The League of Indomitable Evil
They stood before her: Unwitting, soon-to-be victims of the machinations of her dark and twisted mind. Blankly they stared ahead with unseeing eyes and faceless expression, heedless of the Doom about to befall them. And while some lesser beings may have felt pity at the thought of their inevitable destruction, the only thing coursing through her veins was excitement and pleasure at the notion of crushing such unworthy fools under the mountainous weight of her Iron Hoof.
She was Professor Panic. She was the Portent of Pandemonium. And Equestria would soon know her name and tremble at its mention.
"Prepare yourselves, fools!" she whispered as the crest of her ink-black helmet slowly rose above the windowsill. Her furrowed eyes glowed with wickedness as they shone in the dark crevasse of the slot that traveled across and then down the helm. The shadows underneath were cut with a flash of white as she drew a hideous wolfish grin across her face. It was time.
Professor Panic silently reached through the window and, with the grace of a venomous snake, squeezed the potent, deadly cocktail into the bowl. She relished hearing the faint tapping of the liquid dropping into the mixture, even as the acid bite of it stung her hoof. She bit her lip and savored the pain, knowing that it was merely a fraction of what awaited those pathetic reprobates that would soon know to fear her. With a chuckle she retreated back the way she had come, retaking her hiding place in the shrubs next to her partners in Infamy.
"Is it done, Professor Panic?"
"It's done, Jester. Now we wait and watch as our evil plan overwhelms them all!"
From their observation spot behind a thick bush, they watched as their feeble prey went about their day in blissful ignorance. Ten, fifteen, then twenty minutes went by. It wouldn't be long now. Soon the evil that they were unleashing would be ready. Professor Panic could barely contain herself. She turned to her ally, Ghastly, and smirked as she rubbed her hooves together.
"They'll be serving up the main course right about now, Ghastly, my creepy calamitous cohort!"
Ghastly nodded, one of the only expressions she was capable of making under her mask of bandages and scarves. A shrill, muffled cackle oozed out from underneath her disguise. But as nebulous as her expressions and communication was, it was wise for anypony who had the unfortunate fate to meet Ghastly to hope that that mask never fell off, for the horrible visage underneath would have driven even the most stoic to madness. To her left, Jester, bedecked in all manner of mismatched and clashing clothing, produced a camera from seemingly nowhere. She flaunted her powers of dimension-bending anarchy without care or concern for the fabric of the universe which she bent to her will as she pleased. With a flourish, Jester prepared the flash on the camera as she began chuckling.
"Might as well document it, huh? After all, a good joke deserves to be preserved!"
From inside the building, a gasp of surprise sounded. Some hushed mumbling followed, together with various cries of astonishment and disbelief. It soon became an outright clamor, and more and more ponies began filtering in to see what all the commotion was about. Professor Panic could not contain herself, and leapt from the bushes, ran to the window and scaled it, hopping up to stand triumphantly in the open window of Sugarcube Corner.
All the ponies were gathered around the counter, as Mr. and Mrs. Cake stood before a giant plate of freshly baked muffins. Mr. Cake was holding one in his hoof that had a giant bite taken out of it.
"Who in Equestria put lemon in these muffins?!" he asked through a mouthful of baked goods.
Professor Panic guffawed with gusto. "MWAHAHAHA!" she crowed. "It was I! Professor Panic! And now you shall all partake of the pungent piquancy of my pernicious pastries!"
Mrs. Cake smiled as she craned her neck over the crowd that was ravenously consuming the muffins, almost as fast that they could toss gold bits up on the counter.
"Well thank you, Sweetie Belle," she said. "That was a great idea! I would have never thought to add lemon to the blueberry muffins. It's a huge hit!"
Panic was at a loss for words. With shoulders slumped and jaw dropped, she made a face at the success she had inadvertently caused.
"It is?!" she groaned in aghast horror. "You…you like it?"
"And how!" called Mr. Cake. "We'll have to add that to the menu! Whaddaya think? Should we call it The Sweetie Belle?"
She turned away and hoped down off the window to go back outside, meekly saying under her breath, "It's Professor Panic, darn it," as she did so. She sauntered back towards the bush with her helmeted head hung low, and her black, high-collared cape as limp as her spirits as it dragged in the dirt. A sudden flash caused her to blink hard, and a voice from the shrubs followed.
