Plugged In

by Impossible Numbers

Rating: teen
Tags: Lemon Hearts, Romance, Science Fiction, Sunset Shimmer, Discord, Alternate Universe, Drama, My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic
Length: 15068

Why try for some cutesy-wutesy ‘true love’ pap when you’ve got a whole world of chaos on your side? Chaos is life. Life is chaos.

Sunset Shimmer owns this world. She can do whatever she likes, play whatever games are devised, run around in a high-tech simulation the like of which has never been seen, smelled, heard, touched, or tasted before. And why wouldn’t she, when the Spirit of Chaos himself is her own personal game master?

But sooner or later, all good games must come to an end…

Contestant for the Sunset Shipping Contest: Endings. Further details are available via this link.

Published 2019-09-13 15:10:01 UTC
Last updated 2019-09-13 15:10:01 UTC

The Reality

Darkness.

Darkness… fell away, slow as a blanket.

Sunset found herself staring at a mass of dots. Then she blinked, and they became cords.

Lots of them.

Groaning, she reached up and pushed them aside – then baulked as more cords came up with her limbs. Others weighed down on her head, her ears, her mouth, her nose: Schmooze cords everywhere, hovering just above her skin.

Of course. Memory trickled back. She’d developed the most advanced kind – contactless cords – just before entering… the simulation.

Frowning, she pushed them all aside, tangling herself in the process.

She lay on a chair, hooked up to even more machinery. Pipes connected to her mouth and other areas. Even as she watched, bluish liquid bubbled in the one over her open mouth.

Ah, so that was how she kept herself fed. She glanced down. And that was how she took care of… other biological needs.

It was a full minute before she was free of the machine grips. Her limbs didn’t want to move. Too long spent in a chair. How long? Days? Months?

Sunset ripped the grips off and staggered, groaning, away from the chair. She stood in the middle of a hallway, clinical white, walls beeping with towers of machinery.

She looked around. The big heavy vault doors. They were the only way in or out.

Wearily, as though on autopilot, she lit up her horn. Groaning, creaking, grinding, the vault doors opened onto…

A corridor.

She followed it, stumbling as she went. No feeling came to her. For the moment, she just walked.

Corners and corridors led her on. They were nothing like the simulation’s corridors. They were dark, and shattered in a few places. Most doors had collapsed or been smashed off their hinges.

Finally, she came to an empty room. Broken glass and plaster littered the floor. There was a window. She staggered towards it.

Milkpale-on-Spill.

Imagine a city, its skyscrapers blackened and twisted, its streets lit by a thousand small fires, howling against a blood-red sky.

Even from here, she could see the ruins of the real Chickpone Palace. Once, Chickpone Palace had shone. Now it was rubble, along with the bureaucratic brick buildings on either side of it.

Isn’t it a mess? said the voice of Discord.

Sunset gasped and looked around.

What on earth do you see in this? slithered his voice inside her head. It’s a dead city.

I killed it, thought Sunset. “Where are you?”

Milkpale-on-Spill thrived once upon a time, but not now. Now you’ve got something better. A home where you’ll always be happy, and we can party at the Livery Club from dawn until dusk. And even later, if you know what I mean.

“What?”

Or else you can come back to this dump, because you think you can unscramble an egg. But only I can do that now.

Sunset stumbled, gripped the windowsill for balance, and stopped to think for a moment. The simulation; it had all been a lie. Yet a lie she’d plugged herself into for months.

“You’re in my head,” she said. “You’re not real.”

Well, you wrote my program. You always were better than you thought, weren’t you? Especially at chaos.

“Are you real? Or are you some kind of leftover program?”

Yes.

Even his smugness rubbed against her. She shivered.

“You survived the shutdown. I didn’t tell you to.”

You told me to keep the simulation fresh and exciting. Not my fault you didn’t specify the means or the ends. Life is chaos, after all.

“Get out of my head!”

Aw, and what fun would that be? Don’t you want someone who’s fun to hang around with? For a change.

For a change. For a change. For a change. Sunset bit down on the words.

No. She was out. She’d have to make the best of things. And as she strode away from the window, Sunset felt herself again. Not some fool prancing around pretending to be a college student all over again. The proud, ambitious Sunset Shimmer.

The Sunset who had to clean up.

The Sunset on her own.

Eventually, she located a mop and bucket. It’d be pathetic next to the ravaged mess of this building – which in real life wasn’t bigger on the inside or a million storeys tall – but Sunset did it anyway.

Cleaning up this room. Broad strokes. Push, and pull, push, and pull.

Fires burned on in the city. They never went out. The only magic here was chaos magic, and it was usually locked away in the hooves of professionals who knew better than to use it like it was a joke.

No one was outside. Sunset checked several times, in between mopping and brushing. She even dusted and polished. The end result would be a clean abandoned room with one wall missing, but some sanity would exist somewhere.

Her parents had lived here. It wasn’t called the Livery Club in the real world. It was just Liberty Towers.

“Broad strokes,” she whispered, and for a moment she imagined her happy father murmuring the words with approval. “Get the corners. A tidy room reflects a tidy mind.”

Sunset looked out the window again. Under that blood-red sky, there was no way to tell how much time had passed. It felt like most of the day.

She left the room to go exploring. More likely, to find new rooms to clean. In her imagination, her parents followed her, giving her the lectures she’d never listened to. She wished she’d listened to at least some of them.

She found the second vault. Sunset’s face gave nothing away, but in her heart, something flickered.

The vault doors groaned, creaked, ground open under her modest spell, then they opened onto…

Another hall, but this one was a mess. The machines had been smashed. The cords had been torn out and thrown around. The pipes leaked where something had hit them fiercely. The chair was broken in half with a lead pipe.

Lemon’s vault.

Sunset stared, remembered –

Sunset blinked and backed off at once. “The hay!? Where’s Lemon?”

Discord said, “Oh, she was becoming an embarrassment to you, so I threw her out. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Out of where? The club?”

“No. Think bigger…”

– and Sunset gasped.

She fled.

No. Lemon wouldn’t, she didn’t, she couldn’t have…

“Lemon?” she shouted. No answer.

“Lemon!” No answer from the corridors.

“Lemon!” No answer from the main room where mop and bucket lay waiting.

“LEMON!”

Sunset skidded to a halt. She glanced at a door she’d passed – the main security office! – broke through, flicked a few switches.

One by one, the monitors for the surveillance cameras flicked on. Nothing in any of the rooms, on any of the screens. Some showed nothing but static.

Sparks fled along Sunset’s spine. Deep inside her, Discord laughed under his breath.

She rewound the video. All of them at once. There ought to be something, some glimpse, or a suspicious camera going offline unexpectedly.

She spotted her. Lemon unhurried backwards, towards the lifts, unhit the doors hard, unhammered the button, unhurried backwards and out of sight. Sunset played at normal speed. Lemon hurried into sight, hammered the button, hit the doors hard, hurried away from the lifts…

Was Lemon trying to flee? Why? Didn’t she remember what lurked outside?

As soon as Sunset returned the feed to live, she spotted Lemon in a hallway. The mare had stopped to lean against a wall and pant.

“What are you doing!?” hissed Sunset.

She threw herself out of the main security office, along the corridor, back to the room’s one window, peered down at the street, and was just in time to see the front doors burst open and Lemon stumble out onto the road.

“LEMON!”

But Lemon looked both ways and then fled along the curving road. Sunset recognized the route. The Ring of Gigs, heading for Lemon’s home.

“LEMON! COME BACK! YOU KNOW WHAT’S OUT THERE!” Sunset cursed and threw herself into a run.

On the way down, she rushed back into the main security office, and rushed out again with two shotguns. And a bandolier of shells.

Unlike Lemon, Sunset didn’t tire easily and knew the direct route down to the hall. By the time she burst out onto the street, Lemon had barely disappeared round the corner.

Then Lemon screamed.

“Lemon!” Sunset lunged, gathering speed as she galloped. Out on the streets, the air choked like smoke. She zigzagged around the random fires.

Let the randon begin! Discord sounded like he was chewing popcorn. The great chase! Will she find her true love? Will she actually want to?

Sunset cocked her first shotgun to check it was loaded.

To her shock, Lemon ran back towards her, shrieking at the top of her lungs.

“What!? What is it!?” Sunset shouted.

Something leaped over the rooftops.

By the time Sunset aimed, it danced over the pavement and an eagle claw lashed out and sent the gun flying. Lemon skidded to a hasty halt, screaming anew before she could collide with –

The pony-thing… turned.

Six eyes blinked, some sideways. An eagle claw took a shot.

So did Sunset. With the second shotgun.

Another door burst onto the street. Pony-things burst through windows, burst out of sewer holes, burst into view flapping over the rooftops, and occasionally just plain burst, spraying hissing green over the ground.

Lemon spun and fled – before Sunset’s spell yanked her back.

“No, you don’t!” Sunset forced the second gun into her scrabbling legs.

“But I don’t know how to –”

“Cock and fire!” A blast: Sunset’s own shotgun blasted a lion paw that swiped at her. Another pony-thing swooped down, snake tail curling like a lasso. She beat it off with the butt, then swung the whole gun around and fired. A screech fell to the ground.

Lemon gulped and aimed, shotgun shaking.

Between beating off some fangs and whacking off a double helping of claws and hooves, Sunset spun round and fired over Lemon’s shoulder. The buzzing pony-thing that Lemon was supposed to shoot sailed backwards.

“Sunset, behind you!” Lemon swung round.

Sunset turned. “What the…?”

It was Lyra. Her one scorpion pincer lashed out –

Whereupon Lemon smashed a bottle over her head. The Lyra-thing collapsed.

“That was Lyra!” shrieked Sunset. “You just –”

“It’s not her anymore!” Lemon was in hysterics. In the real world, there was no powder on her. All that was left was the jaundiced coat, some mascara, two pink eyes turning red, and a mass of curls.

“And that’s not Twinkleshine!” Lemon shot through the curling mass of snake tails to slash with her bottle.

“And that’s not Minuette!” Black oil scythed the air as Lemon’s completely unladylike kick sent the beast spinning through the air.

