Romance and the Fate of Equestria

So… ever since Discord returned to the show and established a close (if dysfunctional and manipulative) relationship with Fluttershy, it's been hard to imagine any other arrangement. My plan in this story, however, was for Discord's best friend in the group to be Applejack—I figured she would be intrigued by his inability to tell a lie and they could bond over that. In theory, this chapter would have been the culmination of their friendship… in practice, unfortunately, this is the first time that Discord and Applejack have any meaningful interaction at all.

This would normally be the part where I'd say something self-deprecating, or perhaps genuinely self-loathing, about how I've failed as a writer, but you know what? Everything else in this story is going off without a hitch and it's totally awesome. So I can forgive myself one little mistake. Let's celebrate! Happy one hundredth chapter to me! Woot woot!

Speaking of failures, I wish I could say there's a passable in-universe explanation for a certain Lauren Faust joke that's in this chapter… I've been trying to think of one… and there aren't any. It's just straight-up breaking the fourth wall. …Sorry.

Chapter One Hundred

Early the next morning, Discord sat on the railing of the highest balcony of Golden Oak Library, staring intensely into space, his one-fanged mouth set into a deep scowl.

The balcony door opened, and Applejack squeezed through to sit alongside him. "Hey, Dis."

"Applejack," he said lazily. "What do you have there?"

She held up the white paper box. "Takeout food," she said brightly. "You said somethin' about that last night, so… here ya go."

He took the box, then stared at her suspiciously. "None for you?"

"Nah, I'm good."

He considered the food for a moment, then rolled his eyes. "Don't be an idiot," he grumbled, reaching into the box and magically producing an exact replica of it and its contents, thrusting it into Applejack's chest.

"All right, thanks," she chuckled, accepting it. "So, how ya doin'?"

He laughed bitterly and raised an eyebrow at her. "Sympathy for the devil, Applejack? Never thought I'd see that from you. From the weirdoes in the group, sure… Pinkie Pie, and maybe Twilight… but you, I'd always had you pegged as more of the 'paladin' type."

"Aw, shucks," she said with a grin. "Thanks."

He continued regarding her with uncertainty and suspicion. "That wasn't a compliment," he said. "I don't generally care for paladins."

"Eh, well, that makes sense, I suppose," she said, shrugging. "But I appreciate the comparison. That's how I kind of like to see myself too. I'm choosin' to take it as a compliment. Anyway, you ain't the devil. I don't know much, but I'm sure of that."

"Oh, don't be too certain," Discord mused, opening his takeout container. "Back when I ruled Equestria, ponies were known to come to my castle asking for one of my legendary Faustian bargains."

"Faustian bargain?" Applejack said thoughtfully. "Is that Faust, the deal-with-the-devil guy, or Faust, the former executive producer?"

He scoffed. "The 'deal-with-the-devil guy', obviously. Why would I—?" He turned to her in anger, only to see that she was laughing. "Oh. Oh, I see, that's funny. The former… yes. Okay." He chuckled and popped a dumpling into his mouth.

"So…" Applejack said gently, scooting closer to him. "You wanna talk about your mother?"

"Not really."

"Okay," she submitted, backing off.

"…Yes," he said grudgingly. "What would you like to know?"

"I'm curious 'bout a few things," she said cheerfully. "I'm not askin' you for any major intel or nothin', just hopin' to chat with you."

He stared. "All right. About what?"

"Well… if Mitgaeard is your mother, who's your father?" she said, leaning toward him with genuine interest.

"Don't have one," he said dully. "She spent two hundred years making me in her body with magic, then spat me out of her mouth."

"Really?" she whispered.

"I already told that bit to Twilight, she didn't spread it around?" said Discord. "Although I suppose, if I do have a father, it's… time."

"Time?" Applejack repeated. "Like, Father Time?"

"Nothing so tangible as that," Discord said. "Just 'time'. See, if you take perfection… utopia, if you will… and you add time, then you get… well, you get me. Do you see what I'm saying?"

Applejack thought long and hard, but had to admit that she couldn't follow. "Nope."

"You don't…? Well, I guess I shouldn't have expected you to. I'm immortal, after all, and borderline-omnipotent, I work on a level far different from yours, so it's no surprise that you couldn't follow that train of thought." He sighed. "That certainly is upsetting."

"What is?"

"That you don't understand what I'm saying and I find that upsetting, that's what's upsetting," he said uneasily. "You know me, Applejack, I'm not a deep guy. You should know that normally, I'd be giggling with glee at the notion that you had no idea what I was talking about. But I'm not. It's these damned Elements of Harmony in my back, they're making me want you to understand me. I don't like having my mind tampered with like that."

"Well, I'm sorry about that," said Applejack. "Nopony likes having their mind tampered with." She looked at him meaningfully, with a familiar shifty and unconvincing expression.

"Point taken," he sighed, staring out into the street.

