Prolouge: Getting the Band Back Together
Prologue
The moon shone brilliantly down on Canterlot Garden. The air was filled with lightning bugs flying whimsically, the scent of newly cut grass, and the sound of two shadowy figures bickering quietly to each other. “Ugh,” Grogar moaned as he slowly shuffled across the lawn. On his back was a large, heavy mass, covered clumsily with a homemade quilt. “Why do I have to carry this thing, Tirek?”
Tirek reached into the black bag around his neck and pulled out a golden bit. “Because I won the toss, that’s why. Now hurry up and get it to the chariot. Someone’s going to see us.” He motioned his clawed hand toward an ebony chariot, hidden lazily behind three bushes. When he looked back at Grogar, he saw that his companion had tripped and fell, his burden pinning him down.
“Gak!” Grogar coughed. “Some help here, please?”
Tirek struggled not to laugh at the sight of Grogar struggling so. “Fine,” he agreed. “But only so we actually get away with this.” With that, he lifted the mysterious cargo up off of Grogar, swung it over his shoulder, and walked casually toward the chariot. The cargo made a loud bang when he placed it into the chariot and the beasts that had brought them there were riled, but only slightly. Tirek taught them better than that. Then, after a quick whip of the reins, they were all off.
“So…” Grogar said awkwardly as he rested his back on the side of the chariot. “What are we going to do once we get back to Tambelon? Do we have any gameplan whatsoever?”
Tirek laughed out loud. “We sure as hay aren’t going to Tambelon. That place is a complete manure-hole of a city. And besides, last time we were there, I’m pretty sure that donkey of yours tried to hit on me.”
Grogar stood up, defiant. “I’ll have you know that Bray is one of the best minions I have. He’s stuck by my side faithfully for centuries.”
Tirek smirked. “You ever stop to wonder why he stuck by your side faithfully for centuries?” He snickered as Grogar grew more and more upset.
“You should talk. What color was this chariot when you bought it? Was it pink? Or was it purple? Whatever it was it was oh so intimidating.”
“Alright!” Tirek raised his hand in protest. “Call it a draw. For now. We’re almost there.”
“Almost where?” Grogar whined, as if he were still a child.
“Midnight Castle. Right over on the far eastern end of the Everfree.”
Grogar sighed. “And what do we do when we get there?”
Tirek shrugged as the cool night air whipped through his hair. “I don’t know. We wing it.”
***
“A little to the right,” Tirek said as Grogar once again struggled with his burden. This time, he shuttled the thing back and forth around Tirek’s dining hall in the Midnight Castle. In the center of the darkened room was a long, elegant table, with three seats: two at each end, and one in the middle. The murals spread across the ceilings depicted scenes of conquest and darkness, always with Tirek at the center of them, causing the mayhem. The tiling on the ground was another throw to his vanity: every five tiles spelled out his name in opulently gothic, black and red characters. The opposite ends of the room held spiral staircases, each spanning throughout the fortress, allowing access to all of its floors.
Grogar groaned. “What does it even matter where he is?! We still don’t have a clue how to help him anyway.”
“Nope, Grogs. You went too far. More to the left. And if he’s going to be here, he might as well look like a damn good decoration.”
Grogar, fed up with his friend’s abuse, snarled. “You know what? I’m done. Here.” And with that, he bounced the covered mass off of his back and onto the tiling below him. As it fell, the blanket slipped off revealing what was beneath: a large, detailed statue of a strange, dragon-like creature. It had the head of a pony, the arms of a lion and an eagle, the legs of a lizard and buffalo, and the wings of a bat and a pegasus. It had a disturbing countenance of unrestrained horror frozen on its face.
“Aww, come on Grogs. Don’t be like that,” Tirek pleaded as Grogar marched across the hall to the stairwell. He nimbly galloped over to him to cut him off.
“Get out of my way, Tirek,” said Grogar flatly, a look of extreme apathy on his bearded face.
“Hear me out here. Just wait until morning, and I’ll get some people on it. Why don’t you just wait upstairs for tonight?”
“You don’t have people anymore, Tirek. They’re all gone.” Tirek’s blood started to boil. “Or do you not remember being bitch smacked by a rainbow? Besides, this whole idea of yours was stupid. Anything we do will probably just smash him to smithereens.”
