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// 1: An Idea So Crazy It Just Might Work 
// Story: No Escape From Yourself 
// by alarajrogers 
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As Discord leaned up against the wall, sipping an endless glass of garlic cider and wishing that the field harmonics radiating throughout the castle allowed him to turn into a flower growing out of the wall, Rarity approached him.  Discord raised an eyebrow in surprise.  "Why, Rarity! What brings you to my humble corner?"

Rarity smiled at him.  "Well, darling, Twilight called Pinkie into an important conversation of some sort, so Pinkie deputized me to make sure that every partygoer is having fun.  And it does look to me as if you aren't. Forgive me if I'm wrong, but I expected you to be more, mmm, outgoing at a party."

He looked down at his garlic cider.  There was no alcohol in it -- Discord neither needed nor wanted the senses-dulling crutch of alcohol to enjoy chaos, and if there wasn't any chaos, it was probably because he'd decided that all things considered, he should lay low, which wouldn't be particularly compatible with getting drunk. But he felt strange -- wrung out from the events of the day, from the emotional roller coaster he'd been on since he'd betrayed his friends, and been betrayed by Tirek in turn, and spent what had felt like a very long time believing he was going to die, putting all of his effort into trying to save the ones he'd betrayed, and failing at that as well.  If it hadn't been for Twilight...

"Truth be told," he admitted, and wondered why he was admitting it, and to Rarity of all ponies, "I don't much like parties.  I keep thinking I should, because of all the things you ponies do with some frequency it's the one activity I'd expect to generate a good bit of chaos, but... Well, it's easy to see that I don't really belong here, do I."

"Of course you do!  Our success today was as much through your aid as anypony else's. I will admit, I thought you a perfect beast for betraying us as you did, and I can't say I will soon forget Fluttershy's tears--"

"I can't either." He sighed.  "She was spending some time with me for a while before she had to go home to feed the animals, but... it felt... wrong.  We were simply... not talking. I mean I've gone hours in Fluttershy's presence where neither of us are talking before and it didn't feel wrong, but... I felt like we should be talking but I didn't know what to say." 

"It will take some time," Rarity said.  "She's forgiven you, I know, but... it will take her some time to put this behind her. You did break her heart, you know."

"I didn't," he said, staring at his cider as if he expected great revelations to come bubbling out of it. "I  didn't think she'd take it that hard. I didn't think she really, truly trusted me." Discord slumped against the wall.  "I've probably lost that trust forever, now."

"She had far less reason to trust you when she first reformed you," Rarity said.  "Focus on doing the right thing, on living your life in a way that she can be proud of you and regain her trust in you, and eventually, you will have it back. I know Fluttershy, she's very, very forgiving."

"But you're not. So what are you doing over here?"

"Why, I've come to ask you to dance," Rarity said. "This is your party too... and while I fear it will be  some time before our fellow citizens regain their trust in you--" she glanced around at the various Ponyville residents and other Equestrians who were either not looking at her and Discord, or who were shooting glares at Discord -- "--I'm sure it will go faster if we remind them that this was your victory too. Without you, we'd never have gained the last key to defeat Tirek, and the box would remain unopened. Twilight feels certain that in the future we will be able to access the Rainbow Powers of Harmony anytime we truly need to, so in a sense, by betraying us you restored to us the power we lost earlier this year when your vines forced us to return the Elements to the Tree. And these powers are better than the Elements were, in the sense that they're part of us and can't be removed. So for all your chaos, in the end you've made Harmony stronger." She smiled brightly at him.

Discord wished he knew how he felt about that. He'd wanted the mares to open the box. He'd wanted them to have this power, before he'd changed sides and thrown in with Tirek. He'd certainly wanted them to have it when that power was the only thing he could imagine to undo his mistake and restore Equestria from Tirek's grasp... not to mention the only thing that might save his own life. But now that they had it, it was sinking in that in a sense he had betrayed himself by siding with Harmony, just as Tirek had been claiming all along. And yet, on the third paw, he felt bad about himself, about his nature, about chaos itself, right now. If he was betraying a true nature that had made him throw away every chance he'd ever had in the past at happiness, was that really wrong?

"How does asking me to dance accomplish any of this?" he asked.

"Well, I am one of the Bearers of the Elements. Twilight and I personally ensured that all the unicorns of Equestria had their powers restored to them--"

"How'd you do that?"

"Astral travel of some sort, I believe, and it's rude to interrupt, darling. The point I was making is that my standing, right now, is impeccable. If I am seen dancing with you, it will reassure any ponies who see it that you have been accepted by the Bearers. Twilight and Pinkie can't do it because they are the Princess of Friendship and Ponyville's party pony, respectively; they're expected to extend a hoof in friendship to, well, nearly anyone. Fluttershy's gone home and the poor dear would simply die out on a dance floor anyway. Not that she has justification, she has wonderful grace and I've seen superb dance moves from her when she's just with us, but you know how she is."

"So you want to dance with me to prove to the ponies here at the party that I can be trusted."

"Exactly!"

A rush of some emotion he couldn't entirely identify went through him. Rarity had never been one of his favorite ponies; he still thought her love affair with Tom was one of his best jokes ever, and her pretentious ways annoyed him. But here she was, placing her reputation on the line to try to save his.

If he did this, maybe he'd fit in better. The reason he didn't like parties, despite the potential for chaos, was how obvious it was when he attended one that nopony wanted him there. This hadn't been an exception; nearly every pony in the room, aside from the Bearers, the Princesses, and the Cutie Mark Crusaders, looked at him with fear or hate in their eyes or avoided looking at him at all.  Including Financial Security, the insurance salesman who'd been using his presence to drum up business and had always been friendly with him as a result, and Filthy Rich, whose cutie mark probably should have been in "sucking up to powerful ponies and other entities for potential personal gain". Even the selfish ponies who'd been friendly with him because they saw potential benefit in it for them hated him now. 

Twilight and Pinkie had both made a few sporadic attempts to draw him away from the wall, but they had the whole party to entertain, and the time Fluttershy had spent over here with him had been painful in its awkwardness. The Cutie Mark Crusaders had been cheerful and friendly with him as they raced madly around the party, but they were too energetic to stay in one place and he wasn't sure they even knew of his role in events. Celestia and Cadance had been friendly enough, and Luna had pretended to be civil -- at least she hadn't attacked him in public -- but they didn't have time to make for him either. Maybe if he danced with Rarity ponies would get the idea that he hadn't really betrayed them, that it had all been part of an elaborate plan to ensure Tirek's defeat and grant the Rainbow Powers to his friends.

But of course that was a lie. He had betrayed them. And on any other day a lie that made him look better would have seemed like a great idea, but not today. "What makes you think I can be trusted? Maybe they're right." He sighed heavily. "Luna certainly thinks so."

"Princess Luna? Why would you say that?"

"Because she gave the bouquet I gave her as an apology to Pinkie, and Pinkie ate it."

Rarity's hoof flew to her mouth. "Oh dear! I'm sure Pinkie didn't mean anything by that!"

"They were candy flowers." He'd made them for Celestia millennia ago, a field that just the two of them would visit, and later on Luna had joined them; he remembered it like it was only a short while ago, the babbling brook that had literally babbled like a foal, the meadow and the hill covered completely with candy daisies in different colors and flavors. When he'd given the bouquet to Celestia, to apologize to her and thank her for his second chance, and winked at her, trying to evoke her memories of that time, she'd blushed, thanked him, and eaten the bouquet with apparent delight. When he'd given the second bouquet to Luna, she had accepted with glowering bad grace and then promptly regifted it to Pinkie without telling her where it was from. "I'd hardly expect anything from Pinkie other than eating them. I know Luna didn't tell her where they came from. It'd be  one thing if she had, and she gave it to Pinkie because she didn't want the sweets or because she wanted to share, but she said nothing. She was just trying to get rid of it."

"I'm honestly quite surprised. I would expect Princess Luna, of all ponies, to understand the desire for redemption after committing a betrayal..."

"She thinks I'm faking it. And for all you know she could be right."

Rarity shook her head. "Discord, the draconequus who drew a target on his chest and asked us to hurry up and shoot him because you had entirely failed to notice that we'd resisted your magical corruption is not the great liar and manipulator that so many have tried to claim you to be. Sweetie Belle does a better job of pretending to be sorry than you do. So I am thoroughly convinced of your sincerity, right now."

"Why, thank you, Rarity. I believe that's the most backhooved compliment I've ever received," Discord said sardonically. 

"Oh, you're quite welcome, darling," Rarity said sweetly. "So, about that dance?"

He shook his head. "Another time, perhaps. For tonight, I'd rather be a spectator than a spectacle." He considered transforming into a giant pair of glasses, but the harmonics were interfering with his magic and to tell the truth, he just wasn't feeling very funny right now. 

"Ah, well. I do understand, but if you change your mind, simply come find me." She left his side, and within minutes was dancing with another stallion. By his count, she had danced with every male creature besides him, the younger colts, and Owlowliscious at least one time, and Spike three times, and a few of the stallions twice. Discord sighed. The incongruity of a large draconequus dancing with a small elegant pony would have been hilarious, but he didn't need the pity right now, and he was telling the truth about wanting to hang back and watch, for once.

To be honest, he hadn't thought Luna would accept his apology. He was just grateful that Celestia had.

