//------------------------------// // Chapter Eleven // Story: Head Full of Cotton Candy // by TheManWithTwoNames //------------------------------//    Head Full of Cotton Candy A “My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic” fanfiction By TheManWithTwoNames I do not own any of the characters contained in the following work.  “My Little Pony” and all subsequent properties belong to Hasbro and Lauren Faust.             The one of the kidnappers brought his girlfriend over and they asked if they could use my bed for the night. I don’t like it here anymore.                   Fun fact, Discord’s drink of choice down there was inspired by real life experiences. I get dared to drink something foul one time, and then the next thing you know, it’s my guilty pleasure.                   “It’s a tumultuous day in this neighborhood, a tumultuous day for a neighbor,” Discord hummed as he paddled his waffle cone canoe down a lemon pudding river. “Would you be mine? Could you be mine?” His ears perked at a conga beat of thunder booming over his head, so he took up to the skies to watch the coming show. A smirk split his face when he saw one of his favorite creations slaloming around the tie-dyed cloudscape. He chased after the Shift Cloud, eager to see where the next storm would strike.                   He would have followed it for hours if he had the patience for it. But as he was a busy ruler, he thought it would be better to give it a little boost. He snapped his fingers and sent the cloud racing through the sky, chasing after the setting sun. Discord followed eagerly; out west was where plenty of earth ponies had their settlements. He’d love to see the looks on their faces when they suddenly sprouted all their new appurtenances. Hopefully they wouldn’t be as boring as Ploughmouth was about it and just refuse to not even try to use them. And worst-case scenario: he’d send a little bit of the magic over to the buffalo tribes that lived out there. He always wondered what would happen to them if the storm struck them. Or the Diamond Wolves for that matter. Or dragons, or phoenixes, or centaurs—wait, no, he already found out, they turned into donkeys. There were still the minotaurs. He liked the minotaurs, they were great for thumb wrestling. The only problem he had with them was when they refused to stop calling tartar sauce taurtaur sauce, but that was easily settled after a week of tartar sauce rain.                   A mountain range was quickly approaching, expedited by the mountains moving on their own toward Discord. Somewhere on the other side of the mountains would be the pony colonies, and he could just squeeze himself with glee at all the thoughts bubbling in his mind. He dropped onto the pulsating cloud, and slapped the top of it a few times to get it primed to discharge as soon as somepony was in range. It was too late for him to stop the storm when he noticed a very pony-shaped thing soaring around the clouds above the mountain range.                   It was a race between Discord’s wings and Discord’s magic when he shot off in the stupid pegasus’ direction as the storm erupted with a shockwave of golden energy. It passed by him in seconds and soon splashed into the pony over the rocky peaks. He shut his eyes and hoped that the pony would get a horn and turn into one of those Merry Soo’s that were so unpopular with the other subjects. A loud scream dashed his lofty hopes and he flapped his wings even faster. It was soon clear that he wouldn’t make it to the pony before the mountain did. He couldn’t teleport or he’d lose all his momentum once he reappeared near her and lose her. His red eyes madly flashed between the plummeting mare and the mountains below when an idea overcame him.                   The pony endured history’s most embarrassing rescue as she had her fall softened by the world’s largest whoopee cushion. She fell onto her stomach, trying to settle her pounding heart as the cushion deflated with a flatulent noise. It might have even been really funny if she hadn’t been nearly killed. Discord seemed to share her lack of humor in the situation.                   “What on earth where you thinking?” Discord shouted as he towered over the light-blue mare. “Don’t you know better than to be out flying when a shift storm’s around? I mean, I made them impossible to mistake for anything else so stupid ponies wouldn’t be airborne when one was coming! Didn’t anypony ever teach you better?” The transformed earth pony only stared up at him in worry, completely unmoving. Discord smelled the gray heat wafting off of her and sighed, his long body going limp before he drew himself back up.                   “What’s the matter, can’t you talk?” More silence. “Uh huh. Look, if you’re not going to talk, then I’ll just leave you up here and you can climb down yourself.” He didn’t like the way the girl was staring at him with those big cyan eyes. He was used to ponies looking at him angrily, or shocked the first time they ever see his awe-inspiring appearance. Fear wasn’t uncommon, either. But he wasn’t sure what this pony had going on behind those big glassy eyes, and he wasn’t sure if he liked that. Was it surprise? Curiosity? Confusion? What was her deal? It didn’t matter much to him, he decided after several uncomfortable seconds of silence. She wasn’t talking to him and she wasn’t at the big glue factory in the sky, so he didn’t have any reason to stick around.                   “Thank you for saving me.”                   Discord always imagined it would have taken a lot for something to surprise him. Maybe a pony slamming a pie into his face before he could douse them with seltzer water, or seeing a sasquatch tap dance without any influence on his part. But now that it had finally happened, he felt underwhelmed. And what was made worse was that he didn’t know what to say to that.                   “Okay?” Good enough.                   “Could I ask you a question?”                   “Certainly,” he said as he resumed his usual nonchalant air. There was no good in letting some common pony see him looking troubled, after all.                   “Why did you?” Well that just wasn’t playing fair, Discord internally groaned as he felt his cool slipping again.                   “The resurrection spell doesn’t work unless you’re in one piece.”                   “You mean when you turn old ponies into foals?”                   “Sickness, living to old age, all these are simple things to avoid,” Discord explained with a careless toss of his wrists, “and yet you ponies are always dying. So I put an enchantment on all of Equestria to take a pony on their last breath of life and turn them back into newborns for their families to take care of them. Then they can enjoy their lives all over again. They keep their old memories most the time, too.”                 “Why would you do that? Tamper with the natural order of life and death?” Qustions, questions, questions! It was a good thing he loved hearing himself talk so much, or this filly would be irritating.                 “Because it’s a king’s duty to protect his subjects however he can. This is how I do it. ”                 The pony’s eyes widened at the answer. Just when she thought she had gotten used to Discord’s surprises after twenty years, she had a day like today. “Where’d somepony like you get that idea?”                 “I don’t fully remember, but am I so wrong to think like that? What, are you so surprised that I’m not just doing something for a gag?”                   “That’s the sort of reputation you’ve built for yourself,” she said plainly. “I’d be surprised if anypony expected you to want to help anything.”                   “I’m all about defying expectations,” Discord laughed with a wolfish grin. The pony jumped in surprise; she was certain that he was in front of her just a second ago. She turned over her shoulder to see him pacing around her, looking at her quizzically. She twisted herself back to face him when she noticed his eyes lingered on her flank for a moment too long. It wasn’t out of fear of any sort of perversion, but what he might see.                   “That’s an interesting cutie mark. I don’t see many for astrology any more,” the spirit mused.                   “It’s not astrology, it’s astronomy,” the pony said defensively. “One’s looking at the stars, the other one is trying to make some hokey fortune-telling business around them.”                   “I’d imagine both of the fields have suffered ever since they started waltzing around the sky at night, so good for you,” he said breezily.                   The mare’s relieved sigh was quickly inhaled through clenched teeth when Discord asked her for her name.                   “I’m Lunar Lander.”                   “Then it was a pleasure meeting you. But I’d say I’ve been nice enough and kept you sufficiently entertained for the day, so I’ll be seeing you. Ooh, maybe I’ll still send that cloud over to the buffalo and find out what would happen? Wouldn’t that be a sight? Muaha!”                 “Wait!” To both their surprise, Discord halted. “You can’t leave yet. I’m still stuck up on the mountain and I can’t climb down. Could I please have my wings back?” While Lunar certainly wanted her wings returned, that wasn’t the only reason she wanted the spirit to stay around. She now found herself in a very unusual situation to learn more about Equestria’s oppressor, and anything she could learn about him could only help her.                   “It defeats the purpose of taking them away, doesn’t it?” Discord said dryly.                   “I guess, but it’s not like you were trying to get me in the first place—”                   “You mean it was an accident? What a crazy, random, delightfully disastrous twist of fate!” Discord squeezed his cheeks together and made a silly face long enough for Lunar to get the message, and then several moments longer just because it amused him.                   “Well, if you’re certain, then I guess I can’t change your mind…”                   Discord internally winced at the wild accusations. He considered his options. He could leave the original chaos in tact, which would prove that he was staunch in refusing to change the chaos, but would that mean that he would be putting things back in order, but then maybe it wouldn’t really be in order because everything else was out of order, or was it still too ordered since he had to think of the word to describe the situation, or would the second chaos be the larger bit—or…                   “Why does chaos have to have so complicated?!” he finally cried. Discord opened his eyes and was embarrassed to see he was twisting his tail in his hands. He threw it down, fuming that he had picked up the old habit (literally) he thought he had beaten years ago.                   “What do you mean?” Lunar’s ears were raised in interest as she slowly sauntered over to the draconequus.                   “Chaos is supposed to be what’s unexpected. Not just anything out of the ordinary.”                   “Is it?”                 “Unless some other Spirit of Chaos has decided on a different definition, then I’m going with mine. Not that it’s really completely defined, mind you, but it’s—dgh—dah! Never mind. I’m right, be quiet when I’m talking. So being chaotic means sometimes doing what’s doubly unexpected, and then triply and then back to doubly and jumping to tendiddily and… you see where this is going.”                   “I’m actually waiting for the part where you try to make some dumbed-down metaphor that explains it for us simple ponies who weren’t born into chaos,” Lunar said wryly.                   Discord shrugged. “You know, I don’t think about it much myself. Chaos is simpler when you don’t try to explain it, which is why you’ve got me in such a jam.” Lunar was surprised that she was surprised when the spirit wasn’t suddenly swimming in a giant jar of jam. He seemed to pick up on her feelings and gave her a knowing nod of his head as if to say ‘Now you’re catching on, so let go before it’s too late.’                   “So, what you’re afraid of is acting against chaos and doing something that would bring harmony?” The sudden tenseness in Discord’s posture clued Lunar in that he didn’t agree with her hypothesis.                   “I’m not ‘afraid’ of anything, and I wouldn’t be caught dead doing something harmonious. Harmonic? Harmonized? Whatever, it doesn’t matter. I’m chaotic, there’s no two ways about it.”                   “I don’t think you should have to see life like that,” Lunar said softly, her voice carrying a air of wisdom that was more suited for a pony three times her age. “Good, evil, right, wrong, harmony, chaos, there’s no such thing as a cut and dry truth. Even night and day are constantly blended at every moment.” She corrected herself as she turned away from her company to look at the moon suddenly switch places with the sun in the sky, bringing an immediate night to Equestria. “Well, they used to be, anyway. There’s no black and white, that’s no way to look at the world. It’s all just shades of gray.”                   When she concluded, Lunar looked back to see if anything she said had sunken in. She took a step back when she found Discord staring at her as if she had sprouted a second head, which could have been a real possibility. He was as stiff as stone, his golden eyes glowing like lanterns. Just when she was about to speak, Discord flew into a wild frenzy of laughter, rolling on his sides and laughing until his eyes watered and his sides ached.                   “And just what’s so funny?”                   “Nothing, nothing, nothing~” he said as he tried to choke down a laugh. Shades of gray. How do they come up with this stuff?                   “Then why are you laughing?                   “You’ve got a problem with laughter?”                 “You just seem to do it a lot. Even when things aren’t funny,” she added pointedly.                   “Laughter is always the best reaction to anything,” Discord said grandly, a chuckle starting to tickle his throat at just the thought of it.                   “Like playing pranks on ponies?”                   “A draconequus is entitled to his fun, isn’t he?”                   "Where's the pleasure if only you enjoy it?"                 His long gray face fell into a scowl before he began to stomp around the small stone platform. "I took every opportunity to do it their way. I spent every day trying to reach out and give them something to enjoy. And they all turned their backs on me. Ponies don't appreciate anything you try to do for them. They didn't want my gifts so now they'll get them whether they want it or not. And I’ll bet in enough time, they’ll learn to love it as much as we did."                 Lunar Lander titled her head to the side. "We?"                 "What?"                 "You said we."                 "Why would I say we?" Discord asked accusingly.                 “I don’t know.”                   ‘I say we should leave her.’                   Discord turned left and right to find the new voice, and was surprised when he realized that it was coming from his eagle talon.                   “Who are you?”                 “Are you talking to me?” Lunar asked, once again confused by the latest turn of events.                 ‘Who am I?! Did you seriously forget that you stuck me in here, you stupid lummox? Real nice.’                 “Swifty,” he said, addressing the claw with the name he had given it a few years back, “why didn’t you tell me you could talk?”                   ‘You’ve been spreading me around and making ponies miserable. I didn’t think I needed to tell you what to do until now. There was never anything to discuss. Plus, I don’t like you, and you spread me with hundreds of other ponies that I could talk to, so there’s that.’                   “Well, at least I know Lionel supports me,” Discord sniffed. He raised up his lion paw and worked it like a hand puppet to nod with him. Lionel was always much better company than Swifty was anyways. Plus, he was fluffy.                   “Excuse me?” Discord’s attention returned to the blue ex-pegasus looking at him hesitantly. “Could I please have my wings back now?”                   With a click of Lionel’s toes, Lunar Lander was washed in a white light that forced her to close her eyes. When she opened them again, she was ecstatic to see her wings back where they always were, and mercifully without any sort of tampering. She tried to approach Discord to thank him, but immediately fell forward onto her chin. She gave a miserable groan and inspected her legs with horror when she discovered that her hind legs were bending the wrong directions.                   "Why are my knees backward?"                 "Thats not how they normally look?" Discord sounded puzzled as he held up a chart detailing pony anatomy.                 "No! Why did you even try to change my knees!,"                   "They connect to the wings."                 "No they don't," Lunar growled, having difficulty fighting back her frustration.                 “Yes they do. The leg bone’s connected to the, wing bone! The wing bone’s connected to the, neck bone—"                 "That's a song! And that's not even how it goes!"                 "Everypony’s a critic.”                   Discord set her knees back in their place without being asked and Lunar rose back to her hooves again in time to see another rapid sunrise. The pegasus sighed sadly at how quickly the night had to end. She always liked trying to test how long the last, brightest stars in the sky could hang in the dawn sky. Instead, she tried to content herself by watching a trio of pigs fly by the mountain, carried on white, feathery wings. After a few moments, she realized that Discord had been silent for an unusually long period and turned her head to catch him staring intently at his eagle claw, mind lost in thought over some mysterious puzzle. Part of her would have loved to enjoy the moment of calm and take time to collect herself, but there was something about the sight of the creature looking so grim and motionless that just felt wrong. And even after spending twenty years living in a world of dancing lakes and candied apple trees, the sight of a pensive Spirit of Chaos was by far the most jarring and unnatural thing she had ever seen.                   "What's with you and pigs, anyway?" she said, dying to set the one consistent thing in the world back to the status quo.                   "I love pigs,” Discord said happily, “I have a pet pig! Well, I had one. He got ill-tempered and I got hungry…” He paused to look at Lunar with a mischievous glint in his eyes. “So I cooked his bacon. I'm sorry, was that joke in bad taste? Because he sure wasn't."                   