• Published 26th May 2012
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Discordian Episodes - CelestialScribe



While the mane six were off defeating Discord, what did the other inhabitants of Equestria get up to?

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The Princesses

Sliding open the cloudy white door to his van, Discord delivered exactly as promised: fillies and candy.

The cutie mark crusaders were gorging themselves on mounds of colourful, unhealthy sweets and chocolate, literally swimming in the stuff to get to the other side of the vehicle where more waited. The small, overhanging bellies continued to be stuffed as Flim and Flam looked on, horrified.

"Discord! What did you put into this stuff!? It's great!" Scootaloo said, muffled over mouthfuls of candy.

"Magical, mind-numbing poison!" Discord said happily, taking one for himself.

Chewing it slower, but still taking more, it didn't act as much of a deterrent.

"Tastes like cherryade," Applebloom pointed out.

"Yes, funny thing with poisons, they all taste delicious! You should try some cyanide, it has a remarkably lemony aftertaste," Discord finished his advice on health and looked to Flim and Flam, who in turn stared back at him. "Well? Come along now, we don't have all day," He said, pointing them inside the van.

"Can we... refuse?" Flim asked delicately.

"Oh sure... sure. But, y'know, if you look down you might want to rethink that."

Following his hint, they saw that the once-fluffy cloud layer that somehow used to hold them had vanished, leaving them floating by either magic or some invisible platform. After looking down, Flam immediately jumped into the vehicle.

Flim, slightly more composed, stared at his brother, confused.

"I don't like heights, brother."

"See? He has the right idea, 'brother'. Now, unless your insurance policy covers becoming one with the ground..." He said as he brought his hands together in a spiritual pose. "...You'll get in the van," He finished rather grimly, pointing over his shoulder.

Gulping, Flim nodded and swam his way through the candy next to his brother. Sitting at the opposite sides of the vehicle, they watched as the fillies took little notice due to the stocks of candy.

Appearing in the driver's seat, Discord took hold of the wheel and started off their adventure.

"Funny thing about this van," Discord started, "It used to be a limousine. But, cost of living and all that... the economy being as it is, non-existent and replaced with ducks, I had to make sacrifices. The ducks were cracking down on me, so I downgraded."

Flim, being possibly the most sane of them all, could only bury himself deeper in the piles of food away from the incoherency that was Discord's story. He could feel himself slowly succumbing to this disease, it seemed so normal now, there were no longer boundaries that could determine what was deranged and what wasn't, Discord had replaced them with dancing toasters.

"What's this?" Sweetie Belle asked, knocking a hoof on a solid metal object that was uncovered after much eating.

It had a cylindrical green body, ending with a rounded head and a square tail. It looked very much like a rocket-shaped bomb, of which the three fillies were very experienced with thanks to countless afternoons spent in the arcade playing games like 'bomberstallion'.

"Oh, that's just a present for the ex-leaders of Equestria. I call it the 'little colt'. Think of it as a parting gift to thank them for so easily relinquishing control of the state. You... might want to stay away from the hatch under it. But hey, I won't stop you."

Sniffing it, Sweetie Belle reported back, "Smells really gross."

"There are many reasons for that. None of them sane. Don't touch it, this van doesn't have insurance."


The clunking sounds of armour successfully stirred the princess of the night once more out of her sleep. It was almost as if Celestia had planned the routes these guards patrolled, just so the metallic clashing would wake her up. Burying her head further into the pillow, and out of the way of the dim light seeping through her dark curtains, she heard a rip.

Holding her head up and regarding it with a deadpan face, she saw that her horn had in fact ripped the pillow's material, feathers gliding onto her face.

"Inferior fabric."

The sound of another regiment of troops passed down the corridor outside her room, and she lay on her side in preparation to get up. Surely, there was a reason they were disturbing her sleep so much. That and she wanted another pillow. Tiredly grunting, she sat up in bed and stared at the exit for a moment.

So far away...

Begrudgingly, she got up and walked to her door. Opening it, it suddenly caught a fleeing soldier off-guard, his head abruptly lodging inside the door. The golden helmet fell off as his unconscious head hung limp through the hole.

Awkwardly, worriedly, and embarrassed, Luna prodded the guard's head with a hoof. Definitely out cold. It wasn't her fault as much as it was the steadfast door, she told herself. Freeing his head with her magic, she lay him down in the corridor as she looked around.

