5 - The Beautiful Game Part 1 - Your Father Would Be Proud...
“You know, I could do your ‘do up real nice, Anny. All you gotta say is ‘hit me up with that do, Uncle Z!”
Ann wrinkled her nose, “Why do you keep saying ‘do’, Uncle Z?”
Zephyr Breeze, Fluttershy’s neigh’r-do-well little brother and Ann’s uncle, laughed at his niece’s question.
“You are so cute when you’re acting dumb, kiddo,” he said as they walked beneath the orange and red-leaf trees together. “It means hairdo. Why, I remember explaining the same thing to that Rainbow Dash,” he whispered conspiratorially, “She had a thing for me back then. Anyway…!”
“Oh,” Ann nodded, not entirely sure what he was talking about. That was kinda neat though. Understanding everything was boring. And hanging around Uncle Z was like a little drip-feed of Chaos, considering how slippery his brain was. Ann could hardly get a bead on him, even when she tried.
And she’d been trying for two days, ever since she figured out how to read Flawless Gem’s mind back at the party…
W-what’s going on? Flawless had slightly panicked in her own headspace.
Ann spoke quickly, so quickly that the conversation she was having right then would happen too quickly for anycreature to notice, saying, It’s Ann, I’m just reading your mind. Don’t panic.
YOU’RE READING MY WHAT!?
Shhh! Ann shushed, Do you want our folks to notice?
Flawless’ muscles hadn’t had time to twitch. She wasn’t necessarily afraid at the moment, just unused to time stopping and somepony else’s thoughts running through her brain. But, Ann would give her credit, for a normal pony she was taking it well.
What’s this all about? I thought we were supposed to “make up” and “be friends”?
Ann frowned in their little mental space, Do you really want to be friends?
With a freak like you? Flawless scoffed, Never.
So, Ann sighed, mentally, Do you want our parents to fight over us not being friends?
Flawless thought for a moment, though that moment technically lasted less than a fraction of a second. Your lisp is gone.
Well!?
Yeah, alright, Flawless mentally nodded, So how do we ditch the grownups?
Follow my lead…
And just like that, the Cold War had begun. Nopony had noticed, not even Ann’s parents. Only her grampa, Grogar, seemed to notice anything was out of the ordinary, but Ann was sure he didn’t know anything for sure.
Which… was exactly how Discord had described Zephyr Breeze, actually. With Discord banned from school grounds, Ann’s parents had opted to pull Fluttershy’s brother in for Uncle duties, despite his Manestyling business doing so well.
Duties which included walking Ann to school.
“So? What’ll it be, Anny?”
Ann raised an eyebrow, “What?”
“What sort of style are we looking at?” he smiled and held up a comb and scissors with his wings. “I’m thinking a punk flair up front with a little poof in the back.”
Ann gaped. Nothing about that made sense. It was times like this, actually, when she wished she could see the fourth wall so she could ask someone in the audience about it. At least, that’s how her dad explained it once.
Come to think of it, sometimes it’d be nice to have an explanation for him as well.
Uncle Z hadn’t raised his hopeful gaze away from her.
“Alwight,” said Ann, “Let’s go a little cwazy…”
“Cheese! Little Cheese!” a voice cried out, “Son! Are ya alright!?”
Little Cheese slowly lifted himself up off the ground where he’d fallen, after a series of spasms, kicks, and twitches had tossed the colt around and around. That was probably the most powerful thing he’d ever felt before, and it left him almost nauseous.
His dad’s panicked screams did his head little favor.
“Uh, yeah. I’m alright…” Lil Cheese tried to shake the fog from his mind.
Big Cheese, the other party planner pony personally in the present vicinity of the populated precincts of Ponyville, sighed in relief, “Hoo boy! I would not want to have to explain something like this to your mom when she gets back from Yakyakistan… what happened there, scout?”
At his father’s words… something within Lil Cheese snapped, and a flood of instincts came roaring into his mind… with a dire warning.
