Problem Exists Between Map and Assignment: Submission
Moondog’s butt was glowing, and not in the usual way.
A hazy cluster of stars near where her cutie mark would be if she were a pony was flashing. It’d been flashing for the last few dozen dreams. It itched. More strangely, that cluster was always arranged in the same way. Moondog poked them, prodded them, pushed them around, shut them off, pulled them off and threw them away, covered them up, and more. Nothing worked. The stars kept snapping back into position and flash-flash-flashing away like they were a Las Pegasus casino front.
Glaring, the Princess of Dreams asked, “What is your problem, butt?”
Her butt didn’t deign to answer its royal interrogation.
It was day, which meant there weren’t many dreamers around, and eventually Moondog ran out of excuses to not do an in-depth analysis. She dove into the structure of the flash, pulling it apart bit by bit. What she eventually found was something like the notification spells Mom had used to send messages to her or the ones being used in the mailbox. Someone — or something — was trying to contact her.
By making her butt flash. And doing nothing else.
It was with great befuddlement that Moondog went to the next part of her analysis, tracking the source of the spell. The path went this way and that, zigging and zagging in the usual dreamlike ways before going orthogonal and heading straight into…
ugh();
…reality. Again. Rotten zarg barg-a-ding-donging princesshood.
And when she found the source of the spell, she couldn’t even blame that.
With reality eating away at her like a bazillion little leeches sucking at every cubic centimeter of her aether, Moondog stood on the outskirts of Ponyville, glaring at Namepending Castle. (Perhaps Twilight would’ve gotten around to naming it eventually, but now that it wasn’t hers anymore, she never would, and so its name would be Pending in perpetuity.) She knew where this was going. And, hooboy, she did not like the destination. Sadly, her butt would keep flashing if she tried to skip this field trip.
After composing and releasing a sigh, Moondog stepped through the doorway and into the castle without bothering to open the door. She silently stalked through the hallways, muttering angrily under her breath.
“Had to come now, didn’t it? When I’ve got princess duties and I’m in and out of dreams what feels like once a stupid week. I mean, really. I was totally free just a few moons ago! No princessing! I could’ve done it then, easy! But noooooooo, let’s wait until I’m neck-deep in responsibilities! It’ll be fuuuuun!” A sigh. “And I guess that’s the real world, isn’t it? Stuff happens and you can’t control it. …And they all wonder why I hate coming out here. Oh, no reason, it’s just a place I was literally made to not exist in — literally literally — so it’s not like…”
Finally, Moondog reached the map room and threw the doors open with a thundering boom, revealing Starlight and Discord standing at the Cutie Map. “Alright, Starlight,” Moondog said, “tell me what-”
E:\Equestria\Ponyville\Namepending Castle> Stop-Process -Name "dramatic declaration"
Moondog stared at Discord, then spun on the spot. “Nope!” she bellowed as she walked out. “Nope! Nope! Nope! Nope! No-”
She slammed into a throne, her exit having taken her further in for some strange draconequustic reason. “Unfortunately, Accident,” Discord said glumly, “I’m afraid we won’t get off that easily.” He grabbed Moondog’s head and pointed her to look at the Cutie Map. Two mark-like objects were orbiting each other above a certain corner in the southern reaches of Equestria. One was the constellation of stars that was flashing on her rump. The other was an irregular series of eight outward-pointing arrows: the Star of Chaos.
Moondog stared as she reattached her body to her head. “This… This isn’t real, is it?” she asked quietly. She flowed out of Discord’s grasp and grinned nervously at Starlight and Discord. “Which one of you’s pulling my leg?” A friendship problem she could handle (if under protest), but a friendship problem with Discord…
“The castle,” said Discord. He raised an arm; a Star of Chaos was flashing right below his armpit.
“Take it off!” yelped Moondog. “You’re Discord, you can do that! Take it off and you don’t need to come with me!”
Discord’s sigh sounded like a depressed hot air balloon committing suicide. “Oh, Accident. Do you think I haven’t already tried that? Observe.” He peeled the Star from his body, but when he tried to drop it, it clung to his fingers like a booger. He shook his hand; no effect. “The Map is very much smarter than you.”
Although she knew she was going to be scoring gold at straw-grasping, Moondog forced out, “Try harder! Um, please? You can try harder…”
She pretended to not recognize the look Starlight and Discord exchanged. Discord glared flatly at Moondog as he started shaking his hand, faster and faster and faster until it was generating whipcrack-like sonic booms. Then something snapped off, went ricocheting around the room at untrackable speeds, and quickly wound up bouncing out the door. When his arm came to a stop, there was no Star.
“Okay!” Moondog squeaked. (Holy Mom, when had she ever squeaked?) “It’s gone! We don’t need to worry-”
But Discord shook his head. “Oh, no. It’s done this before, and it always comes back, even if I don’t know where just yet.” He pulled his head off to look at the back of his neck. “Let me know if-”
“It’s on your tongue,” said Starlight.
“Is it?” Discord pulled his tongue from his mouth. There was the Star, sitting right beneath the fork, pulsing away. He rolled his eyes, got a yahtzee, and tossed the tongue away. Once he’d pulled a new tongue from his throat, he said, “I give it roughly ten seconds before-” He suddenly winced and clapped a hand to his eye. Delicately, he reached into his pupil and peeled something off his retina: a tiny, flashing Star of Chaos. “Very well,” he huffed at the Map, “She gets the picture.” He slapped the star on his thigh.
Super. Super. SUPER. Moondog made a throat-clearing noise in spite of her lack of a throat. “Um, Starlight? Can, can I talk to you in, in private?”
The pair scooted over to a sufficiently acoustic-poor corner and Moondog was immediately talking. “Do I really need to do this? Can’t I just, I don’t know, let my butt keep flashing for eternity? It’s not even the weirdest thing that’s happened to me in the past twelve hours.”
“We’ve… Hmm.” Starlight frowned at the Map for a moment. “We’ve never… actually thought about that. But the Map is related to the Tree of Harmony in some way, and given what the Tree can do, I’d rather not find out. But what’s the problem? You go out there-”
“Discord. I can’t work with him! He’s- He’s so- I mean… Look at him.” Moondog pointed at Discord.
“I really don’t see why you needed to do it like this,” Discord was saying to the Map. “I’m perfectly capable of-”
“You know that’s just Discord, right?” said Starlight. “Him arguing with a table is practically mundane.”
“It’s not the fact that he’s arguing with a table that concerns me,” hissed Moondog. “It’s the fact that he’s losing.”
“I suppose,” pouted Discord. “But I’m telling your mother about this.” A pause. “Oh, dear interdimensional deities, you cannot be serious.” He hung his head in his hands. “#?*!&@, @*$!&%#, ¡%¿#*¥&…”
Moondog glared at Starlight. Starlight laughed nervously, then coughed and said, “So, uh… that town’s… Windham Gulch, and… I… guess you… better get a move on?”
Moondog brooded at her little cutie mark above the Map. Of course she knew Windham Gulch. She knew just about every town in Equestria. Decent place. Home to some Abyssinians in addition to ponies. Nothing bad had happened there recently that created nightmares. Maybe she’d get lucky and it’d be simple. As if “simple” could describe a situation that required the interjection of both the Princess of Dreams and the Lord of Chaos. Ha ha, maybe.
Sigh. There was really nothing to it. “Alright,” she mumbled. “C’mon, Discord, let’s get-”
“No,” Discord said quietly. “Not yet. We need to talk.” He grabbed Moondog by the tail and slunk out of the throne room.
