Breaking Reality

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There's only so much you can blame on the imaginary drugs you think someone must have slipped into that food you ate a bit ago to explain what you're seeing.

That's really quite a key acknowledgement. Alongside it, if you're crazy enough to hallucinate things happening that couldn't be called anything less than the acts of a god, you may as well just call your personal crazy-land reality and move on with life, because i'm fairly sure you aren't getting out of there. Ever. So you may as well just adapt and look for the positive side.

Most of you have probably known these sorts of things forever. Maybe you haven't, but I just gave you a convenient lesson summary, and if I was you, i'd pretend that I had. Look good when possible, I suppose I'm saying. Because they're both completely right. I'd known and understood that for a good while--both were easily reachable conclusions--though I admit, it only really set in on the day I went crazy. Before that, they were just one more thing that could spiral through my mind and maybe, if they were lucky, get caught in a moment of focus. They might have been there jokingly, too. But madness throws a lot into the foreground that previously was probably more comparable to... I don't know. That speck of color you accidental made when you set down a paintbrush? That.

All this rather poorly stated several times over, i'm insane. At least, i'm pretty sure i'm insane. See, I can't be sane, so it would follow that I would be the opposite—and as sanity doesn't ordinarily involve seeing a magical cartoon chimera, you can understand my logical progression here.

How did I start seeing a magical cartoon chimera? Well, that takes a story to explain. But it's sort of a lame one, and really, really, really short, too. The chimera just sort of appeared, you know, in one of those cartoony magical "poof"s. Rather randomly. I think I was eating pizza and playing Skyrim at the time. Regardless, that isn't really the critical component of the story. A random event is insignificant until it makes something happen, so the critical part of the story lies in what this did to me. And, man, did going crazy do a lot to me. A lot.

I'll start that story—the interesting, critical one—just after the random event, roughly near the established "pizza and Skyrim" point on my delusional demonstrative timeline. I believe it started with shouting.

I shouted, rather loudly, a curse or two when the multicolored serpent monster appeared between me and my tv screen. I lucked out in that I didn't make any overly drastic moves, more just gave a general flinch of shock and locked up. This meant my pizza could be saved, as well as my game, which i'd accidentally paused as my thumb slipped off the thumbstick. I looked at the serpentine beast suddenly hovering above me, body coiled in the air to fit itself into the available space. It looked weird, cartoonish,
and very familiar, its body a long slender light-brown shape, its limbs seemingly gathered from several different creatures, its head roughly that of a goat, though with two odd horns that had rather strange (and both different) shapes. Its solid red eyes looked around the plain basement with an amused curiosity.

"Discord?..." I said, quietly dumbfounded. The massive beast looked at me.

"Well, now, what are you? And, perhaps, where am I?" I watched the subtle movements of the large draconequus, mouth hung open slightly. Discord raised an eyebrow and smirked slightly. "Not used to seeing cross-dimensional teleportation? Or perhaps you can't speak well." Discord gave a relaxed yawn as he stretched. "Well, whatever."

"You aren't real," I said quietly. I blinked. The moment felt absurd. Am I dreaming?

"I take mild offense at that," Discord said jokingly. I continued my undoubtably rather blank stare. The large draconequus tilted in the air and repositioned to his full length, lying horizontally in the air. The draconequus was yards long, and he definitely couldn't pose vertically in any room of my house without some trouble. He looked roughly like he was laying on a sofa, or... Something solid. Only he wasn't, of course. He was floating.

"Are you, like..." I thought for a moment. There was nothing coming to mind to follow that up with. My mouth moved anyways. "Am I hallucinating?"

"Afraid not, at least as far as I can tell. You can see me, correct? Not some sort of giant, mutant
cabbage or the like?"

"Yeah, I guess," I said flatly. A momentary impulse to ignore the floating spirit of chaos and go back to playing Skyrim until my sanity returned passed over my mind, but, of course, Discord was in the direct way of the screen. "So... uh... why are you here?" I was painfully aware of how forced the question seemed. This was by far the most awkward hallucinated exchange i'd ever had.

"An emergency escape, I'm afraid. Ran into an awful conflict with a number of dreadfully irritable ponies." Discord looked up, reaching a clawed foot to the white-painted ceiling and running it along the surface. "No idea where I was going, of course, not that this dimension doesn't seem decent, my strange, pale friend."

I continued staring. It seemed to have not resulted in any sort of negative consequence so far, and i'm not the sort to fix things that aren't broken. Or fix things that are broken that I don't immediately need. Discord raised an eyebrow at me, sitting with a vacant expression on my sofa.

"So, does this place have a name?" Discord said.

"Earth," I said.

"And what is your species called?" Discord asked, in a leading tone of voice.

"Human," I said.

"And what are you called?"

"Aaron," I answered. Discord smirked.

"So you can speak more fluidly when prompted." He looked around the room. "Though, I can't ask you much more. That would spoil all the fun of discovery." He seemed to have a childish glee at the idea.

"Cool," I said. My mind froze a seconds, rebooted, and I blinked a few times. "Can you, uh, move? I'm playing a game."

"Hmm?" Discord said. He glanced behind him, twisting his neck to look. His fingers snapped, and a bright flash of light followed. "Better?" A voice said from near my ear. My head whipped around. Yup, there he was, lying on the small ledge going along the back wall. His head was inches away, a wide, slightly cruel smirk on his face. He looked a bit more massive, put against the still more confined space behind me.

"Yeah, that's better," I said, maddeningly calm. The draconequus seemed unperturbed by this. My heart pounded heavily in my chest, and as I looked for a moment down to my controller, I noticed a shaking to my hands. The screen remained paused, even as I refocused on it.

"You don't seem to be doing much," Discord said with a happy sarcasm after a few seconds.

"I haven't started."

"Well, I am rather curious, if you would," Discord said.

"Actually, I don't think I should," I said, the sheer stupidity of my shocked psyche bothering me to no end. But, I'd said it, so I was obligated to not do it. I held the center button, and when the option came onto the screen, I turned off the console. And then the tv.

"A shame," Discord said into my ear with a politely disappointed air.

"Yeah, I guess." I grabbed the plate and with it, my pizza. I started to walk out of the room, trying hard to not look back. Denying. Ignore him. He's not real.

"How rude a host you are, ignoring your guest," Discord said in joking critique. I kept walking out of the room, down the hallway, up the staircase, to the left, and all the walking it took to get me up to my room, where I immediately closed the door and locked it behind me. I checked that the bump of the lock was pressed in. I looked around. Normal bed, normal futon, normal desk. See. He didn't even follow you. He would have totally followed you if he existed. I chuckled a bit and enjoyed the numb tingle that often accompanied re-realizing my own madness. Then I laughed. Then I chuckled some more.

"Wow... I actually snapped." I walked over to my computer and hit the power. The light turned green as the desktop slowly came to life. I rested my cheek on my hand, braced on my desk. My fingers drummed. Ha, Discord just showing up in your basement. What sort of fantasy bullshit is that?

The screen flashed as the startup process continued. Really, it wasn't that slow, but under the looming pressure that thinking one's self insane brings, it felt like trying to watch a snail move from one end of a table to the other. I took a bite of pizza, and as I tore off a bite of topping-covered bread goodness, I looked back at the door. I had barely even been thinking as I did so, but as soon as I considered the reason I'd looked was incredibly obvious.

He isn't there, idiot. He isn't real. I forced my focus back to my computer, setting my pizza down and putting my fingers on my keyboard. A few seconds, and the user log-in was before me. I went through the log-in steps, watched the desktop boot, hit the google Chrome shortcut, waited another second or two for that to load... I looked at the doorway again. It, as is the natural tendency of doors, was not moving. There weren't any obvious sounds coming from past it, either.

He isn't there, my thoughts yelled in cruel denial of the possibility.

I've never been actually crazy, though. What guarantees this isn't really happening? the other side of my thoughts said back with calm rationality. Odd, given it seemed the side that favored losing my grip on reality.

The fact that cartoon characters don't exist, the other side replied.

You have no sense of imagination, do you? the other side replied. I stared at the loaded Chrome window. I didn't actually have a plan for doing anything on the computer, I knew. But the crazy, "Aaron, just let go of your grip on your reality, it'll be hilarious, man," part of my brain wasn't something I liked to let pressure me into doing things. It just seemed... You know. Stupid.

I clicked on my bookmarks folder labeled "pony" and headed to Equestria Daily. I'd checked it just before going downstairs, so it wasn't probably going to have too much that I hadn't seen. Not the best distraction to pick.

Sure enough... There were only a few things, including fanfiction updates to stories I wasn't reading, and non-vocal music by people I didn't know. Nothing that interested me. I felt an odd tingle on my neck's right side, and the solitude of the room felt disturbing for a moment. I looked to the door with a quick glance. Still not moving. I stared at my screen again. Then my desk.

I sighed. I really need to work on self restraint, I thought as I got up off my seat to check for my fantasized mythical villain. I walked to the boundary of my room and the rest of my house. The plain wooden portal separating me and the pursuit of madness. I grabbed the door handle, twisted my hand, and walked back out into the not-my-room rooms of my house. They didn't seem horribly off, and also seemed rather void of Discord, so I headed back towards the basement. The first sign was loud laughing, in that rather distinct voice. Which made me curious, if Discord did exist, how separate was he from his voice actors and animators?

I kept walking, shoving the thought to the back of my mind. This wasn't something worth logical analysis. As I turned into the hallway leading to my gaming room, I saw the large draconequus. Vertical. That seemed physically impossible. I ran into the room, and Discord turned to me with a smile.

"Ah, Aaron, nice of you to join me."

I looked around the room. First off, it was way larger than it had been. The ceiling was increased from maybe 7 or 8 feet to at least 15, and horizontally... the room seemed to somehow stretch infinitely away from me and the draconequus. Everything previously in the room was gone, replaced with... I wasn't even really sure. A wide assortment of random things in a large, plain white space. Very, very odd random things. I was getting tired of doing the surprised-and-in-shock act, but I found it happening again.

"Uh," I said astutely. Discord turned toward me and stretched his mismatched arms to the ceiling.

"I've done a wondrous job of remodeling, if I do say so myself!" He lowered his arms and put his lions claw to his chin. "Though I admit that the walls could use a more stimulating color than white."

"What'd you do to my stuff?!" I said, louder and more whiny than i'd intended. He waved a hand back and forth dismissively.

"Oh, nothing. It's back in the native dimension of this space, perfectly safe and unchanged."

"So this, uh-" My eyes lingered on a massive centipede nearby that seemed to be constructed out of segments that were pumpkins. "-place is another dimension?"

"Well, if you'd like to put it in simple terms, yes. One big, cross-dimensional hole, dug personally by me."

"But, like... The room..." I said weakly. My thoughts however, went in a more positive direction than concern over the existence of a specific room in my basement; Hey, he is here. See? At bare minimum, you're at least crazy in a reliable way.

"Yes?" Discord asked, elongating it in a leading manner.

"Uh, that needs to be there. My parents will be back soon, and, uh-"

"Well, i'll just put this away when they get here, if it'd be a disturbance. What do you think of it, though?" Discord raised an eyebrow questioningly.

"The... the dimensional thing you made?"

"Yes, that," Discord confirmed.

"It's, uh, nice?" I said. Bizarre seemed more accurate than nice, but, if it was at all possible that this Discord--who couldn't really be the animated Discord, because that would mean he'd have to be voiced and animated instantaneously in real time by animators and his voice actor. In the third dimension. In my basement. But, regardless of that... if this Discord were real, pissing him off would be a devastating mistake.

"Hmm, yes, nice... Still, I would admit, it isn't my best work. I don't seem quite as powerful here as in Equestria." He paused. "Maybe if I did add color..."

"So, wait, why haven't you just done this to my whole house?" I asked.

"Why, that would be rude," Discord said. Almost as an afterthought, he added, "And far too easy. The whole joy of a game lies in challenging one's self."

"Makes sense," I said numbly. We stared at each other for a moment. I adjusted my glasses. "So, uh, you just gonna stay down here?" Discord opened his both, but then glanced behind him at the sound of something exploding. He looked for a moment, relatively unconcerned, before looking back.

"Well, I could. It would be rather boring though. Chaos needs an audience."

"I mean... what do you wanna do?" Amazing how quickly my attempts at controlled speech devolve into the most common of phrases.

"Well, I would be open to suggestions."

"What?" I said.

"Suggestions. Vocalized or hinted directions for action. I'll obey anything you give me."

"Oh... Hmm." I'll obey? "...Don't you sort of normally make the rules? Control things?"

"Sometimes. Depends on my mood, really." He seemed to think for a moment. "Though certainly it is a bit more fun to control others... Hmm." He snapped, and in a flash of light, he was gone. I blinked in surprise. His position became suddenly clear to me again when I felt a light touch on the back of my head. I felt a weird surge of warmth over my body. Whatever delay there'd been in my instinctive urge to move away, that seemed to cancel it, and I jerked forwards, turning as I did so. Discord hovered where i'd been standing, looking curiously at his index- finger? Talon?

"What was that?!" I asked, both excited and irritated. My heart was pounding, and the warmth lingered, along with an electric tingle. It felt uncomfortable.

"Oh, just a test. You appear to be resistant to mental manipulation. Kudos." My heartbeat intensified.

"So... You tried to mind-control me?"

"More like tweak your brain than 'control,' per say," Discord said. He seemed completely casual about it. Like it hadn't even taken a thought, or was just done spontaneously. Which it was. Discord. Chaos. Of course he's casual about it. You've done long-winded rants about how casual he was about it and why you didn't like that.

"Well, that's cool, I guess."

"Hmm. You're okay with that?"

"I guess. I mean, not like it'd matter."

"Interesting," Discord said.

"In a good way, or a bad way?" I asked.

"Good. Entertaining, at least. Which in the end is just good, really, so let's settle at that." I nodded.

"Okay." I looked around. "Well. Uh. Yeah." I rubbed the back of my head. There wasn't really anything else I could think of to say to the godlike figure. He did seem to still be there, and not acting quite as nice to me as he probably would have if he was merely a delusion of mine. He also didn't seem to be steering me towards anything, which seemed to move my self-diagnosis farther away still from having snapped. But, if that were all the case, what was there to do? Leave him in my basement? That didn't seem very effective. Or likely to be possible, for that matter.

"Well, anything else?" I broke out of my thoughts.

"Hmm?"

"You did come back down here. Not for anything specific?" Discord absentmindedly waved a hand around, a red flame trailing after his fingertips.

"Not really. Just checking where you were."

"That's nice of you." I nodded again. I remained paused for maybe a second before starting for the hall, desperate to escape the rather slow, awkward, confused conversation. I was almost past when a force gripped at my shoulder. I looked, but there was nothing there. It had, however, appeared right when I was reached Discord's side. "Would you mind if I accompanied you upstairs? You seem more interesting than here at the moment." I was silent a moment. Be friendly. Appeasement.

"No, I guess." The force released, and I started walking again. Discord lowered his head and followed me, snapping his fingers as he went. I looked back subconsciously, and from what I could see, the old, much closer wall seemed to be back in place. I assumed the whole room had followed back into place. With a snap. I headed back to my room, trying again to ignore the mythical beast following. That seemed to be a pattern. Acknowledge, Ignore, Deny. Of course, it'd be harder to do the denial phase with Discord actually present. But I would try, damn it.

"So, you mentioned parents?"

"Yeah," I said. "They're out running errands for today."

"Hmm," Discord offered as comment. "Do you think they'll mind?" The weight of that sentence took a second to hit. It was amazing that I didn't feel it as soon as the sentence was spoken, because the thing must have weighed a ton.

"Probably," I said, a little shakily.

"Well, then, I will simply take my leave whenever they return." I looked back, which didn't work out too great because Discord just kept moving. He hovered right up to me, moving to head over my shoulder, though he paused on noting that i'd stopped. This had the awkward effect of shoving his face almost against mine. "Yes?" He said, still calm.

"I, uh-" His bright red eyes were locked with mine. It was fairly intimidating. "Like. That just seems... helpful."

"Yes, that was the idea."

"Okay," I said flatly. I turned around briskly and started once again heading to my room. Discord chuckled behind me as I went. It bugged me.

I opened more door, and Discord ducked his head to follow me into my room. He was still chuckling. I wasn't entirely sure about what, unless he really just found my vague discomfort that hilarious.

"Well... This'll be fun," I muttured as I sat down at my computer, Discord hovering behind my shoulder.

Fun, as implied by my sarcastic utterance, wasn't what i'd call the next hour I spent in Discord's company. At least not for me; Discord seemed to be having a blast. Mostly because he seemed fascinated by my interests. And, you know, the whole "brony" concept.

As with the computers of most bronies I know, mine had quickly revealed me as having some knowledge of Equestria, so Discord got to that part of the hour after maybe two minutes, when I reached my homepage (Equestria Daily) and... Well, that's sort of a dead giveaway. So that bought maybe fifteen minutes of nothing but awkwardly explaining things. Discord took the news that he was a creation made for children's entertainment on earth pretty well, chuckling amusedly and joking about how humans must have much better senses of humor over ponies as opposed to having an existential breakdown. He could warp dimensions, so that did make sense, I suppose. Him being surprised by anything as mundane as being revealed as a multi-person creative effort from a different plane of existence would have come as a surprise to me.

After that, though, things got more awkward still, because most of my normal time would have been devoted to checking artists (and there were several that might have been... Strange... To check in front of Discord) and watching stuff on the internet, which felt somewhat self-focused with a guest. Even if the guest was a possibly imagined serpentine cartoon character.

"So, these bronies, as you call them," Discord started. Given my lack of direction, Discord had seemed content to keep driving the conversation in that direction. Presumably, again, because my suffering and growing irritation amused him. By the end of the hour (And I knew it was an hour--i'd been checking my watch throughout the time), or now, it was driving me mad. "Are all obsessing over a kid's tv show, which happens to perfectly mirror my home dimension, for personal amusement, and many devote hours of their free time to this, and only this."

I let out a long breath. "Basically, yes."

"Ha!" Discord exclaimed. Again. "Priceless! It's such a bizarre situation I bet only a couple thousand individuals have ever thought of it." Discord laughed a bit longer, clutching his stomach and tilting back his head. Discord's chuckles took a while to die off, and to my anguish, he immediately resumed staring at my screen as soon as he was done.

"So, have anything in particular you want to see?" I asked, boredom leaking from my words.

"What is there to see?" Discord asked.

"I don't know. Videos. Games. More pony stuff." I added the last one with a bitter sarcasm. As I probably should have predicted, it was stupid to even mention the option.

"Show me this pony stuff of yours." I gave a small snort of irritation, but I was already moving my hand to open the appropriate folder on my desktop. Just get it over with, hide any sort of emotional response, and he'll lose interest. Probably. As the folder opened, a strange feeling of dread came over me. Hopefully.

"What amongst the pony stuff do you want to see?" I asked, cursor drifting up and down the additional folders in there. Fanfiction, Images, Videos...

"Hmm... How about images," Discord said, with the tone of someone experimenting aimlessly for amusement. I clicked it open. I looked over some of the first of hundreds of images I had saved, but I suddenly felt tired. Well, more tired, really.

"You know what, you can just look through the stuff if you find it so fascinating." I got up, and Discord shifted behind my seat to let me pass.

"You aren't going to give me any guidance on how to do that?"

"Eh, the computer's almost dead anyways. It'll be more fun for you this way." Discord smirked.

"How considerate of you, Aaron." Discord touched my chair, and in a flash of light it teleported two feet backwards. Discord promptly sat and put his eagle's claw on the mouse, lifting it and looking over the device analytically. I walked out of the room. If he's willing to dick around looking through my pony stuff, then i'll let him. After a moment, I turned around and shut the door behind me.

I headed out to my kitchen and started making myself a sandwich. Cheese, ham, pickles, bread... I tossed the ingredients down on the counter, and went about the process of getting out a plate, getting out bread and putting that on the plate, and putting the other toppings on that. A sandwich. I started eating--really, that was the nice thing about a sandwich, how little preparation time it took. Two minutes and I was away from explaining my love of a show to one of its stars and instead with a delicious sandwich. Much better company.

"Man... what the hell did I do to have this happen," I muttered to myself as I took a bite of the sandwich. Bizarre. The whole situation was bizarre. I'm eating a sandwich while two rooms away an omnipotent being browses my pony images. I kept eating. It wasn't a very exciting sandwich, but it wasn't bad by any means either. Decent.

Even though I desperately wanted to avoid being in Discord's company, I had a very, very strong urge to run back into that room and not let him out of my sight. My sandwich was much nicer, it was true; but it also didn't have much destructive potential. Discord could have turned my computer into a pinata filled with chocolate syrup in like two seconds, if the thought passed through his mind. Though he had said something about being polite or restricting himself or something, so he probably hadn't. "Probably" being key there. I took another bite of sandwich, forcing myself to eat it slowly. He'd be fine, and I needed to keep myself in a rational state, which being near Discord was never going to allow.

Having to explain what a brony is again... how tedious. Chewing felt like work for some reason, but I kept going at it. How Discord could be so distracting without even trying was incredible to me. I suppose the whole situation was rather... fantastic, but still, it was hard to believe. Hell, I didn't believe it. The idea that I was going to wake up at any second kept reappearing in my head as soon as it could be shoved out, persistent and powerful.

I heard a loud fit of laughter from my room. I could only imagine why he was laughing again, but it could have been any number of things considering the vastness of my pony folder. I bit into my sandwich again. It was almost gone; i'd have to switch to an apple soon if I was going to keep using the food excuse to avoid my room. I got maybe a minute of silence before I heard another burst of laughter.

What is he looking at? I finished my sandwich in two large, tearing bites, probably influenced by my gradually decreasing tolerance for abnormality. I got my apple, and took a large, aggressive chomp out of it. It was a Granny Smith, and rather dark green, so it was pretty tart. How I liked it. Some of the comics are funny, yeah, but not... laugh-out-loud funny. Not that laugh-out-loud funny, at least. I held the apple up to my teeth, but then my arm started to drop.

"Aw, fuck it," I muttered to myself (which it seemed was conceptually threatening to become a habit), and traveled back towards my room. I kept the apple with me.

I looked over to my chair as I opened the door, and there was Discord, leaned back and several feet away from my desk to fit into the space more easily. His head leaned against his left hand in a casual, relaxed manner. His right hand seemed to be missing, but then I noticed a yellow stump extending from where the mousepad was located and I understood. Being a draconequus would be the most convenient thing ever. Discord didn't glance over, but his visible eyes did seem to turn towards me.

"You weren't gone all that long. I've only gotten through what i'd guess is a small fraction of the total content here."

"Yeah. I got bored," I said unenthusiastically. "What are you lookin-" I stared a moment when I reached the screen. Oh, that's what was so funny. Some rather saucy shipping art, specifically rather saucy shipping art of Discord. I opened my mouth to say something, but my brain seemed to have shut down momentarily, and it wasn't rebooting very quick. Discord's grin broke into a wide, slightly predatory smile.

"So, an individual of unusual tastes?" He said it in a sort of forceful whisper, not really loud, but intimidating none the less. He hadn't even said it in an angry way, in fact he sounded rather delighted, but there was still something unnerving about it. I wanted to just turn around and leave, but I didn't. There was something between curiosity and a bizarre sense of politeness pinning me in place.

"Uh- well, I guess so, yeah," I muttered. Well, that sounded weak. I dragged out what little pride I could muster, and gave it a second shot. "Yeah." Slightly better. Still not above "horrible." Discord gave a snort, and then promptly teleported. I blinked. It took a second for my head to remember that it wanted to know where he was and start turning, but thankfully, Discord once again provided his location rather quickly.

I felt his fur push up against the back of my head. Shortly after feeling this, the weight of two hands landed on each respective shoulder, and there was a playful chuckle from behind me. The mix of various factors sent an uncomfortably pleasant tingle of anticipation through my body, one that I did not want to be experiencing while still unsure of my mental stability. "Well, you could have said so earlier! There's nothing wrong with strange interests."

"Yep. I could have, but I didn't, so that's that," I said, voice becoming increasingly flustered as Discord started to rub my shoulders. "You could get off me now, you don't have to-"

"Oh, i'm quite fine here." He snickered. "Your face is simply marvelous right now, and to disrupt your making it would be nothing short of kind and compassionate! It's straight out, that is to say." I turned my head back to the right, eyeing the paw squeezing my shoulder. The individual... toes(?), I suppose would be the colloquial term over fingers, were mesmerizing to look at. They were just so... not real. I wondered if Discord was seeing some bizarrely over-textured, over-complicated being under his Molesting hands. Then I lunged sideways onto my futon to get out from under his molesting hands.

He just chuckled again. "This is incredibly good comedic output for the effort it's taking, you realize."

The hands seemed to still be on my shoulders, persisting in massaging me with an unholy vigor. Despite the fact the Discord, who I could see clearly again from my new, horizontal vantage point, had not moved. The clean stumps of his arms--And, well, that he was Discord--made how that was happening pretty quickly apparent.

