ever meet about their cutie mark, so no, I haven't met them all, but I've met a lot."

"It can happen," Discord said. "You're unlikely to discover a cutie mark you can't fulfill – you'll channel it in some other way. But if your cutie mark made sense and was appropriate when you were young, and then the world changed and it wasn't appropriate anymore... Well, imagine that Scootaloo's soldier got their mark during the last war Equestria had, in their childhood, and they were a distinguished and skilled veteran by the time they were an adult. And then peace came, and another war never came in the soldier's lifetime. How would you feel knowing your talent was one that was no longer needed? Or that you were sure was still needed, but no one in all of Equestria agreed with you, and they would rather you go quietly disappear than remind them that once upon a time they thought they needed soldiers? What then?"

"Um... I guess that would be pretty awful," Sweetie Belle said.

"You children are more fortunate than you know. You don't know why you exist, what you were made for, what your special talent is. It could be anything. It could be everything. You still exist in a state of plenipotentiality, when you can dream of being virtually anything at all, and nothing stands in the way of those dreams. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon know what their talents are, and what their talents are is something limited, pathetic and useless. They can't dream of being something great, something unique; they can't imagine that someday they could change the world, because they are, respectively, a filly who's good at wearing a tiara and a filly who's good at spending her mommy's money wisely. You three could be anything."

"If that's how you feel," Apple Bloom said, "why do you keep wanting to take us on adventures where we might get our cutie marks?"

"Because I know you probably won't get your cutie marks from the things I show you... but knowledge is power, and there's other important things to learn besides what cutie mark you have. What good would Twilight's talent for magic have been if she'd never learned to read, so she couldn't read spellbooks? If Rarity hadn't known how to sew, would she be a dressmaker now, or would her mark have made her become a jeweler or a miner?"

"I guess that's true..." Sweetie said uncertainly.

"But Rainbow Dash would still have been awesome," Scootaloo said.

"Yes, but if she'd never learned to manage weather she'd be awesomely broke. You don't make a living from being awesome, Scootaloo."

"The Wonderbolts do."

"Is Rainbow Dash a member of the Wonderbolts?"

"Not yet..."

"Then if she hadn't known how to manage weather – which is a skill the Wonderbolts also need to know, if I'm not mistaken – how would she ever be a Wonderbolt?"

"It sounds like you're saying we should go to school and study because you never know what you'll need to know to make your destiny happen once you get your cutie mark," Apple Bloom said.

Discord made a face. "I'm fairly sure that that is the last thing I want to be saying."

"Look." Apple Bloom faced him, looking up into his eyes. "An adventure would be cool and all, even if it doesn't get us our cutie marks, and I guess you're right that it's better to not have a cutie mark than to have a bad one."

"That wasn't honestly what I was saying—"

"But the thing is, we have school. And Sweetie Belle was gonna tutor us on our homework and instead we had you in here jawing away and now Scootaloo and I don't have our homework done. Which means we're gonna have to do it after school. Which means no adventures, not before school, not till after homework. You wanna come around then, sure, I bet we can all do something fun. But right now, we've got to get to school."

Discord sighed heavily. "I could take you back to the moment you left once we were done."

"And then we'd be all tired out after having an adventure and we wouldn't be ready for school anymore."

"We've got to go," Sweetie Belle said. "Thanks for the offer, Discord, come ask once we're done with our homework! We might be ready then!"

"As if I don't have a schedule of my own? You assume I have no pressing engagements that would interfere this evening," Discord sniffed.

"You told us once that chaos means never having to have a schedule," Scootaloo pointed out.

"I said that, did I?" He rolled his eyes. "Oh, fine. I'll drop by this evening if I'm still interested and haven't completely forgotten what I was going to do."

And then he vanished. Scootaloo grabbed her saddlebags and maneuvered them onto her back. If she didn't hurry she was going to be late.

Fluttershy was just finishing up with feeding all the animals breakfast when Discord appeared. "Fluttershy! Go somewhere with me today?"

She smiled at him. "Maybe. How did things go with Luna last night?"

