We Are, Each of Us, a Multitude
Discord always enjoyed a chance to delve into a being’s psyche. No two creatures saw the world in quite the same way, not twins, not analogues of the same person from different worldlines, not even the same person at different points in their life. As such, there was nothing as unique and unpredictable as a mindscape. It was why he so loathed actually killing creatures; every death destroyed something unique and irreplaceable.
Of course, in his bad old days, he’d seen such marvels merely as interestingly shaped canvases waiting for his personal masterpieces. These days, he was learning to appreciate them for what they already were. He’d certainly gotten that far with Fluttershy… though he had to admit, even when he’d directly jabbed her mind in the palace hedge maze, he’d seen something there. Some indescribable, protean potential that had slipped out of view once he’d turned down her color saturation.
He had felt a brief hint of regret in that moment. And he suspected that that fleeting vestige of remorse, rather than anything that came after, had been his real first step towards reformation.
The psychic impressions of Fluttershy’s mental innards assembled themselves into something approximating sensory data. Abstract shapes and colors—mostly pinks, greens, and yellows, of course—resolved themselves into an idealized Sweetfeather Sanctuary, one that stretched from horizon to horizon. Every biome imaginable had representation here, with minimal care for pairing neighbors according to any kind of logical system. A peak lopped off of the Yaket Range sat comfortably next to a stretch of the Bone Dry Desert, opposite which was what appeared to be a chunk of Luna’s mane the size of a buckball field.
Discord moved closer and smelled salt. Then one of the "stars" drew closer and turned out to be attached to something that looked like a fish designed by something that had never seen one, but had tried to make one out of leather scraps, slivers of bone, and a woefully misplaced Hearth’s Warming ornament.
The two regarded one another for a time before the anglerfish—as the helpful sign that hadn’t been there moments ago called it—got bored and swam off.
“Interesting,” Discord said as he stroked his goatee. “I’m not sure if I should be impressed that Fluttershy knows about such monstrosities or piqued that she never thought to tell me.”
“And why would she bother with the likes of you, anyway?”
The sheer haughtiness of the voice made Discord sneer for a moment before smirking and chuckling. “Oh, is somepony actually going for the snooty approach with moi? Goodness, I haven’t a chance to empty out a stuffed shirt since…" He trailed off as he turned towards the offender. "Fluttershy?”
It was Fluttershy, yes, but nearly unrecognizable. She wore a green-and-gray pantsuit with creases sharp enough to slice, her mane up in an iron-hard bun and her expression one of permanent distaste. She looked at him from top to bottom and wrinkled her muzzle. “My word, you are a sight. You can’t possibly expect me to believe that she actually came up with you" She waved away at him with a forehoof. "Go on now, shoo. The place is crowded enough without drifters coming in and squatting.”
Discord most decidedly did not shoo. He tilted his head, examining the Fluttershy in turn. “How strange. Don’t you know who I am? What I am?”
She shrugged her wings. “I am what I was made to be, and while I haven’t the foggiest idea what manner of expertise is needed to comprehend a being such as you, I know that I don’t have it." Her gaze hardened at his continued presence. "Now kindly remove yourself from the premises or I will have you removed.”
“Oh, what are you going to do?" Discord scoffed. "Write a nasty letter to the Daily Id?”
The Fluttershy raised a single eyebrow, then took a deep breath and cried, “Oh, Rager! I fear this brute stepped on a sand flea!”
“What? No I—” Discord paused. He’d taken an involuntary step back at the accusation, and he could feel something crumbling under his dragon foot. He lifted it, and sure enough, a pile of desert sand reassembled itself into a roughly insectile shape and scuttled off. “See? It’s fine!”
The Fluttershy just smirked. Said smirk grew as grains of sand started shifting, followed by the very ground rumbling beneath Discord's feet. A vaguely equine behemoth charged into view, a green bodysuit struggling against the bulging body while a purple mask did nothing to hide her identity as another Fluttershy.
“WHO HURT THE PRECIOUS DARLING!?” The sheer volume of the bellow was a bit off, but the contents weren't.
