Rainbow Dash was really not looking forward to her second teleportation. According to what she’d overheard from Princess Celestia, the first had been even worse than she’d initially thought, and that was certainly saying something. She still didn’t understand quite how it worked, but none of the fancy magical words the Princess had thrown around when scolding Twilight had made her feel any better about the situation.

Rainbow would have begged to simply fly to their destination if her prosthetic hadn’t been completely shattered. In fact, at Celestia’s behest, the Royal Physician had personally removed what was left of the now useless frame of metal and hardened light-shards. He’d used an anaesthetic spell, and so the process had been painless. Even now, Rainbow’s bare shoulder was a tad numb. It felt... Odd to be missing a wing, even a false one.

The Princess had promised to have a new prosthetic fashioned for Rainbow when they returned from their errand, but there was no time to waste. Celestia had insisted that Rainbow Dash, Twilight, and even Applejack accompany her on her excursion, although Rainbow still couldn’t figure out why. Most frustratingly, the Princess was being rather secretive about the whole ordeal, something that Twilight informed Rainbow was rather the norm for Celestia.

And so, taking a deep breath, Rainbow closed her eyes as she, Twilight, and Applejack stood near the Princess in the hallway outside Twilight’s study. Applebloom waved goodbye to her sister, her eyes still bloodshot from crying. At least Spike was there to look after the diminutive filly, and Celestia had personally promised that there was no way the lunar forces could have possessed a dragon.

She’s been wrong before, Rainbow thought miserably as she felt the magic of Celestia’s horn wash over all of them. Let’s hope she’s right about this one.

With her eyes closed, Rainbow didn’t have to watch the horrible melting away of the world around her, but she still did have to feel the cold nothingness of losing her physical form all over again. She would never get used to it no matter how long she lived.

Thankfully, at least, the ponies’ jaunt through the void was much shorter this time. Rainbow idly wondered in that screaming silence if physical distance still had some sort of sway over one’s journey through non-physical space. After all, they were only journeying a short way from Canterlot. Even given the current circumstances, though, it was the last place Rainbow had ever wanted to visit.

They were going to Ponyville.

The sensation of self was blessedly returning, existence washing back around them.

And then...

Greetings and salutations, Rainbow Dash. Welcome to my home away from home! But what’s this? You don’t have an invitation ? For shame, showing up unannounced. If you want to visit me, then I expect you to schedule an appointment like everypony else. I’ll trust you to find the door on your own.

What?

The cessation of self returned, quickly eroding all reality. A flash of warmth, a burning sensation like the hottest fire imaginable, flared up in that unspace, but the void returned and claimed them all, forcing them back into itself.

Reality came crashing back like a wave. It engulfed Rainbow Dash, like a smack in the face, sending her tumbling over backward, head over hooves until she finally landed upside down. She gasped, fighting down her panicked urge to hyperventilate, telling herself over and over that there was plenty of air in her lungs and that she was not, in fact, suffocating. It still took a few moments for her brain to catch up to her assertions.

Reality was back, but with physicality came pain. Rainbow’s body ached all over.

She struggled to her hooves, looking around to see Twilight and Applejack in similar states, rubbing sore bruises from where they too had popped out of the void and tumbled along the ground. Only Princess Celestia stood unharmed, but Rainbow Dash flinched to look at her all the same. The Princess’s eyes were narrowed, and her mane and tail shimmered and flowed with sharp, jagged, irregular motions. She looked positively furious, to a degree that made her response to Twilight’s disobedience seem like a minor annoyance.

“This isn’t possible!” Celestia declared. The grass in a circle immediately around the Princess wavered in a heat-haze before bursting into flame. The fire burnt itself out almost as quickly as it had begun, leaving a dark, ashen circle, but Celestia still looked enraged. “That... Monster!”

“Princess Celestia, what’s wrong?” Twilight asked, walking over to her mentor, but not getting too close. From Twilight’s wariness, Rainbow guessed she’d never seen her teacher quite this angry. “Your magical calculations are always perfect, I don’t understand—”

“Quiet,” Celestia commanded, and Twilight complied. The Princess sat down, slowing her breathing, her mane and tail slowly returning to normal. “I apologize, my little ponies. I wish you didn’t have to see me lose my temper. This predicament simply... Complicates things.”

Rainbow Dash took a closer look around, revealing that they were on a dirt road just a few hundred yards outside Ponyville. Farmland surrounded them on either side, with a few random cottages popping up every so often before the cluster of old-fashioned buildings in Ponyville proper. All in all, they’d hardly missed their destination by that much. A short walk certainly wouldn’t kill them.

