A Matter of Genetics

by Guardsman_Sparky

A New Challenger Approaches: Mewtwo Strikes Back!

Flying, especially under one's own power, is a sensation, a joy that cannot be properly explained, only experienced. It's also one that I am fully able to appreciate for the first time, considering my last time doing this was in the throes of mindless insanity. But, I digress.

I rocketed through the sky, a trail of blue light trailing behind me as I shot towards Ponyville. As the landscape blurred past below me, a thought struck me. I was actually looking forward to this coming confrontation with the incarnation (...god? Aspect? Embodiment? I honestly wasn't sure) of chaos, which honestly struck me as a little strange. I had never really enjoyed fighting. Even in videogames, I preferred pursuing the storyline over the combat sections. But now, my heart was racing in anticipation. Perhaps that theory that Pokemon are battle maniacs wasn't so far off the mark?

A bright flash of light from up ahead caught my attention. I knew that light. I knew it from the only coherent memory from my time of madness: a blinding light that preceded a rainbow of harmonic energies. But there was no rainbow accompanying this flash of light. The Elements of Harmony had failed.

I knew it was only a matter of time before the Elements of Harmony regrouped, a matter of time before Discord was cast back to the stone. But I knew not, remembered not, how that would come to pass. And I could not allow the possibility of Discord interfering with that process.

There he was. Dead ahead. My target. Discord the Draconequus. Vaguely serpentine in shape, there was little symmetry to his body. He had the body of a brown horse, the head of a gray goat, with an ivory deer antler on the right, a turquoise goat horn of the left, one long fang, yellow eyes with red pupils, an orange snake tongue, a black donkey mane, and a white goat beard. The rest of his body consisted of the right paw of a pale-yellow lion, the left yellow talon of a brown eagle, the right leg of a green lizard, the left leg with a sepia hoof of a chestnut deer, the right wing of a purple bat, the left wing of a blue bird, and a red dragon tail with a white tuft at the end. He sat there, gloating at a stricken lavender unicorn.

Adjusting my trajectory, I propelled myself even faster. Traveling at speeds unheard of in any creature alive, save perhaps one, I braced for impact.

---

As her friends, her dear, greyed-out friends abandoned her (It wasn't their fault!), the lavender unicorn mare known as Twilight Sparkle sat heavily upon her haunches, disbelief written in her purple eyes. A golden tiara with an amethyst, six-pointed star that matched her cutie mark sat heavily upon her head, perched over her purple, pink-streaked man. "I don't, I don't understand. Why didn't it work?"

"Hahahahaha!" Twilight looked up at the guffawing Draconequus. "Oh, my little Twilight. They're called the Elements of Harmony, not the Elements of..." Discord paused, tilting his head in confusion. "What's that sound?"

To Twilight's utter shock, the embodiment of chaos promptly exploded. As hundreds of minuscule Discords rained down from the sky, Twilight dropped the foreleg shielding her face and gasped. There, where Discord had been but a moment before, hovered a strange, purple felinoid, engulfed in an aura of actinic cyan light. Its thick, muscular tail thrashed angrily, short fur standing on end. It turned its head to consider Twilight over its shoulder, lilac eyes barely visible through the blue aurora burning within.

As it stared at her, gaze burrowing deep into her very soul, Twilight heard a voice, a single word, almost as if a stray thought from a dream.

Go.

---

I watched the lavender unicorn, Twilight, gallop away. Hopefully, she'd be able to figure out what went wrong with the Elements. That said, I dismissed her from my mind, for the moment. I had more pressing matters to attend to.

I watched dispassionately as the multitudes of tiny Discords flowed back together into a single entity.

PHWEEET! "Foul! Illegal bodycheck!" Discord cried, dressed as a soccer referee and waving a red card in the air.

A mental nudge and a telekinetic twist crushed the laminated card into dust. Discord blinked, then deadpanned at me. "Well, that wasn't very sporting." Vanishing the referee uniform, Discord glared at me. "I can tell, you're going to be no fun at all."

I didn't deign to grant him a response. Instead, I simply raised my arm and clenched my three-fingered paw. Discord let out a pleasing squawk of surprise as he was suddenly crushed into a small, brown ball the size of a melon. I reveled in the silence, but it was not to last.

A pair of eyes and a snaggle-toothed mouth popped into existence on the side, glaring at me with a scowl. "Of course, you realize: this means war."

The ball swirled up, becoming a swirling vortex akin to the Tasmanian Devil before resolving into Discord. With a flourish, he presented his eagle claw, two talons pressed together. "Let's see how you like being a kitten." He snapped his talons, a mad grin on his face.

I grimaced at the cold sensation that passed over me, but after a moment of waiting, I smirked. It seemed that the shield of psychic energy I was projecting protected me from chaos magics as well as the standard stuff.

