Twenty Years Without Chaos
By Claw in Cursive
“COME BACK HERE!”
Discord skidded around the corner of the hallway outside the library of the Castle of Friendship. In his paw was a book on a string he used as a yo-yo. His legs were twin pinwheels of velocity. As he sped down the hall, a perturbed Starlight Glimmer followed in hot pursuit.
“I WAS READING THAT!” she bellowed after the mismatched maniac. She couldn’t use her magic because, before he stole her book, Discord snuck up on her and painted her horn with some sort of strange green goop that caused it to emit a very loud, very rude noise when she tried to cast a spell.
A painful stitch grew in Starlight’s side as the chase continued. She vowed when she caught him, Discord would wish he had a cutie mark to remove instead of what she’d do to him. She wondered what madness bubbled beneath that horn and antler which made him annoy her so.
“I swear,” she huffed, “this world would be so much better without chaos!”
Discord came to a sudden stop, vibrating in place for a second. Starlight couldn’t halt as quickly, and she crashed into Discord’s tail. He turned slowly and faced her.
“What did you say?” he asked.
Trying to catch her breath, Starlight wheezed, “I said, this world would be better without chaos.”
Discord dropped the tome in his paw and scratched his chin. He wore a serious expression on his face unlike any Starlight had ever seen from him.
“Oh, really?” he said. “Since I’m feeling so magnanimous, I’ll grant your request. I’ll go away, and I’ll take all the chaos in Equestria with me. In fact, I’ll even transport you, let’s say, twenty years into the future, so you can see for yourself what a perfect place Equestria will be without me and my chaos.”
With her breathing and heart rate back under control, Starlight glared up at the draconequus. “Fine by me,” she dared.
Discord gave her an oily smile. “Remember, you asked for it.” He reached up with his paw and claw and snapped his fingers on both, producing a giant flash of blinding white light.
Starlight awakened in the hallway. True to his word, Discord was nowhere to be found. Thinking to herself that it was the first thing today that had gone right, she looked to where the madpony’d dropped her book, but it wasn’t there. As she took a better look around, she noticed the hall wasn’t as clean as it usually was. Dust bunnies drifted in a slight breeze across the floor, and motes danced through the rays of sunlight coming through the windows. One of the windows down the hall was missing, and several more were cracked.
“What did Discord do before he left?” Starlight muttered to herself as she made her way downstairs. As she continued, she saw more signs of the normally tidy castle being anything but – dusty pictures, occasional trash, broken items and thick cobwebs littered every inch of the place.
“Princess Twilight?” she called. “Spike? Where are you?”
No answer came to Starlight’s calls. Her walk quickened into a trot as she got more nervous. She reached the double doors at the grand entrance – one was off its top hinge and hanging askew – and poured her magic into them to open them.
“At least that goop’s off my horn,” she realized, but the sight outside the doors caused her to gasp.
Ponyville, the place she’d called home since her reformation, needed some serious reformation itself. All of the quaint little houses, once meticulously maintained by the ponies dwelling within, looked to be on the verge of collapse, if they hadn’t given up the fight already. Here and there, ponies lie on broken benches or simply in the middle of the street, not caring in the least if anypony else would come down the road and run them over.
Starlight galloped up to the local mailmare – Muffins, was it? – who was lying on her side in front of the castle, snoring. She shook the grey pegasus awake and asked her, “Did Discord do something to Ponyville?”
The walleyed mare yawned and blinked. “Discord? Nopony’s seen him in two decades. Good riddance, too. Without him, everything’s perfect.”
Starlight waved her foreleg at the dilapidated town. “You can’t possibly say Ponyville’s perfect.”
Muffins glanced about, then shrugged without getting up. “Meh. It’s messy, but nothing comes along to destroy to the place. We’ll get around to fixing things, eventually.” She yawned and went back to sleep.
Starlight made her way to Carousel Boutique. She had to find out what was going on around town. Like the rest of the buildings, the boutique looked like it had seen much better days. The pristine white paint peeled in great strips, and some of the columns leaned at odd angles. She knocked on the door, only to have it fall in with a loud thud. It kicked up a dust cloud.
“Rarity?” called Starlight. “Are you here?”
“Coming,” said a voice that sounded like Rarity’s, if someone had drained all the life out of her.
