Being Chaos (commission) chps 2 and 3 (Patreon)

I'm going to be breaking this into at least two chapters when I publish on fimfiction.

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We walked to Fluttershy’s cottage. Well, the ponies walked. I floated. God, I could fly. This was amazing. I wondered if I could fly like Rainbow Dash did, fast and zippy, since it seemed like mostly I was floating. I could probably do stunts like her, though. My body was incredible. I could twist myself into a pretzel, I could loop myself into loops, I could bend over and bite my own tail like an ouroboros. Also, if I had a dick, and the jury was out on that one since I hadn’t found it yet, I was absolutely going to be able to suck it. First chance I got for privacy, I was checking that.

You’d think all this would weird a guy out. New body? Cool superpowers? Surrounded by aliens?  Absolutely no reasonable explanation as to how you suddenly ended up in a fictional universe? But it didn’t bother me. It felt – not normal, exactly, but exciting and fun. More like going to an amusement park you’ve never been to before with fifty dollars in your pocket when you’re ten and amusement parks are still cool. Things are new and different and you don’t know where stuff is and maybe you don’t exactly know what to expect, but it all feels like it’s gonna be great. And my body felt right, for the first time in my life. I’ll admit it now; I’ve suffered from some severe body dysphoria throughout my life, enough to make me flirt with being otherkin for a while, except I could never make up my mind which animal I felt like; they all seemed not quite as wrong as my gangly, weird human body, but not at all right either. Obviously I’d needed to kin a draconequus. I kept touching myself – not in any kind of sexual way; Spirit of Chaos I might be, but the idea of doing something like that in front of these innocent ponies, who were probably all virgins except maybe Rarity and maybe her too because she was totally the kind who would save herself for marriage, was just appalling and gross. Also, still didn’t know if I actually had a dick or not. No, I was touching my scales, and my feathers, and my fur, feeling the different sensations of my talons touching my fur versus my lion paw. Noticing the differences between the flat, horsehair-like fur on my face and neck, and the fluffy, thick fur around my body. The large, wide scales on the upper part of my tail, versus the tiny ones on my legs.

And my powers! I couldn’t do everything I wanted to do, I couldn’t do anything they could see unless it looked harmless to them, but I’d spent my life being fairly powerless and now I had the cheat codes to reality. I made an ice cream cone, and ate it upside-down like the cone was a straw I was sipping a milkshake through. I turned birds that no one was paying attention to into replicas of Tweety from Looney Tunes. I made a tree spontaneously produce rambutans (they are the weirdest looking fruit on Earth, being hairy and kind of remiscient of spiders), and then whacked the tree with a baseball bat and made them all fall. I made a frog sing “Hello, my baby, hello, my darling, hello, my ragtime gal,” while dancing with a top hat on his head. They all kept glaring at me every time I did something they could see, like the gag with the frog… all except Fluttershy. Oh, I knew this playbook. Be the nice one, the permissive one, the friendly one, to get the kid to trust you. Sorry, dear Fluttershy, but I wasn’t falling for it this time.

It felt so good to use the power. It wasn’t even just the thrill of being powerful. It was like making cool stuff with Legos or Minecraft, except with reality, and the energy that I felt flowing through me… well, I’ve gotten high on occasion, and it felt kind of like that, except what if you could combine how weed makes you feel relaxed and makes you wanna think deep thoughts, with the high energy and the feeling that you are Getting Things Done that you get from meth. It was a sweet shock to my system any time I did anything. Wow. If this was how using his magic made Discord feel, no wonder he wouldn’t give it up for anything. 

I tried, experimentally, to make things that were just normal. Just snap a perfectly average frog into existence. I did it, but goddamn. You ever look at a thing that is so boring, you feel like your mind is just going to melt out your ears if you have to look at it for one more minute? Like you’re at the doctor’s office and all they have is magazines about retirement, home decoration, and sports you don’t play? Or you ever want to make something cool in art class, except the teacher wants you to do the assignment exactly like she told you to, and yells at you every time you try to add even the tiniest of creative embellishments, so working on the project feels like running a cheese grater over your brain, it’s so abrasive and painful? Making a normal frog was like that. Everything in me was screaming that this was a waste, it was boring, do something different, come on, maybe he could be a blue frog, maybe he could be an exotic Amazonian poison frog, what if he had giant flippers, what if his ribbits sounded like he was on helium? I resisted the temptation, but shortly after I made the frog I snapped him back out of existence because I couldn’t stand knowing I had made something so boring.

Well. I didn’t have any particular allegiance to Chaos as a principle – I mean, if I had to pick between Chaos and Order, sure, put me on Team Chaos, but I wasn’t like a Warhammer fan or something. I didn’t normally think about the world in terms of Order and Chaos. Turned out that with Discord’s powers, Chaos and Order mapped almost perfectly to Creative and Fun vs So Boring I Want To Spork Out My Eyeballs. I didn’t know whether the power had made Discord love Chaos, because goddamn was it ever fun, or whether it was the fact that he was the Spirit of Chaos that made his powers like it, but wow. I could see so easily now why he’d said chaos was a wonderful thing. 

Anyway, so we all got to Fluttershy’s cottage. I’d basically ignored everything the ponies had said on the way here because I’d been busy exploring my powers and my body, and all that’d they’d had to say had been endless repetition of how Applejack, Rarity and Rainbow Dash didn’t think I was safe for Fluttershy to have in her house and Twilight was obviously on the verge of a cranial explosion because saying this was a terrible idea would be criticizing Princess Celestia. 

As soon as we got inside, Fluttershy started zipping around cleaning up. Of course, her focus was all wrong. I couldn’t have given less of a damn about clutter, but my brand new amazing nose could tell that… well, I’m sure Fluttershy worked hard to keep the place clean, but there had obviously been considerable quantities of poop, pee and animal stink all throughout the place. My nose wrinkled a bit, but I decided not to say anything. I fully intended to mock these guys, but Fluttershy was so gosh-darn earnest, insulting her for her stinky house seemed like kicking a puppy. I might be a bad guy now, but some things were just beyond the pale. So I snapped my fingers to sterilize and clean her couch, and then laid myself out on it. 

“Fluttershy, why are you trying to clean up for this guy?” Rainbow Dash asked. “He’s seriously not worth the effort!”

“He may be horrible,” Fluttershy said, flitting around to put books away, “but that doesn't mean we have to act the same way. We should at least try to be hospitable.” She went down to the floor to talk to her itsy-bitsy cutesy-wootsy bunny-wunny. “You don't mind giving up your favorite spot on the couch, do you, Angel Bunny?”

The rabbit apparently did most certainly mind, and with a series of angry squeaks, tried to remove me bodily from the couch by tugging on my foot. Sucks to be you, Angel Bunny, how sad that you can’t negate the laws of physics and therefore a ten foot tall draconequus is much too large and heavy for you to budge. 

Fluttershy flew over to me and said solicitiously, “Oh, I'm sorry about Angel. Are you alright?”

I decided to lay it on really thick. “Oh, yes. Thank you, Fluttershy, for your concern.” I waved my hand. “If only your pony friends could be as considerate...”

Five colorful faces glared at me. “Don't listen to him, Fluttershy!” Rainbow Dash shouted in her I-sound-like-a-smoker voice, flying over to where Fluttershy hovered. “He's just trying to drive a wedge between us like he always does.”

I threw up my hands. “Now why in the world would I ever try to do a thing like that?” It’s not like my name is Discord or something.

Rainbow Dash hovered directly above me. “So we can't unite and use the Elements of Harmony against you, that's why!” 

“I never thought of that!” I said in the most exaggerated voice I could muster, one finger to my chin.

Rainbow Dash did not appreciate my sarcasm. “You big liar!”

Man, I love wordplay. I used to provoke older foster siblings into chasing me or beating me up by saying things like “Wow, are they really having sex? Can I see?” when they’d say “Did you take my fucking socks?” (The answer, by the way, was yes. Nothing works as well to hassle people as to take small unimportant things they expected to find in a specific place and hide them somewhere. It helps them learn about what truly matters in life, since the unimportant things generally become really important when they can’t be found.)

So I shrank myself and said, “Now, look who's a liar. Anyone can plainly see that I'm not big at all.”

Unfortunately, Angel the misnamed took the opportunity to try to reclaim his position on the couch, so I right-sized myself. I misjudged my own size, though, so my head ended up knocking Fluttershy’s lamp off the end table, and it shattered.

Poor Fluttershy looked utterly horrified. What, was the thing an heirloom from her dead grandmother or something? I rolled my eyes, got to my feet, and snapped my fingers, making the pieces of the lamp reconstitute themselves as a very art nouveau interpretation of me in broken glass. “There, all better.” Then, because Angel Bunny had jumped up onto the couch again while I was briefly standing on it, I whacked him with my tail and stretched out on the couch again.

None of the ponies appreciated my artistic talents. Applejack put her hat on her face. “I can't watch...” she muttered, and headed for the door, followed by the entire herd. 

Twilight was the only one who paused at the door to check. “You sure you're okay with this?” she asked Fluttershy. Plainly nobody was going to ask me. I lay back with my eyes closed, pretending I was taking a nap while exercising my amazing hearing. At least until the rabbit showed up and tried to pull on my leg again. Then I started goofing off, making the couch float, scooting it around, and so forth, just to annoy Angel, who kept trying and failing to chase after me. I was still paying attention, though.

“I know it's not gonna be easy,” Fluttershy said, “but Princess Celestia's counting on me. And... I think I actually know what to do.”

Twilight said, “You do?” Wow, your faith in your princess’ ability to pick the right pony for the job is sad, Twilight. I considered doing a Darth Vader bit with “I find your lack of faith disturbing”, but decided it was kind of pointless because no one here had seen Star Wars. Besides, I wanted to hear Fluttershy’s devious plans for me. Please, Fluttershy, do go on.

“I think the key is to befriend him. Being kind to him and letting him be my house guest is probably the best way to do that.”

I opened my eyes just so I could roll them. (Not like dice, this time.) Oh, yes, Fluttershy, I’m so desperate for a friend I’m going to follow you around like a puppy and do whatever you say because you let me crash at your house. She had no idea how many people I’d couch-surfed in my time, and what absolute tools most of them turned out to be.

“And you really think that'll work?”

“I think it's worth a try,” Fluttershy said, like every social worker who thought I could be helped if they just tried the new therapy fad.

“Okay, but if you need us, all you need to do is whisper "help", and we'll be back here with our elements,” Twilight said. And then she looked straight at me, playing with Angel. “So watch that goat-legged step of yours, pal!”

