//------------------------------//
// Chapter 20: The Evil League of Evil 
// Story: Caverns & Cutie Marks: Our House Now 
// by TheColtTrio 
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    A sharp series of raps on Purple Heart’s door pulled the colt’s attention from the swing  of his pendulum desk ornament.
    “Come,” he ordered, without looking up.
The door swung open and a stagehoof peeked inside.
“Sir, I don’t mean to interrupt, but there’s a package in the workshop for you,” the pony called. Purple Heart flicked his eyes to the visitor for a second, then went back to peering at the figurine.
“Just bring it up to my office, please,” he requested.
The stage hoof winced. “Would if I could, sir,” they replied. “It's so big it won’t fit through any of the doors.” Purple Heart blinked, lifting a hoof to stop the pendulum’s kinetic motion, and pushed his seat back.
“Ah,” he hummed. “That package. I’ll be down promptly. Clear the workshop, would you please? I’m not sure how much of a mess this will make.”
The stage hoof started. “Mess, sir?”
    Purple Heart, waving his hoof again. “It shouldn’t be too bad,” he soothed. “It depends on how violent the teleportation is.”
    “Teleportation, sir?” the pony gaped. Purple Heart pulled open a drawer in his desk and pulled out the postage stamp he’d received from Light Patch.
    “Goodness me, I think there’s a rather polite echo in this room,” he muttered, loud enough for the pony at his door to hear. “I must do something about that.”
    The stage hoof gulped. “I’ll clear the workshop, sir!” he squeaked, darting from the doorway.
Purple Heart chuckled to himself and stepped out of the office, locking the door behind him. He strode down the hall, humming to himself and nodding to other crew members as he walked. He heard the sound of shuffling and shouting long before he reached the workshop where set pieces, costumes, and props were kept. He shoved the heavy double doors open and stepped into the shop. Ponies were walking to and fro before him, ignoring the stage hoof pleading that they leave the shop quickly.
Purple Heart watched this all for several seconds, an amused expression on his face. He stepped up next to the hapless stage hoof.
“I’ve always found that in situations like this, it's best to do one of two things,” he whispered, making the pony beside him jerk in surprise. “You either remain silent and wait for them to notice you.” He paused for a beat, waiting for just that to happen. After several seconds, he spoke again. “Or, you get their attention the old-fashioned way.”
He inhaled deeply, filling his chest with air.
“OI,” he boomed. All activity ceased and all eyes turned to the doorway. Purple Heart nudged the stage hoof beside him and grinned.
“It's all in the delivery,” he said, stepping forward. “If I could have the shop for a moment please? I need to check that box.” He pointed with a hoof at the tall package standing in a corner. “Give me a few moments and the shop will be yours again.” Purple Heart stepped forward and the crowd of set designers, stage hooves, actors, costumers, light technicians, and other ponies moved aside for the large earth pony to pass.
“Wot’s in da box?!” a pony demanded from the back of the shop.
Purple Heart rolled his eyes. “The name of a certain highlands play,” he called over his shoulder. “I may have t-” He looked over his shoulder to see the workshop empty, one of the double doors still swinging in the aftermath of the crews’ sudden flight. He chuckled again and looked at the tall box before him. A green thread stretched out from him and found the taped seam in the side of the box. With a sharp jerk, the two flaps swung open, allowing Purple Heart entry into the empty box. He pulled out the postage stamp from under his left leg and slapped it to the outside of the box with the same thread. With another jerk, the flaps shut and he settled in for the journey.
A minute passed.
Then two.
A frown creased Purple Heart’s brow and he poked at one of the flaps. The flap swung open to reveal a dark, stone walled basement who’s ceiling showed some signs of a fire and was lit by a few lamps strewn about.
“Huh,” Purple Heart grunted. “Guess the transport was instantaneous.” He stepped out of the box, his hooves clopping on the rough hewn floor. Maps of different parts of Equestria lined the walls, illuminated by smaller lamps or even candles. Baelhart did a double take as he walked toward the center of the room where a triangular table stood. On one wall was a pixelated map of greens, blues, and strips of brown. Standing before the map, was a short pony. A unicorn.
Purple Heart arched an eyebrow as he sat, allowing some blue to leak into his mane. “It’s been a while,” he said. “How’ve you been, Wits?”