Cadance had left already, she and Shining Armor having taken off to head back to the Crystal Empire shortly after the Bearers had performed an impromptu joint dance and song about friendship and rainbows, or something... he hadn't really been paying attention to the lyrics. He hadn't had a chance to even begin to think about giving her an apology gift, even though he owed her one more than he owed one to Luna... Luna had never trusted him, and Luna had never done anything for him, not since she and Celestia had begun fighting him anyway. Cadance had helped to take care of him when he was sick, and had spoken on his behalf to Celestia before they'd come here to Twilight's new castle. He'd have to come up with something for her, eventually. Not flowers, Shining Armor might misunderstand and while normally that would be hilarious, he wasn't in the mood for generating disharmony right now. Which might mean there was something seriously wrong with him, but he didn't feel like thinking about it.

He owed all of the Bearers some sort of apology, too. The thought of what that could possibly be paralyzed him, though. What could he possibly give to Fluttershy to even begin to make up for what he'd done? And if he couldn't give something to Fluttershy, how could he give anything to any of the Bearers? 

So he was left with nothing to do but watch the party, which refused to degenerate into entertaining chaos, and under the circumstances he didn't feel comfortable trying to give it a push.  He wanted to leave and go find something entertaining to do, or something, but he didn't know what he could possibly do when the idea of creating even minor chaos made him feel so very uncomfortable.  What was wrong with him? Chaos was his life, his raison d'etre; was he afraid of what would happen to him if he stepped out of line?  No, he could blow off some steam making the apples in Applejack's orchard into zap apples -- she'd actually probably appreciate that -- or give wings to rabbits (except for Angel Bunny, who was insufferable already), or some other kind of chaos that wouldn't cause anypony any harm, and that certainly wouldn't result in anything terrible happening to him. And yet he didn't want to do it. He didn't feel safe doing it, but he didn't know what the danger filling him with such anxiety actually was. 

If he could go somewhere that nopony could see him, he could create chaos and not feel bad about it.  But Celestia had sentenced him to remain in Ponyville for the indefinite future.  As punishments went, given the scale of the betrayal he'd committed and how horrible the consequences of his actions had almost been, it was a mere slap on the wrist, but he didn't dare violate it; Celestia had been deadly serious when she'd told him this was his last chance.  And there was nowhere in Ponyville proper he could go that didn't belong to some pony or another, or the town itself, so there was nowhere he could go that his chaos wouldn't be noticed.  Theoretically he could leave, if accompanied by one of the Bearers or a princess, but all the ones that were still here at the party were partying and he didn't want to ask anypony for help anyway, not now especially. 

And at some point he was going to have to figure out where he was going to stay tonight.  Judging from the glares he was getting, he wasn't going to have an easy time finding a place to sleep.  He didn't want to go to Fluttershy's house and ask her if he could stay there; he felt certain she'd say yes, but he felt equally certain that she'd be doing it out of obligation and not out of affection, not right now, and he could cheerfully impose on any pony for what he wanted any other day but not today, not Fluttershy, not if it would make her angry with him for doing it.  But it wasn't as if he had a lot of other options.  

The anger and fear and hatred the ponies of Ponyville were directing his way would normally delight him.  Such emotions fed disharmony, and disharmony was his bread and butter.  And it was hardly as if he wasn't used to it. Ponies disliked chaos, what a shocking new development!  It would have broken him centuries ago if he hadn't learned to love it.

Except he wasn't loving it, not right now.  They didn't hate him because they just hated chaos like mindless golems of harmony. They hated him because he'd rounded them up or held them down and let Tirek steal their powers, and after Tirek had done the same to him, he knew exactly how horrible that was.  He'd been proud of himself for keeping them all alive, making sure Tirek didn't kill any of his victims, but now that he'd been through it himself he wasn't entirely sure that death wouldn't have been preferable... obviously not in the long run, now that everything was resolved and he had his powers back, but if he'd had to live indefinitely that way? And his magic would have eventually returned to him.  The ponies' magic would never have.

He deserved to be hated, right now.  

And isn't this what you wanted? he thought to himself bitterly. You wanted ponies to hate and fear you for good reasons, instead of spooking even when you were trying to be nice.  So congratulations!  You gave them a great reason!  Have a cupcake and celebrate, every pony in Equestria's been reminded that you're a villain and why!  Isn't that what you wanted?  You wanted to be evil because it hurt too much to try to be good and be rejected for it? So now you can be rejected for being evil! Isn't this a big improvement?

Maybe he'd ask Rarity if he could crash at her place.  If she'd been willing to dance with him to help him salvage his reputation, she might be willing to let him sleep above her boutique.  Or maybe he'd just sleep in one of Applejack's trees so he didn't have to lower himself to begging anypony for a place to stay the night.  Or in the branches of Twilight's treehou -- oh, right.

He could find a cloud to spend the night on -- quite aside from the magic of chaos, his body held the inherent magic of each of his component species, so his pegasus wing gave him the ability to sleep on and walk on clouds just as a pegasus could.  But given what he'd done to the local pegasi, he'd have to sleep with one eye open if he didn't want to find his cloud towed out to sea while he was asleep, or dumped over in the heart of the Everfree, or maybe in one of the volcanos down in Mexicavallo.

"Hiya, Discord! What's with the frowny face?"

Discord looked up, startled. He hadn't realized he had been intently staring at the floor.  Given that he hadn't been looking up, it was perhaps not wholly surprising that Pinkie had been able to bounce right up to him without him noticing, but he was surprised that he hadn't been looking. "Oh, it's nothing, my dear. This is just... one of your more sedate parties, all things considered. I could use a bit more chaos... but under the circumstances, I can certainly understand why."

"Yeah, it's not as boring as the Gala but it does have to be one of the slower parties because of all the nobility and stuff that Celestia said had to come so they'd recognize that Twilight's really and truly and for sure a princess now, instead of just princess-y or something. Sorry about that! We could kick things up a notch now that most of the nobles have gone back to Canterlot!"

He smiled wanly. "That's quite all right, Pinkie. It's been a long day. Eventually your friends will need to sleep, even if you don't."

"Yeah, Spike already went to sleep! It's funny because he's sleeping right under the stage with the band! Like you would think loud noises would wake up a pony but because he's a dragon he likes to sleep with loud noises, or something! Maybe because dragons are really really loud when they snore!"

"Or possibly because if he's sleeping under the band he can't possibly hear Twilight calling him if she wants him to help with something."

Pinkie giggled. "That could be it! Which reminds me of the TOTALLY MOST AWESOME NEWS EVER! I was talking to Twilight and guess what? Guess what?"

"Hmm. A little hint, please? Is it bigger than a breadbox?"

"It's the BIGGEST THING EVER!" Pinkie started bouncing as if the ground beneath her feet was a trampoline. "Twilight picked me to be her first Minister! Not her First Minister like Prime Minister which is apparently a kind of ruler like a princess except they won a popularity contest sort of like a mayor except what if the mayor got elected by the city council and it was for an ENTIRE COUNTRY, but the first Minister she's picked for her cabinet, which is not where she keeps her plates and cups but is apparently where she keeps her advisors! I'm not sure I would like staying in a cabinet all day but she says it's not like that kind of cabinet and she's made me the Minister of Events! Do you know what this MEANS?"

"That if you win a popularity contest you can rule Friendship with an iron hoof?" Discord asked dryly.

"No, it means PARTIES! Because she's the Princess of Friendship and the best way to make friends with new ponies and new griffons and dragons and zebras and everybody is to have parties for them! So I get to plan all the official parties for the Friendship Outreach which is what she is calling her mission to spread friendship! WHEEEEEE!" She grabbed Discord's paws in her hooves and with surprising strength swung him around in a circle. Her intent was probably simply to swing him like a dance partner, but Discord deliberately let go of gravity so that Pinkie ended up swinging him around through the air with his full length stretched out behind him, causing his tail to barely miss whacking a few ponies in the face. At the same time she was spinning herself away from the wall, so by the time she came around to the completion of the circle, they had managed to get slightly more than Discord's full length away from the wall, allowing her to complete the arc without letting any part of him smack the wall. Which was good, because given the fact that the walls were made of pure Harmonic crystal, Discord wasn't sure he could have phased himself through them as he'd originally planned. "Isn't this the BEST NEWS EVER?"

Discord landed on his hoof as Pinkie released him, spun around once like a ballet dancer, and then set his dragon foot down and pulled his tail in. "It certainly does seem exciting, though I have to admit that on a personal level the news that I was being let out of my stone prison has it beat in the best news competition."

"Oh yeah, that was pretty good news for you too! But anyway! So I had to quit my job which is sad because I love to bake things and the Cakes have been really great friends and bosses but they understand I won't have time to bake at a bakery when I'm the Minister of Events for the Friendship Outreach!  And I'm going to be moving in here at the castle because how can Twilight be the Princess of Friendship if she doesn't even live with any of her friends? I mean she lives with Spike and he's a friend, but she lived with him anyway and he's really more like family, which is not exactly the same thing as a friend!"

"Trust me, Pinkie, I'm well aware of the distinction." 

"But Fluttershy can't do it because she has to live near the Everfree because of all the animals, and Rarity can't because she has to stay with her shop, and Applejack can't because the farm, and Dashie could but she would be sad if she couldn't live in a cloud house anymore! So I'm the only one of Twilight's best friends who can move in with her!"

