The Bucket

by Incredible Blunderbolt

Organized Chaos

Author's Note:

Bored with the same old predictable routines that his pony "friends" occupy their time with, Discord takes it upon himself to round out their interests more by taking away their talents in the fields they love. By making Twilight illiterate, Rainbow Dash uncoordinated, Pinkie Pie dislike the taste of sugar, Applejack forget how to farm, Fluttershy too loud to tend to animals, and Rarity have a creative block, he hopes that they'll soon learn that there are other things to do in life than just what they know they're interested in. And maybe, just maybe, make their lives more interesting.

At least to watch...

It was a perfectly cliché summer day in Ponyville. The hot, sunny kind where ponies milled about the streets lazily, frolicked in the park, played games and otherwise wasted no time being ordinary and normal. The gentle breeze pulled at the trees, the birds danced high in the sky and the flowers were tended to by the bees.

In other words, Discord was bored.

Actually, bored was an understatement; he was pretty sure that the Fields of Asphodel held more entertainment than Ponyville. At least the ponies there had an excuse to be so utterly unentertaining. They were dead, after all.

As his long, almost snake-like body hung upside-down from a cloud, he couldn't help but remember a better time. A more entertaining time. A time when anything—everything!—from ponies to weather patterns and even the so-called "laws of physics" were his to warp and shape as he saw fit.

Chocolate milk rain from cotton candy clouds? Delightfully absurd.

Oceans of cheese with tortilla fish? Deliciously odd.

Ponies suddenly forgetting how to stand? Or which end of their body their head was on? Perhaps speaking their words backwards while playing hopscotch on their roof? Wonderfully chaotic.

But alas, he lamented, sipping his cake batter through a bendy straw, Fluttershy didn't like any of those things. And what Fluttershy wanted, Fluttershy got. At least, as far as he was concerned. Maybe it was her smile. Regardless, if keeping Fluttershy happy meant not doing anything fun, he was in for a long eternity. Or at least a long sixty years or so.

The thought made his ear twitch. He was sure he'd blow a fuse if he was forced to entertain himself with so much nothing every day. It was practically torture!

On the ground below him, a dark blue stallion and a pearly white mare sat beneath a tree on a cliffside overlooking the town. Their forehooves were intertwined, and the mare's wing was wrapped firmly around the stallion's barrel. The sight in and of itself wasn't anything incredibly special, but Discord didn't really have much to look at, and found himself watching with tired eyes as the stallion pulled a tiny black box out of a picnic basket and showed the mare, who gasped and smiled like she'd just won the lottery. Without a moment's hesitation, she lept up and tackled the stallion to the ground before mashing her lips on his.

"How unique," Discord said, rolling his eyes. "A marriage proposal on cliffside—nopony's ever seen that one before." He watched as the stallion rolled the mare over, clearly intending to take over the kiss, but she wriggled free with a laugh and led him, bouncing, on a chase around the tree.

"You forgot to wait until sunset, you know!" Discord shouted at them from his perch. With a snap of his talons, a strange, omnipresent "Aww" sounded from no place in particular. "And don't tell me you didn't bring the violin players!"

He continued to watch the display for a few more minutes before giving up and spinning around on his cloud. Just because he couldn't make anything fun didn't mean he had to put up with everything boring that happened around him. It was time to do something. But what?

When ponies were bored, they'd visit friends, he mused. He didn't have many friends. In truth, he only really had one friend—and his relationship with her was tenuous at best. Still, there was a certain circle of ponies that weren't total strangers to him—he might even be inclined to call them his friends, if they were to ever hint that they enjoyed him as much as he enjoyed toying with them.

He wondered what they were up to. Perhaps one of them could fix him up with something to occupy his mind. It wasn't like he was having much fun on his own, after all. He may as well be bored with something to do.

With a shrug and a snap of his lion's paw, Discord conceded defeat, and his cloud popped and became a triangular kite embroidered with a mosaic of Celestia sticking her tongue out. It pulled him against the breeze toward the center of town, changing its expression every few moments. Readjusting his sunglasses, the draconequus took another long swig of his cake batter and swallowed it with a satisfied grunt. His eyes drifted to a particular tree by the town hall.

"I wonder what ol' Twily's up to today..."

---

A shiver of excitement raced up Discord's spine as his kite carried him right to Twilight's window. He couldn't help but wonder what kind of crazy experiments the (self-denied) mad scientist was concocting deep inside its bowels. Probably something exquisitely strange that he could watch explode—or melt, or disintegrate; he wasn't picky.