Into the main room shambled the wreck of Rarity. Her mane and tail required work to be upgraded to rat’s nest status, and stains blotched her formerly alabaster coat. Her half-lidded eyes took a few seconds to focus on her visitor. “Oh, it’s you,” she droned. “Whaddaya want?”
Seeing the fashion-forward filly in this state almost made Starlight want to weep. “Oh, Rarity. What’s happened to you?”
Rarity took a brief, disinterested look at herself and shrugged. “Ever since ponies stopped buying new clothes, because nothing changes here in Equestria, I stopped caring about designing them. Even sold the boutiques in Canterlot and Manehattan. With nothing to do, why bother even taking care of yourself?”
“But you love designing new clothes and dresses and hats and –”
“Not when nopony’s motivated to buy them, I don’t. Whatever. I got a nap to get to.” Then, Rarity flopped over on her side.
Sugarcube Corner was always a place of activity. If anyplace in town had life, it was there, thought Starlight. As she trotted through the streets of Ponyville, she spotted a multi-colored tail and sky-blue coat around the side of a tree. She galloped there and found Rainbow Dash, but not like she’d ever seen the speedster. Most of her feathers had fallen out, and she moved with all the urgency of Tank in the middle of winter.
“Rainbow! Your feathers!”
Rainbow Dash lifted a wing, and a feather dropped off. She viewed it with no interest. “Eh. Don’t need ‘em if you don’t fly.”
She might as well have told Starlight she was a biped with spidery claw-like things on the ends of her hooves and almost no coat. “B-but what about the Wonderbolts?”
“What about ‘em? You know as well as I do the princesses disbanded the military fifteen years ago. No threats to the country, no need for a military to protect it, and no need for a precision flying team. Really, no reason for me to fly anymore. Simple as that.”
“I – suppose you’re going back to sleep then.”
“Unless you’ve got some cider, yeah.”
Like every other place Starlight had been, Sugarcube Corner was also in a terrible state. The roof had collapsed in the middle, and the ends of the roof leaned toward each other. As Starlight approached the door, an unfamiliar tan stallion with a dark brown mane passed by it inside the shop.
“Excuse me,” Starlight said, “but is Pinkie Pie here?”
The colt gave her a disinterested stare, then pointed, “Upstairs.”
Starlight noticed the young adult didn’t have a cutie mark, though he should have at his age, and asked him about it.
“Without things to achieve, there’s no need for cutie marks anymore,” the colt said. “I’m going to get my sister Pumpkin and find some grub.”
Starlight gasped as she realized she’d been talking to Pound Cake, the Cakes’ little foal. Twenty years must have really passed, she thought to herself.
As she made her way up the creaky, rotting stairs, she wondered why everypony was so lethargic. Without chaos, everything should have been perfect – right?
Upon reaching Pinkie’s room, Starlight opened the door and received another shock. Upon the bed – and all around the bed – were rolls and rolls of pink-furred fat. The pony on the bed kind of resembled Pinkie Pie, if this Pinkie Pie had eaten about four or five of her clones. The massive mare turned her head when she heard the door open, and feebly waved one of her forelegs. Starlight noted with a bit of disgust that a fatty wing continued to jiggle after Pinkie’s wave stopped.
“Hey, Starlight,” droned Pinkie. “Got any cake?”
Starlight couldn’t find words to describe the scene in front of her. After some searching, she said, “Why did you let yourself go like this?”
“Well, ever since Discord went away, things sort of stopped happening,” said Pinkie. “We stopped going on super-cool adventures, and eventually, with everything so dull, everypony stopped partying. There was nothing to celebrate anymore.”
“Oh, Pinkie,” sighed Starlight, and she hugged a lumpy roll on Pinkie’s side.
“Can I tell you a secret?” said Pinkie, and Starlight nodded. “One of the reasons why I threw so many parties was because, well, you never know when, or if, you’ll have a chance to have another. Seize the day, if you will. But, if you know every day’s going to be the same as the last, well…”
With more urgency than ever, Starlight galloped out to Sweet Apple Acres. If anypony would still be working hard, it would be Applejack. Starlight didn’t know a time when the industrious farm mare would let her homestead go to pot.
However, when she passed the fallen gates of the farm, she knew the affliction of indifference had hit there, as well. The trees grew wild, without any sort of direction, and the farmhouse looked deserted. The house was in better shape than the barn, which now appeared to be little more than a pile of splintered timber. Learning against the barn’s remains was Applejack, and Starlight had to gasp yet again.
