The Quandary of DisQord

Chapters

Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 4

Chapter 1

I sat on top of the saucer section of the USS Enterprise-D, just behind the bridge hub, facing backward toward the two warp nacelles that propelled the ship. Well, no, that's not quite accurate. "Sitting" and "facing" implied that I currently had a posterior on which to "sit" or a face with which to… well… "face." Given that I was currently in my true form, neither of those things applied to me. It was just as well. I'd had more than I could stand of being stuck in a physical form to last me for quite a while.

I watched as the starship moved at a glacial sub-light speed away from the fourth planet in the Bre'el system. Down on the planet, they were no doubt celebrating the fact that their precious moon was now back in its rightful orbit and that their civilization was no longer doomed. I bet not a single one of them even thought to give thanks to me, however, even though I was the one who had righted their moon for them. Ingrates. In any case, I no longer had any interest in them or their petty problems.

It was merely that fixing the moon's orbit was the very least I could do to make it up to Jean-Luc, after the spot of trouble I had put him and his ship through while locked in my bumbling human form. No doubt, however, the crew of the Enterprise was also celebrating my departure, even though I had only just finished doing their jobs for them, especially considering that it was a job that they'd had absolutely no hope of accomplishing on their own, despite their best efforts and can-do attitude. I still remembered La Forge's arrogance and his mistreatment of me in engineering, and I briefly considered yanking him out here to give him a piece of my mind, and perhaps even more than that. But I refrained from doing so, if only because that would have upset Mr. Data.

Data. He was the only one, the only one, on the entire thrice-damned ship that had shown tolerance and kindness to me in my time of peril, and that was only because his programming simply didn't allow for him to feel those dreadful emotions that burdened the others, such as anger or envy. Still, I was glad that Data had enjoyed the little gift I had left for him. At least he got to experience one of the more positive emotions of which humans are capable, if only for a brief moment. If only the others felt more of those emotions in my presence, rather than the uglier ones that they usually felt, like jealousy and arrogance, it would make my visits much more pleasant for all concerned. Data was fortunate that he was incapable of such things.

"You know, Q, I think he was right," said a nearby disembodied voice.

"I thought you'd already left," I groused, as my fellow Q appeared next to me with the burst of light and sound that is the trademark of our kind. He was in his blond-haired human form again, though still wearing that ghastly gray and green jumpsuit for some reason, so I decided to take my own human form as well, very reluctantly I must add. It would have been rather impolite to try to carry on a conversation otherwise. I glanced down at myself, frowned when I noticed that my clothing exactly matched his, and quickly changed it to a red Starfleet uniform, with captain's pips on the collar, of course. But, you know what? I felt that I deserved better than that right now. I switched my uniform to that of a full fleet admiral.

"Very classy," said Q. "Anyway, I just want to make extra sure that there aren't any lingering hard feelings. You know, about the whole 'getting you kicked out of the Continuum' thing."

I performed an infinitely more subtle and expressive equivalent to what humans would call "rolling my eyes" as I looked over at him, limited though I might have been in my current form. "Let's just say that it's water under the bridge and leave it at that, shall we? What's done is done. Anyway, what do you think who was right about?"

"The bald one," said Q, gesturing behind him toward the bridge hub. "What was his name again? Pickerd?"

"Picard," I said. "Jean-Luc Picard."

"Ah, that's it. Well, as I said, he was right," said Q with a nod. "You do seem to have a bit of residue of humanity there."

"Psh." I rolled my eyes at him again. "Spare me." Now that I actually had a posterior and a face again, I resumed in earnest what I had been mimicking before Q arrived: sitting and facing out toward the rear of the ship. I considered ignoring him in the hopes that he would get bored and leave, futile though I knew it would be.

"No, seriously," Q retorted, as he sat down next to me. "It's right there, just kind of bobbing about in your aura. It's a weird… pinkish color, I think, or maybe orange. Kind of stands out."

"Why are you here, really?" I asked, resigned to the fact that Q wasn't going to leave me alone, at least not for the time being.

"Just wanted to chat for a bit," Q said. "We haven't really had a chance to catch up since you started your new job."

"Oh, well I'm sure we have lots to discuss!" I said, expressing a faux cheer that I obviously didn't feel. "Let's get right to it, Q! What do you want to chat about?"

"Well, since you asked," said Q, ignoring my sarcasm, "answer me this: why human? I mean, you've never once struck me as the kind of Q who would take his work that seriously, after all."

"Honestly?" I said, as I looked down at my human form in appraisal. I held up a hand in front of my face and turned it over a couple of times, before letting it drop to my side again. "I haven't the foggiest idea. I should have chosen to come back as a horta. I could have spent my time doing absolutely nothing but pleasantly burrowing around and eating rocks before the Calamarain or some other monotonously single-minded species found me and ended my existence. At least then I would have been spared all of this humiliation."

"You can't fool me. You really do like them, don't you? These humans," said Q.

"Absolutely not," I said. "I merely find them interesting, and in much the same manner that they find insects pinned to corkboard interesting."

Q crossed his arms. "Don't fib to me, Q, you know I know when you're stretching the truth. Even when you do have your powers back, you can't fool me."

"Oh all right," I said. "They're certainly not nearly as… murderous as some of the other species I've encountered during my existence. Well, most of them aren't, anyway. Take those Calamarain, again, for instance. They spent almost the entirety of my time as a human trying to kill me. Kill me! Can you imagine it?"

It was Q's turn to roll his eyes. "I have absolutely no idea why they would have wanted to do that."

"I know, right? Compared to the Calamarain, humans are little bundles of compassion. Why can't those wispy good for nothings be more like Data? He wouldn't hurt a fly." My eyes widened and I suddenly snapped my fingers. "That's it! An android! I should have chosen to be changed into an android. I would have made much better use of Data's gifts. I still can't believe he would willingly give them all up to be a measly run-of-the-mill human."

"And yet, he always refuses when you offer to turn him into one. He's unique, true enough," said Q. "Well, okay, maybe not unique, since he has at least two identical twin brothers and all, but still, you know what I mean."

"Yes, whatever," I said, waving my hand in a dismissive gesture. "One of his brothers is currently disassembled and scattered across Kolarus III, and the other one is a being of pure malevolence. I honestly can't decide which of the two bores me more. Data is the only one of them who has actually done something worthwhile with his life, artificial though it may be." I sighed wearily and loudly. "Anyway, Q, it's been a nice chat, really it has. However, I'm sure you must have much better things to do than to sit around here on some dreary gray starship."

"Speak for yourself. Still, I'm a bit surprised, though," Q said thoughtfully, tapping his chin with an index finger and completely ignoring my incredibly subtle prompting that he leave me alone.

"Now what?" I asked, resisting the urge to just teleport myself to the far side of the galaxy.

"You chose to be human… but I would have figured that you would have chosen to be one of those ponies."

Shockingly, despite the fact that I am omniscient and should have seen it coming, this caught me by surprise. I looked over at Q again, but said nothing.

"You still think about them," said Q. "About her." It wasn't a question.

"You know that's a painful subject for me, Q," I said, starting to get somewhat perturbed. "Of all things, why are you bringing this up now?"

"Well, I was only there at the very tip end of that nasty business, so… I just want to know the whole story," said Q. "Straight from the horse's mouth, pun most definitely intended given your state of being at the time. Really, what could have possessed you to do the horrible things you did on that world? I mean, even for you, Q, it was pretty sadistic. Honestly, I would almost prefer to think that it was some sort of possession, as impossible as that would be, rather than to think you genuinely capable of such things of your own accord."

"I really don't want to talk about it," I said, preparing to make good on my earlier thought to teleport away, except that now it was the other side of the universe that was looking like a much more appealing destination than merely the other side of the galaxy. Q stopped me by putting a hand on my shoulder, not that it would have mattered anyway. He would have just followed me. After all, he knew where all of the hiding places were the same as I did.

"Believe it or not, Q, I'm not trying to push your buttons here. I'm honestly curious about it, that's all. Tell me about it. Tell me about her," said my companion. "Besides, you already know I'm not going to stop pestering you until you do."

I looked at him hard for a moment, then I sighed and looked down at the dull metallic gray of the outer hull of the Enterprise. "Well…"

I was still a relatively young Q at the time, only a few thousand millennia old. I was in what I suppose you could call my "experimental" phase. Things back in the Continuum were dreadfully boring, as they pretty much always have been. I flitted hither and thither around the universe, looking for things to excite my omnipotent senses, no matter how insignificant they may have been. And, trust me, most of them were.

It was during one such random excursion that I happened upon the planet that housed the land of Equestria. Or, at least, the planet that housed what would eventually become the land of Equestria. At the time I arrived there, Equestria itself wouldn't be founded for another several thousand years at least.

As I roamed the planet, I observed all the various flora and fauna, trying to decide what would best suit my corporeal form during my visit here. There weren't any sapient beings on the planet at this point, mind you, or I would have immediately chosen their form as my own. I spent a few centuries watching the various life forms on the planet, trying to make my decision. I knew that I didn't want to be some boring plant, but the animal life was quite diverse. Eventually, I decided that since I couldn't decide at all, I would just take a bit from each of them.

I took pieces from several different animals and made them my form. Not literally, mind you, as that would have been barbaric, not to mention uncouth. Among other things, I took the foreleg of a lion, the talons of an eagle, the horn of a goat, the antler of a deer, the tail of a reptile, things like that, you know. But for the head… for the head, just any old animal wouldn't do, not at all. For the head, I chose what I felt to be the most… elegant of the animals living on this world: the pony.

You see, I had been watching the ponies very closely, more so than the other animals on the planet. These ponies were nothing like their distant equine brethren in the Sol system and on other such planets. There was something special about these ponies. For one thing, they had already gained self-awareness and were on the very cusp of gaining true higher thinking. That was interesting enough, in and of itself, but there was another thing about them. Even before that, they were already beginning to manipulate the environment around them in a manner that most species wouldn't acquire for millions of years into their development, if ever. Humans, for example, have never even shown a glimmer of possessing this skill thus far. Generally speaking, they don't even believe that such a thing actually exists, thanks to their limited science long ago ruling out the possibility. Even so, they are somehow still aware of it, and they create fantastic works of fiction about it, and some enlightened few among them do indeed still believe in its existence, despite all of their flawed evidence to the contrary. But can any human actually use it? No, of course they can't. Someday, perhaps. Maybe even sooner, rather than later, if that Crusher boy and his dealings with the Traveler are any indication.

I'm talking about magic, of course. These ponies were beginning to use magic. Sure, it was on a vastly rudimentary and primitive level compared to the abilities of the Q, but it was there, nonetheless. In some, the talent was stronger than others. These were the Unicorns. The magic actually physically manifested itself in the horns on their head. However, what the other pony races lacked in raw magical abilities, they made up for in other ways. The Pegasus ponies developed wings and the ability to fly, as well as to walk on the clouds, and to control those clouds and thus the very weather itself. The Earth ponies seemed to be at the biggest disadvantage of the lot, but they possessed a certain strength, not only just in body, that the other two types of ponies lacked, for the most part. Not to mention the fact that there were a very rare few Earth ponies who possessed powers on a reality warping scale, close to rivaling that of the Q itself even, but mostly this ability remained dormant and unutilized, though it was still passed down through the generations. And lastly, there were the Alicorn ponies, which possessed the abilities and physical attributes of all of the other three types combined. These were an incredibly rare sight indeed, however, and they tended to remain to themselves during this era.

By this point in their history, as I said, the ponies had already achieved sentience, and soon after, at least on a geological scale anyway, they had gained true sapience. At that point, I was rather tempted to change my form entirely to that of a pony. Obviously, an Alicorn body would have suited me perfectly, but over the millennia I had grown rather fond of the jumbled mishmash that I had created for myself, so I decided to keep it.

I continued to watch as the ponies evolved. At first, each race kept mostly to themselves. Then, they started interacting with one another, but it was a rather adversarial relationship. The Earth ponies had developed agriculture by this time, as their innate magic was particularly suited to it. They grew all of the food, in other words. The Pegasus ponies, as I already mentioned, had gained the ability to control the weather. In exchange for using their gifts to provide water for the crops, they demanded food from the Earth ponies. The Unicorns, meanwhile, had mastered the use of their magic to such an extent that they could control the very solar and lunar cycles of their planet. The Unicorns themselves believed that they were actually causing the sun and moon to rise and set, but all they were really doing was manipulating the rotation of the planet with their telekinesis, with some very limited influence on the lunar cycle. That is to say, they had the ability to increase or decrease the rotation of their planet as well as to speed up or slow down the lunar orbit, without causing the moon to go spiraling off into space or crash into the planet. Granted, these things are something an infant Q would learn to do almost immediately after being born, but it was still an incredibly impressive feat for such a young species. Anyway, the Unicorns also demanded food from the Earth ponies for these feats. You would think that this would have been an equitable arrangement. The Earth ponies grow the food, the Pegasi provide the water, and the Unicorns provide the light. Rather simple. But at this point in time, the pony races were on the brink of a terrible war. A large part of the reason for this was the windigoes.

The windigoes were disembodied creatures that fed on negative emotions. While the pony nations squabbled with one another, the windigoes grew ever stronger. The stronger they became, the colder the area where the ponies lived grew. The only thing preventing an all-out war between the pony nations, ironically enough, was the very thing that was driving them to the brink of such a war in the first place, given that the ponies were too cold and hungry to wage full scale war upon each other. Eventually, it got to the point that a localized ice age began in that region of the planet.

I considered intervening and dispelling the windigoes myself, but I decided it would be much more interesting to simply watch and see how the ponies dealt with this issue. At first, I thought they were doomed. That such an interesting species with so much potential would squander it all and allow themselves to become extinct after only a few thousand years of existence was disappointing. It brought a tear to my eye, it did, but I still chose not to interfere. If the ponies were wiped out, they would have brought this fate upon themselves. I considered it a test, the first of many. I had faith that they would pass this test.

The ponies left the frozen wasteland that had become their home and tried to find new lands to cultivate. And at first, they succeeded, but soon the petty bickering resumed, allowing the windigoes to close in for the kill. However, at this point, something new happened. Some of the ponies from the different tribes learned that it was far better for them to work together in harmony rather than to struggle with each other for dominance. Their thick-skulled leaders soon came to their senses as well, and, finally, the windigoes were expelled and the lands returned to their bountiful nature.

Of course, it was all much more complicated than that simple story makes it out to be, but ultimately, that is how the land of Equestria was born. During this time, the Alicorn race, which had always been a very rare sight in the old pony lands, rose in prominence if not necessarily in number, and soon, they were ruling the land. It was a benevolent government, for the most part, as the Alicorns generally possessed a wisdom that far outstretched the relative youth of their species. Some of them I'm sure would give even the more profound of the El-Aurians a run for their money. I wasn't sure why they hadn't interceded during the windigo crisis, but I assumed that their reasons were likely similar to my own. Not all Alicorns were created equally, mind you, same as the other ponies, or any other sapient race for that matter, including the Q. Some of them could get rather hot-headed at times, but that will become apparent in due course.

It was around this time that I decided to start taking a more active role, rather than remaining purely an observer. While I didn't yet make myself known to anypony, pardon me, anybody, I still made my presence known in other ways. Sometimes I would use my powers to humble some of the haughtier or more evil of the ponies, but never in a way that drew attention to my presence. They thought the result of my actions was merely a strange sickness at first. I know exactly what you're thinking. You're surprised that I didn't just charge in and start showboating, but I was a somewhat different Q back then.

One fateful day, as I was flitting in the wind above a vast woodland area known to ponykind as the Everfree Forest, and inside of which the Alicorns had set up their original capital city, I first laid my eyes upon her. And that was when everything changed.

"Well… go on," said Q, making a gimme gimme motion with his hands. I didn't respond for a while. I watched as the starship on which we were sitting finally entered warp and hurtled along, carrying the crew toward whatever no doubt mind-numbingly boring new mission they had been assigned to do.

"You have to understand, Q," I said finally, "that I'm not normally one to just fall for a pretty face, as they say."

"Oh really," said Q, cocking an eyebrow. "What about Vash?"

"Vash?" I said, narrowing my eyes. "That's different. We just had a… business arrangement of sorts. Besides, that hasn't even happened yet."

"Oh come on, Q, we're both non-linear beings here. You don't have to play coy with me," said Q. "Okay, so you don't want to talk about Vash. Fair enough. Well, then, what about Amanda Rogers?"

"What about her? I was, or rather will be, sent by the Continuum to potentially end her existence!" I said.

"Yes, indeed you will," said Q, "but we both know that you won't go through with it. She will come to accept her rightful place as a member of the Continuum. And she will be a rather well-adjusted one at that, I should add, which is more than I can say for some Q I know."

I ignored the jibe. "Well… she'll be more like a… well… like a daughter to me, in a way, almost, or at least a favored pupil of mine. In fact, I'm quite insulted that you believe I would think of her in any other fashion," I said, turning toward Q and narrowing my eyes.

"Whoa there, tiger. Easy. I suppose I can see your point. Okay, then. So what about Lwaxana? You can't tell me you won't have a very interesting experience with her," Q crossed his arms and smirked as he said this.

"No thanks to you," I muttered under my breath. I thought back, or rather, forward, to the time that I was- will be -visiting the Enterprise while they will be hosting the ceremony for the marriage between the children of the heads of the Nistral and Graziunas families of the Tizarin merchant race. Memories of my yet-to-be encounter with the mother of the Enterprise's counselor, Deanna Troi, left me with a feeling of apprehension. Or perhaps outright dread would be the better word. "Well, we both already know how that will end," I said blackly. Still, despite everything that I knew would befall me, I couldn't help but feel a bit of anticipation as well.

"Indeed we do, and, believe it or not, it's for your own good, Q" said Q. "Enough said on that subject for now. Let's move on to Janeway, then."

"Oh, don't even get me started on Janeway," I groaned. "I'm serious. It will be a very… complicated relationship."

"And let's never forget the inimitable Guinan," said Q, grinning at me.

I merely glared at him, imagining him burning forever at the core of the hottest star I could think of. Annoyingly, he used his own powers to counter my own.

"All right, all right!" laughed Q. "Anyway, those are just the blatantly humanoid ones. What about that spunky little Caitian you met on the old-"

"Q!" I said, cutting him off. "You're not planning to list off every single being in the universe in which I have displayed a more than passing interest, are you?"

"Fine, okay, whatever, sheesh," said Q. "I don't have that many centuries to spare anyway, thank you very much. You get my drift, I'm sure. But just one more… How about… you know… Q?" said Q.

I thought long and hard about Q. Not the Q sitting next to me, of course. Her. She was, as the humans would call it, an "old flame" of mine. We were in an on-again-off-again situation which was currently well into the "off" phase. It's not that I didn't like her anymore, far from it. It's just that she could be somewhat… clingy at times. A Q needs his space, after all. I also knew that we were going to be interacting with one another again at some point in the relatively near future as well, but divining a Q's destiny is much more difficult than that of mortal races, due to our powers interfering with one another, so it wasn't quite yet clear to me what would happen to bring us back together, though I knew it would involve Janeway and Voyager in some way. And, to be honest, I just didn't feel like expending the effort to bring that into focus at the moment. "No comment," I said finally, then added, "Fine, fine, I get your point. All of the creatures that I encounter in my travels leave an imprint on me in some way, even though in most cases I'd prefer to respond to that by cleansing the stench from my essence in the event horizon of a black hole. But there are some who leave me feeling a bit… wistful. But only a very, very rare few of those did I ever consider being almost an… equal."

"Like the girl you met in Equestria, right?" prompted Q. "And don't worry. I won't breathe a word of this to Q. You have my word. Now don't keep me in suspense."

"Yes…" I said, letting the memories overtake me again. "Just like her. Dear Princess Celestia."