As he said this, Grogar looked back towards where the statue of his old friend was. They were both shocked to find what he did. The statue was gone, where it stood only a few granite fragments remained. But at the table was the most surprising sight of all: sitting at the dead center of the table, was Discord, dining happily on some popcorn and soda.
Discord smiled at them, removing the soda straw from his mouth. “Are you two done already? Seriously? It was just getting to the good part!”
Tirek and Grogar’s jaws dropped.
Discord got up from his seat and began walking toward them. “Don’t look so surprised. Weirder things have happened, mind you.” He swung his head around a full 360 degrees to examine the hall. “Haven’t been here since I was a kid!” He gasped suddenly and looked at Tirek with a wide-eyed, puppy dog stare. “Did you save the triple bunk beds? Gahhh I got to look!” And as quickly as he showed up he flew up the stairs to the sleeping quarters.
Tirek and Grogar stood there for a long time, looking at each other, before finally, Tirek asked, “What in the hay just happened?”
Grogar smiled. “Discord just happened.”
Chapter 1: Of Backstories and Backsides
Chapter 1
Discord sat at one of the ends of the dining room table, snapping up all types of candy and junk food and devouring them greedily. Tirek sat opposite of him, somewhat repulsed by his friend’s gluttonous behavior. “You know,” he said with a raised brow, “you don’t have to eat all that right now. “
Discord dropped the milkshake he was drinking and, as soon as it hit the floor, all of the food around him disappeared in a flash of white light. “Excuse me, your highness,” he said ironically, “but the next time you spend weeks on end without being able to eat, I’ll be sure to tell you how hungry you are!”
Tirek lifted his hand up to his ear. “What was that?” he asked angrily. “It sure didn’t sound like ‘Thank you Tirek for busting my sorry hide out of jail. I really appreciate it.’”
Discord feigned surprise and applauded sarcastically. “Good, good. It seems your hearing is still intact after the accident. Tell me, what happened that day I found you broken and half dead?”
Tirek shuddered at the thought of that day. It was his moment of triumph. He had won. All the power he would ever need was in the little bag around his neck, the Rainbow of Darkness was his, and he had taken to the skies in his chariot. But then, as he was reveling in his victory, he felt a searing pain. The rainbow beneath him had taken on its natural colors, and swirled him into a Technicolor tornado. The whirlwind carried him around for days, burning his crimson skin and singeing his blue fur. After the third day, he fell. Fell from what he could only image was hundreds of feet in the air into a darkened forest. He didn’t know how long he had been there before Discord showed up. Discord had healed him, got him back on his hooves, and even helped him renew Midnight Castle. But the damage was done: he had already lost his minions and his power.
“Ugh and don’t even get me started on what it was like bringing old Grogs and Tambelon back to this plane of consciousness,” Discord snarked. “That one gave me migraines for weeks. I swear, the things I did for you two…” he tapered off, as if consumed by his thoughts. He shook his head and got back into the conversation. “In any case, I think we’re all just about even now. Now, what put such a chip on your shoulder that caused you to be so upset at your old friend Discord?” As soon as the words left his mouth, he had blinked over to Tirek’s side of the table and conjured up some reading glasses, a quill, some paper, and a couch, on which he promptly reclined. “Come now, you can tell the doctor anything you need to.”
Tirek allowed a small grin to creep across his face. Make no mistake, both he and Grogar were upset with Discord and wanted some answers from him, but there was no denying that Discord was one of the funniest beings he had ever had the pleasure of meeting. “Isn’t the patient supposed to lie on the couch?” Tirek asked to humor him.
Discord rolled his eyes playfully and shrugged. “I think it’s comfier here.”
Their conversation was cut short by a grating scraping sound from down a nearby darkened hallway. “Uh, Grogs…. You still have that new magic bell of yours on you, remember?”
The scraping stopped abruptly, followed by a barely audible “Damn it,” from the hallway. Seconds later, Grogar emerged from the darkness, levitating another chair at his side.
Discord’s head shot up from the sofa. “You expecting company or something?”
Grogar dropped the chair at the middle of the table. “Nope, no guests at all,” he said as his red eyes darted across the room and a single bead of sweat rolled down his forehead. “Don’t know why you’d ask such a thing.”
Discord and Tirek exchanged confused looks as to say “Wow, that was weird,” before Discord stood up from his couch. “Now that you’re both here, can you please tell me what am I’m in trouble for this time?” Grogar opened his mouth to start talking, but Discord interrupted with a facetious remark. “Seriously, guys. The suspense is killing me.”