“Ann!!!” he cried out, leaping up almost as high as his dad’s eye-level, “Something’s happened to Ann!”
“Oh no!” Big Cheese snatched his son out of the air and hugged him close, “Your little Ponequus friend? Discord’s little girl? What happened!?”
“I don’t know!” Cheese leapt to the ground, and set his face with a determination unmatched in another so young. “But we need help!”
Big Cheese nodded. “I’ll get the Element Bearers and your mother!”
“Good job, Dad!” Lil Cheese turned back towards the school, “I’ll see if I can help in the meantime. Boneless?”
The rubber chicken leaned out of Lil Cheese’s mane with a squeak of respect.
“Find the Pillars. They’ll know what to do!” he said, biting down on the chicken’s neck and giving him a helping swing up, out, and over the treetops.
Father and Son hoofbumped, and then charged off towards their goals. For Equestria. For Ann!
An hour later, Flawless Gem leaned back in her seat in Miss Silver Spoon’s classroom, and basked in the glorious sight which she beheld. She even put both her hind legs up on the desk, just to relax even more.
“How are you doing that?” her changeling friend Dib asked.
“It’s all the rage back in the Crystal Empire,” Flawless said, crossing her forelegs behind her head for support. “It’s like how humans sit in the Mirror World.”
The unicorn colt on Flawless’ other side gulped, and hesitantly said, “I h-heard that humans… eat ponies over there…”
“Hush, Beauregard,” Flawless held one hoof up for silence, “I want to enjoy this…”
The whole class was enjoying the show. There was a yak-sized hole in the wall where the front door should have been, and a veritable who’s-who of the pony world was standing there, the last rays of a rapidly fading charged-rainbow-blast vanishing as soon as the reason for their summons had become apparent. Everycreature there recognized Princess Twilight and her friends.
For some reason, though Flawless had a good guess as to the cause, Fluttershy, renowned the world over for her kindness and soft-spoken nature… was shrieking like a batpony champion yodeler at a tall, lanky green pegasus and buzzing around his head in tight circles.
She looks peeved, Flawless thought, laughing inside her own head.
And the cause of this sudden disturbance was obvious, as Ann stood, kicking at the floor and avoiding eye contact with anycreature, her mane…
Eugh.
Flawless made sure to mentally scour her brain of the image. That manecut might… might work in a theoretical sense… somewhere… if you added a few dimensions to the space-time continuum… but Miss Silver Spoon had already retched and passed out at the sight of it, and one of the older colts from next door who’d gotten too close had collapsed into a fetal position, and was still crying in the corner, where his aunt Applejack was trying to coax the poor kid back to sanity.
Poor Big Sugar, Flawless thought, even an Apple like him doesn’t deserve that.
That manecut defied definition. Its mere presence seemed to cause madness in everycreature’s mind when they stared at it. It couldn’t exist in three-dimensional space… not really, yet here it was with all its alien dimensions and eldritch horror.
Still, watching Ann squirm while her… uncle(?) crouched down in submission to her wrathful mom was a ‘hoot’ as these bumpkins called it. Oddly, Cheese and his folks were all fine with the proceedings, collapsing on top of each other in fits of laughter the entire time. Pinkie Pie still wore that horned yak-helmet from the night before… and a full foot of snow on top of her coat, but she just seemed happy like nothing else in the world.
Kept yelling something about Lil Cheese ‘having the Pie sense!!!’, whatever that meant.
With the teacher out of commission, Ann and her friends had all day to practice… at least once she’d used a little Chaos magic to regrow her mane… that most noble of sports. They’d promised, Ann, Cheese, Shady, and Pearl, that they would defeat Flawless Gem and her friends at the game of Buckball.
And by Twilight, they were going to do it! The Cutie Mark Crusaders would never give up!
“No, Ann,” Pearl sighed, “Use your hooves, tail, or wings. Your face can only take so much more punishment, my dear…”
“I can do it!” Ann snarled, “Cheese just keeps thwowing it too hawd!”
