Twilight Sparkle thought she’d done the best she could blending into this strange new world of Canterlot High School. She quickly ran through her mental checklist, just to be sure. Keep equine habits to a bare minimum? Mostly check. Not react to anyone, however familiar they may look, as if she knew them from her home world? Check. Refrain from speaking to Spike as if he were a talking dog capable of responding to her? Only when she was certain nopony—nobody—else was around, so check that off too. After all, she’d seen Fluttershy carry on a private conversation with the veritable menagerie she toted about in her green backpack, so Twilight believed she was on the right side of the status quo.
So then why in Principal Celestia’s name—she still wasn’t used to that particular title just yet—was she being summoned to the front office?
Twilight had always found libraries to be a haven. Thanks to Spike’s resourcefulness, she’d managed to sleep on a bed of books last night when the whole school was closed rather than ask a random student if she, a complete stranger, could stay at their house. The temptation to sneak into a class just to observe was great; she never could resist learning, after all. But Spike had squashed that idea. She needed to keep a low profile until she could secure the crown from the Fall Formal, and sneaking into class wasn’t the way to accomplish that. Yet she’d somehow attracted enough attention to have her name boomed out loudly across the PA system throughout the entire school.
“Twilight Sparkle, please report to the front office. Twilight Sparkle to the front office. Thank you!” the announcement ended with a squawk.
“Oh no! Spike, what am I gonna do?” Twilight yelped.
“It sounds like you have to go. There’s really not much choice,” Spike replied, scratching behind his ear with a hind leg. Twilight was convinced he wasn’t itchy so much as putting his unfamiliar body through the paces of being a dog.
“What if I don’t go? What if they find me here? What if they make me go home, but I don’t have anywhere to go, and I don’t have the crown back?”
“Twilight.”
“I’ll disappoint Celestia and Luna and Cadence and all my friends and,” Twilight clapped her hands to her face, “the Elements of Harmony! I can’t go back without the crown, or the Elements will never work again! Equestria will be left completely defenseless!”
“Twilight…”
“Completely defenseless, Spike!”
“TWILIGHT!” Spike barked. A disembodied hush from the librarian floated through the bookshelves, and he rolled his eyes before continuing. “If you don’t go, Principal Celestia will come looking for you. Just go see what she wants! I’ll be waiting right here when you get back.”
“Promise?”
“I promise.”
“Okay,” Twilight frowned, gingerly rising to her feet. It was difficult enough to get used to walking on only two legs, so the issue was only compounded by her being nervous. With great hesitation, she wound her way to the library doors, past the doppelganger Cutie Mark Crusaders, who were once again huddled around one of those strange computer devices she didn’t quite understand yet.
She made it to the front office without much difficulty, save for nearly tripping over Vinyl Scratch, who was sitting outside a classroom door with headphones clamped over her ears and feet sticking out into the hallway. Twilight wished she could speak to Vinyl, or frankly anyone, and get some more help with this situation. Even a way to sneak into the kitchen would be welcome! It was hard living off what she could swipe from the lunchroom once a day without arousing suspicion.
She pushed the door to the front office open, and the secretary with snow-white wavy hair and yellow half-frame spectacles looked up with a kind smile.
“Hello! You must be Twilight Sparkle.”
Words escaped Twilight at the moment, so she gulped nervously and nodded.
“You’re not in any trouble, I assure you. Principal Celestia simply wants you to do what she wants every transfer student to do: meet with the school counselor!”
“Meet with the school counselor?” Twilight repeated.
“Yes, it’s just to be sure you’re getting acclimated to the new school environment.” At this, the secretary leaned across her desk and looked over her spectacles at Twilight with another good-natured smile. “Don’t worry. Everything is going to be just fine.”
At that moment, Twilight realized the secretary was the spitting image of Mayor Mare from Ponyville. Oh, she wanted to say something, anything, on the off chance that somepony familiar was here in this world with her and could help her out. Before she could say anything, however, the desk phone rang and the secretary answered, gesturing with one hand for Twilight to take a seat while twirling a flower-tipped pen in the other. Warily, she plopped down in an uncomfortable upholstered chair customary to school offices, crossed her arms, and waited. A pile of glossy magazines were splayed across the side table next to her, but celebrity gossip had never been her choice of reading material.
Some time passed, with student office helpers staggering under mountains of freshly copied worksheets and the secretary tapping away on her computer when not chatting on the phone. The thought of meeting with the school counselor made nervous energy ball up in the pit of Twilight’s stomach. Her thoughts whirled. What did one say at these appointments? What was expected of her? Should she be perky? Brisk? Oozing with confidence?
