"And now for the Ponyville weather report," said the announcer over the countertop radio at Sugarcube Corner. "The sky is clear and the air is nippy. Tonight is shaping up to be a brisk Nightmare Night. Peak fall leaf colors are going fast. Most of the leaves have been run to the ground, but there are a few places outside Ponyville where you can still get a glimpse of the last gasp of gold for the year."
The radio sat in a display of real pumpkins and wreaths of autumn leaves made of maroon and tangerine silk. When the weather announcement was finished, the program continued with mildly creepy violin music.
Pinkie Pie stood behind the soda counter. Rainbow Dash, Twilight Sparkle, and Fluttershy sat on stools opposite her. Pinkie dripped vanilla and violet syrups into a glass and added seltzer and a few ice cubes. She popped the cardboard cap off of the bottle of cream and slowly poured some of that in. "Here you go, Twilight."
Twilight was silently reading to herself from a ghost story book she held up in one hoof. Without looking up, with her other hoof she brought the soda over to herself, stirred it lightly with a straw, and took a sip.
Fluttershy daintily nibbled a slice of lemon sponge cake. The usual recipe at Sugarcube Corner had been embellished with orange sugar spiders. Fluttershy had carefully removed the spiders with her fork and placed them on the edge of her plate.
"Are you going to eat those?" asked Rainbow.
"I'm saving them for last," replied Fluttershy.
"I could eat them if you're not going to," said Rainbow. "My cider didn't come with any."
"We've got millions of sugar spiders back here behind the counter, Rainbow," said Pinkie, and she piled a hoof-full in front of her friend. Rainbow crunched a few contentedly.
"I could use some spiders," said Miss Cheerilee, who was seated by herself at a small table in the middle of the shop. "My pistachio parfait didn't come with any, either." She walked over to the counter and received a paper cupful of spiders to take back to her table.
Rainbow slid her mug across the counter. “Fill me up, party pony.” Pinkie Pie took the mug and refilled it with mulled cider. The original cinnamon stick from Rainbow's first mugful would continue to give it a strong flavor, but Rainbow had eaten the orange slice. Pinkie added a new one on the lip of the mug and gave her the mug back.
Pinkie Pie did all of this without a smile. Mrs. Cake, passing behind the soda counter on her way to the bakery case, gestured at the corner of her own mouth with a little upsweep of her hoof. Pinkie responded to the prompting with a wobbly crinkling at the corners of her own lips.
"Why so glum?" asked Rainbow Dash.
"It's Nightmare Night," answered Pinkie.
"Why in the world would that make you glum?"
Pinkie Pie could not hear the word glum twice in a row without realizing that it rhymed with sugarplum. She reached up on a shelf behind her and took down a jar of hard-panned sugarplum candies with spicy nut centers and crunched one, frowning.
"Is this still about Club Skewbald?" asked Rainbow.
Pinkie narrowed one eye and gave a small snort. She was still chewing her candy, so she couldn't give a full-on snort. She swallowed the candy, nodded, and said: "Me. Me! The town's premier party pony, and even I can't get inside."
"It's not like it's anything personal against you." Rainbow Dash was wisely philosophical on these matters when they didn't apply to her.
Pinkie Pie's pink face turned red in her indignance. "It's still not fair!"
Rainbow shrugged and sipped her Sugarcube Corner Seasonal Spiced Cider. "You'll never get in. Nobody can. You might as well just enjoy your Nightmare Night somewhere else."
"Somewhere else? Somewhere else!? There is nowhere else on Nightmare Night! Club Skewbald is the first most rowdiest place in Ponyville! Sugarcube corner is only the second most rowdiest. I refuse to sit here, being only second-most rowdy, all. Night. Long. If you don't want to be rowdy on Nightmare Night that's fine, but I intend to be rowdy, I intend to be boisterous, I intend to border on downright disorderly."
Without looking up from her ghost story, Twilight said, "'First most rowdiest' is redundant and incorrect. You only need to say ‘rowdiest.’"
Miss Cheerilee chimed in from her table. "Twilight is correct. As I tell my pupils, 'Say what you mean and mean what you say, with clearness and brevity every day.'"
Pinkie Pie's left eyebrow twitched up. "Just enjoy your treats, both of you."
"So the big, fun plan for Nightmare Night is to admit defeat?" asked Rainbow. "Are you saying that you're not going to be boisterous unless you can get inside that exclusive club?"
"How can I boister at my full potential when my Pinkie sense will be trying to urge me toward the partyingest place of all? Club Skewbald is rambunctious on a regular night. On Nightmare Night it will be downright unruly!"