E:\Equestria\Ponyville\Namepending Castle> Set-Property -Actor Moondog.tntbs -Name gravity -Value 0
“Alright,” Moondog said glumly as she bobbed through the air. “See you, Starlight.” She gave Starlight a final wave before they were gone.
Discord took Moondog out the back door of the castle, onto a screened-in porch (one that Moondog was sure wasn’t there before, but whatever). He released Moondog and folded his arms to look down at her. Moondog returned the look; she almost made herself as tall as him (or even a bit taller), but now wasn’t the time to enter into a horn-measuring contest.
Eventually, Discord said, “So.”
“So,” Moondog replied.
Silence.
“You know,” Moondog said, “you don’t like me and I don’t like you-”
Discord’s grin was weirdly sardonic. “Oh, I don’t know. Some people would say that our endless bickering is obviously a sign of mutual affection.”
Moondog tilted her head. “Seriously? …Some people are idiots.”
“Are you seeing this?” Discord said to the screen, pointing at Moondog. “She’s insulting you.”
Moondog blinked, looked at the door, didn’t see anything, recovered. “We don’t like each other, some people aside. So let’s just shut up and get this done and we can go back to ignoring each other. Mkay?”
“Mkay,” Discord replied. “I’m pleased to see you’ll do everything I say.”
“Whoa, wait, what?” Moondog’s wings sprang open and she jumped into the air to hover right in front of Discord’s face. “You’re in charge of this? Ho, no. Nah-ah. Nope.”
“And, tell me, why shouldn’t I be in charge? Why, it’s not like…” Discord’s body abruptly elongated, contorted; soon, his sinuous coils filled the small space, his head mere inches from Moondog’s. “…I’ve been around since before thoughts were thought of,” he rumbled across infinite frequencies, “and reality itself bends like putty before me.” Grinning crazily, he turned one jaundiced eye on Moondog, bloodshot veins twisting into fractal runes.
Moondog didn’t respond, just stared back at him. You could technically say the same things about nocnice, considering their metaphysics, and she faced down those every night without a problem.
Discord eyed Moondog for another moment, then shrank back to his usual size. “You, on the other hand, aren’t even three years old yet and you somehow manage to struggle at merely existing. My experience so outclasses yours it’s not even funny (not that I won’t laugh anyway).” He tapped his temple. “Calculus.” He gestured at Moondog. “Amoeba.”
“Please,” snorted Moondog. “Experience is only relevant if you learn something from it, and let’s not beat around the bush: you’re an idiot. You have literally never made a multi-step plan that’s worked. I’m not totally sure you’ve made a single-step plan that’s worked.”
“Fluttershy’s gift for last Hearth’s Warming,” Discord said promptly. “The winterchilla? I’m sure you saw it at some point in your snooping.”
That got a pause from Moondog. “Okay, point. But that’s once, all it does is keep you from whiffing existence.”
“You’re exaggerating,” huffed Discord, “and comical exaggeration is my purview.” He stroked his beard for the briefest of moments. “Tell you what: if you can name but three times my plans crashed and burned to a downright unreal degree-” He held up three fingers, twisted into a number 3. “-I will permit you to lead us.”
Easy. “Well, for starters, remember that time you tried hosting a tea party and almost killed yourself in the process?” Moondog swiped at her neck and her head popped off. Balancing it on a wingtip, she continued, “That takes a special kind of inept. And you shouldn’t’ve even done it like that in the first place, because Fluttershy likes you for you, not some staid, straight-laced version of you.”
Discord glowered at the screen, muttering, “Oh, I see where this scene is going…”
Moondog took another look at the door. Perfectly normal screen door. She pushed the thought out of her mind as she plopped her head back on her neck. “And then there’s the way you tried to take over Equestria when you were first released again. Step 1: steal and hide the Elements of Harmony. Step 2: take over the country without any pesky heroes to stop you. Pretty clever, as villain plans go, but step 3 should not be ‘tell the heroes exactly where to find the Elements’!”
“Step 4 was ‘mentally destroy the heroes with their own flaws’, you know.”
“Yeah, but it stopped there! You let them go fix themselves! Your scheme unraveled because of mail! You didn’t even have the decency to lie to Twilight and the gang about where the Elements were!”
Discord broke out into a huge grin. “I’ll keep that in mind next time I try to take over Equestria!” he said cheerfully, jotting down notes. “What was that, again?”
Sigh. “When you hide the villain-beating artifacts, lie about where they are.”
“Perfect. You still need to name one more, by the way.”
E:\Equestria\Ponyville\Namepending Castle> Set-Appearance Moondog.tntbs Grogar.rm
“Here’s an idea,” Moondog growled, stroking his beard. “Let’s gather Equestria’s latest villains together. Let’s tell them where to find a magic-nullifying artifact. Let’s make it the actual artifact, not a fake.”
Discord turned infrared as the pen and notepad melted from his grip. “Okay,” he said in a small voice. “You… have a point.”
“Plans are part of order, and as you so looooove to remind everyone, you’re chaos. You and plans go together like Rarity and plaid. Actually, Rarity can make plaid work if she has to.”
Discord folded his arms again and looked back into the castle, drumming his fingers on his fur (they were timpani drums). “Very well,” he said eventually. “If only to get this farce of a chapter over more quickly, I will allow myself to submit to your control. But remember this…” He whirled back on Moondog, his pupils twitching and writhing. “It is only by my grace that-”
“Yeah, yeah, you’re letting this happen, and if you wanted to, you could take me down in a second.” Moondog waved a leg dismissively. “Honestly? I’ll take even that as a victory.” She ploofed back to her normal shape. “You can make suggestions, but I reserve veto power and the right to call you a dumb stupid dummy dumb.”
Discord held up a jar of aloe vera. “Well, I’m happy to know I won’t need this.” He tossed the jar over his shoulder. A cat yowled.
“Good. Then let’s get going.”
“Actually-”
E:\Equestria\Ponyville\Namepending Castle> Set-Location $mapDestination
Set-Location: the path defined by '$mapDestination' exists, but can't be accessed yet because you don’t have the proper permissions or whatever balderdash you usually use. In short: because I say so. ❤, DiscordDiscord sighed. “Oh, come here.” He grabbed Moondog by the head and raised a hand.
“Whoa, wait.” Moondog attempted to flow out, but Discord’s magic prevented that. “What’re you-”
E:\> dis.cordrun();
Moondog actually felt better when Discord released her, more like she was back in dreams. All the leeches were gone, at any rate. “If we absolutely must work together,” Discord said, “the least I can do is ensure you can use magic() properly. You were so… inelegant.” He glanced at the screen. “That’s Piet, by the way.”
“Seriously, what are you looking at?” Moondog asked, staring at the door. “You’ve been doing that a lot. And why’d you make a hole in spacetime with your voice?”
“This is why.” Discord tapped one of the non-door walls. He tapped the wall leading back into the castle. He tapped the other non-door wall. And then he punched a hole right through the wall with the screen, breaking it. He waggled his eyebrows at the screen.
foreach (Joint j IN joints) {
j.roll();
}“Well, thanks, anyway,” Moondog said. She flexed all over; no problems whatsoever. Stars above, she was actually thankful for something Discord did.
“Now. Windham Gulch,” said Discord. “Perhaps we should mail ourselves there? It’s all the rage.”
“Mail ourselves.”