"Splendidly. We even buried a hatchet. Under space ice cream no less."

"Space... ice cream?"

"Well, she's the alicorn of the Moon, did you expect her to eat regular ice cream? And what do you mean 'maybe'?"

"Let's have some tea, first. And I haven't had breakfast yet; do you want some?"

He grinned at her. "Always." Discord didn't need to eat, but he seemed to greatly enjoy doing so, and even more, he enjoyed getting ponies to make him food.

Fluttershy made tea, eggs – the girls had been prolific lately – and strawberry muffins. Sometimes she tried to make something particularly chaotic and weird for Discord, but most of the time she just made the kind of food she liked, because Discord was perfectly capable of altering it if he didn't like it. Also, because she hadn't yet made something he'd decided he didn't like.

Once she was sitting down securely, sipping her tea and watching Discord sip his (he was actually sipping the actual tea this time and leaving the cup alone), she said, "Where did you want to go?"

"I don't know. Somewhere. Anywhere. Somewhere fun. How would you like to go flying in a part of the world that ponies have never been to?"

"Um... I'm not a very strong flyer, though, you know that."

"Easily solved." He snapped his talon, and Fluttershy felt strangely buoyant. Not actually light enough to float without trying to fly, but light enough that she felt that a single wing flap would have her in the air. "I've reduced the pull of gravity on you, so you should, for a while, be able to fly with as much endurance as Rainbow. Not as fast, obviously, but right now it should be more comfortable and easy to fly than to walk."

"Okay. Well, maybe going flying somewhere with you would be nice. Where did you have in mind?"

"Haven't decided yet, but someplace where there are a lot of animals, I'm sure."

"Oh, that does sound fun."

His paws twisted themselves together. "Do you know I think you're maybe the first mortal being ever who's responded to my saying 'I want to take you somewhere and show you something interesting' with, 'Oh, that sounds like fun'?"

"That's very sad." Fluttershy flitted over to him, which was in some respects actually harder than usual, because her instinct when flying was to flap her wings really hard, and as light as she felt right now, she was fairly sure that that would plaster her on the ceiling. She hugged him briefly and let him go. "I'm so glad that you have somepony now. The Cutie Mark Crusaders enjoy going places with you, right?"

He rolled his eyes. "They don't want to go anywhere until after school."

"Well, school is important. But they'd be happy to go afterwards, I'm sure. And Pinkie goes places with you."

"I suppose. But Celestia wouldn't."

"Princess Celestia must be very busy, so that shouldn't be surprising." His paws were still clasped and twisting around each other nervously. "Discord, is there something wrong?"

"No, of course not. What would be wrong? Everything's perfectly fine."

"Is this about... the thing that happened yesterday?"

"I have a question for you, Fluttershy," he announced, and then suddenly both of them were in the middle of the room and he was coiled around her, gazing directly into her eyes. "I'm going to present a hypothetical situation, and you need to tell me what the right answer to be a good friend is."

"Um... all right..."

"Let's say that someone is after you. You don't necessarily know who. It could be anypony. All you know is that they could strike at any moment."

Fluttershy's eyes went wide. "That sounds like a very scary scenario."

"What's more, your friends – the other Bearers – can't help you. They're out of the picture."

"Why?" Fluttershy asked. "Did something happen to them? Wouldn't I be focusing on rescuing them rather than trying to protect myself from whoever is after me, if they're gone?"

He sighed, uncoiling, and teleported back to his feet. "It's a hypothetical, Fluttershy. Maybe this is happening before you ever met them."

"Well, I've known Rainbow Dash for a long time—" His expression was impatient. "—but all right, I accept the hypothetical."

He paced. "So, you do have your animal friends. You know they'll fight to protect you. They might even succeed – you're friends with a bear, after all. But most of them are so much weaker than you and not nearly as intelligent. The odds that they could fight off something that thinks it can attack you are low. And whoever is coming after you might even target your animal friends, to make you suffer before they attack you." Discord stopped pacing and faced Fluttershy directly. "As a friend. Is it better to stay with your animal friends, who want to protect you even if they can't, and risk all their lives? Or is it better to go away by yourself and try to survive on your own, even if it means you'll never see your animal friends again, because it will keep them safe?"

