Filthy Rich paced nervously back and forth across his office.
“Daaad, can I come out now?”
“No, sweetie, just a little bit more. Be patient for daddy.”
Filthy Rich’s daughter, Diamond Tiara, was sitting locked in her room, and on its door was drawn a pentagram.
It was supposed to be a good day.
“Oh, please don’t come… just don’t come. Just… forget we have this meeting,” Rich spoke to himself, sitting back at his desk in a defeated motion.
That day he was having a meeting with representatives of a big company. A very big company. He got hang of them through… awkward means.
On the stock market, you sometimes buy out small businesses. They’re good to exploit and pass around. A good purchase can mean a nice new coat for your wife, or jewelry for your daughter, so that they both let you work in peace. Never a bad thing.
Sometimes, when you buy these businesses, it turns out that they have connections. Now, that isn’t all that grim. Business sharks like Filthy Rich himself know each other well. Should they come to a conflict, they would usually meet, and, normally, work out a good solution. As a matter of fact, that was how he got a lot of his connections - puppet businesses being purchased off him by aspiring moguls, and himself doing the same off other ones. It was a common pasttime if anything.
When he heard word of how “Route 767”, a chainless motel far north off Ponyville, located in just the most perfect location for the coming trading season, had some strings attached, he was ready for negotiations. Barely ever did they go badly.
With time, he was sent a contract. He signed it, left himself a copy, and remained to wait the two weeks till when executives would come by him to perform said negotiations.
And then he read that contract four more times, just to be safe.
“Daaad, I’m bored.”
“Sweetie, please, you’ve only been there for an hour and you have all your toys and everything. Isn’t that enough?”
“They’re boooring.”
“Come on, Diamond, if you behave like a good girl, we’ll…” he stumbled for a moment, gulping down heavily, “...take you somewhere new today.”
“Hmpf.”
Most of his time from then on he spent trying to contact Styx Enterprises, the actual owner of the motel, and explain to them that it was all a misunderstanding and they can have their former property back. It was all sent back to him as if the address never existed.
Eventually, he was forced into rather drastic action.
Shaking nervously, Filthy Rich fixed one of the scent candles by his daughter's room just a bit. The position had better have been perfect from what the books had said. At least he had managed to find good sulfur-scented candles, whyever they would even be produced.
He took another drink upon having returned to his desk. Afterwards, he went back to rocking in his chair and glancing at the window with anxiety.
It was all very rotten.
The weather had been getting worse and worse since the hour he woke up. It started off sunny, like Ponyville normally would be. The past sixty minutes, however… it seemed that a storm cloud had begun to manifest over his house, and noone else’s.
He would have contacted the weather control, maybe even asked for Rainbow Dash, just to show that he can still throw money around, but something told him that at that point, he would do best to stay put.
Rich’s Barnyard Bargains were too big a business and an investor in the town to risk such damning publicity.
Filthy Rich laughed into his tie. He was actually still worrying about publicity.
“Daa—” and then, the bell finally rang.
“Not now, sweetie. I’ll answer the door,” he told her, “and it will all be over soon.”
“Please be the postmare, please be the postmare, please be the postmare,” Rich repeated to himself internally as he descended to the door of his mansion.
With an enormous strain on his nerves of all sorts, the stallion looked through the peephole.
In front of the door stood a somber-looking dark grey mare with a long mane that obscured most of her face, a smoking mouthpiece protruding from her mouth. Next to her was an imposing, visibly well-off, high-class white unicorn with a complexion that reminded Rich of Prince Blueblood.
They didn’t look so bad. Maybe-
“Open the door,” the unicorn commanded, and just the sound of his voice sent Filthy Rich’s heart right back where it belonged - somewhere in his stomach.
He could do little but oblige and let them in.
The decision to dismiss all of his house staff on a one-day holiday for this occasion has proved to be fruitful. Much unlike the one that lead to it, but there were good sides to everything, after all.
Noone was in his mansion but himself, Diamond Tiara and the two executive managers - Torch Bearer and Grey Grosser. Even his wife was sent on a (knowingly overpaid) vacation to The Faraways. For good reason. Filthy Rich could tell.
