Elements of Opposition

The Mission

Opposition, 7 AM

The dirt crawlspace dug out under the giant tree was never very well lit. There were two small gaps in the roots that formed the ceiling, which had been covered with metal lattices to allow light and air in, but they were on the west side of the tree, so no direct sunlight ever came through except in the afternoon, because Celestia had no imagination and would always make the sun track from east to west. No version of Celestia he'd ever met had enough of a sense of humor to make the sun rise in a different quadrant of the sky, and this version was more humorless than most. So the space was usually quite dark and dank; sunlight and moonlight shone through the two small gaps enough that the darkness wasn't usually total, but it was dim enough to have made it a challenge to write that letter.

It was gone now, off to its destination, hopefully. Discord had expected to feel a sense of accomplishment, of achievement, and he had last night, the moment Spike sent the thing, right before the nausea had overwhelmed him and he'd thrown up. But the feeling hadn't lasted. Discord lifted his head to stare up at the lightening sky through the tiny, sad excuses for windows in his cell, and felt a sense of emptiness and hopelessness. It was out of his paws now; there was nothing more he could do to try to save himself, and the truth was, he didn't believe it would be enough. The likelihood that his  Twilight would care, or even believe him, was so low.

His whole body ached; Fluttercruel had allowed him to heal himself after Twilight's experiments yesterday, but without the ability to discorporate into some completely different form and then rebuild himself from scratch, there was a limit to what chaos magic could do. Chaos couldn't heal, it could only transform; Discord was an expert at finding loopholes in anything, including chaos, so his entire life he'd been healing himself with transformation magic, but low-level transformation could only do so much, and he wasn't allowed to perform a total transformation, so he ached all the time, even when he was as whole as he ever got to be anymore. Discord lowered his head back to the dirt floor, hearing the rattling of the metal chain as it clattered back onto the dirt. He'd tried pulling at it with all his strength, but it was deeply rooted – literally; it was deep under the dirt and fastened through one of the giant tree's huge underground taproots, so it wasn't coming up without a team of earth ponies with shovels, or magic, or preferably both, and the collar around his neck that it was fastened to prevented him from wielding that magic.

I'm never going to get out of here, he thought, and closed his eyes tightly, clenching his paws into fists as if he could crush the thought. He couldn't think that way. If he let himself give up hope completely, he'd snap.

The door upstairs creaked open. Discord cringed, flattening himself against the floor before he could stop himself. Stupid, really, what good was that going to do him?

"Wake up, sleepyhead!" Fluttercruel's voice caroled. "Rise and shine, it's time for breakfast!"

Despite his hunger, Discord felt dread. Please let it be edible. Please, please, please, let it be actual food this time, please. Yesterday's breakfast had been three eggs. Which would have been wonderful, except that they were raw. And in their shells. Which hadn't been cleaned, so they were covered with bird feces. And it had turned out they were over a month old and rotten. And when he'd tried to balk at eating them once he'd realized they were rotten, Fluttercruel had ordered him to, so he'd had no choice. Filthy shells and all. Then she'd punished him for trying to refuse.

First she'd broken his talon by making him stretch it out on the dirt floor and then hitting it repeatedly with a small hammer, until the bones shattered. Most of Discord's bones weren't bones at all but soft cartilage, and extremely flexible, but this wasn't the case with the bones in his paws or wings because they needed some strength and firmness in order to work, and that made them breakable. He'd been scheduled to spend his morning helping Rarity, and he needed both paws in presentable condition for that, so Fluttercruel had had to order him to heal himself, eventually. But she'd spent many long minutes letting him cry and whimper with pain while she lectured him on why he shouldn't try to refuse his orders before finally letting him heal.

Then, when it was late afternoon and Rarity was closing up for the day, Fluttercruel had taken him with her on her trip to a dairy farm. She'd purchased milk, then brought him out to the cowpen and asked him if he wanted some. When he'd said yes – he'd known that nothing good was likely to come of it, but the honesty spell on him gave him no choice but to admit it – she had poured a cup, then ordered him to eat a pat of cow manure and told him that if he did it quickly enough she'd give him the milk. He knew how this game was played, he knew she wasn't playing in good faith and that this was just an excuse to torment him, he obeyed because the spell on him forced him to and not because he actually believed she'd give him anything when he was done, but even still, a little part of him had shriveled up and died inside him when he'd finished and Fluttercruel had declared he hadn't been fast enough, and then poured the cup of milk out onto the ground in front of him.

He hadn't been given anything else to eat, all day, and after the effort of not telling Spike that the letter he was begging Spike to send would go to his cognate in Discord's home universe rather than to the Celestia of this one, which had made him acutely nauseous and forced him to throw up all the disgusting things he'd been forced to eat that day... for all intents and purposes it was as if he hadn't eaten since the day before yesterday. He was so agonizingly hungry... but he whimpered quietly in fear of what awfulness Fluttercruel might have decided to make him eat today.

"Here you go!" She carried a bowl of plain hay in her forehooves as she fluttered over to him, using her wings for locomotion. "Some nice hay for you."

Discord was part pony. He could eat hay. It was the most boring possible food in existence, so he didn't like it, but it wasn't rotten and it wasn't fecal matter, it was actual edible food, so he dove at it. His sensitive nose caught a whiff of what Fluttercruel had done to the hay the moment before he bit into it. Discord didn't let his face change expression, but inside he was smiling fiercely. This trick, at least, he could handle.

He devoured the hay in two gulps and a slurp of the tongue to catch whatever he missed, cleaning the bowl out completely. The large quantity of hot sauce that Fluttercruel had laced it with, puddles of the stuff lying under the top layers of the hay where he'd easily smelled it but hadn't been able to see it, were a pleasant burn, clearing his sinuses and helping him become fully alert despite his exhaustion. In fact the hot spice made the hay far more palatable to him than ordinary boring hay without any kind of spice would have been. Even without his powers, Discord could handle any quantity of hot sauce. But Fluttercruel didn't know that, obviously, or she wouldn't have tried this trick. So as soon as he'd finished eating, he mimed being overwhelmed by the hot spice, panting, gasping, letting his tongue hang out of his mouth, and begging Fluttercruel in a choked voice for water, which she denied him, laughing. "Oh no, silly, no water for you right now. You need to earn your keep, after all."

Discord had known she would do that, of course. He really did want water; he'd been feeling dehydrated when he woke up, even before the hot sauce-laced hay. But he wasn't in nearly as dire straits as he was pretending. If Fluttercruel thought that something he found a mild annoyance at worst and actually pleasant at best was a harsh torture he could barely endure, she would likely inflict it on him again, in lieu of the tortures he really couldn't endure. Of course he couldn't say he found the spice unendurable, because it wasn't true, but he'd found that the spell didn't prevent him from using his body language to lie. It didn't even make him nauseous when he did. As long as he made no attempt to speak a lie or to speak a technically true statement that was so misleading it was essentially a lie, the honesty spell didn't harm him.

It wasn't enough, of course. She never gave him enough to make him stop feeling hungry. When she'd chained him up for the night and he was in too much pain to fall asleep right away, he generally spent the time fantasizing about food. Candied apples, mountains of ice cream, warm mustard-filled donuts chock full of cracker bits, cheese and lollipop tops, pie soup, oyster-flavored bananas, mozzarella mushroom muffins, hot sizzling barbequed rutabagas that tasted like Gryphonian grilled steaks with cream cheese barbeque sauce, hearty crunchy tableware... it was probably foolish of him to do it and it probably made his hunger worse but he couldn't stop. When he hadn't been working on his letter and he hadn't been sleeping and he hadn't been thinking despairing thoughts about what would likely happen to him the next day and how little hope he had to ever get out of here, he had been lost in elaborate daydreams about food, inventing entirely new recipes in his head, savoring imaginary tastes and lingering over the imagery of flying rowboats laden with delicious dishes, and equally delicious food on top of the dishes, all for him.

Sometimes when he was bleeding and his skin was torn and she didn't let him heal himself right away, he'd lick the blood or tear off the skin and eat it, and once or twice he'd even bitten large chunks of flesh out of his own tail and eaten them, because his tail had been beaten so badly it was practically ground meat anyway and the pain of biting into his own flesh where the pain was already so bad he could barely stand it was still less than the agony of his hunger. Also, because he knew that either he'd be ordered to heal himself at some point, or he'd bleed to death, so one way or another no matter how badly he further mutilated his tail he wasn't going to have to live with it indefinitely.