"Why don't we just compete with Club Skewbald and make our own party the rowdiest of all? Surely we can get into more trouble on our own than at some stupid club."
"Sour grapes," Fluttershy said quickly and quietly, and then she ate another bite of cake.
"Discord said that he can get in," said Pinkie. "And he said that he can get me in."
"But nobody can get into that place," said Rainbow.
"Oh, I'm sure he can do it, if he said he can," Fluttershy softly asserted. She dabbed her lips with a napkin and took another bite of cake.
"Well, hay, if he can get Pinkie in, then I want in," said Rainbow.
"It's not that simple," said Pinkie. "Discord said he would get me in on one condition."
"Oh, brother," said Rainbow.
"Oh dear," said Fluttershy. "What did he ask you to do?"
"As conditions go, it's not the worst, but it's not the way I wanted to spend my Nightmare Night. Not this year, anyway."
"These spiders are only made of sugar, right?" asked Miss Cheerilee.
"Yep!" said Pinkie.
"Okay, must be my imagination," said Miss Cheerilee.
A suggestion of movement from the bucket of orange candy spiders behind the counter drew Pinkie Pie's eye. She watched, and could not be certain that it was only her imagination how the spiders seemed to crawl out from the center of their own number, shifting layers from bottom to top. But then, they were all identical, so which ones had been on the bottom and which on the top before was difficult to discern. The effect could have been caused by the sugar spiders settling, since she had scooped some out recently. Pinkie cautiously dipped a hoof into the bucket. Nothing happened. Then she noticed that one of the spiders that had been on Fluttershy's plate was now on the counter. It could have just been bumped there by Fluttershy's fork, but Fluttershy was usually a very neat eater.
The doorbell jingled and drew Pinkie Pie's attention. A palomino stallion walked in. "Hey, Copper Coin," said Pinkie, her customer service cheer coming to the fore in spite of potentially mysteriously moving spiders and a potentially non-rowdy Nightmare Night. "What'll it be?"
Copper Coin came over to the soda counter. "Peach soda in a to-go cup, please."
"You got it." Pinkie dispensed the soda water into a striped paper cup, picked up the peach syrup bottle and started to drizzle it in, but instead of peach syrup, out poured Discord.
At the same time, the bucketful of spiders poured up from behind the counter, making sounds like sleet with their hard-sugar feet.
The Lord of Chaos let out a booming, maniacal laugh, accompanied by thunder and lightning. He exulted toward the ceiling with his claws held high and the blood-red of his irises streaming from his eyes and down his cheeks. "Bask in the glory of chaos!"
Copper Coin screamed and fled Sugarcube Corner, doorbell jingling in his wake.
Sugar spiders skittered and scattered every which way. Over at her table, Miss Cheerilee was frantically rubbing at her muzzle. Two or more spiders had started to make their way up her nostrils.
Discord finished roaring, bleeding, and being covered in spiders, glanced from one to another of the pony faces at the counter and finally at Pinkie. Every face was frowning, and Pinkie was tapping one rear hoof.
Discord dropped his arms and drooped out of his exultant pose. "Fine. I'll go apologize."
The draconequus folded himself in half the long way, pressed the crease, and tore himself into two. Half of him traipsed sulkily on one foot across the floor toward the door.
Rainbow Dash called after him, "You can't just do anything that you want to do and then undo it every time with an apology."
The half of Discord at the door with his claw on the handle turned and said over his shoulder, "Don't be sore, Rainbow Dash, just because it doesn't work that way for you."
Rainbow blew a raspberry after him. Then she picked up one of the crawling spiders, examined it, and ate it. "Yep, still sugar."
"I'm not sure I can eat them now," said Fluttershy.
"You're fine, dear," said the half of Discord which had stayed behind—the antler and lion's paw half. "As Rainbow says, the creatures are nothing but animated sugar. Here, I'll make yours sit still."
Fluttershy's share of orange spiders crumpled, and their legs curled in a disquieting show of realistic demise. Fluttershy held one up on her hoof and peered at it, then gave it a lick. It wiggled, she shrieked, and Discord chuckled.
"Discord!"
"Sorry, dear, just a little Nightmare Night prank. I promise it is delectable inanimate sugar now."
Still, Fluttershy set that particular spider on the counter and ate another instead.
Discord addressed Pinkie. "I came by to ask if you've given any more thought to my offer."
"I've thought about it," she admitted. "Bobbing for apples is as rowdy as Sugarcube Corner gets. Nightmare Night should be at least a little bit scary, and bobbing for apples is not terrifying at all. Although it does spice up that game to put Gummy in the barrel without warning anypony there'll be an alligator under the apples—but I only did that once, and the Cakes asked me not to do it again."