If she was there, she would have fainted multiple times by the time the executives had been in their home for five minutes. If only because of the smell coming from the grey mare’s mouthpiece. Rich could not have been too sure, as he had spent a while setting up scent candles, but the odor was positively sulfurous. That was far from normal.
“Gah, what bauble is this?”
“Zap apples, Mr. Bearer. Rich’s Barnyard Bargains exclusive. They—”
“Taste like electrified filth,” the unicorn concluded with an expression of eternal disdain, eating his fifth one in a row nonetheless, as if his hunger could not have been quenched.
That simply pushed Rich to the end of his wits. The Apples’ products were what normally put any equine business partners on their good side for any face-to-face talks. This… This was not the plan.
His attempts to get on Styx Enterprises’ good side were rather futile up to that point.
“Well, that would be left to opinion, Mr. Bearer.”
“My opinions tend to be synonimous with facts,” the manager glared at Filthy Rich with an intensity that nearly made the businesspony bow by sheer instinct.
Something unsettled him greatly about the two executives. He was, effectively, business itself in the Canterlot area, but their being next to him turned him back to a gibbering, nervous mess, waiting for his first job interview.
Thankfully, Grey Grosser had arrived to move the conversation forward. She had been missing for barely over ten seconds, but it seemed as if she had had a good look over all of the mansion, if only judging by the trail, visible in the halls.
“You seem to be prepared, Mr. Rich. It is all in the contract. We have brought over copies just in case,” she said in a rough voice, procuring a pack of papers and a pen from her absolute lack of a saddlebag, “Re-examine them and we can be done with the formalities.”
That was exactly what Filthy Rich did not want. Torch Bearer’s sole presence, however, nearly made him sign the papers there and then.
“I… I have a better proposition,” the stallion said with as confident as voice as he could muster.
“Really.”
“Hm. I had assumed that you knew who you were dealing with,” the mare dropped off ash into an ashtray on his desk, “You would know that we are, by far, the most efficient in this sort of deals. It’s a simple transaction that benefits both sides.”
“Yes, I am aware. But… I think I have something better to offer you. To… ensure our cooperation, so to say. Our companies will be business partners, after all - it is rather good form, I would say, to ensure loyalty to each other,” Rich said his usual line of nonsense that no company would ever take seriously. That was not its purpose - it was code for “I don’t actually intend to buy you out completely, so deal with me for now.”
“And what exactly can you offer us that is better than your soul, Filthy Rich?” Torch Bearer cut to the chase.
Filthy Rich had signed his soul away when he accepted the Styx Enterprises contract, and the executives had come to extract it in exchange for both the motel and cooperation further on.
The past two weeks he had been working on a way to get out of the deal.
He knew he had a way.
“Another one. Much better quality.”
“That would not say much,” the unicorn scoffed at him and grumbled.
“And who would that be?” the grey mare questioned, her eyes still obscured by the long mane.
“I… assume you have seen the door nearby. I decorated it to fit the procedure.”
“Yes, you have. I had assumed that it was for your own transaction.”
“The pentagram is completely off-center, and the candles are the absolute cheapest sulfur I have ever smelled in my corporeal existence.”
“Well… It can’t be critical, can it? I am…” he decided to go with a bold line, “...knowledgeable in this regard. My drawing may not be all that great, but I know a good deal when I see one, and right now I am offering you one.”
Rich felt like a PR colt for one of his early companies, spouting bovine excrement in such a way.
“So, what would it be?”
“My daughter.”
Thankfully, Diamond Tiara had been relatively quiet the past few minutes, and they were far enough away for her not to hear them.
It was a miracle that she had not yet tried to open the door by herself. He locked it from the outside. Twice.
“Oh. I see. We will… consider that,” Grey Grosser was barely shaken.
“Dear heavens, do they really have foal souls offered to them so often? I must be in luck then,” he thought to himself.
“Hmpf. That could be a passable trade. I see no reason why you would need to keep yours, though. Someone like you has no need for a soul, Filthy Rich,” Torch Bearer said to him, slowly melting the businesspony’s very skeleton with his lucid glare, “You would lose remarkably little by adding it to our stocks. Then again, it isn’t like your kind—”
Rich’s heart was so high up his throat that he had not even noticed the hiccup, and neither did he the mare nudging the other stallion in the side.
“—your community has ever had good business sense.”
“We will check on her.”
“B-be my guests.”
