The Quandary of DisQord

by Kane Magus

Chapter 7

Shortly after the battle between the two Alicorn sisters, Celestia knew that the palace was a lost cause. She hardly had the power to even stand up for months after the battle, let alone oversee the repair of the palace, especially with the dangers of the Everfree Forest encroaching on all sides. And, slowly but surely, without Celestia's power to hold it at bay, the forest was taking the palace for its own. And so, with a very heavy heart, Celestia finally fled, with the help of the castle staff that remained in the aftermath of her battle with her sister. Soon, she founded the new city of Canterlot, on a nearby mountainside. It was here that she made her new seat of power.

For some strange reason, Celestia decided to leave behind the broken stones that had once been the Elements of Harmony, despite the fact that she brought everything else with her, including my stone body. I don't know why she decided to do this, as it only made things more difficult for the new bearers a millennium later. So, yeah, speaking of which, that one single short millennium passed, and Luna was freed. Just like that.

So, as you said, one sunny day about a year later, a class of small schoolponies and their teacher were touring the new statue gallery. It was the spitting image of the old one, in fact. The statues of Victory and Friendship had long since been replaced by that time, of course. Then they reached me, and that ridiculous little argument broke out between those children and then they all moved on. It was to be yet another boring day in the life of Q, the statue of Discord. Ho hum. But then I felt the stone cracking, and I couldn't help but laugh. And then, in my anger at the injustice of it all, I got right back to work.

It was just like old times. Pink cotton candy clouds dropping chocolate rain. I'll never get tired of that one. Perhaps I should try it on Jean-Luc someday. I'd love to see the look on his face. I had no real intention of going beyond that this time, but they had no way of knowing this.

Celestia quickly summoned the new bearers of the Elements of Harmony to Canterlot and fed them some cock and bull story about how I was some ancient foe of hers, rather than the truth, of course. Well, okay, so I had indeed been an ancient foe of hers, granted. But still, it was the principle of the thing that counted.

As for these new Bearers of Harmony, they were nearly beneath my contempt. They were nothing compared to me, and were little better than bacteria compared to the magnificence of even my dear Celestia. Of course, I was still angry with her as well. As I bantered with the new Bearers in the hallway leading to the Royal Vault, neither Celestia nor I made mention of the fact that I had, oh, only saved her very life barely more than a thousand years before.

The ease with which I played these new Bearers of Harmony for fools was almost embarrassing, even for me. Right off the bat, Twilight Sparkle erroneously interpreted my little riddle and assumed I meant the hedge maze. The "twists and turns" referred to what I was going to do to her friends, not that I had literally placed the Elements in that damned maze. What a little fool this Twilight Sparkle was. Seriously, I couldn't believe that she had been taught personally by Celestia herself of all ponies. What a horrible disappointment.

I'll let you in on a little secret here: with the "find the Elements back where you began" line, I had originally intended this to mean the castle in the Everfree Forest. That was, after all, where they had truly began their friendships in earnest, since before that point Twilight Sparkle had still been reluctant to let friends into her heart, and it was only during the fight with Nightmare Moon that she finally realized this and thus had begun to become the pony that she was today (which isn't saying very much at all, believe me). But, when I saw how utterly close to breaking she already was when she once again misinterpreted my riddle, I decided to take pity on her and move the Elements to that book in her library. If she had realized that she was going to have to try to brave the dangers of the Everfree Forest again, this time either by herself or with friends that were no longer friends, I dare say she would have completely cracked. I mean, sure, this was my plan all along, but I wanted her to be broken explicitly due to the fact of her friends turning on her, not simply because the last part of the riddle was too difficult to deal with.

But, anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself here. So yeah, as they all charged obliviously into the hedge maze, I robbed the Unicorns and Pegasi of their unique gifts, and then decided to have some fun and pick them off one by one.

Applejack, the Bearer of Honesty, was my first target. She was simple enough to ensnare. I merely showed her a possible vision of the future, a vision of her friendship with the others falling apart. What she didn't realize, of course, was that the future isn't set in stone. It is as malleable as wet clay. It only became true because she caused it to come true. She couldn't take this ugly "truth" and so decided that all truth was a pain to be avoided, and so she started lying about everything. How utterly ridiculous. If she had just realized that if she stayed true to her Element, perhaps this could have been averted. Oh, who am I kidding, even if she had seen through my ruse, I would have found another way to corrupt her, easily enough.

