Freedom Incarnate, or the Redemption of Chaos

by Spirit Wind

First published 26th of April, 2012

Spirit Wind, a perpetually blank-flanked pony, stumbles across a gem holding some of Discord's Power

Spirit Wind, a perpetually blank-flanked pony with a near-biological need for absolute freedom, comes across a gem holding some of Discord's power.

Will this power drive him away from his year-long acquaintances, or into the first true commitment in his life? Either way, Chaos will be involved.

Chaos is a funny thing, it can be good, but too much is very, very bad. Too bad this balance changes as much as chaos itself does.

OC/Screwball shipping. Because Screwball.

Later chapters will border on dark, but shouldn't wade enough to warrant the tag just yet.

My Introduction

Hey! I'm Spirit Wind, a Pegasus from Caulifornia. I typically can be found around Ponyville now, since I moved there once I heard about all the crazy things that go on there. Since more recent events I've actually been a part of them! More on that later, I should explain a bit about myself, that way my actions won't seem so strange to you.

To start off, I adore freedom above anything else. So much that I can't really hold down one job or stay in one place for too long, I'd start to go bonkers if I even tried to. So I live day to day seeing where I can scrape together a few bits for the day, to some it’s just for lazy people, and others say it’s impossible, but this’ll be my second year of this way of life!

I’m also a bit mischievous, from dye in a shampoo bottle to tripling the fountain’s water output! I really don’t try and hurt anypony, sometimes it just… happens… Anyway, this mischief lands me in a bit of trouble from time to time. Once, I was locked in the Ponyville Pokey for a week! The random arrows around town did cause some ponies to get lost and wander halfway to Canterlot, so I suppose it was justified.

Even though I can be mischevious, I also try to be kind and loyal to others. My joy of freedom kind of gets in the way sometimes though. There have been times when I have hurt other ponies feelings, and times where I’ve abandoned others for the sake of my freedom. I try and keep those times to a minimum, and I’ve gotten better about it over time, but I can’t always keep true to… any one trait for that matter.

That brings me to another fact, I don’t have a cutie mark, even though by my age, I should. I used to be worried about it, but then I realized that without a talent to call my own I was truly free to work on any skill I wanted without restriction. Even if I will never be as good as others in any one area, I’m better than most in every area, I think. A colt-of-all-trades is a proper way to describe me.

Since my arrival in Ponyville, I’ve been mistaken for a mare many times. To clear up any confusion right now, I’m a Stallion, a very marish looking one, but a stallion regardless. And yes, I am old enough to be called a Stallion, even though everypony, even young colts and fillies, keep saying I’m “Like a little brother”! I’m nearly as old as Twilight Sparkle, how do they make that mistake? It’s nice to be considered family to so many, but I’m really only related to my parents and my older brother, Alpha Wind, and he’s back in Caulifornia still.

Anyway, that’s all you should need to know about me for now, anything I missed should be seen in my actions. Now, onto my tale!

A rather tasty problem

It was shortly after Winter Wrap Up, everypony was getting used to the new season’s weather patterns. I was lazing about the bottom of a mountain on the eastern region of the area around Ponyville. While I don’t exactly remember what I was doing, I somehow ended up sliding on my back down the side of the mountain. That I can remember because I was plucking dirt and gravel out of my wings for weeks.

After face-planting in the dirt at the base of the mountain, I found that I had dug up a small, glittering gem. This wouldn’t have been interesting since gems were commonly found in these mountains, except that this gem wasn’t acting like a regular gem at all. Every time I blinked, this gem would take on a different color, a different shape, even a different texture at one point.

A gem this free with its appearance made me curious, and excited. Without a second thought, I tucked the gem away between a few feathers, and dashed off for the library. I guess I forgot who was in charge of the library, and who she was friends with.

Upon reaching the library and knocking on the door, I was greeted by a white mare with a flair for hair. Rarity. “Hello? Oh, dearie me, what happened? Your mane is a mess!” Rarity exclaimed.
“sliding down a mountain will do that.” I replied.

“Rarity, she’s probably here for a book, not to host a fashion show.” A voice I recognized as Twilight Sparkle’s interrupted. She made her way over to the door, “Oh, Spirit, how can I help you?”

“Stop by my boutique after you’re done, Spirit, we must do something about all that dirt! Thanks again Twi-dear! Tata!” Rarity spoke before trotting off towards Carousel Boutique. I waved a good-bye before turning to Twilight. “Twilight, you’re never gonna guess what I found!” I exclaimed, happy about presenting my find.

“What is it, better not be another ‘fossil’, we’ve had a hard enough time removing the birds after you found that thing.” Twilight remarked. I presented the gem, now with a blue glow and in the shape of a turtle. “You found… a gem. You know these are found easily around here, even if this one has a unique… did it just change shape… and color?”

“Now do you see why I wanted to show this to you, this gem doesn’t stay the same for very long!” I exclaimed excitedly. “It’s crazy!”

“I have never seen anything like this!” Twilight yelled while snatching the ever-changing gem out of my hands, “Maybe it’s a gem enchanted with magic! It could also be a new form of amorphous rock. Oh! Maybe it’s a new type of living creature!” Twilight rambled on like this for a few hours, as well as pulling various books off the shelves looking for any kind of lead. I got bored of watching her scramble about, so I ducked out for a snack.

After meeting with Pinkie Pie at Sugarcube Corner for a light snack and another random song dedicated to various pastries, I found myself thinking of that gem again. So I went back to the library, and found Twilight surrounded with open books, the gem in front of her, and herself, passed out with her head on the table she was working on. “Uh, Twilight?” I asked before moving in to see if she was all right. Luckily, she was still breathing.

I tried to shake her awake, but it didn’t work. I tried to find Spike, but it seemed he was absent, which was unusual. Once I got tired of running around the library, and trying all different ways of waking Twilight up, I finally resorted to taking the gem and heading back to my sleep-tree. Hey, it’s my gem, and I was tired.

I must’ve been more tired than I thought, because I thought I saw a pink cloud floating in the sky. Once back to my tree, I took up a sleeping position and tucked the now-sticky gem back into my wings. Upon falling asleep, I dreamt the most chaotic dream I’ve ever had, roads of soap and gigantic apples on trees. During the dream, I had stood next to an empty throne and witnessed Ponyville turn into an amusingly chaotic reality. When awake, I would’ve been scared and confused, but in this dream, I enjoyed every minute of the chaos. At the time, I was unaware of who this dream was really about.

When awake, I was starving, and still sleepy. In a daze, I flapped down out of the tree onto the Everfree Forest path and buried my head in the dirt, trying to clear my thoughts. Once I heard my stomach growl with hunger, I started looking around for something to eat. Since my head was still in a fog, I really didn’t find anything around that suited my tastes (and my tastes are very open!). At that moment, I felt something slippery fall out of my wings, a bright red apple! I devoured the chocolate flavored fruit without a second thought. My thoughts cleared immediately as I heard Twilight’s voice shouting at me from the entrance of the forest.

“Spiiiiirrrriiiiiittttt!” Twilight shouted urgently. I responded by arcing over to behind her and saying, “yes?”

“Spirit, did you take the gem you found out of my library?” Twilight asked, very close to pleading.

“Yeah, I did, fin-“ I started before she interrupted with, “Oh, thank Celestia, do you still have it?”

“Yeah,” I said as I began rummaging through my plumage. “Just…lemme…find…it…um…” I shook my wings furiously trying to shake out the gem. My mind started to panic as I thought I had lost the gem, until I was shocked by a different revelation. “Twilight… I think I ate it.”

“WHAT?” Twilight screamed, “Oh, nonononononono. Spirit, do you realize what that gem was?”

“Uh, no, is it gonna kill me?” I started a full on panic at this point. Without waiting for an answer, I took off at high speed toward the mountains. I span in circles for a good hour waiting for my untimely end.

Acts of Chaos?

When I wasn’t dead, I calmed down a bit and sat, thinking about all things that I’d miss after I was gone. After another hour had passed, I starting thinking that I may actually not die, that’s when I was greeted by Rainbow Dash. “Hey, I was sent by Twilight to calm you down, not sure why, she didn’t explain. So come on! Let’s race!”

Getting a little ansty sitting on this mountain for so long, I took up the rainbow pegasus’ offer. We took off from the top of the mountain and started a spiral course off towards Ponyville. I knew I wasn’t as good a flyer as Rainbow Dash was, but I still tried my hardest, even if I wasn’t determined to win, I was trying my best to keep close. That went about as well as expected, I ended up a whole minute behind Rainbow Dash, and growing. Unlike my usual self, I prayed for something, anything to slow Rainbow down. A twitch sparked in my throat, similar to when I ate a zap apple for the first time.

In the distance, I saw Rainbow Dash hit something, something pink. Once I got closer, I noticed she was stuck to the pink fluffball, so I stopped to see what was going on.

“What the hay? I thought these would stop showing up now that Discord’s stone again. What gives?” Rainbow Dash questioned while trying to break free. Trying to help her only got my hooves sticky, with cotton candy. “Eagh, what is this? Cotton candy, in cloud shape?” I asked

“Yeah, Discord made a whole mess of these when he broke free, Twilight told you the story earlier, didn’t she?” Rainbow remarked while breaking free from the cloud.

“Yeah, but she didn’t mention the exact chaos he caused.” I replied while taking a bite of the cloud thoughtfully. The cloud was sweet, and tasted as good as expected.

“Well, these annoying things were part of it.”

“They don’t seem too annoying, they taste good at least.”

“You haven’t seen one pour chocolate milk on everypony”

“That sounds delicious!”

“You sound just like Pinkie Pie. Come on, we better go tell Twilight about this.”

“All right, I’m taking this though.” I stated, while following Rainbow Dash, with tasty pink cloud in tow. Upon reaching the library, there was barely anything left of the cloud when Twilight had answered the door. “Hello Rainbow, oh, and Spirit, come in, we have things to discuss, don’t run off this time.” She said with an almost literal smirk in her voice.

We sat down at the small table set up in the library usually used for quiet study. Twilight hovered over a book that was almost as colorful as the gem I ate. “Now, to begin, Spirit, that gem you ate won’t kill you, but it will affect you in a different way, starting with that cotton candy cloud you have all over your face. I’ll explain more later.” Twilight began.

“So that cloud doesn’t mean Discord’s back?” Rainbow Dash asked.

“No, Discord is still securely locked in his stony prison, Equestria is safe…mostly.” Twilight replied, casting a wary glance my way. “Anyway, Spirit, that gem you ate is known as a Chaos Ruby, it was a special gem created when Discord was sealed away and his power was removed by the Princesses…” At this point, I started zoning out of her history babble, I knew it was important, but I really didn’t want to listen to history, until she stated the phrase “…and so eating the Chaos Ruby must’ve given you some of Discord’s power…”

I responded with, “Wait, so you mean I can perform some acts of chaos?”

“well, yes but-“ Twilight started again before I started for the front door. Swiftly, I was tackled down by Rainbow. “Yes, but it’s dangerous, that power once threw Equestria into a chaotic mess! You must be careful and not use that power carelessly. Especially since you don’t know how to use it perfectly yet.” Twilight finished.

