Twilight tapped her hooves together, anxious in the silence, watching the clock as the second hand ticked over another minute.
"He's late."
Celestia glanced up from her place on the sofa, the dozen levitating books closing and stacking themselves as she rose, "Did you really expect him to be on time? If Luna were here I'd bet that he wouldn't show up at all. Not today at any rate."
Twilight gave her a hopeful look, "Are you sure Luna couldn't be here? Between the two of you we have basically all conventional magic covered."
Celestia shook her head, "I'm afraid not. Her banishment lasts till the end of this month. Just a few more days."
"Don't you think that banishment was a little..." Twilight searched for the word under the princess' stern gaze, "...excessive?"
Celestia pursed her lips, "I recognize that she felt she was acting in everyone's best interest." Her eyes narrowed, "But she tricked me into drinking coffee, decaf no less, for no good reason. She must pay."
Twilight looked back to the clock, sighing resignedly. Not touching that.
Just as the clock ticked to the 34th second, there was a pop and Discord spiralled into existence above them, wearing a long white robe with his arms raised as light shone down upon him and a choir sang in the background, "Fear not, for I have come."
Celestia frowned, "Took you long enough." His cloven hoof was engulfed in a shimmering gold aura and the robe vanished as he was yanked down to their level, "We need your help disarming this shield."
Twilight winced as Discord gave the white alicorn a reproachful glare, hoping this wouldn't devolve into more immortals arguing with one another, but he shrugged off the princess' no-nonsense tone and peered closer, "Oh my, you have gotten yourself in a nasty little contradiction haven't you? How long have you two been in there?" He whistled, tapping inquisitively on the bubble like a fish tank.
"Two? Oh." She glanced over her shoulder at the spot she knew the invisible Pinkie Doll sat, its expression set in a perpetually focussed frown, "Uh, two months?"
Celestia rolled her eyes, "You were there mere minutes after it happened, you know."
He waved a paw dismissively, "I really wasn't paying attention, I just came because I wanted to show off Rarity's couch. And Fluttershy asked me to."
As with Celestia and Luna, Discord's telepathy was unnoticeable till it was noticed. At which point it became nearly intolerable. Unlike Luna, whose "voice" was pleasantly cool like a night breeze and tasted faintly of chocolate, or Celestia, whose telepathic subtext resonated like a bell and had the vague scent of particularly heady wine, Discord's telepathy... was complex. The meaning was typically clear, yes, but there was always a faint wrongness about it. Like all the furniture of a room being clustered in a corner or a cupcake with uneven frosting. No wonder Discord rubbed pony's the wrong way.
Fortunately, she'd been able to adjust when Fluttershy had dragged him along to translate for her during a visit, most of which she'd spent trying to read Fluttershy's lips rather than listen to the maddening asymmetries of chaos. Now she could put it out of her mind and concentrate on the problem at hand. Mostly.
Discord peered over his steepled fingers, drumming them against one another as he slowly rotated around Twilight's bubble in an unstable and gradually decaying orbit, "Hm... quite a doozy, this one... could be a better way... nononono... more fun..."
He hemmed and hawed for a few more minutes, making Twilight increasingly uncomfortable under his scrutiny. But, she had given Luna and Celestia a full month to come up with their own solutions, Discord deserved... well, certainly not a month, but at least an hour. His face smeared past across the face of the bubble, pressed flat like a colt peering through a window, somehow leaving a dirty smudge on the magic. Maybe 45 minutes.
He reared back, stroking his goatee for a long moment, "Got it."
"Seriously!?" Twilight's spirits soared.
"Hold on." Celestia placed a calming hoof on the bubble, narrowing her eyes at the innocently hovering draconequus, "How?"
He shrugged, "Same way I break out of anything, or in fact, do anything: throw a little chaos at it and see what happens." He bobbed his head in concession, "Well, a LOT of chaos, as the case may be."
Twilight balked, "Wait what!? That's your big solution?"
He sniffed, raising a paw to his chest, "Not sure what you were expecting, I rather thought that was why you wanted to bring in my expertise."
"You're planning on just snapping your fingers and seeing what happens?" Celestia raised an eyebrow, "I think it's going to be a little harder than you expect it to be."
