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// Discord is right; Celestia CAN be a killjoy from time to time, but she's nice enough 
// Story: Aether, Heir of Chaos 
// by Arcane Anonymity 
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So! After the exciting ride on the candy-scented headache express, I found myself bumbling through Canterlot castle's halls. Everything looked like I expected it to look; cartoony and with outlines. Then again, I see the way I want to see, and I wanted to see something like the show for ease of recognition, so the transition period until I stopped seeing the outlines was about a day.

I was near the throne room and I... may or may have not accidentally tripped over the guards. Before they could recover, I hissed "Silence, please!"

They regained their bearings and tried to raise an alarm, but no sound came out of their mouths. Figuring I had used magic without knowing, I just commanded them to sleep and carefully set them out of view.

My head still felt like a demented cartoon chimera had assaulted it with a giant, humorously-shaped confectionary. Which was exactly what had happened.

Setting my ear against the door, I pushed it just a crack and tried to make out what was one of my favorite princesses up to.

She was nervously muttering to herself, but I wouldn't have picked it up without my newfound powers - even if I was wielding them like a neanderthal would a cudgel. Apparently, Discord's statue disappeared into thin air without any sort of signal whatsoever.

Yesterday.

Discord might have done that 'time delay' on purpose, just to make things more difficult for me. He can be spiteful like that.

His statue was on the gardens because it's very easy to check up on something that way, she can merely look through her window for visual confirmation (given that he can be stealthy when he wants to, both physically and magically, this is a great idea). The heavy presence of guards is justified - hey, we're talking about the castle grounds! And so is the obscene amount of alarm wards all around the garden - not even Discord could avoid all of them for long, that's why Celly had the 'spontaneous' idea of interrupting her meeting to check 'if her daisies were left in the oven' .

Hey, it's hard to come up with a good excuse when you're feeling horrified because the one other soul you'd bring to combat against such a powerful being is still so weak she can't hold her 'windless waving hair' during the daytime. Cut her some slack.

Anyways, she was waiting for the six to arrive. Even if Luna was OK now, it was still a bad idea to fight in the middle of Canterlot.

(For reference, her 'loss' against Chrysalis was because Chrysy was reckless and poured a whole lot of power and compressed it greatly into her beam. Trying to overcome that thing could have caused an explosion so violent, it likely would have killed everything in the room save for Celestia and maybe Chrysalis. And everyone in the adjacent rooms. And above. And below. It surprised her and she couldn't do something about it in time, earning her an injury that felt 'like my horn was replaced by a red-hot iron spike stabbing directly into my brain'.)

Anyways, it seemed like the whole castle was bathed in chaos magic, explaining why I went by undetected. The downside was that Celestia was so on edge that making my case would be really hard. I decided to wing it, since time was against me.

I pushed in the enormous double doors like they were nothing, and yelled. "I bring news of Discord!"

Unfortunately for me, Luna decided to teleport in right before I opened the door, so I had both princesses glaring down at me like they wanted to buck my head.

"A human!?" Celestia scowled, and it was terrifying! She was very angry, but given the old myths and her own clairvoyance, I can't blame her. Not to mention that she thought I was in league with him.

"Where are the guards?" Luna asked, full of authority. "And what do you know of Discord?"

"Ehh... both questions are related, actually." I gulped. "See... Discord decided he doesn't like it here anymore, so he retired."

There was a commotion outside the throne room. Misunderstandings arose, conclusions were drawn, Dash and Twilight yelled something, and then Dash tried to tackle me at about a hundred kilometers an hour - impressive for the short distance available for acceleration. It was all fairly quick, but I refused to fall prey to the 'human is mistaken for a monster and is attacked by Applejack/Rainbow Dash before he has a chance to explain himself or even speak at all' plot device.

So I didn't.

"Stop! Please, stop!" I yelled in frustration, only for Luna and Celestia to look at me like... well, they already wanted to attack me.

I turned around and saw Rainbow Dash floating in midair, her outline flashing red. Neat, I had videogame-themed magic! Though the ponies were not amused. They were also wearing the Elements, but something (instinct? My future self?) told me not to worry too much.

"What did you do?!" Celestia roared, not helping my headache.