“Fine, fine, I’ll be careful, but I still will take advantage of this.” I remarked, getting help up from Rainbow. “Besides, its not like I’m Discord himself, right? Anyway, I’m off to do something else, thanks for the info!” I trotted out of the library, but I could still hear a bit of speech from the inside, “I know, I don’t trust him either, Discord’s power in the hands of the flightiest of ponies, who knows the damage? The letter’s been sent, so all that’s left is for the Princess’s reply….when…”

This statement hurt, I guess I still wasn’t trusted around here, I didn’t blame them though, if I was somepony else, I wouldn’t trust me either. It didn’t make the pain any less real though. I decided I needed to be seen as no threat, even with this power. My first thoughts were to show the pony who’d appreciate the power the most.

My arrival at Sugarcube Corner was expected because Pinkie Pie’s pinkie sense went off, signaling the arrival of someone with power (it could’ve been me, or the mayor, her sense wasn’t as specific as that). She greeted me as she greets everypony who steps into Sugarcube Corner, “Heya Spirit! Welcome to Sugarcube Corner! Can I get you a cupcake, a piece of pie, or *gasp* maybe a whole cake! Anyway, take a seat and tell me what you want!” as bubbly as ever, she showed me to a table.

“Actually, Pinkie, I want to show you something, but it’s gotta be outside.” I told her.

“Oh! Okie-dokie-lokie, just let me finish work first! Come back in a couple hours or so?” She responded. I nodded my agreement and made my way to the Everfree forest after getting a small muffin with what change I had left over after my last package run. Swirling about the sky, I started practicing chaos, dotting the sky with a few pink candy clouds and making a tree or two into licorice. I immediately realized the danger I could be when a tree I was trying to make into glass burst into flame! Quickly, I doused it with a surge of chocolate milk, but the tree itself was lost to the fire. Oddly, I was ok with the loss of the tree, after all, the fire was pretty. While I did understand the danger I could be… I didn’t care.

An hour or so had passed and I went back to Sugarcube Corner. Pinkie was there expectantly, bouncing around as usual. I waved to her on my decent. Once landed, she began questioning me on what I wanted to show her. “So, what is it, what did you want to show me, huh? Huh? Huh?” Was near the exact wording she used. Sharing in her excitement, I summoned a cotton candy cloud directly above her. Thus the chocolate milk fell on the shocked pony’s head.

“What do ya think?” I asked. Pinkie took a taste, then a mouthful of the chocolaty rain. After a large gasp, she responded with, “Chocolate rain! Yummy! Where did you find the cloud? Tell me, tell me, tell me!”

“I can make them now, that’s the best part!” I answered, glowing with pride. Another gasp escaped the pony, “That’s amazing! You’re not gonna go crazy and turn everypony grey are you?”

“I don’t intend to if I end up doing so.” I responded, a bit hurt that so little was thought of me after I got these powers.
“Ok good! Cause Discord was fun, but he nearly broke my friends and our friendship, so he was a bad guy, luckily we had the elements of harmony to fix everything, that world was a biiit too crazy, even for me!” Pinkie Pie said while laughing. So even the pony who I thought would fit best with Discord’s world thought he was evil.

I left Pinkie Pie with the cloud and travelled off towards the Everfree forest again, silently hoping that someone would approve of me unconditionally, not even my parents or own brother did. I’d already made peace with the fact that my own family had emotionally abandoned me even before I actually left. Now, I just need to find somepony who likes me as I am now, chaos powers and all.Good luck, I told myself.

Before drifting off to sleep on a cloud, I decided to make a visit to Discord’s statue in Canterlot on the train tomorrow. If I can’t find anypony who would approve of me, maybe I could get approval from the spirit of chaos himself.

Gardens Canterlot Royal The

As usual, my morning scrambles my train of thought from the previous night. Instead of going to Canterlot as I had decided, I went to go ice-skating on the reservoir. I had completely forgotten that Winter Wrap Up had taken place already, so when I got to the reservoir I was disappointed that the ice had melted.

Using some chaotic energy, I decided to skate on a soapy field around the reservoir instead. While lost in the enjoyment of skating, I didn’t realize the large white crowned pony land nearby. Well, I didn’t notice her until I heard a rather large thud as something slipped and fell on the soapy ground. I quickly looked to see what had fallen, and noticed Princess Celestia splayed out with a slightly shocked expression. It took all I had to not… well, nevermind, I burst out laughing violently, so much that I fell on the soap myself.

Once she got up and righted her regal pose, a bit more irritated than before. About this time I stopped laughing and realized that I had made a poor impression on the most powerful pony in Equestria, who could easily turn me into stone or send me to the moon. Trying to mend the situation I apologized, “Sorry, Princess,”, with a bow, “I didn’t expect to see you drop in on an uninteresting pony like myself.”

“That’s why I did drop by, Spirit, you’re not as uninteresting as you think. And I think that this slippery ground proves it.” Celestia responded.

“Oh… so how much did Twilight tell you?” I asked.

“She told me about your discovery, and how you somehow ended up eating it. And the result."

“So…you’re going to banish me now, aren’t you?”

“Don’t worry, Spirit, I’m not going to banish you, not unless you do something really bad. Chaos isn’t a bad thing in itself, but too much chaos harms other ponies, as you heard about Discord.”

“You’re letting me go?”

“As long as you promise to be responsible in using your powers, then I’ll let you keep them. But I do have a request.”

“anything.”

“come with me to Canterlot. Now, I don’t know much about Chaotic magic, but perhaps I can help you learn how to control your powers better.”

“That seems like a good idea, but I think I got them under control.” I reply, just as the soap turns into jello and the reservoir fills with frogs. “On second thought, that’s probably a good idea.” Celestia chuckled at my change in confidence.

We made our way to Canterlot, Her by flight, Me by train. Eventually, I found her waiting at the entrance of the palace. “Good, you made it. Head to the garden, I need to finish up day court, so I’ll find you there after I’m done and Luna takes over.” The Royal Light instructed, “No chaos during that time, all right? Since Discord’s located there, any chaos around him may allow him freedom again.”

“All right, I’m off then!” I replied before flying off toward the garden. Normally I couldn’t tolerate Canterlot because of all of the uptight ponies who live there, but the garden is so neat that it makes up for the common company.

Once I entered the garden, most of the animals scattered as they do for any non-Canterlot visitor. I really don’t care for animals that much, they seem rather useless to me. Plants on the other hand, they are useful as food, so I can appreciate them. Speaking of plants, I noticed a peculiar purple pony plucking random plants. While her coat and mane weren’t unusual, her headgear was not something any pony around Canterlot would be caught dead wearing, a propeller hat.

Interested at this pony’s story, I decided to say something to her, “Uh… hello?” She turned to me and looked at me with perfect violet spiral eyes. With a cheery grin, she replied, “Hi!” Still taken back by those unusual eyes, I couldn’t really think of anything to say.

“Hello…uh?” She questioned, or stated, I wasn’t quite sure.

Stumbling for a response, the best I came up with was introducing myself, “I’m Spirit Wind, Freedom Incarnate!” I facehoofed at my self-given title. Her response was interesting to say the least.

“Wind Spirit, you meet nice to it’s! Hahahahaha.” She giggled. This mare confused me more and more the more I talked to her, but talking to her wasn’t as boring as talking to normal ponies.

“Um…what?”

“you meet to nice!”

“huh?” I was still confused until I thought out each word, and realized she was speaking backwards! This amused me greatly, and I wondered if it was on purpose. “Oh! Nice to meet you as well!”

“heh, on caught finally you so.”

“yeah, that’s a neat way to speak, did you train yourself to speak that way?”

“heritage my of part it’s, no”

“I see, so what’s your name?”

“Screwball” She introduced herself. That name fit extremely well, but I was curious why she didn’t have a last name. I didn’t want to ask anything more personal, so I avoided the question.

“So, what’re you doing here?”

“Dad my visiting”

“I see, is he in town, what’s he do?”

“here doing you are what? Statue a of kind he’s” She replied, nervous to change the subject. While she seemed goofy at first, she’s actually pretty normal. The statue part confused me, but I gave in to her subject change.

“I’m waiting for Princess Celestia to get done with her court for the day, she is going to try and teach me how to control these chaos powers I got.”

“stone into you turn gonna she’s! No oh!” Screwball gasped.

“No she’s not, she told me so herself.” I tried to reassure her.

“did harmony of elements new the before long stone into dad my turned she! Chaos hates she! Is she yes.” She spoke, panicking. I had to let that last statement rattle in my brain a bit before I understood what she said. The record scratch was audible. “Wait, so Discord’s your dad?!?”

“hide gotta you! Later that on more but, yeah.” She said urgently. With a flap of wings the princess’s arrival was marked. “Why hello, Screwball, what brings you to the garden?” Princess Celestia asked, almost accusingly.

“flowers…um…uh…I” Screwball stammered. If you haven’t heard somepony stammer while speaking backward, it’s like crazy on top of crazy, in other words, very amusing. After stuttering that excuse, she bolted away. It seemed as if she just disappeared. Celestia sighed, “that Screwball, I don’t know why I let her stay around.”

“Uh, Celestia, do you really hate chaos that much?” I asked, meekly.

“Oh, you understood her? That’s unusual. Anyway, no Spirit, I don’t. Since Luna and I had sealed her father away, she’s held a grudge against me. She always worries that I’m going to seal her in stone as well. You have no need to worry, my little pony.” Celestia reassured.

“If you say so, can we begin training?” I asked, still a bit wary. I don’t know why I was so wary at that point, the word of one slightly-crazy pony versus the princess of the land, my loyalty should’ve been unquestionable. Here I was, doubting our kind ruler.

“Why yes, to begin, we need to move away from Discord’s statue, follow me to the royal magic academy practice hall.” Celestia instructed. I followed silently behind her, into the practice hall. Inside of the regal structure was an area scattered with many target boards and ropes, some desks lined the edges of the room. An area was cleared out near the north end of the building, circular in shape and surrounded by completely clear gems, this is where she led me to. “Now here is the practice ring, any magic that would exit the boundaries of the ring is absorbed by those clear crystals, likewise, any magic that should go in is also halted by the crystals. A good way to make sure any chaos you make doesn’t go anywhere it shouldn’t.”

“That’s smart. I don’t want to cause any extra damage.” I commented. I stepped into the ring and prepared for any test Celestia could throw at me.

“To begin, here,” Celestia said while throwing in an extremely tacky stained glass lamp, “do something about this, will you?” Confused at the request about the lamp, I began.

The offer, and a bit of fun

About a couple weeks of training pass and I thought I had good control of my magic, I made progress at least. I had seen Screwball at least twice more during this training period, and both times she wanted to hide me away from Celestia, even if I told her about what progress I had made in that time.

Finally, one day, Celestia and I were walking in the royal garden, discussing my progress when we stopped by Discord’s statue. Celestia sighed, “Discord… You see, Spirit, he represents an overabundance of chaos, so much that nopony can live in peace. If you keep in mind your training, you can eventually represent the perfect amount of chaos, allowing for variety in everypony’s lives but not causing harm to anypony.”