Princess Celestia took a final deep, slow breathe as she stood, setting off at a trot into town. The others tried their best to keep up, but it wasn’t easy.

“If my fears are confirmed, I will tell you what happened,” Celestia said as they neared the outskirts of town after several moments of silence. “But if my hopes are rewarded, we will never speak of this again. Is that clear?”

Rainbow nodded, smiling nervously. The Princess had seemed so nice earlier; what had made her so angry? Surely even an immortal being could mess up a magic spell now and then.

But, wait a moment...

Rainbow shook her head, uncertain. The jumble of thoughts she’d had in the void were only now sorting themselves out now that they had a brain to properly organize things, and something came slowly back to the forefront, something that even she suspected shouldn’t be possible.

“When we were in there, in that in-between place,” Rainbow said slowly. “Did you all hear a voice?”

“Come to think of it,” Twilight spoke.

“Not now,” Celestia said. “And, hopefully, never again.”

The young mares remained silent the rest of the journey. It was an easy task for Rainbow, as she was lost in her own thoughts as they wandered through the streets of downtown Ponyville. Too many memories came flooding back at every familiar landmark. There was the fountain where she’d been dunked as a filly when she’d first moved to Ponyville, the other foals mocking her for her single real wing. There, the old arcade where she’d spent many countless hours, quite a few of them more enjoyable than the rest of her time in Ponyville, but all too many others of them rather lonely.

There were even a few ponies Rainbow recognized. The stragglers from the high school, the youths who smoked behind the convenience store or the more academically inclined-students leaving the library hewn from a tree. Rainbow Dash did her best to not meet their gaze, and to her surprise, not a one called her out. She had always been a bit of a loner, but surely even ponies who had never much cared for her would at least notice her presence?

Rainbow looked around curiously. In fact, none of the ponies, be they students from the high school or other ponies wandering about in the dusk, were paying any attention to the four mares. She glanced back at Twilight and Applejack, who were also looking about a tad nervously. Twilight kept rubbing her horn, while Applejack’s tree-legs were sprouting flowers the same color as her coat, as if in an attempt to hide her abnormality as best she could.

Still, however, nopony paid them any mind. Not even Princess Celestia.

Rainbow glanced up at the Princess, whose horn was faintly glowing, emitting the barest of golden auras. When the group trotted past a store window, Rainbow saw why. They didn’t cast a reflection. Even their shadows were curiously absent.

Rainbow smiled. This was rather nice. She was walking through the town that had made most of her foalhood and teenage years miserable, and yet now, nopony who used to torment her could even notice her. She’d have to ask the Princess if she could borrow such an enchantment after all this was over. Whether they were invisible or simply impossible to acknowledge at all, Rainbow quickly decided she preferred this to wading through masses of ponies who acted like their very noticing her was an offense to them.

However, it did take a good while to find out where they were going. Princess Celestia herself didn’t seem to be entirely certain, but she kept following some sort of path all the same. A turn here, another there, a backtrack here and a long walk over a bridge. The Princess never glanced at street signs, seemingly following a trail only she could see.

At long last, they arrived at a building on the far side of town. Rainbow Dash’s eyes widened as they approached. It was a blocky, three-story structure made of stone, looking for all the world like a miniature hospital. Rainbow had heard urban legends and tall tales about this place for as long as she’d lived in Ponyville, and even now, she wasn’t certain which were true and which were fiction.

“Of course he’d choose a place like this,” Celestia muttered to herself as they walked inside, passing under the name of the facility above the front entranceway, a sign that read, ‘Ponyville Institute for the Mentally Ill.’

The inside was a lot less intimidating than Rainbow had thought it would have been. In fact, it looked for all the world just like the waiting room at Ponyville lone physician’s office. Posters in frames on the wall described various forms of mental illness and ways to treat them, medical magazines a few years out of date covered the glass tables, and a single mare in a nurse’s outfit was writing something with a quill at the front desk.

“We’re here to see a patient,” Princess Celestia said to the nurse, who looked up at them with a friendly yet weary expression. She didn’t so much as blink when she looked at Celestia.

“Of course, ma’am,” the nurse said. “Which patient?”

“May I see your list?”

“We don’t usually give out that information, ma’am,” the nurse said. Celestia’s horn glowed a bit brighter. “It’s a part of patient confidentiality, and... Um... Well, I suppose we could make one exception.”