"So?! Were they annihilated by our evil?!" Jester asked as the camera lowered from her face.
Professor Panic rolled her eyes at Jester as she plopped down in dejection.
"No," she said. "They thought it was delicious."
* * *
Their trip back to their evil lair was as subdued and gloomy as their overcast spirits which hung over them like dark storm clouds. There was little conversation besides the occasional mumble concerning the unfairness of the world, and the potential faulty logic of the entire operation which they were currently running. Finally, as they reached the ladder reaching up into their dark fortress in the tree, Professor Panic spoke as she started to climb.
"I just don't understand what we're doing wrong, you guys."
Jester was close behind, twisting the space around her to levitate up the ladder instead of climbing it as a mere mortal would be forced to do.
"Maybe we just haven't hit our stride yet," she posited. "We need ta find our particular kinda evil. Maybe sabotagin' muffins ain't our strong suit."
"But that was fool-proof!" Professor Panic whined. "Everypony loves muffins, right? What's more evil than ruining muffins?"
"Seems to me you didn't do a very good job of ruining them," Ghastly snipped from the bottom of the ladder. She had removed her mask, putting the entirety of Ponyville at risk as her twisted façade was bare for all to see. But she had little concern for that at the moment. Let them gaze upon her and go mad. Ghastly cared not. She was in no mood.
Professor Panic sneered down at her crass compatriot. "I didn't see your plan working very well either!"
"Hey!" Ghastly replied. "That would have worked! Those rabbits would have totally destroyed Lyra's garden under normal circumstances! How was I supposed to have known that Fluttershy'd taught them to only eat weeds?"
"They also watered the plants for her!" Panic shouted in dismay. "Fluttershy was training them as amateur groundskeepers! It was a disaster! Lyra thanked us, you botchy, belligerent, brainless…um…bad…uh…"
Ghastly clucked her tongue as the Professor ground to a halt. "Yeah. Keep going with that. You're doing real good."
"You're dumb!" Panic yelled with a squeak.
They entered their Den of Decadence, the walls covered with illustrated scenes of terror and evil. Lightning bolts were shooting from the fingers of masked villains. Bombs were counting down as pathetic heroes rushed to stop them. Damsels cried in distress as cackling masterminds glowered over them in triumph. Super-powered titans of destruction crushed all that stood before them like so much dry kindling, stamping out city blocks and the pitiable weak under their hooves with equal ease. These were their idols, and what they must aspire to be if they were ever going to succeed in their quest.
"So let's recap," Ghastly said as she sat down at their desk stacked high with notes on their evil plans. "Operation Death Muffin was a flop. Operation Garden-To-Dust-Bunny was also a flop, but only in the technical sense of the word."
Panic shot Ghastly a wicked glare.
Ghastly brushed off the look and continued, biting back her embarrassment as she did so.
"Also a flop were Operations Mailbox Switch, Regular-To-Decaf, Greasy Horseshoes and Operation Speckled Hen. So a bust all around. We can't seem to do anything right."
With a sigh, Jester took one of the pictures off the wall and held in it front of her. It was a scene of her personal idol, The Maneiac. So powerful. So twisted. So evil. So glorious. Jester could only hope to one day aspire to that level of madness.
"Ya'll, we gotta do somethin'," she said. "If we're ever gonna get our Cutie Marks in Super-Villainy, we gotta step up our game. No more small apples!"
"I wholeheartedly agree!" came a deep, resonant voice from outside their window.
Professor Panic, Ghastly and Jester all jumped at the sound. Turning as one they saw, floating in the air outside their impenetrable lair, the horned and winged form of Discord. His lazy, smug grin spread wide across his face as the claws of his taloned hand tapped together in a casual, mischievous staccato.
"What're you doin' here?!" gasped Jester. "Howdidja get past our security?!"
"Oh yes," Discord dismissively replied. "Those strings with the bells tied to them are quite top-notch. But of course, young Applebloom, they don't work very well on those who can fly. Like me!"
"That's Jester!" Jester retorted. "And you better get outta here before I destroy you! You're not the only one with reality bending powers anymore!"
"Oh but you misunderstand me, most powerful Jester," he slimily purred with a chuckle. "I'm here to help you all! I couldn't help but overhear your little problems with becoming Super Villains. I sympathize completely. True villainy and chaos is a tricky thing to get right. So many fail spectacularly. And well, I just wouldn't be able to live with myself if I didn't nurture the development of such fine potential allies in evil."
