Love – faster than light!
Discord didn't zap him self away like he usual would, instead he had spent some more time with every single one of them, as they gathered around for a last time, when he hold his heroic speech, dressed up like a nobleman on his own funeral.
"This might goes wrong... but if it does, you probably don't have to worry about me ever again... but if i shall succeed... which is likely since i'm amazing" as he licked his finger tipp and slid over his eyebrow "everything will be alright again, for me... and everypony else of course!"
They knew what this meant.
Many of the things that had gone wrong in the past would never had happen in the first place. Still they had some doubts, there wasn't just bad times, many good things happened as well and Twilight even had offered Discord to live with her in the crystal Empire.
He would be praised as national hero, beloved by thousands - as soon the word had spread, about what he done... and there was also a chance, he could find another special somepony she had told him.
It was a noble and good meant offer, but he had refused. "There is no other pony for me. Never."
She already had predicted this answer.
They even could convince him to restore Manehatten, like he did on the crystal Empire, despite blaming Celestia for at least half the damage! Oddly enough he didn't bother to restore a single window in any of the towns buildings. "I don't do windows" he had said, what ever that meant.
"So there is just one thing to do. Wish you all a good bye" as he performed a overly dramatic gesture.
"Byeeeee!"
"Good luck, partner!"
"Take care, wont you?"
"Do it- don't try!"
"Write me!"
"Uhm... bye"
"Well... maybe there are two things left" he grinned, as he got in front of his yellow mare, kneeing down to get down to her size "may i?" reaching out with his soft lion paw.
Fluttershy looked desperate to her new friends, but they just shrugged about it, not knowing what to come... still she put her hoof into his paw - as he slowly leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek, making the mare blush as the others didn't know what to say.
"You made my life worth while." with this words, he was gone.
It flashed once more and he was in the past, right away trying to fetch his breath.
This kinda trick was even exhausting for his degree of powers, as he had to sit down for a moment, wiping off the sweat on his forehead. "It better works..." he said to him self, trying to fetch his breath. If he would make even the smallest mistake everything could become even worse than before and since time travels turned out to be really complicated, even more so than his little puppet theater made out to believe...
He could not just zap back and forth to try over and over again, in order to make it right.
Everything he would change now, would become the new feature – so the one he just had left, wasn't into his reach anymore, as soon he affected anypony's life. Then he only could wait for decades to see if everything was back to normal or not - and might end up even more clueless than the first time... without any chance to find out what to do.
-Lost in time- as Celestia had put it, when they had their finally talk.
He still could feel the huge drain the travel had caused, but for regular magic he still had plenty juice, so he didn't bother to lose any more time and snapped him self to Cloudstale, so he would not miss the event.
After a few tries he found the school and even had spotted a young yellow filly which he was absolute sure to be his past future former wife.
Discord knew why he never ever wanted to touch time magic, it gave him a headache.
The draconequus had put on another disguise than -Mr. Handsome-, which seemed inappropriate... turning into a filly he had seen flying by, giving himself a cotton candy pink fur and half hue/half deep pink mane, as well green eyes...quite a sympathetic color pattern he had to admit... with this he could blend in and pretend to be a student like any other around here.
Despite his, once again brilliant disguise, Discord was trying to stay out of sight from anypony in the first place, since even a single glance towards him may could blew history for good.
The young Fluttershy was so diminutive... he had seen her old filly-photos, but she was even more adorable close up: Not even half her adult size, wearing a brace, while her long mane was hiding most of her young face and her flying practice was like to watch a newborn butterfly.
She struggled to get of the ground and took almost a minute to do so – when she finally lifted of she seemed surprised about her own skills, grinning at this great accomplishment and reaching out for the next step, to get past a cloud-ring which was about five meters above her... so she flew slowly up and tried to get through, stepping on the rings inner part, but she somehow managed to stumble over it and lost balance. The foal stopped flapping her wings for some reason, fell down and slid along cloud beneath like a slide to leave it in a wide bow, tarring of a flag from a post she had almost hit in the process - slumping onto the next cloud layer below.
