The sun glinted off of Barron Secht's faceplate as he strode into the central square of Ponyville--the quaint, rural, barely-populated town that he was now using as a base of operations. Every step he took left a few cobblestones cracked as the weight of his combat-ready chassis thudded along.
It had been two weeks, local-time, since he had landed. Two entire weeks of trying to understand the native life. If Skitarius Gentoo and Skitarius Arch had guessed that they would be in negotiations with the scientist-princess of a Xeno kingdom, he would have made them Servitor Gentoo and Servitor Arch. Come to think of it, the only reason he had not disassembled them personally was that Gentoo was the only one who knew where to find Twilight on short notice, and Secht saw more value in rewarding Gentoo for obedience than in punishing him for almost erasing a valuable artifact.
He had already learned several valuable lessons. One of the first was that these 'ponies' apparently had no idea about the Warp. On his first day in Ponyville, he had an embarrassingly emotional reaction to seeing the one called 'Rainbow Dash' kick a cloud out of the sky. When Twilight explained that the entire population of Ponyville had similar powers, he almost voided his lubricant tank. But, when he brought out the Servitor he had personally built out of a particularly unlucky Navigator, he found no evidence of Warp taint. Indeed, he did not even feel the characteristic chill of a Psyker's twisted powers when Twilight levitated a book to him. Not only that, her telekinetic aura felt warm to the touch, a fact that he confirmed with two different Auspexes, a spare Servitor, and a thermometer that Twilight had offered to use when Secht explained what he was measuring.
Secht was considering a new experiment, one in which Skitarius Gentoo would be levitated and then dropped harmlessly into the town's fountain, when he realized that the one called Rainbow Dash was speaking.
"...and you still haven't met Fluttershy because of the trouble her animal friends are having..."
"Trouble?" Secht whirred, with the same tone of voice that he reserved for trouble that required shooting.
"Oh, it's hibernation season, but apparently a giant metal box landed near Everfree Forest, and it woke them all up. Ever seen a bear wake up from a bad dream?"
"I have never seen a bear," Secht said bluntly.
"...huh. Well, they're big, and strong, and tough, but Mr. Bearington gets nightmares too, I guess. I don't really have nightmares. What am I gonna be scared of?"
The Archmagos felt a brief desire to rotate his optics in disbelief, but he suppressed it. As much as this blue creature reminded him of certain other blue-painted warriors he had met, he needed to be...what was the word Twilight used? 'Calculated'? No, that was for strategy. Considerate! Yes, he must be considerate when dealing with the pony xenos. At least, if he wanted to remain on good terms with their leader.
With calculated precision--up to 38 decimal places of precision, to be exact--he determined that Rainbow Dash would very much enjoy it if he met Fluttershy. Secht briefly congratulated himself on his progress in understanding the tactics of common conversation, and went forward with his response.
"I think I would very much like to meet Fluttershy."
"Oh, you'll have to meet Discord too. Surprised he hasn't shown up yet."
"And the one called Discord is...?"
"Oh, he's a draconequus. He's, like, Chaos in the flesh and all that."
Barron Secht noted, with concern and frustration, that this time he was unable to stop his lubricant tank from voiding itself. His vocoder buzzed and squawked for a moment as he tried to say at least twenty things at the same time. Rainbow, being somewhat more intelligent than the average Ork, took only a few moments to pick up on this.
"You okay, big guy?"
"I--you--did you say CHAOS."
"Uh, yeah. He's cool though."
"A being of CHAOS is...cool."
"Yeah! He's friends with Fluttershy. Anypony who's friends with Fluttershy is cool."
"I do not understand how you can be so calm about this."
Barron Secht spent the rest of their lengthy trip muttering under his breath--a habit he had quashed long ago, after developing it in a time when his voice could be heard above his vocal processors. From what he had gotten out of the blue one, this was no ordinary warp-spawn--everything she said pointed to Discord being at least equivalent in power to an Alpha-Plus psyker. It chilled him to the bone to think of it, but his deepest fear rose unbidden: By the description Rainbow gave, Discord could very well be...
