//------------------------------// // Ch 06 Pipp Pipp Hooray! // Story: Discord's New Fluttershy // by Kaidan //------------------------------// I consulted Twilight on how she had handled the loss of Celestia and Luna. We did our best to relate to each other. She even told me how proud she was that I had let Fluttershy go. Twilight had known all along what I was doing. We suspected that Fluttershy knew I was prolonging her life, from the very beginning. I wasn’t ready to let go and that was why she had waited as long as she did to ask me to let her pass on. I can appreciate Twilight not trying to stop me, when she realized I had made Fluttershy stop aging. Perhaps our history together had taught her that I did things in my own way, in my own time. If she’d tried to take Fluttershy from me by force, I’d have zapped her to the land of the Merponies as a school of tasty sardines. Twilight also knew that magic was getting weaker, and that various threats could take advantage of Equestria in a weakened state. She had contingency plan after contingency plan in place. While she was worried about losing all of ponykind, I had already lost the only pony worth caring about. She explained that magic was at risk of disappearing completely. I realized something at that moment that I’d not thought about in a while. If magic completely ceased to exist, then so too would Harmony. So too would Chaos. We are beings of magic, after all. This could be my chance to cross the veil and see Fluttershy again. It was a long shot, I doubted I could die, but wouldn’t ceasing to exist be the same as dying? I tried to explain this to Twilight. Without magic there may not be harmony, but there’d be no chaos, and no way for the various villains to return and threaten Equestria. There would be only ponies, left to their own devices, and ponykind was not a violent or evil race. Life would continue without Twilight or myself, if only she would let go. She didn’t agree with me. The magic of friendship was sort of her deal. She would do anything and go to any length to preserve it, and deny me the chance at blissful oblivion to erase my pain. And so I callously rejected her offer to entrust some magical macguffins to a new generation of ponies. Had it ended there, Equestria likely would have been fine. Twilight still had Spike and Flurry to help her prepare for the worst. But in my grief it wasn’t enough to refuse to help. After that meeting, I went out and sought to bring about the end of friendship, and magic, for good. The planet was already a house of cards ready to be knocked over by the next gust of wind. All I did was blow. I’m the one who ended the magic of friendship to hide from the pain of my loss. I’m certain life carried on with some semblance of normalcy, but I quickly began fading away once magic had been cut off. Before my slumber began I heard Twilight calling to me, not in anger, but in disappointment and sorrow. I was gone before I could reply. The last thing I had expected was for one of Twilight’s silly contingency plans to work. And now, who knows how long afterward, I am awake again. Alone in a new world. My pain dulled but not gone. And five little ponies desperately trying to prove to me that friendship isn’t dead. Pipp heard a knock at her door and quickly checked her appearance in her vanity mirror to make sure she looked presentable for Discord. She would be the final pony to try to make a good impression on Discord, before he decided whether or not to turn Hitch back to normal. Worst case scenario, Pipp was certain this ‘Fluttershy’ had the body of a model and the voice of a singer, so she could probably get Hitch work as a social media influencer. She really hoped it didn’t come to that, however. There was another knock, and Pipp hurried over to open the door, finding nopony standing behind it. “Oh, finally I get to see what this thing does. Pone: Pegasi Legends, Poones TD, Unicorn Impact, Earth Pony Crush…” Pipp turned to find Discord sitting in her bed under a pillow fort. As she got closer, she noticed the pillows were similar to ponies, but their skin was jet black and they had holes in their legs. In the tent, Discord was cuddling a larger creature with a wicked looking horn, and a very fluffy pink pony. It was so fluffy she couldn’t tell which race it was. “Careful with that! It’s an iPone 13 and it’s very expensive,” Pipp said. She crawled on the bed and started making her way into the fort. “I’ll be on my best behavior.” Pipp smiled. “I’m sure you will, but where’s Hitch? I thought we’d be tagging along. “Oh, I assure you she’s fine. She is downstairs with Zipp.” “What are they up to? I haven’t seen any of you or my sister since yesterday.” Discord smirked. “Oh, it involved plenty of lubricant, chains, and synthetic leather. I dare say they’re working up quite a sweat right about