Balancing Act

by Rinnaul

Rating: teen
Tags: Comedy, Adventure, Discord, Twilight Sparkle, Princess Luna, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, Fluttershy
Length: 3113

It wasn’t that big a deal. Discord had just put the sun out. How hard could that be to fix before Celestia woke up and noticed?

Well. It wasn’t that big a deal. He’d just put the sun out.

And now it was just a matter of causing enough chaos to recover his magic to a point where he could fix it.

Without causing so much chaos that he'd actually be in trouble for it.

All before Celestia woke up and noticed.

Discord was in for a long night.

Published 2017-02-04 04:50:01 UTC
Last updated 2017-02-04 04:50:01 UTC

It was at this moment, Discord knew...

Discord sat at the edge of the lake, examining the object he had just fished out of it — a dull, brown sphere that was slightly warm to the touch. Nearby, his miniature duplicate was scratching its head as it checked one scrap of paper after another against a ledger.

Finally, Mini-Discord shook its head and handed the final tally back to his larger counterpart, who looked it over and frowned. “The entropic balance is still short?” He shook his head. “Very well, then I suppose that leaves me no choice. Time to put this ‘friendship’ deal to the test.”

Discord stood and opened a portal with a wave of a hand.

“You stay and take care of this mess. I have some ponies to talk to.”

Elsewhere, a small yellow pegasus sat in an open field, surrounded on all sides by forest, with not one sign of civilization within sight. However, unlike the oppressive and threatening darkness of the Everfree Forest, there was a tranquility in this place, as if it were watched over by Luna herself.

The only thing marring the scene as the very image of harmlessness was the great black shape looming over the pegasus.

It had the form of a hound, but one so large that, even sitting, it towered over twice her height, and looked down at her with eyes glowing with a ghostly radiance. Blue flames filled its mouth, and dripped to the ground, as though liquid, in the place of hungry drool.

It stared intently at the tiny pony before it, and, more particularly, the lone wing she help up between them — the only barrier between the beast and the mare.

She swept her wing aside.

With all the enthusiasm of a puppy, the great black beast hopped to the side, rolled, and landed on its back, a trail of its burning saliva being flung in an arc to scorch a line in the grass. It lay there panting and looking expectantly at the little pony.

“A wonderful roll!” Fluttershy trotted over and began patting the hound’s stomach with one hoof. “Such a good boy!”

“Young mare, is that a baskervor?” Discord stepped up from behind her, arms crossed and one foot tapping on the ground. He shook his head. “What have I told you about playing with otherworldly spirits of vengeance?”

“Are you sure that’s what he is?” Fluttershy asked, looking up at Discord with concern without ceasing her tummy rubs. “He’s so friendly, though! I thought maybe he was just a mastiff or a particularly large bloodhound.” She paused and considered. “Possibly a mix.”

Discord gave her a Look and held up one hand. A thick tome appeared within it, already open to the necessary page. He placed a pair of half-moon reading glasses on his face and cleared his throat. “The baskervor. An underworld spirit in the form of a great black hound, it is charged with pursuing those who escape mortal justice. It will haunt the dreams of its target, feeding upon their fear, until it gains enough power to manifest physically. By this point, the victim is exhausted from the lack of sleep, and thus the hunt is typically a very short one.” He snapped the book closed, vanished it and the glasses, and resumed giving Fluttershy the Look.

Fluttershy gasped and turned back to the baskervor, pulling her hoof away and narrowing her gaze. “Is this true, mister?”

The baskervor’s expression dropped and it yipped at her.

“I understand it’s your job, but that is a very mean way to go about doing it.”

The baskervor let itself roll back onto its side and whined.

“I’m sure you’ll think of a way. You’re a good boy.” Fluttershy patted the hound’s side.

Discord tapped her shoulder. “Look, this all very touching, but I have something of an emergency that I need help with, and Equestria already has somepony to deal with otherworldly beings intruding upon the local dreamscape, and she is not pleased with me at the moment.”

“AVAUNT, DEMON!” A booming voice echoed around them. “THOU STRAY FAR FROM THY HUNTING GROUNDS, AND I SHALL CAST THEE BACK!”

