Rainbow Dash wasn’t sure what she was looking at here. She and her friends... well, all but one of her friends were clustered defensively on the green outside the Golden Oaks library. Applejack’s neighbor Golden Harvest had returned, and she brought with her four other ponies.
There was that clumsy pegasus everypony knew as Derpy, and another pegasus name of Flitter, purple, with a barely wind tossed, light blue mane, and a bright cheer in her soft eyes. Dash didn’t really know much about Flitter aside from her stats: she was lighter, more delicate and less destructive than Derpy. There was that one candymaker down the street from Sugarcube corner, with the cream colored coat and the blue and pink curly hair, and finally a mint green unicorn that Dash actually... had only seen around town before, and didn’t know what she did here.
They stood there like it was a faceoff, the five of them, versus Rainbow Dash and her four friends. Except Rainbow Dash didn’t know what they were facing off about!
“Where’s Twilight?” Golden Harvest said at last, in a very quiet, and a very dangerous tone. The others with her were equally hostile in their stance, and in fact even Derpy, silly, goofy, derp eyed Derpy was matching Rainbow Dash’s hover, like she was going to tackle Rainbow Dash if she even tried to fly away, and get this. Derpy’s eyes were straight.
“She ran in the library,” Applejack replied more in a scared and shaken, less in a hostile manner, but still not very friendly. “Was yelling something about us freein’ Discord.”
“She locked the door, too!” Pinkie Pie whined. “We can’t figure out why she doesn’t want to hang out with us anymore!”
“You really do think we’re going to free him, don’t you?” Rarity said to the other ponies, in a note of shaky disbelief.
“Who are you ponies?” Rainbow demanded, wanting at least some answers to this.
“Well, I’m Flitter,” the smaller pegasus, with the long blue hair said, but she wouldn’t say any more than that. None of the other ponies answered, but watching them warily, Golden Harvest separated from the group. She walked to the front door of the library, lifted the doormat up with a hoof, and snatched a key out from underneath with her tail. Wordlessly, she went and unlocked the library door, and vanished inside.
Rainbow didn’t know Twilight hid a key under there.
“She’s getting Twilight, right?” Applejack asked, looking from the door to the ponies who were sort of maybe kind of herding the main 5 of them all nervously clustered together.
The mint unicorn was the first to break, her expression dropping to shock as she said in a bold alto, “Wait a minute, you ponies are all still friends?”
“Uh... yeah?” Applejack said, fiddling nervously with the brim of her hat. “Why wouldn’t we be?”
“You’re still friends??” came Twilight Sparkle’s very surprised voice from the now opening door to the library.
Ignoring the other five, the main 5 turned at once to their darker purple friend, all shouting, “Twilight!”
A frazzled looking purple unicorn known as Twilight Sparkle emerged swiftly from the library, with a tear streaked face, along with Golden Harvest close to her side. Twilight then rushed up to the main 5, eyes full of worry, looking at Applejack’s face, and holding up Fluttershy’s chin, and babbling, “You’re all still friends? You’re still friends with me? You stayed yourself? Other ponies are still acting strangely around you? You’re still yourself?”
“Why are you asking that, Twilight?” Rainbow Dash said suspiciously. “Because I’m not sure that’s true anymore!”
Rainbow pulled her diary out from her wing pouch and tossed it at Twilight’s hooves, the purple unicorn catching it naturally in her magic before it struck the ground. “Turn to the 23rd of this month,” Rainbow Dash said. “You see my mouthwriting? How it changed?”
Twilight didn’t even look in the book. She just looked up at Dash and... and then at Derpy, and then around at the others. She said, “I... I can’t explain it. This doesn’t make any sense. But... I’m so tired of fighting it. Just, come in the library everypony. I’ll... it can’t hurt things any worse at this point to just tell you.”
About two weeks ago, the great lord Discord, Master of Chaos, powerful poker of pony personalities, was having a smashing time with his newfound freedom. After a thousand years of biding his time, the Elements had at last weakened enough that his favorite breed of Chaos could once again spread over all the land. Up was down, red was blue, and everything was checkerboard colored. It was beautiful!
