Dearest Heart let out a long, continuous sigh that carried with it some of the weight from today’s slew of unfortunate deliveries. She had misread and misdelivered no less than nine letters and packages based on her simple inability to keep her eyes focused. Then she had misdelivered five more packages because apparently, ponies thought doing algebra via cutie marks and esoteric symbols was a suitable replacement for these things called addresses and then got MAD at her when she took her best guess and got it wrong.

Two letters had been dropped in a stream. Really, that was hardly her fault though, that tree came out of nowhere and hurt like the dickens.

She tried to perk herself up with a sandwich when the high from this morning’s muffin binge wasn’t enough to keep her going, and then another letter caught fire during her lunch break because it was too close to a candle… that she’d lit in hopes of her darling joining her. She knew he was busy, but hope springs eternal...

Why bother preemptively setting ambiance if it was just me trying to eat a daisy sandwich?

Oh, her stomach rumbling reminded her she’d also delivered half of the same daisy sandwich to Bulk-Biceps by mistake and that was gone-daddy-gone.

It had been, to put things mildly, a bad day. Though one devoid of her ‘helping’ in her husband’s workshop and accidentally unmaking portions of reality that ponies probably would need. So... all in all, it could have been a worse day, except it was also bad because not helping meant not getting to be near him.

Thinking of him, Dearest gathered up a length of the long, multicolored scarf of earth tones and gave it a little sniff. The warm, comforting scent of her husband immediately filled her nostrils and a content smile flooded across the stress that had started a colony on her face. It had been hours, agonizing hours since she had been with her dearest, but the scarf was the next best thing to having him around.

The day wasn’t particularly chilly, but the scarf was a good thing to keep on hoof to immediately make her feel better, except for those times where its length meant it got caught on doors, branches, small fillies, and then she’d face plant hard into the ground…

Those times where almost all the times.

DH took another small sniff.

Worth it!

DH gently wrapped the length of scarf around her neck and glanced at her blue mailbag. Another thing that reminded her of her husband, as he had made it for her. It was perfect in every way, from the buckles that managed to keep her mail inside even during the worst crashes, to that little gold name tag with the adorable little picture of a muffin on it.

Her stomach grumbled again, reminding her loudly that if dinner was also mishandled as lunch had been there would be consequences.

Well, let’s get this last one over with…

She opened the mailbag, fighting the urge to cringe as she haphazardly rummaged a foreleg in the empty space. The bag was deceptively larger on the inside, which made it difficult to find things, but saved her many clumsy trips back to the post office for her route due to the sheer capacity of it.

“Yes!” she declared to nopony around her as her forehoof touched… something? She reached in with her other forehoof and pulled out a package that was shaped like no-shape that had or would exist before in reality. Squinting with her lazy eye, she could see that the address was actually haphazardly written across several surfaces, some of which couldn’t possibly exist in this plane of relatively predictable physics, as well as several glyphs, hints, and riddles that danced across her eye in the form of a mysterious tapestry of directions that threatened to destroy her concept of what was real and not and also possibly threaten her brain with eminent melting.

DH let out a gasp.

“Yay! An easy one! Finally!” She gleefully cheered as she clutched the un-item to her chest.

With effort deceptive of what most considered a handicap, DH flapped her wings hard and was suddenly above the thatched roof houses and tree line of Ponyville. She squinted with both her focused eye and ‘lazy-but-actually-the-hardest-working-eye-in-Equestria-thank-you-very-much’ as she used a forehoof to shield them from the sun. “There it is!” she declared excitedly. Far too excited for her own good, DH flapped her wings and flew past a pair of houses into a Ponyville park in a literal fashion as she smashed her forelegs against the ground and went into a roll across the empty grass and walkways until she stopped with her hooves in the air and her walleyes staring up at a placid frog, next to a red mushroom, that seemingly watched her with a detached interest.

Smiling to herself, DH focused her eyes on the frogs’ and watched as its frog lips moved perfectly horizontally across its face and its eyes shifted as if it had a quick glimpse of the future and knew, unequivocally, that death comes for us all in due time, and perhaps the hour was nigh. Despite this new bit of existential dread the animal was suffering, it hopped onto the mushroom, and offered a croak followed by a raspy, “Password, please.”

