Twilight was tense and twitchy as the train passed rapidly through the countryside. As it did, she tried not to look out the windows.
With every minute that passed, she could see things change. A vast stretch of grasslands had become a gigantic checkerboard. A forest had turned inside out, with roots stretching up to the sky, and moles swimming around through the air in confusion.
Her friends weren't faring much better at the sight of Equestia slowly falling to chaos.
She noticed Applejack shudder as the train passed by a grove of fruit-trees. Not hers, thankfully, but it wasn't hard to imagine what might be happening to Sweet-Apple Acres, just judging from how the lemon grove's fruits had been turning from lemons directly into glasses of lemonaid, hanging from the trees by thin glassy stems.
"T'ain't right," Applejack says, shuddering with revulsion, her Earth Pony sensibilities driving her to illness at the sight of the natural order being defied.
Pinkie giggles. "Could be worse. At least this time the world-ending threat is a little funny," she admits, gesturing to a pond where a large group of ducks seem to be completely normal, aside from the big clown noses attached to them all, and the loud horn-like honks that they make rather than duck-honks.
Fluttershy balks. "Oh, those poor dears," she says, looking at what Pinkie pointed out.
"It doesn't matter. Funny or not, we're going straight for the Elements of Harmony and putting a stop to this. Have any of you read the history books detailing the last time Discord was freed?" she asks, just to be sure.
When all of her friends shake their heads negatively, Twilight purses her lips.
"It was a very dark time in Equestria's history. Just to give you an idea, nearly half of all Equestria's magical illnesses can be directly traced back to the last time he was free. Cutie-pox, Feather Flu, Hay Fever, Spontaneous Duplication. All of them 'Pranks' he pulled," Twilight insists, giving Pinkie a look that makes her realize that checkerboard plains and long-legged bunnies might be the least of Equestria's worries.
"I don't think I need to remind any of you how awful it was when we ran into that Poison Joke, that one time," she finishes, causing all of her friends to simultaneously flinch.
"Right, we gotta kick his butt," Rainbow Dash nods, pounding one hoof into the other menacingly.
"While I would love absolutely nothing more than to fight two different fights at the same time against ponies that have no chance of harming me, I'm afraid I'm going to have to decline," Discord says, huffing with his arms crossed, sitting across from the others, who leap to attention.
"You wouldn't be saying that if we had the weapons, you low down varmint. Why don'tcha give em back and you'll see how 'harmless' we are," Applejack says as Rainbow Dash flies towards the draconequis with hooves ready to batter them into submission.
With a yawn, his torso turns into a large donut-like shape, the pegasus slamming into the train seat behind him and bouncing off uncontrollably.
"If you really wanted them, you would have gone into the little tower I brought over for you, clearly, you don't, so don't start," he waves them off.
Gesturing to the window, he begins to speak to the glaring ponies, ignoring Twilight, who fishes around in her saddlebags.
"If you'll look to your left, you'll see the wonderful Equestrian Countryside, under renovations by moi. I think it's shaping up quite nicely, as a matter of fact," he says, pointing to a field of checkerboarded grass that the train is running by.
"And if you'll look again, you'll see it again!" he chortles, pointing out how the landscape seems to be repeating.
"So, the way I see it, if you want to save your precious princess and get your precious elements so badly, then a small game is in order. Reach the front of the train, and I'm sure the conductor would be happy to pull in to Canterlot," Discord explains, waving out the window at a clone of himself wearing a conductor's costume at the head of the train.
The others, realizing that something is wrong, look outside as well, realizing that the train has been looping around the same track of countryside this whole time, the rails bent in a giant circle!
With a growl, Rainbow Dash jumps up from where she crashed into the seat earlier. "Don't worry girls, I got this!"
She leaps out of the window, flying as fast as she can to the head of the train. Moments later, she crashes through the window on the opposite side, landing back in her seat, dazed and confused.
Discord waggles his fingers. "Ah ah ah, no cheating!" he leers.
