//------------------------------//
// Getting Stoned, Toke Two 
// Story: Oddball 
// by Crescent Pulsar 
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Discord seemingly found himself standing within the great expanse of space, surrounded by stars and the dust clouds that were illuminated by them. Below his feet, and what he supposed made up the "floor" of his environment, was where a cluster of stars could be found.

After a cursory inspection of his surroundings, he flippantly remarked, "Well, this is new: a stone prison with a view?"

He snapped his talons. When nothing happened, he slumped in disappointment. "Aw... Figures I'd be denied some entertainment." He quickly perked back up when an idea occurred to him, which inspired him to jokingly say, "Hopefully this upgrade of the facility includes a schedule with chaos time, or at least shenanigan privileges for good behavior."

Inwardly, though, he scoffed at the idea: being able to have access to his power at someone's whim, or having to earn the right to be himself, likely by being unlike himself, was quite distasteful to him.

Not seeing anything else to do, he decided to follow the cluster of stars and see where they led him. For a bit they took him nowhere, but eventually he could see something take shape ahead of him, appearing to transition from a gaseous state to a solid one the closer that he got to it. Before the vision could fully resolve itself, he recognized exactly what it was he was approaching: the Tree of Harmony.

Unafraid, he didn't stop walking until he was at its base, where he crossed his arms and looked up at it with a frown. "I take it that this is your doing?"

To his left, within his peripheral vision, a rectangle-shaped screen appeared and played a scene from Tron, where the Bit turned into an orange octahedron and said, "Yes."

He blinked his eyes at the sight before narrowing them accusatorially as his gaze returned to the tree. "Did you just steal my shtick?"

How the Tree of Harmony had made a trans-dimensional reference, he didn't know, and it didn't escape his notice that it had used a Bit to do it, which was a word synonymous with shtick.

In response, the first screen faded away and another replaced it nearby, which showed Lex Luther screaming, "Wrong!"

Nonplussed as he was by what he was experiencing, he could excuse himself for jumping in surprise when he suddenly heard someone say, "They lifted those from me."

Looking to the side, he saw a male human appear as if he were stepping out of a thick fog, mature in age and naked as the day he was born. A glowing "cord" came out of his belly and disappeared into the distance, connecting him to his physical body, which explained his presence in the astral plane. Whether his current state was purposeful or not, or aided, was another story, but ultimately unimportant.

The human casually walked up to him and offered his hand in greeting before saying, "I'm Oscar. And before you ask: no, I'm not a chauffeur."

Discord glanced at the offered hand before looking Oscar in the eyes with disinterest and replying, "Well, while you're being expeditious, perhaps you could get right to telling me what's going on as well."

Despite the snub, Oscar grinned in light of his reference being acknowledged and retracted his hand. "As you wish." That earned him an eye-roll. "To put it simply: I'm here to reform you on behalf of our mutual friend," he gestured toward the Tree of Harmony, "here."

Unable to help a snort, Discord said, "I'd tell you to pull the other one, but I can't put bells on it... Thanks to our so-called mutual friend."

"Better to have had and lost, right?" Came Oscar's rhetorical response, with an accompanying shrug of the shoulders. "Anyway, despite what you might think, Harmony is intent on freeing you with your power intact."

A screen appeared beside him, for Discord to see, where M. Bison enthusiastically exclaimed, "Yes!"

"Not without a lobotomy, I bet," Discord retorted.

As the screen with M. Bison faded away, another appeared on the other side of Oscar, this one with Darth Vader wailing, "No-oooooo!"

"Are you mocking me!?" He finally snapped at the Tree of Harmony, taking an aggressive stance toward it. "It's not fair if I can't respond in kind!"

Oscar held his hands up placatingly and said, "Hey, it's not like that. That's just how they communicate: by using our own memories. And it seems they tend to use the ones that stand out the most in your mind. It took a bit for me to get used to it, myself."

Discord huffed and returned to facing Oscar, his arms akimbo. "Whatever. Let's hear how you plan to bend me to your will."

With a half-lidded stare, Oscar patiently said, "I'm only going to try and convince you. If you prefer being stoned instead, I won't judge."

"Ha, ha," came Discord's unamused reply.

Unaffected by Discord's behavior, which Oscar found understandable, he continued. "Anyway, life isn't simple, right? It's not supposed to be the same for everyone all of the time." Above his head, a screen showed a flat line on the monitor of an electrocardiograph. "It should have its ups and downs."

"So, what," Discord began, as he watched the line express the aforementioned ups and downs with a frown, "you want me to contribute to the ups?"

"Nope," Oscar replied, with a shake of his head. "To both, but not as if it were a job. The issue is that you force everything to bend to your whims, making everything chaos, and that's what Harmony wants to address."

"Hmmmm," Discord hummed thoughtfully as he stroked his beard, intrigued. "Care to elaborate?"

Oscar nodded his head. "Harmony is about co-existing despite being different. The idea is not only for you to be fair in how you affect others with your chaos, but to continue reflecting the side of life that isn't fair or within our control. There's a place for chaos, and we hope that others will come to accept that if you're one among many features of a playground, by using discretion, rather than wantonly overtaking the whole space with a sandbox."

"'Variety is the spice of life', is what you're saying," Discord concluded, looking more animated than before. "I suppose I could get behind that."

"Harmony also hopes that there will be those willing to come to you to enjoy your chaos, as well," Oscar added.

The thought of such a thing happening was so foreign a concept to Discord that it made the gears in his head grind to a halt, and his body stiffen.

Oscar shook his head with some amusement at his reaction. "Another part of your reformation will teach you how to make your chaos fun for others, or for them and you."

Discord seriously considered the offer being made to him for a time, but ultimately didn't think he had much of a choice. Either he continued to be entombed in stone for an indefinite period of time, or he learned how to integrate himself into Equestrian society — making it his home, more or less. Honestly, he found the idea interesting. It would certainly be new, and he supposed that making others upset enough to seal him in stone was starting to get old.

"I guess it couldn't hurt to try something different," Discord casually decided, as he turned away from Oscar and the Tree of Harmony. "The whole being-a-statue thing was cramping my style, anyway."

The Tree of Harmony displayed an image of "success kid" for Oscar's eyes, who found it amusing.