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The ground rumbled violently. Before she had time to even think about it, Twilight found herself half-running, half-flying, barely escaping the grasp of the plant-worm thing that had suddenly erupted out of the ground. Her attempt to get any kind of height was stymied by a draconequus suddenly landing on her, arms wrapped around her neck and tail wrapped around her middle. Twilight turned to face the thing, horn at the ready, backing away as its maw opened and tentacles flung themselves outward.

"What in the world!?" Discord's exclamation sounded almost like a shriek.

It hadn't surprised Twilight when Discord had wrapped himself around her in an apparent pretense of terror, after he'd been pretending all day to be sick and needing her attention. It hadn't surprised her that he was improbably light, either; her ability to fly was impeded more by his bulk and how extremely non-aerodynamic having him clinging to her was making her than by his weight. But hearing what sounded like a genuine exclamation of fear and shock from him – that shook her. She'd been certain Discord had invented that creature just to annoy her. If he really was startled by it – if he really was afraid and not being a gigantic attention-hogging drama llama again – that didn't say a lot of good things about her and Cadance's ability to fight the thing off indefinitely.

The creature reared up, Twilight readied a blast, Discord raised his talon to snap, and Twilight could feel Cadence next to her gathering magical energies for a shield.

And then it spat some sort of goo at them.

Twilight was startled enough not to fire the blast she had prepared. Cadance's shield converted to a magic health bubble spell instead, purging the ponies of the goo, and any disease organisms it might be carrying, instantly. The creature slumped backward, sliding back into its hole in a trail of goo.

Discord was still covered in the stuff. He hadn't managed to summon any kind of spell in time. For a moment Twilight wondered if Cadance had left him out of the health bubble on purpose, and then realized that that was impossible; Discord was still hanging on Twilight. Leaving him out of the bubble would have risked leaving her out as well. It just hadn't worked on him. Which made a certain amount of sense. Discord was mostly impervious to harmonic magic, the kind that almost all unicorn magic used.

Or he could be trying to repeat his fake illness. Within seconds, he had turned as green all over as he'd been blue before, and dark spots appeared all over his fur. Diseases didn't work that fast and Twilight had actually never seen a disease turn a pony's fur or feathers a different color. Discord wasn't a pony, but if anything that ought to make him less likely to get sick from pretty much anything.

Before she could say anything about it, he suddenly became extremely heavy. Twilight staggered, and Discord's arms and tail slipped free of her body. He crashed to the ground with a startled cry, falling on his back.

Twilight backed away from him. "Discord, what are you trying to pull now?"

"Pull? I'm not trying to pull anything!" He sat up, brushing the dirt off himself with every appearance of being genuinely irritated. "Just look at me! What did that thing do?"

"It's given you the green pox, apparently," Cadence said. "A terrible illness. First the victims turn green, then they start itching uncontrollably, then they foam at the mouth, and finally they're overwhelmed with a desperate need to confess their love to inanimate objects." She shook her head sadly.

Discord glared at Cadance. "Oh, you're very funny, princess," he spat. "You'll be taking Pinkie Pie's title as Equestria's resident comedian any day now."

"Are you seriously trying to tell me you didn't make those things?" Twilight asked skeptically.

"They weren't supposed to come out like that!" Abruptly Discord seemed to realize what he had just admitted to. "I – I mean, I've never – I didn't—" He wilted slightly under Twilight's glare. "The tatzlwurms were supposed to be much smaller than that," he confessed. "They were just supposed to be a, a challenge. You know. A bit of an obstacle to make things interesting. Not that giant... thing. And where did that repulsive goo come from and what has it done to me?" He made a show of struggling to his feet and sinking back down again. "I haven't been this weak since... never! Wait, am I turning to stone again? Don't tell me—"

"You're not turning to stone," Twilight said, exasperated. "You're just green."

"But I feel so heavy," Discord said plaintively. "I can barely move my muscles. I suppose you're right, they can't be turning to stone because I can still feel them, but they ache."

"Right. You just spent the whole day pretending to be sick to mess up my day with my sister in law, and now you're really sick. Discord, how stupid do you think I am?"

"Why, I don't think you're stupid at all," Discord said, in what was probably supposed to be an overdramatic, how-could-you-think-such-a-thing tone, except for the coughing fit at the end, which left him doubled over on the ground, clutching at the grass as if he was afraid of sliding off the mountain.

"Uh-huh. So why do you think I'm going to believe that you're really sick now?"

Discord looked up at her, lifting his head slightly off the ground. "Because I really am!" He lowered his head again. "Or something. Maybe I'm under some sort of spell. Why do I feel so weak?"

"Don't know, don't care," Twilight said. "You ever hear the expression, 'Fool me once, shame on you, fool me twice, shame on me?'"

"Twilight, be reasonable. You already passed my friendship test! Why would I need to do the same—" He started coughing again.

"I don't know. It doesn't make any sense that you'd think I'd fall for it now. But that's your specialty, isn't it? Things that don't make any sense." She looked over at Cadance. "Come on, Cadance. Let's go home."

"Wait!" Discord pulled himself to his feet, moving slowly and as if his body was dragging on him. "Twilight, I really don't feel well at all. I'm entirely serious about this. I need help."

"So teleport home," Twilight said. "Or fly. You can fly with us if you insist you need someone to spot you."

"I can't fly." He flapped his wings a couple of times, pitifully. They were plainly much too small to give him any lift on their own, without his magic negating gravity, which it was apparently not doing. "I'm much too weak. I can barely stand up!" To illustrate his point, he wobbled and almost fell over, catching himself by bracing his tail against the ground at the last moment.

"Discord, we're done here. I don't know why you're trying so hard to make me believe this particular story, but it's way too coincidental for you to get really sick just after you've been faking being sick all day. And the same kind of sickness – just a different color."

"I know!" Discord said, a pleading note in his voice. "There's not making sense, and there's being entirely stupid. Do you think I don't know how unlikely this is? I wouldn't try to fake another illness right now, because I know you wouldn't believe me!"

"So I'm supposed to believe you because you wouldn't fake an illness because I wouldn't believe you."

"Yes!"

"No." She turned to Cadance, who'd spent the whole interchange looking at Discord with a speculative expression. "Let’s go home, Cadance."

"Do you really think that's wise?" Cadance asked, concern in her voice.

"Yes," Twilight said, flapping her wings and lifting off the ground. "It's almost dark, and we don't want to be out here in unfamiliar territory when night falls."

"Twilight, please. I'm not faking this! I—my magic isn't working and I feel awful, please help me." Twilight ignored him, beckoning Cadance to follow her, and after a moment of looking at Discord with uncertainty, the other alicorn finally did so. "No, wait!" Discord shouted, as they took to the air. "Don't leave me here!"

"I'm pretty sure you can find your own way home," Twilight called down to him. "Fluttershy will be back tomorrow around lunchtime, so if you really aren't feeling well, I'm sure you can go drop in on her once you get back."

"But I can't! I—Twilight!" She turned away from the draconequus and began to fly in earnest. "You've disappointed me, Twilight, I'm very disappointed!" he called after her, and then started coughing again.

Cadance sounded worried. "Twilight, are you absolutely sure this is a good idea?"

"Yes," Twilight said, and then threw up a silence bubble around herself and Cadance. "No. Please put up a bubble around this one."

Cadance did as Twilight suggested, so that Twilight could cast a sonic illusion outside the bubble, the sound of flapping wings, to mask the presence of a silence bubble at all. "What are you thinking?"

"I want to land some distance away and cast a scrying spell on him, when he thinks we've gone. If he's faking, he'll probably have teleported home by now. If he's not... well, I want to see what he does when he thinks we're not watching."

"Ah, I see." Cadance nodded. "And maybe teach him a bit of a lesson about crying timberwolf, I'm guessing?"

Twilight grinned. "I really do think it's way too much of a coincidence for the whatever he called it, tatzlwurm? Is that what he said?"

"Yes, I think so."

"Right. It's ridiculous that the tatzlwurm could get him sick, right after he's been pretending to be sick all day, especially since he admitted he had something to do with creating or modifying the things. But... he was taking it pretty far for a scheme of some kind. When he was faking, he kept using his powers all over the place. He's not doing that anymore. So... maybe he's actually telling the truth this time. But I want to know for sure, first."

"Don’t you think it would be better to send the message that you can rely on your friends to help you when you need it?"

"Not if it means sending the message that your friends are doormats. Or idiots. Discord has to know that sometimes, he's going to get called on his games. If he isn't faking, we'll help him, but I want him to know that he can't fool me the same way twice."

She chose a likely looking spot and glided down to a landing, Cadance following her. "All right. Let's see what he's up to when no one's looking at him."

An image formed. Discord, still green and spotted, was on all fours, walking very slowly down the mountain, his tail dragging in the dirt. "... stupid tatzlwurm," he was muttering. "Chaos, why do you do this to me? Don't I bring you enough exploding flowers and thermonuclear chocolate? You're a witch, you know that? Think you wouldn't be so high maintenance after all these years..." He sighed. "Note to self: stay better focused on being unfocused. Obviously crossed some streams someplace... oh, gods, why am I so tired? Feel like... I've been outrunning... Elder Gods... for a century or two. I do not like this. Stupid Twilight Sparkle."

Cadance looked over at Twilight. "That doesn't sound like he's faking."

"Maybe not. But if he suspects that I might be watching him, he might be dragging it out."

At this point, the ground erupted under Discord with a roar. He shrieked like a foal and rolled, barely clearing the area by the time the tatzlwurm burst free. "Oh, for the love of--! This is ridiculous!" he shouted.

One of the tatzlwurm's tentacles snagged Discord's leg and started dragging him in. He doubled his body over into nearly a circle, bringing his teeth and claws into the same area as his leg, and swiped at the tentacle with his claws while grabbing it with his talon. It tore, just as another one wrapped around Discord's tail. Snarling, Discord flipped himself in the other direction, backward, grabbed the tentacle around his tail with his mouth and bit down, ripping it in half.

Twilight watched with interest. She'd never seen Discord use his body as a weapon before; for all that he was a large, savage-looking creature with a predator's teeth and claws, he was almost excessively civilized. Immature, selfish, and malicious, but civilized. His weapons of choice were invariably words, followed by his chaos powers. He even went two-legged most of the time, crippling his body's ability to move quickly in favor of being able to employ his opposable thumbs. The fact that he wasn't using his magic to fight the tatzlwurm suggested he might not be faking his illness, but the fact that he was able to react so quickly and with such apparent strength to the attack threw into question his complaints about being weak.

The tatzlwurm shrieked and reared back. It seemed to be a different one than the one that had sneezed goop all over them; possibly the same one that had been under the flower, because it seemed robust and healthy, and also had the ability to fly, or at least jump absurd distances. It lunged at Discord, who twisted sideways again, rolled under the creature and raked it with his claws, then rolled out from under it, came to all fours, and ran frantically as it curled itself around with a scream and pursued him.

Discord ran straight for a cliff face, muttering something to himself as he ran. Twilight increased the sound amplification on the scrying spell so she could hear him. "...know you wanna break loose, come on, do it for old Discord, you never liked being part of that mountain anyway, come on, come on, be your own giant hunk of rock and stop living in daddy mountain's shadow, come on..."

He came up against the cliff face, backed against it, panting hard. The tatzlwurm charged straight for him. For a horrifying moment Twilight thought, what if he isn't faking? What if that thing eats him before we can get back there? She readied a teleport spell – as annoying as Discord was, she didn't want to see him die, or even suffer grievous physical injury. Before she could invoke it, Discord was twisting himself out of the way, moving more like the tatzlwurm himself than like a creature with legs. The tatzlwurm slammed into the cliff face, and a large, jagged piece of the cliff face broke loose and fell on it, squashing its head. Its back end twitched once, and then went still.

"YES!" Discord pumped a fist into the air. "I've still got it! Woohoo!" He then collapsed into a puddle of coils on the ground, coughing. "Ugh. So tired... " Inching along the ground the same way he had when he'd asked Cadence and Twilight to carry him from the Starswirl exhibit and they'd refused, he made his way over to the dead tatzlwurm and the giant rock on top of it, got to his feet, and climbed the rock.

"Well, Bob, that wasn't quite as hilarious as the adventure I had with your cousin Tom a couple of years ago, but I'm glad to see that when push comes to shove—" Another coughing fit. When it subsided, Discord draped himself backward over the top of the rock, lion limb over his eyes as if the fading sunset was hurting his eyes. "...that you're willing to break free of Dad and be your own rock... did I thank you for saving my life back there? No? Well, thanks. You can be my new second best friend, Twilight obviously doesn't want the job." He turned over onto his belly. "Is this what nausea really feels like? I think I'd forgotten. Urgh. Either that or I've pulled every muscle in my abdomen. Why does it hurt so much to move?" If it hurt him to move, it wasn't stopping him, apparently; he curled up on top of the rock, bending into a semicircle lying on the relatively flat top of the jagged boulder. "Feel so heavy... what's wrong with me? The chaos is there, I can feel it... just can't reach. So tired, hurts to breathe. I didn't turn the oxygen into glass shards, why does it feel like... I did? Maybe just... need some sleep. Yeah. I'll take a nap, feel better when I get up, then I'll go turn Twilight into a turnip for leaving me here... nah, Fluttershy won't like that... I'll just make her head look like a turnip and pretend it's her own magic that did it. That'll work."

Twilight scowled. Cadance said, "Well, I'd say that's pretty definite. I can't imagine he'd say that if he knew we were still watching him."

"I'll turn him into a turnip," Twilight said. "I know he'll just turn himself back, but after everything he put us through today--!"

"You did leave him to be nearly eaten by a tatzlwurm because you thought he was faking an illness he really had," Cadance said.

"You're standing up for him?" Twilight looked at her sister-in-law in shock.

"I'm standing up for you, Twilight. You're a better pony than this. You were willing to try to take care of Discord before you knew for certain that he was faking because of the chance that he might be sincere. Does the fact that he was faking illness all day really change anything? You already knew he was a liar, a trickster, and that he might be faking." She waved a hoof at the image, where Discord was shivering, trying to coil himself tighter, and mumbling something about wishing he could conjure himself a blanket. "It's pretty clear he's not faking now."

"Yeah, but the fact that he was faking it, and that he was actually upset that you said this hadn't really disrupted your day with me and you needed a challenge like this, that tells me he set out deliberately to ruin my time with you! For no reason except that he despises friendship! And he uses 'friendship' as an excuse to do it!"

"I actually don't think that despising friendship was the reason he did this. I think—"

Whatever Cadance was going to say she thought was cut off by a rumbling sound in the image. Both ponies turned to watch as yet another tatzlwurm burst out of the ground right near the giant rock crushing the body of their compatriot, hissing and roaring.

"Oh, now, this is totally unfair!" Discord shouted. He tried to get to his feet, but before he could move, the tatzlwurm's tentacles had wrapped around his dragon leg, his tail, and part of his upper body as he tried to lunge up and away. "Chaos, why are you doing this to me?" Discord wailed, scrabbling at the rock with both paw and talon, trying to cling to it as the tatzlwurm pulled at him. He thrashed, twisting and kicking, wings beating frantically, but the tatzlwurm had too much leverage. Slowly, inexorably, it pulled him across the surface of the rock, despite the fact that his talon was dug in hard enough that it was scoring gouges in the rock as the tatzlwurm pulled.

Discord started laughing. It wasn't one of his laughs of triumph or mockery or amusement or condescension. It sounded broken, hysterical, the laughter of a being who'd just discovered that the universe's ultimate practical joke was being played on him. The sound snapped Twilight out of her shocked focus on the images in her scrying spell.

"Cadance, I'm going to get him. Cover me!" Twilight teleported, directly above the tatzlwurm that was trying to pull Discord into its maw.

"Let go of my annoying pain in the rear friend!" she shouted, firing down at the tatzlwurm. She couldn't fire into its vulnerable mouth, Discord was too close to it. The tatzlwurm shrieked and thrashed, but took no serious injury.

Discord twisted his head around to look up at her. "Twilight?"

Cadance appeared, and fired at the back of the tatzlwurm's head. It screamed, its tentacles releasing Discord as it twisted around to face its new attacker. Discord fell off the rock and slumped onto the ground at its base, sitting against the rock, wide yellow eyes still staring at Twilight in shock. "You came back..."

Between the two of them, Cadance and Twilight alternately battered and wrestled the tatzlwurm back into the hole it came from. Then Cadance levitated Discord out of the way so Twilight could roll the large bulk of Bob the rock off the dead tatzlwurm and deposit it on top of the hole.

Cadance set Discord down against the base of the cliff. "How do you feel?" she asked.

"Awful beyond belief." As Twilight landed next to them, Discord turned on her. "What took you so long? I could have been—" Hacking and coughing. "--killed!"

His obvious anger might have been more menacing if he wasn't slumped at the base of the cliff in obvious misery, barely moving, his eyes completely bloodshot and his voice hoarse, with an irritating scratchy note to it as if he needed to clear his throat. He looked as if he could barely sit up. Every part of his body was tinged a dull green, and the dark spots all over the fur on his neck and head had multipled.

"Relax, Discord," Twilight said, smiling sardonically. "You just passed my 'Is Discord Still Being A Big Fat Liar Or Is He Really Sick' test. Sorry about the tatzlwurm grabbing you before I could get here, but, you know, I didn't put them here."

"They... weren't supposed... to be like this," Discord said, wheezing.

Cadance tried to cast a spell on him to strengthen and heal his lungs, but it slid off him like water off a greasy pan. "Don't... bother... my dear," Discord panted. "Healing... spells... don't work... on me."

"Oh, that must make life difficult," Cadance said sympathetically.

"Not unless... they draw from chaos," Discord said. "Don't... suppose either of you can do... chaos magic?"

Twilight and Cadance looked at each other. "It... hasn't really been among my top priorities to learn," Twilight said. "Given that my Element of Magic comes from Harmony, after all."

"I could make you fall in love with somepony," Cadance said. "Depending on how I cast it, that can be a chaotic spell."

Discord grimaced. "No thank you. I have... enough problems." He looked up at Twilight. "Let me... guess. You flew off... and spied on me... to see if I was faking?"

Twilight nodded. "Did you guess at the time, or are you just figuring it out now?"

"Now. At the time... I thought... you left me."

"Well, I'd give you a medal for passing my test, then, but I don't have one... actually, what happened to the one you gave me?" She looked down as she realized for the first time that the medal appeared to be gone.

Discord sighed. "Chaos has a problem with permanence..."

"Whatever you did to the tatzlwurms didn't wear off."

"I keep... telling you. That wasn't... how they were... supposed to come out." He closed his eyes. "I'm so tired. Can we go home?"

Twilight looked around. "I think that's going to be an issue," she said slowly. "If you can't fly, and you can't teleport... Cadance and I can't carry you with magic all the way back to Canterlot, or Ponyville, or wherever we're dropping you off, and your chariot seems to have disappeared just like the medal you gave me did."

Discord curled in on himself, coiling like a snake, with his legs inside the coils, and his wings spread out over them, shivering. His head was draped over the top of his own coils, eyes heavy-lidded though not quite closed anymore. "Can you get me a blanket?" he mumbled. "I'm so cold."

Twilight sighed. "The blankets and pillows you had with your chariot are also gone." She put a hoof on his forehead. "Huh. You're much hotter than you were earlier."

Despite his apparent weakness, Discord smirked. "Oh, really? You prefer green on me that much? How flattering, Twilight, thank you."

Twilight scowled at him. "I am going to give Fluttershy the recipe for the grossest, most awful tasting, disgusting anti-fever potion I can find in the library and I'm going to have her make you take it."

"Oh no the horror." He couldn't even fake faking being worried.

Cadance cast another health bubble on Twilight. "Until we know what he has, we need to keep ourselves protected from getting it," she said. "If you touch him, you should cast a health bubble to sterilize anything you might pick up from him. The tatzlwurm sneeze acted on him so fast, we can't take any chances. If this is an illness, it could be incredibly contagious."

"Or maybe it only affects draconequui. Or avatars of chaos," Discord mumbled.

Twilight levitated one of the giant flower petals over to him. "One of these fell on me earlier. They're not perfect, but they'll block the wind, at least."

"Oh." He shivered when she dropped it over him, and then used his paws to pull it almost closed around the front of his coiled body, like a cape. "Thank you, Twilight. That... really isn't much better though."

"It's what we've got." How were they going to get him home? He was too large to carry on a single pony's back and there was no way they could fly with him draped across the both of them. Besides, now that he wasn't using his magic to lighten himself he was a lot heavier than he'd been. They didn't have his chariot, not that she wanted to pull that godawfully heavy thing again anyway, and they couldn't very well make a travois and pull him if they were going to fly...

...or could they?

Her face lit up with a manic grin as she figured out how they were going to do this.

Half an hour later, a heavily protesting Discord, straightened out, was wrapped tightly in giant flower petals, only his face and snout exposed. Tentacles from the dead tatzlwurm bound him, holding his arms, legs, and wings inside the flower petal cocoon and keeping it wrapped around him. The stem of the giant flower had been cut in half and hollowed out to make a travois long enough to lay him on, with a bit of magic to transform the outside of the stem into wood to make it stronger while leaving the inside as softer, squishier plant matter for a cushion. More strips of the stem had been transformed into ropes, some of which tied Discord's cocooned body onto the travois, tightly enough that he couldn't slip free. The travois wasn't entirely long enough for his full body, including tail, so a small part of his tail hung over the edge, swishing frantically but helplessly. Twilight was using more of the plant matter to create harnesses for herself and Cadance, so they could attach Discord's travois at four points and keep it more or less stabilized in the air.

"I would like to state, for the record, that I have the strongest objections possible to this plan," Discord said, for the fourth time. Twilight thought he must really be upset to have repeated himself this many times. Discord didn't normally like repeating himself at all.

"And I would like to state, for the record, that I still don't see any other safe way for Cadance and I to transport you back home, so your objections are noted and are being ignored."

