//------------------------------//
// Old Dog Learning New Tricks 
// Story: Cause, Effect, and Consequences 
// by Coltsguy 
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Sleep went by uneventfully. I'm not sure if I tried talking to Luna or not. After all, it's hard to remember dreams. Sure, I can remember when my prophetic dreams occur, but only while they are occurring. I doubt that happened last night. I don't think anything but normal sleep happened last night.

The morning went by pretty uneventfully as well. No Discord around. No Twilight trying to show up at my door. No anyone bothering me for some reason or another. It was so ordinary that it was actually sending up warning flags in my head. I'm not even sure why. Maybe it was the clothing I was wearing. It was the same style, but Rarity had given this particular outfit her personal touch by making the shirt purple with white trim and her cutie mark displayed right beneath where the tag would be on the back. The pants were at least fine by me. A dark blue color with three red strips coming down from the waist to my ankles. I had, since the laundry incident, created my own socks and underwear because, you know, hygiene. Still, I doubt all of that really made me feel any sense of foreboding like I was getting.

After breakfast, I began to wonder what was up with Discord. More to the point, where was that goof? We were supposed to go train today and he hasn't shown up for it. He didn't even tell me where it was going to take place. Although, I had a sneaking- oh who am I kidding? It was probably going to be in the Everfree Forest. Where the hell else would it be? It's such an obvious move. I wouldn't be surprised if he was waiting for me to find him in there.

I kind of got sidetracked thinking about how Discord seemed to be turning into a cliche. I mean, he was getting more predictable. His jokes seemed to rely on getting cued to instead of just randomness. I swear it seems like he's turning to the Disney side.

I let out a sigh in realization that he was waiting for me and I had to travel through the Everfree Forest to find him. From what I can remember, one out of every three episodes where someone had to go into the Everfree Forest something bad happened. Yeah, I'm not exactly worried about it as much as I sound, but I'm going in there to meet Discord for training. I could put my life savings on the line to bet that something bad will happen to me in there during this little trip.

I ended up only taking my coin with me that time as I went out the front door. Of course, I remembered that morning that I had left my DS with Twilight. No big deal I suppose. As long as she doesn't try to recharge the thing on her own. Oh crap. If the power goes out on it she might think it's broken and being all sciencey she might try to take it apart to try and fix it.

Huh. That sounds like a premise to an episode right there. It totally sounds like it. Ah man, if that's the case then she'll be avoiding me like the plague until she has no other choice but to admit to her mistake. I won't get to see any of the hilarity.

I let out a sigh and conjured a note onto my front door. It let whoever came by know that I was training in the Everfree Forest with Discord and not to come looking for us. I also made sure to leave a P.S. for Twilight letting her know that I wanted my DS back when I returned. You know, in order to move the plot along.

As I was about to head down the road to Fluttershy's place and use the path near there, my attention was drawn to a sign standing next to the cabin. It didn't say anything on it, but it was a caricature of Discord complete with his tail coming from the ground and the rest of body being horizontal on his belly and his claws pointing towards the direction of the Everfree. Well, I was glad he decided to give me directions instead of making me wander aimlessly through the forest. I just hope he isn't trying to get me intentionally lost in there. Not only would it be annoying it just wouldn't work since I could teleport out whenever I felt like it.

I walked to the edge of the forest out back and looked around for other signs. It took mere moments to find the next one. Each sign led me further and further into the forest and each one looked slightly different than the one before. The second one was like the first, but with Discord on his back extended from the ground. The next one was him on one leg while he was doing a half-Superman pose. After that there was one of him holding a hobo's pack on a stick and sticking his thumb out. There was even one with his head on the body of a bull getting ready to charge in the direction he wanted me to head in.

Eventually the signs led me to a clearing in the forest where I stopped at the edge of. I was a little surprised since I didn't really think there were any areas like that in the series. It didn't really matter that much since situated in the middle of the clearing was Discord sitting in a lotus position. That was making me a little nervous because I couldn't tell if he was trying to be serious or not. It took a few moments for me to calm myself before I entered the clearing and walked up to Discord.

"I see you have arrived young grasshopper," he said calmly without opening his eyes.

"Movie quotes already I see. Eh, I like those so it doesn't really bother me."

"This isn't going to be like usual with me," he stated. I could tell from his voice he meant it too. "Chaos magic is the most volatile of all magic and is hard to control. You've done well up until now I surmise, but you need to know how to harness it properly or it could get quite out of hand. I made that mistake and paid for it. Of course, I didn't listen to my teacher and that's the reason for me, but I believe that you aren't as impetuous as I was back then."

"*sigh* I understand that you're trying to do... whatever it is that you're doing that I don't seem to be able to vocalize, so I'm ready to try and get this training underway."

"You are impatient."

"I know. It comes and goes. If I wasn't so intrigued about this training I'd have let my apathy keep me in the cabin to see the result of the comedy that's unfurling out there as we speak."

