In a small auditorium, two podiums stood empty on the stage. In the audience sat a small crowd of espers and ponies, shifting uncomfortably.
“…they’re not commin’, are they?” Applejack eventually broke the silence. Japanese subtitles briefly flashed into existence before her, repeating what she had said.
Saten squirmed a little in her chair. <Well, Misaka is under house arrest…> Equish subtitles appeared here as well.
“Even if she wasn’t, I’m afraid that both she and Twilight are still… rather upset about everything, darling.” Rarity finished. Japanese subtitles… well, you get the idea.
Uiharu slowly raised a hand. <So, um… should one of us get up there, or…?>
“Do I hear somepony in need of a special guest appearance?!”
The espers and ponies looked in confusion over at stage left, with the exception of Pinkie, whose eyes bugged out of her head. “No no no! You can’t appear here! You’re still sealed!”
“Well, isn’t it lucky for me that I own a time machine then?” The mismatched form of Discord swooped in from offstage, curling around a podium like the snake that ate the canary.
“A time machine you neglected to mention was smaller on the inside, spirit.” A second new arrival said, lazily riding a Segway onstage. She was human (in appearance, anyway), and wore a witch’s hat, a black cape, an eye-patch, and frankly not much else. In one hand she carried an ornate spear longer than she was tall.
Discord scoffed, snapping two claws together to freeze the audience in place before they could finish running for the exits. With a wave of his paw, the audience spun back around to face the stage, and rigidly sat down in their seats, panicked looks frozen on their faces. “Oh come on Othi-poo, you know you love it!” He fluttered his eyelashes at her.
With a rubbery squelch noise, Othinus ran Discord through from behind, her spear pinning him to his podium. “Never call me that again.”
“Okay, okay, fine!” Discord huffed, wriggling around the spear more in annoyance than in pain. (Luckily for him, he was the furthest thing from the ‘symbols of human power’ that that spear destroyed). After a moment, he seemed to realise that he couldn’t pull himself free, and stopped. “Um, little help?”
Ignoring him, Othinus picked up the list of questions left on the podium Discord wasn’t pinned to and skimmed them. “Hmm… stupid… insulting… stupid and insulting…” She paused. “‘How does Twilight and co’s magic work in Academy City?’”
“That’s not much of a question.” Discord protested. “Most of them have already had their magic explained – Fluttershy has a Sleeping Beauty ‘blessed by the fairies’ spell, Rainbow Dash is still using Pegasus magic, Pinkie Pie’s a Gemstone and Applejack’s normal!”
Othinus narrowed her eyes at her ‘co-host’. “The rainbow-haired one keeps her magic?”
Discord waved a finger, smirking. “Not at all! In my world, it’s ‘pegasus magic’, as in the species, and in your world it’s ‘Pegasus magic’, as in the stallion.”
“That explains why she can carry lightning bolts,” because Pegasus had often been said to carry bolts for Zeus “but not why she can move clouds around.”
“Because Pegasus was made from a cloud, duh.”
Othinus’s narrowed eyes became a full glare. “No he was not. He was born when Medusa was beheaded.”
“In the original maybe, but that’s just icky, so she based her spells on the Disney version instead.”
Before Othinus could think of a response to that, Discord stretched himself over to pluck the list of questions out of her hands. “Ooh, this one looks interesting...”
Othinus sighed, and her gaze briefly flickered to the girls still frozen in the audience. “Just so we’re clear, humans, Rarity’s cloth magic is a mix of several different myths, much like that English Knight Leader’s sword spells. Twilight’s magic is primarily based of Hephaestus, the Greek forge-god. If she properly put the time and effort in, she could make some properly divine ‘arrows’ and ‘armour’; but she’s always in a hurry, so she churns out second-rate beams and forcefields instead.”
“‘What is this SYSTEM thing anyway?’” Discord read out.
“Humans cannot comprehend God.” Othinus explained, leaning forward on her Segway. “As a being that exists outside of time and space, cause and effect; lacking completely in the concept of ‘limits’. Therefore, to understand God, you must become more than human. Academy City calls this result, a human with the so-called ‘mind of God’, SYSTEM. It is the defining trait of a Level 6 Esper.”
Discord leafed through a textbook, coke-bottle glasses suddenly perched on his nose. “Uh-huh… okay… yeah...” Reaching the end of the book, he threw it behind himself, his glasses disappearing when he did so. “Okay, the fact-checkers are all done. What do we think, boys?”
Two more Discords who were abruptly standing next to the curtains on both sides of the stage sang out in chorus: “That is not science!”
“Naturally.” Othinus deadpanned. (The extra Discords disappearing the moment no-one was looking). “Most of the city thinks it’s some kind of abstract goal that can never be reached, like world peace. Only a select few realise that the Director-General is completely serious.”
“Oh, here’s another interesting one!” Discord said, looking back down at the question list. “‘Does telekinesis really go though another dimension?’” He looked over at Othinus eagerly.