“And that…” Lemon stopped.

Sunset fired at a face rising from the sewers, then looked up.

Well, can’t say I didn’t try to warn you, said Discord in her head. When you leave the simulation, you have to face reality.

“It was you! You put Lyra and the others in the simulation!” Sunset almost missed the next claw; in time, she smacked its owner upside the head.

I was aiming for “persuasive”. Be grateful I didn’t put Moondancer in. Oh wait, never mind. Ah well. You had to face her sooner or later, I suppose.

The ground shook.

Even some of the pony-things screeched and flailed trying to get out of this gigantic thing’s way. It didn’t seem to notice them. Twelve glaring eyes focused on Lemon and Sunset, who backed into each other. Sunset’s shotgun rose up. Lemon raised the broken remnants of her bottle.

“Why don’t you use this?” Instantly, Sunset forced the second gun back into Lemon’s grip.

“I don’t know how to operate a gun!”

“Didn’t I teach you?”

“No! In case you hadn’t noticed, some of us aren’t welcome at the country club!”

Another footstep thumped the ground.

The Moondancer-thing towered over them, over even the houses on either side.

Isn’t she a doozy? said Discord. Have… aha… “fun”.

Amid the Moondancery face and occasional horse parts, it was half-hazmat, half-dinosaur, half-alien, half-zombie, half-pirate. The suit parts crinkled as a scaly, clawed foot stepped forwards. Behind giant glasses, five of the twelve eyes pulsed. Bones and sabres poked through the flesh like porcupine quills. One of its mouths breathed through a gas mask. The thing raised a leg that turned out to be a cutlass. Massive jaws growled through massive fangs.

Under its rotting chest, a cart-sized heart beat, beat, beat…

They waited to see who would make the first move.

“Oh bollards!” murmured Lemon.

The jaws opened.

Both of them jumped; the laser blast from its metal tongue scattered cobbles. It raised its cutlass to strike the ground.

“Moondancer!” shouted Sunset. “Stop!”

Ignoring Lemon, the Moondancer-thing turned its eyes on her instead. Muscles, bones, and metal flexed in its efforts to face Sunset.

Sunset stood taller. “Moondancer! Don’t you remember me!?”

“What the critical hit are you doing!? Shoot it!” Lemon shouted, raising her own shotgun. She fired. The shells pinged off a dinosaur leg.

“Moondancer!” cried Sunset. “Don’t do this! Don’t! After everything we’ve been through, I don’t want it to end like this! No!”

The Moondancer-thing opened its mouth. Sunset stared up at the fiery charge building up.

Tears burned her eyes, and her chest boiled, and her mouth dried up under the deserted words. She had to try. Moondancer was a lost cause. Business, business first. Sunset raised her shotgun, slowly. All twelve eyes showed not the slightest sign of recognition, just a seething, boiling, shimmering heat haze of absolute hatred.

Sunset gabbled; anything to make it stop. “I’m sorry I shouted at you! I know better now! It was my fault, not yours! I wanted to tell you that, Moondancer! I’ve wanted to tell you that for a long time! Please!”

The air screeched under the effort of all that lasery build-up. A scaly foot rose high, eclipsing the sky. The cutlass swished through the air in readiness.

Sunset fell to her knees. “Please! Don’t end it like this!”

Even through those twelve monstrous eyes, she felt a lifetime’s worth of accusations.

Sunset dropped the shotgun.

The Moondancer-thing… lunged.

Then exploded.

Sunset shut her eyes and covered her ears until the deafening echoes died away to silence.

Bits tinkled in the street. She opened her eyes. It was raining chunks. If she didn’t stare too closely at them, she could imagine they were voxels. It didn’t help much.

Sunset breathed heavily, while she still could, and wiped her cheeks. They were thick with damp, almost oily.

Wasn’t it devastating? Discord said soothingly. Then and now? Would you like to go back to the simulation yet? Or are you such a boring, predictable martyr, just like your precious Celestia.

Against the rush of sobs, Sunset bit down hard. This was no time to break down, this was no time to break down…

“Control your feelings,” she repeated under her breath, and the memory of her parents’ voices rang in unison. “Be stoic. Be stoic. Give nothing away.”

The pain was still there. For the moment, she held it down, not it her.

But what had caused the explosion?

She looked at where the thing’s crater should have been. Among the raining bits, amid scorch marks, Lemon lay flat on her back. Her shotgun pointed straight up, right where the thing’s heart had been.

Her eyes were wide. For a moment, she looked dead of fright. Sunset stepped forwards.

Lemon shot up. Saw her. Froze.

Then Lemon threw her shotgun down and rushed to her feet and galloped, further along the Ring of Gigs.

Sunset cursed. Just as it was making sense, she had to go and do something stupid! “Lemon! Lemon! LEMON, GET BACK HERE, YOU IDIOT!”

Lemon didn’t even look back; she just blurred into the tunnel of darkness and ran left and rammed straight through the front door of her home. Windows were broken, walls were gouged, even the space out the front was littered with bottles. She’d dropped her broken one amongst them, sending them tinkling about.

In the distance, things squelched and hissed. Sunset put on a fresh burst of speed, snatching the second shotgun as she went.

“No more running,” she declared through the panting. “No more hiding. This ends NOW!”

Sunset broke through the door, immediately swung round, pushed a nearby welsh dresser in the way, and raised her shotgun as things bashed and thumped against the other side. They kept bashing and thumping. The barricade held.

“DON’T COME ANY CLOSER!” shouted Lemon.

Sunset spun round, shotgun ready.

Lemon was at the opposite side of the room, next to a tin bath overflowing with gleaming Kolt Powder. Enough to submerge a pony if she dived in.

Raising one leg over the rim, Lemon added, “I mean it! Not another step!”

The powder glistened, despite the low light. All around them, bottles and broken pieces of furniture showed where Lemon’s housekeeping had given up completely. Dust turned everything grey. The pony-things hadn’t bothered raiding this house. Some places disgust even monsters.

Lemon licked her lips, somewhere among her slight but sustained panting. “Once I step in the bath, I’m not coming out again.”

Sunset’s mouth, already hanging open from the effort and from all the running, gaped even wider. “But there’s enough powder there to –”

“I know. It’ll feel nice at first. Couldn’t ask for a better way out, could I?”

And Sunset’s shotgun lowered, muzzle first.

Lemon’s eyes ran rivers. In the real world, she wore genuine mascara, which now dribbled down to her chin.

Gently, Sunset raised a placatory hoof. “Lemon. I know what you’re feeling –”

“Don’t talk to me like I’m worth it!” Lemon shouted. “I know what I am. You know. Just go back. Have fun without me.”

“You’re coming with me or I’m not going.”

“Oh, shove it where the sun doesn’t shine! I told you I’m not going.”

“Yes, you are!”

“It’s over! All right!? It’s all over! There’s chaos on the streets! This is the end! Don’t you get it!?” Lemon’s horn lit up. From amid the bottles, a single ring floated up between them. “See this? See it?”

Sunset saw it. The engagement ring.

“I never wore it!” shrieked Lemon.

“I know that. I just assumed you didn’t like wearing it.”

“Oh, stop being so bloomin’ understanding for five seconds! I’m poison. You know it, I know it, everyone who’s ever met us could tell, just from one look at my stupid face.”

“I’m not going back to the simulation,” said Sunset.

“You what?”

“There’s a mess to clean up here. Supposing we’re not the only survivors? Supposing we could rebuild? Maybe outside the city it doesn’t go very far, we could get help –”

“Are you mad? It’s scrambled. It’s the biggest scramble you could get. How in the nine hells of Tartarus do you expect to clean that up?”

It took a while for Sunset to reply, weakly, “Feed it to the chicken?”

She didn’t need Lemon’s head jerking back in disdain, or the inner tut of Discord. Even she cringed at her own words.

“Look, I have to try,” said Sunset desperately. “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch. Help them hatch.”

“What!? Get stuffed! The city’s dead. It’s chaos out there.”

“I thought life was chaos?”

“Bull! Total bull!” Lemon took a deep breath. “You know what? You were right, you know. You and Moondancer. I lived ‘chaotically’. You both said it. I laughed it up. Well, joke’s on me, isn’t it? Chaos isn’t life. It’s just a great black hole. It doesn’t mean anything. It’s nothing. I’m nothing. I couldn’t even do chaos right! You liked that electro Discord freak more than you ever loved the real me!”

“He’s not real!”

“No! You know what real was? Real was me not realizing until I met you that I had no ambition, no direction, no, no order, no nothing. And as soon as you forced me to see that, I knew I was well and truly stuffed.”

“But you organized state dinners at the palace!”

“THAT WAS A DAM LIE!”

Just in time, Sunset barely let her face flicker. “Well… You… You helped me set up that simulation.”

“No, I just said, ‘Let’s run and hide!’ when the midden hit the fan. You set that up! I just hung around and gave it a few tweaks! I couldn’t set that up in a million years, and you know it!”

“But –”

“And you wouldn’t have to if I hadn’t thrown the midden in the first place!”

“What!? I did that!” Sunset pointed at the thumping door. Behind it, the pony-things – the creatures of chaos – groaned, and the fires in the street crackled on.

“Yeah, ‘cause I dared you to! I bucked the table! I mucked it all up! And all because of some scrambled funky egg. I said you can’t unscramble a funky egg. Boy, was I funky right!”

Sunset said nothing. She just watched as the leftovers of Lemon sagged under wet snorts and splattering tears. Yet she forced herself to stand her ground.

“Just go…” wheezed Lemon. “Go back to the simulation. Run and hide, and stay there this time, and forget that unscrambled egg rubbish.”

After that, she blubbered, and became nothing but a melting mass of misery hanging off her own half-attempt at climbing into the bath.

Cautiously, Sunset strode forwards. Not a response met her. She walked over to Lemon’s side, plucking the ring as she went, then she stood, and she stared at it, turning it over and over. True to form, it didn’t gleam. Metal didn’t if it was anywhere near Lemon for too long.

