Author's Note
(This is the sixth piece of super garbage that I wrote to amuse myself.)
I just randomly thought of some wordplay, made it a part of a joke, then put that joke into something that some people might consider to be a story. I was probably already going to Hell, but this likely earned me a harsher sentence.
Call of the Chaos
A klaxon began to blare before the break of dawn, erasing the tranquility from a rural subdivision and replacing it with alarm and fear. Knowing what it meant, those who were woken by it quickly left their homes and congregated in front of the house whose driveway was illuminated by a flood light, some cutting through the lots that had been cultivated for food and trampling over the crops in order to do so.
Beckett joined the crowd and did his best to keep his composure, but his heart wasn't just beating from his run. Because he knew, like everyone else likely did, that they were going to abandon the little slice of paradise that their small community had created after the last time that they'd had to run from the threat of death and enslavement. Sure, they had found another out-of-the-way place to retreat to and make a new home out of, but it wouldn't be easy and it would probably just delay the inevitable.
That is to say: at some point, one of the big groups or gangs, who had military-grade weapons and vehicles at their disposal, were going to find them when they had nowhere to run.
When their leader deemed that enough of their community had arrived, he stepped onto a crate so the crowd could see him, indicating that they should quiet down as he raised his voice and said, "As we feared, 'The Monsters' have sent a heavily-armed convoy to claim our home." That wasn't their real name, but it was better-suited for a gang that committed murder, enslaved people, and did other things best left unsaid, than the patriotic one that they had chosen to besmirch. "Bill saw them moving out of the city nearly ten minutes ago, so we have less than thirty minutes to pack up and leave."
"Before you run off," he continued, "see who we're missing and tell them what's going on. Carl? You, Charlie, Rachel and Greg start torching the houses and crops. Marcus? Check the bombs on Muldoon and make sure they're ready to be triggered by our 'friends' after we're gone." He clapped his hands. "Move out!"
Hurrying back to his home, Beckett went inside and began to get everything that he hadn't already put into his camper after their subdivision had been found by the scouter drone that “The Monsters” had sent before they could bring it down. It still wasn't as much of his life as he would prefer to take, but he didn't have room to take much beyond the necessities and keepsakes.
"It's just not fair," he lamented to himself.
The future looked so bleak. Everything had been going downhill worldwide even before the polar ice caps had melted, but the global rise in temperature had cemented the downward spiral of humanity. The food supply had been greatly reduced, both on land and in water, and it hadn't helped when wildfires went out of control and exacerbated things. Hundreds of millions of people had been displaced by the rising sea level, which caused more problems than he could count, especially with the refugees. There had been wars, of course. They had usually been wagered over resources, and a fair amount of nuclear exchanges had occurred. And if all of that hadn't been bad enough, all sorts of awful and deadly viruses, both old and new, ran rampant, in addition to other organisms destroying ecosystems and biomes.
He had prayed to god many times, wishing that the world would get better. He imagined that many other people had done that, too. Yet, the horror and decay continued. Maybe he should try praying to someone else? But who would be benevolent enough to help humanity and have the capability to bring enough order to the chaos?
The last part of what he'd been thinking about made him pause as he was grabbing a wad of his clothes inside of a drawer, so he could shove it into a knapsack. It reminded him of a character from an old cartoon, one that had been circulating in their community for a long time because they thought it was one of the more beneficial ones for the children to grow up on. That character was Discord, a spirit of chaos who was basically like Q from Star Trek, who started out as a villain but had been reformed.
Although it seemed silly to him, he decided that it wouldn't hurt to spend a few seconds sending a prayer to Discord in the privacy of his bedroom. What was the worst that could happen? Either he wasted a few seconds, or he'd get help. At least, he figured getting some help from Discord would be a lot better than no help at all. Not that he expected Discord to appear, but hope and desperation inspire people to do nonsensical things.
So, he knelt at the side of his bed, with his elbows resting on it and his fingers meshed together, and prayed to Discord, imploring him to help them in some way. When he finished, he simply stood up and turned around to continue what he had been doing, so it came as a surprise when he walked into something brown and somewhat giving, resulting in him bouncing off of it and landing in a seated position on his bed.
What he saw standing before him made him gape in shock: it was none other than Discord, in all of his cartoon glory despite being in a three-dimensional world. Thinking that he had somehow psyched himself out and got his brain to create a hallucination, he rubbed his forearm across his eyes and looked again. To his relief, as well as disappointment, Discord had disappeared.
He let out an undignified scream when a pair of "hands" fell upon his shoulders, which held him in place when he jumped, then Discord leaned down to his ear and casually said, "You should really leave those kinds of gestures to me; I can actually make things disappear if I rub my eyes, after all."
"Y-y-y-your r-real!?" Beckett managed to gasp out, his mind reeling.
Discord disappeared, then reappeared in front of him, with his arms akimbo and looking amused. "Well, if you want my help, wouldn't it be preferable if I were?"
