Catchup: It's Not Just For Hayfries Anymore
Author's Note: This chapter talks about material that may be triggering for some readers, beyond what we've already seen; specifically rape threats, male on female; explicit gore.
That really wasn't hard at all! I had quite a bit of fun with it, too.
It wasn't hard to identify the waitress who'd kidnapped me -- while all the waitresses at Something Different wear beehive hairdos (it's a Baltimare thing), I'd spent quite some time looking at this particular pony, from all the angles. I'm not entirely sure which of the other waitresses were the specific three who joined in the fun -- sometimes ponies all look alike to me, you know? But this one, I'd studied.
I followed her home. Mostly by flying slowly above her, invisible. Pegasi generally fly above the buildings -- it's why Manehattan and Canterlot are the only pony cities dominated by tall structures. Baltimare's a port city, and ports live and die by the whims of the sailors coming to trade, and with their weather control abilities pegasi make up more than their fair share of sailors. (For some reason, earth ponies don't appreciate being out on the water so much. Can't imagine why not.) So if you hover two average pony-heights in the air, the only pony you're likely to run into is Celestia (that mare has amazing legs.) She lived alone, in a small apartment, presumably so that if she got lucky and found a boytoy she didn't need to drug into submission, she wouldn't have to arrange matters around a roommate's schedule. All the better for me.
I waited until she'd taken her skates off (can you believe she skated all the way home? But then, skating's also a thing in Baltimare), washed off the travel dust, and poured herself a drink. Hard cider. My my, our little friend liked to live it up in all kinds of ways, didn't she? I waited until she had a mouthful of cider and then appeared directly next to her (or, more precisely, most of my body curved over her back, part of my tail behind her, and my face next to hers. Pony language actually is rather poorly designed for describing what I do with my body easily.) "Well, hello there!" I said to her cheerfully, as she spit out most of her cider and dropped her glass on the floor. "You ran off so quickly last time, you didn't even give me a calling card! How did you expect me to contact you for another date?"
The unicorn tried to step backward, backing away from me, which was silly because I was draped over her. I lifted my tail and twined it with hers so she wouldn't step on it. She shrieked and tried to lunge forward, which only brought her head and neck slamming into my neck, as I'd just circled her head with my neck so my face was now on her other side. "Oh my!" I said. "In a rush, are we? That's quite all right, though, I remember how quickly you wanted to get down to business last time!"
She tried to shriek, but what came out of her mouth was a word balloon, a jagged one with the word "AAAHHH!" written on it. "Ah-ah-ah," I said. "Don't want to disturb the neighbors. Now I wanted to make sure that we're communicating properly, because I feel as if we might have fallen down a bit on that last time, but we won't get to have any fun if your landmare calls the cops. So I thought this would be a great way to make sure we can talk, without you being loud about it." I leered at her deliberately. "Maybe later I'll go with a traditional soundproofing spell. If I recall correctly you're quite the screamer!"
More word balloons spilled out of her mouth. "Please," they said mutely, in that kind of all-caps bold italic writing that you mostly only find in comic books. "Please, I'm sorry, please don't hurt me..."
"Hurt you? Now whyever would I want to do that?" I grinned at her. "We had so much fun the last time. All I want is a repeat engagement! But this time it's my turn to be on top. Don't worry--" I dangled a set of four leather cuffs, hoof-sized, with fur lining, in front of her. (These were conjured, of course -- nothing died to provide this leather or fur -- but I knew the mare would be able to smell that they were, actually, leather and fur. Maybe it's a bit overkill to be three times the size of a pony, with claws and teeth, and be the god of chaos, and taunt the target with goods made of leather, but I was hankering for a bit of overkill, actually.) "I made sure to bring my own gear!"
She actually managed to toss me off her and run for the door. I teleported in front of her, grinning. "Oh! Is this the game we're playing?" She spun and tried to run again, and I intercepted her again. "This is fun! Tell me, did you ever do this with any of the stallions you loved and left down in your basement, or am I the first one you've ever played tag with?" She blasted me with magic, quite uselessly as her harmonic spell simply unraveled against my chaos field. Then she picked up a coffee table and threw it at me. I turned it into an ordinary, rain-bearing cloud and let it fall apart around me, leaving a puddle of rain on her apartment floor. "Mm, refreshing." She started throwing everything her magic could grab at me. I turned all of it into flowers. "My dear, you don't have to shower me with gifts," I said. "Just your presence is enough for me!"
At this point she fell to her knees and started crying, which was funny, because the word balloons were coming out with "*sob* *sob*". I picked her up in my tail and lifted her to my face again. "Crying? Just because I said you didn't need to give me flowers? You're definitely a high-maintenance sort of gal, you know that?"
The word balloons were coming out so fast they were falling over each other, as if she was babbling. More of the "please let me go" and "please don't hurt me" variety. I laughed. "Oh, you little minx. You're getting me back for how I played the part last time, aren't you? One would almost think you didn't want me." I pulled her even closer, turning her slightly so I could breathe against her ear. "Of course we both know that's not true. After you drugged me, and dragged me off, and tied me up, there isn't any question about you wanting me, now is there?"
"You're a monster!" the next word balloon said.
"How rude! If you preferred the stallion form I wore last time, you could have asked nicely. Now I don't feel like switching into it. So there." I murmured directly in her ear. "Don't worry, though. I assure you, even in this form I'm completely compatible with ponies."
She sobbed harder, shaking her head back and forth. As amusing as this had been, I decided to bring the little charade to a close; when they start crying like that, you're not going to get much more variety in reaction out of them no matter what you do, and obviously I had no intention of doing what I was pretending I was going to do. "Wait, wait," I said. "No? You're saying no?" She nodded her head vigorously. "Oh, good, you're actually saying yes. I was worried--" More frantic headshaking, and word balloons saying "No, no, I don't want this, please," came falling out of her mouth. "You don't want this?" She didn't fall for it this time; instead of nodding or shaking, she went with the word balloons saying "I don't, I don't want it, please don't touch me, please" and that sort of thing.
So I dropped her. "Well, that's a surprise," I said. "After you wanted it so badly last time... oh. Oh, I know what your problem is." I nodded knowingly. "It's too soon, isn't it? It must be intense, playing rough like that. Well, I can see how a mare might need some recovery time after being with me. I'm sure you're quite exhausted." I winked at her.
She stared up at me from the floor, a wonderful look of total confusion on her face, fear leavened by just a touch of hope. That's really where I like them to be, teetering just on the razor edge between despair and relief, when their minds are alive to all the possibilities their future might hold, and they don't have the slightest idea which way it will go. "I tell you what," I said. "To be honest, this no-safewords play is a little bit edgy for me. It's fun, don't get me wrong, but I personally would feel just a little bit better if we had a signal. Something that doesn't interrupt the roleplay or ruin the immersion, but that makes it clear what we both want. Hmm."
Again she backed away from me, so I teleported to her and coiled around her again. "I have the perfect solution! I want to hear what you think of it." I snapped my talon, so she could talk again. She opened her mouth and tried to scream, but nothing but a hoarse croak came out. "What did I say about bothering the neighbors? I want to hear you talk, not yell. Sheesh, my ears are right here."
"I'm sorry, I'm so sorry, please let me go, if I'd known who you were I wouldn't have gone near you, please..."
"Oh, my dear, if I believed that it would break my heart! To think you'd reject me so cruelly for my true appearance, after all we've meant to each other." I nuzzled her neck slightly, and she shuddered. "But I know you don't mean it. You're just playing the game! So let me know what you think of this for a signal."
I looked directly into her eyes. "I come back to your restaurant," I said. "I'm wearing a different form. Maybe I'm an earth pony this time. Maybe I'm a pegasus. We'll mix it up! I know, my true form is a little bit intimidating for mares, they can't quite handle so much concentrated sexy, so I'll downgrade just like I did before. Be more approachable." I leaned in close. "And all you have to do to tell me you're ready for funtime is to do exactly the same thing you did last time."
"...What?" she whimpered.
"Just that! If you're feeling kind of sore, if you're tired, got a headache, not in the mood? Just leave me alone. Take my order, bring me my food, and nothing extra. But if you'd like me to tie you up and demonstrate exactly what I can do with this tongue--" I waggled it at her-- "just drug me or cart me off like you did last time! Hold me at knifepoint, hit me over the head, however you want to do it. The important thing is the verisimilitude. You'll play like you're overpowering me, and then I turn the tables on you and ravish you the same way you did to me, last time. Won't that be fun?" I grinned at her. "Though I'll probably take this form back once I've got you in my power. Hooves are all well and good but you don't know what you're missing if you've never experienced fingers." I did a little air piano in front of her to demonstrate.
"...please..."
"Yes, I can see how eager you are! But you're right, we don't have to play tonight, I'm sure I thoroughly satisfied you yesterday." I leered at her again. "So the next time I'm in the mood, I'll come by, and if you're feeling frisky, just take me captive! And if you're not, then just treat me like an ordinary customer, no Happy Ending down in the basement, and I'll know you mean you're not up for it this time and I should come back another day. Sound good?"
