Twilight Sparkle was not sure how long the sound had been going on — she knew only that she heard a clacking downstairs. Something was pawing and rapping at the entrance to Golden Oaks Library like a wolf at the door. She stiffened under her sheets, her whole body clutching its breath as she was sure whoever — or whatever — was outside could hear her. She knew the thought was irrational — nothing could possibly hear her stirring under the sheets, but the fear trickling coldly through her veins told her otherwise.
And even if the one who knocked could not hear her, Twilight Sparkle was very certain that they could hear Spike snoring his basket all the way outside.
She wrinkled her muzzle, wishing the weight of sleepiness from her eyes and its fog from her head. What was it about summer that made Spike snore so loud? Was there some kind of relationship between dragon health and varying climates that she didn’t know about?
One hoof snuck up from between Twilight’s sheets, and she rubbed at her eyes in the dark. Just who would be out at this hour?
The alicorn wriggled out from under the coziness of her bed and tippy-hoofed over to her night-side end table. Her eyes were still half-closed and bleary as she squinted at the face of her clock, the moonlight reflecting the dim shape of her form in its glass face.
Reading the arms, she saw that it was exactly one thirty-eight in the morning. The dawn weather patrol was not even supposed up for another three hours. Absolutely nopony should be up, not when activity and business hours in Ponyville began and ended with the light of Celestia’s sun as it made its journey across the sky.
A sudden, sharp sound pulled her from the limbo-like drift she stood in, where she had still found herself yearning to be asleep again. Something in her chest clutched tightly, and her throat was bone-dry when it wasn’t a moment before. That sound — it had been something like a snap, like a cracking twig. She had heard once, clear like a tap on the door.
Then, she heard it again. She heard it the way you heard bells on a Winter Wrap-Up sleigh when it was wandering closer.
And it had come from inside the library the second time.
“You know, a good morning would have been nice,” came a leering voice right next to Twilight’s bed.
Immediately, Twilight whirled around, spinning back to where she had emerged from the sheets — at least, as much as her hooves would allow. Her wings had spread open with an abrupt fwomph of terror.
Standing atop her rumpled, tossed-aside sheets was the serpentine form of the draconequus, appearing as eerie as king of all monsters — and her latest, most-reluctantly-admitted friend-of-a-friend. She could see the outline of his crooked fangs gleaming in the dark, and the only thing that stopped the weight of the scream of protest from escaping her mouth was him clapping a paw against her muzzle.
“MMMMmmmphh!!” Twilight protested.
Discord leaned forward, and Twilight caught the up-close view of his unnatural yellow eyes contrasting against the shadows of her room. “Shh, Twilight! You’re going to wake your poor little wyrm!”
“Urgh!” Twilight mumbled, slapping away Discord’s paw with her forehoof. “Spike’s not a worm, he’s a dragon!” she hissed in a clenched-teeth angry whisper.
“Well, well, well, somepony certainly hasn’t gotten enough of their pretty princess beauty sleep.”
“Ahem,” said Twilight, arching one eyebrow and shooting the draconequus a pointed look.
Discord feigned a gasp of offense and twiddled the digits of his mismatched forelimbs innocently. “Has Princess Crankylight forgotten about the little get-together we planned?”
“P-plans?” gasped Twilight, her eyes growing wide. A gathering storm of fearful ideas was budding in her head. “When did we make plans?”
“Pfft, you don’t remember?”
“N-no?” Twilight stammered, giving one fleeting look to where Spike was still sound asleep.
“August nineteenth is today — which means it is exactly the right time for the Forty-Three Days Until My Birthday party.”
“You have a birthday?” Twilight blinked, resisting the urge to paw at the floor in thought — she didn’t want to wake Spike! She had always presumed that Discord was born from some fantastic astrocatastrophe and was beyond mere mortal things like birthdays.
“Of course,” Discord huffed, plopping onto her sheets messily and crossing his mismatched arms.
“And it’s… October first?”
When Discord looked at Twilight, his disappointment pierced the pre-dawn gloom. It was a stare that told her she should have known what she said was wrong. Yet, she didn’t know why. Was there something offensive about suggesting a pony was born on the day they told her they were — or was he not born, per se? Did draconequui hatch from—
“I,” Discord sniffed, posing with the stuffiest and most formal air, “was born on a particularly windy afternoon one grand September thirty-first at exactly the sixty-second second of the fourth hour, thank you very much. I thought we talked about this when we planned this little get-together, now didn’t we?”
“I…” Twilight blinked, nervously wondering if she should protest the sheer terror that could come from speaking out against Discord, a being so much vaster than she. “Yes, o-of course. Absolutely n-nothing wrong with a Sept-September th-thirty first. Nothing at all… doesn’t mess up the calendars one bit, no siree.”
“You’re hyperventilating, dear,” Discord sneered.
