".... actually, to be spezzific, it vould seem dat der Drakonekvus---"

BOUNCE

"... haff altered both ze ratio uff action to reaction, as vell as ze Coefficient uff Restitution...."

CAROM

"...to randomly alternate to any fraction betveen vun--"

POING

"...und zero...."

SPLAT

"The what??" Rainbow Dash said, dodging a careening desk. She, like the rest of the pegasi, thestrals and flutter ponies, had gone airborne once everything had started bouncing off everything else. Those few unicorns capable of it were levitating as well, trying not to touch anything. Everyone else was more or less at the mercy of unhinged physics. I had managed to grab a pillar and hold on. Twilight was hovering overhead in a purple bubble.

"He means the bounciness of things," Twilight told her pegasus friend. "Like,  a One will bounce like a rubber ball on a kitchen floor. And a Zero will go splat, like a, well, like a pancake." She drifted to the right as several loose objects caromed her way. "The Draconequus is changing that randomly from one, to zero, and everything in between."

"There's nothing between one and zero," Rainbow Dash complained.

"Yes there is! Fractions or decimal places---"

"Y'know ah don't mean to interrupt all your fancy mathematicals," Applejack said from her hiding place under an overturned desk, "but d'you think y'all could concentrate on how to FIX THIS??"

"Call it a hunch," I said from my hypothetically safe position as a fixture on a pillar, "But we need to get everything to stop bouncing..."

At this point the bouncing effect had spread out to the entire castle, and was already affecting the nearby streets of Canterlot. Ponies and their possessions and property were bouncing hither, thither and yon. Least ways we could hear the mayhem through the open windows. There was a great deal of panic in the uproar, not to mention the sounds of quite a lot of breakage.

As I was frantically rifling through my addled mind for ideas on how to stop an entire city of ricocheting objects, I heard a feminine screech and was struck amidships. I folded around my hurtling attacker with a 'WHOUF!', bringing them to an effective, if inelegant, halt. Purple hooves clutched at me and dark purple eyes looked up into mine. "Bonjour," Violette said weakly.

"We must stop meeting like this," was all I could think to say. I wrapped one arm around her barrel and held on.

Well I couldn't exactly just set her down-- the poor mare would have gone careening off again.

"Hey, Hot to Trot, no time for love! We need a solution to this, quick!" Rainbow Dash was being her usual charming self.

I swear, that mare has a natural gift for pushing the worst possible buttons at the worst possible moment. I flushed and snapped back, "What are you all looking at me for? I'm just a de-facto diplomat! I don't have any magic powers, or wings or--" here I ducked a flock of chalkboard erasers-- "anything like that ! Why do you expect me to solve this? Get out your darned elements and zap things back to normal yourselves!"

I was in a bit of a mood.

"Gee, somebody is a grumpy pants," Pinkie Pie said to me.

"Well I--" I did a double take. The party pony, contrary to all possible logic, or perhaps in accordance with her own, was the only thing in the room currently not bouncing. She was standing there, all four hooves firmly planted on the floor, grinning.

I thought for a moment. "Pinky... you glued your hooves to the floor, didn't you."

"Um, yuppers." Her smile faded a bit.

"....And now you can't move, can you," I concluded.

The pink pony hung her head. "....Yeah," she confessed dolefully. "I knew I shoulda used my suction cup shoes..."

"That's it!" Twilight exclaimed suddenly. "Pinkie! Do you have any of those shoes with you??"

 

---

 

Several minutes of physics-bending morphic resonance field manipulating moments (1) later, the lot of us had donned pairs of magically-replicated suction cup shoes and were 'ka-plock'ing our way down the castle halls. Even Dash had opted to wear the things, as going airborne was proving little protection from being pinballed about by flying objects, as even something as light as a ping pong ball could unexpectedly send you off on a new kinetic vector in a most non-Newtonian fashion.

The girls were wearing odd bits of armor procured from the various display cases lining the halls (and one or two chivalrous young guards) to protect them from random ricocheting debris; I myself had replaced my hat with a steel cooking pot and managed to acquire a minotaur war shield from a wall display, and was more or less successfully blocking any incoming projectiles. Why wasn't I still being battered about by the force of objects striking my shield? Who knew? The rules of physics and even common sense were quite out the window at this point.

