The ponies all stared, wide-eyed and gape-mouthed as the spirt of chaos slithered into the middle of the dungeon, trailing confetti and streamers. “Never fear, ladies, Discord is here!” He sang, spreading his arms out as a cheeky grin sprouted on his face.

He bucked his head back, awaiting applause or gasps of relief. And waiting. And waiting. He perked an eyebrow up, looking around. “I say, I know I’m not exactly Seal Team bloody Six, but I was hoping for a little more enthusiasm here.”

Twilight’s gaze remained locked on him. “It was you…it was you all along…” she shook her head, eyes still wide, still locked on Discord. “I can’t believe it…”

“Really, Twi?” Rainbow snorted. “Because I sure can.”

“N-now girls, let’s not j-jump to any con-conclusions here!” Fluttershy quickly pointed out. “M-maybe Discord has some other explanation for us! I-isn’t that right, Dissy?”

Discord turned on Fluttershy, startled. She knew how he abhorred her little pet name for him, and so she would only pull it out if she was under stress or feeling like getting under his skin. Based on the twitch in the corner of her pasted-on smile and the split ends in her rosette curls, he figured it was the former.

“A-alright…” he said, quickly taking a seat on the cobblestone ground, his arms curling around his knees. “Okay, an explanation for what?”

“Discord,” Twilight said, choosing her words with all the care and thought she could muster. “It’s about the human-emperor of the Changelings, Mr. Jason Wright.”

“Aw, yeah?” He scratched his chin. “Emperor, hmm? Damn, that is interesting, must mean he took on Chrysalis at some point and won…can only guess how he swung that…”

“Discord,” Twilight said, her breath starting to come in labored heaves. “We have been experiencing certain…changes with regards to our thinking about Mr. Wright. Changes that match your influence perfectly.”

“Yeah?” He said passively, rocking back and forth on his tail. “Well, I don’t know how you could be…”

“Discord…” Twilight looked up at him, wings and ears tucked in close, her lower lip quivering. “Discord, did you alter our thoughts and perceptions concerning Mr. Wright five years ago when he first came to Ponyville?”

Discord paused in his rocking. He smiled at Twilight. She only met his gaze, and he finally drank in the pain in those eyes, the bags gathered under them, the agony that could only be suffered from someone that had seen something unutterably horrible. His smile faded. “I say, Twilight, what’s happened? You look like you’ve seen…”

“Just answer the question!” Fluttershy screeched in a high-pitched, startling voice that was nearly beyond the range of normal hearing. Everyone, Discord included, turned to her in surprise. She let out a quick squeak and cowered away from the bars. “Just answer the question, please.”

Discord moaned and looked away, biting his lip like a kid caught with his hand in the cookie jar. Finally, he threw his claws in the air, looking more annoyed than saddened. “Alright, fine! Yeah, I might have monkeyed around a little bit with your heads to get what I wanted, there!”

Seven jaws dropped around the room. The dripping water continued in the background. Discord crossed his arms over himself and shifted uncomfortably, then an awkward grin crossed his face. “Monkeyed around, get it?” He asked with a nervous chortle.

No response, the ponies all looking at him as though something had just crashed every one of their brains.

“Jeez, I know it’s not my best pun, but…” he trailed off, looking at their faces with a blank, confused expression.

Pinkie was the one to finally break the silence. “How could you!?” She screeched, her voice cracking with effort. “How could you do that!? We trusted you!”

“Come now girls, don’t you think you’re overreacting a bit?” Discord said, obviously nonplussed.

“Overreacting!?” Rainbow Dash gasped. “Overreacting!? You used us to torture an innocent creature for three years and you think we’re-“

“Tortured!?” He gasped, still looking around, that confused gaze not changing. “Honestly now, you think a few little jokes amount to torture!?”

“I’ll show you a few jokes you bucking sonofa…”

“QUIET!” Celestia’s Royal Canterlot Voice boomed through the room, shattering a few eardrums as it made its rounds. Surprisingly, everypony obeyed, though likely only because such a massive audio assault had likely blasted any arguments right out of their skulls. The Princess levelled her gaze on each pony/draconequus in turn, her voice at that collected calm she had mastered over the centuries. “While Discord’s actions may seem heinous to us now, he at least has the right to explain himself, as would anypony. Jason extended that right, even if he wasn’t interested in listening, and we will follow that example. It is the very least we can do.”

