Author's Notes:

My exams had started at the beginning of the month.

"I lied."

"W-w-what?" Coco Pommel on reflex leapt to her hooves, her insides suddenly freezing and the vacant expression on her face flashing away.

"I lied."

His voice was crystal clear and seemed to jumble strangely in her ears before going to her brain, preventing Coco from registering them properly. Everything was seeming to be happening too fast again for Coco as if it was some sort of skipping record. She looked up at the draconequus- who was standing on his hind legs to purposefully tower over her- in utter incomprehension.

All through her story, he had been watching her on his belly with at first an eyebrow raised and his chin in his hand, but then he slowly started to lose his cocky expression and replace it with something that brought back nightmarish memories of skyscrapers turned to cardboard and roads of soap bubbling like lava.
He clasped his hands behind his back, arching his neck like a snake. "Well, not outright. But I suppose it's still just as bad, isn't it? Especially between two friends?"

Coco's imagination was coming up with all the possible things he could have lied about and unsurprisingly she found that she wanted to get as far away as possible. All of the laughter and the ease had burst into flames.
She stared at him uncomprehendingly, feeling as if she was being pierced to the bone with his lamp yellow eyes. She had to force out her words . "W-what do you m-mean?"

"I already know who you are and why you're in Ponyville. I was there at the window when you were having your cozy tea party with Fluttershy," he said matter-of-factually. " I watched you from the borders of the forest. I have to say that at the time I was very curious as to what kind of a pony you were that Fluttershy herself recommended me to you."

Coco felt bewildered, terrified and hurt, like a glass cat that had been knocked off a table. Her voicebox seemed to be utterly inaccessible, rendering her helplessly silent.

" Don't look at me like that! You yourself even asked why I was acting so cheerful!" Discord stood up fully now, towering over her and spreading his hands in exasperation. "Even then you suspected that something was off! Come on, Coco Pommel, I'm Discord- the Lord of Chaos, the King of Deceit, the one who three times tried to take over Equestria, thinking of nothing but myself, treating the inhabitants as dollar-store windup toys! How could you ever be so naive to call me your friend and even tell me a part of your history that I wager you've never spoke a word of to anyone ever before!?"

His voice was becoming higher and louder and more desperate the longer Coco listened. Her face seemed to screw up in confusion- and then she was touched by understanding as if it was a ray of light pouring down through a storm front.

"Three times! And every single time I did it I always got a another chance! Ponies wouldn't stop forgiving me and smiling patiently whenever I turned their rabbit into a cotton bud or their cottage upside down or their vegetables into monsters! I attempted to stab them both in the front and back and who says I won't do it again?! Botch everything up somehow!? Are you still going to let me free? W-"

He seemed to abruptly lose his breath for a moment. "Will Fluttershy still fight for my sake even if I keep damaging her like this time and time again?"

And then, rather unexpectedly, he crumpled - drawing out an involuntary squeak from Coco- and then curled into a tight ball like the one that he been in before when she had struggled to wake him up. Discord had his hands covering his eyes and his red tail coiled up neatly beside him as he lay motionlessly on the cold cave floor.

Coco's legs had stopped twitching as she lost her fear and the world slowed down, abandoning its jerky quality to resume a normal pace as her breathing was back under control. She had been listening very closely and took the silence as an opportunity to begin to automatically slide the pieces of the puzzle together. The resulting blurry picture made Coco stop and survey Discord (who was now regarding her with some unease) with some sort of strange floaty, fuzzy feeling.

Never what I thought earlier about not living in some type of filly fairytale...

She conveniently forgot that he had been manipulating her since she had fallen into the cave and the feelings were replaced with concern. He looked like had something snapped inside him, breaking him limp, and Coco was too much of a blasted nice pony to leave him alone like that- after some awkward shuffling she carefully advanced as near to him as she dared, which was about three feet from Discord's grey head.

Is he-?

"Oh- Discord-" She cut off, about to finish with 'don't cry', but had the feeling that he would not appreciate her assuming he was in tears. She pretended not to notice and laboriously lowered herself onto her stomach (some muscles were still strained), folding her forelegs underneath her and tilting her head in worry as he failed to react. She had heard detailed and rather fanciful sounding stories of Discord's chaos-causing and with his second release from stone had even been victim to it herself, but that didn't really matter at the moment.
Coco frantically cast about for something that would rouse him from his miserable state, and she remembered that he was somewhat funny and that funny means jokes.

Here goes nothing...

"I, um..." She stopped, ducking her head in uncomfortable embarrassment. The few jokes she had been told were by one of her co-workers, who knew only rather mean-spirited ones. " I-w-what's all black and white and red all over?"
She swallowed at her horrible choice. "A-a penguin in a blend... nevermind that one-"

Discord surreptitiously moved his fingers slightly to peer at Coco, who was determinedly looking everywhere but him. Her attempts were almost award-winningly horrible.

" What had four legs and flies? A d-d-dea...a dead hor- ice-cream! Uh... A flying ice-cream scoop with legs...?"

" What's the difference between a b-buffalo and a bison? You can't- you can't wash your hooves in a bison! Wait, no... that doesn't make sense- I guess that's a good thing-"

" Ah...okay, so Granny Smith walked into a bar, a-and- and then a pole, and then a chair... but then somepony gave her glasses because it would be rude..."

" Why did the changeling bring sandpaper to the desert? He thought it was a map- I mean- I meant- I don't think changelings are stupid, I'm-I'm not biased, I promise..."
Coco tucked her chin into her chest.

"I got it, I got it!" She said triumphantly, leaping to her hooves. "Okay, what's the difference between a guitar and a fish? You can tune a guitar, but you can't tuna fish!"

"Unless," said Discord, suddenly rising up smoothly to his hind legs and looking down at her frozen form. "you play bass."
If he had his powers, there would certainly be that particular 'badum-tss' to accompany his words.

"Okay," she said.

He was now staring at her with his arms now hanging unsurely by his sides.

Not wanting Discord to think that she was simply dismissing his earlier panic, she continued in a firmer tone than she had spoken to him with before- one that resembled a resembled a teacher's when one of their young charges broke down over some math problem.
"Let me iron some things out now. You listened to me and Fluttershy's conversation, that I know. Was that the first time you had seen me?"

He nodded dumbly.