"I cannot see any possible way this could go wrong," Discord murmured.

"But I can!" Pinkie's eyes grew very big. "What if I bug Twilight? Because Twilight loves her friends but she likes to sit and be quiet and read, and I like to always be talking to ponies or anyone really and always moving around and doing stuff! And I could talk to Spike but he sleeps a lot because he's a dragon and besides he reads too even if most of the time it's just comic books because comic books are fun! And also he has to help Twilight! So what if I'm bored and I want to talk to somepony but Twilight and Spike want to be quiet and read! That would annoy Twilight or else it would make me sad and lonely, but annoying Twilight would also make me sad! So you have to move in with us!"

Discord had been following Pinkie's monologue, despite her high pitch and speed, up until that point. "What."

"Because you always like to do things that are fun and exciting and especially with ponies! Some of the things you like are mean but some things are just fun so if you moved in with us, then if I was bored and lonely and Twilight didn't want to talk to me because she was reading I could hang out with you! And Princess Celestia says you're supposed to live in Ponyville now anyway so if you came and lived with us you would have a place to live!"

"Let me see if I understand you properly, Pinkie. You want me to move into the Castle of Extreme Purpleness with you, Twilight and Spike, in order to avoid annoying Twilight."

"Yup!"

"Have you run this plan past Twilight, by any chance?"

"No, I didn't even think of it until I saw you all lonely and bored looking up against the wall and I started thinking about what if I was lonely and bored because I never get lonely and bored when I'm selling cupcakes because there are always more customers, but if I'm not selling cupcakes to customers anymore then maybe I would be lonely, and Twilight won't always have time for me because she's an introvert and I'm an extravert, but you're an extravert too! Which by the way what is a vert and why does being an extra one mean that we have a lot of energy and we like to be around other ponies?" Before he could even begin to answer the question, she continued. "So then I realized that if I was living with you I wouldn't get lonely and bored and neither would you and that way we don't bug Twilight so much! But sometimes we have to bug Twilight because if she spends all her time with her books then she'll miss out on fun with her friends!"

Discord resisted the urge to create extra paws to facepalm with. Pinkie was either astonishingly naïve, or deep down inside really did want to torment Twilight at least just a little bit for being such an introvert. Or, possibly, against all odds, her plan would actually work, but Discord rather doubted it. 

That being said, he didn't actually care. He had just been invited by a friend to live with her. Not because she was trying to reform him, the way Fluttershy had been when she'd first invited him to be a houseguest. Not because she felt some sense of obligation, as Celestia obviously had when she'd offered him a room in the palace (an offer he'd declined, although the portal to his personal chaos dimension that served as his home did usually anchor in Canterlot someplace.) But because she actually wanted him there. Not for his magic, not for unspecified things he could do with his powers, but because she thought he was fun.

This had never happened before.  He was frankly stunned.

A few minutes ago he'd have said there were no possible circumstances that would keep him inside this castle any longer than necessary. It had been made by the Tree of Harmony; it resonated with energies that dampened his powers. But Pinkie had invited him to live with her. And Twilight. And if this did in fact result in annoying the living daylights out of Twilight, well, how could that possibly be his fault? He hadn't asked Pinkie to extend him the invitation, and how could he turn down a heartfelt plea from a friend? 

"Well, if you want me here so badly, who am I to tell you no? I accept, Pinkie." He squeezed her in a sideways hug. "Roomies!"

"Technically castle-ies, because we aren't gonna share a room but we are all sharing a castle, but I guess that sounds kind of weird!" She squirmed free of him.  "C'mere, c'mere! I picked out a room for you already!"

She bounced off, out of the main hall and down one of the corridors. Discord followed her all the way to a side door leading out of the castle. "This is gonna be the garden for Fluttershy! We're going to wall it in with a magic field thingy that lets the animals go in and out if they want to but it blocks mean animals who want to eat the other animals from coming in so they'll be safe! And anypony in Ponyville or from anywhere or even like griffons and things can come into the garden and walk around and it's going to be kind of wild but also safe, like the Whitetail Woods, and no statues, we promise! But maybe some fountains!"

Right now there was nothing there but a grassy field, exactly like the other grassy fields all around the castle. Discord took a deep breath, enjoying the fresh air and lack of harmonic restraint on his magic.  "Perhaps you'd like my help with it? I dare say I have some talent at creating a chaotically natural space, and I've gained some experience with Fluttershy at making natural environments that are safe."

"I bet that would be good! She'd like that!"

Pinkie bounced back in through the side door, and pointed to the room nearest the door. "Tadaaa! Right next to the garden 'cause I knew you would want to be near where Fluttershy will probably be when she comes to visit!"

Discord opened the door and surveyed the room.  "It's a trifle... small, don't you think?"

"Well, I figured you could make it bigger on the inside with your powers so you wouldn't mind it being small... is that okay? You don't hate it, do you? Please tell me you don't hate it!" She grabbed his chest fur and pulled him toward her, eyes wide and pleading as if she were some romance heroine from a threebit opera begging her objet d'amour for a token of love rather than a party pony arranging logistics. 

"No, Pinkie, I don't hate it. It's... fine." It wasn't fine. The harmonics wouldn't allow him to do what she was suggesting, so it really was a tiny room and it really would remain so. But it was wide enough for him to stretch out fully in any of the three basic spatial dimensions, and really, he'd been planning on sleeping in a tree. This would suffice. Otherwise he'd have to admit to Pinkie that his powers were drastically reduced in the castle. He trusted his friends, to some extent, but it was too ingrained in him to never admit to a weakness if he could avoid it; the thought of letting Pinkie know that the castle weakened him made him feel profoundly anxious and unsafe. 

Oh, how far he had fallen for the sake of friendship. To even consider living in a place that weakened his powers!... but he'd nearly lost both his powers and his friends today, and of the two, the loss of the friends had hurt the most. He could compromise, if it meant that somepony actually wanted him here.

"Great! Now we just have to go get your things! Princess Celestia said you have to stay in Ponyville unless me or one of the others or one of the princesses is with you, and I know you live in some weird chaosy place that isn't in Ponyville, so I will totally go with you and help you move! Why don't we do it right now?"

"I don't really have anything to move, Pinkie. I make what I want with my powers when I want it."

"But don't you even have any furniture? Or pictures or something? Or I know! Your thinking tree! We totally have to go get your thinking tree and put it in the garden!"

Discord stared at her.  "Your memory frightens me sometimes, my dear."

"Did you think I would forget your thinking tree? What kind of a friend would I be if I forgot something important like that?" Pinkie demanded. "Come on, let's go get it!"

He sighed. "I... may possibly no longer have a thinking tree."

"You don't? What happened to it?"

"Well, I got tired of thinking."

"So what did you do with it?"

Discord squirmed slightly. Really, it had been his tree, and he could always make another; why did he feel guilty over the disposition of his own possession? "It, um, might conceivably have... exploded?"

"Exploded?" Pinkie's eyes went impossibly wide.

"I confess it, I was really tired of thinking."

"Poor tree!" For a moment it looked as if Pinkie was about to cry. Then she brightened. "Well, I guess that makes two trees we need to grow back!"

"What do you mean two trees?"

"Well, duh! We have to grow Twilight's tree back!"

Discord raised a skeptical eyebrow. "Because oak trees are well known for their tendency to grow back to their former glory within a reasonable pony lifetime, of course."

"Hello? Earth ponies? I was talking to Applejack and she's gonna have teams of her family members and other farmers come out in shifts. Three earth ponies focusing on growing a tree every day and the oak should be as big as Twilight's tree was in three or four years! Which is a lot longer than I wish it would take but even farming ponies with tree experience can't speed it up any more than that!" Her face drooped. "The sad part is we can't grow back the books. We're gonna be gathering up as many book donations as we can but there's some books she had that she can't ever get back 'cause she had the only copy or they were sentimental like the books she scribbled all over when she was a foal but I guess there's not much we can do about that! At least she and Spike and Owlowliscious are all okay, and that's what's important!"

Guilt hit him like a sledgehammer to the gut. He'd been thinking, at least there were no long-term consequences to his betrayal; ponies all had their magic back, none had died, none had been seriously hurt. He'd made sure of that. But Twilight's books were gone. Discord often found it hard to quite understand ponies having sentimental attachments to things; with his powers and with his level of chronic disorganization, he found it much more convenient to own nothing, but just use his magic to manifest whatever he needed, because anything that he actually owned that he hadn't made himself, he'd inevitably lose. 

He did, however, understand the value of information. He'd actually read over half the books in Twilight's library himself, in the months after he'd been released from stone, trying to catch up to the modern era without revealing any part of his own ignorance. Being able to hear ponies speaking, and walk in their dreams while he himself was asleep, had left him much better adjusted to today's age than Luna, but it wasn't a substitute for actual immersion in pony culture, and good comedy needed cultural immersion. There was a time in his life when the idea of information being lost forever would have delighted him, because he'd seen knowledge of the past as a chain, an anchor to Order, but he was too old now to be quite so ideologically pure about Chaos. Knowledge was power. The loss of knowledge was the loss of power. And as he had been brutally reminded today, the loss of power hurt.

