Contraptionology!

by Skywriter


12 - At Last, the Villain

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Contraptionology!

by Jeffrey C. Wells

www.scrivnarium.net

(with gratitude to the pre-reading powers of Akela Stronghoof and S.R. Foxley)
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Part Twelve: At Last, the Villain

Discord!

The name echoed through my head like the crack of a bullwhip.

Discord!

In a flash, the sunny happiness of massive cider-poisoning under which I'd been laboring for the past several hours was boiled away, replaced in an instant with the triple-distilled white truth that lay at the core of Large Hadron Cider underneath all that alcohol, sorta like the tiny piece of sour candy that's left in your mouth once you've sucked off all the other layers of the jawbreaker.

In that moment, I could see with absolute scientific clarity what I'd become, what my friends and family had become, what poor Ponyville had become, literally overnight. Pictures from my happy little jaunt through the town flickered across my mind, each one more upsetting than the last. Here was Fluttershy's twisted hoof snaking out from the crack of her front door as she fumbled at the apples I had brought for her, here was the mad gleam in Rarity's eyes as she plotted violent revolution against Canterlot itself, here was Twilight's lifeless body draped in a sheet on her laboratory floor while her brain chattered crazily away from inside its tank…

I stared, slack-jawed, at the little photo album in my head. Boy howdy, I thought, we all sure got wrong in a hurry. Finally, though, I had found somepony to blame.

My face twisted into a snarl.

"Discord!" came the name one last time, this time from my own throat.

The column of golden light startled, turned, and looked over at me.

"What," purred a voice, coming from everywhere and nowhere all at once, "is this?"

The creature above the grove reached behind its back and produced a folding spyglass, which it then snapped open. With a clattering noise, the spyglass extended to about thirty feet in length, putting the lens basically square in my face. The golden figure made like it was going to peer through the eyepiece but leapt bodily into it instead, emerging out the other end of the spyglass directly in front of me.

And so there he was. The spirit of chaos and disharmony hisself, again, larger than life. I ain't gonna say "in the flesh", because he weren't nowhere near that. Close up like this, I could see the gaps between the ribbons of yellow light that made up his body; he looked half-complete, like some sort of chicken-wire frame waiting on a coating of papier-mâché. It was a horribly ugly sight, but then again, when was this bugger not?

The makeshift monster smiled congenially at me, showing wavering lemon-light teeth. "Ah, my old friend, Applejack," he said.

"I ain't your friend," I said, my eyes narrow. "'Bout the furthest from it, actually."

"Why is my joy at seeing you little ponies never reciprocated?" said Discord, resting his chin on his eagle claw for a second. "It's so very dishearten—"

"'Cause you're a weed, Discord!" I shouted. "I ain't never happy to see weeds!"

"Slander!" replied Discord, touching a claw to his breast and gesturing back at the trees behind him, which were still spitting out the yellow light that made up his body, making him look a bit like some kinda fancy marionette. "As you can see, I happen to be a very fetching grove of lemon trees at the moment." His voice rose in a little ditty: "Lemon tree, very pretty, and the lemon flower is sweet, but the fruit of the poor lemon—"

"Y'aint that neither!" I cut in, desperate to not get caught in a musical number. "Last I checked, y'all was back to being a plot-ugly bird-mess target in the middle of the Princess's sculpture garden!"

"Oh, I'm still there," said Discord, looking sullenly off into the distance at Canterlot Mountain. "Most of me, that is." He brightened. "But! Part of the beauty of being an entity of primordial chaos is that I don't absolutely have to be all in one place at once! It's all thanks to the wonders of bilocation."

"Bilocation?"

"Ask your friend Pinkie Pie," said Discord, waving a claw all dismissive-like. "She'll clue you in. At any rate, yes, this handsome creature you see before you is a tiny little shard of my greatness, buried in the trees of a humble little lemon grove in the Everfree Forest. Admittedly, it's a bit less camouflaged now that this quarter of it's been largely reduced to the Everfree Ash Pile."

"A... shard?"

"You know what I really love about high altitudes?" said Discord, peering down over the edge of the nearby bluff face. "It's the echoes. Yes, a shard, Applejack. The first thing I did upon being released from my stone prison – this last time, anyway – was to shave off a few bits of my consciousness into a pile of happy little me-fragments, which I then proceeded to broadcast far and wide while you little ponies were all busy with your delightful cotton-candy weather. There are thousands more of me out there now. You can find pieces of your old pal Discord in the trees, in the water, in the flowers, in the fertile bellies of your marefolk…"

"All right, absolutely anything y'all say from here on in is officially too much information."