"All done with your breakfast?" Fluttercruel asked cheerily, and pointlessly, because at this point the bowl was completely empty.

"Yes," Discord mumbled, tiredly, wishing there was more hay in the bowl.

"Discord, that's not very respectful. How do you address me?"

He sagged against the ground in utter humiliation. "Yes, mistress, I'm done," he said, forcing himself to speak loudly enough that she wouldn't force him to repeat himself. "What do you want me to do today?"

"Well, Applejack could use the help. So let's head over there."

He followed her out of the basement, putting one limb in front of the other in a dull routine pattern, trying very hard not to think about the future. Going to Applejack's almost invariably meant being beaten at least once. Well, it could be worse. It could be Twilight. Unbidden, his mind went back to the experiments she'd performed on him last night, and the agony he'd endured. No. No, Twilight was a slave to Order. Every three days and then every four days. Clockwork. He had four more days before he needed to suffer under Twilight's hooves again.

At least Applejack got started early in the morning. On some of the days when he was supposed to help in Rarity's shop or when Fluttercruel kept him here to help her, the day's work either started late enough, or he remained in proximity to Fluttercruel long enough, to give her the opportunity to demand that he satisfy her in the morning, and given that she usually required pain, humiliation and submission from him before she'd be satisfied, those mornings were bad. Applejack was almost certainly going to hurt him, but not in the particularly horrible ways Fluttercruel usually inflicted on him.

"Let's give your wings a little stretch," Fluttercruel said. There were two rings in each of his wings, surrounding the upper bones and piercing through the thin flesh underneath. She unclipped them from the harness buckled around his body. "You can go ahead and give them a little flap, but no flying unless Applejack tells you to." They burned with the ache of having been bound in one place too long. It almost hurt more that she'd unbound them and ordered him to use them, but it was still a relief to be able to stretch them out.

He wondered how she was going to make him pay for this particular small mercy. Maybe just the fact that they were free, that he could theoretically fly away despite the leash because he could outfly Fluttercruel, and the obedience spell wouldn't allow him to. Sometimes Fluttercruel seemed to revel in giving him the appearance of freedom, when both of them knew perfectly well that he wasn't actually free at all. He'd pulled that particular stunt on ponies often enough to know that it was sometimes very amusing to pretend that your victim was free to do as they liked.

Fluttercruel was in many ways worse than he ever was – he'd never raped anypony and he'd never employed unrestrained torture, preferring to put most of his focus into the psychological variety because mere pain was just boring – but she used many of his more sophisticated techniques as well. It hurt, seeing himself and the things he'd done in her behavior, experiencing for himself what his victims must have felt and knowing that this particular singular torment, at least, was one he deserved, even if he was still managing to hold tight to his belief that he didn't deserve most of what he suffered here.

"Now, don't forget," Fluttercruel said cheerily as she fastened a leash to his collar. "Don't let anything damage your collar today!"

She said it every day. He suspected that if she left it open ended, a command to never damage the collar, the force of the command would eventually wear off and he'd be able to free himself. But because she repeated the command every day, he never had a chance. In the early days when they'd first enslaved him, Fluttercruel had told him not to damage his collar, so he had looked for elaborate workarounds that would permit other ponies or inanimate objects to damage or destroy the collar. After he'd deliberately tripped and fallen neck first into a bonfire on the logic that either it would burn his collar off and free him to use his magic, thus allowing him to heal the burns, or he'd burn to death and be free of this torture, Fluttercruel had figured out his game and had rephrased the command so that there were no more loopholes.

"I won't forget," he said dully, because it was true, the spell wouldn't let him.

Fluttercruel stepped into the hoof-end of the leash, shook her leg so the hoof ring would slide up and catch tightly, and walked forward. Discord followed her out of the house into bright sunlight, trying desperately to convince himself that today wouldn't be so bad, that it could be worse, that he'd be able to endure it. He knew he was lying to himself, of course, but he needed to.

Harmony, 10 AM

"This is the situation," Twilight said.

It had been difficult to refrain from giving explanations prematurely, particularly since Fluttershy had been the first to arrive, almost before Twilight had gotten back to the library herself, and she had been pleading with Twilight for information. But this was the kind of thing you didn't want to have to talk about twice.

"Last night Spike got a letter from Discord. It was in really bad condition, so he copied it out and sent the original to Princess Celestia. In the letter, Discord says that he went to an alternate universe – like that portal I went through to get the Element of Magic back from Sunset Shimmer, except this one seems to be more like ours, where all the ponies that are here are there as well."

"Hey, is this like that alternate universe Daring Do went to in issue 29 of the comics, where she had to team up with Ahuizotl because he was a good guy there to defeat herself because she was evil?" Rainbow Dash asked.

Twilight almost face-hooved – as if what happened in a comic book could have anything to do with a serious situation like this! – and then realized that, actually, Rainbow couldn't have picked a better example if she'd tried. "Almost exactly. It sounds like it's not quite entirely like that – like maybe at one point the good ponies were still good, and maybe most of them still are – but we are evil there. The six of us."

"Evil?" Rarity cried. "Oh my dear! Does the alternate version of me force ponies to wear plaid?"

"Is it like when Discord messed with us and I'm all like 'argh I hate you all you're laughing at me' and Applejack's like 'snicker snicker no I'm not' and Fluttershy's all 'I am laughing at you cause you're stupid' and Rarity's in love with Tom?" Pinkie Pie asked.

"Pinkie! I thought we agreed never to speak of that again!" Rarity said.

"Kind of," Twilight said, ignoring Rarity. "But a lot worse."

"Worse?" Applejack said skeptically. "What's worse'n what Discord made us into?"

Twilight took a deep breath. "I'm – I'm going to get to it. Let me finish. He said, he went to that universe because he wanted to make chaos and he was afraid Fluttershy would be mad at him if he did it here, so he went to a universe where all of us, and maybe all the ponies, are all still there, but where the other him was dead. It turns out, the other him is dead because the other Spike killed him."

"Spike is evil too?" Rarity exclaimed melodramatically, and fell over backward in a faint. Spike shoved a chair behind her to catch her, in the absence of her fainting couch.

"Wow," Rainbow said. "Spike, you killed Discord? That's... I don't know whether that's scary or awesome. Maybe both!"

"It's not awesome," Spike said. "The other me did it while he was a statue, with some special magic sledgehammer. I don't know why he did it, because Discord's letter didn't say, but I can guess."

"As can I," Twilight said. "The alternate Discord corrupted the Elements of Harmony themselves. Not just us, but the actual Elements. And it sounds like he didn't reverse them so much as he fused them with their opposites. So all of us are weird combinations of our true selves and our opposite selves, at the same time, and that's what turned us evil."

"Like what're we doing that's evil?" Applejack asked skeptically. "'Cause if the alternate Discord's dead... ain't like being a liar would've ever made me wanna take over Equestria or something."

"Like torture," Twilight said.

Pinkie Pie's eyes went huge. "Torture? Like... us? We're torturing ponies?"

Twilight nodded. "Discord's been taken prisoner by these alternate versions of us, and they're... they're torturing him. And I don't mean the kind of thing all of us except Fluttershy have probably wished to do to Discord at some point, not like smacking him or bucking him into a wall or something. I mean... torture. I... I don't even want to describe it. He sent the letter because he wants us to rescue him."

Fluttershy had said nothing since Twilight began to talk. Now, the silence following Twilight's last words were broken by a sob from the gentle pegasus. Fluttershy sat down on the floor heavily, without any of her usual grace, and covered her face with her hooves, crying quietly. "I knew he was in trouble," she whispered, barely loudly enough for Twilight to hear her. "I knew it..."

Rainbow Dash knelt down beside her fellow pegasus, putting an arm around her. "Hey, Flutters. It's gonna be okay." She looked up and scowled. "Uh, exactly how are ponies like us torturing Discord? Last I checked, he was like super powerful and without the Elements, we've never been able to do anything to him."

"It sounds like the other me found a different way to use the Elements," Twilight said. "She cast an obedience spell on him."

"An obedience spell?" Rarity cried, and promptly fainted again. Twilight rolled her eyes.

"Does an obedience spell do what it sounds like?" Applejack asked.

"It makes a pony into a slave," Twilight said. "It's an abomination. The spell's forbidden, it's the kind of thing you'd expect somepony like King Sombra to use, not... not me. Under an obedience spell..." She swallowed. "The pony under the spell can still think and feel for themselves, but they can't disobey an order. The one controlling the spell could make them put their hoof in a fire, or, or jump in a lake and drown themselves, and they'd have to do it. An ordinary obedience spell would never work on Discord, he's much too powerful... but the other me channeled the spell through the Elements, like that summoning spell the Princess taught me that we used to call Discord when his vines were all over the place.

