The friends of Twilight Sparkle watched intently as Discord worked his dark magic on the comatose draconicorn, reluctantly attempting to free her from her new, unwanted persona. Time rolled on as the black-grey magic streamed from Discord's palms and surrounded Twilight's body, attempting to remove all of her dark and evil powers before her condition worsens any further.
A quizzical expression appeared on the draconequus' face, which Fluttershy promptly took notice of. "What is it Discord? Is something the matter?"
"Huh? Oh...well, actually, there is something strange going on with Twilight."
"We already told you that!" Rainbow Dash blurted out irritatingly.
"Not that! I mean that my powers can't seem to remove this new mass of dark magic from her body," Discord explained, eliciting a collective "What?!" from all of Twilight's friends.
"What do you mean you can't remove the powers?!"
"How can that be??"
"You're supposed to be the one with the super-powerful magic, so start super-powerful magic-ing Twilight back to normal!!"
"Now hold on, everyone," Fluttershy said, sticking up for her draconequus companion. "Don't berate Discord like that. He's tried his very best to get Twilight back to her old self, and if he says he can't do it, than he can't do it," Fluttershy turned her head back to smile at Discord, letting him know he's got her support, and he returned her gesture with a sincere smile of his own.
Discord's magic receded back into his palms, his recovery undertaking a palpable failure. "I apologize for not being able to cure Twilight. I guess there are some things even I cannot do," Discord stated with a pair of sad puppy dog eyes, which only made Rainbow roll her own eyes.
"It's all right, Discord," Fluttershy responded, placing her hoof on his shoulder. "You did your best, and that's all we can ever ask for," she finished in a pleasant tone, though the feeling wasn't mutual amongst her other companions. Applejack, on the other hoof, was more puzzled than mad at this time.
"Ah still don't understand this—ah mean, how could Discord's not work?? His powers are the best out of anypony we know!"
"I'm sure there's a perfectly good reason for why he couldn't help Twilight. Isn't there, Discord?"
Discord rubbed the back of his head whilst sporting a discomfited appearance. "Well...it's rather difficult to explain."
"Not like we have anything else to do today," stated Rainbow Dash.
"Actually, there's probably a lot of things we could do, but I still want to hear Discord," Pinkie made a point to say before turning her attention to Discord.
All eyes were on the draconequus now, which wasn't exactly helping him feel any more at ease, but Fluttershy's supportive expression did aid in raising her friend's composure, so he felt ready to try and explain the current goings-on to his fellow ponies and Spike.
"Well, the only way I can explain it is that it's...it's as if my powers don't want to leave Twilight."
"Don't want to leave her?"
"What? Like the magic itself is 'alive' somehow?"
"Yes, that's just it. I think this is beyond her simply receiving my powers—Twilight may have acquired something else during the skirmish with the cloud."
"How do you mean?"
"You told me(while Discord was trying to heal Twilight) that the cloud struck Twilight's horn just as she was about to attack; what I believe may have happened is that the magic of both Twilight and the cloud must have...combined when her horn was struck, and during that point in time my essence inside the cloud, believing it was going to lose the battle and wanting to save its life, transferred itself into her body to avoid the same fate that befell my cloud creation."
Everyone stared at Discord in stunned silence at his elucidation, needing some time to come to terms with the fact that their friend was being possessed by an anarchic spirit.
"My goodness," Fluttershy said, breaking the silence.
"That's horrible!"
"So this is even more your fault than it already was!" Rainbow proclaimed irately.
"Wait, what?"
"Oh, you know what I mean!"
"Now hold on a dang second!" Applejack interjected, not all of her questions having been answered. "Ah understand that part of you is inside Twilight, but that doesn't explain why you can't just go and take yerself out of 'er!"
"Well, my powers are inside Twilight, correct? The very same dark magical powers which reside within myself. My essence is using those powers to impede my efforts to remove them and it from her body, so it can continue to corrupt Twilight's body and mind until it gains full control over her," multiple gasps arose from the others upon hearing this horrifying possibility.
"I can't believe it!"
"I can believe it, but I still don't like it!" Pinkie added in a quite panicked voice.
"You mean you can't do anything??"