“Oh, you know. Use the post. You and I, in close proximity together, for days, with only each other for company…”
“…No, we are not shipping ourselves.”
Discord smirked at the screen. Then he snapped his fingers and they were gone.
Moondog decided that Discord wasn’t going to be needlessly belligerent when she popped back into existence without a splitting headache. She felt just as fine as in dreams, in fact. Although she didn’t feel quite like usual, more like-
She quickly looked over her shoulder. She was a normal pony — a unicorn, to be precise — with a soft blue coat and a dark purple mane and tail, both a bit shapeless. Her cutie mark was the same constellation of stars that had been flashing minutes before. For a moment, Moondog felt ready to panic; Discord hadn’t flat-out taken her powers away, had he?
self.setAppearance(DEFAULT); undo();
With no trouble at all, she slipped into her original form before going back to the pony. Huh. He really was restraining himself. But why put her in this shape at all?
“Disguise, obviously,” she heard Discord say. A brown-coated unicorn with a sharp beard, his black mane and tail streaked with gray, trotted into view. “If we looked like us, we’d be swarmed by adoring fans, magnificent as I am and unmistakable as you are. And that would throw quite the monkey wrench into our map mission, wouldn’t you say? Something I’d normally be in favor of, but that would mean spending more time with you. So…” He waved a hoof up and down himself. “…real ponies.”
“Good decision,” Moondog said. “Thanks for not going too far with the ‘real pony’ thing, Discord.”
Even snaggletoothed, Discord’s grin almost looked charming on a pony face. “Discord? I’m Jaunty Lancey, I don’t know who you’re talking about. He sounds really really really ridiculously good-looking, though.”
“You know practically every pony knows who Discord is by now, right?”
“I’m an idiot right now.”
“As opposed to when you’re an idiot every other time?”
“Precisely!”
Moondog rolled her eyes, then took in where they were. The two of them were standing on a hill above Windham Gulch, a small, hardscrabble town in the foothills of a mountain. The land was sparse, not dissimilar to the flats around Appleloosa, except for an orchard and a few impressively large tracts of farmland that were clearly the result of earth pony magic. Above the town, Moondog could make out a few structures that were the beginnings of mining tunnels. In all, nothing she didn’t expect from an out-of-the-way small town. (What was it with friendship missions and out-of-the-way small towns? Starlight’s village, Sire’s Hollow, Kirin Grove, whatever was up with the Hooffields and McColts…)
As they set off towards Windham, Discord said, “Now, since you’ve taken it on yourself to take up the reins (hardy har), what’s your plan of action?”
“Bumble around like an idiot until I find some ponies who look like they were once friends but now need help.” Moondog looked over at Discord (who, she noticed for the first time, was still taller than her). “Feel free to needle me for my lack of planning, but the price of admission is a better plan.”
“Then today’s your lucky day, because I haven’t got one. I’ve never done this before.”
“Go on a map mission or interact with ponies on their own level?”
“Yes.”
“Same here.”
“Can we stop talking before we end up discovering more commonalities and bonding?”
“Oh, Mom, that’d be awful. Shutting up.”
They walked. Dirt crunched beneath their hooves. Windham grew closer.
“You should’ve teleported us into some back alley.”
“In hindsight, yes. I suppose we needed a dramatic establishing shot.”
“The view was pretty nice.”
Sniff. “It was acceptable.”
Plod. Plod. Plod.
“Why don’t we split up?” asked Discord. “Surely even you can tell when ponies are on the outs with each other. We’ll cover more ground that way, and this manner of thinking is acceptable since we’re not walking into some psychotic slasher’s lair, as far as I can tell. Yes,” he added, preempting Moondog’s suspicious look, “I’ll keep any ruckus generation to a minimum. Draconequus’s honor.”
“Which might mean something if you had any honor,” said Moondog. “Or were a draconequus.”
“Oh, you know what I- Penitent’s honor.”
“Good enough.”
self.setAppearance(WINGS.Default); self.getWings().setVisibility(0);
Flexing her unseen wings, Moondog said, “So how do you want to do it? Me take north half, you take south half?”
“Oh, no,” said Discord. “I’ll take the southern quarter-”
Before Moondog could protest, a pegasus stepped out from behind Discord, looking close enough to him that the two could be related. In Discord’s voice, without missing a second, the new pony continued, “-and I’ll take the western quarter-”
Another not-quite duplicate, this one an earth pony stepped into view. “-and I’ll take the eastern quarter.”
Moondog looked over the trio one at a time, then glanced off to the side. “And you’ll take the northern quarter?” she asked tentatively.
An alicorn in an absurd sort of judge’s outfit leaned into view where Moondog was looking. “Don’t be absurd,” he scoffed, “I have spacefaring mariners to trade barbs with.” And he was gone.
“Worth a shot,” Moondog said with a shrug. “Northern quarter for me, then.”
As Discord trotted off and Discord flew off, Discord said, “Let’s go with the usual cliché and meet at the center of town in… shall we say an hour? I’d love to be able to spend an hour away from you.”
“An hour away from you it is, then. Now scram.”
“And scram from your presence I shall!” Discord practically galloped away and was gone in seconds.
For a moment, Moondog faux-breathed deeply, taking in the gorgeous lack of Discord. Then she looked around, at each direction Discord had left in, and a tiny bit of envy twinged in what qualified as her heart. “Note to self,” she mumbled. “Find out how Discord does that self-duplication thing.”
“What was that I heard?” Yet another, now-draconequustic Discord popped into existence, propping himself up on her head. “You wanted to learn some magic from moi? Really, I’d think that being in two places at once would be second nature for someone like you. Once you stop making time look like a straight line and think of it more like a big ball of wibbly-wobbly, timey-wimey, Jeremy-Bearimy stuff, it’s quite simple.”
“So… you gonna tell me how it works? Or what Jeremy-Bearimy is?”
Discord smiled broadly. “No!”
“Screw you too, buddy.”
“Only on my birthday!” Poof.
pfft();
Moondog strode into Windham Gulch with her head high and her mind blank. How did those ponies always manage to stumble on whatever problem the Map threw at them within twenty minutes or whatever? Hay, when Starlight had gone to Canterlot for a friendship mission, the literal first thing she’d done had been to ask Mom and Aunt Celly about any possible friendship problems they knew of, and surprise surprise, guess who was having the problem?
Well, she had a few spells that could gauge the emotional state of the dreamer (not that she needed them much anymore, not with better-honed observational skills). If Discord had really altered her to work in reality, they might work on real ponies (and the Abyssinians who also made Windham their home). It wouldn’t be perfect, but finding ponies who were angry at one another would at least filter it down from the entire town. So…
foreach (Actor v IN villagers) {
v.getEmotionalState();
}
return:
--StackOverflowException eMoondog flinched as pain lanced through her head, made all the worse from a general lack of feeling it in ages. Definitely not; the sheer number of ponies was overwhelming the spell. Of course, it’d been made with only a few ponies in mind in the first place, and the fact that it was more than just one at all was only because Mom liked to overengineer things. Oh, well. Worth a shot.
Except for the consequences. Moondog didn’t like headaches at the best of times, and gravity not being a figment of her imagination out here made it worse. Blinking away stars, she staggered over to a nearby bench and dropped onto it. Pretend to breathe in… Pretend to breathe out… In… Out. Why did that work when she wasn’t actually doing anything?
“Hey. Are you okay?” A sleek pegasus mare had noticed her and walked over to examine her with concern. “You looked like you were going to fall over for a second there.”
