The Trial of Discord Draconequus

by 42Zombies


The First Witness

The newly-created witness stand was nor a very comfortable place to be. It was a dinky little set of walls that had been set up up between the judges' stands and the tables for the prosecution and defense. The only seating was a tiny wooden stool inside of the enclosure that wobbled on uneven legs if its occupant so much as breathed.

As the first witness to be called, Discord had the dubious honor of being the first to use the witness stand. It felt far too small, and that feeling only got worse when the door on the enclosure was closed. The hard stool was unpleasant to sit on, and the stand itself was so cramped that there was pretty much no tail-room.

If Discord was the first one to use the witness stand, he felt bad for whoever would use it after him.

While Discord settled into his new seat, Chance floated before the witness stand. His butterfly wings were as annoyingly as still as ever. Although his businesslike expression betrayed no emotion, Chance still somehow managed to look smug without even doing anything . Discord didn't know how that was possible; maybe he just disliked Chance that much.

Chance reached into his suit's pocket and produced a small notepad. He flipped through the first few pages before looking up at Discord from over the rims of his square glasses.

“Please confirm your identity for the court. It says here that your name is...” Chance squinted at his notepad. “'Dis-cord?' Is that right?”

“You know it is,” Discord seethed.

“Huh.” Chance frowned in bemusement and shrugged. “And, to clarify, your occupation is serving as the current Lord of Chaos?”

Discord glared at the prosecutor with barely-restrained frustration.

“Not 'current,'” he said through gritted teeth. “Only. I am the one and only Lord of Chaos, no matter what any of you pretenders say.”

“Uh-huh,” Chance said dismissively. He was looking at his notebook once again, paying little attention to Discord. “Alright, Mr. Cord, let me start off by asking a very simple question.”

Chance lowered his glasses and gave Discord a very serious look.

Guiltypartysayswhat?

Whatever Chance had said had been so quiet that it barely qualified as a whisper. It had been more like a sigh with consonants. Discord had to assume that this was some petty attempt to annoy him; that, or he had suddenly become hard-of-hearing. The former option seemed more likely.

“Speak up,” Discord demanded impatiently. “If you're going to keep bothering me, at least be audible with it.”

Guiltypartysayswhat?” Chance repeated, slightly louder this time.

“... What?” Discord asked. “I can't understand what--”

Chance suddenly let out a cry of triumph, causing Discord to jump in his seat. The judges all laughed uproariously, much to Discord's confusion. He looked over towards his table, where Fluttershy still sat. He was hoping that she would be as confused as him, but instead she had her face buried in her hooves in a clear display of embarassment. That wasn't a great sign.

“What just happened?” Discord asked.

“Guilty party says what!” Chance exclaimed, finally speaking at a normal speed. “You said 'what'; that means you're a guilty party!”

The judges all applauded. Chance bowed graciously as they began throwing roses at him.

“That's not fair!” Discord protested. “That's entrapment, or leading the witness or something!”

Bedlam snickered. “Sounds like something a guilty party would say,” she said mockingly.

The Bewildebeest, still recovering from his laughter, sighed and wiped a tear from one of his eyes.

“No, no,” he said, a chuckle still in his voice. “Discord is right. That was great, but we can't actually use that as evidence against him. Sorry, Chance, but you'll need to actually question the witness.”

The laughter in the courtroom died. Bedlam, Dada, and Chance all looked fairly annoyed by the Bewildebeest putting a damper on their fun.

“Fine,” Chance said through gritted teeth. “I was going to keep on asking questions anyway.”

Chance regained his composure and calmly floated closer to the witness stand. Discord spitefully stuck his tongue out at the prosecutor, and he was pleased to see the gesture angered Chance a little.

“Alright, Discord,” Chance said. “Could you please explain to the court when you first decided to stop being chaotic?”

Fluttershy raised a hoof.

“Um. Excuse me?” She said. “Objection? Leading the witness?”

The Bewildebeest opened his mouth to speak, but Bedlam wound up beating him to the punch.

“Overruled,” she said in her strange, wet voice. “We're never going to get anywhere if you keep interrupting the prosecution. Discord, answer the question.”