And it would stay that way, if he could get rid of that goody four-shoes librarian. In his regrettable absence, she along with 5 other mortal ponies had somehow taken control of the Elements of Harmony themselves. Discord giggled unpleasantly to himself as he watched the 6 run around in his giant leafy distraction, losing their very selves in their attempt to navigate the maze he never told them to navigate. How had ponies as incompetent as these managed to take the Elements? Surely they had to have been desperate, to attach themselves to mortal ponies at all. But then again...
The Elements had surprised him once before.
Discord hated using his benevolent gift to ponykind, to do such boring, awful things like ruin somepony, but he couldn’t let himself be a big softy when his continued freedom was on the line. You would think ponies would be grateful for what he gave them, putting life back into a decrepit mare’s old legs, granting a very silly earth pony the power of flight, giving a little filly all the talents in the world. Fun, whimsical things like that were his bread and butter. But for these 6, Discord had to harden his heart, and get serious about messing them up if he wanted to survive.
In doing this, he managed to get one of the ponies to separate from the group, but that librarian... as soon as she had the others in her clutches, his greatest beguilement couldn’t convince her to separate from them, or them from her. They went from loving her to hating her, yet in hating her they still wanted to be a part of her life as much as possible! It would have been hilarious if it wasn’t so dangerous.
He made a show of being nigh invulnerable, when they impotently tried to use the Elements against him, a completely futile act thanks to their missing member. But it was only a matter of time at this point, before they would get her back, and Discord would find his newfound life rudely interrupted, his glorious personage once again imprisoned in stone.
An amazing thing happened, then. The purple one broke! The librarian lost her color, and her psychic defenses but she didn’t know that, and just gave him the world on a silver platter! Discord was overjoyed, because without her meddling, her former friends quickly scattered all across town, doing their own thing and not giving one single thought into usurping his well earned reign. He taunted her gleefully as she slogged along through the muddy soap, not even caring whether it was night or day anymore. She didn’t have any friends anymore, this was great! Just like... just like him.
Well, it might have been a trick, on the librarian’s part, and neither sunbutt nor mooney had made their move yet, so Discord once again got to scheming. Now that he had power over this unicorn, he had to make the most of it, before some other force went and stole her out from under his very handsome schnozz. Hurrying ahead of her, he canvassed the librarian’s library, trying to find if she had any secret weapons set up, or traps that she was heading towards, pretending to give up just so that she could arm them and ruin his fun. And there, Discord found... an opportunity.
“Oh, what’s this?” Discord said, as the little purple lizard tried to scramble behind another bookshelf. Discord’s magic turned it into a podium with twenty-three spotlights on it. “A baby dragon!” he said excitedly, “How did you get in a pony’s library, little guy?”
“Stay back!” the kid responded, almost falling over on his own tail. “Twilight’s gonna stop you!” he declared confidently. Oh. The librarian, again. Of course the dragon would be on her side too. Was this her secret weapon? But how could one young dragon’s crude magic pose any sort of threat to Discord master of Chaos?
Poor little Spike stopped struggling then, and belched out a delightfully odiferous gout of green flame. But what was fascinating about it was a scroll that accompanied the dragon’s fire, a scroll that hadn’t been there before. And Discord hadn’t detected any sort of teleportation going on. Could dragon fire do that? Maybe it was closer to Chaos magic than Discord had ever known! In all his years, he’d never had a baby dragon to play with!
Because dragons are absolutely no fun at all, when you want to experiment on their young offspring.
Discord cracked open the seal on the scroll, ignoring the baby dragon’s protests, and eagerly read its contents. His face fell to a smouldering frown upon reading it though. Of course. This was their secret weapon. Not fire, but Friendship. Sunny bunny hadn’t got any less crafty in her old age, it seemed.
“The princess?” Discord drawled casually, glancing from the scroll to the baby dragon, “I’m impressed, that you let her use you like that.”
“What do you mean?” Spike said, alarmed. “I’m not gonna—” oh this was perfect. The dragon had to stop talking, for he belched out another scroll.