Twilight had saved him. She hadn't had to. She'd offered her power to Tirek in exchange for her friends, and when Tirek had released the five mares and Spike, she'd demanded that he release Discord as well. If she hadn't done that, Discord would have died; Tirek had told him, flat out, that his mistake in revealing to Tirek that chaos would rebuild his magic had doomed him. Tirek needed to kill him to prevent Discord from becoming powerful again. Twilight had known of his betrayal, but not of his crisis of conscience; she hadn't seen how Tirek's betrayal had broken him, she hadn't been there when he'd been struggling to break open the cage he'd made and free her friends. She couldn't possibly have known how horribly sorry he was for what he'd done. And she hadn't known that Tirek intended to kill him, either. But she'd demanded his release anyway, because he was one of her friends.

Every moment he drew breath, now, he owed to Twilight. And it was his fault her books, as precious to her as a hoard of gems was to a dragon, were gone forever.

Or were they?

An incredibly stupid and dangerous idea was forming in his mind. A manic grin spread across his face. "Pinkie, what would you say if I told you there was a way we could save Twilight's books?"

"There is? Oh, what is it, what is it, what is it? We gotta do it! Poor Twilight, if we can save her books she'll be so happy!"

"Well... it does involve a slight possibility of destabilizing the space-time continuum. But not if we're careful!"

"Careful is my middle name!"

"I thought your middle name was Diane."

"That's my other middle name! You can have more than one name in the middle! What are we gonna do?"

"Well... I'm going to need your help." Destroying the space-time continuum would be bad; Fluttershy and Twilight definitely preferred living in linear time. So he couldn't do this the easy way. For a moment the thought of the scope of the project he wanted to undertake daunted him. But Pinkie was so excited, and the thought of how happy Twilight, Twilight who had called him friend and saved his life, would be if he could do this for her, and how happy Fluttershy would be that he did this for Twilight if he succeeded... He took a deep breath. This was going to be very very hard, but worth it. "We're going to go back in time, to moments when Twilight and Spike weren't in the library, and copy the books, and bring the copies to the present. We can't take the risk of actually taking the books; for all I know, Twilight was in her library moments before Tirek blew it up, and she'd notice even a single book missing if it wasn't supposed to be. But if we make copies of all of them, then there's no change to the timestream, no risk to spacetime, and Twilight gets her books back." And never mind how hard it would be to use Chaos to make accurate copies of anything. He'd just have to try his hardest.

"Wow! But how can we do it? When Twilight went back in time she could only go back a week! Maybe if we went back during the Equestria Games? Nopony was in the library then! But that was more than a week ago and Twilight could only go back for a few minutes! We'd need more than that to copy a lot of books!"

"There you go, Pinkie. That's part of what I need your help for." He grinned at her. "Let us not forget that when she's not carrying around the power of four alicorns, I'm much more powerful than Twilight. And Harmonic magic has difficulty with something as unnatural as violating the flow of time, anyway; that's a job for Chaos if there ever was one. So we won't have a hard time going back. The thing we'll have to be very careful about is making sure we don't change anything in the past."

"Okay! Technically going to the past in Ponyville is still Ponyville so you're allowed to do it and besides you're allowed to do it anyway if I'm with you, so let's do it! Let me just write a note for my friends first so they don't get worried, and what time will you bring us back?"

"I have no idea; I have to make sure we don't come back before we left, and most likely we'd cause a great deal of worry if we were gone longer than a day, so let's shoot for sometime tomorrow? Maybe in the afternoon. Maybe morning. It's not as if chaos is exactly predictable."

"Okie dokie lokie! Let's do this!" She removed a purple glitter crayon and sheet of paper from a fold in reality and scribbled a quick note with her hoof. "Note's written, let's go! LEEEROY JENKINS!"

Discord chimed in with her on the second part of her battle cry, and snapped his talon. A moment later there was nothing where he and Pinkie had been standing but a hastily scribbled and very purple note.




"Sorry to wake you, Twilight, but I figure we might have a problem here."

Twilight rolled over and moaned. There was no furniture in the castle yet; Rarity had brought over a giant pile of blankets so that anypony who felt too tired to head home after the party could crash at the castle, so she was lying on the floor in a pile of very attractive lavender-scented down comforters. "Spike, take a le'r to Princelestia, ask her to turn down the sun..."

Applejack snorted, took off her hat and laid it on Twilight's face. "There ya go, nice and dark. You ready to wake up now? Nopony can find Pinkie."

Twilight groaned and got to her knees, knocking the hat off her face. "She's probably cleaning up. We had a big party last night. Remember?"

"I sure do, which is why it's so surprisin' that she ain't cleaned up a darned thing. That's not like Pinkie Pie at all."

No. It wasn't. Twilight came fully to her hooves. "Did we check Sugarcube Corner?"

Applejack rolled her eyes. "First place I checked when I couldn't find her here. I woke up Dash and she's gettin' Fluttershy, and also she's supposed to be searchin' town once she does that. Figure you can wake up Spike and Rarity."

"She's probably just gone for a walk or out to pick up pastries for breakfast or something..." Twilight trailed off. If Pinkie had gone to pick up pastries, she'd have gone to her former employers, most especially to reinforce that there were no hard feelings about her departure from the job. "Wait! She said something about maybe trying to find a replacement for herself at Sugarcube Corner; maybe she's gone off to interview another baker, or something?"

"Before cleanin' up after the party?" Applejack asked skeptically.

Twilight drooped. Applejack was right. Pinkie took her party responsibilities very, very seriously; there were potential positive events that could distract her so badly that she'd forget about cleanup, but not many. "Okay, have Cheese Sandwich or any of Pinkie's relatives come into town?"

"None of 'em were at the party so far as I know, but Rarity was up a heck of a lot later than I was, so we'd best ask her."

"Right." Twilight trotted over to the bathroom, realized she had no washcloths, soap outside of dish soap, toothpaste, or toothbrush in her new castle, and facehooved. It was hitting her again... everything she owned was gone. Everything. Not just the books. The books had hit her hard, and had kept hitting her even throughout the party, and she had had to struggle to keep a smile on her face sometimes when the thought came back, Your books are all gone, again and again. But it was so much more than the books. Spike's baby bed, from when he'd been a tiny dragonet barely bigger than his egg had been. The dresses Rarity had made for her over the years, such as her Gala dress or her coronation dress. All of her equipment for her research. The fruit basket of exotic cold-weather fruit that Cadance and Shining had sent her back home with after her trip to the Crystal Empire, that she hadn't gotten around to eating yet. Her wing scrubby. 

No. She couldn't wallow in it right now. Not if Pinkie might be missing. She used her magic to make the water from the tap blast her teeth in a high-powered stream to substitute for the toothbrush she didn't have, swished and spat in the sink, then took a big drink and turned the tap off. That was the best she was going to be able to do until she had a chance to go out for toiletries, or send Spike. 

Spike and Rarity looked positively adorable. Rarity had been up late enough to see off the last of the partygoers, and had been too tired to go home, not after she'd already made an evening trip back to the Boutique to pick up blankets for everypony who was going to sleep over. She had made herself a nest of silken comforters and arranged herself on them elegantly, her mane tied back in a scarf to protect it from bed head. And she had obviously found Spike under the stage for the band and carried him to his own little blanket nest, near where she and Twilight were sleeping. Except that at some point during the night Spike had apparently woken up just enough to drag his blanket nest onto Rarity's and pass out next to her. If he were older or Rarity less honorable, Twilight might actually be bothered to see his proximity to Rarity in her sleep, but she knew Rarity would do all she could to avoid either taking advantage of Spike or breaking his heart, and Spike was a teenager by Pony standards but still a very, very young dragon. 

"Spike! Rarity! You need to wake up!" She hated to do this when they were adorable and her own head was pounding, but Pinkie might be in danger. "Pinkie's gone missing!"

"Huh, what?" Spike lifted his head blearily. The stereotype of dragons was that they slept deeply unless something threatened their hoard, but Spike had always been quick to rouse if there was a potential threat to any of his friends. "Wait, Pinkie's missing?"

"Really? Oh dear," Rarity mumbled.  "Spike, if you could be a dear and move so I can get up...?"

"Oh, sure thing, Rarity!" Spike said, and then apparently realized where he was. "Oh my gosh oh my gosh I wasn't bothering you while I was sleeping, was I? I don't even remember how I got here!"

Rarity smiled wanly at him. "Quite all right. I'm the one who tucked you in so close to me; I might have expected you to slide over in your sleep. Think nothing of it." She got to her hooves. "I absolutely must wash up. What is the situation with Pinkie?"

"Well, she didn't clean up after the party, she's not here, she's not at Sugarcube Corner, and nopony can find her."

Rarity sighed. "That does sound as if she might be in trouble, the poor dear. I promise I will keep my toilette to a minimum, but I simply cannot leave this room until I at the least have the opportunity to brush my mane."

"I don't have any hairbrushes," Twilight admitted.

"Oh, of course you don't, darling, you lost everything when that beast destroyed your home," Rarity said. "That's why I brought over brushes and shampoo and soap when I brought the blankets. I do regret that I didn't happen to have any spare toothbrushes, and of course the apothecary was not open that late, so I couldn't buy any."

"You brought over brushes and shampoo and soap?" Twilight's eyes went wide. "I love you. In a deeply friendshippy way."

