It was a lovely morning in the land of Equestria, as Princess of the Sun made her way towards the tower to perform her duty to raise the sun once more, as with every other day.
Quietly strutting she nodded to the guards who saluted her as she made her way past them, smiling in affirmation. However, as she walked she quickly noted one guard whose eyes quickly got her attention…that being they were yellow and mismatched.
“Good morning Discord, I see you’re being productive as ever.” The princess spoke with a smile and no apparent hint of mockery as she continued walking, knowing full well the Lord of Chaos wouldn’t be far behind.
One flash of light confirmed this as said spirit was now floating with his body reshaped to its normal form, save for the armor. “Indeed my dear princess. I thought it might be nice to change things up a bit with the guard staff around here, I mean look at them.”
His right claw seemed to appear out of nowhere over the heads of each guard in the hall. “It’s almost got me wondering if you stumbled upon a cloning spell in the thousand years I’ve been gone!”
An exclamation point appeared above his head, which then promptly split into five, each looking the princess in the eye with a questionable stare. “You didn’t, did you? Because that would actually explain quite a few things.” A literal thought bubble appeared over his head, revealing the image of countless seemingly identical ponies casually walking through Canterlot, completely ignoring the fact that there were exact duplicates of themselves within view.
The Sun Goddess covered her mouth in an attempt to hold back a chuckle at the absurd notion. “Believe me Discord, I’m fairly certain that if such a spell existed Twilight would have discovered it long ago. She’d certainly have far more use for it than I.”
Discords five heads each looked at the other in a sort of silent debate over Celestia’s answer before reaching a consensus and fusing back into one.
“Too true. My dear friend Twilight does have a tendency to overwhelm herself, so I can certainly see needing a spell like that to avoid repeats of prior behavior.” Discord quickly pulled up a sign showing a normal Twilight on one side and a completely manic one on the other, with bulging eyes and a frazzled mane to boot. It wasn’t every day that a teacher's prized student becomes so manic from stress she ends up using magic to cause a small riot.
“Besides clones would be such an unnecessary bother…Don’t you agree Discord?” Discord himself literally asked himself, with his hand having shapeshifted into an exact replica of the spirit's own head. “Most certainly, things would get way out of hand if that were the case.” With a quick chuckle at his own obvious pun, the head returned to it’s original form, as Discord continued to float and follow Celestia.
Celestia continued to make her way up towards the towers to raise the sun, with Discord quickly shifting to where his form was now stretching across one of the shields hanging on the wall,
“So my dear Celestia, off to raise the sun as usual I presume. Nothing like a little tedium to start the day.”
Celestia simply ignored the obvious jab at what was effectively the duty she held most dear to her heart, opting to stare out at the night sky in the direction of where the sun was. “I personally find the raising of the sun to be quite an enjoyable experience. After all each new dawn brings a new day with it, and with that new day comes new experiences and memories. So no two days are exactly the same.” She quickly puffed out her chest slightly in a show of pride. “And if I do say so myself it is a breathtaking sight to behold, one that I could never tire of.”
Popping off the shield, Discord seemingly pulled a chart out of nowhere and a pointer. “But it’s the same thing every day, you just bring the sun up and then put it down when little miss Luna shows up.Talk about a snore fest...”
A giant banner with the words SNOREFEST appeared above his head with a couple of pillows and Z’s on it with Discord himself snoring loudly enough to cause the castle to shake, but Celestia still didn’t look phased as she reached the balcony and began the process of raising the sun.
“I mean, seriously Celestia you're little more than a glorified light switch! At least change things around, maybe make the sun a different color, or make it spin or something. That would certainly add some flare to such a dreary affair.”
Seemingly to emphasize his point Discord promptly pulled a seemingly endless list of possible suggestions out of thin air, allowing the massive and endless piece of paper to roll down the hallway like a carpet, actually smothering the guards who still remained seated.
