There was a sort of order to properly-functioning biology and as with just about all things orderly, Discord found it annoying. Oh, when he snapped something living into existence, he tended to automatically copy the extant system into his new creation... but that was a matter of necessity. He could certainly conjure creatures without much in the way of internal organs: it was just that when he stopped paying attention to them, they tended to fall over. Which could be amusing in and of itself, but the 'never moving again' part was simply irritating. And he had been told there was a smell or rather, after a few days of the whole never-moving-again thing, there would be a smell. It was something he frequently had to take from external reports because when it came to the sense of smell, it wasn't always worth his trouble to have one.
Why wouldn't biology be seen as annoying? If it was functioning properly, then it was only working in one way and that was just no fun at all. And when you thought about all of the tiny parts which had to slot together exactly in order to make anything function at all...
Copying was automatic, and he did it without thought because direct examination of everything involved irritated him to no end or rather, once the irritation had become severe enough, to the very real end of something: it was just a rather brief question of what. When it came to direct study, Discord typically thought of biology as being like the kind of puzzle which came pre-solved, where somepony had put a coating of glue all over the pieces. It was obvious that the only hope of understanding came from taking the whole thing apart and starting over. But once you'd done that, then why would anyone want to put the pieces back together in the right order, anyway? Plus it made his talons all messy, and he could never seem to remember where he'd put that one corner --
-- the point was that biology was annoying, and that was why he generally chose not to have one. When you were essentially a being formed from pure chaos and incarnated as what was more or less solidified magic, you didn't need to opt in for every last part of the messy bits. He generally felt he was a lot happier that way.
For example, take what he was doing right now, in the cottage, at the little cozy summer morning tea party: just himself and Fluttershy and sure, there were all sorts of animals scampering all over the place, but they hardly counted. As far as Discord was concerned, it was tea for two, because that was his privilege. One of many.
"...so how is it?" his friend hopefully asked as he took a slow sip.
"Quite good," he decided, because that was the sort of thing you told a friend and if it happened to be a lie, then falsehoods could lead to their own little form of chaos and that was even better. "If you happen to prefer such a non-standard blend."
The visible side of her features briefly contorted into something halfway between frown and wince. "...non... standard..."
"I generally take a bit of pine tar," he sniffed. "Or lava." One talon delicately curled away from the mug. It was the behavior of a proper draconequus when drinking tea and since there was only one of those, he got to decide what that was. "To give it a bit of bite. Tannic acids alone just don't do it for me. That's for the Grimcess. And incidentally, the concept of drinking acid?" He peered suspiciously at the liquid. "That may sound intriguing enough at the base, but when it comes in this form..."
But that was when he saw her face again, and realized that she was starting to become upset.
"It's quite good anyway, of course," he quickly reassured her. "I hardly expect you to have lava in casual stock." Took another sip. It didn't taste bad, and he could say that because he was currently allowing himself to have a sense of taste. All things considered, he'd just bring his own tea set next time. The hardest part was transporting the gravity well, but how else were you supposed to get rid of leftovers?
She managed a smile, sipped at her own mug.
"...and the muffins? They're whole wheat. Lots of fiber. I just thought I'd try something new..."
Two of them were currently sitting in a little pocket within the shell of his manifested form, and doing so with the sort of odd weight which made him long for the drag of the gravity well. As an improvement. "They're fine." You had to make sacrifices for friends, or so he'd been told. Causing that matter to annihilate itself out of the local universe was standard: waiting to do so until he left the cottage was polite.
"...I'm not used to them," his friend admitted. "I usually don't eat this many grains at once. Or fiber. Maybe I shouldn't have had so many..."
Her face contorted again.
"Something wrong?" He understood that you were supposed to ask after the welfare of those you cared about, although Fluttershy had a strange insistence on his not taking care of whatever might be causing her distress. Or whoever. Really, as long as you were making matter annihilate itself anyway...
"...I'll be right back."
He watched her trot out of the Sun-lit sitting room, and felt she was moving with visible discomfort. That worried him. Perhaps he needed to help --
-- there was a very small sound. It was something like an extended pfft!, only drawn out into a low whistle. But there were lots of animals in the cottage, which meant there were even more sounds. And when it came to the smell... as far as Discord was concerned, there wasn't one. He didn't have an olfactory sense at the moment. There were a lot of animals in the cottage, and just about every specimen came with its own musk, cleaning habits, and personal idea of where the bathroom was.
She trotted back in, and the discomfort was visibly gone. All was well.
His friend sat back down. He sipped some more tea and, out of further politeness, had another muffin. Neutrons of whole wheat began to collapse in on themselves.
"...so what are you doing later?" she eventually asked.
"I thought I'd just go around town for a bit," he placidly announced. "See what there might be to do." Shake up. Disturb. Educate. The last was the same thing as the first two, only with slightly less follow-up psychiatric counseling.