Rarity patted her on the head. "I know you do, Twilight, and you know it's entirely mutual. Now let's get our minimal morning washing done so we can find Pinkie."




Once everypony was gathered back at the castle, Twilight went over what they knew. 

"So the last anypony remembers seeing Pinkie was when I talked with her about being Minister of Events, and she went and gave the Cakes notice. The Cakes told her to take today off, and then she'd be working for them for the next two weeks while they look for a replacement, and she said she'd try to find somepony for them. Then they went home, and Pinkie told me she had to go tell everypony about her new position. But at that point, Fluttershy had gone home, Applejack and Spike had both been asleep, and Princess Celestia had already said good night and returned to Canterlot."

"She told me," Rainbow Dash said, her voice even hoarser than usual; Twilight recalled Rainbow still being up when Twilight herself had gone to sleep. "I told her that was great and I was excited for her, and then she went bouncing off to tell somepony else."

"And she did indeed tell me," Rarity said. "Shortly after I had a conversation with Discord." She looked around. "Now that I'm mentioning him... where is Discord, do you think?"

"Who cares?" Rainbow said. "Pinkie's what's important here."

"Um, but what if he knows where she went?" Fluttershy pointed out.

Rarity suddenly looked uncomfortable. "Oh, dear. You don't think... they wouldn't have... surely Pinkie wouldn't..."

"Wouldn't what?" Twilight asked.

"Oh, I really don't think so!" Fluttershy said. "Because... because... well, I hope they wouldn't..."

"We talkin' about Pinkie and Discord hooking up, or something else?" Applejack said. "'Cause you get misunderstandin's if you can't just plainly say what you mean."

Rarity blushed. "I, well, yes, I was wondering about that possibility... given the understandable excitement of the day, mares have certainly been known to... make impromptu decisions about romance that are perhaps not examples of good judgment..."

"No way!" Rainbow Dash burst out laughing, harshly. "Pinkie and Discord? Not a chance! Pinkie and Cheese are like practically the next best thing to special someponies, and besides who the heck would want to get snuggly with Discord?"

Fluttershy visibly cringed. Twilight took a deep breath. "There's an easy way to find out if Discord knows where Pinkie is, or if he's with her," she said. "They don't have to be, uh, romantic to fall asleep together. I've seen firsthoof, Pinkie goes full blast until she gets too tired and then she just goes out like a light, wherever she is. And Discord's not allowed to leave Ponyville without one of us, so if he got Pinkie to go somewhere with him out of Ponyville, and then she fell asleep... well, he has to stay with her. Assuming he's going to stick with his parole, but after yesterday..." 

She'd been so angry with Discord for betraying them. The whole time she'd been fighting Tirek, she'd wanted to find him and blast him, as hard as she'd been trying to blast Tirek, to pay him back for his betrayal. And then she'd seen him in one of the bubbles with her friends, slumped over, all the restless energy and annoying humor he usually demonstrated gone, and her anger had drained away, just like that. Maybe Discord had been playing some kind of deeper game against Tirek, pretending to ally with him for some reason, and Tirek had found out. Maybe he really had betrayed all of them, only to be betrayed by Tirek in turn. She hadn't known. All she'd known was that he looked miserable and broken, and she couldn't feel any trace of the Chaos magic that normally boiled out of him every moment. Tirek had been roiling with so much pony magic, she wouldn't have been able to detect Chaos magic inside him anyway, but she'd definitely been able to feel its absence from Discord. And when Tirek had released the others, but not him, and he'd said nothing, just turned away in silence with his head hung low as if he felt too sad or too guilty to even ask for his freedom... she'd felt deeply sorry for him, and she'd demanded that Tirek release him as well. 

She hadn't had much of a chance to talk to him since then. He'd thanked her, given her the amulet -- which provided the final key, and from the way he'd been enunciating, as if he were on a stage, she was sure he'd known it would -- and he'd helped prepare for the party, with a bare minimum of magic use. If she hadn't felt the Chaos in him when her three fellow princesses, Discord, and Spike had all come to join them outside the castle, she might have suspected that he never got his magic back. Then he'd spent most of the party leaning against the wall, and the few efforts she'd made to draw him out had failed. He'd looked depressed, and while he'd sounded almost normal when he spoke, simply the fact that his motions and body language had been subdued suggested that he was hurting inside. She'd felt torn. The part of her that believed in justice said that he should feel sad, he should feel guilty; but the part of her that believed in compassion wanted him to be happier. He'd made a horrible mistake, but he'd made up for it as well as anyone could.

After yesterday, she truly couldn't believe that Discord would actually do something to hurt any of Fluttershy's friends, or deliberately break the one restriction Celestia had placed on him. Not this soon, anyway.

Rarity nodded. "I agree," she said, sounding relieved. "I doubt Discord would want to violate his parole this soon under any circumstances. So perhaps he's just staying with Pinkie somewhere until she wakes up."

"Uh, but if he can teleport, why would he be stuck somewhere? He could just take himself and Pinkie back to Ponyville," Spike pointed out.

"You said there's an easy way to find out, sugarcube?" Applejack asked Twilight.

"I can just scry for Discord," Twilight said confidently. "His Chaos magic shows up like a beacon. If he's anywhere in Equestria, I ought to be able to find him, and if he's not in Ponyville, odds are he's with Pinkie."

The scrying spell was one she'd used before, so thankfully she didn't need to look it up... without her books, she wouldn't have been able to. She concentrated, focused on the feel of Chaos, and fired up the spell.

There was no echo, no feeling of Chaos magic ghosting against her horn. There was no resonance anywhere. The Everfree pulsed erratically with chaos magic, but no more than normal; Discord wasn't hiding in there. And without Discord, they'd lost their best clue to Pinkie's location. It was too bad she couldn't scry for Pinkie directly...

...Wait! Maybe she could! "Girls, I want to try something," she said.  "Gather around, and focus on your element."

"Are we going to try that summoning spell?" Applejack asked.

"No, it wouldn't work without all six of us, and I don't think the Rainbow Powers work exactly the same way the Elements did anyway. I have something else in mind. Focus on your element, and when you have it firmly in mind... reach out to Pinkie."

She felt the rainbow of magic building up inside each one of them, felt it pulse and grow. It wouldn't be a large enough pulse to cause a phaseshift; they wouldn't transform to their more garishly colored forms. But it should be powerful enough that she could focus and guide it out and let it lead them directly to their missing sixth.

Except, when she did, it fizzled completely.

"It didn't work," Rainbow Dash said, sounding nervous. "How come it didn't work? Is it something Discord did?"

"Or perhaps something left over from what Tirek did to us?" Rarity asked, sounding close to the edge of panic.

"Has... has something bad happened to Pinkie and Discord?" Fluttershy asked.

"I don't know," Twilight said, feeling lost. Why hadn't it worked? She'd felt the resonance, she'd felt it building. It should have worked.

"Well, I'm guessing it just plain didn't work somehow," Applejack said. "Because the only other explanation is that Pinkie and Discord ain't anywhere, and that don't make sense either."

"Wait!" Sudden excitement swept through Twilight. "Wait, that's it! I know exactly where they are!"

"Are they okay?" Fluttershy asked.

"Do tell us, Twilight!" Rarity urged.

"Well, okay, I don't know exactly where they are, but I have a really good hypothesis. Princess Celestia told me, when she told me that Discord was under town arrest, that normally he lives in a pocket dimension of chaos that he made himself. But he's not allowed to live there anymore; he's not even allowed to go there without one of us. So he must have gone with Pinkie to get his stuff, because he's been ordered to move into Ponyville!"

"But why wouldn't you be able to find them, then?" Rainbow asked.

"Because they're not anywhere! Just like Applejack said. They're outside of this plane of existence, and that means the magic can't find them. If they're in a pocket dimension, then they're not strictly speaking inside our universe at all, exactly."

"Oh, that is such a relief," Rarity said. "I can picture it perfectly, too. If he was tired and wanted to retrieve his possessions before going to wherever he planned to stay the night, of course he would ask Pinkie, and then undoubtedly the two of them must have fallen asleep there because of the late hour. And without the sun or an alarm clock to wake her, and after all the excitement and the length of the party, Pinkie must simply have overslept! And certainly Discord wouldn't be responsible enough to even think about the fact that she'd like to wake up early and return here to clean up." She sighed happily. "It all makes perfect sense."

That phrase bothered Twilight. Things almost never made perfect sense around Discord. On the other hoof, it was the best explanation. What else could it be? She felt certain Pinkie couldn't be dead; the resonance she felt from Laughter still felt Pinkie-shaped. And if she wasn't dead and she wasn't anywhere, then where else could she be but outside the universe?

"Well, if Pinkie's oversleepin' cause she went to help Discord, then it's plain to see we're gonna have to pick up the slack and clean up the party for her," Applejack said. "Can't say I mind it much; I never did feel right leaving Pinkie to do all the work cleaning up after, but she'd always say it was her job, bein' that she planned the party. Maybe we can do something nice for her this time, since she ain't around to tell us no."

"As long as all you ponies are helping out and nopony's leaving me stuck with the whole thing, I'm game for it," Spike said.

Rainbow Dash sighed. "I guess so. It's a nice thing to do for Pinkie, but I'm worried about what might've been going on with the weather while Tirek was taking all our magic. It wasn't like he was trying to make any of the rain come out on schedule."

