> A Story In Which Twilight Sparkle Does Not Fight Discord
>  by Catullus Sedecim
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

> Part One: ...Despite Her Best Efforts
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The whole world was white. It was hard to describe what it was like. There had to be a floor, of course, because something was keeping Twilight’s feet on the ground, but she couldn’t quite make out any shadows and, strangely, couldn’t quite see her own shadow. In fact, she couldn’t quite see any sort of light source, but when she raised her hoofs in front of her face, she could see them clearly enough. The world here didn’t make sense. Of course, the person she was here to see - More accurately, to fight - Was hardly famous for making too much sense himself. It added up to a frustrating situation for the purple princess pony, as she felt her hooves lightly clop against whatever the floor was made of. It sounded like marble, but didn’t feel like it. Didn’t feel like anything. It should probably disturb her, but she had way too many important things on her mind for the moment. 

“Listen, Discord!” She called out to the nothing that surrounded her, “I know you’re in here, and I know you know why I’m here. Stop hiding, and come out and fight me like a... Uh...” She paused, “Like a draconequus!” She finally concluded. 

“I am!” The honeysweet voice replied, “I’m fighting you EXACTLY like a draconequus. Hiding in a pocket dimension and not fighting. That’s what we draconequuses do!”

“Okay, then!” Twilight responded, “Fight me not like a draconequus! Fight me like a... Like a fighter!” she paused, and added “The type that fights!”

“Ohhhh, very well,” the voice responded, sounding almost bored as it did. 

Suddenly, the world around them changed in a flash. Now it was suddenly an arena, like the great Maredison Square Garden. Discord stood before her, wearing a long robe, and heavy boxing gloves. Twilight narrowed her eyes.

“Okay, Discord,” She said, “If this is how you want to p-”

“WAIT!” The draconequus responded, holding up his glove, then looking at it, and a single finger was drawn in the middle, “Wait, I have to check something.” He raised his other hand, peering at a small piece of paper. 

“DDR section. Environment changes frequently... Indirect attacks... Oh, here, arena setting, NOT boxing. Sorry, that was my mistake, we can’t do this.”

“What do you mean we can’t do this! You can’t just invite me here and say we can’t do it now!”

“Customer’s always right, Twilight!” He responded, “I’m still annoyed by the ‘No Penetration’ part myself.”

She glared at the strange trickster beast, “You’re starting to get piss me off, Discord..”

“That’s fine,” he answered, “I’m allowed to do that. Encouraged even. Just not box you. Now, THIS,” he said, and the world around them morphed in a section, from the hub of Canterlot combat today, to that of a thousand years ago, a massive marble Colosseum, with the two standing on coarse sand, “THIS I can do.” 

He was dressed now in some sort of ancient form of bronze armor, though nothing that covered much of his body. She wore the same. It looked more like costume versions of Romane gladiators than the real ones, and they were notably unarmed, but she was ready to get to the battle itself, and she didn’t particularly care where they would do it. 

“Okay, Discord, however you like. I don’t care where I have to fight you, I just care that I’m about to fight you, now stand up a-”

“Hold on!” Discord raised a clawed hand again, palm out, “Pardon me, Twilight, fight ME?! Oh, nononono. You’re mistaken. You don’t fight ME. I don’t like getting my claws dirty. Especially not when I just had them manicured.” 

He vanished from her sight, then appeared behind her, holding his claw in front of her face. The ancient Equestrian sun shined off the filed-sharp point. “I mean, just look at that” He asked, “The Lotus twins were working on it for DAYS. Well, they were working on it for a few minutes, but I made it SEEM like days. I think they deserved to really appreciate how hard they were working, don’t you?” There was sinister joy in his voice. 

“No, Twilight,” he continued, placing the other hand on her shoulder in a manner that could have been comforting from someone else but from him made her blood run cold, “No, you aren’t going to be fighting me. You’re going to be fighting HIM!” He declared, and pointed an outstretched claw across the arena. 

Twilight nearly fainted when she saw what he was talking about. The ‘Him’ in question was a massive beast of a Diamond Dog. Standing well over a foot if not two above Twilight, even with the horn, he had a head nearly the size of her chest, and shoulders as broad as two mares standing side by side. His pitch-black arms looked to be the size of the great columns of Cloudsdale architecture, with the marks of bulging muscle along them enhancing the illusion of intricately carved black marble. 

If it weren’t for the obvious striations in his pecs, his chest could easily have been the envy of any silicone-injected pageant pony. Only the signs of rock-hard muscle along them changed the illusion. His abdominal muscles stood out in his flesh and made his whole midsection look like some sort of canyon carved from black volcanic rock by a strangely criss-crossing river. 

His thighs below had long since passed the point that the ever popular tree-trunk comparison could work. Boulders were more like it, along the upper leg and the lower. Twilight, for all her confidence and pride, couldn’t help being impressed as she followed the unending mass of rocky muscle down the legs to his feet. 

“DING DING DING!” The voice of her true opponent interrupted her,  and she turned her head to follow as she saw Discord run across her vision, carrying a piece of posterboard labeled “Round One.” What made it so strange, of course, wasn’t just that he was carrying the board, but that he seemed to have put on a far-too-tight bikini that was raising unwanted questions about where he kept parts of his anatomy. 

“Discord, why in Equestria are y-AGHHH!” Her question was interrupted with what felt like a cinderblock or lead weight slamming across her cheek and sending her collapsing to the ground in front of the cheering arena crowd. All sorts of rules could change in Discord’s world, but there was one that wouldn’t: Always keep your eye on your opponent. 

The impact of the monstrous thing’s fist against her cheek was as heavy as any of the combats she’d been in. She’d been punched through mountains and been in less pain afterwards. She collapsed to the ground, eyes already somewhat unfocused, knees wobbling, and arms flailing out. She tried to catch herself so she could stay on her feet, but no luck. The impact sent her collapsing to the ground like she had somehow forgotten how to control every limb in her body at the same time. 

She couldn’t move her limbs. Well, she could, she just couldn’t remember how to move which one. Her attempts to stand lead to random flailings of her arms, tensing of her flank. The punch had knocked her silly - Fitting considering Discord’s involvement in this contest - And she was just trying to remember how her body worked. 

Before she got a chance to, she felt a heavy hand in her mane, and fingers wrap around it and pull. She hadn’t had time to collect her senses and be ready for the fight to continue, but it didn’t matter. If she couldn’t figure out how to get back to her feet, her opponent would figure it out for her. She was lifted in the air, and, completely beyond her control, she felt her body dragged along the old-fashioned sandy ring.  She weakly raised her hands to try to pull the beast’s fingers out of her hair, but that couldn’t help and couldn’t spare her. Her opponent was larger, stronger, and most importantly at this point, not reeling from a blow that could have knocked out a full-grown dragon. 

Her hooves dragged scores in the sand, as the monstrous creature pulled her along by her mane. It was bad enough to have been taken by surprise like this, but the beast was pulling her the worst possible place - Face to face with Discord. There was a cruel and chilling smile on the face of the Draconequess as he met her gaze. He knew he was in control. She knew it too, even though she hated to admit it. She would find a way out of it, of course, but for now, he had control. Or, rather, his doggy creation had control. 

“What’s wrong, Discord?” She asked through gritted teeth, glaring in his eyes, hoping to goad him into getting involved himself, “Afraid to handle things on your own?” 

“Afraid?” Discord asked, shaking his head rapidly as he responded to her taunt, “Oh, no no NO, Twilight. I’m not afraid. I have no reason to be afraid. I control everything here, after all. How could I be scared? You couldn’t touch me if you tried~”

Twilight kept her eyes on his, “You don’t control me.”

“I don’t?” Discord asked, “Oh, goodness gracious me, what a mistake. What an error. I forgot!” He laughed, “Or, perhaps, it was you who forgot. Who forgot EXACTLY who you are dealing with here. You foolish little unicorn. In my dimension, my rules apply. This is my world, and you are just part of it. I can do anything I want to you, I could end this fight right now if I wanted. It’s only continuing because I like to watch weak, stupid, arrogant little ponies like you suffer. You are only still able to fight while I find the idea of your struggles amusing. After that, this all ends. For now, I’m enjoying the battle... But not the conversation. Fido? AWAY WITH HER!” 

The Diamond Dog, or whatever twisted version of those creatures Discord had summoned, answered with a growl and clutched his fingers tighter in Twilight’s mane, until the purple pony began to feel like he was about to tear her mane out by the roots. She reached up to try to pull on the creature’s wrist, but her efforts were ended when the other hand threw a hard punch against her back, right against the spine. For a moment, her nervous system went wild, agony accompanied by ‘funnybone’ tingles rolled through her, and her whole body went limp. 

It was followed by a yank on her mane, and her whole body was pulled along with it. It felt like her scalp was on fire, and she wished desperately that the beast would release her... Not realizing then just what would happen when it did. The diamond dog twisted and threw her backwards with one arm, and the purple pony felt the ground completely fall away from her as she was thrown at full force across the arena. 

Her body traveled like a cannonball shot from a pirate ship, as she flew over the sand and her back crashed against the stone wall of the arena. The impact was as bad, no, worse than the monster’s punch. The world seemed to go completely black accompanied by a mind-shattering ‘crunch’ sound, one she could only hope was a product of Discord’s Taunts and tricks as opposed to the result of her body being slammed against the stone. 

Twilight’s arms and legs were limp by her sides as she fell to the ground. Whether a product of Discord’s tricks or simply the fact that she had been thrown at full-force by a giant beast against the wall, the whole arena seemed to be spinning. Her back ached, her head ached, her shoulders, left leg, and right calf ached. The rest of her - Her chest, her stomach, her arms - Didn’t ache yet, but only because her body had not yet figured out they were part of it yet. Stunned, even drooling, she looked up. 

Three of the beasts... No, five, no, wait, only two, now seven... Her eyes wouldn’t focus enough for her to count accurately at first - Were coming towards her. Giant arms at their sides, hungry, monstrous drool falling from their lips, fists clenched, they moved in unison towards her. She shook her head, trying to shake off the stun. There had to be only one of them, she just had to figure out which one it was so she could fight it off! 

It took a few precious seconds, a commodity too rare for her to comfortably waste in a fight, for her to remember how to move her arms and legs enough to stand up. It wasn’t easy, but in time, it came to her, and stand up she did. She raised her hands as the monster approached, trying to figure out which one was the one she was tasked with defeating. 

Wait... She knew how this worked. She was seeing more than one because her eyes couldn’t focus. They weren’t looking in the same place. They were crossed, or just unfocused, but whichever one was the middle would be the real one! Magic senses allowed unicorns to keep that much even without the visual input.

Twilight’s horn glowed, gathering the magic within her body that she could. Many unicorns would have had to gather the magic from the world around them, but she was always special. In facT, she was the elemennt of friendship, and as any schoolcolt would be able to tell you, friendship was, in fact, magic. As long as she had any memory of her connection to the others in ponyville, no level of magical interference or even simply being sucked into another world could truly sever her connection to the magic of Equestria. Not even Discord’s bizarre arena-world. She felt Equestria’s magical energies flowing through her, empowering her, and gathering at the tip of her horn. That was a wonderful thing about unicorns, a thing few other species would ever be able to experience, the joy of unleashing a truly poowerful spell. And this one was going to be one of the best yet. 

With all the force that she could muster, allt he magic that she had in her body, she bent her head down and blasted a beam of pure energy at the draconequus’s bizarre, monstrous sidekick. It hit him square in the chest, causing the diamond dog (or, well, psuedo-diamond-dog, it was clear that it wasn’t the real thing, just one of Discord’s bizarre, monstrous creations) square in the chest. It was the knowledge that this was, in fact, one of his strange monsters that allowed her to put so much force in it, causing the creature to start to glow like a lightbulb, fill with magic, and then, ultimately, burst into confetti like a blast from Pinkie’s party-cannon. That result assuaged whatever last bits of concern Twilight might have had that that thing had been another creature trapped in his world like her. She wasn’t entirely sure what diamond dogs WERE made of, but she was fairly certain that whatever it was, it wasn’t confetti, balloons, cupcakes, or any of the other things that now littered the area, covering her, not coincidentally, in cupcake frosting. At least it was a SWEETER smell than whatever the normal result would have been. And much more delicious. 

