Friendship is Deception

by Your Antagonist

Act II Finale:Right Outta Left Field

I got nothin’. If you were expecting something, your expectations were wasted because there’s nothing here. You should expect nothing but prepare for anything. Especially nothing.

        “Y-y-you!” Twilight stammered pointing a hoof at the figure that stood before them.

        “But how? That doesn’t even make sense!” Pinkie declared ironically.

        “No, this isn’t possible!” Rainbow Dash stated.

        “This ain’t right; we put you away fer good! How’d ya break out?” Applejack inquired.

        “This. Is. The. Worst. Possible. Thing.” Rarity declared before collapsing onto Applejack.

        “um....how?” Fluttershy asked quietly.

        “Jest who are we talkin’ to? Is that one a them giraffes?” Granny Smith asked, having slipped back into her senile state.

“What? I thought you all would be happy to see me since we haven’t seen each other in such a long time,” The figure stepped out of the shadows, and everypony hesitated to believe their eyes.

“The last time we saw each other I believe you turned me to stone, always an unpleasant experience. Now as much as I’d love to chat, I am rather busy; so if you all would be so kind as to vamoose, it would be greatly appreciated.” The figure revealed itself to be none other than Discord, but something was different about him.

Twilight took note that he stood behind a semi-transparent barrier as opposed to his usual teleportation shenanigans and open harassment of her friends. Whatever had happened to him, she suspected that his powers were affected as well. “How are you standing before us right now? We turned you to stone and the Princesses locked you away, therefore you shouldn’t exist right now.”

“Twilight Sparkle, I’m disappointed in you. I figured you better than anypony save for the Princesses would have figured that out by now. I suppose if I must tell, I must tell,” Discord shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. “If you must know my existence is separate from that hunk of stone you have buried Celestia knows where. You might call me a physical manifestation of the memories that I separated from myself as I was being turned to stone. The first time I mean, not when you did it.”

“Your memories... but not your powers.” Twilight came to a realization.

“Correct Twilight, oh you catch on so well,” Discord was exceptionally giddy at this point. Why anyone would be excited to reveal their weakness was beyond her. “Would you care to guess at the purpose behind this little organization I...had I guess, at this point? Or would you rather I just give you hints while you fill in the blanks? Rhetorical question! Your door is B.”

“AGH! Bee?! Where?! Get it off me!” Shouted Pinkie Pie as she began running around in circles and rolling along the ground, earning strange looks from everypony in the room.

Discord recovered fastest from her odd antics and turned towards a machine behind the barrier with him and began fiddling with it “Oookay... Anywho, as the spirit of Disharmony...”

“You feed off of negativity, chaos and unrest...”

“Tonight I attempted to murder....” Discord continued

“Princess Luna and Princess Celestia...”

“Which would...”

“Throw all of eques--” Twilight cut herself off with a gasp of realization

“I see you put the pieces together quickly Ms. Sparkle.”

Fluttershy turned towards Twilight “What does he mean Twilight?"

“If I’m right, the purpose behind Black Anarchy was to destroy equestria’s current government structure, and throw the country into anarchy. With the embodiment of Discord’s powers being locked away, the resulting political backlash would be more than enough to restore his powers.” Turning towards discord she now shot him a smug grin “But you failed. You may as well give it up now Discord, and maybe the courts will go easy on you.”

Her grin quickly faded as she heard an insane cackling from behind the barrier. “You really didn’t think I had just one bomb planted in the stage did you? That would be too easy to foil. No, no, no my dear little Ponies, I rigged the whole castle to go up like New Years.”In fact give it about five minutes...four minutes fifty eight seconds, oh you know what I mean.”
Rainbow was the first to take action, immediately rushing the barrier hoping she could crash through, but to no avail, it was as though she hit a brick wall. As she fell, Applejack galloped up and caught the Rainbow maned pegasus. “How’re we supposed to beat im’ if we caint even touch im’?”