"I would put an alligator under apples any old time I wanted to," Discord bragged.
"No doubt you would," Twilight said dryly.
Pinkie said, "I heard you can't even take an apple into Club Skewbald."
"It would be difficult," said Discord, stroking his half-beard.
"Still, my whole part in your deal sounds really lame," said Pinkie.
Discord shuffled himself boredly. "Come on. You call yourself a party pony. Besides, you said you would."
"That was a metaphor, Discord! It's not meant to be taken literally!"
"Oh, really? This is you." The half of Discord became half of Pinkie Pie and squeaked passionately, "'I would literally die to get into that place!'"
Twilight said, “Wait a minute. Exactly what kind of a deal are you two discussing?”
Pinkie ignored her and shouted indignantly at Discord, "That kind of literally isn't meant to be taken literally!"
From Miss Cheerilee's table came the judgmental sound of a clicking tongue. Pinkie looked over, and the teacher was giving her a knowing look.
Pinkie Pie insisted, "Well, it isn't!"
"Anyway," said Miss Cheerilee, "I should be going. There'll be trick-or-treating at the school. Happy Nightmare Night, everyone!"
"Happy Nightmare Night to you, too!" Pinkie responded, her cheerfulness restored. "Don't forget to take a lollipop from the bowl by the door!"
Miss Cheerilee plucked one out, held it up and waved it on her way out the door.
As the schoolteacher went out, the impersonated half-Pinkie turned back into half of a draconequus, and the other half of Discord came back through the door with Copper Coin under his arm. The pony wore an expression between mollified and intimidated. Discord's eagle foot gently placed the customer on a stool by the soda fountain and gave him a pat. "Put his tab on me, Pinkie." All of Discord came together into a white swirl that transformed into a receipt pad on the counter.
"Thank you, Mr. Lord Discord, Sir," said Copper Coin.
Pinkie gave the palomino pony his proper to-go peach soda, without any chaos in it this time. Copper Coin hopped down off the stool and departed, sipping it.
"What do I owe you for his drink?" the receipt pad asked. "How about a free ride over to Club Skewbald?"
"I still haven't made up my mind," said Pinkie.
"Think how much fun I'll have. It would be good for you ponies to do something nice for me for a change. You're always making me do silly stuff like 'sit still' and 'be nice' and 'obey gravity'." Discord scrawled "IOU" on himself, then grew out of the receipt pad, scattering the IOU and blank sheets everywhere, and lounged on the counter in his full size.
"We hardly ever make you obey gravity."
"Come on, just this once, for me. I promise it'll be worthwhile.”
Pinkie Pie plucked the IOU out of the wreaths of silk leaves and held it up to show Discord. "Real bits, please."
"Fine." He developed a pocket and from it drew two shining coins. "These are pure gold, stamped with Luna's and Celestia's faces. Eighteen hundred years old."
"What if I'm too tired to be rowdy at the club afterward? And those are more than I need."
"These are all I have. Everything else is too chaotic for ponies to spend. Call the excess a tip. And you won't be. It will be refreshing, I promise."
Pinkie said, "All right, fine. I'll do it." And she accepted Discord's coins.
"Wonderful!"
"Just let me put my Nightmare Night costume on first, so I'm ready to party afterward!" Pinkie Pie put the ancient gold coins into the cash register for safekeeping. Then she, Rainbow Dash, and Twilight all put on their costumes.
Pinkie Pie put on a big, curly pink wig and taped on a cutie mark exactly matching her own, over her real cutie mark. Then she pulled a second big, curly pink wig out of her first curly pink wig, and pulled that on over the first. It threatened to bounce off of her now doubled layer of floofy, bouncy mane. She tied it under her chin with pink string. Then she took out a sticker made to look like her cutie mark and pasted it on over the taped-on second cutie mark.
"Even I have to ask," said Discord. "What are you going as?"
"I'm going as myself going as myself for Nightmare Night! Nobody'll ever guess it's me under the costume! And even if they do, they still won't guess that it's me."
Twilight said, "But won't everypony's first guess be that it's Pinkie Pie?
"Sure, but that will be guessing what the costume is. It proves nothing about who's wearing it. They would have to guess three times, and nopony ever thinks of doing that. And even if somepony did, they would have to get the third guess right. It's the perfect crime. What are you going as, Rainbow? A geometric birthday cake?"
Rainbow Dash wore linen barding painted haphazardly in colorful diamond shapes. “That’s a good guess, but it’s not what I was going for. I was hoping it would be obvious. Shiny paint would have made it better, but I didn’t have any.”