Swallowing the next stammer that threatened to leave her, Twilight nodded. Why was it that every conversation she had with the draconequus made her feel one step closer to a psych eval? More importantly, if she felt this way, then that means poor Fluttershy must be feeling at least ten times worse!
Eventually, Twilight felt her breathing calm down again. “What is that you wanted…” she swallowed, “...to do for your, erm, pre-birthday?”
“Oh, joy!” Discord exclaimed in a joyful whisper, bringing his paw-and-claw together in a giddy little clap. “Now you finally ask! I was beginning to dread that you would never act like a good hostess and friend.”
Twilight failed to show no fear — her body was trembling slightly as Discord snapped his claw and batted his exaggerated, newly conjured eyelashes at her. Just how much longer was she supposed to sit still and follow along like she were under his hoof — err, paw? A paper crown poofed into existence on his head, its magic-made sequins were pasted on crookedly and a shower of glitter had dribbled carelessly onto Discord’s shoulders.
A blue tee-shirt had been snapped into existence, one that was the exact shady of blue reserved for the parties and foal showers of little colts. Clumsily cut letters spelling out ‘BIRTHDAY COLT’ in garish hues were sewn onto the front in a crooked line. When you were a god, Twilight was sure that anypony could dress however they liked, but Discord had managed to make such foalish attire feel so uncanny and creepy — the kind of creepy that had her want to summon Princess Celestia with a letter, just so she could tell her teacher ’Hold me, I’m scared’. There was nothing that could fit the situation better — a being she could not fathom was standing in her bedroom at — she checked her clock again — one fifty-seven in the morning.
It was a simple fact of Twilight Sparkle’s world that Princess Celestia was one of the few beings in the world who could hold heaven in her hooves. Discord was the god of opposites, of things-fall-apart to everything Celestia was the goddess of. For all Twilight knew, everything seemingly innocent could turn into anything from a battle for reality itself or a squabble over the cereal box prizes that Spike loved to collect that were sitting downstairs in her pantry.
“Umm—”
For all she knew, Discord wanted to steal her socks and find a way to make them a danse macabre sock-theater spectacle to make sure Spike would never sleep forever and then—
“I want a pizza party,” Discord said, a snakish hiss oozing overemphasis in every bratty syllable.
“Th-that’s it?”
Twilight could barely contain the squeak in her tone, and kept her ears pinned to her skull. Her wings hugged her side tightly.
“Well,” drawled Discord, his voice fitting for the syrupy puppet-master in their first encounters, “I want you — yes, you, Twilight Glitter Sparkle — to help me make an almost-birthday pizza!”
“I-I don’t even have a middle name—”
“Ah, ah, ah! Enough of that! Will you help me make a pizza or not?”
Twilight sighed, giving the floor a glum stare. “Sure,” she relented, letting out a tired sigh to punctuate her words.
Perhaps there was a friendship lesson that could be found in this ordeal that she could dictate to Spike when she was less exhausted. Anything to make this fate feel more bearable was something she would welcome. She nodded sleepily in the direction of stairs, blinking wearily as Discord held his arms against his sides and slithered down the library’s bed-loft stairs like a snake.
Twilight shook her head and followed far behind him, her gait still a quiet tippy-hoof as she crept after the chaos god. She could question everything Discord put her through when all that remained of this pizza party was uneaten, cold scraps of crust and she had at least three barrels worth of coffee in her system.
…
When Twilight Sparkle stepped through the door leading past the kitchen’s threshold, she was surprised to find Discord doing nothing. He simply stood statue-still — (oh, how Twilight wanted to chuckle at that) — in the middle of her kitchen, and thus the middle of everything. It was as though he were the ghost of last night’s dishes still soaking in the sink, with suds as white as first snow still clinging to where bits of hayburger had sunk into the waters of the quaint barrel sink.
“Wash your hooves, please,” Twilight said tiredly.
She trotted to the icebox tucked in the corner. Some of the tension eased from her body when she heard Discord finally begin to pump water from the sink. It meant she didn’t have to worry about chaos magic destroying the kitchen of Golden Oaks for at least five minutes. Lighting her horn with a small amount of magenta aura, Twilight pulled open the topmost door to her icebox. Aside from a few sapphires that Spike had chilling in there, an ice cube tray, and far too many corn cobs, there were a few easy-to-make pizzas.
One box was levitated out, and Twilight walked toward the stout table close to the center of the kitchen, carefully overseeing the floating of the frosty box. Under the powdery crystals of ice was the image of two happy foals sprinkling mushrooms on a pie that was no longer plain — and, of course, the nutrition facts that Twilight liked to pretend didn’t exist.
Discord teleported next to Twilight with his usual auraless pop of magic, startling the little alicorn.
