G5 Adventures in The Bad Guys

If you thought that things couldn't get any worse... it got worse.

After finding out that Mr. Wolf and Reva both wanted to go good, the other Bad Guys and Reva's cousins felt so betrayed, Mr. Snake and Gretchen denounced their friendship and their family-ship before leading the others away, leaving only the Mane 6, Allura, Twitch, Mr. Wolf and Reva to help Diane (who had been revealed as the Crimson Paw when she saved them from the prison) and Rogue help Safira and Marmalade's wicked plan.

Of course, Mr. Wolf and Reva were both heartbroken... they didn't say a word as they slowly climbed into Diane's car to head to her house for cover.

Zipp got the address to Diane and Rogue's house in her FlyPad and promised that she and her friends would meet them there as fast as they were able to.

But for right now... our heroes needed time to process this heaping dose of heartbreaking information.

XXXXXXXX

Sunny sighed as she and her friends sat beside the side of the road. “It just doesn't add up… why would Marmalade and Safira team up like this? And why would Snake, Gretchen and the others completely abandon Wolf and Reva? Couldn’t they see how heartbroken those two were?”

“I don’t know… but it hurts to think about it,” Izzy said rather miserably, shaking her head sadly. “What are we gonna do now?”

“Well... let's think about it for a minute. If we go back with Snake and the others, Wolf and Reva are gonna be beyond hurt,” Zipp argued. “But if we go with Wolf and Reva, the others are gonna be beyond hurt, so… there’s no win-win in this situation.”

“But… then again, we promised Diane and Rogue that we would help them stop Marmalade and Safira,” Pipp nervously shrugged, “and we’ve never broken a promise before… not one this scale, anyway.”

“...I understood Snake better than before when he said that his birthdays were a reminder that he was a monster,” Allura muttered, completely disheartened. “I felt the same way, after all those years being separated from Alterro... even before I got sent to Starlight Ridge. If only I had seen it earlier… I wouldn’t have focused just on Wolf and Reva… maybe their friendship and the cubs' essence of family would be all right.”

“Allura, you can’t possibly blame yourself,” Zipp said comfortingly. “Sure, things got a little… heated, to put it lightly, but we’ve been in a lot of situations like this, and we’ve always managed to find our way out of them somehow. We’ll find our way out of this one too.”

“...we need some of us to go after Wolf and the others,” Misty said after a moment, “and the rest of us need to go after Snake and his group, just to keep both sides of the situation under control.”

“Good idea, Misty,” Zipp nodded. “Who wants to do what?”

“Twitch and I can go after Snake and the others,” Allura volunteered. “And... perhaps Zipp and Hitch can come with us too?”

“Sounds like a plan,” Zipp nodded. “And Pipp, Misty, Izzy and Sunny can go after Wolf, Diane and their cubs for the time being.”

“Perfect. We’ll text each other with any updates,” Sunny said before the groups parted ways, hoping to catch up to their friends before it was too late.

XXXXXXXX

At the same time as this, Safira was flying through the skies of Los Angeles to reach Professor Marmalade’s compound, where his assistant Cuddles was piloting a helicopter above the house and flipped a switch. The roof opened up as the meteorite was lowered down, with Safira entering the house before the roof closed.

Three mechanical arms linked the meteorite to a machine, siphoning energy from it as Professor Marmalade, now in a golden jumpsuit, turns on his mind control helmet. “Now,” said Professor Marmalade, putting the helmet on, “this is what a true bad guy looks like.”

“Oh, I should say so, professor,” Safira said as she strutted over, earning Professor Marmalade's attention. “A villain with as much deviousness as you should never try to be outmatched.”

“Normally, Safira, flattery would get you nowhere, but… if it’s you complimenting me… I could take it,” Professor Marmalade smirked before turning away from her. “Now… what of the weak links?”

“From what I saw last, the Bad Guys, those ignorant cubs and their friends were being dropped off at the prison, just as we expected,” Safira reported the last news she had of them, not knowing they had escaped and separated. “They’ll never be able to get out and stop us. Even if they did get out, they would never be able to stop feuding.”

