Chaos Order, Ordered Chaos!
Author's Note
Dear Readers,
It's opposite day in Equestria! Write about someone swapping roles for a time.
Hoo, doggie! I've been waiting for a reason to get this one outta my system!
—NotARealPonydotcom
Chaos Order, Ordered Chaos!
NotARealPonydotcom presents
ORDER CHAOS, CHAOS ORDERED!
A tale of chaotic chaos in chaos chaos because chaos
Starring Princess Celestia and Discord
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"But Celestia, I'm boooooored!"
"Then go find something to do. I know how much you enjoy sending my guards on wild goose chases. Go do that."
Discord huffed and floated across the room, arms crossed, to where Princess Celestia sat looking into a mirror. He spun himself around a few times and flicked his tail against her mane, sending it wavering off in a new direction.
"It's not fun if you tell me what to do!" the draconequus whined.
Celestia sighed and turned away from her reflection. "Then think of something yourself, Discord."
He gripped the sides of his head and shook it back and forth, shouting, "No, no, no! You're still doing it! I can't just listen to orders like that!"
"I'm not ordering you to do anything." She turned back to the mirror. "Just don't do anything rash."
"Rash?" Discord swiveled his body through the air and forced himself between Celestia and the mirror. "When have I ever done anything rash?"
Celestia stared at him. He sighed and rolled his eyes.
"Right, right. Ponyville. I forgot."
"I don't think you did."
"Hmph." He vanished in a flash of light, leaving Celestia to stare at her reflection again. The room became silent, save for the barely-audible in-and-out of Celestia's breathing. She stared into the eyes of her reflection, their shared expression calm and unreadable. Had a pony entered the room at that moment, they would find her animated mane to be the only sign of life in it, fluttering in the air as though in some windstorm only it could feel.
"Why are you just staring into your mirror?" the reflection asked, its eyes yellow like a sunflower. "Don't you have princess-y duties to attend to?"
Celestia, unfazed by her reflection's sudden chattiness, replied, "As a matter of fact, I do: I'll be lowering the sun in a few minutes. I prefer to meditate before I do so."
"You meditate by staring at your own reflection?" The reflection scratched at its face with its lion's paw, peeling away the flawless white coat it wore to reveal a much more humble, grayish one. "Actually, now that I've thought it over, that does sound quite a bit like something you'd do."
Celestia let out a sigh. "Is there any reason you're still here, Discord?"
"Of course there is!" the draconequus chirped, dropping the vise of Celestia's mirror image completely. "I'm bored, and I want you to spend some quality time with me! We never get to do that anymore, not since you became a sucker for harmony and order and all those boring things."
Celestia sighed again and turned away from the mirror—it was clear that she would be wasting her time trying to meditate any further. "I told you," she said, "I have business to attend to."
"Ah, yes, business." Discord's head and shoulders burst out from within the mirror, spilling globs of silvery liquid onto the floor. "Always with the raising and the setting, every day at the same times. So repetitive. So easy."
To his surprise, Celestia laughed. No, it wasn't a laugh she gave him: it was a guffaw.
"Oh?" He snaked the rest of the way out of the mirror. "The Mare of the Sun dares to guffaw in the presence of another living being? I really must have said something interesting that time." He slid over to where Celestia now stood and faced her. "Be a dear and tell me what it is you find so funny."
Celestia gave him a sweet, condescending smile. "My job is hardly easy, Discord. And you know very well that my duties extend far beyond controlling the movement of the sun."
He snorted. "Oh, puh-lease. There's nothing difficult about doing nothing."
"You call moving the sun nothing?"
The irritation in her voice almost made him giggle like a schoolfilly. "Exactly. Nothing." He thought for a moment, and a grin spread onto his face like a disease. He leapt into the air and twisted about, saying, "Why, I'll bet I could do exactly what you do for the rest of time, and I'd not once break a sweat!" He laughed mirthfully, twirling around and sometimes through the objects that sat about the room. Coming to a halt in front of Celestia once more, he continued: "It'd be like a vacation!"