I was startled; though I’d been listening to the conversation, I wasn’t really expecting the focus to suddenly be back on me again. On the other hand, I never turn down attention. “What?! Look at me!” I declared, creating a pair of elegant high-backed chairs and dressing myself in clothes straight out of Alice in Wonderland, with Angel in the other chair, both of us holding teacups. “I'm practically reformed already.”

Twilight obviously needed to learn my spell for transforming and rolling eyes, because she plainly really wanted to be able to do that. A vigorous eyeroll later, and she was out the door and Fluttershy was closing it on her.

I didn’t think it was particularly safe for me to not listen in on the conversation outside, so I abandoned Fluttershy for the roof of her tree cottage, and leaned down to listen in. I could hear Fluttershy hunting around for me, calling my name, but that wasn’t the important thing to pay attention to here. The five mares who held five out of six parts of the Anti-Me Friendship Laser were talking amongst themselves, and after you’ve irritated the crap out of your teacher and they’re having a private conference with your foster mother du jour, it’s always a good idea to listen in.

“She's really alright with him staying there?” Rarity asked.

I could hear the shrug in Twilight’s voice. “That's what she said.”

“Personally,” Rainbow said loudly, as if she talks any other way, “I think we should come up with a backup plan, in case this whole ‘befriending’ business doesn't work out.”

“Rainbow Dash is right,” Rarity said. “This is Discord we are talking about, girls. It wouldn't be a bad idea to have another trick up our sleeves.”

“And I think I know just the trick,” Twilight said in the kind of voice that should have been accompanied by evil steepled fingers. Unfortunately she only had hooves, and you can’t steeple hooves. “Back in my library, I’ve got quite a few reforming spells.”

My ears perked up so hard they jumped off my head. Literally. My powers apparently do stupid jokes even when I’m not actively trying to make them. Reforming spells? Doesn’t a spell that reforms someone sound just a tad like magical brainwashing?

Pinkie said, “It’d be good to make him realize it’s better to make ponies happy, but you can’t make him not-chaosy, Twilight, that would be wrong! You can reform someone who’s evil but you can’t make them stop being who they are!”

“I don’t have to make him not-chaotic, Pinkie. Not evil is the goal here.”

Oh, like you can tell the difference between chaos and evil, Twilight. As nearly as I could tell, Pinkie might literally be the only pony who could tell the difference, judging from the fact that the Cutie Mark Crusaders had looked at my statue – which looked like it was laughing or singing – and declared me to be “confusion”, “chaos” and “evil.” I mean, maybe I’d been doing something to make them fight with each other – I mean the real Discord, obviously – but confusion, chaos and evil? Really? 

They all trotted off, Twilight and Spike making a beeline for the library. I got there first. The first thing I thought of was to get rid of all the books that contained the reforming spells, but as I thought the question “where are the books”, so many of them lit up that I realized Twilight would instantly know something was wrong. On the other hand, they were big thick books. What if the spells she was looking for just… happened to not be there?

Maybe I was being a bit of a hypocrite, considering that I’d mesmerized all of her friends, and Fluttershy, I’d cheated with. But that was the real Discord; I was a human, much as this felt so much more fitting and right than anything from my human life, and humans consider mind control to be awful. Cast a spell to just magically make someone want to behave themselves and be socially appropriate? That was my idea of evil, not making some pies float or shrinking myself for a dumb joke. Yeah, I’d done it too, but I really didn’t have any control over what the real Discord had done in the past, did I? I identified pretty strongly with Discord, but at the end of the day… I wasn’t really him, right? So I felt free to work myself into an absolute froth of outrage over Twilight deciding to use mind control on me.

I snapped my fingers and summoned all of the spells straight out of the books, tearing them loose. There were like 40 or 50 of them. Wow, Equestria. So many reforming spells in one mare’s library? That was genuinely scary. Maybe this pastel pony paradise wasn’t such a utopia after all.

But if Twilight found me around here, she’d know I was up to something. And if Fluttershy couldn’t find me, she might summon her friends to look for me, assuming I’d flown the coop. I was definitely not done with Fluttershy. So I teleported back there, manufacturing a bowl and sitting back on the couch, because what if Twilight had some kind of spell that could reconstitute a book page out of shredded-up bits? I had to destroy these pages so utterly they couldn’t possibly be restored. And I kept remembering a scene from one of the Q episodes where the Klingon had hit Q with a genuine zinger and Q responded with, “Oh, very good, Worf, eat any good books lately?”

If I ate the pages, there was no way Twilight was reconstituting them.

Fluttershy stuck her head into the room. “Discord?” she said in a very slightly panicked voice, and then, relieved, “Oh, there you are. Listen, Discord, I just want to make sure you know that if there's anything I can do to–“ At this point she realized what I was doing. “Umm, are you eating... paper?”

I had a delicious bowl of the pages I’d ripped out of Twilight’s books, which I’d used my powers to make taste like nachos, and I was chowing down with a fork because when you look like a scary monster, it is so much more hilarious to behave as if you’re a gentleman of breeding and refinement. I glanced at Fluttershy. “Am I? Oh, how odd of me.” I munched on another page.

“Well, um...” She forced a smile on her face. I could tell. Ponies are not particularly good at acting, is what I’m saying. “I'm just heading out, so you just make yourself at home while I'm gone.”

Wait, she was leaving? She was heading out and leaving me by myself?

I popped over to the door in a pink housecoat as she left, waving at her as she left. “Buh-bye, have a nice time! Everything is fine here. Bye bye... Bye bye...”

Okay, I was milking it, but firstly, ponies are really gullible, and even among a very gullible species, Fluttershy’s picture would be found in the dictionary illustrating the word “gullible”. (Or at least if I told her so, she’d probably believe me.) And secondly… I was so excited! Time to myself! Time not under the watchful supervision of mistrustful ponies! Ah, bliss!

I shut the door and turned around. There was Angel Bunny the misnamed, the jerk who once slapped Fluttershy for not making him the exact salad he wanted. So I grinned evilly (it turns out you can, in fact, feel that your grin looks evil), and waved a carrot at him. “You like carrots, Angel?” I whapped him with the carrot, knocking him over. “I'm playing your owner for a fool!” I laughed, because if Angel did manage to explain to Fluttershy what I’d said, I’d just make big eyes and talk about how I understood that jealousy can make people, and presumably animals, lie, and I’d act sad, and Fluttershy would buy it completely. And then I projected myself into the carrot and continued to grin evilly. “How d'ya like them carrots?” 

Angel was not much for seeing his carrot suddenly grow a face. He shrieked and ran off. Me, I flopped down on the couch to engage in some hard-core paper snacking.

Of course, it was important to keep an eye on what was going on. I manifested a styrofoam dodecahedron, and cast my consciousness out to summon images of what all my new pals were up to, which displayed on the panels of the dodecahedron. Fluttershy was… getting groceries? Wow, that made sense. I have a dangerous and nigh-omnipotent god of chaos in my house, so of course, it’s grocery shopping time. Rainbow Dash… was flying circles around Fluttershy’s house, occasionally kicking a cloud so anyone with only one brain cell, which describes most ponies, would think she was doing her job and not stalking Fluttershy. Rarity, Applejack and Pinkie Pie were doing boring pony things; you’d think Pinkie might at least be entertaining, but she was baking something, and watching someone else bake is very dull, especially when they’re not going to invite you to eat it when they’re done. Princess Celestia was eating cake and drinking tea with Luna and Cadance. Ah, so that was what a royal summit looked like. I was tempted to drop in on them, but the fact that I didn’t actually know their history with Discord, and I didn’t want them to know that this body was under new management, convinced me it was a bad idea.

Besides, Twilight was getting to be very entertaining.

There she was, searching fruitlessly through a spellbook. I let sound come in, and heard her say, “That's weird. The spell I had in mind isn't in here. Spike, where are the other books I asked you to pull?”

In the pane of the dodecahedron I could see Spike staggering toward Twilight with a giant pile of books. Meanwhile, Fluttershy at the market was giving herself a pep talk. “You can do this, Fluttershy! You’re strong, and Princess Celestia has faith in you!” She was doing deep breathing exercises. I assumed from the bit about Princess Celestia that she meant me, although given Fluttershy’s history, if it hadn’t been for that line I’d have thought maybe it was the market itself triggering her.

She was interesting, Fluttershy was. I wondered if I was supposed to hold a grudge, if Discord would have. Twilight Sparkle had rallied her friends and defeated me – well, Discord, but having spent some time in stone I could empathize – but Fluttershy had forced me to cheat at my own game.

I could imagine it vividly. Now that I could wield Discord’s power, I knew what it felt like to warp a pony’s personality. The research he’d done, reaching out from my stone prison with the barest sliver of power I could muster up, to analyze who the ponies who bore the Elements of Harmony and identify their weaknesses, the points I could attack to get through their defenses and warp them. (I did not, and still don’t, like the verb “discord” that the fandom uses to describe the process of warping a pony’s personality. I’ve got more going on than that! Well, Discord does.)

I knew how he’d gone after the traits in them that could most easily oppose their Elements. Pinkie, made to think that laughter was being turned against her, like when she was a rube from the sticks fresh from the rock farm and nopony in Ponyville got her jokes, and she was still a kid, so they mocked and bullied her. Rarity, who in fact is always incredibly greedy, but she craves high status and good reputation more than she wants stuff… most of the time. Applejack, who lost some friends in childhood because she was too honest with them, and it upset her so much she ran off to Manehattan to try to live with her Orange relatives. Rainbow Dash, whose famous “loyalty” can be split if you pit her family and her home against her friends, like pretty much anyone’s loyalties would be…

…how exactly did I know any of this? Was I subconsciously tapping Discord’s memories? If so, cool, but was there a way I could do it deliberately?

Also… what had happened to the real Discord? I mean, I’d thought the guy was awesome… I didn’t want to be taking his place by shoving him out of it. Had he died? Found himself in my body? (Which might be the same thing, considering the truck…) Was he drifting around as a disembodied spirit? I wished there was someone I could ask, but I couldn’t admit I wasn’t the real Discord. What if they tried to do an exorcism or something to summon the real Discord back, because they decided I was an even bigger jerk? I liked the guy, but unless someone gave me a different body to occupy, I didn’t like him enough to die or become a disembodied ghost for his sake.

Anyway! I wrenched my mind back to what I was doing, wondering if that kind of thing had happened to the real Discord. It certainly had happened to me a lot in my life. I was checking up on Fluttershy, right? Because I had targeted the bullying she’d suffered her whole life and how everyone looked down on her and thought of her as weak, even her friends… and she’d beaten me. Discord. She’d beaten Discord. She’d deflected everything he’d thrown at her and in the end he’d had to use brute force to warp her.