"Then you followed me to the edge of Ponyville, and no further. Right?" Coco was tempted to ask if he had heard her mention how useless she was.

He bobbed his head again.

"So that's how you know I exist. Did you somehow influence me in some way so that I would end up in this particular cave?"

Discord shook his head frantically like a wet dog.

"It was coincidence, then... The entire time we've been here together, you've faked being nicer than you usually are for... actually, that's not so clear..?"

"Not the entire time," he argued. " Only..."

He awkwardly seemed to raise a hand towards the makeshift bandaged arm, before dropping it and looking sheepish. Coco couldn't make heads or tails of this the gesture so she focused on his answer instead, feeling like an interrogator. Does that mean he wasn't pretending to...

"Now, when you were shouting at me-" he flinched- " - about taking over Equestria three times-"

"Trying to..."

" - I got the impression that you're still guilty about the recent incident- wait, I'm not finished- and you're wondering how the ponies could forgive you as you've 'stabbed them in the front and back so many times', meaning you don't exactly trust yourself."

He huffed sourly. "Yes, officer."

"And you kept mentioning Fluttershy."

Discord froze.

"I'm not jumping to conclusions, I'm stating the facts." Coco had at least some idea why he had talked about her in particular- she was the only one to have somewhat unwavering faith in him from the start. And there were also other ideas that she refused to consider.
There's limits to how right I can be.

"In short... you don't want to hurt any more ponies."

"Ponies," he muttered sourly, not facing Coco. "The feelings they make are no fun at all."

"Wait...I-I don't understand. W-what were the motives behind you pretending to be my friend?"

He turned from admiring the wall to Pommel, who looked a little like a lost filly- sitting on her rump with her ears a little droopy. Discord dropped his arms to sides again, watching the mare with some apprehension, and remembering her wholehearted (albeit very horrible) joke- cracking attempts to cheer him up regardless of what he had said right before.

"Oh, please don't make me sacrifice my dignity," he mumbled, too low for her to hear, but still dropped to all fours and came to a stop about two feet away from Coco's face. He hesitantly lowered his head so that his yellow- and red eyes were level with her blue (why did so many ponies have blue eyes?) ones.

Coco stared back into his pleading gaze alertly, her ears pricked.

"So I've been a bit of a prick. Still am, always will be, It's a universally acknowledged fact and all. Even the Twilight and Co. get frustrated more often than not whenever we come in contact with each other. But I do on purpose, you know? I just don't have any sort of motivation to not turn a house into a mass of ferrets or a painting into a waterfall of mustard."

She blinked at him, not understanding why he was choosing to tell her all of this. Was it his way of an apology?

" I don't care about anybody's judgement except Fluttershy."

Of course.

"And you."

"Wha-?" This was the last thing she had been expecting from somebody like Discord.

"Alright, maybe not as much as she does! Just to some extent." He started to look uncomfortable. "I mean, you being mad at me something I'd dislike slightly more than anybody else. Don't take that too seriously!"

"I won't," Coco said solemnly, but she was fighting to keep in a grin.

"I just... I wasn't completely pretending to be your friend."
He seemed to pause, unwilling to explain himself further as rambling on about emotions and gratefulness was excruciatingly mortifying. He carefully extended his lion paw towards her. "Of course, if you don't want to, I would understand completely and solemnly swear to never extract any sort of revenge or change my attitude towards you. Unlike some ponies."

Coco looked at him, the shape of her eyes reminding Discord rather painfully of Fluttershy's. "Discord..."
His eager expression became painfully fixed in place.

And then it morphed into one of horror as Coco suddenly darted under his arms with the speed of a sugar-crazed dragonfly, and forcing Discord to be pushed up as she simultaneously rose to her hind legs and wrapped her forelegs around the base of his neck in a hug gentle chokehold.

"Umph," he squeaked as he was hugged strangled to death. "What is- with you- ponies- and displays of affection?!?"
Thankfully, she released him and he drew back, rubbing his neck. "Oh! I think it's just me..."

"I may have noticed," he grumbled, tapping the side of his face and making Coco duck her head in a glow of embarrassment.

"So!" he suddenly barked, standing straight up and clapping his hands together with a very loud ringing sound, and he took her hoof in his paw and started to energetically pump it up and down, making Coco wobble all over the place. "My deeearest petite new friend Prench Fluttershy Version Two. Would you be able to find it in your figuratively bottomless heart to allow me to properly re-introduce myself once more to properly re-acquaint ourselves to properly be able to perform whichever acts of sufficiently mawkish- or if you would prefer something more saccharine and less sickly, syrupy- friendship that would properly make us the proper sort of properly re-acquainted, re-introduced friends?"

Coco Pommel swallowed, blinking in a rather bemused way. "I think I- I would be able to understand that if I wrote it down... um, I'm Coco Pommel, and I work as a salespony at a Manehatten dress shop."

"John Q de Lancie Discord, immortal chaos and utter nonsense generator extraordinaire," he replied courteously.

"de Lancie-?"

" Full-time absolute bestie of Fluttershy, part-time tormentor of Celestia (and the rest of the world), avid petter of puppies, pillbugs, parrots, pachyderms and to a lesser extent pretty pegasi ponies."

Coco decided to respond in kind, despite her only understanding half of what Discord was saying. " I have a Canterlot royal brother... and..." She had a sudden stroke of genius, "And frequent visitor at a cafe with a banana waiter!"

"Ooh, you're learning. Accomplished archer in Ogres and Oubliettes with the absolute most fabulous hair, I must say!"

" I go ballistic when dirty!" she said confidently, covered in red scratches, a rat's nest mane, gravel in her fur and muddied hooves.

"I was a twice garden gnome in the Canterlot gardens!"

"I'm friends with the Element of Generosity!"

"I'm friends with the best Element of Harmony!" he said loudly.

"I'm friends with three of the Elements of Harmony!" she said even louder, though her feminine voice restricted it to some degree.

"I'm friends with all of the Elements of Harmony!"

"I was friends with a cellist, a DJ, and a sandwich!"

"What do you mean 'was'?"

"It's another long and tragic story!"

"I consist of long and tragic stories!"

"I thought you were sick of long and tragic stories?!"

"My life is one long and tragic story!"

"That's more proof that you're tired of long and tragic stories!"

"I don't think there's anything wrong with your long and tragic stories!"