Celestia raised an eyebrow. "Discord, are you suggesting—"
"—that we switch places? That I, Lord of Chaos and Disharmony, take over the position of Ruler of Equestria and maintain order and balance throughout the land, just as you have for millennia? That you, the Alicorn of the Sun, renounce her responsibilities as Princess and turn to the side of Chaos, where any and all things can and eventually will happen? That the two of us trade our lives for the rest of time, or until one of us either gives up or dies, at which point the other will be crowned winner of their domain and be given this handy-dandy backscratcher as a spoil of victory?" He produced said prize in his hand and waved it in the alicorn's face. "Why yes, yes I am."
Celestia looked at Discord. Then she looked at the backscratcher, and then once more at him. Her expression was unreadable. Discord prepared for the chewing out he was going to get: he could see he'd irritated her, and if he got her to yell at him she might forget about lowering the sun. It'd be late, and that might bring about a little chaos, if enough ponies saw that the sun was up longer than it was meant to be. That'd be especially maddening for Twilight Sparkle, what with her obsession for routines and schedules. She'd probably start writing letter after letter about how she was sorry for whatever it was she might have done to upset Celestia, and how she'd understand if the Princess wanted to send her back to Magic Kindergarten, or—
"Alright."
Discord blinked once, twice, three times. He stuck his eagle's claw into his ear up to the wrist and rattled it about. After a moment of searching, he yanked the claw out and found he had latched onto a toad. He stared at the creature in his hand, and it stared back. The toad croaked once, then hopped out of his hand and onto the floor. Then it hopped out of the room and onto the nearby balcony. Discord watched it go, and when it was out of sight he turned back to Celestia.
"Come again, dear?" he asked.
"I said, 'Alright.'" She had on a small smile that told him not all was as it seemed. "Let's trade places."
He scrutinized her, looking her up and down with his piercing, uneven eyes. "Are you sure? You heard what I said about 'for the rest of time,' correct?"
She nodded. "I did indeed."
"And you're still game?"
"I am." That small smile again.
He squinted at her another moment. Then, seeing nothing of any importance, he clapped his hands together and grinned wildly.
"Excellent!" he declared. Swirling his hands in a grand motion, he brought a gem-studded sword into existence and rested it on Celestia's shoulder.
"By the powers vested within me," he recited, "I, Discord the First and Last, Lord of all Chaos and Disharmony, Earl of the Great Plains of Disarray and the Endless Sea of Random Happenings, King of Inexplicability and Enigmas, Duke of Baffling and Odd Things, and Third Councilman to the Seventh Dimension and Its Grand Farm of Mattresses n' Tin Cans, do declare that the Princess Celestia of Equestria is hereby granted all the powers and responsibilities formerly entrusted to myself, with the understanding that they are to be used for the sake of chaos and chaos only." He tapped each white shoulder three times, then spun the sword in his hand and bopped her on the head with its handle.
"In the Great Faust's name I do deliver this power, hay-men," he finished, and the sword vanished from the mortal plane forever.
Celestia rubbed her head and muttered, "And I do so humbly step down from my position as Princess of Equestria, and bequeath my throne unto the Lord Discord, in the hopes that he may spread harmony and and peace throughout the land. Thus do I name thee"—and here she looked up at him with playful eyes—"Princess Discord."
The newly-made princess only grinned back and said, "There. It's done." He leaned back, resting on what appeared to be an invisible chair, and floated to the other end of the room. "Now, show me what you can do."
"Oh, I will. Just as soon as you set the sun."
"Hmm?" Discord cracked an eye open and looked back at Celestia. "I need to what?"
"Set the sun, of course. When you took on my power, you took on my responsibilities, and my most important one is making sure that the sun sets and rises each and every day exactly on time." She tilted her head innocently. "That won't be too hard, though, will it?"
For a second, she could have sworn she'd seen him falter. It had to have been a trick of the light, though—he was grinning still, and had his arms outstretched now.
"Why, of course! The simplest of all tasks!" He clapped his hands and rubbed them together, leering at Celestia. "One sunset, coming right up!" He raised his hands and wiggled his fingers, summoning a fountain of magic that poured from deep within him outwards, up through his chest and into his arms, where it would manifest in his hands and—
"What are you doing?"