"H-how will I know it's you?"
I laughed heartily. "You won't! Think of how gloriously unpredictable that will be! Any fella you decide to show a good time to might be me! Or any lady--" at this point I released her and took the form of the model Fleur de Lis. "I can be quite a sexy mare if you decide your door swings both ways." Back in my own form, I leaned forward. "Hey, listen. I didn't get the addresses of your pals, but do let them know the offer's open to them as well. If you decide you're not up for it but any of them want a bit of fun, same deal -- they can just take me captive and try to sex me up, and that'll be a pretty unmistakeable signal, don't you think? I mean, hard to misinterpret that one." She started whimpering again. "Oh, cheer up, my dear, it's not every day you catch the attention of the god of chaos! Do you know, you were my first in a thousand years? Not by my choice, of course, it's just hard to get action when you're a stone statue. But believe me," I leaned even closer and murmured in her ear, "you were very, very memorable." (Side note: she wasn't. She was surprisingly vanilla for a rapist.) She shuddered, her eyes closing tightly and tears leaking out. "I'd wait for you for twenty years if that's how long it takes, dear heart. You could be an old, old lady, and all you'll have to do to get some fun is conk some fellow you don't know over the head... and it'll probably be me."
I let her go and teleported, half of the flower-strewn room between her and me. "In any case, since you're not in the mood tonight, I'll take my leave. But do remember me the next time you want to get wild with the date rape drugs, won't you? I'll be looking forward to it!"
And then I came back here.
I could be wrong -- I am not always the best judge of pony behavior -- but I feel safe in saying that that is a mare who will most likely never attempt to rape anypony, ever again.
But all good things come to an end. I've had my fun today; it's time to bite the bullet and tell you all the sad, sordid details of my de-tailing. (Which I am fully recovered from, thank you for asking. It doesn't even ache when I curl it tightly anymore.)
So if you were paying attention, and I'm sure you were because how could you not be riveted to every word I write?, you certainly must remember how I talked about being consumed with a red-hazed hatred and desire to go charging off to wreak some nefarious vengeance, at the end of my first entry in this journal. I knew that I had to do something villainous, or the role Anon wanted to force me into would drive me into it, and if I was pushed rather than going of my own free will it was likely to be far stupider, and more dangerous for me, than something I chose to do.
I chose to check up on Woona. Because really as a good little villain I should be gloating at her, and giving her the opportunity to say "You'll never get away with this!" so I can say "On the contrary, my dear, I already have... muwahahahaha!" and suchlike. More seriously I wanted to talk to her about Anon. If she hadn't broken free of the dreamworld I inceptioned her into by now, then either Anon made her seriously, seriously stupid, and pointing out her own incapacity to her might get the wheels turning... or she was eager to remain in a dreamworld and wasn't fighting hard to return to reality, which sounded like either a weakness I could exploit, or a subconscious awareness that she was being screwed over in real life.
By this point it had been nearly two weeks since my first confrontation with Anon. I was frankly astonished Luna had remained imprisoned for so long. I mean, I know I'm good, but that good? I impress even me. I was also rather shocked that nopony (or human) had bothered to check the Castle of the Two Sisters. Really, how does that level of stupidity even survive?
Luna was still asleep on the floor of the castle. I had provided her with a bed, and an adorable blankie, and a lacy, frilly nightgown so ridiculously long that it would have dragged on the ground if I'd worn it, mostly because I'd wanted to see Luna try to jump to her feet in a battle posture, get tangled in her nightgown, and faceplant. But all of these accoutrements had vanished, either because of the general impermanence of chaos magic and the fact that it had been two weeks, or because one of my narrow escapes from Anon had disrupted it. However, this had not woken her up. She was still lying peacefully on the castle floor, her chest rising and falling and the eyes behind her lids moving about jerkily, but no other movement. It puzzled me. I knew she was quite all right -- an alicorn in a magical sleep won't need food, water, or a potty break any more than a sleeping dragon would -- but I was surprised that she was still under. I'd half expected the moon to awaken her on the first night, let alone this far in.
Carefully -- I'm not completely incautious -- I stepped into her dream.
The quality of the weave amazed even me. I'd built this dream for her, but she'd taken it over at some point, making it rich and vivid to the point of hyper-reality. It wasn't hard to see why she hadn't broken free of it, either, as the very first thing I saw in the dream was an evening parade in Luna's honor, revering her for a military victory against the caribou. Soldiers and freed slaves marched in the parade, ponies threw white lilies and moonflowers in front of her chariot, and the air was filled with the sound of laughter and cheering and marching bands and excited foals shouting at each other, "Look! Look! It's the Princess!"
Luna has issues.
The similarity to what Anon had done to the world did not escape me. As I observed the dream further, however, I recognized that Luna made a much better god than Anon did. Her heroic exploits were actually in character, very similar to things she had actually done in her existence. The evils she spent her time challenging were mostly real, societies that Celestia had chosen to leave alone and self-ruling out of realpolitik, and I was sure the inability to crush slavers and topple tyrants as she'd done in the past, now that Celestia had created such a peaceful, orderly society, was grating to Luna. She didn't take on the sort of threats that brought out the Element Bearers; in the dream, she had become good friends with Twilight Sparkle and was engaged in teaching her some of the things Celestia had not, such as battle magic and shadow weaving and how to safely use dark magic. (This might have been questionable in real life. Celestia's opinion was that the only way to safely use dark magic was to never do it, and the fact that Luna herself had fallen didn't make the best argument for Luna's perspective on the matter.) Luna fought armies, at the head of armies of her own, and there was blood and there was sacrifice and there was death aplenty, and the fact that Luna always returned in triumph to the cheering of crowds didn't change the fact that at least it had been a hard-won battle.
I also noticed, interestingly, that Anon wasn't anywhere in the dream.
I waited until Luna was ready to retire for the morning, and popped into her bedroom. "Nice blackout curtains! With soundproofing, no less! These are nice digs, Luna, I can see why you slept right through my first little jailbreak."
"Discord!"
She snarled at me and fired a bolt of moderately dark grey magic, which had it hit me might have even done something, but I swung my tail up with a baseball bat in it and hit her magic with a good thwack, causing the bolt to fire off at the wall instead. The wall became encased in thick webbing. "Ooh! Bondage! Luna, you minx, you." I snapped my talon and covered her horn with a magic-suppressing party hat, unleashed a storm of confetti, and blew one of those roll-out noisemakers at her. Luna wasted several minutes pawing uselessly at the rubberband holding the party hat on her head, attempting to bring her hoof to bear against it in the absence of magic. Which would almost certainly have worked if I hadn't glued it to her coat, but without the dexterity of magic (or hands!) she couldn't budge it. "Now, now, Luna, I came here to party! Or was that parley? I always mix those words up."
"I have nothing to say to you, monster! How can you even be alive? I saw Anon destroy you!"
"Yeah, funny about that. Where is our favorite monkey with the hairtrigger temper, anyway? I haven't seen him around here, have you?"
She scowled at me. "I recall a rumor that you can restore yourself from the dead. Perhaps your time in the Shadowlands kept you from noticing, then. Having destroyed you, Anon returned to his own world, for it was you who were holding him here."
A rumor? Luna knows I can come back from the dead. She's seen me do it. Of course, Luna also believes that the first time I did it, I wasn't the same being when I came back -- literally, she thinks I'm some sort of dybbuk of Chaos running around in a copy of the original Discord's body. And to think, she's never actually read the X-Men's Dark Phoenix saga! But she shouldn't be thinking of my talent for cheating death as a rumor. (At this point, you are no doubt wondering, "But Discord, if you're so fantastic that you can restore yourself from the dead, why are you even afraid of Anon?" And the answer is, when he attacks me with that sword it usually disrupts my magic, and my ability to come back from the dead is very much contingent on my ability to die with my magic intact. I've never tried it, for obvious reasons, but I strongly suspect that if I die without magic or with my magic in more disarray than it is usually, I'll stay dead. And the Shadowlands are a very, very, very, very, very boring place. Admittedly slightly more entertaining than being a statue, but only slightly.) Also, the notion that I'd be keeping Anon here is laughable. But it was very interesting that Luna had kicked Anon out of her dream, in a way that made sense within the story he'd turned all of Equestria into, and without rejecting the high opinion of him that had been forced on her, but conveniently ensuring he would not be around so Luna could be the hero instead of Anon. Luna has a greater talent for seeing through illusions than any other pony I know, far better than Celestia's. Maybe some part of her was subconsciously seeing through Our Hero's façade?
"Well, now, that's just a silly idea. Why would I have wanted to keep Anon here?" I remembered then that Luna hadn't been awake when Anon had disrupted my power the first time. "He's so stolid! Maybe he needs to grow a beard."
"Cease your nonsense and leave, Discord!"
"Ca-an't make me," I caroled at her, swishing my hips in a little dance. "But let's talk about Anon." I flashed her onto a psychiatrist's couch, with myself in a chair next to it. "Zis ‘Anon' fellow, he is gute friend of yours, ja?"