Not that that mattered. What mattered now was the fact that she had a clear view of Discord. With his beast out of the way, it would be down to just her and him. He was a powerful trickster, but, as she had discovered, a coward as well. She just had to get TO him, and he would be hers. She narrowed her eyes, glaring at him, and could feel the residual magical energy of the blast she had just fired floating around her. 

“Discord!” She called out, and he gave a shocked look, looking around, as if pretending to have no idea who it was she would be so angry at. Eventually, he pointed a finger at himself, and looked at her questioningly, as if to ask if she really meant HIM, of all people. 

“Discord, your bodyguard is gone, and you’re going to be following him soon. It’s time to end this!” 

She growled, and charged at him at a speed that would have made Rainbow Dash proud. Her feet pounded at the hard sand, propelling her forward, as Discord leaned back, cowering in fear. She ran, her feet slamming against the sand. Slam, slam, slam... Blomf!

She felt her hoof sink into something, and looked down to see the ground had turned to the giant air-filled tubes of a bouncy castle. She didn’t have time to stop her run or adjust, she was already in the act of putting her other hoof on the no-longer-ground. It sank in as well, and she was propelled upward as a result, bouncing into the air.  She overbalanced, and fell forward, even as she bounced in the air.

It was a bouncy castle, but momentum was still momentum and a spine was still a spine, she couldn’t afford to land on her neck. She tucked her head and rolled, feeling her back land and bounce against the round, air-filled surface. It propelled her into the air, and she tumbled again, head-over-hoof, landing on her front this time, sinking into the air, and being propelled out as if being slung by a rubber-band sling shot.

This time she didn’t land on the ground, but only because there wasn’t any more room in the arena. Fortuantely, rather than being pitched clean out and into the stands, the area had completed its transformation into a full-on bouncing castle by now, and she twisted, her back slammIng into an air-filled wall, and bouncing her off again. 

She was sent careening away from the wall, feeling more like a pinball in a machine than a mare at this point. Honestly she’d never had time for things like this, even as a filly, she was too invested in her work, but she was FAIRLY certain even bouncy castles didn’t bring enough bounce for a wall to pitch her six feet away, and send her sinking into the ground on her back again, bounce up, tumble, and roll forward. 

She twisted in the air to roll to her side, making sure she wouldn’t bounce quite as high on each impact as a result, and then when she did go up managed to twist and get her feet under her, solving at least ONE of the problems she was facing as a result of the arena switch. She was still bouncing, you couldn’t stand on something like this, but at least she was able to bounce in place, giving her something of a stable position to try to solve the second problem: Her opponent for the fight. 

That problem popped into existence beside her with a sudden rush of air, lying on his back and letting the castle bounce him easily up and down. He was showing off and in complete control, while what she was doing was little more than treading water, trying to avoid being careened around too far one way or another by the unnaturally elastic arena. 

“Having FUN yet, Sparkle?” The Draconequues taunted in his low, smooth voice. 

She glared at him, “I’ll be having fun when I have a fight,” she answered simply. 

‘A fight?” Discord asked, feigning shock at her comment, “Oh, you wanted a FIGHT? I’m so sorry, I must have been confused, I thought you came here to be beaten to a pulp by someone far more powerful than you could ever imagine being, but if it’s a FIGHT you want, well... A fight you can have!” 

There was another rush of air, and more draconequuses appeared around here. They weren’t additional people, though, not even in the way that the diamond dog had been. They were made of rubber, or elastic, or whatever this arena was made of. Long torsos with painted-fur textures replaced the main body of her oppponent in these little replicas of him, the subtlety of the arching neck lost as well in favor of a simple extension of the torso to make the main body of the creatures look like one single oblong sausage-shape, like a bendy balloon. Their arms and legs were long, but noodly, with the legs ending in broad, flat, similarly fake feet, and the arms ending in simple square-shaped imitations of boxing gloves. They looked a little bit like the standing bag things that fillies and colts sometimes got, filled with sand at the bottom to ensure that whenever you hit them, they would pop right back up. That was, honestly, a rather good description of dealing with Discord, too, now that she thought of it. 

“Okay, Twilight,” Discord said, interrupting her minor moment of thinking about his nature, “Since you were so insistant and asked so VERY nicely, you can have your fight. Are you ready for it?” He laughed, not even giving her the time she would need to answer the question, “Well, ready or not... FIGHT!” 

The gloves the things wore may have been fake, but the impact was real. If anything, it felt like it was harder than a normal boxing glove, like the latex cubes had been inflated with lead instead of air. It sent her tumbling, completely upsetting the small amount of balance she had managed and sending her falling to the ground. Her body landed in the latex, and bounced up easily, presenting, unfortunately enough, an absolutely perfect target for the second balloon-discord to capitalize on. 

Once again, she felt the psuedo-balloon fist smash into her body, a glove like pure rock pounding her. This one didn’t just hit her, either, it sent her flying up high in the air, an uppercut that launched her even higher than the balloon castle itself had. She felt like she was being celebrated in one of those old time cartoons, bounced up, almost gravityless before she started back on her way down. 

The third of air-filled Discord clones was not looking for the same level of show-off in his attack, he was interested only in how hard he could hit a helpless pony who was in freefal after a gravity-defying uppercut. It turned out, in fact, that the answer was “Quite hard indeed,” as the glove’s impact into her chest sent her careening towards the fourth of the group like a fastball pitch. She practically sailed through the air... 

And felt his ‘fist’ smash into her with home-run quality power, sending her collapsing right down to the ground. Whether it was a result of her body being more exhausted and thus just that little bit heavier since she wasn’t really able to try to balance, the fact that the impact of the blow had managed to stop her momentum short and she had very little to bounce with, or, quite frankly, it was Discord himself making sure her collapse would be as pitiful as possible and ensuring her momentum stopped, she couldn’t say. She was just knocked to the ground, and felt the air-filled rubber shift a little under her as she fought her way to all fours. 

“Come on, Discord,” she glared up at him, “You know this isn’t why I’m here. Get rid of this castle and let’s just fight.”

“Get rid of it?” Discord asked, looking around. The balloon imitations wobbled their torsos around a little as well, since they had no necks to do the same with “Get rid of what, this?” His voice was smooth, soft, and had the same calm he did when he was preparing a new prank to pull on the other ponies. The other discords vanished away as he spoke. 

“Get rid of this castle?” He repeated, “This castle, right here? The one that you’re standing on? The one supporting your weight? That’s the castle you want me to get rid of?” Discord laughed a disturbingly excited laugh. She shivered as she realized what he was planning. 

“Oh, very well,” He said, “If you INSIST, Twilight. I’ll take it away.”

With a snap of his fingers, he did exactly that, and to a far greater extent than she could have expected as well. Suddenly the castle was simply not there, and she was falling. Back in the white void, but this time without a floor, she was falling. Discord reclined on his hand behind him, holding one leg out straight and propping the other up on top of it.

“I admit I’ve never been entirely sure on how to deal with fighting in mid-air but, well, it was your choice, and I hate to turn a lady down” The wicked draconequus laughed, then rolled on his ‘belly’ and clasped his hands against his cheek, “I guess I’m just a romantic. Tell me, Twilight, is it all that you’d hoped for and more?” 

She looked down, but there was nothing to see. Nothing to feel, either, except the rush of the wind through her mane and even that she was pretty sure was only a result of the fact that she was moving quickly, not that there were many air particles to actually blow through her hair. She looked back to Discord with desperation in her eyes, but as she could have expected, there wasn’t much in the way of kindness, gentleness, or mercy in Discord’s eyes. 

“This isn’t what I wanted, and you know it, Discord,” she answered, glaring at him still, even though it was a little harder with her eye just barely starting to swell shut from the way it had been bashed with those gloves, “You know what I wanted. A proper fight. A battle. So stop our falling a-”

“Stop our falling?” He asked brightly. 

“I didn’t say th-”

“Oh, I know what I heard. YOU said you wanted to stop falling, and get to battle. And who would I be if to deny a direct command from royalty? Very well, your will be done, your princessliness!” 

With a click of his fingers, she suddenly stopped falling. Hard. There was no bouncy castle this time. Admittedly she thought she felt SOME amount of movement, but that might have just been how hard she had been bashed around so far. 

She was on wood, now. That was something she could at least determine with a fair amount of certainty. Tile and slate didn’t tend to give you splinters for one. She raised her head weakly, and saw Discord standing in front of her, wearing a long, dark, old-fashioned coat. A three-pointed hat with a feather the size of her arm extended from the band of the hat. More of the ballon-clones stood around him, wielding balloon cutlasses and with red-and-white bandanas around their ‘heads.’ The former boxing glove hands were gone, one now held a weapon and the other was completely bare.

“AHOY, YE LILY LIVERED LANDLUBBER!” Discord proclaimed in a terrible imitation of the traditional cornish ‘Pirate’ accent, “Ye wanted to not fall and come to battle, well better battle could there be than a PIRATE battle, aye lads?!”

“AYE!” “AYE!” “AYE!” The psuedo-Discords all yelled out in agreement.

“JAY!” Yelled a final one after a pause.

“Oooh, breaking the rules, I like him!” Discord said, “He’s my new first mate. As for you, well... You’re my new prisoner. LASH HER TO THE MAST, LADS!” 

In an instant, she was seized by the creatures. They dragged her by her arm, pulling her to the massive wood mast. Long, thick, red licorice candies seemed to appear magically in the hands of the psuedo discords, and they pulled her arms behind the wood, and tied them together. She was forced to stand, now, and stare at the collection of cannon that had been turned and aimed right at her. Crews of clones stood by each one. 

“Okay, crew! She may be a landlubber wench, but she’s fought hard today. I say we give her the ol’ 21 gun salute, AYE?!”

“KAY!” Yelled the first mate immediately, and Discord patted it on the head, “isn’t he adorable?” He asked, “Alright, Draconequi!” He proclaimed, “Ready! Aim! And... FIRE!”

It was a blessing, if a somewhat small one, that the cannon seemed to be loaded with gumballs instead of cannonballs. It meant that while the impact of three thick balls against her body certainly hurt, it wasn’t going to kill her. Of course, it was hardly going to save her, either. She looekd up at Discord. 

“How much longer do you plan on doing this, Discord?”

“That’s CAPN’ Discord to you, missy!” He responded, “And until I get bored. Which I’m not yet. Now, three down, 18 to go. READY! AIM! FIRE!” 

The gumballs came at her again, smashing into her body. Once again it hurt like hell, but once again, at least she could say that the pain was nowhere near as bad as it could be. She had to take the small advantages when they came to her, here, there hadn’t been many big ones lately. She tried to shake off the pain, and the frustration, and glare up at Discord once more. 

“You know, Discord, this isn’t the first time I’ve had to fight you from a disadvantage, and I won that time too. So if you think that I-OOOF!”

A blueberry gumball smashed into her head, and landed on the ground, rolling over to Discord’s feet. Discord looked down at it with mild interest.

“I’m so sorry about that one, Twilight, I really am. I’m afraid that one never good keep his gun from going off early.”

He lifted the gumball in the air, and turned it around in his claw. It was about the size of a bowling ball, though deformed somewhat already from how Discord’s clones had been using it to fire straight at Twilight. 

“Of course,” Discord continued, “I suppose that IS what happens when you have blue balls!”

The entire crew laughed uproariously at the joke, and Twilight blushed, looking down at the ground beneath her. This was going too far. When she looked back, Discord had taken a giant bite out of the gumball when it was an apple. 

“Oh, I’m tho thowwy aboud dat,” Discord began, and then shook his head, “Sorry, shouldn’t talk with my mouth full. Very rude of me. Anyway, please, what were you saying?” 

Twilight began to flex and try to pull the ‘ropes’ apart, feeling them stretch and weaken at the middle as she spoke. 

