"Moondancer, you have to give friendship a chance!"

Twilight Sparkle's plea was met with an angry glare from her former friend, the tan mare's horn glowing a desaturated purple as the magic flowed around Twilight, lifted her up and out of Moondancer's way as the unicorn continued on with a frustrated grunt.

"I GAVE friendship a chance a long time ago! It didn't work out then, it isn't going to work out now!"Moondancer's words cut into Twilight as she watched the mare she had hurt so long ago vanish into the Canterlotian night. The Princess of Friendship felt the tears welling up as her assistant Spike hurried over to her from across the empty street.

"Twilight, are you all right?" The dragon's voice matched the nervous, worried wringing of his claws as Twilight turned and walked towards her own home, the tower were she had once lived in the Outer Commons of Canterlot.

"No, no I'm not" Twilight's force was low and quiet, the horrible feelings inside her that had been building up ever since she had returned to Canterlot to reconnect with her friends threatening to overwhelm her composure. The alicorn heard Spike's claws clacking against the pavement as her followed quickly behind the princess.

"W-where are you going?"

"I don't know Spike, I really messed this one up. That party was everything to her, I can only imagine what it must have felt like when I didn't show up!" Twilight paused at the boundary between the Upper Markets and the Outer Commons, trying to piece together what might have happened that fateful day when she chose to go to Ponyville instead of attending what had been her first friend's party. All she could picture was Moondancer's happy face twisting into sadness as the mare was told Twilight wasn't coming. Twilight could picture it now, the unicorn slowly curling into herself and shutting out everyone else in her life because the so-called Princess of Friendship had simply been too busy to be there for her original friend, before she had met everyone else in Ponyville.

"If only there was a way to undo the damage..." Twilight was silent for awhile as she tried to keep the feeling in her chest from taking over and causing her to collapse in puddle of tears. It was her fault and she needed to fix it, but how...Twilight Sparkle gasped as the image of a certain pink pony seemed to bounce into the alicorn's mind, trailing a mess of balloons and confetti behind her. Twilight's eyes snapped open as the determination to succeed pushed back the cloud of guilt, shame and despair. Her wings seemed to flare out into the warm night air on their own and Twilight fixed Spike with a grin. It was a perfect plan, but if there was anypony that could fix a party problem...

"I know what I need to do! And I know just who can me!"

"Oh Twilight, of course I'll help you!"

Twilight Sparkle found herself wrapped up by the sinewy body of Equestria's god of chaos, Discrod, as the Draconequus grew out of the wet evening soil like a rampant weed. His sudden appearance threw the purple princess pony for a loop and for a moment all Twilight could do was hang limply tangled in Discord's limbs and torso before finally her brain responded.

"Discord!? What are you doing here?" The alicorn gasped before conjuring the familiar energies of her teleportation spell, vanishing from

Discord's arms and appearing once more on solid ground. Twilight nervously flapped her wings as Discord seemed to coil back into the ground with an audible slurp before appearing once more beside her, his lion forearm loosely wrapped around her neck.
"Well you see" He began, panning his Griffon talon arm across the starry Canterlotian sky, "I had been having a late supper with Princess Celestia and was on my way home when I just happened to look down and see you, one of my closest and dearest friends of all, having that horrible little run-in with that other mare!"

Twilight sighed and fixed Discord with her usual stare of suspicion and caution. "I see. But have you forgotten that little talk we had on not eavesdropping on the conversations of your friends?" She felt Discords weight lift off her back as the chimeric creature of chaos floated away despite the mismatched wings on his back not flapping.

"Oh I've not forgotten, but you know how hard it is to break old habits!" The look on Discord's face was anything but apologetic, and Twilight rolled her eyes and turned away from his hovering form, flapping her wings as she herself took to the air, grabbing Spike as she quickly picked up speed.

"C'mon Spike, we just need to get Pinkie and I'm certain we'll get through to Moondancer!" Twilight's voice was confident, but just as the spires of Canterlot seem to fall away from her as she and her dragon assistant veered south towards Ponyville, suddenly the entire capital city seemed to crash down from above her. Twilight screamed and braced herself for the coming impact.

Yet none came.

