In a burst of light, Discord and Matt materialized in a new yet familiar-looking room. As per usual, Matt stumbled and nearly fell over due to the teleportation, but before he could crash onto the floor, a yellow glow snagged him halfway down and held him in place. Instead of a bout of expected pain or violence, the nervous human found himself floating gently like on a cloud and laid on a strangely comfortable bed. He looked around and saw what would have passed for a decent sized studio apartment, complete with all the amenities – a small full kitchen, a dresser, a cushy-looking chair and small table with a computer sitting on it, even a TV with what looked to be several various gaming consoles sitting around it. What was Discord up to this time?
The demigod grinned and spread welcoming arms. "Well? What do you think?"
"Put me back!" Matt snarled as he climbed off the bed and got nose to nose with his enemy.
"Don't you like your new place? It's got all the creature comforts of your old home, and I should know what they are."
"Drop dead!"
Discord raised a dramatic paw to his forehead, worthy of an acting award. "Oh dear. All my hard work to make everything just right and he doesn't like it. I suppose you should just be rid of me once and for all then, for I am such a failure!"
A snap of his fingers summoned the same shotgun Matt fired during their last encounter and he let the confused young man take it. A few bullets followed suit and made their own way into the chamber. Though it did nothing the last time, Matt wasn't about to pass up a chance to fire away at him again. Baring his teeth, he aimed the barrel straight between Discord's amused eyes and pulled the trigger. A blast rang out and left the maniac's head split into pieces. After a brief moment, he chuckled and put himself back together, not even so much as leaving a stain on the wall.
"Y'know, if I was like you, that probably would've hurt. Would you like to know what it feels like?"
Before he could react, Discord snatched the firearm and spun it back around at its owner. He smiled maliciously as Matt shrunk back. Just because the gun didn't do much for him didn't mean the same would happen in Discord's magical hands. Why exactly the monster felt the need to use a weapon that was beneath him wasn't a question Matt cared to ask himself.
"Bang!"
Instead of being taken by nothingness, however, Matt was sprayed with several streams of harmless water. His sudden, warranted display of fear left Discord to laugh some more. The annoyance that came with being wet for no good reason only made him crack up harder.
"Oh, that look!"
"Goddammit, what the hell do you still want with me?! You can't get anything more out of me than you can from someone else now that a fucking city is here!"
"You're absolutely right, Matt. But that doesn't mean I can't give my best pal the life in Equestria he truly deserves."
"B...best pal?" he sputtered. "A-are you high? Are you a fucking idiot? Why in God's name do you think I'd want to be friends with you?"
Discord swung around him and curled an arm across his shoulders, squeezing him tightly. "I'm giving you things here out of the kindness of my heart that you haven't played around with since you came here. Anything you want is just a thought away in this place!" He stretched his arms over to the empty fridge and threw it open, pulling out a random assortment of mostly unhealthy but still delicious food. "Some macaroni and cheese made just the way you always liked it? Chicken parmigiana? A bacon double cheeseburger? How about some Mountain Dew or Cherry Coke or something, hmm? Perhaps we could be drinking buddies if it came right down to it. Heck, if you want to cook something up for yourself, anything you can think of that you may need will pop up in here, perfectly fresh."
His numerous limbs put the grub back and swung over to the top drawer of the dresser across from the bed. "What about these? Some of your favorite titles?" Each time he yanked the drawer open, a new set of cartridges and game CDs appeared. He recognized all of the names he saw. "Granted, you won't be able to play any of those...oh, what do you call it?...online things, but surely that's not that big a deal, no? Oh, and don't you fret over how this little pad has electricity and plumbing. I've got it covered."
"How do you know about all this anyway?"
The trickster tapped at his own forehead and then his rival's. "Remember?"
Ugh, that's right. He could kick himself for his sudden absentmindedness.
"It gets better though. Check this out!"
On Discord's command, a fork made its way out of one of the kitchen drawers and into Matt's hand. The room's night stand graciously slid out of the way to expose an electrical socket. Magic took control of the utensil and dragged its wielder straight for the dangerous opening. No matter how hard Matt tried to combat it, he couldn't release it or stop himself from being pulled along. Just as the prongs were about to drive themselves into the hazard, the plastic face ducked and dodged and raced around the wall, aggressively avoiding being stabbed at every turn. The fork suddenly vanished, making the socket zip back into place.
"Or how about this?"
The television took flight and launched itself into Matt's head with the consistency of a feather-soft pillow. After a merciless beating, Discord set it back on the dresser, solid as it was supposed to be.
"Would you like me to throw you against the wall or drop you head first onto the bathtub faucet inside?"
"I think. I get. The point," Matt droned. "You still didn't answer why you still want me around."
