“Ok lost villain, come introduce yourself…”
The door opened all by itself, yet there was nothing but silence.
Discord looked at the entrance in annoyance. “Hey...bad guy! We don’t have all day here. I mean, I technically do, but my audience don’t.”
Still nobody came...
Discord furrowed his eyebrows. “Alright, this is starting to get dumb. Whoever my third guest is, they seem to think fashionably late is more than just an excuse.” He snapped his clipboard to existence. “Who even is my next guest, because if they think they’re too good to be on MY show, I’ll show them...that…”
The very sight of the guest’s name made him scratch his forehead. “Oof...that complicates things.”
Placing the clipboard down, he sat back down and sighed. “Well...this is a fine pickle. How am I going to get King Nothing to be my guest now? Not like I can just bring him back from the dead…I’m not much of a fan of necromancy, too much blood and unintelligible chatter. If only there was a way to bring him here before he kicked the bucket…”
It was as if on cue, the light in his office started to die out.
“Gosh, it’s only been two chapters and my light is already out?” He snapped his fingers and replaced it with a brighter fluorescent light bulb. “Should’ve known being energy efficient was the better choice. Also, I just learned how to solve this problem.”
Going into his desk drawer, he fished out a gold chained pocket watch. It had an eloquent design that branded his face on the back. “Ahh, time travel...the cause and solution to everyone’s problems.” Opening the hatch, he pressed several buttons that turned the clock hands back several times before it finally stopped.
“Time for a time travel episode folks!” He said as he pressed a button on the clock and was gone from his office.
---
“Discord’s right,” Twilight proudly stated as she looked among her friends. “We've proven time and time again that the real magic is the six of us working together!” The six of them turned around, facing the mad King Sombra with burning determination. “With these girls by my side, I'm not afraid of you! I'm not afraid of what you can do or how much power you have!”
“You should be,” Sombra gave a wicked smile as he readied a blast of dark magic that would surely kill these interlopers.
In an instant, a deafening brass like sound reverberated throughout the throne room, causing Sombra to flinch. When he opened his eyes, he felt the air grew colder and the colors in the room were drained. He looked forward to see the foolish ponies before him were frozen in place.
He lightly stepped forward, looking at their frozen faces of determination. A part of him felt ecstatic now that he could just use his crystals to finally crush them right where they stand, yet the other part was just trying to register what could be going on. “D-...did I do that? Can I do that? ...Can Grogar do that?”
“Oh...please, don’t set yourself up for disappointment, your Highness.”
Sombra looked up and saw a small doorknob form at the ceiling. The door formed as Discord poked his head out, then slithered towards the king as his tail closed it shut. He gave a toothy grin while fiddling with a stopwatch. “Sorry for the sudden continuum break and that rather loud outburst, it’s sort of how time travel works nowadays. Also, my apologies for the delay, was torn between what pose to do for a certain obscure reference, but then I got bored and settled for this little thing. Oh, and don’t worry about Goat Man, he’s nowhere near my level.”
Sombra looked at the new intruder, then glanced behind him to see the draconequus still lying on the floor. He stared carefully at him. “Well, this is new. I never thought the lord of chaos would have a twin brother..or maybe this is a feeble way for you to convince me not to destroy your friends. I'll start by saying, it won’t work.”
Discord gave his signature nonchalant laugh as he pulled up a chair. “Oh, nonsense your Darkness. How do I put this...I’m the same Discord, but thirteen weeks older and handsomer. I’ve traveled back to the past to give you some much needed advice. Certainly a mighty usurper, such as yourself, will find what I have to say useful.”
The hesitant king raised his eyebrow at the absurd idea. Then after some quick thinking, he gave a toothy grin as he held his head high and stepped forward. “Well, if you’re here to give me advice, then that must mean these ponies failed to defeat me!”
“That’s not my first guess, but sure go ahead.”
“And obviously,” Sombra continued without listening, “you're here on a quest given to you by my future self to make sure I don’t repeat the same mistakes he made. Though, why stop there, when you can bring that feeble old goat here to show him how I’ve won his game and I’m the rightful ruler of Equest-…” His egotistical tirade stopped when a tissue box was shoved right in his face. Annoyed, he took the box in his magic. “What are you doing with this?”
Discord glanced at the tissue box and back at Sombra. “Oh this? Don’t worry about it, I just thought you were catching a nasty cold. Can’t be a malevolent dark lord with a stuffy nose now can you?”
