A Discordant Romance

by chasethebrony

Ch 2: First Comes Love...

A Discordant Romacne

Ch 2: First comes Love....

From the Wreckage

The destruction of the lab was not quite total.

As Discord stood up, his claw began to try to massage the massive headache that was developing in his head.

Opening his eyes, he saw before him the same yellow pony that had stood before him twenty years ago. Only, age had improved what was a blossoming flower into a beautiful lily. Well, a battered and unconscious lily that is.

Beside her laid the one responsible for his second imprisonment: Twilight Sparkle. Just her name sent a combination of fear and anger coursing through his veins.

From the way they were laid out, it was obvious that some sort of shield had protected them from the brunt of the blast. Moving over to check on the earth pony, he tried to summon a tendril of chaos to glide him over to her side. Suddenly his headache flared and he collapsed on the ground with fiery bolts of pain coursing through him.

When the pain finally cleared up, he sighed in frustration and gingerly picked up the yellow mare and carried her out of the wreckage. Climbing a set of stairs, he found himself in the reception area of an exceptionally well stocked and organized library.

Looking around, another set of stairs led up to what looked like a bedroom area.

Staying in shape had never been a top priority for a being who could command chaos to carry him and whatever he desired. So having to actually walk and carry weight was exceedingly tiring. Finally reaching the top of the stairs, the sight of a decently sized bed with star printed sheets brought the promise of resting his arms. Carefully laying the mare down in the bed, he tucked her in, and had absolutely no idea what to do next.

If he stayed, he would undoubtedly be discovered and the fracas that ensued would surely end up with him being encased in stone for yet a third time. But, he was hesitant to leave the side of the beautiful figure in front of him. After a moment of crisis, his self-preservation won out.

Finding a stack of paper and pens nearby, he grabbed a sheet and jotted down a quick note.

After folding it up, he wrote on the front: “For when you wake up” and propped it up on the bedside table.

With one last glance back into the room with the drowsing figure, he snuck off to hide.

Rise and Shine

The light creeping through the curtains was shining right in Apple Blooms eyes. She tried to turn over in bed, but the sudden feeling of pain enveloping her woke her up with a whimper.

‘Whose bed am I in?’ she wondered idly.

Looking around, she saw that she was in a largeish bed with stars and planets on the sheets.

Her eyes widening in shock, she frantically looked around to see if Twilight was in bed with her.

Not seeing that anypony else sharing the bed with her, she let out a little sigh of relief.

Focusing on her wounds, she realized that she had no idea how she had gotten injured.

‘C’mon Apple Bloom, think! you can remember...’

Suddenly a rush of memories filled her mind.

She remembered setting up the Chaos Inhibitor, initializing the power sequence, then... nothing.

All she knew was that something had happened and she had wound up in Twilight‘s bed.

Getting up, she noticed a small note laying on the bedside table

Opening it up it simply read:

“Hope you get better, I don’t think I could bear to lose you again.

-D”

‘Well that’s odd. I don’t think I know anypony with a name that starts with a D.’

While she was pondering upon who could have possibly left her the note, the door to the bedroom slammed open and a very pissed-off Twilight stormed inside.

“Why in Luna’s name did you leave me in the workroom?! I thought that you would at least have the decency to wake me up and put me in my own bed, but noooo; you had to leave me passed out and bleeding in the middle of the burning wreckage downstairs while you were sleeping peacefully IN MY BED!”

With those last couple words she looked like she was about to burst into flames of pure rage.

“Uh, Twilight, I have absolutely no idea what the hay you are talkin’ ‘bout. I just woke up a couple minutes ago.” After a slight pause, she continued “Wait, what happened in the workroom? What happened to the Chaos Inhibitor?!” with the thought that her precious project had somehow been a failure, her voice started to raise it pitch.

“You mean you don’t remember?”

Thinking hard and coming up with nothing, the youngest member of the Apple family stole a phrase from her older brother: “eenope.”