Why was I going along? Damned if I know. I certainly didn't know what I expected to contribute, but the thought of leaving six girls and an aging professor to face a Draconequus alone made me want to crawl under a rock. We had a few hangers-on in our little group; Snails was tagging along with the professor, and Violette refused to leave my side. Celestia and Luna were not with us this time; they had both taken to the air, overflying the city and magically gluing down anything and anypony they could; once again anything with a pair of wings or a horn had been called away to help with a crisis in a similar fashion, so our security detail was thinned.

Jonquil, being too small to lend much muscle to the larger effort, was with us... she was clinging to my shoulder and was busy using her magic to help fend off various hurtling objects. Twilight had erected a screen of her own, but the randomness of the kinetic forces involved was making it hard for her to shield effectively--- half the objects that hurtled at us were punching right through.

There were a few guards on hoof with us, but they were looking like they were well out of their element and knew it.

Coincidentally, I have to stop and mention that the sight of the ponies ka-plocking along in their suction cup shoes was dorkishly adorable. Ever seen a dog or cat trying to walk in booties? Exact same high-stepping, leg flailing walk. If the situation hadn't been so serious I probably would have collapsed in a giggling fit.(2)

"So where are we heading?" I asked. Rules of engagement, don't you know. Someone has to ask the obvious question.

The professor held up what appeared to be a pair of punch bowls, mouths taped together to form a hollow ball, with a glowing ping pong ball clattering about inside. A carpenter's level was taped across the top, and a regular grid of numbers was written down the sides of the globe. "Mit zis, I am able to determine ze direction und distance uf the epicenter uv ze dishturrrbance."

I cocked an eyebrow. The professor needed no further prodding. "Inside is un ping pong ball mit a perpetual bounce spell, provided by ze gracious Miss Tvilight," he explained. "As it is supposed to only bounce oop und down at a regular pace, ve can use it measure ze strength uff der Discordance. Ze closer ve get to ze eye uff ze shtorm, as it vere, ze vorse ze erratic behavior uv ze ball becomes." He was right. Despite the makeshift globe being held level as possible, the ping pong ball inside was bopping around quite erratically indeed.

"So how close is it?" Applejack said.

Cosmic Constant scrutinized his cobbled-together detector, squinting at the numbers. He then kerplocked his way to a set of wide double doors. "Iff mein calculationz are correct--- und dey alvays is--- it is right on der udder side of dese doors," he said in a low voice.

 

"Okay girls, get ready." A thrill of tension seemed to pass through our little group. The Mane Six clustered together, Elements donned, and faced the door. The earth ponies took fighting stances.  Every unicorn in our little group lowered their horns and prepared themselves.  I gripped my cane and the french filly under my arm tightly (she squeaked in protest but made no other sound.

At a curt signal, the doors were magically flung open. They slammed open with a bang, revealing...

A ballroom.

Well, in all fairness, it could have been a chapel, or a chamber, or a banquet hall; just a wide open room with a gleaming marble floor and a vaulting glass ceiling. But I felt at the time that the best term for this capacious chamber would be "ballroom."  Seeing as, at the moment, it was full of balls.

Well, not precisely full of balls. Maybe a half dozen, all bright blue and about the size of a basketball. All seemed to have writing of some sort or the other on the side--letters, numbers, strange greek symbols--- painted in yellow. One got the impression of there being many more due to the fact that they were bouncing back and forth through the room, off the walls, floor, ceiling, and off the single tenant of the room, who was seated in the middle of the floor, clapping his hands with glee and occasionally catching and tossing one of the bouncing orbs in a random direction.

It was the Draconequus. It had to be. I'd hate to think there was another species out there in the cosmos of such discombobulating attributes.

This one looked nothing like either Discord or Ataxia. Where those two had certain attributes in common (two arms, two legs, two wings, vaguely sinuous) , this creature was of a radically different form. Twilight would reflect later that it shouldn't have surprised us that Chaos entities would be radically different in form from one another.