She rather visibly thought about that for a while.
"...please don't scare anypony."
He sniffed again (which required another brief internal pocket, because the air had to go somewhere), and made sure to look irritated. Really, he understood about doing things for friends. It was just that some of the requests could be so unreasonable. But it seemed to make her happy, thinking she could ask him what not to do.
"If you insist."
And when it came to her happiness, it was best to let her remain so.
He'd decided to visit one of the parks and in order to follow the constraint which he didn't have to obey, was doing so as assorted and rather jumbled playground equipment. Discord roughly understood that parks were for playtime and really, once you had that part down, it was just a question of what you were going to play with. He was currently considering some possibilities for the sandbox, which surely just needed some buried treasure to make it interesting. That wouldn't scare anypony at all.
(Of course, when you had buried treasure, you needed something to guard it. But all of the traps could be completely non-lethal and besides, if being hung upside-down from one hoof scared you, then how was that his fault?)
This was the section of the park designed for the youngest children: the oldest ones playing were preschoolers, and the low end of the age scale bottomed out at foals. He'd decided it was a good place to show up as playground equipment, because some of the foals were still young enough to be expressing random magic as Surges. Not only were those good chaotic fun, but that fun regularly destroyed quite a bit of the facilities. Nopony ever questioned new equipment showing up.
There was an admission fee box set at the entrance to this part of the park. Most parents were understanding, and allowed their bits to defray replacement costs. It didn't keep the majority from grumbling when they had to sign the attached waiver.
Very few foals today, though, and they were all being watched by second-time parents, who had their offspring tumbling about in playclothes with accessories of horn restraints and wing sleeves. It made him gravitate towards the preschoolers.
Most of them were lying upon the central rotary wheel, facing each other while lightly giggling and talking about anything they could think of, especially while their parents were watching from a distance and couldn't hear. They were at that age where they were fascinated by a number of topics. One, for both colts and fillies, was the nature of anything considered gross. Another was the ongoing exploration and mastery of their own bodies. And as it turned out, there was an intersection topic.
One of the pegasus fillies had a funny look on her face. Then she shifted one of her back legs, and...
He wasn't sure what to make of the resulting sound. It was sort of like a brrrritttp!, only with more of a musical tone to it. But it made snouts wrinkle all over the wheel, and then it made all of the children laugh. Some of them began to roll around on Sun-warmed wood, tossed about by their own amusement. Whatever the sound was, they considered it to be funny. And when it came to anything amusing...
A red ball casually rolled up a little closer to listen in.
"...bad!" an earth pony colt laughed. "So bad!"
Well, he was laughing, so clearly it wasn't bad at all. Ponies just talked like that sometimes. Language had orderly rules, and yet words emerged as a jumble of meaning. No wonder it took so much effort to figure out what everypony was feeling.
"Everypony does it!" the pegasus filly helplessly giggled. "You're worse! I smelled yours!"
Smell? He hadn't bothered with that sense. Perhaps he should --
"Everypony does it!" declared a rather small unicorn filly. "Everypony, no matter what they say! I bet the Princesses do it!"
This made all of them laugh, even harder. One nearly fell off the rim.
He was becoming intrigued.
"Everypony!" decided a pegasus colt. "Everypony and everyone, everywhere --"
He stopped, and light blue fur furrowed across his brow.
"Does Discord?"
Several swings immediately strained forward.
They were talking about him. He didn't understand the reason yet, but they were talking about him and there could be nothing better. It was just a question of learning the context...
"I bet he could," the small unicorn immediately decided. "It could come out rainbows if he wanted it to."
And before he could contemplate entering into competition with the Factory, the pegasus colt said "No, like we do. You eat, and then you wait, and then you get it."
"Di-ges-tion," an earth pony filly carefully pronounced.
"Yeah," the pegasus colt said. "Only I don't know if he eats and stuff. So maybe he doesn't." With awe, "The only one in the whole world who doesn't..."
A maypole briefly vibrated with outrage. An entire planet full of life was doing something and he had been excluded?
The colt looked around the wheel, expression both thoughtful and curious. Posed a question to the world, or at least the local part of it which wasn't adults and would never tell him not to say something like that.
"Does Discord fart?"
And nopony had an answer.
"I hope he does," another colt said.
"He really should," considered a filly.
"Because farting is the best feeling," the original pegasus colt declared. "The best in the world."
Most of them nodded. One filly shook her head.
"Second-best," said the somewhat tall earth pony. "After the other one."
The pegasus thought about that.
"Well, yeah," he admitted. "But you only get the other one after it stops. And you know what has to happen first."
Just about all of the children shuddered.
"Second-best," the pegasus agreed. "In the world." And, a little mournfully, "I hope he farts. Imagine going through your whole life and not farting..."