He did not lower his hands, but his concentration fractured enough to stall the spell. He winced and said, "I'm lowering the sun, dear. I thought that was obvious."
"Oh dear," Celestia tittered. "You can't really be thinking of doing it that way!"
Discord let out a sigh and lowered his arms. "And what exactly am I doing wrong?"
"You have to stand out on the balcony, of course. You can't lower the sun without a visual aid." She flicked aside a bit of mane. "Besides, you were lowering it far too early."
The draconequus grunted. He could see what Celestia was trying to do and knew that any protests he made would only further sate her desire to ruin him. So he simply turned and stepped out of the room, heading out onto the balcony as Celestia had directed. As he approached its edge, he noticed the toad he'd pulled out of his ear from earlier; it had hopped up onto the railing on the balcony's edge, and now it sat there still as a statue, its eyes bugging out in different directions. He eyeballed it menacingly, and flicked it off the edge of the balcony. It vanished a second later in a puff of illogical smoke.
"Alright, then," he said, cracking his neck. "Let's get on with it." He wiggled his fingers and raised his arms once again, summoning magic into them as he did so.
And once again, Celestia interrupted him.
"Now?" she asked just as he was about to cast his spell. "You're going to do it now?"
He sighed, and said, "If there are no more interruptions, yes." He swiveled his head around to glare at the alicorn. "Is that alright with you?"
She shrugged and said, "Certainly."
He nodded sharply and turned back towards the sun, muttering words his breath that he would not dare say directly to Celestia's face. For the third time, his arms rose, and for the third time, Celestia butted in with another snippet of "advice."
"I was just going to say you're doing it too early."
Discord's head spun around to face her again. She noticed a scarlet tint about it that made her want to laugh out loud. She maintained her calm exterior, however, and continued:
"If you're going to be the Lord of Order and Harmony from now on, you should know exactly when to set and raise the sun. You must understand, you can't be a single second off when you do this. It would be catastrophic."
He grinned madly at her. She savored the sudden flash of fear in his eyes.
"Catastrophic?" he squeaked.
Celestia nodded. "Absolutely." She gave him that sweet, innocent look again. "And of course you know that if something catastrophic were to happen..." She trailed off, letting her words of warning sink in.
Discord now stared at her with an expression on his face that was somewhere between furious and terrified. He squeaked again: "And this is every day?"
"Yes. Every day."
"At the same time?"
"The same exact time." She smiled sweetly. "But that's not too hard, is it?"
She saw his eye twitch, and almost lost it. Thankfully, the draconequus spun his head around again, so she was able to let a smile break out on her face without his knowledge. She watched him raise his hands for the fourth time that evening, and forced her laughter down.
"Of course it's not," Discord muttered, sounding truly unsure for the first time in centuries. "I'll be done in a moment."
"In a moment?" She took a few steps closer to him. "Not a minute? Are you sure?"
His head twisted again. "What? Is this not the right time?"
"Of course it is. It's time for sundown."
"Then let me bring the sun down!" he yelled. His hands clenched into fists, and the faint yellow glow surrounding them shifted to a threatening red. Celestia noticed this, and approached him calmly.
"Focus on the spell, Discord," she reprimanded. "We don't want to miscast it, do we?"
Again, his eye twitched. She took great joy in seeing his face flush completely red with frustration, though her indulgence was short-lived—Discord twisted back around to look at his hands, and a few seconds later, she heard a great, stressful sigh leave him, and the blood-red aura returned to its previous yellow hue. He did not turn back to face her.
"That's it," she coaxed. "Just remain calm. You must focus on the spell. Feel the sun shining on you. Will its glow down, away from you."
"When?" he asked, his voice faint and high-pitched compared to what it had been merely a minute ago.
"When the time is right, Discord." She was grinning, and she prayed that he wouldn't turn around again. "You have to lower it at exactly the right moment. If you're even a moment too early... or a moment too late..."
