Shy Continuum

How long has it been? Three, four, maybe five years since he met the butter yellow mare? It was extremely bizarre to think he had managed to grow a bond with someone as quickly as that. Normally it would take centuries for someone to even think of liking him. He wasn’t the easiest person to like. Even he could admit that. He had come to this little pocket around three thousand years ago with Amanda, who now called herself Screwball, so that they could attempt a relationship. She wanted to be a Q instead of a human, and, as he was curious enough to have caused feline genocide, he, for whatever reason, decided ‘hey, why not adopt this psychopath?’.

Even now he questioned his odd choice.

Well, it had been a very good choice apparently, since this world of sunshine and rainbows wore her off her lust for killing. Yeah, she had been quite the Amazon during the war; he preferred her being a little naïve filly to that beast. Maybe it wasn’t so insane to Hasbro-fy her?

While he and Screwy were trying out a relationship, his actual kid was attempting to get on mama’s good side, who had gone back in time to get with Worf just to spite him… Yeah, she wasn’t the type of woman you should scorn, because she’d go with a pea-brained hammerhead behind your back. Then again, she wasn’t exactly the loyal type.

Screwy was having a nap at the moment. She was so used to the human thing that she couldn’t help it, which he allowed. Discord had been fine for a while, just getting out all his mad ideas and to vent all his chaotic thoughts. He didn’t expect the equines around here to be so order-driven, it was enough to choke even the most goodie do-gooder Q. He’d fixed it and, for that, they decided to fight the omnipotent being. Discord had been thinking about what a nap would be like, so he let them turn him to stone to give it a shot. It wouldn’t have been that bad if he hadn’t been used as a garden gnome.

Fluttershy—a name that was as ridiculous as Twilight Sparkle or all the other extremely silly names—was very… different from what he was used to. She was kind, a little too kind; she was as innocent as they could come, as loving and caring as someone could be. Hell, if she could get him to give a damn about her, she could probably get anybody to care about her. It was weird that he actually wanted her to be happy, wanted her around, and possibly enjoyed her company... an actual friend. Not someone who tolerated him, not someone who held their wrath on the inside, but someone who actually gave a damn about him. She forgave him when he’d stabbed them all in the back, which he’d done just so he could liven things up, and she had managed to make him feel guilty about it.

He, someone who had ended the lives of millions with a snap of his fingers, felt guilty over betraying one little pegasus who could barely even fly.

He didn’t really know how to feel about her. He’d actually gone as far as to try to change himself just so he didn’t scare her, which apparently wasn’t very wise to do. Q could fade away if they tried being something they weren’t, so that was apparently a thing? He’d felt jealous when she got that hippie to go with her to some party instead of him; He’d gotten involved in some role-playing game with a red horse and a baby dragon... if he didn’t know any better it sounded like he was settling down. Well, he was a father, the only father in the Continuum, so he didn’t know if this was how this was supposed to go.

“Discord?” He’d been sitting on her couch while pondering what he wanted to do. What he was going to do. He might scare off his one true friend; he might not. It was a little scary not knowing something. That was possibly why he remained there: because it was filled with new things and new experiences. Their views on friendship were practically cultish, but, still, he was attached to them.

And there she was. That yellow mare, the one who possibly taught him what being a mortal was like without actually becoming one. “What’s wrong? You seem troubled.”

“Not at all… well ok, maybe a little.” She actually mattered, how she felt mattered, as did her reaction to this. “I’ve wanted to tell you something for a while now. I’ve been thinking it over for the past few days and I'm not sure how you’d react to it…”

Fluttershy wasn’t sure what to expect. This wasn’t like Discord, to seem so vulnerable and even... a little frightened? What was it that was upsetting him? The Element of Kindness smiled warmly, walking into the kitchen to make some tea. “It might scare you, and I don’t fancy losing the only real friend I have.”

“Discord, you don’t have to tell me if you don’t want to.” She prepared the tea, walking over and putting it on her coffee table. He seemed so... so off today. She didn’t know what was up with him. “You can tell me when you’re ready. We have time.” He did. He had all the time in the universe, but she didn’t. She was in her early twenties now, it still felt like a day to him, and he didn’t like it. if it were up to him, he’d make her immortal, but he knew better than to do that. Her opinion mattered to him, which was also slightly frightening since barely anybody’s opinion mattered to him. Other than his son and extremely unstable adopted daughter, and Jean, not many people mattered.

She could see the turmoil in his eyes. Once filled with youth and childishness, they were now filled with old age and possible wisdom. It was like a stranger was looking back at her when he looked into her genuinely sweet cyan orbs.