"Are you some kind of Harlequin pony?" Fluttershy asked.
"It's supposed to make me look like a Crystal Pony," explained Rainbow.
"Allow me," said Discord. Faster than a blink—as if it had already been done a moment before—Rainbow's outfit was decorated all over with paper-thin plates of pastel crystal.
"Whoa! You've made my costume, like—"
"One hundred percent cooler?" suggested Discord.
"If you round up," Rainbow agreed generously.
Twilight was dressed as a ghost, in a sheet with holes cut into it for her eyes and nostrils. She got it all draped into place with Fluttershy's help and tried it out. "Boo!" Twilight said, evidently pleased with herself.
"Are you really going in that old boo sheet?" asked Rainbow.
"What's wrong with it?" Twilight asked. "It's a little frayed around the edges and there are some threadbare spots, but that just makes it spookier."
"Come on, Twilight, it's the same boo sheet year after year."
"It's a classic," said Twilight, beginning to gain an edge to her voice, muffled though it was beneath the sheet. "I'm sorry if you don't like it, Rainbow Dash, but you're just going to have to put up with my boo sheet."
Rainbow rolled in the air with laughter. Fluttershy smiled, and eventually, after time to let the pun sink in, even Twilight tittered.
"That's enough merriment occasioned by somepony other than me," said Discord.
"What are you going as, Discord?" Fluttershy asked.
He gave her a flat look. "As the Spirit of Chaos, my dear."
"Of course, I should have guessed," Fluttershy said meekly.
"And as the life of the party," Discord added in a more expansive tone. "Pinkie Pie will play opposite me. Pinkie Pie, are you ready now?"
Pinkie nodded.
Discord snapped his claws, and in a flash, Pinkie Pie died.
The pink party pony sprawled half across the counter, and her friends, at first mildly startled, recovered from that and regarded her with some ambivalence.
"Discord, do you know what you're doing?" asked Twilight.
"Don't I always?" Discord pulled a black sheet of cardboard from behind his back and folded it, tucking tabs into slots, until it was a pony-sized casket. He flung Pinkie Pie into it and stapled the lid. "Who wants to sign the coffin?"
"What the hay." Rainbow shrugged and signed her cutie mark with the pieces of colored chalk Discord provided.
Fluttershy and Twilight signed the black cardboard with their cutie marks, too, and Discord finished it off with his own name in white chalk with plenty of flourishes and the inscription, "Rest in chaos until you rise again at Club Skewbald." Then Discord became six of himself and bore the cardboard casket out the door of Sugarcube Corner.
Mrs. Cake called from behind the bakery case before they were out of sight, "Don't forget, Discord, Pinkie begins work tomorrow at five in the morning."
"No worries, little Mrs. Baker Pony," Discord called back. "She'll be on the dot."
A tiny foal had been watching through the window when Discord lifted Pinkie's limp form into the casket. Now the foal watched the march to a carriage hearse which popped into existence at the curb. He turned to his mother. "Mama, did Pinkie Pie dieded?"
"No, dear. She's fine. If Pinkie Pie had really died, there would be helium balloons attached to the casket as pallbearers."
The foal silently watched the casket being loaded into the back of the ebony carriage, then burst into tears.
"Oh, honey." His mother wiped his face for him. "I told you she's fine. It'll be okay, it's just Discord."
"But I wanted to see balloons!"
A streetlamp skittered toward them, using its black iron base as feet. Mother and foal startled and shied toward the curb. The lightpole bowed out and snaked around the foal's pastern. He shouted and jumped, and his mother tried to kick the impossible lamppost away. The metal post became as thin and bendy as a string and tied itself in a neat bow at the foal's pastern, and the lantern up on top rounded out and bobbed serenely above his head.
The foal looked up at it, and then down at the black iron ribbon bow. He sniffled once and settled down, consoled. His mother was wild-eyed and frazzled for a few moments, then gave her contented youngster a tender smile and accepted the scenario with a shrug.
The hearse drew away from the curb, pulled by two solemn Discords wearing shining black and silver harness and blinkers, with glorious fluffy black plumes standing up at their polls.
Fluttershy walked alongside one of the majestic harness Discords. "Is she only playing dead, or…"
"She's really dead, of course," replied Discord. "Otherwise this would be a pretend funeral, and I wanted to put on a real one."
"If she's really dead, shouldn't we wear mourning?"
Instantaneously Fluttershy was tastefully clad in a black dress with a ruffled skirt and a black lace mantilla over her ears and mane. Velvety midnight roses decorated a collar at her chest and she had black lipstick and black hoof polish.