To begin describing it I would have to say he mostly resembled one of those plush caterpillars you see at certain toy stores. Rather than being bilaterally asymmetrical, one might say he was randomized sequentially. His head most resembled a crocodile, save for the bulging, frog-like eyes, and the manic grin. The next segment of his body seemed to be the forelimbs and torso of a raccoon, complete with little black handlike paws. The one after that was of some sort of bear; the one after that was feathered and had the claws of a raptor... and thus down the length of his body, each segment bearing the markings, hide, and limbs (and occasionally wings) of a different animal, tapering down to his bobbled tail-- which seemed to be made up of a daisy-chain of parasprites.

Twilight seemed a bit flummoxed by the creature's unexpected appearance, but she rallied quickly enough. She stepped forward, hooves akimbo. "Draconequus Mayhem?"(3)

The Draconequus paused in toying with one of the balls in its paws and looked up at her, grinning.

Twilight continued.  "Good evening! As a duly designated representative of the land, principality and kingdom of Equestria, I order you cease any and all supernatural activity and return forthwith to your place of origin or to the nearest convenient parallel dimension!"

We all stared at her. "That oughta do it, thanks very much, Twi," Applejack drawled.

The mismatch creature leaned forward, like a stack of beanbag chairs starting to topple forward. It goggled at us with its bulging, wide set eyes, its crocodile snout spreading in a manic rubbery grin.

Oh please don't say it, I thought.

It giggled; a loud, echoing, high-pitched giggle. "Are you a god?"

I didn't wait for Twilight's reply. I plucked Violette up, made my hasty, sucker-footed way to a corner of the room where three massive pillars provided a sheltered corner and plopped her down on the floor behind them, her suction cupped hooves sticking her firmly to the floor.(4) I stuck my head back around the pillar in time to catch Twilight's response.

"Of course not!"

Here we go...

Mayhem began giggling. "Bouncy Bouncy! Bouncy Bouncy Bouncy!"

Well, at least that was original. It was certainly off script.

All the balls in the room stopped bouncing, freezing in midair. For the first time I got a good look at the symbols and letters on the sides.

The moment I saw the little triangle and V symbol, it clicked. Just as Ataxia's little gravity prank had been tied to the Canterlot snow globe, Mayhem's chaos effect had a totem as well. Those balls symbolized the six variables for --- what was the field called? Blast. Kinematics, that was it!--- a kinematic equation. Position, displacement, velocity, acceleration, two others I couldn't remember--- mass and delta V? Blast, once again my Cliff's Notes brain betrayed me... whatever, it came down to the fact that as the balls bounced and collided with each other, each collision somehow changed the relationship between those variables, altering, among other things, the Coefficient of Restitution in the world around us. Which in turn altered how the balls reacted with each other, in an inception-esque maze of complexity that would probably make smoke roll out of the ears of anyone but a mathematical genius.

TL;DR, if we wanted to stop this Event we had to capture those balls.

It wouldn't be till much later that I thought this out in full. At the time I was running on raw subconscious instinct, out of which only a few sparse words bubbled up as conscious thought:

The balls.

Collision equations.

Oh crap.

Twilight had apparently seen the symbols, and snapped to the conclusion my sluggish brain was just starting to gel into a thought. She went rigid for a split second, then barked, "Girls! GET THOSE BALLS!"

Before anyone could move, with a loud, cartoonish kerboing, his segmented body flew apart at the seams. Each segment of his body hurtled, pell mell, around the room, snatching up one of the Equation Balls in its paws/claws/flippers, before crashing out through the skylight.(5) Even his parasprite-chain tail wrapped around one of them and flew off. The last to go was the crocodilian head, the delta-v ball clutched in its rubbery jaws.(6)

Twilight wasn't so easily deterred. "AFTER HIM!" she shouted. Twilight's horn flared, and she disappeared with a flash... only to reappear a few seconds later in another. "What are you waiting for!" she shouted at the others.

"We'd like to, Twi, but how?" Applejack said. "We cain't all exactly fly OR teleport, here."