"Twilight, the tatzlwurm skin is fuzzy! Do you want me to peel enough of the skin off that we can wrap it around him for an extra layer of protection from the wind? We've got a long trip and I think he's got a pretty high fever."

"If you can magically cure it so it's more like leather than dead animal skin, sure."

"Well, it's actually a plant, so it won't be like leather, but I think I can cure it to be a little tougher on the inner surface, so we can put that side facing out and let the fuzzy side face him to keep him a little warmer."

"Please tell me I'm having a nightmare," Discord said. "Luna, I bow to your superiority, very funny, now let me wake up please."

"Do you have nightmares about mares tying you up fairly often?" Cadance said. "I think maybe if you found a way to explore your fantasies in a safe environment with a mare you trust, it might help with that."

Twilight turned bright red. "Cadance, please don't—"

Discord was never one to be defeated in a contest of innuendo. "Why, Cadance, are you volunteering? I'm so very flattered, but what would Shining Armor think?"

"Discord! Of course I didn't mean me, we've only just met! How could we possibly have the mutual trust and respect necessary for a consensual and healthy BDSM relationship? You'd need to ask Pinkie Pie, of course. Fluttershy's a submissive herself, I think, so while she might be willing to domme you for your sake, I don't think she'd get much out of it."

"I'm not listening to this," Twilight said, pressing her hooves against her ears. "I'm not listening, I'm not listening."

"Oh, you'd be surprised what Flutters is capable of when she puts her mind to it," Discord said.

"I admit I don't know her that well; maybe she has hidden depths." Cadance smirked.

"I'M NOT LISTENING TO EITHER OF YOU! LA LA LA LA LA!"

Cadance laughed gently. "Relax, Twilight, I'm just teasing."

Discord sighed. "You really are related to Celestia, aren't you?" he said to Cadance.

"Well, adopted, but she pretty much raised me. Now don't wiggle around when I lift you, I'm trying to wrap this tatzlwurm skin around you to keep you warm."

"Or you could just not, I promise I won't complain about the cold, really—"

"You? Not complain about something? Sorry, I don't want to bring about the Apocalypse today," Twilight said. As Cadance wrapped the tatzlwurm skin around the entire travois, Twilight tied it into place with more of the ropes made from the flower stem. Creating something out of nothing took a lot of magic, more than any of them could spare with Discord sick, but transforming something into something similar wasn't difficult for an experienced unicorn mage. Twilight was easily able to transmogrify the plant stem strips into strong, tough, flexible ropes.

As tempting as the thought of muzzling Discord was, his frequent coughing fits suggested he needed his mouth free to breathe properly. Instead, she shaped the top of the travois into a semi-rigid hood, large enough to accommodate his mismatched horns, that would serve as a windbreak, shade his eyes in case the moon was too bright, help keep him warm, and make it totally impossible for her or Cadance to hear a word he might say once they were in flight.

"I don't suppose you might have a tiny glass of water?" Discord asked as the two of them finished wrapping and tying him into place.

Twilight glared down at him. "NO."

"But my throat hurts."

"Doesn't change the fact that we don't have any glasses and I don't know where to find any water around here." She sighed. "You kept complaining how tired you were. Why don't you just try to get some sleep?"

"How am I supposed to sleep with two inexperienced flyers dragging me through the sky, tied up, helpless, entirely too weak to free myself, and with no magic to protect myself or fly if you accidentally drop me? Especially when you can't even spare me a tiny little bit of water?"

"What am I supposed to do, conjure it out of nothing? Oh, wait, I'm not a chaos spirit with a near infinite supply of magic, so I can't do that."

"No, but you could summon water out of the dead tatzlwurm," Discord snapped. "Living things, and dead things that used to be living, are mostly water. I can understand you being reluctant to vaporize innocent blades of grass to keep me from feeling like I've just eaten a bag of knives, given how little consideration you're giving me right now, but surely you can stomach damaging the dead body of a creature that's already dead, which tried to eat me and possibly you and your dear pal as well, to spare me a little bit to drink so I don't have to feel like my throat is a griffon's lunch?"

Twilight blinked. "I actually didn't think of that. Sorry."

She did as he suggested, modifying a weather control spell that could shape the behavior of water so that she could pull a stream of purified water out of the dead tatzlwurm, then carefully holding tight to it with her magic so she could guide it over to his mouth. She didn't have a cup, so she had to turn the stream into essentially a magic-guided water fountain that he could drink from by lifting his head slightly. He gulped water for what seemed like several minutes while Cadance attached ropes to the travois at several points. Finally he laid his head back. "Thank you."

"Discord, it's not like I'm trying to make you suffer here."

"No? Not even the tiniest little bit of schadenfreude influencing your actions?"

She sighed. "I'm trying to make you as comfortable as I can, but you've put us all in a really bad situation. We're in an unfamiliar place, night's fallen, it's hard to see because the moon's barely up over the horizon yet, and there's dangerous creatures underground that made you sick and have nearly eaten all three of us. You're much too big for either Cadance or I to carry you, and we've got a long way to fly home. We don't have the material to build a carriage or chariot, and yours disappeared when you got sick, or cursed or poisoned or whatever this is, so this is the best we can do."

"Maybe so, but you certainly seem gleeful about it," he grumbled.

"No, believe me, dragging you home across this kind of distance is the last thing I want to be doing," Twilight said. "Don't think I'm glad you actually got sick. Even if I didn't have any consideration at all for your suffering –"

"Which you don't," Discord interrupted.

Twilight ignored him. "—the fact remains that I wasted a whole day catering to you when you didn't need me to, and about the only good thing that could have come out of the fact that you were faking it was that I could stop having to take care of you, except then you actually got sick. I wouldn't have been real happy to spend the day taking care of one of my best friends, the ones who I know would do anything for me. I've have done it, because that's what friends do, but I'd have known they'd do the same for me. You've never done anything for me as far as I can tell."

He glared at her. "When I do things for you, I don't feel the need to brag about them and demand I be declared a Hero of Equestria, so you never find out."

"Oh, like what? What have you done for anypony since you reformed?"

"I don’t think I want to tell you. You're being mean." He harrumphed and squared his shoulders, tilting his head to the side. Presumably he'd be folding his arms if they weren't bound at his sides by the giant flower petals wrapped around his body and the vines tying the flower petals in place.

"That's awfully convenient. If you've never done anything, then pretending you don't want to talk about it is a great excuse."

"Don't try reverse psychology on me, my dear, I invented it."

"Twilight, I've got all the ropes in place," Cadance said. "Let's head on back. It's going to be really late by the time we get home."

Twilight sighed. "Yeah."

"Don't worry about the Starswirl exhibit. I'll invite them to bring their tour to the Crystal Empire if they'll do a one-day showing at the palace itself, and you can come to visit me and we'll make a day of it, just Shining, you, and me. Or maybe invite your parents too if they'd be interested. What do you think?"

"That sounds fantastic!"

"No one ever invites me to these things," Discord grumbled.

Twilight looked down at him. "Would you even be interested in an exhibit on Starswirl the Bearded?"

"Well, it's not as if anyone ever asks."

"So I'm asking now."

"Maybe. He was my teacher, you know."

Twilight stared down at Discord, rather more shocked than if he had grown a second head. In fact, Discord growing a second head wouldn't be all that shocking at all, whereas what he'd just said frankly stunned her. "Wait, what?"

Discord smirked. "I'm very tired, Twilight. I think I'm going to take that nap now. How about you and Cadance get a move on? The night won't last forever, not unless Luna goes crazy again."

"You can't just say something like that to me and then leave it there like that! You knew Starswirl the Bearded? Personally?"

Discord closed his eyes and began ostentatiously pretend-snoring.

"Twilight," Cadance said, not sharply, but firmly. "We really do have to get back. You can always talk to Discord about Starswirl tomorrow."

Twilight sighed. "You're right."

The trip home was a lot easier for Twilight than the trip out had been. They knew the distance, they'd covered the route before, and while Discord was much heavier than he'd been without his magic, the combined weight of him and the flower-stem travois was still much, much less than the weight of the chariot had been. Also, the moon was out. Twilight had always loved the night; it was so much more peaceful than the frenetic day. She caught her second wind easily. In the crisp, cool air of the early evening, she felt like she could fly forever.

Cadance wasn't in nearly as good shape, though. Twilight, being a brand new alicorn, had been practicing her flying a lot lately; Cadance's life had been so consumed lately with affairs of state and diplomacy and paperwork and meetings, she barely had time to do much walking, let alone flying, she told Twilight. Also, unlike Twilight, she'd never been much of a night owl. She was struggling gamely, but Twilight could see that between her exhaustion and the weariness of her wings, the trip was much rougher on her than it was on Twilight. Twilight considered the possibility of going up the coast to Las Pegasus to stay for the night, but if Discord's magic wasn't working and standard unicorn magic didn't work on him, there was no guarantee he could actually stay the night in a cloud city, and besides, he might be contagious.

There wasn't much choice but to keep going. Between here and Ponyville was a whole lot of nothing; there was the San Palomino Desert, which was sparsely settled by the type of ponies who didn't take well to strangers, and it was hard to get stranger than Discord. And the desert wasn't a place she wanted to camp for the night without camping supplies, even if everyone in her party were well, which they weren't. Discord needed to be gotten to someplace where he could get medical treatment of some kind and some hope of a diagnosis. The fact that whatever had been in that goo had almost instantly shut down his magic, made him weak and given him muscle aches, and within minutes had led him to start coughing and wheezing, worried Twilight. If it was a disease rather than a magical curse of some kind, it was moving much too rapidly, and if was a magical curse it was having too many different unrelated effects, plus a health bubble shouldn't have protected herself and Cadance from a curse.

She needed her library. As Discord was the only draconequus anypony had ever heard of, it wasn't exactly as if she expected any pony doctor to have any expertise in treating him. Fluttershy and Zecora, between them, probably had the best hope of coming up with a cure for this or something to alleviate the symptoms, if it was actually a disease. But if it was a disease, most likely somepony had heard of it before. Unless Discord had somehow managed to invent it by accident. He had claimed the tatzlwurms hadn't come out the way he'd planned. She'd have to question him later as to whether he'd created them, or modified them from something that had already been there.

By the time they got back to the library, it was past midnight. Cadance was beyond exhausted; Twilight had to half-wrestle her into a bathtub and wake up Spike to give her a rubdown, because a pony who went to sleep after overexerting herself and getting drenched with sweat would be utterly miserable when she woke in the morning. While Spike was helping Cadance, Twilight set up a quarantine bubble in the middle of the library, dragged the mattress and blankets that she'd given Discord earlier when he'd been pretending to be sick over to the bubble and dumped them in, and then carried in Discord, who she'd left outside in his cocoon, dead asleep. He woke up briefly as she was using her magic to shred the cocoon off him, but seemed to be too tired even to talk. As soon as he was free to move, he curled up in a semicircle on the mattress, head balanced on a pile of pillows, pulled the blankets around himself, and closed his eyes again.

After making sure Cadance had gotten to bed all right, Twilight had Spike write a letter to Fluttershy telling her what had happened, and had Owlowliscious drop it off at her house, with instructions to go in her window, drop it on her kitchen table, and put a small purple amethyst star-shaped paperweight on top of it so Angel would know it was from Twilight and that therefore there would be hell to pay if he tried to make the letter disappear before Fluttershy could get it. She took her own bath, using her magic to give herself a rubdown so her muscles wouldn't lock up tomorrow, while she waited for his return. Once Owlowliscious had come back and confirmed the success of his mission, finally Twilight could get some sleep.

Two

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Cadance was accustomed to waking before dawn, and being in a strange place only accentuated that. She was physically worn out from the day's experiences, but she was too excited to be here in Ponyville with Twilight to be able to sleep late. Also, she ached. That had been a workout for her wings like nothing she'd experienced in years.

She crept downstairs quietly, looking to find something for breakfast. Something simple, country fare like hay or oats, not the elaborate fancy meals she'd been served in Canterlot or the Crystal Empire most of her life. Maybe an apple or a nice glass of juice.

The sound of the draconequus coughing his lungs out (not literally, thankfully, given that he didn't seem to have the ability to use his powers at the moment) in the quarantine bubble was disruptive enough to her appetite to put a kibosh on that plan, at least for the moment. Instead she went into the main library. "You're awake?"

He looked up at her with bloodshot eyes. "For some reason it's extremely difficult to sleep when your lungs are on fire and your magic has stopped working for no particularly good reason."

"I know, isn't it?" Cadance said. "It must be as bad as having your wings feel like they've been stretched on a rack because you just had to fly for ten hours round trip because a spirit of chaos wanted somepony to pay attention to him."

Discord rolled his eyes. "I know what it feels like to overuse your wings," he said. "This is much worse. Trust—" He began coughing again.

"You do sound miserable," Cadance said.

"Good, because I am miserable. When is Fluttershy supposed to get home?"

"I believe Twilight said around noon."

"What good does that do me? I have no idea what time it is now!"

"5 am."

Discord's eyes widened in an exaggerated expression of despair. Though actually he seemed to be childish enough that it might not be all that exaggerated. "Six hours? How am I supposed to survive that long? Everything hurts, and Fluttershy's the only one who'll care."

Cadance decided not to tell him his math was wrong and it was really seven hours. In his current state that seemed cruel. "Well, I'm no expert, but if you'd like some warm broth, I was about to make myself some breakfast. I could heat you up an herbal broth for your chest and throat."

"You would do that for me?" His tone was both surprised and plaintive.

"Of course I would. Twilight would, if she was awake, and while both of us are her guests, I'm her family, so I feel obligated to do for her guests what she'd do if she could."

"When is she going to wake up?"

"Twilight sleeps late. And you kept us both up very late last night having to fly you back here. So I wouldn't guess she'd wake up until around ten."

Discord sighed. "Well, it's very gracious of you to extend me Twilight's hospitality when she can't be bothered to do it herself, Princess Cadance," he said. "I do apologize that my little test for Twilight interfered with your family fun time."

"Don't apologize for things you're not sorry for, Discord," Cadance said. "You did that on purpose and you know it."

He slumped slightly. "Well, if I'd known what a sweet, caring pony you are, maybe I would have thought better of it."

"Also, you don't need to try to butter me up. I'm going to make you the broth anyway," Cadance said, smiling. She headed for the kitchen before Discord could respond to that.

It took a few minutes to figure out where Twilight kept everything, but since she was obsessively neat and organized, once Cadance figured out which cabinet served which purpose it became obvious where the supplies she needed were. She made herself a bowl of oatmeal with raisins and a glass of apple juice, and for Discord a bowl of vegetable bouillion broth and a mug of ginger tea with a lot of honey in it for his throat. With a health bubble up around her, she opened the quarantine bubble, lowered the mug and bowl down to him, and closed up the quarantine bubble again. "Please don't make a mess. I'm going back to bed in a little while, so if you spill that, you'll have to clean it up, and without your magic I'm sure that will be inconvenient for you."

"If I spill it, then I don't get to drink it," Discord pointed out. "I'm fond of chaos, but not the kind that gets between me and my breakfast." He breathed in the fumes from the ginger tea. "Why, I think this might be helping already."

She sat by the bubble and ate her oatmeal, watching the sick draconequus mix a portion of the vegetable bouillon into the ginger honey tea, then pour some of the tea back into the soup bowl. He did spill a little bit of it onto the blankets, but not enough to worry about. He then proceeded to drink the contents of the soup bowl, and eat the liquid from the mug with a spoon –for a few bites, anyway, and then he seemed to get bored, or tired, and drank the rest of it.

When he was done, he made puppy dog eyes at her. "I don't suppose you'd be willing to get me a teensy tiny glass of water?"

"I'm considering it," Cadance said.

Her answer took him aback. "Considering it?"

"On the one hand, I'm sure it's important for you to keep your fluid intake up with this illness of yours. On the other hand... you did just set up an incredibly elaborate plot to put Twilight and me through the wringer just to prove that Twilight really does care about you at all. And also secondarily to ruin her day with me."

"Now I never said that," he objected, and then started coughing again.

"Of course you never said it," Cadance said. "But you did say you were responsible for the tatzlwurms, because you wanted to provide a challenge—"

"They were supposed to have been a lot smaller."

"And you admitted that you deliberately interfered with my time with Twilight, just a few minutes ago."

He closed his eyes. "Is this an interrogation? Should I be hiring a lawyer? Or are you just going to torture me with thirst so I'm forced to answer your questions?"

Cadance sighed. She got up, went to the kitchen, and poured a large glass of water for him. "Here you go," she said, putting it through the bubble with the same technique she'd used last time.

"Thank you," he mumbled.

"I don't need you to answer my questions; the answers are obvious," she said. "There were other things you never said in so many words, either, but to me, they were equally obvious."

"Oh, what is that supposed to mean?"

Cadance glanced at the staircase. There was no sign of either Twilight or Spike. "I mean," she said quietly, "that you chose the day your friend was out of town, rejected Pinkie Pie when she offered to take care of you, made Rarity and Applejack sick so that they couldn't-"

"Temporarily!"

"Temporarily sick," Cadance agreed, "all in order to make sure the only available pony to care for you would be Twilight, on a day when she was supposed to be spending time with me, a friend and family member she hasn't seen in a long time. You made the two of us carry you to the literal ends of Equestria to prove that Twilight would be willing to help you if you needed her to, even if she had other priorities she'd have much preferred to engage in. And I think you know your craft far too well for me to think you seriously thought you could disrupt my friendship with Twilight."

"Well, of course not! You're family. No one gives up on family simply because of one annoying day."

Cadance nodded. "You had no nefarious plot ahoof to ruin our friendship. You weren't trying to get us killed, given that you didn't even recognize that creature and you keep saying it wasn't supposed to be nearly as dangerous as it ended up... you were simply trying to annoy me and make me regret spending the day with Twilight, and make her regret the day as well." She smiled at him. "But you made a grave miscalculation."

"What, in letting that creature get its snot all over me? I admit that was unforeseen—"

"No, Discord." She leaned against the bubble so she could speak even more quietly. "In that you did all this in front of the Alicorn of Love."

Discord blinked goop-encrusted eyes at her for a moment, and then widened them. "I'm sure I have no idea what you're trying to imply," he said snappishly, but far too quickly.

Cadance shook her head. "You're in my domain now, Discord," she said softly. "I'm not mistaken about such things, any more than you'd be mistaken if you noted me having a fight with my husband. Do you actually know yourself well enough to know what you're feeling, and you simply think you can misdirect me? Or are you clueless enough that you don't know?"

Discord stared at her in utter shock. "I – you don't – I'm the avatar of chaos, Cadance! Surely you don't think you can comprehend my emotional states the way you could a pony's!"

"No?" Cadance smiled broadly at him. "As nearly as I can tell, being the avatar of chaos doesn't do anything to stop you from having the same emotions ponies do. It just makes you respond to them in remarkably immature ways." Her smile grew bigger. "Love is chaos, Discord. I know more about the kind of magic you wield than possibly any other pony in Equestria. That screen you use so nopony can really get a fix on your mind or heart, so lie detection spells don't work on you and heart reading spells don't work and nopony can ever use magic to figure out how you really feel about anything? I can see how that would work very well against ponies that know nothing of chaos magic... but I couldn't master my domain without learning a good bit about it. Love can bring about the most perfect of harmonies, but in its fundamental nature, love is chaos. One must know both harmonic and chaotic magic to master love. And since you don't expect ponies to know anything about chaos magic... you never built that shield to block a heart reader who understands your magic."

She leaned forward into the bubble, pressing her face into it, as Discord shrank back from her. "I see right through you," she said softly. "Don't try to lie to me about this. I know."

He curled back against his pillows, pulling his covers up to his chin, his wide eyes terrified. "Don't tell her," he whispered. "What do you want? Magical weapons to defend the Crystal Empire with? Secret tomes of forbidden magic? Eternal life for your hubby? Whatever you want, Cadance, just... please don't tell her."

"I want your word that you will never, ever do something like this to her again," Cadance said. "With the understanding that if you break your word, I will tell Twilight exactly why you felt the need to do this... and exactly what form of friendship you wish you had with her."

"I don't wish any such thing!" Discord said bitterly. "Love's a weakness, a weapon to use against its victims."

"Yes," Cadance said. "It is. But you shouldn't be ashamed of your feelings, Discord, love is the most chaotic emotion there is. It brings the greatest joys and the most tragic of sorrows. It heals and it destroys. It weakens us and it makes us stronger. It's nothing but contradictions. I'm surprised you haven't explored it before."

He scowled. "I don't use chaos against myself."

"Which is why you didn't recognize the tatzlwurm you yourself created to harass Twilight and me, and why it was able to make you sick. Because your chaos never, ever gets away from your control and turns against you."

"Rub it in, why don't you."

"I'm not here to torment you."

"You're doing a magnificent job if you're not even trying."

"Why, thank you. Coming from the master of torment, that's quite a compliment," Cadance said sweetly. Her eyes narrowed. "But that isn't my objective. My objective is to make sure that you either choose to reject your feelings entirely – which I don't believe you can do, and I don't believe you should do, but it would be a better choice than what you did today – or that you choose to treat Twilight with respect and kindness. Because if you insist on acting like a colt who'll dip a filly's tail in ink or put earthworms in her mane because he likes her, then I'm going to tell Twilight exactly why you're behaving this way toward her."

"She'll never believe you. Me? In love? Her orderly little brain would simply break on the concept."

"I'm her friend, her foalsitter, her sister-in-law... and the Alicorn of Love. You're a well known liar. I think that no matter what you say to her, she'll believe me."

Discord curled up under his blanket, turning into a semicircle. "Fine," he mumbled ungraciously. "I'll be nice to her. This is blackmail, you know."

"Yes," Cadance said, still smiling. "I know."

