Higher Ground

by Lissamel

Hello Again, Sir!

Rainbow Dash was, quite honestly, not Discord’s favorite pony. He found her annoyingly smug (which was actually a decent description of Discord himself) and was pretty sure she had quite a few conflicting loyalties. Element of loyalty, his…Er, hoof, he guessed. However, if Twilight Sparkle was a Jekyll-Hyde lawyer in this place, he was very curious to see what everypony else was, if only because he still had no idea how in Equestria he was going to get back to the normal dimension.

He flittered up to the clouds, staring at one of the white ones, as though almost trying to will it to change color. It didn’t, of course. Growling, he proceeded to mold the cloud into a star shape, since he wanted to be different somehow. Discord then quietly sat on the cloud, waiting for a certain pegasus to zip by.

She did, mere seconds after he sat down. At first, she seemed not to notice, though suddenly froze up and stared first at the cloud and then at Discord. “What did you do to my cloud!?” She snapped.

“Well, I just thought they could be more…Decorative.”

She quickly scanned him up and down with at least five jerky head motions. “And you don’t have a badge! Why are you molding clouds without a badge!? You could be banished!” She paused to give an irritated sigh. “Don’t you know how Triple-W works!? I can’t just have any pegasus doing anything they wanted!”

“Rules are meant to be broken.” He replied simply. This Rainbow Dash was apparently high-strung. Oh, he could play around with this. “And don’t you have some, I don’t know, friends or something to see?”

Dash seemed confused for a split second, then shook her head. “I can’t have friends! If I have friends, they’ll keep trying to talk to me and then I won’t have time to make all the weather in Equestria picture-perfect, and if it isn’t picture-perfect then Triple-W will fire me and if Triple-W fires me, then it’s all over!” She stopped, gasping. “I forgot to make it rain over by Applebuck Acres!” She realized, and then darted off, carting the storm cloud that had previously annoyed him behind her.

Well, he’d seen how some pegasai changed the weather before. And hey, anywhere could use a good hailstorm, right? Smiling to himself, Discord stood up and began jumping on his cloud, at first making it rain but then freezing it into hail roughly the size of jelly beans.

He smiled wider. Oh, what pony just liked a mundane partly-cloudy day? He flew to the next cloud and did it again. With angered shouts and complains as background music, he went from cloud to cloud, jumping just enough to make it hail.

“WHAT ARE YOU DOING!?”

He should have known his fun wouldn’t last long.

Dash zipped up to him, panic dancing in her eyes. “Oh dear Celestia! Now people are going to file complaints and then Celestia will have to come and fire me and then I’ll get replaced by that Ditzy…Derpy…Something!” In a mad rush, she began stomping on the clouds to make the hail stop.

And quietly following behind her was Discord, hopping on the clouds again to make it rain.

When she finished all the clouds she found, to her shock, a third of them were raining. Growling, she zipped back to make them stop, only to look over and find it snowing in some places.

Discord yawned with a little smile. After all, this was his game.

Fed up with it all, she bumped him out of the way before flying, faster and faster and faster, around the clouds, making something of a rainbow-hued tornado. It didn’t have the time to touch down on the ground, since she stopped just before then, leaving the clouds in a perfect sphere.

She zipped back to him, her nose almost pressing against his face. “Now look what you’ve done! I have to go rearrange those clouds in double time just because you wanted to play mad scientist with the weather! And people are going to file complaints and then I’m—You know what, you know the drill! Just leave the clouds alone, you got it!?”

“Sorry,” He smiled, “But that’s not what I do.”

“Then start doing it!” Dash snapped, then suddenly panicked about something. “What did I make the weather in Canterlot?” Seemingly out of nowhere, she yanked out a clipboard and flipped though the papers, gasping. “Light clouds!? I made them heavy! Oh dear Celestia, and the gala is so close I can’t mess this up!”

“Certainly I could do it for you.”

“NO!” She nearly screamed. “And don’t touch anything, y’hear!?”

And with that and a rainbow streak, she was gone again.

Of course, you can’t give a command like ‘don’t touch anything’ to somepony known for chaos and then just leave a sphere of clouds in front of him and expect him to do nothing. He flew up to the top of the ball and began walking, rolling it across the sky, a smear of cloud marking his path. He whistled, as though smearing clouds was his day job.