"Are these, uh, gonna just stay there? They're-" My brain slapped my mouth silent a moment. If my thought at that moment could have a voice, it would speak in an angry whisper. Quit being polite! You're having your shoulders rubbed without your consent! Are you just gonna take that? My mouth closed as civil war broke out in the brain department of my body.

Well, I mean, I shouldn't. It's not right. And clearly it's being done only in jest. Thereby, I should work to stop it. It's only logical.

...It does feel good you know, Logical Side, a different part of me said. Probably good 'ole Insanity.

"Oops. Aaron? Have I broken you? You seem to be zoning out," Discord said, tapping my head with a stump. My brain department made a hasty compromise.

"Discord, get your hands off me. For now." Instant regret came at the stupidity of what the ending there seemed to imply. I considered furiously backpedaling, but for some reason that felt stupid and embarrassing even before doing it. Which wasn't normal. Normally backpedaling got going before I would realize I was being stupid and embarrassing. I was fairly surprised when Discord obliged, hovering his hands back to him and displaying his palms in a peace gesture while they went about reattaching.

"Well, if you promise to make it up later, i'll happily retreat for now."

"I won't make any sort of promise," I said, annoyed.

"Nah, you will," Discord said, in classic infantile comeback fashion. "I get an exemption from my "obey you" rule next time I mess with you. Heard it loud and clear from your brain just now."

"My brai- Wait, that was a rule? Not just for like those ten seconds?" I said incredulously.

"Yep," Discord said calmly.

I shifted slightly on the futon as I massaged my temples. I have Discord in my house, who has at least said that he'll obey whatever I say, he knows what a brony is, that i'm one, and that I really, really like ponies. Probably a bit too much. I took a deep breath. I could be hallucinating, but it doesn't seem likely, and if I am, my parents will be coming back soon enough. Though Discord's said he'll just leave then. I took another breath, slightly smaller, for strength, and then forced myself to stand.

"Okay, then," I said, sounding much more decisive than I actually was. "I don't really know what to do, so i'm just going to go over to a window and stare contemplatively at the outside world for a while. You can keep looking at... whatever. I don't even care."

"Toodles, again, then," Discord said, flashing back to my armchair and immediately resuming his image browsing. I left and went to a window. I had some contemplative staring to do.

Window

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Staring out the window didn't help much, tragically. The outside was still the outside, and the outside would help me little in my current predicament.

Hey, at least Discord likes you, I thought. Possibly in a way that could lead to sexy times. I thought a moment. On the other hand, it might lead to sexy times. Unwilling ones. With Discord. I felt a shudder go over my body. The sheer number of awful things that I might-or-might-not enjoy that something with his range of reality-bending powers could do was an intimidating concept. I took a bite from my apple. I'd barely remembered having it while I was in my room, but away from Discord again, I could fully enjoy and appreciate it. It was slightly crushed; apparently, i'd been gripping it progressively tighter and tighter in my room, so there were indents where my fingers had been. Delicious, mushy apple indents.

If I could have just sunk all my conscious thought into that apple and how it tasted, I would have. Heck, I was trying to. But calm refused to come. Presumably, it had gone and stayed with Discord and his calm. They were probably having a calm party back in my room.

My sense of rationality is disappearing fast, I realized to myself. The stress of the nonsense going on was more than my pitifully low emotional maturity could keep under control.

I sighed. I wish I was able to use my computer right now. Just be alone, me and my computer, and maybe some online comedians. Relaxing. Maybe complaining about how bored I am. There wasn't anything that sounded like a good idea to do; Discord, who I wanted with increasing degrees of desperation to avoid, was at my computer. Playing video games was too time intensive and could well be interrupted, even assuming that the process of dimensional distortion hadn't somehow destroyed my Xbox. Eating would require having unused space in my digestive system, which would not be true, especially after this apple. Sleeping would require me being tired, and besides that, I reaaaally didn't want to leave myself sleeping anywhere near Discord. It felt too vulnerable. I mean, the dude had rubbed my shoulders.

"Because that's very threatening," I muttered to myself.

It is in the context of Discord having just seen a suggestive image of himself on your computer, yes, yes it is, spoke a paranoid part of me. Or maybe logical. From the perspective of a somewhat paranoid person it was hard to tell.

Doesn't really matter. Come on. You'd totally be waiting for something to happen. You know you would, I thought to me. And damn it, I was sort of right. I would be. With that sort of mixed feel of dread and anticipation that you get when you're about to go on a huge roller coaster, or give a short speech in front of a large group. That. It really didn't matter, though, as I had no intentions of sleeping, whether or not Discord would take advantage of the opportunity, and whether or not I would enjoy it. It wasn't a time to give in to madness or perversion. It was a time for... well, something else. It was hard to really say. But not that.

I heard Discord chuckling again from the other room.

I took a bite of apple. My sanity had just fallen another notch, I was pretty sure. Presuming I was still sane. Even if I wasn't, it didn't help me. That would mean I was completely delusional, and at that point things were going to suck period. For some reason, I couldn't appreciate the taste quite as much as I had earlier. Thoughtfulness, ruining life as per usual.

As I moved to take another immediate bite, inspiration suddenly struck like a bolt of lightning born from the clouds of concern circling my brain. A simple realization, overshadowed not more than twenty minutes earlier by irritation.

I have a godlike entity obeying my orders. If i'd been speaking aloud, I would have pointlessly cursed to emphasize how awesome this suddenly was. Okay, sure, he was only listening by principle on a rule he set that he could theoretically disobey at any second, but still. Command of a god of chaos. The thought was enough to quietly move contemplation and worry to the side and walk back to my room. Again. My aimless motion through my house was quickly becoming a hammered-home foolishness, but I couldn't have cared less.

"Discord!" I called enthusiastically, my energy showing as I burst through my own door triumphantly.

"Aaron!" Discord called in the same manner, turning to face me, and stretching his arms wide in a mock display of welcoming, which I promptly got on ignoring. I thrust the hand holding the apple out into the air.

"Make this into a-" I thought a moment. This probably could have been more thought out. It probably should have been, even. "Uh... hmm."

"I presume that this isn't quite what you were planning to say," Discord said calmly. I nodded slightly.

"Yeah. Not quite. I was going to try giving you some kind of request, test the whole obedience thing." I lowered my apple. Rather lamely, I might add. "Yeah..." Discord laughed. He did that a lot, it seemed.

"You're so delightfully impotent," Discord said, snapping his fingers. My fingers clenched in subconsciously as the apple held in them vanished and popped back into reality in Discord's palm.

"I-" I started to object. But, really... yep. Yep, kinda, indeed. He was a reality distorting immortal, I was an unfit, somewhat pudgy mortal teenager. "I guess. Uh." Discord tossed the apple up in the air and ate the whole thing, core and all, in a swift chomp.

"Okay, then, test it."

"...What?"

"Test it," Discord repeated. I stared a moment.

"You ate the apple."

"You seem to be confused, here. I don't think the apple is relevant to proceedings. You just tell me something to do, and then analyze the results." I was silent for a moment as I tried to minimize visible frustration.

"Ah, yes, of course." I sat down the edge of my bed. My brain was completely empty--I couldn't think of a single order to give that remotely made sense. I wasn't hungry, but I was still stuck on the food thing. Discord turned back to my computer screen, where he was evidently continuing to look through my massive shipping image folder one picture at a time.

"Screw the test," I said after maybe a minute of silence.

"Hmm?"

"I'm just going to trust that you're listening to me for now," I said. "It's not like it'd really affect much one way or the other. I can't even think of anything I want."

"Okay, then," Discord said indifferently, flipping to the next image. I watched him do this several times, just stare at an image smirking, and then flip to the next after like three seconds.

"...Are you ever going to get fucking tired of that?"

"Whatever do you mean, Aaron?" Discord said with painfully obvious fake obliviousness.

"Looking through my image collection. Specifically my shipping one." I jabbed my finger toward my screen for emphasis. "That."

"I really can't say. You keep getting bothered by it, and that's funny, so, potentially never." He paused a moment, clicking to another image. Luna x Twilight. "And, of course, conceptually this is just hilarious. I'm looking at two sworn enemies making out in the sky." He rested his muzzle on his hand. "Not sure why'd they'd choose the sky. It's not very romantic."

"It's not?" I asked, before I could remember I was irritated.

"Not really, no. Well, not in my opinion, at least. Though I admit i've been off the dating market for a while. Trapped in stone and all that." He clicked the mouse again.

"Okay, nevermind, I thought of something to order you to do. Stop looking through my pony collection. It's... weird." Discord spun the chair to face me, and in a manuver fairly impressive for someon- something, that had only been using a computer for under an hour, clicked the folder closed while doing so.

"Done," Discord said happily. "How do you plan to amuse me now?"

"I don't," I said, hopping off my bed. Discord chuckled.

"Well, then." I heard him snap, and he was waiting outside my room in the hallway. "I suppose i'll have to make my own amusement again."

"Mmmhmm," I muttered as I kept walking, turning away from the draconequus. I wasn't really sure where I was walking, but I had Discord hovering over me from behind, which was a pretty good motivator to keep walking somewhere. He kept silent as I gradually made a course to my basement, which was kind of unnerving, really. A several meter long serpentine chimera hovering behind me who seemed to enjoy making me feel uncomfortable; or, in layman's terms, terrifying shit.

My theory that everything was back to normal, at least visually, was confirmed as I got back into the room that Discord had appeared in. The room was no longer a massive white space, the tv and gaming systems were back, and there weren't any random, bizarre... things, in the room. I went over and sat down on the couch. Discord, perhaps a yard away, pointlessly teleported himself to the seat immediately beside me. The air stood still, excluding our breathing. It was fairly tense. I felt the impulse to move, and maybe even do something, but my body evidently didn't feel like it, because I wasn't. I glanced over to Discord. He seemed to be watching me intently, which was kind of discomforting, so I turned back away.

"So, uh." I started. Discord just kept staring at me. I looked over to him. "What was being in stone like?" DIscord's eyes widened for a moment, and he blinked. I thought I even saw a flash of melancholy, but if it was there, he hid both it and his surprise away after a second.

"Hmm, well..." The draconequus stroked his goat beard. "...Cold."

"Cold?"

"Cold," he repeated. "And very, very, very dull."

"Huh," I said astutely. It surprised me that he'd managed to say that with almost no sense of... sadness. I mean. A thousand years of boredom and cold. I'd be pissed. "Well, ok then. That's an insight."

"Really, it's a rather morally questionable punishment. On the upside, though, you don't have to worry about much when you're a statue. Besides ponies with gum." He gave an exaggerated shudder. "Ugh."

"Was it lonely?" I asked. He didn't seem to mind, so... why not? It was something interesting to contemplate. Centuries of imprisonment; an idea beyond true human comprehension. Not that some fanfic writers hadn't tried.

"What do you think?" Discord said with a playful sarcasm.

"...Yes," I said. Okay, "would it be lonely" probably isn't the part outside human comprehension, me. Discord smirked. His upper body twisted towards me, but his lower half didn't move at all. It was strange, but it looked somehow completely natural at the same time.

"Correct 100%."

"Can a one-word answer really be partially right?" I said immediately. Discord's smirk widened a bit. It gave it a slightly feral look, that sort of smile where the teeth are showing in an "i'm going to bite you," way more than a "I am happy at this moment," sort of way. His mismatched paws came together to form a flat level, which he promptly rested his chin on. His smiling at me over that small, artificial platform from two feet away just felt bizarre. His neck was arched to do it too.

"Well, i'm not quite sure. If I wasn't 100% lonely during my short retreat to stone skin palace, would "Yes," be a 100% correct answer?" I opened my mouth to respond, but one of Discord's arms darted out and pressed a silencing finger to my mouth. My hand jerked up and grabbed his wrist reflexively. That, too, was bizarre; Like. No one actually does that. It's just something that wasn't really an effective means of silencing someone.

Seems to be working fine for him, though. Indeed, i'd stopped speaking.

"I would like to note, though i'll not yet invoke my exception, that you've steered the conversation towards how lonely i've been for... mmm, the past millennium or so, while sitting not more than a yard away from me." His finger moved away, and my hand fell limply off his arm as it withdrew from my personal space. "You are trying to avoid me physically toying with you, right?"

I'm not sure. "Yeah, haha, yeah..." I scooted a little further away from Discord. Which didn't do much, considering I was already at the edge of the couch, but every little bit counted. I felt myself blushing. Discord twisted his body further in the direction he'd already turned, and then, in an elastic twist, spun his body 270 degrees in the opposite direction with a loud crack. Then he returned to a normal sitting position, giving a contented sigh while slumping back against the sofa's back.

"...You are a much better audience than my last crowd. You respond in the way a normal person would be expected to."

"I don't think a normal person would react quite like this to you flirting with them, to be entirely honest," I said immediately. He laughed.

"Perhaps not. Still. The point that you're a much better audience than the folks back home stands." I shifted in my seat. I'd gone from bored, to trapped uncomfortably close to Discord. And in conversation with him.

"We'll see how long that lasts," I said quietly.

"You being a good audience? Well, that lasts until I get bored. Which could be a while. You have a whole new set of cultural values for me to bend and disregard in front of you." The feral quality in his persistent grin really shined. Like. Bright, straight into my eyes. "Plus, you're a weakling, but one I can't directly influence. A perfect setpiece on my board."

"Wow," I responded flatly. "Glad to know i'm so perfectly amusing to you."

"It does have advantages, you know. Though you have yet to capitalize on them."

"The obedience game thing?" I said without changing my tone in the least. He grinned.

"I'll give you this, you do display occasional bursts of intelligence."

"It's not like i'm gonna use that for much. I can't think of anything to do with unlimited power." Discord just laughed again at that. I waited for him to stop. And then maybe make a witty comment. A second passed. It seems... i'm becoming slowly desensitized to Discord's mannerisms, including laughing at everything. That seems dangerous somehow. His laughter gradually dropped off, and he turned back towards me.

"I'm genuinely growing curious as to what you do want, Aaron."

I'm curious about what I want as well, I thought back. That was getting harder and harder to discern, right alongside my degree of sanity. "I dunno. Maybe some pie, when I get hungry again."

"Sounds good," Discord said. "You can never go wrong with pie. I once defeated a rebellion with pie, in fact."

"What, like in Over a Barrel?" Discord raised an eyebrow questioningly. I processed why for a few moments, and then started to explain. "See, that was a different episode in the My Little Pony show I watched, where some buffalos and some ponies fought, and the ponies used pie to attack them-"

"Well, then. Yes. Vaguely like that, I suppose. Were those pies explosive or filled with spikes, out of curiosity?"

I felt a shiver of grim mirth. Lethal pies. Of course. "I think it was apples, actually."

"Hmm, I wouldn't think that would be effective."

"Well, it wasn't. I mean. They ended up having a treaty because a buffalo ate some of the pie filling, and-" I heard a grinding, coming from a small distance away. The sound of a motor moving and the rattling of plates. It was a familiar sound, the sound of a garage door opening.

The sound of a garage door opening.

"Shit!" I said under my breath.

"What is it?" Discord said calmly.

"My parents are here!" I said back.

"Ah," Discord said. "So, you want me to leave then?"

"Yes, that would be ideal, yeah," I said, somewhat hurriedly. The garage door had stopped moving. Discord gave a chuckle.

"Alright then." He snapped, and the normal flash of light happened. For some reason, though, the room disappeared, but Discord didn't; he was still right beside me, in the middle of... swirling darkness?. Then, not a second later, everything got bright.

That hurt my eyes.

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"AH, fuck, my eyes!" I yelled, hands snapping up to cover my face. I felt my legs collapse, and I fell down onto what felt like ground. Discord laughed.

"I suppose you don't go outside much?"

"Fuck!" I responded politely. I moved my hands away slowly, my eyes blinking as they quickly started adjusting to the daylight. I was on grass, for sure; glimpses of bright green confirmed that to me. There didn't seem to be much else around, besides the occasional distant tree or the like. Just oddly bright, strange looking grass... "Discord, where are we?"

"Equestria, obviously," he said, hovering as though still seated, a few feet to my side. He was strafing to reach my front, though, even as I realized where he was. A crawling sensation traveled up my spine. I took a long breath and gave a short, relaxed chuckle.

"Ha, no, seriously, Discord-"

"Equestria," he repeated. "Your parents had arrived, so I left. As per request."

"Why the hell am I here, then?" I said. I could hear the sad sound of a collapsing mind emanating from my voice. Equestria. I'm in Equestria. Discord cocked his head quizzically.

"You seem somewhat agitated. Was it the teleportation? That can be somewhat disorienting for newbies, I know." I rose slowly from the ground. I didn't even bother to take the second necessary to wipe off the back of my pants.

"Take me back."

"I'm afraid I can't," Discord said.

"I order you, take me back, and if you don't, I swear, i'll-" Any threat I make will be empty. Completely. I'm threatening the physical avatar of chaos.

"I do mean, I can't. As in, I lack the ability to comply. I was dimension-hopping randomly when I headed to your earth; I have no idea where it is." I stared blankly at him as he continued happily. "Which means I get to keep you, my adorably awkward audience, around for a long while!"

"You can't mean that, can you?" I said. My voice was weak.

"Well, no, I can. I do, actually."

"Well then why'd you take me here?" I said.

"...To keep my audience? And as a present for you." He actually spoke a little softer for the next part, to my confusion. "I figured this would be a likable shift, considering the apparent nature of your obsession."

"Well, it's not," I said frustratedly. "It's like a common thing amongst the fans to go, "oh, I wish this were real," or, "I wish I was in Equestria," but it's not serious! At least... Well, not the Equestria one. Not for me. I have connections back on earth. A family. I use technologies that don't seem to exist here for hours of every day. I'm frail, don't possess magic or flight, and I have utterly no relationships already built here. I-"

"You have me," Discord replied firmly. I shut up. "Besides," Discord carried on in a much more cheery voice, "It's not like it can be reversed, so may as well make the best of it." I held my silence for a moment. Giving up wouldn't do... but presuming he was still playing by his rules, he couldn't get me back, so he was right. I'd have to just deal with it. And whatever impact it would have on my psyche. I took a deep breath and held it for a moment before letting it out.

"Okay. What do you want to do here, then?" He smiled at my grudging acceptance of my surroundings.

"Well, first off, if i'm going to have any fun, we're going to need to steal the elements of harmony again," Discord said casually.

"No. No, we're not doing that," I said immediately.

"Well, it'd be more me doing it," Discord replied. I looked around. There was still nothing living anywhere nearby.

"Yeah, I know. I mean, you shouldn't do it." Discord looked intrigued. I waited for him to say something, but he merely twirled a finger in a "continue" gesture. "Couldn't you... make peace? Or something? Just for simplicity's sake. And, like, to avoid getting resealed in stone."

"In answer to that, no, i'm not going to make peace. What a ridiculous notion. Pony society has turned to following all that boring law and order nonsense, under their precious monarchs. I have a point to make; chaos over order and such." He snapped his fingers, appearing just beside where he had been. In his former place was a statue of him in the same pose. "As for the stone, harmony magic is rather on the slow side for Draconequus abilities." I pushed up my glasses.

"Well, then." Payback time. "I order you to not do anything to any pony without my express command." Discord seemed to freeze for a moment before flashing a wolfish grin. For a moment, I felt a shudder of fear, but then he let out something I hadn't yet heard; genuine, low-pitched, wicked sounding evil laughter. I wondered if that came naturally, or if it was something he'd practiced— it was impressive either way.

"Oh, that's excellent. You do have a spine!"

"...Yeah," I said after a short delay. Discord kept smiling. It wasn't like that was uncommon, but still.

"Haha, that'll make things a bit more interesting," Discord continued. He looked up at the sky, teeth bright white in the clear sunlight. "I'll have to be a bit more subtle..." He lowered his head, and looked off into the distance. "Are those clothes important to you?"

"What?" I said.

"Are those specific articles of clothing, the ones you brought, important to you?" Discord asked again, turning towards me. I looked down. A plain black t-shirt, pajamas, and black socks.

"No?" I said back, unsure where this was going. "I mean, kind of. I can't be naked."

"Why not? I'm naked," Discord responded. He had a suggestive tone of voice there, just subtle enough to clue me in that he understood human clothing conventions demanded that people not normally be nude. Somehow.

"Because," I answered. A gust of wind blew through the field we'd appeared in. Discord's hand started to vanish in the air, turning into a strange colored mist. It was like the wind was sweeping his flesh away.

"Eh, I suppose it's not important." The snap. The flash. I immediately started looking around for his new location, but for one thing, I didn't see him anywhere, and two, I felt an extra weight over my body, and my arms were covered. There was a light brown cloak on me over my other clothes, one that had a shift from brown to grey near the top and that had differently colored arms...

"Discord, if i'm wearing you right now-" I started. The idea made me feel... weird. Like... an empty, hollowed out tingly feeling.

"Brilliant, isn't it?" his voice said, seemingly from right behind me. He wasn't, when I looked, of course. "No logical pony would assume that an alien creature's clothing is me. It'd be my first assumption, of course, but i'm me, so that's sort of cheating."

"It's colored just like you!"

"Not completely. Parts of my beautiful body were, alas, for a simple article of clothing too varied in color. And the assumption is so wild in other ways that it won't occur to them. The alien wearing the odd cloak will likely be of more interest to them. They'll probably just think you're flamboyant and weird looking."

"That's not the only problem! I don't want to be wearing you! It's... it's weird." He laughed at my protest. Again, it felt like it was coming from just behind me.

"Well, it's also the best course of action for subtlety on my part. And it's funny."

"Where are you talking from?" I wondered aloud.

"I'm talking from the back. It has a large face pattern on it. When i'm silent, it'll just serve to look cool, but it functions well as my face." I held up an arm. The sleeve was smooth against my skin, and it hung down slightly, so it was loose enough to be comfortable. I put up the hood, which, I suppose for a bearable design, was white, in contrast to the light grey upper body and shoulders. "You know, if I changed your pants, I could get my leg colors in too..."

"Sure, why not. As long as my pants aren't actually made of you, do whatever you feel like to them. Appearance wise," I made sure to quickly add on at the end. There wasn't even a flash of light, but I felt the difference immediately. They were smoother and a bit more loose. I imagined I looked like an excessively obsessed teenage LARP-er. The thought didn't make me feel immensely more pleased with the plan. You could just command him to not do this plan, I thought.

But if he gets bored, it'll probably be something worse. Besides. He has his one exemption still hanging over you, my internal sense of paranoia spoke up. I followed it. It wasn't even worth stopping. I was out of my league, and I was clearly going to just be dragged forwards through things. I lacked any sense of direction or purpose in Equestria--how could I compete with the relatively clear goal of "be amused and cause chaos?"

"So," I said aloud, breaking off my thoughts. "Where to?"

"I don't care. Any major settlement should be fine. Though Canterlot would likely be the most fun one," Discord said.

"Not Canterlot," I said. "I dunno." Ponyville. You know you want to say it. "Is there anywhere you especially want to cause chaos in? Ponyville. Come on, Aaron.

"Not really, no," Discord said calmly. "Anywhere's fine."

"Okay. Ponyville, then." If Discord had had a face I could see, it would be bent in the shape of smug satisfaction. I knew it would. I knew his currently existing face was, for sure, smiling, due to reasons of smug satisfaction. "Now... how are we going to get there?"

"Well, there's walking, and teleportation. Either would work just fine."

"How far away is it?"

"Eh, a mile or two. I brought us near it on arrival... For some reason, I had a suspicion one of us would want to go there, either for theft or visiting purposes." I didn't react to that.

"Let's just teleport... Could you make me some shoes first, though?" I looked down. "Wearing just socks is annoying me."

"Ha, sure." I tried not to react as shoes just appeared around my feet. So this is the upside to infinite power. Shoes. Shoes on demand. They were black, mostly, and fairly simple in design. They felt fitted, though, and that was really what mattered. "Okay, so now we can just go. I guess. Preferably to the edge of town. I don't want to get swarmed." Because having a bunch of 3-foot tall, brightly colored ponies around you is terrifying, right? whispered a dark, self-loathing part of my brain.

"Excellent~" Discord said, and then I was back in swirling darkness for a few seconds.

Ponyville, here I come. The thought felt oddly unenthusiastic. I didn't want to be in Equestria permanently, or unexpectedly, but still... the concept of meeting the show's cast should have brought a little excitement to me. Instead, I just felt sort of vaguely tired. I felt the world reappear in a rush, and immediately started checking my surroundings. If there was a plus to Discord's presence (besides shoes), I suppose it could be said that my sensory awareness was gradually improving. I was on a path, and there was little else around besides more grass.

"Ponyville is down the path in front of you," Discord said helpfully.

"Yeah, I know, it's just... you know. Meeting ponies."