"But, my dear," Rarity said, back from her brief faint already and fanning herself until Spike took the fan from her and began eagerly performing the job himself, "why would anypony ever need to torture somepony under an obedience spell? I'm hardly the student of magic you are, but I remember reading about those in my magic lessons. If somepony's compelled to do anything you tell them to, why would you torture them?"

"Maybe because you're evil," Rainbow Dash said. "I mean... if we're evil... I'm a hero and I can't tell you how many times I've wanted to buck Discord in the face. If I was evil and I could order him to stand still for it... I mean the only reason I wouldn't want to do that is that it's wrong and evil, and if I was evil I wouldn't care, I guess."

"What kind of parties would an evil me have?" Pinkie asked nopony in particular. "Like, would I decorate everything in black? Or not send out enough invitations, so some ponies wouldn't get them and they'd get upset? Or use punch that was going bad so everypony got food poisoning?"

Twilight did not want to explain to Pinkie what Discord had implied about her alter ego. "Discord says he thinks they're trying to brainwash him," she said. "The obedience spell can force him to obey, but we know how good Discord is at finding loopholes. He says he thinks they're conditioning him to obey unquestioningly, to be so afraid of disobedience that he won't look for loopholes anymore, and then they'll be able to make him use his magic to do anything they want. He also says they think he's the one from their universe, which might explain how the other me would stoop to casting an obedience spell, except I don't care what they think he did, there's absolutely no good excuse for... for the things he says they're doing."

"And you believe him, sugarcube?" Applejack asked.

Twilight nodded. "I do."

"Yeah," Spike said. "I checked over the document itself really carefully and it all tied out. Like he said he was making the paper he was writing it on out of tree bark and his own skin, with transformation magic, and there were places where I found the paper was rough like bark or it had Discord's scales in it..." He stopped abruptly at the look of utter horror from Fluttershy. "Uh. So, yeah. Twilight and I think he's telling the truth."

"You mind if I take a look at this letter for myself?"

Rainbow Dash snorted. "Like you could tell if Discord was lying," she said. "I know you can usually tell if somepony's lying, but you've never been able to tell with Discord before."

Applejack rolled her eyes. "The reason I can't generally tell if Discord's being honest is that he never is. He's always setting off my 'this is a load of horseapples' meter, but I can't generally tell about exactly what, cause he mixes up lies and truth and he tells the truth like it's a lie or he uses a truth to tell a lie and it's such a big mess of confusion, I can't tell which way's up. A thing like this, though, it feels like either it's all gotta be a lie, because it's some kind of joke or evil plan, or it's all gotta be the truth, and I figure maybe I can tell which."

Twilight smiled nervously, shuffling slightly in place. "Um... Well... The thing is..."

"We sent the letter to Princess Celestia already," Spike said.

"But you said you made a copy, Spike," Applejack said. "I don't need to read the original. Honesty ain't in ink and paper, it's in words."

Twilight sighed. "Discord sent the letter to me," she explained. "So he knew I was going to read it. And he knew Spike would because he sent it through Spike. And I'm sure he knew that I would send it to Princess Celestia. But I don't know if he would be all right with me sharing it with anypony else."

"Seems to me, if I was being tortured and I wanted somepony to come rescue me, I wouldn't care who-all read my call for help, so long as it ended up they came to help me."

"But you're not the kind to keep things to yourself for the sake of your pride. Some of the things Discord says in this letter... he says he's under a spell that forces him to tell the truth, and if it's not the complete truth, he'll throw up, and because of that he says some things that he didn't even want to tell me, but the spell made him do it."

"Um... if it helps to make sure that everypony believes him... I think Discord would be okay with Applejack reading it," Fluttershy said softly. "I know he doesn't think any of us trust him except for me—"

"Yeah, well, why would we?" Rainbow Dash asked. "He lied to our faces about those vines!"

"I'm, um, I'm not saying you're wrong to mistrust him... I'm just saying, he knows about it. If, if he's really in trouble, I think he would be okay with Applejack reading about it, if it means that we believe him..."

"All right," Twilight said. If Applejack saw something she and Spike had missed, some way this could all be some kind of elaborate awful prank, she needed to know. And if Discord was as sincere as Twilight felt he was, Applejack would pick up on it, and the others would trust Applejack's assessment of Discord's honesty more than they'd trust such an assessment from anypony else except maybe the princess. "But, Applejack... it's awful. It's really awful."

"Maybe so, but I gotta see for myself anyway," Applejack said. She sat down at Twilight's desk so she could use her hooves to move the pages, and Spike handed her the document.

"What are we going to do, Twilight?" Fluttershy asked, as Applejack was reading. "We are going to help him, aren't we?"

"We're going to Canterlot to talk with Princess Celestia, once Applejack finishes," Twilight said. "She said the six of us, plus Spike, need to meet with her there. She also said she was going to try to get hold of Shiny and Cadance."

"Oh my!" Rarity raised her eyebrows. "So Princess Celestia is taking this quite seriously."

"Yes, I think so," Twilight said.

Pinkie had said almost nothing, at least not in comparison to her usual exuberance. Now she said, apropos of nothing, "I never gave him a party." Her eyes were wide, and... welling with tears?

"You most certainly did," Rarity said.

"Yeah, it's not your fault he skipped out on you and you had to change it to a 'Hooray for Fluttershy Reforming Discord' party!" Rainbow said.

Pinkie shook her head. "I was always going to have a real one, but not until he earned it. Because he was trying to break the rule."

Rarity gasped. "He broke a Pinkie Promise?"

"No, not that rule. Nopony breaks a Pinkie Promise," Pinkie said. "He said you guys weren't really his friends. Just Fluttershy."

"Well, duh," Rainbow said. "Kind of obvious, don't you think?"

"Is that why you said you weren't his friend?" Twilight asked.

"I said I wasn't going to be his friend but I wasn't not going to be his friend," Pinkie explained, which explained nothing. "Because he wanted to be friends with me. He came to me to apologize but he apologized about the wrong thing! And he wants to be my friend, but he doesn't want to be friends with my friends, and he's said he's sorry for what he did to me in the maze but it's not because of me, it's because he likes Laughter, and he's not sorry about any of the rest of you except Fluttershy and I said well then you can't be my friend! The rule is, if you're going to be my friend you have to be friends with my friends, and if you're going to be sorry for making me a big meaniepants it doesn't mean anything if you aren't sorry for doing it to my friends too! And he said but you wouldn't ever be his friends because you hated him and I said but did you even try and he said there wasn't any point in trying and that Twilight thinks he's the worst kind of stallion there is, which honestly he isn't even a stallion really because he's not a pony, he's a draconequuthingy and I don't even know what you call them when they're male, but anyway he wouldn't tell me what he meant by that but I said well if you're not even going to try to be friends with my friends then I can't be your friend until you're friends with my friends and that's why I'm not gonna throw you a party. But I was always going to someday! I was sure he would come around eventually, because you're all such nice ponies, and I was going to... as soon as he could really be sorry for messing with all of us and not just me and Fluttershy and as soon as he could really be a friend, not just say he is to your faces and then say to me that none of you are really his friend because you hate him... I knew he could do it someday, I knew Fluttershy was working on him so I had to be the bad cop even though I don't like that because he has to know that sometimes being a friend means being friends with your friends' friends, and I had the party all planned in my head for whenever that was going to be..." She flung her arms around Twilight with a sob. "BUT WHAT IF HE NEVER COMES BACK? What if we can't rescue him, or what if the evil us, they, they... what if he never comes back?"

Awkwardly Twilight extricated herself from the sobbing Pinkie Pie, handing her over to Fluttershy, who was equally distraught. There were times that Pinkie seemed bizarrely inappropriate, like she lived in an entirely different world, and when she'd first started talking about not giving Discord a party Twilight had thought that this was one of those times. But the party was just a symbol. Pinkie wasn't crying over the fact that she might never be able to hold a party for Discord, she was crying over the fact that for some reason, she had seen a greater potential in him than anypony but Fluttershy had, and he might not live to realize that potential.

