PonyFall:Adventures in Chaos

by Draequine

New Day 1: Mugged by Memory Lane.

Back again? Good.

Now where were we?

I’m pretty sure I haven’t gotten to the part with the tank yet. That didn’t happen till Wednesday.

Hmm…

Ah! Now I remember!

I was somewhere in Here, staring at my future (?) self and the mysterious lady.

---

Can they see me? I had wondered as I oggled the two of them.

“Can you see him?” The other Ashton had asked the girl as he met my stare.

“Who?” The girl had replied, sounding a bit weirded out as she stared at Ashton.(The one that wasn’t me.)

Ashton had then nodded toward me and said,” Well there’s your answer.” He then rifled through his pockets muttering,” This really is inconvenient..”

“What in the name of Equestria are you doing now?! They could find us in any second!”

“Yeah, but not this second,” the other Ashton had said, probably in some pointless attempt to seem cryptic, if I knew myself as well as I did.

The lady then moaned in frustration. “How did I ever let you convince me to come here.” She then smacked Ashton in the back of the head.

Ashton ignored the angry woman and pulled something out of his pocket. It was a sharpie. One of those generic kind of sharpies.

“Hey, I’m talking to you!” The lady yelled, outraged.

Ashton had then thrown the sharpie at me and said,” Just think of geometry.” He begun to close the door on me, but then quickly stopped to say,” Oh, and -

Suddenly, the door slammed in front of me, which in turn had caused me to let go of the handle and flinch, which had then caused the hallway to shift for me again.

Taking a short pause, I thought about what had happened. I quickly decided that it wasn't worth the headache.

---

Oh sure, I had an encounter with what was probably my future self, but by then these temporal shenanigans were already an old hat.

I’ve decided that the best way to deal with these kind of situations was like getting a shot. Just get it over with and promptly forget about it.

---

I had started to walk again. The next time I came close to one of the doors, I had refrained from opening it. It didn't have the “pull” the cabinet had. In fact, most of the doors I had walked by made me feel anxious. I had wandered for what felt like hours until I came across a peculiar door. Well, it had came across me actually.

It was a large stained glass door encrusted with popcorn. The glass (made of petrified syrup) formed a mosaic of a certain draconequus. It menaced with spikes of lemon drops.

---

Okay, not so peculiar after all. It was obviously Discord.

---

“Oh gee.” I had droned,” I wonder where Discord is.”

“Well, you’re no fun.” The door had said. The mosaic shifted as the the draconequus talked.

“Falling off the Empire State Building tends to ruin my good cheer.” I dryly replied.

Discord laughed hard enough to rattle his door. “I really didn’t expect you to scream that long! It was amazing.” The mosaic then jumbled up and formed an image of what I could only assume was me holding onto a rope for dear life.

I sarcastically laughed. ” Well, now that that’s done, mind telling me where we are?”

“Here!” The door exclaimed.

I sighed. I had actually been foolish enough to expect a straight answer from the spirit of chaos.
“Oh right,” The image of Discord had appeared again, giving an insincere face palm. “Here is the place where Tomorrow and Yesterday meet, just Zorth of eventuality.”

In some strange way that had made sense. We were actually in an abstract concept given form as some kind of metaphysical plane.

---

You see, tomorrow technically never arrives. What you assume to be tomorrow is simply the day after your current day. The same thing can be said for yesterday as well. This means that Here shouldn’t exist since it would be encompassing the infinite gap between the two, but this is Discord you are reading about.

---

Then I thought about what the other Ashton had said about geometry. It had finally dawned on me that I was in what basically amounted to a graph full of an infinite number of points. Each point being a hall of doors that lead to who knew where, and I realized that the reason why the hall kept changing was because I had to maintain eye contact with the center of the

Discords mosaic looked nonplussed. “You don’t have that amusing look of bafflement on your face” Discord had said as he begun stroking his beard. “Perhaps you are smarter then I gave you credit for.”

I wasn’t ashamed to admit that hearing him say that gave me a bit of pride.

“Or you’re still trying to just ‘go with the flow’” He finished.

The pride had left, leaving me thinking; I’m pretty sure I never said anything about that…

“No, you didn’t say anything about that.” he had said, giving a smile before continuing,” and no, I’m not reading your mind. I don’t need to, I can already read you like a book.”

I was slightly miffed and wondered why we were here in the first which was when Crazy Voice reminded me.

~He said he was taking a trip through memory lane not 30 minutes ago!~ It spat out in a harsh tone of thought.

It seems to me that this would be pretty inefficient, I replied in my head, but then again, I’m not Discord.

“As most Heres go, this must be the sloppiest!” Discord had exclaimed with obvious distaste.

“This coming from the Spirit of Chaos.” My bad mood had decided to override my sense of self-preservation.

“Chaos is what you make it,” Discord said in what I had assumed was his wise sage voice. “But a mess is always a mess. Look around and tell me what you see.”

