The door to Discord's Classroom exploded into a thousand pieces.
Naturally, this got Discord's attention.
"Discord!" screamed Sunset in rage.
"Ah, Sunset," answered Discord cheerfully. "So, that crown actually worked out for you, eh? Totally menacing look there. That might scare the students, so I think we might have to discuss that. Oh, and please don't destroy my stuff. I have to stop and fix it again."
The door pieces suddenly picked themselves off the ground.
"Although... I suppose thanks to this little incident," Discord mused, "I can take the opportunity to change things up a bit."
The door reassembled itself in it's frame, but then shifted form into a pentagon shape.
"Shut up!" screamed Sunset. "I'm only going to say this once. Send. Me. Back. I hate it here. I thought you hated it here too, come to think of it!"
"Well, I did hate it back when I didn't have any control over it. But now I can change whatever I want, which means that this is effectively my little sandbox. Don't worry about a thing." He waved a hand at her. "You will love it here when I'm done."
Sunset immediately sensed a magical intrusion upon her mind and quickly blocked it with her own power.
"HOW DARE YOU! YOU'VE JUST USED UP YOUR ONE CHANCE!"
Discord scrunched up his face, seemingly unconcerned with the she-demon charging up an orb of magic between her hands. "Wait a second, why didn't-"
There was a blast of orange magic, and it quickly expanded to engulf Discord, who cried out in shock, and then in pain.
Sunset let the spell die and glared down at the man, now laying out on the floor on his back.
"That hurt!" he complained.
"There's more where that come unless you let me out of here!"
"Let's try this again with a little spin on it," said Discord, standing up. He held up a strange metal rod.
"You don't want to hit me," said Discord. "And you're going to love it here."
The top of the rod flashed with light.
Sunset blasted him again.
Discord picked himself off the ground again. "Huh. This is a problem. Look, why don't we get rid of that crown and then take it from the top."
Discord flexed his hand in her direction and Sunset gasped and threw up a magical defense. Strangely, she didn't feel any magic fall upon it.
"Alright, something is up here, levitating stuff is beyond simple at this point. Maybe-"
There was another blast of magic.
This time when it cleared away, Discord was no longer standing where he had been.
"Alright, look, I get that you're not happy right now, and that's a problem," said Discord. Sunset turned around and realized that he was leaning against the wall that had previously been behind her. "If you would just see things my way though, you wouldn't be unhappy anymore, and we'll both be just fine and dandy."
"I'm not interested in your definition of just fine and dandy, and, obviously, you can't make me!"
"Apparently so. It would seem that despite everything that you have done for me, there are still some parts of my power locked away."
"What are you talking about?" cried Sunset impatiently.
"Well, as I was explaining to your Principal a while ago, I thought I was insane because of the impossible things that have started happening to me. But now I have realized that the reason I can do the impossible is because the world itself is a construct which I created to keep myself from getting bored. Perhaps even subconsciously. I don't remember. But the point is, nobody in it is even real other than me."
"Hold on, you said that if we got back to the real Canterlot High that you would reconsider thinking that you are insane."
"And I did!"
"And now... you're a solipsist?!"
"I don't know what that word means. Does it mean someone who thinks the things that I do?"
"Duh!"
"Well, then sure, why not. I don't care what you call it."
Sunset stared at Discord for five seconds.
"Discord... You idiot! You freakin' idiot! You weren’t insane when we first got trapped in this stupid place, even though you thought you were, but now you have indeed fallen into the depths of insanity even though you think you are not!"
"Say what you like, but you can't prove me wrong. And, seriously, stop attacking me, it's annoying."
"You know what, I don't care what you think. You want me to stop, then all you have to do is get me out of here!"
"Well, Sunset, you see, I can't do that. Or, rather, I won't."
Sunset blasted him with more magic.
This time when the magic died away, there was a painting of Discord directly on the wall.
"I'll admit, you surprised me with the first two times, but I totally saw that coming," the painting said, moving as it spoke. "You can't hurt me like this, you know. Even if you broke the wall, which I'm not going to let you do that, it still wouldn't hurt me."
Sunset stared at him in anger.
"Why won't you let me go?" she demanded, and realized that she sounded desperate.
