The whole lot of the spectators stood on the bizarrely hectic field, staring at the extremely strange conflict standing before them. Before Dash hovered a Windigo, same as they had learned about during the old Hearth’s Warming tales. An eerie howl of wind accompanied it. Naturally less threatening without a swirling horde of others around it, the translucent, ice-blue specter was only moderately such. It’s own aura of unnatural strength inherently put a momentary pause of hesitation in Dash’s body.
“Weird.” Twilight spoke aloud, to which Captain Picard glanced down before resuming a vigilant watch on every move either side made. Twilight continued, “It’s pretty uncommon for Rainbow Dash to be phased by something like this. I mean, we’ve fought dragons and all kinds of monsters. Why would one Windigo intimidate her?”
Q waggled his finger in their direction from where he stood on the field. “Intimidate is right, my little pony.” Across the field, Discord almost inaudibly mentioned something about how ‘my little pony’ wasn’t Q’s line, yet this went completely ignored by all. Q continued to explain, “You see, whether or not this ghost… thing… is any stronger than what you’ve fought in your day, our little game gives certain abilities. This Windigo has a natural ability to ‘intimidate’ its opponents. It won’t be a problem though.”
Discord took the chance to command his move. “Hmm. Let’s see here, now. Windigo, go hit that Pegasus with an ice wind!” The spectral horse spirit swirled around, releasing a harsh, chilling gust at Rainbow Dash, which caused her to stagger and drop downward, due to her instinctive reaction of closing her wings in tighter to prevent the significant cold from effecting her body. Naturally, as an accomplished flier, her reaction was only partial, thus she did not actually fall from the air. However, this also caused her to take the wind more fully, dropping her stamina.
“AHA! Did you see that? Looks like your little monster game is easier than I thought!” Discord jested. It seemed that if they were going to jump into the game headlong, then even Q would have to abide by the rules. At least, for now. Q thought for a moment, and then recalled Dash, a red beam sucking the cold Pegasus into a seemingly pocket dimension. “Let’s change things up, I’ll send in… Pinkie Pie!” The newly sent out beam of light released Pinkie onto the field in Dash’s stead. Of course, being Pinkie, the bubbly earth pony appeared springing, smiling, and ready to go.
“Oh! I love games!” Pinkie exclaimed before rubbing her chin with a hoof. “Funny though, I don’t really seem to wanna do anything without being told. Oh well!” Q smiled, amused at the pony’s rather cooperative and excited attitude. He leaned back towards Picard, “You see, Jean-Luc? Now if only you could adopt this little pony’s outlook, and maybe our encounters in the stars could provide you with quite a bit more entertainment and excitement.” Picard only replied with an unamused stare which he channeled every possible signal of hurrying the situation along as quick as possible.
“Oh fine.” Q said, looking back to Discord and the field. “That Picard is always such a dreadful stick in the mud.” Pinkie bounced along under the Windigo’s circling wind, seemingly without a care. Discord looked to Twilight Sparkle beside the Starfleet Captain and let his eyelids drop to half-mast. “You too, eh?”
Twilight exclaimed in response with a “Hey!”, before settling back down.
“Well, at any rate. Let’s see here… Pinkie, Play Rough with that Windigo thing!”
Pinkie, still bouncing and smiling, gave a little salute, and jumped into the air, grabbing the Windigo, which cause the thing’s eyes to bug momentarily before being sucked to the ground in a huge, and rather comical, dust cloud. While little stars and hearts seemed to fly out of the dust, all onlookers seemed rather curious as to what exactly was going on.
However, the dust soon cleared, and Pinkie was once again bouncing above the now badly dirty and exhausted ‘body’ of the Windigo. The ice beast was clearly unable to continue, thus granting clear victory to Pinkie Pie and Q. Discord growled to himself and recalled the cold creature. “That’s not fair, Q! You’re… you’re using main character rules! That’s cheating!”