No, no, that would be irrational. Secht had made a career out of being the calmest, most sane sapient in the room at any given moment, and he would not let this little upset defeat him. From what he had seen thus far, Ponykind had made no contact with the Warp--no daemon had set foot here, the forces of Chaos had not invaded, the ponies were not even aware of the Warp's existence. This seemed to contradict the very concept of anything Chaos-affiliated living so close to the local head of government.
He went over the possibilities in his head, in order of probability:
- Discord may not actually be a chaos-borne creature, not by the Imperium's standards. Perhaps he wielded a more powerful form of the 'magic' that Twilight had?
- Discord could be a Warp-fiend of some kind, with the planet hiding his signature somehow--or perhaps he simply wasn't using his powers. (Either way, if something used enough Psykana to turn rivers to chocolate or send chunks of land floating into space, the Navigator aboard their Imperial Cruiser would have sounded an alarm, and Secht would have been considering his options from orbit.)
- Discord and everything on this planet could be a hallucination.
- Discord may very well be the fifth Chaos God, and somehow they made friends with him.
He turned that last possibility over and over in his head, searching for something, anything that could rule it out. Even as the road gave way to dirt, and dirt gave way to brush, he continued processing it. There had been rumors for centuries of a fifth Chaos God--dangerous rumors, suppressed wherever possible, to avoid accidentally creating the bastard--but they were only rumors, weren't they? And yet he could not definitively rule out that option. He had no reason to believe that a fifth Chaos God exists, but he could not disprove it.
"Uh, mister Secht?" Rainbow said. "We're here."
Secht glanced up from his considerations, and saw a cottage laden with moss, vines, and small mammals. He toggled through the thermal spectrum on his built-in Auspex; the house was teeming with life, inside and out.
"I would knock, but--" He shrugged. His arms were not built for operating doors, least of all the tiny wooden ones that so many ponies used. He had once tried to open the door to Twilight's library, and left a deep gouge in the wood with his claw, even though he had been careful to deactivate the powerfield on it before reaching for the door.
In all honesty, it would be a miracle if he could fit through the door at all. Broad shoulders made for an imposing figure on the battlefield, but here they merely got in the way.
Rainbow nodded, and tapped on the door with her hoof. Moments later, a golden-yellow pegasus answered the door, brushing her mane out of her face.
"i'm terribly sorry," she said, "but i've got my hooves full with the hibernation and--oh! rainbow dash! don't worry, tank is doing just fine--"
As the one called Fluttershy glanced past Rainbow Dash, Barron Secht felt a moment of concern. Even with the few lessons he had learned about 'Friendship' and the way these ponies negotiated with each other, he could tell by the way Fluttershy held herself--she was almost ready to flee. Secht wondered if she would run for the back door, scream, or faint on the spot.
But to his surprise, Fluttershy smiled, in almost the same way that Secht once smiled upon seeing the first lasguns rolling out of the STC buried deep within Lemuria's oceans.
"oh! i've never seen anything like you before! are you the new friend from another world?"
"Yep! He said he just had to meet you. Gotta introduce him to the whole gang, ya know?" Rainbow idly brushed some of the dirt off her forehooves, taking care to look anywhere but at Secht and Fluttershy. She didn't want to show her jealousy, after all.
"i've asked twilight for details but she was worried i'd be too busy--oh, but you must come inside! what do you eat? fruits? veggies? fish?"
"I, ah, have not had opportunity to try any of the foods your kind produces here," Secht muttered. Truth be told, he didn't quite trust them that much. He'd just have to grin, bear it, route the undoubtedly-poisonous food to a secondary holding tank for later analysis, and play along for now.
"goodness! i'll have to prepare all three--we'll figure out what you like best. oh, but--look at the time--rainbow, are you sure--"
"Relax, Fluttershy! He wants to meet Discord too!"
Secht couldn't help but wince. He didn't want to meet Discord. He had to.
