Pinkie floated forward giggling, doing a breaststroke into the nothingness that was everything. Discord slithered around behind her, looking around at all there was to see.
If there was anything to see.
He blinked a couple of times to make sure he hadn't been duped. No, there truly was nothing here. All around him was a colossal amount of nothing, with a small side of boring silence and a glass of confusion. He drank the confusion, then spat it out when he realized it was far too tart for his taste. The boring silence didn't taste too good either. It was like reheated leftovers from two days ago; devoid of almost all flavor, yet just enough to keep you curious to try and find more flavor by eating more food.
Pinkie turned around mid-air like a graceful swordfish in an underwater ballet. "What's wrong?"
"There's nothing here!" He extended his arms for emphasis, about twenty feet or so. His eagle claw hit something and it resonated with a clang, like cymbals on concrete. The thing rotated and revealed itself to be a large square of glass. Pinkie used her tail like a propeller to float over and catch the glass and rotate it back into position, slapping away Discord's claw like a petulant child. After she settled the pane back into place, she floated back to see a relatively annoyed draconequus.
"What was that for?!" He growled slightly. It wasn't until then that he noticed the echo of the colossal subspace. It made the "spectacle" seem all the more boring and empty.
Pinkie huffed. "You need to learn to respect your surroundings, Discord. You nearly broke that screen and caused a catastrophe!" When he started to grin maliciously, she immediately added "and you don't want to do that! Not HERE, anyway."
"Why not here? There's nopony who'd be hurt by it, anyway."
She slowly waved her hoof across the vastness of the void. "Wrong. If you did that, you'd hurt EVERYTHING and EVERYONE." When he raised a quizzical eyebrow, she wrapped her foreleg around Discord's neck as the floated forward towards another large pane of glass. Pinkie pushed her hoof against a part of it, and the immediate area around her hoof lit up like a blue light, revealing a small window with different colored panes. The screen flickered to show grey and white fuzz before coming into focus, revealing what lied beyond.
***
A young human girl sat at her desk, not looking at her black screen but instead staring at the paper that lied before her. She had been given a commission by a client who wanted a picture of Discord holding an upside-down umbrella, but for some reason her mind couldn't remember the image. She didn't want to look up the actual image as reference, as she saw that as cheating. She preferred to do her art from her own creativity and her own memory. Her ceiling fan buzzed over her while her cat sauntered around her legs like scratching posts, expecting it's hourly dose of praise. Sure enough, she bent down to pet the small creature, its purring resonating in its throat in shear delight.
She suddenly heard the start-up jingle for her computer, which was enough to raise an eyebrow but not investigate. She kept playing with the small feline, the cat lying on it's belly and stretching it's pink little paws in it's owners reverence. After a few more seconds, the cat sat up and sauntered away to it's little cat house, settling in nicely to one of the alcoves and closing it's eyes in exhaustion. Being great was so much of a chore.
The girl turned her head around again, and her eye caught on to the previous pieces she had done. She looked fondly on the sketch of Vinyl Scratch at her DJ booth she had made last week, remembering how much DeadMau5 she had listened to whilst drawing her. Next to her was Octavia playing her Cello, and memories of Vivaldi, Chopin, and Bach came to her. She closed her eyes in reminiscence, sighing in satisfaction at how well they both had turned out. She wasn't one to brag, but she absolutely loved the piece. It showed her best efforts and reflected the amount of love and care it took to dedicate the time and energy to make it.
After wiping away a small tear of satisfaction, she turned back towards her computer to see how it had started up on its own. She froze, unsure if what she saw was a part of a dream or actually happening. She rubbed her eyes, blinked multiple times, then focused her vision back on the screen. No change. None at all.
There, right before her on her desktop, was Pinkie Pie. Pinkie Pie and Discord, standing on her taskbar like it was a train platform.
She immediately starting doing a virus check, to see if these things were some sort of joke. The window for Norton Anti-Virus popped open, and it blocked the images of Pinkie and Discord. To her dismay, Discord only shoved the Anti-Virus window out of the way, and it bounced against the left side of her screen. He folded his arms and huffed, clearly annoyed. Pinkie Pie, however, started giggling.
The girl started to panic. No program she knew of was advanced enough to physically move a window, unless it was her cursor? She wiggled her mouse around to make sure, and it moved around in the upper right hand corner of the screen. It hand't been that, so what was it?
The Pinkie Pie on her screen moved over to the bottom right of her screen, getting bigger and bigger. The girl backed away, thinking it was one of those "screamers" her friends in school told her about. The Pinkie on her computer pressed the volume control, unmuting the computer and allowing audio to flow out.
