My Large Villain: Alcohol is Magic

by Hotel_Chicken

Chapter 4. Well, Ain’t That a Kick in The Head.

Tirek found himself struggling to remove a rather stubborn stain from the wall. He scrubbed for almost half an hour, fighting with an arsenal of cheap soap brands, a bucket of water, and a determination that blinded Tirek to the large amount of time he had spent attempting to clean the bar.

He had already swept the floors, wiped down the counter, cleaned the tables, nailed down the loose board that had been annoying him for the past two weeks, and repaired one of the billiard cues with a thick wrapping of duct tape. All that was left was for him to clean the walls, hide the cracks that were spreading through the exposed support beams, and hang a few pictures to make the bar feel livelier.

While he had been busying himself with his mind-numbing task, the bell above the door rang to alert Tirek of a new customer. Unfortunately, any small amount of joy he had washed away when he turned to see a familiar blue unicorn mare trot in with a sour expression on her face.

Once she sat at the counter of the bar, she stared off into the empty space behind it for a brief moment before she turned to look around the establishment, as if she had only just noticed that the centaur wasn’t behind the counter after she sat down. When her eyes finally landed on Tirek, she glared at him for daring to be anywhere other than behind the counter.

“I want a hard cider,” she ordered, shoving the finished cigarette into the ash tray with enough force to nearly tip it over.

Tirek rolled his eyes as he moved away from his cleaning duties, silently vowing to get rid of the determined stain that refused to disappear. Tirek shuffled delicately into the area behind the counter, careful not to accidentally bump the shelves behind him and cause their entire stock to paint him in alcohol… again.

“So, what poor soul earned your ire this time?” Tirek asked idly as he brought a bottle of hard cider off of the shelf and poured it into a glass for the fuming mare.

“Starlight Glimmer,” she answered, seething in violent anger at the very mention of the unicorn’s name. “I can’t find her anywhere! My drones have been searching for her since I came back, and there’s nothing. It’s like she doesn’t exist! All I’ve managed to find through my spies is a small town where her dad lives, and that’s it! Her father was no help either, he was more interested in some old chairs than the location of my sworn enemy. But, I’ll find her soon, and when I do, I finally exact my revenge!” She boasted.

“Yes, I’m sure it’s veeery interesting,” Tirek sarcastically replied. “So, why are you here talking about it and not at your hive?”

“Because I need a drink and I need somepony to complain to,” Chrysalis answered in a snappy fashion. Her magic wrapped around the glass with an idle shift of her head, allowing her to float the drink to her muzzle with ease.

“And you couldn’t do that at another bar with one of your little bugs?”

“My children wouldn’t understand. They don’t know the things we do, they don’t have an iota of an idea of how much I hate her. You’re the only one who knows why I loathe her and works at a bar. If I reprimand them for not finding her or Throax, they look at me like I’ve lost my mind. Oh, that’s another thing, I can’t find that traitor, Thorax, anywhere either! He’s not connected to the hive mind and he’s been gone for two years. Phyrax keeps insisting that Thorax is dead, but I know he isn’t. He’s out there somewhere, plotting with that unicorn to ruin my hive. And once I find them, I will make them suffer a fate worse than death!

“My children may think I’m becoming paranoid, but I know how important it is to capture those two. They’re more of a threat to my plans that anypony else out there, and since you still refuse to help, I need to attack those two first before I make a move against the princesses. So long as those two are out there, they’ll always be a threat to my plans,” she answered before placing the glass down and taking another cigarette from her satchel. He could see a few empty packets sitting in her satchel, and idly wondered how long they had been in there.

As if reading his mind, Chrysalis preemptively snapped at Tirek for a comment that never made it past his lips.

“I’M STRESSED OUT, OKAY?!” She reasoned as she lit the last cigarette with her magic. “I have the greatest opportunity to get rid of them both, but I can’t find them anywhere. It’s like they never even existed!”

“Then why don’t you go find Cozy Glow and ask her if she knew anything about Starlight’s past? That filly talked to her a lot, maybe she shared something that you could use,” Tirek reasoned.

The proud queen of the changelings fell silent as she continued smoking her cigarette, taking the time to bask in the quiet air of the bar as she stewed in her own thoughts. Tirek found himself slowly becoming uncomfortable with the loud silence of the bar, waiting patiently for an insult, witty retort, or even a snide comment from the disguised queen.

“… She's been hospitalized,” Chrysalis quietly revealed.

“Who?”

“Cozy Glow. She’s in the hospital,” Chrysalis irritably clarified with an annoyed huff.

“What?! Why, what happened?” Tirek quickly asked. For a brief moment, the centaur was surprised at the tone of his own voice. He had never cared about the filly in their previous life, and he had barely given her or Chrysalis a second thought after he arrived in the past. But for some reason, Tirek actually felt like he cared about the little psychopath.

Before she answered him, Chrysalis decided to stare at the centaur incredulously, as if she were silently mocking his intelligence.

“Are you an idiot? No, wait, you are an idiot. Tirek, we were turned to stone. We all thought we were going to die. Granted, immortals like us don’t have too large of a concern for death, but her… Oh, you know how sensitive ponies are, she’s not much different from a normal filly.”

Tirek decided to not say something about her being a “normal filly” and elected to hold his tongue as he listened to Chrysalis.

“After I found out that you were back in the past, I tried to see if the filly did as well. Turns out, her parents took her there after she… Look, I haven’t seen the doctor’s diagnosis yet, but I can’t imagine that it’ll say that she has a clean bill of mental health.”

“… Wow,” Tirek said simply as he struggled to accept what Chrysalis had told him. “So… Is she uh… doing alright in there?” He asked awkwardly.

“Gee. Is she doing alright? I really wonder,” Chrysalis replied sarcastically. Her mocking tone was dropped shortly after as she drank her hard cider. “She’s… Like an entirely different filly. She’s so… Smiley now.”

“Smiley?” Tirek parroted. “What in Tartarus does that mean?”

“I mean she’s… It’s like she’s been infected by friendship or something. It’s creepy! She just hums to herself while she brushes that stupid doll’s mane, and she keeps talking about how she’s a ‘good filly’. It’s… it's creepy.”

Tirek only nodded in silent agreement as he imagined what had happened to the small bundle of evil that he had taught. It was hard for him to imagine that the little filly was struggling with anything considering how she had always exuded confidence that rivaled even the Lord of Chaos. He felt his stomachs turn in on themselves as he pictured the filly locked up in a padded cell with a wide smile on her muzzle.

For a brief moment, Tirek considered taking refuge in the many glass bottles behind himself to try and lessen the growing sickness inside of him. She had always seemed like an unstoppable force, like an annoying bug that you could never step on because it was too fast. Sure, she was annoying but she was also one of the strongest ponies he had met. Not many ponies could brush off getting sent to Tartarus like they were being grounded, and he was certain that not a single pony had, or would ever be able to, achieve as much as she did.

Granted, her achievements didn’t last long, but they would have made her historical. Cozy Glow, the filly that stole all of the magic in Equestria. They probably would have given her a clever title with some silly pun mixed into it. But now, she was simply a child that was locked away in a ward.

After allowing himself to properly think about what had happened to the psychotic filly, Tirek grabbed a clean cup and placed it under the hidden beer taps beneath the counter. With the drink in hand, he raised it up to the disguised queen to give a somber toast.

“To her health, I suppose.”

Comments

[Mystic Sunrise]

Serves Cozy right, that filly-sized bitch. No, I'm not sorry.