“You can’t even stop it, can you?” Discord said, wrapping his lovely tendrils right around this poor dragon’s heart. “You’re just her delivery boy, no... you’re just her mail box. She can use you whenever she wants, without your permission. You must really love being ignored and left behind, since the ponies think you’re only good for delivering the mail.”
“Well, no, they think I’m really important!” Spike said futilely. “I help out lots!”
“But think how much more you could help out,” Discord said, getting right up into Spike’s eyes, “If you could choose who sent you letters. Ponies don’t know any better, do they? Wouldn’t it be better if you could receive all your letters from someone who respected you? Aren’t you tired of just... letting the ponies do whatever they want with you, without asking?”
“Yeah, I’m...” Spike said in a dazed tone. Got him.
“You don’t need to receive letters from any pony, or any princess,” Discord said to the dimming Spike, “You only need to receive letters from me. Unlike them, I would never take advantage of a brave, strong dragon like you.”
Through some fantastic sorcery if he did say so himself, Discord managed to fork Spike’s breath effect, so Spike did not belch out a single letter now that Discord didn’t get to see first, which was absolutely perfect. If Neopolitan and Blueberry didn’t want to come down themselves and deal with him, and he was sure they wouldn’t, then they’d just ignorantly remain up in their mountain castle, thinking all the while that the letters they sent were going straight to their beloved student, the librarian.
Discord absconded the fork out of there when Twilight arrived, the poor, confused mare trudging in and immediately snapping angrily at the dragon, “Pack your things Spike, we’re leaving.” She actually thought Canterlot was going to be there, when she got back! This librarian was inattentive, bitter, and downright stupid, just the opposite of all the qualities that were normally her greatest strengths. He peered eagerly through the window as she outdid his wildest imagination, by taking the lofty, most stuck-up, self important Element: Magic, and just tossing it in the waste bin!
Oh, he would never let it live that one down.
Nevertheless, as pleased as he was with the situation, Discord was still unsatisfied. Yes the bearer was powerless and dim, but that gem was bright as ever, and he swore it gave him a malevolent glitter as it plummeted into the trash. It knew that even his great powers had their limitations. This pony, like every other pony, would eventually shake off his beguilement, and get back to her normal, boring old harmony wielding self. And how would he predict when that happened? Discord didn’t do predictions. That wasn’t his thing!
It was then that Discord got an idea, an awful, terrible, wonderful idea. He thought of a way that wouldn’t rely on his sorcery, to take care of the ponies and the elements, all in one hilarious comedy of errors. Discord’s favorite form of entertainment, second only to infomercials and reality TV.
He had a letter to write.
The library foyer was the most pleasant interrogation chamber that Rainbow Dash had ever gone into. But then again, it was also the most unpleasant interrogation chamber Rainbow Dash had ever gone into. One way or another, they were gonna get some answers from their friend. Rainbow Dash wasn’t sure she wanted answers anymore, though, or that she’d be happy with what she found.
Things were less... tense now that Twilight had outright given up on... whatever she had been doing. Rainbow Dash really wanted to know what was bothering Twilight so much, and why she thought they’d release him of all creatures. Rainbow hated waiting, but Twilight didn’t mince words after they’d gotten inside. She sent Spike off running to the kitchen to prepare some nachos (score!) and settled down to explain to the 5 of them what had happened. Not the 6 of them, not the 11 of them, but only 5 ponies who were kept totally in the dark: Rainbow Dash, Applejack, Fluttershy, Rarity and Pinkie Pie.
“Okay, everypony,” Twilight said, “You may have noticed that your life, or your life recently, has felt wrong. I want to assure you that it’s only natural, given what happened to you. What I... yes, I know what happened to you. I’m going to tell you, and I’m not going to hesitate. We can’t gamble the safety of our whole world on a lie, however well intentioned,” she told herself firmly, “So this is what I know...”