“You really think a free spirit like mine can have limits?” I questioned.

“You’ve already shown great progress in keeping your chaotic powers under control, with a little more practice, I think you can.” Celestia assured. Even with only two weeks of working under Celestia, I could understand how Twilight felt about not wanting to let Celestia down. Celestia brought up an interesting idea, “I was thinking, since you know that your powers need control, and I can’t teach you how to use your power to the fullest, how would you like lessons from Discord himself?”

“What? How? I…I mean that’d be cool!” I was shocked at her offer, considering I really wanted to meet Discord, but getting lessons from him had never crossed my mind.

“I’ll warn you though, Discord is unpredictable, and may even refuse to help you. And the process to allow you to take lessons from him without setting him free will leave you as a statue for a while.” Celestia warned. This warning took me back to what Screwball had said about Celestia turning him into stone.

Even with two weeks of study, I still had doubts about Celestia’s reasons for taking me as a student. This seemed like a perfect way to trick me into agreeing to be sealed away. However, if I agreed, I might be able to make my own magic stronger, with the penalty of being frozen in place for a while. This loss of freedom sealed my decision, “That’s a really cool offer, but I couldn’t take being stuck in one place for any amount of time. Thank you for teaching me control and all, but I’ll refuse this offer.”

Celestia was unsurprised at my answer, “Now are you sure? This isn’t an offer everypony gets you know.”

“Yeah, I’m sure.” I replied, confidently.

“All right, consider this the end of your lessons then, now make sure you take what I’ve taught you to heart. I’m sure you’ll do fine.” Celestia told me before taking off for the main castle. Once Celestia was out of sight, I made my way over towards Discord’s statue. On my way there, I noticed two swirly violet eyes watching me as I walked.

“Screwball, I’m heading to your dad’s statue, follow?” I asked her. Without a reply, she appeared beside me. We walked towards Discord’s statue, once there, we stared at his now-horrified expression for a while; the mismatched creature wasn’t as frightening as everyone thought.

Eventually , Screwball asked, “Stone no, so?”

“No stone.” I replied, “Celestia isn’t as bad as you think, Screwball. She can be very forgiving.”

“Mountain dragon down surfing pie go to want, anyway? That doubt I.” Screwball asked randomly. At the time it sounded like a great idea, I was getting bored of Canterlot’s glamor.

“Let’s go! Race you there!” I challenged her. With a clack of my hooves on the dirt garden ground, I vanished in a flash. Screwball took off her propeller hat and pulled a baseball out of it before placing her cap back on her head. A flick of her hoof and the baseball jumped high into the air, Screwball jumped towards it, and disappeared within like a black hole sucking in light.

What was left in the garden was a lone baseball, and an unnoticed crack in a single stone statue.

Atop Dragon Mountain, I summoned two large apple pies and a cooking spray slide down. Screwball and I began a rapid decent down the mountain, chuckling at the size and taste of the ridiculous pies. About halfway down, it turned into not only a slide race, but also an eating contest. I lost the eating contest, but won the race. I didn’t think a mare would be able to eat an entire pie that size, I was impressed.

“That was awesome! How are you able to eat so much pie?” I asked, chuckling.

“Practice!” She proclaimed proudly. We teleported back up for another run.

Our fun lasted for hours! Since Screwball was as free as I was, I wasn’t surprised I could spend so long doing random things with the same pony. Normally, I’d spend an hour at most with any one individual, but then I’d lose interest and find someone or something else to involve myself with. We had just started work on building a gigantic building out of entire trees when a dark shadow covered our work area.

The First Confrontation

“SPIRIT WIND AND SCREWBALL, THOU HAST WROUGHT CHAOS TO EQUESTRIA!” A booming voice echoed across Everfree forest.

“Uh oh…what’d we do?” I asked, panicking.

“dunno I!” Screwball responded.

A deep blue-purple alicorn landed upon our incomplete construction. “SINCE THOU HAST BROUGHT IT, THOU MUST FIX IT!” Princess Luna commanded. I covered my ears and asked, “What are you talking about?” My words must’ve caused her confusion, as her voice lowered to normal, “You mean thou does not know what befalls Canterlot this day?”

“No, we’ve been free on the edges of Ponyville for hours now. What’s going on?” I asked again, more worried this time.

“Discord has broken free again, we had assumed that thou wast at fault.” Luna explained.

“Daddy!” Screwball exclaimed happily. If I didn’t know better, I’d say she disappeared at the speed of light. At least I’d know where to find her.

“I’ll go see what’s going on. Where is Discord?” I wondered.

“Discord hath taken up residence in the throne room of my sister and I. The Elements of Harmony are on their way.” Luna answered.

“I gotta hurry then, see ya!” I said before warping away. Only later will I realize how much I had actually offended her by not showing any sign of submission. My time in the castle had made me more arrogant than I realized. This did cause me problems after this whole event; I needed a hard lesson in humility from Twilight, but that’s not part of this story.

Appearing at the castle, I was greeted by a marshmallow staircase leading to a gram cracker door. I could tell that Discord was at work. There were rainbow streams flowing upward towards the door, and beaver ducks swimming down the stairs. With a mixture of excitement and confidence, I opened the doors to the castle. My first thoughts were ‘holy moving sidewalks’ and ‘why am I suddenly hungry?’. The once-simple hallways of the castle were now a funhouse of conveyer belts, chandeliers and toll booths.

Now, I thought this would be easy to unweave considering I could control chaos myself, but I didn’t realize how powerful Discord really was, no matter what twists and turns I unweave, coils upon coils of chaos laid before me. I had to give up and flow through the chaos instead of fighting against it. Eventually, I reached the throne room. Discord was sitting upon the throne in all his mismatched glory, Screwball was spinning around the room happily. There was also a grey alicorn huddled in the far corner of the room. “Celestia!” I shouted.

“Spirit!” Screwball shouted in response. Chills ran down my spine as I heard a cold, yet childish laugh come from the spirit of chaos. Something deep within me resonated, almost calling out to Discord himself, driving to return to him, at the time I didn't know what it was.

“Why hello there. Screwball’s told me soooo much about you. It seems you have a fan.” Discord mocked.

“Discord, what did you do to Celestia?” I asked, playing the hero role.

“Oh? I did nothing more than tell her of her faults, would you like me to tell you yours?”

“Like you did to Fluttershy?”

“Pah! That filly was too kind for her own good.”

“That was just cruel.”

“You want to talk about cruel? Talk to your Princess, or to Twilight Sparkle and her friends! You cause a little chaos and the penalty is imprisonment in stone! Now that’s cruel.” Discord frowned in anger.

“The chaos you make isn’t little! What I do is little!”

“Ah, yes, that’s right, you still have some of my power. I’ll be taking that back.” Discord sneered. Right before he snapped his fingers, the elements of harmony burst through the throne room door.

“Discord!” Twilight Sparkle shouted.

“The Elements of Harmony, welcome to my new castle! I hope you enjoyed the tour.” Discord announced.

“I don’t know how you escaped, but we’re going to put you back!”

“I don’t think so, not this time. I’m having too much fun to go back.” Discord scowled at the group, me completely forgotten. “Let’s break this little friendship apart again. Starting with Twilight Sorrow.” Discord had teleported behind the group and levitated Twilight up to his eyes. He was about to turn her grey when an orange mare bucked his stomach through the closed doors to the hallway, Twilight dropped in her place.

“Nawt today, Discord, keep ya paws offa my friends.” Applejack commanded.

“Oof, you have some strong legs there Liarjack, I suppose I don’t stand a chance.” Discord stated overdramatically. “Oh, Screwball dear, would you help out your poor, old dad?”

Screwball saluted and said, “dad yes!” before grabbing baseballs out of nowhere and began pelting the Elements with her own brand of chaos. I was shocked at the fight going on before me, not because the chaos was hard to follow, but because there didn’t seem to be anypony with a clear advantage.

Maybe I was a bit arrogant thinking that I could change the battle in anyway, but I still thought it. I was given a choice between chaos and order, fun and friends. The balance of two separate worlds was at my hooves. A world of everchanging, ever-entertaining chaos, or a world where you would be able to rely on anything to act the way it was supposed to. It wasn’t hard to believe that I wanted both. To make matters worse, I was recruited by both sides. Screwball shouted out, “me and dad my help, Spirit!” at nearly the same time twilight shouted, “Spirit, take her out of the fight!”

When it came down to my decision, I panicked, hard. Trailed by my scream and a harmless chaos stream, I ran. Normally, I can make simple decisions, like what to eat, but when I had to decide something major, I usually let someone else handle it. Since freedom is my calling, I can never dedicate myself to anything for long, and decisions that will have major lasting effects are a form of major dedication, I can’t ever make that choice, no matter how simple it seems.

So I ran, or flew, either way, I kept going, farther and farther from that scene. I only stopped when I had reached the ocean. Once there, I screamed my hardest, knowing that I made another stupid decision. By the time I had reached the ocean, the battle had already been decided but not without problems, Luna had stepped in and assisted the Elements and Discord was sealed away, along with Screwball. Not that I knew any of this until I was spoken to by Twilight herself.

I swear, Nightmare Twilight is probably more terrifying than even Nightmare Moon. Even if things had turned out for the better (Even to this day I’m not sure what the right decision would’ve been), I was still angry and dissapointed at myself for flailing when the decision was mine. When Twilight showed up, I thought she was going to comfort me, knowing I needed it, although the way she approached me suggested a more hostile response. My fears were proven when the first words out of her mouth were, “Hey! What was up with running off like that!?”

“I got scared” I replied meekly, I wasn’t in any way up for a fight.

“Scared?! You weren’t the one being attacked!” Twilight was furious, I didn’t know why

“You made me choose! I don’t handle commitment well.” I spoke up, beginning to feed off of her anger.

“There was no choice! You were supposed to help us! What choice are you talking about!?”

“You wouldn’t get it! You are so devoted to your precious harmony that-“

“So that’s it! You were on Discord’s side all along!”

“No! I-“ I started flagging. I never was good in arguments.

“No wonder you were there before us! You were plotting with Discord to return him to power!”

“I jus-“

“That gem turned you against us! You’re no better than Discord himself!”

“Twi-“I had tears forming now.

“You, the blank-flanked freeloader with absolutely no sense of loyalty, are just another disaster waiting to happen!”
“Sto-“

“Maybe you should be sealed in stone as well!”

I had absolutely broken at that point. Tears had started falling, and I had turned into a sobbing mess of a colt. This was an embarrassing moment for me, and I’ve been in even more awkward situations. The accusations of being evil, brainwashed or whatever, paired with the threat of never being free again was too much though. Without any awareness, I just sobbed for a long time. When I started to quiet down, I noticed Twilight was sitting down at the shore, looking much calmer staring at the ocean.

Against my wishes, I pulled myself up, walked over, and sat down next to Twilight. Even with her being the reason I cried, I just needed to be next to somepony; Comfort reasons, you know. Silence was present everywhere, even the ocean was quiet. I finally spoke up and said, “I’m sorry.”

