Well, several hours later my little brainstorming session had gone pretty well. I had figured out what I was going to do, yet I knew that I was not in the right condition to do them. Yeah, I could pull off the whole thing using my magic and probably have a good time doing it. The issue was, of course, my terrible stage fright. It's so bad that I misspelled chair in a spelling contest when I had about two hundred and fifty or so students watching the whole thing. This time around I'm going to be putting on a performance in front of a crowd of ponies over twice that size. Trust me. I made a through the looking glass contraption to ask Celestia about the thing.
Heh. The reaction she had when my face popped up in front of hers was pretty funny. I signed off from that by creating a giant balloon over her head and popped it on her horn to coat her and the area around her throne in shaving cream. I have no idea if she was going to let the prank war go away, but I decided that since I was here that I would have some fun with it and launch the first salvo against her.
I was given more of the specifics from her before I did that like how long I was to take, what I shouldn't do in front of them, when specifically I was supposed to take the stage. That last one finally got rid of my own stupid running gag. What the hell the time was. Nobody seemed to want to tell me when in the day it was and apparently it was Celestia's idea to do so. That's pretty much the reason why I ended up doing what I did to her. Payback sucks Celestia.
Anyway, after getting the information from her I had to go over what I ought to do. I was to put on something, but all she said was to make it interesting. I found that kind of vague, but it also gives me room for interpretation. Honestly, I think she just wanted me to do something that I'd enjoy doing in order for me to work on the stage fright issue... Maybe the anti-social thing as well. As much as we're teasing each other I'm getting the feeling that she's trying to get me to grow as a person like she does with Twilight.
Meh, enough with the introspective thinking. Let's move on to what happened afterwards. Namely something I realized during my little session that I figured out I could do.
After deciding on what I would do, I set down the notebook I wrote everything down in and snapped my fingers. Discord then appeared in a flash in the middle of the air looking a bit astonished. As soon as he appeared, I jumped off of the couch, latched onto him, and began to give him a furious noogie so powerful that the friction almost caught on fire.
"You didn't think I'd forget about you so easily now did you?"
"I was rather hoping that you would. What sort of terrible revenge have you plotted against me for most eeevil transgressions?" he spouted sarcastically.
"Well," I said and dropped to the ground beside him, "I was thinking about that and I think instead of giving you some kind of punishment I'm going to make you help me with the end of a joke."
"Hmmm," he replied while stroking his beard. "A joke you say?"
"Oh it's nothing you wouldn't already be interested in. That is if you don't already know what's going on."
"Ohhh, I have a hunch," he said in a bit of a cheeky manner.
"Well, Twilight's gone through every other avenue she can think of. I believe that it's time you provide the crescendo to her state of chaos. You know... Do what you do best."
Discord let out a chuckle and began to tap his fingertips together.
"My dear boy, you have directed quite the devious ploy. I am impressed," he finished in a low tone.
"Eh, it's just a running gag," I said with a shrug. "She actually started it by keeping my DS. If she had just come forward and admitted the issue then none of this would be happening."
"Well, far be it for me to not help get as many laughs out of a joke as possible."
"Just help me put the final nail in this coffin would you?" I asked a bit beleagueredly.
"I would be glad to! Time for some fun!" he finished forcefully.
As he disappeared, I took one last look at my list and then checked my watch. Not knowing what the time was for as long as I did was a real pain. Sure I knew how much time passed when I looked at it. The issue was that if anyone wanted me to be somewhere by a certain time, then my watch was pretty useless. But now it was different. Now I knew that it was 5:21 in the p.m. and it had been almost four hours since I had left Twilight to her endeavor in the library. Yeah, it may not mean much that I got these things rectified, but it means something to me.
What I needed to do now was get the timing for Discord's addition to the joke down right. I didn't give him any specific instructions to follow. It would be easier for Discord to just act like himself, after all. The issue at hand would be how he would play out his part as the last resort of the desperate.