The beautiful light of Harmony sang through Twilight’s veins. She couldn’t believe how close that had been! Well, not anymore! Discord was fresh out of luck, because his sinuating, twisting writhing ceased. Soon all that was left was a stone statue, and a glorious rainbow.
It spread over all the land, and swept away his dark sorceries. It swept through Twilight’s heart, and cleared her head of all that terrible foggy beguilement that his evil magic had wrought. Twilight and her friends descended like sylphs, two of the air remaining in the bright blue sky, while the three of the earth landed on beautiful, living, green grass, with not a single checkerboard pattern to be seen for miles around. Twilight smiled in blessed relief, and to her eternal amusement, not only did Discord get turned into stone, he did it in such an awkward position that he just toppled over, his statue slamming to the ground on its side with a terrible sound of finality.
“Well, girls,” Twilight concluded, looking to her left, “It looks like—”
She stopped cold.
There, flying in the air was that rainbow haired stunt pony who was always crashing through her library, and in general making a huge jerk out of herself. The mare was... smiling? Fondly? And that baker, Twilight only knew about her through the Cakes, and from the frustration and yelling she heard, of a mare taking her rage out on the baked goods in the back of Sugarcube Corner. The pink pony made good food, but... the Cakes didn’t let her work the front counter, for a very clear reason. It was amazing that they decided to foster a teenager when they did, but even years later, she had some real issues. Well, Pinkamena’s mane was now completely ridiculous in its puffed up nature, and Twilight couldn’t recall her ever smiling before, but she was smiling now!
There was an orange pony that... Twilight had never seen before in her life, a violet haired, white unicorn... that Twilight had vaguely interacted with, then decided her dresses were too overpriced, and finally... a butter yellow, pink maned, pegasus, that Twilight had never seen before, but she had been warned about before. And they were all wearing the Elements of Harmony! Why were they wearing the Elements of Harmony?!
“Ha, we did it!” the rainbow mare uttered, pumping her hoof as Discord’s statue thudded to the ground.
“He looks so silly, on his side!” the pink one crowed, laying on her own side, giggling bubbly and then rolling to kick her legs in the air, just like... no.
“Ah reckon we finally got him,” the orange one said, crossing her hooves and smiling jauntily just like oh no no no.
Twilight was starting to remember what she had done.
“I’m so glad everything’s back to normal,” the butter yellow pegasus said quietly, descending to the ground, turning into her mane in a very familiar way. “I was really worried, for a minute there.”
“You know what this calls for?!” the pink one said loudly, with an earsplitting grin on her face. Twilight didn’t know that pony, but she knew that grin. “A party!” the pink one concluded to herself. Of course.
“I’ll have to get cake and streamers and all sorts of ribbons and glittery things, and Rarity you love glitter ribbon right? We wanna show everypony that the day is saved!”
“Yes, I am partial to glitter, and ribbon, and sometimes their combination,” the white mare... Rarity? Rarity drawled, in that pseudo-ironic, wry manner that lent so well to the selling of c-c-chocolate bon-bons, “But you are the expert on parties, am I right?”
“You are so right, Rarity!” the pink one said enthusiastically.
Some of the other ponies in town, besides the ones who stood with Twilight, were starting to climb out from behind wherever they were hiding, now approaching the six of them. Twilight and her... and these ponies were found standing there by an awe inspired populace, beside the statue of Discord in the center of town, each of the 5 with an Element around her neck, and for Twilight Sparkle, a tiara. As Twilight observed this, her mind working desperately to make this better somehow, she became vaguely aware of the rainbow haired pony looking at her strangely.
“You okay, Twilight?” the rainbow pegasus said, hovering in front of the quietly panicking unicorn. “Aren’t you stoked? We just beat Discord’s butt!” Okay, that was new.
“I’m fine!” Twilight squeaked to... her. “Just a little frazzled, you know. We sure went through a lot of trouble to get him. I’m just a little stressed. I’ll be better before you know it.”
“Anything I can do to help?” the pegasus asked her. Asked her in that way. Twilight turned away in a panic. She couldn’t take it. She couldn’t believe what she did! These mares, she... she had thought they were her friends! Discord tricked her, the whole time! Why didn’t this get dispelled, like every other one of his evil tricks? Because... because...
