//------------------------------// // Prologue // Story: Chaotic Emergence // by Gambit Prawn //------------------------------// Discord floated alone in the aether. The façade of his trademark grin showed its first signs of cracking as he started on the nine-hundred and twelfth iteration of the day’s task. Dipping a claw into a tiny slip of paper, he felt around a bit before pulling out a hat with a name on it: Iemanjá da Silva With a snap he manifested a wheel that depicted the three tribes of pony surrounding the grinning master of chaos himself. Each group contained three mares and one stallion. They were evenly spaced out and gave the onlooker disconcertingly wide smiles. The draconequus gave the wheel a modest spin, and his counterpart in the center started to dance around. Leaving its perch, it flashed haphazardly between the blank flanks of the ponies. As it passed onto each one, the remaining members of its tribe shuffled coat and mane colors. It continued accelerating into a blur before abruptly settling on a small, golden earth pony mare in the bottom-right corner. Discord lazily accepted a bronze, toy-sized tail from the chooser and stuck it to the hat, which then became a realistic doll of an Afro-Brazilian woman. He dropped the doll and gave an exaggerated sigh. "Well, the votes are in," Discord said, summoning a drumroll and an elaborately sealed envelope. He let the comically long piece of parchment unroll for several seconds become continuing, "I am officially bored with playing pin the tail on the human." "I'm handed the rare chance to write off unprovoked polymorphism as... what was it called again?" “Doing the right thing for and making the world a better place for everybody,” The illusionary head of Equestria’s newest princess answered from his shoulder. “Yes, something like that. Sure, the opportunity's magnificent: if this works out, the precocious pony population I’ve planted saves an otherwise doomed world, and I earn another point on my redemption punch card. If not, the apocalypse can be a cold place. If nothing else, I will be generously providing nice, warm fur to those in need. But truth to be told, the selection itself has become too much like a full-time job." Discord teleported into a desk a short distance above and was now sporting standard officewear while rapidly pressing buttons on an old-fashioned adding machine. "I am a Draconequus of principles," Discord said straightening his posture. "I have a responsibility to shirk any sort of responsibility." “That doesn’t make any sense!” the Twilight apparition started to object. However, she was cut off by a killer fiddle solo coming from the other shoulder. The being of chaos tapped the desk against his fingers to the beat while thinking. "I could foist the whole thing on Sweetie Belle and tell her she could get her cutie mark in stochastic determination, but her sister's still mad about hilarious "accident" with the apple dog and those edible dresses." "Besides I couldn’t possibly deny a single customer my personal, chaotic touch," he said filing his nails. "Guess it's up to me to find a way to meet my pony quota all at once." With a flash of chaos magic, Discord was now in a bowling alley facing an endless sea of labelled pins. With a squeaky pop, he removed his own head and chucked it down the lane. It rolled perfectly before crashing into the first row of human stand-in pins. He then lashed out with his tongue, striking each of the fallen pins with a random pony sticker. Discord's hybrid body rejoined his head, and he began counting, frowning as he reached the end. "Only sixteen? This won’t work at all; the dizziness is hardly worth it. I need something with more energy. Maybe let my contestants interact, bounce off one another..." No sooner had he thought it than he had started to make it happen, flying straight through the roof of his bowling alley construct. With a frenzy of green energy, the draconequus formed a base of solid light in the empty space. Countless scraps of shredded green and brown pieces of paper coalesced on top of it into a wide plain fed by a rich soil. He hand-sculpted a familiar landscape and gently painted a winding dirt road through the hills. As he came upon the scene of the main action, uniform, ceramic homes self-assembled from top down. These were soon followed by shops, businesses, the town square, a library tree and a one-room school house. Colorful, crudely-painted wind-up ponies emerged from the houses and started to act out daily errands in the developing town. Paper maché flowers and trees would occasionally pop up beside some of the earth tribe as they walked. Above the town, similar toys in the shape of pegasi slid along zip lines, carrying