Tirek spoke up, his deep voice overpowering Discord’s. “You left us, Discord.”
“I don’t answer to you,” Discord said with his arms crossed, a hint of anger lurking in his tone.
“You probably should now, Mr. Lawn Ornament,” Grogar joked. Tirek laughed, but Discord’s scowl only grew larger. “All we ask is why you left us all those centuries ago. T wasn’t even done recovering yet.”
“I could have died!” Tirek boomed.
“You were going to be fine! I wouldn’t have left otherwise.”
“Then why did you leave?” Tirek asked, his voice bordering on a full scream. “For nearly a thousand years we had no clue where you were!”
Discord smiled. “Oh, so Mom and Dad were worried sick that I was out past curfew, then?” He looked at both of them. “Grogar is clearly the Dad in that case.”
“We didn’t leave Tambelon for a millennium!”
“Well, whose fault is that, you lazy old shut-ins? Besides, you knew full well Tambelon is a manure-hole of a city, anyway.”
“Hey!” Grogar interjected, none too pleased about the way Discord was talking about his home.
“That’s beside the point,” Tirek said, ignoring Grogar completely. “We stayed there because we were afraid of what those ponies would do to use if we dared show our faces again. Look,” he turned around to show Discord his rump. There were still large patches of fur that were gone, burned off by the rainbow. “I’m still not fully recovered from the last time!”
“Wow, look at all those bare patches…” Discord’s face lit up, and a light bulb appeared over his head. He leaned over to Grogar and told him, “from now on, we call T… ‘Patches!’” Grogar recoiled at the sight of the thing hovering over Discord’s head. Discord looked up at it and plucked it from the air. “What this thing?” With that, he threw the bulb behind him and it exploded into butterflies on impact.
“Enough games, Discord,” Tirek growled under his breath.
Discord waved his hand at Tirek. “You can never have enough games.” He looked over to Grogar, who was seemingly mesmerized by the butterflies. “Right, Grogs?” He redirected his gaze back at Tirek. “Now, Patches, if you’d be so kind as to turn around so we can all see your coat again, that’d be fantastic.”
Tirek had enough. He felt nothing but rage. He lunged at Discord, grabbed him by the fur around his neck, and pinned him to a wall. “You listen to me you flankhole! We spent years hiding like friggin rats in a sewer, waiting to hear any news of you. Then, after Faust knows how many centuries, we hear someone’s altering the laws of physics all over Equestria. Then, we save your flank. AND THIS IS HOW YOU REPAY US!?? WITH SNIDE REMARKS AND INSULTS?!”
Discord gasped and wheezed, Tirek’s massive red hand nearly crushing his windpipe. “Gak! Flank! Grogs….Look at his flank!”
Tirek’s gaze never left Discord. “Go ahead, Grogar! Tell him how funny I look!” He leaned in closer to whisper into Discord’s ear. “Why were we even friends?”
Grogar peered at where the patches were. “You aren’t looking too funny at all, actually.”
Tirek’s head whirled around. “What do you mean not at…?” His voice trailed off. The missing patches of his coat were all filled in, fixed in an instant by Discord’s magic. He unhanded him almost immediately. “I’m so sorry.”
Discord coughed a few times to clear his throat. “It’s fine, its fine. I should have just come out and told you. But that was a very good question, though. And to answer your question: I met a nice mare. That’s where I went.
Grogar glared at him, dissatisfied by his response. “For a thousand years?”
Discord rubbed the back of his neck and looked up toward the murals on the ceiling. “Well, here’s the thing. I kind of had to plunge the world into chaos. You know, to show her I’m awesome. Then, when I asked her out, she and her kid sister…..kind of maced me.”
“Maced you?” questioned Tirek.
“In a way, yes.”
“Like…with actual pepper spray?” Grogar asked.
“Well, not really…” Discord placed his claw up to his chin, thinking about the best way to describe it. “It was technically the powers of harmony and order, but with the way it hurt and the way it was used; yeah, let’s just say it was a kind of Super-Mace.”
There was a long pause. Tirek and Grogar exchanged looks, then collapsed on the ground and burst into laughter.
“So you mean to tell me,” Grogar laughed, “that you actually try to get a date, and she was so repulsed by the idea of it, she turned you into a statue? Oh, that’s rich! Ha Ha Ha!”