“It’s quite simple Applejack: You don’t.” Discord chided from behind the barrier. He watched in amusement as the other four approached the barrier. Twilight tapped a hoof against it and the others mere stared puzzledly. Applejack and Rainbow Dash attempted to tackle it from a physical perspective by bucking it like crazy to no avail. Rarity and Fluttershy looked for weak points in the structural integrity and these attempts were also in vain the construction of the barrier was impeccable. Not even the elements of Harmony would be able to break this.

“You like it? With the limited amount of power I possess, this is the limit of my magic...for now. In about four minutes even I’ll be unstoppable, and unrivaled. You know you can all stop this foalishness and play for the winning team, or I can just kill you all first and make examples of you, your choice really.”

Twilight knew they were running out of time and looked at Pinkie who, at the moment, was deep in argument with herself about... Pinkie stuff.

“No Jed, plastic explosives will not crack that barrier like the eggs of a peregrine falcon--”

“Pinkie, I need you for a second, I have a theory I need to test,” Twilight instructed while writing something on a sheet of paper.

“Twilight, if you need to test something you should send it to school first silly, and I think now is hardly the time to be filling out registration forms.” Twilight merely blinked in response to that statement not sure how to respond, and also not caring.

“C’mon Pinkie”

“Okie Doki Loki Twilight!”

Twilight approached the barrier and scowled at Discord who merely grinned in response “Well my dear, have you and your friends finally come to your senses, and wish to join Black Anarachy?” Discord pried while casting a salute at the mention of his own organization and staring off into nothingness.

"Discord, Princess Celestia is my friend, and even though death may be a consequence of standing with her, betraying her would cause her to lose full trust in me as a student and as a friend. So in acknowledgement of your victory, here.”  Twilight pressed the piece of paper to barrier and noticed the countdown timer read 2:01 remain.  Discord reached through the barrier and grabbed at the paper exposing his talons, and Pinkie immediately jumped at the barrier and proceeded to bite down hard which resulted in a loud yelp from the Draconius. Pulling his inflamed digit back inside, he looked at the paper and proceeded to read what was on the page  aloud: “Losing a friend’s trust is the fastest way to lose a friend? Now just what does tha--” He looked at the grins on the faces of all the ponies who had up until recently been struggling to break down the barrier, and they all sat expectantly on their haunches... All but one he noticed. A voice from behind startled and told him exactly what they were waiting for: “Forever!”

Discord whirled around to see Pinkie Pie airborne flying towards him ready to deliver a flying kick followed by an inevitable beatdown, and reacting quickly, Discord summoned his magic and turned it into the form of a shield successfully stopping her attack, and the he proceeded to swing the shield at Pinkie knocking her back. Nice try, Ms. Pie. I don’t know how you got in bu--”

“Ahem.” Applejack had coughed to get the attention of the Draconius, and proceeded to walk through the area where Discord’s barrier once stood followed by her friends. Discord smiled sheepishly attempted to reform his barrier but Rainbow Dash yelled “Too slow!” and flew behind him bucking his legs out from underneath him causing him to fall  on his face.

Applejack had leaped into the air and came down hard on Discord’s elongated neck with all four of her hooves and pinned him down while Fluttershy trotted over and stuck three syringes into his neck and emptied their contents into his bloodstream. “Oh dear... ummm... I meant to use anesthesia, and...  I used king cobra venom by accident.. I’m sorry...”

Discord convulsed and tried to fight, but Applejack adjusted all four of her legs so that she could exert the maximum amount of crushing force on his carotid artery.

Twilight casually trotted past her three friends who were busy euthanizing their arch-nemesis, and made her way to the device with the timer upon it, that now read one minute, and attempted to figure out what she was looking at. After a lot of deliberation, she realized there was no way she could stop this, maybe if they had gotten through the barrier with an extra minute they coul--Clonk!

Pinkie had hit the device with a monkey wrench and was winding up for another hit.

“Wait Pinkie, what are you doing?You might set the bomb off!”

“Sheesh Twilight, you weren’t complaining when I stopped the other bomb under the stage.” Pinkie rolled her eyes and delivered another blow to the machine.