Discord laughed. "You've already met me, and you seem comfortable enough to snark at me, despite the fact that I could turn you into a kazoo at any moment I felt like it."

"A kazoo specifically?" I shot back immediately. Discord laughed.

"See? Right there. It was an example, too, for your knowledge. I could also turn you into... Well, anything, really, though a Kazoo does sound fun." I was quiet. My feet shifted in place indecisively. "Just go, Aaron," Discord said reassuringly. "It'll be fun!" I made myself start walking.

I'm probably just completely insane by now, I thought. It did seem a likely possibility. By all logical conclusion, from my perspective, I appeared to be in Equestria (a fictional land) and was wearing clothes constructed of Discord's flesh. Discord also being from Equestria, and thus also being completely made up. Those sounded like the logical conclusions of an insane person. Of course, even if I was insane... Did it matter? It wouldn't change what I was feeling or doing, at least as far as my senses could tell.

Discord actually stayed quiet for the next few minutes, and I saw the town start to approach me. Visually. Physically, I was approaching it. I looked at my sleeve while I walked, just for something more engaging. The shade of tan was pretty nice. And the texture was good, too... It was really smooth and had a pleasant, cool feeling to it. Really, besides me looking stupid in him, and the fact he lacked pockets, Discord was a pretty sweet cloak.

That's a weird thought. Then; At least he didn't replace your undergarments.

"Hey!" Came a shout from the sky. The improbability of hearing it seemed pretty high, but i'd know the voice; Rainbow Dash. The only pony I couldn't have cared less about meeting, and the one most likely to hate me.

Goody, I thought as I heard the rush of wind behind me.

"What the hay are you?"

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"I'm a human," I said as I turned around. Ugh. Rainbow Dash. Her bright rainbow mane was there to greet me after my 180 degree turn, and, in fact, it was her most prominent part, given she was at least two feet shorter than me. I didn't even really hate her character, normally. I was more annoyed by it. But with her in front of me, it felt like she was the worst pony i'd ever meet.

Maybe it was just thinking of having to deal with her and Discord simultaneously, I dunno.

"A human?" Dash said suspiciously. In a way, it was good that I was irritated, because the alternative to frustration probably would have been freezing up and staring.

"Yes, a human," I said. Dash glared at me. I stared down back at her, as disdainfully as i'd ever stared at someone. Or somepony, for that matter. The moment lingered on, past where it should have dissolved away into another sentence. Silent.

"What are you here to do, Human?" Dash said, whispering the word human as though humans were her sworn enemies.

"Look, Dash, I just want to-"

"Wait, how do you know my name?" Dash said, with honest confusion.

"Uh," I responded. Shit. I already failed at hiding my knowledge. "Well... Who... doesn't?" Dash was quiet for a few moments. I could basically do nothing but hope that would get accepted by her as a viable excuse; I could also have said I was a telepath, but that would be easy to disprove and establish me as possessing powers I didn't have. This did give fuel to her ego, though, which, considering it was Rainbow Dash, should-

"Are you a fan, then?" Dash said. It was incredibly obvious that she was trying to remain suspicious, but it wasn't working very well. I could hear pride underneath the fake suspicion. If there's a pony that I can deal with, really, even if I don't want to see them, it would be Rainbow Dash.

"I suppose so, yeah," I said, glancing past her.

"Well, I don't blame you. I am the most awesome pony ever, probably. Element of loyalty, a great flyer, and I helped beat ole' Nightmare Moon, and Discord!" She struck a little pose on the dirt path. I held in the squirming feeling of discomfort and fan rage I got at that. If there was any Element holder i'd question the most, it'd be you, Dash. And how much effort can it really take to use a magical artifact, anyways?

"Pretty impressive, sure," I said aloud. Discord was probably barely holding in his laughter at this point. I know that i'd cackle maniacally, given the current situation. I really wanted to leave, but I wasn't quite sure how to get out of the interaction.

She gave a small chuckle. "Yeah. I am pretty impressive."

"Sure," I said simply. I was silent a moment. Then I just started walking into town again.

I heard Dash cry out a "Hey, where are you going!" after me, which I ignored. She flew after. Naturally.

"I'm going into town," I said back, glancing to my right at the sound of flapping wings.

"Why are you heading into town?" She asked. Roughly as she had just a little bit ago. I still had no good answer.

"Just, well... you know. To be in town. To sightsee."

"Who goes to Ponyville to sightsee?" she said questioningly.

"Me." Fucking brilliant. Dash gave an odd look, but then she started heading away.

"Well, have fun with that, I guess, human guy. I'm gonna go take a nap. Training is tiring stuff." I watched her fly away into the air. I was almost into the edges of town; just barely away from where i'd start actually being likely to run into ponies.

"You handled that almost tolerably. Tolerable work, Aaron. Keep it up." I flinched at Discord talking again, still from behind me. Or my back, as it were.

"Shut up, Discord." I said as I resumed heading into town. I steeled myself as I entered what seemed to be the boundary of town. I could see a few ponies, easily within eyesight, walking around, and I knew it would only be so long til i'd get noticed and reacted too in some form or another. Really, even steel seemed an inadequate defense against being more obviously out of place in a social setting than I usually was on earth. Which was a lot.

Social interaction wasn't my thing.

The first pony to notice me was a brown-coated stallion that I didn't recognize, who paused in place and followed my motion with widened eyes. He didn't say anything, though, so I just ignored him and kept my head pointed straight forwards until the hood of my cloak blocked him entirely from my peripherals. Other ponies, naturally, also started to take note, some less silently than the stallion had. I was gathering a murmering crowd. It was terrifyingly exact in its resemblance to my feared entrance. I did the same for every other pony that spotted me as I had for the brown stallion; ignored them and kept walking until the edges of my hood blocked them conveniently from my sight.

Where am I going, I wondered. And the answer was an enthusiastic, "Who knows?" I had no idea where I wanted to end up, and really, even if I did, I didn't know the size or layout of Ponyville. I settled on just trying to look for landmarks I did know, and I could decide whether or not i'd stop when I got to one. My quietly murmering crowd followed behind me as I entered the area of town that seemed to serve as marketplace. Which meant more ponies. I would have stopped and just rested to try and fix my mental fatigue at the idea, but then, of course, i'd have to stop in front of my crowd, and the ponies in the marketplace would approach me from the front, and then I would be surrounded. Zombie movie style. Only with nonaggreessive ponies.

I kept going a while longer, ignoring the ponies that joined my small trailing crowd as I passed through the marketplace. I got past what seemed the last stand and then kept going for another minute before I stopped. I heard the actually surprisingly loud hooofsteps of all the ponies behind me gradually stop,as did their chattering, also surprisingly loud, given how much its absence seemed to enhance the forming silence. It was overwhelming, the forming silence. I turned slowly around.

"Can anypony direct me to the town library?

Several ponies pointed to their right, and several at once gave hasty directions. I heard one of them well enough to make it out.

"Thanks," I said before promptly turning left and walking to where they'd directed.

I was incredibly thankful that the rest of the trip to the library went smoothly. If it hadn't, I had little doubt that my heart would have exploded from overworking itself. But, as it was, the crowd had dispersed after i'd asked for directions, as if the revelation that I could talk and maybe wanted a book made me entirely regular. Or perhaps they all just thought that I had purpose in where I was going and decided to let me go about my task. I had no real way of knowing. I just accepted it as a gift.

I knocked on the library's small wooden door. It was really quite small, smaller than me by maybe a foot and a half or so. As such, my knock was more my wrist repeatedly flicking my hand against the door than the normal lower-arm-and-hand rapping of the knuckles.

It took a few seconds, and then I remembered that the place was actually a public library, and that I could just walk in. I did so, stooping to get under the top of the doorframe, which was, of course, the wood of a tree. Only in being there did how weird Equestria was begin to pummel me over the head. I paused for a moment inside, just... It was hard to explain. Letting my inner fan (who'd been, up til now, alternatingly terrified and irritated into hiding) come out and just bask in the environment. My eyes immediately started to dart around the place and soak up details, and froze when they reached the purple unicorn peering with a burning curiosity at me from halfway down the staircase to the right.

"What are you?" Twilight said, slowly beginning to descend the staircase.

"I'm a human," I said simply. I looked around for a second, and then realized that my hood was annoying now that I was indoors, with only one other sentient- well, only one other speaking sentient being in the room, and one who I wanted to talk to. So I lowered my hood.

"A human?" Twilight repeated.

"Yeah," I said back. The thought that this was basically a not quite as accusatory introduction process as my speaking with Dash was not lost on me. If I have to repeat this process again after this...

"I've never heard of a creature called a human before..." Twilight said, almost to herself. I looked at the ceiling, lacking anything to say back to that. Every damned introduction was so, so awkward. So painfully awkward. I mean, that made sense; this was part of the reason going to Equestria was so not appealing. Ponies I recognized would all be, to me, nothing less than celebrities. Heck. More than most real human world celebrities, to me.

I would, to them, be a weird alien thing that knew too much about them and seemed eerily happy just being near them.

"Well, uh. So..." I said after a period of silence.

"Where are you from? I mean, it can't be anywhere in Equestria, or i'd have read about your kind somewhere." She said that all fast. She was clearly getting excited by the possibility of gaining new scientific knowledge. Which I can't give her, I realized suddenly. I was not a good liar, I knew. I kept mostly to a policy of honesty, whenever possible. And I knew that if I said, "I'm from a different dimension," the question of me getting to this dimension would come up. And considering how I got here, the true explanation would not be advisable to communicate.

"Earth," my mouth gave out as my thoughts were focused on the matter how I shouldn't say anything related to my honest origins. Fuck.

"Earth?" Twilight said. "Hmm, i've never heard of that either..."

"It's in another plane of existence," I said. "So. That does make sense."

"You're from another dimension?" Twilight said excitedly. The utterance didn't phase her much. She released a stream of questions. None of which I could answer. "How'd you come here, then? Why'd you come here? Why are you in Ponyville's library? Oh, so many questions to get answered!"

"Uh," I said.

"Ugh, Twilight, what's going on?" Came a tired voice from up the stairs. Spike, my brain instantly thought. Indeed, I saw the small purple dragon coming down the stairs as my head turned reflexively towards the voice. The little dragon gave a small start in surprise on noticing me. "Woah. What's that thing?"

"I'm a human," I said for the third time. Or perhaps it had been more times. It wasn't something I was going to try keeping count for. No one said anything for a few seconds. I couldn't think of anything to do. And Discord wasn't helping, on my own command. Subtlety. "Yeah, so, I don't really know how I got here, so..." I said.

"Here as in this structure, or here as in this plane of existence?" Twilight asked.

"...Here as in this plane of existence," I said after a few seconds. That was a simple lie, and arguably necessary for my survival, as the truth would reveal me as Discord's... conspirator? Friend? No term that came to mind seemed to fit. Even so, the falsehood put a bad taste in my mouth.

"You look really weird," Spike commented as he reached a point near Twilight's side. I might have felt offended, but I really didn't. For one thing, I did, even by human standards, what with the ridiculously colored clothes made out of... Well, Discord, but visually, I had no idea. Also, Spike was really small in contrast to me, and it was sort of funny. Like. He was at maybe just above my kneecaps in height. It was adorable, for lack of better defining word. It was like watching a child speak in fluid, intelligent sentences. Which it was.

"Spike!" Twilight scolded. "It's an interdimensional being, of course it looks a little... odd."

"Ah, it's no big deal. I probably do look odd to you guys. Being all bipedal, and wearing clothes, and... stuff." I just sort of drifted off. I had no idea what to do. I had no idea what I had been doing. I wondered what Discord was doing. Really, the experience of being in Equestria was summarized by that; doing things with no purpose or direction.

"Well, if you were in Equestria already, why'd you come here?" Twilight asked, randomly returning to the last note of actual coversation.

"What?" I said back.

"Why'd you come to the library, uh-" She paused.

"Aaron," I volunteered. "And-" I slammed my mouth shut. -to see you? "-to get a book?" Twilight was quiet a moment.

"On what?" Spike said, seemingly oblivious to how stupid the question was.

"...uh." I had nothing. I truly blanked. It had been inevitable, I would have supposed, were my mind not busy desperately trying to think. Everything took too much thought, and it was getting to me. "I.. I don't know..." I rubbed my temples and let my eyes shut. "I'm really tired right now, after getting dragged through the dimensional barrier."

Twilight, who at this point seemed as confused as I did, if not outwardly more, didn't react. Spike yawned.

"You're not the only one who's tired."

"Spike, it's late in the morning. You got plenty of sleep," Twilight responded. Spike spoke again, but I wasn't paying attention to him. Or Twilight. How is it that the only time I stop caring too much about equestria is when i'm there? I looked at my arm, at the light tan color of the sleeve covering it. I hesitated for a moment. I heard Twilight say my name questioning as she realized my tired daze. I considered responding, but then I just thought, for once simply and unopposed by any part of myself, No. I tugged on my left sleeve sharply.

"Teleport me to somewhere secluded. I need to speak to you." I saw both others in the library look immensely confused as I opened my eyes, and then swirling darkness. My eyes were jolted by the complete transition of scenary. It was very dark, which made me happy. Making me less happy were the large, dull green trees looming overhead, the odd silence, and the wide variety of dense plants everywhere on the ground. Having no impact on my emotional state but being vaguely surprising, Discord had disappeared from my upper body.

"You know, I must say, this whole stealth and subtlety thing is rather dull, as funny as it is watching you try to be calm," Discord said from behind me. I turned around. Yes, there he was, in his regular form, face rather unamused for the first time

"The Everfree Forest? Really?" I said.

"You wanted out, you wanted seclusion. Everfree Forest," Discord said as if that was the most logical conclusion possible. I llifted my glasses off my face and lowered the lenses to the bottom of my shirt, and started cleaning each.

"Still." I held up the lense I was working on. It wasn't clean. I lowered it back down. "...So, your brilliant plan of bringing me for amusement isn't working out?" Discord gave a small irritated sound from his throat.

"It was fine until the end. But then your performance just sucked. No emoting, you weren't at all flustered, you gave nothing away. Boring, in a statement." I checked the lense. Clean. Onto the next.

"Yeah, that happens when people are constantly confused and irritated for a while." I sighed and looked up with my blurred sight over to where he hovered. "You know, just- just what did you expect?" Discord gave a small laugh.

"I don't expect. Things you expect are boring." I put my glasses back on.

"Yeah, okay. Sure. But like, I mean. It's... what'd-" I cut myself off. I was fumbling. I took a second to work the sentence in my head, and then spoke again. "Why would you even make a game where you're under the control of someone who's going to for sure be more boring than you?" Discord was silent. I kept going. "You had to have recognized that i'm not as chaotic as you. If I was as chaotic as you, i'd have been locked up by other humans, on account of that I don't have any sort of powers to prevent that from happening. I mean. Besides that, if I was as chaotic as you, then the universe would, like. Break. Or something. Because you're supposed to be chaos incarnate." I paused. This was getting long winded. I was surprised Discord had been silent the whole time, actually. But he seemed stuck. I couldn't continue, because I found my fatigued self was just watching him. "Discord?"

"I said already. I need an audience," he said calmly, out of nowhere.

"But that could just be ponies," I said flatly.

"No. The audience has to appreciate it, and ponies do not. They don't ever appreciate it. Not fully, at least," Discord said more towards his normal voice.

"And I do?"

"Yes," Discord said. "In some way or another, yes, indeed; you do."

"...Are you just lonely?" I said after thinking for a few seconds. Discord chuckled.

"You seem to be regaining your steam away from Ponyville," Discord said calmly. I took note of how he dodged that question. Really, really smoothly--so smoothly in voice and facial control it was like he was metphorically covered in lubricant--but still, he'd dodged it. "Well that's happening..." Discord snapped, and instantly the few trees within immediate reach brust into mist. Also, a bed appeared. That frightened me. "...I think I might take my exemption."

"Uh..."

Exception to the Rules

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"Yeah, could we not do that now? I'm really tired," I said, instantly pleading.

"It's not your choice," Discord said, smirking. "And, of course, you don't really know what i'm going to do, so what i'm reading as a mix of fear and embarrassment is entirely misplaced." I looked at the bed. I looked back to him. The sheer bizarre nature of the situation failed to completely silence the strange inner maelstrom of emotions running through me.

"I don't know if you're being subtle enough to try saying that," I said. He smiled.

"I'm bored of subtlety."

"And i'm not," I said. Discord's smile didn't falter. His hand slowly raised. I really wasn't sure what to do. It wasn't like I could stop him if he decided to do something violent. Or sexual. Or anything, really. He could have produced a vat of honey and put me inside it if he felt like, and I couldn't stop that. This is so crazy. Truly, i'd gone insane. I would call the whole... the whole past day a weird personal fantasy that I for some reason couldn't leave, but not all of it had been enjoyable. In fact, most of it hadn't been. He snapped.

There was a very short period of swirling darkness, and then I was on the bed. Specifically, on my back, on it. I was still clothed, though, so there was that. And then instantly Discord was hovering just over me, body almost parallel to mine. Like. Just hovering above me by like a foot. I stared. For once, staring actually seemed like the only viable option and not just me being... I don't even know. Easily paralyzed by my own internal conflict?

"So... uh..." I gave a nervous laugh. Discord just smugly smirked down at me. "...What now?"

"Amusement," Discord said.

"But..." I said. I wasn't sure why I was questioning him not doing anything. Especially with the most likely thing he could do being so...

Arousing, my brain answered. Vaguely terrifying, but arousing nonetheless.

Can't I pretend to be noble? I thought back.

Hey, this is your subconscious answering. This is you. Just you on your most simplistic emotional and instinctive level, and given voice by the stress of the situation and your internal emotional conflict over what's happening to you. I couldn't help but recognize that that was probably a part of the reason for questioning. Disappointment. Only a part, but still. I came back to reality, and let my question die off in my throat. I just sat, barely moving under the substantially larger body of the Draconequus, and no doubt blushing like mad. Discord laughed immediately above me.

"So... Is this it?" I said. Discord took a little while to come back to an answering point, as his lungs were occupied. He did, though, after a few seconds.

"Well, that depends. What do you think?"

"...Yes?" I said back. He smiled.

"Do you think i'd come so close to not do anything?" I thought a moment. It was odd, how I could do that. Be calm enough to think, though that statement logically pushed me closer to the occurrence of a very large and very strange event. It was like the internal conflict between madness and logic, desires versus culture, was manifesting back and forth. Calm and accepting of the madness, then freaking out and getting annoyed. For the moment, my mind was relaxed entirely. Tranquil. The answer was obvious.

"Yes," I said. "Yes, I absolutely believe you'd come so physically close to me without the intent to do anything. Because it's making me nervous, and that's funny to you." I thought a moment longer. "Also, now that I think about it, i'm not sure if you could do anything further in the... normal way. You're sort of..." I looked down subconsciously, which, really, was just lifting my head from the pillows of the bed. "Smooth. You're smooth down there."

"I don't think you have a complete grasp of Draconequus anatomy just yet, Aaron," Discord said in a soft voice.

"Fair enough." I looked away from him, to the right, and then looked back. "Any particular reason that this is amusing, though?"

"Not really, no," Discord said. "It's just sort of funny. I jump dimensions and find an alien, and somehow he has a collection of romantic art involving me. And then is really embarrassed about it." He lowered his pawed arm down to my chest, with a purposeful slowness. It was almost painful to watch. It pressed softly onto my chest. "It's rather like finding out someone you've never heard of has a crush on you. Or, in other words, hilarious."

"Wouldn't that be kind of... creepy?" I said. Even though I was the person he'd never met in this example. And don't have a crush. Probably...

"Not really, no," he said. His paw was exerting a light pressure onto my chest. It felt odd.

"Is anything creepy to you?" I asked, looking down at his paw. My voice was shaking a little. Apparently it was time to fall back into freaking out. Discord made a thoughtful expression.

"Not much, no. Though the prospect of being sealed in stone again is one I find most..." I saw a flash of darkness fall on his face. "...unpleasant." I nodded a little, in spite of myself.

"Yeah, that probably sucked." I blinked. My eyes felt that pressure on them, the kind that always comes when you know you should sleep. It was a strange feeling, that dull, throbbing ache of the eyes. Did a damn good job of making you want to sleep, though, so as a bodily communication to the brain, I suppose it worked really well. "...I'm tired."

"It's midday," Discord said happily.

"Not back on earth," I said in response. "It's probably like... I dunno. 11 or some shit on my internal clock." Discord smiled.

"Scoot over," he said. I got an... eerie? Yeah, that seems to fit. I got an eerie feel at what I suspected he intended to do, even though it was harmless. I was going to comply, but I was apparently moving a bit slowly, because the arm on my chest just sort of slid me over to one side of the bed. Discord did an odd roll through the air, and his back flopped down onto the bed next to me. He gave a sigh. I just sort of nervously glanced over to him and then went back to looking straight up, as though afraid he'd catch me looking. "You're rather funny when you're embarrassed. It's a gift."

"I don't know if i'd call it a gift," I said. My eyes did another quick dart over to him. He chuckled.

"Oh, it is. You're an amusing victim. That's a born ability. You're not going to see anyone develop that through training."

Who would want to? I thought.

"Is "victim" really what you meant when you said audience?" I asked after a moment. Discord's left arm slid itself under my head (which traitorously lifted, without even a word from me to allow it) and gripped my left shoulder.

"Depends on you, Aaron. Are you suffering?"

"...I don't know, Discord," I said as a crawling tingle traveled over my skin. He pulled me back towards him, and I felt the softness of his fur touch my arm. He laughed.

"Indeed."

I didn't really have anything else to metaphorically throw at him, so I just sort of sat there next to him, uncomfortably comfortable. My thoughts were just sort of scrambling, but all of them fell away in seconds but the simplest, which were of no use. They were things like, "Discord is warm," which really didn't have much to do with a logical course of action. Maybe a logical course of action didn't exist for the situation at hand. I was possibly insane, after all.

"Do Draconequuses normally sleep on beds?" I asked suddenly.

"Not usually, no. They didn't," Discord said calmly. My brain picked onto the "didn't," but it gave me nothing to say about it.

"Hmm." I stared at the trees above. It wasn't super dark in the woods. Not as dark as I would have liked, really. Oh well. "If you're exemption-free messing with me is done, i'm gonna sleep."

"It is. I told you your fear was misplaced." I was quiet. He really hadn't done much. Either good or bad. Though I suppose as things he could have done to make me uncomfortable went, him lying next to me on a bed was pretty... nice.

Really nice, my insufferable subconscious went.

I've spent literally a day with him, my main-conscious answered back. Less. So. Shut up.

"Yeah, i'm gonna sleep then." I closed my eyes. I heard Discord shift a little on the bed.

"Okay." And so I went to sleep, and my first day spent with Discord ended.

The Second Day

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I awoke slowly, and almost immediately, I noticed that Discord was gone. I lay there on top of the bed for a while, just to let my senses return to operational condition. Not like I needed to go looking for him. He seemed at minimum insistent on keeping me around. Plus, I was in the Everfree Forest, and now alone, which made following him something of a non-option.

I lifted myself slowly from the bed. I'd never put the covers on, or taken my clothes off--which, on that note, had acquired the subtle odor clothes got after getting worn for a night. I'd have to clean them, eventually, if I was going to keep clothed.

I wondered where Discord had gone. I'd only said he couldn't do anything to any pony, which wouldn't technically have prevented him from just going out to Ponyville or Canterlot or any other city and declaring his return. I could see him doing that, despite how inconvenient my restriction would make being publicly known be. On the other hand, of course, it wasn't like he could really be hurt by the ponies, either, so... He'd go out just to taunt them? Yeah, maybe.

My thoughts rested a moment. Or maybe he went to get food... But he can summon it out of nothing, so that doesn't really make sense. Minutes passed, and I became increasingly restless. I was one of those types that hated doing nothing; What I normally "did" never really accomplished much, but still, it was something. Even just watching random stuff online still had more value and purpose than sitting here on a bed in the middle of a jungle. Already, I missed my computer and its access to the unlimited immediate entertainment of the internet. For that matter, having my younger brother around to chat with wouldn't have hurt, either.

What reason would Discord even have to leave for hours? For that matter, did he sleep? How long was he just laying near me, awake? When did he leave? My restlessness started to become nervousness, and I felt that nervousness begin to clutch at my heart.

"Discord?" I said questioningly into the distance, still externally calm.

"Yes?" Discord's voice said out of the air. I relaxed, in spite of myself.

"...You there?"

Discord's body appeared from the bottom up, leaning against one of the trees at the edge of his cleared circle. It was like he was lifting a wall in front of him that had blocked him from sight. Without moving. "Presuming we're thinking of the same there, yes."

"Why were you leaning on a tree ten feet away while invisible?" I asked.