Twilight responded with, “I know.” Seemingly still a bit annoyed, nowhere near as much as before. We sat quietly watching the ocean for a while longer, until Twilight shattered the peace,

“Fluttershy was injured in the fight you know. We’re not sure she’s going to live.”

Repercussions

Without thinking, I took off flying back towards Ponyville. Everypony loved Fluttershy, including myself. She was the sweetest, kindest and most gentle pony ever to grace Equestria, and now she might be gone forever. I flew as fast as I could, trying to see if there was anything I could do. We were about to lose Fluttershy and it was all my fault.

Hovering over Ponyville, I noticed that the town seemed empty. I wondered where everyone had gone. Since the fight had taken place in Canterlot, I thought that everypony wouldn’t hear about it until later. Pressing on, even while my wings ached, I started towards Canterlot.

After I couldn’t fly anymore, I started to run. I lost track of time quickly, my energy was running out, and I blacked out on my way there. When I woke up, I started running again. Even though I knew I could use chaos magic to get there instantly, I was angry at it for causing this mess. This happened at least twice, and by the time I had arrived, I had forgotten what day it was. Time wasn’t even important, only life was.

Fluttershy was under care in the castle, still in a fragile state of life. Not that I was able to tell, the palace guards stopped me from even entering the front gate. “None may enter the castle at this time, as an investigation is underway.”

“Come on! Let me in! My friend is injured and I need to see her!”

“What is your name?”

“Spirit Wind!” I answered. The guards looked at each other with the same plain face as usual, before one of them spoke up and grabbed me by the shoulder, “Spirit Wind, you will come with me.”

“What?” I questioned while being led roughly through the gate. The guard was leading me down multiple flights of stairs, towards the dungeons.

“You are accused of conspiracy of treason, and will be held until Princess Celestia sees fit to hear your case.”

“No!” I shouted, I couldn’t be locked away, I would go crazy, I hadn’t even apologized to Fluttershy yet. Summoning up what chaotic energy I could, I teleported my guard and myself to Fluttershy’s resting room (Chaos has a funny way of making you go where you want to.). Five of the six elements were in the room at the time. Fluttershy was laying unconscious and covered in bandages nearly everywhere, Rarity was dabbing her eyes with a cloth, Pinkie Pie was sitting down sadly, even her hair was flat, Applejack was just entering the room, and Rainbow Dash was laying her head down beside Fluttershy’s bed. Things appeared as if she had just gotten injured, or a few hours out of surgery.

“I’m sorry!” I shouted, “I’m so sorry!” I nearly started crying again. While Fluttershy was still out, everypony else gave me scornful looks that screamed “Traitor”. The guard had started hauling me out again, this time I had no energy to do anything about it. I had allowed myself to have my freedom stripped away, those looks had made me feel as if I deserved it.
An uncounted amount of days had passed, and Fluttershy did recover; She was left even weaker than she was before. Even as I went stir crazy, started talking to myself, and turning my cell into a mess of chaotic randomness, I was always focused on the regret I felt for not making a choice. Although I knew that not making a choice would have its own consequences, I didn’t expect anything that bad. I had been visited by each of the elements, except for magic, once. Honesty and Generosity chewed me out, Laughter… I had no idea what she was talking about, and I ended up apologizing to Kindness over and over, even though she said that it wasn’t my fault. Loyalty, Loyalty was the worst; if bars hadn’t been in the way, I was sure she was going to end me.

Eventually, I was hauled up to Princess Celestia’s throne room, where I was to be judged. The elements had returned home at this point, so I was alone in the room with Celestia, and her guards. The atmosphere was as thick as syrup. Celestia’s expression showed that she was more bored than angry.

“Spirit, I had understood that you were there when Discord and the Elements of Harmony began their conflict.”

“Yes” I had no other way to respond.

“And did they ask you for help?”

“Yes”

“Did you help them?”

“No”

“Why not?”

“I got scared”

“Scared?”

“Yes, scared of making a choice”

“What choice were you given?”

“Between helping Discord, and helping the Elements of Harmony.” My voice started to waver.

“Why was that a choice?”

“Because Screwball asked me to help her and her father.”

“What made you consider that option?”

“I…I like Screwball” my voice fell away at the end.

“Really?” Celestia seemed to think on this a while.

“Well, I came to my decision.” She paused for dramatic effect, no idea why. “Spirit Wind of Ponyville, I find you innocent. However, “ Another pause, “You are forbidden to enter Canterlot for five years. And you are no longer allowed to enter the Canterlot gardens under penalty of treason.”

“I-“ I began in protest before changing my mind, “Thank you.”

“Guards, escort him out of Canterlot.”

“Yes, your Highness” Two guards spoke. I was promptly led out of Canterlot and left at the gate. Immediately returning to Ponyville would probably be a bad idea, since the Elements live there, and they were probably still mad. My mind knew another choice was coming up, so instead of thinking, I just started flying with no destination in mind.

My wandering led me to the shore again. I stared out at the night-covered ocean, drinking in the peaceful view. Putting my worries away, I started a flight dance, using the water as a reflection of my actions. With the otherworldly scene unfolding at my wingtips, I reflected on what had happened.

Rumors of Evil

While skimming the water, I was truly lost in my thoughts. So much so that I didn’t even see the two trespassers approach. My serenity was so complete, I eventually lost my bearings. Once I opened my eyes, I saw a mint green unicorn and a pale yellow earth pony watching me. Startled, I lost altitude and my left wing sunk into the water, halting my flight and sending me tumbling wing over hooves into the sandy shore, leaving a rather impressive sand rift.

“Hey, Lyra, who’s that?” Bon bon mused.

“Is she okay? That was some fall.” Lyra responded. I pulled myself out of the sand crater and shook most of the sand and water mix out of my mane. I started to walk up to them.

“Hey, I didn’t expect anyone else to be this far away from Ponyville this late.” I greeted them; as if I hadn’t just taken a spectacular crash though the sand.

“Wait… I remember you; you’re that blank flank colt who moved to Ponyville a while ago.” Bon bon said with a sudden spark of recognition.

“Wait, that’s a colt? You’re a colt?” Lyra asked, confused. This wasn’t the first, or the last time I’d hear a comment like that.

“Yeah, I’m a colt. Anyway, I’ll take my leave unless you need something from me.” I stated, getting ready for takeoff again. Since they hadn’t said anything for a bit, I took off back towards the ocean. Just as I started my climb, I heard one of them shout,

“Wait! Is it true that you nearly killed Fluttershy?”

I was so shocked by this accusation that I literally fell from the air and landed with an inglorious splat in the ocean. My peace shattered by those words and the icy ocean, I paddled to shore. Stomping my way up to the two mares, I nearly lost my head in anger.

“I-“ I began, before I caught myself. I paused for a second or two before sighing and replying with,
“Yes, my refusal to act nearly cost Fluttershy her life. I regret being so stupid. Why do you think I won’t go back to Ponyville, yet if ever?”

“Oh, so you didn’t actually attack her with a knife?” Lyra asked

“What?” I swore my eyes became as large as saucers.

“It seems that a rumor’s gone around about a blank flanked colt who assaulted Fluttershy.”

“Are… are you serious?” I shivered at the thought that anyone thought I attacked her directly.

“Yeah, although nopony can agree on how.”

“I need to fix this!” I shouted before immediately taking off towards Ponyville. It pained me that I already had caused somepony to get injured, now it’s only made worse by rumors saying that I deliberately hurt her! Kindness was my last saving grace, I had already lost loyalty.

The sun had appeared over the horizon by the time I reached Ponyville, I was exhausted and barely able to fly, but I had made it. What happened next was confusing.

Flying down to Sugarcube Corner, I had expected an angry mob to form right under me. No such bad luck, the streets were still empty when I landed at the door. I don’t know what told me to go to that sweet store, hunger perhaps? There wasn’t any noise from inside, since it was daybreak, I wasn’t surprised. What did surprise me however, is when I opened the door, a very pink ball of energy greeted me with the greatest enthusiasm.

“Heya, Windy! Welcome home!” Pinkie Pie greeted me, and pulled me inside the corner. I was greeted by a large amount of ponies partying to some random mish-mash of sounds that almost instantly gave me a headache, and a neck ache for some reason. Trying to ignore the pain, I asked Pinkie,

“What’s the reason for the party this time?”

“You silly! Twilight and Fluttershy were worried that you weren’t coming back so they told Lyra and her marefriend to find you and get you to come back here!”

“Th-they told me that rumors were spreading that I deliberately hurt Fluttershy!”

“Of course that’s not true! You’d never hurt Fluttershy, at least not on purpose!... would you? Would you???” Pinkie pried, making me feel very, very small.

“No…” My reply was so weak, it could’ve blown away in the wind.

“Ok! I’m gonna go get more punch, have fun!” Pinkie finished before bouncing off to the kitchen. I swear, when it comes to parties, Pinkie never loses energy. Still confused at the turn of events, I decided to get lost in the fun, shoving my worries off for another day. My head was covered with a lampshade before I could even say ‘fun’.

Sometime later during the party, I had noticed a familiar chaos-causing pony in a conversation with Twilight over, I assumed, the finer workings of chaos magic. I approached her with the strangest feeling in my stomach.

“Hey Screwball! Good to see you again.” I greeted her.

“Spirit Hey!” Came her simple reply.

“I’m glad you were able to make it.”

“problem a not!” She dismissed. A slow tune flicked on, and the lights dimmed.

“Uh… would you like to dance?” I asked, slightly taken back at the sudden change of mood.

“Ok…uh…” She replied with a blush. We made our way to the dance floor, when I noticed a strange line appear on one of the building’s walls. This line more appeared to be following the wall instead of being on the wall itself. Just as I was about to ignore it, more of these lines appeared, crisscrossing the whole scene. Suddenly, like stained glass windows in Celestia’s throne room, my entire world shattered into millions of colored shards.

What Really Happened

My eyes flicked open, revealing that I was lying up-ended between Sugarcube Corner and one of the nearby houses, at least now I knew where my headache and neck ache came from. Day had broken and ponies were trotting around doing what they usually do. I noticed that some ponies did see that I was lying here, although none even approached me. The best I could guess is that the rumors were real.

Once standing up, I made my way to the library. Since I had come here to stop the rumors, but had no idea how to start, I thought that Twilight might have an idea. On my way there, it was easy to see that I was being avoided. I continued quickly and kept my head down, I could feel the looks of disapproval everywhere.

Eventually, I banged my head against the library door, which was quickly answered by the local baby dragon, Spike.

“Hello!” Spike started, once he saw it was me, he continued, “Oh, Spirit. Come in.” Without saying a word, I walked into the orderly library. Twilight was nose deep in another large book of some sort; I couldn’t even tell what the title was. She seemed completely fascinated by it though. Rainbow Dash was also here, lost in another Daring Do novel.

“Um… Twilight?” I started. She seemed to snap out of her book reading daze and began to look me over.

“So, you finally came back. This means you weren’t convicted?” Twilight asked with a raised eyebrow.

“No, but-“ I tried to start before I was cut off.

“Well, welcome back. You look like you’ve heard the rumors.”

