Chapter 5: Another Day, Another Lesson
I woke up gasping for breath. The sheets of the bed were soaked through with sweat and as I woke up the bed dumped me on the floor before shaking itself vigorously like a wet dog and wandering off.
Uncle Discord was standing there waiting for me. “Feeling better sunshine?” I glared up at him but winced as my head suddenly exploded with pain from the simple motion. “Ah-ah-ah…” he tutted at me, “You have to conserve your energy. The trip back was harder than I imagined. Your mind is simply fascinating. Did you know it tried to keep you in? I had to force our way out to give you that break I promised so you’ll have to forgive the headache.”
After several minutes of repeated attempts at getting up and having the headache blaze to life it finally faded to a more manageable level. Gritting my teeth I could stand and walk even if there was a small constant sensation of little knives cutting my head up. But really, what was that to all the horrible things Discord had done to me?
As I walked out of the room my Uncle called back to me, “Just so you know I’ve planned a little entertainment for tonight before training! Come to the coliseum at roughly 5 pm! You’ll know it’s 5 when something odd happens to you!” Something odd? My uncle did nothing but odd things. What could he possibly have planned to make my day that much more odd?
Sighing, I headed for the kitchens. I was in such a foul mood I didn’t even bother zipping along the floor. Colors faded and light dimmed as I walked through the Dwair. I guess I was so down I was modifying it without noticing it. The whimsical side of me noted that it sort of looked like an old time movie from the auditorium Uncle kept running 24-7. Sometimes you would find him there, sitting and eating popcorn, laughing at all the cheesy jokes. Most of the time, however, he leapt right into the movie and screwed every single important scene up until the characters had no idea what was going on anymore. Jaws had ended up a giant rubber duck once. I had no idea you could make a rubber duck that terrifying before I saw that.
My mood had brightened a little thinking of when the Dwair had been so much more fun before training. Keeping up the old movie style appearance I tried saying something. A moment after my mouth moved my vision went black as a sign reading “Testin. Testing. One, two, three.” appeared. Giggling madly, my vision went black again as the words “Hee! Hee! Hee!” appeared. This caused me to walk into the wall, however, as my vision faded right before a corner. My vision returned and I saw what had happened and muttered, “Oww…” Predictably the sign came up again, taunting me.
This was going to take some getting used to but it was definitely more fun than my training.
“WHEEEE!!!” I yelled at the top of my lungs, zipping down the halls, commanding the floor once more as I dashed for the kitchen. As the sign declaring my excitement appeared several more signs suddenly flashed before my eyes in a very disorienting manner.
“What the hay?!?”
“I’m blind!!!”
“My leg!!!”
All of a sudden I was bombarded by the signs telling me what happened to everypony that had heard me. Some were confused, others shocked, and one in particular had banged his leg pretty badly. He kept swearing over and over again as he just kept banging into more stuff by prolonging how long the signs were there.
After a while, he finally figured out to shut up, but by then Discord had figured out what was going on and was laughing madly. Overall everypony spent about half an hour blind to everything but the signs until things settled down.
Luckily, I had memorized the way to the kitchens. By the time it had finally let up I was waiting outside the door, on the side wall today, and launched myself through again. I willed the lantern hanging from the ceiling to lower as I shot through. Grabbing it, I swung up to the ceiling and landed gracefully there as I reversed gravity for myself.
“Ding!” went the sign for the oven beeping as it opened up. Today a nine came out along with a plate of Rainbow Nachos and an explosion of confetti. Soarin, who had been busy eating, started at the ding. Everything else had been silent after all.
He looked up at the nachos, then up at me on the ceiling. Upon seeing me a silent scream flew from his lips to show up as a sign a few seconds later.
“ARGH!!! Don’t hurt me!!!”