Fluttershy lowered her hoof uncertainly. Even at this distance, Discord could see that the pony's brow was ever-so-slightly knit with frustration. Discord empathized with her; he was sick of this trial, too.

“I ask you again,” Chance said from his spot off to the side. “At what point did you decide to give up on being chaotic?”

Discord turned his attention back to Chance and glared impatiently at the younger draconequus.

“Frankly, I don't think I should answer such a ridiculous question. I AM chaos. I would never stop being chaotic. Why would you ask a question with such an obvious answer.”

“What about that time you had Fluttershy over to your house for tea?” Chance asked casually. “You stopped being chaotic then. It nearly killed you.”

Before Chance had even finished asking his first sentence, Discord's eyes widened in surprise.

“How do you even know about that?” Discord asked in a disbelieving whisper.

Chance shrugged disinterestedly, as if Discord had just asked him what he wanted to do for lunch. He glanced up towards the judges' stands, where one of them cleared their throat.

“We've done extensive research in preparation for this trial,” the Bewildebeest said from on high. He stroked his mighty gnu beard as he looked down at Discord. “We are aware of all of the facts pertaining to your case; everything you've said or done. There really isn't anything you can hide from us, Discord. Unless you hid it somewhere we'd never look, like the moon.”

Discord stared up at the judges in horrified confusion. He didn't understand how the lesser lords could know all the things they were claiming to. Had they been spying on him? Or did these self-proclaimed lords have some way to read Discord's mind? The latter one seemed unlikely. Even Discord sometimes had trouble making sense of the chaotic thoughts that regularly swirled around inside of his head.

Regardless of if it was true or not, the very idea that he was apparently an open book to these creatures made Discord extremely uneasy. He was a draconequus who valued his privacy.

“Alright, I tried being normal once.” Discord said, trying his best to brush off the Bewildebeest's claim. “But it was a one-off. I never did it again.”

“So you say.” Chance removed his glasses and began cleaning them with a chain of handkerchiefs he produced from his suit pocket. “But how can we know you're telling the truth? How do we know you're not constantly acting normal in secret?”

Discord folded his arms over his chest, unimpressed. “I thought you all knew everything I've said or done.”

“We do,” Bedlam clarified. “But we don't know everything you haven't said or done. So if you haven't done something, we don't know about it. Since we can't know if you haven't been acting normal in secret, we have to assume that you might have been doing it.”

Discord blinked. “But if I had been acting normal, you'd know about it,” he pointed out.

“Yes.” The Bewildebeest said. “But you haven't been acting normal, so we can't know for certain if you've been doing it or not.”

Discord supposed he had to concede that they had a point. What the court was saying didn't make any sense, but it did make a sort of nonsense. There was an illogical logic to it; the kind of thinking that a chaotic being like Discord could really appreciate.

Fluttershy, meanwhile, looked as if she was getting a headache from trying to wrap her head around what the judges has said. Discord offered her a look of sympathy before returning his attention to the case.

Chance set his glasses back on his face and began putting his chain of handkerchiefs back into his suit pocket.

“Let's get back to something we do know for sure,” he said. “Discord hasn't been as chaotic as he used to be. If we were to make a graph tracking Discord's chaos over the last thousand years, we'd see a sharp downturn around the point where he was officially reformed.”

A small smile formed on Chance's face.

“In fact,” he said, “imagine that I have such a graph with me right now.” Chance gestured to the empty air beside him, where a chart like the one he'd described might be. “Please pretend to take a good look at it.”

The judges began making sounds of disapproval, and Discord could imagine why. If the chart Chance had described really existed, it wouldn't have put Discord in a very positive light. It probably had a very sharp decline, or a gradual fall into truly abysmal numbers. Maybe it was even labeled. It would be terrible if that chart existed.

“As you can plainly imagine,” Chance said, “the drop in chaos is a steep one. It plummets down to numbers that are only marginally better than the chaos Discord produced while he was a statue. There are some blips of chaos after this downturn, but it never comes close to equaling the earlier points in the graph.”

Bedlam shook her head. “The graph I'm imagining is shocking. Discord, these imaginary numbers are inexcusable.”

