Sombra glared at the misbegotten cretin that dared stand before him, barely-contained loathing roiling beneath the surface of his expression.
Meaty chunks of demands flew from its mouth to splatter across his stalwart chest and face. In another time, in another place, he would already be rifling through his index of spells, debating the personal satisfaction factor of the wretch's death via exsanguination, liquidation, or disintegration. In truth, the thought still crossed his mind even now, though he refrained from acting on it.
(It would have been disintegration. Painless, unfortunately, but it left behind no mess. Blood, he had learned, was a much less enjoyable spectacle when he had to clean it up himself afterward.)
More demands flew at his face as he stoically weathered the storm. In time, the lesser being finally ceased its prattling and met his gaze; expectant and trollish in its idiocy.
How he hated it.
"So, in summary," His voice was thin and reedy —forced as it was through the windpipe of his unwilling host— and betraying none of his ire even as his pride cried out at the indignity of lowering himself to the level of such a creature. "You want a number five with no cheese, two number threes —one with no pickles and no mustard, one with extra pickles and extra mayo—, a junior princess meal with extra nuggets-"
"With the toy," the featherhead's brat interrupted.
"With the toy. Three large beverages and one small. Will that be all?"
"Yes," the mare replied stiffly, tilting up her pinched features in an effort to look down on him despite his height advantage. "And don't you dare get a single item wrong. Don't think I won't hesitate to call both your manager and the district coordinator; both close, personal friends of mine. My baby has a very delicate palate."
Oh, how he longed for the days when he could have laughed in her face, told her what he thought of her “delicate palate”, and sent her off to the mines (or worse) in chains. But without his throne, without his full magic, without even a body of his own through which to express his divine right to rule, all he could do was force the practised saccharine smile on his face and kowtow to the lying pony-shaped worm. He knew for a fact his crotchety old greybeard of a manager had no friends.
"Of course, ma'am. Your total is thirteen fifty." Bits were exchanged and he forced himself not to cringe as her filthy plebeian hooves brushed his. Just another drop in the ocean of indignities he was forced to suffer. "Thank you. Your order number is thirty-five. A server will bring it to your table when it's ready."
She turned on a bit and walked off, spawn in tow, before he was even finished. Done so, of course, without so much as a word of thanks or consideration. Not that he'd expected any less. Standards had fallen so far in his long absence.
The Manehattan Burger Princess (36th street location, across from the metro access) was not where Sombra had expected to spend his days after he and his Empire finally returned. But two failed takeovers and just as many vaporizations had a way of throwing a wrench in one's plans. Which was not to say he wasn't making the best of a bad situation.
Shielded from view beneath the greasy overgrown locks of the teenage body he'd stolen and possessed, his horn glowed with the anti-light of a dark spell. A few steps away, the impertinent mare stumbled over nothing, nearly knocking into a prodigiously fat stallion and his equally corpulent wife. She exchanged scowls with the couple before recovering and continuing on her way. Sombra allowed himself a grin as he felt the wisps of Will he’d siphoned off her slide down his horn and coalesce within him.
He wished he could take more —the mare was far too willful for her own good— but there was good reason to limit himself; stealing too much at once risked being noticed. His was a plan that required subtlety and patience. He took solace in the knowledge that every shred of Will he stole brought him one step closer to victory and revenge, no matter how many ponies he had to drain it from.
That was one of the few advantages of making his tactical retreat to such a greasy and ignoble hovel. The endless stream of customers. Such a dull and weak-minded lot; it was hard to believe they had any Will to steal. But they did, and one by one their hunger for cheap and greasy food fueled the furnaces of his resurrection.
That was not the only boon of the location, but the other was best left to its slumber in the back of the deep freezer where none ventured among its nest of cardboard and nuggets.
Tearing off the order as the ancient register finally finished spooling it out with its ear-grating mechanical whine, he turned and slapped it onto the wheel that crossed the divide between his counter and the kitchen. With a careless push, he sent it on its spinning journey across.
"Order up!" he called back to the chefs before leaning in and adding a hissed whisper. "And put some special sauce on it."
The order disappeared from the wheel with a flash of emerald magic, and was all too quickly replaced by the emaciated snarl of the Head Chef (as much as the term applied when her primary culinary techniques were defrost and deep fry).
"Don't tell me what to do!" she spat before disappearing once more. He stared impotently through the window that led to her domain. He knew that she'd probably have sauced the order anyway regardless of his instruction. Her vitriol was expected, though the insult still rankled.
