Sometimes, you create a masterfully multi-tiered plan of insanity that has backups upon backups upon backups. There is absolutely no way it could possibly fail, and all exits have been taken care of. Nothing could possibly go wrong.
And then an idiot comes in and destroys it all by laughing.
This is an irritation both the villainous and heroic of the universe have to deal with. Immense, ridiculous plans brought low by one silly, amusing detail. Why? Because it’s funny, apparently.
Now, when two geniuses go at each other, the ensuing game of you-would-know-that-I-would-know can really go off the deep end. But that’s not important right now.
What’s important is the significantly less predictable situation where two cloud-cuckoolanders are going at it with “plans” of equal improbable idiocy.
~~~
“Hey! Skeleton-grin!” Pinkie called, waving from the top of the wall. A fiery shooting star streaked across the sky just over her head.
“I’m LORD HATER!” Hater matched Pinkie’s hoof wave with a shake of his fist. “Are you done making us wait!?”
“Yeah, actually! You wanna come in and give us your demands now?”
“You listen here, little pink—”
“Sir, that’s what we wanted her to do,” Peepers groaned. “Yes, we’ll come in!”
“Yay!” Pinkie clapped her hooves together. “Could you leave your army outside? The streets aren’t big enough for all of them.”
Peepers snapped his fingers. “Squad two, with us. Rest of you… make camp for the night, or something. I better not get back and hear about laser-to-the eye games, you hear me?”
“I can handle myself, Peepers,” Hater growled.
“Sir, do you even know what we want from them, exactly?”
“Their power!”
“And do you know what that is?”
“Uh…” Hater scratched the bottom of his skull. “...Not really.”
“And that’s why I’m coming along, okay?”
“Fine. This better not be another round of boring talking, though.”
“It won’t!” Pinkie called out. “I’ve got games!”
“No games!” Hater shouted.
“...But there’s games and talking. I thought you hated just talking.”
“I… want… AGH! Let’s just get this over with.” He marched up to the city gates. The gumball guardians and banana guards did nothing to stop him as he entered the Candy Capital, Peepers and a half-dozen other Watchdogs following behind.
Pinkie jumped down from the wall, bouncing like a spring before coming to a stop just in front of Hater and his group. Two people ran to stand behind her—Dirt Beer Guy and Toronto. She took a moment to adjust her crown, keeping it straight, before extending a hoof to Hater. “Lord Hater, I, Princess Pinkie Pie, welcome you to the Candy Kingdom! I hoof control of the city over to you!” She pulled a key out of her mane with her tail and tossed it to him.
It hit his hand, but it slipped through his fingers. His other hand made a swipe, however he only knocked it upward instead of catching it. Stumbling around he made numerous other attempts to keep the key in his bony gloves before Peepers swiped it out of the air for him.
“This is lame,” Hater growled.
“But you’re the Princess-Lord of the Candy Kingdom now!” Pinkie blew a party blower and started walking to the castle. “We should celebrate, talk business over a feast!”
“This isn’t business!” Hater spat. “You are my subject.”
“Uh, sure. What do you want me to do?” She blinked several times, expectantly.
“Uh… uh… ah! Fix my ship.”
“How?”
Hater blinked. “Peepers, how—”
“They may not know how,” Peepers explained. “We’d have to set the engineers on it after we examine their resources and existing technology. We can do that in the morning.”
“Morning?!”
“We have to sleep, sir! It’s late! Let’s just establish our rule, find the royal chambers, and then figure more out in the morning.”
Hater sagged. “I like this a lot better when we have a working ship. I get to blow more things up.”
“Oh, you want to blow things up?” Pinkie asked, waggling her eyebrows. “I’m sure you could put that to good use! There are many demolition proje—”
“Stop. Being. So. Happy. And. Helpful.” Hater seethed.
“...Would you rather I tried to fight back?” She raised an eyebrow and grinned.
“I… wh…”
“I’m just doing what you want! Being completely cooperative!” She gave an exaggerated bow that Dirt Beer Guy and Toronto matched. “You want to see the royal chambers? We can go right there, but we’ll pass through the festival hall! Unless, skeletons like you don’t need to eat?”
Hater ground his teeth so hard sparks flew. “I do need… food. But you can’t possibly have goo—”
Pinkie bounced over to the palace doors and threw them open, the light from within much more adequate than the soft glow the pyramids were putting out. “We have pizza, cake, vegetarian sandwiches, and tables made of candy!”
Hater, dazed, walked into the main hall, jaw hanging open. The decorations sparkled and the food looked amazing. Absent-mindedly, he devoured a cupcake and kept walking. “Wow…”
“Neat, huh?”
Tripping over his own feet, Hater shook his head. “It’s nothing like the great parties we get in space, nothing at all! Why, I’ve seen… parties better than this every tuesday! And I don’t want a party anyway, I just wan—”
“To blow stuff up, I know, but this stuff was already here! Oh well.” She casually cleared a table of delicious food, sending a wince through Hater. So many delectable goods he wouldn’t get to taste. “Sooooo Princess-Lord, sir, beyond helping fix your ship, what does being under your rule mean for us?”
Peepers pulled out a roll of paper and cleared his throat. “Hater’s law one, your new favorite person is Lord Hater. Hater’s law two, your new favorite day is Hater’s Day. Hater’s law three, your new favorite race are the Watchdogs. Hater’s law four, your fav—”
“Uh…” Pinkie grabbed the scroll out of Peepers’ hands and read through it faster than should have been physically possible. “Wow, we can’t follow any of these! I’m sorry, I can’t change everyone’s favorite everything in a day!”
“WHAT!?” Hater shouted.
