"Prove it? How? What, am I supposed to...to tickle someone to death?" Matt's lack of amazing abilities left him with a bit of a conundrum as to how to put Discord in his place.
The chaos spirit held his stomach and laughed. "You...haha! You can't use magic, can you?"
His eyes narrowed in anger at Discord's insinuations that magic was the end-all, be-all of what a person, pony, or any other creature could do. "My people's magic was our technology, and I'm afraid I forgot to bring my missiles when I landed here. So sorry, asshole."
"And whose problem is that, hm?" Discord asked dismissively.
Matt ignored his remark and continued, "When I sat in Twilight's library for months, I did quite a bit of reading about magic and I'm willing to bet you can do what I read about."
Discord folded his arms proudly and smiled smugly. "Well, I am an all-powerful spirit of chaos, so it's highly probable. Tell me, what exactly did you have in mind?"
"I saw that some of Equestria's more powerful magicians could share their power with another if they wanted to. Are you able to do that, or are you really as pathetic as these stupid jokes all over the place?" Matt queried.
"That? Hah! That's an easy one. I thought you were going to give me something difficult. I should have known that that feeble little brain of yours would be so easily amused," Discord said, spinning his finger through Matt's hair. He swatted at the eagle talon but Discord pulled away at the last second. "So, what, you want some of my power? Is that it?"
"You want to know what's swimming around in my head? What chaos is really all about? Then give me some! Now!"
"Matt, what are you doing?!" Twilight screamed.
Discord's body snaked around Matt and a smirk crept across his long cheeks. "And just what you expect to do with any magic I give you? You say you've never used actual magic before. What makes you think you'll be able to control it properly?"
"I read about that too, and I'll bet you can give me innate control, can't you?" The draconequus fluttered his eyes and smiled innocently. "Then, do it already!"
"No slapping!"
"Oh, shut up."
He grinned maliciously as his talon glowed its signature whitish yellow. Matt closed his eyes as Discord touched his head. The aura that emitted from Discord's finger surrounded Matt's body. The girls watched horrified as their friend appeared to let himself be taken by their enemy. After a few seconds, the glow subsided and Discord pulled away. "Alright, boy, amuse me."
Matt stood motionless, his eyes darting back and forth beneath their lids. He snapped them open after a moment and sneered. In a heartbeat, he grabbed Discord by his beard and pulled him in close. "You're serious? What do you expect me to do with this shitty amount of magic? You want to see what I can do? Then give me more. A lot more!"
"Exactly how much more?" Discord asked, annoyed that his free gift seemed rather unappreciated.
"All of it!"
Discord guffawed at the notion. "Don't be stupid. I'm not giving you all of my power and leaving myself wide open to the Elements. I'll tell you what. Since you're so confident in your abilities, I'll give you half my strength. Even at half my current power, I'm more than a match for the Elements of Harmony."
"Matt, darling, stop! Don't play his little game! You'll get yourself killed!" Rarity pleaded.
His tiny red eyes glowed and Matt's body was lifted into the air, the magic surrounding him again, pulsing with life. Discord rolled on the ground laughing once the ritual had begun. "Wow, I simply can't believe how well this has all gone for me!"
"Give us our friend back!" Rainbow demanded.
"'Back'? You never really had him to begin with," Discord said venomously.
"What are you talking about?" Twilight scowled.
"Did none of you ever stop to wonder where he came from?"
Twilight glared daggers at him. "We never found anything about him or where he might have come from. What are you getting at, Discord?"
"Do you remember the last time we fought? I do," he casually reminisced. "Right before you finished trapping me in stone for the second time, I released a tiny portion of myself – my essence if you will – whose sole purpose was to find a source of chaos I could use to feed off of without anypony knowing about it.
"It searched across time and space until it happened to stumble upon a source that bled chaos so much it could taste it – his home world! It headed on in to look for the most chaotic creature it could find, and it happened to find dear Matt here," he explained as the girls listened intently.
