After finishing his episode in regards to student loans, Discord himself wanted to make sure and prepare his next piece as soon as he could possibly can. But somehow, life just happened to throw a wrench into his production. That wrench being the overly huge shitshow that resulted from both of the princesses making their retirement announcement official. If he were to summarize what happened, it consisted mostly of the tree of harmony blowing up, him faking his own death (to no avail) and the mane six going as far as to use gardening tools in order to push back whatever encroaching forces tried to overrun Ponyville. That and after further investigating, he learned that an old grumpy grandpa billy goat had basically brought all the major bad guys back to form the equestrian equivalent of the League of Villains, including Cozy Glow and Tirek of all things.
But with the return of these villains, the draconequus came to a bit of a realization on something. Former villains, like he and Starlight, were reformed and allowed to be able to live out normal lives. Yet, when it came to that of Cozy Glow, she did not get off with a slap on the hoof at all for when she took over the friendship school and was instead sent to the prison that was seen as the Equestrian version of hell. And that left him with one question that had been burning through his brain all week.
How the hell is something like that possible? And more importantly… Why?
Even when talking this over with Starlight Glimmer; the former destroyer of time, apprentice of Twilight Sparkle and now the School of Friendship’s guidance counselor, was beyond confused by this as well. And she wanted to find out why this was the case just as much as Discord, which was exactly what was going to be taken care of tonight.
So, donning a new suit and having the introduction music begin, he now had the chance to say hello to his audience again, go through his opening remarks and then begin to start off his piece. “Our main story tonight concerns something that a lot of ponies just seem to can’t get enough of. Criminal Justice. Whether it's watching the daily perils of Princess Celestia in day court and trying to tell somepony that they can’t extinguish the sun, hearing complaints about stupid shit that nobles did recently or you watch the classic movie that is ‘Red Robin standing shirtless in the rain, the movie’,” That comment was followed by an altered version of the poster for the movie called ‘The Shawflank redemption’ as his audience laughed. “Tonight though, I wanted to focus on the criminal justice system. More specifically, how Equestria handles its most major threats. Because even though you might be thinking ‘Well isn’t that a trick question? Just lock them up in Tartarus’, that’s not entirely considered to be the ‘go-to option’. For example, when it came to both Starlight Glimmer and also myself, we were both respectively reformed and have changed our ways for the better and when it comes to local offenders that were caught for crimes, they have their own respected judicial process for those instance. Yet, on the other hoof… you have stories like this.”
A scene now cut in, recalling the events of the infamous ‘School Raze’ incident that took place at the School of Friendship two months ago, with the end result of that leading to Cozy Glow, a filly that was a student there at the time, getting locked in Tartarus. “That’s right… a filly got sent to Tartarus for all of that shit. And don’t get me wrong here… this piece is not in any way trying to convince you that what she did wasn’t so bad because it was straight up batshit crazy. The point in bringing this up is because there seems to be a huge difference between who ends up ‘getting reformed’ and not paying any real consequences for their actions and who ends up getting banished to Equestrian Hell. So tonight, let's talk about why that is the case.”
The left hand corner of the screen now changed to the title image of the subject, shortly before the draconequus began to explain more to his audience. “And let’s start with one single question that seems to have no known answer to it. How the buck does Tartarus itself function? And in order to do that, we need to look at an organization that has been responsible for locking up most of the monsters that are in there. They’ve mostly been secret, but after recent events, they’re now being more transparent about how they operate.”
That was followed by Discord taking a second to clear his throat as the title card changed. “The group that I’m talking about here is SMILE. Which, yes, upon first hearing that name you might think that to be the name of a song that Pinkie Pie would sing throughout Ponyville…” Another image of Pinkie Pie bouncing around and singing was seen. “Or the one word that you hear the dentist tell you just as she’s about to go in and do your annual cleaning,” Which was followed by another image of Rainbow Dash being very resistant to do so as she sat in the dentist chair at Colgate’s office. “But in reality, it's actually rather different than you might actually think.”
“One of the top royal intelligence agencies in all of Equestria is known only by the name SMILE. Which stands for Secret Monster Intelligence League of Equestria. Their job? To be able to prevent any monsters from just roaming around Equestria, capture them and put them into Tartarus before they could be able to attack any civilians.”
“Okay, so that seems cool and all… but my only complaint is did you really have to make the acronym for your organization sound so obvious?” Discord now asked as he got a small chuckle from his audience. “Because in all honesty, if someone told me that this was a secret organization from just saying their name fully, I would be like ‘yeah, no shit’.”