Because this was a magic trick, but not his magic trick. There was only one magic involved here that Twilight Sparkle could fathom, and that magic was her own.
“I have to write a letter,” Twilight said frankly, and maybe a bit too quickly, to the five of them.
The rainbow one nodded her head, saying, “Hey yeah, good idea! I bet the princess will want to hear about this.” Twilight grinned uneasily, then just left. She trotted off to her library hoping against hope that none of them would follow her. Not until she was inside, with the door closed and her back pressed against it, did Twilight feel like she could even breathe.
It was only then that Twilight realized she had forgotten to take the Elements back from... those ponies. Did it even matter at this point? Had those ponies used the elements? But her friends were supposed to... Twilight didn’t even know where her friends were right now. Where had they gone, when she gave up on them? All she knew is that somehow Twilight and these five complete strangers used the Elements of Harmony to defeat Discord, and not Twilight and her friends.
She traveled in a daze to her writing desk, and levitated out an empty scroll, an inkwell, and one pseudophoenix quill. Her eye twitched slightly as she tried to firm her resolve for what she was going to have to write. She put pen to paper.
Dear Princess Celestia—
“Woah, woah, hold on,” Rainbow Dash cut in, interrupting Twilight Sparkle’s exhaustively complete narrative. “Are you saying you did this to us?”
“I... I–I... I didn’t mean to,” Twilight whimpered, lowering to her belly on wobbly, weak knees. “I didn’t have any other choice, I was beguiled I...”
“Seems simple enough,” Applejack said gruffly, pushing up under Rainbow Dash to address the unicorn. “Just uncast your spell or whatever, and we cain be our old selves again.”
Rainbow Dash had a sinking feeling about that, as in she sank right to the ground. She looked at Applejack unbelievingly, saying, “Are you serious, mare? Did you even read what it said in my diary before that?”
Applejack blanched at that, saying, “Okay fine, change all of us, except Rainbow Dash.”
“And Rarity,” Rainbow said flatly.
“And Rarity,” Applejack nodded. She blinked then, and blushed, adding, “And... Fluttershy. But... but we gotta be ourselves! It just ain’t right to be living a lie!”
“It doesn’t matter anyway, because I can’t safely undo it,” Twilight said miserably. “What I did to you, was... it’s not just a simple spell on you. You’re not even enchanted right now. What I did was... I thought I was helping you, but what I did was...
“Unforgiveable...”
“Snap out of it!” a troubled Twilight Sparkle shouted, pushing Applejack down on her back. “This isn’t you! You’re not a liar!”
Applejack acted too surprised to protest. Clearly the confused mare was surprised because Twilight didn’t believe her. She thought that her boasting about taking on Discord solo was a story that was believed by anypony, anywhere, ever. In that moment of confusion, Twilight strained her magic to its limits, her horn glowing with a brilliant purple light as she tried to recall all of the wonderful memories she had made with [Applejack]. Ponyville’s first successful Winter Wrapup, making up for good times in the Running of the Leaves, saving Twilight from certain death by telling her what she needed to do. Let go.
Discord’s magic didn’t stand a chance against the power of Twilight’s friendship. Applejack’s eyes widened as her memories rushed back, and Twilight poured them right into her, pulling Applejack away from that dark path of confusion, and bringing her into the beautiful light of friendship. Twilight pushed the memory far back, of the visions of them feuding and fighting, and gave her friend something else to think about, something called hope.
“Twilight!” Applejack said, as soon as she had come back to herself enough to recognize the purple mare. “Ah had a vision of us feuding and fighting! Couldn’t face the truth, so... I started telling lies . Can you ever forgive me?”
With a triumphant grin, Twilight said, “I already have.”
“Ah remember that, Twilight, and it was the greatest thing you ever did for me,” Applejack said reverently. “Ah was so lost in that web of lies, and all because of that stupid vision, with those talking apples. You saved me from that. What’s that gotta do with mah family not trustin’ me?”
