//------------------------------// // Adoption // Story: The Chaotic Adoption of Scootaloo // by Mega NewWays97 //------------------------------// The school bell rang, signaling the end of Miss Cheerilee’s class. As the fillies and colts exited, Scootaloo turned to her friends. "So, I was thinking we should try getting our cutie marks in sky diving." However, Sweetie Belle and Apple Bloom both looked regretful. "Sorry Scootaloo, but Rarity needs help and I kinda volunteered," Sweetie Belle said with an apologetic tone. "Same here, Applejack wanted me to help." Scootaloo was saddened by this. "Okay then." Her two friends walked away, leaving the pegasus on her own. As she wandered, she came to Ponyville's park to calm her head. However, this wasn't to be the case. "Oh look, it’s the Chicken." The nasty voice belonged to a soulless, demonic hellspawn, Diamond Tiara. Scootaloo rolled her eyes and tried to walk away from the two without saying a word to the pink filly. Nothing good ever came from a conversation with Diamond Tiara. Sadly, this wasn't to be as the two started to circle her like sharks about to enter a feeding frenzy. "So, where are your two loser friends? Did they finally decide they were too good for you?" the spoiled filly asked. Scootaloo's expression fell at that and she leveled a flat look at Diamond Tiara. "No, they're just busy with family stuff. So can you please get out of the way? Talking to you is about as much fun as a tour of the cardboard box factory." "Oh then why don't you go to your family?" Diamond Tiara asked. Scootaloo flinched at this. "You don't have any family, you're an orphan!" The two bullies laughed at the pegasus filly. However, up in the tree was something sleeping in the leaves. "Oh what in the name of Chaos is that laughter? It sounds familiar." The mismatched being in the tree was Discord, the Draconequus: Equestria’s chaos god. He looked down to see two fillies tease one of the CMC, Scootaloo he believed, and walk away after hurting her feelings. He didn't seem to care until he heard her scream something. Something that caused a flashback. "Stop picking on me because I don't have a family!" Discord was suddenly thrust back to the time when he was just a fledgeling god of chaos all those millennia ago. He was slowly walking down the streets of a village and scanning around him, hoping not to run into anypony. All of a sudden, something hit him on the side of the head. He reached up with his talon and saw that somepony had thrown a rotten tomato at him. He craned his neck to see a group of foals sneering at him. "Hey everypony look, it's the freak of nature!" one of the bigger fillies called out. "Yeah, where are you going today ya little freak?" another jeered. "Aww come on ya guys, lay off the poor thing," the leader of the pack started. "Don't you guys think he has it bad enough? I mean, he is an orphan after all." This caused laughter to erupt amongst the group. "Yeah, I bet his parents took one look at him and decided to toss him out!" the filly behind the leader called out between laughs. Scootaloo saw a stick of cotton candy handed to her. "Here." She was stunned to see the God of Chaos himself offer her cotton candy. "Discord? What do you want?" she asked. Discord looked down at the filly. "You're an orphan right?" Discord asked. The orange pegasus turned away from him. "Yes so if you’re going to-" "I know how it feels." Discord’s words stunned her, "I've kept most of my early memories locked away, but I know, I was a parentless god of Chaos all those years ago before Celestia and Luna took the throne. Before the three tribes united, I was there with no parents of my own and I was picked on for that." "Really, did you ever do anything to them for it?" Scootaloo asked with a mouthful of cotton candy. Discord just shook his head at that, "No, I was just a child and didn't have control of my powers." "So, you heard what Diamond Tiara said?" "Yes, it's always amazed me just how cruel some foals can be," Discord sighed. Scootaloo sighed as well and stared at her cotton candy with a gloomy expression. "I know that feeling. Sometimes I just wish I could have a family like everypony else. I've even had the occasional dream of showing somepony other than Rainbow Dash off at Family Day at school. I usually pick somepony really cool like Spitfire or even a Royal Guard to adopt me... but I'd be happy with anypony really," Scootaloo admitted, sniffling. Discord usually wouldn't care about anything, this however he did strangely seem to care. 'I'm not going to do it,' a part of Discord's mind said. However another part screamed at him, 'You must!' Discord sighed. "Give me a moment." With that, Discord was gone, teleporting away to go get something. Discord appeared at the front of a nearby orphanage. The mare working there was frightened by his appearance, "Discord... What can I do for you?" She really didn't want to be banished to another world or whatever the deity had planned. "I'm here to adopt a filly named Scootaloo," Discord answered. The mare was taken aback by what Discord had just said. She told herself that she had to have heard what he said wrong and shook her head to clear it out, "I'm sorry, but did you say that you wanted to adopt Scootaloo?" "Why, yes I did." "Well... um if you could follow me to my office then I could get the papers in