Chapter Text
1)
“Siesta what the fuck are you doing,” Tabris sighed. “What are you even wearing.”
“A costume,” the cheeky maid replied. “Duh.”
Yes, Tabris thought, it could certainly be... counted as a costume. Or it could be counted as... “That’s maido fetish gear,” he observed. “...Is that an actual tail?”
Siesta grinned. “I’m going to an anime convention!” she declared, eyes shining. “My costume is Tohru and she’s totally about 99% complete!”
Tabris had his head in his hands. “I don’t want to know what’s missing,” he groaned, “I don’t want to know what’s missing...”
“Oh, some random little detail I’m sure I can find at the convention,” Siesta replied confidently. “It’s practically guaranteed at this trope!”
Tabris stared. “...You know what, I don’t want to know. Just... go to your convention yourself. You’re perfectly capable. Why did you even come to me.”
Siesta Ikari shrugged, twirling around in her leather maid costume, complete with slitted eyes, curving horns hidden under her hair, and a thick green tail swaying behind her. Her ensemble was tied together with a white headdress and black leather high-heel boots.
“And now you spent a paragraph describing your fetish gear,” Tabris observed. “What am I, a fucking Audience Surrogate?”
“Basically,” Siesta grinned. “Sorry Uncle Tabris, you can go back to fucking Alt-Grandpa again tho~”
“Riiiiiight,” Tabris noted. “If you’ll excuse me, I’ll go be somewhere else now.” He walked behind a stick and out of the scene.
Siesta giggled to herself.
With a swirl of her costume and a flip of her hair, Siesta idly pulled up a booklet of spells- really, it was mostly just the lyrics to various Rammstein songs that, honestly, weren’t even necessary for her to make a portal… buuuuut it was easier to do the spell if she had something to focus on.
“Hmmm…. what song lyrics do I sing to get to the convention… I wonder if there’s any songs about horses?” Siesta muttered, idly paging through the booklet and tilting her head curiously. “And I wonder what world I’ll be thrown into…”
She paused. “You know, I’m going to be breaking convention anyway, in more ways than one... Where’s my... Aha!” Siesta pulled out another booklet of lyrics, flipping through it. “If you want to break convention, go Russian,” She murmured. “Here we are.”
She started singing, softly, very, very softly...
"Выйду ночью в поле с конём...
Ночкой тёмной тихо пойдём!
Мы пойдём с конём по полю вдвоём,
Мы пойдём с конём по полю вдвоём..."
And she stepped behind a pillar, around it, and back out from a whole new world.
“Ah, 2017,” she sighed. “A whole different age...”
<>
Five minutes and a few forged badges later, Siesta stepped into the convention center proper and… was immediately kind of underwhelmed.
To be fair, there were a lot of pretty ladies dressed in skimpy cosplay doing photoshoots in scenic parts of the center, but most of the people at ComicCon were… sweaty nerds trying not to die from being exposed to the summer heat in the middle of San Diego.
Also everything that wasn’t in the Artist Alley was massively overpriced and of exceedingly cheap quality. But oh well, that wasn’t why she was there.
No, she was looking for someone.
Someone… special. In more ways than one, really.
Someone with a specific look, with a specific attitude, and with a specific, shady nature that was all but impossible to miss if one was looking in the right place.
A shadowy little shitlord who was technically supposedly powerful enough to destroy a good section of the greater universe cluster that existed in the vague space between spaces, but was also… well.
An idiot. And also mostly irrelevant.
“Eenie, meenie, miney... you.” Siesta stopped next to a stall full of what seemed to be handcrafted objects in a large variety, but oddly enough very few customers.
“Slow day?” she inquired of the man behind the stall, wearing what was probably an ironic Dr. Facilier costume, looking grumpy.
“As hell,” the man grumbled. “I thought I had struck gold getting this stall here, where people usually come to rest their legs. Gold! Ha! Struck asbestos, more like. Would you like to sample my wares, young miss?”
