//------------------------------// // Window // Story: Me and My Lord of Chaos // by Abryssle //------------------------------// Staring out the window didn't help much, tragically. The outside was still the outside, and the outside would help me little in my current predicament. Hey, at least Discord likes you, I thought. Possibly in a way that could lead to sexy times. I thought a moment. On the other hand, it might lead to sexy times. Unwilling ones. With Discord. I felt a shudder go over my body. The sheer number of awful things that I might-or-might-not enjoy that something with his range of reality-bending powers could do was an intimidating concept. I took a bite from my apple. I'd barely remembered having it while I was in my room, but away from Discord again, I could fully enjoy and appreciate it. It was slightly crushed; apparently, i'd been gripping it progressively tighter and tighter in my room, so there were indents where my fingers had been. Delicious, mushy apple indents. If I could have just sunk all my conscious thought into that apple and how it tasted, I would have. Heck, I was trying to. But calm refused to come. Presumably, it had gone and stayed with Discord and his calm. They were probably having a calm party back in my room. My sense of rationality is disappearing fast, I realized to myself. The stress of the nonsense going on was more than my pitifully low emotional maturity could keep under control. I sighed. I wish I was able to use my computer right now. Just be alone, me and my computer, and maybe some online comedians. Relaxing. Maybe complaining about how bored I am. There wasn't anything that sounded like a good idea to do; Discord, who I wanted with increasing degrees of desperation to avoid, was at my computer. Playing video games was too time intensive and could well be interrupted, even assuming that the process of dimensional distortion hadn't somehow destroyed my Xbox. Eating would require having unused space in my digestive system, which would not be true, especially after this apple. Sleeping would require me being tired, and besides that, I reaaaally didn't want to leave myself sleeping anywhere near Discord. It felt too vulnerable. I mean, the dude had rubbed my shoulders. "Because that's very threatening," I muttered to myself. It is in the context of Discord having just seen a suggestive image of himself on your computer, yes, yes it is, spoke a paranoid part of me. Or maybe logical. From the perspective of a somewhat paranoid person it was hard to tell. Doesn't really matter. Come on. You'd totally be waiting for something to happen. You know you would, I thought to me. And damn it, I was sort of right. I would be. With that sort of mixed feel of dread and anticipation that you get when you're about to go on a huge roller coaster, or give a short speech in front of a large group. That. It really didn't matter, though, as I had no intentions of sleeping, whether or not Discord would take advantage of the opportunity, and whether or not I would enjoy it. It wasn't a time to give in to madness or perversion. It was a time for... well, something else. It was hard to really say. But not that. I heard Discord chuckling again from the other room. I took a bite of apple. My sanity had just fallen another notch, I was pretty sure. Presuming I was still sane. Even if I wasn't, it didn't help me. That would mean I was completely delusional, and at that point things were going to suck period. For some reason, I couldn't appreciate the taste quite as much as I had earlier. Thoughtfulness, ruining life as per usual. As I moved to take another immediate bite, inspiration suddenly struck like a bolt of lightning born from the clouds of concern circling my brain. A simple realization, overshadowed not more than twenty minutes earlier by irritation. I have a godlike entity obeying my orders. If i'd been speaking aloud, I would have pointlessly cursed to emphasize how awesome this suddenly was. Okay, sure, he was only listening by principle on a rule he set that he could theoretically disobey at any second, but still. Command of a god of chaos. The thought was enough to quietly move contemplation and worry to the side and walk back to my room. Again. My aimless motion through my house was quickly becoming a hammered-home foolishness, but I couldn't have cared less. "Discord!" I called enthusiastically, my energy showing as I burst through my own door triumphantly. "Aaron!" Discord called in the same manner, turning to face me, and stretching his arms wide in a mock display of welcoming, which I promptly got on ignoring. I thrust the hand holding the apple out into the air. "Make this into a-" I thought a moment. This probably could have been more thought out. It probably should have been, even. "Uh... hmm." "I presume that this isn't quite what you were planning to say," Discord said calmly. I nodded slightly. "Yeah. Not quite. I was going to try giving you some kind of request, test the whole obedience thing." I lowered my apple. Rather lamely, I might add. "Yeah..." Discord laughed. He did that a lot, it seemed. "You're so delightfully impotent," Discord said, snapping his fingers. My fingers clenched in subconsciously as the apple held in them vanished and popped back into reality in Discord's palm. "I-" I