The marketplace of Pezulma was quieter than it had once been. The state of the economy had sucked the life out of trading with Una Magna, and the gradually decreasing population of the island - in spite of its position as a resort destination - was a clear sign of what an effect the previous war had had on it. In the past couple of years, trade had begun to seep back into Una Magna as its residents grew used to the declining conditions, and adapted as best they could.
It was a busy day. A number of contracted suppliers from mainland Cabérico sold their goods here, trading for what the people of Una Magna produced. While it had become a routine congregation when the cargo ships drifted into port, the main draw for most residents today was the large circus tent standing at one end of the courtyard. Unlike other locations the troupe ventured to, Una Magna was considered to be on the list of vulnerable areas, and so, entry to the circus was free for everyone.
So then, there was no reason they wouldn’t let a draconequus in there, was there?
Discord sat in silence and in darkness as he waited for his moment. He could hear the sounds of the crowd and the performers outside. One of the griffons, a strongpony garbed in a fairly convincing recreation of an executioner’s wear, was grinning manically as he built the audience up to when he would chop one of the other actors in half. The pony in the box had a pair of painted tubes for legs, but the axe was real enough. Discord couldn’t help but chuckle to himself as he heard the fake squeals ring out as the axe fell.
As he sat there, he watched each and every member of the performance through the thick weave of a sack filled with confetti. He analyzed their thoughts and emotions, their physical capabilities, and whisked away the time theorizing and estimating on where each of them would be in a year or two. One of the gymnasts could be a world-renowned master if she trained herself right, while the other didn’t have long for his job, given he was clearly only doing this for the money. It was all in the spirit of the act.
And those were only if the current situation persisted. What if another war broke out? The griffon would make an incredible warrior, and given how convincing his snarls and roars were as he comically ran around with the severed legs, he might have already played out this scenario in real life. Discord loved circuses. Each one was unique, and each performer always had their own reasons for joining in. It always set off a child-like glint in his ancient eyes, partly like a comic book geek obsessing over every tiny detail every tiny character possessed, and partly like a gardener admiring all the work that had gone into the anthill he was about to destroy.
He felt a pair of hooves pulling the neck of the sack he was hiding in and quickly made himself weightless so nothing would seem off. One of this circus’ main events was the freak show. In truth it was more of a play than a simple round of window shopping from the audience. A normal pony, living in a home filled with strange pony-hybrid creatures. While most of them were just actors in costume, the circus had the fortune of having a real lamia involved with the production.
Discord felt himself and the other bags being loaded into a cannon aimed toward the hole in the center of the ceiling. The fuse was lit and… the cover on the top of the circus tent was still in place. The ringmaster with his impressive voice was too wrapped up in his own performance to notice the error that was about to take place. The confetti was meant as an outside display to draw attention to the circus. For that reason, there was a lot of confetti that needed to make it out of the tent.
With an almighty BOOM and a little dose of magic, the sacks disintegrated while leaving the confetti untouched, and out poured a flood of coloured paper, striking the ceiling with enough force to shift the cover slightly all on their own. Soon, the cries of the audience began as the massive amount of confetti came back down. Discord, invisible, whizzed through the air, bathing in the mess of confusion. With a flick of a wrist and a click of his talons, some of the paper turned into like-coloured frosting and rained down upon the crowd. The ringmaster had snapped out of his act when a clump of frosting knocked his hat off and he was now panicking like there was no tomorrow.
Now it was time for the real show to begin. Again, Discord analyzed. This time the audience members were his target. He watched each pony, griffon and dog and how they reacted to the situation. Some laughed, some had run from the scene, some covered their children so that they wouldn’t get anything in their eyes, while most of the rest were simply confused or angry.
With every finger outstretched and a few glowing pens clasped between each, he directed the forces of chaos to his chosen victims. One would stub their claws on a door frame in three days, one would go through an early and very thorough molt and would have to take sick leave until their feathers regrew. Another would find a crack in two of their crystal sculptures, and another would miss the last boat of the day off of Una Magna, forced to sleep in an alley for the night lest they not have enough money for the return trip of their holiday.