This visibly distressed the group. It was something they could imagine and after a few seconds, they changed the subject to stuff which got stuck in your ears and navel, just so they wouldn't have to think about it again.
After a time, their parents called them away, and the group began to disperse. The playground equipment remained, shifting back and forth with the effort of deep thought.
Did he? He didn't remember having done so. Surely it had to be within his capabilities, even if that meant doing it -- the normal way. He was certain of his ability to do something normally, at least once. And if there was an entire planet full of beings doing something, an activity which led to the second-best feeling in the world (and that reminded him: he had to find out what was in first), then he had every right to participate. More than that: he had the duty.
"Fine," one of the water spray faucets muttered. "So it's just a matter of finding out what farting is..."
And once he'd found out, he had to try it.
The educational process had been simple. Discord had a habit of self-teaching, which usually meant he teleported to an empty section of the Canterlot Archives, briefly animated the books into speaking, and allowed his self to be taught. (It was best to avoid the tree in this, as the librarian had two bad habits: listening in on his studies, and then trying to stop them. Really, of all the ponies to discourage learning...) In this instance, it had taken a few tries to find the proper department, and then he'd eventually escaped from Biology with his head spinning: the full circles were fine, but the rotary action of his ears had nearly put him into a hover.
But once he'd had the laypony terms to go with everything else...
There was a sound, and then there was a stench! (He quickly gave himself a full olfactory bulb, and vowed to maintain it for the rest of the day.) And put together, they were disruptive! Disturbing! They created chaos, and did so through a fully-natural process! No magic involved at all! And there he would be, fully innocent with wide eyes and a talon gently placed to the side of his fang, while ponies scattered and coughed and possibly screamed, with nopony able to blame him because it was a fully-natural process.
(He thought about one of the other parts for a while, and decided he could in fact manage the feat. He just didn't see any point, because then it wouldn't be natural any more. Besides, part of the point was the stench. He supposed he could add a sound, but when it came to farting rainbows, he already knew what red smelled like. It wasn't anything special.)
However, avoiding blame meant he had to do it naturally. Which meant allowing himself to descend into Nature for a while, and that was something which left him grumbling. Normally, he just copied the system, and did so without any true thought. Bringing about a proper fart seemed to require careful examination. Quality control. Inspection, and everything else which tended to irritate him.
It nearly put him into a Mood. But it was for the sake of the resulting chaos, and so he persisted.
He was going to need a digestive system: a true one. This required a certain amount of outer (and, simultaneously, inner) support, but the digestion was the important part. So not just a tongue and taste buds, but a proper throat and stomach. Plus there was a liver, and that nearly stopped the whole project on the spot because he didn't know very much about livers. At one point, he'd overheard the librarian saying that if anypony was ever fully, personally, and constantly aware of their liver, while having to operate every last function, they probably wouldn't bother.
So once he'd conjured one up, he tried it for a while. Having to micromanage endless fiddly little chemical processes quickly proved her right, and he gave up control to the automatic systems while muttering to himself and vowing to never tell her.
And then there was the small intestine, which was somehow worse. It turned out that when you created a properly-functioning small intestine, you also conjured up a number of guests. Things which just seemed to be part and parcel of the package. And according to that one nice hardcover, they were fully necessary for farting at all. But it made him into a host, or possibly the landlord for freeloaders. He wasn't exactly happy about that. So he created a little representative, shrank it down even further, went inside his own body, and presented a rather huffy talk about how they were his guests and he expected them to behave themselves because if they didn't, He Had Ways.
The bacteria fully ignored him. Bacteria generally did.
Between the liver, being dismissed by a bunch of single-celled idiots, and dealing with a process which was so incredibly fussy and boring when you had to think about every last part of it... well, when he looked back upon the events of the day, (after it was all over, from a great and theoretically safe distance), he admitted that he'd slacked off a bit towards the end, especially for that part which had already seen him retreating from the onslaught of a thousand medical terms, all in Griffonant. Still, it looked good to go.
After that, it was a matter of loading up. Several books had been so kind as to list the best foods for inciting the process and now that he had a proper digestion, it was just a matter of picking and choosing.
Then he remembered that it was going to be his first fart ever, and chose all of them.
It led to some initial difficulty in acquiring the supply. He had the option to just snap everything into existence, but he was trying to do it naturally and that meant using that which was already in the world. Shopping tended to be difficult for him, especially as the Grimcess frowned on his simply bringing unbacked money into the economy: there was also a certain trouble in getting some shopkeepers to stop screaming.
The easiest solution was to raid multiple fridges. On the sly, in secret, leaving illusions behind so that nopony would know anything was missing for a while and once that faded, there would be his IOU. Or as he thought of it, his You Actually Owe Me Because I Didn't Leave Behind Any Surprises, which was what happened when anypony other than Fluttershy tried to call them in. Which incidentally told him who to raid, and he emptied out multiple shelves in Bearer kitchens. As far as he was concerned, every mare should have been grateful for the chance to contribute.
