The Discord Continuum
The Discord Continuum
Twilight opened her eyes. There was nothing; nothing but emptiness surrounding her. She realized she was lying on a floor, but there was no floor. She tried to stand up. As she did, the ground beneath her hooves started to feel more real.
She turned in every direction looking for something; anything. There was nothing to see but blackness. She tried to take a step. As she did, the ground she was standing upon started to paint itself in before her eyes, spreading outward. She found herself standing on a road.
The road appeared vast. She could see nothing but miles of endless road. Seeing nowhere else to go, she started down the path it laid. She walked on and on.
"How far have I walked?
How long have I been walking?"
Twilight could not answer the questions she thought. Time didn’t feel quite ‘real’ here.
Finally she spotted something more than the road itself. It appeared to be a Bed-And-Breakfast. A sign hung in the window: “Never Closes”.
As she approached the old building, she discovered an elder stallion, rocking in a chair, reading a large leather-bound book; “The Old”. Leaning on a post, stood a young mare reading a magazine; “The New”. A third pony could be seen playing on a game machine. He was a grey stallion with a blonde mane. His cutie mark was infinity (∞).
In fact, when Twilight double-checked, every ponies’ cutie mark appeared to be infinity. She walked over to the young mare trying to get her attention.
“Hello? My name’s Twilight Sparkle. …Where am I?” she asked. The young mare did not even look up. She simply continued to read the magazine.
“Um…Hello?” she tried again. “What about you sir, can you hear me?”
The elder pony too, did not acknowledge her standing there.
“Hello? …Anypony!? …CAN ANYPONY HEAR ME!!?” she screamed getting frustrated.
“I can hear you just fine! There’s no reason to shout,” The grey pony, with a blonde mane said standing directly behind her. He was so close, that he startled Twilight when he spoke, making her jump.
“AH! UH!...uhm…Hi. You scared me!” Twilight said still jittery.
“Sorry about that,” he replied. “Welcome Twilight Sparkle. We are both surprised and so pleased you could come.”
“Come where? Where am I? What happened to me?”
“You did the very thing we were afraid you might one day do. Yet, at the same time, you did the very best possible thing you could do, all at once!” he said without answering any of her questions. “You and your friends are remarkable ponies, Twilight Sparkle.”
“Huh? I don’t understand. Where are we?” she repeated the question.
“Welcome to the Continuum!” he said, waving his front hoof as though he were unveiling a vast city, instead of an endless road and an old building.
Twilight was still lost. She recalled Geordi mentioning something about the Continuum, but couldn’t recall. However, she did remember that the Continuum was related to Discord.
“As in…Discord’s…” she tried to ask but was becoming more nervous at the thought where she might be.
“Discord’s…yes…I suppose you could call this, the Discord Continuum!” he said, chuckling to himself.
Now Twilight was very nervous. If this was where she thought she was, then she was in terrible danger. “Wh-Why was I brought here?” she asked, nervously. She started to backpedal away slowly.
“My dear, WE didn’t bring you here. YOU brought yourself here! And might I add, you’re the first species to do it, besides the Q! It was truly, a remarkable feat, and exactly what we feared most about your kind.”
“Feared us?” Twilight asked now confused. “Why would you fear us? We’re simple peaceful ponies!”
“Ah, but you weren’t always. Your kind went out into the stars millennia ago and fought massive battles, combining magic and science.” The stallion looked up at the sky, which had suddenly filled in with stars.
Twilight remembered the Princess’s story of their violent past. “But we’re not like that now!” she pleaded. “We’ve been at peace for two thousand years!”
“True, True. Yet you just fought a war that left dozens of ponies, humans, and Bratak soldiers dead.”
"We tried not kill anypony!” she shouted, tears forming in her eyes. “Everypony we fought, we would not kill!”
“Indeed. We noticed that. Which is why you are being welcomed, instead of executed, for being here now!”
Twilight gulped. Her mind started drifting towards Discord.
“He died because of her…” she thought.