But Lemon was right about one thing. They couldn’t try recapturing the good old days now. Not the political activism, not crying out against the paper and the bureaucracy, not trying stuff and laughing about it. That egg was well and truly scrambled. They’d drifted too far apart, even in the simulation. Whenever she tried to remember Lemon, all she remembered was a sad attempt at a smile, behind the towering Discord, whose smile was genuine.

Genuine, because it didn’t mean anything. There was no weight to it. “Genuine” was easy when it had nothing to worry about, or to hate, or to pity.

In her head, the presence of Discord shifted.

Go back to the simulation? Sunset’s leg half turned to the door…

By the way, oozed Discord’s voice. That game I was developing? Know what I planned to call it?

She heard the faint echo of his chortles.

Commitment Anxiety.

Nearby, Lemon fell sullenly silent. Sunset kept her gaze firmly on the twirling ring.

She’d never worn hers either.

It would be so much easier to go back and plug herself in. This time, Lemon wouldn’t be around to interfere in the maze. Then, perhaps over time, safe in the vault, Sunset would forget all this. She could ask Discord to wipe away the painful memories, the leftover traces of sanity, even her parents. Leave nothing but the Livery Club, forever.

There was no doubt Discord could do it, overnight, and then there’d be days of fun and games and this time, for all time, she’d never be tempted to leave.

All while the world outside had its red skies, and streets full of monsters, and its own problems. Perhaps, before she lost her memory, she could even pretend it had nothing to do with her at all. That it was someone else’s problem. She hadn’t signed up for it, after all.

But she had.

She’d tried the spell, just for a dare.

She hadn’t meant to do this, but she’d done it, all the same.

She looked up at Lemon’s running mascara. Once, long before the dare, Lemon had helped her bounce back from Moondancer.

Sunset ran a gentle forelimb over Lemon’s shoulders and held her steady.

They could bounce back, couldn’t they? They could leap, over and over again. Not once, but keep leaping, every day. That’s what it meant, when faced with chaos.

“Life isn’t chaos,” Sunset said. “Life is meaning out of chaos.”

Lemon whimpered and looked longingly at the bath.

“It did mean a lot to me when we were together,” Sunset continued.

“Oh, don’t,” moaned Lemon. “We’re about as compatible as fish and flies. It just doesn’t make sense.” But there was doubt in her voice.

So Sunset refined her approach. Don’t go deep. Keep things simple, that was the key. Help the message fit into a Lemon-shaped world…

“Here, hold this,” she said.

Yelping, Lemon stumbled under the shotgun hefted at her. “What the berry bells do you think you’re doing? I told you I can’t use a gun!”

“I’ll teach you.” Sunset cocked her own.

Lemon held the gun as though frightened it’d explode.

“And you could clean up in here at some point,” added Sunset matter-of-factly. “There’s dust everywhere.”

“I don’t know how to clean!”

“I’ll teach you that too.”

“What is this, a game?”

“No. We’re past games. It’s called growing up.”

“We’re not getting back together.” Lemon plucked the ring off her. “Forget it. This schmaltz won’t work on me.”

“Oh, eat it.” Sunset plucked the ring back –

– and then threw it aside. She took care not to watch, or to sigh.

“Look, I know we mucked things up,” she said, “there’s no escape from that. But we’ll make something work sooner or later. We’re eating the old egg and starting again with a new egg. And if we don’t, well, we can still be friends, right?”

Lemon screwed up her lips. Too much scepticism there.

“You’re not girlfriend material, Lemon,” said Sunset bluntly. “I do know that.”

Despite herself, Lemon nodded once at this in grudging acknowledgement. The mare hefted the shotgun, still looking at it warily.

“But…” said Lemon, chewing her words over.

“Well, we had fun, didn’t we? We could still have a… little bit of fun with this, right? Least we’re not the bureaucracy.” Sunset shook her head, and deep in her mind the last remaining spark of Discord echoed with cruel but dying laughter. “A little fun. To start with. Then on to the next level. Together. No cheating. How’s that sound?”

Sunset cocked her gun. Lemon watched, then cocked her own. Successfully, too. And for once, Lemon’s grin, despite the scars of mascara above it – or rather because of them – that grin held more demon in it than even the lowest pits of Tartarus.

“You know… I think I could come to like this ‘taking responsibility’ thing,” she said.

“Just remember, we’re cleaning up a big mess. After this, there’ll be a mop and bucket later.” Sunset looked around at the layer of dust and bottles. “Possibly an excavator, too.”

“You’ll teach me to use those?”

“It’s only fair. You taught me how to have a good time.” Sunset extended a hoof. “No backing out now. Deal?”

Lemon met it, spitting on her hoof first because why not? “All right. Deal. If this works out, I owe you a drink. If.”

They both moved over to the door, which thumped and groaned and started to crack. The welsh dresser threatened to topple over.

Both of them cocked their guns again, just for the sound of it.

“Ready to rebuild?” said Sunset. “‘Pal’?”

Lemon pawed the ground. “Gotta start somewhere, I guess. So what’s the plan, ‘mate’?”

“Erm… cleaning up, checking the place out, looking for any survivors, seeing how far this goes…”

“OK, so nothing concrete?”

“I prefer to wing it. Follow my lead. You might need a pony to hold your hoof.”

“Yeah! Get in there, my girl!”

“Right! I’ll take left. You take right.”

“Ooh, ooh! Don’t forget to –”

“Reload.” Sunset jangled her bandolier. “All right. Let’s funky do this.”

The doors burst open – outwards. Beyond the cloud of dust, shadowy things drew back. Sunset switched her horn off.

Both Lemon and Sunset stepped out, faces set in stone. They raised their shotguns, aimed, and started off with an impressive double combo.

Then the games began.

The Simulation

Imagine a city, its skyscrapers blackened and twisted, its streets lit by a thousand small fires, howling against a blood-red sky.

Now imagine the same city under an ocean blue summer, skyscrapers whole and shining in the sun, and now look down upon the crowds of ponies happily living their slightly traffic-heavy lives.

Both versions of this city are true. At the same time. For a given value of “true”.

For this is Milkpale-on-Spill. Once a humble little river village in Chickpone country, it has – over the last thousand years – expanded and swallowed up more villages to get itself some of that exciting modern-urban-type stuff the kids are talking about. Still, it remains humble now, with a nice little population of a mere ten million ponies. The locals don’t brag about being the new capital of Chickpone at all, though they might smile a bit.

Prior to that, its only claim to fame was coining the phrase, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.” And more recently, coining the phrase, “You can’t unscramble a scrambled egg.”

All of this might be connected.

Or it might not. Hard to tell with chaos theory, where even the smallest change can have massive, catastrophic consequences later on.

But eh, forget that nonsense.

Time. To. Party!

In her Federal Quarters near the Chickpone Palace, Sunset Shimmer checked her dress in the mirror.

This evening – or tonight, depending on how fast the moon came up – she’d thrown on half a zoot suit, half a glittering ball gown, a pair of short shorts, and a see-through tartan kilt. This was an eclectic day: dress as everything, dress wild, and be prepared to go home with a different set of clothes or, possibly, no clothes at all.

Days and days, months and months of throwing on everything in her massive wardrobe. Days and days, months and months of looking in the same full-length mirror – today shaped like a pretzel – this, this was how life was meant to go.

She walked out. The Federal Quarters were better than a five-star hotel: en suite bathroom, en suite brush room, en suite kitchen, en suite room just for watching TV. It wasn’t exactly a wild location, but she needed some sanity somewhere in her life. And this was a good little splash of sanity that didn’t make her want to tear her mane out.

Out in the street, she passed the main gates of the Chickpone Palace. Then she passed the ranked masses of official brick on either side. Bureaucracy, bureaucracy, bureaucracy.

Oh, the bureaucracy! The liberalism of the old days had betrayed her here.

Everyone could do what they wanted, provided they sent a request for a license or a visa or whatever piece of flimsy paper the bureaucracy possessed that said you could do it.

Everyone had an equal chance, provided the bureaucracy said so, and it was no secret the bureaucracy talked more politely the more money you had “earned”, or (these days) inherited.

Everyone could start a new project, provided it wasn’t on privately owned parts of the city – which were most of it – and everyone could find out why they couldn’t start it, provided it didn’t violate privacy laws and corporate confidentiality – which it did, all the time.

And bit by bit, paper by paper, standard by ruthless standard, after one generation of entrepreneurial hard work and several generations of inheritance, the so-called anarchy and freedom of the new administration just led to the same old, same old despotism, except now you were more likely to die from boredom than torture.

She’d worked hard to find that out. She’d worked hard to earn her place in the Federal Quarters. All just to find that, say, the Bluebloods and the Fancypants’s in the Palace had already booked their place in the upper echelons since before she was even born.

You couldn’t unscramble an egg. She knew that well enough. So you started again with a new egg.

Now Sunset barely looked at the offices. She’d considered removing them. On the whole, though, they acted as a reminder of what her life could have been like. And again: some sanity somewhere.

No! Now she ruled the world! This was her world!

She’d blown away all the sad and stupid paper. She wasn’t a cog in the machine. She was a ghost, a free spirit. She was a child reborn! She could feel again! She could love again, whenever she felt like it!

Obviously not “true love”. That was just another way of saying “boring love”. It was a sensible pressure cooker kind of love. She wanted bonfires. She wanted roaring infernos! She wanted to set the whole world ablaze!

Around her on the streets of Chickpone, other unicorns wore stuffy shirts and ties, or plain clothes, or worker’s vests, or jump suits for mucky jobs that soiled them, like cleaning or engineering. She tried to ignore them.

Tried, because they never entered buildings. Sometimes, similar-looking ponies popped up a little further on, say, down the next street. They never stopped to clean anything either. All they did was walk about. Make the place feel lived-in.

She’d have to change that. It hadn’t been much of a problem when she started, but the more she settled in, the more she noticed little “off” details like that.

And her? Sunset Shimmer was off to the one place in the world where sanity could go kick itself. Saxophones played and singers crooned and all sense and logic took a running jump, there at the one club in her world that was allowed to do whatever it wanted.

