While most of everyone else was too stunned to speak, Ranma glanced up at Discord with a cocked eyebrow. "You're going by 'Discord', huh?"
Discord shrugged his shoulders. "Well, 'John' wasn't exactly a fitting name for what I do. And I didn't want to be confused with my throne, or vice versa."
"Right," Ranma simply accepted.
Twilight Sparkle, who was both excited and afraid of what she would learn, stepped toward them and tried to keep her voice steady as she asked, "This isn't some kind of elaborate prank, is it?"
"I just woke up," replied Ranma, not knowing exactly what "this" was referring to. She returned her gaze to Discord. "So, is it?"
Discord stroked his beard as he hummed and feigned a thoughtful expression. "An elaborate plot, perhaps."
Curious, Ranma prompted him to continue by voicing, "Oh?"
"Well," Discord somberly began, as he snapped a wing chair into existence, which he reclined upon, along with a bubble-blowing pipe, velvet smoking jacket, fuzzy slippers, and an ottoman to prop his feet on, "I'm sad to report that your plan failed. The diamond dogs, dragons, yaks, griffons and portions of other species — that they could convince to help them — warred against the ponies about three decades after you went to sleep." He paused to blow some bubbles. "Between that and bad apple syndrome taking hold, in addition to some ambitious ponies convincing the unhappy population that you abandoned them and were thus the one to blame for their woes, it only took a few generations for them to devolve back to their old ways, then worse as tyranny and racial supremacy became prominent."
Expression sorrowful and eyes downcast, Ranma quietly said, "I see..."
"Hold up," Applejack spoke up, who appeared ready to be angry as she scrutinized the two, "if that really happened, then why didn't you stop it?"
With a weary sigh, Ranma explained, "Because I wasn't willing to go that far to control them. Humankind had thousands of years to figure out how to live peacefully, and I wasn't going to achieve the dream of who knows how many no-good people by becoming the absolute ruler of everyone, governing their thoughts and actions to suit my own vision of how things should be."
"I'm also not a leader, deity or mother figure," she went on, her steely gaze sweeping over her audience. "So, the best alternative that I could think of was to change things up, more or less give them a fresh start, offer the option to follow my value system, then let them decide their fate. Should that turn out poorly, I gave this guy," she gestured to Discord, who waved at everyone excitedly, "permission to figure out where the harmony was between our weaknesses and strengths and try to influence events to achieve it."
Most stared at Discord incredulously, unable to imagine him doing anything for the sake of harmony, much less before his supposed reformation. Twilight Sparkle spoke for most present when she uncertainly said, "That can't be true... Can it?"
The doubters were surprised when Celestia answered instead of Discord or Ranma, while she and Luna both regarded the latter with strange expressions. "It is true... And I'm convinced that this is — indeed — Faust."
"What do you mean?" Came Twilight Sparkle's confused response, who was looking a bit lost. "How...?"
Celestia and Luna shared a look, wondering how best to phrase what needed to be said, but Discord didn't have the same compunction to speak prudently, who suddenly appeared next Twilight Sparkle and looped an arm over her withers. "I've been in cahoots with dear ol' Celestia and Luna since the time before they were princesses. Why, I practically raised them!"
That elicited many exclamations of, "What," and, "No way!"
Luna gave Discord a half-lidded stare and scoffed, "Hardly. You give yourself far more credit than you deserve. By my measure you were little better than Star Swirl the Bearded."
"...You were raised by Star Swirl the Bearded, too?" Twilight Sparkle muttered absently, a faraway look on her face as she swayed on her hooves.
With a huff, Discord stood up straight and set his arms akimbo. "Excuse me? I've never heard any complaints from you two about how you turned out."
Sighing, Celestia pointed out, "That's because you weren't the one who—"
Discord snapped his fingers and disappeared in a cloud of smoke. When the smoke cleared, the draconequus was replaced by a grey and white-mottled unicorn mare, one whom Ranma noticed bore a familiar candy bar on her flank, who smirked and exclaimed, "Surprise!"
Initially shocked to see the nanny from their youth, who had taken care of them in nearly all ways outside of their magical studies, until they were on the cusp of becoming mares, Celestia and Luna had to rein in a great many emotions that her appearance evoked in them, being that she had practically been a mother to them until her disappearance. Eventually, with a stomp of her hoof, Luna unhappily declared, "Jest not about our beloved Milky Way!"
"Yes," Celestia agreed with a frown. "It isn't funny."
Seeing Discord's ears and face fall, Ranma spoke up to get the discussion back on track and head off any potential drama. "So, what did you do to get things on the right track, aside from making the unicorns redirect most of their magic resources to move the sun and moon?"