Sombra steadied his flaring emotions and reeled in his anger, setting it to a low simmer of frustration in the back of his mind. Lowering himself to a mere servant of cheap snacks was infuriating enough, but suffering through day after day with the oh-so-strangelable ponies known as his coworkers was enough to make him question if it was all really worth it. It was hard to imagine a more insufferable cross-section of equinity.
*Ding!*
A tray of food appeared in the second window accompanied by another acerbic shout from within the greasy depths. "Order thirty-two ready for pick-up!"
"I'm on it, Miss Chef!" A small puce-colored ball of energy and saccharine sweetness appeared out of nowhere to pick up the tray. Overloaded as it was, the puny pegasus's wings buzzed like an insect to keep her aloft as she weaved over the crowd.
A tiny grin quirked at the edge of Sombra's mouth. His horn flickered—barely for a moment, barely time for a corona to even form—and then the little annoyance was head over hooves, tumbling through the air in a living firework of soda and hay fries.
It was beautiful, in a way. Enough to make him momentarily forget the drudgery of his new existence.
And then he heard the incessant tapping of someone mashing the broken counter bell.
"Excuse me." The mare could have been a color-corrected copy of the last one, bleached mane and all. "Some time today if you don't mind."
He imagined her dipped in boiling oil. Not unlike the hayfries she would doubtless order then complain about the greasiness of. It was the small things that kept him going.
Sombra straightened his apron and refixed his plastic smile. "Hello. Welcome to Burger Princess. How can I assist you today?"
This was not her place.
Making food. Cleaning grease traps. Serving ponies. It was all so far beneath her it should have been as dust.
The food service industry was a neophyte level infiltration. The kind of assignment given to infiltrators just out of basic training so they could get practical experience around real ponies.
And yet here she was; Chrysalis, Queen of the changelings and all the deep fryers she surveyed.
It was enough to make her Queen Mother roll in her grave, the conniving old toad.
Still, for a changeling who'd been abandoned and betrayed, it was one of the most reliable sources of energy she could access without bringing undue attention to herself. Ponies loved their fast food. It wasn't a deep love or a fulfilling one or even a healthy relationship by any means, but it was strong enough she could drain it away.
And if she ever got tired of the same greasy flavor, there was the occasional flash of stronger emotion to stimulate the palate. A foal’s excitement over receiving a shiny hunk of worthless plastic with their order. The teenaged joy of earning their first paycheck.
None of it was filling by any means —rare was the day that some simpleton brought a romantic date to a place where they could gorge themselves to an early grave for under twenty bits— but it was enough to survive with a little leftover to stockpile for her inevitable return to glory.
She slid another tray of hot trash across the divide. "Order thirty-two ready for pick-up!"
At least it was easy work. Keeping track of a dozen or so orders across just as many fryers, skillets, and temp workers was nothing compared to managing the logistics of a hive thousands of changelings strong. Or it would be, if ponies had any kind of changeling work ethic.
Rather than bred-warriors and lifelong-infiltrators, all she had to work with was...ugh…
...teenagers.
A loud crash from the dining floor deepened her scowl. There wasn’t any need to check; only one thing made that noise.
“Someone get me a redo of number thirty-two, Butterfeathers dropped another one.”
The responding groan of her cooking minions was not nearly as quiet as they thought they were being. She made a note of the most insubordinate ones to assign after-hours cleaning duties to. But despite the groaning they were quick to get back to work. That much she’d managed to drill into their puny minds.
She watched the kitchen with a critical eye as the machinations of food production stuttered along, putting out fires (all too many literal) as they cropped up.
“Stop, stop, stop! You incompetent fool! Preheat the oil, then add the hayfries. You’re going to ruin the whole batch!”
“Are you actually blind or just stupid? This order said no cheese! It was underlined three times! Eighty-six them and start again.”
“Get those tools out of your filthy mouth! Do you not see the sign? Hoof-mixing only. You learned this on your first day!”
It was like running a hive of nymphs. Nymphs that swung wildly between lackadaisical ineptitude and near-suicidal incompetence.
She never learned their names. She hadn’t needed names in the Hive, not when ‘You!’ would suffice, and she had no plans to change. Besides, they wouldn’t last long enough to be worth remembering. They never lasted. Even with only a light daily draining of ambient positivity they always wore out so fast. Honestly, if she’d just waited a generation or two to invade, she could have strolled into the Canterlot throne room through the crumbling remains of a nation filled with layabouts who had no motivation to do anything whatsoever.
