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                    In The Nick Of Time                    
                         -by CCC-                          
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                       The Beginning                       
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The Beginning
Discord steepled his fingers together.
"Hello, Fluttershy."
"Discord?" asked Fluttershy. "What - where am - my friends are in danger! I have to go back!"
"Don't worry," said Discord, waving at an empty seat. "I don't know what exactly is going on, but believe me, you've got time to catch your breath. That's what this is for, after all."
"Are you sure?" asked Fluttershy, hesitantly. "I mean, the changelings -"
"Over here," said Discord, pointing at a large box with a glass screen on the one side, "you can see the place you left. If you will observe carefully, you will notice that everything is static and not moving. It will remain that way until you elect to return."
"Well, that's... useful." Fluttershy relaxed slightly. "But -"
"You may have noticed by now," said Discord, "that what you are talking to is not, strictly speaking, my magnificent self, but is rather a... a recording, if you wish."
"So, you can't really answer any of my questions?" asked Fluttershy.
"But to answer your most likely questions," said Discord, "you are currently in what I call the 'nick of time'. I'm sure you remember Twilight's little escapades with time travel? What you might not have noticed is that certain recent events have gone so far as to shed splinters of, well, time. Pretty much a complete rewrite of the timeline half a dozen times, actually. But that's not important. What is important is that time, here, in this little nick that I've nicked to use for my own purposes, runs at right angles to time as you know it - or, in other words, you can spend as long as you want here before you go back to there. Well, so long as you don't want to spend more than about an hour, this splinter wasn't all that large."
Fluttershy blinked. "One hour?" she asked.
"You got here," continued Discord's recording, "because of a little spell I put on you, that pulls you here the moment that you really think you are about to die. Now, if you're really feeling suicidal, you can go back to exactly where and when you were by stepping through the black curtain to your left, but I really don't recommend it. If you step through the green curtain to your right, you'll find yourself back at your cottage at exactly the same time, while the gold curtain behind you will take you directly to Celestia's throne room in Canterlot, and the brown one in front of you will take you to Griffonstone. The way I see it, at least one of those places must be safe."