“Yeah. I don’t know if they’ll ever stop.”

“They will, just give it time.” After Twilight finished, Rainbow Dash had approached. I flinched, expecting to be hit. Rainbow only sighed and stated,

“I would say I’m sorry that I wanted to tear your wings off, but you did nearly cause my oldest friend to die, you know.”

“I know, and I’m sorry. Please don’t hate me, I…” My sentence trailed off. She was right, and I already knew it, even days later the pain of regret still hurt.

“Twilight, I’m going to see how Fluttershy’s doing, I’ll return the book tomorrow.” Rainbow Dash then walked out of the library and flew off towards Fluttershy’s before waiting to hear a response.

“If I could help you Spirit, I would, but harsh feelings like these take time to heal, maybe a long time. Even if I had a hard time accepting your choice, I knew you only did what you could. So if you need someone to talk to, I’ll be here.” Twilight said, trying to comfort me.

“Thanks Twilight, I’ll remember that.” I spoke gratefully. I walked out of the library, and in an effort to avoid others, I took off flying towards Everfree again.

Hovering above the “Dangerous” forest, I looked for anything to do, trying to get my mind off of the town that hated me. Unexpectedly, a wild purple blur barreled into me, sending us down in a heap somewhere in the forest.

I was starting to get sick of crashing everywhere. When the stars cleared out of my vision, I was face to face with a familiar pair of swirled violet eyes.

“Screwball!” I shouted at recognition.

“us help you didn’t why? You found finally I, Spirit!” Screwball asked, seemingly more out of confusion than anger. Then again, she did tackle me out of the air. Either way, I was pleased to hear her voice again.

“I was scared of making a choice, I never could make a commitment.” I responded honestly.

“Soon again choice that make to have gonna you’re. That fix to need gonna we’re. Really?”

“Why?”

“Strong very wasn’t seal the, injured was kindness of element the since. Again out broke I and dad my.” Screwball replied. I winced at the mention of the injury.

“Wait. You were trapped as well? And why haven’t I heard anything if Discord’s back?”

“now for, hiding in is dad my. Well as trapped was I, yeah.” She answered smartly, “Though, soon something doing be he’ll.”
“And what about you?”

“Well as us helping be should you and, course of, him helping be to going I’m!”

“But, but-“ I stammered.

“me for, please?” She looked at me with pleading chaos-filled eyes. At this time I realized we were still collapsed in the heap. I pushed her off of me and stood up. My mind was fighting itself over what I should do. I was just asked by the only mare who could hold my attention for extended periods of time to assist in the complete overthrow of the kindest monarch in history, just so her dad could take over and cause mass chaos everywhere. Even with how much chaos I actually enjoyed, I was already losing the trust of the Elements of Harmony.

This should’ve been an easy decision, just abandon the Elements and join in the new chaotic order and live free forever. However, I knew that Discord would ‘dispose of’ the Elements right away, and I couldn’t bring myself to be a part of something that would end the lives of such nice ponies. If I knew there was an easy way to solve the entire problem, I would’ve taken it right then and there. Unfortunately, I was stuck in the same decision as before, as it seemed, I was going to have to make a commitment regardless of how badly I wanted to avoid it.

“I- I really want to help you Screwball, but I really don’t know, I’ve always had a hard time making tough decisions… Why are you so focused on helping your dad take over Equestria anyway?”

“Happy him make to want really I so… dad my he’s but exactly dunno I-I.” Screwball seemed confused, as if my question didn’t make sense, or if she never thought about why before.

“Wait… so does that mean if I can prove that he causes a lot of harm with his chaos, then would you help whatever side I chose instead?”

“uh… um…” She stammered. This was good enough for me, so I took her by the hoof and dashed off in a random direction, hoping to prove to her the harm that full on chaos could cause. Even if I had no idea where to begin, I knew I could prove why chaos needed to be limited.

A Quick Explanation

Maybe I should’ve mentioned how my chaos powers worked before I jumped into this. Anyway, if you think of your body as a black void, usually nothing is in this void, unless you can perform a type of magic. I don’t know how it looks to unicorns, but my chaos magic looks kinda like a spitball shot into space. Tiny streams of chaos energy spreads out from this wobbly core, when performing some sort of chaotic act, I pull on those streams and force them out into whatever I want.

The more power required for any act, the more strings I have to pull, my only problem is that, when I pull the strings out, they disappear. If I wait long enough, usually a day, the core spits out more streams for me to use. As long as I didn’t mess with the core, I would be able to use chaos magic until the day I died. Then again, if I used my chaos magic well enough, I’d be able to live for a long time, if not forever.

More to the point, if I did mess with the core, by trying to tug on the core itself, I would be able to perform feats of chaos that would impress Discord himself! Of course, Discord would be able to easily do what I did, since all I had was a fragment of his power. If I knew the power that I could use just by tugging on the core, why wouldn’t I use it? Because, each time I would pull on the core, it would become smaller and smaller, too many pulls and I would lose my chaos magic completely. Any other consequences were unknown to me. So my choices were: Long time minor chaos, or short term major chaos.

Now that you know how chaos magic looks and works a bit, I can tell you the tragedy that happened next.

By the time I quit running, I realized that I was on the path to Manehattan. Knowing my destination, and knowing Screwball was still being dragged along, I pulled threads to warp the two of us to Manehattan. In an instant, we arrived.

“Ok Screwball, sit back and watch REAL complete anarchy unfold.” I told her, sounding confident. My insides were squirming though, with no idea what I was about to do. All Screwball did was nod. I reached inside myself, to that chaos core, and pulled. I only learned about what happened next after Screwball explained it to me after this story was complete, she had refused to talk about it for days.

Anarchy in the EQ, or Wind of Change

My eyes opened, and I stared directly at my object of affection. Her shock was plain to see.

“D…daddy?” She had asked, noticing my eyes had taken on the same look as Discord’s, along with a very strong chaotic aura in his likeness. She said that she could tell something was wrong right then, but not exactly what. I had laughed and turned towards the boring stuck-up town of Manehattan.

“Ahh, what a bore, let’s liven this place up!” I had said, before teleporting to the middle of town, “Now, let’s start this party!” Very familiar glasses had perched themselves on my nose. Before they knew it, Manehattenites on the sidewalks had been propelled forward on new breakneck-paced moving walkways. Easy stuff, like the soap roads and dancing buffalo appeared next.

My next target had been a little home owned bakery known as “Basket’s Fine Bakery”. I had gently floated over the neck-snap sidewalks and perched myself on the counter. “How about a renovation?” I mocked. Each nicely packaged loaf of bread had become a full-fledged pony made out of springs; and each of them had begun to tear at the shelves and walls of the little store. The owners were scared as one of the spring-ponies began to chew through the register. As a final touch, I turned their windows into rubber. All of my cackling had worn out my throat and I had decided that Manehattan needed nicer weather.

I flew out of the shop and into the skies, where I spun some clouds into cotton candy. One jump and Manehattan was sucked into a typhoon of chocolate milk. Quenching my thirst, I had noticed the local guard had suited up and started coming after me. I snorted in contempt, one by one they had charged at me, each in turn being defeated in a ridiculous way. My first enemy was a chicken, the second had his magic suddenly reflect back, and the last one I had bothered to deal with actually managed to damage my wing before being flung into a building-turned-bounce-house.

Getting bored of the antics of the guard, I went after some of the local residents. Seeing as there wasn’t enough actual damage, I decided to ‘plug in’ a couple elephants. Two families were permanently shape shifted from that. Sirens started going off stating the emergency of me. Without stopping my cackling, I approached the offending speakers and changed the channel. My background music now established, I wanted to change the way the world worked.

First of all, I wanted to see everypony fly; as such, gravity disappeared for Manehattan. Many ponies were shrieking in terror and agony, I drowned it out with my music. Soon I wanted to see some other ways ponies could act, so I approached a resistant few and proceeded to warp their minds, ‘Discord them’ would be a good term. Even without my direct influence, a brawl had started down the street. Many ponies enjoyed the scene going on, safe above the cotton cloud line. My solution to their enjoyment was to remove their wings, simple enough; they fell into the sticky clouds themselves at my will.

Bored with the monotony of no gravity, I decided to turn it on and off at a random pattern. I focused on that giant ugly statue sitting in the plain ocean that I hadn’t dealt with yet. Without looking, I threw summoned darts to determine where to change things. Those darts hit EVERYWHERE; so I changed everything. Instead of being the four hooved alicorn lighting up the sky, I shifted it to a dancing sculpture of Discord himself.

Now all that was left was that pesky ocean, bluing up the whole ocean. In my exact words,

“Let there be spectra!” I had screamed.

Shortly, entire gallons of the rainbow stuff started pooling into the ocean, making it seem as if the rainbow factory dumped their entire supply into the ocean, making a multi-colored mess, especially where the colors mixed badly. It should be known, fish can’t really breathe spectra; the stuff also stains your coat very badly.

Just as I thought Manehattan was perfectly chaotic, I noticed Screwball attempting to hide, watching what I was causing. With one swift click, Screwball was in my hooves. I grinned manically. Even out of my own mind, I could sense her fear.
“Hello beautiful.” I had said, “Enjoying my chaos?”

“Anarchy is this, chaos isn’t this! Ponies hurt doesn’t dad my! No…No!” She shrieked.

“Same thing, my love.” I had responded before… forcefully kissing her.

She later told me that it was good, but not truly me, that was when she noticed that I wasn’t in control at all, she could sense the full taint of chaos. It goes without saying; she struggled, and smashed me right in the throat, causing me to drop her into the spectrum ocean. I didn’t care, as I had already gotten what I’d wanted.

If anyone tells you that the blast from the Elements of Harmony is harmless or feels good, smack them. I didn’t notice it until too late, but the six elements had already appeared and began their magic build up by the time I was aware they were there. When the rainbow of light started to wash over me, I felt a very hot sensation, as if I was being dipped in hot tar. Soon I felt the overpowering dark chaos retreat back into my body, turning back into the core. Not only was I freed, but any energy I had left over was also drained from me as the rainbow of light faded.

I fell into the now-clean ocean, where my mind cleared, allowing me to think properly again. Without a clear memory of what happened, all I could do at that time was paddle up to the shore and approach the elements, who were exhausted but still standing. My only words that I could say at the time were,

“Thank you” before I completely collapsed into unconsciousness.

Repercussions...Again.

I woke up, in jail, again.

I had no idea what had happened other than that I had caused a large amount of chaos. My body was fighting itself over getting up, I had apparently lost a lot of energy. When Twilight appeared as a visitor, it took all I had just to stay awake again, so she really did all of the talking.

“Spirit, what were you thinking? Have you gone completely insane? Only Discord has caused chaos on that scale before!” She paused after reprimanding me. I only responded with a pitiful grunt-whine. “Now, I have been working on a way to remove that power of yours, it only seems to be causing trouble for everyone. Unfortunately it’s not quite ready yet, so I’ve requested that Princess Celestia keeps you locked in here until it’s ready. She will be coming to ask for an explanation of what you did, so make sure you’re respectful to her and explain everything that happened. I have also pre-“ Her monologue continued as I passed out again.