By the Hive, it took constant supervision just to get them to put the bare minimum effort into jobs they themselves had applied for!
At least she didn’t have to try and manage Greaseball. That wasn’t his real name, of course, but while she couldn't be bothered to learn it he was infuriating enough to earn a mocking moniker. Especially with that mane.
If she dipped him headfirst into the deep fryer (as she’d often fantasized), he’d probably come out cleaner.
He was strangely void of joy, for a pony. Almost as regularly miserable as she was. Except when something bad happened to Butterfeathers, but who didn’t feel better seeing something happen to that freakish imp with her tasteless fake happiness?
“Order up!”
That sneering voice cut through her reflections. She could hear the implied demand. It oozed from his words like slime from a rotting fetid log. No matter that it was her job to take orders from him, she was a Queen! And she would have respect!
Even if she had to drain these nimrods dry one at a time!
In a cramped office that still sported the hooks and shelves of its days as a storage room, a scrawny figure that still somehow filled the room with presence grimaced as he heard the crash from outside.
The idiot child had probably tripped. Again. Which meant a mess. A comped meal. Taking someone out of the kitchen to clean it up. Another twist in the tally sheets at the day's end.
More paperwork.
He'd take it out of her pay. That would teach her to be so clumsy. How anyone could trip so frequently in the air was beyond him. Every day she made him question their alliance.
Sighing, he set down his quill and grabbed the wheels on either side of his chair. A few practiced twists maneuvered him around the desk and towards the door as he braced himself for the second-worst part of this job.
Dealing with ponies and their looks.
How he hated it. Oh, how he hated it. Hated their pitying stares. Hated their flat platitudes and rote offerings of help. Hated how they looked down on him out of the corner of their eyes when it was he, the strongest being in the world, who should be looking down on them like a god among ants!
To his eyes, he was a deity among mortals, merely at rest, biding his time before choosing to strike them down once more for their hubris in daring to defy him.
To the eyes of every pony on the street, he was nothing but a washed-up old minotaur; scrawny and pitiful and wheelchair bound.
But as much as he despised it, Tirek had to admit that it was a perfect disguise. Far better than any ratty old cloak. No one looked twice at an old cripple. Most preferred not to look once. Combined with the story of an adopted pony granddaughter, and no one questioned anything he did. It was a miracle to be able to move so freely through the world of ponies with only a smiling child and an enchanted chair as a disguise.
Even if his hidden back legs were constantly either numb or prickly from being trapped in magically expanded space.
And he couldn't go up stairs.
And the looks.
Peering through the little window in the swinging double doors that was lowered to his seated height revealed a scene just as he'd expected. A mess. With his pretend granddaughter in the middle of it, Greaseball snickering behind his counter, and the patrons split evenly between watching the little monster try and salvage the scattered remains of a triple hayburger, and ignoring her entirely.
He turned and wheeled back to his office. So long as no one was howling about lawsuits and the floor remained free of blood, he didn’t need to intervene personally. Let Greaseball deal with it, the freak.
He settled back in his desk behind bars of spreadsheets and ink. So different from his previous cage’s bars of anti-magic maudite, yet just as tight and restrictive. Even if he were to go on a rampage this very minute, drain the kitchen, the building, the whole city of magic… it’d pale in comparison to the force the Equestrian Bureau of Taxes and Revenue would send after him when the bills came due.
He added a few more numbers, the black ink totaling red on more lines than not. Maybe it was time to rework the wages again, recoup another few bits through “training programs” and “mandatory uniform updates”.
Input and output values swarmed like locusts. The shift chart was a mess of scribbled out old names.
He needed to post another help wanted ad. There had to be a reason why they couldn't keep any employee for more than a few weeks. Obviously it wasn't because he drained a little of their magic every day, he'd been very careful to just skim off the top and go unnoticed. That had been his mistake before. Too much, too fast caught the attention of those in power. But if it wasn't the drain that made them quit, then what?
The shapeless sound of an argument wormed its way into his paper prison.
Of course. It had to be the toxic work environment. Greaseball and Crystal Lace. The vilest ponies he'd ever had the displeasure of meeting. Riding himself of them would no doubt improve morale alone by leaps and bounds.
And yet...