Then there was laughter, coming from two colts: one of them with brown fur, dam mane and blue eyes. The other one was orange furred, had a brown mane and green eyes. They hoovered over to her and started to make fun about her little mishap.
Even if she was not yet the Fluttershy he knew and loved, he still could not help to grind his teeth... one day he would give them a payback! How could they bully such a cute ma... filly...
but not even a minute later Rainbow Dash showed up as well. The blue pegasus looked almost like her older self, but only half her size and her mane was - if even possible, more ruffled than usual. The blue filly landed in between the yellow one and the two jerks and tried to defend her honor from much he could make out from this distance.
"Oh this must be it" he said, using his hands like binoculars, which somehow worked.
The quartet took off and flew away, as he made him self hurry to get after them.
The young ones headed to the school sports ground, or better put, the flying arena... which was made to train young pegasus ability's – dealing with clouds and learn proper flying, using different round courses to do so.
Of course the bullies made a lot of ruckus about the howl thing and gathered some of their loyal sheep's as audience on the way there, when the three flier's got to the start line, there was about a dozen more filly's cheering for this event in a small cloudbox nearby and it promised to become a quite memorable race.
Rainbow versus the two bullies.
Fluttershy was the one to wave the flag, standing in on a small cloud. Discord would liked nothing better than stuff him self with cotton candy right now, not just he didn't had some in a while, but the tension was almost killing him – still there would be time later, now he had to focus, as the flag quickly came down and the trio raced off in a rush.
At first, he almost jumped after Fluttershy, which fell of her cloud as the flier's passed by, but since he knew this fall would not dare to hurt her, he managed to fight down the tension to do anything about it.
This was one of the hardest things he ever was forced to do... - nothing at all.
With some hesitated he zapped him self a little further ahead in order to follow the race, as he had lost track of the flier's for just about a second, making him curse mentally.
His eyes searched the sky all around him. "For chaos sake! It cant be so hard to find this fuzzballs!" he thought to him self, as the three just rushed by his cloud, passing another ring.
This was also the moment when he realized he had forgot the wings on his back! How foolish of him - adding quickly this detail. Luckily none of the flier's seemed to have notice since they was way to busy racing for the first place. "Lucky me" he told him self, keeping his eyes on the competitive flier's.
The course was going from a long bow into a zick zack, as one of the bullies didn't caught the turn and slammed into a cloudpillar and was out of the race, as Rainbow passed him and continued her way, while the false pink filly did her best to zap him self from cloud to cloud, stalking his prey.
He had to admit, she had not exaggerated to much, even as filly she was really quick on her wings, but one of the bullies took a short cut and tried to push her out of the way as both dived down towards the last ring on the track.
Rainbows speed doubled and tripled in a matter of seconds, pushing the bully aside, which lost control of and spun down to the ground. "Serves him right" Discord grinned until he noticed he would just land in a small lake below. "Meh..."
"Focus!" he slapped him self - it was any second, when she would perform her first Sonic Rainboom!
Making him search in panic for everything what could remotely caused that bright flash she had described. The clouds? All white and soft...
Her speed had tripled, as just another second had passed.
The sky!? Clear, not even a single bird in it...
He already could see the mach-cone forming!
The ground!! There! A black mare! and without a doubt she was and unicorn of some sort, charging up her horn.
He almost had overshot her, pumping to much magic into his teleporation spell - blowing the mare right from her hooves as he appeared next to her, making her charge go off into the wrong direction, cutting of clean a tree branch.
An instant later he rose his head once again to the sky - as Rainbow Dash´s cone was changing color, when she passed the last ring, bouncing of the air to break the color spectrum all around her in an massive explosion – followed by a rainbow colored shock wave - spreading quickly out over the land.
She had performed her first Sonic Rainboom and shot ten times faster then before trough the air, pulling a rainbow-stroke along with her towards the sky. It was amazing!
Not even he could fly that fast... and she was just a filly right now!
It somehow even touched his sense for chaos, as he saw the sky split up in all those strange color's... made him think - maybe there was a little more to her, than he did gave her credit for?
Then his attention got back to the mare, which just had stood up, hiding her face below a coat.
