Sergeant Johnson's New Gig

While the Ponies and other various denizens of Equestria were retiring to a peaceful night, chaos loomed over lands to the far east. Across the vast cerulean waters of the Crystal Ocean, it was high morning. Many nations’ citizens were comfortably beginning with business as usual, but for the lands of the Roaman Empire, another day of reality-shattering phenomena was only just beginning to bring its fruits to bear on the unsuspecting population.

In the picturesque port city of Tarentum, a Zebra plebeian was taking a break from his work loading and offloading cargo from the large, oceangoing steam triremes that arrived at the docks in the harbor. They came in often, laden with gems from Equestria, silks and spices from Saddle Arabia, lumber from the dense forests of Germaney, and fine wine from Prance.

The dockworker donned a simple, but comfortable lime green tunic, and his black-white mane was neatly cropped short, in the typical Roaman fashion. The commoner reclined on the wooden bench along a smooth limestone road. Around, the causeway itself was moderately busy, a few shoppers here, a few wandering artisans and laborers there. Merchants hawked their many diverse wares from within tiny shops set into the first floors of the many insulae, multi story apartments favored by Tarentum’s mostly middle class population.

A nearby piazza regaled the neighborhood with local music. Musicians of high caliber performed a variety of instruments. Some were old fashioned, such as lyres and drums, and some more modern, like lutes and harps. There were even strange instruments favored by foreigners from Equestria, Prance, Albion, and neighboring lands; foreigners themselves called them violins, cellos, and clarinets.

The zebra himself, unremarkably had a newspaper in his hoof, no doubt full of daily gossip and news from all around the Empire. His own trade and daily business was rather boring compared to an artist or musicians’, he would admit, but it wasn’t without its perks. Dock workers were municipali, city workers, which meant fair wages. Not wages that could make one a wealthy patrician, mind you, but it far surpassed those of the peasant farmers and olive plantation workers outside the city.

The curbside was lined with young, slender trees that cast cool shade over the area. It was perfect reading weather, the Zebra reasoned. As he loosened the tension in his muscular chest, he absentmindedly reached a hoof out for the basket of dates on the ground beside him, then proceeded to read. The succulent fruit easily gave way under his jaws. He skillfully extracted the pit with his tongue, promptly spitting it out onto the curb. Then, he slowly chewed the remaining fruit with delight, occasionally pausing to guffaw at a particularly scandalous or outlandish column.

Passerby gave him funny looks and frowns on occasion when his raucous laughter reached far above reasonable volumes. Little did the Zebra realize, it would soon be someone else entirely who would be doing most of the laughing in Tarentum, and for far different reasons. Everything started at about the time when several loud, professional voices drew the dockworker’s eyes up from his stories.

“Legionarios!” One voice boomed.

“Ave, Centurio!” Several others shouted in reply.

The first voice spoke again. “Hail to you as well, this fine morning! Bene, we have a city to patrol.  You know the drill, boys, forward march!”

Immediately, the Zebra could tell who they were even as they rounded the corner of the nearby shops. The early spring sun shimmered off their polished segmentata, helmets, and leg greaves, all forged from the finest steel Roaman denarii could buy. The audible synchronized thumping of their many armored hooves echoed down the street.

Brandishing their tall rectangular shields in one foreleg, with their other close to their flintlock pistols and short swords, the Roaman Legionnaires each marched on their two hind legs in a perfectly-formed column. Walking on only two legs for long periods of time was understandably difficult and impractical for most, and scarce few outside of the Legion knew the secrets of how to do so comfortably, such as belly dancers and acrobats. Their shields bore a stark white eagle on a purple foreground, and they wore studded kilts and tunics, all the universally-recognized violet colour of the Caesar and the patrician classes.

Oddly, none of these details were what caused the Zebra civilian to continue to neglect his paper. Rather, it was the fact that the unit of soldiers themselves and their centurion were behaving...strangely.

In fact, they were marching backwards as if it were the most normal thing in the world, much to the complete bafflement of the dockworker and fellow sane citizens who bared witness to the spectacle. One old stallion standing at the edge of a side alley, his white and black coat long since faded to mostly steel-black, pointed a hoof at them and cackled maniacally.

He was clearly amused. The centurion, however was not, and flashed the elder a sneer as they passed. He was holding his command baton upside down, marching on all fours backwards with his soldiers.

