Chapter 6,
For want of a war
Γ Gamma
She shook her head, trying to clear some of the cobwebs, and smacked into an unyielding but not hard surface. 'What is?- it all came back to her in a sudden rush.
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The chariot had landed close to the library outside of town, the six running the last leg themselves. Arriving at the library they had discovered Spike sitting outside on the grass, tears of frustration in his eyes, chained to a stake in the ground. After freeing him and determining he was unharmed, Rarity's panic became a simmering rage. Then somepony noticed the new sign over the door: "No Running, No Flying, No Magic, No Yelling, and No Pets."
There was nothing to do but follow the white unicorn as she charged the library - her shouts suddenly shifting to silence as she passed the threshold. Which is where things started to get confused.
Draconequus in a sweater-vest, tweed coat (with elbow patches), and glasses. First time seeing him in three dimensions, not helped by the costume. Crashing noise as Fluttershy tries to fly and - Jackie points out the lack of horns and wings. Somepony tries to scream, all that comes out is a quiet squeak. Everypony tries to talk at once, which is more confusing than one would expect with all voices at a raised whisper. The mad jumble of noise and books and pony seemed to stretch on for a month or two before -
"Girls, girls, girls..." Discord raised his paws in a placating motion, "I enjoy a good bedlam as mu-" he glanced at the pony closest to him, frowning - "...I probably like mass panic more than all of you put together, but I'm on a limited schedule here. So what can't I do for you?"
Rarity reined herself in, "We want the Elements of Harmony, Discord. We- Twilight figured out your riddle and... " Rarity saw something she didn't at all care for in draconequus's expression. "Well Jacqueline, it looks like you were right. Come on girls, he has moved them."
"Now hold on there, Assistant Professor Bell, I never said the Elements weren't here-"
"You don't have to. I, 'sir', know 'hogwash' when I see it. With the expression on your face right now, you could head over to Sweet Apple Acres after this and see to their pigs."
"Actually, Rarity, pigs are surprisingly good at grooming themselves - we almost never have to -"
"Twi? It's an expression, sug. An' you just ruined it. That feller isn't fit to wash hogs."
"Twists and turns... beginnings. Argh, I almost have it..." a pink pony pondered, perplexed.
The blue former pegasus stepped forward, "I think I've got this one girls. Yo, D, any chance you'd be willing to just put the Elements back where they should be?"
The serpentine figure loomed over the ponies, leering slightly, "Oh sure, I can put the Elements in their proper locations, from which your amateur librarian friend here could easily find them - in this library, Chaos's honor. Is that what you want?"
Everypony knew this wasn't going to turn out well, Rainbow Dash included, but she didn't seem to be able to stop herself from nodding. Then everything went black.
***** *** *** *** *****
Twiilght shook her head, which felt disturbingly light without... 'No, I do not have the time to panic.' The filtered sunlight told her it was still daytime. Hard wood below and above her and the singular scent of aged paper mingled to remind her of library trips past - 'No, damn it, NOT NOW!' with several violent lurches she managed to unwedge herself from her bookshelf prison.
She stood up, groaning and stretching after her shelved confinement. She was sure, looking around, that she was still in the library. 'So what section am I... ' she looked at the sign hanging nearby which read REFERENCE: Apples - Astronomy 'I don't know whether to growl, laugh, or cry... feathered smartequuss.' It was obvious Twilight needed to hurry, find her friends, try to retrieve the Elements of Harmony, and check on her laundry. 'Now hold on a minute, what I really need to do right now is thi- … who in the name of - GET OUT OF MY HEAD!'
The draconequus staggered back, the powerful psychic outburst having disoriented him for a moment. He smacked his lips together, "... why do I taste pine?" Further quips were cut off as a loud bang was followed by several bookshelves falling like dominoes, only to crash on top of the creature, covering all but his head and lion's paw in copies of Encyclopedia Equestria.
"What the hay is wrong with you!?" Twilight hissed in as loud a whisper as the library's twisted rules would allow. Not being able to shout made her angrier. "You're like some horrible eighth-yearling who's discovered that ants and magnifying glasses don't go together on sunny days, and keeps at it!" If she could reach into the green, maybe she could calm down, feel the web of life around her... 'Oh, right, somequus TOOK MY HORN.' "Aren't you several hundred - if not thousand - years old? How can making others miserable still be so attractive to you?"
"Oh save your moralizing for someone who buys your act, Twilight Sparkle." Discord rolled his eyes, grunting as he turned his head to face the purple uni pony. "Element of Honesty? Ha! I couldn't have made a funnier joke if I had been trying."
"The spirit of Disharmony is lecturing me about morality... what in Equestria am I doing with my life?" Twilight wailed, placing a hoof over her muzzle. She brought it back down with an audible bang, "Oh, yeah, I'm helping to SAVE THE WORLD. Your jab is a little weak, Discord."
"When I start attacking your character, you'll know it. Uhff." two hundred hard-bound reference guides turn out to be a pretty heavy pile of things to be pinned under. "But I stand... figuratively, by my statement. You. Are. Not. Honest." His paw gestured as Twilight made to reply, "ah ah ah, you may see things clearly, you may even blurt out inconvenient personal thoughts rather than keeping anything from ponies around you - but I know the truth. All of the things you say are a screen to keep from having to say the things you really don't want to. Give ponies enough of a taste of the truth and they won't ask for seconds, am I right?" he leered a conspiratorial grin.