Pinkie Pie, the Bearer of Laughter, came next. This one actually worried me, I'll admit. I'm not even talking about how she had actually enjoyed the chaos I was causing, rather than being concerned or frightened. That, I had actually found genuinely delightful. In her own special way, Miss Pie was a pony after my own heart, though she liked to sing a bit too much for my tastes. However, if you recall way back when I was giving you my history lesson about the evolution of the ponies on this planet, I briefly made mention of the fact that a very small number of Earth ponies had somehow developed a freakish ability to warp reality, though it mostly lay dormant throughout the generations. Well, no other Earth pony had this ability more strongly than Pinkie Pie. It made me very nervous, at least at first, when I got a whiff of just how strong it was in her. But, like all the rest, she didn't even know she possessed such a vast power, and I wasn't about to tell her. When she used it at all, it was wasted on frivolous things, like randomly teleporting around when chasing after her friends, or through that absurd "Pinkie Sense" which she used to foretell the future, or when she was breaking the fourth wall. Oh, don't give me that look. You know exactly what I'm talking about. It was a damn shame how so very simple it was for me to convince her that her friends were laughing at her, rather than with her, and this was even after she had only just learned a lesson in not mistrusting her friends back on her birthday. She decided that Laughter was evil, and thus she would oppose anything that could bring it about. Go figure. The fact that such a thing could so thoroughly break her as it did boggled my mind. Deep down, she was a very lonely pony, despite being surrounded on all sides by the friends she had made, and it almost made me want to spare her from this fate. But, of course, I did no such thing.

And then was Rarity, the Bearer of Generosity. Generosity, my wrinkled pink human ass. I broke her with a fake vision of a diamond. Can you believe that? That's all it took. I mean, really, what. I had her lug this huge rock around the whole time. She even started calling it Tom. She was willing to fight anypony who so much as laid a hoof on it. It would have been hilarious if it hadn't been so ludicrously sad. No, wait, I'll be honest. It was hilarious.

Now we come to Fluttershy, the Bearer of Kindness. I know. I know what you're thinking. I gave up on her far too easily and just broke her manually. Bah. It was just that she was so sickeningly sweet, she made me want to hurl. I couldn't bear to be in her presence for more than a few minutes. I could have just as easily broken her the same way I did the others. I could have shown her visions of her madness during that year's Grand Galloping Gala, when she was chasing around those terrified woodland creatures. I could have shown her visions of her future self reducing two of her best friends to tears after her dubious assertiveness training under the minotaur Iron Will. For that matter, I probably could have just shouted "BOO!" and simply terrified her into submission. The girl was, quite literally at times, afraid of her own shadow. But you have to understand, truly, those stupid little doe eyes of hers… barf. And that soft, non-threatening voice… I could feel the teeth rotting in my head from just being within a hundred feet of her. Therefore, I simply decided to just fling a hex on her and be done with it as quickly as possible. And so, with just a tap of my finger to her head, she became the biggest bitch of the whole lot of them. She was a lot more fun to be around after that.

Rainbow Dash, the Bearer of Loyalty, was the last one left, aside from Miss Faithful Student herself. With Miss Dash, I actually posed a genuine moral dilemma. Should she remain loyal to her friends and help them find the Elements that they mistakenly believed to be in this hedge maze? Or should she be loyal to her hometown, which I had just shown her a vision of crumbling if she didn't show up to single-handedly save everypony there? She chose to abandon her friends and fly away to her home after I allowed her the use of her wings again. Granted, she didn't take into consideration the fact that she had absolutely no hope of actually stopping me from destroying her home, whether she was there or not, but then I suppose that was to be expected. She's not a very smart pony, after all. All brawn and no brains, that one. Partly just for the fun of it and partly because I felt sorry for just how terribly stupid she was, I made her believe that a nearby tiny cloud was her home and that she had indeed heroically rushed in to save the day in the nick of time. How very, very pitiful it was. Was I actually going to destroy Cloudsdale? No, of course not. Sure, it was on my list for chaosification after I had finished with Ponyville of course, but simply causing it to crumble as in the vision I showed to Rainbow Dash would have been lame.