started to object. But, really... yep. Yep, kinda, indeed. He was a reality distorting immortal, I was an unfit, somewhat pudgy mortal teenager. "I guess. Uh." Discord tossed the apple up in the air and ate the whole thing, core and all, in a swift chomp. "Okay, then, test it." "...What?" "Test it," Discord repeated. I stared a moment. "You ate the apple." "You seem to be confused, here. I don't think the apple is relevant to proceedings. You just tell me something to do, and then analyze the results." I was silent for a moment as I tried to minimize visible frustration. "Ah, yes, of course." I sat down the edge of my bed. My brain was completely empty--I couldn't think of a single order to give that remotely made sense. I wasn't hungry, but I was still stuck on the food thing. Discord turned back to my computer screen, where he was evidently continuing to look through my massive shipping image folder one picture at a time. "Screw the test," I said after maybe a minute of silence. "Hmm?" "I'm just going to trust that you're listening to me for now," I said. "It's not like it'd really affect much one way or the other. I can't even think of anything I want." "Okay, then," Discord said indifferently, flipping to the next image. I watched him do this several times, just stare at an image smirking, and then flip to the next after like three seconds. "...Are you ever going to get fucking tired of that?" "Whatever do you mean, Aaron?" Discord said with painfully obvious fake obliviousness. "Looking through my image collection. Specifically my shipping one." I jabbed my finger toward my screen for emphasis. "That." "I really can't say. You keep getting bothered by it, and that's funny, so, potentially never." He paused a moment, clicking to another image. Luna x Twilight. "And, of course, conceptually this is just hilarious. I'm looking at two sworn enemies making out in the sky." He rested his muzzle on his hand. "Not sure why'd they'd choose the sky. It's not very romantic." "It's not?" I asked, before I could remember I was irritated. "Not really, no. Well, not in my opinion, at least. Though I admit i've been off the dating market for a while. Trapped in stone and all that." He clicked the mouse again. "Okay, nevermind, I thought of something to order you to do. Stop looking through my pony collection. It's... weird." Discord spun the chair to face me, and in a manuver fairly impressive for someon- something, that had only been using a computer for under an hour, clicked the folder closed while doing so. "Done," Discord said happily. "How do you plan to amuse me now?" "I don't," I said, hopping off my bed. Discord chuckled. "Well, then." I heard him snap, and he was waiting outside my room in the hallway. "I suppose i'll have to make my own amusement again." "Mmmhmm," I muttered as I kept walking, turning away from the draconequus. I wasn't really sure where I was walking, but I had Discord hovering over me from behind, which was a pretty good motivator to keep walking somewhere. He kept silent as I gradually made a course to my basement, which was kind of unnerving, really. A several meter long serpentine chimera hovering behind me who seemed to enjoy making me feel uncomfortable; or, in layman's terms, terrifying shit. My theory that everything was back to normal, at least visually, was confirmed as I got back into the room that Discord had appeared in. The room was no longer a massive white space, the tv and gaming systems were back, and there weren't any random, bizarre... things, in the room. I went over and sat down on the couch. Discord, perhaps a yard away, pointlessly teleported himself to the seat immediately beside me. The air stood still, excluding our breathing. It was fairly tense. I felt the impulse to move, and maybe even do something, but my body evidently didn't feel like it, because I wasn't. I glanced over to Discord. He seemed to be watching me intently, which was kind of discomforting, so I turned back away. "So, uh." I started. Discord just kept staring at me. I looked over to him. "What was being in stone like?" DIscord's eyes widened for a moment, and he blinked. I thought I even saw a flash of melancholy, but if it was there, he hid both it and his surprise away after a second. "Hmm, well..." The draconequus stroked his goat beard. "...Cold." "Cold?" "Cold," he repeated. "And very, very, very dull." "Huh," I said astutely. It surprised me that he'd managed to say that with almost no sense of... sadness. I mean. A thousand years of boredom and cold. I'd be pissed. "Well, ok then. That's an insight." "Really, it's a rather morally questionable punishment. On the upside, though, you don't have to worry about much when you're a statue. Besides ponies with gum." He gave an exaggerated shudder. "Ugh." "Was it lonely?" I asked. He didn't seem to mind, so... why not? It was something interesting to contemplate. Centuries of imprisonment; an idea beyond true human comprehension. Not that some fanfic writers hadn't tried. "What do you think?" Discord said with a playful sarcasm. "...Yes," I said. Okay, "would it be lonely" probably isn't the part outside human comprehension, me. Discord smirked. His upper body twisted towards me, but his lower half didn't move at all. It was strange, but it looked somehow completely