When silence still reigned, she took that as assent, her raging, vermillion eyes turning on Discord. “Go.”

“Well, thank you princess,” he said indignantly, straightening up to look over the ponies around him. “I’m glad somepony here has the ability to…”

“I. Said. Go.” She hissed, and when Discord turned to her again, he realized her offer to explain himself hadn’t been an offer at all. One look in those raging, burning irises, and he knew it was a command.

“Y-yes, miss,” he stammered, biting his lip as he began his tale.

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It was official: now that he’d experienced both, Discord could firmly say that harmony was irredeemably boring.

Here he was, sitting on a normal, white, fluffy, not-a-bit-of-chocolate-to-it cloud, and what did he have to do? Nothing. An entire afternoon like this, spent up here, just doing nothing. No animated lightposts, no buffalo ballerinas, no checkerboard fields, and of course not a single soap bubble in sight. Disgraceful. An entire morning had passed by, and what had he accomplished? He had successfully transferred a snot bubble from one nostril to the next on the tip of his tongue.

If his mother were here, she’d disown him. Again.

Oh, but there was that promise. The ever-so-wonderful Fluttershy was keeping a close eye on him, and if he ever wanted a nice, quiet tea party with her again, he would make sure to keep it. He grimaced. He should hate nice, quiet tea parties. He should hate little Fluttershy for using his emotions like this. He should hate, he should hate, he should hate everything to do with Equestria! At the very least, he should be able to disregard her wishes and do as he wished, as he’d wanted that very first day when he’d been released!

And yet…and yet…he thought about that little mare’s big, wide eyes, quivering as she asked him why he broke his promise, and he just…

“UGH!” He groaned as he turned over to find a new position in his cloud. He was going in circles. Chaos was all well and good, but not when it was inside his own head! If things kept up, he'd go incoherently crazy, and where would that leave him? Imprisoned in stone, most likely. Something had to happen, and soon, or he'd wind up...

Something twinged, a tiny little prick at the back of his mind. One of his eyes perked open. The twinge didn't fade, as most little blips in Equestria's ambient magic often did. It remained there at the back of his mind, not strengthening, not waning, just...there. Curious, and figuring there was nothing better going on, Discord lifted out of his cloud and sailed back down to Canterlot, turning transparent as he went. Not quite invisibility, but good enough for someone that didn't want to attract attention.

"The throne room?" He muttered under his breath as he wisped towards the nearest open window. The twinge was leading him right to Sunbutt's throne! He knew he wasn't allowed there, not since the chocolate milk and syrup incident on April Fool's. He grinned at the memory. Oh, Sunbutt had been positively covered! Nothing but a set of magenta eyes poking out of the goop, glaring at him! He sighed. Memories...if only ponies weren't so sensitive and gave him something besides one day a year to have free reign...

All fond memories of past mishaps flew out of his mind when his invisible eyes peered into Celestia's throne room, and drank in the five-foot-tall, pale-skinned biped in jeans and a t-shirt kneeling at Celestia's hooves, holding one gold-shod hoof in its...hand? Yep, not claws, not talons, that was definitely a hand there. Discord considered, and so missed the moment where the creature bowed and took a gold-shod hoof in its hand, planting a single kiss there. Only a few creatures in existence had hands, and even fewer of those weren’t covered in fur or scales or armor plating. Still, it took him a moment to dig through the extensive library in his head and come up with the name: humans.

He'd heard of humans before, it was hard to avoid them. Everything they did just had to be so damned loud! They were the Donald Trumps of existence, always doing their best to be noticed and heard, even if they had nothing worthy of being noticed or listened to. Of course, he'd also noticed their key trait, the one thing that humans had on just about every other creature on their planet: humans were decidedly hardy. Most animals would give up at some point, would reach a certain breaking point where going on was simply too hard and death became the preferable option. As far as he could tell, humans either had an impossibly high breaking point, or didn't have one at all.

Now, this was interesting! Divine intervention in the nick of time, had to be! A human was new! A human was capable of so much! A human could...

A human could take anything I dish out...

