I wake up with a stinging sensation across my face and I jump up ready to fight whatever hit me... and stumble over onto my face. Why can’t my legs wake up as fast as I do? “Mmm, wha’ happened?”

“Anthony! Where have you been!?”

“Here. Asleep. Tired.” I grab the nearest softest object and lean my head on it as a pillow. Twilight seems to have some form of problem with her back being said soft object. “Shhhh... pillows don’t talk...”

“Anthony! Get off of me this is a public area stop stop stop!”

“Meh.” She’s fuzzy, and I’m tired. Seems like a great match to me. I try to go back to sleep but I’m pushed to the ground and have my nose hit a rock with a SPACK “Uuuuuuuugh, ‘n I’m up, I’m up, where’s the fire?”

“Anthony, where were you last night? You didn’t come back to the library, and I started having a panic attack, and I’m really glad Spike told me to check around town before sending in a report to Celestia that you’d been foalnapped, and-”

“First off, calm your damn tits, it’s too early for this.”

“It’s one in the afternoon.”

“As I was saying. Do you really think anyone could keep me contained for long once I’d woken up? Who could kidnap me, really?”

“There is such a thing as blunt-force-trauma-to-the-head and sleep spells.”

“Whatever, I’m here, I’m fine, and you know it. I was here all night long after I went to talk with the Apples... man those guys can cook a helluva meal...”

“And you couldn’t have told me? Gah, fine, but don’t do that again! I was worried alright?”

“Yeah, that’s kind of obvious. You sound like my mom or something. Anyway, now that the most exciting part of your day is over, what’s going on, you need me for something?”

“No, I was just worried because you disappeared without warning. If you’re sure you’re alright...”

I roll my eyes. “Well unless I got a stain on my pants from sleeping on the grass, I am wholly unchanged.”

“Alright, alright.” Twilight takes a few deep breaths. “Well, I guess I’ll go tell Spike he was right, and you’re fine. You have a nice day, then.” She turns to leave.

“Wait a sec. Where’s Clark? I wanna talk to him about the trial too.”

“Oh, he’s stopped sleeping at the library. He mentioned insomnia, and that he planned to move in with Fluttershy. He said he was tired of sleeping under the couch in the side room.”

“Eh, alright. I’ll...” I turn to head for Fluttershy’s cottage but I spot the schoolhouse and get an idea. “Hey, if you see Discord around, tell him to meet me here, alright? I have something he might want to hear.”

“Uhm... I’ll, er, be sure to mention it.” She doesn’t look like she means it. Jeez, she’s almost got as bad a poker face as Applejack.

“Thanks. This might be a very... educational day for him.” Assuming she does send Discord over.

I walk to the schoolhouse and I see Cheerilee at her desk looking through some papers. She looks up at my entrance. “Ah, hello Anthony. Did you sleep well?” She chuckles, obviously having seen me outside. “I was under the impression that you slept elsewhere. You haven’t been out on the playground in quite a while now.”

“Eh, old habits... and it was the best available place at the time. Anyway, I recall you offering me a chance to speak to the class on a subject of my choice. If it’s at all possible, I’d like to make that today. I have a very interesting lesson planned. You might like to hear it as well.”

Cheerilee looks over her schedules and shifts some papers around. “Well... I could make it today, and you could talk as long as you like, but it’d have to be the first thing on the agenda for today, I only have space there if I shuffle a few things around. Is that alright?”

“That’s perfect. I’ll be back when the kids start showing up.”

“Glad we got something settled. And what will your speech be about?”

I give her a grin. “It’s a surprise.”

The teacher gets a rather confused look on her face, but doesn’t stop me. Looks like the plan is still on. Time to unravel some misconceptions.

When the kids show up, the special lesson is announced, though the subject matter is still a mystery. I walk in and sit down on a chair I pull up to the chalkboard. The children seem very interested in what I’m going to teach them. I hear a few kids murmur about me telling them how to slay monsters and be a hero. But I don’t say anything. Finally, a hoof is raised.

“Uh... so what are you gonna teach us about?”

I stand up and smile wider. Grabbing a piece of chalk, I write on the board in wavy, crooked letters of varying sizes, writing a just barely legible ‘CHAOS’ on the board. “I am here to talk about this. Chaos.”

Again, the talking. Cheerilee looks about to call for them to pay attention, but I give a subtle shake of my head. She catches it and lets the kids continue. Finally one question is said loud enough to be directed at me. “So... what is chaos?”

“Chaos is a wonderful, wonderful thing. Chaos is not what you hear people tell you it is. Chaos is not evil. Far from it really, chaos can be a very powerful force for good.”

“But... how?”

“The answer to that... varies. Chaos is about randomness, spontaneity, the unusual and the strange. The mistakes, the accidents, the differences. It’s all chaos. Chaos is constantly happening, and it is everywhere.”

The children look around the room. “Where?”

I point to the child who spoke, a little cobalt-blue pegasus filly a bit bigger than Scootaloo. “Why are you blue?”

“Huh?”

“Why is your coat blue? Why isn’t anyone else blue? Why isn’t everyone a pegasus?”

“Uh... ‘cause... we...”

The kid trails off and another student chances an answer. “We were born that way?”

