Chapter The First and Only
Continuity Fix (Or The Lack Thereof, Rather)
by Kane Magus
“Well, ‘Dipcord,’ you’ve gone and done it now.”
I rolled my eyes. “Psh. It wasn’t my idea to go and break me out of my statue in order for Fluttershy to reform me, now was it?”
Q2 stood in front of me in his human form as I stood in the middle of Ponyville, in my Discord form, surrounded by the time-frozen forms of my new friends, the Bearers of Harmony and Princess Celestia. Just to be clear, by the way, that was his doing, not mine. “Really, Q, ‘Friendship is magic’? Seriously? That actually came out of your mouth?”
I turned away from him and looked around. “So? Why are you complaining? I made friends! Honest to goodness friends, as opposed to just overly suspicious acquaintances! It feels great! This was what you wanted, right? You wanted me to ‘learn my lesson’ and all that.”
“That’s all fine and dandy, Q,” said Q2. “I’m happy for you, really I am, but it’s kind of exasperating that I have to explain this to you. You’re being intentionally thick about this, and I get that. It’s how you are. Yeah, it’s great that you’ve decided to treat the ponies better… nobody faults you for that… but why did you have to do it at the cost of completely breaking space-time, hmm?”
“Bah, it’s not that bad, is it?” I muttered. “What are a few little temporal paradoxes between friends?”
“Need I remind you that the fabric of space-time is already rather strained after our little ‘Civil War’ we had the other day?” said Q2, wringing his hands and pacing back and forth. “This is just going to make matters all the worse.”
I looked at him and rolled my eyes again. “By the way, where were you during that whole Civil War thing, anyway? I was right there on the front lines, but I didn’t see you there at all. You weren’t off hiding in chaotic space again, were you?” When he chose to ignore me completely in favor of continuing to pace back and forth, I had enough. “Blast it, stop all that moving around! It’s making me nervous. Besides, it’s not that serious, is it? Can’t we just explain it away as a big ball of wibbly-wobbly timey-wimey stuff like our friend the Doctor does and just leave it at that? That seems to work well enough for him, and time travel is actually his Thing, after all. I just dabble in it, here and there.”
“No, Q, we can’t.” Q2 stopped pacing and turned to stare at me. “We’re members of the Q Continuum, after all. We can’t just let this sort of thing slide!”
“And just why not?” I said, starting to get more than a bit annoyed by his insistence that we “fix” this “problem” that I had apparently caused. “I’m perfectly fine with there being inconsistencies between the story of how the Federation made first contact with the ponies and the story of how I made my first real friend in Fluttershy. By the way, you know all those bad things I said about her before, about how she was too saccharine and how she made my teeth rot and how I can’t stand to be around her? I take it all back. I was wrong. She’s a wonderful pal.”
“Q! Would you stop with the…” Q2 was right in my face, breathing hard. He took a few deeper breaths and backed away. “We have to fix this. This can’t be allowed to stand.”
“Well, why don’t we just ask him,” I said, pointing to the tan pony with the spiked-back brown mane and hour glass cutie mark who had just come around the corner from one of the nearby houses. “He’s the expert, after all.”
Q2 turned and looked at the pony. “Oh hi, Doc. I assume you’ve come because of the big hash that Q here has made of the timeline?”
Doctor Whooves shook his head and said, “No. I’m here because someone has frozen time entirely in this area. Care to explain what’s going on here?”
Q2 looked between the two of us. “Exasperated” was an understatement to describe the expression on his face. “I froze time so that I could have plenty of… well, time to give Q the what for. He’s the one who has gone and messed up the timeline with all this ‘being reformed’ business.” He turned and looked back at me again. “By the way, Q, I don’t buy it for a minute. You? Reformed? Ha. If even we couldn’t reform you, how are we supposed to believe that a single pink and yellow pony could do it?”