"Fluttershy can wear black if she wants to," said Rainbow Dash. "I'm keeping my crystal costume."
The procession started up the street. Twilight Sparkle fell in step next to the off carriage-Discord and Fluttershy walked on the near side, with Rainbow flapping along above Twilight.
Spots of the street's surface in front of them distorted and crumbled, and when the street smoothed out again new Discords had grown from it. They were dressed in suits with colorful neckties and black top hats. One of these Discords took his horn from his head and with a flick of his fingers shaped it into a trumpet. Another picked a third Discord out of his pocket, shook him out like a handkerchief, and stretched him into a circle, and that Discord became his own stretched hide on a round frame. Discord played himself on the drum with drumsticks made of his own antler. He played a solemn dirge, with a thread of discordance that gave listening ponies on the sidewalk the shivers.
But Are You Adequately Rowdy?
Ponies came out from shop entryways and stepped down from the sidewalk to watch the procession, and after a few minutes some of them followed the hearse curiously. At first everypony was silent. The dirge began with an undertone of menace, but the ominousness of the music slowly lifted and the same tune sounded more hymn-like than grim. The ponies following behind the hearse or alongside it on the sidewalk began to chat with each other in fairly normal tones, while keeping a wary eye on the carriage-Discords, who were quite a bit larger than the townsponies.
Apparently from behind the hearse, regardless of on which side of the carriage one was walking, came a tall, clattering Discord who would have been willowy had he not been skeletal. He wore a long, richly colorful, flounced dress and a hat trimmed with mare-igolds. The skeleton's bones rattled, at first randomly, but soon a rhythm was picked out of the dry clicks and clacks, and the band Discords changed their tune.
The dirge picked up speed, the tall Discord began to sway, and some of the watching ponies unconsciously mimicked this. The music gradually changed to a lively jazz beat.
The procession grew noisier as it danced and jazzed through town, and as it went it picked up more followers—who might have been wondering who had died, but since Discord was in evidence all over the place, they didn't wonder too much. A few windows and doors were hastily closed once the occupants of houses and shops saw who was responsible for the wild music. However, more frequently, the response was to come down to the street, and ponies who heard the music from a block away came to investigate.
Soon the townsponies were trotting to match the beat, spinning back around so as not to pass the band, and taking little dance steps back and forth toward each other.
Ghostly flying Discords wailed and whooshed up and down the street above the funeral procession. Two draconequus skeletons materialized next to the band, carrying a pole between them from which was suspended a piñata shaped like Nightmare Moon.
Little fillies and colts on the sidewalk, dressed in their Nightmare Night costumes, desperately begged their parents for freedom, lest the procession get away from them. They clamored after the Discord skeletons who carried the Nightmare Moon piñata, heedless of the grinning skulls that would have scared them away on any other day.
One fleshless eagle's foot presented a long stick to a colt at the head of the beseeching bunch of foals. The unicorn colt took it in his youthfully awkward telekinesis. He and the other foals took turns trying to hit the piñata as the Discord skeletons spun and whirled it around while they danced down the street.
At last a Pegasus foal gave the papier-mâché Nightmare Moon a final whack, and it exploded in a cloud of purple confetti and glitter. A flock of miniature Discords fluttered out of the piñata halves, turned into multicolored bats and flew at the foals, whose cheers of victory switched to screams—but they refused to be spooked. Candy had also fallen out, and the foals pounced on it.
A small group of stallions munching apples in front of the greengrocer's watched the parade passing. One of them called out, "Where’re you going?"
"Club Skewbald!"
The pony laughed heartily. "You'll never get in! And with that hearse and this whole herd with you? You're only making it harder. Just go to a Nightmare Night party somewhere else."
"We're going to the one at Club Skewbald," persisted the hearse-drawing Discord, with dignity. "You're welcome to come along."
The stallions on the sidewalk glanced at each other.
"You think that the Club Skewbald bouncers'll let them into the party on account of the rowdiness of the procession?"
"I doubt it. How could they?"
“Worth a try, maybe Discord knows what he's doing.” Two or three of the stallions departed from the skeptical pony and followed the procession. At first they acted aloof and indifferent, but it was impossible to maintain a self-possessed walking gait to the jazz that the Discords were playing.
The skeptical stallion watched his companions dancing away down the street. Eventually he picked out another apple, tossed a couple of bits to the greengrocer, saying, "Keep the change," and marched off behind the hearse.