Ice cream was consumed by the trough. He followed this up with raw onions, and then cooked a dozen just in case that made any difference. There were pickles dipped in pepper jam. Pears added their efforts, as did asparagus. Whole grains seemed to be good contributors and as a side bonus, he'd finally found out why cabbage existed.
And of course, there were the beans. The beans were the best part. He heard the word 'garbanzo' for the first time and laughed for three minutes. It wasn't a name which belonged on a seed: it was something more suited to an inquisitive (and perhaps slightly stuffy) cross between a magician and a professor. So he dressed up one of the beans appropriately, gave it some limbs, and laughed for another five minutes.
Then he provided it with lots of other beans for company, stuck them all in a pocket dimension, waved up a home with half-botanic caretaker, added a full ecosystem, brought the whole thing to life, popped out before any of it could see him and forgot about it for five years.
He ate, and the heaviness of the previous muffins seemed to be magnified. Well, that was reasonable: there was a lot more mass being stored now. And there seemed to be a certain churning going on. The more food, the more gas and the more gas, the better the chaos was going to be. And while he'd had to burden himself with fully natural biology for a time, nothing said he had to allow the rules of space to apply within his own form. There had to be more room than his serpentine body implied, or what was the point?
So he'd twisted things a bit there, just to allow for an extra trough of dairy products or three. It all fit, because he wanted it to. And yet... there was a bulge where his newly-realized abdomen had been told to be.
He wasn't quite sure how that was possible. He'd lost track of how much he'd eaten to make it possible. But there was food, and there would be gas. That was the whole point.
Besides, his digestive system was now producing acid of the non-tannic variety. Biology could make acid. It was almost enough to make him respect the whole thing.
He waited for a time (and the churning seemed to be getting faster). Yelled at the bacteria to make them operate more quickly, because politeness hadn't worked. (They ignored the yelling, too.) And when he felt that the process was well and truly under way, teleported back to Ponyville.
Chaos needed a place to happen and when it came to Ponyville, Discord happened all the time.
He seldom toured the streets in his own form, mostly because there was always somepony who'd just moved into town and he would come across them unexpectedly. (He'd been expecting it: they hadn't.) On a normal day, the long-time residents eventually became tired of chasing down screaming newcomers to explain the status quo, also locally known as We're Almost Completely Sure You Won't Die, And Here's A Card With A List Of Psychiatric Counseling Rates. (Better Price For Family Bulk.)
But today, he had something boiling in his newly-formed gut. (He could feel that, along with the fact that there was quite a bit of roil there. He suspected tides. There was also a chance of a newborn weather system.) And true randomness seemed to be called for, especially after the excruciating labor of having to deal with so much systematic planning. He didn't have any real idea for where to be when it all let go, and allowed his mismatched limbs to pick out a trail of their own accord. All he had to do was stay around ponies and eventually, there would be chaos.
His innocent expression was ready to go. He'd even polished his fang.
Ponies stared at him as he ambled by, taking carefree hitching strides which had no particular place to go. He even whistled a bit, mostly as a warmup. But the waiting was starting to wear on him. Having to wait, for Discord, felt very like a fast-building internal pressure.
...there was quite a bit of pressure, actually.
Was there supposed to be pressure? There was weight and he'd anticipated that: going this far into biology meant he needed to have real mass and even if he'd bent the rules for the occupying volume of food, it brought a little extra to the table. Maybe a lot: he'd frankly lost count or rather, he hadn't bothered counting at all because there was already enough horrible order in the process without involving numbers. Weight was probably normal. But to have this building, swelling pressure...
He looked down.
His torso had domed out a little at the start. There was now somewhat more of a bulge than before.
The internal storm system tossed off a sharp series of gusts. The dome swelled accordingly.
He was just starting to think about what that might mean for the final result when the next part hit him.
As horrified ponies watched, the long body twisted against itself. Curling happened. Sun put highlights on what was now a much larger dome, even as his arms cradled it and the doubling over became complete.
He found himself making a sound. He hadn't meant to make it, and it didn't strike him as a very funny one.
After a while, somepony found a cart large enough to load him into. And as helpful, worried ponies who'd survived all of it and only had three counseling sessions to go hauled him towards help, he wondered if going so far as to include actual nerves had been a good idea.
There were six mares looking at him now, as he lay in the cool grass under the tree's swaying branches. The dragon was a little further back. And, quite a distance out, there was a ring of ponies. Close enough to watch, if just barely -- but too far out to hear anything, and with a clear path to the exits. At the moment, those were considered to be located everywhere, and they would not be enough.
He weakly stared up at the swaying branches, which now took a little work to get past his swollen belly. (He'd allowed the area some extra elasticity, just in case.) Swaying in the wind.
That particular portion of air was moving freely. His wasn't. It seemed horribly unfair.
