A Discordant Romance
By: ChasetheBrony
Discord
Being the lord of Chaos was a pretty awesome gig. Go around, change the world as you see fit, and generally control all entropy in the galaxy.
Well, It was awesome until that uppity Celestia thought that creating a haven of order in his land of chaos was a Good Idea.
With both of them being in their adolescence at the time, he had (foolishly) thought that he could tackle the powers of order and harmony by himself.
As it turns out, he was wrong. Very, Very wrong.
Celestia and Luna managed to use the powers of harmony and order to freeze him into a statue and render him unable to directly affect the world.
However, they had overlooked one tiny little detail: When an element is crystallized, that causes it to be focused and can therefore be used to create cohesion and will eventually create an increase in power on a localized area.
Essentially they had inadvertently created a chaos cannon.
At first, Discord’s power was severely diminished by the creation of order in Equestria. Being forced to sit in one spot and watch pigeons crap on you is not the best way to retain your sanity, so he began to contemplate the rest of his chaotic realm outside the earth.
From these contemplations, Discord came to several conclusions:
One: The universe is in a constant state of entropy and is expanding chaotically without limit.
Two: Being lonely sucks.
Three: Imaginary friends stop being fun after 456 years. Also, they don’t talk back and make lousy conversation.
And Finally: there are exactly 4.56234203948231094e2345478 stars in the universe +/- 3.43e12532 with an additional 9,453.456 being created every other minute.
Even though his power was rising, he was getting more and more bored.
The closest he ever got to new amusement was when Celestia banished Nightmare Moon to the Moon. They had some interesting conversations, but Nightmare Moon wasn’t exactly the most personable pony, and they quickly grew to hate each other’s guts.
After what is possibly the longest game of “I’m not touching you”, Nightmare Moon lost after 1,000 years.
However, His feeling of victory was short lived and the loneliness quickly set in.
After over five thousand years of imprisonment, the moment had finally come.
Millenia of captured cosmic chaos had finally been accumulated for this one single instant.
All the power of chaos was unleashed through the top of the statue first. Then, using his headcannon, he slowly began to fracture his stone prison chip by chip.
Apple Bloom
School Field Trips were usually fun.
Usually.
The exception being when your teacher parades you through a garden full of boring old statues and lectures you for hours on ponies you never really wanted to learn about anyways.
So as usual she got in an argument with Scoots and Sweetie Belle to try to pass the time.
Soon enough, their argument turned into a full-fledged fight.
After Cheerilee broke up the fracas, the Cutie Mark Crusaders were back into their same bored routine while the tour continued.
“Psst!” Scootaloo whispered over at Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle.
“Psst yourself!, What’s up Scoots?”
“What do you say we go and have some fun?. Maybe we could go and see if we can get our cutie marks by climbing statues or something”
Scootaloo always had the best ideas for getting their cutie marks.
Making sure that Miss Cheerilee was distracted while giving her tour, the three fillies snuck off into the field of statues.
Scootaloo was right! Tag is so much more fun when you have to weave your way through a maze of statues!
giggling while she was running Apple Bloom suddenly ran head-first into a huge statue.
Looking up, she saw that it was the large Draconequus statue Miss Cheerilee had pointed out earlier.
“Hmm... I don’t remember all these cracks being here when we looked at it five minutes ago.”
With a puzzled look on her face, she reared up on her hind legs to try and get a better look at the new fissures forming on the skin of the statue.
Suddenly a bright yellow light began to shine from the fractures, blinding the small yellow filly.
Apple Bloom fell backwards onto the ground screaming as the statue exploded in syrup and eggshells.
A loud booming voice overtook her world.
“I am FREE!”
Part of Applebloom wanted to run away screaming. Part of her wanted to be courageous and stand against the creature. The odd third part of her wanted to bow in front of the creature and worship him.
Looking around, the beast noticed Apple Bloom and froze. Freezing in place, the draconequus stared into her eyes for what seemed like hours. His gaze seemed to reach to her very soul while spontaneously surrounding her with those little chalky hearts and hooves day candies.