Ghastly raised an eyebrow. "Seriously? I thought you were reformed."
Discord sneered and wagged a finger on his pawed hand. "Mostly reformed," he corrected. "You of all ponies should know that true evil never goes away, Scootal—. Ah, my apologies. Ghastly, was it?"
"That's right," Ghastly said with a grimace. "My horribly disfigured features are enough to drive ponies to madness! Now I strike back at the world that shunned me! I'm surprised you can bear to look at me."
"It is rather difficult," Discord agreed with a nod. "Fortunately I have acclimated myself to such horrors."
With a zap he was suddenly disappeared, popping back into existence behind the Professor.
"And of course," he continued as she jumped again in surprise, "We have the nefarious Professor Panic. One with an evil intellect such as your own can only be the mastermind of your little Legion of Wickedness."
"Indubitably!" she said with her helmeted chin held high. "My genius is unparalleled!"
"Ooh, and such a vocabulary!" Discord marveled. "You realize that the span of one's words are a window into their intellect, yes?"
"Unequivocally!" Professor Panic beamed.
Discord looked around at the band of evildoers, and nodded with admiration.
"Well, there's a lot of potential here," he said before gesturing to the pictures on the wall. "And you certainly have some fine inspiration. The Mane-iac was always one of my favorites. Do you collect her greatest infamous hits, so to speak? I have quite the collection myself."
"Naw," said Jester. "These're Spike's. We borrowed them from him. I suppose we gotta get 'em back to him sometime soon, now that I think about it."
"Jester!" groaned Ghastly. "I thought you said that you stole them! Not borrowed! You're not supposed to tell somepony you stole from that you'll give their stuff back! That's not very evil! And now he knows who has it!"
"Oh," Jester said. "That does make more sense."
Discord disappeared once more, reappearing on top of the desk, sitting on the stack of papers.
"I'll tell you what your problem is, my little ponies," he thoughtfully said with his paw to his chin. "You need to think bigger! Small time villainy is no way to run an operation, particularly one with the potential that your own has. What Ponyville—Neigh!—what Equestria needs is something massive to shake it up! You need to hit them where it'll make them cry for their mommas! You need a plan of…Pure Chaos!"
Professor Panic's eyes lit up. "Now you're talking! What did you have in mind?"
"It's quite simple," he said. "What is the biggest upcoming event that everypony will be at?"
A moment passed between the three aspiring Champions of Darkness. Then as one, they gasped at looked at each other and said:
"The Summer Solstice Celebration!"
Discord laughed manically. "That," he bellowed, "Will be your opportunity to unveil yourselves as the new terrors of Ponyville! That will be their day of reckoning!"
The trio joined him in laughing. Soon the sky above their fortress was filled with the dusk of the encroaching evening and the gleeful sounds of impending doom.
* * *
The day of the Summer Solstice Celebration had finally arrived. Ponyville was abuzz with activity, and last minute preparations were causing a flurry of well organized insanity in the early morning dawn. The food tables were set, the DJ booth was wired up and the sound was being tested, the dance floor was being buffed to a shine, and the elevated table for Princess Celestia herself was in the final stages of completion under the bannered and beflowered gazebo sitting outside City Hall. The entire town was decorated for the event, with flags the color of summer adorning every lamppost and railing all up and down the streets. In only a few hours, Celestia and the rest of the guests would arrive, and the party would begin.
Twilight Sparkle was standing on the gazebo, helping to direct traffic and organize things, as was her unofficial job for nearly everything of importance that happened in Ponyville. Next to her, Mayor Mare directed the placement of the table decorations.
"So you're sure that Rainbow Dash will be ready to do the skywriting, yes?" she asked Twilight. "I haven't seen flank nor mane of that pony all day long."
"Don't worry," Twilight said, only partially convinced of her own words, "She'll be here right on time. Trust me."
"And she knows how to spell 'Solstice,' correct?"
"Yes, of course." Once again, Twilight wasn't one-hundred percent sure of that.
"Alright then. Remember, she must be writing in the sky at precisely the stroke of noon!"
"She knows, trust me."
