• Published 27th Aug 2012
  • 18,238 Views, 1,246 Comments

A minor variation - notMurphy



No sonic rainboom. The Mane 6 find different destinies. See where it takes them.

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A Nation is Lost

A Nation is Lost

"I won," he said it one last time, just to savor the feeling, "I won." It still made him feel giddy. The sun flashed into the sky as the moon dropped from view. Discord turned, contemplating the six ponies who had been the last real threat to him. 'And what, praytell, do I do you all of you? Right now you're reminders that I can best anypony. But… leave you running around too long and somepony may get stupid ideas about rebellion...' Maybe. Probably. 'Ahh, I don't care right now – I'll take care of it, later. Right now it's time to really cut loose.' He chortled, contemplating the possibilities...

The beast of chaos popped his knuckles – for a fifty mile radius every robin, bluejay, and sparrow dropped to the ground and began tunneling through the dirt, the worms didn't even know what hit them. He stretched his spine out, and every calendar in the left half of the Equestrian continent had every instance of Wednesday replaced with the name Cedric. A few deep knee-bends just felt good, but as an afterthought he made all the local freshwater fish into flying creatures. Pikes prowled the trees, minnows nibbled at bushes, and catfish sunned themselves on rooftops.

Limbered up, Discord decided to perform a few 'warm-ups', old gags that still amused him. Floating houses, conceptual jokes, the usual. He figured after a few minutes some real inspiration would occur, and he could come up with something to show off. Because, because everypony had to know who was in charge now, darn it. Any minute now he'd come up with a beauty...


"Blast." Time Turner cursed, the crummy pen had dropped a spot of ink onto his carefully written application. He wasn't entirely sure what to do; the one thing was abundantly clear was that he needed to be in these flight classes. Both because Derpy clearly remembered him being there, and because he was, truth be told, abominable when it came to controlling his feathery appendages.

The scroll was snatched from him by a tired looking bureaucrat, who put on a pair of pince nez glasses and inspected the scant details provided. "OK, application for one Tim. E Turner. Thank you."

The Doctor started, "err, that's not exactly right, you see the pen–" there was nopony present to listen to his explanation. 'Well I suppose it's not the worst clerical error ever made.'


It had been at least half an hour since Discord had declared victory over the elements of harmony. Somepony would have looked at a clock, but the devices started melting if one looked directly at them. Clearly, the Reign of Chaos was going to take a lot of getting used to.

Several copies of a scroll were carefully passed around. Ponies read and hoofed them to their immediate neighbors as surreptitiously as they could. Sweetie Bell heard a mulberry and blue maned pony cough loudly next to the filly, casually sliding a copy across the grass. Sweetie read it, then she read it again. She might have been tempted to read it at third time, but she had a sinking feeling the instructions wouldn't change. The diminutive unicorn glared at her desaturated sibling, vowing revenge if they ever made it out of their current predicament.

It didn't matter, there was no way she'd have the chance to do... that. And in front of everyone. Why would Rarity do this to her? It didn't make sense... she watched an inflated porcupine float by, polishing any bit of brass it passed. 'Oh, right, there isn't any sense anymore...' Somehow that did not make her feel better.


Discord sat on his paws and contemplated... nothing. He had the entire world as a blank canvas, and he couldn't think of a single thing to do. Oh there were tons of pranks he wanted to play, but he couldn't remember a single Faust-sketched one of them. Maybe he should go rub the Princesses's muzzles in how misguided their faith in the elements and their bearers had turned out to be. 'Eh, maybe in a bit.' or he could taunt Derpy about her utter failure to make a difference, 'well, yeah, but she's already shut down emotionally... no use in beating a dead-'

*Hiccup/Fwoosh* a bright flash of light was followed by a small groan. The spirit of disharmony's ears perked up as he flitted over to the growing pile of letters next to a young dragon obviously in the throes of intestinal woe. Discord snatched one up at random and scanned the lines, "Dear Princess Luna... blah blah blah... learned that you can always count on..." he made various gagging motions as he mumbled his way through the trite missives. Finding nothing of any value he gestured and the entire pile crumbled to ash; he whistled up a wind and blew the ash away. 'Nice try, Moonbutt,' he snickered.