“I am the president of anger,” Dada gurgled. “Disappointment, disappointment, disappointment.”

“Wait, 'graph?'” The Bewildebeest asked, surprised. “I thought we were imagining a giraffe.”

“That's right your honors,” Chance said as he finished shoving his chain of handkerchiefs back into his pocket.. “This graph would be extremely incriminating if it actually existed. In the face of such imaginary evidence, can you really afford NOT to give Discord the harshest sentence possible?”

The judges murmured among themselves. Once again, Discord couldn't make out exactly what was being said. Just like Chance's graph, however, Discord could imagine that it wasn't good.

There needed to be an interruption before the judges reached any sort of decision. That strategy seemed to be working for Discord so far, and he was always willing to try it again. This time, however, he didn't get the chance to interrupt the judges himself; somepony beat him to the punch.

“Um. Excuse me.” Fluttershy was hovering up above the defense's table. She had a particularly stern expression on her face, one that Discord knew meant she was starting to get frustrated.

“You can't present imaginary evidence in a trial,” Fluttershy said firmly. “And even if you could, Chance should have presented the evidence earlier. Everything Chance just said should be struck from the record. If that's okay.”

Discord was pleased to see that all of the lesser lords had been taken aback by Fluttershy's chastising. Even Chance looked a little uncertain of himself. Discord allowed himself a small smile of triumph. It turned out that Fluttershy getting pulled into this mess with him was paying off.

Unfortunately, Discord soon realized that the judges weren't caught off-guard because Fluttershy had chewed them out.

“... Are we supposed to have a record?” Bedlam asked, surprised.

“Courts are supposed to have stenographers, yes.” Fluttershy said, her eyelids lowered in a thoroughly unamused expression.

“First the witness stand, now the stenographer?” Bedlam pinched the bridge of her nose with the crab claw she was currently sporting. “Whose job was it to set up a court stenographer?”

“Not mine,” The Bewildebeest said.

“That was not in this cat's wheelhouse,” Dada said.

All eyes turned to Chance. The blue draconequus hovered with his arms folded over his chest. He raised a single eyebrow in annoyance before sighing and rolling his eyes.

“Of course we have stenographers.” Chance said as he raised his hand into the air. “They're right here.”

With a snap of Chance's fingers, a large wooden door appeared in the middle of the courtroom. It hovered in midair, not attached to anything. Discord had seen hundreds of doors like it. They were very convenient; you could just put them away when you didn't need them, and there was no room attached to take up space.

The door opened on its own, swinging inward on hinges that didn't exist. Through the doorway, which was now just a rectangular hole in existence, Discord could see a clean, well-lit room. From what he could tell from his limited perspective, the room was positively massive. It seemed to stretch back forever. But that didn't surprise Discord anywhere near as much as what was in the room:

Monkeys. Billions upon billions of monkeys of every shape, size, and species. There were more monkeys than Discord could even begin to count. Each monkey was sat at a desk, and each desk had a typewriter. The monkeys were all typing away at the typewriters, their fingers dancing nimbly. The air was filled with the nonstop clicking of the typewriters.

“Oh my stars and garters,” the Bewildebeest said in a hushed tone.

Chance smiled proudly. “There's an infinite number of them in there, all slapping away at the keys at random. With enough time, they'll have produced every possible combination of letters, spaces, and punctuation. That means that, eventually, we'll get a perfect transcript of this court case. Let me show you.”

The blue draconequus reached into the phantom doorway and snatched away a sheet of paper from one of the monkey's typewriters. Smiling smugly, Chance brought the paper up to his eyes to read it. However, once he saw whatever the monkey had typed, his smile disappeared.

'Act 1. Scene 1. Elsinore. A platform before the castle. Francisco at his post. Enter to him Bernardo...?'” Chance squinted in disbelief at what he was reading. “What's this malarkey?!”

Chance raised his head and glared furiously at the monkey from whom he'd taken the sheet of paper. “You're not supposed to be working on your screenplay, Emile! Get back to work!”

Chance balled up the offending piece of paper and tossed it at the responsible monkey, hitting them square in the eye. Discord winced in sympathy while Fluttershy gasped in horror.