"Oho! Did somepony say my name~?" A wooden figurine on a shelf twisted and turned, animating itself--bouncing and dancing as it gradually took on a strange mishmash of every animal trait Secht could think of. Paws, hooves, horns, claws, tails--and then it grew, expanding out until it stood thrice as tall as the ponies and twice as tall as any Man.
"And who might I be pleased to make the acquaintance of--"
At the very moment that Discord's eyes met Secht's optical sensors, he froze.
"Ohhh, no. Fluttershy? A moment, please."
"are you sure?" Fluttershy whispered, the smile gone from her face. "i'm here for you, even if you're scared--"
"A moment. I'll be fine, Fluttershy. Don't you worry your sweet little head over me."
He gave her a little pat on the head, and she sighed, walking into the kitchen.
"And you too, Dash." Discord shooed Rainbow into the kitchen as well.
And then there were two: Discord and Secht, staring at each other, daring each other to make the first move.
"I suppose Rainbow told you that I'm an agent of Chaos," Discord muttered, settling onto a couch. The coffee-table in front of it stretched, its legs growing to let Discord rest a chocolate milk of glass on it.
Secht didn't move an inch--nor did he take his eyes off of Discord. "Is that what you are?" he asked simply.
"Not gonna hit the Big Red Giggle Switch on me? I'm shocked. You're not one of those heretics, are you?"
Secht's eyes lit up--literally--as he recognized an opening. "I am the one who cancelled the Exterminatus," he said. Discord choked on his glass, spitting it out--it landed neatly in the window, where it returned to its normal pane-shaped life.
"You? Cancel an Exterminatus? Cancel an Exterminatus--why, if I didn't know better, I'd think you were joking."
"The one called Twilight Sparkle."
"Mmm, I've heard the name," Discord replied, steepling his fingers. "What does she have to do with it? You don't listen to Xenos."
"She has...admirable qualities. A desire for knowledge. A mind filled with questions. Will to find answers, to understand."
"Ah, so you have a waifu."
Secht's optics narrowed as he searched for a definition of 'waifu'. Certainly, Discord was not implying that he had acquired trash. In context, this made no sense.
"Don't bother understanding that one, it isn't for you. Now--you're wondering, if I'm an agent of Chaos, why am I not turning you inside out for funsies, hm?"
Secht gave Discord a single nod.
"Well, it's very simple. You see, most of the Chaos Gods you're familiar with want Chaos to win," Discord explained, as his face split down the middle--one half going pitch-black, the other turning stark white. "Some of us like to keep things interesting."
"The fifth Chaos God," Secht said, awestruck.
"Discord, neé Malal, at your service," said the only Chaos God who played to lose.
Accidentally According To Plan
"So, that's my story! I simply got tired of the other four players at the table. They seemed so stagnant. Chaos is change, after all!" Discord did a brief loop through the air, rolling his eyes in ways that human eyes can't move.
"But some things stay the same, correct?" Secht was certainly not expecting friendly discussion with Malal-turned-Discord, but he wasn't going to pass up the opportunity. "Khorne may always be inventing new kinds of death, but he is still Khorne, and Khorne is always going to be the Blood God."
"But that's the problem! If Khorne is always the Blood God, he's not changing. And that just offends me. So too for Slaanesh, really. I should've known something was up when she hadn't tried anything new for a week."
"You're kidding," Secht murmured, his optics going wide with shock.
"Oh yes! That was the last time I went to a party with her. The hoof-holding was amazing, but there was just something wrong with that manifestation of unholy desire."
"I can't believe it--wait, did you say 'hoof-holding'?"
"Oh yes! How lewd it was."
Secht decided to set this aside for now. "So you chose to live on a planet that the Imperium hadn't found yet, right on the edge between a chapter of Ultramarines and two neighboring threats, leaving all three of them in the dark about your existence?"
"Oh yes!" Discord said as he righted himself temporarily. "I figured, the Imperium would be too stupid to look, the Orks would be more interested in stomping the Marines, and old Nurgle would never get off his fat behind!"
"...it's, er, funny you say that..."
Discord's eyes grew to the size of literal dinner plates. "No."
"Well, you see, word from on high is that...activity has been detected."