Wild Discord used Chaos. But nothing happened.

Discord blinked in surprise, then turned the baseball cap he was wearing around. "Hmm, so, we do this the hard way then. Fine." Standing in midair, the mad creature took an exaggerated fighting stance, suddenly dressed up in a karate Gi with a black belt. "We settle this the old way." In response, I settled into my own stance, half-remembered from lifetimes ago.

For a long moment, we stood there in the madness that was Ponyville, both waiting for the other to make the first move. My patience was superior.

An insane grin crossed Discord's face. "FIGHT!"

Reality shifted, and a giant, Godzilla-esque Discord was bringing its cloven hoof down upon me. A simple thought summoned a radiant field of blue energy that stopped the hoof in its tracks. In retaliation, a regular-sized Discord popped out of the ground, twisting space itself in an attempt to crush me. A pulse of psychic energy shattered the rising earth and scattered the Draconequus' form as a flurry of soap bubbles. As Discord reformed in a whirlwind of leaves (wearing a kill-me orange jumpsuit and blue, steel-plated headband), our fight continued.

Enveloped in a bubble of cyan power, I flew at Discord, the chaos entity making an amusing splat sound against my shield. Letting him bounce off the shield, I darted above him and slammed myself down, crushing him into the plaid dirt.

A moment later, a crushing force crashed against the side of my bubble, sending me careening into the sky. I tumbled about, and just when I finally got myself under control, a shadow came over me. Spinning around, I was just in time to see Discord swinging a giant tennis racket: I plummeted to the ground. Everything went dark for a moment, then an explosion sent me skywards once more.

Snarling, I spun around, not bothering to slow down as I crushed the oversized cannon that I had just been fired from. That was a mistake.

"Hey, batter batter batter! SWING!"

Oh shit.

A horrendous crack sent me hurtling towards the ground, leaving Discord holding half a shattered baseball bat behind me. Slamming into the ground with a meteoric impact, I tumbled across the ground, leaving a deep trench in my wake. Somewhere along the way, my bubble popped, leaving me bruised and bloody as I finally came to a halt.

Groaning in pain, I began to haul myself to my feet, only for a distant shrieking to catch my ear. It was strangely familiar. I looked up.

"Yipe!" Telekinetically throwing myself to the side, I was just able to dodge the barrage of acidic green bolts of energy as the familiar, black form of a Star Wars TIE-fighter screamed overhead. As it came about for another pass, I grabbed myself with my telekinetics and launched myself at the anachronism. Roaring in defiance, I punched through the wing strut with a pulse of energy. Pulling myself up and to the side, I watched as the stricken craft plummeted from the sky and began bouncing across the ground: right towards the terrified colt standing in its path.

Immediately I fell forward, hurtling towards the petrified foal. Somehow, I knew I wouldn't make it in time, but at the same time I could not allow another death to come at my hands, er, paws. Desperately, I pushed as hard as I could, ignoring the building pressure in my head and the darkness creeping at the edge of my vision.

Streaking towards the foal, I brought my arms up to catch him. Time slowed to a crawl as the colt turned his head to look at me. I caught a glimpse of a yellow-eyed, snaggle-toothed smirk before the pony vanished in a flash of light.

Motherfu--!

CRASH!

---

Pain coursed through my body as I came to. Even my fur hurt. I opened my eyes, but all I could make out were blurry shapes, and there had to be brain damage of some sort, because I swear the small fires all around me were pink and yellow-polka-dotted and that there was green smoke pouring into the crumpled TIE-fighter.

I never really had a chance, did I?

A serpentine shadow fell over me. "Aw, he fainted. I wanted to catch him. Oh, well, nothing ventured, nothing gained."

I blinked blearily in confusion, and then the figure dropped something spherical on me. Something I recognized instantly.

Oh sunovab-

There was a flash of red light, then everything went dark.

---

Discord cackled madly as he watched the ball, a red and white sphere with a black ring interrupted by a white button separating the hemispheres, twitch violently. He waited with anticipation as the twitching slowed, slower and slower. Finally, it stopped, and the white button on the black ring blinked red. Discord leapt into the air with glee and stayed there as he celebrated. "Hooray! I caught a Legendary!" He threw out his arms, tossing fireworks into the air. "I win!"

"Not quite, Discord!"

Blinking in surprise, Discord turned to see Twilight Sparkle in her tiara standing there with five other ponies, all wearing ornate gold necklaces. "Oh, hello girls! You've got some color back in you." He blinked. "Wait. Color back in...?" Discord watched as the five necklaces and one tiara began to glow, engulfing the six ponies in a corona of white light and lifting them off the ground. "Oh, poo."

