Adventure Awaits (And Keeps Waiting)
Fluttershy ascended the stairs in her cottage. In her teeth she carried a tray of carefully prepared biscuits and tea, hoping to make a peace offering to the intruder.
Coming up to the second floor, she saw not much had changed since she went to go prepare the meal. Twilight was still at the base of the door next to a pile of books, studying them carefully, while the rest of her friends attempted to talk to the large bipedal creature that locked itself in Fluttershy's bedroom.
"If you'd just talk to us," Applejack complained, "maybe we could figure out what's wrong!"
A voice loudly shot back from the other side of the door. "I know what's wrong! That's why I'm in here, and I'm not coming out until Twilight finds out a way to send me back. No grand adventure, no wacky hijinks, no weird wish fulfillment. I just want to go home."
Twilight looked up from her assortment of spell books with a frown. "Well, maybe if you'd explain who or what you are or how you got here, this might go by a little faster."
"No!" the voice cried. "That's how it always starts! You start trying to unravel the big mystery of why I'm here and then ~mysterious~ plot threads start getting dropped everywhere and I'm stuck in here forever because the story never finishes!
"What are they talking about?" Dash muttered.
"I don't know," Twilight whispered back, "and I especially don't know how this creature seems to know all of us, by name."
She looked over to Fluttershy. "Fluttershy, can you tell us anything else about our 'guest'?"
Fluttershy sat the tray down. "Nothing I already told you. I was out in the garden and this big portal appeared, and that big two-legged creature fell out of it. Then it looked around, saw me, and ran into my cottage and locked itself in my bedroom."
"And that's it?"
"Beyond it saying it wouldn't talk to me until you got here, yes."
Twilight scratched her head. "This is just weird. This thing seems to believe it'll cause some kind of disaster if we keep interacting with it."
She knocked on the door, addressing the creature on the other side. "Why did you lock yourself in there, anyway?"
Silence.
Twilight had had enough of the tall creature's poor attitude. She stomped a hoof down. "Hey! I'm happy to help you get back to wherever you come from, but I can't help you if I don't even know why you're acting like this! If you don't help me, I can't help you!"
An annoyed grunt came in from under the door, and the creature spoke. "Look. It's nothing to do with you, Twilight. Believe me, I think you're cool. I just know what'll happen if I start doing anything significant. I'm just not up for any grand adventures."
"Not up for grand adventures?" Dash asked. "Who wouldn't be up for something like that? In fact, me and Pinkie just—"
The creature began to repeat a noise on the other side of the door. "Lalalalalala! Not listening! If I can't hear it, you can't make me do it!"
"Really Twilight," Rarity said, "we should just let this dear calm down and try again later."
Fluttershy pointed to the door. "What about my bedroom?"
Rarity waved Fluttershy's concern away. "Oh, they'll have to come out and eat eventually. It's like a siege."
At that moment, they heard a crash on the cottage floor below them, but before they could react, they saw Starlight Glimmer run up the stairs. Suspended in a magical aura above her was a stone glyph, carved in strange glowing symbols.
The unicorn paused to catch her breath, then looked up to the group.
"Twilight," she gasped, "I found this in the Everfree Forest."
Twilight Sparkle leaned in, her eyes going wide. "Why, those are Stone Sigils!"
The creature butted in. "Stone what? Those aren't in the show!"
She shot a look over to the door. "You stay out of this!"
Looking back over to the stone tablet, Twilight inspected the writing closely. "Hmmm. It looks like an Early Ponish era prophecy. The One That Will Seal The Darkness will begin its journey in Kindness."
RD crossed her hooves. "So, it's predicting this thing would show up at Fluttershy's."
Twilight nodded. "It appears so. But its arrival will signify the Return of the Darkness. For to Seal the Darkness, the Chosen One must..."
"No!" the creature shouted. "No no no! I'm not doing any of that! I'm not fighting any generic dark villain, I'm not gonna be the Chosen One, and I'm not going to be Fluttershy's boyfriend!"
Twilight quickly rescanned the tablet. "The prophecy doesn't say anything about that."
"She's the first pony I ran into!" the voice shot back. "I have to be her boyfriend! That's how this always works!"
Twilight groaned. "You keep saying 'that's how this always works'. How what works? Does it have something to do with how you know who we all are?"
After a pause, the voice responded. "...Yes?"
"Can you be more specific?"
"...No?"
