While two of our... eh, 'heroes', I guess we'll go with that... were busy being unconscious, a nefarious group of ne'er-do-wells assembled for their monthly session of scheming and scones.
Deep in a dark, dank, dismal, dreary, depressing (and a whole bunch more alliterative adjectives bearing negative connotations beginning with the letter 'd') swamp, which the evildoers insist to all readers is totally not Froggy Bottom Bog because there's no way they'd be that predictable and stupid, this cabal of criminal conspirators conspired... uhm... conspiratorially (this is starting to read like a campy 1960's Batman TV show script) in their creepy hideout. The diabolical dwelling sat above the marshy mire upon an EEEEVIL giant piston which could lower the whole shebang beneath the muck and then slowly raise it up at the start of each episode for added mood effect, because the villains loved being melodramatic like that despite the impractical design of the place and the obvious issues with mud clogging the hydraulics and constant leaks.
Oh, and there was that one time that the garage door opener malfunctioned and opened while they were submerged. Holy crap, was that ever a mess.
Regardless, the sight of this hideout that resembled a sort of Darth Vader mask if Darth Vader was a horse and which gleamed like polished tar (it's kind of like polishing a turd, something you can actually accomplish via the Japanese method of 'duro dango', which makes these really glossy spheres out of poop. Why anyone ever decided this was a good idea initially... I can only assume significant sake consumption and a large wager were involved) struck the right tone and totally screamed "Hey! Evil hideout right here!" every time it ascended from the murky depths. It also smelled like farts, like, all the time. Because of omnipresent swamp gas. Which tended to detract from the evil ambiance for visitors and bring to mind duro dango (seriously, Japan, you guys spent how many hours crafting shiny balls of poop. What the hell were you thinking?!).
Christened "The Fortress of Fearsome Felons", after one of its residents realized that calling it the fortress of 'fearful' felons made it sound like they were all scardy-cats, a number of the most terrible villains in the usually saccharine and lame land of Equestria now sat assembled inside the sinister structure to discuss matters most foul... including who clogged the toilet in the little villains' room.
Around a long table in the darkness deep within the bowels of the fortress, a group of shadowy figures loomed, their identities so perfectly hidden by the gloom that there's ABSOLUTELY NO WAY anyone could just guess their names by taking their overt personality traits into account. So don't you try to pretend you know who they are! You just got lucky, that's all! All you know is that they're various shadowy, indistinct figures identified with a totally random letter of the alphabet which absolutely does not represent the first letter of their names.
"I have recently sensed a great disturbance," intoned the spectral visage of Shadowy Figure N in a booming soprano tone laced with poorly-concealed malice. "Something borne of tremendous power has rent asunder the the very Veil and cast itself into our realm."
"Indeed! Of course I too have felt it!" exclaimed The Great and Powerful Shadowy Figure T. "How could anypony of prodigious magical skill not sense such a formidable sensation. Naturally-"
"Naturally, you couldn't feel a thing, oh Great and Pathetic Dweeb," cackled the beaky and cheeky Shadowy Figure G.
A sullen red glow crept from The Great and Powerful Shadowy Figure T's eyes and an amulet about the still-unnamed and thus you-can't-possibly-guess-who-it-is-so-there figure's neck as she growled, "This coming from a magicless featherbrain! How dare you interrupt the Great and Powerful-!"
"Blah blah blah, you're fantastical and amazing and whatever. Not two minutes into the meeting and you're already dorking it up," yawned Shadowy Figure G, grabbing a shadowy scone-like object from a shadowy plate-like object upon the shadowy table-like object of shadows.
"Not now, you two!" snarled Shadowy Figure N. "Save your petty squabbles for the inevitable backstabbing we'll all get around to later in the story! For the time being, once the others have assumed their places, we must decide what to do about this thing which has entered our world. It is a threat to us? Or, could we make use of its power for our own evil plans? And on the other item in our agenda, I reiterate that it was not I who caused the toilet to-"
"We have plans?" chuckled the lithe loudly, faint profile of Shadowy Figure D, floating into the room on a cloud of composed of even more shadows. "Plans are so boring! They make everything predictable! And there are all those steps to remember, things to forget, things to go wrong, plot holes to fall into; and I can NEVER figure out Step 2, other than it precedes 'profit' in the grand scheme of it all. It's why I strongly suggest we move entirely on spur-of-the-moment improvisation and hope the laughs carry us past the incredulity and implausibility of our ridiculous and frequently self-defeating actions. Oh, and it was certainly you in the stall that flooded. You had TP stuck to your back hoof. I do appreciate the chaos, though."
