The Cutie mark Chronicles
It had been a rather normal morning for Luna, she had finished with her advanced music class, dismissed her students, and had found herself walking through the school’s gardens, a certain spirit by her side. Discord always had a way of reading ponies, back in the old days that had been quite dangerous, but now…well…it just made him a better friend, able to tell when and how a pony was feeling down. He looked sideways at Luna, his yellow eyes studying her, as if looking right through her skull and peering into her mind.
“You’re thinkin’ about her again aren’t you?” he asks, to which she nodded.
“I’ve done all I can…but I don’t know whether it’ll be enough” She said with a sigh
“Whatever is doing this…it’s strong, very strong. I don’t think I can separate it on my own…” Her thoughts turned to the 6 orbs, currently acting as a center piece within the main hall of her castle. She had told nopony what they really were; they just assumed it was sculpture that the lunar princess had taken a liking to.
“You know you could always tell them. If they knew they’d work towards bringing someone up to bond with the elements.” Discord said, looking down at her, raising an eyebrow slightly, wondering why she hadn’t done that before. Luna, sadly, shook her head.
“You know very well what kind of ponies live in the capital. Had I been so blatant about it they would’ve raised somepony self-righteous and egotistical to bare the title and they would have completely missed the point.”
I could pick out someponies you know. It’d be easy.” Discord offered. Luna began to giggle.
“What?” Discord asked, sounding offended.
“You don’t see the irony of the Lord of Chaos hand picking the bearers the Elements of Harmony?”
Discord paused, fiddling with his beard a little bit as he thought
“Okay point taken…” He finally relented. The two of them continued to move through the garden, Discord distractedly snapping his fingers, each snap turning the flowers around them a different combination of colors; turquoise, rainbow, bright yellow with pink polka dots, black with purple zigzags.
Just as he stopped Luna felt a rumbling in her hooves, turning she saw a giant pillar shooting into the sky, air displaced and sent outward, before it crashed back in on itself in the center.
“What in the-“She began, before the shockwave hit her full force, knocking her off her hooves accompanied by the most bizarre musical score she had ever heard. It seemed random and chaotic and yet at the same time such order, a steady beat, an infectious rhythm, and the constant and hypnotic “Wub wub wub”. It was like order and chaos decided to go dancing. Luna shot a sideways glare at Discord, who shrugged.
“Wasn’t me.” Just as the words left his mouth there was another explosion from directly behind them.
“That’s the testing building!” Luna gasped, quickly getting to her hooves, Discord snapped his fingers before she could take a step, the two disappearing from the spot and reappearing in front of the door to the testing halls. L.U.N.A. was a finishing school by nature, anypony who wanted to study up on whatever field they were heading into could ask for no better place than L.U.N.A. to study from, but there were certain tests required for entering certain fields of study. It seemed today that explosion, whatever it was, had caused somepony to have an accident during a test.
“You go find out what in Tartrus caused that boom! I’ll get things under control here!” Discord nodded once, gave a little salute that knocked his head off his shoulders sending it rolling down his back before he snapped his fingers once again and was gone.
Luna barged into the testing chambers, to find…well to put it bluntly, what looked like one of Discord’s final exams. The place was a mess of papers caught up in a whirlwind of magic, two of the teachers running the test, both unicorns, were dangling from the vaulted ceiling, their horns fused to the stone. The third, a peagsus, had been turned into a stone statue.
Desks were growing feet and starting to wander around and in the middle of the swirling energy was a little filly, no older than 10, her eyes a glow and her horn crackling with the magical output. Luna couldn’t help but stare, for a second. Such powers from somepony so…no, focus Luna!
The Princess marched into the cyclone, ignoring the papers folding themselves into paper cranes, dragons, stars, and origami instruments which played as she passed. The Lunar princess lowered her head down to the unicorn’s level and gently put a hoof on her head
“You may stop now” She whispers softly. The unicorn turns her eyes towards Luna, twitching slightly as she struggles contain the raw power…but the storm slowly began to fade, the unicorn returned to the floor, looking dazed and a bit confused. Within a few moments Luna had righted the room, releasing her staff from the various enchantments and returning the filly’s parents (Who had been in a corner, turned into a set of potted plants) back to normal before turning her attention to the unicorn shyly scuffing her hooves on the floor, refusing to meet Luna’s gaze. Slowly Luna lowered herself own to the child’s height.
“What’s your name?” She asks softly, the mint colored pony jumping slightly as the princess spoke to her.
“L-lyra, Lyra H-heartstrings” She mumbles, still on the verge of tears.
“Well Lyra Heartstrings, you seem to have quite the impressive gift. Tell me, what were you applying for here?” Lyra glanced away
“En-enchanted music and Anthropology” Luna raised an eyebrow at that, not many ponies took anthropology…then again not many knew what anthropology is. The species it studied were so hard to come by that Luna had never seen one before, the subject had been squeezed in with mythological studies and currently only had 3 students taking it.
“Well…a gift like yours shouldn’t be squandered” She said with a soft smile.
“How would you like to be my personal student?” Lyra’s eyes widened slightly
“I-I don’t understand don’t y-you already-?” Luna patted her gently
“Those are classes with many other ponies, I’m only one of three teachers in that class. What I’m asking is would you like to be the pony taught directly by me.”