His claws were shaking. Positively shaking. "Surely," he croaked, "there must be some allowance for error..." And that was all he said. The glow around his claws intensified.
"Hold on... Wait... Remain calm..."
"Celestia, I'm warning you—"
She suddenly stood on her hind legs and propped herself up against his back. He was as rigid as he'd been as a statue. She leaned in close, staring not at him but at the sun.
"Don't pay any attention to me. You have to be perfectly on task for this. You can't slip up for even a moment. If the sun doesn't set at the prefect time every day—"
"EVERY DAY!?!?!!"
It was the straw that broke the draconequus' back. Letting out something not unlike a roar, Discord tore himself away from the balcony and swiped his lion's paw in a random direction. A bolt of electric yellow magic went rocketing off into the distance. He paid it no mind, having flung himself through the balcony doors back into the castle. Celestia watched the bolt vanish into the distance, then turned to watch the draconequus tear about her chambers. The smile on her face grew wider with every word she heard from his mouth:
"I won't! I can't! It's madness, this, this... this schedule!" He pointed at one of the cushions sitting on a large pink couch near the center of the room, and it instantly became an enormous marshmallow. "How could you stand to do the same thing, over and over and over again, every day at the exact same time for all your life?" He crossed and uncrossed his arms, and the small table near the mirror mooed and began to gallop about the room, spitting out hair ties of all colors and sizes. "What sane being would ever, ever condemn themselves to such an endless, torturous, routine?"
Celestia laughed. She couldn't hold it back.
Discord spun around, eyeing her like a Diamond Dog eyes a pony intruding on its mining territory.
"How could you laugh at this?" He took a step towards the balcony. "You, the Mistress of the Sun, the Princess of Equestria, the Keeper of Harmony! How could you laugh at such terrible suffering?"
She responded with more chuckling. When Discord took another step forward, she held up a hoof to stop him.
"Ah," she jeered, stifling her laughter as best as she could, "but I'm not the Keeper of Harmony any longer, am I?" She pointed her hoof at him. "That's your job now. I am the Lady of Chaos and Disharmony, and if you were to ask me, I would say that I've done a fine job of bringing disharmony to my subjects."
He spluttered, "Wh—What?"
She giggled. "Well, you seemed quite disharmonious whenever I told you that you needed to set the sun at exactly the right moment." She took a step towards him. "I think I did superbly, actually."
He was seething at her. "But you—the sun—" He stared at the orange-yellow fireball. "Shouldn't it have set by now?"
She glanced at it and shrugged. "I suppose. I'm sure Luna won't mind if I keep it up a tad bit longer."
"Luna won't—" He shook his head, smacked his cheeks, and rubbed his temple with both hands, all the while keeping his eyes on Celestia. Finally, he processed the smirk on her face and the cheekiness in her words, and the truth came to him like inspiration comes to a fashionista.
"You—You tricked me."
She considered this, then nodded.
"Yes. Yes, I suppose I did." She grinned. "Isn't that what a spirit of Disharmony is meant to do?"
"Me. You tricked me." He was staring into the sun now, looking haunted. "Me. The Lord of Chaos."
"Oh? You're the Lord of Chaos again?" she chirped. "Am I to take it that you've given up? Or would you still like to try lowering the sun?"
He seemed not to have heard her. He only repeated, "Me. Tricked me."
Celestia shrugged. "Very well. I hereby declare this little contest over." She turned to the sun and held her head up high, taking in and releasing a deep breath as she did so. In the light of the late day, it was nearly invisible, but she could still feel the glow of her magic surround her horn. Shutting her eyes, she felt the heat of her sun as well, beating down upon her with a quiet ferocity she'd grown to love. With a swipe of her mind, she wrapped its rays around her horn, lassoing it like a cattle. Then she pushed, and the warmth began to fade. Behind her, she could feel another push—her sister's own celestial body was reacting to its sister body's movements. She gave one final tap, and her control of the sky was relinquished. The magic faded, as did the intense warmth of her enormous star, and she shivered. Setting the sun always made her do that. She'd grown to love that, as well.