The grocer did a few dance steps to the departing jazz music herself as she set out bushel baskets full of fresh fruit treats for the trick-or-treating that would begin after dark.
In the meantime the sky was still midafternoon blue, with the sense of vastness and clarity unique to autumn. Draconequi on the rooftops tossed pawfuls of orange and black confetti, and as the pieces glittered their way down through the air they transformed into magenta and gold autumn leaves that collected in huge piles behind the hearse. Colts and fillies in Nightmare Night costumes rushed out into the street, joining those who were busily dividing piñata candy with each other.
Ordinary, non-discordant carts that had been following steadily behind the hearse were forced to pick their way among leaf piles being flung this way and that by joyful foals. Even grown-up ponies, some in costume, cantered back and forth among the crispy, crunching leaves. One big cartpony unhitched himself purely for the fun of stomping leaves, leaving his loaded wagon in the way. One of the hearse-drawing Discords and one or two of those in the band could be heard to let loose darkly gleeful giggles.
Just as Twilight Sparkle was saying, "I think that's enough chaos, Discord. Somepony could get hurt," a shrill blast on a whistle brought the whole cortège to a halt. The procession now faced Ponyville's most imposing force: the mounted police. A small pony stood on a forbiddingly stern-looking, slightly bigger pony. Both of them wore official caps with badges, and both had very official-looking cutie marks which showed that they had been stern since foalhood.
"Hello, officers!" said Discord the drummer and Discord the drum. "How delightful. Everyone knows it isn't a party until the police are called, and I didn't even have to portray them myself."
"Do you have a permit to be blocking this street?"
"Certainly." The Discord who wore a flounced dress and mare-igolds unrolled a long scroll that took form out of the bones of his skeletal hands.
"That doesn't count," said the police mount. "It needs to be stamped by the mayor. The real mayor."
"Oh, you're no fun."
"Permits are not fun."
"My point exactly."
The mounted officer gave another blast on her whistle, and the K-9 unit careened out of an alleyway. The K-9 unit consisted of a huge German Shepherd and a spindly gray Pegasus pony in a blue uniform who bobbed like a kite on the end of the leash.
The dog beheld the Lord of Chaos, flattened its ears, made a play bow, and wiggled the tip of its tail.
"Well, hello, Champ! Look, everypony, it's my good friend Champ."
Twilight asked, "How do you know Ponyville's police dog?"
"I got bored one day and decided to be part of the police department's chaotic training scenarios."
"Champ here can handle anything," declared the dog's handler. "Including you, Discord."
"It's true, in the course of our training I have already thrown everything I could imagine at this dog. He's such a good boy."
"He is a good boy," Fluttershy agreed. Champ thumped his tail on the street.
Discord snapped his claw and Champ turned plaid. Champ's handler frowned in disapproval. Champ wagged his tail. The draconequus snapped Champ back to his proper sable color and turned the handler-pony into a hot-pink duck. The duck flapped awkwardly to a bumpy landing on the street and let out a disgruntled duck sound. Champ looked back over his shoulder and gave a few curious sniffs toward the hot-pink duck, then lay down and yawned.
"We've done much more chaotic scenarios than this," said Discord. "The dog handles all of them like, well, like a champ."
The big mount officer said, "We're going to have to ask you to disperse. Wait, bad choice of—"
Before the pony could finish his sentence, naturally all of the Discords had dispersed themselves. They hung, dispersed, above the street. The hearse and the leaf piles remained.
Champ wagged his tail. His duck handler turned back into a frazzled Pegasus.
The unyielding mount pony said, "I mean that we need you to get out of sight."
"Very well." The hearse and all of the Discords vanished, leaving behind great pyramids of leaves and a bewildered herd of followers.
The police officers asked of each other, "Where'd he go?"
The unseen Discord laughed mightily. "You can't see a trace of me or of the parade! I mean the solemn procession."
The mounted officer sternly sat down on her partner's withers and crossed her forelegs, and the larger pony beneath her said, "Really? Lord of Chaos and that's the best you can do—turn invisible?"
Discord and all the other Discords reappeared. One snapped his claw, frowning, and the police officers and Champ were blindfolded.
"Not better," said the sturdy mount pony. His mounted partner leaned over his neck and removed the blindfold for him. Champ pawed his blindfold off of his face, took it between his teeth, and shook it playfully. His handler stumbled around on the other end of the leash, not yet seemingly aware as to why he couldn't see anything. Finally the pony touched his face, found the blindfold, ripped it off, and tossed it to the ground in disgust.
"Please let us by," said Discord. "Can't you see this is a funeral?"
