Villains of a Certain Age

by BorgiaBrony

Chapter 2: Well ExSmooze me, Princess

Chapter 2

Grogar looked at the extra chair he had brought out the day before, then to a clock on the far wall. She still hasn’t arrived, he thought. I do hope nothing has happened to her… What was he saying? Of course things had happened! It had only been, what, three thousand years since he saw her last? And as if she’d even want to hear from him after how he left? Not likely. He bowed his head in defeat, and slowly began levitating the chair back to its closet.

While he was walking through the Southern corridor, he heard a grating noise coming from outside. It was a strange, metal on metal sound that he hadn’t heard before, or at least not recently enough that he’d know what it was. He threw open the window on his right, letting the afternoon sun bathe the hallway in its glow. He squinted and raised his hoof up over his eyes. “Damn sunlight,” he muttered to himself. “Never had that problem in Tambelon.”

In the courtyard below, instead of the harsh concrete and stone plane Grogar had come to recognize, was a large patch of dirt. In the middle of it stood Discord, wearing a sun hat and toting a watering can. Grogar shouted down to him. “You know T’s going to flip his manure when he finds out about this.”

Discord looked up at him. “Oh well. It can’t be worse than this morning when he threw his little tantrum.”

“Yeah, don’t remind me of that,” Grogar said. It wasn’t a pretty sight. After they had all woken up, Discord informed them that they couldn’t leave the castle for the foreseeable future. Tirek, after centuries of living in hiding, was livid.

“WHY IN THE HELL NOT?!” he bellowed when he heard the news.

Discord answered the question more calmly than any other being in Equestria could have. “I told you, T. I just gave you the short version. The princesses can’t technically use the Elements anymore, but they have six watchdogs to do what they say. And those little ponies will hunt us to the ends of Equestria.” He looked at the clock on the wall. “And you can be damn sure they’ll get it done in 44 minutes at the absolute maximum.”

“So tell me, genius. What do we do? Waste away in this castle until it crumbles around us?”

Discord waved his hand to dismiss the idea. “No, no, no! Of course not! We just have to wait until one of those six is indisposed in some way.”

“And how long will that be?” Tirek asked with a raised eyebrow.

Discord shrugged. “I don’t know. Soon. Probably. Ms. Dash seems to hurt her wings a lot.” He scratched his head. “Twilight is always messing up some spell or another. That’ll do some harm eventually. Oh, and that pink one with all the sharp instruments you can find in a bakery? That isn’t ending well for anyone.”

Tirek ignored his attempts at humor. “But you’re still not sure?”

He sighed and shook his head. “No, I’m not sure.”

Tirek stormed out of the room, screaming what were no doubt the most vile curse words in the ancient Centaur tongue. The only thing Grogar and Discord could make out was “CALL ME WHEN YOU WANT TO MAKE SENSE,” he began to walk off, then stopped and turned back around, “AND DON’T YOU EVEN THINK OF SAYING IT, DISCORD!” He stomped his way up the spiral staircase, and when the other two lost sight of him, they could hear a loud slam of the master bedroom door.

Discord leaned down to Grogar and whispered with a smirk on his face. “But what fun is there in making sense?” Tirek, who had somehow heard Discord’s quiet quip from upstairs, growled in frustration, his anger echoing throughout the entire castle.

Discord snapped up at Grogar from the garden below. “Are you finished with your expository flashback yet?”

He shook his head back and forth quickly. “What did you say?”

Discord crossed his arms. “Nothing, nothing. Just forget it. And here someone had told me that self-referential humor and fourth wall jokes were all the rage nowadays…” Grogar took a second to analyze what his friend had said, but could come to no sound conclusion. Discord was like a brother to him, make no mistake, but sometimes he was just too out there.

Trying to change the subject, Grogar pointed at the dirt Discord was standing on. “What are you trying to grow there?”

Discord’s snout scrunched up almost immediately, and his eyes shot rapidly back and forth. “I’m not growing anything. Nope, nothing at all. I just like sitting on dirt piles. Yep, dirt piles. I love ‘em. I’m certainly not growing plants that have hallucinogenic effects when they’re burned. Nope.”

“Are you growing-“

He raised a finger angrily. “I swear if you call the cops like you did when we were kids…”

A shout rang out from the castle tower. “Guys! Get up here right now! You won’t believe what I found!” Grogar and Discord shot each other glances, and in a second decided it was in their best interests to try and forget the morning fight and go up and see what Tirek had to show them.

