Torso still twisted, Q stood in an attempt to look over his shoulder at the two newly transformed pegasi. “My my, most curious indeed!” He stated in what could be accepted as genuine interest from Q. Picard stepped forth and held his ground in frustrated contempt against the powerful entity. “Q, set this right at once! We’ve had enough of your games. There is no grand lesson here. It is simply another of your games.”
Q looked abashed. “Very well, Jean-Luc. I can set this as it should be, but I assure you that I have no idea what is going on here in your beloved Ponyville.” Picard rolled his eyes, as Twilight, Rainbow Dash, and Applejack all offered stern expressions. Twilight Sparkle even instinctively crossed her arms, though she did not understand why the natural instinct came to her. Q stood for a moment in silence, observing the reactions of the now human ponies.
Sighing a breath of surrender, Q whipped his hands into the air. “Oh very well.” He snapped his fingers, and the ponies all returned to their natural bodies. Spike as well returned to his normal form. In a flash of light, Spike was suddenly twice as large, although still a baby dragon, and the girls had returned to their humanized versions. Picard narrowed his eyes, and snapped. “Q! Enough of this!”
Q snapped his fingers again, putting everything right, before they again found themselves confronted by everypony being turned into altered forms of themselves. “Well this isn’t normal.” Q muttered to himself. The quip was audible to all, though Q did not care. Picard again insisted that Q end his games, to which the almighty being insisted that he was taking no part in the transformations back into altered incarnations.
The ponies all returned to their humanized forms, with Spike, once more, a small purple Loris on Twilight’s shoulder. The little purple primate crossed his arms, and gave Q an expression denying amusement. As Picard was about to lecture Q once more, a sudden snap resonated, and where Picard was, there stood a beige earth pony with a dark red, almost maroon tail. The mane was missing, which led to only one conclusion.
The entirety of the room was staring at the new pony. Q walked slowly to the new figure, and looked it over, almost touching, but knowing better, despite his unrivaled power. “Well then. I must say your bald head is MUCH better suited to being human.” Q quipped with a mix of genuine amusement and intrigue. The pony exclaimed in response, “What the devil are you talking about? What do you mean, ‘human’?”
Q snapped his fingers again, placing a short standing mirror before the Captain, who now realized what everypony had been looking at. HE was the new pony in the room. Just as the girls had been turned human, Jean-Luc Picard had now become one of the pony-kind. His eyes fell to a most irritated half-lidded position.
A bizarre laughter filled the room, to which even Q searched for the source of. Shortly thereafter, that familiar voice echoed from every crack of wood. A nearby Angel Bunny ran for cover under a table, remembering events past. A sudden whip crack noise broke the uncomfortable silence, and the entirety of the gathering found themselves outside in the center of town.
Before them stood Discord, tall and proud. The mighty creature bent over laughing heartily. “Oh! Oh! You should all see yourselves!” He slid around the legs of the girls, wrapping himself around Picard’s pony shoulders, prodding his bald head. “And YOU! What a delight! As if bringing a little mischief and disorder to this place wasn’t enough… YOU are so utterly unaware of ANYthing here! It is SO. MUCH. FUN!” The great Draconequus thundered with laughter once more.
Picard’s pony eyes retained their stare of contempt, directed this time at Discord. Q walked forward towards the creature, expressing thoughtfulness and curiosity on his human face, whilst pointing a finger towards the beast. “And who exactly are you? I refuse to believe that in all my time in this utterly predictable universe, I would have never met you. Whether or not I even knew what you were.” Discord bent over, examining Q thoroughly, offering a cunning smile, and rubbing Q’s head and neck with his claws, as though investigating some scientific discovery.
Discord looked to the former ponies, and leaned close to Twilight. “Oh!He’s just like me!” The Draconequus held a hand up, making an impractical and theatrical display of falsified cloak and dagger. “It’s the voice.” Q teleported next to the now Captain, now a pony, and leaned on his equine shoulders with an arm. Discord, shook his head, and slithered back around to the front of the group.
“I am Discord. Master of all chaos, spirit of disharmony, blah blah blah…” Discord snapped his fingers, and the surrounding houses started changing colors every time the minute hand on the face of Ponyville’s clock tower shifted forward. The girls all began heatedly explaining and considering how to act in this situation, while Q simply walked forward again. “Yes yes, I’m sure you’re an amazing force of nature.”
“SUPER nature.” Discord corrected. “I may be Draconequus, but I still have unrivaled powers of change! There’s nothing that isn’t mine to play with!” Q’s eye quirked a little at the inadvertent challenge. “Really, now?” Q offered, considering a myriad of possibilities in his limitless intelligence. Q flashed with a spark of light once again, and stood in traditional French military garb from the early 1700’s of Earth. “Well then, Discord, perhaps you’d like to test your theory?”
Discord laughed, and danced across the room, between pony and human alike, until he disappeared, emerging from Q’s tricorner hat as a pair of eyes at first, and then slithering out into his normal Discord form, albeit wearing the same French general’s uniform top. “You want to play? Fine! Let’s play then, and see who the real master of chaos is!” Discord shouted gleefully before vanishing with a pop.
Picard hoofed forward in his new pony form, snapping at Q from behind his back. “Q! What the devil are you doing? This is no time to test your ego!” Q smirked over his shoulder and put an arm around Picard’s pony neck. “Oh hush, Picard. There is no ‘test’ here.” He spoke with utter disdain and contempt. “I am Q. There is hardly a force in the entire universe that could even come close to the power I wield with the most involuntary of thoughts.” This did very little to convince Picard, who in his time of knowing the creature, had witnessed disaster both caused by, and directed towards Q.