“Per deos! Has a traveling troupe of jesters raided the local Legion fort, or has the military grain supply gone moldy?” One well dressed, upper middle class mare inquired, a hoof clamped to her muzzle. Even being exposed to some of the many eccentricities of the Roaman elite, she was clearly as puzzled as everyone else. The dockworker set down his paper and chuckled at her with incredulity.

“Perhaps an angry foreigner spiked the wine over at their favorite taverna, or perhaps His Majesty’s generals are experimenting with new ‘reverse psychology’ tactics in case we go to war with those paranoid pastel ponies.” He slapped the wooden surface of the bench, laughing loudly at his own joke.

The well-to-do mare frowned at him, not sensing any comedic value at all. Promptly, she galloped away in alarm as the bench the stallion had been sitting on came to life. It started barking and panting like a dog, before running away in the opposite direction. The dockworker meanwhile was knocked roughly onto his rump, sending his head flying straight into the basket of dates.

Meanwhile, the tabloid newspaper started floating in the air off its own accord. It then recited in a dramatic voice fit for a master actor, every humiliating detail to the letter, about the Zebra’s life to anyone within earshot. When he pulled his head out of the basket, he peered up at the bewitched newsprint in disbelief.

In other parts of the city, chaos was affecting things with far greater intensity.

Discord chuckled with filly-like glee as he strode down the column and tree-lined road. Unknown to the citizens of Tarentum, he had been blending among them for quite some time, observing and patiently waiting for the most appropriate hour of day to rain chaos upon them.

Now, just happened to be that time. In fact, Discord had just arrived at where he stood after a visit to the local garrison, then to the town’s only public bath house. Legionaries were easily susceptible to chaotic magic, Discord observed with amusement, and rerouting the dirty harbor water through the pipes into the bathhouse had been even more trivial.

Many Roamans are rather superstitious, and this particular day was when a local festival to pay tribute to the resident numina, or spirits, was being held. There was going to be music, merry making, feasting, meditation and gift giving, and tributes of money, clothing, weaponry, or foodstuffs to the various shrines throughout Tarentum.

One flier Discord had read even mentioned that a band of tribal dancers from the West Islands were going to sing in rhymes and perform a rain dance. It was planned in hopes of enticing Nubila, Goddess of Weather, to grant all Zebra lands fertility and bountiful harvests towards the end of the season.

“Dear, sweet Zecora. Your native people are oh so very funny. Why, chanting up at the sky for rain, when I could change it with but a snap of my fingers!” Discord mused with a chuckle, bringing his words to life by twitching his eagle’s talon.

Thunder boomed as a massive storm front formed from nothing over the harbor. Gaining in strength, the storm quickly rolled in to drench the city in its downpour.  Discord could see much of Tarentum from where he was, up on the acropolis hill that housed the local Pantheon. “Pshaw!” With another snap of the talon, part of the blanket of nasty dark grey clouds formed into a nasty, scowling face. “Oh my, it would seem little Nubila must be quite upset. How sad.”

The Master of Chaos could easily hear the cries of outrage, shock, and fright from the oblivious citizens hundreds of meters away. Chuckling with a higher intensity, Discord continued his hike up to the temple, the target of his final act of chaos over the region.

In his wake, numerous odd things could be witnessed. A nearby bush burst into flames as Discord passed, several statues of famous Zebras climbed off their plinths and started dancing, all the while a giant, meter and a half-tall pigeon sat on a bench in a nearby pond at the base of the hill. It cooed randomly, throwing bits of stale bread onto the now soaking-wet lawn before it with its wings. Several Zebras rushed over from a nearby pavilion, craning their necks down to peck at the loaves like birds while the rain pelted them.

When Discord finally entered the temple interior, his massively powerful influence had already well proceeded him. Standing casually in the marble doorjamb, lighting flashed behind him, casting his shadow far across the cavernous sanctuary of the Pantheon. Discord remained there for awhile, observing the sweet chaos unfolding.

Inside, priests and priestesses were running amok, panicking. Others were sitting on their haunches before the statues of their deities, eyes transfixed with disbelief. “Inmo! Blasphemy, this doesn’t even make any sense!” One sitting priest cried, his voice shrill. In front of them, the statues of the Roaman Gods were coming to life, and one by one bowing towards their clergy, as if in worship.

One Auspex, a priestess who could foresee fortune or misfortune in one’s future, galloped around in a circle with abandon. “End of days, end of days...!” She chanted with increasing distress.