That was where the idea formed. He tried to blink it back, force it out of his mind. When that didn't work, he tried reasoning it out, figuring there was some flaw, some way it could all backfire and explode in his face. Surely, Princess Celestia would check on...no, that was easily dealt with. Even a low level shading spell to keep the human out of her mind would do the trick. Not forgetfulness, not wiping the memory, more like misplacing it, like most ponies would misplace what they had for breakfast that morning. It’s not like anypony would bring the human up around her. Okay, but surely Twilight Sparkle wouldn't...no, Twilight was perfectly paranoid enough on her own, it wouldn’t take much on that front either. But there's no way he could cast a spell large enough to encompass a town without somepony noticing...unless, of course, it was low-intensity enough to be confused with the town's natural magic aura, in which case everything would be perfectly fine and nopony would be the wiser. Oh, but what if somepony wondered over him and saw that there might be more to him than the monster he was creating…but no, if he made sure that when the human was out of sight, he was also out of mind, then all those problems resolved themselves.

He floated away from the window, barely capable of flying. His head buzzed with ideas, forming a subtle maelstrom of chaos with the human at its center. His talons shook with excitement for the first time in ages, definitely for the first time since he'd made his promise to Fluttershy. Could it be? A chance to cause chaos again? Real chaos, not the occasional chocolate raincloud for Pinkie or the odd soap-suds skating rink? Don't get him wrong, those things were all fine and dandy, but something was still missing from them, something was off without somepony screaming and running around. Here was his chance to change that.

With a snap of his fingers, he materialized above Ponyville with all the consistency of a light summer breeze, totally invisible. The first pony should be the hardest, the one who resisted his power for longest, and the youngest royal in Equestria. Young, but still an Alicorn. Getting to her would be an achievement.

He wafted in through an open window on her treebrary, still barely a zephyr in the air. Below, Twilight was just sorting through her books, reorganizing her extensive Encyclopedia Equestria editions for what he was certain had to be the umpteenth time that week. Yes, he had been bored enough to watch Twilight shelve more than once, and the novelty of watching her when she had no idea had long worn off.

Focusing his magic, he concentrated on the form of the human, only viewing it through a monstrous lens in his mind's eye. Dull, hardly impressive incisors became fangs. Smaller eyes became beady portals into a monstrous, animalesque soul. Fingernails became claws. And most of all, he attached that moniker to it: Monster.

Breathing the word out in a whisper, he led the spell right into Twilight's mind. Of course, he knew it would take time to swing her around to where she needed to be, she was one of the more resistant ponies around, but he was nothing if not resilient, a few more doses and...

...and Twilight's coat dulled a little. She let out a gasp and a shiver as his spell took hold, her color pallete shifting just a little bit darker. He blinked in surprise. He had barely put any force behind that spell at all! How had it taken hold so fast!?

Shrugging it off as good luck on his part, Discord wafted out of the treebrary and drifted over Ponyville, a subtle little spell playing up the town's already rampant collective paranoia trailing behind him. Rarity was next, playing off her own sense of decency to bar some "wild animal" from entering her shop. For such a generous spirit, it sure hadn't been difficult to play off her elitist attitude.

Then came Flutter-butter, and here was his first real challenge. Could he really cast a spell on a friend? A true friend that had risked everything just to give him a second chance? Who he had served up tea parties and gone on awesome adventures with?

Then he scoffed at himself. Of course he could! After all, he'd done it to this exact pony before! And he was the same draconequus now that he was back then, right? He was still the god of chaos, and nothing less, right? Absolutely.

After that hurdle, the spell itself was child’s play. Fluttershy's fear was easy enough to play off of. As was Pinkie's, surprisingly. A little sabotage in her "Pinkie Sense" to tingle with the human around meant she'd be too paralyzed with fear to ever get close to him. After all, her Pinkie Sense had never steered her wrong before, right?

A grin, much darker than he ever could have imagined, crossed his face. Now came the coup de gracie. Swooping out over the little village, he took off for Cloudsdale, aiming for the Element of Loyalty’s home. Rainbow Dash's protective instincts were easy enough to bend to his will, and her aggression would take care of the rest. Upon seeing the awful monkey-monster at the edge of the Everfree, her only possible reaction would be to chase it off like any other monster, a bolt of lightning or two to discourage the awful creature.

He had to jam his talons into his mouth to keep from guffawing at the thought of that silly little thing being zapped full of lightning. Its ambient magic would make sure it'd be like a joy buzzer going through every time he walked around town! Oh, it would be so wonderfully hilarious! He managed to slip out of Rainbow's home before the laughter overtook his body entirely, and he spent a few moments laughing until his eyes filled with tears, clutching at his stomach as he rolled around on a cloud just outside Cloudsdale. A few harmless zaps to the ass would be more chaos than he’d caused in months, and he just couldn’t wait for it. This was going to be a masterpiece!