The chair came to life and grabbed me, its "arms" turning into clawed hooks that clamped around mine, and straps snapping closed around my middle. Impressive! Of course, Luna has more control of the environment within a dream than I do, but I hadn't realized that that would be the case even if she didn't know it was a dream.
"I have been practicing, Discord," she said. "Honing my magic, fighting against the enemies of Equestria, the enemies of friendship and justice. I believe I am much closer to a match for you than you remember me."
This was actually not very good. Not only did Luna have more control over the dream than I did, but she had made up an excuse for herself why she could warp reality. And when I tried to free myself of the dream, I felt her will bearing down on me, holding me in place. In the past I'd run around fairly freely within Luna's dreams, over a thousand years ago when I was in stone but she wasn't yet on the moon, because I'd known about her dream powers and kept moving so she couldn't affect me with them. But I'd made the mistake of assuming she couldn't use them when she didn't know it was a dream. Apparently that wasn't the case.
"How splendid for you," I said grumpily. "Here I come just to have a friendly chat with you, and you repeatedly try to tie me up. Why, Lulu, if I didn't know better, I'd swear you were propositioning me." I waggled my tongue at her. "Or are you?"
"Keep thy tongue in thy mouth, foul beast, or I shall remove it forthwith!" she said furiously, charging up her horn... which meant that, since she was preparing to blast me in the dream and not manipulate the dream itself around me, my bonds were probably weaker. I proved it by teleporting out of them.
"Luna, Luna, Luna. This is getting us nowhere. I just came to chat with you about Anon."
"What doth he matter to thee? I shall tell thee nothing!"
When Luna goes all thee and thou, she's really riled up. She's a lot better about using modern parlance when she's calm. "Oh, just about the fact that he's not really gone, you're only dreaming that he has, and in the meantime he's warped all Equestria into some twisted theatre for a play he's putting on about what a big hero he is."
"What? Anon has been gone many a year! How dare thee speak such a transparent lie to me!"
"Now Luna, when have my lies ever been transparent? You're in a dream, Princess. You've been in one for nigh-on two weeks of real time. How do you think you got so much more powerful than you'd ever been before? Seriously, the fact that you can challenge me for even a moment should tell you I'm telling the truth."
She stared at me. "I cannot be in a dream, Discord; you lie, still. I am the Princess of Dreams; I surely would have noticed."
"Nope! Because I'm better than you are at making a realistic dream, and your mind just ran with it. You've been in here for several years, haven't you? And you haven't noticed anything strange?"
"No, and that is proof of your lies! I would never be deceived into thinking a dream is reality!" She blasted me -- I should have seen it coming, she'd been holding the charge in her horn for some time, but frankly I'd assumed she wasn't going to do anything because Luna isn't known for her patience. I went flying through the wall, which actually hurt, though in reality it probably wouldn't have. Much.
"Nice one, Lulu." I picked myself up. "But how do you think you managed to do that if this is real?"
"We have struck blows against you before, foul monster."
"With your sister's help, yeah, but on your ownsome, you're not all that, sweetheart." Luna has a sophisticated range of very unusual magics that the average unicorn simply cannot do no matter how hard they train, while Celestia has, basically, straightforward unicorn magic. But Celestia has a lot more raw power than Luna does. Celestia alone can do me some damage, sometimes, if I'm not paying attention, but Luna alone cannot, a subject of incredible frustration to her over the centuries.
"You assume that Luna is alone," a voice that sounded very much like Luna's, but deeper and strangely affected, said. "I assure you, she is not."
Great. So because this was a dream, Moonie was able to show up in it as an independent entity. She strode forward out of a conveniently placed shadow. "Hey girl!" I said. "Long time no see. You look fabulous. Have you been getting underage female humans to style your hair again?"
"Be quiet, insolent whelp!" She fired another bolt at me. That one actually hurt, too.
"Luna, did it ever occur to you that Nightie there shouldn't be running around in an extra body if this isn't a dream?" I pointed out.
"'Tis but another thing that happened whilst thou wert dead." She smirked. "Anon brought out Moon's soul e'en before thou and I battled, and reformed her, and after thy death, he and Twilight worked together to grant her a new body so she need not reside solely in my head."
Right. Anon reformed Nightmare Moon. And I'm a turnip. And Luna speaking like a time capsule again suggested she was under some sort of stress that she hadn't been under moments before Nightie appeared, when she'd been managing to remember her you's. Methinks some part of Luna doesn't truly love Anon nearly as much as she thinks she does.
"Now, prepare yourself to return to the Shadowlands once more, base creature! And this time, don't return!" Nightmare Moon snarled, and she and Luna both charged up their horns.
This was going to be a bit of an ow, I thought. "Go ahead, girls, make my day." I put up a mirror field, one that in real life would have sent their magic bouncing in all kinds of crazy directions.
Instead it cut through my mirror field like a watergun through paper. "Oh, pooh," I said, and then the combined force of the beams turned me to ice and shattered me.
And then I opened my eyes, still sitting on the floor of the Castle of the Two Sisters, while Luna smiled in her sleep, no doubt doing a happy dance with her alter that she had once more heroically destroyed a threat to Equestria. The thing about dying in a dream, contrary to many bad comic books and plays, is that it doesn't kill you; it wakes you up. The humans' fiction eventually figured this out, which is funny, because humans really can't walk in dreams not their own, whereas ponies actually can and yet this myth that dreamwalkers can die in a dream persists.
I was obviously not going to get anywhere with Luna as long as she was dreaming. On the other hand, if I woke her up, then I'd have to go to all the effort of holding her prisoner. Feeding her, keeping her locked up, making sure she didn't try any clever escape tricks, oh, it's all so boring. I never held a prisoner longer than a day or so because I just couldn't be bothered. I needed leverage. So I picked her up with my magic (what? I wasn't going to do it with my arms, alicorns are heavy. It's not like I lift or anything) and carried her outside, into the Everfree Forest.
Then I re-entered her dream. "That hurt, Luna," I said.
She was in the middle of preparing for some speech, to give at evening's fall to a crowd of adoring citizens, when I popped in on her. She whirled on me in fury. "WHY WON'T YOU STAY DEAD?!" she screamed, and blasted at me multiple times. This time I was ready for her, and dodged all of them.
"Because you never killed me in the first place," I sneered at her. I snapped my paw and collected her horn and wings; it was repetitive, but in this particular case I was consciously choosing the repetition. She'd have a much harder time lucid-dreaming her way out of one of my stunts if it was one she fully believed she couldn't counter in real life. "Luna, I am tired of this. I came here to talk to you, but since you refuse, I've brought an ultimatum." I sensed Moonie preparing to ambush me, and snapped, making her reappear in front of the both of us as a small foal. "And you! If you want to have an independent body so badly, how about you do it the way the rest of us have to? It's hardly fair. If I had to live through awkward years of being a child, then so do you."
The small foal stomped her little hoofsies in rage. "How dare you treat me this way? I am NIGHTMARE MOON!"
"Yes, yes, Moonie, the grownups are talking here," I said. "Luna. You are dreaming. I have taken your body from the safe place I'd stashed it in and I've dumped it in the Everfree Forest, sleeping. If you don't want to wake up in a manticore's gullet, you will shut up, sit down and listen."
"You wouldn't dare," she snarled at me.
"Oh, try me. You've used up all my patience, Lulu, and you know well I never had much in the first place."
"You are bluffing!" squeaked Goodnight Moon. "This isn't even a dream!"
"Can you take the risk?" I ignored the Mooninite and hung down upside-down next to Luna, my head upright and speaking in her ear. "If I'm lying to you, and you fall for my bluff, all that happens is you have to listen to me. But if you try to call my bluff, and I'm not lying, you could end up as hydra chow. Can't very well defend yourself if you're asleep, now can you?"
"Very well, then, miscreant." Let it never be said that Luna is not liberal with the use of the classy insults. "Speak, and do not further try our patience."
"Did you know that when Anon came to this world, two thirds of all the stallions in Equestria were transformed to mares, and none of them remember it?"
Luna glared at me. "If you have something serious to speak of, then do so!"
"Oh, I'm quite serious, believe me. Census records, newspaper archives... there's actually evidence that what I'm telling you is true. Once you wake up you can check it."
She snorted. "And of course ‘twould never be your way, to fake the evidence."
I laughed. "Of course ‘twould, had I but the power to make such a thorough, detailed, orderly change," I said, mocking her archaic speech. (Yes, I talked like that once too, but I was around in Canterlot Gardens listening to ponies talk while the language was evolving. Also I've always been better at adapting to change than Luna is.) "But I don't. I don't even have the power to change the sex of millions of ponies, let alone alter the memories of every pony in Equestria. I'm good, but I have limits. Apparently Anon does too, but his are above mine, as much as it pains me to admit it."
She stared at me as if I had three heads. Which occasionally I do. "Discord, you're madder than ever before. Anon has no such power. He bears the Element of Protection, that is all."
