//------------------------------// // Prosperous Cheaters // Story: Mischmasch // by SpiralWriter //------------------------------// "Another round." Back in the casino, I sat in the lounge area alone, the guard Eight Ball remembering me from the night before, my table of choice one the far corner away from anything else. I was incredibly pleased with myself, all things considered. Didn't have to bring the beating to any poor fellow who didn't deserve it, told the douchewagon duo to bugger off, and the casino had rum. Rum, the sweet, glorious throat-burning nectar of the gods. A passing waiter placed a glass bottle of rich, caramel-colored liquid in front of me, and I tentatively grasped it in my bird hand, the hard yellow skin clacking against the glass. I raised it to my lips slowly, which were the first to be soaked. I dipped my head back and titled the bottle forward. At once, the fullbody of the drink washed itself over my fangs and flickering tongue with a wave of heavy oak flavor, a roar of searing alcohol making its way down my throat. I smacked my lips and flared my nostrils, my eyes tearing up from the glorious flavor. I just really liked rum. A sound of trotting hooves came up as I downed my second swig, Alamo settling himself down in a seat beside me with a frazzled look. Sheesh, did the bloke look tired. His mane was frizzy with bedhead, his eyes were bleary and red, and a loud yawn escaped his lips every once in a while. "...You slept the entire day, didn't you?" "Sure did." I rolled my eyes and sighed, something I had become accustomed to doing with the old timer around. He waved to a passing waitress to get her attention, motioning his hoof to his mouth as if he were taking a sip of a drink. She nodded and went to fetch him a beverage. "You already done with yer job?"He questioned. I settled down my glass of rum with a light tink of the container hitting the table, resting my head on my hands and my elbows leaning on the table."For the most part, yeah." "What'd ya do?" "Collected some money." "Anythin' else?" "Nope." "Not too keen on talkin' 'bout all this, are ya pardner?"He received a jar of whiskey. Obviously they knew his drink of choice. "Nope."I repeated, finishing up my own drink, but didn't bother calling the waiter over for another refill. I didn't feel like drinking anymore, didn't feel like doing much of anything. My somber mood was interrupted by a large shadow. Only one thing around here big enough to make something like that. I turned around and was greeted by a scowling Brutus. "The King wants to speak with you."He grumbled out. "Ah'll just be here."Alamo said meekly, shrinking in his seat from the sight of the minotaur. "Word travels fast."I said and got up to follow him, every eye on the floor following the two tallest things in the building. Once we left, the sound of clinking slot machines and rowdy poker games resumed. As we walked, only silence fell between us. I was pretty sure he would only speak unless he was dictated by the King to do so. I found myself back in the King's room, the lights dimmed to an appropriate level of bleakness. The pegasus in question sat on his throne, this time though, another throne of equal stature was beside him, Lady Luck elegantly displayed, one of her hooves wrapped around his. "Oddjob, glad to see you were enjoying my casino."He cackled, a hearty cough following. "Just the rum."I stated flatly. I didn't want to be here any longer than I should. "Good, good. Now, I heard youse finished your first job?" I nodded. "But there was...complications, correct?" This time I shook my head."Not really. I did everything I had to do." "But you only received half of the money."He enunciated on that part. "Poor bugger only had half. Said his business had been slow."I said with much sympathy in my voice. The King slowly shook his head, allowing a stream of smoke to pour of his mouth."I know you didn't fall for that sob story."Another puff from his cigar."I'm very disappointed in youse, Oddjob." "And why's that?"I raised an eyebrow. He snubbed his cigar out on his armrest, tossing it aside casually. The King got off of his throne and trotted up to me."Youse got morals, I like that in a fella."He began circling me, making me feel very anxious. Suddenly the atmosphere in the room had become very tense, and I didn't like how much south the King's tone was becoming. I resisted every little voice in my head screaming for me to run away or deck the blighter or both. They just needed to shut up and be chill for a moment. Maybe things wouldn't be that bad? "But in our line of work, morals get in the way. Morals can get youse killed."He stopped in front of me to look me up and down, as if assessing my whole being. "Morals keep shit like what your boys were about to do from happening."I snapped back. "Oddjob,"He shook his head."Youse have your morals, and I have mine. If my boys had actually only roughed up our friend just a little, i would have received the whole debt he owed me instead of just half. You see? 