I dropped to the floor and looked quizzically at him. “Don’t hurt you?” The sign showed up with multiple question marks in the margin to emphasize my confusion. “It’s me Soarin. Baffle Buck. I’m not a monster.” Unbidden, the memories of the past two days flashed in my mind. ‘Not yet at least…’ I thought to myself.
His mouth moved for a bit before his response appeared. “Oh it is you… Sorry. I just had the most terrifying nightmare involving you the other night.”
“You and me both…” I said shuddering, “Please tell me it didn’t involve me going on a psychopathic rampage murdering everyone…”
“How’d you know?” came the responding sign. It was highlighted with shocked exclamation points.
“Because that was part of my training… Uncle apparently thought it would be healthy for me to face the darkest and most horrifying things I could become. What you saw was what I would have become if that battle hadn’t gone so smoothly. I hadn’t realized it was that close a battle. If you guys saw it I was pretty darn close to losing it. Did Spitfire have the dream too? Where I told her to run?”
“Yeah! I was already gone from the dream by then but she said she came in and saw me and you. She said she saw you fighting with yourself and then everypony else woke up at the same time. We all had the nightmare dude. Let me tell you, it was freaking terrifying dying like that.”
I rubbed my hoof on my forehead as I felt another migraine coming on. “Great, now everypony will be worrying I’m going to be coming to kill them…”
“Dude! Don’t take it like that. We all have faith in you. We know you would never do that to us. And if you did we would blame Discord. I mean for someone who’s supposed to be your guardian he sure as hay doesn’t care much for your mental safety. I never knew training was that bad for you. All he does to us is prank us.”
I looked at my friend, smiling. “Thanks, you don’t know how much that means… I’m not so sure that I would never do it though. Not after yesterday.”
“What happened yesterday? Nobody could find either you or Discord. It was a bit of a relief not having to deal with sudden one person rainstorms of chocolate milk, or the hallways suddenly becoming soap, but we all missed you.”
The memories of yesterday brought the migraine on more. Rubbing my temples the old movie feeling slipped becoming that overwhelming sadness again. The colors were faded and dead. They weren’t just grey, they were depressing. The lights flickered and dimmed again in an eerie sort of manner and my voice came out rather hollow and emotionless.
“I don’t want to talk about it…”
Soarin let it go, holding out the nachos I had been ignoring. “Hey you forgot your nachos! I’ve been practicing a little. Maybe I can warm them up. I still can’t believe I can do stuff like this in here. Feels like unicorn magic to me.” His voice was echoy and distant, but it still pierced the gathering gloom. I watched as, slowly but surely, he willed the nachos back to being piping hot. He even managed to throw some color in there. While most ponies lacked the proper focus and willpower to shape Discord’s mind to their whim very much it was one of the nicer things about being trapped in there. Unicorn, pegasus, or earth pony, it didn’t matter. In the realm of imagination and chaos that trapped us here with Discord anypony could do anything if they tried hard enough.
Grabbing the nachos I popped some into my mouth. I’d heard rainbows weren’t for eating, but I didn’t really care. As the glorious rainbow flakes touched my tongue seven flavors of amazing spiciness burnt into my tongue. I felt my cheeks shifting through the seven colors as each little explosion happened.
Nothing like rainbows to make somepony happy. Slowly color returned to the room as the memories of the previous night went to the back of my head. I was about to thank Soarin when the world flashed white. This had to be whatever Uncle was planning. The force of the will behind it was immense.
When the light cleared I looked to Soarin to see if he knew what had happened. My mouth dropped in astonishment. He was a chicken. Looking down at myself I saw that it was not my mouth that had dropped, but my beak. Turns out I was one too. Great, just great… I never understood what possessed Uncle to do these little things.
Looking back at Soarin I said, “Well, guess it’s time for today’s entertainment at the coliseum… Do you know what it is? He didn’t tell me.”