"Oh, but you're so fast, Rainbow, surely you can put some time in to help us and then go catch up with the weather later today? I'm sure the crops won't die if the rainfall comes a few hours late," Rarity said encouragingly.

"Don't even know as that we need rain right now," Applejack said. "Last I checked, the cisterns weren't low. So I'm pretty sure you've got time to pitch in."

"Fine," Rainbow said, sighing. "But only a few hours! I really do have to check up with the rest of the weather team!"




It was less than half an hour after they started cleaning up the castle from the party that Spike found Pinkie's note.

In large, blocky hoofwriting, written in glittery purple wax from what appeared to be a wide crayon, it said, "Me and Discord went to do something really really nice for Twilight but it's a surprise so I can't say what! See you tomorrow afternoon or something like that!" What followed was a rows of X's, O's, and smiley faces.

Twilight blinked as she read it over. Going to get Discord's stuff was not what she would call something really, really nice for herself. So she'd been right that Pinkie was with Discord, but possibly wrong about where they'd gone. Except, where else could they have gone? Did Discord have some sort of present for her at his home in his pocket dimension? She cringed at the thought of what Pinkie and Discord might consider an appropriate present for her. Well, Pinkie's taste in presents was usually okay, but if Discord was in the mix, who knew what he could talk Pinkie into? She didn't think he'd do anything actively malicious, not right now, but he was still Discord.

"She could have put this somewhere that one of us would have seen it, instead of leaving it lying on the floor near an exterior door," Rarity complained. "I swear, after the terrible fright she put us through, I most certainly intend to have some words with her."

"Yeah, but you know she didn't mean no harm by it," Applejack said. "And anyway, it'd be just like Discord to drag her off the moment her note's written without waitin' for her to actually put it someplace that makes sense."

"Well, I certainly intend to have words with him as well," Rarity said. "I was almost certainly awake when he and Pinkie left, and I believe Twilight was as well; perhaps if the goal was to arrange for a present for Twilight, I can see why they wouldn't have wanted to speak to her, but what could possibly have been the problem with telling me personally before they left?"

Rainbow looked uncomfortable, probably because she was placed in the position of either defending Discord at the same time as defending Pinkie, or failing to defend Pinkie. Apparently she came down on the side of friend defense. "I, uh, I gotta say, when Pinkie gets an idea in her head that she thinks is gonna make somepony happy... she doesn't normally think about stuff like checking in. I mean she forgot she had to do party cleanup. This idea of hers must've been a big one. She wouldn't forget party cleanup for just any old reason."

"I wonder what it is?" Fluttershy asked. "If Pinkie is involved, it must be something Twilight will really like, but with Discord involved... oh, it could be anything!"

"Which reminds me," Rarity said. "Twilight, once we finish the party cleanup, the four of us simply must take you out shopping to replace your toiletries and kitchen supplies! And perhaps some furniture would not go amiss. Oh, but we'll have to put thought into what sorts of furniture would match the castle's décor! It can't be just anything. Perhaps we'll have to have custom-made furniture brought in! Or at least go shopping in Canterlot!"

Twilight put on a weary smile. "Thanks, Rarity, but... I'm not up to picking out furniture yet. I'm... still kind of reeling over what's gone. The food and the toiletries, yes, that's a good idea. Especially healthy food, because once Pinkie moves in, she's probably going to try to fill the pantries with party food." She sighed. "Spike, you and I ought to go out to what's left of the tree to try to recover your gem hoard... gems don't get destroyed by fire, so we might recover most of it. And maybe some of what was in the basement survived."

"Oh! I can help with that!" Rarity volunteered.

"That'd be great!" Spike sounded much more enthusiastic than Twilight felt. "And we kept some of my baby toys in a fireproof box, remember? 'Cause I kept setting them on fire?"

"Good point, we might be able to find those as well." At least maybe some of the sentimental mementos of Spike's babyhood might have survived. And some of Twilight's own childhood memories were still at her parents' home, never having moved with her to either the School for Gifted Unicorns or Ponyville. But there was so much gone... all the books...

Well. There was no sense crying over it. Even though she really kind of wanted to.




By late afternoon, toiletries had been purchased, and the remains of the tree had been thoroughly searched. The gems Spike had kept stashed in the wall turned up, but none of the ones from the kitchen or from under his bed, nor did the fireproof box of baby toys. Tiny fragments of paper, too small to possibly piece back together into anything, floated on top of piles of ash, and all of them were completely covered with soot by the time the search was done. The things that had been in the basement hadn't blown up, but they'd ended up completely covered in dirt, buried when the roots of the tree caved in and brought the entire dirt ceiling of the basement down on top of everything that had been in there. This included Twilight's box of books that she'd originally planned on trading at Rainbow Falls; when she pulled them out of the dirt and brushed them off enough with her magic to confirm what they were, she almost cried, and only the need to keep her princess face on and be strong, particularly in front of Spike, stopped her. Some of her most precious books had survived. But so very, very few. The contrast between the happiness at finding them intact, if dirty, and the grief over all of the rest of them, gone, was making hay out of her equilibrium. 

Pinkie and Discord had not reappeared. This was making Twilight very, very nervous.

The party had been cleaned up hours ago, the weather team had brought a brief shower to compensate for several days without Tirek bothering to bring rain or pegasi who still had magic feeling safe enough to do it themselves, and Twilight now had an assortment of towels, washcloths, blankets, kitchen supplies and soaps. Also, three different ponies had turned up at the castle asking for jobs as cooks or maids. She had to turn them down, for now, until she had time to discuss with Celestia where the funding for the Friendship Outreach was going to come from. And Ponyville residents had been wandering in with library books that they'd had checked out before Tirek's reign of terror, all day, returning them to her so she could at least record which ones survived. 

Filthy Rich dropped off five boxes of donated books from his affiliated bookstores; while the Barnyard Bargains in Ponyville didn't sell any such thing, apparently the franchises in Manehattan, Canterlot, Fillydelphia and Baltimare had book sections. Admittedly they consisted almost entirely of mass-produced crappy best sellers from last year, beach thrillers and cheesy romances and the like, and there was a lot more duplication than she normally thought the Ponyville library could really support, but right now beggars couldn't be choosers. Several other ponies had delivered book donations as well. She felt so proud of her town, of her fellow ponies and how much they stood behind her. But the combination of happiness and pride twined around grief and loss was stretching her tighter and tighter, and her worries for Pinkie (and to a lesser extent for Discord) were putting enough pressure on her that she thought she would snap.

Her namesake had fallen upon Equestria, the last rays of Celestia's sun fading below the horizon and Luna's stars rising on the other side of the sky, and she was pacing anxiously. She shouldn't be so nervous, she knew. While Pinkie was punctual, Discord was not, and he was probably responsible for their transportation. She imagined Pinkie whining at Discord that it was time to go, and Discord laughing her off, claiming that keeping to a schedule was no fun. Pointing out that after all, she hadn't promised to be back by afternoon. Wearing Pinkie down, because Pinkie did like to have fun. Sometimes Twilight thought Discord would have had more success in the long run if he'd seduced Pinkie to the chaos side of life than by discording her. Well, not literally seduced, she'd never seen Pinkie show an even slightly romantic interest in anypony until Cheese Sandwich came along. But he'd had her halfway to his side already with the chocolate rain, and then he'd ruined it by messing with her mind. She knew that Pinkie's feelings regarding Discord seemed to be wildly variable; sometimes she treated him like one of her best buddies, like she had when he'd gotten sick, and sometimes she did things like declaring that he wasn't her friend, although he also wasn't not her friend.

What if he had done something to her? Pinkie was the only one who might be talked into helping Discord with one of his schemes, if she thought ponies would find it fun...

No. No, she couldn't believe it. She remembered the moment when Tirek had released all her other friends, and Discord, still trapped in his bubble, had turned away, slumped, his body language speaking silently of grief and resignation. He hadn't begged for his freedom, hadn't even tried to remind her of his existence... and according to Rarity, Discord had possibly saved all their lives by bargaining with Tirek, betting him, with their continued life as his stake in the game, that Tirek would need them as hostages to obtain Twilight's magic. But he'd said that Tirek wouldn't let him go one way or the other. If Twilight hadn't saved him, Discord would have been dragged off to a dungeon somewhere or thrown in Tartarus or something... but he'd said nothing. 

Twilight thought a lot about pony body language, and tone of voice, and the meanings of what wasn't said, because she didn't instinctively understand it the way other ponies did. She'd suffered a good bit of pain in her childhood from being unable to tell what ponies thought of what she was doing or saying until it was too late; part of the reason she'd decided to forego friendship in favor of her studies was that ponies just didn't want to be her friend anyway, and while the teasing had stopped when she'd become Princess Celestia's personal student, few had bothered to reach out to her, and some of what she'd thought were attempts to reach out had turned out to be attempts to humiliate her, or get social status by pretending to be her friend. Now that she was an adult and had studied numerous works on pony psychology, she had learned to read ponies almost as well as those born with the ability could... she'd never match a Fluttershy or an Applejack or Rarity, but she thought she might be better at it than Rainbow Dash.