"Well, you see, it's like this," Discord said. "If I send you back, you're going to go back to that Equestria place, and then one of two things are going to happen. Either you are going to build up your strength and then come back and try to ruin everything that I am doing here, or else you won't come back. I don't want the first thing to happen for obvious reasons. But if you were to leave and I never saw you again, it would only be a matter of time before I forget your face. And then a little while longer and I might forget about you completely. And if I forget about you completely, then you will effectively have never existed, since if I don't think you are in the world, then you arn't. And I would rather you not disappear. After all, you are the reason that I was able to unlock my true potential."
"You... don't want me to leave," stated Sunset in deadpan shock. "Even after everything I just did to you."
"Well, it occurs to me that the reason that bad things are still happening to me is that some part of my mind that I have no control of is making it happen for some reason, in the same way that bad dreams happen even though you don't want them to. It's not your fault though; it's something wrong with me."
Sunset blasted the wall where the Discord Painting was.
She quickly let up when, true to Discord's word, the wall did not come crumbling down.
"I told you, that's not going to work." insisted Discord.
"Fine. Let's see how you like having a taste of your own medicine."
Sunset released an entirely different kind of magic, but it failed to take effect.
"Did you just try to mind control me?" asked Discord in surprise.
"For all the good it did! Besides, you tried to do it to me!"
"All I tried to do is get you to see things my way. You just tried to force me to do your bidding."
"It's the same thing!"
"Not really. With my way, everyone gets to be happy in the end. As your fellow students will soon find out."
"What? You mean Twilight and those other five girls?"
"Well, sure, but the rest of the school too. I set up this thing that will teleport the students here once they set foot on campus."
Sunset was silent for a moment.
"You're wrong. Look, I was going to force the student body to follow me through the portal into Equestria to help me take over, but I was going to let them go in the end, and then once they saw the end result of the entire ordeal, they would be forced to admit that things are better with me in charge. They would never come to that conclusion if I didn't force them to help me. But you... you're..."
Sunset trailed off. Then she started speaking once more. "Actually, never mind. Forget it. I see your point. I'll be getting out of your way now. Do what you will."
"Well, alright, fine. I have things to do. We're going to have to pick this up again later, but unfortunately I can't seem to stop time, so for now I have a very special fall formal to plan."
Sunset landed and walked toward the door wordlessly. She pulled it open.
Then she hesitated when she saw the group of girls waiting on the other side.
She quickly slammed the door closed and then charged a spell, and then released it.
There was a flash, and then there were screams from the girls.
"What did she do?" cried Rainbow in panic.
"Wait a moment," said Twilight. "We're fine. She... teleported us. Into another hallway."
"How much did you all hear?" Demanded Sunset.
"I heard everything," said Twilight carefully. "I saw you go back to Discord's room and followed you. You look different..."
"No kidding."
There was awkward silence.
“Where your mutt?” asked Sunset, looking at Twilight's unzipped bag.
“When you ran out of Discord’s closet, I started to chase you, but then I realized that I was battering poor Spike, so I let him out of my backpack. I don’t know where he is right now.”
“Hmm. Bummer.”
“I have a feeling that you are not being sincere.”
“So sue me.”
"So..." said Twilight. "Mister Discord has turned into a solipsist."
"What's a solipsist?" asked Pinkie Pie.
"Technically he's a metaphysical solipsist," growled Sunset. "That means that he believes that all of reality is a fabrication of his mind, including the people in it, which means that he also thinks that he is the only true consciousness."
"But... that's just simply not true!" insisted Pinkie Pie. "I mean, look at Dashie here, she's obviously a conscious person, and I know that I'm a person!"
"Actually," said Twilight sadly, "While solipsism is impossible to prove, it's also impossible to disprove. Rainbow Dash might actually be a biological calculator created with instructions on how to make decisions, but otherwise not actually be a consciousness."
"That's stupid!" cried Rainbow Dash. "I know that I'm real!"
"You do know that you are real, but you don't know if Pinkie is real, do you?"
Rainbow Dash narrowed her eyes.
"Well, I guess I can't actually prove anything, but this is just ridiculous!”