"It's not like I think I have a chance anyway," he muttered. "I just... everything I've done for her, and she doesn't even know about it, and she doesn't even care. And she wouldn't believe me if I told her. And every moment she spends in my presence, I can tell she wants to be anywhere else, and why am I even doing this? If I wanted to be despised and barely tolerated, I could be plunging Equestria into utter glorious chaos right now – well, not right this minute, I'm sick, but I could have done it yesterday! I thought doing this whole friendship thing and reforming meant I wouldn't be hated anymore. That ponies would want to spend time with me for once. But she doesn't."

"Pinkie does. Fluttershy does."

"Yes, yes, Flutters will make friends with any creature who needs her. It hardly even seems personal. I wish I could believe our friendship was based on something other than her feeling I'm some sort of wounded bird who needs friendship because I don't have any... but I don't see any evidence of it. And Pinkie is so relentlessly cheerful. It's unnatural! I know what she's suppressing, but if I tried to help her set it free and become the pony she truly is rather than the pony she thinks she needs to be, everypony would be calling for my head on a platter."

"Twilight's not going to want to spend time with you if all that ever happens when she does is that you make demands on her or taunt her. If you want her to be a friend, you have to be a friend to her."

"She thinks horrible things about me. She doesn't even want to be my friend. She just doesn't want me taking over Equestria."

"So change it."

"I'm not allowed to. Mind control spells are a one-way ticket to Stonesville, according to Princess Sunny Sunny Sunshine. And while I suppose I could get up to all kinds of mischief now that the Tree has taken back its Elements... it seems like it would be completely pointless if I had to use magic to do it."

Cadance sighed. Trust Discord to totally misunderstand what she was saying. "You're right. It would be. The first thing I learned when I learned to do love spells is to never do love spells. Making a pony love you, or somepony else, is completely pointless. You might as well be a foal hugging a plush doll; the thing you love isn't the other pony then, it's yourself reflected off the other pony. You've made them into an object, and if you love an object, that's not the same thing as loving a thinking, feeling being."

"There never used to be a difference," Discord mumbled.

"Really? Because if there was never a difference why didn't you just animate rocks and trees to watch your chaos with you?" Cadance asked. "I know what you did when you got loose, and I've been told about what you did before you were turned to stone. You wanted an audience. You wanted actual ponies who could have actual reactions to what you'd done. If you really couldn't tell the difference between ponies and objects, you could have stuck with objects and then nopony would have tried to turn you to stone. But you needed it to be ponies, because you needed something that wasn't you."

"I... suppose so."

"The most I ever do is strengthen love that already exists, or give those that love the courage and confidence to admit their feelings, because I know the other one feels the same way. I've helped ponies who had fallen out of love with their spouses to rekindle their feelings, but only when they asked me to, and only when I felt that the love was still there buried under the pressures of everyday life. That wasn't what I was talking about when I said for you to change it. You can't mind control Twilight into being your friend, or anything else, because it wouldn't mean anything if you created the emotion. But you can try to be a friend to her. You can try to offer her some reason to enjoy your company. Something about you that she would like. That's how friendship works. Something about the other pony makes us feel good, something about their personality and behavior is something we enjoy, and they feel the same way about us."

"And how am I supposed to do that?" he asked bitterly. "I'm Chaos. She's psychotically obsessed with order."

"Well, what do you like about her?"

"The fact that she's so unbelievably annoying," he said, almost dreamily.

Cadance blinked. "What?"

"Psychotically ordered. As I said. She represents everything I can't stand, and she challenges me with it! But that isn't truly what she is... she has so much power, so much chaos inside her. Why, she swapped out her best friends' cutie marks and brought their lives into total chaos and confusion! It was wonderful! And she denies it about herself, she denies everything about it, all she wants is order and control and precision and she can't have it because she's Magic, and Magic is Chaos! So delightfully contradictory! I never know what she's going to do next. And she's so brilliant and so young and so completely stupid about everything because she's a genius who thinks she knows everything and she has so much more to learn. I could spend the next several centuries challenging her and tormenting her and she'll fight back, she'll learn from it, she'll get better and she'll challenge me, she already has."

He sagged against the mattress and pulled his covers tight again. "But I'm disharmony. I love what I hate because that's what I am, because I'm all about contradiction and conflict. She isn't. So she'll never see in me what I see in her. I know that. I just want... I just want her to not hate me. I thought I'd done it, that I'd proven she cared, that she would go to the ends of Equestria to help me... but then she got so mad at me for doing it she left me behind when I really did need her. I know it was you who talked her out of it."

"It wasn't," Cadance said. "It was always her plan to get far enough away from you that you wouldn't sense a scrying spell, and watch to see what you did when you thought she wasn't watching."

Discord's eyes went wide. "Really?"

"Really. She never intended to leave you there if you were really sick. It was a test, just as she said." Cadance decided not to mention that it had been obvious to her that he was really sick long before Twilight had been willing to admit it to herself.

"Oh." He looked absurdly pleased, given the circumstances. "Well. That's surprising."

"It must be hard for you," Cadance said gently. "As old as you are, as powerful as you are, to be at the mercy of something you've never experienced before."

"Yes, this flu or whatever it is is positively dreadful."

"I wasn't talking about that. I meant love, actually."

He scowled at her. "And how exactly would you know what I've experienced before or haven't?"

"Well, Twilight filled me in on the details of your reformation while we were carrying you out to the flower yesterday, and she said you said Fluttershy was the first friend you'd ever had."

"And having had a friend is a necessary requirement for being in love?" he snapped. "I know a lot more about this than you think I do. I never had anything quite exactly like a friend – I'm not wholly convinced I know what that even is – but I have had a.... I have no idea what to call her."

"Someone you loved? Who didn't love you in return?"

He chortled. "You really don't know half as much as you think you do, Princess Cadance. I had someone I loved who did love me in return, or at least claimed she did, for all the good it ever did either of us."

Cadance frowned at him. "Then how is it you never had a friend?"

"Can you call that a friend? When we met, I was too young to understand romantic feelings, so I thought, she must be like a sister. Then puberty hit and I realized my feelings weren't brotherly in the slightest." He chuckled. "I thought she was my other half, my anchor, the melody I was born to counterpoint. She promised me she'd be there forever to keep me tied to this reality, to keep me from drowning in my chaos. Then she abandoned me. And I found out, not only do I have gills, I actually quite like it here at the bottom of the sea." Discord sighed ostentatiously. "I tried to show her how beautiful chaos is, but she couldn't comprehend it. She kept trying to call me back to her reality, as if I could possibly ever want to go. As if it wasn't her fault in the first place for leaving me behind. At least chaos would never leave me."

That... sounded like the other half of a story Cadance was familiar with. "What happened then?"

"Who cares? Ancient history." He coughed again. "I've been blissfully free of the entanglements of this stupid emotion you ponies call 'love' for nearly two thousand years, now, and I have no desire to be enmired in it ever again. You say your powers can tell what I'm feeling? Well, then feel this. I don't want this. If I had the power to make it stop I would. She'll despise me even more than she does now if she knows. So if you know what's good for you, Princess Cadance of the Crystal Empire, you won't tell her."

"Don't set out to ruin her day just to get her attention, and I'll never have to." She levitated her oatmeal bowl, and the soup bowl and tea mug she'd given him earlier, pulling them out of the quarantine bubble and keeping them encased tightly in a health bubble. "I'm going to go wash these and sterilize them, and then I'm going to take a hot shower for my wings, and then I'm going back to bed. You should get some rest too, it'll be a while before anypony else gets up."

"I'm sooooo bored," Discord moaned. "There's nothing in here to distract me from how awful I feel even for a nanosecond."

Cadance shrugged. "Sorry. Being sick is boring. That's why I said you should get some sleep."

"Every time I try to get back to sleep I start coughing again."

She sighed. "Maybe I can find something in the medicine cabinet for you."

First she washed the dishes, in boiling water heated by magic, with a health spell on them for good measure. Then she hunted around through several of Twilight's cabinets to find a menthol neck rub. "Here you go," she said, putting it through the bubble. "You're supposed to rub it on your neck and ch--- oh no."

"Bleah, this tastes awful," Discord said, making a face.

"If you'd waited a moment to listen to me... you weren't supposed to eat it, you were supposed to rub it on your neck and your chest!"

He pointed at his neck. "Really, Cadance? This small bottle wouldn't even cover my neck, let alone my chest. Bleah. That is really a horrible taste. Guh." He then proceeded to lick his own neck, a feat Cadance would have sworn would be impossible without his magic. "Well. Maybe that's a little better."

"How are you doing that without breaking your spine?" Cadance asked in horrified fascination.

Discord leered. "I'd show you precisely how flexible I am, but I wouldn't want dear Twilight's BBBFF to feel... inadequate."

Cadance rolled her eyes. "Try using your paws to apply the rest of that bottle, if you left anything in it when you tried to eat it. I'm going back to bed, and you should try to get back to sleep if you can. You need your rest."

"My fur tastes like sour avocados. I wonder if that's why it turned green?"

She didn't dignify that with a reply. Hot shower, maybe some more of the muscle rub Spike had put on her wings last night, and back to bed.

Author's Notes:

Whether you love or hate Discolight, readers who have an opinion on the matter should be aware that this is not the kind of story where Twilight falls madly in love with Discord. I cannot help interpreting "Three's A Crowd" to support Discord having an unhealthy fascination with Twilight, but if it was ever going to go the other way around they'd have to at least be friends first.

Those who read the scene from my blog... this is substantially edited (as well as expanded) because when I actually built up story around it, it turned out that some of my assumptions made no sense and had to be reworked, and other things would have been redundant.

It's part of my headcanon that because love is inherently chaotic, Cadance knows more about chaos magic than any other alicorn and the vast majority of unicorns. That doesn't mean she casts it; she's firmly in favor of using harmonic magic. It just means she knows something about it.

Three

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The sun was barely over the horizon as Pinkie Pie bounced her way to the library. Predictably, it was not open. It was never open this early, and after Spike had told her yesterday that Twilight and Cadance had gone off to the ends of Equestria to get a flower to cure Discord's blue flu with, it was even more certain that it would not be open. This just meant Pinkie would have to get creative.

The twitch in her left front hoof had told her yesterday that Discord was faking it, so she'd let him distract her with a balloon, because if she'd pushed and insisted on being the one to take care of him he would probably have done something to her more annoying than giving her a balloon to chase. Like what he did to poor Applejack and Rarity. After he'd taken off searching for Twilight, Pinkie had returned, helped her friends to Fluttershy's house where all the good medicines were, and taken care of them for about two hours until the blue flu spontaneously cleared up, by which point everypony was able to figure out what Pinkie already knew: Discord was a big fat faker. Unfortunately there was no way to get hold of Twilight and Cadance at that point, since Twilight generally didn't actually run the spell that allowed her to receive mail from Spike.

However, the pinch in her right knee and the twitch in her tail told Pinkie that Discord's story about being sick was somehow going to come true. How, she didn't know, when the rapid disappearance of the blue flu and the fact that Discord had been freely using his powers the whole time he'd been claiming to be sick made it plain that the blue flu was not a real illness. But Pinkie didn't question her Pinkie Sense, as a general rule. Discord was somehow going to end up genuinely sick, and Fluttershy wasn't expected back until noon (and possibly longer; it would be entirely like Fluttershy to miss her first train because she was too entranced with her studies of the CUTEST MOST ADORABLE CREATURES IN THE UNIVERSE, not that Pinkie knew this to be true for a fact but Fluttershy had said it and Fluttershy knew her cute.) And Twilight was going to be really tired after coming back from the Ends of Equestria (which end? Because technically speaking, Manehattan, Fillydelphia and Baltimare were all along the coastline, which made them an end of Equestria, and not that far away, and then you could go to the north end of Equestria to get to the Crystal Empire, and there was Vanhoover and Las Pegasus out at the other end, and Pinkie was curious which way they'd gone).

So Pinkie had decided that she was going to be Discord's nurse, and also make sure Twilight and Cadance and Spike didn't get the whatever it was that probably wasn't blue flu because blue flu was something Discord made up, at least until Fluttershy came home.

She pulled a trampoline out of the place she'd been hiding it for a trampoline emergency and placed it under one of the large tree branches. A hop, hop, jump, JUMP and she was up in the air, grabbing for one of the branches and flipping herself onto it neatly. Twilight always left at least one of her upstairs windows open at night for Owlowliscious. Pinkie crawled along the branch until she reached the open window, then squeezed herself in.

She suddenly found herself encased in a magic bubble, floating. "Whee!"

"P... Pinkie?" Cadance asked blearily.

"Oh, this is the guest room! So this is where Twilight has you staying? If I was having a sister in law over for the weekend I would probably have her in my bedroom for a sleepover, but none of my sisters are into mares as far as I know so I will probably never have a sister in law unless I get married and my husband, or maybe my wife, has a sister, which I'm totally not planning on doing anytime soon because how can you party all the time if you're married? But then I only have one bedroom because I live in somepony else's house! So maybe if I had a whole house I would put my sister in law that I don't have in the guest room! Except probably not because sleepovers are fun!"

"Pinkie... what are you doing in Twilight's guest room?"

"I'm here to take care of the sickies, silly! Are you a sicky? I hope you're not sick. I didn't get any twitchies about you but I don't know you that well so I don't even know if I would!"

Cadance blinked. "Discord's sick. I've been casting magic health bubble and Twilight has him in a quarantine bubble now, so nopony else got sick. It's not the blue flu, it turns out he was faking about that."

"I know! That's why I let him give me a balloon!"

"What?"

"Where is he? I thought he would be in the guest room, that's why I came in this way!"

"He's downstairs in the library."

"Well, that's really silly! You don't let super chaos guy sleep in the super organized room, he's probably going to run around messing it up just so he can get to sleep! You know I can't sleep in a super organized room either? As soon as it's really organized it feels like it's a box and I hate to sleep in a box! Unless it's a really big box! Or I'm pretending it's a secret fort!"

"He's in a quarantine bubble, I don't think he'll be getting out to mess up the books. He doesn't have his powers right now, Pinkie."

"Really?" Pinkie's eyes went wide. "Does that mean I can tickle him?"

"He's sick."

"But if I wait until he's better then he'll have his powers back and I won't be able to tickle him!"

"He's also in a quarantine bubble."

"I'll use Zen Tickle."

"I am too tired to ask you what Zen Tickle is."

"I'll demonstrate! Tomorrow! Meanwhile I have to feed a draconequus chicken soup! With whipped cream on top! See, I don't forget the whipped cream!"

She bounced off, ignoring the waves of bewilderment that radiated off Cadance. Twilight was a light sleeper, so Pinkie made sure not to yell "whee" as she slid down the banister, figuring that the clopping of hooves on the stairs would be more likely to wake Twilight than the sliding but it would miss the point of being super quiet if she then yelled, though she did whisper "whee" to herself because how could you slide down a banister without going "whee" at least a little bit?

Discord was, in fact, lying on a mattress in the middle of the library, with a bubble around him. He was shifting restlessly in his sleep, curled on the mattress with half his tail falling off of it and onto the floor, and a blanket tangled around his middle. He was also green. He wasn't green the way he'd been blue, a vivid, brilliant shade; he was dull green, with darker spots all over the light parts of his fur and lighter spots all over the dark parts of his fur. And he smelled like sour avocados, which made Pinkie think she should have brought sour cream instead of whipped cream. Unfortunately she wasn't generally prepared for a sour cream emergency. Maybe in the future she needed to expect that.

"Hiii, Discord!" she caroled at him, in a slightly less loud voice than usual since she was trying to avoid waking Twilight up.

Discord opened his eyes. "Pinkie?" he mumbled. "I have a fever..."

"I brought you something..."

"Is it cough drops? Because I would renounce chaos for the rest of eternity if someone could bring me some cough drops."

"Then you'd be super boring! How would you even have anything to do if you renounced chaos?" Pinkie pulled out her emergency hazmat suit and started putting it on. "I thought Twilight might quarantine you if you got something weird!"

"Pinkie, where did you get that... never mind. Do you have cough drops? Because if you don't I really just want to go back to sleep and try to pretend to myself that there isn't an entire colony of Diamond Dogs digging for gems in my throat."

"There are? Sillies, what makes them think you have gems in your throat? I know that would be all chaotic and everything but gems, really? You don't even eat gems! They should look in Spike's throat!"

"Pinkie, do you actually know that that was a joke and you're playing straight mare to be funny, or did you really think I meant it?"

Pinkie sighed deeply. "That was cruel, Dissy," she said. "What did that poor joke do to you that you had to kill it like that?"

"My apologies. I'm not at my sharpest at the moment." He inspected his claws. "Perhaps with a bit more filing."

"You'll need Twilight's help with that, I bet. You're probably much too disorganized to be filing anything!"

"I assure you I can file with the best of them. Everything goes in the folder that says 'Do This Later' unless it's garbage, in which case I have Spike copy it in triplicate and send it to Celestia. Isn't that how to do it?"

Pinkie grinned. She really missed having conversations like this. "You remind me of my old Granny Pie."

Discord leaned forward, eyes comically huge though not actually magically altered. "All the better to see you with, my dear," he croaked.

Now that her hazmat suit was on and sealed, Pinkie clambered through the airlock flap on the bubble and hopped onto Discord's chest, pushing his head back against the wall of the bubble. "Open wide, Nurse Pinkie's got some medicine for you," she said.

"Why, Pinkie, this is so forward of you! Though I really expected a bit more naughty out of a naughty nurse costume. You look more like a member of a biohazard cleanup team."

"Which reminds me has anypony brought you a bedpan or something? Or do you even need one? Is your pee all chaosy like lemonade or something or is it just like regular pee?"

"I'd offer you a taste so you could see for yourself, but even I have standards."

"Yeah, that's just gross. So! Potty or no potty?"

"No one has brought me a bedpan and eventually this will become an issue if you don't suffocate me from sitting on my chest first."

"Whoops!" She rolled off him but continued to push his neck up against the side of the bubble. "Now be a good little chaos spirit and open super wide!"

"What exactly are you going to inflict on me?"

"Medicine for your throat. It's much better than cough drops, trust me. It's even yummy! Almost."

"Well, that fills me with confidence," Discord mumbled, but did as he was told. "Aaah."

Pinkie whipped out the jar of honey, laced with menthol and healing balm and some weird stuff Zecora had given her, and popped open the lid, letting the liquid pour into Discord's mouth and down his throat. He coughed and tried to splutter, but she held him in position until half the jar was gone. Which didn't take very long; the stuff mixed with it made it a lot thinner and more fluid than pure honey.

As she put the jar away, Discord straightened up, smacking his lips and making strange faces. "I don't know whether that tasted delicious or utterly horrible."

"Both," Pinkie said. "That'll soothe your throat for about four hours or so, and Fluttershy ought to be home around then, and if she's not, you can take the other half the dose. Sorry there's so much but you have a very very very very long neck! I figured if the whole inside of your neck was hurting with coughs and a sore throat that would be a whole lot of neck to have to coat with medicated honey, so I made a whole jar!"

"Pinkie, do you have any idea what you're doing?"

"I know lots of things," Pinkie said. "You like hot sauce, right?"

"I love it. Normally. Right now I am dubious."

"Hot sauce is good for you when you're sick! It clears your sinuses and it makes your immune system work harder! I brought you some hot chicken soup, and by hot I mean both the temperature kind and the spice kind, but not the kind that's stallions because that would just be super weird."

"Did you say chicken soup?"

Pinkie nodded proudly. "Granny Pie used to swear by it when we got sick."

"I hope you didn't kill any of Flutters' chickens. She'll be quite irate."

Pinkie laughed. "No way, silly billy, of course I didn't! There isn't even any real chicken in it. I order the chicken stock from Gryphonia because it has to come from chickens and have some real chicken fat in it or it doesn't work the same way, but instead of chicken it has tofu marinated in chicken stock. Also hot sauce, green onions, lots and lots of garlic, mushrooms, and noodles!" She pulled out the thermos. "And I brought whipped cream to put on top of it."

Discord's eyes went big again. "You brought whipped cream for my soup? That's astonishing. How did you think of that?"

"I just thought of the weirdest thing to go on top of soup that would actually stay on top of the soup, because I figured whatever the weirdest thing was to go on top of the soup, you would like it!"

"It sounds delicious. And given that my stomach and I are not getting along well at the moment, something that sounds delicious is impressive. But I suppose the proof will be in the pudding, as they say."

"No, no, it's soup, not pudding."

He sighed. "And to think what a wonderful setup for a joke that would have been if I'd had my powers."

"But if you'd had your powers you could have made your own chicken soup." She unscrewed the top of the thermos and handed it to him. "Hold this." Next she pulled out her whipped cream can and sprayed a generous dose of whipped cream on top of the soup in the thermos. Once she was done, she took a shot of whipped cream herself. "Yum!"

"Are you done? Can I drink it now?"

"Do you want extra chili pepper on top?"

"Hmm. Yes, I think that would go quite well."

Pinkie took out her red pepper grinder and ground sprinkles of chili and cayenne all over the top of the whipped cream. "Here you go!"

Discord took a swig of his soup. His tongue, still ridiculously long despite his lack of magic, snaked out of his mouth and licked his lips, then lapped at the whipped cream. Apparently satisfied with the taste, he chugged the rest of the thermos so quickly Pinkie didn't even have time to start chanting "Chug! Chug!" before he handed it back to her. "Delicious as always, Pinkie," he said.

"Do you feel any better now?"

"Yes, but possibly only because I've eaten solid food. I haven't had anything to eat since my magic cut out on me, you know. Just broth and tea."

"Well, yeah. You're sick. That's what you're supposed to have."

He made a face at her. "A draconequus cannot survive on broth alone. I don't think I realized quite how hungry I was until I had your soup." Discord lay back down again. "Although I'm still very tired. Why am I so tired? Is this normal when ponies get sick?"