“We are, so far,” the unicorn grumbled, and went to face the door of Diamond Tiara’s room.
Something deep within Filthy Rich told him to turn away and preferably start crying in a corner, so he never saw why there was an excess of strange light and weird noises in the following minute. He merely faced the corner of his room and chewed on his tie anxiously. Something was happening, something most certainly was, and the fragments of his parental instinct told him to pick up something heavy and start doing something stupid, but his rational center was in much better condition.
“Grrrhhh…”
“Mr. Bearer? Ms. Grosser? Is it—”
“Filthy Rich,” Torch Bearer’s voice made Rich shiver with intensity.
“W-what?”
“Who do you PRESUME yourself to be to take US for FOOLS?”
The brown stallion turned around and faced the two executives. His eyes went wide and nearly fell into his skull.
Something had always been off about them. The tones of their voices. The odor that followed. The strange feeling of their glares, drilling right through him.
Torch Bearer’s eyes had gone shining and blank, his voice reverberating unnaturally. Grey Grosser was very openly emanating smoke and being distorted in a shadow that was never there before.
“I— I have experience in the matter, and—”
“And WE are a pair of FOOLS who can’t perform their jobs’ UTMOST BASICS, is that CORRECT?”
“Goodness no! You—”
It had all fallen apart.
Rich’s plan was foiled.
Wherever he read, it said that the souls of young foals were innocent. Incorruptible. Clean. Better than that of any adult. What had gone wrong? What happened? Why weren’t they accepting it?
“We are not INTERNS. We are EXPERTS. We can tell a FOAL from a SPOILT HEAP of MINDLESS FLESH. This IS one.”
“B-but she is young! Innocent! Incorruptible! How is her soul not—”
“Daaad?..” Tiara’s voice sounded weakly from behind the door. The last thing he needed.
“Mr. Rich, is this your daughter?” Grey Grosser asked in a highly distorted tone of voice.
“Y-yes, my firstborn, in fact, and that—”
“You are special, Mr. Rich. Somehow, by some… unclear means, you have managed to corrupt that which is technically, safe for very few loopholes, incorruptible. Your daughter is one of the worst I have seen in a long time. Quite literally the only source of worth it can have is the suffering she had caused the fillies in her class, and even for that to pay off, we would need to wait until her body dies. Until then, we can't even withdraw any of the soul energy. That is... highly suboptimal.”
He was completely stumped. Why? What did he do wrong? He did everything right, he even… even…
“No, wait, there has to be some kind of mistake. She is perfectly provided for! Always treated! I even discipline her when she gets out of line!”
“Once per a dozen years, yes,” Torch Bearer said in a slightly less furious, echoing, gravelly tone, but with a sort of voice that clarified that he was stating a fact and not making a sarcastic remark.
“How is that not enough? Why can’t you take HER and leave ME alone?”
“Daaad? I’m… I don’t want to sit here anymore… they’re creeping me out. Daaad?.. They're staring at me...”
He sincerely could do without the guilt tripping of his daughter, speaking from behind the door with such a painstakingly drawn pentagram of red crayons. From behind that same door, obscure tendril-like puffs of smoke erupted, and faint, eerie noises made themselves heard.
“Her soul wouldn’t be worth keeping for that long. It is, in essentiality, already lost. It’d be to the detriment of our own business. And you, Mr. Rich, are sending it to us as a good will gift. That is not good conduct.”
“Apparently, you presume to think that you are smarter than us, Filthy Rich.”
“We were going to be civil about the transaction, but by our own rule list, this sort of behavior is not to be treated lightly. You just tried to sabotage a Styx Enterprises operation. That is…”
The mare reached for another sheet that had nowhere to come from, and Rich had begun to surrender all thoughts of continued existence. Then, Torch Bearer had stepped forward, and begun to close the distance between himself and the other stallion, moving much faster than someone of his size possibly could have.
Rich had so many more thoughts of continued existence to surrender that it was simply depressing.
“You…”
“Oh dear heavens, no…”
“...are going with us.”
While Torch Bearer was approaching, something happened. The unicorn had passed a wall mirror. Rich, in turn, looked at the reflection.
