//------------------------------//
// The Chaos Test 
// Story: The Life and Times of Flix the Hippogriff 
// by AlaskaIsCold 
//------------------------------//

The Chaos Test

Discord groaned. He had figured that the whole grandstanding at the party was for show, but no, apparently he was going to actually become a teacher. He floated into the house where the herd was waiting for him.

“Thanks you for coming Instructor Discord. Now, have you decided exactly how you are going to teach chaos theory? I figured it would take a bit to figure out exactly how you were going to teach–”

Path was cut off by Discord who was looking more and more bored by the moment. “Path, I have been around long before you or even your herd members. I know how to teach; the real question is can your students handle being taught by me?” Discord started to float around, his voice becoming arrogant. “You creatures love your ordered little lives, everything in its place. I don’t think that they could handle a course as intense as my own.”

Roseclaw spoke up. “Actually, Discord, we already thought about that, so you are going to have an entry exam for your classes to see if they can actually do it, and we have your first four potential students right here.”

Right on cue, the door opened as the four youngest members of the herd came into the room. Princess Epiphany, Destined Path, Lucida Path, and Flix Path.

Discord looked at the group of kids and then back to Path. “Seriously? You want me to teach your kids about chaos?! None of them even have the right kind of mentality for it!”

Path just started to chuckle. “So then why don’t you give them a few tests? Worst case scenario: at least you know how to test other applicants. Best case scenario: you have a group of eager students to teach!”

Discord stopped for a moment before he turned to the four kids and smiled. “Okay, student hopefuls, you want to take a class with the Lord of Chaos himself? You just need to pass a few simple tests first. Meet at the Twilight statue in the town center at noon!”

Destined blinked. “There is no such statue in the center of town.”

Discord snapped his talons and he grinned. “There is now. Study hard pupils – you have just under twelve hours!” Discord disappeared in a puff of pink smoke.

Path looked over to his kids with a grin. “Go on then! Study or do what you feel you need to do. No matter what happens, we will all be proud of you!”

The four kids walked out of the main hall and already Destined was grinning.

“I have this one in the bag! If I can understand time and space, chaos will be a cinch. It’s all about trying to figure out the underlying formulas that are behind the magic!”

Lucida rolled her eyes. “I don’t really know how I’m going to do magic. I’m not a changeling or a unicorn. I’m a speaker, I’m a mediator. I don’t run around snapping my fingers and causing chocolate rain, but then again Dad has taught me how do deal with tons of situations, so I should at least pass.”

Pif was doing an exaggerated trot, her confidence high as well. “I might not have your experiences, Lucida, or your magical aptitude, Destined, but I have the entire hive network at my disposal; any question I can ping and use the entire network to process the question so I could get an answer”

Flix just rolled his eyes. “Honestly I’d rather not even do the test. I’m not magical, I don’t have access to a whole team to figure things out, and I’m not a world traveler. I’d rather just work in my studio. I have a project that I’m trying to work on, you know?”

“Come on at least try to pass the test.” Lucida told Flix. “I mean you barely pass your classes as it is, so wouldn’t it be nice if you knocked this one out of the park? I know Dads and Moms would be happy!”

“More like they would be surprised I managed to pass anything at all.” Flix huffed and headed to his room and did what he normally did – he worked on his art.


# # #


Discord was waiting in the center of town when three of the four hopefuls came up to him just as his alarm sounded.

“Finally we can begin! Wait, where is the other hippogriff?” Discord looked down at the trio.

“She had to stay up late to deal with a last minute trade agreement with the Grand Colony and one of the larger Zebrican Clans. We tried to wake her up a while ago, but she just cawed and curled up into a ball. She most likely won’t be up for a few more hours. I think she went to bed after the sun came up.” Destined informed Discord.

Discord rolled his eyes a bit. “Okay then, the girl hippogriff is disqualified. It looks like we are already down to three, which actually makes this a lot easier on me since I only really had two tasks to see if any of you had any real merit.”

Flix looked at Discord and raised an eyebrow slowly. “You are strangely serious about this. I was expecting more… pinkie-esque behavior from you.”

Discord snapped his fingers and desks shot up out of the ground right under the kids, and walls slammed down around them from the sky. Once the confusion settled down, they found themselves inside a small classroom and staring at them was a discorded version of Cheerilee.

“Write this down fast!” The greyed pony yelled out as she started to talk in a fast, mechanical manner. “Two trains are on the same track, one is leaving from Ponyville at 7:35am, the other is leaving Vanhoover at 8:10am. One is going 35kph the other is going 70kph, ten passengers get off one, five get off the other, three more get on the second, one more on the third. The wind is going 25 miles an hour to the north then shifts to the west….” Discord kept describing the word problem as Pif’s horn started to glow.

‘Hee! I have the hive network; this is going to be cake!’ Pif thought as she started divvying up the tasks to drones that were not occupied.

Discord continued, “… one of those trains is powered by arcane crystals much like the Crystal Kingdom Express, while the other is powered by coal much like the normal Ponyville train. One has ten tonnes of fuel and the other has 300 Gigatwis of energy….”

Pif was starting to show more and more strain as her small mini network started to buckle under the computational intensity of the problem.

“….so to the nearest picosecond, at what time do they crash? Please express your answer in reverse Neighponese!” The discorded Cheerilee finished.

Pif kept focusing to compute everything until her horn stopped glowing and she just fell onto her side, simply overloaded by the need to compute such a complex problem in such little time.  

“Looks like we lost one!” Cheerilee stomped a hoof and the princess disappeared.

Discord appeared next to the earth pony and he tapped her head once and the color returned to her. With a snap of his fingers, she was back teaching in her classroom.