The Livery Club.

But first, a pickup.

“Lemon?” Sunset rapped on the door.

This house was in shadow. They all were, in this part of the city. Little cottage-like houses – throwbacks – leaned into each other overhead, making a tunnel of near-darkness. Already, the sky tanned a luxurious orange, but down here the light just looked mucky. The road itself ran like a croissant round and out of sight. Pubs, taverns, houses, and little arcade parlours and club entrances huddled in the dark, here in the Ring of Gigs.

The Ring of Gigs ran around this district in one complete circuit. It marked where the old village used to stop; these days, it painted a bull’s eye around the most interesting parts of the city. The Livery Club would be further along the ring, like a diamond.

Sunset rapped on the door again. “Lemon? We can’t start without you.”

Lemon threw the door back and suddenly her face was up against Sunset’s.

Very carefully, Sunset took a few quick steps out of range. Lemon stank. She swayed slightly, and the whites of her eyes were pink and veiny. But around the eyes, what looked like dark blue mascara shone in the gloom.

“Oh, Lemon,” said Sunset irritably. “You put it on before coming out now?”

“If it didn’t kill me, I’d have a bath in this stuff.” Lemon patted her eyes, and now Sunset spotted the dark blue stains on those otherwise yellowing hooves. Lemon’s whole coat was otherwise one big jaundice.

Sunset kept staring at the dark blue powder around that half-amused, half-annoyed, half-lidded glare.

Kolt Powder. One application to the face, and the powder would calm any serious clubber and gently sing their problems away. The powder did things. It changed how you saw the world. The impossible became possible. Forbidden fruit tasted sweeter. Pebbled, tilted, bopped, hummed, alligatored, blushed, flapping, plain-windowed, loftied, flecked, illuminated, wallpapered, cushioned, trickled, jeeped, partialled, recycled, flavoured, casseroled, muddled, bemuddled, fuddy-duddied, sedated, moused, dolloped, and dunked: neither slang nor synonym could capture the feel of a good old Kolt Powder to the face.

It kicked in; Lemon reared up and grinned at Sunset a grin that didn’t extend to those dark-blued – almost blacked – eyes. “Hallo, Sunny.”

“Hallo, you old Lemon.” A quick hug, because it meant getting close to the stink, then Sunset backed off to a respectable distance. “Let’s go before the party starts, shall we?”

Sunset led the way, ignoring the struggles, curses, and the slam and clink of keys before Lemon ran to catch her up.

“I’ll see their party,” said Lemon, curls bouncing, “and raise them one Tartarus on a train carriage. Got your Schmooze cord?”

Sunset levitated one double-ended cord to her face, right up close in case Lemon had trouble focusing. “Got yours?” Sunset replied.

Lemon held it up. Then she held up something small and rectangular.

“See this?” she said.

Sunset squinted. “Is that…?”

“Fake ID? Yep! I wanna get royally Schmoozed tonight.”

After some walking, Sunset said, “You do know you’re old enough anyway, right? That ID’s completely pointless.”

“Yeah, but where’s the fun in doing it legally?”

Sunset examined the ID more closely. “President Celestia?” she read aloud.

“As with Schmoozing, so with lying: go big or go home. Funk! YEAH!”

Despite herself, Sunset winced. Lemon was a party all by herself, but still… well… she could carry herself a little better, couldn’t she? Sometimes, she came out with random stuff that Sunset swore was meant to be ruder than it sounded, as though only Lemon’s smelly, leery goodwill prevented worse from coming out of her mouth.

Sunset decided: she’d stick with Lemon for a bit at the start, then go off and find someone else before Lemon did something stupid.

Lemon even swayed when she walked. Then she tripped and staggered.

“Bollix!” she said.

“OK, that one has to be offensive,” said Sunset.

“It’s an archaic word for ‘botch’, ‘muck up’, ‘make a hash of’, actually.” Lemon glowered blearily at her. “But since it offends Your Majesty, next time I’ll say ‘bollards’. How’s that?”

“Do you have to say anyth–?”

“Yes. Free country. Didn’t you know?”

“All right, all right! Point taken.” Sunset let this one go. In the right mood – at least, “right” from Lemon’s point of view – Lemon could read the phonebook and make ladies faint. Rudeness was her art.

Under her breath, Lemon murmured, “La vie est le chaos.”

So Lemon was picking some things up from Sunset. Sunset’s higher education translated for her.

“Life is chaos,” she said back.

Overhead loomed the biggest, shiniest skyscraper of all. The home of the Livery Club. All one million storeys of it.

Despite the fact that the base of the Livery Club building only covered enough space for a football stadium, Sunset looked straight ahead, past the milling ponies, past the reception desk on one side and the lifts on the other, down a corridor lined with doors, gates, portals, vaults, castle drawbridges, and sci-fi teleporter alcoves, all the way to the distant dot where her eyes gave up on infinity.

What was inside the club didn’t obey the rules of the outside.

In one corner of the hall, a jazz band watched from their podium among potted palm trees. Their music cruised and sailed through the lights, accompanied by the foghorn of a lonely tuba. Penguins waited on tables. A mare singer with richer feathers in her hat than even the tuxedo-esque penguins could ever boast now took to the stage and crooned. Oh, she sang of unhappy loves and scoundrel stallions, but she sang it in a way that suggested a sumptuous bed and breakfast, with plenty of bed but with breakfast as barely an afterthought. And my darling, wouldn’t you sleep well tonight…

Then the lights went out, except for one lonely spotlight.

Nothing happened. Nothing existed beyond the light; as soon as the switch had clicked on, all other sounds ceased. There was just light and dark.

Sunset and Lemon watched the spot patiently.

Then Sunset remembered who she was dealing with and looked to her left.

“Aha, I thought so…” she said.

“My my, are we waiting for someone?” said the new figure. Even his voice grinned.

Then he did something that suggested he’d just pulled himself through his own fingers, and there in the spotlight was the spirit of chaos, the talon-footed, cloven-hooved, eagle-clawed, lion-pawed, snake-tailed, behorned, begoatee-ed, befanged horse-headed dragon of disharmony, with no parts matching and all parts flashing out of existence…

The room flashed back to existence the way it was, and there in the middle of it all was –

“Discord!” Sunset rushed forwards and grabbed him around the waist, only to let go and find nothing there.

Behind her, Discord said, “A delight as ever to see you, Sunset of the Apocalypse! And my word, have we got a game for you two tonight!”

She turned, but missed him before he flashed out of sight.

She turned again, and found him at the singer’s stand, shooing the singer off gently – and with a blown kiss back for his troubles – before he snapped his fingers and spoke into the floating banana as though it were an intercom:

“I hope you brought your cords today,
The game tonight is plug and play.
Like holes in heads, it’s what you need,
‘Cause strange minds think alike indeed.”

Cheers and applause rang out, stamping, hollering, and whooping all around. Ponies threw glasses, tin cans, rubber duckies, and plates of spaghetti onto the stage.

Discord waved at them demurely in a “too kind, too kind” manner. “Now! Good times, everypony, ahahaHAAAA!” Another flash: Discord and banana were gone.

To a random stallion on her right, Lemon raised a two-ended cord, one end already plugged into a socket on her head. “Plug and play?”

“Lemon!” Sunset rolled her eyes. “Just like that?”

“Relax, Little Miss Prudery,” said Lemon, leading her evening choice away. “We’re just playing some mind games.” To the suddenly smiling stallion, she added, “Ping pong? I’m in a rebound mood tonight…”

The door leading to the private rooms slid shut behind her.

“She’ll be all right,” said Sunset quickly.

Her hoof ran along the temple of her own head. It was always there; that slight noticeable gap where the Schmooze cord would plug in, like a USB port. Her own invention.

Hadn’t she dreamed, when she’d been fighting the old computers to do anything, for something that could let her get into the software itself, just plug herself in, and tell everything to stop messing up or to stop stalling or to stop shutting down unexpectedly?

So of course they had to be everywhere here. This was her own little world.

What worried her was how much of it seemed to happen without her.

The Schmooze network: that hadn’t been her idea. She’d only wanted to get to the heart of her computers. But then Lemon couldn’t stop there. She picked away at the idea. She’d wondered if ponies with the socket implants could plug into more than just the heart of a machine. Supposing, after all, ponies could plug into another pony? Plug into their heart?

And then Lemon here had run off with the technology, and what could’ve been an efficient way to pool a team’s resources without relying on clumsy talk or body language had instead become just a toy.

Just a toy.

“Just a toy?” murmured Discord in her ear.

Sunset didn’t dare look. Knowing him, he probably was right in her ear too, at one-sixteenth his usual scale.

Of course. He always knew what she was thinking.

“I didn’t mean it that way,” she said, far too late.

“There’s nothing ‘just’ about a toy,” said Discord, pouring honey into her ear – she hoped not literally. “Toys are great fun. Toys make ponies happy.”

“Toys are great fun,” agreed Sunset hastily. “And toys make ponies happy, yes.”

“Of course, if you get tired of all these ‘just’ toys, I know another game we could play.” She even felt his sweet, hairy breath, like a tickle of cotton candy pushed deep into her lobes.

He whispered:

“Twists and turns: in the club, a heart.
Find yourself there to go back to the start.”

Sunset shook her head. “No,” she said, firmly. “I’m good. I’m happy here.”

Sickly lips slimed their way into a tongue-sticking-out grin. “Glad to hear it,” continued Discord.

When she turned to face him, he held up her cord. “Fancy a simulation game? I’ve made a new one on the Schmooze network, just for you. It almost – but not quite – compares to the real thing. Like a simile.”

“Yes,” repeated Sunset. “Like a simile.”

It always seemed a bit redundant, to use the Schmooze network for simulations in a world that had Discord in it. Anyway, it reminded her too much of normal life.

And yet… Part of her wondered if that was the point. It was the point, wasn’t it? She had to be rooted in something, even whilst throwing herself to chaos, else she might stop being Sunset Shimmer.

Discord knew her so well. She’d done a good job with him.

So he smiled, and beckoned with the cord.