For a second during his trip back to Canterlot, he paused. Even this seemed...excessive. To a pony, this kind of chaos and jollymaking would be simply cruel. He couldn't imagine doing this to one of his four-legged friends, even back during the zenith of his power, in the days before Equestria was even a nation and his domination was absolute. But this wasn't a pony, was it? He gave that grin again, the one that had he seen it in a mirror, might have made him think twice about this whole plan. But no, this was a rough and tough human! This was something he could use to vent all that pent up chaos on, without any possible consequences!

He wafted into the castle with newfound confidence, a lightness in his chest like he hadn’t felt since the moment he’d agreed to play nice with the pretty little ponies. Now, one would think Celestia would pose the greatest challenge, and one would be right. The Princess of Day herself would pose a great challenge, to someone less clever. As it was, Discord just needed her out of the way: no pesky little checkups or letters sent to ruin his fun. She didn’t need much help, just to become a little forgetful, and for that he needed her busy while a few of his more subtle charms did their work, to make sure she didn’t talk to a guard or her own sister about their newest visitor. A particularly graphic accident at a watermelon stand and a riot amongst the nobles due to a hideous rumor that one of the biggest banks in the city was on the verge of bankruptcy ensured that. By the time an exhausted princess collapsed into her bed that night, the human was just a fading wisp of a memory at the back of her mind, a spell capable of being broken by nothing less than a face to face confrontation. So weak, yet so effective.

His work done, Discord rubbed his paws together. It was all set. He now had the perfect plaything: a sapient creature capable of appreciating his masterworks while being tough enough to survive them all with ease. Hell, from what he knew about humans, the little guy would probably wind up enjoying this more than any tea party or study session he might have had with the prissy little ponies as his friends! He grinned as his magic set to work, the human boarding the first train to Ponyville. He did chortle a bit when Twilight slammed the door in its face, but the real laughs didn’t come until Rainbow Dash and Applejack went to work. The screwed up look of pain in the human’s face…absolutely enjoyable! A treasure he could cherish for years!

So it carried on for the next few years, and every time the human poked his head up, Discord would wake up one of his little ponies. Applejack’s bucks were fun, but Rainbow Dash’s lightning bolts were something all by themselves. The human would go yipping around and scurrying about, and the god of chaos would have to run off to laugh to himself, laughing until his face turned blue in some cloud far away. Sure the chaos wasn't much, but any port in a storm, right? And after a while, watching all those little puppets dance on the end of his string was almost as fulfilling as any cotton candy cloud or chocolate milk rainstorm, and the fact that it could all happen right under the nose of the Princess of Day herself made it all the more delicious. Finally, without any consequences whatsoever, Discord had…

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“You monster.” Celestia stated, ending the story.

Discord whirled on her, eyes wide. He raised his eyebrows in confusion, opened his mouth, closed it, and finally opened it, though his voice was half the distraught, joking loudness he’d been aiming for. “Wh-what did you say?”

“You heard me, cretin,” she hissed, her eyes blazing with low, blue flames. “You tortured a creature for three years without any regard for any sort of humane treatment.”

“Well, I’ll admit I went a little overboard for a while there, but I hardly…”

“A little overboard!?” Fluttershy screeched. All eyes turned to her, all shocked. Nopony could believe that such a forceful shout could come from Fluttershy of all ponies. Nor would they have expected the hateful glare and heaving shoulders she regarded Discord with. “You tortured him for three years, you beat him down every single time he went looking for a bit of compassion! Don’t you get it!? You deprived him of all loving contact for three years!”

Again, Discord’s jaw dropped, his pupils narrowing to pinpricks. “I…I never thought…”

“No, you didn’t think, and because of that you broke him, Discord. Do you understand? You broke him. We’ve seen your handiwork. His heart’s been shattered in so many pieces it’s a miracle he ever got back up again, but when he did the only thing he had left to cling to was hate and despair,” she shook her head, rosette curls flying in every direction. When her eyes opened again, angry tears were wavering in them. “I can’t believe I thought you were my friend during all of that.”

“I…I was…”

“Then explain Tirek!”