"You best hurry, I'm not sure how much longer your precious princess and her loathsome lord can handle their little tussle with me!
"Or don't, the view is getting quite nice, after all," he shrugs, as Twilight finally gathers up the shining crystal orbs that she was looking for, using the Materia to flood her body with combat magics.
"Ta!"
And with that, the spirit of chaos and disharmony disappears, as if he were never there at all, just in time to avoid Twilight in her blazing fanged glory blasting a molten hole through the seat he was in, and the rest of the train car behind it as well.
"Are we really going to just play along with that brute's game?" Rarity exclaims, glaring at the spot where he was sitting.
Twilight's slit eyes narrow. "I don't think we have a choice," she says, jerking a bit as Fluttershy puts a hoof on her shoulder.
"We'll get through this together, ok?" the shy pegasus manages, staring at Twilight's magically enhanced form fearlessly.
After a moment, Twilight nods with a sigh. "Alright girls, let's do this, there's nothing Discord can throw at us that we can't handle!" she says, trotting over to the door of the train car and wrenching it open with telekinesis.
Gilda feels the sword guiding her as she glides towards the city, wind whipping through her wings as she banks towards the train currently going in circles near it.
Smashing through one of the windows, she spots Rainbow Dash and her friends acting totally crazy.
"That ain't the whole truth! Now be honest and fess up!" Applejack demands, jabbing a hoof at Rainbow Dash who is saluting at everyone nearby.
"Yes ma'am! I wasn't allowed to sleep in a cloud bed until I was ten due to bedwetting, ma'am!" Dash shouts with military fervor, obeying instantly.
Rarity, in a corner of the train is scratching frantically on a piece of paper, trying to cobble together a deed to everything she owns and who she's giving it away to.
Pinkie Pie, in the middle of the aisle, is thrashing and laughing uproariously, unable to do much more than flail around on the ground in a giggly fit.
Fluttershy, meanwhile, is huddled under one of the seats. "Why can't we all just get along?!" she wails, covering her head with her hooves.
"Girls, please, you need to calm down, Discord is messing with your head!" Twilight tries to say to them, only for it to be drowned out over the sheer volume of magic spells spewing from her horn. She also appears to be twice as large as she was before, with a frankly oversized mane of purple fire waving all over the place.
Pinkie Pie manages to catch her breath for a moment, before Twilight's words reduce her back to a useless giggling wreck.
Gilda just watches for a moment in stunned shock.
"What the heck is going on here?!" she finally manages.
Twilight looks at her for a moment before quickly looking away before her eye-beam spells start activating again.
"It's awful Gilda, Discord seperated us and tricked us into... Whatever this is!" she shouts, waving a hoof at the maddened state of her friends.
Gilda thinks for a moment, before nodding firmly and following her instincts.
Leaning down to where the butter-pegasus is cowering beneath the seats at her friends and their perceived cruelty, Gilda speaks in as soft a voice as she can manage. "Fluttershy, I need you to do something for me, ok?"
The pegasus, noticing Gilda, nods faintly, but the fear in her eyes is strong.
The griffon almost flinches at the pitiful response, but takes a deep breath and tries to look confident.
"Summon that wishing thing, I fixed the problem. You need to wish everything back to normal, alright?" Gilda explains, waggling the Master Sword for emphasis.
Fluttershy shudders as her friends continue yelling and freaking out in the background, but wordlessly, the Star Rod of Wishes appears in her hooves, and she squints her eyes shut.
"Just what do you think you're doing?" Discord says with disappointment.
Rolling his eyes, he rolls up his sleeves. "Looks like I've got another one to-" he begins, only for Gilda to leap at him with an animalistic shriek.
Teleporting to the side, Discord again rolls his eyes. "Well, it seems we're doing-" he attempts, only for something strange to happen, as Gilda's flying attack instantly changes trajectories in an impossible way, as if locked onto the Draconequis.
With one clean slice, Discord's arm falls off bloodlessly at the shoulder, like a doll's arm being popped off.
As Gilda breathes heavily with satisfaction, Discord calmly picks up the dis-attached limb.