“Well, actually... I sort of... made that up,” Twilight said with an uncomfortable smile. “With the apples and the pond of truth? I didn’t really know what he did to deceive Golden Harvest at the time, so I just assumed it had something to do with her not wanting to tell us, about how badly we’re going to be fighting. I mean, really. Talking piles of apples? What was I thinking!”
Twilight shook her head, saying, “I wasn’t thinking. I was playing into Discord’s twisted claw the whole time. And then you helped me, because you were my friend. The one I’d lost, or so I thought. One by one, we held down our other friends, and forced them to see the truth, that our friendship over the years is stronger than anything Discord could throw at us. A-and you got better! You all were fighting together with me. I was back in the game. We were going to kick Discord’s scaly brown butt!”
Twilight perked up brightly and more excited as she talked, and... then she just wilted.
“He wasn’t even concerned,” she said softly. “He was toying with us. A-applejack did lie to him, even though she didn’t know it. She said he made her a liar, but he didn’t make her anything she wasn’t already. He knew we couldn’t possibly use the Elements of Harmony, because... because you weren’t even my friends.”
“We are your friends, though!” Rainbow Dash protested. “...aren’t we?”
“Yes. You are!” Twilight protested right back. “You’re all my friends now, and it’s all my fault! I am so sorry!”
“Twilight,” Rarity said with a nervous titter, “You can’t expect us to believe that. Nopony could do that with her magic. What you’re suggesting is nothing more than a tale used to scare foals.”
“An old mare’s tale, perhaps?” the cream colored earth pony said smoothly in response, eyeing Rarity judgementally.
“You have a point, miss Drops...” Rarity grumbled, “But still. Twilight wasn’t... oh... carving our souls with her magic.” She turned to Twilight saying hopefully, “You were just undoing Discord’s curse! The hex he put on each and every one of us!”
“Yeah, that was just some kind of dispel magic!” Pinkie Pie declared, hopping in front of Rarity to face Twilight. “Dashie would never fight against us, if she wasn’t really tricked by Discord to think we were all evil Mcevilersons! When we dragged Rainbow Dash out of the sky, and held her down with ropes,” Pinkie said enthusiastically as Twilight cringed more and more, “So that Twilight could touch her really bright horn directly to her forehead, it was clearly just snapping her out of it.”
“Excuse me Pinkie, but I was in the middle of saying something important,” Rarity huffed, jockeying the pink pony back away from Twilight. Rarity didn’t seem to have anything more she could say though, just remained quiet and gave the scared purple horse a sympathetic wince.
Rainbow herself lifted up an uneasy hoof to her chest, looking from Pinkie Pie to Twilight.
“You... tied me up?” Rainbow asked them cautiously. “I don’t remember that part.”
“You wouldn’t, because...” Twilight sighed, “It was somepony else who remembered that part. I restored your memories, but... but recent ones, I didn’t need to give you. I didn’t think you needed them. I was getting better at the s-spell as I went on. It was the hardest spell I ever had to cast, and I was doing it...”
She turned over her shoulder, looking at a very sad, guilty looking pegasus, whose golden eyes didn’t go the same way. “For you...” Twilight said to Derpy, solemnly.
Pinkie Pie stuck her hoof over her head.
“Ooh! Ooh! Question! I have a question!” she squealed, waving her hoof in the air. Rarity facehooved, grumbling something about herself and giving up, and staggered off to sag down to a sitting position apart from the pink pony.
“Nopony’s talking,” Twilight said, waving vaguely at Pinkie Pie. “You can just ask, you know.”
“If we were all big dumb blue meanies,” Pinkie asked, with a look of childlike curiosity on her face, “Then why didn’t Discord’s magic make us act like goody four-shoes?”
“Pinkie’s right!” Rarity exclaimed, shooting up to a standing position in shock. “Discord’s beguilement made everypony act like somepony they were not!” she said hurrying up to Twilight, “But I remember being subject to that! Vaguely. What you describe seems to fit my beguilement to a T. I don’t care how stingy you think I am, I refuse to believe I was the sort of mare who would mistake a rock for a diamond!”
