“You!” Toxic Shock jumped to the front of his cell, pounding on the door, clawing at the bars in the tiny window. He was barely strong enough to reach it- -they had given him a body, but a weak one, its legs like twigs, built so that they could disable it at any time. “Listen to me! Please!”

The pony outside jumped back, surprised and terrified by the half-robotic unicorn on the inside of the cell.

“Not this again,” moaned Toxic Shock’s Strait-jacket clad roommate, who was lying on his bed, as he always did. “Just be quiet…I’m trying to sleep.”

“You have to get me out of here!” said Toxic Shock, firmly, trying to reach out for the lunch-pony’s keys with his magic. Something attached to him was surprising it, though, and he could barely summon a glow in his horn. “I’m not crazy! There’s a disease, and it’s spreading! I have to get out of here, if it gets to the city- -” He suddenly began to convulse and collapsed in pain on the floor as the control-body he had been placed in simultaneously locked up and poured electric current into his body.

“What did I tell you?” said a gruff voice from outside of the cell. “Stand back six feet from the doors!”

“But…but what if he’s right?” said the other pony, the one that Toxic Shock had frightened.

“Right? Right? This is a madhouse, bro. He’s as crazy as they come. Do even known what this guy did?”

“No…what?”

“This Wastelander tried to cordon off an entire frontier city. Brought in mutants and soldiers and everything, full-blown conquest. He’s a terrorist, and insane.”

“But I heard that all the ponies there were sick, though…”

“Only because the Wastelanders are infested with just about every sickness you can think of. They’re almost as bad as the bats, worse, even.”

“But what if- -”

“Son, it doesn’t even matter.” Toxic Shock heard the sound of two sets of hooves walking down the hall. “Not even half the guys in here are really crazy. We just get paid to hold ‘em until they buy their respective farms.”

“I’m not insane,” whispered Toxic Shock. “I’m not insane!”

Deep within himself, however, he was beginning to doubt even that. The things he had seen were terrifying. Whenever he slept, he saw nothing except the tall, pale figure standing over him, metal protruding from its pale, translucent skin, its eyeless face staring down at him as if it could see inside his very soul. It his long life, Toxic Shock had seen monsters, and spent a long career fighting whatever mutants and abominations managed to pull their way out of the scrap and toxins of the Wasteland. This one was different, though. It was so small, so ordinary- -and he could still feel the sensation emanating from it, the desire and intelligence within it that was somehow so profoundly perverse.

It had taken his body, but left him alive. Then others had come, breaking the quarantine- -and taking him away. At first they thought that they would heal him so that he could tell them- -but nopony believed him. He had been declared insane, and imprisoned.

“Well,” said his roommate, still facing the wall. “You are in a crazy house. House de le crazy. Booby hatch, even. Except not nearly enough boobies.”

“The sickness,” said Toxic Shock, barely managing to stand as the remote locks on his legs were released. “It…it isn’t a disease. It changes them, makes them into monsters- -and they all got transferred all over Equestria. If somepony doesn’t do something, we’re all going down to Tartarus in a handbasket!”

The madpony on the bed laughed.

“It’s not funny!” screamed Toxic Shock. “I’m the only one who knows! I have to do something!”

“Hey!” called a voice from across the hall. Toxic Shock leaned toward the window, and saw a mare across the hall looking out of her door-window. “Who are you talking to?”

“My room…”

Toxic Shock suddenly put his hoof to his head. For some reason, his mind was buzzing, and he immediately had a powerful headache. “Roommate,” he said to himself. Then, suddenly, he realized why he had suddenly had such a surge of anxiety. He was in isolation; he had no roommate.

“Just now realizing this, I see,” said the other pony, sitting up from the bed. Toxic Shock looked over at him, and his mind seemed to shudder from the paradox. He had spent day with this pony, who was always in the corner on the bed, always complaining about how he was trying to sleep- -and yet he had never seen him before.

The green pony smiled, and then easily slipped off the Strait Jacket, revealing his vomit-colored green coat beneath.