“What I was saying, Discord,” she answered, “Is that you can do whatever you want to try to intimidate me, or my friends, or, well, whatever else it is you feel like doing or saying, but you don’t scare me, you don’t intimidate me, and you certainly d-” She blinked as she felt something against her cheek, and turned her head. A giant blue blueberry gum bubble was pushing up and flattening against Twilight’s cheek, as Discord inflated it further and further. Soon it was covering almost half her face. It was hardly a fitting position to be in for nobility, but that seemed to be what he wanted. What she wanted was for the ‘ropes’ to break. Both of them seemed to be getting their way at the moment, too, the little ropes were stretching out, and if she could keep this up, soon she would be free.

“What I’m thaying!” She said as the bubble continued to expand against her face. As she said it, she felt the ‘rope’ fall away, and smiled, “Ith that thith has gone on long enough. Thtop with the games!” She commanded, and stepped away from the mast, and the bubble, turning to face him. The other Discords made an attempt to interrupt, but she interrupted them first, a glow of magic surrounding her horn and then blasting away to send the other Discords flying away from her and splashing into the ocean.

“I’ve taken part in your little stupid... Whatever,” she continued, “For long enough. You accepted the challenge, you agreed to fight me, and I’m not going to just stand here and have you make joke after joke. I’m sick of it. I’m sick of being toyed with. If you want to fight me, Discord, just Draconequus up and FIGHT me. Because I’m putting my foot down a-”

There was a dark chuckle. A worrying sound to come from Discord, she had learned.

“Putting your foot down, Twilight?” He asked, “Well... So am I.”

No sooner had the words left his lips than she was driven down to the wooden deck of the ship once more. A weight like a mountain suddenly crushed down on her. It was sticky, too. Sticky, slimey, it felt like the worst parts of the inside of a humid cave in summer. She swore it smelled too, and it was soft. She didn’ know what exactly this new arena of his was, but it was her least favorite yet. Slimey, muggy, and with a completely rancid smell. Even flat on the ground, she could tell she was sticking to it somehow, like gum to the underside of a desk. Even the slightest movements, pulses of some sort of underground (or overground?) liquid through the massive form of the thing, pulled on the hair at the back of her body as if something was trying to rip her coat clean off. The weight increased, and shifted, as if she was feeling centuries of tectonic motion on her back. It was not a pleasant sensation, even without the smell. 

The thing pulled up, and she could see what was going on, largely because it pulled her with it. Whatever sticky liquid was coating this... She had assumed it was a normal bit of ground, but it seemed like it was some bizarre flying machine or something... Turned out to be sticky enough to lift her whole body off the ground. It wasn’t a fact she found particularly pleasing, this... This whatever was not something she wanted to be attached to too much longer. She would have been honestly perfectly fine with it if at that very moment she were to completely lose traction and fall to the ground in an instant. It wasn’t exactly a pleasant thought, the idea of crashing to the ground like an anvil or other weight in an old cartoon, but it would be nicer than being... Wherever she was. She honestly didn’t want to think about it, if she could avoid it. 

After all, she had already been crushed. Being flattened down to the ground without some horrific foul-smelling weight on her back would have to be a much more pleasant experience than having that happen with the bonus of a stink so bad she wanted to wretch and some mysterious, horrific, sticky slime. 

She tried to get what could be called a ‘lay of the land,’ so to speak. Land may have been a generous term, but she didn’t have a better one. She herself was standing on top of a hill. The hill’s incline was slight, almost imperceptible, but it was there. It rolled down, and then back up again on the far side of the valley. She couldn’t see over the top of the hill across from her, but judging by the area closer to her, it probably ended with a quick drop-off ravine, just like this part did. Beyond that, hard to tell how far beyond, stood a great wall, an almost sheer cliff face covered with what she could only assume was some strange carpetting of thick and matted brown moss. 

So, she had at least the beginnings of a set of answers about where she was. She could physically describe it, and maybe understand parts of it, though not where in Equestria someone would find emerald-green soaking wet deserts. She would have to table that for now. She could consider that later, right now she just had to think. Specifically, she had to think about the problem of the day. This fight had not been going her way so far, but at least she’d kind of comprehended Discord’s sense of humor, and as a result, figure out what he was doing and, most likely, or at least probably and sometimes, what she could do to end the ‘gag.’ And in this place, she couldn’t help reflecting, gag was a very appropriate term indeed. Why HERE, though? What was this place that Discord would find it worth taking her? Everything else had been ridiculously themed like the pirate or gladiator, or just plain ridiculous like the bouncey castle. When it came to Discord’s disturbing place creations, this hardly felt in line. He seemed to like ‘funny,’ or his twisted version of it, and whatever the slippery humid hellscape was, comedy it wasn’t. 

By Celestia’s hips, the place did stink, though, didn’t it. Whatever it was, it certainly was never going to top anypony’s list of greatest vacation destinations. In the back of her mind she had a feeling there was something she was missing, some obvious answer to this riddle. The problem with things that you’re missing, though, is that you’re missing them. 

‘Another great quote from the princess,’ Twilight thought to herself, and struggled up to stand on her hind hooves. 

Her legs were a bit shaky in the attempt, from all the punishment she’d taken over the course of their bout, but she was eventually able to manage it. Her hooves sunk a little bit into the strange ground, but only slightly. It was like walking on a sandy beach. There’s give, your feet go down a bit, but never too far even if you can never be sure WHERE the solidity came from. She adjsuted her weight, leaning back and forth from one hoof to another to make sure that she would be able to walk along the surface. After all, she could speculate all she wanted, but the only way she was going to be able to get a straight answer and figure out what was happening and where she was, was to find discord and ask him. 

That was, in fact, another strange thing about the place she’d ended up. Where WAS Discord? He had shown up almost instantaneously for all his other unpleasant little surprise trips, but right now it seemed like she was alone on the muggy alien landscape. Well, whatever it was, she’d get her answer when she found him.

She tested her weight a little more, then started taking a few small steps. Strangely, despite the wetness on the ground, the stickness made it a simple task to walk across. She looked around as she made her steps, trying to see if there was any feature like a tree or a rock or SOMETHING that would break up the bizarre monotony. There didn’t seem to be anything. Including a draconequus. 

All other options expended, she did the only thing she still could. She cried out. 

“DISCORD!” She yelled out, trying to sound intimidating but probably coming off more like pleading and desperate, “Discord, where in Equestria are you?!”

There was a heavy, deep, dark chuckle that sounded like the rumblings of thunder. 

“Twilight... I’m up here~” He answered. She looked upwards, up above the mossy wall to see...

To see his face. His neck and his face exactly, in fact. He had, through his bizarre mystical tricks, found a way to grow to the size of a giant. When it had felt like she was being crushed under a mountain, it had been mostly the correct instinct. She had been crushed under a mountain, but the mountain was her opponent, grown hundreds of feet tall, miles possibly, and pushing down on her with all his weight. 

Which of course meant that if Discord was the mountain that had crushed her, than the bizarre emerald land formation that had born his wait had been... Had been... 

“EEEEEEEWWWWW!” She couldn’t hide her disgust at the thought of where she was. 

“Discord,” she called out to him in the stern tones of an exapserated teacher. It may not have been wise, but her intimidation in the moment had been chased away by disgust, “Discord. Tell me something.”

“Tell you what?” He asked. 

“Discord... Am I STANDING on your FOOT?!” She demanded. 

“NO!” Discord answered quickly, “Oh, nononono! Never! You’d n... Okay, a little.” He answered, “Teeny bit,” He held up a hand, fingers pinched close together, “Smidgeon.”

He then paused, “Yes. You are on my foot.”

“DISCORD!” Twilight’s fury was growing, “I came here to fight YOU! I came here for the fight that YOU accepted because you SAID we could fight. That’s why we’re both here. So I want to fight YOU. Here. In an arena. I don’t want to fight your clones, I don’t want to fight your pet dog, and I CERTAINLY do NOT want to be STANDING on your FOOT!” 

“Oh, you don’t?” Discord asked, and he laughed again. This time, at least, Twilight was able to realize the mistake she’d made before Discord used it against her. Not that that was too helpful, to tell the truth, knowing the REASON that you’re about to be made a fool of didn’t mean you weren’t about to be made a fool of, it just meant you got to regret whatever it was that put you in a situation for it to happen. 

“That was not what I meant to say,” she tried to object, but Discord leaned in, his face now taking up the whole horizon as if she was standing in front of a massive Discord-carving skyscraper.

“Oh, but Twilight,” he answered, “It’s what you SAID.” 

He brought his fingers up in front of her. A good ten feet, honestly, but on this scale he might as well have been caressing her cheeks. The center finger curled under the sides, and she watched his fingers shake with the tension of a coiled spring.

“And would NEVER go against what you say~” 

Saying that, he released his finger and flicked her from his hand. The full finger, larger than her entire body and too thick around for her to even contemplate hugging it, caught her in the midsection and launched her hard, far, and fast off the Draconequus’s foot. She was at least glad to be getting OFF his foot, she wouldn’t want to spend any more time on there than she had to, but the force it took to propel her like that, a little purple rocket launching from an emerald-green island, was enough to set her body bouncing and shaking. She flailed as she sailed through the air, reaching out for anything that could stop her seemingly unending flight. 

She found something. Just not the way she wanted to. Her back hit a wall the same way it had in the arena, crashing full force and flattening her so she felt like a pancake, or perhaps that gooey toy that you could throw at walls and watch it slide down. The impact certainly left her feeling like her brains and body had a similar consistency to the silly putty, thick and together but jellied and useless. She felt like she was a character in the cartoons he watched, prepared to peel off the wall and collapse. 

...Actually, considering that, why WASN’T she falling? It wasn’t as if she had any particular adhesive power or anything, the only thing she had sticky on her was...

Was his foot sweat. 

“EWWWWWWWW!” She repeated as she felt her body start to slowly pitch forward, not sure if she was terrified or thrilled to know that there wasn’t enough of his sweat on her back to keep her stuck to the wall. 

Being stuck was bad. On the other hand, not being stuck would be worse. She might be trapped on the wall, but for now, she was, at least, on the wall, which, for all its flaws, was at least not tumbling in a rapid free fall towards whatever sort of twisted game Discord had planned for her next. As much as she hated the fact that she was stuck purely due to Discord’s viscious sweat, she would take disgusting and pungent over a wild freefall plunge anyday. 

She tried to hold perfectly still, tensing every muscle and holding her breath, in part to prevent herself from making any unwanted movements that might make her free herself and start a plunge to the ground, and in part to keep from having to inhale the horrid scent of the sweat that covered her body.

She heard an unpleasant squeaking sound as she slid down the wall, the wet and sticky coating of her back sliding along it. A tiny rational part of the back of her mind reminded her that this didn’t make sense, but of course, nothing that Discord had done so far had made sense, so this was hardly an exception. Despite all her best efforts, she could feel bits of her fur slowly starting to  peel away. She pressed her head back, biting her lower lip and concentrating as if she could will herself to just STICK, she knew better than to think that any magic she tried might work. 

Then she heard the familiar deep voice of Discord beside her, “Oh, deary me...” The draconequus murmured, his voice sickly-sweet like spoiled honey, “It looks like you’re stuck. Well, that won’t do at all. Here, why don’t I give you a hand.”

She turned her head to see he was still massively oversized, not as far as he had been when she’d stood on his foot, but huge nonetheless. He reached out and grasped her head where it was stuck to the wall, pulling it slightly away. She felt like a sticker being carefully peeled off, and bit her lip, not wanting to look down as she felt her body slowly unstick from the wall. 

Sooner rather than later (and certainly sooner than she was happy about) she was freed from the wall, and now there was nothing to stop yet another seemingly unending descent to whatever the next torment Discord had in store for her would be. 

Although there wasn’t actually any wind to rush past her, she could still hear it. She hazarded a brief moment of opening her eyes to see what she would be in for, but it was hard to make anything out with the way that the simulated wind of Discord’s world seemed to batter and slap at her face. Still, she could see down below that there was some sort of array of bright lights, it was difficult to make out any details, and quite frankly she knew she would find out soon enough. As it rushed up towards her, she instinctively closed her eyes to protected herself against the oncoming... Well, whatever it was. 