Dearest scrambled to her hooves and began to brush dirt away from her beloved scarf and mail bag. “Whatever! It’s Two-thousand-and-Nineteen!” she said in an uncharacteristically indignant tone. Both the words, tone, and metaphysical un-vibrations she exuded were accepted, clearly, as the frog opened its mouth and shot out its sticky tongue.

DH was immediately pulled into a soft-purple swirling vortex and then flew out of it into a whole new world. Her wings extended and she did her best to pick some sort invisible plane to right herself on as she was now clearly in a land where gravity was more a guideline than law. She looked up, down, left, right, all at once with both her eyes to take in as much as what was going on in the land as possible. The place blew a wind that was magically intensified as the black sky to her left began to rain blood. Without a moment to lose, Dearest shoved the scarf into the mailbag as she heard the disdainful shrieks of what must have been living furniture or pirates from the house relatively right and below her, on account of how often she was hearing concerns over ‘wooden legs’.

As the bloody rain fell sideways into her, a content smile formed on her lips.

Magic was something that Dearest Heart thought was ‘very good’, and one of her eyes could see it permeate and swirl chaotically through even the smallest molecule of this peculiar land.

The rain fell like leathery sheets atop DH’s ghost as she hovered down to the house with the blood-covered package.

She rapped a hoof gently across the door. “Special delivery!”

There was a crash, a snarl, and then a cannon shot as a lead ball tore through the wall scant few inches from Dearests face.

“I’m coming! I’m coming!”

Dearest Heart leaned over and peered into the house. If one discounted the fact that the furniture was alive, armed with cutlasses and flintlock pistols, and also engaged in multiple sword-fights with the homes’ pony-goat-dragon-griffon owner, it was a perfectly lovely and normal house.

Oh, and the owner? He just shimmered and glowed with an aura unlike anything DH had seen before. He was easily top 10, one of the most astoundingly beautiful creatures she had ever seen, after her dear husband and loving family, of course!

“Take your time!” Dearest said cheerily.

The unmistakable entity known as Discord placed his lion’s paw on the arm of his eagle talon and pulled away a bit of his arm revealing a watch as he fought off cutlasses with a trio of his own swords taped to his feet and tail. “You’re early!” he cried angrily. “Several weeks so, in fact!”

Dearest Heart let out a mirthful chuckle. “Well, that’s a first! No pony has ever been mad at me for delivering their package early before!”

Discord produced two flint-lock pistols and fired them into a woodgrain ottoman with purple cushioning. The bullets connected and the ottoman stumbled through the fray of fighting furniture before collapsing and gasping “The treasure … is buried ... in ... castle Argh!” as his other limbs fought off the chairs, end table, and the couch that had banded together.

“Look, no pony, and I mean no pony has ever been able to locate my home in anything less than two weeks with the packages that are sent to me! They can’t follow simple directions! So, either you’ve stumbled here by sheer dumb luck or you don’t even exist.” Discord reached behind his back and produced a simple black grenade with a fuse he dropped amongst his attackers who all scattered.

“Hide!” screamed the couch. “No! Not behind me!” it pleaded as the other furniture piled behind it.

“Yar!” cried the end table. “Time ya be takin’ one for the team!”

“Curse you, Black-Handle! I’ll see you in HE—”

“KABOOM!”

“So, which is it?!” Discord demanded. “Are you lucky or are you even real, hmmm?”

Dearest Heart just laughed. “Oh, I’m very real, but I’m not lucky! I simply followed your instructions to the letter! Even the imaginary ones.”

Discord’s eyes widened and his expression went blank. Not only was this pony observing a multitude of things that she should consider outside the bounds of possibility, had she really followed his instructions regarding the package he mailed to himself just to make whatever hapless mail pony that had the misfortune of delivering it work harder in their entire lives to deliver it. This pony apparently couldn't care less about his antics, had followed his direction with ease, and paid no mind to the fact she was covered in blood.