Usually there was always at least one night-guard around Luna's room, now there was nothing but the cold, polished décor to greet her. It wasn't new recruit induction day, was it? Surely her room couldn't be that hard to find. Indeed, Luna's room stuck out like a sore thumb, the near-black shaded door penetrating the otherwise gleaming hall of white.

Finding nopony else, she decided to make a turn around the corner and head for wherever her sister might be at this point. As soon as she passed the corner of the corridor though, four guards, two night and two day, nearly bumped into her. Their perception was overwhelmed by a sense of urgency. Halting dead in their tracks, they saluted the princess of the night. It was unusual to see a mixed squad. They were allowed to socialize, of course, but duties between night and day were always kept separate.

"Guardsmen!" Luna addressed, "Why are the chambers so deserted? And why do I sense that something isn't right with your daily assignments?"

Panting, one of them took charge to reply. A day guard, taking off his helmet to reveal a set of cramped, silver hair that relished the opportunity of freedom, spoke, dropping most of his professionalism and enduring pretense to relay the problems.

"Where do we start, ma'am?" He spoke tiredly, and worriedly, with an overtone of confusion. The rest of his party seemed just as dazed by the ordeal, many of them looking back, agitated. "Something's happening with the castle, we've been trying to find your sister but we seem to be getting cut off at every chance."

"Specify, if you please: what exactly is happening?"

They all answered with various stand-alone words and quick phrases, talking over each other in a mess of unrelated words.

"Popcorn."

"Monkeys."

"Ghosts."

"Mudslides."

"Salmonella poisoning."

Luna cocked an eyebrow a step further up at each word, until it was nearly wrapped around her horn.

"Perhaps it would be best if we try and show you. Micawber," He addressed one of the two nightguards, "Protect Luna's flank."

Luna stabbed the guard with her eyes, forcing him to amend himself.

"No! As in... t-the rear, w-wait... um..." The guard stammered, shrinking under the dominant alicorn.

She chuckled to herself, "I understand what you mean guardsman, but are we under attack? Is the protection really necessary?"

Micawber, the night guard who now moved to defend Luna from any behind attacks, acknowledged, "Attacked is a word too organised, planned and aggressive. The mere diffusion of multiple threats, steadfast but untraceable, irritating but unrealistic, is what we fight. In short - we are fighting the aftermath of a mad dictator who knows they have already won," He finished solemnly.

"Speak Equestrian Mick," The leader said, starting the walk on what they hoped would be a safe trail through the maze that was the princesses home. "We have no idea. We're all split off from the uppers, sections of the castle are just falling apart. It's not an attack... just chaos."

The walls began waving from side-to-side as they walked past, like some kind of fun-house that intended to distort reality or scare the occupants. For anypony else, it might work, but the guards were composed and trained. Even in these circumstances, whatever they were, they stayed as the elite.

Or they were just used to what they were seeing.

The paintings of various authority figures adorned the walls they were passing as they went deeper through the halls. Family, foreign ambassadors and historic events indented the otherwise spotless walls, and they seemed to be watching them.

They continued, hoping to find Celestia and a safe zone, before attention was brought to the situation behind them.

The portraits had in fact been watching them, and now they were alive, bringing whatever was inside them to life also. Almost the entire zebra nation, meeting with ministers from Equestria, jumped from the picture. Fortunately, they didn't come out to a realistic scale. The pin-sized army charged them, the tiny war-cries congregating to match that of a single mouse squeak.

Like termites, they threatened to devour all in their way, prompting the group into alert. Something didn't feel right about simply squashing them, nor would they probably hold out against all of them. So, without needing any prompt from each other, they sprang around the corners and sprinted for safety.

It didn't take long for their unmatched strides to easily defeat the tiny rumbles left behind them. Once they were at sure-fire safety, they slowed to a casual walk.

"I think I see what you mean," Luna said to pierce the silence between the puzzled guards.

"The best is yet to come, I'm sure," The gold-studded, self-appointed leader warned.

Before they could even recover their breath, something was eager to prove that.

A faint sloshing, growing in volume as something washed over and clashed with the walls behind them, reverberated through the corridors. Fearfully turning, they met with a horrifically jovial sight.

"Now that's a mudslide," The guardsman said, pointing at the smiling, gaping maw of a monster.

