The next morning, we woke up early. We didn’t want to get there and find that Discord had disqualified us for being late to the party. As we walked through the portal, Luna as a pony and I as a human, we were surprised at how quiet it was. I had figured things would be in the same state as when he had been released the first time: cotton candy clouds and chocolate rain, buildings floating upside down, checkered grass. But as we stepped into the statuary, everything was as we left it. The birds were purring quietly in the trees, a soft wind ruffled the grass, and it was generally quiet.
It was about seven o’clock, so it wasn’t very early, but it wasn’t very late either. We looked around for any sign of Discord, and eventually saw him walking towards us, walking upside down on a road made of clouds, grinning as maliciously as ever. “Hello, my friends,” he said. He was obviously in a good mood. That wasn’t a good sign. “You’re just in time for the first game. Luna, my dear, I’m sure you’ll find your game to be most entertaining. Come, it’s just on the other side of the castle.” With that, he began to walk straight down towards the ground, but rather than walking on the grass, he went straight into the ground. Assuming he had gone to the other side of the castle, we took off and flew over the top, but as we came into view we were shocked by what we saw.
Laid out before us was what looked like a flight course, fully laden with just about every kind of deadly trap imaginable. There were fire rings, acid pools, and swinging blades all over the place. That wasn’t even the worst part of it though. As we grew closer, we could hear the screaming of fillies below us. As we got close enough to land, we could see that the three Cutie Mark Crusaders were trapped in the course, each by her own kind of device. Apple Bloom was perched precariously over a flaming deck, Sweetie Bell was tied over a bubbling pit of acid, and Scootaloo appeared to be the victim of the classic “tied to a train track” trap.
Swinging nimbly out of an overhead cloud, Discord chuckled at his own devilishness. “Oh, ho, ho, isn’t this just delightful?” he asked giddily. “It’s so much fun, it almost seems sinister!”
“You dishonorable, sickening, devil!” Luna yelled at him. “What kind of coward would use children in his plan to neutralize a perceived threat?!”
Discord simply shrugged, like any villain would have done it. “Well, Princess, it was after all your fault. After all, I did warn you that leaving Equestria would cause me to increase the stakes of our little game.” He waved his hand nonchalantly, a glass of apple juice appearing in his hand. Taking a bite out of both the glass and the juice, he continued. “You see my dear, I simply had to think of the one occurrence you wouldn’t think of.”
Luna face-hoofed and sighed. “We weren’t plotting; we were trying to prevent exploitation of our exploits. Just let the children go.”
Dropping the half-finished glass in a burst of flower petals, he continued to stroll about as if he were half in the bag. “And I would like to believe you, really I would! But I simply couldn’t take that chance! So I suppose I can let the children go, but that would leave poor little Sweetie Bell to fall into the acid, and sweet Apple Bloom would fall onto the flaming deck, leaving a very mentally scarred Scootaloo. So it’s your choice. Either you bring them back safely, or they don’t come back.”
Face growing dark, Luna tried to stare him in the eye, despite his floating around our heads. “By gods, Discord, you are the lowest kind of foul I have ever dealt with. When I have assured the children’s safety, you will-”
“Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Discord said passively. “Save the generic and overused threats and insults for someone who hasn’t heard them before. A hundred times.”
Turning back to me, Luna said, “Give me your knife.” I did, and after securing it to her side she began to transform into her human form. I heard the sickening sounds of bones remodeling themselves and changing to fit her new body. At the sound, Discord turned and just stared. I guess he hadn’t known that she could do this.
“But that’s not fair!” he cried. “I designed this course to be near impossible to a flier the size and bulk of a pony! This wasn’t meant for a human!”
Luna straightened up and gave her wings a quick stretch. “Too bad. We didn’t come prepared to prevent the deaths of innocent children, so we have to ‘use the one occurrence you wouldn’t think of‘.”
Enjoying this probably more than I should have, I leaned over to him and whispered, “She likes to use your own words against you like that.”
As Luna took off, I realized Discord was right. Had she still been a pony, she wouldn’t have been able to navigate the course. But as a more aerodynamic human, she tucked and swerved through the course with ease. As she approached and retrieved Apple Bloom in the flaming portion of the course, a train’s whistle could be heard. I guess there was a time limit on the race too. Ducking and diving through the swinging axes, she was fast approaching on Sweetie Bell; the train could be seen coming over the hill. Luan had to slow down as she approached the little white unicorn filly so that she could cut her down while keeping hold of both her and Apple bloom at the same time, but she managed to do it by throwing Apple Bloom onto her back to leave both arms free. She caught the rope with one hand while she cut above it with the knife in her other. She handed Sweetie up to Apple Bloom for safekeeping as she made winding turns and loops around icy geysers and fountains.