No one could whip teenagers into an efficient kitchen staff like Crystal Lace could. Before she’d come onboard the kitchen staff was constant, but throughput was half of what she managed to squeeze out of their sorry hides. And Greaseball, for all his unpleasantness and poor hygiene, could handle the most irate customer like a trained diplomat or noble. That, and the snake had somehow weaseled a loophole into his contract that made him all but unfireable. That's why he no longer let new hires negotiate their contracts. If they weren’t willing to sign on as is, there was always another teenager eager to take their place.
Which was really saying something considering he had the highest employee turnover rate of any Burger Princess this side of Canterlot. Something that that insufferable district coordinator loved to ream him out over during his monthly inspections. That balding worm of a pony was more puffed up on his own ego and minor degree of power than the emperors he remembered from the Old Country.
He could feel another migraine on the horizon.
Perhaps it was time for another private employee “performance review”.
A quick snack always took the edge off.
‘Smile and laugh. Play it up like I’m trying to hide panic. Overstretch to reach that hayfry while stepping on the tomato and… pratfall. Excellent.’
Ponies laughed as once again she went tail over teakettle. It would make the mess worse, but if she was going to have to clean it up anyway, why not milk the bad luck for all it was worth?
That was supposed to be the easiest part of the job. Anything that got her right up close and cozy with ponies usually landed right in her pile of skills. Friendship —and all its lesser flavors— were just so easy once she learned the rules.
Talk like this, and ponies will do that. Make this face, and ponies will react. Act a certain way, be a certain way, and ponies will give you what you want. Pure transactional friendship as regular and repeatable as math.
So why in name of all of stupid Twilight’s stupid books did all the rules go out the window the minute she got a job serving food!?
It made absolutely no sense! She’d used every trick she knew just like she had done back in the School of Friendship, but they just didn’t work anymore. It was like waking up from a long nap to find that two plus two now equalled fish and rain fell up on Wednesdays.
Day one on the job she’d readopted her cute persona. She gave all the right cues, said all the right things, made all the right faces. She even invented a new adorable catchphrase!
According to all the Rules of Friendship, ponies should have fawned over her, loved her, given her whatever she asked for. Just like at the School. By her initial plan, she should have been the restaurant’s darling unofficial mascot within a week, an official one within a month, and (assuming Tirek managed to pull through on his half of the deal and eat his way up the corporate ladder) the new face of Equestrian advertising in a year or less!
But it just. Didn’t. Work.
As long as she wore an apron and carried a tray of food, it was like the Rules of Friendship didn’t apply to her. Like she didn’t exist beyond the function she served!
Blame rained down for things outside her control. Demands for things she couldn’t possibly deliver swarmed like bats. Messes like scenes from a horror movie were left for her to clean up like she was a personal maid.
But Cozy Glow was nothing if not determined.
She created a new persona. It was easy enough; a new manestyle and color, a new cutie mark (thank you very much Starlight’s private journals for that little trick), and then just take bits and pieces of other ponies she knew to make a personality. Her coworkers swapped out quickly enough the transition phase hardly even mattered. Her first was a rough and tough filly brimming with backchat (made from two parts Rainbow Dash and one part Gallus) to fit the vibe of Manehattan.
It failed. Ponies just got angry quicker than they got dismissive.
So she tried again. Styling herself as quiet and shy filly (three parts Fluttershy, one part Ocellus, dash of Smoulder) eager to please and do her best.
Apparently, showing weakness only made customers more demanding. So much for the “Inherent Charity of the Equestrian Spirit” that Celestia liked to stamp on her banks and coins.
She made a third try as a refined and snobby filly (one part Rarity, one part Trixie, heavy undertones of Diamond Tiara) who looked down on this job forced upon her by her grandfather.
That one hadn’t lasted a single shift.
In the end, she fell back on her most familiar self. The well-worn sock is always the easiest to pull on. Plus the cute act sometimes netted a bigger tip from old grannies (though more often than not it was in hard candy instead of bits).
Cozy Glow smiled awkwardly at the crowd as she gathered the last of the scattered bits of wrapping and smashed condiment packages. “S-Sorry.” The fake stutter usually soothed tempers a bit. Usually. Would tears be pushing it? “T-There may be a teensy delay on your orders.”
The frowns she saw appear on several faces were a clear enough sign that the stutter had not been enough. She beat a hasty retreat through the Employees Only door, tossed the ruined food in a bin, and locked herself in the restroom.
