Brick-a-Brack took a breath as he shoved the stool against the bathroom counter and climbed on up.
“Discord…” he whispered out, before hurriedly spinning around and checking the small bathroom for any sudden changes. Although, it was silly. You couldn’t really summon someone just by saying their name in front of a mirror, right? No, of course not. That was just a rumor.
“Discord… Discord… Discord…”
Brick-a-Brack steeled himself before speaking the final name.
“Discord?” he asked the empty room.
And for a little while, it remained just like that. Empty. Until—
“Yes?” a voice behind the shower curtain asked. “What is it?”
"Umm…” Brick-a-Brack was truly at a loss for words. “Discord?”
Angrily, Discord threw aside the shower curtain and stepped out of the tub. “Yes, I think we’ve covered that part. So, I’m here. Must be something important, right? To summon someone as important as me to such a shabby place?”
Discord leaned towards him, causing Brick-a-Brack to shy away.
He shrugged. “I dunno. I guess I just wanted to see if it would work.”
Discord huffed. “That’s it? I’m here because of some little experiment? You think I get a choice when someone does something like this to me?” He shook his head gravely. “No, sir! All someone has to do is says my name five times in front of a mirror and—” He slapped his hands together. “Zoom! Off I go! You know what I have in the oven at home right now? Hmm? Some tasty hay fries! Did you even bother to think about what might happen to those fries if I don’t check up on them soon?”
“I’m sorry,” Brick-a-Brack said. He only raised his head when another thought came to him. “You want to play Legos with me?”
Discord thought on that. He told the colt, “You better have a lot of bricks, kid. And I’m raiding your fridge before we start.”
***
“So, what did you build?” Discord asked, standing before his immense creation. In one hand he held a small Lego brick, and in the other, the remains of a sandwich that used cookies as bread and cookies as meat. In retrospect: a handful of cookies.
Brick-a-Brack sat on the floor of his bedroom, a tidy hill of Legos spread out before him. “It’s not much. I made a bench. Like a bench for a park. What about you?”
“Oh, nothing too fancy,” Discord answered with a smirk. “With only fifteen minutes, I had to build fast—that’s why I only made an exact replica of Canterlot.”
Raising his head, Brick-a-Brack gasped. Discord’s creation must’ve been four-feet tall and six-feet wide; so intricately put together, just staring at it for long was enough to give him a headache.
“I didn’t even think I had that many bricks!” Brick-a-Brack admitted.
“You didn’t,” Discord answered with a snort. “That’s why I had to break in to eight nearby toy stores when your back was turned.”
Brick-a-Brack nodded. “That would explain all the broken glass on the carpet.” Then he asked, “You think my bench could go in your Canterlot?”
Discord smiled, grabbing Brick-a-Brack’s small park bench. “What a splendid idea! There’s a garden right next to the castle and everything!” Carefully, he set the Lego bench down along a path. Then he swiftly moved the bench again. This time inside a Lego dumpster just behind the castle.
“Hey!” Brick-a-Brack exclaimed. “That doesn’t belong in there!”
“Sure it does,” Discord replied. “Don’t you get it? It’s more realistic this way! How many dumpsters do you know that stay empty? Not filled to the brim with crap no one wants to look at?”
Brick-a-Brack was about to protest further, until a jarring noise caught him off guard.
Bring! Bring!
All good humor vacated Discord’s face; he balled both hands into fists.
“What’s that noise mean?” Brick-a-Brack asked.
“Someone’s just said my name five times in front of a mirror,” Discord told him through gritted teeth. He asked him, “And, perhaps I should’ve asked this earlier, but… how did you know to say my name five times like that?”
“Everyone at school was talking about it,” Brick-a-Brack told him. “Some foal heard it from some other foal from another school who heard it from another foal. And so on.”
Discord grimaced. “Oh, sh—”
Then he disappeared from the scene, leaving all his stolen Legos behind.
***
Like a whirlwind, Discord shot out of the bathroom, slamming the door behind him. He held one sharp claw before his face. “Alright! Who did it? Who said my name five times here?”
A loud cheer caught him off guard.
Another colt wearing a party hat ran up to him. “You see everyone? I told you I could get Discord to come to my birthday party!”
As if I had much of a choice, Discord thought to himself.
“You want a slice of cake?” the Birthday Boy asked.
Discord shuffled passed him, ignoring the two dozen other foals and adults currently in the room. “Rather full, actually. But perhaps a nice present might help cleanse the palate.” With that said, he grabbed the closest wrapped gift and swallowed it whole. Right before spitting it back out. “A sweater? Who in their right minds gives a kid a sweater on their birthday? Hello!?”
Another adult entered the room with a cake in tow. “Time to blow out the candles and make a wish!”
“Oh, boy!” the Birthday Boy chirped, running for the cake, before being abruptly halted.