"Luna. Focus. What Element of Protection? You've been to the Tree, you've seen the markings on it. Was there ever an Element of Protection there?"
"The Element of Protection is the lost Seventh Element. It was not on the Tree when Celestia and I went there to defeat you."
"But all the Elements have to work together! How could you have defeated me if you were missing an Element?"
Little Moonie laughed. Amazing how obnoxious that laughter sounds when coming from a knee-high filly. "Oh, poor Discord! Are you troubled by something that doesn't make sense to you?"
I was about to make an undoubtedly devastatingly witty comeback when I felt a certain sense of unease. I broke the dreamwalking spell and opened my eyes, just in time to see Anon rushing at me, howling a battle cry, with his sword over his head.
"Yeep!" I teleported straight up. (Don't try this at home, colts and fillies; I was in the thick of the Everfree Forest. A unicorn who tried that stunt would have quickly learned what it was like to be a tree.) From the safety of a branch a good bit over Anon's head, I peered down. "You finally bothered to come looking at the castle? Finally? On the one day I come here to check up on Woona? This is completely unfair!"
He sneered at me. "You just think it's unfair because you're not winning!"
"Well, yes, of course, me not winning is the very definition of -- oh, how are you even climbing that tree with a sword?" It hung at his side, making "ting" noises every time it struck against his armor (did I forget to mention he was wearing his armor? Obviously, he was prepared for me, but how? I hadn't even known I was going to check up on Luna until the moment I decided to do it.) It was large and unwieldy and should definitely be preventing him from making his way up a heavily vine-overlaid and bush-crowded tree, and if the sword wasn't getting in his way, the armor should have.
I floated off the tree, out of his reach. Under the canopy of the overgrown trees, I was fairly confident that Rainbow Dash wasn't going to be able to appear out of nowhere and barrel into me. "I suppose I shouldn't be shocked that you can climb trees under these conditions," I said. The thing I intended to say right after that was, "You've warped everything else in the world to your convenience, why not give yourself magical tree climbing powers?" What came out of my mouth was "I suppose they teach you this sort of thing in monkey kindergarten, right? Do you all start shimmying up trees as soon as you can walk?"
"Is that supposed to be an insult?" he snickered at me, as I blinked, trying to figure out why I hadn't said what I meant to say, and for that matter remember what I had meant to say. "Tree-climbing is one of humanity's talents." He jumped down from the tree, at a height that really should have gotten him hurt given the armor he was wearing, but it was as if the armor was as light as his clothing -- it didn't seem to be impeding him at all. "So is making use of tools." Abruptly there was a large rock in his hand -- I hadn't even seen it get there -- and he flung it, with uncanny accuracy, directly at my eye.
I reeled back, but kept enough presence of mind to keep levitating. How had he just taken me by surprise? How had he hurt me with an entirely non-magical missile? "Oh, you think you're clever, don't you, Anon?" I snarled down at him. "Any ape can throw a rock. But I'll bet you can't hit what you can't see." I summoned a cotton candy cloud and made it rain chocolate milk on him, drenching him, as I lay down on top of the cloud. It was dense enough that I knew nothing he could throw at it would penetrate through to me, not before I sensed it coming at any rate.
He started climbing a tree again, plainly trying to get above my cloud. Now he really should not have been able to climb the tree, because the torrent of chocolate rain should have made the tree far, far too slippery, but this didn't seem to faze him. "Oh, persistent," I chuckled. "I'm sure they'll make a movie of your exploits. They could call it--" I had planned to finish that sentence with "the Man with No Name", but instead I found myself saying, "The Best Tree-Climber In Equestria."
Frustration boiled over. "How are you doing that?" I shouted at him.
"Doing what?" he smirked.
"Blocking what I planned to say and making me say something else," was what I wanted to say. Instead I said, "Climbing that tree! The chocolate milk should have made it far too slippery!"
"Like I said. Humans are great at climbing trees."
Instinctively I backed away from him (though I left the cloud in place). Now that this had happened three times in rapid succession, I was starting to be able to remember the things I had wanted to say. Enough about them that I was picking up a pattern. Deliberately I opened my mouth to say, "Why do they call you Anon, anyway?" and instead said, "Fortunately for me you're not very good at flying."
This time I remembered, and in remembering, I was able to recognize the pattern. I couldn't make a comment about Anon's name. I couldn't talk about his powers. Any time I tried, even if I concentrated on what I wanted to say, something completely different, but relatively apropos, would come out of my mouth. It wasn't that these weren't things I would say, although some of them were lame enough that my internal is-this-actually-funny censor would have cut in and blocked them had I chosen to say them. (The Best Tree-Climber In Equestria? Really?) It was just that I hadn't planned to say them. And it was disorienting every time it happened, and hard, very hard, to remember what I'd actually been planning to say.
Anon tried leaping at me, from the tree. This didn't do him very much good; I was well out of his way. He landed, with no sign that jumping down from that distance had done him the slightest bit of harm. Ponies could fall from that distance without injury but ponies were infused with magic; I'd thought a human would be more fragile. But of course, I kept forgetting. Anon was infused with magic, the magic of twisting events so they went the way he wanted them to.
"Discord, you coward!" he shouted. "Come on down here and fight like a man!"
"Oh, you mean with no magic, and pointy sticks that I don't have? That certainly sounds fair. Tell you what, why don't you toss that sword into the bushes? That would make it much more fair. No magic for you or me, just bare fists and claws. Oh, wait, your claws aren't very sharp, are they?" I toss him down a nail file. "You want to work on that?"
"If you weren't such a coward, you wouldn't be afraid to face me!"
I felt a burning rage, entirely out of proportion to his taunts, and an overwhelming desire to make him eat those words. Call me a coward, would he? I'd show him!... but I managed to cling to just enough of my rationality to realize what a terrible idea it was to let that rage consume me. Anon, or more precisely Anon's power, wanted me to attack him. And more specifically it wanted me to attack him in the most bone-headed of comic book villainous ways. I didn't care if he thought I was a coward; in my experience that taunt always means "Come fight me in a way that gives me the advantage over you!" I mean, earth ponies used to taunt unicorns and call them cowards for using magic in combat instead of their hooves. Chew on the stupidity of that for a moment.
I freely admit, if wanting to fight from my own advantage and not my enemy's is cowardice, call me a lily-livered chicken then. I have no interest in fighting fair; I am all about the fights that are totally unfair and in my favor. When I'm not fighting for my life against a more powerful opponent, I do give out handicaps to make the games more fun, but as soon as there's some chance an opponent might hurt me, well then, no more Mr. Fair Play Draconequus. So his words should have been meaningless to me, along the same lines as "You monster" and "What in the name of the seven rings of Tartarus are you supposed to be?" and "But if you do that, there'll be total chaos!" (Actually that last one is meaningful, it just means the exact opposite of what the pony saying it thinks it means. Since they usually think it's supposed to dissuade me.) And yet, I felt a disproportionate fury, and I was barely able to restrain myself from dropping to the ground and inviting him to do his worst.
Instead, I decided that if this was a fair fight, his ability to harm me should be counterbalanced by me actually harming him, not just taunting him or twisting reality around him. So I made it rain baseballs.
The result of this, while hilarious, was less damaging to my opponent than I'd have hoped. Anon started using the flat of his sword as a bat, smacking baseballs out of the air. Some of them, he even managed to make fly toward me, though I dodged fairly easily. With him fully occupied, I descended closer to the ground so I could see his face better, which improved his ratio of smacking balls toward me, but I easily redirected them into curve balls that curved around me. "Swing, batta batta batta! Swing batta!" I chanted at him, laughing.
It was hysterically funny to watch him swinging a sword around as if it were a baseball bat. Also a little unnerving; he moved too fast. It was almost as if he had extra arms -- I don't mean he actually did have extra arms and they were just invisible or something, I just mean that the speed he was hitting these things at gave the impression that he was in multiple places at once. So, since I was getting bored with watching the baseball game, I turned him into an octopus, dispelling the baseball-dropping cloud as I did so.
I completely lost it and fell over on the ground laughing as the octopus -- we're not talking a giant octopus here, we're talking a perfectly normal octopus, like the size of a pony's head -- attempted to lift the now-massive sword with its small tentacles, glaring at me with all the fury a small octopus can muster up. It was easily the funniest thing I'd seen in days. Even now, knowing that my reaction to the sight might have been influenced by Anon's power, I still think it was unbearably funny.
What happened next was not so funny. Anon the octopus leaped at me, still somehow holding his sword, and because I was down on the ground in hysterics, I didn't see him in time. He latched onto my head with most of his tentacles, the rest of them attempting to maneuver his sword into position that he could stab me or something, though it was so large and unwieldy for a small octopus that he couldn't quite manage. I shrieked, my first reaction being to attempt to pull him off my face with my talon, but octopi have some grip to them. I flew up, fast, straightening as I went, but Anon's grip on my head only tightened, and since he was lying on top of my nostrils and his tentacles were wrapped around my muzzle, I couldn't breathe. In an utter panic, I turned the octopus into a bunny rabbit.