By the time Grogar made it up to the top of the tower, where the master bedroom was, he was nearly out of breath. Discord blinked in directly adjacent to him. “Place needs an elevator, huh?”

Grogar was never too fond of Discord’s god-like powers. Sure he was no slouch himself, but he just couldn’t compare to him on that level. “You suck,” he said playfully as he gasped for breath.

“Just like your mother,” Discord retorted.

Grogar opened the double doors to the bedroom. The bedroom itself was, as you’d expect, extremely lavish. Ebony banners with red tassels lined the walls on each side of the canopy bed, which was similarly decorated. The rug was a dark crimson, reminiscent of blood and resting on either side of the bed were both a bedside table and a suit of armor once worn by Tirek’s personal guard.

While Discord was mildly impressed by the sheer opulence of the room, Grogar wasn’t. Not by a long shot. He knew Tirek better than anyone and he knew that the arrogance and lavishness he surrounded himself with was nothing but over compensation. Tirek never came to terms with losing what was essentially his god tier power, and it became clearer and clearer as the years rolled on. Day after day he would call upon non-existing servants and demand the denizens of Tambelon to bend to his will, lest he destroy them with a power he had since long lost. Grogar had grown fond of calling moments like these “power-trips.” Ironic, as the only traces there even were of this power were the suits of armor and the empty black bag Tirek carried around his neck. When Grogar looked across the regal chambers, he knew the story behind it, and he felt only pity.

He was broken out of his reflection when Discord nudged him with his elbow and motioned toward the back of the room. Tirek stood in the far left corner, waist deep in a pile of old boxes and clothes he had undoubtedly unearthed from the closet just a few feet away from him. He was holding a small brown box. “Guys!” he called joyously as he beckoned to them. All memory of the fight must have completely left his mind. “You have got to get over here and see this!”
The pair walked over to him at an intermediate pace, their curiosity peaked. What could have made Tirek forget about how angry he was? Surely it was something of vast importance. When they arrived at the pile, Tirek reached into the box enthusiastically and pulled out an old, damp magazine. “Look at what I found!” he cried as he brandished the book. This is from when we were kids!”

The title across the front page of it read PlayColt and stretched across its cover was a scantily clad mare with a sultry look in her eyes. Grogar leaned closer to the thing and smelled it. He recoiled in disgust. “Congratulations. You found an old skin magazine that reeks of mildew and what I’m sure is some ungodly bodily fluid.”

“It’s not the magazine itself I’m excited about,” he said as he opened it to the advertisements section. “Look at this.”

Discord took it from him. “Reading it for the articles after all, eh T?” A pair of reading glasses appeared on his face in a bright flash of light. “Now, what do we have here?” His eyes scanned the ads, and he began reading them off to himself as he went. “Wing enlargement supplements…Lyra plushies…Oh, is this what you wanted us to see?” He held up the open book and pointed to a brightly colored, purple and green advertisement. It read: Get your very own Jar o’ Smooze! Impress your family! Scare your neighbors! Make yourself the baddest motherbucker this side of Tartarus! Contact us now for your very own Jar o’ Smooze!

Tirek beamed. “So can we get one? Please? Please? Please?”

“I don’t know, T,” Grogar said with a raised brow. “Aren’t these sorts of things usually bogus?”

“Yeah!” Discord chimed in. “Like that time I got a tank of mail order sea-ponies! On the box it said all I had to do was pour the packet into the tank and wait a few hours for them to develop an advanced civilization!” he snapped and conjured up the box in question. He pointed to an image of a sea pony family eating dinner at a table. “See? And all I got was a bunch of microscopic pests that never let me sleep. Always singing, ‘Shoo-be-doo, Shoo-be-doo!’ Little menaces damn near drove me insane…er.”

Tirek looked at them, with a hint of malice in his eyes. “I’ve always wanted one, ever since I was a child. Now, please. I’m. Getting. This. Smooze.” Grogar recognized the look immediately. That was his power-trip look. Tirek was, by harnessing this jar of sentient, malevolent slime, trying to regain some of that power he lost so long ago. He realized that trying to dissuade Tirek from this course of action was futile, and finally agreed with him.

“Ha!” Tirek laughed. “Looks like you’re outvoted, Discord. Now send that letter to that address.” He clapped his hands. “Quickly now.” And within a few minutes, Discord had begrudgingly written the letter and snapped it to the nearest post office.

“Stupid place probably doesn’t even exist anymore,” he grumbled to Grogar when Tirek was out of earshot.