“You weren’t Discorded,” Twilight mumbled, cringing back until a confused Rarity retreated her head out of the librarian’s personal space.
“I’m sorry, what?” Rarity gaped incredulously.
“You weren’t Discorded!” Twilight repeated, leaning towards Rarity earnestly. “Tom wasn’t a diamond. He was a giant chocolate truffle!”
The candy seller too shrank to her belly at that, snout scrunching as she grumbled under her breath, “I thought we weren’t going to mention that again.”
“I—I just made you think you were Discorded,” Twilight said waving a hoof to show off the other 5, while she looked anxiously at the main ones. “I didn’t make you think you were friends with me. I made you think you were my friends, literally!
“Each of my friends, I used a variation of the come-to-life spell to animate—er—re-animate your brains to think like them instead.” Twilight said, walking from friend to friend as she did. “It was like a puppeteer and her five marionettes, five versions of herself all acting like her ideal image of her friends. Every one of my friends were Discorded, and I... projected my memory of that onto you. Like Lyra here for instance...”
“I thought nopony ever took me seriously,” the mint green unicorn said with a nervous grin. “And I ended up getting mad at anyone who laughed at me... and then at anyone who laughed at all.”
“You and me both, sister!” Pinkie said in tacit agreement, while the unicorn gave her an odd look.
“Discord told me I was too much of a pushover to stop him,” Flitter said, in jaded submission.
“Oh, that’s terrible!” Fluttershy said sympathetically. But as Fluttershy came forward, Flitter jumped back, fluttering into the air in a fright. The blue haired pegasus deliberately descended to the ground then, looking at Fluttershy evenly, but it was too late.
Fluttershy cast her head down, saying sadly, “At least he had to trick you. With me, he didn’t have to do anything at all...”
“It’s okay, ...Fluttershy,” Flitter said, with a tormented smile at the pegasus. “You were as much a ...victim as the rest of us.”
“That’s very kind of you to say,” Fluttershy murmured, looking evenly at Flitter again. “Were you Kindness, then?”
“Ostensibly... yes,” Flitter said, casting her head down and sighing.
“It explains why we act so similar,” Fluttershy speculated.
Flitter looked up at Fluttershy thoughtfully. They stared into each other’s eyes. Then Flitter said in surprise, “You are Kindness now?”
“Yes, though I don’t deserve it,” Fluttershy said, blushing and looking aside.
“You,” Flitter said, “Fluttershy. You’re Kindness?”
“Yes?” Fluttershy said, looking up at her questioningly. Flitter didn’t turn away this time, and just stared right back.
“And my friends were going to betray everypony!” Derpy cried, with a tormented look in her mixed up eyes. “I thought I had to choose...”
“Sometimes loyalty—” Twilight started to say to her.
“—means that when your friends are messing up, that’s when they need your help the most,” Derpy finished for her, turning her nose down sadly as she landed beside the unicorn.
“Wait, wait, wait!” Dash said, fluttering up to the two of them and saying with open mouthed astonishment, “You mean to tell me that Derpy’s the Element of Loyalty? You made me Derpy? ”
She landed and stared at the odd pegasus, who stared right back... sort of. They tilted their heads at each other for a moment, scoping each other out. “She’s nothing like me!” Dash exclaimed exasperatedly, turning to Twilight and waving a hoof at Derpy. “Derpy gets into all sorts of crashes, and I—wait.”
“I take these wicked cloud naps that, wait no, lots of pegasi do that...”
“I... fly... fast?” Dash squeaked out desperately.
“I would fly fast too,” Derpy replied pouting, “If my eyes weren’t so screwy.” She added in a more pleased tone, “But I’m not jealous. It’s like seeing me, as a potential Wonderbolt!”
“Oh, you like the Wonderbolts, huh?” Dash said in cautious respect.
“Yeah, I’m like their biggest fan,” Derpy said with a giddy giggle. “I hope I can meet them again, and maybe even get an autograph this time!”
“When did you meet with them?” Rainbow asked curiously.
