You Need Practice
by Kris Overstreet
vaguely inspired by DreamAlex's "The Music" and "Wings and Magic."
The howling never stopped in Tartarus.
Oh, individual denizens of the mystic prison realm might stop howling. You could only bellow your rage, your pain, your boredom, your existential ennui, or your demands for a second dessert on your lunch tray for so long. Even ancient and mystical horrors and demons from ancient times got sore throats.
But where one howl ended, another always began. There was no shortage of prisoners who were angry at the pony princesses, who were lamenting their unbroken centuries of imprisonment, who craved the ultimate nonexistence that could only come by that most extroverted suicide method, universal destruction...
... or who had just been served banana pudding for the eighth straight day even though they had made it clear, crystal clear, to the guards that they were allergic to vanilla.
If you were sent to Tartarus, chained to a stone slab, kept behind bars, watched by minotaur guards and in the last resort kenneled in by a giant three-headed pug, it meant you had been written off as irredeemable by the most naive, most forgiving species on the planet. It meant you didn't get parole hearings. You didn't get chances to redeem yourself through deeds or learning experiences. You got three hot meals a day and reasonably sanitary lodgings, because the ponies didn't regard themselves as monsters, and you got all of eternity to think about exactly where your plan to conquer or destroy everything went wrong. And that was all you got.
You definitely didn't get visitors. Usually.
"Hey! Tirek!" A minotaur guard rapped his polearm against the bars to the evil centaur's prison. The bars, worse luck for the prisoner, were a good twelve feet away from the farthest extension of the chain shackled to Tirek's right foreleg. "Some pony wants to see you."
"Really now?" Tirek's voice rasped, as it always did when deprived of the magic that gave him his power. Without magic he was a pale, pathetic, ancient-looking thing, not a shadow of his true might and glory. "Has Twilight Sparkle returned to gloat some more about the power of friendship? Or perhaps Celestia wants to ask a boon of me."
"Nah, it's just some crazy filly," the guard said. "You want to see her or not?"
"By all means," Tirek said. "Send her in."
A portal opened, and through it Tirek could hear a chirpy young female voice: "Who's a magnificent, ever-vigilant guardian beast of the netherworld! You are! That's right, you are!"
In a much politer tone than he'd taken with Tirek, the minotaur said, "Miss Belle? The prisoner will see you now. You have five minutes."
Through the gate trotted an adolescent unicorn, a jumbo-sized doggie biscuit floating in her magic. She tossed it back through the portal, which closed behind her, cutting off the sounds of happy barking. Tirek's mouth watered at the casual use of magic, of a unicorn child just coming into her own power. None of his victims were more vulnerable. You could take magic from babies almost as easily as you could take candy, but a teenage unicorn could be persuaded to give it to you, oblivious of the danger until it was far, far too late...
"Hello? Mister Tirek?"
Tirek slunk forward, chain jangling, until he'd drawn himself to the limit of his shackle. The unicorn, lamentably, lay just outside the reach of his power to drain magic, at least in this withered form. "I do not remember you, young one," he said. "Although I'm sure you remember me. I drained every pony in all Equestria when last I was loose, before Twilight Sparkle and her precious 'friendship' defeated me."
"Yes, I remember you," Sweetie Belle said. "Not that we were properly introduced, but I remember you quite well."
"Very well, then," Tirek said. "I am Tirek, and one day I shall conquer your land and drain it utterly dry of magic, leaving it to be swallowed up by the sands of time and utterly forgotten. And you are?"
"Sweetie Belle," the unicorn said, not at all put off by the blatant threat.
"Pleased to meet you." Tirek smiled, which is to say he showed his teeth. "I should be even more pleased if you would step a little closer to the bars. My eyesight isn't what-"
The thud of an ironwood polearm butt striking the merciless stone of Tartarus shattered the speech. The unicorn flinched from the wood coming down on the floor directly in front of her. She looked up to see the guard shaking his head negatively.
Drat. Well, you had to try. "Or perhaps not," Tirek continued. "We mustn't alarm the guards, after all." He shuffled on his hooves, his chain clanking a little. "So what brings you to my cell, little pony?"
"Well, my friends and I help ponies figure out what their cutie marks mean," Sweetie Belle began.
"I have no cutie mark," Tirek interrupted.
"I know," Sweetie Belle said, unfazed. "But lately I've been thinking about other people we could help- people who are depressed, people who are frustrated with how their lives are going. And I thought to myself, 'who needs my help more than anypony else?'"
"Let me guess. It was me."
"No," Sweetie Belle said, "to be honest it was Featherweight. He was depressed about how the Foal Free Press was losing readership. But you were second on the list."
