As the light faded we were all met with the sight of the the beast floating above us in the , now unchanged, hallway that had led up to the vault. Unsurprisingly the first to react was Celestia, "Discord! What have you done with the elements, and more importantly how? Even you shouldn't have been able to get into that vault without alerting me!"

Discord dismissively waved his hand, "Chaos; I don't have to explain shit."

Before Celestia could respond Discord snapped his talons, and in a flash she was gone, leaving him free to turn his attention to us.

"And now that she's out of the way, we can pl-hrrk!"

Discord was cut off by the triple whammy of Rarity's telekinesis grabbing his snout, Applejack's lass looping around his throat and pulling him down, and Rainbow tackling him from behind. All three of them leveled a heated glare at Discord, "Where. Are. Our. Sisters!"

Discord blinked in mild surprise before his form shattered like broken glass, pieces of his body tinkling as they fell to the ground. The girls all stared in shock at this for a moment before Discord walked out from behind a pillar with a dustpan and broom which he used to sweep himself up. As none of us had decided to speak up at this point he shrugged and popped a piece of glass in his mouth, making a noise like a cross between a squeaky toy and crumpling paper as he chewed before swallowing. "Huh, Chocolate sardine aged in Chardoneigh, that one's new."

With a shrug Discord pulled open a pouch on his body and poured the rest of the glass in, "Now where were we? Oh yes, your sisters!" Discord's gaze flickered to Rainbow, "Or sister figures anyway. Wonderful little vermin they were, and while I'd normally be disappointed at having less chaos to work with I can't help admire how they went completely off script. That little apple one didn't even come to the garden! I had to rely on that foppish stallion with the slicked back golden mane raising another stink over something trivial to provide that last little oomph to get out."

Applejack, Rarity, and Rainbow moved towards him, their stupors broken by his works, but before they could start demanding any more information, especially since Discord obviously knew which fillies they were talking about, he snapped his fingers and they found their mouths sealed shut with what I recognized to be over-sized wax lips, "Tut tut, I wasn't finished. Though I suppose I can let you know, as a reward for going against the grain I put them somewhere safe where they can watch the proceedings without getting caught up in our games, and speaking of, let's get started shall we!"

I decided to speak up, "And here I was hoping that we could skip the twisted game stacked in your favor and just move on to the part where we use the elements on you, but I suppose you just want to go down the basic, predictable route hmm?"

Discord's head whipped to face me so fast I'm sure he would have been suffering whiplash if he bothered to care about mundane things like anatomy as he growled out "Who dares-" Discord's anger died in his throat as he blinked, momentarily taken aback, "Is that a human?"

In a flash he was standing over me in a brown vest and holding a jewelers eyeglass against his eye, backwards of course, and pacing around me as he examined my form, "By my Mother it is! Oh Celestia, this almost makes up for the thousand years in stone! And it's not even my birthday, how thoughtful! But still, you did insult me and I don't feel like having you interrupt my game, so off you go."

I briefly heard the girls who could still speak shout in outrage before Discord snapped his fingers and my vision was filled with light.

When my vision cleared the first thing I noticed was that I was in a sealed room with no windows or doors, and more importantly Discord was lounging in the air in front of me while I was rather firmly strapped into a large lounge chair.

Considering my situation I feel my reaction was understandable, "What the hell did you just do!" I began pulling at my restraints, though this accomplished nothing but to make my wrists and ankles sore.

Discord waved a hand dismissively, "Oh relax, I just took you somewhere more private so we could have a little chat, and in case you were wondering your little pony friends are currently playing my 'twisted game stacked in my favor', but you knew that didn't you?"

Discord floated down and wrapped himself sinuously around my cushioned prison and looked me in the eyes. "I do so love you humans, did you know that? You all have so much chaotic potential even while embodying several of the Harmony's oh so precious elements! Wars escalated to worldwide scales due to your countries remaining loyal to their allies, friendships torn apart by a moment of honesty, and laughter without thought causing deep, festering resentments. Absolutely wonderful! But you, you're even better. Because you're an unknown in this world, and thanks to your interference with the script this world is on a path that not even Celestia or I can predict, and that, that excites me."

Discord slowly unwrapped himself, floating over to a corner and pulling forward a large oval object wrapped in brown paper. "Now, how about you help me push things even further off track?"

I snarled, "Like hell, I'll-"

Discord interrupted me with a roll of his eyes, "Yes yes, you'll never help me, never betray your friends, yadda yadda yadda. I've heard it before, and let me tell you it never gets interesting. Anyway, you haven't even heard what I have to offer! And before you bother, I don't care if you don't want to know."