Painting the walls brown as it passed, the flood of mud moved slowly, devouring everything it passed with it's viscous teeth. What made it truly terrifying was the gleeful, wide-open expression it wore as it came closer and closer. Trying to impede it, blasts of magic from everypony who was capable of doing so did nothing but show the dominance this monster had.

Nothing but holes that were simply reformed appeared in it, and it began laughing at the pitiful attempts. Bubbling and foaming, the mud could be shaped into whatever it chose. It made the shape of multiple eagles and fired them at the shocked group.

These, however, were more easily defeated by a single shockwave from Luna's horn. They melted into small pools of mud, but it still didn't dent the leader who was sloshing closer, gurgling with laughter.

The two unicorns of the group, both white day guards, no longer felt the need to keep up the futile attacks, and the leader ordered the other to cease. The other two, who were night pegasi, were left seeming pretty useless, as direct contact with the big blob looked dangerous. Everything it rolled over solidified and became encrusted in the ground; statues of brown would be left as their fate if they didn't run now.

In sync, the four stallions and Luna turned tail and ran. Luna was starting to regret the many expansion projects the castle had undergone. They passed marble busts depicting the evolution of the guard, each armed with a different stone weapon or piece of armour. The walls were oozing strawberry trifle as they ducked away from propelled balls of sludge.

Apparently angering the monster, it's dirty arms shot out at them, grabbing Micawber by the back legs. The beast stopped as it's arms moulded over the entirety of his bottom half. The leader ran to his aid, trying to saw the crusty mud off with magic or brute force. Now dragging him further from them and into the demon's mouth, the pegasi snatched a stone spear from a display guard as he slid gradually closer.

"I can't get you out of there, Mick, magic isn't doing anything!" The leader said, following him nearer to the impending fossilization. Like a light on reflective glass, magic just bounced off and into their surroundings. Trying to pull him also was fruitless, the brute's strength matched its size.

"Alas, the surly bonds of squalid disarray seemed to have claimed me, I appear forsaken by misfortunate duty," He said, still poetic and noble under the grimiest of circumstances as he grasped his friend's hooves, holding the spear under his wing.

"I didn't understand a word of that," He replied with a dark amusement.

"In short- I'll see you on the other side."

"The cafeteria?"

"Precisely."

"I hear it's an all-you-can-eat zebra-style tonight," He said, clinging on to the last fleeting moments of trivial conversation he could before their departure.

"Then my sacrifice shall not be in vain," He concluded, suddenly letting go of his friend's hooves and sliding towards the patient attacker.

Bringing the spear to his front, he aimed it straight forward as he adjusted the collision course.

"ADVANCE TOWARDS ME, BRETHREN!" They heard him cry before they turned to escape. A series of splashes and the crunching of dry mud later, they were now only surrounded by whimpers of silence.

They continued on, one stallion down and a mutual feeling of reluctance to continue in the air.

Not looking back to see the outcome, Luna had to wonder why they were taking this so dramatically. Worst case scenario, Micawber would be trapped in mud for a little while and then break free. Of course, night armour was a tough one to clean.

Was this all one of Celestia's elaborate tricks? Would she really be willing to sacrifice time to spend rehearsing a silly joke instead of ruling Equestria?

Yes, actually. That sounded likely.

Trotting through the eerily quiet kitchen, they decided to cut through it and into the main hall. If anywhere would be a secure zone, hopefully one with the highest concentration of guards would be.

Of course, it wasn't enough to have even the briefest of respites, as the toasters, pots, pans and cupboards were all singing to themselves. The blender, accompanied by microwave beeps and an electric whisk, were providing the beat while the utensils sang in their... metallic voices. A faint scratch was heard in their singing, the rust apparently having an effect on their magical voice-boxes.

An explosion, and the singing halted. Screams sounded from the hall as whatever was happening out there was far worse than in here. Officers barking orders and blasts of magic echoed through the walls, both a good and bad sign.

Rushing through the kitchen, they ended up at the second-floor of the main hall, watching over the anarchy from a balcony above.

On the plus side, they had found Luna's sister. On the negative though, she was about to be eaten by the royal sea-sponge.