"Well, that was..." he begins trying to pop the limb back into place.
He trails off with wide silent eyes as, rather than reattaching as he wanted it to, the arm simply flops back to the ground, refusing to return to its owner.
"That's not... That..." he attempts twice, looking at Gilda and swallowing heavily as he disappears instantly without a gesture or fanfare, narrowly avoiding her second slash at his head.
With a bright flash of light from Fluttershy and her own Weapon of Light, the train heaves, and begins plodding towards Canterlot once again.
Celestia and Weiss smirk as, in unison, the two of them leap out of the way of a gigantic wad of bubblegum, following up the dodge with a flurry of exploding orbs emitted from their horns.
Discord looks displeased as he uses a large net to prevent them from blasting Caterlot Castle to rubble.
"Alright, that's enough of that," he says, snapping his finger and turning both Celestia and Weiss into rabbits.
"Now, be good little bunnies and stay here while I finish turning Equestria into the most delightful modern art ex-" he begins, turning around for a moment only for Weiss to slam into the back of the spirit's head, smashing it into the cobblestones.
The black rabbit smirks maliciously as he hops away, flipping in midair and exploding into a torrent of smoke that rapidly forms a unicorn once more.
"Any advice, Weiss?" Celestia asks, realizing that her own skills with the spell aren't nearly sufficient to withstand the kind of pain required to rearrange a shadow clone.
Weiss shrugs. "Cast the spell again. Unlike me, you've actually got the juice for it," he points out.
With a nod, the ivory bunny utterly negates Discord's spell by simply summoning a second, new clone.
"You're beginning to annoy me," Discord frowns, plucking his head out of the ground and screwing it back on as he stands up and returns his annoyed attention to the pair, who walk towards him with a smug look on their faces.
Celestia and Weiss share a look before tittering, their laughter taking on the smug, snide quality of gossiping schoolgirls.
"Beginning to annoy, did you hear that, Weiss?" she says, covering her fanged smile with a hoof.
Weiss shrugs, shaking his head with a grin that betrays any attempts at faux sympathy. "Sorry to hear it. It's a shame you can't just mind-whammy us like you're trying to do to the Elements of Harmony right now," he says.
"Oh? You seem to be implying something about my skills, Johnny boy. If I had half a mind, and I do, of course," he says, half of his head disappearing to reveal smooth fur where grislier things are meant to be.
"Then I could have you wrapped around my little finger, in but a few words," he insists with a slowly growing snarl.
At this, Weiss and Celestia guffaw. "You? Discord, you weren't able to manipulate me or my sister when we last fought. If you had, then I imagine there would have been nothing alive that could stop you. Weiss, meanwhile, manipulated me into acting like a slavering beast and rampaging through the streets in a mere thirty minutes!
"I thought my life was over when I realized how he managed to corrupt me!" Celestia giggles, nudging Weiss, who nods with his arms crossed and a satisfied look on his face.
"Shut up. You think you know corruption? I play with the minds of ponies like you play with whiny poetry," Discord says to the laughing pair, teleporting them to the center of the planet with a snap of his claws.
"Oh my god, he's actually jealous," Weiss says, his jaw dropping at the sight as they both walk out of a nearby portal that spews white-hot metal all over the ground, the two ponies unharmed by the insane heat.
"Compared to me, Discord, you're an amateur, a clown. The difference being, you can see a pony's every weakness and make them go against their nature, I can see a pony's every weakness and taint their nature forever," Weiss explains, both he and Celestia firing twin beams of hellfire that twine together like rope as they punch through both Discord and a chunk of the mountain behind him.
"I wonder if he even realizes that we're onto his predictable scheme?" Weiss continues, glancing at Celestia, who looks a bit confused at this mysterious statement while Discord shoves a thumb in his mouth and blows, making the hole in his torso seal shut with a comical "pop!"
"You need to shut up. You think you're so smug? I know your plan just as well, I know every little nuance of it," the Draconequis repeats, trapping them both in indestructible peanut brittle, their smug faces frozen in amber.
