Adamant Alloy galloped through Trottingham’s castle’s corridors. Time was of the essence, so he didn’t mind the surprised glances from the ponies that noticed him. The weight of the armor he was wearing barely slowed him, as he had been using it for so many years that he no longer felt it restricted his movements. He finally reached his destination and opened the door to Trottingham’s treasurer’s office. As usual, the first thing he did when entering a new room was quickly scanning it in search of potential dangers. The only other ponies in the room were Golden Shower and his two young apprentices, whose names Adamant didn’t remember. The room was rather crowded with the three desks and the large bookshelves filled with accounting books. Since Golden Shower had been appointed Trottingham’s treasurer half a year ago, the number of bookshelves had multiplied from having one behind the treasurer’s desk to covering all the walls, leaving only the door and the window uncovered. Despite being Hearth Warming’s Eve, the only concession to the festivity was a ridiculously small decorated tree half-buried by books on a corner of the room.

“-many times do I have to tell you?” Golden Shower reprimanded one of his apprentices while Adamant opened the door. “We work with the accrual basis, not the cash basis. We aren’t running a small business, we are running a town with more than ten thousand citizens,” he turned his head to face Adamant. “What is it?”

“Golden Shower, you have to come fast, your niece isn’t feeling well and she wants to see you,” the guard quickly said.

“Bit Stretch, you are in charge until I’m back,” Golden Shower said as he teleported out of the room. “Where is she?”

“She was in the kitchens last time I saw her,” Adamant answered, and Golden Shower teleported out of the corridor as soon as he finished.

Havoc’s teleport made him appear near the ceiling of the castle’s kitchen, as he suspected that teleporting just where a pony was already standing wouldn’t be fun for anyone involved. He landed on all fours, grunting as he quickly made sure that the impact hadn’t turned his legs back to their original shape. A small crowd of ponies was circling something, so Havoc galloped and opened a hole in the circle.

“Oh God Diane,” he whispered when he saw her. She was lying unconscious on the floor, barely breathing, and her coat seemed to be stained with dark purple spots. After a few seconds he realized to his horror that the stains were moving over her body, changing the color of her skin and hair. “She needs a doctor!”

“Calm down, the doctor is coming already,” a mare said as she patted him on the back. “It was so sudden. She was fine when her coughing got much worse and these… dark spots started to appear on her body. She managed to say that she wanted you to come, and then she said ‘havoc’ over and over again until she passed out.”

Havoc barely registered the mare’s words as he inched towards Diane. “Diane, can you hear me? You are going to be fine, the doctor will find what’s wrong and we’ll be laughing about this in no time,” he said, mostly to himself. He held one of her forelegs with his hooves, but he reeled back when he saw dark spots appearing where he had touched her. “What is going on here?” he whispered.

The doctor arrived shortly after, and his unicorn horn began to shine as soon as he crouched next to Diane. “I have never seen anything like this,” he said. “These spots where he coat changes in color… It is as if her natural magic had spilled out of her magical lines and concentrated on these places. This isn’t supposed to be even possible. I… I don’t know how to heal her, this is way out of my field. The only ponies that could know how to heal her are the ones in the research center.”

“Comet Tail, I bring her now,” Havoc said as he teleported out of the room. He appeared outside of the castle, and with a few more teleports he reached Comet’s workplace. A few minutes later he found her office and barged in.

“Hav-Golden Shower,” she stuttered, surprised. They had barely talked to each other since that morning when he made her angry, so he was the last one she expected to see. “What in Celestia’s name are you doing?”

“Diane is sick, she has some sort of magic bleeding that the doctor can’t heal. She can’t barely breath. She needs you,” he quickly explained, not stopping to breathe.

“I’ll do anything in my hoof to help,” she said, her shock quickly turning into resolve. “Where is she?”

“The castle’s kitchen,” Havoc replied, and she teleported both of them there and soon as he finished the sentence. Comet’s better knowledge of the castle’s layout allowed her to reach the kitchen with just one teleport.

“Wow, that was fast,” remarked the doctor. “I didn’t dare to use any healing spell on her. Celestia knows how might my magic react with what she has.”

“You did well,” Comet replied, and after examining Diane for ten seconds she talked again. “Now, everypony must leave the room. Golden Shower has explained the symptoms to me and healing her will be dangerous to anypony in the area. Golden, you stay. I will need you to shield me both of us when I start using my magic.”

Comet waited until everypony had left before talking again. “Have you done this to her?” she asked.

“What!? No!” he replied, outraged. “I would rather die than let Diane suffer any harm! Can you help her or not? I swear if you can’t help her I’ll take her to Celestia herself if I have to.”