Grogar smiled. “I know. Let’s just humor him for a bit.”

Later that night, when the trio was eating dinner, they heard a loud knock up against a window. “What was that?” Tirek asked scratching his head.

Discord shrugged. “Probably just a bird. It’ll fly off eventually.”

Eventually didn’t come, however. The knocking continued for the next half hour, growing louder with each passing minute. Grogar could stand it no more. He marched right up to the stained glass window around the corner and threw it open. “Listen here, you! I have half a mind to give you a…” He paused, for he wasn’t talking to a bird. Flying just outside the window was a pegasus pony. Her coat was grey and her mane was yellow and she carried a large brown satchel on her back. What Grogar found most curious, though, was that her eyes never exactly faced the same direction.

“Give me what, mister? Is it a muffin? I love muffins.”

Grogar became uneasy. “How do you know where we are?”

The mare smiled and laughed. “Because I have some mail for you, silly! I’m a mail mare!” She leaned back and reached into her satchel and she pulled out a long, cylindrical package. “Are you Mr. Tirek?”

At the sound of his name, Tirek came rushing from the table, like an excited filly on Hearth’s Warming Eve. “Is my Smooze here?” he asked the mail mare with a giggle.

She handed him the package. “It sure is!” Now Grogar was getting really nervous. “I don’t know what Smooze is though. It sounds like it’s fun!”

Tirek threw the pony a muffin. “Here you go, kid. And don’t tell anypony where we are.”

She caught it a smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Tirek! And you’re secret’s safe with Derpy Hooves!” With that, the ditzy pony flew off, hungrily eating her muffin as she went.

Tirek shot Grogar a glance, and then slowly began to smirk in a way that could only be described as gloating. And faster than Grogar even knew he could move, Tirek ran straight into the dining room to tell Discord of his new pet’s arrival. Grogar sighed and slowly sauntered in after him. By the time he had reached the hall, Tirek had unwrapped the brown paper surrounding the glass tube, and they could now see the Smooze for what it was. The dull purple slime writhed around in the glass, as if it were in pain. Two eyes floated around freely in the gunk. It was when these eyes blinked that unnerved Grogar the most. Discord just stared at it, dumbfounded. “So that actually came?”

Tirek nodded happily. “Yes it did.”

“And you think I’m supposed to be jealous of it or something?”

Tirek shook his head with a proud grin on his face. “No, not jealous, per say. Just appreciative of how awesome I am now with Smooze for a minion.”

Discord looked back and forth at the centaur and his Smooze. Then he looked at Grogar, who could only shrug. He didn’t know what to say. Tirek was happy, so why shouldn’t they be? Discord frowned at him for his display of apathy. He stoically glared at Tirek, snapped his fingers, and blinked off to his room for the night.

Tirek turned around to face Grogar and yawned. “Well, I think I’m off to bed too, Grogs.” He peered into the tube and tapped at its side. “We’re going to have quite the day tomorrow, you and I.”

Grogar woke up in a daze the next morning. When his vision finally cleared, he could see that, somehow, he had ended up in Tirek’s chambers. But that wasn’t all. The entire room was covered, ceiling to carpets, with the Smooze. The purple slime coated every inch of the furniture, to the point where the room looked more like some sort of sticky beehive than a master bedroom. It had even managed to open the doors and descend down the hallway and (what Grogar could only assume was) the rest of the castle. He tired to move, but he found himself bound: the purple goo constricted around him whenever he made a movement. “Don’t bother,” said a voice from above. Grogar shifted his gaze toward the ceiling, to where Tirek was hung upside down by his hooves by the gunk. “I’ve already tried to get out. You can’t do it physically. And I’m pretty sure it took your magic bell off your neck when it brought you in here last night.”

He looked all around the room and, sure enough, his silver bell that gave him his magic rested on a slime mound that used to be a bedside table. “You want to tell me how this happened, T?” he grunted.

Tirek looked away from him indignantly, arms folded like a spoiled child. It didn’t take long for him to break. “Fine, fine. Last night I got excited about the Smooze and I opened the tube. Okay?”

Grogar chortled. “So what you mean to say is that you got too excited and your Smooze came out of your tube before you were ready?”

He snapped his fingers and pointed at Grogar. “Bingo.” He scratched his head and took a second to analyze what Grogar had just said. “Hey!”

