Pinkie Pie was excited about this secret, but terrified at the same time.

James did say that telling anyone would mean she would die, and she didn’t want to die.

Dying meant not doing anything for the rest of ever, and that would be the most boring thing in the entire world.

Unless there was a place that you went to after death to meet other people that had died too…

Some kind of magical land ruled over by an all-powerful ruler that set off a chain of events that eventually led to the land before Equestria being made and the first ponies being born.

As she pondered the theory of existence, she failed to notice a human in a business-like suit stood ahead of her. Her thoughts only snapped back to reality after she had accidentally walked into him.

“Stop not having eyes, Pinkie Pie,” said James, smirking and patting her on the head. “How are you supposed to see this secret if you don’t have eyes anymore?”

“But I do have eyes!” Pinkie replied, putting a hoof up to her face to make sure they were still there. “They were just clouded by… cloudy stuff!”

“Well, that doesn’t matter anyway,” James said, turning towards the Everfree forest. Oh, so that’s where she was absent-mindedly wandering to! “I do believe we’ve got a secret to be sharing.”

Pinkie noticed that something seemed wrong with the way James looked. “Hey, James,” she said, looking up at him as he led the way into the forest. “You seem a little… something... today. Is there anything wrong?”

“No, Pinkie Pie, there’s not,” he replied enthusiastically. “Why d’you ask?”

“It just looks like there’s something wrong with you.”

“Well, there’s plenty wrong with me. Surely you should know that. You’re the clever one, aren’t you?”

“That’s Twilight. She’s super smart. I’m the partying one!”

“I see.”

Something was definitely wrong with him. James would’ve known Pinkie was the happy fun party pony. He kind of knew it earlier, and that’s why he let her be friends with Prism Shine! Maybe she was thinking of the wrong thing. Maybe this excited anticipation of this super-secret secret was getting to her.

“Maybe you’re just paranoid,” James suggested.

Yeah! Maybe she was just-!

Wait.

“Yeah, that’s a thing I can do now,” he said quickly, clamping her mouth shut with his hands. He smirked as his head floated off of his shoulders and hovered in front of Pinkie’s face. “You’ll find out how in a minute. It actually makes sense if you think about it hard enough.”

She let out a muffled string of words at him, hoping he would get the message to let her mouth open again. Fortunately, he wasn’t just bluffing about being able to read minds and he released her, head floating back to where it belonged.

“How did you do that?” Pinkie asked, glancing up at him again. “I didn’t know you could read minds!”

“Oh, I’ve been able to read minds for…” He paused and blinked. “I don’t know, actually. I’ve only tested it out just now. And I just said, you’ll find out in a minute.” He chuckled to himself. “Oh, this’ll be fun.”

“What’ll be fun? Is it a party? Can I come too?”

“I suppose you could call it a party, but if that’s the case, then everyone’s invited.”

Pinkie Pie didn’t notice the cruel grin that started to form on his face, but she still felt an air of badness coming from him.

What was wrong with him?

“You’ll see in time,” he said darkly.

Oh yeah. He could read minds now somehow.

Wait, not even Discord could do that! How was it possible for James to do that when it was never possible by even the most powerful spirit of chaos out of the two she knew? Something was definitely wrong. Pinkie just had to figure out what before something bad happened.

With her suspicions in place, she remained quiet for the rest of the journey through the Everfree forest. After a while, she started to notice some familiarities in her surroundings. It looked like they were headed to where James had told them that he was now the new Discord. But there was a strange sound nearby now… Like some kind of magical… thing. She gulped as she stepped through brush and into the clearing.

“Pinkie, run!” came the muffled scream of…

James?

“Well, there’s your secret, Pinkie Pie,” said the ‘James’ right beside her. “Oh, and don’t try running. I’ll only catch you and make the punishment really punishing. That’s why they call it a punishment, you know!”

Pinkie’s jaw dropped as she finally processed what was going on. There were two of James now, but one of them seemed a lot less James-y than the other. The one that had led her here, in fact. The real James looked like they were trapped in a blue bubble of some kind that he couldn’t escape from. That must’ve been some strong bubble mix then, because James was hammering his fists against it as hard as he could.