“I’m hardly young for a dragon,” Siesta protested, amusement twinkling in her eyes. “I have at least a couple of centuries on me, you know!”
“I think you’ve gotten a few details wrong,” the man observed.
“It’s an AU or something,” Siesta disagreed. “I’ll persevere.”
“Riiiiiight,” the stall owner drawled. “At least wear a tie... I think I have one around here...”
“I think we know how this song and dance goes already,” Siesta muttered almost sarcastically, rolling her eyes as she handed over the requisite five bucks to cover the tie, then clipped it on and-
“See you on the other side, Siesta,” the shadowy bastard saluted jauntily as Siesta fell back into a cotton candy flavored portal made entirely out of the lyrics to the national anthem of the USSR. “And tell my old master hello for me, why don’tcha?”
Siesta didn’t even want to know what kind of mathematics would go into making a portal like that but she let herself fall nonetheless.
Maybe Uriel would like to figure it out, she wondered as darkness claimed her.
<>
Siesta awoke on a checkered plain, in a small lull in the chaotic environment around her. She felt... different, in a way that she couldn’t put her finger on at first. Then she dug deeper into her Core and rolled her eyes.
“Well, at least I got an Angel-size form for myself now,” she snarked. “What else did he change around?”
“Well, I changed your natural hair color, if you absolutely must know. Modified your energy output, tweaked a few inefficiencies, ported DOOM (1993) into the bio-digital software making up your soul and played through on Ultra Nightmare mode…” the shadowy bastard paused and had the decency to blush as he looked away. “... that was a lie, I didn’t make it past the first level. Anyway, congratulations, your first major patch to the family Network enables Angels to now play DOOM with their very souls. Have fun dicking around in anthro horse world or whatever. I dunno, I don’t really choose the destinations anymore.”
“You know, I had wanted to figure it all out myself,” Siesta grumbled. “Thanks for nothing, Umbra. ”
“Ah, sweet sarcasm, how I missed thine bitter words,” Umbra shot back, rolling his eyes before snapping his fingers and dumping Siesta on her ass in the middle of a thick, wild forest. “Thanks for the five bucks, Siesta .”
Without another word, the bastard vanished and left Siesta all alone, save for the endless sounds of wildlife chittering and squawking and hissing through the jungle-like woods around her.
“I could have sworn this was a plain five minutes ago,” Siesta noted. “This is a bit too chaotic at this point. Where even am I?”
She walked forward and the jungle around her melted into a twisting medieval cityscape into a beach by a raging sea into the same checkered plain she’d seen before.
In only a few steps.
“Okay this isn’t normal,” she deduced brilliantly. “Hush, narration.”
She walked forward again, watching the world melt from one environment to another. It’s like the world was... out of alignment? Still malleable? Varied in upper spatial dimensions? None of those felt right...
Huffing, Siesta snapped out her Absolute Territory, pressing it down on the world and enforcing her Will on it, overriding the chaos.
...huh.
Without the chaotic environment, the world was still... vibrant. Too vibrant. Did she detect a hint of pastel? Fascinating.
“Oh you’re new ,” came a strange voice all around Siesta, the shape of some kind of horrible chimeric mishmash of animals coming into view as it swirled around her. Strangely enough, the horrible creature seemed perfectly at home with the chaotic environment, and seemed actively repulsed by the bubble of reality enforced by Siesta’s soul. “And you’re… what are you, a hairless monkey pretending to be a dragon?”
“The term is ‘human’,” Siesta shot back. “What are you, a chimera pretending to be a Ryuu?”
“Ooh, you’re a feisty one~!” the strange being shot back, grinning wolfishly as he plucked a cloud from the sky and ate it like a wad of cotton candy. “Just for that I might not turn you into a suitably ironic work of art mounted on my wall.”
“Are you even capable of it?” Siesta asked. “I can tell that you are repulsed by the Light of my Soul. Who are you to make such claims anyway?”