about tiny cotton balls to pattern the sky with clouds. In no-time at all, Discord had himself an immaculately detailed scale model of Ponyville. For the final touch, an imposing network of chutes and tubes started snaking their way through and around the model. Hundreds of terminals provided access to the structure, while just as many small, circular holes fed back into the maze. Many converged on a gigantic funnel at their beginning, and the goal line consisted of a dozen buckets with half as many chutes leading to each. Discord grinned malevolently and rubbed his forelimbs together greedily. With a flick of his tail, the billions of bowling pins reappeared and became tiny marbles. Stuffing them into a fishbowl, he stirred the contents briefly before reappearing on a diving board above the bowl. He strapped on a pair of goggles and dove in head-first. His massive splash spilled millions of the fishbowl’s tiny inhabitants, and a small subset of these filled the funnel to its brim. Although the entire top column teetered over the edge, not a single one fell. There would be no backing out from this fate-changing journey. As if scoffing at the apparent bottleneck, the tube network eagerly gulped down the clear, purple marbles, and in no time at all, the first of their number began dropping into the Ponyville model. Dozens fell from clouds like in a flash hailstorm, while others popped out of second-story windows or rolled out of the functional train’s passenger cars. They would be kicked into the holes by passing hooves or magnetic unicorn "magic" only to reappear somewhere else. After a several minutes, many of the frontrunners had already toured most of the town, but none had found his or her way into the buckets. Bored already, Discord shrunk down and took a walk around the town. "There's that innovative Quill and Sofa store. A genius combination if I do say," he commented, passing by the vendor in question. The streets had their usual rustic appeal, populated with greengrocers, shoppers and the occasional filly or colt trotting to school. The draconequus strutted through the town like he owned the place—which he technically did. Taking a left, came upon an unmistakable circus tent structure made of fabric. His inspection of it was short-lived though, as a blond-maned, toy pegasus collided with him on the way down. He grabbed a few of the stars swirling in front of his eyes for a snack and watched the gray mare stuff a sponge muffin in Carousel Boutique's mailbox. She then took large bite out of a small, brown package. The paper ripped, and a greyish-yellow marble dropped to the road and started to roll. "The mailmare mixes up every third delivery. A nice touch." The tranquility of the toy world was then broken suddenly by a choir of mouse-like squeals. Dozens of multicolored wind-up ponies fled in mechanized panic from a manticore puppet. Their stampede sent marbles ricocheting about, knocking them through open doors or into nearby holes. When the dust had settled, the remaining marbles were also a rainbow of dichromic hues. "And we even have occasional fun from the Everfree!" Discord said, watching the doppelgangers of six familiar ponies chase after the manticore. The alicorn among them then channeled her magic, causing hundreds of the little orbs to come out of hiding in order to pursue the pursuers. "Everything fun about this saccharine little town is here!" Discord blinked above the town square. "Although I can't help but feel something is missing. Hmm....." Discord pondered the problem briefly before the lightbulb floating above his head lit up. With a clap, a golden bust of the enigmatic entropic embodiment himself imposed itself on the fountain. Its multiple heads made wacky faces in every direction, and passing ponies were periodically drenched in the mock-spit of the head frozen in a raspberry. "Perfect! If hadn't done it myself, I'm sure I couldn't have done it better myself!" He looked above, and the last of the marble lots bled from the funnel. Within seconds, the final marble had already rejected several turns before taking a left in defiance of its momentum. Discord shrunk further down to its size to follow it along its tortuous path inside the tubing. The passageways were thin, giving just enough room for the marble to shift left or right and occasionally climb the walls. Gravity kept them moving, but an occasional puff of air make their descent all the more unpredictable. After a couple of corkscrew turns, a change in pressure pushed him and the marble upwards and then down a chute. They dropped out into Sugarcube Corner's kitchen. The element of laughter had returned from fighting evil and was now decorating clay-based pastries. Even as a crude