Chapter 1: Boredom
Tick
Discord was sprawled across the sofa in his personal quarters. Ever since his reformation he had been living in Canterlot castle. There he had been called upon numerous times by the princesses to help with certain situations that were either beyond understanding, too difficult to figure out within a reasonable timeframe or were too dangerous to anyone who didn’t have a power level similar to Discord or the princesses.
Tick
Discord remembered the first time that he had called upon to help. It had been at Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. One of the students had been conducting an experiment which backfired horribly. The entire wing of the school that the student had been in had been covered in Raspberry Ripple rice pudding. The student herself had been carted off to a hospital where it was discovered that she had grown two extra tongues, spoke in a long and complex series of 1’s and 0’s, her pupils constantly shifted colours and she could only breathe balsamic vinegar.
Tick
Quite what she was experimenting on and how those sorts of results occurred not even Discord knew. However, once Discord had finally managed to stop laughing at the unfortunate unicorn (true it took a couple of hours but better late than never) Discord had simply clicked his finger and “poof”, everything was fine again, everything was okay, everything was orderly. They hadn’t even thanked him for it either. In fact, the only form of acknowledgement he had received was a half arsed “Thank you Discord, you can go now.” from Celestia.
Tick
Discord gave his “escort” a quick glance. The two unicorn guards were as stony faced and expressionless as ever. Discord hadn’t for even a second brought the “It’s for your own safety” rubbish that the princesses had sold him when they assigned him his guards. He knew that they were only there to make sure he didn’t cause too much trouble and to report to the princesses if he ever did. They never smiled, never talked unless it was necessary and they never even did anything other than watch Discord like a pair of hawks.
Tick
To his left was a fort of books. Books from every genre imaginable were there; fantasy, adventure, sci-fi, comedy, romance, horror, mystery. Discord never understood why ponies were shocked to hear that he liked to read. True, reading didn’t really fall into his usual brand of chaotic entertainment but it was always enjoyable to get absorbed in a good story. Discord always liked to picture the story in his mind as he read, like a motion picture but infinitely better. The book fort itself was something to be marvelled at. It stood at seven feet tall and took up half of his, somewhat sizable, room. It was complete with battlements, spires and it even had a cathedral in the centre. It even challenged the infamous Fort Novella that a filly Twilight Sparkle had built back when she lived at the castle. It was said that Fort Novella had withstood a legion of pillow warriors before even one book had been knocked out of place.
Tick
“Argh!” Discord finally snapped, somewhat startling the guards, “Enough with that infernal ticking!” he yelled, launching a pillow off of the sofa at the clock hanging on the wall. The clock fell off the wall and hit the stone floor of the room with an audible Crack! The rim around the clock shattered slightly and ticking finally stopped.
“How can you two stand it!?” Discord exclaimed, rounding on the two guards, “How can you two stand there all day doing buck all and not just explode with boredom!?” The guards shared a glance with each other but other than that they acted as though Discord hadn’t said anything.
This only appeared to aggravate Discord even further. “I mean, all you do is just stand there and make sure that I don’t do anything! What’s so wrong with me doing even a little bit of chaos?! Huh!? At least it would stop this constant repetitive cycle!”
The guards once again glanced at each other, both becoming worried that Discord had finally lost it. However, Discord only got more worked up. “Don’t you act so ignorant! You know exactly what I mean! This place is so damn predictable and repetitive that if I took the time to watch the staff and guards then after a few weeks I’d be able to tell you exactly what everypony would be doing at any point in the day any day of the week!”
Discord was slowly becoming more and more irritated. A combination of boredom, a lack of chaos and all the stored up energy from not being able to make chaos was only adding to his short temper.
“It’s just so orderly! What is it that you ponies love about order anyway?! Hmm?! D’you know what a completely orderly world would be like?! If there was no chaos whatsoever?!” Both the guards shook their head ever so slightly, a bit fearful of how Discord would react if they didn’t play along.
“All the buildings would be exactly the same! No variation in architecture! Because if even one building was different then it would be out of order! It would be unorderly! There would be no creativity either! That would require one pony to be more creative than another! Which would be out of order! There would be no difference in personality. Everypony would be the same! There would be no such thing as individuality! Because that would mean you would be different! Which would be Out! Of! Order!”
Discord was all but shouting now, the guards had taken several steps back and had jumped as Discord had slammed his fist into the floor upon the last word. But it appeared that he hadn’t quite finished yet.
“It’s all just so! Damn! Orderly! And predictable! And repetitive!” As to further prove his point he violently pointed at the door to his room. “In about 5.3 seconds a maid is going to knock on that door, open it and say ‘Excuse me sir, but dinner is being served in the royal dining room.’”
The moment that Discord had finished his sentence there was a knock on the door and a young mare with a brown coat and even a darker brown mane opened the door and poked her head in.
