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NATURAL ENEMIES

"It is easy to hate and it is difficult to love. This is how the whole scheme of things works.
All good things are difficult to achieve; and bad things are very easy to get."

Confucius

—

"There's something you first must know about me," I say. "About Chaos. Haven't you ever wondered why it was so easy for everything to fall apart, but so difficult to put it back together? Why it's easier, quicker, to destroy than to create? That is My influence. Order is the attempt to minimize My influence. It is the natural tendency of your kind, but it is the unnatural way of things. Because of this, chaos is always easy, and order is always difficult."

"Everything is so… symmetrical," he said with some disgust upon entrance to the palace. "I have seen it in your towns, your ponies, and now your castle. Why do you design this way?"

Celestia smirked, her eyes taking in his form. "Symmetry is beautiful," she replied. "Symmetry implies intelligence and desirability. A symmetrical face, for example, is more attractive than an asymmetrical one."

Her eyes narrowed ever so, with a twinkle of laughter in them, but they were not kind.

"This is the body you gave me," he reminded irritably. "If I'm considered 'unattractive,' it's nobody's fault but your own."

She threw her head back and laughed. The sound grated on his nerves. "Oh, Discord." She wiped a tear from her eye. "You look only the way you could look. Would you prefer it if you looked like every other pony?"

"Of course not. If you ask me, I'm more attractive than any pony I've ever seen."

Celestia only smirked again. Her bubblegum-pink mane flowed with its invisible wind. He smirked right back.

"A mane blowing in the wind where there's no wind," teased he. "Seems rather… disorderly, does it not?"

Her smirk was wiped off her face, satisfying him immensely. "You know nothing, Discord." She tossed her head. "You don't belong in my kingdom. You're lucky I have let you remain this long."

"Oh, because I do not obey without question? My sincerest apologies, Your Highness." He bowed with a flourish. "I forgot that in your kingdom, the orderly way to do things is to enslave your citizens."

"You quiet yourself," she warned. "I am losing patience. My people are free ponies."

He scoffed, crossing his arms. "You and I, Highness, have a very different idea about what it means to be free."

"You would have the world destroyed!" she accused. "You would have ponies running wild, doing as they liked, killing and stealing and trampling everything that good ponies have worked hard to build. I am sorry to disappoint you, Discord, but civilization comes with a price. The freer ponies are, the less safe the world is."

"Yes, precisely." Discord shook his head in annoyance. "Can't you see, then, how unnatural this existence is? Your restrictive bodies, your allotment of magic and flight to only some ponies, when both should be the right of all? Freedom comes with a price, too, but it is the only way to exist."

She tossed her head again and stamped one hoof. "You would threaten everything? Threaten lives? Because that is what will be lost, were things your way."

"Why don't you give magic and flight to all ponies? You and your sister are the only ponies with the gift of both."

"It is too great a responsibility for any one pony who has not earned it," Celestia answered. "We are alicorns; we are princesses. We have earned our wings by performing great feats of magic. It is because of my sister and me that the sun and moon rise and set every day."

"You are a tyrant," Discord hissed. "You may claim to be good, but you don't have me fooled. You may have brainwashed all your 'subjects' into believing that. Fine… but your sister will understand. You'll see; someday, she will see that she is not your equal, and she will rebel. What will you do then, Princess? What will you do when that day comes?"

"GET OUT. I will not be spoken to in this manner! GET OUT!" Celestia's mane whipped around her, and her eyes looked almost like flames. Her rage was so intense, so uncontrolled… so chaotic.

Discord smiled wickedly, and dropped into a mocking bow. "But of course; I shall leave gladly… Princess."

—

"I have to say… in that moment, as her heart beat with hate, she was beautiful. And I thought, 'That's it! That's how it's supposed to be. Magnificent.'"

Twilight looks at me with disapproval. "Surely you can't be saying that hate and evil are better than good? I would say I expected better of you, but I'm not sure why I'd expect that at all."

"My dear Twilight. In the absence of order, there is only chaos, and chaos is neither good nor evil. Order invented those concepts: what was orderly was good, and what was chaotic was evil. I do not subscribe to those beliefs, though they are quite fun, and I found evil to be much more exciting than good for a long time. But in that moment, it was Celestia's lack of control of herself that made her beautiful. That was what I knew—that was who I was."

"So… you and the Princess hated each other?"

"Hate is such a strong word. Our very natures clashed, that is all. We were natural enemies. I can't speak for her, but I didn't hate her then. In fact, quite the opposite; for all I disagreed with her, I was quite, shall we say, entranced with her. She was the only pony worth my consideration, after all, with her power. Though, when she trapped me in stone, I did hate her. I had every right."

Twilight hesitates, then asks, "So, you… loved her?"

"You flit from one extreme to the other, Twilight. It's rather chaotic." I grin wolfishly, the first in a long time, but at her look, my smile falls. "…Our natures conflicted. It was not meant to be."

"What do you mean?"

I shift, look out at the stars, seeing something from another life.

"She is the embodiment of Order. And I, Chaos. I ruled long before she… and we were enemies when she came along. But how I loved her, despite everything. I did try to change my nature for her. I tried to comply with Order."

"Did she love you?"

My gaze lowers. "Yes. For a moment."