And possibly for the fact that she'd held back her friendship, something she normally gave to anypony at all, from someone who'd actually sought it, because she'd been trying to teach him to be a better friend, and now she might never have a chance. It actually somewhat surprised Twilight that Pinkie had tried being the "bad cop" with Discord; she was normally so relentlessly cheerful, so impossible to offend or depress. Naturally, she had probably only been able to bring herself to do it because she'd believed that she could teach him that way, that he could improve if she held out on him... and if he didn't survive this or they couldn't rescue him, she'd have to live with rejecting friendship from somepony who'd offered it without ever achieving the goal she'd been trying to accomplish by doing that.

"Now, Pinkie, I'm sure Princess Celestia will have a strategy," Rarity said. "I'm... sure she wouldn't abandon anypony in such dire straits, not even Discord."

"One way or another, we're going to help him, Pinkie," Twilight said. "He's a jerk, but he's our jerk, and he – and he doesn't deserve what they're doing to him. Nopony would."

Applejack stood up, pushing the chair back from the desk. Spike had been hovering by her, pointing out various features of Discord's original document that weren't present in his copy. "I've read all I need to," she said shakily.

"And?" Rainbow asked.

"And I think this ain't no prank or twisted up plan of some kind. I feel like, probably he ain't being entirely honest about what all he did over there – he talks about it like it was nothing, and ten to one I bet ya it was the kinda thing where if he did it here we'd've been trying to talk Fluttershy into helping us put him back in stone. But that is no justification for what they're doing... and in my opinion, if there's anything he ain't being honest about when he talks about what they're doing to him, I think he's holding back on how bad it is." She took a deep breath. "I also think Twilight's right, nopony else should read this thing. It's bad to read about terrible things like this happening to somepony you know, even if you don't much like him, but it's much, much worse to read about yourself doing those things. I'm gonna have nightmares about this for a long time now."

Twilight felt a mixture of relief and sorrow. It was good to know that the Bearer of Honesty agreed with her own assessment of Discord's truthfulness in the letter. But if he'd been lying, then she could have been angry with him for playing a cruel prank or whatever it would have been. If he was telling the truth... then all those horrible things really were happening to him, and they were being done by versions of herself and her friends.

"So you believe him?" Rainbow still looked skeptical.

"I surely do," Applejack said.

"Okay then! If you trust that he's telling the truth, that's good enough for me."

"And me," Rarity said. "Not that I ever doubted my little Spikey-Wikey, but it is good to get an independent opinion." Spike grinned in exactly the same way a dog being scritched would wag its tail. Twilight half expected him to start wagging his. At least this portal, we'll all get to stay our own species, she thought.

"Well then!" Pinkie shouted. "What are we waiting for? Let's get to the train and go see Princess Celestia!"

"Yes," Twilight said. "Let's go."

Harmony, 12 PM

Celestia's seneschal offered the Bearers refreshment while they waited for Celestia to dismiss the Solar Court for lunch. The sandwiches looked positively delicious, and the cookies delectable, but Twilight had no appetite. She drank the apple juice that had been put out for them, noting with a bit of vicarious pride that it was obviously Applejack's family's own product, and watched her friends, with the exception of Fluttershy, scarf down the food.

"Fluttershy," she said softly. "Are you okay? Maybe you should eat something."

Fluttershy shook her head. "I couldn't eat right now. What about you? Shouldn't you eat?"

"No appetite," Twilight said.

Fluttershy looked as if she was going to cry again. "It's... it's really... bad?" she whispered. "Is he – if we rescue him – when we rescue him, do you... what kind of medical treatment do you think he'll need? Because I'll pack my whole kit if I need to..."

That was good. That was Fluttershy focusing on what she could do to help, not crumpling up in grief because of what was happening to her friend. "I don't know what we might need," Twilight said. "Painkillers, antiseptics and bandages, I guess. Maybe... some material for splinting. He says they leave him a little bit of his magic to heal himself with, but he said he heals himself with transformation magic, so that's not going to work well if he has only a little bit of it."

"What does that mean? Healing versus transformation magic?"

"Well, healing magic focuses on fixing a body back to its natural state, of course. It's a type of harmonic magic, like most of the magic unicorns do. Discord doesn't use harmonic magic, and by its fundamental nature chaos can't fix things, so he probably doesn’t have access to healing magic at all. Theoretically, you can use transformation magic to heal by transforming a body from an injured state to an uninjured state. Like, if I turn you into a gecko, and then I turn you back into a pony, when I turn you back into a pony I don't restore you to how you were before you were a gecko, I restore you to your ur-state, your fundamental Fluttershyness, so if you had a broken wing before I made you a gecko... geckos don't have wings. When I turn you back into a pegasus, you don't get the broken wing you had before, you get the unbroken wing that nature says you should have, because that's where I'm getting the pattern to make you back into yourself. You see?"

"Not entirely but a little bit..."

"So Discord can heal any injury by just transforming himself back into his uninjured state. But transformation magic takes a lot more power than healing does... which might not be a problem for Discord, because generally speaking getting chaotic magic to do what you want it to do takes a lot more power than using harmonic magic, but that might not be an issue for him because of his affinity with Chaos... but on the other hand he's not used to having limited quantities of power..." Abruptly Twilight realized that Fluttershy's eyes were glazing over. "Oh! Sorry. The point is, using transformation magic to heal isn't efficient and uses a lot of power, so he might not be able to heal himself very well."

The bugle of the herald cut off any reply Fluttershy might have made. "Princess Celestia!" the herald shouted, as if everypony in the room didn't know exactly who was walking through the large doors.

By habit, Twilight bowed. Celestia laughed gently. "There's no need for that, my little ponies." She looked at her herald. "Bugle Blue, I don't require so much pomp and circumstance with these ponies. These ponies, and this young dragon, are heroes of Equestria, my loyal and faithful servants, and among their number is our newest princess, Princess Twilight Sparkle. They do not require such ceremony."

The herald turned red and stammered. "I – I'm sorry, your Highness..."

"It was a simple mistake, and no harm was done," Celestia said. "Simply remember in future."

"I – I will."

She looked at Twilight and her friends. "If everyone has had a chance to have some lunch, let us go to a more private chamber to talk."

"These sandwiches are great, Princess!" Rainbow said. She grabbed an extra one to munch on as they headed for the chamber.

Twilight noticed Pinkie sticking an entire tray of sandwiches in her mane, where it disappeared. "Pinkie, what are you doing?"

"You and Fluttershy didn't eat anything, silly billies! So I'm saving you guys some lunch for later!" She dumped half a tray of cookies into her mane, and then poured the rest of them into her mouth. "Ymm!"

The private chamber was still very large, but unlike the wide open court hallways and audience chambers, it had a door. Celestia closed it with her magic as they all entered. "How come the private room, your Highness?" Applejack asked. "Is there something hush-hush about all this?"

"To a degree, yes," Celestia said. "There are many here in the court who would... not approve of a mission to rescue Discord, and I prefer not to give the gossip mills of Canterlot new fodder to squawk over." She smiled, but it didn't reach her eyes. Twilight noted that Celestia looked... tired. It bothered her. Princess Celestia never looked tired during the day.

"So we are going on some kind of rescue mission?" Spike asked. "All of us?"

"You, most certainly, Spike. No matter who goes on this mission, there will be no way to communicate home by conventional means. If you need help or encounter difficulties, only a dragon's messenger fire can send a letter between the realms."

"Wow! So I'm important to the mission?"

"Absolutely." Celestia smiled warmly at him.

"Who all you thinking of sending, your Highness?" Applejack asked.

"I do not believe Princess Cadance and Shining Armor will be able to leave their duties in the Crystal Empire for this," Celestia said. "And if it's true that he's being held in the basement of Fluttershy's counterpart, and that the portal is near the Everfree... a small group who can move quickly, who are familiar with Ponyville and who the residents will not be alarmed to see, but who have sufficient power and experience to handle themselves should there be trouble, would be ideal. We cannot afford to send anyone whose counterpart might be dead,  for that would certainly raise great alarm and consternation if they were spotted, but the only ponies we know to be alive are Spike, the six Element Bearers, and myself. I... cannot go." She sighed. "The other Celestia would surely sense my presence. There cannot be two Sun Bearers who are unaware of each other. So I believe that ideally, the party should consist of you seven only."

"Prin—uh, Celestia," Twilight said, unable to quite get used to the fact that her rank made it proper to address Celestia by her first name, "wouldn't the fact that we don't know that Shiny and Cadance are alive over there mean we shouldn't bring them anyway?"