“Miss Sparkle?”
Twilight looked up at her name, and she had to clench her jaw to keep it from hitting the floor. No. It can’t be.
A gangly yet sophisticated-looking gentleman stood at the other end of the secretary’s desk holding a clipboard and pen behind his back in one hand. His clothing choices were curious to say the least: his brown suit was well-tailored, but his pants were rolled up above his ankles, showing off clearly mismatched green and tan trouser socks. The red tie about his neck was knotted carelessly and hung loose about his shirt collar. And though his salt-and-pepper hair was smoothed back into a neat ponytail at the nape of his neck, his white goatee, which he was now thumbing, was in serious need of a trim. Once he caught Twilight’s eye, he smirked.
“The doctor will see you now,” he beckoned, his eyes gleaming behind his spectacles.
Wordlessly, Twilight followed. Of course she’d been faced with some shocking discoveries since tumbling into this new world yesterday. But this? This was the mother of all shocking discoveries in her short time here. I have to confirm my suspicions first, she chided herself. This could be just like Fluttershy or Cherilee or anyone else I’ve seen—I know them, but they don’t recognize me at all. Still, if it really is him, WHY HIM?!
“Please, have a seat, Miss Sparkle,” the counselor said as he opened the door to his office.
“Call me Twilight,” she muttered darkly, walking in and standing in the middle of the room. “You know that’s my name.”
“Are you suggesting I read your entire student file in the time between Principal Celestia asking for you on the overhead and you arriving at the office? Come now,” the counselor smirked again, “you have too much faith in the efficiency of high school staff.”
Twilight rolled her eyes and made to sit down on the long red patient couch—it looked considerably more comfortable than the office waiting chair—but the counselor stopped her.
“Ah ah ah. That’s my spot. You sit there,” he pointed to a high-backed, squashy leather chair.
“I thought patients usually laid on the couch.”
“Oh, but I am the patient, Miss Sparkle! If you ever become involved in the field of psychology, you’ll quickly learn that every client psychoanalysis is really a self-analysis. Every appointment is an insight into both the patient and the doctor.”
Twilight crossed her arms, completely unimpressed.
“All right, it’s because I have long legs and like to stretch them out! I’m a tall man, you see.”
“I do see. What’s your name?”
“Dr. Cord, and I fail to see how this is in any way relevant to your visit. Please sit.”
“What’s your first name?” Twilight pressed on.
“Irrelevant! And I ask, as the adult currently supervising you, to sit!” Dr. Cord snapped. Twilight’s breath hitched in her throat, for Dr. Cord’s eyes in that moment flashed an intense scarlet. At least they seemed to, anyway: the office was poorly lit. She sat involuntarily, unable to take her eyes off of him out of fear.
“Now, where were we? Oh yes. Twilight Sparkle.” Dr. Cord’s eyes had calmed, and he grinned as he scratched her name on his clipboard. “Kids these days with their crazy names. I just spoke to one named Flash Sentry just yesterday for running up the stairs three at a time.”
“So what’s your name, then, if mine’s so strange?”
“Look at the diploma,” Dr. Cord replied casually, jabbing his pen toward the wall above his desk. Twilight, hesitant to get up again, squinted toward the framed certificate in question, which read:
The University of Canterlot Doctorate School confers upon
Damien Ichabod Sirius Cord
the degree of Ph.D. in Psychology
on this day, the twenty-third of January, two-thousand two,
and all authority and privilege thereto pertaining.
“Unbelievable,” Twilight mumbled, shaking her head.
“Has difficulty acknowledging authority of adult figures.”
“Excuse me?”
“Nothing, nothing!” Dr. Cord said lightly, still writing. “So, Twilight, what is your general impression of Canterlot High School so far? Is it an escape from the rough-and-tumble zoo from whence you surely transferred?”
“What?”
“Do you have problems hearing, dear? I could speak louder if you like.” Out of nowhere, Dr. Cord produced a megaphone and switched it on. The squealing feedback made Twilight clamp her hands over her ears.
“Is there any way you could be less irritating?!” she growled through gritted teeth.
“Prone to intermitten outbursts of anger…”
“Come again?”
“Appears to experience aural stimuli unperceivable by others. Must investigate further.”
“WHAT ARE YOU WRITING ON THAT CLIPBOARD ABOUT ME?”
