"Did you really have to do that?" Ner' asked me angrily. Aquapony and Fphant shot me dirty looks from the side. The Courier was too busy looting to participate in the exchange.
My ears pinned back against my skull in embarrassment. "It seemed like a good idea at the time." The Courier paused his pilfering just long enough to glance at me. He then shook his head and resumed ransacking the place.
"Ooh, I think I'm going to like this one," said the tall, creepy, pale, humanoid thingy with the wide, yellow eyes and the overly wide smile filled with sharp teeth standing right next to Ner'. It rubbed its thin black hands together hungrily. The necromancer shot it an annoyed glance but everyone else ignored it, so I followed suit and ignored the deranged-looking biped.
"In his defense," Fphant said in my defense, "he had no way of knowing they were standing right next to the door."
"Yeah, but did you really have to kick the door open so violently?" Aquapony asked. He looked worriedly back and forth between my two unfortunate victims before focusing me with a concerned frown.
I shrugged. "Eh, probably not." One of the two probably concussed victims let out a weak groan. "In hindsight I might have been a teeny tiny, little itty-bitty bit overzealous."
Ner'Ghalad slowly panned his head to look at the heavily cracked stone walls next to the door and the two prone forms lying in heaps directly underneath the cracks. He then looked back at me and raised a single eyebrow.
"Ugh," the sorceress groaned and rubbed her head. "Did any of you get the number of that cart?" She slowly picked herself up off the ground and blinked around blearily. Next to her Unique let out a weak moan and rolled over.
"Well," I said, "technically, it was a door-"
"Which he kicked into your face," Fphant interjected unhelpfully.
"-not a cart." I glared at Fphant. "And it looks like it had the unexpected but surprisingly fortuitous effect of breaking you free of Ner's mind control."
"Since when did you know what 'fortuitous' means?" the sorceress asked. Her eyes seemed to be struggling to focus and she was looking somewhere off to my left.
"Shut up and be thankful you're not a zombie mind slave!"
"How does that even work, anyways?" the Courier wondered as he shoved a desk lamp into his back pocket.
The sorceress, sensing an opportunity to talk someone's ears off about how magic works, forgot all about the injury she was supposed to have and launched straight into a complicated dissertation explaining the mechanics of magical mind manipulation.
Meanwhile, I noticed that Ner' had taken the distraction as an opportunity to talk to the creepy bipedal thingy I'd noticed earlier. I took the opportunity to eavesdrop. They were discussing a small black notebook with something written on the cover. "...and so I just write their name in this book while thinking of their face and then forty seconds later that person will die of a heart attack?"
The creepy thing nodded. "There's more to it than that, but basically, yes."
"So Ner'," I said cordially as I sauntered over to the pair. "Aren't you going to introduce me to your friend?"
For some reason my comment seemed to really surprise them. "But I... how?" Ner' spluttered for a couple seconds before regaining his composure. "I should have known better..." he sighed and poured himself a drink -I think it was bourbon- from the conveniently placed minibar right next to him. "Of course you'd be able to see Ryuk."
"Wait, he can see me?" the baffled thing, who I suppose was named Ryuk, asked. "That shouldn't be possible."
Ner' downed his drink in one go and began pouring another one. "Tell me about it. Ryuk, meet the thorn in my side I was telling you about earlier. You," he spat the word with venom -and a little bit of bourbon- like it was a mild curse, "this is my, ah... good acquaintance, Ryuk. He's a god of death who's just given me the means to kill all of my enemies effortlessly and remorselessly."
"That's neat!" I offered my hoof to Ryuk. He shook it and I mentally scratched 'shake hooves with a literal god' off my bucket list.
"I do try to keep things interesting." Was it just me, or did the smile Ryuk was wearing look malicious?
"...es-ti-a!" Ner' finished writing in his pretty black notebook. I peeked over his shoulder and saw a short list of names. First were the names of all of my friends, followed by several other names of which the only ones I recognized were 'James Bond,' 'Steve From Accounting,' and 'Princess Celestia.' My name was conspicuously absent.
Ner' looked up and saw me reading over his shoulder. I then looked at Ryuk, who looked at me looking at him. Ryuk laughed a raspy laugh. We spent the next forty seconds standing around awkwardly.
~~~Meanwhile, in the foal mafia's armory~~~
James Bond clutched at his chest and gasped desperately for air. He beat his hoof desperately against his rib cage twice before collapsing. With a grimace on his face he slowly dragged himself into a chair. "Not the way I'd have liked to go," he grunted, "but I suppose it could've been worse."
A soft golden light enveloped his features. When the light cleared a different pony was sitting in Bond's chair, wearing Bond's clothes. "Ugh, I always hate regenerating," the new and improved James Bond complained as he reached for a bottle and started drinking himself into a stupor.
~~~Also meanwhile, in Celestia's throne room~~~
Princess Celestia, age old ruler of a nation and magical master, felt a feeble magic probing at her lifeline. With a faint smile and a soft chuckle she magically grabbed the invasive magic by its magical throat, tied its magic neck into a magic knot, and threw it into a magic closet so she could magically deal with it later... with magic.
And nopony around her even noticed the supremely impressive feat of magic she'd just performed. Celestia sighed and resumed playing the role of expert puppetmaster to stave off her boredom.
~~~Back in the place of important things~~~
"Well," Ner' stomped a hoof impatiently, glaring at all of my friends and then Ryuk, "why isn't it working? Why aren't they dead?" he asked the death god.
Ryuk explained that the notebook, which he insisted on calling a "Death Note" for some odd reason, needed both a name and a face to work. According to him, the only one of my friends whose name he'd gotten right was Fphantom, and that Fphantom hadn't died since his face was always changing.
"Who's he talking to?" asked Fphant.
I waved a hoof dismissively. "Invisible death god, don't worry about it." For some reason that made him look even more worried.
Before anyone could say anything else a small side door that I hadn't even noticed before opened up and a lumpy decaying thing walked in carrying a squirming black bag. It noticed the room's many occupants and froze stiff. "Ah, sorry to interrupt, master, but where should I..." the lumpy thing trailed off and motioned to the squirming black bag.
Ner' sighed and pinched the bridge of his nose with his hoof. Somehow. "Just, over there in the corner." He waved a hoof towards a stretch of wall with absolutely no corners.
"Yes, master." The lumpy minion bowed and proceeded to bury the squirming black bag in the most corner-like stretch of that cornerless wall.
"Now, on to business!" Ner' announced, flourishing his notebook of death.
"Is nobody going to mention what just happened?" the Courier asked.
"What just happened?" I asked.
"Never mind," the Courier resumed looting. I'd never realized you could fit that many bottles of booze into one pocket.
Ner' tapped me on the shoulder. "What was your name again?" He was poised to write something in his notebook.
I blinked. "Did I never introduce myself to you? I felt like such an inconsiderate jerk. My name's...-"
And then Ner's minibar exploded, sending all of us flying in an ungainly 'away' direction called thataway.