“I’m not a Draconequus, there’s no such thing. My name isn’t Discord, I’m not a spirit, and I’m not the last of my kind.” He’d grown attached to that name. Discord. It suited him. The Continuum was starting to figure out the idea of having children, maybe the next thing was names?

He had a name, he’d chosen it a couple centuries after he’d been made, but most Q just called themselves Q. Quinn hadn’t been wrong that it had become stagnant. His war had shaken things up enough for there to be change, but children weren’t going to be enough. Living with these mortals, he could see just how arrogant the Continuum had become before he’d changed it. Yes, he possibly could’ve gone about it another way, but, sometimes, words weren’t loud enough.

“I’m a Q from the Q Continuum. I’m a God, not just in name like Tia or Lulu. I’m an actual omniscient deity… I’ve lived countless millennia, to the point where a thousand years is just a minute for me.”

Fluttershy had always wondered if Discord really was a god. He had such power, such abilities, it was crazy to believe otherwise- Even Celestia called him a God. But this was different. He was part of a species, there were more like him. Were they as powerful as he was? He sounded so old, so tired. It was enough for her to know he wasn’t lying or telling half-truths. He’d wanted to say this to her for a while, wanted to come out and tell her that Discord… wasn’t real. The Draconequus she’d gotten to know was a mask, a façade for an older being to wear, one of the many outfits he liked to wear. She wasn’t sure how to process this. She couldn’t tell him off for it, she had encouraged it after all.

“Discord isn’t real?” He gave the hand gesture ‘not entirely’ which the author didn’t know how to describe. You know, the one you do with your hands that makes it look like its surfing on air?. Forget it. “So, who are you really?” She wanted to ask if the years they’d known each other meant anything. He started to glow, and in a dimmed down flash, he was in his old form… captain outfit and all. It surprised her, but she didn’t run away. “What’s that? Is that your real form?”

“No, my real form would cause your bones to melt and your eyes to turn to ice, but this is the form my people are most commonly in. It’s called a human.” Twilight had mentioned humans when she went to that other world, but she said that they looked just like them, just bipedal and ape-ish. He didn’t look like that. No, he was something different.

“Discord started out as a façade, but over the years, the line between the mask and myself has blurred. I’m still Discord, this is just what's behind the curtains.” She was a little disturbed by the strange being, how little fur it had and how off it was. It was like nothing she’d seen before. “It doesn’t scare you too much, does it? I haven’t exactly been in this situation before… which is a lot considering I’m older than that sun of yours.”

He wasn’t going to tell her than him staying here was what caused the once weak magic to suddenly grow in power. When he eventually leaves, it would be like the dark ages of the arcane; he doubted Celestia would be able to hold the illusion that she raised the sun anymore.

No, Celestia didn’t raise the sun, he just made it seem like she did. It gave her and her dear sister a sense of purpose and he wanted to see what happened if mortals believed they had control over celestial bodies. Apparently, it made them very arrogant and self-righteous. Luna was broody and Celestia made herself seem like the all-mother when the two were really just puppets who didn’t know that the strings had yet to leave their hooves. They would forever be fun to play with, especially since Celly had that Klingon ‘no-nonsense’ thing about her.

“No, no. It’s ok. I’m just surprised, that’s all.” Fluttershy was hiding how confused she was, and that it hurt her slightly. Discord, the fun-loving Draconequus had been a persona for an older deity that was ancient and likely bored. “It’s just... does our friendship disappear with Discord?”

“That’s what caused me to come out. I only care about five people: my son, my daughter, a human, an android, and you.” It would be six, but she still owed him for that Worf thing. Fluttershy blinked a couple times, surprised to hear the words ‘son’ and ‘daughter’. He was a parent? “Oh, right. Forgot I never mentioned that. Well, I have a son who is currently trying to get on his mother’s good side... likely failing, considering what a backstabber she is. Why I ever went out with her, I’ll never understand. ...and remember that pink earth pony with swirly eyes when I took over? That’s my adopted daughter…”

A psychopath who should probably never leave the planet lest she commits omnicide. Again. Eighty dead under her belt. Yeah, didn’t really trust her that much yet. Maybe he should make her mortal and lock her memories away? He cared slightly for her, but he also liked being alive and she’d been extremely savage during the war.

Being in this room wasn’t going to do much to help this. He needed more space, and that was exactly what he was going to get… and give.

He snapped his fingers, and, in a flash, the two of them were above the planet’s atmosphere. It scared the pegasus for a few moments, but he made a cloud appear under her, so she wouldn’t fear falling into the starry abyss around them. This was better. A gravity-devoid environment where that demonic rabbit wouldn’t be able to interrupt anything. Well, there was gravity, but it was just easier to say that there wasn’t. Fluttershy looked down to the planet below, her eyes wide at the orb of blues and browns below. There were some greens but those weren’t very easy to see.