The kite burst into a few million bubbles that dropped to the ground like rocks as he flipped himself in midair and landed on the grass. The bubbles touched down by his hooves, and roiled before erupting into multicolored lilacs that he strode through to get to Twilight's window. Without a moment's hesitation, he grabbed the sill, turned to the reader and scoffed. "What? Doors are way too cliché!"

Through the window, he could see row upon row of books sitting in a large circle around a modest reading area decorated with cushy furniture. Perched upon a seagreen couch lay a purple alicorn with a book that was nearly as large as she was. Her head slowly drifted from side to side as she drank the words from each page like a pony dying of thirst. Or like a pony dying of boredom… Discord thought to himself as he leaned against the window.

The glass squeaked and stretched as he pressed himself closer and closer, warping into the library like it was made of rubber until finally, with a shattering crash, he found himself on the other side; the window jiggled as it swayed back into place. “Twilight!” he said, cheerfully doing the backstroke through the air toward her. “How wonderful you’re here!”

To her credit, the freshly crowned Princess of Friendship didn’t bat an eyelash—didn’t take her eyes off the book, as a matter of fact. She merely flipped a page and continued to scan the words without missing a beat. “It’s my home, Discord. Of course I’m here.”

“Ugh, how predictable.” Discord groaned. He set his lion paw on the ground as he floated backwards and swung like a switch onto the floor, landing with a soft poof! onto a pile of marshmallows. With a sigh, he looked over at Twilight and rested his head in his claw. “You ponies and your habits. Would it kill any one of you to do something interesting once in awhile?”

When Twilight didn’t answer him he rolled over and stared up at the ceiling. “I don’t suppose you’d be interested in doing something today, would you?” In the corner of his eye, he saw Twilight’s book dip just a bit as she regarded him with a raised eyebrow.

“Are you asking to hang out with me?”

That gave Discord pause for thought. Was he asking to hang out with Twilight? He’d just been searching for something to do, after all; he’d never “hung out” with anypony. The closest thing that he’d ever done to that was the time he’d turned Fluttershy’s house upside-down.

A bit of companionship might do him some good, he mused. Fluttershy was companionship enough, usually, though the animals in her care required near-constant supervision, so he didn’t get to see her as often as he’d like to. He turned to Twilight and shrugged. “I suppose so.” He snapped his claws and vanished for a moment, only to reappear behind Twilight, leaning over her side and looking into her eyes with a sly grin. “Why? Were you hoping I’d ask?”

Twilight coughed and turned her head to the side long enough to cover her nose with a hoof, causing Discord to wonder if perhaps vinegar hadn’t been the most appropriate thing to brush his teeth with that morning. “Not particularly,” she said blinking hard. “I’m actually pretty busy reading up on Maristophanes. I just got to his ostracization.”

“They Ostracised Maristophanes?” Discord asked, his eyes sliding telescopically out of his skull and examining the book around Twilight’s scowling face. “That’s too bad. I liked him.”

Twilight cleared her throat, and Discord’s eyes slid back into place with a low pitched sound much like a slide whistle. “Anyway,” she said flatly, “I’m unavailable right now. Maybe some other time when I’m not so busy.”

“Busy, busy, busy…” Discord sighed, taking a seat on the back of Twilight’s couch. “That’s all you ponies are, but it’s all your own doing. You don’t have to study right now, yet you choose to, and you call yourself busy.”

“That’s because I’m occupied with my current task, Discord,” the alicorn replied peevishly. She raised her book back up and turned to the next page.

“A task that you chose for yourself.” Discord held his paw in the air over himself and examined his claws. “You could easily drop it right now, but your habits forbid you. It’s quite sad, really.”

Nostrils flaring, Twilight set her book down on the coffee table and took a deep breath. “What I choose to do with my own time is my choice, Discord, and, frankly, none of your concern! So leave me in peace, please.”

Discord snapped his fingers and popped back into existence by the library door with a large bindle slung over his shoulder. “Fine,” he said with an exaggerated pout. “I see how it is. I’ll just go see if anypony else wants to spend some time with me.

His only response was the now-irritatingly familiar sound of a page turning. “Oh, come on!” he groaned. “Don’t you even want to know what’s in the bindle?”

Another page turn.

“Fine,” he huffed. With another snap of his fingers, the bindle untied itself and a forty pound lobster dropped to the ground at his hooves. “You can go home now, Barry,” he said, opening the door and walking out with a pout. “There’s nothing here for either of us.”