"What are YOU doing here?!" Shadowy Figure N thundered, once the shock of the unexpected former member's presence abated, along with his blabbering. "Cursed treasonous hoof," she then muttered under her breath before resuming fuming at the serpentine shadowy presence hovering above. "I was under the impression you'd been reformed! Again! For realsies this time! After the attack by T-"
"Oh come now," sang Shadowy Figure D, twirling his shadowy paw-like paw in the almost total darkness, which was really becoming annoying to narrate at this point. "You know how perfectly unpredictable I am and how completely stupid an idea it would be to think I could actually be reformed, or that, after being a cunning prankster for thousands of years who knows the art of betrayal and deception inside and out- as well as countless pop culture references from a completely different universe," he noted in an aside to all of you out there who should know this stuff. "-that I'd be stupid enough to ever trust another villain!" He turned and glared at certain television cartoon writers while frigidly purring, "I'd find that quite offensive indeed." Quickly returning to a jovial mood, as befit a being of his spastic nature, Shadowy Figure D continued, "I'm good one day, bad last week, chaotic neutral on 2nd Sundays after Armistice Day... totally random 115% of the time!"
"And where does that leave you today?" Shadowy Figure N asked flatly, perpetually unamused by D's antics.
"You're in luck today!" declared Shadowy Figure D cheerfully. "The stars have certainly shone upon you and the fates aligned in your favor, and the magic 8-ball has declared with certainty that I am squarely on the side of villainy this fine, miserable day! I rolled my D20 just this morning and it landed on 'One solid month of pure, unambiguous evil'!"
"Which means you're as unreliable as ever, as far as I'm concerned," spat yet another haughty villain voice, none other than Shadowy Figure C, her annoyed tone punctuated by a static reverberation with every syllable. She fluttered into shadowy view on tattered, shadowy wings. "And by the way, can someling turn on the damned lights? I nearly flew into a wall! Why do you always insist on sitting in the dark? None of us can even read the minutes you insist on keeping from the previous meetings!"
"CRYSSSSSSTALS?" croaked a deep dreary voice belonging to a shadowy figure who actually appeared to be composed of shadows rather than merely lacking illumination. A cracked, weakly glowing horn which emitted a pale, sickly sanguine luminescence shone out. The billowy visage wisped away from its place at the table toward the wall on the far side of the hall. There was a click. A moment passed in silence. "GRRAAAAAARRR!!" the shadow growled angrily, following its annoyed utterance with repeated thuds as it banged its head repeatedly against the wall. Finally, after series of sparking flickers announced the activation of the cheap fluorescent ceiling lamps, several of which sputtered half-heartedly into illumination with a headache-inducing random strobing effect Shadowy Figure D found oddly pleasant, the villains were revealed in all their glory to the shock and surprise of all readers who must have had no idea who they were at all because the writing is just so subtle!
Shadowy Figure G, now clearly visible as *le gasp!* none other than the cruel and conniving and clearly irredeemable Gilda the Griffon, gazed at the feeble flickering lights with bemusement. "Seriously? We still didn't get the bits for better lights? I thought we budgeted 200 bits for new light fixture last time!"
"Trixie required dry cleaning for her fashionably fiendish new capes and hats!" announced the formerly unrecognizable shadow of The Great and Powerful Trixie, once more wearing the Alicorn Amulet for the simple fact that she never learns her lesson... a problem clearly epidemic among this world's inhabitants.
"Well that can't have cost too much-" began Nightmare Moon, who was still dark and shadowy regardless, as was snarling smoke-pony Sombra who was still banging his head against the wall for no apparent reason.
"All five dozen matching sets!" declared Trixie.
Gilda massaged her forehead with her talons, "Geez, what is WRONG with you stupid ponies?"
"GRAR!! CRYSSTALS GARGLE BARGLE SLAVESSSS!!" the cloudy form of King Sombra the vile and clearly severely brain-damaged former despot of the Crystal Empire snarled in objection to the speciest generalization from the damned beaky named Gilda.