"They could have brought enough power and skill to the group that it would be worth the risk," Celestia said. "I have many powerful and well-trained soldiers among my Royal Guard, and my sister's Lunar Guard has many as well. But none have experience in fighting by your sides. Shining Armor and Cadance do. Nonetheless... they're not available, and I have every confidence in the six of you ponies in any case."

"And me," Spike said.

"Spike, your role on this mission is too vital to be jeopardized by potential combat," Celestia said. "You shall accompany the Bearers, but I want you to avoid any type of confrontation with the ponies on the other side unless it is absolutely necessary. If you should be injured, the others would be left with no means of summoning aid from our side if they needed to."

Twilight grinned to herself. Nicely played, Princess. She'd just told Spike to keep out of trouble and stay safe, and had managed to phrase it in a way that made it sound like it was his duty and a heroic act to do so, not something he should do because he was a tiny little dragon who couldn't realistically fight a full grown pony. Telling Spike to stay safe because he was a kid never worked anymore, but telling him it was the best possible way for him to protect the rest of the group just might.

"Yes, your Highness!" Spike said, standing up straight and proud. "I'm your dragon!"

"You know I'm ready for an adventure any time, any day," Rainbow Dash said. "But, Princess, I have to ask... is this really what we oughta be doing? I mean, I don't think Discord deserves to be tortured either, but... we haven't got our Elements, and the evil versions of us do. And they're evil. So except for me, most of them are gonna be better fighters than my friends are, I mean you can't get awesomer than me by being evil and if she's got her opposite trait in her then she's probably a coward who'll run away, but the others... a mean and angry Pinkie or Fluttershy's probably gonna be better able to hurt other ponies than our nice and kind Pinkie and Fluttershy. And the other Twilight came up with a spell to take down Discord. No offense, Twi, but you never came up with anything like that."

"It's true, I didn't," Twilight said. "It sounds like the alternate Discord was running riot on that world for a lot longer before they could put him in stone than ours did, so she probably had a lot more time where she felt she had to come up with things." But she was definitely going to look into this Sweet Dreams spell for herself, when she had time. According to Discord, the other Twilight had initially disabled him with a spell that fed on chaos and produced happy illusions that kept the subject calm, and even if Discord himself never did anything that warranted having to stop him, he had never been the only source of dangerous chaotic behavior in Equestria. The obedience spell was completely evil and Twilight would never have used such a spell on Discord even if she knew how, but the Sweet Dreams spell didn't sound harmful at all.

"Rainbow, are you saying we should leave him there?" Fluttershy asked, anguish in her voice.

"Well, um... maybe? If he's there, we don't need to worry about what he's up to here... and it's not like he'd do the same for us. I'm not worried about myself, like I said, I'm pretty sure I can kick my counterpart's flank into next Tuesday. But I'm worried about the rest of you guys. They're more ruthless than you and they've got their Elements and we don't. And... he kinda did get himself into this..."

"How could you..." Fluttershy whispered, looking utterly stricken.

"That's exactly what he thought we'd say," Twilight said.

"Fluttershy, Rainbow Dash is only doing as is her nature. Don't be angry with her," Celestia said. "It is the nature of loyalty to put the well being of friends first, before any other consideration. And given that loyalty is so powerful once it is given, she does not easily trust or befriend anypony who's harmed her friends at any point. It is perfectly understandable for her to put your safety and well being ahead of Discord's, just as it is yours to forgive easily and to consider the suffering of a friend to be your highest possible priority."

"I'm not saying we should leave him there," Rainbow said, uncomfortably, looking away from Fluttershy's eyes. "But maybe we should think about what the best thing to do for all of Equestria is? I mean, I'd like to go kick evil me's flank, but is that what we ought to be doing?"

"You're absolutely correct, Rainbow Dash," Celestia said calmly. "We should think about what the best thing to do for all Equestria is. That is always my first consideration, when making any decision. And I assure you, rescuing Discord is the best thing to do for all Equestria." She put a hoof on Rainbow Dash's shoulder. "I'm glad you brought up this question, because I'm sure it must have been in the minds of some of your friends as well, and I welcome the opportunity to explain why we must rescue him."

"Okay...?" Rainbow was now looking extremely uncomfortable, as if she couldn't tell if Princess Celestia was angry at her or not.

Celestia lowered her hoof, and stepped away. "Setting aside the moral considerations of what the good thing to do is, the righteous thing to do. From a purely practical perspective... in Discord's letter, which I take it you have not read, Rainbow?"

"Uh, no, Applejack and Twilight and Spike all agreed that nopony besides the three of them and you oughta read it."

"Of course, and that was wise. But if you had read the letter, you would have realized exactly what I am sure they have, and what I have. Discord says that he believes they are trying to brainwash him into being an obedient, unquestioning servant... with the full power of Chaos at his command. He says that he doesn't know what they intend for him, but speculates that perhaps they will want him to conquer other worlds for them. Other dimensions. If that is the case, and we cannot assume that it is not... ours is the first he knows of. And if we leave him there, whatever loyalty he feels toward us now will be turned when they break him. He will hate us for abandoning him there. He might even seek permission from his masters to attack us."

"Um. Yeah. I guess... we don't want that!" Rainbow laughed nervously in obvious embarrassment and continued discomfort.

"But if that were the only consideration... if I were as ruthless and cruel as it seems my counterpart may be, and I was only concerned with ensuring that Discord could not be turned against us... I might send a team of assassins to kill him. Without his power, he's as mortal as any pony. In his current circumstance he might even thank me for that. There is a reason why I wouldn't choose that path, aside from the fact that it's a betrayal of everything I believe in and everything Equestria stands for. The truth is, Equestria owes Discord a debt it has never been able to repay."

"Owes Discord a debt?" Twilight said, somewhat shocked.

"My goodness, he's only been reformed a few months, and I certainly hadn't heard of anything particularly remarkable he's done for Equestria," Rarity said. "Whatever could you mean, Princess?"

Celestia sighed deeply. "Discord... was not always Equestria's enemy."

"Oh! Oh!" Pinkie raised a hoof. "Is this like all those stories where he used to be your brother and he was an alicorn and then some kind of mean nasty Chaos thing took over his brain and turned him into a bad guy?"

"That's ridiculous, Pinkie, Discord can't be..." Twilight trailed off at the expression on Celestia's face.

"Discord was never an alicorn. He was always a draconequus... a species that is now extinct, except for him," Celestia said. "And from the time I met him, he wielded Chaos magic. However... I am curious as to the source of these 'stories,' Pinkie, because some of those suppositions are almost accurate."

"Oh, they're not here," Pinkie said. "They're out there." She waved her hoof at nothing. "Just like the one we're in!"

"Princess, that's just Pinkie being Pinkie," Applejack said. "But I admit I'm mighty interested in what parts of that crazy story she just told might be the truth."

"My family took Discord in, as a foster brother of sorts to myself and Luna," Celestia said. "He was... different then. Not physically, he looked much as he does today, though younger. And in some ways he was much the same. He still loved Chaos. He enjoyed playing pranks, teasing Luna and myself – especially Luna – and starting arguments. And he was thoughtless, and occasionally cruel, but back then he also had great compassion at times. He never did have very much empathy for any ponies he didn't know well. But for the few he invited into his heart, he was as loyal and true as any of you are to each other."

"He told Fluttershy he never had a friend before," Applejack said, scowling slightly.

"He never did. He had foster family and a teacher. I told him on occasion to make friends with other ponies besides Luna and myself, and he..." She broke off for a moment. "Excuse me, my throat is a bit dry. I think I'll have some of that excellent apple juice from your farm, Applejack." She opened the door, stepped out a moment, and returned, sipping a cup of apple juice.

Twilight might have just imagined hearing her voice break, right before she excused herself to get a drink.

"What did he do, Princess?" Fluttershy said softly. "I mean... if you're okay with talking about it..."

"Of course I am," Celestia said warmly. "I was going to say... he told me that Luna and I were all that he needed, that he had no desire to make friends of other ponies when he had us." She sighed. "Probably I should have demanded it, or made arrangements for him to meet others whether he liked it or not, but... perhaps it would have made no difference in the end."

"What happened, Princess?" Rarity asked. "He's obviously quite different now..."

"What happened was war." Celestia took another sip of her apple juice. "In those days the dragons were different as well. Today they are disorganized, individualistic to the point of being almost ungoverned, but in those days, they were a great empire, and they were at war with Equestria. And we were losing. When I ascended to the throne, Luna was not at her majority yet, so she didn't yet rule by my side. I was barely more than a filly, and I had the responsibility of protecting my nation against an enemy more powerful, who were far too proud to surrender to mere ponies, who were very difficult to kill with magic or in fact anything, and who didn't seek to merely conquer us but eat us."

