//------------------------------//
// Chocolate Made of Chocolate 
// Story: Last Ditch 
// by MaxKodan 
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Last Ditch
Chapter 2:  Chocolate Made of Chocolate
Max Kodan


A squee of joy escaped Pinkie Pie's mouth as she rocketed down the water slide, reaching out and snatching cupcakes and cookies left and right.  Where did they come from?  She had no idea, but did it really matter?  Cookies!  Cupcakes!  "This dream is super splendiferously awesome!"  She giggled as she zipped around another turn.

"You know it's a dream?"  A head that looked more like a donkey's than a pony's floated alongside her, just outside the impossibly long slide.  A yellow, scaled arm reached out, daintily holding a large piece of cake.  The pony snatched it almost the instant it appeared.  Discord looked around.  They had just passed a mountain made of ice cream, and there seemed to be an avalanche of whipped cream following them now.

Pinkie shot him a glare.  "Of course it's a dream.  Sprinkles aren't that big in real life."  Even as she spoke, an enormous blue sprinkle accelerated out of the avalanche and smashed into Discord's disembodied head, and with a shout he fell back into the froth.  He emerged a few moments later, his dragonlike body and remaining limbs now fully formed.  He slithered through the air  and caught up, saying something that was drowned out by the roar of the collapsing mountain of whimsy.  "Sorry!  Can't hear you!" the pink pony turned her nose up at her old enemy, then quickly resumed her giddy laughter, completely ignoring him.

This irked Discord, the physical embodiment of everything nonsensical, more than anything that had happened before.  He stewed for a moment, then became angry.  "ENOUGH!" his voice exploded out of his throat with such force that everything stopped.  The slide was gone, and he stood face to face with the now sweet-deprived mare amidst an orbiting mass of sugar-laden satellites which rotated around them in large chunks.  "Enough of this foolishness!"  He boomed.  Then he stopped and looked around, composing himself.  "Hm, 4 words that I never thought would escape my mouth in that order."  He straightened his back, moving his hands as if he were adjusting his tie.  "Now-"

"Don't care!"  Pinkie Pie bounced past him, heading towards a large, floating meteor made entirely of marzipan.  She leaped and snapped, but every time she got close, the mass simply shifted away, always just out of reach.  "Awww!  This really IS a nightmare!"  she groaned, sitting down in a huff.  Discord strode toward her, balancing his temper with his desires.

"You knoooow~," he crooned, now back to the smooth, suave fast-talker he was.  "There's this...thing.  This substance..."

"Don't care!"  The pony attempted to bounce away again, but was stopped when Discord grabbed her and dragged her back to stand in front of him, his hands on her front shoulders, though not rough or harsh.

"Stop that.  This substance is the sweetest, most amazing tasting thing in the universe.  You know what it is?  What it really is?  It's real, 100% pure essence of sweet."  Pinkie looked unimpressed.  "You...don't get it.  This stuff can make anything into the tastiest thing you can imagine!  And no negative effects!  No tooth decay, no stomach aches, no overfilling, no nausea, no nothing!  Just pure ecstasy for your taste buds."  He grinned widely.  While Pinkie's face seemed stoic and distant, as if she were completely ignoring him, her eyes betrayed her.  There was a glint there, a glint of greed.  Or probably nothing quite so extreme, but Discord preferred the word greed.

"Don't...care."  She didn't seem quite so convinced this time around.  Her legs faltered a little bit, and Discord saw his chance.

"I'll tell you where it is." A grin slid across his face.  "You can get it as soon as you wake up."  He blinked, and his eyes opened to a hypnotic spiral.  He stared deep into Pinkie Pie's eyes, and he could see himself reflected in them.  "All you need to do is go break my spell.  I have it, cased in stone with me.  All you need is a big hammer..."

"What?  I'm not breaking you out!"  The pony's response surprised Discord so much that he pulled back.  "You're my biggest enemy, and now you're trying to trick me!"

Discord thought on his feet.  "So you don't like me, do you?"

"No!"

"Almost hate me?"

"Yeah!"

"Hate me enough to want to go smash my stone likeness with a hammer!!"

"No way!"

Somewhere along the line, Pinkie regained her control over her own dream, apparently, because the next instant she was holding a massive mallet, and the head was swinging down towards him.

"Wait, when did you-!"

Pinkie Pie didn't really wake up, but she stood in her bed, holding a pillow over her head, slamming it down on the headboard repeatedly.  When she did wake up, several hours later, she found herself sleeping on a bare pillowcase and surrounded in feathers.  It was a few moments later before she realized that she was not in a feather-covered bedroom, but a feather covered kitchen.  "Wow!"  She intoned cheerfully.  "I should sleep in the kitchen more often!  Now I don't have to go anywhere to make breakfast!"