“Excellent,” the professor praised the dragon before eyeing a nearby guinea pig. “Now, let’s see if this device truly works.”

That was when he used the frequency of the helmet to take control of the guinea pig’s mind, moving it around like a puppet, causing Safira to grin sadistically. “It works like a charm, professor! Now… what do you say we have some fun?”

“Oh, Safira…” Professor Marmalade smirked. “I like the way you think.”

The professor then proceeded to move the switch on the machine to a higher setting, and laughed evilly as the meteorite surges and unleashes a shockwave that spreads across the land. In a house, two guinea pigs seemed affected, with one knocking the bowl of carrots off a little girl's hand, causing her to scream while they escaped.

Another guinea pig was brainwashed, riding off on a boy's skateboard, and then, two more emerged from the sewer, followed by tons more climbing down an apartment building and leaving their cages in the pet store.

And this was only the beginning of the biggest heist known to history... by the time they were through, Professor Marmalade and his new dragon partner would have everything they ever wanted... and much, much more.

XXXXXXXX

Misty quickly teleported herself, Izzy, Pipp and Sunny to the address that Zipp had given them before they had separated, appearing right in front of a house that seemed right within the limits of the city. “This is the right house,” Pipp said, putting her hooves on the window and peering inside, “but… I don’t see Wolf, Diane, Rogue or Reva yet.”

“Oh no…” Izzy looked worried. “Do you think Safira or the meanie professor got them?”

“We can’t think like that yet, Izzy,” Sunny tried to be comforting. “Maybe they’re just… running a little late?”

“Look!” Misty pointed down the street to see Diane’s car approaching. “Here they come!”

Diane’s car was just pulling up to the house as they approached, and Sunny let out a sigh of relief. “We’re glad you guys made it here safely,” she said as the windows were rolled down. “With Safira and the professor planning this big heist of theirs, we were worried they might do something to you.”

“We’re fine, Sunny,” Diane reassured gently. “But… Reva and Wolf, on the other hand…”

It was then that Misty noticed that Mr. Wolf and Reva were completely silent and looking downtrodden with themselves. “Hey…” she said gently. “Are you guys okay?”

“No, we’re not okay. We’re very, very un-okay,” Mr. Wolf said with a disheartened grumble. “Just left the only friends I have ever had, and Reva’s only family she had, so what am I… what am I getting us into?”

“...it’s not your fault, Wolf,” Reva said softly. “I was the one who betrayed my family, so… I guess I kinda deserve it.”

The ponies honestly felt their hearts breaking at how disheartened both of them sound, but none of their experiences compared to this. How could they cheer them up if they had no idea what to say?

But luckily for them… Diane knew just what Mr. Wolf and Reva (to a point) were going through. “I know this isn’t easy, leaving everything behind.”

Mr. Wolf looked at her skeptically. “Do you?”

“Yeah. I was the best thief in the world,” Diane continued. “Fast, fearless, inventive. I just had one thing left to steal.”

“The Golden Dolphin,” Reva realized. “So you went after it.”

“She didn’t just go after it,” Rogue told her, having heard this story before. “She had it, and a clear escape route.”

“So… what happened?” Izzy asked. “Why didn’t you steal the Golden Dolphin before now?”

“Well, Izzy… after looking at my reflection for a moment,” Diane explained with a hint of sadness in her voice, “all I saw in the end was the tricky fox that they always told me I was. And once I put the trophy back and left, it… it changed everything. So, now, instead of hurting people, I’m helping them. I’m still me, I’m just… me on the right side.”

“You’re both doing the right thing… even though you’re really hurting right now,” Misty said to Mr. Wolf and his apprentice gently. “And someday Reva’s family and… your friends, if they’re real friends… I think they’ll understand.”

Mr. Wolf and Reva slowly began to smile at this, and Rogue purred against Reva, loving to see that smile grace her muzzle. “Now come on,” Diane urged with a smile of her own. “Let’s get inside. You guys look like you just busted out of a prison.”

“Heh, yeah,” Pipp looked down at her orange suit. “Not exactly the best color for me.”