Discord gasped and slapped his hands to his cheeks. "Indeed! Tell you what. You see the door right over there, yes? You can leave now and go back to your friends and I won't bother you again. But if you decide you simply love it here and wish to stay instead, I'll fill you in."
Matt glared right through the spirit, figuring he was up to something as always. Still, what if snatching him away was just another part of a stupid, unpredictable game that was simply meant to annoy him and the girls? He spied the door across the room out of the corner of his eye but quickly darted back to Discord. The amused megalomaniac floated overhead, relaxing in an invisible hammock.
Taking a chance, Matt crept toward freedom, always making sure to keep a watchful eye on his enemy. His shoulder eventually bumped into the door and he fumbled around for the knob. Once he found it, he paused to take one last look at the strangely calm draconequus who swayed a lazy leg back and forth and waved goodbye. With a final smirk, Matt threw open the door and charged into...
...the same doorway all over again. From across the room, Discord said, "You can leave any time you want, bucko."
Matt blinked and spun around. There sat his foe too. It sank in quickly what was going on. Sighing in defeat, the young man miserably closed the door and stepped back inside. The demigod dismounted from his perch and twirled around the broken soul.
"Oh, you chose me! You really didn't have to but you did anyway! That simply warms my heart!"
"Go fuck yourself."
"Now, now. Don't make me wash your mouth out," Discord joked, a bar of soap suddenly in hand. "But first, I'll show you what's going on. It took a little bit of effort and putting a few pieces together, but I managed to figure it out."
A snap of his talons seemingly transported the pair across the cosmos. The room had flashed and left the Earth before them with all the stars and the moon in familiar positions. It took a moment, but Matt eventually realized that he was still breathing and not becoming a human ice cube. Must have been either an illusion or a memory or something.
"It wasn't hard for me to find your old home, Matt," Discord began, conjuring a map. "I simply recalled the directions that little bit of me went when I first began this whole hullabaloo all those months ago. It took a little while to get there, even knowing where it was. Anyway, I sat on its moon and looked and looked and looked and nothing seemed out of the ordinary.
"Then I thought, 'What if I'm simply not looking at this the right way?'. I tweaked my vision ever so much and found a most interesting magical...accident."
Matt's eyes joined Discord's in glowing a deep shade of yellow, revealing an enormous whirlpool of similar color spiraling in Earth's orbit, hidden in plain sight. Several tendrils snaked toward the surface, no doubt plucking up random objects, people or places and sending them to his new home.
"What the hell is this?" Matt asked. "A-and how is this even here? They blasted your ass away when you were in me, so how could you have done this? I know I didn't throw you in Earth's direction."
A claw rested gently on his shoulder. "Sonny-boy, you know what magic is like better than just about anyone. You learned from the best after all, right?"
"What are you getting at?"
"Some ponies believe that magic is all about the wielder, that magic itself isn't inherently harmonious or chaotic, good or evil, all that jazz – and in most instances, they're right."
"I already know that. So what?" Matt snapped.
"Two things. First, some spells, once cast, are designed to maintain themselves on their own. Do you happen to know any like that?" Discord retorted.
He hunted through memories of things and ponies around Ponyville, around Canterlot. Aside from some basic levitation, there wasn't that much magic that many ponies did other than Twilight. He thought of objects large and small, buildings, food, animals, the weather, the...
"Tank," he mumbled.
"Rainbow Dash's pet? What about him?"
"His...propeller that lets him fly around. It...it moves on its own."
"An astute observation!" Discord extended his fuzzy beige arm at the vortex. "As with your friend's little turtle, this is acting on its own volition; I had nothing to do with it – not entirely directly, at least."
"Well, if not you, then what?"
"I know you remember the spell I used to bring you here in the first place, Matt. I know you're aware that I had never cast it before, which brings me to my second point, one that, again, you already know," the spirit said, wiggling a pair of fingers in his face. "Some spells, when cast or tested for the first time, can have some...unusual and unexpected side effects. Heck, you read about some of them while you were still living in Twilight's library. Oh, the things that Starswirl the Bearded went through back in his heyday, hahaha!
"It gets even better though! You're probably wondering what this all has you."
"Wow, for once, we're on the same page," Matt growled.
Once again, their surroundings changed to a memory that Discord would prefer to forget. Frozen in time stood Matt a moment before being hit by the Elements of Harmony while fighting a certain would-be body snatcher. The two approached past Matt, his chest shining brightly to them.
"Do me a favor. Rewind this back a few extra minutes. It's my favorite part," the young man snapped, grinning sarcastically.
"Watch yourself, kiddo. A broken leg won't set everything off again. Of that I can assure you," Discord fired back. His rival quickly shut his mouth and went back to paying attention. "See that glow?"