After longer than she would have liked (and certainly long enough that she was quite certain she shouldn’t have survived the fall) she landed with a heavy thunk, in a heap on the ground. She didn’t dare open her eyes, but she heard loud sounds, various plinking and beeping noises, as if Pinkie had had a misadventure in the mirror pool and every one of the replicas was trying to win a whacky-sound contest on the idea that only the real pinkie would be the loudest. She shook her head a little, trying to make sure she would be ready for whatever strange sights she would see when she opened her eyes. 

What she saw when she did did little to change her initial impression. She was in a room that was somehow dark and bright at the same time, black walls and a seemingly black floor, though one with bright shapes of stars and moons and all manner of objects in shocking pink and green. She herself was on some sort of elevated platform, metallic with black pads, arranged in some sort of square. She’d had her eyes shut long enough that she was needing a moment to deal with the glare and sounds around her. 

She looked around, and then up, to see Discord on a similar platform. As her eyes got used to the strange lighting that surrounded her, she realized they were in some sort of video arcade. Canterlot had been full of them when she was a filly, and while she had never exactly been eager to waste her time with flashing lights and robotic musicians, she could recognize where she was well enough. 

With that context, she was able to figure out where exactly she was. The video monitor behind Discord was so bright that it took her some time to adjust and make it out, but she wasn’t interested in it anyway, she just wanted to deal with the draconequus. She glared at him, planting her feet and staring him down as he reclined against the bar at the Prance Prance Resurrection beside her. 

“Enough of this nonsense, Discord!” She glared at him, “I’m not here for your chaos jokes, I’m here for a fair f-”

“FAIR?!” Discord responded brightly, not letting her finish, “Oh, but Twilight, this IS fair! Perfectly fair competition, just like you want. I’ve never been one for physical violence, of course, but we’re as fair as can be, here. You have a machine, I have a machine. We’ll play a little game, and if you win, I concede.”

“And if you win?” Twilight asked, “What happens if you win, before I agree to anything?”

Discord chuckled, “Oh, poor Twilight, I’m afraid you misunderstand. There’s not an agreement to be made. You’re part of this, whether you agree to it or not. But for what it’s worth, I promise, if I win, you can keep up your useless struggles to defeat me. Do we have a deal?”

Twilight considered his answer, as if she had a choice. Discord held all the cards here, metaphorically speaking, she was just trying to see if there was something about this place that she could use to force him into a more conventional confrontation. He had things sewn up, though, his faux-arcade didn’t seem to have any exits, and even the roof she’d fallen through was covered up. There was no way out, and there was no way up. That meant that, ultimately, the only option would be to play whatever games he had in store for her. At least this time there weren’t any gumball cannons or ballon-discords, so there were limits on what sort of tricks and magic he could pull out against her. 

As she stared at him, she suddenly felt a heat under her hooves. It was a mild warmth at first, but it gradually increased, until she was wincing from it. 

“Oh, by the way, Twilight,” Discord chuckled, “You might want to be a little bit careful there. PPR can be a VERY unforgiving game, you know.” 

“What are you talking ab-”

“Okay, warm-up time over, time to get started!” Discord interrupted her, and instantly, the already somewhat painful heat on her hooves turned searing. 

“AHHH, WHAT ARE Y-”

“Play the GAME!” Discord responded quickly, pre-empting the question and already beginning to dance. She looked down to the pad, seeing the agonizing flashes, then up and realized that the parts that were hurting her hooves were matching up to the arrows on the screen that would have been ‘wrong.’

“OH SHOOT!” She responded, trying to match her hooves and movements to the game’s approved points. She wasn’t the most graceful and dextrous of mares even at the best of times, she didn’t get any better when she had been bashed around time after time, and her abilities CERTAINLY didn’t improve when the punishment for losing a superheated blast that made it that much harder for her to keep up, now that she had to deal with the agony at the bottom of her hooves along with the rapidfire changes of direction and movement necessary to keep up with the machine. The result, of course, was a continuous, heavy pulse of failure sounds. 

“You really aren’t very good at this, are you?” Discord asked, resting himself on  the top of the machine, casually sipping from a large paper cup with a Dairy Princess logo across the front. Twilight glared at him, trying to keep up with the motions, but dividing her attention between the screen and the draconequus lying on top of it just made her task that much harder, and put her hooves through that much more pain. 

“Don’t you have to! Ah! Ow! Shoot! Yowch!” The repeated failures felt like spikes into her hooves, and her fury at Discord’s behavior growing as the draconequus refused to take even his own challenge seriously, not even standing at his own machine for the competition “Ahhh! Darnit! Don’t you have to play... Ow! Play as well? I thought this... Ooof, this was a contest!”

“Oh, but Twilight!” Discord responded, laughing at her impotent fury, “But I AM playing, see?” He asked, and gestured with his tail towards the machine beside hers, where she saw a pair of disembodied draconequus legs dancing to the beat, hitting every point perfectly. Her heart sank at the sight, she hadn been frustrated by the events so far, of course, but she had at least been able to take comfort in the fact that she was making progress towards her ultimate goal of getting through Discord’s seemingly interminable series of tricks and toys and defeating him once and for all. Now, though, that seemed hopeless, and to make matters worse, her moment of frustration turned brought down her focus, and not coincidentally, her movement speed, making her feet hurt even more. It was bad enough that she was going to lose... Whatever this competition that Discord was putting her through was, but on top of that, she didn’t even get to stop dancing. If she did that for even a moment, her feet would be further singed by the red-hot dance pad underneath her. 

Normally she closed her eyes when she really needed to concentrate, but right now, that wasn’t exactly an option. She had to keep her eyes on the machine, focus completely on the scrolling arrows, to ensure that her day wasn’t going to have to become any more painful and frustrating than it already had. Not that her attempts to keep her focus were going to do too much, of course. The thing about having one’s hooves repeatedly singed is that it makes it a lot harder to use them for... Well, really, anything. While the music played on, she began to lose control of her legs, panting from exhaustion and even starting to slip on the platform, struggling to keep to her feet, much less match the notes. 

The rhythm of the music increased, and the heat seemed to as well. It had already been agonizingly hot, achinng with every step, but soon she was barely capable of thinking about where she was trying to put her feet at all, as every step seemed to be placing a hoof on a hot stove. Indeed, she looked down to see that wasn’t far from the case, the pad had grown so hot that the neon lights were no longer visible beyond the glow of white, and every time the safe zone changed, it turned back to black for almost a tenth of a second before becoming safe again. 

Now it wasn’t merely the exertion that was making sweat poor down her body, it was the heat coming from below as well. Her sensible (and nitpicky) half wondered why she was even still able to feel in her foot after spending so long having it practically burned off, since surely her nerves sould have singed by now, but this was Discord’s world, after all, and her biology, like everything else present, was completely under his control. The answer, of course, was simply that he wanted her to keep feeling pain, and as long as he wanted that, she would feel it. With the way her muscles ached, her heart beat in her chest, and her lungs felt like they’d been slashed with razorblades with every breath, that was going to be for quite some time even if the torture stopped right now. Which of course, it...

Did.

Discord may have been a sadistic and twisted being, but he also seemed to have a certain sense of honor to his games, or at the very least, he didn’t want to keep up with one forever. Eventually, the song had to end, and when it did, she collapsed down to her knees in exhaustion, covered in sweat and panting from the effort she’d had to go through. She wanted to get up angrily and yell at him, but she didn’t have the strength to. She didn’t even have the strength to look at him, even though she felt his tail drag across her back and he floated back to reattach himself to his legs. 

“Ooooh, time to see who won!” He intoned, sounding as eager as he would if... Well, if he DIDN’T already know the answer for sure. She didn’t have the energy left in her to respond, and she heard a low, frightening growl of frustration at her lack of playing along. A small part of her was glad to have done something to at least sort of hurt or upset him, although a much larger part was worried about just what he would have been capable of if he was genuinely angry and wanting to destroy her, not just have some fun. Maybe she was lucky he wasn’t really fighting. Then again, maybe a quick beating would have been more comforting. 

She felt his hand grip her mane and yank upwards, her back arching a bit and making her look up at the machine above her.

“Come on, Twilight... Don’t you want to SEE?” He asked, yanking again, her neck cranking and back bending backwards under the force. Her vision was obscured, stained with sweat and tears, and now her back, neck, and shoulders were in agony as he forced her to look up at the scoreboard. Through the blur of her tears and sweat, she saw the score counters go up. Or, rather, she saw his go up, while hers remained at a frustrating 0. She’d done her best, but she didn’t need the machine to let her know that Discord hadn’t cheated. She really had failed to score even a point, and the Draconequus laughed. 

“Oh, dear, poor Twilight,” he taunted her, “Guess you really didn’t do so well, did you? You really got...” He chuckled, “Hammered!” He announced. She didn’t need to see what was happening to know that the comment was going to be the start of some painful pun, and her presumption was proven when a heavy weight smashed on her back, driving her to a completely prone-position on the still wildly hot dance pad. It seared into her body, seeming to singe the hairs on her chest and underbelly, and she could only groan as the weight was lifted, but her back and body stayed in agony from the crushing blow. 

“You really shouldn’ttake challenges you can’t win, you know, Twilight,” he scolded her, “It’s not a very good plan. It won’t well for you. I’m sure you’ve noticed, I’ll always be better at these games than you.”

She groaned, looking up at him in exhaustion and fury, glaring at the chimeric creature standing above her. 

“Not here for games... Fighting...”

“What was that?” Discord laughed, “You’re here for FIGHTING?” He laughed harder, floating off the ground and turning circles, “Oh, Twilight, don’t you understand? Fighting’s a type of game... And I’m very, VERY good at it. I’m just doing this because you don’t stand a chance at that game~”

“I want...” Twilight panted, trying to bring herself back to her hands and knees, “I want... That.”

“You want that?” Discord asked, “You really want to fight?” He chuckled, “Well... I suppose if you insist...” His smile got wider, “Time to fight...”

Rather than actually attacking her, though, he pulled a lever, and she felt the pad beneath her suddenly rise, propelling her on a spring off of it and across the room. She was about to hit one of the machines she was sure of it, but to her shock, she didn’t. Instead, right when she was sure she would hit it, the world gave way, becoming brightly colored, the arcade fading until she was in some sort of strange, underground factory world. 

To her surprise, she suddenly felt a lot better... She was still feeling the agony and coated in sweat, still exhausted, but most of the pain seemed to fade. She felt she could move and fight. For a moment, anyway, before she landed hard on the ground. Metal, in fact, as became clear as she rolled against an already damaged guardrail. 

She raised her head, and saw her own name floating above her. Floating beside a picture of herself, in fact, and a yellow bar framed by silver. It even had her name helpfully labeled. There was another beside it, but she didn’t have time for that... She had to get up and figure out where she was. 

She stood, and shuddered at what she saw. Standing a few feet away from her was a giant man, well over seven feet tall. He was a human, like the characters Lyra so adored from her silly shows or the world she had once visited. Well, he at least seemed to be. His skin, though, was a bright red, his hair black, and he wore an almost comically tiny pair of glasses. On his hands were massive, pitch-black gauntlets that she shuddered at the thought of being struck by. 

He didn’t approach her, though. He just stood, looking at her, unmoving. She looked at him, waiting for an attack that didn’t come. Maybe he was friendly?

“Hello?” She asked. No response. She tried again, “Er... Excuse me, but why are we here?”

Was that too rude? “Er, could you please answer, Mr...” It occurred to her that his name might be seen in the bar above like hers, “Mr. Tager?” She asked.

She got a response, but not from the man. Instead, she heard Discord’s voice laughing. 

“Alright, Twilight, time you got what you wanted, just you and me, one-on-one... Like I said, I am VERY good at fighting games!” He began to laugh. As he laughed, another voice interrupted, an excited sounding female, and as she spoke, the words appeared in mirror to Twilight’s right in a huge, gothic text.

“The wheel of fate is turning. Rebel one. ACTION!” 