He made a hopscotch board in the sky and then broke off a small hunk of cloud, tossing it at a space. It landed on space number eight. He hopped from space to space, the ball still rolling under him.

He drew a giant maze with lots of loops and turns and dead ends. Looking down, he saw some fillies trying to solve it by tilting their heads. One of them was smiling smugly, obviously, it had won.

He sketched a tic-tack-toe board and began to play a round with a brown earth pony. The earth pony won, to his dismay.

He tried a round of Hang-Pony with two mares. He won, though it might have been because using French words was hardly fair game (the word being, of course, désaccord).

However, just after the game, the cloud ran out. He stood on a little block of cloud and looked around the sky, admiring his work. Wouldn’t Rainbow Dash be surprised! Discord sat down, awaiting her return.

‘Surprised’ was not the emotion she used when she did come back from Canterlot. Actually, the emotion was more like ‘enraged’.

She didn’t even bother to yell at him as she zipped around, forcing the smeared cloud shapes to return to their more puffy, natural state of being. When she got to the little bit of cloud with Discord on it, though…

“CAN’T YOU JUST DO WHAT YOU’RE TOLD FOR TEN SECONDS!?”

“Oh, certainly. I just don’t want to.”

Hissing, she bumped him out of the way again before molding the last cloud back to normal again. She then pointed to the ground. “Out of my sky. Now.”

“Fine, fine.” He grumbled. He’d had his fun and had somewhat run out of ideas. Well, he could make a giant cloud castle—Oh, great, right when he gets an idea he’s forced out of the sky by Rainbow Dash.

He landed on the ground (or, at least, close as he could, since he was not attempting to walk on hooves again) and looked up, watching Dash rearrange the clouds once again. Well, if he needed amusement, he now knew the pony to go to.

Lets see, four more ponies he wanted to find to see? Looking back and forth, he decided perhaps he would see Pinkie Pie next. I mean, she was…okay…he guessed. Didn’t she have a job somewhere…?

From wandering blankly, Discord found himself in front of a bakery called Rhubarb Pastries. Well, obviously, that would be where Pinkie was, if she wasn’t out throwing some party. He pushed open the door, a bell announcing his entrance.

Comments

[Lissamel]

First of all, oh dear Celestia. I did NOT expect so many comments. Usually after I post something, it goes unnoticed and I forget about it until one obscure person comments, I remember it for all of a week, and then I forget all over this. Thank y'all for making me extremely giddy.

I think all of the last chapter's issues can be blamed to Twilight. While I have ideas for everypony, Twilight's was...Honestly, the least interesting. I could think of nothing. In hindsight, this means she should be, I dunno, last, but what do I know about pacing?

Anyway, Rainbow Dash, everyone. Hopefully she can make this twenty percent cooler.

[PonyPonyX]

Now there's the Chaos.

[Marshmallow Swirl]

I wonder what Pinkie is doing, also, great story!
~Marshmallow Swirl

[Ducreux'ed]

I like what he'd doing here, it really in character.
I tend to try not to give out the cliche "OMG it was awesome" speech, but this is brilliant.

sadanduseless.com/wp-content/uploads/2010/06/681.jpg

It's one of these stories you wish was longer because you enjoy every second of it, the pacing is perfect and it doesn't have any of that annoying filler used purely to make it longer, or any unneeded dialog scenes. The proper characterization of Discord helps too.

[Bishieluver01]

I have a bad feeling about talk of Celestia banishing ponies left and right...

[Moon_Dew]

So Twilight's a Jekyll/Hyde Lawyer doomed to do the same case over and over again on the threat of banishment, and Dash's a workaholic with too much to do perfectly in too little time...

...I'm guessing Pinkie Pie's gonna be the dullest living being in the world.

[hanatoro]

Given how Rainbow and Twi are, I'm slightly worried about Pinkie now. Her 4th wall powers could be disastrous if they're used for anything but rule of funny.

[hanatoro]

Given how Rainbow and Twi are, I'm slightly worried about Pinkie now. Her 4th wall powers could be disastrous if they're used for anything but rule of funny.

Actually, now that I think about it, I dread the meeting with Fluttershy.