Rainbow Dash stretched and yawned; another wonderful day in Ponyville. It was bound to be a great day of lazing around, with maybe a half hour racing against some ponies who thought they were cool enough to challenge her, just to make sure everypony still knew that she was the fastest.
There was some noise from outside, not loud but just enough to keep Dash from another well-deserved lie in. By the sun streaming in around the blinds, it couldn’t be more than mid-morning, and she felt the neighbours could be a little more considerate. She’d have to get up then, find out what was going on and maybe find an excuse to go back to bed once whoever that was had stopped banging.
She got to the door, and peered out at the house across the street. That seemed to be the source of the noise, thought there was no immediate indication of why. That was Fluttershy’s house, anyway, and even in her half-sleeping stupor, Rainbow Dash knew that if Fluttershy was making a terrible racket as early as ten in the morning, then there was a pretty good reason for doing so, and that it was probably something Rainbow Dash had volunteered to help with and then forgotten. Yelling might not lead to her friend crying, but it certainly wouldn’t get her back to her lovely, cloud-filled bed any sooner.
So Dash headed into the kitchen, and made up a cup of coffee. Once the cobwebs and clouds were blown out of her head, she might be thinking clearly enough to find out what was going on without causing a ruckus, and then she could maybe find somewhere else to sleep for the rest of the day.
The coffee worked its magic; which thankfully was quite different from unicorn magic, and could be enjoyed equally by all pony types. Half a pint later, Rainbow Dash could easily distinguish from the pounding from across the street, and the pounding in her head following an excess of partying the night before. And as her sleep-addled brain returned to normal, Rainbow Dash started to realise that something was very, very wrong.
She walked to her front door again, opened it, and stared out at the house across the street. That was Fluttershy’s house, sure enough. But Fluttershy didn’t live across the street from Rainbow Dash; nopony did. She lived in a little cottage on the edge of the Everfree Forest, on the ground and next to a road. Rainbow Dash didn’t feel the need to put her house near a road, because she didn’t walk anywhere when it was both easier and more fun to fly. So something was certainly wrong.
Rainbow Dash stuck her head out of the door now, and looked down. There was a long drop to the ground, just like there should be. That was exactly why her house was built on a foundation of clouds, to keep it off the ground. Fluttershy’s house, on the other hand – she looked again, just to be sure – wasn’t built on clouds. And yet there it was, level with Dash’s home, just a couple of strides away. And beneath it…
Dash wasn’t entirely sure she could believe her eyes at this point. Because Fluttershy’s house was surrounded by Fluttershy’s garden, just like it should be. There was even a ring of wooden fencing around the edge, and a neatly trimmed garden path leading to a gate that led right off the edge of the little patch of earth. And below, there was nothing to be seen but gleaming metal, some parts of it seeming to move as the light glinted off them. There was an impression of flames too; blue and yellow shapes reflected the sunlight so brightly that she couldn’t even tell for sure what she was looking at.
Whatever it was, there was no doubt that it was cool. It was awesome, in fact, and that wasn’t a word Rainbow Dash used often unless she was talking about herself. It was also metal, huge, and making an echoing clunking noise, like someone hammering inside a giant bathtub.
“What the…” she started, not even sure what the questions were, never mind how to answer them.
“Oh, hi! Rainbow Dash, I didn’t see you there!” It was Fluttershy, of course. She was standing in her garden, and waving over the fence. “Did you see my house? I hope it isn’t a problem, I just couldn’t find anywhere else to put it.”
“Oh, right,” Dash muttered noncommittally as a couple of wingbeats carried her over the gap between the two homes. “I didn’t know if some demon had possessed your house or something. You’re okay?”
“Yeah, I’m fine. It was a bit of a surprise, really. I mean, it was supposed to be a chicken coop really, but Angel was really scared, wondering if it was going to fall over on the house. I told him that’s impossible, but he just couldn’t cope. And I noticed that there’s a hole in the top, like there was another part that got broken off somehow. And I thought that maybe if I put my house on top, then rain wouldn’t get in, and the bunnies wouldn’t be so nervous about coming near it. I mean, you can’t see it from up here, so they’re fine.”
