If you were to look for the Canterlot High School cafeteria, all you would have to do is ask directions from Principal Celestia. Her office is the first door on the right in the west wing of the building, room 127. When you find her, she’ll scratch her chin, look you over with faint recognition, and say, “Go down this hall, turn right, pass the gymnasium, and you’ll be there. Good luck.”
And sure enough, if you follow her directions exactly, you will be there: the Canterlot High School cafeteria, where you’ll be greeted by the sound of clinking silverware, the sweet aroma of spices, and an overbearing old lunch lady named Granny Smith.
You might have trouble if you were then to look for someplace to sit. After Granny Smith shuffles you through the lunch line, you’d scan the room, frown, and finally settle on the empty seat next to Gilda the Human. She’d be at the table nestled in the back of the lunchroom, where people are always yelling, arm wrestling, and blaring rock music. When you approach, Gilda would give you an evil sneer, take a swig of soda, sizing you up through her pig eyes, and belch in your face. If you’re smart, you’d leave immediately.
You might find your way over to ‘Prince’ Blueblood’s table. He’d take one look at your lunch tray, note that you were eating ‘common food’, and proceed to ignore you for the better part of the hour.
And once your patience with him wears thin, you would cross to the other side of the room, where you’d see the boy.
He sits alone in the corner of the cafeteria, as far away from everyone else as possible. Hunched over the table, he individually pulls shells from his book bag and breaks them open. Most he pitches at a glance. A few make him mutter unhappily. These he would trace the inside of with his finger, magically reseal, and drop into a half-filled basket at his feet. Shucking oysters? It’s hard to tell.
“Hello,” you say as you near the table.
He grunts and shucks another oyster.
No, not oysters. For the first time, you realize what you thought were shells are actually fortune cookies. How could you have gotten those two confused? With renewed interest, you take a closer look at him.
He's tall and lanky, with a dusty goat-like goatee and a tangled mop of hair that never loses its greasy sheen. A tattoo of a misshapen dragon, a draconequus, runs up his arm. It resembles him, in some twisted way.
He is dressed no better; nothing he wears ever seems to match. Today, he sport a denim biker’s jacket over a loose-fitting football jersey and an assortment of mismatched necklaces. Two different styles of boots were tucked behind a pair of scarlet red, bellbottom jeans and a black fedora was pulled low over his face. Even though you couldn’t see his eyes, you had the distinct impression he was watching you carefully.
“You’re not the one I want,” he simply said.
“What?”
“You’re not the one I want.”
Raising a hand, he gestured toward a purple-haired girl across the cafeteria. No one seemed to notice as her body stiffened and she spun around. Beckoning with his index finger, the boy licked his lips hungrily as the girl started marching toward the table.
“Twilight Sparkle.” As she approached, the boy feigned disinterest, pretending to be engrossed in his cookies.
“What are you doing?” the girl, who must have been Twilight, asked.
The boy didn’t even look up.
Twilight shrugged. Hovering above the table, she was just about to crack open a cookie when the boy stopped her.
“I wouldn’t do that if I were you,” the boy said, almost chided, as he shucked another cookie shell, “unless you have a particular fondness for ducks.”
“Uh, no, not particularly.” Twilight set her cookie back down and took the seat across from him. “What are you doing, Discord?”
“Rewriting the fortunes I find in fortune cookies.”
“Why?”
“It’s senior prank week,” the boy, Discord, said as though the answer should be obvious. “Don’t tell me you didn’t notice the toothless alligator in the girl’s bathroom.”
“The WHAT?”
Discord suppressed a reptilian grin as he broke another cookie open and withdrew a tiny slip of paper from the inside. His smile quickly faded though. “You will enjoy good health; you will be surrounded by luxury,” he read. “See that? That’s just the kind of nonsense I can’t stand. Somebody opens a cookie and suddenly they’re blessed with a life of extravagance!”