Finally, when my energy had mostly returned, I got up and bothered to take a look around the cell. Boring was the easiest way to describe it, white-washed walls and shined iron pillars for bars. One thing was different about this cell than the other one I was in, this one was coated in a layer of magic suppressing stuff, and I was unable to use any of my chaos powers at all.

It wasn’t long before Celestia appeared on the other side of my cell. I knew exactly what she was going to say.

“I am very disappointed in you, Spirit, you completely disregarded all that I taught you. You were lucky that the Elements of Harmony treated you differently than Discord, but just because the Elements saw you differently doesn’t excuse your actions against Manehattan. What do you have to say for yourself?” Celestia reprimanded, losing none of her regal appearance as she fumed.

“Discord is back?” I said, more like a question than an explanation. Now before you laugh, realize how difficult it is to talk to the ruler over your entire land who stands at least twice as tall as yourself and is many times more imposing. This month wasn’t my best for talking, or anything else for that matter.

“How can you prove this?” Celestia asked, sounding both worried and doubtful.

“Screwball told me.” I responded, a bit more confident.

“So Screwball was involved with you tearing apart Manehattan because Discord’s back?”

“Yes! Wait… no! Ugh. Let me explain.” Of course I had stuck my hoof in my mouth again. What completely confused me is that she was laughing; here I was all but admitting to the chaotic rewrite of Manehattan, and Celestia was just laughing.

“Oh Spirit, you’re just like Twilight when you get flustered. Don’t worry, Screwball explained everything, twice actually. While I don’t approve of the way you went about it, you did get the daughter of Discord, heir of chaos, to realize the importance of control. Although, she seemed very traumatized by the entire ordeal, she didn’t explain in detail what happened. Would you care to explain?” Celestia has a way of calming down everything, even the lights seemed relieved somehow.

“I wish I could, but I don’t remember anything besides drawing up the core of my power, and falling into the ocean after the Elements freed me.” I replied. It concerned me that she made no mention of Discord beyond that she knew about it, but I left it alone, knowing it’d be dealt with eventually.

“Is that so? Well, I see no need to keep you if that’s the case. I think you should go talk to Twilight Sparkle and her friends right away, they’ll want to know what happened.” Celestia said with resolution. I was set free. When my chaos returned, I could definitely feel the drop in my reserves of power.

It was a really long flight back to Ponyville, I couldn’t imagine what any of those six were going to say; Especially since those rumors are still going around, probably reinforced by my actions in Manehattan.

My arrival in Ponyville was met by the sun hitting its peak, noon. As usual, I was avoided by everypony in the streets. Considering Twilight was the accepted ‘leader’ of the Elements, and she was usually the most logical about everything, I decided to see her first. One knock on the tree-house and I was greeted by a Twilight who’d been up studying too late again. She mumbled something and walked back into the tree, leaving the door open.

I followed her inside and took a seat at the book covered table. Twilight had made her way upstairs and through a door, leaving me to the main floor of the library. She had left her study materials open on the table, so I decided to take a peak. I immediately regretted it when I saw the title, “Chaos Gems and their Effects on Ponies” by Twilight Sparkle. My powers caused me a lot of trouble, but were a lot of fun, and I did understand where she came from when putting together a book like that, so I didn't hold it against her.

Eventually, Twilight returned to the main library floor, without the messy look of just-woke-up. She approached me without a look of anger, but a look of want, a want to understand. I hoped that this was a good sign. All she did was walk past me and take a seat at the table, her magic levitating a note-pad and a pencil; she gestured for me to take a seat. When I did, she began.

“Okay Spirit, explain. I know you and that anarchy wasn’t you. What happened?”

With more confidence than when I was speaking to Celestia, I told her everything, from when I met Celestia for the first time to when I reached her tree. The only thing left out was what happened when I was ‘possessed’. The air needed clearing, and I was ready to explain and I finally had someone who would listen.

Chaos Six

"Well, that explains your actions, at least. Does Celestia know that Discord is free and in hiding?" Twilight asked after I finished my 'report'.

"She does, but noone knows where he is, so we can't-" I started, before a wave of dark energy surged through the tree. Twilight almost immediately lost her color, and glared at me sternly.

"Do you have any further buisness here? If not, I'd like to get back to my work." Twilight spat. I had no clue what had happened, and her sudden change in attitude and pigment worried me, since she told me about this before.
"Twilight, are you ok?" I stupidly asked.

"Yes, I am well, but I am very busy, so I am going to have to ask you to leave." She finished. Without knowing what to do to fix her, and needing help, I decided to leave and find Fluttershy. Even if I still feel guilty about what I had did, I thought her kindness would help.

I guess I was wrong. Once I had reached Fluttershy's place, she was gray and already torturing Angel with tableware. Quietly, I tried to make my escape, but she noticed me. In a heartbeat, I was pinned against a tree by her cutlery.

"What do you think you're doing? Tresspassing on my property like that?" She said while approaching me. I freed myself and attempted to fly away, only to notice she had me pinned by my tail. "Ah Ah Ah... You're my new stress ball since you let Angel get away. Now stay-" She started, before being tackled by a crazy purple mare.

"Run, Spirit!" The ball of energy had spoken. Taking her word, I flew away and towards the center of Ponyville again.

From overhead, I saw a sulking gray Pinkie Pie arguing with a gray Rarity. Not only that, but a gray Applejack was conversing with an angry shopkeeper. From what I could tell, only the Elements of Harmony were affected by that dark wave.

"This isn't good." I stated obviously. Without the Elements, how were we going to take down Discord? I decided that a different group were going to have to stop him, so I called in a few favors.

My first stop was the far house near the cliff. The mare there still owed me for re-boarding her house, Golden Harvest, also known as 'Carrot Top'. When I knocked, she greeted me with her usual smile.

"Hello Spirit, what makes you visit me today? Need another job?" She asked innocently.

"No, but I need to call in a favor. Something's going on and I need your help, the Elements of Harmony are in danger." I explained, rather poorly.

"Oh, but why do you need me?"

"Because you're one of the few who still owe me favors, and you're good at gardening."

"Oh, well, I guess I'll join you then. Where are we going?"

"Right now, the Post Office."

"What?" She asked, before I suddenly warped us to the Ponyville Post Office. "Agh! Warn me before you do something like that! Besides, how did you use magic? You're a pegasus, aren't you?"

"Sorry, and yeah, blame the strange happenings. Oh! Mr. Post!" My focus redirected when I saw the gruff pegasus staring at us in shock.

"Huh? Oh, what?" Mr. Post asked after snapping out of his shock.

"Is Ditzy working today?"

"Yes, she should be back any secon-" His sentence got cut off as Ditzy came flying through the open window and into the pillow net set up just in case this happened.

"I'm baaack!" Ditzy announced while getting up and dusting off. Once she noticed me, I was barreled over in a hug, "Spirit! Hey! Thanks for watching Dinky again, that really helped me get caught up on my work!"

"No problem, but I actually could use your help." I explained while getting up and separating myself from her. "Something's happening and the Elements of Harmony are in danger. I am trying to get some ponies together to do something about it."

"Hey, I noticed that Rarity was acting weird as well, when I went to give her her mail, she took my saddlebags! I knew something was fishy! Count me in, but we have to finish before school lets out, I promised Dinky that we'd go to the park after school." Ditzy spoke with her usual carefree attitude.

"I can't promise we'll be done by then, but I'll try. We should hurry then." I finished while grabbing on to the two mares. With a flash, we vanished from the post office and appeared at a large mansion gate. Golden Harvest was still a bit disoriented, but it seemed like Ditzy took the sudden teleport without too much difficulty.

A knock or two and we were greeted by an ashen colored pony wearing a bow tie.

"Hello? Ah, Spirit, is it? And two guests, I suppose this relates to the way Canterlot has been drastically changing into a mess?" Octavia spoke, the same unsurprised and upper-crust tone that she usually used.

"Um... I didn't know Canterlot had been hit yet, but yeah." I responded with a bit of shock. Discord was hitting major points quickly, this wasn't good.

"And I suppose you want to call in the favor I owe you for posting those fliers up in Cloudsdale. Very well, let's go." She finished.

"Oh, uh... ok then." Whenever I speak to Octavia, she always seems to know what I plan to say. Anyway, I was running out of energy to teleport, so we hoofed it towards the high rise apartments near the 'lower-class' area of Canterlot (If it even exists).

On the way, we definitely saw the chaos spreading through Canterlot, everything was changing; since I needed a recharge though, I pulled some of the loose chaos energy out of the air, it wasn't much, but it did help a bit. The odd thing about this was that I didn't realize that I did until I noticed my energy was a bit higher than it should've been.

As we reached the high rise apartments, a white mare with an electric blue mane was sitting on a bench outside.

"Hey Octy!" She called.

"Vinyl?" Octavia asked, as she heard and recognized the pony.

"Long time no see." Vinyl Scratch commented as she got up and approached our group.

"Indeed, I think it was back when we were neighbors, when you constantly came over and raided my refrigerator." Octavia deadpanned.

"Sound familliar?" Golden Harvest said while nudging Ditzy.

"I have no idea what you're talking about." Ditzy replied, while holding the best poker face that a wall-eyed mare can hold. Golden Harvest only chuckled.

"Okay," I announced, "only one pony left!" I summoned up whatever chaos energy I had gotten from the air and whatever I had left otherwise, and I pulled Screwball from wherever Fluttershy had her and set Screwball directly in front of me.

"Huh, Uwah?" Screwball yelped at the sudden transport. "On going what's, Spirit hi, oh?"

"Hey Screwball, I think I got a good team here, we need to go face your dad now, are you willing to help?"

"am I, yes. now out everything figured I think I." Screwball replied.

"Wait, what's going on, I'm confused." Vinyl inturrupted.

"Yes spirit, I am rather confused myself, what did you mean by 'your dad'?" Octavia added.

"I'll explain what I can on the way, we need to go, now." I explained, adding a bit more haste just to avoid any large arguments.

With that, we were off to Canterlot Castle again, since I could feel the largest well of chaos there. My own energy was resonating with that of Discords, pulling me in, our confrontation was guaranteed, the outcome almost predictable. Even with everything against us, even if I knew we were going to fail, I would be foolish not to try.

Countering Chaos

Finally, we reached the doors to Canterlot Castle. Unlike the last time I was here, the doors were covered in huge wooden chains, preventing us from just opening the door. If the doors were anything other than a natural materiel like wood, we probably would've had to find a different entrance, luckily we had an expert in nature with us.

"It looks like I actually can do something here. Stand back!" Golden Harvest announced. Unexpectedly, the orange mare leapt at the chains of wood and started biting into them. As a Pegasus, I hardly question why Earth Ponies do something, especially when Pinkie Pie was involved, but even THIS, confused me.

My confusion ended suddenly, when the chains started to slacken, and Golden Harvest actually started yelling at the chains to let us through. Earth Pony Magic, I've learned to stop questioning it. By the time we registered what she was up to, she was already done and the door was open. "...And next time you think of blocking our path, I won't go easy!" Golden finished before turning to us. "Well, that tree won't bother us again, easy as pie. Let's go."

