They'd finalized a plan. Most of the group had already drifted away, but Rainbow Dash, Starlord, and Tony were still bunched together, talking.

"I'm really sorry for shooting you," Starlord said. "You should probably cover your wings, though. They're really unprotected."

Rainbow shook her head. "I can't. I need my feathers open to the air. They let me feel even the smallest changes in the wind, which comes in handy in unlikely circumstances, and I can't steer worth dirt without them. You saw how clumsy my flying was with my wings tucked in."

Tony hummed thoughtfully. "What if you only had a thin covering that could wrap around each feather?"

She shrugged. "If that existed, was textured enough for the wind to catch it, and was still strong enough to be worth anything, I'd take it."

Tony grinned. "In that case, want to borrow some nanobots?"

Her eyes widened. "Do you even have to ask?"

"Give me one second, I'll fetch the stuff we used to patch the ship. Don't need them for that anymore, and they should be more than enough."

He returned soon, holding a towering handful of grey goo. Rainbow wrinkled her nose in distaste. "That's the nanobots?"

"Don't sell them short. Watch this." The goo suddenly rose up, forming a hard and shiny sphere, then a cube, then a pyramid. Then they rose into the air, forming two streams that spiraled around each other. Tony sent them dancing around Rainbow's head, smiling at her awed expression, then split the streams. Each one glided to one of her wings and spread across it like water, forming intricate patterns of red and gold.

"They'll respond to your mental commands," he informed her, "but you probably won't need them to. They're just there to protect your wings."

She turned and stared at her wings, focusing hard. The patterns of red and gold shifted, until her inner feathers were red and her outer feathers were gold. Then she reversed it. She laughed out loud. "That's amazing!"

"Neat!" Starlord exclaimed. "Don't suppose I can get some of those?"

Tony rolled his eyes. "I only have a limited supply, all right? I need what's left for my suit, they don't grow on f-"

Scootaloo and Spiderman were hanging from the ceiling. Specifically, Spiderman was teaching Scootaloo how to hang from the ceiling (she'd begged). Her hooves made it harder to hold on, but she refused to stop trying.

"Okay, good, now slowly release more web. Try to descend smoothly. There you go!"

Side by side, the two glided down, very near Doctor Strange. Scootaloo glanced at him uncertainly. "Uh, are you okay? Hello? Mister Strange?"

"He's actually a doctor, he gets super annoyed when you don't realize that."

"Oh! I thought that was a fake name."

Spiderman shrugged. Upside down. Scootaloo didn't know how he managed to keep his balance, doing that. "So did I, but apparently Strange is his actual last name, and he's actually a doctor. Weird, right?"

"Eh, not weirder than the rest of you guys, not to me." She turned back to him. "Hey! Doctor Strange! Are you okay?"

By this point, several of the Guardians had gathered around to look at him with consternation. Suddenly he gave a huge gasp, as if he was surfacing out of deep water, and looked out of them. Scootaloo, startled by the sudden change, let go of her web and dropped several feet. "Ow!"

"That's our next lesson!" Spiderman called down at her. "Not dropping when you're startled!"

"Are you all right?" Mantis asked Doctor Strange.

He nodded shakily. "I was looking at possible futures."

Scootaloo popped up eagerly. "How many are there?"

"Over twenty-five million."

She raised her eyebrows. "That's a lot. How many do we win?"

"Three." Doctor Strange sighed deeply. "And one of them is a really long shot."

Spiderman let go of the rope and turned, landing nimbly on his feet. "But we already made the plan! Do we need to change it?"

Doctor Strange paused. "It... has as good a chance as anything else. And no, I can't tell you all what's going to happen. That changes the future, and never to a path that works."

Scootaloo turned to go, then turned back. She had to ask. "Doctor Strange?"

"Yes?"

"If you know about Discord... did you ever hear anything about the Elements of Harmony? Twilight is hoping they'll be strong enough to counter the Infinity Gauntlet, just in case Thanos gets the whole thing. It'd be nice to have a backup plan..."

"I've only heard a little about them," Doctor Strange admitted, "and never from very reliable sources. Some old and muddled books seem to suggest that Discord made them, or at least has a strong link to them, but I think they must be wrong."

Scootaloo nodded. "Well, yeah! He'd be kinda dumb if he made the only things that can stop him."

Strange shrugged. "True. But perhaps he wanted a force to rival the Infinity Stones. Every source agrees that he utterly despises Infinity."

"I don't understand. You make Infinity sound like a person."

He shrugged again. "That's what's implied. Usually it's considered female--the opposite of Discord, I suppose. She wants things to last forever. Discord wants constant change. It stands to reason that they would be opposed."

Something he'd said jiggled at a memory. She'd heard that phrase before. But she couldn't figure out which phrase, so instead she protested, "Discord isn't the opposite of Infinity! He's the opposite of harmony! He's a spirit of disharmony, how could he create harmony?"

Mantis, who'd been listening to all this, stepped forward. "Of course Discord didn't create Harmony. It was there from the beginning of the universe."

"Huh?" Scootaloo asked.

"Where I'm from, there is a legend. At the beginning of the universe, there were two cosmic beings: Infinity and Harmony. Infinity wanted everything to last forever and be the same, but Harmony loved different things, resounding together as one, and things that continued to change. Often they quarreled, but sometimes they came together to accomplish great things. But it is said they vanished, long ago. Nobody knows where. Some people say they fell into darkness and strife, and lost themselves."

There it was again, that feeling of familiarity. Somewhere in that tale was something she'd heard before, just out of reach. Infinity... Harmony... Discord... What am I missing? She had all the pieces, she was sure of it. But how did they fit together?

Doctor Strange leaned towards her. "Did the legends say anything about stones?"

Mantis shrugged. "It's been a long time, but I think they each had a set of magical gems. Those came from the beginning of time, too."

Scootaloo wasn't listening. It was so close, just out of her grasp. If Discord is the opposite of Harmony, is there an opposite to Infinity, something that doesn't want anything to last forever? Is that Discord too? He certainly likes change. But how could he be the opposite of both? And what feels so familiar?

And then it clicked. The memory rushed back, and with it, perfect clarity. Because she'd been looking at it all wrong--Discord wasn't the opposite of Harmony. Not at all.

Abruptly she scrambled to her hooves and galloped off. "Rainbow!" she called. "Where's the book? I need to talk to Twilight. Right now."

Author's Note

I've been trying to alternate chapters and who they focused on, but at this point I had no choice but to break that pattern. Sorry about that.

At this point you have all the information you need to figure out the answer to this little riddle. I wonder if anybody will...