Six ponies and a young dragon stared blankly at the noodle-shaped body lying in a perfectly straight line, face-down on the ground. His goat's hoof was bent awkwardly beneath him, and his eagle talon was pointing a digit up into the sky. The arm that supported it was bent at an unnervingly precise ninety-degree angle. His pony-esque face was buried firmly in the ground, and the rest of his mismatched limbs lay politely tucked beside his body.
They'd been staring at him for ten minutes.
He'd actually been there for twenty, but it took them a while to realize that he still hadn't moved in that time. It was uncharacteristic of him to remain still for that long, but only as long as you don't count the millennia or so he spent as a glorified gnome.
"Sorry I took so long, everypony." The silence was broken as the seventh pony of the clique cutely bumbled her way out of the gutted oak she called a home. It screamed in tormented agony as the door slammed behind her, but since it was in the language of trees nopony paid any attention to it. Probably didn't even hear it, the sick creatures. Probably didn't realize it had to sit there and suffer as its family watched when the sadistic pegasus turned it into a jack-o'-lantern with a door.
The yellow pegasus, blissfully unaware to the plight of anything that didn't have cute sparkly eyes, continued her apologies. "I tried to bake a few scones last minute, but the oven started acting up and I..." she trailed off as she noticed that none of her friends were paying attention. She gave them a look as if someone had dumped a burlap sack full of blind kittens into a volcano and made her watch, until she noticed they were all staring the same direction. She followed their eyes as slowly as an elected official follows their promises before her eyes landed on their destination.
Fluttershy blinked once. Twice. The third time her eyes started to well with tears as she bolted towards the collapsed chimera.
"DISCORD!!" She pleaded on a shrill voice, wrapping her forelegs over the deceased draconequus, and lifting his face with a wing. "MY DARLING, MY LOVE!! I NEVER TOLD YOU I-- ohhhh he's not faking..."
Her expression shifted from heartbreak and grief to pure confusion immediately, unceremoniously dropping her friend's face back in the dirt with a dry thud. She looked back to the table set up in her lawn-- more specifically the creatures sat around it --and curiously gestured towards the corpse with a hoof.
"What the hay happened while I was in the kitchen?"
Starlight Glimmer raised her hoof, beckoning that she'd like to speak first. With a nod from Fluttershy, she did just that.
"Well, we were all sitting here, chatting away like we normally do. That's when Discord came running up screaming that he was finally here, so the party could really start! There was fanfare as a bunch of trumpets played from... somewhere? Anyway, he just... fell over suddenly and the music just stopped short."
A series of 'mhmm's, 'yeah's, 'that's what happened's and a single 'I think he tripped on a rock?' echoed out from the rest of the ponies gathered. The latter statement coming from a very disappointed dragon giving the lifeless body a deadpan stare. Fluttershy slowly turned her head away from the group, eventually tearing her eyes away to look near his goat leg. Sure enough, a small rock jutted out of the ground, scuffed on one side as if scraped by a cloven hoof.
Discord stared blankly down at his own corpse, bewildered. He was sure he'd caught himself from the fall, and he didn't remember spawning a clone for this gag. All the odder was that he could see himself-- the 'himself' that was still standing, that is --perfectly fine. No transparency or even translucency as he expected from ghosts. How disappointing, he was hoping to disguise himself as a very tasteful lamp if he could. Maybe haunt Celestia's windows again, turn them all into pictures of her during her most awkward moments years. Especially that one incident with the quesadillas; oooohh, that one was a hoot! Her poor purple protege still couldn't be in the same room as that dish.
He supposed he could still do that, especially if nobody could see him. But he needed to be sure he could still enact his will.
As a test, he snapped his fingers, and the plate of sandwiches sitting in the center of the ponies grew wings and flew away. No pony seemed to care, though, as the dragon reached over and plucked a sandwich from where the plate was as if it was still there.
How curious.
It took all of fifteen seconds to drag the body inside Fluttershy's cottage, and nopony paid it any mind as it lamented the presence of the horrid abomination's corpse. Instead, they plopped it very rudely on the living room table, upsetting Angel Bunny as he grumbled from his resting spot and jumped away.
Discord smirked, pulled his lizard's foot back as the ultimate test, and seconds later was admiring the flawlessly bunny-shaped hole through Fluttershy's window. He'd always wanted to do that.
"Ohh, poor Discord..."
His attention was called back to the group as he heard his name, albeit a little indignantly given how close to laughter the farm-pony sounded as she lamented him.
"... what do we do with the body? Ah mean, if Ah may be so bold, mah pigs have gotta eat and our feed fer 'em's gettin' lower than Rarity's datin' standards."
Discord's jaw hit the floor as he stared at the farmer. How dare she! The Lord of Chaos, fed to pigs?! Now, chickens would be another story, but pigs? It was undignified! He was momentarily distracted from his befuddlement by a scoff from the fop.
"Certainly not! That would be a waste of his natural..." she paused for a moment, tapping her chin with a hoof. "... I hesitate to say 'beauty', but... maybe we could turn him to stone again? Keep him as a statue in the center of town square, as a memorial?" This was starting to sound more Discord's style. He wasn't overfond of being turned to stone again, but he had to admit that it would be a pretty funny way to memorialize--
"What would the plaque say? 'Here lies fizzlord'?"
He glared daggers at the flying bag of fruit loops, muttering something about flags under his breath.
"Come now," Fluttershy cooed, causing him to relax slightly. Surely she'd set things right! "You know better, Dash! His name was... uhm..."
His head made a noise like a stone slate sliding across marble as it turned on his neck. His dearest friend, his closest companion in all his life! How could she?
"... Whizford?"
HOW COULD SHE?!
"I'm sure it was Pinstoward."
"No, no! It was Rimshoard, darling!"
"Ah coulda sworn it was Gizmork..."
"Wasn't it De Lancie?"
"OH, FOR GOODNESS' SAKE!!"
They all winced as the pop of a teleportation sounded behind them, all turning to look at where Discord was standing a few seconds ago. There was a long pause, a pregnant silence that gave birth to a cacophony of laughter as the eight friends rolled on the floor.
"Think we... went too far?" Fluttershy gasped in between wheezes of laughter, trying and failing to keep herself together.
"Heck no!" Dash cackled, "if anything, we just challenged him to step up his pranking game! I can't wait!"
Twilight and starlight caught their breath long enough to clap their hooves together in a congratulatory hoof-bump
"Thanks for helping me out with that body double spell, Starlight!"
"Eh, it was nothing. The looks on his face were absolutely worth it!"
In the back, a very irate rabbit chattered angrily at Spike until the drake handed over a pocketful of bits.
Author's Note
A completely random idea that popped into my head while I was catching up on my reading on here: what if Discord fell on his face and died?
As I wrote I felt like it was funnier to have it be a very well-coordinated prank at the expense of our dear incarnation of chaos, but originally he was going to actually be dead and everyone was just going to be chill about it. But I didn't have a lot of confidence that I knew how to make that as hilarious as I think it should be. At least not without heavily breaking characters, which isn't something I really enjoy doing.
I'm not expecting any belly-laughs for this, this was made for nose-exhales and whatnot.