"You just contradicted yourself. I mean, I do share thoughts that I have that I'd rather not - because they lead to secrets. So if I don't hide my worst thoughts from ponies, there's nothing left for me to-"
"Dear sweet Faust with a hand cramp, I half believe you have yourself fooled too!"
"Discord, nothing you... oh no, I'm not making that mistake. Look, I'm convinced that I'm right - and that you're pretty much a jerk. Under those circumstances your attempts to undermine my identity with such a transparent ruse are pathetic. Just let us have the Elements of Harmony, I promise I'll talk to the others and we can work something out - hay, I almost feel sorry for you."
"You do!?" Discord exclaimed, disappearing under the pile of books and somehow popping up behind the surprised pony, only to pick her up in a hearty hug. "Oh wisn't dat jus thu' sweetesht thing?" He set her back on the ground, hopping up to sit on top of the pile of books. "I am a changed spirit. Just do one teensy little thing for me and I'll give you the whole set of elements, pinkie promise." his paws made a complex series of motions that looked like he wanted to poke out his eye.
"A what now?" Twilight deadpanned.
Discord's smile fell, "that just cost you some of my good mood. Nevermind. I will believe in your true blue honesty if you can tell me the worst thoughts you have for three of the ponies you're closest to."
"This is one of your games, isn't it? Fine."
"That's the spirit! I'll start you with an easy one." The serpentine creature held a dark red cloth, which he whipped into the air, revealing a pony-length mirror as the cloth snapped back down.
Instead of Twilight's reflection, however, an image of her white and purple friend appeared, horn and all. "Rarity? Well..." she chewed her lip for a moment, "she's... she can be really cranky. And when she thinks somepony is being mean to her or condescending or anything, she gets very snippy... like too much, more than whatever the other pony was doing. I mean, sometimes she even feels bad about it afterward." Discord made a rolling motion with his paws. "Okay, she can be a nag sometimes. I love her, she's one of my best friends, but she really can be a nag."
The spirit of chaos tilted his head back and forth, tilting his eagle claw side to side, "Okay, I'll accept that. Next." With another ripple of cloth, the image in the mirror became that of her big brother, Shining Armor - sans armor.
Twilight laughed, "This is easier than the last one. Shiny has, like, no ability to stand up to mares. None. Big strong Stallion, Captain of the Royal Guard, master of shield magic, awesome big brother, but he's a pushover when a mare starts shouting. It's about as sad as it is adorable, but it almost cost him the love of his life."
"Oho, I think you're getting into the spirit of this. But the last one isn't going to be as easy." Discord pushed back imaginary sleeves and rolled his shoulders before flourishing the cloth a third time, and when it came down there stood before twilight a light purple unicorn mare with white, gray, and lavender mane.
Twilight's shocked expression was mirrored perfectly. "My mother!?" She glared at Discord, "fine, you want to know what I don't tell my mother, why I've avoided all possible contact with my parents for years - why I even begged Fluttershy to help me deal with them when I was ambushed at the Gala?" She turned her attention back to the other pony, her brows furrowed in a glare of indignation, frustration, and hurt. "It's because I could never be good enough for her. 'We're just worried about your future, dear'. Do you know she gave me a doll with a notepad, so I could pretend the doll was doing homework!?" Discord casually wiped the 'No Yelling' rule off his sign, nodding for the apoplectic purple pony to continue.
Tears of frustration formed in the corners of her eyes. "All those panic attacks, the test anxiety, my active avoidance of making friends - yeah, that's right, all through grade school I thought friends would just put me behind on my studies! I'm glad I failed the application for Celestia's School because I don't think anything less than being the Princess's star pupil would have satisfied them. I was completely neurotic..."She raked her hooves through her mane, screaming at the image, "I WAS A CHILD! Why couldn't you let me be one? I loved you, I still love you, I just can't stand the sight of you... "
It was while she paused to get her breath back that Twilight noticed the soft hiccuping sound. Red rimmed eyes mirrored her own, tears streaming down her mother's face... and no mirror to be seen. "I... oh Celestia, I never meant to hurt you... we just... ohhhhhh." Twilight started to reach a hoof when a snap of red fabric whirled across her vision and replaced the confrontation with a corridor of bookshelves.
"No- that wasn't what you said... but I... "
"You meant every word, Twilight Sparkle. In Manehattan they charge hundreds of bits an hour for service like that."
The mare couldn't even bring herself to glare at the patchwork creature standing over her. "I... that was all me. If I had ever talked to her you wouldn't have been able to..." color began to leach from her hooves.
Discord knelt next to her, touching the top of her mane as he whispered in her ear, "Honest words can cut the deepest, becoming the cruelest of acts. To keep from losing loved ones, you must find other tacts. If you can't baffle them with horse apples, blind them with facts." Twilight's eyes swirled in a mix of muddy colors as the last of her coat and mane grayed. "Goodbye, my only worthy opponent."
The spirit of disharmony slithered away muttering to himself. "I'm through playing around. This time I am NOT going to lose, I'm NOT going to be a statue EVER AGAIN!"
** *** **
The clatter of hooves could be heard down the library. A staccato rhythm with a repeating frequency of approximately fourteen point eight seconds, worried but not yet in a panic.
"Twilight, darling! I'm so glad to see you, come on, we need to find the others."
"The most effective search pattern, known as a grid search, is a pattern of repeating divisions of unsearched space into consecutively smaller quadrants." Twilight trotted after the white mare, staring forward with disinterest.
"Err, thank you dear." Rarity bit her lip as she glanced at her friend, 'Something is wrong here, but we have so little time. I'll just have to figure it out on the hoof, as it were.' "I'm not going to lose to you, Discord."