His friend was looking at him, with that one visible, concerned, and somewhat exasperated eye.
"...Discord..." she softly began, and added what was very nearly the worst thing. The head shake. The slow head shake. Something which indicated disapproval.
"Clearly," he snorted, "you have no appreciation for the finer things in life. That which actual living offers as scant compensation for the horror of the experience. Tell me, Fluttershy, why wouldn't you want your friend to experience what I've been assured is the second-best feeling in the world?"
She simply sighed, and stepped back a bit.
"...excessive gas," the team medic diagnosed.
"So tell him t' jus' make it vanish," the farmer stated. "Easy enough, right? An' then Ah can get back t' some real work." With a soft snort, "Gettin' called in, an' it turns out t' be for this foolishness..."
"I refuse."
They were all staring at him. He liked that. Being the center of attention was right.
"This is a natural process," Discord stated. "I went to a lot of trouble for that. It will be resolved naturally." His belly bulged out a little more. "Or not at all."
The mares and dragon exchanged glances.
"So he's gotta fart," the farmer sighed. "No other way." Followed by a thoughtful, somewhat bemused "Well, Ah suppose he could jus' float off."
"...Applejack!" emerged as a startled squeak.
"Calm down, 'Shy. We'll help if'fin we can. But can't blame a pony for the thought." The farmer squinted at him. "First fart now, is it?"
He nodded.
"With new biology, from what y'said before."
Again.
"So his body may not know what to do," the librarian proposed. "It doesn't have any experience."
The farmer seemed to be deep in contemplation, and the hat's brim slipped slightly forward accordingly.
"What did everypony have for lunch?"
He absently half-listened to the emerging lists. Most of his attention was focused on what was happening with his body. He was almost used to the wind aspects of the internal storm, and acid rain was normal enough. The lightning, however, probably wasn't supposed to be there.
The naming of foodstuffs wrapped up, and the farmer nodded to herself.
"Good," the orange mare said through her faint grin. "Tells me who's ready t' lead by example. Let 'er rip, Rares."
The designer's hooves scrabbled in the grass, scooting a white-and-paling body backwards.
"I will not!"
"It'll help," the farmer countered.
"I --" with open outrage, "-- I have never!"
"Y'have. Everypony does. Everypony, everyone, an' we're workin' on settlin' the one exception. If y'didn't, you'd be dead." The grin got wider. "Come on, Rares. Jus' a little one, t' show him the way. Bit of a toot. Kick enough fits out the front end: don't need quite as much drama from the back."
Hooves scrabbled faster. "One does not ask a lady to -- !"
"Ah didn't," the farmer countered. "Ah asked you."
All four white legs locked, and the next words were pushed between teeth. Every sentence emerged into the world as something close to a hiss, and the punctuation served as a promise of poison.
"There are ponies watching," the designer half-snarled. "I do not. I will not. My poor reputation suffered enough after that Tartarus-freed party in the capital, and all the rumors which had no reason to be attached to my tail, none at all! Something which is just barely beginning to die down, and to do it here, with ponies watching...!"
Green eyes rolled. "Fine," the farmer declared. "Ain't quite sure Ah'm up t' it right now, though. Could go get some things t' eat, assumin' there's anythin' left." With another snort. "Explains why AB kept sayin' her hooves were goin' through the pears. Discord, exactly how much did y'eat?"
"Oh, please," he sniffed. "Aren't I suffering enough without being asked to keep count? Really, what you all put me through --"
"-- rough estimate, then."
He thought about it.
"A bale-ton."
The farmer blinked.
"Really?"
"Obviously not!"
And exhaled. "Oh. Good. For a minute there --"
"It is an estimate. I rounded down."
"-- and you are perfectly content with doing it in public, I suppose?" the designer shot at the largest mare, still glaring. "No concerns at all?"
The farmer shrugged.
"Usually step into the trees for a bit. Ah'll admit it."
"AHA! So you too see the shame --"
"-- 'cause if'fin Ah let a good one fly, it can take out some of the pests."
The designer's skin was now two shades paler than her fur.
"...what?"
"Tent caterpillars, mostly. An' as far as Ah'm concerned, they've got it comin'. You're a mare of the world, Rares. Y'ain't never heard of gassed apples?"
There were things which the designer didn't do in public and if her hoof speed had been slightly faster, retching would have been one of them.
They all waited for her to fully return. Discord, whose spine was beginning to curl somewhat upwards from sheer lift, had no real choice.
"...I know he wants it to be natural," his friend tried (and naturally, failed) to understand, "but that's looking really bad, everypony." With a hopeful look at the librarian, "Maybe magic?"