Twilight didn’t get much chance to do anything after that, as the giant man began his approach.
> ...Even in a game
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

She didn’t understand much about what was happening, but she was pretty sure that, despite the seemingly pleasant look on the man’s face, letting him get close was going to be far from a pleasant plan. Her suspicions were confirmed when he approached, and raised his hand before slamming a crushing fist into her body. She tried to create a mystic shield in front of her using her magic, but his fist slammed through the magic with ease, powering through the shield and pounding into her face, knocking her flying back. 

She was blown into the air by the impact, off of her hooves and careening away from the giant red man. The blow had been strong, but she hadn’t expected him to send her off the ground so easily. Nor had she expected it when he leaped in the air after her, connecting a second slam of his mighty fists into her face. For some reason she couldn’t understand, at least by any known form of pony science or magic, she felt herself fly back again, as if this was the first strike and she was being lifted rather than simply being hit on the way down. A bruise began to form on her cheek, as her foe drove his iron-gauntleted fist into her gut, knocking her up into the sky further, while he landed on the ground. The crash onto hard floor hurt less than she would have expected, but it did nothing to alleviate her fear as the beastly man looked down at her and briefly adjusted his glasses. 

“You can try to run away you know,” suggested the mighty draconequus. Twilight immediately took him up on the suggestion scrambling away from the massive red male. She made it a few feet, at least, before she felt a sudden, overpowering force tugging on her body. It was like being trapped in the magic of a more powerful unicorn, but as much as she scrabbled at the ground or tried to throw out counter-spells, nothing worked. No matter what she did, she was being pulled closer and closer to the giant by the second, and nothing she was doing was stopping her out of control movement. 


She turned around to watch what was coming, as if that would help her defend herself, and saw the beastly creature bringing her closer and closer, even though she still wasn’t entirely clear on what he was doing to get her there. Then, just as she had feared, the mighty beast raised his massive hand to strike. She continued to desperately try (and fail) to backpedal as he drove his fist forward against her... And somehow, just before he hit, she was overcome by a sudden instinct and raised her hands, crossing them over her face. 

“Ohh, fooey, you blocked it!” 

“What?”

“When you’re backing off and a strike hits, it gets blocked! Don’t you know anything about games, Twilight?” her tormentor mocked her. She didn’t of course, but she would take any advice she could get, and kept trying to take steps back as the great red beast assaulted her. 

She didn’t understand the way that the blocking in this world worked, but the specifics of it didn’t matter, she just needed to avoid taking a cinderblock smash to the face. She could think about the mechanics of it later. She just kept stepping away, and despite the strange force dragging her closer to her foe, she was at least avoiding too much damage. She had no idea what she was meant to do to fight back, of course, but as long as backing off was some sort of passive protection, she would be able to figure out what came next. Then she heard a low chuckle, and the monstrous creature reached out and grasped her bodily in his mighty hands. In that moment, she couldn’t even SPEAK in response. She was just pulled up, and the beast leaped into the sky, holding her with both his arms. 

They began to twist, and she felt herself stretched out lengthwise. She wasn’t even entirely sure what was happening, her body was being twisted and thrown around too fast, drool flying from her lips as she turned. The monster rose up high in the air, and then began to fall back down. She could only hold her breath in shock, bracing her body, which somehow just made it hurt that much more when they landed on the ground, and she felt her body smash, spine bend, and muscles rend from the force of motion suddenly stopping. She let out a weak gasp of air. 

“Now, time for a killer combo!” Discord announced, laughing as she was grabbed by the neck and the beast began to swing his arms, like a windmilling windup punch. Or, perhaps the  more accurate metaphor would be like a baseball player preparing to throw a fastball, seeing as she was being whipped around so hard that it felt like she was stuck in a wind tunnel, and the world was starting to go a little dark. 

“If I burn meter here, Twilight, it switches game, WATCH!” Discord laughed, as the monster released her, and she flew up in the air, towards the window through which she could see Discord’s arcade. She flew out past him, but he didn’t strike, and she didn’t get a chance to even try. She was being propelled past him so fast that she couldn’t touch him, just fly up... And then back down, towards another one of the machines, with some strange meaningless word next to it. Some others at least were in classic Equestrian, but she didn’t get a chance to read them before she fell towards the machine - And like before, rather than crashing into the glass screen, she fell through it. 

She tried to turn like a cat towards the ground, but she didn’t want to see the pain before she felt it. She couldn’t see what was coming. She was surprised, then, when she hit the ground... Only to land in something cold and wet. She opened her eyes and blinked a couple times, before realizing she had landed in some sort of Hearthswarming Haven style corral, surrounded by people dressed in bright red and white fur costumes, cheering wildly. She looked up to see that the bars were back, and in front of her stood some strange mixed human-beast person, with the body of a muscular man but the head of a jaguar. 

“I don’t suppose you feel friendly, do you...?” She started as she stood up, and he slammed a gloved fist into her stomach, making her bend over. She hadn’t thought so. 

She grunted, drool falling from her lips and eyes starting to water from the sheer impact of that fist into her stomach. She shuddered in pain, and looked up at the man, whose strange green bar labeled him as ‘King.’ He twisted around, and wrapped his arms around him, the same way the last male had. This one, though, grabbed her arm, twisted, and slammed it down on his shoulder. She gasped in agony as he did, and then she felt him twist behind her, and wrap his forearm around her neck while holding the arm he had grabbed trapped behind her. She grunted as he did, and then he gave a single tug, wrenching back on her trapped arm and her head at the same time, tormenting both her shoulder and her neck. While she gasped in agony, her mysterious opponent leaned backwards, grabbed both arm and leg at once, and started to roll. 

She wasn’t even 100% sure how what he was doing was supposed to work, as he dragged her down, drove her head to the ground, and started to roll the pair in a giant circle. What she was sure of was that, somehow, it still managed to hurt like hell, with every single roll, her head was smashed to the icey ground, and she came up covered and dripping from the snow. The attack was dizzying, and left her as much embarrassed from the semi-public exhibition of her simultaneously painful and and admittedly humorous defeat as she was in pain from the repeated head smashes. Of course, with her head being driven to the floor and the dizzying spinning motion that seemed to continue for far longer than she could hope to keep track of, she quickly lost track of what was supposed to be happening. 

Finally, she didn’t even know when, it was over. She looked up from her spot prone on the ground, only to see that the massive jaguar man was replaced by someone new, a tall, young, and (by human standards) handsome man whose clearly labeled name-bar indicated that he was named ‘Jin Kazama.’ The furious look in his eye, however, along with the MMA-style gloves and the loose-fitting martial arts pants, indicated that whoever this ‘Jin Kazama’ was, she could only assume he would have no more mercy for her than the brilliant red monster or the jaguar-headed grappler.  

She hated being right sometimes, and this was one of them. The mysterious human stepped forward, and drove first one fist, then the other into her chest. The punches seemed to glow and her whole body instantly snapped back, making her give a high and humiliating gasp. He followed it up quickly, too, leaping and driving knees and then elbows into her face, bashing her back and bruising her body with every blow. The punches left her seemingly paralyzed, helpless to move, helpless to do anything but collapse in a vulnerable pile for the man. 

Then he pulled his fist back, and she saw a strange glow form around it. She tried to step away, but she couldn’t, she found herself simply starting to tumble to her knees. Then, he drove his fist directly into her sternum once more, and she was rocketed back, flying head over heels from her foe, and up towards the strange portal in the sky that would return her to the arcade. 

Just like before, she approached the portal, then flew through it, past the head of the draconequus. This time, she had the presence of mind to flail out and try to strike him, but her strike whiffed, her body flailed violently past her foe’s head and she tumbled through the air, and then into another one of the machines. On the way to the ground, she caught a glimpse of the label on the machine. Its title, “Street Fighter IV,” didn’t give her much hope for a less violent experience.

This time, she found herself floating over what seemed to be some sort of high-tech military installation, complete with massive airplanes and little people scurrying around, accomplishing whatever tasks they needed. One individual, of course, stood out to her, a woman in what seemed to be a lovely blue dress. At least she seemed to be dressed like a fighter, and as she fell to the ground past the strange labeled bars, she could only hope that whoever this ‘Chun Li’ was, she would be less violent than her predecessors. 

That hope, sadly, would not be granted, as the woman jumped into the air to meet Twilight on the way down. Only then did she notice the fact that, while the rest of her looked a lot less powerful and agressive, the woman’s thighs were almost the size of Twilight’s torso, and on her wrists were a pair of giant spiked metal cuffs. She may have been less cruel of a fighter than before, but she was, unfortunately for Twilight, still a fighter. That, point would be driven in even harder when the woman leaped in the air, and drove her leg powerfully into Twilight’s chest, the blow stunning the alicorn with its sheer force. 

Of course, in keeping with the bizarre physics of these worlds, the blow sent Twilight up high for a moment, before sending her crashing back down. She could only hope that the impact on concrete ground would be less painful than the blow she had just suffered. 

It might have been. Unfortunately for Twilight, she would never get the chance to find out. Shortly before she hit the ground, the mystery woman raised her foot and began to rapidly kick at thin air. It seemed like a waste of time, striking at nothing, but Twilight found the explanation a moment later. She had just wanted to be sure that Twi wouldn’t be able to avoid the blows, when Twilight fell, she found herself falling into what she could only describe as some sort of strange wall of what could only be described as constant blows. Of course, the world’s weird rules ensured she wouldn’t even be able to hit the ground, either. 

While Twilight was suspended by the constant blows, her opponent screamed out some strange phrase, and then suddenly stopped... Only to turn upside down and continue them, making some sort of bizarre helicopter spin that sent blow after blow of the woman’s thighs into Twilight’s body! It was like falling into a bizarre bludgeoning form of a helicopter’s blades, and as the blows racked her body, she could only hope this experience would end soon. Of course, she doubted it would, Discord had not shown much tendency to mercy, but whatever bizarre games were being played had to end sometime... Somehow... Right? 

The answer, of course, was yes. But not in a way that would please Twilight, as the woman screamed once again, and Twilight felt herself suspended in mid-air. The woman, however, wasn’t and the world grew dark as she yelled, pulled her arms back, and then pushed forward. Twilight didn’t understand where or how humans like this could get access to magic, but a massive fireball burst from the woman’s hands, and surrounded Twilight in a mystic blue inferno that, despite its not-entirely natural nature, was no cooler or less agonizing than the real blasts of flame Twilight had occasionally experienced. Though unlike those, she had never before been kept floating helplessly in the air by the flames. She felt her coat start to singe in the flame, her body twitching, her feathers burning. By any logic or science she had ever known, she would have been burnt down to a pile of ash by the assault. Of course, like before, the natural laws didn’t exist in Discord’s world, or whatever strange world he had conjured up through these infernal arcade machines. She certainly wasn’t going to be able to defeat whatever these strange game-bound servants he had summoned were in hand-to-hand combat, and tears began to form in her eyes, tears that were quickly evaporated by the overwhelming heat of the mighty woman’s mystic flames. With every muscle she had seizing up and twitching from the constant pain inflicted by the fire, it was like being tortured in a bizarre simultaneous mash-up of electricity and flames, zapped and burnt to death at once. Somewhere in the hell of constant firey blows, she heard a deep voice announce the letters “K” and “O,” before she collapsed to the ground, shaking, singed... And yet, bizarrely, her coat was completely unmarred. 

Twilight collapsed to the ground, shaking in pain and tears falling from her eyes. She looked at her forehooves and her legs, fluttering her wings as she tried to understand what had just happened. How? And of course, her body was completely unmarked, but somehow that felt like it made things worse, like it was almost an insult to her that her form was unscratched despite the agonies it had been put through. She should have been seen burns... Well, no, she should have seen NOTHING, her eyes should have been burned in their sockets, and even if she could see it should have been worse than burns, she should have seen raw muscle and sinew in her body. Instead... Instead she was unmarked. Worse than that, most of the pain was gone, surviving in traumatized echoes, while the rest of her body was back to its full health. Somehow, against her will, she found herself being dragged up to her feet. Then the voice called out again. 

“ROUND 2. FIGHT!” 

“Wait, please!” She cried out, “Please, stop, Discord, I’m done with this game!” 

Suddenly, a mysterious black box with words she couldn’t focus enough to recognize appeared over her. 