now.” “Uh…” Pipp blushed. “What?” He snapped the fingers on his paw, creating a small image of the launch bay. Zipp was attaching rivets to a support, and Hitch was laying on the ground covered in engine grease. “Oh thank goodness,” Pipp sighed. “For a second there it sounded a bit like you were describing pony fans.” “P, o, n, y…” Discord typed away into the phone. “Oh Celestia! I think you’ve just stolen my innocence, and I’ve been around for a few hundred thousand years.” Pipp snatched her phone out of his hand, tapping a few buttons to clear her search history. “Discord! How do you even know how to use one of these?” “What?” He shrugged. “I find the iPone to be very intuitive and easy to use, it’s so streamlined! But I would love for you to teach me a bit more about the internet.” “Oh, I was hoping you might ask.” Pipp gave him a brief rundown of the major social media websites and how the internet worked. “Alright. So Pegasi invented a series of tubes that became the first computer, but the internet is a highway, and it was made in somepony’s garage back when nerds couldn’t get laid, which then caused a sudden explosion in technology. And in only forty years? That is impressive.” “Yeah, that about sums it up,” Pipp replied. “And now anypony with a special talent can reach out to their fans. Like this song I recently released.” Pipp turned the phone sideways as music began to play. Everybody needs somebody, I’m somebody too… If you ever need somebody, I’ll be there for you… Discord listened to Pipp’s latest hit single until it had finished. “Really? A song on friendship, it’s a bit on the nose, but on-theme for ponies.” She nodded. “Yeah, after you appeared I put this together with my producer, and released it. I put a lot of thought into the perfect way to show you that I’ll be there for you, no matter what.” He nodded. “That’s actually quite thoughtful, and here I thought you’d be the shallow one… no offense, you’re just awfully young to be hitting on a deity old enough to be your grandpa.” Pipp squeaked. “I … what? That’s not what this is!” Laughter filled the pillow fort, and Discord scrolled down below the video. “Oh, hey what’s this? Comments?” She got a little closer and laid on the fluffy pink pony so that she could read the comments with Discord. “Yeah, everypony can upvote, downvote, or leave smiley faces to convey complex opinions like ‘wow you’re the best pony ever!’” “And this number?” Discord tapped a finger on the screen. “You’ve had thousands of ponies vote?” “Yeah, with the internet you can be connected to thousands of ponies at once, more once we spread out cellular networks across Equestria to the other races and distant villages.” “Oh, and this one?” Discord brought up a comment and read it out loud. “You’re a no talent hack that looks like a cheap carnival prize.” Pipp frowned. “Yeah, uh that’s a troll. It’s best to ignore those.” “Lot of those down arrows, I mean did he even put any effort into it? And what about this one?” Discord raised an eyebrow. “I don’t think I can even read this out loud, and I once gave all of Canterlot tourettes for a month because they forgot to invite me to the gala.” He began typing away at the keyboard. She grabbed the phone, “Wait no! You can’t feed them, that’s the worst thing to do when ponies troll you!” Discord smirked. “Feed them? Don’t be silly, my little pony… they’re going to feed me.” He snapped his fingers and vanished, along with the pillow fort. Pipp looked around in confusion before noticing a tiny draconequus on the screen of her phone, scratching out a message to reply to the rude commentor. I don’t know who you are, I don’t know what you want, but what I do know is I’ve got a very special set of skills… skills that will allow me to turn you and everyone you love into fleas on a Griffon’s arse! “No, Discord!” Pipp tapped the phone angrily, trying to swipe left on him. “Don’t worry! I’ll be back!” Discord slithered off the screen. Pipp flicked a hoof to scroll down after him, catching the end of his tail slithering into a hyperlink. “Oh no, this is bad…” Pipp minimized the app and hit the speed dial button to call up the only pony she assumed could help. Moments later, the call connected and a calm voice answered on the other end. “Zephyrburg, how can I help you?” “We’ve got a problem! I think I just released an angry chaos god into the servers!” Hitch wiped his face off with a clean rag, noticing that he’d gotten more oil in his hair, and the pink strands were getting a bit knotted up from all the dirt. The fur on the back of his neck began to stand on end. “Are you doing okay over there, Sheriff?” Zipp asked. She was busy with a complicated ballast system to help control the airship’s altitude, but stopped to check on her friend. “Yeah, I just felt something, it must be this magic Discord used on me or something,” Hitch