Discord of Tomorrow

by ChaoticConduct


Chapter Three

PAST

Discord had fully intended to teleport into his pocket dimension, safe from the power of the Elements.

Instead, he ended up back at Fluttershy’s cottage.

“Oh, that’s right, I haven’t created my home yet,” he mumbled, looking around at the cottage as if expecting his dimension to be tucked away in a corner. Everything in the cottage was just as he left it, completely normal and safe from the chaos outside. A little voice in the back of his head said he should probably revert Ponyville back to normal but eh, that could wait.

At this very moment six brightly colored ponies were probably attempting to hunt him down and turn him back into stone. He shuddered. No doubt that’s why his past self swapped them in the first place. There wasn’t much Discord could do to the Elements when they were being used against him and he never really had a chance to study them himself.

Now that he thought about it… what was stopping him from just…

Snap!

Five necklaces and a crown flashed before him, each with an Element of Harmony embedded in it. He bit the inside of his cheek, one hundred percent sure that Fluttershy would not appreciate him finding any humor in how easy that was. His body trembled. He couldn’t help it. He burst out laughing.

“I can only imagine the looks on their faces!” he cackled. He pressed his paw and claw against his cheeks and used the most effeminate voice he could think of. “’Alright girls, let’s find Disc- Oh no! Our Elements are gone! What are we going to do?’”

Discord sunk to the ground, clutching his stomach and laughing. After a few minutes he lay limp, wheezing and wiping tears from his eyes until he was sure he calmed down. He sat down and levitated the Elements closer to himself, adopting a more serious expression as he examined them.

He could feel fear in his gut but did his best to keep it down. These were Elements of Harmony and he was just a part of that as anypony else and his intentions weren’t bad. Not this time. He took a deep breath and tapped the Element of Kindness with a claw. It sang one note and then went silent. No rainbow beam had been shot at him. He did the same to the Element of Magic. It played a different note and then again, nothing.

Grinning, he donned a music conductor’s outfit and plucked a baton from nowhere. He cleared his throat and tapped the baton against a wooden stand he had materialized in front of him. An audience of other Discords went silent and gave him their full attention as he began tapping each Element, using each note they sang to play a song that sounded very similar to a theme song the Discords couldn’t quite place.

“That’s quite enough of that!”

Discord winced, vanishing his outfit and peering guiltily at one of his copies that was wearing spectacles. The other Discords coughed into their paws and looked all around the cottage except at them.

“These are the Elements of Harmony!” Specs said. “Not toys!”

“Oh, you’re no fun,” Discord said, pouting. He levitated the Elements around him and let them clasp onto his torso. The Element of Magic went on top of his head and he peered at himself in a mirror, admiring his reflection.

Specs slapped the crown off, causing Discord to almost fall over as he scrambled to prevent it from hitting the ground. He clutched it in his paw and held it closer to his chest, ears flattened against his skull as he stared at his (questionably) mature counterpart reproachingly.

“This is serious!” Specs growled.

“Hardly,” Discord laughed. “I have the Elements! What threat do these ponies hold over me? I can do anything I want as long as I keep these out of their hooves!”

Threat? Anything you want?”

“Well, yes-“

“Those ‘ponies’ are your friends, in case you’ve forgotten.”

Discord sputtered and his audience glared at him. “I- I meant… Of course they are! Um, will be…” He cringed and looked at the Element he still clutched. The ugly, heavy feeling of guilt swirled in his stomach. He sighed and snapped his fingers, vanishing his Discord audience and transferring the Elements from his body onto a pillow he made for them on a table.

Specs gave him an approving nod and sat down on one of Fluttershy’s chairs.

“What am I supposed to do?” Discord asked him, throwing himself onto Fluttershy’s couch. “My friends aren’t my friends anymore! I manipulated them and ruined their home and they probably hate my guts!”

“You also stole the Elements of Harmony twice now.”

“Well I’m not going to just let them turn me back to stone!” Discord snarled, red eyes flashing.

“You’ve hardly given them a reason to reconsider doing that to you,” Specs pointed out, nodding at the window. “Not very friendly, don’t you think?”

Outside, Discord could see the edge of Ponyville, plagued by Chaos. Buildings were floating upside down and ponies were slipping on soapy roads. In the distance he could also see the rainbow pools of Cloudsdale were tainted brown from cola rain and the weather factory stuffed with cotton candy clouds. Just in the moment he looked out, the sky had flipped between day and night twice.