He tromps up to the crystalline candy and jabs a pointed talon straight at Weiss's frozen smug face. "You're nothing compared to me, a child throwing a tantrum because he lost his precious toys."
His anger turns into sly cunning as Discord stalks around the frozen duo.
"But... It doesn't have to be that way, you know. Time Travel, the sort you could never quite manage, is well within my grasp, you know," Discord whispers.
With rolled eyes, one of Weiss's Eye-rocs appears from the shadows, morphing into a new copy of him. Another Eye-roc promptly explodes, swapping with Celestia to free her from the sticky entombment.
"Really? You know I killed the last fellow to try and use my old vices against me. You're using stale old material, clowny. "
Before Discord can snap his fingers and twist reality yet again to stop his opponent's jabbering lips, their eyes narrow.
"Face it, Discord. You're little more than a wire-headed buffoon. I can't believe I was so foolish before, you know. I didn't have enough time to study you, the last time we met. I thought your magic was something truly poignant, something like drawing from the emotional confusion of others, or maybe even having something beyond magic itself that let you do what you do. Now, however, I think I've got it quite handily," Weiss explains simply, teleporting to the side as Discord snaps his fingers yet again. dropping an anvil on where the unicorn once was.
"That's how your magic works, isn't it? It's as backwards as you," Weiss says, his smoky form congealing behind Discord, close enough to whisper in the spirit of chaos's ear.
"There are still individuals left alive after your little nap you know. If you give up this pointless charade, I could take you right to them. Wouldn't it be nice, to finally meet with those you loved? To give up on your hatred?" Discord retorts, talking past the dark sage as if he hadn't spoken at all.
Weiss continues to speak as well, Celestia watching with nervous intrigue as the two truly begin to battle on their preferred field. The field of corruption, of attacking the heart.
"When you cast a spell, it doesn't require that you feel anything, no, it doesn't require that at all. And it isn't like dark magic, either, where it can give you the feelings needed to cast the spell... Your magic is backwards. Instead of Emotions begetting magic, your Magic grants you emotions," he says quietly, with a half-lidded stare that looks like it belongs on a snake.
Discord leers. "Or perhaps you don't wish to meet any remaining residents of the former Shadow Realm... You spent your entire life begging for forgiveness from the dead, but perhaps you aren't so keen on finding out if the living are willing to forgive what you've done," he whispers in a poisonous tone.
The two are walking now, Celestia watching as they stalk around one another like wolves, Weiss's sickly sweet revelations contrasted against Discord's threatening truths.
"You never did find Chaos Magic that makes you happy, did you Discord? No spells for love and companionship? It must drive you to tears, knowing that your precious dopamine dispensing chaos can't give you a life worth living. And of course, we can't forget the other side of the equation. A million spells that feel nice to cast, and not a one can take away the little pains in your heart..." Weiss croons, stabbing at Discord's heart in a way that is sickening to watch.
"Has your hatred ever given you anything but misery and pain? You held onto it for so long seeking repentance for your sins, only to live long enough to do things that are genuinely unforgivable. Isn't it ironic? Isn't it cruel? I could take away that hate, if you but let me," Discord retorts, verbal claws raking at his opponent's hide.
Weiss's voice turns teasing, as green smoke bleeds from his eyes "Celestia doesn't even know that you swapped my Vancian magic around to keep me from teleporting us directly to the elements. She didn't even notice when you swapped her clone for her true self, making our entire duel pointless as we stall to get fake ponies to the vault of the Elements of Harmony," he gestures to the white rabbit that Discord had turned Celestia into, one that hadn't collapsed into smoke upon her summoning a new double.
The non-sequitur catches Discord off guard, seemingly, as Celestia gasps with horror.
"But I knew you would. You're predictable like that. You want to win easily, but you don't want to win too easily. You want to cheat, but you don't want to skip to the part where you win. Chasing after the slightest bit of joy and happiness that your magic can't simply feed you."