"Sometimes, yeah," Pinkie said. "Rarity and Applejack weren't tired when you got them sick, just really sneezy and coughy. Which by the way that was mean!" She glared down at him. He smirked at her. "I know you wanted an excuse so you could go bother Twilight but making my friends sick was not a nice way to do it!"

"They got better quickly," Discord pointed out.

"That doesn't make it not mean. How would you feel about somepony if they were the one who made you sick? How did you get sick, anyway?"

"Twilight didn't tell you?"

"I haven't even talked to Twilight, silly! She's still asleep!"

Discord blinked. "So you came over here to take care of me because you thought I still had the blue flu?"

"Oh, no, I knew you were a big fat faker from the beginning! My Pinkie Sense told me so!"

"I object to your characterization of me." He sat up again with a look of indignation on his face, folding his arms tight against his chest. "I am quite svelte."

She leaned over him to one side and back to the side she was standing on, inspecting the width of his body. "You're right! You're a big skinny faker!"

"Thank you." He nodded, graciously acknowledging her correction. "So then how did you know I was sick? I cannot imagine you brought chicken soup with hot sauce and whipped cream to feed to our esteemed noble Princesses."

"Because I got a special twitch that told me you were sick. I knew Twilight and Spike weren't because I would've gotten twitchies for them and I didn't, and I didn't know about Princess Cadance, because I didn't get a twitch but I don't know her that well so maybe I wouldn't, but I got a twitch and a pinch and it told me you would be sick! Which is funny because I never got a twitch for you being sick before but probably you never were sick before and if you were it probably was before we were friends so it took me a while to figure out what it meant but then I did and I knew that when you and Twilight and Princess Cadance came home you were going to be a sicky and I would have to bring you some chicken soup because otherwise you would whine a lot and wake up Twilight and that totally wouldn't be fair after you made her do so much flying. And also because you're my friend even though sometimes you're a big jerk! And also because I really would've taken care of you if you really did have blue flu but since you really didn't I didn't have to and then you gave me a balloon which was nice! You could have made me sick like my friends but you didn't so I'm mad at you about making them sick but I'm happy you gave me a balloon instead of making me sick! You should have given them balloons too!"

"They wouldn't likely have been distracted by balloons, Pinkie."

"Oh, right! I guess you would have had to give Rarity some gems and they don't even float! And what could you give Applejack? If she saw a floating apple she would just think it was because of you making things float that shouldn't float!" As she spoke, Pinkie climbed onto Discord's chest again, carefully because she didn't want to crush his lungs, hooves folded under her chin, looking at his face intently. "So how did you get sick?"

He sighed. "An enormous, monstrous plant creature called a tatzlwurm that I did not intend to make that size, or that annoying, spat some sort of goo at me. And at Cadance and Twilight, but Cadance cast a health spell to protect them. I suppose it was too much to ask of her that she include me in her health spell as well."

Pinkie scowled at him. "Discord, do health spells even work on you?"

"Well, no, but she could have made an effort!"

"Are you being absodupeylutely super-dee-duper telling the truth here, or are you just being truthy? Because Cadance not even trying to cure you doesn't make any sense, and if it doesn't make any sense it's probably something you did, and if it's something you did then Cadance really did try to help you and you're just pretending she didn't because disharmony and stuff."

"Pinkie, I'm shocked that you'd think I would lie about something to you!" He pressed his paws to his chest in a dramatic gesture worthy of Rarity.

"Do you see this face?" Pinkie leaned forward, pointing a hoof at her own nose. "This is a straight face. This is not a face that is laughing, because that wasn't even a funny joke. Now if you had said 'I'm shocked, shocked that you'd think I would lie about something to you, and by the way, Princess Celestia is right behind you,' and then she wasn't, that would be funny because then you'd be lying about something that's even more obvious than the lying about Princess Cadance, which is mean and you had better stop. What really happened?"

"Well, she did cast her magic health bubble," he grumbled, "but it had no effect on me. And then she went along with Twilight's plan to leave me behind so they could spy on me to see if I was really faking, and I almost got eaten by two different tatzlwurms! And then they tied me up and dragged me home like I was a kite being flown between the two of them!"

"That sounds fun!"

"It wasn't. It really, really wasn't."

"Maybe it would have been more fun if you weren't sick."

"I doubt it." He lay back down again. "I'm tired, Pinkie. And I want some water. I don't suppose you have somewhere on you a teensy tiny glass of water?"

"Nope! All I have is a big pitcher of water!" She pulled out her pitcher. "I see you already have a glass, so here!" Pinkie poured ice water into the glass until it was brimming.

"I knew I could count on you." Discord lifted his head without sitting up, and drank the water even more quickly than he'd drunk the soup. "Do you think I still have a fever?" he mumbled, laying his head back down again.

"Probably. I didn't give you any anti-fever potions or anything; you'll have to wait for Fluttershy for that. Granny Pie's chicken soup is just supposed to help sickies feel better, not actually be medicine or anything."

"Then I think I need to sleep." He closed his eyes. "This is astonishing. I've never felt so tired, you know. Or so heavy, well, outside of being stone. It feels like all the energy in my body has just... leaked away. Is this what it's like for ponies?"

"You asked that already. Weren't you ever sick before? Ever ever ever?"

"Not that I can remember."

"Lucky you! But also poor you because you're sick now. I'm gonna get out of this bubble now because all my mane is getting in my face under this face hood thing! Are you going to be okay?"

"How would I know? I feel like I might expire from sheer exhaustion any moment now, but it seems unlikely that that's actually the case."

"But you don't need anything else to eat or drink or something?"

"Just sleep," he murmured.

"Okie dokie!" She climbed out of the quarantine bubble, pulled off her hazmat suit and shoved it into a bag to be sterilized once Twilight woke up. Then she laid back against the bubble. "This thing is comfy! It's like laying on a balloon!"

"It's not big enough," Discord grumbled. "I can't stretch out in here."

"I never see you stretch out anyway."

"You try spending a thousand years stuck with your back and tail fully extended and see how much you like stretching out all the way. But at least most of the time I have the option."

"Maybe Twilight can make it bigger once we take you to Fluttershy's, but if it got too big here, anypony who wanted to use the library would have to walk around you! Besides at least it's comfy! You know what would be really bad is if she put you in a bubble and it was all crunchy and scritchy and it made annoying noises anytime anypony touched it!"

"The glass is always half full with you, isn't it, Pinkie?"

"Not usually! Usually it's either full, so I'm gonna drink it, or empty, because I just drank it! Half full is like two seconds at most!"

Discord laughed. Pinkie poked the bubble with her hoof, grinning. "I made you laugh!"

"That isn't hard," he said. "I laugh at most things."

"Me too, but I still like it when I can make you laugh, even if it's not as hard as it is with some ponies. Anyway, you're sick! And they say laughter is the best medicine, right?"

"Did you ever wonder who 'they' are? They say this. They say that. Who are they, and why does every pony in Equestria feel compelled to quote them all the time?"

"I know! I wonder the same thing! And if they say all this important stuff that we always think about, how come we don't even know their names? I mean, Starswirl the Bearded wrote all these super amazing spells, according to Twilight, so she knows his name, but they have all these wise sayings and stuff and yet we don't even know who they are or what kind of pony or anything!"

"How do you even know they are ponies? Maybe they're draconequui and that's why ponies don't want anyone to know who they are. It's a conspiracy."

"Ooh, yeah, it could be! Or maybe they are dragons! Most grownup dragons are jerks and stupid so nopony would ever believe they could be so wise if they're dragons, but Spike is a smart dragon so it could be dragons!"

"Or maybe they're humans."

"Lyra would know, I bet!"

Discord laughed again, which set Pinkie off into a fit of giggles. "Pinkie, I don't think there is any other pony in Equestria who can manage to keep up with me like that. Bravo."

"We should hang out more often," Pinkie agreed.

Discord looked surprised. "Hang... out?"

"Yeah, you know! Not from trees or anything, although you could because your body's all long and flexy and twiny and you could hang from a tree easy, I bet, but I couldn't because my body won't do that so easily and I could hang from my back legs like an acrobat but then all the blood would go to my head and I'd get dizzy! Which is fun but it wouldn't last very long because if I got dizzy enough I'd fall out of the tree!"

"Well, if trees are out, where were you suggesting we should hang out?"

"You know. Ponyville, or I dunno, anyplace really. You write letters to Fluttershy and I know you come visit her sometimes but you know, I like spending time with you when you're not being a big mean jerk, and you never come to visit me."

"You're always surrounded by a crowd of ponies, one way or another," Discord said. "And the whole 'eek! Run away, it's Discord!' thing gets old after a while."

"Didn't ponies do that when you took over Equestria?"

"Some did, but back in those days, they figured out fairly easily that that just annoys me. The ones who ran away screaming were much, much more likely to end up suffering from my more egregious pranks than the ones who were willing to play along." He sighed. "But nowadays I'm not allowed to put pony legs sticking up from their back so they have to walk around upside down because they couldn't be bothered to have a civil conversation with me, so there's really not much I can do about the pointing and screaming anymore."

"Well, sticking pony legs on their backs is part of the reason for the pointing and screaming, did you ever think of that?"

"And yet I don't do that anymore and they still point and scream."

"Okay then! We should totally hang out then! Because if ponies saw me spending time with you, well, they all know that Fluttershy is friends with all the scary animals and besides she doesn't like to go into town anyway, so even if they saw her with you that wouldn't make them think you're nice now because seriously, she makes friends with manticores, and they totally ruin parties when they show up! But they all know I like to have fun, so if I'm hanging out with somepony, or somedraconequus, which sounds really silly and have you ever considered having a shorter name for what you are, like you know pony and dragon and gryphon all have just two syllables but draconequus is a real mouthful, but anyway, if they saw me hanging out with you they would know that you're fun and not scary! Most of the time. Sometimes you're still scary."

"Sometimes Twilight is positively terrifying and that doesn't seem to impede her ability to make friends."

"Yeah, she is!" Pinkie giggled. "So see? If we hang out then ponies won't be as scared of you and we can have fun and do silly things! Also chocolate rain!"

"I don't like to repeat myself constantly," Discord said. "I am somewhat fond of the chocolate rain, but if I did it all the time I'd be predictable."

"What about fluffy donut holes? What if you made it rain fluffy donut holes?"

"Would ponies like that?"

"No! Except for me! But I'm a pony so if you wanted to make it rain fluffy donut holes on a pony you could rain them on me and then I could eat them!"

"I have no idea why you aren't obese by now."

"Because sugar is energy! You only get fat from sugar if you don't burn your sugar! Mister, it takes a lot of sugar to maintain my high-energy lifestyle." She poked her hoof at the bubble again with a fake stern expression.

"That actually makes a surprising amount of sense. For shame, Pinkie, I thought you were supposed to be as sheerly nonsensical as I am."

Pinkie laughed. "But everything makes sense if you look at it from the right perspective. Even you. It's just that ponies don't understand you so they don't think you make sense."

"And you do?"

"Sometimes!"

Discord adjusted himself on the bed so that he was on his belly in a semicircle rather than on his back in an S, and looked up at her with his eyes rather than lifting his head. The expression made him look almost plaintive. "You'd really want to spend time with me? Because in my experience most ponies would rather have a hooficure with rotten eggs and a toothbrush that's been sitting in a stagnant algae covered pond for a month than spend any time with me."

"I am not most ponies. I am Pinkamena Pinkie Diane Pie, the First! And if I say I want to hang out with you, then I don't care what most ponies think! Do you care what most ponies think?"

"Not for the past few millennia and I don't intend to start, no."

"Well then! When you get better! I have to plan Rainbow Dash's birthdayversary because that needs to be a super duper amazing party and it's like in a few weeks so I might not have time right away, but after the birthdayversary we should get together and do something fun. We could bring Fluttershy too! But she won't want to do anything too wacky, but I bet she would laugh if she saw us doing it."

"That does sound moderately entertaining. Fine." He rolled onto his back again. "Once I'm recovered and you've held your overly planned shindig for Rainbow Smash, we can spend a day together and find some entertaining chaos to wreak that won't upset your delicate 'not making ponies mad' sensibilities and won't make Fluttershy too irritated with me."

"Great! It'll be tons of fun!"

"Can you actually guarantee tons? Because I've actually handled a ton of fun, and believe you me, it is much larger and heavier than you are probably picturing."

"Well, I didn't want to get into anything too heavy! Maybe we just want light fun. But even if it's light fun, if you have enough of it that would make a ton!"

"Not if you negate gravity on it."

"Oh yeah! Fun with no gravity! That sounds good!"

"Perhaps we can even employ levity."

"Yeah! Enough of that and we could fill a balloon with it!"

"You're obsessed with balloons, aren't you?"

She pointed at her cutie mark. "Hellooooo...."

"Ah, good point." He closed his eyes. "Still tired, Pinkie."

"Yeah, you need your rest." Pinkie leaned back against the quarantine bubble again, facing out toward the library. It was very comfy. Balloons were surprisingly uncomfortable to lay on – she'd tried, multiple times, but they squeaked and a properly firm balloon was actually rather hard. Whatever material Twilight had made the bubble with, it felt soft and fluffy, like a transparent cloud. Obviously it was tougher than a cloud, but it felt nice. She sighed.

"Discord?"

"Mm?"

"How come you wanted to spend time with Twilight so badly anyway? I offered to take care of you but all you wanted to do was bother Twilight. How come?"

She heard him sigh. "Pinkie, of all of the six of you, which one of you do you think is most like me?"

"Hmm. Well, Dashie likes to play funny pranks, and Rarity's very creative and artistic and she likes to make things that are different, and Twilight is smart like you, and—"

"Be serious for two seconds. I said 'all of the six of you', not 'all of your friends.' That means I was including you in the question."

She grinned. "You said 'be serious.' You need to be careful, they're gonna come and take your chaos license away if you do that too much."

"Never. I've paid them far too many bribes. Now answer my question."

"Me, I guess."

"Now, which of you is least like me?"

"Applejack," Pinkie said promptly. "Because she's honest all the time, and you're funny almost all the time, and funny is never exactly honest. And sometimes you lie to be mean too which isn't usually very funny. And she believes that you should do everything with hard work and you should do it the right and proper way and that's how good things happen, and you believe you should do everything with magic and breaking the rules and finding tricks to solve problems. And when she sees all chaos stuff she's just all like, 'Somepony had better fix this', whereas Twilight's all like 'Aaah! This is all nonsense and crazy and I'm gonna go crazy trying to fix it' and Rarity pretends to faint and Dashie just gets mad."

"Interesting. There's a certain logic to what you say; I suppose she's even more my opposite than Twilight is. But Twilight is the one I was thinking of. Twilight depends on order, even though she's actually better at generating chaos than the vast majority of ponies. Twilight is terrified of or infuriated by chaos."

"Right! So why did you want to spend time with her?"

"What seems more likely to cause disharmony? Spending time with someone who is a lot like you, or spending time with someone who is completely unlike you and yet enough like you, deep down, to be utterly discombobulated by what you do, rather than simply grimly annoyed?"

"I keep forgetting about the disharmony thing. That's... not nice, you know."

"I am what I am, Pinkie. The name's 'Discord', not 'Fun Guy'."

"I guess that's good, because then you'd be a mushroom!"

"Or I could be yeast. I could make bread rise, brew beer, and give mares terribly annoying itches in their nethers. I think I'd enjoy being yeast, actually."

"But then I could defeat you with yogurt!"

"Do you even eat yogurt?"

"With blueberries, yeah! It's tasty!"

"Have you ever tried boysenberries?"

"No, because I always used to mix up my p's and b's, and nopony would want Binkie Bye to eat yogurt with poison berries!"

"They'd be poison perries, wouldn't they be?"

"But that would be a blatybus!"

"Regrettably, I think I'm actually too tired for this conversation." He sighed. "You're fun, Pinkie. I enjoy spending time with you. But the very thing I enjoy about you is that you can match me. Sometimes... I need someone who will oppose me, instead."

"I guess that makes sense. Weird sense, but that's your kind of sense."

"Pinkie?"

"Yeah?"

"I really need to go back to sleep now. Please be quiet."

"Okie dokie lokie! I'm gonna go make fluffy donut holes now in Twilight's kitchen! You can have some when you wake up if you feel better!"

She skipped off to the kitchen, feeling much better. Discord distracting her with a balloon to get her out of his way had given her mixed feelings; on the one hand, he hadn't gotten her sick as he had her friends, and he'd given her something she liked, even if she did have to spend ten minutes chasing it first. On the other hand... she'd offered to take care of him, to spend time with him, even knowing he was faking his illness, and he'd rejected her because his master plan had apparently been to go annoy Twilight all day. Why would he rather annoy Twilight than spend time with somepony who wanted to spend time with him? The disharmony thing made her feel better; she didn't like the aspect of Discord that loved conflict and stirring up bad feelings, so she tended to forget about it except when he got her really angry, like when his stupid vines attacked Ponyville and he was pretending he didn't have anything to do with it even though he totally did, but he was right that it was part of who he was. If she wanted to make friends with him because she liked the chaos, she was going to have to deal with the disharmony; he was both.

But at least he hadn't rejected her because he didn't like her or he didn't think she was fun! That was the important thing. Pinkie whistled as she pulled baking supplies out of Twilight's cabinets. Twilight liked donut holes.

Four

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Twilight woke up to the smell of coffee and fresh-baked donuts. Like a sleepwalking zompony compelled forward by a necromancer, she stumbled down the stairs with a serious case of bed head, still blinking sleep crystals out of her eyes, fumbling her way toward the kitchen by memory rather than sight. Of course, memory was not kind enough to remind her of the huge quarantine bubble with the draconequus in it, right in the middle of the main room of the library. She walked directly into the bubble, which was springy and soft. It gave under her weight, leading her to almost, though not quite, faceplant herself directly into Discord's chest.

Discord opened his eyes. "Why, Twilight," he croaked. "I know you're desperate to check on me, but don't you think trying to walk right through that bubble defeats the purpose of having it?"

Annoyed, Twilight reared back, which allowed the springiness of the bubble to decompress and knock her backward on her rear. "Shut up, Discord, I haven't had any coffee yet," she mumbled.

"Twilight!" Oh, how dearly she loved Spike and the cup of sweet sanity he was bearing toward her. Oh, how she hated how high-pitched and loud his voice was. "You're awake! Here's your coffee. There's fresh donut holes in the kitchen!"

"No one told me there were fresh donut holes," Discord grumbled.

"You were asleep," Spike said. "Also, um, now that you're awake... why are you sleeping on the floor of the library in a huge bubble, and why are you green? Pinkie wouldn't answer me. She said that answering questions right then would throw off the zen of baking."

"Well, Twilight and I went to Las Pegasus to get married last night," Discord began. "But unfortunately our honeymoon revelry was cut short when I proved to be highly allergic to something I'd consumed – my guess would be the shellfish – and so—"

Twilight magicked his blanket around his mouth, after her initial attempt to manufacture a zipper didn't work. Even sick, Discord's body was resistant to her magic, but he couldn't prevent her from tying his mouth shut with cloth and telekinesis. "Discord faked being sick to ruin my day with Cadance yesterday and made us go out to the far edge of Equestria to get a thing that would cure him, even though he wasn't really sick, but then this weird creature that tried to eat all of us called a Tatzlwurm sneezed on him and made him actually sick, so here he is, waiting for Fluttershy to get him so I can dump him and his quarantine bubble over there."

Discord pulled the blanket off his mouth. "I liked my story better."

"I didn't."

"You're so mean and grumpy in the mornings. Look at me, half-dead from this horrible unknown illness, yet I manage to maintain my cheery disposition. Spike, how can you stand living with this sourpuss?"

"I ignore everything she says until she's drunk her coffee," Spike said.

"Well, that's quite candid of you. I appreciate the advice."

"That's approximately 90 percent less than I ignore everything you say," Spike said.

"Oh! I'm wounded! Truly a barb straight to the heart! How sharper than a serpent's tooth is a sarcastic dragon!"

"WHO WANTS DONUT HOLES???"

Twilight put her hoof to her forehead. "Pinkie, please, not so loud. I have such a headache."

"Don't drink just the coffee," Cadance said from the stairs. "You didn't have the opportunity to hydrate much, so you spent ten hours flying with no water. You've got a hangover, basically."

"Is that why I have such a terrible headache?" Discord said. "Nopony seems to think it's worth their while to give me more water."

"You'll just drop it on the carpet again," Twilight said testily.

"How could you think such a thing?" Discord declared dramatically, pressing his paw to his heart. "I could never do that! There isn't even a carpet in here for me to drop it on."

"Not helping your case, Discord." Twilight looked over at the stairs. "Are you okay, Cadance?"

"Oh, I'm fine, Twilight. I got up this morning and got myself some juice and some breakfast. Besides, I've been an alicorn longer. The trick is, you don't automatically heal from the things that won't threaten your life, so you've got to recognize they're happening and use spells to compensate. I was a pegasus first, so I have a lot more experience with the idea that you have to stay hydrated during hard exercise. Also, I think I drank half the shower while Spike was giving me a rubdown last night." She giggled.

Discord smirked. "Well. Spike. Finally giving up on Rarity, are you? You've set your sights high."

Twilight lifted Discord's pillow telekinetically and hit him with it. "That's disgusting, Discord. Shining Armor was like a big brother to Spike, too."

"You say that as if it makes the concept impossible, but you do realize, that just makes it all the more intriguing, right?"

"I'm sure the concept of a draconic being falling in love with an alicorn he can't have is very intriguing to you, Discord," Cadance said in a suspiciously arch tone, "but please, let's not forget Spike's youth. You and I both know that when ponies have to exert themselves dragging a sickly, and rather heavy, spirit of chaos across all of Equestria and get home in the middle of the night, we need a rubdown, and Spike was very considerate to wake up and help me considering how tired I was after all Twilight and I did to help you. But of course you know that's all it was, because talk of draconic beings falling in love with alicorns is quite silly, isn't it?"