"Oh not at all! We'll do this your way: controlled conditions, safety measures," He paused, swallowing hard, "p-pr-" He took a deep breath, forcing the word out, "-protocol. Blegh."
Both alicorns eyed him dubiously, "Really? And how are you going to manage that?"
Looking a little green, Discord made his way into the kitchen as he explained, "Alright, I'll try and explain but I warn you: I have a severe logic intolerance, this might get messy." He cleared his throat and took a steadying breath, "You know how to get rid of unbreakable spells just as well as any other immortal who's been under one: just stop existing for a while. I know-" He raised his talon at Celestia's look, "I know, you think she's a little too young to get a good look at infinity. But so was I and look how I turned out!"
He spread his arms wide, glitter seeming to cascade off of him for a moment as the choir returned.
He opened one eye to find both alicorns gaping up at him; Celestia's lip curled in revulsion, Twilight's mouth wide in horror. He sulked, "Way to make a guy feel welcome, Princess of Friendship, Ha!" he shook his head, brightening after a moment, "Not to fear, I was just using that as a prelude to what my actual idea is anyway: if we can't take Twilight out of reality, let's take the reality out of Twilight!"
Twilight glanced at the princess, who frowned at Discord but said nothing. Grinning excitedly, he drew a pointer from thin air as a chalk board poofed into existence beside him, along with a cap and gown on his body, "You see Twilight, 'reality' is by definition a set of rules that tells everything how to behave. Gravity, magnets, birds, bees, magic, and yes, even friendship are all (cough) roughly (cough) based on the rules that underlie reality."
He drew, or rather, several sets of floating chalk drew out pictograms of each thing floating on an ordered grid, "However, reality isn't the end of the story! There's a certain... conscience in every speck of space, not an intelligence mind you, but a kind of willingness to obey the rules set down by reality." The objects animated and the bee hastily fled as the bird chased it across the board, the magnet and abstract star of friendship falling inertly on the drawn grid.
"And that is where I come in!" He tapped the board, sending ripples through the grid as the bee grew to several times its former size and turned to chase the bird while the magnet and magic star rose off the grid and engaged in mortal combat, "I... rile up the crowd, so to speak. You know, open the universe to new options that don't rely on realities little rulebook. And if I rile it up enough, maybe we can get it to forget about that pesky little bubble you've stuck yourself in."
The cap and gown vanished, along with the chalkboard and its inhabitants, as he squeed excitedly, "Ooooh I've always wanted to see what happens when we reach infinite chaos!"
"Infinite. Chaos." Celestia deadpanned, her flat expression at odds with the majesty of her billowing mane.
"Figure of speech, more like 'push out all the order in a space.' Obviously you can't truly achieve infinite cha-aooh..." The green tinge in Discord's face, which had been growing in intensity throughout his explanation, had reached the shade of spring leaves, "Whooo boy that was a lot of exposition, if you'll excuse me for a moment-" He sat down rather hard against the kitchen counter, fanning himself and taking slow breaths.
Twilight trotted in place, a habit she'd developed since noting the bubble's near frictionless surface, "Princess? Was that all...?"
"Mostly accurate, from a draconequus' perspective anyway." She sighed, slumping down next to Twilight, the lingering shadow of her aged self visible for just a moment, "I don't like this Twilight. From your own experience, have you ever seen a plan involving Discord go... well, according to plan?" Twilight shook her head glumly and Celestia nodded, "Precisely. What Discord says is true... but solving a rule by breaking it rarely does anything but escalate the original problem."
Pausing in her one-directional pacing, Twilight considered, turning to the serpentine avatar of chaos, "Are you sure this will work Discord?"
Discord, who had been vigorously scrubbing his tongue with soap, spat into the sink, "As I ever am." He turned and placed his paw over his heart, "In all honesty, I just want to help."
Celestia didn't look the least bit convinced but Twilight wasn't about to look a gift horse in the mouth, not when the alternative was literal immolation, "Alright. I... trust you and I'm happy to have you here."