“Why would he tell me anything?” snorted Soarin. “I’m a nobody to him. The only reason I know stuff is because he tells you. He just told us all to come to the Coliseum. I really hope this isn’t another session of Cooking with Discord. Remember how he turned us all into turkey’s for that to show us firsthand how a Thanksgiving dinner’s made? He didn’t even tell us what Thanksgiving was! I still think he was making the holiday up.”
“Nah, he wasn’t making it up. Being a creature of chaos his mind has access to bits of information that seem to come from nowhere. Sometimes I don’t think even he knows how he thought about certain things. Still, I really don’t want another Cooking with Discord session either, maybe we can talk him out of it? We just have to give him a better idea. Come on, lets go find him.”
“Soarin! Soarin!” came Spitfire as she ran into the room, “Discords turned everypony into chickens!”
“Don’t you think we’d know that since everypony implies us as well?” I asked dryly.
“Baffle is that you?” Spitfire asked, “I mean the real you, not the bloody, psychotic, rampaging you.”
“Yeah it’s me…” I muttered, “Please don’t take that dream the wrong way. That was all just part of his training.”
“Turning you into a psychopathic villain and having you kill your friends is just training?” snorted Spitfire. “And I thought what I put the Wonderbolts through was intense. That’s a little sick. What the hay is he training you for?”
“I dunno… He never tells me. He just smiles like a smug bastard and does the echoy laugh thing he loves so much. He did tell me that whoever left me with him asked him to train me though.”
“That’s rough…” Spitfire sighed, “But anyways, we have to head to the coliseum now. Discord’s orders.”
“You know what for?” I asked.
“Yeah! He’s actually letting us put on a show! The Wonderbolts are back! We have to go like right now Soarin.”
“Wait! You do know this is Discord right? Whatever show you’re all doing isn’t going to be your standard show. And how are you even supposed to perform as chickens?!?” I called as they ran off. I heard a brief reply about Uncle saying they’d be turned back into ponies for the show. It was rather muffled though, and I missed most of it.
Sighing, I willed the floor to zip me down the halls after them. They must have been really excited to be putting a show on after so long because I didn’t come close to catching them, despite taking every shortcut, secret passage, and bizarre route the castle had to offer to shorten the trip.
When I finally made it to the coliseum flocks of white chickens were pouring through the entrance. Discord didn’t hold entertainment often, but when he did you had better come. He had a way of knowing if somepony didn’t make it. That pony usually ended up at the bad end of all his pranks for the next couple weeks. Once a filly had missed it because she had the feather flu and Discord had her sneezing out feathers for a week after. No pony had any idea how he got them inside her, but they caused the most irritating itch. She just kept sneezing and sneezing more of them. By the end of the week it was like we were in a pillow factory.
The coliseum was rather impressive. It was essentially a giant bowl like your normal spectator arena, but with a few adjustments made. First off, the seats liked to rearrange themselves. You could have the best, or worst depending on what his ‘entertainment’ was, seats in the house when suddenly you switch to being top row and forcing to squint your eyes to see anything. Second was the fact that the seats moved through the field. That meant that any participants had to constantly look out for giant blocks of stone barreling towards them. The third thing was it was Discord’s Coliseum so he could add anything he wanted to to it at any time, but that should go without saying.
As I walked in I turned and went for the VIP section. Discord always insisted that I watch the show with him. Guess he viewed our watching the pain and misery of other ponies as some sort of bizarre bonding exercise. It’s not that these things couldn’t be fun but Uncle had a way of getting carried away.
It took a while since the seating sections kept moving but I finally cornered the VIP section and managed to get on it. Uncle was already there and he’d brought the recliner and hoofstool from my bedroom with him. As I came up he took one look at me and fell over laughing.
“My oh my… Whatever possessed you to stay like that?” he asked, “I would’ve thought the first thing you would have done is willed yourself back.”
“I didn’t even try… I felt the force of your will in that blast. I didn’t think I had any chance of overcoming it.” He just rolled on the floor some more laughing.