"I wanted to see what you'd do. I expected more talking to yourself, to be completely honest. Oh well." He popped over to besides the bed in a flash of light. "So, what now?" I took a moment to respond. Partially to get over the fact that he'd just hidden ten feet away from me for amusement, instead of doing anything i'd considered.

"In terms of overall plan, or like this second?"

"Well, this second comes first, obviously, but also whatever we want to do about the whole pony matter. You did just sort of introduce yourself and then leave mid-conversation with the element of Magic." I started to formulate a response to the second matter, lacking any input on last second, but my body conveniently sent a very strong feeling of hunger to my mind. Which gave me something to say about the second. Convenient.

"We should eat something," I said.

"What did you have in mind?" Discord asked.

"I dunno. Bacon?" Discord smiled.

"Sure." He snapped, and instantly, a plate full of bacon appeared on the bed. That made me smile, I admit. Instant bacon. I reached to grab a strip, but withdrew my hand on encountering substantial heat still lingering on the tasty meat strips. It's like it just came from a pan!... Discord's hand darted in and snatched a strip in between the tips of his talons, before tossing it up and into his mouth with an artful flick. He caught it well, about half sticking vertically up into the air, the other half in his mouth. The heat didn't seem to bother him, and he quickly devoured the rest of the strip. He grabbed another almost immediately, but ate it more calmly. Just lifting it up to his mouth and taking off small bites. "Is it a bit hot?"

"Nah, it's good," I said back immediately. "I mean, hot bacon in bed. Like. Thanks." I reached out and took a strip--they were cooling fairly quickly, thin as bacon is. I took a bite.

It was damn good magically-generated bacon, as could be expected. I pondered for a moment if bacon was something that would even be legal in Equestrian society. Even if it was, it couldn't be a common thing.

Maybe I should just reveal myself alongside Discord. Try and play a, "he's harmless!" angle, my thoughts went as I munched on my bacon. 'Cause i'm not losing this.

"So," Discord said, breaking off a strip in his mouth before continuing. "You still want subtlety, I presume?"

"I'm not sure," I said. "I mean, really, I don't know if it'll matter when you reveal yourself. More what you do." I ate another piece of bacon. Between the two of us, the plate wouldn't last much longer.

"Well, the likelihood of me getting along with the ponies seems minimal, to be honest," Discord said with a light tone of sarcasm in his voice.

"Still. It's not like they can hurt you. You're almost invincible." Discord smirked.

"True." He teleported over to the opposite side of the bed for no reason I could discern. "So, the plan is we just arrive in plain sight, and I block any attacks thrown our way. Or dodge them, in the case of the elements."

"...Maybe?" I said. I grabbed another piece of bacon. "I don't really know. That sounds incredibly stupid said aloud."

"Ah, it'll be fun. Let's do that." I didn't have a better plan for the moment, so I just shrugged and ate what I suspected would be my last piece of bacon. Discord smiled, grabbed what was left of the bacon (around 8 strips), and promptly ate it all. He didn't even really seem to chew much, but it was all gone, and he didn't seem to be choking. In a fluid motion, he grabbed the plate and threw it frisbee style behind him. It shattered against a tree. I winced. He didn't look. "Excellent," he said, and then he snapped. My eyes widened as the light came, and then darkness, and then...

I glanced around. Yep. Ponyville. We were drawing eyes, understandably. I was an alien, and Discord was a huge serpentine monster who many of the populace had been traumatized by just.... some time ago. When exactly we'd arrived in the Equestrian timeline wasn't really that clear. I felt myself shrinking under their eyes, and now I had no cloak to hide in. Discord was simply smiling, as per usual. To my surprise, he started walking forwards. Just walking, on his plain hindlegs. It was the first time he'd done that. He glanced back at me and smirked.

"Well, come on, Aaron. We have a town to sink into anarchy." And then he turned around and kept casually strolling in a seemingly random direction. I jogged to catch up, and then joined him in strolling. I had no idea where we were going, though my guess was on "nowhere."

"Do we really have to? I mean..."

"Indeed we do," Discord responded, a cheer in his voice. "It's discord that keeps order at bay."

"I don't know what's so bad about order," I said back.

"That's easy," he said, pointing a single digit into the air for emphasis. "Order tends to punish the most vulnerable. Chaos? Not so much. Chaos just does stuff. And it's normally way funnier stuff, too." I would have liked to argue back, but that made sense. And, at least from my own, rather negative self-perception, it made chaos the side i'd logically support.

I wonder if they have pins for that. Like. "Chaos supporter," on a pin.

"I guess. Still." Discord chuckled at my weak persistence.

"Your astoundingly stubborn curiosity does seem to like the subject, I must say." I nodded in response. It was true. The slowly decaying remains of my morality just kept fighting the notion of absolute chaos, which, fair or not, still in simple terms fucked shit up. It likely wasn't helpful that I was actually coming to dread seeing any recognizable pony, especially the main cast of the show. I was anticipating seeing the mane six, lurking in wait. I wasn't quite sure why that image was coming to mind, the six of them springing out from behind some corner like they'd been waiting in ambush for me and Discord, as if somepony who'd seen us had just kind of gone over to one of their homes and gone like, "Hey, there's like, this thing, and, uh, you should deal with it," and they'd secretly gathered. And then located us and hid appropriately down along our path.

Which was, of course, stupid. Really, in-show, looking back, they'd had rather convenient villains, in terms of being able to gather and respond. Discord hadn't even really been attacking them, and Nightmare's efforts were at most playing, besides destroying a cliff. I mean. A thorn in a paw. Really. Cutting off a mustache. Really? The group had always been gathered beforehand, and had the elements ready and then had their confrontation.

Really, tactically speaking, especially with Discord in tow, I could destroy any chance they'd even have of attacking. Our shitty plan is functional. Discord's too fast, and possibly now too furious, for them to take on. And then, for a moment, I felt the instinct to just put a clawed hand in front of my face and laugh maniacally. I held it in, though. Barely.

"Are you thinking about anything?" Discord said.

"Just... if you're gonna refuse to be peaceful, could we stop conflict? Make the chaos stuff easier?" I said. Discord paused mid-stride, and put a hand to his chin thoughtfully.

"What are you thinking? I do so value creative input."

"Well... just steal the elements. Like. No game. Just steal them." I felt a pang of guilt at the suggestion. Just vocalizing it felt... wrong. Even though it made complete sense, and might have been key to my safety as a... friend, of an enemy of the monarchy. Discord's red eyes widened for a moment, and then, suddenly, shrunk to smaller than they'd been before. I became distracted during this time by the fact that his beard appeared to be stroking itself.

"Hmm..." He said. "It would take some of the fun out of the invasion, and that is a high point of any good conflict... But, on the other hand, their desperation would be funny." I had another spark of inspiration, and even as my guilt made an agitated "no go," gesture and furiously shook its head, it slipped out. Helped by my fear of potentially being the first human, not really evil test subject of a harmonious strike.

"Just take one, actually. Take magic. It'll mess with them." Discord smiled wide, and looked at me with an odd, childish light in his eyes.

"Oooooh... that's quite lovely, actually. I like it."

"...Yeah," I said.

And then I heard her yell.

"Discord!" Both me and Discord glanced off to our right, and I saw a pink blur charging over. "And... Ooh, who are you? What are you, for that matter, because i've never seen a creature that looked quite like you before!" I felt an odd dread rise into my chest. Discord just seemed amused. Pinkie evidently noticed neither. "So, Discord, are you gonna make chocolate rain again, because I know Twilight's gonna make me come and try and get you back as a statue--you made a cool statue by the way--but I really, really like chocolate rain, so I want to enjoy it as long as possible before we all come back and seal you back up!" She paused, tilting her head quizzically. "Not sure why we have to seal you up. I mean, chocolate rain! How could that be bad?"

"The idea seems kind of dull now, really," Discord said.

"Aw, really?" Pinkie said with a disappointed expression. Then she looked back to me, excitement returning to her face as she did so. "Well then, I guess i'll have to just have some at your welcome party! Normally we'd do that right now, but..." She leaned in toward me and turned her head away from Discord. "He's around, and when he's around, everypony's all panicky and "AUGH," and that's no attitude to have them be in at a welcoming party!"

I headed back to my default blank stare option. Discord just looked vaguely bemused. Neither of us did anything for a moment. Pinkie looked between us, and then smiled and started bouncing away.

"Where are you going?" I called out instinctively.

"I'm going to go get Twilight and the others, silly!" She said as she glanced back for a moment. Her bouncing didn't stop as she did this, and she continued doing it after. I watched for a moment.

"So," Discord said. "Onward to stealing Magic, then?"

I silenced the guilty voice that rose up at him saying it, and just nodded. "Yup."

We emerged from the darkness of teleportation in what I immediately guessed was Canterlot's central castle. The white, well-crafted pillars of stone and high ceilings gave it away, as did the two royal guards standing to either side of the large, decorative door guarding the elements with barely subdued surprise decorating their faces. One's mouth dropped open a little. Shortly after, each shifted back to serious, flat faces, instantly flaring their wings to appear larger. Apparently, they were going to hold to their duty. Against an unrecognized alien and a several-meter tall Draconequus. Good guards.

"Halt! Who goes there!" One called.

Despite my height in contrast to both guards, I felt a chill. It was intimidating, seeing their faces set in stone harshness, approaching with a slow, purposeful stride. Discord clapped his hands together.

"Permission to act?" I glanced over. He raised an eyebrow. "Bend the no-touching rule," he added for clarification. I thought a moment, and then looked at the guards, both of whom had paused, expressions wavering. Apparently they were afraid of Discord. Which, really, was completely reasonable. You have to get past them somehow, my fear whispered seductively. And then I was seduced. It was apparently a fairly obvious vulnerability of my character, being easily seduced.

"I guess. But don't hurt them." Discord spoke with a quiet, intense thrill, twirling his hands about.

"Excellent." The guards took off, but in an instant, one fell back onto the floor wingless and the other turned about and wheeled on his former comrade and angrily yelled "Criminal!" before diving onto him and striking away. I flinched at each hit. Discord whistled as he walked past them--fighting just to the right of the central path of the hall--and stuck his finger into the hole of the door.

"Stop the fighting!" I yelled over to him. I'd meant to whisper, but it certainly didn't come out that way. He glanced back, just for a second, and his whistling stopped. He snapped. Both guards were instantly restrained by ropes around their legs, though the aggressive one was still flailing about on top of the other one. The wingless one underneath started protesting loudly, which I tried my best to ignore. One, it looked really silly, and two, vaguely erotic. Or maybe it was just me. No, it was definitely just me, actually. I walked over to the door, where Discord had resumed whistling and was twiddling his finger about in what I was pretty sure was a magical lock. The door opened anyways, though it didn't have the massive blue glow Celestia properly opening it had given it, so instead of looking all epic and magical, it was just sort of a room with a box in it. Discord strolled in, deftly opened it, took out the tiara, closed it, and walked back out.

"Well, we're done here," he said casually, hitting the wall besides the door with a backwards flick of a fist. Both sides slid shut. His gaze shifted down to the guards. As it was, the top one was fiercely trying to nip at the other's nose, who was for obvious reasons still offering significant protest. "Hold this," he said, and then put the tiara on my head. It was too small, but it sat there, and I just awkwardly tried to keep it balanced there. Discord kept moving. "Now, for these two..." He flicked both arms up. It looked vaguely like the gesture of a composer. They separated as they hovered up into the air, veering left and right in their upward drifts. The aggressive one kept snapping at the other. The other stallion, though likely terrified shitless, looked mostly relieved. My conscience wanted to whine again, but honestly, it looked rather... cool. Theatrical. Movie-villain type stuff. "As I can't kill you, i'm simply going to remind each of you-" He looked over at the snarling, and now cursing, stallion. "Aaron, could you get that guy to focus? This is going to be hard with him being all crazy."

"You made him that way! How would I even help him?" Discord shrugged in response.

"Fair enough. Anyways, though, this will look awfully bad for both of you two-" he turned to the guards. "-if you don't just get back to duty, won't it? And you're not to blame. It would be shameful if innocents like you suffered just because you were hopelessly outmatched..." The stallion on the right had grown calm, staring forwards with a dull look in his eyes. His eyes had also turned into multiple, outwards-moving colored rings, so I was fairly sure that he'd been hypnotized. Discord and I looked in tandem over to the other guy. The other guy released several choice expletives. Discord swiftly touched a finger to his forehead and just force hypnotized him.

"Return to guarding your door, you never saw us, blah blah blah, so long!" Discord said, and then snapped. I expected the darkness. I got it.

And so we were back in Ponyville, only now I had an undersized jeweled tiara on my head. Though, really, it wasn't that undersized; ponies had massive heads in contrast to their bodies. I took it off, looking at it for a few seconds in admiration of its craftsmanship, and then stowed it awkwardly in my pocket, remembering that the idea was to steal it and not provide any clues as to its location. My pocket wasn't ideal for the purpose, as I could still see on golden tip of the piece sticking out.

Whatever. You just stole an element of Harmony! Celebrations are in order!

Or being arrested, my conscience snarked.

"Well, that's done," Discord said merrily. "They'll get to have some confusion and frustration before they get to even make their first fruitless shot now. It's going to be great to watch~" I looked around. The few ponies who'd been in the area of Ponyville we'd arrived at were either nervously leaving the scene, or just watching us, either silently or in gossiping commentary mode.

"So. Now what?" I asked. Discord laughed.

"Well, really, we're basically just going to be waiting on the darling little elements trying to confront us." He looked thoughtful for a moment. "Which, if they have to head to Canterlot first, gives us approximately two to three days of free time." I felt surprise at that, even though it made complete sense. After all, the ponies themselves couldn't just cut from one setting to the next; they actually had to travel places.

And what this meant, unless the mane six behaved like idiots and confronted us without the elements, was that I was going to be stuck in a town confused and afraid of me and Discord with Discord, for days. The instinct to scream in terror occurred to me.

"Ah," I said instead. Discord smiled as he started hovering, and quickly slid his body through the air to be parallel to the ground and in front of me.

"So, what do you want to do?"

"I don't know. What would you do?" Discord smirked and gave a small snort of amusement.

"Well, i'd cause chaos. Warp the physical rules of this plane of existence, cause everypony around to descend into madness, that type of thing, you know. But you seem to take issue with that sort of stuff, so..."

"Yeah. Okay, then. Um." I looked around. My mind was empty of alternative options for entertainment that would actually also appeal to Discord. Maybe... reading? No, no. That wasn't going to work. Well. Not for Discord, at least. That sounded like perhaps my best option.

Ah, fuck it. Discord can just do whatever. I'm gonna go read books.

"Let's go to the library," I offered.

"Sounds like a plan," Discord said, snapping. Darkness, and then we were in the library. It took me no time at all to notice the six rather recognizable ponies sharing the room with us, all of whom looked very surprised.

"Oh, uh-" I said aloud.

"-Are we intruding on anything?" Discord said pleasantly.

Confrontation

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All six were silent, besides Pinkie, who pointed a hoof at us immediately and said excitedly, "See! There they are." I stood still, focusing on breathing, which suddenly seemed way harder to do than a second before. Or it felt significant. Words don't capture the physical awkwardness that was crushing against my chest. Discord didn't seem to be feeling it, but he sort of cheated by being a god. Or a demi god. It was cheating either way.

"Dis-" Twilight said with quiet confusion before recovering and speaking with a confrontational confidence more ordinary for facing a villain. "Discord! And... Aaron?"

I noticed that Dash looked as though she were teeming with rage, standing near the back left of the room. I could see muscles tensing as her bright eyes glared at me. Everypony else, besides those three, though, just looked plain shocked. Even though I could only imagine that they'd been meeting each other about the fact that me and Discord were strolling around town. I suppose it might have been kind of hard to believe, for the ones who hadn't seen evidence. I mean, they had sealed the motherfucker in stone at the conclusion of their last encounter. Or thought they did, at least.

"Indeed! Live and in the flesh," Discord said. I felt him grab my arm, and I started to look over, only for him to give a swift tug and let go. I slammed into him, and his arm was instantly around my shoulder, holding me there, next to him. His hand wrapped around my head and pressed it into his fur. It felt simultaneously awkward, embarrassing, nice, and incredibly stupid. It also seemed to paralyze the mane six further still, except for Pinkie, who released a loud giggle.

"I told you guys! I was riiiight~" She said with the cheer that normally possessed Pinkie. Despite the warm cheer, the rest of the room remained frozen in a strange mix of confusion, anger, and shock. I felt my muscles tensing in preparation for an effort at escape, which seemed rather misinformed of them, as I was fairly sure I was going nowhere. Discord seemed to be tensing up too--I felt the muscles of his body shifting underneath his furry exterior.

He laughed, really loudly, tossing back his head. I could feel his chest moving slightly as the air movements involved worked through his body.

"Ha, you're all so surprised! You all sincerely though you defeated me? All of you?" He swept his head back and forth, gazing over the group. He was met only with a dense, irritated silence. "Well, then... To give you a quick update, you didn't. Just so we're all on the same page here."

"How did you get out of your prison, Discord!" Twilight demanded, having apparently regained control of herself.

"By not getting in it, my dear Twilight Sparkle," Discord said with a slight grimness to his voice. "When the magic of the elements came down, I figured it would be a good time to jump ship. So I headed off to some random, as-of-yet-unnamed dimension to relax for a while. And I found this guy!" A finger of his other hand prodded the top of my head.

"That doesn't—what!?" Applejack protested immediately, in obvious confusion.

"You tricked me!" Dash yelled just afterwards, pointing to me. The rest of the group looked at her. Then they all followed the hoof's direction down to me.

"Well... I couldn't just say Discord brought me from an alternate dimension as his companion," I said quietly. Dash's eyes narrowed.

"How'd you know my name? No, wait, scratch that, why are we letting you stand there when you're together with Discord!" Discord pointed to her.

"You're powerless." I saw Dash get riled up at the statement, and the other ponies in the room move to restrain her. Discord smirked. He relinquished his hold on me, and I dropped to the ground besides him. Almost instantly, I started to miss the warmth of his side. It was one of those sort of, "only miss it when it's gone," things. There was, of course, the upside of a sudden decrease in my level of embarrassment, which was a perk. On the other hand once again, the room had descended back into silence. Apparently, they were still lacking anything to actually do to me and Discord. My dread built up over the next few seconds, not helped by Dash maintaining a look that spoke of a strong determination to inflict bodily harm to someone or something.

I ran out of the library.

Well, walked out, but I turned and left. The void of conversation in the room and the fact that I was likely now in "public enemy" status by way of association seemed decent enough motivation to ignore a thing as mundane as politeness and to simply leave. Nobody in the room actually seemed to have the nerve to comment, besides Discord, who simply uttered a "Forgive him, he's a little shy," to the group before snapping. I anticipated the flash in front of me before it happened.

"I know you're nervous, Aaron, but don't you think just leaving is a little rude?"

"I don't have any defense. I'm your accomplice."

"True," Discord mused. "Though i'm virtually required to remind you that being my associate has substantial advantages." I glanced back.

"Yeah, but that's basically just when we're alone. Almost everything we've done in public either has you doing nothing, or using your powers for things that you desired or needed. Nothing that I want-" Discord got a wicked look on his face. "-ed..." I finished. The mane six were coming out of the library too, no doubt trying to figure out what was going on. Discord's body lowered, and, though my body started to anticipate his motion, the odd air-slithering move he did at high speed functioned quite nicely for surprising me. He was besides me in a fraction of a second, past me in another, bending his tail end around me the next—Discord smirked as his head came back up in front of me, smirking at my obvious, still-not-abating discomfort. His body was wrapped in coils, circling me without actually touching, though barely. It appeared to have stretched to do so.

The proximity and restrictiveness of the constraining pose heavily implied imminent toying, which made me blush. Especially since it would now take place in front of someone else. Several someone-elses, in fact. All just watching us, transfixed, their large pony eyes widened even more in confused fascination; I considered ordering Discord to release me, but some impulse held back the urge.

"Discord..." I said warningly.

"Yes?" Discord replied. My eyes switched between him and the six ponies standing behind him.

"What are you doing?"

"Making you flustered again, and confusing our dear, now-shared enemies," he answered calmly. "Fairly amusing, i'll reiterate, for such little effort." He made a thoughtful expression, and his tail—seemingly subconsciously—tightened around my clothes and against my skin. "Do you think your reaction would be funny if I licked you?" I processed that statement.

"If you find embarrassment and slight arousal funny, it'd be funny as hell," I said back quietly, only too aware of the listening audience. The response felt oddly foreign to my mouth as it left, like something someone else had said that was completely unrelated to me. Which was odd, logically speaking, because that response had everything to do with me. Discord let out a low chuckle, and then started moving his head towards me, with a very deliberate slowness.

Shit. He was doing it.

"What are they doing?" I heard Applejack whisper to one of the others.

"Does it matter? Now's our chance!" Dash said in a barely hushed, frenzied tone. I leaned slightly to the left to look at the six more clearly, and that was where my eyes were fixed when Discord started to lick my neck. I saw it in my peripheral, a thin pink thing that ended in a fork. It felt rough and wet where it touched my skin, and instantly I felt a tingle spread over my body; that sort of skin-crawling nerve response the mind gave shrugged its shoulders and gave when weird shit was going down. My breathing sped up a little, and I heard a slight sigh slip out my lips as his tongue traveled upward. It withdrew as it reached my cheek.

Man. I am a subby bitch, my logical thoughts gave me before shutting down and collapsing into a sparking, dysfunctional mess.

"Well... That was amusing," Discord said with a sensual deepness. His body and tail curled a little tighter around me. I could feel the blush on my face practically burning the atmosphere around it.

"O-oh my..." Rarity offered in comment. Discord chuckled at that, his neck turning to let him peer over at the six.

"None of you have any obligation to us, you know. You can all scurry off and do pony things." He hung a hand down off his wrist and flicked it up twice in a shooing gesture. Meanwhile, his coils were shifting, moving the part of me they held down to my legs, and moving my body upwards, up to where Discord's chest debatably lay. I was fairly powerless to resist as I got pushed up, back against Discord's body. He seemed determined to get the mental image of us cuddling (awkwardly, one-sidedly cuddling, but still) stuck in the head of each of the Element's individual heads. Still lacking anything to say, I held my silence, and joined Discord in staring at the ponies.

Confused. They all seem confused still, my mind noted, in a completely unnecessary observation.

I'm still confused. Of course they are. My arms, in an instinctive effort to stabilize my position, wrapped around Discord. He was still a rather comfortable thing to be against. Warm, soft... It was almost exactly as i'd imagined it would be. A felt a momentary surge of self-pity at the realization that I had in fact imagined what this would be like, but quickly the justification that it was just like wanting to have a cat or dog to cuddle. Which it was. Only romantic cuddling, and the cat/dog would be sentient. Discord's hand gently touching the back of my head cut my out of my thoughts and attempt at self-justification as cleanly as the blade of the sharpest razor on earth would shave a face.

"I did really mean that. Go get to fetching your precious elements," he said, as he started gently stroking my head. It was an affectionate act, rather like, indeed, one might do with a pet. "Besides, you're making him nervous," Discord added, as his hand completed one slide down to the base of my hair and started back up. I could have cared—Societally, I should have cared—that this centuries-older-than-me male beast was doing that, but sensation, apathy, and perversion won out, and I just closed my eyes and tried to shut out everything but the pleasant feel of Discord and his hands.

Another pause. Then, "Oooh, I get it!"

"No explanations, please, Pinkie..." Fluttershy mumbled. It was the first time she'd said anything. I suppose that even her expanding confidence, a returned evil demi-god and an alien cuddling in front of her was a bit much to handle.

"Okie dokey~!" Pinkie responded.

"Girls, come on," Twilight said, trying to refocus the group. "He is- well, he is right. We're going to need the elements." My eyes opened. Blocking out other things was proving too hard.

Rarity was glancing over to Twilight, her pale face still tinted a light pink by the blood rising to her skin, to make the white features flushed with an apparent embarrassment. Her speech, ordinarily rather controlled, came out filled with slight stutters, and a sort of wavering quality that implied weakness. "But, Twilight, Darling... Surely we can't just- just leave Discord here! Alone, in Ponyville, unwatched and unguarded? The town will be devastated!"

"Watchers will be charged," Discord broke in cheerfully. "And beside, i'm on good behavior right now." The degree of bizarre I was at, mentally, or course, as I lacked a quantifiable value with which to measure bizarreness, cranked up a little bit more.

Wait, Rarity finds this erotic? my mind added wonderingly.

"No. We're all going, now." Twilight seemed to have ignored Discord. Rarity was slightly more flushed yet. "Before Discord manages to talk us out of it, or... Or something," Twilight said flatly. Her horn started to glow with purple light.

"Bu-but darling, I-" Rarity began before a flash of purple energy cut her off, and swept the six away.

And then we were alone again. I felt a great sense of relief. For one thing, there was no longer the mental burden of even trying to worry about speaking to the ponies, and two, the group had seemingly failed to notice the golden tip of a tiara sticking out of my pocket.

