Discord looked out over the Canterlot skyline, from his balcony at the Palace. Though Celestia had given him a room here – and a rather good room, by pony standards – he hardly ever visited it.
“Ah, Discord.” said a purple pony, flying towards the balcony. “I see you got my note.”
“Twilight.” said Discord, with a nod. “I did indeed. Though I don't see why you thought I would...” He waved an eagle claw in a vague gesture. “...well... I mean, I'm a creature of chaos. I have a reputation to maintain, you know.”
“Well, if you're worried about your reputation,” said Twilight, “nopony needs to know. We can retreat to your apartment, and I'm sure you can ensure that no-one interrupts us.”
“No, the reputation's not really that important.” shrugged Discord. “The real reason is... well... it's just boring. Too structured, too... predictable.”
“Then why did you even come here today?” asked Twilight.
Discord shrugged. “Because you suffer under a severe misconception about me, about the way I think, and about what I want out of life. What you're trying to do is to convince me that order need not be boring, that structure is somehow helpful. If I turned you down, you'd find some other way to try to teach me that lesson, and I doubt I'd get much entertainment from that.” Discord sighed at that dreary thought. “But if, on the other paw,” he continued, brightening up, “if I can teach you what I really want out of life, then there's a fair chance that you can come up with something interesting for me to do – something that's actually entertaining.”
“And... you're going to show me that over a chess game?” asked Twilight.
“The chess game,” replied Discord, “is going to be absolutely boring. Let's get that part over with as quickly as possible. I'll play black, mate in 53.”
Twilight frowned. “We haven't even set up the board yet, how can you predict checkmate so early?”
Discord shrugged, and snapped his talons. A chessboard, fully set up, complete with chess clock, appeared on a small table on the balcony. “Mate in 53.” he repeated. “Can we do this quickly? I have a point to make.”
After some thought, Twilight moved her pawn one square forward. She reached out to tap the button on the clock, but once again, before she could do so, Discord nodded at his pieces. A black knight wriggled, and leapt over the black rook, to threaten Twilight's pawn. “Mate in 23.” intoned Discord, sounding bored.
Discord's clock had not yet ticked even once.
“Mate in three. Check.” intoned Discord, as his queen flowed(1) across the board.
Twilight looked over the board for a few minutes, then nodded. “Mate in three.” she conceded. “Nothing I can do about it.” She glanced over at the clock again, which had still not ticked even once on Discord's side, and then back at Discord. “How did you predict that before the game even started?” she asked.
“That,” said Discord, “is a secret. What matters isn't how I did it, what matters is that I did it. For the last two weeks, I've known that it would take fifty-three moves to defeat you in chess today.”
“I only sent you that note one week ago.” pointed out Twilight.
“The problem, you see,” continued Discord, ignoring Twilight, “is that chess is too predictable. There are too few options that can be taken. I get – you may have noticed this – I get very bored, very quickly, playing a predefined part. You'll never see me on stage, unless it's for improv.” Discord leaned so far back in his chair that his horns touched the balcony floor, and he appeared to be addressing the upside-down Canterlot skyline. “And for the last two weeks, as far as I'm concerned, this game has been... predefined. Boring, boring, boring.”
“Hmmm.” Twilight frowned, looking over the board. “But... you played brilliantly.”
“Yes, yes, yes, if I wanted to I could become the Equestrian chess champion, win recognition and accolades, blah blah blah.” Still facing the upside-down skyline, Discord waved his claw. “Which would be great and all, if I actually cared about recognition and accolades and blah blah blah. Which I don't. Not in the slightest. It's just not worth the boredom of all those hundreds and hundreds of games of deadly, terribly, horrendously boring chess.” He snarled out the last word, spitting it out of his mouth as if disgusted that it had even been in there to begin with.
“I...see your point.” said Twilight, cautiously. “But, what I mean is... well... the first time we met. You hid the Elements of Harmony... in my library. In the first book I'd look into, if I was looking for information on the Elements. You knew – I know you knew – that I would find them there. That putting them there would risk turning you into stone again...”
“Of course I knew that.” snorted Discord, abruptly sitting up. “That's precisely why I put them there.” He glared at Twilight, and poked her with a claw. “There were hundreds of ways that I could have guaranteed a victory. Thousands of ways that I could have ensured that I could never, ever, have been turned into stone again. Do you know why I didn't use any of them?”