“Lacks basic understanding of others’ boundaries—”
All the frustration Twilight had felt within the last day and a half burst forth as she leapt from the leather chair toward Dr. Cord, who yelped and launched himself toward his desk. A mad chase about the office ensued, Twilight snorting like a bull each time she missed.
“GIVE ME THAT CLIPBOARD, DISCORD!” she roared, skirting around an end table and sending a green banker’s lamp as well as a stack of papers flying.
Dr. Cord, meanwhile, was still able to keep his composure well enough to continue taking notes while being chased. “Has serious delusions regarding others’ identities!”
Twilight managed to grab one of Dr. Cord’s coattails just as he was bolting toward his desk once more and yank back hard. Ordinarily, such a change in motion would have caused a gangly man to careen backward onto his assailant. However, he miraculously vanished in a puff of pink smoke that smelled suspiciously like cotton candy and reappeared suspended from the ceiling by his fingertips and toes.
“Finally!” Twilight cried, snatching up the clipboard and flipping through the pages. Apparently Dr. Cord’s mumblings she’d overheard hadn’t been all he’d written. In a short order he’d scribbled out an over-exaggerated psychoanalysis of her, complete with several doodles. At the bottom of the final page, next to the giant label “CONCLUSION,” he’d scrawled something Twilight had to squint to read.
“‘Twilight Tiddlywinks Sparkle is absolutely neaking futz?’” she read aloud. “What is the meaning of this?!”
“I’d very much like to know the same thing.”
Principal Celestia stood in the doorway of the office, hands on her hips, taking in the purely chaotic mess of scattered papers, toppled lamps, and knick-knacks that had fallen from the tall bookshelves. She barely glanced toward Twilight and instead chose to look up. In an unshakably calm voice, she asked, “Dr. Cord, what are you doing on the ceiling?”
“Celestia! Oh, Miss Sparkle were just engaging in a little, ah, trust exercise!” At this, Dr. Cord had released his fingertips from the ceiling and walked toward Principal Celestia completely upside down. “Yes, I believe a little, shall we say, mutual destruction allows for the most open communication between counselor and student.”
“This mutual destruction of yours is impeding Nurse Redheart from caring for ill students properly, as well as disrupting the efficiency of the front office.”
“So Miss Mayor can’t hear the humdrum of the copy machine for five minutes. So what?”
Principal Celestia reached up and tugged on Dr. Cord’s goatee, bringing them nose to nose. “Not to mention the potential distraction you’re making for students who are trying to learn!”
“And we wouldn’t want to waste the pwecious wittle high schoolers’ time, would we? Oh, wake up and smell the coffee, Celestia. News flash: high school students think every adult is wasting their time!”
“If this is true, then I’m sure Miss Twilight Sparkle believes you’re wasting her time by arguing with me.” Principal Celestia cut her eyes toward Twilight, who tried her best to look bored under sudden pressure.
“Furthermore, you will call me Principal Celestia. I am your boss, and it’d behoove you to remember that.”
“My dear, I will call you anything your heart desires,” Dr. Cord replied with a sultry smirk, reaching out with a finger toward her cheek. Principal Celestia swatted his hand away, but not before Twilight caught something of an amused smile on her face.
“I expect to see you in my office at four, Dr. Cord.”
“I’ll bring the champagne!” Dr. Cord cried after Principal Celestia closed the office door and walked away. He immediately turned to Twilight, who was still clutching the clipboard and looking more annoyed than ever.
“She’s completely into me and you know it.”
“That’s not why I’m annoyed—although I must admit that got a little creepy,” Twilight replied, looking off to the side. “Are you really Discord or not?”
“Yes! I knew better than to try and outright fool an intelligent girl like you. It’s far more amusing to push all the evidence right in front of your nose and watch you squirm as your logic crumbles around your ears!”
“Yeah, really funny,” Twilight muttered, flopping back into the leather chair.
“Get a sense of humor while you’re in this new world, why don’t you? It would do you some good back in Equestria. Your friend Pinkie Pie completely has the best outlook of all of you: laugh at the utter absurdity of life, and you will never go unamused.” With that, Discord released his grip on the ceiling and crashed down on the couch. “By the way, can I stay in my human form? It’ll make things less complicated here if no one walks in on rumpled clothing and a serpentine creature who could very well have eaten their school counselor.”
“Why are you even in this world, anyway?”
“Simple: sometimes I want a vacation.”
“You have unlimited power back home in Equestria! Also, how could you walk on the ceiling? I lost my magic when I got here!”
