To take revenge half-heartedly is to court disaster; either condemn or crown your hatred.
-Pierre Corneille
The human brain is the most powerful computational device in this spinning blue marble we all live on. With a single grey fleshy pile able to outpace over one hundred thousand laptops running simultaneously, it could create marvels with ease and bring pain to millions. All that said though, it had one fatal flaw. Memory. No matter what you knew, however skilled, powerful or smart you were, it was all irrelevant if you simply...forgot.
Wallflower Blush was intimately familiar with this.
Discovering the Memory Stone had been a miracle of luck and she'd been hesitant to push herself. It began simply then, mere experiments, child's play really. Social anxiety and awkwardness urged her to shave a few seconds here and there, peers unknowingly enduring reintroduction after reintroduction. It seemed fun at first, gaming her way through high school, oh so desperately save scumming into anything below the bottom rung of the teenage cliques. An embarrassing use of such a powerful object really. Wiping memories because she burped in class? Utterly ridiculous.
No, she'd learnt better. Blueblood had been a real eye-opener. He was cute, charming, had a good body and was rich as all get out. The last two hadn't mattered initially but in her meagre attempts at flirting he'd pushed her harder than any other boy ever had. Cruel words had cruel results. It lived in her basement now, as all good boyfriends should.
Its embrace was...calming. Intimate. Soft. Hours at a time it would be in her arms, glassy-eyed and desperate for her. She'd brush its silky hair and soothe the once-mans half-formed whimpers, a soft smile on her face. He'd been a monster once, now he was obedient, he was hers. He was her little Blueblood.
With one rubicon crossed so many more opened up to her, like a flower in spring, each petal a possibility. Her school was quite literally built next to an interdimensional portal after all, who knew what the limitations of the stone were? Memories were merely energy and energy could be manipulated in so many interesting ways.
Life was good.
Serene and composed, Wallflower Blush exited Canterlot General Hospital. Sunset Shimmer had been successfully neutralised, as had a majority of the cruel, nasty, boys who'd turned her down and hurt her feelings. For a profit no less! Her little mantra of 'Life is good' came to mind. A thing she'd certainly started believing in since that amazing lucky charm had entered her world.
If only the parents would stop complaining so much.
She understood affection, Blueblood and her plants certainly received more than enough whenever it was humanly possible. It was more a problem of correct application in her opinion. They never grieved in quiet, always whining and screaming and sending out missing poster after missing poster. No one cared! No one cared in the past and they certainly didn't care after Wallflower had visited them. No, all those parents did was give her sore feet and a raging headache.
Headaches were a recurring theme today, however. There'd been this creepy old guy at the hospital, His suit looked like someone had tried to distil a raging migraine into fabric form. It wasn't garish, just...weird. Every time you looked a new layer would reveal itself, whether it be a simple pattern or a missed seam. He'd waved at her as she walked past, rationally it was meaningless. Just a lonely old man trying to be friendly. Still, it weirded her out.
As the streets to her home were whittled down something began to catch Wallflower's attention, it was meagre at first, barely perceptible even. A scratch on the chalkboard of her mind, yet a hundred classrooms away, annoying but distant. With one block left though it had built to an almost indescribable feeling that somehow something wasn't quite right. Did she feel...afraid?
“Don't be stupid Wallflower,” she muttered to herself, leaning on a lamppost as her heart raced. “You've got this. There's nothing to be scared of. Life. Is Good.”
Every cell in her body suddenly crawled as an ominous sound swept down from the heavens, the closest description she could think of being some kind of off-kilter finger on a wineglass rim. It was honestly like nothing she'd ever heard of, utterly alien and forbidding.
“Is life good though Wallflower Blush? You can't even get half-decent chocolate milk in this tragic, third-dimensional, little cul-de-sac.”
Already tense fingers recoiled as cold steel became soft fur, the former lamppost looming over her as glass, wire and metal shifted slowly into a horrid face, akin to some animator's worst nightmare. The cyclopean creature oozed a palatable sense of wrong, from the way its predatory eyes swivelled about loosely, to the jumble of different animals that made up its patchwork body.
For a moment the Frankenstein creature paused, stretching the macabre joke it called a body. Unreal muscles rippled beneath slick-skin new flesh, moving further and further till they seemed to almost want to separate. Yet separate they did, the thing's mix-match limbs briefly popping off its body like a child toy. After a moment of levity ( in which the arms briefly engaged in a rousing game of rock-paper-scissors) the wayward body parts returned, simply reattaching as if this was the natural way of the world.