Oh wait just a second here. Twilight was desperate. I just gave Discord carte blanche to do whatever he wanted with her in the name of this dumb joke. Oh shit, did he plan this? All of a sudden, this felt like something he might come up with. Twilight might know a bit about technology, but I'm pretty sure she doesn't know enough to notice the subtle nuances that some like my DS has in contrast with something here such as, say her little machine that she has stored in the basement. Her main studies are in magic and friendship. When it comes to everything else she's more of a jack of all trades. Discord probably knew this as well and is going to take advantage of the situation.
As I was about to go there and to something, I noticed something... rather odd happen. It wasn't anything grand, but instead it was so very imperceptibly noticeable. The entire room just seemed to shift ever so slightly to a different angle. It was almost like I had tilted my head ever so slightly to the right and hadn't seen myself do it.
I hated that. I hated that so much. It was a weirdness that I couldn't explain. I'm not just talking about that time, but the fact that it had happened twice before back when I was on Earth as well. Once when I was driving home and it looked like everything was suddenly closer. The other time was, ironically, at a magic show. I was seven at the time and somehow during the trick the color of a rabbit in a picture changed from white to brown. I mean when it changed it changed faster than a camera shutter fast. Not only that, but everything else in the room looked slightly tilted from before the point it had changed colors. I hate it because it defies any logic! At least here I could come up with some sort of craziness as an explanation. Not so back home. Fuck that drives me nuts that I have no answer for it!
No, now was not the time to get so pissed off at the weird things that happened to me. Instead, I needed to get to Twilight before Discord did something with her. I powered up a bit, as I had started to call it since it sounded cool, and I decided to check my coin to see how this was draining my magic. After digging it out of my pocket, I flipped it to the blank side and noticed the glowing edge was a little less than half way around the rim. I'd say maybe forty five percent charge held in the coin. I wasn't really sure how much magic I was capable of holding despite all the numbers that Discord had given me, but I knew that I didn't have a battery indicator on me anywhere. Well, unless you counted the tattoo on my hand, but that didn't function as such.
And so, as I made delays to my haste, I was caught by surprise as there was a knock on my door. To my great surprise the door let me know that Twilight had shown up at my doorstep. That just didn't add up. I took maybe a minute after the weirdness had happened and was just about teleport over there and she's already here? How?
Well, Twilight might have the answers I was seeking so I made my way to the door and opened it up to greet her.
"Hey Twilight. What's up?"
Her reaction was to look to the side and rub the back of her head with her hoof. For some reason, she also looked like she was blushing. I wasn't really sure why though.
"Hello Seth. I, um, came to give this back to you," she said while continuing to not look at me.
Her horn lit up and my DS came floating from off of her back where I didn't see it before and came to a stop just in front of me. I subsequently reached out and picked it out of the air and took a quick look at it. Nothing seemed to be wrong with it. It still had the same worn appearance that I had given it through years of play. I guess Discord didn't do anything to it.
"Thanks for giving this back to me Twilight. Did you have fun with it?"
"Yes!" she blurted out. "Um, I mean yes, I did have some fun with it as I was studying it. I learned quite a bit from it."
"Well, I'm glad to hear that. I was beginning to worry that something had happened," I said while managing to keep the mirth out of my voice.
Her face instantly switched to one of concealed panic.
"Of course nothing happened! Why would you think anything happened? That's silly! You're silly!"
"Twilight, you sound kind of bothered by something," I said while becoming more exasperated by the second. "If something is going on you know that I have plenty enough indifference to hear about it and not really care one way or the other, but not enough that I wouldn't give you some advice on it."
Again, her face went red. This time, though, her entire face was covered in a reddish hue.
"Wouldyouliketogoonanoutingwithme?" she blurted out.
"Huh? That was a little fast for me. What did you just say?"
"I-I wanted to know if you would like to go out and do something with me?" she asked just as nervously as before.
Warning. Vital brain functions have gone into shutdown. Please enter emergency reset code to reactivate normal parameters.
**************************
Code accepted. Brain has rebooted. Normal functions have been restored. Have a nice day.
"You want to do what!?!" I nearly bellowed in surprise.
"I want you to go on a date with me!" she yelled with a completely red face this time.
I was having none of that. As soon as she yelled that last bit at me I proceeded to pick her up with a bit of levitation and pull her face to within a few inches of mine.