“I know it is. Once ponies- and other creatures too, of course, starting thinking that way, they can easily find themselves thinking along very dangerous lines. One of the primary arguments against Solipsism is that if the universe was created in the mind of one person, then that person should be able to change the state of the universe with their mind alone. Most individuals can’t do that.”
“Oh my goodness,” breathed Rarity. “But Mister Discord suddenly can now, more or less, and that argument has been invalidated for him! I think I can actually almost understand what he is going through right now!”
“Exactly.”
“That’s not the only problem,” said Sunset. “Most solipsists will continue to at least keep from making other people angry, even though they don’t think that they are really people, because they will still have to contend with consequences when they make them mad. Mister Discord has become so powerful that that has suddenly become a non-issue too. Even I can't stop him now, I can’t fight him. Nobody can."
Twilight gave Sunset an uneasy look. “If you give me the element of magic, I might be ab-“
“No! Completely out of the question! We shall be leaving the crown with the person who is the most powerful! I am better than ALL of you!”
“Sunset.”
Sunset blinked, and then turned to stare at Fluttershy in surprise.
“The quiet one speaks. You had better have something worth hearing.”
“I think so. I have a question.”
“Then hurry up and ask it!”
“What if the only bird singing in the forest was the one that was best at singing?”
Sunset growled in irritation. "Don’t think I don’t know what you’re up to. It would be a very quiet fore-“
Unbidden, Sunset’s mind conjured up an image of herself as a bird in the forest.
“Congratulations!” cried the hated voice of Discord. “You’re the queen of this entire place!”
“But there is nobody else here!” she answered.
“Exactly!”
Sunset shook her head, as though trying to dislodge the image from her brain.
“Shut it, Fluttershy. You could twist anything in your favor if you think about it the wrong way.”
“We shouldn’t be fighting with each other,” Twilight pointed out. “Right now, Discord is a much bigger problem for Sunset and all of the rest of us. We have to work together to bring him to his senses! We can fight over the crown after we ensure that Discord doesn’t turn the whole world inside out!”
“Sunset has no interest in stopping Discord,” spat Rainbow Dash with disdain. “She’s planning on escaping through the portal.”
Twilight paled.
“You wouldn’t!”
“But,” said Rainbow, now sounding confused, “she also said that she would take us with her.”
“What?” cried Twilight. “Why?”
“I was planning on bringing the whole school, you dummies!” cried Sunset. “If I’m going to be a queen, I need subjects!”
“But Equestria has plenty of potential subjects,” Twilight argued. “And if your plan to dominate the will of your fellows actually would work, then it would likely work on ponies just as easily.”
Sunset glared at her.
“Look at this.”
She cast a magic spell and a doorway opened. The giant library was on the other side of it.
The girls stared in confusion.
“Yeah, about that,” said Rainbow Dash. “Why is the outside world gone and replaced with a big library?”
“Because Discord.”
“What?” said Rainbow in confusion. “That doesn’t explain anything!”
“Trust me, I have very quickly realized that when it comes to that madman, that’s all the explanation you should need. His twisted mind spawned this sort of a pocket dimension when I knocked him out, and he kindly took me in with him."
Sunset groaned and grabbed her forehead.
"Once he started playing with magic, he started transforming the school into... a freak show. Although, apparently all that stuff is gone, which is a little odd, but it will be back soon, mark my words! You see that giant library in there? That is the library. His freak magic will shrink you and take you right back to the center of the school if you try to leave. No matter how many times you try, you can’t get out of here. We’re stuck here. Welcome to my tartarus.”
“What?" cried Twilight in panic. “That shouldn’t be possible! The other Discord told me that the crown only has enough power in it to transform me into my normal self for twenty-four hours! There is no way that the crown contained even close to the amount of power it would take to create a pocket universe that bends space this severely!”
“Ah. So that was your plan for this stupid thing. I was wondering.”
Twilight gasped as Sunset held up a previously hidden fall formal crown.
“You make a good point, actually,” Sunset admitted. “It sure feels like there is still a lot of magic in here. Seems like Discord didn’t suck it all up after all.”
“But then where is all of this power coming from?” asked Twilight.
