“In hindsight, destroying a bunch of trees instead of Twilight and her friends was a bad idea,” Tirek said. He sighed, scratching a claw against the icy cold steel floor of his cage, deep within the confines of Tartarus. “Also, coming up with an escape plan in case I ended up back down here would have been a good idea.”
“Ugh, tell me about it,” a voice spoke from behind him. “You’re so busy with the entire ‘take over the world’ scheme and then the most practical stuff just slips your mind.”
Turning around abruptly, Tirek was met with the horrifying visage of none other than Discord, lounging in a foldable chair while sipping juice from a coconut through a crazy straw in the shape of himself who was also sitting in a foldable chair sipping a crazy straw in the shape of himself sipping a crazy straw and so on. It hurt Tirek’s eyes after a while just trying to make sense of it.
Discord scratched his chin, or rather, his beard was doing it for him. “Why, I remember I left both the stove and sink on when I left to enact my plan of ultimate villainy. Luckily, they pretty much canceled each other out. Wish I could say the same for the bill.”
“Ah, so you’ve arrived,” Tirek muttered, eyes narrowed in a furious scowl. He got to all fours. His limbs were scrawny and weak, coat disheveled and dull, yet his eyes still blazed with a rage of an unfathomable level. “So, the time has finally come. I didn’t expect it to end this way, but nevertheless, it is the end.” Tirek lifted up his dukes, indicating with two fingers for Discord to approach. “Let’s get this over with.”
Discord stopped sipping from his coconut, eying Tirek with a mismatched gaze. “You want to dance?”
Tirek’s fists lowered. He blinked slowly, taking a step back. “Wait, what?”
“Well, only if you insist, Tirek-deary.” Discord hopped out of his chair, and with a snap and a spin, he was outfitted with an utterly ridiculous flamboyant vest and that sparkled like a diamond had thrown up on it, and leather pants so tight they may as well have been grafted onto his skin. With another snap, hair like an overgrown bush sprouted on his chest, along with a twirly mustache to complete the look.
Discord was at Tirek’s side in a second, grabbing him in his arms while drawing their bodies close. Giving Tirek a spin, Discord said, “My, my, Tirek, you didn’t tell me you stole the magic of dance as well!” Discord let go of Tirek to spin around like a top as he nonchalantly walked over to the other side of the cage, taking his sweet time while humming a happy tune. Once there, he put out a hand without looking and caught Tirek in his arms and abruptly ended his spinning dilemma. “You’re a natural!”
“Wh-what are y-y-you do… do…” Tirek’s face turned a vile shade of green, but he managed to swallow back whatever had decided to crawl up his throat. Shoving Discord to the side, Tirek snarled at his nemesis, albeit while tipping over side to side. “What do you think you’re doing?”
“Oh wait, we weren’t doing the waltz?” Discord asked. Looking down at his getup, he nodded. “Well, I’m certainly not dressed for it.” Snapping his fingers, Discord’s attire was now composed of ghastly looking armor which appeared similar to a porcupine, if said porcupine was covered head to toe in iron spikes. “How does the tango sound instead?”
“I thought you came down here to finish me off, once and for all,” Tirek said. Arching his back to relieve some of the soreness on his spine from Discord’s turbulent spin from before, Tirek muttered, “And so far, it’s starting to look like that more and more, except in a more tortuous way.”
“Kill you? Ha, as if! Seriously, you thought I came down here to kill you?” Discord laughed. He playfully patted Tirek’s shoulder, bringing him close in a one-armed hug. Tirek had to hold back his screams as the spikes started to poke every inch of his arm and side. “Now, why would Celestia send me down to do something like that?”
“Because she’s a callous bitch who always comes out on top, no matter what the situation, by having others do all the work for her?”
“That is only partially true,” Discord said, pointing a single finger up. “Which is the best type of truth. But enough about that. Instead, she sent me down here to do the most benevolent and charitable thing that you deserve, Tirek.”