Discord leaned forward, resting both arms on the table and pressing his nose against Twilight's.
“Because.” he said. “It. Would. Have. Been. Predictable.”
Twilight leaned back. “You...” she said, “...set up a situation... in which you could easily lose... on purpose?”
“Hah!” Discord leaned back, raising his arms into the air. “You're getting it! You're finally getting it!”
“But... why?” asked Twilight.
“Because,” said Discord, “it's no fun if I know the result in advance.”
Twilight thought about it for a while. “So...” she said, “...if we had failed... then... your victory would have been assured, right?”
Discord shrugged. “Sure, for about six months or so. Once you threw out the Elements, I'd've picked them up, hidden them somewhere, left a few cryptic hints here and there for people to pick up on, and had a dramatic showdown with another bunch of ponies.”
“But if you keep going on like that, you'd've been trapped in stone sooner or later.” said Twilight.
“Probably later.” Discord shrugged. “I'd've ensured that anyone facing me had a chance, but it would always be a small chance. Besides, as long as it's not an immortal alicorn princess wielding the Elements against me, I very much doubt I'd've stayed trapped for even as long as a mere hundred years. Then... another round, a whole new batch of ponies.”
“Huh. That... that explains a lot, really.” Twilight considered this viewpoint. “So... when we released you, to try to reform you...”
Discord nodded. “Round two, yes. My victory condition was to persuade you – or any one of your friends – to willingly refuse to use their Element against me. Your victory condition was to persuade me to use my powers for good. I could have destroyed any of you in any of a hundred imaginative ways within fifteen seconds of being freed from the stone... but that would've been predictable. So, I went for a long-term, fairly mild plan, all told; I mainly wanted to see what Fluttershy had in mind.” His face took on a slight smile. “I don't mind admitting that I didn't see that coming.” he admitted. “In retrospect, it was wonderful, really. Do you know how long it'd been since anyone has really, genuinely, managed to surprise me?”
Twilight shook her head. “No.”
“Seven months, three days, twenty hours, seventeen minutes and fifty-four seconds.” said Discord, promptly. “You were the last one, when you recovered from my grey plague, and bought your friends back, too. Honestly, I thought I'd won by then – you and your friends had avoided all the possible victory routes that I'd left for you. And before that, it was two hundred and thirty-three years, four months, one week, two days, three hours, forty-two minutes and eight seconds.”
“...wouldn't that have been while you were stone?” asked Twilight.
Discord shrugged. “I could still see what was going on around me.” he said. “So I could still be surprised.”
Twilight nodded, conceding the point.
“The only things that have surprised me in the last five thousand nine hundred and seventy-four years,” said Discord, “have been the actions of living ponies. I spent a week in Las Pegasus recently, going through every game, slot machine, roulette wheel, you name it, in the city; they're all predictable, all too ordered. Outside of the Everfree Forest, the weather is regulated; I can pick up a pamphlet and see if rain is due or not. Inside the Everfree, the weather is predictable; I can study the air movements, humidity, and so on for five seconds and give you a ten-day forecast.”
Twilight made no comment. After that chess game, she was willing to concede that Discord was a far better predictor than she'd expected.
“Which,” continued Discord, “brings me to the reason why I suffered through this disgustingly boring chess game to begin with. There's something that I want you to do for me. That is why I told you all of this – without this knowledge, you would have had no chance of completing my task.”
Twilight frowned. “I'm... not actually obligated to...”
“To do anything for me, I know.” said Discord. “But this one, I think you'll want to. Mainly for the challenge, but also because if you don't, I'll get terminally bored, and that will end up in a desperate race to find the Elements of Harmony – again – and turn me to stone – again. The good news is that you can ask anyone for help, use any resources you want – including asking me for help, if you need to, and if you can do it while still completing the task. I don't care how you do it, as long as you do it.”
Discord leaned over the small table again, eyeball-to-eyeball with Twilight, and said two words before vanishing.
“Surprise me.”
(1) That is to say, the queen melted, the resulting liquid slithered along a diagonal, and then the queen reformed itself on the target square.