Without waiting for me to respond Discord turned and pulled off the paper with a flourish, and any words of protest died in my throat as my heart began to break. From behind my shoulder I heard discord speak, "I'll even let them go with you, help me now, and you'll never have to worry again."

I opened my mouth to speak, but no sound came out. I tried again several times before I could choke out a few words, "Three hairs."

Discord blinked suddenly appeared before me again and blinked, "What?"

"I also want three of your hairs, that's not a problem is it?"

Discord looked at me for a moment, then shrugged, "Fine, not like any magic can touch me if I don't want it to." Casually Discord plucked three hairs from his goatee and handed them to me as my restraints broke up into butterflies and fluttered away, though how they left without any windows being present I have no idea.

"Now that that's settled, I do believe I hear a purple pony calling for me, so I'll leave you here until I'm ready, ta ta!"

Discord disappeared in a flash along with his larger offer, though I barely noticed as I stared down at the hairs in my hand.

====================================================================================================

I stood behind Discord's throne as I listened to Twilight's speech, the words, and even the chaos around me, barely registering to me as I reflected on what I was about to do. I was making a sacrifice that I never thought I'd have to, and it left my heart feeling empty.

But I'd made my choice, and as I felt Discord give me a mental nudge I realized that I had no time left to question it.

As I stepped around the throne I heard all the girls gasp, and felt my heart break further as I saw the looks of betrayal on all of their faces, but unlike me it seemed that Discord found those same expressions absolutely hilarious as he cackled madly,

"Really, you six should have known better than to trust a human, after all they are creatures of chaos at heart, not that you'd all know that I suppose. Regardless, are you all really prepared to blast both of us?" Discord wrapped an arm around my shoulder and pulled me closer, "After all, there's no telling what it might do to something so totally unfamiliar to this world, who knows it might even reject him so violently that he winds up as a rainbow colored paste!" Discord cackled again, but I was able to hear Applejack speak over him.

"Aaron? Ah don't, how could yah-" I cut her, and by extension the rest of them, off as I placed my hand on Discords back in a show of camaraderie, "Applejack, he's right. It's dangerous to trust a human."

Applejack's expression hurt the worst, she had let me into her home, practically become a second family, and I was throwing it all back in her face.

I really hated to trick them.

"You should especially be wary to trust one of us when you don't bother to get verbal confirmation of an agreement bastard!"

Discord barely manged to turn his head before I opened my hand completely and pressed a scrap of paper with a very special transmutation circle to his back and pushed energy into it.

The roar of pain that followed scraped against our sanity and brought all of the ponies to their knees, and I only held on out of necessity as the circle hadn't completed it's job yet. Discord had made a major mistake in giving me those hairs as well as not checking my pockets and taking away my notepad and pens that I always kept on me for alchemic emergencies.

It had been fairly easy to create a circle capable of analyzing what Discord was made of, and in doing so I found out something remarkable. Discord's physical form was actually an amazingly complex enchantment, or in other words a purely magical construct. And as I'd told Luna at the Gala, magical constructs could be forced to decay with alchemy.

Unfortunately without the proper set up I couldn't create a circle to rapidly decay Discord into his component magic, a rush job like this one did have the wonderful side effect of putting him through excruciating pain as it slowly ate away at his essence.

As I felt the reaction take hold more firmly I pushed discord to the ground, alchemic lighting crackling over his form as more and more of his body bubbled and boiled, spitting out random bits of magic as the decaying crater on his back got larger and larger.

As Discord writhed on the ground, futilely trying to force himself up I shouted, "Girls, now!" Time was of the essence here, I had no doubt that Discord could simply detach the portion of himself that was falling apart and recreate it if he bothered to concentrate, I had been banking on the hope that Discord would be completely unfamiliar with pain like this and it would keep his thoughts muddled, but I had no way of knowing how long that distraction would last.

I shouldn't have worried though, the girls recovered from their surprise quickly, and even as I shouted they had begun to challenge the power of the elements, and in seconds Discord found himself once again encased in stone.

Author's Note

There's really no excuse for my absence, though I also won't deny life has been pretty hectic for the past year. Regardless, thank you all so much for your patience, also I have an announcement to make:

I am completely removing this story from any association with the Displaced meta. This does mean that I will be removing the chapters I did with Shagohad from the canon of the story, though I will preserve them for anyone who wishes to read them. Part of my absence was that I just could not find a way to fit the repercussions of what was going to happen in the story with the repercussions of that crossover.

I do apologize for anyone who enjoyed that portion of the story and to Shagohad, who was a joy to work with.