"That can be taken two ways!"

"I didn't mean the bad way!'

"I know!"

"Does it have something to do with the sandwich?!"

"Yes, it does! And the cellist and the DJ as well!"

"Why exactly is it so long and tragic!?"

"Because it was your fault!"

Coco suddenly slumped, like a doll which suddenly had all of it's strings cut abruptly, drawing a a surprised cry from Discord.

The moment she had managed to get those words out of her mouth, all her burdens had come rushing back like a downpour and settled heavily back down on her shoulders, covering her in newfound despair. No matter where she went, no matter what she did, every single part of every single period of time Coco had wanted to wipe clean would just return as if her efforts were equivalent to lazily waving a flyswatter.

She had managed to keep them at the very edge of her mind for almost two days under all of the new things that were happening to her and she had noticed the improvement in her attitude- no listlessness, no monotone, and a smile on her face. Her success in masking what she was in the inside was very heartening... but of course, there really wasn't any such thing as a happy ending, or amnesia to forget your past, or princes and roses in one's life to chase away all of a mare's nightmares.

It felt so unfair to her. No other mare seemed to have her problems. No other mare had had the kind of heartbreak Coco had been forced to face when she was a filly. No other mare seemed to have any problems with the thought that their relationships felt like scented tissue to Coco- sweet for the ten seconds it lasted but so durable that one single argument would set the entire thing into a billion pieces so they would go moping around everywhere complaining and crying and sobbing on shoulders and such when they really shouldn't have acted on the basis of such flimsy love alone, but really who was a filly like Coco to judge whether or not because she had never felt for anypony in her life what every single love story seemed to preach until they're bursting at the seams?

She felt so derisive towards herself at the moment. All hunched up on the ground and crying silently just because of a single thought. If she was this fragile, then what was the point of trying to pick up all the pieces of her shattered glass soul? Trying to frantically chase after them, gathering the shards in her arms until they bled?

Wow, I look like such an idiot, she thought morosely, looking at her scruffy mane. All those dirt-covered hairs sticking out everywhere like awry springs made her sneer self-deprecatingly. I wonder which shade of mud my coat is now?

She vacantly pushed her mane back and heaved herself off of the floor, but could not summon the will to look the utterly flabbergasted Discord in the eyes. She had to take a few well-timed breaths- her throat had suddenly closed up and was feeling painfully convulsive- before she looked up at him with those eyes that resembled Fluttershy's so much. "Discord, would you like to hear a story?" she said in a suspiciously even voice.

Immediately a defensive stance was adopted. "Coco, I am absolutely serious about saying I don't think-"

"Please..." The cold front she had suddenly put up was melting away fast and she started to quiver. If she didn't tell somepony something, it would eat her up like a wheat grinder inside.

There was no spoken response, but he then carefully adopted a crosslegged stance, settling himself slowly on the cold cave floor.

Coco throat closed up again briefly. "Once upon a time... there was an old house, and five ponies, and chocolate raining through the roof..."
_____________________

The unnatural sticky rain raced in threads across Coco Pommel's flapping sea-blue raincoat as she frantically galloped through the slick cobblestone streets, brandished her ivory umbrella over her head. She hissed in discomfort as she felt the combination of gravel and chocolate milk was getting pasted onto her hooves the more she ran, and the sheet of rain hissed back in response.

Coco skid around the corner and continued at the same hectic pace, dashing past the tall dripping skyscrapers as the cloud- covered sky momentarily flashed magenta and tried to shake the matting liquid from her mane, having conveniently forgotten her rainhat. There were very few other ponies about also seen as running away from the hell the world had suddenly become, some having taken it considerably less well than others from what Coco could see through the furious sheets of beige.

The entire town of Manehatten had turned into a hub for entropy.
The buildings would go from being perfectly normal to grow a number of assorted legs, shrink and run away or melt into what looked like paint but felt like ice. Frogs with dragonfly eyes would gently float from the sky armed with mini cannons that shot lemons at anyone who mentioned somepony by name. The merchandise in shops would come alive, perform a badly made re-enactment of Beauty and the Beast and try to smash anypony who looked at them using carrots and syrup as their main method of attack. The roads would bubble furiously like somepony blowing in water through a straw and then get slowly covered in a thick layer of green or pink vanilla-scented soap (Coco saw somepony admire the smell before resuming their panicked state) and would randomly shout nonsense like 'Dove!' or 'OLAYYY'.

Strangely enough, the sidewalks remained perfectly normal, save for the fact that there would be a sickening snapping sound if anypony set hoof on the cracks.

As Coco barrelled through the chaos the city had become, her hooves splashing the dirty puddles forming on the concrete, she noticed with an overwhelming sense of relief that whatever was left of the buildings were beginning to thin out and become shabbier and smaller. She had to now hop over flat pieces of concrete the sidewalk was now being reduced to to and then she suddenly felt the cool blades of green grass underfoot tickle her hooves.

When she looked back she could see that she had come to the very edge of Manehatten, and now there was nothing but some ruins and a long field of heather and gorse that spanned over hills before turning into a forest.

And about twenty meters away was the lone townhouse.

The roof was made of corrugated sheets of metal and held together with clay and some sort of cheap concrete, and the walls were an alternating patchwork of wood and brick that were hidden in patches of whitewash. There was a hole at the corner to sweep water out of that had a cloth plug next to it, and it was all trailing with ivy and hedges and a rosebush adorning the scant half-fenced backyard that contained little else but a shovel and a plastic tricycle missing the wheels. The house itself has this feeling of being old and welcoming, like someone's wistful grandmother.

Coco carefully picked her way across the muddy path and ducked her head to get through the red chipped doorway that led into a large, square room that branched off into four bedrooms.
It had a white painted chimney- which was already stacked with a bundle of bone-dry sticks that were alight with flame.
She hadn't noticed the smoke coming out of the top of the shack, and her eyes flitted over the four ponies waiting there and staring back at her.

She recognized each one of them. Sitting in a messy circle around the flames and shrouded in a awkward, expectant silence. A grey pony with a casual, intelligent, rich purple stare and flowing black mane that was currently matted and plastered to her body and dripped occasionally. However, Octavia did not look as if she could care less as she steadily returned Coco's gaze.