Moondog recognized her immediately: Silky Mist, a mare with quite a bit of low-key stress sprinkled around her life that only occasionally sprouted up into nightmares, and never to any great degree. An easy-to-please repeat customer, so to speak. “I’m fine,” she said. “Bad headache all of a sudden.”
“You’re sure?”
“Yeah.”
After a moment, Silk nodded. “Alright. Um… excuse me for asking, but you’re new here, right?”
Right. Windham was the “everybody knows everybody” sort of town. Of course Silk would recognize an outsider on lack-of-recognition-on-sight. “You could say that,” Moondog replied. “Maybe I’ve been here before.” She waved a hoof back and forth. “I’ve been all over.”
Silk laughed. “Even if that’s true, either it’s your first time here, you live here, or you’re here for trade. It’s your first time, Ms…?”
random.randName(SPECIES.Pony);
“Figment.” Moondog shrugged. “And at the moment, I’m just sort of around.” She looked behind Silk at what qualified as main street. “Small town, this.”
“Oh, like that’s a bad thing! I never liked cities. I could pass by hundreds of ponies every day and not know a single one. You never feel quite so alone as when you’re in a crowd. But here, I know ninety-five percent of the people, and I’m working on the other five.”
A flash of inspiration came to Moondog. “So you know anyone I should…” She lowered her voice. “…watch out for while in town? In a bad mood or something? Got a bad deal in trading, house-building not going according to plan, spats with friends?”
Silk’s smile slipped away almost immediately, replaced by four parts confusion to one part suspicion. “Um…”
“No offense, but bad fights in small towns are the worst,” Moondog stage-whispered. “You can’t avoid the people having the fight, then everyone starts taking sides, and what should’ve been personal grows until it’s…” She stretched her hooves far apart, remembering to keep the distance anatomically possible, and made a face. “…wleh.” She wasn’t making that up. Small-town strife like that was thankfully rare in Equestria, but when it hit, it hit hard, creating clusters of repetitive dreams that Moondog hated having to clean up.
Silk’s expression shifted to four parts confusion, one part mollified. “Well…” She tapped her chin and nibbled on her lip. “Don’t think so, no… Tabitha’s claiming she got a bad potion from Cork Stopper, but they’re hashing it out…” (Moondog discounted those two; based on their dreams, they’d never been close enough to have much of a friendship problem in the first place.) “Sheffield and Nimble Wind were yelling about something yesterday…” (They’d both had guilt dreams about it last night and had probably already made up.) “Rep and… This… isn’t what you wanted to hear, right?” Silk laughed, semi-nervously.
“Actually, the town sounds great, if that’s the worst of your problems.” Which was in itself a problem when the map mission depended on something in the town being not great, but oh well. Moondog stretched her legs and stood up. “Thanks for caring, but I’ve got to get going. Get some exercise, clear my head up.” She tapped her temple. “I’m feeling better.”
“If you’re sure,” Silk said. She gave Moondog one last look of near-concern, then smiled. “Well, it was nice meeting you.”
“You, too.” Although did it really qualify as “meeting” when Moondog had been into her dreams countless times in the past year? Eh, probably. Face-to-face talking and all that. “Stay safe, and don’t forget to put the potatoes in the oven before your parents show up.” She’d been stressing about that for a while.
Silk did a double-take. “Wait, how did you know that?”
Moondog grinned and tapped the side of her nose. “Cold reading.” And she walked away whistling before Silk could think about that too much.
Thus began the meander. Moondog was used to it. It was basically how dream patrols worked: get a good feel for the dreamscape, head over to where she thought she was needed the most, do her thing. Except she didn’t know a physical thing about Windham to get a good feel for it, she had no idea where she was needed the most, and she didn’t know what her thing was that needed to be done. It wasn’t that different from when she’d only been a few moons old and didn’t have anything like a system, but sheesh. There was a reason she’d grown out of it.
The northern quarter was mostly residential, so Moondog wandered up and down the roads, oohing and aahing at the (genuinely) pretty houses and feeling useless in the process. She didn’t feel any bad vibes anywhere, or at least not friendship-problem-bad vibes (and as a mental being, Moondog knew her vibes).
After not quite an hour, Moondog was sorely missing the semi-meaningfulness of dreams. A lot of the time, the confusing cavalcade of images the mind spat out meant something. Not always something important, but something nonetheless. You could pick apart dreams, assigning meaning to this or that element. Here… wleh, you had nothing. The house over there was a house over there was a house over there, nothing more. Yet, more than once, Moondog found herself staring at unusually-shaped rocks under a habit-powered belief that they meant something, simply because they were unusually-shaped.
The few conversations she had weren’t much help, either. Any questions of tensions between friends garnered confusion at best, but usually denials. There didn’t even seem to be any species animosity between the ponies and Abyssinians. She’d figured all that from dreams, but it was still lousy to get all that thrown right in her face. It was like the entire town was permanently laid-back.
Eventually, Moondog’s time ran out and she wandered back over to the town square. With ponies and Abyssinians passing this way and that, it was hard to properly look for Discord. Moondog squinted through the crowds, but a brown unicorn wasn’t going to be very remarkable in this company. Come to think of it, after splitting up, there was no guarantee that Discord would still be a-
“You’re not very good at this,” a voice came from behind her, “are you, Figment?”
“I thought you said we should split up, Lance,” Moondog said as she turned around. Singular unicorn Discord was looking disapprovingly at her. “Were you following me?” Even though he could’ve been following her and going over his three quarters at the same time.
“No, I just looked a dozen and a half paragraphs back,” said Discord. “So I also know you accomplished as much as I did: nothing.”
“Really?” Moondog groaned and rubbed her head. “Of all the… C’mon, let’s get to that teahouse. If we have to spend time together, it might as well be with some comfort food.”
A waiter took their orders almost as soon as they sat. Moondog chose a jasmine tea, Discord picked one at random and wound up with a special called Kickback Kombucha. The two laid out what little information they had, which was completely exhausted by the time their teas arrived. Moondog stared into her cup and made no move to drink it. With the way their luck was going, it wouldn’t even qualify as hot leaf juice. “Any ideas?”
“Insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting different results, you know. On the other hoof, going insane might make you more interesting.”
How long had they been treading water like this? It felt like ages. Moondog had never accomplished so little in so long. With a sigh, she mumbled, “Why us?”
“Torment.”
“The Tree of Harmony would do that, maybe, but not the Cutie Map. Whenever it sends someone, it’s because that person and only that person can properly resolve the friendship problem. So: why you? And why me?”
“Does it really matter that much?”
“It might! I mean, dreams!” Moondog tapped both her temples. “Everyone has them! So what’s so important about dreams for a certain few people here that I’m needed? And what’s so dramatic that you’re needed and not one of the uberpower unicorns in Twilight’s circle?”
“To be fair, any event can be improved with more of me.” Discord ran a hoof through his mane and smiled.
Moondog snorted and looked into town, drumming her hoof on the tabletop. Just what was she missing? Some little spark here or there that would show her the way to the friendship problem and let her get away from Discord faster. If it was in the ponies and Abyssinians walking this way and that, she couldn’t see it. “I’m trying to think,” she muttered. “Let me know if you get any brainstorms.”
“If I must.” Discord idly took a sip of his tea.
And immediately spat it back out with enough force to punch a hole straight through Moondog’s leg and the table both. He stared at his cup with his ears up rigidly straight and his pupils the size of pinpricks in shock.