'Cause of you, that poor pony still has that debt over his head." "So it's about the money?"I said through gritted fangs. I clenched and unclenched my fists, the sound of claws popping in and out of my fingers audible in the air. I heard Brutus breathing heavily behind me as he guarded the door. "No, the money's secondary. It's the principle, Oddy." And then, I realized why everyone who ever stepped on this chunk of cloud were so scared of the King. All he did was raise a foreleg and stomp it down in front of me. At first, I was confused. The white cloud floor beneath me began to grey, then blacken into what appeared like thunderstorm clouds. At once and without notice, I found that the floor I was standing on had disappeared and myself falling through a hole that perfectly matched my size. I clung to the rim with my hands, trying to pull myself back up, but when I did, the parts I held onto seemed to thin out, forcing me to concentrate on just clinging to that one part without letting go and falling. I peered down, and multiple holes were made through every floor of the building and straight through the bottom of Los Pegasus itself, the city of Applewood so far below. If my strength faltered, I'd be taking a nice mile long drop. "It's my principle that I receive everything due to me, Oddy."The King lowered his head to whisper at me, a smug yet malicious look upon his features. "Everything in Los Pegasus belongs to me. I worked too hard, too long, not to get what I deserve."He stamped his hoof again, and the rim of the hole that I held onto weakened even more, my grip slipping. He gave a low and long laugh, something befitting of a supervillain in a James Bond movie."Literally everything in and on Los Pegasus is mine. You, all the bits that flows through, everypony that comes off of those balloons. Every piece of cloud, I control. A pegasus can lay claim to their own cloud,"My mind briefly flashed to Rainbow Dash and her own home made of cloud."So I took it upon myself to own the biggest cloud in Equestria. Took a while too." I wasn't really listening. All the while he spoke, the hole was getting bigger, and I scrambled to keep myself from tumbling to my doom. "Now Oddy, do you understand why I'm upset that you didn't get me all of my money?" He stamped his hoof again, and the hole sealed up, leaving me panting on now solid ground, the cloud white once more. I looked up, The King having a smarmy smirk and eyes that belayed something incredibly dark beneath him. He looked expectant of a reaction from me. A million thoughts rushed through my head as I tried to formulate a response. Holy shit I almost just died. Was the dominant one. But, after sorting through the terror and the anger and the adrenaline bursting in my veins, I replied by coiling my neck like a spring, feeling the muscles bunch up and tighten, and to unleash it forward in one of the most savage headbutts I could muster, sending the King flying with enough force to crash into his throne and topple it over. Lady Luck was immediately by his side, helping him up. "All I know is,"I stood up and pointed at him."That you're a-"Before I could even finish, something incredibly big and incredibly heavy tackled me to the ground once again, pinning me with all the professionalism of a wrestler. Tap-out! Tap-out! The King got up sporting a nice bloody nose and pure rage in his eyes. He stormed over to me, each stomp of his hooves leaving behind a spot of blackened cloud. Lady stood behind him reluctantly, a look many shared whenever they thought of the King on her face: fear. Brutus wrenched my head upright to stare into his eyes. Yup, the blighter was mad."HOW DARE YOU?!"He screamed right in my face, a wave of nasty smoker's breath laden with nicotine and spittle bombarding my senses. My hypersensitive tongue would spend the next few days on bedrest cause of this guy. "Brutus!" The minotaur holding me down snapped to attention. "Take him to the dungeon."Ooh, that sounded pleasant."Be discreet. Make sure he's as uncomfortable as