She opened her eyes. The sky was a multitude of colors now, endlessly vibrant and inexplicably beautiful. She turned back to Discord, who was staring at the horizon now. Specifically, the spot on the horizon that her sun was swiftly vanishing behind. His expression was unreadable. But then, it was usually that way.
"There," she said, startling Discord out of his stupor. "Luna will be on duty any minute now." She stepped back into her room, and stood in front of the draconequus. "You can enjoy the sunset until then..." Her horn flashed, and the backscratcher that Discord had gambled away materialized in front of her. "...while I shall enjoy this."
Discord looked at Celestia, his mouth open the slightest bit. Then he did what he always did in the end: he grinned.
"I think you cheated," he growled. "I never said 'Begin.'"
She tapped his nose with the backscratcher, smirking. "Oh, calm yourself, Discord." She put her face up close to his and cooed, "It's only a game. No need to be a sore loser." Then she tilted her head around his muzzle and pecked him lightly on the cheek.
He was still reeling when she opened the door leading out of her chambers and turned back to him.
"Enjoy the sunset, oh Lord of Chaos and Disharmony." She hesitated. "I... had fun." Then she was gone, out the door and into the castle proper. Discord turned in time to see the last wisp of her tail disappear from sight. The door clicked shut behind her, and he was alone.
His eagle's claw trailed across his cheek. He tittered, and the grin that had left his face when lips met cheek returned in full force. Turning back to the balcony, he looked out at the spectrum of a sky over Equestria and laughed. It was truly a magnificent sight, he would have admitted to Celestia had she stayed another minute.
I would say that I've done a fine job of bringing disharmony to my subjects. I think I did superbly, actually.
"Well played, Celestia dear," he chuckled. "Very well played."
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"...and of course we'll need to come back tomorrow to dig out the rest of that little cavern we found. We can't let the Diamond Dogs get a hold on those gems, not with all the dresses I need to make in the next few weeks. You don't mind, do you, Spike?"
The little purple dragon tugged at the gem-filled wagon he was pulling and smiled.
"Of course, Rarity. You know me—always there to help a—" He hesitated, and gulped. "—a friend."
The white unicorn trotting just ahead of him smiled and said, "Oh, thank you so much!" She turned and nuzzled the drake warmly. "It's such a relief to know I have somepony to help me with my work."
Spike would have corrected her (it was "somedragon," not "somepony"), but her nuzzling had sent him reeling. He was practically panting by the time she pulled away and continued walking along the path.
"A-Anything for you, Rarity..." he mumbled, his eyes unfocused.
"I hope you mean that," the mare responded, turning away from him to face the road ahead, "because I'll really need your help these next few days. I can't possibly finish this entire lineup on my own, and you'll be such a—"
BZZARP!!
Rarity yelped and jumped at the sound of the zap. A flash of electric yellow light momentarily blinded her. In that moment of blindness, a rapid stream of panicked snippets of thoughts swept through her mind:
Sweet Celestia evil magic Nightmare Moon returned Discord lying never reformed Diamond Dogs learned magic followed us from the gem fields going to hurt me hurt us hurt Spike NO!
She spun around, her horn already primed with a spell to defend herself and the little dragon. She met instead with a sight that made her jaw drop.
Spike was struggling with the cart, trying to keep it from running him over. Normally, this would not have been a problem—he wasn't that small. However, he was not normally buried up to his elbows in the ground, stuck there by some unknown entity. Actually, when she looked closer, it didn't seem like he was buried—the ground wasn't even dirt: it was stone. No, it seemed more like he'd simply been lowered into the ground, and the rock had parted to hold him snugly in place. Rarity looked around for any sign of the source of the yellow flash—all she could see was the path, the trees and rocks surrounding it, and off in the distance, Canterlot, its palace standing tall and proud on the side of the mountain. She fixed her gaze on it, wondering if maybe, just maybe...
"Uh, Rarity?"
The white unicorn's attention returned to the poor, half-embedded drake with a snap. Spike looked at her with pleading eyes.
"Do ya think you handle the cart for a minute? I'm kinda stuck."
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THE END