Tirek slipped out of Discord’s grip, rubbing his sore shoulder and arm. “Wait, no, don’t tell me. Spoiling it would just ruin the surprise,” Tirek said with a roll of his eyes. “She’s going to let me go?”
“Correctomundo!” Discord cheered, slapping a party hat on Tirek’s head while he threw confetti and balloons all about his cell. Jostling Tirek’s shoulders, Discord slapped his back while wearing the widest smile possible on his face. “You’re gonna be a free man, good buddy! Or free centaur. Although technically the man part is still half-right.”
Tirek’s jaw hung low as the spirits inside the cage rose sky-high. Heck, even a mariachi band had appeared, with Discord now jumping about shaking maracas while his sombrero did the same atop his head.
“Wait, are you serious?” Tirek asked while holding up a hand, before shaking his head and looking down. “Wait, no, of course not, I’m talking to you.” Glancing back up, Tirek asked, “Is Celestia serious?”
“As serious as a snail eating potato chips,” Discord answered, dancing around his sombrero while the sombrero in turn started performing freaky fresh freestyle moves.
“That isn’t really helping me much in the assurance department.”
“Well…” The music stopped playing, leaving just the two of them. A spotlight appeared on Discord, his shadow contorting his face into a grisly mask of ill intents. “There is one condition.”
Tirek looked left and right, then shifted his gaze back to Discord, then glanced over his shoulder furtively before staring at Discord again. “Just… just one condition, right?”
Discord held up a single digit. “Correct.” He lifted up all his others and countless more that surrounded his head like a fleshy mane made out of appendages as he leaned close to Tirek, who merely shrunk under his gaze. “But it is this one condition that can make it or break it for you, Tirek. Are you sure you want to go along with it?”
Tugging at the white of his beard, Tirek shrugged, holding out his hand to Discord with the smallest hint of a grin on his face. “Might as well. Anything beats being trapped in this hellhole.”
Grabbing Tirek’s hand with an insanely strong grip, Discord shook him like a ragdoll being flung into a tornado. “Excellent! Nice we’re getting on agreement terms right at the get go, roomy!”
Tirek pulled back his hand before his entire arm would be reduced to jello. “Roomy? What the—no! No, it can’t be!”
“So, you know where I can put my bags?” Discord asked, decked out in a hoodie and trashy jeans with a pile of luggage held under each arm. “Also, do we get room service?”
“Celestia couldn’t have made the one condition having you be my roommate!” Tirek shouted. He backed away until he hit the bars of his cell, so that he slowly slid to the floor. “It… it just can’t be!”
Discord snorted. “Oh, of course not.” Letting go of his baggage so that it took up a good one-half of the cage’s interior, Discord rubbed his hands together deviously, much like a fly would before eating a giant pile of cupcakes. “Her exact words were ‘Discord, you can’t stay in the castle any longer, since there’s no way I’m going to pay for everything you damage and there’s no way I’m going to have my servants pick up after your messes. You’re a grown up draconequus, so act like it… I think. I don’t really know what stages of growth your species goes through. But nevertheless, I want you to—wait… is that the last pudding pop? Are you seriously eating the last pudding pop? That was supposed to be for me you inconsiderate, asinine, downright—’”
“Can we speed this along?” Tirek asked, waving his hand in a circular motion.
Frowning, Discord pouted, but eventually his lips began moving at an incredibly fast speed as he kept on speaking, the words coming out of his mouth too fast and muddled to be made any sense of. “‘—moronic jerk! Get out of my castle!’ In which I replied with—”
“Do you not understand the meaning of ‘speed it along?’ Just give me the facts!” Tirek demanded.
“Not like you’re in any big rush to be anywhere, now are you?” Discord performed a sassy snap in a z-pattern while Tirek merely looked away and pouted. Smirking, Discord snapped his fingers repeatedly, this one of the rare occasions it didn’t cause some magical mishap to take place… at least nearby. “Now, what did I say… oh yeah. Something along the lines of where I was supposed to live and when I can come back. In which she said ‘Go hang out with Tirek in Tartarus for all I care. In fact, you can’t live in the castle unless you reform him. That should at least keep you out of my mane for a little while.’”