"I'm sorry, but because what is inside Twilight has the same power as me, I can't 'out-power' it!" Discord exclaimed defensively before returning to his calmer voice. "I must say, I'm actually quite impressed with myself—I mean, that myself, not me myself."
"We get it," Rainbow responded with both a flat and nettled tone.
All of this new information may have let everyone know more about the current dilemma, but this knowledge had only made the situation even worse for everybody, as if Discord couldn't fix this, then who could? Twilight's friends were growing increasingly distressed, with Princess Celestia and Luna attempting to conciliate the anguish rampant amongst the ponies and Spike, though the fact that the princesses were not feeling perfectly composed themselves made the task difficult.
Discord was not feeling particularly good himself, as though he stated previously he prefers Twilight's new look, the fact that he was not able to help Twilight as his dear friend Fluttershy so hoped he could made Discord feel genuinely disappointed in himself. Fluttershy was the only other person Discord had ever truly cared about besides himself, and believing he had made her feel bad made Discord feel absolutely miserable.
During all of the current shouting, running around, and any other panicky-type noises, the eyelids of the slumped draconicorn began to twitch. Slowly, Twilight's eyes became fully open, her blurred vision just as slowly re-adjusting itself to a clearer sight.
Though she could not make anything out, Twilight could tell there was much movement going on in front of her, and soon her hearing came back to her, and not as slowly as her vision did. She looked around as the figures in front of her came more into focus, and soon came to realize she was surrounded by her friends. What was going on here? And why did everyone look to be in such a panic? Twilight needed to be brought up to speed.
The draconicorn felt her body aching all over, and she found it difficult to move—still, Twilight forced her throbbing muscles to move, and began pushing against the ground to get herself off the ground. Her back legs joined her arms in their shared endeavor to bring the draconicorn back to her upright position.
It took quite a bit of strained effort, but Twilight finally managed to get back up on her two feet. She shook her head, still not feeling 100% back to normal, but she was getting there. It took several seconds for Twilight to notice the room had gone quiet. She looked around at the stunned faces of her friends, all of whom were motionless as they stared back at their companion. This lasted only a short time before Twilight asked what was going on, only to be hastily clustered by her friends, all asking if she was okay at the same time, which only create an incomprehensible mish-mash of noise for Twilight's ears.
"STOP!!" Twilight suddenly shouted, her friends all quickly backing away in alarm. With the silence having returned, Twilight could now get a proper word in. "Okay, now let's start over: What's going on here? What happened while I was asleep? And what is Discord doing here?"
Twilight's friends exchanged glances with one another, with none of them feeling particularly eager to fill Twilight in on the details that took place during her possessed and unconscious states.
"Much has transpired since your change into your wicked form," Celestia states, everyone bringing their attention to the princess.
"My change?? Oh no..." Twilight grasped her face as it became draped in dread—the fear of having hurt somepony yet again in that form took little time to become rampant in her mind. "What happened?? Did I hurt anybody?? Please tell me!!" Twilight pleaded, sounding more panicked than ever.
"Please, Twilight; I will explain to you of all that has happened, but you must calm yourself."
It was difficult at first, but Twilight mustered the strength to take a deep breath, her nerves and mind much more at ease now(though still not perfectly unperturbed). She informed her teacher that she was okay now and extremely willing to listen, so Celestia began her account of the current past events, though Twilight was certain to be none too happy in hearing them.
"Twilight?"
"Hey, Twilight!"
"Twilight, you in there?"
"Or is somepony else in there pretending to be you?"
Try as they might, the friends of the stupefied draconicorn could not get through to her, as after being told the whole story of what happened during her "episode" Twilight seemed to have entered some form of shock-induced trance, which none of her friends could seem to extricate her from.
"And I thought she had been taking this all hard before," Spike said as he waved a hand in front of Twilight's still static face.
"Well, this is Twilight, after all," said Applejack. "She's one of the last ponies ah know who'd wanna hurt anybody else—'specially not her friends or either of the princesses."
"Indeed; it was quite a bit for her to take in," Princess Celestia stated. "But Twilight wished to know everything down to every last explicit detail, and I would never hold back any of that information, regardless of how it may affect her," the others understood the words of their princess, but they still had the matters on hoof to deal with, and none of them were so easy to fix.