The pegasus couldn’t help but laugh at the corny joke. Satisfied with a job well done, he decided to treat himself. He snapped his fingers and conjured a floating glass of lemonade and a can of whipped cream. Lunar’s laughter subsided just long enough for her to watch Discord pour some of the whipped cream on top of the lemonade and take a long draught of the concoction. He opened his eye and caught the pony’s look.                   “Don’t knock it ‘til you tried it.” Discord noisily guzzled down the rest of his drink and turned to Lunar with a purposeful look in his eye. “Alright, now spill the beans. Why is it that you insist on being so obnoxiously friendly to me?”                   Lunar wouldn’t have thought of herself as being kind to the draconequus, but she had to say something in response to that. “It doesn’t seem like anypony shows you any kindness, so I thought you really need it the most.” Perhaps she was more right than she thought.                   “Hah! Let me guess, you’ve been abandoned by the rest of Equestria?” Discord said, jabbing a claw in her direction.                   “What? No, of course not. Where did you get an idea like that?”                 “Meh,” he shrugged off the question and rose up to his feet, giving his wings a stretch. “Well, keep up that nicey-nice passive attitude and give it time, and I guarantee you will be.” Discord bounced in the air a few times and turned around with a grand gesture to face Lunar one last time.            “It pains me to say it, my little pony, but I really must be moving on. Things to do, ponies to see, statuseses to de-quo! Au revoir! Ahahahaha!” With a puff of smoke, Discord was gone.                   Lunar still waited several minutes just in case the draconequus was lurking around and watching her. Once she was confident she was alone, she collapsed on the hard mountain top, exhausted from the anxiety and fear she had been under for the last hour. Her chest rose and fell quickly as she tried to catch her breath and calm her heartbeat, letting her light blue coat return to its darker shade in a wave from the bottom of her hind hooves to the tip of her now visible horn. Her hair turned into a dark violet miasma of stars, and Princess Luna’s disguise was completely disposed of.                   Lunar Lander? What sort of fake name was that? Lunar Lander. Her parents must have been watching over her to stop Discord from figuring out who she was then and there. She shuddered to think how he would have reacted if he thought that he was being tricked into showing some sort of softness to one of his sworn enemies. It was only good fortune that she had managed to see him before he spotted her so she could put on a disguise. It was only by quick thinking that she was able to try to turn that situation into anything useful to her at all. What would he have done if he found out she was trying to find some vulnerability in the beast? Would he have killed her like her mother and father?                   Luna frowned at the thought, though it was not out of the anger and bitterness that the memory had never failed to stir in her mind before. It was that glowing fury and desire for revenge had been dimmed, just ever so slightly, out of the smallest twinge of pity for the creature. And as she looked down at her once-beautiful kingdom and all the madness that had gripped it, there was only one thing she had to say.                   “I’ve never heard… a sadder laugh.” ----------                   “So, Swifty,” Discord spoke to his claw as he soared above his dystopia, “now that you’re in a talkative mood, care to make any suggestions on where we go next?”                   ‘Have we been to Canterlot in a while?’                   “No… But I do believe that they’re due for a little royal treatment!”   ----------                   Discord slowly paced down the empty streets of the once-proud capital of Equestria, looking this way and that for any sign or sense of nature or life, but there was none to be found. He wondered if the town’s emptiness had anything to do with the time he turned Canterlot Castle into a giant house of cards. What were they worried about? It wouldn’t fall over if a twister hit the city, he had seen to that precaution. These ponies were so excitable.                   Just as the spirit was planning to blow the ghost town, he felt the slightest trickle of warmth creep up his tail. He held the scaly extension in his hands, aiming it around like a divining rod to find the source of the chaotic energy. He followed the trail to the outskirts of the town and found a small house with a small cloud of smoke drifting out from the chimney. Discord rubbed his claws together eagerly. This pony deserved some personal attention.                   Discord knocked on the door and plotted his move. The door slowly pulled open and the pony looked up at the visitor. Gold and ruby met with wide purple eyes.