"That had to have been you. So what?"
"So it's me, huh? Let's watch and find out."
The scene unfolded, moving at twice the normal speed until it reached the old Matt laying on the ground with his blade by his side. Strangely, there was still a miniscule shine emanating from his heart. It was almost difficult to spot at first, but with his visuals having been slightly altered, Matt could see it clear as day once he found it. For fun, Discord poked and poked at the image.
"But I don't get it. What the hell is it then?" Matt asked.
"I wondered that at first too when I checked this out before. If that was me, why didn't the Elements get rid of it? After all, I was able to toss aside their little rainbow of doom before this. Surely all that power I had would have been able to stand up to them even if I hadn't, regardless of the fact that you had a hand or two in taking me down. But that's when it hit me, how magic can be unpredictable and all! From what I could piece together, I wasn't the only thing that latched onto you when you were brought here. The side effect that created that hole in reality must have sunk its teeth into you too and grew stronger over time until when you got 'harmonized'."
Matt blinked, still confused at the wild explanation. His brow furrowed and he glared at the demigod again. "Let's say you're telling the truth. How did the Elements not bitch-slap it out of me then?"
"Like I said, magic is all about the wielder's intentions, but when the magic itself takes on a life of its own, it's not good or evil. The Elements may have had a passing effect only because it took a moment for their magic to understand that what was a part of you at that point was neutral. Trust me, I know more about those little artifacts than anypony, even Celestia and Luna. They're nearly as old as Equestria itself – just like me – and the Princesses haven't been around forever."
"Yeah, and you've been blasted by them more than once, if I recall correctly," Matt added, poking Discord's forehead and then his own.
"Eh heh heh heh."
Despite his deliberate pushing of buttons, however, Matt was starting to believe the madman. There were still a couple things he needed answered though. He began to stutter, giving himself away and leaving him right where Discord wanted him – afraid.
"Okay, um...but...but why now? W-why didn't that thing start bringing other shit here until recently?"
"Bringing you alone was easy. That magic was trying to build a superhighway across the galaxy big enough to transport things a little bigger than a single person. You don't honestly think it would take a weekend, do you?" the spirit chuckled. "It would have gotten started if a certain group of ponies hadn't blown up the bridge and left it to start over from scratch."
"But...um...Celestia and Luna, they...they looked me over. They–"
"Ah yes." The scene changed once more. The Princesses flanked Matt on either side, their long horns glowing as they scanned over him like they would with a metal detector wand at an airport. A few feet away, six tense mares watched and waited for the results.
"Any sign of him, sister?" Luna asked.
"I haven't found any. He certainly appears to be gone."
"And from what you all have described, he could very well be gone gone."
"It's possible," Celestia said apprehensively. "We should still keep on guard though, just in case. He's always been quite crafty."
"So, I get a clean bill of health?" the former Matt asked.
The alicorns deactivated their horns and smiled proudly at the hero. "It looks to be that way," Luna beamed.
"Woohoo! Then you know what this calls for!" Pinkie cheered.
The illusion paused with Matt sadly mouthing the next obvious two words to himself. He felt a fuzzy arm lay across his shoulder but paid it no mind.
"They were looking for me," Discord whispered in his ear. "If they had searched for anything and everything, they probably would have found what was left and cast a counterspell and that would have been the end of it. But they didn't! If they had been more thorough in their search, this likely would never have happened! Oh, the irony. It's always the little things that cause the biggest problems, eh?"
The small apartment reappeared around them, the journey through the past seemingly over. Matt stared at nothing, any fight or disbelief left in him having been stripped away. Everything Discord had shown him started to make a lot of sense. Applejack and the others had told them what happened after the mountain lion nearly took his head off and again when he woke up in Ponyville Hospital after he had been slammed into the car outside the Waldorf – the strange static, things suddenly been torn from reality. If that thing really was tied to him...
"You should see what it's like outside. It's almost what you would call trippy!" Discord said as he clutched onto Matt's shoulders and zapped them outside. High above the city of Canterlot, on the tallest spire of the castle, the two appeared in a dizzying blink. The broken man looked down once his head stopped spinning and froze up. Damn the heights! "Don't worry, I've got you."
Discord lifted his prey's chin to the heavens and allowed him to see the rogue magic like he did. An enormous, twisting portal covered most of the sky with several of the same gangly fingers transporting new additions somewhere in the world. It was strangely beautiful and terrifying all at once.
Figuring Matt had seen enough, the pair vanished and reappeared back in the residence. Another spell of wooziness and the vertigo he got from being half a mile in the air left the young man ready to throw up. Not wanting to bring up more than his low opinion of his captor, he laid down on the bed.