As she drew near Scootaloo, she began to see that she may not make it in time. During as straight a stretch as she could get, she threw my bone knife with some of the greatest precision an accuracy I had ever seen in a knife thrower. The knife hit true to its mark, and Scootaloo’s ropes were cut without harming the filly herself. As soon as they were free of the obstacle course, Luna dropped the kids, pressing herself to speeds than even Rainbow Dash would be hard pressed to have approached in such a short distance. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Bell barely held on as Luna scooped Scootaloo up and took her out of the train’s path just in time.
Discord threw down a hat he hadn’t had a moment ago. “Drat! You’re no fun, Princess Luna! It took me all night to create that obstacle course, and you completed it in a matter of minutes! I do hope your husband is a better sport than you are!” He turned almost viciously, but as he finished a shout could be heard from the train, which had stopped at the station a short distance away.
“Apple Bloom!” The country voice that floated was from a very worried looking AppleJack. As she came over the hill saw us though, she began to look very angry. “Rarity!” she hollered over her shoulder. “Move yer hooves! They’re up here, with Princess Luna, Adam, and Discord!!”
“What?” Rarity picked the pace up, turning on so much speed that she gave the farm pony a run for her money. “Oh, Sweetie Bell! I’m so glad you’re safe! But what are you doing here with this monster? Eew, and why do you have such a gaudy rope around your middle? I don’t ever recall a season when brown and frayed was in. And what is all this tacky equipment? I mean, I agree it should all be burned to save Equestria from the eye-sores they are, but why on the castles lawn?”
“Rarity, it ain’t bein’ burned ‘cause it’s ugly, there’s something else at work here. Namely Discord!” she said fiercely, snorting and pawing the ground with her hoof. “Now how bout we start again with tellin’ us here what the hay is goin’ on?”
“Oh, my dear AppleJack, always so serious and to the point. You need to have more fun!” Discord said sweetly, floating around our heads like he had eaten one too many clouds. “You see, once your beloved other-worldly hero was kind enough to start world hopping and causing chaos within space time, I was given the chance to spread the joy of chaos all over Equestria! Admittedly things have been slow starting, since I’ve been trying to entertain him and the princess, but we will soon have all of Equestria in the swing of chaos.”
“Well, ah don’t know about any space-y chaos, but we’re gonna go get our friends and blast you back into that statue where you came from! Come on, ya’ll.”
As the five of them turned to head back to the train, a wall of fire appeared in front of them, blocking their path. “Oh, don’t leave, dears, we were just about to start really having fun!” Discord spoke like a child trying to convince his friends to stay at his house longer. “While it’s true that Princess Luna cheated a bit and turned into a human for my wonderfully convoluted flight course, I’ll have to think of something much more difficult to stretch the rules on for Adam, and that means something much more fun!”
“Well, what in tarnation are you planning to do to him?” AppleJack exclaimed.
“Oh, well, for that, I have a question for you, hero. Which folk hero on your home world do you most admire?”
I was obviously confused. “Uhh, folk hero? Really? Why do you want to know?”
Allowing himself an evil sounding chuckle, he rubbed his hands together. “Oh, I have my reasons.”
Knowing I wasn’t going to get a straight answer even if I did press the issue, I just answered truthfully. “John Henry.”
Discords eyes lit up, and I briefly wished I had said Johnny Appleseed. “Oh, the story of the man who tunneled through a mountain single-handedly to lead his family and friends to the promised land?”
Worried by the fact that he knew the legend, I rubbed my hand on the back of my head and kind of shrugged. “Most versions say that he just dug ten feet into the mountain, but yeah, I guess.”
“Oh, ho, but we will certainly have to use the version where he dug the whole way through! That’s so much more wonderful!” he laughed, doing what I guessed was a kind of victory dance. “Ooh, this is too good! All right, in one hour we will begin the game here. In the meantime, I strongly suggest that you find a hammer or two,” he added, the devilish gleam never leaving his eyes.
…
He left us all alone after that, despite the fact that he had set up a wall to keep AppleJack, Rarity, and the fillies in the area. “So, dear, what was that all about?” Rarity asked first. “I mean, hammers and tunnels? What exactly did this John Henry fellow do?”