“By the gods, she can’t be serious, can she?” Tirek bit on his nails and shifted his gaze, eyes welling up with woe at the situation before him. “I mean, she can’t honestly expect you to reform me, now can she? She’d have to be insane! Or…” Tirek stared at Discord’s creepily gleeful expression that had on it a smile that met his eyes and then some. “Or she truly wants me to suffer in the most agonizing way possible.”
“Oh, don’t be like that!” Discord picked up Tirek in his arms and squeezed him tight, his hoodie smelling of B.O. so long unwashed that it had festered a new smell over the already pungent disgusting one. “It’s like taking out two beavers with one tree! I get a new crib to chill at, you get to get reformed in the meantime so that you can gain sweet and slightly overrated freedom, and with us being roommates, the rent gets split between the two of us!”
“There is no rent in Tartarus!” Tirek wheezed.
“Oooh, even better!” Discord squeezed Tirek tighter, the cracks being heard either Tirek’s spine, ribs, or both. “That means I don’t have to get a job! We can spend all our time together! Forever and ever and ever, until you’re finally reformed!”
“Wait, don’t you hate me for stabbing you in the back?” Tirek asked in between his muffled gasps for air. “Why would you want to spend any time with me at all?”
Discord let go of Tirek, who fell in a flop on the floor and flailed a while like a fish out of water as he gratefully drew in breaths.
“Well, I am a bit sore over that, but it doesn’t matter. My good friend Fluttershy taught me to forgive and forget, and that anyone has the capacity in themselves to be good.” Discord’s eyes grew to an unnaturally large size while his pupils turned into tiny pinpricks, both locked onto Tirek’s sweating face. “And I promise you this, Tirek, that no matter what, I’ll get that capacity out of you one way or the other. Maybe with a shovel. Or heck, even a drain de-clogger!”
“This can’t be happening to me,” Tirek whispered to himself, assuming the fetal position for all its worth. “I know I’m evil, but no one is evil enough to deserve this. It’s just too cruel. Too heartless. Too… well, downright malicious!”
“Hey now, no need to be glum and gloomy!” Discord sat before Tirek, buzzing with so much energy he slid across the floor like a jackhammer on autopilot. “I know just the thing to cheer you up!”
“The sweet embrace of death?”
“Close! A board game!”
Tirek held back his tears. “No…”
“Oooh, we can play Monopoly!”
“Why me?”
“How about Candyland?”
Tears started to well up in Tirek’s eyes. “Celestia, how can you be so black-hearted?”
“There’s always Risk!”
Tirek began to weep. “No.”
“Huh, I nearly forgot about Clue.”
“No!”
“Aha, here it is! Arkham Horror! How does that sound?
“NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!”
Celestia sighed in content, licking the last traces of delicious chocolate from the wooden stick of her popsicle. Sticking the sticky stick on a near replica of herself made entirely from popsicle sticks, Celestia clapped her hooves together and grinned. “So close! Just another few dozen and it shall be complete!”
Opening up her pudding pop box, Celestia frowned when she spotted she had only one left. “Oh darn, the last one. Guess I’ll have to buy more later. In the meantime…” Celestia undid the wrapping and licked her lips, eying the chilly pudding treat like a predator with its pudding covered prey. “With Discord gone, I can enjoy as many of you guys as I want. Come to momma.”
Before she could even taste the pudding pop, the front doors of her throne room were thrown open. Tirek stampeded through, a hoard of guards following in his wake while several clung to his back. The dark lord of dark magic dragged himself to the stairs of Celestia’s throne, even with half the guard force piled atop his back.
“Wait, please, Celestia, I beg of you to listen to me!” Tirek called out from under the pile of royal guards, only his hand visible now. “It is of the utmost importance.”