So there she was having a panic attack and it was so easy to think so little of her. Smiling and being friendly and then panicking when I couldn’t see her anymore, probably hating and fearing me as much as the other ponies but faking it, like the social workers who I was sure had secretly hated my guts. It seemed like it would be so easy to crush her, to make her run away screaming… or to trick her into letting me get rid of her Element. Was she really that kind? I’d seen the Iron Will episode and the one at the Gala when she was running around screaming “YOU WILL LOVE ME!” Did she have secret desires to lash out at the ponies who treated her badly, and I just needed a way to bring it out? Or was she actually as milquetoasty as she was in that episode where Angel slapped her and she just took it? 

But I had to remember. She’d been the only one who stood up to me, the only one who resisted my effort to bring out her dark side. Fluttershy wouldn’t crumble. Fluttershy was a grass, bending in the wind but insidiously growing into everything, even cracks in the sidewalk blocks away from any other greenery. (I think. I’m not a gardener.) Fluttershy was gentle but relentless. I needed a strategy, something other than “irritate her until she gives up and tells the others to go ahead and turn me into stone.”

Well, I didn’t know if Discord had been a master planner, but I knew I always preferred to fly by the seat of my pants. Something would come up and I’d find a way to work with it.

In the meantime, Twilight was discovering that none of her books that were supposed to have reforming spells in them actually did. Serves you right, Twilight. “Reforming spell” my ass. I don’t approve of mind control. The kind of thing Discord did where he warped ponies’ personalities was bad too, to be honest, but I wasn’t the one who did that… even if I could remember exactly how to do it if I wanted to. 

And there was Twilight freaking out. “Princess Celestia didn't cast a spell protecting our books! Everywhere I thought I'd find the reforming spell...” She gasped. Wow. Is it such a surprise to you that I don’t want to be lobotomized with a rusty buttonhook? How do you hold the moral high ground against Discord warping your friends if you’re willing to do the same thing to him?

But that raised a question.

Here and now, I was a villain. How much morality did I want to have? I had my own ideas about what Discord’s morality might have been, and all evidence suggests I was right – if Discord was a killer, would Celestia have left me with Fluttershy? But I also knew he’d done things that made me uncomfortable. Did I want to continue to do those things? Did I have a choice?

Could I quit being a villain if I wanted to? I didn’t have a script writing me; as far as I knew I had free will. I could, theoretically, reform on my own. I could give up the chaos – I wasn’t the real Discord, so I wasn’t the real Spirit of Chaos, right? Using my magic to turn the world upside down felt so good, but I wasn’t really a draconequus chaos spirit, I was a human who’d spent my life without that power, so I could give it up if I chose, right?

I floated in midair, lost in thought, not particularly paying attention to the screens of my dodecahedron, as I thought it over… and the first few lines of a song came to me, a parody of a song from a Broadway musical (one of my foster mothers was very into Broadway musicals, okay?). I started to sing it. My singing voice has never been great, and turning into Discord didn’t fix that, but there was no one here for me to be embarrassed by except Angel Bunny, and seriously, I did not care what a rabbit thought of my singing voice.

“I'm reviewing the situation
Can a fellow be a villain all his life?
All the trials and tribulations!
Should I settle down and stop creating strife?”

And then the rest of the song started to trickle into my head. I’d never heard them do a song parody on the show, probably for copyright reasons, but I didn’t have to worry about that. I’d actually kind of ignored the songs on My Little Pony; I’d never been much into music, so my headcanon had always kind of been that they weren’t really happening, kind of like some of the goofier cartoon effects. Well. Apparently I was wrong.

“If I let ponies disarm me
And join them to spread harmony,
And friendship, love and happiness
And live here in eternal bliss.
A normal life in Ponyville...
Oh dear, the prospect makes me ill
I think I'd better think it out again!”

As I sang, I created visuals, picturing a Discord with a broad friendly smile on his face, helping little old mares across the street, manifesting ladders to get kittens out of trees, carrying foals around in his arms, petting puppies… ugh. No no no. My stomach churned at the thought. I’d never have wanted that kind of life as a human, let alone as a powerful chaos mage. 

“I'd never want to be normal, anyway
It sounds awfully dull, anyway.
But I'm all alone in a world,
That I don't understand
And I'm here in a pony's house
Totally unplanned…”

Until I sang it, I hadn’t realized how much it was bothering me that I was here in the pony world. Oh, sure, in so many respects it was a dream come true; my body felt right for the first time in my life, my senses all seemed so much keener, I felt so much more alive… and the magic, of course. But… all I knew about this place was two and a half seasons of a half hour kids’ cartoon, and whatever mysterious not-quite-memories I was getting from Discord’s brain. At home, at least, I’d known how everything worked. I didn’t even understand my own magic, let alone anything else about this world, and I was all alone in my ignorance. It was a weakness, so there was no one I dared talk to about it… not as long as I was a villain.

“I'm reviewing the situation,
I must think of all the pony fic I know.
Think of stories where my creation
Of rampant chaos turned into a big fat no”

Could I live without my chaos? If I didn’t want to fight ponies, if I wanted to have companions I could get along with… if I wanted friends, the ride-or-die kind of friends that ponies made rather than the superficial relationships I’d had with every human in my life… would it be worth it? And could it happen?

“What does Discord do when harmlessness
becomes the goal, and nothing less
Is tolerated; oh, what stress!
Could friendship truly come of this?
Do I need chaos? Can I live
Without it; and will they forgive?
Embrace a villain as a friend?
...I know better, why e'en pretend?

I think I'd better think it out again.”

I bounced all over the inside of the house, leaping onto furniture with a microphone to sing, twirling in midair, throwing the back of my paw against my forehead when I sang about the stress it would cause to try to be good, and making images appear of the Mane 6, all around me, smiling up at me…

…and then hung my head as the implausibility of that struck me, and I sang about knowing better than to think I could have friends. At home I’d been a fellow human, not nearly as weird looking as Discord, and the chaos I’d caused had been within normal human limits, and I still hadn’t had any friends. Here… I was a villain who’d brainwashed everyone, who looked completely bizarre, who was a different species, and who still had the power to do almost anything. No, of course I wouldn’t have friends here.

But did I have to have enemies? Did I need to have the Elements of Harmony, the only weapon that worked against me, as my enemies?

“So should I go hide somewhere?
Would ponies track me down? Would they care?
If I kept my chaos far away
Maybe the ponies would let me play
There have got to be species who really know how to have fun
And if I only knew where, there I could run

I'm reviewing the situation.
I've got no interest in creating harmony
But is it such a humiliation
For the lord of chaos to pack up and flee?”

I manifested a backpack, a few pieces of luggage, and a lot of travel flyers, which I skimmed through while I sang about reviewing the situation.

“The Elements of Harmony
could go back to their armory
And I'll be in a distant land
Maybe in one that's full of sand
Creating chaos as I like
A tree of pies! A flying bike!
And I'm certain in this far off place
There will exist a different race
Who'll never tattle to Celestia
And send the Elements there to get'cha...
I think I'd better think it out again.”

This time a beach appeared all around me, while I was attired appropriately in swimming trunks and a Hawaiian shirt. The tree of pies appeared, and I rode around it on the flying bike, singing the rest of the stanza… which, of course, ended with the bitter realization that Celestia wasn’t going to tolerate me just going off to cause chaos in another country. 

“I can't have a friend, I know that now.
Don't want to stop chaos, anyhow.
And whether I stay or I go they will hunt me down
So I might as well go back to deposing the crown…”

I picked up the tempo and moved faster, twining myself around a pole I’d made, doing cartwheels in air, shimmying like I had when I’d broken out of stone, flipping upside down and catching a trapeze with my tail… that sort of thing.

“I'm reviewing the situation.
I'm a villain and a villain I shall stay!
You'll be seeing no transformation,
But it's wrong to be a rogue in ev'ry way.
I won't employ more mind control,
I do not want to warp a soul.
No turning anyone to stone
Don't turn a young mare to a crone
Especially I will not kill
And I'd rather not destroy Ponyvih-hi-hille

I think I'd better make a plan again!”

Well. That was a thing that happened.

I jumped down off the floating sofa into midair and re-summoned my dodecahedron. Crud. Fluttershy was on her way home. Since my little soul-searching session had come down pretty hard on the “being a villain” side, I needed to figure out what my endgame was.

I was Discord. I broke up friendships. I caused chaos. I disrupted harmony. So. Discombobulate Fluttershy, make her uncomfortable, push her boundaries while saying all the right words to make her think she was on track for reforming me.

Dangle the carrot in front of her on a pole and lead her off a cliff. Metaphorically speaking. I’d decided I wouldn’t kill or cause grave physical harm if I could avoid it, and she was a pegasus anyway.

While I’d been jumping and dancing in mid-air, I’d observed that Fluttershy’s house had a structure I only saw in rich people houses, back home, but was probably normal for pegasi. Her living room went up to the top of the house. There was a discreet kitchen on the first floor, and stairs neatly tucked away that went up to an interior balcony running around the house. That was probably where her bedroom and bathroom were. But here, in the central room of the house, there was a lot of space to maneuver.

I lifted the house into the air, and started spinning it top over bottom, making everything inside the house fall, and keep falling because gravity wasn’t stable enough for most things to ever hit the ground. Some things did, and slid along the walls.

This was the scene Fluttershy flew into, managing to barely dodge her own door smacking her in the head.

“Um…” She was plainly at a complete loss for words. “Uh…”

I lay in the sofa, which I was keeping stable, suspended in the middle of the room, as I finished up the last of the paper. “Are you sure this isn't overdoing it?” I asked, in a butter-wouldn’t-melt-in-my-mouth tone. “You said to make myself at home while you were gone, but I wouldn't want to overstep my bounds.”

Oh, it was hard for her. I saw that. I saw her force down whatever her first reaction was going to be. “I did say that, so... if this makes you more comfortable...” She dodged an object that nearly fell on her head. “By all means, please feel free.”

I stretched out, throwing my arm behind my head. “Oh. Well, it does, very much so.”  Then I teleported right behind her, stretching my neck around hers. “You're so very kind, my dear Fluttershy.” I put my hands on her shoulders (wait, wasn’t there a special pony word for those? Crap, I don’t really know anything about horses) and said, “I always knew that you were the understanding one, not like those nasty friends of yours.”

That got her mad. She pointed a hoof at me and almost yelled, “My friends aren't nasty!”