I sighed and tried to explain. “There are a lot of versions of the story, but there’s one I’ve always liked best. John Henry was a former slave who was working on a rail road. The train company had offered land to those men who helped, so he was working to get property for him and his wife, Polly. He was the strongest man ever to work the line. He could sink a spike with a single blow of his mighty hammer, forged out of his chains and gifted to him by Polly on their wedding day. It took the next strongest man three or four swings to drive the same steel with the same weighted hammer. After a while though, a new kind of mechanical steam drill. It had been intended to be a replacement for all the manual labor that was being used, and if all the men lost their jobs, then they would all lose their land. A challenge was made by the owner of the steam drill: if any man could out work the drill, the men would get to keep their contract and land. John took the challenge.
“In the morning they started. Whoever was to make the most progress and drive the most steel by sundown would be the winner. John and the drill each worked hard, and in a matter of hours they had reached the mountain. John reached it first by a minute or two, and thought that since he couldn’t drive steel over the top of the mountain, he had won. But as he rested, the drill caught up and stopped in front of the mountain. The conductor pulled a lever, and the drill transformed into a digging machine and began to tunnel through the mountain. John’s hammer fell from his hands, but Polly picked it back up and handed it to him. Remembering his cause, he caught a hammer thrown to him by a coworker. Knowing his wife and his men were depending on him, he began to viciously burrow his way into the mountain. Each hammer weighed upside of twenty pounds, but John swung them like they were feathers, making great progress with every swing.
“Polly and the workers made their way to the other side of the mountain, and as the day wore on they waited for a sign of John or the drill. They could faintly head John and the drill battling beneath the mountain, and they could feel the valley trembling under the force of both John’s hammer blows and the drills mechanical workings. As the day wore on, the two fighters could be heard more and more clearly, the drill clicking and clanging, John roaring with every swing he made. As the sun was near setting, the side of the mountain exploded open with tremendous force and power. Dust and shards of rock filled the air, and for a few seconds the workers couldn’t see who had been victorious. As the dust settled, John could be seen exiting the cavern, tall, proud, and very tired. His hammers glowed white hot with the heat of digging, and his body heaved with every breath. As the sun set, he raised his hammers high in victory. The drill, still in the mountain behind him, exploded, pieces rolling out of the mouth of the cave. The men cheered and hugged each other, and even Polly and the foreman did a dance.
“But the dig had been too hard on John. His arms fell to his sides, and the hammers fell to the earth with a resounding clatter. Polly ran to him to brace his fall as he crumbled to his knees. She laid him back on the ground and brushed some of the dust and dirt from his face. He smiled weakly at her, and gestured for his hammer. She placed it in his hand, and he crossed it over his chest, placing its head near his heart. He died there with his hammer in his hand and a smile on his face. He had worked so hard inside that mountain that his heart gave out, and had still finished the tunnel. He had led his loved ones to their promised land. Legend has it that lightning and thunder is John’s spirit in heaven, driving steel to a new promised land.”
I looked at the ponies and woman sitting around me. Rarity was quietly weeping, AJ was simply slack jawed, Luna was pale faced and clearly trying not to tear up, and the fillies had expressions much like AJ’s, simultaneously letting out a breathless “Whoa”. Rarity wiped her eyes with a white handkerchief and sobbed, “That’s such a beautiful story. You should go into professional story telling.”
AppleJack shook her head and asked, “But wait… Does that mean Discord’s gonna make a fancy drill and make you battle against it? Or is he just gonna see if you can dig through a mountain in a day?”
I shrugged. “I have no idea what he thinks is going to be fun,” I admitted. “All I know is that I need hammers, and I have an idea as to how I can get them. Luna, can I see my knife, please?”
She reluctantly handed it to me, asking a question of her own. “But wait, John died. Do you think Discord is going to see how much it takes before you die?”
Flipping the knife in my hand once, I looked at her sadly. “I really don’t know. I certainly hope not, but given that the villains here have been much more violent towards me, it’s hard to say.” I focused on the knife, willing it to turn into a hammer that would be able to drive its way through a mountain. Dutifully, it transformed into exactly what I had envisioned in my head, a simple hammer with a large, relatively squared head and a strong handle as long as my arm. Stepping away from the girls, I gave it a test swing. It had gained the heft of a real hammer, logically enough, but had kept the grace of the knife or a sword.
Looking back at the worried faces, I said, “Hey, don’t worry. I’ll be fine. But what I do need is for you to stay here. I have to make a quick errand.” Without another word, I turned and threw the scrap of spatial fabric into the air, stepping slowly into the Crossroads and leaving several protesting women behind me.