The Friendship of Evil Grows

by Zizi Tachyon

Fourth Chapter - The Chessmaster

"Ha. Ha. Ha-ha! Ha-ha-ha-ha! I'm free! I'm finally free!" Cozy and Tirek had walked for about an hour since they left Ponyville and were now in the White Tail Woods. Ever since they left Cozy had been carefully watching the surroundings, making sure they weren't being followed. Now that she was certain they were alone and sufficiently far apart from the town, she could no longer contain her laughter. "At last, no more of Twilight and her friends and their little visits! I've had to put up with that much too long. At least she put me in the hospital where she would visit me only once a day—you were holding out in the belly of the beast. That must have been unbearable."

Tirek hesitated to comment but Cozy continued, "But it sure paid off. Can you believe it? 'We're so sorry for what we did to you Cozy, can you ever forgive us?'" she cried, imitating none of the ponies in particular, but nailing the heart-wrenching sympathy with unsettling precision. "'We trust you, now go on a friendship mission with Tirek.' Jeez, ponies are so gullible!" She had to land on the ground and catch her breath before she could continue. "A friendship mission! Can you imagine I would ever do something like that?" She fetched the scroll with assignments from her saddlebag and unceremoniously tossed it into a random bush. "Good riddance. Now, let's get serious. What's the plan? Taking magic from a small village? Stealing a magical artifact? A direct march on Canterlot?"

"We're going to the land of centaurs," he responded soberly.

Another fit of laughter overwhelmed Cozy. "My, Tirek, you're a riot! For realzies now, where are we going?"

"I am serious. I have every intention of travelling to my homeland."

Her smile collapsed into a pathetic frown. "Did those ponies really get to you so soon? You disappoint me. Don't you see you're playing right into their hooves? Twilight can't stop us when we work together and she knows it, that's why she put us on a wild goose chase." She flew in front of Tirek, emphasizing her words with dramatic gestures of her hooves. "I bet there isn't a trace left of your kingdom. It's been more than a thousand years since you came to Equestria, after all. If there was anything left of the centaurs, surely we would have known by now. You would be searching for months, for years, desperately trying to puzzle together Twilight Sparkle's lies while she is relaxing in her castle, comforted by the idea that she has forever diverted this threat to her reign. So congratulations, you're walking right into a trap!" Cozy smiled and patted the centaur on the head, much to his annoyance.

"But if we went our own way," she continued, "we could take revenge. Grogar is off our backs and the ponies have lost the Elements of Harmony. Even the Tree of Harmony is destroyed, so what's gonna stop us?" She reclined upon his shoulder. "Maybe you're just a little grumpy because you haven't eaten this morning. You know, we just passed by a town full of hard working earth ponies. You'll feel a lot better after you've absorbed their magic." She brought her muzzle close to his ear and whispered, "What do you say?"

Tirek picked Cozy Glow off his shoulder and held her in his fist. "You're really getting on my nerves, you know that?" to which she nodded delightfully.

"I'm not going on this mission because 'Princess Twilight' wants me to. I'm doing this for myself. Scorpan is the reason I was trapped in Tartarus for a thousand years, I need to know what he has done to my kind after he betrayed me. The ponies can know my wrath once I've proven that he's just he lousy traitor to his kin. So much for friendship…"

He loosened his grip and Cozy climbed out. "All I'm saying is that you're wasting your time. But if you won't change your mind, I'll go my own way." She spread her wings and flew off in a different direction.

"Where do you think you're going?" Tirek shouted after her.

"To the train nearest station. I suppose I'll just start over in Manehattan or something."

Tirek bellowed with laughter. "Start over? You're more stupid than I thought. You've tried to take over Equestria twice, you're known in every corner of the land. The ponies from Ponyville might have fallen for your sweet act, but to the rest you are still a notorious criminal and not as cute as you try to be."

"I AM cute!" Cozy's face turned red with anger. "In that case I'll just find Chrysalis and team up with her. I know she has escaped and still wants revenge."

"Good luck with that. She can be anywhere, disguised as anypony. Ponies have been looking out for her for weeks and are still patrolling the areas. The odds that you will find her before they find you are zero."

Cozy groaned with frustration and lifted her nose in defiance. "That's still better than being on the road with a grumpy centaur. I'll take the risk."

She wanted to fly away, but Tirek managed to grab her attention. "Do you want to know why you lost against Twilight and her friends, but won against Grogar?"