"Yikes," Spike said. "Dragons... dragons don't eat ponies nowadays though, right?"

"Not as a rule," Celestia said. "But as I said, things were different in those days." She closed her eyes. "I sent my most powerful weapon to the Dragon Empire to defeat them. Discord wasn't as close to all-powerful as he is now, then, but he was the most powerful mage in Equestria and most likely the world. I knew that using his power in the context of warfare, using chaos to kill and to destroy the minds of his foes, could damage his sanity. He knew it as well. I sent him anyway, and he went willingly, for I had to consider all of Equestria, not just one I... one I cared for. And he had little loyalty to the abstract ideal of Equestria, but he was loyal to me, and to Luna." She breathed deeply. "If I had known then what I know now... I might still have done it, and he would almost certainly have disobeyed me and done it anyway if I had ordered him not to go. For all the damage Discord's chaos did to Equestria, he never killed ponies except by thoughtless accident, not that I was aware of in any case. The dragons would have eaten us all."

"Are you saying Discord went insane because he was forced to use his powers to kill the dragons?" Twilight asked.

"Not... entirely. There was no one moment that broke him. It was a slow slide. His sanity was questionable for some time, but I was always able to return him to himself, to break his obsessive focus on Chaos and make him recognize there was value in life aside from making everything change constantly.  But eventually... the dragons tried to kill him, in a way that completed his transformation into the avatar of Chaos, not a mere Chaos mage. He became very nearly unstoppable... and lost his reason, at the same time. And for some time, we were separated because of what the dragons had done. He believed Luna and me to be dead, and with what was left of his sanity gone, he blamed us for abandoning him. And blamed us the worse when he learned we weren't dead, even though it was no choice of ours that separated us from him. I couldn't... I couldn't bring him back to reason. Chaos was all he loved any longer, all he lived for, all that mattered to him."

She took another sip of her apple juice. "So you see... Discord saved Equestria, at the cost of his sanity, and we repaid him by fighting him for centuries and then sealing him in stone for a millennium. We had no choice, but in a sense, neither did he. He lost his ability to freely make choices, to restrain himself, because of the war I sent him to win. Ponies live and thrive today because Discord willingly risked his psyche to save us. And I never meant to lock him away for a thousand years... only until I could find some other way to restrain him, to bring him back to himself. But then I... then I lost Luna, and... with the Elements broken, I had no way to seal Discord again if I freed him. I didn't dare."

"How tragic," Rarity said softly. "I never knew... It must have been so hard for you, Princess."

"I always intended to release him, once you six were bearing the Elements. But not right away. You needed experience, you needed to deepen your friendships, for I knew that destroying friendship had become one of his favorite tactics. He broke loose before I thought you were ready, and you did well, defeating and resealing him... but it had always been my intention to ask you to try to befriend and reform him, eventually. Because I knew it was possible. Because once he had been my... my..."

"Yer brother?" Applejack asked.

Celestia shook her head, her eyes welling with tears. Twilight hadn't seen the Princess so overwhelmed with emotion since the Elements had defeated Nightmare Moon and restored Princess Luna. "Luna saw him as a brother," she said. "But I was the one who asked my father to take him in, when we first we met. We were too old to be newly a brother and sister." She closed her eyes. "It was very long ago."

"Oh, my," Rarity said. "Princess... did you... love him?"

Celestia nodded, once. "As I said. A long time ago. It... doesn't matter any longer. There have been too many years of enmity... I am not sure we can ever even be friends, now. But... yes. He was my first love, and I his."

Twilight blinked. Discord had told her, while he'd been ranting about the nightmare she'd had with him in it and why he was much too attractive to stoop to raping ponies, that the "most beautiful and powerful mare in the world" had... well, the way he'd phrased it, it had sounded positively sordid. He'd said she'd thrown herself at him and begged him to take her virginity. Twilight had shouted "TMI!" at him and strongly considered hitting him, again, and she hadn't taken the boast at all seriously. But Discord had a way of telling the truth in a way that made it sound like lies. And mixing lies and half-truths into it; he'd also told her he'd never had any relationships or much more than one-night stands, had actually bragged about it as if it was something to be proud of, and if what Princess Celestia was saying now was true, he'd been lying about that. But actually telling the truth about being the first love of a beautiful, powerful mare... while not bothering to mention that she'd been his first, and if the rest of what he'd said had any accuracy at all, only love, as well.

"Wow," Rainbow Dash said. "Just... wow. I, uh, I'd have never expected that, Princess."

Celestia smiled wanly. "No one ever does," she said. "It isn't... a fact either of us advertise. For obvious reasons. And as I said, it's no longer relevant... except as part of the explanation why I felt he could be reformed, and as part of the explanation why I feel Equestria owes him that chance. He has done so many terrible things... things I can never truly forgive. But even at the height of his madness, he protected Equestria from threats that weren't him. And I know that he can control himself for love's sake, that he has. I am not sure anypony can offer him love, not anymore, but I believed he could control himself for friendship's sake as well. And thus far he has. Mostly. As much as he ever did, anyway." She sighed. "For the sake of the debt all ponies owe him, for losing himself to save us from dragonkind, we must rescue him. For the sake of not allowing him to become a weapon against us again, we must rescue him. And... for the sake of what I once felt for him... I, myself, cannot bear to leave him to such torment. Will you help him for Equestria's sake, Rainbow? And for mine?"

Rainbow nodded seriously. "You can count on me, Princess."

"And me," Rarity said. "I hadn't any idea you and Discord had such a tragically romantic past, your Highness. Of course I'll do anything in my power to help."

"Figured I wasn't gonna be able to leave somepony in a place like that soon as I figured out he was telling the truth," Applejack said. "So I'm all in."

"So what're we waiting for? Let's go!" Pinkie shouted.

"Pinkie, we don't even know where we're going," Twilight said.

"Oh." Pinkie's face fell.

"Have you attempted to find the portal yet, Twilight?" Celestia asked.

"Not yet, but something as disruptive as a portal to an alternate dimension should show up pretty easily if I scry for it." She mused for a moment. "I'm thinking, we should return to Ponyville. The portal's near there anyway, so it's almost on the way. We can pick up any supplies we might need..."

"Yeah, that's right!" Pinkie said. "If we're in a different Ponyville then all the emergency supplies I put all over the place in case of emergency would be in different places because a different me would have put them there and maybe they would be evil supplies! I wouldn't want to grab a balloon that I set aside for a balloon emergency and find out it was a bomb she put aside for a bomb emergency! So I'm going to have to pack up all my emergency supplies and bring them with us!"

"And I'll want my medical supplies," Fluttershy said softly. "And maybe I should speak with Zecora about bringing along a few healing potions."

"Oh, and I will most definitely want to bring along costuming supplies," Rarity said. "After all, if we happen to run into our other selves, they won't believe we belong there; we may have to disguise ourselves!"

"I figure I'll just bring a lot of rope," Applejack said. "Can't think what else I might have that we'd need for a trip like this."

"Mountain climbing pitons," Rainbow Dash said. "And one of those hook thingies that you swing up onto the top of things so you can climb. That's what Daring Do would bring!"

"Darling, why does Daring Do need mountain climbing pitons when she is a pegasus?" Rarity asked.

"Duh! Because when she was fighting the werejaguars, their high priestess cast a spell on the mountain to make the air burn if you got more than pony height off the ground, so she ended up having to climb Mount Popocatepillar to throw the Ruby of Doom into the volcano with mountain climbing pitons instead of flying!"

"So you're gonna bring some?" Applejack asked skeptically.

"Naah, there aren't any mountains in Ponyville," Rainbow said confidently. "I figure I don't need to bring anything but my awesome self."

"I'll need paper and quills," Spike said. "Lots and lots, maybe."

"And we need to pack food!" Pinkie said. "Oh, I know, I'll bring a couple of cans of Cotton Candy in a Can! That way when we find Discord we can open up the can and give him the cotton candy! And if he has his powers back he could eat the can too!"

"When we get back, I'll make a list," Twilight said. "We'll pack everything, and we'll make sure that everything we need to do gets covered while we're gone. Like someone to take care of Fluttershy's animals."

"Yeah, and I'll need to get someone to cover my weather shifts," Rainbow said.

