Villains

by MarvelandPonder

8/ Gilda - Jerk

Jerk
Gilda

Dear Gilda Beak-Breath,

Hey, sorry, but I have to bail on the visit this weekend. I really wanted to come, but some crazy stuff is going down with the weather in Equestria and everypony’s blaming the weather patrols. They have me working round the clock like it’s my job or something.

Maybe we’ll hang soon, anyway, the weather’s getting so out of hoof I might need you and the griffons to help out. Between you and me, I’m in some serious hot water. Everypony’s looking to me for answers I don’t have. If I don’t make a good call soon or fix things, they’re probably gonna can me as captain.

And on top of all that nonsense, Spitfire went missing. Like, poof. Now the ‘Bolts don’t know who’s in charge, and I’ve gotta high-tail it back and forth between two disasters.

Sorry,
Rainbow Dash

Gilda uncrumpled the dumb letter. By this point, the folds were all fuzzy and it was getting hard to read. She grumbled, smoothing it out with a fist. If she had any self-respect, she’d tear that stupid thing apart and quit moping about it.

Grenda’s head popped into the roost, and she knocked with one knuckle (in that order). “Doofus.”

Gilda ate the scroll.

Thankfully, Grenda wasn’t paying attention, anyway. Something wouldn’t let go of her eyes. “There’s some bull-plop out here for you.” She ducked back out.

“Bleck.” She reached into her beak. She winced. The scroll had officially taken enough abuse.

What waited outside disappointed her to the core. Grenda wasn’t kidding.

An elephant. Just an elephant. Well, not just an elephant, but that was the worst of it.

The nest bent underneath him, and no wonder. Between his size and his gold-plated armour, this goof clearly didn’t understand the concept of traveling light. His tiny eyes latched onto her. Her friends rallied around her door, sneering and fidgety, not exactly blocking his path, but keeping watch just the same. Gilda snorted. Those jokers.

Even if he was here to pick a fight, white war elephants versus griffons? They had flight on their side, and some of them could actually use a weapon, but why did all of the griffons she chose to spread friendship with collectively think sparring off against a war animal was a stellar idea?

They let her by no problem.

The gold tassels on the sultan’s back tingled when he bowed his massive elephant head to kiss her claw (raising his trunk out of the way). His voice twisted in a typically friendly elephantine accent as he said, “Greetings to you, your excellency. You must forgive the suddenness of my visit.”

Gilda’s claw hung in the air, wet with elephant drool. “Uh, yeah. Your liege, I guess.” She bowed for half a second, took one look at his stampers, and rose back to her full height. “You didn’t come to for scones, huh?”

The sultan’s head sunk, along with his big floppy ears. “Unfortunately, no. Less enjoyable terms have brought me to you. There is a summit of nations I have come to invite the leader of your kingdom.”

Gilda blew air out the side of her beak. “Yeah, well, that’s great and all, but-” An invisible claw slapped her. “Wait, you seriously think I’m the queen of Griffonstone?”

“Is this an untruth?” He angled his head like a dog, which was cool to look at seeing all his tassels ad jewels sift one way. “Your followers lead me to you. Am I now to believe I have been implicitly lied to on my mission of peace?”

“That’s exactly what you’re now to believe!” a gruff male voice called.

From above, another griffon slammed himself in between Gilda and the sultan. He wore a crown that was obstructed by the three feathers sticking up in a cowlick on his thin head. He spoke as if he introducing a motion picture coming this summer. “I’m ... Prince Gulliver, the greatest of all princes and Gullivers. I am the rightful heir to Griffonstone’s mighty throne. Don’t waste your time on losers, go for griffon gold. The real deal. My blood is the blood of kings, and unless I have a long-lost sister I am currently unaware of, I still work alone.”

Gilda leaned around. “We don’t pay attention to him. He’ll usually go away if you ignore him long enough.”

The sultan scratched his head with his trunk. “Well. Whichever one of you speaks for Griffinstone should attend the meeting in three day’s time in the Llamastinian palace. Farewell until I see you then, my friends.”

With that, he lumbered away.

Gulliver jabbed a talon in Gilda’s face. “Don’t think you’ve won. You’ve messed with the wrong prince, princess.” He narrowed his eyes. “I’m the leader Griffonstone wants and needs. You’re just some pathetic wannabe riding my tail feathers, like a fart trail on a summer’s breeze.”

“I don’t care who rules Griffonstone. If I have to explain that one more time, I’m going to slam your beak into the King Grover statue. Repeatedly. Until you can’t use it anymore. Ever.”