"But don't worry," Discord continued, "he's not some 'chosen one' or anything silly like that. He was just some poor random soul that my essence happened to pick. He was the first one it found, you see. It pulled him through to Equestria and latched itself onto him so I could feed on whatever chaos he would inevitably bring, and it was such a small amount that not even Celestia would have been able to detect its presence, had she even bothered to look!
"Once I reached full strength again, I figured I was finished with the little whelp. Certainly you remember seeing Matt in such terrible pain from time to time?" Discord smiled with feigned innocence. "That was me! The part of me that was attached to him called out for something to come and take care of him for me every time, like moths to a flame. When that dragon showed up, I thought 'Hey, great! Maybe he'll turn you six into piles of ash or step on you or something and you'll be out of my way for good!'" he joked, shooting a smirk at Matt, "but he managed to weasel his way out of it and even save you. His response to the whole ordeal though? Priceless!
"After a while, I decided to give it another go. I'm sure you all still remember that Ursa Major? Me again! The amount of chaos I could consume if the entire town was destroyed would be amazing, and you all would likely have been killed too! Not only did he manage to somehow stop the thing–" he zipped up to the girls and squeezed them together in his arm, "–by the way, remind me to tell him that what he did even I think was absolutely incredible–" and zipped back to where Matt hovered, anger replacing his amused tone, "–but thanks to you, he survived."
"Sorry to upset you, Discord," Twilight deadpanned.
He chuckled at her sarcasm. "Oh, but I should be thanking you. After all, if he hadn't shown me how resilient he could be, he wouldn't have given me a even better idea as far as what to do with him. But I needed to put him through one more little test. I tried sowing chaos using the six of you and then the town. The only thing left was to attack him directly."
"The cockatrice..." Twilight remembered.
"Y'all ran into a cockatrice earlier?" Applejack asked.
"It's why his arm is bandaged up. I asked him to come with me to see Zecora's earlier. It showed up and attacked us. Matt grabbed it and was going to let it turn him to stone while he choked it so it would suffocate in his hand. It scratched at his arm trying to get away, but it eventually gave up when it saw Matt wasn't letting go."
"That's crazy!" Rainbow exclaimed.
Discord spun around in the air, pumping his fists victoriously. "And that's exactly what I was hoping for! Everything that's happened to him, even if he just stubbed his toe and punched a wall over it, gave me strength. That little fight he had with you earlier was just icing on the cake!" He teleported over to Fluttershy and patted her on the head before reappearing next to Matt. The timid pegasus looked away feeling guilty all over again.
"You guys had a fight? What happened?" Pinkie questioned.
"I'll tell you later."
"Just think! If one of his species gave me this unheard of amount of strength, imagine what a dozen of them could do! I could rule over all of existence for all eternity!" he cackled with a roar of thunder and flash of lightning filling the skies.
"You...you used him as a guinea pig! You...you...MONSTER!" Twilight shouted, her eyes watering. She lifted a large piece of the dirt road and flung it at Discord desperately. It shattered against him with no effect. "We won't let you! We'll stop you somehow!"
"Let me? Hahaha! I told you months ago just before you beat me that I had already won! I had this plan brewing for a while and now that it's come to fruition, it's turned out better than I ever dreamed! You and your precious Elements can't stop me now! Nothing can stop me!" Another bolt of lightning crackled at his words. Suddenly, an oven timer dinged and popped out of his ear. He pulled it out and looked at it, smiling at what it indicated. "Correction. Nothing can stop us."
Terror instantly covered their faces. "W-what do you mean?"
Discord's widened his eyes in delight, "He belongs to me now." He turned to Matt, who floated back down to the ground as the yellow glow that surrounded him faded away, and smiled villainously. "What do you say, Matt? Are you ready to show me now?"
His eyes shot open and the chaos god's yellow light erupted from them. He slowly looked up at Discord, who threw his head back and laughed triumphantly. Matt sneered and lit up his hand.