Discord smiled, rolling with their laughter. “Yes, get it out of your systems now. It’s that funny.”
Two hours later, when the laughter began to simmer down, Discord smile had turned to a scowl. “Is it out of your systems yet?” he asked angrily.
Tirek stood up. “Okay, okay. We’re done laughing now,” he said wiping a tear away from his eye. He pointed toward the staircase behind him. “Your room’s where it’s always been. Get some shut eye. Got some serious stuff to talk about in the A.M”
Discord’s smile returned to his face. “Oh T,” he said as he patted him on the head, “you and your serious business. You should know by now nothing about me is ever serious.” And with that he blinked up to his room.
Chapter 2: Well ExSmooze me, Princess
Chapter 2
Grogar looked at the extra chair he had brought out the day before, then to a clock on the far wall. She still hasn’t arrived, he thought. I do hope nothing has happened to her… What was he saying? Of course things had happened! It had only been, what, three thousand years since he saw her last? And as if she’d even want to hear from him after how he left? Not likely. He bowed his head in defeat, and slowly began levitating the chair back to its closet.
While he was walking through the Southern corridor, he heard a grating noise coming from outside. It was a strange, metal on metal sound that he hadn’t heard before, or at least not recently enough that he’d know what it was. He threw open the window on his right, letting the afternoon sun bathe the hallway in its glow. He squinted and raised his hoof up over his eyes. “Damn sunlight,” he muttered to himself. “Never had that problem in Tambelon.”
In the courtyard below, instead of the harsh concrete and stone plane Grogar had come to recognize, was a large patch of dirt. In the middle of it stood Discord, wearing a sun hat and toting a watering can. Grogar shouted down to him. “You know T’s going to flip his manure when he finds out about this.”
Discord looked up at him. “Oh well. It can’t be worse than this morning when he threw his little tantrum.”
“Yeah, don’t remind me of that,” Grogar said. It wasn’t a pretty sight. After they had all woken up, Discord informed them that they couldn’t leave the castle for the foreseeable future. Tirek, after centuries of living in hiding, was livid.
“WHY IN THE HELL NOT?!” he bellowed when he heard the news.
Discord answered the question more calmly than any other being in Equestria could have. “I told you, T. I just gave you the short version. The princesses can’t technically use the Elements anymore, but they have six watchdogs to do what they say. And those little ponies will hunt us to the ends of Equestria.” He looked at the clock on the wall. “And you can be damn sure they’ll get it done in 44 minutes at the absolute maximum.”
“So tell me, genius. What do we do? Waste away in this castle until it crumbles around us?”
Discord waved his hand to dismiss the idea. “No, no, no! Of course not! We just have to wait until one of those six is indisposed in some way.”
“And how long will that be?” Tirek asked with a raised eyebrow.
Discord shrugged. “I don’t know. Soon. Probably. Ms. Dash seems to hurt her wings a lot.” He scratched his head. “Twilight is always messing up some spell or another. That’ll do some harm eventually. Oh, and that pink one with all the sharp instruments you can find in a bakery? That isn’t ending well for anyone.”
Tirek ignored his attempts at humor. “But you’re still not sure?”
He sighed and shook his head. “No, I’m not sure.”
Tirek stormed out of the room, screaming what were no doubt the most vile curse words in the ancient Centaur tongue. The only thing Grogar and Discord could make out was “CALL ME WHEN YOU WANT TO MAKE SENSE,” he began to walk off, then stopped and turned back around, “AND DON’T YOU EVEN THINK OF SAYING IT, DISCORD!” He stomped his way up the spiral staircase, and when the other two lost sight of him, they could hear a loud slam of the master bedroom door.
Discord leaned down to Grogar and whispered with a smirk on his face. “But what fun is there in making sense?” Tirek, who had somehow heard Discord’s quiet quip from upstairs, growled in frustration, his anger echoing throughout the entire castle.
Discord snapped up at Grogar from the garden below. “Are you finished with your expository flashback yet?”
He shook his head back and forth quickly. “What did you say?”
Discord crossed his arms. “Nothing, nothing. Just forget it. And here someone had told me that self-referential humor and fourth wall jokes were all the rage nowadays…” Grogar took a second to analyze what his friend had said, but could come to no sound conclusion. Discord was like a brother to him, make no mistake, but sometimes he was just too out there.