“Discord?” He hadn’t said his name, had he? Well, it wouldn’t hurt him if he let her keep calling him that “What is this?”

“Oh nothing, just wanted a change of atmosphere. We’re in space above your planet’s atmosphere. For a planet the size of Pluto, it's not that bad.” Pluto wasn’t a planet, but he didn’t really have the time to care. “Behind us is your moon, and over there is the sun. Tia doesn’t actually raise it, I just let her think she does, it makes her extremely arrogant to the point that it’s funny.” Probably only funny to him, but he made many jokes that were only funny to him. He snapped his fingers and held out his hand, holding the whole of the mare’s solar system in his hand “It’s difficult to try and see things from your points of view when I’m able to create and destroy however I please… the only thing I can’t seem to force is the friendship you’ve given to me. I can try, but then I’d end up like Sombra, with loads of slaves I want to believe are my friends but aren’t.”

He probably shouldn’t have shown her he could do that. He snapped his fingers, putting the solar system back to where it was before. “Scared yet?”

She wanted to be scared. She had known Discord, or whatever he called himself, was powerful- but not this powerful. It hurt her brain trying to process what she’d seen. Her whole world was so small... they were so small to him. He wasn’t kidding when he said was a god. He legitimately was a god.

It knotted in her stomach when she remembered how rude and hostile her friends had been, how they still were, and he just let them do it despite having the power to crush all of them in between his fingers. And he valued being her friend… shouldn’t she be afraid of that? Shouldn’t Fluttershy, the timidest mare in Equestria, be scared of this extremely powerful creature? No… she pitied him. He was ancient, he was forever living. In her opinion, immortality was the curse of loneliness. It had been what attracted her to Discord the first time, how lonely he was. Seeing what he was and what he could do, it made her feel even more sorry for him.

“No…” That was surprising. “Are there... are there more like us? Like our sun and our moon?” Last time he showed a pony how tiny their world really was, they became cuckoo. Hm, what a brave mare... She was supposed to be terrified, yet here she was, asking him about what he ruled.

“The stars around us? Each one is a sun. Some of them have their own planets, their own moons, their own people. Some may look similar to you, though the majority are bipedal like this form I’m in.” She felt tiny to be around such massiveness. She’d always believed Equestria was enormous when it wasn’t at all. There was so much... too much. She wanted to see it, to touch it and to meet the aliens that she never knew were real. Discord himself was an alien, literally, and he could take her to all of these places. The Guide to the Galaxy.

“You don’t mind? I was kind of expecting you to get all shouty and threaten to blast me with those little trinkets. FYI, they don’t work. It just made you feel more secure believing they did. The 'trapped in stone' thing was me testing out what a nap felt like.”

Surprisingly, Fluttershy didn’t care. Why should she? Everything she believed in, it was extremely minor and insignificant to the world outside her world. When she looked to the sky, she always thought that they were just fancy lights in the sky, but, no, they were all their own suns with their own planets and their own ponies. Or people? All her fears, they suddenly felt silly. She was scared of holidays, of newsponies, she was afraid of her own shadow for a couple years. What did she have to fear when she had a deity by her side? He was beyond powerful, and Fluttershy believed their times together had been genuine, even if Discord was a mask for him to wear.

“I... don’t think I can be?” She opened her wings, a very faint smile on her face “You’re so powerful, you could destroy us without any effort at all, but you don’t. I… I actually feel sorry.”

“What for?”

“To be so powerful and so old, it must be hard to connect to other beings. I believe that you were genuinely trying to make friends, but you didn’t know how, or were reluctant because you’d outlive us?” She was as sharp as ever. He’d taken notice of her sharpness, like an obsidian dagger. After he’d said his little riddle, Fluttershy had asked to go home, she’d figured it out in a snap! She couldn’t be manipulated by him, not without considerable effort on his part. That, and he didn’t really want to. It was so rare to find such a genuinely innocent and pure being. “I’m happy that you believed you could share this with me. Is it alright if I keep calling you Discord?”

“The name has grown on me. Might as well.” This went better than he thought it would. “You know, I could take you anywhere and anywhen. Time is nothing to me… well, it is, considering that everyone I meet always dies... Leaving me behind. I’m tired. Tired of being alone… I have my son, but he’ll go off someday to do his own thing. I’m not sure what to do with Screwy, the human and android I mentioned tolerate me more than like me… my own people don’t tolerate me as much as they do. I had a girlfriend, but she kept going behind my back to spite me. In some very pathetic and pitiful way, you’re all I’ve got.” The yellow pegasus wrapped her forelimbs around his waist, hugging him tightly, and he let her. “Look at what you’ve done, you’ve made me all sappy.”

"You're more sweet than sappy."

"Semantics."