“Hey!” Twilight protested indignantly. “Can’t you watch how close you’re getting? Didn’t Fluttershy tell you about personal bubbles yet?”
“Cut your whining, Sparkle. Are those plain pies?”
“Umm, yes. The package says that there aren’t any toppings included right over—”
“Take it back!” Discord declared, kicking a rear hoof against Twilight’s floor in a stamp.
“What? You said you wanted pizza!”
“I wanted good pizza. What you have is an abomination!”
“It’s not an abomination, they don’t sell those at the store!”
“You’re telling me that you live in icky peace, yucky love, and organic markets and farm-fresh everything Ponyville — and you still bought this?”
“Yes!” Twilight huffed, her face darkening a few shades of purple with the horrific grocery-shaming she was enduring. “Spike and I like different things on our pizzas, so I don’t get anything with toppings already on it. I don’t really like cooking either, so I buy these ready-made.”
“And oh my, is it frozen too? You eat ice-paved pizza?”
“Ugh, no! You’re just being silly now—”
Discord placed one of his arms on each hip and craned his long neck down at Twilight. “That’s my job. You wouldn’t make poor Pinkie do everything, now would you?”
“That’s not the point…” Twilight muttered, clutching her pizza box protectively.
“Points are for babies and ponies!” Discord huffed. “Well, don’t just stand there looking plum-glum all day. What do you have for toppings?”
“I, uh…” Twilight scratched the back of her mane with a flick of her magic, and her ears swiveled to the side. “I suppose anything else in the icebox or the pantry would work for that. I have some jars of tomato sauce in one of the root-cellars. If you want, I could go get some things among things…” Twilight paused, yawning loudly, “...among things and — uhh — something else, too? I don’t remember…”
As Twilight blinked sleepily and swayed on her forehooves, her wings unfurled. They hung at her sides, slack and sagging with exhaustion.
Discord observed her boredly, giving a pompous snort. “Yes, you go and get something good to put on this pitiful excuse of a proper pizza pie and be a good little mule. I’ll see what I can find up here.”
“Mmm,” Twilight affirmed, half-asleep on her own hooves. “Yeah, I’ll go do that…”
…
One of the most important things about living in a library with numerous deep basements and below-ground storage spaces was to always account for emergencies. Stashing a spare firefly lantern and first aid kit was what most ponies would put in their homes, Many popular magazines reported that rural communities like Ponyville still popularly used torches as an emergency source of light. Twilight had followed the advice of these publishings and stashed torches and the like down in each of her basements.
But she also kept the real emergency supplies squirreled away in the opposite corners where she could.
Why? What was the point of dividing her supplies so?
Well, because crossword puzzles were painfully flammable. If Twilight Sparkle was short even one crossword puzzle booklet in an emergency, then there was simply no more beauty in the world worth holding out for. Yes, she was well-aware of the many other lesser things worth stashing with her well-stocked canned goods, but it would be entirely unacceptable if Twilight No-Middle-Name Sparkle were not also frightened of the prospect of her mind-maintaining routines being starved too.
So, while she certainly saw fit to find all the jars and burlap sacks of proper ideas for pizza toppings, Twilight Sparkle knew that self-preservation was important when confronted with Discord. And if it was a lie at all, it was only a little white one to not come back to the kitchen immediately. Instead, Twilight Sparkle gave her brain a much-needed break from her best worst friend. It wasn’t like she would let Discord wreck Golden Oaks on her non-existent watch, which gave Twi plenty of time to cozy up with figuring out the name of a piece-by-piece collaborative art method…
...she was farily certain it was on the tip of her tongue… it was something ghastly and ugly-sounding...
...Exquisite body? No. Beautiful corpse? No, but she was sure she was close.
Twilight Sparkle spent exactly forty-five minutes contentedly working through her crossword puzzles — this was close enough to a national emergency that would warrant breaking them out. Fifteen minutes was to account for preheating the oven; another thirty was what was needed to thaw a pizza.
Only then was it worth returning to the kitchen.
…
The smell was the first thing that Twilight noticed — it wasn’t anything outright bad. Though, it was closer to a candle than anything like the cheese and veggie aromas that Twilight knew belonged to pizza. Still, she walked back into the kitchen with full saddlebags and a polite smile on her face.
“Hi, Discord! I’m back — and I brought the toppings.”
Discord had warped all of Twilight’s perfectly circular plates into hideous triangles. He had set out three of them, and it wasn’t even in a tidy row. It’s like the draconequus knew an arrangement like that would trigger Twilight’s anxiety.
“Finally, brave little Twilight Sparkle has returned from her basement-dwelling natural habitat.”
“Hey!” Twilight squeaked, levitating her full saddlebags onto a nearby stool. “The only time that I’m in the basement is for research, you’re just a meanie.”
“Shush, the pizza is ready. Only ponies who are quiet get proper portions of pizza.”