"You disappoint me, Applejack," said Discord, pursing his lips. "If your friend Twilight Sparkle were here, I wager she'd want to hear me out, for the data-gathering opportunity alone. To be quite frank, I'd actually been banking on her being here instead of you. I'll have to tone down the polysyllabics for my inevitable monologue."

"And just what do you mean by that?"

"What, the word 'polysyllabics'? Oh, sorry, that was a bit more than the guttural twanging grunts you're accustomed to." Discord cleared his throat, then put on a straw hat which he hadn't been holding up until now. "Me g'wine trah talk wit' small words now—"

"No! About Twilight!"

"Oh! Merely that she's just that much smarter than you, my dear," said Discord, removing the hat, dropping it down onto my head and then patting me on the top of it. The light-lines making up his paw buzzed a little, but other than that, I couldn't feel the contact. I immediately tossed the hat to the ground, trying hard not to think of Old Reliable as I did so. The hat vanished into a spray of ribbons where it fell. "After all, this is something of a mind-game, isn't it?" Discord continued. "It's not a problem you can solve by kicking it, lassoing it, or showering it with amusing regional colloquialisms, all three of which you quite excel at, I don't mind saying." Discord snapped his leonine claw and conjured a pitcher, out of which he poured a table and two chairs. "Sit?"

I scowled again. "In case you missed these here goggles and this here snazzy white coat, I's a science genius mare now, just like Twi is. So you can just button that lip."

"Correction!" said Discord. "You're a contraptionology genius mare. I can't stand science; it's one of the most boring things ever invented. All that checking and double-checking and double-double checking. But this, this 'contraptionology' business you ponies came up with, it's just the most delightful idea you've ever had! Imposing your senseless visions and dreams onto the world via borderline madness? Outstanding! I wish I could take credit for it, but no, it's all you. And the most fun thing about it is that it pretends to be science, when it isn't!"

"Whatever!" I said. "Point is, I ain't sitting at the same table with the likes of you!"

"Suit yourself," said Discord, waving his paw and dismissing the furniture, which went galloping away like a trio of camelopards, quickly vanishing just as the hat had. "Yes, quite impressive. Somehow, out of all the chaos, you alone managed to achieve something close to your noble aspiration: a dose of honesty cider that actually allows you to see my manifestation here at the grove. How on earth did you manage it? I'd have thought that my convolving dream-whispers would have eradicated all hope of that."

"I ain't been dreaming," I said. "I ain't even been sleeping."

"Tut, tut," said Discord. "Even after your buddy the Professor told you to get a good forty winks last night and everything? I'm surprised at you, Applejack. His little tent is right over there on the far side of the grove; if he could perceive my avatar in any way, I'd march over there right now and tattle on you for disobeying his direct request. Unfortunately, he's in there with his new little friend the Mayor at the moment, getting rather acquainted with her."

"You sick little mudpuppy," I said.

"Very acquainted, if you catch my meaning," continued Discord, ignoring me. "Their morning-after mortification is going to be absolutely delicious."

"Don't you even bring Stranger Danger into this!" I yelled. "Mind-controlling Pinkie's old mentor and forcing him to poison us all with science-juice is just one more thing I aim to take out of your hide. You're weak, Discord! Y'ain't even got the fortitude to stand behind the mess you're making this time. You got an innocent professor doing all your dirty work for you!"

"Herr Doctor von Danger is merely a channel," said Discord. "But, yes, these little fragments lack the raw power of my magnificent Central Self. I've been forced to draw potency from other sources. And do you know who I'm drawing power from right now, Applejack?"

I narrowed my eyes and said nothing. Discord leaned in close. It was a bit unnerving not to feel the draconequus's breath with his face right in mine like that. "I'll give you a hint," he whispered. "It starts with the letter 'y' and ends with the letter 'u'."

"Everpony keeps telling me I'm feeding their stinkin' evil plans! Y'all are lying at me!"

"Really, Applejack?" said Discord, flicking at the Element of Honesty at my throat. The jewel shone with a sickly wood-colored light. "I have to confess, your virtue has proved remarkably resilient under the circumstances. All the fault of that bullheaded promise-keeping you've been engaging in with your little Meals-On-Hooves program. But that doesn't change the fact that Honesty's paragon is living under a very, very delightfully enormous lie, does it?"