Fluttershy considered. "Why wouldn't I ask other ponies to help protect me?"

"Because you don't know any other ponies? Or because they aren't your friends?"

"But there are ponies whose job it is to protect anypony. Such as police officers, or the Royal Guard. And there are ponies who would protect other ponies out of the goodness of their hearts. Even if I wasn't friends with Applejack... well, everypony in town knows how strong and gentle Big Mac is. Even if I wasn't friends with his sister, I might go to him and ask him if he could protect me."

"What if he didn't like you?"

Fluttershy looked down. "There was once a time when I first came to Ponyville when I thought nopony liked me. Or ever would, aside from Rainbow. My parents helped me get a place to live down here and then left me alone, and all the ponies in Ponyville were strangers, and I thought they wouldn't like me because I was new and I was a pegasus and I couldn't fly very well so the pegasi wouldn't like me either and I was useless because my only talent was for making friends with animals. But it turned out not to be true. They didn't know me, but they liked me just fine when they did know me."

"Okay, so stepping out of the realm of the hypothetical 'you', what if this happened to a pony who was a jerk?"

"Like Trixie."

"Yeah, okay, like Trixie."

"Someone who is arrogant and has spent a lot of time acting as if she's better than other ponies, and stronger, and good at everything, so it will be embarrassing to her to even have to ask for help, and most ponies who've met her don't like her."

"Yes, yes. All that."

Fluttershy looked directly up at him. "Even Trixie could find ponies who are good-hearted enough to protect her, if she's willing to ask. If she's going to pretend that she doesn't need anypony, then either she stays with her pets and they get hurt, or she leaves her pets alone and they miss her and they don't know what happened to her, and either way she probably gets attacked. But if she'd just own up to the fact that she's not as great and powerful as she says she is, and that sometimes even she can need help... a good pony would probably still protect her."

Discord looked at her for several seconds without moving. Then he said, "That's very interesting," in the low-pitched, almost growly voice he sometimes used when he was being very, very serious, like some of the things he'd said during the incident where he'd trapped Twilight in a book.

"What's interesting about it?"

"Never mind that!" She should have known; Discord never let himself show his vulnerable side, even to her, for too long. "Are you done with your breakfast? Let's go!"

There was still egg on her plate, and half a muffin, but to be honest she didn't have a lot of appetite. Discord's behavior was worrying her. She wished he'd just open up to her and tell her something. The hypothetical he'd just described was obviously not hypothetical. In bits and pieces, she'd been putting things together; his family had thrown him out. He was afraid of something, but wouldn't tell her what. When Twilight had played a prank on him by blocking his powers, he'd reacted as if he was facing execution. Chrysalis had told him yesterday that his ex, the one it seemed to cause him physical pain to talk about, had tried to have him killed during the Changeling invasion, and while he'd claimed it wouldn't have worked... he wasn't always truthful.

She couldn't quite see how the pieces all fit. But she could guess, from his "hypothetical situation", that he thought someone was gunning for him, or might be, and he was afraid that whoever it was might attack his friends. In fact Chrysalis had more or less warned him that exactly that might happen. She hoped that the answer she'd given him would convince him to go to Princess Celestia, swallow his pride, and ask for the help he needed. Surely he knew she was a good pony and would do whatever it took to help him, even though they'd been enemies for years. And if Princess Celestia knew what the threat actually was, she could certainly protect him from it. She'd only fallen to the Changelings on the day of the wedding because she hadn't known they were coming; she'd thought Shining Armor would be sufficient protection for the city, without knowing that he was under Changeling control.

Well. If he wanted to distract himself from whatever it was for a little while by going flying, she could go along with that. And maybe later she could remind him that Princess Celestia was the kind of pony who would help someone in need no matter what, and that she had the resources to deal with any sort of threat if she knew it was coming. "Okay, we can go," she said.