Finally, it came down to Twilight Sparkle, the Bearer of the Element of Magic itself. With her, I knew I didn't even have to bother. For all of her book smarts, she lacked simple common sense. Not to mention the fact that she was obviously no good with simple riddles either. It completely floored me when I saw that she apparently couldn't even realize that her friends were acting strangely due to my own direct influence. I mean, really, what did she think had happened, that her friends had just forgotten to take their "don't be a jackass" pills that morning? Even after her little pet baby dragon explicitly pointed it out to her that they had all turned gray, she still acted as though they were acting under their own volition. Rather than trying every thing in her very real magical power to heal them, she acted like the asocial homebody she really was and merely bickered with them pointlessly. No, I knew I wouldn't even have to bother with breaking her, because she was going to do a bang up job of it on her own. After a brief lesson in which I demonstrated to her that her precious Elements of Harmony would not work while her friends were… well… no longer her friends, I saw that I was indeed correct. After she turned gray on her own, I rubbed it in her face for a bit, but then I decided that I had more important things to deal with, and left her to her own devices.

While Twilight Sparkle bumbled around, I paid a little visit to a "friend" of ours who happened to have been in town for a while. As I popped into his humble home, he turned to face me.

"Ah, there you are, Q!" he said, in that grating voice of his. "I was beginning to think you weren't going to pay me a visit at all!"

"You've decided to be an Earth pony today, rather than a Pegasus, I see," I said, looking him over. Indeed, he was a simple brown Earth pony, with a brown spiky mane and tail. Appropriately enough, his cutie mark was that of an hourglass.

"And I see you've decided to keep being that… whatever it is you are there. Draconequus, was it? So, anyway, what brings you to see me this fine, albeit crazy day?" said the brown Earth pony. "Would you care for some yogurt?" He gestured a hoof at the nearby table.

"Cut the pleasantries, Timelord," I said sharply. "Don't think I haven't sensed your presence on this world since well before I broke out of my stone prison. You have been a thorn in my side for millennia, and I don't intend to take any chances this time. Keep your nose out of my business and I won't turn you into a Cyberpony and launch you into the Delta Quadrant, possibly into the path of an oncoming Borg ship."

"Sure, I remember how that turned out the last time, and it wasn't very pleasant, believe you me. You have nothing to worry about from me, old friend," said the Doctor.

"And if you even think about… what?" I said, momentarily caught off guard by this. I had expected him to do his little hero bit and attempt to thwart me.

"I've already seen how this all ends, after all, and I know that my services won't be required," he said simply.

I narrowed my eyes. "Oh, you have, have you? That just means I need to keep my eyes open all the more, now doesn't it?"

"Believe what you want, but I have no need to lift a hoof here. It will all work out fine in the end," he said. "For all concerned."

I was silent for a moment as I glared at him, then said, "I'll be watching you."

"I wouldn't expect anything less," he said cheerfully. "Now if you'll excuse me, my yogurt is melting."

I narrowed my eyes again, and then shrugged. This hadn't gone anything like how I expected it to go, but okay. I had bigger fish to fry anyway. Even so, just before I left, I subtly changed his yogurt to pear flavored. As I teleported away, I let a sinister laugh linger in the air of his little cabin.

I reappeared in Celestia's chambers. Strangely, she appeared to be in the process of sending out a letter. When she saw me, she quickly picked up another one and made to send it out as well, but I teleported it out of the grasp of her telekinesis.

"Discord!" she said angrily, but I merely held up a hand.

"You're sending out correspondence at a time like this, Celestia?" I said, clucking my tongue. "And you didn't send me a thing. I'm hurt. So, what do we have here?" I unfurled the letter and began to read out loud. "'Dear Princess Celestia, I have learned a very valuable lesson about friendship.'" I looked up at her and raised an eyebrow before looking back down at the letter again. "'blah blah blah yadda yadda yadda Always Your Faithful Student, Twilight Sparkle' Celestia, what is this saccharine nonsense?" When she didn't respond to my question, I merely shrugged. "Fine, be that way. Allow me to send this one on for you." I tasted the remnants of the magic in the air and said, "Oh, return to sender, is it? Finally given up on the little know nothing, have you? Good for you. She wasn't worth your time, anyway." I exhaled a poof of green fire and sent the letter on to its intended recipient. "Miss Sparkle is already utterly broken, by the way, and on her way out of Ponyville even as we speak, so whatever little plan you had with these letters is completely useless. Just saying." I saw the stricken look in her eyes as I said that last bit. I wasn't quite sure whether to feel satisfied or sorry.