“Well here is the short and sweet version: It worked, then it exploded.”

Her engineering mind began to mentally take apart the Inhibitor’s design to try and reconnect where the process could have gone wrong.

While she was thinking, Twilight walked up to the bed and saw the discarded note laying next to Apple Bloom.

“What’s this?”

“Ah, dunno. It was layin' next to me on the bed when I woke up”

Twilight quickly read through the short letter, and got a confused look on her face.

“Hmm, well there are several things that I can tell from this note just by looking over it.

First: Whoever wrote it must have been in the workroom, because they noted that you were injured.

Second: They seem to be somewhat enamored with you.

Third: They obviously like you more than me, because they carried you up and tucked you in, while they left me collapsed and bleeding on top of some rubble”

Apple Bloom got out of bed and wandered over to her business partner.

“Hey Twi, why don’t you go and fix yerself up. I am goin’ to go see what I can salvage from the workroom.”

With a grumble, Twilight walked into the bathroom and the sound of a hot bath being filled could be heard through the door.

Grabbing a notebook and pen, the engineer walked down into the main room and stopped at the threshold of the basement. Steeling herself for what lay within, she opened the door and moved down the stairs.

What she saw filled her with surprise and sadness.

Her life’s work lay in ruins under the library.
Moving around in the basement, Apple Bloom was dumbfounded as to how she and Twilight actually survived in the surge of energy that had wrecked everything in the basement.

Looking around, she noticed that the six energy dissipators she had installed were nothing but black lumps of slag on the ground.

“Well at least now I know that my dissipator design worked...” she mumbled under her breath as she took notes.

After surveying the damage, there was depressingly little material or equipment that could be salvaged. However there did seem to be a few interesting inconsistencies with the survey of the damage.

In a normal explosion centered on the Inhibitor, the power would have spread radially from the device, laying waste equally around to the workroom.

What she saw painted a whole other picture.

There was a small circle of relatively untouched ground. In front of it was the remains of the control console.

Then in the center of the room, the Chaos Inhibitor was nowhere to be found. There was none of the shrapnel normally associated with crystalline explosions.

Also, there was an inexplicable charred path that looked like it had been burned from one edge of the room into the center of the chamber.

Stumped on what exactly happened, she did what any good scientist would do: She wanted to collect more data.

Trotting back upstairs, she stuck her head upstairs and told Twilight that she was going home to grab some of her tools, sensors, and some supper.

On her way out she ran into Spike, who was returning from the concert he had been attending the past couple days in Canterlot.

“Hey Ap- What happened to you?!” He cried out in shock at the bruised and battered looking Apple Bloom.

“We had an accident in the lab yesterday afternoon. Twilight is ok, though she was also hurt a bit in the blast.”

“Blast? Were you two trying to do? I don’t want to have to replace all the flooring again...”

“Actually Spike, if you could avoid cleaning the workroom right now, I still need to take some measurements down there.”

“If you say so” he shrugged. “I'm going to find Twilight. She is probably going to make me run the library while she is resting. Will you be coming back later?”

“Yes, Spike. I will, do you need me to pick up anything for the two of you?

“Uh, not right now. Thanks though!”

“All right, well go look after Twi. I’ll be back in a couple hours.”

With that, Apple Bloom began to walk back to her house wondering how she was going to explain this to her roommates.

Garden Tour

Garden Springs was taking another group of tourists through the Royal Canterlot Gardens. This was a rather slow time of year, but nonetheless she still had groups of five to ten ponies coming through every couple days.

The tour took them past the royal hedge maze, the royal fountain collection, the royal shrubberies, the royal guard posts and finally the royal statue garden.

Passing all the marble statues of ponies was normally awe-inspiring, but the big attraction was the large statue of Discord that resided in the middle of the plaza.

So when she walked up to it and saw that Discord had disappeared, she did the only rational thing that came to mind: She screamed and fainted.

Normally Princess Celestia looked forward to her brunch.