A massive rainbow erupted from the glowing ponies, spearing through Discord and swamping him in its radiance. The rainbow grew brighter and brighter until it became too radiant to look at, blotting out the world with its light.

As the light died down, it was revealed that all of Discord's machinations had been reversed, turning the world back to normal. Ponyville was in one piece again, Town Hall was upright and on the ground, the grass was green, the sky was blue, and the clouds weren't raining chocolate anymore.

And Discord? Well, he was turned back to stone, an expression of terror on his face and his arms outstretched as if to ward something away.

All was right with the world.

Save one thing, that is.

A strange red and white ball...

---

Oh, God, I feel like the Genie: ULTIMATE COSMIC POWER! Itty-bitty living space.

Yes, that's right. I was stuck in a Poke Ball. Not the Master Ball, or even an Ultra Ball. A Poke Ball. The bastard.

I sat there, seething, wondering when I would be released. And I had just got out, too.

Of course, that was when I started hearing the voices.

"What in tarnation do ya suppose this thingy is?"

"Oh, would you look at those colors. *Gasp!* Idea~"

"I don't trust it! What if it's a trick by Discord?"

"Hm...It appears to be a containment vessel of some kind."

"Oh dear. I saw Discord put an animal in there. I think it was hurt, the poor thing."

"Boop!"

There was a loud click, and I felt something shift before my tiny world lit up with a red flash of light. When the light faded, I was out of that accursed ball. Eyes closed, I took a deep breath of air. At that moment, it was the most beautiful thing in the world I had ever smelled. Of course, the moment was ruined by a small "eep" from behind me.

Sighing, I turned around and opened my eyes to see six mares. I stared down at them. I knew these ponies. Knew of them, at any rate. The six Elements of Harmony.

The leader was Twilight Sparkle, a unicorn mare with lavender fur and a purple mane streaked with two tones of pink. Her cutie mark was of a six-pointed star surrounded by five smaller stars. Purple eyes considered me with a scientific curiosity. She represented and bore the Element of Magic.

The next was Applejack, an earth pony mare with orange fur and a blonde mane done up in a loose ponytail. The orange gem cut in the shape of an apple matched her cutie mark of three red apples. Green eyes stared at me with caution from under an ever present cowboy hat. She bore the Element of Honesty.

Next to her was Rarity, another unicorn mare, this time with white fur and a luscious purple mane. Her three-diamond cutie mark matched the purple stone set in her golden necklace. Dark blue eyes looked up at me appraisingly. She represented the Element of Generosity.

Hovering just above the rest of the little group was Rainbow Dash, a cyan pegasus mare. Like her name implied, her mane was the color of a wild rainbow, and her rose eyes glared at me in suspicion. Her cutie mark of a cloud with a rainbow lightning bolt was mimicked by the red lightning bolt gem set in her golden collar. She held the Element of Loyalty.

Standing right in front of me, practically vibrating from excitement, was Pinkamena "Pinkie" Diane Pie. An earth pony mare, she had pink fur, a pink poofy mane, and a cutie mark of three balloons that matched the balloon-cut gem in her collar. Big blue eyes stared up at me with wonder and excitement. She was the Element of Laughter.

Finally, hiding herself shyly behind her friends, was Fluttershy. A yellow pegasus with a long, pink mane, she had a talent with animals, as evident by her cutie mark of three pink butterflies. A pink butterfly gem shone from her necklace as she stared at me uncertainly with big, blue eyes. She was the very embodiment of the Element of Kindness.

Together, they were the Elements of Harmony.

I looked at them. They looked back up at me. They didn't move, but they seemed...ill at ease in my presence. I couldn't fathom why that would be, until I remembered. As a Mewtwo, I have the passive ability 'pressure,' which in the game translated into draining Power Points twice as fast. In reality, it probably translated into a sense of unease, at the very least, probably as a side effect of my psychic powers.

Something hit my foot, and I looked down to see the Poke Ball that Discord had trapped me in. I was a bit surprised that it was still...existing, but still... The six mares tensed as my eyes lit up, only to relax slightly as I simply picked up the Poke Ball in my telekinetic grip. No need to leave behind the only thing that could conceivably hold me outside of the Elements of Harmony, after all.

Giving the assembled ponies a brief nod, I turned and began to stalk away. Once I was a decent distance away from them, I enveloped myself in my power and took to the skies.

---

As the strange, purple felinoid vanished over the Everfree forest, the Elements of Harmony sagged in relief, taking in the deep breaths of one who had nearly drowned.

Applejack recovered the quickest. "What was that thing, Twi? It was like I couldn't move, could barely breathe."

"I don't know Applejack," Twilight replied, staring off at the sky above the distant forest. "I don't know."