“Well yeah, but what makes you different from everyone else? Why don’t you all look, act, speak, and talk the same? Chaos! Chaos is why you are individuals. Chaos is the nature of things being different than usual. It could be as complex as, I don’t know... clouds raining candy... but it can range to you seeing something on your way to school you don’t usually see. Chaos is the spice of life. It makes things new and interesting.”

“But... I like things being safe...” Ah, the response of a misguided child. I am here to fix that.

“I’m sure you do. But if every day was exactly the same, you never met anyone new, never said or heard anything new, never learned anything new, and everything everyone did was exactly the same forever-”

“I’d be bored out my mind!” Yells Scootaloo, who seems to be on my wavelength.

“Exactly! Chaos isn’t just big things, it’s little things. It’s the core of life, it’s why mistakes happen, and new things are invented because someone had a new idea, one that was different, a chaotic idea. Where would we be without books, or balls, or things with wheels? Who decided to make a clock? Looking at the sky and assigning numbers to various phases of light?”

The kids respond with more murmuring, things along the lines of “Sounds crazy like that.” and such.

“Chaos is, at its most basic core, variety and change. If it weren’t for chaos, there would be no color or even light, because they come in shades and forms different from another, they are chaotic. A mess on the floor could be chaotic, sure, but if the mess was intentional then it isn’t chaos, because it was fully planned. Some call this ‘organized chaos’ but that is not what the term means.”

“So what does it mean?”

“I’m not really sure, but if it’s fully intentional for something to be a certain way and it does end up that way, it’s order, not chaos.”

“My head hurts...” Some of the other kids agree with this.

“Well I think he’s on a roll!” Discord pops out of thin air to congratulate me.

“Thank you Discord, I was hoping I was doing your position justice, I-”

A kid speaks up. “No, you’re on a roll... like for real.”

I look down and see that my chair has been turned into a lightly buttered biscuit of sorts. “It seems I am. How different. How chaotic. What would be even more chaotic is if this didn’t taste like a roll, but something else. Or would it? See, chaos is complex. If I expect this to not taste like a roll, and it doesn’t... it could be considered chaos, just expected chaos. You can, in fact, plan on chaos. You just can’t force it unless you are being chaotic.”

“How do you do that?” Surprisingly, it’s Discord who asks this.

“Well... any number of ways. It could be you walk home a different way than normal, or you jump on top of a park bench and start doing a trick or something. You did something out of the ordinary, and therefore created chaos. In a minor amount of course. Large amounts of chaos would be things like... well a chair suddenly turning into a bread product. Something immediately changes from one thing into another when it is not supposed to naturally. Like turning an apple into an orange or a pear. Sure it seems minor, it’s just an apple, but the fact that you altered it in such a way so that it barely resembles what it was supposed to be, is quite a lot of chaos.”

A filly jumps on top of her desk and shouts “This is chaos!!”

After recovering from the sudden outburst, I reply. “Yes, yes it is. Just remember, without chaos, nobody would be special, and there would be nothing new to say, think, or discover. Life itself is impossible without chaos. If everything was the same, there wouldn’t be other animals like rabbits or snakes or birds, everything and everyone would look and be exactly the same.”

“But... what would we look like?”

“Who knows, but whatever it is isn’t nearly as good as what we have, thanks to chaos.” Discord is practically preening himself at this point.  “So Discord, what’s it like being able to focus chaos?”

“Focus it? I control chaos!”

“Actually, you don’t.”

This gets everyone surprised, but mostly him. “What?”

“If you had total control of chaos and could dictate what it did and when it happened, and there couldn’t be chaos without you, then why are all these various children, products of chaos, here when it’s obvious they were born while you were still imprisoned? Chaos is a force of nature that can be directed but not controlled. If it could be controlled completely, then there would be nothing chaotic about it. And Discord, you are very special in that you can create chaos on a level nobody else can, and that can really break routine. Chaos is a force for good, and is only bad when it is misused, and in that case, it is not the fault of chaos itself, but the person who caused it. Blaming chaos for someone setting fire to a tree would be like blaming gravity for your cup falling to the ground after someone pushed it off a table. Chaos is important, and calling it bad or evil is the opinion of one who does not understand what chaos really is: The spice of life, and so the reason life is worth living!”

My long-winded speech done, I take the time to catch my breath and let the kids talk amongst themselves about how I pretty much contradicted and out-logic'd every bit of propaganda they’d ever heard about chaos... in half an hour. It feels good.

“Anyway, I’ll let Miss Cheerilee get back to her lesson plan. Hey Discord, wanna turn a lake into banana pudding?”

“...Why?” First time I’ve heard that from him. Guess my speech had an impact on him too.

“Why not?”

“Good point, let’s go!”

“Discord, never change.”

“Why would I ever want to change? I-” When he sees my knowing smile, he stops for a moment. “Hmmm... anyway let’s go make some chocolate pudding!”

“I thought I suggested banana?”

“Chaos isn’t about what you want, Anthony.”

“Exactly. Seeya kids!” The class bids me and Discord goodbye, and Cheerilee thanks me for coming in. I just wish I was able to give that speech in front of a few others. Oh well, teaching children the real facts of life is important. Today is going pretty good. Next Chapter: Chapter 170 Estimated time remaining: 8 Hours, 33 Minutes