Chaos Spawn, Not Sane for Long

by FanOfMostEverything

Introduction: Sympathy for the Draconequus

Hello out there in storyland. Please allow me to introduce myself. My name is Discord. You can call me Discord.

That wasn't redundant. Not from my end, at least. Your ears and eyes are no more capable of comprehending my true name than an ant is of teaching macroeconomics. Your alphabet is also woefully unequipped for the phonemes involved, but I'm narrating this to a living quill that at one point was Celestia's personal secretary, so there we are.

In any case, I'm sure you're familiar with some of my work. Chocolate rain, celestial discombobulation, personality inversion, all quality chaos, the sort of nonsense I'm proud to call my own. However, you may be less familiar with the long con I'm playing in at least one timeline. You see, in one future (of which there are an infinite number, but we needn't go into that,) I perform what some of you might call a Face Heel Turn. That is, a switch from that arbitrary moral position so often oversimplified as "good" to the equally meaningless distinction of "evil." From your perspective, this takes/will take/has taken (my relationship with time being rather more fluid than yours) place at the series finale of My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, the last episode of the fifth season.

Mind you, this implies that I ever performed the complementary Heel Face Turn. Remember, I am the physical incarnation of disharmony and enmity. Friendship is my antithesis. It is not going to make my heart grow three sizes. Or maybe it will. Who can say? Not I, though I can give quite the educated guess.

In any case, at that point in time, I seize an opportunity, banishing the princesses, the bearers of the Elements of Harmony, and whoever gets in my way to a quaint little backwater of a universe (in other words, yours, or at least one quite like it,) tossing them two decades back in time with memories erased and bodies altered to those of human newborns. From that point on, I am free to resume my rightful reign as ruler of my realm. And there is much rejoicing. Yay.

Of course, some of you already knew that. Rainbow Dash, Shining Armor, Gilda the gryphon, and a number of others have been sharing their experiences with you as my little curse begins to unravel, some twenty-five years after their insertion into that passé little cosmos. A few of you have even had the temerity to analyze my actions and point out where you think I've gone wrong. For one, to paraphrase the frustrated son of a mad genius, why didn't I just kill them?

Well no one asked you, but I'm feeling awfully generous, so I'll let it slide. I'll even answer the question. Aren't you the lucky one?

You see, I don't care for death. It's just so... final. A dead body is orders of magnitude less entertaining than a live one, and reversing the process takes far more than just a snap of the talons. Even then, something is irrevocably lost. Thus, I try to avoid killing whenever possible.

"But Discord," you say, "surely you'd make an exception for those who managed to petrify you in the past!"

Well I don't. And don't call me Shirley. Anyone clever enough to catch me off-guard has too much of my respect for me to just replace her heart with a baked potato. Besides, in chaos is all things, including the potential for chaos's defeat. What fun would it be if my victory were assured? Answer: none whatsoever.

"Fair enough," you allow. "Still, why banish so many ponies? At this rate, you must not have too many subjects to torment. While we're at it, why the same spell every time? Isn't that awfully consistent for the spirit of chaos?"

Presumptuous little ape descendant, aren't you? Well, I'll have you know that that fluid relationship with time I mentioned earlier means I suffer not from a lack of foresight but an overabundance of it. I'm continually aware of countless futures, but I never know how probable any given one is. They're in constant flux with every action taken by every creature with any degree of free will, including the action of inaction. That's how I was beaten both times before; I was too distracted by all the visions of chaos triumphant that I didn't even notice the Rainbow Beam of Ruin Everything until it was too late. This time around, I kept a closer eye on those futures where I lose. Then I sought out the ringleaders of those rebellions and nipped them in the bud.

As for the matter of depopulation, there are plenty more ponies where those came from. For every one I banished, there are tens if not hundreds of thousands still here. It's a nonissue.

And consistency? Look, just because I'm the embodiment of chaos doesn't mean I can't appreciate reliability. Once I devised a method capable of eliminating alicorns, I saw no reason to reinvent the proverbial wheel. (Especially not when proverbial wheels get much better gas mileage than literal ones.) Besides, once the spell expired, imagine the panic in the Earthlings. What if it was an epidemic? What other magics might work? Even you readers have been worrying about whether you're who you really think you are. Not even I saw that one coming.

Hmm? Why did the spell expire at all? Well, again, it's just not fun if the opposition has no chance whatsoever. Besides, it's much more difficult to keep something out of its proper place in the multiverse for very long, especially when you're too busy ruling with a molybdenum fist to reinforce the spell. Twenty-five years was the longest duration for which I could both make a one-shot spell last and think of a good rhyme. "Five score divided by four." One of my better ones. Not strictly necessary, of course, but if you're not going to execute a coup d'etat with style, you might as well turn in your villain card.

In any case, just because I felt compelled to give Team Pony a chance doesn't mean I had to give them a good one. That's where our story begins, some five years after Princess Sunbutt looked up and shouted, "Save me!" and I looked down and whispered, "lol i troll u."

Author's Note:

And so begins what I hope will prove to be an enjoyably novel take on a quite engaging Pony-on-Earth story/collaboration/scenario/additional noun.

Naming chapters after songs I then put in the author's notes shamelessly stolen from Dusty the Royal Janitor.

Comments

[Dementia20]

Good introduction...

I will continue

[G S tol Kriaal]

I'm probably going to regret asking this (or maybe not, who can say?), but why molybdenum? Why not zinc or germanium? Or trilithium?

[lunaDaRula]

Molybdenum(Mo) is the third element of harmony, hydragen(H) argon(Ar) molybdenum(Mo) nitrogen(N) and yttrium(Y). HArMoNY, I read that some were(over the rainbow)

[yrfoxtaur]

tossing them two decades back in time with memories erased and bodies altered to those of human newborns.

I know you said not to worry about timeline sync, but the two decades bit is completely erroneous.
the show did not occur at the same time as the events it depicted, it occured years after, thanks to Twilight remembering without remembering. of course, nothing is said that explicitly states that Discord didn't send them back for grins, except that the curse did not contain any elements of time travel. also, that would be a lot of work for a five year stint of freedom.

eh, it's a minor thing, but I'm fairly certain of it.

[arachnidsGrip]

2903919 Mo is the 42nd element on the periodic ta8le.

~Vriska Serket