Another priest, one with a slightly posher appearance than his colleagues, stopped his panicking when he reached the table housing the Holy Ambrosial Wine, normally saved for only the most sacred of occasions. Seizing an entire keg in one foreleg, the stallion ripped his white toga off with the other. Without wasting any further time, the priest emptied all the wine onto his coat, soaking and staining it purple. He then tossed the keg to the tiled floor, and assumed a heroic pose. His Zebra stripes were concealed beneath the purple. “Behold, mei amicitia! I am a dainty, colorful Equestrian pony!” The priest started kicking his legs out on both sides in a ridiculous little dance.

“Oh really?” Someone retorted, skeptically. “Then where’s your destiny glyph, eh?”

“By the Gods, no, no my friend! You have it all wrong...I believe the term they use is...sissy mark, something like that!” Another jeered.

A particularly bold priest dashed away into a nearby closet, only to return with a small orrery, a scaled model of the Sun and planets. She held it aloft, beaming like a lunatic. “Hey look, I’m raising Sol into the sky! If a simple Zebra mare such as myself can raise the Sun, than what’s so special about their silly Princesses and their magic?” The other priests calm enough to sit down and listen to the exchanges burst into intense fits of laughter, clutching at their guts.

Discord yawned, finally bored by the pontiffs’ antics. He sauntered pass them with a mild, businesslike smirk, drawing mixed reactions from the already dismayed and confused Roaman priesthood. He approached the main altar, where two Zebras stood.

One wore the same garb as all the others Discord could see, while the second, a far older Zebra, wore very elaborate robes. They were a rich cerulean, and possessed what appeared to be gold and silver trim on the cuffs at the forelegs. Such fancy dress indicated the elder’s position as Hierophant, the leading high priest of the region. In addition, the elder had a golden amulet around his neck, and his now all gray mane was cut in a monk-like tonsure.

The younger priest was as dismayed as his fellows nearby. He held a Zebra skull in his hoof, and was beating himself in the head with it as he faced the old stallion. The elder scoffed, as he looked on at the junior priest, “Stop hitting yourself with your own skull, idiot!”

“Quaeris, quomodo? What is happening to me, Calixto? This doesn’t seem physically possible!” He cried in reply.

“Indeed it isn’t my boy, under normal circumstances.” Discord interjected with a toothy grin. “Isn’t chaos a wonderful, beautiful thing?” The young priest gawked at him for a moment until he hit himself one final time, falling unconscious, the skull rolling away into a corner as he dropped it. The Hierophant Calixto looked down at him, then at the bowing god statues, and shook his head. He then arose, glaring at Discord.

“Draconequus! Are you the one behind this....this....desecration?” His raspy old voice quivered and shook violently with outrage. Discord rewarded the Hierophant’s anger with an even wider grin, as a skull suddenly materialized in his right lion’s paw.

Discord looked down at the cranium, whose alien-like appearance was completely different from that of the one the now unconscious Zebra priest had just dropped. It was bleached white, and had a prominent hammer fringed by a circle etched into its forehead. The jaws were like a primates’, short and possessing no muzzle. “Just one moment please. I need to send this little beauty off to some friends of mine back in dear old Equestria!” Discord snapped his talons, and then the skull vanished again, teleported away. "Tell me Calixto, are Zebras white with black stripes? Or are they black with white stripes?"

Calixto continued to glare. “I swear on all the Gods’ names in this holy place, the Caesar will have your head for this! The Legions will track you down, and justice will be dealt!”

“Old timer, come, come now! Must you Roamans see me as such a...” Discord’s body morphed into a serpent, which rapidly coiled up around the Hierophant’s neck, turning to stare at his weathered face mischievously. “....snake in the grass?”

With a hearty chuckle, Discord returned to his normal shape, and stood at the old Zebra’s side, holding an arm around his neck as if they were the best of old chums. “I’ve seen a few of your plays in the past week or so I’ve been around your Empire. Where’s your sense of humour, my good man?”

Thunder rumbled loudly outside, causing many priests to murmur in fear. “You call this humor?” Calixto rebuked, trying to swat Discord away. “You are a lunatic! Never since the reign of Caligulata the Monster, has mighty Roam known such a time of fear and depravity as this.”

Discord flitted away from him, taking the form of an animated grinning statue in a nearby marble alcove overlooking the altar. “I prefer the term....visionary.” His voice became dramatic and posh as he assumed the air and appearance of a playwright. “I am an artiste of the absurd, a purveyor of the preposterous, a realtor of ridiculous, and a sucker for everything well...silly!"

