//------------------------------//
// Chapter 7 
// Story: Universes Apart 
// by Shotoman 
//------------------------------//

Discord laughed as he put the hat back on his head. "It's not quite as good as what I had in mind, but you do have a certain flair for introductions, Doctor."

"Aren't you supposed to be, I dunno, reformed or something these days?" the Doctor's Derpy accused. Discord smiled, and the Doctor -- who was actually quite familiar with Discord and his moods -- could tell it was one of his actually genuine smiles, not one of his look-at-how-genuine-I-am smiles.

"Still traveling with the Doctor and kicking gods in the face, eh?" With a shrug Discord began pacing a bit. "Yes, yes. I am in fact one of those one-and-a-half-per-year former baddies." As he spoke a teapot appeared in his left hand and a teacup in his right. He held the cup upside-down high above his head, and a stream of tea poured up from the pot into the cup. "First one of the big, world threatening ones, if I may be so bold." Here he stopped pouring the tea, made the pot disappear, and turned the cup rightside-up again, bringing it back down to face level. "Not counting my Loony Little Luna, of course. I maintain she doesn't count, given that she and Nightmare Moon were effectively different ponies. Hmm, a little too cold." Here he produced an ice cube, dropped it in the cup, and after a brief hssss, there was a noticeable plume of steam rising from the cup. The Doctor couldn't help but smirk at the little show he was putting on. "Though it would behoove students of history like yourselves to remember that the Princess isn't the only one who can pull those off."  Here he offered the cup to Fluttershy, who cast a nervous glance at the Doctor -- who smiled and gave her a 'go ahead gesture -- before taking the offered cup and taking a sip. Her eyes widened and a small smile formed on her face.

"I trust I got it right?" Discord asked, his smile a gentile one generally reserved for but one other.

"Yes thank you."

Discord's smile turned to a grin. "That said, I'm betting you're wondering why I'm here, turning your little expedition into a wild goose chase."

"Omigosh, yes!" Derpy responded in exasperation.

Discord turned, one of his bushy eyebrows rising into his hat. "I'm surprised I annoy you so much. I'd have thought you'd find my... idiosyncrasies charming. I mean, the pony you travel with is at least as chaotic as I am."

The Doctor grinned at that. "True." he agreed. His grin widened as his Derpy glared at him. Other Derpy was smirking behind her back. "In fairness, though, Discord, do you remember what you actually put her through on your first trip to Ponyville?"

At that, Discord's cocky facade slipped just a little. "Actually, no. You must understand, I'd been trapped for a very long time, so I basically let the chaos do its own thing even more so than usual. I was only really focused on the Element Bearers. And even that was only until I thought I'd beaten them. Was it... particularly bad?" Derpy levied a rather scary glare at him -- it didn't come close to what he'd seen Luna do in the past, but not bad for a normal pony. "Huh. I don't suppose a sincere apology would suffice?"

Derpy seemed to get even more agitated. "Really?"

The Doctor couldn't help but bark out a laugh. "Oh, Discord. Discord, Discord, Discordy-Disco-doo. Even I can read the room better than that."

Discord actually looked a bit put out by that. "Honestly, I really don't see what the problem is, here. I would have thought you'd be thrilled at my little intervention."

Other Derpy put a hand on her counterpart's shoulder before she could respond with something she might regret later. "Why'd you think that?" she asked.

With a deadpan expression on his face, Discord caused a small record player to appear in the palm of his hand, complete with a brass bell-like horn for a speaker. He placed the needle on the vinyl record, then: "Good. Excellent. The girls are searching outside, the Derpy's have  the upper floors, and that leaves us with the ground floor. A nice,  simple, easy plan."

"Which means it's somehow bound to fall apart horribly." 

"Oh, absolutely."

"Why are the two of you so happy about that?"

A chuckle. "That's when the fun starts. You'll see."

As all the girls' eyes turned to look at her, Derpy's face turned a red so deep it just started to tinge into purple. The Doctor, meanwhile, was sporting a rather toothy smile. "You don't get to say anything," Derpy said, a finger jabbed in his face.