“You clever minx. Trying to lull me into a false sense of security as if I wasn’t clearly able to see through your lying lies.”

“Nope, honestly don’t care.”

“Is the desperate lie you tell yourself at night. Clearly, even you have been fooled by your own cheap trickery, but not me. I see you scheming there, scheming as if Griffonstone didn’t already have a soon-to-be King.”

“It doesn’t, the monarchy collapsed years ago. You have no say on anything at all.”

“You’re jealous of my power.”

“You live in a box.”

“Yet only I represent Griffonstone to the world, and not you.”

“Your crown is made out of cardboard. You actually cut a part of your house in the shape of a crown and you wear it around.”

“Soon, with the whole world supporting my rule, I, Prince Gulliver, will finally be coronated as I was always meant to be.” He flared his wings. “And now, I fly.”

He flew.

Gilda scowled into the sky, disappointed with existence for including him. Grenda came up beside her, pretty much the same flavour of unimpressed, but with a hint of resignation. “You should go.”

She made a face. “I don’t ‘speak for Griffonstone.’”

“Maybe, maybe not.” She shrugged she walked away, and added. “It would piss Gulliver off.”

Gila’s eyes popped.

---

The Llamastinian palace housed several thousand representatives and one fussy Griffon prince.

Gulliver stomped his way toward the Griffonstone seat, huffing and scowling as Gilda shook claws, hooves, tentacles, talons, and unidentifiable limbs with the other representatives on the way. They gave her the Griffonstone name-tag, after all. For all intents and purposes, Gulliver appeared to be her servant.

Gilda never saw any reason to correct them.

She kept an eye out. With this many nations all in one room, still getting themselves settled, she didn’t see the pony representatives anywhere. With all likelihood, Princess Celestia would be there, but a part of her was still convinced Rainbow Dash and her princess friend could be here.

Gulliver pulled out the Griffonstone chair, and she sat in it. He glared at her. She smirked. “What a gentlegriffon.”

He bowed his head beside her ear and spoke through a tight beak. “That’s enough playing dignitary, you salty vixen. Get up. Announce your mistake. Let me take my seat.”

“No.”

“Come now. It was cute at first, and I must admit your seduction tactics are more potent than I’d first thought, but you don’t belong here.” He spoke even lower. “Giffonstone needs a leader. It’s been on the verge of collapse for years. Just because your little band of punks thinks they know what’s best for the rest of us, doesn’t mean it’s true. Back off. I can bring pride back to our homeland. Stabilize things. Unite them under one rule, like my ancestors. Secure funds from the other territories, and stuff like that.” He twisted his head like a hawk. “What can you do for Griffonstone?”

Gilda glared ahead, but without much force behind it. Griffonstone didn’t need Gulliver, but it did need somegriffon. Friend-making hadn’t exactly been a prosperous mission; it’d taken her years to gain any sort of traction with the way things had been going. Nogriffon really felt like making friends when they had to worry about where their next meal was coming from.

The Llama Master of Ceremonies took the floor at the head of the room. “Thank you all for making the journey to be here today. Some of you for the very first time. Llamastine welcomes each one of you. We now invite the honourable representative of the Kitsunes to take the floor.”

A three-tailed fox stepped up from behind and took the podium. Whenever it spoke, three voices, one high, one tenor, one deep, rasped in unison. Instead of its mouth moving, the kitsune’s female voices projected out from no identifiable source. “Thank you.

“Good creatures, I urge you to consider the reason we have been assembled today. The ponies have crossed the line.”

Gilda’s head slammed back. She looked around. No ponies. No Crystal Empire. None what-so-ever. She sank down in her seat a little, trying not to let it show in her face.

Gulliver apparently made someone get him a chair, so he pulled up beside her, glaring pointedly, head angled to the side. He pushed the little Griffonstone name-tag over to his side. She made sure he saw her rolling her eyes.

The kitsune addressed the crowd again: “For too long have they hogged the magic resources of the world, and now, when their pegasi have lost control of their weather magic, they refuse to acknowledge the impact they’re having on the rest of the world. How can we be sure alicorn magic isn’t next to be somehow disabled? What then, when the pony Princesses can no longer rotate the sun and moon?”

The assembly grumbled.

Gilda’s jaw hit the desk. No wonder Dash couldn’t come for a visit.

“We propose an alliance. The redistribution of magic resources. The ponies’ magic isn’t as non-transferable as they’d have you believe. True, it may be produced through them, but their monopoly on our natural resources and industries can come to a peaceful end, if we all bring our demands to their attention.”