Out of our group, only Ditzy and I were stunned at what Golden did. Shortly, we shook our heads and went along with the rest. If I had thought Discord messed up the castle before, this was just insane. Even now, I can't exactly describe what was going on or how we were moving through, only Screwball and I could protect our group from going completely nuts at what we were looking at.

Somehow we ended up in an open room after sliding down a wet tongue of some sort that mashed up color with broccoli. Luckily, this room wasn't as messed up as that "Hallway", in fact, this room was almost a completely normal concert hall. "Wh...What... That, and with the... I've never even..." Octavia was scrambling to complete a sentence to describe our walk through the hall. Ditzy was laughing and Golden Harvest was struck speechless. Aside from Screwball and I (Who were immune to Discord's crazy worlds) only Vinyl seemed unaffected.

"Eh, I've seen worse, I once ate a five pronged leaf once that sent me into a crazy world even Discord would be afraid of." Were Vinyl's exact words about the whole thing. I still think that she would've gone crazy if it wasn't for Screwball and me. Regardless, Vinyl started to walk around the concert hall to see if she could find a way out while the others recovered their senses. A short rest later, Vinyl came back to the group and reported what she saw.

"Well, I didn't find us a way out, but there were some cool records on the stage that acted as a giant set of turntables!" She reported.

"Vinyl, only you would be excited about a giant set of turntables, we would rather find Discord." Octavia responded. I nodded in agreement, as did everypony else. Just as the rest of us got to exploring the hall, a familiar chuckle rang.

"Why hellooooo intruders, welcome to my music room. I'm glad you could join me." Discord announced before appearing in the center of the room with a bright flash of light. All of us immediately set into a battle stance. Octavia pulled her cello out of off-screen. Golden Harvest braced herself forward. Vinyl summoned a pair of records and began spinning them like a buzz saw. Ditzy took to the air and prepared a ridiculously sized cannon stuffed with muffin batter. I began tugging at the chaos strings inside me, otherwise looking fiercely at the ground.

Screwball, however, was standing uncomfortably still, looking about two hooves to the left of her dad.

"Screwball, you wound me. Why are you with these ruffians instead of beside your dear old dad?" Discord mocked. Screwball remained silent, she may have seen the need for control, but just to go straight up and fight her father? I expected this reaction. There was nothing I could do, this was the one thing I actually couldn't help her with.

Discord apparently got bored, so he yawned and snapped his fingers a few times; each time a new Discord appeared next to the old one. Soon, we were surrounded by a large handful of Discord's, each laughing manically.

"This will be fun." All of the Discord's said at once. Combat began, Vinyl threw her records like Frisbees of death, cutting through two of the Discords, who vanished into a pile of confetti.

"Let's spin this shit!" Vinyl shouted her battle-cry. Ditzy screamed in rage and began launching hot muffin batter everywhere. Golden Harvest disappeared into a crowd of the Discords. Octavia provided the background music (I still think she's way to proper... and it didn't even fit the mood!), and I began weaving my own brand of chaos.

Screwball was frozen in place, still torn on what to do. Without her, we would have a harder time beating Discord, but we had to try.

In unsettling synchronicity, the Discords acted as a crazy military force, each "pair" sliding and skidding around with no real aim. Each "pair" somehow managed to cause damage, to either us or the surroundings, that could rival any muffin cannon or flying disc of death. During the match, I managed to get bowled down and cut up along my stomach when I was used as a trampoline. Octavia managed to avoid much damage, but even through her injury, she kept up the phantom orchestra. Vinyl rocked around to a beat all her own, taking down more Discords than anyone. Ditzy was a maniac, shooting at anything and everything, even with this display of crazy, she ended up being the only one of us who wasn't injured by the end of the fight.

Golden Harvest was easily the most brutal of us, causing the most harm without actually ending any of the Discords. She was also one of the most injured of the group. By the time the fighting ended with the last confetti explosion, she was down and out. We were worried that she was dead, but luckily Octavia was able to tell she was alive.

After the fight was over, Discord spoke up again, this time without being there. "Ah, you are tougher than you look, when you actually meet me you might have a chance. For now, rest, I've provided a room, " a door appeared and opened in one of the walls, "aren't I nice? Hahahaha... oh, and Screwball, pick a side next time, they really could've used your help. Hahahaha..." His voice faded, leaving the silence behind.

"Let's rest, if we're gonna run into an army of Draconequinsses... Dracono.... bah, an army of Discords, we'll need it. I just hope this isn't a trap." I told to the group. Everyone nodded.

Nearly everyone was inside the new room, only Screwball and I were left in the concert hall. I approached her to see if I could fix her 'brokenness' of staring off into the ground. "Hey, Screwball, you ok?" I asked. She looked up, but didn't say anything. "Come on, say something at least." Still nothing. Honestly, I hated seeing her like this, conflicted doesn't look good on her face. After trying a countless amount of ways to get her to react in vain, I resorted to something I KNEW would provoke a reaction, good or bad.

I kissed her.

A... Carnival? Or the Worst Chapter In This Story

Just like that, I had kissed her for the first time I had remembered.

And just like that, I was met with a hoof to the face.

I flew like a rag doll, impacting the unforgiving stone wall and leaving a nice impression of myself. Well, I got a reaction out of her, and I was about to get a slew of (back) words as a bonus. Only, the words weren't as angry as I expected.

"Now twice that's, anything or someponies special we're like not it's, again that like something do you before me warn, gah!" Screwball shouted at me. I peeled myself off the wall and hovered over to her, a confused expression on my face.

"I had to do something to break you out of your trance, and what do you mean twice?" I asked.

" Time next me warn just, nothing." Screwball remarked before walking to the new room with a scowl.

Normally, I would pursue the 'next time' thing, but she didn't seem to be in a joking mood, so I filed it away for later. I made my own way into the new room, rest was what everyone needed. Suddenly, I found myself standing gawk-eyed at the inside of Twilight's library. Or, at least, a very well made copy of her library, complete with her own room upstairs and the guest room in back (only with more beds, enough for each of us).

Everyone was actually busy unwinding in their own way. Vinyl had already set up her DJ stand and was jamming away to some unknown beat through her earphones, Octavia was reading a book about music and Golden Harvest was already laying in one of the beds, asleep. Ditzy was attempting to comfort Screwball, mostly to no success. Personally, I wanted to call it a night, today had been really jam packed with everything. However, I knew I needed to organize the group, even if I hated playing the leader role.

"Okay, everypony, " I started, standing on 'Twilight's' study table, trying to get everyone's attention, "even if Discord keeps his word and lets us rest in peace, we should stay alert at least a bit, he could pull a trick and separate us or turn us against one another. To start, we should take care of our injured, then get whatever rest we can, although one of us needs to stay up and watch out at all times. A schedule should be set up."

"Who are you? Twilight Sparkle? Come on, relax, Discord's too much of a show off to do try anything sneaky." Vinyl spoke up, having heard me over her music.

"I'll agree with Vinyl on this one, he's not the type to go behind anypony's back." Octavia chimed in.

"Still, isn't it better to be safe than sorry?" I replied, knowing that I was acting completely unlike myself. Something was off, normally, I'm not that cautious, but I was acting more and more responsible than I should. "Uh... nevermind, I'm going to rest." I quickly added before running into the guest room and flopping onto one of the fluffy beds.

I couldn't sleep at all. Normally, I could even sleep through the worst thunderstorm Everfree Forest could throw at me. Thinking back on it, I think the stress of the whole situation prevented me from getting sleep. So I just laid in bed, waiting until everyone else was rested enough to move on. My thoughts were scrambled, and I couldn't focus on anything else except what could be ahead.

Soon enough, the others started getting up and getting excited. We started to move back into the concert hall, if it was still there. Once we opened the tree-door again, the new scene greeted us, literally.

"Welcome to the wheel of chance!" the loud sound blasted at us. Once we moved into the new room, we saw a large carnival set up, showing off all of the games set up along a path that stretched off into a dark spot in the far back. "Play a game! Any game! Get lucky enough and you may just be able to get back stage and meet the ringmaster!"

"Cool! A carnival, and a chance to go straight to Discord! Let's get going!" Vinyl exclaimed. She rushed out and was immediately out of sight. Octavia chased after her shouting to not get separated. To be honest, I was starting to get giddy at the atmosphere, so I kinda... ran off myself. It was a stupid mistake considering this was nearly the same way that Discord corrupted the Elements the first time.

Maybe it didn't matter, none of us really had any 'golden' traits like the elements, we were mostly average and actually had a 'bronze' trait that was more negative than anything else. If I had to think, I'd say only Ditzy had any actual good pony traits, considering she was the only one of us to hold any responsibility over anything besides ourselves.

Anyway, after dashing off in glee, I was found standing at a ring toss stand. All of the rings were just sitting on the stand, with nopony running the stand. Since I was alone, I decided to take a shot! Carnival games are always rigged, these were no exception. I still had fun, I ended up sending piles of rings all over the place! After this whole event was settled, Screwball found a Ring still stuck in my mane!

The final ring was laying at the table, just waiting for my throw. It all came down to this, this one throw would determine everything. If only at the time I realized how true that was. Just as I began to throw the ring, I was distracted by someone shouting my name behind me. My tail smacked the ring mid-flight, and sent it sailing. When I whipped around, I saw Ditzy and Screwball running towards me, an urgent look on their face.

They were just about to say something before I disappeared from their sight, I was teleported against my will, right into the throne room of Discord.

Discord

"Congratulations! and welcome back. I've been wanting to deal with you." Discord coldly mocked.

This throne room was indescribable, true chaos existed here and it doesn't like anything to be recognized. Even with the protection of chaos, I could feel my own sanity slipping. Whispers of the past and future taunted every single movement I made, and the silver made a cold stream circling my body. My senses were beginning to merge, I swore I could taste color and see sound.

"Discord! Finally. Unraveling, polishing the end!" I managed to write, my meaning was clear to both of us even though it made no sense elsewhere.

"SIGGHH, very well, you know how this will end." Discord spoke. Beams of glass light weaved around the two of us, giving form to our chaos energy. There really was no contest, and I would've been overwhelmed, if he wasn't toying with me. Patterns of sound weaved back and forth, a mess of color that made a sonic rainboom look like a filly.

Worlds formed and ended before the greater and lesser forces of chaos, reality slipped in and out as I tried to unweave his chaos. Discord allowed me to nearly unweave his creations before he reinforced them and shoved me back, taunting me every time.

"Maybe next time! Maybe next time! Hahahaha! Almost, just maybe!" Discord cackled. His power seemed unlimited, nearly throwing me out of everywhere. I kept up what I could, but my power was draining fast, and I struggled to do anything but deflect what he threw. Just when my power seemed to reach its limit, I felt someone else appear.

"Here I'm, Spirit!" An unforgettable voice entered my sight.

I shifted my hearing to the... right?... where I saw my favorite pony of chaos shining in a glass light vortex. Screwball had power that I didn't even know she had, very close to three quarters of Discord himself. This was the first time I truly recognized her as Discord's daughter.