explained. She put down her tools and trotted over. “Oh, what’d you feel?” “It was as if a thousand voices screamed out in agony and were silenced at once…” Pipp and Zephyrburg stood in the main data center of Ponybook and watched several large televisions showing the status of the website. On another set of screens were hundreds of comments appearing all at once. Discord says: Hey xXx_hugecockadooledo69_xXx, your village called, it’s missing its idiot. “He appears to be trolling over nine thousand users simultaneously. This could affect our fourth quarter profits, do something!” Zephyrburg shouted. Next to him a mare with a cutie mark of a monkey drinking coffee was typing into a keyboard as fast as they could. “I’m trying, but he’s trolling from inside the firewall! I can’t keep up!” Another pony, this stallion wearing glasses, came up next to her. “I’ll help you, A B!” The two of them were furiously typing into the same keyboard, as lots of really cool looking things happened on the single monitor. Pipp couldn’t really keep up with it. “Hack faster, or the holiday party is canceled!” Zephyrburg threatened. “There has to be something we can do, try bypassing the router switches and reset the solid state drives to an anti-clockwise spin pattern!” “I can’t, he’s already bit the bytes and shifted to a trinary system!” The monitor went dark a second later, and Pipp held out a plug in her hoof. Zephyrburg facehoofed. “You just unplugged the monitor but he’s already in the mainframe…” “Oh.” Pipp sighed. “I don’t suppose you’ve got like, a light switch no one is supposed to touch that you duct taped over, that would turn off power to the entire server room if some idiot intern flipped it?” Zephyrburg began beaming. “Yes! That’s it! Release the intern!” “It’s too late sir!” the code monkey replied. “He’s followed an outgoing hyperlink.” “To where?” the CEO demanded. The two ponies gulped and looked at each other. “Well, spit it out already!” Pipp went over to look at the display everypony was gathering around and felt her stomach drop “Oh no, Discord’s on ponychan!” Pipp shouted. Pipp walked out of Ponybook headquarters and started back towards the palace to warn her mom, the Queen, about what had happened. On her way there she saw the strangest thing. Hundreds of ponies had turned gray and were moping around like they were still in a high school emo phase. As soon as the ponies found and touched some grass, they reverted to normal. By the time she had flown to the castle and headed to the royal quarters to look for her mother, she heard a loud groaning coming from her bedroom. Pipp walked inside and found Discord laying on her bed again, only now his stomach had swollen up as if he’d eaten an entire flying elephant whole. “Discord! You had me so worried, and I think you broke the internet. Are you okay?” Pipp asked. He nodded, letting out a burp that formed a large yellow cloud that started raining buttered popcorn all over the room. “Yeah… I haven’t dined that well since before Sunbutt and Moonbutt ended my reign of chaos.” “Who?” “Not important,” Discord replied. “But I’m back at full strength, thanks to you.” Pipp jumped up onto the bed, making him groan again. He seemed to be too full to move at all, and was bothered by any motion. “And did you hurt any ponies?” “Physically? No.” He burped again, creating a green jet of fire that dumped several scrolls of parchment onto the floor. They quickly skittered out of the room emitting a loud screaming noise. “Emotionally though? Well, I think the trolls will all be back to normal once they get a little sunshine.” She sighed in relief. “That’s good news. I don’t think mom would have forgiven me if I broke the internet for a second time.” “Now, why don’t we watch a movie or something? I dare say I won’t be moving from this spot until I’ve finished digesting all that excellent chaos,” Discord explained. “And I’m sure whatever Zipp and Hitch are up to involves a lot of physical exertion.” Hitch and Zipp had cleaned up after working on the airship for the better part of two days. Now they sat on some beanbags in the back of the launch bay, giggling like school fillies trading gossip. “I don’t know how I let you talk me into this,” Zipp said. “Me? If Sunny found out about this I’d never hear the end of it.” Hitch smiled, his blush turning his cheeks a cute shade of orange. Zipp smirked and glanced at him out of the side of her eyes. “Night’s not over yet.” There was a flash of light as Zipp’s phone camera went off. Hitch gasped, looking around until he spotted his saddlebag and pulled his own phone out to snap a picture of Zipp. “Mutually assured destruction.” She nodded. “Fair enough, Sheriff. Now hold still while I finish brading your mane.” Hitch held still as requested, and continued slipping some beads into Zipp’s mane as she braided them in.