"What do you mean?"

"I've thought about this question over the last couple of weeks. I blamed my defeat on dumb luck, but there is obviously a pattern to this."

"Let me guess, it's 'the magic of friendship'?" Cozy rolled her eyes.

"I don't believe in that. I'm more of the opinion that friendship is indeed power, but that cannot be the full explanation, or you would have defeated the ponies long ago. You just need to understand what you were doing wrong and beat them at their own game."

"That's very smart. If I know how Twilight and her friends think, and then do what they do but better, then I can defeat them for sure! So what's your plan then?"

"I already explained this. Twilight believes that Scorpan had no malicious intentions when he left me behind to rot in Tartarus. I will see for myself if this is true, and when I show the truth to her, she will have nothing to bring against me. As for how we can exploit their power to our own ends, I'm not sure. We'll have to figure that out along the way."

Cozy Glow thought it over. "You know, coming with you might not be such a bad idea after all." She figured furthermore that if the journey were to turn out fruitless after all, Tirek would have no reason not to join in on her own plan. She ran up to him and happily trotted beside him, continuing their path through the woods.

---

Rainbow Dash was correct; the mist began clearing up not much later. The sky assumed a beautiful shade of cerulean and direct sunlight warmed up the surroundings. Positive spirits had fully returned to Cozy and with what seemed genuine excitement she filled the time enumerating and looking forward to all the fun things they could do on their "camping trip": telling campfire tales, spotting birds, playing board games, foraging wild berries, et cetera. Tirek was as always indifferent. Besides the fact that they were together by his own volition, it was nothing different from the endless small talk that he had perdured in Tartarus after the filly accompanied him there, and yet he was somehow feeling less annoyed now than back then.

When Cozy had fully exhausted this conversation topic she reached for her saddlebags and took out the map of Equestria.

"So, let's see… Ponyville is here, the forest is here," she traced their path with her hoof, "that's where we are. We should reach the end of the forest by nightfall. After that: the Undiscovered West. That's as far as this map can help us. How far do you think it is, Tirek? Twilight said it could take as long as a month before we would get to your old kingdom."

"That's a great overestimation," he spoke as a plain matter of fact, "If we keep up the pace we will arrive there in little more than a week."

Cozy inspected the map once more. The lands were charted from north to south and beyond the sea to the east, but the west was uncharted. "It's strange that ponies never explored further in this region, don't you think?"

"After we've passed the isthmus, the terrain will be much rougher. It's a mountainous forest area that is filled with monsters."

"Kind of like the Everfree Forest?" Cozy interjected.

"Precisely. It's no problem for centaurs, but for your kind it would be hard to traverse, and outright impossible to inhabit. Besides, I think Celestia herself has a stake in keeping the area near the isthmus clear."

"Celestia? Why is that?" Cozy asked with profound confusion.

Tirek showed a faint smile of anticipation. "You'll see."

Suddenly the pair saw two ponies running in their direction. Tirek, who had the incident of a couple of weeks ago still fresh in his mind and didn't want to start another panic, instinctively pulled his hood over his head. As the oncomers approached it became clear were still foals, about Cozy's age, and they were in great distress. Maybe they had recognized them?

Nevertheless, Cozy put up her most joyful face and greeted them warmly, "Hullo there! What's the hurry?" She waved her hoof in the air and caught the attention of the duo. Heavily panting, they came to a halt before her.

"Please, can you help us?" the filly said with an anguished voice. She was slightly taller than her male companion, whom Cozy presumed was her little brother. "Our pet bunny has a really bad fever. We're from a nearby town and we're on our way to Ponyville to see somepony called Fluttershy. They say she is really good with animals. She might be able to cure him, but we don't know how to get there."

"Yes, Fluttershy's cottage, it's at the edge of the Everfree Forest. To get to Ponyville, just keep following this road and…" Much to Tirek's surprise, Cozy's instructions were clear and accurate (as far as he could verify for himself; at least the way to Ponyville was explained in good faith). The two siblings wasted no time. They thanked Cozy, paying no heed to the centaur in disguise beside her, and dashed off to Ponyville's resident veterinarian.

"Who'd have known," Tirek proclaimed in theatrical surprise, "the little devil can actually speak the truth? And you thought I'm the one who has gotten soft."

The taunting made Cozy blush. "Don't get the wrong idea, centaur. I may be cunning and deceptive, but I'm not cruel to animals. Besides, I've never seen these ponies before, and I will probably never see them again, so I had nothing to gain from lying to them."