Sunset shrugged. Why make excuses? Life was chaos. She could do what she wanted. And at the end of the day – or the end of the night, now – it was only a little detail.

Three hours after plugging in, Sunset started to wish she’d plugged out a while back.

The simulation game was new. It was good. This wealthy mansion she walked around in – currently the gleaming main hall where the simulated heroine and her simulated fiancé had a teary confession session whilst shouting at each other – was almost like her grandmother’s mansion had been. Perhaps it was, and Discord had salvaged the design from her deepest memory.

Occasionally, whilst listening to the argument, Sunset turned and fired her shotgun. Heavily armed hazmat troops, who’d leaped out to fire, found themselves vanishing into numbers which floated up to the ceiling and then popped like bubbles.

Before then, it had been dinosaurs. Before them, aliens. Then zombies. Then pirates, though that part had been on the minecart level, where the rich family had bemoaned the loss of industrial revenue for the much-needed dowry whilst Sunset had ridden the other cart and shot ambushing swords-ponies.

It was… genre busting. Novel. Different. And surprisingly with good continuity.

But she didn’t want to stick with it.

Three hours was usually when these games palled for her. Already, she was starting to notice how, say, the lord pony over there clipped through the bottom step of the grand staircase. Just slightly enough for it to be noticeably distracting.

Chaos being chaos, the series would probably get scrapped within a night or two anyway, and something even better would come along. So she got her pleasures while she could.

The game was called “Lemon Thick”.

Discord walked her through its levels – and through some of its walls – wearing an usher’s uniform and twirling a moustache a bike would be proud to call “handlebar”. Occasionally, he twirled his cane, which was actually a bark-shedding branch topped with a golden apple. Sunset gingerly stepped around the bits of bark trailing behind him.

“On your right,” he said casually.

Sunset aimed and fired. The hazmat suit screamed and turned into “+24”.

“Left,” Discord added.

Another shot. Another “+24”, accompanied by the ever-gratifying “DOUBLE COMBINATION BONUS: +48”.

“Don’t forget to –”

“Reload.” Whilst she worked, Sunset opened her mouth as he tossed her a cherry. It blipped as she chewed. Her horn flashed red.

“Ooh, critical hit! Save that for the boss level.”

“On it.” Willing the glow to go down, as though swallowing a cherry pit, Sunset forced her horn back to normal mode. The red flashes stopped. She aimed her shotgun again, just in case of last-minute ambushes.

To her delight, she saw the lady unicorn break off from her heartfelt confession on the floor to turn to her. “Superlative effort, Sun-1 Shimmer-me-timbers!”

Sunset nodded. She’d chosen her own username on impulse.

“Oh, my loyal bodyguard and confidante! Whatever would my mother’s old home be without your sterling efforts to keep us safe?” continued the lady unicorn. “It is clear now! Lord Butterworthy no longer has any hold over my vows, however many of his slaves he sends to assassinate my love. And now my vows, along with my heart, shall belong to my true beloved beast!”

“Oh, Lady Lemonaider!” swooned the lord pony.

“Oh, Lord Gilt!” swooned the lady unicorn. “Let us marry on the morrow, when I shall at last be of age!”

“Not a marriage for an age, my noble enchantress, but for all time.”

Their hooves met, their lips prepared to nuzzle, the background violin music rose in triumph…

“Ew, gag,” muttered Discord.

Sunset slapped him on the paw. Trust Discord to ruin a lovely moment.

“Stop it here,” she whispered.

“Gladly!”

“I mean before it goes downhill. This is a perfect ending. I don’t want it ruined.”

“We passed ‘downhill’ when the romance smothered the shoot-‘em-up. Can’t we at least skip to the boss battle before we go? I promise it’s a doozy…”

“Now, Discord. Please.”

“Pfft. Fine. Have it your way.” Discord reached down and gripped something invisible, like a cord. He yanked it out.

The simulation shattered. Pixels – or voxels, since this was a 3D simulation – scattered, flew away, evaporated. Sunset felt the Schmooze cord yank out of her skull and flop onto the carpet. The old familiar croon of the mare singer and her jazz band filled the silence. Penguins waddled respectfully around her, carrying trays over their heads.

Discord picked up the console, unplugged the other end of the Schmooze cord, and vanished in a flash. He flashed back on the table beside her, empty-handed and now dressed in an orange suit and top hat. Sunset decided not to ask.

“Won’t you smell this little daisy?” Discord pointed to his chest.

“Seriously? That old gag? How old do you think I am, three?”

Another snap of his fingers: the daisy turned into a rose. “I am, in fact, working on a new game that doesn’t involve sappy romance, but I’m afraid you’ll have to wait a little longer.”

“If it’s that one you’ve been stuck on for months, don’t bother. I don’t want to get my hopes up.”

“Well, the night is young, and time is an illusion.” Discord pulled a lever that hadn’t been there a second ago, and their patch of floor rose out of the ground, and circles opened up in the ceiling to swallow their makeshift lift. “Shall we have some real fun? How about a randon?”

“You mean ‘random’, right?”

“No, I mean a ‘randon’. It means ‘great chase’, but of course you already knew that. Didn’t you, college girl?”

Sunset gave him a sidelong glare. For someone who could do whatever he wanted, Discord always seemed to focus on showing off to her, and appealing to all her thoughts.

It was all the more annoying because she’d designed him to do that. What she hadn’t kept in mind was that “all her thoughts” meant “all her thoughts”. Including the ones below the surface, whether she wanted them or not.

Part of her had thought, “Ew, gag.” Marriage, and a happily ever after? Just like that? Get real.

As she went up in the world – or the Livery Club, though the mistake was easy to make – she kept that part of her very, very quiet.

All the same, that part leaked out in other ways.

Discord sipped his drink through a crazy straw. He was the only one drinking at the bar; everyone else either dabbed Kolt Powder onto each other’s faces, sometimes lovingly, or patted it on themselves. Soon it looked as if all of them were fans of Rainbow United, dancing and chatting and laughing as if their imaginary team had just won the championship.

Meanwhile, Discord winked at Sunset’s table. As he drew up, the crazy straw flexed and twined around him, getting longer and longer, until he was surrounded by a mass of pipes that could have come from a desktop screensaver.

He put his drink down. It was coloured perfect rainbow. The layers went up-and-down rather than side-to-side.

“Great chase?” Sunset giggled under her breath.

“Yes! I’m chasing the last drop to the bottom of this glass.” He took a sip. “Pineapple. Delicious. Can an old chaos spirit tempt you at all?”

“Nope.”

Sunset dipped her hoof in a box on the table – specifically for that purpose – and lathered more powder onto her own face. Ah! There it was! Chickpone’s Finest Kolt Powder.

“I remember Lemon first got me trying this stuff at college.”

“Yes, yes.” Discord snapped his fingers. The jukebox in the corner played something with a bit more hip-hop to it. “I’ve heard it before. And you tried better ‘stuff’ – education – since, yadda yadda.”

But Sunset kept going, and nuts to his impatience! “Well, I did. Poor Lemon dropped out before we got to the really good stuff.”

“Expensive stuff.” Discord pretended to smile, but she saw him grow a third arm behind his back and make “talk, talk, talk” gestures. Why was he getting so… uncooperative, all of a sudden?

Regardless, all she wanted to do was talk. “It was intense then. I studied everything. Chaos theory. Chaos magic. Chaos technology, like the Schmooze cord – and this –” She pointed to the slot in her own head. “Implant stung a bit, but I don’t regret it.”

“Indeed?” said Discord, giving nothing away. Ah, that was more like him. Discord was there to listen to her. She’d designed him that way. He could do what he wanted, provided he wanted what she wanted. He was there for her.

He knew anyway, but she went on, “Maybe my last project could’ve been better.”

“Oh?” said Discord.

Sunset looked up suddenly. “Can you unscramble an egg? Really?”

“Puh-lease. Watch and learn.”

A twirl of his eagle claws, and the egg materialized out of nowhere. Another twirl, it broke and flowed and scrambled in mid-air. A third twirl, and voila! Instant shelled egg again.

Sunset shook her head. “No! No. It’s not real. It’s just not real.”

She slopped more of the powder onto her face. Why wasn’t this working? Kolt Powder shouldn’t make her feel like this… Old memories kept lurking in her head. There was the sensation: she stood on the border of pain, and anger, and misery, and things even worse than those.

On instinct, she looked up. Oh no. Not now. Not them!

Her parents.

The two of them wound their way among the tables and ponies. Yes, same old disgusted squints, same old stiff upper lips, same old thoughtless pride in their steps.

To think, she hadn’t seen them in days. Nonetheless, they had been cropping up here, more and more, lately.

Sunset stood up at once, in theory out of old respect, though it was more reflex these days. A flash: Discord was suddenly nowhere to be seen. Darn him!

Yet she could sense his presence nearby, leering over her, watching.

Both Mom and Dad nodded to her and sat down opposite, as though ready to shoot up at the slightest stain.

Lips twisted on both sides.

“Mom,” said Sunset, breaking ranks. “Dad.”

“Sunset,” replied her father, nodding. Her mother said nothing. “We trust you’re enjoying yourself?”

“Up till now, anyway.”

Her father cleared his throat, and for once he trembled with discomfort rather than held his nerve. “We’ve come to take you home.”

“You can’t make me leave,” said Sunset coldly. “Neither of you can. I made sure of that.”

He looked around, taking in the laughter and chatter around their little pool of silence. “And this is what you want, is it? To spend your life in some plug-in culture? In this shambles? Look what you’ve done to Liberty Towers.”

“It’s called the Livery Club, Dad. I’ve told you this before.”

Glancing at her mother for silent support via nodding, he continued, “It’s a lot to take in, we understand, but sooner or later you’ll have to come home. To your true home.”

“I have a true home, thank you.”

“What, in one of those lapdog assimilations you go on about?”

“That’s laptop simulations, Dad. And they’re not laptops, anyway. They’re consoles. Game consoles.”

“You need consoles, do you?”

“I don’t need you pushing me around.”

“Not even to push you in the right direction?”