Twilight gave a half-hearted, slightly panicked grin. "It'll be perfect!" she said. "Don't worry about a thing! Yup! Perfect! She'll be here, all right! Right at noon! I made sure she set two alarms so she wouldn't oversleep or anything! Yessir!"
Mayor Mare looked at Twilight skeptically before taking a deep breath. "All right then," she sighed. "If you trust her, I do too. Now go make sure the music booth is level. That platform it's on has always had a problem with going lopsided. If it is, that record needle to liable to skip all over the place. It would ruin the music."
"Of course," Twilight said before trotting off to double-check that the wooden shim which she had wedged underneath one of the legs yesterday was still properly in place. As she did she could still hear the Mayor yelling at the caterers as she made sure that the dull, flavorless daisy-burger recipe for the main course which they had sampled yesterday had been changed to the more vibrant and appetizing version featuring wild ginger and snapdragons. They assured her that it had been.
On her way back from the booth (which was naturally still as exactingly level as she had left it) she noticed Pinkie Pie standing near the edge of the dance floor. The usually cheery pony was looking somewhat grim and uncommonly focused, bowling pins, plates, chickens both rubber and live and all manner of other randomness spread out before her. She was holding a pen in her mouth and scribbling fiercely onto a notepad.
"Hi, Pinkie," Twilight called as she passed. "What's up? Working on your performance for tonight? We're all counting on you to give us something special!"
She held up a hoof as if to say "One cotton-candy picking minute," and finished furiously manipulating the pen. Spitting it out so hard that it buried itself into a rubber chicken with a squeak, Pinkie Pie then turned to Twilight with a look of trepidation.
"I'd be doing a lot better if I could think of something original," she grieved. "I wanted to bring out something super-duper-luper special for this celebration, but all I've got is the same old shtick! The same old wonderful, hilarious shtick!"
"Oh," said Twilight. "Well, I'm sure everypony is going to love whatever you give them, Pinkie. After all, that's why you're the best at what you do!"
"I know!" she cried. "I am the best at parties! That's why this is so terrible! What if I'm losing my edge?! What if I've peaked?! I don't think Ponyville would be able to cope with a lack of new Pinkie Pie material! IT'S UTTERLY UNPARTYRIFIC!!!"
Twilight scrunched her muzzle up as Pinkie Pie got right up in it, her eyes wide and pulsing with panic. It was the best Twilight could do to just smile and pat her passionate friend on the shoulder.
"You'll be fine," she whispered, as it was unnecessary to speak louder since Pinkie was mere inches away. "You just need to relax."
"What I need is inspiration!" Pinkie said with a final grand gesture into the air. Turning away from Twilight, she went back to her arsenal of party equipment and sat down in the middle of the pile on top of a rubber chicken, hoof on her chin as she thought deeply and with profound intensity. The chicken gave an airy squawk in protest.
"Sorry, Boneless," she muttered.
Twilight Sparkle removed herself from her friend's zealous predicament and continued with the rest of her final checks. It was getting close to 9 o'clock. Soon the guests would start to funnel in. Princess Celestia would not be far behind. Then the festivities would begin. There was still a good amount of last-minute things to get done in little time, but Twilight thrived during times of pressure. Everything would be just fine. It was going to be a great Summer Solstice Celebration.
Nothing was going to ruin this day.
* * *
It was getting close to noon now. At any moment, their dastardly scheme would unfolded, and the ruination of Ponyville would soon follow in its wake. Doom was at hoof, and before the end the pathetic residents of this town would know the name of its Prophets.
They had gone over the signals exhaustively. Their plan would be a highly coordinated attack that would send everypony reeling before they had a chance to react. That's what Discord had thought them: Overwhelming full-frontal assault. Be bold. Be decisive. Don't give them a chance to save themselves. It would all happen at once, and when they struck, it was going to be glorious.
Noon was the hour of their reckoning. And the hands on the clock in the tower were getting very close. Soon the signal would sound.
They were all in their places. Professor Panic was underneath the main banquet table with her payload of diabolical destruction tucked up under her cape. Jester was hidden in plain sight among the crowd, in disguise wearing her former wardrobe of a pink bow in her mane—a mask to cover her new, true identity. Her real form was hidden underneath the table nearest to the dance floor, which was (not so) coincidently also where the expected highlight of the day's festivities would be occurring soon. Ghastly was hidden under the DJ booth, where the music was blaring with a notably apathetic spirit. Not that it mattered, for Ghastly would soon be putting a sticky end to that.