A pair of eyeglasses appeared in his paw before he put them on and scanned over the list. “Let’s see there’s 1. Eclipsing the sun with a giant disco ball, 2. Splitting it in half, 3. Making the Sun laugh… I must admit I’m rather partial to the color changing option. Oh tell me, Celestia, how does a purple sun grab you?”
When Discord attempted to place the list in front of Celestia’s face, she merely used her magic to move it out of the way and focused her attention into the distance.
“As entertaining as those ideas sound, Discord, I must decline. The sun is perfectly fine the way it is and I have no interest in changing it. Now if you’ll excuse me, I have other affairs to attend.” The princess quickly made her way to her next appointment leaving Discord to mull over her rejection.
The Sun Princess’ flat denial of his suggestion merited a grumble from the spirit of Chaos, looking over his list again. “Oh so many wonderful ways to brighten up something so drab. I can’t believe she wouldn’t even consider a single one. I mean look at some of these choices!”
His eyes quickly scanned over each option, mulling over each one. “I mean sure some of these options are little much, I know making the sun five times its size or turned into a giant glowing orange is a little crazy, but still.” His eyes continued to scan until they noticed one in particular.
Slowly his grin grew ever wider. “Well hello there. Now there’s an idea that would be oh so wonderful to try.” “Oh this is just too good to pass up.” Almost immediately Discord’s head seemingly split right down the middle and two heads quickly formed from the split like a starfish. Both heads looking at each other, with one letting out a scoff.
“Really, we’re doing the whole Army of Darkness, good, evil head schtick for this. Why not just go with the angel on your shoulder bit.” As if in response to his statement a mini Discord in an angel costume appeared out of nowhere. “The author was too lazy to bother writing me in and wanted to move the plot along quicker. Deal with it.”
As his proverbial angel disappeared the other head looked at what was on the list with apprehension. “Come now my dear brother, surely you don’t think this is necessary. I mean what would Fluttershy say if we did this?”
“Oh please, you make it sound like we’ll make it literally rain cats and dogs!” The two Discords paused as the notion of canines and felines of various breeds, became quite a clear image in their minds. “You know thinking about it now, she might actually enjoy that.” With another snap a note appeared along with a quill. “Mental note to self, in future try making it rain cats and dogs for Fluttershy.”
Quickly brushing the note away with it turning to smoke the spirit turned to the screen or where
the screen was. “Okay I believe this distraction has gone on a little too long and we need to move this story forward before the readers become bored. So with that in mind...”
Turning his attention to his other head, he said “As much fun as arguing with myself over this matter would be, and frankly that would make an interesting episode, time is of the essence and we need move things forward so.”
Seemingly out of nowhere Discord pulled a chainsaw out and reved it up and prepared to move.
“Oh don’t worry everyone reading at home, we won’t be going into any messy details...Not that there will be anything anyway as this isn’t M rated. Sorry.”
He instead slashed it across the screen causing it to transition to the next day.
-Next Day-
Celestia once again entered her daily routine of preparing to raise the sun, casually humming a jaunty tune to herself, whilst walking past the numerous, identical guards, each who saluted her the second they made eye contact.
The sight only brought a smile to her face, responding in kind to the acknowledgement. However, the bulk of her attention was elsewhere, as evident by her eyes continually to scan the entire hallway, combing over every brick, carpet and guard, looking for a currently missing trickster.
“Odd, Discord never misses an opportunity to try and get my attention with his usual antics...Then again falling into any kind of routine goes against his very nature. So I suppose I shouldn’t be surprised.”
Despite a slight nagging feeling that something might be a miss, the monarch opted to shake any possible thoughts of concern from her mind. Sure Discord pretty much treated the fabric of reality like his own personal playset, but he’d certainly mellowed out in recent times and kept from doing anything too outlandish. Yet in the back of her mind she couldn’t help feel a tad concerned given her conversation with him the other day.
Deciding to try and focus her attention elsewhere she took another glance at the guards, meriting another train of thought, ironically tying back to what Discord had said the previous day.