“Do you really think all that will was meant for you alone? It was scattered between all these charming guests. It’s quite hard to turn something sentient into something it doesn’t believe it is. Quite frankly I wouldn’t be able to lift a finger to stop you from just waving it all away from yourself and probably half the ponies here. That would just shatter the illusion for the rest of them.”
“I doubt that…” I said, petulantly remembering our training sessions. If he wanted to keep an illusion up he darn well could.
“Oh come now! You underestimate your willpower! My training has been doing more than just kill you a needless number of times you know. Nothing like washing away the point of death to boost somepony’s self-esteem. And whether you know it or not you’ve been steadily gaining power since we began.”
Okay first he’d been kind enough to take me out of own personal little hell last night and now he was encouraging me with a pep talk on how killing me had been good for me? If I didn’t know better I’d say he was becoming attached to me. It was a disturbing thought. Sort of like having a ticking time-bomb for a mom. You never knew when that little wheel that spun in his head determining his next course of action would land on something you didn’t like.
I decided to play along, however, and tried willing myself back to normal. Surprisingly, it worked. There was a little flash of light and I was back to my old self. There was some disgruntled squawking from the others when they saw I was all right. Unfortunately turning back had one small consequence. All the talking I heard before suddenly became an enormous gale of squawking and shrill cries. Apparently the illusion had come equipped with the ability to understand chickens and as I didn’t properly know how to call a chicken, or even talk like one, I was now out of the loop. Oh well, it’s not like anypony would talk to me while they were being terrified out of their minds from also being next to my uncle.
Sighing, I sat in the chair reserved for me and waited for the show to begin. Unlike my uncle, I didn’t callously put my hooves on the hoofstool. It did have feelings after all. The hoofstools had the odd characteristic of thinking they were dogs. Thus, rather than be crushed by our hooves, they preferred being scratched behind the tassels or belly rubbed.
Finally after what felt like an eternity of sitting there and getting a headache from the chickens, I mean ponies, squawking the floor of the coliseum opened up and the Wonderbolts rose up to the crowd. It was nice to see them in the blue jumpsuits again but something looked off… Oh that was it, Discord hadn’t restored their wings.
“You’re making them will their way through the whole show?!?” I sputtered angrily at him, “You know they aren’t capable of stuff like that. I tried explaining to them once how I managed flight and it was a disaster. They don’t get stuff like creating an endless jump and modifying the theoretical force, velocity, angle, and starting point behind it continuously to approximate flight. Not to mention they definitely don’t have the willpower to pull it off.”
“Well then…” my uncle said mischievously, “You better lend them some of yours. They are going to be going through the Extra-Extreme Obstacle Course of Doom and Other Miscellaneous Titles of Dread.”
“You want me to do what and they’re going through what?!?” I yelled.
“The Extra-Extreme Obstacle Course of Doom and Other Miscellaneous Titles of Dread. I came up with it myself. They’re going to need all the help you can give them. You didn’t think your training ended during the day did you? Day training is just creativity training. I normally leave you to your own devices, but I wanted to take an active hand today.”
Great, just great. Still… I suppose it was better than dying fifty-bajillion times.
“Come now there’s no such number as fifty-bajillion.”
And now I had to worry about him reading my thoughts too… Wonder what defense there was against that?
“You could just think about a rubber duck but, honestly, it’s too much effort to read minds.”
Grumbling to myself as I stored that little tidbit as I prepared for the show to start. The easiest thing to do would be to will their wings back but I had a feeling Discord wouldn’t stand for that. He’d just call it cheating and then my training for the night would be ten times worse.
Instead I gathered all of my will and willed understanding into the Wonderbolts. I didn’t make them do anything so much as give them instructions on what they had to do. They jumped a little as their thoughts randomly jumped to what I made them see but they quickly started studying what they had to do.