“Excuse me sir,” she started, “but dinner is being served in the royal dining room.”
“Of course it is!” Discord snapped, making both the guards and the maid jump. Discord stormed over to the door and ripped it open, bending the hinges slightly as he did, and roughly pushed past the maid growling darkly under his breath as he walked.
It took the guards a couple of seconds to realise that their charge had just waltzed off without them and quickly galloped after him. One of the guards shouting out a quick apology to the maid before slamming the door behind him, leaving the maid alone in the room.
The maid slowly looked around the room. At the broken clock and pillow on the floor. Discord’s sofa that had been wildly cast aside as he had ranted and finally at the giant book fort at the back of the room. No sooner had she noticed the book fort when one of the spires slowly toppled over, taking the rest of the fort crashing nosily with it.
The maid looked horror-stricken at the mess before her. But then, off to the side of the room next to the pillow,
Tick
The maid just flopped face-first into the ground, giving in to despair.
* * *
Celestia smiled politely at the maid that had just brought her, her dinner before thanking and dismissing her. She sat at the circular table of the royal dining room. She had chosen to go with a circular design so that here there was no head of the table, so that nopony would look to be superior, so that everypony would appear as equals.
Celestia sat so that the door on the right side wall was to her back. Around three spaces to her left Luna sat, already digging into her dinner, with a somewhat overly enthusiastic vigour. She was just about to start on her own meal as well when,
BANG!
The doors to the left side of the room were thrown open causing both Celestia and Luna to jump in their seats. They both looked at the doors to see Discord angrily stride in with a face of thunder, his escorts panting slightly behind him as though they had had to gallop to keep up with him.
“My my,” Luna remarked, a teasing smirk on her face, “What has infiltrated your posterior and expired, Dissy?” Instead of coming back with his own witty remark like they expected him to, Discord just glared at Luna and let forth a dark growl, his eyes flashing dangerously.
Luna’s smirk fell off of her face, replaced by a frown as Celesta eyed him concernedly as he viciously yanked out the chair opposite her and glared at the maid that brought him his food until she practically galloped back out of the room. Discord then proceeded to violently tear apart his meal with his knife and fork.
“Discord? Is everything alright?” Celestia asked, wondering just why Discord was acting like this.
Discord didn't even look up as he addressed her, now stabbing his meal. “Oh yes princess, everything’s just fine. Absolutely peachy.” His voice laced with sarcasm and irritation, “Please, pretend I'm not even here.”
Celestia and Luna both looked at each other, their eyebrows raised. Eventually Luna just shrugged and returned to her meal. After carefully eyeing Discord for a few more seconds, she too resumed eating her meal.
They ate in an awkward silence for a minute or so before Luna decided to strike up a conversation with Celestia. “So Tia,” Luna started, “How was Day Court? I hear tell that the nobility are trying to push forwards new tax rates.”
It was a testament to centuries of playing the political game that she was able to prevent herself from sighing in frustration. In all honesty Celestia had never experienced a session of Day Court that had been more gruelling in all her year of ruling. It appeared that the nobility had adopted a new tactic. Instead of spending months carefully planning out a new bill or law or tax raise or whatever, now they were producing a new one near enough every week. It seemed the nobility were trying to wear her down with a near constant bombardment of long and tedious court proceedings, until she eventually gave in.
The only comfort she had in the situation was that for every noble that was trying to wear her down, there was another noble helping her push back against increasingly stupid and outrageous tide of requests.
"I swear Luna, they're getting worse and worse by the week. In fact if it weren't for ponies like..." However the rest of her sentence was cut off as Discord, who had progressively gotten more aggressive with the dismemberment of his meal, was nearly cracking the plate with his knife.
“Discord!” Luna snapped, giving the draconequus a stern glare. “Will stop trying to spear your meal.” She turned back to Celestia and gave her a small smile, “You were saying, Sister?” Celestia was just about answer when there came a massive WHAM! The entire table jolted and the two princesses turned to look at Discord with shocked looks on their faces.
Their shock only deepened when they saw that Discord had summoned a proper spear and had slammed it through his plate and had forced it halfway through the table. “Don’t spear your food? You mean like this princess?” Discord growled. Neither of the princesses did anything, neither of them having seen Discord get this aggressive before.
When he received no reply, he put both of his hands on the table and leaned forwards, his glare darting between them both. “Now listen here princesses. I have been having a very bad day so far, which has left me feeling very irritable and with a short temper. I don’t want you to criticize me, chastise me, tease me, in fact I don’t even want you to talk to me. Because if you do...”
Discord trailed off as he raised one of his hands and snapped his fingers. Summoning a cut-out of a parchment white alicorn with a red mane. Before he yanked the spear out of the table and hurled it at the cut-out, nailing it in the head and embedding the spear about a foot into the stone wall behind it. “...I might seriously reconsider my no harming ponies rule.”