Chapter 2

I first spied her in the statue gallery of the royal gardens. Ironic, that. She could hardly have been more than a foal, not much more than perhaps twenty Equestrian years old at the time. She was barely out of diapers, in other words. That's not just an expression, by the way. Were you aware that Equestrian ponies actually do put diapers on their infants? It's true, and not just a little disgusting. I'm so glad that we Q never have to bother ourselves with such vile biological processes, at least when we're not in mortal forms, anyway. Where was I? Oh, right, barely out of diapers. Alicorns mature rather quickly in their early years, however, and so her current state of development was probably the rough equivalent to that of a human with the same number of years of development, plus or minus a few years or so. After this stage, however, Alicorn development slowed to a relatively geological pace, at least physically, anyway. They were an incredibly long-lived species. In fact, were it not for accidents and… er… "accidents"… I would dare say that they were effectively immortal.

She was a pure white Alicorn, with a mane colored with the pink of a morning sun and a tail to match. The mark on her flank was that of a blazing sun. Forgive me if I don't go into the intricacies of cutie marks, as they are called. For now, it's enough to understand that it is a mark that a young pony receives as he or she matures that reflects their true calling in life. It's all very meaningful and symbolic and whatnot.

Suffice it to say that she was indeed a very lovely creature, even then, and she only became more so as the millennia progressed. Her mane would come to be a multicolored pastel work of art, but even back then, in its purely pink state, it was still a marvel to behold. However, as breathtaking as she was, it wasn't her physical beauty that had me truly spellbound. She was an amazingly wise and kind creature, even in the bud of her life as she was then, but she wasn't averse to letting her mane down and having a bit of fun now and again. Though she was not yet ruling the land herself, I knew that she would one day make an excellent leader of her people.

After watching her for a year or two, I finally decided to make myself known to her. She was once again trotting along and viewing the various pony statues that littered the garden, as she tended to do at least two or three times a week. I was in a mischievous mood, so as a bit of a prank, I swooped down along the path she was taking and transformed myself into a statue, my right hand on my stomach and my left one extended upward, my mouth open as though in the midst of a rousing speech or a song. Or a scream.

When she finally reached me, she let out a small gasp of surprise. "That's unusual," she said, studying me closely. "Is this a new one? I don't think I've ever seen this one before."

"That's because I've never been here before," I said, winking down at her.

"Oh my," she said, and took a few surprised steps backward.

With the signature burst of light and sound of the Q, I returned to my non-statue form and floated down off of the pillar. This startled her so much that she tried to back away some more but tripped and fell backward onto her hindquarters. I found it to be absolutely adorable, despite myself. "No need to be alarmed, my dear," I said, with a chuckle. "I apologize if my boorish prank has unnecessarily frightened you."

"W-who are you? What are you?" she said, slowly returning to her feet. She still looked unsure as to whether she should remain in my presence or take flight.

I pondered quickly and decided that I did not want to make my true identity as a member of the Q Continuum known to the beings of this world, so I concocted a new identity for myself on the spot. I bowed deeply and said, "You may call me… Discord." I'm not at all sure what possessed me to choose a name like that. It's just the first thing that came to mind, so that's what I said. The rather fitting nature of that name, given what came later, was completely lost on me at the time, despite my non-linear nature.

"Discord?" she said, the edges of her mouth angling downward the slightest bit. "That's a rather… unusual name."

"I know what you're thinking," I said, and now I had to come up with a reason for why I had such a potentially disagreeable name, "and I fully understand. I know that ponykind tends to choose names that befit a given pony's station in life. Let's just say that my… parents… on the other hand, have a rather unique idea of what constitutes a proper name for a child. Meaningless fancy. Completely random. And thus, they chose Discord to be my name. It could just as easily have been something equally ridiculous, like Puddinghead or some such. Even so, I have grown rather fond of the moniker myself. I just like the sound of it, if not the meaning, and so I have decided to keep it. As for what I am… I am what you would call a draconequus."

She tilted her head, and decided not to press the name issue any further. "A… dragon pony? I'm afraid that I've never heard of such a creature. And, pardon me, but you do appear to have more than merely draconic and equine features."

"I am unique," I said with a flourish, bowing again. "There's only one like me in all of Equestria. Well, aside from the parents I just mentioned, obviously, but, um, they don't live in Equestria itself, so I guess that means I'm still one of a kind here! By the way, my dear, how may I have the pleasure of addressing you?"

"Oh," she said, suddenly mindful of the fact that she hadn't introduced herself yet. "C-celestia. Princess Celestia," she hastened to add.

"What an astoundingly apropos name indeed for such a celestial creature as yourself," I said, turning my charm up to full blast. I was rewarded when a blush spread across her face, visible even through her pure white fur, and she averted her eyes briefly, the previous slight frown being replaced with a soft smile. "Ah, and you're a princess, too! I should have known. So I suppose that means this wonderful place must belong to you?" I continued, making a sweeping gesture around the statue gallery, the garden beyond, and of course the large palace itself.

"I suppose you could say that," said Celestia. "More appropriately, I suppose I should say that it belongs to my father, the king."

"Well, again, my dear lady, I must apologize for my rude manner a moment ago," I said, taking one of her forelegs in my hands and bending over low while bringing her hoof to my lips. "If I had known you were of royal blood, I would have dispensed with my usual loutish buffoonery and introduced myself to you directly." I was lying again, of course. I had long known she was of royal blood, as all Alicorns now were. I'm not sure what possessed me to keep piling on lie after lie… I suppose it was simply in my nature. The people of Brax don't call me the "God of Lies" completely without merit, you know. But these, at least, were harmless white lies.

Celestia's blush deepened. "Oh, I d-didn't mind, really. It was just a bit unexpected, that's all, though not entirely unamusing in retrospect, I can admit. I'm not averse to the occasional harmless prank myself, as my sister Luna could surely tell you. It's just that I thought I was completely alone here. Very few other ponies visit the statue gallery at this time of the evening, which is precisely why I choose to come here myself. It was just a bit of a shock to find somepony else here, especially one as… unusual as you. Oh, I'm sorry, I don't mean to offend you."

"None taken, my dear. None at all," I said, kissing her hoof again and then releasing it and allowing it to drop back to the ground. Celestia's face was almost entirely pink by this point, roughly the same color as her mane. "It's true. I am a rather unusual being."

"You say you don't originally hail from Equestria?" she asked, after a moment. "Where did you come from? What is it like there? I have so many questions."

"Well that, my dear, is indeed a very fantastic tale," I said, warming up to spin an incredible but harmless work of fiction, as I felt that the truth of the Q Continuum would have been infinitely beyond even her ability to understand.

Before I could begin, however, from off in the distance, a voice reached us from somewhere within the nearby hedge maze. "Hey! Hey, Tia! Is that you I hear talking over there? Where are you?"

"Luna? I'm in the statue gallery," said Celestia.

A short few seconds later, a younger Alicorn, perhaps between sixteen to eighteen Equestrian years old, with dark purple fur and a shimmering mane and tail the color of the nighttime sky made her way out of the maze and over to Celestia. Her cutie mark was that of a white crescent moon, overlaying an inky black midnight sky. She couldn't have looked more different from the other Alicorn standing before me, but it was instantly clear that the two were indeed sisters, even so. She was almost as beautiful as Celestia, though her beauty was of a different, perhaps darker nature.

"I was idling about in the hedge maze and I heard you talking, so I thought-" She stopped in her tracks when she saw me. She looked at her sister briefly and noted the rosy color in her cheeks before returning her eyes to me.

Celestia looked from me to her sister and then said, "Forgive my manners. Luna, this is Discord, who I just met a few moments ago. Discord, this is my younger sister, Princess Luna."

"I am charmed to make your acquaintance, dear Princess Luna," I said, bowing deeply to her. Something told me that attempting to kiss her hoof as I had Celestia's would be a bad idea, however, so I refrained from doing so.

Luna, in return, said nothing. She continued to stare at me and slowly made her way over to where Celestia and I were standing. Or, in my case, floating. When she reached us, she looked me up and down, as though carefully studying a frog she was preparing to dissect.

"What is the matter with you, Luna?" said Celestia. "Don't be so rude."

"What is this creature, Celestia?" said Luna cautiously, not taking her eyes off of me for a moment. "Where did it come from?"

"He is standing right there, Luna. You can ask him yourself," said Celestia, the red in her face starting to change to that of embarrassment and a bit of anger.

"It's quite all right, my dear Celestia," I said. "I understand that my appearance is probably a bit… frightening."

"I have no reason to fear you," said Luna, a bit coldly.

I narrowed my eyes imperceptibly. 'Oh but you do, my dear, if you keep trying my patience like this.' I thought, but didn't voice. Instead, I said, "Of course you don't. I mean you absolutely no harm, after all. To answer your question, I am merely what you would call a draconequus."

"A dragon pony?" said Luna. "I have never even heard of such a creature."

"That is because I am unique among my kind," I said, not bothering with the whole "parents" thing this time.

"And what kind of name is Discord, anyway?" said Luna. "I'm sorry, but that sounds like the name of some sort of obvious two-bit villain to me."

"Luna! What has gotten into you?" said Celestia sharply. "Mind your tongue!"

Luna didn't respond, never once taking her eyes off of me.

After a moment or two of awkward silence while she merely stared at me, I cleared my throat. "I am terribly sorry. I don't mean to cause a commotion here. If my presence is a nuisance then I shall take my leave of you. I don't wish to come between the two of you. Celestia, I bid you adieu. Luna, it was… nice to meet you."

"Wait! Discord, you're not a nuisance at all. My sister is just-" cried Celestia, but before she could say anything more, and to the shock of Luna and the dismay of Celestia, I disappeared with my customary burst of light and sound. I even put a little bit of extra oomph into it that time, since it was the first time Luna had seen it. However, I didn't actually go anywhere. I merely cloaked my presence from their senses.

Celestia wheeled on Luna. "Little sister, how dare you! What were you thinking?"

"What was I thinking?" said Luna, her cold manner dissolving into a hot anger now that she thought the two of them were alone. "I was thinking that there is suddenly some sort of strange creature that neither one of us has ever seen before, who has somehow gotten into the very center of the royal palace grounds without alerting any of the guards, and who has, from my perspective, possibly put some sort of spell over my own sister! Especially a creature that looks like that thing did and which has such an obviously foreboding name as Discord, of all things! What were you thinking, big sister?"

Celestia was taken aback by this. "I can't believe that you would jump to such outlandish conclusions. Haven't you learned that you shouldn't judge a book by its cover? If you had taken five seconds to just stop and listen to him, you would have found him to be a perfectly charming individual."

"That's what I'm afraid of, especially after seeing how he was affecting you there," said Luna. "Look at you, you're still beet red, even now!"

"I can assure you that I am perfectly in my right mind. If I am red in the face, it is because of mortification due to your behavior," retorted Celestia.

Luna snorted. "My behavior. Sometimes I feel like I am the older sister between us. What do you know about this creature? Truly, sister, tell me. If you can convince me that he is not a danger, then I will admit my error and welcome him with open hooves."

Celestia shook her head. "Why don't you convince me that he is a danger!"

"I believe I've already made my case for that. Seriously, Tia, what do you know about this creature?" said Luna, not backing down.

Celestia said nothing for a moment, then frowned and lowered her head slightly.

"That's what I thought," said Luna. "I'm going to go tell mother and father about this at once." Luna made as if to go around her sister and enter the palace, but Celestia moved to the side and planted herself in her sister's path.

"You will do no such thing, Luna!" said Celestia. "I won't have you raising an alarm over nothing at all."

"Nothing at all?" snapped back Luna. "We clearly have an intruder in our midst that can teleport around at will! How is this not a potential threat that should be made known to our parents?"

"Lu, please," said Celestia, her voice softening a bit, "just listen to me. Yes, it is true that I don't know very much about him yet, but the brief conversation I did have with him before you arrived was a very pleasant one. If he were truly a threat to us, given that he is able to teleport at will as we both clearly saw, he probably could have harmed me before I was even aware of his presence. Assuming he hasn't been offended to the point of never returning because of you, I wouldn't mind getting to know him better. And as I said, no, I don't believe for a moment that he was… coercing me in any way whatsoever. Obviously, I have no way to prove that to you, but I hope that you'll just trust me when I say that it is so."

Luna said nothing for a moment, then shook her head. "Okay, fine. Have it your way, as usual. Against my better judgment, I won't say anything about this to mother or father. Yet. But if I see the first sign that this creature is a threat, I will go straight to them."

It was Celestia's turn to pause for a moment. Then she sighed and said, "Fair enough. But I will prove to you that he means us no harm." She looked at the space where I had occupied (and still did occupy, though they didn't know it) and I could see that her eyes were glistening, on the verge of tears. She turned back to Luna and said, "Again, assuming he ever comes back, of course."

Luna averted her eyes for a moment, then looked straight into Celestia's own. "Look… sis. I… I apologize. Maybe… maybe I was a bit hasty. If it means this much to you, I will… try to make an effort to get to know him better… if he comes back. Maybe you're right, and I should give him the benefit of the doubt."

Celestia smiled. "Thank you, little sister. That's all I ask."

Luna looked down and shuffled one of her front hooves for a bit, then looked back up at her sister. "I'll try, Tia. But I'll still be keeping an eye on him. Now, if you'll excuse me, I have lessons with father in a few minutes. Again, I won't say a word about this." With that, Luna gave a slight curtsey to her sister and headed for the door to the inside of the palace.

"Hahahahahaha," said Q, slowly clapping his hands. "That Luna had you pegged right from the start!"

"She most certainly did not!" I said.

"Q, she was absolutely 100% right about you! In fact, I bet you did put a hex on her poor sister," said Q.

"I did no such thing!" I said, genuinely angry at this. "You think I can't convince another sapient being to find me charming and witty without resorting to petty trickery or something as gauche as mind control?"

Q raised an eyebrow.

"It's true, damn it all! I swear on my honor as a member of the Q Continuum that I did not unduly coerce her against her will in any way whatsoever."

"You know, that doesn't mean too awfully much, coming from you," Q retorted.

"Be that as it may, it is still the truth!" I insisted. "At that point in time, she did indeed genuinely like me, and did so for a long time to come. That's part of the reason I found her so fascinating. And you have to understand that, even then, I could tell that she possessed a wisdom that was far beyond her years, as I already said. Most creatures to which I make my presence known are either incredibly afraid of me or incredibly envious of me. Take Luna, for instance. She was both."

"What possible reason could she have had to be envious of you?" said Q.

"Well, aside from my charming manner and outstanding good looks, I think she considered me a threat," I said. "And I don't mean in the obvious sense. I mean, I believe that she considered me a threat to her relationship with her sister. Like she knew, even then, that Celestia would start spending a lot more time with me that she had used to spend with her sister. I believe that's why she was always so standoffish and rude to me on the very few occasions that she tried to hang out with us later."

"Sounds to me like she was just cautious of you," said Q, "and rightfully so, given what you eventually did to all of them. I don't see how you can even pretend to deny it! She had locked onto you like the phaser array on this fine ship here and burned right through you!"

I stared daggers at my fellow Q. "I'll have you know that none of the things that came later were even glimmers in my mind at that point, even taking my non-linearity into account. Besides, I… I was perfectly justified in my later actions."

"Are you &~%|(!*^$`+#ing kidding me?" said Q incredulously. Q, as a general rule, doesn't swear often, but when he does… watch out. And that was a particularly vile one, learned from somewhere in the Triangulum Galaxy, if memory serves.

"Well," I said, backpedalling a bit. "I certainly felt like I was perfectly justified at the time."

"Q, there is several universes worth of difference between actually being justified in your actions and merely thinking you are justified in your actions," said Q.

"Don't you think I know that?" I said. "But still, we're both Q! Who has the right to tell us if our actions are justified or not besides ourselves!"

"You just said it yourself. Our fellow Q have the right!" said Q. "And in your case, I and the rest of the Continuum most certainly did not think your behavior was justified. You were acting like a spoiled human toddler in the midst of one humdinger of a tantrum who had somehow gotten its hands on a quantum torpedo! &~%|(!*^$`+# it, Q, you were even worse than Trelane!"

This stung me to the core. "Worse than… Trelane…?"

"Yes, worse than Trelane," said Q. "And at least Trelane had the excuse of actually being a small child to mitigate his actions. Actions which, I might add, were nowhere near in scale to what the humans would call 'asshattery' as what you got yourself into. What was your excuse, huh?"

"She hurt me, Q," I said, defensively. "She turned away from me. She hated me. You just can't know how much that tormented me."

"Only after you all but destroyed her," said Q. "What she did to you, if you can even consider her as actually doing anything to you at all aside from getting righteously pissed off, was but a fraction of a Plank's volume of quantum foam in the ocean of darkness between galaxies compared to what you did."

I merely hung my head at this. "You're absolutely right, of course. If I could make it up to her, I…" I trailed off. How could I? Her parents. Her people. Even now, when things were back to normal again… Q was indeed absolutely right. What nerve did I have to be angry at all, especially at her? None whatsoever, that was what. Confound it all. I put my human head in my human hands. I wasn't about to cry, but if a Q could cry, I was as close as one could get at that moment.

Q softened his tone. "I know what you did. All of us know what you did. What we don't know is why. I mean… I can probably guess, but I don't want to do that. I want to hear it straight from you."

"Damn you, Q," I muttered.

"Damn me all you want," he said. "And then tell me the rest of your story."

Chapter 3

"Discord! Are you still there? Please answer," said Celestia, galloping back and forth in the statue gallery as though she would be able to locate my hiding spot, even though she had no way of knowing if I was even still present at all. I couldn't bear to see her in distress, so I immediately made myself visible again, but without the usual accompanying fanfare this time. Well, okay, I at least toned it down a bit, anyway.

She stopped short and then trotted back over to me, the smile returning to her face. "Where did you go? I apologize for my sister's terrible rudeness. I just don't know what has gotten into her at all. She's normally much more pleasant to be around."

I held up a hand. "She has every right to distrust me. After all, as she said, she knows nothing about me and, indeed, I did just appear here out of the blue without warning."

It didn't register to her at all that I had just let slip that I had been eavesdropping on their earlier conversation. "That still doesn't give her the right to-" Celestia began.

I put a finger on her lips. "It's okay, my dear Celestia. Her nature is simply different from your own. You are a very kind, trusting individual, and your sister is simply more… cautious. I understand completely. I promise you I will do everything in my power to prove your sister wrong, to prove to both her and you and everypony else that I mean you no harm."

"Y-you don't have to convince me," said Celestia, shaking her head slightly.

"I am gratified that you trust me," I said, flashing her one of my warmest smiles, which rewarded me with another pretty blush of her cheeks.

At this point, you must forgive me if I skip ahead a bit. I don't want to bore you with the trivialities that went along with my relationship with Celestia and the mistrustful interactions with her sister. Suffice it to say that nothing… untoward happened between Celestia and me during that time. I kept things purely chaste, though I'm pretty sure Celestia herself would have been more than willing to, shall we say, expedite the relationship. Aside from little gestures like kissing her hooves or a bit of nuzzling or the occasional rare hug, I refrained from going any further if only because the thought of becoming… truly intimate in that way with a mortal creature, even with one as beautiful as my dear Celestia, filled me with a nameless dread and not a little disgust. As I said, I was still a young Q back in those days, but even now the thought doesn't appeal to me. Besides, you know how Q mate, and you know that this would not have satisfied a purely physical being in the slightest. Anyway, I was interested in her mind and spirit, not her body, as easy on the eyes as it may have been. Honestly, the fact that she was as patient with me as she was, despite her longing, only endeared her to me even more, and I believe that my reticence somehow endeared me to her even more as well. We merely met in a secluded corner of the statue gallery on the evenings she was free from her studies and we talked, nothing more than that. And these were indeed some of the most refreshingly delightful conversations I've ever had with a lesser being. Well, I'll be honest. It very quickly came to be that I didn't even really consider her to be a "lesser" being anymore. Even though she was not a Q, I still almost considered her to be an equal, at least in intellect and wisdom if not in power and ability. There were times when I almost considered revealing my true nature to her.