“I’m so sorry about Discord!” Twilight burst out. “I didn’t want to kill him. I tried to stop it from happening! I didn’t want anypony to die!”
“And that’s why you and your kind are safe now,” he replied. The Continuum pony was walking around Twilight in a circle, checking her out from front to back. Twilight squirmed with discomfort as she was scrutinized.
“Despite the horrific things that happened to you and your friends," he said; "despite a scenario where lives were at stake; despite leaving you with no alternative but to choose who should live and who should die; you pushed, beyond hope, for an alternative that would not involve killing. As did all your other pony friends. That is why we are so proud you could come here.
“But the Red Guard on the other hand…,” he continued, lowering his face in disappointment. “Here, we have a problem.”
Twilight gulped again. She had personally witnessed Captain Torus kill one of the Enterprise crew. “Please! You mustn’t judge us all based on the actions of the few! We preach love and tolerance. We are peaceful ponies!”
“You certainly believe that.” the blonde stallion sighed. “Do you understand what the reason was for testing you?”
“No. I don’t know what possible reason you could have playing a game that left many of my friends wounded or dead!” she screamed at him.
“You are the only beings in the universe currently capable of reaching us here without our help. And you could have killed Discord, but you chose not to.” He explained.
“Discord’s still alive?”
“INDEED Miss. Sparkle!” an ethereal voice called out from behind her.
“Discord!?” she shouted in shock, as she turned and spotted him. He wasn’t quite right, though. He didn't appear whole. He looked partially see-through, almost like a ghost.
“My dear Twilight!” he said, spreading his arms and smiling warmly. He looked positively serene, which made Twilight even more concerned. She stared at him questioningly, with one eyebrow cocked.
“Oh don’t give me that look. You did it!” he said, still holding his arms out, like Twilight was suddenly going to run into them and embrace him in a hug.
She did not. Twilight just continued to stare at him.
“Don’t you see Twilight, that’s why these old fogies were scared of you!”
“I wasn’t scared of them,” the blonde pony interjected, giving Discord a sour look. "Merely trepid, is all!"
“Of course not. You were simply concerned that they might one day kill you.” Discord looked back at Twilight, who was becoming more and more confused by the second.
“Why would we ever try to kill you? This doesn’t make any sense!” Twilight said.
“Let me break it down for you then,” Discord said, putting an arm around her shoulders. Twilight could sort of feel his arm, but it didn’t feel solid. They started to walk slowly around the area in front of the building. “You see, in the beginning of time, there were not that many beings in existence. The Continuum was one of the first species to evolve.
“Back then, we had physical bodies just like every other species. We used animals for labor as we progressed as a society. Eventually, we shed our mortal forms and evolved into the existence you see before you now. But our animal laborers continued to evolve their physical forms, eventually growing into fully sentient beings, with tools and animal laborers of their own. Can you guess who they were?”
“Ponies,” Twilight answered.
“Ponies, yes,” Discord continued. “You ponies are related to us and, with your abilities, have the potential to one day reach the Continuum and even possibly destroy us! We could never allow such a thing. Which is why we eliminated all of your kind two thousand years ago, or so we thought.”
“YOU killed our ancestors!?” Twilight screamed jumping away from him. “You killed billions of my kind?”
“No. They killed themselves mostly; fighting a war so devastating, it destroyed whole planets. Their technology and magic was reaching a level, along with their violence and hatred, that was deemed a threat to the Continuum and therefore, eliminated.”
Twilight was in shock. She couldn’t think of any way to possibly respond to such a horrid statement.
Discord, seeing her stuck in her thoughts, continued to talk. “They were beyond salvation, and would have done it themselves anyway, but might have also taken us with them, which we would never allow.
But then we discovered your little world of Equestria. You slipped past us by hiding in the dense particle cloud in this system. When we finally discovered you, we saw you had reverted to a simpler society with no computers and technology and weapons. You appeared to be at peace. It was determined that we would not just blindly destroy you. We, instead, would evaluate you to see if you would one day become a threat again.”