Rarity glanced up with something like vague curiosity as her adoptive son expelled another magical message, before returning to carefully brushing her mane and coat. "Spikey, dear, do you need an antacid?" she called, not really listening for an answer.

The youngling groaned again, " *Oughh*... make it sta-hhp."

Discord grinned, "I normally don't do requests, but consider your wish granted, little dragon". With a flourish the draconequus produced a black tophat, reached into it, and pulled out a gray parasprite. He stared into the tiny monster's compound eyes, causing them to swirl in many colors, then he released the little beast. After a moment it took wing, fluttering around. Without warning it darted above the purple dragon, opening its jaw impossibly wide and closing it again over blank air. A moment later it belched, releasing a few fragments of parchment.

The chaos spirit chortled, leaping into the air, "Behold the benevolence of your Dictator-for-Life Discord!" He considered the matter, 'maybe I can amuse myself by granting their wishes in ways that backfire spectacularly or result in huge amounts of collateral damage. That should be amusing...'


The brown pegasus stallion struggled through horizontal rainfall, a fell wind roaring in his ears. The adrenaline that had gotten him to the cottage had failed ages ago, but he had no choice. This was going to be his only chance to get readings on the blasted storm, and of course he'd dropped his bloody screwdriver earlier. The only lucky break was that he had turned on low-level sonic vibration before losing his grip on it, so he hoped it would be possible to feel his way to the tool.

Ten minutes later he was about to give up when he finally felt something. It seemed the thin metal device had become immersed in the muddy ground, and he had to paw it out without touching it directly and sending it deeper. It was much like trying to remove a splinter without tweezers – a tool only unicorns could manipulate.

For once, hard work turned out to be rewarding. Moments after he had retrieved the little beauty it began reacting violently to a temporal intrusion. By the time he'd triangulated the source there were only moments to leap out of the way, a gust of wind blowing him dozens of meters away; he saw the golden flash of the object spattering into the same mud he had just dug up. 'Typical.'

With a certain amount of effort he was able to make the mucky mess of mud yield up its second prize. It was unrecognizable, but from memory he knew it to be a golden choker with a single gem in the shape of a storm cloud. Considering storm clouds, he was reminded that things were about to become infinitely more unpleasant nearby, so he ran... inasmuch as it was possible to do so in his circumstances.

When he awoke after the blast we was lodged in the branches of an overturned tree. By some quirk of fate he had thought to put the sonic screwdriver and the element of loyalty into his saddlebags, which were hanging from a nearby branch. The doctor smiled grimly, 'right, one down, five to go...'


Rarity glanced nervously at the demon of disharmony, though he seemed occupied at the moment. She caught sight of another white unicorn as she turned back, 'I am so sorry, Sweetie Bell, but there was nothing else I could think of.' Shaking the thought away with a toss of her mane, she discarded the brush, creeping slowly toward her friends.

She started with the other gray unicorn. "I'm going to guess family problems, stop me when I get something wrong, won't you dear? Judging from your affliction, you must have said something you'd give anything to take back." Twilight refused to make eye contact, so Rarity grabbed her head in both forehooves, "Just exactly how do you think you will ever repair what you have done without speaking the truth? Lies will avail you nothing, and silence is downright poisonous." The history professor chuckled bitterly, "Take it from one who has made that mistake several times. The truth hurts, but pain lets us know we are still alive." Sparkle looked at her, and the expression on her muzzle was one of doubt, but it was still the most response she had given since leaving the library.


Things were not going smoothly, but at least the minor hiccups were providing him with some small measure of diversion, as Discord considered the matter. The first pony to approach, a carrot-topped mare called 'something Harvest' had wished the draconequus would just go buck himself. He'd turned her into a radish. After that it had taken a long time for anypony to be willing to come forward – he'd had to idly comment to himself that granting wishes might be slightly more entertaining that turning ponies into lawn furniture.