Chaos felt so good. It felt like years since he last let his powers spread over Equestria like this. Nowadays he kept it to a minimum, ponies preferring when he altered himself rather than their home. He wouldn’t lie to himself, using Chaos magic to change his appearance and make visual gags was just as chaotic and their reactions were just as fun.

It just didn’t feel the same though.

“Why should I be friendly?” Discord asked. “In my present I had magic and friendship. Here I have only magic.” He levitated the Elements of Harmony from their pillow, using his magic to juggle them in front of himself. “Limitless, unrestrained, wonderful Chaos magic. I should make the most of it.”

“What about Fluttershy?”

“No matter what I do here, I won’t see my friends. My Fluttershy,” Discord said solemnly. “I can’t take myself back, I don’t know how. I’ve thrown myself into the future several times, never once thinking of what became of my future selves that were thrown to the past and I know that not one of them were able to reverse it otherwise I wouldn’t be here.”

“I imagine they never did have a reason to.”

“What?”

“Certainly, other Discords had no reason to go back to their original timelines,” Specs said. He was now sipping a cup of tea nonchalantly. “We have no way of knowing they even tried.” He lowered his tea cup and stared at Discord intently. “You, on the other hoof, have a reason to try and go back. Your friends are there and they’re stuck with a Discord who wouldn’t hesitate in making their lives absolutely miserable.”

Discord shot up into the air. “Oh my me, you’re right! I’ve got to get back!” The thought of what his past self was doing to Fluttershy and his friends made him both scared and furious and was the only reason he needed to abandon his fleeting idea of unrestrained Chaos.

He summoned up some magic, dissipating Specs in the process and attempted to grab a future and drag himself to it. Never had he tried to find a specific moment and it proved to be even more difficult than he thought. His magic would stab at several different futures and he’d give them experimental tugs but none of them felt right. There was no way to see what exactly he was going towards. The more he tried, the more magic he depleted and the more he had to pull from the Chaos he had spread in Ponyville.

He didn’t care how much magic he used, he just needed to get back. Now.


“Our Elements are gone! What are we going to do?!” Twilight cried.

“Oh my goodness, oh my goodness,” Fluttershy panted over and over as Applejack rubbed her back.

“Come out and face us, Discord!” Rainbow Dash shouted, flying in a wide circle around her friends. “We’re not afraid of you! We can take you on with or without the Elements!”

“Coward!” Rarity screeched to the air, stomping her hoof. “Charlatan!”

“Now, now, calm down everypony,” Applejack said. “Panicking and screaming ain’t gonna solve our problems.”

“The Elements of Harmony are the only way to stop Discord. Last time he hid them from us as a game because corrupting us was fun. He’s wised up this time. We had our chance and we failed,” Twilight said. She bowed her head and squeezed her eyes shut to prevent her tears from falling. “I’m so sorry… If I had just placed enough faith in our friendship and tried harder, we wouldn’t have wasted any time. We could’ve stopped this.”

“Aw, it’s not your fault, sugarcube,” Applejack said. “Discord got the best of all of us.”

“Just wait ‘til he shows his face around us again!” Rainbow Dash growled. “I say we show him what we ponies can really do when you mess with us!”

“Where is that vile trickster, anyway?” Rarity asked. “I’d think he’d be rubbing this defeat in our faces by now.”

“Maybe he got tired and went home?” Fluttershy suggested hopefully.

“No way, he’s busy running all this!” Pinkie Pie said from under a cotton candy cloud that was dousing her in chocolate milk. “Say what you want about him but this guy makes a mean cup of chocolate milk!” Rarity cringed in disgust as Pinkie unhinged her jaw and pointed her muzzle up so her mouth could fill up with chocolate milk. She gagged when Pinkie gurgled in pleasure.

“Oh, he’s mean, alright,” Twilight said, wiping at her eyes with a hoof. “Next time he appears we’ll be prepared.”

“Prepared how?” Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight pointed at the library. “We’re going to study.”

The Golden Oaks Library was still a mess from the friends’ earlier scuffle over the book that Discord had hid the Elements in but Twilight knew which books she’d be looking through. She levitated several books from the shelves, making them circle her as she flipped through all the pages and made notes on a scrap of parchment.

“What are we, uh, studying?” Applejack asked, poking at a few books still on the shelves.

“Spells,” Twilight said. “Any spell that might be useful.”

Rainbow Dash rubbed the back of her head. “No offense Twilight, but Discord’s magic seems kinda… out of your league.”