automaton, she had a certain energy to every action she took. She picked up a marble marked "Lilian Thompson," and it began to take on a pink hue as if injected with food-coloring. She placed it atop a cake, and the staining process stopped once she handed it over to the store's yellow proprietor. He delivered it to a waiting ash unicorn who apparently would not accept it until he had heard every single complaint she could possibly conceive about the bakery and its service—though her red thumbs-down cutie mark might explain a thing or two. Four different chutes kept the kitchen well-supplied with the marble decorations. Discord watched as one dropped onto the toy Pinkie's back and she gave a bounce to land it in the sink's drain. Regaining focus, Discord scanned the small kitchen for the marble he had been shadowing. "Oh, poo! Where did today's final contestant go? I took my eyes off them for one second, and they’re gone. On one hand, I want to find it, but at the same time, it'd be a disgrace to my name if I could." Not even the draconequus himself knew all the labyrinth's twists and turns. It could be days before the slowest of the marbles found their way out. CLACK A marble settled into one of the dozen buckets waiting outside of the maze. Curious, Discord warped to the end and became full-size again. "Oh goody! What will become of our first-place finisher?" he asked excitedly. He spied a single occupant of a bucket and lifted the bin to reveal a chalk drawing of a pegasus mare underneath. The marble itself had retained most of its original color with splashes of white and crystallic blue. Discord conjured a magnifying glass to test a hunch. Koyuki Araoka No. 2,779/2,779 2013 In Chaos we doubt Discord smirked at the clear evidence in front of him; it was indeed the marble he had just been following. "Well it looks like somepony is eager to grow a tail." Though with these human names I don't quite know if there's a gender swap that warrants an extra laugh or not, but I suppose I'll indulge just in case." "Ahem...." "HA!" "Very good. Who's next?" .................................. "Anypony?" The labyrinth's exit gave no answer. Bored yet again, Discord took on the form of a pinball flipper, fixed himself near the fountain and started redirecting every marble he saw. When personally mixing up things for chaos's sake got tiring, he started aiming for the toy ponies: 100 points for a mare, 500 for a stallion and 10000 for a stuck-up, boulder-loving unicorn who should really just let that dress incident go it was perfectly harmless fun. After a few short minutes, Discord sat on a modest sum of 43,300 points. He was aiming a black and white marble at the economical target of Big McIntosh when his sight was blocked by a plastic wagon pulled by an orange filly on a scooter. She and her two passengers both wore styrofoam helmets. Discord hadn't even begun considering getting annoyed before he had hatched an idea. "Hey there girls. I've got a confused, blank-flank, little foal who would just love to join your club. Let me introduce you!" he taunted, striking the pinball. It popped up onto the wagon, rolled up the sitting Applebloom's back, dropped onto Scootaloo and knocked her off the scooter, causing her to upturn the wheelbarrow of a passing old mare. A second marble catapulted out of the wheelbarrow and flew towards the topmost golden statue, which depicted a singing Discord with a cane and top hat. It landed perfectly in its mouth, giving a satisfying noise as it hit the bottom. At once, a high-pitched chime was heard. Sourceless lights danced across the Ponyville in straight lines and alternating colors. The chime was then overtaken with the sound of a hundred slot machines all paying out at once. Deciding it too subtle, Discord added a neon sign saying "You're Winner" and a full game show set to the mix. "COOOOOOOOOOooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooongratulations" a suit wearing Discord began. "You have been selected as Chaos Network's next reality star!" "Will you proudly strut onto the stage alongside our ratings breadwinner? Or will you languish in obscurity? Will you help unite ponykind? Or will you bring about a schism that will doom it? All these questions and more will be answered soon. But first, let's meet our lucky winner! It was dark. Delvaux couldn't see a thing. He was beginning to miss the piercing sunlight on his skin as the cool cave air send a shiver down his spine. It was a frightening place to top-off a terrifying turn of events. He could have sworn he heard a bat a while back. A near-perfect silence made him acutely aware of every little noise; the persistent echo of footsteps had been tuned out a while back. Hours of being