“Well, it was last year at the Gala,” Derpy said, tapping her chin, “And it was going really good, except they were too busy to talk to me, and then I kind of um...”
“She ran into me, trying to get them to notice her,” the green pony spoke up in an amused tone of voice, “And bumped me right off the stage. That sort of started a thing going, which...”
“...knocked down the entire Gala,” Derpy finished regretfully.
“But... but that’s when I met the Wonderbolts...” Rainbow Dash said miserably.
“I’m sorry Rainbow Dash, but I don’t think you have,” Derpy said sympathetically. “You’re always saying they’ll recognize your greatness and recruit you, but I don’t think you ever tried to talk to them... or apply.”
Dash was just... speechless at that.
“Discord didn’t curse you,” Golden Harvest announced to the main 5, drawing their attention to the orange carrot farmer. “He didn’t curse any of you. Well, he might have, but only to turn your color grey. All he was going after was fooling Twilight, since the rest of us Elements had already given up, and were off doing... crazy things.”
“But if he didn’t curse us, then how did we get so... discordant?” Rarity asked. “We just happened to be that way? That seems unlikely.”
“It’s more likely, if you consider that he picked you out!” Twilight said confidently. “He was trying to ruin the Elements, by finding the scummiest of scum, no offense, and tricking me into thinking they’re my friends. You were all the worst he could find, and when I confronted him he could just laugh as the Elements failed again, and again. B-but instead, I mean... you saw his statue. I don’t think he was expecting that. Instead, what I believe happened is that...”
With a ridiculously lavish and floppy hat on, Discord bent over his writing desk, pondering as he scratched out a lovely letter on parchment. Yes, parchment. Don’t worry, it wasn’t anyone you knew. “Real friends...” he muttered, “Don’t care what your cover is. Ha ha yes, good luck figuring that one out. I’ll throw in another about how wondrous and powerful friendship is. There we go.
He then delicately patted his chest, and gave an enormous belch of some stolen green flames. A letter from the sun princess emerged from his devilish diversion, that sent her messages straight to himself before they reached their intended destination. He opened it, and read through it, taking note of the contents, but certainly not the names of ponies within. “And who shall I write about this time?” he pondered, “Hmm...”
Drifting around town, Discord found some ponies enjoying his gifts, some ponies fearing them, and some ponies just not giving a care in the world no matter what he did to amaze them. And of that latter group, he found the rottenest, most no-good lying cheater in the entire town, currently dead drunk and passed out at the poker table. It was splendid. Discord hadn’t even known ponies were advanced enough to waste their lives away playing that silly little card game he invented, and imagining that they could be actually skilled at it.
This pony was a piece of work. A struggling mare, with a filly to worry about, a filly that was family to the mare, but she could only pretend the filly was her own. Ponies treated her with sympathy because of this, and gave her support. Yet even with the help of everypony in town, this mare still managed to ‘lose’ her cider supply every spring, and sell it for double price to ponies who thought they were sneaking it out from under her nose. A brilliant scheme, really.
And then she went and gambled her profits away, with her family none the wiser, and not one bit less hungry for the effort. A pony who would work so hard, cheat and steal from so many other ponies, and then throw it away, just so she could pretend that she needed her family to support her financially was absolutely despicable. It made Discord feel ill, just worming his way through her unrepentant rememberances.
She was perfect.
“My friend...” he later said, with a flourish of his super floppy quill ink pen, “Applejack , is the best friend a pony could ever have...”
Five perfect mares later, and Discord’s freedom was finally secured. That adorable little librarian, she ate up every sappy, syrupy word he rewrote to her. As her color brightened, she threw off the yoke of his depressingly boring beguilement. It didn’t even matter whether his magic had hold of her, at this point! This mare had such beautifully manipulable tunnel vision, that once she became convinced of something, there was simply no reasoning with her anymore!
There on his throne, Discord rolled his eyes and adopted a bored, resentful act when the librarian returned, with her five new friends in tow.
It was such a perfect plan, that nothing could possibly go wrong!