He returned slowly to his former form, as the cute little filly was all of a sudden about two meters in size and looked like the personified devil!
"YOOUuuuuuuuu! He pointed with his lion paw at her, as his griffon paw formed a pink energy ball, pulling the deadliest tennis serve he could, but the mare jumped quickly aside, as the ball did hit the ground - blasted away a huge chunk earth in every direction, to leave a perfect round crater.
Even before the first strike had landed, he already made a second one follow up, but this time - unbelievable - the mare managed to redirect the shot with a quick punch, making it land on a nearby tree, which got incinerated like a match.
The mare starred at him for a second with blue green shimmering eyes into his red yellow ones.
Discord was huffing. Not because of exhaustion - more than pure rage.
Unlike on Celestia, here would be no holding back. He would shred her to pieces,
put her back together again - and repeat the process twelve more times just to be sure!
Suddenly the mare conjured a bright flash, making lights dancing before his eyes as he fixed his visions half a second later the mare had already run of – so he followed her quick as he could, which wasn't a easy task. She also used some kind of short teleportation spell, zapping herself about twenty meters ahead at a time in a wild zick zack pattern, making it hard to predict where she was heading.
One time he almost had got her, as one of his balls strafed her slightly, setting her coat on fire, out of which she teleported right away.
If she was able to deflect his magic and cast spells on his own, he had to wonder why she used so short teleports!? Technical she should been able to skip half Equestria with this kinda powers, unless...
Than he saw it. She was running straight as they left a forest. Just about fifty meters head was some kind of black rift standing in landscape, green and blue sparks bursting all around it.
It must been some kind of portal – of course! She must use a huge chunk of her magic in order to hold it open! The mare did a last teleport and jumped into it- so did he without hesitation, but snapping once more moment before he passed trough, fixing the damage he had done... just to be sure, as the portal collapsed right behind him.
The portal had spun him around and bend his body, tearing on him on all levels, to get spit out on the other side, landing flat on his stomach.
"I.... hate time travel.." he grunted. One time was bad enough, but two times on one day made his body burn like it was on fire.
This time he didn't had used his own powers, which was good and bad for different reasons.
The good part was - he still had some breath left, in order to make this mare pay for the next three or four century's... or when ever he got tired of it... if he ever would get tired of it.
The bad part was, since it wasn't his own magic, the portal wasn't made for him, causing heavy side effects.
If he would had been something like a normal pony - he would be dead by now without a doubt. Passing trough the portal just took couple of seconds, but he had literally lost at least a hundred years of life time doing so... so when a young pony had jumped into it, it could talk about luck, to come out as a wrinkled one on the other side.
Additional to this, the forces within had tried to tear him apart and keep him inside, pushing his body to limits, like he just had received the beating of a life time – now he could image how Celestia must had felt, after his last strike. Tough little princess.
Discord got up. He knew exactly where he was. The was only one path like this and his castle rose high above him, blocking of the sun to cast a long shadow over the land around him.
He had seen her, he had felt her magic. There was no way she could hide, no matter how far she ran away... he could track down this light of her.
Yes, this little blue/green spark dancing in the back of his head... he would lick his fingertips and put out her candle.
Not to far away in Ponyville, Fluttershy was about to say goodbye to their friends, which all sat in the castle making breakfast. She had thought Discord would had picked her up by now, but this wasn't the case... giving her somehow a bad feeling. Her friends tried to tell her he might just want give her some space, or he had sleep in long, but she wasn't convinced about this.
"I, better look after him." she said shyly.
"don't worry, it was fun having you here, now go and look after your troublemaker" Twilight said with a wink.
The others made some smaller jokes and said good bye as well, when there was a dull bang coming from outside, making everypony alarmed.
"W-what was that?" Rarity said confused.
"I don't know, but it sure didn't sound good..." Applejack pointed out.
Only one mare cheered "Maybe fireworks!?"
Twilight ran straight for her telescope, taking a look around, when she found a big dust cloud raising. She adjusted it some more and pointed it a little deeper "it must bee near your castle Fluttershy!"