As for Luna, despite her earlier promise to her sister, she was never more than merely tolerant of me, and even that was a stretch most of the time. She continued to mistrust me, what very few times she chose to join us during our excursions. And her mistrust grew deeper, despite the fact that I acted as nothing other than the most prim and proper of gentlemen toward both her and her sister. I think my blatant attempts to win her over as I had her sister merely had exactly the opposite of the intended effect. She just seemed to be waiting for the hammer to finally drop, no matter how much I tried to convince her that I meant them no harm, and at the time I truly didn't, despite my growing frustration with Luna. Nothing short of me mentally dominating her would have changed that, but that simply would have justified everything she imagined about me, and I didn't want to give her the satisfaction. Also, of course, if I had done that, it would have gravely upset Celestia, and I obviously didn't want to do that either. I held my anger in check and kept it from showing, but the little filly was truly starting to get under my skin. Still, to her credit, she did keep her other promise and didn't tell their parents or anyone else about me. In the end, it turned out that she didn't have to, as they found out about me on their own, with catastrophic results.

You see, I had been watching their parents along with every other creature on the planet. You recall how I said that I was conducting little experiments with the haughtier ponies, yes? Well, her father was one of the haughtiest ponies in the whole land. Sure, he was the ruler of all of Equestria, but even taking that into account, he was still a right ass. Granted, he never mistreated his subjects or his family, but even so… I longed to make an example of him. It was only out of concern for Celestia that I held myself in check. Eventually, however, it got to a point where I could barely contain myself, and so, I arranged circumstances so that he would "accidentally" discover us during one of our little excursions.

It was almost a century to the day after my first meeting with Celestia when it happened. Celestia and I were sitting on a bench beneath a large wild apple tree that had recently been imported from the nearby lands that, in later millennia, would come to be known as Ponyville. I had just told a particularly charming and romantic story about some inconsequential trifle or another, and as I looked down at Celestia, she was gazing back up at me. Her eyes were half-lidded and her lips slightly parted and upturned in a small smile and her cheeks were once again aflame. I found it to be rather intoxicating, despite myself. I knew exactly what it was that she wanted, and after all this time, I finally decided to give it to her, despite my own lingering reservations on the matter. I slowly lowered my head down toward hers. I think she realized that it was finally about to happen (and happen for the first time, I say again, despite all of the subtle and not-so-subtle hints she had been giving me over the years) because she tilted her face farther upward slightly. Our lips drew closer together and were just about to meet when…

"WHAT IS GOING ON HERE?" came a deep, booming voice from a short distance away. So this was the infamous Royal Voice that the Alicorn ponies had developed? I was not impressed in the slightest. Celestia jerked and almost toppled off of the bench. She had to grab onto me to keep from falling completely, while I merely turned my gaze slowly and deliberately toward the source of the voice. I knew that things were just about to get very interesting. I hadn't planned for us to be discovered right at that exact moment, mind you, but it couldn't have worked out better if I had.

"Father?" squeaked Celestia. "What are you-"

"What is this creature?" said the imposing Alicorn standing before me, still speaking in that obnoxious tone of voice. He was large. Very large. Even larger than Celestia herself would come to be at the height of her power. He was almost completely black, though it was more a very deep purple, much darker than that of Princess Luna. This included his mane and tail and even the horn on his head. However, he also sparkled. I don't just mean that he was covered in white spots that looked like stars. I mean that he looked like he was literally covered with miniature stars themselves, or at least gemstones of some sort, though they were a natural part of his body and not some sort of affectation. His cutie mark was itself a large star. Actually, it was more like the core of a galaxy than a star. I could feel the raw power simply exuding from every pore in his body. And right now, he looked like he was getting ready to direct every bit of that power right between my yellow and red eyes. Celestia looked like she might faint, but I merely continued to stare at the newcomer, my calm unwavering. "Answer me at once!" he commanded.

Celestia was almost gibbering at this point. "Father, please calm down! I-I can explain everything." She finally let go of me and rose from the bench. I could easily see that her entire body was trembling.

The large Alicorn never took his gaze off of me. "Well?" he said.

"T-this is Discord," said Celestia. "He is a draconequus. I met him… just the other day, and-"

"My dear Celestia," I said, putting my lion's paw on her shoulder and interrupting her. My familiar manner with his daughter did not go unnoticed by her father, just as Celestia's grabbing of me earlier hadn't either. "You shouldn't lie to your father like that. We met nearly one hundred years ago, sir." Celestia cringed as I said this.

The large Alicorn's eyes widened. "One hundred years? That's around the time when…" His eyes narrowed again. "Creature, what are you doing here with my daughter? And what have you been doing with my daughter for the past century?" His implications were clear, as made evident by the deepening blush on Celestia's face, despite the fact that nothing of the sort had occurred.

"We are merely enjoying a pleasant evening filled with delightful conversation, just as we have every other time that we've been meeting like this. I assure you, sir, that I have been the very Platonic ideal of a gentleman."

The Alicorn turned to Celestia and addressed her in that damnable voice that made me want to just turn him into a chipmunk or an earthworm or something. "Why have you not brought him before me in all of this time? SPEAK, girl, and stop trembling like a day old foal." This, obviously, only made her shrink back and tremble all the more. I could tell that this was the first time in a very, very long time that her father had felt the need to raise his voice to her like this, and she didn't quite know how to handle it.

Obviously, this guy was long past the point of beginning to irk me, and I felt a sudden urge to protect my dear Celestia from him and his detestable voice, but I held my tongue for the moment and let her speak for herself, not that it helped. "I-I'm sorry father. I was p-planning to introduce him to you soon, b-but…"

Her father turned sharply to me again, all but ignoring Celestia's stammering. "Creature, I demand to know what you have done to my daughter! You have obviously put some sort of curse upon her, haven't you? She is not acting at all like the confident daughter that I love! She's almost like a different pony! Whatever you have done, I demand that you undo it this instant! Speak, creature! I command it!"

At this, I rose up to my full height. I smirked imperceptibly when the Alicorn's eyes widened a bit when he realized he had to look up to make eye contact with me, despite his own imposing size. I towered above him and glared down at him. "Sir, I have been the very picture of patience, but I would request that you cease calling me 'creature' and start addressing me by my name. As for your dear daughter, have you considered the fact that she may simply be abashed by your churlish demeanor?"

"Discord, please, don't-" whispered Celestia, glancing at me out of the corner of her eye, though she still kept most of her attention on her father.

"How dare you speak to me in such a manner," said the Alicorn, interrupting his daughter once again with that horrid tone. "Do you even know who I am?"

"Well, obviously," I said sardonically, "given that Princess Celestia has called you 'father' on multiple occasions, I can only assume that you are the king and ruler of all of Equestria. That's all well and good, but it doesn't excuse you from basic manners, now does it? Why, you haven't even introduced yourself to me yet."

Celestia was looking from me, to her father, and then back to me. Even at the worst of her sister's needling of me, I had never directly challenged Luna as I was her father now, and Celestia seemed to be a bit unsettled by this. "Discord, please watch your words. My father is-"

"I can speak for myself, Celestia. I don't need you to fight my battles for me," said the Alicorn king.

"Ah, is that what this is, dear sir? A battle?" I said, beginning to let the very tiniest of fractions of my own power bleed through the screen that I had been holding up for the past century. Celestia was confused and a bit frightened when she sensed it, but the Alicorn's eyes merely widened a bit, as if in recognition, before narrowing even more.

"You may address me as Lord Uran-Ra," he said, drawing himself up even higher, though it still wasn't anywhere near my own height, "and as you said, I am the ruler of this land. But, more importantly to this particular moment, I am Celestia's father. Now, I ask you again, creature, what have you done to my daughter?"

"Father, he has done nothing to me!" said Celestia, trying everything in her power to keep this situation from escalating. "Nothing at all," she added, glancing at me again at this last, before turning back to her father again. "Please, if the two of you would just stop for a moment and-"

"So when I happened upon you just now, was that some of the nothing that you two have been doing together?" interrupted Uran-Ra yet again, looking back and forth between her and me. The ever deepening blush in Celestia cheeks betrayed the fact that she had certainly been thinking about such things, even if we had never reached that point. That seemed to be all the evidence that the king needed.

"I told you, sir, that I have been a proper gentleman," I said coolly. "And I must say that I really don't care to have to repeat myself unnecessarily." Celestia looked at me, pleading silently with her eyes for me to be more respectful to her father. I had to look away and focus more fully on Uran-Ra, or else I might have lost my resolve.

"I don't believe you for a second, creature. Celestia, go inside at once," ordered the large black Alicorn. "We will discuss this later, after I deal with this creature."

"No, father! Please don't-" cried Celestia.

"NOW!" he thundered.

Celestia turned her tear-filled eyes to me again. I softened my expression and said, "Please Celestia, just do as your father says."

"But…" she stammered. "What about you?"

"Don't worry about me," I said. I turned my gaze back to Uran-Ra and hardened the look in my eyes as I added, "I can assure you that am in absolutely no danger here." I let a bit more of my power bleed through. Just enough to let both of them know that I was roughly the equal of the large black Alicorn in power, despite the fact that, in actuality, I was as far beyond his level of power as he was above an amoeba. It pained me a bit to see the fear in Celestia's eyes as this situation inexorably threatened to boil over.

"Discord," pleaded Celestia, "I don't wish for the two of you to-"

"CELESTIA, DO AS I SAY! GET. INSIDE. NOW!" roared the Alicorn again, turning his loathsome Royal Voice up to its highest volume yet upon noticing the none-too-subtle challenge in my own voice.

Celestia turned and galloped for the door. With one last look at us, she entered the palace. However, soon after that, I noticed that she appeared on a balcony far above us, through a door which I assume lead to her personal chambers, though I had never been there. Soon after, Princess Luna appeared at her side, her face as filled with anger as she glared at me as it was with concern as she looked at her father and her sister. They were far too high to be able to hear what their father and I were saying down below, but they could still see from our body language that this situation was far from contained.

I turned back to the king. "Are you happy now, sir? You've clearly and unnecessarily upset your dear daughter."

"Am I happy?" he said. "Who in Tartarus do you think you are, creature? Despite your deception of my daughter, I know exactly what you are! You are the one who has been behind the torment of my subjects for at least the past one hundred years! I can feel your aura, and it is identical to that of the affected ponies!"

As I said earlier, I had been playing pranks on the haughty and evil ponies. Indeed, I had kept up this practice during the days when I wasn't meeting with Celestia. And now, here before me stood what had to be the absolute haughtiest pony of them all. The things I wanted to do to this guy raced through my mind. The only thing that stopped me from acting right then and there was the simple fact that he was Celestia's father. I would wait and allow him to make his first and only mistake before I unleashed myself upon him.

"What of it?" I asked. "I merely test your subjects. If they are found lacking, their fate is no more than they deserve."

"You have no right!" said Lord Uran-Ra. "You are driving ponies to madness!"

"Who are you to say I have no right? I have existed on this planet for far longer than you and your kind have. Besides, the only ponies driven to madness are those who cannot endure the stark truths that I show them," I said. "If they can overcome their weaknesses, then they will be fine. Better, even, than they were before."

"I will not allow this to continue!" said the king. "I will protect my subjects from evil creatures such as you."

"I am the evil one?" I said. "You are the one who turns a blind eye when ponies under your rule mercilessly bully those weaker than themselves. You are the one who does not lift a hoof to shake up the complacency of the spoiled, greedy nobles whose rampant snobbery and selfishness defiles the very palace in which you live on a daily basis. You are the one who allows rape and murder to darken the farther corners of your kingdom. I bring truth to these wicked ponies, and if they cannot handle that, so be it!"

"You bring nothing but terror and madness to all ponies!" said the king. "I will put an end to this, right here and now."

"Oh, how I have been waiting to see you try," I said, with a sneer, as my reptilian tail began whipping back and forth in anticipation.

"Damn you, creature! This ends now!" said Uran-Ra. He took to the air for a moment and flew backward several feet, then landed again. From his stance, I could tell that he was preparing to unleash his full might upon me. Above me, I heard both Celestia and Luna faintly screaming down at us, but for the moment I paid them no mind. Before he actually released his attack on me, I briefly wondered why he was risking a battle on the very palace grounds. However, when the attack actually came, it became clear.

This pony had exact control over his abilities. He had enveloped me in a bubble of dark purple energy. He was attempting to crush me down to the size of a miniature black hole and then was planning to launch me into the Equestrian sun itself. Given that it was currently night time, this would have of course first required smashing me through the planet as well, which I'm sure was also part of the plan, and probably would have been something that he would have done even if the sun had been directly overhead. That was his plan, of course, but it wasn't going nearly as well as he had hoped.

Obviously, I was still whole and merely floating there watching him as he continued to pour on the power. Sweat broke out all over his body as he realized with no small amount of disbelief that what he was doing wasn't working, and still he increased his power upon me. Had he used this power on any other being than a Q such as myself, it would have been over in nanoseconds. For my part, I merely studied my claws and talons and waited for him to finish. If I'd been wearing a watch, I would have checked the time as well.

Just as he finally aborted his failed attack and collapsed to the ground, I noticed that Celestia and Luna had returned to the courtyard. Luna rushed to her father's side as he lay panting from the exertion and was trying to help him up, while Celestia was merely standing there, staring at the two of us, both in awe and, I noticed, no small amount of shock, but also relief, that I had somehow survived the attack, but also with great apprehension as to what may have been about to happen next, now that her father was down.

I turned from Celestia to the king. As I slowly floated toward him, Luna rose up and planted herself firmly between us. "YOU LEAVE MY FATHER ALONE!" she screamed at me, trying to hide the tears that were burning in her eyes behind a veil of pure rage and that damnable Voice.

I merely looked the king in the eyes and held up my eagle talons as I finally let my full power shine through. Both Celestia and Luna gasped in utter, wide-eyed shock as they sensed it, but Uran-Ra merely closed his eyes. He knew then that he was truly beaten, that he'd never had the slightest chance of victory, and that now the price for defeat was about to be paid.

"No, Discord!" said Celestia, finally breaking out of her trance and running toward us. "Please!"

"My turn," I said, with an impish smile on my face. As I snapped my fingers, both myself and the king disappeared in a burst of light and sound.

"See, Q," said my companion. "You were totally unjustified."

"Did you not just hear my story?" I asked incredulously. "That haughty pony tried to erase me from existence! If I hadn't been a Q, he would have easily succeeded!"

"I did listen to your story," said Q. "And what I got from it was that a concerned father and ruler of his people was trying to remove an entirely valid threat to both his daughter and his subjects."

"I was absolutely no danger to Celestia whatsoever!" I countered, momentarily enraged.

"Maybe not then, you weren't, no," said Q. "But what about later?"

"I…" I said. I turned away from him and looked out over the stardrive section of the Enterprise again. I studied the pulsing blue of the twin warp nacelles as I considered what he said. What, indeed, about later? The memories still gnawed at me.

"Besides, the king was absolutely right about what you had been doing to the people he was sworn to protect," said Q, after a few moments silence.

"Bah!" I said, turning around to face Q again. "Every single one of those ponies deserved everything I did to them."

"Did they?" said Q. "Or is that just a rationalization on your part?"

"YES! I mean, no! Yes, they did deserve it and no, it's not a rationalization! They were haughty and arrogant. And, as I keep saying, some of the more irredeemable ones were outright evil. Okay, maybe the crimes of some of them were a bit on the petty side, but still… The ones that eventually recovered from my treatment of them went on to live better lives than they had before. They had learned valuable life lessons. The ones that didn't… well, I was doing Equestria a favor by removing them from the gene pool."

"And Celestia's father?" asked Q. "Did he deserve what you did to him?"

I didn't answer for a long time. Then, finally, I said, "Well, at the time I certainly thought he did. But in retrospect…"

Q nodded. "It seems you're not completely irredeemable after all. Tell me what you did. Let it all out."

I put a hand to my temples and rubbed them with my thumb and middle finger. Could it be? Was I actually experiencing a human migraine even now that I was back to being omnipotent? I shook my head. "You have to understand, Q, what this Lord Uran-Ra thought of himself before I… changed him. Until the moment that he met me, he had believed himself to be, without the slightest shadow of a doubt, the absolute most powerful being in all of Equestria. And until he met me, he had been right. He even fancied himself a god, Q. A god. Can you believe that? The sheer arrogance of it all. Very simply put, all that I did to him was to disabuse him of that mistaken notion. I shattered his belief that he was the most powerful. In fact, I took from him the idea that he had any sort of power at all. I made him believe that he was now the most useless pony in the entire world and that nothing he would or could ever do again after that point would have any meaning, therefore why should he bother ever doing anything at all? I left him a broken shell of a pony. He could barely take care of himself after that, let alone his kingdom. And then, after what happened to his wife, Celestia's mother, well… but I'll get to that, soon enough."

Chapter 5

Several days had passed since the battle with Lord Uran-Ra, if you can even call it a battle at all, given how one-sided it was. Celestia had not returned to the statue garden even once since then, and had scarcely left her father's side. It was the same with Luna. Eventually, however, I knew that Celestia would have to try to sleep, despite her power, so each night I waited upon the balcony leading to her room.

Finally, after the tenth such day, she stumbled into her room and made her way toward her bed. I could tell that she was extremely exhausted. She didn't notice me standing out on the balcony at first, so I tapped on the glass with my eagle talon.

She turned to face me, frowned, and then walked slowly over and opened the glass door leading out to the balcony. "Tell me why I shouldn't call for the guards this very instant," she said darkly.

"Well, for one thing, it would be a futile gesture, as you well know," I said. "In any case, I am not here to antagonize you."

"Then why?" she said.

"I merely wish to talk with you. I sorely miss our conversations in the statue gallery," I said. "May I come inside?"

"No, Discord, you may not. If you had asked me a month ago, I would have been overjoyed, but now…? Don't you understand? Everything between us changed when you… sickened my father," she said. "Never again will I be able to think of you as I did before." There was a slight catch in her throat as she said the last. "How can you possibly expect it to be any different?"

This hurt me very much, though I had expected it. I only let the barest surface of that hurt show, however. "Please, my dear Celestia-"

"Don't call me that again," she said sharply.

"Have it your way," I said, sighing deeply. "All I want to say is that I am sorry. You were there. You saw how antagonistic your father was being with me."

Celestia lowered her head and looked down at the floor. "I've had time to reflect on that day during this past week. From what I recall, my father was merely being protective of me. Overly protective, true enough, but even so. You were the one baiting him and making him angrier. Discord, why? Even at the worst of Luna's barbs, most of which were far worse than what my father said to you, you never once became short with her. So, why did you attack my father?"

"Princess Luna is merely a child," I said. "But she is honest to a fault and… I admire that in her. As for your father, I would have thought that a ruler of an entire nation would be more, shall we say, diplomatic. Besides, as you saw, he attacked me first, with intent to kill!"

"Discord, this wasn't some sort of official business on my father's part. Put yourself in his place. He happened upon us just as we were about to..." she blushed deeply, despite herself "…kiss. For the first time." The blush deepened still more, and she struggled with her emotions, as furious with herself as much as she was with me. "Would you have acted any differently?" So she didn't know that her father was also aware that I was the cause of the… ailments that were afflicting the population, and that this had been the reason he had attacked me, rather than mere blind rage. Perhaps I could use this to my advantage.

"Would I have tried to flat out murder my very beautiful daughter's suitor? No, I don't believe I would have. Nor would I have raised my voice to my charming and intelligent daughter, as he did," I said. "I would have at least made a modicum of effort to see her side of things, and to see that she had been happy, before rashly trying to punish her and her beau."

Celestia looked back up at me, tears starting to form in her eyes. "Please, Discord. Even if he was entirely wrong, he doesn't deserve this. He has not moved from his bed once since this ordeal began. He hardly eats, and then only when we or the servants feed him by hoof or telekinesis. He is wasting away. It is agony for me to see him like this. I have sent a summons to my mother, but I don't know when she will be able to return, and even when she does, this will break her heart. I… I am not even sure her power will be able to help him. So I ask you again, please, remove this curse you have placed upon him. I know you have it in your power to do so. I…" The tears began to flow freely at this point. "I'm begging you, from the depths of my heart. I can't bear to see him this way. And please… stop what you are doing to the other ponies. For my sake, even if you don't care for them. If you still care about me at all, Discord, please…"

I was moved. The look on her face crushed me. I truly did not want to see Celestia in such a doleful state, so I made my decision. I loathed doing so, but I would do it for her. "Very well, Celestia, I-"

"YOU! HOW DARE YOU SHOW YOUR FACE AROUND HERE!" The enraged shout came from the still open doorway. Celestia spun around to face the door.