"As the patient," Discord announced, "I demand to have authority over my own health care --"
But the librarian had winced. "No." And started backing up at the same time, as rapid-fire words punctuated each hoofstep. "No-no-no. I don't even want to press on that too much, not unless I know what the guide route is." Even more quickly, with sudden overtones of lecture. "And you can't teleport something that's inside a body, and even if I could, there isn't a popping sound when I go, Fluttershy! There's no air collapsing into the vacuum where I just was! Because it's an exchange. I displace a little air at my arrival point, but the rest goes to where I started. I'd just be swapping atmosphere for --" a reluctant glance at the dome "-- whatever's going on in there. And if there was a vacuum... that would be worse."
The little dragon sighed. "Don't look at me," he announced. "I'm just hoping his aren't worse than mine."
Which made the librarian's fur instantly turn against its own grain, and also had Discord focusing on the small reptile.
"Yours are really bad?" he hopefully asked, for some comedy required a partner.
"Did you eat any anthracite?"
"What's --"
"-- it's coal with a luster. And attitude. And it likes to get payback, and it means I'm not allowed near any open flame. Including my own," the dragon darkly stated. "Did you?"
Discord frowned, and vowed to have a word with the books. Leaving such a potent tool off the list was virtually a crime. "No. But for next time..."
The dragon put his hands on his hips and glared. Meanwhile, the mares were still talking. "So you don't have any magic for farts?" the baker hopefully asked. "None at all, Twilight?"
"Pinkie --"
"-- not even a little one? Like, you know it's coming out and you're at a lectern, there's a whole audience in front of you for the really big talk, it's all professors and doctorates and ponies who are so stuffy, you couldn't even get a good plushie out of them -- isn't that just the most counterintuitive thing ever? -- and you don't want to look silly, so you sort of muffle the sound while you teleport it somewhere else, just a little teleport, no flash at all..."
"No."
The baker's head tilted slightly to the right.
"You're going to research that now, aren't you?"
Red blazed through purple fur.
"...yes."
The baker lightly shrugged. A little more of Discord's back lifted from the grass, and she looked at him.
"Maybe we need Cherry Berry," the baker decided. "I'm an aeronautics amateur. That kind of balloon might take a professional."
"Ah still say somepony's gotta give him an example," the farmer insisted. "'Shy?"
Who blushed. "...the muffins were a while ago..."
"Fine." She looked up, because you almost always had to look up. "Rainbow?"
Who snickered, putting a slight jostle into the hoover. "Hey, I like letting a good one rip as much as anypony --"
"-- better than most," the designer muttered. "Perhaps more than just about all --"
"-- but it's a matter of timing! You can't just ask! And the more you push, the harder it can be." Followed by, with surprising thought, "But I do know a way to make it easier. It's altitude."
"With your personality," the white unicorn darkly volleyed, "that's hardly a surprise."
"I said altitude!" the weather coordinator shot back. "And no jokes about extra propulsion! I tried that. You can't get the focus on that small of a -- anyway, it's about pressure differential! The higher up you are, the easier it is. It wants to come out."
"Great," the librarian sarcastically said. "Just great. I can only project him so high before I start to lose cohesion on the grip, Rainbow. And he's too heavy for you two to carry. Usually." And with tones dipping into shadow, "Well, he's just about off the ground now, really. I suppose we could just wait a few more minutes, then tie a string around his hock..."
"DIGNITY!" the draconequus roared, because there was only one of him and therefore he got to decide what dignity meant. "You will treat the patient with dignity!"
And then curled up a little tighter, not that he really could. There was a lot of dome in the way.
"...we have to help him," his friend half-whispered. "Please... Pinkie?"
Who shook her head. "All I could do was bring the twins," she said. "They're naturals. But they can't really talk him through it. Because of the whole not-really-talking-yet thing."
"Wait." The librarian's eyes had just gone wide. "My magic doesn't cover this --"
"NATURAL!" the patient demanded.
"-- but somepony else's might. Rainbow, that's air." With a little wince, "Of some kind, anyway. You could --"
But the weather coordinator was already shaking her head. "Same problem. It's inside him. No direct conduit." Followed by, with a smirk, "I do know a technique. But it's only good for after."
"...sorry?" the librarian reluctantly asked -- but that wasn't what drew Discord's attention. Deep in the shadows of the swaying branches, the designer's body had just gone rigid.
"Well, it's like you said!" the hovering mare smirkingly enthused, because getting the chance to finally tell the story had made her completely overlook the nature of the audience. "It's just air. And I'm a pegasus! So let's say... you know it's coming. You find this place to stand where nopony's gonna notice. And then you sort of -- catch it. As it comes out. Make a tight little bundle. And let's say you're at this party, this stupid boring party which you only had to be at because you lost a bet -- other pony totally must have cheated -- and she wanted to show up with a Wonderbolt. Boring party, stupid stuffy ponies, and you've got this fart in a tight little bundle which you can make go anywhere you want. Make it look like it came from anypony. And you keep it circulating! Because she wanted me to circulate, right? That's the whole point! So I figured --"
"RAINBOW DASH!"