Twilight stared at the growing mound of cookie bits at his feet. “Umm, you ARE aware those aren’t real prophecies, aren’t you? Somebody writes them and then they’re put into the cookies at a factory -”
“So now we’re lying to children? That’s even worse.” Discord snapped his fingers and suddenly the words on the slip of paper he held burned red. “You will be eaten alive by a shark. There! Much better.”
“That’s horrible,” Twilight shrieked. “Are ALL of them like that?”
“Not all of them. One says, You will read this and exclaim loudly, ‘Geez! I could have written a better fortune than that!’”
“And when they’re opened?”
“Depends on the fortune. For example,” Discord plucked a seemingly random cookie from his ‘completed’ pile and held it out for Twilight, “whoever gets this little beauty will inexplicably find themselves saying, ‘Geez! I could have written a better fortune than that!’”
Twilight clasped her hands over her mouth. “So whatever you write on those will come true? Someone’s going to be eaten alive by a shark?”
Discord laughed. “My dear Twilight, you can’t honestly tell me you’ve never wished bad things on someone, even if just in passing. Someone who’s wronged you perhaps?” His eyes flit to the rockers table but Twilight didn’t seem to notice.
“Nothing I’d actually want to come true! And that doesn’t justify what you’re doing.”
“Hmm.” Waving his hand dismissively, Discord tossed another cookie into his mouth, fortune and all. “Figures someone spouting friendship like it’s water would be oblivious to the power of revenge.”
“The power of revenge? What are you -” Twilight took a calming breath. “What are you talking about? Why’d you call me over here? Do you need something?”
Discord pulled another cookie from his bag and broke it open. “A dubious friend may be an enemy in camouflage. That’s not even a fortune!” He crushed the cookie and left the remaining shards to scatter about his feet.
“But to answer your question, Twilight Sparkle, I have a proposition to make. I’m working on a project and I require assistance from you and your little friends. Normally I would ask Fluttershy but somehow I can’t imagine everybody at your lunch table listening to her -”
“Of course we all listen to Fluttershy!”
Discord raised a greasy eyebrow. “Beside the point. You’re the unofficial group leader, aren’t you? I need you to convince your friends to help me.”
Twilight was fuming now. She no longer cared what Discord wanted - she just gritted her teeth and took another deep breath through the nose. “And why would I do that?”
“Your friends treat you differently, Twilight Sparkle. Or haven’t you noticed? The magic of friendship can only take you so far.”
Her face suddenly resigned. “How did you -”
“Haven’t you ever wondered why Sunset Shimmer acts as though she owes you something? Why the girls immediately adopted you as one of their own? From your very first day here at Canterlot High, people flocked to you and expected something from you.” He waited for a reaction. When none came, he continued. “You’ve never noticed how forced your friendships feel? Never wondered how everyone knew your name before you ever introduced yourself?”
“As if you know,” Twilight glared.
“You don’t even know what I want.” Discord rapped his fingers against the table. “Tell me Twilight, are you familiar with the story of Sunset Shimmer and her zombie slaves?”
Twilight flinched. “Her what?”
A giant, all-knowing crocodile grin spread across Discord’s already demented looking face. “Looks like we’ve got a lot to talk about.”
Before she met the boy with the fortune cookies, Twilight 'Tara Strong' Sparkle would have sworn she’d heard everything.
When she first transferred to Canterlot High, people had been convinced she was a pony-princess from another dimension. Her friend Fluttershy was more than a little disappointed to find out that her dog Spike couldn’t talk. Pinkie Pie often referred to her as the 'fake' Twilight Sparkle.
But now she was being told that her best friend was a thirty-some year old unicorn who stole a magical plastic tiara and enslaved her classmates in attempt to overthrow a monarchy of pony-people. Twilight didn’t object. Although she found Discord’s story hard to believe, it was clear by now that he was trying to draw every negative emotion he knew from her; anger, resentment, bitterness, so Twilight decided it might be better to keep calm until she figured out why. Still, despite her best efforts, she could feel her nails biting into her palm, her anger slowly surfacing.