To her right, a deep-voiced Zebra Chief stood. “Zebrafrican potion-makers have always been ready to share/ the ponies act like magic is a burden for their kind to bear. This has never changed; prepare to be short-changed.”

The General of the Minotaurs rose. “If it comes to that, we’ll threaten war. They’ll have to come around then. I don’t care how much magic they’ve got, they can’t be so foolish as to think they could take on the whole world. Plus, we know they’re pansies. We mention war, they’ll faint, we take the magic. Easy.”

King Aspen, of the deer, struck his hoof down on the desk. “As patron of a realm within Equestria, and a non-violent one at that, I warn the council that talk of war will get us nowhere. The deer will abstain if that’s your aim.”

“With all due ressspect,” hissed the gorgon prime minister, “no one sssaid anything about a real war. It’sss a negotiation tactic. We have to be clear about what we’re asssking from them and how, but if they refuse, we have to be willing to ssstand our ground.”

Queen Chrysalis took the stand, chuckling. “Now, now. Don’t think so small.”

She made her way down to center stage. The kitsune stepped aside for her. “Look at you all. The ponies have you believing you’re worth so much less than you really are. Isn’t it sad what they’ve done to us? They even had the gall to lock me up away from my subjects- with no regard to how the hive is supposed to run itself.” She swooned multi-layered voice buzzing through the amphitheater and dripping with pity. “What’s a Queen to do?”

The Breezy King shouted from the front row, “Oi! You attacked their capital! The only reason they imprisoned you was to keep their own safe from your retaliation!”

Chrysalis stalked towards him like a cat on the prowl. Her sharp-toothed grin was bigger then his whole huffing torso. She laughed. “You would bring that up, tiny pony. Does that really matter when my hive almost collapsed?”

The assembly kicked up a bit at that. The Breezy King grew pink, looking around. “Breezies are not ponies.”

She smiled wider. Deeper. “Neither are changelings.” She grazed back up to the podium. “And neither are the deer, or the zebras, or the diamond dogs, or the bison. Does that mean we should accept less than total control of our own nations? They’ve taken more from us than our weather or enhanced crop cultivation. Control. Power. Freedom. Without their magic, we’ll always be ... Limited.

“Do we let them lord their power over us, or do we take what’s ours?”

“Yaks no want war!” Prince Rutherford slammed the reinforced desk in front of him. “Yaks pony-friends for a thousand moons! No war.”

The Breezies, Diamond Dogs, Deer, Centaurs, and Trolls applauded. That was it.

The rhino president grunted. “Crazy holes is right. If they don’t meet our demands before the end of the month, we attack. Full force.”

Several hundred nations raved with him. Some remained silent (and not just the ones who communicated telepathically) like the Zebrafrican Chief, but the few who stood to defend the ponies quickly found their voices out-numbered.

Gulliver rose out of his seat. Gilda watched him, gestured for his to sit down again, but he seemed pretty intent on staring off into the distance boldly. He let out a piercing squawk that cut through the crowd. All fell quiet. “The griffons are ready and willing to gather our forces and lead the armada on ponykind.”

A glorious applause rained through the palace.

Gilda stood up. “You can’t just do that. Ponies can be really, really annoying, but they don’t deserve to die. And maybe they are hogging all the magic. So what? Do we even really need it? Griffonstone’s gotten along fine without their stupid pony magic, and so has everybody else. Quit whining.”

For half a second, she thought that’d done it.

Then the dragon representative grumbled, trembling the palace’s stone. All heads turned back. He sighed. “The ponies are easy targets. When they see our forces at their gates, they’ll relinquish their magic, or their kingdoms will fall.”

Gilda watched hundreds of nations, Griffonstone included make alliances to wage war with the ponies.

She had to warn Rainbow Dash.

Author's Note:

Edited by the always awesome Noakwolf!

Comments

[ForSpite]

he ponies act like magic is a burden for their kind to bare

bear.

[MarvelandPonder]

6627841 You've always got my back, Spite. Sorry the chapters coming out now aren't as properly formatted as the older chapters. I really just want to get this stuff out there since it's done, but my schedule's so hectic.

[ForSpite]

6628619

That's fine. This Gilda one felt like less of a standalone than most of the others. Are you going to be working a larger plot into this?

[MarvelandPonder]

6628935 Yeah, that was the original idea. Use elements of all the standalone stories to lead into a big finale with the more big-name villains. I don't know how well it turned out, but you can judge for yourself as they come out.

[Putainnn]

UPDATE ALREADY