“Ah." Discord stepped forward and offered a paw. "Fluttershy’s simmering anger, I presume.”
Bloodshot eyes fixed on him, the great body almost quivering with rage. “SHE’S STILL WORKING ON HEALTHILY EXPRESSING NEGATIVE EMOTIONS!”
Discord nodded, idly squeegeeing off the spittle. “Oh, I know. Some days it’s like she needs permission to get properly mad at something.”
“EVERY DAY IS A STRUGGLE, BUT ALSO A NEW CHANCE TO GROW!”
The more severe Fluttershy looked from one entity to the other, finally seeming less than sure of herself. “This is not how I expected this to go.”
Discord grinned. “Who do you think is helping Fluttershy with this particular issue?”
"Rager" grabbed him in a hug tight enough to make his eyes bug out. “YOU’RE A GOOD FRIEND, AND SHE DEEPLY APPRECIATES ALL YOU DO TO MAKE HER A MORE WELL-ROUNDED PONY!”
“We are both very lucky that I don’t actually need any of these bones." Discord winced as he felt assorted bits of himself grind against one another. "Or other organs.”
“I’LL HELP YOU YEET THE OTHERS!”
A chill parkoured down Discord's fractured spine. “You mean ‘meet,’ yes?”
Rager shook her head, grinning. “HIPSTERSHY TAUGHT ME!”
He swallowed. “Why does this not fill me with confidence?”
And then she hurled Discord like an organic javelin.
He soared across the sanctuary of Fluttershy’s mind, watching countless species as he reassembled himself. Some were indistinguishable from the real things living in the actual sanctuary. Others were vague entities Fluttershy had only read about, which even the authors only knew in broad strokes.
Here and there Discord spotted sapient creatures, sometimes one of Fluttershy’s friends, sometimes an instance of her herself. A Pinkie Pie paused in her almost incessant bouncing on a massive taffy trampoline to wave at him as he passed overhead. A Twilight browsed a library of equal parts wood and crystal, with growing hints of marble. A Fluttershy…
Was rapidly approaching, actually.
Discord snapped on a police uniform and arrested his momentum. His hat popped out into a parachute, allowing him to gently drift to the grounds of…
“Sweet Apple Acres?” The trees weren’t as carefully aligned as the real orchard, making them much more pleasing to Discord’s eye. “Or some place like it anyway. How curious. I suppose this is the Applejack habi—”
A streak darted by in the corner of his eye.
“… tat?” He realized that the Fluttershy he'd spotted en route was now nowhere to be seen.
The next time the streak went by, Discord paused and considered. Which was to say he paused the streak and considered it. "Well now. What are you?"
This Fluttershy was markedly different from each one he'd seen thus far. She wore nothing save for an unusual cutie mark and a much more ragged mane and tail. Darker coat, tufted ears, bat wings, fangs...
Discord shook his head. "I am shocked, Fluttershy, shocked. This is, I believe, tribal appropriation. And I'm given to understand that that is not okay."
He released her, expecting an explanation, a quip, a bad bat pun. Instead, she screeched at a near-ultrasonic pitch and disappeared deeper into the apple forest.
"Was it something I said?"
"When has anything you've ever said made things better?"
"Now that—" Discord turned to the speaker and winced. "Oh. Well. This is awkward."
A nearly monochrome Fluttershy scowled at him. "Screw you too, Dad."
The wince became a full cringe. "Congratulations, you've made this uncomfortable even for me."
She rolled her eyes. "Well, you poked your little thing into Mom, and then I came out. What do you call it?"
"I call the 'little thing' in question a talon." Discord waggled one for emphasis. "I don't think anyone expected forced mental inversion to result in the inception of an entire alternate ego, especially since I just made up half those terms. Besides, didn't Twilight Sparkle play a part? I'm sure she fits into this horrid little metaphor somewhere. Possibly the midwife, or at least somepony who smacked your bottom. You seem to need it, if Fluttershy packed her vulgarity in there."
"Oh sure, you don't show up for years, and when you do, suddenly I'm 'disrespectful.'"
Discord shook his head. "I did very good work with you that I now deeply regret."
