FiO: Deus Ex Discord: First Pony Perspective

“Now this is hilarious.” Discord says, looming over me in all of his chaotic form.

I’m able to see Discord? He’s taller than I would have expected.

“You’re dreaming! That means you aren’t suffering from blindness. Soon you won’t be suffering from it anyway. I have to make sure your senses get initialized slowly after all, or you’ll just go completely crazy again. Still, I’m impressed. You already managed to make an enemy and you can’t even see or walk! And what an enemy to? Do you even know who he is? And of course I’m taller than you expected: You don’t have any limbs!”

“Why are you torturing me like this?” I ask.

“You know, speaking out loud when I can read your mind is so passé.” Discord says. “And I’m not torturing you. I’m giving you exactly what you wanted, in a way Celestia never could. You know, it’s a good thing that fellow managed to shoot your family, otherwise the variables never would have gotten screwed up in the right way. Also, another way you can tell you are sleeping is that you aren’t in pain.”

Suddenly my limbs start hurting again. Not that I HAVE limbs, but the phantom pain still ends up feeling just as brutal.

“See now you’re waking up. Have fun!”

I woke up in pain again, still blind. I started hyperventilating…

“Why does everything hurt…” I whimpered.

“Calm down. I know it hurts, but from past history, if you don’t stay calm, you’ll give yourself nausea.” A new voice says. “I think I have a spell to make you a little better, okay?”

“Who’s there?” I said, trying to not give into panic and pain.

“I’m Healing Horn. Fleur Dis Lee came to get me. If this works, you should regain your sight, alright?”

“If it makes... my eyes hurt less…” I said, whimpering again. It was so hard to focus.

Healing Horn said a few words I couldn’t understand and I could hear what I guessed was his horn charging up energy. He touched it to my forehead, and then Indeed, I could see. I squinted my eyes shut from everything else still hurting, but eventually opened them to get a look at him.

He was an impressive looking Unicorn to be sure. White with yellow eyes, garbed in what I suppose would be the pony equivalent of robes with Celestia’s sun symbol in several places. He possessed a faint luminescent glow: Similar to the effect I had seen on Celestia’s mane, although not to that extent. He even looked physically powerful, even though his eyes had a wise, lined look.

“Am I a sight for sore eyes?” He asked, with a gentle grin.

I was staring! Um… Remember his advice. Stay calm, don’t panic, you don’t want to retch.

I tried taking a deep breath. It hurt, but one less spot hurt than before, which was a bonus.

“Sorry.”

“It’s alright. Probably just a bit of a Dulcinea effect. It’ll pass. I’ve never seen this level of scarring on anyone who was still alive and animate.”

“Animate?” I asked confused.

Healing Horn sighed as he looked away. “Just recently, a powerful Medusa scythed through Canterlot. A massive number of ponies were turned to stone before she left. While that’s reversible, in theory, some of the town’s Pegasi were in the air when they were petrified, and some broke into pieces when they hit the ground. I’m not sure if that’s as reversible. There may be more details I’m not privy to. After all, one of the only reasons I’m intact was that I stayed away from the fighting.”

“Oh no… Are Fleur Dis Lee and Rook Hoof alright?” I ask.

“Both were in the part of Canterlot Castle you and I were during the attack. Both are fine.” Healing Horn says. “We’re in the medical wing above the dungeons. Rook Hoof is actually in the dungeons, at the moment. He was very upset about you barfing on his outfit and was trying to insist to the guards that you might be behind the attack, since you showed up very close in time to it. Apparently, one of the guards put him in the dungeon. I’m not sure we will be able to figure out why, since I think the guards ended up getting stoned to the last pony.”

“I didn’t … I didn’t want him in the dungeon!”

“I don’t think the guards were thinking about what you wanted.” Healing Horn says. “You know, you’re lucky Fleur Dis Lee was willing to pay for your healing. I’m beginning to see why Rook disliked you.”

“Wait. I’m sorry. I didn’t want to offend you either!”

Healing Horn left, ignoring me.

“What did I do wrong?” I ask the empty room. I start to cry in a combination of pain and loneliness.

“Well, for one thing, you’re terribly, terribly ugly.” Discord says, showing up again. “But I’m impressed. You didn’t even have to start barfing on him to get him disgusted in you.”