"I got no idea what you're talking about," I said, seething. The Element of Honesty bucked feebly in its setting.

"Oh, this is going to be priceless," said Discord, pulling out a tripod-mounted camera. "Applejack, we're recording this for posterity, so you might want to get your mane in place. Do you swear, positively absolutely cross-your-heart-and-hope-to-fly swear that you have no idea what I'm talking about when I refer to your enormous lie?"

"Yes!" I shouted back. "I have no idea what you're talking about!"

There was a hollow little "plink" from my throat. I looked down, my gut feeling just as hollow as that noise.

The Element of Honesty had cracked straight down the middle, its gemstone a lifeless coal-black.

Tears suddenly welled up in my eyes.

"Smile," oozed Discord, in a voice like oil. The camera flashed in my face, turning my world into pastel polka-dots for a second. When the spots cleared, Discord was holding a little photographic print of me, standing there like a stunned bull, big-eyed and crying for the camera. He was gazing at it with unfettered child-like glee.

"I," he said, clutching the picture to his chest, "am going to treasure this photograph forever."

I let out a guttural roar, wiped the tears out of my eyes with one violent swipe of my hoof, and charged the grove of lemon trees at full gallop.

"Oh, come now, Applejack," said Discord, lazily, turning to follow me. "Let's not do anything rash, here."

"Rash ain't got nothing to do with it!" I said, my molars gritted down hard enough to break 'em. "You're a bunch of fruit trees now, you Tartarus-spawned varmint! And if there's anything on this green earth I know, it's fruit trees!"

"So, what," said Discord, cocking his head as he wandered over. "You're going to harvest lemons at me?"

I turned, my face a mask of rage. "You think that's all these hooves can do?" I said. "Boy, you got another thing coming. I am an absolute certified master at bucking trees, Discord. Every little wooden cell's got a song it sings to the others, and every tree's got its sweet spots and its sour spots. I can make trees drop fruit in whatever direction I choose. I can kick autumn leaves off one at a time, if it suits my fancy. I can even buck a tree in such a way that the branches make music in how they vibrate. I once kicked a birch into a stunning rendition of Beethooven's Empress Concerto in E-flat major for a party trick. Give me a tree and a pair of hooves to kick it with and I can move the mother-loving world, see if I can't!"

"Your point?"

"If I can buck a song out of a tree," I bellowed, "I can sure as heckfire buck it dead out of the ground!"

"Ah," said Discord, smirking at me. "So that's the point of your lengthy tirade. You were merely explaining how you were going to engage in a show of brute force. Such a novel approach! Becoming a contraptionological genius has really changed you, Applejack."

"You shut your cake-hole," I said, planting my forehooves and readying myself for a buck that would tear the nearest lemon tree clean off its roots. "Dead trees, dead Discord-fragment. Simple as that."

"These aren't just trees, now," said Discord, putting a weightless arm across my withers. "They're indestructible extensions of my will. You see how they're still alive, still thriving, in the wake of a forest fire hot enough to reduce everything within five acres to char? It's going to take more than kicking to do these babies in. It might even take... science."

The lemon-punch fizz rose in my brain, struggling powerfully against the remaining potency of my nuclear honesty cider. The sound of clashing chemicals climbed from a buzz into a horrific screech that threatened to tear my head apart.

And then everything got quiet. "Science?" I muttered, dreamily.

"Yes, science," cooed Discord. "And I wager you've already got some lovely ideas as to how you might eradicate my presence using the force of knowledge, now."

"I bet," I murmured, "I bet I could use my atomic still to whip up some nasty herbicide or something. Eat the roots right out from under y'all."

"Oh, wicked!" said Discord, encouragingly. "Yes, that would almost certainly work. Anything else?"

"Explosives!" I said, my eyes gleaming. "Like that unstable gelignite we use to break up rocks we can't pull up by ourselves! I bet I could churn out a heap of that stuff and blast this here patch of trees to kingdom come!"

"Wonderful! Yes, excellent! More!"

"Tent caterpillars!" I shouted. "We got a bunch of them in the south field! I could scrape 'em off and then I could feed 'em some kind of kick-flank vita-tonic of my own devising and turn them little devils into grove-devouring monsters!"

"How, indeed, could I withstand something like that?"