Suddenly, a guinea pig came down onto the car’s windshield, causing the group to yelp startled before the tiny rodent scurried off. “A guinea pig?” Izzy looked confused before humming in thought. “Where have I seen that before…?”

Suddenly, the others gasped in realization and looked at each other with wide eyes. “Marmalade!”

“Let’s bounce,” Reva said to Rogue with a determined tone in her voice, causing Rogue to nod before the cubs jumped out of the car, causing Mr. Wolf to sigh in satisfaction. “They grow up so fast…”

XXXXXXXX

Diane and Rogue led their remaining friends inside their house, which was actually a lot smaller than the others thought it would be. “So, this is the hideout of the great Crimson Paw,” Mr. Wolf commented as Diane headed into the kitchen and started typing on the microwave control panel. “Snack break?” Misty tilted her head. “Okay, oddly timed, but you do you.”

However, as Misty leaned against the fridge, a secret door opened, and Misty would have fallen if Rogue hadn’t caught her. “Identity verified,” a robotic voice spoke up. “Welcome, Diane.”

“What…?!” Reva and Mr. Wolf spoke up and looked at each other before Rogue and Diane dragged them into the elevator after the ponies, and soon, it descended deeper into the house.

It wasn't but a moment or two later when they finally arrived in a hidden room filled with all sorts of spy equipment-- zip lines, grappling hooks, lasers, computer screens... the whole nine yards. “Whoa-ho!!” Sunny couldn’t help but stare alongside her friends. “Holy moly!”

Diane laughed and sighed as she went further into the room with Rogue by her side. “It’s so good to be home.”

“Are you kidding me? Laser-sighted zip line?” Mr. Wolf asked, holding the said item up before tossing it, causing Pipp to quickly catch it in mid-air as Reva deeply gasped upon seeing another item in particular. “The XM-2400 radar jammer?! No way!!”

“I actually prefer the earlier model,” Diane said with a shrug, causing Reva to laugh. “Agree to disagree.”

“Oh, this stuff is nice, too,” Mr. Wolf twisted some lipstick he found, only for the lipstick to ignite like a blowtorch, causing him to yelp. “Yeah, that’s a blowtorch,” Pipp said, grabbing the lipstick from Mr. Wolf and putting it under her wing. “Also, so not your color.”

Diane then turned to her computer before typing on the keyboard, producing several satellite imaging systems. “All righty, Marmalade. What are you up to, you fuzzy little weirdo? We need eyes on the city. Let’s see if we can’t hack into the government’s surveillance satellite.”

“But, you’re the governor,” Sunny frowned. “Couldn’t you just ask?”

“Well, yeah,” Rogue said with a slight nod of confirmation, “but… pfft… paperwork.”

“I am definitely picking up on suspicious activity here,” Diane said as she pulled up a map of the city with heat signatures all over the place. “Those are guinea pig heat signatures.”

“Safira and Marmalade must be using the meteorite to control them,” Rogue added, “but… to do what?”

“Yeah. I’ve seen enough heist movies to know,” said Misty, “that there aren’t any specific targets.”

That was when Mr. Wolf unfolded the charity map from the gala, looking at it before putting it on the map on the computer screen. “That’s because they’re moving targets.”

“Wolf is right!” Sunny realized. “The locations given on the map match the same locations to where the guinea pigs are!”

“That means the guinea pigs are gonna steal the money from the charity fundraiser!” Reva said with wide eyes. “Raised in his own name?”

“It’s the greatest heist the world’s ever seen,” Mr. Wolf told her. “$1 billion inside trucks, on their way to charities all over the city.”

“But what’s Safira’s role in all this?” Misty asked. “She couldn’t know how to use the meteorite to take over minds!”

“No… but I think I know what her role is. During all our time with her, me and my cousins learned that she’s obsessed with her powers growing,” Reva said. “Once Marmalade completes the heist, she’ll wanna use the meteorite to boost her own energy! And if she does, she would never be stopped!”

“Oh, woof,” Rogue winced. “That does NOT sound good.”

“We need to cut off Marmalade’s communication with his guinea pig army,” Diane said firmly. “Right…” Sunny nodded slowly. “Cause if there’s no signal…”

“There’s no heist!” Reva realized. “And Safira wouldn’t be able to gain any extra power!”