Then, he broke the stare, shook his head, looked up at the castle and stated:
“Well, off I go to conquer the world again!”
and with a loud pop and a wave of chocolate milk and strawberry frosting he disappeared into thin air.
Later, the other children and an extremely worried Miss Cheerilee found Applebloom staring wistfully at an empty pedestal in the middle of the garden, surrounded in candy hearts and frosting with a small smile on her face.
PART II
-20 Years Later
Apple Bloom and Twilight Sparkle were gathered in the Ponyville Library basement tinkering on a mass of machinery surrounding a small crystal cube.
Twilight’s horn was glowing violet while Apple Bloom was wrenching inside of one of the larger metal contraptions.
Ever since she had gotten her cutie mark (a slide-rule) after engineering the drawbridge of the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ Super Secret Clubhouse, Apple Bloom was considered one of the best engineers in the Ponyville-Canterlot region of Equestria.
Ever since she had released the dragoneqqus Discord in the Canterlot Gardens twenty years earlier, Apple Bloom had been working on the design for her newest creation: The Chaos Inhibitor. In conjunction with the most powerful unicorn in Equestria, Apple Bloom had spent the past three years designing this powerful artifact.
Combining Unicorn Magic and Earth pony Engineering was no small feat even on it's own. Unrefined magic was inherently unstable and unusable by the earth ponies, while most unicorns were so reliant on magic they sometimes had a hard time understanding the more precise working of the newfangled engines and machinery.
Either way, with a large grant from the Equestrian Science Institute, and some supplemental funding from Celestia’s School for Gifted Unicorns, Twilight and Apple Bloom had in conjunction created some of the largest scientific leaps since the advent capturing steam power.
~~~~
“Can you pass me a number 7 adjustable spanner?” The slight twang of the younger pony’s voice echoed from inside the small metal case.
Levitating the spanner over, Twilight tapped Apple Bloom on the flank with it and then set it on the ground by the other pony’s foreleg.
After a couple minutes of grunting and mild swearing, Apple Bloom finally emerged from the machine with a victorious smile on her face.
“Well, Twilight. I think it’s done! Let’s run some preliminary tests and then we can go ahead and let Celestia know that we are ready for the chaos transfer.” The earth pony trotted over to the output console to monitor the output readings. “Ok Twi, lets start by tryin' to capture the chaotic entropy of combustion. That should be a good baseline test to calibrate the Chaos Inhibitor with.”
With a quick snap of magic, Twilight lit a candle over in the center of the room by the crystal cube. Then she quickly retreated behind the relative safety of Apple Bloom’s console.
“Ok, I am going to go ahead and start feeding magical energy into the input nodes.” Twilight’s horn began to glow and lavender tendrils of magic began to expand themselves to several crystals on the edge of the room. “Input Nodes online. Beginning connection to aether laylines.” The unicorn stated. Twilight began to sweat under the magical strain. “I have achieved magical connection. Stand by and watch for any unusual magical fluctuations while the connections stabilize.”
The arranged machinery and crystals began to light up and hum with a rhythmic pulse.
“Ok ‘Bloom. Its under your control now. I will watch and maintain a shield in case of... accidents”
Tapping at the data inputs in front of her, Apple Bloom did a quick recheck of all the magical displays before flipping a large red switch.
“Feedin’ power to the Inhibitor.... now!”
The cables connected to the cube suddenly began to glow and crackle with power. Immediately after, the cube in the middle of the room began to lift out of it’s cradle and glow a deep crimson.
Suddenly several small alarms on the console began to ping with urgent warning.
“Twilight, the Inhibitor is overdrawing on the nodes! Try to shunt off the energy into the dissipators!”
“I am TRYING to do just that! It won’t go! I am going to go ahead and cut off the power from the leylines.”
With both ponies frantically working to stop the machine, they didn’t notice a blue form coalescing around the Chaos Inhibitor.