Trying to change the subject, Grogar pointed at the dirt Discord was standing on. “What are you trying to grow there?”
Discord’s snout scrunched up almost immediately, and his eyes shot rapidly back and forth. “I’m not growing anything. Nope, nothing at all. I just like sitting on dirt piles. Yep, dirt piles. I love ‘em. I’m certainly not growing plants that have hallucinogenic effects when they’re burned. Nope.”
“Are you growing-“
He raised a finger angrily. “I swear if you call the cops like you did when we were kids…”
A shout rang out from the castle tower. “Guys! Get up here right now! You won’t believe what I found!” Grogar and Discord shot each other glances, and in a second decided it was in their best interests to try and forget the morning fight and go up and see what Tirek had to show them.
By the time Grogar made it up to the top of the tower, where the master bedroom was, he was nearly out of breath. Discord blinked in directly adjacent to him. “Place needs an elevator, huh?”
Grogar was never too fond of Discord’s god-like powers. Sure he was no slouch himself, but he just couldn’t compare to him on that level. “You suck,” he said playfully as he gasped for breath.
“Just like your mother,” Discord retorted.
Grogar opened the double doors to the bedroom. The bedroom itself was, as you’d expect, extremely lavish. Ebony banners with red tassels lined the walls on each side of the canopy bed, which was similarly decorated. The rug was a dark crimson, reminiscent of blood and resting on either side of the bed were both a bedside table and a suit of armor once worn by Tirek’s personal guard.
While Discord was mildly impressed by the sheer opulence of the room, Grogar wasn’t. Not by a long shot. He knew Tirek better than anyone and he knew that the arrogance and lavishness he surrounded himself with was nothing but over compensation. Tirek never came to terms with losing what was essentially his god tier power, and it became clearer and clearer as the years rolled on. Day after day he would call upon non-existing servants and demand the denizens of Tambelon to bend to his will, lest he destroy them with a power he had since long lost. Grogar had grown fond of calling moments like these “power-trips.” Ironic, as the only traces there even were of this power were the suits of armor and the empty black bag Tirek carried around his neck. When Grogar looked across the regal chambers, he knew the story behind it, and he felt only pity.
He was broken out of his reflection when Discord nudged him with his elbow and motioned toward the back of the room. Tirek stood in the far left corner, waist deep in a pile of old boxes and clothes he had undoubtedly unearthed from the closet just a few feet away from him. He was holding a small brown box. “Guys!” he called joyously as he beckoned to them. All memory of the fight must have completely left his mind. “You have got to get over here and see this!”
The pair walked over to him at an intermediate pace, their curiosity peaked. What could have made Tirek forget about how angry he was? Surely it was something of vast importance. When they arrived at the pile, Tirek reached into the box enthusiastically and pulled out an old, damp magazine. “Look at what I found!” he cried as he brandished the book. This is from when we were kids!”
The title across the front page of it read PlayColt and stretched across its cover was a scantily clad mare with a sultry look in her eyes. Grogar leaned closer to the thing and smelled it. He recoiled in disgust. “Congratulations. You found an old skin magazine that reeks of mildew and what I’m sure is some ungodly bodily fluid.”
“It’s not the magazine itself I’m excited about,” he said as he opened it to the advertisements section. “Look at this.”
Discord took it from him. “Reading it for the articles after all, eh T?” A pair of reading glasses appeared on his face in a bright flash of light. “Now, what do we have here?” His eyes scanned the ads, and he began reading them off to himself as he went. “Wing enlargement supplements…Lyra plushies…Oh, is this what you wanted us to see?” He held up the open book and pointed to a brightly colored, purple and green advertisement. It read: Get your very own Jar o’ Smooze! Impress your family! Scare your neighbors! Make yourself the baddest motherbucker this side of Tartarus! Contact us now for your very own Jar o’ Smooze!
Tirek beamed. “So can we get one? Please? Please? Please?”
“I don’t know, T,” Grogar said with a raised brow. “Aren’t these sorts of things usually bogus?”
“Yeah!” Discord chimed in. “Like that time I got a tank of mail order sea-ponies! On the box it said all I had to do was pour the packet into the tank and wait a few hours for them to develop an advanced civilization!” he snapped and conjured up the box in question. He pointed to an image of a sea pony family eating dinner at a table. “See? And all I got was a bunch of microscopic pests that never let me sleep. Always singing, ‘Shoo-be-doo, Shoo-be-doo!’ Little menaces damn near drove me insane…er.”