“We have to steal the meteorite!” all eight of them shouted at once, wide smiles imprinted on their faces. “That was cute,” Mr. Wolf told the others with a smirk. “That thing we just did there.”

“All right,” Diane told the others confidently, tossing them some black latex suits. “Put on your big-girl pants. We’re gearing up.”

And once the others put on their suits, they grabbed a variety of gadgets from the walls, one of them being a grappling hook that Diane grabbed.

However, Mr. Wolf looked a little nervous upon seeing it. “I wouldn’t take that. Those things rip your pants right off.”

“Huh…” Diane blinked before pressing a button on the wall. “Try wearing clean underwear. Just in case.”

Just then, the nearby wall lowered, and the others gasped upon seeing Mr. Wolf’s car waiting for them to ride into the compound. “Wha… you stole my car?!” Mr. Wolf asked, hugging the car while looking back at Diane and Rogue. “Respect.”

“Eh,” Rogue shrugged with an innocent look on his face. “It helps when you have a really good teacher.”

“All right then,” Reva said to her friends with a confident smile. “Let’s do this!”

And once they had climbed into the car, they sped out of Diane’s garage and further into the city to stop Professor Marmalade and Safira’s plan once and for all.

XXXXXXXX

While the others were on their way to stop the real villains in this story, the rest of the Bad Guys and their apprentices were on their way to their hidden lair, still feeling hurt by their so-called friends’ betrayal.

But while her friends and cousins sat in silence, Gretchen sat in the corner, thinking hard about what she had said to Reva before they left… how they weren’t family anymore.

Suddenly, a memory of her and Reva spending some time together in the Valley of Mythix, on an annual with their parents (Gretchen’s mother and father, Perali and Oriko, and Reva’s parents, Neven and Sakira) came out of the back of her mind, and these two quotes stuck out to her more than anything else.

“Gretchen? We’ll always be cousins, no matter what happens… won’t we?”

“Of course we will, Reeves. Nothing can ever stop a family. As Daddy always says… family never gives up on each other, no matter what problems come our way.”

Gretchen gasped as she suddenly remembered saying this, beginning to realize what she had done to Reva to make her hurt so badly…

…without really meaning to, of course.

She wiped the tears from her eyes without the others seeing, of course, just as the elevator arrived in the secret lair.

Unfortunately, when they got there, they gasped upon seeing that all of their things had vanished! “What?!” Carmine gasped while Oran stared wide eyed. “No!”

“All our stuff?!” Mr. Piranha gawked, wide eyed.

That was when the group ran into the lair, trying to search for anything left behind, and their speech began to overlap on top of each other a bit.

“Where is everything?!”

“No, no, no, no, no. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no!”

“All our stuff!”

“It’s… it’s all gone!”

“My disguise closet!”

“Where’s my things?!”

As Mr. Shark moved through the coat hangers to try and find at least one of his disguises, Mr. Snake growled as he suddenly realized what happened. “Wolf and his goody-goody gang gave away all our loot!” We stole it fair and square!”

“Come on, Snake, we don’t know if this was their doing!” Zari tried to argue as Mr. Snake slithered into the kitchen to check everything out there. “It could’ve been Marmalade for all we know!”

“Now I understand what it feels like to have things stolen from you!” Mr. Piranha said, trying not to blow a gasket while trying to control his breathing. “I don’t like it! I really don’t like it!”

As Snake checked around the kitchen, he saw the photos on the fridge that the group had taken over the past while, showing good times with Wolf and Reva. He groaned before opening the fridge door to find a push-pop, to his surprise, wondering how it got there before clutching it in anger.

However… his anger was diverted when he heard Mr. Snake begin to panic. “We got no food, we got no money, we got no money we could use to buy food, no food we can sell for money…!!!”

And finally, Mr. Shark’s panic culminated into the form of sobbing his head off, causing Mr. Snake to sigh under his breath and slither over. “All right, okay, okay. Here… take it,” he said, giving Mr. Shark the push-pop, which he immediately began to suck on as Mr. Snake slithered off. “Now, stop crying, buddy.”