They popped into existence high in the air above an ocean. Normally Fluttershy would have panicked, appearing in mid-air with no time to prepare herself for flight, but she felt so light and floaty; a couple of flaps and she was in control of her flight, her bearings solid under her wings. Discord was next to her, his wings much larger than normal, closer to the proportion of dragon wings to body, though he was still much smaller and snakier than any dragon she'd seen. Well, bigger than Spike, but still more serpent-like. He was flapping them, something he rarely did except to stabilize himself when he levitated vertically. The oversized wings moved in slow steady beats, more rhythmic than most things he did.

"Where are we?" Fluttershy asked.

"The ocean," Discord said, somewhat unhelpfully.

"Okay... but which ocean?"

"Near Zebrica. We're going to see some amazing creatures you've never seen except in zoos, Fluttershy."

"That sounds very nice."

It was surprisingly peaceful up here. Surprisingly, because this was Discord, and he was usually so manic and full of energy. It was fun to spend time with him, but it was very rarely peaceful. The ocean was beautiful; she could occasionally see dolphins cresting above the waves. As they headed inland, they passed over rocky beaches empty of any sapient life, but she knew from her books that if she dipped low she might see crabs, or starfish, or any number of other interesting tidal pool creatures.

"Where are the zebras?"

"The continent is a large place; these particular beaches aren't anywhere convenient to creatures who can't fly. There are plenty of frolicking zebras on beaches to the north and south where the mountain ranges are lower and they can more easily get through."

"Are there no intelligent flying creatures in Zebrica?"

"Oh, there's plenty. There's the gray parrots, the flying monkeys, the gargoyles, the sphinxes... but none of them live around here. You might actually be the first intelligent native of this world to see this beach." He shrugged. "Probably not. It's not like zebras don't sail ships. But it's possible."

They headed into the mountains. She saw gorillas, various birds, and creatures that looked a lot like the buffalo back home. "Are those buffalo?"

"Indeed they are, but the ones in Equestria technically are not. Those folks down there are the original buffalo; ponies named the Equestrian buffalo as such because they didn't know better, and there is a resemblance. Equestrian buffalo—"

"—are actually bison, yes, I know. Oh, I'm sorry, I didn't mean to interrupt. That was rude of me."

Discord snorted. "Fluttershy, if that was rude, I'm a potato chip." He did not then turn into a potato chip.

For a few hours, they flew. Fluttershy had never been able to stay airborne so high, so long, but with the gravity on her body lessened, it was easy. She felt like she could fly forever, as if it was easier to do this than to trot. And they saw so many creatures, some she'd seen in zoos, some she'd seen in books, some she'd never seen before in her life. When they passed over groups of intelligent creatures, like a zebra village or a group of ibexes on an expedition to find a nice place to graze, Discord made them invisible – the sight of a pony probably wouldn't startle them too much, ponies could be found in many places and were known to travel, but a draconequus was another story.

Then Discord wanted to go to the top of the mountains, to go skiing. Fluttershy balked. "It seems so dangerous," she whimpered, looking at the steep decline below her as she stood near the mountaintop.

Discord sighed. "Fluttershy. There are no trees. There's nothing for you to crash into. And you can fly. If you fell off the side of the mountain, you could just flap your wings. Plus you're with me. I kept you safe in space; do you really think you're in danger anywhere on the ground, if you're with me?"

Fluttershy trembled. "Yes, but..."

He scowled. "I see. You still don't trust me."

"That's not it at all!" Fluttershy burst out. "Discord... do you even know what fear feels like? Stupid fear? Fear of something that you know you shouldn't be that afraid of but just thinking about it makes your heart pound and your sides start to sweat? And all you want to do is whinny, rear up, and run for your life, or flatten down and hide under something, and you know it's stupid, and you know you shouldn't feel that way but you can't help yourself and every minute that it's happening all you can think about is how much you're disappointing everypony and what a coward you are and what a failure and it makes you want to just sink into the ground and not exist?"

Discord stared at her. Then he sat down on the snow-covered ground. "Fluttershy. Flutters, come here," he said gently. "Come here, dear."