Twilight harrumphed and pulled up a second stool, which she seated herself upon. Then she began to levitate out her sauce jars, an assortment of veggies, and a few small bundles of hay. As was proper, she kept levitating things into an expertly-arranged line. Nothing was even a millimeter out of place. It was glorious.
Three seconds later, she had to stifle a scream. Discord had flung open her oven and stuck his paws right inside without an oven mitt before pulling out the pizza. She didn’t even get the chance to protest when his wild, multicolored magic threw everything she had brought up right out the window.
“B-but… all my hard work!” Twilight whimpered, wincing as she heard the breaking of a glass jar’s impact.
“Just look at my wondrous creation,” Discord purred, intimately caressing the surface of the too-hot pizza pie in the most disturbing way fathomable. “C’mon, Twi-pie. You didn’t think that some normal loser vegetables would be worthy of me, did you? This is an occasion that requires some love for my absolutely masterful creation!”
Twilight beheld the pizza. The crust was puffy and golden — a very proper pizza crust. Pale shreds of cheese were still distinguishable even after they were mostly melted.
But she saw what Discord had topped his pizza with, and felt the start of tears forming in the corner of her eyes. Upon the pizza was neither sauce, peppers, or anything else that Twilight had kept in her icebox — instead, he had reached into the darkest corners of Twilight’s pantry, the forgotten realm where stale bags of chips and leftover candy from Nightmare Night and All Foal’s Day lurked, yearning for attention once more.
Discord had given that candy the worst kind of attention; tears were starting to trickle down Twilight’s face as she looked at the culinary train crash before. The tri-colored white, orange, and yellow kernels had been reduced to a warped, bumpy tar layer stuck about the fragile crust as thick as a coating of toffee.
“No…” Twilight whispered. The traumatic sight was making it hard for anything in the world to feel real, for anything else to pull her from the gripping, only-real sensation of seeing a candy corn pizza. “Nonononono—”
“My dear, how big do you want your slice to be?”
Streaming hotly down Twilight’s face were too many tears for her to keep track of. The horrible, warm lump of misery and fear was making it difficult for anything more than a creaking, pitiful whimper to escape her — and even those sounds made her throat feel sorer with each sob that wracked her body.
“W-why? W-wh-why w-would you do this? I n-never asked for this—”
“SURPRISE!” Discord cheered, flashing her a real villain’s smile — the kind that made her shiver at seeing.
Swirling around Discord’s claw was a sudden, blinding charge of black-purple-red-green and—
Her ears pricked forward, barely breaking her paralyzing fear just as his magic crackled. Twilight opened her mouth for words she knew she hadn’t even thought of and—
Something wrapped in magic hit her right in her agape mouth, and her mind screamed that she was choking, and not just because the feeling was like wax upon the tongue. The shriek that was clogging Twilight’s throat became the pizza, and she fell onto the floor as every aspect and sensation it had absolutely infected her mouth, her mind—
The abnormal crunchy melt of the candy corn became her world. The burned, waxy flavor was overwhelming in all the worst ways, and Twilight wanted no words to describe them, for they mixed with the flaky, crispy bread of the pizza crust. The knowledge that she would have to swallow this vile mixture was dawning on her with each oh-gods-no screeching thought spurred by her racing heart.
Had she brought this upon herself, this degenerate parody of a pizza existence? That was the most prominent thought seeping into Twilight’s tormented time as she lay, twitching on the floor and half-choking, half-actually-attempting-to-swallow Discord’s horrid creation. The aftertaste of the cheese was hitting her, and it was everything she could have never wanted… not in these circumstances. Not when it mingled too closely with the distorted sweetness of the candy corn, brought to a semi-frothing, hellish, hot-baked state.
The staleness of the pizza’s crust was still coating her throat as she hacked up the remaining half-chewed mess onto the kitchen floor.
Wheezing and gasping for breath, Twilight turned to the draconequus, her eyes shining with betrayal and fear. Her head was dizzy with exhaustion, and her profound sense of fear had drained all her strength.
“Why?” she rasped.
Discord said nothing, he only giggled madly — which was an extraordinarily unpleasant sound — and shrugged as though no atrocity had taken place. The sheer cruelty in that laugh! It was like he could not recognize a crime against the universe itself sat right on Twilight’s table, one that she was seriously considering using the Elements of Harmony against when it was cold and properly powerless.
When Twilight Sparkle blinked, all that she saw was the translucent outline of the draconequus rapidly fading to nothing. She was soon left alone in her kitchen, with only his smile hanging in the air.
That, too, vanished in time.
And Twilight Sparkle was left, truly alone, with a monster she knew too much and too little of resting above her on the table. All the distance between now and the dawn stretched before her.
Author's Note
regidar if you read this far you are a fucking fossil and i will drill your soul for oil
have a hap borf 🖤