“I keep… your face is glued to the ground! How is that my fault!?”
Pearl rubbed her throbbing temple with a hoof, “We’ve been doing this for an hour already. And I am of course referring to the fighting and arguing! Now let’s try this again, ladies!”
Shady… just shook his head. He’d been watching their practice for the better part of an hour, from when Apple Bloom had shown up to officially induct them all into Ponyville’s most famous foal’s club, to the… golly, fifteenth time Ann took a buckball to the face and ate some dirt.
“Have… Miss Apple Bloom? Have you ever seen…?”
The mare shook her head, slowly, sadly. “Eenope. Never seen a worse team of Buckball, and I once saw Sunburst, Trixie, and Twilight try to form a team.”
Shady paused, not sure who some of those were. “How…”
“I still have a scar from the explosion,” Apple Bloom scowled, and seemed completely uninterested in continuing.
Meanwhile, Ann was set up for another attempt at blocking the ball. She… hadn’t yet mastered flying, exactly. She could flap her wings alright. She could move air. It was everything else that seemed to be eluding her at the moment, was all.
Cheese gave the buckball a few experimental bounces. By contrast, he seemed quite at ease around the ball, and moved it back and forth like it was an extension of himself. With a savage whip of his tail, he lightly tossed the ball up and into the air, right where he’d normally shoot it during a game.
Ann leaped for the ball, wings ripping at the air like it owed Ann bits. It was a nearly flawless dive-jump. Nearly. In that, when something isn’t flawless, it is flawed. Her back hooves tangled on one another, twisted Ann up during the jump, and sent her face-first into the ball’s trajectory with a rubbery whomp.
A moment after she hit the ground, Ann felt a second whomp as the ball landed directly on top of her head.
“Ow,” she said, without enthusiasm.
“Just use your stupid magic already!” Pearl Rose shouted, “Some of us would love to be able to fly with magic!”
“No magic!” Ann stood up too quickly and nearly toppled over again, losing her hoofing. “I have to be able to beat Flawless without it! I will learn how to fly!”
“This is ridiculous,” Cheese lay down in the dirt, “She’s gonna smash us.”
Pearl hadn’t heard him. “You… you think magic is stupid or something!?”
“No!” Ann’s eyes flashed, “I think you’re…!”
At which point a larger, older mare stepped in.
“Alright my little ponies!” Apple Bloom physically separated the two squabbling foals, “I think ya’ll need a break! Take five!”
While Apple Bloom went to retrieve some apple juice she’d brought along for the new CMC’s practice, and Shady wandered off… for some reason he hadn’t quite explained, Ann, Cheese, and Pearl sat under the shade of a nearby tree. Fall or no, they’d worked up a sweat that morning, and a lie-down seemed to be the thing to cool them off.
Their tempers needed to cool as well.
“Pearl…?”
“Yeah?”
“… I’m sowwy,” Ann sighed.
“Me too,” Pearl set her head down onto her front hooves as she lay in the grass. “I just… I just can’t stand that Flawless!” she snarled.
“This wouldn’t have happened,” Cheese said with an ‘I told you so’ sort of voice, “if you two just tried to be friends with her.”
Ann and Pearl snorted at once, but did not further dignify that nonsensical statement. Partly for Ann, it was that she felt quite tired. Which was odd, she thought, since she’d been far more active before and never felt this… winded? Was that a word?
Within a few minutes, Apple Bloom had returned with a small cart full of apple juice. She was pleased to see the three foals finally calmed down and talking to one another like friends, and so while they sucked away at the juice, she began to regale them with a story of the original Cutie Mark Crusaders’ exploits.
“… and from then on, my friends and I swore to help everypony we came across to find their special purpose, or rediscover it, if’n they’d lost sight,” she finished the tale of how she and her two best friends gained their Cutie Marks together.
“That story was amazing!” Pearl beamed, then threw a look back to her own blank flank, “Wouldn’t it be wonderful to get my Cutie Mark at the same time as my friends?”