Discord had snapped himself between the Birthday Boy and the cake. His smile grew. “You already got your wish, remember? Discord at your party, right? Now here’s my wish.”
Then he blew out the candles, causing everyone in the room to shriek at once.
It was clear why, though; the Birthday Boy had miraculously become the Birthday Stallion in one blinding flash of light. Complete with business shirt, tie, and all.
“Umm,” the Birthday Stallion said, in a far lower tone than before. “What just happened?”
“You just skipped your next twenty birthdays,” Discord told him snidely. “Congrats. You’re a twenty-five-year-old accountant now. Correction. Assistant accountant! Remember to blow out your candles and wish for something again next year!”
As Discord made his way towards the door, a familiar sound sung its jolly tune.
Bring! Bring!
He slammed the stolen presents in his hands down. “For the love of—”
***
“Celestia?”
Princess Celestia stood before him, fiddling with her flowing mane in front of a mirror.
“You called me here?”
“Mmm-hmm.” Finishing with her mane, Celestia turned to him. “It’s rather important.”
Discord furrowed his brows. “How important?”
Celestia smiled daintily. “Do I have something stuck in my teeth?”
“Seriously, Celestia? For your own sake, you’re standing in front of a mirror. Are you… feeling okay? You seem… different right now.”
He was right; the very moment he’d entered Celestia’s lavish bathroom, she hadn’t taken her eyes off of him. Even her usual smile had changed. Normally so customary—so ordinary—it now seemed much brighter, cheerful than before.
Discord’s eyes widened. “Celestia? Are you dying?”
Celestia chuckled, taking a step closer to him.
“Am I dying?”
Celestia raised a curious brow. “Is that even possible? And perhaps words won’t be necessary here.”
She then laid an unarmored hoof against his cheek, sliding it all the way down his neck.
“Celestia… could this mean?” One side of Discord’s mouth slid upwards into a grin. “Are you trying to start things between us again? Last time… last time, didn’t you dump me for a throne? An honest to Dog inanimate object?”
She left her hoof to rest against his chest. “What can I say? At the time, that throne was a lot more supportive than you; always ready to catch me if I fell. But now things have changed. There are more Princesses in the world than ever before, leaving me with a lot more time to…”
“Force summon me by magic mirror?” Discord bluntly cut in.
Celestia smirked. “Can’t help it if you never stop by anymore.”
Discord wrapped his own hand around her hoof. He snickered. “Warm. Hot, even.”
“They don’t call me the Princess of the Sun for nothing.”
As she leaned her face towards his, Discord did the same. Until—
Bring! Bring!
***
Discord wasted little time letting his raw feelings out once he arrived at his next destination.
“You stupid, imbecilic, no-good, moronic moron from planet dipstick: population—”
He glanced around and found no one within screaming distance. No buildings, either. No nothing. All around him was white. An endless, boundless sea of the boring stuff.
Discord growled. “Someone better show up soon! I got some yelling to do!”
“Greetings, Discord,” the all-consuming white announced, as loudly as if the very heavens were speaking to him. “It has been some time.”
Discord cocked his head. “Dadcord?”
The heavens sighed. “I wish you would use my real name when you visited, son.”
That only made Discord whine. “But I don’t wanna! It hurts my jaw whenever I try! Six-hundred letters long? What’s wrong with a name like Jim?”
“A being such as myself cannot simply go as ‘Jim’,” Dadcord answered in his usual booming tone. “I am energy. All energy. Pure and without end. I am—”
Discord waved a hand. “Whatever. I get it. But this better be important, Dadcord. I was just about to have an alicorn sit on me.”
Dadcord paused. “Is… is that a good thing? I would not know of such frivolity.” Another sigh. A forlorn one. “I would not have used the secret mirror technique to get you here were it not important. I… I miss you, son. You rarely visit anymore.”
Discord scoffed at that. “Really? It’s not like you really take this relationship of ours all that seriously. When was the last time you even wore that ‘GALAXY’S BEST DAD!’ t-shirt I bought you last millennia?”
“We have been over this, Discord,” Dadcord replied. “I am energy. I am limitless. I am endless. The shirt did not fit.”
Discord narrowed his eyes. “You sure? Because I’m almost certain I got you an XXX-large one.” He let that go as another thought came to him. “Alright, you smart ball of energy. Where’s that ‘NUMBER ONE DAD!’ mug I got you for Hearth’s Warming Day? Still got that kicking around here somewhere?”
“Again, son,” Dadcord replied tiredly, “I have no need for coffee. Or any liquids or solids or squidloods of any kind.”
“Squidloods?” Discord questioned.
“Coming next year.”
Discord shook his head. “No coffee? Jeeze! How do you even survive up here? So that means you haven’t tried hazelnut yet? It’s delicious!”
“Let us not circle around things we have already discussed,” Dadcord told him. “Let us talk of new things.”