“Oh, good thinking.” Rainbow Dash nodded. “Would you like a coffee? I kinda got carried away and made three pints instead of one, because I was still half asleep.”
“Oh yes, that would be great. I’ve been busy this morning, trying out different things I could do with the space down there…” she gestured at the space under their hooves, and gave a little half-shrug.
“I guess that’s the banging, then,” Rainbow Dash shrugged, “You know how much this thing echoes?”
“Oh, I didn’t think about it. Should I move it a bit farther out of town, if the noise is bothering you?”
“Oh, wow, you can actually move this thing? Like a proper cloud house? I’ve not helped to move a house in like, forever. How many ponies does it take?”
“Oh, just me. It’s really easy once you get the hang of it. I thought I’d be happy enough leaving my cottage where it is, but once I started I realised there’s like so many other places I could get a better view.”
“You sure? This thing’s a lot heavier than a cloud, I’m sure. And it’s made out of metal. Where did you get it from, anyway?”
“Oh, there’s an interesting story to that. Do you remember that lecture Twilight gave us about the nature of converging infinities in mathematics, and the possible effects on different categories of magic?”
“How could I forget? It was like she scoured Canterlot for the biggest eggheads she could find, and asked them all to come along and nod so we’d feel like the only ponies who didn’t understand. She said it’s an important lesson, but I didn’t learn a thing.”
“Me either. And I was even awake for most of it. But Twilight said it was very important, and one of the other scientists thought so too, and she told Princess Celestia, and she thought it was important, and she asked us to go tell…”
“Yeah, I remember that. I was the one delivering the messages, remember?”
“Yes, and we’re all really grateful. But anyway, this weekend was the street market. And you’d never guess what happened there…”
Two Bits, Two Bits, Two Bits
“How much is this?” a chirpy voice asked.
Discord took a deep breath that made his chest expand to three times its normal size, ground his teeth (conjuring a pair of false teeth from the air with each hand, so that he could grind them even more than normal), and replied in a put-upon, frustrated voice that he had to admit was an improvement even on his normal oratorical repertoire: “Is it from the pile to my right?”
“Uhh, I don’t think so.”
That surprised the draconequus, but of course he couldn’t let himself show it. The script called for the potential customer to give a cautious “Yes?” in response to that and the next three questions, and this was the first time in the whole weekend that somepony had said anything different.
He looked down to see a sky blue unicorn with a spiked mane, was holding up a battered assemblage of cogs and gears with her magic. It wobbled slightly in the air, as the filly looked down with some concentration at her own hooves. Or more precisely, at the letters ‘L’ and ‘R’ that decorated her shoes.
“Yes it is.”
“Oh! Why’s that then? Look, this one says ‘left’.”
Discord sighed. Here he was, being given a perfect opportunity for some visual humour, and he just didn’t feel up to it after the gruelling weekend that the Princesses had subjected him to. Still, as the spirit of chaos, there were such things as standards. He had to do it, but he didn’t take any particular pleasure in it.
“How about now?” he asked, after a brief sleight-of-hoof which ended with the unfortunate youngster’s legs in a slightly different configuration.
“Oh, now it’s right!” she beamed, and finally turned her head to look up at Discord, with all the pride of someone who’d solved a particularly difficult problem. “So how much is it?”
“You got it from this pile?” Discord asked, displaying the patience of a very disgruntled saint.
“The one on your right!”
“Yes. The one with this sign on the front of it?” Discord pointed to a stone tablet, propped up against the lowest part of the pile of debris and assorted knick-knacks. The pile did indeed start to his right, but as soon as he rose from his seat it became clear that this was merely the foothills of a much larger mound of ancient and mysterious objects which extended behind Discord, and whose summit was hidden in the clouds.
“Yes?”
Discord released the breath he’d been holding, allowed the false teeth to disappear in a puff of smoke, hastily concealed the smoke behind a convenient ‘no smoking’ sign, opened a portal to another word through which he thrust a pack of cards, and completed a half dozen other stealth puns too quickly for anypony to properly realise what he was doing. Finally, this conversation was going the way he expected. It wasn’t much, but it was a small victory.
“The sign that says ‘Everything in this pile: two bits’?”