Peepers did the equivalent of facepalming, which, considering his head was one big eye, it was a miracle it didn’t send him into a fit of agony. “Sir, none of the planets we conquer do.”
“Wh—why wasn’t I told?” Hater was trembling slightly from the revelation.
“Sir, I thought it was obvious. Usually this list is just a fear-tactic to get them to obey, but I don’t think it’s going to be that helpful here.”
“Oooh, clever!” Pinkie said.
“Thank you,” Peepers said, bowing slightly. “Still, Sir, you mostly want to own the planets, right? If we bothered trying to get the people to act a certain way there’d be a lot more boring talking like this.”
Hater folded his arms, grumbling.
“So…” Pinkie tossed the scroll of “laws” over her shoulder. “What do we actually have to do?”
“Anything Lord Hater says,” Peepers said.
Pinkie stared at him in disbelief. “No forced army service? No slave camps? No—”
Peepers sighed. “Look, just be loyal to Lord Hater, put posters of him up everywhere, and get the people happy with him. We really don’t care how. Can you do that?”
“Absolutely!” Pinkie laughed. “Imma tell you something, I originally was gonna throw this pie in your face and start a chain reaction of events that would knock Hater onto his plot, but you know what? Dirt Beer Guy, cancel secondary pie-fest.”
“Canceled,” Dirt Beer Guy said, taking a pie out from under the table and setting it in front of Hater.
Pinkie jumped to Hater and started shaking his hand over and over, fast enough that he felt like it was going to come off. “Glad to have you as our new supreme ruler, sir!”
Hater didn’t know how to respond to this.
That was when they heard an explosion outside.
“Oh for the…” Peepers threw his hands wide. “I leave them alone for five minutes and they start blowing things up!” He marched out of the castle. “I’ll be back after I shout at them all about responsibility. Don’t do anything without me.”
He slammed the door behind him, leaving the hall with one less occupant.
“He’s really stressed, isn’t he?” Pinkie asked.
Hater nodded. “He’s always so focused. He does his job but he puts waaaay too many ‘protocols’ and ‘rules’ in it.”
“You should keep listening to him, he knows what he’s doing,” Pinkie suggested. “I mean, look at me, I’m working closely with Toronto!” She pointed at the dog, her hoof cracking like a whip.
Toronto looked up from his notebook. “Why am I suddenly part of this conversation?”
Pinkie ignored him. “Toronto is a greedy little penny-pusher who seeks only his own monetary gain.”
“Hey!”
“But, he’s actually really good at managing the kingdom’s finances and resources, so I got him on board. He’ll be the one helpin—” At Hater’s twitch and small sparks of lightning, she stopped herself. “He’ll be the one following your orders to fix your ship with whatever we’ve got at our disposal! He’s like my Peepers!”
Hater tapped his bony fingers on the table. “Eh, Peepers can do whatever. So long as I get back to conquering planets! Starting with this one!”
“We can go over military plans later,” Dirt Beer Guy said. “You said you wanted to sleep?”
“Ugh, finally, a bed, yes. Royal chambers, sta—”
“How about we have a little conversation, first?”
The thing that was not the King of Ooo walked into the room, making no effort to hide his blazing golden eyes. It was more than a little shocking to see something that had kept itself in the shadows for so long standing in plain sight.
“You were deposed!” Pinkie called, throwing the pie at his face.
He lifted up a hand, some kind of invisible telekinesis pushing the pie away. “The Waxman was deposed. I was not.”
Hater stood up, grinning. “Ah, you! You look like you want a fight!” He lifted his finger, summoning green electricity to it. “Finally, some fun.”
“Oh no, I’m not here to fight. I could if I wanted, but there’s no point! I just want to make a deal. You see…”
“Don’t listen to him!” Pinkie shouted. “He—”
The not-King held out a hand, pushing Pinkie into a wall and holding her there by the jaw, preventing her from talking. “Not right now, shooting star. The adults are talking.”
“Heh,” Hater said. “Nice one.”
“Thank you, thank you!” The thing bowed, sneer widening further. “Now, my offer is simple. You’re being manipulated by this despicable pink fluff. She doesn’t want to serve you. She wants to HELP you.”
“She is being very helpful…”
“Think, what kind of person about to be conquered would be this happy about it? Nobody, that’s who! She’s trying to turn you from your conquering ways. She cannot be allowed to succeed!”
“You’re right! You’re right!” Hater smashed his hand into the table, breaking it with ease. “This is unacceptable!”
“Yes, it is! But, Peepers was also right, you need this city intact… but how can you tell if they’re listening to you because they’ve been conquered, or because they’re trying to help?”
“Uh… uh… uh…” Hater looked around, suddenly wishing Peepers was here.
“You don’t… without something more.” The thing extended a hand that became engulfed in ominous blue fire. “Shake, and I’ll give you all the knowledge you need to determine their true motive. No, I’m not doing this to help you. I’m not doing it to serve you either. I want something in return.”
“I’m not giving you anything.”
“Really? All I want is one of the many subjects of the Hater Empire to order around. Just one. Surely you can spare one.”
“Just one?”
“Just one.”
Pinkie somehow managed to break out of the thing’s magic. “No! Don’t do it, Hater! He’s manipulating you! Hemmmfphhh!”
“I might be,” the thing admitted. “But I can guarantee that not only will you get to keep your Empire, your ship will be fixed! I’m not going to destroy any of your possessions as part of this deal.”
“Huh. This sounds like a really good offer.” Hater scratched his chin thoughtfully.
Toronto shook his head slowly, but his motions were rewarded by being tossed over to the side with the not-King’s power.
“That looks fun… th—aha!” Hater extended a hand. “You have a deal if I get to fight you as part of it!”
“DEAL!” The thing laughed.