“That’s called ‘tea’, Lance,” said Moondog. “Maybe you’ve-”
“It’s not just tea,” Discord growled. Actually growled, low enough that Moondog was sure she could feel it. “There’s-” He blinked and leaned back, staring at the cup. When he spoke again, his mouth didn’t move and his voice went directly into Moondog’s head without passing through her ears. <There’s something in the tea.>
Moondog blinked and only barely managed to keep herself from yelling out in surprise. <What do you mean?> she asked. <What’s in there?>
<Witchweed.>
<…Is that supposed to mean something to me?>
Discord rolled his eyes. <Back when I first graced Equestria with my presence, I thought it might be interesting to have my place at the top not be guaranteed. I created witchweed as a way to nullify my powers, force me to get creative with omnipotence.>
<You gave yourself a weakness. For fun.>
<Well, if I knew I would always win, that’s not chaotic anymore, is it? Obviously.> Discord blew a raspberry at Moondog. <I have an image to maintain, after all. Witchweed granted chaos magic to those who could properly use it while canceling out my own.>
<So why haven’t I heard about it?>
Discord’s eyes narrowed. <Please stop interrupting my exposition. I hardly placed it everywhere, Accident. Someone who found it had to be worthy of it. I gave them clues, hints, an epic-if-clichéd quest… Oh, it was going to be so fun, creatures with magic they could barely control, going up against one with unparalleled control who was technically far less powerful.> A sigh. <Then Celestia and Luna had to butt in with the Elements. Killed the mood worse than Twilight and her friends did Sombra. And no one ever found the witchweed, to boot. Tell me, what’s the point in setting up a quest if nopony ever grabs the hooks to start- Ooooo. That’s why Spike was angry at last week’s O&O session.>
Moondog stared. <What does Spike have to do with this?!>
<Disappointing reference humor.>
<Never mind. So this… witchweed. How dangerous is it to ponies? Or Abyssinians?>
With something resembling a grin, Discord said, <Not remotely. It’s just broadleaf plantain with a few extra quirks. And, in fact, the amount in here-> His teacup spun around on the table. <-is so diluted it won’t do much more than make your snot glow, if that. Mostly, it’s the “kickback” in “Kickback Kombucha”. I wouldn’t be surprised if our proprietor doesn’t truly know what it is.> He squinted at the cup. <I just don’t know what it’s doing here…>
A bell went off in Moondog’s head. <Maybe it’s related to the friendship problem? Part of the reason you were chosen?> If that was true, to think their first lead would be based on tea.
<To be Mr. Exposition? I should hope not.> Discord lowered one of his ears. <And now I’m wondering if this truly is a friendship problem. Sometimes, the Map mistakes large-scale Equestria problems for friendship problems.>
<Does it?>
<Of course. The very first one. What sort of friendship problem did our old friend Starlight have while she was still a dictatress?>
<Point. Alright, we’ll leave that as an option. So we just need->
Cough. “Um.” The waiter was back, shifting his weight from paw to paw as he watched them. “I… don’t want to interrupt whatever… staring contest you’re having,” he said, “but, ah…” He held up a slip of paper. “Your bill.”
“Of course,” Discord said smoothly. He plucked the bill from the waiter’s paw, gave it quick once-over, then levitated a small pile of coins over.
After counting the coins, the waiter nodded. “Thank you for coming and have a nice day.” He gave Moondog and Discord one last look, then walked away, his flicking back and forth thoughtfully.
“Were those real bits?” whispered Moondog, leaning over the table.
“Of course,” Discord said airily. “Your real bits, as a matter of fact.”
It took Moondog a few seconds to get it. “But- How- Did you go into my royal coffers?”
“Well, I certainly wasn’t going to hope the cafe accepted credit, then be forced to fill out an expense account for this business trip, then hope my self-appointed boss actually approved that account.” Discord smirked. “Time is money, you know, and by stealing directly from you, we’re saving time.”
Groaning, Moondog slouched over the table. It was the kind of roundabout logic that made just enough sense for Discord to exploit. Not like she could do anything about it, either. “Fine,” she muttered. “Just… don’t do it again, okay?”
“I will make no such promises.”
“Then don’t spend too much at once, okay?”
“No such promises.”
“…At least don’t hit Equestria’s financial system with an overdraft.”
Discord’s grin grew even wider. “No. Such. Promises.”
self.setVolume(0.1);
for (i IN range(10)) {
self.setLanguage(LANGUAGE.Random);
curse();
}“Hivyo sasa-” began Moondog. She blinked and shook her head.
self.setLanguage(LANGUAGE.Ponish);
“So now,” she said, “we just need to find wherever they get the witchweed from.” She looked at the door to the teahouse. “Wonder if they’d tell us…”
“Tell Lance and Figment? Never,” said Discord. When he smiled, his teeth were remarkably sharp. “But tell Discord and Princess Accident? Oh, absolutely.”
“Whoa, hey,” said Moondog. “You’re not going anywhere near them. You’d scare whatever pants they were wearing off of them.”
“…So?”
“So we’re not needlessly terrifying ponies for you to get your kicks!”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s cruel!”
“Tell you what. Let’s flip a coin.” Discord spun a coin out from behind his ear. “Heads, I do it.” He showed an image of himself as a draconequus smiling a winning smile. “Tails, you do it.” He flicked the coin around to display an image of Moondog’s rump.
That was going to be the most Discord would concede, wasn’t it? Sigh. “Fine,” said Moondog. “But no magic.”
Discord smiled guilelessly. “Wouldn’t dream of it.” And he flipped the coin high into the air.
As the coin arced through the air and spun end over end, Moondog watched it carefully. As far as she could tell, it was behaving all the laws of physics, but even Discord could be subtle once in twenty blue moons. It spun and spun and spun and she stuck out a hoof, catching it perfectly. She’d never been happier to see her butt.
“Ha!” said Moondog. She held the coin up for no one to see. “Tai-”
A certain tufted tail was already disappearing into the teahouse. “Sun blast it,” sighed Moondog, and slunk in after him.
Only to immediately get beaned in the face by a flying teapot.
Full-draconequus Discord was trying and failing to hide in one corner of the room, one of his hands up to shield himself from the oncoming flurry of chinaware. He was already utterly splattered with steaming-hot tea, which seemed to actually be hurting him from the way he was wincing. And that was all Moondog could take in when she got brained with a full cast-iron kettle.
“Are you with him?” yelled the brewer, a unicorn with a satin sash and apparently a huge chip on her shoulder (Moondog recognized her as Pearl Gray). She pulled back a cutting board, ready to lay down a smackdown with it. “You’ve got ten seconds to leave!”
“How did you get her this peeved in like two seconds?” Moondog whispered to Discord.
“Six!”
“I don’t know!” Discord whispered back. “She just-”
“Three!” Pearl drew her board back.
self.setAppearance(self.getDefaultAppearance());
foreach (Item i IN kitchen.getItems()) {
i.repair();
}Pearl faltered as Moondog shed her Figment disguise and everything started fixing itself around them. “Um,” she said as her magical grip on the board faltered. “I… didn’t know it was you, Your Highness.” A pause, then she drew the board back further. “Are you with him?”
“Yes, but under protest,” said Moondog. “It’s complicated.”
Pearl’s eyes narrowed, but she lowered the board and didn’t wallop a diarch on the noggin, so that was a plus.
“Just one question and we’ll be out of your mane,” Moondog continued. “You know the Kickback Kombucha?”