“When you’re as powerful as I am, Twilight, your magic pervades all bounds of time and space. But really, in all seriousness, these are shoes with sticky bottoms on them. See?” Discord took off one of his loafers and handed it to Twilight, who covered her nose and waved it away. “Human are astonishingly gullible. Shock them enough all at once, and they can believe just about anything.”
“And Princess Celestia lets you do this? Take vacations here, I mean?”
“First of all, I am an independent draconequus who doesn’t need to report to anypony!” Discord replied with a raised finger. When Twilight looked throughout unimpressed, he continued. “But to answer your question, yes, she is aware that I come and go through here as I please. The thirty moons bit Princess Luna gave you is simply a deterrent to any of the nosier guards that may go poking around where the portal is kept.”
Twilight clasped her hands in her lap, thinking. He genuinely was Discord, and although he wasn’t what she’d been hoping for, this looked like the best opportunity she had for any kind of help. She swallowed hard, shoving her pride deep down inside.
“Discord, I need your help.”
“You have a crown to reclaim, don’t you?”
She did a double take. “How did you—?”
“Really? You didn’t pick up on any kind of history between Principal Celestia and I? Any sort of long-lost camaraderie?” Discord deadpanned, summoning a cup of tea and sipping. “Perhaps I overestimated your intelligence.”
“What would happen if I just left the crown and returned to Equestria?”
Tea sprayed all over Twilight’s face in a spit-take. Discord righted himself and dabbed at his lips with his red tie, much to her chagrin. “I beg your pardon?”
“The Elements of Harmony can’t be Equestria’s only means of defense. Princess Celestia wouldn’t rely on just one thing to protect us.”
“No, but there is something to be said for weapons that can shoot lethal rainbows at their target when used in tandem. The visual effects are just so satisfying.”
“I just don’t feel like I deserve the crown,” Twilight remarked, rubbing her arm.
“Whether or not you deserve what you’ve received is for a later conversation,” replied Discord, who’d refilled his teacup and resumed sitting upside down. “But if you’re so badly in need of validation and a position of power, I hardly think running for Fall Formal Princess is the way to go.”
“I’m not doing it for the power! I’m doing it because I have no other choice.”
“You could always steal the crown back.”
“I can’t do that!” exclaimed Twilight, scandalized.
“Why not? Really, you’ve already done the ‘rally friends together and defeat a foe with the power of friendship’ bit, what, twice now? It’s getting old,” Discord yawned. “Why not try something different? You could go home much more quickly.”
“Even if I could successfully steal it, Princess Celestia would know.”
“Forget Celestia for a moment. You have no moral or social obligations to this world whatsoever! And Sunset Shimmer stole the crown from you; to steal it back is only fair.”
“But it’s not fair.”
“Why isn’t it?” Discord pressed.
“Because it’s MINE!” Twilight yelled. When she realized what she said, she clapped her hands over her mouth, violet eyes wide. “The crown is mine,” she whispered.
“Ah, so you do have some attachment to it after all!” Discord summoned a yellow legal pad from his desk and jotted down some notes. “This is progress, very good progress.”
“I shouldn’t have to steal what rightfully belongs to me,” Twilight continued, “so the only solution is to win it back!”
“You’re going to stay stuck on that power of friendship idea, aren’t you?”
“It’s the only way I can beat Sunset Shimmer for Fall Formal Princess…unless you know another way.”
“I know utterly nothing about Sunset Shimmer other than she’s made her way to the top of this high school’s food chain through coercion and bullying. Her leather jacket is also on the leading edge of cool.”
Twilight stared at Discord, her face a mix of incredulity and amusement.
“What? You think Rarity is the only one in Equestria that has fashion sense? Look at me!” Discord gestured to his ensemble, which was now more rumpled due to his current position on the couch. “I’ll have you know I spent a good three minutes deciding what I’d wear to work today.”
“Is my ‘transfer student consultation’ done yet?”
“Actually, we’ve run over by a good fifteen minutes. You’ll see a bill for my services in your mailbox back in Equestria when you return.”
“Discord!”
“I accept bits, credit cards, and stand-up comedy as payment! All attempts at mime will be denied.”
Shaking her head and smiling, Twilight got up from the chair and tiptoed across the messy floor to the door. Before her fingers closed around the doorknob, she felt a hand clap down on her shoulder.
“I believe in you, Twilight. Or whatever sentimental bunk makes you high school students think you can succeed at everything,” Discord rolled his eyes.
“See you on the other side?”
“Sooner than you might expect.”
And with that, Twilight opened the door and strode confidently out, on her way to reclaim what was rightfully hers: her friends and her crown.
