A short ways away, the thug leaned against a wall and paused, making sure he wasn’t followed. Taking a few deep breaths, he snapped his fingers and disappeared in a flash. In his place, the spirit of chaos and disharmony uncoiled his body, stretching until a few of the hundreds of vertebrae in his snake-like body cracked. “Oy,” he moaned, scratching at the fur on the back of his neck. “Humans would be easier to walk around in if they weren’t so damned tiny!”

“You get used to it,” a voice announced from above. Discord grimaced and allowed a low growl to rumble through the back of his throat, but made sure to maintain his usual easygoing look as a blonde man in a tuxedo stepped from the shadows.

“Mr. Dietrich!” Discord said with an embellished bow. “The lord of treachery! To what does this humble servant owe this extraordinary pleasure?”

“I take it you are less zan thrilled with our current arrangement?”

“That’s one way of putting it,” the draconequus replied, again suppressing an angry growl. “As much as I enjoy playing matchmaker where there’s plenty of opportunity for chaos to result, I’m not so happy when I am doing so under blackmail.”

Dietrich nodded, a little smile playing at his lips. “Tree months, six, and excellent.”

“What?”

“You vere wondering how long it was going to take those two to finally consummate their relationship, as vell as how many times they would do it that night alone, and how good it would be,” he pointed back down the alleyway at the lame pilot and the vegetarian walking hand in hand together. Then he held up three fingers, then six, and mouthed “excellent,” exaggerating every syllable.

“For heaven’s sake…” Discord sighed. “You really have a one-track mind, you know that krauty?”

“So I’m told.”

“So, this means you’ll hold up your end of the bargain?”

The blonde nodded. “Aye. Neizer me nor my siblings will breathe a single word about your continued existence to the Princess.”

“Wonderful,” Discord straightened out and cracked his neck, taking a seat on the thin air in the middle of the alleyway. “That’s just perfect.”

“So, you can very well be on your vay.”

“Oh, I intend to be. Just as soon as my magic has fully recovered from being stuck in that dreadfully mundane form, I’ll snap my talons and you’ll never see my scaly arse again.”

“Sounds almost too good to be true,” the man in the tux replied with a joking smile, pulling a stacking crate out from behind a dumpster and taking a seat across from the spirit (much to Discord’s annoyance). “Now, how long will that take?”

Discord huffed and lifted up his non-existent seat, turning it so he was facing away from the man in the tux. Still, he guessed there wasn’t any point in lying. “Two or three hours,” he mumbled quickly, as if that would throw the man off.

The man in the tux arched an eyebrow. “A simple transformation spell sucked up that much of your magic? I should think a being with power such as yours vould have no problem teleporting out of here after something this easy.”

“Oi! It’s not that simple, alright!?” Discord pouted. “Usually, you’d be right, but this boring little world has almost no magic to speak of, and maintaining a disguise so radically different from my natural, beautiful form is a slow drain on my already strained resources! I have to leech off whatever magic is trickling through the nether for even the tiniest spell!”

“As I guessed,” the man grinned, leaning his head on one hand and propping his elbow up on his knee. “I could fix that, you know: drop you right off into one of a multitude of magically-enriched worlds where you can be on your merry vay within a few minutes.”

Discord glared back at Dietrich, but sighed resignedly. He had the kind of ego that caused people to go on one-man crusades to get statues built in their own honor, but it still wasn’t so massive that he wanted to delay his return to power. “Eh, alroight, if it isn’t a bother,” he shrugged. “I guess I could hitch a ride with you. Y’know, if you’re heading in that direction anyway.”

“But of course,” Dietrich replied with a snarky little grin. “I just have one little question before we leave, however.”

“Hmm?”

“Why don’t you vant the Princess to know you’re alive if you care about her so much? Ah!” He held up his finger just as Discord jolted up from his seat, mouth gaping. “Don’t lie and say zat you don’t care about her. If you really didn’t, you wouldn’t have done all zis to keep her in the dark. So tell me: why are you so eager to run from the one you care about?”

Discord opened his mouth, and then closed it again, grimacing as he considered his words carefully. Finally, he snapped his fingers. His eagle’s talon flopped onto the ground and wheeled around, pointing back at him. “Dietrich, who am I?”

The demigod blinked. “Discord, spirit of chaos and disharmony.”

“Bingo,” another snap of his fingers, and the claw hopped into the air, tracing a figure with a shimmering sparkle of magic: two wings, an equine body, an ornate necklace with boots for jewelry, and an ever-flowing, ethereal mane. “Now, who is this?”

“Princess Celestia,” Dietrich said with a little smile. “The Solar Princess and ze goddess of harmony for Equestria.”

“Exactly,” he snapped his fingers again, and the eagle’s talon leapt back into place on his body as his paw dashed away the shimmering caricature. “The goddess of HARMONY.”

“Your point?”

“The goddess of harmony,” he pointed to himself again. “And the spirit of chaos. You don’t see any problems with that pairing? Barring the severe unlikelihood of such a relationship working, barring the serious differences we would need to overcome, barring the fact that half the population of the nation she rules thinks I’m some sort of monster…”

He gazed up at the man, his eyes glistening in the dim light. “Could you imagine what could happen? I mean, the Princess of Harmony trying to rule a nation from the spirit of chaos’s arm? It could be destruction! Wanton bloodshed! The kingdom could fall into civil war! It would be…it would be…”

“Chaos?” Dietrich asked, a smart little smile on his lips.