"Whatever you want, Discord, spit it out and leave me be," she said.

"Come now, Celestia, we both know that you are in no position whatsoever to be making demands of me, but I will be brief," I said. My voice then lost all joviality. "I have a bone to pick with you."

"Oh?" she said, feigning interest in what I had to say.

"Princess Luna," I said. The name lingered in the air for a moment, before she finally responded.

"W-what about her?" Celestia asked with genuine confusion in her voice.

"Damn you, Celestia!" I said, barely keeping my sudden rage in check. "How could you take her back so easily after a mere one thousand years, when you left me to rot in that stone dungeon for what you hoped was eternity?"

Celestia's eyes widened. "What are you talking about?"

"Don't play dumb with me, my dear," I said. "But, just for the sake of argument, let's step through this, shall we? Remind me again exactly why you imprisoned me forever."

"How can you even ask that? You were torturing all of my little ponies! Driving them mad, or worse!" said Celestia. She looked at me as if I were mentally deficient given that she had to explain this.

"But did I murder anypony?" I asked. "Did I directly kill a single pony?"

"YOU KILLED MY PARENTS!" Celestia cried, her eyes wide with incredulity, rage, and above all terrible pain.

I waved a hand at this. "That is the closest I came to directly killing ponies with my own hands, but even then, I did not. Your father died of a broken neck as he fell to his death, through no direct action of my own, aside from the test that I put him under earlier. Which he utterly failed, I should add, though I'd hoped that he would overcome his trial. Your mother died as an indirect result of my defending myself from her unwarranted attack upon me. I did not kill her. I merely knocked the weapons she was using on me out of her possession. Would you have done any differently had you been in my place and had the power to do so?"

"Cease this charade, Discord!" said Celestia angrily. "What are you here for, really?"

I ignored her. "Every other pony on this planet lived a full life. Granted, most of them lived that life while entirely insane, but I did not kill a single one of them. Well, not permanently, anyway. Those who died of anything other than old age, I brought back to life. I even allowed most of them to still raise families, even in their madness."

"You say that as through it was a kindness," said Celestia, with horror.

"Wasn't it?" I said. "If I hadn't brought those ponies back, or let them keep their families, the population of this land would hardly be a thousandth of what it is now. But even, then, at least there would still be ponies around! I had no interest in causing the extinction of your entire species."

"Discord, I truly don't understand what you are-" Celestia began, but I shook my head violently.

"Don't try my patience with this faked ignorance, Celestia. You are an intelligent pony and you know exactly what I'm getting at here," I said. I changed gears and asked, "What is it that you do when you 'raise the sun', huh? And don't give me that nonsense being fed to the plebeians by your priestesses about how you actually do control the sun. We both know that's horse apples."

Celestia seemed taken aback, but quietly said, "We regulate the rotation of the planet. As I'm sure you know, in the past there has been some instability in the axis of the planet. Our magic, and the magic of the Unicorns before us, has corrected that, or at least, has kept it stable through the eons."

"Very good," I said. "Now, explain to me, in laypony's terms, exactly what Luna was planning to do, in her madness a thousand years ago." I could see that Celestia fully understood what I was getting at, despite clearly not wanting to.

"S-she…" she swallowed, hard, then resumed. "She wanted to bring about 'eternal night.' Of course, this meant 'eternal night for Equestria' not the whole world. She couldn't have cared less at the time about the rest of the world. Therefore, she brought the rotation of the planet to a halt."

"Exactly," I said, my eyes blazing. "Now, then, tell me what exactly would have happened had she been allowed to succeed in this absurd plan."

Celestia said nothing, but I could see her eyes glistening with more barely held back tears.

"Fine, then I will tell you," I said. "With the rotation of the planet stopped, Equestria would have indeed been bathed in eternal darkness. The other side of the planet, which Luna didn't give a fig about, would have been trapped under the scorching heat of the noonday sun. Now, I will put this down for you very simply, Celestia. Your precious little ponies in Equestria would very soon have found their side of the planet freezing, and it would have been a frost far worse than even the most powerful windigoes could conjure up. The creatures on the other side of the planet would have found themselves frying, the very blood in their veins boiling them alive from the inside. It would have taken a little while as far as the ponies are concerned, but as far as the two of us and your sister are concerned, all life on this planet would have ended in the blink of an eye."