Still trembling, Fluttershy walked over to him, slowly. As soon as she was almost within his reach, she found herself teleported into his arms, lying on his warm furry coils. He held her and gently stroked her mane. "Fluttershy, isn't it true that one of the things you fear is interacting with other ponies? Strangers?"

She nodded, not trusting herself to speak, trying to keep back the tears.

"You do that every day. You are so much braver than any pony I know. Than any intelligent being I know. Because you're terrified of almost everything. But you face that fear. Your pal Rainbow Dash is afraid of hardly anything – but the things she does fear? She'll never face them unless somepony's going to die otherwise. Most of your friends are like that. It takes the threat of a friend dying or Equestria being plunged into eternal night or something to make them face their fear. You have to face your fear to go get carrots."

"It—it's not that bad, anymore," she whispered. "I know Golden Harvest. She's not a stranger."

"But when new ponies move into Ponyville, then they are strangers. And sometimes they're there on market day. And sometimes you go out to rescue some ducklings and a nasty griffon yells at you. And sometimes you might run into a random pegasus you don't know, and then you start thinking about all the ways in which they might be judging you. Don't you."

"What else can I do?" She was almost whimpering. "I have to get food for the animals. I can't just have it all delivered. Nopony wants to come out to the edge of the Everfree every day. But that's where the animals are so that's where I have to be."

"And you spent years being terrified of that, too, even though you lived on its edge. Now you go in there routinely to treat injured animals."

"I – but they need me, so I have to..."

"That's my point." His talon laid under her chin, longways, and he brought it up like a lever to point her face at his. "Fluttershy, you're the bravest pony I know. You face impossible levels of fear, all the time, just to do ordinary things you have to do to survive. Or even to do favors for others, things you don't have to do. And you do it. You face it." He swallowed. "I – I've never had much reason to fear anything in my life. A few things. I've had... a number of incidents. But they're not things that happen every day, or even every aeon. I'm nearly omnipotent. It takes work to find something that can harm me."

"But... there's something you're scared of now?" She looked up into his eyes. "You can talk to me, you know."

"I don't want to talk about it." He laughed, harshly. "I'm too afraid of it. I don't want to look at it in my mind long enough to talk about it. I want to pretend it's not real. But you don't do that. Your reality is, terrifying things happen all the time, and it takes so much strength for you to face them, but you do it. I am far more of a coward than you."

"You're not a coward." She reached up to stroke his neck. "You could have hurt Twilight really badly, or even killed her, to make sure she couldn't use that reforming spell, but you didn't."

"I had other ways to stop her. And she saw reason, in the end. But... I'm not..." He lowered his head. "Fluttershy... the only way I've ever learned anything about mortals is to test them. To put them in a situation and see how they face it. Usually while pretending to be an evil bad guy at the time."

"Wait." She blinked. "You – is that why you brought chaos to Ponyville? Were you testing us?"

He chuckled bitterly. "No, no. I wish I could say yes, but no. I wanted revenge. When I first came to Equestria – no. When I first brought rampant chaos to Equestria, when I set out to destroy every rule and drive ponies to the brink of insanity, yes. That was supposed to be a test. But... I liked it, and I got sucked in, and eventually I was doing it because it was fun, and that's why they turned me to stone. And I was so angry about that that I tried to do it again, for revenge, and that's why you turned me to stone again. But that's not the point." He lifted his head again. "Fluttershy, I don't want to hurt you. I never want to hurt you. But... but I don't know how to face my fear. I never had to learn. Anything I was afraid of, I could just run away from, or destroy, or something like that. And this time I can't. And maybe nothing bad will happen, but if it does... I have to know how to endure fear. And I want to learn from you, because you're the expert. You do it all the time. But to learn from you... I have to see you do something you're afraid of. I have to see you make yourself overcome your fear."

She glanced down at the slope, her heart starting to pound again, her mouth going dry. "I don't know how to ski. I'll trip and get hurt."

"What if instead of skiing, we were sliding, and I held you?"

"On a slide?" Slides weren't so scary. Foals went down slides.