Sitting next to her was Vinyl Scratch, for once without her ever-present snazzy smile and her glasses up on her head, pushing back her alternating dark blue and neon mane. Her cerise eyes focused on Coco in her unique both intense and vacant way. She appeared to be missing her headphones, but on closer inspection they were by her side, presumably brought in somehow without getting wet (which was a rather smart move, on the whole).

Then it was the curly-maned dorky looking Cheese Sandwich with the signature poncho and hat , whose appearance made her quirk an eyebrow- he had been acting on wanderlust for quite a while now and hadn't been seen in the flesh for six months as he threw parties across Equestria.
He wiggled his eyebrows rapidly in his comic way at Coco, but his expression was haggard under the ever-present mask of cheerfulness.

The last pony's ears went back and he looked away into the fire when Coco's eyes flitted over to him. As always, Fancy Pants must have had the particular expert look of one who was classy without trying too hard when he rolled out of his pristine bed in the morning, but now the white of the shirt underneath the once elegant suit was quite stained. His polished blue hooves were remarkable unscuffed,however, and so was his ('weeny,' thought Coco) mustache and glossy mane. He seems to have no objection to sitting on the bare dusty wooden floor among 'lesser' ponies, she thought with the faint hint of something negative.

Coco examined her brother a second longer than the others, feeling a familiar unease in her stomach that hadn't settled for a long while. Biting her lip, she then carefully settled a little ways from the others, trying to sit as far away as possible without arousing any ill feelings. It was just... after so long... her feelings towards her longtime childhood idols were shaky and tangled at best.

For a while, nopony looked at one another. Pommel was wondering why exactly they had summoned her to their old haunt all of a sudden, and suspected that the utter sudden mind-boggling chaos had something to do with it. She had no idea why it was happening all of a sudden, why her world was now a resembling a literal surreal nightmare, and had tried to act as rationally as possible until a ruffled, wrinkled yellowing envelope had smacked her in her eye when she opened her window that morning to let some seemingly harmless storm air in.

Unsurprisingly, her floor was then beginning to flood with the most horrible messy liquid ever to come out of the sky.

It had been from Octavia, in her mellifluous loopy writing, and had been signed by the scratchy scrawl of Cheese, the neat and small block printing of Vinyl and the cultured calligraphy of her own brother. She remembered how she had struggled not to squeak or cry out, and how she had stuffed her whole hoof in her mouth rather unattractively and how her throat had twisted painfully for a moment. So long...

And a voice came out to break the silence. Hearing it after it had been so long, it had at first taken a while for Coco to recognize it.
"Hey, my little filly," Vinyl laughed, scooched closer to her and then nabbing her in a headlock which made Coco squeal. "Long time no see, eh? What's with the quiet? Cat gotcha tongue?" She then proceeded to give Coco a fierce noogie and ruffled her sticky matted mane even more. Pommel gave a helpless sort of laugh, pushing futilely at the floorboards. It was if they were fillies again, with Coco being teased as the youngest.

Her laugh broke the tension and cleared to air. Feeling almost festive despite the hellscape that was outside, guiltily relieved not to have to deal with the expected discomfort, the other ponies started to join in laughing- Octavia's musical laugh, Cheese's easy laugh, and then slowly came the deep-throated chuckle of Fancy Pants. Octavia, in a display that was highly unusual for her, wrapped her forelegs around the two and squashed them together, and then hesitantly the esteemed noble Fancy Pants came over to put a hoof around the gaggle too-

'PIG PILE!"

With sudden panicked squeals, the mares scattered as Sandwich launched himself bodily into the air and came down upon them with a tremendous practiced belly flop- however, Coco's brother was not fast enough on the uptake and thus was promptly squashed.

When the dust settled, the three mares anxiously leaned forward in tandem to look at the bedraggled figure spread-eagled on the ground with his eyes closed. Cheese quickly scrambled off him.

'...Oh, gee, I didn't manage to accidentally squash him to death, did I?" he said uncertainly, also leaning forwards with them. They all looked at each other.

"Uh, bub? Any last words?" Vinyl poked him.

"Fancy?" Coco said worriedly in her soft voice.

Keeping his eyes firmly shut, he muttered, "Tell my father I died and it was very sad and that I am unfortunately unable to do his tax reruns now in the afterlife."

There was another round of laughter that made the walls ring, which Coco joined after some hesitation at the mention of her father.

Coco had been terrified when she had entered the house and had seen all of them arranged there,feeling the compulsive order to run coming from the part of her mind that shied away from social activity as if they were the Princesses themselves. She had had absolutely no idea of what to say to them and wasn't even able to ask why they had summoned her. Coco had also been scared at the thought that because of the wearing effects of time, they would no longer be able to communicate with one another as they did when need forced them together in those cold companionable nights.

But as they were all sitting near the fire in a much tighter circle with the horrific conditions outside forgotten, it felt as if nothing had changed since they were foals- to Coco it actually felt as if they were all foals again. Before this, after the events which made them grow apart had she been able to laugh like that, or had seen any other adult to act so immature or so close as they had done. Even with her brother, with whom she had very strained relations with, seemed to have left their circumstances behind as well as one in the situation could and was talking to her as if they were old friends (which they technically were).

Since she had matured, she hadn't even really thought it possible for someone grown to have so much joy in them as she was feeling through her heart now.

She would hear the croaking of one of those insane lemon wielding frogs as it slowly drifted onto the roof, and then a frown then curled it's way down her face. She absently reached up to fiddle with her red clip as the fire made shadows dance across her skull in the approaching darkness. Octavia, who she was right next to, was well attuned enough to know what she was thinking and pulled herself back from her own thoughts as she watched with her default morose look into the flickering flames, and turned her head to look at her.

"I just..." Vinyl and Cheese started, having drifted off for a bit, while Fancy glanced at her without moving his own head. "I mean... does anypony know why everything is so..."

"Out of whack?" Cheese offered.

"Insane-o lame-o?" Vinyl seconded.

"Quite out of the ordinary?" Fancy corrected

"All of them?" Octavia said in her rich tone.

"I mean, the sky's raining cow juice-" Vinyl started.

"That's disgusting," Cheese mumbled.

"-and the roads have turned into those decorative scented rose soap my grandmother keeps in her kitchen sink cabinet-"

"That's a rather exclusive remark," Fancy said.

"Aren't those expired and poisonous?" Cheese asked. "Remember you tried to eat them once, because you thought they were made of bubblegum?"

