Queue
An unknown amount of time ago…
Cotton candy clouds poured chocolate rain down onto the checkerboard fields below. Paper cranes flew past while facing the wrong way, while carrying smaller construction cranes, which were lowering their hooks to grab at nothing. Waterfalls of pink lemonade flowed upwards into the sky, and a unicorn was happily kayaking across it in a boat made of 5 wooden planks arranged in a u shape on a table. Everything was perfectly chaotic, not a single thing in place, and-
-wait, what was that part about a unicorn having fun?
Discord looked down from his throne with an eyebrow raised. Sure enough, there was a pony who not only seemed to be completely unfazed by all the chaos around him, but looked like he was enjoying himself! This would not do. Snaking through the air, Discord dove into the the cascade of sugar water before emerging from the water to a dramatic kazoo solo.
Arcane Catalyst was having a very interesting dream. He had woken up to find everything wrong. His lab equipment had grown cartoonish legs and walked out the door in a conga line, and his breakfast of blueberry waffles had turned into chocolate chip pancakes. Oh, and gravity seemed to be taking a sick day. Clearly this was a prank from Moon-Princess-Boss Luna. And now that he'd settled in, he was face-to-face with… uh… hm. Maybe it would know?
"Hello! Are you a mammal or a reptile?"
Discord frowned. "Really. That's your question?"
Arca tilted his head to the side, and then gasped, having remembered his manners. "Oh, sorry. I'm Arca, Princess-boss Celestia's Royal Alchemist! What's your name?"
Discord slapped a claw to his face in frustration. "I go through all this trouble to plunge the world into chaos, and you don't even know who I am? Who do you think I am?"
Arca shrugged and cast his fishing line out again. "Okay, you took too long to answer, I'm bored. Your name is Funny-Colored Noodle Dragon."
"WHAT?!" Just as Discord was about to fire a retort at this arrogant equine in front of him, the fishing line hooked his horn. Immediately, he was yanked unceremoniously back under the surface of the lemonade waterfall, dragged underneath the boat, and pulled up to face Arca once more.
"Oooo, I caught a big one! Hello again Mister Noodle Dragon. Are you enjoying the crazy day today? All the rules are so different today!"
Discord, of course, was quickly getting fed up with this. Seriously, he checked the fed-up-ometer and it was at seventeen! That's six more than eleven! His face contorted into a snarl. This… this pony should not be acting so nonchalant around all this chaos! It was wrong! It was against everything he expected! It…
…it was chaotic.
Discord blinked. He popped his eyeballs out of his face and wiped them like a pair of glasses before putting them back in. There was no way a pony could handle even a fraction of his chaos, but here was one doing just that. So he did the only illogical thing a spirit of chaos would do in this situation. With a wily grin, he reached forward and pressed a talon to Arca's forehead, channeling his magic into the stallion to flip his personality on its head. Then he floated backwards, and waited.
Arca sat there in his little boat, mouth open as his eyes tried to look up at the point he'd been poked. The color started to drain from his head, creeping its way across his mane and down to his muzzle, the same expression still on his face. Finally, Discord had the stunned reaction he was looking for-
"ACHOO!"
And then Arca sneezed. And then all the drained color shot out of his mouth in that sneeze in the form of a grey cloud. Which hit Discord square in the face.
And then physics kicked back in.
It was a few minutes later that Discord woke up. Suddenly being subject to the laws of physics after eons of ignoring them had left him with a nasty headache due to the distance he'd fallen. It had only been a brief moment, but that orange stallion had somehow managed to 'discord' the draconequus himself! Everything was still colored wrong, but Discord scrambled to his feet to face the pony, who he was now actually worried about for the first time in who knows how long.
"Oh hey noodle dragon!" Arca simply waved from the side of the pink lemonade puddle he was drinking out of with a silly straw. "Glad to see you were awake. Sorry, it's allergy season I guess. Want some lemonade? I'm full." Arca then proceeded to eat the straw because it was made of pasta. Discord just stared. "Also, have you seen any rare potion ingredients lying around? My boss will be mad if I lost them again. Actually, can I have one of your horns? I bet that'd be a rare ingredient."
Discord let out a sigh, stroking his goatee. A force this unpredictable would either be a thorn in his side or a great boon, or both. Thankfully, throwing caution to the wind was practically a requirement of being a chaos spirit. "I'll tell you what, small pony. I'm rather fond of my horn… so how about instead, I teach you about a special ingredient only I know about?"
Arca's face lit up like a hearth's warming tree.
By this point, Discord and Twilight had moved to the garden outside her castle while the draconequus had told his tale, simply due to the fact that it was a nice day. The two were now sitting at a picnic table. "So, what did you teach Arcane, then?"