All three police officers let out matching snort-sighs, while Champ wagged his tail and panted. The mount pony decided, and spoke for all of them. "All right, but clear up those leaf piles. I want to see no sign that this funeral was ever here. And invisibility doesn't count."
"That's fair," said Discord.
He made a careless gesture over his shoulder with his paw, and the leaf piles opened gaping black holes for eyes and wide maws which let forth ghastly, mournful moans. The moaning piles spun scratchily over the street, then lifted into the air, dissolving into individual leaves as brown and shriveled as if they had been drying for days. They whirled away, borne on a wind that had not been there a moment before. Pegasus foals spiraled wistfully upward after the departing leaves.
The street full of carts and wagons was released from its self-imposed suspended animation, and followed along again behind the cortège.
Something odd, if not chaotic, was happening to the hearse and the Discord band. The procession and all of its participants, including the townsponies, got gradually, steadily smaller. The music got smaller too, as if fading away, but in truth it was only becoming tiny along with the instruments themselves.
The parade became extremely itty-bitty as it turned off of Mane Street and into an alley hung with pumpkin lanterns at about knee height to a pony, but far above the heads of the now teensy cortège.
It was cooler and dark in the alleyway, where sundown happened early in the shadows at the bases of the buildings. A glitter and a flicker of miniature lights ahead resolved into a wee sign with two animated skewbald Breezies flanking the words CLUB SKEWBALD. Closer to the ground, a warmer light emanated from inside of hollowed-out acorns with faces carved into them. The band played cheerfully all the way to a hole in the wall underneath the sign, then stopped.
All of the Discords poofed away one by one, except for the handsome pair drawing the hearse. These two Discords each went in opposite directions around the hearse, and when they met up behind it, they kept on walking into and through each other, layering together like translucent sheets of paper. They solidified into a two-dimensional cut-out of the God of Chaos, then became three-dimensional again, and represented the usual one Discord. "Put your shoes on, Pinkie Pie," he called into the back of the hearse. "We're here."
He slit the seam of the cardboard casket with a talon and peeled back the lid, interrupting his vermiform selves who were playing pony-nochle on Pinkie Pie's snout. These creatures were eyeless, but each had a horn and antler, beard and fang. While Pinkie slowly blinked alive, they transformed into spiders and scuttled down her cheeks and out of sight into her costume wigs.
Discord created a short set of stairs out of his tail, allowing the party pony to reach the ground easily. Pinkie was a little wobbly as she joined the crowd outside the mouse-hole-sized door to Club Skewbald. Discord poofed himself to the front of the group. "Hello, Bruiser."
A tattooed Breezie bouncer grunted a greeting to Discord, but looked without comment at the herd of diminutive ponies, crossed his forelegs over his chest, and narrowed his eyes.
"They're with me," Discord said importantly.
The bouncer rubbed his chin consideringly. He spoke with heavily accented but perfectly intelligible Equuish. "Are they rowdy?"
"One of them literally died to get into your club."
"That's devotion, but Death isn't very rowdy. It's just resting in peace."
"Oh, it was a wild time getting here," Discord assured him.
"Totally," said Rainbow.
"I just got revivified," said Pinkie. "Give me a minute to get my boisterousness warmed up."
"Boo," said Twilight.
"Should I still be wearing black if Pinkie isn't dead anymore?" asked Fluttershy.
Discord sent a finger-point of magic at Fluttershy, and her costume became that of a ghostly Mare in White.
The bouncer gave the draconequus a nod. "Go on in, Mr. Discord." Discord slithered in past him. The steely-eyed Breezie kept his post at the door, blocking the hopeful ponies.
"We should've brought along that gold Discord gave you, Pinkie," said Rainbow.
Bruiser said, "I can't be bribed into letting you in if you're not rowdy. I'm an honest Breezie. You all look pretty orderly to me."
"Technically, we're physically impossible," said Twilight Sparkle. "Only Discord's chaos magic made us able to be this small."
"I just gotta get into the party!" Pinkie trotted in place. "I missed my own Dia de los Maretos Neigh Orleans jazz funeral for this! I'm irrepressible, isn't that sort of a synonym for rowdy?"
"Hm. Not sure," said the bouncer.
The group of stallions from back on the sidewalk at the greengrocer's came forward to hear the argument. The skeptical stallion finished nibbling his apple and tossed the core on the alleyway cobbles.
Twilight pointed at the core. "Bruiser, look! This stallion just threw litter in the street with a callous disregard for order. The term 'rowdy' is thought to originally refer to a lawless backwoodspony. At least one of our number is thoroughly out of hoof. I think the etymology clearly supports letting us inside."