Lyra couldn’t contain herself any more, she began to bounce around the princess, squealing
“Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes!” Luna couldn’t help but smile feeling that little tug in the back of her mind, one she had last felt over 900 years ago, though much weaker than it had been before.
“Well” She thought, “One down, 5 to go”
Discord appeared about a mile outside Ponyville, where he estimated the blast originated, quickly clicking his fingers once again the moment he landed. He didn’t like taking on disguises when he left the school, but after a rather eventful trip to Las Pegasus that ended with a rather moody Luna, a hung over Discord and a city covered in snozberry jam Luna had insisted he not draw attention to himself if he could help it.
The form he took today was one of his favorites; a brown unicorn, with light gray eyes, a short black mane, tail, and beard all striped lightly with gray, dressed in a suit with a little green bow tie. He fussed with his tie for a moment, glancing around, nopony had seen him…coast was clear it seemed. He began to trot quietly into town. Nopony would suspect this young smart looking unicorn with the scroll cutie mark was really a near omnipotent spirit of chaos and disharmony.
He made his way through town, his eyes scanning the place, finding almost nopony in the street, they were all gathered, it seemed in the park in the middle of town. Weaving his way through the crowd Discord found the source of the trouble next to the town’s baseball diamond; a scorched and twitching white unicorn with bright electric blue hair, currently missing her eyebrows and grinning as she twitched on the grass next to the remains of a large destroyed contraption. A pair of nurse ponies lifted the unicorn up on a stretcher while a purple pony in a baseball uniform quickly followed them, tearfully muttering her apologies over and over again.
Discord began to ask around to see what the ponies in the crowd knew. From what he could gather, the pitcher, the purple pony, had been throwing wild pitches all day. After one was hit way foul, it bounced off a sign and hit the unicorn’s giant speaker thing, which then kind of…blew up. Discord shrugged, he had seen weirder things happen. He trotted off to the hospital to see if the pony was alright. He found the pitcher pony sitting outside a room, sobbing softly her helmet on her lap, a beanie with a propeller on it perched on her white and purple curls. He sat down next to her
“Whats wrong?” He asks softly , though of course he knew the answer already.
“I H-h-hurt V-v-v-“ she breaks down into tears again, he gentle pats her shoulder.
“Oh I’m sure she knows you didn’t mean to do it…you didn’t mean to do it right?” She gave him a furious look through her tears.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no I didn’t mean to do it!’ and a ‘this isn’t making me feel better’. But I’ll tell you what I do when I upset my friends” She sniffles and wipes her nose on the back of her foreleg, her slightly crossed purple eyes focusing on him.
“ W-what?” She asks miserably.
“I think of all the good things that came out of bad situations. Now, what can you take from this that you didn’t have before?”
“A ringing in my ears?”
“Besides that.”
“W-well…I got my cutie mark…and I guess m-maybe if I apologize to her she’ll be friends with me..?” She smiles shakily, Discord smiled back.
“There ya go, that’s something you can take from this, just remember to turn that frown upside down when things like this happen, and it’s always helps to have a good chuckle at yourself once in a while too. Nothing is better for the soul than a good laugh!” Suddenly from within the room they heard a loud, excited cry.
“Holy cud! Best way to get a cutie mark ever! That was so awesome!” The disguised Discord smiled and shook his head.
“She also might be a little hard of hearing for a while, don’t be afraid to bust out the megaphone.” The purple earth pony giggled, an act which caused the propeller on her hat to spin.
“Thanks mister” Discord patted her beanied head and quietly turned, walking through a door across the hall.
“Hey mister…You know that’s a janitor’s closet right?” She asks as he closes the door. The only response she got was a soft ‘click’. A pony with a mop bucket trotted over to the closet a moment or two later, opening the door to reveal it was completely empty.
~~~
Discord appeared in the middle of Luna’s quarters not a half second later.
“Luna I-“ He was stopped dead in his tracks by the sight he found. The dark blue alicorn was laying in her bed, a book propped open on her fore legs, her left wing extended over a little mint colored unicorn. Thousands of responses to this fought for dominance in his brain; jabs at Luna for finally coming out, materializing a flannel shirt, references to a tumblr blog that involve a princess and her faithful student being in a very open relationship. But all the ideas withered and died the moment Luna fixed him with a look. She hoofs the book over to her student.
“Keep studying dear, I’ll be back in a moment” She got to her hooves, leading Discord from the room.
She went down a few floors, into a vacant classroom, casting a quick spell to muffle the sounds from getting outside before she turned her attention to the draconequus standing in front of her.
“So what did you find out?” she asks quietly, her heart pounding.
“There was a large explosion in Ponyville, some kind of musical device that went haywire. A few of the ponies told me she called it her bass cannon. The pony caught in the middle of it is in the hospital, nothing too serious, singe marks and a few bruises, she might have to wear a hearing aid for a while, but other than that no pony was hurt.”
“Good” Luna said with a smile, looking out at the sunset, lost in thought.
“What are you thinking?” Discord asks, watching her.
“I’m thinking…we have the best chance we’ll ever have to set this right again, and we have ten years to prepare for it.”