"An ice slide. That goes all the way down the mountain. But I'd be holding you, and you know my power would never let you come to harm."

She swallowed against the dryness of her mouth, and then looked up at his face. It was very, very rare for him to look so serious... or so needy. "If – if I can't? If I say no because I can't?"

His head sagged. "If you can't, then you can't," he said. "It'd be pointless to try to force the issue. I'd just scare you for no good reason."

Fluttershy took a deep breath. "Okay, then," she said. "We can do it. Okay."

Discord frowned at her. "I thought you said you couldn't."

"I just wanted to know what you would do if I did say I couldn't."

He grinned, chortling. "Oh ho, so you were testing me? Little minx."

With a snap of a talon the entire mountain was covered with an extremely twisty ice slide. Fluttershy swallowed again. "Does... does it have to be so twisty?" she whispered. "And... and maybe... maybe just a little bit less steep..."

"Nope. This is the one." Discord floated over to the top of the slide and then settled himself on the ground again. "Coming, Flutters?"

She swallowed again. And again. And made herself pick up her hooves and walk forward. It's Discord. He won't let anything hurt me. It'll be scary but I can live through it. He needs me to show him how to handle being scared. She told herself those things, over and over, to keep her legs moving.

And then she was there, and Discord was nestling her on his lap, both of them dressed in snow gear. Her wings stiffened at her side with fear as she saw what looked like a sheer drop just a short distance down the slide. "Um... what if you made the slide... just a little less steep? That looks... um... well, it really looks like an edge..."

"Oh, don't fret, Fluttershy, we're not going to go sailing over the edge of anything. And even if we did, I've got you. Are you ready?"

"Eep!" She wanted to cover her face with her wing, except she couldn't move her wings. "n-no, I'm not..."

Her voice was very, very tiny, barely audible even to her. Discord, of course, ignored her completely. "Splendid! Let's goooooo!"

And they were falling. Well, sliding. Very very fast, on a very steep incline, with twists, all the way down a mountain. Fluttershy shrieked. Discord simply yelled. "Woo-hooo!" His paws were thrown up in the air, though his legs were tightly around Fluttershy's middle, with her sitting on his tail. I'm safe I'm safe he won't let me get hurt I'm safe Fluttershy tried to chant to herself, but she couldn't even hear her own mantra over the sound of her screams. Certainly she couldn't concentrate on it. She wanted to turn around, to cling to Discord with all four hooves, but if she turned around then her back was to the incline and she wouldn't be able to see where they were falling to or be able to prepare when it went especially steep. Blindly she reached backward, over her head in a way that really wasn't comfortable for ponies, and grabbed onto his neck, her hooves touching each other and connecting on the other side of him.

"Make it stop!" she wailed. "Please!"

"But this is the best part!"

Gravity inverted as the slide looped. Fluttershy started shrieking again as she was briefly upside down. Discord's forelegs went around her, so he was now clasping her with all four of his legs. "Don't worry," he said. "I've got you."

There were two more loops, and twists and turns, and places where they slid uphill for a bit before a dramatic plunge. By the time they landed in a giant pile of pillows at the bottom, Fluttershy's voice was hoarse from screaming, and her whole body was shaking, and she felt sick.

Discord nuzzled against her cheek. "You were very brave," he whispered in her ear. "I'm so proud of you. Thank you."

"I – I wasn't brave. I was so scared."

"You only asked me to stop once. And I could hear you trying to calm yourself. And you didn't faint, or vomit, or cry. You just screamed a lot. That's how you deal with fear, isn't it? You let it out. You're not ashamed of it, so you don't try to hold it inside where it burns."

"I am ashamed of it. I shouldn't have been so scared." She leaned back against his warm, furry bulk for a moment, then turned her body to face him and buried her face in his fur, clinging to him. "I knew you wouldn't let me get hurt, but I was still so scared."

"But you did it anyway." His paw went around her while his talon gently combed through her mane. "Because a friend needed you to. And if you were on the top of that mountain and Applejack was at the bottom with a broken leg and a wild boar menacing her, you'd take that slide again in a moment if you thought it was the fastest way to get to the bottom."