Bruiser gave one more narrow look at the herd, then stood aside. "Have fun, ponies." He threw his forelimb out in front of the skeptical stallion, stopping him. "You. Pick that up first."
The skeptical stallion picked up his apple core, dropped it into a minuscule tin waste can, then went inside the club to be rambunctious.
"Woo hoo!" Rainbow did a loop the loop in through the teeny-tiny door. "We got in!"
Club Skewbald had four levels: the ground floor and three balconies. There was weird, rocking organ music coming from somewhere. Dressed-up creatures dancing on all three balcony levels gave the impression of a wall of grooving glitter. On the ground floor a long buffet table towered with microscopic treats topped with dabs of whipped cream and molecules of maraschino cherries. A realistic Breezie skeleton made of glue and string swung from the first balcony.
Breezies in strange Nightmare Night costumes swarmed everywhere. On a closer look the ponies found that some of what looked like bizarre costumes were the real appearances of unfamiliar species who had joined the festivities, creatures the ponies had never met nor imagined, tinier than they would ever notice day to day. The creatures wore minute chips of gems and bits of colorful down, and danced on spindly, brittle Changeling-like legs or wiggled and wriggled inside their skins.
Breezies and other creatures whooped and squealed and hollered. Some dragged miniature chains and made spooky noises. One of the guests tossed another guest off the topmost balcony. Fortunately, the tossed guest was winged and zipped right up again.
Pinkie Pie said, "Wow, this place is rowdy! But I don't think it takes first place after all. That goes to wherever I went when I died. That place was wild!"
"I could send you back there," said Discord, claws poised for a snap.
"No way, I came to party and I aim to party! And I wouldn't have even been able to set one hoof through the door without you, Discord! Thanks, God of Chaos!"
Discord sighed with pleasure. "I am good at Friendship, aren't I."
"I want to actually be part of the cortège next time, not just the corpse," said Pinkie. "Being still as death is just not my thing."
"Well, perhaps I could take a turn dying," said Discord. "But it just seemed so awkward to mourn myself."
"How was my funeral?"
"It was properly somber."
"Were the police called?"
"Naturally."
Pinkie hoof-bumped Discord's eagle foot. "Wish I could've been there. Were there balloons as pallbearers?"
"Not this time," said Discord. "I did that part myself. In fact, I did almost all of the parts myself." He surveyed the tiny, wild party and cracked his knuckles. "What should we do first?"
"I'm a simple mare," said Rainbow. "Show me to the cider. Ah—there's a whole fountain of it over there. Catch you nerds later." Rainbow's costume glittered like a disco ball. Everywhere she went, when her crystal plates reflected the natural pastel lights of Breezies' antennae, the Breezies struck poses or did some disco dancing.
Fluttershy occupied herself with cooing over creepy-crawling party guests so small that no fabric could be cut down to their size. Some creature had painted their disguises on for them with a brush made of a single hair.
Pinkie pointed. "Look! There's bobbing for apples."
An enormous—by Breezie standards—wooden tub contained three floating crabapples. Pinkie opened her mouth wide and dunked her muzzle in. She could hardly miss biting one of the apples, relatively large as they were, but of course her teeth pushed down on it and it began to sink away from her. Then something pushed it back up, and Pinkie's teeth got a grip on the apple.
Whatever it was down in the water kept pushing the crabapple from underneath. Pinkie backed away from the edge of the tub with the crabapple clamped between her teeth, but before she had taken a full step, something from inside the tub reached out and scratched at her chest. Pinkie pie scrambled backward and dropped the apple on the floor. She quaked with fear, but curiosity won out, and she moved forward again to peer down into the water.
Barely visible under the shadow of the other two crabapples lurked a dragonfly nymph almost as big as Pinkie Pie.
The nymph rose up and reached for her with its claws. It broke the surface of the water. Pinkie reared, bucked, and ran around shrieking, spraying apple-bobbing water everywhere from her three layers of curly mane.
The club was so chaotic that Discord didn't have to contribute much in order to be satisfied. He made his tail prehensile and dangled from the balcony banister next to the realistic fake Breezie skeleton, soaking up the antics of the tiny partiers.
The spider-Discords that had been hiding in Pinkie pie's manes appeared and dangled by strands of web that glittered with leftover apple-bobbing droplets, swaying festively and nightmarishly.
"Ooh! Ooky spooky!" said Pinkie. "Let's dance!"
And with Pinkie Pie and all of her funeral procession there and in top partying form, that Nightmare Night, Club Skewbald was the rowdiest place, not just in Ponyville, but in all of Equestria.
~~The End~~
