//------------------------------//
// In the Time of Harmony 
// Story: The Champions of Equestria 
// by DrakoGlyph 
//------------------------------//

	Standing there before them, appearing as though a veil had been slipped off him, was what looked to be an exact copy of Discord, with one minor difference, he was a mirror image of the true Discord.
“This… You…” Discord stuttered.
“I know you can’t have forgotten me, Discord, even after all these years.”
“I rid the world of you! That fang… it was your eternal prison!”
“And you have released me from it, Discord, and I thank you for that. Now I’m ready to return to Equestria and make it the way you never dared to. I will make it in Chaos’s image and it will be a sight to behold!” The voice and the laughter was the same, but the chills it sent down each of the Cutie Mark Crusaders’ spines was so much different. 
“I can’t let you go and destroy everything Harmony and I have created! That was why I trapped you here, you insidious little brother of mine!”
“Brother? You’re still sticking to that story? You know just as well as I do that I am you. I am the parts of you that you gave up for that silly Harmony. She weakened you; she weakened us. Now, there will be nothing to stand in my way from dominating the World. Especially when I take your Heart of Chaos.” The talons on the mirror-Discord reached straight into Discord’s chest and pulled out a heart-shaped object. The real Discord coughed and wheezed, his body beginning to look like it was aging.
“You… they will stop you, Havoc, mark my words.”
“They who? The Elements of Harmony? I won’t give them the chance. Just you wait and see.” Havoc laughed, and each of the ponies shuddered. “Now, I will be taking the Fang you have, and I shall be off, to reform the world in only the way that it should be!” He plucked the oversized tooth out of Discord’s mouth and vanished into thin air, leaving three confused ponies and one breathless Draconequus.
“What just happened?” Applebloom spoke first.
“And who’s this ‘Harmony?’” Sweetie Belle inquired.
“And who’s Havoc?” Scootaloo said.
“I think it’s time I tell my story before my time on this plane is through,” Discord coughed. “A long time ago, long before the Princesses, there were two draconequui, myself and one other, Harmony. We watched over the land, and saw that it was a grand world.
“Harmony was a beauty, rivaling anything you have ever seen. Though she was a Draconequus like me, she carried it with grace and dignity, in a way that not even I would dare imagine trying to pull off. She was the incarnation of the good things in life, and I was the incarnation of the bad.”
“I already knew where this is going,” Scootaloo said, with an air of distaste. “Love stories make me gag.”
“Would you let the Draconequus talk, Scoots?” Sweetie said, “It sounds like it’s going to be a most wonderful romantic story!”
A glare from Applebloom shut them both up.
“To say that I liked her would be understating things. While we were opposites, there was a sense of completion when the both of us were together. We saw the ponies grow into a civilization worthy of being called sentient. She preached harmony and love, while I wanted to have fun, chaos, and the wrecklessness of being young.
“We may have gotten along well at times, but others we butted heads in cataclysmic wars sometimes, leaving ponies in terror. This only fed my chaos, and made it stronger. I always hated these arguments with Harmony because it pushed her farther from me, and I knew that one day she would never return to me.
“Being the last two of your kind, or actually the only two of our kind, there was some sense to be made in us getting along. We never knew of other Draconequui, and the Ponies certainly never knew of them. They have even forgotten Harmony, and the great and wonderful things she had done with her powers: Laughter, Loyalty, Generosity, Kindness, and Honesty. The ponies all loved her, and so did I.
“But the Chaos within me was growing, it was like a cancer I couldn’t live without, lest I lose everything that I ever was. Harmony was with me most of the time, but when she wasn’t, I knew that those were the worst times.
“I would look into the mirror, and instead of myself, I would see this reflection of a mad, crazed, power-hungry Draconequus, one who lusted for the power and control of all of what would one day be Equestria. I put these feeling away, locking them within the one part of me that I could remove and stow away without Harmony noticing: my left fang. Each day, though, the chaos grew and grew, and I knew that keeping it would only lead to tragedy and loss.