Twilight stopped walking, standing in the middle of the road. She was trying to process everything she had just heard.
“So this war… was a test?” she asked.
“Yes. And you passed Twilight! Your people are safe now. I’m sorry for your losses, but we needed to bring you to the point where killing was the only option. You still refused, and even when you had me beaten, fair and square, you did not kill me; which I thank you for, by the way.”
“Are you sure you’re not dead?” Twilight asked curiously, looking through the translucent creature, at the restaurant behind him.
“Well, you certainly could’ve killed me, but instead you just made me a little more ‘detached’ from the physical realm for awhile. Don’t worry, I’ll be back to my old self, soon enough!” Discord smiled and did a twirl of his ghostly self.
Twilight continued to think of all that had happened, including the many injured and dead.
“Can you bring them back?” She asked, looking straight at Discord. “Everypony who died… can you bring them back?”
“Well…” Discord tried to avoid answering the question.
“I saved your life! You admitted it!” Twilight yelled.
“Yes…but…well…ugh! Fine! All of your precious ponies are alive.” He said waving his hands. His demeanor and smile suggested this had been his intention all along, but was simply teasing her.
“And the others?” she added looking at Discord sternly.
“…Fine….the animals and humans are fine too.” He said waving his hands a second time.
“And the Bratak?” Twilight was not going to let him go until all the damage was undone.
It was the blonde pony who spoke up this time. “I’m afraid we have a problem there.”
“What problem would that be?” Twilight asked looking even more sternly at the stallion.
“You see, the Bratak’s planet is set to be destroyed by a meteor. Nothing can change this.
“That’s not fair!” Twilight screamed. "Even if they lost your game, they don’t deserve to die! You have the power don’t you? Save them!”
The stallion sighed. “I’m sorry, but the best we can do for them is send them back and make them forget. They will go out in blissful ignorance.” He waved his hooves just as Discord had. “Done.”
“That’s not good enough!” Twilight protested, tears starting to form in their eyes. “What about the Enterprise? They could help them!”
Discord replied, “No, they can’t. The Bratak were wiped from existence four hundred thousand years before you or the Enterprise crew were even born!”
Twilight was furious at their refusal to help them.
Seeing the anger on her face, Discord added, “Twilight, hundreds of sentient species, throughout the universe, have come to such untimely ends, due to natural events, like meteor impacts. It happens all the time. It's part of the universe and it would be terribly rude of us to change the whole universe around!”
Twilight didn’t know what to say. Her ears lowered and she shed a tear for those people who died, even though it was so many thousands of years ago.
“Ohhh there, there.” Discord said almost comfortingly. He tried to hug Twilight, but she still would not let him hug her, quickly backing away from him.
She had another burning question in her to ask. “Are the tests over? Will you finally leave us alone?”
Discord smiled again, this time a little more crookedly. “That entirely depends on you. If we have no need to test you again, you won’t be tested!”
He looked at the clock with no hands on the wall of the building. “Well, it’s probably time for you to be going back to your friends, Twilight. Why it’s almost, zero o’clock!”
Twilight looked from Discord to the blonde pony and back again. “How do I get back?”
“Just keep following the road until you find where you belong,” the blonde pony said, pointing his hoof down the road.
Twilight started down the road. After she walked several yards, she turned back to look at the pair of them. They both waved at her, smiling. She walked a little further and looked back again. They were gone. The old Bed & Breakfast was gone. The stars were gone. Just the road remained.
She continued walking down the road, looking for whatever she was supposed to find. Slowly but surely, she too faded away.
Stats
Page generated in 0.025 seconds
Total duration
942 users online
1,402,795 hits today, 2,561,572 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.®
Only one chapter left
How will it end?
Will Pinkie finally admit her feelings for Riker?
Will Twilight use her new power to destroy the universe?
Will Fluttershy Flip out and start creating a new pet rabbit out of the spare parts from dead ones?
Will Rainbow Dash join the crew of the Enterprise?