“Calm down, I was just asking in case you had done this by mistake or something,” she huffed. “Now, let me focus…”

Comet touched one of Diane’s dark spots with her horn, which gleamed with her own magic. “The doctor is right, this dark spots on her body have great amounts of magic in them. But…” her eyes widened as she turned to face Havoc.

“What?! What is it?!”

“These accumulations aren’t made of pony magic. It feels just like when you used your magic on me. Havoc, this is your magic, in her body,” she explained.

“No, it can’t be,” Havoc whispered.

“But this shouldn’t happen,” she continued. “When you used your magic on me, my natural magic flow made it leave my body after some seconds. You say you haven’t done this to her, so unless you have been using her as some sort of chaos magic battery…”

“I haven’t.”

“Then I have no idea why this is happening to her. It can’t be magic diabetes, the symptoms don’t match.”

“You say that my magic is causing this, right? Then I should be able to just suck it back to myself and she will be fine,” Havoc reasoned. However, when he tried to do that, he found that he couldn’t take the magic from her. “I can’t do it. It is part of her now, I can’t steal somepony’s magic when it is inside the body. I couldn’t even feel it was my magic until you pointed it out. Wait, her necklace. The necklace stores her natural magic so she can use it later. If it can do the same with my magic it will heal her.”

Havoc did another couple of teleports to reach his house, and then he went into Diane’s bedroom to try to find her necklace. Diane’s room was strikingly similar to Pinkie Pie’s room in Sugarcube Corner, but lacking the ‘candy house’ decoration. It took Havoc ten minutes to find the necklace, as Diane had put it in a rather obscure location: hidden in plain sight on her bedside table. When he found it he wasted no time and teleported back to the kitchen, ignoring the fact that his energy reserves were critically low after covering such long distances just by teleporting.

“I can’t touch her,” he told Comet. “When I did, more spots appeared on the places I touched. Put it around her neck."

The unicorn mare nodded and did as he told her. “Is it working?”

Havoc closed his eyes and focused on his magic sense. He could feel his own magic, as a rather shallow pool inside of him, and then he reached towards Diane. Her natural magic was still there, too chaotic to belong to anypony else save for Pinkie Pie, and the magic stored inside the necklace, but they weren’t reacting at all. He focused on the magic that was harming Diane, his own magic, and the mental image of it was like polluted water on a clean pool. Then he glimpsed a small spot of ‘pollution’ appear where moments before there was only Diane’s magic. He focused on it, and then he saw. Diane, despite being physically identical to a real pony, was a copy made of water and magic, after all. If, for some reason, she somehow lost all of her natural magic, she would instantly turn back into water. Unlike ‘normal’ living creatures, which are material beings with a side of magic, she was more like Havoc: magic with a side of physical matter. Obviously, Havoc didn’t get all of it at the moment, but he understood what was happening: his mere presence was poison to Diane, because her unique physiology made her act as an unwilling filter that caught his magic whenever it tried to go through her body. ‘Oh God, I would have killed her if I had decided to keep on feeding her with food created with my magic.’

“It IS me,” he said, his eyes filling with tears. “She is passively storing the magic I release just by existing. I-I have to leave… If I don’t… I… I will kill her if I stay around her.” When he finished that sentence tears were rolling down his cheeks.

“Wait,” Comet asked. “Maybe the necklace can eat your magic faster than she can absorb it? We have to try at least.”

“She has to be awake to make it work,” he said, sniffing. “If she doesn’t… If she doesn’t wake up… Oh God Diane…”

“Havoc, calm the hay down,” Comet berated him. “Diane needs us right now, you have to keep your cool. Turn back, stop staring at her and panicking, take a few deep breaths and tell me when you are ready to be of any help.”

‘Diane needs me. She needs me, I need to help her. Calm down, Martin Thompson. Your little sister is in danger, and you have to help her,’ he thought to himself as he took deep breaths. A full minute passed before he was able to think rationally. “Comet, I’m fine now.”

“Good,” she said. “I have been trying to wake her up. I have tried throwing water at her face, but I haven’t dared to plug her nose. She’s barely breathing already.”

Havoc thought how to make her wake up, and he soon remembered something. Back when they were travelling to Trottingham, she would wake up in the middle of the night from nightmares from the test that Twilight Sparkle did to all the Pinkie Pies in order to find the original one. He crouched next to her and whispered to her ear in a perfect imitation of Twilight Sparkle’s voice.

“Pinkies, you have been brought here to take a test. Don’t worry, it’s a simple test. About as simple as they come, and whoever passes gets to stay! THE TEST WILL BE WATCHING PAINT DRY!”