“Okay. Some nice chitchat, then.” Discord chewed on his tongue, searching for some jumping point. “You catch that last big sports game?”
“Sports are meaningless to me. Next question.”
“You see that new film Rad Olive Pit’s in?”
“Films are meaningless to me. Next question.”
“Read any good books?”
Dadcord sighed once more. “I have no hands, Discord. Therefore, I have never been able to properly hold a book.”
Discord paused, before baiting him. “And…?”
“…even if I could hold a book, books are meaningless to me. I know the answer to all questions before they are even asked.”
Using his claws, Discord ripped out a patch of his mane. “Fine! You pick a topic!”
Dadcord asked, “How about a joke?”
“Fine.”
“Joke incoming. Joke incoming. Joke arrived. A neutron walks into a bar and asks how much for a beer. Bartender replies, ‘For you, no charge’. Ha. Ha. Ha. Joke has concluded.”
Discord grunted as if punched. “Nice one, Dadcord, but I really should be heading out. Fries in the oven and all. But, uhh, never change! I love you just the way you are!”
“You know I cannot change,” Dadcord corrected. “I have already reached the upmost limits of intellectual processing—”
“I get it! I get it, you ol’ fart cloud! It’s just a figure of speech!”
And if right on cue. Ding! Ding! Someone new teleported Discord away.
***
Discord recognized the kitchen at once. One table. Eighty-five chairs. Nine-and-three-quarter forks. One basket of plastic fruit strictly for decoration. It was his kitchen.
Yet he hadn’t been the one that teleported him back there. So, who did, then?
“You abandoned me, Discord.”
There was a plate of blackened and scorched hay fries on the table. Ones that were talking to him now.
“You left me to burn. All alone.”
Discord held a claw to the ruined fries. “You called me here? But how? I don’t even own a mirror!”
“A plate of fries is speaking to you, and all you can think of are mirrors? For shame, Discord. I trusted you. You were supposed to eat me!”
Circling the table, Discord knelt down to the blackened mound of fries. “It wasn’t my fault! Everyone kept summoning me! Saying my name five times—”
“Who’s gonna eat me now?” the Hay Fries asked him, miserably. “I look horrible! I’m ruined!”
“Hey, hey, don’t be like that,” Discord replied in a hushed tone. “I think you still look good, Hay Fries. Just a little… crisp, is all.”
“You’re just saying that!” A single grease tear trickled across the plate. “What hungry pony would ever look at me now? Lick their lips in my direction?”
“I would! Sure, I would.”
“Liar! I know what’s next for me! To the trashcan I go! Right next to that yogurt cup you forgot at the back of the fridge! I… I thought I knew you, Discord.”
Discord stood up again, pinching the bridge of his nose with his fingers. “Dude. I bought you, like, yesterday.”
Ding! Ding!
“Go ahead! Run off again! Like I care! Everyone’s cutting out carbs these days, why did I think you’d be any different!”
“I’ll be right back,” Discord lied, before being summoned again.
***
Discord had never been happier to see a familiar face. The moment he could, he swept them up in a tight hug. Fluttershy didn’t seem to mind, though; only squeaking slightly by the embrace.
“So, it’s true,” Fluttershy breathed out once their hug was complete. “Ponies really can summon you with only a mirror? Have they always been able to do that?”
Spread out along her couch, Discord exhaled wearily. “Afraid so, Fluttershy. Some ancient curse or rule or whatever it is. Only before today, it was only every few months or so that some pony would accidentally say my name five times while in front of a mirror.” He painfully dragged both sets of claws down his face. “But today? It seems as every pony in the world knows how to summon me! And you know what? That ticks me off a little-teeny-tiny bit!”
Bring! Bring!
Fluttershy gasped as Discord teleported off her couch. Then gasped again as he returned there only seconds later.
“Another summoning?” she asked timidly.
Discord rolled his eyes. “Some mare wanted me to open up a jar of pickles for them. Said it was my duty to Equestria! All because I have fingers and she has hooves!”
Softly, Fluttershy traced a hoof along Discord’s arm. “Poor Discord. Think Twilight might be able to help? She’s usually really good with figuring out stuff like this.”
“She better be,” Discord retorted. “Because I think word’s getting around how—”
Bring! Bring!
With Discord gone again, Fluttershy quickly grabbed a pocket mirror and trotted out the door.
***
“Discord-Discord-Discord-Discord-Discord,” Fluttershy again whispered into her pocket mirror. Over the last hour or so, it seemed as if word about how to summon Discord had spread across all of Equestria, and now he couldn’t go more than a single minute without being zapped somewhere new.
Thankfully, Fluttershy had brought him back each time.
“You mind hurrying up!” Discord wailed, once Fluttershy returned him yet again. “I’ve seen so many pony bathroom’s today, I could start a second career in interior design by now!”