“…what are you talking about?” Othinus tilted her head.
Discord blinked. Wordlessly, one of his arms stretched offstage and returned with a television clutched in his paw. His claw tapped it, and Accelerator’s face appeared on it.
“The **** is that? Some kind of energy Ability that can also be used for telekinesis? You’re not just making it up like that pain-in-the-*** #2, are you? Here’s a tip. What’s the reflection of you pushing me down? Answer: me pushing you up. It doesn’t matter through what weird other-space you have to draw the vector in.” The image of Accelerator said, his voice slightly distorted by the recording.
“Ah, I see.” Othinus nodded in understanding. “You’re asking me if telekinesis works by routing the force through another dimension to avoid crossing the space to the target?”
“Uh, yeah?” Discord raised an eyebrow and waited. When Othinus didn’t respond, his other eyebrow rose to meet the first one. “Wait, do you not know?”
“It’s not a Hephaestus-based spell, I can tell you that much.” Othinus shrugged. “Beyond that, no I do not know. The spell she casts in my world is simply the closest approximation to the spell she has in your world. It could easily be from a long-forgotten cult, dead for thousands of years until she rediscovered it, or even an original invention of hers. It might well work the way the esper suggests.”
“Some god of magic you are.” Discord said, holding up a small statuette of Othinus and dropping it into a bin he held in his claw. Both disappeared as suddenly as they’d appeared.
Othinus scowled. “I created that world by applying phases over another one, changing the parameters that make it up. I have no special knowledge of its contents; much like a child with a grow-your-own-crystals toy does not know what the crystals look like until they examine them. I’d like to see you do better, spirit.”
“Fine, I will!” Discord declared, scrolling down the list of questions. “Oh! This one’s a doozy. ‘What the what was up with Touma going down the magic hole in the ground and coming out ____?’”
Othinus squinted at Discord. “…are they talking about Context Shift?”
Discord lifted the list of questions closer to his head, one eye briefly occupying all of his face as he peered closer at the words. “Must be. I guess they haven’t named it yet.” He turned to face a calendar that hadn’t been on the wall just before, peering intently at it.
Othinus sighed. “To properly understand what happened, you must understand both phases and Imagine Breaker itself.”
“See, lots of smart ponies think that there’s lots of different worlds, but that’s not true!” Discord leaned back, resting his head on his mismatched claw and paw. “There’s just the one ‘real’ world, and that’s the Pure World. It’s a world of pure science, no magic. Nobody believes in anything, not in fate, not in gods, not even in luck!” He paused. “It’s a pretty rubbish place to live, frankly.”
“Spirit, you have no idea what life is like there. You would dissolve the minute you arrived, the magic that comprises your form sucked out in a feeble attempt to fill the vacuum.”
“Are you sure about that?” Discord said, his head twisting upside-down and looming over Othinus’s form.
Othinus ignored Discord’s antics, and the draconequus snapped back to whatever passed as normal for him. “Regardless, the minute that anyone believes something, they cease to live in the Pure World and now live in a world where that belief influences the world. At first the only way the newborn ‘phase’ can do so is through you, but the more people believe the same thing for longer, the greater the distortion grows.”
“It’s a bit like stained-glass windows!” Discord said, snapping his claws and conjuring one at the back of the stage. “The light behind the glass is a pure white, but because of all the obstructions in the way, it looks like there are beautiful patterns in it!”
“Unlike with stained-glass windows,” Othinus took up the explanation “phases can be layered on top of each other as many times as you can imagine, each one changing the ‘appearance’ of the world you live in just a little more.”
“For example, Princess K-K might well be ‘Equestria’s darling little princess’,” Discord said, pretending to gag “but she also runs Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns. She has plenty of students who think of her as their principal so much that they forget she’s also a princess – so much so that there’s a version of the world where she’s only a principal, not a princess.”
“A more common example are the ‘alpha worlds’, where a prominent figure is decried as evil or praised as good with no basis.” Othinus’s mouth twisted in distaste, her knuckles turning white as they clenched tight onto her Segway. “If the distortion becomes great enough, the forces of good and evil can swap places altogether.”
“I am never going to live ‘Captain Goodguy’ down.” Discord hung his head in shame.
“Which brings us back to Imagine Breaker.” Othinus said. “Some people mistakenly think that it’s the power to ‘destroy magic’, which is ridiculous. The souls that people posses and the ley lines that run through the planet are undeniably magic, and it destroys neither people nor planet. Instead, it is the power to ‘return things to normal’.”
“But here’s the kicker!” Discord waved one ‘finger’ from his paw. “What counts as ‘normal’ is context-dependent! I mean, obviously, otherwise young mister Fantasy Killer would be returning everything he touched to its Pure World version.”
“Context Shift is a gap between the layers of stained-glass windows.” Othinus resumed. “As you leave the ‘light’ formed by the phases of your home, all of your features become indistinct, lost in the ‘darkness’. It is only when you emerge into another layer that you can see yourself again, though because of the different spread of light and colour, you ‘look different’.”