If Twilight took any offense to this, she didn’t show it. “That’s why we’re going to be creative. Discord thinks ponies are all boring and predictable and love order. The last thing he’ll suspect is us playing dirty.” She shut one of the books she was reading and looked at her friends smugly. “In fact, I doubt he knows we’re capable of it.”

Rainbow Dash and Rarity had both perked up at this. “What’s the plan, Twilight?” Applejack asked.

“Last time Discord saw us, we had the Elements and were united to fight him. He won’t expect us to stop hanging out with each other without him corrupting us. When he thought he won, he came to me directly and began to gloat and tried showing off this ‘Chaos Capitol of the World’ for attention. I don’t think he’ll show us the Elements, its too risky, but he will get close to us himself. If he does, I might be able to put a tracking spell on him,” Twilight said. She pulled out a blackboard with her magic and began drawing on it with a piece of chalk. There was a crude picture of Discord and random locations. She connected them all with squiggly lines going back and forth. “With that spell on him, we can see where he goes when he’s not causing Chaos. Wherever he goes, that’s probably where the Elements are.”

“What if he just gets bored with us and moves on to other places in Equestria?” Rainbow Dash asked. “If we fight, he’ll just think his job is done and leave and we’ll never be able to even track him in the first place.”

“We have enough evidence to prove that Discord can’t resist gloating. I know he’ll want to rub it in our faces. At the very least he’ll check to see if our friendship is broken. I’ll have to be careful when I cast the tracking spell. I’m looking up anything involving stealth as well.”

Rarity took a few steps over to stand next to Twilight, peering at a few books herself. “It sounds as though we have a very small window of opportunity,” she said. “I think if I attempt to learn a few of these spells, it’ll give us more of an edge!”

“You? Learning spells not related to clothes?” Rainbow Dash scoffed.

Rarity harrumphed and stuck her nose in the air. “I’ll have you know that my magic is very precise and subtle. I may not have the same skills as Twilight but I am more than capable of studying new spells!”

“Alright, I’m hearing a bunch on how to find the Elements, but nothing about how we’re gonna get them,” Applejack said.

“What if they’re in a fortress?” Pinkie Pie asked. “Or in a mountain guarded by a dragon?” She gasped. “What if they were with us all along?”

Fluttershy looked down and tapped at her neck to make sure the Element of Kindness wasn’t just invisible. Rainbow Dash snorted to stifle a laugh and Fluttershy blushed.

“Discord can use magic to take the Elements. I don’t see why we can’t do the same as soon as I know where they are,” Twilight said. “This time we’ll make sure to put as many magical locks on them as we can so he can’t take them away again. Even his magic has to have limits. That’s why we’re going to find every spell we could possibly use. Anything useful!”

Twilight’s friends nodded and each went to their own sections of the bookshelves. Slowly a pile of books in front of Twilight and Rarity grew and both unicorns were flipping through the pages that had been bookmarked and made notes on the spells they found.

“It’s getting late,” Fluttershy, who had been keeping an eye out for Discord, whispered.

“How the hay can you tell?” Rainbow Dash asked, tossing another book onto the pile.

“Oh, um, the sun is going down.”

“Fluttershy, the sun and moon have been going up an’ down all day,” Applejack said. She shook her head and walked to the window to peer out.

“It’s been daytime for a while now… this is the first time the sun is going down normally,” Fluttershy said.

“And you didn’t think to say anything?” Twilight asked, joining Applejack and Fluttershy by the window.  Rarity remained where she was, practicing a few of the spells they had found.

“I didn’t want to bother you…”

Twilight had stopped listening and was instead glaring up at the sky, waiting for it to switch between night and day as it had been doing for the past twenty-four hours. Nothing happened. Aside from a few cotton candy clouds here and there, the sky looked rather normal. She jerked back when a cotton candy cloud fell to the ground in front of the window with a splat.

“You don’t suppose Discord got bored already, do you?” Applejack asked.

“I hope not,” Twilight whispered. She looked away from the window and at all her friends who were staring at her anxiously.

“No more chocolate rain?” Pinkie Pie asked, eyes wide.

“Doesn’t look like it,” Applejack replied.

Twilight pawed at the ground, wondering if they’d be able to pull off her plan. They hadn’t even figured out how to contact one another when they were found by Discord! It was clear to her that they were running out of time if they wanted to catch him here in Ponyville.

“We have to move now,” Twilight said. Her horn lit up and duplicated the notes on spells she and Rarity had written. Rarity took her copy and nodded, studying it intently. “Girls, keep an eye out for Discord and each other. He won’t win this time.”