Queen Chrysalis of the changelings, those shape-shifting, love-stealing icky chitinous bug ponies begging for a heavy application of DDT, fluttered into one of the creaky folding chairs arranged around the hall's central table which consisted of two ping-pong tables pushed together. Taking her place, she shook her head so that her long, greasy-looking seaweed-green locks flung about and brushed against the lithe figure of the once-more-treacherous serpentine chimera and erstwhile Spirit of Chaos, Discord, who promptly whipped out a can of Lysol and liberally began decontaminating himself. Chrysalis lit her gnarled, crooked horn and levitated a scone from the paper plate at the table's center. "I agree with Fuss-and-Feathers over there. It isn't right that SOMELING-" She glared at Trixie. "-keeps blowing our budget every accursed month, keeping us stuck with furnishings I'd expect of the inbred pony hicks of West Mareginia!"
"ENOUGH!" cried Nightmare Moon with a clap of thunder and flash of lightning, revealing that despite being blasted out of Luna by the Elements she had somehow still miraculously regained a physical form and gained equal powers to the alicorns by the mysterious magic of plot convenience. "We'll discuss how Trixie's to blame for all our financial problems later!"
"Nice traditional effect," approved Discord.
"Heyyyy!" added Trixie.
"Since we're just missing the Flim Flam Brothers and our newest inductee Suri Polomare, who are conveniently off on another diabolical mission far away so they won't clutter up this already over-stuffed narrative," Nightmare Moon glowered. "I call the meeting of the Legion of Really Diabolical Supervillains to order. Oh, I just came up with that title for our group last night. What do you all think of it?"
Discord stroked his thin beard, "LoRDS... a delightful acronym if I do say so!"
"BLARG!!" agreed Sombra.
"Sexist, naturally," huffed Chrysalis, a classic feminist like all tyrannical mind-controlling, deceptive, emotion-eating monsters. "But I suppose it will do."
"Wonderful!" Nightmare Moon jotted down the results of the vote. "That's the fastest we've ever gotten anything done around here! Now let's begin with the Pledge of Evil."
They all stood up and faced a image of Pony Satan on the wall, reciting, "I pledge alliegance to evil, and all the lies upon which stands; one purpose: to stomp out goodness, for villainy and stealing candy from foals."
"And now that that's done, we can move on to old business. Chrysalis, I believe you had proposed a evil bake sale-" began Nightmare Moon when the lights suddenly blinked out.
"Let me guess," droned Gilda. "Trixie spent our electricity budget too."
But before Trixie could vehemently deny the baseless accusations on account of the bits for the electricity bill already having gone out before she could get her grubby hooves on them, a smooth, sonorously deep and bone-chilling voice oozing with sinister vileness interrupted her.
Like, this was a voice that was so dripping with evil you'd instantly arrive at the conclusion its speaker was the sort of guy who'd get off on dropping adorable puppies and kittens one-by-one into a woodchipper while making a bunch of innocent wide-eyed children watch... and then he'd throw them in afterward. And make burgers out of the mess that came out and sell them to their parents. Because it was JUST THAT FRIGGIN' EVIL!!
"Does anyone mind if I join your little band of misfits?" spoke the voice again as the lights fearfully flickered on, their gleam only timidly touching the towering and terrible form of the one addressing the assembled villains, showing only a silhouette of a vast centaur bearing two great horns jutting from the side of his head.
"T-T-T-TIREK!!" yelped Discord, zipping away under the table which quaked at his shudders.
"How dare you show yourself here, you over-powered magical leech!" Trixie snarled. "We have no need of such a sorry power-gamer who relies on a cheap cliche method for gaining absolute power in such a convenient manner!" The Alicorn Amulet McGuffin glowed rather obliviously at that moment for some reason.
"Eh," shrugged Gilda. "Ain't got no magic for him to steal. And besides, I thought that crystal tree thing kicked hit plot pretty hard anyway."
"N-no!" whimpered Discord from beneath the table. "It's the OTHER Tirek!"
The villains went dead silent in shock and horror (save for Nightmare Moon who squeed in excitement) as the vile, malignant face of the ORIGINAL Tirek strode confidently into full view. "Would any of you care to stroke my pulsating bag of darkness?" he asked in a sickeningly sultry voice dripping with horrid, clearly intentional, double entendre that made them all wish to evacuate their internal organs in disgust (save for Nightmare Moon, who would have gladly stroked anything he wished her to).
"Ok," clucked Gilda, gulping down her nervousness and not a little bile. "That has to be the most creeptastic euphamism I've ever heard."
Tirek merely grinned at Gilda, who shrank into her seat with a frightened chirp and intoned, "I've come at last."