All they had to do was lie in wait until Celestia made her speech at noon. A toll of a bell followed by a collection of baited breaths waiting for a spectacle that wouldn't come would come next. And then they would strike.
Not long now. Only a few minutes.
Professor Panic uncorked the bottle she pulled out from under her cape. The smell was enough to make her cough, but she held it in. On the other side of the party, under the DJ booth, Ghastly placed her hoofs on the shim that was holding the leg level and grinned deviously under her mask. Outside, Jester took her place next to the table that hid her outfit, glancing to the side and taking note of Pinkie Pie's last minute preparations. It looked like the bright pink party pony had her work cut out for her, with an impressive pile of props laid out behind her. She looked very focused and not as cheerful as she normally did. Little did she know that Jester would soon be making her feel much worse.
And she wouldn't be the only one.
The music faded into silence. Celestia was standing!
Their time was at hoof!
"Fillies and Gentlecolts," Celestia spoke, her voice ringing clearly across the warm summer day, "Welcome to the Summer Solstice Celebration! This is always one of my favorite times of the year, a time when we can all—"
She continued on like that for some time. The speech was Professor Panic's cue. Silently slipping from under the table, she gave a few quick glances around to make sure nopony saw her. Everypony was paying attention to the Princess. None were paying attention to the table where the main course lay. Panic hurriedly upended the contents of the bottle across all of the daisy burgers on the table until every last drop of the potent brew was gone. With a wicked smirk she retreated back under the table, hooves rubbing together and barely containing her joy at her own evil.
The speech ended with Celestia declaring that "The Summer Solstice Celebration has officially begun!" Behind her turntables, Vinyl Scratch fired up the next record on cue. A heavy dance beat thumped over the speakers, bringing several ponies to the dance floor to celebrate. While the tune was somewhat catchy, it was largely uninspired, and the ponies were only partly into it.
Ghastly's cue was coming up. She reared her leg back and prepared to kick.
Next to the booth, Pinkie Pie took her cue as well, and began juggling a collection of bowling pins, ducks, an entire cake, and a lone cantaloupe. It was the best she could come up with in her doldrums, although she was still not completely sold on the cantaloupe. As she juggled, she mentally kicked herself for not putting some googly eyes on it, realizing that would have been golden, or at the very least a bit different. And while the display would have indeed been impressive for those whom had not been witness to a Pinkie Pie performance before (And everypony here most certainly had), true to her fears, everypony at the party couldn't help but regard her juggling as almost trite. They remained polite, but nopony there was having their horseshoes knocked off.
Right about then Mayor Mare started scanning the sky. She looked behind her at the clock tower. The time was essentially noon. Still there was no activity among the clouds, and certainly no writing going on.
She turned to Twilight Sparkle, seated to her left. "I don't see Rainbow Dash anywhere, Twilight," she said with a wary tremble to her voice.
Twilight was indeed feeling the alarm in her gut grow to a full-blown panic, but tried not to let it show. "It's fine," she quietly replied out the side of her mouth. "She'll be here. She's still got…twenty-five seconds or so."
"I hope you're right," Mayor Mare whispered harshly. "Between this, the bland music, and Pinkie Pie's outdated material, this is not going nearly as well as I had hoped!"
As she spoke, the daisy burgers were laid out before them. Twilight noticed an aroma to the food which she couldn't quite pin down, but it didn't seem exactly like what they had decided on earlier. Still she prepared to take a bite. She was starving, and she would do anything to distract her from her nerves. Stuffing her mouth with food sounded like a plan.
Across the party, Jester saw that Pinkie Pie was struggling. Her time was now!
Leaping out from under the table wearing her true colors of chaotic disarray, Jester stood before the juggling pony and posed dramatically.
"Ha ha!" she laughed. "You want entertainment, you simpletons? How 'bout this for humor? What happens when the joker becomes the jokee?!"