“Well, of course you'd say that.” Hands back on the shoulder. “It just goes to show how understanding you truly are.” Through a mirror that kept spinning around on the wall, never quite falling off, I could see her infuriated expression, so I backed off and teleported back to the couch. The secret to really getting people’s goat is to know when to fold. “You know, I think Princess Celestia is right when she singled you out as the one who could reform me. You're off to such a good start, I'm seriously considering actually being reformed.” I was laying it on so thick and syrupy, I’d have gotten diabetes if I hadn’t made a second face behind my face and made a raspberry.

Outside we could hear Twilight shouting. “Fluttershy, can you hear me?”

“Goodness! I hear Twilight!” Fluttershy, who had probably been desperately hoping for an interruption like this, flew off, but not before grabbing the bunny rabbit, who was finally falling. Curses, Angel Bunny, I finally get gravity to outrun you and there’s Fluttershy to the rescue.

This time instead of a styrofoam dodecahedron, I made a baseball out of crystal and gazed into it, watching Twilight freak out completely. Fun times. “Fluttershy, what's going on? Are you okay?!”

Fluttershy landed. “We're fine. Everything's going great. Isn't it, Angel?” Her bunny did not back up her statement, but staggered off like he was drunk.

Twilight, still in full freakout mode, said, “We've come to get you away from Discord! He's just terrible and, from the looks of it, completely out of control!”

“Oh, but you're wrong!” Fluttershy said. Ah, Fluttershy. My one supporter among ponykind. I wondered how long that would last. “We're making great progress!”

“Seriously?!” Twilight’s exclamation was joined in by Spike.

“I'm earning his trust by giving him a little space to be himself,” Fluttershy said. Do… do you guys know I can hear you? I’d never directly caught a social worker being quite that blatant about trying to manipulate me.

“Hate to break it to you,” Spike said, “but he used that ‘space to be himself’ to tear out all the reforming spells from the library!” He displayed a book with missing pages, apparently thinking Fluttershy would find this as appalling as Twilight did.

She did not. “That does explain the paper eating...” she said thoughtfully, with no sign that she considered the action to have any moral valence for good or evil. Way to go, Fluttershy! Recognize that reforming spells are terrible and I was well within my rights to get rid of them!

“He ate them?!” Twilight groaned in frustration, although it was loud enough to almost sound like a scream.

“But we aren't going to need a spell,” Fluttershy said passionately. Well, as passionately as you get with her tiny little voice. “He's already really considering being reformed! He said so.”

“And you believed him?” Okay, gotta give this one to Twilight. I wouldn’t believe me in this circumstance.

“If I'm going to be his friend, I have to start by giving him the benefit of the doubt!” Well, that made sense. Manipulative as hell, still, but it did indicate that Fluttershy might possibly not be a completely naïve idiot. “Tell you what. Bring all the ponies over for a dinner party this evening, and I'll bet his manners will have really improved by then! I'll even get him to put the cottage back on the ground first.”

Oooh! A dinner party? A fahncy dinnah pahty? (I’m sorry, I can’t write out a fake posh British accent.) I could have fun with this.

Twilight’s eyeballs continued to say “Seriously? Seriously?” until finally she looked down and sighed. “All right. Dinner it is.”

***

Of course I had to pretend I hadn’t been listening in, so when Fluttershy told me eagerly that she thought it would be a wonderful opportunity for me to demonstrate my true interest in reforming and making friends by having a fancy dinner party, I didn’t let on that I already knew about her plan. “What a splendid idea!” I said. “A fancy dinner party! I don’t think I’ve ever had one of those. You’ll have to tell me all the rules of etiquette, I can never remember which spoon goes with which dish!”

Fluttershy giggled nervously. “I don’t think we need to get that fancy,” she said. “We’re not hosting the princess, just my friends.”

“I suppose,” I said. “It’s important to make a good impression, but, between you and me?” I teleported to float right next to her ear, in miniature so I was basically ear-sized, and whispered. “No matter what impression I make, I’m sure they’ll never like me.”

“That’s not true! My friends are good ponies; I’m sure that if they see you’re really trying to reform and make friends, they’ll appreciate that.”

I knew better. Part of the reason I was saying it was because I wanted to drive a wedge between Fluttershy and her friends; it seemed logical to me that the Elements of Harmony wouldn’t work for a group full of internal conflict. But part of it was just true. Fluttershy was the social worker, the one who had to pretend to like me in order to get me to behave; the others were under no such restriction.

“I’d like to get ready for the party. I have groceries outside, but I don’t want to try to put them away with the house spinning like this. Do you think you could put it on the ground?”

“Of course,” I said grandly, wearing a tuxedo with cape and top hat and a mask because I have never actually seen anyone wear a tuxedo with a cape outside of Sailor Moon and I was ripping off Tuxedo Mask. I bowed, and teleported the house to the ground, melding it back with its foundation. “Anything for you, milady.” The thought occurred to me that if I was going to call her milady I really ought to have snapped up a fedora or trilby, but I decided it didn’t matter because she wasn’t going to get the joke either way. 

All of her stuff was a complete mess, lying all over the ground completely disorganized. Something inside me that’s always tense when I go to a new foster family’s house and they’ve made it painfully neat and clean for my arrival started to loosen up and relax. I guess I’ve always had an affinity for chaos; I prefer a disorganized mess to anything neat and efficient. It doesn’t look alive if it’s neat. Houses that are lived in are a wreck; houses that are dead museum pieces are perfectly arranged. 

“Would you be able to help me clean up the mess? I just want it to look nice for having guests.”

Oh, there it was. No, Fluttershy, I won’t help you kill your house now that it’s just started to look pleasant. “I’m so sorry, my dear, but chaos magic won’t allow me to organize something that’s chaotic and make it orderly. You understand, I’m sure.”

“Oh, of course I do! Don’t worry about it, then, I’ll take care of it myself. But, um… broken jars of food and things like that… they aren’t really chaos, are they? I mean, they are, but they’re also unsanitary and spread disease, and I’m sure that’s not the kind of chaos you like…”

I didn’t know Discord’s opinion on that, but I knew I wasn’t personally a fan of getting sick. I probably couldn’t get sick in Discord’s body, but I wasn’t willing to inflict getting sick on ponies… not by accident. Maybe if there was a good reason for it, but even then, I’d rather do it with my magic where I could control it than with actual germs I had no control over. I sighed. “Very well, I’ll help clean up any filth I see, but you do of course understand I have no power over clutter.” I strongly suspected I was lying about this, because with telekinesis I ought to be able to do anything that involved moving things around even if I couldn’t just snap my fingers and make it clean itself, and if that failed I could probably use my paws to pick things up… but come on. Being a god of chaos has to be good for getting out of chores, doesn’t it?

“That’s perfectly fine! Whatever you can do would be helpful.”

So that’s how I got snookered into making food that was lying all over the floor from a broken jar flow back into the jar, losing all the dust and dirt it had collected in the process, and then making the jar repair itself. Reversing entropy was weird and unusual and therefore counted as chaos, right? Except entropy was chaos, right? But surely doing something impossible counted as something within Discord’s bailiwick. Maybe it was disharmony. Entropy’s only supposed to go in one direction, so reversing it messes with the harmony of the world, right?

I wondered if Discord had had anyone to talk to about this stuff. If he’d even thought about it. He’d seemed to be very intelligent in his first appearance, aside from that incredibly stupid bit about not noticing that the Elements of Harmony were working again, but I’ve made almost equally dumb mistakes and I’m pretty smart. I didn’t know how introspective he was, though. Me, I can overanalyze anything. 

I didn’t actually like the concept of a fancy dinner party. Some of my most humiliating memories come from the foster family where there were six other kids and the mom seriously thought that the way to give poor non-white kids without parents a leg up on the rest of the world was to teach them etiquette, like what fork goes with what course kind of baloney, and all the other kids knew it because she’d been teaching them longer, and I couldn’t manage to learn, mostly because I thought it was so stupid that I didn’t want to put any effort into it. But it turned out I remembered enough about it to kind of replicate it to decorate Fluttershy’s dining room, while she cooked a meal. Some kind of potato pastry, and carrot muffins with apple slices on top, and a cold vegetable soup. Didn’t sound really filling to me, but on the other hand, the thought of killing an animal for meat, in this world where animals could practically talk, was kind of appalling. I supposed if I really missed hamburgers, I could pop myself up one with magic.

Obviously, it took her a lot longer to make the dinner than it took me to decorate for it. I did go through a few different iterations, trying to get it just right, because I wanted to impress Fluttershy – not for herself, but to lull her into a false sense of security and maybe actually get her to think her plan was working – but none of it took me very long. Fluttershy praised me for how nice it all looked – plush purple cushions with gold edging and tassels, an extra-size irregularly-shaped table large enough to accommodate six ponies, a small dragon and a draconequus, and fine china dishes. No silverware because apparently that’s a unicorn thing. 

I thought about her reaction when she learned I’d been playing her, and wondered if I cared, and wondered why I was wondering. It had never bothered me to screw around with social workers, because they were liars. They’d tell you to feel free to express yourself, but then if you started trying to rip an action figure’s arms off so you could see how they worked, they’d “redirect” you, their polite term for taking it away from you, and if you drew pictures of dragons eating villagers because the virgin sacrifice hadn’t wanted to admit to anyone she was gay and had made out with her girlfriend the night before, they would try to get you to draw something else, something positive, or else waste your time asking why you would draw such a thing and what did it mean to you and were you angry at lesbians? (The answer was no, of course I wasn’t angry at lesbians; I just thought the whole idea of a virgin sacrifice was stupid, because what counts as sex? The virgin sacrifice was a lesbian because it was funny. The dragon was eating the villagers because what else would a dragon do if presented with a virgin sacrifice who wasn’t actually a virgin? False advertising doesn’t seem like something a dragon would be thrilled with.)

But Fluttershy had told me to feel free to express myself, and then put up with me rotating her house and wrecking her stuff. I was fairly sure that none of the social workers or counselors who’d I’d ever met would have done that, even if they’d been able to fly. 

She was a manipulator, just like them. Her end goal was to get me to conform, just like them. But I got the feeling she actually believed her own horse puckey. That she seriously thought that offering to be friends with me was such a wonderful bribe, it would make me stop doing what gave my life meaning.

I meant, Discord’s life. Or did I? The longer I was here, the harder it was to tell the difference. And if this was going to be the rest of my life, was it a difference that made a difference? (Answer: Yes. Unless I have conscious access to Discord’s memories and I know he’s not coming back, it’s important for me to remember I’m not him. Or wasn’t always him.) 