With another poof of smoke Discord returned to his usual appearance, although he wasn't as animated as before. "Oh, a little nudge here, a little nudge there... Got the right ponies close to the ruling class, hoping that they would influence the leaders enough to ward away the wendigos, thus showing the importance of friendship and unity from the top down — which was a close thing. Then I made sure that the flag of the new nation would feature two alicorns, so the symbolism would lead them to accepting Celestia and Luna with open arms once they made an appearance and ol' Swirly suggested that they should rule Equestria."
"...So when you took over Equestria, it was just so they could defeat you and cement their worthiness after everypony else failed," Twilight Sparkle hollowly deduced, who had collapsed upon her haunches while staring into the middle distance.
Luna nodded her head. "It is as you say."
"And you've been the rulers of this Equestria for at least a thousand years," Ranma noted, then returned her attention to Discord and inquired, "Should I take that to mean your plan was a success, then?"
Discord shook his head before pointedly casting his gaze toward Twilight Sparkle. "Those two helped to pave the way for the pony that will bring harmony to the world for a period of time that's too long for me to divine the span of, lest I drive myself mad." Catching Ranma's look, he shrugged his shoulders and revised what he said. "Well, more mad."
Putting two and two together, Rarity overcame her stun-induced silence and asked, "Are you talking about Twilight?"
"Huh?" Twilight Sparkle responded to her name, as she shook herself out of her stupor.
"Hold on," Rainbow Dash spoke up, an edge to her voice as she caught on to the suggestion that was potentially being made, "you guys aren't saying that you've been manipulating Twilight, are you?"
Ranma regarded the alicorns of the sun and moon with narrowed eyes. "You better not have."
"I would never!" Luna vehemently denied, her head reared back.
In contrast to her sister's response, Celestia cast her eyes downward and softly said, "If I have, it was never my intention."
"What do you mean?" Twilight Sparkle entreated, who was clearly ready to excuse whatever her former mentor might have done.
Discord leaned over and placed a pair of lenseless glasses onto her face, ones which functioned as blinders. "She's probably referring to that blind spot of yours."
Annoyed, Twilight Sparkle tossed the eyewear aside and asked, "What blind spot?"
With a sigh, Celestia decided that it would be best if she heard the answer from herself. "You hold me in such high regard that I have to be careful with what I say, because of how it might influence you."
Luna added, "My sister has tried to lower your opinion of her to a healthier level, but it has proven to be difficult to accomplish. After the events of the royal wedding, we were unsure if there was anything more she could do without going too far."
Twilight Sparkle was so embarrassed and conflicted that she couldn't find any words when she opened her mouth, so Ranma opted to spare her being the center of attention by getting more information from the older princesses and Discord. "If you three haven't been molding her into the pony that will bring harmony to the world for a very long time, then what have you been doing?"
Celestia and Luna shared a glance before the former said, "Giving her tests to gauge her competence or character, providing opportunities to build a reputation better and greater than ours, and establishing a foundation for her destiny so there's evidence that anyone can see without divination."
"Like that crystal tree?" Ranma surmised, considering how the mark on Twilight Sparkle's flank was its main feature.
They both nodded, with Luna saying, "That's not to say that we weren't tempted to do more than set examples. We were quite worried about how antisocial Twilight Sparkle was while growing up, and how little she valued friendship. We had to delay her first test so that we could figure out how to alter it, because we had initially planned for her to face Nightmare Moon's trials alone."
Twilight Sparkle's eyes widened and mouth dropped open while her friends expressed their own shock. Her mouth moved a few times before she got out, "That... That was a test?"
With a solemn nod of her head, Celestia replied, "Yes. Each challenge was designed to elicit a quality that matched with an element of harmony, in order for you to witness it and puzzle out the solution, with the hope that you'd realize the value of friendship and be accepted by the final element when you faced your own challenge."
None affected by those words seemed to know what to say in response to that, so Ranma broke the silence by asking Discord, "So, the tree: I vaguely recall a dream about it."
Discord gave her an uneasy smile. "Ah, yes... I didn't want to wake you up, so I discussed my ideas with you in a dream, both to get your approval and work out any changes you deemed necessary."
"Was that all you did while I was dreaming?" Ranma pressed, her brow furrowed with suspicion. Ever since Discord had damaged his mind trying to take in more information than he could handle while making an unambiguous divination, for the sake of finding a path to a brighter future, she'd had to be mindful that he was no longer as predictable or judicious as he used to be.
Sweat began to appear on Discord's brow, which grew legs and ran down his face. "I asked if I could use your DNA to create the alicorns needed for the plan, which you approved."
Ranma stared fiercely into Discord's eyes. "We can't create something from nothing, so you must have used transformation magic... Right?" When Discord began to cower instead of answer, horror began to dawn upon her. "You... You didn't..."
Spike was the first to voice what everyone now realized. "Wait, Faust is actually their mother!?"