"They had ' Sweet Candy Touch' written all over them..." Coco mumbled.

"Good times," Vinyl reminisced. "But, so, yeah. I can way see what you're trying to say there. I mean-"

The tin roof creaked, making the five lookup at the shadows across it rather uneasily. There was an extensive web of long-legged spiders in the corner, but the inhabitants were fleeing- presumably due to the storm- and then a thin trickle of something dark began to flow down the side.

Coco froze up, suddenly starting to feel some kind of ice in her bones. "Wait-"

Before she could utter another word, with a terrible and eerily animal screech the roof suddenly tore away from the mix of clay and concrete that had cemented it to the wall entirely, leaving nothing but the roaring mass of dark pink cotton-like clouds and the occasional scrap of orange and red evening sky.

The ponies leapt to their hooves and then there was a mad sort of helter-skelter scramble as the fireplace was put out by the rain which began to assault them as well. "Take cover!" Cheese yelled out, before remembering he had a poncho. "Oh. Wait. Over here! Guys!"

Vinyl was the first to pop up by his side under the extensive square of cloth, followed by Fancy who shook his wet hooves resignedly and then Octavia and Coco. They all quietly peeped out at the rain, and the true danger of the roof being ripped off began to slowly sink into them. Coco bit her lip- it was all so fine just a minute ago, how could everything have wrong all of a sudden? It was so quick she had barely any time to react to it.. One moment laughing, the next trying not to get blinded by this ungodly rain...

"About this ungodly rain," Octavia said and Coco started. "It's being caused by the escape of Discord."

The utterly casual and flat way she said that line left Coco baffled. She whipped her head around to stare at her, her mouth slowly falling open. "No way."

"I am not joking," she promised.

Coco just stared at her, then stared up at the sky and then back at her again, as if it would make her words false or something. The entity of Chaos had escaped from his prison? "But.. th-the Elements, and the Princesses..."

Everypony looked round at her now. "I.. that's a really, really bad thing..." she trailed off. She still couldn't let it sink in. Discord? The one to took over Equestria and all? In the span of one day had suddenly erupted out to do all this?

She started to feel a little queasy. She knew that this moment of reconciliation may have provided her a brief sense of happiness, but she had her life to live- and she knew by now, after all of those bumps on the road she had been forced to face that was her family, she wouldn't have this peace for long. Something was obviously going to go wrong- her whole life had been based on that .
Perhaps a little too literally.

This was his doing?

Coco had at one point been an avid fan of history- she liked to read about the much more exciting lives the ponies had back then when comparing to the present one she was living.
And then she grew up, and then understood what it meant to die and then history had become much less fun. Sometimes, out of the idiocy that was her heart, she would cry over some dead ponies' troubles, hunched over a crinkled book in the darkness of midnight and a single dying flashlight.

She remembered how she had wanted to live in the period of Discord, and even when Coco started to read about the more morbid times of Equestria she would purposefully try to find nothing wrong with him. As a dressmaker, she should naturally be repulsive of the utter disorderliness and clash he was made to create- but she had never really felt that way, never really wondered about it.

He had the seemingly limitless power to do absolutely anything ever there was imaginable and thus was the very epitome of the creativity Coco cherished- it had seemed like some kind of daydream a foal would come up to escape the boredom of their lessons. Some very imaginative hero sort.

She had even wanted to be friends with Discord when she was young, she had wanted to be his adviser and tell him about all the kinds of cool things he could do.

Other foals would collect dolls, action figures- while she did collect as many dressable dolls as she could snag, the main focus of her room was the patchwork Discord plushie that had lost it's cunning yellow glass eyes to be replaced with buttons. The Discord lamp that had an arm Superglued backwards (until it drove her nuts and she broke it again to fix it). The drawing of Discord in a suit she made when she was thirteen (which was her proudest masterpiece for quite a while) and that prized vinyl Discord figure with moveable limbs that only had the tip of his tuft and an ear chipped off.

Most teenagers have had posters of celebrities in their rooms put up at some time of their life and their favourite topic was to talk about them and/or exchange such related merchandise and autographs (which were, according to them, utterly to die for). Coco had that phase, only hers came with a bit of a problem- she couldn't really get an autograph from somebody locked in stone.

Her mother treated it with heavy disdain and her father with paternal disapproval used reserved for a coltfriend (Coco realised that at some point and was then a little creeped out by how obsessive she had become and quietly got rid of the evidence, except for the aforementioned three). Her brother treated it with more or less resignation; Coco brought up one of the positive memories associated with him- they were all sitting at a small, round plain wooden dining table when her parents brought up the subject to guage her brother's reaction.
She remembered him saying in his even then stentorian voice, "Well, it could be worse", and herself puffing up with triumph.

And now she was in the period of Discord, and she felt like her filly self was such an airhead.
Only one day into the madness and already she was wanting to cry from it. Chaos was chaos for a reason- it existed to disregard being told to do. It was the opposite of Order, which was everypony being told what to do and doing it utterly flawlessly.
And she had wanted to go stand by his throne made of wacky whatever and salute whenever he passed by. And be addressed personally. And give him makeovers, and bring him his tea and get a big fat helping for 'being a good the best little filly'. It was actually a little frightening to her now, how subservient she used to be- or was she still? It was rather hard to notice these type of traits about oneself, and she could never acquire the gall to ask anypony else if it was normal. Nopony would notice anything about herself anyways- she was good at building herself a metaphorical shell.

I'm an ignorant weenie, she thought bitterly, using Vinyl's name for such a pony. All I can do is fantasize about being walked all over, scrap together cloth and lie.

"What happens now?" Vinyl asked into the rapidly darkening gloom.
The puddles of milk that were trying to form just spilled out through the hole in the corner and she could hear the resident family of rabbits scuffling around under the house. Coco wondered how the milk was going to affect the wildlife.

"When is it going to end?" Coco asked quietly, her eyes luminous in the almost unnaturally fast approaching night.

They all looked at her, and She felt that little worm of nausea in her stomach wriggle. What if it didn't end? The technical problems associated with that were astoundingly many- to just name one that branched off many times, life as normal would be impossible with the weather and the buildings melting or running away and everything. She was feeling scared now, and scared especially of the threat of repeated tyranny. I was so, so stupid...