Frustrated, Discord sent out a new creature, but this time it was much more familiar. Claws, beak, and feather revealed the mighty and stoic form of a Griffon. True, it was not in fact Gilda, but certain a Griffon none-the-less. Pinkie stopped bouncing, remembering her encounter with Gilda. Clearly, she didn’t blame all Griffons, but remembering the incident did bring her a bit of skepticism. “Oh, put that spring back in your step, little pink horse.” Q encouraged aggressively. “It’s just a Griffon. If I were concerned with every little being that bore ill will against me…”
“Then you would be exiled from the universe, Q”. Picard replied. Q raised his eyebrows unamused. “Yes, well I can hardly help it if… oh what am I doing? Let’s get this over with. Pinkie, do it again. Play Rough with that Griffon.” Pinkie gave a half cocked smile, throwing caution to the wind. Discord answered the attack with his own, demanding the Griffon perform a Sky Drop. The Griffon grabbed Pinkie as she leaped up, and pulled her skyward. With nothing left to do, the Griffon flew back downward with the pink earth pony in arms, about to hit the ground.
“Woah!” Q exclaimed, and froze the two in time, stopped before the two hit the field. “This is a little too much for this PG world. One second!” The omnipotent entity known as Q snapped his fingers in the arrogant fashion that only Q could perform, and below the now frozen Equestrian creatures appeared hundreds of cake boxes. “Alright. Continue, then!” He spoke, releasing the two, and resulting in the explosion of quite a bit of cake frosting and breading in all directions. The Griffon flapped it’s wings, and emerged before Discord. Pinkie’s head popped up, covered in frosting, but very clearly out of it.
“Really? Well that’s disappointing.” Q pondered. “I thought the pink one could handle at least one more. Oh well.” Q’s red beam retracted Pinkie and summoned a new ally instead. This time, it was the little dragon, Spike. “Woah! Why am I out here? I- I shouldn’t be out here!” Twilight nearly panicked, before remembering the futility of the situation. She called to Spike, “Spike! Don’t panic! Just remember that we have to make do with we have right now. You’ve helped us so much, you can handle this too. Just remember that!”
Q gave Twilight a clever look that gave Captain Picard a sense of concern. “Oh, you’re equine mentor is correct, little dragon. For example, if I tell you to use ‘Dragon Pulse’ on that Griffon, what do you suppose will happen?” Twilight watched Spike nervously, wondering what a ‘dragon pulse’ was, while Spike thought hard to answer. “Well, I dunno. I guess it might…” The young dragon’s words were cut off by what felt like a hiccup. His chest lurched once. Spike felt like he might throw up. He lurched a second time, but felt a strange heat inside his throat. Suddenly the urge to expel something stopped. “Huh.” Spike spoke quietly, turning to Twilight, before looking back at the Griffon before him standing confidently. “That’s odd. I could’ve sworn that I was gonna-“
Upon the last words, similar to Spike’s usual small, green dragon fire, a swirling and powerful beam of the same green erupted from his little maw, dragonfire racing towards the Griffon who hovered far too startled to evade. When the beam cleared, the Griffon simply plopped to the ground, coated in a thick black scorch. Its eyes blinked, before swirling in circles and falling to his side on the ground. Spike covered his mouth uncharacteristically, and excused himself.
Discord, unimpressed and beginning to get frustrated in his seemingly even, yet futile struggle against Q, already had begun releasing his next combatant. A Vampire Fruit Bat, as seen in the Sweet Apple Acres orchard, emerged. The winged critter was noticeably larger than the others, but it was the same regardless. Q smiled. “Perfect! I know just the pony!” Spike was recalled in the familiar red beam, and out in his stead was the sturdy earth pony known as Applejack.
“A vampire fruit bat?” AJ questioned. “That’s a big’n , but shouldn’t we be okay with those critters now?” Twilight shouted out to her friend, “Normally, yes, but this is different! We’re going to have to play along with this until it’s over. Maybe then we can get things back to normal! Just remember how you felt when they first settled on your trees!”