Standing there was Princess Luna, her horn already glowing in preparation for battle. Before Celestia could react (and before I could settle on exactly how I wanted to deal with this trivial interruption), Luna charged at me, a cone of power forming in front of her. For the briefest moment, I saw Celestia's horn had begun to glow as well. I will never be sure what she planned to do in that instant, whether to aid her sister's attack or to protect me from it, given what I had been about to say. In any event, she had no time to do either before Luna slammed into me.

Luna struck me with such a force that it sent me crashing through the stone railing on the balcony. As I started to fall, however, I looped my reptilian tail around Luna's torso and yanked her down with me. I could hear Celestia cry out as both of us tumbled toward the ground far below. As we both fell, Luna managed to extricate herself from my tail. Then she placed all four of her hooves squarely on my chest, tensed her legs, and then, with all of her strength, she kicked me straight downward. Her form became smaller in my eyes as her wings spread and she floated upward and away from me.

Less than a second later, I smashed directly into one of the statues in the garden below. It was the pony statue of victory, if that matters. A fine cloud of disintegrated plaster rose up around me, momentarily obscuring me from view. Luna circled above and waited to see what I would do, not wanting to charge in when her vision was obscured. For her part, Celestia was standing on the balcony, still in shock at the sudden battle that had erupted between her sister and me, especially since I had just conceded to make everything right again.

As the cloud finally settled down, I merely stood there and meticulously brushed myself off. I eventually deigned to look up at Luna. She had dared to attack me, physically attack me. Though I could feel the waves of fear emanating from her, given that she knew how much more powerful I was compared to her, I could also feel the determination to do what she felt must be done, regardless. I was impressed. You had to respect that, utterly foolhardy though it was. And, to be honest, this was somewhat exhilarating for me. Luna wanted a battle? Very well, I would give her one.

With a simple flick of one finger in her direction, I send a narrow blade of energy hurtling toward her. She had no chance of dodging it, though she tried, and the energy struck her in the left wing, numbing it into momentary uselessness. As Luna cried out and began to fall, Celestia suddenly leapt from the balcony and dove beneath her stricken sister. Celestia just managed to catch Luna just before she slammed into the ground. Celestia helped her to the ground, but Luna quickly rose to her feet and charged at me again, despite Celestia's shout for her to wait and listen.

I suppose I should spill the beans here. This was fun. This was the first real fight that I've had in millennia, and I had no intention of ending it prematurely. However, all three of us knew that Luna had no chance against me whatsoever. That said, despite everything, I strangely found myself not in the mood to actually harm the poor girl. Much, anyway. Despite being over a century old, as I had said to Celestia earlier, she was still little more than a child as far as Alicorn development is concerned, still the human equivalent of being in her late teens. For that matter, the same was true of Celestia as well, though as I have said before, she was wise far beyond her years of life. I decided that I would toy with Luna for a little while, and then I would put her in her place, and then I would resume my interrupted conversation with her sister, and everything would be okay again.

Just as Luna was about to slam into me again, I teleported out of the way. This time, it was Luna's turn to smash into one of the statues, though she didn't completely shatter it like I had. Commendably, she hardly missed a beat as she levitated the statue and hurled it directly at me. I simply let the statue (this one representing friendship) hit me and crumble to pieces, just like the previous one.

"Discord, please stop this!" cried out Celestia from behind me.

"Why should I?" I said, genuinely laughing. "I'm having the time of my life here. I haven't had an interesting fight in millennia!" The implication that my battle with their father hadn't been an "interesting fight" sank in. "And your sister obviously has some aggression she needs to work out. I'm happy to provide her with an outlet."

"Damn you!" yelled Luna. And finally, just as I had been hoping she would do, she unleashed her full power upon me.

I suddenly found myself floating in deep space. Whether this was an illusion spell, or I had been literally teleported into outer space, or I had been pulled into some sort of pocket dimension of some sort, it didn't matter. If I hadn't been a Q, this would have been the end of me. For a time, I just floated there in the vacuum, which would have been bad enough for a non-Q, but then the real attacks began. In fact, as soon as I had appeared there, the cosmic radiation had immediately started to build up to a critical state and beyond. I could feel it gathering around me, trying to boil me in my skin. And then the first of the asteroids arrived, smashing into me. Soon, it was raining asteroids and comets and small planets from all directions, all of them crashing into me. As the spectacle continued, I simply floated there, admiring it for a time. Very impressive, Luna. Very impressive, indeed.

Eventually, however, I grew bored. I held up my lion's paw. Suddenly, all of the blackness of space began to shrink and coalesce in my open paw. A few short seconds later, and I was once again floating in front of Luna and Celestia in the statue gallery, and in my paw now rested a small orb of dark purple energy. To say that Luna was shocked at this was an understatement. She made to charge again, but this time I stopped her in her tracks and lifted her off the ground, binding her wings with my power so that she couldn't fly away and binding her horn so that she couldn't magically attack me again.

"However, my patience is starting to grow thin, child," I said to Luna as she struggled to free herself from my power, continuing my earlier statement from before she had unleashed her power upon me. "I have endured your verbal barbs for the past century. And now, I intend for you to feel each of those barbs tenfold. Physically." From the direction of the hedge maze came a flurry of leaves. All of them had been sharpened into needle points. Luna struggled futilely against my hold as the leaves began to circle around her. A few of them darted in and nipped into her hide, leaving shallow pinpricks that caused her to gasp in pain. Blood began to trickle down her sides as more and more of the leaves darted in and left their marks.

"Tia, help me!" Luna managed to cry out, despite my tight grip on her.

"My dear Celestia," I said, "I have no desire whatsoever to harm you. Please stay out of this. I promise you that no lasting harm will come to your poor sister. I merely mean to teach her a lesson in humility."

"No, Discord! I won't let you hurt my sister!" said Celestia, and then I felt her unleash her own power on me. It's difficult to describe, but it felt almost as if a solar flare had erupted where I stood and was now enveloping me. It was a rather curious sensation, honestly, despite the fact that I've felt actual solar flares before and I know what they are like. And then, it felt as though I was being pulled into the surface of the sun itself. Deeper and deeper did I sink until I finally reached the core of the star. I stood in appreciation of Celestia's power for a bit before finally deciding that enough was enough. Taking a deep breath, and inhaling some of the solar plasma that churned around me (incredibly, it smelled like her), I held out my eagle's claw. Similar to the way I had handled Luna's power, I coalesced Celestia's attack down into a small glowing white ball in my hand. Celestia and Luna looked on in helpless shock and I smashed the two balls of energy together, one light and one dark, observed the result of the mixture for a moment, before simply tossing my head back, opening my mouth, and swallowing the whole thing as though it were a chocolate cream sandwich cookie. At that point, I finally let the cloud of needles dissipate, and whirled around to face Celestia. As I did so, I telekinetically flung Luna at her. The younger sister crashed into the older one and they both went down in a heap. As they struggled to untangle their limbs and regain their feet, I slowly advanced on them. I honestly wasn't quite sure yet what I planned to do to them, but then the decision was taken out of my hands.

"YOU WILL LEAVE MY DAUGHTERS BE, YOU MONSTER!" a sudden new voice shouted from somewhere behind me, using the Royal Voice of course, though it somehow sounded much more melodious than it had when Uran-Ra or even Luna had used it. I didn't even bother to turn around, since I already felt a presence sailing over my head. And then a new Alicorn was standing between me and the two sisters.

"Ah, this must be mommy dearest," I said, the smile on my face widening once again. In front of me stood a female Alicorn and I could tell at once where Celestia and Luna got their beauty from. Her fur was white with the slightest golden tint to it, but her mane and tail were a strange mix of the orange of dawn and the purple of dusk. It worked for her though, it really did. Her cutie mark was that of a spiral galaxy. "Lady Terra-Ki, I presume?"

"And you must be the creature known as Discord that my daughter informed me about in her summons," said the radiant Alicorn. "It seems I got here none too soon."

By this time, Celestia and Luna had managed to get to their feet and were now standing at their mother's side. Both of their horns were glowing with magic. However, Terra-Ki shook her head and motioned each of them back in turn.

"Mother?" asked Celestia. "What are you planning?"

"I'm going to use the Elements and put an end to this once and for all," said her mother. At this, both Celestia's and Luna's eyes widened.

"Does nopony but Celestia ever think to try to talk to me, rather than attack me on sight?" I muttered, mostly to myself.

"Mom, you can't!" said Luna.

"Without father, it won't-" began Celestia, but Terra-Ki held up a hoof.

"I will be fine, my beloveds. But regardless, I have to save my people… and my family. Now please, my little ponies, move aside."

"But-" said Luna, but was silenced with a stern but still loving look from her mother.

"Trust me, Luna," said Terra-Ki. Luna reluctantly stepped back, and I could see tears in both her and Celestia's eyes. They feared what was coming.

As for me, I merely crossed my arms and waited. Whatever was about to happen certainly didn't bode well for me, or so the majestic Alicorn believed, and I was simply interested to see what it might be. I have to admit, I was definitely not disappointed.

Lady Terra-Ki began to glow softly as six gem stones materialized around her. Red, orange, blue, green, purple, and pink. It was shaping up to be an impressive show. I found it all highly amusing… up until the point when she actually unleashed her power upon me, that is.

While Lady Terra-Ki was far more powerful than either of her two daughters, she didn't have quite as much raw power as her husband, Uran-Ra. However, with these artifacts in play, her power was magnified by several orders of magnitude. Of course, it still paled in comparison to the power of a Q. Or so I thought. As waves of pure energy washed over me, I looked down at myself and realized, with no small amount of shock and horror, that I was slowly turning to stone. What in the name of the Continuum was going on here? As the petrification slowly began to work its way up my body, I looked up sharply at the lady Alicorn, who was showing real signs of strain, due to my innate resistance.

"How are you doing this? It simply isn't possible!" I thundered, but she gave no answer, merely continuing to pour on the power. I believe that it shocked her that I was resisting almost as much as it shocked me that she was having any sort of effect on me in the slightest. It seemed that we had both underestimated the other. Finally, I decided that it was time to end this. I brought to bear my full might upon this poor, delicate pony.

"No!" she screamed as she realized what I meant to do, but it was far too late for her to do anything to try to counter me, not that she would have been successful, in any case.

It was over quickly, but not easily. With a terrible wrench, I forcibly sundered her connection with these artifacts and sent them flying in all directions. I sent them to the far corners of the world, where I knew it would take a very long time for them to be found and assembled again. The effect this had on Terra-Ki was immediate and dire. Her eyes widened and her pupils contracted to pinpricks as she buckled at the knees and then slowly collapsed. Celestia and Luna were at her side hardly before she had hit the ground. Terra-Ki's breathing was ragged as she feebly tried to stand up again, but the effort was futile. I knew she wasn't long for this world. I'm pretty sure the others knew it as well. A very, very tiny part of me very, very briefly considered using my power to heal her, but I very, very quickly squelched that part of me. No, this was the price one paid when challenging a member of the Q Continuum. Well, either that or a lifetime of madness or imprisonment.

"Mom! Please don't try to move," cried Luna. "You're badly hurt." Indeed, I could see the blood starting to flow from her nose and mouth.

"Celestia… Luna…" said Terra-Ki.

"Mother, Luna is right. Please don't speak," said Celestia urgently.

"Listen carefully…" said their mother, gasping for breath between every few words. "Y-you… were right. I should… never have tried to… use the Elements of Harmony… on my own." Her condition was quickly and clearly getting worse. "But…"

"You're going to be okay, mom!" said Luna frantically. "Please, just lie still and I'll go get help!" Before she could leave, however, Terra-Ki managed to rise up enough so that she could wrap each of her forelegs and wings around both Luna and Celestia.

"Please…" she said, pausing briefly to cough up a spatter of blood onto the ground. "You must… find the Elements again… only together can you…"

"Mother… m-mom, please stop exerting yourself!" cried Celestia. "Don't worry about the Elements right now. When you are well again, we can find them together! We can use them to heal father! We-"

There was another spasm of coughing and more blood spilling to the ground. With tears in her eyes she looked at each of her daughters in turn. "It is… too late… for me." Luna violently shook her head at this, the tears sprinkling in every direction. "Tia… Lulu… my dear… beautiful daughters… I… I… love…" And with that, before she could finish, her eyes glazed over, her head lowered to the ground, and her breathing came to a stop. She was gone.

"M-mom?" said Luna, her voice cracking. "MOM?"

Celestia couldn't even form words. The only sounds she made were choking sobs as the tears flowed freely down her face.

"NOOOOOOOOOOOO!" came a tormented voice from far above us. All three of us looked up to see Lord Uran-Ra standing on a balcony adjacent to Celestia's own. He was still entirely dull gray in color. He was looking down on the scene with sorrow clearly imprinted on his face. "I-I should have helped you! I should have been able to h-help…" He struggled to climb over the railing of the balcony, as through he meant to fly down and face me in battle again or to simply be at his wife's side.

"Father! What are you doing?" screamed Celestia.

"I tried to get here sooner!" said Uran-Ra. "But I couldn't move! I heard you battling that demon, but I couldn't save you! I… I cannot survive… without you."

"Daddy, no! Stop!" shouted Luna. "You're-"

Before she could finish, Lord Uran-Ra tumbled over the railing. I'm not sure if I saw him feebly trying to flap his wings to right himself or not. I would like to think that he did, because otherwise, this was pure suicide. Luna and Celestia were still kneeling next to their fallen mother, wrapped in her embrace, and before they could even gain their feet, their father slammed into the ground. Normally, a fall such as that wouldn't have much harmed an Alicorn of Uran-Ra's stature, but in his weakened state, it was more than he could bear. He had landed badly and his neck was bent at an awkward angle, his wings crumpled around him. His horn had snapped in half on impact.

Celestia rushed to her father's side. Luna got about halfway between where her mother lay dead and where her father lay… also dead. She dropped to her knees, tears openly falling to the ground. "No," she said in a small voice.

Meanwhile, I was merely floating there, watching all of this unfold. I felt like the biggest villain in the entire universe, and at that point in time, I dare say that I probably was. This shouldn't have been getting to me, and I couldn't figure out what was wrong with me. I have seen and had been the cause of the deaths of more beings than there had ever been ponies living on this planet and I hadn't batted an eye at it… until now. I considered using my powers to bring them both back, but something deep and black and ugly inside of me prevented it with a vehemence that shocked me. It felt as though something inside me was beginning to crack. I honestly wanted to weep, at least for my dear Celestia if not the others, but I felt something else building up inside me instead. Something dark and very frightening, even for me.

"No," said Luna again, louder than before.

The cracking at the core of my essence widened. A demented grin slowly grew on my face. I began to chuckle.

"NO!" screamed Luna for a third time, rising shakily to her feet and turning to face me.

The chuckle became a laugh.

Celestia stood up and placed herself between Luna and myself.

The laugh became a full-throated cackle.

"DAMN YOU TO TARTARUS!" shrieked Luna, in the full force of the Royal Voice. I barely heard it.

The cackle became a full on belly busting guffaw.

I finally looked up and into the eyes of my dear Princess Celestia. There was absolutely nothing whatsoever in those eyes except for pure, cold wrath and hate. The cracking in my soul widened to a canyon. I could do nothing but hold my ribs and let the ragged laughter escape. It was almost painful in how strong it was.

Luna was trying to blindly charge at me again, but Celestia was holding her in check with her telekinetic power with an entirely unnatural calm about her, particularly given what had just happened. "Sister, we do not stand a chance against him at the moment. We have to flee."

Despite herself, Luna came to her senses when she heard this, though her rage and anguish still threatened to overtake her again. "You want us to RUN AWAY? Are you mad! We have to destroy this monster for what he did to m-mom and d-dad." She was on the verge of completely losing it again.

Celestia, in a coldly mechanical voice, simply said, "Yes, I agree. And we will. However, for now, we simply do not have the power to do so. We cannot help them now, nor can we afford to mourn them properly now. We have to do as mother said and seek out the Elements of Harmony again."

"GO!" I shouted, my own voice a dark parody of the Royal Voice. My eyes were a multicolored swirl of madness. "LEAVE THIS PLACE AND SEEK YOUR PRECIOUS ARTIFACTS! FLEE, BEFORE I CHANGE MY MIND AND END YOUR PUNY EXISTENCE WHERE YOU STAND!" A tiny part of me was raging against these threats being made toward my dear Celestia, but I ignored it.

Celestia looked at me coldly and calmly. "We will return, and when we do, you will indeed pay dearly for what you have done this day and everyday before this."

"Muahahahahaahahahaaa!" was all I could say in return. Ignoring them utterly, I began to rise up into the air, and soon I was floating over the palace. The sky began to blacken and lightning began to fall everywhere around me. Oh, it was all so very melodramatic, but I was in a melodramatic mood. "ATTENTION, CITIZENS OF EQUESTRIA! LET IT BE KNOWN THAT FROM THIS MOMENT FORTH, THE AGE OF DISCORD HAS BEGUN! ABANDON ALL HOPE, YE WHO CAN HEAR MY VOICE!" I looked down and saw that Celestia and Luna were nowhere to be seen. They had already fled to begin their search for the Elements. That was okay. They thought of me as the villain of the story now. So be it. If they wanted a villain, I would certainly do my best to oblige them.

"And that, I presume," said Q, "was when you started being, as the humans would say, a real dick, am I right?"

I was silent for several moments. "Q," I said slowly. "In your long existence, have you ever truly gone mad?"

"Nope, can't say that I have," Q replied amiably.

"Well, I have," I said. "To this day, I can't explain how or why it happened, but then I suppose that is the nature of madness, isn't it? It… it was a very unpleasant experience and one that I never care to repeat."

"Well… let's just say that the Continuum will see to it that that doesn't happen," said Q, somewhat ominously. "You were just very lucky that you contained your madness to that one planet.

I paused again, before continuing. "So, yes, as you said, I went bad. Or perhaps I should say worse. I went batshit, to use another human phrase. Or was that apeshit?"

"Probably both are accurate," said Q.

"You know the cotton candy clouds and the chocolate rain that I was using when you showed up?" I said.

"Yeah," said Q, "that was rather… weird, even for you."

"I started off with that the first time as well," I said. "That, the soapy streets, all of that infantile stuff. However, I very soon progressed far, far, worse than that, and mixed everything together. Imagine pink clouds raining down chocolate milk, filling up the screaming mouths of ponies that were submerged up to their chins in free-flowing lava. Imagine ponies slipping and sliding on soap bubbles, just before slamming right into walls filled with long shards of twisted, jagged glass and rusted metal, with no air around them to even scream this time. Imagine long-limbed lagomorphs chasing after ponies, impaling them upon vicious claws made of ice, which fried them to a crisp, or hitting them with gouts of flame from their mouths, which froze them to solid blocks of ice. Imagine a thousand similarly chaotic but all equally horrid fates befalling untold numbers of ponies. And that was merely the physical side of it all. The things I did to their minds were indescribably far worse. No pony was spared, be they adult, elderly, child, or even infant. Yes, even in their madness, a lot of them still tried to raise families, after a fashion. Any ponies that died during this time, save from sheer old age, I brought back to life. It occurred to me again that I could have easily brought back Celestia's mother and father as well and subject them to the same torment that I was inflicting upon their people, which for them would have lasted an eternity rather than merely a lifetime. But even at the time, when my madness was at its height, it seemed wrong to me. Instead, I merely tormented their subjects."

"Yeah, it was pretty bad," said Q simply.

"Occasionally, I left small groups of ponies sane, so that they could really appreciate what I was doing to the rest of them. Usually, I would let these ponies live their lives in full, never directly knowing the taint of madness that I inflicted upon their brothers and sisters, though occasionally I still physically tormented them even as I left their minds untouched. Sometimes, without warning, I would infect the whole lot of them with madness. Many of them went insane of their own accord anyway, with or without my direct intervention. Other times, I would take a group of ponies that I had been torturing for half of their natural lives, and suddenly remove the madness from them. But not the memories of it. Never the memories, Q."