“Wha...” she was practically speechless, there were things out in the great darkness of the multiverse. She was aware of that. Demons were real. That she knew. This thing was different though. Older. Stronger. Somehow, deep in her soul, she knew it was a beast of a different stripe.
“Oh I do apologise Wallflower Blush, where are my manners,” the thing announced, its Disney Esque sing-song voice even more unnerving than she expected, “the name's Discord, lord of chaos and disharmony. How do you do?” its lion paw reached out and embraced her hand in an oddly soft grip.
“Are you-”
“The devil?” an eyebrow peaked before 'Discord' threw its head back in uproarious laughter, “Ah, humans. ever predictable. No, no, my dear. I've been mistaken on the odd trip to this blasé microcosm you call home, but no. I am most certainly not any kind of satanic archetype or figure.” As if to demonstrate his point, a red jumpsuit briefly materialised on him before melting away into an angelic robe, complete with a suspended halo.
“Ah,” the girl released a breath she hadn't even known to have held “that's good.”
It was then Wallflower Blush realised this...'Discord' hadn't let go of her hand after the initial handshake. Its grasp wasn't so soft anymore either, rather bone-crunching now in fact. With all the solemnity of a Viper, the thing's neck dipped lower and lower and lower until they were face to monstrous face. A snaggle-toothed smile rose as her look of emerging terror reflected deep within the yellow and crimson eyes this monster had been bequeathed with.
“I'm worse.”
“A gift?”
The words are hesitant, unsure whether the inflexion should be a few octaves higher or lower for maximum inoffensiveness. It worries her for a microsecond, anxiety flaring into life before becoming a rolling cascade of mental panic.
The polished crystal floor of 'Castle Friendship' (as the locals called it) played an upbeat concerto whilst a certain Draconeques slithered along it, each flick of his tail resonating with the beat. “Of course Twilight, that's what you do for friends, right?” he replies, mischief ever-present in his expression. Before she can reply though he is there, wrapped around her like an ungainly feather boa, all oily smile and easy charm. “We are friends though, aren't we?”
With practised ease, she removes him, horn aglow and peace in her heart. He may still unsettle her, but the burning resentment had faded years ago. Now it was more...irritation maybe? It was always difficult to tell, rather like Discord himself in a way.
“Yes,” there's a sigh, more for dramatics than any real feeling, “hard as it may be to believe, we are indeed friends.”
Despite his palms differing natures, the eager claps ring as clear and loud as any bell Twilights ever heard. He seems almost like a foal in a candy shop, so unbelievably happy whenever he heard her say those words. Perhaps it's the irony of it?
“Here you go then ol' buddy, ol' pal, o' mine”, he proudly declares, a simple, brown box appearing in her hooves, no flashy displays, finger snaps or even puns to announce the item's arrival.
Experience though has taught her to be careful. Discord may have been retired from 'the world-conquering business' as he put it, but it had been apparent almost from the start of his reformation that the Lord of Chaos was still up for any and all shenanigans possible. Prank wars were less of an occasion and more of an expectation when it came to him. Lavender wings readily tense though as the box's lid rises slowly, the spell for banana-cream removal on mental speed dial, yet hope sprang eternal! No pie, merely...plant?
“Uh, thanks?” she says, staring at the wilting, near-dead flower, it's once white petals now a dull grey. Was that a crack in the pot as well!?
“Oh, don't thank me,” he replies bashfully, cheeks lighting up. “It's a bit of a rarity actually, 'Vita Bona Est' I believe is the technical and (might I add) rather boring name for it.” Griffon claws rake through a beard that alternates from snowy white to cream at a whim, "I discovered it on my travels, so many interesting places in this grand new chaos-free era you understand? Still, when it comes to names I prefer the more common parlance, 'Life Is Good'. You see, despite looking like it's in a rather sad state it can't actually die. Ever."
Her eyes light up, “Why, something like that is a complete unknown! It could revolutionise botan-”
A brief buzzing from some seemingly discarded saddlebags snaps the Alicorn away, a single, swift, telekinetic movement pulling forth a well-used (and currently shaking) journal from the bag's dusty confines.
“Is everything ok?” Discord asks, his gleeful smile unnoticed by the fervently reading pony.
“Oh it's fine, absolutely fine,” she can barely hold back the joy in her voice though, “just getting a quick message from an old friend.”
Author's Note
A non canon, authorised, DOUBLE response fic!? How avante garde 
With great thanks to eemoo1o for help with the pre-reading.