“Been better,” Wits said amicably. “I recently adopted a stray. Turns out I’m allergic to tentacle-cats that eat socks out of the dryer before you can get to them.” He leaned against the closest chair. “And my faithful assistant ate my burger, and gave me a lecture when I told her what was in it. Not to mention,” he gestured to the room around them, “this aesthetic totally clashes with my-” He trailed off, as if just noticing who he was talking to. “Did you do something with your hair? You look… How can I put this nicely… Bad.”
Purple Heart looked down at his coat and winced. The green did clash rather badly with the purple. He laughed weakly. “Yeh, it does look a little bad,” he agreed. “Something to do with a little villainous cocktail.”
“Cocktail?” Wits blinked, then shook his head. “I probably don’t want to know. It’s bad enough that Patchy just left a train ticket while I was out. Nothing like teleportation via clipping out the word ‘subductisupercilicaptor’. I’d be insulted if I knew what that meant.” With a sigh, he pulled back his chair with a magical hand and took a seat, draping one hindleg over the arm. “So, what’ve you been up to since the great exodus from Castle Twilight?”
“A bunch of little things. Saved some nobles, schmoozed some more nobles, got a play produced, and got Discord removed from the field,” Purple replied. “I’ve wanted to get back at that Q knockoff for a while now. And having Twilight kick him out without having to do much more made it all the sweeter.” The purple and green earth pony sighed contentedly. “Now, I’m just waiting till the show either gets banned or pulled to make a country wide tour. What about you? Did Twilight push one button too many for you to hang around any more?”
    The unicorn was silent for a moment, weighing how much to share with his friend. “Let’s just say I have been challenged, and I intend to follow through. I’ve been collecting some stuff, meeting some very nice ponies, and I like to think I’ve formulated a nice little plan. Just need one, two…” Wits was counting on an increasing number of summoned hands, “maybe twenty more things, and I’ll be good to go.”
    Silence filled the room again. After far too long, Wits twisted in his seat to look behind him. “Where is that crit-magnet? I could be playing around with Trixie’s stage kit right now.”
    “Finishing up the spinach puffs!” Light Patch said, strutting into the room with a tray of the pastries on his back. “Sorry to keep y’all waiting. I had to restart like five or six times. No easy access to ready-made puff pastry around here, so I had to make my own.” He dropped into his chair after setting the tray in the middle of the table. “And the oven was busted. Before we begin, can I get you two anything to drink?”
    “I have been craving a good Iced Chai,” Wits mused. “Then again… Nah, I’ll stick to my guns. Iced Chai.” He glanced towards Purple Heart. “You?”
    “Mango Lassi,” the purple and green colt replied. “Please.”
    Light Patch leaned forward and slammed his fore hooves onto the surface of the table. As he raised them, two glasses appeared and filled with the liquid. He smiled, looking at the two glasses. He frowned, noticing he’d gotten the drinks switched. He promptly swapped the two glasses and looked up at his two friends.
“Sorry about that. I’m still getting the feeling for the weird powers I’ve got. Sometimes they flow like water and other times it’s… what?” he asked, noticing the way the two were looking at their drinks.
    “My fruity yogurt tastes like tea,” Purple Heart muttered.
    “Who got mango in my Chai?” Wits asked. The two of them looked at each other and with a shrug, swapped the glasses.
    “That's the problem when the power swings more to Pinkie’s side; they work when it’s funny to work. Otherwise, they like to make little jokes.” Light Patch sighed. “Anyway, while you sip the puffs and nibble at the drinks, I suppose I should go ahead and explain why I gathered us here.”
    “One sec.” Wits reached over and stuffed a spinach puff into his mouth. He made a vague gesture as he brushed crumbs from his face. “Comfimue,” he mumbled around the pastry.
    “Right. Well, just to throw this out up front... As you two may or may not already know, I’ve decided to remain strictly neutral during all this. This is between you two and the mares. I’m just an observer and like most observers, I find it disorienting when the viewpoints of a story keep swapping around..”
    Wits scoffed, another pastry halfway to his mouth. “Right, neutral.” A pair of magical hands made air-quotes around the last word. “That’s why you messed with Twilight’s map. I told her not to actually fix it, but Trixie was quite disappointed that she couldn’t even make a dent in whatever you did. Did you delete the System32 file or something?”