Cheese laughed, then shook his own flank in the air, proudly displaying the cheese-pie symbol there, “A little late for me, sorry! But if you and Ann or Shady get them together, I’ll ask my Mom to throw the cute-ceanera!”
Ann, however, scrunched up her nose, and asked, “Do… do only ponies get Cutie Marks?”
At that, Apple Bloom, who had been previously caught in the glow of a nostalgic memory, blinked. “Uh… um, yeah, I suppose so… but!” she closed her eyes and tried to look authoritative, “Actual Cutie Marks aren’t everything! They’re just… an outward sign that ponies have found their special talent. Why, look at Gabby!”
“Gabby?”
Apple Bloom nodded, “Ole Gabby’s a griffon that runs the local postal service between here an’ Griffonstone. And when she showed up one day to get her own Cutie Mark, we gave her a badge that was like a Cutie Mark.
“See,” she elaborated, “Gabby had already found her talent. She jes’ hadn’t realized it because non-ponies don’t get the mark itself. But that didn’t mean she wasn’t a Crusader in spirit!”
“Oh…” Ann glanced away, towards her own flank, “So… if it doesn’t show up, then I’m not a pony?”
Granny, Apple Bloom silently thought to herself, if you can hear me, wherever y’are, I suddenly feel right awful about what I put you through before I got my cutie mark…
But before she could say anything out loud, a familiar voice rang out over the school grounds, “Hey! Aren’t we practicing!?”
Shady galloped back towards his friends, with some new faces in tow. Well, new to the group of friends, as each were still classmates Ann and company had seen in class, if not interacted with much yet.
The first was a griffon, whose feathers were brilliant white with gold-trim, and whose head resembled an owl’s. Her feathers were so thickly-laid and fluffy that she looked like an inside-out pillow with wings, and even her talons were almost invisible hidden in all the fluff.
The other newest companion was, somehow more oddly, a Batpony. His coat was a deep, dark blue, and his short, swept mane was a series of black and white stripes. Perhaps unsurprisingly considering the time of day, he wore a pair of large, round sunglasses.
“Whewe’d you wun off to, Shady? Ann asked, trotting up to meet all three as they neared and slowed, “And… who awe they?”
Shady took a breath, and then held out one hoof, “Ann, Cheese, Pearl? I’d like you to meet some of my other friends!”
He indicated the griffon, who sat back on her haunches… only to nearly tower over all except Apple Bloom herself. “This is Goldie. Her parents run the Griffon Charity, and she’s really good at counting.”
Goldie waved with one claw, then seemed to note her height difference and tried to shrink down into herself. “H-hey guys… Um… how’s it going? Or is that too personal?”
Ann wasn’t sure, for a moment, if Goldie or her Mom had the softer voice. Then again, even Shady’s voice was sounding a little wonky, fading in and out…
“Oh, I know Goldie!” Cheese waved back, “My Mom and Dad go to you for money-stuff.”
Goldie tapped her claws together, “I… I just like helping ponies with their taxes… it’s fun…” she said in increasingly quiet tones.
“And this,” Shady pointed to the Batpony, “is Moon Wane. He’s like, Batpony royalty or something.”
Moon sighed, “I am not royalty. We don’t do that. My folks were just… very wealthy.”
“Were?” Ann barely had the word out before she could feel her tongue recoil in her mouth, and hear a few sharp gasps behind her. At least, she thought they were behind her.
She didn’t want to turn around. She could feel Pearl and Cheese’s eyes on the back of her head.
Eyes, she thought, stomach churning. Why’d it have to be eyes?
Moon flinched, though only at the gasps, “Y-yeah…”
Apple Bloom started apologizing at the same time as Ann, and both ponies talked right over each other. Moon didn’t seem to react to any of it… except that his ears opened wide and began swiveling towards them, one ear each.
“I’m so sowwy Moon, I didn’t mean…”
“… Ann is new to these things. She don’t mean no harm…”
He held up one hoof, and let both quiet down before he said, “It’s okay, really. Shady told me about you, Ann. I understand.”