order," she said, still not entirely believing the situation she was finding herself in. Discord complied with the mare and hovered above the chair in front of her desk. "I uh... assume you have your papers in order, so we can see if you are qualified to care for Scootaloo...?" Discord snapped his talons and a small stack of papers appeared on the mare's desk. "I could also get a recommendation from one of the Elements of Harmony if that would help," Discord mentioned. "That would be great," the mare said. Discord was gone in a flash. At her cottage, a yellow pegasus with a pink mane was just about to call her animal friends when she was grabbed and, in another flash, was gone. Scootaloo had finished her cotton candy and was heading back to the orphanage when Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon appeared again. "What is it this time?" Scoots asked. "Well we just wanted to say–" But they were interrupted as the clouds above them started to fire lightning at them and Discord appeared next to Scootaloo. "Well, now that that's out of the way..." In his hand was a suitcase. Diamond Tiara and Silver Spoon paled when they saw the mad god appear before them. "Discord, what are you doing back here?" Scootaloo asked. Discord’s face broke out into a wide grin as he opened his briefcase to show her his freshly signed adoption papers. "Well, I just happened to be near a certain orphanage and I popped in to adopt a certain orange filly." Scootaloo's eyes widened when she heard that and then looked over the paper to see that it said that Discord had, in fact, adopted her. "So, does this mean-" "Yup!" he started, interrupting her. "You are now the daughter of chaos!" he finished as he threw up his arms and set off a miniature fireworks display. The display was a fun sight, but then Discord turned to the two bullies. "Now then, let me make one thing clear." Discord had a serious face, which, for someone as random as him, was quite terrifying. "If I find you both continuing to bully Scootaloo or her friends I will send you both on a nice vacation to another dimension, perhaps my cousin Slaanesh would enjoy playing with you both," Discord said in a dark tone. The two of them nodded quickly and rushed off at an impressive speed. Scootaloo didn't seem to notice as she had a large grin on her face. "This is so cool! I finally have a dad!" she cheered as she fluttered in the air for a moment. She then looked down for a moment as she landed, "I... uh... I can call you dad, can't I?" Discord was taken aback by that question. He hadn't expected her to warm up to the idea so quickly. He then smiled comfortingly as he tousled Scootaloo's mane. "You can call me whatever you like." Scootaloo perked up at that and looked up at him with excitement, "Awesome! So, since you're the god of chaos do you live in some big chaotic castle or something like that?! Are you going to give me chaos powers like you?" Scootaloo continued to fire off question after question while Discord just chuckled as he waited for her to finish. "Okay, one: I live in a nearby dimension that I found when I was a child, and as for the powers…" Discord snapped his talons. "Let's see how well you do being able to fly without needing to flap your wings." Scoots was confused until she started floating. "Whoa, how am I doing this?" Discord gave a laugh. "I learned long ago that Chaos and Harmony are not total opposites, they can and do coexist in many things. So with a push I turned your weak pegasus flight magic into a natural power to reject gravity." Scootaloo beamed as she started to float around Discord. "I don't think I understand all that stuff about harmony and chaos, but the other thing I get. If I don't do anything stupid with my floating powers then I can keep them and maybe get more?" "We'll see about giving you more, but yes you can keep the floating. That is, if you can behave with them. That means keeping the destruction you cause with it to a minimum." Scootaloo's expression fell a bit at that. She knew the trouble she got into with the Crusaders already. "So... uh why did you decide to adopt me anyway? Not that I'm not grateful or anything, but you're Discord, you nearly took over Equestria twice! So why would you bother helping me out?" Discord thought for a moment. "Because, looking back at it, if I wasn't teased because I was an orphan and had real friends then I probably wouldn't have become who I was. I let my rage consume me... from anger came insanity and from that came the desire for revenge," Discord said, recalling his dark breakdown. "Only a few are naturally born evil, the rest become evil. The same can be said for good I suppose," Discord said, looking back on his life. "Oh... I guess I never thought of stuff like that." "I'm not too surprised, you are still fairly young." "So what are we going to do now? I was going to head back to the orphanage but I guess I don't live there anymore." Discord tapped his chin as he considered what to do. He honestly hadn't thought this decision through too much. 'I may need to clean the house up a bit to be more child friendly. I guess I'll start with getting rid of the hall of eyes. That could cause some mental scars.' "How about we stop by Sugarcube Corner to get ourselves something nice? And after that I'll show you your new house," Discord suggested with a grin. “Okay.”