“Speaking of, we need to be going.” Discord grabbed Fluttershy with one hand while opening a portal with a snap of his fingers with the other, tossed her through, and then dove after her.

The baskervor stood up and sniffed the swirl of magic that the friendly yellow pony vanished through, then huffed and stepped through itself, just as the gate dissipated and closed.

With a flash of lightning and a peal of thunder, Princess Luna burst forth into the now-empty dreamscape, a fog rolling forth from beneath her hooves. She narrowed her eyes and looked around the empty field, then snorted.

“I tarried overlong, it seems, in the name of spectacle.” She shook her head, then lit her horn and swept the area with her magic. Her quarry may have escaped, but it would behoove her to ensure the resident dreamer was unharmed before she gave chase. However, what she found gave her pause.

“What in the world?” Her eyes widened as she turned to take in more of the dreamscape. “A stable dreamscape with no dreamer?”

In the waking world, a swirl of multicolored magic appeared at the foot of Fluttershy’s bed, and soon Fluttershy herself came tumbling head over hooves out the center, just managing to spread her wings and right herself before landing on the floor. A moment later, Discord followed just behind, hitting the ground in a roll and springing back up just before hitting the bed. The feat might have been impressive, had he not had to pause a moment to stop his eyes spinning in their sockets afterward.

Then, as the portal began to swirl closed, the floorboards creaked with a great weight, and the shadows of the room seemed to shift slightly as an unseen yet imposing presence followed them through. It sniffed at the friendly yellow pony that stood at the end of the bed, then sniffed at the friendly yellow pony in the bed, then yawned and lay down beside the former.

Fluttershy glanced at the slight indentation in her floorboards where the invisible mass of the baskervor lay, then turned to the bed she was currently sleeping in, then back to Discord.

“Discord, I have a couple… Well, a few… Well…” She took a moment to count on her feathertips. “Many. I have many questions.”

Discord blinked until his eyes were both aligned in the proper direction, then nodded. “Ask away, my dear Fluttershy.”

“Well… Why is there a sleeping me and an awake me? And why is Mr. Baskervor invisible? And what kind of emergency are you having? And what did you do to upset Princess Luna?” Her voice sharpened considerably on the final question.

“Oh, Fluttershy. Allow me to answer those in an order more convenient to the development of the narrative.” Discord sat at the edge of the bed. “First, Luna is overreacting terribly. I borrowed the moon for a little bit — when nobody was using it — and gave it back when I was asked, but she’s acting like I ruined it forever.”

“You really need to ask permission before you do something like that.” Fluttershy frowned. “But okay, that doesn't sound so bad.”

“Now, as for the baskervor…” Discord turned to the space the creature was occupying. “Frankly, I wasn't expecting it to follow us. Or to meet one at all. I can't be sure of the exact intricacies of its situation, but I suppose this is what happens when a creature that can't normally manifest physically enters the physical realm.” He shrugged. “It's probably harmless.”

“Being stuck that way, or Mr. Baskervor himself?”

“Yes. Now, as for you… Huh.” He finally looked over at the sleeping Fluttershy. “That was a dream, wasn't it?”

“Discord…”

“Alright, look, I may have forgotten that while I traveled directly into the dreamscape, you were there as an actual dreamer, then opened a portal back to the waking world, and brought your dreamself into the real world. But that should be easy enough to fix!”

Discord reached up, plucked the blue horn from his head, brought the tip to his lips, bent down over Fluttershy, and played a reveille.

Angel Bunny poked his head out from under his blanket and gave the draconequus a tired glare, but the sleeping Fluttershy did not stir.

Discord frowned and placed the horn right in Fluttershy’s face, took a deep breath, and played it again, louder.

From all over the cottage came the sounds of animals irritable with being woken in the middle of the night — or just the rudeness of the loud noise on principle, for the nocturnal pets. Angel Bunny in particular came out and prepared to give Discord a solid kick in the shin, only to notice the Fluttershy standing by the bed. He then hopped up onto the bed to see the still-soundly-sleeping Fluttershy in the bed. He looked back and forth a moment, then sat down and just gave the conscious Fluttershy a confused look.