“He… he did?” Ann lowered her head a little, awaiting judgement.
Moon allowed himself a tiny, toothy smile, fangs and all. “Nice things. He said nice things. He also said you needed help with beating Flawless this Friday?”
Shady stepped back into the conversation, “I figured you’ve all tried playing parts of buckball… but have any of you actually played a game? Together?”
Pearl scoffed and raised her nose… but held her tongue for a long second before saying, “You might have a point. Besides a few matches in Magic Kindergarten, I usually just practice the basics with Papa’s trainers.”
She kicked the dirt at her hooves, “I guess that’s more exercise than playing…”
But Shady just lifted up a Buckball bucket with his magic, and said, “Well then, we’ll play you! What do you guys say?”
Cheese and Pearl exchanged nods, and Ann smiled at Moon and Goldie.
New friends! More friends!
“That sounds like a gweat idea!” she laughed, then said back over her withers towards Cheese and Pearl, “Come on! Let’s give it anothew…”
She took one step.
Ann’s face hit the dirt, the rest of her following. For a moment, all she could feel was the ache in her muzzle, all she could hear was the pounding of her heart in her ears.
For some reason, she could hear somecreatures yelling ‘ham, ham!’ Or, was it ‘and, and!’
No… it was definitely ‘Ann’.
Apple Bloom was on her instantly, prying open one of her eyes. Which helped, as Ann couldn’t quite open it on her own.
“I’m okay,” she said, though she wasn’t sure if anycreature heard it. Sounds weren’t working right.
“Ann!?” Cheese leaned in, tears in his eyes… his huge, beautiful eyes…
“Hey Cheese, just give me a minute… I can’t feel my legs.”
She held up her forehoof, just to show him. And then, she stared at it. There was something strange about it.
She could see through it.
“Well that can’t be good…”
“My butler knows medicine!” Moon ran up to them, wings agitating at his side, “W-would that help?”
Goldie was already bolting, talons shredding the earth as she went by. “I’ll get help!” she called back over her shoulder, already vanishing through the treeline towards town.
“Ann!” Pearl cried, “Ann! Please talk to us! What’s going on!?”
The Ponequus lifted up her head, and immediately regretted that decision as a throbbing pain ripped past behind her eyes. It was a strange sort of pain. It was almost… clarifying in its dimensions. Ann felt like she was fading away in some ways, and becoming more real in others.
But Ponequus aren’t real, a voice said. It slithered into her brain, quite rudely, and nestled in amongst her thoughts, which were now swimming along with the sky above her…
I know.
So, what might that mean for you?
I… I’m real…
But are you?
“Stay with us!”
Oh, another voice.
“Her tail’s disappearin’!”
That didn’t sound promising. Ann was sure she should be more worried about that… but she just couldn’t muster up the strength… she was falling.
But, just as her eyes began to fail… her ears perked up one more time, as another voice, half-heard, cried out.
“… back…! And… help!”
There was a horrifying feeling Anarchy could never shake, and it was always when she was dreaming. It didn’t help that Princess Luna occasionally showed up in her dreams to dance, or play games, or just talk about things… that same, awful feeling would always come back.
It was the same feeling a fish gets when the net pulls them up.
Ann was pulled, pulled by a net of steel up from the depths of her dreams, the one place where her Chaos worked exactly like she wanted it to, and where she and her friends didn’t have to go to school or bother with Flawless, and where Ann could fly with her wings alone.
Into the light of reality.
But unlike normally, Ann felt… warm. Her blanket was a lot fuzzier than normal. Or was that shag? It also smelled funny, like old cider and smoke. She blinked a few times, and noted that her blanket back home was a sort of shifting plaid pattern that never stopped writhing, whereas she appeared to be nestled into something far more… blue.
Also unlike her blanket, whatever she was wrapped up in, it was hard… and breathing. She wriggled, just a little, to figure out where she was.