    “Okay, so I’m not strictly neutral,” the grey pegasus said, using his wings to do air quotes. “I figured that, if I’m gonna be stuck here watching everything, I might as well keep it interesting. That, and Twilight might have pushed one button too many. So in a fit of frustration, I may have evened the field for you and Purple Heart a little.” Light Patch leaned forward and whispered conspiratorially. “I actually didn’t do anything to the map. I just forwarded the output to this little watch.” He set the timepiece on the table and wound it. A miniaturized version of the map flickered into existence over the watch.
    Purple Heart leaned out of his seat to peer at the map, cheeks bulging with spinach puffs. “Hum,” he grunted, spraying flakes of pastry with his gusty breath. “Coo.” He swiped another pastry with a thread and placed it on his plate, completing the mountain of pastry dough, spinach, and cheese before him.
    “Anyways, mostly neutral, constantly flipping between characters, hard to follow the story lines. I had a plan to make things a little easier on myself.” Light Patch leaned back in his chair. “I thought ‘why not get you two together and act as a mediator to help you form a little Evil League of Evil’. Or whatever you want to call it.” He reached for a pastry, only to find the tray empty of spinach puffs. He blinked slowly at the crumb covered platter “You two couldn’t even leave one for me?”
    Purple paused with his mouth open, the last spinach puff halfway to vanishing into the cavernous hole he called a stomach. Trying his very best not to pout, the purple and green colt placed the pastry on the serving tray and went back to sipping his chai-tasting yogurt drink.
    A smile crossed Light Patch’s face. Just as he reached out for the last puff, an intangible hand pulled the tray away. “First of all,” Wits said, picking up the pastry, “these are amazing. My compliments to the You. Secondly… really?” He jabbed towards Light Patch with the procured puff. “Work with him to make things easier for you? I don’t know what Purple Heart is up to, but he looks like somepony blended the Joker, so I’m sure it’s not good. And my plan does not do well with having dramatic flairs added to it. I’m walking a fine line here.” He dropped the spinach puff back onto the tray and shoved it back towards the pegasus. “Also, not a fan of the ‘evil’ thing. I’m going for ‘villain’, not ‘bad guy’.”
    “Okay! You can call it the ‘Villain’s League of Villainous Intent’! Sheesh,” Light Patch sighed.
    “Department of Redundancy Department.” Wits End coughed into his hoof before grabbing the last spinach puff again. “I’m taking this again as punishment.”
    Light Patch threw his forelegs into the air. “We’ll call it Daisy Doilies Tea Time! Like I said, name later, shaking hooves and forming the alliance now!” He grabbed one of Purple Heart’s and Wits End’s free hooves and pulled in an attempt to force them together.
    “Watch the puff!” Wits End called, jerking his hoof away. “I still haven’t agreed to this League of Extraordinary Gentlecolts yet. Aside from making your job easier, which I’m against on principle by the way, what’s the advantage here? What do I get out of it?”
    “Wealth, fame, glory, and all of the parades you want,” Light Patch groused. “Maybe a chance to learn some of each other’s plans or devising a way to avoid their plan screwing up yours? A chance to actually talk to a friend in a world that seems to dislike us? All you can eat sushi on Thursdays?”
    “Assistance against Twilight and her newfound issue with us?” Purple Heart offered. “Some backup in case she tries to Friendship Death Star us?”
    Wits shook his head slowly. “As much fun as body shields and sushi would be, we have a proven history of getting in each other’s way just as much as we help each other out. I already tried to plan my scheme around one or two of you stumbling into the way. I don’t have the time or resources to change it to make sure everyone’s happy. Plus…” He trailed off, looking at the other two from under furrowed brows.
    Purple Heart frowned back. “I don’t like that look. There’s either bad news or a bad pun coming.”
    “This is all assuming that we all want to be on the same side,” Wits finished eventually. “The last time one of us went all villain-y, another one ended up with a hole in his chest the size of a Ford Mustang. If we don’t like where each other’s plans are going and it comes to blows, there might not be anything left of us by the end.” He leaned back in his seat again, playing mindlessly with the spinach puff in his hooves. “I don’t fancy my odds if that happens.”
    “It worked out in the end. We’re all still sitting here, aren’t we?” Light Patch asked, staring at the spinach puff. “A part of why I wanted to start this was to help keep you two from coming to blows again. If you at least share your plans, you can avoid being blindsided by the other. Being an observer sort of means watching out for friends.” He looked at the two colts, a concerned smile on his face.