In direct contrast to Pinkie Pie, AJ was little more than skin and bones. All of the hard-won muscle had wasted away, leaving her a husk of herself.
Applejack didn’t acknowledge Starlight’s approach until she called, and even then, AJ gave the slightest grunt without moving her hat from over her eyes.
“Why aren’t you working the farm?” asked Starlight.
AJ shrugged. “T’aint any bad weather or critters or anything else ta make the apples rot, so what’s the use? They’ll just drop when they want to, and we’ll get some whenever we get hungry enough.”
Starlight frowned. “Don’t the rest of the ponies in town need to eat, too?”
Another shrug. “They come out an’ help themselves, too. Not my concern.”
Starlight’s despair grew as she galloped toward the edge of the Everfree Forest and Fluttershy’s cottage. Fluttershy was caring and concern – surely she would be her old self.
All of the windows were boarded up and the door shut tight when Starlight arrived. She spotted Fluttershy off to the side of the house, kicking over one of the birdhouses on a stilt she kept.
“Ngh!” she grunted. “Stupid things. Why did I make them so sturdy?”
The sight shocked Starlight so much, she might as well have seen the shy pony kicking her pet, Angel Bunny. Fluttershy turned and saw Starlight staring.
“What do you want?” she snapped.
“Wh-why are you taking down your birdhouses?”
“Because, the stupid birds told me they didn’t need me to care for them, just like all the rest of the stupid animals around here. It all started when that stupid Discord left and took all his stupid, random magic with him. Stupid.”
The bitterness in Fluttershy’s voice cut Starlight’s soul more than a knife. It was so out of place. Suddenly, she knew the pony she needed to see, so she asked Fluttershy where Twilight was.
“Feh, heck if I know,” spat Fluttershy. “Stupid ‘Princess of Friendship’ said she couldn’t stay here and watch everypony just wither away, so she left on some stupid quest or something. She comes back sometimes, but she never stays. She’s so stupid.”
Starlight Glimmer trudged into town, the ennui finally settling into her bones. She couldn’t get her friends, or anypony else, to do anything. They all lie there, wasting away, without anything to motivate them. They needed something to work toward, some sort of adversity, something to spark them to life, but in this version of Equestria, nothing existed. Without hardship, ponies wouldn’t do anything more than necessary to exist. They required ill fortune, they required calamity, they required…
“DISCORD!” Starlight shouted in the middle of the town square, reared up on her hind legs, forelegs stretched to the heavens. A few ponies glanced in her direction, but did nothing more. “Where are you?! I’m sorry. I was wrong! Ponies need something to struggle against to make themselves better! They need disaster! They need discord! THEY NEED YOU!”
A stray newspaper blew through, but the draconequus didn’t pop up to Starlight’s summons.
“DISCORD! Discord! Discord?” Starlight settled back onto four hooves, then slumped to the ground, covering her eyes.
“Starlight? Starlight? Starlight?”
Somepony shook Starlight’s shoulder. She raised her head, and groggily looked around. The shaker was Princess Twilight, and she looked concerned.
“Starlight? You’ve been working so hard to find a spell to strengthen the windows in town ahead of the scary storm blowing this way, and I found you moaning in your sleep. Are you all right?”
Starlight looked around. She was at a desk in the library, and the book Discord took, “Glass Strengthening Doesn’t Have to Be a Pain,” by Utter Shutter, was open before her.
Abruptly, Starlight grabbed Twilight by the shoulders. “Twilight! You’re still here!”
“Where else would I be?”
“And that storm’s still on its way?”
“Yeah, so we have to hurry up to get everything battened down.”
“So, there’ll be windows broken, tree branches down, roofs possibly blown in, and ponies panicking?”
“Umm, yeah…”
Starlight hugged Twilight fiercely, and shouted in her ear, “That’s awesome!”
A completely confused princess murmured, “Iiiiit is?”
“Yes!” shrieked Starlight. “We’ve got to get going and help!” Starlight barreled through the library doors and took off for the foyer. She paused to kick over a potted plant at the end of the hall. “CHAOOOOOS!” she squealed.
Twilight stood dumbfounded, mouth ajar. Discord came up behind her and said, “I don’t know what’s gotten into that pony, but I admire her sudden candor for chaos.” He reached down and gently shut Twilight’s mouth.