Next had come the frivolous little requests: turning the grass into a checkerboard pattern, turning the sky fucsia, one pony wished for all the shrubbery to be orange, the next had wished for it to be blue, and then he'd had about six more going back and forth. In the end he'd turned the last one's coat into an orange and blue checkerboard pattern.

He'd anticipated that they would just about be gathering the nerve to try and trick him when a pink filly marched up to him. Apparently her 'special talent' was redundancy, because she was wearing the same headgear that marked her flank. Nevertheless she certainly seemed to have the potential to amuse him for a few moments, the pettiness in her character was blindingly obvious. "And what, pray tell, can Discord the Great and Powerful do for you?" His grin was wide as he leaned forward to take in every little detail.


The scholar noted that the spirit of Disharmony was still managing to amuse himself quite effectively. 'It can't last, but I need to get as far as I can before he comes back around to gloat...'

Next up was Diane. Rarity wasn't entirely sure how to... no, she knew exactly how to proceed. A field of blue magic held the earth pony in place as the unicorn hissed into her ear, "well, was it fun? Did you enjoy getting to be the catty one for awhile? I can certainly understand the frustration of watching everypony continue to make the same mistakes over and over, but aren't you the one who is usually telling me that too much of anything is bad for you? It's time to care again, it's time to–" a distinctly pink, if still somewhat desaturated, hoof stopped the unicorn's speech, the owner of the appendage rolling her eyes over to a pegasus who was blue in every sense except her hue. The town librarian nodded.


He was almost two minutes off as to when the crash happened.

The gray pegasus peered at the canted blue box, "Hello? Is there anypony in here?" cautiously she stuck her head through the open door, "Whoa, it's–" The Doctor crept around to the other side of the TARDIS, ostensibly to avoid being seen by himself, but mostly to not hear the line again. He used to love that bit.

That was the worst part of the next few years, he'd know that she was here, with him. Of course he was himself, but he wasn't him now... hold on when he was himself he was/wouldn't will have... oh, nevermind, it was confusing and painful, that pretty much covers it. The Doctor caught sight of the blonde pegasus and what looked like an earth pony walking toward the nearby town, and he made his move – first retrieving the necklace from where it had rebounded off the time machine causing both to crash in the modern era. The gem was of indeterminate color, and could either have been a piece of fruit under a balloon, or a very fat exclamation point. 'I suppose that rather is the point.'

Now was his chance to 'borrow' the blue box and finish everything up again... of course that meant he'd have to bring it back as well. 'Bloody paradoxes...' grumbled the brown stallion to himself.


"Rainbow Dash, I am afraid there is simply no kind way to put this," Rarity sighed, plunging ahead, "the level of paranoid self-aggrandizement required for you to believe that your choices are the sole source of changes in a pony's destiny is staggering." Ah, now she had the pegasus's attention. "Simply put, you have neither the responsibility, nor the right to carry the weight of the world upon your shoulders. More importantly, I wouldn't trade you for anything. Now get up."

Hints of color began to return to the pale pony, "Rarity, I'm so s–"

The historian put a hoof over her face and groaned. "Rainbow, I swear to Luna that if you try to apologize for anything that monster did to you I will... well I don't know what I would do, but it would be very messy." she was not altogether successful at keeping a note of amusement out of her voice. Dash did seem to be improving, however, so it was time to move on–

"Jackie's next right? I noticed something important earlier, when I was having trouble caring about anything. I think she..." the blueing pegasus shared a few observations that would prove to be very helpful.


It took longer to find the grayed earth pony than Rarity had expected. 'Was she trying to get away? It looks like Dash was right... oh dear.' She cleared her throat, startling the formerly blonde pony. "Ah, Jacqueline, how are you?"

Jackie stared at the white unicorn,
"I've been down so long,
It looks like up to me,
Why won't you ponies,
C'mon an' set me free..."