Stay tuned for the Final Episode of "The DISCOOOORD CONTIIIIIIINNNNNUUUUUU-UUUUUUUMMMMM!!!!!"
And a special shout-out to the two best comment-editors without actually getting a real one:
and Assasin_Asha 
Stelith
Thanks! /]
So the story is just about over. Will there be a sequel?
1645248 Perhaps the most important question will Derpy raid the enterprises Muffin supply?
us*
The problems of those with that much power. Unless all of reality were to become a rts with no real limitations, with factions of the continuum bootstrapping various worlds in various ways, all for their own amusement... I mean, the Federation has the Prime Directive. It's easy to see why beings that can change mortal's thoughts would have a stricter version. I mean, since the universe isn't a giant bundle of controlled chaos, with feuding and bickering factions everywhere or anythi.....
1645500
Yes. It definitely is a great burden to those of us with so much power!
But it also has its perks!
1645440
I will need to think about this one. The prequal is underway (The Great Pony War: The Legend of Hearth's Warming Eve).
If I can think of a way to get all three groups back together (Enterprise, Discord, and Mane6) I might start it.
I am also thinking of a one-off Futurama cross as well for fun - though this won't be started for a little while.
We shall see!
Derpy getting her hoves on a replicator. May be bad thing.
Technical contamination and all.
1645248
[\ You are welcome!
Right now I found nothing... might be because I'm tired. We'll see later.
Anyhow, that never closing Bed-And-Breakfast kinda reminded me of Daniel and the Ancient Bar... or however they called that. Along with the press talking about Anubis winning and stuff... And that's why I love this piece.
Keep up the good work!
1645741
I think you got stargate stuck in your head too much!
(Not that there's anything wrong with that! 
) 
think ST Voyager Season 2: Ep. 18 "Death Wish" - than you'll see everything line up quite neatly.
1645784
Yes, well... that... unfortunately they stopped airing ST when I was quite little and not really interested in it. Then, when I became a bit more into SF, SG appeared. You may guess the outcome. Only recently we had ST with Kirk(TOS?), ST: DS9 and ST: Enterprise. There also technically is TNG but not on a channel I can access. Voyager is out of question... dumb TV... Plus, I don't really have time to watch that. Oh, well...
I still love it though. Even if my connections are wrong, they still work! dERp!
You know, this one line...
I always thought you use neither as agreement with negation. Shouldn't that be something like 'And so would your friends?' I dunno, this kind of fancy talk is beyond me.
Spotting typos, inconsistencies, sure! This? Not really.
1645834
Whatever works for ya!
Here's a link where you can watch the ep:
ST Voyager S2E18 Death Wish
You can skip until you see sunshine and the road to get the visual for the continuum.
1645982
I've just watched first 10 minutes of it.
How dare you even suggest skipping this awesomeness?
Edit after 2 more minutes:
Eternal prison or death?
Wow... relevant to Discord... not that it's new.
But I say death. Eternal prison is the worst.
More edits:
Dat Double Single Facepalm...
Bucking Earth bribing, Q!!!
Ahhh... now it makes perfect sense with your scene here.
Ah, yes. Immortality is good as long as there is still something new to experience. After that...
200 FAVORITES!!!?
BUCK YEAH!!!!!
fc00.deviantart.net/fs70/f/2012/267/9/7/cutie_mark_crusader_gangnamstyle____ers__by_chocomilkterrorist-d5fo36v.gif
1646274
Hey, gratz! it's rightfully yours!.
1646170
Glad you enjoyed it!
1646314
Also Thanks!
1646363
Nothing major!
Ehm... sorry for this spam, but I have some small errors here.
set to be
Missing quotation mark before 'Even'.
comma after Why and s after it'. Flows better.
Add in a comma after road. We need to splice these two verbs.
And with that, I stop pestering you. And making this entire thing my comment playground...
Seriously, 5 comments out of 16 is mine... a new record, really...
Again, keep up the good work!
Wonderful.
1647178
So I take it you forgive me now for the first battle chapter?