The crickets were silent, hindered by the rain. Octavia comfortingly snaked a foreleg around Vinyl's neck, and hesitantly Fancy Pants on Coco's other side leaned in a little after a moment's consideration. "When all's said and done," he said to her in a low voice, "you must really remind to repay your favours."

"Uh?"

He leaned in. "I ate your ice-cream," he whispered guiltily.

Coco struggled to bring up the incident, when her tub of vanilla in the fridge had gone suddenly missing a day after her birthday. Due to some circumstances she couldn't buy another one to replace it either, and had to make do with the absolute worst sweater in the world- stereotypically itchy and mustard yellow with misspelled words made of yarn cherries on the sides- 'HAPP HEART WARMING' (Coco's birthday fell in December, so her family used to hid half of the presents she received for her birthday and reserve them as 'Hearth Warming's gifts').

"...meanie." she slumped. Coco then sighed. "I don't even like ice-cream."

Fancy Pants shook his head mockingly. "A filly who does not like ice cream? I believe you would be the sad exception instead of the rule."

"Oh, happy day." she mumbled.

"The walls look like they're crying," Vinyl suddenly spoke up, sounding unnerved.

Everypony poked their heads out of the poncho that covered them to take a better look. It was very eerie- the walls did indeed look as if they were bleeding out as drops would well up from the stained brown walls and drip down the sides. Coco tried to place the phenomenon from the textbook extracts she once diligently studied, but the only thing she could vaguely conjure was 'limestone' which made absolutely no sense. Cheese in particular looked very nervous at the sight, eyeing the house apprehensively, probably matching it up to some form of nightmare.

And a nightmare this night was. It was pure luck that some annoying creature hadn't come in to blast them into pieces and the rain was now thinning out from hammering sheets into a sort of drizzle. Coco caught Cheese Sandwich trying to catch the drops on his tongue.

"Maybe it'll end if we ask nicely?" Coco suggested halfheartedly. Whatever worked...

"Oh yes. Absolutely brilliant." Cheese monotoned, quirking an eyebrow at Pommel. "'Yes, please Mister Discord sah, I'm the most pwettiest mare in allll the land, so wouldcha do a widdle favour for a widdle filly here and pwease just put yourself back into stone? Just this once?' And then you flap your eyes all like this-" he demonstrated 'flapping his eyes' which was an unflattering version of a mare batting her eyelashes. Vinyl sniggered, which at least seemed to take her mind off of the oozing walls, and Coco just stuck out her tongue at him. "Nyehh.".

"Very mature."

She then turned to the night and then cleared her throat. Normally, in front of any other pony in the world she would have never done this unless on threat of death, but with the ponies she had spent most of her life with she could make an exception.
It did not mean she would do it gracefully, however. Her face prickled rather uncomfortably.

Things have been defeated in more unorthodox ways before...

"She's serious," Vinyl said, briefly raising her glasses. "Glasses off to you, dear filly."

Coco huffed. "Okay. Um, Mister Discord? Could you please stop the raining? I mean, I know it's fun to spread chaos in all the land, but it won't be fun if there isn't any land to begin with... because I don't think this is so healthy, I mean from what I learned in my..text..books...um... nevermind?"

For both Cheese Sandwich and Vinyl Scratch were busy laughing hard into the night, and as laughter was often stated to be contagious first Fancy Pants and then Coco and Octavia joined in the chorus too.
The rain did not really seem to appreciate their mirth, however, and kept on throwing itself down purposefully.

"Ahhh...well...It was good as long as it lasted," Fancy Pants said, pausing to take off his monocle and contemplate cleaning it, until he saw the state of his suit and mournfully tucked it in his breast pocket.

"We need to find a way out of this chaos," Octavia said evenly, surveying the puddly landscape before her.

"Yes..." Coco felt her heart sink and settle uncomfortably on her stomach. The reality of the situation was coming back down on her back again, and then she worriedly looked at her friends. "I can't seem to think of anything..."

And then at the very moment Coco finished her sentence, the clouds raced away from a suddenly robin's-egg blue sky so fast it looked as if they were having a desperate race. Utterly bemused, the five watched them slide smoothly over the horizon, and then looked up at the completely normal atmosphere above them, with the position of the sun suggesting somewhere around five.

The puddles of chocolate rain then seemed to drain into the ground, leaving the floor completely dry and exactly as dusty as it had been before the whole ordeal. Threads of liquid also drained rapidly from the walls, as if it were some strange barrel with an uncountable number of needle pricks in it. It all happened simultaneously, and Coco could hear the birds starting to call out from overhead as if nothing had ever happened in the first place. The roof did not fly back in place, however.

Coco looked at her friends, who all wore the same deadpan expression.

And then for the fourth time that day, they all started laughing.

______________________________________________________________________

Coco had left the house feeling the spring in her step bounce her up to newer heights. The buildings seemed brighter, the sky seemed more colourful, and the ponies were between a mix of relieved, grumpy or haggard. They glanced at her in a rather annoyed fashion as she skipped past them, humming a hopelessly out of sync tune.

She laughed a little, just to see how it sounded. Funny how something being taken away and then given again makes it seem more precious. She turned in a circle and felt her possessions- especially a thread of rainbow yarn around a spool- bump against her side in her saddlebags.

She daintily stepped over the cracks in the sidewalk, then broke off at a run when she reached the outskirts of the town. Just yesterday she had been running with an utterly different set of mind- terrified and bewildered and confused. Now it was if nothing could go wrong- the streetlamps above her stood tall and weary, the cabs trundled past, the pidgeons cooed, and she felt happy like a baby bird in it's nest. All cozy and snug.

The grass under her hooves tickled her as she tested its bounce. Some little yellow flower was beginning to bloom on some of the weeds scattered around the plains, and there was a multitude of white butterflies flickering around, landing on the rims and testing their worth. They took to the air with a flutter and glided away smoothly when Coco ran her hooves above them.

As Coco stepped out onto the dirt path flanked by shoots of dandelion and clover, she paused and cocked her head to one side, and then the other in polite puzzlement. There was a strange sound in the distance, like somepony tapping a bell lightly with a hammer, and then another noise like a avalanche of and rolling off from a height. Coco's ears tilted forward in interest and her flicked her tail.

She neared the edge of the valley that led to the house and looked down.

