Spike's wide eyes glimmered as he stared at what he considered to be a true artisan at work. “So down in Core Metro, instead of balloon sculptures, you humans did this?”
Breaking his concentration for the briefest of moments, the crystal elemental Beryl Hex glanced at the small dragon out of the corner of his eye and gave a very brief unimpassioned nod before returning his attention to his work in-progress. He gracefully wove his small wand in careful motions to add to the next few layers of solid gemstone, briefly pausing to dip his tool into a nearby series of bowls containing specific varieties of mineral powders before returning to the point he left off at.
After the next few dozen minutes, Beryl gave the excitably fidgeting and drooling Spike his request: a cone of hexagonal sapphires swirling with a row of emerald orbs containing arranged shafts of pink diamond topped with a cherry-like prism of ruby. Spike clapped as he placed a big bag of bits on the stall’s table, then took his purchase in claw, walking away while licking it. This act got a weird look out of Beryl, but then he turned his attention to the bag and shrugged before lifting it up to put in his lockbox of that day’s profits and turning to take the request of the next in line.
As Spike walked along the road down the market immersed in his hand-crafted treat, he was oblivious to the flash of bright light to his side that left behind one of his closest, most bizarre friends. Discord was disappointed to not receive a proper greeting from one of the few non-chaotic beings he ever acknowledged, but he decided to go with it for a minute and pulled out his now rubber-like cheeks to make a face at him. Then, he bopped himself on the forehead which sent his eyeballs rolling down into his skull only to pop out of his nostrils. Finally, for his encore, he pulled his mismatched horns down under his chin and tied them together, pulled off his beard which turned into a foal’s pacifier and put it into his mouth, and made his eyeballs swell up to twenty times their size.
When this didn’t work, Discord shook his head back to normal in a blur, rolled his eyes, and just snapped his fingers on his bird-talon hand. Suddenly, a banana peel walked right to the middle of the road and came to rest in Spike’s path. He slipped on it, hollering, and his gem cone went flying, only for Discord to extend his body and catch it in-claw. Spike sat up and rubbed his head until everything stopped spinning. Then he looked up at discord with his gem cone, smiled and took it in claw once again as he got up. “Gee, thanks Discord! I really should pay attention to my surroundings!”
Discord scoffed and rolled his eyes. “Yes, you really should. Speaking of our surroundings…” He swung his head around, looking hither and about at the new sights, such as the market stall where the sand elemental Nubia Gobi and her fire elemental husband Richter were working together blowing glass for an onlooking crowd of ponies, the ice elemental elder Aeolus Yoden sitting on a nearby public bench with two elderly mares throwing bread crumbs to some pigeons, and some pony and human children playing with a ball with a pegasus and a human on a cloud flying up to spike it and an earth pony moving to intercept only for a human to burst right out of the ground and intercept their interception.
After biting a chunk out of his crystal cone, Spike turned to Discord with his mouth full. “I know! Isn’t it great?” He swallowed and belched a fiery burp. “Twilight and the others went on a big adventure in a cool underground city and brought back a ton of new friends! Even after living among unicorns for so long, I’ve never seen magic so interesting before! And their warriors are just so awesome! Makes me wish they had some kind of comics or trading cards I could collect!”
At this, Discord snorted and started gesturing. “Well, I for one find them to be messy pests. Like grains of sand after a fun day at the beach, they just end up getting everywhere into every nook and cranny!” He paused for a moment to tug on an ear and pour out a small dune’s worth of sand. “You can’t imagine how shocked I was when I found that a few of those ether tribesmen somehow wound up in my dimension! And I think I can safely say ‘there goes the neighborhood’ because a few of them seemed to like it enough to live there!”
At that, Spike took another bite from his cone after giving it a few more licks and gave Discord a wry look. “Really? I figured that you of all creatures would appreciate such a big change, especially with a whole new kind of creature that all seem pretty chaotic in their own way!”
Discord glanced at an open space in a nearby park where two humans wearing padded training getup bowed to each other before holding out their wooden replica weapons and rushing to clash them. After a few rounds of this, they started slinging their magic at each other. “Well… I suppose I can’t deny that I really like their style in some aspects of their way of life, but I’m still a little miffed at the fact that a few of them threatened Fluttershy…”
With a loud crunch, Spike finally finished off his intricate but short-lived treat. “Fluttershy’s tough, she can fight her own battles in her own way, but besides that…” He paused briefly to lick each of his claws of any gem dust. “It seems to have been a really long time since we’ve done something together. In fact, I can’t help but feel that for some reason, I haven’t done much in a while!”