Tirek was rapidly growing tired of this conversation. The guards wouldn't let him steal the pony's youthful, vibrant magic- possibly enough to get past the guards, probably not enough to get past the dim-witted hound at the gate, but the guards took no chances. And without magic to steal, a pony was, well, a pony, an annoying, chipper, brain-damaged lump of meat and fur not worth the trouble to kill. "I feel so honored," he said. "So, how do you propose to help me?"
"Well," Sweetie Belle said, "it occurs to me you've tried and failed to conquer Equestria twice."
"By the slimmest of margins," Tirek said, anger rising at memory of past defeats. "The first time when my accursed brother Scorpan betrayed me, and the second time by that self-righteous harpy Twilight Sparkle and her friends."
"Well, yeah," Sweetie Belle continued, unruffled. "And have you figured out why you lost?"
"Betrayal?" Tirek asked. "Opposition by the most powerful pony wizards of their day? Failure to crush my victims into dust when I had the chance? Because I assure you, my little pony," he sneered, "I won't make that last mistake twice."
"I was thinking of something a bit more fundamental," Sweetie Belle said. "You're obviously very good at draining magic, but it's really all you do, isn't it? There are all sorts of things a world conqueror needs to do, and you weren't very good at any of them."
"How DARE you??" Tirek reared up, nearly falling over when the chain went taut and pulled him off-balance. "I am TIREK! I am the greatest calamity Equestria has ever known! I walked the world, and empires crumbled under my hooves! And you claim I was not 'very good' at conquest?"
"Which of us is on which side of these bars?" Sweetie Belle asked.
Tirek, unable to answer that honestly, turned his eyes to the guard. Two of his comrades had wandered over to listen. "Isn't the five minutes up yet?" he asked.
The minotaur shook his head, smiling as the guards so seldom did. "Oh, we wouldn't interrupt this for worlds," he said. The other two guards nodded.
Sighing, Tirek addressed the pony girl again. "Very well. Where, exactly, did I go wrong on my previous attempt to conquer your precious little kingdom?"
"I'm glad you asked," Sweetie Belle said, using her magic to pull an easel with pictures on it closer to the bars. "I believe the problem is, you think you're good at conquest because you're really powerful. That's not all there is to it, though it certainly helps. Nopony ever heard of Dinky Doo coming close to taking over Equestria."
"Who?" Tirek asked.
"Exactly!" Sweetie Belle added, smiling. "Now, with practice potentially anyone can become a successful conqueror, but it's kind of hard to practice conquering things. Most places won't let you conquer them a second time."
"Do tell," Tirek drawled, irony dripping from his voice.
"So the secret is to practice all the steps necessary to conquer somebody else," Sweetie Belle said. "If you practice hard and work every day, there's no limit to what you can achieve!" Her smile grew even larger as she added, "My sister taught me that."
"And what nations has your sister conquered?" Tirek growled.
"Well, she's well into a campaign of conquering the fashion world," Sweetie Belle said. "And fashionistas are pretty territorial, I'm sure you know."
Tirek finger the rough sackcloth of his robe. "Possibly not," he said.
"Oh. Well, she is," Sweetie Belle said. "Anyway, lets go over the five components of successful conquest. Now, you're able to steal the magic from other creatures, and when you do that you gain incredible strength and power, so you've got Logistics in hand. And you did pretty well at defeating any opposing force right up until the end, so I'd say you have a decent grasp on Operations."
"Actually I flunked out of medical school," Tirek muttered. "Mother never did forgive me."
"So your weaknesses are in Personnel, Intelligence, and-"
"I trust," Tirek said, hissing like a leaky radiator, "you did not just call me stupid."
"No, I mean 'Intelligence' like finding out information about the enemy," Sweetie Belle said. "When you tried to conquer us, you didn't find out the princesses had given their magic to Twilight Sparkle until way too late. And you never did find out where Twilight found the power that let her defeat you once and for all. You never even tried, so far as I can tell."
"Then I'll get started now. How did she defeat me, exactly?" Tirek asked. "And please don't say 'power of friendship,' that's hardly useful to me."
"Iiiiiiiii, I don't think I'm going to tell you," Sweetie Belle said, caution creeping into her tone and stance for the first time in this entire interview. "It's best if you get practice by finding that out for yourself. Which brings me to your next weak point: Personnel."
"Personnel?" Tirek asked. "I am Tirek! I need no lackeys! Everyone is but fodder for my appetites!"