And then they were all looking at the designer. Every mare, the dragon, Discord, and the distant ring of ponies, which had responded to the most recent event through becoming a little more distant.
Discord could understand why they were looking. But it meant they weren't looking at him, even with his stomach starting to fully qualify for its own aeronautics event. He cleared his throat.
"Did you know her eyes could do that?" he asked the dragon. "The glowing-white thing. I thought that was just with yours."
The weather coordinator swallowed.
"Um," the hovering mare said, as wingbeats began to speed up. "Um..." and then there was the rather distinctive gulp of a mare trying to bring up extra vocabulary. "...hypothetically...?"
The white horn ignited. Cyan wings pushed.
The librarian managed to get it broken up after the third murder attempt.
"Look," she said as bubbles of energy pressed two mares tightly against opposite sides of the treetrunk, "we need to get this fixed. I'm pretty sure he's not going to explode."
"I could if I wanted to," Discord declared. "Much better than any of you. Living beings can barely explode at all. I heard the record was a mere twice."
"...but I'd rather not take the chance," she reluctantly continued. "I still don't want to risk magic, and maybe getting him in the air is best. But before we do that, we should figure out if anything else is wrong. Something which would keep that from working, before it fails. Let me take a look."
She slowly stepped forward. Trotted towards his curving, twisting, and now rather overshadowed form.
"You made real working organs," she asked.
"Obviously," he huffed.
"Did you do the liver?"
He renewed his vow. "Of course."
"Small intestine?" She moved around his head, started to follow his twisted back. He had to curve in order to follow her.
"Ask me about freeloaders!"
"Large intestine?"
He frowned for a moment: the position of his head meant she saw it from an angle. "Obviously. I remember that distinctly. It was the last thing I did."
She blinked.
"The last?"
"Yes," he huffed again. "The large intestine, and then it's over."
The librarian stopped. Got body and head low, and looked at the gap which sheer lift had made between the curving tube of his form and the ground.
Then she looked closer.
"...oh," she softly whispered. "...oh..."
"Twilight," came from the left side of the tree. "I am certain I could help if you let me go. To approach you freely. And not her."
The librarian ignored this.
"You forgot." There was a tiny smile on her face. He didn't like that. It was the sort of smile which implied something was his fault -- and then to make things that much worse, the purple-furred monster actually went and said it. In public! "You forgot the last bit."
"I did not --" was automatic.
She looked to the left, at where the curve of his neck had brought head and antler close to his own spine. "-- you don't have a rectum."
He frowned at her. "A what?"
She blushed. Leaned in, and whispered into his ear.
"...oh," Discord eventually said.
She nodded.
"It was a fussy process," he defended himself. "And boring." (She was starting to smirk.) "Also, there was an truly excessive amount of Griffonant. Anyone would have stopped paying full attention -- stop smirking. So that was an accurate description of what it is? How it looks and works?"
Another nod, with very little of the smirk discarded. At least his friend looked relieved.
"Such a simple thing," he decided as his stomach bulged out by another hoofwidth. "I can fix that right now."
"Do that," the librarian declared, beginning to straighten. "Just let me get clear --"
The talons snapped.
Afterwards, once pieces of descriptions had been assembled from the remnants of a thousand trembling counseling sessions, what emerged was this.
There was a sound. Nopony was ever truly able to agree on just what the sound had been like. Some compared it to a steam whistle, others said it was the scream of a tornado being funneled through a narrow canyon and shearing away rock, and more than a few made references to explosions. The term BRRLAPITC! was kicked around a lot, although with no agreement on spelling or pronunciation.
Most of the witnesses on the outer ring reached a consensus on the rolling tide of -- 'air' is about as far as we want to go here -- which had boiled towards them. Nopony could really talk about the colors for very long, although a few of them continued to insist that they had somehow managed to smell red.
Oh. The smell.
The smell was described in various ways. Methane was invoked, because it had to be. But there was also talk of 'that thing you get when you've got an emergency outhouse on the outskirts of your farm and you forget that it has to get a new hole dug every year. For ten years,' which wasn't all that uncommon of a description in a farming community. Others invoked the pus discharged from an infected hoof, some thought of mold, a number came up with decay, manure, monsters, the breakdown between the walls of reality, and some ponies never really got it down to words because any attempt to reconstruct the event made them start screaming again. But on the whole, it was agreed that there had been a smell. 'A smell' was the last word on the topic for many, especially for the ones who chanted those words for hours until the emergency thirty-hour downpour washed the last of it away.
Most of the disaster relief and scientific papers written after the event agreed that the smell had driven at least a fifth of Ponyville temporarily mad, at least once the rolling, circular tide of -- 'air' had saturated the entire area. Oddly enough, the remainder seemed to have been brought to a state of something which could be described as hyper-sanity, at least in the sense that it brought with it an increased sense of awareness. For example, every pony among that eighty percent was now fully conscious of and personally operating their lungs, with every last one using the opportunity to try and stop doing so. Forever.