"I suppose so," she whispered. She took a deep breath. "Did you get what you needed?"

"I think so. I'm... hoping I won't need it. But if worst comes to worst... well." He stood up, helping her to her feet. "Shall we go home?"

"Don't you think you should get rid of the ice slide first?"

He shrugged. "It's made of ice. It'll melt eventually."

"Oh no, but that just makes it worse. Because up at the top it's cold, so it won't melt. And down at the bottom it will. And we can't predict where it will break, only someplace in the middle, but anypony – well, any zebra or ibex or whoever lives around here who's up near the top won't be able to see the break, and what if it's in the middle of a loop? Or at an angle that sends them flying off the mountain?"

Discord sighed deeply. "As always, you have a point," he said, and snapped his talon. The ice slide vanished. "Now shall we go home?"

"Yes, please." And they were already on her lawn. It was warm here, after the chill of the mountain, and her familiar little friends were all over the place. Her ragged breathing stabilized, and her heart rate finally felt as if it was coming back to normal. "Hello, everyone. I hope you didn't miss me too much while I was gone!"

"We were only gone for a few hours, Fluttershy."

"Yes, I know." It had been early morning when they'd left, but somehow afternoon in Zebrica, approaching sunset as they'd done the ice slide. Now it was about noon. "Why is it a different time in Zebrica?"

"Because the planet is round. When the sun goes around it, it's shining directly on different parts of it. Have you never noticed that the clocks in Manehattan are all an hour earlier than yours?"

"Oh! Yes, I always wondered about that, but the Manehattan ponies are so... well, they're very independent and opinionated."

Discord laughed. "That's certainly a politic way to phrase it," he said.

"Shall I make us some lunch?"

"Dear me, you're always feeding me, Fluttershy. What if I get fat?"

Fluttershy started laughing. Discord made an expression of mock distress. "You laugh, but this is serious!" He waggled his tail around. "All of this rich food is going to go straight to my tail and then where will I be?"

"Maybe you'll have to exercise," Fluttershy said. "You could walk places instead of teleporting."

"But then my feet will hurt."

"Well, I'm hungry, and I'm sure so are the animals, so I'm going to make lunch. I'll make some for you too, but if you insist that you can't eat it, I suppose I can always feed it to Harry... he's always willing to eat an extra helping."

"Now, I never said I wouldn't eat it..."

As Fluttershy started toward her cottage, her ears pricked up at an unusual sound. It sounded like... like the buzzing of a million locusts, like the roaring of a crowd far away. She turned toward Discord, meaning to ask him if he knew – and saw him looking up at the sky with his ears flat against his head and a look of dread on his face. "Discord?" Fluttershy asked, and then had to shout to be heard over the sound, which was getting steadily louder. "Discord?! What's happening?"

"It's time," Discord said, the fear in his voice far less melodramatic than usual – he was almost toneless, only the slight shake to the voice clearly showing his distress. "Fluttershy, I... I have to go now..."

She galloped two steps and nearly crashed into him, her forelegs wrapping around his middle, clinging to him. "Where? Where are you going? Discord—"

"It's the Continuum. The other spirits are summoning me to judgement. I have to go." He swallowed. "They told me within a year. They never said within a week—"

"That's not fair! They should have given you more warning!"

"Should've, would've, could've, only mortals think life is fair. I thought something like this might be coming within a few days – they blocked me from sensing them but there was still a feeling I got – but I didn't -- it's not—" His voice broke. Discord gathered Fluttershy up in his arms and held her tightly to his chest. "Fluttershy. Thank you for everything. Because of your friendship, I was – for a short while, for the first time I can remember in millions of years, I was... happy. Even if it was only a short time... you were the best thing to happen to me in more time than you can possibly imagine."

"Are you – what are they going to do to you? You're talking like—"

"Like I'm never coming back?" He chuckled bitterly. "I'm probably not. The two most likely possibilities... I told you this, the night we went to the moon. Maybe they'll let me go with a warning, or just imprison me for a few years, though their idea of a 'few' might be most of your lifetime. But most likely. They'll either execute me or make me mortal."

