Izzy Moonbow awoke in a pitch black void, fluttering her eyes open, strong winds blowing all around her. Her hooves felt like jelly as she had been laying on them for a long time. She was no longer in her bed at the Crystal Brighthouse, that much she was certain.
She looked around in every which way to see where she was. As far as her eyes could see, there was nothing in sight for miles. Nonetheless, she stood up as her excitement for adventure triumphed over any rational thought. She looked out into the darkness again, watching carefully for anything that could move.
Nothing did.
“Hi, mysterious black abyss, my name is Izzy!! Izzy Moonbow!” Izzy called out. “It’s nice to meet you! You know, I’ve never talked to an empty void before, so this is my first time!”
Silence mocked her and it only increased her desire to talk to it further. Was she crazy? She had been called that a lot. As she was about to speak again, she heard a sound. Her ears perked up as she began hearing the sound of dark maniacal laughter.
“Ooh, you can laugh!” Izzy exclaimed. “This will make our conversations so much more interesting!”
“Oh I’m sure it will, Izzy Moonbow,” the deep voice responded. “And let me say that you are incredibly lucky to be here today!”
“I am?” Izzy inquired.
“Oh yes,” the voice answered back, “You may call me Discord, the Lord of Chaos! I am running a little experiment. You have been brought from your own time period to my realm to make some new friends. They’re waiting inside my house.”
“Is your house invisible or something?” Izzy asked, “Because I for sure can’t see it. Or maybe it’s a hide and seek game! I have to find it!”
“Well yes and no. Yes you have to find it and no to the hide and seek game. Although that would have been fun. No sadly, you just have to follow me.”
“Don’t mind if I do!” Izzy answered, practically jumping with excitement as she followed the sound of the maniacal laughter. She could not see Discord, but she knew that he was there somehow through the sound of his voice.
She wondered who she might find in his house. Discord called them her new friends and that got her really, really excited. If there was one thing she was excited about, it was meeting new friends. That was always her thing ever since she was a filly. When she received Sunny’s floating lantern all those years ago, it gave her the motivation to go out and seek new friends. She didn’t know how, but it was like the message was calling to her.
So she continued to follow Discord’s laughter, singing some songs as she pranced about. The winds got stronger the further she walked and she began to feel the ground tilt and shift beneath her weight. It was all so weird, yet so fun at the same time.
Eventually, she reached a floating cottage that slowly spun around in perfect circular rotation. It was cool to look at, but she hoped that whoever was in there wasn’t prone to motion sickness. She wasn’t, but she knew that other ponies didn’t have the same endurance that she tended to have in the best of times.
“Welcome to my humble abode, Izzy,” said Discord. “You will have to wait until my dear friend completes her daily rotation. I assure you, I got everyone’s permission first.”
“You read my mind!” Izzy gasped. “Tell me, what am I thinking right now?!”
“Something dumb. Ah, there we go! You’ll have to excuse Gryffin’s daily routine. Have fun now, Izzy. We shall meet again in four hours!”
No sooner did he finish his sentence did the cottage stop spinning for a moment. The door opened automatically to let her in and it bowed in her presence. Izzy blushed as she wasn’t used to being treated like royalty.
Gracefully, she stepped inside the cottage, feeling the floorboards creak and repair themselves automatically. Inside was a total mess. The couches were floating on the ceiling, the stairs kept shaping themselves in random orientation, floating napkins sang and danced along the area. A large kookoo clock screamed in donkey language before changing to a horse sound instantly after.
“Ooh! I’m going to love this! WHOA!!” Izzy fell to the floor on her stomach as she felt the cottage go airborne. The door locked instantly.
There was no escape.
Izzy swallowed a twinge of fear. “Okay…I’ll just wait here with the other ponies he told me about until the four hours are up. Shouldn’t be a big deal.”
She stood up again and walked carefully across the area, grabbing on to random things around her to avoid slipping as the cottage began turning clockwise. Eventually, she reached the kitchen where she saw the most interesting sight she had ever seen.