“So what does this have to do with me?” Twilight muttered once he was finished.
Discord recoiled in surprise. “It doesn’t. It has to do with me.”
“Huh?”
“I know you dislike me, Twilight. Or at least distrust me. But believe me when I say I’m not 100% evil. It might be worth your while to consider my proposition. Quid pro quo.” There was a long pause before he continued. “I suppose by now you’ve figured out what it is I want you and your friends to do?”
Twilight shook her head no.
“I’ll give you a hint: the statue doesn’t change me. When I visited Equestria 29 moons ago, I didn’t turn into a pony. I didn’t even get the draconequus form of my Equestrian equivalent. I don’t change, because chaos is universal. It may take many different forms; it may speak in many different tongues, but at the end of the day, chaos and hatred are the only constants nature guarantees.”
Twilight peered into the sweet and sour chicken Discord had cooling on his lunch tray. “So you want us to go with you to this place?”
Discord gave her a smug, satisfied look. “I learned a lot about myself, in Equestria; who I am, where I belong, why my relationships never last.” He smiled genuinely. “I think it might be good for you too.”
“So, Sunset Shimmer –” Twilight backpedaled.
“Yes, yes we could spend the rest of the day discussing the long, boring story of Sunset Shimmer and her zombie slaves, but I’d rather not. Let’s talk about a much more interesting story – yours.”
“What’s there to say about me?”
Discord cracked open another cookie. “Call upon time and patience, for many obstacles await you. Oh, I like that one. No change needed.” He resealed the cookie and dropped it in his basket.
“But as for you, Twilight Sparkle, your story has just begun. In three days’ time, another moon will pass and the boundaries between America and Equestria will dissolve. What you do from there is in your hands. Come with me and discover who you are or stay behind and let Equestria find you. Either way, the choice is yours. Just know that the statue and the mirror are not the only passages between worlds. America and Equestria are more connected than you could possibly imagine. I – do you believe in fate?” he asked suddenly.
“Well, I, no.”
“So you don’t believe in destiny or predetermination or anything like that?”
“No. Why?”
“The other Twilight did. If you don’t, there’s no reason to continue this conversation.”
“Wait, what? No, wait, don’t -”
But it was too late. Discord snapped his fingers and the basket of fortune cookies emptied. He snapped again and Twilight was suddenly sitting at her usual spot in the lunchroom, across from her friend Rarity.
Her friends were engaged in idle chatter. None of them were gaping at her. No one seemed to notice anything was wrong.
“What’d Discord want?” Fluttershy asked a few moments later, once she found a convenient place to put their conversation on hold.
“I don’t know.” Twilight turned in her seat to see if she could find Discord. “He never really got to the point . . .”
Applejack and Rainbow Dash exchanged nervous glances. Whether because they knew Twilight was lying or because they didn’t trust Discord, it was hard to tell.
“I’m starving,” Twilight said, eager to change subjects. Looking down at the empty table space where her lunch tray should have been, she frowned. “Hey Fluttershy, can I have part of your salad?”
“Not today, sorry. I promised Angel I’d feed her my leftovers during art class.”
“Pinkie Pie?” Twilight looked hopefully at the mountain of cookies Pinkie had somehow accumulated. “There’s no chance I could swipe one of your . . ."
Pinkie Pie growled in response.
“Have mine, Darling,” Rarity said, holding a fortune cookie out for Twilight. She pulled it back abruptly as Twilight reached for it though. “But only if you promise to tell me all about your little ‘conversation’ with Discord later.”
Twilight gave Rarity a bland, liquid smile as she took the cookie and broke it open. A single ominous sentence was written on the fortune inside.
You will be caught between two worlds and have reason to despair.
Suddenly everyone in the cafeteria turned their attention toward Applejack as she stood and announced, “Geez! Ah could’a written a better fortune than that!”
Author's Note
And so it begins!
For some more in-depth author's notes, click here.