“I don’t know, I can’t read.” Discord shook his head in disbelief, but of course he shouldn’t have been surprised. The filly was quite small, and seemed barely able to lift an object with her magic.
“Well, that’s what it says. Everything in the pile is two bits.”
“Wow.”
“So do you want it?”
“The pile?” the filly gasped again, looking up at the towering peak of trash over Discord’s shoulder. “Wow. No, I don’t think there’s space in my room.”
“No, that’s two bits per item.”
“Oh. There’s a lot of items.”
“Yes, there are.”
They stared at each other for a few moments, wondering who was going to break the impasse. Discord felt like he had somehow lost track of the conversation, like they were talking about completely different things, and he wasn’t a being normally prone to confusion. The little pony’s blank expression, on the other hand, was something he was entirely at home with. The unicorn eventually looked away first, as she couldn’t maintain the magic long enough to hold the item any longer, and it clattered to the stony ground.
“How much is this?” She picked it up by hoof this time, and held it towards him.
“It’s in the pile, right?” Discord answered, his frustration of the last few days coming right back, and you know what the sign–”
“No.”
“No?”
“No.” She shook her head emphatically, dropping the strange gearbox again.
“That didn’t come from the big pile?” Discord picked the item up and looked at it in confusion. He didn’t have the first clue what it was, which meant he was pretty sure it might have come from the pile behind him. Everything on his table right now had been carefully selected, items that he valued enough to put a high price on, but not quite enough to actually want to keep them. Whereas the pile to his right, and to a greater extent the mountain of trash behind him, could have been better categorised as ‘everything else’.
“Yes, it did,” the filly nodded, but didn’t stop shaking her head until a few moments later, and ended up swaying dizzily on the spot as a result.
“But you just said ‘no’.”
“Yes!”
“No!”
“Yes! I said the item on the pile, and you said–”
“No! It’s not on the pile, it’s in your claw.”
“Oh, I see. But it was in the pile, and then it was in your hoof.”
“Yes!”
“So it’s two bits. Like the sign says.”
“Oh, okay.” Just like that, the filly sauntered off, falling over about two steps later. Discord watched her go, shaking his head in disbelief. She hadn’t seemed at all scared by his strange and terrible form, or confused by his unusual mannerisms. Perhaps, he speculated, it didn’t make that much difference to her because she was perpetually confused in every case; too young to know what was normal, and therefore unable to recognise the abnormal. That was a little disheartening to one who had spent his life raising abnormality to the point where it was almost an artform.
After a while, he threw the strange box of gears over his shoulder, where it landed somewhere near the summit of Mount Miscellaneous and dislodged a junkslide large enough to engulf a couple of villages (one of them constructed entirely by dust bunnies) before disgorging a few new items from the upper reaches of the heap onto the smaller pile to his right.
“What’s wrong with Featherhead?” a familiar voice raised from his introspection, just as the unlucky unicorn moved out of sight. He turned back to his left, and saw one of the kindest ponies in the whole of Ponyville looking over the arrangements of objects, art, and objets d’art on his workbench. “She looked like she was having trouble.”
“Oh, I know,” Discord said philosophically, “You know what the young are like, before they’ve learned to fully master their own bodies. Looks to me like she’s got two left hooves.”
“Most ponies have,” this time it was Fluttershy’s turn to be confused.
“Oh yes, but usually on the same side of their body.”
There was a pause. A long pause. Discord had cast his gaze back in the direction the filly had gone now, but even so he could feel Fluttershy’s angriest stare directed at the side of his head.
“Okay, okay!” He held up one hand, clicked his fingers, and reality changed in some small but significant way. “She’s fine. You can stop staring now.”
“Hmm?”
Discord turned his head to look at the figure directly in front of him. Fluttershy was getting quite good at machiavellian mind games now, probably as a result of having learned from the best. He really couldn’t tell if she’d stopped staring as soon as he did what she asked, and was feigning disinterest out of some desire to make him realise that he knew when he was doing something wrong without any direct signal from her; or if something on the display of his wares had got her attention so completely that she genuinely hadn’t thought of giving him a stern talking to for his mistreatment of one thoroughly confusingly bemused filly. Either way, there was nothing he could do about it now, because the only way to find out for sure would be to go back and redo his earlier act of mischief, which was unthinkable. Quite apart from the very real possibility of losing his standing invite to afternoon tea if Fluttershy ever found out, it would be quite tasteless, and doing the same trick twice was quite out of keeping with his nature as a spirit of chaos.
