//------------------------------//
// 72 - Science and Magic 
// Story: New Endings, Old Starts 
// by David Silver 
//------------------------------//

"I have learned from my mistakes." Twilight looked quite proud of herself as her glowing magic gently prodded and checked over Comforting. "Are you comfortable?"

Comforting tried her best to look at her head, but the angle was wrong, at least until she realized it was suddenly fine. Oh, her eyes had casually left her body for a better look at herself. She wore a strange suit that covered her entire body in blinking lights, even her long tail. A helmet of sorts, more of a colander, rested on her head. She pulled her eyes back in with a thought. "This is better?"

"The first time I tried something like this...." Twilight turned to point to a large machine. "I had Pinkie stuck standing in one specific spot. With this suit, you retain your mobility, and hopefully it's also comfortable?"

"It's alright...." Comforting tested each limb in turn. She was, indeed, mobile. "Is it... helping?"

"I am getting so much data." Twilight clapped with joy. "Now... I am trying to temper my expectations. If you are a chaos spirit, measuring you and what you do is going to be difficult, at best. Still, you are a very friendly chaos spirit. So I'm hoping you may help me. Why don't you go ahead and make something small?"

"Alright." She considered where to pull from. Ah, why be complicated? She slapped her hands together with a muffled jingle of her worn gloves. Drawing her hands apart, she saw nothing there. "Oh..." She had failed? Maybe her gloved hands were a bad spot?

Comforting reached for Twilight, producing a large apple from behind her head. "Ta da!"

"Were the holes intentional?" Twilight took hold of the apple from Comforting, twirling it around. It had holes, like Swiss cheese.

"No..." Comforting frowned and crossed her arms. Why was she having a hard time?

"Still, thank you." She trotted quickly over to a lenghtening sheet of paper, looking over the results there. "Fascinating... Go ahead and lift in the air a little. I'd love to see how it compares to Starlight."

Comforting grinned at that. "You got her to wear this?"

"I did." Twilight turned back to Comforting. "There were some complaints, which I've improved on... I hope..."

Comforting hopped up... and came back down. She frowned and jumped up and down, oh there it was. Like the ledge of that other dimension was slippery and she had to get a good grip on it. She hovered several inches from the ground a moment before she fell back to her feet. "Hm..."

Twilight joined in the curious noise. "Is the suit pinching anything that needs to move?" She reached with her hooves, inspecting Comforting curiously. "I can adjust it if you feel restricted?"

Comforting started, ear and feather going up. "I think I get it!"

Twilight sat back. "Oh, that's good. What's wrong? You seemed to have flying well under your control before."

Comforting waved over the getup she was wearing. "This is Attention. Your measurements are attention. Wearing this? I'm being watched. Watched chaos has a hard time chaosing. Half the job is to distract things so I can get something done between the lines." She held up two fingers close together. "But I'm wearing a thing that I can't distract."

Comforting giggled. "And if I distracted it, you'd be very sad, finding a gap in your readings just at the good part."

Twilight scowled, imagining that hole in her readings. "That is... infuriating..." Still, her magic wrapped around Comforting's helmet, lifting it free. "Thank you, for trying. I can't say this is your fault. You're barely more 'experienced' than I am in this field. But mmmf!" She thumped the ground in a futile stomp. "How frustrating!"

Comforting saw permission and got to wriggle free of the rest of the suit. Once it was flopped on the ground, she could easily lift into the air. "Sorry... I want to help, really."

"I know you do." She rest a hoof on the shoulder of the floating chaos filly. "I'm not mad with you, just the situation. The very idea of a phenomenon defined by its invisibility... No wonder Discord always gave me the side eye whenever I brought it up with him. I thought he was just... being Discord." She flopped to her haunches. "For once he was being practical..."

"Not gonna say I toldja so." Discord grabbed Comforting by either shoulder. "I need this. Later!" And he withdrew from view with her with a pop.

Twilight was left alone, just like that. "What...?"





Discord dropped Comforting in the middle of the air. "Here you go, now stop complaining."

"Yay!" Screwball zoomed in and hugged Comforting tightly. "There you are."

Comforting blinked, dragged from one place to another. "Hi Screwie. Um, what do you prefer, actually? Screw, Screwie, Screwball?"

Screwball inclined her head. "That you're even asking means so much... But I'm actually alright with all of those." She floated back and away from Comforting, clapping her hooves. "I did it! Just like you said!"

"What did I say?" Comforting said a lot of things... Wait... "You can pull things out?"

"I can pull things out," joyfully shouted Screwball. She curled a hoof and stuffed it right into her own forehead, drawing free a comically large candy bar that she offered right up to Comforting. "Ta da!"

Comforting applauded in a rapid clapping of her hands. "Wow, great! You did it!" She took the candy bar and turned it about. It had a picture of Screwball with her swirly eyes, smiling at the viewer. "What's it taste like?" She unfurled the foil wrapping and tried a bite. It was like, well, chocolate, but there was something else. Oranges? Lemon? A citrusy hint that worked well to create a unique flavor. "Not bad."

Discord rolled his eyes lightly. "She would not shut up about getting you here."

Comforting turned an ear back at Discord. "Why didn't you just bring her?"