“Honey, the only thing I’m repulsed by is how ugly your soul is,” the being immediately huffed, ruffling a suit that hadn’t been there before as he floated upside down and grinned, a crooked snaggletooth dangling from one side of his mouth. “As for who I am… You can call me Discord, king of the world and all that good stuff.”
“Has the world always been so annoyingly malleable,” Siesta drawled, “Or is that a recent development?” She coughed. “‘scuse my snark, you highness. My name is Siesta Ikari. How may I help you?”
“Oh ho, helpful little lass aren’t you?” The chaotic king laughed, continuing to circle around Siesta and prod the bubble of her AT Field for a few seconds. “No no, this world was exactly as you see it in that disgustingly drab bubble- boring and normal, following all sorts of dumb rules like physics and logic- blech! Can you believe how annoying it is to be the ultimate expression of all things chaos and fun in a world that doesn’t even have cotton candy clouds and chocolate milk rain? So of course- I, my magnificent self, made a few changes. It’s so much nicer now, don’t you think?”
Siesta looked around.
Her eyes slid across a mishmash of different factors, variables, and environments, all in a chaotic dance that, if she was being fair, did have a certain aesthetic quality to it.
She frowned and dug deeper.
Within her were two wolves, except no there weren’t because that was a stupid meme.
Her Angelic nature, the one which came with her Identity as an Angel of the Fourth Heaven, declared her surroundings to be a senseless mishmash with no rhyme or reason.
The other nature, however, the one that was ‘bestowed’ upon her by Umbra or whatever his name was, was under the identifier of a ‘Chaos Dragon’, and found the environment to be quite pleasant to be in.
Hrm.
“I am of two minds about it,” she finally said. “Honestly, if you don’t mind, I’ll keep my Soul up either way until I figure out which mind should prevail.”
“Well hurry up with it if you’d please, the stench of all that order and self imposed righteousness is giving me a headache,” Discord huffed, popping off his head and stuffing a few ice cubes into it before rattling the entire thing out and pouring the resultant mix into a tall cocktail glass that he then proceeded to drink once his head was on again… backwards.
Crossing her arms, Siesta narrowed her eyes. She then reached back inside herself and realigned her Absolute Territory to match the Chaos Dragon entity, mostly to see what that would do.
“.... I suppose you’ve made up your mind then,” Discord deadpanned idly as the entire area around them didn’t so much as explode as it did revert to primordial elemental chaos . “Y’know, as much as I appreciate the primordial chaos, I think it’s a bit… much don’t you think?”
The draconequus immediately put on a pair of oversized sunglasses, shaking his head and snapping his fingers a few times to gently drop the previous background back into place much like one would drag in a different png file in a photo editing software of some sort, complete with all the little boxes and dotted lines. “Ahh, much better. See, the old chaos was nice and all, but it was so tacky, y’know? So much nicer to have this- more stuff to do, more people to terrorize, more candy to snack on and all that.”
Siesta looked at the mess of colors that was the new Chaos, and raised an eyebrow. “Are you honestly trying to tell me that this new reality is less tacky, your Highness?”
“There’s a difference between staring into a kaleidoscope of Dayglo and neon tacky and kitschy randomness tacky,” Discord huffed, as if Siesta spoke words that she didn’t understand- or more like some asshole judge in a fashion competition or something. “The difference being that I like my candy clouds, and this at least doesn’t sear your retinas with gamma radiation. Nasty stuff, that. Not that it’d kill me , but it has such a nasty aftertaste, y’know?”
He snapped again, forming a golden throne to sit upon and a slightly smaller pile of throw pillows for Siesta. “Aaaaanyway, let’s cut to the chase- You’ve got about two options here in the near future as outlined by a mutual shadowy friend who I had to block on Horsebook about a thousand years ago for poking me a whole bunch and generally being a smug jerk, but I digress. Option one: you and I reign in chaos for as long as we want, doing whatever we want and with no one to stop us. Oooor-“
Discord paused for dramatic effect as the sun and moon suddenly both rose at the same time on opposite sides of the sky, casting the world into a brilliant, beautiful twilight as the two celestial bodies cast their light and power across the sky.
