Disclaimer: I am not Lauren Faust nor Hasbro. I do not own My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic, nor Equestria Girls.
Opening Note:
This is an experimental piece where it is assumed that Principal Celestia (in the human world) managed to redeem Sunset Shimmer shortly after Sunset arrived in the human world – therefore Sunset never tried to go back to Equestria and ended up stealing the Element of Magic, with (pony) Twilight being sent to chase her and having to run for Fall Formal Princess at Canterlot High School. This piece is set during the events which correspond to the Friendship is Magic episodes 'Twilight's Kingdom (parts 1 and 2)' although things have played a bit differently here once Tirek got loose.
- 'Let me show you the true power of friendship' (Principal Celestia to a recently arrived in the human world Sunset Shimmer, derailing what otherwise might have been)
Twilight Sparkle had failed.
She'd always had doubts about being a princess, and Discord's attempts to bolster her confidence and self-belief hadn't exactly helped either.
But when Princess Celestia had entrusted Twilight and her friends with the mission of seeking out and stopping Tirek, despite her doubts Twilight had gone anyway, and she'd led her friends into a trap and to defeat.
Sucked dry of magic and caged, it had been up to Discord to rescue them, although, as he'd rather pointedly commented it was mostly Fluttershy he was rescuing – the only pony to have really treated him like a friend.
And he'd brought bad news that Tirek had gone after the other princesses, sucked them dry, and was at this point almost unstoppable in any head-on confrontation, even by a Lord of Chaos.
Therefore, it was time to get the six ponies (and Spike) out of the way, alongside the mysterious chest (plucked from the 'flower' next to the Tree of Harmony), which Discord seemed to believe might still have a possible solution to Tirek inside it.
"I'll run what interference I can in Equestria." Discord promised them, having transported them to the throne-room of what had been Cadence's castle in the Crystal Empire. "It'll be fun, running a resistance movement, against that musclebound genius. Not as much of a genius, obviously, as moi, but he can more than top me in stolen power right now. Anyhow: behold your means of retreat!" He gestured dramatically at a large oval mirror on a peculiar stand, which Twilight had noticed a couple of times here in the throne-room during that Princess Conference in the Crystal Empire a while back.
"What exactly is it supposed to be? Besides obviously being a mirror?" Applejack demanded.
"A gateway to another world, which opens normally every thirty moons." Discord explained. "But I can Lord of Chaos emergency-open it. I have no idea what kind of world nor what awaits on the other side, but since a previous Star Student of Princess Celestia departed through it a while back, but Princess Celestia apparently expected her to possibly return some day, it should be a survivable environment of some kind."
"A Star Student? Like Twilight?" Pinkie Pie asked.
"Not at all like Twilight." Discord sniffed. "Well not except maybe in terms of having been a Star Student and a unicorn pony. Her name was Sunset Shimmer and she sometimes came out to study me whilst I was still a statue in the gardens. Proud, confident, and a bit too impatient on some counts, her relationship with Princess Celestia became increasingly rocky, and she took herself off through this mirror and never came back. But Princess Celestia expected her to maybe return one day. They had some means of occasional communication, and Princess Celestia received a message to the effect one day that Sunset was sorry for everything, but intended to stay there, wherever there was. Princess Celestia sent a response, but that was the last, to my knowledge, of their contact." Discord pulled a cuckoo clock out of thin air and inspected it, before crumpling it up and throwing it away, over one shoulder.
"Time is pressing, and Tirek will be here before long. We had best none of us be here by then." Discord snapped his talons and the mirror suddenly began to swirl and pulse with light. "The exposition is over, leaving you with some mysterious cryptic clues and plenty of gaps to fill. Enjoy your holiday." He gestured dramatically at the mirror. "Destiny awaits! Will you walk, or need I push you?"
"How in tarnation are we going to move that chest thing?" Applejack nudged it.
"Oh poo." Discord waved and the chest flipped through the air to contact the mirror and disappear into its depths.