Across the library, Twilight Sparkle searched among her many, many books for one particular title; one that she thought had been there just a few days ago.
“Spike!” Twilight called, once she caught him sneaking along the hallway outside.
The small dragon stuck his head inside the room. “Yes?”
“Did you happen to borrow a book of mine recently?”
“Perhaps,” he said sheepishly.
“A book about draconequus and legends, perhaps?”
Spike glanced at whatever he held in his claws and out from view. “Perhaps…”
“Did you perhaps show this book to some ponies?” asked Twilight gruffly.
“Just a classroom of kids for show and tell,” Spike admitted. “It was the Crusaders’ idea, honest! They said who had more fascinating books than Twilight!”
Once teleported back to them again, Discord crossed the room towards Spike with visible fire in his eyes. “So, you’re the reason for all of this? You?”
“Uhh,” Spike whispered. “Perhaps?”
Discord sneered, displaying his single fang. “Ten years, Spike. I’ll give you a ten-year head start. Use it wisely, my friend.”
“So, does that ten years thing start now? Or?”
Discord began counting down. “Nine years. Three-hundred and sixty-four days. Twenty-three hours. Fifty-nine minutes. Fifty-nine seconds.” He took a quick breath. “Nine years. Three-hundred and sixty-four days. Twenty-three hours. Fifty-nine minutes. Fifty-eight seconds.”
That seemed to do the trick, as Spike scrambled down the hallway, leaving his book behind.
Twilight levitated it to her at once, flipping it open. “Here!”
Discord, Fluttershy, and her all crowded around the text. One sentence stood out above the rest: “Reflect and speak the name of him 5 times”. It didn’t get much clearer than that.
“What are you waiting for?” Discord demanded. “Destroy it!”
Twilight shook her head. “Ancient books like these are never as simple as they seem. Either are curses or hexes or rituals or whatever this whole thing is.”
“So, is there a way to erase it?” Fluttershy asked. “That last sentence, at least?”
As Discord popped in and out from the room outside of his control, Twilight tried her best spells on the text. Nothing was removed. Or appeared damaged in the slightest.
Twilight huffed a strand of hair from her eyes. “Figures. This whole book was written in draconequus blood. That stuff… I couldn’t even imagine what it would take to remove it.”
“Then could we add to it?” Fluttershy suggested.
Twilight’s eyes shot open. “That’s it! We don’t have to erase the curse! Not when we can rewrite it!”
As soon as Discord reappeared in the room, Twilight ran to him and pricked his arm with a quill.
“Ow!” he spat. “That hurt, Twilight! Just because I might look all mean and scary on the outside, doesn’t mean I’m not rather fragile on the inside! Like a hardboiled egg!”
Ignoring him, Twilight returned to the book with dripping quill floating in her aura. She hovered it over the page and asked, “You want fifty? Five-hundred?”
“Five-hundred what?” Discord asked, before it clicked. “Oh, I get it. Better make it more. A lot more. If ponies want to summon me out of the blue, they better damn well earn it.”
After a single nod, Twilight added in the zeroes.
“Reflect and speak the name of him 5000 times…”
EPILOGUES
Princess Celestia stood before her mirror again, quill and parchment at the ready.
“Discord,” she said, and added a single dash to the top left of her parchment. Only several thousand more to go, she thought. “This might take awhile…”
“So, why not save your breath for something better?” a voice asked from inside her bedroom.
She hurried in and found Discord spread out along the covers of her bed, a single red rose held within his claws. He sniffed it, then ate it. “Give us some sugar, baby. But not real sugar, because that’s just messy. Especially on bedsheets. That stuff would just get everywhere. Eww. So coarse and dry—”
Celestia used her aura to snap his jaw shut.
“Why not save your breath for something better?” she asked him.
***
The Birthday Stallion sat alone at his desk, working late into the night as usual. Only once the last employee left the work floor did he dare open his desk drawer and retrieve what lay inside.
A single cupcake and candle. He lit it with a match.
To think it had already been a year since his last birthday; when he was nothing more than a child with no responsibilities or bills or deadlines at all.
“Make a wish,” he muttered, blowing out his lone candle.
With a sharp pop sound, he instantly reverted back to his five-year-old self.
“Huh,” he muttered again, his adult shirt and tie hanging off him loosely. “At least this year of accountant work will help in my math class.”
Then he very quickly and energetically ran away from all responsibilities.
Author's Note
“Dude, those hay fries look disgusting! How can you even eat those?”
“You kidding? I love my fries when they’re burnt like this. Extra crunch and all!”
"Bro, why does it look as if those fries of yours are crying greasy little tears?”
“Tears of joy, friend. Tears of joy.”
This story is sponsored by 1992's "Candyman", South Park's "Hell on Earth 2006" episode, and a lot of Captain Morgan's Original Spiced Rum.