    Wits was silent for a good long while, his internal debate obvious on his face. Finally, he sighed and smirked back. “Fine.” He pointed his hoof at each of them in turn. “But no disintegrations. My plan relies on there still being an Equestria and a Princess of Friendship when I’m ready to spring this thing.”
    “What is it you even have planned, Wits?” Purple Heart asked, yanking his foreleg free of Light Patch’s grasp. “I already did my canoodling around and being a prick. I dunno what to do next.” He paused, eyes squinting. “I could mess around with Canterlot’s bureaucracy. See if I can pull a Palpatine.” A grin split his face. “Ooooh. Now that sounds like fun!”
    Wits leaned away from Purple Heart’s teeth, protecting his lone puff behind a wall of jazz hands. “Okay, now you’re smiling like the Joker,” he grumbled. “What’s next, your declaration to return Canterlot to us? The Ponies?”
    Purple’s grin vanished and he grimaced. “Let’s not go around mixing our villains, smol one.”
    “What mixed? Your palette is so off putting I want to dump you in a trough full of green,” Wits retorted. “At least you’ll look consistently envious.”
    Purple Heart squinted at the minty unicorn, his mouth shrunken with displeasure. “No.”
    “I doubt your plans will overlap, so co-operation could only help. There’s gotta be ways you can help each other. Maybe you,” Light Patch pointed at Wits, “can make use of Purple’s contacts in Canterlot’s higher societies.” He then pointed at Purple Heart. “I’m sure that Wits’ secret evil plan-” he was interrupted by a loud cough from the unicorn. “Sorry. Wits’ secret Villainous plan could be of some help in your plans. Surely you two can see the benefit in a little co-op? Remember Magicka? No, wait. Bad example... Remember Helldiv- No. Ultimate chic- No, that’s not co-op. The Alamo- No, we weren’t born then. Monaco? No, that devolved quickly... Terraria! Remember Terraria and the cool stuff we managed together?”
    “Yeah, I fell a lot,” Purple Heart deadpanned.
    “Without our help I may add,” Wits End contributed.
    “We also wrote an amusing omake about whether or not you were a primarch,” Light brought up. He blinked. “Hmm, gotta be careful of the wall there.”
    “ANYWAYS,” Purple rumbled, rolling his eyes, “I could probably be persuaded to assist in whatever plan Wits has lined up. Will your ponies call my ponies? I still have a theater to help run in the meantime.”
    Wits shrugged. “We’ll see.” His horn flashed as he summoned a sheet of paper and a quill. He then articulated one of his jazz hands to scribble out an address on the paper that he passed to Purple Heart. “Send me a letter at your earliest convenience.”
    Purple Heart accepted the paper and inclined his head. “Sounds plan-like,” he said. He looked at Light Patch. “Satisfied?”
    “Very.” Light Patch leaned back in his chair. “Well... mostly. I didn’t even get one of the puffs. Next time, I’m making a double batch… What do you two think about the name ‘The Order of the Spinach Puffs’?”
    “For a cooking group, weak but passable,” Wits muttered. “For the three of-”
    “Two. Observer here, remember?”
    “Right, right. For the two of us; unusable.” Wits finished, looking at Light Patch. “Do you really not have any other plans? ‘Cause I’m not buying it for a millisecond.”
    “Can’t say you’ve got me convinced with your neutrality act either, sah,” Purple agreed, eyeing the gray pegasus. “You managed to remove mapfunctionality.exe from Twilight’s map board. That doesn’t seem like a very neutral thing to do. It almost seems like you were helping us get away with our respective schemes without a colt-positioning system.”
    “Like I said, the map was a fit of rage and my decision to leave my actions as they were. Keeps things interesting to watch,” Light Patch reiterated. “But to be honest, I might have something small in the works. It shouldn’t interfere with either of your plans.” Light Patch shrugged. He blinked when a final thought seemed to strike him. “By the way... did you have a chance to check those notes I gave you, Wits End?”
    Wits End blinked. “The… oh, those! I mean, there wasn’t anything in Twilight’s library about it, but that’s never stopped anyone from bodging anything together. I just haven’t had the time to try any prototyping.” He narrowed his eyebrows at the pegasus. “There’s an obvious answer to why you need an interdimensional portal, but somehow I doubt it’s that simple...”