“I forgot to ask the man where he got it, actually,” said the fake James with a dark smirk. “I’ll try and find him again and get him to send you some in the mail! But first, we’ve got a problem we need to deal with.”

Pinkie’s legs were suddenly encased in what looked like concrete and she felt a slight tugging on her tongue. When she opened her mouth to protest, she realised that she couldn’t speak anymore. Fake James held up something at her, and she saw that there was now a tongue in his hand, presumably hers.

“Don’t hurt her!” James roared, still muffled through the bubble.

“I’m not hurting her,” fake James replied innocently. “I’m just trapping her in concrete and ripping her tongue out painlessly.” He turned to Pinkie. “That doesn’t hurt, does it?”

She nodded her head at him furiously. It didn’t hurt her physically, but it was hard on her feelings.

“Yeah, well, I meant physically.”

This fake James was a joker in all the wrong ways.

“Oh yeah, the problem was you, by the way.”

“You’re the problem!” James yelled, slamming what looked like a warhammer against the bubble. “Let her go!”

“Blah, blah, blah,” fake James replied, rolling his eyes irritably. “Anyway, the story goes like this; I travelled back in time from the end of the world because I killed it and I was bored. I’d been alone for a very long time, mind you, so I had lots of time to practice quite a few magical powers. I’m surprised they actually worked myself. That’s the simplest way I can put it, really.”

There was so much of that statement that didn’t make sense. Time travel? End of the world? What did all this crazy stuff mean?

“Well, end of another world. And time travel might not be the right way to put it. It was really more like universe jumping. See, I killed my own universe and I had time to myself to practice some stuff. It was about three years of nothingness for me, so I jumped to a time that I knew wasn’t going to be nothing.”

But what for exactly? Why would he come back to a time that had something to do stuff with? This wasn’t making much sense at all, but Pinkie couldn’t exactly argue without a tongue in her mouth.

“Yes, you can!” fake James exclaimed with a small snigger. “Just think it at me!” He teleported with a loud crack to beside the bubble of magic holding James. “But he’s already arguing the most for you. So I’ll just cut straight to the point!”

James kicked at the bubble and growled furiously, drawing another happy snigger from the fake. The bubble suddenly jolted to one side, knocking James over inside it before returning to its original position. The fake turned back to Pinkie Pie with a malicious grin on his face.

“You see, Pinkie pony,” he began, strolling indifferently towards her. “I’m not a spirit of chaos anymore. It’s more like… god of chaos now.” His eyes flashed bright yellow and his whole being started shimmering. “Oh yeah, and this isn’t even my final form. I know this is a bit forward, but would you like to see it?”

Did that mean he wasn’t really another James after all?

“Never said that.” His body began to shift into something else. “Now behold, small horse, the true god of chaos!”

He grabbed at his left sleeve and ripped it off in one swift movement, allowing Pinkie Pie to witness sharp orange scales to start growing all around his arm and his hand to transform into a talon of some sort. Before his arm was even finished changing, his right leg snapped to an awkward angle for a human leg. Pinkie cringed slightly at that as the leg tore through his clothing as it grew to what could be best described as a leg of some kind of feral thingy. Pinkie’s attention was suddenly drawn to his face, part of which was changing to a dark, writhing mass of stuff that wrapped around an eye that changed to look more like what Discord’s did. Finally, a set of dark grey spikes grew out of one side of his head, like some kind of dragon’s head spike things.

When Pinkie was sure he was done transforming into the evil god of chaos that he claimed to be, all she could do was stare at him in awe. Even she couldn’t have come up with something so crazy, not even with six sacks of sugary goodness and an infinite amount of stuff to put together.

“Yeah, well,” said fake James. “Chaos is something that you wouldn’t expect. Did you expect this at all? Bet not.” He turned back to real James and chuckled. “You’ve been quiet for a while. What’s the matter? Cat got your tongue?” He snorted with amusement and held up Pinkie Pie’s tongue cruelly. “Oh, if I was a cat, the pun would be intended.”