He smiled warmly but quickly had to bend back over the sink, "Ooh dear -urp! All this order-talk is making me queasy. Ahem, Twilight, we're going to need another Pinkie on the outside of this thing." He wrapped the bubble with his knuckles, "Chaos thing, don't ask. Cae Cae-"
"Don't call me that."
"-set up a... Oh, in pony magic I think it's called a... class five containment spell? You know what I mean: Make a big ward somewhere, I get the feeling this is going to get... exciting." His smirk was dishearteningly malevolent for a moment before he spun and vomited rainbows into the sink, "Urp! Too much planning! Gotta go!" He vanished in a puff of illogic, space distorting uncomfortably for a moment before settling down.
"This is not going to go well."
Twilight sighed disparagingly, flopping down on her rump, "I know... but what other choice do I have? You said everything else was too dangerous."
Her mentor groaned, "Ugh, I know. But this isn't much better. He's essentially going to boil the reality off you and hope it takes the bubble with it."
"...I can survive that right?"
Celestia tilted her head in a less than encouraging manner, "I've no doubt I could. And of course Discord is like that all the time." She closed her eyes, letting out a weary breath through her nose, "It all comes back to-"
"Me being too young, I know." Impressively, she made it a full two seconds before apologizing, "I'm sorry Princess, I'm just so sick of this! Of being a burden on you and the tetrarchy!"
"It's alright Twilight. We've all had our moments," Her eyes flicked to a spot on the ground where, after a moment, Twilight realized the moon was located behind, "-and we need to stay together during tough times so we'll make it through the better for it. Now then," She got to her hooves, bending down to look Twilight in the eye, "Are you ready for this?"
Taking a deep non-breath, Twilight nodded determinedly.
She was not ready for this.
Luna, who had returned from her momentary banishment, and Celestia were tracing out the lines of a truly enormous glyph around her, the likes of which she'd only ever heard discussed in hypotheticals. Supposedly it had been used in millenia past to contain magical meltdowns, the sort that come from a powerful artifact self-destructing or an eldritch being reality warping its way out of a prison. In short, to contain Discord.
The draconequus himself sat just beyond the glyph, holding Pinkie in his claws. "Going to need a bit of a boost for this one." he'd explained when she questioned, not deigning to say more on the matter. It seemed rather silly to Twilight... at first. Pinkie was random, sure, and she had her impossible moments, but Discord was the self-proclaimed "Lord of Chaos." And he had enough insane power to back it up. Pinkie was just... Pinkie.
Or so Twilight had thought.
Discord had been slowly growing for the past hour, now well over three stories in height, and he seemed to jitter uncontrollably. Not like a pony, more like a tuning fork that had no stable resonance. He himself was actually sitting cross-legged with a look of intense concentration set into his face. Pinkie sat in his huge paw/claw, her usual bubbly attitude dampened somewhat. Twilight quirked her lips sadly: better than she was before but by Pinkie standards she still looked glum. They'd had a heart-to-heart about guilt and the unexpected consequences of pranks and dares last week. She'd tried to reassure Pinkie that she didn't blame her for the whole bubble fiasco but she got the feeling it wouldn't stick till she got out of this thing.
In the meantime though, "Pinkie?"
The pink mare perked up, smiling at her expectantly.
"Why are you here?"
She made a Weeeeelllllll... gesture and set off on a complicated sign-language explanation that was, for the most part, unintelligible. Twilight sighed. Naturally.
Resigned to her fate, Twilight waited as the Princesses completed the glyph. Glancing up behind her, she frowned at the Pinkie doll, still frozen in its determined glare. Luna had dispelled the invisibility, explaining that she wanted to be certain that it wouldn't interfere with the procedure. Considering the "procedure" involved detonating what amounted to a chaos bomb in an enclosed space, Twilight couldn't help but feel it was unnecessary. She couldn't wait to get out of this bubble. Pinkie or not, the doll kind of creeped her out.
Discord stepped inside the edge of the outer circle as they finished and onto a clear circle of his own. Oddly enough, he set Pinkie into a smaller circle next to his. Now a little concerned, Twilight spoke up, "Um, Princess? Why is Pinkie inside the-"
Twilight felt her telepathic link snap as the Princesses took their positions on either end of the ritual. The glyph lit up, the enormous containment field powered by two alicorns, and Discord, still several times his usual size, lifted his talon to the sky... and snapped.