“Of course,” Pearl nigh-snarled. “It’s my own recipe. Question not a goddess in her own kitchen.”
Yep. That was Pearl. “What’s the secret ingredient?” Moondog asked. “We, uh… Well, it’s important. Maybe for the safety of Equestria.”
“Mmhmm.” Pearl snorted. “As if that oaf ever cared about the safety of Equestria.” She waved the board threateningly at Discord.
“I do!” Discord protested. “Usually! Sometimes!”
“He has a weird way of showing it, but he does,” said Moondog. “Usually. Please? I can make it up to you tonight.”
Pearl gave Moondog a long look. “You helped Lipton sleep last week, right?”
“Of course! That recital was really stressing him out. How’d that go, by the way?”
“Good.” Pearl smiled a little. “Very, very good. …There’s an earth stallion who comes down from the mountains every few weeks with enchanted plants. Green mane, brown coat. Rep. Don’t know where he is at the moment, but I bet you could find him if you ask around.”
“Perfect, tha-”
Up came the board again. “Now get out of my teahouse!” Pause. “Your Highness.”
Even with the knowledge that nothing out here could hurt her, Moondog took a step back, Pearl was so fierce. “Onelastthing!” she said. “We, uh, don’t want ponies to know we’re here, so do you think you could keep this between us? Please? You know, off the record, on the QT, and very hush-hush.”
“Only if you get that idiot out of here in the next-”
Moondog teleported herself and Discord into the (thankfully empty) alley behind the teahouse. She shot a look up at Discord. “What happened?”
“I honestly don’t know,” Discord said. He dabbed at his still-damp face, only to bite back a gasp. “She saw me, screamed out, You!, and decided it was time to practice her arteallery skills on my face. And you know what was in the first thing she threw at me? Kickback Kombucha.”
“With the witchweed that kills your power.”
“Indeed.” He snapped his fingers, to no effect. “I don’t suppose you-”
“-have any idea what was up with her? Eh, maybe. From what she said, I guess she doesn’t like the way you’re kinda responsible for a lot of Equestria’s near-apocalypses recently. And she’s always had a bit of a temper problem.”
“Hmph.” Discord wiped at his face in a meager attempt to dry himself off. “I meant, I don’t suppose you-”
“-can accomplish this on my own, since you’re out of commission? I can give it a shot. My powers aren’t that different from yours, now that you juiced them up.”
“Very good, but I don’t suppose you-”
“Yeah, you’re right, we don’t want to look like this for too long.” With a twist of magic, Moondog and Discord were Figment and Lance again. “There we go.”
Discord glared at Moondog. Moondog looked wide-eyed at Discord. Discord reluctantly snickered, then winced. “This hurts,” he pouted.
“So now you know what it feels like.” Moondog carefully prodded at the tea; she felt a little jolt of magic, but nothing worse. When she scooped it off, nothing burned. “Drinking this won’t kill me, will it?”
“It shouldn’t,” Discord said as he shifted through dozens of different forms. “It only takes away my magic.”
“Hmm.” Moondog let the tea drop. “Now we gotta find where this Rep guy is. Let’s hope it won’t take an hour this time.”
“Oh, wonderful. You’ve jinxed it.”
One minute, thirty-seven seconds later…
“See that path?” said Gully. Said path wound off, away from Windham, up the nearby slopes. “He lives in a cave at the end of it. But be careful, okay? He doesn’t like visitors.”
“Thanks for the warning,” said Moondog. “Be seeing you.” She gave Gully a salute and set off down the path, Discord in tow.
Once they were some distance away from Windham, Moondog turned to Discord, smirking. “You said I jinxed it.”
“I did not,” Discord said, looking every way at once except at Moondog.
“Did too. I said I hoped it wouldn’t take an hour-”
“I did not.”
“-and you said I jinxed it-”
“I did not.”
“-and it didn’t even take two minutes.”
“I did not.”
“C’mon. Admit it. Here’s your fork.”
“Oh, all right, if you insist.” Discord reluctantly snatched up the fork and ate his words. “Now, let’s cut this trip short.” He reached out and tugged the end of the road closer, letting them hop over to it.
The path ended at the mouth of a cave — not a particularly big one, but plenty ominous. The howling wind echoed out and the temperature dropped once Moondog set foot in it. But all she felt was satisfaction. “Spooky cave lair of a villain?”
“Spooky cave lair of a villain. Equestria problem?”
“Equestria problem.”
Moondog kept her ears peeled as they walked into the mountain. There wasn’t much to hear, but she didn’t want to blunder into Rep by accident just because she wasn’t paying attention to footsteps. Then she smacked herself and let her body evaporate. Why bother making noise and walking when you didn’t need to?
<I was wondering when you’d do that.> Discord was slinking soundlessly across the cavern walls as a shadow. <For someone who’s supposed to be stealthy in her job, you are… not.>
<I cheat,> Moondog replied. <Most ponies aren’t lucid when I’m on the job.>
<So take away the lucidity of Rep and anyone else in this mountain and we’ll be in business. Enough to form an LLC, even.>
<Bad form out here.>
<Have I ever told you you’re no fun?>
<…I don’t think you have, actually. Not in those specific words, anyway. Sure, it’s been implicit, but->
<Well, you’re no fun. There. Now it’s explicit. Not the form of explicit that’d change the rating, though.>
Moondog was about to reply when words drifted up from the back of the cave. Words spoken by… definitely not a mare, they were too raspy. But a woman’s voice. What species, though…
“-told you to stop selling my witchweed!”
“They were the less potent strains! You said we didn’t need them, and we do need money!” A male’s voice, but not exactly a stallion’s. It had more bass than usual. It almost sounded like a young dragon.
“I never said that!”
“Yes, you did! Tuesday two weeks ago, after lunch!”
“Tuesday? I… I don’t… remember Tuesday… It was right after the latest batch finished brewing…”
“Didn’t you say you’d stop testing the potion for a week?”
“I… I just needed to try one more-”
“Oh, Catrina…”
Moondog and Discord gave each other looks as only disembodied entities could, then blipped to the end of the tunnel. A vast cavern was spread out before them, methodically chiseled and worked and smoothed until it was close to a room in a castle, nearly homely. It was filled with strange pumping and pressing machinery chugging away; whatever its end goal was, Moondog couldn’t tell. Tables and desks with alchemical instruments and gear of all sorts were scattered around, occasionally lined with notes. Other caves branched off from the room, going to who knew what. But Moondog only paid attention to the two people inside.
A tall, scrawny Abyssinian and a teenaged dragon were at one end of the machines. The Abyssinian was wearing a somewhat tattered but still surprisingly glamorous red robe. Her mane (was that the right term?) was long, flowing, and a vivid orange, contrasting sharply with her chocolate-brown coat. The dragon was taller than Smolder, but only by maybe half a head, and that was if you were being generous. His scales were a muddy brown with a pale underbelly and he wore a bipedal version of a green squire’s outfit, complete with little pointy helmet. The Abyssinian was slouched near a pipe, her eyes fixed on the bowl beneath it but her ears turned towards the dragon. The dragon was massaging his forehead like he was at the end of his rope about something.
<A-ha,> Discord said. <Bingo enough for the old ponies’ home. Spooky cave lair of a villain.>
<Quiet,> Moondog whispered. (Stupid reflexes, telling her to stay quiet when she was already perfectly silent.) <What’re they doing?>
“Catrina,” the dragon said in a strained voice. “I appreciate what you’re doing for me, but… it’s not working. You’ve been at this for-”
“Not long enough, Rep!” the Abyssinian growled. But it was thin, forced. “I’m almost there, I know it!”