"You were a real asshole. This is true," said Q with a nod.

I continued on, not really listening to him at this point. "Throughout it all, I never touched Celestia or Luna. They never once stopped their search for the Elements of Harmony that I had scattered throughout the lands. They hardly ate or slept except for the barest minimum that their bodies would allow, their hatred of me and their determination to end me sustaining them for the most part. At first, when they came upon ponies that had been affected by me, they tried to help them. Every single time, it broke Celestia's heart anew when she realized that there wasn't a single thing she could do to ease their suffering, so soon enough they stopped trying and started actively avoiding other ponies at all costs. They did nothing but scour the land for the artifacts that I had scattered, because they knew that this was ultimately the only way they could ever hope to save their people. Even so, it still took them many centuries to find what they sought. I had hid them that well. By that point, the whole world had long since been corrupted by my insanity."

"And when they finally found the Elements again?" said Q.

"That's when they returned to Everfree Forest, which I had fashioned into my own lair and to which I had paid extra special attention," I said.

Chapter 6

From my den deep inside the Royal Palace, I sensed them coming back. A part of me was gleeful at having two new untainted ponies to play with, Alicorn even, but part of me was, and always had been, raging against what had already been done to them, but that part was still very small. I spread my essence to the edge of the forest and spied upon them as they approached.

"W-what has he done to the forest?" said Luna, looking around in a mixture of despair and rage at the deplorable state of the Everfree Forest.

Celestia sniffed the air and frowned. "It almost as if… he has removed the influence of all pony magic from it." Tentatively, she tried to exert her will on the surrounding lands. For the briefest of moments, the forest in that area returned to what had once been its normal state, but as soon as she let her power fade, it snapped back into what was now, and forever after would be, its natural state. "I… can't correct this," she said, sorrow clear in her voice. "I fear, even after we defeat Discord himself, and even if we use the power of the Elements, the forest will remain forever tainted."

"Add that to the list of crimes for which he must pay," said Luna, resolutely. I chuckled at this, and as I did so, the winds carried it to their ears as it rustled the leaves. "He knows we're coming," added Luna.

"I would have expected nothing less," replied her sister. "Be wary."

"Your quest is futile, my dear Celestia," I said, my voice echoing through the forest all around them. I giggled a bit. "Give up! Turn around and go home! Oh, wait, that's right, your home belongs to me now. Wherever will you go?"

"All of Equestria is our home, fiend," growled Luna. "And we mean to take it back."

"How precious," I said. "You know, my sweet Luna, we never did finish our little tiff from before. Care for round 2, hmm?"

"We'll give you more than you bargain for, you devil," said Luna, all but snarling.

"Oooh, I can hardly wait!" I said. "But you do realize that I can taste every drop of the fear that pervades your being even now, right? You are the same scared little baby girl you were hundreds of years ago. I almost want to pick you up and give you a big ol' hug, poor thing."

"Just you try it." Luna said through clenched teeth.

"I just might, at that!" I said with a chortle.

While I carried on my idle verbal banter with her sister, I had actually put most of my attention on Celestia. I was looking for any hint of regret or hesitation on her part, but so far I found absolutely nothing. The tiny part of me that was raging inside of me felt sorrow at this. The rest of me laughed at that other part of me and called it mean names. "My dear Celestia-"

"Never call me that again," said Celestia, the briefest flare of her rage showing through before she put the impassive mask back into place.

"My dear Celestia," I said again, utterly ignoring her. "Really, what do you hope to accomplish here? You know as well as I do that I will simply do to you what I did to your poor, fragile mother. And to you, Luna, I will do what I did to your feeble, powerless father… before also doing to you what I did to your mother, of course."

Luna made as if to charge forward and leave her sister behind, but Celestia stopped her with small a telekinetic jolt. "Patience, dear sister," she said. "It will be time soon enough." To me, she said simply, "No, Discord, I don't think you will do any of those things to us."

"Ah, is this the beginnings of an impassioned appeal to my better nature?" I said, the smirk on my face evident in my voice, though they obviously couldn't see it with their own eyes yet. "You mean to try to get me to come to my senses and realize the error of my ways? Is that it?"

"Nothing of the sort," said Celestia. "I just mean that we are going to do what… our mother failed to do. We are going to encase you in stone for all of eternity." Luna smiled as Celestia said this, though Celestia herself remained as impassive as before.

"You know," I said in a perfectly normal conversational tone of voice, as though this were just a simple chat, "that's something that has been bugging me all these years. Those little trinkets that you have with you, the Elements of Harmony I believe you called them? Explain to me how, and more importantly, why the ideals of Kindness, Generosity, Honesty, Loyalty, and Laughter, of all things, would turn poor pitiful little me into stone?"

"You neglect the sixth element," said Celestia. "Magic. That is what will be your undoing. The others merely bolster this."

"Yes, yes, and I'm sure your mother thought much the same thing, just before I ripped her very soul to shreds," I said. I chuckled again.

"Do not speak of our mother!" shouted Luna. "I will rip your-"

"Tsk tsk, my sweet innocent Luna," I interrupted her. "That's not very Kind of you. Nor is it very Generous of you to selfishly spend all of your time with me, charmed though I am by the gesture, when I'm sure you have far more pressing matters to attend to, such as the well being of your people. Of course, not a single one of them even remember you by this point, I'm afraid. In fact, none of them can remember a time before the Age of Discord descended upon them. You should be out there, trying to heal your people, rather than here, futilely trying to defeat me. It's the only worthwhile thing you could be doing, given that your fool's errand here has no chance of success."

"That's where you are wrong, Discord," said Celestia. "Only by ridding this world of your wretched taint can we even begin to aid our people."

"How very Honest of you," I said. "Your Loyalty to your people is so very admirable." I paused for a bit, then added, "What? No Laughter? Very well then, I shall take that one upon myself." The forest shook with my morbid amusement. "Ah, but I see you have reached your former home. I hope you like what I've done with the place."

The two sisters stopped in their tracks as the palace came into view, the shock evident upon their faces. They had been expecting a decrepit ruin to match the surrounding forest, but instead found the palace still in a pristine state.

I chuckled again. "Surely, now, you didn't expect me to live anywhere else did you? And while I may have changed the surrounding forest to be more… one with true nature, shall we say, I left the palace completely untouched. I drove all of the ponies out, of course, but that just means there's more for me."

"You very presence alone is more than enough of a defilement," said Luna.

"Ah Luna, I never tire of your barbed words," I said dryly. "Oh, wait, yes I do! Well, then, this is starting to bore me. Let's speed things up, shall we?" With that, accompanied by a prodigious burst of light and sound, I appeared in front of them. "Should we have a climactic, epic battle now? Or maybe we can settle this with a game of golf? Perhaps a little go-karting? Or maybe you'd prefer to bet on some pony races? I can easily arrange a nice derby for your benefit as I'm sure your subjects wouldn't mind performing for our entertainment. Then again, my dear Celestia, there are far more… enjoyable… ways that we could be spending our time, you know." I wiggled my eyebrows at her knowingly. "It's what you've always wanted from me, after all."

Her mask of impassivity slipped a bit as her gorge began to rise. And did I seriously see a hint of blush in her cheeks, despite everything? She certainly still remembered the feelings she had once had for me, and the oh so naughty thoughts they had engendered in her, even if she no longer felt them and the idea of acting on those thoughts now turned her stomach almost as much as it did my own.

"You disgusting swine," said Luna.

"Alas, lovely Luna," I said, glancing at her briefly. "A swine was not one of the animals I modeled myself after." Turning back to Celestia, I said, "How about it, my dear? Even if the illicit thoughts of getting intimate with me no longer appeal to you, surely you at least recall with fondness all of the delightfully deep conversations we had with one another throughout the years, no? You can't claim that our time together was all bad, can you?"

"Lies," said Celestia, averting her eyes from my own. "Y-you were just toying with me the entire time. You never cared for me at all. You were just… using me."

This hurt me in a way that her cold rage had not. I don't know what bothered me more: the idea that she was merely trying to intentionally inflict pain on me with these words, or the idea that she genuinely believed that I had never cared for her and that it had all been some sort of sick ruse on my part. "That is not true, and you know it, Celestia," I said, my madness breaking for a brief moment. "I thought the world of you! Rarely in my eons of existence have I found someone with the ability to… to… share my simple delight in the universe at large. Together, we could have lived an eternity in happiness!"

Celestia dropped her mask completely. "Then why, Discord? Why did you do all of these terrible things? Why did you kill my father and mother? WHY?"

"I told you!" I said with a vague hint of imploring in my voice. How very much I wanted her to understand. "I was improving your people! And, failing that, I was separating the wheat from the chaff! As for your father and mother…" I sighed heavily, and lowered my head. "I never wanted them to die, but they foolishly chose to oppose me! That, quite simply, is the fate for any and all who do so."

Celestia shook her head, tears starting to form in her eyes. "I l…" She paused, took a deep breath, and shook her head again. "I loved you, damn it all! I deeply and truly loved you! You were indeed charming and thoughtful at one point in time. I was sure that I had found that special somepony that I would be spending my entire life with. And… and then you took my heart and you ground it into dust! I love you no longer, Discord. I cannot love you again. I will not love you again! I will not!"

Luna, throughout all of this, had merely watched us with wide eyes. "Tia?" she said, her voice nearly whisper.

"Then it all comes down to this," I said, drawing back to my full height once again, though the madness no longer touched my eyes. "You are going to unleash your power and that of the Elements upon me. In order to protect myself, I will then rip them from your being, shredding your souls in the process. You will die, Celestia, you and your precious little sister. You, who would have otherwise lived essentially forever, will cease to exist. Is that what you want? Is this some crazy form of suicide on your part? Celestia, I know that you will never believe me when I say this, but I do not want to kill you. But if you attack me with those things, I will have no choice but to do so. Please don't force me to have to do this! Are you really going to rob me of one of the rare few things in this universe that I…" a look of surprise came over me "…loved? Truly, can this be? Yes, I was indeed certainly fond of you. I definitely respected you and I wanted to be near you and your perspicacious mind and your captivating conversation for all time… But I…" I looked down at myself in confusion. "I honestly didn't think myself capable of true love. Is that what I was feeling? Is that what I still am feeling even now?"

"Discord, please…" said Celestia, her voice cracking as the tears now freely spilled down her face. "Stop torturing me like this. You are a horrible, despicable creature that doesn't deserve to live. You don't love me! You never loved me! You truly aren't capable of loving me! It's all a lie! It has to be."

"And yet…" I said, "you do still love me, don't you…" I wasn't asking a question. "Deep down… and even despite everything…"

"Tia, please don't listen to him!" said Luna. She moved so that she was standing between me and her sister, as if to somehow protect her from my words. "He's just trying to twist your mind! He only wants to make you hesitate! You're right! There's no way that he could love you! And t-there's no way that you could love him, right?"

"I…" Celestia said. "I don't know! My feelings are so jumbled together… I hate him for everything he's done to me, to us, to mom and dad, to our little ponies. And yet…" She closed her eyes and shook her head violently. Luna reached out a hoof toward her, wanting to touch her, but not actually doing so. Then Celestia looked up at me again finally, and I saw her eyes harden. At that point, I knew, truly, how this was going to end, and I regretted the fact that I was about to lose her forever. "But… no matter how I may personally feel, I am still resolute in what we have to do. Discord, you have committed far too many crimes against this world to ever be forgiven, no matter what. Prepare yourself, Luna."

Luna stepped back again and took up a position beside her sister. I merely watched them. This wasn't fun anymore. To be honest, this hadn't been fun for many centuries. For the longest time, I had just been going through the motions of it all, despite my madness. "You know what," I said. "Go ahead. I will let you take the first shot. Give it your very best effort. But simply be aware that when you fail, your souls are forfeit." I spread my arms wide and just floated there, waiting from them to begin.

Celestia and Luna closed their eyes. The Elements appeared out of nowhere and began to swirl around them, moving faster and faster. I couldn't tell if any one of the Elements favored a particular sister or not. As I watched, everything began to glow, including the two pony sisters and myself. Suddenly, Celestia and Luna both opened their eyes at the same time. There was nothing but pure white energy visible in those eyes.

Once again, the power of the Elements of Harmony encircled me. And once again, I felt my body beginning to turn to stone. And once again, I noted with no small amount of sadness and regret, it would take merely a fraction of my power to shred their connection to the Elements, and with it their very life force, into tatters. I looked deeply into Celestia's eyes, hers channeling the power of the Elements and mine having finally and fully lost the multi-colored madness that had been resident there these past long centuries. I was purely back to myself again at long last. "My dear Celestia, I am so very sorry for what I am about to do. I will sorely miss you, my… love."

And with that, I lashed out at them with my full power. Except… nothing happened. My body still continued to slowly turn to stone. It finally dawned upon me that my powers were being blocked somehow. And then, the full realization of what was happening crashed into me. The Continuum had finally decided to step in, had they? I sighed a defeated sigh. Very well, then. So be it. Being trapped in stone for however long it took for the Continuum to consider me no longer a nuisance? I'd endured far worse than that in my long existence. And, in my heart of hearts, it was with great and wonderful relief that I realized that Celestia wouldn't die after all. She would continue to live a long and healthy life. With a newfound lightheartedness, I struck the very same pose that I had taken when I had first made myself known to her: my right hand on my chest, my left hand extended outward, and my mouth opened to scream out, "GOOD BYE, MY DEAR PRINCESS CELESTIAAAAAAAAAA!"

And then, the stone completely engulfed me.

"That little time out did you good, Q," said my companion. "Or… so we thought, anyway. But then, when you finally got out several thousand years later, not even a full day passed before you were back to your old tricks again. What happened, Q? What in the name of the Continuum caused you to immediately start tormenting them again?"

I sighed. "For several millennia, I was indeed honestly at peace with what had happened. Sure, I was completely immobile, trapped inside a physical body made entirely out of stone. But my mind was still free. I could still watch them as they rebuilt what I had destroyed. At first, I thought that this was just an additional part of my punishment from the Continuum, and it may very well have been intended as such, but I soon came to view it as a kindness.

"Though they weren't able to restore the Everfree Forest surrounding it, the palace itself was still fully usable, though any visiting dignitaries had to be flown in via Pegasus-drawn carriage now, granted. They even took my statue and placed it in the rebuilt statue gallery. They were using me as an example to all ponies of the dangers of confusion, evil, and chaos. The dangers of Discord, in other words."

"A pretty fitting fate for you, I have to admit," said Q. "Big bad Q, forever serving as a signpost to guide all ponies away from the corruption of chaos. HC SVNT DRACONES! Turn away! Yeah, those two ponies are pretty classy ladies."

I glanced at him and just rolled my eyes. But I couldn't really disagree.

But there was apparently an ulterior motive to that act as well. It surprised me when it first happened, but I eventually grew to relish it. You see, during the evenings, when no other pony was around, mainly due to nopony wanting to be outside at night with the danger of the corrupted Everfree so close by, Celestia would come out to the statue gallery by herself, the same as she had all those years ago. She would sit on a bench next to me and talk. I don't know if she knew that I could indeed actually hear her, or if she even hoped that was the case or not, or if she was simply doing it for her own peace of mind and nothing more. She would talk about anything, and everything. The state of her kingdom, or rather principality I suppose, since neither Celestia nor Luna ever assumed their rightful titles as Queens of the land and simply remained Princesses. The actual titles meant very little one way or the other. The mundane trivialities of her existence, such as those dreadfully boring Grand Galloping Galas that she had never enjoyed, even back when her parents were still alive, but especially loathed now that she was actually expected to attend the awful things on a yearly basis. The relationship with her sister, which had its ups and downs, as all sibling relationships do. And, in general, just the restoration of the land and its inhabitants after all the troubles I had caused. At the end of the evening, when she finally retired for the night, I could tell it was with a spring in her step, as though she had unloaded all of her troubles onto me. I didn't mind it at all. It was nice just to hear her voice, even if I couldn't answer.

As for Luna, she never joined her sister on these nightly excursions, of course, or was even aware that Celestia was doing it, since Luna herself was always too busy holding court and dealing with more important matters of the night during this time. I seriously doubt she would have approved of it had she known.

It continued this way for several thousand years. All of the subjects loved Celestia. She and her sister had saved them from the dreaded Age of Discord after all. After four or five generations, the madness was finally not much more than something taught about to little colts and fillies in their history classes. Things probably would have continued that way for who knows how long, but then something began to change.

As time went on, Celestia's talks with (or rather to) me began to revolve more and more around her sister, Luna. She never straight out said what was going on, but I could tell from her tone that something bad was happening with Luna. However, one thing that I had noticed, even in my state, was that the nights were starting to last longer and longer. And then, one day… or perhaps I should say one night… the sun never rose, and the moon remained hanging directly overhead in the sky, motionless. Well, I couldn't actually see it myself, as my eyes were frozen shut in that ridiculous pose I had struck, but I could still sense it. The rotation of the planet had completely stopped altogether. As you well know, the consequences of such a thing had dire implications, even on a planet that wasn't being manipulated by pony magic as this one was.

And then, one day, I heard some dreadful sounds coming from within the palace. It was audible even to me, all the way out in the statue gallery, and despite the fact that my ears were filled with stone. For hours, perhaps even days, it sounded as though a terrible battle were taking place. I didn't know if the palace was somehow being invaded or what, though from my limited vantage point I could sense no such invaders. I could hear stone and mortar crumbling as the palace was being completely destroyed by whatever was happening. And then, before I knew what exactly was going on, the battle erupted through one of the nearby walls and was right there at my very feet.

I don't think I need to emphasize just how shocked I was when I saw that the battle was being waged between Celestia and Luna, of all ponies. Though I couldn't actually physically see what was going on, my powers were still with me enough such that I could get a mental picture of the thing. Luna was decked out in some strange armor that I had never seen before. But, more than that, her colors had inverted. Her fur was now pitch black, except for that beneath her crescent moon cutie mark, which was now purple. She hardly looked like the same pony that I remembered. Both she and Celestia were bleeding in several places over their bodies, and I could tell that both of them were running on empty. Celestia seemed to have taken the worst of it, though. As their battle raged on, they repeatedly shouted back and forth to each other.

"For the last time, submit to me, Celestia!" shouted Luna, using the Royal Voice.

"Please, Lu! Stop this madness!" replied Celestia in a ragged voice. "This eternal night must end, or the world is doomed!"

"Never!" Luna said. "You lie! The ponies will love me and my night! Those that do not will be punished!"

"I will not allow that to come to pass!" Celestia said. "I will do everything in my power to stop this!"

If I could have moved at all, I would have goggled my eyes at this display. Never would I have ever imagined that Celestia and Luna would be locked in battle with each other like this. This wasn't some petty sibling spat, obviously. I could sense that there was something terribly wrong with Luna, though. If I didn't know any better, and admittedly, I didn't, I would have said that she had been possessed by something. And, no, before you even ask, I had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with this. How could I have? At any rate I could just about taste the madness boiling off of her. I should know, because the very same madness had overcome me millennia before.

Luna merely laughed. "You have nothing in your arsenal that could stop me, sister! I am just as powerful as you are! More so, now that I wear the mantle of Nightmare Moon!"

"Luna, please, I don't want to hurt you!" said Celestia. "But if you don't snap out of this, I am afraid that I may do something that I will regret for a very long time."

"Ha ha ha ha ha!" Luna sneered. "What can you possibly hope to do to me?"

"Sister…" said Celestia, with great remorse in her voice. "I am sorry."

"What are you…?" Luna's eyes widened when she saw what her sister was about to do. "NO!"

Celestia had summoned the Elements of Harmony. All of them were swirling around her, and her alone, now.

"You can't do this!" said Luna, with confidence that she suddenly didn't feel. "It simply isn't possible! Y-you'll die!"

"If I can defeat you first and restore balance to the day and night, then so be it," said Celestia. She closed her eyes, and the Elements swirled ever faster around her.