Oh, good. Her hooves were back. Excellent.
A deep, rumbling sigh swept around Ann as she squirmed. It felt like the earth itself was humming, and it vibrated all along Ann’s snout to her tail so pleasantly that she paused in her struggle for freedom, just to let it roll over her.
And then, the rumble became a voice.
“Ah, you awaken.”
Ann’s ears perked, and she twisted her head around to see where above her that voice came from.
“Gwampa?”
Grogar, Father of Monsters, held his grandfoal tight against his chest, tucked under his chin and above his powerful forelegs. He lay with her beneath a shady tree mere yards from the schoolhouse. A late afternoon sun turned the land around them into a gold and purple twilight.
“Whew awe my fwiends?”
Grogar, eyes still closed, merely tilted his head to one side, indicating the next tree over. There, her friends… Goldie, Moon, Shady, Cheese, Pearl… and even her parents lay or paced about, worry fraught upon their faces.
But as Ann drew in a breath to call out, she felt her grandfather’s magic clamp down on her muzzle.
“Hold,” he spoke softly, but with authority and menace, “They don’t know that you are returned to the waking world… and for the moment, I should like to continue that illusion.”
Ann frowned. Why?
Grogar shifted slightly. “Mental projection? My, my. You have come far indeed, little one.”
His magic let up, just a little, but Ann did not shout as she’d initially planned.
“What’s going on? Why don’t you want my fwiends to know?”
“Because,” the Ram of Darkness spoke slowly, “I wish to know something first, before all others.”
A single, terrible eye opened, and cast its baleful gaze down upon Anarchy.
“What happened today?”
Ann shifted herself. She didn’t like eyes. Didn’t like how they kept watching her, judging her… but there was something different about Grampa Grogar’s eye. Sure, it pierced all things; cloud, shadow, earth and flesh… and Ann could definitely feel its dark magic weighing down her soul…
But it didn’t judge. It simply wanted to know.
“I…” she wondered what he could see, “I was playing buckball. Well, we wewe leawning to play it…”
“Why?” Grogar’s voice felt like a sliding tomb door.
Ann sighed, “We… we wanted to be bettew than Flawless Gem and her fwiends…”
Grogar kept staring. He hardly moved, merely inviting his grandfoal to continue.
“We’we not fwiends,” she explained, “But we didn’t want to involve the gwown-ups anymowe, since you all take this stuff too sewiously. So we decided to play her and hew fwiends at buckball… to pwove she wasn’t bettew than us.”
“You haven’t been using your magic,” Grogar finally blinked, “Why?”
“… it’s stupid…”
“Chaos? Magic?”
Ann looked away, “The weason… I… I wanted to pwove I didn’t need it to beat her.”
Burning shame welled up in Ann’s cheeks as she heard her grampa say, “But Chaos is a part of you. To not indulge in its majesty is to deny yourself. You realize this?”
“Yeah.”
His voice grew somehow lower in register, “By not using Chaos, you began to fade away.”
“I know.”
“You were almost lost, save by my own magic,” he whispered, “You were so reckless. You could have been lost to us. To me…”
Ann turned back to her grandfather. There were no tears. There could never be tears. But just behind the ancient evil, behind all the austere dignity that came with millennia of villainy and malice…
She couldn’t read his mind… not really. His was a primordial spirit, unreadable, ineffable. But, for a singular moment…
He spoke, still quietly, “For all my hatred of the ponies and their friendship… their happiness and their laughter… I have lived with my hate for eons.
“But,” he sighed, and his gaze softened, “there is something terrible about seeing that hatred in one so young. Every grandfather wishes their grandfoals a better life than the one they lived…”
He grew silent again, his baleful eye staring at something Ann couldn’t see, far off in the distance. Perhaps in another time, and another place entirely.
Grogar’s gaze fell back to her. “So. Flawless Gem?”
“Y-yes?”
“Do you still wish to defeat her?”
“… yes.”