When Twilight opened her eyes she found herself suspended upside down in the air only a few feet from where she had grabbed Spike, with Discord laying casually on a house that had been missing from Ponyville for over a year, roughly around the time that Discord had appeared and ruined Twilight and Cadence's original plans for sister-in-law bonding. With a groan of frustration Twilight attempted to right herself, yet only succeeded in causing Spike to lose his grip on her mane and fall screaming into the night sky.

"Spike!" Twilight cried out, only to watch Discord and the strange inflated house her was perched on swoop on and catch the diminuitive dragon, bringing him safely down to a 'normal' altitude.

"Oops, I'm sorry Twilight! I forgot that ponies aren't used to having their personal gravity inverted!" With a snap of Discord's talon, suddenly the word was righted, and Twilight plummeted the few feet to the ground with a yelp of surprised.

"Discord!. What. Do. You . Want!?" The princess of friendship growled as she pulled herself out of the dew coated grass while Spike leapt from the chaos trickter's mobile home throne and scampered to Twilight's side. Then suddenly Spike vanished in a flash of white light, only to reappear in the distance, a silhouette in the window of the popular Donut Shop.

"Want?" The magical being gasped in obvious fake shock, "Why, I'm here to help you Twilight! As I said, I want to help you mend the error of your ways with Doonmancer!"

"Moondancer."

"The name isn't the point! What matters is that you hurt a friend, and I can give you the opportunity to make sure that both of you never have to feel the pain of a lost friendship!"

Even with his exceedingly good behavior in the months following Tirek's defeat, his actions at the Grand Galloping Gala only a few weeks ago had justified Twilight's continued suspicion of Discord's motivations. After all, he was the avatar of chaos, playing by the rules just wasn't nor would ever be in his nature. Twilight shook her head and opened her eyes to tell Discord goodnight when she realized the Draconequus was now directly beneath her face, his boy and the house he rode upon now no bigger than a foal. Yet his eyes were almost larger than his head and watery, his lip quivering as he clasped his paw and talon together. And that was when Twilight remembered that she was the princess of friendship, and even if she didn't trust him very much, Discord was still her friend. Besides, what harm was there in simply hearing him out? She could still always tell him no and still make good time to Ponyville before it got too late to call on Pinkie's help. With a single deep breathe to center herself, Twilight lowered herself to her flank and nodded to Discord.

"Okay, okay. What do you have in mind?"

The Draconequus exploded in a shower of what looked to be confetti and streamers, enough to make Pinkie Pie proud, but a closer look showed that each piece of confetti contained a dancing Discord , while each streamer was actually a miniature version of the creature of chaos. The party favors suddenly disappeared as one streamer landed upon Twilight's muzzle and instantly reformed into Discord's proper, if tiny, frame. He fixed Twilight with a serious look and with a wave of his hand, pulled a pointing stick painlessly from one of the purple alicorn's hair follicles and pointed to each side of his body where two sparkling frames appeared, each with an image of Moondancer; one happy, one the same face Twilight had seen only a few moments ago.

"I present with you a choice, Twilight Sparkle!" Discord's voice, while tiny, was no less filled with grandiose and bravado, "These images represent Goon Prancer-"

"Moondancer"

"These images represent Moondancer moments before you crushed her emotions and scarred her soul by skipping her party years ago, and the other represents the same pony who just left, one who has lived several years as a introverted hermit who does nothing but read books and let life pass her by" With a flash Discord was once again his normal size, although now he was sitting in a red high-backed leather seat, large reflective shades covered his yellow and red eyes as he held both frames in his talon and paw. Twilight looked at both images and then back to Discord, her movements and face reflected in the sunglasses despite the lack of a strong enough light source.

"What's the catch?" she said, hoping that was all it took to end the ruse so she could get on with her plan. Although if this was what Discord said it was...Twilight couldn't help it, her guilty conscience and curiosity were piqued.