The tears began to fall down Celestia's face as she pictured this in her mind, despite trying her best to shut it out.

I let the hammer fall again. "Your dear sister would have annihilated every living creature on this world, bar none… well, save perhaps for you and her. And me, of course, though I wouldn't have relished being stuck in a stone statue in the midst of a frozen wasteland forever."

Celestia said nothing, but just stared at me. I could see my own refection in her moistened eyes. I tried to bury the memories and emotions that caused to well up within me. I succeeded. Mostly.

"AND YOU FORGAVE HER FOR THIS," I thundered. "After a mere thousand years, you forgave her for almost utterly destroying this world. And yet, look at what you did to me! Did I not deserve the same chance you gave her, especially considering that the absolute worst of what I did paled in comparison to what she would have done had you not stopped her when you did?"

After several moments of silence, Celestia finally said, "Of course I forgave her, Discord! I don't regret that for a single second! She is my baby sister! And… and she has apologized. She is still in agony over what she did to this day. Can the same be said for you?"

"YOU DIDN'T GIVE ME A CHANCE!" I roared.

"Well… you are here now," she said, nearly a whisper. "You have your chance. Will you take it?"

I was floored by this. She was actually expecting me to beg her for forgiveness. No really, let me repeat that: after what she had done to me, I was the one expected to apologize. If that was what she wanted, however, then that is what I would give her. "Very well," I said. I got down on my knees in front of her and clasped my hands together. "I beg you for forgiveness for everything that I have done in my time on this world. I apologize for what happened to your mother and father and every other pony. I am sorry for what I put you and your sister through. Can you ever forgive me?"

I watched her closely. I imagined the gears turning in her head. She hadn't expected me to actually do it. I seriously doubted that she thought I was sincere. I'm sure she just thought it was another sick game on my part. Eventually, she simply lowered her head and looked away.

"I didn't think so," I muttered blackly. I floated away from her, my back to her completely. But then I turned back to face her with a false cheer that I didn't feel plastered on my face. "Very well, my dear Celestia. That's fine. Even if you can't bring yourself to do so, I am capable of letting bygones be bygones. I hold you no ill will whatsoever. In fact, I think I will give you what your heart most desires."

"W-what-" said Celestia, looking sharply back up at me.

"The one thing you desire in this whole world: your freedom!" I said manically.

Celestia's mouth was moving, but no words came out.

I pressed my attack. "All this royal princess nonsense, it weighs upon your heart. All of the brownnosing sycophants constantly currying for your favor, all of the tedious drudgery of politics and diplomacy, all of those horrid social functions like that terrible Grand Galloping Gala. You'd like nothing more than to never have anything to do with those things ever again, right?"

Celestia shook her head as if to clear it, but I could see she was becoming more and more muddled. "Y-yes, it's true that I need a break from those things from time to time, but-"

I went in for the kill. "Well, have no more fear! I completely absolve you from those dreadful things! Never again will you have to trudge out to that throne and spend all day reading dry missives from insignificant underlings or listening to the asinine prattle from some high-born fop. I will take over your responsibilities from now on! Consider this an extended vacation and my gift to you, my dear Celestia."

Her eyes took on the tell tale multi-colored signs of my influence. I had won. "Yes… I'd like that… but…"

"Oh?" I said, cupping my lion's paw to my ear. "What's that you say?"

"There's one other thing I'd like even more than that," she said, looking up at me again.

"And what is that, my dear?" I asked, a beaming smile on my face.

She blushed deep red, and muttered, "You."

"Moi?" I asked, drawing back and clasping my hands over my heart.

"Yes, Discord," she said, staring deep into my eyes. "Ever since I first met you, I've wanted nothing but to be at your side. You were- no are- a very charming, sophisticated, intelligent gentleman. What more could any filly want?"

It was time to twist the knife. "There's just one slight problem with that, my dear Celestia."

She frowned. "W-what?"

"I just don't like you very much anymore," I said. It was, of course, yet another bald-faced lie, but at the moment, I was only interested in hurting her as much as I possibly could, at least without causing her actual physical damage.