Octopi have a very, very powerful grip. Bunnies, not so much. He fell off my face easily, his sword dropping from his paw and plonking to the ground with a crystalline "tink" noise, looking even more enraged than he had when he was an octopus. I burst out laughing again at how ridiculous he looked.
"Who's a cutesy-wutesy bunny-wunny? You are!" I said, giggling. "Oh, Fluttershy! Here's a new pet bunsie-wunsie for you!"
He hopped around infuriated, glaring up at me, making chattering rabbit noises. Then he hopped up on top of Luna, who was still sleeping (honestly, how does that mare sleep through a fight going on around her, with chocolate rainstorms no less? She was drenched and lying in a puddle of soggy mud and still asleep), and tried to use her as leverage to leap up to me... which was even funnier, and I lost it again. At least I stayed in the air as I convulsed with laughter, this time.
And then I decided to float down and boop his nose. "You are just the most adorable--"
This was the part where he leapt up onto the top of my head and bit me, hard.
I yelped and swatted at him, but he'd wrapped his paws around my antler, so it proved to be surprisingly difficult to dislodge him. I landed, no longer able to focus on levitating, and shook my head wildly, pulling at the rabbit at the same time. He shouldn't have been strong enough to stay latched on through all that, but he was.
After a few moments of flailing, I did what I should have done first -- I snapped my talon and teleported him off me, simultaneously changing him into a hamster and sticking him in a wheel. For a few moments he tried to escape by running, which of course is exactly what a hamster wheel is for. I'd healed the rabbit bites on my head by then, of course, so I was fully free to point and laugh at Hamsterman.
Then he did something blatantly impossible. He leapt up to the top of the hamster wheel, grabbed its spokes with his tiny paws, swung his lower body hard enough to fall out of the hamster wheel (it wasn't fully enclosed, only the bottom portion), and then, as I gaped at him (people who are not me are not supposed to do completely impossible things), he picked up the wheel and chucked it at my head.
I hadn't made him into a super-strong hamster, and yet, he was demonstrating more strength and flexibility than a hamster body has. I admit, I was stunned enough (and probably, impaired by his powers enough) that I simply stood there, staring at him, until the hamster wheel hit me directly in the eye.
Just because I can regenerate injury doesn't mean that getting hurt doesn't hurt. I reeled back with a startled scream and reverted my magic. This disintegrated the offending hamster wheel, but allowed Anon to pop back into his human form.
He wasted no time. By the time I'd healed my eye and looked back down, I didn't see Anon. I turned my head, and he was behind me, running straight at me with the sword. Under most circumstances, my instinctive reaction when someone is charging to attack me is to teleport, or dodge, but somehow every time I'm in danger from Anon, I seem to forget I can teleport.
Instead of doing something sensible like teleporting, and instead of doing something like what I'd done last time and teleporting taffy or something into the way, and instead of grabbing Luna and using her as a living shield (which I might not have wanted to do anyway, because he might not have been able to stop his charge, and I'd really rather not see wittle Woona dead), I swung my tail at him, planning to grab his sword arm and wrench the sword away from him, and possibly the arm as well. I think. I think that's what I was thinking, anyway.
I'm used to having the fastest reaction time of all the creatures I know, when I'm actually in combat and not, well, laughing at my enemies too hard to realize they're actually a threat. Against any other opponent, that trick would probably have worked. But Anon was faster than me.
For the first split second I didn't even feel pain. I felt unbalanced, literally -- I'd been in the middle of swinging my tail toward him and then something had happened to throw off my balance and wait I hadn't elongated or warped it so why was my tail all the way over there?...
And then the pain hit, and I started screaming.
There was blood, everywhere. Blood pouring out of the piece of my tail that was lying on the grass a few heads away from me. Blood pouring out of me, in giant irregular spurts. Anon's sword, covered in blood; his face and armor, spattered with it. "Who's laughing now, Discord?" he said -- laughing at me, so obviously the answer was him. "Is it funny now?"
I couldn't levitate. I twisted around to grab the half a tail I had left -- and screamed, my paws burning as I touched it. It was glowing white. Still spurting blood everywhere, but now it was burning with the paradoxic heat that the energies of Harmony inflict on me every chance they get, the sensation of being freezing cold and burning hot at the same time. I was terrified, thinking I was turning to stone again, and I ran a few steps on all fours, stumbling, as if I could somehow run away from it, but of course it was attached to me. The sensation was growing worse. I looked over at the severed piece of my tail and became even more frightened. It was glowing, even more brightly, and flaking, crumbling into shiny bits of light and flying away in the breeze. When I looked back at the part of my tail that was still attached to me, I saw the same thing was happening to the very edge of it, and the glow was slowly burning its way up my body.
I wasn't turning to stone. I was disintegrating.
Up to that point I'd just been screaming in pain. When I realized what was actually happening, I started screaming the word "No!", over and over again. And Anon was laughing at me darkly, and Luna was finally starting to wake up, and it hurt so much and there was so much blood and the glow crawling up my tail was going to hit certain portions of my body before any others and I'm sorry, I realize this is darkly comic in afterthought, but if you don't feel a special surge of horror at the thought of a burning disintegration ray crawling over your genitals, you are probably a golem, or a tree. And I kept trying to run away from it, like a dog trying to escape cans tied to his tail, or smack at it to put it out, but when I touched it with my paws it made my paws burn too. I... may well have been sobbing by this time. I have a surprisingly good memory given what I am, but this particular event comes back to me as a collection of incredibly vivid snapshots, each one full of all the things I was feeling at the time, but nothing connecting them.
I remember Anon still laughing, saying, "Poor baby. Why don't I put you out of your misery?" and coming for me with the glowing sword again. I remember screaming something (it was probably "no" again). I remember being back in this cave -- I don't remember teleporting, but I must have -- with control of my magic back, but no matter what I did with my magic the glow just kept burning up my tail. I remember sitting on the floor, sobbing, watching my tail burn and realizing what I had to do to save myself. I don't remember summoning a sword of my own, but I remember swinging it down before I had a chance to have second thoughts or flinch at what I was about to do to myself. I remember that it hurt much, much worse than the first cut Anon made, but the pain was flesh tearing and bones breaking and the shock of impact. Not burning.
I remember watching the piece I'd just severed myself sizzling into nothingness on the floor. I remember hyperventilating, watching the attached part bleed, waiting to see if it would start burning again, and breaking down in tears of relief when it didn't.
I remember looking up from the floor, disoriented and in more pain than I could easily remember, wondering why I was lying there and where did all the blood come from and then I remembered. I must have passed out from shock on the floor. Try as I might I couldn't regenerate the injury. I struggled up to a sitting position (sort of; actually sitting was incredibly painful), and summoned up bandages, which was much harder than it ought to have been, and tied them around the end of my tail as tightly as I could, trying to tourniquet it. If I couldn't stop the bleeding I was going to have to cauterize the wound and I really, really did not want to inflict any further injury on it.
I had very little magic, and very little energy, and I wanted to just collapse back on the floor and sleep, but I was afraid that if I did I wouldn't wake up. I couldn't restore my lost blood magically, either, and I was really, really cold. Fortunately, being the creature of luxury that I am, I already had a sizable assortment of blankets, a fireplace, and all the equipment I needed to start a perfectly mundane fire to warm up beside. I figured, what I needed to do was eat raw meat, drink a lot of liquid, and stay awake long enough to confirm that I wouldn't die in my sleep from shock and blood loss. To that end, I started writing my journal entry above, and now we're all caught up.
Edited to add: this first version of this was a lot shorter. This was an exceedingly humiliating and painful episode so I really just skidded through it at high speed with "and then I did this and he did this and I did this and he cut off my tail and you know the rest." Since you have the luxury of reading this in order, you haven't gotten to the reason why I bothered to revise it to add so much gory detail, yet. That'll be next chapter, same Discord time, same Discord channel!
Well. That was stressful to even think about! Now I know why I put this off for so long. Sheesh, I have no idea how Daring Do manages it.
Time I went down south to collect my Element of Greed, I think. That ought to be fun. And then maybe I'll drop in on Celestia. After all, Anon doesn't know I'm collecting the Elements of Disharmony, so I have to make some sort of villainous appearance so he knows I haven't forgotten about him, right?
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Damn you! I was just about to go to bed!
...I'm glad to see that Discord has finally started telling Luna something about what's going on.
I'm not sure what, if anything, she'll do about it, but it's only a sensible step.
Gratz on Featured!
I caught on to what Discord was doing shamefully late – I couldn't tell whether he was actually coming on to her or not – but that was so well delivered!
The irony.
IT BURNS
DAFUQ DID HE KNOW?! Discord, run. You're neck-deep in the Aura of Stu(pid).
As a human I can say fuck no it's not. That's something the other great apes can do, we long ago lost our talent for that. My entire family is living proof.
And none of the other sapient races we see in the show ever use tools. Tool-usage isn't a human talent, it's a sapience talent. Hell, even on Earth there are crows that use tools. Of course, not like Anon would know that.