Hopefully I've restored your image of Discord.
1650341 Yes.
Wow.
Nice.
I'd say that was the best literary representation of the Q Continuum I've seen, but its the only one I've ever seen. Keeps to voyager-canon as well, viewing the Q as you both would and wouldn't expect.
You may have expected ponies, but a B&B?
Never.
1655233
How do you explain a gas station to early industrial ponies?
I figured it was the smallest change I could make that would keep the imagery.
I have been holding out my opinion on your story so far, but I feel this is important to note.
I don't hate the story, not at all actually because there are lots of ideas put into it that are very good!
However, regardless of good ideas for a story, the main problem I've had here was with the execution of those ideas. It feels as if there's so much going on but at the same time the story tells me so very little about what was going on. For example Angel's death is sudden, short and dealt with in just a douzen lines of narration. I get that the idea behind this setting is the last act that any owner's Pet is able to perform, which is the act of sacrificing himself for the safety of his owner. That setting can be both very strong and touching as well in the way that Angel, a bunny pet who was at first seen by all as a bastard, would throw himself to take an arrow for Fluttershy. What more can I say? the opportunity there was missed and I didn't feel as bad as I hoped I would for Angel or Fluttershy.
Another example, the Red Guard's betrayal subplot which was so rushed that I didn't even know what their motivation was or anything about Torus's background story or any of his guards for that matter. Upon reading it again, he only met with Discord and talked about his intent, which was overthrowing Celestia. Reading a little more into it, I only dig slightly into his character and find out that he has grown to hate peace because it is weaker than he is and can't fight against the forces they're up against. In conclussion, I know Torus's Intentions and final transformation that decided his final character traits, but what happened to before that? What exactly made him turn this way? That's what he's missing, an evolution or at least a mention of one such evolution that has led him to these final character traits.
Fun fact is that, besides it being a common and predictable as hell villainous act, I can still believe this happening. Since the Red Guard have only been taught to kill and eliminate any enemies they'd encounter, it only makes sense that they would eventually betray Celestia, since they're just the only ones being used for such a purpose to begin with while all the rest of ponies are free to enjoy the freedom that these guys will end up dying for. They have nothing, no life to live or enjoy, no gain in their actions, they're just organic weaponry that is always trained to be ready for the mission.
This is just how much I could depict, given his and his guards' short backstory.
To be fair, this is all due to the fact that the main focus is spent on certain characters and not all characters, which again you should have prioritized based on events. Some events need a slower pace when telling a story, otherwise when as a reader I am facing a fast pace in the story, for me at least that feels similar to holding down the fast-forward button on a remote control while watching a movie.
Great story, but I think the execution could have gone a lot better than it did.. Nothing had striked an impact, except the very important things which obviously should have left an impact, otherwise the story wouldn't have worked at all.
I hope you didn't take too much offense from my comment, these are my honest thoughts upon reading the story and I hope they help you somehow! Did I mention that the idea behind this story just blew my mind? I'm just saying..
1658650
Thanks for the critique!
I would say that most of the short side stories and lack of depth was due to the writing style for this story.
I didn't write the story in advance. I wrote it chapter by chapter, sometimes one or two chapters ahead of what was published to try to give leeway if things needed to change in earlier chapters as the story was written.
The Red Guard for example, was originally entirely done in one chapter - introduction, betrayal, attack. This was to quick to be anything but useless, so I quickly went back, changed the previous chapter to introduce them and expand their story in the following chapter by connecting them with Discord.
Angel was very last minute in the chapter and I had to quickly expand his role so he actually had a part and not just a death. If I had written the whole story prior to publishing I could have expanded these story lines deeper into previous chapters building them. But since chapters were being published as I was writing them, they could only be as deep as the chapters that had yet to be published.
In my second story, I'm trying to create more depth between characters' plot / development, but it too is being written/published together make the depth limited to my insight on future chapters as I type.
Thanks again for the critique though. I will try to consider more character dev / plot lines where I can.
