Poker Night

by SvenFoxx

10. Chaos For Order

Discord waved a hand. “Anyways, if I’m done being interrupted…” He paused, waiting to see if he would, in fact, be asked anything else. “Majesty was unknowingly tearing at reality through rapid fire wish fulfillment. When I finally realized this, I confronted Order and we both agreed that something had to be done.” He sighed in aggravation. “Predictably, we failed entirely to agree on what should be done.”

“What were the options on the table?” Celestia asked curiously.

“I wanted to retcon her out of reality. Painless and the best way to also fix the current damage. Order wanted to grant her the knowledge of how to control her power perfectly, stopping the sundering of reality and letting her keep her toy. Unfortunately, as Order’s creation and technically her current manifestation point at the time, I couldn’t actually act against Majesty in any direct manner, meaning Order had to agree to my proposal in order for it to happen.” He ran a paw down his face. “And Order, unable to comprehend the limits and failings of a mortal mind, even one of her own creation, decided to ignore my warnings and dump the knowledge directly in her mind. No filters whatsoever.”

Celestia, Twilight, and Luna cringed in unison. “Ow,” they muttered in sympathy.

Discord nodded. “Yeah. That about sums that up. Info dump worked though. Majesty could control her power perfectly now. Problem was her brain got scrambled by it. Her critical thinking and rational processing was fine. Her moral compass, on the other hand, warped… hard.”

“Giving rise to Mad Queen Majesty,” Celestia concluded. “So… it wasn’t her fault?”

Discord wiggled a hand back and forth. “Kinda? Majesty wasn’t the stablest of Unicorns to begin with. Having your every whim attended to does not make a well adjusted pony. She was fairly flakey, and had absolutely no concept of hard work. That said, she tried using her powers to make life easier for her friends and family. She was, ultimately, a well-intentioned fool that just wanted to help her friends… and when Order hit her with the knowledge on controlling her power, it shifted that around a little. She now saw the world for how dangerous it was, and had come to the conclusion that the only way to keep everyone close to her safe was to lock them up and strip them of their freedoms.”

He shrugged at the shocked looks on everyone’s face. “To be perfectly fair, she was right. The only way to protect anyone absolutely is to remove their freewill and lock them up, preventing them from being hurt by others as well as themselves. But ponies value freedom far too much to take that laying down. She took over the Second Kingdom fairly easily, but discovered the hard way that no amount of wish fulfillment would allow her to perfectly usurp the free will of ponies. It was messy when she tried.” He shivered. “Very messy. I couldn’t step in unfortunately, but ponykind found out, to both their surprise and my own, that the ponies chosen by the Hero system I had created were completely immune to her attempts at controlling them through her power. They eventually put her down, ending her reign.”

Luna frowned after a moment, something occurring to her. She decided to keep it to herself though, unsure how Discord would react if she tried to confront him about it.

“Majesty faded from the minds of ponies as centuries went by, and even recorded history didn’t really have many details of the era of Mad Queen Majesty. I think that may have been Order trying to sweep the dirt under the rug. Time marched on again, and I went back to trying to push ponies into striving for greater things. Eventually though I pushed a little too hard on Chaos… and it backlashed on me.” He grimaced. “Take it from me. Chaos isn’t controlled. The absolute best you can hope for is to guide it. Direct the power towards something vaguely resembling what you want, and hope it doesn’t try to eat your face.”

“What, can’t control your own power?” Rainbow asked with a grin.

Discord smirked and snapped his fingers. Rainbow blinked, before realizing she felt different.

Twilight sighed. “Please change her back Discord. The last thing I want to deal with is her trying to find out if Griffons can perform a Sonic Rainboom.”

Discord had turned her into a Griffon. A griffon with Rainbow Dash’s color scheme. Suffice to say it looked kinda weird.

Discord pointed. “Case in point, I was hoping she would turn into a seapony. I got a griffon instead. The intent was to transform her, and she transformed, just not into what I was hoping for.” He waved a hand, and Rainbow was back to normal. “Undoing Chaos is easy. It’s nothing more than me reabsorbing the power I applied to her. Nature reasserts itself, with a little bit of help from the background magical radiation, and pop. Pegasus Rainbow Dash.”

“Isn’t that… dangerous?” Rarity asked.

Discord nodded. “Yep. But only to your sensibilities. If I leave room for random interpretation, my power will do what I want for the most part, but if I try to force the issue on a detailed level… well… let’s just say there’s a reason I got nailed by the Elements in the first place and didn’t just teleport away from them,” he grumbled. He then shrugged. “Second time was a little bit of the same, but I had managed to keep a bit of my power free. Given enough time I would have gotten out on my own a lot quicker than last time.”

Twilight and Celestia exchanged glances with each other and the still red circle. Peter had been right. Discord could have gotten out on his own.

Comments

[badninja]

An interesting story to see return. Now how will this revelation change Celestia and Twilight? Plus how will it affect her at her next appearance at the table?

[Comickook]

REALLY good job on this next chapter. Quite glad to see this story finally get another update. Certainly appreciated the work that went into the dialogue, characterizations and future set-up. Yeah, the greater details on the Majesty story - just plain ouch. But, yeah, Discord proved his point with Rainbow (though Rainbow being a griffon might teach her a bit more empathy for her old friend Gilda prior to "Lost Treasure of Griffonstone") and, yeah, also thought Twilight's reaction to the continuations of Discord's story (as well as the reveal that he COULD have escaped much sooner if he wanted to) was very appropriate.

Most assuredly looking forward to more of this.

[Brandonjl1]

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