The feeling of "reality boiling off" was... not what Twilight had expected.
For her unicorn instincts it was utterly terrifying. She hadn't felt the touch of air in two months but she'd still been connected to the world through magic. She hadn't really thought about it, didn't know what it would feel like to be without it, but her magic had been with her the whole time. And now it sputtered and left, droplets falling away from her like being lifted from the sea. For the first time, ever, she felt... nothing.
Her alicorn self was a little more at ease, her own magic seeming to withdraw into her like some kind of diving reflex. For a moment she wasn't even sure if her eyes were open or closed. Then her mind adjusted to her surroundings and she realized the question itself was flawed.
Her eyes weren't open or closed. In fact, she was fairly sure she didn't even have eyes at the moment.
Despite this, she was able to "look" down at herself and study her new form. Nebulus energy shaped, for whatever meaning that word really had in a place like this, vaguely like Twilight Sparkle. She was bright, painfully so if she'd had eyes to hurt, and somehow... more. She'd never felt this conscious of her entire being before. She could see every part of herself, every idea, every memory, every strand of magic and life. There was so much of it...
Aware of the suddenly looming threat of solipsism, she shifted her perceptions away from herself.
Oh. She thought. So that's what reality looks like from the outside.
It surrounded her yet fell away from her on all sides, and some part of her knew this state of being was extremely unnatural. The image was distorted and blurred, like looking through water, only she could see what she could see before as well as what was really there.
There was Luna, intent and serious but also auric like herself and ringed with an eldritch glow. Opposite but also joined to her was Celestia, regal and concerned but overlayed by a form that was too blinding to properly examine, even in this state it was like looking into the sun.
Discord was a fair bit different, as expected. His "normal" shape was superimposed over something that was nothing so unlike some kind of crystal where every molecule was aligned at just a slightly different angle than any other. Waves of restructuring swept across it mesmerizingly, an infinitude of arrangements held within a finite form.
And then there was Pinkie. Pinkies. One by Discord. One by her.
The "normal" images looked like Pinkie.
The thing stretching behind both of them did not.
Twilight sucked in a panicked breath of air, sitting bolt upright, eyes frantically rolling.
Something was very wrong, but she couldn't figure out what it was! Coming to terms with the blur of colors and shapes, she thrashed about, choking and writhing in the sudden deluge of sensation.
The world slowly stopped spinning and the panic receded as her brain (thank goodness it was back, she'd missed it dearly) made sense of the familiar patterns around her. She was lying in a field, both Princesses peering down at her concernedly. Behind them, Discord lay splayed out on the grass, panting in exhaustion as Pinkie fanned him with an oversized leaf.
I know the feeling. Oh wait.
"YYYYYEEEESSS!"
Both Princesses stepped back as Twilight leapt to her hooves, rejoicing in the sound of her own voice. After nearly 8 weeks of absolute silence, it was unpleasantly loud. And, at the moment, she really didn't care.
"YES! YES! YES!" Twilight spun and kicked and scrabbled and fell down a few times, but who cares! She was free!
Falling once more, she fondly rubbed a hoof across the dirt, enjoying the coarse texture, "Ohhh ground. I missed you."
"I'm sure the ground has missed you as well." Celestia's beaming expression turned to one of surprise as Twilight body-tackled her mentor with a hug.
"OHMICELESTIA you're so soooooft!"
"Twilight! Twilight, I'm glad you're out as well but..." Celestia blushed as Twilight nuzzled her neck, hooves wrapped around her leg, while Luna looked on, smirking.
"Oh, let her have her snuggles Sister. You are quite soft."
Celestia swatted her with a wing, the two sisters patiently watching as Twilight moved through quite a list of tactile, aural, and fragrant delights that she'd missed in her time imprisoned. By the time she'd calmed down enough to have a coherent conversation, Celestia was lowering the sun.
"Thank you. All three of you, for working so hard on getting me out of there."
Discord looked uncomfortable, scratching his neck while muttering under his breath, and both princesses bowed their heads welcomingly, "We would be poor rulers if we left you in your prison."