Next I coaxed the tension from their bodies, replacing it with the heady power of self-esteem they normally had. Emotions were a tricky business to manipulate but by using emotions they normally felt I was able to get them ready for what needed to be done. They were the Wonderbolts after all. It was only natural they should best any flying challenge set before them.
When I’d made them as ready as they’d ever be I said, “Done…” Discord rose up and bade the crowd to silence. A microphone appeared from nowhere and his voice rang throughout the stadium as he spoke into it.
“Fillies and gentlecolts, hens and roosters, welcome!” The crowd screamed in response, but, as I couldn’t speak chicken, I couldn’t tell if it was to cheer or boo him. Whichever it was it just slid past him since he didn’t care. “Today we have a marvelous show for you! The Wonderbolts are back and here to remind you of the good old days. Yet, as always, I’ve added a little twist to the show! Not only will they be performing without the luxury of wings, but they must also make their way through an obstacle course of my own personal construction! I call it The Extra-Extreme Obstacle Course of Doom and Other Miscellaneous Titles of Dread!”
The storm of squawks that assailed him was clearly a round of insults this time. They probably thought he wasn’t being fair. Which he wasn’t, but did they expect anything else? As the course shimmered into view the volume of the outraged squawks grew exponentially. Like usual my uncle had gone overboard.
Giant spiked pistons floated in the air to crush those who passed between them at the wrong time as they crashed together in a seemingly random pattern. Pendulums swung back and forth ready to cut anything that didn’t pass by fast enough. Wintery wind tunnels were scattered about the course to slow them down. Passing through those tunnels wouldn’t just start freezing them as they were coated with ice, but would dramatically shift the required calculations to will yourself through them. I quickly updated the Wonderbolts understanding to include this though it felt rather dirty forcing thoughts into their head. The worst part was the mist cycling through the course. If they got caught in it they’d be flying blind. It was way too much for them to handle flying wingless and turning the mist transparent for their eyes. It looked like I was going to have to do that for them and save them if worst came to worst.
“Are you ready fillies and gentlecolts? If not, too bad, because they’re off!” At this Discord dropped the floor from underneath the Wonderbolts and they barely caught themselves with the technique I had showed them. It was a rather dirty trick. All the initial calculations I showed them were off now and they had to wing the numbers themselves. Whatever training the Wonderbolts normally went through it wasn’t extreme mathematics. While normally unimportant, when you can manipulate the world around you on a whim, math tends to become very important in stabilizing what you do with willpower, and thus performing math under pressure becomes significantly more important. The Wonderbolts, however, had never thought they’d be flying through math instead of on wings and were sort of floundering around trying to get used to it.
While the Wonderbolts were getting their bearings the spectators were either staring in astonishment at them flying without wings or yelling at Discord, probably telling him to return the floor instead of having opened it into that lovely pile of spikes. Discord was just laughing at the wingless pegasai’s attempts to stay airborne. The crowd suddenly directed their attention to me and I got the odd sense they wanted me to help.
I don’t know why they thought I wouldn’t be doing that already. I was currently giving the Wonderbolts a five minute crash course on the history of mathematics and physics in their heads. It took a while, but eventually I pressed it so hard into their minds that on some level they must have got it because they started willing themselves into flight. They looked completely flabbergasted at what they were doing. I smiled smugly and looked at my Uncle. He had always doubted the use of all those math and science books in the library. “What point was there to universal laws when you can change them?” had always been his snide comment to me. Well it turns out you can do quite a lot provided you have the will to set them in place. Now I had proof to back it up.
He looked at the Wonderbolts flying perfectly smoothly, and then looked back at me and clapped slowly. “Bravo. Did you really just teach them everything you learned from those dusty old tomes? That was more than 3 years of reading for you! How did you do it?”