possible." The servant nodded. He released me only momentarily to raised his fist to bludgeon me across the temple, the ol' reset button right on the head. A wave of darkness and mumbled voices washed over me as I lost unconsciousness. Run. Hide. Please. "Why are you helping them?" "I don't want to hurt them." "We're not hurting them."Discord said sarcastically as he lifted up a terrified pony in his lion's paw, the mare shivering at his mere touch, the fear evident in her eyes. "We're...helping them see the world in a brand new way."He only had to think it, and the mare became a discombobulated mesh of pony and toaster parts, two slices of evenly toasted bread jumping out of her mouth, to which Discord caught and spread butter on, munching his snack away after releasing the poor thing. "Think of it this way,"He slithered through the air over to me, extending an arm out towards the scenery before us. All of Equestria was his once more. The sky didn't even know what it wanted to be, so it settled on an equinox of both the sun and the moon and even a few other celestial bodies hovering there. Most of the land was dominated by a checkerboard pattern, though there were some patches of licorice grass. Rivers of lemonade ran freely through the air, not limited by just the waterbed they streamed through. Ponies of all shapes and sizes, literally, I saw a rhombus-shaped pony, were in complete disarray at their new world. Some had gone mad as their new reality, simply sitting down and muttering to themselves, only to yelp every once in a while. Others tried to fight it, but found that having rearranged bones and new body parts they didn't need very unfortuitous. I even saw a mountain of sherbert in the distance stand up and walk off to relocate itself. "We're not hurting anypony at all with our little fun. Chaos will have it's way, and everything will be nice and dandy at the end of the day."The spirit cackled, whipping up a hamburger out of thin air and taking a bite, only to spit out a chunk of it onto the ground with a look of distaste. Where the half-chewed food landed, a flower with french fry petals grew."I have no idea how you humans can stand such unhealthy things."He complained as he plucked five candy bars from a nearby tree that grew them and gobbled them down in one fell bite. "But they're...so unhappy. Miserable even!" "Bah, they're just spoilsports. They'll learn to love their new, chaotic world!"He turned to look at me, his disproportionate eyes a mad red."And so will you, Dismay." I slowly nodded, turning to a pony trying to flee from us. "Go get 'em, champ."Discord cheered. I shakily held out my hand and snapped my fingers. The pony running away found that he could not no more, seeing as how the ground beneath his hooves was now glue, firmly planting him the mass of white goo. Overhead, a massive glitter shaker rained down chunks of glitter the size of a fist down on him, burying him under a shiny mound of confetti. "I would've done a tad more glitter, but fair enough job, Dismay!"He clapped. I gave a halfhearted laugh, but in all honesty, it felt good. Everything around me in utter turmoil and madness, I loved it. I didn't feel numb anymore, I didn't feel wrong. I felt right. I even felt happy. "So what else?"I asked, turning to the god of chaos himself. Hmm..."Discord pulled a PDA from behind his back and reading glasses from nowhere, scrolling down the screen."Riot and Ruin are over in Manehattan, making the skyscrapers there play tennis with the ponies as the balls, so we're clear for that. Strife transformed Cloudsdale into a tornado...but we can't find it. I think it's over Canterlot. Ah, here we go! We have to visit some old acquaintances in Ponyville, catch up with them, meet with the King of the Doughnuts, AKA, Pony Joe, and delegate whether to transform his shop into a separate nation. Sheesh, you give a guy the ability to transform anything into a doughnut and he goes on a power trip! "After that, Princess Celestia and Luna want a nice chat over tea," "Aren't they stone?"I interrupted. Discord shrugged before continuing."It'll mostly be a onesided conversation where we do all the talking. How rude of them!" I chuckled along with him."Chaos is a wonderful, wonderful thing."I found myself saying. I jerked awake with a sudden gasp of breath."It was just a dream, it was just a bad dream..."I whispered to myself, shaking off the throes of sleep and bringing my conscious into the world of the awakened. But it felt real enough, real enough for me to get some serious