Discord stared at her for a moment, eyes wide, as if what she was saying was somehow... frightening him? That made no sense, but then very little made sense with Discord. And then he chortled. "Of course! Don't mind me, Spike, I'm just messing with you."

"It's okay," Spike said. "Don't forget I ignore ninety-five percent of everything you say."

"You said ninety."

"No, I said ninety more than Twilight. I only have to ignore her like five percent of the time."

"HERE COME THE DONUT HOLES! PLENTY FOR EVERYPONY! And dragon! And draconequus! And owl if Owlowliscious would like one!"

"He's asleep," Twilight said, telekinetically taking several donut holes off the plate and carrying them to her mouth.

"That's all right, Pinkie, I already had breakfast," Cadance said.

"But you should have some anyway! Because I baked enough for everyone! And sugar in the morning gives you energy! And donut holes are yummy!"

"Don't argue," Twilight said. "Just take a donut hole."

"Don't I get any?" Discord asked plaintively, while Spike grabbed pawfuls of donut holes and indecorously shoved them into his mouth like a ravenous beast.

"Of course you do, silly billy! I have the normal donut holes here, and then here are the special chaotic donut holes! This one has hardboiled egg inside and chili pepper glaze; this one is frosted with pickle relish; this one is full of beet jelly and rolled in coffee grinds before glazing; and this one I soaked in grape juice, then I froze it! So it's a donut ice hole!" Pinkie turned to Spike. "I made special dragon ones too but I left them on the counter because if ponies accidentally eat the chaos donut holes they'll just taste yucky but if ponies eat the dragon donut holes they could get hurt."

"I swear to protect every pony here from dangerous donut holes!" Spike said, saluting. "Ready for my mission!"

"They're to the left of the stove piled on top of the blue plate."

"Yes, ma'am! Those donut holes don't stand a chance!" Spike ran into the kitchen.

"Twilight, can you give Discord some of his donut holes? I don't want to touch them with my hooves, I might get too curious and eat them and then Discord wouldn't get them and besides they're probably gross."

"If you think they're gross, why do you worry you'll eat them?" Twilight asked, lifting the four chaotic donut holes off the tray and levitating them in through the flap to give them to Discord.

"Because they're still donut holes, silly!"

"What time do you need to get to the train station?" Twilight asked.

Cadance looked at Discord before answering. "I'm not comfortable leaving you to have to deal with him on your own."

"It's okay. I know you've got Crystal Empire stuff you need to do—"

"Yes, but what's the point of being a Princess if I can't rearrange my own schedule? I'll stay at least until you can drop him off with Fluttershy. I just need to let Shiny know." She picked up a piece of paper and a quill from the nearest desk.

"It's okay, though. I can handle Discord. I've done it before."

"Yes, but this morning I think Discord and I came to an understanding." She smiled sweetly at Discord, who gulped visibly. Obviously that "understanding" involved Cadance holding something over Discord's head. Now Twilight was very curious as to what, but knew better than to ask in front of Discord. "So I'm sure he'll be better behaved as long as I'm here."

As Spike came back in, mouth full of gem-encrusted donut holes, Cadance magicked her note to Shining Armor away. "You have a dragon in the Crystal Empire?" Spike asked.

Cadance laughed. "No, though I wish I did. Shiny and I both can cast that spell directly, the way Princess Celestia does."

Spike's face fell. "Oh... so nopony really needs a dragon to send messages that way?"

"Not so at all. Only an alicorn or a powerful unicorn can manage that spell; it's as difficult as teleportation. Shiny struggled with it for more than a year, and this was when he and I could only talk to each other with letters because he was in Royal Guard training and I was studying abroad. It's exhausting for a unicorn to cast the spell. Whereas dragons can just do it; it doesn't tire you out at all."

"Yeah!" Spike said, grinning. "One time Princess Celestia sent Twilight something like twenty letters at once and I could do it. I was kind of wiped out afterward, but that was mostly because burping that much wears you out."

Cadance raised an eyebrow. "Twenty letters at once?"

"They were all her friendship letters. We were fighting that guy," he pointed at Discord, "and Twilight was just about ready to give up, but Princess Celestia sent her back all her friendship letters."

"I always wondered how you pulled that one off," Discord said. "Friendship letters, hmm?"

Twilight glared at him. "Aren't you reformed?"

"Of course I am! I'm only curious, Twilight. Why, even if I were to turn back to my nefarious ways, I certainly wouldn't do so the same way I did the first time, so it's hardly as if knowing you beat me with friendship letters could possibly affect the outcome of any future conflict. And besides, that would never happen because I'm reformed!" He started coughing. "Could someone get me a glass of water?"

"You're a little bit obsessed with this water thing, aren't you?" Twilight said.

"As if it's my fault that being sick has dehydrated me." He looked over at Pinkie. "Pinkie, Twilight's being mean to me."

"You were mean to Rarity and Applejack yesterday."

"But I'm siiiiiick."

"So were they, because you got them sick. Twilight didn't get you sick, you did that to yourself! So Twilight's not being as mean to you as you were to them."

"But she did tie me up and turn me into a kite."

"And I still think that sounds like fun! Twilight, will you turn me into a kite someday?"

"Sure, Pinkie. Someday." Twilight glared at Discord. "You weren't actually even sick yesterday when you started this whole water thing."

"Well, technically I actually was. Blue flu is a real illness, you know."

"Really? Because it sounds like something you made up."

"It's actually not," Cadance said. "It used to be – well, not common, but not unheard of, when I was a foal. I thought it had gone extinct, though. I don't think there's been a case in Equestria for at least two hundred years."

"Okay, then, maybe it's a real disease. But you didn't really have it," Twilight accused, turning back to Discord.

"I most certainly did."

"Did not! You even admitted you were faking! Don't try to go back on it now!"

Discord sighed. "Twilight, I haven't been ill in two thousand years. How could I possibly be expected to realistically portray the experience of being ill if I had no experience with actually being sick? I really was infected with blue flu. The part I was 'faking', as you put it, was that I could have cured myself with my powers any time I'd wanted to, and I could suppress any symptoms I didn't want to have. Also, it wasn't affecting my magic at all. I admit that this is completely different because I have no control over this whatsoever; my magic isn't working, I feel terribly weak and the symptoms are far worse than the ones I was having yesterday, and I can't magic them away without working magic. But yes, I really was thirsty, I really was coughing and sneezing, I really did have less physical energy than I'm used to."

"But you did all that to yourself."

"That doesn't change the fact that I was still feeling those things. Though I suppose I should thank you for the compliment, Twilight; you seem to think I'm such an amazing actor, I can realistically portray an experience I've never actually had. And perhaps if I'd tried I might have succeeded, because perhaps I genuinely am that amazing, but I didn't want to take the risk of getting it wrong, so yes. For the sake of verisimilitude, I gave myself blue flu. I admit it. Oh, if only I subscribed to the technical school of acting and not method!"

"Seriously? To start with you can't possibly be a method actor if you're as big of a ham as you are," Twilight said, making Discord blink at her.

"You... actually know something about the schools of acting?"

She grinned. Shocking Discord was very, very difficult to do, but it made her feel great when she managed to do it. "Gee, Discord, I've only read every single book in the Canterlot Library and in this one. I can't imagine where I would have learned anything about modern approaches to drama."

"What are the schools of acting?" Spike asked.

"Technical actors use... kind of formulas and rule-based acting styles, which come across as less realistic but easier to see and understand on a stage. Method actors imagine themselves in the same place as the characters, like, they imagine that they are the characters, and then they just do what the characters would do. Method's better for improv, but technical is better for hamming it up and being ridiculously over the top."

"But what if the character you're playing really is ridiculous and over the top?" Pinkie said. "Like when I play characters I always imagine that I am them but if I play a character who's a big ham then that's who I am!"

"That's kind of who you are in real life, though," Twilight said.

"Well, that's kind of who Discord is in real life, too!"

"Good point," Twilight acknowledged.

"Besides," Cadance said, "formulas and rule-based acting doesn't really sound much like Discord. Though to be fair, method would require a lot of empathy and I'm not sure he has it."

"I am right here," Discord groused. "What is it about you ponies talking behind my back, to my face?"

"Trust me, Discord, we say much worse things about you behind your back," Twilight said.

Discord's face fell, and for a moment he looked genuinely hurt. "As if I don't know that," he muttered.

Now Twilight felt bad. She hadn't intended that as an actual insult – well, she had, but more as witty insulting banter than anything he'd take seriously and be genuinely hurt by. "Sorry," she said. "That was a joke, but it didn't really come out all that funny, did it."

"Oh, don't fret, Twilight, my skin is thicker than that!" Discord said jovially, or as jovially as he could manage with the rasp in his throat anyway. "I hope you don't think my feelings were hurt by your little jape! Your delivery definitely could use work, though; I've heard less wooden attempts at jokes from timberwolves." He lay down. "I really would like that water, though. Sometime today."

"I gave you a whole big pitcher! Did you drink the whole thing?" Pinkie asked.

"Um... well, actually I seem to have knocked it over with my tail while I was asleep."

Twilight facehooved. "What was that about not spilling water on the floor?"

"Oh come now, Twilight, you can't hold what I do when I'm asleep against me! It's not my fault I'm a restless sleeper. And there's hardly room in this tiny bubble for my tail anyway."

"How about you give me the pitcher and I'll refill it?" Pinkie asked.

"Pinkie, no. It's in quarantine with him now. We'd have to sterilize it."

"Well, duh! But you can do that, right? Because I have a hazmat suit you need to sterilize too!"

Twilight's eyelid twitched. "A hazmat suit."

"Because I knew Discord was gonna get sick and I didn't know if it was contagious so I packed a hazmat suit so I could go into his bubble and give him some medicine and soup! But now I've worn it in there so it needs to be sterilized!"

"Where did you put it?"

Pinkie removed a hazmat suit from her mane. Twilight flapped her wings just enough that she could balance on two legs so she could double-facehoof. "Pinkie, you've just exposed yourself to the whatever it is disease!" she yelled, while Cadance simply cast magic health bubble on everypony in the room. "How long has that thing been in your mane?"

"It's not really in my mane. That's just how I get it in and out."

"Well, then where is it really? In your head?"

Discord coughed. "Twilight, unless you're prepared for a deep and complex study of matters you are by personality wholly unsuited to comprehend at this stage of your life... simply take her word for it. I saw where she put it, and it was fully quarantined from anything else, trust me."

"Trust you? The guy who gets himself sick just to annoy me?"

"Yes, well, I have no desire for any of the rest of you to get sick with this." He coughed again. This time it was less of a throat-clearing, may-I-interrupt noise and more of a hacking, wheezing, lungs-might-come-out-his-mouth cough. "I knew I could cure anypony who got the blue flu. I can't do anything about this, and I have no idea what it is, or how dangerous it might or might not be to ponies, and besides, the more of you get sick, the fewer there are to take care of me."

"Well, that I can buy," Twilight muttered. "All right, I guess there's probably no harm done. Hoof over the pitcher." He lifted it with his tail and pushed it against the flap that allowed food and water to enter his bubble; Twilight claimed it with her magic and cast the health spell on it. She levitated it over to Pinkie. "You don't have to get him a whole pitcher of water, you know. He'll just knock it over again."

Pinkie's eyes narrowed, and her face took on a stern expression. "Twilight, how many sickies have you taken care of?"

"Um... one time Spike molted... he was pretty itchy that day..."

"Have you ever taken care of a pony or a dragon with the flu?"

"No...?"

"Then you'd better settle down and let your Aunt Pinkie handle this. I have experience with sickies. And one thing is, water is always good for them! It flushes the yucky out." She hopped off to the kitchen.

"I'm pretty sure I'm older than you," Twilight mumbled.

"She does have a point," Cadance said. "He needs to stay hydrated."

"Yes, but does he have to do it on my library floor? What if the water goes through the floorboards and drips into the basement? I have books in my lab in the basement! Water ruins books!" She spun on her hooves. "Spike, run downstairs and make sure the floor up here isn't leaking!"

"I'm pretty sure it isn't."

"Pretty sure is a great way to get ruined books! Go check!"

Spike sighed. "Okay..."

Discord looked taken aback. "I had forgotten about your neurotic obsession with the condition of your books."

"I haven't forgotten what you did to them, Discord. If you're trying to ruin my books on purpose again—"

"It wasn't on purpose the last time! If I'd tried to ruin your books on purpose, I'd have turned them into candy cane flowers or something. And we already agreed that I was careless and I don't intend to do it again. And I'll promise to do my best to make sure the pitcher doesn't get knocked over again while I'm in your library, if you'll just calm down."

Twilight remembered the last altercation she'd had with Discord over damaged books, and smirked. He'd been at full power then, started out by laughing at her, and ended up negotiating in earnest and offering to repair and/or clean the books he'd ruined. Obviously, he didn't want to deal with her ire on the matter right now, when he was virtually helpless. Of course, the fact that he was virtually helpless meant she wouldn't actually do anything to hurt him, but she didn't necessarily need him to know that. "Pinkie Promise."

"I can't do that. If I fall asleep again I really can't prevent my tail from swishing while I'm unconscious. And this illness is making me so tired I keep falling asleep for no good reason."

"Pinkie Promise that you'll do your best to avoid knocking over the pitcher. I understand you can't control your tail when you're asleep, but you could maybe ask somepony to take the pitcher from you and sterilize it before you fall asleep, and then get more water when you wake up?"

He sighed. "Fine. Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a miniature baked confectionary in my eye."

Pinkie came back with the pitcher. "Somepony made a promise here?"

"Discord promised to do his best to not knock over the pitcher this time." Twilight blinked. "Wait, I thought you knew exactly what ponies were promising when we make Pinkie Promises."

"Nope! I only know what you promised if it sounds like you might break it! Discord, here's an idea for you: if you feel sleepy, drink the whole pitcher! Then it won't matter if you knock it over."

"That is an idea. I'll consider that." After Pinkie passed the pitcher in to him, he poured himself a glass and drank it. "When am I supposed to take more of that throat stuff you made?"

"Two hours. Right around when we're expecting Fluttershy, so you might not have to."

"I might have to now. My throat really hurts."

Pinkie looked at Twilight. Twilight looked at Cadance. Cadance shrugged. Twilight turned back to Pinkie. "We don't have any idea what he's got, how fast it's moving, how virulent it is or how bad the symptoms will be. If the throat medication doesn't have anything in it that can harm him if he takes too much of it, then go ahead and let him have the second dose."

"Thank you, Twilight, for finally taking my pain seriously," Discord groused.

Spike came back up the stairs. "No leaks, and all the books are fine," he said. "Just like I said they would be."

"Thank you for checking anyway. Now. We've got two hours or maybe more until Fluttershy comes home, and I don't want to dump this problem on her before she's had a chance to unpack her bags and unwind, so I don't think we should even bother her with it until this afternoon—"

"What?" Discord wailed. "But I need Fluttershy!"

"What you need is treatment for your symptoms and somepony to figure out whether what you have can be cured, or if you'll just have to wait it out. I'm going to ask Zecora—"

"But I want Fluttershy!"

"And I want to not have a sick draconequus in the middle of my library, but we can't always get what we want right away. Trust me, I want to dump you off on her too, but if we want to be good, considerate friends to Fluttershy, we won't bother her while she's still recovering from travel."

Discord pouted, then brightened. "But Fluttershy is too kind to be happy with the idea of relaxing while her dear, dear friend is suffering so," he said. "So in order to preserve her feelings, don't you think we shouldn't wait?"

"No. In order to preserve her feelings, we won't even tell her you're sick and we need her help until after she's been home a couple of hours."

Discord curled up on the bed and buried his face in his pillow. "Torturer. You're enjoying this."

"No, I'm not." Twilight sighed. "Zecora is every bit as competent to treat you as Fluttershy is. Probably more so. Fluttershy would just go to Zecora and ask her to make some potions for you, so we're going to get a head start and ask her ourselves. Spike, take a letter."

"Ready!"

While Twilight dictated a letter to Zecora, outlining the situation and asking for help, Pinkie crawled into Discord's bubble in the now-sterilized hazmat suit, again, and gave him the second dose of the medicated honey. He complained about the taste, but at least he wasn't whining for Fluttershy like a foal for his mommy anymore.

"I've always wanted to see the Everfree Forest," Cadance said. "Spike, would you mind having a companion on your trip to Zecora's? I've also never met her, though I've heard a lot about her."

"I would be happy to be your guide, Princess," Spike said, bowing. "Maybe... um... there's some things I might want to ask you about on the way, if you don't mind? You're the Princess of Love, right?"

Cadance smiled at him. "Feel free to ask me advice about whatever you'd like."

Great. Twilight hoped Cadance didn't encourage him with this whole Rarity thing. She felt bad for Spike – other dragons were jerks – but pony prejudices against xenophilia being what they were... well. She was pretty sure that Rarity thought that Spike was a charming little boy, and that was it. And she didn't want him getting his heart broken because he got too hopeful for something that wasn't likely going to happen.

After Spike and Cadance set off with the letter to bring to Zecora, Discord had a new complaint. "Pinkie? Do you remember that discussion we had about bedpans?"

"Oh! Do you need to pee?"

"I would really prefer that we don't shout about my biological needs at the top of our lungs," he muttered.

"I've already thought of this," Twilight said. "You're obviously mobile enough to attend to yourself if we give you something to use, right?"

"Yes, Twilight, I'm not a foal. I might not have such sordid biological needs very often when I have my magic, but I do in fact know how to use the potty."

"I wasn't concerned with your knowledge but with your physical ability. But you're able to move around in there, you're not so weak you're totally incapacitated. So!" She went upstairs, and came back down with a chamberpot, with lid, and a wide-mouthed flask. And then she looked at Discord, and considered the fact that he was three times bigger than a pony.

"Tell me the truth here... are these going to be big enough?"

Discord peered at them through his bubble. "...Possibly not. I've drunk a lot of water."

"If I enlarge them with magic, is there anything about contact with your – well, contact with you, that would disrupt the spell and make them shrink back to their original size?"

Pinkie started snickering. "You mean like, chaotic poopies?"

Discord might actually have been blushing. With the green fur and the quarantine bubble, it was hard to tell for sure. "To the best of my knowledge, no, but there is a way to test it. Hygienically," he added. "Cast your spell and give me the items, and I'll be able to tell how likely it is for them to spontaneously revert."

Twilight did as he suggested, casting the enlargement spell on the flask and the chamberpot, then passing them in. Discord promptly cleared his throat in the most disgusting-sounding way possible and hocked a thick, goopy, green loogie into the chamberpot.

"Euw!" Twilight looked away. "Did you have to do that?"

"Well, I certainly wasn't going to pee in it to test it against my bodily fluids. I'm sorry, did you want me to cut myself and bleed into it?"

"No! That's just... never mind, it's a chamberpot, it'll get worse." She sighed. "So, spell holding up okay?"

He nodded. "There's no sign of disruption that I can see. I didn't expect there to be any, you know; I don't exactly go about spitting on things to disrupt the spells laid on them. Or peeing on them, for that matter. Although the mental image of doing that to break the spell Celestia had on the Elements, back when you had them, is utterly hilarious. Maybe I should have tried it."

"Maybe that is the most disgusting idea ever."

"Sometimes chaos is disgusting. Like the time I turned Canterlot Mountain into a giant nose and had it sneeze all over the ponies who lived around the base of it." He snickered. "That was unbearably funny. I think even you would have thought so."

"No, I wouldn't have, because that's totally disgusting. Why am I even helping you?"

He made his eyes improbably large and batted his eyelids. "Because you're a heroic and compassionate mare who's dedicated her life to helping those in need?" Discord's expression reverted to normal. "Or, the thought has occurred to you that if what I have is contagious, and transmissible to ponies... well, if it could affect me this badly, I'm sure we don't want to know what it could do to ordinary ponies. So it's in your best interest to cure me as quickly as possible."

"That part's true, but I don't have to be treating your symptoms to be researching the cause."

Pinkie glared at Twilight. "Don't be mean, Twilight. Discord's really sick and he needs our help. You can't tell somepony you'll be their friend and then not help them when they're sick just because they played a really gross prank one time."

"I was just joking, Pinkie."

"Well, it wasn't funny, and that is my expert opinion as the expert on funny."

"I don't suppose you could cast some sort of concealment spell," Discord said.

Twilight turned to face him. "Don't tell me the master of chaos is actually embarrassed by something?" she asked, grinning.

Now he was definitely red. "Perhaps you don't realize this, but I haven't had to do this since getting out of stone. Which I suppose means I haven't needed to use the necessary for over a thousand years."

"I'm pretty sure it's like riding a bicycle!" Pinkie said. "You don't forget how to use a potty!"

"I'm not afraid of forgetting... Oh for the love of anything, Twilight, aren't I allowed to want some privacy?"

"Don't worry, I actually thought of that too." She summoned one of the tarps for the hot air balloon and dropped it on his enclosure. "There we go, that should be nice and private!"

Discord's voice came through the tarp, muffled. "That would be wonderful, if only I could see anything."

Sighing, Twilight removed the tarp. "You just want what? Me to use a shadow spell or something to make it dark here?"

"I'd like you to turn the bottom half of this bubble opaque and leave the top clear for light, but I'd certainly understand if Princess Celestia's student, the Alicorn of Magic, couldn't cast such a sophisticated spell."

"There's no need to be sarcastic about it." Twilight cast the spell, making the entire bubble opaque except for a circle on the very top. "Is that enough light?"

"It'll do," Discord said crankily.

Twilight turned to Pinkie. "Pinkie, do you have to go back to work or would you be able to help me?"

"I took the whole day off! Who knows when Fluttershy's going to get back? She might miss her train or something so I figured it would be better if I could help you out as long as you need it!"

"Thank you, you're a lifesaver. I already know there's nothing in this library about draconequui, but we need to try to find references to any kind of disease that turns anyone green, even if it's a dragon disease or a cat disease or an owl disease or whatever. I'm..." She swallowed. "Going to have to examine his bodily secretions. Magically. So when he's done in there I'll have to take it down to the lab and look at it."