Beckett forcefully got his breathing under control while he stared at Discord, having a hard time believing that he wasn't a figment of his imagination, but knowing that the spirit of chaos was right. So, once he had calmed down enough, he said, "I... I do want your help."
"If you want my help," he began with a mischievous twinkle in his eye, and snapped his talons, "you got it!"
A backpack appeared on the floor between them, and Beckett stared at it for a second before glancing up at Discord questioningly, who encouraged him with enthusiastic gestures to check it out with more than his eyes. Bemused, he slipped from the bed and knelt over the backpack, wondering what could help him inside. When he opened the main compartment fully, however, the backpack completely engulfed him — despite being far too small for that to be physically possible — and he found himself lost in darkness before he could make a sound.
The backpack began to bounce around as if there was a great struggle going on inside of it, then it spat its contents out and made a whole production out of looking like a normal backpack again. When Beckett recovered from his ordeal, he quickly noticed that something wasn't right, and it wasn't just the sight of two pink, chitin-covered forelegs that clued him in.
Whether by luck or instinct, he was quickly and adeptly able to rise onto all fours as he confronted Discord, who he pointed at with a foreleg as he yelled, "Is this some kind of—!" His extended foreleg came back to cover his mouth in surprise and dismay, upon hearing its feminine tone.
"Joke?" Discord finished for him, looking completely unrepentant. "Of course! How could I resist turning someone into a changeling with a bug-out bag when they're in the middle of evacuating?"
A second Discord rose up behind the first and hung a "medal of comedian" about his neck. "Sometimes even I surprise myself with my genius!"
Understandably, Beckett was not amused. "So you just came to kick someone while they were down!?"
The Discords disappeared, then one reappeared beside him, hooked an arm across his withers, and pulled him close. "Now, now," he said placatingly, maybe condescendingly. "I know it was unexpected, but think about the advantages of being a changeling for a second."
"I'm basically a love vampire," Beckett flatly replied, in no mood to take Discord's suggestion seriously.
"Exactly!" Discord cheerfully agreed. "That means you can survive among friends and they'll have one less person consuming their food supply!"
That was true enough to make Beckett pause, but it didn't take him long to mount another objection for his transformation. "So you changed me just to solve that relatively small problem?"
"Tsk, tsk, tsk," Discord expressed his disappointment as he stood up to his full height. "You're forgetting that being a changeling doesn't just allow you to hide, but being able to do so in plain sight. Surely you can imagine the potential of being able to infiltrate the people who threaten you, especially with multiple changelings."
Beckett could certainly imagine what would be possible if he could look like animals, inanimate objects and other people. It was so easy that he was already thinking about ways that he could get into the main base of "The Monsters" and destroying them from the inside. However, when he got around to factoring in ideas that required more than one changeling, he finally noticed the last thing that Discord had said and regarded him as he said, "Wait, multiple changelings?"
Discord held up a hand mirror in front of Beckett's face, which showed him that he didn't have the typical features of a metamorphosed changeling. "You're a queen, so you can — shall we say — make more. Or," he disappeared and reappeared next to the "bug-out bag", which he gestured to with an open paw, "you can introduce this little guy to your friends."
The aforementioned "little guy" saluted with one of its shoulder straps.
"I see," Beckett responded, who felt physically ill at the thought of making more changelings the natural way.
He didn't like the idea of being a changeling either, or being female in general, but he could see how useful the change might be, for both himself, his friends and his family. Who knows? Maybe it could do more than just solve the immediate and personal problems of today, but also save all of humanity tomorrow. Perhaps, as impossible as it seemed, even with the existence of magic and once-fictional creatures, they might be able to reverse a significant amount of the damage done to the planet, making it less inhospitable to live on.
"Welp," Discord drew out while in the middle of stretching, "I think my job here is done. No need to thank me."
Discord waited expectantly. Beckett gave him a flat stare.
After a moment both sighed in resignation at the same time, but it was Beckett who started talking first. "...Thanks, Discord. It wasn't the kind of help I was hoping for, but maybe it's more realistic — making sacrifices and doing the work, I mean."
Perking up, Discord disappeared and reappeared next to Beckett, where he proceeded to pat his head. "Now you're getting it!" He lifted his paw away when Beckett looked up at him with a scowl. "Anyway, I'm going to go and enjoy the brownie points I'll earn from this. Good luck!"
With that said, he was gone in a flash. Beckett stared at the space that Discord had occupied a second ago in disbelief before shaking his head, remembering that he didn't have the time to stand there and ruminate. Fortunately, changing his appearance came instinctively, so he assumed his human form — including his clothes — and picked up the backpack that had transformed him.
Holding it up by the handle, so he could address it, he said, "Looks like we're partners of a sort. Ready for a long, hard road?"
One of the shoulder straps contorted enough to fashion a raised thumb.