“He’s distracted!” Cried Black-Handle. “Yar! Resume the attack!”

His expression unchanging, Discord snapped his fingers and the house immediately struck an iceberg he had just created and began to take in water only through the new gouge in his home.

“Shiver me timbers!”

“We get it! You’re a pirate!” a comfy-looking baby blue colored easy chair said in a feminine voice.

“We’ve struck ice!” Black-Handle declared. “All is lost! To the lifeboats!”

“Captain!” began one of the chairs. “They mutinied and you left them adrift at sea just last week.”

“Ah! Those treacherous scallywags! It’s every piece of furniture for themselves, then!” The furniture all picked windows to fling themselves out of where they were immediately caught in the ocean current that surrounded the house, flooded the living room, and poor harmlessly off the side as Dearest sidestepped the new stream coming out of the open door.

“Come again?” Discord said.

Dearest Heart just giggled. “Yeah, the instructions were so easy to follow. And the riddles were just so much fun! Hehehe… Go to where the Fun-guy sits next to the one that knows one day it will croak! Not to mention the password spelled out via symbols! I worked that out by applying alternating cubed Pythagorean theorems and—”

Discord simply watched, transfixed, as words poured out of the pony’s mouth. Time seemed to slow down as she blinked, her eyelashes and gazed upon him with an unfocused eye that clearly missed nothing… He could swear he heard music playing in the background specifically because some of his bedroom furniture had begun playing music as they accepted their watery fate.

♪Suddenly… Life has new meaning to me!♪

♪There’s beauty up above... and things we never take notice of.♪

♪You wake up suddenly… you’re in love...♪

This... this mail-mare… She would be his… Oh yes, she would be his! She would be his friend forever, and that was the end of it. No… that would be the beginning, end, alpha, omega, and everything in between, and no one would say otherwise.

“— So, yeah!” DH concluded as she pointed at a surface on the package that was busy phasing in and out of this dimension. “Super easy!” Dearest Heart held out the package. "So... here it is?"

Discord finally cracked a smile. “Yes, yes of course," Discord said as he picked up the package with his eagle talon and tossed it into a nearby ankle-high waste receptacle in one swift motion. Said waste receptacle coughed, wheezed, then toppled forward onto its side where it ceases motion. "Oh, where are my manners?” Discord motioned towards his kitchen. “Care for a spot of tea?”

Dearest Heart giggled. “I would, but your kitchen is mostly underwater, now.”

Discord turned. “So it is!” he frowned heavily then turned back with an apologetic look. “I’m sorry, I don’t get a lot of guests here.”

“Oh, no!” Dearest Heart said in a tone of genuine concern. “Well, maybe you can have dinner with me and my family?”

Discord’s eyes widened and hope danced a merry jig in his eyes… metaphorically speaking, but also literally. “Your… family?”

Dearest nodded. “Yep! Husband, kids, and my cousin!”

Discord felt all his hearts beat as one as they sang in unison.

‘Gimme!’

They began to beat faster and faster.

‘Gimmie!’

‘Gimme! Gimme!’

‘Gimme!-Gimme-Gimme!-Gimme!-Gimme!-Gimme!’

“Oh, you’re going to loooove them!” Dearest Heart declared.

“I can tell I already do,” Discord said darkly.

Dearest Heart gasped. “Then you’ll come?! On such short notice, even!” she said giddily.

Discord favored Dearest Heart with an icepick smile. “I couldn’t possibly imagine any place I’d rather be.”

“Yay!” Dearest Heart declared as she closed her eyes, pranced in place, nearly fell off the edge of the lawn into the watery, furniture abyss below, but was quickly snatched by Discord’s eagle claw which he extended to grab her before it was too late.

Dearest Heart gave Discord an embarrassed smile. “Whoops! Sorry!”

“Think nothing of it, my dear,” Discord said magnanimously as he gently placed Dearest Heart back on terra-firm-enough.