I groaned and said,” Alright, I’ll tell you what I see. I see a stupid tacky talking door in the middle of a hallway full of tacky doors that goes on and on and on, and I am getting sick of it!”

Discord gave a quiet laugh to himself,” That’s interesting… in a not so interesting way.” Then the door crumpled in on itself, forming something vaguely human shaped, I wasn’t the least bit intimidated when the heap shook itself to pieces, revealing the human Discord under all those shards of candy.

I thought I had caught a subtle meaning in what Discord had said so I asked,” What do you see then?”

Discord then gave me an appraising look, before he bent down to put his face in front of mine and said,” Everything.” His eyes became pitch black and full of stars. My god they were full of them.

But I had held fast and asked again,” Yeah, but how are you seeing it?”

He took a step back with a serious, pensive look. The strange perpetual hallway had somehow became even quieter. “That, Ashton, is a personal question. One that you should never ask.”

Just after he had finished speaking, for the briefest moment I saw Discord in an entirely different way. He was covered in moss and cracks. His skin looked like granite, but his eyes resembled polished marble. His face, however, was what had me the most aback. His face had such a lonely expression.

Now, it couldn’t have been more than an instant, but to me it felt so much longer. Too long, actually.

But then everything had went back to normal.

---

In its not at all normal way, that is.

---

DIscord wasn’t stone, and he had his usual smirk. He coughed into his fist and walked toward me saying,” Well time to get this show on the road.”

I felt a chill rise through my spine and had decided that then would be a great time to start running away, so I turned around and…

Ran straight into Discord.

I had wondered why I even bothered to run from someone who usually never bothers to move around the normal way; i.e the way that involves not breaking the laws of physics. Then I wondered why Discord had taken me to Here. My thoughts then wandered to why Discord was in the same place no matter where I looked, as if he became a permanent fixture of the hallway, which had certainly kicked my infinite space geometry theory right of the window. Then my thoughts trailed to why the other Ashton told me to think about geometry in the first place.

So I came to the conclusion that I’m only going to get stupider with time. Unless the Ashton I saw was from an alternate reality where I am an idiot.

---

Which, knowing me, is the one I’m probably in right now.

---

“I’m rather glad I decided to bring you here.” Discord said, grabbing me by the shoulder. “It would have taken ages to sort through this clutter alone.”

My panicking had subsided to intense anxiety. “Is that why you brought me here? To help you sort through this?” I asked warily, trying to take a step back from him.

He snorted. “Hah! As if you could really do anything here. No, I brought you here for different reason.”

“Oooh…” I quietly moaned, realizing that wherever Discord was taking this conversation, it wasn’t going to be pleasant.” So why did you bring me here then?”

Discord then gave a weary sigh and rolled his eyes. “Well it certainly wasn’t because I needed your quick-witted personality. Now hold still.”

“Wait I-”

Never had the chance to finish that sentence before Discord had grabbed my head by the hair and sent me on another wild ride.

It had suddenly felt like I was in some kind of full body swimming suit. One that had me in a moist vice-like grip. I spent the next handful of horrific seconds in absolute darkness, guessing what was going on until I heard a click.

Accompanying this click was the sensation of a weight, pushing down in the center of my skull. I had felt it squirm and slither around in my head, and as it squirmed I started to see swirls of colors and smelled a series of baffling scents that ranged from burnt cereal to frost-bitten rubber. I started to hear sounds. Every kind of sound that you could have imagined. This thing was in my brain, violating it.

I wanted to scream, but my mouth wouldn’t open.

Then, amongst the cacophony sounds, I heard the disembodied voice of Discord. “Hmmm… Now where should I start.” I thought I heard someone rifling through a stack of paper, but I wasn’t sure that was him. “This looks about right.”

I heard another click, and the sights, sounds, and smells vanished. The thing writhing around in my skull went slack. It was a welcome moment of respite, even if I was still immobile. It was almost pleasant really, at least until there was yet another click.

Whatever it was that had gotten into my head started to harden. I knew I shouldn’t have been able to feel it in my brain. After all, I was pretty sure the brain couldn’t feel anything. No nerves and what not. But, I did feel something. It kinda gave me the impression of a long thin balloon filling up with chilled syrup.

Suddenly I felt really angry. I also felt really hungry. I was hot as well. Oh, and apparently I was being carried by a giant, red-headed beard monster, but I was okay with this for some reason. A name came to mind. Uncle O’Monty. It had felt familiar.

The giant and I were surrounded by really tan people. One of them was carrying a suit case. No one was moving, or breathing for that matter.

I heard another click, and I was suddenly terrified. The giant was squeezing me against his chest in one hand, and carrying a suitcase of cash in the other. He looked like he was running toward a truck. My ears were hurting. The other people looked very angry.

I heard Discord again. “Oh my, this is interesting and all, but it’s much too early.”
The click had went off again, but before I was able to register this new scene I heard another click. This click was followed by another quicker click, which itself was followed by an even quicker one with other faster clicks not far behind. It was not long before there was a torrent of clicks parading me through my memory as I then realized that was what was actually going on.