“Oh, do you want to stop? What’s wrong, you don’t like the game?” 
 
“NO!” Twilight answered, hoping she sounded defiant but sure she was starting to sound like a petulant child (an impression no doubt backed up by the tears that fell down her cheeks, “No, I don’t like the game, I don’t like playing like this, I don’t understand what’s happening! I came here to fight you, not your servants, but the least you could do is actually have them fight, not pull out these weird magic tricks all the time!” 

“Weird magic tricks?” Discord laughed, “That’s a rich phrase coming from you. But oh, very well, if you want a fair fight where punches don’t make you fly, I can do that. No more tricks, just an honest battle with you and her, is that better?”


She didn’t want to answer him, but she couldn’t stop herself. After a moment of shaking, she wiped away the tear in her eye and answered “..Yes.” 

“Alright, Twilight,” Discord said, and a highlighter on the strange text moved, “Then let’s resume. Ready, set... Go!”


The mystery woman stepped forward, but not with the strange repeated motions that Twilight had seen so far. Now the movement was more normal, more reasonable, and Twilight could at least see how someone could move like that. She raised her hands, ready to fight off this ‘Chun-Li,’ and while she wasn’t sure that Discord was being true to his word, there was at least some evidence in the fact that the mysterious labelled bar no longer floated above their heads. 

She stepped in towards her opponent, ready for a more fair battle for the first time that day, hands up and looking to throw some boxing-style punches. Her foe would no longer be able to stop her with that bizarre interrupting-paralyzing sort of magic these game-people seemed to have. As she stepped in and started to throw her punch, though, she realized just a moment too late that while this woman may have used her mystic powers for combat before, she was probably still a trained martial artist. 


Twilight bent double as the mysterious blue woman slammed an iron-like kick into her gut, crushing her abs, before following up with a high strike right to the side of the head. The impact was enough to stun her and send her stumbling to the side, and before she could even start to recover, the strange woman followed up her attack with a leaping roundhouse kick that slammed her in the head again. Already off-balance, Twilight was immediately knocked to the ground, sprawled on her back and with no defense against the blue-clad woman. 

The mysterious woman stepped forward, and dropped her hips onto Twilight’s body, straddling her and staring down at her, before raising one of her fists and driving it into the helpless princess’s face. She may have specialized in kicks (how could she not with legs like those?) but her punches were no laughing matter either, and every impact sent Twilight’s head rocking back against the hard concrete ground. 

Blow after blow rained down on Twilight Sparkle, like the woman’s fists were made of solid rock. Her skull slammed against the dirt behind her like she was a basketball being dribbled by one of the Manehatten Trotters, and she was starting to lose the ability to focus on what was happening. She needed to put a stop to this beating, so as much as she disliked using her spells on mundane creatures like this human, she gathered her strength, focused the magic in her horn, and gave a loud cry of rage as she tried to throw out the most powerful spell she could. She felt the power grow in her and...

Nothing happened. She looked up at the woman straddling her helplessly, before a fist rocketted into her face, and sent her head crashing back to the ground again. From far above, she heard the cruel laughter of Discord as she clutched her throbbing head. A small and somewhat pointless mercy, the woman astride her ceased her brutal bashes as Discord spoke.

“Oh, Twilight, going back on your word so soon?” The mighty draconequus laughed, “You silly girl. I thought you said you didn’t want any bizarre magic tricks. Were you lying to me, or has my dear friend here already beaten your brains around so badly that you’ve forgotten in less than a minute? Not that the timing would matter much anymore, I took away your match timer. Didn’t you say you wanted a fair fight? Is this not FAIR?”

“N-NO!” Twilight cried out, rubbing the tears out of her eyes and trying to get some semblance of focus back after the vicious assault, “How could this POSSIBLY be fair? I’m a normal pony and she’s a martial artist! There’s nothing fair about that! My magic is the best I have, I wanted you to take away her magic, not mine, if you take mine away, it’s just no-AAAGHHHH!” She didn’t get to finish her sentence, as the massive legs of the woman who was straddling her twisted and suddenly closed in on her like a vice, pure power and muscle crushing the pinned pony with all that the strongest martial artist she’dgrasp of the blue-clad battler, her body  ever seen could pour on. She shook, spasmed, and began to weep as the woman squeezed her. 

“I don’t think she likes hypocrites” Discord laughed as Twilight shook in the destructive grasp of the blue-clad battler, her body twisting and twitching as agony coursed through her, “Poor Twilight, you’re trying to fight someone far greater than you in this field. You brought in your power and skills, she brought in hers, and you’re being completely... Well, crushed!” 

“GAHHHHH!” Twilight screamed as Chun emphasized Discord’s words, squeezing down on her body with those iron-like legs, and starting to shake and feel her body turn even more purple as that was the last breath the grasp would allow her for now, those powerful legs pulsing too tight, now, for her to be able to breathe, just torturing her with their power. 

“Trying to fight a martial artist with merely your far-inferior body... You know what this is like, Twilight?” Discord laughed, “This is like if you had challenged a chaos god to a battle, planning on using magic to supplement your lack of skill, and then you complained when HE used spells as well and they were more than you could handle! Wouldn’t that be silly of you, Twilight?” Discord laughed, “Wouldn’t that be a bad move? Do you see, now, Twilight, why all this is happening... Or do you need a bit more of a demonstration? Show her, Chun!” Discord encouraged. 

On his orders, the massive-legged martial artist squeezed her thighs tighter around Twilight’s body again, starting to crush in on her sides, and Twilight could feel the muscles twisting and twitching in her body as they, and her bones, were bent in the face of the solid-rock scissor hold. There was little she could do to stop the attack, just lie there and shake, literally breathless in the face of the massive leg muscles of the woman astride her. She wanted to answer back, of course, to tell Discord it wasn’t the same, he should just fight her... To tell her, well, ANYTHING, but she realized he was right. Or at the very least, she realized she wasn’t going to get out of here anytime soon, she was helpless, and his tricks and magic and games were something she couldn’t handle. She could only silently sob as the blue battler squeezed tighter, her body wracked with tears and agony by Discord’s powerful replacement for the fight. 

She wanted to keep fighting, she wanted to deny her position, she wanted to battle back, but right now, there was nothing she could do. She could either submit, admit that this was too much for her to handle, and accept her defeat in at least this stage of the contest, or she could try to keep fighting and get crushed until her body broke. With options like those, the choice was clear. Twilight helplessly slapped the flat of her hand against the ground, and gasped out “I GIIIIIVE!” with what little air she could draw into her lungs around the overwhelming squeeze that Chun’s legs had locked her in. 

It came out as nothing but a weak shuddering wheeze, but it seemed the other creature understood well enough what had happened, and Twilight felt her start to disentangle those mighty thighs from around her body. She rolled on her front, on her hands and knees once more, clutching her helpless and bruised midsection as she gasped air into her oxygen-starved body. Each breath felt like it was dragging vicious razor-talon’d claws on the inside of her lung, and her  tears fell harder to the ground as Discord’s cruel laughter echoed around her. 

“You see, Twilight?” Discord laughed, “You see how foolish you were to fight me? You don’t stand a chance, you’re nothing but a little toy that I get to play with for as long I like, until I get bored. This is a game, and it’s one I have no intention of losing. Do I make myself perfectly clear, or do you need my friend here to demonstrate further?”

Twilight weeped on the ground, unable, for the moment, at least, to do much else. It was clear enough that she wasn’t going to be able to force him to fight her on her terms at this point, it would be his type of battle, or nothing. She shook her head, her muscles aching from exertion and the repeated beatings she’d suffered. She looked up in the air, up at the portal that Discord grinned wickedly down at her from, and shook her head. This whole experience had been rough, but getting to his hellish arcade had been the worst part. She knew, though, that without an admission of defeat he wouldn’t be letting her out. Quite frankly, she wasn’t entirely sure she would have been able to resist pleading even if it wasn’t the only way out of these twisted game machines. 

“I just... Want to be done... Here...” She shuddered, “At least get me out of the arcade... Please...” Tears stained her vision as she looked up at the draconequus, “Please, just let me be finished.”

She didn’t know WHAT exactly she’d said, but she instantly knew that it had been the wrong thing, when Discord’s wicked smile returned, “Finished?” the Draconequus laughed, “You want to be... Finished? Did I hear that right?” The laughter grew louder, “Silly little pony girl, that’s not Street Fighter. You need to get your games right! You’re thinking of a different franchise entirely.” Then his eyes raised a little to look at the blue martial artist, “Chun, why don’t you be a dear and give her a nice boot, so we can send her somewhere where someone can... Finish Her.” 

Twilight didn’t have time to think about what he had said, and wouldn’t have time to object, either, before the mighty woman drove what felt like a crushing soccerball kick into her side. It drove the last air she had left in her body from her lungs, no doubt crushed a bone or two (if that could even happen in this bizarre game world, and then she felt herself launched bodily into the air. It was like she had been strapped to a rocket, the kick not only landing flush against her body, but sending her in seconds from flat on the ground to nearly a hundred feet in the air, heading out towards the arcade once more. 

Hard, high, and fast she flew towards the portal, her body careening like an out of control acrobat into the sky. She didn’t even bother making an attempt to grasp onto Discord as she flew out of the machine and passed him, and simply focused on trying to make out what new horrific game world she was going to be tormented in next. She flew out of the Street Fighter cabinet, and towards another machine. Like before, this was at least labeled in (admittedly poorly spelled) Equestrian Standard. Unlike the others, though, this one she recognized the label, and knew well the wicked reputation of the game she was about to enter. She closed her eyes in horror as she fell into the pitch-black cabinet with the label “Mortal Kombat II.” 

She tumbled into its world, falling straight down, and landed in front of a shirtless, smiling man with wraparound sunglasses. He did at least seem less frightening than the blue or yellow warriors on the side of the machine, but she knew he was no less likely to destroy her. She tried to raise her hands in a desperate attempt to block whatever assault was coming, but it didn’t surprise her to find that she couldn’t raise them an inch. Her hands felt like they were glued to her sides, and the most motion she could manage was a bizarre drunken sway. That just made it so much worse when she heard a cruel voice, practically anticipating her destruction, call out “Finish Her.” 

She watched, practically paralyzed, as the man stepped forward, and then... Reached into a pocket in his pants, and pulled out a small scrap of paper and a pen, and scribbled something across it. Then he tossed the paper at her. She tensed her muscles (or tried to) in fear as she saw it fly towards her, fully expecting it to become some sort of razor-blade or shuriken, but instead all that happened was the paper stuck to her chest. She regained enough control of her body to look down at what it was: A photo of the man in front of her labeled “To My Biggest Fan: Cage”

The deep voice spoke “Johnny Cage wins... Flawless Victory. Friendship,” and then a pause, before it repeated ‘FRIENDSHIP?!’ in a voice that implied not even the speaker could understand what was happening anymore. 

“Okay, Johnny, send her back here,” Discord said, and a bright green glow surrounded her body. She could only look up in horror and, now, confusion, as she was levitated towards the portal to return to Discord’s arcade. 
> ...But Loses Anyway
> --------------------------------------------------------------------------

The portal back to the arcade approached at terrifying speed, and Twilight instinctively tried to cover her face to avoid the pain of smashing through it. Of course, there was nothing to smash through, the glass covering that would in other circumstances have blocked the arcade cabinet was just an illusion here, and she passed easily through the area that the window wasn’t, ejected from the world of the game and sent tumbling onto her hands and knees in the arcade’s main room. 

The machines seemed quieter, whether it was some sort of trick and advantage Discord was giving himself and using that to disorient her, or just a result of her body reacting to how badly it had been beaten in the machines and not being able to hear as well. Whichever it was, she clutched her head as the agony pumped through it, the stars and planets on the arcade’s thin carpet seeming to swirl in front of her. 

“Have I made my point perfectly clear to you, Twilight?” Discord taunted her, raising his foot and stepping down on the back of her head, pressing her cheek to the rough carpet, and grinding it into the ground. She shook in growing pain, the rough carpet scratching up her cheek, the glow-in-the-dark stars seeming to shine in her eyes as Discord pressed her down on the ground, into her own tears, “Are you ready to give in and accept your superior, or are you still under the impression that you could ever stand up to me?” 