The chuckle turned into more of a laugh as he looked at his audience. “But aside from their bad choice in names, we still don’t know much about how SMILE works. All we do know is that their agents commence investigations into monster sightings, capture them and then send them to Tartarus. But that in itself doesn’t even provide any context as to how that’s done at all. It’s like you told somepony who’s coming to Equestria for the first time that Celestia raises the sun, but doesn’t give context as to how or why. It would give off very wrong first impressions.”
The image of Princess Celestia looming over a set of newcomers into Equestria with the blazing sun behind her was now on screen as more of his audience laughed. “So, setting all of that aside, if you take everything I said so far regarding their job, you might think that they are very skilled at it. But remember, they are dealing with very dangerous creatures here. There are reports of what happens when something goes wrong and when a monster that is locked up breaks out and it’s had several of their branches shut down. One such case was when this happened in Ponyville a couple of years back.”
It was then that a brief fifteen second clip played of the mane six fighting the bugbear monster in Ponyville while everypony else, including the donkey named Matilda was flipping out and panicking. “The reason why I bring this up was because one of the branches of SMILE had to shut down because this bugbear, a monster that would answer the question ‘What if a grizzly bear fucked a mutant queen bee?’,” The audience laughed for a brief second as the image began to sink in their heads. “Broke out of Tartarus and hurt many of the ponies that were responsible for locking it up in the first place. And some that still work for them had either been demoted or reassigned to other departments.”
Then, Discord let out another breath as he brought up another point. “However, to look solely at SMILE only has you look at one aspect of how things are run at Tartarus. Because SMILE only focuses on the monsters that are locked up there, not the other creatures that have committed crimes. Because if you were to lock up somepony that were to have been a great threat to Equestria like Queen Chrysalis or Cozy Glow for example, that goes through an entire different process and even then, it feels a bit flimsy. And to explain how flimsy, I want to bring out a friend of mine. Please give it up for Princess Twilight’s former student and Friendship School Guidance counselor Starlight Glimmer everypony!!”
The audience began to cheer as the lilac unicorn trotted out onto the set and took a seat on the opposite side of Discord’s desk. Waving a hoof to every creature that was able to make it to the show tonight. As she got herself situated, that was when Starlight turned back to Discord and had one question. “So… what did I miss?”
“Well, let’s see… we’re on the part regarding judicial process and what warrants a creature to be sent to Tartarus,” Discord told her as he looked through some papers before throwing them behind him and having them explode off set. “Could you be able to help our audience on that tonight?”
“Why yes, I think I can,” The unicorn replied back, taking a moment to turn around to the camera. “In order for some creature to even be considered ‘eligible for Tartarus’, they have to meet specific… criteria, so to speak.”
“And that criteria is?” Discord asked.
“Well, if I have to be personally honest, it’s not what the criteria consists of that concerns me, but more as to what it doesn’t have,” The unicorn told him. “And to demonstrate, I’ll let this clip of Princess Twilight explain what constitutes somepony getting sent to Tartarus.”
“In order to be remotely considered to get sentenced to Tartarus, some creature needs to fit a series of requirements. Different cases have different rules to it, but there’s primarily two that are in every major case. First, successfully commit a plan to attack or harm the leaders of Equestria, including the Princesses and the Elements of Harmony. Second, threaten the peace and harmony of not just Equestria and its citizens, but also its allies abroad. Which, seems reasonable right?”
As Starlight listened, she just sat there. Staring blankly as she just took a sip of hot cocoa and looked back at the audience. “Hold on… why are you asking me if this seems reasonable? You’re a princess! And even though both of those seem like credible reasons, you should know that this applies to all citizens and that there are no preset rules to handle cases committed of the off chance that this is committed by a minor, which is crazy,” The unicorn took another sip of cocoa as she formulated her next like. “You can’t be able to buy the next Mare-tal Kombat video game at GameTrot without showing valid ID to prove that you’re a legal adult, yet Tartarus is the equivalent of a family friendly theme park!”
That got the crowd laughing as a new picture of ponies waiting outside of Tartarus and a neon sign that glowed ‘fun for all ages’ was glowing atop the highest peak alongside what appeared to be roller coaster tracks and a ferris wheel in the background. “Let me clear on this… I’m not saying this in defense of Cozy Glow or anything that she did. But I’m saying this because in no capacity would children as young as her be able to understand the law. And this is coming from the fact that myself, Twilight and Celestia had to inform her parents about the whole ordeal. They didn’t think that their daughter would be capable of such a thing… but then this happened while her parents were present during day court.”