"There is no catch." Discord's face was impassive, his voice a flat monotone. The sheer lack of any of his normal overflowing personality was eerie and Twilight felt a shiver run down her spine despite the warm summer air. Discord's face shifted slightly towards the framed image in his talon of the present version of Moondancer, a recluse in a black turtleneck whose life consisted of waking up, studying, and going to sleep; "Choose this option, and I go home. You get to continue on your way, knowing that your plan might not work, and all you'll have to show for it is a pony, hollowed out and broken because you made a mistake that you can't fix" Discord nodded to the magical frame in his unfurled paw that contained the past, cheerful version of Moondancer, a ponytail-less, turtleneck-less mare whose face was an enormous smile as she set up a table full of party food; "Choose this option, and you go down the rabbit hole. You'll go directly to the party along with Minuette, Twinkleshine and Lemon Hearts and get to see how happy it makes Moondancer, keeping her from becoming the mess she is today"

Twilight sat back for a moment, not realizing that she was no longer on the grass but in a leather chair of her own. Her right hoof tapped her lips as she stared at both suspended images in front of her of two very different Moondancers. It couldn't be that simple, could it? After all this was Discord and no matter how good he might have become, nothing was ever simple with him.

"What happens if I choose to go to the party? That's in the past, before I became a princess and met all of my current friends? What happens to that?" Twilight's eyes scanned over Discord's impassive face, but his form was like a statue and the only movement was her own reflection in those impenetrable sunglasses he had conjured up.

"You will inhabit your previous physical form but you will retain all of your your memories and all the accumulated knowledge you have gained over the past two years, but you will be unable to cast any magical spells that were beyond your abilities at that moment in the past. You will lose your wings and return to your original height as a unicorn" Discord's voice felt far away as he droned on, as if the Draconequus was not truly there in front of Twilight. "But you will return here, to the present, with all of your abilities and alicorn attributes restored, after one day."

"So this is just a temporary event, like the old time travel spell I used to go one week into the past, but for only half a minute? But just more powerful?"Twilight still was not convinced, but the option sounded more appealing than it had been only a minute ago.

"Correct."

"But how-" Twilight started but Discord leaned forward in his chair, the leather squeaking noisely in the still night air of Canterlot. Twilight edged back slightly in her own chair as her reflections in Discord's glasses came so close that she could almost see an infinite reflection of herself from her eyes back into the glasses.

"Twilight, I cannot hold these open forever. Make your choice."

Electricity shot down her spine and Twilight felt her fur on her coat bristle. Frowning, she leaned in to meet Discord, her hoof outstretched towards the portal that showed Moondancer the Recluse, bushy eyebrows furrowed and a tight frown beneath broken glasses, a book shoved in her face as she ignored and was ignored by everypony around her. Twilight felt the shame and guilt gripping her heart at the image but there was still a chance she might be able to fix it herself...

"Remember. All I am offering you is the chance to correct your mistake. Going to her party will alter Moondancer's life for the better. Your plan can still fail and she'll be left more broken inside because of it. And it will be your fault. However, in the end, the choice to be a good or bad friend and the consequences are yours, and yours alone." Discord's voice stopped Twilight's hoof a mere inch from touching the image that represented the current Moondancer. The alicorn's eyes flickered between Discord, her own twinned reflection in the sunglasses and back to the images in front of her, her eyes lingering on the smiling past version of Moondancer for a moment.

A moment was all the horrible feeling within her needed as it surged forth and seized Twilight Sparkle's heart completely. In that brief moment of crushingly silent electro-chemical debate, Twilight's hoof slid from Discord's talon to the brown-furred paw and tapped the smiling image of Moondancer.

Author's Note

Hello everyone. This was my attempt to write a new story from a Equestria Daily writing prompt based off of the episode of "Amended Fences". in which Twilight attends Moondancer's party. Unfortunately I was unable to submit at the deadline as my Internet Service Provider basically shut down across my entire region this week, and making it generally impossible to have access to the Internet. Not being able to make the deadline for this has me pretty bummed out, but oh well, it is what it is, and now I can, at least, submit this is chapters instead of giant block of text. And hey, if you guys like it enough we can see about finishing it!

This was also my first attempt at writing since I lost all my other work from the hard drive crash earlier this year, so it might be a tiny bit rusty and rough in spots. Hopefully you can still enjoy it nonetheless. Suggestions for a new title are welcome!