The Next Conversion

    I woke up with a headache so painful it would have killed a lesser animal. I looked around and saw that the stallion had untied me, apparently believing he had killed me and needed the rope for something else. Getting up I found that the room I was in was ransacked, perhaps by a fight with the HLF. I began to search myself and found that none of my personal goods were gone, perhaps he had some good in him not to steal from a dead man. I counted my blessings before I heard something down the hall.

    It was two screams, one of a small child and the stallion. I headed to the source and found that it was coming from the Gift Shop. Opening the door I found a slender man in uniform bearing down on a bleeding stallion and a crying filly. He quickly turned to face me and I quickly begun to wish he hadn’t. His face was long and pale, as if it had never seen the light of day. His eyes were hidden behind large rectangular sunglasses, black as night and seemed to have sucked the very soul from my body. His mouth was large and smiling, revealing all of his hideous, crooked, yellow teeth. He was wearing a beret identical to the colonels‘. His head tilted to one side as if he had his ear pinned to his shoulder. And he smelled, not like someone who got back from a run but like he hadn’t bathed in years.

    “Hello dear friend.” He said with a twitch. “I know you. You’re Rick, the one who BROKE Bradford.” His actions when coupled with his appearance painted the portrait of a serial killer.

“Colonel Howard?” I asked, trying my damnedest to sound less like I was terrified and more like someone meeting another for the first time.

“In the FLESH.” He said, his fist clenching as I could feel him glaring at me from behind those shades. I quickly pulled my revolver and held it to his chest. “Oh, what’s this?” He said swiping it from my hands. “You shouldn’t be playing with such toys,” he said tossing the loaded gun to the corner of the room as carelessly as one would a rag doll.

    “Why don’t we talk this over? I’m sure we can STRIKE a deal.” I quickly turned to try and run out the door but found that he was now over there! I screamed and backed up into the two ponies that were huddling in the corner. “Isn’t technology amazing? I got these implants, makes me twice as fast. Of course they had a few…side effects so I had to get them on the BLACK market, but it was worth it.” He reached for his pant leg and pulled it up revealing that a section of his lower leg was made of pure metal!

    “Do you know how this thing works?” He said walking toward me, taking his long finger and rubbing it on my chin. “It takes electrical impulses and ZAPS my nerves into moving faster.” I was fairly unsure that was really how the human body worked but I guess they’d tell people anything to make them feel safe. I looked around nearby for something to use. All that I had found were some old snow globes and a plush toy of Sunny. I tried to play out all the scenarios in my mind and then I remembered something.

    I turned to see the stallion and that mysterious filly. It was light blue with a white mane and was a Pegasus, her wings hardly looked developed at all. Tears ran down her cheeks as she laid shaking. She was sitting on the stallions chest, he had been knocked out and blood was dripping from his left eye. She was whispering something over and over again.

“Wake up mister, please wake up.” repeating the statement the filly would sometimes nudge the stallion’s head.

    I knew what I had to do. Standing up I began toward at the man. “What’s this, You wanna GO?” He took off his sunglasses and revealed that his eyes were pure white. “I don’t think you’d want to FIGHT a man with glasses on.” They were whiter than his skin and had nothing in them, no irises or pupils. I was horrified and was about to back down into the corner once more when I heard the child scream in terror. I clenched my fist and walked toward the thing, God only knows how many times that small child was exposed to this.

    I threw a punch and he swiftly avoided it, jabbing me in my kidney. Pain ran through my entire body and I froze up. I shook it off and tried to kick him, he grabbed my leg and twisted it. Pain ran up it and knocked me over. I fell into the corner and saw that he was rearing up his leg to kick me in the skull, panicking I grabbed the first thing I could find and threw it.

    I braced myself for the final blow only to find that nothing was coming, instead I heard him screaming in pain. I opened my eyes and saw him flailing his leg around, it sparking and his foot swinging wildly. I spotted the broken snow globe and put it that his leg malfunctioned, he was in my playing field now.

    I told the little filly to turn around and close her eyes until I told her to stop. I picked up my gun from across the room and finally put it to some use. I took it and smacked him upside the head, his screaming intensified as he started to bruise. I continued to beat the man until his screaming stopped, blow after blow his screaming continued shouting that he did not deserve this, praying someone to end his misery, and screaming that he would get vengeance. After one more blow he went silent.