"I don't know!" I yelled; I was feeling very tense. "This is why you sit down and listen before trying something stupid like attacking someone you don't know anything about!"

And it was a good idea to prevent ponies from hitting me, since it was like trying to hit Celestia or Luna; even when knocked unconscious, thus being at my most vulnerable, it would be like hitting steel. Conscious? Think Shining Armor's city-wide protection spell concentrated into the physical space we occupy. (That is to say, a bad idea!)

Unless you have order or chaos magic on your side, but that's another thing.

"I can fix this." I told the paralyzed pegasus, since I knew she could still hear me. "But you have to relax, alright? Enjoy life from time to time, stop rushing everywhere."

I concentrated really hard, even through the needles in my brain, and the light stopped.

"Sorry dude." She said with a stoner's grin on her face, fluttering in place, and we all stared at her dumbfounded. "Like, that wasn't cool of me. Like, not at all."

If you haven't figured it out by now, chaos magic does what it wants with what you do and say if you don't will it down. I told her to relax and enjoy life, hence, her senses were enhanced to the point she's as good as high.

"Whoa, dude, you look like a shaved ape." Dash said, and I knew Celestia was about to bore a hole on my skull with her glare.

"Yeah, well, you can all go home now!" I said, trying to distract the blitzed pegasus, prevent her friends from trying to attack me again, and answer Celestia. "Discord isn't coming back! He gave up! Passed the torch! He doesn't want anything to do with you!"

Thankfully, the revelation startled the royals enough to interrupt the 'death glare' mode.

"Whoa, like, for real? Too bad, his eagle talon reminded me of Gilda..." Dash again, but she was soon distracted by the stained glass windows. "Hey girls! Like, have you looked at these things before? Like, really look at them?"

"I'm sure that will wear off soon." I said. "But yes, 'for real'. He said he doesn't want to escape only to become stone again, so he plucked me from my homeworld and made me his heir."

"Awesome." Dash said, still drunk on life.

"And do you intend to bring chaos to the land?" Ah, Celestia, always down to business.

"Discord told me in no uncertain terms that I have to so that we'll all survive."

"Twilight, now!" Celestia said, obviously not hearing the important bit of what I said.

"Sister, no!" Luna said, obviously doing what Celly hadn't.

They did their floating, glowing thing, while I raised my arms in reflex and wished for 'big guard', 'magic counter' and 'mirror' spells. Luna tried to cast a shield spell on me, but it bounced off my reflectors and targeted Celestia instead.

For the record, the 'Rainbow of Light' can be considered a formality; as soon as the Elements are activated, they have already hit you. It's why neither Nightmare nor Discord teleported out - their magic was short-circuited! That mine still worked had to be the biggest clue that I hadn't earned myself a granite body. And I haven't, yet.

Instead, she saw that the rainbow was circling around me without doing anything and accused me of doing something.

"Nothing! I swear!" I said, lowering my hands.

I had great curiosity, so I stuck my finger on it. It was... warm, and felt like a river coursing around my hand. A river made out of the capacity of sentient beings to feel at peace with one another and themselves. I pulled my hand back and found a little bit of glittery rainbow stuck to it, so I did the only logical thing when faced with magical residue of such high potency it can alter reality.

I tasted it.

And let me tell you, it was the best decision I've ever made in Equestria. My headache? Gone. With that, I could feel the things around me - sure, given the 'chaos deficit' even the crisp mountain air felt wrong, but I was more aware of my powers.

Since THE Rainbow was quite possibly the best thing to happen to me in the past few minutes, I put my hands in the pockets of my jeans, searched around for a bit, and pulled out two glass jugs of several gallons capacity. I stuck them in there and boy, let me tell you, are those useful.

The problem came when I put them back in my pockets. Not because of it, but rather because the rainbow was losing color.

Then my newly awakened senses began screaming at me that something was seriously wrong.

"What have you done!?" Celestia bellowed from inside a blue dome, again missing the point.

"I'm not doing anything!" I said, now the rainbow was almost completely grey, and I felt a sick, twisted knot in my guts.

"They are!" Luna yelled, pointing at the still glowing, floating group of ponies. "They are trying to force the Elements to act!"