“I’m actually starting to wonder if Discord was onto something with the whole cloning spell. At first I thought he was just being silly, but looking at the guards again, it is odd just how identical they appear. Perhaps I should look into this?”
Quickly filing the thought away into the area of her mind reserved for future matters, she entered the tower leading to the spot for the Sunrise.
As Celestia made her way up to the balcony, she prepared to raise the sun once more. “Well, I’m sure if Discord is up to something it’s probably harmless.” A faint yellow glow encased her horn as she began to cause the sun to rise above the horizon, catching site of the dawn’s glow, admiring it’s shimmering beauty.
“No matter how many days I see it, I will never tire of the sight of a glorious morning sunrise.” Yes it certainly seemed like a breathtaking sight, as the orange glow of the sun grew brighter, whilst the sky started to turn orange and yellow with the morning light. It certainly was a magnificent…..
“Wait….What’s that sound?”
The tranquil sight of the morning sun ascending was seemingly shattered by what sounded like someone screaming in serious agony. It was strangely loud enough to where Celestia could easily hear it, yet still seemed distant enough to where it was apparent it wasn’t coming from the castle or Canterlot itself. Worst of all it seemed to keep getting louder and more irritating with each passing second.
“Where is that screaming coming from? Is somepony hurt? Or perhaps it’s a dragon in pain. It’s certainly loud enough.” So distracted by trying to find the source of the noise, that Celestia was effectively raising the sun subconsciously, completely ignoring the sight, despite the screaming growing louder and louder.
It was enough to actually break the princess's calm visage, with a narrow frown adorning her regal face. “I need to find the source of that sound so I can stop it. Faust knows what kind of disruption this will cause for everypony.”
Quickly preparing to leave she decided to take one last look at the sun to at least admire her handiwork. However, her normal expression of joy at the sight of the bright shining star of the sky quickly turned to abject horror.
Why you might ask? Well that’s simple really. You see, upon the normally blank shimmering visage of the sun, there now sat a face. A pair of eyes, a nose and mouth. That in and of itself wasn’t the problem however, no the problem here was that said face was currently in the midst of screaming at the top of its….Well if it had lungs it would be that, but regardless. Yes the sun was screaming, with it’s eyes seemingly dilated and it’s mouth open as wide as possible, bellowing out its scream for all of Equestria to hear. It even had teeth, if those extremely narrow rectangles that more resembled rocks could be called teeth.
Celestia could only continue to stare, seemingly having been paralyzed by the sight of the celestial body she commanded being, defaced or in this case, faced, in such a manner. Also didn’t help that the scream was unbearably annoying but it was still the principle of the matter.
As the shock started to where Celestia’s eyes quickly became shadowed as she tried to concentrate despite the screaming, as she quickly figured out who caused this obvious act of planetary vandalism.
“Discord!”
“You called, dear Celestia?”
The avatar of disharmony appeared in his trademark flash, currently sitting in a lounge chair and looking fairly relaxed, looking at the sun with a degree of pride. “I take it you’ve seen my little improvement to the sun. Isn’t it just so much better.”
Celestia however, hardly looked pleased trying her best to mentally block the incessant screaming that the face was now producing. “Alright Discord, you’ve had your fun, now please change the sun back to how it was before.”
The request didn’t get the reaction she’d hoped as Discord, in the midst of taking pictures of the sun for his apparent scrap book, had his face reappear on the back of his head. “Change it back? Why on earth would i do that? Frankly it seems much better this way. I mean all the sun does all day is sit in the exact same spot, never doing anything of notice until you spend roughly five minutes lowering it. At least here it’s more active.”
Quickly grabbing his ear and enlarging it, he directed it near the screaming. “Not to mention it really does liven things up a bit actually, like an alarm clock for the whole country. At least now we don’t have to worry about ponies being lazy and sleeping in all the time. Really you should be thanking me.”
Again Celestia tried her best to at least block out the screaming which continued without a single decrease in tone, which, coupled with Discord’s clear smug amusement of the situation was quickly exhausting the normally limitless patience the monarch had. “It’s distracting and disruptive to the entire country. Just imagine how ponies all over Equestria must be reacting to this incessant noise!”
