//------------------------------//
// Chapter Sixteen - Discorderly Conduct 
// Story: Equestria Girls /0 
// by Bitt_Player 
//------------------------------//

“Good, good, you’re growing into quite a fine Zoid,” Twilight said to the partially formed machine growing in its vat.  “It took us long enough to get the chemicals we needed, huh?”
One of Twilight’s phones rang, but she ignored it.  Pressing her hands against the glass, she stared at the Zoid’s Core.  “I’ve only seen you as a pile of scrap,” she said.  “I can’t wait to see what you really look like!”
Finally noticing the beeping sound from her skirt pocket, Twilight withdrew her pink phone and opened it.  “Yes?  Yes.  Oh.  Um, I don’t see why not.”  With that, Twilight disconnected the call.
“Um, Spike?”  Twilight asked, prompting Spike to meander over to her.  “I’m not sure what I just agreed to.”
Spike offered a sympathetic woof.





The next day, Discord showed up at the front door of the Thunderbolts’ base. He wore his favorite absurd suit and circular yellow glasses.  In the crook of his arm was a black cane that appeared to be both brand new and utterly superfluous.  Shining Armor’s reaction was immediate and predictable.
“Who are you?” Shining asked, blocking the doorway.  “And why are you here?” Discord was taller than many people, Shining Armor included, but his beanpole physique gave Shining at least fifty pounds of muscle on him.  Aggression was right out.
“Why, I’m Discord,” the tall man replied, “and I’m here looking for Twilight Sparkle!  I believe she’s mentioned me?”
Shining sighed.  “She’s in the secondary hangar.  Come with me.”  He started across the tarmac, Discord matching his stride to walk shoulder-to-shoulder with him.
“So…  How is Twilight’s little project going?”  Discord asked.
“Getting the supplies took more time than it should have,” Shining replied irritably, “because we had to make sure your Chaos Union didn’t hijack the Gustav.”
“Not my Chaos Union!” Discord insisted.  Shining Armor couldn’t tell if his chagrin was legitimate or feigned.  “Tirek’s Chaos Union!  I may be accused of many things, Shining Armor, but banditry is not among them.”
Shining Armor stopped at the hangar door’s keypad and looked Discord in the eye. “Do you have any idea how little I trust you?”
“Hmm…”  Discord leaned on his cane, stroking his goatee, while at least pretending to consider the question.  “Well, if I had to put a number on it, it’d probably be a negative.  Two or three digits.”
Shining Armor glowered.
“Four digits?”
The muscle above Shining Armor’s left eyelid visibly twitched.
“Okay, look,” Discord returned his cane to the crook of his arm, persistent grin finally dropping from his face.  “You don’t trust me.  You don’t like me.  That’s fair, given who I am and who you work for.  But you do like and trust your sister, don’t you?”
Shining crossed his arms and raised an eyebrow.
“What I’m getting at is,” Discord continued, “in addition to banditry, another thing I can’t be accused of is being a bad boss.  Can you at least believe I won’t make Twilight unhappy? At least not intentionally.”
“Fine.”  Shining typed in the passcode, and the door slid open.
Twilight immediately looked up from the console connected to the Zoid growth tank. “Oh, Shining Armor, y- Discord?! I didn’t expect you for another day at least.”
“Gustavs have a wonderful autopilot,” Discord offered, grin firmly in place. “It’s been far too long since I’ve seen my favorite salvager, how are you?”
“I’m fine.  So is Spike.”
Spike barked at Discord a few times, then hid between Twilight’s feet.
“Alas and alack!”  Discord moaned, clutching at his heart.  “Will young Spike never accept me?”
“Probably not,” Twilight admitted.
Discord’s feigned woe vanished immediately.  “Ooh!  Is this your new Zoid?!”
“Yes!”  Twilight replied proudly.  “He’ll be fighting fit inside of a week!”
“Delightful!”
“Given the rate of growth, he’ll probably weigh in at one hundred and thirty tons, give or take.”
Discord whistled.  “You’re going to be a big boy, aren’t you?”  He asked the Zoid, tapping its tank with his cane.
“So, Discord,” Twilight began, adjusting her glasses.  “What’s the other reason you’re here?”
“Other reason?  Why, I came here to see you, and to check on your Zoid!” Discord insisted.
Twilight crossed her arms in exactly the same way her brother did.  “And?”
Discord sighed and rolled his eyes.  “Okay, you got me.  Tirek might have led a bit of a mutiny and he may have kind-of kicked me off my own Whale King.  A little.”
“And everyone just went along with that?!”
“Ugh, I know, right?”  Now Discord’s arms were folded as well.  “You fill up your gang with people who’re just in it for the money, and they turn on you the minute some lunkhead tells them he’ll pay them more!”
Twilight facepalmed.  “At least he gave you a parachute for the trip down.”
“No, I had to steal that.”
“I thought you weren’t a bandit?” Shining Armor jibed.
“In my defense, it was my parachute.  They stole it from me first.”  Discord stroked his goatee again.  “Technically all the parachutes I left behind are mine, too, come to think of it.”
“Isn’t the Whale King yours as well?” Twilight asked, unable to stop herself from being sarcastic.
“Yes, yes, but there’s not much we can do about that,” Discord admitted.  “Look, you said this beautiful boy,” Discord tapped the Zoid tank with his cane again, “will have a charged particle cannon, didn’t you?”
“Oh absolutely!”  Twilight’s eyes lit up as the topic returned to her pet project.
“Can it shoot down a Whale King?”
Twilight’s eyes widened as she realized where Discord was leading her. “It… should be able to, yes.”
“I’m going to need you to do that for me.”
Twilight looked back and forth between Discord and her Zoid.  “We’re in.”
“’We’?” Shining Armor asked.
“The Zoid and I,” Twilight explained.  “My research indicates that it has a mind of its own.  I get the feeling he’s willing to let me speak for him, though.”
“Well, all right then!” Discord said delightedly. “If Tirek thinks he can turn my fun little club into some kind of unending crime spree, he’s in for a surprise!  Oh, a thought just occurred to me!  Complete change of subject, Shining Armor, did Cinch ever get her email encryption changed?”
“Shut up, Discord,” Shining Armor replied.
“... You’d think people would say that to me more often.”  Discord stroked his goatee once more.