"And poorer friends." Celestia glanced around at the clearing, the center of which looked, appropriately, like a bomb had been detonated in it, not to mention the half a ton of castle stone and the Pinkie doll lying on its side, "We have some cleaning up to do Twilight, you should get back home while there's still light. I'm sure there are many pony's eager to see you."
Twilight blinked, "Oh, of course... but Princess, could we-?"
Celestia bowed her head, "We can discuss everything in greater detail later, go enjoy yourself for now. There's no rush."
Twilight nodded, smiling and struggling not to bombard her mentor with questions. A shock of pink caught her eye and she peered through the legs of the gathered demigods to Pinkie Pie, scuffing her hoof on the grass and avoiding her gaze. For a brief moment, something else resolved around her, but the pink blur was gone before Twilight could properly register it. She trotted over to her friend, a warm smile on her face.
"I'm really happy you're not stuck in the bubble anymore, can you ever forgive-"
Twilight embraced her friend, who returned the gesture with gusto, hair bouncing back to full poof in an instant, "And I missed you and the rest of my friends most of all, Pinkie. Of course I forgive you."
The pink mare sniffled, "They'll be so happy to see you! I have a whole party set up for you back in town!"
Twilight remembered what had been bothering her before Discord had snapped, "Why were you the only one here? Why were you here at all? Wasn't it dangerous?"
Pinkie released her, the two falling into step along the path back to ponyville, "Well, you see: Celestia said that it was important to have another element bearer around to keep you grounded, just in case, and the others wanted to come too but Luna said that having all of us would be too strong an anchor and stop Discords magic from-"
Celestia smiled after the retreating pair of friends, Discord cracking his back loudly as he hobbled up to her, "Whew, I haven't pulled something like that in a millenium. Think it worked? Princess of Friendship: untraumatized? Crisis averted?"
She lifted a feather to his mouth to silence him, waiting for the voices of Pinkie Pie and Twilight Sparkle to fade into the woods before turning to the Pinkie doll, "Ok, you can move now."
"GAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAASP! Whew! Wow, I thought I was gonna crack there at the end!" Pinkie Pie's outburst caused Luna to yelp in surprise, skittering backwards in an unregal way as the pink mare threw up her hooves in victory, "Woohoo! Equestria breath-holding champion!" She bounced up from the rubble, immediately collapsing back into it, "Oooh... stiff.... oww......"
Luna gawked at the supine Pinkie, glancing between her and her sisters amused expression, "...Sister?"
Celestia opened her mouth, then closed it, then tried again, "There are some things Twilight... still isn't ready for. That one of her closest friends is a hyperdimensional starspawn from beyond time and space, for example."
Pinkie nodded fervently, "I was kinda worried there when the bubble wouldn't let me leave either, and I got really worried when she saw my real shape. Part of it anyway. Normal pony's... don't like it very much. Which is why Mr. Discord's idea was super great! We pull Twilight out of reality but not outside of reality."
Celestia nodded after her student, "Is she believing the explanation?"
Pinkie tilted her head in a so-so gesture, "As much as Twilight can without affirmation from multiple peer-reviewed sources. She'll buy it for now I think. Good thing nobody but you three knows anything about how the Elements actually work."
Luna gave her sister an incredulous glare, "You didn't think to tell me this, once, in the past 3 years?"
Celestia shifted uncomfortably, "I'll... fill you in on the way back to the castle."
Grumbling under her breath and keeping a wary eye on the brightly smiling pink "mare," Luna followed her sister as she took flight, the two dwindling to nothing in the night's sky. Discord sidled up next to Pinkie, who was rapidly recovering her improbable flexibility as she arched backwards into a bridge, "So... thanks. For the boost."
"Oh don't sweat it, Mr. Discord! It's hard getting that much entropy into a closed system without a direct window to the outside, even for you!"
Eyes narrowed, the master of chaos raised his talon and snapped, vanishing with a faint ripple of space and a final gripe, "Yeow! Cramp! Cramp!"
Pinkie shook her head sadly, "Should've stretched first."
Then she popped out of existence so she could focus on being with Twilight.