“Good. Crush the wretch and bake her bones into bread.”
“No.”
Grogar nodded, “Very well. Can’t blame an old ram for trying.”
Ann tilted her head sideways. “You… saved me? Why wewe you…?”
“Ah,” Grogar smiled, “Since that buffoon’s banishment, I was elected to bring you to and from the school, and to accompany you on field trips, if such would occur.”
“You shouldn’t call my dad a buffoon…”
Grogar guffawed, somehow quietly. “I was speaking of Zephyr Breeze, but the fact that your tender mind already assumed Discord was a fool warms my heart to no end… She awakens!” he bellowed to the others.
Ann would spend the next few minutes alternating between apologizing to her friends for scaring them like she did, and hugging them all closely, because in the grand scheme of things, her friends were happier to see her safe than they were anything else.
But the next few hours would be spent convincing her parents not to ground her forever.
“I just… Buckball!?” Discord’s voice warbled somewhere between utter fury and inconsolable fear the whole night. “I almost lost you because of… a jock-game!?”
“It’s called a spowt, Dad,” Ann sighed. It was hour-five, and the argument had gone right through dinner. Discord currently paced the living room in the house in Chaosville, with Fluttershy sitting on a nearby couch and Ann standing front and center.
Discord scoffed, “Pfeh! You want a real game, I could get you into a rousing game of Ogres and Oubliettes! Sure, the new edition dumbed things down for the streaming audience, but it’s still an exciting… nonlethal game of wits and skill!”
And with a snap of his fingers, a feathered-hat appeared atop Ann’s head, and a wooden lute hung from her neck.
“You can be a Singer!” Discord said, testing the draw-strength of a bow he materialized solely for the gag, “The new edition makes them a little OP, but I trust your restraint…”
Annoyed, Ann ripped the lute and hat off with her tail, and flung them both across the room into an upside-down active volcano.
Discord sighed. “Hm. Fine. Not a ‘Fantasy’ player then? Never fear!” he pulled a small collection of boardgames out of his left ear, “Would you care for some Vampire-Pony: The Lemonade? Or perhaps a rousing game of Space Tiffs: Edge of Equestria? Mahjong…?”
“I don’t want to play games!” Ann growled, sick and tired of defending herself by now, regardless of who was to blame, “I want to play buckball with my fwiends!”
“Out of the question!” Discord held out his paw with a small STOP sign stuck to his palm, “You’re staying put. If your friends want to see you, they’ll have to schedule something during visitation hours… and bring a signed letter from the governor.”
“That’s not fair.”
Discord laughed, but didn’t smile, “Life hardly is.”
Fluttershy had been silent thus far. Her initial panic at Ann’s… incident had long since faded from tears and terror to a sort of dull, throbbing heartache. But for all she felt right now, that desperate, motherly wish to claw her baby back to her forelegs and wrap her in a hug that would never end, she also knew when things were going too far.
After a tiny cough, she said, “Discord… we should probably talk about this alone before…”
“What’s there to discuss!?” his head spun completely around to face her, his voice incredulous, “Our little Anarchy almost died out there!”
Ann shook her head. Whatever shame she’d felt before was worn down into a blunt and jagged desire to just forget the whole day and move on.
“But I’m fine!” she sighed, a pressure building in her chest, “Gwampa said…”
“I don’t care what Grogar says! He isn’t your ‘Gwampa’!” Discord twisted back to his daughter so hard he hung in the air, doing his very best to loom over the living room.
Fluttershy’s hackles raised, not liking where this was going one bit. “Discord…”
“What does that mean!?” Ann stomped one hoof onto the floorboards, causing a flight of seagulls to crawl out from under the rug and flee for the hills.
Discord turned towards the fireplace, now a log of marshmellows which burned up into popcorn as opposed to fire and smoke. He folded his ears forward, and his arms across his serpentine body.
In a low, low voice, he growled, “Grogar isn’t your grandfather… because he was never a father to begin with.”