manhandled had given him an incessant backache, and he feared his masseuse wouldn’t be made available to him any time soon. He had given up struggling hours ago, but the vise-grip around his arms and legs had never once let up. Traitorous bastards! Avoiding this sort of bullshit is exactly why I handpicked my security, but they stabbed me in the back all the same. They were the best—they knew how to treat a man of my stature. And they still sold me out! Accredited professionals or not, I guess wage slaves can always be bought. Go on, gloat! Your halfwit scheme succeeded so gloat, you trash! God knows I could never shut you and your folksy jokes up before! Isn’t that right, Marcel? His former bodyguards gave no response to his mental pleading. Throughout the whole ordeal, they had never once spoken: No small talk was exchanged over a four-hour drive. No talk of ransom. No questions which would cause the the smarter of the two to recap their entire plan—though that one might have been wishful thinking. They stopped. He was set down. The blindfold came off. Delvaux took a moment to take in the scant detail of the dimly lit cave chamber before his gag followed. Now's my chance. "I... I'll give you whatever you want just name it! Money! Information! Nuclear launch codes! Whatever you want!" Delvaux belted out in quick succession. Recovering his composure, he continued, "I'm sure you know better than anyone what a man in my position knows and what he can do. If you're after a ransom, I can quadruple it. I’ve also got insider knowledge that fatten your wallets even more. I can offer much more than you'd get from turning me over to your employer. Since we're having this conversation at all, you must know I'm worth much more alive than dead. If you would, give me a starting point so we can discuss this like gentlemen?" Delvaux doubted they had heard a word. If it were possible, they looked even dumber than usual. "I'm not after your hat, Jean-Paul Delvaux," came a mechanical voice. More echoed footsteps followed, and a cold sweat trailed down Delvaux's neck. I have to be strong here. I can't show them weakness. He thought as he stilled his chattering teeth. "Show yourself! Who are you?! Why are we here? Answer me!" "Very well. But, when you see the answers, remember that you sought the knowledge yourself." A lantern came into view and significantly brightened the small cave chamber. The two traitorous members of the president's security detail stood at attention as a cloaked, red-skinned woman came into view. "I believe a demonstration is in order." The steady synthesized voice coming from her unnerved Delvaux, but he forced himself to his full height and looked up at her. Her eyes betrayed nothing, and her face looked as if strings controlling her expression had been cut. That's when he saw it. It was a noxious, tapeworm-like protrusion from her sleeve. It trailed slime that the ground itself seemed to retreat from. In short: it was an abomination. The woman approached while the French President basked in petrifying fear. Only when she was well-within his personal space did he object: "Now listen here! I....." But he was too late. Before he knew what had happened the woman had him by the neck with a familiar, inhuman strength. He continued to choke out his objection in spite of the lack of air, but he could feel himself on the edge of unconsciousness as his brain and lungs starved for oxygen. His vision went blurry and he tried to formulate some last words befitting his office. He was dropped. The pain had stopped. He was alive. His cough, exacerbated by asthma, lasted well over a minute before it allowed him to regain his bearings. Still struggling to catch his breath, he motioned to voice his rage at being nearly killed. But he had no such chance: He suddenly felt a writhing from within. Every nerve in his body ignited as the parasite made itself at home. He felt a mounting pressure in his head as his knees gave out. His frantic panting was transplanted with silent screams. He twitched in unnatural ways and fell limp, hoping for unconsciousness. However, his body righted itself of its own accord as if telekinetically lifted. You ask us who we are. the same voice from before came from within Delvaux's own mind. We come from a distant planet to expand our domain Images of burning fields, six-legged red-skinned reptilians slaughtering others and an alien fleet of starships flashed through the president's mind. I am their envoy A memory of a metal behemoth beneath the waves played through his mindscape. It moved along the ocean floor like a vacuum, taking in massive quantities of seawater along with any unfortunate marine life that had been caught in the vortex. My arrival