Five others were sitting at a table chatting, only they were not just ponies. She saw a hippogriff, a Kirin, a griffin, another hippogriff, and one other pony.
“Hi, new friends!” Izzy greeted them. “My name is Izzy!”
They all turned to look at her. Instantly, they got out of their seats, grabbed any tools they could find as weapons, and aimed them all at her.
“Stand back, intruder!” declared the Kirin, “I, Autumn Blaze, defender of the Peaks of Peril, shall defend all who are with me from you!”
“Whoa whoa, girls, I can explain!” Izzy put her hooves up in surrender before putting them back down. “See, uh, I’ve been brought here by Discord too!”
“Wait, what?” asked the pink hippogriff.
“Who’s Discord again?” the grey griffin inquired. “I honestly forgot. You know how it is with little ‘ol me!”
“Ah, just the mischievous draconequus who we released from stone, who befriended Fluttershy, and is now our best friend!” the pink pony explained. She faced Izzy. “Hiya there, Izzy Moonbow! I’m Pinkie Pie and I planned this interrogation just for you! Are you excited? I’m so excited, I’ve never been so excited, well, except for all the adventures we went on where I was like-“ She gasped, “But I mean really, who could top that?!”
“Interrogation, huh?” Izzy asked. “This should be fun! You know, Zipp interrogated me about Sunny’s lantern the other day. She was all suuuuuuuper scary! But I didn’t get what all the fuss was about. I just go walking with it every night!”
The hippogriff cocked her head, glancing at Pinkie Pie. “Well, Professor Pinkie, she shares our mannerisms, certainly. She sounds fun! Let’s let her in on the party! I’ll show her the new plumbing book I found upstairs!”
“Just one thing, Silverstream,” the yellow hippogriff said, “We cannot truly know if she is one of us until she answers the billion dollar RIDDLE!”
“The what?” Izzy was confused.
“Only those who know the answer to this riddle can truly join the club,” stated the griffin, “For your information, I’m Gabby!”
“Right, is that the riddle?”
“No,” Gabby replied, “The riddle is this.” She inhaled for dramatic effect and stated the riddle: “109876543322+ 1233445566677789990- 4(098765543234567776655579) to the power of 2 divided by the square root of 10000000000000000070001x equals y.”
“27,001!” Izzy answered. She honestly had no idea, but she assumed that was the correct answer. She just hoped she wasn’t about to be spliced in half.
“CORRECT!!!” Pinkie Pie announced. “CONGRATULATIONS!! YOU WIN ONE BILLION BITS!!!!”
“Wait, that was actually the answer?” Izzy couldn’t believe it. She was a genius at Math after all! All those negative things her teachers told her at school, all the F grades she got on her tests, balderdash! If she could answer that, she could answer anything. She vowed to quiz Sunny on that riddle when she got back.
“Indeed it is!” Autumn Blaze confirmed, “Congratulations, new friend! Only a true member of the Hyperactive Nation would know such a prestigious riddle such as this. Pinkie, you have her payment?”
“I’ll tell Discord to send it over when we are done,” Pinkie Pie said, ”Now with that out of the way, LET’S GET THIS PARTY STARTED!!!!!”
The six of them partied it out for three hours, making Discord’s house an even bigger mess than it already was when they arrived. Izzy bonded with all of the other creatures. Silverstream and her cousin Skystar (the yellow hippogriff) showed her the wonders of the small things in life by delighting in what would ordinarily seem like mundane things to any ordinary creature like shell stringing, climbing stairs, plumbing and fixing sinks, while Autumn Blaze, Gabby, and Pinkie Pie showed Izzy the glory of musical theater by creating a makeshift Broadway stage and singing great hits and re-enacting musical plays.
Finally, when all was said and done, they sat on the floating couch together and talked about their lives before meeting each other.
“Wait wait wait,” Izzy couldn’t believe her ears, “You guys got into an argument and your leader decided that the best way to avoid conflict was not talking?!!”