But I didn’t have anything else to give my life meaning. I’d never found anything back home as a human that I wanted to devote my life to doing; I’d spent my time playing pranks, trolling people who took themselves too seriously on the Internet, and plotting out elaborate not-actually-crimes that hinged on doing something legal and normal and taking it to a ridiculous extreme, like paying for a new Xbox 360 with thirty thousand pennies. (Most such plots never came to fruition, but that one actually did.) My grades had always been bad even though my mastery of the topics was high, because I couldn’t be bothered to do homework, and I’d gotten myself expelled from college before I could figure out what I wanted to do with myself after it was over, and then I’d ended up homeless… hell, as nearly as I could tell, causing chaos and disharmony was what I’d spent my life doing. Oh, and art, but I’d never been satisfied with anything I could create because it didn’t look enough like it did in my head to be worth making. Now, with these powers, I could make anything I imagined pop into existence, looking exactly as I’d pictured it.

So, okay. Chaos is what gives my life meaning, and using these powers is the best possible thing that could ever have happened to me, and I’m not giving any of it up. So Fluttershy could go soak her head. Maybe she would get upset when she found out I’d been playing her. Maybe she’d cry, boo-hoo. I didn’t need to care. She was a social worker just like all the others. She just wasn’t as disillusioned as the ones back home were, so she actually believed her own garbage.

***

I heard ponies near the door. Time for the best parody of a fancy dinner party ever, sure to give my former foster mom apoplexy if she’d been here!

Dressed as a butler, with a pencil-thin mustache because if you’re going to be a refined and genteel supervillain who dresses as a butler, you need a pencil-thin mustache, I opened the door. “Oh, our pony guests!” I stuck out my tongue and let it roll out as a red carpet, then teleported to the end of the carpet and bowed. “We're so delighted that you've come. Please, do come in,” I said in my best imitation of an upper-class British accent, which frankly wasn’t very good, and motioned them on in through the door.

“See what a beautiful job he did helping?” Fluttershy said. “Discord set the entire table himself. I'm so proud.” Set a table. I can turn a house upside down but she’s impressed that I can set a table. Fluttershy, methinks your standards are… on the low side.

I teleported into the hat rack and leaned forward. “May I take your... ahem, hats, ladies?” And reached for Twilight’s tiara with her Element on it. Instinctively I didn’t really want to touch it, but I was wearing gloves… and I was pretty sure she wasn’t going to let me grab it anyway, but I’d be remiss if I hadn’t tried.

Of course she backed away, holding onto her element with her hoof. “Hang on to your elements, girls. It's gonna be a bumpy night.”

I made the floor extremely lumpy. “Oh, dear! Let me take care of that. Shoo! Shoo!” I teleported and flew around, stomping on bumps and making them go flat, or roll out to the wall in a wave and then go flat, as if there had been some critter in there. Then I turned to the ponies, beaming. “No more bumps! All taken care of!”

Pinkie giggled. Twilight looked exasperated. Applejack rolled her eyes, Rainbow Dash just glared, and I couldn’t see what Rarity was doing because the gems she was wearing were reflecting light into my eyes. No, that’s a lie, I just wasn’t paying attention to Rarity. Or Spike, who was there with the rest of the group, being forgettable as usual.

Still in my fake butler accent, I said, “Tonight’s meal has been hoof-crafted by Fluttershy personally; mashed potato and cheese puff pastries, and a superb little carrot muffin made from the finest carrots, topped with a lovely slice of Gala apple from our dear friend Applejack’s orchard.” 

“Sounds great!” Pinkie said. “I’m starving; ever since I heard we were having a dinner party I didn’t eat a single snack because I wanted to save all my appetite for the party and now all I can think about is food!”

“I could whip you up a little snack,” I said, manifesting a small tray of chocolate chip cookies. Pinkie reached for it, and I yanked it away. “Oh, but that’s right, you’re saving your appetite for dinner! Don’t let me tempt you to ruin your own plans!”

“I need to run back into the kitchen to get the food,” Fluttershy said. “But, um, if Pinkie is so hungry, why don’t we just all sit down and get started, and I’ll bring out the food?”

“Your cooking’s the only reason I’m putting up with this ridiculous thing,” Rainbow said, landing on one of the chairs.

“That, and the fact that you’re my friend and you support me in what I’m trying to do, right?” Fluttershy prompted.

Rainbow rolled her eyes dramatically and waved a hoof in the air. “I guess,” she said, in the most skeptical and put-upon tone you can imagine.

“Now, Rainbow, we are definitely here to support Fluttershy in her endeavors,” Rarity said. “Even if what she’s attempting to do is patently absurd and impossible, it is the task Princess Celestia gave to her and we owe her all the support we can possibly give.” Wow. Thanks so much, Rarity, glad to know you consider becoming my friend patently absurd and impossible. Not that I didn’t know that already.

“I ain’t so sure of this, but sounds like Fluttershy’s got some idea of what she’s doing, and she’s the expert on taming… critters.” Excuse me, I am not a critter and I have no intention of being tamed.

“The food smells great, Fluttershy!” Twilight interjected, very loudly. “Spike, why don’t we help Fluttershy bring the food to the table?”

“Sure! Glad to help!” Spike said overenthusiastically. I’d had a school principal glaring at me and referring to me as a “thug” while the counselor was trying to tell me I could have a place at the school if I would just try to follow the rules, and yet I have never seen such a dramatic example of someone sabotaging someone else’s attempt to get a third party to reform, behave or be friendly as I did with these ponies… and the dragon. 

They ran off to the kitchen, leaving their friends behind. I decided to interact with Pinkie Pie, since the others’ cold stares and side-eyes weren’t much fun. “So, my delightful little Element of Laughter! What’s new in the world of the party pony? Any good parties lately?”

“All the time!” Pinkie said, grinning broadly. “Carrot Top just had a birthday last week, and we did a welcome party for Electric Sky who just moved here, and blah blah blah I’m droning on and on about all kinds of unimportant ponies you never heard of.” She didn’t say that last part, but since I can’t remember what she actually said, she might as well have.

Thankfully I was saved from Pinkie’s interminable small talk by the arrival of the food. “Please, permit me,” I said, and used my magic to fly food from the serving trays to everyone’s plate. Twilight hung onto the bowl of apples and set it down in the middle of the table, not letting me put apples on ponies’ plates. 

All the ponies drifted into sitting positions on the cushions. Spike was too short, so Fluttershy had me make him a second cushion. I would have thought a hammock swinging from nothing would be a better choice, but you know Equestrians, so picky.

Fluttershy began some opening remarks. “As you all know, Princess Celestia hoped we'd help Discord use his magic for good instead of evil.”

Pinkie Pie didn’t wait for her to finish whatever speech she had planned; she dropped her head, ripped the pastry’s top off so quickly it could barely be seen, and stuffed her face deep into the potato pastry, coming up with a face covered with potato beard. Either Fluttershy was used to this, or she was unflappable, because she just said, “Pinkie Pie, care for some gravy?”

“You bet!” Pinkie said with her mouth full and potato covering her cheeks and chin.

I gestured. “Allow me,” I said, and animated the gravy boat into behaving like a dog. Gravy slopped partway out of it but didn’t fall, to be a tongue, and it panted and eagerly trotted over to Pinkie Pie.

She petted it. “Oh, what a cute little gravy boat you are! Yes you are! Yes you are!” It happily licked her face with its gravy tongue and then poured her some gravy.

You’d think it would be a lot of work to make a gravy boat act like a dog, and if you were doing it entirely through telekinesis and casting conscious spells, maybe you’d be right, but that’s not how I did it. It was more like I just thought, “combine the traits of being ‘dog’ with ‘gravy boat’”, like a programming language, but one I was thinking in. I couldn’t actually fully predict the gravy boat, though I could give it a nudge.

My biggest fan, Rainbow Dash, said, “That's one creepy little gravy boat if you ask me.”

No one did ask you, I thought, but Fluttershy beat me to it with something much more polite than I would have said. “Oh, come on now, Dashie. You're not even giving this a chance.”

The gravy boat bounded over to Rainbow Dash. I felt rather bad on its behalf that she’d called it creepy. Like a dog, it was too dumb to know it had been insulted, but I did, so I gave it the tiniest nudge, making it misidentify Rainbow’s lap as her plate.

She yelped. “Hey! That's hot!”

“Whoops!” I said. “I'm so sorry!” I couldn’t see Fluttershy’s face, but I was touching her shoulder and I could feel her tense up, probably with suppressed rage.

Rainbow hovered above the table, pointing at me. “He did that on purpose!”

“Oh, well, I don't know about that.” I smiled. “Mistakes happen.” Okay, I could actually feel Fluttershy heating up with rage. It wasn’t a literal physical heat, like the time Twilight set herself on fire because Pinkie’s powers were impossible, but it felt like heat. The thought occurred to me that maybe I was detecting disharmonious emotions. It certainly would have made Discord’s job easier when he corrupted these guys if he’d been able to sense their emotions. Well, I didn’t want Fluttershy exploding on me yet, so I made a quick distraction. “Look, everypony, dancing candles!”

What they were supposed to do, because fire is dangerous and I don’t want to cause death or serious physical harm to anyone, was dance around, gather in front of Spike since he’s fireproof, and then trip and fall in his lap. If the fire got on any of the furniture, I’d quickly put it out. I knew Spike wouldn’t be harmed, and I knew seeing the candles fall over would freak everyone out anyway.

But as three of them danced up to Spike – who watched them with wide-eyed wonder, like he genuinely liked them – Rainbow Dash blew them out.

“I'm not falling for that!” She stood on the table, which couldn’t be sanitary. “Discord's just trying to distract us from–“

I told the candles to lift into the air and attack her. The three of them began repeatedly bonking her in the head and wings, making her flatten against the table. “Hey! Knock it off!” She glared at me from her position on the table. “I suppose that's another ‘mistake?’”

“No,” I said, “I think you just made them mad.”

Twilight Sparkle frowned. “There's something fishy going on.” Whoa, you think?

The soup tureen was shaped like a fish. I couldn’t believe she was handing me an opening like this. I animated it with certain personality parameters, and it hopped over to Twilight and squirted soup in her face, then did Spike.

Fluttershy looked up at me. “Discord?” Ah, there was that disillusionment starting to kick in.

“Well, it's hardly my fault if the soup tureen finds the term ‘something fishy’ to be offensive.” I made air quotes for “something fishy.” 