“Ms. Cozy Glow. We here have already listed the charges that you are facing. Is there anything you wish to say in defense to what you’re being accused of-?”
“Yeah, I did all of those things and it was very fun!!”
“…… Come again? Attempting to undermine the credibility of Equestria, manipulating the Elements of Harmony to going into Tartarus, stealing the artifacts of the school of friendship in order to obtain their magic, and tricking the students of the school of friendship to believe that the ‘Young Six’ were threatening to destroy the school is… fun to you?”
“Yes it is! Now can we pleeeeeeease please please please move this along? I really don’t want to be late for my play date with Lord Tirek. Oooh, I just can’t WAIT to meet him!!”
“…… Well, that escalated quickly.”
All that did was just have Starlight Glimmer just hit her head across Discord’s desk as she let out a deep sigh. “If it’s not apparent enough, I think that shows why children can not in any capacity understand the law. And it also kind of shows the disparity in how we deal with these numerous incidents. Take it from us. Both Discord and I were both considered as ‘villains’ at one point, yet we were given the chance to reform and live normal lives. It’s a little bit weird to hear something like that from us given that you just heard how a filly basically sentenced herself to the most unwanted place on the planet that could be considered as a tourist destination.”
“That’s what I’m saying!” Discord added, while giving Starlight a hoof-bump in the process. “This whole process with Tartarus barely makes sense. Not just because you’re basically keeping all the villains there for a grandpa billy goat to form his own league of villains,” A new picture of Tirek, Cozy, Chrysalis and Sombra were seen around the father of monsters named Grogar as he continued to speak. “But also, there’s another problem. Because even though SMILE and other ponies are responsible for putting criminals in there… there’s barely anypony watching over the facility. And that was made clear recently when newly appointed royal guard commander Tempest Shadow and former special effects pony for Michael Hay presented a report to the Princesses during Night Court on the matter.”
“After carefully analyzing and surveying first hoof the activities that take place in Tartarus, I must say that I am not impressed by the way everything is handled. Barely anypony is around at the facility or even attempts to go near the cells of the inmates and most of the time, the Warden is not anywhere to be found.”
“And she later goes on in order to say that Tartarus not only has a lack of personnel there, but that there is an extreme lack of oversight, which is NOT what you would want in a prison. If there was a lack of teachers at a school and the principal barely watches over the students, who knows what kind of crazy shit they would get up too?” That was followed by showing the main classroom at the school of friendship with no teacher at the desk, but the students throwing a crazy party like it was spring break in Mexi-colt.
“So right now, that is where we’re at,” Starlight then spoke. “We have a system where a secret organization is putting monsters into Tartarus, yet we don’t know the methods as to why or how. We have a legal system that assumes that colts and fillies can understand the law and try to defend themselves and we have a prison where there’s barely anypony around to watch over the inmates that we’re keeping inside. So the question now is, what the hell are we supposed to do next? Well…” She paused for a moment, before looking back at Discord as she asked him a question. “Would you like for me to tell them or should I?”
“Would I?” Discord asked. “Well, since you did ask… while we were preparing for this, the two of us had the chance to have an interview with one of the Agents of SMILE so we can get some insight into how their organization works. On the condition that we don’t use their real name and that we don’t reveal any damning information that could put Equestria at risk. Please, take a look.”
It all first started when we got a letter from somepony wanting to talk to us. Around this time, Starlight and I were asking around town for information regarding this piece and the letter asked for us to do one thing. Come to Manehattan and to have nopony follow us.
Of course, Manehattan was the one place in the world where you would get fined for parking your party cannon in the wrong place and where the arches of the main bridge look like oversized horseshoes. And after experiencing Manehattan’s warm lack of hospitality, we finally reached the place where we were supposed to meet. And boy, were we nervous.
“Do you think this pony’s going to show up?”
“I better hope so. I didn’t cancel out of the ‘competition’ that Twilight was doing with the rest of the girls just for this to be a complete and utter bluff.”
And we were slowly beginning to think it was. For you see, the letter asked for us to meet this pony around noon and a few moments after the initial time of the interview was supposed to begin, we became kind of nervous. Not just because of the fact that the meeting was taking place in a conference room with all the windows curtains tied shut, but maybe it was because across the street from where we were was the Manehattan Police Station.
Around ten minutes to one though, we could finally let out a sigh of relief.
“Sorry for being late. We had a last minute impromptu meeting that needed to be finished before I could come see you.”