Autumn Blaze laughed. “Paranoia will do that to you. Thankfully, things turned out alright in the end thanks to Applejack and Fluttershy. Now I’m working on setting up a singing program for everyone!”
“My friends don’t understand the value of stairs,” Silverstream piped up, “But I tell them that only a true believer would understand. Gallus was all like ‘WHAT?! What are you trying to say?! Are we not true believers?!’ And I was like ‘Nope! But you can certainly learn!’ So I give them free classes in ‘Silverstreamism’ every Sunday!”
“I lost Shelly and Sheldon in the battle against the Storm King,” explained Skystar, “But I decided to be tough like my mom and say, I’ll make new shell friends! Of course, I held funerals for both of them. All of Seaquestria was there. But now, I have new friends! Meet Melvy and Melvin!” She held up two identical looking purple shells.
“How do you tell the difference?” Izzy asked.
“Well that’s easy!” Skystar stated, “You see, Melvy has a blue line on his back here, see? Melvin doesn’t. You gotta reeeeeaaally look!” She pointed to each one of them individually. Just as she said, Melvy had a thin blue line in the middle marking his top shell. Melvin did not.
“And I’m pretty sure the writer of this fanfiction just made that up for the sake of this story and you’ll never mention them again afterwards, buuuuuuut-“ Pinkie Pie said and ripped open a patch of air into another black void. “Hey you! Author! Will you bring Skystar’s new friends back in the next story featuring her?!”
“I’ll think about it!” I responded. “Now go away!”
“Okie dokie lokie!” Pinkie Pie closed the rip in reality. “Well that clears it up! What about you, Gabby?”
Izzy was flabbergasted at what she had just seen. No one could tear the very fabric of reality and talk to an author, right? And on that note, did that mean she wasn’t even real?! She knew that she would be having an existential crisis later on.
Gabby blushed. “What can I say now? Spike and I are dating and…I think we really have a thing for one another! We’re gonna get married! Well, as soon as we’re both old enough, of course. Plus, being a royal advisor to Princess Twilight herself AND official friendship ambassador has gotta take a lot of time! So I respect his commitment despite everything.”
“That’s when you know you found the right guy,” Silverstream winked at her. “I know Gallus is it for me. We’re around the same age. He’s 17, I’m 16, but we’ll get there! He’s already planning to get me a diamond wedding ring! He doesn’t care if he has to fight the Diamond Dogs to do it!!”
“Um…who?” Izzy inquired. “I mean who are the Diamond Dogs?” She gasped. “Are they made of diamonds?!!”
Pinkie Pie shook her head. “No, silly! They’re obsessed with gems! They even ponynapped Rarity in an attempt to get her gems and called her a mule! But we rescued her! Although, it would be cool if they’re made of diamonds, wouldn’t it?”
“Indeed it would be,” Silverstream replied, laying back against the couch. “Ah, we could just be talking like this forever and we would never get bored of each other. This is the first time I’ve met anyone like me. Well, besides you, Professor Pinkie. But you get my point. Everyone at school just calls me weirdo and stuff like that, but I’m not weird, am I?”
“Not to us, you aren’t!” Izzy assured her cheerfully.
“In this dimension, chaos is embraced,” Autumn Blaze advised her, “So embrace it. Act like every day is your day. And if those other creatures can’t accept the madness, then so be it! Why should you have to praise everycreature, right? At least to me, when you’re being yourself, truly, truly letting loose and showing who you are and what you have to offer, that’s your best self. So why suppress it, right?”
“Wow that is deeeeeep,” Skystar commented, “But yeah, be yourself, Silver. At least I am with my mom 100% of the time…regardless…if she likes it…But you get the point! I like being unabashedly optimistic as it helps me deal with so many things. Don’t ever lose that part of yourself, Silverstream. I’ll be sure to tell you as much via letters.”