Tirek looked at them, with a hint of malice in his eyes. “I’ve always wanted one, ever since I was a child. Now, please. I’m. Getting. This. Smooze.” Grogar recognized the look immediately. That was his power-trip look. Tirek was, by harnessing this jar of sentient, malevolent slime, trying to regain some of that power he lost so long ago. He realized that trying to dissuade Tirek from this course of action was futile, and finally agreed with him.
“Ha!” Tirek laughed. “Looks like you’re outvoted, Discord. Now send that letter to that address.” He clapped his hands. “Quickly now.” And within a few minutes, Discord had begrudgingly written the letter and snapped it to the nearest post office.
“Stupid place probably doesn’t even exist anymore,” he grumbled to Grogar when Tirek was out of earshot.
Grogar smiled. “I know. Let’s just humor him for a bit.”
Later that night, when the trio was eating dinner, they heard a loud knock up against a window. “What was that?” Tirek asked scratching his head.
Discord shrugged. “Probably just a bird. It’ll fly off eventually.”
Eventually didn’t come, however. The knocking continued for the next half hour, growing louder with each passing minute. Grogar could stand it no more. He marched right up to the stained glass window around the corner and threw it open. “Listen here, you! I have half a mind to give you a…” He paused, for he wasn’t talking to a bird. Flying just outside the window was a pegasus pony. Her coat was grey and her mane was yellow and she carried a large brown satchel on her back. What Grogar found most curious, though, was that her eyes never exactly faced the same direction.
“Give me what, mister? Is it a muffin? I love muffins.”
Grogar became uneasy. “How do you know where we are?”
The mare smiled and laughed. “Because I have some mail for you, silly! I’m a mail mare!” She leaned back and reached into her satchel and she pulled out a long, cylindrical package. “Are you Mr. Tirek?”
At the sound of his name, Tirek came rushing from the table, like an excited filly on Hearth’s Warming Eve. “Is my Smooze here?” he asked the mail mare with a giggle.
She handed him the package. “It sure is!” Now Grogar was getting really nervous. “I don’t know what Smooze is though. It sounds like it’s fun!”
Tirek threw the pony a muffin. “Here you go, kid. And don’t tell anypony where we are.”
She caught it a smiled. “Thank you, Mr. Tirek! And you’re secret’s safe with Derpy Hooves!” With that, the ditzy pony flew off, hungrily eating her muffin as she went.
Tirek shot Grogar a glance, and then slowly began to smirk in a way that could only be described as gloating. And faster than Grogar even knew he could move, Tirek ran straight into the dining room to tell Discord of his new pet’s arrival. Grogar sighed and slowly sauntered in after him. By the time he had reached the hall, Tirek had unwrapped the brown paper surrounding the glass tube, and they could now see the Smooze for what it was. The dull purple slime writhed around in the glass, as if it were in pain. Two eyes floated around freely in the gunk. It was when these eyes blinked that unnerved Grogar the most. Discord just stared at it, dumbfounded. “So that actually came?”
Tirek nodded happily. “Yes it did.”
“And you think I’m supposed to be jealous of it or something?”
Tirek shook his head with a proud grin on his face. “No, not jealous, per say. Just appreciative of how awesome I am now with Smooze for a minion.”
Discord looked back and forth at the centaur and his Smooze. Then he looked at Grogar, who could only shrug. He didn’t know what to say. Tirek was happy, so why shouldn’t they be? Discord frowned at him for his display of apathy. He stoically glared at Tirek, snapped his fingers, and blinked off to his room for the night.
Tirek turned around to face Grogar and yawned. “Well, I think I’m off to bed too, Grogs.” He peered into the tube and tapped at its side. “We’re going to have quite the day tomorrow, you and I.”
Grogar woke up in a daze the next morning. When his vision finally cleared, he could see that, somehow, he had ended up in Tirek’s chambers. But that wasn’t all. The entire room was covered, ceiling to carpets, with the Smooze. The purple slime coated every inch of the furniture, to the point where the room looked more like some sort of sticky beehive than a master bedroom. It had even managed to open the doors and descend down the hallway and (what Grogar could only assume was) the rest of the castle. He tired to move, but he found himself bound: the purple goo constricted around him whenever he made a movement. “Don’t bother,” said a voice from above. Grogar shifted his gaze toward the ceiling, to where Tirek was hung upside down by his hooves by the gunk. “I’ve already tried to get out. You can’t do it physically. And I’m pretty sure it took your magic bell off your neck when it brought you in here last night.”