Glancing at her pudding pop, then at Tirek, then her pudding pop again, and finally at Tirek, Celestia sighed and set her treat away. “Fine. Guards, release him. Give us a moment of privacy. In his current state and with me here, he’s not a threat to anyone.”
In neat order, the guards disengaged from forcing Tirek down. Now they exited in single file out of the throne room, leaving Tirek a battered and trampled mess on the floor.
Adjusting herself in her seat to appear more intimidating, Celestia asked, “So, Tirek, I see you escaped Tartarus once more. Did Cerberus leave his post once again?”
“No, I dug my way out,” Tirek said, picking himself up while dusting himself off. Lifting his hands, he showed off the numerous scrapes and cuts along his palms and fingers. “It took weeks upon weeks of effort, but I finally did it.”
“Uh… wow.” Celestia grimaced, noticing his broken claws. “That’s quite the massive amount of effort on your part. What I’m just wondering is why you would escape just to come to me. I would have expected you to draw back your strength again to launch another attack on Equestria.”
Tirek shook his head repeatedly, approaching Celestia’s throne on bended knees while a wide smile on his face. “No, no, of course not, your highness! I would never dream of ever attacking you or Equestria! Nope! Never! Not at all! I only wish to serve you the most helpful way I can to the best of my abilities!”
Celestia arched a brow. “Did you just call me... your highness? Wait, no, nevermind that.” Celestia sighed, rubbing her temple as she closed her eyes. “Did you just mention you wanted to serve me?”
“Oh, most certainly! I have seen the errors of my ways and now realize that being good and accepting the magic of friendship into my life is the best way to go!” Tirek sheepishly drew closer to Celestia’s throne, taking one step at a time to meet her. “Please accept my most humble of offerings to spend the rest of my days to your service so that I may be of some use to you!”
“That’s… well, nice and all,” Celestia muttered. She quickly scooted backward in her throne as Tirek reached out to her hooves while laying on his stomach, groveling to her while on the floor. “How exactly did this change of heart take place?”
“Guess who’s moving back in?” Discord whispered, his tongue snaking out to enwrap around his precious while his saliva coated it as he planted small kisses upon it. Holding up Celestia’s last remaining pudding pop, Discord smacked his lips and gave it another lick. “Boy, all this reforming work sure makes me hungry! This pudding pop really hits the spot!”
“You actually did it?” Celestia asked him, which Discord answered with a curt nod and small bite of the pudding pop. “I was being sarcastic!”
“You know, sarcasm is pretty hard to interpret,” Discord reminded her. “Especially with this form of it.”
“Please, oh benevolent one, don’t send me back down there with him,” Tirek begged, pointing an accusing claw at Discord. “It was the most tortuous experience one could imagine. He played his music at all hours of the night on full volume, never cleaned up his side of the cage, left his weeks old Chinese food out to grow mold, never bothered to wash the dishes even once, ate everything in the fridge even when it was clearly marked with my own name as mine, and he always got to pick the movie for movie nights! It drove me insane! Anything was better than that! Anything!” Scowling while hugging Celestia’s hoof closer to himself, Tirek muttered, “Plus, he cheated at Jenga.”
“It’s not cheating if you use your tail!”
“It is so!”
“Is not!”
“Is so!”
“Is not!”
“Oh no, what have I done?” Celestia asked herself.
“Eh, I don’t see why you keep on complaining I was so bad,” Discord said, finishing the last of his pudding pop. He stuck the stick into the completed figurine of himself made completely out of popsicle sticks, with Celestia’s nowhere to be found. “Now we both get to be Celestia’s roommates!”
“I call dibs on top bunk!” Tirek cheered, his sanity lost long ago and dignity shortly beforehand.
“Oh right, that.” Celestia’s head went downcast, her eyes focusing considerably on the floor. “You know, Tartarus isn’t sounding so bad right now as a living space…”