"- incredibly rude of her. I mean, REALLY. We're guests and she- Oh hey, I can talk." Discord grumbled. Pinkie giggled once again. Discord sauntered forward, pressing his face against the screen. He sprung back right away as his entire muzzle turned white and was covered with frost. He shook it off, irritated and confused.
"So THIS is one of those humans you were talking about, Pinkie?" He gestured his paw towards the screen, and the girl behind it. "It doesn't look like much, really. Kind of like that Chimpanzee I rode that one time." The girl was annoyed and wanted to yell at him, but realized it would serve no purpose considering it was a program or virus.
"Hey! Don't be so rude, Discord!" She also gestured towards the girl. "She's a pretty big fan of ours, you know! She writes stories about our universe regularly and shares them with the rest of her world!"
He placed his arms on his hips. "It doesn't matter if they're no good."
"Here, let me show you how good they are!"
Pinkie hopped on to the nearest folder labeled "Unfinished Art", then climbed up a few other folders until she reached one labeled "Completed Stories". She reached in with her tail, fishing for a story. She whipped up her tail after a few minutes, then threw a book down to Discord. The book was a brown, leather-bound hardcover with a picture on the front. Discord stared at the cover, then immediately blushed and stared at the girl through the screen. She looked around awkwardly, as if caught doing something wrong. Discord opened the book, flipping through the pages and examining the contents. He began muttering to himself, saying things like "Uh-huh" or "Ugh, really?" After a while, towards the end of the book. He slammed it shut, sweating. He opened up a pocket in the side of his fur, and put the book in it.
Pinkie reached in and pulled the book out, saying "Discord, what're you doing? We can't take things from other creatures like that! It's stealing!" Then SHE looked at the cover, and began laughing hysterically.
"BRIDE OF DISCORD?" She practically screamed mid-laughter. Discord folded his arms, looking away and blushing furiously, so much so that steam poured out from his closed jaw and ears. He made a bucket of cool water pour over his head, and his blush diminished. He picked up the book again, and looked at the girl. Never, in any history book, work of fiction, or any stained glass mural or portrait, had anypony - no... had anyone matched his personality so perfectly.
It bothered him. Immensely.
"You there, human." He pointed at the screen, walking close enough to be within arms reach of it. "Who are you? How do you know so much about us, about ME?" He held the book aloft, motioning to it. "What did you hope to achieve while writing this?"
The girl sat, silently stunned. She stayed that way until Discord pounded on the glass with his paw with all of his might, making a tiny crack in the glass. Pain be damn, the draconequus needed an answer. Pinkie recovered from her laughter, and made a motion to the abstract spirit. She stopped mid step though, when Discord took a couple steps back from the glass and waited.
"Umm..." the girl said. She found this too bizarre to be really happening, but she spoke anyway. "It's... it's because, well, I'm such a big fan of yours. Even when you were a bad guy, I knew you had to be lonely. So I figured... I figured even you needed someone, you know... someone to love you." She raised her hands up, defensively. "I'm sorry if it bothers you, honestly. If I had known I could get your opinion on it, I... I don't know, I wouldn't have made it."
Discord remained silent, thinking on what his observer had said. After a few minutes he looked down at the book cover again, then he spoke. "You wrote a sequel to this, right?"
She nodded.
"What happens in that one?"
The girl stayed silent. She answered very slowly and hesitantly, making sure her answer was to his liking. "I.... I can't tell you."
He growled, holding up the book and shaking it. "And WHY NOT?!"
"Because.... it'd.... it'd ruin the surprise?"
He stared. She stared back. Pinkie stood up straight, ready to intervene if needed. Silence encompassed the screen and the room for what seemed like forever.
Five minutes passed. Ten.
"Keep up the good work." He finally said. He then put the book into his pocket, turning around and saying, "I'm going to borrow this for a while."
The girl nodded, saying "Okay", very quietly.
Discord looked down on the pink Earth Pony. "Let's go, Pinkie."
She smiled warmly first at the girl, then at Discord. "Oki Doki Loki!" She said with a bounce in her steps. She pushed the window on the bottom left hand corner of the screen, and the pink pony pressed the power button with her hoof. Oddly enough, the computer did not shut down. A door did open in the background, though, and Discord opened it and waited for Pinkie.
She turned to the girl, smiling. "It IS okay for him to borrow that, right?"
The girl nodded meekly. Pinkie's smile got bigger, and she skipped towards the door blissfully. They both went through the door, closing it gently. It started to sparkle and flicker, then faded from existence.
Some time passed before the girl noticed a post-it note on the bottom of the screen. She lifted it up with her cursor, expanding it. She read it, then smiled.
"Thank you. I'll bring it back within a week or so, then borrow the next one."
At that moment, something occurred to her. Something she'd regret for the rest of the week, if not the rest of time.
She didn't get their autographs!