“I had no other option though, but to be a good Draconequus, for ever wanting Harmony to liken to me the way I had her would mean that I would have to leave the path of Chaos and walk along her teachings. I knew it would never happen deep inside, because Harmony and Chaos are pure opposites, and these opposites didn’t  attract.”
“Surely there was a way you could win her heart!” Sweetie said.
“Told you this was going to be a love story, bleech.”
“Silence, you two, and let him talk!”
“Harmony started to notice me becoming more and more anxious, particularly when we retired at night to the palaces we had created in the clouds to watch the stars and the ponies from the skies. She called me on my odd behavior and demanded to know why I was in such a distraught state. It was the Kindness in her.
“She told me that there was another side to the chaos. It was the source of the happenstance that brings lovers together, best friends united, and sometimes those unexpected surprises that bear the most meaning in life. I didn’t believe her in the slightest, for I was the Spirit of Chaos, if anyone in the world should know all the secrets to Chaos, it would be me. I had certainly never seen anything good come from the chaos I wreaked when I had my days.
“She continued to tell me that friendship was the only way for me to overthrow my misgivings. That even the most chaotic of beings had some good in them, and they just needed help finding it sometimes.”
“Bleech with all this love and friendship! Why can’t we just have action in stories? Why must there always be this love interest?” Scootaloo complained.
“It’s because it deepens the story, it makes you sad when one of them has to go away, Scoots,” Sweetie replied.
“For the last time, will you two stop so that we can listen to his story?” Applebloom commanded.
“She wanted so much to be my friend, but I knew that would mean exposing her to my true nature.” Discord gave a long pause that was filled with the regrets he had. “I told her about the Fang, about how I had locked away the deepest throes of my Chaos within it, and of how I could not even bear to look at myself in the mirror for fear of seeing the monster I would become. It was my move of good faith, and I knew that it would be the only chance I had of securing a friend in this world of Draconequui and ponies, for all the ponies I had ever seen feared me, even when I was just strolling though town.
“She asked for the fang, and I knew this would be the end. This would be the point where all of the good in my life would end. She told me, she assured me that she could handle the chaos, that she could help tame the beast within me. It was a nice thought, and I had hope it would work. I took the fang from its hiding place, and handed it to her, and that was when it happened.
“A black cloud enveloped her and began turning her into the monster that I saw in the mirror when I looked for myself. I pulled the fang from her hands before the effects could finish, but she had seen the depths of my depravity, and it was profound the effect it had on her.
“She created her Elements of Harmony and bestowed them on the ponies, instructing them to pass them down from generation to generation to keep me in check, but I knew that would never be enough. If Harmony herself couldn’t tame the chaos within that fang, if I couldn’t, then there was no hope for our world.
“Each night she would come to me, seek to help me overcome the power I had locked in the fang, but each night it grew more and more dangerous, and I soon disallowed her into my castle. I would never let her handle the fang, for I feared it would turn her into my nightmares. It would turn her into the Draconequus that I was supposed to be.
“She grew concerned, and I knew she was distancing herself from me—the one thing that I didn’t want the most in all of our world. And I knew that it would break me if I couldn’t have her.
“Then, one night, whilst I was sleeping, I was startled awake by a noise. Harmony had entered my palace of the clouds and taken the fang. Slowly she became more and more disfigured until she was my own reflection. Her Elements of Harmony, her kindness and laughter, her honesty and generosity, and her loyalty… they became corrupted.”
“Ya mean like when Applejack was tellin’ all those lies and Big Mac was actin’ like a dog?”
“Now who’s interrupting him?” Scootaloo sharply retorted.
“It was an honest question about the story.”
Scootaloo could only roll her eyes.
“That was merely discorded, Applebloom; no, she became much worse. She was tainted, no longer worthy of being called Harmony. I gave him the name Havoc, for she was the image that I saw in the mirror. She was the very thing I had tried to stop by placing all that chaos in that fang.
“So wait… she’s a he? Ah mean… he’s a she? Which is it? You keep saying ‘him’ and ‘her’ about the same thing!” Applebloom asked, expressing the confusion that had beheld all of them.