He looked all around the room and, sure enough, his silver bell that gave him his magic rested on a slime mound that used to be a bedside table. “You want to tell me how this happened, T?” he grunted.
Tirek looked away from him indignantly, arms folded like a spoiled child. It didn’t take long for him to break. “Fine, fine. Last night I got excited about the Smooze and I opened the tube. Okay?”
Grogar chortled. “So what you mean to say is that you got too excited and your Smooze came out of your tube before you were ready?”
He snapped his fingers and pointed at Grogar. “Bingo.” He scratched his head and took a second to analyze what Grogar had just said. “Hey!”
Grogar chuckled. “Alright, forget I said that.” He tried once again to free himself, but his efforts were again in vain. “So,” he said calmly as he relaxed his muscles and looked up at Tirek, “since we’re going to be stuck here for awhile, why don’t you just tell me why you had to mail-order a malevolent, shapeless, unstoppable monster?”
Tirek’s eyes wandered around the room, like those of a child who was just asked why he misbehaved. They finally stopped moving once they were directed at the ceiling. “Because I don’t want to feel like a third wheel,” he mumbled.
Grogar leaned in as close as the Smooze would allow. “Excuse me? I didn’t quite catch that.”
“Because I don’t want to feel like a third wheel!” he shouted angrily.
Grogar started to get confused. “Why in Equestria would you feel like a third wheel?”
The centaur sighed. “Because ever since my accident I just haven’t felt…I don’t know…on par with you and Discord,” he said somberly. “I mean you two have all those powers and magic, and what do I have now? An old castle and an empty bag. I figured it was only a matter of time before you guys left me, so I wanted the Smooze as a pet so I could have something I could do.”
Grogar was stunned. He knew his friend had self confidence issues since the accident, but he never imagined the wounds went this deep. “Hey don’t you worry about that happening, T. Hell, Discord could have left you to die if he wanted.” He noticed Tirek’s face light up when he pointed it out. “Discord and I could never ditch you. We’ve been friends too long for that. In fact, we’re damn near brothers by now.”
“You’re right aren’t you?” Tirek said, his voice picking up its usual tone.
“Of course I am.”
“Yeah! You are! Thanks, Grogs! I’d come over there and hug you or something but…” he pointed toward the Smooze binding his legs.
“No worries, man,” Grogar said jovially. “Say, do you want to write a letter on what you learned about friendship today?”
Tirek raised an eyebrow. “What would posses me to do something like that? That sounds absolutely asinine. Why would you even ask me such a thing?”
“I don’t know,” Grogar said thoroughly befuddled. “All out of nowhere I just felt like I needed to say that. I honestly don’t know why…”
“Hmph. Well let’s just hope it doesn’t happen again.” Suddenly, Tirek’s gooey bonds receded and he fell to the floor. “Ouch!” he cried as he grasped his front right knee. “That frickin’ hurt!”
“Oh no, call the paramedics!” Grogar said facetiously. Then, as swiftly as Tirek’s restraints were removed, his did the same. As soon as he could, Grogar bounded over to his bell to affix it around his neck, ready to fight the purple beast off; when he saw that the Smooze was leaving the room. Like a tide receding into the ocean, the purple mass was evacuating the entire chamber through the main entrance. Needless to say, both of them were confused as to why the thing would randomly abandon its assault, so they followed it. The followed the fleeing purple beast throughout the halls of the castle until they came to Discord’s room. He was sitting in the middle of the floor, a bib around his neck and a fork in hand, slurping the Smooze up as if it were a dangling piece of spaghetti.
“Morning, you two. Back from some deep heart-to-heart I bet.” They looked at Discord with unbridled disgust on their faces. Grogar’s throat began to well up with vomit at the sight of Discord eating the Smooze, but he choked it down. “Well, come in! Sit down! There’s still plenty more to go around.”
“That’s disgusting, man,” Tirek said.
Discord slurped up another glob of Smooze. “So is your face.” Discord laughed at his immature joke. “Seriously, though. It’s actually not bad. It tastes like ramen. Try some.” Grogar and Tirek looked at each other, threw caution to the wind, and sat down to eat breakfast.