"Then I'm really close to giving up!"
A sudden rumbling shook the cottage, making them all shout in surprise. Rainbow Dash leaned out the window, gawking at the sky, and turning back to the others.
"Twilight! The moon is eclipsing the sun! And also the moon exploded!"
"Still not coming out!" the creature screamed.
Rarity suddenly fainted. Before any of the others could grab her, she crumbled downwards, and the second she hit the floor she was enveloped by a green flame. It enveloped her whole body in a flash, and quickly subsided to reveal a very lanky changeling that superficially resembled Chrysalis, but in bright neon hues unfamiliar to the changeling queen.
The others gasped.
"What's going on out there?!" the voice demanded.
"Rarity's a changeling queen!" Twilight yelled back.
"Nice try, but I'm still staying in here!"
Rainbow Dash's eyes suddenly began to glow white, and with unimaginable speed she took off, grabbing Rarity and launching herself towards the shattered moon in the sky.
"I don't know what that was," the voice complained, "but I'm guessing Rainbow Dash just took off with Fluttershy. Or Rarity."
"That's it!" Twilight screamed. "I'm convinced you're the one causing all this!"
"What do you mean me? It's this world trying to tempt me into a crappy self-insert. I ain't falling for it! I'm staying in this room until this all blows over. My only comfort in this whole ordeal is that I haven't seen a single wall of text since I got here!"
Twilight was finally fed up with the creature's nonsense. Flaring her magical energy to its zenith, she prepared to rip the door off its hinges and demand answers from the thing at hornpoint. But right as she was readying a spell, a flash in front of the door revealed a familiar, lanky creature floating in midair.
"Discord," Twilight grumbled. "I should have known you had something to do with this."
The draconequus gave a fake bow. "Believe me, I wish I was behind chaos this good. But the sad fact is that I have it on good authority that our friend here is the cause of it."
Twilight glared at the door. "I knew it."
"Not intentionally, mind you. If we want to fix this, we're going to have to convince our friend behind the door here to fulfill his destiny. Otherwise his role will continue to fester, and interesting plot points will continue to pile up and up until the world is destroyed."
Twilight rolled her eyes. "And how are you going to fix this? Some kind of zany chaos magic?"
Discord scoffed. "Really, Twilight, you always think I take the easy route. Watch and learn."
The sprit of chaos snaked up in front of the door, knocking politely on the frame. "Ahem. Human? If you don't come out and help the girls finish this story, I will be forced to involve myself in this grand tale."
Discord pressed his face against the door with a wicked grin. "That's right. If you don't come out, this HiE story will be a Discord HiE story."
Silence again. Twilight was just about to ask Discord what the heck he'd just said, but stopped dead when she saw the doorknob turn and the door slowly open, revealing the bipedal creature. It looked down on them with its strange apelike face, its expression a combination of defeat and resignation.
"Alright," the human sighed. "Do we start with the prophecy or the exploding moon?"
"I vote moon!" Discord cheered.
The creature pointed a finger at him. "I don't need this story more insufferable than it already is."
Putting its hands in the pockets of its pants, it began to walk down the stairs. "C'mon, the sooner we meet the OC villain the quicker this is over."
It had been a long journey. They had laughed, they had cried, Pinkie had been mysteriously absent through the whole adventure for some reason. Also, the whole thing had taken less than twenty minutes; about halfway through the human said something about the chapters probably being 'less than a thousand words each'.
But it was finally at an end. With the Emperor of Darkness defeated, the portal in the center of the Eternal Palace was open once more, guiding the human back to his own world.
He looked over his shoulder, counting the friends he'd made along the way. Twilight. Rainbow Dash. The pony that was a palette swap of Rainbow Dash. Fluttershy, who he'd been forced to marry.
With a final sigh, the creature walked backwards through the portal, holding both hands high while flipping them all off.
After the portal closed, the light shimmered above them and suddenly surged into a purple oval, revealing Glimmer's face. She had opened a magical communication portal, and looked relatively concerned.
"Twilight!" she announced. "We have a new problem!"
"What is it?"
The communication portal panned over to Fluttershy's couch, revealing an unconscious alicorn splayed out on it. A very unusual alicorn, with an abnormally long horn, black fur, a red mane, and zebra-like stripes.
"Who is that?" Twilight asked.
Glimmer's voice replied. "I dunno, but I found him in the Everfree Forest."
She sighed. "I think he has amnesia."