"What do you plan to do? Are you going to turn me into stone like we did to HIM?" Luna shouted, pointing a hoof at me. Then she staggered. "What? W-what is happening to me? I feel so… very weak."

Celestia didn't respond. Instead she simply unleashed her power upon her sister. Luna screamed and tried to fight back, but it was already a foregone conclusion. The battle was pretty much over at this point. I fully expected that I would soon have an eternal companion at my side here in this statue gallery, except that isn't what happened at all. Princess Luna's body simply began to disintegrate, or so it seemed. And then I knew what Celestia was doing. Luna's essence was being channeled through the falling moonbeams. She was going to banish her sister to the moon!

But she was doing something more than that. In the instant that Celestia had summoned the Elements, I felt their connection to Luna shatter. Luna should have died this night, but she didn't. In the process of banishing her sister to her lunar prison, Celestia also did something else. She channeled all but a sliver of her own life force into her sister, preventing Luna from dying due to the break in her connection with the Elements, but it came at a cost most dire to Celestia herself.

Celestia continued to pour on the power and, soon, it was over. Finally, when she was sure she had succeeded in her task, she curtailed her power and collapsed to her knees. The Elements of Harmony continued to swirl around her for a moment, but then something terrible happened. The Elements flashed, and with a dreadful cracking sound, they all turned into dull gray stone. They dropped to the ground around Celestia, and I realized with horror what had happened. Just as I had forcibly sundered her mother's connection to the Elements thousands of years before, here the very Elements themselves had cleaved their connection to Celestia. Why this happened, I can't even begin to guess, but it did. I knew that she was already in a grievous state even before this, due to having given most of her life force to her sister, and this was far too much for her to bear. It would have been too much even if she had been at full power. There was no way that she could survive this. I was screaming wordlessly in my mind as Celestia's eyes rolled back into her head, which dropped to the ground between her forelegs. More than a mere trickle of blood began to flow from her nose and mouth, and her breathing slowed to the point of stopping.

Not caring about anything else, even the fact that this technically shouldn't have been possible, I channeled every particle of my power, my essence, my very being that still remained to me into her. I was determined not to let her die the same terrible way that her mother did, despite the fact that I had attempted to do the very same thing to her in my madness just a few thousand years before. Even though I knew it was utterly futile and that I was going to have to be tormented forever with the memory of my dear Celestia dying a few short meters in front of me. Except… it wasn't futile. My powers were working! Strangely, it didn't even occur to me to break out of my stone imprisonment at the time. As quickly as I could, but still agonizingly slowly, I mended the physical, the mental, and, above all, the spiritual damage that had been done to her both with the severing of her connection to the Elements and by the ordeal she had endured prior to that. Slowly, ever so slowly, the bleeding finally slowed and then stopped. She gasped and started breathing again. Her eyelids fluttered for a moment, and then slowly opened.

Shocked to her very core that she was somehow still alive, she finally realized what had happened. She rose to her feet and walked unsteadily over to me. "Discord? Did you…? How…? Why…?" She staggered forward and then fell. She lay unconscious at the base of the platform on which my statue had been placed.

"Good on you, Q" said Q. "I didn't know you had it in you."

"To say that I was surprised myself afterward would have been a gross understatement," I freely admitted. "I shouldn't have been able to affect anything at all." Then I narrowed my eyes and looked at him. "Did the Continuum-"

"Absolutely not!" said Q, shaking his head forcefully. "As far as we were concerned, all of your power was completely sealed inside that stone flesh of yours."

"Then how?" I asked.

"I honestly can't give you an answer," he said, shrugging. "Maybe it was the power of true love, or some other such thing as that."

I stared at him, open mouthed.

"Close your mouth. You'll draw space-flies," he said.

"The power of… what? Are you kidding me? What utter nonsense!" I said, incredulously.

"How so?" he said. "Stranger things have happened in this universe of ours."

"Not to us! Not to me!" I said.

"And why not?" he asked. "You said yourself earlier that you did indeed love her, didn't you?"

"Well… yes… I suppose I did say that. Honestly, I'm still not entirely sure what my feelings were… or are… but, even so, do you really expect me to believe such utter tripe as the 'power of true love'?" I couldn't believe I was hearing this.

"Do you have any other explanation for what happened?" said Q evenly.

"Of course I don't," I said. "And I think you're lying. The Continuum surely just returned my powers briefly… or maybe it was you who healed her and just led me to believe that I was doing it myself, as part of my punishment somehow!"

"And what possible reason would we have had for helping you or her in that instant?" said Q, annoyance evident in his voice. "From our perspective, cruel though it may have been, her dying in front of you like that would have been a most delicious twist to your punishment, one that we hoped would further drive home the lesson you needed to learn. In the end, however, we decided that, no matter how you had accomplished it, the obvious reason that you had somehow temporarily overcome your imprisonment was solely in order to save her. Because of that, you would not be further punished for doing it, especially since you hadn't tried to fully escape. In fact, if it means anything to you, several members of the Continuum wanted to let you out right then and there."

"Really?" I said, dumbfounded.

"Yes, really," he replied. "I wasn't one of them, mind you. I agreed with the rest of the Continuum that you saving one single solitary life, extraordinary though it was that you had been able to do so at all, did very little to mitigate all of the other billions of lives you had absolutely wrecked prior to that."

"I see…" I said.

"Anyway, you're getting distracted," he said, the faintest hint of impatience in his voice.

"From what?" I asked with great annoyance. "What could possibly be more important than this?"

"Finishing your story, obviously," said Q. "You still haven't told me what made you go nuts again when you were finally released from your stone prison."

"Ah," I said, coming back down to earth again, so to speak. My mood began to darken severely. "Well, it was Luna's banishment."

"Oh?" said Q. "How so?"

"Another thousand years went by," I said. "And then Luna came back. Just like that. She was welcomed with open arms by her sister and the new bearers of the Elements of Harmony and all of Equestria. I had merely tormented some ponies for a few thousand years, and they had locked me into a stone body for what they had hoped was an eternity. Luna, on the other hand, had stopped the rotation of the entire planet, threatening to bring about the very extinction of all of ponykind, not to mention all other life on the planet. And she got banished to the moon for a relative blink of an eye, and then it was as though it had never happened. Welcome back, Princess Luna! You only did something that would have killed every single pony on the entire planet within the span of maybe a year or so at the very most! All water under the bridge! Here, Princess Luna, have the adoration of all of your subjects again!"

"Yes, I suppose I can see how that would have made you angry all over again," said Q reasonably. "It's rather petty, to be sure, but I can kind of understand it."

"Then… why did you let me out when you did?" I said. "You had to know what I was feeling at that time."

"We felt that you needed to learn another lesson that wasn't going to be learned while you were stuck in that stone body of yours," said Q. "So we let you out. Pretty fitting that it happened while those three fillies were arguing and fighting over what your true nature was. So, tell me, did you learn your lesson?"

"You were there. What do you think?" I answered his question with my own.

"I think you need to finish your story," was all he said.

I merely sighed wearily in response.

Chapter 7

Shortly after the battle between the two Alicorn sisters, Celestia knew that the palace was a lost cause. She hardly had the power to even stand up for months after the battle, let alone oversee the repair of the palace, especially with the dangers of the Everfree Forest encroaching on all sides. And, slowly but surely, without Celestia's power to hold it at bay, the forest was taking the palace for its own. And so, with a very heavy heart, Celestia finally fled, with the help of the castle staff that remained in the aftermath of her battle with her sister. Soon, she founded the new city of Canterlot, on a nearby mountainside. It was here that she made her new seat of power.

For some strange reason, Celestia decided to leave behind the broken stones that had once been the Elements of Harmony, despite the fact that she brought everything else with her, including my stone body. I don't know why she decided to do this, as it only made things more difficult for the new bearers a millennium later. So, yeah, speaking of which, that one single short millennium passed, and Luna was freed. Just like that.

So, as you said, one sunny day about a year later, a class of small schoolponies and their teacher were touring the new statue gallery. It was the spitting image of the old one, in fact. The statues of Victory and Friendship had long since been replaced by that time, of course. Then they reached me, and that ridiculous little argument broke out between those children and then they all moved on. It was to be yet another boring day in the life of Q, the statue of Discord. Ho hum. But then I felt the stone cracking, and I couldn't help but laugh. And then, in my anger at the injustice of it all, I got right back to work.

It was just like old times. Pink cotton candy clouds dropping chocolate rain. I'll never get tired of that one. Perhaps I should try it on Jean-Luc someday. I'd love to see the look on his face. I had no real intention of going beyond that this time, but they had no way of knowing this.

Celestia quickly summoned the new bearers of the Elements of Harmony to Canterlot and fed them some cock and bull story about how I was some ancient foe of hers, rather than the truth, of course. Well, okay, so I had indeed been an ancient foe of hers, granted. But still, it was the principle of the thing that counted.

As for these new Bearers of Harmony, they were nearly beneath my contempt. They were nothing compared to me, and were little better than bacteria compared to the magnificence of even my dear Celestia. Of course, I was still angry with her as well. As I bantered with the new Bearers in the hallway leading to the Royal Vault, neither Celestia nor I made mention of the fact that I had, oh, only saved her very life barely more than a thousand years before.

The ease with which I played these new Bearers of Harmony for fools was almost embarrassing, even for me. Right off the bat, Twilight Sparkle erroneously interpreted my little riddle and assumed I meant the hedge maze. The "twists and turns" referred to what I was going to do to her friends, not that I had literally placed the Elements in that damned maze. What a little fool this Twilight Sparkle was. Seriously, I couldn't believe that she had been taught personally by Celestia herself of all ponies. What a horrible disappointment.

I'll let you in on a little secret here: with the "find the Elements back where you began" line, I had originally intended this to mean the castle in the Everfree Forest. That was, after all, where they had truly began their friendships in earnest, since before that point Twilight Sparkle had still been reluctant to let friends into her heart, and it was only during the fight with Nightmare Moon that she finally realized this and thus had begun to become the pony that she was today (which isn't saying very much at all, believe me). But, when I saw how utterly close to breaking she already was when she once again misinterpreted my riddle, I decided to take pity on her and move the Elements to that book in her library. If she had realized that she was going to have to try to brave the dangers of the Everfree Forest again, this time either by herself or with friends that were no longer friends, I dare say she would have completely cracked. I mean, sure, this was my plan all along, but I wanted her to be broken explicitly due to the fact of her friends turning on her, not simply because the last part of the riddle was too difficult to deal with.

But, anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself here. So yeah, as they all charged obliviously into the hedge maze, I robbed the Unicorns and Pegasi of their unique gifts, and then decided to have some fun and pick them off one by one.

Applejack, the Bearer of Honesty, was my first target. She was simple enough to ensnare. I merely showed her a possible vision of the future, a vision of her friendship with the others falling apart. What she didn't realize, of course, was that the future isn't set in stone. It is as malleable as wet clay. It only became true because she caused it to come true. She couldn't take this ugly "truth" and so decided that all truth was a pain to be avoided, and so she started lying about everything. How utterly ridiculous. If she had just realized that if she stayed true to her Element, perhaps this could have been averted. Oh, who am I kidding, even if she had seen through my ruse, I would have found another way to corrupt her, easily enough.

Pinkie Pie, the Bearer of Laughter, came next. This one actually worried me, I'll admit. I'm not even talking about how she had actually enjoyed the chaos I was causing, rather than being concerned or frightened. That, I had actually found genuinely delightful. In her own special way, Miss Pie was a pony after my own heart, though she liked to sing a bit too much for my tastes. However, if you recall way back when I was giving you my history lesson about the evolution of the ponies on this planet, I briefly made mention of the fact that a very small number of Earth ponies had somehow developed a freakish ability to warp reality, though it mostly lay dormant throughout the generations. Well, no other Earth pony had this ability more strongly than Pinkie Pie. It made me very nervous, at least at first, when I got a whiff of just how strong it was in her. But, like all the rest, she didn't even know she possessed such a vast power, and I wasn't about to tell her. When she used it at all, it was wasted on frivolous things, like randomly teleporting around when chasing after her friends, or through that absurd "Pinkie Sense" which she used to foretell the future, or when she was breaking the fourth wall. Oh, don't give me that look. You know exactly what I'm talking about. It was a damn shame how so very simple it was for me to convince her that her friends were laughing at her, rather than with her, and this was even after she had only just learned a lesson in not mistrusting her friends back on her birthday. She decided that Laughter was evil, and thus she would oppose anything that could bring it about. Go figure. The fact that such a thing could so thoroughly break her as it did boggled my mind. Deep down, she was a very lonely pony, despite being surrounded on all sides by the friends she had made, and it almost made me want to spare her from this fate. But, of course, I did no such thing.

And then was Rarity, the Bearer of Generosity. Generosity, my wrinkled pink human ass. I broke her with a fake vision of a diamond. Can you believe that? That's all it took. I mean, really, what. I had her lug this huge rock around the whole time. She even started calling it Tom. She was willing to fight anypony who so much as laid a hoof on it. It would have been hilarious if it hadn't been so ludicrously sad. No, wait, I'll be honest. It was hilarious.

Now we come to Fluttershy, the Bearer of Kindness. I know. I know what you're thinking. I gave up on her far too easily and just broke her manually. Bah. It was just that she was so sickeningly sweet, she made me want to hurl. I couldn't bear to be in her presence for more than a few minutes. I could have just as easily broken her the same way I did the others. I could have shown her visions of her madness during that year's Grand Galloping Gala, when she was chasing around those terrified woodland creatures. I could have shown her visions of her future self reducing two of her best friends to tears after her dubious assertiveness training under the minotaur Iron Will. For that matter, I probably could have just shouted "BOO!" and simply terrified her into submission. The girl was, quite literally at times, afraid of her own shadow. But you have to understand, truly, those stupid little doe eyes of hers… barf. And that soft, non-threatening voice… I could feel the teeth rotting in my head from just being within a hundred feet of her. Therefore, I simply decided to just fling a hex on her and be done with it as quickly as possible. And so, with just a tap of my finger to her head, she became the biggest bitch of the whole lot of them. She was a lot more fun to be around after that.

Rainbow Dash, the Bearer of Loyalty, was the last one left, aside from Miss Faithful Student herself. With Miss Dash, I actually posed a genuine moral dilemma. Should she remain loyal to her friends and help them find the Elements that they mistakenly believed to be in this hedge maze? Or should she be loyal to her hometown, which I had just shown her a vision of crumbling if she didn't show up to single-handedly save everypony there? She chose to abandon her friends and fly away to her home after I allowed her the use of her wings again. Granted, she didn't take into consideration the fact that she had absolutely no hope of actually stopping me from destroying her home, whether she was there or not, but then I suppose that was to be expected. She's not a very smart pony, after all. All brawn and no brains, that one. Partly just for the fun of it and partly because I felt sorry for just how terribly stupid she was, I made her believe that a nearby tiny cloud was her home and that she had indeed heroically rushed in to save the day in the nick of time. How very, very pitiful it was. Was I actually going to destroy Cloudsdale? No, of course not. Sure, it was on my list for chaosification after I had finished with Ponyville of course, but simply causing it to crumble as in the vision I showed to Rainbow Dash would have been lame.

Finally, it came down to Twilight Sparkle, the Bearer of the Element of Magic itself. With her, I knew I didn't even have to bother. For all of her book smarts, she lacked simple common sense. Not to mention the fact that she was obviously no good with simple riddles either. It completely floored me when I saw that she apparently couldn't even realize that her friends were acting strangely due to my own direct influence. I mean, really, what did she think had happened, that her friends had just forgotten to take their "don't be a jackass" pills that morning? Even after her little pet baby dragon explicitly pointed it out to her that they had all turned gray, she still acted as though they were acting under their own volition. Rather than trying every thing in her very real magical power to heal them, she acted like the asocial homebody she really was and merely bickered with them pointlessly. No, I knew I wouldn't even have to bother with breaking her, because she was going to do a bang up job of it on her own. After a brief lesson in which I demonstrated to her that her precious Elements of Harmony would not work while her friends were… well… no longer her friends, I saw that I was indeed correct. After she turned gray on her own, I rubbed it in her face for a bit, but then I decided that I had more important things to deal with, and left her to her own devices.

While Twilight Sparkle bumbled around, I paid a little visit to a "friend" of ours who happened to have been in town for a while. As I popped into his humble home, he turned to face me.

"Ah, there you are, Q!" he said, in that grating voice of his. "I was beginning to think you weren't going to pay me a visit at all!"

"You've decided to be an Earth pony today, rather than a Pegasus, I see," I said, looking him over. Indeed, he was a simple brown Earth pony, with a brown spiky mane and tail. Appropriately enough, his cutie mark was that of an hourglass.

"And I see you've decided to keep being that… whatever it is you are there. Draconequus, was it? So, anyway, what brings you to see me this fine, albeit crazy day?" said the brown Earth pony. "Would you care for some yogurt?" He gestured a hoof at the nearby table.

"Cut the pleasantries, Timelord," I said sharply. "Don't think I haven't sensed your presence on this world since well before I broke out of my stone prison. You have been a thorn in my side for millennia, and I don't intend to take any chances this time. Keep your nose out of my business and I won't turn you into a Cyberpony and launch you into the Delta Quadrant, possibly into the path of an oncoming Borg ship."

"Sure, I remember how that turned out the last time, and it wasn't very pleasant, believe you me. You have nothing to worry about from me, old friend," said the Doctor.

"And if you even think about… what?" I said, momentarily caught off guard by this. I had expected him to do his little hero bit and attempt to thwart me.

"I've already seen how this all ends, after all, and I know that my services won't be required," he said simply.

I narrowed my eyes. "Oh, you have, have you? That just means I need to keep my eyes open all the more, now doesn't it?"

"Believe what you want, but I have no need to lift a hoof here. It will all work out fine in the end," he said. "For all concerned."

I was silent for a moment as I glared at him, then said, "I'll be watching you."

"I wouldn't expect anything less," he said cheerfully. "Now if you'll excuse me, my yogurt is melting."

I narrowed my eyes again, and then shrugged. This hadn't gone anything like how I expected it to go, but okay. I had bigger fish to fry anyway. Even so, just before I left, I subtly changed his yogurt to pear flavored. As I teleported away, I let a sinister laugh linger in the air of his little cabin.

I reappeared in Celestia's chambers. Strangely, she appeared to be in the process of sending out a letter. When she saw me, she quickly picked up another one and made to send it out as well, but I teleported it out of the grasp of her telekinesis.

"Discord!" she said angrily, but I merely held up a hand.

"You're sending out correspondence at a time like this, Celestia?" I said, clucking my tongue. "And you didn't send me a thing. I'm hurt. So, what do we have here?" I unfurled the letter and began to read out loud. "'Dear Princess Celestia, I have learned a very valuable lesson about friendship.'" I looked up at her and raised an eyebrow before looking back down at the letter again. "'blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda Always Your Faithful Student, Twilight Sparkle' Celestia, what is this saccharine nonsense?" When she didn't respond to my question, I merely shrugged. "Fine, be that way. Allow me to send this one on for you." I tasted the remnants of the magic in the air and said, "Oh, return to sender, is it? Finally given up on the little know nothing, have you? Good for you. She wasn't worth your time, anyway." I exhaled a poof of green fire and sent the letter on to its intended recipient. "Miss Sparkle is already utterly broken, by the way, and on her way out of Ponyville even as we speak, so whatever little plan you had with these letters is completely useless. Just saying." I saw the stricken look in her eyes as I said that last bit. I wasn't quite sure whether to feel satisfied or sorry.

"Whatever you want, Discord, spit it out and leave me be," she said.

"Come now, Celestia, we both know that you are in no position whatsoever to be making demands of me, but I will be brief," I said. My voice then lost all joviality. "I have a bone to pick with you."

"Oh?" she said, feigning interest in what I had to say.

"Princess Luna," I said. The name lingered in the air for a moment, before she finally responded.

"W-what about her?" Celestia asked with genuine confusion in her voice.

"Damn you, Celestia!" I said, barely keeping my sudden rage in check. "How could you take her back so easily after a mere one thousand years, when you left me to rot in that stone dungeon for what you hoped was eternity?"