“Right by whose authority? Yours?” Sunset shoved the box of powder aside.

“Be reasonable. You need some direction in your life.”

“Reasonable!? Listen to me: I’ve spent my whole life being ‘reasonable’! I went through college and university being ‘reasonable’! I got into the Federal Quarters being ‘reasonable’! I won under ‘reasonable’! I’m choking under ‘reasonable’! So now I’m picking my own direction, whatever it is. I don’t need any direction from you, because it’s not mine. Now I’ve got one! I’ve made one! And it wasn’t somebody’s hand-me-down leftovers.”

Both her parents leaned back under the speech, then as implacable as old scabs, drew in again.

“And then you had fun, did you?” said her father. “Smooching your life away?”

“It’s called Schmoozing, Dad. There’s nothing wrong with it.”

“Not the way your Lemon does it. But then, she always was a shameless little –”

Sunset slammed her hoof on the table so hard the box rattled. Her chair hit the floor, she shot up so fast.

“Lemon does state dinners at the palace, Dad! Did you know that!?” she shouted.

Nothing fazed him. Nothing fazed either of them.

Admittedly, Sunset didn’t quite believe it herself, but Lemon had looked so calmly proud when she’d told Sunset that, years ago, and that wasn’t a look Sunset often saw on her. That’s what she’d told Sunset. For all that she’d dropped out, she hadn’t given up. She’d gone up in the world. Worked hard, like Sunset.

“She’s not a clown anymore,” said Sunset, and that made her proud.

So it was a shame Lemon blundered in, face painted with every colour of Kolt Powder, looking like a clown with no mirror and even less taste.

“Heyo!” she blurted out, spraying grains everywhere – Sunset’s parents froze in shock. “Come to powder my nose… and then I’m going to the bathroom.”

Sunset blinked up at her, trying to ignore the “aha!” looks on her parents’ faces. “I thought you were still playing with that stallion.”

“Him? He was just a pickup.” At the expression on Sunset’s face, Lemon added, “A truck driver pony! Duh! Anyway, he was rubbish. Oh, hi! Sunset’s old stallion and old mare, my cheeky cocky copper spaniel!”

Two chairs scraped back. “We were just leaving.”

“So was I,” said Lemon. “Which way to the bog bucket again?”

Sunset strained not to grimace. She pointed to the bathroom, not looking up. Lemon’s footsteps disappeared into the laughing crowd.

Awkwardly, Sunset’s father mumbled, “Well…”

“Yes,” said Sunset, not helping him an inch.

“So long as you think of us, we’ll keep showing up.”

“Thank you.”

“Just remember: you were the president’s protégé once.”

“I’m not likely to forget, Dad.”

“You’re better than all… all this.”

“Everything’s going perfectly, Dad. And it will keep going perfectly.”

With a sigh, she heard her mother rasp, for the first and last time, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”

When the footsteps died away, Sunset felt no presence of Discord at all.

She gripped her head between her hooves, trying to hold herself together. She wasn’t on the edge anymore. She was falling apart. Bits of her hurtled into the black hole, so close and yet so far. She just had to hold herself together.

Then she went downstairs to join the jazz music. Odds were she’d find Discord there. Discord was good for a laugh.

Sunset found Discord in one of the private rooms. As soon as she shut the door, darkness enclosed the cramped space.

Then, a screen flicked on.

“Leaving so soon?” Discord’s image laughed. “Same time tomorrow, then?”

She heard the bed squeak; another Discord lounged back on it as though it were the finest chaise longue. Which it might have been, if chaise longues were made of jelly.

That grin of his… It had to be fake. She’d programmed it. He oozed with a sort of cruel confidence, showing too much fang and curling with too much serpentine glee.

Yet she wanted it. The grin said: We’re both having fun, so isn’t that what matters?

“I want to try your second game,” she said.

“Someone wants to switch off? Or is it on again? Switch on, switch off: which way around is it?” Discord summoned a glass of sherry, and then scratched his back with it.

“Maybe this time, I’ll win,” said Sunset, shrugging.

Discord yawned, theatrically, patting his own mouth.

“I’m ready,” she insisted.

“Well, when you get bored again, come back and see me, OK?” The glass of sherry hovered beside him; he lazily turned towards it. “Want to place a bet, Sherry? Five copies of Lemon Thick she comes out within an hour.”

“Discord, I’m serious,” said Sunset.

“Oh, I hope not. Being serious was what got you into this mess in the first place. Am I right, Sherry?” Discord snapped his fingers, and the sherry glass nodded. “Yes, serious, boring Sunset. You thought you were free to do what you wanted under President Celestia, and yet here we are. A protégé is just a fancy word for ‘smothered slave’, right? Slave to Celestia’s approval, slave to her standards, slave to her and her society’s ways of thinking. No wonder you wanted to be in charge instead…”

Sunset kept her lips tightly shut. She’d programmed him. There was no other way around it. He was thinking what she was thinking.

“I just want to try,” she said. “I’m not committing to anything.”

“That’s the spirit! Commitment’s also a fancy way of saying, ‘To accept favour is to sell your freedom.’ Isn’t that right, Sherry?” The sherry glass yipped like a puppy.

“I was toying with the idea, that’s all.”

“Yes, you used to like ‘toying’, didn’t you? With ‘just’ toys.”

Sunset glared at him. “Are we doing this, or not?”

Groaning, he said, “If we must. Again.”

A snap of his fingers: chaise longue, sherry, and glaring TV were gone. Despite the lost light, Discord himself remained illuminated.

Two dice fell into his outstretched paw. Glasses fell over his muzzle. Grey sideburns and moustache grew over his face. As the beige jacket and beige trousers slid over his snakelike undulations, a ring caught one of his eagle claws discus-like.

Sunset stared at the ring.

Oblivious, Discord threw the dice, then glanced down as they spun in mid-air.

“I’ll be gamemaster, shall I?” he said. “I always liked the ‘Guy Gags’ look.”

“It kinda suits you,” was all Sunset thought to say.

The dice stopped spinning. Sunset peered closer. One stopped on eight arrows radiating outwards like a star. The other stopped on an open book, its pages completely blank.

Discord recited, voice echoing as he spoke:

“Twists and turns: in the club, a heart-a-heart-heart-art…
Find yourself there to go back to the start-the-start-start-art…

“Now-now-ow…” he continued normally, “to make sure your heart is in the right place-place-ace… pass test one: leap-leap-eap…”

A flash: he vanished, along with the dice.

Leap. Leap. Leap! Against all sense, the words continued to echo even louder than before.

Sunset stood in nothingness.

Leap! LEAP. LEAP.

That was the shock of it. Just like that, he hadn’t even bothered pretending. He’d simply stuck the black hole right in front of her.

LEAP. LEAP! LEAP!

All around her. As if he knew it was there, and wanted her to snap out of her nonsense by shoving it in her face.

LEAP-LEAP-LEAP-LLLEEEAAAPPP!

How dare he shove it in her face! Didn’t he know she hated that!?

LLLEEEAAAPPP! LLLEEEAAAPPP! LLLEEEAAAPPP!!

Here was chaos. A gaping void. A chasm. A bit of emptiness. The unknown future, the mysterious past, the present that was one hair’s breadth from nothingness…

LLLLLEEEEEAAAAAPPPPP!!!

So why not leap?

“Life is chaos,” she whispered, and leapt.

And leapt again.

And kept leaping.

What the hay? She leapt, but nothing happened, over and over again, however many times she leapt. She leapt until her hooves slammed repeatedly against nothingness, then until her knee clicked, then until she panted for what little breath of anger could keep her kicking and stamping at this thing that was supposed to do something –

The nothingness… shattered.

She stumbled in the hallway, bounced off a door, and shook her head until the room stopped glaring and blurring.

Not a hallway. It was an orange corridor, lined with doors as though this were a hotel. One end of the corridor stretched away forever. The other end – she turned round – the other end entered a grand, imposing arch, all swirling decoration and dripping ooze.

The golden words overhead read: “The Rising Fly.”

Clapping, Discord stepped through an opening door next to her. “Wonderful! Wonderful work!”

“Do you mind telling me what that was all about?” Sunset rounded on him, and got a lazily raised claw as a result. The ring shone on it.

Discord tugged his thickening beard and rolled his two dice again. They exploded into confetti.

“Sunset, honey!” To her annoyance, he pinched her cheek. “What kind of chaos spirit would I be if I told you everything you needed to know? Especially everything you already know.”

“What? I’m not playing games, Discord –”

“Yes,” he said meaningfully. “You are. Now enter the Rising Fly and don’t fall for any bait. A pony looking for help is a pony enslaved by her helper. Ta ta!”

He leapt like a ballerina, and vanished like a shine on a window.

Sunset groaned and entered the arch.

Every week, for the last five weeks, she tried her luck and went in. She’d never finished it.

Corridors broke off and branched off, doors on every side. Soon, she was deep in the maze of the Rising Fly.

Life is chaos, she thought as she turned another corner. There was no point thinking she’d finish. It was like seeking sense from Discord.

“Want to go back yet?” whispered his voice in her ear.

“No,” she said, then remembered herself and added, “Not yet.”

Life is chaos. It never stood still. If you wanted to keep on top of it, you had to leap on it every day of your life. Good grief, is that what he meant?

“Is that it?” she muttered. “Chaos is a commitment?”

He tutted in her ear.

No, that wasn’t right. Chaos happened, whether or not you committed to it. Nothingness was there, whether she ran into it or kept her distance. So that meant the only bit she could really control was… the bit with her in it?

“Leaving chaos is a commitment?” she tried.

He didn’t say anything. She wished she had his smug complacency. It’d be nice to be on the other end of it, at least. For a change.

“Oh, but you are on the other end of it,” whispered the disembodied voice of Discord. “You made me, Little Miss Chaotician. I am what you know chaos is.”

Sunset turned the corner, and then stopped.

A dead end.

With a door.

At least, she assumed it was a door. To a generous eye, a gigantic lyre was door-shaped, though usually not embedded in the wall like one.

“OK…” Gently, she turned around and took another turning instead.

