"Any reason you've invited me over, dear Twilight?" Discord mused, hanging like a teenager on a floating couch in the grand castle's library. Twilight dug through the books.
"As a matter of fact, yes!" She wheezed, carefully and ever so delicately shoving the books aside in search of one specific book. Discord would have been curious if it weren't for his complete lack of interest. "I realize I haven't done any research on the draconequus! How could I have missed it?" With a flap of her wings, she cupped Discord's face in her hooves. "You're a medical anomaly and yet I was too caught up to really think about it!"
With a poof, Discord sat upright, cradling the princess in his claw-paws. "There there, Twilight. Don't you worry your pretty little head. You haven't missed out on any studying because I can't be studied. That is," he chuckled, setting Twilight in a now existent floating chair, shifting his position to show off his tail, "unless you want to come close up with the only one~." He cooed, gesturing suggestively. Twilight gagged, before shaking out, realizing what exactly he'd said.
"Only one?" She repeated, flabbergasted. "H-how?"
"Not everything can be explained with logic, dear Twilight." He curles the tip of his tail around her chin. "Especially not the lord of chaos himself."
She swatted him away distastefully. "Starswirl seems to think otherwise," She snorted. "He wrote the only book on the topic. I'm looking for it now. Do me a favor and poof it into existence."
"Do you take me as nothing more than a circus act? Your assistant?" He scoffed. "I will certainly not be sourcing you false information." With a snap of his claws they were back on the purple couch, kind enough to obey the laws of physics.
Twilight blinked. "False infor-- Discord, are you out of your mind?!"
"Technically, yes." He smirked, innocently batting his suddenly very long eyelashes. "But not in this context. Starswirl is nothing more than a crazed, thousand year old pony whomst disappeared who knows where."
Twilight rolled her eyes. "We found him last week, Discord."
"Oh, is that so?" He readjusted his magic glasses and tie, which vanished in time once again. "Episodes do run far too fast these days. How long has it been since the last? Ho hum, it doesn't change my point. He hasn't seen the light of day in a thousand years."
"Neither have you!" Twilight shot back defensively, horn glowing as she summoned stacks upon stacks of books and scrolls that practically flooded the library. "At least he did something with his life before so."
Discord wiped the dramatic faux tears in his eyes. "Are you assuming my past? Dear Twilight, I thought we were friends."
this only caused her to vanish the summoned literature and sigh. "Sorry. I've only looked up to Starswirl so long, I don't like the spirit of chaos putting his works to the side as if it were childsplay."
"It isn't," the Draconequus clarified. "I think what works that did succeed are very well thought out. What I mean, dear princess," he flicked his tail in a snort, "is that he wasted away so much of his life to spend his time scribbling spells he wished would just be solved already, going by the book to the point where he had to pay immensely for it."
"Pay--? What are you on about?" The princess stammered - it wasn't uncommon to be absolutely left in the dark by Discord, he never really made his point clearly - but this went much too far.
He shrugged anyway. "Nothing important."
"Fine then!" She huffed. "Pack your bags if you're so insistent on being conveniently vague. We're going to visit the wizard himself."
Discord scorned. "If you think for a moment I would drop all my incredibly important plans to go visit a namby-pamby-pony-wizard, let alone a boring goody two shoes who despises fun, you're sorely mistaken."
"You're being forced to!" Twilight huffed, summoning her suitcase and a bunch of her necessities. Discord curled around her frame. "Fine. I'll turn his shoes into frog toes and his hair into snakes. If he even has hair anymore. His beard?"
"And I'll turn you to stone," Twilight threatened. "You can't tiptoe around me forever."
"I can and will dear princess! If Celestia and Luna have their privacy handed to them on a silver platter regarding their past, then I can have it too." He reasoned angrily, tapping his toes and crossing his arms. Twilight poofed his own - very wildly patterned - suitcase. She shoved in his Fluttershy fan slippers and his red-and-yellow bathrobe.
"They're princesses with no doubt humble origins. You're a biological anomaly."
Discord snapped, and Twilight's color palette was completely inverted. She screamed. "Discord! Stop stalling!"
"I'll go on the condition you offer me something greatly in my interest." He crossed his arms, clearly about to make the process a living hell if she could not promise to deliver.
"Fine." She grunted. Discord grinned.
~~~
"Now, you remember our rules, right? Be polite." Twilight established, Spike nodding wildly behind her, notebook and quill in hand. Claw?
Discord waved Twilight off like a grungy teenager. "Yes, yes, I'm the spirit of entropy, not a child, Twilight." He crossed his arms, hardly proving his point.
Twilight rolled her eyes, her feathers ruffling. "Whatever."
The door creaked open, and out peeked the wizard. "Twilight!" He chuckled, an old creak in his voice. "How wonderful for you to visit."
"I brought a friend, too." She hummed, gesturing towards the cowering Draconequus. Starswirl creaked the door open just to have further view - and immediately slammed the door when he spotted Discord. Twilight gawked.
"T-this is not a good time, Twilight Sparkle!" He shuddered from behind the door, the sound of locks clicking into place as Twilight pressed her face onto the side of the door.
"Starswirl," she huffed. "You're the only Draconequus expert I know of!"
"There's a reason that book's long since been restricted and pulled from shelves, Twilight!" He stammered, a muffled cower from behind the door.
Discord groaned. "If I must…"
He snapped, and suddenly they were in his home. Discord loomed over the wizard. "I would have done as you pleased and left you to wither away, but I'm afraid curiosity killed this cat." He grumbled, gesturing towards Twilight. Starswirl remained speechless.
The princess watched with intent. "You two know eachother?"
"Know?" Starswirl breathed, fiddling with the hem of his cape, refusing to look him in the eye. "He is m-"
Discord cut off, setting some tea on a table that wasn't there before. "What a lovely idea! A nice game of trivia. Take a guess, princess : he knows me like the back of his hoof. Am I; A, a past lover, B, a science expirement gone wrong, or C, a convoluted version of Starswirl himself?" Discord flashed a screen hovering over Twilight's head all sorts of numbers. She looked frankly lost, and Starswirl wasn't far behind. Discord seemed to be enjoying every bit of their bewilderment, giddily tapping his claws in the table.
No one answered for a long, long time.
"Well fine! If everyone's going to be such a sore serious bum, then I'll give you the answer myself." He vanished the cards and screens and game show props. "Its C."
"Oh." Twilight blinked. "I thought all of them were joke answers."
"Afraid not my dear, Swirly here hated his sense of entropy so darn much he decided 'to hell with it,' and seperated me from him. It's a shame that all that's left of him is a hollow shell of dull seriousness. What fun is that?" He explained, in more clarity than anything he'd said in the past few days. Twilight blinked, the only sound was Spike scribbling in his notebook anxiously. Discord looked pleased with himself. "The one thing Swirly here did anything near correct was create a party animal such as my handsome self..." he purred, grooming his mane back.
Starswirl nervously fiddled with his hooves. Twilight stared before it all registered, and she began to hyperventilate. "All this time--" she wheezed, "I've been...right next to--???"
"That's right, doll." Discord purred. "You're friends with an idol. Will you value me now?"
"I have to do test runs! Study the spell! Genetic decoding...spell discection, all that! No time to waste, come on!" She exhaled, pulling Discord's paw towards the door.
Discord grunted at what he'd gotten himself into. "Sweet Celestia."