“We’re fighting Team Eidechsekanone,” Sunset said without preamble. “Ideally without the Chaos Union getting involved.”
“Ooh! Ooh!” Pinkie jumped up and down. “Are Rarity and Applejack going to fight?! Are we going to have a funny accent festival?!”
“Excuse me?” Applejack crossed her arms. Rarity shot Pinkie a dark look.
“Whoops! I didn’t mean that quite how it sounded!” Pinkie backpedaled.
“It’s actually going to be you, me, and Rarity,” Sunset told Pinkie. “We’re fighting in a wide canyon with several small mesas which Eidechsekanone will undoubtedly climb.  That means we need Rarity’s smoke to hide her from line of sight long enough to spot for you.”
“What are you planning to do while Pinkie and I are dealing with the Gun Snipers?” Rarity asked.
“Put the fear of Tartarus into them,” Sunset said.  “Daydream Liger can climb those mesas with her boosters, and it takes two hits from a Gun Sniper’s tail rifle to break through her shield. Although I think Photo Finish’s custom rifle can drop it in one.”  Sunset ran a hand through her hair.  “The more they shoot at Daydream and I, the less they’ll be trying to hit you two.”
“You three gonna be all right without my ECM?” Applejack asked.
“Pixel Pizazz might be an issue, her Pixelated Gun Sniper has a composite sensor unit,” Sunset admitted. “It’s not as good as a Multisensor, but if she gets close enough she might be able to blind-fire at The Diamond Dustfox with... more accuracy than I’d like.  Ideally she’ll be taking shots at me instead.”