Holy shit… Bon Bon. The pony that worked as an agent of SMILE was mother… fucking Bon Bon!! Starlight and I only knew her as the earth pony mare that was mostly a candy maker and also Lyra’s roommate. So seeing this was a bit of a shock to the system. Nevertheless, despite the complete and utter surprise, we were prepared to ask some of the most important questions that needed to be addressed.
“So what kind of gadgets do you guys have? Do you have a freeze ray? Some kind of grappling hook? How about one of those memory erasing gizmos?”
“What makes you think that we keep a memory erasing gadget on hoof?”
“Well, you do look like one of those agents in Mares in Black.”
Whoops. My bad. That’s not it… I swear, that was just a test. Needed to make sure our microphones were working and what not. Of course, it did not stop us from hearing this from somepony out in the middle of the nearby hallway.
“Ahh that’s hot, that is hot!”
Now then, where were we? Ah right, Tartarus. There we go.
“So, how does SMILE determine what kind of creatures get sent to Tartarus? Is there some sort of system that you need to follow that determines who goes there or not? Some kind of criteria that they need to meet?”
“… Usually dangerous creatures with magical capabilities in them. Sentience is for those that wish to harm others, so, if it weren't for your reformation, I'd take you to Tartarus myself.”
“Duly noted.”
“Are there any ‘special cases’ that don’t usually follow that kind of criteria though?”
“Animals that are very hostile in civilized areas, while also outside of their natural habitat.”
"You mean like if somepony thought they could try to keep a basilisk as a pet?"
“Cockatrice, and yes.”
Hearing that alone had Starlight slowly begin to regret asking that as I looked back at her. I mean, knowing about special cases is important, but the thought of keeping a Cockatrice as a pet sounded like a nightmare. Yet, all this talk about creatures being in Tartarus had me think of something else that seemed important to ask.
“What about in terms of ponies getting sent to Tartarus? Is there like a different set of rules that you need to follow for those cases or is it out of your hooves, so to speak?”
“We never had that rule. Only monsters and other creatures before the branch I once worked for was disbanded.”
“So if your branch was still around during the time of the ‘School Raze’ incident, would you have prevented Cozy from going to Tartarus or suggest alternative means to discipline her actions?”
“Alternative means... like find her parents and have them deliver the punishment, and if they do not, we will charge them for bad parenting and take Cozy to child services to be rehabilitated?”
Okay there, Bonnie. I think we maybe need to pump the brakes a little on that one. Thankfully, that was when Starlight intervened.
“No I mean... like reformation. You see, it's just completely bonkers to think that somepony like Discord or I can be reformed for the bad things that we've done, yet a filly does this and goes to Tartarus. Isn't there a way to put her in like some kind of 'Friendship Detention' or something?”
“I'm sure there is one, but by the sounds of it, the Equestria judicial system doesn't have it's priorities straight.”
And that was one thing that we can both agree on. Because after showing the same footage of Cozy Glow in Day Court to her, let’s just say that Bon Bon was a bit… surprised by what we showed her.
“… So they didn't verify if she was crazy and needed to go to an asylum?"
“They basically just took that as her admitting to what she was accused of and used that as grounds for Tartarus… Which seems stupid because there is no way that any filly or colt her age can understand how the law works.”
“Like admitting you stole cookies from a cookie jar because you think you’re going to get a prize.”
That… was actually a rather accurate analogy from Starlight. And one that I surprisingly did not think about earlier when preparing for this interview. Because lets face it, it’s one thing to throw a pony into Tartarus for something heinous that they did, but if you have a filly admit she did something wrong because she would find something good in Tartarus… then something is completely wrong there.
But before we were to finish the interview, I wanted to take a chance to ask her about one creature in particular. One that lead to the entire mess that had been everything that occured within the last week, had me do a fake death scene and even prepare flash cards for this part.
“Are you or any creature that works at SMILE familiar with the name Grogar at all?”
“Who’s Grogar?”
“Well, my notes says that he’s the father of monsters, was responsible for getting all the big bad villains back together including Tirek and Cozy, brought Sombra back. I have a sketch from the Cutie Mark Crusaders if that helps. Here, take a look.”
“He’s… a goat?”
“Yeah, though isn’t it ironic that he just happens to make himself known just as the princesses announced their retirement plans?”
“Honestly, I don’t even know anything aside from what you told me, Discord. Nopony… let me rephrase that. No creature that I’ve worked with or perhaps in general knows who he is. Villains and hostile creatures are typically known for massive huge displays to get attention, not trying to keep things quiet.”