As she cackled manically, Jester used her reality bending powers to produce all manner of madness from the depths of her multi-colored and mismatched robes. Apples. A lava lamp. A dog. Three bike horns. One hundred-fifty-seven grains of rice. A flaming marshmallow on a stick as well as the chocolate and graham crackers. There may have even been a kitchen sink in there somewhere. All of that among other things were thrown up into the air to be caught and juggled by Pinkie Pie. The crowd gasped at the sheer volume of objects, and Pinkie's eyes went as wide as her mouth went agape. Her hooves were a blur of motion. As a final joke, Jester produced from the aether a skateboard, and rolled it underneath the struggling pony's feet. With a warbling cry she began zooming around the freshly polished dance floor, stilling juggling all the while.
The gasps of surprise were Ghastly's cue! With a mighty kick she knocked the shim out of place, and the stage above her shifted slightly to one side. The effect was instantaneous. The music sputtered wildly as the needle skipped all over the record. The levels had gotten thrown off completely, and the record on the other turntable began playing before its time, mixing with the beat of the first song to create a cacophony of muddled techno mess. Ghastly could hear the DJ curse as she struggled to salvage her set-list, sending levels wildly adjusting and vinyls scratching.
"What's this fresh whackness, yo?!" came the cry from the booth.
Ghastly allowed herself a moment of triumph as she laughed uproariously.
It was right about then, right about at the point when Jester had slipped out from under the table, when Twilight, Mayor Mare, Princess Celestia, and everypony else sitting at the table under the gazebo took a bite of the food. Twilight, or more specifically her nose, had been correct when she had noticed something different a few moments earlier. And as they all simultaneously took a big bite of the daisy burger, the full effects of Professor Panic's sabotaging of their lunch became instantly apparent.
The moment that the food (and the hot sauce added to it) hit Twilight's tongue, a fiery sensation shot right to the back of her throat and kicked her in the back of her head. Her mouth was ablaze, and she and everypony else at the table immediately reached for their drinks. Mayor Mare was about to say something apologetic to Princess Celestia, but couldn't bring her nose out of her glass of water. It wouldn't have mattered much anyway, since the Princess was doing the same.
In that moment in time, the scene was an absolute bed of chaos. The music was sputtering all over the place. Pinkie Pie was juggling dozens upon dozens of things while flying around on a skateboard. The V.I.P. table was completely busy fanning their burning mouths. Nopony knew what in Equestria was going on. And the sky was clear of any kind of writing whatsoever.
They had won. The party was officially a disaster.
Professor Panic leapt up on the table she had been hiding underneath and bellowed her evil laugh to the heavens which she defied. She felt the power of true villainy surge through every vein and seep from every pour. The debauchery felt deliciously decadent.
Jester too joined in her revelry of malevolence, splitting time and space alike to warp herself over to where Panic was standing. The colorful robes surrounding her still produced various things that she had left over from her sabotage of Pinkie's performance: Feathers, a wagon wheel, various trading cards, and a bowling ball all came pouring out as she stood next to her partner in crime.
Then from under the DJ booth, Ghastly emerged as well, taking pleasure in the shocked looked her bandaged and veiled form got. For a fleeting moment she considered removing her mask and unleashing some true horror, but thought that was perhaps best saved for another day. For today, their work was done. She joined her decidedly less gruesome compatriots on the table, and cackled in celebration.
"Yes! Witness the coming of your undoing, Ponyville!!!" shrieked Professor Panic. "Bow down before your new overlords!!!"
From a table across the way, clear of the pandemonium of Pinkie's struggles or the blaze of the food, Rarity, Applejack, and Fluttershy sat and considered the events unfolding before them. It was quite a confusing scene, but the three young fillies standing on the banquet table by the gazebo laughing and screaming about something that was impossible to make out over the music was enough to catch their attention.
"What in crabapples is goin' on here?" asked Applejack. "And why is Applebloom wearin' half my closet? I been lookin' for those duds!"
"Well, clearly she should have come to me for her little costume," said Rarity. "Sweetie Belle had me whip up that delightfully chic cape she's wearing for their little club. I wasn't sold on that high collar, but I must admit that she's pulling it off reasonably well. Of course, I blame my craftsponyship."
With a wave she called out to her little sister, "You're looking wonderful, darling!"
"Little club?" Applejack crinkled her nose up suspiciously. "Whassat about a club?"
"Oh, didn't you hear?" said Fluttershy. "They started up a whole new club to get their Cutie Marks. They came to me to hire some gardener bunnies for a project for it. I believe they called themselves the 'League of Indomitable Evil,' or something close to that."
"League of Indomitawhosit?!" Applejack balked. "What?!"