But Tirek pressed on, not letting this opportunity for humiliation go to waste. "Twilight would be proud if she saw what you did."

"Why? If you're only ever mean, you won't achieve anything. If you want to get ponies to do your bidding, you must get them to like you. I'm not afraid of being friendly if it means I can get a lot more in return. Just act nice, compliment, throw them a bone, and they will be your friend and do whatever you want. And that is the true face of friendship: ponies sacrificing their time, their bits and even their lives for others. I see this happen, and you know what I think? That it's all a game: the game of friendship. Everypony in Equestria is playing it, and they all play by the rules: trusting each other, being kind and generous, repenting and forgiving." After the latter burst out of her with sheer loathing. "They are all wearing blindfolds, they don't see the objective. Some of them, like Twilight Sparkle, even refuse to see it willingly. She knows so much about friendship, but she's just a glorified pawn."

"So that's the true meaning behind your cutie mark."

She proudly looked at her own flank. "Yes sirree. I've always had a knack for games, but my mark only appeared when I learned to manipulate ponies."

"If I may ask, are you manipulating me right now?" Tirek was serious, but asked the question with playful curiosity.

"Uhm, well, duh. If you want to call it that, anyway. My point is, it is in our interest to work together for now. While ponies don't realize this, you understand that there's no point in helping somepony unless you can get something more valuable out of them in return. If you put it like that, we're kind of BFF's, right?"

Tirek smiled hesitantly. "…Right."

They kept travelling and set up camp when they reached the end ond of the woods. After dinner Tirek lay down for the night. He was enjoying his freedom: no walls or bars surrounding him, no struggle for power, only the soothing ambience of the landscape around him. He couldn't remember the last time he experienced it. On any other day he would have disturbed the silence: he could turn back and take revenge on Twilight and her friends, or he could loot a village like Cozy tried to tempt him to. But the more he rejected these ideas, the easier it became to put them out of his mind and the more tranquil he became. The only thing he couldn't shake off was his brother. He would take revenge if he proved to be the scoundrel he had always believed him to be; that promise was irrevocable. But at the same time he had begun feeling a glimmer of hope—hope for plausible explanation for Scorpan's absence during his time in Tartarus, so that he could put it to rest.

He thought about Cozy Glow. He knew a thing or two about cutie marks. They were supposed to be a graphic representation of the pony's talents, but for Cozy it didn't entirely make sense to him. That a chess piece symbolizes strategy and manipulation is obvious, but why the rook? It's a powerful piece that dominates the board by posing threats along brute, straight lines. Its movements leave it trapped in the beginning, and it only becomes more useful as the game develops. The rook is also involved in castling, a special strategy to guard the king. None of this sounded specifically like Cozy. She's a child prodigy and acts with cunning rather than force. She can operate in tight spaces and has no loyalty to the king, whomever that may symbolize. Could there be an unknown meaning lurking behind it, or was he looking too far into it? Maybe it wasn't him, but Cozy herself who had the wrong idea.

Tirek opened his eyes and looked up. At the other end of the campfire lay Cozy in her sleeping bag. The filly was sound asleep and looked as peaceful as a newborn, dreaming about Luna knows what. Now more than ever did it strike him what an unnatural individual she was. For a pony—a filly, no less—to join a group of villains who want to take over Equestria, something must have gone awfully wrong in her past. He couldn't deny he was experiencing a sense of responsibility towards her. However the future will come to unfold, he should try to stay together with her.

Comments

[vito]

Tirek is a cool guy, and it looks like Cozy has some personal secrets about why she's acting like this.
Good chapter!

[TheClownPrinceofCrime]

Scorpan, get ready for this. Great chapter by the way.

[asdtroi8895]

I knew that filly wasn't being honest. At least she has Tirek to reign her in.

[Animation Crusader]

Tirek and Cozy's bond is absolutely adorable. I loved that Tirek waited around until Cozy recovered, and is taking his daughter home with him to confront his past.

Hopefully Tirek finds his answers, and that Cozy learns from this trip. She needs to learn that even though she sees friendship as one big game (great character perspective, by the way), it is more complicated than a game, and isn't a game at all.

[Zizi Tachyon]

10036340
Well said. I'm glad you like it!

[Razzy]

It's simple, Cozy is just a pony-shaped great old one.