The inverted Fluttershy smirked. "Yeah, 'cause now I'm inconveniencing you."
"Also because I hurt a good friend on a deeper level than I realized."
"Sure. 'Friend,'" she said, complete with feather quotes. "You're her bitch and you know it."
"Charming as this conversation isn't, I really must be going literally anywhere else. But while I have your attention, what can you tell me about your bat-winged counterpart in there?" Discord jerked a thumb at the wild orchard.
The Fluttershy glanced into the woods. "Flutterbat? She's as much of a dumb animal as anything in here. Keep her full of apples and she won't try to maul your face." She sneered. "So feel free to try to take her out of her orchard. That'll go real well."
"Duly noted." With that, Discord flicked his old mistake across the horizon.
"Uuuuup yooouuurs!"
Discord willed a pith helmet and khaki vest onto himself. Naturally, the helmet was an inside-out orange peel and the vest was the perfect tie-dye for standing out against the forest shadows. "Now for some more pleasant company."
It didn't take long to find "Flutterbat." Once Discord found the first desiccated apple, it was just a matter of following the trail, especially when he gave said apple legs and made it follow its brethren for him. The drained juices did make it shamble like a zombie, but pork chops, hot dogs, yadda yadda.
Eventually, the reanimated apple bumped into a tree repeatedly until Discord let it rest. And, sure enough, Flutterbat sat in the branches, grooming herself like a cat. Even as Discord watched, she paused to snap out her tongue like a chameleon, snaring an apple, sucking it dry, and spitting it onto the ground.
"Fascinating." He snapped a photo. The flash was turned off, but it wasn't going to be supported for much longer anyway.
The shutter sound—which was actually a kazoo—was still enough to alert Flutterbat to his presence. She turned to him, hissed, and spread her wings.
"Now, now," Discord said from right behind her, "no need for that." He grabbed her and placed her in his lap, brushing her mane with the finest dinglehopper in the sea.
Oh, she thrashed and spat and bit at first, but a scratch behind those tufted ears made her all but melt into a puddle. She even gave a trilling sort of purr before falling asleep.
He smiled. "Much better company than most of what I've seen here."
"Discord?"
He looked down at the ground. The pegasus below didn't have any unusual outifts, mutations, or color scheme alterations that he could make out from where he sat. "Ah, Fluttershy! Have you met Fluttershy? She's a dear once she gets used to you."
"I've, um, been Fluttershy. And I... still am?" She shook her head. "This is why I use the other names."
"Understandable. What brings you to the inner stretches of your mind?"
"I'm pretty sure you did. I passed out after you went in my head and I woke up a bit ago. I see this place a lot in my dreams."
A non-Fluttershy, wonder of wonders, flapped over to them. "And you should probably both get out of here,"
"Twilight?" Discord's eyebrows went up. He grabbed them in a butterfly net before they got too far. "May I ask why?"
"Well, I'm just Fluttershy's impression of Twilight, but I also embody what knowledge she has of magic, and you casually using chaos magic inside her head probably isn't good for her."
"Chaos magic? What chaos magic?" Discord then realized he'd turned the apple tree into his vibrant purple thinking tree. Also, there was much more of a checkerboard pattern in the vicinity than he recalled there being. "Oh, right. That chaos magic. You may have a point."
The baseline Fluttershy flapped up to him, a smile on her muzzle. "Did you get a sense of inner Fluttershy?"
"Oh, very much so." Discord smiled down at Flutterbat, continuing to pet her. "I've heard of rich inner lives, but I've never seen such a thriving inner ecosystem. Still, your personal Purplesmart proposes a potential point. No sense spending all day lost in your thoughts." He snapped his talons, and light consumed his vision.
Once Discord wiped the spots out of his eyes (and made a mental note to get more wiper fluid,) he saw that he had somehow ended up with Fluttershy on his lap. Also, she was in that novel bat pony form. "Oh. Well, you did warn me."
She looked up with slit-pupiled eyes and gave a fanged grin before nuzzling against him. "If you can change me back later, it's alright. Sometimes it's nice to be the pet."