He half-turned, just enough to give Ann a withering look. “Don’t you see? He made me in a lab, and he only raised me so he could have his Chaos Monster! He wasn’t a father, just an old goat who didn’t care for anycreature’s feelings except himself and his own!”
Ann had listened… and even Fluttershy could see the little Ponequus was boiling. Her Grampa may have rough edges, but he was kind to her. And right now, something was starting to build up within Ann that detested hearing anything to the contrary.
“Well I guess it runs in the family!”
There was a half-second where the fury had come loose in Ann. And it was immediately followed by a cold, hollow feeling.
That feeling screamed, Did I say that OUT LOUD!?”
“What did you say?” Discord was facing Ann directly, his voice a haunting, faded sound, like a ghost caught in the branches of a tree.
“She didn’t mean it!” a voice, Fluttershy’s perhaps, echoed after his… but Ann couldn’t hear it.
All she could hear was the sound of anger flowing back into her like adrenaline.
“Y-yeah! I did! Gwampa might be a little gwouchy, and he smells funny… and he’s evil… but he’s nice to me!” The words tumbled out of her mouth, “He understands me!”
“Stop. Talking.” Crimson eyes flashed as he spoke.
There was no stopping. Not now. Not when she had something to say.
“You nevew understood! You don’t care! All you care about is your pwecious Chaos, and how much of it you can spwead awound! Gwampa gets me more than y…”
Snap!
Ann felt the snap, even before her ears really registered its sound, the finality of a gavel ringing through the Realm of Chaos. It snaked straight through her, nose to tail.
Where were the words?
She tried to speak.
Nothing. She remembered how, but something was… lacking. Her throat felt so strange.
Ann tried again, only managing a strangled squeak.
“You will not say such things to me, missy,” Discord snarled, “If you can’t say anything nice… then say nothing! AT! ALL!”
Then, with the same hand that had just robbed Ann of her voice, he jabbed a dagger-like finger towards another part of the house and said, “Now go to your room!”
Ann stood silently. Her eyes looked straight up into Discord’s own, meeting fury… with tears.
No, she thought. No, no, nonononono! If… if I can’t talk, how will I…? What if… Cheese! I can’t talk to Cheese! I can’t talk to… anyone…
Her heart constricted in her chest, and Ann felt the wave of terror climb higher and higher within her… only to slowly feel the truth of it. It wasn’t fear… it wasn’t sadness. It was rage. The filly felt, for perhaps the first time, a true, true fury take hold of her. That wave of fear and panic at losing her friends?
It was as the foam atop a tidal wave of madness.
Her eyes flashed, crimson, and her teeth gnashed. And Ann let loose in the only way she knew how.
A psychic scream wrenched itself loose from her soul.
I HATE YOU!
And, without a snap or fanfare of any sort, she vanished in a flash of light, sent straight to her room.
Discord hadn’t moved. He couldn’t. He turned, just enough to see Fluttershy…
Fluttershy couldn’t look back. The tears flowed freely, her face covered by one hoof as she quickly rose, and then walked out of the room. She never once looked back.
The Lord of Chaos, now alone, slumped down onto the floor. His hands covered his eyes, the only things powerful enough to hold back the tears, and they still failed.
“I’ll never become you,” he whimpered, quietly and with shuddering breaths, “Never… never…”
I’ll never forgive him, Ann wept into her bedsheets, staining them with her silent cries. Never… never…
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So.. The therapist whom discord said was not a joke(He really needs that)... I get it. Poor anarchy...
Wow, that got out of paw fast. Looks like Ann's grown into her teenage rebellion phase already.
And geez, Discord's backlash certainly didn't help. Buckball isn't what's dangerous, it was Ann trying to hold in her chaos. But I guess I can understand wanting to take some kind of action against the situation arising again, however misguided.
Wow, the Teenage years came early for this family.
9999528
no shit sherlock
Cha cha real smooth Discord...
I want to see that!
Alright, if the Pillars don't come to aide, I'm going to be disappointed in you.