Discord crossed his arms. "Look, if I just unleash her on Ponyville, Twilight will have words for me, and Fluttershy will be dissapointed. It'll be a whole thing."

Comforting could see Screwball sniffling, tears stinging at her eyes. "What if... I did it? She can't be too mad at a new chaos spirit, still getting the hang of things."

Discord smirked softly. "You're picking up my bad habits... bravo. Well, far be it from me to get in the way of a good mistake." He swerved off to his house a short distance away. "Have fun!" And he closed the door from inside, gone from view, at least until he appeared at the window, waving briefly.

Screwball clapped her hooves together in one firm motion. "Can you? Only Discord knows how to get in here, or out of it..." She turned to the floating rock with the mailbox. "Poor postpony gets lost trying, a lot..."

Comforting hadn't done it yet... Still! "It can't be that hard." She grabbed Screw's left front hoof. "Let's try." With a cheering chaos filly, Comforting pulled them along towards the ground. "I just need to make a way home..." She withdrew her hand and reached ar-oops! She fell over, burdened with the sudden weight of an entire door.

Doors were heavier than she remembered! Sure, she hadn't picked up a lot of doors that weren't fixed on a hinge. "Alright..." She scrambled back upright and struggled the door to a stand. "This is our ticket out of here. Discord does it all the time!"

Screwball gave an appreciative 'Ooo' as she floated around the door. "How's it work?" She pawed at it gently with a hoof. "Show me, please."

"Like any door." Comforting grabbed for Screwball, drawing them in close as she threw open the door with her other hand. She jumped through without even looking. Looking would just complicate it.

She was standing in a hallway. She released Screwball to resume floating. "Where?" The walls, ground, and floor were made of crystal, so... "Either Twilight's castle, or we ended up way north..."

"Twilight has a castle?!" burst out Screwball with undisguised amazement. "Is this it? Wow!" She zipped up towards a picture. squinting at it. "That's Celestia."

"Twilight likes Celestia, a lot." Comforting shrugged at that. "But I think that makes it more likely we landed in Twilight's castle, which means we're in Ponyville. Welcome!"

"No way!" Screwball looked about wildly before she spotted a window and vanished right through it. She turned slowly, eyes glistening with window. "Woah..."

Comforting joined her silently, floating up beside her. "Better?"

"Better?! You rescued me!" Screwball squeezed Comforting tight. "I never thought I'd get back here... Um..." She put a hoof to her chin. "Not sure where I should live though."

Comforting inclined her head. "Where did you live before... all this." She waved at Screwball widely.

"I didn't."

Comforting blinked slowly. "Uh... You were homeless?"

"Not exactly?" Screwball shrugged softly. "I think Discord kinda dreamed me up or something."

Comforting squinted at Screwball. "I... am not sure that's what happened. You forgot yourself. This is awful." She threw her hooves wide. "We should check if anyone lost a foal about when Discord came back, then we can maybe find your parents."

"Clever!" Scewball started lowering, floating towards the ground. "Let's go! I wanna find out if I have a mom and a dad. Will they remember me? I don't remember them at all."

Comforting frowned with new thoughts, landing gently on the ground. "If... you have them, they've probably already shed a lot of tears, and... we'd make new ones, finding their foal, but with no memory of them..." Would that be the nice thing to do?

"You are a chaos thing now."

"Like you," joyfully cried Screwball with a big smile and unfocused swirling eyes. "It's so nice to have a friend. Or a sister? What are you?"

Comforting crossed her arms with a thoughtful hum. "That's a good question... Consider me like... an older sister. And as your older sister, you have to listen to what I say." She smiled though. "You just have to listen though. If I'm talking nonsense, you listen, and then you ignore it, but I'm going to try, as your older sister, to say things that make sense, for your benefit."

"You've been nothing but great so far." Screwball tried to stand as Comforting was, but she couldn't land, hooves wildly flailing for the ground that denied them. "Not fair..."

Comforting took a hold of Screwball and tried to push them to the ground. "Here." But they were like two magnets of the same pole. The closer they got, the stronger the push became. Comforting could not put Screwball on the ground. "That's odd..." It clicked though with a snap of her fingers. "Is that how you fly?!" It wasn't how Comforting flew, but when did Chaotic things have to all use the same thing?


"Is it?! Neat! You're already figuring stuff out." Screwball looked way too happy for the discovery. "Why is that pony watching us?"

Comforting turned to see Twilight in the door of her castle, staring at them. "Hi!" She waved at Twilight. "Why are you hiding way over there?"

Twilight slowly stepped down from her stairs. "Who is that?" Her eyes were on Screwball. "She looks familiar... and not in a good way."

Screwie hid behing Comforting with a squeak.

"This is Screwball." She stepped to the side, waving at her little sister. "And she needs my help. She was lost in Discord's place for.... uh... years... and now she has to get used to Ponyville again."

Twilight blinked at this new information. "I see... Well..." She considered the nervous Screwball. "That is a pony... You understand that, I hope... A young pony." She offered a hoof towards Screwball. "A confused young pony." A little smile hinted. "Like yourself, come to think... This may be more responsibility than you are ready to accept."

Comforting folded her arms firmly. "As her older sister, I am not abandoning her! What are you suggesting?"