Her voice rang throughout the room. It struck Discord with the force of a semi-truck. He sank to his talons, eyes locked on her, then slowly curled up into a little ball, his lanky form wrapping around itself, quickly turning into a small ball. In an instant, Fluttershy darted to the bars of her cell, the anger replaced with concern.

“Discord?”

He was quiet for a while, and when he spoke, his voice was almost too tiny to hear. “I was not a good person until he turned on me,” he whispered. “I had accepted your friendship because of what it could provide me, but until then, it never occurred to me that I might have to give back. I wasn’t your friend then, Fluttershy, and I wasn’t until Twilight released me from Tirek’s grip. Until then, I was just a bratty kid with powers he was never responsible enough to use properly. Still, you offered up the gift of friendship, despite my never having any intention of returning it, and I thanked you by throwing it in your face.

“I-I’ve made terrible mistakes in my life. Betraying you had to be the worst. The best thing that ever happened to me was Tirek betraying me in turn, because at that point, I finally knew what I’d done. I finally looked back at the long list of ponies I’d wronged, the sins I’d committed, and I realized what an utter and complete tosser I’d been. I’d thought of everypony around me as a tool to be used. All Tirek did was turn that same, exact treatment on me. When he was gone, I finally looked back at my actions, and realized all they’d ever earned me was a thousand years in stone and a ‘friend’ that stabbed me in the back at the first opportunity, whereas you had been willing to look past all that and be with me. My selfish actions had caused me to turn away the only creature in existence to ever show me a little bit of compassion, and accept a jackass who couldn’t wait to twist the knife he was planning to stab in my back.

“That’s why I’ve spent the last two years doing my best to make up for it,” he finished with a whisper. “So that I can be the sort of creature worthy of that forgiveness, and of that friendship.”

Celestia’s wide, reddened eyes gazed over the tiny ball. She opened her mouth, and a little squeak came out. She tried again, and at last words came. “I…believe you,” she said, shaking her head sadly. “But that doesn’t change the damage you’ve done…oh, how will we fix this?”

“Ohmygosh,” Fluttershy squeaked, darting back from the bars. “How do we tell Jason? What will he do!?”

“I know what I’d wanna do,” Rainbow snorted, glaring at Discord. “And y’know what? He might deserve it.”

“No,” Twilight finally stood, her chest thrust out, her eyes narrowed. “Killing is wrong. Discord has obviously repented for his actions, and even if he hadn’t, we couldn’t in good conscience allow him to be killed. If we offered him up, we’d be no better than the old cults of Ancient Equus offering pony sacrifices to their gods.”

“B-b-but wait!” Fluttershy said, holding up her hooves, her earlier rage forgotten. “He-he’s Discord! Jason couldn’t kill him even if he wanted to, r-right?”

“That may be true usually,” Discord sighed, then snapped his fingers. A pitiful little spark leapt from his paw and flitted to the ground. “Unfortunately, my magic won’t return for a while yet. Whatever Jason did drained it completely, it’s only been able to recharge since I broke out of the stone. I’ll need at least another day for it to return completely.”

“Oh no…” Celestia whispered. “Without your magic, you’re…”

“Temporarily mortal,” he replied with a thin smile. “Isn’t it just grand?”

"Th-that changes nothing!" Twilight announced, her wings flaring out once more. "Discord may have to confess what he's done, but that doesn't mean we can't do it on our terms! We'll keep him hidden until his magic has recovered, then he can speak without fear for his safety!"

The ponies all nodded. Even Discord looked up from his spot on the floor, a wan smile spreading across his face. For the first time in days, Twilight felt a glimmer of hope that everything would work out in the end. She truly began to believe this plan could work with everypony's best interests working out.

And then a voice announced from the top of the stairs: "Unless he already knows."

Twilight's heart dropped into her stomach. She couldn't move. She couldn't breathe. She could barely even blink. She could only stand there as the familiar scrape of boots on cobblestone filled the dungeon, everypony looking on in horror as Jason Wright's gas mask-clad figure cleared the steps and strode into the center of the room, towering over Discord's curled-up form.

Somehow, Twilight just knew there was a vindictive smile on his face as he knelt by Discord and said: "Hey there, buddy, haven't seen you in awhile."

Author's Notes:

I know some people are going to have problems with the twist, but this has been my vision from the beginning. I wanted to portray a scenario that I think might allow for something as awful as what happens in the original story to occur in the world of the show, and from there, see how the characters would react to that. I think I've done as best I can.