//------------------------------//
// Breaking The Surface: Lyra 
// Story: Harpflank and Sweets: Forced Introspection 
// by Arcainum 
//------------------------------//

“Everything.”

“Oh?”

“I’d give everything.”

Discord’s creeping smile widened.

“You see? That’s the Lyra I know!”

The couch and other trappings vanished, letting Lyra drop gently to her hooves.

“Isn’t it nice to let go and... understand yourself?”

Lyra nodded.

“Yeah. I’m kind of glad you helped me get it off my chest, if I’m honest.”

Discord blushed and waved his claws coquettishly.

“Oh, stop.”

“No, I’m serious. If it wasn’t for you, I’d never have puzzled this out. I never realised you could win and lose at the same time, but it’s pretty clear now.”

I... Wait, what?”

Discord froze.

“I get it now. I’d give anything to win totally, like you said. Beat you? Get the love, the music, the adoration? Sounds awesome. But...”

Lyra chuckled.

“But then that wouldn’t be winning, would it? Because even though I’d gained everything, I’d have given everything up to get it. And that’s no win at all.”

Discord scratched behind his horns and raised an eyebrow.

“I don’t follow.”

“If I sacrificed everything to win, I’d have lost all the love and music and stuff I already have. So the only way for me to win, to really win, is to win without giving anything up. Even if the only way to win is to give everything up.”

“I’m not sure you’re quite grasping the nature of sacrifice.”

Lyra scoffed.

“You’re the one who doesn’t get it. If the only way to win is to sacrifice everything, then winning isn’t winning. Winning is winning without sacrifice, and I’d sacrifice anything for that.”

Discord’s blank stare seemed to last for an age.

“That doesn’t make any sense.”

Lyra shrugged.

“Making sense? What fun is there in making sense?”

~

Lyra awoke tangled in the mangled frame of the exercise machine led to an unfortunate demise by her duel with Rainbow Dash. Grinning to herself at Discord’s infuriated reaction to her words and subsequent ejection of her self from whatever weird world he’d pulled her into, she pulled herself free from the creaking structure.

She briefly wondered about the others. They’d be fine. She held no illusions as to her own insecurities, and had no doubt that her friends could handle theirs.

She looked around the dented gym. The scars of ninety-nine battles covered its every surface. She trotted, a spring in her step, to the scoreboard propped against one wall, grabbing a piece of chalk magically along the way.

With a smug flourish, she added a fifty-first line to the green column.