"That may not be completely word for word," Fluttershy muttered as her head shrunk into her shoulders.
Applejack never got a response to that because, right then, several significant things happened.
The first thing was that, back at the DJ booth, Vinyl Scratch had pulled out every trick she knew to bring the music out of the downward spiral of madness it had dissolved into, and masterfully used the skipping and jostling along with her namesake to wrangle it into the illest beats that Ponyville had had dropped on them for some time. She would later go on to credit that sudden violent event which forced her to improvise and create spontaneously as the genesis of her artistic blossoming. That stage of her career would see her release several highly acclaimed and intensely popular albums. This naturally included the seminal release, "DJ-Pon3 Liv3 and H3ctic @ Summ3r Solstic3," which would go on to influence an entire generation of dance artists throughout Equestria.
While the music was melting the proverbial faces off every pony there, the second thing occurred, which was that, amazingly, Pinkie Pie had managed to pull off the most incredible display of juggling that everypony there had ever seen. Her face was relaxed and serene, as if a inner door to a part of her brain had been unlocked, sending her talents to a new tier of unexplored territory in the realms of entertainment and tomfoolery. Around the party she sailed on the skateboard, never missing a single beat nor dropping so much as a grain of rice. At the conclusion of the party, she would wake from a sort of trance, having little memory of the events which had transpired but knowing that she had reached the next level of partying. Pinkie would forever onwards thank that outlandishly dressed stranger for pushing her to her limits, and showing her what she was truly capable of. When told that it had been Applebloom in disguise, Pinkie would dismiss it, chuckling and insisting that she distinctly remembered the stranger being a small rhinoceros, although she would admit that her memory of that moment in time was a teensy bit hazy.
The third thing that happened was that, while Pinkie was dazzling everypony else, all the guests at the V.I.P. table finally got over the initial rush of heat that the daisy burgers offered upon first bite, and turned to each other and declared it unanimously to be the greatest hot sauce any of them had ever had. The complex bouquet of flavors was unlike anything they had ever experienced in a simple condiment, and made it one of the best meals any of them could remember. Even Twilight, not typically being a fan of hot things, had to admit that once the heat settled in, the taste was unbelievable.
The caterers never knew exactly how their burgers came to taste that way, although they would never admit it. Whomever it was who had done that to the food had actually done them a tremendous favor since, despite assuring the Mayor that it hadn't been, the order had in fact been completely botched, with the decision of the more flavorful ginger and snapdragon recipe being lost somewhere in translation. Fortunately the overwhelming zest of the sauce was enough to completely mask that unfortunate, bland mistake, and nopony was ever the wiser.
Professor Panic would likewise never know how that random throwing together of stuff in Rarity's cabinet was able to make such a popular sauce, and she was never able to replicate the exact recipe. She would blame the subsequent lack of evil.
Perched on the table as the clock tower chimed in behind them, the League of Indomitable Evil stood: Mouths agape, shoulders slumped, eyes wide, and spirits crushed. They looked upon Pinkie's incredible performance which was drawing a standing ovation even before she was finished. They watched ponies dancing like never before to music that was undeniably avant-garde and catchy. They saw the table behind them raving over the food that was supposed to be inedible. They gazed upon it all and despaired.
"What did we do wrong, guys?" muttered Professor Panic, shell-shocked.
"Everything," Ghastly dryly stated, ripping off her mask and tossing it to the ground.
"Are we just incapable of bein' bad?" pondered Jester, voicing what they all were thinking.
Then Professor Panic had a moment of hope. There was one thing they had gotten right!
"Rainbow Dash!" she shouted. "We were able to stop Rainbow Dash from skywriting! I told you that turning off her alarms would work! That pony'll sleep through anyth—"
That was as far as she got before a rumble started shaking their table, along with all the silverware and glasses throughout the party. Off in the near distance a jet of solid white air displacement was headed straight towards them at a tremendous speed. As it crested the hill right outside Ponyville, it broke with an ear crushing blast of sound and a mighty burst of colors that spread like a ring over the town as the streaking form of Rainbow Dash pulled up, twirled and twisted to write "HAPPY SUMMER SOLSTECE" in the clouds that weren't blown away by the force of the explosion.