She gave him an awkward smile. “We're working on it.”

Discord growled and took an even deeper breath, his body swelling like a balloon. Angel Bunny stared as Discord grew larger and larger, until survival instincts kicked in and he made a mad dash for the cover of his bed. Fluttershy, despite being merely a projection of her dreaming consciousness, dove under her bed. The baskervor, despite being a spiritual entity relentless in its pursuit of those who escaped justice, joined her.

Discord blew a reveille.

Afterward, the silence felt unnatural. The silence aside from the various animals thrown into an uproar, the dishes still clattering together from the reverberations downstairs, the dust and small bits of debris filtering down from the thatch roof, and the faint—but somehow still audible over the din—creaking of cracks spreading across the bedroom windows.

It actually wasn't very quiet at all, but it was a relative silence.

Discord scratched his chin as he screwed his horn back in place, then shrugged. “Well, it seems that you're not going to wake up so long as you're walking around like this. We'll just have to take care of that later.”

Fluttershy crawled out from under the bed. “Um, why not take care of it now? You can just snap your fingers and put things back, right?”

“Fluttershy, I'm sorry, but it just isn't that simple.” Discord pulled her up and sat her on the bed next to him. “Though I must thank you for giving me the perfect opening to segue into the most important problem at hand — that being mine.”

Fluttershy rolled her eyes. And not in a Discord-y literal manner, either.

Discord drew a dull brown sphere from behind his back and held it up for her to see. “And here it is, The Problem.”

Fluttershy edged away from it. “Is that what I think it is?”

He held a hand up in a placating gesture. “I know, I know, I'd be disgusted, too. Brown dwarves are the least fashionable of all stellar objects — utter bores. I wouldn't be caught dead in the company of one. And yet the resemblance is clear.”

Fluttershy paused. “Brown… dwarf? Like the underground ponies in that game Spike, Big Macintosh, and Rainbow Dash play?” She looked up at him. “Did you try to bring a fictional character into our world and get it stuck like this?”

“What? No, no, no. This is the sun, Fluttershy. Try to keep up.”

“Um… Shouldn’t it be bigger? And brighter? And hotter?”

“Look, when you pick and choose which laws of physics are going to apply, strange things can happen when you drop the sun in a lake.”

“Pick and choose the— Drop it in—” Fluttershy shook her head and took a deep, calming breath. “Okay. Discord, why did any of those things happen?”

“Well, I’d just borrowed the sun for a little prank since they made me give the moon back.”

“Yes, and...?”

“And then I dropped it in a lake.”

Fluttershy gave him the kind of intense questioning glare she usually reserved for Angel Bunny at his naughtiest.

“It was a complete accident, I assure you. And, much like your current condition—he cleverly ties the whole thing together—I can’t fix it.”

“Why not?”

Discord snapped his fingers a few times, each time producing a scattering of tiny sparks and a variety of rude noises rather than the usual displays of phenomenal cosmic power. “It turns out that I’ve been such a good, kind, helpful, and all around wonderful draconequus lately that I’ve let my entropic balance drift much too far into Harmony, and it’s going to take quite a bit of chaos and disharmony to bring myself back to the point where I can do things like restore you to the proper plane of existence or relight the sun before Celestia wakes up in the morning and notices its absence.”

Fluttershy sat and considered that. “Correct me if I’m wrong, but wouldn’t going around causing wanton chaos get you in trouble with the Princesses, too?”

“Perhaps, but I’ll take general irritation and disappointment over personal wrath. However, that does sum up the problem rather well. A rock and a hard place, if you will.”

Fluttershy put a hoof to her chin. “Hmm. Well, do you need to cause the chaos personally? Or just… be involved?”

“Ah, you’ve struck upon the exact same train of thought I had! While I’m definitely going to have a hand in things, I don’t see any reason we shouldn’t multiply the potential chaos with some more ponies. So, who do you think? Pinkie Pie? The Crusaders?”