"So," Discord said, still stroking my head with his lion's paw. "Am I correct in assuming you're enjoying this?"

"A bit, yeah," I said ashamedly.

"That's good," he replied, in a comforting manner of speech. We started to hover to the library door. On nearing it, it flung itself fully open before us (Discord's hands didn't leave me), and we hovered back into the library, me in Discord's arms. Though, in fair consideration, I was equally within his tail and body.

"Whoa," I heard a young voice say as soon as we were inside. "Uh... Hi." Both me and Discord looked over to the stairs. Spike. Of course.

"Hey," I said back on impulse. "How's it going?"

The tiny dragon blinked. He didn't seem afraid, but 'uneasy' seemed like it would fit. "Uh, okay, I guess."

"That's good," I said back. "So, we can browse, correct?" Spike seemed to be thinking.

"Of course we can, Aaron. This is public property," Discord answered for the tiny dragon, dragging several books from their shelves and hovering them around himself. "Hmm, I wonder what they have on me."

"You're good, then?" I asked.

Discord smirked. "I haven't been bad so far, have I?" I ignored the playful nature of the line and instead walked over to Spike.

"Wanna go upstairs, Spike? Just-" I glanced back at Discord, who had generated a monocle and was holding a thick book in one hand, which flipped its own pages after a short period of observation. "-I can explain what's going on. Probably more than Twilight." Spike glanced around nervously; I could only imagine he was afraid of being caught speaking on friendly terms with the enemy. If, indeed, that actually was what the mane six had reclassified me to.

"Sure, yeah. I could do with knowing what's going on."

"Okay, then," I said. Neither of us moved for a moment, and then Spike started running with his short little legs over to the staircase. I followed him easily. My legs gave me a massive advantage.

We went up the stairs, into what I could only assume was Twilight's room, and sat down on what I could only assume was Twilight's bed. I tried to avoid showing any obvious signs of weirdness about that idea as I launched into my explanation.

No idea how well it was working.

The Wait

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Just under a day had passed, all the time between my explaining to my waking up after a decent rest. Spike, after getting brought up to speed on the more general details of my getting to Equestria and being repeatedly assured that Discord wasn't dangerous, seemed to mostly accept our presence in the library. It seemed he'd been left with little to do, so when he was in the library (he left to go do some preemptively requested errands at one point) he either just sort of hung near us or actually helped us.

I'd slept in my own, freshly-generated bed, put in the space Twilight was using as her room. Discord had made it with little commentary, besides a single snide comment about me finally giving a command that made complete sense, given the "obvious absence of other places to rest your pretty little head." I'd swallowed that one easily. Better than sleeping in Twilight's bed. That'd just be... Weird. Not to mention that her bed was tiny for a human. The one Discord had made was actually larger than was necessary for me, which was likely to make it comfortable for him when he slept on it, as indeed he did, right behind me, arms wrapped around me in a comfortable, relaxed embrace.

As enjoyable as it was, I had yet to understand why Discord was displaying so much affection. There were possibilities running through my mind, sure: that he was just trying to mess with me, that he was really, really desperately lonely, that he found me godly attractive (I was fairly positive that that one was false), that he was just trying to mess with everyone else... None seemed that likely. He didn't seem desperate, he didn't seem constantly amused by the actions, and he did it when we were alone. And he certainly didn't seem to find me that especially attractive.

Basically, we'd known each other for two days total and he was hugging me, had licked me, (he did that a few more times in the library, most likely to try and force me to respond while in the presence of Spike) and slept with me twice. In a literal manner.

People didn't normally do that, as far as even my rather limited knowledge of romantic interactions understood. For that matter, I wasn't sure if this was supposed to be romantic, let alone if it was.

Regardless, I liked it.

Waking in his embrace did feel weird, though, even if it felt nice as well. His arms hadn't loosened from around me during sleep—as a result, leaving the bed wasn't much of a possibility. Whether or not I would have gotten out of the bed if I could had was unsure; the allure of staying a warm, comfortable bed just after getting up was something I could only occasionally resist when not being held in place there. I twisted my neck to look back at Discord's face. He appeared to be asleep. I could tell, because besides having his eyes closed, his face had that sort of relaxed quality to it that falls on faces during sleep. The lines of his old (and I suddenly remembered that he was old, at least 1200 years so) features were softened. All in all, it lent an adorableness to his odd look.

He gave a sudden murmur in his sleep, and I flinched in spite of myself. It wasn't even a loud murmur. In fact, it was exceptionally quiet. His arms drew a little tighter around me. The fact this happened just after I woke up made Discord's actual state of awareness suspect once again. I tried to just allow myself to give in to the comfort. It worked okay. I didn't move again for what felt like an hour, and I might have even fallen back asleep and then re-awoken.

That was about my limit, though. While I wasn't someone who enjoyed working, mainly because it involved responsibilities that I wasn't quite willing to trust myself with, I also had a low tolerance for not doing anything. This made it very hard for any part of me, including the human instinct that says "stay in the nice warm bed with the fluffy biological heat generator in it," to convince me to not get up at that point. I glanced back at Discord again. Still asleep-looking. If he was faking it, he was both surprisingly patient for a god of chaos and a damn good actor. I shifted against his grasp. He didn't release.

Aw well, my thoughts whispered. Fuck it. He can deal with me getting up one way or another.

I grabbed his talon and paw in hand and yanked them apart and away from myself, while pushing forwards towards the edge of the bed. He resisted strongly for a moment, but then, suddenly, released. As a result, I experienced a minor excess in momentum, which I translated into an uncoordinated, but decently quiet given the circumstances, roll off the bed.

I paused for a moment on the floor before getting up and checking Discord. When I did, I was met with two mismatched red eyes piercing my soul.

"Aw, i'd hoped we could cuddle a little longer."

"Shut up," I said after regathering my wit. I lifted myself from the odd, three-limbed landing position i'd ended my tumble in. "So, you were awake."

"I don't actually require sleep," Discord said cheerfully, sliding his spine up against the back of the bed until his head and upper body were fully upright.

"Then what'd you do while you were in the bed for, like..."

"10 hours and 13 minutes," he contributed helpfully. I nodded. My brain offered the traditional "do you really want to know?" question, but, of course, it was too late in coming now.

"Yeah," I said, nodding. "That."

"Watching you, plotting, and a few times magically delivering ominous messages I wrote about said plots to Celestia. Not much, really."

"Ah," I said. I looked around the room. Nothing had changed, which, really, was exactly what I could have guessed, making my searching look absolutely pointless. "Well, that all seems good."

"Really?" Discord said with mocking disbelief. "No problems with me watching you, then?" I contemplated that for a moment and felt embarrassment flow over the surface of my skin like liquid heat.

"Besides the fact that it's rather creepy, no, not really."

"Well, i'm under the continuing impression you like creepy, so i'll take that as a positive response." I paused a little at that, found it unworthy of the effort of rebuttal, and headed out to the main space of the library. Discord moved after me, phasing through the sheets of the bed as he got up to do so. Spike seemed to be at work on the shelves, reorganizing books atop a ladder that seemed almost comically tall compared to him. I could only guess, since Spike had been mostly with us yesterday, that the books he was re-shelving were the ones Discord had taken out to read that same day. He noted us descending the staircase and lifted an arm in recognition.

"Hey, guys," he said with a light coating of enthusiasm.

"Hey," I said, matching his wave of acknowledgement. We reached the base of the stairs.

"Is anyone else hungry?" Discord asked, as his fingers flexed in the air experimentally. For the first time, I noted how he had avoided using the term "anypony," and, for that matter, other terms like it. Which, considering the three sentient beings in the room were all different species and that none of those species was pony, was really quite logical.

"Yeah," I answered his question. Spike, too, gave a small answer of affirmation. Discord smiled.

"Well, as I imagine i'm still to be on provisions duty between us, Aaron, and I see no reason not to feed you, Spike, while i'm at it, outcast of the harmony party that you are, what do you two want to eat?"

I gave a noncommittal shrug. Spike, though he hesitated for a moment (whether to contemplate his request or dwell on Discord's words, it was hard to say), promptly announced his request.

"Some crushed gemstones? And hold the emerald." Spike, seemingly struck immediately after by modesty, added, "...If you could?" Discord summoned up a large bowl immediately, and above it several varieties of gemstone, emerald not included, with a snap. Then, with a dramatic combinations of arm thrust and fist clench, telekinetically crushed the stones into tiny chunks. As the pieces of shatter gem fell, they spiraled down toward the center of the bowl, mixing themselves neatly. It was all in all a rather impressive display of food preparation.

Do I still call it food preparation if what's prepared isn't something I can eat?

"Aaron, then... What do we eat?" Discord asked, turning over to me. Spike looked at his meal for a moment, mouth watering, and then dove in with no hesitation at all.

"I don't know. I mean, you could do whatever. You don't have to wait on me."

"No, I don't. But then I would know what I was going to eat, and that would be rather dull indeed, would it not?"

"Not... really," I said back.

"Naw, it would be," Discord said, reaching into the bowl of crushed gems and scooping a handful into his mouth. They crunched as he chewed. "Besides, even if it wasn't, I'm making you decide, because you're indecisive and that's funny." Going along with it—a skill I was getting better and better at using—I considered a moment what I'd want to eat, but I got nothing.

"Could you give me some options?" I asked, in a manner that could have been termed whiny.

"Not really. That's one of the few problems with limitless power; Rarely do you have a simple choice of what to do. It makes impulsiveness a rather handy trait." I thought another moment, and, in a burst of inspiration, knew suddenly what I wanted, though it felt as though perhaps i'd already known.

"Hydra meat," I said suddenly. Discord raised a single one of his large white eyebrows.

"Hydra meat?"

"Hydra meat," I repeated. Discord smirked. The sound of Spike eating slid back into the foreground of my thoughts for a moment, a loud sound of grinding and that of stones shifting against one another.

"Just want to try it out, hmmm~?"

"Yeah, I guess. Well... I mean, is it good?" He shrugged.

"Who can say?" Then he gave a wolfish smile. "Let's try it~" He snapped, and instantly a plate of steaming meat slices appeared, hovering between us. Both he and I looked at the meat. The slices were large, and rather odd looking— it had a strange yellowish hue, and it seemed unnaturally smooth. The steam coming off it had a similar color, the normal white tinged light, sickly yellow.

"What makes it yellow?" I muttered, more rhetorically than not.

"No idea," Discord responded. We were still for a moment, and the Discord summoned up two forks, and tossed me one. I lunged for it, but missed, and then bent down to lift it up. "So," Discord said, after a bit of chuckling at my expense. He lifted his fork. "Let's eat."

"That looks sort of suspicious, actually. And it's morning, besides, so I'm not that hungry anyways-" Discord had, as I started to have second thoughts, plunged his fork into the meat and torn off a small piece. He slipped it into his mouth and started chewing. I dropped off my rambling and watched as he chewed. It was a strange, awkward moment. Discord swallowed, and my eyes unconsciously followed the lump if food as it traveled down his long neck.

"Delectable," Discord said in conclusion. He stuck the fork back in the edge of his mouth and sucked the last juices of the meat off the tines. I cast a still-suspicious look at the yellow meat. Discord plunged his fork into the meat, and tore another piece away. He pointed the fork at me. "Here."

"What?" I said, though, obviously, on a conscious level, I was aware of what it meant.

"I'm offering you meat," he said, smiling.

"I don't want it," I said. He moved the fork closer to my mouth, and I twisted to avoid it.

"Sure you do~"

"No," I said, twisting my head the other way as the fork closed in. He jabbed again. I dodged my head to the side. It escalated quickly from there, and I started using my fork to fight off his jabs and make some slow, joking ones of my own, while I ducked and bent and swayed to avoid the food at the end of his fork. I took a fencing stance. It was silly, stupid, and random, yes, but it had been brought about in part thanks to me, and that made it enjoyable. My fork waved back and forth in my outstretched arm, keeping between me and the small morsel being thrust repeatedly at my face.

"Shall we be going to the death today?" Discord said jovially. We started circling around the library floor.

"Aye," I answered, equally mirthful, "I shan't rest 'til i've halted your wicked effort to make me eat your meat!"

"I can't believe they all took you so seriously," Spike said. I glanced over to the tiny dragon, who'd been entirely forgotten. It should have been obvious that he was done with his meal, because the grinding sound of his eating was gone. It had been, when I thought about it. To replace eating, he'd been watching, evidently, which I really couldn't blame him for considering what we were doing. I felt something grab the back of my head in that instant of being distracted, and for a moment my mind collapsed into terror. Timorous, I swung my fork wildly about for two swipes, desperate in that instant to escape. I hit nothing. Discord's fork descended on my mouth in one fast strike, and the meat pressed against my lips.

"The game is mine," Discord said, grinning madly. He'd won the joke contest—that was true. Unfortunately, joke or not, honor still demanded I eat the meat, so I opened my mouth. The meat did not move in, and the force holding my head back (which I could only guess was one of Discord's hands) did not abate. Discord remained smiling, teeth glinting in the wide grin. As per usual. "Say, Ah~" Spike's presence weighed heavily in the air.

Clever bastard, I thought.

"Ah~" I said. I brought out a begging tone, just to ensure he'd put an end to the moment faster. He moved the fork into my mouth, and I tore the meat from the fork. I chewed it slowly. For all my resistance, it tasted quite decent. A little like a tough, oddly-seasoned steak. The force holding my head released.

"So, what do you think?" Discord asked.

"It's okay. Kind of stringy, but it tastes alright." I took another piece, this time by my own volition. I ate it. "Say," I said, as my mind subconsciously turned to the meat, "How do you make a meat you've never tried, or cooked, or anything? Just... think about the concept of Hydra meat?"

"Basically. It's rather easy." He took another bite for himself on his fork. Spike apparently had only paused eating, not finished, because the grinding sound had resumed. "You should really try it some time, having infinite power."

"I don't think that's how that works," I answered back.

"It's not so hard. We'll put you in me and give you the run of things for a while." He pointed a finger at me and then switched it to himself in one quick little arc as he said it.

We'll put you in me, my thoughts repeated. The words echoed inside my skull for a moment before the rest of the sentence caught up to me. "We could do that?"

"You could do that?" Spike added, more enthusiastic and less disbelieving than me. The instant made me remember that for all his mature behaviors, he was a kid. Discord chuckled.

"How should I know?" He abandoned the fork, tossing it into the air. It bent over itself into a spiral, and the seemed to suck itself into oblivion. The sight was oddly mesmerizing, and oddly eerie at the same time. He tore at the remaining meat on the hovering plate with his lion's claws, taking off a substantially larger chunk of yellowish meat than the small ones our forks had been able to take out. "I would be glad to try it, though," Discord added, eating the meat out of his hand with quick bites. It vanished quickly. "And I do believe we all know how much Aaron wants to be inside me."

Sadistic bastard, I thought. Spike seemed to think about that for a second a few seconds before it either clicked with him, or he just got weirded out by the silence of both of us; then only one not embarrassed was Discord, who instead of being embarrassed, had seemingly decided to be amused as fuck. He was laughing hard for the next while. I, disgruntled, opted to cover my shame by eating more hydra meat.

The air was thick enough we could have cut cut some of it out and spread it on toast and other baked goods. I ate in silence, Spike ate in grinding, and Discord ate in between fits of laughter. Spike finished first, and promptly left to realms upstairs.

"You're so cute when you're flustered," Discord said as soon as the small dragon was gone.

"You've said that, yes," I said bitterly. Discord chuckled.

"You know, it surprises me somewhat that you so utterly fail to control that; you are a veteran perverted weirdo."

"Doesn't mean I went around flaunting it," I said after a moment. Discord gave a small cooing sound, on some level both pleasant and angering.

"Well, try to adapt. Later on, if we're to maintain our relationship, being easily flustered..." His tongue flicked mockingly out. "...Could be quite a hinderance."

"We're in relationship?" I said, almost ignoring the rest. It made sense, as a statement made by Discord went, but I couldn't help but pause. The vagueness of Discord's intent up until the moment had been driving me mad. Of course, his verbal confirmation of one suspicion hardly confirmed anything—especially since my second best theory was that he was just messing with me.

"Of course we are," he said, grinning. In a quick darting motion, he pressed his face to mine. The length of his neck basically meant he was just bending down over the plate—I wasn't quite sure why that occurred to me, considering Discord's face was almost pressed against mine. His red eyes were close, inscrutable. "The better question," he whispered, "is what kind?"

I took a step back, into a more comfortable position. "That's true, I suppose," I said. My voice was slightly shaky. Discord laughed.

"This is the sort of thing that i'm talking about." The plate hovered aside, and Discord closed in where it had left a void. He lifted a paw to under my chin, just slow enough that I didn't jerk away or slap it aside on impulse. "It won't do for the king's king to seem uncomfortable in front of their subjects."

"The king's king?" I repeated on impulse. It was a strange turn of phrase.

"The romantically-and-ceremonially-bonded, also-male companion to the king, yes. I've half a mind to make you mine after i've taken over."

"Good," I said stupidly in response. "So we're not going to do the "male queen," thing?"

"Well, we could, if you need our dynamic to be more interesting still." He said. "I call queen though," he added sharply, as though defensive. I could tell he wasn't because the corner of his mouth was still trying to lift upwards into a grin.

"No, no, we're good. I don't care too much. We'll have the same title. It implies more equality." He gave a derisive snort.

"But you issue the orders. How equal is that, in your eyes?"

I issue them because you wanted me too. You could stop following me whenever. And you brought me here to amuse you. So... "Not very, I guess."

He gave a small bow, dropping his body low enough to be beneath me. "I'll accept your charitable agreement with me on suggested future titles, then, my king." He snickered after, though it lacked any sort of meanness to it. I just stared a moment.

"...So..." I started. My mouth grabbed from the strands of recent conversation for a topic. "You're saying our relationship is romantic? Even though we've only known each other for like, what, two days?"

"Yes," he said, lifting himself up. He was still smiling, but for an instant I sensed a kind of sadness in his face. He looked tired. His voice, however, didn't show it. "By my cultural dating standards, we may as well have known each other forever." I wasn't sure what to say in response. I wasn't really sure what I'd say I felt, either, if someone had asked. In what could have been called a decently smooth self-distraction, and walked the few feet over to the plate and ate more hydra. The taste was growing on me, and it gave me an excuse to momentarily get away from Discord. Trying to figure out Discord made me need to momentarily get away from him. It was a hard task; Discord was confusing.

"So we're draconequus dating?" I said after a few bites, mouth full.

"If you'd like to put it that way, yes," he answered.

"I will," I said. Human dating standards suck anyways. I left my fork on the plate as I finished chewing the mouthful and swallowed. "So, what do you want to do, now that we've eaten?" I cast a glance about. I had no desire to do anything. If I were back home, I would have just gotten on my computer, maybe browsed the web for... Well, pony images. Or videos. Maybe listened to some music. Not really things I could do anymore.

That's a grim thought, a cheerful voice in my head said. The discordance of the mental elements shook me for a moment.

"I'm not sure," Discord said.

"Well. Uh. Hmm." I pondered what we could do for a moment. Basically, read, talk... Assorted physical activities. Nothing else but "nothing" came to mind. "Walk somewhere?"

"You don't strike me as the type to suggest that," he said in response. "But, yes, we could."

"Sure. Nothing else to do in Equestria," I said. He snorted again.

"That's a blatant lie. It's like you consistently want to deny yourself your access to infinite power." He smirked. "Still, sure."

"Excellent," I said, stepping towards the door. Discord snapped, and the plate vanished along with the remaining scraps. Suddenly, mid-stride, I felt my body shifting orientation. The wooden floor of the hollow tree rushed towards my face, and my arms did a sort of desperate flailing motion, no doubt in effort to save me. Face met floor anyways. "Ow," I heard myself mutter, bizarrely calm again.

"Are you okay?" Discord's voice drifted into my hearing, sounding oddly distant. My eyes opened. They had closed as I drew close to the ground, and opening them quickly revealed that that was meant to be. My vision was swimming. The wood looked nothing like wood—it looked like hundreds of brown lines, sliding over each other, zipping up and down. The texture was shifting.

Madness sinking in. Or maybe sanity. You were already seeing shit that didn't exist, so... Really, does it even matter which?

"Aaron?" Discord's voice came in. Even more distant. Even more distorted. I detected a hint of concern this time, which made me happy. Or would have, if I hadn't been injured. My arms tried to lift me back to my feet, but they suddenly felt very, very weak. I had a sudden sensation of falling, even though the floor was right in front of my face, and it didn't seem to be moving.

Maybe i'm flying, then, my thoughts offered as I decided I was not in fact falling,despite the sensation. My senses seemed to be shutting down. I felt something touch my back. Discord, maybe.

The hydra meat, paranoia whispered. Discord's poisoned me!

This is an oddly indirect way to kill me for a god, my mind gave, before it too shut off, and the shreds of sensory input I had left collapsed at once into darkness. I fell asleep, I think.

It's hard to say exactly what's happening in absolute darkness.

Adaptation

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I awoke rather suddenly, from unpleasant dreams. No specific images rose from the dark depths of dreamland, but I had a general sense of unease as I awoke. Not helped by the fact that my last memory of the waking world involved me collapsing to the floor and hallucinating.

I had no recognition of where I was, either. It was certainly not the Ponyville library. Wherever it was was dark, and the air felt cool outside of the bed I was in. The scent of dampness was in the air.

I'm in a bed. Sheets shifted above me as I lifted my arms. They still felt weak, and as they moved, they gave me a sort of odd, tingling electric backlash. It didn't hurt, but it felt incredibly strange. I let my arms fall back to my sides. The effort seemed too much for them. I was still dressed, I noted. I could feel my clothes against my skin, clingy and stiff, like they'd been worn a few days. Which they probably had, really.

Well, i'm clearly not dead, unless the afterlife is incredibly dull and feels much like the real one. My eyes started to search the darkness. Already, they were adapting, and I could make out dull shapes in the space around me. They weren't recognizable yet, but I was sure that it would only be another minute or two before I would start perceiving detail. The ceiling seemed to be high, maybe thirty feet, and I could see that it was rough and changed height frequently. I could see walls in the distance, not very close.

A cave, maybe?

A few minutes later, I tried getting up again. Boredom and the creeping feeling of isolation were beginning to set in, and accompanying them, the compulsion to move. The effort went better; I managed to get to a sitting position, and then swing my legs off the bed. The floor was rough and uneven too, which made standing on weak legs even worse. I staggered forward and away from the bed.

I'm weak, but there's no pain at all.

"Discord?" I called out. There was no answer. "Discord, if you're there, I order you respond." No answer. So I was alone in wherever I was, unless Discord had suddenly decided that now was the time to stop listening to me. Great. I'm confused and alone.

Gradually, keeping a hand to the wall on my left, I crept along the rooms edges. It was painfully slow progress. My legs didn't seem to want to move as I bade them, and I still couldn't see incredibly well. It was dark, simply put, no matter how adapted my eyes could get. The room was big, and lacked any sort of decisive shape to it. It was just a big, empty cavern. I noted several tiny holes in the ceiling, far above, too small to give any decent light, but enough I could breath, I supposed. Eventually, after what felt like a good part of an hour (I had taken several rest breaks) I made it all the way around the room and got back to the bed, where I promptly collapsed.

Definitely a cave, I thought. And Discord was most definitely the one who brought me here. There's no clear entrance and there's an incredibly made, huge bed in a cave for no reason. The traces are all over this. I lay back on the bed, and slipped off my shoes, tossing them gently off the edge of the bed. They were dirty and wet now, if they hadn't been already. I didn't move. Everything in me felt weak, and I felt tired, even though i'd barely just woken up. I forced myself to stay awake for another half an hour, realized nothing had happened, and then went back to sleep.

When I woke up again, it was to the feeling of my chest being lightly pressed down upon. I opened my eyes.

"Feeling better?" Discord said. He was sitting on me. It seemed like something that should have felt much heaver than a light pushing on my chest; the draconequus was looming over me with his great height, in our positions.

"Yeah, I guess. I'm not passed out." The draconequus wasn't smiling. He wasn't frowning, either, but on him the expression looked rather grim.

"That's good to hear." He lifted off my chest, and slid down to stand besides the bed. He didn't speak.

"What happened to me?" I asked.

"In essence, from what i've gathered, your body was starting to adapt to having magic in it," he said. I thought a moment.

"My body has magic in it?" I said flatly. It sounded more snarky than I'd intended.

"Yes, your body has magic in it," Discord said dryly. I lifted a weak arm in front of my face and flexed the fingers.

"Why am I so weak, then?"