“I think all of us can agree on that. Aside from the exception of Queen Chrysalis.”
Yeah, we all can definitely agree on that. Because to summarize everything that we know, Tartarus is supposed to be the most strictly regulated place on the planet, yet we don’t have the personnel to watch over the inmates, we’re throwing in children that have no idea how the law works and the prison’s becoming a recruitment ground for an elderly grandpa billy goat who snaps at any creature that doesn’t listen to them the same way that Granny Smith would snap at ponies who try to sneak onto Sweet Apple Acres in the middle of the night.
“So, before we finish up here… Given everything we discussed, what do you think needs to be done considering Tartarus?”
“That’s way too simple. Let the ponies who are experienced with capturing monsters be the ones who watch over them and provide guidelines as to what qualifies a creature to be locked up in Tartarus, have the judicial system get its priorities straight and most importantly, we need to drill into everypony’s heads the simple fact that children do not understand how the law works. That will tackle a majority of the issues that we talked about.”
“A majority? Are there… any others that we missed.”
“Well… there’s one minor one… some of my co-workers haven’t quite been told that you two are now reformed, so they kind of think that you’re still doing villainous deeds… You might want to run while you still can.”
Okay, just to be clear SMILE… tell your agents that we are NOT on your fucking list because we do not want for us to get stuck in Tartarus. Because once we were done, we had to full on gallop towards the station in fear of our lives.
Meanwhile…
As the Centaur named Lord Tirek began to rise up from his slumber, he was not disturbed by the sound of crows that lurked in the dry valley that Grogar and the rest of his legion resided, but instead by what sounded like the joyful giggling that came from that of Cozy Glow. She appeared to be looking at a strange box with moving pictures and… was that Discord on there?
“Oh, hi Tirek! Golly, I was wondering when you were going to wake up.” The filly said, turning away from the box as it looked to show Discord and what looked like Princess Twilight’s former student talk to some mare in a suit.
“Cozy, what… are you doing?”
“Me? I’m just watching Discord’s show. About how he talks about different topics in society and how he points out the extremental flaws with them.” She gleefully told the centaur. “This weeks on Tartarus!”
That… registered differently in the centaur’s head. If he’s pointing out the flaws of Tartarus, then it would mean that the conditions would be even harder for them to break out if he or Cozy would be sent back there.
Of course, things did not go so entirely well once one other creature joined them. “Hey, what’s with all the racket in here-?”
“Are you or any creature that works at SMILE familiar with the name Grogar at all?”
“Who’s Grogar?”
“Well, my notes says that he’s the father of monsters, was responsible for getting all the big bad villains back together including Tirek and Cozy, brought Sombra back. I have a sketch from the Cutie Mark Crusaders if that helps. Here, take a look.”
“He’s… a goat?”
“Yeah, though isn’t it ironic that he just happens to make himself known just as the princesses announced their retirement plans?”
“Honestly, I don’t even know anything aside from what you told me, Discord. Nopony… let me rephrase that. No creature that I’ve worked with or perhaps in general knows who he is.”
In that moment, the expression that Grogar had on his face immediately changed. It went from being grumpy to ABSOLUTELY LIVID in several seconds flat. And he did not seem to like the ‘criticism’ that he was hearing. “Golly, mister Grogar. Are you okay-?”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!!!!!!!”
School of Friendship
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!”
“Hey Twilight… do you hear that?”
“I feel it, Spike.”
Canterlot
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!”
“What in the name of my parents is that noise?”
School of Friendship (Again)
“I guess the tree really is gone.”
“Then we gotta do something to honor it-!”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!”
“Uh… do you guys have any idea what the hay that is?”
Somewhere in the universe right now…
“Purgatory… Hell-”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!”
“Denise? Oh god, Denise it’s happening again!!!! I TOLD YOU TO LEAVE ME ALONE ALREADY!! WHAT MORE DO YOU WANT FROM ME BY NOW, I DON’T HAVE ANYTHING ELSE THAT I CAN GIVE YOU!!”
A Mercenary’s home…
“Alright, so we got all the new potential recruits together! So what kind of test should we give them?” A mercenary wearing a red and black spandex suit asked a blue griffon that was sitting next to him at a table.
“Well, we could-”
“AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!!”
“… Professor Deadpool, just what was that?”
“Pure unbridled outrage... either that or the amount of people screaming bloody murder over the movie design of Sonic the Hedgehog.”
“What-?”
“It’s better if you don’t know.”