“You don’t have to believe it,” I said with an enigmatic smile. “It only matters that they believe it. But seriously, though, I do feel at least a little bit reformed. Maybe just a smidge reformed? Do you see any residue of poninity floating around in my aura this time? If you do, that could explain it. What color is it? I’m guessing pink, or maybe yellow. ‘Poninity.’ Is that even a real word? Hmm…”
“Well, as far as the timeline goes,” said the Doctor, “I don’t really see any problems with it. Sure, things are a little… out of sync, but it’s not the end of the universe or anything.”
“See?! What did I tell you?” I said triumphantly.
“And besides, I think it’s nice that Discord has reformed, even if it’s just a little bit,” added the Doctor. “Is that a bad thing? Besides, maybe now he’ll stop substituting my yogurt for that disgusting pear flavored travesty.” I gave the pony a big grin and a wink. He rolled his eyes.
“Well, no, I suppose not, but…” said Q2. I could tell he was beginning to crack.
“Of course it’s not,” I said. “And neither is this measly little temporal paradox that you’re oh so worried about.”
Q2 looked back and forth between us again, and finally threw his hands up in defeat. “Fine! Fine, we’ll leave things as they are, rather than trying to make one story fit with the other. Besides, it seems like I am the only one who cares about this sort of thing anyway. The rest of the Continuum certainly can’t be bothered to get up off of their collective lazy butts and do anything about it. Go on, then, play with your new friends here. Use your powers for good. It’s about time you set a decent example for your son anyway. I’m going to go off and at least patch up some of the more troublesome tears in the fabric of space and time, but if we’re not going to actually fix the root cause of the problem, then… oh well, that’s on your head, not mine.” He disappeared in a burst of light and sound.
The Doctor and I looked around. “Great, he forgot to unfreeze time,” noted the Doctor. “Unfortunately, that sort of thing is outside my purview, I’m afraid.”
“Don’t worry,” I said in an offhand manner. “I’ll take care of it. But you might want to get out of sight first. It wouldn’t do to have to explain why you suddenly appeared out of nowhere to these other ponies, you know.”
“Oh, quite right,” said the Doctor. “I’ll be off then. Oh, you should come by and visit sometime, now that you’re ‘reformed’ and all.”
“Maybe I’ll do just that,” I said, giving him another grin. I watched as he trotted back to wherever he had been before Q2 showed up and froze everything.
I looked around at the other ponies with something akin to affection. Sure, Twilight Sparkle and Rainbow Dash still get on my nerves, but… they’re all right, I guess, deep down. Applejack and Rarity… eh, they may as well be background ponies as far as I’m concerned… though I do have to admit that I rather liked Rarity’s “silly and gullible” zinger, even if it was at Fluttershy’s expense. Pinkie Pie… I didn’t realize she felt so strongly about whipped cream. That does sound pretty tasty, though. Maybe I’ll add that to my chocolate milk rain cloud recipe. As for Fluttershy, hmm, I do feel kind of bad about how I treated her now, but at least she was such a sport about it. I… I guess that’s what friends are for, after all. It feels weird to say that. I don’t even consider Q2 to be a real friend, honestly. He’s more of a tolerable annoyance, if anything. And, last but not least, my dear Celestia. She actually gave me a chance. She had faith in me. I totally wasn’t expecting that. Maybe… just maybe… …nah. Well, we’ll see… time will tell, I guess.
Getting back to Pinkie Pie, though, I wonder if this should be considered to have taken place before or after she got her Q-like powers? Hrmm… now I can see what Q2 was getting at. This could be rather confusing… maybe we could fit in this whole thing with me being reformed and say it all happened before I brought the Enterprise here? But then that would make the thing with my statue not make sense… not to mention the fact that I was still being kind of an ass to them during all of that when, if this came first, I’d have been much nicer, I suppose. Ah, but who really cares about that stuff, am I right? I’m Discord! The spirit of chaos! This is right up my alley! Non-linearity for the win, and all that jazz!
Anyway, I suppose I should restart time now and just let things happen, come what may.
The End