A lionfish swam past her face. Hastily she stopped to let its flamenco flare of fins drift by.

“Why,” said Sunset in a strained voice, “are there toxic fish in this place?”

“Oh, it’s probably symbolic,” said Discord airily. “Or probably not. Ask the scorpion and the viper when you see them.”

“You’re joking, right?”

No answer. Sunset made a special point to check the floor, then remembered herself and checked the walls and ceiling too.

Sunset turned another corner.

Three gigantic stars, five-pointed, embedded in the dead end.

A lyre? And now stars?

Frowning, she went back for another route. Surely there was no sense here? Surely she’d just turn this corner and find –

A third dead end.

A giant hourglass towered over her. Even as she watched, sands hissed their way down, yet neither top nor bottom changed.

No, this wasn’t a coincidence.

“These weren’t here last time,” she said.

She was lying. The cutie marks had been there. They’d just never been this gigantic before. Something had changed.

It had to be chaos, it had to be chaos, it didn’t mean anything, that was what chaos was, no rhyme or reason, no meaning…

She almost ran into the fourth dead end, and there was another symbol.

“No!” she shouted.

“NO!” she shouted at the crescent moon, at the three stars around it.

“NO–” Sunset cut herself off and rounded on a voice that wasn’t there. “It’s you that’s doing this. Stop it right now!”

“You can stop it, Sunset,” said Discord cheerfully. He popped out of the wall before her.

Sunset’s tackle went right through him and hit the door opposite. The rebound landed her on the carpet. But she recovered fast, nose still throbbing, cursing, and found no one there.

“You’ve gone too far this time!” she said.

“But why make yourself miserable?” crowed Discord from all around. “They bribed you.”

“What?”

“They bribed you into growing up. They took on their own jobs. Didn’t Lyra stop visiting you to pursue a career in classical music, on your own advice? Twinkleshine preferred being an astronomer to being your friend. And Minuette, dear historian Minuette had all the time in the world, and yet you never had any time for her. Not when you were becoming second only to the president.” Discord’s voice blew a raspberry. “Why pretend you care about them anyway? You said they were holding you back from your ambitions, with their fun and their games and their nights out.”

“It wasn’t my fault!” growled Sunset. The pain in her nose was nothing to what was happening in her chest now. She panted harder. Her hoof on her heart felt a rising beat, beat, beat, as though in panic.

“You said they had to grow up. You only really liked one of them, because she was already grown up.”

“Don’t. You. Dare.”

“But then she learned not to grow up. She learned not to bury herself in dusty old books. Wasn’t it fun, watching her throw her career and future away to be happy with her friends? Wasn’t Moondancer –?”

“Stop right there!” she shouted.

She could feel the smug grin. Discord flowed like poison. Somewhere in there, however, was a drop of honey.

“I’ll only stop if you stop. Why don’t we forget this little charade?” he continued happily. “I’m still working on that new game, if you like. I’ve even thought up a new name for it. Won’t you come back and try it out?”

The poison stung through her panicking heart, and now the honey cleansed it away. Don’t leap into it, whispered the honey soothingly. Don’t leap. Don’t fight the chaos. Isn’t it so much better to let these things go?

Part of Sunset rebelled, but it was writhing and screaming under the black hole that was the poison, pooling into her world. If she backed off, the pain would die down. It was like sticking a hoof into a fire; pull away, and the pain would go away eventually.

She began to turn back.

Then Lemon Hearts staggered out of a nearby door, without even opening it. The mare’s face was a six-way war of colour. Her head swayed before she focused on Sunset.

“About time,” slurred Lemon. “I been lookin’ all over. Chuck us a drink, would ya? I’m getting a bit bored with powder.”

There was a bar in one of the doors. It was full of chickens.

Lemon constantly threatened to tilt all the way off her chair whilst Sunset fetched two pint glasses from a rooster at the bar. To his credit, though, the rooster had kept the glasses scrupulously clean.

“Bartender’s a cock, isn’t he?” said Lemon as Sunset sat opposite. “‘Cause he’s a rooster.”

Her lemony grin faded.

They sat in the corner, ignoring the occasional cluck around them. The bar was dimly lit. Chickens filtered out one by one. There was definitely a sense that these were last orders.

Lemon pretended to drink her drink, which was OK, because the drink pretended to be there. It looked like she was slurping an empty glass.

Whereas Sunset didn’t drink. She just stared.

At Lemon. At the powder on her face. At a mare who had never grown up, or even knew which direction “up” was, half the time. Even now, Lemon belched half of a national anthem, a trick which wasn’t funny even when she’d done it in magic kindergarten.

“You tryin’ to run away?” said Lemon.

Sunset very deliberately pushed herself further away from that breath. Her chair legs scraped against the tiles.

Lemon raised half her Schmooze cord; the other was already plugged into her head. “Look, the stallion was just a warmup. Ooh, I know what’ll make you feel better.”

She winked.

Sunset did not return the wink.

“It’s a game,” explained Lemon helpfully. “For fun,” she added later.

“I prefer playing with Discord,” said Sunset at last.

Lemon burst out into sniggers. “Playing…” she whined helplessly.

“At least he’s actually helpful in a game.”

“I prefer to wing it. Come on, Sunny. You don’t need a pony to hold your hoof.”

“And this is coming from you, is it?”

“We had fun, didn’t we?”

“Five weeks ago.”

“So what’s changed, Sunny?”

“You haven’t changed. You never change. You’ve always been what you are right now, a dead weight.”

Lemon froze in the act of raising her glass.

Sunset hadn’t bothered holding back the words. Not this time. The gigantic cutie marks kept floating up in her mind. Those ponies had tried to better themselves, but Lemon hadn’t. Oh, except for the state dinners thing, and she was probably lying about that.

Carefully, almost reverentially, Lemon put down her glass and gave Sunset what would have been a serious squint, minus the swaying.

“I get the impression,” Lemon said, putting down each word as though it too were a glass of precious drink, “that we are drifting apart somewhat.”

“You did that to Moondancer, didn’t you? Made her drift apart.”

Lemon sighed. “She didn’t know when to switch off. I found her switch.” Another snigger burst out. “Oh, didn’t I just –”

“This is not funny, Lemon!”

The sniggers vanished.

“We are not schoolfillies anymore! Lyra, Twinkleshine, Minuette, Moondancer – why aren’t they here? Can you tell me that?”

Lemon winced. Gently, she said, “Let’s not dig up old memories –”

“You always say that!”

“What the fudge, Sunny!? You want those reminders wandering around!? I thought you wanted to forget! That’s why I didn’t include them in the program!”

Crack! Sunset’s hoof rebounded from the table. Chickens clucked in alarm all around.

“You promised you would!” Sunset hissed.

“I changed my mind, all right? I thought it might be too cruel.”

“I want them back!”

“What the hickory-dickory-dock do you want me to do!? Wave my magic horn and make them come back? It’s over, Sunset –”

“Oho, right. Yes. You wave your magic horn. Because you’ve always been so talented at that, haven’t you?”

And she knew Lemon was stumped: a mare like Lemon would’ve erupted into fits of laughter at “wave your magic horn”.

Sunset leaned forwards. She’d decided.

“Wake up, Lemon,” she hissed.

Lemon’s only response was to not look up. She tapped the glass in front of Sunset.

“Have another drink,” said Lemon. “Switch off sometime, all right?”

“What, like you?”

“What’s got into you? You used to like being like me.”

“Five weeks ago!”

“You’ve smiled since.”

“I was faking it.”

“Please. I can tell a fake smile from a real one.” Doubt crossed Lemon’s face. “I think.”

And that was it. Lemon could only guess. Without the Schmooze cord plugged into Sunset too, emotions were just a guess.

Lemon waved the cord hopefully, and got a silent glare back until she stopped. No chance. Not anymore.

As Sunset turned to leave, Lemon’s sullen little voice said behind her, “Don’t count your chickens before they hatch.”

Sunset watched the last of the chickens file out, some clucking with laughter, others determined to scurry out as soon as possible. The rooster bartender pretended to clean a glass with his wing.

“You can’t unscramble an egg,” Sunset replied, turning around.

“Ah, I’ve been thinking about that one!” said Lemon, with brittle brightness. “No, you can, actually.”

“How?”

“Feed it to the chicken.”

The bartender looked up with a cluck.

“What?” said Sunset.

“You feed scrambled egg to the chicken,” said Lemon happily. “Chicken converts it and lays shiny new egg.”

“That’s nonsense.”

“I also figured out how to uneat an apple. You use the cores as compost for the next apple tree, along with your own –”

“First of all: a healthy chicken would have to eat other things to make up the egg, so it’s not just scrambled egg.”

“Yeah, but –”

“And secondly, you still have to look after the chicken to make the egg.”

“So? You’d have to look after a factory, wouldn’t you? Or a pony casting the spell?”

“Thirdly, that’s not magic. That’s cheating –”

“How is that cheating!?”

Sunset gave up. Even she could tell their reasoning skills had atrophied here, after so many months in the morass of chaos.

“It’s useless, stupid, and obnoxious,” said Sunset, giving up on even adult-ish insults in favour of easy, childish ones. She knew it was petty and dumb, but seeing Lemon’s ridiculous face… “Like you, every time you bring it up.”

“I was only saying,” muttered Lemon into her glass. It might have been OK if she hadn’t whispered, “I’m not the one running away from her mistakes.”

Sunset tried her best to ignore that, and to ignore the bartender’s stare. It was stupid because Lemon said it, and Lemon said it because it was stupid. Sunset had to remember that. Only with the pain of the poison seeping through her, it was getting harder to handle, and easier to forget Lemon’s smile and laughter and smug, knowing voice that said, hey, we’re smarter than everyone here, why don’t we have a good time together…?

But before this whole Livery Club thing started, when Milkpale-on-Spill had been a shining city under blue skies, Sunset had not blown her off then. It was Lemon who had suggested Sunset use the chaos technology to unscramble an egg, just to prove the saying wrong. It’d be a laugh, she’d said.