"But... at least... if they make you mortal, couldn't you come back here and be a pony? I know you're afraid of the Changelings, but how would they know who you are if you were a pony? And you could go to Princess Celestia for protection! I know she would keep you safe, even if – even if you're not friends..."

He clutched her even tighter for a moment. "You have such optimism, Fluttershy," he murmured. "But no. I can't. I have friends here. I can't bear to take the risk that an old enemy would come at me by hurting you. And Celestia's not far enough away. Nowhere on this planet is." Discord took a deep, shaking breath. "I have to go to the next best thing, because no one out there in the universe thinks I could possibly have friends, because I never have. The closest thing I have to a friend out there is beings who think they're my enemies but are compassionate enough to protect me anyway, and no one's going to go after them for being my friends because they aren't."

"That's not true! We can protect ourselves! Please, Discord – I hate the idea of you being out there all alone, without your powers or even any friends! You can't – don't do that to yourself for our sakes, please!"

Discord set her down. "Tell Twilight and Pinkie and the others – thank you. Thank them all for pretending to be my friends even if they weren't really feeling it, for a little while. I enjoyed the illusion, at least. And thank you for being the only one who was ever sincere."

"Pinkie is sincere," Fluttershy said desperately. "Discord, what if Twilight spoke to them on your behalf? Or the princesses? I know they wouldn't listen to me, but—"

"All of you count as mortals to them. Including the princesses. It won't work but thanks for offering, at least." She could barely hear him anymore, lip-reading him over the sound of the roaring. "Goodbye, Fluttershy."

And before she was able to say anything more, he vanished in a flash of light that started dimmer than usual, and grew, and seemed almost to dissolve him into it, leaving only the afterimage of his sad attempt at smiling.

"NO!" Fluttershy screamed, lunging at the place where he had been, a moment too late. She landed, hard, and looked up at the sky, tears streaming from her eyes, but she had hardened them into the Stare, glaring into the sky with the full force of her will. "Give him back to us! He's changed! He's reforming! You don't need to punish him anymore – he was already punished when we turned him to stone! He doesn't deserve this! Please!"

Nothing happened. Of course nothing happened. Even if any of them were looking down at her – they were like Discord. He was immune to the Stare, why wouldn't they be? And if what Discord had said about how lowly they considered ponykind was true, then why would they even look at her?

She drew a deep shuddering breath. "Twilight," she said. "I need to get Twilight. She'll know what to do."

And then she was off, a streak of wings flapping as hard as she possibly could, racing for the library.

Author's Note

"Next of Kin to Chaos" doesn't follow comics continuity at all, not one little bit... but I had established friendship between Discord and the CMC, or at least his pattern of taking them out on adventures, at the very start of this story, long before the comics did it.

As an omnipotent being, Discord might know the true meaning of Diamond Tiara's cutie mark, but he has never let the truth get in the way of making a point with a joke at someone's expense.

The roaring, buzzing sound I refer to is heard in Star Trek TNG twice: once when Q is taken away by the Continuum at the end of "Hide and Q", once when Q appears naked on the bridge in the beginning of "Deja Q."

I no longer think phonetic accents are a good idea at all and may go back through earlier chapters and edit Applejack to be saying "I" instead of "Ah".

Zebrica is a continent, not one nation. Kind of like Amareica is (I don't actually know if I'm using that name in this series, but it's definitely in the "Last Draconequus" continuity.) Just because it has the name of an equine species in it doesn't make it a nation. That being said, most of the nations in it are part of a coalition of zebra nations.

I had originally planned that the scene here was going to be like chapter 3 or something, because it is what kicks off the point of the story. But then I thought, no, I have to do some slice of life to establish Discord actually being friendly because otherwise, if it looks like it kinda looked in canon by the time of "Princess Twilight Sparkle", why would any of the ponies but Fluttershy care? I didn't expect to do 65 K words or so of slice of life, though. But now the "drama" tag kicks in.

Removed the comedy tag because it really only applied to the first few chapters.