"I'm going to take a few minutes to see if I can scry the portal from here," Twilight said. "It'd be better if I could tell Princess Celestia exactly where it is before we leave. Spike, while I'm concentrating on this, can you take notes on what everypony says they need to pack?"

While Twilight was setting up her scrying spell, and the others were talking animatedly with Spike about the preparations they needed to make, Fluttershy turned to Princess Celestia. "Princess, can... can I talk to you? Um... privately?"

"Of course, Fluttershy. Walk with me." Celestia walked with Fluttershy out of the chamber. "What did you wish to talk about?"

"Um..." This was so hard. "What you said... before... about you and Discord?"

"Yes?"

"Does that... does that mean... is it okay to feel that way about someone who isn't a pony?"

"Did someone tell you it was not?"

"I'm not sure... exactly. It's just... everypony always seems to act like... it's, um, unnatural. Wrong, or, or something. Ponies joke about Spike's crush on Rarity, but if she had the same feelings for him, some ponies would act like she's weird? Or sick?"

Celestia nodded. "Prejudice against xenophilia. It comes and goes. There are times that it is stronger in society, and times it is less strong. Discord and I had to hide our true feelings in public, at first; I didn't wish to cause a scandal, and while Discord did, he cared for me enough to respect my feelings. Eventually I stopped caring. The common ponies might have been scandalized if they knew, but we were at war... and when my love came home to me ranting about the world being a soap bubble and talking about turning the patterns of everything inside out and telling me that reality was melting, I wasn't going to turn him aside for propriety's sake, no matter who could see us."

Turning the patterns of everything inside out. The last time Fluttershy had seen Discord, he'd talked about how strongly he was compelled to do that, how it obsessed him and it hurt him to be unable to do it. The Princess had said that in the old days, he'd been able to hold himself back for the sake of love, and that now she believed he could hold back for the sake of friendship, and Fluttershy knew that that was true. She'd seen him doing it. She knew how hard it had been for him.

She felt so guilty. She was the one who'd told him that ponies would be afraid of even harmless, beautiful chaos, that he needed to make friends before he could do even that much. And so he'd run off to create chaos somewhere that she wouldn't see him do it, because he couldn't bring himself to do without it. And now he was in a terrible place, trapped, because she had told him to hold himself back still, and he couldn't do it.

Fluttershy wanted to save him, wanted to fly in there and Stare down anypony who'd hurt him, wanted to bring him safely home and take care of him and make him well again. But in addition to that, she wanted him to know she'd never meant to make him feel hopeless, she'd never meant to make him feel like he had to run to another universe to get what he needed. If bringing his light rain to Ponyville could have saved him from needing to do this, she should have encouraged him to do it, she should have talked Twilight and Pinkie and Rarity into accepting it and let them convince everypony else, because Twilight would have been fascinated by it and Pinkie would have thought it was fun and Rarity would have seen the beauty in rain that was light. They wouldn't have been afraid of something beautiful and harmless even if it was strange, not if she'd assured them ahead of time. But she hadn't. She'd been afraid of what they would think. She hadn't been confident enough to stand up for her own opinion to her friends, and because of that, one of her friends was suffering horribly.

She wanted him to know how sorry she was for doing that.

She wanted him to know... if he could use love as an anchor to help him deal with his obsessions... if he could want that as much as he wanted Chaos... maybe if he could possibly be interested... maybe...

Before she could lose her nerve, she asked, "So, it wouldn't, you don't think it would be wrong or weird if, um, if I was in love with..." She trailed off, unable to finish the sentence.

Celestia's eyes widened. "Oh. Oh, my poor little pony. Oh, my poor dear. I'm so sorry."

She laid a wing over Fluttershy's. "It's not wrong. Love is never wrong. But oh, my poor Fluttershy, if this had been any other time..."

"Any other time?" Fluttershy whispered.

"You love Discord," Celestia said softly. "That's what you're trying to tell me, right? And you're afraid that this makes you 'wrong or weird'. It's not wrong. Love is never wrong. But, Fluttershy..." She took a deep breath. "You didn't read the letter, right?"

Fluttershy nodded, wide eyes fixed on the princess, who seemed distraught on her behalf.

"What did Twilight tell you was happening to Discord?"

"The evil versions of us were, um... torturing him..." She could barely say the words. She could barely bring herself to wrap her mind around the concept. Discord was so strong and confident and carefree most of the time, so funny and alive. She'd seen him suffer emotionally. She knew he could feel physical pain; he'd told her it was painful to be turned to stone. But the thought of him being tortured... it seemed impossible, it seemed like a violation of everything he was, but then, if the impossible could happen to anypony it would be Discord.

"Did she give you any detail?"

"Just that... it was really bad."

Celestia nodded once. "I understand why she would have wanted to keep the details from you. But I think you need to know some things. I think perhaps your friends underestimate your strength. For the sake of helping Discord, can you bear to be told details that will horrify you?"

Fluttershy swallowed, but nodded. "I... um, I can take it. If it's to help him."

"First... I am so sorry to tell you, Fluttershy, but your counterpart is his chief torturer."

Fluttershy sucked in her breath. Let it out slowly. "Of course... because if the other him made her into her opposite, she'd be Cruelty... so that makes sense."

"He gave her a different name, so he wouldn't confuse her with you. He's trying, very hard, to separate the two of you in his mind. He didn't do that for any of the others. But... you must understand... part of the way they are torturing him is that by having her do it, they are using his feelings for you to harm him."

"But I thought... do they know about me? I thought they thought he was the Discord from their universe..."

"Discord thinks they do. It may be accidental. Perhaps they gave her the task simply because, as you say, she is Cruelty. But whether it's their intent or not... they are using his feelings for you to cause him harm, and... I don't know if he's strong enough to bear that. I fear he may simply let the part of himself that cares for others shut down."

"No." Fluttershy shook her head. "I can't let that happen. I can't."

"I hope you can help him fight it. He was... still resisting, when he wrote the letter. We have no way to know how long it was between the time that he finished it and the time that Spike received it, but we know that, at least when he finished the letter, he was still able to care." Celestia lowered her head. "But even if he is still able to care, even if he still wants your friendship... more than that is probably... unlikely."

"I... understand," Fluttershy whispered. "If... he loved you... there's no way I'm as pretty as you, and—"

"No." Celestia's voice was firm. "No, Fluttershy, that is not any kind of reason whatsoever. I have no doubt in my mind whatsoever that if this had not happened, and you had told him how you feel, he would have returned your feelings. Perhaps not immediately – it's been centuries since he let himself dare love anypony – but eventually. You are Kindness itself, and he longed for your friendship so badly, he turned away from the cruelty of his chaos for the first time in as many centuries as it has been since he last loved. But." She looked down again. "I was not done, telling you the things I fear you need to know from the letter," she said softly. "Fluttershy..." She looked up again, meeting Fluttershy's eyes, and her own seemed to be full of all the sorrow and compassion in the universe. "Your counterpart... raped him. More than once."

The horror of the words hit Fluttershy like a blow to the back of her neck, and she staggered slightly, wishing for a moment that she was a drama queen like Rarity and she could fall back onto a fainting couch. Rape was a rare crime in Equestria, but considered one of the most horrifying possible; it took the act of loving intimacy itself and turned it into a torture. While there was no death penalty for any crime in Equestrian law, it was common that the Royal Guard would have to be sent to protect convicted rapists on their way to prison, in small towns like Ponyville, because otherwise the citizens would lynch them, and the local constabulary would turn a blind eye. The thought of anypony doing such a horrible thing to Discord, who'd only ever had one friend and one love in his millennia of existence, horrified her. The thought that it was another version of herself sickened her utterly.

But, she realized, didn't entirely surprise her. She remembered being her cruel self, little as she wanted to. The others all thought Discord had put something on her that wasn't originally there, but that hadn't been it. Fluttershy knew there was a darkness inside her; she'd spent her life forcing down selfish impulses, cruel impulses, violent impulses. When she'd gone half-insane at the Gala demanding that the animals should love her, when she'd taken Iron Will's assertiveness training and turned into a selfish monster... that hadn't been any doing of Discord's. That was inside her. She'd resisted Discord in the labyrinth, not because she was so innocent that she simply had no darkness inside, but because she'd faced that darkness and forced it down so many times, he couldn't trick her into giving into it.