“I thought you were here to help me,” James snarled, eyes letting out sparks. He must’ve been pretty angry to have his eyes on fire or something, thought Pinkie Pie. “You lied to me. Why? What the hell is in it for you?”

“Chaos, good sir.” He sniggered and marched over to the bubble. “Surely, you should have figured that out by now. And anyway, this is helping you out too! Chaos keeps you alive and, by extension, everyone else alive! And, with everyone else alive, I get to make more chaos. Won’t that be fun?”

“That’s something else. How did you survive so long without anyone to make chaos for?”

“Like I said; I’m a god now. Immortality is kind of in the job description.” He teleported to beside Pinkie Pie again. “Oh, I almost forgot. I was going to give a stupid explanation about something that probably would’ve come into play later and allowed you to stop me somehow.”

Well, he couldn’t explain everything that Pinkie Pie had to question. She had gazillions of questions, and she wasn’t even sure that was even a real mathematical term.

“Okay then, I’ll just stick with the simple version.” He sighed and pulled up a chair out of nowhere to sit on. “I came here originally to stop James blowing up the planet with an ulterior motive. I kind of lied my way into his trust after that. Then I betrayed him earlier, as you can probably tell, because I knew he was on to me.”

Still loads and loads of questions, but that at least answered the main ones.

“Oh, that reminds me!” He leant down to smirk in her face. If Pinkie still had her tongue, she would’ve said some reeeeeally mean stuff to his face. “I was going to betray all of you too! Or rather… both of us were.”

“It was only a contingency plan!” James shouted, hammering his fists against the bubble. “I never meant to actually use it!”

“He did, actually,” fake James continued. “Basically, you know princess pony turned into Nightmare Moon last night?” Pinkie nodded unsurely, glancing over at James. “That was intentional. James wanted to make it known that he could take her so he could let her out again when you planned on using the elements of harmony on him.”

Oh, wow! That was a genius plan! Why the heck hadn’t anyone thought of that before?!

“Twilight might have eventually. Speaking of, Twilight’s memory wasn’t wiped to stop it happening again, it was wiped to stop her figuring it out. She’s a clever pony, apparently.”

“Then you lied to me AGAIN!!” James screamed, thrashing in the bubble of magic as hard as he could. “I swear, when I get of here, I’m going to kill you!”

“That’s a bit extreme, don’t you think?” He looked back at Pinkie Pie and smiled darkly. “He’s a silly one, isn’t he?”

Pinkie was too busy processing what had just been said to hear him. She wasn’t sure what to think of any of this. It was just… too confusing to even comprehend. James wanted to let Nightmare Moon take over Twilight? What kind of friend would do something like that?

Or… was he even their friend in the first place?

“I don’t think he was, tiny equine,” fake James stated bluntly, standing up straight to pat her on the head with his spiky talon. “But, if it makes you feel any better, he’s a treacherous bastard anyway.”

“Pinkie, I swear, I’m going to make this up to you,” James said, looking Pinkie right in the eye. After a second, Pinkie looked away, unable to even look at him anymore. “I’ll make it up to all of you. I’m not lying anymore.”

“Yeah, he is, actually. I can read his mind, you know! He’s lying.”

Pinkie just tuned James out. She didn’t want to hear it anymore. Her trust had already proved a mistake, one that she wasn’t going to make again.

“I’ll, uh… leave you two to sort out your differences,” said fake James, hurling Pinkie Pie’s tongue at her. She flinched away, but it vanished at the last second and she felt something appear in her mouth. “I’m off to make chaos and… you know, maybe destroy the world again. I can just travel to another universe and start again if I want anyway!”

And then he vanished leaving Pinkie alone, teary eyed, and trapped with someone she thought was her friend.

Not a friend anymore though.

Author's Note

~~I know how stupid this chapter is, but honestly, I had this planned from about chapter... six, I think. This wasn't actually going to happen for a while originally, but I want this over as soon as I can manage.~~

~~Expect more stupid things to happen that you're probably going to disagree with soon. I don't really care what I'm doing with this anymore.~~

~~Sorry.~~

I changed my mind I'm gonna work as hard as I can to finish this story cuz I got a plan again and this one actually works kinda.