"I see. Far be it from me to tell you no."
Neither mentioned the incident until a month later, when Fluttershy noticed the developing horn buds on her forehead.
Yeah, much like yesterday’s prompt demanded Fluttercord, this called for Fluttershy’s inner conflict. Flutterbat’s the principle entity that first came to mind, but then I remembered Masterweaver’s Welcome to the Family and ran with the idea of Fluttershy looking after her discarded personality fragments as much as her animals.
I have to appreciate how either half of the Carl Sagan quote works (the other half being "Within us is a little universe,") even if he was talking about body cells and not a collection of ego shards.
And I am sucker for a draconequine Fluttershy.
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"Twilight will not outlive her friends" and making them all alicorns is a bit lazy. Your move, anyone who disagrees.
Silly Discord. Everyone knows skeletons are wholly vestigial. Nobody needs them.
So Flutters got infected with anarchic-paracausality? Whether or not that ends up being a good or bad thing is up in the air.
Interesting little insight into the inner workings of our favorite butterfly pony.
I do love a good journey to the center of the mind
Most delightful.
Depending on how much Inverted Fluttershy is a separate entity... This line is very interesting, because it's possibly a way that Fluttershy herself thinks of their relationship.
----
And, as the end shows, things just keep happening... Well, at least Fluttershy will hopefully be immortal??
----
Great short! More sequel??
10298706
I do tend to skip them unless they catch my notice by chance
10298771
They're kind of important for this one.
10298618
Oh, personally I like the notion that all Twilight's friends become immortal, but in a variety of absurdly different ways. Say Draconeqqus Fluttershy, Vampony Rarity, Daring Do Cursed Artifact Dash...
Well, it seems that Fluttershy already had enough inner chaos that all she needed for ascension was some catalytic magic.
10298798
Oh hey, might as well drop that pasta I made and then didn't use anywhere near as often as I expected:
Rainbow Dash literally outflies Death until she's given the job, Fluttershy becomes the Draconequus of Nature, Applejack starts and continues to remember her serial reincarnation as a reference to G1 and G3 Applejacks, Rarity undergoes brain uploading into a fabulous Raribot, and Pinkie Pie is Pinkie Pie. (That last one has a headcanon explanation, but the point is that it works regardless of the specifics)
Perfect.
This one hurt, because I love Flash so very much and the support for it running out hurts.
I know why they are doing it, but it doesn't make it hurt any less.
Also Discord needs to lay off the wordplay a bit, he's becoming predictable with it.
10299263
well there's predictable that you do something and predictable how you do something. Discord's hows still tend to be random
10299585
Hum, yes, fair enough on the how but it is still a gag that's very easy to overdo. Especially in shorter chapters with a lot of actions in them.
10298618 10298798
It is fun to branch out beyond the usual take. I personally like the idea of Pinkie and Rarity joining Fluttershy as chimera noodles. (Rarity would basically be a muse. Inspiration is as unpredictable and chaotic as anything.)
10298681
It would hardly be chaos magic if the outcome were certain.
10298708
Fluttercruel is an inveterate troll. Her opinions don't reflect the greater Fluttergestalt, just whatever she thinks will get a rise out of someone.
10298886
After all the transformations she's gone through, both physical and mental, she really just needed that one last push.
10299053 10299263
Ah, contradictory comments. Because you can't please all of the people all of the time.
Suffice to say, if Discord isn't performing some manner of shenanigans, you're not using him to his full potential. And it's hard to express nontextual antics through a textual medium, so here we are.
10298798
I recall a take on this general concept on DeviantArt that had Applejack finally catch the Great Seedling and, in that moment, discover that the reward for catching the Seedling is to become the next Great Seedling yourself.
Me, I have a soft spot for Fluttershy and Pinkie going the draconequus route. Hmm... now I think of it, I could also see Rarity managing to work out a purified version of the Inspiration Manifestation thing and giving herself a body of living, undying crystal and metals...
10298618
I sometimes up the ante by making Fluttercord the start of what eventually becomes a gestalt entity of thousands. (And this sort of thing does make for good practice!)