Once again, Chance snapped his fingers. The door to the monkey room slammed shut, then shot up into the sky and disappeared into the void above. Chance shook his head, a frustrated grimace on his annoying little face.

“Okay, so they haven't produced it yet,” he conceded. “But they have all of eternity to work at it. Eventually, we'll have our court record, and then we can remove whatever it is that Fluttershy was complaining about.”

With speed that she normally wasn't capable of, Fluttershy bolted out of her seat and flew right up to Chance. She was practically nose-to-nose with him, a furious expression on her face as she looked Chance right in the eye.

“You did NOT just do that!” Fluttershy yelled quietly. “What kind of bully treats a poor, innocent monkey that way? You've been nothing but mean all day, and you ought to be ashamed of yourself!”

Chance was taken aback by Fluttershy's outburst. His eyes were wide with shock as he flinched away from the little pony. All of the smugness that Discord had grown accustomed to seeing on Chance's face was completely gone. It was, at once, both shocking and extremely satisfying.

The Bewildebeest banged his gavel once more. This time, it made a theremin-like sound that Discord couldn't quite identify. He found it pleasant, though.

“That's enough! I'm sick of this case going off-track.” With an angry snort, the Bewildebeest pointed his gavel down in Chance's direction. “Fluttershy is right to chastise you, Chance. Monkeys should not be court stenographers. They should be butlers, and nothing else. Let this be a lesson to you.”

Fluttershy gave Chance one last glare before returning to the defense's table. Chance, clearly still shaken, dusted his jacket off and floated back to the witness stand.

“Alright,” Chance said, a slight crack in his voice. “Now, as I was saying earlier, Discord, your chaos has been in a decline for some time now. Could you please tell the court, in your own words, why that is?”

Discord rolled his eyes. “I already told you, I'm just as chaotic as I used to be. But if you're asking me why I don't get up to the same tricks I did when I ruled Equestria, the answer's simple: I'm reformed. I'm one of the good guys now.”

Chance nodded in apparent understanding.

“Now, why does that prevent you from causing the same chaos you used to?” He asked.

The question gave Discord pause. Off the top of his head, he wasn't quite sure how to answer it. He needed to glance over at Fluttershy, who was quietly fuming, to remind himself.

“My friends don't want me to,” Discord said plainly. “They like Equestria the way it is, for some reason. They don't appreciate the kinds of changes I would make. And since I'm such a good friend, I take their feelings into account.”

Discord gave the question some more thought.

“Also, if I tried to take over Equestria again, they'd probably turn me back into a statue,” he said. “But it's mostly the friendship thing.”

Chance stroked his chin in thought. He began intently studying Discord, much to the older draconequus' discomfort.

After what felt like minutes, Chance finally spoke again.

“You make it sound like your friends are the only thing keeping you from turning Equestria upside-down,” he pointed out. “Is there any other reason? Do you in any way regret your actions from a thousand years ago?”

“Oh, what's to regret?” Discord asked with a wave of the hand. “Sure, the ponies didn't enjoy being tormented every day of their lives, but honestly? I think they were overreacting. It was all in good fun.”

As the memories came back to Discord, he chuckled wistfully to himself. Those had been some good times. They made Discord so nostalgic that he didn't even realize something was wrong until Chance pointed an accusatory finger in his direction.

“You heard it yourselves, your honors,” Chance said loudly. “Discord's letting the feelings of others dictate his actions. He'd happily go back to his old ways of brainwashing the masses or turning the oceans into jelly, but he won't; not because of any sort of moral decision, but because it would upset some ponies. He has, quite frankly, given up.”

Discord began sputtering in disbelief.

“Now wait just a minute!” He said as the judges began their murmuring. “That's not what I said! I mean, it sort of is, but you're reading too much into it! And I've never turned any oceans into jelly in my life!”

“And now he's saying that we read too much!” Chance exclaimed. “He's calling us nerds!”

The judges gasped in horror.

“There is no need for that kind of senseless bullying, Discord!” The Bewildebeest chastised. “You would do better than to insult the few people in this court who are sympathetic to your plight.”

