Life in Equestria had been eventful to say the least. Ever since Pinkie Pie never attended her surprise birthday party, Twilight Sparkle and her friends had been searching throughout Ponyville for their missing friend. They asked the Cakes at Sugarcube Corner if they had seen her but they had not seen her lately, not since she went to her room looking distraught. She was nowhere to be found in her bedroom. Fluttershy stumbled upon Pinkie’s secret party cave but it had not shown any signs of recent use.

The mane 5 asked every citizen in Ponyville if they had seen their missing friend but the answer was the same: nopony had seen the pink party mare anywhere.

Twilight wrote a letter to Princess Celestia to inform her that Pinkie had gone missing and was nowhere to be found in Ponyville. Celestia suggested looking for her at her family home on the rock farm and asking her family if they had seen her. Unfortunately, Celestia could not lead a search herself because the Grand Galloping Gala was soon and she couldn’t afford to divert attention from the event without the nobility making a spectacle of themselves over it.

Twilight and her friends traveled to the rock farm where Pinkie grew up. The group got a rocky reception from a cranky Limestone while Marble was a little overwhelmed from the number of visitors.

Twilight informed the two that Pinkie had gone missing and asked if they knew anything about it. This caused the two sisters some concern as they had not seen their sister anywhere.

“I hope she had nothing to do with this,” Limestone mumbled.

“What was that?” Twilight asked.

“Nothing! It’s none of your business,” Limestone snapped quickly.

“Please! Pinkie is our friend. If there is anything you know about her that might lead us to her please tell us.”

Limestone took a deep breath and let it out to calm herself. “I don’t know anything that could help you. Pinkie’s life is centered around us and Ponyville. If she isn’t in either place then I have no idea where she went.

Limestone’s statement had dashed any hope of finding their missing friend for the foreseeable future. Twilight and her friends returned to the train station with sad looks on their faces and waited for the next train to Ponyville.

After the gang left, Marble spoke up, “Why didn’t you tell them about the places she might hang out?”

“Because they don’t need to know about her. I want to think that whatever happened to her ten years ago was permanent but part of me knows better. If she is on the loose again, then wherever she goes things will turn ugly fast.”

“We have to tell Maud about this right away. She’s the only one who can get her to calm down.”

“We don’t know if she’s loose again, but I do agree that we need to tell Maud but also our parents.

Time had passed. The Grand Galloping Gala was far from a happy experience for Twilight and her friends. With concern about their friend at the forefront of their minds. Rarity spent her time moping at a table instead of chasing after Prince Blueblood. Fluttershy sat at the table with Rarity instead of checking out the Canterlot Gardens. Rainbow Dash was too apathetic to concern herself with the Wonderbolts. Applejack still tried to sell her wares during an event where the food was catered but she didn’t care whether she made a sale or not because of her concern for her missing friend distracting her thoughts. Twilight tried to spend time with her teacher who spent nearly the entire evening greeting the nobles so she didn’t get to see any excitement in her evening.

The day after the event concluded, Celestia and Luna conducted a nationwide search for Pinkie Pie, not only because was she one of the Elements of Harmony, but she could feel the seal on Discord’s prison weakening and without the Element of Laughter, Equestria would be in peril.

Unfortunately the search turned up fruitless as each town and city in Equestria was searched and neither hide nor hair was seen of the lost party mare. The only conclusion the search teams could come up with was that Pinkie Pie had disappeared off the face of Equestria.

The worst case scenario had come to pass as Discord, lord of chaos and disharmony, broke free from his stone prison and neither the Princesses nor the Element Bearers were prepared to face him without the Element of Laughter. Discord himself found this to be disappointingly boring.

However, Discord was not one for repeating performances if he could help it and ruling Equestria again was not appealing to him the second time around. Of course, with how disappointing his opposition was, turning Ponyville into the chaos capital of the world didn’t feel like he had earned it. He knew he ruined everything Celestia had planned for him before it was set into motion. Without Pinkie the other five were ordinary ponies facing a god and the conventional magics of the Princesses were easily dealt with.

Of course, Discord was not without mercy. He would have loved to have a challenge but with Pinkamena active again he couldn’t afford to let her run free in Equestria without things getting bloody. He knew he brought this upon himself but he also didn’t want to go empty handed for his efforts so he made a deal with the Element Bearers and the Princesses.

“Let’s make a deal, shall we? To be frank, your effort to oppose me was a poor attempt to entertain me. I am willing to keep the chaos to a minimum, but in exchange, one of you has to move in with me.”

“What?!” the mares exclaimed.

“I’m not looking for anything romantic, mind you, just somepony who can help keep my house nice and messy while I’m out and about. Preferably somepony who doesn’t have royal duties to attend to. I’m not a slave driver.”

The ponies began shouting their discontent toward the agreement but the fact that the draconequus would be going around Equestria unchecked was an equally undesired outcome.

Discord added in the promise to not harm the one who volunteers even though he had no intention of harming any of them in the first place. After all, he was bored, not evil.

Eventually one finally spoke up to volunteer and to everyone’s surprise, it was Fluttershy.

The other mares now voiced their discontent about letting the yellow pegasus go with a creep like Discord but the draconequus had accepted her application and teleported with her to another part of Canterlot. It was there that he named the terms of her servitude.