Comments

[Titan Commander Sebaste]

Okay, I'm really liking this way of narration!

[HoneyBadgerr]

I had really low expectation for this fic, but I gotta say, this is actually really decent!

[FrostTheWolf]

Wild Discord used Chaos. But nothing happened.

You now have my attention, good sir

[DiscountDiscord]

"Boop!"

Yep. Pinkie would be the one to touch it...
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[Greatazuredragon]

Very good battle and lots of amusing scenes, nice work.

"Boop!"

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[Warrior Kitten]

Why wouldn't Twilight know? She would have read History books!

Also, annoyed at the complete disregard of walls Discord showed. A TIE Fighter? A Poke-Ball? Discord doesn't go that extreme.

[TigeR]

Yes, Twilight should know what Mewtwo is, she lived in the castle for a long time. Even the CMC got a tour through the gardens with Cheerilee.

[LucarioFan2066]

8027674 ...Mostly due to copyright reasons; Hasbro doesn't want to get sued by Disney or Nintendo/Game Freak.

As this story (and the website as a whole) is a non-profit venture, it'll be 'difficult' for the listed companies to claim legal rights; not to mention that Fair Use applies here.

8031824 Yes, she should.
Just like how Twilight should recognise her old foal sitter, but fails to recognise 'Princess Mi Amore Cadenza' until Shining points it out.
Or like how, in Dragonshy, Rainbow Dash puts Fluttershy down for being afraid, and for being a weak flier. Despite a later episode claiming that the two went to the same Flying Academy, Fluttershy got bullied for being a weak flier, and Rainbow defended her from said bullies.
Or how NOPONY sticks up for Twilight when she goes mad in A Canterlot Wedding, despite the Mane 5 learning to do this in Lesson Zero.
Or the fact Philomena's obviously been Celestia's pet Phoenix for quite some time, but Twilight had no clue as to her existence until A Bird in the Hoof. EDIT: Twilight's also very well-studied, having read countless books in her life. Despite this, she somehow had no idea WHAT a Phoenix was until Cele- Princess Celestia personally informs her.
Or how, in One Bad Apple, Applejack could've just TOLD the CMC about Babs Seed's history with bullies, and that she's come to get away from any mention of cutie marks. But nnnnoope - the mare completely fails to do so until it's too late, allowing the plot of the episode to occur.
Or how, in One Bad Apple, the CMC threaten to tell Diamond Tiara's mother about her poor behaviour. However, we later learn in Crusaders of the Lost Mark that Diamond's mother, Spoiled Rich, is rude and egotistical as hell, and where the filly got this mindset from. I doubt her mother knowing Diamond was rude to 'blank flank lowlifes' would get the filly into any kind of trouble.
Do I need to go on?

Point is, everyone makes mistakes. Even the actual canon creators. All Guardsman_Sparky's doing is following their example.

[TigeR]

8037294 I don't want to be confrontational about this, as it is really not that important whether or not Twilight remembered. The examples you've written down are all totally valid! It just felt weird that Twilight of all forgot something, when she is the knowledgeable one. It wouldn't be out of place to me if she could name the page number of the book of every spell she learned.

You can explain however you want why Twilight didn't recognize Mewtwo, but explaining this "mistake" with "because others made mistakes" is not the correct answer to that, I feel.

[Ephedianroyalty]

It would have been interesting if he decided to fake redemption so that the princesses wouldn’t stone him again by letting the mane six be his trainers. Ya know, ‘cause they released him. Or something.

[FuntimeFoxy]

Reality shifted, and a giant, Godzilla-esque Discord was bringing its cloven hoof down upon me. A simple thought summoned a radiant field of blue energy that stopped the hoof in its tracks. In retaliation, a regular-sized Discord popped out of the ground, twisting space itself in an attempt to crush me. A pulse of psychic energy shattered the rising earth and scattered the Draconequus' form as a flurry of soap bubbles. As Discord reformed in a whirlwind of leaves (wearing a kill-me orange jumpsuit and blue, steel-plated headband), our fight continued.

I love how you included the Naruto reference.

[Someguy458]

Discord cackled madly as he watched the ball, a red and white sphere with a black ring interrupted by a white button separating the hemispheres, twitch violently. He waited with anticipation as the twitching slowed, slower and slower. Finally, it stopped, and the white button on the black ring blinked red. Discord leapt into the air with glee and stayed there as he celebrated. "Hooray! I caught a Legendary!" He threw out his arms, tossing fireworks into the air. "I win!"

Really, he used a regular Pokeball? That's.... Actually quite fitting for him.

[AJCylace]

Adjusting my trajectory, I propelled myself even faster. Traveling at speeds unheard of in any creature alive, save perhaps one, I braced for impact.

Sonic?