“Oh, sorry,” she shook her head, “I was just looking at these things. Are those life-size statues of me, Twilight, Rainbow Dash, Luna, and Spike?”
“Indeed they are. The work of one of the greatest sculptors who never existed, which is to say, me. I use them for flashback sequences sometimes, it’s easier than getting real ponies to play along.”
“Oh. That’s…” she seemed to notice the price stickers attached to each item on the table for the first time. “You’re selling all of these?”
“Oh, yes!”
“You think somepony would pay fifty thousand bits for a statue of me? Why?”
“Well, of course if I have to lose such a precious heirloom, I would have to be sure that the buyer knows how important it is.”
“An heirloom? I thought you said you made it.”
“Oh, yes, yes. But of course, if I was ever to have a heir, then…” Discord thought ahead for a few moments as he spoke, and saw several ways the conversation could go badly. He quickly retrieved from the table a device for making blankets out of pony hair, as well as a couple of other trinkets that could have caused him considerable embarrassment if Fluttershy happened to notice them, and tossed them all onto the mountain behind him. There was a crash, a rumble like distant thunder, and just maybe a scream on the edge of hearing.
“Why aren’t Rarity and Celestia on here? Did somepony already buy them?”
“Oh, no. They’re on the pile over here. I thought it might be easier to sell them that way.”
And so, Fluttershy came to stand in front of the massive pile of all the things that Discord didn’t care that much about. On that heap, there were indeed statues of the Princess of the Sun and of Rarity. In front of the Rarity figure was a small sign, proclaiming the low price they were available for as if it was some kind of special offer.
“Why are they… what is this stuff?”
“Ohhh, this?” Discord gestured to the pile, the table in front of him, the scaffold that looked like a typical market stall, and the frankly quite ridiculous costume. “This is me getting rid of all the things I don’t need, as ordered.”
“Oh, I’m sure the Princess didn’t mean… I suppose… well, it’s better than throwing it away, I guess. Maybe they didn’t need to worry so much. And you’ll meet a lot of interesting ponies if you manage to sell most of this stuff.”
“Oh, yes, yes. Everypony wants something from this pile, I’m sure.”
Fluttershy’s mouth opened, and closed again. And opened, and closed. She wasn’t really sure what she should say. When she’d seen this stall at the side of the street on market day, she’d assumed there was some kind of prank behind it. Discord was a lively sort, and he was always coming up with new antics with which to entertain the good ponies of this town. But now, she thought back to a recent discussion with the Princesses, and wondered if they’d been a little too harsh.
Somepony had said that Discord’s home was causing some kind of trouble on a dimensional stability level, by containing an infinite amount of objects that he might only use once, for a single joke. It wasn’t something Fluttershy really understood, but Celestia and Twilight Sparkle were the only ponies she could think of who really understood anything about infinity, and they said that different kinds of infinity interfered with each other, and Discord had to have a clearout, to prove that he didn’t want to unintentionally cause havoc across all Equestria.
It had really been mean, of course. Discord just had to say that he didn’t want to cause havoc by accident, and then he couldn’t back down without upstaging himself. So he’d signed a contract, in triplicate, with three extra hands fighting among themselves over a single pen. An agreement, that he would look through the contents of his garage (whatever that word might mean to an extradimensional being), and would dispose of all the items that he had no use for and didn’t actually care about.
Fluttershy hadn’t expected it to be such a large pile, and now she felt bad about her small and silent part in bullying him into the agreement.
“Is this all stuff you don’t care about?” she asked, hoping he wouldn’t go over the top. Of course, she knew her friend, and knew that anything he did would be turned up to eleven, but she could still hope that disposing of everything like that wouldn’t be too hard on him.
“Yes. And that I have no use for. This is entirely a collection of ephemera, which I have neither a practical nor emotional need for.” As he spoke, his brow wrinkled for a moment, and then he tossed the prohibition against ending with a preposition onto the huge pile.
“Well, I guess that’s good,” she shrugged, “What’s this?”