Discord let out a short, smug laughter. “I get what you mean friend. It honestly feels like this is the first time I’ve ever actually existed!” Then, he turned to look at something or someone in the eye that wasn’t really there but somehow everpresent. “It almost feels like the powers that be over our little corner of the omniverse is having a little difficulty in deciding how we should behave in the scenarios they’ve tried to plan out.”
Spike giggled as he proceeded down his way. “Whatever you say, Mr. Reality Bender!” However, he ended up bumping into something very solid and falling on his tail. He quickly looked up. “Oh! Sorry, my bad!” However, before replying, the lanky human bent down to take a good look at the little dragon with his narrow, golden-brown eyes. He had neck-length dark hair and wore a white tank-top and pale-brown cargo pants that his hands were currently tucked in.
After getting an uncomfortably long eyefull, he straightened up and took a deep breath. “Say… you’re a dragon, aren’t you?”
Spike, looking smug, struck a pose and attempted to smooth back his head-ridges. “Why, yes I am! Thanks for noticing!”
The human gave Spike a lopsided smile as he cocked his head to the side. “You know, back down in Core Metro, dragons came to be known as a symbol of supremacy, invincibility, and perfection.”
Spike turned around and struck another pose, swaying his hips side to side. “Well… Is it any wonder why?” This caused Discord to point at his open mouth as he made a gagging expression, his tongue detaching and hopping on his finger to do a little dance.
The human cocked his head to the other side, flashing a frown and raising an eyebrow. “Of course, you seem a little… smaller than the carvings and illustrations depicted. But I suppose a warrior’s deeds are what one measures their acclaim, not their stature. If half the things I’ve heard about Spike, the dragon of Ponyville are true…”
At that, a conflicted Spike tried to put a little sass into the next pose he struck, but before he could say anything, Discord slinked over to look the human straight in the eye. “One more thing to add to the list of things about humans that annoy me is that you don’t seem to know your place. You didn’t even have the courtesy to accept my good friend’s apology.”
The human turned his body to point his shoulder and hip at the draconequus, but kept his eyes on him. “Well, if anyone knows about what it means to be cocky, it’s Discord, almighty spirit of chaos. No matter what your initial impression, the one thing you have to keep in mind about us humans is that above all, we’re survivors. And being a survivor means having to always test your limits and your place in life. And the golden rule about that way of life is…” Suddenly, quick as lightning, he swung out his arm in a backhand swing. All the pair of friends saw was a blur of bright green. Right when he immediately slipped his hand back in his pocket, Discord’s beard fell from his chin, cut clean off. “Never, ever, take your current place in life for granted. Oh, and if you see Kris Duelis and the Prancing Pony Brave Six, tell them that Slash Render and the Rising Dragon Guild Mighty Six are in town looking to settle the score.”
Slash turned around completely and continued down the road. Discord rolled his eyes and snapped his fingers. But then his eyes grew wide as he snapped his fingers a couple more times only to get no results. To Spike’s confusion, Discord bent down and grabbed his beard, at first trying to stick it to his chin as-is, then he held it to his chin and tried to give his fingers a couple more snaps to no avail. “Huh. Interesting”
Spike scratched the side of his head, a brow raised. “Uh… What was that? What just happened?”
Once realization finally set in, Discord gave a big, mischievous gin and stared down the way Slash went. “Something fun, I’m sure!”
***
“And so I said, ‘Call me Pixie Boy again kid, and I’ll give you a roll of quarter-credits for every tooth I yank out of that little head of yours!’” At the end of that funny story, all of Alphonse’s friends sitting at the table in the bazaar burst into laughter, the ponies someone awkwardly as they tried to shift their focus to their drinks. Riding the buzz, Alphonse added an addendum as he sloshed around his tankard of juice. “And that’s how I was banned for life from the best ice cream parlor in Core Metro! I can only hope that that little list I’m on was lost in the move to open up shop up here!”
However, the humans’ laughter quickly quelled as they suddenly began to look around the room. The ponies, especially Twilight, were a little concerned. “Um… are you guys alright?”