Diane’s eyes opened wide as she woke up. She hyperventilated as her eyes, reduced to pinpricks, darted from side to side. The quick breathing soon turned into dry coughing.

“Diane, listen to me!” Havoc shouted. “You have poisonous magic in your body. Use the necklace to remove it from your body.”

Diane managed to nod as she violently coughed. “Already *COUGH* doing *COUGH* it.”

Havoc focused on her magic again, and he saw that the necklace was indeed removing his magic from her. However, the process was so slow that it barely made a difference as long as Havoc was next to her.

“Already? Diane, did you know what was happening to you?” he asked, horrified. The way Diane’s eyes avoided to meet his confirmed his words. “Why? Why did you let me do this to you?”

“I *COUGH* didn’t want *COUGH* you to *COUGH* leave,” she muttered.

“I could have moved to another house, or try to find a way to stop this from happening, or anything. Diane, you are the most important pony in the whole world to me. You know I would do anything for you.”

“I *cough know that, that’s why *cough* I couldn’t tell you,” she said, tearing up.

“Diane…” he sighed, also crying. The tears sprouted wings and flew around him as he talked, but he ignored them. “I have to leave you. You know I would like to stay with you, but I must do what is best for you. I will try to find a way to stop my magic from doing this to you, but until I learn how to do that I can’t live in Trottingham.”

Diane looked down in resignation, her tears silently dropping on the floor.

“Comet, I need to ask you one last favour,” Havoc said as he turned to his draconequus form and picked a leaf from his wooden arm. “If you burn this leaf I’ll feel it from anywhere in the world. If you ever need my help, or you find a way for me to stay with Diane without harming her, burn it. Make it burn slowly, if you burn it too fast I might not know what happened if I’m in a tricky situation. Also… Please take care of Diane.”

“I will,” she promised.

“Then I’m leaving. Tell everypony that Golden Shower was cursed by Bruce Mayne’s magic weapon moments before he died, and that the curse was what made Diane sick. Tell them that Golden Shower has left to live in a secluded place until he can be around ponies without harming them. I think you’ll manage without me, but make sure to double check what my replacement as treasurer says you have to do,” he then turned to face Diane. “Diane… I’ll be back as soon as it is safe for you, so I don’t want any parting words. See you soon.”

“See you soon, big brother!” she cried, and then he vanished without further words.

Teleporting back to his bedroom took almost all the energy he still had, so he quickly absorbed his chaos domain until there was not a single trace of it left. He walked around all the rooms, trying to take any chaos magic that might have remained, and then he turned to owl and flew away, his plumage keeping him warm even though it was so cold outside that the city was covered in snow. As he flew out of town, he tried to get his thoughts in order. ‘I don’t have to go too far. I can just find a good place to make a small chaos domain here in the forest until I manage to stop emitting energy. I can’t believe she hid this from me… She was going to die! I must find a way to protect her from me. She doesn’t deserve to suffer like this, not after all that she’s been through.’ He was soon flying over the forest, trying to find a cave or something similar. Something poked him on his right shoulder, but he ignored it. ‘Maybe, when the necklace takes all my energy away from her, we could try using the same amulet to make a barrier around herself that would bounce off my energy… She will have to wear it all the time, but it’s a possibility...’ He landed, turned to draconequus and walked towards a small cave he had found. The poking returned, this time more insistent.

‘Who the fuck is… Oh fuck…’ Havoc turned his head and found himself facing the only creature in the world that he feared meeting more than Disharmony: Discord himself. Havoc remembered how the draconequus looked like in the show, but seeing him face to face was a completely different experience. Havoc had to look up, as Discord was a meter taller than him with both standing on two legs, but Havoc's body was heavier and bulkier. Despite that, Havoc felt like a drop of water facing an ocean when Discord met his gaze. His yellow and red eyes were unfathomable pits of twisted wisdom and madness. Havoc could feel the chaos energy that the old ruler of Equestria emanated, and he was certain that, if he ever could amass such a quantity of power, he would be able to tear the world apart. The residual energy that Discord released was enough to charge Havoc’s reserves at a faster rate than his chaos domain ever could. ‘This is the power of a god,’ was the only thought that came to his mind.

“Well, well, well. If it isn’t Disharmony’s little bishop,” he said, a menacing grin adorning his face. Disharmony wasted no time in taking over Havoc’s body.