The Draconequus paused and rubbed at his goatee. “No wait, scratch that! Master of Chaos works just fine.” Discord snapped his marble fingers, and the altar randomly transmutated into a cow. She looked around at everything with puzzlement.

“How in the hay did I get here?” The cow asked, speaking Equestrian with a distinctly rural accent.

Calixto's eyes bugged out of his skull, and he caught her attention, pointing towards the exit. “More nonsense? No, I think not. Out.” He commanded. She looked at him in confusion, clearly not understanding a lick of the Roaman language. “Out!” He shouted, a little more forcefully.

“Oh!” The cow exclaimed, rushing out. “Don’t cha know!” She disappeared into the rain outside.

Discord, now back in his normal body again, reclined in the Hierophant’s sofa off to the side. He laughed, helping himself to a bowl of grapes on the cabinet top beside him. The old Zebra looked helplessly between the empty space his altar once occupied, and the draconequus who stole his favored place of relaxation.

Calixto fell onto his haunches, raising his forelegs to the heavens. “Woe is me! O’ mighty Jupiter, please help rid us of this God of Chaos! This humble priest beseeches you!” The Hierophant resumed his default pose and looked towards where he last saw Discord.

For a few moments, he could see Discord standing there, grinning at them. “Salve, old Zebra. Your little city has been nice and all. I’ve had my fun, but there’s still more of the Empire to see, and only so much of me to go around! Next stop, the sunny, the humid, the beautifully dangerous and mysterious, the West Islands!” The draconequus jovially snapped his fingers, and a t-shirt decorated with tropical flowers appeared on his chest, while a pair of sunglasses and a straw safari cap materialized on his head.

Discord held an upside down umbrella in his paw, and a suitcase of luggage in his talon. “Oh, one final thing before I go, your holiness. Celestia sends her regards, and would like to remind you of the importance of finding your inner...child, every now and again.”

Impish cackling and another flash of lighting marked Discord’s departure as he zapped himself out of the temple to his destination. The Hierophant could only sit there, speechless as the rest of his priests continued to act like lunatics. Suddenly, lightning struck the massive dome of the Pantheon outside, and Calixto was soon after turned into a little filly.

Looking around in absolute shock, the young Zebra eventually shrugged, and then happily climbed out of the exquisite robes that were now far too big for her. Calixto started to hum a pleasant foal’s tune, then summarily trotted and skipped away, looking for someone to hopefully play tag or jump-rope with her.

The following day, back in Equestria, former UNSC Marine Corps Sergeant Avery Junior Johnson was slowly awoken from his likely esoteric dreams by an insistent voice.

“Hey, Sergeant!”

“So...ya beat the Halo demo?” Johnson chuckled quietly in his sleep, then started murmuring again. “Not bad soldier, not bad at all!” Suddenly, he turned over to the other side of the bed, leaning his head towards something in his dream. He raised his voice. “But are you ready, to take the next step?”

“Johnson?” The voice pressed on. Sergeant Johnson continued talking in his sleep.

“Buy one. Heck, buy two!”

“Johnson!” The voice repeated, louder than the last time.

It was enough to finally do the job. “That’s an order soldier!” Avery shouted, shooting up from his pillow in full combat alert. When he noticed the source of his rude awakening, he frowned. “What the? Who said my name?”

“Over here!” It was Spike, standing up on the end table on the opposite side of the four-poster bed.

Johnson groaned for a brief second and checked his timepiece on his side. It read 8:00 AM. “Ah no, c’mon now. I never wake up this late. Heck, I rarely even sleep! Don’t tell me this world is starting to make me go soft like a grunt.”

“Well if you are, I doubt I’d be able to tell. Twilight’s good with that kind of stuff though.” Spike replied.

“Is that so, big guy? Fascinating. So what did I miss?”

Spike nodded and jumped off the table, heading towards the door, left ajar. He opened it all the way and pointed towards it. “Twi’s about to bring that new repeater gun contraption of hers out for the test firing we talked about yesterday. Get yourself ready and meet us down in the back gardens. It’s the range, next to the miniature apple orchard. You can’t miss it!”

The dragon disappeared before Johnson could reply, so he shrugged and got himself out of bed. Before he could do anything, an old, all too familiar feeling washed over him.

“Skulls on. Iron skull, detected.”

"Son of a..."