“Draconequui are not limited to being just one thing, we can change our form as we see fit. It is all in the nature of being chimerical,” Discord responded.
“What does this have to do with chemicals?” Sweetie asked.
“Chimerical, not chemical. It means being like a chimera, made of many different parts.”
“Oooooooh,” the Cutie Mark Crusaders all voiced in unison.
“Now may I continue?” 
The Crusaders looked at each other then gave a vigorous nod. 
“The ponies were powerless to stop her, and she became less and less a her as the time wore on. I fought with all the magic I had, but it was useless—two omnipotent beings could never defeat each other. I didn’t want to hurt whatever was left of her anyway. I always kept alive the hope that deep within her was that good side that I had loved so long ago.
“As we fought I noticed that she, well he,” Discord said before being interrupted.
“See, now we’re all confused. Is it a she or a he!?” Sweetie cried out.
“Havoc is a he, Harmony is a she. Does that clarify things?”
“So long as you stop switching genders on us so frequently.” The other two Crusaders rolled their eyes at Sweetie.
“I finally made a plan, tear the fang from him and lock it away within a realm that only I could access, and the world would be rid of Havoc, and I would have my Harmony back again. The plan took some time to prepare…”
“Alright!  The action part!” Scootaloo said!
“Where have you been? It’s been action for some time now!” Applebloom responded.
“No, it’s been all ‘I loved her but she was a monster’”
“Then there was action!”
“No there wasn’t!”
“Silence!” Discord said.
The startled debaters couldn’t continue their discourse.
“I tousled with Havoc for dominance before I finally ripped the fang from his mouth. I expected that all the chaos would return to the fang and my Harmony could be returned to me, but it wasn’t to be. The fang had transformed her too much, and she was no longer the Draconequus that I had loved. She was now Havoc. He was in complete control, and she was him.
“My dismay turned to rage quickly, and I trapped Havoc within the Fang that had created him and threw him into the end of the Chaos Continuum, where he would be trapped forever more, but that rage came at a cost. I had no more trappings for my chaos, nothing else to hide it away to be a dutiful citizen of Equestria, which had formed while I was bouting with Havoc.
“I began the reign that history always remembers, but no one ever remembers what came before it. The pain I endured, the loss I suffered. They all assumed I was just a tyrant wanting to control the world for his own nefarious fun.
“And I suppose that was true: the part of me that was Havoc still existed, however diminished within me. I was soon stopped, as History all remembers, by the Elements of Harmony wielded by the Princesses Celestia and Luna, but they could never understand the pain that I had been through.
“After a thousand years locked in stone, I could only toil and bubble with anger and frustration until the three of you released me. I was destructive and domineering, and I wanted nothing more than to destroy the world because my Harmony, the most beautiful Draconequus of all, would never be again.
“Again, I was stopped by the Elements of Harmony, this you should know well since you lived through it, but I was still tormented with the loss of Harmony within my own soul. Once I was turned by Fluttershy, I began seeing the good things that came from chaos and happenstance. It was literally like turning over a new leaf, I could see the difference, the side of Chaos that Harmony must have seen before Havoc intervened.
“But I will never have my Harmony again. She’s been Havoc for far to long, and this story is never going to have a happy ending. The best you three can do is prevent him from destroying the world. He will know all about the powers of Love and Harmony, and will be able to disrupt them.”
“You’ll be there to help us!” Applebloom said cheerfully, “We’ll just help you defeat Havoc and maybe the Elements of Harmony can turn him back into… her?”
“There’s the flaw in your plan, sweet Applebloom, he took my Heart of Chaos. With it, he took any power over chaos that I have. I’m already starting to age to match my true age, and soon I will be nothing more than dust. You need to go and stop Havoc, leave me to the parasprites.” He dragged a talon through the air and the glimmer of home shone through, though it seemed bleak. 
“We’ll get you that Heart back and you’ll be your old self in no time! Count on it!” Applebloom said as she jumped through, followed closely by Sweetie Belle and Scootaloo.