Here's an idea that just popped into my head. What if Discord just... steals the EoP? Like he did with the others? Screw repetition, it was a good plan, especially if he decides to chuck it into the bottom of the ocean.
So kind, isn't he?
Stay strong, Discord. We believe in you.
Good gracious!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I am ascending to new levels of HATE whenever I read any parts that has Anon in this story!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! This Anon is possibly one of the biggest Anon character bastards I've read on this site (There are a few I hate more but I forgot the stories names for them)(If anyone has any stories with human protags/anons they hate due to being Gary Stu's/Mary Sue's please post here!!!!!!!!!!!) !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Also, this is personally one of my favorite Discords on the site!!!!!!!!!!!! Could you potentially (PLEASE!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!) have Discord give a genre-savvy and totally non-anon polluted "Reasons You Suck" speech to the princesses, mane 6 and Anon, that even Anons reality warping can't stop (Look on tvtropes)!!!!!!!!!!!!!! Let Discords hate flow through his eloquence!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
trigger is mah trigger wurd fak~face, muh-soggy_knees—stik asshull, how dear you triggah me
Okay.
That is one of the few times I've ever read a threatened-rape scene, male-on-female, in which I can honestly and without reservation say -- "She deserved it."
Discord if anything went pretty easy on her -- he's shifting alignment a bit in his old age. But then, he was in the main universe too -- what Fluttershy did in the main worldline wouldn't have worked on him if he hadn't been getting bored by cruelty.
That's actually kind of Heartwarming. I mean, ultimately what Luna wants is to be appreciated for her service to Equestria. That's not a bad dream.
Well, yeah. Luna is in fact mostly unselfish and honorable, for real.
Heh. That's fairly close to Luna's opinion of adult-Discord in my world, and she's half-right in that continuity. That's actually a key point in Divine Jealousy and the Voice of Reason, and in the parts I haven't published yet.
Also, Anon hasn't seen her, talked to her or even been near her for two weeks. His mind control over Luna may be wearing off, with it persisting to any extent only because Luna hasn't been given any new information to doubt her memories. Luna is notably not missing Anon, for someone with whom she is deeply in love, implying that the emotional drive is fading.
They could call foal Nightmare Moon Nyx, or something like that!
Woopsie, Discord ... you're falling under Anon's power again ...
I totally and completely agree with Discord's opinion here.
Oh, Discord. You really should have paid more attention during Monty Python and the Quest for the Holy Grail. You should never underestimate the rabbit!
By transforming Anon into one shape after another, and Anon figuring out how to use each transformation against him, Discord was setting himself up to be the recipient of a heroic beat-down, and because of Anon's powers, Discord couldn't even see what he was doing.
The true irony? Discord is in this scene a (sort of) Dragon trying to save a (sort of) Fair Maiden from a (sort of) Knight. And Mind Control is normally a draconic sort of power.
At least now we know how he took that terrible wound to his tail.
As a male human, let me assure you that you made me wince at the thought.
5255184
Bad spelling is one of my triggers! How dare you spell so badly without putting it behind a spoiler cut! You monster!
God I can't stand Gary stus
what would anon be, would he be an antihero.. no, antivillian? maybe. douche bag at times. yes
5255363 Antivillain. I like that.
5255363 5255383
An "antivillain" is generally understood as one that pursues morally good actions (or at least, seemingly morally good actions) in the pursuit of villainous goals, so this label would only apply if Anon is aware of what he's doing.
Discord, however, is actually venturing dangerously close to antihero territory. And you know what? Every last one of us is OK with that.
As it turns out, Equestria doesn't need a hero. It just needs someone to say, "No."
Discord is Caesar.
5255627
Information theory, mostly. Chaos theory's in there a little bit though.
*I fell into a burning ring of fire i went down down in a burning ring of fire... BURN BURN BURN Mwhahaaha* Antonflax 2014 playing tf2 as pyro
5255203
Punish the rapist mare further would have been kind unfair, considering we don´t know how much of her criminal behaviour was truly her fault instead of Anon´s.
Wow I hate Anon. I have never hated a fictional character more. I like your fluttercruel more than I like this guy! I only ask that you kill Anon, and let Discord live.
please
I can't help but think that Hasbro's talking pony toys' phrases are some sort of cross-dimensional punishment inflicted upon us by Discord for anon's sins.
5255918
I had this thought myself. But, then, this is Discord. And he chose to limit his cruelty to, essentially, giving her a scare calculated to deter her from committing her crimes again. This is character development, especially as this Discord never promised anything to this Fluttershy.
5255048
i.dailymail.co.uk/i/pix/2012/06/04/article-2154373-1371AF41000005DC-84_468x286.jpg
fbcdn-sphotos-f-a.akamaihd.net/hphotos-ak-xpa1/v/t1.0-9/10805666_10204123046530196_3724074017366331650_n.jpg?oh=958fe70f5b35a4b6c4318df336308838&oe=54EE6EEA&__gda__=1423663868_e1a69351e72adefa1ef8bad151a22bbd
Also known as the revered French martial art of running away and falling on your face :-P
5256337 Something you have to train to know how to do.
Plus, it's not climbing trees.
Common, please let Discord get even just a small victory over Anon! I've never hated a fictional Human more than him! :P
5256343
You can raise hawks in such a way that it will never fly, simply by denying them the ability to practice when young (and note that the parents of baby hawks still have to kick them out of the nest or taunt them by flying higher than they are with food in their beaks to actually get them to do anything).
Climbing trees and acrobatics are inborn skills, which mean there is the potential to get somewhere...but one has to make an actual effort first.
Although this raises an interesting point, namely why the other great apes usually climb trees and we don't; and that's because swinging like Tarzan actually takes twenty times as much energy as simply walking.
Also, we don't have useful thumbs on our feet or prehensile tails.
We suck at climbing, compared to the other apes.
But the basic architecture is still there! And we suck only in relation to the apes!
Seriously, from the perspective of other animals, what we do is damn near magic: do you think a horse can climb anything at all? Or a cow, or a dog, or an elephant, etc. Hells, even goats do well mostly on rocks and not on trees! (That's because we have the marvelous things that are wrists. Seriously, we've got quite a good range of movement on our limbs).
(in fact, there's a fic by Estee where Rarity gets trapped in a tree two meters above the ground and has to wait the night until someone can rescue her, while Rainbow laughs her ass off from a nearby cloud).
I forgot where I was going with this. Stupid fanfics keeping me up until seven in the morning.
5256343
Stepladders! Stepladders are magic. And so are the catwalk thingies outside of industrial plants which look horribly unsafe.
Those things are pretty impossible for any other species to use.
5256364
Well, note -- Alara's now taken the story up to the point at which Discord began telling it -- this being the loss of his tail.
Maybe now Discord will be shocked enough by his near-death to start fighting back more intelligently.
One way I can see this entire thing ending is with Discord actually managing to undo everything Anon does, resetting time and memory, such that he is once again trapped in stone (because he never could have escaped without Anon), with only his journal as the one thing left that explains what happened. The basis for Celestia letting him out on probation in the first place. That's probably the only way this story can have what could be considered a 'good' ending, anything else would be tragic to the extreme.
Am I the only one who is thinking that the coincidences of Anon showing up whenever Discord is making headway into trying to foster anything against Anon are as much coincidences as Discord randomly having his words changed every time he tries to let Anon know about his powers to warp reality?
You know, it's stuff like this which highlights how crazy Anon really is. Sure, the reality-warping stuff is what makes him a villain, but he isn't aware of that. It's this that makes him hateable, that makes him an actual bad person. We're to believe that, from his perspective, he's just an ordinary brony that ended up in this world by accident who happens to have talent for swordfighting, and yet here he is mutilating someone and laughing at their pain before he prepares to murder them.
I know that Discord is seen as a pretty bad guy in-universe, and that taking extreme measures to stop him probably sounds more reasonable from Anon's perspective, but, well, come on, it's Discord. He's not the sort of villain that inspires the kind of burning hatred that Anon is showing. The whole reason he was brought back as a recurring character in the first place was because people like Discord.
This is why I don't understand the existence of things like that Mortal Chaos chapter from that other fic that inspired this. You need a special kind of humourlessness to not like Discord at least a little bit, and a special kind of unforgiving cruelty to think with such certainty that he deserves to die for actions. In a darker interpretation of Discord's character like we used to have pre-season three, sure, but even ignoring his reformation and going just by Return of Harmony, stories like the kind that this is mocking may as well be portraying the mob lynching of the Hamburglar.
5256774
Lucky you! Are you new here by any chance? Or maybe living in a cave? Caves are beautiful places, I'd totally live in one if I could.
5258396
Yes. Yes yes yes.