"B-but… Discord! WHY?" The tears started to fly out of her eyes now in an almost comical fountain, and yet, I didn't find it amusing at all. Still, I had to keep up appearances, so I laughed heartily in her face.

"No real reason. I just don't find you all that interesting anymore," I said, lying through my teeth once more. "I'm not sure I ever did, to be quite honest." This was tougher than I thought it was going to be.

"Discord, how can you say that?" she cried. "I… I thought we… I thought you… …but you said…"

"You were mistaken, my dear," I said, glancing down and inspecting the talons on my eagle hand. Celestia turned and ran toward her bed and threw herself dramatically across it, burying her face in her pillows as she sobbed. It took all of my considerable willpower to stop myself from rushing to her side, cooing in her ear, comforting her and reassuring her that I had meant none of the horrid things I'd just said to her, that it was all merely another garish prank on my part.

It was at that moment when the door behind me was smashed off of its hinges and directly into the back of my head. The door split down the middle and fell to either side, a bit in front of me. I idly rubbed the back of my head as I turned around. "Took you long enough to get here, Luna. Obviously, you are too late."

"WHAT HAVE YOU DONE TO TIA!" she screamed at me, turning the Royal Voice up to eleven.

"Oh, spare me the tedious theatrics," I said, boredom lacing my every word. "I merely gave her everything she ever wanted. Well, almost everything, that is."

"YOU HAVE CORRUPTED HER AND YOU WILL PAY FOR THIS," she yelled, powering up her horn and lowering her head to charge at me. I rolled my eyes. Before she could take a single step, I enveloped her in a cocoon of my own power.

"Forgive me, my dear, sweet, innocent Princess Luna," I said cloyingly, "but I really don't have time to play games with you right now. Instead, how about I offer you the same thing I offered Celestia? Your heart's one true desire."

"You have nothing that I could want, fiend," she hissed.

"I know how it is for you," I said calmly. "Everypony loves Celestia. But you? They fear you. Even after a full year of trying to atone for what you did as Nightmare Moon, they still fear you. Some of them even hate you. They think you should be strung up and left to rot for what you did. Or maybe drawn and quartered, though some think that would be far too quick an end for you. Some of them have much more depraved punishments they would love to inflict upon you."

"S-shut your mouth, you bastard!" shouted Luna.

"Language, language, my dear," I said with a hearty laugh. "And you wonder why everypony is afraid of you. Well, I can change all of that. In the blink of an eye, everypony will love you."

"I… I just want…" she said, then suddenly thrashed her head from side to side and redoubled her futile efforts to break my grasp. "NO! I won't fall for your deception, demon!"

"No deception here," I said. "In fact, I have an even better offer for you. Why, just a few minutes ago, your dear sister abdicated her throne to me."

"What?" said Luna. She jerked her eyes toward Celestia. "That can't be true!"

Celestia's muffled voice cried out from her pillows and between her sobs. "It's true. I don't have to be a stuffy old princess anymore, and I won't. I've always hated all that boring stuff. B-but that's not what I really wanted…"

Before Celestia could continue along that train of thought, I hastily said, "And now, my dear Luna, I give that throne over to you! You would be a much better ruler than I would ever be anyway. Just think about it! Soon the citizens of this land will be looking to you for guidance, rather than your sister. I know you've always been jealous of the way that Celestia had everything she ever wanted handed to her on a silver platter, simply because she was the eldest sister. Well now, as sole ruler of the land, you would be able to do anything you wanted."

"I… I can't…" she said, but I could see the multi-colored swirls starting to form in her eyes. She was almost mine.

"Anything that you want! It is merely yours to ask for!" I said, releasing her from my telekinesis.

Luna landed on her feet and marched regally to the center of the room. "Well... okay then. As my f-first royal decree… I demand that it be nighttime forever!"

The slapping of my lion's paw to my face echoed throughout the chamber. Glad I didn't use my eagle hand or I probably would have poked my own eyes out.

"No!" said Celestia, leaping up from the bed. "I don't want that! Discord said I could have anything I wanted! And… and I want it to be a sunny day forever!" She began to use her Alicorn abilities to rotate the planet so that the sun would be directly overhead.

My eyes widened into saucers at this. Oh dear, what had I done?

