NOTE: This chapter has a pretty big event happening: The final reveal of the reason they are there.

2100 Hours
Gerald R. Ford
Seven (7) days after first contact

Captain Daniel Henderson, commander of the USS Gerald R. Ford, was retiring for the night. He had been up for a little over twenty hours, and constant nights like these throughout the past week had only piled on. He needed sleep as much as anybody else, and the fleet would still be there in the morning. They had officers for a reason, after all. If his crew didn't preform above average, even at night, then the last two years he had spent training them would be worth nothing.

Closing his eyes, Henderson quickly drifted off to sleep...

... And without any warning, he found himself standing on the bridge of the Gerald R. Ford. As he looked around in confusion, he noted that every station was unmanned, and he could see nothing on the flight deck of the ship when he took a look through the windows. The ship appeared to be floating on an endless sea, entirely devoid of any ripples or waves, with the sky a clear blue. The fact that he had appeared here he could handle: The why of it, as well as the obvious question about the complete absence of people, he could not figure out.

'Calm yourself, Daniel.' He thought to himself as he began to walk around the stations. 'The worst thing you can do is overreact. Find out why you're here, and where everybody went.'

Within minutes, Daniel had tired of waiting for something to happen. By this time, he had walked down several decks to the hanger area below the flight deck. His footsteps made no sound on the metal he walked on, and it felt as if he was suspended midair, inducing brief bouts of vertigo that he recalled from his days of piloting EA-6Bs from the decks of various carriers.

"Okay, whomever is responsible for this, come out so I can tear your throat out through your ass." Henderson growled as he slowed to a halt. "Don't play games with me. I want to what the hell this is, and why the hell I'm here!"

"Don't you want answers, Captain Henderson?" A deep voice echoes from all around in a mocking tone, white mist starting to appear on the floor of the hanger, quickly forming a near-cloud that coated the deck. "Wouldn't you love to know why you are here? Why I brought you here? Surely you have figured some of the riddle out!"

"What riddle? What the hell are you talking about?" Henderson shouted as the mist started to swirl around him. "Start making some sense, damn it!"

"Oh, but what fun is there is making sense?" The voice said, originating from his left. Henderson whirled around in time to see the mist start to come together, forming what seemed to be a mishmash of different body parts, some of which he could not begin to describe. The figure laughed at him, the loud voice seeming to echo from all around.

"Who the hell are you?" Henderson said as he stared in shock at the figure, searching his memory for a possible explanation.

"Oh, just your local God of Chaos." The figure said, yawning. "Surely, after all you know, you have to have heard my name before! I'm simply fabulous!" The strange creature was suddenly fitted in a full suit, complete with a monocle.

'God of Chaos, where have I heard that before?' Henderson asked himself, right before his mind settled on the only possibility. 'Oh, fuck me...'

"I take it you're the one known as Discord." Henderson said, trying to keep his tone even. Inside, he was close to a panic. Dozens of questionings had left one figure at the 'center' of the possible causes: A being named Discord, said to be responsible for dozens of 'disastrous events'. The general consensus was that the figure was either a myth, or amazingly powerful, able to break the known laws of physics, and just about everything else.

Said being was standing right in front of him.

Suddenly, a loud bell rang, and confetti shot into the air behind Discord.

"Step up, ladies and gentlecolts: We have a winner!" The chaotic being shouted.

"Right, onto the obvious point." Henderson said as he tried his best to ignore the theatrics in front of him. "Why the hell are we here? I'm assuming that you had something to do with it."

"Right again!" Discord said as another bell rang twice. "No matter how many times Celestia and Luna try to lock me up, they never complete it! There's always a bit of me that can run around, have some fun, cause some chaos, and change an entire reality as I go! Why, I happen to be the reason why your little force is here!

"And that's all you dragged ten thousand men out of their homes for?" Henderson asked incredulously. "A goddamn game? What the fuck is wrong with you?"

"You died." Discord said, stressing the last word. "I can't move things through realities at will, but I can grab them - and anything near them - when they pass out of one. You had all died, and so I pulled twelve of you, and then a few hundred, and now look where we are! You're causing all the chaos I expected you too, although I didn't really expect you to go killing them all. Oh well, sacrifices must be made."

"Let me get this straight: You stole a few thousand of us through reality and landed us on an alien world, after our deaths, just so you could create chaos?" Daniel Henderson asked incredulously.

"Correct!" Discord replied. "Isn't it grand?"

"That's fucking insane!" Henderson shouted. "I've lost almost fifty men since I got here: Over one thousand ponies have been killed, and those are simply the ones that we know about! We are under constant attack by a hostile government ruled by two eternally-living, near-despots who want every man and woman under my command dead. How the fuck is this grand?!?!"

"I've lived for uncounted years, Daniel. Some would judge me to be insane. I don't care for your problems, not at all. And if Celestia annihilates every last one of you, it would not make a difference to me. I'll be still free, and I can always pull more of you. Let me show you how your little life would have ended if I had not gathered you..."