Snarling, the spirit uncoiled his body and sprang at the man in the tuxedo, pausing just short of smashing into him face-to-face. “Don’t get smart with me, boy. I am ancient compared to you: I have watched universes rise and fall in the passage of my lifetime. This isn’t the proper kind of chaos I’m talking about. This is bloodshed and war. This is the kind of chaos your ever-so-wonderful little humans are used to. This is just wasteful destruction, without so much as a chocolate milk cloud in sight.”

The man in the tuxedo regarded the draconequus. Then he smiled. Then he grinned. Then he snickered. Then his hand went to his mouth to cover it as he laughed, long and loud, his feet stomping enthusiastically. Discord sneered. “What is so funny, boy?”

“It’s just…ze god of chaos and disharmony, afraid of the chaos that might result from ze unknown!” Dietrich threw back his head and let his laughter bounce along the alleyways and echo into the night sky. “That’s incredible! It’s priceless in its stupidity!”

“You dare…”

“I was ready to follow through on my vord,” Dietrich bolted to his feet, knocking the crate over as he advanced on Discord. “I vas going to simply drop you off in some magical world and let you run amok to your little heart’s content, but you know vat?”

Discord shifted uncomfortably in his nonexistent seat. Something about the manic look in the man’s eye unnerved him. “No, what?”

“That ‘boy’ comment really pissed me off. So now, instead of sending you to where you vant to go,” suddenly, the man’s hands lashed out and wrapped around Discord’s head, latching onto him faster than a pair of cobras.

“WHAT THE FUCK ARE YOU DOING!?” Discord screamed, struggling in the man’s ironclad grip.

“I’m sending you where you NEED to go!” Dietrich laughed, his eyes widening with a maniac’s glee as a portal hummed into existence right around the draconequus, sucking him in.

“WHAT IN THE HELL ARE YOU…” Discord didn’t even get to finish his sentence before his ears popped and he rushed out of existence, thrust tumbling head over heels into the nether, totally blind and helpless against the currents dragging him along. Before he could even orient himself and begin to figure out what was happening, he came screeching to a halt, landing flat on his face on a marble floor.

“Oww,” he groaned, wincing as he touched a new lump on his head. He sighed as he tried to peer into the darkness around him. “What have you gone and done to me now, you crazy kraut?”

Hopping back to his feet, he pushed himself into the air to simply hover away, only to land flat on his face once again. “What the…” he groaned in frustration. What had happened to his magic!? Hovering was the simplest thing he could do, hardly requiring any exertion at all! The only thing that could explain this would be if something had totally drained every shred of magic in his body.

Eyes widening, he snapped his fingers, hoping to summon a small chocolate milk cloud. Nothing happened. “Oh, that cheeky bastard! He’s drained my magic!” He gasped. Holy crap, this was bad! Even with the tidal wave of magic he felt flowing through this new world, it’d be hours before he could ever summon the magic needed to teleport again, and a good while before he’d be able to use defensive magic again! Until then, he was practically defenseless! Not good, most definitely not good!

“So, where’d you send me, you son of a whore?” He mumbled angrily, feeling along the walls of this place (a prison cell? He certainly hoped not) for any sort of exit. “Draining my magic and dropping me off like a helpless babe…what kind of sick shit is this!? So Swarm, did you send me to that planet with the flesh-eating caterpillars? Or how about that Red Chinese Earth where they killed off every species that wasn’t human? Ooh! No, wait! Y’know what would be really creative: the planet with nothing but those godawful, annoying Bushwoolie things that just agree with everything you say, you sick bastard! And me without my magic to even light them on fire!”

Finally, his claws closed around a doorknob. “Not a prison cell, thankfully,” he sighed with relief as he eased the door open. The tiny bit of light peeking in revealed his prison to actually be a moderately-sized broom closet, probably unused by how empty it was. Sneaking as quietly as his snake-like body allowed, the spirit slunk out into a large, vaulted hallway. He grimaced as the midday sun met his eyes, and shielded himself until his vision could adjust. He was peering at a set of stained glass windows, set up all along the far wall and framed by massive archways. Now, if his eyes would adjust so he could make out the pictures being depicted in these windows, he might be able to get his bearings and figure out where in the metaverse he was. Squinting, he pieced together something of a picture through the haze in his eyes, and his jaw dropped: a certain white Alicorn surrounded by six magical jewels, her ethereal mane billowing as she stood victorious over an exiled Nightmare Moon.

“Oh no,” he whimpered, rocketing down the hallway in a panic. Flesh-eating caterpillars be damned, he could only wish to have been sent there! Or the planet of the Bushwoolies! Hell, even the world of the Justin Bieber impersonators would be better than this! Anything would be better than Canterlot Castle itself!

“No, no, no, it’s all wrong!” He screamed, flying down the hallway in a panic. “Swarm! You blew our deal, you bastard!” But even now, he could already tell how the man in the tuxedo would reply in that arrogant, bastardized German accent: “What? The deal vas that we would not tell the Princess about your continued existence, it said nozing about SHOWING her!”

“I know that, you tricky motherfucker!” He screamed, darting down a fork in the hallway and slamming himself against yet another door. He wrapped his fingers around the doorknob, rattling it with all his might, but it stubbornly remained sealed. “No, no, no! This isn’t supposed to happen! This can’t…”

“Discord?” An angelic voice asked from the opposite end of the hall. His eyes widened. He must have shot right past another door in his mad dash to escape! How could he have been so stupid!? Sighing, he let his arms drop to his sides in defeat, the door remaining shut before him. He turned to the source of the voice, though he knew who it was the moment she spoke. After all, he’d spent over a millennium listening to its oddly harmonic melody during his time as a piece of statuary.

“Hello, Celestia,” he replied, a sheepish smile crossing his face.