    His leg continued to flail so I knew some sort of life was still in that miserable monster. The filly had begun crying as she opened her eyes to see me standing over it’s body. I was never good with children and animals hated my guts, dealing with a little Pegasus was like doing both at once. I tried to pick her up but she bit me as I tried to get closer. I decided to look at the stallion and checked his pulse. There was none, I began to panic and tried to resuscitate him.

    I stood up and began to look around the room, I saw that the lunatic’s leg was still acting up. It clicked in my head that maybe some volts would get his heart beating again, so I grabbed the loon’s leg and began to drag him across the room. Pushing the Pegasus off of his chest I pressed on top of his heart and prayed for the best.  It wasn’t working, it needed another short to work! I grabbed another snow globe and broke it on the leg.

    I felt a sharp pain and fell onto the floor as I saw the stallion begin to stir.

    It was the same blackness I had seen before, I once again got up and tried to figure out where I was. I saw an orange tint this time, something coming out of it and a male voice beckoning me closer. I saw an odd reptile creature, well… reptile mammal bird amphibian thing. He sat on a velvet throne slightly larger than him.

    “Bravo Ricky, that was amazing! Taking a snow globe to his electronics and beating him while he’s down, If you put some more thought into it you could have ended it more…” He paused as if the next word felt too good to let it out of his mouth. “Chaotically.”

    “Who are you?” I said, feeling oddly more frightened by this being than I did Celestia.

“Who am I? Who am I?” He said, acting shocked and offended. “I’m Discord! The Spirit of Disharmony and Chaos, and I am here to congratulate you on your recent work. Shocking a man then beating him to death with a gun! Truly you have some promise within you, not to mention betraying your own species for a group of invaders because your life stunk.”

“To death? He was fine when I-”

“Fine?! You are a laugh, why do you think he was screaming? I saw every bit of his head split within itself as you brought that weapon down on him.” He got off his throne and began to descend on imaginary steps.

    “And the others oh boy, you really messed with them!” He said reaching the final step in front of me. “Taking away the one thing that kept Jefferson alive and well, and taking it from him as violently as possible! It looks like his beatings made you a bit weaker though, so perhaps he got the last laugh. I mean really,” He tapped me on the skull and chuckled. “This is your second time here. I’m unsure if you know this but once more and you’re over with. I suggest you take off this silly hat,” he said pulling it off of my head and twirling it like a loop around his talon. “And find a helmet.”

    He pushed it over my eyes and spun me around. “Finally there’s how you handled Mr. Bradford. How hysterical it was to see him curl up in a ball as you laughed at how you killed his best friend? How great was it to push him down and try to crush his skull under your boot as his battalion could only watch in horror? I see great potential in you, continue down this path and maybe you can join my daughter in causing chaos!” He opened a curtain that had appeared with a snap of his fingers. Behind the shades was a purple mare with a smile not dissimilar to Howard’s, pink eyes in an odd swirling pattern, and a spinning beanie.

    The odd mare approached me and without changing her expression said one thing. “Help me” was all that she said before Discord pushed her away and gave me a toothy smile.

“Our time is running out unfortunately. I wish I could give you advice on how to destroy that rats nest of a safe house, or what Colonel Bradford has in store for you. Ta-ta!” With that he vanished in a puff of smoke and left me in empty blackness.

    I woke up horrified and saw that the stallion was standing over me, shaking my body.

“Geddup boy! Geddup!” He shouted. I coughed and began to stand up, shaking my head as I tried to clear my mind of what had happened. “Oh tank Celestcha yer alive! You saved me boy, I was just ‘bout to hed down dat white hallway when I woke up wit dat creep on me. I dunno wat’cha did boy but I’m glad ya did it.” His smile turned to a frown as a realization came to him. “I’m sorry ‘bout what I did earlier but… you mentioned my son and I… It was long ago, and it‘s a long story…”

Author's Notes:

To be painfully honest, I liked writing Discord. I liked pointing out how the "heroes" of these stories are more villainous than they set out to be while failing to recognize what they're doing. I need to write villains more often...