“Oh! Where are my manners? You agreed to come to dinner and I haven’t even told you my name, yet! I’m ‘Dearest Heart’ or ‘DH’ for short! Some of my friends call me ‘Muffin’ and uh… some call me…” Dearest Heart swallowed and whispered out the last bit “Derpy Hooves…” she said shamefully.

Discords face hardened. “Who calls you that? And how well do you suppose they would survive with their vital organs flipped to the outside of their skin?” The anger cemented on his face cracked as a devilish smile made itself known. “Because I can guarantee they’ll survive the experience given enough warning… and I can guarantee they’ll treat you with more respect from then on.”

Dearest Heart waved her forelegs about dismissively. “No-no-no-no-no! It’s just a silly nickname from my school days! They don’t mean any harm by it!”

Discord grunted in displeasure as his bushy brows closed in to display the same emotion on his face. “If you say so.”

He took a calming breath and a brief moment to wonder what was happening to him and would he even recognize himself in the mirror after today. “Well, I... am Discord!” he said as he motioned dramatically to himself with his eagle talon and lifted his lion paw into the air before offering it to the pony below. “Perhaps you’ve heard of me?”

“Oh, of course!” Dearest said. She placed a forehoof into the paw where it was firmly shook. “It’s a pleasure to meet you, finally!”

Discord couldn’t help but whimper as a glassy-eyed look came over him. “No one has ever said that to me before… ever.”

“Whaaaaat~? Get out!” DH said in disbelief as she playfully swatted at a spot that was supposed to be Discord’s thigh but turned out to be empty air. “You’re an utter delight!”

A sound that had to be gas and not a squeal of pure delight escaped Discord. Yes… just passing gas and nothing else.

He took a moment to look around and sighed. New friend or no, he couldn’t leave things here in such a state. “I’ll have to meet up with you later, my dear. I have so many things to attend to, first. The furniture is still alive, the house is still mostly intact and the dishes are getting cleaner the longer they soak in the sea water!” Discord shook his head and tutted himself. “It simply cannot stand.”

“Oh?” DH tilted her head and glanced in seemingly all directions, as if taking in the entirety of the realm with a mere roll of her head. She mostly focused her eyes back on Discord. “Erm… May I…?”

Discord nearly replied with ‘May I, what?’ but instead decided to see what would happen next. “Of course. You are a guest, after all.”

Smiling warmly, DH took flight and built up speed until she was next to a tree which was twirling and whirling in the unspace of the realm. “You should probably come up here with me if you don’t want to get splinters!”

“Oh, uh…” Discord floated up towards DH. “Of course.”

Seemingly satisfied that her new friend was out of harm's way, DH forcefully smacked her flank against the tree and sent it hurtling towards the iceberg. It screamed all the way before it smashed into the ice which exploded into chunks that blew massive holes in the barely standing home and rained down on the waterlogged furniture.

Furniture that yelped and hollered before being silenced by falling ice.

Then everything was quiet for a moment before Black-Handle’s pitiful wail pierced the air.

Discord smiled widely. “Impressive! Just let me finish up and—”

“Be patient!” Dearest said in a gentle, maternal tone. “It’s almost done!”

“What is…” A dark shadow fell over the pair. Discord looked up to see a flaming meteorite, roughly the size of a hoofball field, fall towards the remains of the house.

He didn’t know where the meteorite had come from.

He didn’t even know he had a meteorite!

Dearest averted her gaze and shielded her face as the flaming space debris smashed into what was left of the house and send bits of wood, water, and shards of glass EVERYWHERE.

Except for, somehow, the space she and Discord were occupying.

Discord’s jaw dropped and he took a moment to turn and just appreciate the creature flapping idly in the air next to him with a look of contentment. She couldn’t be a normal pony. She just couldn’t. She was… she was something cosmic. She had to be... destruction…

Just… pure Destruction made manifest in the form of seemingly clumsy Pegasus.

Discord marveled, looking at his new friend in an entirely new light as they were both backlit by the flaming remnants of his home.

While he was certain she’d never be able to pull off the Chaos he had mastered, her ability to destroy everything around her was simply unparalleled.

And she was going to be his best friend.

Discord felt a tug at his eagle claw and looked down into Dearest Heart’s adorable smiling face. “Shall we go?”