Sombra angrily crushed the tissues and burned it to cinders. “A cold? I am not sick! How dare you insinuate that my regal voice can be mistaken for sickness.”
“Well excuse me your Ickiness, but I’m not the one who used to sound like the intimidating, indomitable, fierce monster I thought you were. Now you sound like a blues singer who hit that high note just a little too high and now you’re stuck with a career-ruining voice.”
Sombra placed a hoof on his neck. “Do...do I really sound bad?”
Discord shrugged. “Either everpony’s tone deaf, or too mature to laugh. Still, your voice before had a pretty rough baritone, and I fail to see how this is an improvement.” Forming a cute, small doll of Sombra, he pulled the string on it’s back as it started to speak.
“Yes...crystals! My crystal slaves...!”
“Listen to that, you hear just how vile and low that was? A good villain needs a good evil voice, otherwise they start sounding like they’re should be their own bumbling sidekick!”
Sombra sat down on the throne, his head held high up as he stared back at the draconequus. “Well, as you must know, my voice was sore when I returned from my slumber.” Sombra noticed his raised brow. “What? You expect me to rise from a thousand year prison, unable to say a single word and not have a sore throat? If I had time to go to the store and buy some lozenges, I would’ve.”
Discord pinched his beard. “I suppose Mr. Miller just had an off day then. Oh well, it doesn't matter now. I’m not here to talk about your perilous pipes, I’m here to talk about your dangerous disdain for self-preservation. It seems you think of yourself as some untouchable daredevil.”
Discord grasped the air above his head and a projector screen was pulled down from thin air. He formed a baton in his hand as the pictures started to form. It showed Sombra, along with the other villains, as he proclaimed his independence from Grogar. “I mean, going the lone-wolf route and turning down an alliance with four other villains? A loose cannon king who doesn't play by the rules, I see.”
“Mmph!” Sombra leaned on the throne’s armchair. Images of Sombra leaving the four villains behind claiming that his power alone was all he needed. “They might have served me well as servants, but as you can see, I don’t need them to bring Ponyville and Canterlot to their knees. My mastery of dark magic is proof enough that I have no weakness.”
“As opposed to the first time you did a hostile takeover at the Crystal Empire where they discovered you were weak to explosion-type attacks.” He moved his baton on the screen to show Sombra being destroyed by the Crystal Heart exploding in a thousand pieces as they fell into the snow. “Sheesh, and that was just the first time they met you. Makes becoming garden art or living in pony hell a luxury.”
Sombra unflinchingly stared at his own death being played. “That...was just a practice round. A test to see if these were worth the effort of destroying. Besides, what's the big deal? You don’t suppose that I, Sombra, need to learn from such an unlucky fluke like that.”
“Sounds like Queen Bee has ego competition,” Discord mumbled to himself, “listen, your Conceitedness, you may think you’re some invincible, godlike, chosen being, but you’re not me, and even I have some idea of caution. Just look at your security measures in your former castle.”
He pressed his baton up to the screen and slid it across to show more pictures. “Now don’t get me wrong, doors that give you nightmares and infinite stairs would definitely turn back any plucky protagonist, though it seems your final defense to protect your precious heart had a small design flaw.”
“And what pray tell is that?”
“Oh, it’s not much, just the fact that your Twilight solved the crystal trap problem, by throwing the Crystal Heart outside the trap.” The screen showed Twilight tossing the Crystal Heart to Spike outside the trap, as he proceeded outside. “As specific as the rescue sequence is, you can’t deny that because of this flaw, you were turned into the empire’s mulch.”
“BAH!” Sombra scoffed as he turned away from the image. “Like I said, unlucky fluke. What more could I have possibly needed for defense measures against those frivolous fillies?”
“Heck if I know,” Discord shrugged, “you were up against a mare that turned your staircase into a slide. You may have been up a creek either way, but now I want to know what’s going on with this.” He snapped away the baton and projection screen as he motioned towards the entire throne room. “Wanna explain what’s going on your Uncaringness?”
Sombra only saw saw the frozen ponies still standing in front of him. “Explain what?”
Discord shook his head. “I’ll just get this over with; it’s your castle defenses. The lack thereof I should say, because it seems you’re way too much into this daredevil lifestyle. It’s hard to believe you’re the same king who defended your own castle and also thought opening the front doors and making yourself at home in the Princess’ home was the smartest idea.”