Quickly pointing her hoof down to Canterlot, the princess continued. “Look at the city, it’s only been screaming for two minutes and already the ponies look ready to riot.”
It was true, as Discord, through a telescope he pulled out of his stomach, quickly caught sight of ponies all across the city doing literally anything they could to block out the noise. Some were standard like covering their ears with their hooves or using things like cotton or cloth to plug them up. Then there were the down right desperate, literally burying their heads in sand or the Unicorns actually making magical shields around their heads. It was actually pretty funny.
“Is that pegasus actually using that cloud as earplugs...Oh that’s actually quite clever, I should write that one down.” Promptly pulling a notepad from his beard before pulling his right horn of his head, which was now tipped like a pencil.
“This is hardly the time for amusement Discord! All of Canterlot is in a practical state of anarchy, you can’t possibly believe that this is a good thing?”
Of course the now clearly irritated Celestia glaring at him quickly resulted in him shoving the notepad down his throat and putting his horn back.
“Oh please, most of those ponies are just a bunch of stuck up, snobs who act like the world is ending if there food is a few seconds late. I’m sure that with some time this little distraction will be little more than background noise to them.”
By this point Celestia’s patience was really starting to wear out as it was obvious she wasn’t going to get anywhere with Discord on this matter. And the sun incessant screaming itself, was just getting to the point where she couldn’t take it anymore.
The screaming was bad enough, but on top of that it was the face. Discord had effectively placed a loud, ugly, screaming face on the very thing she treasured almost as much as her students and sister. To see it disfigured to such an extent and purely as a joke... well….
“DISCORD, AS THE RULER OF EQUESTRIA AND MONARCH OF THE SUN I ORDER YOU TO CEASE THIS CHARADE AT ONCE!”
Celestia’s entire body, mane and tail included, had become engulfed in flames, with her eyes now searing red and her wings spread out with the feathers also on fire, resembling an angry phoenix.
The sight however, didn’t really get a great deal of fear out of the Master of Chaos, since even at her most powerful Celestia’s magic couldn’t hold a candle to his own. The sight of her fiery visage did make him jump a little bit, “You know, there’s a joke I almost feel like I should be making right now, but for the life of me I can’t…..”
Discord quickly found himself telekinetically grabbed and pulled until he was looking Celestia dead center in the twin red fireballs that used to be her eyes. It literally felt like he was actually staring into the sun at this point.
“I’m not Going to Ask Again Discord. Either you change the sun back or I’ll make sure to tell Fluttershy all about this and have her make you as miserable as possible.”
The mention of his closest friend prompted the spirit of Disharmony to clam up somewhat, being unnerved by the thought of Fluttershy’s opinion of him lowering to some extent. With a slightly panicked look on his face he quickly nodded and teleported out of Celestia's grasp. “No need for that my dear princess, you win. I’ll change it back immediately.”
Celestia’s fiery form seemed to all but dissipated as her normal bright smile returned to her face, “I knew you’d be willing to listen to reason. Thank you for that Discord. Now I’m going to go have breakfast with Luna, who I imagine has been having her own difficulty sleeping with the noise. Thus I trust everything will be back in order when I’m done.”
A nod of confirmation was all she needed as she quickly moved passed Disord towards the kitchen. However, there was still the matter of the Sun as it was still screaming, seemingly louder than ever. Sure Discord was going to fix it, but after listening to it scream nonstop for several minutes and continue to mock what Celestia cherished so greatly…..Welll
A single fiery gaze, even hotter than before appeared on Celestia as she turned completely red and unleashed a roar that echoed across the skies, “AND YOU, SHUT UP!”
The screaming sun looked at the angry sun goddess, whose fiery orbs seemed to grow brighter, which made his screaming promptly die down, as if he were a child that was just scolded by his mother. Celestia smiled in return as she looked at the now terrified star.
“That’s a good Sun.”