Ginormous and somehow mobile, the sponge was the centre piece in this hall of madness. It was flanked by guards on all sides, all hitting it with whatever they could, desperately trying to free Celestia. Grasped in the sponge's yellow, gluttonous blobs of arms, Celestia was firing beam after beam of solar energy into what she hoped was its face.

"Bob, I command you to stop this instant!" Celestia yelled, but Bob simply waved her around in the air like a rattle. The top half of him morphed into an idiotic smile, which turned out to be his warning that she was going to end up there.

But it looked as though Bob's arms weren't all that tough to a mighty string of royal power, a navy blue slice of Luna's magic dissecting his primary arm. Celestia easily recovered in mid-air, flying closer to her sister as she kept Bob distracted with yellow lasers.

Bob was mournful at his lack of an arm, his once-cheery grin falling into one of despair. He tried picking up his arm and gluing it back on, completely ignoring or uncaring of the attacks he was receiving, but it wouldn't stick, repeatedly falling off each time a major blow struck him that wobbled his entire structure.

"Sister, thank goodness you're here!" Celestia said, landing next to her and her party.

"What in Equestria is going on?!" Luna said, understanding that this couldn't be a joke.

"Discord," She replied bitterly.

"Ah, I fail to see how that eluded me. This is clearly his work. Are we... well... going to win?"

"It's not down to us, our fate lies in the elements. Speaking of which..." Celestia finished as a guard carrying stacks of papers addressed her. On his back, hovering above him, in his mouth and under his hooves- he was covered with notes.

"The letters you ordered, Princess," He spoke, muffled.

Without even thanking him, Celestia fired an explosion of magic at his face, dissolving the letters around him and char-grilling his coat. He stood frazzled, utterly confused and disoriented by what happened.

"Thank you, guardsman, you may take the rest of this shift off as my apologies, speed was vital." She hoped Twilight would be on hand to receive them, but either way Spike would be coughing them up for a while.

He didn't responded, stuck in a haze of discombobulation thanks to her powerful magic.

"What?!" He asked loudly after a while, "Did you say something, Princess?"

Celestia paused, just as scared as he was now. Hopefully deafness was only temporary. She shook her head slowly, fear adorning her face, and he saluted her uneasily before going back to his duties as cannon fodder for Bob.

"We shall cross that bridge when we come to it," Celestia said, adjusting back to her sister. "For now, our priority... you have a moustache..." Celestia finished, interrupting herself.

Her face contorting in alarm, Luna smacked a hoof to just beneath her nose and found a bushy line of hair. Matching her darker shade of hair colour, it was now forming a goatee around her chin.

"I realise why we hate Discord so much now, sister," She said, choosing to ignore the rapid growth rather than satisfy the draconequues with a reaction to it.

"Yes..." Celestia said, completely entranced by her sister's brand new mutton-chops. "Anyway, as I was saying, we need to concentrate on containing Bob."

"I told you we should have just got a cat."

"Well, forgive me for being unable to foresee Bob taking on such a growth spurt. Rather like you," Celestia said, poking her sister's black beard.

"Humorous in times of distress, aren't we?"

Meanwhile, the guards were still busy not making an inch of progress. Surprisingly, the sponge was spongy, Bob simply absorbed weapons and magic alike as if they were water. All they seemed to be doing was anger the pet more, now head-butting the floor around him and shaking the structure.

The eruption resulted in the chandelier and part of the ceiling dropping straight on Bob's head. Further damaging his ego, Bob looked as though he wanted to let out a roar, but couldn't. He could only create a set of eyebrows and frown intently.

One by one, the guards were being devoured by Bob. Absorbing them too, was a cinch for the behemoth. Disgusting sucking noises swept the large hall as Bob's vacuum-like mouth went to work, staining the impeccable floor with a long line of saliva.

Many of the guards saw this as their time to retreat, back into the other, smaller rooms where more peculiarities would be waiting for them.

Yet another thing sounded its ominous presence throughout the castle. As if something else could go wrong. For Luna, it was familiar: a sloshing, watery sound whistled from the direction she entered the plaza from.

The sloshing became a trembling, similar to Bob's reverberations, and even the sponge himself stopped to take notice.

Crashing down in an instant, the entire wall next to the princesses was levelled. Through it came charging the maniacal mud monster, and on top of its back was a night-guard, matted in dirt, ordering him to attack with a spear raised over his head.

"En guard, you unfathomable mass!" Micawber shouted.