It wasn’t exactly a kind question, and she didn’t know what would happen if she said yes, but she couldn’t bare to find out. She knew he had control, she wasn’t beating him like this, and while her body and instinct screamed at her to surrender, she was sure she couldn’t just let him do whatever he wanted. She couldn’t even remember why at this point, what he had done that brought her to this, but she knew that it would be too dangerous to let him go, he was too powerful, and she had to find a way to defeat him. Tears continued to roll down her cheeks as she fought to focus on the situation at hand, fought to remember what was happening to drive her towards this. In the end, there was nothing to draw on for strength except her conviction that she would have to find victory. Based on that and nothing else, that knowledge she had to win, she pushed forward, and wrapped her arms around Discord’s knees, pulling back to trip him flat on his back. For once, she accomplished something, at least, sending Discord tumbling back, onto the ground in front of her. 

Or rather, TOWARDS the ground. He didn’t land. Instead, he tumbled away, hands flailing as he sunk into the space-patterned floor. She reached out towards him as he fell, trying to get her hand back on his foot, only to find that she couldn’t touch him. He was out of her reach... And more importantly, of course, she had somehow reached into the ground. 

Twilight watched him tumble away from her, fading into a strange tiny dot far away, and made an instinctive grab at him again as if it would help. It didn’t, he’d become a star in the distance. She tried to rise up to her feet, look for another option in the arcade, but her legs couldn’t find the floor. She wasn’t on her hands and knees now, and she looked behind her to see she wasn’t in the arcade, either. Instead, the pattern of the floor was all around her. As she started to flail around in desperation, trying to grab something to hold onto, she realized she had gone from staring at an image of outer space, to floating helplessly in the inky blackness on her own, without even something she could grasp that would help her maneuver. She was alone, and she started to shiver, her aching muscles quaking as she started to worry this was the end, that Discord was going to leave her floating helplessly here and return to whatever nefarious plans he had. 

Of course, Discord wasn’t the sort to let his opponents languish alone, he wanted their defeat to be total and undeniable, and soon, Twilight his deep, mocking voice. When she turned, she saw that the Draconequus was wearing a bulky white suit with a great fishbowl-like helmet on top.

“Oh dear, fancy seeing you here,” he gave a deep, cruel chuckle, “Are we having fun yet? I know I am, I do LOVE exploration, deep space, monsters, alien encounters, starships...” His spacesuit turned black, with a small red triangle, and a human with close-cropped black hair stood in front of her, “But you see, Picard, in the end, all you humans are is snivelling ants giving pointless lectures about morali-Oh, wait, no, that’s my 12:30. You’re the stupid pony. I’m sorry, you four-dimensional life-forms all look the same to me. Where was I...”

The smile on the human’s face grew wider as he morphed back into the spacesuit-wearing draconequus, watching her wickedly and with no small look of cruel anticipation in his eyes, “Ohh, yes, my dear little Twilight, how exciting... Surely any smart filly wants to go to space and have all those adventures, study stars and planets... But you know, I’m SURE that I’m missing something. Or maybe...” he considered, “Or maybe YOU’RE the one who’s missing something... Is there something you’re missing, Twilight? Or maybe something that’s missing around you?”

Twilight listened for a moment, not entirely sure of what the Draconequus was getting at, “I don’t think I’m missing anything, Discord. And I doubt anything’s missing around me, either. In fact, that’s highly unlikely, because since outer space is a vacuum a-” She tried to continue, but found herself unable to speak. She started to gasp for air, and nothing came, and she felt a strange pressure in her body, growing agony as Discord rolled back in his suit laughing.

“Oh, right, that was it! I knew I forgot something, you can’t BREATHE in space! At least, not without a spacesuit...” He vanished from in front of her, then appeared at her side, hand on her shoulder, “Oh, don’t you HATE when you show up to the party underdressed?” She didn’t quite understand how she was even hearing him, sound shouldn’t have carried, but of course, that was the least of her problems. Twilight lashed out at him, but her hoof caught nothing, and she simply spun around in the air, eyes starting to bulge from the mismatched pressure.

“Oh, Twilight, are you alright?” Discord laughed as the purple pony tried and failed to draw oxygen in the depths of space, “You’re turning all purple!” His smile grew wider, “Here, Twilight, let me help you get to your feet...” 

With that, he grabbed her, pulled his arm back like he was about to hurl a baseball, and tossed her. She couldn’t tell how fast she was moving, at first, but it must have been at a wild speed, because soon one of the dots was growing, and seconds later, she could recognize that she was hurtling towards a red-brown rocky planet. 


As she got closer, she realized the danger, and put up a force-field around her body. That decision was not a moment too soon, either, as mere seconds afterward, the field was engulfed by flames as she fell into the planet’s atmosphere. She couldn’t even see the ground or rocks coming towards her anymore, her view was obscured by the fire, and despite the forcefield protecting her from the worst of the flames, the heat still penetrated, and it felt like her coat was being singed from her body. Of course like before, it was only a feeling, but like before, that made it worse, knowing that this pain was, hypothetically at least, unending. She could be put through this for years without it ending, without even getting close to damaged enough to stop. 
Eventually, though, it did come to an end, even if it was hardly how she would have hoped. The falling finished, and the landing came, her body crashed into the ground, creating a massive crater on impact, then rolling along the base of it, surrounded by flames. It was hard to know which hurt more, the impact which jarred her jaw, teeth, and bones the second it happened, or the residual heat that charred her flesh, the abandonment of the force-field meaning she was finally being scorched by the heat she experienced. That might almost have been a relief, if it wasn’t accompanied by the searing agony of flames and the rocks and pebbles tearing at her skin as she rolled across the ground. 

She cut a new canal through the desert planet’s surface as she rolled, bouncing and twisting far beyond her own control over the agonizingly rough surface of the planet. She didn’t know how long she was rolling and bouncing, but when she stopped rolling and looked back behind her, the score her helpless body carved in the ground stretched to the horizon. Twilight clutched her head, feeling it throbbing and heavily scratched, before looking around herself to see where she was and how she had wound up here. 

She looked up from her position on her hands and knees, only to find that she had come to rest at the foot of some strange, monstrous being that looked like a cross between a rock quarry and a dragon. She tried to stand up to flee, but found herself unable to move, her muscles tense and body starting to shake in fear of the beast she had rolled to a stop in front of. The creature rose up higher, until it stood at nearly eighty feet tall, or even more, standing at its full height and arching its back before letting out a monstrous roar that shook the ground around Twilight, and send a chill of fear to her bones. Dust that had gathered on the great beast’s shoulders began to fall around her, and she stood perfectly still, hoping that if she didn’t move then perhaps the monster would mistake her for a rock or pile of dirt, and she could be spared whatever fate awaited her.

Paralyzed by fear anyway, it wasn’t exactly hard to stand perfectly still. She tried to hold her breath to stop even the rise and fall of her chest, which a little bit in the back of her mind couldn’t help noticing the irony that she was trying to avoid breathing so soon after being nearly killed by the airless void of space. Now, of course, she couldn’t breathe at all... Or else, she might not breathe again. She couldn’t even let her eye follow the motion of the beast as it leaned down to inspect her. 

The trick might have worked, too, but in her attempt to avoid the danger she had forgotten one important detail about her situation. It may LOOK like a dumb predatory beast, but it, like everything else here, was a manifestation of Discord’s sadistic desire to bully and beat her. It wasn’t real, it was an illusion made to bring her even more humiliation, and she could no more stop Discord from assaulting her with this beast than she could stop him from thinking about her. 

The beast reached out, and wrapped a single, massive hand around her body, then lifted her in the air. Then it stood, back to its full height, and Twilight was left dangling in the creature’s grasp, shaking and kicking her legs in the last, desperate attempts to escape the monster. Those attempts were doomed to failure, though, and the beast simply tossed her in the air, opened its mouth, and let her fall into it. 

Though she expected a quick end after being so quickly and brutally assaulted, to disappear into the soaked cave and then down the monster’s throat, she should have known better than to expect something so simple from Discord. Or more accurately, so... Uncreative. He may have liked to come up with strange horrors for her to do battle with (or perhaps fail to do battle with, so far,) none of them would be so casual as to eat her. Instead, she found herself lying on a thick, wet, red carpet in a dripping cavern that she realized, from the bright white stones around her, was the beast’s mouth. 

She didn’t bother to speak this time, she knew something strange was coming, and she wasn’t disappointed. One by one, the strange white stones rose out of the ground, like monstrous beasts. The roots of the teeth became their legs, and from the sides, giant arms grew like those of vicious, musclebound beasts. The smooth fronts shifted quickly to bare cruel, wild smiles. Twilight didn’t even have time to think about what was happening and try to understand why, she just needed a way out. 

She realized a moment after that the beast may be some alien, divorced from anything she was familiar with on Equestria, but it still must have had something similar in its anatomy. That meant that most likely, she would be able to escape by backing off, and while the monster’s throat was behind her, she doubted Discord would allow her to get out of this one by simply dissolving in stomach acid. She would fall into some new trap, but that one, unlike this, might have something she could think her way out of. 

With her eyes on the creatures, she wasn’t looking behind her. She didn’t realize, then, that the teeth near the back of the jaw had risen too, and performed a circling maneuver, slipping behind her to be ready when she backed into them. Her back hit something smooth, hard, and wet, and no sooner had she realized what had happened, than she was seized from behind, and her arms grabbed and pulled behind her, trapped in a full-nelson hold by the dragon-creature’s teeth. 

The creature wrenched on the hold, cranking her arms back and her head down. Agony rolled through her as her muscle and neck were stretched in the being’s viciously-executed hold. She couldn’t defend herself, and her abs, chest, and whole body were completely open and vulnerable to whatever vicious assault was coming next from the tooth creatures. 

As it turned out, the assault was exactly what she should have expected, as they closed the circle around her, and began their assault. The teeth may have been strange, almost cartoonish enemies, but their bodies (muscular as they seemed) were still made of rock-hard enamel. A crushing fist slammed into Twilight’s midsection, and she instinctively leaned forward as the air was driven from her body once more. While she tried to recover her breath, a second stepped forward, and added a hook punch to the cheek that rocked her head to the side, while a third delivered what would have been considered a headbutt to the opposite side, but ultimately, thanks to their bizarre neck-less anatomy, ended up as a crushing blow from a solid brick wall. 

She was dazed and seeing stars, her muscles starting to go limp, as she felt a third one reach down and grasp her legs. It wrenched them, and for a moment she worried that there was something far worse than physical blows planned, but she soon found herself lifted up in the air.

Holding the helpless pony off the ground, the monsters began to carry her like a sports hero being celebrated or a crowdsurfing rockstar towards the entrance of the twisted cave. She squirmed and twisted to try to get out of them, but she was being carried in a massive swarm of the tooth-beasts, each one more eager than the last to contribute to her downfall, and there was no escape from their wicked grasp. They began to chant in some bizarre, unrecognizable language, and Twilight found herself helpless, with no choice but to close her eyes and simply hope that whatever came when she was thrown from the mouth wouldn’t be too painful. 

She would have hoped that perhaps closing her eyes and not knowing what was coming would protect her from some of the agony and horror, she remembered stories of intoxicated ponies able to survive because they couldn’t process what was about to happen, and how much of the pain a pony felt in an accident or injury was more from shock than it was from actual nerves firing. Her plan to spare herself the horror, though, failed when she felt the monsters gather together and pitch her out of the beast’s mouth, sending her tumbling towards the ground below. An instinct she could only wish to control forced her to open her eyes as soon as she was hurled forward, and she had no choice but to watch, flailing and helpless, as she fell towards the ground. Like the first time, the impact was agonizing, only the cruel rules of Discord’s world saved her from being splatted like a dropped meatball on the ground, with the trade-off of overwhelming agony as her body was crushed to the rocks and sand beneath her. 