This comes from thirty years of frustration in dealing with the "Haha! I am the heroic hero! Therefore I will brutally torture the villainous villain and laugh at his terror!" shit I see from role-players and writers, none of whom are ever any good, most of whom are committing egregious Stus at the time or else warping the personality of canon heroes until they're unrecognizable (my "favorite" was a guy playing a canon hero who is basically a total Boy Scout, a complete imago of "I'm heroic and compassionate and just a great guy", who in canon actually admitted to feeling sorry for the tormented villain despite the fact that the villain's machinations had caused the death of his father several episodes back... who, as played by this guy, threatened to rape a female villain who had PTSD from a prior rape and was terrified of being even touched by men, in order to interrogate her for information. And I'm not at all sure the player wouldn't have gone through with it if I hadn't had the villain break and answer his questions.)
Oh, and they're sexist, too. Female villains are there to be reformed, or possibly sexually humiliated in some way. Male villains have to die horribly. It doesn't even matter how proportionate it is. These guys will torture villains in an AU where the villain hasn't yet done anything villainous, because they "just know" the villain is bad despite their character having no way of knowing this because it's an AU.
And they think they're heroes. I have flashbacks to this attitude every time I see someone making the argument that Discord cannot possibly reform because he was so thoroughly evil in Return of Harmony. He made it rain pies upside down, people! Yes, he mentally fucked over the Mane 6, who had the only weapon that could hurt him; yes, he obviously enjoyed doing it. He's a bully and a jerk, there's no doubt about it. But nothing in the show should suggest that he's friggin' Satan. Get the Warhammer 40K manuals out of your ass, dudes, chaos isn't inherently evil and bullies who like to troll people and make them feel miserable are perfectly capable of wanting to have friends, and changing their behavior to please their new friends if they have to. But it's like, THERE IS ONLY ONE UNIVERSAL PARADIGM: HEROES ARE COMPLETELY GOOD AND VILLAINS ARE COMPLETELY EVIL, and it just doesn't matter what the nuances are.
I see this when Marvel Comics fans tear the fandom apart in wars over whether Magneto should be written as a misguided idealist or a monstrous neo-nazi, I see this when fan writers have Picard tell Q, after both of them are dead, that Picard is okay with his own death if it means Q was removed from the universe (after the backstory where Q-turned-human was kidnapped from the Enterprise, brutally tortured to the point where he saw his own execution as a relief, and thus was not alive and in possession of his powers to save Picard from assassins. Like, the writer even recognizes that Q isn't wholly evil and yet they have Picard hate him badly enough to gloat over his death.) I mean, I'm not in favor of going in the opposite direction either, with Draco in Leather Pants and the villain is wholly innocent and a sweet woobie and everyone else is just a big meanie, but I'm not nearly as scared of that attitude as I am of the other. Believing that an attractive guy can't be a villain usually ends up punishing itself, because that's one of the ways people end up hurt or exploited or abused. But believing that "villains" are completely and irredeemably evil leads to war crimes, lynching, and vigilante murders.
So yeah. Anon thinks he's a hero. But he's not. And the people who think this way are not heroes, and will never be.
Does that mean that If discord is killed by anon, then anon will return home?
Come on luna! Can't you see that Anon is tricking you!
I know anon is good, and is doing everything without knowing, but I hate him so much.
5258525
He's honestly not. He's not evil, and back home on Earth he was probably a better person than Discord is, but the fact that he enjoys Discord's fear and suffering so much, and takes such glee in cutting him up... I mean, up to that point in the story, Discord had stolen the Elements, kidnapped Luna and trapped her in a lovely dream that she enjoys so much she hasn't been able to wake up, which does her no harm because alicorns in magical sleep don't need food or water; he discorded the Elements again, in exactly the way he did it the first time, but they all recovered easily; he interrogated four of the Bearers about Anon, and tried to stir up shit with Rarity, but couldn't get anywhere with the other three... as villainy goes, this is like a Care Bears villain. So far he's been approximately as threatening as Flim and Flam. And Anon thinks he deserves to be brutally cut to pieces with a sword while he screams and cries. And is willing to actually go through with it (in real life many people who'd claim they wanted to do such a thing would stop dead when they saw all the blood their mutilation caused.)
So feel perfectly free to hate him. :-)
5258574
by the way, great story. Also, could anon have twisted celestia and luna memories (Luna not remembering that he can come back from death) so they remember a completely different shared past? Having the sisters think they have always been enemies? If so, then my heart will be broken. Dislestia may have been in the past, but celestia deserves to at least remember the nice memories
5258805
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Why, uh, no, I would never do a thing like that to poor Discord... perish the thought!
5258863
sure. I believe you
5258517
Oh my god, so much this. I hold this for absolutely every villain in the series. NMM, Chrysalis, Discord, even Sombra and Tirek, the latter of which I plan to do in one of my unpublished stories. Absolutely nobody is wholly evil to the very core, and nothing could ever possibly sway them from that course. That's simply not how psychology works and yet so many people seem to believe that a thing such as the 'morality event horizon' exists!
5258396
I could make an argument that it is just to kill Discord: he's done things which have resulted in a lot of death and suffering over the centuries, even though his motive was more a callous sort of playfulness than truly murderous evil. What I don't think is right is being sadistic to him.
Oh, and Anon is far worse in terms of the effects of his actions. Though one could make an argument that Anon shouldn't be punished because he doesn't know what he's doing.
The same could be made for Discord, of course, as he doesn't see most Ponies as really real -- not the same way that he and the few Ponies he actually really likes are real.
5259581
Yeah, but you'd need to be like an alicorn or something to do it.
It is the only effective way to use them all, though. Splitting them up between different beings just ensures the beings fight with each other. All the Elements together would make the being using them essentially a temporary Chaos avatar, kind of like using all of the Elements of Harmony makes the gestalt a temporary Harmony avatar, but the average pony can only wield one; you'd need to be an alicorn, an old and powerful dragon, or some other very powerful magic user to wield them all.
5259623
One could also make an argument that being imprisoned in stone for more than a thousand years is sufficient punishment for what Discord has done, and killing someone for what they might do is by definition not justice. Killing Discord might be the right thing to do from the perspective of realpolitik, making sure he cannot come back and start shit again (at least, if you don't know that a new Chaos avatar will be born when he dies), but it's hard to perceive it as morally right when he's already undergone such a severe punishment. It would have been just, perhaps, to kill him before the Elements first imprisoned him, but you know, when a guy's spent forty years in jail for his crimes, we generally don't think it would be just at all to send him to Death Row after that.
Honestly, death is probably more merciful than over a thousand years of being conscious but completely unable to move.
5258517
Yeah. Anon's attitude reminds me of my attitude when I first started roleplaying and writing -- when I was around 14-17 years old. It's profoundly immature; it's based on the notion that only one side can be bad in a conflict and that side has to be totally bad and the other side totally good. And I don't think I would have been that cruel if I was in the hero's position in real life, at that time (though I would have been a prick, a jerk and a hypocrite, because I was those things in my youth).
5258517
A lot of fans maybe miss the point that in an AU where Q never plays with Picard by tossing the Enterprise into Borg space, 18 crewmen don't die.
The whole Federation dies, because they're tooling along fat, dumb and happy when the Borg attack Federation space.
Q acts like a jerk, but he actually saves the Federation by what he did.
5259623
Citation needed. Suffering is a yes, because Celestia said as much, but nowhere has Discord ever been shown or implied to have ever killed anyone. We don't even know just how bad the "suffering" part really was, given how little we actually know of Discord's reign. Even if we limit ourselves to just Return of Harmony, no, I don't think that there's any justification at all to jump straight to murder. Not unless we bring in headcanon.
And that's just from Anon's perspective as a brony watching the show.
In-universe, it's even less justified, because Alara's Discord really does have good in him, he's shown this, and the princesses (among others) know this about him. He won a war for Equestria. He saved magic itself from being destroyed. He was offered the Element of Loyalty, for Christ's sake. He's even sort of a vegeterian, and his personal code of ethics make it an unlisted point that he never causes permanent harm to anyone, even when he's at his most carefree and villainous. We all know he's no saint, but this version of Discord is a hero, even if a fallen one, only just now getting back up.
5258574
On Earth he had no power. And he sees Discord as the Designated Villain and hence anything he does to him is fair and reasonable by his lights. Which, you're right, is the same mentality that drives war crimes -- with a different religious background he might well have done something like joined ISIS and merrily slaughtered civilians in Iraq, because they wouldn't be really people to him any more than as Discord.
There's also a dose of What Measure Is a Non Cute here. Unlike all the Ponies (including the eight Anon loves, in his own patronizing way), Discord's not beautiful. He's a big, fanged, clawed, very weird dragon-horse chimera thing. Anon has absolutely no sexual or romantic desire for him. So, in the mind of an immature person, this makes it more okay to hurt Discord in ways he never would have done to something he could see as "cute." (And I really doubt he saw Chrysalis or the Changelings as cute, especially when he was fighting them).
I wonder if he would have killed Nightmare Moon if he had confronted her and not known she was Luna? Nightmare Moon is pretty much Luna with every cute and loveable part of her personality suppressed.