"Yeah, that's where you're wrong," Sweetie said. "Imagine what Twilight would have done, or not done, if you hadn't betrayed Discord. Or, better yet, if you had him and maybe a couple of other baddies on your side. Now, I know you have bad past experiences with allies-"
"If you are about to speak my brother's name," Tirek snapped, "don't."
"-but the fact is that people working together are usually more powerful than anyone working alone," Sweetie Belle said, "even if that one person is really, really powerful. You should try practicing that. You don't necessarily need to like them or be their friend- though that has a power-"
"Not interested."
"Well, I hate to admit it, but you don't need to be friends to have allies or even minions. Look at the Storm King."
"I do, every day," Tirek said. "He's the new feature in the prison rock garden."
"The Storm King was dumb as a bag of hammers, true," Sweetie continued, "but he was really good at personnel. Whole fleets of minions. Converting enemies into employees. By himself he would have been a joke, but with his army he came closer to conquering Equestria than you did."
"Did not."
"Did so."
"Did- ugh. Guard, is it five minutes yet?"
The guards paused in their munching of popcorn and shook their heads.
"Thought not." Tirek sighed again and said, "Fine. I need to practice my people skills. Any other advice you have to offer?"
"Only the most important of all," Sweetie Belle said. "Civil relations. History shows the easiest way to conquer a country is to ally with some dissatisfied faction inside the country. You didn't even try that."
"What? Of course I did!" Tirek barked. "I swayed over Discord, didn't I?"
"Low hanging fruit," Sweetie Belle said. "That was easy and you know it. Discord was hungry for respect and comradeship. But I know you can't name a second time you've tried to use people inside the kingdom you conquered to weaken it from within."
"No," Tirek said truthfully. "I've never needed to."
"That you know of," Sweetie Belle corrected. "Think about this. Discord came within a hair's breadth of -"
"Wait a minute," Tirek interrupted. "Hair doesn't breathe."
"Breadth. As in thickness."
"Oh." Tirek waved a hand. "So sorry, do carry on."
"Anyway, Discord almost won because he worked on the differences between Twilight and her friends, trying to break their friendship. No friendship, no Elements of Harmony. No Rainbow Power. Maybe even no fourth alicorn. And think how that might have gone if he'd actually been able to recruit, say, Pinkie Pie to his side as a full partner."
Tirek thought about this a moment. "The mind boggles," he muttered.
"I know, right?"
"By the way," Tirek added, "please thank Pinkie again for the birthday cake. Devil's food is my second favorite flavor, after metal file. How did she even learn my birthday, anyway? It was thousands of years ago in another calendar system!"
"She just knows," Sweetie said. "But you see my point, right? If you can win over a part of the existing power structure to your designs, you're stronger and your victim is weaker! You gain twice over!"
"Yes, I see," Tirek muttered. "So what you're saying is, i should practice my people skills, and the more I practice them, the more likely I am to succeed in my next attempt at destroying your land and all you hold dear."
"That's right!" Sweetie Belle smiled, dancing on her hooves.
"Why, thank you very much, Miss Belle," Tirek said, ladling on the honey in his raspy voice. "You have given me great inspiration going forward, for which I am sincerely grateful."
"You're welcome!" Sweetie Belle said. "It's always good to know I helped." A suggestion of discomfort crossed her face as she added, "Though I hope you'll understand if I hope it's another thousand years before you get the chance to apply your skills."
"Oh, of course," Tirek agreed. "Well, please don't let me detain you any longer. I'm sure there are dozens of other megalomanic psychopaths in need of your wisdom."
"Oh, no problem! Have a good day, now!"
The portal reopened, and Sweetie Belle danced through and was gone, her easel full of helpful diagrams barely following behind her before it shut.
Tirek looked at the guards. "She's going to be in here with us before much longer, isn't she?" he asked.
"We've already reserved a cell for her and her friends," one of the guards said. "It's still under construction though. We're repaving the path to it with good intentions."
Author's Note
The writing prompt: write a sequel, or a story set in the same world as, an author's works.
The author I was randomly given has two works, one of which is this one:
https://www.fimfiction.net/story/261025/the-music
The other is a thematic sequel to The Music.
DreamAlex almost certainly doesn't deserve to have her sweet, heartwarming work turned into crackfic, but when I saw I was a day late for the contest I hadn't had any other inspiration from her works. They don't NEED continuing. They're sweet little moments that stand alone, and they're pretty much identical to canon.
But, at the same time, I didn't want to not write anything at all, so I took my usual route of nonsensical comedy.
This is, of course, not canon. Sweetie Belle would know better than to offer free advice on conquest to an irredeemable baddie.
... don't ask me about Apple Bloom or Scootaloo...