Meanwhile, Rarity shrieked as the tureen hopped over to her. “Not the dress! Not the dress!” It, of course, squirted cold soup all over her dress… and then went after Applejack.

“That tureen's only doin' what you're makin' it do!” Applejack insisted. Technically this was not entirely true. I’d infused the tureen with a desire to avenge itself, but I hadn’t specified how, or who. Just that it needed to leave Fluttershy alone.

“Now, let's not jump to any conclusions,” Fluttershy said, while I giggled behind my paws until she looked at me, at which point I played innocent. She sounded ridiculous even to me. Of course I was behind this. Was Fluttershy seriously considering any other possibility?

Rainbow Dash was still fighting unlit candles. She kicked them away. “Fluttershy! Can't you see what he's doing? He's playing innocent with you so you'll never agree to use the Elements of Harmony against him!”

Meanwhile the candles she’d managed to kick away had relit themselves and were dancing again, the tureen had gone and splashed everyone except for me and Fluttershy and was on round 2 or 3 with some of them, and everyone was cringing away from the table. It was total chaos. I loved it. I’d made this happen, I’d set it in motion, and now it was doing its own thing without more input from me, like a much cooler, real-life version of a computer program you’d made. 

“Oh, well, that's a bit harsh, isn't it?” I said. It wasn’t entirely true either; I was playing innocent with Fluttershy because the moment she turned against me and decided to use her Element, this became a straight-up fight, and that was no fun. It was just so much more entertaining to irritate the dickens out of ponies who knew I was doing it on purpose, but I still had enough plausible deniability that they couldn’t attack me like an enemy.

Rainbow managed to capture the tureen with a dish cover, and stood on it so the tureen couldn’t escape. “You see what I'm saying, right, Fluttershy?” Fluttershy didn’t respond. “Fluttershy!”

Fluttershy leaned forward, with her mad face on. “You know what I see? I see that Discord's far from perfect, but I also see none of you giving him a chance!” I grinned, the picture of innocence. Of course they weren’t giving me a chance. I was trying to irritate them and they knew it.

Nearly all of them yelled, “Come on!” at more or less the same time, though Rarity was saying “That’s ridiculous!” Rainbow added, “What's gotten into you?! Why do you keep cutting him so much slack?”

Then she pulled me close in a sideways hug, and said, “Because that's what friends do.”

She touched me. Willingly. Not like social workers did, smothering hugs for little baby me and then at best, handshakes when I got older. A genuine bro-hug.

No one had ever touched me that way. I’d had sex with people who showed me less affection and compassion than that.

“We're friends?” I said, startled.

“Why, of course!” Was it fake? It had to be fake, but I knew fake so well and this didn’t sound fake… “I can't remember my house ever being this lively before you came along.” She was flying, and smiling, her posture and her movements full of energy and excitement. 

Lively. Could be a polite euphemism. Could be a lie. Or could be… she was enjoying the chaos? She thought it was fun?

Couldn’t be. It had to be a lie. This was Fluttershy, meek scaredy-cat Fluttershy. How could she genuinely mean she enjoyed my chaos?

But what if it wasn’t a lie? This was the show about friendship being magic. What if, against all odds, she actually wanted to be my friend, my real, pony-style, Thousandth Man kind of friend, the friend who would drive the getaway car to hell to get you out and back again…? A friend like she had in the other five ponies who all wanted me to be a lawn ornament, but she wanted to be my real friend? I’d been basing my impressions of her on human social workers, but she was a pony… and not even a social worker among ponies, but an animal caretaker. Maybe veterinarian at best. 

Maybe she was sincere about everything.

I realized my mouth was gaping. “Oh...” Taken aback, I had to struggle to think of something to say. “Well, I've... never really had a friend before.”

She took my paw in her hoof. “Well, now you do!”

I felt a sense of warmth welling up, something I couldn’t remember ever feeling before. Someone liked me. Someone wanted to be my friend. Part of my mind kept reminding me, she might be faking it, she might be lying to get under my defenses… but I couldn’t help it. I was swept away. She’d said we were friends, and she was either the best liar I’d ever seen, or she was telling the truth.

At this point her stupid rabbit had to open the window and hop in, making weird rabbit noises. Way to ruin the mood, Angel.

“Now is not a good time, Angel,” Fluttershy said. “We're having a dinner party.” Oh, good, so she can stand up to the rabbit sometimes.

“Hold up!” Applejack said. “I-I think he's tryin' to tell us somethin'!” The rabbit proceeded to pour a glass of water on his own head, and feigned drowning.

Then he held up an apple. Multiple ponies proved they knew what it was by yelling “Apple!” Angel pointed at Applejack, so of course they said “Applejack!”, but the rabbit did the best impression of rabbit exasperation I’ve ever seen, and then threw the apple in a pitcher of water.

“Oh! Sweet Apple Acres?” Rarity guessed.

“Flooding at Sweet Apple Acres!” Rainbow Dash yelled.  “And we all know who's behind that now, don't we?”

Huh. To the best of my knowledge I hadn’t actually caused any flooding. “Who, me?” I said, my best innocent expression on my face, and manifested a halo around my head, because I honestly didn’t know if there was some chance I might be responsible.

“Oh, give it a rest!” Rainbow continued to hover in the air as the rest of the ponies filed out the door. “What do you think of your ‘friend’ now, Fluttershy?” she sneered, and followed them.

Fluttershy looked at me. I shrugged. I didn’t actually know what was going on, this time.

***

Oh, yeah, the beavers! I’d completely forgotten about them. 

When I’d made the beavers selfish and angry and determined to get what they thought they deserved at the expense of anyone else, I hadn’t been thinking of it as mind control, because they’re beavers. Now I felt a little bad about it, not because they’d built a gigantic dam that had turned all of Sweet Apple Acres into a proto-swamp – the water was still too fresh to really be a swamp, but give it time – but because I’d just sworn not to use mind control and here were the aftereffects of mind control I’d already committed. Me, not the former entity known as Discord.

I figured I was going to need to undo the warping on the beaver minds… eventually. But I wanted to see how Fluttershy handled this. So instead of doing anything to help out or even acknowledge that there was a problem here, I dove straight into the water from the air where I’d teleported in. “Woo-hoo!” I yelled. The water actually did feel nice; a little on the cold side, but I had fur on most of my body. I manifested swimming trunks because I was cool with running around naked on land, due to the aforementioned inability to see any genitals, but the water hitting me in the crotch told me I had something there and it didn’t like the cold. Also because one of the cool things about Q was the constant costume changes. I actually liked clothes, I just hated trying to find any that fit me, and with my powers, that wasn’t a problem.

Meanwhile Fluttershy was trying to talk to the beavers – which was weird, because if Fluttershy can understand animals when they talk, why had Angel Bunny had to play charades to get us to understand that the farm was flooded? Maybe he saw her making nice with me and figured he needed to tell the others because Fluttershy might blow him off for my sake. Paranoid, bunny, but nice thought nonetheless. The Apple family was trying to rescue apples by hand, which had to be the most ridiculous waste of time I could imagine. I swam, and dove, and found that I didn’t need to breathe underwater, which felt great. I’m a city kid; I’ve only ever been to a pool a few times, giant municipal things with way too much chlorine and way too many people, and in my human body I didn’t really know how to swim, but it hadn’t entered my head that I’d have a problem with it before I dove, and it turned out I didn’t. Was that more of Discord’s subconscious memory at work?

But the thing about being underwater is that it makes it very hard to see or hear what your pony friends are doing on land. And considering that they still had the only weapon that works on me, I thought it was important to be able to see and hear them. So I quit swimming and teleported up, manifesting water-ski shoes for my mismatched feet and fish-shaped soup tureens to be my motorboats (also a life jacket and a flowered bathing cap), and started waterskiing all around Sweet Apple Lake. And I popped a tiny eavesdropping ear into the trees near Fluttershy and her friends.

Fluttershy was complaining about the beavers. “They won't listen to a word I say!”

“You see Discord's behind all this, right?” Rainbow Dash asked, in a tone of voice that made it sound like she was pretty sure Fluttershy didn’t.

Indignantly Fluttershy said, “Oh, of course I do! Do you all think I'm a silly, gullible fool?”

I would have recommended the ponies not answer that, but they tried, Rarity saying something like, “Only in the sense of being silly and gullible,” and Applejack failing to be simultaneously tactful and truthful, saying “Uh, no, not exactly...”

“I've just been trying to gain his friendship any way I can, so he'd come to trust and listen to me!” Thank you, Fluttershy. And here I was thinking that maybe you were sincere. So glad to be disillusioned.

I skied over to them. “Hey there, Fluttershy, you want a turn? The water's great!” I called, not letting on that I’d heard what she said. 

She muttered, “Time to see if it worked.” And then I jumped off my waterskis and landed right near her.

“Fluttershy, oh, there you are,” I said. “A sight for sore eyes.” I was laying it on rather thick, I admit. Hearing her admission stung more than I expected, and I wanted to make her feel guilty. It didn’t seem to work, though; she just looked exasperated and angry.

“As you can see, there's a big mess down here at Sweet Apple Acres,” she said, in a lecturing tone Twilight could have been proud of.

“Oh, yes. Awful business, that. Mm.” I toweled myself off.

“It is awful.” She glared. “This is Applejack's home, and it's being destroyed by innocent creatures who would never be acting this way if it weren't for your reckless behavior.” She turned her back on me, hooves folded in front of her. “You need to fix this.”

Right. I need to fix this, because that is the whole reason you tried to convince me you were my friend, so you’d have the power to tell me to fix it when I do things like this. 

But wait. I’d been looking for some kind of a hook I could hang a plan off of. Perhaps I’d just found it.

“Oh, yes, very well, I will fix it. I only ask one thing in return,” I said.

She turned around to face me with a big smile. “Yes?”

“I ask that you never use your Element of Harmony against me,” I said. “As a sign of our friendship.”

They take this friendship stuff very seriously in Equestria. I had no doubt that if there was any part of her that genuinely wanted to be my friend more than she wanted to control me and force me to behave, she’d immediately recognize that using your Element of Harmony to turn someone to stone was not the behavior of a friend, at all. And maybe it was real. Maybe it was her friends she was lying to, because she really did appreciate the fun and excitement in my pranks but she knew they didn’t.

If she was real, she’d agree to do it. If she was a manipulator, she’d never relinquish any bit of control over me… and I’d know she was playing me, and respond accordingly.

She looked shocked. I didn’t know why. Seemed to me like an obvious request. She turned to her friends for advice, and all of them vigorously shook their heads. Don’t do it, Fluttershy! they said silently with their faces and gestures. Don’t trust him! Don’t give up the only means we have to threaten and control him!