“Who knows? Who cares? What does matter is getting out of here. Leaving through the portal to Equestria is impossible now, it does not exist here. As the most powerful person here, and as your queen, it falls to me to get you all out of here. You and the entire student body.”
“Wait, you want to help us?” asked Rainbow Dash in confusion.
“Use your brain, Rainbow,” growled Sunset in irritation. “Unlike Discord, I am not a solipsist! No matter how dumb you all are, you are definitely all real people, and I can’t leave you all with Discord. You are all beneath me, and many of you downright deserve a good slap, but the reason that I worked so hard to become a Queen in the first place was so that I could be a better ruler than Celestia, to be a benefit future subjects, for which I ask only recognition and admiration in return.”
The girls all stared at her with disbelief.
“You’re not quite who I thought you were,” said Twilight in wonder.
“That’s because you know nothing about me. Here.”
Twilight barely had the presence of mind to catch the fall formal crown that Sunset tossed to her.
“What? You’re giving this to me?”
“Don’t make me regret it. I can still overpower you. Once you use it to assume your pony form, we will have two magic casters, and we might be able to overcome Discord.”
“Sunset, we can’t beat Discord in a fight. I saw what he was capable of. But there are alternatives to fighting.”
“Like what?” cried Sunset in frustration.
“We need to try reasoning with him.”
“Reason with him?” cried Sunset in disbelief. “Twilight, you said yourself that it is impossible to disprove solipsism. Not only that, but Mister Discord doesn’t strike me as the sort of person to care about rationality.”
“Then it’s a good thing that we aren’t going to try to disprove anything,” Twilight answered. “What we are going to do is make him realize that whether other people are real or not, he does care about them. We just have to help him see that what he is doing isn’t what he wants. Not what he really wants.”
Sunset put a pointed fingernail to her chin in thought.
“Alright. It’s worth a shot.”
“Then you will need me,” said Fluttershy, stepping forward.
“What?” said Sunset in confusion. “What good will you do?”
“Because I know Discord better than any of you do. This version of him, anyway.”
“Argh, fine then. Come on then, let’s get this over with.”
Sunset flapped her wings and took to the air, then started flying down the hall, once more to Discord’s classroom.
“Hey girls,” whispered Pinkie Pie. “didn’t Sunset have... er, a bunch of frayed holes in her wings and stuff a bit ago?”
“Shh!”
“Twilight!” cried Sunset.
They looked and saw Sunset had flown back and was gazing down at them.
“Um, yes?” asked Twilight nervously.
“I didn’t give you that thing for nothing. Discord is going to try to brainwash you all. If you want to have any chance of stopping that, you need magic.”
Twilight hung her head slightly. “I guess you’re right,” she said. “I mean, I have nothing to hide now. It’s just... there’s one small little thing...”
“Are you seriously telling me we have a problem here?” demanded Sunset, almost threateningly.
“Well, no, not as such. It’s just, the crown has a passphrase to activate the magic, and the passphrase is a little bit... silly.”
“Twilight, seriously,” said Sunset, slapping a head to her forehead. “On a scale of one to ten, that is a zero on things we care about right now.”
“You’re right, sorry. I just thought I would warn you all.”
“Wait, yer going to turn into a pony? Now?” asked Applejack.
“I guess so. Why, is there some reason I shouldn’t?”
“Er, no... Ah just... I can’t picture you like that. It’s so strange... But don’t mind me none, you go right on ahead.”
“Alright then. Here goes nothing,” said Twilight. She hesitated, and then spoke out in embarrassement.
“It’s morphin’ time.”
The moment before being engulfed in light, Twilight became very aware of the stunned stares coming from every single other girl in the group, Sunset included.
Twilight felt herself body shift, and in a couple of seconds, the light died away and she was in alicorn form once more.
Sunset Shimmer fell out of the air and collapsed in the floor, laughing hysterically. The other girls just stared at her.
“What?” demanded Twilight in humiliation. “You said it wasn’t important! I know it sounds stupid, but all things considered, it made quite a bit more sense coming from Discord than I thought it would.”
“My sides!” cried Sunset in laughter. “Twilight, I’m sorry to tell you this, but the other Discord made a fool of you!”
“What?” cried Twilight in alarm. “What do you mean?”
Sunset forced herself to calm down and explain.