"Ah... child of mine. So glad you could join us, did you pick a side?" Discord asked, a murderous grin on his ever-shifting face. "How silly, of course you have, you're still in that boring pony body. Such a tragedy, you could've been a wonderful replacement spirit. Oh well."

Discord changed his attention to her, and began to begin the chaos weaving contest with her, giving me a chance to rest for a time. I was absolutely grateful that Screwball showed up, she would give Discord some challenge at least.

"Psst, Spirit, over here..." A voice popped up out of nowhere. I turned and noticed a pair of amber eyes trained on me. Ditzy was somehow... standing?.... unharmed in this mess. Not only that, but she also had a vortex of glass light, it was an extremely tiny vortex, but it was definitely there.

"Ditzy? How do?" I wrote to her.

"Shhh! Take my energy, muffins abound." She replied simply. Both of us focused on a stream of energy, allowing me to pull her vortex into my own, after which, she vanished. While it wasn't much, the sentiment was worth it, as well as the idea.

I didn't get far before I was shocked by three new ponies appearing, each with small vortexes of their own. Somehow, each of the ponies who I called in favors for had chaos energy all their own, still not much, but some. This new energy wasn't ignored by Discord, and he split his focus; another mistake.

"Hey, more toys! How fun. Get over here." Discord cheered. Screwball took this opportunity to put in a cheap shot. The spirit of chaos cracked, and howled in rage. "AGH! How dare you!"

"Discord, me is target your!" Screwball taunted, and bowling full force into Discord's energy. I could've sworn Screwball's mane flashed yellow before impact, but this chaos made any type of study impossible. Anyway, I ... ran?... over to the three mares.

"Idea! Borrow your chaos?" I scripted. They only nodded. 'Seeing' them nodding, I started to pull the energy to myself. That's when I confirmed something; After I had drained everything from each of them, I looked back and noticed each of them unconsciously pulling the chaos energy out of the 'environment'.

Something new to add to the journal on how chaos energy works, when chaos energy is completely absent from something, the empty space is filled with chaos energy from the atmosphere, like water filling an empty glass when the glass is put under water. Normally, a glass is limited in the amount it can hold making it unavailable for use by any normal pony, but the chaos gem I ate 'overfilled' my glass, allowing me to use that overflow to affect the world around me.

This is where I got my idea: what if I tricked the world around me into thinking my glass was empty? I thought that it would have a black hole effect, making me pull in a large amount of chaos energy really, really quickly. So instead of using chaos to unweave chaos, I would just rip out the energy keeping the chaos effect up.

And so I began to obliterate the world.... or not. Screwball was fading on energy at this point, and Discord was beginning to injure her badly. Without chewing, I charged at Discord physically, even if I knew it'd be useless. Luckily, I was able to steal his attention as my energy flared after passing through him. What he didn't notice is that my energy only flared because I drained a little bit of his energy.

"Pest, I let you rest too long. My mistake." Discord coldly stated, he seemed completely consumed by his anger, acting unlike his usual cruel-jolly self. "Time to end you." His energy lashed out at me, cutting my mind, and breaking my leg. When I shook off the pain, I used my own energy to mend my leg up and set up a defense until I could perform my trick.

Discord kept pounding away at my defense, unknowingly giving me all the energy from his attacks.

After a moment to breathe, I began squashing all of my chaos energy into the core inside me. I was left completely defenseless to whatever Discord was up to, he could've easily ended me right there, but I put on a brave face so he still thought I was defending myself. Once I cut off all feeling in my body, so I wouldn't be distracted, I began to crush my chaos core.

This would've been painful if I had any feeling, luckily I shut that off. Soon, I crushed the core down to a single point, where I began to crush it further.

Suddenly, I heard a pop, along with the sound of a vacuum. A torrent of chaos energy started flooding into me, draining directly into that single space, never increasing the size. A literal chaos black hole, as far as I knew. I had been swept away with the ever increasing flood of chaos, into the very center of this mass.

I woke up in a field of black, void as far as I could see. Once I stood up, I noticed shards of glass lying on the ground, reflecting nothing. For a good while, I thought I had killed myself, until three shards of glass started floating in front of me.

"You won't survive if you keep this energy and stay as you are, ahead of you there are three options, each one has its perks and flaws" A voice that was my own stated. I nearly jumped out of my skin. When I tried to reply, I found that I couldn't speak, as this other thing had my voice. One of the mirror fragments floated in front of my face.

The fragment showed me... only a different me, taller, more impressive, and with a sharp horn joining my wings... an Alicorn me.

"This first option is the path of power, and responsiblity. You would join the ranks of the Alicorns, becoming the Alicorn of Change and taking up the role Discord once fulfilled, before his corruption. You would become immortal and a prince in your own right, with extraordinary magic . However, everyone here; Vinyl Scratch, Octavia, Golden Harvest, Ditzy Do, Discord, and Screwball would all die, because you would keep all of the chaos energy that exists, removing their bodies ability to act on its own."

Before I could do anything, another fragment floated up, revealing a letter, written by me. The words were blurred so that I couldn't read them.

"The next option is the path of the letter. You would release the chaos energy back into Equestria, saving everyone here except for Discord, because he cannot live without all of the released energy, and he does not regenerate chaos energy like any normal creature. This would return Equestria to a state resembling Everfree Forest's weather, where nature would take care of itself. You and Screwball would become regular ponies instead of ponies of chaos. A letter would be written by you to Princess Celestia explaining why you chose this path and why Equestria should take care of itself."

Another fragment followed, the last one. A beam of chaos energy was shown launching into space, and Screwball and I were standing on a cliff overlooking the beam.

"The final option is the path of the destruction of chaos. You would release the chaos energy and send it off into space, never to reach Equestria again. This path is the darkest of the three paths, as it eventually leads to the end of all life, as life cannot exist without chaos. However, it is still a path open to you."

I thought about all of this, and each option well... sucked in its own way. Truly, I hated choosing at all, I would run away if I could without dying. Since each path did offer something good, I would've liked to take all of those pieces and stuck them together and left the bad to rot in a corner...

so I did.

Freedom Incarnate, or the Future of Chaos

I opened my eyes and saw Canterlot castle covered in grey, and nopony was moving except for me. Time seemed to have stopped completely, even the objects floating in the air were suspended. Shortly, I noticed Screwball standing in her usual chaos-forming pose opposite Discord, who had changed his appearance drastically.

Discord no longer appeared to be the mish mash of animal parts that he used to. Instead, he looked like a regal Alicorn, just like Luna and Celestia, but he was still recognizable. His grin is the same no matter what he looks like, the same goes for his scowl.

Screwball was a bit different, not as much as Discord though. Her hair was flattened to her head and laid out in neat lines of changing color (the shades were different). The most striking difference was her eyes, instead of being the swirly orbs they usually were, they were normal. Since her eyes were normal, that ended up making her pose all the more direct and impressive. At least I thought it was impressive; It still wasn't the regular Screwball though.

After enough looking around, I finally decided to begin splashing the world of energy within me. Waves of energy started to pour out, coloring the world again. When it reached each of the ponies in the room, it stopped shortly to fill them each with color. I made sure to fill Screwball with enough to turn her back into her usual self, and I also made sure to prevent Discord from absorbing any energy at all.

Soon, I sped up the release, allowing it to cover the entire world. Washing color back into the grey land, and slowly bringing time back to moving. Everyone except Discord in the throne room were slowly regaining their senses and shaking their heads in confusion and exhaustion.

All that I had left was Discords massive energy reserve which could tip the world in any direction. Instead of just releasing it into Equestria, I split a large portion of it between me and Screwball. This part of the energy didn't bring along any changes to us physically, but joined with our already set energy. If I did put in all of Discord's energy between us, we would've been changed, and not in a good way; there wouldn't have been enough to change us into alicorns, but enough to mutate us into... other things.

Finally, whatever energy that wasn't my own I launched out of Equestria, the world wouldn't be itself without the pegasii controlling the weather after all. All I really needed to do was to reset the balance of chaos. With that out of the way, and all of the overflow energy gone, I waited for everyone to get back to normal. Well, everyone but Discord.

"It did we, Spirit!" Screwball announced before pounce-tackling me in laughter. Of course she'd be the first to react, she was the only one with enough energy to match my own. Her happiness was very catchy, and soon I was laughing with her. Everyone else started racing towards us and began celebrating, and Celestia entered the throne room.

The regal form of the Princess hushed everyone's chatter with a flap of her wings. "Spirit Wind," She began, I gulped, "Not only did you disregard my lessons on control, but you broke into my castle once again." A pause to increase tension further, Screwball wouldn't let go of my neck, so I was having a hard time breathing for two reasons. "And you ended up ridding us of Discord permanently. Job well done, my little pony." She finished with a smile. Cheers broke out once again.

One voice did rise above the crowd though, "Do you know what this calls for? A PARTY!"

The familiar party mare appeared from Celestia's mane. I was sure I only returned what she had before, but Pinkie Pie has a chaos energy all her own.

One whirlwind later, the entire populations of Ponyville and Canterlot were stuffed into the Canterlot Throne Room. A large party was going on in celebration of the defeat of Discord... again. (That was on the sign) Normally, I would enjoy the festivities, but I was exhausted from the fight and the outcome, so I wanted to rest. I found Screwball swinging a bat around at the piñata field.

"Hey, Screwball, will you come with me for a bit?" I asked, still exhausted, but with an unknown energy.

"Sure, oh. Hm?" she responded. I led her out to the balcony of the large party hall (a very long ways away from the party). "Up what's?"

"Well..." I started, approaching her side as we looked out at the colored night sky, "If I remember, you said next time I wanted to kiss you, I'd have to ask. So..."

I actually was interrupted as SHE kissed me, and of course I returned it. No taste can compare with hers, and no way am I going to tell you anything about it. Too soon, though, we broke apart and she said,

"Ask just can you, kiss we when choose to get I only."

Her smirk was the stuff of gold, and I wouldn't trade her swirly eyes for anything else in the world.

"Then I get to choose the next time you get to eat a jelly filled donut!" I replied jokingly, while snatching her beanie off of her head and jumping off the balcony and into the sky.

"Fair no, hey!" She replied chuckling. I was soon pursued into the sky by a mare who was once thought of as only trouble, and the only mare able to keep me at her side.

+++

"And that was how I met your mother. And how I saved Equestria too."

Spirit concluded his story spoken towards the three children sitting upon large mushrooms in the forest located just outside of Ponyville.

"Wow..."

"Heh"

"You're too mushy dad."

Each of the children hopped up and chattered about different parts of the story. Unknown to any of the children, Spirit was being watched from a hidden part on the edge of the clearing. Soon, he was pounced on by the blur. Screwball landed on top of Spirit, a cheerful grin on her face. He returned the grin.

"Met we how of story the children the telling?" Screwball asked, already knowing the answer.

"Heh, yes, and I still remember every detail." Spirit replied, "Including our deal." Screwball chuckled.

"Well?" She asked.

"Well... can I kiss you?" Spirit asked in response.

Screwball's only reply was locking lips with him.