“How did you- -”

“Well, it’s a Straight jacket,” said the green pony, setting the garment on the bed and walking over to the toilet. “I just focused really hard on the idea of two Discord’s going at it, and the thing slid right off.” He reached into the toilet with both his front hooves and stuck out his tongue as he fished around inside it. “There it is!” he said, drawing out two objects. One was the pink air-freshener cake from the bottom, the other was a crooked antler-like horn, which Toxic Shock knew had not been in there before.

The green pony attached the horn to his forehead, as though it were a unicorn horn, and screwed it into place. He also took a large bite out of the air-freshener cake.

“Trade secret,” he said. “They really do taste like cake. And not one of you can prove it otherwise.”

“Who are you?” demanded Toxic Shock, retreating to the edge of the room. He turned and looked through the door, and looked pleadingly at the cell across from him- -only to see a green pony with an antler-horn smiling through the window across from him as well.

“I am my own grandmother,” said the green pony, smiling and sitting on the bed- -a bed which Toxic Shock really could not remember ever having been there before. “Don’t ask me how I managed that one.”

“How are you doing this? You’re magic, they suppressed it- -”

“Magic? But I’m a Pegasus. I don’t have any magic.”

Toxic Shock stared at the pony, and saw that what he said was true. He had a pair of green wings. Toxic Shock turned away and shook his head, though- -when he looked back, the pony was now inches from his face, wings gone and antler-horn returned.

“You smell like meringue,” he said.

Toxic Shock pushed him back and scampered to the other side of the room. “What in the name of biohazardous waste are you?”

“Am I? I am. Simple as that. Because I think. Except I don’t. Because my brain has been replaced with Tesla coils. Probably.” He bowed. “I am Buttery Snake, Spirit of Chaos.”

“Spirit of…of what?”

“Well, I used to be Buttery Snake, Proxy to Chaos, but ever since Discord married that demon-mare, he’s been in retirement. To be honest, I think the whole thing with Fluttershy three centuries back really messed him up. More so than before, anyway. Side note, and I learned this from that: if you are immortal, never fall in love with a mortal. Because you’re gonna have a bad time.”

“You’re insane,” said Toxic Shock, trying to figure out how he could defend himself. There were no weapons in the cell, though, and his body was too limited for him to put up any real fight.

“No,” said Buttery Snake sarcastically. “We are in a madhouse, aren’t we? Or am I in the wrong place again?”

“What do you want?” demanded Toxic Shock.

“What do I want?” Buttery Snake chuckled, which was more of a bizarre hissing cackle. “I want a fillyfriend with two heads. Not end to end, but next to each other. And a huge tub of jelly. Actually, I know a guy…or how about proper editing, good cover art, thorough readership, and, oh, I don’t know, a story that doesn’t have a three-horned alicorn OC as a main character? So cliché…”

Toxic Shock had no idea what was going on.

“I can see that you have no idea what is going on. You don’t need to. You’re not at all important to this story. That disease? I know what they’re doing. You can’t stop it. Nopony can. Not even ‘Thebe’. By the way, the second ‘e’ is silent. Like ‘Theeb’.”

“I know how to pronounce ‘Thebe’,” said Toxic Shock.

Buttery snake suddenly burst into laughter. “I’m sorry, he said, rolling on the floor and promptly rolling up one of the walls. “You just look- -oh, those legs!- -you look ridiculous. Here…”

Toxic Shock felt his body shift slightly, and looked down. To his immense surprise, he saw that his original body had been restored. Now he would be more than strong enough to break down the door.

“What door?” said Buttery Snake.

Toxic Shock looked at his former roommate, and then at the door- -and realized that there never had been a door. The wall simply opened into the hall; it always had. He also knew that such a thing was impossible, and yet he was seeing it.

“Hmm. Your brain seems somewhat resistant to reality edits.”

“Reality is finite and predetermined,” said Toxic Shock, mainly to himself. “It cannot be changed like that.”

