“What!?” the Doctor yelled once more. The Doctor looked at the black chaos particles in the sky. The tail of it seemed to be fading away. “Follow that trail!”

“Looks like a pegasus or something took it,” Discord said.

“No,” the Doctor gritted through his teeth. “The eye alone couldn’t radiate that much chaos magic. It must be amplified by something else.” He looked up at the fading trail as he began trotting to Sweet Apple Achers. “There must be something else with lots of chaos magic. We must find it before it goes off.”

“It’s fine,” Discord said. “I mean, it hasn’t gone off in the present, so it won’t go off now.”

“Don’t you get it!?” The Doctor screamed at his fez. “The Eye of Discord doesn’t care about timelines. It doesn’t matter when you use it, it’ll destroy the past, present, and future of a planet. It’ll destroy a whole galaxy with its chaos if it’s allowed.”

“How do you know?” Discord asked. “I could hear you and Celestia talking, and you said that my first eye is back on your home planet. How do you know what it can do if it’s still there?”

“Because the eye was used on my planet!” the Doctor shot back. The Doctor had to stop trotting to catch his breath, both physically and mentally. “It was during the Time War and my people were losing. All the enemy forces were at my planet. If they landed, they’d wipe out all of my people and move onto the rest of the universe.

“I was there. I was on Gallopfrey the day the Dalek would wipe out the Time Lords. But it was there. The eye.” The Doctor paused. “I had to do it. If I didn’t, Gallopfrey would have been destroyed anyway. The Dalek’s were there too. All of them. Time Lords too. They all died. Time Lord. Dalek. The eye... no... I killed them all. I was the only one that was able to make it out alive. I’m the only survivor of the Time War. I won.”

This whole time, Discord said nothing. While the Draconequus was normally one to make light of situations, even the god of chaos wasn’t cruel enough to kick a pony while they were down like this.

“If that thing activates, it’ll destroy me, you, and every creature in Equestria and beyond! It’ll kill all of us and there’s nothing we, nor Twilight and her friends, can do to stop it once it starts. I won’t let what happened to Gallopfrey happen here as well,” the Doctor spoke.

After a minute, Discord transformed from a fez into a parrot (with the 3D glasses still on). “I’ll go scope ahead to see where it went.” The Doctor gave a wordless nod as Discord flew off.

Discord thought as he flew to follow the trail. He thought about Fluttershy and the way she, and to an extent the others, made him feel welcomed, loved, and accepted. He knew he wanted to save them and didn’t want to be on his own again.

Though, while thinking about this, he couldn’t help shaking the thought that despite the acceptance they gave him, he still felt different from them. While he didn’t want to admit it, he understood the Doctor’s loneliness.

*****

The Doctor stood there for several more minutes before continuing to trot to Sweet Apple Achers. He continued onward, tears marks down his cheek.

He looked back up to the sky, hoping the trail hadn’t vanished yet. When he did, he saw the parrot Discord flying around an apple tree.

“The trail ends here!” he said. He was right. The faint bits of a trail that there were ended into the apple tree next to Discord.

The Doctor jumped the wooden fence in front of him and looked up at the tree. “How am I going to get up there?” he thought aloud.

As he said this, the ground beneath him started to leave. He looked down and saw that he was levitating! The Doctor began to freak out before he looked up to the parrot above him. “I think you forgot you were with the lord of chaos,” the parrot said. The Doctor chuckled and continued to levitate up.

After a moment, they were both inside the middle of the apple tree’s branches. The leaves and apples covered up the trees so much, it was hard to see past them. They acted as shields to keep anypony from seeing what was behind them. As he ascended, the Doctor whispered to himself, “Let’s see what you are.”

When he got to a point where he could clearly see the inside, he didn’t expect what was there. He expected some terrifying, winged, chaos creature Discord had made to be in the tree and ready to attack, but what was there was... a mare.

She was a pink Earth pony with an indigo mane and tail; however, that’s where the similarities to a normal pony end. She wore a hat propellor hat and had purple eyes with spirals. Her cutiemark was of two items: a screw and a baseball. Though the oddest thing was that, despite being an Earth pony, she was hovering in the air.

The Doctor had barely any time to comprehend this as, between her two front hooves, he saw that the mare was holding The Eye of Discord. The Doctor immediately put his hoof up, as if to show that he wasn’t a threat to her.

“Hello there,” the Doctor said. “What’s your name?” He asked this question to calm the mare down. As he looked at her, he saw that she looked scared, hyper, and paranoid, like something bad would happen any second (which, to be fair, would happen if she accidentally unleashed the eye).

“I-I-I'm Screwball,” the mare said. “W-w-who are you!? Are you trying to t-t-take me away!?”

The Doctor kept his hoof up. “We’re not here to hurt you, we just need that eye.”

Screwball’s eyes widened. “The eye!? No no no!” She started to back away slightly from the Doctor. “This is the only thing I have left of daddy Discord!”

The Doctor was confused. He didn’t realize that Discord’s creations saw Discord as a father, but in hindsight, it made some sense. Before the Doctor could respond, Discord finally made it up. “You know, it’s a lot harder to fly into a tree than birds would have you believe. Sorry that took so long. So, what do we have here?”

Screwball looked at parrot that had just flown up into the tree. “Daddy?” She asked. “Are you my daddy?”

“I’m sorry?” Discord asked.

Screwball looked at the parrot Discord with a mixture of relief and horror. “B-b-but daddy Discord was locked in stone!”

The Doctor pulled Discord over. “Discord,” the Doctor started. “This chaos creature. It’s more sentient than most of your chaos creatures. She sees you as a father figure. I think that that she has the mind of a scared child.”

Discord raised an eyebrow, though the eyebrow went up so high, it came off his parrot face. “And why do you think that?”

The Doctor thought for a moment before he spoke. “Most chaos creatures you make either aren’t sentient or are just augmentations on existing creatures like chaos bunnies or squirrels. But Screwball here seems to be a fully sentient and fully chaotic being. She has the mind of a child because she IS a small child.”

“Well, what do you propose we do?” Discord asked.

“We just need to talk to her.” The Doctor began to look back as he spoke. “Okay Screwball, here’s the...” Before he could finish his sentence, he noticed that Screwball was nowhere to be seen. “Oh dear.”

Author's Note

Good news! I’ve just finished writing the story! I’m gonna continue putting out one chapter every Friday. I’m currently working on the next story. I’m hoping for it to be a “Hearth’s Warming Special”, but no promises.