“And you’re saying it wasn’t?” Sombra asked.
“Um...NO! You don’t just declare yourself ruler of Equestria just because Celestia and Luna happens to be gone at the moment. This is like a bully playing aggressive tag and using the principal’s office as the safe space, and I feel you should be ashamed for being compared to that.”
Sombra rolled his eyes. “Oh puh-lease. If that wasn’t such a great idea, then why am I sitting in this throne, moments away from my glorious victory, and with the only thing in my way being a judgmental chaotic noodle?”
Discord shook his head. “Nice nickname, but just look right in front of you.” He waved his hand toward the line of angry ponies. “The good guys are right here. They breached your defenses, which consisted of useless guards and random civilians, some of them were their family members, so good job not taking advantage of that by the way, and here they are, ready to turn you into pebbles.”
He gave a confusing shrug. “Do...do you just not care about these ponies killing you again? Did you learn nothing from those security measures and decided to ignore any sort of defense? Is this some sort of sick turn on for you?”
Sombra raised an eyebrow, more in confusion rather than anger. “Of course not. Why would you think that?”
“You’re sitting here pretty on Celestia’s throne with no good defenses, the ponies that killed you the first time standing in front of you, and you still have the peanuts to tell the Lord of Chaos how amazing you are? It makes me think you have no incentives to protect yourself, and come to think of it,” Discord teleported next to the still frozen ponies, “you’re not even attempting to use this perfect opportunity to vaporize these frozen-in-time heroines. So what’s the excuse this time your Time Wastiness. They’re not moving anytime soon, so stop talking to me and kill them already! This is literally a golden opportunity, served upon a silver platter, as the planets align just for you!”
Sombra could only respond with a sleazy laugh. “Oh, why would I do that? It’d be much more fun to see the looks on these fools’ faces when I take everything from them. It’s a simple process where I ruin their lives, show them just how much they failed, have them rot in the dungeons for good measure, and then after all that, I end their lives using a slow and escapable death trap, just to give them a small window of hope that they can win.”
Sombra gave another laugh. “Ha, and you thought I needed advice. As you can clearly see, I don’t.”
After hearing everything he just said, Discord could only give a small nod as he looked at his watch. “You know what? Maybe I was wrong about you, your Greatness. Maybe all you need to be a force of nature is dark magic, and power to spare.”
“Well of course you’re wrong. My method of ruling was always better than those failures.”
“Yep, that’s exactly right. Guess I should take my advice of learning from mistakes, adapting to new heroes by any means possible, and knowing your limits to effectively using your strengths and weaknesses to somepony else.”
“That’s...right?”
“Exactly!” Discord then opened his dimensional door and stepped right in it. “Well, if you’ll excuse me, my time is up, and I should get back to the future before time starts to resume.”
Sombra gave a double take at that last line. “What…””
“Oh, and Sombra?” Discord opened the door enough to face the king one more time. His eyes suddenly turned serious as he menacingly glared with a venomous vibe. “You’re gonna die…ta-ta!” He nonchalantly added, his face appearing friendly and carefree once more.
Without a beat, Discord snapped his fingers and he was gone. King Sombra found himself alone with that parting ringing in his ears. “Wait, what did he just say? What did he do?” Sombra felt the cold in his fur dissipate and replace with a warm, spine-tingling feeling of dread, the heat returning to him. He tried to wonder what kind of omen was that since his future was bright. Equestria would be drowning in darkness, right? Surely there must be some kind of misunderstanding...
“As long as we're together, we will never stop trying to defeat you!”
“Huh?”
Sombra looked in front of him to see the six ponies walking towards him, their eyes still burning with determination as they held their hooves together. “For our friends,” said Fluttershy.
“Wait, how long were you standing there?”
“For our families!”
“Didn’t we skip like three steps?”
They all started to radiate with energy as they floated in the air. “For our home!”
“The chaos noodle is still confusing me. Can we take a time out?”
“FOR EQUESTRIA!”
“Oh shit.”
---
Discord found himself in the middle of his office once again. Holding the watch in his claws, he teleported it away and then propped his legs on his desk. He could faintly hear the sound of high-pitched screaming followed by silence, and the sound of the day being saved once again.
He gave a contented sigh. “Guess it’s true what they say, royalty really are useless in this show.”
There was a long pause before Discord suddenly sat up violently, eyes wide like saucers, a realization dawning on him. “Drat! I forgot to make a Lion King reference!”