She was much too shy to ever ask, or offer... but she was a mare like any other. She had desires. She knew that. And her cruel self had been so much like herself at the Gala, herself under Iron Will's advice. If she'd been corrupted by cruelty, if she not only no longer cared if she hurt other ponies to get what she wanted but in fact actively liked doing so... she'd spent her life being much too shy to approach any stallion she had a crush on, or let them approach her, and much too fearful that she would be despised if she admitted her interests in males who weren't ponies. But her cruel self wouldn't care about being despised, and her cruel self wasn't shy. Her cruel self took what she wanted, regardless of what other ponies thought about it.

Her own feelings for Discord were complicated, and hampered by her usual anxieties, but she knew she'd come to find him attractive, even as she'd felt shame for it because he was so unlike a pony. If the cruel version of her felt the same way... and Discord was under an obedience spell, forced to comply...

Now she felt even more sickened. She didn't want to know in her heart how it was that her alter ego could commit such a horrible crime against her friend. She didn't want to understand it, she didn't want to feel as if there but for the grace of fate, she could have gone. But she couldn't help it. She knew herself, she knew her own dark side better than most, and she knew exactly where the desire and the will to commit such horrible acts was coming from. She would never, ever want to hurt anypony, especially not someone she felt she might love, in such a way... but under Discord's influence after he'd attacked her in the maze, when her dark side had ruled her, she'd turned into a pony who loved hurting others. Take away her desire to never cause suffering, turn it into a desire to cause suffering, and love and desire could easily be perverted into such cruelty.

"I see," she whispered, feeling filthy. Feeling like she would never dare touch him, because the part of her that was like the one who'd hurt him lived inside her, and he knew it, he'd brought that part of her to the surface that time, so how could he not see her as being like the one who'd done such terrible things to him?

"I am so sorry, Fluttershy," Celestia said. "If this had been any other time... I would have encouraged you. I know he would have been so much happier with the love of a pony like you, and while I know from experience how hard he makes life for those who love him, I remember that before everything was taken from us, I thought it was well worth it. But... his reactions are not always what one would expect, he prides himself on being unpredictable in many situations, but... I would think it unlikely that he would be ready for that sort of love any time soon, even once he's recovered from this."

And probably never from me, Fluttershy thought with numb resignation. Well. So be it. She'd never really thought she could win his love anyway; she'd only started to imagine it as a possibility when the Princess had revealed that Discord had once loved a pony, that he was capable of it. It didn't matter. What mattered was that she would help save him, and remind him that friendship wasn't something that caused suffering. Make him remember why he wanted to have a friend, if they were trying to break him of that.

"I understand, Princess Celestia," she murmured. "I won't, I, I don't want to do anything to make him upset or, remind him of what happened. I won't... say anything..."

"I hope it can be different someday," Celestia said gently. "Perhaps, with time, it can be. But for now, I think... it's wise of you to agree not to bring this up with him."

Fluttershy nodded.

"Got it," Twilight said. "I think I've got a good fix on where that portal is... and I think I know how to open it, too." She grinned. "It's not like the one to the world Sunset Shimmer went to. It feels... I don't know how to describe it. Closer. Less complicated. Like the mirror portal was a big portcullised castle gateway at the end of a drawbridge with a moat around it, and this is just a sliding door."

"It is one of Discord's talents to make the impossible, or highly implausible, easy," Princess Celestia said, walking back into the room with Fluttershy behind her. Twilight was a bit surprised to see her come through the door, since she hadn't noticed her leave, but she had been concentrating pretty intently. "When Luna and I sealed him the first time, he had left dozens of these things around, and unlike most of his chaos, they didn't vanish when his power was locked. Luna spent several years hunting for them to seal them while I was trying to re-establish order and governance, because unicorns kept accidentally activating them and falling through."

"I think he might have fixed that," Twilight said. "This one has an image lock."

"An image lock?" Rainbow asked. "What's that?"

"Well, it's like a lock you put on a door, where the key is to visualize an image," Twilight said. "For a while it was driving me nuts, because the idea of trying to figure out what kind of image Discord might have come up with... I mean it could be anything. But then I realized, he told me about the portal in the letter and he didn't mention the image lock, so it must be something he thought would be so easy I'd get it right away. So I tried visualizing Fluttershy, and that worked."

Fluttershy turned red. "Oh..."

"I suppose somepony could have accidentally fallen through it if they were practicing certain types of magic, or teleportation, right near there, and they saw Fluttershy while they were doing it. But it's not that close to her house, so that's not too likely." She turned to Spike. "Can I see what we've got for our checklist?"

Spike showed her the list, and she ran down it. "Fluttershy, anything to add?"

"Um, you've already got the medical kit and the potions, so, uh, I don't think so."

"Had a thought," Applejack said. "Twilight, when we get a tree that's dying, or rotted, or it's just plain making bad apples, we can take a cutting from it, plant it somewhere else, and get that to grow up healthy."

"Um... ok?" Twilight wasn't sure what this had to do with anything.

"Well, the Elements of Harmony are like the fruits of the Tree of Harmony. It's a magic crystal tree, but still, it's a tree. So, I'm wondering, if the Elements are corrupted over there, maybe the Tree is too, or maybe it's too weak to fix the Elements. What if we took a cutting from our Tree of Harmony, brought it over there, and planted it?"

"What would that do?"

"Oh!" Rarity said. "Of course! One cannot keep Harmony in a vacuum; if the entire tune has changed keys, the tune is still in harmony. But if we bring a cutting from our tree, perhaps it might act as a tuning fork and disrupt what the other Discord did to the other Elements, bringing them back in key with our Tree."

"Or at the very least, mess up the Elements so they can't harmonize with each other," Applejack said. "Ain't so sure I like the idea that we'd just bring the other Elements back in key. Doesn't seem like it's much in the way of justice to just turn them back into the us ponies they oughta be, after all they've done."

"Oh no." Fluttershy had a look on her face Twilight had only seen a few times... usually preparatory to either the Stare, or Fluttershy doing something absolutely crazy. "No, Applejack, that would be the perfect justice. If we could restore them to their true selves with a cutting from the Tree to reharmonize their elements and drive out the opposite parts... they'd become just like us. But with the memories of everything they've done. That would be justice."

What if Twilight woke up one moment and realized she had been a torturer? That she'd employed an obedience spell? Twilight shuddered. Fluttershy was right. That was justice. Or possibly the cruelest possible thing they could do to their dark selves. Or both. "Well, there's no guarantee it'll work, but it's worth a shot. I think we've got a good list of supplies and plans here." She looked over the list. "We might not be able to get all this stuff together in time to cross through in daylight, and maybe we don't want to be doing it in daylight anyway. How's this for a plan? We collect everything we need, we make arrangements for coverage, we get some sleep, and we get up really really early, like 4 am, and cross over then."

"Wouldn't it be better to do it tonight?" Fluttershy asked.

Twilight shook her head. "We need to be sharp if we're possibly going up against ponies who are us, with all our same talents, but probably a lot more experience at fighting and a lot more ruthlessness. I don't want to leave him over there any longer than we have to either, but we'll all be in a lot better shape for a rescue mission if we're not tired."

"Well, I don't see how waking up at 4 am could possibly leave us not tired," Rarity said, "but you do have a point. Better to get some sleep than none."

"I'll have Spike make us all a pot of his special 'wake up' blend of tea before we head out."

"And I'll make energy croissants for breakfast!"

Twilight blinked. "Energy croissants?"

"Right! You mix in high protein food like cheese, but low fat so you don't slow down from trying to process it, and that balances with the sugar, which gives you energy, so that gives you more energy! Add some spiciness with ginger and cinnamon to give you a wake up kick, and use just a little bit of sour! I do cherry cheese and raspberry cheese, with a lot of icing. When I need to pull an all-nighter I make myself a batch of them and eat them all night!"

"Huh." Pinkie actually had a potion maker's sensibility about her baking, choosing ingredients for their effect and not necessarily just the taste. Who knew? "Okay, sounds good."

"I've requested that my chariot drivers take you back to Ponyville for speed considerations," Celestia said. "Please send me status reports whenever the situation changes, and you're able to. Good luck, my little ponies." She smiled at Spike. "And my little dragon."

"We won't let you down, Princess," Twilight said.

"Hey, I can go faster on my own, so I'm gonna head back and meet you guys tomorrow in the AM," Rainbow Dash said. "I gotta go talk to the weather team in Cloudsdale anyway, and get somepony to watch Tank for me."

"All right. Please don't be late, Rainbow."

Rainbow Dash grinned. "Could say the same thing about you slowpokes. See you!"

Twilight looked around at the other four ponies, and Spike. "Let's go."

Comments? Go here!

Back to Elements of Opposition