This the scholar pony ignored, "Quite. So, I was just thinking about how the two of us have never really had a good informal chat. More's the pity, since I rather envy you your travels and all the sights and experiences you must have had." Rarity was surprised to find that she meant what she was saying. "I won't stop you if you insist on leaving, but I warn you now that you're never going to get rid of us. Call me greedy if you must, but I refuse to give up anything I treasure as much as my friendships." It was true, but it rang hollow somehow.

That was when she realize what she was going to have to do, gouache as it would be. "Err, perhaps what I mean to say is You've got a friend in me."

When the orange pony fell over giggling, Rarity knew it was time to either move on to Fluttershy or kill Jackie. Which would have been a waste of a great deal of effort, she assured herself.


Diamond Tiara shivered, in spite of herself. But she shook it off, she was going to see justice done today. The so-called Cutie Mark Crusaders were at the center of the entire mess, and she was going to use that to get at least one tiny bit of satisfaction out of this entire travesty of a day... she stopped grinding her teeth and glared up into the draconequus's smug face.

"You can tell everpony here what really happened today." Growled the white and purple maned filly. "How three stupid blank-flanks broke you free to do all of this." Her voice raised in pitch as she threw herself into the accusation, "You can point out, once and for all, that they're really a bunch of hypocrites who are more dangerous and more malicious than I've ever been." She took a few quick breaths before glaring up at the Spirit of Disharmony. "That's what you can do for me!"

The filly's furious fuming had earned the attention of most of the assembled equinity. Discord grinned, "she's right, you know. All of this wonderful chaos is possible because of you three." He floated over to them, looming and leering, "such loyal service deserves rewarding. tell me, is there anything your hearts desire?" He already knew what drove their every waking moment, but making a pony admit what they wanted was part of the fun. he decided to go for the unicorn, she seemed ripe to crack, "You are Sweetie Bell, sister of Rarity, if I'm not mistaken? Can you honestly tell me that there is nothing in this world you desire?"

The white filly shivered visibly, horrified by the public attention, struggling with herself. Discord could practically taste the inner turmoil. Finally Sweetie let out her breath, and with a lowered head whispered, "yes. There is one thing that I want – more than anything else in the world, I'd like..."


"Things are starting to speed up, so I'm afraid I don't have time to do this gently, Fluttershy."

"I told you before, Rarity, I'm not–"

"In your right mind, yes, I've figured that out. But you ARE Fluttershy." Rarity advanced upon the cowering pegasus, hating herself but not seeing any other options she had time for, "It confused me before, but there was too much else going on, your claim. Occam's razor tells us that the simpler solution is often the real one. It would be far easier to make Fluttershy question her own identity, and then turn the fake into a doll... in a way it wouldn't even be a change."

"B-but–"

"And if Discord could just turn us into inanimate objects, why bother with the rest? Why not just turn us all into paperweights and torture each of us in turn, at his leisure?" Rarity walked forward, for all the world looking like she barely even noticed the pegasus, as though she were simply pacing and speculating aloud.

"However, that is not the most compelling reason for not believing that Fluttershy was turned into a doll. No, I would rather believe that Fluttershy trusted her friends enough that, on occasion, she could admit to being afraid, unsure, or even simply frustrated. That she could stop pretending to be a perfect doll." Now she looked directly at the yellow mare, "What do you think? Doesn't that sound like a much better world to be living in?"

Fluttershy nodded.


It was like a click, one moment Sweetie's heart was pounding like it was going to leap out of her chest, and the next time and space seemed to have become some sort of perfect crystal. Her doubts, her fears, it all just slipped away... She looked up at the Demon of Disarray and she smiled. "What I want?" She drew in a deep breath, 'now or never.' She glanced at her co-conspirators, her best friends, and she sang. Loud, clear, and pure; she sang, performance anxiety be damned.

"I'd like to build the world a home," these first moments were going to be the most crucial, and here came her three backups, joining her one the second line,

"And furnish it with love," now it was Bloom's turn:

"Grow apple trees..."
"And honey bees..." Sweetie came back in.
"And flying tortoises." That was Scootaloo's addition, but it worked, somehow.