“You let the killjoy princesses take back control of the land and spend the next thousand years as a statue or some boring garbage. Alternatively, option three is you try and kill me and endear yourselves to the warmongers over there buuuuut eh. That one’s boring .”
“What’s this land’s anime called?” Siesta asked curiously. “...and on that note, how’s the fate thing around here - enforced, freeform...?”
“My Little Pony: Friendship is Magic,” Discord immediately deadpanned, looking as if he’d bitten into a sour lemon at the thought of saying those words out loud. “And as for Fate … eh. Little bit of both. Archaic, really, but even I can’t change that aspect of the world. Much as I’d like to.”
Siesta took a deep breath. “You know what, sure, let’s rule together. But when, yes, when we end up getting taken down, I reserve the right to say ‘I told you so’. Kay?”
“Great!” Discord clapped gleefully- not sarcastically for once, but with an actual sense that he was genuinely happy for the first time in a while. He snapped his fingers, turning their pair of seats into a pair of thrones, right in time for a pair of figures to slam down before the two of them and-
“Hey Discord?” Siesta asked, leaning over to stage whisper at said draconequus, who seemed just as flabbergasted as she was.
“Yeah?”
“I thought you said this was a place full of Ponies ,” Siesta continued stage whispering, heedless of the pair of sisters staring at them with divine wrath and rainbows rippling around them. “Those two are clearly anthropomorphic- also, why the fuck are their tits so big!? ”
“Okay one: I have no idea. Two: Like you have any room to talk,” Discord immediately responded, pointing down at Siesta’s chest with a clawed finger. “I swear they were actual equines a few seconds ag- Wait, did you?”
“... Y’know what, let’s not go into that right now,” Siesta sighed, then turned back to the confused embodiments of sun and moon with a deadpan glare. “Alright, the fuck do you two want?”
“We care not what foul creatures you have dug from the dawn of time, Discord,” the shorter of them growled, “but thine reign of terror ends here and now!”
“Oh me , you’ve used that same speech a dozen times Lulu-hon, it’s so last millennia!” Discord immediately laughed, flopping his hand dismissively at the blue horse lady, while the white horse lady just stepped forward and-
“Hey Discord, should we be worried about the rainbow necklaces or-?” Siesta asked, watching nervously as said necklaces began to glow brighter and brighter with every passing second.
“Er- y’know-“ Discord actually paused for a moment, then snapped his fingers and vanished into thin air. “I’ll let you handle this!”
“Mother fucker ,” Siesta growled, palming her face as the two sisters immediately began looking around frantically as if to try and find the chaotic king before re-focusing on her with… rather less rainbow glowing this time.
And a lot more “beat her ass into the ground” energy.
“I’m starting to think… that maybe, just maybe… that rat bastard decided to screw me over,” Siesta muttered.
She crossed her arms, spreading her Absolute Territory, before reconsidering and expanding it to even greater proportions, assuming her massive Angelic Draconic form in the process.
“Then come at me,” she spoke gravely.
Siesta would have liked to have said that the fight was epic and grand, two hardened warriors battling against a dragon ten times their size, lasers flying everywhere as explosions dotted the landscape and turned twilight into burning daylight, with craters and blood and shouting and beam clashes and all that good shonen anime kind of fun.
Unfortunately, Siesta hadn’t ever been in a real fight literally ever, her dragon form was completely untested and she had no idea how to control it… and she was pretty much immediately turned into a conscious stone statue after about five minutes of panicked flailing, half-assed teleports, and a few doom lasers that didn’t do anything except pockmark the already fucked up landscape.
Siesta sighed, groaning and grumbling as the two sisters flew off into the distance, hours and hours and hours passing by until slowly, surely, the landscape shifted and left Siesta… sitting there.
In the ruins of what used to be a small town near the foot of a large mountain.
Alone.
Unable to move.
Staring straight forward at not even anything interesting, just a patch of trees that still looked kinda fucked up even after what she assumed was Discord’s defeat.
“God fucking dammit.”