“Alright, I’m ready. Uncover your eyes.”
Discord unclasped his talon and paw from where he’d set his eyes on the table. What he saw staggered him so, his eyes leapt back into their sockets and he was left gaping. If he’d had the presence of mind to make his jaw drop off, he wouldn’t have done it, though; that would have been competing with what he saw, which would be so… gauche right now.
“What do you think?” Fluttershy cooed. She was, at a glance, not entirely symmetrical, and at a second glance, not entirely pegasus. Her wings were spread enough to show that one was a normal feathered wing and the other was ribbed, webbed, and thumbed like a bat’s. Her eyes were red instead of their usual blue. And if that weren’t the clincher, then the single fang poking from her nervous smile certainly was. “Do you… like it?”
“I… wow. Yes!” Discord gawked and gasped, finding himself at a loss for words to rival being a statue. Fluttershy beamed, and he went soft.
“I’m so happy you do. I’ve been working on it for weeks.” She approached him, going around the table.
“For… for me?” He got a slow nod in response. “Wow. Er… if I may ask… how?”
Fluttershy halted to consider the question. “Um. Do you remember when I wrote to you about those vampire fruit bats?”
“Yes, and how you started turning part fruit bat at night. Is this…?” He gestured, leaving several possible questions unarticulated, but somehow asking them.
“No. I mean, not exactly.” Fluttershy shuffled her hooves. “Twilight tried to cure me, but I eventually realized I still had this… ability in me. It was harder to do without my knowing, though, so I was able to control it better. And I can do it on both sides, actually, but today, this is the effect I was looking for.”
“And I must say, your work has paid off beautifully!” He smoothed his paw over her ears, one of which he now noticed was tufted, which was obviously intended to match his antler.
“Thank you,” she purred, blushing.
“But I have to wonder, how did you and your friends manage to keep this a secret from me?”
“Oh. I haven’t told them. You’re the first to know.”
“What? Why-so-ever not?”
“Well, I don’t want Twilight to worry. She would take it very hard if she knew she made a mistake.”
“Oh, don’t think of it as a mistake!” Discord chided. “This is wonderful. ‘Serendipity,’ I think, would be more apt.”
“I’m not sure she’d see it that way. And besides, Rarity told me to stop being a bat.”
“Wait, when was that?”
“Back on the night they turned me back. I mean, I don’t remember it, but she said that’s what she told me.”
Discord went quiet for a moment. “What about the others?”
“I don’t know. Applejack might suspect because I’ve been buying more apples, but she hasn’t said anything. And I don’t want to tell any of the others, because I don’t know if they’d keep it secret.” Fluttershy locked her red eyes with Discord’s. “Please, promise me you won’t tell them.”
“All right. I promise won’t tell them about your secret—“
“Oh, thank you!” Fluttershy leapt up to hug the draconequus.
“But you have to tell them yourself.”
“W-what?” She dropped to the floor. “Why?”
“Well, consider this. Would you rather I tell you…” The draconequus wrapped himself around the half-vampire to punctuate the question better. “…that this could be our little secret?”
“I would… like that very much!” she breathed.
“Then let’s say we kept this secret together. We could get into all sorts of wacky shenanigans making sure no one sees too much. But really, it would be foolish to think we could keep it indefinitely.”
“Why not?”
“Any number of reasons. Maybe your condition changes, maybe one of us lets something slip despite ourselves, maybe an excentric detective puts it together while investigating an unrelated case. Whatever caused it, those problems you were worried about are at least as bad as they would be right now, except everypony will also wonder what my motives were for keeping the secret.”
“Oh,” said Fluttershy. Then, when she caught up to the implications, “…Oh my!”
“Now, I won’t force you to do this if it makes you uncomfortable,” Discord added, “but I think you need to get comfortable, the sooner the better.”
“I’m sorry, Discord.”
“…huh?”
“I’m so sorry,” repeated Fluttershy, nuzzling close. “I didn’t mean to put you through all that.”
“Hey, it’s all right.” He scratched Fluttershy behind her mismatched ears. “Nothing happened, right?”
“But I was being so thoughtless to even ask that!” she insisted, nuzzling harder. “I’m sorry, I’m so, so sorry.”
“Fluttershy, what are you—mmph!?”
Later, at the new Castle of Friendship (working name)
“Discord’s acting funny.”
“Oh?”
“Yupyup.”
“Well, darling,” quipped the unicorn, “I’m designing a new dress line. Do you mind telling me why your news is more newsworthy?”
“Nah, I’ll just tell you. I saw him covered with one-fanged bite marks, so I told him it looked like he was trying to eat himself and I asked him why, but the weird part is he got nervous when I asked!”
Ignoring the pink earth pony’s technically-logical non sequitur at the start of that answer, Rarity thought over the main part. “Nervous? That does sound… unlike Discord,” she settled on a phrase. “Usually, he has a confident response, whether or not he feels like making it helpful.”
“Yeah, that’s what I thought,” said Pinkie. “What can you tell me about those dresses?”