The mist in front of Henderson rose up, blocking his view of Discord and switching to a scene he knew well. It was the bridge of the Gerald R. Ford, just off the coast of Saint Petersburg.

"Captain! Aircraft incoming, flight of two Fullbacks!" One of the men shouted.

"Let the CIWS do it's job, right rudder full!" Henderson yelled in reply as he walked to the front of the bridge. It was the worst time for an attack: With the deck filled with various jets, many of them fully armed and fueled, an impact would be catastrophic.

The FAB-500 bomb dropped by the high-speed jet missed by almost a hundred feet, rocking the ship the explosion and spraying water into the air. But the Aircraft Carrier was alive and in the clear...

... Until moments later, when it passed by a hidden mine. The Te-1 rocket-propelled explosive shot up from the seabed at 112 miles per hour, rocketing through the bottom of the ship three seconds later. It exploded with a force that the bombs dropped earlier would have been hard-pressed to match, blowing a hole through all twenty decks of the ship up to the hanger bay. The moment the wall of fire reached the cavernous space, it was all over. All of the ordinance lying on carts on the deck, along with tens of thousands of gallons of fuel and dozens of planes, exploded.

Captain Henderson never knew what happened, as the explosion created a fireball that encompassed the entire ship, all of its fuel, munitions, and the oxygen inside forming a deadly bomb that rattled windows on the streets of Saint Petersburg, five miles away. At the end of it, all that was left of the Gerald R. Ford was a single piece of the bow, which quickly sunk underneath the waves.

Captain Henderson quickly averted his eyes from the scene, sadness overtaking him. The final peace that might have awaited some from the ship had been averted, as they found themselves in the nightmare of ending up in another world entirely.

"Anyway, I must be going. Being a God of Chaos has its benefits, but time isn't among them. Oh, and as for the proof of this conversation, you'll find it when you wake up."

"Why the hell are you telling me all this? What good would letting your plan known be?" Henderson asked shakily as the strange chimera slowly disappeared.

"Simple: Because there's nothing you can do about it! Plus, it's always fun to see mortals running around, thinking that they know what they are doing! Ta-ta!"

And with that, the form faded away entirely, leaving Captain Daniel Henderson, commander of the largest Aircraft Carrier that the world had yet seen, collapsed onto the deck of his ship in his dreams, his mind trying desperately to understand what had just occurred.

Henderson slowly opened his eyes, finding them staring at the ceiling of his room. He sighed, knowing he was still aboard his ship, and that nothing had likely changed. Glancing over at the clocked, he noted that the time was 0840 hours. Pulling himself up, he stretched his arms out and yawned before grasping for the blanket.

His hands impacted something hard, however. He quickly grasped the rectangular object and raised his up, getting a good look at it. It was a simple VHS tape, outdated by now, but still occasionally used. He turned it around and paused once he saw the label, before breaking out into a cold sweat.

From your buddy, Discord. Lord of Chaos.

The sound of a door rapidly opening and closing echoed through the halls as Henderson walked through the corridors to the primary communications room, five decks below. Several minutes later, he burst in the door, handing the tape to a startled technician.

"Get that converted to digital on the double, I don't care how." Captain Henderson said, ignoring the acknowledgement as we walked back out of the room towards the main galley. While alcohol was strictly forbidden on navy ships, he still felt the need to drink something, anything, and so settled for coffee. Many of the men were surprised to see the captain of the ship down here, but Henderson waved them off as he settled down to wait.

0914 Hours

"And you are sure that this encounter was the same as the video?" Volkov asked Henderson.

"Trust me, I'm sure." Henderson said over the table, holding his head in his hands. "Frankly, this has been one hell of a night, especially now that we know why we're here."

"We should prepare for more arrivals. You say it yourself: He will persist in sending more." Volkov said. "We can't afford to be caught off-guard."

"We should also work at trying to hold the Equestrians at arms length." Henderson replied. "The next step will have to be discussed at the next meeting. Gather together the officers, we hold it here at 1210 hours."

With that, both of the captains shook hands, one of them leaving to catch a helicopter, the other to sit down at the table, his face cradled in his hands.

"Sir...?" One of the guards at the door asked, as Captain Henderson stood still.

"Nothing, Sergeant." Daniel Henderson replied a moment later. "I just have a lot to think about..."

Written by Merchent343
Edited by The Rainbow Brony

Author's Note

And we finally find out how the humans arrived.

Some will criticize me for using Discord, even though it's been mentioned and hinted at a half dozen times so far (Celestia would have obviously detected Discord's 'fun', and the 'Magical Anomaly' mentioned in the sixth chapter was not for show). In any case, the Discord I will portray is not some cheap-ass villain like in most fics, one who is more for comic relief than anything else.

Anyway, things will get a lot quicker after this.