If there had been somepony around to watch, they would have described an eerie mannequin with a very painful smile fixated on it's face that collapsed woodenly and jerkily as if somepony had cut its strings. Coco honestly believed that she had fainted- her fur stood on end, her eyes seemed to tear into the back of her head, her legs folded in on themselves like moldy sticks.

Nothing. Absolutely nothing. There was absolutely nothing there. There was no house. It had died. Dead.
It was as dead as a house could be.

The exact same place that had sheltered five fillies from the wrath of their lives. The exact same house that had cocooned them when nopony else in the world knew their pain. The exact same house and had stood for two decades without a single sign of falter, the same that withstood anything nature tried to throw at it, the same that had only flagged, that had only shown how murdered on the inside it was when on the night of the decent to madness that was Discord.

And now there was nowhere for Coco to go.
It had been her refuge when whatever scraps of family she had left had tied themselves down to her and weighed her down as if she was a criminal committing the crime of just being born and sentenced to be wrapped with stones and thrown to the bottom of the ocean to drown silently where nopony else would ever hear or care about what happened to the quiet little dressmaking pony whom nopony would notice if she had disappeared.

In the exact same day, the exact same hour, the exact same universe where there was only nightmares upon nightmares happened up on her shoulders she had been happy.
With the sickly fire of horror climbing in her blood, she thought of how a minute ago she had been singing in the wake of this death. She had dared once more to let herself feel, she told herself that she deserved it once in a while, and then of course the higher up you go the harder the fall and this was the hardest fall she could ever take.

She stumbled down the hill, her legs moving mechanically back, front, back, front as her mind seemed to fracture with everything being viewed through broken glass. She slumped in front of the ruins, utterly isolated.

There was a skeleton made of rust where it had been, with grey rocks as crumbly as cookies littering the landscape- so crumbly that to some extent there was only blowing sand and dust. The chimney had fallen and broken into more pieces than a pegasus had feathers. The bell sound Coco had heard was a scrap of metal clinking against another, calling out in the darkness. The wind swirled the dust around into little tornadoes.

Limestone. Rain would corrode it until it was as fragile and as withstanding as a sponge.
For twenty five years the house had been trying to remind them of this and then its desperation shone through- the milk rain bleeding through its walls. It had become so full of holes like her soul that it could be filled with liquid and have it gush out like a bucket that was broken beyond belief.

Coco realised her eyes were as dry and gritty as the bones of the shack and she was wet. They tiredly flickered around the site, trying to find the piece that she and the others had written their name on, and they instead found a blue plastic sign with something official written on it in white words Coco's mind did not decipher.

It was a little strange. Coco could feel her hell of emotions slowly starting to... drain away.
That was the proper word- they were swirling around and pouring out of her slowly. As she looked at the house, she could not for the life of her remember why she was crying so much. She frowned.
It was only a place where she used to hang out as a kid and she was crying like a foal at a funeral.
Her mind seemed to feel lighter somehow.

Coco picked herself up and then extracted her spool of rainbow thread. For a while. she contemplated tying it around a beam or something, but the action seemed more and more pointless the longer she stood there, as the construction ponies would simply return to finish their job and it would be a waste of material.

She turned tail and walked up the hill, sparing a glance back- the butterflies seemed to have all disappeared and the grass wasn't as green anymore. As she restarted on the path, she started to have all kinds of ideas boil in her mind.
She reached town and the intersection which would lead to the apartment she and some of her blood relatives would be living in.

She had already made up her mind- she was never going to live there again- they had obviously trying to push her away for so long, so there really wasn't any contest about it.

She would pack up her things, gather her Discord monuments and smash them against the wall until they were as shattered as she was and then set it on fire, and then head out into the unknown. It wasn't as if things could get an worse, as they were at the bottom of the well already. She had a healthy amount of bits, and she had seen an advertisement for somepony who was subservient and had a talent for fashion which fitted her rather well.

Only this morning I had been singing about a hole in a bucket and skipping down the road, she thought wryly. And now I've come from a home broken twice. I wonder if Fancy and the others know?

She never saw them again.
_________________________________

Coco tucked a strand of her mane behind her cream ear matter-of-factly, wondering exactly why she had elected to tell one of the least sympathetic beings in the world something that would be regarded among other ponies as immensely sensitive.
Or maybe that was the reason. She didn't want to be treated like glass, or she would grow into that image again and once more get crushed all over.

She didn't really expect it, but she actually felt a little more filled out, telling somepony about her problems. It was as if somebody had taken some very heavy bags from her that she was trying to lug around all by herself.
Pommel had been sitting in her usual position, on her haunches like a cat, and she shifted a little. She knew that while she wasn't very thirsty or hungry yet, it would only be a matter of time before it happened and then she would become uncomfortable. More uncomfortable than it already was, sitting in this cold and dark cave.

It was amazing to her how utterly casually she had been able to treat Discord, since he was somewhat directly responsible for what she remembered was the destruction of her entire childhood. She brought up the rush of emotions that had come down on her when she had seen the house destroyed and how they had suddenly and worryingly dissipated like that. She'd had gotten much better with help since then, but she couldn't still remember fully why the destruction had affected her so badly.

She liked cloudy days but now she just really wanted the sun on her mane again. The question of how to get out was starting to return to the front of her mind. Coco summoned the will to look at Discord.

"Um..." she stared, getting to all fours. "Discord, you're flashing rainbow colours...."

"Hmm." He arched his neck to look down at himself, and found he was indeed blinking very rapidly like a dizzying broken neon sign. " That's very interesting and how absolutely WONDERFUL!"

Coco had been covering her eyes with her foreleg because he was really rather hard to look at, what with the flashing and all, and squealed and leapt back when he had shouted so loudly.
Immediately she covered her eyes again, backing up a little in panic, as he seemed to glow twenty times brighter and washed the entire cave in white light. It was like trying to look into a flashlight or the sun itself. "Discord!?" she yelped and the space was being with a sound of a roaring crowd getting steadily louder.

And then there was a resounding snap and everything quietly ceased, to be replaced with the sound of... the sea. Or at least, she suspected it to be the sea having never visited it. She was tilting gently back and forth with the noise of burbling, crashing waves.

Coco dared to open her eyes a slit and then dropped her foreleg away from her face limply.