For his part, Discord didn't seem to know what to make of event yet, Sweetie pulled into the second verse, hoping like mad that Spike and the others were getting everypony to join in, or this was going to be over very quickly.

"I'd like to teach the world to sing," rang the unicorn filly's voice. From the corner of her eye she saw ponies swaying.
"Sing with meee..." Applebloom and Scoots came in on the end of her line, finding a common pitch.
"In perfect Harmony..." all three Crusaders joined in, holding the last note...
"Per-fect Harmony," Twist echoed, a few of the crowd joining her. Interestingly, she didn't sing with a lisp.
"I'd like to hold it in my hooves," all the participants sang,
"And keep it company." Sweetie began projecting from her diaphragm, leading the others.

Thirty seconds had gone by, the draconequus was beginning to frown and the crowd had to be starting to understand... Four fillies locked hooves, swaying side to side as they continued...

"I'd like to see the world for once," Twist grabbed the hoof of a green unicorn... umm, Lyra, was it?
"All standing hoof in hoof," Flitter took Scootaloo's other hoof, Sweetie could hear lines of ponies forming behind them.
"And hear them echo, through the hills..." The tricky parts were coming up.
"For peace throughout the land!" She rose on the tide of voices, bringing them higher.

"Okay, you can stop now," Discord growled, feeling uncomfortable.
Sweetie nodded at Apple Bloom, not paying any attention to the chaos spirit.

"That's the song Ah hear," the youngest Apple sang loud and clear.
"Sing it along..." Sweetie, Scootaloo and Twist responded, all four joining up again...
"Let the world sing today," now that they were in full swing they had to hope enough of the others would join in...
"Over and over!" Enjoined the first two rows, the further rows humming as they waited to join and the cycle repeated.

"Stop singing, or I'm going to..." The spirit fumed, barely able to hear himself over the growing crowd of voices. The growing harmonization of voices... 'aw crud...'

"I'd like to teach the world to sing," this time the whole first row sang.
"Sing it along..." and more than thirty ponies responded.
"In perfect Harmony," Six mares had trotted out in front of the CMC, pausing to wink at them before joining in.
"Over and over!" Every pony present joined in. Sweetie could feel the tide of the music lifting her out of herself.

"Boo! Hiss! Get off the stage! Your lead singer sounds like a robot with bad auto-tuning!"
As the crowd began the echoing refrains, Sweetie reached deep inside and found the voice to deliver the last lines

"A song of peace
That echoes on
And never goes away..."

Over and over the choruses rang out, ponies who didn't know the words hummed along. Cotton candy clouds slowed and began to dissolve into nothing, buildings drifted back toward the ground, and zaniness became more sedate in general. Without physically changing, Discord seemed less something, less … 'satisfied with the narration of this story, perhaps?' Now there's no need to be rude– 'oh I beg to differ.'

In any case, the bearers of the elements of harmony took the field, sporting greater or lesser degrees of restored saturation. The spirit of disharmony watched them through lidded eyes. "You... used a spell to make yourself look gray, didn't you?" he not so much asked as accused the white pony.

Rarity grinned, "not my most elegant solution, but one can hardly argue with the results."

"I can argue with anything. I had a two decade debate with a patch of grass about the merits of photosynthesis." Discord's quip failed to earn even a chuckle. "Whatever. But you've made a serious error, Miss Bell. You've shown your hand. All I have to do is wait until your little chorus line gets bored or falls out of tune. This is not a mistake I'll allow to happen again." He sneered, steepling his fingers, when he began to wonder... 'no, NO. I am not going to ask, there is no way I'm tempting fate–' "...You must realize you can't win, what in Equestria were you hoping to accomplish here?" 'De Lancie with a sore throat, I just had to ask, didn't I?'