"First off, you're still adapting. I suppose that earth's atmosphere isn't magically charged, so you aren't used to breathing magic. Secondly, everything living in Equestria has magic in their body, but without either a horn or an instinctive, automatic impulse to use it, it does pronouncedly little for them. As it will likely do for you." I was quiet for a while, staring at my hand and flexing the fingers again. It made sense. It even conveniently fit into my existing headcanon, which was both immensely fortunate and rather surprising to me. Still... I'm breathing magic now, and it just makes me weak for a while?

"You will live longer," Discord added, seemingly aware of my mild disappointment.

"Well, that's nice, I suppose," I said calmly. "So, I'm just absorbing it from the atmosphere now?"

"As far as I can tell. In vast quantities, too. Hence your collapsing."

"Is that... Normal?" The draconequus sighed with boredom.

"Who can say?" He flopped his lower body down on the edge of the bed. I felt the sinking of my back support towards that side. He was looking at one of the walls, with a distant look. I held myself back. He'd speak eventually. A minute or two passed. Then five. It was the longest I'd ever seen Discord sit still. "...I've been rather painfully bored the past few days. I'm not sure if you can tell."

"I can tell," I said.

"Hmm."

We stopped talking for a while again. Nothing to talk about, I suppose. Discord might have had some recent developments, but I'd had none, a common side effect of being unconscious, and he didn't particularly seem in a chatting mood. What mood he did seem in was hard to say. He had gone back to staring forlornly at a cave wall, his body relaxed and slightly slumped. My immediate instinct was to comfort him somehow, as it was clear he was saddened. But I lacked the nerve to just... I don't know, pet him? Hug him? Say "What's wrong?"

"So, uh..." I muttered.

"Don't pass out again," Discord said quietly. I stared a moment.

"I wasn't planning on it," I said meekly. He turned to face me, face a mask.

"Seriously, don't. I couldn't do anything to anyone and I couldn't get your permission or input on anything. If I know what i'm going to do and I can't force any good reactions out of anybody, how am I supposed to be entertained?"

"You could have made stuff happen around them, you know," I said.

"Clearly you haven't tried to get a reaction out of these ponies. Most of them just get annoyed or frightened if you have things randomly appear. Or explode." He gave a frustrated sigh. "Anything, really. It's rather irritating."

Silence again. We seem to tend towards silence over speech. How strange. Maybe we don't have enough common interests?

"Yeah, sorry for going unconscious again," I muttered.

"Hmm?"

"Ah, just... I've spent a lot of time in Equestria sleeping or in a state of unconsciousness. So. You've probably been bored a lot."

"Oh."

Another pause seemed to be starting. I cut it off; the silence was beginning to drive into my head. "So, what now?"

"What do you mean, what now?"

"I'm conscious. Like. We can do things."

Discord gave a slight smile. "You aren't exactly in ideal shape to be doing things, yet."

He's right. I stopped exerting the effort of keeping my head semi-upright and let it slump down onto my pillow. The soft fabric of the fluffy thing indented to receive my head, and it felt wonderfully soft. Laying down was easy. And yet, even sitting up was so hard now...

"So, I can't cast spells?" I said, more a statement than a question.

"Not to my knowledge. Though, of course, magic is a science, and so at least half of it is composed of guessing and checking. The other half, accidents and the phrase, "how did that work?""

"Well. I guess I can hope, then."

"I suppose you can," Discord said, sounding tired. It sent a fearful tremor through my heart. His not being upbeat and cheery was oddly disturbing to me, it seemed. He might be to blame, but he is my only real company. And I'm also at his mercy. Of course it's troubling. I wanted to reach out, and comfort him somehow, but my arm was weak and, really, I couldn't do anything. Pet him, maybe. But giving the immortal therapy seemed a task of a magnitude beyond my strength.

"Were you lonely while I was asleep?" I said anyways. Discord looked at me, eyes looking wild, and yet bizarrely lacking in menace. A look of despairing madness. He looked away again.

"Yes."

"I'm sorry."

"It's not your fault. You're in a new atmosphere, which I dragged you to."

"I know, but. Like..." Still, my mind wanted to finish. Still, it must be awful. The loneliness. 1000 years... Instead, I just weakly added another, "I'm sorry." The draconequus was still for a while. Minutes dripped by.

Abruptly, he teleported to besides me in the bed. He wasn't facing me, though—he was laying on his back, looking up at the stone cave ceiling. I flinched at his arrival regardless, but I made no comment.

"You know, it's shocking, how few of them react," he muttered pensively. "Oh, scatter and flee, sure, but nopony stands and applauds or yells out a challenge. It's all so predictable. It always has been, of course, even back when I ruled anarchy, but..." Ruled anarchy, I thought. It was a contradiction, but I understood what he meant. More important to me at the moment was his voice—His words were oddly calm as he spoke them.

"There are the elements," I said.

"Oh, sure, there's them, but aside from Miss Pie all their little pony bearers just try to stand and honorably fight. If it can even be called that. Honorably bombard, more like." He paused a moment, and gave a sigh. "Dreadfully predictable, and pronouncedly easy to thwart."

"They worked once," I said before I could consider if that was insensitive. Discord took a deep breath, and calmly let it out.

"True. I was overconfident; took a pose, said, "blast away..." And I paid a penalty for it. A rather harsh one, too, for a bit of arrogance, don't you think." I was silent. Discord gave a small, sad chuckle to himself. "The pose did likely make me a good statue, though. No doubt I looked magnificent in the garden."

"Are they frightening?" I asked. He looked over to me, and I added, "the elements, I mean. To you."

"Nah. If you're a demi-god and you put yourself into moving out of the way, you're out of the way. The jewels aren't the most speedy instrument of destruction. They also aren't very threatening if you've stolen one."

As he said it, my hand darted to pat at my pocket. There was nothing there, which should have been obvious. The tiara was too heavy for me to have not noticed it while walking around as long as I had. Discord noted and laughed, a bit more happily this time.

"It's under the bed," he explained simply. Somewhat embarrassed, among other feelings less easy to define, I stared over at him.

"Ah." I slumped back. The dampness of the cave hung thick in the air over us. An anxious twitch was building up in my motionlessness, until eventually in an awkward, jerky fashion, I weakly rolled over toward him. One red eye focused on me, though he offered no comment. I paused. My breaths seemed loud and forced, and I could feel the effort it took from my weak lungs. "I, uh-" I said, starting a justification for my motion. I didn't have much of one, it felt.

"Yes, Aaron?"

"It's just, uh-" I started again. God, this is so... Like me? Unlike me? I couldn't tell. Both at once. And it was the second time it was happening within the day, too. Discord was still just patiently waiting. "I feel compelled to hug you." His face was stiff for a moment, but then a light smile appeared on his lips.

"I won't stop you," he said softly. I did so, if a bit slowly, lingering anxiety staying my motion besides my physical frailty. My hands reached his thick fur, fingers pressing down to give them access to the flesh underneath. They slid around his sides, and then we were hugging. He was still silent, and unmoving—it was hard to tell how to proceed, or if I should let go. I didn't want to, necessarily. But the awkwardness in the air, at least to me, was palpable almost to the point if smothering. Of course, releasing too early would be odd as well... Or was that just a feeble justification for holding my position?

What the fuck is the policy for comfort-hug length?

"It's worth mentioning that the elements are aware an element was stolen," Discord said.

"Do you know where they're searching?"

"No idea. Not for you, though. I told them it was taken by a foreigner who'd met them many times before. Accurate, technically, but misleading if one doesn't know about your whole pony obsession." He chuckled, and this time there was no sorrow in his voice. "We have plenty of time, now."

"That's nice," I said. "Of course, I can still only barely move."

Discord was silent a moment. As we'd spoken, he'd returned my hug, and now one of his hands was running casually down my back in repeated, calm strokes. It felt pleasant. "Maybe not." I looked up—which in my current position, basically meant looking up his chest—to him. He smiled. "You remember the whole, "being inside me," conversation?"

"...Yeah..."

"Well, we could do it."

"The original idea or the heavily-implied other idea?"

"Well, I was thinking original, given your current physical state. Though I suppose if I did most of the moving, the other idea is equally viable." I felt embarrassed at that, though not as much as I thought I would. Still enough to try hiding my face by pressing it into Discord's fur. That helped little.

"I still don't understand how that would work," I said. My voice came out muffled due to the fur. Which I couldn't help but notice, in such close proximity, smelled nice. I wonder if he needs to bathe, as a demi-god...

"What was that?"

"I said, I still don't understand how that would work."

"As I explained earlier, my king, I don't believe you yet understand Draconequus physiology. Though, if you're willing to accept that I will have the appropriate anatomical bits and pieces when needed, we could start instruction on the subject today." I buried my face a bit deeper into the fur. Perhaps a bit emotionally immature, but comforting. I took a breath.

"Not today. Neither. The fusion or the... anatomy."

"Hmm. A shame."

"I suppose so," I said back. Discord was silent for a while, but then a minute later he broke into laughter.

"What?"

"It's just... For such a pervert, you sure seem hesitant to do the deed," he said, amusement obvious in his voice.

"Yeah... I guess so. I mean, it's kind of weird to do it so early... Right?" I asked, almost as much to myself as it was rhetorically. Not that I could answer, with my total zero dating and sexual experiences.

"Too early, you mean?" Discord said. "Oh, how lucky." He dropped to a whisper as he said it. "I've caught a believer in romance, it appears. What a rare find."

"You already knew that," I said irritably. Discord's stroking hand darted suddenly upward, and grabbed the back of my head. He pulled me away from him, not overly hard—still, forceful enough to surprise me. My head lifted from the surface of the bed. His own head was tilted down almost flat against his neck to look at me squarely. As my neck tilted back the little bit my weakened state and his grip allowed, to get comfortable, his grip loosened.

"Indeed I did." He drew closer. "Still. It's funny."

"Could you not get molest-ey when I can barely move?" I said. Discord smiled.

"Is that an order?..." he said, letting the end hang.

"Yes."

"Oh..." He said. He sounded almost disappointed. It took a short while until he said in an oddly subdued voice, "Can I at least be cuddly?"

I couldn't help but chuckle. I moved closer to the draconequus, back to my old position. "Yes."

"Good. I'll do that as you sleep."

"Sleep?" I said.

"You should sleep. You need to recover, and sleep, if my understanding of the matter is correct, will help that."

"Just... Go back to sleep, in this cave? Like this?"

His arms closed around me. "Like this, yes."

I closed my eyes. I didn't feel tired, but in all likelihood I was physically exhausted. Sleep would come. "Fair enough." I let myself give into fatigue, and gradually, I started to feel myself not making an effort to keep my eyes shut. Damn it. I'm going to sleep on him again, my thoughts said. But it was hard to feel bad about it. Discord seemed momentarily made happy again, by my actions. He was hugging me as I went to sleep. So. He was good. Even if I was going to sleep on him again.

Be more worried about you. He was being honest when he said he dragged you here. Your family's probably worried out of their minds. You're physically weakened by the magic in Equestria. And you are, more or less, an enemy of the existing Equestrian regime.

But as comfy as my current position was, that was hard to feek bad about as well.

Recovering

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I woke again. Discord's arms, I quickly noted, remained around me in an encircling ring of limb. I looked up to the draconequus's face, and found his mismatched red eyes, shining down at me in the dark of the cave.

"Hey," he said affectionately.

"Whether or not I like it, that is still really damn creepy, you know."

"Romantic," he countered. He gave a small kiss to my cheek, which I tried very hard to not let affect my exprssion. If there were a mood I felt regarding the moment, it would have been very hard to define. Buying myself time to think on that, I rolled onto my back, out of Discord's arms. "Aw, are you still embarrassed even by that?"

"Shut up," I countered back, in a full serving of morning terseness. I stared at the cave ceiling a moment, and then, slowly, I lifted an arm into the air above me and experimentally flexed the fingers. They moved. They still had a sort of odd, ghostly feel to them, as though they were only partially there, but they moved easily and with what felt like some strength. Weird. Working, though.

"You seem to have improved," Discord said.

"I think so."

"Can you move?" Discord said. I glanced over to him. His expression was serious, and a little excited.

"Maybe." I tried to lift myself up to a seated position. It went easily—my body moved with that weird sense of ghostly weightlessness, as well, but if anything that seemed to make getting up easier than normal. I slid to the edge of the bed. Easy. I put my legs to the ground, which, after doing so, made me remember that I wasn't wearing shoes. The rock that met my socks was cold and damp even through the thin fabric, and rough as well, though not to the point of painfulness. Still, I jerked my foot up and gave a small start. Discord chuckled.

"Well, you can move, certainly," Discord said. He lifted into the air from the bed, and with an odd, wave-like motion of his sinuous body seemed to crack his rather long back. Several times. I felt surprise at how unsurprised I was. "So," Discord said eagerly, bending over himself in the air to start hovering towards me. "Are you ready to go?"

"Maybe," I said hesitantly. I swung my feet back onto the dry sheets so I wouldn't have to keep holding them up. "After I put on shoes, maybe."

"New ones?"

I looked at him. "Why?"

"Well, the old ones are crap, and I can generate material objects on a whim. I'm just noting the possibility... Some stylish black boots, maybe?" I looked off the side of the bed to my old tennis shoes, which, according to my typical shoe traditions, were the only pair I had and had been worn already to the point of externally starting to collapse. So, halfway to the point where I would have actually made an effort to attain a new pair. Discord's face was simply smiling lightly as I peered back at it.

"Sure," I said, with indifferent acceptance. My attention shifted to my feet, as the draconequus snapped on cue. Sure enough. New black boots, already extending up my leg underneath my pants. And as I noted that, I noted again my pants, and with them my other clothes, which had been worn (I could only guess) for roughly five solid days in a row. It wasn't the type of thing that would normally bother me, but I had barely moved throughout the time, and I could feel their stiffness even sitting still. "New clothes, too, maybe."

"Why?" Discord asked earnestly.

"I probably reek of... Well, me. So."

"That's not the most terrible thing to reek of, you know," Discord said.

"They're also stiff," I said after a moment.

"Fine, fine," Discord said dismissively. Another snap. A fresh black t-shirt and black pants made out of whatever smooth material Discord kept generating clothes out of. Which was something that was perhaps worth questioning, actually.

It's comfy and black. It's good enough, whatever it is.

"Okay. Well. I..." My brain, set on going through the series of paranoid checks I went through whenever I left a place, seemed to struggle with the realization there was nothing to check. "I guess I'm ready to go. If we're going. But couldn't we wait a bit?"

"Why would we?" Discord asked. And I had no solid answer. I could have given him an "I don't feel like it," but somehow that seemed an inappropriate route to take.

"I don't know," I said calmly.

"Excellent," Discord said, hovering beside me as I started to move my legs back off the bed. He smiled wide. "Let's be off, then!" I saw his fingers move together. A sudden epiphany gripped my mind.

"Wait, Discord-!" The snap. The familiar flash of light. My eyes shut instantly at the sudden display of brightness assaulting my cornea, which didn't help the mix of ill-balanced position, lack of spatial awareness, and physical weakness that collaborated to let gravity drag me to the ground. It did so almost immediately, somewhat painfully. I sat a moment after it happened, anger immediately rising out of my ever-stewing emotional turmoil to steam at the surface. My eyes kept trying, boldly, to open again, but they closed again each time any light actually slipped in.

"Yes?" Discord said, from somewhere to my right, evidently having picked up on my desire to speak. Before we teleported.

"The element," I deadpanned. "Also, I was going to say I could try walking around before we went. Just. So. You know, I didn't immediately fall on my ass."

"I brought the element along. And your ass will recover," Discord said cheerfully. "Plus, you're not in a cave anymore. Which is certainly wonderful for me, and probably for you as well." I held what I could only hope was an unreadable silence.

"...Well, okay, I probably could have waited a bit longer," Discord added. "But come on. You gave me a maybe."

"Yes. I did," I said, blinking. My pupils were finally contracting enough that my eyes might be able to open for an extended period soon. "It's just... I just woke up, I'm wearing new clothes that aren't really... Mine, and we've teleported from a cave I didn't know the name or location of to a new place I don't know the name or location of. And i'm still physically weak for barely understood reasons. Just... Give me a moment."

To his credit, Discord did. He simply said, "Okay," turned around, and hovered a bit further away. He gave me more than enough time to have my eyes adjust, figure out vaguely what type of landscape I was in (grassy plains), and think for a moment or two. More importantly, to breath. Discord was waiting patiently now. I took several long, deep breaths, trying to release my energy with each. After a few, I felt sort of in control of my emotional range again—enough to think clearly.

Calm. Calm... I'm out of it again. He was lonely, you cuddled with him, he wanted you to get back to health, he thought you were healthy enough to move—debatably, I am—and so he teleported us. To somewhere. To resume... Randomly wandering and doing shit, I suppose. He chose this field, so maybe he was aware I'm not at fully functionality yet.

I cuddled with Discord, a stupid part of my thoughts echoed. For like half a day, if you count being cuddled up together in sleep.

I'm newly clothed, and I can move, I repeated seriously to myself, voluntarily derailing the other train of thought. Calm. Back to... Well, not normal, but "normal" with-Discord behavior.

"Okay, Discord. I'm good," I said.

"Splendid," the draconequus said brightly as he snapped. He popped back into reality next to me, smiling. "What now, my liege?"

"How should I know?" I said, as I got back on my feet. I looked around and examined the surrounding fields more closely. Almost entirely grass—there were a few heavily scattered trees a distance away, but that was the only non-grass vegetation, I could see—and it was excessively bright. Really bright.

"Thinking. Not to put all the pressure on you—I do, in fact, think as well sometimes."

"Where's the element of magic?" I asked, ignoring him and his cheery mood. He waved a hand dismissively.

"Oh, I put it in an inter-dimensional pocket. It's perfectly safe."

"Well, then. Uh. We're good."

"For what?" Discord asked insistently.

"Whatever," I said dismissively. Discord said nothing, but he smiled. "So, let's get to that," I muttered under my breath.

"Hmm?"

"Teleport us to Ponyville," I said. "If we're gonna do things, let's do things."

He raised his hand again, but paused as his fingers pressed together. "You wouldn't like to explore a new locale?"

"Not in particular."

"You sure? Canterlot could be fun. Celestia brings a rather delightful sense of helpless rage with her wherever she goes." I tried to consider what that would be like to see. Or confront. Frankly, I got caught up at the helpless part. Given what little of her I'd seen from the show, it was hard to envision her as truly, genuinely, pissed off and helpless. She was a godlike being, and she had magic. Helplessness didn't fit.

Unless she was facing a stronger godlike being, I suppose. My eyes flickered back at Discord.

"Either," I said after looking to the sky.

"Lovely." He snapped.

We appeared in a place that was clearly not Ponyville. Canterlot, logic whispered. It seemed to be, certainly; lots of white stone, with most of the buildings looking clean and new. Besides that, there were a bunch of well-dressed ponies staring at us with a sort of vacant surprise. My hand rose halfheartedly in greeting. Discord opted to give a sinister chuckle.

The ponies slid away from us most going in silent fear or talking quietly to their fellows. Discord chuckled again. "Come on. Let's head to the castle. At minimum, the royal guards should have the guts evidently required to speak to us, even if they're terrible company."

"How would you even know what the royal guards are like?" I said, following as he started off in what I could only assume to be the direction of the Canterlot Castle.

"Eh, I have my ways."

"Do your ways involve mind reading?"

"Perhaps," he said cheerfully. "Though in this case, guessing seems to me like it would appear an equally likely method for attaining the knowledge." I gave a small nod, not that that served any point, with the draconequus in front of me. Each step I took felt off. It seemed that walking heightened my awareness of how weak my limbs still were-- The odd feeling that I had only phantom echoes where my legs and arms should have been was persistent, even though I clearly had both pairs of appendages. It was a distracting feeling, and it let me travel to the castle with a relative minimum of actually dwelling on what I was doing. Instead, I could just focus on my leg and Discord's renewed enthusiasm, which came with jokes and jest aplenty.

Dwelling on what was happening might have been preferable, even though it seemed like I may have already lost the ability to ever see anyone I used to know ever again and had almost died. At least that was practical.

I'm reflecting on my reflections, I thought as we reached the start of the path leading directly up to the castle. It was large, an intimidating and artfully designed structure. I wondered for a moment how long the castle could have stood there. Discord had finally, as we reached the entrance, grown quiet again.

"Nice building," I said.

"Hmm, yes."

"...So, you expect they'll try to stop us?"

Discord gave a snort of contempt. "Of course they will. They're the royal guard. And Celestia's certainly not going to be preparing hot cocoa for us." I thought a moment. The sensation in my leg grew intense for a moment, and I paused to give it a sharp shake with an irritated grunt. When I looked back up from it, Discord was looking back at me, with an expression that was somewhere between concern and amusement. "Sure you're okay, darling?"

"Not particularly." I started walking again. Discord gave a small shrug of his shoulders and resumed walking too. The walk up the path leading to the castle was awkwardly silent. My eyes started to notice the spears on the walls of the castle. The royal guard, I thought. "Hey," I said. Discord looked over to me. "Could you prepare some hot cocoa for us?"

"Yes," he said. He raised a hand. "I'll presume that means you actually want hot cocoa right now, right?"

"Right," I said. He smirked and snapped, and two steaming mugs appeared. One in each of his hands. He offered one to me as we kept walking up.

"I made it at drinkable temperatures, just for convenience," he noted. I would have smiled, but the idea of facing the guard, even with Discord at my side, felt kind of intimidating. So instead, I just said, "thanks." I sipped it as I made a quick estimation of how many spears and golden helmets I could see lining the castle walls. The taste did make me smile, and give an instinctive glance at my cup. It was perfectly blended. Perfectly.

"Damn, that's good cocoa," I said after a second. We were almost to the main door, and still no one had challenged us. Discord nodded.

"Indeed," he said simply. He raised a hand and snapped. I was almost unsurprised by it that time, to the degree that I didn't even drop my cup. We appeared where I imagined to be just inside the door. There weren't many guards immediately inside--There were two, one on either side of the door. They couldn't restrain their own shock. I waved a weary arm at one in greeting.

"Don't move, he'll... I dunno." I took a sip from my cup after saying it. It sounded much more nonchalant than I felt. The guards seemed frozen, most likely in confusion.

"We could tickle them if they attack," Discord said.

"That," I said, jabbing my index finger at Discord for emphasis. I closed my eyes and gave a long exhale, willing my nerves to flow out with that breath. When I looked back to them the guards had gone from looking confused to pissed off. It was a restrained sort of anger—their faces were stiff masks full of sharp angles and lines, with subtle twitches. It was, perhaps, more frightening than if they'd just been looking murderous outright, and fear creeped into my body.

"Well, thanks for the cooperation, gents, and enjoy your door," Discord said cheerfully. I followed closely behind him as we moved further into the castle.

"So..." I began after we'd escaped earshot.

"Don't worry so much, Aaron," Discord cut in seriously, before I said anything more. "You're with me. Nothing can harm you." The clear knowledge of my concerns, even unvoiced, was somehow rather reassuring.

"...Thanks," I said after a moment. Discord smirked and nodded silently. We kept going. Occasionally, I'd see a castle servant, an occurrence which ended consistently with them noticing us and then darting away. It was still odd, being run away from. I didn't exactly feel like I should have been able to inspire terror. I wasn't a very capable terrorizer, being a presently physically-weakened teenager who hadn't exactly been strong in the first place, was rather diffident in general, and now was growing increasingly anxious (being reassured by a god evidently only helping me so much, perhaps due to the fact that relying on chaos was something of an oxymoronic concept) about the fact that we had encountered no further guard presence.

I grabbed Discord's left hand with my free right, making sure my mug stayed level in my other hand. The draconequus gave a quiet, drawn out, 'Awww!' which I promptly ignored, though no doubt I was blushing now. He gave no further commentary, but his talons slid between my fingers receptively and gripped back. His hand was strong, and it embodied the force of his presence well. Having my hand in his lent back a bit of mental fortitude to my external sense of serenity.

"You know," Discord said from seemingly out of nowhere, as we approached a staircase. "Sometime I think I should try being a human, just for the fun of it."

"Eh, maybe. I dunno. It'd probably be kind of boring," I said.

"Do you really think so? I would think it'd warrant at least a try. See your response, you know. I bet I'd look rather dashing."

"You're already fine," I said casually, though halfway through my words became sharper in quality, given an awkward edge by my cognitive realization of what I was doing. Discord glanced down as me as we ascended the steps, smiling down with that perfect level of restrained, anticipatory laughter as to imply that he could have made a quip, and was only not because not making a quip or comment there was, in a fashion, a quip or comment. Especially in conjunction with his expression.

"Halt!" came a sudden cry, with the air of a command. I glanced down the hallway at the top of the stairs, and it became immediately evident where the guards had gone. Or at least some of them. There were a lot of them, in that hallway, at least a score, maybe two. The idea of being afraid again occurred, but was swiftly rejected, both due to Discord's yet reassuringly present talons and the prioritized process of scanning for the one who'd delivered the order. I had recognized the voice immediately; my sight quickly yielded recognition as well, mostly because he was wearing his easily identifiable and slightly ridiculous purple armor.