“D̿̂ͤ̐͢͏͏͓̯̜͖̼̺̟̗ī̡̙̭͇̜͒͘s͍̓͐̾̈ĉ̗͊̿͂͒̌̚͘ǫ̋̎̂ͦ̔̚҉͙̯̱̯̭r̼͈͈̔ͩͫ̃̌͐̋ḑ̶̱͕͓̳̫̩̞̗̐̀̂,” she said through Havoc’s lips. “Ỳ̡̛o̶u̸̶͞ ̶a̶̡re̛̕-”

Discord snapped his fingers and Havoc felt Disharmony’s presence leaving as soon as it had come. “What a meddlesome old hag,” he muttered with disgust. “Now, back to you…”

“Please don’t kill me?” Havoc blurted, scared out of his wits.

“Havoc, Havoc, Havoc,” Discord said with a reprimanding tone. “You should know better by now. I couldn’t kill you, even if I wanted to. You are, after all, a piece. Even I have to stick to the rules, and there’s no way to circumvent this one. No, I have come here to meet you. I wanted to meet the human that managed to survive fighting my daughter twice, and whose player is no other than my oldest enemy,” Discord’s eagle hand grabbed Havoc by the skull. “Now, the rules don’t say anything about doing something good to someone else’s piece, do they?” he asked, and then he started laughing as he poured his magic into Havoc.

Havoc felt Discord’s magic enter his body, like a tendril of power reaching towards Havoc’s very soul. Discord quickly moved to the wound that Bruce Mayne had inflicted upon Havoc, and he began to heal it. The process made Havoc feel an intense wave of euphoria that paralyzed him as Discord worked on him. A small part of Havoc’s mind that wasn’t overloaded by the sensation noticed that Discord wasn’t returning what Bruce’s balefire had erased, he was replacing it with something of his own. He finished as abruptly as he had started, and he released Havoc from his grip before taking a few steps back. Then, he pulled a camera from nowhere and did a couple of shots.

“Now that’s how a proper minor should look,” he said as he placed one of his arms around Havoc’s shoulder and used the other to show him the photos. Havoc, still scared out of his wits, decided to play along until Discord got bored of him. The photos of him showed that his missing moose antler had been replaced by a reindeer antler, which was around the same size his previous one was.

“See? You look smashing,” Discord said, chuckling as the photos turned into butterflies on fire that flew away. “And the best thing is that, now that a part of you is of my making, I can mess with Disharmony’s control over you!” he bursted into laughter as soon as he said that. “She is going to be so mad when she realizes what I have done! If only I could see her when she does, her reaction will be priceless!”

“... Can I leave now?” Havoc said. “I… I left something in the oven?”

“Leaving now, human?” he said, his playful mood replaced by a menacing tone. “I’m not done with you. What you want to do is impossible, anyways. It is against your nature to control your magic to such degree, it’s more likely for a turtle to fly by waving its leg than for you to stop spreading chaos magic. You will never be able to stop your presence from harming the only being in this world that cares about you.”

Discord’s bluntness felt like a physical hit to Havoc, who sat on the ground, appalled. Discord promptly slapped him and made him get up on his legs. “I have no time for your brony drama. I haven’t come here to mess with you. Well, not ONLY to mess with you. Now that I have some control over you, Disharmony won’t be able to possess your body whenever she feels like it. Thanks to this, and a certain draconequus’ silver tongue, Sunbutt and Moona are willing to let you live in Equestria without having to hide your true identity in fear of being turned into a garden ornament. Consider it my reward for standing up to Disharmony when she ordered you to harm Fluttershy. Despite Disharmony’s attempts at concealing your actions from my gaze, she is weak and distant and I am powerful and close, so I know everything there is to know about you. Also, since I have decided to convert into the church of friendshipology, and Xenu Sparkle says that ordering others to kill someone is a no-no, I have ordered Screwball to stop trying to get rid of you.”

“... I am still shocked because you are here talking to me and I’m not going to die because of that.”

“At least you aren’t freaking out and screaming in terror,” Discord said. “It was fun with the first humans I visited, but it got boring and predictable very soon... What, you think you were my number one priority?”

“I… This is just… Wow. I just… There’s so much I want to ask you now that you don’t want me dead. Like, how come you are on the ponies’ side now? How deep goes the connection between this and the cartoon on Earth? Is Rainbow Dash a lesbian? What really happened between you and Disharmony?”

“Well, this is a surprise. You are the first one that has actually asked me questions instead of just mentally begging that I would leave as soon as possible,” he commented. “Well, I’m supposed to be a ‘good guy’ now, so I will answer your questions out of the goodness of my heart!” he added, actually pulling his heart out of his chest and making small thumbs ups and smiley faces fall from it.