She turned back to me, looked up with determination, and unfastened her amulet, saying, “I will never use my Element of Harmony against you.”

“Excellent!” I felt great. Fluttershy was sincere, or sincere enough to make me that promise, anyway, and that meant I could get away with anything. I snapped my fingers… and turned the water into ice. “There, much better! I do prefer ice skating to water skiing! Don't you?” I spun on the ice like an Olympic skater, and dressed like one too. Really, this new body of mine could do anything. Not just the magic, I could do any kind of physical activity I wanted to. Three of me popped up and gave me a perfect 10 as I pirouetted.

“Discord!” Fluttershy screamed. “That's not fixing it!” She galloped out onto the ice, with predictable results. “Why, I oughta...” she started, and then skidded on the ice, apparently realizing that stopping on ice from a full gallop is not a thing that happens quickly.

“Where are you going?” I asked her cheerfully. She managed to stop, and glared at me. I approached her with an expression of fake concern. “What's wrong, pal?”

“Don't call me your pal!” she yelled.

Ah, but part of you wants to be my friend, I thought, or you wouldn’t have made that promise. She was mad now, but if she really wanted to be my friend because she liked my chaos, she’d get over it. “Oh, pfft.” I handed her a set of four ice skates. “Come skating with me, and we'll let bygones be bygones.”

Spike, who was better balanced on the ice than a pony, given that his feet had claws, raced out to us with the Element Fluttershy had tossed aside. “Here you go, Fluttershy! Game on!”

Twilight Sparkle called from the shore, “He fixes this or he goes back to being stone! Princess Celestia will understand!”

Fluttershy looked between my skates and the Element in Spike’s hand. Back and forth, back and forth. I was prepared to snap myself away and regroup at a moment’s notice, if she took the Element.

And then she said, "I made a promise not to use my element against him, and I'm going to keep it.” And she took the skates.

I felt giddy beyond belief. Ponies were moaning and gasping in horror, on the shore, but the sounds of my enemies being unhappy has always just given me a thrill. Fluttershy was on my side. She’d rejected her friends in favor of me. And they had no means of controlling me anymore,

I couldn’t keep myself from laughing in delight. “You see? She wants to have fun with me because we're friends. She can't use the elements against me because we're friends.” I’d found the key to winning against the ponies, and it was their own weapon! I’d never had a friend before in my life, but now, here in Equestria, the moment I had one I became truly all-powerful, and the ponies who were so controlled by the Magic of Friendship were helpless in front of it. “I'm free forever!” 

Fluttershy flung the skates and made an animalistic shriek of rage. “Not. Your. Friend!” she screamed.

I was so sick of being jerked around like this. Make up your mind, filly. “Who cares?” I snapped at her. “I can do whatever I want, whenever I want. I'm Discord, the master of chaos!” She was stalking away, and I hated that. She wasn’t even going to listen to me? Well, I’d make her. I teleported over to her and hung my head down in her path, trying to force her to look at me. “You think you can boss Discord around?” I growled at her. “You think I'm just going to turn all this back because you say so? Because if I don't, I'll lose the one friend I ever had?”

And then what I’d just said caught up with me, and all I could say was, “Oh.”

Because I was human, and I understood that friendship was a thing I wanted desperately, that I’d always wanted, and never actually gotten. Casual acquaintances, yes. Anyone who cared about me? No. Not ever. No parents, just people paid by the government to watch me. Teachers and counselors saw me as a problem. Other kids bullied me or ignored me, until I was old enough and smart enough to win attention by being funny, and then they laughed at my jokes and let me hang around them but they didn’t care. No one invited me to their birthday parties, or told me anything in confidence, or listened to my ideas except when they were jokes. 

And I wanted it, I’d wanted it for so long I‘d lost track of how much I wanted it. I’d stopped hoping and become entirely bitter and cynical about the whole concept. I’d mocked My Little Pony for its presentation of friendship, because I’d known things didn’t really work like that.

Except here, they did. And I had a friend. And I had just thrown her away because I was too busy scheming and trying to get one over on her and the others.

For the first time since I was around six or so, I felt tears well up in my eyes. "Well played, Fluttershy,” I said hoarsely, trying to keep my voice from cracking. “Well played.”

It’s so much easier to manipulate and control people if you genuinely care about them. If the thing you have to offer is “I will actually like you as a person if you stop being a dick to me.” And I didn’t know what the real Discord would have done, but I’d lived without friendship, and I’d lived without creating as much chaos as I wanted anytime I wanted, and of the two, living without friendship had hurt a lot more.

I sat down heavily on top of one of the trees sticking out above the ice, held my hands to my heart, and wished everything to be back the way it had been before I’d interfered with it. No massive dam, no crazed beavers, no flood, no ice.

The ponies ran to Fluttershy and cheered her. I didn’t know how to ask her if we could still be friends, if I’d ruined it completely. It felt bad, watching them cheer her, when they hated me, because she’d beaten me. I wanted her on my side again, but I didn’t know how.

I teleported over to her. “I liked it better my way,” I said, anxiously, “but... I guess when you're friends, you can't always have things exactly your way all the time, eh?”

As I spoke they all just looked at me, and it was the worst feeling, the rejection I’d always suffered back when I was human, “you don’t fit in”, “you’re not one of us”, with an added helping of “you blew it.” And then Fluttershy smiled at me. “You must have been very lonely, all those years without ever having a friend.”

“I... was,” I admitted, again forcing my voice not to break. I didn’t want to admit to weakness in front of the other ponies, but I’d have done anything to keep Fluttershy’s smile turned on me.

“Well, you don’t have to be lonely anymore,” she said, and put her hoof on my hand, and I wanted her to keep it there forever.

***

Twilight wouldn’t let Spike send his message to Princess Celestia about Fluttershy’s success until she’d thoroughly quizzed me. “And you don’t plan to do evil things anymore?”

I snorted. “I never did evil things. Chaos isn’t good or evil; it just is.”

She scowled. “That may be true of chaos because it’s not a sapient being who can make decisions, but you make choices, and you can make good ones or evil ones, and the last time we dealt with you, you were definitely making evil ones.” I rolled my eyes.

“If you say so,” I said dismissively. 

“The point is, are you going to refrain from using your magic in ways that hurt ponies or other creatures?”

I sighed. “Wasn’t that the point of this entire exercise? Yes. Fluttershy is my friend and she wouldn’t like it if I went around hurting things, so yes, I am going to try to refrain from using my magic in ways that hurt anyone.” A few harmless pranks, though, that should be fine.

“I’ll believe it when I see it,” Rainbow Dash said.

I pointed at Rainbow Dash. “Fluttershy, how can you stand having a friend who’s so negative? Can’t she just be happy for you without trying to minimize your accomplishments?”

“You hurt my friends very badly when you warped our personalities, the first time we met,” Fluttershy said. “It’s going to take them some time to warm up to you. But I’m sure that as long as you behave yourself and don’t hurt anyone, you’ll win them over.” She smiled at me.

Dammit. I couldn’t keep that up. I wanted to try to drive a wedge between Fluttershy and Rainbow Dash, because Rainbow Dash was a jerk and reminded me of the jocks who used to bully me and I didn’t like her, but I couldn’t stand up to Fluttershy’s smile. 

“So would you say you consider yourself reformed now?” Twilight persisted.

“Absolutely and completely 100% reformed, and Fluttershy didn’t even need to pull out my brain with a buttonhook like Smarty Pants’ stuffing,” I retorted.

Twilight scowled at me. “How do you know about Smarty Pants?”

I smirked at her. “A gentleman needs to keep some secrets,” I said, with an elaborate fan, decorated in black, purple and gold fractals, in front of my face like I was a geisha or a Southern ingenue.

Eventually, Spike was allowed to send a letter to Celestia, and then we all had to wait around for Her Royal Sunshinyness to show up. So I entertained myself by making Carousel Boutique into an actual carousel, for about thirty seconds, making Rarity throw a conniption fit and Fluttershy admonish me that I needed to ask permission before changing ponies’ stuff, and then put a fountain in the center of town with me as the centerpiece, which got me a lecture from Twilight about zoning, and then made a huge tub of chocolate milkshake, which got me a lecture from Pinkie Pie about how it needed whipped cream, while she was busy swimming in it. I was careful not to do anything that would actually harm any ponies, but I could see Twilight steaming up with frustration because technically I was not doing anything evil, and Fluttershy was lecturing her on the need to use patience and understanding because after all I was a being of chaos and it probably wasn’t healthy for me to restrain my magic too much, and it looked like she wanted to explode but was barely keeping it in. It made me chuckle to myself. I’d spent most of my life getting people’s goat (reminder to self: do not use that expression in Equestria) without chaos magic. Twilight could be my Captain Picard. We could have a wonderful relationship based on the fact that she is a major league control freak and might be so much fun to pester and annoy. I was looking forward to it.

Eventually, Celestia showed up, in a carriage drawn by pegasus guards despite the fact that with her wingspan and strength, she ought to be able to go faster if she flew by herself. “Princess Celestia!” Twilight called out and ran to her, as her friends and Spike bowed, because apparently you don’t need protocol if you’re the Princess’ star pupil.

“Hello, Twilight,” Celestia said. “I got your letter.” Didn’t that go without saying? I mean, the fact that she was here should have meant she got the letter, right? “Do you believe that Discord is sincere in his desire to reform?”

“I wouldn’t call it a desire, per se,” I muttered.

She heard me, despite the fact that there were approximately six ponies and a dragon between her and me. “What would you call it, then, Discord?” she asked.

“Ugh.” How annoying. I hate it when I mutter something to myself and then people call me on it. “A quid pro quo, really. An exchange. Something valuable offered to me in exchange for doing what you want, more or less.”

“More or less?” Her eyebrows went up.

I shrugged. “I’m still chaos, Princess. And I’m not a tame lion.” I morphed into a lion, except I still had my own head, covered with a thick lion mane, and my own tail where the lion’s tail would be.

Celestia showed no sign of getting the reference, which is good, because I would be deeply disturbed if there was a pony version of Chronicles of Narnia. “No one objects to you being Chaos, Discord. No one ever has.”

“I could beg to differ—”

“No one that matters to you, in any case,” she said firmly. “The problem was always that Chaos is fundamentally amoral, and can be used for good, evil or neutral purposes.”

“Like in Ogres and Oubliettes,” Spike piped up. “You can be chaotic good, chaotic neutral or chaotic evil.”