Ooh, Shining! said the tiny part of my conscious mind that was still geeking out about everything.

Time to confront Shining, the bigger part said.

Ooh, Shining! said the tiny part insistently.

We had halted. There was an awkward moment where nothing happened, where no one moved or spoke. Shining looked perhaps the most awkward of everyone there, averting his gaze from us and adjusting his mane with a hoof, apparently not caring about how unprofessional it looked.

"Any planned proceedings after that, my dear... Hmm." Discord turned to me. "Aaron, who is this?"

"Shining Armor," I said quietly.

"Ah, okay then. Any planned proceedings after that, my dear Shining Armor?" Discord concluded.

"Stop you, Discord," he said seriously, stiffening his pose and hardening his face as he did so.

"No, we've already stopped. After that," Discord said. Shining just stared for a moment. I felt like I should have said something, perhaps something witty, or... anything, really, just something to justify my presence. Of course, I had nothing to say, a fact I cunningly concealed by taking a long drink of hot chocolate. Discord, evidently finding this amusing, did the same with his mug. We hadn't yet let go of each other's hands, so basically we were drinking in unison while for no logically apparent reason holding hands and not doing anything violent.

"...Uh-" Shining tried to start, but the poor captain was already sort of done for. He didn't seem sure of what to do.

"...Yeah..." I said, after a few more seconds. Nopony said anything. "Hi, guys. How's work?" God, I thought. That was awkward. As could have been predicted, nopony said anything. Again. Discord chuckled.

"Guys, are we going to be allowed to go through, or do we have to go through you? Because, and I mean this with sincere concern for your well-being, I can. You're not the best defense. Kind of futile." Discord took another sip from his mug after saying his part, gave his remaining cocoa a cursory glance, and then let go of the mug. It didn't fall, instead hovering precisely where and how he released it. "And terrible conversationalists, on the note of your failings. You can respond to us being here, if you're not going to attempt to stab us or other silly thing of the like."

"You'll never rule over us," a random guard said.

"True. Rule would be something of a strong term for what I intend to do over you--mostly I plan to sit. On a nice chair." He paused a moment, as if seriously envisioning his grand plan for the future (though I couldn't really say for sure that he wasn't). "Really, I'm mostly in this whole 'invasion,' thing for the sweet chair privileges and fancy titles."

Shining looked sharply at the guard who'd spoken. The guard looked away, ashamed, for a second, and then went back to looking normal. Shining turned back to us. "We're just here to do what we can to stop you-"

"So, nothing, then," Discord said. Shining ignored this.

"-as has the royal guard for any and all threats to Canterlot and Equestria," he finished.

"Guys?" I interjected meekly.

"What is that?" one of the guards in the second row back said in reaction to my speaking.

"I don't know," one of the others said.

"Discord, could we just, like, teleport forwards?" I said with an air of whining. "We're doing nothing here. And I'm getting stressed out."

"No," Shining said, as his horn started glowing bright blue. He sounded only sort of confident about the matter of us not teleporting, but the shield that suddenly sprung up around me and Discord was definitively real. My body underwent an involuntary flinch at the sudden sphere of energy appearing around us, which had the unfortunate result of making my cocoa splash out of my mug.

"Damn!" I muttered instinctively as I jerked backwards. The brown liquid ran down the sphere of energy like droplets of rain on a window, towards my feet, located at the base of the shield. Discord was poking the barrier with his lion's paw, seemingly unconcerned. His claws scraped the shield. The guards watched silently.

"Hmm," Discord said. "Not bad, Shiny. I'm not sure I can teleport through this."

"What?" I said in exasperation.

"It's an impressive barrier. I think it even seals in magic."

"So you can do basically anything, but not teleport out of this?" I said, slight disbelief turning to irritation. This encounter was becoming fairly stupid. The guard couldn't do anything to stop us, in the long-term. Having to stand in front of them doing nothing was growing annoying.

"Yep," Discord said calmly, looking over to me. He snatched his mug out of the air again, and took a sip before giving a contented sigh. "Anti-magic fields are pretty good at stopping magic. It's what they do, in case you hadn't deduced." The draconequus proceeded to look back to the multitude of ponies outside the bubble, now shifting around uncomfortably, uncertain of the need for their continued presence. "Did ole' Celly seriously order you all to just stop us from moving to no practical end? That seems somewhat stupid."

"Yes, she did. And you apparently can't do anything from in that shield, so in my view, we've just won," Shining said with resolution. His evident success had clearly rebolstered his confidence; I found that rather silly, even from in the bubble. He was just delaying us, basically. And all the other guards had yet to do anything, and were basically standing around useless. Though... in fairness, I don't think I'd be prepared to take on an alien and a primordial force of chaos on an average day either.

We sat there a bit, awkwardly silent again. I wondered what the individual guards were thinking. Most of them had assumed blank, serious faces that betrayed no feeling whatsoever. Shining had his face set in a mask that was only slightly more emotionally expressive, one of grim resolution. Staring at them had little point. I looked to Discord, instead--He was really the only other thing to look at, excluding the spilled cocoa, which I was. He was just thoughtfully stroking his goatee, with his right paw, indicating he'd put his mug back in the air. I just watched that for a couple of seconds, and then his red eyes looked to me. They shrunk just slightly, and a wide smile broke out on his face. He looked back to Shining.

"You're stupidly dutiful and not a very good leader, for the captain of the royal guard. But you do seem a decent fellow. And, of course, watching us be trapped in a bubble motionless can't be too much better than being motionless in a bubble. How'd you like some entertainment?" Shining looked suspicious immediately.

"Entertainment?"

"That is what I said, yes." Discord looked to me. "Say, how would you like to make the rough sum of 30-ish royal guards feel incredibly uncomfortable while trying to maintain a dignified facade?"

Not at all, I thought. But instead of that, what came out of my mouth was, "I... don't know...?"

"Wonderful! Let's make out."

"Entertaining"

View Online

"Ah-" I said. The guard seemed collectively bewildered. Shining's face was the most bizarrely neutral thing ever, as if his mind had just given up on trying to portray an emotional response. I probably would have laughed, if it wasn't for the fact that Discord was shifting his body (which, it is worth noting, took up a fair amount of the bubble's volume,) towards me, with a look firmly determined for mischief. "Could, we- Uh-" I paused again. "...No?"

"Oh, but come on, Aaron! It's the perfect escape strategy. Unless Shining over here has a lot more discipline than he looks like, and he doesn't, I'm fairly sure we can eventually break his concentration." He lowered his voice to a seductive murmur. "And even if we can't, it will get ever so boring in here..."

I was silent, though not for lack of effort. Resisting seduction wasn't a strong suit of mine, and—Damn, his face is close—Discord's upper body had lowered to mine, and I had backed up, and then I remembered we where in a sphere and not on a flat plane, and I fell backwards. Discord laughed, and I felt my skin burn with embarrassment. His laugh kept going. And then kept going.

"Shut up," I said, in true me-fashion. I was painfully aware of how flustered I must have looked to our oddly silent audience, who all still seemed half in shock.

"You're so cute when you're flustered, seriously," Discord said, chuckling. He lowered himself further down to keep himself level with me. Keep our faces near each other, mostly. He lifted a talon to my chin and ran the point up my skin, sending shivers through my body and causing me to lift my downward-directed gaze almost unconsciously. Discord's smile turned a bit more subdued. "Well, I'm serious. And for all you're saying, I know you don't actually not want this." He put his other arm on my shoulder. "Ready?"

"I- I, uh-"

Just do it, wimp, my self-esteem said bitterly. "Yes," I said weakly.

"Okay," cut in Shining's voice, loud and clear. "Who is he?" We both looked over to him.

"Me?" I said.

"Him?" Discord said. "Oh, he's my other-dimensional boyfriend. Why?" Shining was, I noted, blushing slightly.

"Uh..." Shining said.

"Hey." I said. "Big fan." Scott Pilgrim reference. Brilliant, Aaron. Everyone here will get that. There was an awkward moment of silence, during which Discord pressed his muzzle forwards over my shoulder and sniffed at my hair. That was the loudest sound in the room for a moment.

"You're a fan?" Shining said, finally just dropping all pretense of command and control and just sounding genuinely intrigued.

"Uh, yeah," I said, as Discord withdrew a bit and made a muttered comment about how I could probably use a bath. He touched my chest, and I noted particles of dust and grime draw off my clothes and body. I could almost deem that as an insignificant occurrence versus the other less believable things happening around me. "That's sort of a long story, though, and-" Discord licked at my neck, and my words stopped a moment. So is that, I thought, as my eyes wandered back to the draconequus. My hands moved stiffly forwards, and gently brushed the fur of his neck. Discord's tongue slid back between his lips, almost silently. It drew my attention to his lips. My attention stayed fixed there, and it seemed oddly persistent about not moving. Saying I didn't want to kiss him would have been a blatant lie.

"I'm gonna make you do it," Discord said quietly. "Just for fun, you know. We have time."

"...Are you going to just stay there, like... Right in front of me?" I said.

"Yeah, sounds about right," he said. Damn, I'm gonna have to just steel myself and do it. I tried to start moving, but that was oddly hard to do as well. Now. I still wasn't moving. Now. I might have twitched, maybe.

"That's kind of hard," I said after a moment.

"Precisely." I closed my eyes, and desperately tried to force some semblance of courage into my heart. The effort didn't yield much in way of results. Move, bitch, my thoughts said in bitter self-irritation. Come on. This is so... It's so 'me,' of me. Cut that shit out. I finally moved a little, slowly inclining my body forward. And then we were kissing, apparently. Or at least that's what my senses were telling me. I could feel his lip--I opened my eyes, and I could see his muzzle against mine. His eyes weren't closed, and so I was staring into the simple, bright red circles that made them up. His eyebrows were angled downward in a mocking gesture, or an appreciative one. I couldn't tell. Discord drew his head back, and I had an instantly formed suspicion that he had leaned forwards just a little to actually made it so that I hit his lips, though I couldn't confirm that. That could have just been my negative self esteem saying that, of course. It was hard to say. There was a lingering feeling on my lips that made me long to get them back against his, straightaway, which was a rather embarrassing thought. Not that I could really get more embarrassed than I already was. The guards were chattering outside the bubble; I couldn't blame them, given how bizarre our counter-captivity measures were.

"You really need to work on this kissing thing," Discord commented.

"Shut up," I said. He smirked, and then he kissed me again. I felt his arms wrap around my sides as he did so. Mine, in stiff, jerky motions, did the same for his own muscled, serpentine form. My eyes closed naturally as I enjoyed the feel of our lips touching, subtly moving against one another as they attempted to fuse perfectly together, only breaking apart to make the subtle shifts in position needed as to really define the next time they touched as a separate kiss.

God, this is surreal, I thought as his tongue brushed my lips. They opened a bit, implying that I granted permission for tongue admission. Or... well, okay, it probably meant that. That was what had popped into my head, at least. Nice. But surreal. Apparently, it was, or at least that was how Discord had chosen to interpret it, because his tongue darted in. I could feel it brushing against my own, and the sensation felt an overwhelming buzz of pleasure through my nerves. The guard's chattering felt suddenly louder, as I made what little effort I could to play back with my own tongue. It was almost overwhelming—my face was practically burning with shame. And besides that, the frail, ghostly feeling in my limbs was growing stronger, and it was becoming easier and easier to just stay slumped against the bubble's inner wall and make out with Discord. Or at least harder to stop. My arms seemed to want to just lay were they were, gently curled up over Discord's back and applying what pathetic little force downwards they could in their weakened state. I heard a moan. I couldn't have said if it came from me.

"I feel like this was a pretty good call, strategically," Discord said as he drew back, a thin string of saliva falling from its unsupported suspension between us. My head had followed his part of the way in what immediately afterwards seemed a subconscious demonstration of longing. And with that thought I felt it, eating away at my restraint and also at the strength of my shame. "What do you think?"

That little voice in the back of my head that spoke only of shame and guilt to me (who was always kind of a downer) said, It's stupid and embarrassing. "Yeah," I said. "Yeah, it was," I said, my breath slightly hastened, my skin burning. Discord gave an oddly soft, affectionate look that lasted for but a second, and then looked over to the guards, who were still chattering among themselves. Some seemed to have finally forgotten their discipline in the face of boredom, pointlessness, and awkward viewing. Others were still just standing there. And others still were watching with what seemed like almost excessive interest.

"Hey, Shiny. How about you?"

'Shiny,' as it was, had his eyes closed, and appeared to be ignoring us. "Grey Wind," he said quietly, "Would you go ask the Princess what she would like me to do? As for the rest of you, you're dismissed. I don't think you're doing anything here." One guard nodded, unfurled his wings, and flew back down the hallway. The majority of the guards left after him, though much more slowly. Several stayed. Whether for enjoyment, duty or the inability to avert their eyes, I couldn't say. Discord rapped with his lion's paw on the bubble of energy.

"Shiiiiinyyyyy~" Discord said in a singsong voice. "Come on! You shouldn't be so dishonest with yourself. It's not healthy." Shining ignored him. Discord stared a moment longer, then muttered irritably, "Che! Ingrate."

"Discord," I heard myself say. "Can we get back to cuddling or kissing? You've left me kind of... Wanting." And mildly hard.

"Oh! Sure," Discord said, almost apologetically. I was about to speak again, but then he darted forwards and resumed kissing me. I stiffened for a moment in surprise, and then relaxed again into him. That was, I was beginning to realize, very easy to do, based around Discord's individual qualities. Namely being soft, warm, and having a really long and rather delightful tongue. He was using it again, that delightful tongue, teasing pleasure from the walls of my mouth, from my tongue, from my lips... Anything it could touch, it drew from. I shook underneath him, in small shudders of physical bliss. Compared to my pitiful efforts, his was truly a godlike performance.

He acts so servile to my desires, I thought. One of the remaining guards gave a short whistle. "Wow, not gonna stop, are they?" the guard muttered. Sort of, I added in addendum, remembering our surroundings and that he'd initiated this. Discord slipped off my mouth and gave several playful nips to my neck.

"Discord, why are you so damn nice," I said under my breath.

"I blame love," he said. "Firstly for entertaining diversions, and secondly for you."

"Oh," I responded numbly. I would have preferred to say something more witty there, but what I said seemed to encapsulate my full emotional response pretty well, so I didn't. I just sat and let Discord keep doing various displays of affection, and let my brain sink under the more basic, automatic responses to his touch. For ease. Also to better ignore the small voice.

"You know," Discord said after transitioning to just stroking my hair and having rolled me over so I was sitting on top of him, "I don't think we're going to get out of here at this rate." I glanced over at Shining, sitting outside his shield prison with eyes closed and expression calm, if tense, in a seated position.

"No, we probably won't."

"As I see it, our only choices are to either do nothing until Celestia arrives, or take this plan to a new level."

"Oh. So... Sit around?" I said. He gave me a mockingly large look of disappointment.

"A shame. I thought we might finally just fuck." My face, which had finally been heading back to a fairly normal shade of pale-ish tan, blushed furiously again. Even though that sort of made sense as a progression. One of the guards laughed derisively.

"I'll admit it, captain," he said to Shining. Shining glanced back at the guard. "I don't feel very threatened by these two. Even if Discord does have nearly limitless power."

"Discord's a force of evil who would throw Equestria into anarchy," Shining said.

"And how much more fun it would be," Discord said cheerfully. The guard laughed again.

"As I said, captain." I stared at that guard for a time. Then, on weak legs, I lifted myself off Discord, and walked to the edge of the bubble. My legs felt gone. There was no feeling in them, but I felt firmly set on the ground. The guards looked at me. Shining had opened his eyes, now that we had stopped.

"Hey," I said. "Can we come out?" Shining's eyes widened, and he had an innocent look of confusion for a second.

"What?" said Shining.

"Come out. I'm useless, and I'll order Discord not to do anything. He'll obey-"

"-I will!" Discord offered helpfully.

"-for some reason or another. Even if he doesn't... All you're doing right now is delaying him. And me. I guess. You know?" I glanced around at the guards, who were all a foot or two shorter than me, which gave me a sense of power in spite of my weakness and the fact that I was terrified. So, really, I had no sense of power at all. But they might. "You know?" I added again for emphasis.

"No," Shining said simply. "You can- you can talk it over with the Princess if you want, if she chooses to see you."

"Ugh, god, you make a boring person as an enemy," I muttered under my breath, turning away. No one gave the impression they'd heard me. I stepped over Discord's tail, which was lain out on the limited floor of our prison, walked to the opposite edge of the sphere—a short walk, given the very limited dimensions of the bubble—turned around and walked back. I had nerves and nothing to do. I decided to let the geek in me win, at least as much as my nerves would let it before demanding I shut up and stop drawing more attention to myself. I looked to Shining, and pushed up my glasses as I did so. "...Is Cadence ok?" Shining's eyes widened again. For all his determination look and act serious, his outward composure was very easy to break.

"How do you know her name?"

"A long story that has almost nothing to do with Discord or present matters," I said back. "But she's ok, right?" He blinked again.

"Yes, yeah, she is."

"That's good," I said. I was silent a moment. I could think of nothing that would actually be a good idea to say, but I desperately felt like I needed to say something. The social need to keep talking when in a group, albeit a small group composed of two technical rebels and four royal guards, and three different species among those two groups, was immense. Unfortunately, wanting to talk didn't seem to make me any better at it, so the silence hung.

"How'd you two meet?" one of the guards spoke suddenly, in a quiet, level voice that carried a neutral curiosity. I was taken aback at being addressed directly by one of the guards. It was a possibility somehow outside my expectations or consideration.

"Uh, well-" I began, and then paused. Discord took up the explanation, an act which I silently, but fervently, thanked him for. Even though hearing his explanation evoked mild feelings of rage towards him.

"I teleported into his house on a different dimension and decided I liked him after knowing him for maybe an hour or two. Then I dragged him back here with me, and we've been hanging around on Equestria together as a couple ever since, after I decided that we'd be one, with him in various states of consciousness and varying degrees of acceptance over that time period. I think he's been awake maybe a third of the time he's been here. Maybe." Discord paused, and then lifted himself upright into the air, to sling an arm over my shoulder, grasp my chin in one hand, and lift it proudly up. His doing this made my embarrassment undergo another oscillation back into intense levels. Discord giggled. "Isn't he just adorable? I think he's adorable. Who here thinks he's adorable? Don't be shy to speak up, at this point he's likely too flustered to speak audible sentences."

Two of the guards smiled, one laughed, and Shining had an uneasy look of confusion decorating his face that made him look strangely vulnerable. I tossed Discord's arm off, and he let it be thrown, smiling wide. I would have verbally chastise him in some kind of mundane punishment for mocking me before these random guards (and Shining Armor), but I was—Damn him—too flustered to speak audible sentences. So instead I just stood there, making sure by quick visual check that my clothes were concealing as much of my body as they could, like they were some kind of cloth barrier against shame. Discord giggled again.

"Ah, how fortunate I have it," he said. I tried to flash him a look of righteous fury. Discord just laughed. Again.

"Are you really Discord?" Shining said, almost in a plea.

"Yes, that's me," Discord said. "Twice-defeated master of chaos and disorder, at your service. It's okay if you forget the last part of that. It can usually be inferred from the name." Discord looked up, over the guards. "Ah, there she is."

Celestia arrived in a rush of wind that I could hear, but not feel. The guard turned and bowed to her as her hooves touched down and her wings folded in.

"At ease," she said. She had a vicious smile that felt rather odd to see decorating her face. "How are you doing, Discord? And..." Celestia glanced to me for a second, with seething malice lurking in her eyes, and nowhere else. "...Pet."

"We're doing quite lovely, Celestia. How about you? How goes your little team's effort at harmonizing?"

"Rather poorly. What have you done with magic?" Discord laughed.

"Pfft, like I'd tell you." Celestia glared at him.

"You've done an unusually small amount of damage in contrast to your usual wake of mayhem. Evidentially, almost nothing. Why is that?"

Discord pointed to me. "Why, that would be due to my pet." Celestia looked over to me for a moment, then back to Discord.

"How?"

"I'll answer that for you if you let us out." Celestia raised her eyebrows. It had the effect of making the contempt practically leaking from her already rise in strength exponentially. "I promise to play nice, too," Discord added, with a mocking friendliness. Celestia remained silent for a time.

"Shining, you may release them." Shining gave an odd, uncomfortable expression, restrained it, gave a stiff nod, and let the small, subtle glow of his horn fade. The bubble vanished. Drops of hot chocolate fell to the ground, no longer supported. Discord smiled, stood to his full height, and gave a slight bow.

"Many thanks, my splendid usurper~"

"Talk," she said coldly.

"He's given me an order to do nothing to anypony," Discord said cheerfully. Celestia's face was stiff and unreadable. "So, naturally," Discord continued, "I haven't done anything to anypony. I've been a good master to him. Why, I expect he may give me a treat soon."

"Of all the things to ever threaten my nation, you may be the most annoying," Celestia said after a moment of cold silence.

"You are ever so appreciative of my efforts, Celestia. It makes all these rebellions worth it." I swept my gaze over the whole group. We had me, who was flustered, cowed, and generally overwhelmed, Discord, who looked smug and jovial about the confrontation proceedings, Celestia, angry and stern, Shining, confused and aimless, and four random royal guards, who all had blanked expressions again besides one who appeared on the brink of laughter. I liked him. His face broke a little of the massive tension hanging over the area as the gods bantered. Well, chipped it, more like. It was still nice. I anxiously shifted my weight from leg to leg.

"So, uh," I said. Both monosyllabic words felt momentous. The group looked to me, whose tongue had cut the silence and then immediately pressed to the floor of my mouth trembling in fear. "What now?" I said shakily.

"Perhaps a display of hospitality," Celestia said, sounding completely inhospitable.

"Lovely. We'll await you in your chambers." His fingers pressed together. I braced instinctively for disorientation. We reappeared in a large, lush room, with a prevalent though not untasteful theme of golden yellow and suns decorating much of the room's trappings. A massive window let sunlight pour in, casting a warm glow over most of the room. A massive bed made of dark, solid wood, with a cover and curtains that dominated the room was present, along with several cabinets.

"Wow, nice," I said calmly.

"Yes. I imagine she'll be rather irritated by our being in here. She enjoys maintaining the illusion of a private life; being in her theoretically-private chambers ought to be a good jab at her." He twirled his finger in the air in what seemed to be a happy excess in energy. "Get back at her for the whole, 'pet,' jab, you know."

"Why does she hate you so much?"

"Well, we're enemies, one. But two, when she originally attempted her coup against my rule, I ran instead of fighting. At the time, she had the elements under control, you understand, and I could have dodged their assault, but at the time I was more interested in the distraction of a nice conflict than an easy victory. I made her life during her first few weeks of rule as accurate an imitation of Tartarus as I could. She was, at the time, not incredibly stable, which meant that as soon as I started to get to her the elements were crippled. No laughter, you know. So, in essence, for personal and impersonal emotional torment over several months."

"Oh," I said. "That sounds terrible."

"Such is war," Discord said, smiling. "And, really, any good vitriolic relationship." I had no comment on that. I noticed that my legs felt tired--not just weird, incorporeal, and hollow, but actually tired too, which had the odd effect of making me feel simultaneously supported by nothing and fatigued in that nothing. So, lacking any other directive, I sat down.

"Man..." I said, and I was contented with that. Discord nodded in understanding.

"Still functioning?"

"Yeah. Tired as hell, though." I lifted an arm to my forehead, thumb and index finger arranged in a 90-degree angle, and massaged my temples. "And mildly disgraced. That too."

"Oh, why would that be? All we did was make out for a bit." I moved my hand over my mouth to conceal my lower face.

"Well, yeah, that was- all, I guess, but..." Discord was holding back laughter.

"What was that?" He said. "Your hand blocked it."

"Shut up," I said back. I lowered my arm to point emphatically at it. He laughed.

"Oh, you know I'm just playing," Discord said, lifting his arm and flipping his hand up and down in a dismissive gesture. "Permission to wrap around you, sir? We should look affectionate when Celestia enters. Commence the mental warfare, you know." I held my silence for a moment. Fuck it. I'm tired and I don't have to take initiative.

"Sure."

Discord snaked through the air over to me, and commenced coiling his tortuous body around mine in tight loops. "I would have suggested we fucked in her bed, but you deserve a break from feeling ashamed about getting excited when I tell you to do stuff."

"Uh. Thanks, I guess," I said as I leaned back into his body. I relaxed my muscles, letting myself fall into the support of his coils, forcing myself to exhale, and envision the floods of mental and physical tension drowning my sense external calm in their swells draining from my body. Discord's head rose out from his third coil around me, to the right of my head, so as to hang over me and allow himself to maintain freedom of his arms and neck. My arms were just above much of his body, and his spine functioned in essence almost as an armrest, where indeed my arms fell.