“Temporal shenanigans,” I said, smirking like a bastard. The truth to that was I had willed their sense of time to undergo drastic changes so that they experienced time at a different rate than everypony else. To them more than five years had passed in their mind as I’d taught them everything they needed to know. Then I had to explain to them how to manipulate that knowledge to their advantage enough times for them to actually understand it. The problem with doing that little trick is the stress it leaves on a pony mentally. The Wonderbolts were going to feel as though five years had gone by for them, while everypony else would only have felt a couple minutes pass by. I’d never tried anything like it before so I had no idea what the side effects could possibly be.
After the Wonderbolts had practiced for a couple minutes they moved to the start of the obstacle course. It should be relatively simple now. They passed through the icy winds, willing the air to warm around them, as I’d told them to. By preventing ice from forming on their bodies they didn’t have to shift their calculations to account for the new body mass. The pendulums they passed through easily enough. When they got to the pistons, however, I was stumped. There was no rhyme or reason to their pounding. I looked to my uncle in frustration. How was I supposed to help if there was no pattern? If it truly was random there was nothing I could teach them to get through it. Their will was already fraying from the stress of keeping so many things going for so long.
My uncle just sat there humming a song. This time he was the one looking smug. I knew there was a method to his madness. That all the chaos he had caused today was just the strings of a larger plot. There was always a pattern if you looked closely enough. Some random deciding factor that dictated how his chaos worked.
One of the Wonderbolts decided he was too impatient and tried to test the pistons. He made it about halfway before two closed about him. I had just enough time to realize what was happening and try to interfere. I made him explode in a burst of mist. The others tried to rush for him, but I held them back with an invisible barrier. I hung on to his conscious, willing it to stay connected to the world, which was a complete hell. He was freaking out, trying to turn back. He almost succeeded too. As Uncle said, it was tough to make somepony something they didn’t believe they were. His mind clawed at mine as I drew him through the pistols to the other side. Bringing him back together I slumped to the ground exhausted. I did not have it in me to pull a stunt like that again. This whole thing was taxing my mind like never before and I was about ready to just give up.
I found myself humming along with Discord as I considered what to do. It really was a catchy song.
Ba dum de-doo
Smash crack ker-klonk
Wait… The song… It was matching the rate the pistons smashed together! Sneaky bastard. It was a song he’d just made up on his own too, so I would never have caught it if I hadn’t started humming myself.
Telling the Wonderbolts to wait with telepathy was a lot easier than I had expected. It was just like normal talking really. Sitting there for a while I watched and waited to see the full song of the pistons. Carefully memorizing it I started humming my directions to them. I had them dance through the pistons to the other side, and as they made it out unscathed I heard Uncle whine in disappointment that no pony had gotten hurt.
The crowd cheered, or at least I assumed it was cheering since no pony had gotten hurt.
“Well, well, well… They made it! Who would have guessed? I say we give them a hand!”
I had a split second to realize something was wrong with Uncle being so cheery. He raised his hand in the air to invite a cheer and suddenly the Wonderbolts were rocketing skyward dangerously fast. Uncle had apparently decided to reverse gravity on them.
“Pull on the ground instead of pushing!” I yelled out to them telepathically. Some of them, like Spitfire, did as I said, tethering themselves and stopping their ascent into space. Some of the others were already out of range from me though and I didn’t have the energy to save them. They just kept on going skyward to be lost in the heavens. I hadn’t given them any instructions on how air thins or how to generate enough air in high altitudes to live. Hell, the sudden change in air pressure from ascending too fast might cause their blood to bubble and kill them that way.
I looked at my Uncle very clearly and said with all the hatred that had been bubbling in me since training had started, “I despise you…” There was no anger in it, no emotion. It was a statement of fact. If I hadn’t turned and walked off I might have noticed that for once in his life Discord looked a little guilt ridden.
Thanks again to John Perry for proofreading through all of my many gruesome grammatical errors. Also feel free to comment. I feel sort of like I'm writing blind here. Do I make Discord chaotic enough? Does he come off as only being sadistic? If so I need to get the point across better that Discord is chaotic which means both good and bad can come of him. Chaos is not inherently evil