Being dragged through my murky past was horrifying enough, but doing it via some kind of demented slideshow was beyond terror. Each click would force me into a new scene from my life. Would force me into the same position, emotional state, and make me feel the same sensations I felt then, but at the rate it was happening I was completely overwhelmed. I wasn’t able to make sense out of anything after a few minutes of barreling through memory lane.

Discord grumbled. “ What a disappointment. You certainly had all the ingredients, but it looks like you just fizzled out.” I could barely hear him amongst the clicking. “Ah, here we go.”

The clicks stopped. I wasn’t dazed, but only because I was forced to be confused for the memory. It was the first time I met Discord. I had begun to notice a sharp contrast between him then, and him now.

“Oh that can’t possibly be me!” Discord said in disbelief. I had a feeling that he noticed the contrast too.

A handful of clicks later, I was at the part where I was in my underwear at home talking to Spirit of Chaos. I had yet to realize that I was completely out of my depth.

“For once, even I’m at a loss for words.”

The click had then resumed accompanied by Discords displeased humming, which was quickly becoming a furious growl. Until he reached the part where I saw him clinging to a statue named Tom while sobbing in a drunken haze. When he reached that part he became very quiet.

I heard fingers drumming along a desk. A bitter sigh. Discord rifled through the cassettes again as he whistled to himself. “I’m sure this one little memory wouldn’t be missed.”

Before I had a chance to panic I heard a small electronic ding. Then Discord gave a puzzled grunt, and I heard the ding again. I could have sworn that I heard his teeth grind before a trio of dings tumbled by, chased by a furious outburst from an angry draconequus, with dark mutterings trailing behind it..

The stream of clicking resumed. I had went through half a week of web surfing in span of the time it takes for a gnat to fart. The other half of the week flew by noticeably slower until the metaphorical nostalgia train I was strapped to gracelessly grinded to a halt.

“Nothing…” I had heard Discord say in breathless disbelief. “You did absolutely nothing, for an entire week.” He gave a soft gasp and continued,” And that would mean that I did nothing that week! No mischief, no mayhem, no… no chaos? That can’t be right!”

The clicking began again, except this time it had went in reverse. I had thought reliving my life on fast forward was the worst possible thing to happen to me. I was very wrong. Reliving my life backwards skyrocketed to the top of my list of worst possible situations, zooming past pigeon rape, and side-swiping dingo car rides.

The worst part of it was that Discord was carefully looking through each moment, especially the private intimate ones, which while still being uncomfortably fast it was just slow enough for me to comprehend what I was feeling. It was a harrowing experience that I knew I wasn’t going to forget anytime soon.

The rewinding finally stopped. Discord gave a defeated sigh and said,” I must have been seriously ill.” After which, he resumed the clicking yet again. With a vengeance. Quick as it was, going through the same week a third time really sucked.

Discord slowed down around the part when we were sword fighting, at the end of the week. “Ah, that’s better.” His good mood had soured a few moments later when I was beating the crap out of him for breaking my computer. He was starting to growl.

I hadn’t remembered that happening, but my memory of what actually happened at the end of that week was suspiciously hazy once I had started to think about it.

When Discords head started to vibrate, I was positive that something was up. I’d have made a note of Discord doing anything weird like that. I was starting to notice that something was off about these moments.

The moments were becoming distorted. My vision was jumbled, and it felt like I was wearing a vest of mismatched puzzle pieces. It was like getting poor reception on a TV. Usually that’s not a problem for me, but since this was my memories, I was a bit concerned.

Discord, however, didn't appear to be inconvenienced by the poor quality. He didn’t say anything about it at any rate. He just kept clicking away until suddenly, he stopped.

Amidst the collage of frayed images of pineapples and whales I saw a statue of Discord. I also saw the Draconequus without a tail.

Discord moaned loudly and wearily said,” I’ve had enough of this. I need a drink.”

That was when I finally blacked out.

---

And that's where I’m stopping for now.

I’m sorry if these notes aren’t really making any sense to you. Looking back on what happened this week, I find it nearly impossible to make sense of it myself.

I’m actually starting to think that writing these letters is pointless. If anything, they might be convincing you not to help me. That is, if these are reaching anyone at all.

Then again, what else do I have to do here.

Yaddah Yaddah Yaddah,

Ashton.

Comments

[Regreme]

Another excellently chaotic chapter.^_^ And lol to Discord having a headache enough to need a drink. XD

[Regreme]

Oh, since he's the spirit of Chaos... I wonder if drinking alcohol would sober him up, while water would make him drunk. xD

[Alex Rite]

3628646 If it does, then that could explain so much...

[Regreme]

Oh, by the way.... since this was a viewing of his memories... that also means Discord learned firsthand that he's not as chaotic as he once thought, thanks to that time loop Ashton went through.

[Draequine]

3630843
Well, he stopped just after the Dream Sequence memories. As for most of the memories, he just skimmed over them.

[Really Big Shoe]

Holy CRAP this is confusing! Still entertaining however!