"Moi? Absolutely nothing." The scholar grinned, disturbing both the enemy and her allies, "And that scares you all the way to Tartarus, doesn't it? I finally realized what you were talking about, back when we first met. Any plan I could come up with, you could foil before I finished. So instead of racking my brain for an impossible solution, I decided to take a chance."

Jackie burst out laughing, "Rarity, that's hilarious..." her unicorn friend wasn't laughing. "You're serious? Uh, sug' don't take this the wrong way, but are you out of your dang mind?" The earth mare gestured at the draconequus, "Are you honestly expecting to depend on random chance to beat the supposed incarnation of chaos? Ah mean to say, it's not like serendipitous coincidences like that happen in real life–"

*Vworp, vworp* a blue rectangular solid materialized out of nothing and nowhere, a door on one side bursting open to reveal a brown pegasus stallion carrying a cardboard box held by a unicorn foal. "Pardon me, but did anypony order a case of Deus Ex Machina?"

"NO!" Discord howled, "This is im– highly unlikely and improbable!"

The improbable pegasus regarded Dinky Doo, "Remind me to pick up a copy of 'Brer Rabbit' to read to you later, will you Muffin?" He glanced at the distressed Discord, quirking an eyebrow, "Honestly, throwing a time traveler into a temporal vortex? You're just lucky I've forsworn causing paradoxes–"

A gray blur tackled the stallion, pausing to catch the lavender filly in a tight hug before nuzzling both. "You're ok... I- I thought–" words failed the mailmare, so she did without them.

Rainbow Dash made a dive for the box, only to have Discord shove her muzzle-first into the grass as he reached and– suddenly found himself under a sizable boulder.

"Say hello to my little friend," Rarity cackled, "Sit, stay. Good Tom."

Fluttershy helped the blue pegasus back onto her hooves and the pair distributed the five necklaces–

"We appear to be missing one," Diane noted.

Twilight rolled her eyes, "Rarity, how did you end up with such an overly dramatic element?"

The pony in question chuckled, "I'm certain I have no idea what you're implying, Twilight, dear. Meantime, everypony get into position, I think we're all quite ready for this to be over." With a crack of thunder from a clear sky, the tiara of the sixth element materialized.

As the light of harmony began to glow, Discord moaned, "I don't want to g–"

"Oi!" shouted an irate time traveler.

Six colors bled into one, and the rainbow of harmony spiraled up and crashed down upon the screaming Discord before extending an ever-expanding dome of light that rushed into the countryside, restoring balance to that which had been warped by the influence of chaos.


Eventually the light faded and ponies opened their eyes again. Loved ones and friends were found, checked out, and in turn assured that each was still alright. Over time, normalcy would go back to being a boring thing, but in its scarcity the mundane had become precious – or, seen another way, the everyday remained as it was, but ponies saw it with more appreciation than before.

Finally there were no more excuses to put off the inspection of the fallen foe of sanity. The six approached, the crowd following close behind. None of them could have said what they expected, but what they beheld was not it.

Discord lay, petrified, clutching at the large rock; he appeared to be either trying to hide behind it or hugging it, depending on what angle the statue was viewed from. More pressing seemed to be the broken hourglass, which was hemoraging glowing pastel–

Rarity began barking orders, "Rainbow, flask, now!" she glanced at the pegasi, relieved to see that both had landed, sacrificing mobility for a reduced risk of spreading the 'sand' that represented the power of an alicorn. The white unicorn shared a look with her purple counterpart and they began whisking as much of the precious spilled dwimmer-dust as they could before it melted away. Everypony moved quickly and carefully, loath to even breath lest they waste years of the princess's life.

They salvaged as much of the luminous sand as they could. There was no way to gauge how much was left, but it was definitely less that it had been. Why hadn't it simply been restored to the solar princess, was she out of the rainbow's effective range? The sun remained in its rightful place in the sky; the mystery would have to wait until they could return the glowing phial to its rightful owner.

Author's Note:

In other news, this excellent fan art was drawn by Soulite1110 / 1110Soulite on dA

I've said it before, and I'll probably say it again, MLP has the best fans I've ever seen!