“They say no plan survives contact with the other team,” Pinkie commented as she slowly followed her teammates through the battlefield.  Fog had rolled in, despite the weather report calling for clear skies, reducing visibility to about half a mile.
“Yes, Pinkie, they do say that,” Rarity agreed with thinning patience. Side by side with the Daydream Liger, the Diamond Dustfox’s smoke generators were closed, their white cloud superfluous in the natural fog.
“Did they take up positions in their starting area?” Sunset speculated. “Since we have to go to them, it would make sense.”
The crack of a Gun Sniper’s tail rifle echoed through the canyon as a large-caliber shell grazed the Daydream Liger’s shield and sailed past the Pinkamena D. Bison’s shoulder.
“They’re not on the mesas!”  Sunset observed as all three Empyrean Zoids took cover behind nearby stone pillars. “They must have taken positions at the ends of the most viable passages.”
“Shouldn’t they be on your Multisensor?”  Rarity asked.
“Magnets!”  Pinkie interjected.
“What?!”  Rarity demanded.
“Pinkie, you’re right!”  Sunset replied, flipping the Multisensor’s windscreen display through multiple wavelengths.  When she reached the electromagnetic spectrum, Sunset’s windscreen lit up in a baffling array of random colors.  “This whole canyon is loaded with magnetic rock!  How did I miss that?  Magnetic sensors are useless here.”
“Oh dear,” Rarity muttered.
Sunset continued switching through sensor readouts.  “They’re not moving, so seismic sensors don’t show anything. Radar have them either, did they add radar-absorbent coating?  Too far away for thermal.  I’m not picking up any chatter, they must have gone radio silent, too.  Fly me to Tartarus on a paper airplane!”
“So how did they see us?”  Rarity asked.
“If they’d seen us, that shot would’ve hit,” Pinkie pointed out.
“Yeah, all three of those girls are better shots than that,” Sunset agreed. “That was psychological warfare.”
“So what do we do?”  Pinkie asked.
“Only one thing we can do,” Sunset said, reactivating Daydream Liger’s shield. “I’m gonna be really stupid for a minute.  Follow me.” Daydream Liger lunged out from behind its rock spire and surged forward.
“Oh dear,” Rarity repeated, following the Liger.
“How fast to you think Pinkamena D. Bison is?”  Pinkie demanded as her Zoid lumbered forward.
“Faster than stationary is fast enough!”  Sunset replied.
“Aw, you always know just the right thing to say, Sunny-Shimmy!”
“I told you never to call me that!”
Pinkie Pie just giggled.
Sunset’s Multisensor chirped.  “Seismic! They’re on the move!”  A Gun Sniper shot echoed through the canyon.
The shield absorbed the hit as Photo Finish’s Gun Sniper came into view.  Realizing she was too close to stop, Sunset allowed Daydream Liger to ram its shield directly into Gun Sniper Finish Special, smashing the smaller Zoid to the ground.  A barrage of missiles from Daydream’s left pepperboxed the Liger, drowning out the Judge’s declaration that Photo Finish was out of the match.
“Minor damage, no problem,” Sunset reassured herself, swinging the Liger left and charging. Ignoring the hiss of melting armor, Daydream Liger pushed through the beam Gatling spray from the Pixelated Gun Sniper and swatted it into the stone pillar it had taken cover next to.
“Pixel Pizzaz is out of the battle!”  The Judge announced.
Daydream Liger spun around, reactivating its shield just in time to stop a point-blank shot from Violet Blurr’s Gun Sniper.  Violet kicked on her boosters and fled, but the Daydream Liger caught up in a few bounds and tackled Gun Sniper Blurr to the ground.
“The battle is over!  The battle is over!  The winner is… Empyrean Team!”
“Did… did we just drop the whole team by ourselves?”  Sunset asked her Liger.  Daydream replied with a celebratory growl.
“Sunset, darling, did you just defeat three Gun Snipers on your own?” Rarity asked as the Diamond Dustfox caught up.
“Yes.  Yes we did.”
“Absolutely astonishing, dear.”
The Pinkamena D. Bison lumbered into view through the mist.  “Sunset, did you just-”
“Yes, Pinkie,” Sunset interrupted.
“Sweet!”





The hangar doors opened slowly as the Shadowbolts and Discord gathered to see Twilight’s new Zoid.  Twilight Sparkle was delighted, her lab coat, wild smile, and clear sleep deprivation making her look more than ever like the mad scientist villain of any number of black and white B-movies.  As the doors finished opening, a huge, sauroid Zoid emerged, taking its first, pilotless, step from the dark chamber into the world.  Its armor was a light gray, with details picked out in deep purple. Its tyrannosaur-like arms were small compared to its body, but it had long pseudo-arms rising from a thruster pack on its back, each of which ended with a set of three blades in a triangular arrangement.
“Behold!”  Twilight announced maniacally, “the greatest Zoid Neo-Equestria has ever seen!  Faster than a Shadow Fox!  Tougher than a Blade Liger!  Its main weapon is a Charged Particle Cannon that runs the length of its body, and is capable of breaking an Ultrasaurus’ energy shield in one shot! The first Ultimate X!  The final word in anti-Liger Zoid design!  This is Berserk Fury Sparkle Special: Midnight Fury!”
Everyone stared at the Zoid, slack-jawed, as it lowered its head and opened its cockpit, inviting Twilight to climb in.  Except Discord, who looked like a kid on Hearth’s Warming Day.
As Twilight settled into Midnight Fury’s cockpit, Discord slid his glasses up his nose to hide his eyes.  “Things are going to be delightfully mad now.”