With that Discord once again snapped his fingers, causing his plate and meal to be restored and removing the cut-out and the spear. However the hole that the spear had caused was still on the wall. Discord sat heavily back in his seat, scooped up his knife and fork and resumed eating his meal, although with less stabbing this time round.
Celestia and Luna sat there for a while longer, simply staring at Discord as though he had suddenly declared that he was going to become an accountant. Eventually though, after observing him for a few minutes longer and coming to the conclusion that his 'little' outburst was finished, Celestia and Luna decided to resume their conversation.
"Anyway sister, you were saying." Luna started, her eyes occasionally flicking back to Discord. Celestia too gave Discord one last cautionary glance before returning to the conversation. "Yes, well, as I was saying, it's only thanks to ponies like Fancy Pants that I can even get through the..."
It was at this point that Discord stopped paying attention altogether, he knew from experience that the princesses would spend near enough the rest of dinner talking about politics, economics and other immensely boring subjects. Instead Discord decided to root through his memories to see if could think of something even remotely interesting to do with his free time.
As Celestia and Luna conversed, Discord thought back to the time when he had been brought in to the Canterlot Psychiatric Hospital. One of the ponies there had been diagnosed with Dissociative Identity Disorder and the patient's doctor had thought, seeing as Discord had great experience with manipulating a ponies psyche, that he might be able to help cure the patient.
Unfortunately Discord was more accustomed to breaking the mind rather than fixing it, and as such there had been no progress in the patient's recovery. However, now Discord was wondering if D.I.D was truly such a bad affliction. After all, two minds are better than one.
Two minds in one body, huh? Heh, I bet you’d never get bored with somepony else...in...there. Discord’s thoughts slowed down to a stop as a brilliant spark of an idea flashed in his mind, That’s an amazing idea. If I had somepony else in my head to talk to then I’d never get bored! Hey, why stop at one more mind? Maybe I’ll get two more minds to talk to. I bet that’d bring a bit more chaos in my life.
Discord felt a small grin worm its way onto his face. His previous anger and irritation turned into desire and cunning. But Discord realised that even if he wanted to get a couple of more minds to share his body with, there would be no species in Equestria chaotic enough for him to want to have in his head. Then Discord remembered a scientific theory he had overheard some unicorns talking about the last time he had been called in to save the School for Gifted Unicorns.
Multiverse Theory. Yes, that was it. An infinite number of universes that can differ from our own in an infinite number of ways. Discord thought to himself, rather enjoying the implications of that theory. There’s got to be a place out there that has some wonderfully chaotic creature. Discord felt his grin deepen a bit more.
But they had also said something else. What was it now? Something about the laws of physics and magic not allowing inter-dimensional travel. Well, Discord’s grin fully spread across his face, I never was one for laws and rules.
With not even a half-baked plan in mind Discord abruptly stood, causing Celestia and Luna to tense up in case he started to throw pointy objects again. But they were rather surprised to see Discord wearing a grin that would put Pinkie Pie to shame.
“Discord?” Celestia called out, not sure whether to be worried or relieved that he was smiling again, “What are you doing now? Where are you going?”
“Well princess.” He started his voice back to its usual tone, “Something you've said has interested me greatly. So I'm off to do some research, so to speak.”
Celestia narrowed her eyes at this, her ‘Discord’s planning something’ alarms ringing in her head. “You’d better not be planning anything Discord.” She said a hint of warning in her voice.
“Me? Planning something?” Discord asked, with mock hurt in his voice, “Why princess, you ought to know that’s the old Discord. An entirely different Discord, you could say.”
And without waiting for a reply from either of them, Discord turned around and headed out of the room, chuckling darkly all the way.
When the doors had closed behind him Luna turned to Celestia, “Do you think we ought to be worried, sister?” she asked with an unsure expression. Celestia just sighed, “When it comes to Discord, Luna, we should always be worried.”
* * *
Meanwhile, back in Discord’s room all of the painstaking work that the maid had put into tidying it up had been all for naught as there were books, pillows and various other oddities dotted about the room. However, in the centre of the room was a clear space where Discord had drawn a pentagram in a circle on the floor, with candles at the points of the pentagram.
In all honesty the pentagram and the candles weren’t really necessary, Discord had just put them there to make it look all important and mystical. After all, appearance is everything and if he was going to travel across dimensions then he was going to look good doing it.
Discord was standing in the middle of the pentagram, wondering just how he was going to get across the dimensions. But after about no seconds of quiet contemplation he just decided to wing it. So, with his hand raised in the air and his fingers primed in a snapping position, he prepared to release his spell. “Arrivederci!” he yelled.
With a sharp clicking, a bright flash of light and the sound of fabric tearing, Discord was gone.