She could point to the exact things Discord had done, or said, or had failed to do or say, that made her think he was genuinely remorseful... and she still felt her logic was sound. If he'd been a villain still, frightened by the loss of his power into pretending remorse... he'd have begged. Or ostentatiously failed to beg, in some way that drew him to her attention. Discord was almost never silent, almost never missed an opportunity to insert himself into pretty much any discourse possible. The fact that he'd been silent spoke volumes that no words of apology could ever match. He was unpredictable, but she found it impossible to believe that he'd betray them again this soon, not after the genuine sorrow and guilt she'd seen in him yesterday.

But what could be keeping them?

And then, as if summoned by Twilight's fears for her, Pinkie bounded in.

"Twilight! Twilight Twilight Twilight! Come on, come on! You have to see this!"

"PINKIE!" Twilight grabbed the bouncing pink pony in her magic, pulled her close, and gave her a hug. "I was so worried!"

"Worried? Oh my gosh did you not get my note? I knew I should've hung it on the fridge!"

"No, we got your note, but it said you'd be back this afternoon!"

"What time is it? Oh no, did we come back next month? Or a year? Please tell me we weren't gone for a year!" She grabbed Twilight's face in both hooves and pulled her close, eyes wide.

"Um, no, you've only been gone a day."

Pinkie relaxed. "Whew, what a relief! So why were you worried, silly filly? I said afternoon or something like that, and evening is something like afternoon!"

"Yeah, but you went somewhere with Discord. Of course we were worried. I have to go tell everypony you're back and safe!"

"No, you have to see your present first! I don't know how much longer Discord can stay awake!"

Twilight frowned. "Why does Discord need to stay awake?"

"Because! When you work super-duper hard to make somepony a present, you don't want to be asleep when they get it!"

A present. From Discord. Twilight sighed. "Spike, please go get Rarity. Owlowliscious, can you get Rainbow Dash and Fluttershy? I'll write a note to have Rainbow get Applejack--"

"Twilight, we have to go! Come on! I'll let all our friends know later but this is for you!"

"How about they meet us?" Twilight offered, not particularly enamored of the prospect of facing whatever Discord thought was an appropriate present without the backup of as many friends as she could get.

"Okay! We'll be out near Fluttershy's house!"

"Near?" There wasn't much near Fluttershy's, aside from the Everfree.

"Well, that's where the present is!"

By now Twilight was curious, though she still had serious misgivings. What exactly would Discord consider an appropriate gift? Well, the flowers he'd given Princess Celestia  had been tasteful (literally, so she'd heard), if perhaps a trifle forward, given that half the gossip columnists in Canterlot were now speculating on a romantic involvement between the two. But he could hardly have worked hard on flowers. She had a hard time imagining what Discord could possibly work hard on, or what in fact constituted him working hard.

She followed Pinkie out, with Spike and Owlowliscious dispatched to summon their friends.  As soon as they were outside, Pinkie broke into a full-out gallop. "Hurry, hurry!" Twilight had to fly to keep up with her, given the dangers of letting Ponyville citizens see a princess galloping... that would probably start a panic. Whereas Pinkie galloping was just Pinkie being Pinkie.

They headed out of town, in the direction of Fluttershy's house, then veered off in the direction of the land between Sweet Apple Acres and Fluttershy's property. As Pinkie slowed down, Twilight looked at what was up ahead, puzzled. That was a very large oak tree. Had she really never come this way before?  She felt sure she'd never seen that tree before, but it was much too big and well rooted to be a transplant.

As they got close, she could see that it was a treehouse, similar to Fluttershy's or the one she'd lost. Nothing hung from the branches, suggesting that it was unoccupied; ponies tended to decorate their tree houses. She'd been quite sure there were no unoccupied tree homes in Ponyville, certainly none of this size. Well, that gave her a clue as to what this was about. She smiled wanly. Her tree was dead, no new tree could ever replace it, and she had a lovely new place to live; she didn't need a new tree. But it had certainly been thoughtful of Discord to make it for her, at least, if that was what this was.

The sight of Discord sprawled on the ground in front of the door seemed to verify her belief. She landed neatly beside him. "You guys grew me a new tree? That's really nice!" she said, wearing her princess face. She really was pleased they'd thought of her, even if what they'd come up with was kind of useless. Well, Ponyville could use a new library, anyway; the Friendship Palace wasn't an appropriately cozy place for reading like the Golden Oaks library had been. 

"Uh-uh!" Pinkie said, shaking her head. "Well, we did, or to be totally exact Discord did, but that's not the really important thing!"

"Oh, my head," Discord moaned. "Pinkie, can I have a new head?"

"I dunno, can you concentrate enough to make one?"

"Chaos, no. I couldn't conjure orange juice right now."

"Then nope! Can't have a new head!"

"Maybe Twilight would make me a new head?" he asked plaintively, raising the offending organ to look at Twilight with improbably large eyes.

"Sorry, I can't make new heads," Twilight said. "Did you guys really grow me a new tree, or did you just snap it up?"

"It's a real tree," Discord said, his voice hoarse and weak, with a distinct whine in it, but steady. "Made from a real acorn and everything. It might be a little twisty in some places inside and of course I couldn't make it grow exactly like your original tree and I do apologize, Chaos magic doesn't do anything perfectly, but it is 100% real tree, even though I wanted to put in glass and stone but I decided against it. And I didn't make the tree sap into soda pop even though I wanted to."

"We couldn't agree on what flavor soda pop!" Pinkie said. "Discord thought root beer, and I said, 'Root beer? Are you crazy?' So it's just all normal tree stuff!" She hopped over Discord. "Come in, Twilight, come in! Come see!"

Twilight flew over Discord, who looked entirely too wrecked to move from where he was flopped on the ground. There were visible bags under his eyes, which were badly bloodshot to the point where she couldn't make out his tiny pupil in the web of red blood vessels covering his eye, and his large pupil was looking like a spider. She didn't think it would take him so much effort just to grow a tree; had the Rainbow Power failed to give him back most of the chaos power Tirek took? "Okay, Pinkie, I'll have a look at... oh my..."

All over the inside of the treehouse, stacked in wobbly, disorganized piles on the oak floor, were books. Hundreds of books. Maybe thousands. Twilight staggered slightly, staring around herself. "What..."

"I can't guarantee all the copies are perfect," Discord said anxiously. "In fact I know they aren't. There are probably a lot with a few pages missing, or with some pages rearranged, and one came out tasting like bacon, I do apologize. But I tried, I did my best-"

"He really did! He had to super concentrate because chaos doesn't like making copies, so it was really really hard for him, like trying to do the Cakes' taxes! I checked a lot of them but I couldn't check them all and I couldn't check every single page but we did our best, I promise!"

"How-- how did you--"

"Time travel," Discord said, dragging himself partway into the treehouse, head and neck coming over the threshold and then flopping there. 

"But... you can't go back long enough to do something like this! You can only go back like a week, or with your level of power maybe a month, and you can only stay for a few minutes!"

"Those are rules, Twilight," Discord said, his voice a little stronger. "My magic can't easily make copies, but there's nothing it does so well as break rules. In fact I dare say I could never have managed to make any copies with any level of accuracy if I weren't flagrantly violating causality while I was doing it." He put a paw over his eyes. "Pinkie, be a dear and ask Luna to turn down the moon for me?"

"I think the lamps are probably a bigger problem," Pinkie said. For the first time Twilight noticed that the light in the room was coming from Fluttershy-shaped sconces on the wall, depicting Fluttershy smiling and playing with a large ball, where the ball was a globe of light. "Lamps! Can you turn down a little bit?"

"They only speak Prench," Discord said apologetically.

"So how do you say it in Prench?"

"I forget. My head really hurts."

"You... copied... all these?"

"Not all of the things! On the first run we went back to right after Spike left the library, to get the stuff that isn't books!" Pinkie hopped over to an area Twilight hadn't noticed before. As if in a dream, Twilight drifted over to join her. "We knew if you went in the library before Tirek blew it up you would notice missing books, and that would make a paradox or something, which is bad, but we figured you didn't have time to go upstairs to your bedroom and check out stuff, so we cleaned out your closet and took all your personal stuff and Spike's, too!"

Her dresses, from the Gala, the wedding, the coronation, all lying in a pile on the floor, unharmed. Spike's baby bed. Spike's actual, current bed. The fireproof box of baby toys that they hadn't found. The books she'd been reading when the crisis came up, that she'd thought she would never finish. "My stuff..."

"And the kitchen too! We didn't have time to take all the stuff in the fridge or all the pantry stuff but we got the spice rack and Spike's dragon tea and his gems and a box of cookies! And then we went in the book sorting room, where you sort the books that ponies return, because we figure you wouldn't have gone in there either, and we took all the books there!" Pinkie pointed dramatically at a pile of about 50 books, not even stacked, and any other day Twilight would have been incensed at the treatment of her books but she'd thought they were gone and there they were. "And then we took the magic books from the top shelf, the ones you keep up high where foals can't get them, which was a little risky because maybe you'd notice that, so Discord put up an illusion so you wouldn't notice they were gone. Then we dropped off all the stuff here and went back to when you and Spike were at the Equestria Games because we knew you wouldn't be in the library then!"