Another dull bang followed, this one was even louder than the first one, making the windows rattle, as the dust cloud grew in size, as other pony's in town began to panic.
"Oh my!" Fluttershy said with big eyes, as she spotted trails of black starting to raise along the dust.
"Whats going on!?" Rainbow asked, but there wasn't any time to talk.
"Hold on to something!" Twilight said and charged up her horn, to perform a group teleport – making the six friends appear nearby the castle.
The first thing Fluttershy and the others saw, was the last castle tower got blown to debris on the bottom, as it slowly began to tilt the side and crashed down, but not before it was hit a second time – unable end his fall with some dignity.
"Oh my.... Angel!?" but to her relieve the tiny bunny showed up just a moment later, unharmed, as she picked him up and hold him tight, now searching for her man.
She was worried about him sick as well, only reason she searched for her beloved bunny first was, that he was just a small bunny – and he the spirit of chaos... so it was way more likely, he could take care of him self.
Than the group spotted something above the castle, it was Discord, throwing balls down onto it and burning parts of the forest when ever one of his wild shots spun to far to the side.
Twilight teleported right away in front of him, as he froze in motion, so his devastating charge would not hit her.
"Twilight Sparkle!?" taking a close look, to check for wings. "Alicorn...?"
This comment was just random. "Yes... - and what in Celestia's name are you doing!?" pointing on the fire pit below.
"Renovating" pushing her aside to charge up another ball, to throw it below, heating up the pit to an degree, even stones started to melt, forming almost something like a small volcano from the looks of it.
"Discord .... !"
He turned and spotted the source, throwing his last energyball careless above his shoulder somewhere into the forest. Twilight barely managed to cast a spell in order to defuse it, before the howl forest would burn to the ground, along with the castle.
Like a magnet he felt attracted towards this pony below, rushing at his wife.
"Oh Fluttershy my dear! Are you alright!?" trying to give her a hug, but she backed off.
"Am i alright!? What have you done!" she shouted, pointing horrified at the ruins.
"Oh this? don't worry, i send all the critters to your old house..." waving it off like it was a quite normal thing to do.
Fluttershy already felt a little better, at least her critter-friends been save, but she still had to sit down since her lags didn't stop shaking "But why did you destroy our home!?"
"He is huuhuu..." Rainbow whispered to Rarity, spinning her hoof on the side of her head.
Discord pointed at her "Am not! But i have a bill to pay! So if you excuse me..." giving his wife a quick smooch on her lips "please wait, i'm done in a minute" and with that he was once again above the castle, bursting some more charges down.
"Maybeee... there was a monster under his bed?"
"Don't be ridiculous!" Applejack said towards Pinkie.
"But i'm so good at it." Pinkie frowned.
Twilight didn't know how to react.
Technical spoken he was on his land - only destroyed his own property.
No living creature was in any danger and despite his really strange behavior, he didn't seem a danger to anypony right now...
So should she stop him, or would this just make everything worse... getting into a fight with Discord never was a good idea, so for now she got down to her friend Fluttershy.
"Fluttershy, cant you make him stop? He listens to you..."
The yellow mare was desperate "I... i'm sorry, so sorry.. h-he wont listen... i d-ont understand."
Then suddenly Discord stopped on his own, just to dive down into the flames, making Fluttershy almost lose consciousness, as Twilight hold her up, until her other friends got a hold onto her.
"Just wait here..." the alicorn teleported her self once more above the castle, looking down into the direction he had took. There was a big gap between the flames, some underground construct showing and if she looked a little closer ... flickering around it... could this be a force field?
This sure wasn't just his basement... there was something really fishy going on.
"Girls... i think you should see this!"
With this said she teleported everypony in a flying bubble above the castle as they all been witness about the black gap in between the fire.
"I assume this isn't your basement?" Twilight checked.
"We don't have a basement..." the yellow pegasus shyly confirmed, which made sense... she was quite afraid of the dark and a spooky castle vault was the last thing anypony could get her into, but right now she just had to get after him "Please, bring us down!" she said without any hesitation.
What ever was in this tomb, her husband might been in danger.