"That's what she said!" quipped Discord, before squeaking. "Don't kill me! Or do other things that are worse than death! I can't help myself!"
Tirek continued as if Discord had been relegated to mere accessory comic relief and no longer was a villain worth regarding. Damn, that's just cold. "The feeble interloper who dared take up my exalted name won't be joining us. He suffered a little... accident... in Tartarus.
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In Tartarus: several demon imp janitors stared disbelieving down into a pit where several hooved limbs stuck out in unpleasantly contradictory directions. "Dang," whistled one to another. "I didn't think that many pineapples would fit in such a small orifice..."
"Figures we get sent to clean it up," grumbled another. "As if mucking after Cerberus wasn't enough crap to deal with."
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"W-where have you been all this time, oh Powerful and...mmmmm... Virile Lord of Darkness?" whimpered Nightmare Moon, wearing a simpering expression of adoration for the creature whose twisted evil she could only one day hope to mirror... and whose mountainous and malevolent body she hoped would one day lay... oh god... oh HELL NO! I refuse to narrate that! That's more nightmarish than anything she's intentionally put into foals heads!
Chrysalis, for the first time in her life, tasted a love more bitter than gall and which left her heaving in gagging breaths.
"Away for some important evil business, my dear Nightmare,," he spoke with a softness that still felt like maggots crawling under your eyelids. "I had much to attend to for these past ages in another world, my last task involved training Catholic priests on how to deal with their alter boys." The Narrator hereby promises to brutally murder Tirek by the end of this fic and make sure he stays permanently dead forever. "I too have felt the presence of something of great power and... intense wrongness..." said Tirek the Abominable, the Bringer of the Abyss, He Who Makes Kim Jung Il Look Like a Boyscout, the Monster With Fetishes Too Horrible To Mention in Any Fanfic Not XXX-Rated, the Really, Really Big-Time Ultimate Big Bad Of This Story. He shivered in what appeared to be ecstasy, "This force is not from our universe. It runs contrary to the pathetic idealistic, idyllic Harmony which inflicts itself upon this world. As yet, it's exact nature is uncertain and the form of its power such that it would not be wise to simply seize it, for my agent in Ponyville wherein it fell reports to me that it is as yet unstable and could be hazardous. Should it not simply explode violently and exterminate the ponies or cause them to suffer all manner of horrid mutations and slow lingering death, either of which would also be quite acceptable, I am certain we could use it to destroy the Tree of Harmony itself once we learn its secrets and plunge the whole of the land into endless misery and sexual sadism. Shall we join together in pursuit of this glorious end?"
"Whoah whoah whoah?" clucked Gilda. "YOU have an agent in Ponyville?"
"Indeed," smirked Tirek.
"Ok, so how does any obviously twisted maniac working willingly for you manage to blend in with all those sugar-and-spice dweebs?"
"You'd be amazed, little griffoness, how willingly the good turn a blind eye to vileness right beneath their hooves in order to maintain their blissful illusion of paradise," the master of all that is perverted and purile crooned. "She's been there for quite some time, and yet only recently has she even appeared on-screen!"
"On-screen?" buzzed Chrysalis. "What on... whatever this planet's name is... is he talking about? We don't have the porjector hooked up..."
Discord wished he dared say something, but as he currently enjoyed the relativistic positions of his internal organs... and the odd harpsichord... he remained silent on the matter.
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In Sugarcube Corner, Pinkie Pie suddenly glowered, "Ooooo... not only is he an evil Pervy Mc Pornopants, he's even stealing MY 4th wall-breaking schtick!" She shouted to the heavens, "HE MUST PAAYYYYYYYYYY!!!"
A random customer whinnied in fear and threw his antire bag of bits on the counter and then shrieked and ran out.
"Thank-you! Come again!" Pinkie called in a sing-song voice.
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"That sounds perfectly wonderful," cooed the Nightmare applying her most dulcet tones, flashing her eyelashes while her gaze slid all over the demonic centaur's massive body, imagining every sort of sordid act she could perform upon it.
None of the other villains dared object, lest they find themselves violated in manners none of them wished to imagine, and which Nightmare was currently fantasizing upon.
"Excellent," grinned Tirek, as a tendril of ichor wormed its way out of the undulating bag hanging from his neck to receive fond caresses from its master, to the nausea of all but Nightmare Moon, who was exceedingly jealous of it. "Then let us begin to fornica-... I mean, contemplate by what manner to proceed."
Discord, stil quivering beneath the table, threw up a little in his mouth.