Chapters "Spike, where is that book I asked for?" Twilight asks as Spike comes strolling out of the upstairs. "It wasn't upstairs, and I'm pretty sure that this sun problem is nothing to worry about." As he finished speaking, Luna bursts through the door with the other five Elements of Harmony. "Twilight, you must come with us. It's of the upmost urgency." Twilight nods her head and tells Spike to stay behind and watch the place. As Twilight and the gang approach Celestia and Discord, they could see the worry on Discord's face. They knew that if it worried Discord, it must be bad. "What is this all about?" Twilight asks the princesses. Celestia turns to Discord as he explains the story of the Elements he created. "YOU DID WHAT?!" Rainbow Dash exclaims as she dashes toward Discord only to be stopped by Celestia. "It is in the past. Though it may be Discord who unleashed this evil, he earned me about it instead of keeping it a secret until it was far too late." Celestia turned to Discord. "Please explain these Elements of yours and exactly what powers they have." Discord looks around at the group and lowers his head. "That's the problem. I may have created them, but I don't know EXACTLY what their powers are. I only know what each one represents. I never even got to name them." Discord walls overt to the Window and let's out a sigh. "The six Elements are as I say them: Chaos, Insanity, Fabrication, Greed, Failure, and Misfortune. If I were to take a guess, I'd say a majority of them still reside in the Everfree forest. Now that I recall, one did return to me, but I gave her two things after training her and sent her on her way. I thought of her as my daughter." For the first time, the ponies saw Discord she'd a year of sadness. Her name is Screwball. if you meet a pony with purple swirly eyes, that's her. She is the Element of Chaos." Discord turns back towards the group. "I must warm you, if you are to go after them, they will not be easy to defeat." Twilight nods her head and turns toward the group. "With the information Discord just shared with us, the first place for us to look is the Everfree Forest." As the ponies agreed and turned to walk away, Discord stopped them. "I almost forgot. If you do manage to "defeat" them, an item that represents their Element will appear before you. Bring back all six to me, and I can fix the sun. But you only have 5 days to find them all. If you fail to do so, their powers will be fully developed. It only takes one to cause 1000 years of darkness. No sun and no moon, for 1000 years. I usually don't do this, but I wish you luck." Fluttershy sheds a tear and his Discord. "We will try our best." She assured him. The gang turns and heads for the front door. Twilight looks up to the faded sun as they walked outside. "Next stop, the Everfree Forest."
As Twilight and her friends wandered through the forest, they heard multiple unfamiliar sounds. In one direction, they heard what sounded like carnival music. In another there was the faint sound of a music box. However, the sound that got their attention was the sound of a voice calling to them. "This way to your heart's desire." The eerily voice echoed. Twilight and her friends look at each other and shrug as they headed towards the voice. The voice got lost and louder with every step the ponies took. Then the voice stopped as they came to a clearing. In this clearing was what looked like a small village. A sign stood in front of them. It read "Welcome to Gloomy Town!" There was a pony leaning on the sign with a skull for a cutie mark, but with it there were a few other cutie marks. A bird, a hammer, an arrow, a Shamrock, and a paw print. "How do you do?" Said the mysterious pony. "Welcome to Gloomy Town! The place where all your cutie mark dreams can come true. I am Gloomiér, the town sheriff." He extends a hoof and shakes Twilight's hoof. "Thank you for the greeting, but if I may ask-" The strange multi-marked pony interrupts her, "You are wanting to know why we have so many cutie marks, am I right?" Twilight nods her head. Gloomiér gestures for the group to lean in. "Is this town. It's filed with the magical properties of the cutie pox. Now, none of us have to worry about not getting our cutie mark, bc now we have more than we can handle." The group looks shocked as he muttered those words. Then Twilight steps forward, "We can help you. Our of all those cutie marks, one is real. If you find the real one, then your cutie pox will go away." Gloomiér lets out a loud, maniacal laugh. "And what makes you think we want our cutie mark to appear? Maybe we like having multiple talents. Am I right guys?" Just them, all the ponies start chanting, as if in a trance-like state, "Cutie Pox Forever!" The 6 friends start backing up slowly, but are stopped by Gloomiér. "You don't wanna go back that way. Trust me." The ponies turn around and realize they are surrounded. Then Gloomiér causes the crowd to form a path to the other gate. "You're gonna wanna go that way. Trust me." The ponies start walking as they hear Gloomiér's voice fading behind them. "All your heart's desires are through that gate." As they step through, they find a dead end with pony skulls around. Then they hear the sudden slam of the gate behind them. They turn around to find Gloomiér standing there. "Well... How does it feel to be trapped? Trapped like an animal in a cage?" Applejack steps forward, "It's you! You decided us! Like a sly fox in the woods! You're the Element of Fabrication!" The pony does a bow, as if he put on a good show. "Well now! Aren't we the smart one? Yes... You are Applejack, the Element of Honesty. You couldn't tell a lie to save your life. Good for you that I'll be ending it quickly." Just then, Applejack gets a smile on her face. And starts laughing. The gloomy pony cannot explain how confused he is. "What's so funny?" He exclaims as Applejack controls herself. "Well I reckoned you'd be one for making deals. Seeing as you love being as sly as you are." His ears perked As he heard the word he can't resist. "Deal? What deal?" Applejack pulls a large sack from her saddle bag. "Well if you spare us all our lives. I'll give you all my riches in this here sack." He looks at the sack and stares her dead in the eye. "You're lying! You have no riches in that bag of yours." A smile comes across Applejack's gave once again. "Didn't you just say earlier thati could never lie to save my life?" Thinking back at what he said, he smiles a huge grin. "Your lives for your riches?! Deal! He opens the gates as he hands the bag from Applejack and opens it up, only to find apples within. "What?! How?! It's impossible! You can't lie!" Applejack looks at him and smiles as she responds, "I didn't lie. Apples are the riches in my life. Looks like I deceived the deceiver without even deceiving." The gloomy pony was racking his brain, trying to figure out how he was deceived bya truth teller. As he thought more, he started to glow. "Impossible! I can't be defeated! Nooooooo!" He exclaims as his flesh slowly disappeared until only a skeleton was left. As Applejack touched the skeleton, it turned to dust. In that dust, was a fox mask with the words "TRUST ME" engraved on the forehead. As the dust blew away in the wind, the hypnotized ponies began regaining their thoughts. The cutie pox curse lifted and they had their one cutie mark left on their flanks. As the ponies saw Twilight and her friends off, they told Twilight that they were gonna stay there and fix the newly renamed "Everfree Village" up and get it on the Equestria map. As Twilight put the newly acquired Element in her bag, she thought to herself, "Are the other elements more dangerous than this one?"