Once alone, she finally let her smile melt into a frown, one that flickered into a scowl as she felt a trickle of something icky run down the small of her neck. Working at Burger Princess was… slightly better than actually being in Tartarus. In Tartarus she had dreary stone walls, here she had cheap plastic and particle board. Tartarus was filled with the screams of tortured souls and the yowls of imprisoned beasts. Burger Princess was filled with the screeching of Crystal Lace at her underlings and Greaseball’s snide comments and barely contained loathing that he somehow thought he was being sneaky about.
Both places had Tirek.
All in all, not exactly the step up in the world she’d been hoping for. It was almost enough to make her discard the plan entirely and head back out on her own. But for all her clearly superior abilities to plan ahead and make her own way… a filly her age working for her adopted grandfather was a lot less suspicious than one wandering the countryside on her own. Especially a filly that may or may not match the hoofprints of an escaped Tartarus convict, something that would doubtless come up when well-meaning country guards tried to identify and return her to whatever parents they’d assume she ran away from.
Besides, there was one upside to sticking around the horrible, nasty place.
Behind the sink, at the height only a filly her size could reach, was a loose tile hiding a carefully carved out hidey-hole. Her most secret spot, where she kept her most precious possession.
If there was any time when she needed a pick-me-up, it was while covered in sauce and cola.
She reached inside the hole and withdrew a crystal... if you were willing to get really loose with what 'crystal' meant.
It was hard and had a lot of straight flat sides... sorta. She couldn't actually look at it directly without getting a headache, but they'd been all over the walls in Tartarus, so she had a thousand corner-of-her-eye glances at them. But this one was special because it was hers. Maybe it had chosen her or maybe it was because she'd bled on it during their escape, but the crystal was hers in a weird, probably magical way she didn't have the words to describe.
It was also the key to her super-secret back-up plan, the one that not even her reluctant partner Tirek knew about.
She ran her hooves over it without looking directly at it till she found the not-crystal's blunted base and pressed it against her heart. Immediately she felt the connection form, not just to the crystal itself, but also every broken shard of it she'd hidden around the building.
And she'd hidden a lot.
Inside seat cushions and hollow chair legs. In the handles of cooking utensils and the pump levers of ketchup dispensers. Above the ceiling panels and in the cracks of the linoleum. Within the doorknobs and toilet cisterns. She'd even snuck crystal dust beneath the lamination of the employee name tags.
And through each shard there was an awareness of the ponies near to it, like inverted shadows around a dark candle. A few ponies' light-shadows looked different from the rest —like Tirek's which was all fluid, and Greaseball who had a strange double one— but the connection formed just the same. A connection that she latched on to and pulled.
She sighed in relief as a soothing flow of something entered her chest and spread out from hoof to wingtip.
Cozy Glow had no idea just what she was taking and what the ponies were losing, but nothing that felt that good could possibly be bad. Besides, if they never seemed to notice and it made her feel like a million bits, who even cared what it was?
Though there was one teensy downside.
A hammering fist on the door to the bathroom broke her from her meditative trance. The yelling didn't help either.
"Girl! You've been in there half an hour already! I don't care if you look like you walked off the set of Carrneigh, get back on delivering orders before we have a riot!"
Cozy Glow took a deep breath and let the heady feeling fade. Mostly. "Just a sec! I'm almost decent."
"Decent, feh. Like that limpet's ever been decent." He probably hadn't meant for her to hear that, but her senses were always sharper after a hit.
They were supposed to have gotten revenge together with him as the muscle and her as the brains. So how had things ended up with him crunching numbers and balancing the budget in his cushy office while she flapped her wings off all day ferrying food from kitchen to table?
Sighing, she put her precious back in its nook and used a few paper towels to wipe the worst of the mush out of her mane. There was no saving the apron, but that was okay, she had a few bits to get another out of the dispenser. Another of her manager’s ‘money-saving’ ideas.
Just another seven hours till the end of her shift, then she could clean up fully, have a quick pull on the night crew, and finally rest. And then it would all start over tomorrow.
She passed Tirek’s office where she could just make out the sound of a snapping quill and muttered curses.
She passed the kitchen where she had no difficulty hearing Miss Chef ripping into one of her staff.
Fixing her best customer service smile, she emerged back onto the main floor just in time to hear Greaseball, in that dull nasal voice of his, recite the mantra that had burned itself into her mind hearing it repeated every five minutes for eight hours a day, six days a week.
"Hello. Welcome to Burger Princess. How can I assist you today?"