"I don't believe I did say anything," The Doctor responded, with absolutely zero shame in his voice. "Nope. Not a peep out of me. Nor any other small woodland creature sound."

"Now, that's all well an' good," Applejack spoke up. "'Cept the rest of ain't the thrill seekers those two are. We ain't enjoyin' these... complications, that's f'r sure."

"I kinda am," Pinkie interrupted.

Rainbow Dash chuckled and draped an arm around Pinkie's shoulder. "Yeah, but Pinks? You're weird."

Pinkie seemed to put some deep thought into that, chin tapping and all. "Hmmm... True," she said, a small smile on her face.

"If you don't mind me asking," Rarity said, "why are you even here, in this world. You're clearly from the other side of the portal."

Discord nodded. "Very astute, Rarity. Very good. Yes, I'm not from around here. In fact, normally I look like this!" And for a moment, he transformed into his true draconnequus form, startling most of the girls (minus Pinkie, Fluttershy, and the Doctor's Derpy) to take a flinching step back at the sheer unnatural-ness of it. He the popped back into his human form, a mildly irritated frown on his face. "Something about this world doesn't like me taking that shape, though. It takes more concentration than it's worth to hold it. Anyway," and here he flipped into the air and hung there, upside-down, legs crossed and hands behind his head. "You can blame the Doctor for that, at least indirectly. We had a little dust-up a... hmm, it's actually difficult to put a time frame on it; I imagine it's like that a lot with you. Let's just say a while ago, that opened my eyes to a bigger world out there. Made me realize how actually kind of small Equestria really is. It didn't take long for me to discover the mirror that leads here. Took even less for me to circumvent the limitations on it, even before Twilight Sparkle figured it out. And this place is most enjoyable to observe. I mean, Sirens! I thought they'd gone extinct."

"So, wait," Sunset Shimmer said, "You were here, in this world during the thing with the Sirens, and you just... watched it happen?"

Discord just shrugged his shoulders at that. "Why would I need to do anything else? You already had Princess Sparkle and the girls working on the problem with you. I had faith the lot of you would succeed. Of course, not before giving me a good show first." He chuckled a little at that.

"Careful there, Discord," the Doctor said with a chuckle of his own. "You're starting to sound, dare I say it, sinister."

"Am I?" Once again Discord looked legitimately put out as he ran the last minute or so of conversation over in his head. "Apologies, I'm not exactly used to being one of the 'good guys.' Old habits do die hard."

"I don't exactly buy that ya are one a' the 'good guys,'" replied Applejack. "I mean, ya are keepin' us from stoppin' a potentially major problem from breakin' out at our school 'n all."

Discord flipped himself rightside up again. "You mean the little alien rat thing? You have nothing to worry about on that front. I have him right here," and with a snap, a dome shaped birdcage appeared, floating to his right, a purple spotted Nn'tok visible within. All the girls fell silent at that. "You can scan it with your devices if you'd like, Doctor. You'll find this one is indeed flesh and bone. So you see, Applejack, there is no threat to your school. I don't intend on making one, either. My intent is in fact to let you take this little fellow back where he belongs. Happy endings all around. All I ask is that you play one more little game with me. I promise it will be perfectly safe. Mostly safe. Relatively safe."

"So, let me get this straight," Sunset said. "You crossed the dimensional divide, or whatever, to a world where you can't even keep your own form, which I can tell irritates you, just to mess with the Doctor and have us... play a game? Why?"

Discord stroked his beard, an unreadable expression on his face. "You know what? That's fair. You don't know me, and I only know alternate versions of most of you. I suppose you would appreciate a straight answer. I guess I can give you one -- just this once and don't tell anybody. Now, I'm going to try to explain something that I suspect only the Doctor will have any inkling of, and only an inkling because he's only..." here he turned to the Doctor with a discerning eye. "Not quite a thousand years old? Maybe just barely there?" The Doctor just smirked and shrugged.