“You’ve been almost there and knowing it for the past four years!” protested the dragon. (Wasn’t Rep supposed to be a pony?) “Forget taking a break, when was the last time you went outside? Just for a walk while the potion was brewing?”
“Five moons ago, and that was before I cut five minutes from the brewing time! Every second the potion sits there without us testing it is a second wasted!”
“Is it?”
Catrina’s ears went rigid and she whirled on Rep, snarling. “With what it can do? Absolutely! We can’t just let it sit here! Even at its most basic, it-”
Rep snorted. “Yeah, yeah, it can give me changeling magic. I know, you won’t shut up about it! Now, don’t get me wrong, I appreciate that, but I’d rather know you’re happy than be able to shapeshift.”
“I’ll be happy when my potion is perfected! Just a few more trials-”
“We used to play badminton,” Rep said forlornly. “I can’t remember the last time we played badminton. Do you have any idea how hard it is to find someone who’ll play badminton with a dragon? I- miss you!”
For a moment, that seemed to give Catrina pause. Her snarl became less snarly and words caught in her mouth. Then the machine behind her burped out a puff of smoke and her attention was on it like it was about to tell her the meaning of life. A few gloopy drops of green liquid dribbled into a bowl. Moondog wasn’t impressed, but Catrina looked like a cavecat who’d just discovered fire.
“At last!” she crowed. She snatched up the bowl and scurried over to one of the tables. With an eyedropper, she quickly separated the meager amount of potion into several test tubes. One of them, she hurriedly drank, lapping at it like it was water and she was dying of thirst. Before it was gone, she started growing, bigger and bigger, until she was soon twice her normal size.
<Hmm. Potions. That’s one way to do it,> mused Discord.
Catrina looked down at her paws, grinning wildly as lightning arced from her eyes and danced around her claws. “Yes,” she giggled. “Yes, yesss…” She raised her head and fired a blast of lightning from her eyes. Carrot dogs and animated mason jars spilled from the bolt’s branches like water over rapids. As she swept her electric gaze around the room, more and more items came into being: irate knickknacks, upside-down cakes, coffee tables made from all the different types of coffee, upside-down upside-down cakes, morose pizzas, and more.
But her power didn’t last. In mere seconds, she was shrinking again, and when she was back to her original size, she toppled onto her hands and knees and she panted from the exertion. She was still grinning. “That… was… the best batch in weeks!” she wheezed. “Rep! Help me collect the jetsam for study.” She gripped the edge of a table and tried to pull herself up.
Rep was already at her side, in spite of her request. “Be careful, Catrina,” he said as he propped her up. “You might-”
“I know.” Catrina slapped his hands away even as she swayed dizzily. “I’ve felt every side effect from witchweed there is. Don’t worry about me, get the jetsam!”
“But-”
“Please. We need to study chaos’s conjuration harmonics. For me?”
Catrina and Rep looked at each other, Rep fidgeting his fingers. Eventually, he sighed. “Promise me you’ll take it easy,” he said as he turned away.
<Oh, why are we watching this?> huffed Discord. <There’s a villainess’s witchweed to be found.> He didn’t have a nose to stick in the air and sniff with, but he managed it anyway. His face wrinkled nonexistently. <Over here.> He seized Moondog by her lack of a tail and pulled her along towards one of the doorways.
<Are you sure? What about…> Moondog generated a directional flux of magic that technically qualified as a point at Catrina and Rep.
<Please. Spooky cave lair of a villain, remember?>
<Well->
<Here we are.> A door swung open and Discord pulled Moondog through. The room on the other side was pitch-black, but that didn’t stop Moondog from seeing.
The cavern stretched away, the size of a buckball field. Most of its floor had been dug out, replaced with dirt. And every single square inch of that dirt was growing small broadleaf plants. Moondog manifested enough of a hoof to poke at one and flinched; it was humming with power. Some sections had been cordoned off from the others and labeled. Across one wall were various bins; they were empty aside from a few cast-off trimmings.
<Hmm. Fascinating.> Moondog got the impression that Discord was stroking his goatee. <This Catrina’s managed to grow them as she sees fit. Can’t imagine how. Perhaps she’s attuned to some chaos magic on her own.>
Moondog tapped the soil. It was bone-dry, practically sand. <How do they grow? It’s so dark and dry.>
<You’re as bright as this room. They’re chaos plants, remember. Too much sunlight and water kills them.>
<Technically, that’s true of normal plants, too.>
Discord nonexistently walloped Moondog on her lack of a head. <So what do you say we do with them, bossmare?>
<What do you mean, ‘do’?>
<The pussycat out there is clearly hoarding them for some diabolical scheme, and as much as I would adore watching someone properly use witchweed (finally), the Map says no. So we need to get rid of the witchweed. I say fire.>
Moondog managed a flat look while utterly formless. <…Fire.>
<I’m telling you, fire works! Whenever you have a problem, light something on fire. Voilà! Different problem. And if you light the right fire, that new problem isn’t your problem.>
But Moondog turned around, looking back towards the main cavern. Was it that easy? Just burn a few plants and be done with it? Then why would the Map pick the two of them for the job? And it didn’t seem like Catrina was getting anywhere fast with… whatever her plans were. So-
<Oh, come now,> said Discord. <The quicker this place goes up in flames, the quicker we can go our separate ways.>
<…No. This isn’t what we’re here for.>
foreach (Actor m IN mapMission) {
m.setLocation(catrinaCaveEntrance);
m.setAppearance(m.getDefaultAppearance());
}Moondog and Discord appeared back in front of the cave in their usual forms; dream being or not, conversation was easier when you could look at the person you were conversing with. Discord was already sprawled across the bottom of a tree branch, his arms folded in annoyance (and out of annoyance, and thanks to annoyance, among other things). “What is it now?” he sighed. “It’s quite simple. So simple I described it in a few sentences. We could be done with this farce of a farce by now.”
“This is more than just witchweed,” Moondog said. “Look. Rep. Catrina. The two people back in the cave.”
“Yes, Accident, those were their names. I certainly hope you weren’t expecting a gold star.”
“Did you hear what they were talking about?”
After a moment, Discord got it. “Oh. Oh no,” he said quietly. He turned back to the cave in horror, his jaw hanging open, his eyes even bigger than dinner plates.
“Yeah. This isn’t one of those Equestria problems that the Map thinks is a friendship problem. This really is a friendship problem.”
Stats
Page generated in 0.028 seconds
Total duration
1,044 users online
9,733 hits today, 2,280,440 yesterday
FIMFiction
My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic Fanfiction
Designed and coded by knighty & Xaquseg - © 2011-2024
Follow & Support Us
Support us
SubStar
Chat!
Discord
Follow us
Twitter
MLP: Friendship is Magic® - © 2024 Hasbro Inc.®
Fimfiction is in no way affiliated with or endorsed by Hasbro Inc.®
Piet to Brainfuck to Binary = snapFingers();
Cool!
...
Hmm, speaking of mothers, are you using FOME's idea for the origin of the Castle? Hmm... Calling it "Namepending Castle" is a big hint...
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/411767/1/holy-crap-mom-what-the-tartarus/how-is-that-harmony
...
Wooo!
...