Twilight looked aghast as the nurse handed a medical chart to the Princess, who ignored Twilight’s expression and flipped through the chart as she levitated it in front of her.

“Excellent, thank you,” Celestia said, returning the chart.

“Anytime, ma’am,” the nurse said, shaking her head and looking a bit puzzled. “Oh, hello, ma’am. Are you here to see a patient?”

“No, we were just leaving,” Celestia responded. The nurse went back to her work and the Princess led the mares into the hallway leading back.

“Princess Celestia!” Twilight hissed. “You told me mind-magic was only to be used as a last resort!”

“I’m sorry, Twilight, but I’m afraid it might have just come to that.”

Rainbow gulped. Just who or what were they going to see in this asylum? Perhaps not all of those rumors about this place had been quite as exaggerated as she’d hoped.

The group reached the end of the hallway and entered a door labelled, ‘Senior Counselors Only,’ descending the spiral staircase beyond. Down, deep down below the asylum, they at last came to another door. This one was thick and metal, with a rather large lock. More framed posters adorned the walls, but these seemed to be intended only for the medical staff. Rainbow Dash scanned one as Celestia magically unlocked the door.

“Do not accept any gifts from Patient Zero,” Rainbow read. “Do not make any deals with Patient Zero. Do not, under any circumstances, play any games with Patient Zero.”

Rainbow gulped again as she followed the Princess and the others inside. She was both relieved and thoroughly disappointed by what she saw within.

Though most of the room was separated from them by a large, thick sheet of glass with seemingly no door or method of getting anything from one side to the other, most of the room appeared just like an ordinary patient’s room. A simple bed with white sheets and pillows rested in the corner. There was a toilet, a sink, a chair, and a number of books. Rainbow noted they all appeared to be for children, the open pages displaying brightly colored pictures.

Speaking of pictures, there were also countless hand-drawn pictures adorning the walls. Crayons in various states of use covered half-finished products on the floor. The pictures themselves were fairly simple, being crude, childlike illustrations of countrysides, sunsets, castles, and forests. Stick-figure ponies and animals, all with happy faces, were playing ball, or running with each other, or having picnics.

There was also nopony in the room.

“Um...” Rainbow Dash said. “Are we missing something?”

“I certainly hope so,” Celestia replied.

However, the Princess’s face quickly fell, just as the young mares’ gasped and took tentative steps backwards. The beings in the drawings were moving. Stick figures suddenly tossed moving balls back and forth between pictures. The sun gave off shiny rays of light. They could even hear whispers, giggles that were growing steadily louder.

“Friends!” said a high-pitched, squeaky voice from everywhere and nowhere all at once. “Friends! Friends! Friends! FRIENDS!”

Things began leaking from the pictures. Lakes spilled water into the room, leaves from trees blew out from the paper, taking on corporeal form and texture, and one of the stick ponies, drawn entirely in pink crayon, leapt out and popped into being.

She appeared roughly the same age as the other young mares, though the childlike gleam in her eyes held nothing of the hardship and weariness Rainbow saw every time she looked in a mirror. Her coat, her voluminously fluffy mane and tail, everything but her eyes were a bright pink. Her eyes were bright blue.

“Friends!” she shouted again as she bounced over to the glass screen and pressed her face against it. “Friends!”

“How could you?” Celestia said, apparently speaking to the pink pony. “How are you even doing this?”

“Friends?” the pony said, cocking her head, but never losing her smile.

“Get out of her!” Celestia demanded. “This is unacceptable!”

“Friends...?” the pink pony said, frowning for the first time.

“I said get out!” Celestia roared.

The pink pony took a few frightened steps back from the glass, her lip quavering. Her eyes were watering.

“F...friends...” she said chokingly.

Tears spewed forth from the pony’s eyes in incredible and impossible volume, spouting like twin fountains. The tears pooled on the floor of the room, quickly filling up the whole space with water. The mare still cried behind the glass, now completely submerged, only bubbles trickling from her eyes.

“What in tarnation?!” Applejack gasped.

“It’s like her crazy happens for real!” Rainbow said, taking a few more nervous steps backwards herself. “Should we be worried about that glass breaking?”

“If he wanted to escape, he could do so at any moment,” Celestia sighed. “He’s choosing to stay in there, toying with us. Mocking me.”

“He?” Twilight echoed. The pink pony was very clearly a mare.

The water started to drop, swirling around and swishing and splashing down a drain that Rainbow could have sworn wasn’t there a moment ago. The pink pony was sopping wet, her once-fluffy mane and tail now straight, slick curtains. They covered her eyes, giving off a most disconcerting appearance.

