"May I Have These Fifty Thousand Dances?"
The Cutie Mark Crusaders sat in the grass, talking about ways to get their cutie marks.
"Maybe we could try for cutie marks in BEAR WRESTLING!" Apple Bloom enthused. "Wouldn't THAT be cool?"
"Or CRAGODILE wrestling!" Scootaloo added. "We could try ALL the different animals, one after another!"
"I wonder..." Sweetie Belle said.
Bloom shrugged. "You wonder what?"
"We could ask Fluttershy if we can wrestle all of her animals...but I also wonder, how did Fluttershy get HER cutie mark?"
Bloom scratched her mane. "And why just butterflies, anyway? I mean, she can talk to just about every kind of animal, ALL the animals, and she just gets three butterflies? That seems kind of...wimpy."
"Yeah!" Scootaloo agreed. "She deserves a lion, and a tiger, and maybe a T-Rex."
With a forehoof, Sweetie Belle pointed at some bushes. "Who wants to try for their snake wrestling cutie mark first? Because I think I see one wriggling around over there."
Part of the snake's body rose up into a loop, which grew, and grew, and grew.
"That snake sure is BIG," Bloom said.
Sweetie Belle swallowed. "Um...I think I want to go talk to Fluttershy now."
The snake rose up even higher, exposing the part of it that was Discord's body and head. "Why, just when I was about to help you three out, too."
Scootaloo frowned. "How were YOU going to help US?"
"You were wondering about Fluttershy's cutie mark, weren't you?"
"Um," Scootaloo said. "I guess we were."
"Well, then." Discord smiled, showing more teeth than any creature probably should have a right to grow. "I can tell you how Fluttershy got her cutie mark. I have, you might say, a unique perspective on the event."
"Um..." Apple Bloom said.
"Come on! Don't you want to know where cutie marks come from? Even if you go ask Fluttershy...and you probably WILL go ask her anyway...you might as well get more than one side of the story, don't you think?"
Sweetie Belle looked suspicious. "You aren't gonna do something mean and horrible to us, are you?"
"I promise I won't. A Pinkie Pie Promise. After all, aren't I reformed now? As long as I have good little ponies around me to remind me not to...go back to my old ways. You three are good little ponies, right?"
"You can't prove anything!" Scootaloo shouted.
"I see." Discord's grin grew. "Then how about I do you TWO favors: I don't tell anypony about anything you might have done that I can't prove anyway, AND I tell you how Fluttershy got her cutie mark. And why it looks the way it does."
"Um," Bloom said.
"Well..." Sweetie scuffed the grass with one hoof.
"You've got yourself a deal!" Scootaloo said. "But if you try even ONE bit of evil, the deal's off!"
"Excellent!" Discord stuck out three arms at once, to shake hooves with all three fillies. "You won't be sorry."
Discord leaned back against a shrub. "It all started when I was studying Premodern Dance."
"Premodern Dance?" Apple Bloom said. "Do you reckon we could get a cutie mark in THAT?"
"Maybe?" Discord scratched his head with one talon. "We can talk about that AFTER Fluttershy's cutie mark story. Anyway, I was studying premodern dance...but I was getting bored with just dancing PONY style. So I thought, why not be something else?
"I turned into a hyena...and I did a dance that was so funny, I laughed and laughed and laughed."
"Ain't hyenas pretty much ALWAYS laughin'?" Bloom asked.
"Hush. That's not the point. Then I thought, what kind of dance could I do if I was a SNAKE? So I looped around and around, and I wriggled my body into all different kinds of shapes. If Twilight Sparkle or Cheerilee had been there, they might have asked me to teach a geometry class."
"Sounds like we're lucky they WEREN'T there," muttered Scootaloo.
"Quiet in the back row, you. And then I thought, what if I was MORE THAN ONE creature? What if I turned myself into a whole lot of something that's really little? Then I could be THOUSANDS of mes, and I could do the fanciest large group dance ever." Discord split into two smaller Discords, each of which split into two more, and so on, until only moments later, a thousand or so mouse-sized Discords ran chaotically all over the field, on every side of the three fillies, who struggled to try to watch them all.
"Stop doing that!" Apple Bloom shouted. "It's too...WEIRD."
The many Discords laughed thousands of little, high pitched laughs, each sounding like the barking of an excited mouse. "I'll try to be...FEWER, then," they all said in chorus. They gathered into a crowd on one side of the fillies, and melted back together, until there was just one Discord again.
"So anyway..." He waved an arm. "...I turned myself into thousands of little butterflies. TENS of thousands, at least. So I was flying around, inventing new ways to dance with myself...and then something WEIRD happened. Something downright CHAOTIC."
"Imagine that," remarked Sweetie Belle. "With YOU there?"
Discord shook his head. "No," he said, "it wasn't ME at all. It was a different kind of weird. Because who ever heard of a PEGASUS falling out of the sky? They have wings for a REASON, you know. But while I was dance-flying around in the form of fifty thousand butterflies, trying to get the kicks of my three hundred thousand legs all properly synchronized...a screaming pegasus fell out of the sky, right on top of me! Isn't that bizarre? Have you EVER seen such a thing?"
"I guess?" Scootaloo said. "I mean...I'm pretty good at not screaming."
"Yes," Discord agreed, "you're very brave at not screaming. Anyway, with thousands of square miles of mostly empty ground she could have landed on, the falling filly somehow landed on ME, instead of on a big rock or a thornbush. So fifty thousand butterflies broke her fall, whether they wanted to or not, and kept her from getting hurt."
Scootaloo snorted. "That's some story, I guess. But it still doesn't explain how a cutie mark for talking to any and every kind of animals you want to, just shows three butterflies...which aren't as cool as a lot of other animals would be, if you ask me."
Discord grinned very, very broadly. "Don't you see, little ones? Fluttershy's cutie mark isn't for talking to animals at all. Her cutie mark is for falling out of the sky on innocent creatures who were minding their own business, and half-squashing them."
Discord pulled a small tree out of the ground, and used the dirt-encrusted roots to pick his teeth. "Her cutie mark is for taming ME." He spat out a few pebbles. "I am her destiny...and she is mine. And THAT'S why I'm not filling Equestria's streams, rivers, and lakes with chocolate milk today, or turning your sisters into frogs and pumpkins. Because I know that would upset my dear Fluttershy."
He spat out another pebble. "If you don't believe me...why don't you go ask Fluttershy for HER side of the story?"