Confused, Bob launched his arms at the advancing brown mudslide, only to be caught in Micawber's new pet's mouth. Chewing the yellow sponge, the mudslide spread its virus up Bob's arms and into his core, tainting and cementing them both into place. All that was left of the abrupt battle was a stiff body of joined mass, fearsome, but frozen in pace like an ode to this day.

The guards cheered, the battle belonging to them, or more specifically, Micawber, who was currently stuck elevated on his mount's fixed figure. His legs were jammed in the mud-monument, restricting him from flying off and joining the rest of his friends.

The princesses watched on as if it was a dream. Discord didn't even need to be the puppet master to control such lunacy, he just had to give them the tools to create their own.

"Alright, somepony get the stick," The leader called out to whoever was closest to the utility closet underneath the huge set of stairs. "We gotta get Mick down."

"I daresay I am feeling rather adequate up here with Copperfield at this moment in time," Mick said.

"Copperfield?"

"Do not amuse me, sir, by stating that my previous mention of this powerhouse that I sit upon's title is indeed the most absurd thing you have heard or seen thus far."

"Try and keep it low syllables, Mick. But I think I understood that, and I think you're right, I've witnessed crazier today."

Celestia and Luna flew down while Mick was being handled by the stick, a crude pole with a blunt hook at the end to grab onto. Nevertheless, it was a platoon favourite for solving problems. Changing a light bulb? Get the stick. Carrying the dirty gym clothes? Get the stick. Somepony you don't like? The stick.

"Congratulations, gentlecolts," Celestia said. "But there are multiple things yet to be done before rejoicing, and medals for that matter, can be discussed. Firstly, we need to free those encased in that sponge prison," She said, tapping the mud-encrusted sponge.

"Drill a hole, pull them out with the stick," Somepony suggested, and they all agreed.

"Very well, meanwhile, we need to secure the rest of the castle."

Before a plan could be formed, a high-pitched whistle stabbed the air, bringing the attention of everyone to the gaping hole in the ceiling. A green splodge was all they could make out before it smashed into the building and shattered the once-threatening monsters into shards of mud and strips of sponge.

The entombed guards fell out, lying strewn about on the floor, taking in the scent of fresh air mixed with candy floss.

"Copperfield..." Micawber said sadly, holding a piece of his loyal steed in his dark hoof.

"I'll get you a new one, Mick. A better mud monster. Or a goldfish, whatever's easier." The leader said, holding a hoof on the night-guard's shoulder and smiling, forcing him to do the same.

In the meantime, Luna and Celestia where busy studying the object that interrupted them. It was a large, green rocket, like a firework that had yet to explode. Luna touched it curiously which activated a paralysing beeping noise.

They backed up, petrified of the rapidly escalating noise. Putting up a mixed yellow and blue shield, they defended both them and the guards from whatever was about to happen.

The electronic beeping reached its climax, and went soundless. Nothing dared disturb the potentially devastating device, but after half a minute of careful trepidation, it was regarded as a dummy.

Dropping the shield, the sisters were still cautious. Gently lifting the metallic object and inspecting it.

"Hmph, Discord and his foalish-"

It detonated, and in an instant the castle was overflowing with cheese.

The windows were demolished, and out of them came cheese, flowing down the mountain and into the plains of Ponyville. Gone were the pillars that supported the castle, replaced with string-cheese. The once-ivory and gold surroundings were all yellow. Everything was cheese. Pools and layers of cheese.

They were washed out into the courtyard, dripping with the sticky substance and nearly choking on the amount they had ingested. The armour felt like a permanent fixture for most of the guards now, and the same went for their new yellow coat. It was safe to say they were more cheese than stallion now.

Celestia lifted her head from the clinging yellow grass and wiped the cheese from her eyes. She now had a permanent tinge of yellow in her vision, a casual reminder of just how awful this day was. She yawned, but the cheese had sealed her mouth shut. Reluctantly eating it, she regained her ability to speak after digesting the foul, thick paste.

"Princess?" One of the guards called out to her. "I think Luna's going to need the stick."

Bewildered at the comment, Celestia moved past the horde of onlooking guards and saw her sister, a puffy, fat ball of dark blue spotted with large red rashes. Her limbs were being swallowed by her swollen torso, her tongue limply hanging out.

It was a bad day to be lactose intolerant.