But while Mr. Shark sighed in relief, the others seemed quite surprised at what Mr. Snake just did. “Uh… Snake?” Oran asked cautiously. “What did you just do?”

“What?” Mr. Snake seemed oblivious as he checked the fridge. “My friend was sad. I was just cheering him up.”

“You… you did a good thing!” Mr. Shark realized. “For me!”

“Don’t be ridiculous,” Mr. Snake dismissed. “I just put your needs before my own.”

“Yeah,” Ms. Tarantula nodded. “You’re being good.”

“I’m not,” Mr. Snake dismissed once more. “I was simply making a sacrifice so Shark could be happy.”

“That is the actual definition,” Carmine said, “of being good!”

“Snake! You!” Mr. Shark said. “The worst one of us! The most selfish…”

“Spiteful…”

“Terrible…”

“Sneaky…”

“Dishonest…”

“Insensitive...”

“Manipulative…”

“Snake-like…”

“Stanky…”

Mr. Snake raised an eyebrow quizzically at their insults. “And your point is?”

“...this may not be what you wanna hear, Snakey, but… I think Wolf, Reva and our friends were right,” Gretchen said to her mentor slowly, and this caused Mr. Snake to turn to her in complete surprise. “W-What did you say?”

“She said that our friends were right,” Ms. Tarantula repeated as Gretchen stood completely motionless. “Maybe we could be more than just scary villains.”

Suddenly, Ms. Tarantula’s abdomen, Mr. Shark and Mr. Piranha’s fins and the cub’s tails began to wag, and the cubs’ cutie marks began to glow as they gasped in surprise. “Is this…?” Ms. Tarantula stammered. “Is this wagging?”

Mr. Snake looked down at his now-wagging tail, causing Gretchen to laugh happily, her first TRUE happy laugh, in what seemed like forever. “W-We’re wagging!”

“Hey, it’s actually kinda fun!” Zari said as she laughed. “Like your happiness is being expressed through your rear!”

However, Mr. Snake quickly tried to stop his tail from wagging with any means possible, and his anger slowly began to rise as his friends and even his own apprentice were choosing to abandon their criminal lives. “No, no, no!” he screamed, causing the others to freeze in their tracks as he turned back to the fridge. “We’ll… always… be… Bad Guys!”

He quickly slammed the fridge door shut, knocking down all but one photo, causing Gretchen to gasp out of fear, her eyes going wide as Mr. Snake slithered off. “Snake… Snake, wait! Please… we don’t have to worry about people being scared of us anymore,” she said, trying to follow him. “We… we can start over! Have the lives we always wanted!”

“...I can’t believe you would betray me too, Gretchen. I’ve been your support system ever since you lost your parents,” Mr. Snake said bitterly as he entered the elevator. “Go join Wolf and Reva if you want… but just know… I’ll never forget this.”

And before she could stop Snake from leaving, the elevator closed up and descended, leaving the other Bad Guys and the four tiger cubs alone. “Oh, Gretchie…” Carmine whispered. “I’m so sorry…”

“...I feel so bad about doing that to him, but… if it was for us to be happy, there was no other choice,” Gretchen said softly before turning to her friends. “We have to find our friends and help them stop Marmalade and Safira, before it’s too late.”

“That’s exactly why we’re here.”

The group immediately turned to see Hitch, Zipp, Allura and Twitch entering the lair through the nearby window, causing Mr. Piranha to become confused as Allura purred up against the cubs. “What’re you all doing here?”

“I know you guys are pretty mad at us right now,” Zipp said, “but you gotta listen to us for a second. Wolf… Reva… they…”

“We know… they were right,” Carmine said gently. “We wanna be good now too.”

“...wow. That was anticlimactic,” Hitch said rather bluntly before shaking his head and pulling out his phone. “We just got this text from Sunny-- she and the others are gonna try and get the meteorite back from Marmalade and Safira to stop their plans, but… they need our help, big time.”

“So, listen up, everyone,” Allura said as she gathered the group together. “Here’s the plan we’ve come up with… and with some sheer teamwork and luck... this plan is bound to work in our favor.”