Grogar chuckled. “Alright, forget I said that.” He tried once again to free himself, but his efforts were again in vain. “So,” he said calmly as he relaxed his muscles and looked up at Tirek, “since we’re going to be stuck here for awhile, why don’t you just tell me why you had to mail-order a malevolent, shapeless, unstoppable monster?”

Tirek’s eyes wandered around the room, like those of a child who was just asked why he misbehaved. They finally stopped moving once they were directed at the ceiling. “Because I don’t want to feel like a third wheel,” he mumbled.

Grogar leaned in as close as the Smooze would allow. “Excuse me? I didn’t quite catch that.”

“Because I don’t want to feel like a third wheel!” he shouted angrily.

Grogar started to get confused. “Why in Equestria would you feel like a third wheel?”

The centaur sighed. “Because ever since my accident I just haven’t felt…I don’t know…on par with you and Discord,” he said somberly. “I mean you two have all those powers and magic, and what do I have now? An old castle and an empty bag. I figured it was only a matter of time before you guys left me, so I wanted the Smooze as a pet so I could have something I could do.”

Grogar was stunned. He knew his friend had self confidence issues since the accident, but he never imagined the wounds went this deep. “Hey don’t you worry about that happening, T. Hell, Discord could have left you to die if he wanted.” He noticed Tirek’s face light up when he pointed it out. “Discord and I could never ditch you. We’ve been friends too long for that. In fact, we’re damn near brothers by now.”

“You’re right aren’t you?” Tirek said, his voice picking up its usual tone.

“Of course I am.”

“Yeah! You are! Thanks, Grogs! I’d come over there and hug you or something but…” he pointed toward the Smooze binding his legs.

“No worries, man,” Grogar said jovially. “Say, do you want to write a letter on what you learned about friendship today?”

Tirek raised an eyebrow. “What would posses me to do something like that? That sounds absolutely asinine. Why would you even ask me such a thing?”

“I don’t know,” Grogar said thoroughly befuddled. “All out of nowhere I just felt like I needed to say that. I honestly don’t know why…”

“Hmph. Well let’s just hope it doesn’t happen again.” Suddenly, Tirek’s gooey bonds receded and he fell to the floor. “Ouch!” he cried as he grasped his front right knee. “That frickin’ hurt!”

“Oh no, call the paramedics!” Grogar said facetiously. Then, as swiftly as Tirek’s restraints were removed, his did the same. As soon as he could, Grogar bounded over to his bell to affix it around his neck, ready to fight the purple beast off; when he saw that the Smooze was leaving the room. Like a tide receding into the ocean, the purple mass was evacuating the entire chamber through the main entrance. Needless to say, both of them were confused as to why the thing would randomly abandon its assault, so they followed it. The followed the fleeing purple beast throughout the halls of the castle until they came to Discord’s room. He was sitting in the middle of the floor, a bib around his neck and a fork in hand, slurping the Smooze up as if it were a dangling piece of spaghetti.

“Morning, you two. Back from some deep heart-to-heart I bet.” They looked at Discord with unbridled disgust on their faces. Grogar’s throat began to well up with vomit at the sight of Discord eating the Smooze, but he choked it down. “Well, come in! Sit down! There’s still plenty more to go around.”

“That’s disgusting, man,” Tirek said.

Discord slurped up another glob of Smooze. “So is your face.” Discord laughed at his immature joke. “Seriously, though. It’s actually not bad. It tastes like ramen. Try some.” Grogar and Tirek looked at each other, threw caution to the wind, and sat down to eat breakfast.

Comments

[thewaffler]

So like Seinfield it's a show about nothing? In seriousness I love that you play this fic up as comedy about three villains just just happen to be friends since they were kids who went through stuff like acne, drugs, prom and getting drunk and smashing mail boxes. It's more like evil summer camp mixed sitcom roommate angst rather than the Legion of Doom.

[BorgiaBrony]

802935
Exactly! There will be some bigger plot elements toward the end, but the majority of the story will be in the Seinfeld, show about nothing style.

[The Gentlemen]

mmmmmmmm, smooooooze ramen. yummy!

[Sir Leadhead]

lol smooze ramen.

Great story, I also enjoy the show-about-nothingness that it has. cant wait for what you have planned next though!

[FancierPants]

Playcolt that's priceless!

[WrathOfGod519]

Discord growing weed?
matthewratzloff.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2012/05/take-my-money.jpg
I KEEP THROWING 50'S AT THE SCREEN But IT DOES EXACTLY FUCK ALL!! WHY ISN'T IT WORKING!!111