"They...Twilight and...and the Princesses...they looked over just about...everything," Matt mumbled as his stomach eventually settled down. "They didn't...they didn't see anything."
"There wasn't any residue of any kind on the stuff that made the trip?" the curious draconequus asked. Matt shook his head. "Interesting. They must have simply been moved and nothing else. I suppose when the floodgates are already open and working just fine, there's no sense in infecting something else. Did they ever bother to look up in any of their searches, by any chance?"
He thought and thought over what they'd seen over the last several weeks. Every sign, every creature, every building, every everything. He sadly shook his head again.
Discord giggled and shrugged. "Well, I suppose there's no telling whether or not they'd have seen that thing overhead. It's all how you look at things – in more ways than one, I suppose. You see an utter nightmare, and I see victory, all because I took the time to see...uh...erm...eh, you know what I'm saying." The menace floated Matt back to his feet and mockingly straightened out his shirt for him. "So, have you figured out yet why I made this place for you and why I made it the way I did?" No response came. "I'll take your silence as a 'yes'."
Now that his enemy had been completely crushed, it was time to leave and find some fun place to watch the lunacy continue. But first, he turned back to Matt. "A couple quick things before I go. First, you really should be thanking me. You'll be safe and sound, sitting by my side – well, sort of – in the one and only place I should have always been from the start, and I can assure you it'll be for quite the long time as I've also designed this place to keep you young and spry. I've always wanted a court jester for all eternity! It's almost a shame you won't see my court though – I've spruced it up nicely now that its previous tenants have been evicted. Second, if through some miracle your friends happen to find you and break you out of here...well, let's just say that I can't afford to have them risking your life by bringing you back out into that awful, dangerous world. I'd have to take some rather...drastic measures," he explained with an evil grin.
That got Matt's attention in a heartbeat, but what could he do? Trying to stop him now was like an ant trying to punch God. Plus, Discord had made it more than clear why he was trapped there. He gritted his teeth behind his lips and fought his eyes as they started to water.
"Toodles, Matt!"
And with that, the Spirit of Chaos departed out the door, able to leave without any problem.
He stared blankly at the exit. Little by little, his anger built up until it exploded in a fury. Matt swung around and slid the TV onto the floor. The screen split as it landed. Stomping past the appliance, he grabbed the chair beside the table and launched it randomly into the air. The mirror above the dresser shattered to pieces as the seat smashed into it. He was seeing red at this point. The table met with a similar fate followed by the dresser's shelves been tossed into the wall, scattering games and clothes everywhere underfoot. Every punch he tried to throw was absorbed by the caring room, leaving everything he tried to physically assault – as well as himself – unharmed. It only fueled his anger. His last effort came at the expense of the bed with most of his strength poured into trying to lift it and fling it across the small room, but much of his energy had already burned out. When the mattress refused to move any further, Matt spun about and collapsed onto his knees, breathing like it was to be his last, and screamed to the heavens. Every ounce of rage he had left poured down his cheeks as he began to sob there on the floor.
-----
Fifteen minutes of grief dragged by as if an entire day had come and gone. He felt numb all over. He could barely think straight. Exhaustion had started to claim him. Hobbling to his feet, Matt turned and crashed onto the bed. Rachel and his four-legged friends came to mind as he tried to get as comfortable as he could. They were probably going just as much out of their minds as he was a few minutes ago.
The pocket of his shorts felt strangely tight as he stretched and adjusted his legs. Becoming irritated again, he reached to grab at whatever it was that was causing the discomfort only to feel something rectangular in his hand. Curious, he stumbled back to his feet and found the phone in his pocket, now sporting a couple nasty cracks across its face. Everything else looked to be working.
But why was it there in the first place? Discord wouldn't have left it with him deliberately. Did he have it with him the entire time and not realize it? He examined his clothes carefully. Were they the same thing he was wearing when the monster almost broke him in half? Well...maybe. It was a couple weeks ago and he didn't really remember anything that happened between then and waking up in traction. Plus, there's no reason the hospital would have had a change of clothes lying around for him.
Still, even he if knew where the little room was hidden, he couldn't ask the girls to come get him. Discord said it himself – he'd kill them. There wasn't any way he was going to let that happen. Either way, he still owed it to them to say goodbye. But would the electronic even work from there? Was the room hidden in plain sight? In a pocket dimension or something? He didn't really have anything to lose by trying. Besides, if it didn't work, maybe if the conniving bastard stopped by again at some point, he could ask to write them one last letter, assuming it would even be delivered in the first place.
With a sigh, he slid his finger across the screen and brought up the main menu. The familiar number he found at the top of the list of recent calls greeted him. His throat suddenly got tight as he touched the selection. Silence whispered into his ear.
But just as his spirits could sink no further, a dial tone buzzed from the speaker.