"So, uh, what now," I said.

"We wait," Discord said simply.

"We wait," I echoed. Again.

Civil Conversation

View Online

Celestia didn't take too long. That was rather fortunate; I was falling asleep in Discord's obnoxiously warm, comfortable means of embrace, and the slam of her door against her wall as she entered snapped me back into awareness. I blinked tiredly and lifted my head back off Discord.

"Our gracious host joins us at last," Discord said. Celestia's horn glowed, and the door behind her swung shut, held in a bright golden-yellow glow. She looked bitter, face flat but with stern, spiteful lines etched at the edges of her forehead, mouth and eyes.

"I really do hate you, you know," she said flatly, without emotion, as she bent her legs to sit down in front of us. "There's no reason at all for you to teleport here besides angering me." She did not mention our position.

"There is privacy," Discord said in response. "Aaron here is shy and timid. Presuming you actually want to speak to him and have him be sort-of functional, and I know you will, this is a decent place." He gave a small chuckle. "Also, angering you is fun."

Celestia sighed. "Fair play, I suppose. Could you conjure some wine?"

"I could," Discord answered. He snapped, and a blue-tinted bottle of wine appeared on the ground between us all, along with several glasses.

"I can't drink," I said immediately.

"Well, you can," Discord said.

"Shouldn't," I corrected myself. Celestia ignored us and started pouring herself a glass, as Discord argued that my new reservoir of magic would remove anything harmful in my system after a little while and I said stuff about how it wasn't legal and also about how, "Wouldn't that ruin the point?" Discord laughed at that. In the end, I ended up holding a glass of grape juice. I suppose Discord had filled it so I wouldn't feel left out. He then poured win for himself, took a sip, and then stared expectantly at Celestia. She said nothing for a moment, then closed her eyes and released a long breath, as if in bracing. When her eyes opened, she spoke.

"Well, I can't remove you without all of the elements, at least not as of yet. So what do you want?"

"Hmmm... Some anarchy, a fancy chair to sit on, and the ability to enjoy a mundane life with my boyfriend here," Discord said. "Though, conveniently for you, I've been in essence banned from anarchy. Not doing anything to anypony without approval is mildly inhibitive to conquest. So. Really, just the fancy chair and mundane, average god-of-chaos life." Celestia's eyes moved over to me.

"You actually are holding the leash?"

"Well, he says so, at least," I answered quietly. Hmm. That was supposed to come out louder. She gave me a harshly questioning glance. "He's obeyed everything I've ordered so far," I added, a bit louder. "So far as I know," I added a second after that.

"Ours is an interesting relationship," Discord commented empirically, as he took another drink of wine.

"Yeah, it is," I added.

Celestia ignored both of us and kept her eyes firmly on me. "What matters is that, between you two, I'd appeal to you so as to prevent conflict, correct?"

"Yeah, I guess," I said.

"He guessed right," Discord added. Celestia ignored him again.

"What would you demand?"

"I don't know," I said. "Mostly just peace, I guess. Which is what you want. I don't even know if we need a discussion."

Celestia looked over meaningfully to Discord. "I'm not sure it can be so simple."

"I'm not submitting to your authority, if that's what you're implying," Discord said. "Though if I'm doing nothing to any of your citizens, I hardly think that should matter to you. I plan to be an unlawful, depraved, cruel bastard, true, but I'll be doing those things privately. For the most part." He paused contemplatively. "Maybe not the depraved component..."

"I can't allow that," she said immediately.

"Why?" I asked.

"Principle," she said back, as though the idea of "principle," could in-context justify a large scale conflict of gods. And me. I took a drink of my grape juice. Gods and me.

"Why can't we just compromise?" I said. Celestia's gaze still didn't look away. The continuous scrutiny under her bright pink eyes was beginning to get to me, even though we'd been talking for less than two minutes. I took another drink; My throat suddenly felt rather dry. Probably nerves. Or maybe just an extension of my being in barely-functional condition. "I accept that Discord walking around your country unrestrained except by me, who you don't really know, is unnerving, and, well, how horrifying what I just said sounds, but I mean... The alternative is that you two just fight, and then you for sure have stuff get damaged. Or just very strange, I guess, since Discord won't do anything to any of you without permission."

"True. But there's little point in making a peace between two sworn foes. Discord cannot tolerate concord. He'll break any oath he'll make here."

"We don't need an oath. We just need niceness," I said. Discord laughed.

"Niceness?" Celestia said. The word sounded forced from her lips, and positively coated in spite.

"Yeah, uh... Niceness." Celestia looked bitterly at me for a moment.

"Has Discord displayed such a thing to you? And I don't mean superficially. I mean, has he ever—just once—made a personal sacrifice for you, or has he simply been following you around and laughing at you?" I started to respond, and then the question sunk in, and instantly slaughtered the yet ill-defined answer I'd almost uttered. I looked over my shoulder to Discord. His face was a relaxed mask with a grin painted on, and I couldn't read into its artificial construction. He raised his eyebrows.

"Go on, answer." I looked back to Celestia.

"Mostly the following and laughing," I said. Celestia smiled then. It was a horrible thing to behold, some kind of awful blend of sadistic joy, contempt, and pity. The pity stung the most, even though it was the most vague and subdued of the elements; I couldn't even see where the idea it was there had come from. Nothing on the surface of Celestia's grim visage implied it existed.

"I see," Celestia said simply.

"Did you enjoy that?" Discord asked suddenly.

"Hmm?" I muttered in response.

"Excluding the most unfortunate elements of our combined journey—eternally losing your access to your home dimension and family, getting knocked out once—have you enjoyed being followed and laughed at?"

"...Yes," I said hesitantly. "Ignoring those, yes. I think." Discord's face radiated joy for a moment above me, despite the uncertainty.

"My point stands," Celestia said. "Discord is selfish, unpredictable, and completely untrustworthy. I'll not be ni-"

"Sister!" came a muffled shout. The door swung open in a dark magical field. All three sets of eyes in the room turned to look. Luna, I thought. The dark alicorn stood in the open portal, a frustrated look on her face.

"Lu-" Celestia began.

"How dare you presume to ignore us in a matter as important as this!" Luna cut in. "I thought you had learned after the changelings to keep me more involved!"

"Luna, this is just a conversation. We're doing nothing of importance," Celestia said tiredly.

"A conversation with an enemy over politics, yes," Luna said in a rather appreciably clever riposte. Celestia said nothing back. Luna closed the door behind her as she walked and sat besides her sister. She gave us a strange look as she did so—whether due to the oddity of the circumstances, my strange and new presence, or the way I was currently enveloped in Discord's body, was impossible to say. It could have been all of those things, really. All of them certainly seemed worthy of a confused glance.

"Hi," I said. "Aaron." My hand shifted forwards along Discord's spine a little bit to extend in offering before I realized how stupid my current position would have made it look. Also that Luna didn't have any hands to extend towards my offered one. After those realizations and a short surge of embarrassment, I stopped.

"I am Luna, Princess of the Night," she said, thankfully not offended by my stupidly casual greeting. She looked between the faces of the rest of us, eyes open and perceptive. "Where do we stand?"

"Awkward, vague compromise, potentially," Discord said.

"Without the elements, we do seem to be heading that way, yes," Celestia said quietly.

"That is good," Luna said after a moment.

"In a way, yes, I suppose it is," Discord said. Celestia took a massive drink of wine and said nothing further. Luna looked at her sister with irritation for a moment, and then looked back to me.

"What manner of beast are you?"

"Huh?"

"To what species do you belong? I've never seen one of your kind, you see," she said, in a mild tone. I was glad that she seemed to have learned normal speech habits in the indeterminable time gap between "Luna Eclipsed" and what was happening now. If there was a time gap. I was likely in an alternate universe—I couldn't see the Hub having suddenly having a number of episodes following a weird gay romance between a defeated antagonist and a human. Though, I wonder how the fandom would react to that...

"I'm a human," I said. "From some dimension. I don't think it's named."

"Intersting," Luna said, with what to my surprise sounded like genuine interest. "Am I correct in assuming by your close proximity to Discord that the two of you are partners?" Discord snickered. I knew a blush had yet again blossomed on my cheeks.

"Yeah, I guess," I said.

"Are you mortal?" she asked.

"Yes."

Luna looked over to Discord. "This is your current choice?"

"Mmmhmm," Discord said. "He's weak, freaky, and decently cute in behavior. If not looks."

"I don't understand your decisions, as usual," Luna said calmly.

"Fair enough. Neither do I," Discord said. I gave a tired chuckle.

"So, are we done? It feels like we're done," I said after yet another pause. Well, mumbled, more. I was tired and still felt rather small in my present company.

"I suppose we are. A temporary ceasefire, accepting that you do no harm. "Harm," as defined by me," Celestia said with a firm, flat voice.

"Fair enough," I said.

"Would you prefer us to be anywhere in particular?" Discord asked.

"Hmm?"

"Would you—that is, Celestia, in case you've forgotten your identity somehow—prefer me and Aaron to settle down in one location? You know, to provide you a place to go if you need to speak with us or confront me about some kind of horribly destructive, cataclysmic event that might occur within this ceasefire period. That sort of thing," Discord concluded.

Celestia stared with bitter indifference toward him for a moment. "You may live where you like. But away from others."

"Nice," I said. I looked back to my draconequus boyfriend. "Discord, let's go to... There."

"Where?" he asked.

"Wherever. Home." For a moment again, my life a week ago flashed in my mind. That home. That house. Its occupants. My family. I closed my eyes at the vague, hollow ache the memories, which felt already distant though they were not, gouged into my chest. "Our new home."

"You don't want a say on where that is?" he asked, with a perceptive softness.

"Nah. I don't know Equestrian geography. It'd be like getting advise on what color to paint your walls from a blind man."

"Very well, then. I'll decide." Discord put his fingers together. "For now," he added, after a moment. "He gave a curt nod to Luna. "Always a pleasure, Luna." He turned to face Celestia. "Also a pleasure, despite your efforts. Enjoy the wine~" And then he snapped. And I let the flash overcome me, not caring where it might take me.

The Two Kings of Chaos

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~One Point Eight Three Years Later~

A mountaintop is a pretty sweet place for a home, if the occupants don't mind having a little less atmosphere around them than one might have at a more normal location. And our home was pretty sweet as mountaintop-located homes went. Hewn straight into the rock, it was, in essence, a deep artificial cave dug into the summit of the mountain that held Canterlot. It was oddly structured and designed, as if building decisions had been made on whim. Which, as they had, made absolute sense. The layout and furnishings of the place varied from week to week. Sometimes from day to day. Each lasted only so long as Discord wasn't bored with it, which was never a long period. Sometimes I would wake up, realize Discord had gotten bored during the night, and then have to spend the next half hour reaccustoming myself with the hallways and tunnels and random hollow spaces. There were precisely two permanent fixtures in the place: My room, and a tower with a base inside the mountain and a top a solid 30 ft above the highest point of the peak, atop of which were two elegantly crafted stone thrones, one decidedly larger than the other.

I was sitting on the smaller of the two thrones, one arm placed under my chin, keeping my head fairly upright. I liked to come up here when I wanted to think, as I did right now. The wind stung my face as it blew across my skin.

Discord seems bored again. That could be dangerous. My free hand's fingers drummed on the stone armrest of my throne. He hasn't moved for like three hours now. He's never motionless for that long. I took a deep breath, enjoying the cold of the air as it filled my lungs. I wonder if I should do anything about it...

A bright burst of light appeared for a moment. My eyes closed almost instantly, though they stayed closed a while after. I rubbed them casually with both hands.

"You know, your teleporting is much more annoying when I don't expect it."

"Apologies," he said. I managed to make my right eye blink open. The left stayed firmly shut. Discord strolled past my sight, and took a seat down next to me on the larger throne. He was silent.

"You ok? You've been bizarrely non-obtrusive today. It's setting me on edge. I keep thinking you've been saving up the madness or something." I forced my left eye open again as well. Both eyes blinked as they readjusted.

"Just tired," he said.

"...Are you ok?" I asked again. He laughed.

"Perhaps not. Do you have a way of making me feel... better?"

"Depends on what you want," I said, ignoring his implication. "You hungry?"

"Not terribly."

"Hmm," I said back. Neither of us spoke for a time, simply looking out over the world. I resumed leaning on my left arm for support and examined the lines and details of my right hand. Not a practical thing to examine, really, unless damaged and in need of repair, but hands did at least have the decency of being complex and interesting to look at. They also made good symbols of creative spirit and humanity. I wasn't sure which I was looking at it for at that moment, the physiological complexity or my attached symbolic meaning, but it was something. "The weather is okay today. Could be less sunny and more damp, but overall it's okay. The right temperature, you know?"

"Are we really going with the weather as a topic?" he said, more amused than actually contemptful of the idea.

"Why not? It works as one."

"True." He took a deep breath, before releasing an accepting sigh. "The weather is nice, yes."

I reached over to his taloned hand and grasped it in my own not-taloned hand. He glanced over. "We could go do something, you know."

"Like what?"

"Well. You could... Chaos. I'd watch you. I like seeing you work."

"You do," he said. "I'm not in the mood, though."

"For chaos? That's strange." I paused. "We seem to be heading in a circular sort of direction in this conversation."

"I am in a rather peculiar mood today. I haven't even felt the urge to see your cute little attempts at being romantic or sexually competent."

"Hmm. Yeah. That is peculiar." Another gust of cold wind blew over us. I let go of Discord's hand to rub my face. My beard had grown out a bit, enough that I ran my hand over or through roughly a half-inch of hair, mostly due to the simple fact that I was lazy and didn't have a razor. "Say. Do you think I should shave?"

"What?"

"Shave. Kill my beard."

"Well, you could," Discord said. "You'll look fine either way."

"Ok." I stretched out on my throne, trying to shift into a comfortable position. For being made of stone, the thrones were actually surprisingly comfortable, but now that Discord had followed me up to them they were far less restful. I awkwardly grabbed at my hood, folded between the backs of me and the throne. It came up from between the two and I pulled it over my face. The cold of the air had chilled the cloth, but it blocked the wind immediately. And it'd warm up. "I think I'll head inside in a bit."

"Why? Dislike my company?"

"It's cold," I said back. "Half of why I like cold is that it makes warmth feel amazing. Besides, you aren't talking and it's weird."

"So I was half correct, then."

"Yeah, I guess." My beard itched. I rubbed my face again. "I mean, I could stay out here. But it's not like we're doing anything."

"We're sitting," Discord said.

"Anything interesting," I corrected. "Sitting's somewhat dull."

"It's very kingly, though," Discord said back. He twisted his body to look back at his chair, showed a momentary irritation, casually bent the stone in such a manner as to promote a more reclined position, and then resumed sitting.

"We're not really kings," I said.

"Why aren't we? We operate on our own authority, I have birthright, I command vast power, and you're tied to me in a romantic and acknowledged manner."

"I don't know. We don't have servants?" Discord laughed.

"Oh, but we do. You have me, and I have you."

I chuckled too. "Dude, you got ripped off in the servant department. I don't even do my own laundry."

"True," Discord said, smiling.

"...Or cook," I added. "Or clean... Or otherwise be helpful."

"All also true," Discord said calmly.

"Yep," I said back. I was silent for a time. In a sudden burst of motion, I lifted myself from my chair. Discord looked over at me curiously. "I think I'm gonna go inside."

"Meet you there," Discord said, snapping. I averted my gaze on instinct. I sighed in sarcastic irritation (a somewhat pointless act, given no one could hear), turned around, and walked to the start of the the spiral staircase that'd let me descend from the tower, knowing Discord would be waiting at the bottom. I walked down the dark stone steps, watching the flickering patterns of the orange glow on the walls as I went. Our home was lit with torches that never went out; due to the rather limited lighting capacity of torches and a decided lack of windows in the architecture, everywhere was lit, but dimly, and with light having the inconsistent, shifting quality of flame. I liked it. Wonder what we should have for dinner...

Discord was, indeed, at the bottom of the staircase, hovering beside the door. He joined me as I walked down the hallway.

"What do you think we should have for dinner?" I asked.

"Did we eat a lunch?" Discord asked.

"I don't think so."

"Hmm. Maybe something bigger, then."

"Some kind of sandwich?"

"Yeah, that would be fine. Though I'd need a bit more specificity then, 'sandwich' to make any."

"...Bread then? I like bread. Maybe with some grapes. It's classic."

"We could do that," Discord said, a light smile playing across his mouth's edges. "Perhaps I could feed you the grapes one by one."

"Perhaps."

"And little bits of bread."

"Perhaps."

"You don't think the idea of getting fed is cute?"

"Not particularly, no. It does give a sense of power or weakness to the eating party, though. You know. Depending on if they want it."

"Definitely doing that, then," he said. I gave a small smile, which I did my best to restrain. I didn't find the idea astoundingly amusing, but it was a more Discord-like behavior than the other acts (or, perhaps more accurately, non-acts) of today, which was rather reassuring. Discord had been getting these weird days recently, and normally they led to some form of unexpected... stuff. Like the time he flooded the basement with honey.

I took a seat on a sofa as we entered the next room, which held a number of sofas arranged over its floor in no particularly evident organization. "So, bread and grapes?"

"I suppose so, yes." Discord sat down besides me, making a lazy gesture with an arm as he did so, which summoned a platter before us loaded with massive portions of bread and grapes. I plucked some grapes from the vine section laid on the silvery platter and took a chunk of bread. My attempt to put the grapes in my mouth failed, as my arm stopped moving halfway to it. "Ah, ah, ah," Discord said calmly. "I'm doing that."

I let my arm fall, let the food hover from my open palm into Discord's fingers, and then let those fingers artfully deliver them one at a time to my lips. He made sure to let his digits linger at the area.

Good grapes. I gently kissed one of his talons as it drew away, prompting a small chuckle. For someone who never needs to eat, Discord knows food, I thought as I split another grape open between my teeth and felt a small burst of juice spread through my mouth.

"So," I said as his hand moved again to pick more food off the platter. "Are you recovered?"

"Rather spontaneously, yes," Discord said. "Hopefully that will hold, but who knows. You could find me crying in a corner after another hour." I took the small group of grapes in his palm as he offered them over to me, snatching them up one at a time with small, awkward nips. I chewed and moved much of the mass over to a cheek.

"Fair enough."

"Indeed it is."

We continued this slow feeding process for a time, in relative silence, until Discord proclaimed that he was bored, after which I fed myself while he produced various patterns of light over one of his hands. Honestly, that seemed pretty boring too. Not that there's much better to do or look at.

"Hmm, what do you think of this one?" Discord said, holding aloft a series of geometric lines in all the colors of the rainbow.

"Eh," I said. He gave a thoughtful pause and then nodded. "Maybe make some kind of statue?" I said. "I miss that one hallway we had that one time with all of them." That had been a glorious hallway. One side was lined with ten statues of me in various poses and outfits (all of which truly captured my lack of presence and vaguely average looks), and the other side lined with ten statues of Discord, in equal variety. It had always had an interesting atmosphere. It had also been relatively informative as to how it felt to have a statue of you somewhere; weird, mostly. Though my ability to feel weird about anything was almost gone, so it'd been left more of a pleasant tingle than really a weird feeling it gave me.

"Perhaps," Discord said. The lines of light bent inward and compacted down into a small, bright sphere of radiant energy, which Discord flicked into the air and swallowed.

"Ugh. What are we doing?" I said after a moment.

"Well. Sitting. Eating. Considering making statues."

"Ok, well, yeah," I said weakly. "I mean, like, what could we be doing."

"Basically anything," Discord said.

"Well, that's useless," I replied back. I heard a small tap come from somewhere in the house, so light I wasn't sure it had actually happened. As such, I assumed it hadn't and ignored it. "Wanna head down to Canterlot? Maybe visit a coffee shop?"

"I can produce coffee at will, Aaron."

"I don't even drink coffee. But it'd be fun to see the Canterlot ponies reacting. It's been a while since we popped into town."

"True," Discord said, with a musing tone. Another tapping sound, a bit louder. Both of us glanced at a door; a different one for each of us.

"Is that the door?"

"I believe so, yes," Discord said.

"I'll get it," I said, rising from the sofa.

"Ok," Discord said, remaining motionless. I left the room and walked to the... well, door. There was like one, placed at the top of a long, steep staircase. Another knock sounded as I approached it. Wonder who's here, I thought as I opened the door. The golden gleaming armor and white coat answered my question. Sort of.

"Hello," he said in a formal tone. "You are Aaron, correct?"

"Discord!" I yelled over my shoulder, ignoring him. "It's a guard!"

"What does he want?" Discord yelled back.

"I dunno! Get in here, it probably involves you," I said back. I turned to the guard, who was staring at me stiff faced from two feet below my eyes. "Yeah, I'm Aaron. Wanna come in?"

"Yes," the stallion said formally, ignoring that I'd ignored him, and stepping into the open door. Discord popped into reality besides me.

"Why, hello, guard who neither of us knows! I do imagine you're going to end up delivering some sort of message to us, probably on one of our sofas! Let's go there, shall we?" He snapped. We all reappeared on a sofa, after a brief stint in dimensional darkness. The stallion couldn't hide the surprise he undoubtedly was experiencing as a result of the forced teleportation, which made him look oddly vulnerable in his newly-seated position on the couch opposite me and Discord. I was completely used to the means of travel by now.

"So, what?" I asked, after a moment of silence.

"Well, uh," the stallion said, still clearly not in his element. His voice was a bit higher and more relaxed, though not much. He cleared his throat uncomfortably, and then continued in the normal guard voice. "The Princess has sent me to request your aid."

"Celestia wants our help?" I said.

"Oh, do tell us with what!" Discord said as the guard opened his mouth to respond. The guard closed his mouth, submitting to the conversational whims of the draconequus. No one spoke a moment, until the guard realized that that was all Discord or I were going to say, and then awkwardly reopened his mouth to speak.

"The Princess has requested your aid regarding a mage who has recently taken control of a city using forbidden magic," the guard said.

"Well, ok then," I said back. Sure. Why not. We're both bored. I think.

"Yeah, sounds good," Discord said.

"You accept?" the guard asked.

"Sure. I mean, why wouldn't we?" I said.

"Because you're..." the guard paused.

"Evil? Anarchic? Crazy? Weird? Alien?" Discord said helpfully. The guard got a strange look on his face for a moment.

"Yeah. That."

"Nah, man. Well. Ok, kind of. I'm probably crazy, we're both definitely weird, I'm an alien, and I think we might be anarchists. But we're like the harmless intellectual kind that sits in their house and thinks about being chaotic instead of doing it." Discord chuckled at my small speech. "Mostly," I added, acknowledging that Discord still did a number of things that were "chaotic," in nature, if done far away from others. "Still. I don't think we're... evil. Probably."

"Depends on how shallow-minded your definition of "evil," is," Discord said, sipping at a small cup of steaming liquid that he just kind of... had, then. "But, no, evil seems a tad strong."

"Still. Enemies of the nation," the guard said, somewhat awkwardly.

"Oh. We're still that," I said back. "Discord, what is that, out of curiosity?"

"Tea," he said.

"Eh, I'll skip then."

"You want any?" Discord said, gesturing lazily with his cup towards the guard.

"I'm good," the guard said.

"Sure?" I added.

"Yeah, I'm... sure," the guard said, somewhat hesitantly.

"Nah, dude, have some. I'm going to go shave anyways, and you can teleport down with us instead of going out in the cold. Much more... warm," I said. I walked out of the room, glancing back to see Discord smirking maliciously and the guard looking several degrees away from comfort. Wait. Razor. "Discord! Razor!" I yelled. A razor popped into existence, and I snatched it from the air as it fell. "Thanks!"

"No problem, dear," Discord yelled back.

I made the way swiftly to a bathroom, stood in front of a mirror, splashed water on my face and beard, and commenced the act of shaving. At home, I rarely cared enough to bother, but hell, if we were going to go out to Canterlot... I slid the blade slowly down the left edge of my face. The lack of shaving cream (and the amount of hair the blade was running into), made the act feel rather strange. Well. Maybe not for the Canterlot. The evil sorcerer might be a tad more important to impress.

After my face was clean of hair (excluding my goatee--A bare face would at this point just feel weird), I returned to the sofa room. Discord grinned at me as I entered through the door. The guard ignored me. He seemed to be staring resolutely forwards, though I did note that he now had a cup floating in the air in front of him.

"Ready now?" Discord asked. He glanced down at the guard besides him with mock sympathy. "I do believe our hospitality has somehow made the poor thing anxious."

"Yeah," I said simply. Discord raised his hand and snapped. And to Canterlot, we go.

Me and My Lord of Chaos

by Abryssle

Breaking Reality

Window

Take me back

Social Interactions

Exception to the Rules

The Second Day

Confrontation

The Wait

Adaptation

Recovering

"Entertaining"

Civil Conversation

The Two Kings of Chaos