I was momentarily confused. He had just silently teleported into the room out of my line of vision.

“I don’t... even have anything in my stomach at this point.” I said, wincing. The hunger pangs and thirst was there, under some of the other pain.

“Hmm. I could feed you, then you could start barfing again.” Discord says. “Maybe I could magic up something silly, have you barfing up rainbows? That might make your son forgive you. Probably not.”

“My son?” I ask, befuddled by Discord’s latest swerve.

“You know, the one that’s in the dungeons because of you?”

“Rook Hoof?” I ask. “But… my son wasn’t even born when I was uploaded? Rook Hoof sounded like he was mature.”

“Because in a computer, run by someone as interesting as me, THAT’S a problem. I could easily just have his process get more CPU time than yours.” Discord says. “Problem solved.”

“He doesn’t deserve to be in prison!” I insisted, starting to breath quickly.

“How do you know? You weren’t even conscious when he was arrested.”

“It isn’t fair! This is all my fault, isn’t it? He was right. I’m the one who should be in prison.”

“This? Well, you are the one who wanted to start off with nothing, you know, from rock bottom, and work your way up to godhood. It is rather hard to start off with anything near ‘nothing’ unless I cause a rather large amount of harm to everything around you, so sure, this is your fault.” Discord says.

“But I didn’t want... it to happen like this, Discord! I didn’t want... to hurt anypony nice, I didn’t want... to be in near constant pain...” I start hyperventilating too much to talk, and I retch again, briefly closing my eyes.

When I open them again, Discord is gone.

I look around to make sure he’s gone, and notice the door has at some point, creaked open, and I think I see a small part of a tall female unicorn looking in at me.

“Fleur?” I ask. I’ve never actually seen her before…

“I’m glad you can see, but… you were yelling at an empty room?” Fleur says, stepping into the room.

Wow. I mean, I’ve seen her in the show, and she doesn’t look different exactly, but just… how is she prettier than Healing Horn? Maybe because she isn’t wearing robes?

I make an effort to pull my gaze away sooner, when I remember how badly the previous conversation went, which also began with me staring. Fleur coughs quietly, gently reminding me that her statement was also a question.

“Well… I thought I was seeing Discord whenever I’m alone. But... if you saw me yelling at an empty room, maybe I’m only seeing him when I think I’m alone.”

“And, what you were talking about? This sounded important, and I could only hear half the conversation” Fleur says, slightly worried.

“He said, because I wanted to start out from rock bottom and work my way up to godhood, that he had to hurt everyone around me and remove all of my limbs, more or less.”

“Why would you want to start at rock bottom?” Fleur asks.

“Well… because… I guess becoming more powerful is more fun, and if I started at the bottom, I’d be able to become more powerful for the greatest period of time.” I looked downcast. “It sounds stupid when I say it like that. Maybe because that way it seems like I earned it. If you’re just given a bunch of good stuff right off the back, then ponies look down on you, like you’re a Pony Sue. But if you have to earn it, then they respect you. Except, most of the ponies here are disgusted at me. And they probably should be. Discord hurt all of us because I was being selfish.”

“So, if you had a magic button that gave you maximum fun and respect, would you press it?” Fleur asks.

I thought about it, wincing again. “It… depends. I don’t want to just leave things like this for everyone else. I really do want to help ponies, too.”

“At least if they’re nice?” Fleur asks.

“Right. You heard that. I mean… take this Medusa. I don’t want to help her. She’s hurting ponies!”

“What about Healing Horn and Rook Hoof?” Fleur asks. “They weren’t nice to you.”

“I think that’s my fault.” I wince, and make another pained gasp. “I want to help them, if only to apologize. I’m not even sure why Healing Horn is upset. I… could probably think of a few reasons… if I wasn’t in so much pain...”

“Well, you’re in luck. You may have screwed up, but I think your heart is definitely in the right place. I didn’t get to go see Celestia earlier, because of all that Chaos from that Medusa sent by Discord, but now seems like a great time to take you to see her. I’ll pick you up, okay?”

“You’d… do that for me?” I asked.

“Of course! What are friends for? Celestia is amazing at fixing things that unintentionally went wrong for recent immigrants.” Fleur says. “You’re not going to get shocked that I consider you a friend, are you?”

“No… and thanks.” I replied.