"Girls, stop!" Celestia finally saw the light. The rainbow shot back the way it came and the ponies fell down... pretty roughly. They kept groaning and trying, unsuccessfully I might add, to stand; I had seen drunks better coordinated than them.

"Did- did we get him?" Twilight said, trying to dispel the fog in her mind.

"Actually, he hasn't done anything to deserve getting hit by the Elements." Luna said and, showing her incredible faith in me, added: "Yet."

"It's why I'm here, talking with you, and not taking place Discord's place as a statue." I said, and then, my... I'd say 'inner chaos' decided to be a bit of a jerk. "But NO! You don't LISTEN to the guy that's DIFFERENT! I mean, he's DIFFERENT! So OBVIOUSLY he's evil! Why let him explain?"

Celestia moved to speak, frowning, but I was on a roll. And a small, vindictive part of me enjoyed showing her up.

"I just said that it was for our mutual survival, but why bother? Just sic the Elements on him! Listen? That'd be too generous for the human! He doesn't deserve it! You surely can be cruel to non-ponies."

I made Rarity and Fluttershy flinch, but whatever Discord left me kept screaming and saying that this needed to be drilled into Celestia's skull before something else happened.

"Really, I only wanted to have a little fun! But you... you just used their loyalty to you so that they did your biding without question! How can you honestly say you care about your subjects? Is Twilight nothing more than a pawn to you?"

That one hurt her. Like... a lot. You can't even imagine. She looked at her hooves, mouth wide open in an expression of pained shock.

See, she admitted to having done wrong. To me, but, more importantly, to Twilight.

And it nearly broke her heart.

She'd later admit (privately) that she'd rather give up the crown than lose Twilight's respect. Why? Because she's her teacher! Virtually a second mother to that unicorn! She did everything to nurture Twilight's capacity for love, her sense of justice; Celestia instilled strong morals in Twilight, all to groom her into properly being the Element of Magic - a born leader with a great heart. See what I'm getting at? If she fell out of Twilight's favor, it would be a sign that Celestia just did something very, very wrong.

In this universe, at least, the scene when the others turn their backs on Twilight was staged -at least Twilight's and Celetia's parts were. Twilight spoke privately with the princess, and she'd admit that Cadence had been acting odd lately but tried passing it off as pre-wedding jitters. Theory that flew out the window when Twilight said 'Cadence' shrugged her off, since the real one couldn't shut up about seeing Twilight again, and Celly thought that their meeting would be excellent stress relief. Another private talk when Twi' saw the mind control spell (a spellcaster worth his salt really can't confuse those with headache relief spells in here), and that set it; they made up the whole thing to get Twilight and the fake Cadence alone together and get captured - acting every bit of the way, in case she had spies. Celestia had to use the ages of experience she had to stop herself from smiting the fake; especially after seeing Twilight's friends abandon her like that, since that couldn't have happened (the way it did) without more mind control thrown into the mix.

God knows I know that Twilight can need some 'alone time', but not like that! Rainbow Dash nearly went off on a changeling revenge hunt once the party died down and she began to think about it.

With that for context, I hope that whoever listens to me knows just how deep the wound I made was.

But sometimes you have to get burned by the fire before you can respect it.

Luna was not amused.

Still, having my petty desires sated, I just shrugged it off. "No big deal, I wasn't hurt, so I forgive you. Just... forgive my outburst, I felt like I would explode if I didn't say anything."

"It-it's fine." Celestia said, still halfway to catatonia; Twilight rushed to her and gave her a much needed hug. "I- forgive me, Twilight..."

Twilight didn't say anything, she let her body do the talking. Luna, too, decided to comfort her sister.

I had to make the suggestion of calling off the state of emergency, and we needed to have a nice chat about Celestia's disdain for humans... but that was boring stuff, since I had to stay out of view for like... ninety-percent of the rest of the day, all the while listening to Luna recount the old, gruesome tales of humans which were monsters among monsters. That and horrible things Celestia saw through a scrying pool, which might have colored her perception.

I'd rather listen to the griffins' human myths.

That's a tale for another time, though. Agh! Sorry, my- ah! My everything hurts! Ah, wait, the medication is kicking in, ah... I have to rest for now, but if it isn't me, someone else in this chaotic realm will recount my story.

To whoever might concern, thanks for list...ening...

Zzz...