It would be pretty obvious to me even if I hadn't read your other stories that your Discord actually likes Luna, and even feels somewhat protective toward her -- what he did was obnoxious but isn't harming her or even causing her much emotional upset, and he's only humiliating her insofar as she doesn't like being treated like a little filly because she's the Big Tough Warrior Princess. He immobilized and kidnapped her in the gentlest possible way.
In contrast Anon is treating her much worse, and in a way which is going to emotionally scar her for a long time to come, if she's ever able to get free from his power. (Same thing, of course, for Celestia and the Mane Six). Though he doesn't consciously know he's doing this.
I think you're implying that he's mellowed, in the exact same way the main verse Discord must have mellowed for Fluttershy's Honey Trap like strategy to have worked on him at all. Which is certainly possible -- in your continuity Discord was corrupted when he learned and used lethal chaos magic against the Dragons; in mine he was corrupted when Dissy was partially overwritten by his insane Cosmic self: amounts to the same thing. Discord has a nicer original personality than the one he exercised as a tyrant, and one which over time and contemplation might recover to become the dominant one.
Also, the only one he hurt was Rarity, and the way he "hurt" her was by trying to make her dissatisfied with Anon. I don't know about your Rarity, but mine -- while a really nice Pony under most circumstances -- is actually one of the more vindictive members of the Mane Six if you actually give her good reason to hate oneself, which is part of why she's an emotionally-compatible mate for a Dragon. If my Rarity knew that someone had put her under mind control such that she was having sex with him, including sex that she would normally consider inherently humiliating and perverted (the group sex with her friends), she would probably find that unforgivable. She would probably, in retrospect, be grateful to Discord for trying to free her from Anon's power.
Fluttershy seems to have downright sympathized with him. But then main verse Fluttershy is emotionally-compatible with him, definitely on the level of friendship and possibly love. And I could tell that Discord was touched by her as well, though he tried to pretend he wasn't. Fluttershy's not vindictive at all, but she would be deeply horrified at what Anon had done to her -- she's just not a very good hater.
What is scary about Anon is that it doesn't even occur to him that he could try to subdue Discord, even though he already knows not only that it's possible but HOW it is possible. I can offhand see a number of ways he could do it, given the level of power he's displayed, most of which would work better with either the other Element Bearers or one of the Alicorns helping him.
He doesn't think in these terms because he wants to kill Discord. And do so in a very cruel manner.
5259826
He has killed, in war or self defense, but he's generally done so in ways that were calculated to be examples to anyone else who might think of trying that. Discord won't shoot you, but he might turn you into a pile of gemstones and dump you on your own kitchen table to be eaten by your kids. If, you know, you're a dragon trying to eat ponies and conquer Equestria.
Think Ender Wiggin. Discord's philosophy is, if he has no choice and he has to kill you, he's going to do it in a way that terrifies the survivors so that they won't challenge him and he won't have to kill them. (It was really, really, really hard to pull this off with the dragons. Dragons don't terrify easily.)
Discord's never been like Twilight, someone who would rather find any way at all other than kill. He'll kill if he feels he must and he won't feel too bad about it if he had to. But he doesn't kill for amusement, because death isn't funny. Death is stasis, death is the antithesis of change and chaos, and therefore death is horrible... but if it's the lesser of two evils he'll take it.
5259678
Oh yes, I'd agree with that. Furthermore, given that every single Pony Discord killed or hurt during his tyrannical rule, save for the Sisters (who don't want him dead), would in any case be many centuries in their graves even if Discord had never lived, further punishment for Discord is silly.
(the question of course comes up of what evils he did during the Day of Discord -- in canon he wasn't that bad, though in the fanon I've mined for my verse he did some worse things, causing some permanent insanity, maiming and other forms of severe suffering).
Though this is Celestia's Realm. If anypony should be deciding on the proper level of punishment it should be Princess Celestia, since she is the legitimate ruler of Equestria by the will of the Ponies and ancient tradition, and hers is the right and responsibility to dispense justice. Not some the right and responsiblity of some random alien guy, whom Celestia would not like at all if she grasped what he'd done to herself, her sister, her friends and her Ponies.
5259891
That first paragraph was just referring to canon Discord. Anon doesn't seem to hold any strong headcanon of Discord as a murdererous tyrant or anything, as Discord's memories haven't been overwritten (as far as we know) to turn him into whatever mental picture Anon would have of him. So it seems to me that canon Discord, possibly even only as far as Return of Harmony, is all that Anon knows. That Discord has got a history of killing, even if under duress, doesn't really matter, since Anon wouldn't know that.
5259826
We know that he's inflicted random chaos on the land, including altering Ponies and their personalities. That means that he's done things which have driven Ponies insane, broken their families, and at times caused death or severe injury by secondary effects (what do you think happens to Ponies of the town whose whole crop gets turned to cotton candy when winter comes? And I'm talking about during the Age of Discord, not during the one day he messed with Ponies in modern Equestria).
Having said this, those crimes were many centuries ago, he's already been punished for them, his victims would all be dead now anyway. It would be as if, say, Attila the Hun was resurrected, and we horribly did him to death for his crimes against the Roman Empire a millennium and a half ago. We would be wise not to trust him, but also to give him a chance.
5259884
Yes. I don't want there to be any mistake, my version of Discord did do some horrible things when he ruled Equestria. Quite aside from the fact that his suppression of any form of organized law and order led to a massive increase in violence, theft, rape, vigilante justice, and race-based conflict, which is a lot of suffering in and of itself, and quite aside from the fact that the constant chaos made it impossible for most ponies to believe they could have any impact on their own lives, leading to fatalism, learned helplessness, and a high death rate from preventable causes because the very concept of preventing bad things was something a lot of ponies lost faith in the ability to do, he occasionally did egregiously awful things.
For instance, he made an example of a town that refused to acknowledge him as the ruler of Equestria by infesting them with giant discorded rats, then showed up in pony disguise claiming he could get rid of the rats. His price for getting rid of the rats was them formally denying their allegiance to the Princesses and declaring their acceptance of Discord being in charge. They lied and said they'd do it, and then went back on their word after the supposed pony got rid of the rats. So he led all their children away and transported them a hundred years into the future. No child was physically harmed in the slightest... but all were orphaned, because by a hundred years in the future their parents were dead. And the parents had to mourn their children as if they were dead, and never got to see them again. (Yes, I am totally ripping off the Pied Piper. What can I say, I love that story.) This is one of the stunts Luna finds unforgivable, and considers part of her evidence that this can't be the real Discord, because the real Discord was orphaned and had compassion for orphans and would never have taken children from their parents like that. (Whereas in fact Discord convinced himself he wasn't being overly horrible because he was an orphan and he turned out fine.)
A thousand years of loneliness has, in fact, mellowed him out. He still hasn't got much in the way of empathy, but part of him is yearning toward it, because he desperately wants to make connections with ponies.
5259891
Exactly. The contrast between Discord and a truly evil villain, such as Tirek, was explicitly shown in the Season Four finale -- and in the story you based on that.
5259946
Like I said to Alara below, Anon only knows canon Discord, so if we're talking about how justified or not Anon is in trying to kill him, that's what we should be discussing. And in canon, we know next to nothing about the Age of Discord. We don't even know if it was an age. It could've been a really bad afternoon for all we know. We certainly don't know if he broke families or caused death or severe injury. I know we can all get attached to headcanon, but try to remember in the context of this discussion what we actually know and what we've invented for ourselves. Because what we know is very, very sparse.
5259946
Well, what actually happens is you beg Discord for food, and if you do it amusingly enough, you get through the winter on pie, chocolate, hot spices, and things that are perfectly edible but don't taste right, like hay that tastes like fish.
The ponies that starved were the ones who were either too proud to beg, or too broken to think of it. And even then, Discord is kind of obsessed with food, given his childhood deprivation, and left lots of edible stuff all over the place. Ponies suffered malnutrition (a steady diet of pie is not really good for ponies any more than it is for humans), but few actually starved to death.
At the same time... your whole crop didn't need to be turned to cotton candy. Crops failed far more often than they thrived, because Discord didn't keep either the seasons or the diurnal cycle consistent enough for anything to grow right. It took massive amounts of earth pony magic to get anything to grow. So widespread malnutrition, feelings of helplessness and dependence on Discord's erratic benevolence, and the loss of a lot of important farming knowledge that no longer applied in the chaotic world... but not a lot of actual death.
5259934
Oh, Anon's a fan. He has his own headcanon about Discord. But it was much, much harder for him to overwrite Discord's own memories of Discord's life, because Discord was in stone when the changes were made (and specifically, a rigidly ordered, magic-resistant stone specifically designed to stop reality warping.) The things Anon does to Discord now are dynamic changes, where he applies a field effect to make Discord act the way he thinks Discord should act; the static changes, where the baseline of reality was altered in ponies' minds, were all made already and Anon isn't making any more of them.
Anon does think that Discord was a wholly evil tyrant, because that is exactly what these guys always think. They write grimdarks about Discord eating ponies or tearing them to shreds or putting them in torture machines that kill them because they think Discord is supposed to be Equestria's Satan. We'll learn more about that next chapter.
5260024
See, now I'm intrigued.