“Friends,” the pony said, peering out from behind her curtain of mane. Her eyes were bloodshot, her face caked in what looked like clotted gore. Her teeth were suddenly sharp and unnaturally long, dripping a black ooze. Bits of yellow were fading into being in the whites of her eyes, her irises reddening. “FRIENDS!”

She leapt at the glass, clawing at it. Cracks began to appear.

“We need to get out of here!” Rainbow said, turning and preparing to bolt. The metal door into the viewing area slammed shut in front of her. Rust appeared all over it, a sickly grime spreading out from the door and creeping along the walls, ceiling, and floor. “We’re trapped!”

“No, Rainbow Dash,” Celestia sighed. “We’re a captive audience.”

The pink mare shook her head, spewing water out of her mane and tail as they instantly fluffed back up to normal proportions. Her face had returned to normal, but her eyes were now entirely yellow-and-red. She fell to the ground, laughing uproariously.

“You should see your faces!” said a voice from the pony’s mouth, although it was not that of the mare they had just heard. It was far older, masculine, and with a touch of an echo. “Priceless!”

“What are you?” Twilight asked.

“I’m the shouldn’t-be,” the voice answered. “I’m everytime your quill nub broke when you wrote a report, Twilight Sparkle. I’m the unpicked apples rotting in the burnt ruin that used to be your orchard, Applejack. I’m the torn muscles of your missing wing, Rainbow Dash. I am aberrant. I am error. I am the gospel of wrong. I am planets smashing into one another without direction or purpose, stars exploding, reality decaying. I am the slow, inevitable, hilarious death of the universe.

“You can call me Discord,” finished the pony-that-was-not-a-pony. “Though this delightfully mad host of mine is called Pinkie Pie. At least, that’s what her family called her before I moved in and turned them all into rock-golems. They still make a living farming rocks, or so I hear, but now that they’re made of rocks themselves, they can hear the rocks screaming in agony as they till the fields!”

Celestia was silent for a long moment. Her horn glowed dangerously bright.

“Really, Celly?” said Discord, or Pinkie Pie, or whoever or whatever it was. “You’d take out your solar wrath on an innocent little mare? Where’s the fun in that? No challenge, just a burnt, red smear on the surface of the earth in the grand scheme of things. Who would notice? Who would care? After all, it’ll only be a few billion years before your sun burns itself out and casts the world into eternal darkness anyway!”

“How are you doing this, Discord?” Celestia asked.

“Easy,” Discord replied. “All those many centuries of starfalls instilled fear and strife into your precious little ponies. Eventually, it opened a crack in my prison, just enough to allow the smallest sliver of my spirit to seep out. Lacking any physical form, I grabbed ahold of the closet vessel that could accommodate me. Even better, she turns out to be Laughter! How lucky can the manifestation of entropy get?”

“So she is Laughter, after all,” Celestia said. “Where is this Pinkie Pie, herself?”

“She’s still in here,” Discord said. “Hold for a moment, let me get her on the line.”

The un-pony blinked, her eyes replaced with the static snow of a dead crystal-vision channel. It opened its mouth a few times, each time emitting a mechanical beeping noise that no biological vocal cords could have ever produced.

When it blinked once more, its eyes had returned to bright blue. She looked around confusedly for a moment.

“Where...” she said, her voice back to its high-pitched squeakiness. “The asylum, right, I remember this place. But, where are Mommy and Daddy and my sisters? Are they still alive? It’s so fuzzy, I can’t remember...”

She looked up pleadingly, finally seeing the group, as if for the first time.

“You!” she said, looking at Princess Celestia. “You’re the big leader pony, right? Please, get this thing out of my head, I can’t take it anymore! Nothing makes sense. I used to like not making sense, but now, not making sense becomes real, and it hurts everypony around me. I just want out... I just want to go home to my family...”

“I’ll... Do everything I can,” Celestia said sadly.

“You will?” the mare, Pinkie Pie, said with a desperate hope. “Oh, thank you, thank you, thank you!”

She began to cough, shaking her head, and when she looked up again, Discord’s eyes had returned.

“Isn’t she just a barrel of fun?” he laughed. “When I finally break out for real, I think I’ll keep her. She’s fun to have around.”

“Princess Celestia, what is going on?” Twilight asked. “What is that thing?”

“Thing?” Discord said, sounding offended. “I’ll have you know I’m a cosmic horror of the highest magnitude, and I deserve to be addressed as such. Who are you to judge me, Twilight Sparkle? After all, I never turned my parents into potted plants forever!”