All of Discord’s hearts skipped a beat as he took the hoof in his claw. “Of course, my Dear. Lead the way!”

DH’s smile evaporated.

Concern finally appeared on Discord’s face. “I’m sorry. Did I say something wrong? You do know the way out, don’t you?”

“No… I… erm… Yes! I know the way out… Just… No one… no one has ever asked me to lead the way before...”

Discord could feel his eyes well up with water but quickly hid the display behind a dismissive wave of his lion’s paw. “Pish-posh. You have a perfect sense of direction.”

Dearest Heart let out a squeal of such unbridled joy Discord briefly considered bottling it and starting a many-years-long addiction to the sound and feeling.

Dearest scanned the horizon once more, her eyes picking out two stars amongst the swirling chaos. “Let’s go!” she said.

Hoof in claw, claw in hoof, the pair lifted off and flew to the second star to the left, and straight on until evening.

Amethyst Star shook her head as she floated over a chrome item that looked like two rectangular staplers that came together around an azure light. “Seriously, DH was too busy delivering mail to help you with this?” she griped as the lilac glow of her magic carried the item past under some sort of propulsion engine and into the waiting brown hoof of the pony below the massive pod the engine was attached to. She frowned to herself and looked up at a clock that seemed to have been cobbled together from random bits of junk. “Where is that mare, anyway?” she mumbled to herself. “She better not be tangled in that scarf in a tree again…”

There was a scoff from below. “You’re suggesting I ask the world’s clumsiest pony to help me with this delicate operation?” A stallions voice responded dryly. “Do you want the concept of reality shattered across an infinite amount of doomed self-destroying timelines? Because THAT’S how you get the concept of reality shattered across an infinite amount of doomed self-destroying timelines!”

“Yeah, yeah,” Amethyst replied in a tone that suggested she’d heard the line many times before and that the potential complete annihilation of known existence is just something that comes up when her cousin came up in conversation. She looked the pod up and down as ‘bangs’, ‘buzzes’, and an angry utterance of “Bloody, bucking, black-mater burner!” could be heard. It was several times larger than a pony, but the domed cockpit was clearly only large enough for one, so no doubt beneath the cockpit and attached to the propulsion systems where all the science-wiency bits that accomplished… whatever it was the thing was supposed to be accomplished. “Sooo… what’s it do?”

“Iwwts a twimewwine cweeafure!”

“Yeah, I don’t speak ’there’s a sonic screwdriver in my mouth’!” Amethyst said in annoyance. “Let’s try again!”

There was the distinct sound of a tool being spat out onto the floor. “It’s a timeline creator!”

Amethyst Star’s brow went from ‘confused wrinkles’ to ‘irritated wrinkles’ in a matter of seconds. “You have me in here helping you build a time machine?! You! The Doctor! You’re building a time machine?!” She looked the device up and down. “Is this some mid-immortal life crisis thing?! Is this a bucking sports car of time machines? Help me out!”

There was a heavy, irritated sigh from the floor and the stallion below pushed himself into view, the work dolly he was on making it a smooth ride so his bright, blue eyes could stare up with just enough of a vexed genius quality that he might as well have been staring down at a child. Something of a comical site as he was also covered in something that looked like oil, but was more of a void-like color of purple that seemingly sucked in the light around it. “It doesn’t allow you to travel through THIS timeline! It allows you to travel to an alternative timeline you first create by using the machine, then BACK to the same timeline or an unlimited number of new timelines!”

Amethyst’s glare only increased. “How is that different from regular time travel?!”

The Doctor’s expression softened somewhat. “It’s technically copying an entire dimension and moving you to the copy! You can’t travel back-and-forth in the existing timeline.”

Amethyst’s eyes narrowed as her expression subtly shifted from ‘vexed’ to ‘unamused’. “So it’s a broken time machine?”

The Doctor’s face picked up the dropped annoyance. “Do you want a new, safe dimension to go to if this one is going to be destroyed by evil creatures, Princess Twilight’s castle mate, or, Heaven forbid, Dearest Heart herself, or not?!”