"Shouldn't you look at his fur too? It was his fur that turned green!"

"Good point. Also blood, and that gross stuff he keeps sneezing, and oh no DISCORD! I forgot to tell you to use the flask for urine and the chamberpot for anything else because I have to keep them separate for study!"

"Now she tells me," the voice from inside the darkened bubble said. "Fortunately for you I have eaten almost nothing solid, so that particular issue hasn't come up yet."

"Well, I'm going to need a stool sample... eventually."

"Certainly. Just poke me, prod me, jab sharp instruments into me, stick all my bodily secretions under a microscope – it's not as if I'm a living creature with feelings, after all."

"I'm sorry if you don't like it, but as long as you're a living creature with feelings of being sick, that's going to have to take precedence. Unless you don't want to get better."

"Fine," he sighed.

"Could I give Discord some of the books to read through? He might make it go faster."

Twilight remembered what Discord had told her, shortly after they had reformed him, before she'd become an alicorn. "That's not a good idea, Pinkie, I don't want to have to sterilize the books." This wasn't actually the reason, but she didn't want to humiliate Discord by telling Pinkie that he probably couldn't read without magical assistance, or at least, not well.

"Thank you, my eyes are far too bleary to make anything out anyway," Discord called out. "By the way, you can drop the darkening spell. I'm done."

Pinkie looked troubled. "Twilight, I'm happy to help but... if I'm the only one up here reading, and you're in the lab..."

"Don't fret, Pinkie, I'll keep you company," Discord said. "I may not be able to read the books and help you, but I'm sure I can stay awake long enough to keep you entertained."

"Okie dokie lokie!"

Twilight went down to the lab and came up with sterile containers. Pinkie was already flipping through various books. "Ooh! We found out everything we needed to know about Nightmare Moon from a children's book of legends and stuff, so how about I read you this book of fairy tales?"

"If they're actually fairy tales they're unlikely to help," Discord said. "Legends, folktales and myths are what you want."

"Or medical books," Twilight said.

Pinkie made a face. "You can read the medical books, Twilight," she said. "I wouldn't understand any of the gobbledygook in them anyway. I'll read legends and stuff."

"And I'll make fun of any that have mangled the source history to a ridiculous degree," Discord put in.

"How is that helping?"

"It will entertain Pinkie so she doesn't get too bored reading all by herself. Which, might I add, is a terrible task to give a mare as gregarious as Pinkie, and it's positively cruel of you to demand that she work alone. Why, if I weren't here, the poor dear would be completely isolated, slaving away by her self—"

"If you weren't here we wouldn't be having this problem." She walked over to his bubble. "I need to take samples."

"Oh." He shrank back against the wall of the bubble. "Are you sure about that? I mean, is that strictly speaking necessary?"

"Absolutely." Twilight sent her sterile instruments through the window in the bubble. Discord started hyperventilating.

"Are there going to be needles?" he asked, whimpering slightly.

"Not unless I need a biopsy. Open your mouth."

"What's that tweezers looking thing?"

"It's to take a scale off your tail. Open your mouth."

"Why do you need a scale?"

"To see how much you weigh, silly!" Pinkie called out.

"Oh, ha. Very funny, Pinkie," Discord said.

"Discord, I can't be standing here all day," Twilight said. "Cooperate with me so I can get my samples, or I'll have to restrain you with my magic so I can get them."

"That's really not necessary, really all you should need is some fur, right? I have the urine sample you wanted, I can spit in a cup if you need me to, you don't really need—"

"Can you cure yourself?" Twilight demanded.

"If I could would I be here?" Discord folded his arms indignantly. "I thought we were over questioning me about this, Twilight."

"We are. It was a rhetorical question. If you can't cure yourself, then get out of my way so I can get the samples I need to research what's wrong with you so I can cure you."

"Maybe we should wait for Fluttershy?" Pinkie said. "If he's scared..."

"I am not scared!" Discord's tone rose from indignation to offense.

"And I can't wait that long to get started. So if you're not scared, Discord, then open your mouth."

He did so with bad grace. Twilight shone a light in the back of his throat, which didn't help her see anything because his muzzle was so long, and then used a tongue depressor and a scraper to take samples of tissue from his tongue and cheeks. His eyes were wide and he was breathing hard, which didn't back up his story that he wasn't scared any. Then she plucked a feather ("Ow!"), pulled some fur ("Ow!"), and used tweezers to pry off a scale ("OW! Twilight, stop it, this is torture!"), dropping each into a sterile container of its own.

"Well, if you didn't have so many separate body coverings, I wouldn't have to take samples of all of them," Twilight said.

"I'll just go back in time and tell myself not to grow so many different kinds of body parts, how's that?" Discord retorted, pain making his voice sharp.

"How about you just go back in time and tell yourself not to give yourself blue flu in the first place?" She took all her containers, including the flask full of pee, and pulled them through the barrier, casting magic health bubble on the outside of the containers as she did so.

"What if I need to pee again?"

"Now you can use the chamberpot. This ought to be more than enough urine for me to do an analysis." Twilight sighed. "I really need a blood sample, but I guess I can get started with this stuff and then we can wait to take the blood sample until Fluttershy gets back."

Discord shivered. "You're a peach, Twilight."

"Can I get back to reading? I found some good ones!" Pinkie said.

"Sure, Pinkie, go ahead. I'm going to see what I can find out from this stuff," Twilight said, carrying the materials with her toward her lab and trying to recall everything she'd studied about biology, ever.

Five

View Online

In the interests of speed, Cadance trotted with Spike on her back, because Spike had to more or less run to keep up with a pony's trot. They headed down the road toward the Everfree, passing occasional ponies, some of whom bowed.

"So, um, I guess if you're the Princess of Love, you already know what I want to ask about, right?"

Cadance laughed. "It doesn't work like that, Spike. I have some idea who you have affections for, yes, but I have no way of knowing exactly what you want to ask."

"Still, though. I guess, if you already know how I feel, it's okay to tell you..."

"It would be okay anyway. I'm practically your sister-in-law... Or aunt. I've never been quite sure if you look at Twilight as a sister or as a mother."

"Uh... both? Neither? I don't even know. She's my, um. I don't even know what to call it. I don't have a mother – I mean, whoever laid me was obviously not in a big hurry to hatch me and be a mom – but that never really bothered me, because Twilight is my... something. I don't know. She takes care of me and I take care of her. She teaches me stuff and she'd do anything to protect me, and I give her advice and I'd do anything for her. Kind of sort of like she feels about Princess Celestia, except with less hero worship, 'cause I clean Twilight's bathroom and believe me, it's really hard to hero worship somepony once you've cleaned their bathroom."

Cadance giggled, which was good, because Spike was trying to be funny. Everything he'd read said that mares liked stallions with a good sense of humor. "Well, Shining looks at you as a much younger little brother, and he's always regretted that even though he was in training at the Palace and Twilight was living at the Palace as Princess Celestia's personal student, and you were with her, he never had as many chances as he'd have liked to come visit and do some brotherly bonding with you. So I hope you don't mind if I consider you my brother-in-law."

"Sure, as long as you don't mind if ponies get weird when you tell them you have a dragon for a brother."

"Get weird?" She grinned. "Spike, if I told ponies I had a dragon for a brother, they'd either be impressed or intimidated. Now, when I tell them that I want potato chips with pickle relish and strawberries, then they get weird, especially when I tell them I'm not pregnant, I just happen to like that combination of flavors."

Spike laughed. "Well, anyway, whether you're my sister-in-law or just a princess, I need some advice."

"No problem."

"I, um..." He clasped his paws together and twisted his claws around each other nervously. "I kind of like Rarity?"

"Yes," Cadance said, looking back at him and smiling. "I know."

"So, uh... does she like me back? And if she doesn't, how can I get her to? And if she does, why hasn't she ever said?"

"Hmm," Cadance said. "From the time I spent with both you and Rarity in the Crystal Empire, after we defeated Sombra, I would say that Rarity considers you a good friend. She sees you as dependable, faithful, and honorable, and she trusts you more than she trusts most ponies."

"But I'm just a friend to her?" Spike asked dejectedly.

"Spike. You need to remember something." Cadance glanced back at him. "You're fourteen years old. And of a species that doesn't mature, physically, as fast as ponies, so the shape of your head and eyes makes you look like a very young foal who just happens to be as tall as a typical colt at cuteceñera. Rarity loves you, as a dear young friend, but if she felt anything more than that she would feel herself to be a child molester – even though you're older than you look and more mature than your age suggests, you still look like a young child and you actually are a child, albeit one with adult responsibilities."

"So it's just about what I look like? I'm not attractive to her because I look like a kid?"

"And because you are a kid." Cadance sighed. "I've been where Rarity is, though I was the one who was older than I looked. I was very young when I became an alicorn – a bit younger than you, in fact. And alicorns age more slowly than other ponies; I spent the next ten years looking like a teenager. Then I was cast into a magical sleep and spent a few hundred years sleeping on an island off the eastern coast. When I woke up, there was this young colt, about your age, shaking me, and I could sense he was as drawn to me as you must have been to Rarity the first time you met, but all I could feel was confusion and disorientation because I couldn't even remember having been put to sleep, so I had no idea why I was waking up in this strange place or what these strange foals were doing here."

"That was Shining Armor, right?"

She nodded. "Right. He helped me in my adjustment to the modern world, and soon I found I had feelings for him as well. But he was a child, ten years younger than me even if we didn't count the years I spent in suspended animation. I looked like an older teen on the cusp of marehood, but I was actually a fully adult mare, even if I wasn't fully grown yet. I felt embarrassed and... dirty, really, having a crush on a colt so much younger than me. Over time, as I recognized all of Shining's wonderful qualities, that crush deepened into true love, but it wasn't until he was actually an adult that I let myself admit to myself that I wanted to pursue this, that I wanted us to be more than close friends. And in our case, because I still looked like a teen, nopony had anything to say about us being the wrong ages for each other; nopony but me knew how old I really was. Well, and Aunt Celestia, but I don't think she noticed; she's so much older than everypony now, I'm not sure she'd be able to tell that ponies are inappropriate for each other on the basis of age unless one's a blank-flanked small foal."

"Also, you were both ponies," Spike said. "I've... I've actually heard ponies say things about how I shouldn't be raised with ponies because what if I grow up to fall in love with ponies?"

"Really? Who said such a horrible thing to you?"

"They didn't say it to me. I was kind of eavesdropping. And Twilight went into a holy tirade, wow, you should have heard her. It was awesome. So I always knew Twilight was okay with it if I fell in love with a pony, and I think she's okay with how I feel about Rarity, but I can't always tell because sometimes it seems like she doesn't take me seriously. Like, she thinks this is just a cute little crush and I'll grow out of it. But I met Rarity a few years ago and it doesn't seem like I'm growing out of it. I mean, I know she's not this amazing perfect princess of a mare that I thought she was when I met her, but that just makes me feel more strongly. If that makes any sense."

"Of course it makes sense. You can't experience true love until you know the other pony's character, faults and all, and true love is much stronger than an infatuation." Cadance said nothing for a moment. "I will tell you something I probably shouldn't if you swear to me to hold it in confidence. Can you do that?"

"Sure. I'll Pinkie Promise. Nothing you're about to tell me in confidence will ever pass my lips unless you tell me to do differently. Cross my heart, hope to fly, stick a cupcake in my eye."

"The fact that you are a dragon... is not an obstacle."

Spike blinked at that for several seconds. "Wait. Are you saying that... Rarity... is into dragons?"

"I wouldn't go that far. Let's just say she's not... opposed to the idea of... loving a dragon. The fact that you are a child is a much greater obstacle... but unlike being a dragon, that will eventually go away."

"Yeah, but when? I know dragons live a long time, but... ponies don't. If I don't look like an adult until Rarity's 80... I'll still love her, but how much time will I have with her?"

"I don't know enough about dragons to tell you. But I'll tell you this. Being a mare's close friend doesn't interfere with your chances to be something more than that. Most mares prefer to fall in love with a friend."

"Yeah, well, I'm not sure that's true for Rarity. She fell for Prince Blueblood before she ever even met him, and then he turned out to be horrible."

"She did?" Cadance laughed. "Oh, poor, poor Rarity. And poor Bluey."

"Oh... yeah, that's right, he's your cousin, isn't he?"

"By adoption, more or less, but he was also Shining's best friend once, and it was the two of them, along with another friend, who rescued me from the magical sleep. And the whole trip was Bluey's idea. He's not a bad stallion, just... a bit selfish."

"Sounds like Fluttershy making excuses for Discord."

"Well, perhaps it is. Perhaps Discord would have done better if he'd had a cousin to make excuses for him. Discord's problem was never that ponies made excuses for him; according to Aunt Celestia, he was seen as a monster long before he actually was one. If anything, his problem was the opposite; if you'll be seen as a monster whether you're good or bad, why be good? Have you ever thought about how you would feel if ponies treated you the way they usually treat dragons, even though you are well-intentioned, honorable and kind-hearted?"

"You mean... screaming and running away? But why would they do that? I'm just a kid; it's really easy to see that I'm too weak to hurt them."

"If you were malicious, that wouldn't be true. Your claws and teeth can rend stone; the fact that it hasn't occurred to you how dangerous you could be to ponies is a demonstration of what a basically good individual you are. But what if you were bigger, but still the same dragon in mind and heart? What if your greed had been reversed but not your greed-growth? Or what if you were the size of one of the adolescent dragons you encountered, and you had no pony family or friends, and all anypony ever did was run away or attack you, regardless of your intentions?"

"I... guess I'd probably be a hermit or something."

"That's true. You might give up entirely on the company of others. If you were someone with a desperate need for attention, though... you might take to tormenting them, because then at least they will pay attention to you. If they're going to scream and run, or attack you, regardless of whether you're good or bad, and being bad allows you to steal from them and lets you command their attention when you want it, then why be good?"

"Yeah, but things aren't like that now. He doesn't have to behave this way."

"He's very old, Spike. He has a lot of bad habits to unlearn, and a lot of old information that doesn't apply anymore driving his actions." She chuckled slightly. "Hopefully, a karmic comeuppance like this will help him to recognize both that ponies do care, so he doesn't have to pull stunts like this for attention, and that it's actually dangerous for him to do things like this."

"Yeah, but you and Twilight nearly got killed, and now here everyone is, bending over backward to make him feel better and help him."

"He also nearly got killed," Cadance pointed out.

"But it was his own fault!"

"And do you think he doesn't know that?"

"Well, he doesn't act like he knows it," Spike muttered. "He's all cheerful and making jokes."

"That's only because you didn't hear him begging us not to tie him up and fly him like a kite back home, last night." Cadance turned and grinned. "Trust me, Spike. Discord got his punishment. He spent at least an hour of the trip home, if not longer, complaining as loudly as he could... and neither Twilight or I could actually hear any of the words, so we had no choice but to ignore him or else we'd never have gotten home before I collapsed. Now that he's in a safe location, and so are we, we have the luxury of treating him for his illness, but when we were out by the ends of Equestria with a five-hour flight home ahead of us and those tatzlwurms around us and nowhere safe we could stay for the night with Discord until we got back to Ponyville, we had no choice but to treat him like a rolled-up rug, and he was not happy with that. Trust me."

"That doesn't mean he knows it's his fault."

"No. But it means that being cheerful and making jokes is his way of making the best of a bad situation, not an indicator that he genuinely doesn't feel anything. Didn't you hear him whining about how he needed Fluttershy? He's sick, he's in pain, and he's forced to rely on ponies he knows he's wronged, who have no reason to be kind to him. He's very much afraid, Spike, and very unhappy. He isn't actually enjoying this at all. It's just very important to him to try to project the image of being a happy-go-lucky creature who's never bothered by anything."

Spike sighed. "I guess. I just don't like the idea that no one is even going to punish him for making Rarity and Applejack sick, and for lying and dragging you guys out across the country, into danger, just because by chance he happened to get sick because of what he did."

"You could be right. But pony jurisprudence has relied more on mercy and compassion than on justice and punishment, for a very long time. I became an alicorn because I reformed an enemy with the power of compassion and love, not because I punished her harshly." Her voice hardened. "Don't get me wrong, there are enemies you can't do that with. Sombra needed to be destroyed, completely. Chrysalis... Chrysalis has the love and near-worship of all of her Changelings. She sees us as food. She can't be reformed. I don't know if my spell killed her or not, and to be honest, if I was told that she died from it, it wouldn't sadden me. Changelings are predators, and we're their prey. If we show them too much compassion, we'll die, or end up as drained husks." Her voice was bitter, a note Spike had never heard from Cadance.

"I... guess that's true..." Spike didn't disagree, but he didn't like hearing such harshness from Cadance. Cadance was a cute, kind, friendly princess of a fluffy, benevolent principle. Not like the Sun, which could burn, or the Moon, which presided over darkness and nightmares. Love was nice. The thought was occurring to Spike that all of the enemies Twilight had fought without Cadance had been reformed, at least ostensibly in Discord's case, and all the ones she'd fought with Cadance were either dead or might be dead.

"But that's neither here nor there. If we can reform an enemy, then by all means, we should. And in my experience, a lack of friendship, love or respect can turn a pony who could otherwise have been good into an enemy. It happened with my first foe, Prismia, who stole love to make herself feel better because nopony had ever shown it to her. It happened with Sunset Shimmer, who, from what I've heard, never understood that she needed friends. It happened with Aunt Luna, who felt that ponies didn't love or respect her as they did Aunt Celestia. And it happened with Discord, who was rejected by most of the ponies he knew in his life, and felt that he'd been abandoned by the few that did care for him." She shook her head. "Sombra didn't turn to dark magic because of a lack of love or respect, and Chrysalis is beloved by her Changelings. They would never have been good candidates for reform. But Discord is."

Before Spike could say anything else, he heard Zecora's voice. "Ho, my friends! Spike, and Princess Cadance!" This seemed to Spike like it wasn't a very good rhyme, and was kind of getting away on a technicality, but he didn't say so. "Between here and Ponyville's quite a long road, so what brings you out here to my humble abode?"

Spike had been engrossed enough in the conversation he hadn't even registered that they were almost to Zecora's house. He could see her hut up ahead through the branches.

"Discord's fallen ill," Cadance said. "He was claiming to have the blue flu, when he really didn't, and we went out to the ends of Equestria with him to get a flower that was supposed to be a cure. While we were there, we were attacked by giant creatures called tatzlwurms. One of them sneezed goo all over Discord, which caused him to turn green, become extremely ill, and lose access to his magic."

"Well, a temporary loss of Discord's magic sounds like something the rest of us would hardly call tragic," Zecora said, smiling. "But I suppose his illness I must attend, since my friend Fluttershy calls him her friend."

"Here's a letter from Twilight with the details," Spike said, jumping off Cadance's back and bringing the letter to Zecora. She opened it and perused it carefully.

"Blue flu... blue flu... it does not ring a bell," Zecora murmured. "I will have to think hard on how to make him well." She gestured at her house up ahead. "The patient, I fear, I will have to see. But first, would you two like to come in for tea?"

Zecora's tea was always guaranteed to be interesting, at least. "Sure!" Spike said.

"I don't know," Cadance said. "We're leaving Twilight alone with Discord. Is that wise?"

"Pinkie's there," Spike said. "Besides, do we really want to go back and listen to him whine right away?"

Cadance laughed. "Well, I suppose a moment or two to rest my hooves would be nice. I didn't do a number on them like I did on my wings yesterday, but a flight like that uses all your muscles."

"Then come in and make yourselves at home," Zecora said. "I've recently acquired a whole honeycomb, so I can guarantee that the flavor of today's tea is something you'll savor."

"Sounds great," said Spike, who was greatly in favor of whole honeycombs and their contents.

Twilight's examination of the various items from Discord's body identified no harmful bacteria that she could recognize, nor any poisons, but there was one thing that was clear: there was no thaumic output from any of the biological items.

This was, given Discord's power levels, absurd. A single one of Twilight's feathers had absurdly high thaumics. Even a feather from Scootaloo was thaumically active. (She'd checked when at one point the filly had asked her to make sure she actually had magic... a silly question to ask, since Scootaloo plainly had a flight field and just hadn't figured out how to point it down rather than out yet. Her wingpower-assisted scooter speed made that obvious. But she'd checked anyway.) Any loose item from a pony's body, whether it be a hoof clipping, a strand of mane, or a feather, was charged with a fraction of that pony's magic. The idea that Discord's body parts were not seething with his enormous magical reserves was ridiculous.

But given that Discord was the king of ridiculous, it couldn't be ruled out. She went upstairs. "Discord, I need a sample of fur, feathers or something from before you got sick," she said. "Is there any more reasonable way to teleport to your home than to piggyback on one of your spells?"

"To this day I have no idea how you did that," Discord said hoarsely. She had traveled to Discord's extra-dimensional home to chew him out for stealing books from the library, by following the teleport signature of books he'd been in the process of stealing (he'd claimed he didn't know you had to check books out of a library, and that he had just been borrowing them, but she'd never quite believed him.) That was when he'd admitted to her – under some duress, because she'd started using magic willy-nilly in his dimension and, well, maybe she had gone a little bit overboard-- that he could barely read without magical assistance. With the use of the spell that read books to him, he could read a dozen books at the same time, and somehow his mastery of chaos allowed him to understand the cacophony that resulted. Without it, Discord appeared to suffer from dyslexia, though he himself had told her it was due to his chaos powers and was very surprised to hear there were ponies with the same problem. Apparently nopony had known dyslexia existed when Discord had been learning to read. He'd been embarrassed enough about the issue, as well as being embarrassed about the fact that he was ignorant about many aspects of modern Equestrian life because he'd been trapped in stone, that he'd actually stolen books from the library so he wouldn't have to admit to any of it.

"Is there some other way to do it?"

"I know where the windows are!" Pinkie said. "You just need to tell me how to open them!"