The object in question was pink, about the size of one of her legs, and seemed to be made from some kind of rubber. It glistened strangely in the afternoon light, and she had picked it simply as the most colourful object in sight. She felt that as a good friend, it was practically her duty to buy something from the pile, and help Discord out of his predicament.
“No idea,” he shrugged, “Never seen it before.”
“But, it was in your garage, wasn’t it?”
“Don’t think so. Most of this junk was, but not that.”
“So…” the conversation seemed to be taking one of those confusing turns into metaphorical territory which were all too common when talking to Discord. She liked to think it was one of his adorable quirks, but it could still be a little disconcerting when she thought she knew the score one minute, only to be completely lost at sea the next. Especially when she was literally lost at sea, which had somehow happened once when she asked Discord to explain a particularly confusing metaphor. “Why are you selling it, then?”
“I’m doing as I was instructed. I have sworn, and also signed a contract saying that I am to dispose of every item that I have no personal use or care for.”
“And this… Ohhh. I think Celestia just meant things in your house that you have no use for.”
“That’s not what the contract said,” Discord answered with every sign of enjoyment. “I have to sell everything I have no use for, no more, no less.”
“So this is everything in the world that you don’t want?” Fluttershy couldn’t help her voice becoming a little shrill with that pronouncement, “Can’t you–”
“Oh, of course not.”
“Good. Because–”
“It’s everything in the multiverse that I don’t need.” As always, the draconequus’s comic timing was perfect. For a moment neither of them spoke, and then Fluttershy was too shocked to even wonder what that word meant.
“But… that means some of this stuff belongs to somepony else!”
“Oh now, I wouldn’t steal. Whatever do you think of me? It’s like you’re convinced I’m some recurring villain, a nemesis to be defeated or redeemed in every appearance.”
“I didn’t mean–”
“No, I entirely understand. You think that I am evil at heart, and need constant vigilance. But in this case, I thought it would be easier just to take unwanted items in general. You know, those that fell down the back of the sofa, or into a wormhole, or something. I admit, I do seem to have acquired a considerable number of mismatched socks from laundry hampers and drying machines, so it’s possible my abilities may not be able to correctly identify the ownership or otherwise of socks. I almost wonder if… But in any case, I can promise you that nopony will have an objection to my disposal of this incredible collection of miscellania.”
It took the pony quite some time to work out exactly what he’d said, but he didn’t seem to mind the delay.
“So… this is all your stuff, or things that somepony threw away or lost?”
“You got it.”
Fluttershy still wasn’t sure what she should think, but there didn’t seem to be anything that could cause problems here. Discord wasn’t slipping back into the ways of chaos, he was simply doing what nopony expected and helping his neighbours. Tidying up all the lost things in the world seemed like a heck of a good deed, even if it might take him a while to put those things in touch with somepony who actually had a use for them.
“That’s really sweet!” she grinned, and fluttered a little way off the ground to give the draconequus a proper hug. That done, she realised that Discord’s plan would go a whole lot smoother if she could help him to sort through the big pile of junk. It was entirely possible there might be something useful there.
“Ohh, this is nice!” Fluttershy squealed. The object between her hooves this time was a pink teapot with yellow butterflies stencilled on it. It would certainly come in useful, especially if she managed to break her current teapot. She wasn’t the most careful pony in the world, she had to admit, in a house where there were often animals chasing each other or generally getting underhoof, and as the most commonly used piece of china in her home, she was always thankful for a spare teapot just in case. “How much is it?”
“Two bits,” Discord muttered, just the faintest hint of sarcasm in his voice.
“I’ll take it,” Fluttershy grinned cheerfully, put two bits on top of a small pile on the end of the table, and carefully fitted the teapot into her bag with her previous finds. She was glad she’d stopped now; as well as bringing her friend up to speed on all the interesting news from her menagerie, an hour and a half digging through a pile of what seemed to be junk had turned up quite a few unexpected gems. Not literal gems, though there were undoubtedly some of those in the stack as well, but things that would fit perfectly into some room in Fluttershy’s house, or that she knew just who they would be a perfect gift for, or something of that sort.