“Of course it can. That’s the whole point of Chaos. I can do anything I want. Well, as long as it’s funny. But don’t bother trying to escape through the lack-of-door. This place has a lot of guards with guns and grimaces and ganache and Garry Sue- -oh wait, that last one was me.”

“Then what do you expect me to do?”

Buttery snake stood up and tilted his head back. His throat produced a gurgling sound, and then he leaned down and pulled something preposterously large out of his throat. Toxic Shock realized that it was an overly ornate golden shortsword. The sword itself seemed to glow, and it did not fall to the floor but rather floated in the air, its point facing the ceiling.

“Uhg,” said Buttery Snake. “I can see why Five hates doing this. But anyway, here you go.”

“A sword? You want me to fight them off with a sword?”

“Of course it’s not a sword, you dumkoff. You just perceive it as a sword. The Gladius of Gladness, I think. It actually isn’t. It isn’t anything. Not an artifact at all, and with no particular origin. But everypony sees it differently.”

“What…what do you see?”

Buttery Snake smiled. “I don’t see anything at all. But I hear it. Piping…endless mad piping. So beautiful, and yet I somehow hate it so much!”

“What am I supposed to do with it?” said Toxic Shock.

“Simple. Just touch it. Then…” Buttery Snake pointed. “Walk about four hundred meters that way. Then just use it again.”

“Through walls?”

“No. There won’t be any walls. Maybe trees. Walk around them. Through does not work so well.”

“Trees?” said Toxic Shock, confused. The only trees he knew were the predatory ones that grew in the Wasteland. “Where are we?”

“Don’t be stupid. Not where. When. It’s simple, and a really old trick. Jump backward in time to before this place was built, take a few steps past the barrier, then jump forward. Easy peasy sleazy breezie.”

“Time- -time travel? You mean as in the most difficult spell possible, that even Thebe can’t crack?”

“I’m not Thebe,” said Buttery Snake, smiling. “I’m just a lawyer.”

“But what you are saying is impossible!”

“Duh. But hurry up if you want to leave. I don’t have all day. I still need to jump back myself and see if the Mane Six can defeat Nil. That part of my timeline hasn’t passed yet.”

Toxic Shock did not know what to do, but found himself walking toward the hovering sword. “Why?” he asked. “You don’t think I can stop the sickness. Why are you helping me?”

“Setting up a sequel, maybe?” he said, smiling slyly. “Or I’m going to shatter your soul. Maybe both?”

Toxic Shock looked at the sword. He knew that it was his only way out, and he knew that he had to get out. He was the only one who might stop the spread of the disease, and certainly the only one that knew what it did to the infected.

“So I just touch this?”

“Yup. Jump back, jump forward. Take your time if you want to, but just know that once you get back here, this thing defaults back to Thoghth, and it tastes really bad, so I’m not going to give you a second chance.”

“Right, then,” said Toxic Shock. “Food here sucks anyway.”

He extended the claws from his robotic hoof and took the sword by the hilt.

Outside the fence of the prison institution, Toxic Shock materialized into reality. He blinked, momentarily blinded by the darkness. In that instant his soul felt the crushing weight of his decision. He still recalled the view of the world he had seen: of a world with a sun that poured light upon the world during the day, and a sky lit with stars and moonlight in the night. A world that had green trees and flowers and animals instead of an endless, vicious, fungoid forest of monstrosities, or worse, his own formerly beloved Wasteland. A world that had blinded him, and shown him things that had changed his perceptions and shown him things he had not been meant to see.

Fifteen years he had spent in that world, and now the memories of where he had been and his life had come back to him. From a world where he had loved and been loved to one where he was a madpony, a fugitive and a soldier standing against an unstoppable epidemic.

As the tears fell from his eyes, he made his way out into the swamps, avoiding the automated spotlights that continued to scan the ground. He had given up that beautiful world because he knew that he had to. If this world was to survive, and if it would become beautiful again, he had to at least try.