Bedlam and Chance both looked very confused when the Bewildebeest mentioned having sympathy. Apparently, they hadn't been informed that that was a viable stance to have during the trial.

“I have no further questions, your honors,” Chance said as he adjusted his jacket. “I think the defendant's words speak for themselves.”

The Bewildebeest sighed, a small frown on his fuzzy face.

“Very well,” the Bewildebeest said with a hint of disappointment in his voice. “Discord, return to your seat. Chance, do you have your next witness prepared?”

“Um. Hang on.” Fluttershy raised her hoof. “Doesn't the defense get to do a cross-examination?”

“No, of course not,” Bedlam said. “Why would we allow that? We're trying to find him guilty.”

The Bewildebeest nodded solemnly, looking like he was acknowledging an unpleasant truth. “Yes. Even if we did allow it, Discord would have to try and cross-examine himself. And since he already refused to represent himself in this case, that would be impossible.”

“But I should be allowed to defend myself somehow!” Discord said. “Otherwise, this whole trial is a farce!”

“Well, yes.” Bedlam said, bemused. “That's kind of the point.”

Dada and Chance both nodded in agreement.

“Oh. Right.” Discord had suspected that to be the case, but wasn't sure of how to respond now that it had been plainly said out loud.

After thinking some more on the matter, Discord decided the best thing to do would be to just go back to his seat.

“This doesn't seem to be going well,” Fluttershy said once Discord returned to the defense's table.

“It doesn't, no,” Discord agreed. “I don't know much about trials, of course, but it doesn't feel like things are going in our favor.”

With a frustrated sigh, Discord pinched the bridge of his nose and squeezed his eyes shut. He felt like a complete fool. Of course this whole trial was a farce; how had he not realized that sooner? These lesser lords weren't actually interested in giving Discord a chance to defend himself. They were just mocking him. It was the exact sort of thing Discord would have done if he were in their position.

That thought only made Discord feel even worse. The longer this trial went on, the more Discord realized how similar he was to his abductors. He was starting to think that they really had been telling the truth when they'd claimed to be other lords of chaos. But Discord still didn't know how that was possible. After all, they couldn't have come from the same place Discord had come from.

Could they?

“Discord.”

Fluttershy's quiet voice snapped Discord out of his thoughts. The little yellow pegasus looked and sounded concerned. She was looking at Discord with an uncertainty that was more than a little worrying.

“Were you telling the truth when you were up on the stand?” Fluttershy asked. “About how the only reason you haven't gone back to your old ways is because of your friends?”

“Of course it was the truth,” Discord said. He held a paw over his chest, where he imagined his heart would be if he had one. “I know you all don't like how much of a bully I used to be. I don't want to upset the only friends I've really ever had. I promise you, Fluttershy, you all have completely reformed me.”

For some reason, Fluttershy only looked even more worried. Discord had thought he'd been rather reassuring, but apparently he hadn't given Fluttershy whatever answer she had been hoping for.

“Okay.” Fluttershy frowned and glanced off to the side as she tried to find the right words to say.

“That's nice of you, Discord,” she said hesitantly, “but you sort of make it sound like you don't feel bad about how evil you used to be. You do know that the way you acted was wrong, right? You said it yourself: ponies lived in constant terror when you were in charge. That's bad.”

Discord stared at Fluttershy in silent confusion.

“If you two are done with your private conversation, we're about to call our next witness,” Bedlam said in a rather hostile tone.

Fluttershy gave Discord one more concerned look before they both turned their attention back to the trial.

“Your honors,” Chance said as he once more folded his arms behind his back, “our next witness is a victim of Discord's chaos-stifling ways. He foiled her plans to upset the status quo and eventually reduced her to a state wherein she was unable to cause any further problems for the ponies of Equestria.”

“That's terrible!” Bedlam exclaimed. “I love problems!”

“Syzygy,” Dada agreed.

“You're both right,” Chance said. “Except for Dada. But the next witness does not need our sympathy; she needs to be heard! And tonight, in front of a live studio audience, she will be!”

With a dramatic flair that Discord had come to hate, Chance raised his claw and pointed at the witness stand.

“I call to the stand,” he said in his most theatrical voice possible, “Queen Chrysalis!”