They sat together in silence for a moment, simply watching the sun climb higher into the sky, taking in the sights of Ponyville and faraway Canterlot.

"Listen, about my… about Mitgaeard," he muttered. "Listen carefully, because this is important. This is data that Celestia's been after for months, using every means at her disposal and coming up empty. I'm giving it to you now to do with as you please."

Applejack nodded. "Well, then… don't hold back."

"Mitgaeard is not interested in creating the Matrix anymore," he stated. "But what she's planning would result in oblivion for the entire world just as certainly as the Matrix would… in spirit if not physically."

"Okay. Tell me all about it."

He took a deep breath and closed his eyes before continuing. "Sometime in the past ninety-nine thousand years that she's been shut up in Tartaros, she realized, logically, that her strategy for turning the world into the Matrix would never work; it was too slow, and somepony would inevitably rise up and stop her eventually. And from there, I guess it occurred to her that destroying the universe is, overall, just a really stupid idea. But she still had a need for order, she just figured she'd just try to pursue a different kind of order: the order of law and civilization. And what's the central premise of civilization?" He looked to Applejack expectantly.

Applejack jumped in surprise when she realized it was a genuine question, and gave it some thought. "Um… justice?" she guessed.

"Money," Discord corrected.

Applejack snorted in amusement. "Well, sure, if you're a cynic."

He actually laughed out loud at that. "My mother's a lot of things—a lot of terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things—but a cynic isn't one of them," he said. "She's too analytical to be a cynic or an idealist. So if her analysis tells her that the core concept of the law is money… you can take that to the fucking bank."

Applejack winced, taken off-guard by the harsh word. "Okay then," she said nervously. "So what did she do?"

"Well, she sat there in Tartaros," said Discord. "Reading, like she always does. But her mind was also on other things. She was scanning the world to find the wealthiest creature in existence. And so she did."

"And who was that?" Applejack said curiously.

He raised his eyebrows at her. "You haven't put that together yet? It was Vorpal Blade."

Applejack stared at him, wide-eyed and dumbstruck. "R… really?" she finally managed. "Vorpal Blade… the guy who goes around Equestria burgling ponies' houses, that Vorpal Blade… is the richest creature in the world?"

"Mm-hmm," said Discord.

"…How's that possible?"

"Well, he's only, like, the best thief ever," Discord said condescendingly. "He figured out a loooong time ago that with his mind powers, he can steal anything and never even be suspected of the crime. And with all the years he's spent going around and stealing all the grandest and most unique things he can get his hooves on, yeah, he's the wealthiest individual on the planet. And for that reason, Mitgaeard recruited him to her cause, oh, roughly around the time Princess Luna returned from the moon."

Applejack blinked slowly. "That… that just doesn't add up…"

"Sure it does," said Discord. "Vorpal Blade, as Twilight has been informed, is substantially older than he looks. He's had a lot of time to amass that wealth. Now, shall I continue, or are we going to focus on the tangential little details?"

"Fine," Applejack sighed. "Keep goin'."

"Thank you. So, through all his years of collecting, Vorpal Blade has a stash of coin, treasure, and art with a value equivalent to roughly fifty-four billion bits. Yes, billion. That's over fifty billion bits hoarded away in a cave somewhere, not affecting the world economy. If that money were suddenly to be put into use… you know what you could buy with fifty-four billion bits? Equestria."

Applejack furrowed her brow as she contemplated that. "Mitgaeard… recruited Vorpal Blade… to buy Equestria?"

"No, that'd just be silly," Discord said, chuckling and waving his paw dismissively. "Rather, she'd like to use Vorpal Blade's practically-limitless riches to finance a campaign to conquer it. Vorpal Blade and his friends have taken to calling it their 'final heist': once they've stolen Equestria itself, what's left to steal? Once it gets to that point, they'll start openly consolidating control over the rest of the world.

"Mitgaeard has an interest in ruling, but not so much interest in the responsibility that comes with it. To that end, Vorpal Blade, Skippmud, and Crazyface will be the ones in charge, the faces and the big decision-makers of the world government, while they answer to Mitgaeard, paying tribute to her by way of frequent and massive sacrifices—the sacrifices being all of those who aren't fitting perfectly into her neat and orderly 'civilization'."

Applejack sat silently, pondering.

"You seem to have other questions," Discord prompted.

"Yeah," she said. "How could Mitgaeard have recruited him three years ago if she only broke out of Tartaros last month?"

"She's had plans like this before," he said softly. "Her mind goes out into the world and reaches out and touches a single creature, who then becomes her 'chosen one'. She may have spent most of recorded history locked up in jail, but she's still been pretty active in the world, acting via her various chosen ones. She can communicate with her chosen one at any time, give them orders, give them powers—powers that sometimes break the laws of reality a little bit—and sends them on missions to accomplish her ends. And she can kill them instantly if they start behaving improperly, which they always do at some point—it's pretty hard to find a chosen one who's willing to participate in the whole 'destroy the universe' bit. Vorpal Blade, he may very well live forever as her one and only chosen one, since she's offering him everything, no destroyed universe required."