Sunset had failed. Spectacularly, because this was chaos technology. You can’t unscramble an egg. A real scramble was irreversible. There was no going back.

Was there?

The poison insisted no, loudly, whilst biting through her heart. But the more Lemon tried to persuade her, the more Sunset thought: Why not push past it? Why not wake up sometime?

“Twists and turns: in the club, a heart,” whispered Sunset under her breath. “Find yourself there to go back to the start.”

She looked at Lemon Hearts’ flank. Three hearts. Her cutie mark. Sunset had never figured out what it meant. It’d be like finding meaning on a battered old tin can.

Sunset looked past her to the exit.

The door was heart-shaped.

There were three doors, in fact. All heart-shaped. They hadn’t been there before.

At this point normally, Lemon wouldn’t have accompanied her. What had changed in Lemon, to make her seek Sunset?

At this point, Sunset would have given up against the pain and turned around and walked back to Discord, who’d grin and invite her to dance until the pain vanished.

But this time, Sunset walked towards the three doors.

All three opened, somehow merged into one with a groan of reality, filled her with the image of more corridors. Darker corridors. Corridors snaking away into the beyond, and up walls, and over the ceiling.

“What are you doing?” said Lemon behind her. The bartender clucked.

Sunset ignored her and stepped through.

Behind her, the door slammed shut.

Overhead, the thoughtful voice of Discord hummed.

And then Lemon panted, right next to her.

“Seriously, what –?” Lemon began.

Sunset ignored her again and leapt forwards. And kept leaping forwards, because Lemon kept following, forcing her to keep ignoring her over and over.

“Sunset, can we talk about this? Sunset, I know what it’s like to be stressed! I used to do state dinners at the palace! Sunset? Sunset! Let it go! It won’t do you any good!”

All the way, Sunset turned her leaps into canters, her canters into gallops, her gallops into leg-straining, heart-bursting efforts to put as much distance between her and Lemon as was possible. Yet the poison inside her chest kept eating away at her.

The corridors were dark, as though all the lights had been smashed. Sunset lit up her horn. Doors flew past her circle of light.

“Sunset! Sunset! SUNSET!”

She had to get out of this place. This wasn’t a game. She was done with games.

It wasn’t that gaming had palled for her. Shooting dinosaurs and pirates was fun. Discord’s “ew gag”, in a way, had been fun. Every day at the Livery Club was fresh and exciting and made her feel young again, before her parents had drilled into her that there were better things, fed her the lie that being president, or close to the president, was the greatest thing of all.

No, that had palled for her.

She rounded the corner and the face of her father loomed out of the darkness so fast she skidded and screeched to a halt.

“Sunset, I’m very disappointed in you,” he moaned as though in agony.

She ignored him and spun around, trying another corner, knocking Lemon over.

“I only wanted what was best for you,” continued her father from behind.

She turned another corner and –

“I’ve always loved you, Sunset,” he said, right in front of her.

“Stop following me!” Sunset ducked for another corner.

The poison seeped into her eyes. She was going to weep. It didn’t matter she didn’t feel remotely weepy; the water threatened to melt her eyes like metal in acid.

“We’ve always loved you, Sunset,” said both her parents, two faces looming up before her.

Sunset jinked around them, galloped on. A shoal of lionfish surged past; rapidly, she threw herself backwards and took another corner, avoiding them.

“Be conscientious,” rang their voices in unison. “Work hard. Study hard. Control your feelings. Stiffen your lips. Be stoic. Give nothing away.”

Far behind, Lemon shouted after her, but indistinctly.

“And don’t run away from your mistakes!” shouted Sunset’s parents over her.

Before Sunset could break free, a pair of hooves gripped hers.

“Finally!” said Lemon.

Rage flared through. Sunset threw the mare off; Lemon bounced off a door, not hard, but enough to addle her already-addled senses. She hit the floor, spraying powder everywhere.

“Don’t go out there!” spluttered Lemon. “Don’t! Stay here! We’re better off here!”

“What, and don’t run away from my mistakes?” spat Sunset. “Like you?”

“You’ll feel better here.”

“No, you’ll feel better here! That’s all this place is to you! Just another dab of powder to hide all your problems!”

Lemon seized a leg; Sunset shook her off.

“And stop dragging me down!” shouted Sunset.

“We’re supposed to stay here together!” Snot bubbled down Lemon’s nose. “That was the plan!”

“That wasn’t a plan. You don’t plan. I’m better than this, and I’m leaving, and I should’ve done it long ago, and this time you’re not stopping me. I want nothing to do with you anymore. You understand!?”

Horror crossed Lemon’s spreading face. “Wait –”

She vanished.

Discord lay where Lemon had lain, front legs crossed quite comfortably under the smile lounging on his lips.

“Does she remind you of anyone?” he said calmly.

Sunset blinked and backed off at once. “The hay!? Where’s Lemon?”

“Oh, she was becoming an embarrassment to you, so I threw her out. Isn’t that what you wanted?”

“Out of where? The club?”

“No. Think bigger.” Discord grinned. “Who needs her anyway, when you have me? I’ll give you exactly what you want.”

“I want out of here.” The poison stabbed at Sunset’s heart.

Discord chuckled. He’d noticed. She knew he’d noticed. For a moment, she was just as idiotic as Lemon, under that “it’s not serious” chuckle. He’d make her feel stupid.

“Half of you wants out,” he said carelessly. “And half of you doesn’t. Which half will you listen to? You’d better listen carefully, ‘Sunny’, because you’ll find I can be very… persuasive.”

Sunset fled.

There! A shape was looming up. Pony-shaped? Was it Lemon? But no: the front leg was wrong.

Just as she stopped, Lyra loomed up before her.

Or something that looked like her. Eyes milky white. Teeth bared – no, fangs.

The Lyra limped forwards. Her leg was a scorpion claw.

Sunset gasped and fled back the way she’d come, only to bump into two more ponies – two more pony-shaped things.

Both things stumbled into Sunset’s light.

Twinkleshine’s curls sagged into scorpionfish fins. Her rear half slithered as a gigantic snake. Her tongue – a scorpion tail – wriggled out of her mouth. Eight eyes stared lifelessly.

Minuette beside her lurched, zombie-like. Black oil dripped off her back like bloodstains. She was trying to walk on three vipers for legs. Snake eyes replaced her own.

“NO!” Sunset threw herself into a nearby corridor and fled, hearing their moans and hisses and thumps falling behind her. “It was an accident! I didn’t mean it!”

Then their voices unified, made some hissing semblance of sense, joining those of her parents: “Life. Chaos. Life. Chaos. Life. Chaos.”

“SHUT UP!”

Then Sunset rounded the last corner, and there she saw herself.

“Twists and turns: in the club, a heart,” recited Discord’s disembodied voice,
“Find yourself there to go back to the start.”

All lights came on.

Sunset stood on the edge of a hallway, clinical white, walls beeping with towers of machinery.

In the centre, another Sunset lay on a chair.

Every bit of that Sunset was hooked up with cords. Cords covered her eyes. Cords covered her legs. Cords covered so much that only the glimpses of coat and mane assured Sunset this was something that looked like her at all.

Clapping. From all around. There was no other sound.

Sunset waited for her breath to come back. “What’s… what’s going on?”

Then Discord fizzled out of the air before her, sending voxels flying around him. He was clapping. Slowly. Almost sarcastically.

“You see?” he said, always smug, always grinning. “I’m leagues better than that overgrown mare-child of yours. What was her name again… Melon Farts?”

Sunset was too tired to correct him, or to say anything about his sense of humour.

Lowering his paw and claws, Discord stopped grinning. “We don’t have to be all that close to make this work. We could just become friends, if you prefer. Why try for some cutesy-wutesy ‘true love’ pap when you’ve got a whole world of chaos on your side? Chaos is life. Life is chaos.”

Poison burned over Sunset’s face now, like Kolt Powder that stung instead of soothed.

Discord gestured to the second Sunset beside him, tugging a cord idly as he finished. “Moondancer had the right idea, Sunset. You didn’t. You didn’t learn until Celestia threw you out for trying ‘dangerous’ experiments.”

“I hurt ponies,” was all Sunset managed.

“Only by accident. You knew you could make chaos work… except you didn’t, did you? Because chaos doesn’t work for you. You work for it.”

“I shouldn’t have done anything.”

Discord shrugged. “Should, shouldn’t. What difference does it make? One day, you try to unscramble an egg just to prove Melon Farts wrong. The next day, Milkpale-on-Spill and all you’ve ever known are plunged into complete chaos. A butterfly flaps its wings, storms arrive on Tuesday.”

“This is wrong.” Sunset pointed at the… the thing in the chair, amid all those cords. “That was wrong. I should’ve stayed.”

Discord sighed as though at a wayward pupil. “Sunset, Sunset, Sunset… Death is stable. Death is all you’ll get. What’s wrong with this dreamworld? It’s a very special dream. You did a good job with it.”

“And now I’m waking up.” Sunset winced. The pain spiked her eyes and nose and mouth. Was he helping it along? Trying to “persuade” her?

The Sunset on the chair twitched.

“Bright blue skies, shiny buildings, ponies going about their business.” Discord flashed out, and then flashed back in right next to her, stroking her face. For a moment, the pain sank down to her chest, drawing away from his touch.

Sunset shivered.

“Isn’t that the Milkpale-on-Spill you’ve always loved?” whispered Discord.

“You have to obey me,” she said.

Discord drew his paw away. At once, the pain rose back, slashing at anything inside her, fighting its way up to her neck.

“Pity,” he said grimly. “It appears that I do.”

He made to snap the fingers of his paw… then curled over and looked down at her, frown upside-down.

When he spoke, mechanical harmonics buzzed through his voice. “ALL PROGRAMS TERMINATED. SIMULATION SHUT DOWN. YES? NO?”

Sunset stared at herself in the chair. She gritted her teeth against the pain.

“Yes,” she said.

“YES. SIMULATION SHUTTING DOWN… 3… 2… 1…”

The walls exploded into voxels. Discord fizzled and faded away. Darkness rushed in, walloping her with so much pain that she blacked out –