Twilight flushed. "Oh, um, right. Hold on--" She tensed up, her horn flaring. She and her friends were surrounded with a whirlwind of blue-white light. There was a flash so bright it almost had a sound, and they reappeared, each sporting a pair of graceful translucent wings.

"Oh boy!" Pinkie Pie squealed, doing a quick loop the loop.

"My word, Twilight, how did you do that?" Rarity gasped. "The last time you did something like this, just giving ONE of us wings nearly knocked you out!" The wings were also a touch different this time as well, I noted. Rather than gossamer butterfly wings, they were more akin to the pinions of a pegasus--- albeit a translucent, ghostly pastel pegasus.

"I've been practicing," Twilight said, a little smugly. She adjusted her tiara(7) and took to the air. "Come on, we've got no time to lose!" The six of them took to the air and flew out the skylight, scattering in pursuit of the discombobulated draconequus.

My own thoughts pinwheeled for a second in frantic energy. What to do? What to do? I suddenly became aware of a weight clinging to the back of my head. Jonquil had clung to her post-- my shoulders-- throughout the whole event. Even now I was surrounded by a faint glister that I recognized as her protective aura.(8) I plucked her off my back and looked at her. "Jonquil,  get word to the princesses, the Captain of the Guard, the head butler, any pony you can find who's in charge, I don't care-- let them know that they need to drop whatever they're doing and go after those balls."

"But what about you--" she asked.

"Do I look like I'm built for speed?" I asked. "This can't wait for me to waddle my way across the castle. It doesn't look like I'm in any danger her anyway, go on, GO!" I all but threw her into the air. She didn't give me any more argument; she zipped out the door in a streak of sparkles.

There was a faint "ach du lieber" from the Professor. I looked over at him; he and the two earth ponies were looking a bit shellshocked from their first meeting with an avatar of Chaos.

"What now, Professor?" I said, as much to prod him out of his shock as anything.

He seemed to shake himself out of his stupor and glanced out the door into the hall. Without warning he leapt forward. "Ach!" he shouted. "Schnell, Shnails, der doors!" Snails and the guards leapt forward and helped him slam the doors shut and bar them. And none too soon; just as the crossbar thunked home(9) something large and weighty banged against the oak doors, making them shudder in their frame. There was a series of thuds and crashes as whatever it was ricocheted its way back up the hallway.

"Now, mein freund Arcturus," Cosmic Constant said, making a cursory effort to smooth his frizzed hair, "Ve shtay in here. Dere ist nuffink for to be bounching about in here, so ve are relatively safe. Der effect seems to be growing at un exponential rate, und our little group is of no use out there." There was a muffled crash and what sounded like a Wilhelm scream. The Professor winced. "All ve can do for now is vait."

I settled to the floor-- carefully; nobody needed nearly four hundred pounds of fat man careening around the room like a demented superball-- and threw my arm over Violette's withers. She rested her head against my shoulder.     

"J'ai peur, Monsieur singe," she said. "Mais au moins vous êtes ici."

I murmured something noncommittal and patted her on the shoulder. The rest of this confrontation with the Draconnequi, it seemed, would be played out by others.

 

Author's Note:

1)And one jar of glue solvent

2) I saved that for later, when reviewing the footage I covertly took with my SmartPhone.

Yes, I had a SmartPhone.... salvaged from the worldgate detritus and painstakingly fitted with a magic recharger. I was at pains to keep it out of Rainbow Dash's hooves... especially as she had threatened to smash it underhoof if I ever showed the footage of her walking around with those sucker shoes.

3)His name was easy to guess. It was spelled out in bright red letters that ran down the length of his body.

4)Don't ask me how I ended up carrying her, even though she was as shoed as the rest of us. She... got somewhat clingy when a bouncing chair narrowly missed her head.

5)Each segment made a point of smashing through a different pane of the ornate skylight.

6)What I had mistaken for ears were, in fact, bat wings.

7)The Bearers had been wearing their elements nonstop since our little tete-a-tete with the late Discord. Nopony was willing to get caught empty-hooved.

8)She'd never take on an assailant hoof to hoof, but she made a dandy fine personal forcefield generator.

9)Luna had a very old-fashioned outlook on home security.