psychiatric help. If Discord was visiting me in my sleep now, there was nowhere safe from him. And why had he? The spirit was always quiet unless he wanted to speak to me directly. It was a strange, strange thing indeed. From what I recalled from his appearance on the show, the bloke could do anything he want and had transformed all of Equestria into his personal playground in the shortest takeover ever. So why was everything still normal? Why was he waiting?! With my brain racking the ideas, I began to take stock of my situation. Why had I been asleep again? Oh yeah, Brutus knocked me out after I conked the King. In retrospect, a really bad idea from the get-go. I wasn't thinking, but I just really wanted to hit the guy. The repercussions were bad, I was satisfied overall with the decision. I could still feel the spot on my forehead where it had made contact with his, sending a rupture of pain shooting through him and enough kick to send him flying without his wings. Felt good. I was in a very large room, that was for sure. Cardboard boxes lined up against a wall, and shelves and shelves of junk took up most of the space. Far off past them, I could make out a door leading to stairs, my way out. I heaved myself up and began to walk, only finding out that I could only step five paces before something jerked me back to the wall. I looked behind me to see an ethereal chain of green energy suctioned to the wall, the other end around my neck in a sort of magical glowing collar. I tugged on, finding that it was incredibly sturdy. First I tried to pry the collar off, but it was like it had been melded into my skin, and whenever I tugged, it hurt, as if I was pinching and pulling at myself. Next, I yanked at the chain, but it was absolute in its durability, not showing any sign of strain even with all of my strength pulling against it. The King wanted me to stay down here. A flurry of shuffling hoofsteps alerted me, and I looked up to see Lady Luck, the green unicorn looking very hoighty-toighty with her nose in the air, flanked on both sides by Royal Flush and Ace as her guards. "Well well, looks like the King finally caged his pet."Ace snickered, only to falter as I snapped furiously at him with a mighty bite of my fangs, my maw just inches away from his face, the chain keeping me just out of reach. "Uh uh uh!"Lady giggled, her horn glowing a magical aura of green that matched the chain. It brightened furiously, the chain lighting up to the intense luminosity of her horn, and I felt a surge of pain course through me via magical electrocution. It was like fucking Discord in the desert all over again! "Now, if you're nice, maybe I can convince the King to let you go early."She quipped as I fell to the ground, my entire body smoking. Fortunately, the clothes were okay though. Hooray for enchantments. "But if you're naughty...we can extend your period in the dungeon." "..." I looked up, all three looking down at me with all the certainty that they had me already beaten back and under their figurative thumbs. What? Just because I was chained and a little shock therapy jolted me, they thought I was broken? Just because one pony trembled before the King, doesn't mean I did. Besides, I wasn't even a pony. "Bugger off."I spat out a small stream of fire at them, causing them to jump back at once or be singed by the flames. The monster still had some bite left in him. "...You can rot in here for all we care."Lady narrowed her eyes at me, to which I gave a giant, shit-eating grin and a semi-serious flirty wink. She turned around with a huff, the two about to follow her, but her sharp command stopped them otherwise."You two stay behind! Teach this...Oddjob a lesson to not mess with the King." When she left, her hoofsteps fading up the stairs, they looked upon me with fear. "C'mon guys,"I grinned at them, flashing my eager fangs."I don't bite." They turned tail faster than any surrendering army ever could. I busted out in guffaws as they tripped over one another to scramble up the steps. Slowly my laughter died down, leaving me alone in the room of nothing but junk and a magic chain keeping me here. I gave it a few more trying tugs, but the results were the same, I couldn't move it more than the man, or the mare, on the moon. Defeated for now, I plopped down on the hard cement floor, awaiting whatever what was going to happen to me next. My thoughts flashed briefly to something Alamo had said earlier. "It's a rigged game, Oddjob, and we're all gonna lose ta him if'n we do or don't play."