That got him to open his eyes.

"Oh? What are you talking about?"

"I left my DS with Twilight and I'm willing to bet that the power ran out. She, however, doesn't know that and I bet that she thinks it's broken and will try to fix it. I could easily see that as an episode if you take the parts and edit them together. In the end, she'll probably bring me a mangled mess. Hearing that out loud actually makes me want to learn this more so I can fix it when she brings it to me so I can resolve this in the correct way."

"Well, that does sounds like it would make a good episode for the show. I wonder if it will air?"

"How would I know? Would it even show me around here? How the hell would that even work?"

"You're asking the wrong guy. Now enough of this topic. It's time to get to work."

Discord disappeared and reappeared standing up in a flash.

"First things first. *sigh* The boring lecture."

A snap of his talons and a green chalkboard appeared and Discord was wearing a sweater vest and held a piece of chalk in his right hand- er, paw.

"Now, I'm going to dumb this down for you because while you are sort of smart, you don't have the intelligence required to know all of the terms and parameters of these kinds of high level magic formulas."

"I don't know jack about magic other than it's magic."

"I know," he said while giggling slightly. "However, you've heard of the terms 'macro probability' and the 'quantum uncertainty principle' before and those are similar in function to what goes on with magic."

I had heard of the terms, but he was right in that I didn't know the specifics on how they worked.

"Let's just go with the easy version," he began while drawing on the chalkboard. "Chaos magic, in it's most simple form, is changing the outcome of an event into an entirely different one."

I'm pretty sure my face right then conveyed my confusion of his statement.

"Let's try something else. If you let go of a coin, you would watch as the coin fell to the ground. However, with chaos you would be tricking the coin into thinking that the ground was upwards. The laws of nature are technically absolute. However, what we do changes those laws to whatever we need them to be. If we need the grass to be purple, we simple change the chemical composition of the grass to a natural state where the grass was always purple. If we need to fly, we change either our own nature or the nature of the air to let us pass through it as if it guided us through it. If we wanted a rubber duck to appear in our hands, we simply change the world around us until you come to a point where it was always there. That my boy is how chaos works in the simplest of senses."

"Would that really be chaos? I mean yeah it is changing the status quo, but it seems like you're just changing it from one norm to another."

"From our point of view that is correct. From an outsider's perspective it is simply chaos."

I couldn't help but think of Chaos Control from Sonic the Hedgehog right then. It just seemed to fit perfectly.

"If you learned magic from Twilight I'm pretty sure she told you about how to use magic. The key concepts of magic are to envision, concentrate, and then create. The difference with chaos and regular magic are that some knowledge about fundamental laws of nature are taken into account for stronger or more intricate spells in regards to normal spells and those laws must be adhered to while chaos rewrites those laws into what we need of them."

"But if that's the case then wouldn't you be able to do either one with normal magic if you generated enough power?"

"Aha, that's the bright boy I see in there at times. It's true enough that with normal magic these changes can be achieved. That is the beauty of chaos! Normal magic has an inherent need to follow the laws of nature and must be forced to overcome its natural state in order to achieve those necessary changes. Chaos magic is inherently intrinsic to nothing. As such, it can interweave and replace normal values with whatever is necessary."

"But how? How are the two any different from each other? You keep telling me that they're different, but it just seems like the two are the same."

"That, my good lad, is something that is merely beyond your current understanding. I simply wanted to give you the most basic of basic understandings before we arrived at the meat of the sandwich."

'Cop out,' I thought to myself.

With a snap, the vest and the chalkboard, which I hadn't noticed simply had an illustration of Pinkie Pie on it, vanished into thin air.

"And now for the next phase. Trial by combat!"

"The fuck are you talking about?"

Instead of answering me, he snapped his paws and a manticore appeared. You heard me. A manticore appeared. This surprisingly did not register a bit. Instead, I reacted thusly:

"Are you fucking kidding me!? You sent in a manticore, the most cliched monster in all of the fandom, to fight me? I'm not doing this."

I snapped my fingers and the manticore turned into a small, orange kitten. It mewled at me as I glared at Discord.

"Well, that was surprisingly easy."

"Of course it was easy! I was too pissed off in disappointment to be concerned! That's not training. That's an insult!"

"Well excuse me if my instrument of pseudo destruction isn't up to your standards. Perhaps something a little more your speed then."

He snapped his fingers once more and the kitten disappeared. In it's place... was a real life pokemon. Sure, it was a Pidgeot, but damn if that wasn't fucking cool!

"No making it disappear this time. This is training after all."

I let out a chuckle at his training reference using pokemon. My chuckle was short lived as the Pidgeot flew straight like bullet into me and threw me for several feet in reverse straight onto my back. As it circled above me, I heard Discord yell at me.

"I believe there's a word I'm looking for. What could it be? Oh yes..."

"DODGE!!!"