"In any case, you have to understand something about immortals, whether they be 'good' or 'bad.'" The quotations could practically be heard in his voice. "We just plain see things differently than you all do. And I've been quite literally the personification of chaos for eons. Plural. And literal. I've utterly and completely lost track of how old I am around eon...3, I think. And now... now I've given up on the whole 'Lord of Chaos' thing. And yet, in a very, very real way I still am Chaos. So I hope you can appreciate where I'm coming from when I say that sometimes? I just get so bored." Here Discord sort of collapsed, dangling in the air like a marionette for a moment to stress his point. 

"You're here because you're bored?" Rarity asked. "Are you serious?"

"No, no, I get it," Pinkie Pie said with a sage nod.

"As do I," the Doctor agreed.

Derpy reluctantly nodded with a shrug. "Sure. Me, too."

Discord grinned, even as the other girls tried not to gawk at the more nutty ones of their group. "Look, how about this?" He snapped his fingers again, and suddenly the sky darkened just a little, and the sun moved from it's current position to near sunset. "We're now entering early evening. Everyone's gone home. No one to get in the way or possibly get hurt. Okay, maybe your loony little Vice Principal is still here. She's a nocturnal one no matter the universe. But still, I've more or less cleared the play field for you." At the lack of response, Discord floated back down to the ground, another put-upon frown on his face. "Look, I'm really bending over backwards here for you." And here he did so, his head burying itself into the ground, the popping up out of the ground in front of himself. "Would it kill you to throw me a bone, here?"

The Doctor's smirk was threatening to tear his face in half as he gestured to the rest of the group. "Come on, huddle up. Don't you listen in, Discord."

"Who, me?" Discord asked, as a halo appeared over his head (which was still sticking out of the ground.).

"So, not going to mince words, I think we should play his game," the Doctor said.

With the exception of the Derpy's and Pinkie, the girls all simultaneously said "What."

"Look, most of you don't know him the way I do. He's actually being quite reasonable, by his standards. Especially for the current time frame. He's already done the work for us, and all we have to do is entertain him for a little while -- possibly lose a little dignity, but that's all. So I say we do it."

"You do realize, he is basically holding the Nn'tok, and by extension the school, hostage, right?" Sunset asked.

"Hmm, yes. I suppose I'll have to have a talk with him about good form. Don't laugh, Derpy. I do understand good form, even if I choose to ignore it. But here's the question: what other options do we have?" Here there was silence. "Look, you've all seen what he can do, he's not been exactly subtle about how powerful he is. We don't really have any chance of beating him in anything resembling a direct fight. I've defeated him once, but it was under some astronomically specific, very timey-wimey circumstances. Now, all he is asking, is that we give him a little bit of our time and possibly embarrass ourselves for our amusement. So, what sounds better? A little time and dignity, or risk offending him by refusing, knowing how powerful he is?"

The discussion did go a few minutes longer -- Rarity in particular was rather reluctant, unsurprisingly -- but the Doctor could tell that he'd already won the argument. Once all the girls finally were in accord, the Doctor turned to Discord and said, "All right, we're in. What is this game you're proposing?"

Discord's face lit up with such delight that the Doctor felt both a surge of both satisfaction and dread at the same time. Discord never quite lost the ability to instill such conflicting emotions in a pony-slash-person. He pulled himself back up to a proper standing position. "It's actually quite simple. I've released another group of creatures on the school grounds. You lot just have to go catch them again. But this time -- this time, I've added some... surprises to make catching them more interesting."

"That's it? Catch some more Nn'toks?" Other Derpy asked, slightly confused.

"That's it." Discord confirmed. "But I feel I must stress -- it's going to be much more entertaining this time."

The Doctor turned back to the group. "I suppose for the sake of simplicity, we should take the same groups to the same places. Is that okay with you, Discord?" Discord nodded. "Soooo... break, I guess." And at that the group dispersed, though the Doctor and Sunset stayed behind for a brief moment more. The Doctor turned serious for a moment as he turned to Discord. "When this is over, you and I will have to have a serious talk."

Discord just grinned. "You're welcome."

Though she didn't say anything, Sunset couldn't help but notice that the Doctor was grinning, as well, as he turned back to the school building.