“You’re my best buddy forever, Silverstream!” Izzy encouraged her, “Whether that be the past, present, or the future. Embrace your weirdness and let it shape the kind of hippogriff you want to be. Because in the end, you inspire everyone around you to be better, regardless if they realize it or not. That’s your true power.”
Silverstream smiled. “Wow. You all have no idea how much I needed to hear that coming from creatures like me. Thank you.”
“And great wisdom too!” Gabby complimented Izzy, “Where’d you learn that?”
“I carry the limitless knowledge of my unicorn ancestors!” Izzy joked an all-knowing tone. All the girls laughed over this.
They talked some more afterwards until finally, they felt the cottage begin to descend once more. Their time together was over.
“Aw no!” Gabby shook her head, “Our time is ending already? But it felt so short!”
“Hey,” Izzy told her, “It may have been short, but in the end, it was worth it. You all taught me so much and we taught each other some things too. I…don’t know if I’ll ever get to say this to you guys again, so…I’ll say it now. Thank you. You’re my best buddies for life.”
“Same here, Izzy,” Autumn Blaze acknowledged her, “No matter where we are, no matter where our lives take us…We’ll never forget the memories we made in this place, the experiences we shared…and the bonds we forged. For they are special and unique. An opportunity like this may never come again, so…I shall always remember every single one of you, my best friends.” As she smiled, a single tear fell from her right eye.
Seeing this, everyone else started to get emotional too, including Izzy. In one grand gesture, they all embraced one another in a massive group hug, tears falling from their faces as they said their final goodbyes to each other.
The door to the cottage slammed open. Letting go of one another, they all walked together one final time out the door, out of the place where they became friends, and back into their own time periods.
———————————————————————————————————————————————————
Izzy woke up again back in her own bed with Hitch Trailblazer and Sunny Starscout, both having looks of worry on their faces, shaking her. Once they saw that she was awake, they all relaxed.
“Izzy Moonbow, what pills did you take?!” Hitch demanded. “We’ve been trying to wake you for the past two hours and you were out like a rock!”
“Yeah, and you were…crying at one point?” Sunny noticed, “Are you doing okay?”
Izzy sat up in her bed, a massive grin on her face. “I’m doing better than okay, Sunny. I never felt more like myself than I ever have before.”
“Really?” Sunny inquired, “What happened? It must’ve been some dream you had back there. You were laughing, crying, and talking a lot!”
“Before I tell you the information you seek,” Izzy stated, a mischievous smile on her face. “You must first answer the billion dollar RIDDLE!!!!!”
“The billion dollar what now?” Sunny now looked completely confused.
“I’ll do anything to get a definitive answer from you, Izzy. Throw it at me!” Hitch challenged her.
“If you insist,” Izzy said, “The riddle iiiiiiiiiiiiiiissssssss: 109876543322+ 1233445566677789990- 4(098765543234567776655579) to the power of 2 divided by the square root of 10000000000000000070001x equals y.”
“Excuse me, what?” Sunny asked. “I’m sorry, professor, I don’t know.”
“Um…7?” Hitch guessed.
“INCORRECT!!!! YOU LOSE!!!!” Izzy announced. “Now I will tell you the story in as many tangents as I feel like! We’re gonna be here all morning!!!”
“Oh no…” Hitch moaned.
“Uh, do I get another try?” Sunny inquired in a worried tone.
“Nope!”
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”
And that was the story of how Izzy Moonbow discovered her true purpose in life with a dream. Or…was it a dream? You see, you will never know. For I, Discord, the Master of Chaos and Disharmony, have actually been narrating this story to you the entire time and I have kept the true answer hidden for a very good reason. For if you all knew the truth…
Where would the fun in that be?
Author's Note
Alternative Title: Fanservice and References: The Story
PLOT TWIST!!!! Bet’cha all didn’t see that coming. I guess you can say it subverted your expectations. 
Yeah, just a fun little idea I came up with. I think it’s a nice, fun diversion after my pretty emotionally heavy Misty story. But let me know what you all think. Feedback is always appreciated. Enjoy the randomness!