A normal day in Equestria, or was it? Princess Celestia walked outside to raise the sun, yawning as she had just woke up. "Morning sister," Luna said as she noticed her sister, "are you ready to start the day?" Celestia nods as she spreads her wins and takes flight into the sky. As the sun began to rise, Luna noticed the sun was not bright, but dim, much dimmer than the moon. "Sister!" She exclaims as her sister lands, "What's going on?!" Celestia shakes her head as she watches the horror unfold. As she was about to say something, Discord bursts through the door. "Princess Celestia!" He exclaims, "Usually, I would keep this kind of thing a secret, but if I don't say something, then all of Equestria, including me, will be in trouble!" As Discord catches his breath, Celestia nods at him to explain. "Well you see, when I first heard of the elements of harmony, all those years ago, I knew you two would go after them. So, I devised two plans, the backup plan, the plants attacking the Tree of Harmony, which failed, but like I said, it was a back up plan. The other plan, the main plan, was to use a lot of my power to create my own elements. But alas, after I created them, they ran off before I could tell them of their amazing powers. So I used an old spell I found in a book to let me know if they figure out their powers. The sun would turn, well that color, when all of them discovered their potential." Celestia glares at Discord. "Why didn't you tell me all of this before it could happen?!" Discord frowns, "I'm sorry! I guess I just forgot about them. All I can tell you is I made one for each Element of Harmony. Six Elements of Harmony means six Elements of Discord." Celestia turns to Luna, "Sister, I need you to go to ponyville and tell Twilight and her friends to come to the castle as fast as possible." As Luna nods and takes flight, Celestia turns to Discord, "Let's just hope there's enough time to stop this."
As the gang stayed towards the Everfree Forest, they heard yelling coming from the town square. When they got there, they saw a pony surrounded by townsfolk. They were yelling and throwing things at the pony. "Hey!" Twilight yelled as she walked into the circle, "Why are you all being mean to this pony?" The townsfolk all stay replying at the same time. So many people were talking, that Twilight couldn't even think straight. "Enough!" She yelled as the crowd simmered down. "You!" She points to one of the townsfolk, who steps forward. "What is going on?" The pony replied to her, "This... This thing came into our town, saying he was kicked out of Coltstown and that he needed a place to stay. I offered to let him stay with me. Then as we approached my house, somepony yelled at him, frightening him, and then everything in town started falling apart. Houses fell, plants exploded, and carts caught on fire, as if out of nowhere!" Twilight looked shocked that a single pony could do all that. Everyone called the pony names. The thing that strick Twilight, were that the story tells signs of Misfortune, one of the six Elements of Discord. As Twilight realized that this pony was the Element, she granted him and pulled him away from the town. The Colt started crying, "Why does everypony hate me? I don't even know what's wrong with me." Fluttershy flutters down next to the Colt and hugs him. "I don't think you are a bad pony. I think you are just misunderstood." She assures him. "Can you tell me where you came from?" He shakes his head, "I'm sorry, but I don't remember where I came from. I always considered myself an orphan." Fluttershy gasps, "That's so sad." The Colt nods, "I've always been a longer my entire life. No family, and no friends." Fluttershy shakes her head vigorously, "No, that just won't do. You will have a friend, even if I have to be it." The Colt wipes his eyes, "You'll be my friend?" He looks up at her with his blue-green eyes. "Yes, I will." She responds, "My name is Fluttershy. What's yours?" He sniffles as he says, "Scythe. My name is Scythe." As Fluttershy and Scythe, he begins to glow. Then out of nowhere, written music appears out of nowhere. It is titled, "Misfortunate" and looks like it was written on old parchment. "My song!" Scythe yells out of nowhere, "I wrote that song when i was a filly." He pauses for a moment before handing the song to Fluttershy. "I want you to have it as a sign of our friendship. The group leads Scythe back to town and lets him stay in Twilight's house. The purple alicorn sighs as she looks at the Everfree Forest. "One down, five to go."