Amethyst let out a defeated sigh. “Point taken.”

The Doctor nodded satisfactorily and rolled himself back under the device. He held out a hoof. “Hydro-spanner.”

Amethyst resumed her duty of floating tools to the good Doctor with a bored expression. Equestria suffered so many threats internally and externally having a backup was a no-brainer. Who knows what the next threat would be, a misused spell from a well-meaning unicorn would hit, or seemingly random thing her cousin would do that might endanger literally everyone and everything?

The sound of a large wooden sliding door was heard, the workshop’s entrance. “Hey, guys! I made a new friend on my route!” Dearest Heart’s chipper voice rang out.

Amethyst turned and it was like her blood flash froze in her body. No. It was like the concept of liquids existing inside her was gone and replaced by pure, solid dark-matter. Her cousin was back and she was covered in blood, and that was somehow the least of her concerns.

WHY DO I EVEN TEMPT FATE BY HAVING THOUGHTS?!

Her cousin was standing there with her big ‘It’s been a good day!’ smile, which may or may not be cause for alarm, but was undeniably a good reason to encourage the doctor to get his prototype up in running as soon as possible was standing upright next to DH.

Discord, Lord of Chaos, Equestria Bane, Jerk Jester of Joy was RIGHT there, just… smiling with the most casual evil way imaginable. He wasn’t rewriting reality around him. He wasn’t snapping his finger to create a chair to lounge in while this, removed from context, mundane conversation took place. He wasn’t even talking.

He just smiled.

Amethyst Star thought she understood true despair just by virtue of being her cousin’s family member and go-to babysitter.

She was wrong.

“That’s wonderful, Dearest!” The Doctor called out from underneath the device. “You should invite them to dinner.”

Amethyst wasn’t aware her horrified eyes could get any bigger, yet there she was! The sentence caused the silent dragonesque’s smile to widen and instead of accepting, he simply raised his lions paw to his crooked smile in a gently ‘shushing manner’ as something in his wild eyes told Amethyst she’d be turned into something unnatural if she didn’t comply.

“Yay! You read my mind!” Dearest Heart declared as she did a giddy in-place galop, lost her balance, fell into Discord and was gently put back on her feat by the chaos lord.

The casual friendliness of the act followed by no hint of malice somehow increased how terrified Amethyst was. Through the fog of pure terror, she could somehow hear the Doctor smirk as he replied, “It’s what I’m here for!”

These were the end times. There would be no escape. There was no sign of hope, which was now dead.

“Goody! Goody! I’ll get Dinkums to help me cook! Oooooh family dinner with a friend! I’m so excited! We can do hay fries!”

“You almost burnt down the kitchen with that oil fire last time, my dear!” The Doctor replied casually.

“Right, right! Fondue!”

“I was grooming cheese out of your feathers for weeks!”

“Uhhh… roasted eggplant!”

“You destroyed a nearby mountain range when you tried to flash roast with the particle accelerator, my love!”

“Dinner muffins! I get to make DINNER muffins!” Dearest Heart declared triumphantly, this fourth option clearly being superior to all the others anyhow. She leaned over and whispered, “Dinner muffins are more savory than breakfast and lunch muffins,” she whispered into Discord’s elbow, apparently forgetting he was standing upright and also substantially taller than her.

“Looking forward to it, Dearest!” The Doctor replied without looking up.

“Me too!” Dearest Heart replied as she clumsily turned. “Have fun working on that dimensional-timeline creator and traversing unit!”

“We will!” The Doctor said. “See you soon, Dearest!”

Discord still said nothing, still performed no magical feats, or doing anything but just standing and grinning. A grin that seemingly grew with every syllable that fell out of DH’s mouth. Finally, he simply saluted Amethyst Star, and walked on after Dearest.

“Amethyst?” The Doctor called out. “I’m done with the multi-tool!”

“… Right…” Amethyst replied, her voice empty of energy as she floated the double-boxed item away to be with the rest of the fantastically futuristic tools, her task far from the forethoughts of her mind.

We’re all going to DIE here!