“Twilight! Ah’ve lost all control of the device! Get a shield up now! With the amount of energy being drawn in right now, I think the nodes are going to expl-”
Halfway through her sentence, the entire room froze. For a split second there was no chaos in Equestria. Just perfect order.
It is said that the universe abhors a vacuum. Is is the nature of the universt that pure order or pure chaos cannot exists. When one of them becomes absent itself, the universe corrects the lack with a massive correction.
That perfect counterbalance formed itself around the cube. It first resembled a snake, then as it grew arms and legs, It ceased to resemble anything except for one creature.
Discord.
Then with a large explosion, everything went black.
Awakening
Ever since he had escaped from his prison (and after his soon re-imprisonment) Discord had been thinking.
The Draconequus had given up on finding any love millennia ago. Every time he kept thinking about it, he was constantly reminded that there were no other Draconequus in existence. However, even that would have been surmountable were it that others liked and accept him. Unfortunately, few saw past the mishmash of creatures his body resembled and looked for the soul within. All they saw was a hideous freak who sewed chaos everywhere he went.
This fear and loathing was plain to see on the faces of those around him. Even the few who had seen though his mad exterior had locked him in stone to be held as a spectacle for everyone to see. With a thousand years to pout, he had been bent on revenge. Locking away Celstia in her tower, playing with the Elements of Harmony, he had been king.
But his anger had clouded his judgement. He had not anticipated the power of hope, love, and friendship. All things that had been so long denied to him.
Now he just sat in melancholy thought, despairing that he could never even find friendship sealed away in the void of the universe.
His mind wandering, he drifted towards a memory from his first release. The face of a small yellow filly with a candy apple mane. Not looking on him with fear or horror, but instead with curiosity and awe. He wondered what her life was like after his release. Maybe she had a family now. She definitely had friends, that was for sure. Few ponies cared to live without the friends they made so easily.
He was used to being lonely by now.
~~~
Being the lord of Chaos meant that Discord had the ability to ‘feel’ the ambient chaos of the universe. Being of the Universe meant that he was familiar with the galactic sense of balance. For every buildup in order in one area, there was a chaotic event elsewhere to maintain the status quo. The eddies and swirls of the chaos/order matrix surrounded him and were a part of him.
So when there was suddenly a major unbalancing in the fabric of Chaos, Discord got worried and went to investigate.
What he saw horrified him.
What he had previously believed to be impossible, had been achieved:
Perfect Order.
Sending his senses straight to the center of the ordering, he could feel the construct siphoning the magical essence from the earth. He also began to feel it slowly spreading its crystalline growth through the area. Thankfully, the chaos of the planet's core was slowing the ordering enough for him to act.
Leaping into motion, Discord gathered up all the chaos he could and dove into the matrix.
Moving into the zone of pure order felt like jumping into a lake of liquid helium I.
Keeping an open path of chaos behind him, he kept pressing forward toward the center. The close he got to the source, the amount of pure order was so great that he could literally feel it stopping the molecular processes in the world around him.
Soon he could feel his path closing behind him.
Pausing for a minute he began to use some desperate measures.
Drawing on the pure fusion chaos of the far flung stars, the pulled the chaos of nuclear fusion in to blast a path through the order. Knowing that he had to stop the spread he burned a path of nuclear fury to the cause of the order. Reaching the center, he could see the pulsating creation before him.
Marveling at the engineering of it, he was enthralled at the controlled imperfections in the crystal that allowed it to focus the massive amounts of magical energy required to freeze the atoms themselves. In fact, the more he looked the more he realized that what it was doing was simply using the chaos around it to self-perpetuate the chain reaction.
Discord was shaken out of his reverie by a sudden drop in chaos.
Seeking the cause, he realized that he had drained 3 systems of solar power just to keep his channel to the heart open.
With a final gathering of power, Discord collected his chaos and dropped it all in one blow to the cube of pure order.
With a crash of power and the thundering of released magic, the world came back to life.