A nice relaxing meal of tea and some light sandwiches in between tedious meetings and entertaining foreign dignitaries was a time for the Princess of the Sun to unwind a little and read a book.

She had also given her guards standing orders that nopony was to disturb her unless the nation was in dire threat of war or cataclysm.

So far, she had gone twelve years without something coming up during brunch.

With a light sigh of happiness Celestia levitated her book up in front of her and happily read while sipping on some tea.

Just as she was getting comfortable, the doors to her private tea room were slammed open startling the princess and causing her to spew tea all over her book.

Annoyed, Celestia turned around to give a nice shout at whomever it was that just ruined her favorite novel.

A very tired Shining Armor was standing in the doorway panting like he had just sprinted all the way from the Crystal Empire just to break down her doors.

Knowing that she couldn’t stay angry and her son-in-law for too long, she beckoned for him to enter her tea room.

“Come in Shining. What brings you here in such a rush?”

"Discord appears to be loose again.”

A pause so pregnant that it probably could have broken birthing records followed his announcement.

Celestia was staring at Shining, hoping that he wasn’t joking or trying to pull some sort of evil prank.

“Seriously?”

“Seriously. A tour guide was taking a group of ponies through the statue gardens, when she saw that the statue of Discord was gone. She screamed and fainted, and one of my guards heard the commotion and ran over to investigate. Then once he saw the statue was gone, he reported it in and took the tour group away from the gardens”

“Have there been any reports of cotton candy clouds or chocolate milk rain?”

“Surprisingly, no. When I first heard, I sent the pegasi out to look for any signs of Chaos, but they reported back that there was nothing like last time.”

Looking pensive, Celestia began thinking of her next course of action.

She couldn’t just announce that Discord was loose again. With nothing changing or being strange, her little ponies would just panic for no reason.

However, she couldn’t ignore that he was on the loose again. Just the fact that he was showing some restraint this time meant that he had learned his lesson from last time and was lying in wait for his best opportunity.

Coming to a decision, she began to give her orders to her Captain of the Guard.

“Shining, here is what I want you to do...”

Comments

[MLP BRONY 27]

moar now please?

[Horatiojones]

I am so confused by the premise of this story.
That said, it is done really well.

[CanterlotGuardian]

1252789
it's simple. Discord falls in love with Applebloom. There's really nothing much more that needs to be said.

Oh and btw, this chapter was pretty sweet. Hope to read more soon.

[Nyerguds]

Shaping up nicely! Discord losing his powers as a result was understandable, and typical for this kind of stories, so yeah, no issues there

Some oddities and errors:
> she saw that she was in a largeish bed
Double space between "saw" and "that" (yes, yes, I'm nitpicking )
> next to me on the bed when I woke up”
> bleeding on top of some rubble”
Missing period at the end.
> Were you two trying to do?
Probably needs to start with "What".
> “I am going to find Twilight, Will you be coming back later?”
Period in the middle, instead of a comma. Those are clearly 2 separate sentences. I'd also think Spike would say "I'm".

> Garden Tour
Needs underlining, like the previous titled sub-parts

> Knowing that she couldn’t stay angry and her son-in-law for too long
Huh? Cadence isn't Celestia's daughter, is she?

[chasethebrony]

1253549
Good catch on the little grammar bits. Even after a bit of proofreading and all that, the little things still manage to slip through.

re: cadence: I always figured that Celestia was either Cadence's mother, or they developed into a mother-daughter relationship while Cadence was growing up.

1252789>>1253100 1249586
Like CanterlotGuardian said, It's about the lord of chaos falling in love with Apple Bloom.

Glad to hear that y'all enjoyed the new chapter though.

[Nyerguds]

1253619
Heh. A small hint one of my fellow writers gave me (not sure if it was MidnightShadow or Mimezinga) was to just leave a chapter alone for a full day and then reread it, since then you can look at it without having the actual sentences as you intended them still firmly pre-embedded in your mind

[Azure888]

MORE! Uhhh... pretty please?