"We'll walk, thank you. Take care of my small friends for me, please, whilst I'm away, and try not to get into any fights with Angel." Fluttershy said.
"I won't pick any fights with him, if he doesn't try to pick any with me." Discord said.
Spike was standing by the mirror and cautiously extended a claw into it.
"It feels hot and cold." Spike said. "And kind of sucky and swirly."
"Oh for crying out loud! You need to get going: NOW!" Discord said. "Do any further sappy stuff, if you have any belated changes of heart in your feelings toward me, if and when you come back."
"Okay: We're going!" Rainbow Dash said and stepped into the mirror and vanished. Fluttershy gave Discord one last look, then followed suit, and Rarity followed commenting that she hoped the transit wouldn't get her dirty.
Pinkie Pie jumped in with a 'whee', and Applejack followed suit shaking her head and muttering something under her breath.
That left Discord and Twilight and Spike.
"I'm sorry. I should have been a better friend." Twilight said to Discord. "And that's not sappy. It's a fact."
"You never had the confidence you needed. I'm sorry that I couldn't figure out a way to give you that." Discord said.
Twilight mustered herself and headed for the mirror.
"Twilight." Discord said as she reached the mirror.
"What?" she paused and looked back at him.
"Don't worry about me and take your time to do what you need to do. And I rather suspect that Sunset Shimmer may be absolutely crucial in whatever awaits on the other side of that gate. If for no reason other than that she's from Equestria and wouldn't have been sucked dry of magic by Tirek at the point that she left from here to there, wherever there is. But there's also – although for reasons of morale, etc, I didn't let on in front of the others – that Princess Celestia specifically told me that in a crisis Sunset might be your last hope. Losing her was a great blow to Princess Celestia. But it was necessary for both of them to move on, and wherever 'over there' is, Sunset has apparently decided that it requires a guardian from Equestria."
"Guardian?" Twilight said. "What kind of place is it?"
There was a bellowing roar from somewhere nearby of what sounded horribly like Tirek:
"DISCORD!"
"We have to go!" Spike said, tugging at Twilight's leg.
Discord made a dismissive gesture, and Twilight found herself shoved forward into the mirror, along with Spike, both of them spinning end over end and tumbling round and round and being squeezed and stretched in a rainbow vortex, to emerge, collapsing, somewhere else…
Author Notes:
(Pony) Twilight Sparkle never got the confidence boost from having had to go to another world to get back the Element of Magic in this universe, so to try to give her a sense of having achieved something, Princess Celestia sent Twilight after Tirek instead of Discord as she did in the show. Presumably Tirek was able to ambush Twilight and her friends and suck them dry of magic, and to go on from there. By the time Discord was tasked to deal with Tirek, Tirek was so powerful he didn't see any need to try and 'corrupt' or recruit Discord, so Discord rescued Twilight and her friends and ran for it and didn't switch sides.
I'm not sure where this would go with (pony) Twilight and her friends (and what the fan wiki refers to as 'The Chest of Harmony') all dumped into the human world. They would be arriving, I think, in the runup to what would have been the 'Rainbow Rocks' film, although without the Sunset-Twilight battle from the original 'Equestria Girls' film having taken place, the sirens may not have had their attention drawn to Canterlot High.
Sunset Shimmer is assumed to have occasionally communicated with Princess Celestia by the linked journals (I think Celestia still had hers up until the start of the 'Rainbow Rocks' film), including to apologise and to say she was staying in the human world to deal with problems caused by pony artifacts which had ended up there. (Maybe the Memory Stone or Time Twirler or something else turned up 'early' in the human world.) Discord is assumed to have some knowledge of these communications – maybe Princess Celestia briefed him when discussing possible last ditch contingency measures for a disaster.
Whilst Princess Celestia claims in the first 'Equestria Girls' film that only (pony) Twilight Sparkle should go through the mirror, in case of upsetting the balance of the world on the other side, Discord (who after all is the 'Lord of Chaos') it seems to me would have no problem with the concept of 'upsetting balance', and would quite happily send six ponies (plus Spike the dragon) off through the mirror.