"And… okay, if he had already hidden away fifty billion bits, why did she make him steal the crown jewels?" she challenged. "And why is he still going around the world stealing stuff?"

"Well, first of all, you must understand that he loves doing what he does, or he probably would have stopped when he made his first billion, see what I'm saying?" Discord said enthusiastically. "She's finally given him a goal to strive for, and that is what sparked his interest in retirement. And it's because of the goal that they need more. They're going to have to spread a lot of money around to get the kind of backing they'll need for a takeover of this magnitude—so they're going to get as close as they can possibly get to possessing all the treasure in the world. Sure, you might think no one would trust him, since nearly everypony he could talk to would be somepony he's stolen from, but… when one has the unfathomable amount of riches that he does, it doesn't matter where he got it from. Money is power and freedom, and with all that he possesses, he can do pretty much anything."

Applejack shrugged. "Kinda hard to argue with that. So, another question—"

"Why did she only escape last month when she's been planning this for three years?" Discord offered.

"…Well, that never occurred to me, but sure, fill me in," Applejack said blankly.

"She had the day of her breakout all planned out," said Discord. "She had Vorpal Blade keep doing his usual stuff, sloooowly adding to their fortune, including the crown jewels of Equestria. Now she's coordinating with him in person, as well as doing her part to keep the campaign going—like when she destroyed all of Lady Kolassa's followers. She's not going to do much else for a while beyond staying on the move. She figures as long as she keeps moving forward on the plan, regardless of how slow-going that may be, she's got all the time in the world. She's not getting any older, after all."

Applejack nodded.

"So, anything else?"

"Just one thing," said Applejack. "How do you even know all of this stuff in the first place?"

"Knowledge has never been a hard thing for me to come by, Applejack," he said. "When I'm at my full power, all I need to do is want to know something, and ba-boom! I immediately know it. And when I'm frozen in stone, I'm still fully aware, in case you never caught that. I can see and hear what goes on around me, and by the same token, I retain my ability to learn anything. And there's not much to do inside a stone shell but learn everything."

He bit his lip anxiously. "It's become harder ever since the Elements were fused to me. As their influence increases, it becomes more difficult to learn about things just by thinking about them. Very, very difficult. It's troubling. A week ago, I might have compared it to going blind, but that's probably a bit much. Perhaps it's more like going deaf. Probably not, though, I suppose. I realize that most creatures can't learn whatever they want without even trying. But it's so frustrating…"

"I understand," said Applejack. "It's different from what you're used to. That's always hard."

"Yeah," Discord muttered. He cleared his throat and clapped his hands. "Well, I've pretty much spilled my guts. Shouldn't you have been writing all this down?"

"Oh, Twilight's been standing behind us taking notes this whole time," said Applejack.

Discord looked over his shoulder. Twilight was standing inside the library, writing on an immensely long roll of parchment. "So she has! Well, get that to Celestia. I'm sure she'll be glad to finally have all the pieces put together."

Applejack considered for a moment, then brightened and leaned her head against his body. "Hey… why don't you tell Celestia everything you told me?"

"Oh, she doesn't want to hear it from me," he said hastily. "I've been withholding it from her for so long… telling her now would just piss her off. Which I'd normally be into, but… I don't know, I'm not in the mood. It'll be better coming from you ponies."

"Aw, buddy, I don't think that's true," said Applejack. "But if that's really what you want, all right. Take care of yourself, Dis."

"I'll do my best," he replied. He realized that he still had his takeout container on his lap, and returned to eating it.

Applejack went back into the library, where Twilight was putting the finishing touches on the notes she had been taking. "Ya get all that?" she asked.

"I think so," said Twilight, rolling up the huge parchment. "You know, just for the record, I think it's really cute that you still call him 'Dis'."

"Heh, yeah," Applejack said, blushing. "You know, at first I did it just to bother him, but then when it seemed not to bother him, I kept on doin' it anyway just 'cause it was easier, and then… well, then I started actually becomin' fond of him. So, yeah, I guess that's just what I call him now."

"Well, it's good," Twilight said. "It's the little gestures like that, far more than any genuine attempt on our part to convert him, that'll get him over to the side of the angels."

"And you really think that's possible?" Applejack whispered.

"After all the time I've spent with him, seeing what he's learned and how he's changed, absolutely," Twilight said with conviction. "I believe that Discord can turn good, if he hasn't already."

Discord heard that from where he sat on the balcony, and considered it as he chewed on his dumplings. He seemed intrigued, then as he thought about it more, he started to look horrified. After a few seconds, he shrugged it off and kept eating.