Covered in saliva, dust, and her own blood from the scratches on impact, bruises rapidly forming on her body, Twilight Sparkle took a moment lying on the ground to try to recover. Far above her, she heard a screaming sound, and looked up on instinct to see one of the horrific tooth-monsters tumbling through the air towards her. She winced as it came close, instinctively ducking away, but it would prove unncessary as the huge tooth-beast landed in a heap beside her, lying limp and broken. Then, from far above, she heard the deep voice of her tormenter, 

“Oh, dear,” Discord laughed, and when she looked up she saw that the monster had transformed into the draconequus, “Look at that. I lost a tooth!” His comment was followed by raucus, cruel laughter as Twilight glared up at him from far below. 

“I know you’re... Ahhh!” She winced in pain as she spoke, “I know you’re having fun, Discord, but I’m not... I’m not going to give up if you’re going to just play tricks like this. So either play fair, or don’t play at all!”

“PLAY~?” Once again, she heard the distinct, mocking tone in his voice that told her she’d given the giant creature something new to focus on, “Did you say we want to play? Oh, I can play,” he chuckled, “I love to play, it’s all a matter of what I’m playing... Oooh, how about...” There was a flash, and Discord was suddenly wearing the heavy padding of a player of Appleloosan Hoofball, “How about we play some HOOFBALL!” 

Suddenly, the rocky ground was transformed to a soft grass, though the blades came up above her knees as Discord backed away a few steps. She began to run from him, but was brought to a halt as another version of the giant, smaller than before but still nearly seven times her height if not more, grabbed her by the horn. She began to struggle, but she felt him push down, and stopped running to try to push up, push back against the weight of his hand to avoid being crushed. 

An ear-piercing shriek sounded, rolling through the air around her and making her coat rustle in the wind, and a great noise of bodies crashing together echoed around her. She didn’t understand the rules of the game, which meant she was hopelessly unprepared for what came next. The only warning she got came in a flash, a mere moment of seeing a huge, round-toed shoe driving towards her body, before an overwhelming impact struck her and she was sent hurtling into the air. 

She could scarcely even count at this point how many times the air had been driven from her lungs, and as she fought to take another breath, she watched below her as padding-clad clones of Discord battled it out in a line beneath her. She continued to sail up and over, until her body passed a huge, canary-yellow set of upright bars with a crossbar far below, and another painfully loud cheer rocked her body. 

The cheer faded out, and she was hurling over another green field, though this one had sand-covered track in the shape of a diamond surrounding it. Once more, she was flying over a collection of Discords, looking a bit larger than before and now wearing the looser buttoned uniforms of Baseball players. She tumbled towards them, landing with a ‘thunk’ in one of the leather gloves, and groaning in pain from the impact. The gloves may not have had the rough, slicing feel of the rocky ground she had landed on before, but it was still far from comfortable to find herself in the hard leather. The glove closed for a moment, plunging her into darkness, and she felt herself being carried... Somewhere. 

After almost a minute, just long enough for her eyes to adjust, the glove opened and the light fell on her face again. She was blinded by it for a moment, unable to see anything but the glare of the sun in her eyes, but a few seconds later, she was able to make out Discord’s face smiling down at her.

“I play Baseball too,” he chuckled, then grabbed her in one massive hand. He wrapped his fingers around her, so tight that it felt like she might be crushed, and she heard him add, “Watch out, fastball down the middle!” As soon as she heard the words, she felt a burst of incredible force as she was whipped forward, and the wind began to blow in her face so hard she felt bits of her coat flying off.

She had enough time to make out the image of another version of her tormenter rapidly approaching, clutching a heavy wooden bat, before the wind forced her eyes closed. A fraction of a second later, she felt the bat strike her body, the shaft almost as large as she was, and it was like every cell that made up her form was crushed to dust in one instant. The momentum shifted so hard that her wings were swiftly defeathered, and she was sent flying up at an angle from the blow. As she sailed away, she was able to look down and see the uniform-clad Discords watching her as she sailed up and out of their little field.... And then she began to arc downward, tumbling towards a black, concrete area surrounded by a chain-link fence. Of course, once again, a collection of Discords were present, lacking the uniforms, but a few with shirts and a few without. With her wings completely plucked by the impact from the bat, she had no way to manipulate her fall, and soon found herself clutched in both of the Draconequus’s giant hands. He squeezed her body in his claws, crushing her down, and as much as she tried to avoid it, she felt herself twisting and contorting until she resembled a large ball, a little larger than his hands, with her face staring out of a gap in her twisted-up legs into the eyes of the Draconequus. 

“Then again, maybe you’re looking for something less formal,” he laughed, “It’s fine, I’m always good for a pickup game or two if you like. Shirts versus skins,” he chuckled at his little joke. 

“Hey, Discord, hurry up!” One of his clones said.

“Shut up and count the shot clock if you’re so impatient!” The Discord holding her snapped back at himself, then looked back down at her with a friendly smile, “I’m sorry, Twilight, I’m just VERY impatient when I don’t get my way, I just can’t control me sometimes,” he laughed again, louder, “Then again, I suppose you can’t either!”

As the other version of Discord began to count backwards from 20, the one holding her drove her body against the ground. To what should have been surprise, but in a world run by a mad draconequus was quite frankly completely normal, Twilight felt her back smash into the ground, but then bounce right back up, only to see his hand coming back down to slap her in the face. That was bad enough, but on the next bounce, she felt herself dragged to the side and then smashed diagonally, before the Discord clutching her pounded her with his other hand and began to run. She couldn’t tell if it was ten steps and strikes or a hundred before he stopped driving her to the blacktop, but finally the blows stopped...

...Only for her to be lifted into the air in the beast’s hands. She saw the rusty orange metal rim of the basketball hoop approaching, and tried to curl tighter into the ball to avoid any pain that was coming. The draconequus gripped her in both claws as he sailed into the air, then in one great motion, twisted and drove her bodily down against and then through the hoop.

The motion may not have been quite as fast and hard as the baseball throw earlier, but it was still far from gentle, and she grunted in pain as she was smashed to the ground. Naturally, she bounced once more, high enough that her shoulder was driven into the underside of the rim, and then propelled back down. The force of the impact unfurled her from her ball, and she splatted to the ground. Which, in the only mercy she had experienced so far, had turned from the hard blacktop to a soft grass. 

She shook her head, hoping that the fact she had returned to her normal body-shape was a sign that the various sports-themed tricks had ended. It would have to be soon, there was only so much that even Discord could up with when it came to tricks and toys, and he had to be running out of ideas, and hopefully, perhaps, interest in tormenting her. Then again, when Discord was in his most sadistic and twisted moods, the type that she hadn’t seen from him in a long time before... Before whatever it was that sparked this encounter happened, it could take a long time before he got bored. She could only hope he was about to make a change. 

That hope would be dashed when she felt a crushing weight on her back, pressing her harder into the freshly mowed grass. Making that part worse, the weight was accompanied by what felt like piercing, painful spikes that dug into her flesh, crushing into her back. She raised her eyes and saw that the games werent over quite yet, and that Discord (and his team of other selves) were now wearing shiny shirts and shorts, and that far on the other side of the grass was a great white rectangle with netting behind it. It looked like Association Hoofball was the next dish in the great feast of torment that Discord had prepared for her. She shuddered at the thought of what might come next, bowed her head, and closed her eyes, just hoping to be over with it all. 

Loud laughter echoed through the area, and Twilight shuddered again, knowing that the laughter of the draconequus rarely heralded anything she would be happy about. 

“Do you see how it is, Twilight?” the nigh-omnipotent being mocked her, “Do you see how helpless you are against me, how powerless you are when you try to fight me? How little chance you have now, how little chance you have ever had, to defeat me in combat? How can a little tiny mortal pony like yourself ever HOPE to challenge one such as me? Even with all the powers of the princesses, you don’t have a prayer of defeating me. And we can continue this forever, Twilight, you can’t outlast me. I can simply freeze your mind for a while, go away, and come back when I’m ready. You won’t know how long it’s been, it could be hours and it could be years, you’ll think it was just one continuous destruction of your body and mind. If I want to, Twilight, I can do anything I want, hurt you any way I want, and you have no more of a chance of stopping me than a fallen leaf has of stopping a hurricane. And you keep insisting that I need to ‘play fair.’ Play fair? Twilight, this IS fair. If you want to stop me, you have to use everything you have, and I can use everything I have as well. The fact that, in a fair competition, I will destroy you every time doesn’t mean that I’m not fighting fair. It means you should never challenge me to begin with, not like this. You cannot defeat me in combat. Do you understand?” 

For a moment, she couldn’t bring herself to answer. It wasn’t that she didn’t think he was right, at least not that she didn’t think he was right she wasn’t going to win. She wanted to fight and defeat him, of course, but she couldn’t. It was that she didn’t want to let everyone down, to subject them to... To whatever he was going to do, she could hardly even remember what it was, at this point, she just knew she couldn’t allow it, it would be too dangerous, too damaging, too... Too... Something. 

She sighed, and her shoulders sagged. She did want to fight back, did want to win this, but it was clear that she wasn’t going to get what she wanted this way. Continuing to fight a battle she couldn’t win wasn’t bravery or resistance, it was stupidity. The only way she would be able to stand up to him, to fight back, would be to give up for now and find another way. With her head bowed, she finally admitted. 

“Alright, Discord... You win. Do whatever you’re going to do, I can’t stop you, not right now. ”

“WOOHOOOOO!” Discord suddenly stepped off her back, the weight vanishing instantly as his attitude changed in a second, “Yes, yes! I win, I’m the best, I win, I’m the best. Woo-hoo, go Discord, go Discord, who da man? It Discord! Woooo!” His enthusiasm was so ridiculous that despite her humiliation, frustration, and fear of what might come next, she couldn’t help giggling at it. It should have been scarier than it was but somehow, evil as he was, he always knew how to draw a laugh. 

“Okay, we’re done here, talk later. I wiiiiiiin~!” Discord laughed, and the other versions of himself around her gathered close to join in the dancing celebration, kicking their legs up like the dancers in Manehattan. 

With a chuckle despite herself, she looked up at him and asked, “Okay, really, Discord, what now?” 

“Oh, you don’t know?” Discord asked, “You don’t... Remember? Come on, Twilight, you know the answer to this. Think about it, Twilight, think about what I did that lead up to this, think about when I took over. What happened?” 

“Yes, you turned us grey and rever...” She stopped, “Wait... That... That was the first time, wasn’t it?” She thougth for a moment, “You did... I mean... You...” What was it? It wasn’t the reversed elements, the greying out, was it... No, no, that was another time as well. After a few more seconds, she looked up at the Draconequus, “I don’t... I don’t remember? Why am I here? What DID I do? What’s happening?” 

Discord laughed once more, then reached down and stroked her hair like he was petting a puppy, “Twilight, I didn’t DO anything. This was your idea. You said that you needed to be able to protect Equestria from anything, including me. You asked me to make you forget what had happened and think I had betrayed you so you would be able to bring yourself to fight me with all you had. I didn’t DO anything, Twilight, except take some time to humiliate you when you asked. And quite frankly, I understand that many mares are into that, you didn’t need to make up an excuse you know.” 

“I wasn’t-” Twilight started to object to the insinuation, “Wait... It was... It was what?”

“It was you needing to know you could protect Equestria. And you can. But not from me. Not like this.”

“Then what can I do?” She asked softly, “If I can’t defeat you?”

“You can trust me, Twilight. You won’t have to.”

She nodded, and looked down, “I guess... Even I can’t be ready for every eventuality, can I?”

“No, you can’t,” Discord shrugged, “There’s always someone out there you can’t fight. It’s not unfair, it’s just true. Even for a princess.”

“Thank you, Discord,” Twilight smiled, “I think I needed that,” she stood, and began to walk away.

“Twilight?” Discord blinked, “Where do you think you’re going?”

She paused, “Where, uh... Where IS the way out of here, anyway?”

Discord laughed, “I don’t know...” And a pair of boxing gloves appeared on his hands, and then on her hooves, “Why don’t you make me tell you? I promise, no tricks.”

Twilight looked down, “You seriously want me to fight you?”

“Well,” Discord shrugged, “It’s not ONLY mares who have fun with this. Let’s go!” 

And they did.