Twilight gasped, her jaw dropping. Tears filled her eyes, streaming down her face.

“H-how did you know that?” Twilight asked.

Rainbow looked at Twilight in confusion. She’d done what?

“It was an accident!” Twilight hissed, seeing Rainbow’s look. “It was my entrance exam into the magical academy. A starfall happened at the same time. Canterlot is protected by a magical force field, but the horrible sound it made hitting the barrier, it scared me so much. My magic went into overdrive, and I couldn’t control it.”

“Why cry about it?” Discord asked. “Who needs self control? You got out of having to listen to your parents, didn’t you? You got your brother to hate you, so you don’t have to worry about him cramping your style either. You even got that cool, twisted horn out of it. Sure, it’ll keep growing and growing, and there’s nothing physicians can do about it, and it’ll eventually grow into your brain and kill you, but what a neat way to go!”

“Shut up!” Twilight shouted. Her horn sparked dangerously.

“Enough, Discord,” Celestia said firmly. “You know why we’re here. We need the Element of Laughter.”

“Yeah, sure, great,” Discord said. “Not really feeling like sharing. Why don’t you come back in about a thousand years? Or, better yet, why don’t we ask what Nightmare Moon thinks when she finally touches down? I’m sure I could broker the Element of Laughter for a good deal on ending my sentence early...”

“...What do you want?” Celestia asked quietly.

“What was that?”

“I said,” Celestia spoke louder. “What do you want?”

“Now we’re talking!” Discord laughed. “I never really cared for eternal darkness anyway. It’d be much more fun to mess with you for eternity than her. But what to ask for? Ooh, the opportunities are so endless, so tempting... For starters, I want my freedom.”

Celestia looked away for a moment.

“Come on, Celly,” Discord prompted. “It’s either good ol’ Nightmare Moon or me. One or the other. You can surrender to a Goddess of Darkness who wants to rule the world in eternal night, and slowly kill it without any light to live by, or you can live with me! You know I’m not into the whole destroying-the-world thing. I just like to mess with it a little.”

“Fine,” Celestia said. “I’ll do what I can.”

“Excellent!” Discord said. “We’ll work out my other demands later. As of now, you have my vote. I’ll give control back to Pinkie Pie here. Just know that our essences have been mingled for so long that I’m still going to be here for a while, so there may be a few... Side effects. Have fun, and don’t let her die! I want her alive when I’m free!”

Discord’s eyes rolled back in Pinkie Pie’s head. She shook herself, and when she looked at the group again, her eyes were back to normal.

“Is... He gone?” she asked trepidatiously.

“For the most part,” Celestia said. “He agreed to let you control yourself, but he’s still there, waiting. I’m so, so sorry, my child.”

Tears welled in Pinkie Pie’s eyes, but she was smiling.

“Thank you,” she said. “That’s the best news I’ve heard in... Forever!”

Celestia’s horn glowed, and the glass screen disappeared. Pinkie Pie took a hesitant step out, then bounced out the door and up the stairs. The group followed, Celestia’s horn still glowing faintly and preventing anypony from seeing them leave.

“We now know why Ponyville was shielded magically from both Nightmare Moon and myself,” the Princess said. “And, for the time being, he’s on our side.”

“But what is he?” Twilight persisted.

“I’ll explain everything back at the palace,” Celestia promised. “Would you please fetch Pinkie Pie? I’ll teleport us back now that Discord had lifted his interference.”

Twilight nodded, trotting after Pinkie Pie, who had bounced over to the fountain in front of the asylum as soon as they had all exited the facility. She had jumped in, making a huge splash. Additionally, the water seemed to have turned into chocolate milk.

“So that’s three of six, right?” Rainbow Dash asked the Princess. “Applejack, Pinkie Pie, and me?”

“Four of six,” Celestia responded. “I have long suspected Twilight as being the Element of Magic. It seems I was correct. The look Discord gave her confirms it.”

“Then there’s only two left,” Rainbow said. She smiled, feeling something approaching happiness for the first time in a long time. With all six of them, if what Celestia was implying was true, they’d beat Nightmare Moon easily when she returned. How hard would it be to find two other ponies possessed by magical spirits? “We’re almost done, right?”

Celestia was silent.

Rainbow looked up to her, wondering why, only to see something that made her stomach want to vomit all over again. Sirens were even now beginning their low, loud, mournful screeches across Ponyville and, likely, all of Equestria.

The entire night sky was full of shooting stars.