As if to mock Weiss's statement, Discord begins eating out of a box of Malted Milk Balls, dumping the black orbs directly into his mouth as Weiss monologues.
"I mean really, stealing the Weapons of Light? Trying to corrupt the Elements of Harmony? I bet you thought it would be really clever to move the elements out of the Vault as well. Really drive home how hopeless it all is when we fight our way there only to find an IOU. Then again, if you thought I would fall for that, you wouldn't have mixed up all my stored spells to keep me from casting Vas Avidus," Weiss winks.
"With my Lamp being bound to both my ultimate teleportation spell, and sealed with the magic of the Elements of Harmony, it would take a snap of my fingers to bring the two together, wherever you happened to put them. Not even you are strong enough to break the seals binding me to them, my dear Frankenstien's Weasel."
Discord's eyes narrow as Weiss casts several weak Vances, Discord's corruptive magic having swapped them all around to the point where only random magic spurts out, beams and fireballs and portals spilling over the place.
"But of course, that assumes I don't mind casting every single spell stored in my spirit all at the same time. One of em is bound to take Celestia directly to the elements, so long as I don't mind erasing Canterlot from the map, and my Shadow Clone with it... I can always make another." he continues with a shrug.
"Oh? And how do you plan on doing that? With these?" Discord asks, rattling the box in his paw before popping another one of the black orbs into his mouth, crunching up the materia into nothing.
He peers down into the box.
"Guess I should have saved some for you!" he laughs, regaining control over the situation as he reveals the artifacts he stole mere moments ago.
Weiss grimaces, tensing as Discord wads up the box and tosses it aside.
"Well? Go on, blow up Canterlot. Get our lovely Princess to where I've hidden the elements. It won't cost you a thing! No consequences at all, aside from the part where you forfeit your only chance at revenge on Sombra and get stuck back in your precious lamp with no more Shadow Clone Materia to cheat you out of it," he says with a shrug.
Weiss just stands there, frozen as Celestia gallops towards Discord, breaking free of her own shocked paralysis
"No? Alright then, I think we're done," Discord shrugs, and, with one final snap of his fingers, creates golden chains that leap up from the ground, lashing around Celestia and yanking her to the ground.
"If it's any consolation, you really did irk me, John Doe," Discord says with a snide smile, floating away.
"As for you... Perhaps a taste of your own medicine wouldn't go awry. Might make you a bit more hesitant to seal someone in stone when you have to deal with an itchy petrified nose for a few hundred years," He says to Celestia, cracking his neck twice as he approaches the struggling princess.
"Weiss! Do something!" she shouts at him, thrashing against the chains holding her down.
"He's out to lunch Celly. You clearly don't know him as well as you thought if you thought for one minute that he would sacrifice his precious revenge for you of all ponies," Discord begins, looking back with disgust as he hears Weiss laugh in a low, dark tone, one not unlike that of someone sentenced to death. The sort of laugh that promises a poor decision being made.
"Revenge is the prime ingredient in the fountain of youth," Weiss says, looking up at Discord.
"I've kept myself alive for hundreds of years on a steady diet of jealousy and hate.
"I was able to use the Shadow Clone technique to sneak my way out of my imprisonment by the Elements of Harmony...
"But it's like operating in a fog. Everything's a little warped and unreal. I feel like I'm walking through water sometimes, and then, when I unleash my magic, I can feel my life slipping away," he quotes, ignoring Discord miming "blah blah blah" with his paw.
Weiss's eyes glimmer with insanity. "I'm running on fumes now... But I've got just enough gas left for this," he says, raising a hand and poising his fingers to snap them, to unleash every bit of Vancian Magic still sealed within his spirit.
Discord raises an eyebrow.
"You're bluffing. You're not the right kind of crazy to throw away your life's work on little old me," Discord says, carelessly, waving him off.
Weiss smiles, a slight, small thing.
"What you don't seem to understand is, Dark Magic is self destructive. As a master of the dark arts, I have mastered what it means to go against my own interests. To hate is to drink poison and expect the other person to drop dead. And me? I've drunk deep of the font."