“Wait you hit the other bomb with a wrench?”

“Uhh...duhhh..” The timer on the device read twenty seconds now and it fizzled out as Pinkie wailed on the machine like it owed her bits and candy, and eventually a small spark and a puff of smoke emanated from the defeated machine, and Pinkie merely grinned having twice in the same day proved her dominance over complex machinery with a monkey wrench.

Twilight blinked in disbelief for a moment, and watched Celestia’s palace out the window, waiting for something. But there was nary a boom or a spark. Twilight stood staring at the Castle for 3 minutes and nothing happened. The only thing to break her focus was Rarity nudging her slightly, urging her to move on downstairs.

The 7 mares made their way back into the massive corridor where cloaked RCIA operatives had apparently flooded the area and began performing investigations during their absence. The arrival of the seven mares had prompted all of the agents to assume more defensive poses. Twilight stepped forth and levitated her badge out of her shoulder holster presenting it to the agents, and almost immediately they relaxed as they recognized one of their own. Upon further investigation, Trixie, Gilda, and Mayor Mare had all been corralled into a single corner, while the Don still lay where Pinkie and Granny Smith had ended him, knife in throat.

Twilight’s group walked down the stairs and they were greeted by a plea for assistance from Braeburn, Uncle Orange and Big Mac who were all being interrogated by EIB agents. It was Rainbow’s turn to flash some I.D. Upon glancing around the room, there was a shocking amount of blood and dead, dying, incapacitated Crosshearts. Twilight couldn’t help but wonder if this was even possible mathematically, while Applejack on the other hand beamed quite proudly at her family’s fighting prowess. Braeburn and Big Mac had been patched up significantly by medical staff that were present, but amazingly Uncle Orange had barely a scratch on him.

Once the 10 were debriefed and allowed to exit the mansion they proceeded to return to the castle, where Princess Celestia awaited them along with Spike, Applebloom, and Sweetie Belle in the courtyard. Almost immediately, they all ran to their respective care takers.

Celestia trotted over towards Twilight and began to address her: “Twilight Sparkle, for your bravery in the line of duty, I would like to recognize the courage you and your friends exhibited for equestria, let it be known that from today on... Is something wrong my student?”

“Well princess if it’s all the same to you I’d prefer to keep this between us and our respective organizations,” Twilight explained

“Well Twilight if you feel that strongly about keeping this under wraps then it shall be done.”
“Psshh yeah right, I’m going to brag about this to everypony I know,” Rainbow said proudly until she felt 5 pairs of eyes scrutinizing her, and she broke under the pressure  and amended her statement “I mean..I guess I could keep it to myself,” she said while rubbing the back of her head nervously with a hoof.

Big Mac simply stated “Eeyup.” And everypony broke out into laughter; This mission was over.

After the laughter had ceased, a light R&B track could be heard playing in the background. The scene then began to pan upwards and focused on a shot of the sunset over the castle as credits began to scroll up from the bottom of the screen. The sunset gradually faded into black, and the white of the credits on the black background detailing the actors involved in the production of the movie became more visible.

“Dude, that ending sucked; I mean how can the writers put forth all this effort into the actual meat of the movie, and then just end it on such a crappy note?” Complained a Zebra wearing goggles around his neck.

“Ahh, you always complain about the end of movies,” Proclaimed a rather robust workhorse stallion with a mark of a wrestling ring on his flank.

“You guys wanna watch another one?” Piped up another earth pony with Drumsticks on his flank.

The zebra responded “Yeah, but Celestia help you, if you pick Cupcakes again... Sgt. Sprinkles was a master of ‘gorror’ films, but the sheer amount of straight to DVD rip-offs is just revolting; I’d rather watch Cherilee’s Garden. We could watch a romance?”

“Yeah...no. How about Scott Pipsqueak vs the Equis?” The drumstick marked pony suggested

“I’m down for that.” Said the workhorse.

“Play it, it shall be glorious!”

*Finale end*