He had no intention of controlling Fluttershy because he would be acting against the nature of chaos if he did that and none of the ponies were a threat to him anymore without Pinkie, but he also didn’t want the mare to think lightly of his terms.

His first term was that although she was still allowed to leave the chaos dimension where his house was to be with her friends and get groceries and whatever else she did, her home was with him now and she would have to return there to sleep at least.

His second term was so she wouldn’t avoid him all the time. She was to stay at home on Tuesdays in order to spend time with him.

Anything else he would come up with later.

Since Fluttershy was being given so much leeway, she spent a whole ten minutes building up the courage to tell Discord that she needed a place for her animal friends. Being in Discord’s chaos dimension was not going to cut it but she couldn’t go back to the cottage anymore.

While Discord wanted Fluttershy to just set her animals free in the forest, she refused the suggestion and refused to budge on the matter. Discord finally decided to compromise and move her animal habitats into the Everfree Forest where his powers would be at their strongest and placed a protective enchantment on the area to prevent predators from entering it. Fluttershy would be able to visit it anytime through a portal.

Once the two finally agreed on the terms, Fluttershy returned to her cottage to start packing her possessions for her big move.

Five years later

The five years from when Fluttershy moved in with Discord were quite eventful. During a royal wedding between Twilight’s brother, Shining Armor, and Princess Mi Amore Cadenza, each of the mane 5 were each given a task while the task that would have been handled by Pinkie was instead handled by a wandering party planning stallion named Cheese Sandwich.

The bride turned out to be an imposter and almost ruined the wedding by invading Canterlot with an army of insect ponies called Changelings. However, the real Cadance was found and worked with Shining Armor to drive them off.

Not long after the wedding, the Crystal Empire returned and Twilight was tasked with saving the empire. The mad king Sombra attacked the city-state but was repelled and destroyed when an artifact called the Crystal Heart was found and returned to its rightful place.

Despite being gone for five years, the mane 5 never lost hope that Pinkie was alive somewhere because her Element still held its luster...but mostly due to the fact that Discord had spilled the beans that he was the reason Pinkie disappeared which earned him a few nights on the couch from Fluttershy.

He also explained that his reason for doing so was for the good of Equestria as he explained about Pinkie’s other personality, Pinkamena, who was a bloodthirsty, vicious psychopath. He also mentioned the night Pinkamena murdered three stallions for trying to rape her which was received by a number of shocked expressions. While Rainbow Dash refused to believe Pinkie was capable of such, Discord quickly corrected her by stating that it’s Pinkamena and not Pinkie who did the killing and that the two were independent personalities living in the same body.

Discord added that he wasn’t about to return Pinkie to Equestria as long as Pinkamena remained an issue.

Despite the draconequus’ warning, however, Twilight continued her search to find a way to bring Pinkie home.

Other than the truth coming out, other events happened such as the Plundervines encroaching on Ponyville. Since Discord owed the mane 5 for what he did to Pinkie, he was made to clean up the mess he caused in the first place.

The centaur, Tirek, ended up sent back to Tartarus by the Princesses before he became too powerful since they had to pick up the slack. Without Pinkie, Celestia’s plan to ascend Twilight to alicorn status was put on hold for the foreseeable future. Until she could find a way to bring back the missing party pony, she and Luna would have to handle the dangerous threats themselves.

Among other events that occurred at the end of the five year span, during the Grand Galloping Gala of that year, was Discord banishing one of Fluttershy’s oldest friends, Treehugger, to another dimension because he was annoyed by her free-spirited nature and how none of his antics got under her skin, an act that earned him another time out by the mare who had become his special somepony during the five years they lived together. Before Discord could retrieve the constantly stoned earth pony, he realized where her destination was and he wasn’t about to risk letting her know there was a way home.

On his way home from a casual flight one day, a rude griffon cut off his path. As she passed in front of him, she told him to watch where he was flying and called him a freak. The griffon ended up flying into a portal to another dimension.

Treehugger landed on her flank in a completely unknown place. As she looked around, she saw how different everything looked compared to what she saw a minute ago...or was it an hour...she wasn’t sure.

“Hey, I’m diggin’ the whole red and green look you got goin’ on,” said a female voice next to the mare. The owner of the voice noticed the tree and heart cutie mark on her flank. “Digging the tattoo too. Who’s your artist?”

Gilda landed on her haunches on something hard. She rubbed her head with one talon and her backside with the other before she opened her eyes. She quickly realized that she was in someplace that looked nothing like Equestria. She spotted a number of strange creatures staring at her and she screeched at them to drive them away. She was curious about where she was but also thought about how she was going to get home from wherever she was. Plus, she wanted to save her energy for whenever she found the freak who sent her to wherever she was and claw his eyes out.

The griffon opened her wings and took flight. Right now she only had one thing on her mind.

...a thought which changed to where she was going to find some food when her stomach started growling.

Author's Note

The purpose of this chapter was to show how Discord was dealt with in the absence of Pinkie, show where the MLP timeline was after 5 years, and show how the major events were resolved in the absence of Pinkie and an ascended Twilight.

More importantly, it introduced two new characters who will play a major role in the story...at least I hope I can portray that. I have plans to bring in 3 more but that wont be until Saints Row: The Third.