marks the end of your race’s stewardship. This world now belongs to the Koriodost; it is only a matter of time. "Get.... outta my head," Delvaux managed weakly. The alien intelligence shifted through the politician's memory and quickly found what it needed to twist the man's allegiance. I have told you all of this because we find you a superior specimen amongst your species. Despite your relative physical frailty, you've come to lead a prosperous nation of millions. Your drive has attracted wealth and mates alike and you still hunger for more. This quality marks you as worthy to stand with the new masters of this world. This sent a avalanche of questions through the man’s mind, but he settled weakly upon What are your masters? The presence frisked his brain for any religious affiliation and promptly decided on the most persuasive approach. Our masters are the Koriodost elite that tasked me with taking this world. Some among you see them as gods, but I see you are beyond such primitive superstition. Damn right. Delvaux replied silently. It was sickening to play a good Christian and family man to win the secondary. Not to mention it cost me a ton in hush money for those whores to keep a lid on some of my less pious activities. But it worked, and those religious idiots pushed me to victory. They'll believe anything that can justify their low social standing--anything that lets them believe their thankless labor means anything in the scheme of things*. Now that you know where you truly stand, we take it that you are not so foolish as to turn down a rare chance to get ahead? Delvaux hesitated for the briefest of moments, but the alien grip within his mind easily muted his withered conscience for good. I will stand with the winners as I always have. It may mean breaking some eggs, but sacrifices must be made to support those on top. We alone can drive progress. What would you have me do? Even now we are turning more and more humans into obedient mions. They will act on our behalf to bring this world under our thumb. Some, such as those that brought you here, are no better than feral beasts in the absence of a handler guiding them. Others are privileged with more autonomy and act as infiltrators. You will stand above them all as an overseer. You will, with my guidance, direct them to cleanse this world for our masters’ arrival. Succeed, and they will welcome you as an equal. Fail, and we will bring you to the dirt where you belong. With a record such as yours, you should not disappoint. Their offer was incredibly tempting. Delvaux wouldn’t be foolish enough to turn it down when he had already committed himself to the voice in his head, but nonetheless, the last of the man’s courage reared its head to hazard a question: “I take it I couldn’t refuse even if I wanted to?” You will serve us. Whether it is as a pawn or as a king—that is your choice. Satisfy us, and we will allow you the sanctuary of your own mind. "Thank you, master. I will prove my worth," Delvaux said retreating from his momentary boldness. But with those words, he turned his back on humanity. A well-informed mion has helped me create a scheme that I believe can give us a powerful foothold on this continent. You will direct this operation to capture the influence and resources of the mafia. Succeed and you will be granted the title of Supreme Executive Overseer of European Operations for the Koriodost. The presence known simply as "the herald" thought it odd that humans were swayed by such fluff, but it wasn’t one to question what worked. I've always wanted to give those arrogant bastards a good punch anyway. What's the plan? Discord buzzed his wings and moved his horned, fly-shaped projection closer. This was unmistakably Jean-Paul Delvaux, but the alien infection was already firmly rooted to his nervous system. "Well this is no fun!" He exclaimed to the four mions in the room. "All that buildup and my grand prize winner isn't even eligible?" He took the form of a ugly colt and grabbed onto the short Frenchman. "It's my unicorn! MINE! GIVE IT BACK!" The incorporeal construct gave no indication of its pseudo-presence, and Delvaux continued the mental briefing with his new employer nonplussed. "Fine be that way! I've already spoiled these hairless apes enough. It'd hardly be fair if I stole the enemy's nest egg too." He turned to the woman, "but if you leave toys lying around, don't act surprised if some of them go... missing." "Enjoy your stupid human! I didn’t want it anyway," he screamed in his foalish voice. "I'm going to give more prizes to ponies who can appreciate them." With a raspberry, Discord's ethereal presence vanished, leaving Delvaux ignorant of the greater power he had narrowly missed out on.