Oh, and there were comparisons made to durian. But for the first time in history, that was actually unfair.
And Discord smiled. Untwisted himself, at least as far as he ever did, and stared up at Sun as his long, smooth body rested within dead grass and lingering fumes. Smiled as he gazed into the warm light, with an expression of perfect peace.
The second-best feeling in the world? How was that possible? He couldn't imagine anything better than this, and he was Discord. If being the impossible wasn't his job, then coming up with it certainly was! Plus he'd had a sense of smell at the time, and that made it feel all the more like he'd just conjured a new form of chaos into the universe! His olfactory bulb was still tingling.
And yet...
"It's a good start!" he announced to what little remained of the world. "But I will have to refine the results. Along with working on the aim. So. Beans. I'm going to need a lot more of them. Also, have any of you ever truly listened to the word 'garbanzo'?" The laugh was automatic. "Anyway, beans. We'll start with two bale-tons --"
There was a sound then. It was rather like six mares and a dragon marching towards a tree.
A door opened. Closed again. Rummaging echoed into the silent world which existed after every bird had stopped singing. He looked at a few of the ones which were twitching in the nearby grass and asked whether they too knew of the joy. They rather rudely refused to answer.
There was something of a sizzle, as if numerous magical protections had been told to wink out for a while. And then the mares silently emerged.
None of them said a word. Five of them simply arranged themselves to stand and hover around him -- the dragon, scales now pitted, was on the librarian's back-- and every eye was narrowed. Their fur was damp, their tails had come apart, they weren't quite the same colors they had been at the start, the designer hadn't even bothered to restore her mane, and every last one of them had recently accessorized.
He blinked at the familiar jewelry.
"Oh, come now," he crossly said. "A bit of an overreaction, don't you think? Besides, it takes six of you! And that's never going to --"
Formerly-yellow hooves touched down next to his head.
He looked up. Saw steaming fur, a mane which had been flipped back by 'air' pressure, and two very angry, extremely Staring eyes.
"-- oh," Discord said.
Fluttershy silently nodded. Her necklace shifted accordingly.
The draconequus considered his options.
"Sorry?"
As it turned out, there weren't any.
Well! The nerve! Making him clean it all up by himself, when it was obviously the fault of the books! When a student was miseducated, then the blame lay with the teacher. Couldn't anypony see that?
...clearly not. They hadn't seen it in the first hour. Or the second. The fourth day hadn't shown much of a change. And -- they kept insisting this was a lesson -- they'd made him do so much of it normally. It had been enough to make his fur and scales and horn lose luster, which made him match the rest of the population and effectively turned him into something boring. He was still miffed and had resolved not to visit Fluttershy for a while, because that was how miffed he was at her having been a part of it.
A good long while. At least two whole days more, with the option to go for three.
...of course, that was punishing her.
So maybe he could show mercy.
But he wasn't heading to the cottage yet. Instead, with the entire town freshly clean and sparkling and with only thirty percent of the residents currently in counseling sessions, he'd gone to the park. It was a good place to think things over. For starters, he'd already resolved to do some further practice in private, because it was the second-best feeling in the world (and what was the first, anyway?) and nopony had the right to demand that he give that up. He just had to refine the process. Make it into... more of a performance.
He'd been considering the possibilities inherent in a one-draconequus band. Using only wind instruments. Surely the baker would appreciate that.
Discord imagined the applause, and he planned (although planning chaos always chafed a little). He also fumed, because life was just unfair.
But for the most part, he listened to the children and eventually, he got what he'd been waiting for. The font of wisdom began to flow again, and did so by turning to the most natural, welcome topic available. They began to talk about him.
"My parents tried to use long words," the wise pegasus colt said. "But I figured it out. Everything last week was him. Because Discord farted."
Every other colt and filly solemnly nodded.
"What a fart," the tallest earth pony filly breathed. "Imagine being able to do that."
All of them briefly closed their eyes and dreamed.
"I wish I could do it," said a brilliant little filly.
"Just once," a colt begged the universe.
"It must have been the best feeling in the world," declared a unicorn.
"Second-best," the pegasus colt automatically corrected. (They all nodded again.)
And then his eyes went bright.
"Hey. Do you think..."
"Does he want to?" asked a unicorn colt. "With what's gotta happen first? The good part is only after!"
"But it's the best part," stated the world's most intelligent pegasus.
They all agreed with that. It was the best part.
"When it stops," that colt went on. "That's the best feeling in the world. Even with what happens first. But I don't know. I mean, we know he eats now. But the rest..."
The crooked, curving slide eagerly leaned forward in anticipation.
"Does Discord throw up?"