Fluttershy held up a hoof and shook her head. “No. It’s well past the Crusaders’ bedtimes. We’re going to go see Twilight.”

Fluttershy stood and set off toward the stairs. The bed shifted and dropped back to the floor as the baskervor slipped out from under it to follow her, floorboards creaking in protest at its every step. Discord and, after a moment’s hesitation, Angel Bunny were not far behind.

“Twilight? But she’s so boring.” Discord asked, dismissively. “I’m sure you want to consult with a magic expert, but trust me, there’s no one more ‘expert’ in chaos magic than me.”

Fluttershy stopped at the door and looked back at him. “Discord, we’re about to give her a problem — a magic problem — in a field she doesn’t fully understand, with a tight time limit to be met under sleep deprivation, with consequences that would upset her mentor and favorite Princess. If you want to see Ponyville turned upside-down, just explain the situation to her and stand back.”

Discord stared for a moment. “You’re much more devious than you let on, aren’t you?”

“It worked on you, didn’t it?” Fluttershy gave him a smile and opened the door. “And while we walk, I can tell you all about what happened the weekend after we fought you that one time.”

However, when Fluttershy went to step outside the door, her leg quivered, and she found it difficult, and soon impossible, to force herself to progress any further. It was almost like she was trying to push her way through a sheet of rubber.

“Oh… Discord? I have a feeling I can’t go any further from… Um… Me.”

Discord rubbed his chin and studied Fluttershy for a moment, and then his gaze drifted to the slight indentation in the floor where the baskervor sat.

He grinned. “Fortunately, I have a brilliant plan.”

Two ponies had joined Luna in the empty dreamscape. Both were concealed by gray cloaks, and either due to the effects of the dreaming or some magic in the cloaks themselves, both were rendered totally nondescript and identical. The only difference to be found between them was their voices: one a stallion, and one a mare.

The faint glow of magic came from under their hoods — the only indication that they were unicorns.

After some time, the stallion released the scanning spell he’d been holding.

Luna glanced towards him. “Sirius?”

The stallion shook his head. “Nothing, your Highness. No dark magic at work, and though I can’t guarantee the Eye still functions through my dreamself, there don’t seem to be any gateways, though it’s possible I would overlook something non-pony in origin.”

Luna frowned slightly and turned to the mare. “And you, Spica?”

The cloaked mare started back slightly. “N-nothing, your Highness. No subtle enchantments or illusions Tri- I can see. Though you are a master of such magics — surely there’s nothing I could find here that would escape your sight. I don’t even rank all that highly in the Watch.”

Luna held up a wing to forestall any further objections. “It would be unwise to ignore the possibility that some spell may have been woven against myself specifically — few, if any, other ponies would investigate an abnormal dream. As for higher-ranking unicorns… Captain?”

“Aldebaran’s magic is so different from normal Unicorn magic that it’s uncertain he would be of use here. Vega remains unable to achieve the meditative state to consciously enter the dreaming. And Canopus…” Sirius trailed off.

“That one I remain wary of,” Luna said, picking up the explanation. “There are too many unknowns about her for me to be willing involve her in such a matter.”

Sirius nodded. “Your Highness, given that we have been unable to uncover anything of use here, what are your orders?”

Luna thought for a moment, then turned to address both unicorns. “Unless they are dealing with a crisis situation, the Night Watch shall focus their efforts on this incident. A terribly powerful beast has vanished, and a dreamscape has been manipulated in a way that is bizarre even in my long experience. I will continue to monitor the dreaming, in case there are further disruptions, or any signs of our missing dreamer appear. I want the Watch to search Equestria for any signs of whoever or whatever is at the heart of this, and stop them causing any more chaos.”

The two cloaked ponies bowed and faded from the dreamscape. Once they were gone, Luna stepped over to the line of scorched grass, and the patches of similar destruction surrounding it. Her eyes narrowed slightly as she considered it.

“But from whence in Equestria could there come enough evil to draw a baskervor here?”

Author's Note

I have no idea where I'm going with this.

I mean, other than "morning".