The Prancing Pony Brave Six ignored her and placed their cups on their table and got up to take vantage of the whole bazaar, but they seemed unable to find exactly what seemed to put them out-of-sorts. However, they all materialized their weapons when an arrogant calling filled the hall. “Looks like your time apart hasn’t dulled your ability to sense ill-will. Excellent!”
The humans turned to the source of this voice as a curtain of silver light fluttered in a previously empty space and pulled back to reveal another group of six humans. Lined up together was a very tall, very lanky human who’s greasy hair was tied in a long ponytail with strangely pale, glassy eyes dressed in a pea-green overcoat; an equally tall but very broad human suited up head-to-toe in an armor made up of countless thin metal plates with a conical helmet covering his hair and a mail-like mask of the same plates obscuring his face, leaving his violet eyes to look out, all while extending a medium-sized metal apparatus from his back; a shorter and more rotund human with his bright-brown hair styled into a curly mullet above his dark green eyes dressed in a leather apron on top of a white undershirt; an auburn-haired human with dark eyes wearing a military coat with the addition of several gold rings hanging lined up on each arm; a short, silver-haired human with blue eyes dressed white and red knitwear nervously trying to hide behind the previous human; and Slash, the human Spike and Discord met earlier, his hands still in his pockets.
Kris stepped forward first. “Well… this is a surprise! I hope you’re not here to cause trouble, because we’ve all got a good thing going here and it’d be very unfortunate if a few of us with a chip on our shoulder were to mess that up, right?”
Slash scoffed at this. “Oh, don’t worry, we like life up here as much as you do and have made our fair share of friends. Because of that, we’re more than willing to settle any scores like gentlemen.”
Once the ponies got over the initial shock of a group of humans appearing out of nowhere, Twilight trotted up between the two groups. “What’s going on? Who are these people? Are you friends or not? It’s kind of hard to tell with the way you’re talking.”
After giving Twilight a look of concern, Kris turned back towards slash and looked him in the eye. “I wouldn’t exactly call us friends, we used to work in similar fields and interacted a lot, so a good thing to call us would be… rivals.” Kris gestured to Slash and his group. “Meet the Mighty Six of the Rising Dragon Fighter’s Guild. We were all apprentices at our respective guilds and used to be called out on a lot of our similar jobs.” He then gave a confident smile and gestured at himself. “But we, the Brave Six, always cleaned up and got the jobs done right!”
At that, Slash scowled and pulled out a hand to point an accusing finger at Kris. “You mean we did all that hard work and cleaned up while you got all the acclaim and appreciation! We were always rougher and tougher than the best of them, even you! Unfortunately for us, everyone loves a bunch of glory boys!”
At this, Kris huffed and gave Slash a very angry look. “Oh! That’s just typical of you! You can’t bear the thought that you’re all just lacking in ability, so you blame others for their own success, is that it?”
Both Slash and Kris started getting in each other’s faces, growling, while their respective groups started approaching one another with intense looks of their own. However, Twilight ignited her horn and unfurled her wings, forcing both groups back. “Wait a minute! I thought you all wanted to settle your issues like gentlemen?”
Kris softened his expression at Twilight’s exclamation, but still gave Slash a hard look. “They were the ones that brought up the word, ‘gentlemen’ so what did you have in mind, Mr. Render?”
Slash broke out into a big, mischievous grin and turned towards his friends, who flashed grins of their own. “I’m glad you asked, Mr. Duelis. We’ve been talking it over for a while and we’ve decided to settle our little rivalry once and for all by showing this whole new world who are the best fighters! So we were thinking about having a little team duel, Tower Rules, standard format would be appropriate I think!”
Kris’s eyes grew wide. Then he turned back towards his human friends, who looked at each other in deep consideration before turning back towards him and nodding. Kris turned back towards Slash with an even more determined expression. “All right, we accept your challenge. Go and arrange things with the commission and we’ll decide on our arrangement, okay?”
Slash made a confident laugh and turned to depart with his similarly laughing friends. “Oh, we’ve already made all the proper arrangements with the commission, all that was left was getting your approval! See you at the pit tomorrow morning, bright and early, Prancers!”
As they stood together in the bazaar’s canteen, Twilight turned towards Kris with a look of confusion. “Pardon me, but what the hay was that all about?”
Kris awkwardly fidgeted with his hands and looked away. “Well, firstly, it’s kind of a human thing. But since we’re all here anyway and have nothing but free time for now, we might as well explain a few things…”