“Just goes to show,” she called back from the bottom of a pit larger than her house, which she’d somehow managed to excavate from the second smallest pile in the range of junk mountains, “One pony’s trash is –”
“Another man’s trees?” Discord completed, “Oh, sorry. Wrong franchise. Still, I understand the sentiment, I’m sure. If you find any more things that take your fancy, I might even have to start saying ‘thank you’!”
A moment later, the call from the hole came again:
“How much is th–”
“Two bits!” Discord stamped his hoof, and coupled with whatever it was that Fluttershy had just unearthed, the vibration was enough to send a torrent of junk cascading down a distant mountain, surging towards them at a frightening speed. The pony’s eyes went wide and she froze for a moment, staring at the surging wave of tumbling items as it swept closer. But she’d been teaching some of her woodland friends the problems with that approach for quite some time now, hoping that no more bunnies would find themselves transfixed by an onrushing cart. And she had the presence of mind to snap herself out of it, half leaping and half flying out of her pit just before it was overtaken by the slide.
“Oh…” she whispered, shaking just a little, “I guess I’ll have to look for another one. I bet there’s a whole new load of treasure in the…”
“Hmm?” Discord raised an eyebrow, looking down at Fluttershy’s wide-eyed stare. Something had surprised her almost as much as the junkslide, but this time there was no thunder of tonnes of boxes grinding over each other, so Discord assumed that whatever was looming behind him wasn’t actually dangerous.
“Are you selling that?” Fluttershy squeaked, a hoof pointing out at something high in one of the foothills.
“If it’s in the pile, it’s for sale.” He said firmly, and started to turn towards whatever it was that had surprised her so.much.
“How much is–”
“Two! Bits!” Discord’s head snapped round reflexively. If he’d waited for her to finish the question, he might have seen what ‘that’ was, and then he might have given a different answer. Maybe, because the object’s presence in the pile was a sure sign that he didn’t actually want it. But something like that, he thought later, he could have built a much larger prank around. And in the heat of the moment, his frustration at having answered the same question two-hundred and seventeen times over the course of the last two days got the better of him. The reply was automatic by now.
“Even for that?” Fluttershy gasped, unable to believe it.
“Yes, even for that. It’s in the pile, it’s two bits.”
“Are you suuuure?” she drew out the last syllable, making it clear with just a long vowel sound that she thought her friend was doing something very silly. But Discord hadn’t gotten where he was today by ever backing down on something he’d said, regardless of common sense or of ludicrous ambiguity in a contract.
“No, but while it’s you, I’ll keep my word.”
“Wow, you really are a good friend!” Fluttershy beamed, tossed two bits onto the pile, and sprinted up the side of the junk mountain to collect her purchase. “I’m not quite sure what it is, but it’s so shiny! And if it doesn’t work, I’m sure the roosters will love perching on that bit at the top. Maybe their little ones can explore it? It could be like a castle for them!”
Discord looked up at Fluttershy’s new toy. He had never seen it before, so he could only assume it had fallen down the back of the sofa in some other dimension. If so, it must have been a pretty big sofa. The thing wasn’t even on one of the massive piles of junk – it was a pile all by itself, but had been concealed thus far by a covering of other junk that it had now sloughed off like some lizard hatching from an egg.
It was huge. He couldn’t imagine using it as a chicken coop, but then he couldn’t imagine using it for anything. That was why it was on the pile with the miscellaneous gearboxes, the keys that didn’t fit anything, an infinite number of paste gems, and other ephemera. It might have been a great tool for someone looking to take over the world, but Discord had never been that kind of villain. He’d never seriously thought about killing the Princesses to prevent them challenging his rule, because he wasn’t a tyrant. And so he had no use for a weapon that wasn’t some kind of game.
This one, it had surely come from a very different kind of world. As Fluttershy somehow managed to get the thing moving, he thought it might actually be bigger than that castle of Twilight’s, that looked so much like a fortress of spun sugar.
Then a deluge of detritus rained down onto Discord’s table, sliding off the giant robot as it Fluttershy somehow coaxed it to its feet. It might have buried Discord alive, but the draconequus already had a new scheme in mind, and was halfway across Ponyville on his quest to obtain a truly terrifying quantity of confectionary made to precise, indistinguishable standards.