“Firstly, I think you of all humans will understand why I joined the ponies. Much like you have that copy of Pinkie Pie, I have found a friend in Fluttershy of all ponies. She believed that there was good in me and that I could change, and she showed me what having a friend is like. Confound these ponies, but this friendship of theirs is addictive! Now I understand why you adult human males are so obsessed with them. Thirdly, Disharmony is an old witch. Secondly, she’s called Rainbow Dyke for a reason.”

“>implying she doesn’t like it when stallions come inside,” Havoc replied. “But what’s the deal with Disharmony? She said you stole her power or something like that? I’m knee deep in this and I would like to know what kind of shit is swallowing me.”

“I’m going to need a drink if I’m going to tell you this story,” Discord replied, sitting on a beanbag he had summoned with his magic.

From the way Discord said those words, Havoc understood that, if the drink wasn’t of his taste, Discord would leave without answering his questions. He quickly made a mug full of cider appear, and then he poured it on the ground. The liquid created a minuscule blue apple as it touched the ground, which grew until reaching its proper size. Havoc grabbed it and stuck a straw on it, then he offered it to Discord. The draconequus took a bite out of it before throwing it against a tree, which turned into a timberwolf that quickly ran away.

"Pretty good, but turning a drink made with apples into an apple instead of anything else made you lose 3 points. I'll give you a Ponka π in a scale from Purple Smart to Yellow Quiet. Now, the old hag... You already know that my species is rather passive, with most of us being content with watching over the multiverse as if it was the biggest TV network in existence. Disharmony was the first draconequus who wanted more. She wants power, any kind of power that will put her above others. However, she knew that she couldn't rule over our race, because even the most laid back draconequi will fight against anyone trying to force them to follow rules and obey orders."

Discord turned into a teenager version of himself and continued talking. “Because of this, she tricked the youngest draconequi into following her. She told us that the other draconequi didn’t need so much power, as they only used a fraction of it to watch the dimensions. We, on the other hand, could use that power to leave the Nexus, enter the dimensions, and show their inhabitants how wonderful chaos was. It was a win-win situation, she said, we watch them as they act chaotically, and they are happier because they are free from order and boredom. Only when together we were powerful enough to match the rest of the draconequi in the Nexus did we realize that, for her, ruling came over chaos. Her only mistake was thinking that we were the same as her, and that we would accept being her seconds-in-command. Using the power we had stolen, we attacked her all at once and we stripped her of her powers, leaving her as weak and defenseless as a mortal. Then we returned the power we had left to the draconequi we had stolen it from.”

Discord’s head separated itself from his body and levitated around Havoc as he kept talking. “We never thought of killing her, because never before had a draconequus killed a draconequus. That was our mistake. Over the course of the millennia she gathered power, little by little, until she became strong enough to target the weakest of us. We were scattered, most of us having left the Nexus to live in dimensions and have an effect on the events that surrounded us. Returning to the Nexus meant death, as the travel is severely weakening and she was waiting for us. So I could only stay here as she killed the others one by one and stole their power. That’s the story,” he concluded, returning to his original shape.

“What a bitch,” Havoc said.

“Yeah, and you have been working for her,” Discord added.

“It’s not as if I have a choice in the matter.”

“Now you do,” he said. “Make sure you don’t blow this chance. Well, this has been a delightful conversation, but I can’t spend more time with you. If you ever see my dear Screwball remember that she is no longer your enemy. I would be very disappointed if you two got into a fight for no reason.”

“I’ll keep that in mind,” Havoc said, and Discord vanished in a flash of light, only to reappear in less than two seconds. “I forgot one little detail: if you don’t know where to go, I have heard Granite Back is a great place to charge your chaos batteries. Arrivederci!” this time he made a huge jetpack appear on his back and he flew away at insanely high speeds.

Havoc waited several seconds, until Discord was so far away that he couldn’t feel his grotesque amount of power. “Alright, time to see how my reindeer form is like."

Havoc made a huge mirror appear in front of him before turning into reindeer. As usual, the moment he transformed he felt as if he had always been a reindeer, the instincts kicking in. Thanks to the mirror he saw that he looked like the typical Santa Claus’ reindeer, and he noticed that his nose had a bright red colour. ‘Dafuq? … Oh God, does this mean what I think it means?’

Havoc focused on his nose and, to his delight, he instinctively knew what to do. He trotted and soon his hooves began to leave a trail of glistening dust and he began to run on the air, effectively flying.

“Best thing ever!” he shouted, all of his problems momentarily forgotten.

Author's Notes:

So, this is Discord's scale:
Best: Yellow Quiet
2nd: Sunbutt
3rd: Ponka π
4th: Moona
5th: Blue Fast
6th: Tree Kicker
7th: Marshmallow
Worst: Purple Smart

Screwball isn't in the scale because it's only for "normal" ponies.