"It's called spite, Discord. Look it up, if they ever get wifi in the garden for you," he barks out, offering one last glance at Celestia.
Discord's eyes widen, and he throws up an arm to snap Weiss far far away from him, but at the last possible moment, Discord's arm falls off, plopping to the ground and wasting precious moments that he doesn't have as he panics.
"Sayonara, Sunbutt," Weiss Noir says with a lazy, two-fingered salute, before snapping his finger as he unleashes every Vance remaining in his body, all at once.
The sphere of raw chaos that erupts from his body pauses only long enough for Celestia to be zapped away in a bolt of greedy lightning, before consuming almost everything but the few ponies that haven't already escaped. The only things spared by Weiss's wrath.
It didn't take long for Celestia to reunite with her student and their friends after finding the Elements hidden in a book in the Ponyville Library. It took even less time after that to reseal Discord, who was scrambling to escape after Weiss's last attack had managed to do a bit of actual damage to the spirit.
It was almost insulting, how easily Twilight and the others defeated him so quickly, so anticlimactically, once they and their elements were reunited and brought to where he had escaped to.
Discord's statue stood as a testiment to the pitiful end of the conflict, the frightened visage of the Draconequis covered partially by the disjointed arm he held up, as if to ward off the elements. As it was carted away by a team of pegasi, Celestia made her way to the crater that used to be Canterlot.
It wouldn't take long to rebuild, the power of three Alicorns in unison would see to that shortly enough, but that wasn't her concern at the moment.
Instead, she made her way to the center of the crater, where a ghost-like form hovered over a soot-stained lamp, the tiny brass object darkening as the black flame from its spout began to flicker and die. Weiss's ability to remain awake while sealed away by the elements fading as the magic of Harmony bid him to rest once more.
"This is it, isn't it? There's no one left to cast the spell for me, once this clone pops. And you can't justify having the Elements of Harmony free me," he says, as the Diarch approaches his mangled clone. His final clone.
"Yes." she says, kneeling down before the dark lord, looking into his eyes with regret as she tries to explain herself to the quietly smiling specter before her.
"After Pluck Night, we had no choice but to imprison you. Your lust for vengeance had left you unstable, self destructive. You weren't ready to return yet, and you still aren't, now. You've only grown more unstable in your half-freed state." she explains to him, gesturing around her as his arms begin to collapse into smoke.
"So long as Sombra lives, you'll hunt him down, even at the cost of your own soul, right?" She asks, as if hoping for a different answer.
"I will. If I'm not stopped, I will fulfill my destiny. I will exact vengeance. There can be no other option," Weiss agrees.
He glances away, wistfully. "I don't blame you for wanting to change that fate... This is your second, and last chance. So don't blame yourself either."
"I won't," Celestia lies, looking evenly down at her fallen rival with pain in her throat that refuses to leave.
He nods tiredly, but it's clear from the glazed look in his eyes that he's not all there, even as he speaks, "Do you think they'll forgive me for failing them? I'm... Too far gone to tell anymore. Too far gone to understand these emotions," Weiss says, lost deeper in memories than ever before, saying things he had already said once before, in some distant era.
Things are going dark now. Sleepy, like any moment he'll blink his eyes and awaken another thousand years into the future.
She could have spared a moment to tell the truth. Maybe the truth was yes, but she spoke before considering it, one way or another.
"Of course."
One of Weiss's remaining left arms collapse into smoke, slowly being sucked back into the lamp.
With the last arm he has, he suddenly lashes out, his arm whipping forwards to grab the princess and pull her close, a brief, furious fire erupting in his eyes one last time, before it fades into sleepy recollection.
"Promise me you'll take care of things when I'm gone. I'm begging you. You're their only hope for peace, now," he repeats a millennia old plea, incoherent and unaware of where he is, his lids drooping as the edges of his body blur like ink.
He wasn't asking Celestia. He didn't even see her anymore in whatever visions had danced across his eyes, and before she could answer, he was gone.