1660339 That's nice to know. Just because of that, i will give the pre-quel, I assume, a read!
)
But despite the many things I've said, don't let them make you think different of your story. It deserves all 139 likes! (one of which is from yours truly
Thank you again for not taking my critique as a formal bashing! I'll await anxiously for the next story.
Hooray! Discord Lives!
I agree with toxicitzi though, Angel's death was too quickly passed over, but it doesn't ruin the story, it just means the story wasn't up to it's full potential.
Also, for some reason, this scene popped into my head when you described the B&B and the long road of the Continuum:
I enjoyed this story a good bit, but I ran into an issue with this and the immediately prior chapter.
Part of the whole point to the resolution in this chapter is that Twilight tried not to kill Discord... but we have no evidence of that. In Chapter 11, we see no evidence at all of Twilight trying to pull her punch. We see Discord pulling an overly theatrical plea for mercy (or was it? given that he actually did take damage and part of what he was doing there in the first place was attempting to figure out if ponies could or would kill a Q... maybe he was genuinely scared... it's hard to say with him.) And then he explodes. And then Twilight overloads and disappears. We don't find out that she didn't *want* to kill Discord until this chapter... in fact, if you go by what you see in the text rather than what people tell you about it, it looks more like she totally wanted to kill Discord in a blind rage and then once she'd done it was horrified by her own actions.
This is a problem because the resolution of your story depends on Twlight *not* trying to kill Discord. "I killed a Q in a blind rage and then felt really sorry about it" is not going to persuade the Continuum not to annihilate her species, whereas "As soon as I realized that my power was actually *killing* him I tried to pull it back and that's what caused me to overload and end up here and I'm so sorry that I failed and he died anyway" would be meaningful to them. They'd be a lot more willing to accept that if a pony who would go all-out against what she thought of as a nigh-omnipotent being would *try* to pull her punch as soon as she realized she *could* kill him, her species probably isn't going to go running around killing Qs in the future. It would also make Q's reaction make a lot more sense; right now he's behaving as if she did pull her punch, as if he lived through that because she stopped herself from killing him even though he did everything in his power to provoke her into trying... but *we* didn't see any evidence that that was what was happening, when it was happening.
I believe it would both make sense, and add a lot more drama to the scene, if when Discord begs Twilight not to kill him, she realizes in horror that she *might*, tries to pull back, is utterly horrified when he explodes anyway, and the energy surging back into her is what causes her to overload and transport herself into the Q Continuum. Right now it's possible that all those things are happening but because you are not actually showing us what goes through Twilight's mind after the attack begins, and we know that when she begins her attack she's enraged with Discord and blames him for all the deaths, what it *looks* like is that she murders Discord deliberately in a hot rage and then overloads on the power she had to absorb to do it. We see him (apparently... and possibly actually) become terrified and beg for his life, but Twlight shows no reaction to this except to continue the attack. We need to *see* Twilight trying not to kill Discord or it doesn't make any sense when Q2 tells us that she won ponykind's freedom by trying not to kill Discord, because as far as we can see she *did* try to kill him.
(I'd also sort of like to know if he was putting on a show there or if he was actually scared she was going to kill him, but I realize that if you can't go into his subjective perspective we're never likely to find out, because if he was actually scared he's never going to admit it.)
3332188
I agree with this assessment. It would be pretty easy to modify it as Twilight trying to sequester all the monoceros particles inside her body rather than continue to use her magic to kill Discord once she realized what was happening, and that's what causes her to go critical. That would actually make it even more impressive, since it would be less of a stopped-short-of-killing-him situation and more of a would-rather-die-than-murder situation, which is a whole lot more noble. All it would really take is a little peek into Twilight's mind and maybe some outward indication that she's actually pulling the Orbital Friendship Cannon back right before Discord explodes.
So Twilight somehow teleported to the Continuum? Wow.
Ok... I expected many things like Twilight having to replace Discord, she become a Alicorn prematurely and a few other things. This open ended quick history lesson wasn't it.