“It’s not like… he…” Q said, carefree, until they looked around and found themselves in the middle of Canterlot Castle’s throne room. The Royal Guard snapped to attention, directing their spears at the gathering, which had cracked into existence. From the throne, Princess Celestia galloped down to oversee the ruckus. “Twilight Sparkle?” The Princess asked, astonished. “Is that you, and your friends?”
Discord enveloped the room, altering the colors, and changing the stained glass to shift and create vivid displays. All of which, excluding a part of Pinkie Pie, found irritating rather than entertaining. “Princess, there’s no time to explain right now. Something terrible is happening, and I don’t know how to stop it!” Twilight replied hurriedly. Q snapped his fingers, and the room went back to normal, before Discord flat out inverted it. Q responded by replacing the castle in its natural position, to which Discord in turn reacted by bringing the tapestries to life to encircle their location.
Q turned over his shoulder to Picard and spoke in mild frustration. “Oh, well this is just getting irritating.” He raised both his hands and snapped both fingers simultaneously, bringing everything back to normal, from the ponies and Picard to the throne room. Celestia sighed, as Discord seemed to be missing from the room. Stepping forth with ease now, she inquired to Twilight as to the situation of things.
Twilight and her five best friends proceeded to relay the events that had unfolded to the Princess, while Spike and Lyra stood behind with the Captain. Lyra turned to Spike as the Princess spoke with the girls, and questioned with a whisper. “So… should I just go now?” Spike shrugged, figuring they’d stay still until the Princess dismissed them. Q walked in front of the Princess, interrupting. “Excuse me… Celestia, was it?” She eyed the humanoid Q over before allowing him to proceed. “If I may, this Discord fellow seems to be awfully powerful compared to even the most magical of you ponies.”
He muttered something under his breath about how insignificant their power was compared to his own natural Q abilities, but continued with as much respect as one could expect from Q. “If I may, your highness, I find your Discord character to be highly intriguing. He reminds me so much of… well… me! A much younger me, perhaps, but still, intriguingly disruptive.” Twilight turned to Applejack and whispered, “How did he know that Discord was originally turned to stone?” Applejack and Rarity glanced at each other and exchanged expressions of worry as Q and the Princess continued discussing matters.
Many, many miles above, beyond the edge of the atmosphere, the real Q stood on the moon, staring down at a distant and full view of Equestria. Standing on the cold and grey ground, Q crossed his arms. “Not bad, Discord.” Q spoke, simultaneously impressed as well as irked. “I can see my test for you will have to be much more intensive than I ever tested Jean-Luc.” With a sudden blink of the eye, Q snapped off the surface of the moon, leaving a small trail of grey dust spiraling upwards in the modest gravity.
Q reappeared in the throne room, standing beside the imposter. He snapped his fingers, and returned Discord to his proper form, to which Discord replied by turning Q into a Discord incarnation as well. “I have to say, Discord, I applaud your talent for getting on everyone’s nerves.” Q spouted at the creature. While remaining in his Discord body, he leaned to Pinkie Pie and Fluttershy, speaking bluntly. “I can see why you want him frozen again so badly.”
Jean-Luc Picard raised an eyebrow with a clever smile. “Now you can understand how I feel, every time you make a visit to my ship, Q.” The near-omnipotent being lowered his eyes to half-mast in exasperation. “Oh, ha ha, Picard. Very clever.” Discord danced around his transformed twin, before adding to the conversation. “I thought so too!” He shouted, bringing in several more incarnations of himself, summoned to distract and confuse. Q snapped himself back to his chosen human form, and popped the other Discords out of existence. Just as fast, however, Discord was making more appear, sometimes in various colors or patterns.
The war of dissonance carried on for a seeming eternity, passing only minutes in real time, as the chaos made each moment drag on for figurative eons. From time to time the ponies and humans would transform back and forth between human and pony form, Spike excluded, now cowering behind Princess Celestia for safety. Finally, Discord and Q both threw their hands up, summoning their powers of reality alteration, and with a sickening crackle, the six bearers of the Elements of Harmony, Captain Picard, Spike, Princess Celestia, Q, and Discord alike found themselves in an open field, seemingly a tear between space and time.
The sky was an altered blue-black, evidently stuck between daytime and dusk. Clouds of white and brown littered the sky, while the ground and landscape resembled a normal Ponyville, only with minor changes making things just a little off. As a breeze came through their hair and manes, strange lines accompanied the current of air. Transparent and intangible, the lines seemed to almost BE the wind itself, as though the lines seen in cartoons and comic strips. Discord gave a hearty laugh. “Well, THIS is just PERFECT!”
Q looked around, observing the situation. Twilight and Picard demanded information from Q at the same time, to which Q simply replied. “We appear to be stuck in a rather strange space. It’s not quite reality, but not quite outside of the fabric of time and space.” Picard considered the Q Continuum, among other things, but Q dismissed the concept. “Not at all, Jean-Luc. The Continuum wouldn’t allow someone like Discord in our home.” Picard was about to make a remark about Q’s personality, to which Q simply advised him to remain silent.
The Draconequus laughed a gleeful and joyous laugh at the utter lack of cohesion in this place, and spoke to Q. “Oh, call it what you will, but this place is like home to me! If only I could bring it to your dull little Ponyville.” He added with a tone of bored frustration. Q ignored the creature and added to Twilight and her friends. “It appears we made this little pocket dimension when our attempted use of powers on each other clashed. This creature is more potent than I would have thought… but he is no Q.”