Discord's fur turned a sickly shade of green, then blue. "You're kidding."
"It seems that...yes, Nurgle is on the move. He has, in fact, gotten off of his fat behind."
"Say it ain't so!" Discord yelped, flopping backward--and upward--onto what appeared to be an upside-down chaise lounge bolted to the ceiling. "oh, don't tell Rarity I borrowed this."
"Your secrets are safe with me. Nobody would believe this if I told them, anyway."
"Now, the situation looks dire, but I do have an idea!" Discord said as he floated back down. "You see, Twilight is incredibly brilliant, and given a bit of time and some tools, she can figure out how almost anything works..."
Secht's optics narrowed again.
"And if she were to, I don't know, find a few Imperial weapons and improve them..."
"You planned for this," Secht muttered, crossing his power-claws.
"I did not plan this! That is poppycock, you are a liar, I did not plan this, I did not." Discord pouted. "Oh hi, Mark," he added, to no-one in particular. Secht was starting to wonder if this was a sign of his own sanity slipping, or merely Discord's complete lack of it. "Planning is for Tzeentch," Discord continued. "Ruining plans is my job."
"And you just happened to describe something that I was already doing before I met you."
"Why, yes. Just as planned. Er, just as I would plan it. If I made plans."
"I see," Secht said, though he failed to see anything.
"Yes, yes. Now, run along! There's much work to do, and so little time to do it! Why, we might actually see a canonical change in the warfront in the next decade!"
"Ah, but the one called Fluttershy was going to make us some food," Secht whirred softly. "I would not want to upset her by leaving before she could offer it."
Discord froze in mid-twirl. He zipped right up to Secht's faceplate, frowning.
"Now listen, you bag of Imperial bolts, because I will only say this once. I have been very careful to keep Fluttershy well away from you and your kind," he whispered. "There are many things I will risk. There are many things I will take a chance on. There are things I will love for centuries and then destroy in a moment of boredom. Fluttershy is off-limits."
Secht watched in stunned silence. Arguing with a Chaos God suddenly seemed like a bad idea.
"I shall inform Fluttershy that you had urgent business elsewhere," Discord explained. "And I'll send you a to-go box."
"What's a--"
Discord snapped his fingers.
"--to-go box?" Secht said, standing in the center of Ponyville's town square.
Moments later, a small styrofoam container appeared in his hand, containing a selection of fresh berries, chopped vegetables, and one very well-prepared filet of tilapia.
"...and that's the story so far," Secht said as he walked with Twilight to her little castle.
"You're telling me there's more Discords out there?"
"Well, I wouldn't compare them to Discord. More like...Discord, but also completely uninterested in anybody's well-being."
"So, Discord."
"Oh you have no idea."
Secht ducked under the doorframe as they entered the castle via a side-door. He had gotten significantly better at entering doors since he realized that his frame was exceptionally good at sideways movement.
"And you want me to build...weapons?" Twilight asked. "Because they might come here?"
"Yes."
"But we haven't had to fight a war in over a thousand years!"
"Twilight," Secht explained calmly, "I want you to imagine what would happen if Discord was the only one preparing for these invaders."
Twilight thought. She thought some more. She carefully considered that last thought, because she really didn't want to admit that it was the most likely one.
"Then we have to act," she said softly. "We can't afford to let Discord try the pineapple and yo-yo trick again."
"The what?"
"Do not ask."
Secht rolled his shoulders, letting out a noise that Twilight usually interpreted as a sigh. "So. We have a stock of armors, weapons, and other various equipment aboard my ship. I shall bring some samples down, and we'll see what kind of improvements you can make to them. Our factories can mass-produce these weapons for the soldiers who will aid you in defending Equestria, and they will accept it, so long as I tell them that we found the designs rather than creating them."
"I still don't see why we can't just tell them that we invented the new lasgun design," Twilight muttered. "Are your people really so afraid of other creatures that they'd kill you for taking advice from a friend?"
"Yes."
Twilight blinked. "Oh," she said. "This is an advanced friendship problem."