Discord grinned wildly as he wove his work, inflicting all kinds of misfortune and strangeness on each of his choices. His eyes came to a rest on the husband of the lamia who was also present in the audience. With a special bolt of chaos, aimed at his body instead of his fate, he made it so the stallion would find out exactly how his wife had come to possess a snake tail in the first place. He always loved transforming people. It was just a shame he had to limit himself these days.
And finally, switching to his pony form, Discord himself plopped out of the air right in front of the ringmaster. With a dastardly twirl of his mustache and an evil laugh for good measure, he blatantly confirmed his role in sabotaging the day’s events, and skedaddled as fast as his mortal legs could carry him. The ringmaster roared in anger and gave chase, unaware of just how much damage had been done. Discord let out another laugh as he felt the emotions in the less enthusiastic gymnast shift; he didn’t like the idea of this circus having enemies.
Out into the marketplace they ran. The area was in a slight uproar thanks to all the frosting and confetti-covered audience members swarming out all at once, and some stalls had closed up for the day to protect any stock from being destroyed or stolen in the confusion.
Discord turned around and skidded to a long halt before the ringmaster. He tipped his hat with a grin. “Oh Master Jubilee,” he spoke in as suave a voice as he could muster, “do you like playing with dominoes and breeding caterpillars?”
The ringmaster didn’t stop. “Stay right there you- you piece of SHIT! How DARE you ruin my show!!”
Here came the hard part. Discord twisted and turned as Jubilee did his best to break every bone in the rival performer’s body. For once, Discord had something of a blank expression on his normally vibrant face, as he set himself up for the most major butterfly effect for that evening. Jubilee was a stallion in good condition and in good shape. He was charismatic and loud, and knew how to treat his workforce. What would a house be like without him?
A moment’s worth of pausing was all it took for Discord to line them both up correctly. Twisting round, he pulled his hind legs in and bucked the ringmaster with precisely enough force to send him hurtling into the sky and off the island, and even out of Cabérico as a whole. Landing harmlessly in a far off country, it would take Jubilee a good five months to find his way back home, and who knows if the Una Magnifico circus would still be around by that point?
His chaos quota filled for the week, Discord looked back to the circus tent, now mostly empty, and allowed himself to smile. There were always situations like this; forced fates that were much, much harder to swallow than the rest. Finding a new job was easy if you were as skilled as the gymnasts, and learning how to move around on a tail was also easy if you already had a loving partner there to help you through it.
What wasn’t easy, was dealing with a nurse who had grown tired enough of her role to abandon patients just for a day off, and a farmer who was going to have to contend with all manner of forces both ill and just on their trip. It was foolish of Applejack to think that her draconequus friend’s only motive was to “make her farm less boring”. It was never going to be about the produce, and with any luck, it wouldn’t take long for her to realize that.
Discord closed his eyes and scanned the city once more, locating Applejack and Doración a ways off from the plaza. Happy that they hadn’t been there to witness any of his actions, he sauntered away from the scene.
Only to stop part-way through the market.
He could feel something in the spot where he stood. There was nothing here, and that was how it was meant to be, yet Applejack and Doración had been standing talking to someone. There were no signs of a stall, but the magical signature left behind was unmistakable. Discord’s brow furrowed and he pulled the ambient magic off the ground and out of the air, and into the palm of his hand. It was an ominous black with a rich, purple glow; Dark Magic. The fact that Dark Magic could only be used to corrupt other kinds of magic to create new spells, and the fact that what had been done here was teleportation, narrowed down the possibilities of who it had been.
The frown deepened at the thought. He hadn’t been planning on Applejack facing someone so blatantly evil, yet here they were on Una Magna, and it seemed they knew she was here. A special windowless container formed around the blob of darkness to keep it sealed from the outside world, and the thing vanished into Discord’s pocket dimension, ready to be combined back into the individual who had created it. Preferably by smashing their fleshless skull into the ground with it. He smirked for a moment at the thought and set to work.
Discord was more a chaotic balancer than a “god of chaos”. That meant he could only inflict as much chaos as any one location or person could handle; more chaos was not a good thing, because that would lead to the planet literally coming apart at the seams. The situation he found himself in was that of a protector rather than a jester, because nothing was ever simple when the Fundamental Parts were involved...