"Alright. What the fuck is going on here? The is no woman on the face of this planet or mine that would be willing to go on a date with me without having severe mental problems."
Man, even as I said that I felt how much that hurt to hear out loud. It also seemed to resonate with Twilight as some of the red left her face.
"You really think that?"
"This isn't the time for what I think. Or at least that part. Anyway, I know that you wouldn't want to go on a date with me. Something is very wrong with this scenario. Why did you suddenly want to ask me out? You're not a changeling are you?"
"No, I'm not a changeling."
"Oh yeah? How did you recover from Discord's mental attacks when you returned to the library?"
"I reread all the friendship reports that I had sent Princess Celestia. But how would you know if- Oh. Right."
"Yes that's correct. And so is your answer. I doubt a changeling would know that answer so that doesn't make you a changeling..."
"No it doesn't. Now can you please put me down?"
I gently set her down and released the hold I had on her.
"Twilight, I am not going to stand here and believe for one second that you actually want to go on a date with me. You need to tell me what's going on."
Twilight looked like she was going to... well, I don't really know how to say it, but she looked panicked, looked everywhere but at me, almost like she was sacred of something. And then, it was like a switch was flipped and she let out a huge sigh.
"I have something to tell you. I... accidentally broke your game."
As she said that, I felt a bunch of weight suddenly appear in my pants. I reached into my pants pocket and pulled out my DS. Or what used to be my DS. The thing was a mess now. The black matte finish, while worn in places before, now was smeared with red and pink smudges of some kind of substance that I couldn't quite identify. The cover where the SD card went as well as the stylus were missing. My Pokemon game looked as though it had been jammed into the game slot in a manner that wasn't conducive to the manufacturer's suggested usage. Opening it up revealed that both screens had been ripped up. Both the d-pad and the b button were missing and, of course, when I pressed the power button it didn't turn on.
"I think broke might be just a bit of an understatement," I quipped.
"I don't understand what happened. I didn't do anything wrong and suddenly there was this red light on there, but I didn't see anything happening other than that so I continued on and then the whole system shut down! I tried to figure out what happened to it and things just started to spiral out of control! Before I knew what had happened I tried to get help from everypony I could think of who knew anything about this which was almost nopony! Then they all tried to be helpful, but all it did was make things worse. I was so certain that I could fix things that I just had Rainbow Dash run interference, but that failed an you still got inside the library. I almost gave up and told you, but I panicked again and sent you off.
"I kept trying to figure a way to fix things, but nothing worked. When I didn't think there was any way out of it, Discord showed up and told me that he could fix it. I was a bit skeptical, but since he actually has been to your planet I trusted his word on it and agreed. However, he said that fixing it came with a price. He said that in exchange for fixing it that I would have to go on a date with you. He said that since it was something that you owned that was broken then it was only right to make it up to you some other way. It didn't really sound like a bad idea at the time, but looking back on it now it just feels rather unlike me to agree to that."
"Yeah, I can't argue with that."
"But now your game is broken and there isn't anything I can do about it now. I'm sorry Seth. I should have came to you as soon as it happened and apologized for breaking it. I truly am sorry for doing so."
I closed my eyes and rubbed my forehead for a moment. Then I opened them back up and looked at her again.
"Yeah, you should've come to me as soon as it happened. The only thing that was wrong with it was the fact that it ran out of power. Besides, if Discord could fix it then why would you think that I couldn't?"
I levitated the DS in front of me and snapped my fingers. The DS shone for a second and it quickly reverted to it's previous state. I reached out, grabbed onto it, and promptly placed it into my pocket. Twilight promptly facehoofed.
"I just don't know what to say about this," Twilight groaned out.
"This is Discord we're talking about. I wouldn't be surprised if he did something to make you think it was a good idea. Let's just forget about the whole thing and say that you've learned a lesson about not avoiding things that are bad in which you have to confront. Or something like that. That sound good to you?"
"That sounds just fine. Now, why don't we head to the library? We all need to talk about your upcoming performance at Canterlot Hall."
"Sure thing. I've actually got some notes that you all might want to look at..."