“Imagine Breaker knew that Touma wasn’t supposed to be a mule in a world of pastel-coloured ponies, so it blocked that transformation. But having left the ‘light’ of his home phase, it couldn’t figure out what he was supposed to ‘look’ like. Eventually it gave up and left him ‘in the dark’ as it were.”
“Only a true god like myself and Imagine Breaker working together could remove the effects of a phase, so the human was very lucky that the Index was able to ‘shine light’ on what he was.”
Discord looked over at Othinus, offended. “What’s with this ‘only a true god’ business? I can do that too!”
“Spirit, I will admit that what you can do with just one phase is very impressive. However, all you are doing is increasing and decreasing the influence of this… ‘Chaosville’. You cannot create a new phase from nothing, and you certainly cannot destroy one. That is beyond even me.”
“Oh, pish.” Discord scoffed. “You just don’t want to admit I could do something you can’t.”
“Naturally you can do things I can’t, spirit. Otherwise, why would we –”
“Shhh!” Discord covered her lips with a finger. “Don’t want to give away too much too early, now do we?”
With a finger-flick, Othinus splattered Discord’s upper half across the back wall of the small hall. His middle stretched out to cover the gap, his lower half still pinned into his podium.
“Think twice before you lay hands on a god, spirit.” Othinus scowled.
Discord coughed up a handful of splinters as he pulled himself back together. “Noted.” He wheezed.
“Good, because we are out of time.” Othinus pulled Gungnir out of Discord with a rubbery squelch sound. The newly freed draconequus quickly flew around to Othinus, wrapping around her and her Segway.
“Oh come on, please? Just two more?” Discord pleaded. Two extra heads sprouted from his neck, one of a puppy and one of a kitten, both of which did their best pleading faces.
Othinus stared flatly at Discord, before rolling her eyes. “Fine. But no more.” She reached over and picked up the list of questions, scanning through the entries. “‘Is Time Turner secretly the Doctor...’” She paused. “Doctor who?”
-Bu-dum tish-
Othinus looked over at Discord. “…why did you do that?”
Discord looked down at the drum kit that had suddenly appeared around his podium. “You know, I’m not actually sure?”
Othinus gave a long-suffering sigh, and finished reading the question. “‘…and are the time-beavers just re-skinned Reapers?’” She shook her head. “What utter nonsense. Why would anyone want to put skin back on the Reaper? A beaver skin at that. Spirit, does this make any sense to you?”
As she looked up, she found that Discord had turned white as a sheet, all of his colour having leaked out of him and formed a puddle around his feet. “The time-beavers are back?” He whispered in horror.
Othinus stared at Discord for a moment, before shaking her head and selecting another question from the list. “‘Is Kuroko in the 3rd or 177th branch of Judgement?’ They’re really asking me this?”
She sighed, pulling out a small Academy City guidebook from a compartment in her Segway and leafing through it. “The 3rd.” She said after finding the relevant page. “Judgement officers only have jurisdiction inside their own school, so they have one branch per school. The 3rd is Tokiwadai Middle School’s branch.”
She made to throw the list away, but noticed just before she did that that question had a postscript written in a smaller font. “‘But wasn’t Kuroko in the office of the 177th branch when Rainbow Dash first entered Academy City? Yomikawa called for her there!’” She squinted at the list, wondering how they had a follow-up question prepared in advance. “Branch 177 is Sakugawa Middle School’s branch of Judgement – the school that the flower girl and the rumour-finder attend. The teleporter visits there only to fill out joint paperwork and to visit her friend. It would be weird if she regularly visited the office, given that it’s inside Sakugawa proper. If the officer was looking for her there, it would be because she first tried her Dorm Manager who then told her to look there, I’m sure.”
With growing annoyance, she noticed a second postscript in even smaller text. “‘Eh? But isn’t the 177th’s office next to the street, not in a school?’” She looked up at the girls still frozen in the audience. “Did you really write these? Where did you get such a hare-brained idea as that? No, such a building does not exist. Judgement offices are always on the grounds of the school they watch over.”
With a jerk, Discord suddenly started moving again, giving out a strained laugh. “Oh? Oh, so it’s one of those things that’s always been that way, huh? Like Twilight actually knowing Moondancer, or the Endymion tower existing, or the Castle of the Two Sisters having been built in the Everfree, or –!”
“Is something bothering you, spirit?” Othinus asked, still sounding quite bored.
In one smooth motion, Discord scooped his colour off the floor and dropped it back inside his outline, his eyes constantly spinning in their sockets as they tried to look everywhere at once. “Well, um, you see, I didn’t realise that the time-beavers were active before I decided to violate causality to make a guest appearance…!”
The sound of a thousand buck teeth chewing on wood suddenly rang out throughout the small hall. Discord’s colour dropped right out from his outline again.
“Abort!” He yelled, grabbing the unamused Othinus and dashing back towards the side of the stage where they’d entered. “Abort! Abo –”