"There's a permanent portal in the Canterlot Statue Garden," Discord said. "And a semi-permanent one near Fluttershy's house, which is probably still openable. But if all you want is a sample of one of my feathers or something, you could just go to Fluttershy's house. She brushed my mane the last time we had Tuesday Tea."

"Discord, your mane is made of feathers."

"Your point being?"

Twilight sighed. Yes, of course Discord would have somepony brush his feathers. "Pinkie, do you think you could check?"

"Okie dokie lokie! And if I don't find anything by breaking and entering into Fluttershy's cottage, I'll break into Discord's dimension with the portal near there and burglarize his apartment for stray hairs!"

"It's... not really burglary if you have permission, and I know Fluttershy would give you permission since this might help with Discord's illness."

Pinkie pouted. "You're ruining all my fun."

"She's good at that," Discord said. He curled up his paw as if he were holding a microphone. "Pinkie, the city of Jokesville has been terrorized for months by the actions of a mad, masked mare that police are calling the Funkiller. While no prank or jape who's encountered her has lived to tell the tale, some witnesses who've narrowly avoided a fatal meeting have reported a general impression. She may be a purple alicorn with a permanent scowl on her face. Citizens are advised to be careful, and keep an eye out. Now over to you, Pinkie."

Pinkie had a toy plastic doll eye in her hoof, and was squinting with one eye and slowly moving the doll eye around, as if she were using it to see. "Thanks, Discord! Everyjoke, stay safe! And now over to Tom for sports!"

"Pinkie. Discord. Be serious."

Discord coughed. "Are you trying to kill me?"

"Well, if I were really the Funkiller, I might, given that you seem to imagine that you're fun. Pinkie, can you also let Rarity and Applejack know the situation, and ask them to pick Fluttershy up at the train station, because I don't think I'll get the chance? Also Rainbow Dash if you can find her."

"Okie dokie!" Pinkie put the toy eye back in her mane and hopped out the door, curly mane bouncing with every jump.

"What are you trying to prove?" Discord asked. There wasn't any challenge in it; it might have simply been a normal question, but his voice was too hoarse to tell for sure. Twilight decided to pretend he simply meant it as a question; if that was true it would be the appropriate response, and if it wasn't true, she'd have dodged one of his attempts to needle her.

"Normally the cast-off bits of a pony's body are charged with magic, and it's true for any creature with some level of magic – even griffin feathers have some magic, because griffins have flight magic. But the samples I took from you aren't radiating any magic at all."

"Then why are they green?"

"Good question. They stopped being green shortly after I removed them from you, which makes me think the green color is actually an aura effect. A very powerful one, since it's visible to the naked eye – most aura effects are only visible when ponies are using their magic – but an aura effect nonetheless. So that didn't shock me. But the fact that they have no magic resonance bugs me. You're so powerful, I can't imagine how your feathers and scales would have no magic resonance."

Discord nodded. "They should. I've seen magicless beings acquire large amounts of magic temporarily from using the fur from my tail plus an amplifier, or from..." He trailed off.

"From what?"

"I don't think I want to tell you. You might try to test it."

Twilight sighed. "Discord, do you want to get better or don't you?"

"Yes, but some prices aren't worth it."

"Listen, I promise you I won't do anything to you that you don't consent to, all right? I mean, I never would have in the first place, but if you need me to make it a Pinkie Promise—"

"You already did things to me I didn't consent to. You tied me up when I begged you not to—"

"There wasn't any other way to transport you safely, Discord, we've been over this. You weren't strong enough to hold onto the travois yourself, and we needed to protect you from the wind and keep you from thrashing around and throwing off the aerodynamics, so we had to tie you up."

"I still didn't consent to it."

"Would you have preferred to have been left behind in tatzlwurm country?" Twilight asked pointedly. "After two of them attacked you?"

"Three, if you count the one that made me sick."

"Fine, three. If we'd left you there to go get Princess Celestia to open a gateway so we could just pull you through, you might have gotten eaten before we even got to Canterlot!"

"Two alicorns together can open one of those gateways, you know."

"No, I didn't know, and if you were so eager to not be flown home like a kite, maybe you could have mentioned that then? Or, I don't know, maybe before we set off for the ends of Equestria in the first place? Oh wait, I forgot, that would have missed the whole point! The entire idea was to ruin my day with Cadance and take as much time and effort as possible!"

"Yes, yes, mea culpa. I'm sorry, can we get over it now? And I didn't think of it last night. Contrary to popular belief, I am not perpetually mulling over the strengths and weaknesses of ali – ali – ah—" He sneezed violently, getting thick green goopy mucus all over his bedsheets.

"Oh, gross."

"Thank you for that very mature observation, Twilight, your bedside manner is amazing. When is Fluttershy coming back? Or Spike and Cadance? Or anyone besides you?"

Twilight passed a handkerchief through the bubble. "You've used up all my disposable tissues. I'm going to have to get more. I didn't want to leave you alone here, since you're sick and completely vulnerable without your magic, but if you really can't stand having me around that much, I suppose I could go shopping."

Discord used the handkerchief to clean the mess off his bedspread. Obviously even he had limits as to the level of grossness he'd tolerate. He then blew his nose with it, demonstrating that his tolerance for grossness was still much higher than Twilight's. "No need," he grouched. "I can make do with this handkerchief until someone comes back." He blew his nose again. "My point remains. I didn't want you to tie me to a travois and drag me back through the sky, completely unable to protect myself if the ropes broke or something—"

"You couldn't fly. How would you have protected yourself if you hadn't been tied up? I can tell you from personal experience, if you can't fly, waving your hooves a lot doesn't help when you're falling."

"I couldn't even scratch my nose, Twilight! Do you have any idea how itchy I was? Or how dehydrated I got with wind blowing in my face the entire time and not even a single tiny glass of water?"

"We gave you a hood to protect you from the wind, and we were flying in the other direction, so the wind should have been hitting the hood, not coming into your face. And I didn't have any water or I'd have given it to you, and we wouldn't even have been in a dangerous location like that with no backup if it hadn't been for you dragging us out there! Or even, I don't know, warning us about the tatzlwurms!"

"I didn't know they were big enough to harm us! They were supposed to be much smaller!"

"Why did you make them in the first place?"

"I didn't! Tatzlwurms are a real creature, Twilight, they're just... normally the size of a particularly large earthworm. At best a garter snake. They were supposed to grow to the size of... you know, cats maybe. Maybe a badger, maybe a medium-sized dog. Not several times bigger than me. I didn't even recognize them at first." He took a drink from the water Pinkie had left him with. "That's not the point anyway. I also didn't want you to pry off my scales and pluck my fur out, but you did that anyway."

Twilight sighed deeply. "I assumed you wanted to get better and you weren't going to be a child about it. I'm sorry, I was wrong. I won't perform any further experiments or give you any treatments unless you explicitly tell me I can, all right?"

Discord folded his arms tightly. "Oh, all right. Fine."

"So, what was the thing you were going to say that you didn't want to tell me because you were afraid I'd do something bad to you?"

He looked away. "Creatures without magic, or with low magic in a world with limited magic, have occasionally demonstrated the ability to get a great deal of power out of... drinking my blood. Or grinding up part of my horn and putting it in their food."

Twilight drew back, horrified. "...did... did ponies do that?"

He snorted. "No. Ponies are high-magic creatures; they wouldn't get nearly as much bang for their buck that way. Ponies have been known to... never mind, that's not relevant. But no, ponies have never tried to eat me." He shuddered. "One time I was in a world where the magical creatures had all died out hundreds of years ago, but the dominant species was very, very adept at getting enormous levels of magical power out of eating their remains... and the top-level practitioners of this type of magic were known to eat each other to take the magic that the other had eaten. Frequently. On a low-magic world, I'm not nearly as powerful as I am here – a little bit of magic goes a long way, but there's too little to draw from the environment and it's hard to push your own mana out of yourself. As if it's too thick – like the way unicorns usually react to trying to do magic in my personal realm."

Twilight nodded. She had had an easier time of it than most unicorns apparently did, because being the Element of Magic, she was more adept at using any sort of magic than most unicorns. Now that she was an alicorn she suspected it would be even easier. "So they drank your blood?"

"No, no, that happened on a different world. On this one... they cut off my leg and ate it. The goat leg. They were planning on coming back for the dragon leg later, but, well." He smirked. "They weren't used to so much fresh magic at once, and they didn't know my specialty is chaos. They broke every water main in the building, exploded all the lines carrying natural gas, and probably killed themselves, but I didn't stick around to find out."

Twilight realized that she was staring, and probably looked bug-eyed. She tried to moderate her expression, and found that she couldn't. The horror was too great. "...Why did you go to a world like that?"

Discord shrugged. "I was bored. I didn't know where Celestia and Luna had gone off to, but I hadn't had a good fight with them in months, and..." He looked down. "I... have to tell you the honest truth, Twilight. I love my chaos. I love everything about it. I loved the days when all Equestria was mine to do anything I wanted with. But sometimes... sometimes even that felt... boring. Predictable. Same-old. Ho hum, what am I going to do today? Mess up some ponies' personalities, swap the destinations of doors around, sponsor a nice round of rock sumo, figure out something to fall from the sky that I haven't done already... sometimes it got old. So I'd go exploring other universes, and sometimes... they weren't very nice." He looked up. "Besides, I didn't know they'd try to eat me until after I went there. It was a world of humans. You know from personal experience they don't usually try to eat magical creatures."

"You didn't seriously think I would try to cut off your leg and study it, did you?" The thought that he might have feared she would eat it seemed so over the top and irrational that she couldn't imagine it being true, but being afraid that she'd cut it off for study seemed more plausible.

"I thought you'd try to take a blood sample," Discord admitted. "Which, for the record... no. I'm not giving permission."

"I'm a pony, Discord. I'm not an alien creature who wants to eat you or drink your blood."

"I've been studied by ponies before. It went better than the leg eating incident did, but that's not saying much." He shuddered.

"All right. No blood sample. I'll reserve the right to try to talk you into it later if it turns out we absolutely need it, but that would only be if we absolutely need it, and I'll honor your wishes if you still say no." Not that she wouldn't set Fluttershy on him to try to talk him into it, if it turned out to be needed. "If what you're saying is accurate, though..." She put her hoof to her chin, thinking.

"Then what?" Discord prompted, finally, after a few moments of silence.

"Oh! Well, I can't be sure until I examine whatever Pinkie finds for me, but... it might be that your magic isn't just being suppressed, but actively drained. Which would be good. I mean, no, obviously, it wouldn't be good, but it would mean we could trace the drain and find whatever is causing it a lot more easily than if it's just suppressing your ability to use your magic." She considered. "Would you be willing to undergo a hoof biopsy?"

"A what?"

"Well, unlike a pony hoof, a cloven hoof has no real sensation inside it as long as we don't make contact with the leg itself. I mean, obviously you know that because you have a cloven hoof!" She laughed nervously. "So you know it doesn't have sensation. I'd like to know if your extremities – your skin, basically – is more drained than parts of your body that didn't physically touch the tatzlwurm goo. I don't know if any of it got into your mouth or not, so I don't know if my inner cheek sample actually represents a part of your body that didn't touch it. But the interior of your hoof definitely did not touch it, and because there's no sensation there, you wouldn't feel any pain if we took a sample from the inside of the hoof."

Discord seemed to think about it. "That would involve needles, wouldn't it?"

"Um, yes, but not poked into any part of your body where you could feel it! It would be completely painless!"

"You can do it if you can find drugs that will make me completely unconscious first. Though I have to warn you, the only drug I've ever found that can do that is alcohol, and it doesn't do it quickly."

"What about tranquilizers?"

"They don't knock me unconscious either."

"No, I mean to control your anxiety and relax you so it doesn't bother you."

"You want to remove some portion of my body with an undoubtedly very large needle. I don't think there are enough tranquilizers in all of Equestria to keep that from bothering me."

"Lots of foals are scared of needles, but the immunizations still keep them healthy."

"I'm not a foal."

No, you're just a grown adult who acts like a foal. She supposed that wasn't entirely fair. Fluttershy's reaction to having to go on the mission to calm the dragon hadn't been anywhere near as conciliatory and accepting as "knock me unconscious and then do what you want", and she'd had visible panic attacks simply talking about it. Discord was at least managing to talk about his phobia calmly. But still, why was a guy who was as powerful as he was afraid of something like needles? "Discord, you're possibly the most powerful magic user on our planet. Why are you afraid of needles?"

"Why are you afraid of quesadillas?"

How did he even know that? "I'm not! They just... ugh. They're... kinda disgusting. All that goopy melted cheese, and it isn't even the right kind of melted cheese, and it just... but that's not the point!"

"Mmm. Quesadillas," Discord said in a dreamy voice. "Gooey, goopy quesadillas. Just dripping with cheddar, and coltby, and Mountain King Donkey, and Chihuahua, and mozzarella... ooh, all of that gooey melted cheese..."

Twilight felt acutely queasy. "Discord. Stop talking about quesadillas or I'm taking your water pitcher."

"What a cruel, cruel thing to say!" Discord gasped, hands clasped to where his heart probably was, maybe. "I'm just a poor sick creature, forced to subsist on chicken soup and water, and you'd deny me my right to even fantasize about the more substantial food I'm not permitted to eat?"

"Fine! Don't answer me about the needles; you could have just said you didn't want to talk about it!" She flounced off, her wings involuntarily flapping a bit in the universal winged-creature gesture of annoyance. "I'm going to go back down to the lab now that I know for a fact the samples should have magic saturation and see if I can detect any differences in the level of magic – I wasn't using instruments calibrated for a very low level, so maybe there's some differences at a lower order of magnitude than I could detect."

"But I'm hungry."

"Oh, for the love of – this had better not be more jokes about quesadillas."

"All I've had to eat since I lost my magic was broth, apple juice, chicken soup, and a few donut holes. Couldn't I have some crackers or something?" He smirked. "They don't have to be con queso."

"Fine! It's not like crackers matter anyway!" She stomped into the kitchen, opened the pantry, took out the box of crackers – which was three-fourths empty despite having been purchased only a week ago, and she was going to have to have words with Spike about snacking – and went back into the main book room with the box. "I'll give you the whole box, that way you can eat them slowly over time whenever you feel hungry."

"Do you have any ginger ale?"

"NO." Ginger was good for upset stomachs, so on general principle she thought maybe she should get some for him, but she wasn't going to admit that to him.

"How about water?"

"You have a whole pitcher in there!"

"Yes, but it's not cold anymore."

Twilight seethed. With her face up against the membrane of the quarantine bubble, she pronounced, slowly and carefully, as if talking to a foal, "Then what you should be asking for is ice. Not water."

"That's ridiculous. Ice and water are the same thing! Next you'll be telling me that when you're bundled up in blankets I need to call you Warmlight Sparkle."

"I don't have the patience for this, Discord. I need to get back to my research."

"Of course you don't, I'm your only patient. You'd need to have another one to have patients."

He was winding her up deliberately, and she knew it, but she couldn't seem to make herself stop reacting to it. Twilight was moments from flying downstairs to her lab and slamming the door behind her when Pinkie bounced through the door again. "Got 'em!" She was waving her hoof wildly, with... something... in it.

Twilight went over to inspect Pinkie's catch. There were two small, stiff black feathers and a lot of thick brown fur. "Good work, Pinkie. This was in Fluttershy's house?"

Pinkie nodded. "All over a couple of brushes. I thought, what if this is her bear friend's fur? So I worried about that, but when I pulled it off, it was soft and kind of fluffy, and bear fur is kind of coarse and rough, so I figured it was probably Discord's and not a bear's, although it could belong to something else that has soft fluffy brown fur, but—"

"Nope, that's mine," Discord said. He was standing up in the quarantine bubble, craning his head against it, which was stretching the bubble in ways it was not intended to be stretched and unbalancing it.

Twilight realized with alarm that it was on the verge of toppling over. "Discord, get down, you can't—"

The entire bubble tipped. Twilight and Pinkie both jumped out of the way as the quarantine bubble fell forward, Discord slamming to the floor with a look of shock on his face and then his mattress, bedclothes and water pitcher all falling on top of him.

For a moment there was complete silence. And then, from under the mattress, came a long, drawn-out "Owwwwww...."

"Discord!" Quickly Twilight used her telekinesis to lift the mattress, sheets and water pitcher off of him. He was lying completely flat on the floor, or at least his head and upper body were flat; the rest of him lay flat on the bubble, but the bubble surface rose up from the floor, so his lower body, legs and tail appeared to be sticking up in the air. His muzzle was extended, jaw against the floor and his entire head aligned with his neck in such a way that his neck and jaw came together in an unbent line. Blood trickled from his lip, and his head was sopping wet. "Are you okay?"

"Never... better," he said through gritted teeth. "Owwww. Do you not know what ow means?"

"Well, it could just mean that you bumped your head," Pinkie said. "Or it could mean that every bone in your jaw is broken! Or maybe that your ribs are fractured! Or maybe that you got hit on the head so hard that you can't see straight and you see little stars dancing around everything! Or maybe—"

"Pinkie, hush," Twilight said. "Can you get up, Discord?"

He scrabbled a bit and got his paws under him, but when he tried to lift his head, he moaned. "I think I'll throw up if I try," he said.

"Let's check you for a concussion." She went over to the bubble and knelt down. For a moment she was worried about his unevenly sized pupils, before remembering that Discord's pupils always looked like that. "Look at my horn."

"Why?" Discord asked, and then yelped, trying to twist his head away and close his eyes, as she let her horn flare with bright light. She wouldn't let him do either one, holding him in place just long enough that she could see his large pupil contract to the size of the small pupil and the small pupil turn into a pinprick. "Ahhhh! Gah! Twilight, what are you doing to me?"

"Checking. You don't seem to have a concussion; both pupils contract in the light."

"Augh. But now I have a horrible headache and I really want to throw up. Oh, the light, it hurts." At this point he wasn't complaining about her horn; she'd released him and turned off the flare, and his eyes were closed and his paw was lying over them.

"All right. I'm going to pick you up and get you situated on the blankets and the mattress again, and then if you want I can bring you an eyemask." She wondered if a pony eyemask would fit his head. Probably, though it would most likely have to hook around his horns rather than the back of his head, as his head was flexible enough that sometimes, like right now, the back of his head seemed almost contiguous with his spine.

"All the blankets are wet."

"I can't do anything about that."

"I can! Give me back my hazmat suit and some clean blankets and I'll change his bed for him in a jiffy!"

True to her word, Pinkie had the bedsheets changed out in a jiffy. Twilight cast Magic Health Bubble on them to sterilize them, then tossed them down the laundry chute for Spike to wash. It was good that she got it done quickly, because Discord was quickly becoming intolerable. Every time he coughed or sneezed, he acted like the pain in his head was about to kill him, moaning dramatically and whining, although Twilight had scanned him for broken bones and contusions and hadn't even found a lump on his head. He had bitten his lip when he hit the ground, but oddly, he wasn't complaining about that, and aside from licking the wound had hardly seemed to notice it.

Discord was pacified with willowbark and ginger tea, laced with honey and hot chili peppers to mask the bitterness of the willowbark and clear his sinuses. What Twilight really wanted was to give him something that would help him sleep, but he'd already warned her that nothing he'd found would do that outside of alcohol, and alcohol seemed like it would be a terrible idea. Once he was tucked in and a blindfold wrapped around his head – it turned out a pony eyemask didn't work very well, but a sash tied around his eyes did – he finally succumbed to his exhaustion, and slept. At least Twilight assumed he was sleeping, from the snoring.

She used the relative peace and quiet to return to her lab and test the items Pinkie had brought. As she'd suspected, the feather and fur samples from Discord from last Tuesday were far more magically potent than the ones from today, despite the fact that magical potency would decay over time after removal from the body, normally. Something had definitely drained magic out of Discord. The question was, how deep had it gone? The snot from the tatzlwurm had coated him on the outside, but the urine sample and inner cheek sample, neither of which should have been exposed to the tatzlwurm goo, were equally devoid of magic. It was possible that Discord's innards were efficient enough to draw back magic from his urine before it was released – for obvious reasons, she didn't have a urine sample from before he got sick to compare it to – and it was also possible that the tatzlwurm goo had gotten in his mouth, so neither of those really proved that the magic loss was internal as well. She really did need to get that biopsy. Unfortunately, Discord probably wasn't deeply asleep enough to sleep through a hoof biopsy, given the effort it would take to force a biopsy needle into a cloven hoof, and there weren't any other body parts she could extract from deeply enough without causing him pain.

Half an hour later, Pinkie called down to her that Spike and Cadance had returned with Zecora. Thank Celestia. Hopefully this whole thing was something Zecora knew all about and could fix easily with a potion and then Discord could get cured and go home and be out of everypony's mane!

Well, a mare could dream, anyway.

Twilight got upstairs just in time to see Zecora startled by Discord's coloring. "You're completely green! A mare could have a stroke, seeing you this way. Is this some sort of joke?"

"Yes, it's absolutely a joke," Discord mumbled, seeming unhappy to have been woken up. "A joke on me. The joke of the universe. Really, why would I do this to myself? I'm miserable. And I almost got eaten by a tatzlwurm."

"Have you been infected by some sort of germ? And by the way, what is a tatzlwurm?"

"You've never heard of them either, Zecora?" Twilight asked, disappointed.

"If they are neither from Zebrica, nor the Everfree, then chances are my studies have not revealed them to me. I've been living in Equestria for many a year, but there's still much I have left to learn, I fear."

"How about Harmony Violets?" Discord asked. "Ever heard of them, or are you a total quack?"

"Mister, you are too sick to try your luck," Zecora said sternly. "Do not call the one who might cure you a duck."

Discord sing-songed. "Quack quack quack, you take that back. If I don't rhyme, it's a crime. They'll throw me in jail, I won't make bail, because I'm a zebra and I'm completely obsessed with rhyming everything I have to say and acting mysterious and all-knowing when in fact, half the time I'm faking it, quack quack quack."