natural at the same time. "Correct 100%." "Can a one-word answer really be partially right?" I said immediately. Discord's smirk widened a bit. It gave it a slightly feral look, that sort of smile where the teeth are showing in an "i'm going to bite you," way more than a "I am happy at this moment," sort of way. His mismatched paws came together to form a flat level, which he promptly rested his chin on. His smiling at me over that small, artificial platform from two feet away just felt bizarre. His neck was arched to do it too. "Well, i'm not quite sure. If I wasn't 100% lonely during my short retreat to stone skin palace, would "Yes," be a 100% correct answer?" I opened my mouth to respond, but one of Discord's arms darted out and pressed a silencing finger to my mouth. My hand jerked up and grabbed his wrist reflexively. That, too, was bizarre; Like. No one actually does that. It's just something that wasn't really an effective means of silencing someone. Seems to be working fine for him, though. Indeed, i'd stopped speaking. "I would like to note, though i'll not yet invoke my exception, that you've steered the conversation towards how lonely i've been for... mmm, the past millennium or so, while sitting not more than a yard away from me." His finger moved away, and my hand fell limply off his arm as it withdrew from my personal space. "You are trying to avoid me physically toying with you, right?" I'm not sure. "Yeah, haha, yeah..." I scooted a little further away from Discord. Which didn't do much, considering I was already at the edge of the couch, but every little bit counted. I felt myself blushing. Discord twisted his body further in the direction he'd already turned, and then, in an elastic twist, spun his body 270 degrees in the opposite direction with a loud crack. Then he returned to a normal sitting position, giving a contented sigh while slumping back against the sofa's back. "...You are a much better audience than my last crowd. You respond in the way a normal person would be expected to." "I don't think a normal person would react quite like this to you flirting with them, to be entirely honest," I said immediately. He laughed. "Perhaps not. Still. The point that you're a much better audience than the folks back home stands." I shifted in my seat. I'd gone from bored, to trapped uncomfortably close to Discord. And in conversation with him. "We'll see how long that lasts," I said quietly. "You being a good audience? Well, that lasts until I get bored. Which could be a while. You have a whole new set of cultural values for me to bend and disregard in front of you." The feral quality in his persistent grin really shined. Like. Bright, straight into my eyes. "Plus, you're a weakling, but one I can't directly influence. A perfect setpiece on my board." "Wow," I responded flatly. "Glad to know i'm so perfectly amusing to you." "It does have advantages, you know. Though you have yet to capitalize on them." "The obedience game thing?" I said without changing my tone in the least. He grinned. "I'll give you this, you do display occasional bursts of intelligence." "It's not like i'm gonna use that for much. I can't think of anything to do with unlimited power." Discord just laughed again at that. I waited for him to stop. And then maybe make a witty comment. A second passed. It seems... i'm becoming slowly desensitized to Discord's mannerisms, including laughing at everything. That seems dangerous somehow. His laughter gradually dropped off, and he turned back towards me. "I'm genuinely growing curious as to what you do want, Aaron." I'm curious about what I want as well, I thought back. That was getting harder and harder to discern, right alongside my degree of sanity. "I dunno. Maybe some pie, when I get hungry again." "Sounds good," Discord said. "You can never go wrong with pie. I once defeated a rebellion with pie, in fact." "What, like in Over a Barrel?" Discord raised an eyebrow questioningly. I processed why for a few moments, and then started to explain. "See, that was a different episode in the My Little Pony show I watched, where some buffalos and some ponies fought, and the ponies used pie to attack them-" "Well, then. Yes. Vaguely like that, I suppose. Were those pies explosive or filled with spikes, out of curiosity?" I felt a shiver of grim mirth. Lethal pies. Of course. "I think it was apples, actually." "Hmm, I wouldn't think that would be effective." "Well, it wasn't. I mean. They ended up having a treaty because a buffalo ate some of the pie filling, and-" I heard a grinding, coming from a small distance away. The sound of a motor moving and the rattling of plates. It was a familiar sound, the sound of a garage door opening. The sound of a garage door opening. "Shit!" I said under my breath. "What is it?" Discord said calmly. "My parents are here!" I said back. "Ah," Discord said. "So, you want me to leave then?" "Yes, that would be ideal, yeah," I said, somewhat hurriedly. The garage door had stopped moving. Discord gave a chuckle. "Alright then." He snapped, and the normal flash of light happened. For some reason, though, the room disappeared, but Discord didn't; he was still right beside me, in the middle of... swirling darkness?. Then, not a second later, everything got bright. That hurt my eyes.