Celestia's eyes widened. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't play dumb with me, my dear," I said. "But, just for the sake of argument, let's step through this, shall we? Remind me again exactly why you imprisoned me forever."

"How can you even ask that? You were torturing all of my little ponies! Driving them mad, or worse!" said Celestia. She looked at me as if I were mentally deficient given that she had to explain this.

"But did I murder anypony?" I asked. "Did I directly kill a single pony?"

"YOU KILLED MY PARENTS!" Celestia cried, her eyes wide with incredulity, rage, and above all terrible pain.

I waved a hand at this. "That is the closest I came to directly killing ponies with my own hands, but even then, I did not. Your father died of a broken neck as he fell to his death, through no direct action of my own, aside from the test that I put him under earlier. Which he utterly failed, I should add, though I'd hoped that he would overcome his trial. Your mother died as an indirect result of my defending myself from her unwarranted attack upon me. I did not kill her. I merely knocked the weapons she was using on me out of her possession. Would you have done any differently had you been in my place and had the power to do so?"

"Cease this charade, Discord!" said Celestia angrily. "What are you here for, really?"

I ignored her. "Every other pony on this planet lived a full life. Granted, most of them lived that life while entirely insane, but I did not kill a single one of them. Well, not permanently, anyway. Those who died of anything other than old age, I brought back to life. I even allowed most of them to still raise families, even in their madness."

"You say that as through it was a kindness," said Celestia, with horror.

"Wasn't it?" I said. "If I hadn't brought those ponies back, or let them keep their families, the population of this land would hardly be a thousandth of what it is now. But even, then, at least there would still be ponies around! I had no interest in causing the extinction of your entire species."

"Discord, I truly don't understand what you are-" Celestia began, but I shook my head violently.

"Don't try my patience with this faked ignorance, Celestia. You are an intelligent pony and you know exactly what I'm getting at here," I said. I changed gears and asked, "What is it that you do when you 'raise the sun', huh? And don't give me that nonsense being fed to the plebeians by your priestesses about how you actually do control the sun. We both know that's horse apples."

Celestia seemed taken aback, but quietly said, "We regulate the rotation of the planet. As I'm sure you know, in the past there has been some instability in the axis of the planet. Our magic, and the magic of the Unicorns before us, has corrected that, or at least, has kept it stable through the eons."

"Very good," I said. "Now, explain to me, in laypony's terms, exactly what Luna was planning to do, in her madness a thousand years ago." I could see that Celestia fully understood what I was getting at, despite clearly not wanting to.

"S-she…" she swallowed, hard, then resumed. "She wanted to bring about 'eternal night.' Of course, this meant 'eternal night for Equestria' not the whole world. She couldn't have cared less at the time about the rest of the world. Therefore, she brought the rotation of the planet to a halt."

"Exactly," I said, my eyes blazing. "Now, then, tell me what exactly would have happened had she been allowed to succeed in this absurd plan."

Celestia said nothing, but I could see her eyes glistening with more barely held back tears.

"Fine, then I will tell you," I said. "With the rotation of the planet stopped, Equestria would have indeed been bathed in eternal darkness. The other side of the planet, which Luna didn't give a fig about, would have been trapped under the scorching heat of the noonday sun. Now, I will put this down for you very simply, Celestia. Your precious little ponies in Equestria would very soon have found their side of the planet freezing, and it would have been a frost far worse than even the most powerful windigoes could conjure up. The creatures on the other side of the planet would have found themselves frying, the very blood in their veins boiling them alive from the inside. It would have taken a little while as far as the ponies are concerned, but as far as the two of us and your sister are concerned, all life on this planet would have ended in the blink of an eye."

The tears began to fall down Celestia's face as she pictured this in her mind, despite trying her best to shut it out.

I let the hammer fall again. "Your dear sister would have annihilated every living creature on this world, bar none… well, save perhaps for you and her. And me, of course, though I wouldn't have relished being stuck in a stone statue in the midst of a frozen wasteland forever."

Celestia said nothing, but just stared at me. I could see my own refection in her moistened eyes. I tried to bury the memories and emotions that caused to well up within me. I succeeded. Mostly.

"AND YOU FORGAVE HER FOR THIS," I thundered. "After a mere thousand years, you forgave her for almost utterly destroying this world. And yet, look at what you did to me! Did I not deserve the same chance you gave her, especially considering that the absolute worst of what I did paled in comparison to what she would have done had you not stopped her when you did?"

After several moments of silence, Celestia finally said, "Of course I forgave her, Discord! I don't regret that for a single second! She is my baby sister! And… and she has apologized. She is still in agony over what she did to this day. Can the same be said for you?"

"YOU DIDN'T GIVE ME A CHANCE!" I roared.

"Well… you are here now," she said, nearly a whisper. "You have your chance. Will you take it?"

I was floored by this. She was actually expecting me to beg her for forgiveness. No really, let me repeat that: after what she had done to me, I was the one expected to apologize. If that was what she wanted, however, then that is what I would give her. "Very well," I said. I got down on my knees in front of her and clasped my hands together. "I beg you for forgiveness for everything that I have done in my time on this world. I apologize for what happened to your mother and father and every other pony. I am sorry for what I put you and your sister through. Can you ever forgive me?"

I watched her closely. I imagined the gears turning in her head. She hadn't expected me to actually do it. I seriously doubted that she thought I was sincere. I'm sure she just thought it was another sick game on my part. Eventually, she simply lowered her head and looked away.

"I didn't think so," I muttered blackly. I floated away from her, my back to her completely. But then I turned back to face her with a false cheer that I didn't feel plastered on my face. "Very well, my dear Celestia. That's fine. Even if you can't bring yourself to do so, I am capable of letting bygones be bygones. I hold you no ill will whatsoever. In fact, I think I will give you what your heart most desires."

"W-what-" said Celestia, looking sharply back up at me.

"The one thing you desire in this whole world: your freedom!" I said manically.

Celestia's mouth was moving, but no words came out.

I pressed my attack. "All this royal princess nonsense, it weighs upon your heart. All of the brownnosing sycophants constantly currying for your favor, all of the tedious drudgery of politics and diplomacy, all of those horrid social functions like that terrible Grand Galloping Gala. You'd like nothing more than to never have anything to do with those things ever again, right?"

Celestia shook her head as if to clear it, but I could see she was becoming more and more muddled. "Y-yes, it's true that I need a break from those things from time to time, but-"

I went in for the kill. "Well, have no more fear! I completely absolve you from those dreadful things! Never again will you have to trudge out to that throne and spend all day reading dry missives from insignificant underlings or listening to the asinine prattle from some high-born fop. I will take over your responsibilities from now on! Consider this an extended vacation and my gift to you, my dear Celestia."

Her eyes took on the tell tale multi-colored signs of my influence. I had won. "Yes… I'd like that… but…"

"Oh?" I said, cupping my lion's paw to my ear. "What's that you say?"

"There's one other thing I'd like even more than that," she said, looking up at me again.

"And what is that, my dear?" I asked, a beaming smile on my face.

She blushed deep red, and muttered, "You."

"Moi?" I asked, drawing back and clasping my hands over my heart.

"Yes, Discord," she said, staring deep into my eyes. "Ever since I first met you, I've wanted nothing but to be at your side. You were- no are- a very charming, sophisticated, intelligent gentleman. What more could any filly want?"

It was time to twist the knife. "There's just one slight problem with that, my dear Celestia."

She frowned. "W-what?"

"I just don't like you very much anymore," I said. It was, of course, yet another bald-faced lie, but at the moment, I was only interested in hurting her as much as I possibly could, at least without causing her actual physical damage.

"B-but… Discord! WHY?" The tears started to fly out of her eyes now in an almost comical fountain, and yet, I didn't find it amusing at all. Still, I had to keep up appearances, so I laughed heartily in her face.

"No real reason. I just don't find you all that interesting anymore," I said, lying through my teeth once more. "I'm not sure I ever did, to be quite honest." This was tougher than I thought it was going to be.

"Discord, how can you say that?" she cried. "I… I thought we… I thought you… …but you said…"

"You were mistaken, my dear," I said, glancing down and inspecting the talons on my eagle hand. Celestia turned and ran toward her bed and threw herself dramatically across it, burying her face in her pillows as she sobbed. It took all of my considerable willpower to stop myself from rushing to her side, cooing in her ear, comforting her and reassuring her that I had meant none of the horrid things I'd just said to her, that it was all merely another garish prank on my part.

It was at that moment when the door behind me was smashed off of its hinges and directly into the back of my head. The door split down the middle and fell to either side, a bit in front of me. I idly rubbed the back of my head as I turned around. "Took you long enough to get here, Luna. Obviously, you are too late."

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO TIA!" she screamed at me, turning the Royal Voice up to eleven.

"Oh, spare me the tedious theatrics," I said, boredom lacing my every word. "I merely gave her everything she ever wanted. Well, almost everything, that is."

"YOU HAVE CORRUPTED HER AND YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS," she yelled, powering up her horn and lowering her head to charge at me. I rolled my eyes. Before she could take a single step, I enveloped her in a cocoon of my own power.

"Forgive me, my dear, sweet, innocent Princess Luna," I said cloyingly, "but I really don't have time to play games with you right now. Instead, how about I offer you the same thing I offered Celestia? Your heart's one true desire."

"You have nothing that I could want, fiend," she hissed.

"I know how it is for you," I said calmly. "Everypony loves Celestia. But you? They fear you. Even after a full year of trying to atone for what you did as Nightmare Moon, they still fear you. Some of them even hate you. They think you should be strung up and left to rot for what you did. Or maybe drawn and quartered, though some think that would be far too quick an end for you. Some of them have much more depraved punishments they would love to inflict upon you."

"S-shut your mouth, you bastard!" shouted Luna.

"Language, language, my dear," I said with a hearty laugh. "And you wonder why everypony is afraid of you. Well, I can change all of that. In the blink of an eye, everypony will love you."

"I… I just want…" she said, then suddenly thrashed her head from side to side and redoubled her futile efforts to break my grasp. "NO! I won't fall for your deception, demon!"

"No deception here," I said. "In fact, I have an even better offer for you. Why, just a few minutes ago, your dear sister abdicated her throne to me."

"What?" said Luna. She jerked her eyes toward Celestia. "That can't be true!"

Celestia's muffled voice cried out from her pillows and between her sobs. "It's true. I don't have to be a stuffy old princess anymore, and I won't. I've always hated all that boring stuff. B-but that's not what I really wanted…"

Before Celestia could continue along that train of thought, I hastily said, "And now, my dear Luna, I give that throne over to you! You would be a much better ruler than I would ever be anyway. Just think about it! Soon the citizens of this land will be looking to you for guidance, rather than your sister. I know you've always been jealous of the way that Celestia had everything she ever wanted handed to her on a silver platter, simply because she was the eldest sister. Well now, as sole ruler of the land, you would be able to do anything you wanted."

"I… I can't…" she said, but I could see the multi-colored swirls starting to form in her eyes. She was almost mine.

"Anything that you want! It is merely yours to ask for!" I said, releasing her from my telekinesis.

Luna landed on her feet and marched regally to the center of the room. "Well... okay then. As my f-first royal decree… I demand that it be nighttime forever!"

The slapping of my lion's paw to my face echoed throughout the chamber. Glad I didn't use my eagle hand or I probably would have poked my own eyes out.

"No!" said Celestia, leaping up from the bed. "I don't want that! Discord said I could have anything I wanted! And… and I want it to be a sunny day forever!" She began to use her Alicorn abilities to rotate the planet so that the sun would be directly overhead.

My eyes widened into saucers at this. Oh dear, what had I done?

"Well, I am the supreme ruler now, so what I say is the law!" said Luna. She used her own powers to try to counteract Celestia's. The planet began to spin faster, as the sun dipped down and the moon began to rise.

"But I am your big sister, so you still have to do what I say!" said Celestia. Outside, I could see days turning into minutes, and the sun and moon quickly began jockeying for position in the sky. Well, if nothing else, at least I now no longer had to bother with doing this myself. Moving the sun and moon around, while an easy feat for a Q, is just so dreadfully boring.

I watched as the two sisters continued childishly fighting for dominance over the sky. I should have found this to be hilarious. And, well, okay, it was a little bit funny, I'll admit. But, deeper down, it really pained me to see the two sisters reduced to this, even if that had been my very goal from the beginning. Actually seeing it happen, however, brought me no real joy at all.

"Celestia…" I said softly enough that neither of them could hear me over their own bickering. "I'm sorry. I truly am. I understand that now. I will make this right." I teleported away. Neither of the two Alicorn sisters noticed my departure.

"Why do you keep stopping just when things are getting to the good part?" said Q. From out of nowhere, he had produced a big tub of popcorn and was munching away on it.

"I'm sure you find this all very amusing," I said dourly.

"Eh, not really," said Q, waving the popcorn into non-existence. "I'm just waiting for you to get to the part where I make my big entrance."

"That's coming up very soon. And, believe me, it's more of a mild cameo than anything. But anyway, let's get the rest of this story over and done with."

Chapter 8

I sat on my throne in the center of my new and improved Ponyville. I could tell that the Bearers of Harmony were approaching. I could also tell that, somehow, they had muddled through and regained their true selves. Good for them. Maybe Celestia's little trick with the letters had borne fruit after all. Whatever. It didn't matter to me, but I had appearances to keep up, so I played along with the charade.

"HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!" I laughed. I created a glass from nothing and held it underneath a nearby chocolate rain cloud. "Chaos is a wonderful, wonderful thing!" I said loudly, knowing that the Bearers were within earshot.

"NOT! As wonderful! As friendship!" came the voice of Twilight Sparkle. She and her friends struck dramatic poses as they confronted me. Snore.

"Ugh. This again?" I said, letting a bit of the true apathy that I felt bleed through. I held the glass of chocolate milk up to my lips and then I drank the glass! I tossed the solid chunk of milk over my shoulder, where it caused an explosion somewhere behind me. Yes, yes, very silly, I know, but these ponies expected silly, so that's what I gave them. They wouldn't have recognized true chaos if it came up and bit them in the cutie mark.

"That's raht!" said Applejack, in that ever so charming accent of hers. "Ya couldn't break apart our friendship fer long!"

"Oh, Applejack, don't lie to me," I said, as I telekinetically grabbed her Element of Harmony necklace (funny how Celestia and Luna or their mother hadn't needed to bother with such gaudy things) and dragged her through the air toward me. "I'm the one who made you a liar." With a melodramatically fiendish look on my face, I grabbed the necklaces of the other four ponies while Twilight Sparkle merely watched with that doltish 'oh dear me what do I do now?' look on her face. "Will you ever learn?"

With the five other Bearers floating directly in front of me, conveniently in a pentagram formation (now why had I done that, how thoughtless of me), Twilight Sparkle nearly popped a vein trying to do a simple teleport and then reappeared in their midst, forming a pink bubble around them as she did so. I resisted the urge to pop it with one of my eagle talons. Instead, I merely narrowed my eyes and watched as she floated them away from me and safely back to the ground. The ground within the bubble changed back to normal grass. A good sign for them, I suppose. Yay.

"I'll tell you what we've learned, Discord!" she said, oh so haughtily. Oh I'm sure she would tell me. The desire to snap her pitiful psyche like a twig briefly rose up within me again, but I fought it back down. I still had a role to play here, so I merely flashed her the goofiest smile I could manage as she prattled on. "We've learned that friendship isn't always easy. But there's no doubt it's worth fighting for!" Imagine that! What a revelation, and a shockingly hard won bit of wisdom on her part! And it's not like she hadn't presumably already learned this lesson several times before, right? I mean, really, wow. Just… wow. Celestia was clearly losing her touch as a teacher. Either that or Twilight Sparkle was just completely straight up retarded. Maybe a little bit of column A and a little bit of column B.

"Ooogh, gag!" I said, getting right up in her stupid, ugly face. "Fine. Go ahead. Try and use your little Elements. Friend me. Just make it quick." Okay, I'll admit, I'm not the best actor in the universe. Sue me. I teleported back to my throne as some pigs flew by in the background. "I'm missing some excellent chaos here."

"All right, ladies!" said Twilight. "Let's show him what friendship can do!" The smug look on her face made me want to just teleport her into the galley of a Klingon Bird of Prey and be done with it. Hmm, do Klingon warships even have galleys? Meh, well, wherever it is that they keep their gagh or their blood pie or whatever other ghastly things they eat. I'd like to see her friendship her way out of that one. If she was very lucky, they'd probably just treat her like an overgrown Tribble and merely vaporize her on sight. I didn't care to dwell on what would happen to her if she were not very lucky.

"Waitwaitwait!" said Pinkie Pie. The others looked over at her as she stood beneath one of my chocomilk clouds, front legs raised, mouth open, and gargling as much of it down as she could while she still had the chance. Oh, Pinkamena Diane Pie… if we'd only met in another time and place, we would no doubt have been the very best of friends, and I do mean that sincerely. It made me almost sad to think about the what ifs and the might have beens. She cheerfully hopped back to her friends and immediately broke into a terrifyingly intense growly face. Twilight starting doing her little magic thing again, and they got all glowy and whatnot.

I yawned.

Each gem on their various pieces of tawdry jewelry began to glow in turn.

"Huh? What's this?" I tried my very best to look surprised and a bit scared as red lightning bolts and pink butterflies and orange stars and yellow moons and green clovers and blue diamonds and purple horseshoes and whatever else started flying past my head. They were straining their little hearts out, the poor dears. It was so very precious. This was taxing my acting abilities to their utmost limits, I assure you. It's not like I couldn't have just teleported out of the way at any point during the whole thing. "No!" I said, as Twilight opened her eyes, displaying that same freakish whiteness that Celestia and Luna had so very many centuries ago. That vainglorious little smile was still on her face, even then. I do have to admit, though, the little rainbow shockwave was rather cute. I suppose that was Rainbow Dash's contribution.

So, you know how it went from there. The big silly rainbow beam shot up into the air, and I had to pretend to be terrified as it came down and enveloped me. Seriously, I had to reduce my power to almost nothing at all, just to get the petrification process to even start. It was that pathetically weak. It shamed me to even have to let this happen to me again, this time of my own accord…

But if this is what it took for my dear Celestia to be happy, then so be it.

"Oooh, we're finally getting to the good part!" Q said, almost physically hopping up and down in anticipation.

"Yes," I said, not even trying to hide my utter boredom. "This is when you made your spectacular appearance."

"Woo!" he said, pumping his fist in the air.

Just as the petrification process reached my neck, time stopped altogether. I stopped my fake screaming and looked around in confusion. Well, tried to look around anyway. My roughly 95% complete petrification made that somewhat difficult. Anyway, Twilight Sparkle and her friends were frozen in place, the very energy that was previously crackling around them before was now utterly motionless. This, I had to admit, was a bit of surprise.

"What's so surprising about it?" said a voice from nearby.

What the…?

"Come on, Q, non-linear beings, remember?" The owner of the voice walked around from behind me and then stopped. He stood about halfway between me and the Bearers of Harmony. He was an Earth pony, his fur a dull gray, and his mane and tail a moderately cropped dirty, sandy blonde color. On his flanks, of course, rested his cutie mark, which was a simple green letter "Q".

"Tada!" he said. He then looked down at himself, and muttered, "Ugh, these colors look just as tacky on a pony as they do on a human."

"Oh, it's you," I said. "I should have known."

"Well, you're the one telling me this story, remember?" he said. "So, yeah, you should have known. Anyway, you know why I'm here, I'm sure."

"Yes, of course," I said, "but for the sake of exposition, please enlighten me."

"Well, this seems like a selfless act to me, Q," he said. "A pretty crappy one, mind you, but a selfless act, nonetheless."

"So what?" I said. "Are you here to taunt me because I happen to love…?" again, I surprised even myself when I actually said it out loud "…a pony and want to do right by her, finally?" I moved my mouth around and repeated the word "love" a few more times, as if I were trying some kind of horrifyingly exotic food like gagh or something for the first time. I seriously thought that this "love" thing deserved a bit more focused study on my part in the near future. I was woefully underequipped to understand it, even as I apparently felt it.