“Your answers, please!” Discord grinned.

“They collide at exactly 9:56:21.9126139am.” Destined looked at Discord with a smile that was way too big for the kid to have.

Discord blinked and looked at the colt alicorn. “Seriously? Okay, fine – you get five points.”

Destined laughed and kept smiling.

“What about you, Flix?” Discord asked.

“There is no answer… because they don’t ever collide. I switch one of the trains onto a different track so that no collision occurs,” he said coolly.

Now it was Discord who was smiling. “Yes! Ten points!”

Destined blinked. “How does he get ten points?! It’s not even a real answer!”

Discord snapped his fingers and the room disappeared. “Ah, it is an answer, but not the answer you were expecting. It is correct nonetheless. Now for the last test. Let’s make it a little more... dramatic.”

He snapped his fingers twice as a stage popped up out of the ground with two little stands. Each of them had a large black top hat and a large black cloth on them. When the second snap went off, Path and Free appeared in midair. They fell onto the ground and groaned in pain. Free was the first one to stand up.

“The meeting was last week – why am I… oh… this isn’t the meeting hall.” He turned to see his two children on stage and Discord looking at them. “Hi, kids. Hi, Discord!” He waved excitedly.

“I’m just going to lay here for a while. Don’t mind me,” Path groaned and rolled over, trying to go back to sleep before Free pushed him up to his feet.

“Yes! Yes! I’m up… what’s going on?”

Discord chuckled. “Two of your four kids have made it to the final test!”

The parents looked at Discord, then to the stage, and then they sat down to watch.

“So, what kind of test is this going to be?” Path asked with a smile as he leaned against Free.

“Simple – they have a hat, and a large black cloth. All the need to do is pull something out of the hat and impress me,” Discord said as he walked over to the two. He snapped his fingers as a chair appeared for him to sit in.

Destined just blinked a few times before he started laughing. “Really, that’s it? Just a summoning spell?!” Destined’s horn started to glow as he reached his hoof just barely inside the hat and pulled out a rabbit that turned into a turnip and then bounced away. Destined looked over at Discord with a grin, but the Chaos Lord just responded with a yawn.

“Technically yes, you did pull something out of the hat, but it was bland, predictable, and you transformed it into a turnip to appear chaotic just to impress me.” Discord extended his talon and pointed it downward. “One point. Let’s see if your brother can do better, hmm?”

Flix just stood there as he put the black cloth provided over the top of the hat. ‘If I go about doing this the way that everyone expects me to, then I will fail. I’m not magical in the traditional sense. There has to be a different way to go about doing this.’ Flix started to shake slightly as he began to fret.

“You can do it son! Do it your own way!” Path cheered out to Flix.

‘My own way… my own way...’ Flix slowly reached one of his talons toward the cloth covered hat. ‘In order for me to do this… to do anything… I cannot play by their rules.’ He looked back at the cloth-covered hat. ‘Nobody can see inside the hat; the inside of the hat is blank like a canvas. Destined pulled out a rabbit because his rules say that a rabbit is supposed to come out of it, but my hat is a blank canvas and the world is my palette, both of them follow my rules’

Flix started to laugh loudly. Destined looked at him, confused, as did Path and Free. Nobody noticed the draconequus staring intently at the hippogriff with a serious look on his face.

‘Rules! In my world there are no rules!’ Flix’s talon opened wide and he plunged it into the hat all the way up to his shoulder, but the bottom of the hat did not break. He then started to pull hard. It looked like he was starting to pull something out before he was pulled back toward the hat. The hippogriff grunted and added a second talon. He braced himself on the table and pulled with all his might!

Free and Path weren’t necessarily expecting Flix to pass Discord’s test, so they were really here for moral support for when he failed. They began to suspect that they would not need to do so.

Flix pulled with all his might as the hat expanded to handle was he was pulling out, but the mass was too big and Flix fell back with the thing still covered in the cloth landing upon him. After a few moments, the cloth was pushed away to reveal a very confused Celestia, one of her wings in mid extension.

“Discord! What did you do?!” Celestia snapped at him.

Discord, however, was on the floor laughing. “That wasn’t me! That was Flix! Flix wins! Flix wins! He is now my student!”

Celestia looked down to see the hippogriff she was sitting on, the one that was holding her tail in his talons. She then looked back to Discord. “How did he do a summoning spell?”

Discord snapped his fingers as Flix appeared next to him, slightly disoriented.

“He didn’t use a summoning spell. He was able to pull you through the hat because nobody could prove that you weren’t in the hat already,” Discord replied with a huge grin.

“That doesn’t even make sense!” Celestia barked. “You can’t just teach him non–” Celestia was cut off as Discord sent her back to the throne room in Canterlot.

“Well… looks like I’ll have to come up with a lesson plan. I’ll be seeing you real soon, Flix Path.” Discord gave him a genuine smile before he disappeared.

Flix was about to say something before he was hugged by both of his dads.

“You did it!” Path yelled!

“I have no idea what you did but it was awesome!” Free cheered.

Flix just groaned a bit, suddenly tired. “Just… sleep now...” Flix passed out in the arms of his dads, leaving them both very confused.


# # #


*Later*

Discord was sipping tea with Fluttershy at their usual Tuesday meet-up.

“So how did your test go, Discord?” She asked as she moved to fill up his cup.

“Better than I was expecting. The one I figured would fail was the one who won. It took all that he had to open up a Pinkie-class chaos gate, but it worked and he passed. I bet he is sleeping it off right now.” Discord sipped the remainder of his tea before munching on the cup.

“Oh? Well that’s nice. At least you have a student now, right?” she asked meekly.

“More than that – I can’t wait till I give him lesson one!”


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