"Well, I am the supreme ruler now, so what I say is the law!" said Luna. She used her own powers to try to counteract Celestia's. The planet began to spin faster, as the sun dipped down and the moon began to rise.

"But I am your big sister, so you still have to do what I say!" said Celestia. Outside, I could see days turning into minutes, and the sun and moon quickly began jockeying for position in the sky. Well, if nothing else, at least I now no longer had to bother with doing this myself. Moving the sun and moon around, while an easy feat for a Q, is just so dreadfully boring.

I watched as the two sisters continued childishly fighting for dominance over the sky. I should have found this to be hilarious. And, well, okay, it was a little bit funny, I'll admit. But, deeper down, it really pained me to see the two sisters reduced to this, even if that had been my very goal from the beginning. Actually seeing it happen, however, brought me no real joy at all.

"Celestia…" I said softly enough that neither of them could hear me over their own bickering. "I'm sorry. I truly am. I understand that now. I will make this right." I teleported away. Neither of the two Alicorn sisters noticed my departure.

---

"Why do you keep stopping just when things are getting to the good part?" said Q. From out of nowhere, he had produced a big tub of popcorn and was munching away on it.

"I'm sure you find this all very amusing," I said dourly.

"Eh, not really," said Q, waving the popcorn into non-existence. "I'm just waiting for you to get to the part where I make my big entrance."

"That's coming up very soon. And, believe me, it's more of a mild cameo than anything. But anyway, let's get the rest of this story over and done with."

Comments

[Joe England]

So... Celestia couldn't come up with any kind of defense? I mean, there were quite a few mitigating factors in the case of Luna's villainy versus "DisQord's."
For one thing, we don't know for certain that Celestia was able to precisely control the nature of Nightmare Moon's banishment. In fact, the show seems to indicate that its termination was due to a convergence of stars. Was that really Celestia's fault?
And when the Elements were used on Luna a second time the psychosis which had led to her transformation was apparently purged, returning her to a basically benevolent disposition. Magical brain therapy, call it what you will. Let's not forget that prior to her madness she dedicated centuries of service to the selfless betterment of her subjects. It's considerably easier to forgive a psychotic break when it happens to someone who has been a longstanding keystone in an entire civilization's harmonious maintenance, rather than someone who has, from all appearances, never done anything but torture people and claim some vague moral justification for his actions. At least the ladies are princesses. What's Q's excuse for his various reigns of terror on a populace that never asked for his presence? Besides, from the sound of things, Nightmare Moon might not have even been rational enough to truly grasp what she was doing. Her banishment wasn't so much a punishment as a desperate measure to protect her from herself as well as others.
Discord, on the other hand, was perfectly lucid. Unlike Luna, this wasn't a clear case of a split personality manifesting itself in an otherwise benign individual. He knew damn well what he was doing and, at his best, showed only the slightest remorse for centuries of insidious tyranny. And even if he honestly believed he was somehow working for the greater good, that simply indicates that his particular form of insanity left him prone to delusions of morality rather than a straightforward sociopathic streak. This guy was not stable.
Which leads to the matter of their respective power levels. As dangerous as Nightmare Moon was, it was clear to everyone involved that Discord was far more so. I mean, at least where Luna was concerned Celestia was formidable enough to at least create the possibility of resistance. But no one could stand up to Discord one-on-one. If it comes down to dealing with an unhinged demigoddess with the ability to mess with the turn of a planet versus dealing with a gibbering maniacal omnipotent being with the ability to turn the planet to cheese and slam-dunk it into a black hole on a whim, it's perfectly understandable to think that less leniency would be shown to the latter rather than the former should the opportunity for containment arise. No one could blame Celestia for trying to nullify something like Discord forever, especially since there was no guarantee that his wrath wouldn't be even worse if he were ever given even the merest opportunity to escape. Conversely, I wouldn't blame Celestia for leaving a window open for the recovery of her sister.
Honestly, I could go on. My only real point is... Celestia. Stand up for yourself, woman!

Fun story, by the way. I really enjoyed it. You capture DeLancie's voice quite well.

[Emerald Digimon]

Discord said that all life on Equis would end. Wouldn't there still be life on the terminator line( the spot between the day side and night side on a tidally locked planet)

[Teraunce]

Celestia and Luna really screwed the pooch this chapter.