Twilight was about to lay into Discord furiously for insulting Zecora, and she could see anger on Spike, Cadance and Pinkie's faces... but Zecora derailed them all by laughing heartily. "You're quite right! Half the time, I know less than ponies think I do. And it's true, I do rhyme!" She stepped forward, her face up against the quarantine bubble. "You're alive and safe. I think that's quite nice. It's obvious that you took my advice. But now here you've found another way to make chaos backfire on you. I must say, for one who claims to be chaos' master, it's surprisingly often you're caught in the disaster."

"Yeah, well, that's chaos for you. She's a witch, but if I left her now I'd lose everything in the divorce. Besides, she's still hot."

"If I were you, I'd strongly consider that divorce. You'd find a kinder mate in nearly any horse," Zecora said, almost teasingly.

"Are you offering? I'm flattered, but I couldn't possibly be seen with a creature so black and white. I'm all about shades of gray, you know. And purple. Shades of purple are good."

"But not so much green, it would seem."

"That doesn't even rhyme."

"Do you two know each other?" Twilight asked.

"Close knowledge is not how I'd describe it, but... we have had dealings, I will admit."

"If by 'dealings' she means that she's shown up to bug me and make totally cryptic predictions of the future that turned out to be completely wrong, then yes."

Pinkie turned to Cadance. "Should we be shipping this?" she asked in a very loud whisper. "Because I'm starting to think we should totally be shipping this!"

"At the very least perhaps we should be getting popcorn," Cadance whispered back.

Zecora grinned. "This is entertaining, I must confess, but I came for a reason, so let's get to business." Her demeanor became serious. "I'll need to know what has transpired. Just how, exactly, was this illness acquired?"

"Spike? Cadance? Pinkie didn't have much luck with researching in the books, but she was mostly reading myths and legends," Twilight said. "While Pinkie and I talk to Zecora, could you guys get started researching to try to find anything about tatzlwurms or blue flu? Or, uh, whatever it was Discord just mentioned. Harmony Violets?"

"Sure thing, Twilight!" Spike said.

While they were doing that, Twilight explained the entire adventure, with Pinkie chiming in to add the parts at the beginning that Twilight hadn't been there for. Zecora nodded as she listened. Discord was by now sitting up on his mattress, pouting, his arms folded. Twilight added that Discord claimed that blue flu was a real illness, and that Cadance confirmed it, though no one here had any idea what this green disease was.

"I must admit I've never heard of blue flu," Zecora said. "Or Harmony Violets either, if I must speak true."

"Great," Discord moaned. "I'm doomed."

Zecora smiled at him. "Oh, it's much too soon to admit defeat! Besides, your symptoms, at least, I can treat. Now tell me of them, if you would be so kind, and perhaps some remedy will come to my mind."

"What symptoms don't I have?" Discord groused.

"Your fur isn't falling off!" Pinkie said. "You don't have gangrene! You're not having seizures! Your eyeballs aren't bleeding! You—"

"I think he gets the idea, Pinkie," Twilight interrupted.

"I just think he should look on the bright side! Sure, you feel awful," she said as she pivoted toward Discord, "but think of all the terrible things you could be feeling that you're not!"

"If that was supposed to cheer me up, it was quite possibly one of the most spectacular failures you've committed in your life," Discord grumbled.

"I cannot treat symptoms that aren't there," Zecora pointed out. "It's the ones you do have that I need you to share."

"Do you absolutely have to rhyme everything?"

"No, I don't." She stared at him for several seconds. "But failing to rhyme causes my spirit some pain. So if you want me to treat you, you'll cease to complain."

"Oh, fine." He lay back on his mattress and pillows, looking quite cranky. "I have a terrible headache. In fact everything aches. My muscles all feel weak, and they ache. Summoning any magic at all is not only next to impossible but makes me feel like my head might literally explode – I summoned the tiniest bit of magic to make a chunk of rock that I could tell was weakened split off from the cliff it was attached to. That should have been the most basic application of disharmony, so easy I'd normally never do it because it's preschool-level disharmony, and it gave me the most horrible splitting headache to do it, and I don't think I could even have managed if I wasn't in fear for my life at the time."

"So magic causes you pain, and does not come easy. Does it also leave you feeling queasy?"

"Well, yes, but so does everything else. I feel mildly nauseated most of the time and extremely nauseated some of the time, particularly when the headache's at its worst. I have a hard time breathing because my nose is stuffed up and I keep coughing. My throat is sore. I feel hot and cold at the same time and they're both unpleasant. I'm tired all the time and sometimes I feel like I can't think straight. I'm thirsty all the time. My lungs hurt – when I do manage to breath in, it feels like there's tiny sharp knives mixed in with the air molecules, cutting at my windpipe and lungs from the inside. When I move quickly I see spots, and I feel dizzy a lot."

"Hmm. Well, it all sounds quite normal, for a disease. I'll try to find something to put you at ease. But as for a cure... well, there's none for a flu. Perhaps waiting and healing is all you can do."

"That's... not the answer I wanted to hear."

"Zecora... Discord doesn't normally get sick, and the fact that his magic isn't working is concerning me," Twilight said. "Are you sure this isn't serious?"

"It may be serious; it may not be. Time will tell; we must wait and see. I can concoct a potion that will give him back some strength and motion, and if his breathing improves, I'm sure that itself will bring him halfway to a cure." She frowned. "The magic loss is a concern. I hope that you'll share with me anything you might learn, as you research the nature of this disease. If it proves to be serious, let me know, please."

"Is there anything you can think of that could sedate him?"

"Sedate him? I'm sure that there are, but don't you think that's going a bit far?"

"She wants to poke me with a needle," Discord complained. "I told her she's only allowed to do it if she knocks me out first."

"Well, you are a draconequus. What drugs would work on you, I could only guess. It's your body; have you any insight on what substances could put you out like a light?"

"I could get really, really drunk."

"I think that would be bad even if you were well. As you are, that would probably make your life hell. Are there any substances that you know of that do something to ponies and something else to you?"

"Poison joke. I use it in liniment for muscle aches. I... get a lot of them, ever since I got freed from stone."

"Ah, the flower that taunts ponies in jest. What happens to you if poison joke you ingest?"

"Is that even a rhyme? You basically just repeated the same words."

Zecora sighed. "Please focus your mind, and answer the question, if you'd be so kind."

He squirmed slightly. "It, uh... it kind of, um... Well, frankly, it gets me high, all right?"

"The kind that relieves you of pain and stress, or the kind of high that drives you to excess?"

"The first one. It, uh, relaxes me."

"A small dose may be warranted for your ache. I'll try to find out how much you should take. On to the matter of what might grant you sleep, there are a few things I could try. A tea I will steep and bring back to you to see its effect. If it works, Twilight can undertake her project." She pronounced it pro-JECT, like the verb, which would have been awkward with anyone else, but Zecora's accent sometimes led her to put the stress on the wrong syllable anyway.

"Great, I get to be a guinea pig."

"As for a cure... a sample of the tatzlwurm's goo -- for lack of a better word, that one will do – might help us to learn why his magic is failing. And that might be related to why he is ailing. Twilight, is there any chance you could get such a sample? Perhaps with Princess Cadance?"

"Maybe. Cadance and I had a really hard time with the tatzlwurm. I'm going to think who might be able to help if we go out there to get a sample. And I don't really want Cadance to have to do it; it was hard enough for her to fly out there the first time."

"Well, anything would be helpful that you can do. As for me, I'll return home to cook up my brew."

"Thanks, Zecora. You've been a big help."

"No, she hasn't," Discord said. "So far she's all talk and no hat."

"You don't need to worry about that," Zecora said. "I promise you when I return, I will have 'hat'." She nodded at him, and trotted out of the library.

Twilight turned to Discord. "All talk and no hat?"

"I was channeling Applejack."

Fluttershy was exhausted. It had been so wonderful to have a chance to observe the Breezies, to learn a few words of their language and speak to them – they were fully sapient beings like ponies, so Fluttershy's ability to understand animals didn't extend to them, but it had been easy for her to pick up a few words, at least. They were just so adorable. And so fragile, and so brave to face the world when it was full of so many terrible dangers for them!

But travel always sapped her of her energy, and dealing with strangers even more so. She'd met so many wonderful ponies – in particular, a mare named Tree Hugger who seemed even more attuned to the rhythms of nature than she was, and who Fluttershy thought might become a really good friend – but even when she enjoyed spending time with other ponies, it sapped her. All she wanted to do at this point was get back to her home and take a nap. Hopefully Spike and Angel Bunny had been able to take care of the animals, and she'd be able to do that.

There were Rarity and Applejack at the train station. Fluttershy broke into a smile. "Oh, hello, girls," she said.

"Fluttershy! Welcome back! You must tell me all about the adorable creatures you saw," Rarity said. Fluttershy's smile got brighter. She knew Rarity wasn't actually especially interested in the Breezies per se, but Rarity was interested in her and the things she enjoyed, and that made her happy.

"I'll be happy to, but I really think I need a nap first," she said. "And a bath. Maybe a nap in the bath."

"That ain't a good idea," Applejack said firmly. "What if you go underwater while you're sleeping?"

"Oh, I always have Angel Bunny or one of the other animals watching out for me if I sleep in the tub," Fluttershy said. "I'm just so worn out from all the traveling."

"Well, you let me take your bags –" Applejack hoisted Fluttershy's saddlebags off her back and wrangled them onto her own with ease – "and Rarity can make you some kinda fancy-schmancy bath to take the travel dust off, and I got fritters back at your house with your name on 'em, just waiting for you to come home so I can fry 'em up for you. And then you take your nap, sugarcube, all right? Get a bath and some food into you and then take your rest."

"That sounds lovely. Thanks so much, Applejack. Both of you girls are so wonderful, I don't know what I'd do without friends like you."

"Oh, it's nothing at all," Rarity said. "We know you'd do the same for us. And travel is wearying. We all know it."

"Rainbow Dash is workin', but she said she'd drop by later this afternoon to see how you were doin'," Applejack said. "It's scheduled to rain today, but she got the timetable pushed back so's it wouldn't be rainin' till after you got home."

"Oh, that was thoughtful of her."

"I thought you might want a bath, so I brought some of my scented oils. Did you want some lavender, or rose, or perhaps some lilac? Oh, I have cherry blossom too!"

"Lavender is fine," Fluttershy said. "You girls don't need to make such a fuss over me, you know. I was only gone for two days."

"Yes, but we know how stressful it is for you to travel on your own," Rarity said.

"'Asides, Twilight and Pinkie couldn't be here for ya and Pinkie in particular was mighty disappointed about that. She had plans for a big cake."

"Oh, that's fine, though, I really don't need a lot of fuss, and a cake... the fritters would be perfect. I don't think I'm up to eating much more than that. Are Twilight and Pinkie both really busy with work?"

"No, they're stuck with—"

"Applejack!" Rarity interrupted. "I'm sure the story of what Twilight and Pinkie are doing can wait until after Fluttershy's had a chance to relax and take her nap."

"Oh. Oh, yeah." Applejack chuckled nervously. "You don't go worrying your pink little head about them two right now, Fluttershy, you can hear all about it later."

"Did something happen?"

"Nothing important," Rarity said hastily.

"Yeah, but nothing you need to be worryin' about right now," Applejack said at the same time.

Fluttershy looked hard at both of them. "Girls?"

"It's nothing at all!" Rarity declared emphatically. "You just get some well-deserved rest after your travels and don't worry about anything. Twilight and Pinkie are perfectly capable of dealing with matters without assistance from any of us."

"Applejack, is that true?" Fluttershy asked steadily, gazing into her friend's green eyes, which skidded away from her own.

"Uh, true enough. Twilight and Pinkie've got things in hoof. Ain't nothin' you need to be bothered about."

"Well, if it's nothing that needs my help and nothing I should be bothered about, why don't you tell me what it is?" Fluttershy asked sweetly.

"No!" Applejack seemed to realize she'd been too emphatic almost immediately. "I mean, no, there ain't no need for that. If you're too tired to talk to Rarity about the Breezies, then we shouldn't be shootin' the breeze with you about anything that's been going on back here."

"But something has been going on," Fluttershy pressed.

"Ah, well, Princess Cadance is still here! You knew she was coming to visit Twilight this weekend, of course," Rarity said. "Well, she decided to extend her vacation by a day or so! Isn't that lovely?"

"It's very nice," Fluttershy said. "But if it was the only thing that happened, you wouldn't be trying to avoid telling me what happened."

"Oh, land sakes, Fluttershy, if you promise that you'll get your bath and your food and your rest before you do anything, I'll tell you," Applejack said. "But you gotta promise."

"I can't promise I'll rest, depending on what it is, because if it's really bad I might not be able to sleep. But I can promise I'll take my bath and eat the fritters you made for me if it's not an emergency."

"Well, it definitely ain't an emergency. Spike and Cadance and Zecora are all helping out too."

"I insist," Rarity said. "Fluttershy, you must get your proper rest. Promise us."

"Um, no. If you won't tell me what's going on I'll just go to Twilight's right now to find out."

The two mares looked at each other. "Oh, dear," Rarity said.

"Guess I went and botched it."

"Yes, but I should never have asked you to help me, since I know you have a hard time with secrets."

"No, I shoulda been able to keep a secret when it's gonna upset a friend if I don't—"

"Girls. What are you not telling me?"

Applejack sighed. "Discord went and got his fool self sick."

Fluttershy's eyes widened. "Discord is sick?"

"He was faking at first," Rarity said, "and, in an unparalleled display of rudeness, made both Applejack and I sick when we offered to take care of him!"

"Oh, it was worse than that, Rarity," Applejack said. "Don't you remember? We didn't offer, he volunteered us. It was Pinkie who offered, and he claimed that we'd agreed to do it when we hadn't."

"Yes, that's true, but we would have helped him, because we didn't want anything to disrupt Twilight's day with Cadance."

"But of course that was what that varmint was after in the first place, so after he got us sick, and Pinkie went wandering off after a balloon and Rainbow Dash flew off and left us all to deal with him—"

"But that was probably for the best," Fluttershy said. "Rainbow and Discord... generally cause problems when they're left together."

"Well, yes, but it meant that taking care of him fell on poor Twilight! And Cadance! And he managed to talk the two of them into flying out to 'the ends of Equestria' to find a plant to cure him—"

"When he wasn't even sick—" Applejack interjected.

"And while they were there, they were attacked by some sort of dreadful creature! Pinkie described it as a giant plant worm with teeth and tentacles!"

"Of course, seein' as how Pinkie wasn't there and she heard it from Cadance, it's possible there's a mite of exaggeration in that story. I couldn't rule it out."

"But nonetheless, even if it was slightly exaggerated, and we don't know if it was or was not, the fact remains they were attacked by a creature while trying to get a cure for Discord."

"And after they beat it, it turned out he'd never been sick in the first place, the lying varmint! He claimed it was some sorta friendship test for Twilight."

"But then apparently one of the tatzlwurms sneezed on him, causing him to actually become ill. Which if you ask me is a well-deserved karmic comeuppance, after he made Applejack and myself sick."

"So now he's over at Twilight's, and Spike and Zecora and Cadance and Pinkie are all helping Twilight to figure out what kind of a bug he's got and how to cure it."

"And you didn't think I would want to know that my friend was sick?" Fluttershy asked, a trace of sharpness in her voice that she couldn't quite suppress.

"Of course you would want to know! That was exactly why we didn't want to tell you!" Rarity exclaimed.

"It was Twilight's idea, but we were all on board for it," Applejack said. "Nopony wanted you to come home to a crisis where you had to drop everything and go take care of Discord when we knew travelin' would tucker you out and you'd need some rest. That's why we didn't want to tell you, because we knew, if you knew, that was exactly what you'd do."

Fluttershy relaxed slightly. They weren't being dismissive of Discord, they were being supportive of her. "All right. I am going to take my bath, and eat, because I promised, but then I'm going to Twilight's to see Discord for myself."

"I don't think you need to," Applejack protested. "They got Zecora and Twilight on the case. You're great with animals, sugarcube, but wouldn't you have just gone to Zecora yourself?"

"I don't think I can cure him," Fluttershy said patiently. "But I'm his friend, and if I know Twilight, she's focusing all her attention on curing him, and probably not very much on making him feel cared for. Which is fine, because we all have our talents and Twilight is very smart and she should be focusing on a cure, because that's what she's good at. But poor Discord is probably miserable."

"And he should be! He made Applejack and me sick for no reason!"

"But you're better now, right?"

"Well, yeah," Applejack said. "The disease he was faking, that he really gave us, turned us blue. We got over it about two hours later, after Discord had cleared out of town with Twilight and Cadance."

"That was good, at least," Fluttershy said. "Not that he got you sick, that was awful. But that he made the illness go away when he didn't need you to be sick anymore."

"'Need' us to be sick?" Rarity asked dangerously.

"Um, yes, for his plans to work. Not that they were good plans, or that he had any right to do that to you two or to Twilight, but my point is, he could have just let you stay sick, but he didn't."

"Ain't you cuttin' him a bit overmuch of the slack there, Fluttershy? Not makin' us sick longer'n he had to for his nefarious plans ain't exactly gold medal territory there."

"Of course not, but with Discord... baby steps. He's coming back to the side of good from being one of the worst villains in Equestrian history. He's not going to get here quickly or without the occasional misstep."

"Assuming, of course, that he ever gets here at all," Rarity sniffed.

"I find myself wonderin', why are you friends with a fella like that, Fluttershy? I mean, I know you say he's nicer to you when he's alone with you than he is with all of us, but given how bad he is... are you just friends with him 'cause it keeps him from wreaking havoc? You can tell me straight if that's the case."

Fluttershy sighed. "No, and that would be a terrible reason to be friends with somepony. Without our Elements anymore, I realize that the only thing holding Discord back is our friendship, but... the fact that he wanted friendship badly enough to try to give up his entire identity says how badly he needs to have a friend. You have to remember... he's the spirit of Chaos. For millennia, that's all he cared about. Chaos isn't evil, but Discord chose to use it for evil by not caring anything about any of the creatures he was harming. He was a villain, and he knew it, and he enjoyed it. Everything he knows about friendship comes from breaking them up for his personal amusement."

"And this is somepony you wanna be friends with, why?" Applejack asked skeptically.

"Because as soon as somepony offered him friendship... he gave that up. Can you imagine how much strength it takes to try to break away from an identity you've had for thousands of years? I know you spent some time in Manehattan learning how to fit into high society, Applejack, but you went running back to where you belong as soon as you realized you belong there. Discord has felt that he belonged somewhere, that he had a role to play and something to be, for thousands of years... and he's trying to reject it and learn how to be a good... draconequus. It takes a lot of strength and courage to try to become someone you've never been before, to learn to be something better than you are. It's very, very hard for him. But he's trying. Don't you think that, in itself, that's a trait that would make a pony worth befriending? The fact that they're willing to give up everything they've known about themselves and try to learn to be somepony better?"

"But darling, don't you think it says something about somepony's character that they were a villain in the first place?"

Fluttershy shook her head. "That isn't the point. If someone is willing to change and grow and become better, then they'll be happier and everypony around them will be happier, and no one will ever take that step if someone else doesn't make the first move. Once you've been a villain, it's hard to find anyone who'll accept you as a friend. But I think that anyone could potentially have been a villain, depending on how they were raised and what their life has been like. So I can't hold it against someone that they were a villain if they're trying to do better."

"Sounds like a whole lot of making excuses and general horsepuckey to me," Applejack said. "Discord ain't a foal, and he ain't an animal with a thorn in his paw. He can make choices, and he made bad ones."

"Yes, he did. And now he's trying to make better ones. But sometimes he's still going to make bad ones, because it's hard to change the habits of a whole life. Don't mistake me, what he did was terrible and I'm planning to have some very stern words with him. But... he does have a lot of good qualities. He just... I'm trying to get him to a place where he's willing to show them to anypony but me and sometimes Pinkie, but it's been like pushing a rock uphill."

"Oh, Fluttershy. We all know your version of 'stern words' consists of a sad face and the words 'I'm very disappointed in you,'" Rarity said.

"That's all I usually need," Fluttershy pointed out. "Especially with Discord. Most creatures hate to disappoint somepony that loves them, and Discord in particular has never in a very long time encountered anypony who was ever not disappointed or angry with him. The feeling of somepony caring about him and not being upset with him is new to him, and precious. He hates losing it."

"Well, I do hope you're right," Rarity said.

"I second that mightily." Applejack pushed open the door to Fluttershy's cottage. "Well, we got you home. I'll go see to those fritters, and Rarity—"

"I'm on my way already," Rarity caroled as she headed up the stairs to the bathroom.

Fluttershy sank down on her couch and sighed. Despite what she'd said to her friends... she really was irritated with Discord for pulling this stunt, right now, and she did feel a tiny bit of temptation to go take her nap anyway. But only a tiny bit. Discord was suffering... and probably making Twilight and everyone else around him suffer as well. Fluttershy couldn't let that stand without going to help. She just wished his timing hadn't been so terrible.

Author's Notes:

The bit about the humans eating magical animals comes from the series by Greg Eekhout, California Bones / Pacific Fire / Dragon Coast, which I highly recommend for a really new take on magic.

There are references in here to my stories Detente and "Signal to Noise."

Random pop culture dialogue callbacks: Crackers Don't Matter from Farscape, and a few Q lines ("We have had dealings", Guinan about Q; "It is a joke. A joke on me, the joke of the universe" from Deja Q.)

Yes, Zecora said hell. When you have to rhyme everything you say, being familiar with cultural references from many different societies is helpful, and while Christianity per se doesn't exist anywhere on Equestria, the concept of hell is not unique to Christians. In particular, the Chinese have it, which means probably the Chineighese as well. :-)

Love, Friendship and Chaos

by alarajrogers

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