What he saw in there got the averagely athletic earth pony to go off in such a wild gallop that even Torch Bearer itself had trouble catching up to him. Rich crossed corridors, ran into rooms, ran out of rooms, locked doors behind himself, built barricades, hastily arranged crosses out of prolonged objects, and even made circles of salt and pepper. And there some thought that all those books on the occult he bought off a shop, so as not to alert Sparkle the local librarian, were useless fiction.
“You have INSULTED our INTELLECTUAL INTEGRITY, Mr. Rich. I did NOT come here to be INSULTED by someone like YOU.”
“AVAUNT, UNHOLY CREATURE!”
“We have come here to do BUSINESS with you, and YOU repay us with a FILTHY EXCUSE for a FOAL, and now— YOU CAN’T EVEN MAKE A PROPER PROTECTION SIGIL!”
“I HAVE A WIFE! WE CAN JUST WAIT FOR HER, TAKE HER!”
Torch Bearer roared and the floor nearly escaped Rich’s hooves.
“Are you MOCKING me? She had ALREADY sold hers! TO US! DO YOU THINK WE WOULDN’T KNOW?"
“GAAAH!”
“Oh, for crying out loud, it is LITERALLY a CIRCLE of SALT, and you are INCAPABLE of MAKING EVEN THAT. ARE YOU MENTALLY DEFICIENT?!”
All of that, while running madly and being chased by something that had, by then, lost all vocal semblance of a highly irritated and deep-voiced high-classed unicorn.
“VANISH, DREADFUL APPARITION!”
“I am an INFERNAL, you ILLITERATE FOUR-LEGGED FREAK. I am—”
“Lucy! Lucy, what the HELL are you thinking?!” Grey Grosser had appeared, submerged in shadow under the light of a perfectly operational lamp, right in front of where Rich was running. He rammed right into her… and through her.
"I am doing that which we should do to ALL of these insolent, quadrupedal—"
Rich had no idea what they were talking about, and skittered quickly to the nearest corner, hoping sincerely that he would learn to blend into walls.
"We should just have sent Jack in..."
"You can't do ANYTHING without Jack anymore! He is one of THEM, and I refuse to even work on the same team, and now we have THIS on our hands!"
Unfortuntely, the wallpapers had begun to crack under the strain of the two managers shouting at each other, and any hope of camouflage was lost.
"Lucy..."
“What?”
“uoY gnikcuf toidi, er’ew desoppus ot peek ti laitnedifnoc!” her voice has also finally lost all semblance of all it was, and Filthy Rich had become completely convinced that he himself, had lost all sanity.
“Bite me, Dammiane. He is not worth preserving. I will devour his soul myself.”
“REFICUL.”
"And I REFUSE to abide by anyone’s rules. You can go and coddle with Meph all you want, I do as I wish, and I WILL not BOW.”
Rich had just sat in the corner and covered his face with his tie as the two things he never thought could even exist bickered about their inner politics.
The last thing he saw was a shadow looming over him, and then…
The next day, Filthy Rich woke up with a rare headache, yelled at his secretary for having dismissed the whole staff for a day, found out that his wife was out on vacation he, obviously, was supposed to pay for, and that his daughter had messed up her whole room.
For the second time in twelve years, he finally did something about her behavior, and took away her tiara for a day. She said she could not remember why any of that was there, or why any of the specially reserved zap apples were missing, but the filly was an awful liar.
Much like him, he had to admit. Filthy Rich was the picture of an honest businesspony.
TO: P.B.
FROM: Fish
Heya. Went fishing today. Caught two, believe it or not. One hungry bastard and one slimy. Took a while to get them to chew on the bait, but yeah, it was worth it. Great weather here in the South. Think you can come by. I’m pretty sure there’s pools more of where those two came from. These ain’t just in the North anymore.
Gotta say, two locals helped. Helped them out, too. Walked them home, buggers got lost in places they don’t often go to. Too bad they probably won’t remember it.
TO: Fish
FROM: P.B.
Visit those two again. They probably would do best if they one hundred percent don’t remember your catch. Don’t want anyone to get to the spawning pools ahead of us. Especially if they’re ill-equipped.
No fishing for us for now, though. We’ve got other sorts to take care of. Better get back home. Our focus is still the same. Buck season is about to come, and we need able riflehooves. So get off your flank and let fish pool by itself. It’s not like they’ll infest the waters within a year. We can accept that loss.