The crags and confining walls of the cave had disappeared to be replaced with the endless expanse of a sky that was painted with a soft orange theme in mind. Closest to the drowning sun and spreading across the horizon was all red and flowing pink and purple and surrounded by an orange halo. The outskirts were creamy white and grey with the underbelly of thick twirls of clouds.

Coco had been correct about it being the sea- only this was the strangest body of water she could think of. The waves were rounded like the bubbles on bubblewrap and the water itself was so blue it looked like some kind of energy drink. When she looked down, she saw that there were ravens skimming the water- but instead of prowling on the surface, they were under it and flipped upside down as if gravity had been turned around.
Koi (but weren't they freshwater fish?) flickered and glittered like large flocks of birds, and when Coco examined the sky she found that there were great serpents diving in and out of the clouds.
When Coco looked down she saw that she was on a raft made of multiple long spools of different types of cloth, each all the same beige colour.

And then she happened to catch a glimpse of her legs. With a gasp she found out that they had been completely cleaned of all of the dirt that had matting it through to the roots of her fur and there was no mud anywhere on her body. She quickly sifted through her mane and felt it to be free of any tangles or matted clumps and possibly a touch more soft than usual.

It all made her very dizzy. She couldn't really tell which way was up or down what with the way the animals were acting.

Pommel took the situation rather well. To her credit, she didn't scream or call out- she only looked around a little wildly for Discord, who was obviously the one who cast this. The question which puzzled her was how- didn't he say that he had his powers missing? Did he have them all along but was keeping them just to toy with her even further?

"Uh...? Discord?"

As if on cue, suddenly a large image of Discord's face filling the sky, quirking his eyebrows impossibly fast. Coco stared back, blinking bewilderedly. "Hello," she said politely.

The Discord face erupted into sudden uproarious laughter. "Oh, but don't you love what I've done with the place?"

"It's very creative," Coco said. "I like the colours of the sky and the fish..."

"If you're satisfied by this exceedingly simple display, my dear," he said, rolling his eyes. "then I can at least be certain that you'll be blown away- " a large fan was conjured out of nowhere and splashed dismally into the sea, "- by what I've got in store for you~" His head disappeared after a bout of laughter which started to sound a little maniacal.

He then appeared on her boat with a flash in his normal form (or as normal as he was) and stuck his arms out to the sides as if welcoming a large audience. Coco started to clap with genuine interest which certainly did seem to please him. He handed back her clip which Coco gratefully reapplied to her mane.

"What exactly do you have in store?" Pommel then asked, sensing that this was the question he wanted her to ask.

"You can't even dream of a millionth of the things I can do by performing a simple snap of my talons," he said in a superior tone. "and of course, being one of the precious few ponies in the world for whom I would do something for..."

Coco's ears perked up and she felt a silly grin stretch it's way across her face. She couldn't really help it- this kind of thing happening was supposed to be only something she would daydream of, and now it was all coming to life- all real and everything, something she could touch with her hooves, almost like how she wished for it to be so many times when she was a foal.

Thinking of when she was a foal reminded her of the reasons she had let go of that dream. She drew her eyebrows together, momentarily forgetting about the world of wonders she could help make.

"Is it- is it going to affect anyone?" she asked worriedly. Was this huge sea an actual place, an illusion or something he just created- and if so, where did it exist? "How even..."

"Quite a lot of bothering with physics which you wouldn't be able to understand," he said. " And it won't make a mark on anybody if you don't want it to."

Coco realized what he was saying and started to hold her breath. "I can... do whatever I want?"

He spread his hands and arched his eyebrows. "It's the least I can do."

"Ooooh!" she squealed, and Coco started to hop around the raft in a manner rather like Pinkie Pie's. "I can do anything? Anything I want?"

She didn't wait for his answer and then leapt up in front of him, standing as tall as she could in an effort to be as level with him as possible. "Can you...."

What she considered to be the absolute best idea ever made suddenly popped into her head and started to grow into a plan. "Can you make a Patapon?" she said eagerly.

He blinked and then steepled his fingers over his snout. "Hmm. Well. You see, I can't exactly create complex life forms."

Coco blinked. "I thought you had no rules?"

"I don't," he said. "It's simply that there are other... deities, lets say, which control that sort of thing. They would actively try to 'kick my flank out', so to speak, if I dared to enter their realms..."

Coco sagged momentarily, then she realized she was being rather ungrateful and popped back up. "It's okay, I'll just-"

"Hmmm..." he surveyed with a bit of a troubled expression, and then laughed. " I supposed there's a first time for everything, then?"

"What do you mean?"

"Why don't we just try this once?" he said, starting to bring his hands together.

"But Discord, you said that the other deities-"

"Would try, of course- but only if they can catch me first!"

Coco looked very apprehensive. "Are you sure?"

"Are you asking me?" he said in that superior tone again and grinned down at her. "Ready to go?"

"I trust you," she said. "Okay.."

After a moment's hesitation, Discord snapped his talons, but unlike the others the sound from this one seemed to reverberate in the air as if it was something solid.

A space in front of Coco as large as her started to shimmer like the air on an exceedingly hot day. Both watched it interestedly, Discord looking a little strained as he kept his talons pressed hard together.
Then the shimmery space started to turn black- blacker than any kind Coco had ever seen before, so black it felt as if it making her blind, and air started whooshing into the rip and out of the air as if it was a vacuum cleaner.
Coco leaned forward, her heart buzzing with excitement- what would it look like? What would it think of her?- and she noticed that it was starting to have some depth like a tunnel. And just like a tunnel, Coco could see something at the other end- like a very small painting, or looking through the wrong end of a telescope.

She realised that the sounds seemed to have faded away, that there was only something like wind blowing through her ears- and it really did feel like through her ears- and that Discord was saying something maybe, and that it felt as if she was deep underwater. Her sinuses were throbbing, her eyes were heavy and her heartbeat was loud like a river through her head...

And then Coco cried out but no sound came, only empty buzzing in her throat, and that she was being flowed down through a tube and that there was no difference between her eyes closed or open...

She felt as if she her bones were made of helium as her center of gravity started to shift and now she was falling sideways and turning over and over and feeling quite scared and maybe she would hit the ground and splatter everywhere, and it was like one of those nightmares where you wake up from falling flailing your limbs only it wouldn't stop and it was real and where was Discord?

And then finally, Coco fell with an almighty splash into a river.