Professor Panic felt her soul drop five miles beneath the surface of Equestria. Her eyes twitched as the rage building up inside her peaked, and with a mighty roar of "OH COME ON!" she sent a cup flying with a kick of her rear legs. The cup went flying across the dance floor and smacked a tan pony with black hair in the mouth, knocking out a tooth that went flying into a nearly flower vase. He looked shocked for a moment, and then lifted a hoof to his cheek.
"My tooth!" he cried. "Oh man! Thanks for that! That thing's been killing me for weeks, but I can't stand the thought of going to the dentist. You just saved me a ton of trouble and aches! Thank you so much! You're some kind of hero, kid!"
Unfortunately a lot of that went unheard, because by that point Professor Panic had blacked out from anguish, and had to be dragged off by her friends.
Once the sky had cleared again, Rainbow Dash came back around to land to thunderous applause. She took it with as much arrogance as she could get away with considering that she had, in fact, almost missed her cue. Twilight came over to her friend after she had gotten enough pats on the back to become tired of the attention.
"Nice job, Rainbow," she said. "You had me scared you weren't going to show up for a minute."
"Yeah," said Dash as she scratched her mane in slight embarrassment. "Some joker turned my alarms off. I didn't even mean to make a Sonic Rainboom there, but when I woke up, the bells were already tolling. So I had to go fast, and I guess it was fast enough to make one! If I hadn't been running so late, it wouldn't have even happened!"
Twilight smirked despite her disapproval of the tardiness.
"Well then," she said, "I guess we owe whomever did that a favor. They really helped out the party. That entrance was so grand I don't even think anypony noticed your spelling error."
"Totally!" Rainbow Dash crowed.
They walked away to get a second helping of those daisy burgers, if there were any left.
"Wait," asked Rainbow Dash as they approached the table. "What spelling error?"
Elsewhere, three small fillies were walking away quietly, heads hung low in shame.
* * *
With that, the League of Indomitable Evil's plan for Equestria domination came to a sad, unfruitful end. Ghastly removed her mask and crushed it under the wheels of her scooter, Jester returned her sister's clothes, and Professor Panic hung up her helmet, never to be donned again. Rarity would later repurpose the cape into a shawl for another outfit, but that was the last bit of the trio's wicked wardrobe to find any use. Never again would they blight the face of Ponyville.
After ridding themselves of their outfits, they sat on top of a hill overlooking the party, still in progress down below. They said nothing, instead sharing their collective dismay in silence. The thumping beat of the music was echoing in the growing shadows of the late afternoon.
"Well I must say that is a fantastic party down there," came a voice from behind them. "You're all missing out!"
Sweetie Belle turned to Discord and frowned.
"Yeah," she said. "We certainly screwed up there."
"Big time," said Scootaloo.
"We couldn't do anything right!" Applebloom wailed. "We stink at bein' evil!"
Discord plopped down next to them and put a hand on top of Applebloom and Scootaloo's head, using his tail for Sweetie Belle's.
"Oh now, now, now," he crooned. "Don't be so down on yourselves. Not everypony is cut out for true evil, you know. Maybe a little evil, perhaps. But no, I don't think it's for you. Perhaps you could get away with being a sidekick. But really, who wants to be a sidekick for an evil villain? It's all brown-nosing and getting kicked around. Not any real fun there at all. No, with villainy it's the whole hog or nothing."
"So what do we do now?" asked Sweetie Belle.
"Well," Discord said as he leaned in close to her, "If I were you, and I am most certainly not, but if I were, I'd go down there and try to grab some of those delicious burgers you helped create! They're a little fibery for my taste, but the sauce is to die for!"
"Really?" asked Scootaloo. "You think they'd let us back there? After all that we did?"
"Trust me," Discord deadpanned. "They'll forgive you."
"I am pretty hungry," Applebloom admitted. "It wouldn’t hurt to at least make an appearance."
"Go on then," Discord said as they got up and started trotting down the hill. As they were halfway down he called out "Feel free to do some more evil if the spirit takes you!"
Once they were out of earshot, he heard a throat being cleared very softly and politely. He spun his head 180 degrees on his neck to see Fluttershy looking at him with a disapproving raised eyebrow. He smiled at her and waved.
"Do some evil if the spirit takes you?" she repeated.
"Oh please, Fluttershy," he said as he rolled his eyes all the way around his sockets. "You act as if I don't know what I'm doing when it comes to villainy."