"We assumed you'd notice any missing books," Discord said tiredly. "And I thought you might not appreciate it if I broke the space-time continuum with a paradox, even to save your books." He grinned, though it was a weak shadow of his usual broad smile. "So I copied them. I apologize if some are missing pages or they sing or they're in foreign languages but I did try as hard as I could..."

"We had to go back over and over, 'cause you can only stay in one time so long even if you're doing it with chaos and you can only overlap yourself once, so if we did a time and we ran out of it then we couldn't do that time again, and we've been doing it for like... three days? Four?"

"Don't ask me, I can't count even when my head isn't about to explode."

"And we didn't even sleep!" This, Twilight thought, might explain why Pinkie was even more manic and loud than usual. "But by the end Discord couldn't drink any more coffee and when I tried to give him a pastry he almost threw up and we didn't want that--"

"Please do not mention food..." Discord moaned. 

"And I was keeping the checklist of all the copies 'cause we also took the card catalog, not the drawers, just the cards, so I drew smiley faces on all the ones we copied, see?" Pinkie displayed her handiwork. There were indeed smiley faces on all the cards Twilight could see. "So finally we had all the cards with smiley faces, or balloons, I put balloons on the ones we took the real book of, and some of them are stamped that they were out so obviously we weren't going to copy them, but it was lots and lots and lots of books and it didn't matter how many times I did dominoes with the books and then knocked them all over or made jello and then dumped it on his head, it wasn't chaosy enough to make up for making copies and poor Discord was getting sicker and sicker but I said it would be okay if we just got most of the books, and he said, he said you saved his life and if his life is worth anything it's worth doing the job right for you and he made me Pinkie Promise not to let him stop until it was done, which was hard because I am running out of coffee, and chocolate, Discord stopped being able to do chocolate milk yesterday and I really need chocolate, and meringue, and maybe a ton of pecan snowball cookies, but it's okay because now we're done and we copied them all!" Pinkie took a deep breath, having delivered that entire monologue without apparently drawing one.

"I really tried," Discord said. "I know a lot of the copies are going to have problems and I tried to fix it, I did, but chaos just can't do that, but if I'm the master of chaos then I should be able to make chaos do what it can't do because that doesn't make any sense, so I made it. But a lot of them are wrong. I'm sorry, I really tried, I'm sorry..."

Discord apologizing once again for not perfectly copying the books that were supposed to be lost forever, had been lost forever except that he'd set out to do something as impossible for him as applebucking had been for Pinkie and dressmaking had been for Applejack, and done it despite it causing him physical pain and illness, and now her books that were lost forever were back and she'd never thought for a moment this could happen and it had... It was the last straw, the final bit of emotional turmoil, and she broke. Twilight's knees folded out from under her and she collapsed to the floor. A wail escaped her throat as she put her forehooves to her face, still kneeling on her back legs but almost flat on the floor, too overwhelmed to get up. 

"Oh no!" Pinkie knelt down next to her. "Twilight, I'm sorry, we thought you'd be happy! What's wrong, please? We tried so hard because we thought you'd be happy--"

"I am happy!" Twilight sobbed. "I am... I'm happy..."

"Oh, boy," she heard Spike's voice. "I haven't seen this in a while." She felt his small claws on the back of her neck, stroking her mane. "It's okay, Twi, it's okay. Let it all out. It's gonna be okay."

"I shouldn't be crying when I'm happy!" Twilight cried, her vision now blurred with tears. "I shouldn't! I'm, I'm happy, I'm so happy, I'm so stupid to be crying like this..."

"It's okay." His hand released her. "Can anypony get Twilight a drink?"

Even through the blur, she saw Discord raise his talon, slightly, then let it flop to the floor again without snapping. "Not it," he said in an exhausted tone.

"Don't worry, I got this!" Pinkie presented her with a tall glass of lemonade. Twilight tried not to think about how impossible that was, and drank it, using it to fight down the sobs.

"Oh my dear. You're so overwhelmed. I understand. I daresay, I would have fainted, darling." She felt Rarity next to her, and then a quick hug. 

"She's not sad?" Pinkie asked. "I don't want her to be sad! We tried so hard--"

"No, no, Pinkie, she's not sad," Rarity said. "Simply overwhelmed."

"This used to happen to her all the time," Spike said. "She couldn't handle it when she had strong emotions changing really fast, mostly from sad or angry to happy or relieved; she'd just fold over and start crying."

Twilight lifted her head, slightly ashamed that her friends had seen her like this. She'd thought she'd outgrown this reaction. "Rarity? Spike? When did you get here?" she asked, her voice hoarse.

"Right at the tail end, my dear. When Pinkie was talking about the card catalogue. Your eyes were a bit glazed by then, so I'm not surprised you didn't notice." She got up from beside Twilight. "Oh, Spike, look! Your gem hoard!"

"Oh, wow!" Twilight looked over at Spike, who had gone from competent and assured assistant to kid in a candy store. "And my comic books! You guys found my comic books!"

"Yeah, they were with your stuff! Which is good because if they'd been in the library we'd have had to make copies and that could have turned weird!"

"No, these are my collection, they're not part of the circulating collection. I don't let anypony read them unless they're my friends and I don't let anypony take them out of the library at all."

"Hoarding comics," Discord said, his voice so hoarse it was cracked. "Could be worse, I suppose. He could be hoarding Hummel figurines, or postage stamps."

"And you got my old toys... Thank you!" He grabbed Pinkie in a hug and squeezed her hard enough to lift her off the ground, despite the size difference between the two of them. "You're the best, Pinkie!"

"Oh, thanks, it was no problem!" Pinkie said, grinning. "But thank Discord too, the whole thing was his idea!"

Discord held up a paw, looking slightly alarmed. "No hugs."

Spike grinned mischievously, and then grabbed Discord around the neck and hugged him anyway. "You saved my stuff, you're getting a hug, dude."

"Can I die now?" Discord groaned. "I promise to resurrect myself. Eventually. After I've grown a new head. I think I wore a hole in this one."

"Nuh-uh, you have to go to bed!"

"I'll just sleep right here."

"No you won't! 'Cause Twilight's gonna want to be all organizy with the books and you are way too low on vitamin chaos to be here for that so I am taking you home! And feeding you like ten glasses of water because I don't even think you had anything to drink all day!"

"Oh my," Fluttershy's voice came. Twilight turned her head to see the yellow pegasus in the doorway. "Discord, what happened to you?"

"He copied all of Twilight's books in the past and brought them here for her so she could have them without making a tympanic paradox!"

"That is temporal paradox," Discord said. "Tympanic paradox is how you have not rendered yourself deaf with all the shouting you do. Oh, my head. Fluttershy?"

"Um, yes?"

"I didn't get you a present yet. I'm sorry," Discord said. "I wanted to get you a present but now I don't know what to get because Twilight saved my life, but you saved my soul, and I wanted to tell you how sorry I am but I don't know how I can beat going back in time and copying six thousand books..."

"Oh my," Fluttershy said again.

"Pinkie, dear, I think Discord is becoming just a little bit delirious from exhaustion," Rarity said. "Where is he staying?"

"With us! In the Palace! I found him a room right near the door where the garden's going to be!"

That broke Twilight out of her stupor. "Wait, what?"

"Isn't it a great idea?" Pinkie said, beaming. "Now if I get bored and lonely and you wanna be left alone I won't bother you!"

Twilight's mouth opened and closed, silently, more than once, at the implication that Pinkie genuinely thought having Discord as a housemate was a good idea. Although... it might not be a terrible idea to keep an eye on him. And while now that Rarity had pointed it out, she realized that his anxiety and guilt were probably only showing this strongly because of how exhausted he was, that didn't mean his feelings weren't genuine... it just meant that hopefully after he'd gotten some sleep he'd stop apologizing for stupid things like not being able to use the magic of making things different to make identical things. 

Pinkie slung Discord over her back like a rolled-up rug, then picked up his head and somehow managed to wind his neck around hers as if he were a scarf, so his head was now lying on her back and not dangling on the ground. Having experienced how heavy Discord was when he wasn't using magic to lighten himself, Twilight was impressed; Pinkie was an earth pony, they were strong, but she herself had been an alicorn when Discord had been clinging to her after they'd all encountered the tatzlwurm, and alicorns had earth pony strength also. Discord made faces to express his distaste for this treatment, but didn't verbally protest or physically resist. 

"Goodbye, everypony!" Pinkie said. "I'm taking Discord back to the Palace to get some sleep, and then either I will go zzzz myself or I will bake a coconut meringue layer cake and eat the whole thing, one or the other! Twilight, enjoy your books! Spike, enjoy your comics! Fluttershy, enjoy having a new tree in the neighborhood! Rarity, enjoy that we didn't let the dresses you made go explody! Applejack and Dashie, enjoy getting the explanation you were gonna ask me for about why I am carrying Discord on my back and where the tree came from, 'cause now Twilight can tell you! Bye!"

She started to bound off, prompting a shriek from Discord. "Ahh! Pinkie, no bouncing, please!"

"Oh, okay, sorry!" This time she left at a sedate trot, which was probably still too jarring for Discord's comfort, judging from his face.

Twilight got to her hooves, noting that Applejack and Rainbow Dash were, in fact, standing near the door, right behind where Pinkie had been working to sling Discord onto her back. "Well? What's going on?" Rainbow Dash asked. "Where did it turn out they were?"

"This is going to take a bit of explanation..."