Wayback
Scootaloo sat in the back of the classroom she was most familiar with, having spent the majority of her filly schoolyard days learning in this very building of wood and nails. It was a traditionally small, one room schoolhouse, within the walls of which she learned a great many subjects from the same teacher. The problem was, almost all of those subjects were boring. She had almost fallen asleep, in fact, but her nap was cut short by a droning voice from the front of the room, and she snapped awake.
WAH WAH, WAH WAH, WAH WAH WAH, WAH WAH?
The young pegasus started in surprise. "What? No! I wasn't asleep!"
WAH WAH, WAH WAH, WAH WAH WAH, WAH WAH?
"My essay? Yeah, it's almost done, it's a real good one too!"
WAH WAH WAH WAH.
"Yeah, I know it's worth a quarter of my grade. I got you, don't worry!" She waved it off with an unworried gesture.
Further conversation was cut off by the clangy ringing of the final bell of the day, and there was a small stampede as all the young fillies and colts raced for the door at the same time, many bumping and jostling each other out of the way to be first out the door.
WAH WAH, WAH WAH, WAH WAH WAH!
"I won't forget it's due on Friday, don't worry!" Scootaloo called over her shoulder.
When the stampede had made its way outside, Cheerilee, at the front of the classroom, turned her head and glared white hot daggers at Pinkie Pie, who had been the guest speaker of the day with a small presentation on the bakery industry. Pinkie Pie, for some unfathomable reason, had seen fit to accompany her presentation with a trombone.
"Do you have to play that instrument while I'm trying to teach?" Cheerilee asked, disapprovingly.
"Sorry!" Pinkie grinned. "I guess I can let it... slide!" She drew out the long portion of the trombone to demonstrate her meaning. Cheerilee facepalmed.
"School is over, Pinkie, you can go home now."
"Am I being a pain in the... brass?"
"PINKIE!"
"Alright, alright," Pinkie huffed, taking her instrument with her as she marched out the door. "Everpony's a critic."
---
Scootaloo ran out the door with the rest of the class, and the rest of them had been working on their essays for the last two weeks. Scootaloo, however, had not. She had initially gone to Rainbow Dash for help with her assignment, wanting to interview her hero for part of the research portion of the essay, and consequently had spent the previous two weeks taking naps, going to Wonderbolts rehearsals, and doing tricks in the skate park. She'd nearly forgotten about the essay entirely for the last week, and if she didn't get a passing grade on this, her aunt was totally gonna kill her!
"Okay, Scoots, you got this, just go straight home, no more procrastinating, stay up all night, crank this out. No problem," she told herself, running around the side of the building without looking where she was going, and slamming straight into what felt like a brick wall of flesh. She stumbled backward, crying out in surprise and pain, and landed on her butt by the time she managed to look up again.
Discord peered down at her, hedge trimmers in one hand, dressed in gardening coveralls. He was supposed to make all the hedges surrounding the school uniform and even, but instead had made a sort of 'wave' pattern, with the tops of the plants crashing up and down.
"Where's the fire?" Discord asked, setting the trimmers down.
"No fire," Scootaloo said, getting up. She was grass stained now, and THAT wouldn't come out for at least a week. Great. "I just gotta do this stupid essay on the history of Ponyville, and I totally forgot about it. I'm gonna have to pull an all nighter just to get done in time!"
"Orrrrrrr," Discord drawled slowly, without a single hint of seriousness in his voice, "You could go back in time to see the early days of the town for yourself, and do research and interviews on someone who was actually there. Would you like that?"
"Oh boy, yeah!" Scootaloo exclaimed. "Hey, wait, why can't I just go back to two weeks ago so I can have time to do it the right way?"
"Because, doing things the right way is boring," Discord said. "And you can't go back to a previous time when you'll risk the chance of running into yourself. You'll break the space-time laws and implode the universe. Do you want to implode the universe?"
"Well, no," Scootaloo said hesitantly.
"That's settled then! Come on. I'll help you." Before the pegasus could protest, she was being scooped up in the arms of the draconequus. "We're going to have so much fun."
The young pegasus felt only mildly uncomfortable, but she hesitantly put her trust in Discord. The only other option was to risk failing her essay and subsequently the class, and ain't nopony got time fo' dat.
---
Discord teleported into his basement with the young pegasus, and in any other context that would have been ridiculously creepy and Scootaloo would probably have needed an adult. But he set her down in front of an enormous, bright blue pod shaped device that looked very much like a giant easter egg.
"Is this a Time Machine?" Scootaloo asked.
"It is," Discord said.
"Does Twilight know you have this?"
"What Twilight doesn't know won't hurt her," he replied calmly. "You think just because she's a princess now I have to send her weekly updates and progress reports? Please." He laughed. "I do what I want."
"Well, alright," she said, and climbed a short set of stairs into the egg-shaped device. Discord followed, and the stairs folded inward as the door hissed shut.
"I should think that two hundred years should be enough," Discord said, spinning a very strange looking dial. "As I recall, that cranky old aple horse was alive during the actual founding of Ponyville, so we'll go back a little farther to before that, to when the fields were still being worked." He threw Scootaloo a very ugly looking green turtleneck. "Put this on."
"What, why?"
"Wings," he said simply. "Ponyville was first founded by earth ponies, so you're going to be a bit of an oddity. More so than usual."
"Oh, alright," Scootaloo said, and was halfway through pulling the sweater over her head when she blinked suddenly. "Hey!"
Discord roared with laughter, and pulled a lever, the machine jolted and vibrated with such force that Scootaloo yelped and fell forward onto her face. There was no magical burst of energy or overly dramatic effect, just a jolt and then silence.
"That's it?" she blinked.
"That's it," Discord said. "We never even moved locations. Just jumped out of one time into another. The stories always make it sound so dramatic."
The door hissed open again, and Scootaloo slowly peeked outward. She was hesitant that something so underwhelming could have such a mind-boggling effect as time travel, she had been expecting more, at least a light show of some kind. "I can't believe it was easy as that," Scootaloo said.
"Well what did you expect?" Discord asked, sounding almost bored. "A Terrifying Anomaly of Really Disorienting, Interesting Science?"
"Something like that," Scootaloo said, and jumped out of the pod machine. She wasn't sure what was expecting, but it wasn't Discord's basement. There were fields and farmlands stretching in every direction as far as the eye could see. Dozens of earth ponies of all sizes and colors were working the fields, planting and tilling and seeding. There was even an enormous clydesdale easily twice the size of Big Macintosh pulling a plow across the soil over an empty section of land. There appeared to be some rows of vegetables here and there, but for the most part it was all wheat, stalks of golden oats stretching out of the ground towards the sky. Rows and rows and rows of it.
"So before Ponyville ever even happened, this was all farmland?" Scootaloo asked. "I've never seen so many oats in my life."
"It's wheat, actually, and, well, you know what they say," Discord said, leading Scootaloo forward as they went to conduct research and interviews for Scootaloo's school paper. Discord looked down at her, grinning maliciously, his eyes glinting.
"Nothing ventured, nothing grained."