"You couldn't!" I said, pointing triumphantly with one hoof. "I just figured out three different ways to beat you, Discord!"

"I'm quaking!" said Discord, balling his claws into fists and shaking them anxiously in the air. "Really, I am!"

"I'm gonna start sketching some of these out right now!"

"Oh, dear!" said Discord. "Well, if you insist. There's a lovely clear area about fifty yards that way where you could really spread out with your plans."

"Then that's exactly where I'm going!" I said, marching off in the direction of Discord's point.

Then I stopped.

"Wait," I said, squeezing my eyes shut, clinging hard to the tiny remaining flicker of truth-cider in my head. "This is a wild goose chase. You're using science to distract me. I'm gonna get so involved in trying to get these plans to work that I ain't never gonna get around to actually beating you with any of 'em."

"Well-spotted!" cried Discord, clapping his paws together. "And that, dear Applejack, is the real beauty of contraptionology."

I stalked back over to the grove. "Figured you out," I said. "Well, it ain't gonna work, Discord! I'm goin' back to Plan A. Say goodbye to your little demon lemon trees here!"

I planted my forehooves again, tensed my gut, then, with a mighty roar, I kicked up and out with my back legs—

* * *

A couple hours and seventeen plans later, I was no closer to success. I had spread makeshift blueprints everywhere, tinkering at the designs, tweaking them in a hundred different ways, but each one of my ideas was beset with some sort of fundamental flaw that grounded it before it even started. I sighed heavily and threw myself onto my back in the big ol' clear spot Discord had indicated to me. At least this place was as advertised – it was a nice, wide open space, free of ash and burnt-up trees, perfect for spreading papers around. A little windy, but other than that, absolutely perf—

I blinked.

"I..." I began. "I had been going to forget about scienceing those trees. I was all set on bucking 'em down."

"Indeed you were," said Discord, watching me from some ways away, his snake-like form draped languidly over a pile of charred wood. In one paw, he held a tiny pink parasol against the late afternoon sun. "But, look at what happened! You got distracted again. Face it, Applejack, you can't win. Even if those trees weren't fireproof, which they are, and even if they weren't impervious to physical harm, which they are, my grove is shielded with the very cornerstone of contraptionology, to wit: the nagging feeling that there might be a better way than this. Anyone coming anywhere near those trees will be overcome with the desire to solve their problems by indirect science-related means, and then they'll just wander off and never come back. It's perfect."

"I swear to you," I said, sitting up, "I'm gonna keep trying until I can kick your dang trees over. I don't care if it takes me a week. I promise you that every time your witchcraft sends me spinning back to these blueprints, I'm gonna spend less and less time here. And every time I march back to those trees, I'm gonna come closer and closer to remembering why I'm there. And I am a mean, stubborn foal-of-a-mule, Discord. You ain't gonna last forever against my tenacity."

"And you," said Discord, lightly, "ain't gonna last forever against gravity."

I blinked. "Come again?"

"Look down," he said, tossing the parasol at me. I caught it in the curve of my hoof, and, against every instinct that was screaming at me not to, I looked down...

...into empty air.

"You know that clear spot I pointed you to?" remarked Discord, as vertigo sunk its claws into my stomach. "You know the reason it was so nice and wide open and free of burnt vegetation? It's because it was off the edge of the bluff. It's really amazing how distracted my grove can make a pony when it gets threatened. Distracted enough to not notice when someone's ushering them straight into thin air, for instance."

"Why – why ain't I falling?" I said, desperately. "I been here for hours!"

"It wouldn't have been funny, before now," said Discord, yawning. "Can't fall until it's funny; goodness, my little pony, learn the rules. If it'll make you feel better, please know that in about three seconds, it's going to be absolutely hilarious, so you might want to open that parasol. One..."

"Discord," I said, glancing panickedly down at the deadly drop that waited beneath my hooves. "Wait—"

"Send me a letter when you get to the hospital," said Discord. "I'd love to sign the full-body cast you'll be in for the rest of the year. Two..."

"Grower curse it, Discord, you are gonna regret—"

"Three," said Discord, snapping one claw. "Farewell, Applejack."

If I was gonna say anything else, I never got the chance. My breath left me as I plummeted straight down through a cloud of paper like a pony-shaped rock, achieving a good solid nine-point-eight meters per second per second on my way to the forest floor below.

It was a long way down.