Right, of course Dungeons and Dragons wouldn’t be called that in a world where dragons are real. I’d picked up the part Spike was talking about through cultural nerd osmosis but I’d never actually played the game. Before I could say anything, Celestia continued. “In the past, you’ve often chosen to use your chaos to evil purposes, causing pain, harm and disruption to ponies and other living things. I never believed you were evil, but you were selfish, thoughtless, and heedless of anypony’s desires and needs but your own. Now you have a friend who’ll stand by you if you try to change that. Can you?”

Interesting. Not “will you” but “can you.” I wondered what my relationship with her was, in the past. 

I strode forward dramatically from behind the grouping of ponies that had somehow turned into a line in front of Celestia. “Yes, Princess, I'm ready to use my magic for good instead of evil.” I bowed, and muttered, under my breath, “Most of the time.” To be honest, I was probably mostly going to be using it for neutral purposes.

“Congratulations on your success, ponies,” Celestia said, smiling. “I definitely sense a big change in Discord.” A weird word to use there, “sense”. Did she just mean what she could hear and see, or was she picking up something else? Did she have some magical ability that was telling her I was actually a completely different person? Or was I just reading too much into the stilted language of a mare who’d been alive forever? Then she half-whispered to Twilight, “I'll leave the Elements of Harmony with you, Twilight. Just in case.” Oh, nice, Celestia. Way to show confidence.

“You were right when you said Fluttershy would be the one to find the way to reform Discord,” Twilight said. “By treating Discord as a friend, she got him to realize that friendship was actually important to him. And something that, once he had, he didn't want to lose.”

Fluttershy murmured at me, “Go on. Say it...”

I groaned. We’d talked about this, but that didn’t mean I liked it. “Alright,” I said, and then as quickly as I possibly could, mumbled “Friendship is magic.”

“See?” Fluttershy said, beaming up at me with her hoof on my paw. “He can be a real sweetheart once you get to know him.”

Out of the corner of my eye, I caught several of the ponies pawing the ground with their hooves and glancing away, obviously not quite on board with Fluttershy’s interpretation of my character, but I didn’t care. I had one friend. I’d lived my life without any; I didn’t need more.

“So, Princess Celestia. I recall hearing something about having a use for my magic?” I waggled my eyebrows, trying to imply that I was implying something.

Celestia ignored that. “I’d like to see you get settled in first, get used to being free… and not wreaking wanton havoc. In a week or so, I’d like you to come to Canterlot, and we can discuss what I want you to do for Equestria.”

Oh, darn. For a moment I thought she was going to end that sentence with “want you to do”, and I had all kinds of innuendo planned, and then she had to go and ruin it. “I would be delighted to serve,” I said, putting as much of the innuendo back into the sentence as I could.

***

Celestia took her leave, and so did the other ponies, and Spike, but Fluttershy stayed with me.

“So, um… do you have anywhere to go? Like, a place that you live?” Fluttershy asked diffidently. “Because if you do, and you want to go there, that’s fine, but… if you’d rather stay at my place for a while, I’d be fine with that too…”

“Trying to get rid of me so quickly, Fluttershy?” I asked, teasing – more or less.

“No! No, no, I just – I don’t want to impose on you or make demands, but I feel like, if we’re going to be friends, maybe we should spend some time together. I’d be happy to let you stay at my house for a while, and I could make us some tea, and maybe bake cookies—”

“I do like cookies,” I admitted.

“So would you like to stay as my houseguest for a little while?”

“Well, if you’re inviting me, how can I refuse?” Also I had no idea where Discord lived, or if it even still existed after he’d been more than a thousand years in stone.

So we went back to Fluttershy’s house, and she made tea, a drink I’d always found interminably dull – give me coffee if I really need to stay awake, or Coke if I want something caffeinated and tasty – but with my new nose, I found the aroma pleasant enough that the tea was actually relaxing. I tried to think of something that humans eat at dinner parties that would be safe for a pony – no meat, and I didn’t know if dairy was safe for anypony who wasn’t Pinkie Pie, and I couldn’t take anything with sugar seriously as a meal – and came up with cucumber sandwiches, which I had once eaten an entire tray of at my foster mother’s stiflingly dull dinner event because she had made us skip lunch to have room for dinner and then hadn’t served dinner for another eight hours. I’d gotten in a lot of trouble for that since the tray was supposed to be for all the guests, but it paid off now because it meant I remembered the flavor well enough to replicate it, and Fluttershy pronounced them to be delicious… and I thought she might have actually meant it. She also made chocolate chip cookies, which were warm and soft but a little bit too sweet for my tastes. I tried snapping one into existence with a darker chocolate mix and a bit less sugar in the cookie dough, found it to be much better, and offered it to Fluttershy to try. She smiled and said that if that was what I preferred, she’d make the cookies that way the next time.

Someone cared enough about my food preferences to change their recipe to accommodate me. Not because I was faking an allergy but because I’d just said, I think this is a little too sweet, what do you think of this cookie, it’s just like yours but with less sugar and I think it’d be better for my teeth, and she’d guessed I was really talking about my food preferences rather than actually caring about my teeth, and agreed to make cookies like that for me. The next time. Because this was going to happen again.

This was dumb. I was the Lord of Chaos, and before that I was Eric Reese, professional troublemaker and hardened street kid. I was not going to cry because a pony wanted to make me cookies I would really like.

They hadn’t invented the television yet, let alone Netflix and chill, but I felt that this situation really deserved some TV to relax in front of. I wasn’t entirely sure if they’d even invented movies, and I didn’t want to risk sounding ignorant. “Fluttershy. Are there any plays or shows you were thinking of seeing?”

“Oh, um, I think today’s been stressful enough, don’t you? I was just planning on staying in tonight…”

“Heavens, no, I wouldn’t imagine you would want to leave the house this late,” I said. “I have no intention of taking you out of your home, my dear. But there’s something I’d like to try. So, are there any plays or shows going on in Manehattan or Canterlot or somewhere that you’d like to see?”

“Hmm.” She gave it some thought. “There’s a romantic comedy playing in Manehattan about a pony and a griffin who fall in love… do you think that’s weird, wanting to see something like that?”

Oh, Ponyville provincialism. “If I did think it was weird, that would only make it more delightful. I take it you were too embarrassed to tell your friends about your interest in this play?”

“Um, kind of, but also, what if I said I wanted to see it and we all went to see it together and it was terrible? I’d feel so embarrassed that I recommended something that turned out to be bad.”

I reeled my head backward, staring at her, taken completely aback. “How… that makes no sense, Fluttershy, and not in a good way. Your friends would seriously expect you to know ahead of time if a play you’ve never seen is any good, and blame you if it wasn’t?”

“Oh, no, they’d never expect that, or blame me. But I’d blame myself.”

I shook my head. I was not even going to try to understand that. “Well, how would you feel about watching it right here, in the privacy of your own home?”

“How would that work? I wouldn’t want you to kidnap the actors…”

“No, no!” I laughed, and snapped up a giant flat-screen television, which I made float in her living room. “We’ll watch it on this.”

“Oh! Like a movie!”

Good, they did have movies. I knew Discord had made movie-related jokes by eating popcorn, but that didn’t necessarily mean ponies had movies. “Just like. Except we don’t have to go to a theater.”

“That sounds wonderful,” she said. “It’s called ‘Love Like Feathers’.”

That was a terrible title, but I didn’t say so, not to Fluttershy. Instead I reached out with my powers. I knew Discord had the ability to display the past – albeit the past he’d been in, but not from his own perspective, so I’d guessed that he could actually view the past in general. It would have made it made sense that he knew the Mane 6 so well despite having been in stone. Turned out I was right; I could make a performance of the play from yesterday show up on my television.

We sat together on Fluttershy’s couch, ate popcorn, and watched the play, which was stupid. I mean, really stupid. Every single plot twist and complication could have been resolved if the characters had just talked to each other. But Fluttershy ate it up, and seeing her laugh at the dumb antics of the star-crossed lovers was far, far better to watch than a genuinely entertaining play would have been.

***

“Do you… need sleep?” she asked. “I mean, most creatures do, so I’d guess you might, but then, you’re called a Spirit of Chaos and I’m not sure what that means…”

Neither was I. I could eat and enjoy food, but despite doing that, I’d felt no need to use the little draconequuses’ room. I knew I had a body and that it felt things, powerfully, but nothing that had happened to me had caused me physical pain. So I had no idea if I needed to sleep or not, but I couldn’t admit that to Fluttershy. “I could certainly do with a bit of rest,” I said, making myself yawn with my powers. 

“Is the couch comfortable enough? Do you need extra blankets?”

I laughed. “I’m quite fine, Fluttershy. Don’t worry about me.” No one had fussed over me like this since I was maybe four or five. I loved it, but I found it kind of embarrassing as well. I was an immortal, ancient chaos spirit now, right? Not a child who’d just moved to a new foster home.

It turned out that a chaos spirit who’s had a long and exhausting day after being released from stone and getting hit by a truck can sleep, and dream. But I’d have expected a silly, chaotic dream, something like swans dressed as firefighters swimming through hurricane clouds, or the sky raining newts, all of whom claimed they used to be ponies until a witch cast a spell. I didn’t expect what I got.

I dreamed that I was facing the Mane 6, armed with their elements of Harmony and their rainbow friendship laser, and I was turning to stone, screaming with fear. And then, although my mouth was sealed in stone, I snarled in rage. You can’t hold me forever! 

Another voice came, and I couldn’t tell if it was male or female. It sounded more like wind chimes than a person, or pony’s, voice. You’re right, I can’t, and if a thousand years in stone taught you nothing, more time in stone would be nothing but cruel.

So let me go, then!

No. There are things you need to learn, and neither stone nor freedom will teach them.

And then I was falling, falling, and the darkness of stone was replaced with sound too loud and light too bright and air too cold, and I could feel everything but I couldn’t make my body move the way I wanted to, and there were giant blobs all around me and I couldn’t tell where their edges were and where other things, like the air or other objects, began…

I screamed. And then I woke up.

The house was still silent and dark. No Fluttershy was coming down the stairs, aflutter with concern for me. I must have only screamed in the dream, not in real life, thankfully.

I felt downright cheated. Sure, my nightmare had been chaotic and incomprehensible, but not in a fun way. “No more nightmares,” I whispered to my powers. “I just want to sleep, and have entertaining dreams, and if they’re cryptic and bizarre, let it be in an interesting way, not… whatever that freaky thing was.”

Secure in the knowledge that my powers would protect me from nightmares, I tried to go back to sleep. But it was a long while before I succeeded.