AJ thought back to the anger and frustration at the orchards being attacked by the bats. Her eyes narrowed on the bat floating only a short distance off the ground. “Shoulda picked a Parasprite, Discord.” She spoke with her drawl. Discord’s eyes widened, and he threw caution to the wind. “Go, my not so little fruit bat! Wing attack the apple pony!” The vampire fruit bat dove down, striking at AJ’s head and back, making impact that was almost negligible, but with repetition began adding up.
“Why is Q just letting AJ take the hits?” Picard asked Twilight. Twilight truly knew as little as Picard did about this particular situation, and any such questions essentially only served to think aloud. Twilight shrugged. “I don’t know. I want to believe that he has SOME idea of what he’s doing. I would guess he has the upper hoof… er, I mean… hand? Right? Anyway, I’m guessing there’s something behind it. Right Captain?”
“I hope so.” Picard replied. “I would like believe that Q wouldn’t put a pony at risk for no reason. In my opinion, he either knows what he’s doing, or has some unfathomable and ultimately pointless reason for this.” Twilight didn’t look reassured, but then, neither did Picard. Truly, being caught in the crossfire of entities such as Q and Discord was alone enough chaos to last a thousand lifetimes. Suddenly, their thoughts were cut off by Applejack yelling from the field. “THAT TEARS IT.” The farm pony hollered, stamping both of her front hooves into the ground, shaking the earth around them mildly, yet impressively considering the force came from a pony. Even the bat stopped for a minute.
“Q, ya yella-bellied lunatic. What in the hay is wrong with you? Yer supposed to be commandin’ us, right? Then do somethin’ already, darn it!” Applejack raged verbally. Her muscles however were very clearly tightened and showing signs of significant upsizing. Q replied. “There it is! I had a feeling we might get that point of anger from you. Dare I say, and Anger Point?”
“Oh please,” Discord spoke immediately after. “None of these ponies, or that ‘human’, are going to get these references, Q.”
Q smiled. “Perhaps. But you do, and being my opponent, that’s more than fine with me.”
Discord raised a finger to reply, but dropped it, and shrugged. “Good point, I suppose.”
To which both entities gave a very gentle chuckle each, leaving the rest of the small gathering rather confused about everything they spoke about.
“Anyway, Anger Point. Yes.” Q explained. “I’ll keep it short and sweet. Applejack takes damage and gets angry. Applejack is now as strong as she could be because of that. Applejack, why don’t you Giga Impact that bat?” Applejack snorted in frustration, especially at being used in such a way to achieve a stronger attack, but at least she could take it out in this strange battle. The farm pony’s legs bounded off the ground so powerfully, that the bat was having trouble keeping an eye on her. Her hat fell off during the sprint around the arena, and as she circled back around, she charged headlong into the bat, sending it just short of Discord himself. AJ skidded to a halt on the ground, standing dirty, sweaty, and breathing heavily. In addition to the Anger Point requirement, the impact had enough recoil damage to cause serious trepidation in the country horse.
“That worth it for ya, Q?” AJ shot defiantly. “’Cause if ya try it again, I’m gonna take these buckin’ hooves and kick ya right in the-“
Q zapped Applejack back, and released Rainbow Dash again. She emerged, still a bit frosty on the wings and hooves, but otherwise seemingly in manageable health. “Me again?” Dash let out in unmasked exasperation, before catching herself in front of the small crowd. “Uh, I mean… of course you needed me to wrap this up! Come on, what else ya got, Discord?” Discord thought contemplatively, before a little light bulb, literally, appeared above his horns.
“Here we go, Rainbow Dash. If you’re so eager, then let’s make this battle… how should I put it? 40% cooler?” Discord began to allow his spherical container to release its next combatant. Dash in full defiance retorted, “Hey, I’ll have you know I’ve only used that line ONCE. And it’s Twenty-“ But before the Pegasus could finish, before her stood another Rainbow Dash. Staring right into a mirror image of herself, the copy did its best to mimic every movement and personality quirk of the real Dash. “Wha?” Rainbow released in pure, stunned surprise. Discord grinned and stretched his arms.