So, this is all about Witchweed, sorta! But the witchweed is more of a salve on Catrina's real issues, whatever they are... Hmm.
----
Typos? Or maybe not? I think I saw other weirdness, but can't place them.
smile pile [intentional? Not "small pile"?]
end of the closer [missing word? Or intentionally removing "road" before "closer"?]
Ah, G1 villains are fun. King Charlatan when?
11311390
In other words, it was routed through two completely different esoteric programming languages. Our rambling writer is quite good at making pseudocode that matches the circumstances.
Hm, that's a new one: A friendship problem that could become an Equestria problem.
I wasn't expecting a reference to the second G1 special here. At least the witchweed isn't brewed by Bushwoolie slaves this time.
Of course Discord WOULD give himself a weakness because he thought it funny.
I love the fact that I had to translate two esoteric languages and a binary datagram to get a two word method call. it was perfect.
in other news I am loving how Discord and Accident play off eachother.
Well this should be entertaining... or really bad, one of the two
How rude
Aww come on, it's fun
The horror
And this is why Discord let himself be able to lose in the first place.
11311487
Oh it's already an Equestria-ending problem, it's just being held back by the Friendship Problem. 😇
11311390
I had heard of Brainfuck, but not Piet before now.
Hahahahahahaha
A good chapter overall, but Discord’s meta humor was just too overt. You really should not just have him say that they are in a story over and over. It gets old.
One the plus side this plot is shaping up to be very interesting. That was really well done and I am anxious for more.
And now we have to glue the fourth wall back together all over again. Thanks, Discord.
Another great chapter.^^
The Moondog and Dadcord dynamic continues to grow.
So why are you taking orders from furniture then, Discord? I mean, its not like you couldn't just snap your claws and the table would have never existed or anything ....
Normal ponies- " time to resolve your personal issues and be on our way. What's that? If we don't hurry a valcano will blow up the planet? OH NO."
These two- " I've just got to plug up this valcano and DEEP PERSONAL TRAUMA? IM OUT OF HERE!"
Shouldn't those be `m.` and not `self.`? Because this way just does the same thing to Moondog twice.
Oh man, Discord and Moondog, what a pair! So many things in this chapter that made me laugh. Can't wait for the next installment!
Discord declares: don't do drugs, dummy.
Well, technically the Starlight assignment was a friendship problem. The town didn't understand they didn't have to be the same to be friends. So it was a friendship problem of sorts.
And speaking of, it's always the one you don't think is relevant to the assignment who's the one who has the most cutting insight into what needs to be done to fix the problem. Moondog thinks that her understanding of making people feel better makes her the most qualified, which I think means that discord is the one with the cutting insight. Which...I think means that once we learn what Caterina is working towards with her brewing, he'll have to level with her about her ambitions and why the people around you are more important than where you're going. At least, how I see it.
What are delightful call back to the first generation
GROAN.
That screen door has weird taste in romance. These two aren't even frenemies (though maybe they'll achieve that status once the Map is through with them). But that's fine, because it's fun to watch them bicker while trying to work together.
My only gripe is that, unlike a canon two-part Map episode, I wasn't able to view the second part immediately after the first part ended.
11311390
Ok now we know where the author's time went
11314437
).
So I tested the Piet picture at https://gabriellesc.github.io/piet/, and found out that instead of simply printing out Brainfuck code characters one by one, it has an extremely complex program flow, consisting of many different loops. What's more, instead of directly storing ASCII values of each character(there are only 8 unique characters in Brainfuck btw) to the stack, the program generates the needed ASCII value by operating(multiply, plus, subtract) on smaller numbers each time, which is ingeniously chaotic. Either this is the work of other programs(I didn't find any that is capable of convert another "normal" program language to Piet), or the author really learned Piet programming and coded this by himself, considering the Piet program consists of 21*102=2142 codels(pixels), that's very impressive. There is a smiley face in the Piet picture(which doesn't do anything), which is evidence that this picture is a work by human being, unless that's a very interesting coincidence. Since the sheer amount of work is too much, I'm guessing the converter from Assembly or something to Piet do exist, the author wrote the Assembly code(which is impressive, too) and made use of the assumed. The smiley face may be an edit, if editing it without changing the program flow is possible at all. Of course, the Brainfuck code itself is an impressive feat, too(which also isn't directly printing out characters one by one), but I'm more interested in Piet. With dedication(
addiction) like that, we readers should be very thankful that the author didn't present a piece of Malbolge code(yet11314966
Oh, no. No no no no nooooo. You think Discord programs like that? No.
Alter so much as a single codel in the smiley face, and the entire program breaks.
BUT! There are certain codels in it you can change without changing the output of the program. Which ones? Why? Not telling.
Or, if you really want to know: for this entire daisy chain of code, I worked backward starting from the result. Once I got to Piet. I set up a loop of arithmetic commands that would lead to certain numbers for their ASCII values. The splits come from the codel chooser: at each possible branch, there's a command to flip the CC x times (x being the top number on the stack). Depending on where the CC ends up pointing, it can exit branches differently and do different arithmetic. The super long setup simply gathers a bunch of numbers that are even or odd depending on what I need. Yes, I did it myself. Yes, it was long, confusing, and tedious.
I got lucky with the smiley face. I originally put it in just for kicks, because why wouldn't Discord put a smiley face in visual code? Then I noticed that the smiley face had twenty codels in it, and twenty is divisible by four -- the same number of possible values as the directional pointer. The twenty codels of the smiley get pushed onto the stack, then that number is used to spin the DP twenty times, meaning it's pointing in the exact same direction as before and can continue on like nothing happened. Changing the smiley means that block has a different number get pushed on the stack and the DP points a different direction after it spins, so it exits the block in the wrong direction and borks the entire program. The codels you can change without wrecking everything are the four in the "chin"; because they're not connected to the rest of the face, changing them won't alter the 20 that get pushed. Discord putting in a smiley face just because is good, but Discord putting in a smiley face that's technically nonvital to the operation of the code yet breaks everything if changed is even better.
Meh, I’m used to getting disrespect from code.
To be fair, there have been missions in Manehattan and Canterlot as well.
Ouch. Should’ve gone for a try-catch.
Ooh, Applegate-style thought-speech. How nostalgic.
I mean, he’s not wrong…
Ooh, intergenerational actual friendship problem. Definitely looking forward to seeing how this gets resolved.
Well, this is new. A friendship problem that Moondog and Discord are assigned to solve? How interesting....
And what's this? Rep is in the story? That means...(gasp). Catrina must be in this chapter as well! (Gets to the part where Moondog and Discord are in a cave) I knew it! Now that Moondog and Discord know what friendship problem they need to solve, it'll be quite interesting to see how they'll do it.
Oh, these two being assigned a friendship problem together? Very interesting! And I really do love the rapport they have going on between them.
I really like how you describe the "simpler" actions Discord takes. Even when being "normal" (or for a better term, causal), there are still little pieces of his magic popping up and reminding us that this is the Spirit of Chaos.
...of course he made a weakness for himself for fun. What else could be expected from Discord?
And despite Catrina and Rep being in a "spooky lair of a villain", I have to wonder if they really count as villains persay. I mean, of course Moondog's right that this is really a friendship problem between the two of them, and Catrina is dabbling with strange and powerful magics, but who knows what their intentions are?
A programming joke with multiple layers and TWO Good Place references? I feel spoiled by this chapter.
Loooove this fic series.
A reference to Doctor Who and The Good Place?
I'm impressed