Discord chuckled at the question. "Well, my dear Snarkle, it turned out the colt had a bit of chaos magic in him even without my influence, so I took him under my wing for a bit. I actually taught him how to use nothing as an ingredient in his concoctions. It was a test to see just how chaotic he was, and do you know what he discovered? Do you? Arcane figured out how to make the actual concept of nothing into an ingredient that can substitute for any one thing. I don't even get exactly how he does it, which makes me both proud AND jealous of him. By the time Sunshine and Moon Moon sealed me away in stone, they had to deal with their number one cause of explosions having much more at his disposal and happy to… ugh, help. Of course, chaos magic is not exactly meant for ponies, so he wasn't exactly stable. Or sane."
"Well." Twilight let out a sigh. "That certainly explains a lot. But, wait. If he can use 'nothing' as an ingredient substitute, AND he can use the philosopher's stone as an ingredient substitute… wouldn't that mean he could create basic, two-ingredient potions from just water? And- if he had a laboratory, which he does, then-"
"And now you see why there isn't a single being short of Faust herself who could outbrew him. Loathe as I am to admit it, he is the best at alchemy. Of course, he could never hold a candle to me in terms of causing chao-"
And then a ferris wheel rotating at high speeds materialized out of thin air, rolling directly over the chaos spirit and coming to a shaky stop shortly after, a little ways away from the two. Twilight was, miraculously, unharmed. Irritated, Discord sprung back up like an accordion in an old cartoon. A little note fluttered down in the air next to him.
Wherever this ends up, I set it to warp to 'somewhere funny'! Please write to Arcane Catalyst at Rainbow Falls to tell me how an out of control ferris wheel is funny.
-Arca
Discord growled. "I am going to-"
He never got to finish his sentence, because the ferris wheel proceeded to topple over and land on top of him, narrowly missing Twilight a second time.
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Woooo! It's alive!
Your puppy is adorable, you should be proud.
yar it be back!
cute dog. also now we see somepony out do discord like its nothing. can we get more? also how would discord handle 'The Duck'?
11293115
Arca wins because he doesn't realize he's even playing.
11293125
oh wow. talk about a walk.
Oh good, the insanity is back! Life was making too much sense in all the wrong ways making it terrifying.
Lmao!
Hey Tonka!
You picked a very cute and by the looks of it, playful/affectionate one.
Glad to see Arca again. Been a bit too sane around here lately.
When the only wining move is not to play
So opposite chaos counteracts each other to create order
The ferris wheel
Here's some fun behind the scenes, by the way:
-I toyed around with what would happen to a discorded Arca for a while. Some rejected ideas were: A) making Arca so utterly bland and boring that Discord almost pukes and undoes it immediately, B) Removing Arca's mental restriction on harvesting ingredients from sapient beings, resulting in him attacking Discord with ruthless efficiency, and C) a future discord time travelling back to desperately stop his past self from ever touching Arca due to some cataclysmic event.
Also, I considered letting arca use 'negative' or 'imaginary' ingredients the same way they are used in complex math as opposed to using 'nothing' as an ingredient, but this makes it simpler.
Fun fact: This means that Arca can make quite a few special potions that only he can brew, because his 'nothing' ingredient can mimic ingredients that don't exist in Equestria or the rest of the world. It's pretty much a cheat code only Arca can pull off.
Noodle dragon? Is Discord related to Sisu by chance?
Also, glad to have you back
Even if it wasn't fine, which it is, all is forgiven because puppy :3
1: I dearly missed this story and am glad to see a return to it.
2: Puppies (and especially Tonka) are adorable.
Nice! We need more Arca and Discord interactions annoying other ponies.
You’re back!
Love the dog, very cute.
The fact that Arca can out-Discord Discord is hilarious.
Welcome back, dear sir!
This was quite the chapter, Discord being out-chaos'd by a pony of all things! I bet that itches his craw something fierce! Hehehehehe!
Arca is funny and puppy is cute. Day is now brightened.
This was amazing!
…
Can Discord “discord” the duck?
Update!
Eeeehh I’d say work is a pretty good excuse
Huzzah \o/
11294822
Amazing story, and something i love about these kinds of stories is that there is so much to read. I still got like 50+ chapters to read :>
11294961
Feel free to comment as you go along! I love seeing that kinda stuff.
The Chaos God gets out-chaosed,
*Discord*
Huh, so that's what it feels like.
You got a cute puppy that's kinda cringe.
11297047 Gotta get ugly pets. The more grotesque and malformed the better! Mine has its brain outside its head! I gave the brain a little cyborg containment pod to house it as it grows. It has started snarling about wanting a new body and being angry at turtles for some reason.
Hail, to the return, of the King of Comedy, the Prince of Puns, and the Lord of Laughter.
With the new additional title of, owner of the one pups
So... what is the potion brewed when Arca mixes: The Elixer of Life, a Miracle flower, and "Nothing" together?
Would it be a substitute potion?
...I am now imagining a Pokemon substitute doll coming out of the cauldron filled with this combination for some reason...
Glad to see you back! Now to reread the story from the beginning!
Tally-ho!
11309515
"I dunno, let's find out!"
distant explosions