"Of course not, Q," said Q. "What you are doing here is a noble thing. Kind of. Maybe? I don't know. The ponies here, of course, will never know of your sacrifice. And, to be honest, I personally kind of do think it's hilariously humiliating, but the Continuum seems to think you've finally learned your lesson."

"And what lesson is that, pray tell?" I said.

"Simply put: 'Don't be a dick,'" said Q. "Is that how the humans say it?"

"That's twice now that you've mentioned humans. What do humans have to do with this?" I asked, tilting my head to the side. Or well, at least tilting my eyes to the side anyway, since my head was currently half transformed into stone.

"The Continuum thinks your existence as it has been for the past few eons has, let's say, lacked a certain amount of structure," said the Q pony. "And never call me 'the Q pony' ever again, got it?" he added.

"Er, sorry," I said. "You were saying?"

"We have a little job for you," said the Q p… I mean, Q. Just Q. "That's better."

"A job? What sort of job?" I said.

"Well, it certainly pays better than spending the rest of eternity trapped in stone," he said, looking me up and down. "How did you stand that for several thousand years anyway?"

"As I already told you back on the Enterprise," I said, "I was able to endure it because, at the time at least, my dear Celestia still didn't completely hate my guts, apparently, and she deigned to still talk to me. You just can't know how much I truly miss it."

"You know, I still don't think she absolutely hates you, even now and despite every deplorable thing you have inflicted upon her. Must be a real masochist, that one," said Q.

"You really think so?" I said, a bit of hopefulness bleeding through my attempt at sarcasm even so.

"Do I really think she's a masochist?" he asked, tilting his head to the side and raising an eyebrow.

"No, not that, the first part," I said.

"Maybe, who knows?" he said with a shrug. "Perhaps you should come back in a few million years and find out, after she's had a chance to cool off some. Anyway, stop distracting me! I was telling you about your new job. Right, so the humans have achieved interstellar flight."

"Really?" I said, rather intrigued despite myself. "Last time I checked in on them, they were still beating each other over the heads with large bones."

"Yeah, they've only had it for a couple hundred years," said Q. "As you well know, the Continuum has long harbored a very special interest in this particular species, and they feel the time has come for them to be… tested."

"And you come to me?" I asked, incredulously. "After you just had me spend however many thousands of years trapped in solid rock for doing the very same thing to these ponies?"

"Q, we want you to test the humans," said the hideous gray Earth pony. "Not drive them insane. Just a few hoops to jump through, maybe some multiple choice questions, that sort of thing. And just so you know, I'm going to let that 'hideous' comment slide, just this once. Mainly because I entirely agree with you. Guh."

"Well… okay," I said. "I suppose it beats lying around here for another few millennia. It would be easy enough to leave this physical form behind, so that those bumbling ponies over there think they actually managed to win. So, when do I start?"

"That's the spirit!" he said. "How about now? Right away! The very flagship of the Federation is on its way to Farpoint Station as we speak."

"Farpoint Station?" I asked. "Is that the one with the huge alien being trapped in the-"

"Sssh sssh!" said Q, wagging a hoof. "Ix-nay on the oilers-spay! You are not to tell the humans about that. They need to find out on their own. It'll be part of the test."

"Well," I said, glancing down at my almost completely petrified body. "I guess I'm pretty much done here, it seems. Let's get going then." I gave one last look over at Twilight Sparkle and her friends. It left a sour taste in my mouth to let such a ragtag bunch of buffoons think that they had actually legitimately defeated me, but oh well.

As Q and I teleported away, time resumed in Equestria and the empty husk that used to be my physical form completed its transformation into stone. The dome of energy expanded and encompassed all of Equestria, undoing all of the things that I had changed in the short time I'd been back again.

In the personal chambers of Princess Celestia, the two pony sisters suddenly stopped slap-fighting each other and looked around in confusion and no small amount of embarrassment and shame. Celestia and Luna both fully remembered what had been said in the brief time that they had been Discord'd. They looked at each other, both of them tearing up again, and then they hugged. It would take some time for things to return to normal, but neither of them was going to make that process any more difficult than it had to be.

While still embracing her sister, Celestia looked toward the ceiling, not really seeing it but instead imagining the night time sky and the stars beyond. As she did so, she felt a sense of profound loss, and another tear slid down her cheek at the thought. I'm not entirely sure how it was possible, but I got the distinct impression that she actually somehow sensed that I was no longer on the planet anymore, and that this is what was making her sad, even despite every horrible thing that I had done to her and her ponies. I wanted to skip out on my job before I had even started it and rush back to her side, but… no. That's not what a good little Q would do, now is it?

"And that," said Q, "was the story of how I got my cutie mark!"

"Ha," I said, completely deadpan. "Ha."

"So… what are you going to do now?" he asked. He stood up and then stretched, as though he'd been sitting on the drab hull of the Enterprise for a very long time, even though it hadn't been more than just a few hours at most.

"I haven't decided yet," I said, when he returned to my side. "There's the whole thing with Lwaxana coming up soon, but I… really want to put that off as long as I can. I'm also thinking of doing some kind of Robin Hood thing for the command crew of the Enterprise a bit later. That's when and where I meet Vash for the first time, you know. In any case, I kind of want to study this 'love' thing some more, so maybe I can use both of those events to further that cause. Besides, I think I'm going to need whatever knowledge I can glean before my dealings with Janeway later."

"Sure," said Q. "But I'm talking about right now, though. You've got some time to kill. Why don't you… you know… go pay her a little visit?"

"Who? Are you talking about Celestia?" I asked, raising my eyebrows in surprise.

"Sure? Why not?" he said. "What harm could it do? Wait… don't answer that."

"I don't dare show my face there again, especially so soon after, well, you know," I said.

"I don't mean show up as Discord," he said. "Though that could always be in the cards for the future, perhaps. No, I mean show up as your normal charming self (ugh, I can't believe I actually said that). Or, at least, the pony equivalent thereof, anyway, and as a member of the Q Continuum, and not some crazy deformed dragon pony thing. I still don't get why you didn't tell her from the beginning what you were."

"I just didn't feel like it. It didn't seem right at the time, somehow," I said.

"Whatever you say," he said.

"You know what?" I said, the beginnings of a grin starting to build on my currently human face. "Maybe I will."

"That's the Q I know," said Q. "Go get 'er, tiger! Just don't make a complete hash of it this time, if you please."

"And maybe I should bring a few friends along as well," I said, my grin getting bolder. "It would be so very easy to knock this ship off course and then lock it into orbit over a certain planet filled with candy colored ponies. Oh, the look on Jean-Luc's face… Ooh, ooh, and can you just imagine Worf's reaction to one of Pinkie Pie's parties? It would be glorious! And I think Data and Fluttershy would get along great together. And you know Twilight Sparkle would kill to get access to the Enterprise library computers, once she learned about them."

"Q," he said, warningly.

"Just kidding," I said, holding up a hand and then placing it over my heart. Behind my back, I crossed the fingers on my other hand.

The End

Author's Note

Author's Notes (04-01-2012): So… yeah. That was certainly a fanfic. I banged this thing out over the course of the past three weeks or so. Well, the fic itself was pretty much done in a week or so, but then I've reread the thing about 4 or 5 times since then, fixing/changing stuff. Anyway, here is my history as far as My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic is concerned. I'd been aware of the existence of the show for a while now, but had just never really had a reason to watch it before. I didn't dislike it or anything. Quite the opposite, in fact, as I was sure I'd probably like it if I ever got around to watching it. Well, around the first of March 2012, I finally got around to watching it. I inhaled the entire series, both seasons, over the course of around 3-5 days or so, up to the then most recent episode "A Friend in Deed" (the one with Cranky Doodle Donkey). Needless to say, I was hooked. I… I was a brony. I tried to deny it at first, because I was fresh off of watching the CollegeHumor "My Little Brony" video before that (which, ironically enough, was a big part of the reason I started watching the show itself, actually), but you know what? I don't care. I'm a brony. Ya don't like it, screw all y'all. (And if you're not a brony yourself, what the hell are you doing reading a MLP:FIM fanfic, amirite?) At some point after watching "The Return of Harmony" (for which, sadly, I had been spoiled on the fact that John de Lancie voiced Discord prior to watching the show), I got the idea for this fic in my head. And it just wouldn't leave me alone! And so… yeah, here it be.

Yeah, this is almost entirely a MLP:FIM fic (more specifically a Celestia/Discord + Luna fic, since the main 6 characters don't even show up until the very end). For the TNG part of it, it's mostly just a few brief references to some Q-related episodes. The framing story for this fic takes place immediately after the events of the TNG season 3 episode "Deja Q" (the one where Q is stripped of his powers and becomes fully human for a little while). For this fic, the Peter David novel Q-in-Law is entirely canon (though it hasn't happened yet as far as the fic is concerned). At first, this was just a throwaway thing to pad out the "Q doesn't just fall for a pretty face" thing to include Lwaxana Troi, but the more I thought about it, the more it made sense. In that novel, Q is ostensibly trying to figure out what this human emotion called "love" is all about. This also is part of the plot behind the TNG episode "Qpid" (the one about Robin Hood) as well, so it all dovetailed nicely together, I think. As for the very brief reference to Trelane… I leave it entirely up to the reader as to whether or not they consider the Peter David novel Q-Squared to be canon for this fic or not (I personally do, because that novel is awesome). Also, the tiny bit about Q supposedly meeting M'Ress (or just the TOS/TAS crew in general) is just purely made up by me, because I thought that would be a cool thing if it had ever happened.

Back to FIM, for Celestia and Luna's parents, I based their physical appearance on a couple of pieces of awesome fanart I'd seen on DeviantArt (namely "Little Princesses" by SpyrotheFox and "just keep flapping" by egophiliac). Their names were just something I made up off the top of my head, though, since I couldn't really find a generally accepted fanon consensus as to their names, and most of the ones that were being tossed about were kind of generic and blah. "Uran-Ra" is a mix of "Uranus" the Greek god of the sky, and "Ra" the Egyptian god of the sun. "Terra-Ki" is a mix of "Terra" the Roman goddess of the earth, and "Ki" the Sumerian goddess of the same. I really didn't like having to kill those guys off. :_( Also, for Luna's dialog, I didn't even pretend to try to keep the whole "thee" and "thou" and royal we thing in this fic. That would have made my head a splode.

I kind of don't like the title of the fic. It's pretty lame. That said, it's a bit better than "Q Discord Fic" which is what I was calling it until today, when I realized I had to come up with a title for the damn thing.

One last thing... despite the blatant sequel hook at the end there, I currently have no plans at all for writing a full-on TNG/FIM crossover fic at this time. I think Q-is-Discord works, but I don't think I could do a whole TNG-cast meets FIM-cast fic the proper justice it would deserve.

(Update 05-04-2012) And by that last paragraph there, of course, I mean that I'm already over 22,000 words into the sequel, which roughly seems to be at about the half-way mark. The sequel is shaping up to be a lot longer than The Quandary of DisQord was. I don't plan to upload it anywhere until it's finished though, as I personally hate starting to read unfinished works and then having to wait forever until the next part comes out. As for when it will be finished, though, I can't really say. I'm working on Valve time here, I guess.

(Update 07-24-2012) Now for a kind of bad news/good news kind of thing here.

First, the bad news (at least for me anyway). A week or so ago, I tried to submit this fic to Equestria Daily, with the intention of also submitting the fic that I'm currently working on to there as well, given that it's a direct sequel to this one and I figured it'd be a good idea to have this one there first, if possible. Well, this morning I got the "first strike" rejection email (which, as far as I'm concerned anyway, is the only strike). The reasons for the rejection are sound enough, in my eyes (apparently too much emphasis on Trek in the first chapter, which means the "hook" for non-Trek fans is non-existent, and too much Equestrian history stuff in the second chapter, which FiM fans would find boring apparently). Essentially, the rejection was less due to "your fic sucks" reasons and more due to "FiM fans wouldn't have a clue what you're talking about" reasons, and I can appreciate that. I can totally see where they're coming from, I guess. I get why that would be a barrier to accessibility. Well, that's okay, no hard feelings, EQD is still an awesome site, and I'm not going to be all butthurt about it. That said, however, I also have no intention of making major edits to this fic in order to accommodate EQD, as I didn't write this fic just for FiM fans only. It says "Star Trek" and "crossover" in the description, and I'd already assumed that someone who isn't a fan of Star Trek as well as FiM would have little interest in this fic to begin with. So... fair enough, no EQD for me, I guess. *shrug* As such, I see no need to bother with submitting the next fic (the direct sequel to this one) to there either.

Speaking of the sequel fic, however, here's the good news (at least for me anyway). It's pretty much finished. I've already done a couple of read-throughs of it since completing the first full draft a few weeks ago, polishing (a lot) here and there as needed, and am now mostly just waiting on someone else that I have giving it a read it to give me some feedback on it. As such, maybe another week or so at the most until I post the sequel to this fic (to fanfiction dot net and to fimfiction). It ended up taking a hell of a lot longer to write it than I was expecting, and it ended up being around three times as long as this one here.

(Update 01-19-2013) Moved the author's notes down to this spiffy new "Author's Notes" section.

Chapter 4

Almost as soon as we had disappeared, the king and I reappeared exactly where we had been before. The only difference now was that the king had lost all of his color. His fur, his mane, his tail, and his horn all were an indistinct shade of gray. The sparkling of the stars in his skin had become blackened and dull. He collapsed to the ground again and merely stared out at nothing.

Luna turned from me and rushed again to her father's side. "Come on, daddy," she pleaded. "Get up! What's happened to you?"

"There is… no point, Luna…" said the once proud and mighty Uran-Ra. "There is no point to anything, anymore. I am undone. Broken utterly."

"What are you saying, daddy?" said Luna as she struggled to get her father to stand. Reluctantly and very unsteadily, the Alicorn stallion rose to his feet, but that was about all he did. Luna pulled him toward the still open door through which she and Celestia had come before. As they slowly walked toward the palace, she turned to Celestia and said, "D-don't just stand there, Tia! Help me!" Celestia was merely standing there in shock, staring at me as through she had never truly seen me before that moment. "Tia, please!" Luna begged. Then she stopped and turned to me just as they reached the door. Her father staggered to the side listlessly and Luna had to shift her weight to keep both of them from falling. Still looking at me, she said, "You will p-pay for this, you horrible creature. When mother returns from her trip abroad, you are doomed!" She tried to retain her normal arrogance as she said this, but I could feel the terror and despair washing off of her in waves. She looked at Celestia one more time and called to her again, but realizing that her sister was still in shock, she turned away from me and helped her father into the palace.

I turned to Celestia. She was feeling the same terror and despair as her sister. For the first time, the slightest inkling of regret for what I had been doing began to take root in me. I floated slowly toward her. This broke her out of her trance, and she took several backward steps away from me. "My dear Celestia, please. I only did what I had to do to protect myself." Another lie, of course, and I think she knew it.

"What did you do to my father?" she said, in a small voice.

"I merely opened his eyes to the truth of his situation," I said. "He was arrogant to a fault and thought he was the most powerful creature in the universe. I simply corrected that mistaken impression."

"Please, Discord, change him back to the way he was before," she said, tears falling freely from her eyes.

"I'm sorry, Celestia," I said. "It is up to your father now as to whether or not he will recover from this. If he can overcome this ordeal, he will return. He won't ever be the same as he was before, but if he manages to recover himself, he will have learned his lesson fully and will actually be better off than before."

"I-I don't believe you," said Celestia. This hurt me, to put it plainly. Then she tilted her head as if struck with a sudden realization. "It was you, wasn't it? You are the cause of all of those other ponies that have been stricken with the mysterious illness over the past century. They were just like father. They were gray, the exact same as father, and began acting exactly the opposite from how they had been acting before, again just like father. And some of them just went completely insane. Many of them never recovered. Are you truly the cause of this terrible calamity? How can it be possible?"

"I wouldn't call it a calamity," I said, confirming her suspicions. "All of the ponies who I have… touched… were haughty, arrogant ponies. Some of them were flat out evil ponies. The ones who have recovered have been improved by this experience. Surely you can see this?"

"They're no longer themselves!" said Celestia. "You have changed their fundamental nature!"

"But can you deny that they are not better off than they were before? To society, at least, if not themselves?" I asked. I was somewhat surprised that Celestia could not see it my way. As I said, until now, she had proven herself to be an exceptionally perceptive and intelligent creature. Of course, in my own arrogance and blindness at the time, I simply didn't realize that she still had these traits in abundance and had indeed properly assessed the situation.

"Better off? They're not even the same ponies anymore!" cried Celestia. "Please, Discord, stop this madness! Change them back to the way they were before! C-change my father back to the way he was…" Her voice caught as she said this last. "P-please."

"I am afraid I can't do that, my dear Celestia," I lied, reaching a hand out toward her face, meaning to wipe away her tears.

"Don't touch me!" Celestia screamed, backing away some more. I let my hand drop to my side, the pain on my face clear. "You can't change them back?" she continued. "Or you won't change them back? Which is it?"

"I refuse to undo the improvements I have made upon pony culture," I said simply.

"You call these improvements?" said Celestia. "Have you seen how the ponies that you have 'improved' have been acting? I say again, they are simply not the same ponies anymore!"

"Better these new ponies than the old ones," I said. How could she not see?

"And the ponies you have driven mad? Many of them committed suicide!" said Celestia. "What have you to say about them?"

I sighed. "Their weakness was their own undoing. Ponykind is better off without them."

"W-what about their loved ones?" she asked. "What about the ones you are indirectly hurting when you inflict this madness on their friends and family?" There was an implicit "What about me?" in what she was saying, but it remained unvoiced.

"I…" I began, then lowered my eyes. "It is unfortunate that they have to suffer for the sins of the others, but in the long run it is for the good of all of ponykind."

"I cannot believe I'm hearing this," said Celestia, more to herself than to me. "Luna was right all along!"

That stung even more than her previous words. "Celestia, wait," I said, approaching her again.

"Stay away from me!" she shrieked, both in rage and fear. She backed up again, until her hindquarters pressed against the stone wall. I stopped moving once again. "I can't believe I trusted you, Discord! H-have you been lying to me this entire time? About everything?" Her eyes widened a bit as though this thought had only just occurred to her.

"My goodness, Celestia, how can you believe such a thing!" I said, even though in very many ways, I had been doing exactly that. "You mean everything to me. I… I would never hurt you."

"But you have hurt me," she said. "What you have done to my father and the ponies of this land has hurt me more than you can possibly know! I have been hurting for the whole time we have been together, though I only just now realize that you were the cause of it. And now that I do know it was you, it racks me all the more. How can I ever believe anything you say ever again? I… I can't believe I even fell in l-" She stopped herself at that point, averting her eyes from me in shame. As I watched, she simply turned and galloped into the palace. The door slammed shut behind her.

"No really. What made you think you had the right, Q?" said my companion. "You know as well as I do that it is not the place of the Q to go around 'testing' lesser species like that."

I turned in full and faced Q straight on. "You have the gall to say such a thing to me, especially after having personally given me this new 'assignment'?"

"That's different, and you know it," said Q, with the tone of a frustrated teacher trying to correct a wayward student.

"How is it different?" I said. "Please enlighten me."

"For one thing," Q said, "in this new endeavor, you have the full backing of the Continuum. Or, at least, you did, until you went overboard again. You were lucky to be reinstated this time, despite my word on your behalf, and especially after all the horrible things you had already done in Equestria and elsewhere beforehand."

I snorted in disgust. "Oh, so because the Continuum approves of it, it makes it all right, but if I do the exact same thing of my own accord, that's a big no-no?"

Q sighed. "You still think you can equate the two things? Q, the things you did to the ponies and the things you are doing now are orders of magnitude in difference."

"I was testing one species before, and I am testing one species now. How are these any different at all?" I asked.

"Well, for one thing, in this case you are not driving the test subjects to madness and suicide," said Q. At the mention of suicide, all of the belligerence drained out of me. It dredged up the bad memories once again. Q recognized this and said, "Are you ready to continue your story?"

"All right, if you insist. But I warn you, the worst is yet to come, as you well know."