Romance and the Fate of Equestria

And there goes the 400,000-word mark!

I should mention that Legend of the Goddesses is finally finished. If you've never read it, you should go and do that.

Most of Crazyface's dialogue in this chapter was originally in chapters 113 and 151. Then I said to myself, hey pal, you ever heard of subtext? So I deleted much of his muttering to himself from those two chapters and replaced it with some simple foreshadowy body language and dirty looks from him, and turned it all into one big monologue to go right here in this chapter.

Chapter One Hundred and Fifty-Six

The sun was halfway below the ocean horizon. Mitgaeard floated at the top of a flat-topped mountain, stealthy peering down at the cherry forests below, where she could barely see Kolassa.

She turned to Vorpal Blade, standing silently on the mountaintop with his two friends. "Ssso… your endlesssss treasure has been diminished."

He didn't answer.

"Thisss raisesss the quessstion, one I've been pondering as of late, of what I keep you around for."

He still said nothing, just looking at her with no expression whatsoever.

"No cocky reply?" she taunted. "They are material thingsss, child. Thingsss we were going to give away. Don't be sssssuch a fool."

She waited, and he still had nothing to say.

"No matter," said Mitgaeard. "I antisssipated thisss day would come. There came a point you ssseemed to be losing your enthusssiasm. Your habit for obedienssse was beginning to waver. Thusssssss did I begin to recruit new followersss. I'm ssssstill in the market for a new chosssen one."

She only got a furrowed brow in response.

"Appraise what remainsss of my treasure," she ordered. "We may ssssstill get ussse of it… if not of you."

He glared at her, and without a word he teleported back to the cavern. Among the treasure with his two companions, he stalked away, his furious gaze directed at the floor.

"Did it really never occur to you that she was planning on spending all our treasure?" Skippmud asked him.

"No… no, it did," he said. "But it wasn't… I mean… what hit me wasn't realizing she was going to spend it, what hit me was more like… like what was I thinking? What did she do to get into my head like that? I accepted her power because she would have overloaded me with energy and killed me or something… What is WRONG with me? Why did I want to rule Equestria like some kind of superpower or—or supervillain or… GAAAAH!"

He dropped to his knees, slamming his forehead into a pile of coins. "That's not me! I just! Go around! And steal stuff! THAT'S me!"

"Maybe the 'steal Equestria' thing was too tempting to turn down," Skippmud said quietly.

"Maybe!" Vorpal Blade retorted. He sighed and lay down on his side, running his hooves through the treasure. "Five and a half centuries of work… fifty billion bits worth of history and art and culture. That amount will never exist again. It just can't. She hijacked our lives, Skippmud. I'm so sorry."

She shrugged. "It wasn't so bad. Let me tell you, I've been into you from the moment I saw you, but you've never been more attractive than when you had that fire in you, when you wanted to rule it all! You'll get that back. You're still the chosen one. You'll always be my chosen one, if that makes any difference. Everything will be okay."

He stood up and gazed at her. After a moment of silent consideration, they embraced.

"You know…" said Crazyface.

He spoke so abruptly, so shrilly, that the two of them jumped in shock, wincing in pain as they turned to give him their full attention.

"I've just about had enough of you two," Crazyface said sullenly. "I don't know why I didn't see it coming, really. It's not as if we were ever a team of three to begin with. We were a duo… and Crazyface. That's what we were. All our plans were coordinated between the two of you. Never consulted me, never considered my input, and now there's no question about why! Nopony cares about poor, sick, perverted, messed-up little Crazyface. He's just there to fulfill his baser urges while we keep a leash on him! What do you hope? That I might do less damage under your influence than outside of it? Fine reason to keep somepony around."

"Crazyface, I don't…" Vorpal Blade stammered. "What are you talking about?"

"I'm talking about how I can contribute to this group! And its goals!" Crazyface snapped. "I'm not just some uncontrollable… GYEEAHGRAAAHGRRAHGRAH! I could be a perfectly good mastermind if I wanted to! In fact, I think I will. You two don't need a third wheel on your chariot of love and fortune anymore."

"Face, I don't understand where this is coming from—"

With another incoherent yell, Crazyface's eyes glowed red and lightning bolts from his stone horn scattered everywhere, burning the stone walls and sending coins flying. He teleported, several times a second, seeming to be in many parts of the cavern all at once. Finally, he was gone, vanishing in a beam of red light shooting straight out of the hole Mitgaeard had left in the ceiling.

"…Wow," Skippmud said dryly.

"Well, darn… that's cause for concern," Vorpal Blade said blankly. "Did you see that coming?"

"No," said Skippmud. "Buuut, that's probably part of why he's so pissed off."

"Yeah… yeah, I picked up on that," he muttered. "But wow… those destructive powers he has… if he'd been born a unicorn, he'd have been unstoppable as a child. I wonder where he's gone."

"Meh, don't worry about it," said Skippmud, putting an arm around him. "How are you doing?"

"Hmm. Tired."

"I know you are," she said, a harsh tone very suddenly creeping into her voice at that. "Will you take off all that damned Mecha before it kills you?"

"No," he snapped, sliding away from her.

She let him go without a word. "This isn't… terrible," she said slowly, looking around. "There's a lot of stuff still here. The crown jewels, for one."

He looked at her in surprise, to see her kicking the six huge crown jewels around.

"All six of 'em, perfectly intact," she said brightly. "See, that's not so bad. You wouldn't have even tried to take these if it wasn't for Mitgaeard. That's a good memory, right? We had some fun and you got some sex out of it."

"I suppose," he said weakly.

"They did destroy a lot of the good stuff…" Skippmud mumbled, gazing around at the cavern. "Probably pilfered quite a bit of it too, they had a pretty strong mercenary look to them. But this is still a hell of a lot of treasure."

"I'm sure it is."

"Aw, cheer up!" she chirped. "We've still got the crown jewels, yeah? Still got…" She desperately looked around for something significant. "The giant blue camel with the weird goatee!" she said, pointing to a huge statue. "That was a good one, right?"

"Yeah…"

She dug through the treasure. "Ooh, and this ancient sun amulet? This looks important."

Vorpal Blade laughed. "There are so many conspiracy theories about where that thing went. Ponies still go crazy wondering what happened to it."

"Ooh, and look at this!" Skippmud produced a crooked, fuzzy black tube, as big around as her head. "The neck of the Beast! We've had some fun times with this! Remember all those times the Beast tried to talk us into using it? Cutting out our own necks and replacing it with his?"

"Yeah," said Vorpal Blade, genuinely smiling now. "He did not keep at that very long. I think even the Beast knew we were never going to fall for that one."

"Too bad we never went out into the world and tried to see what would happen if others were tempted by it," said Skippmud, toying with the neck.

"Yeah! Yeah… that would have been a riot. Maybe we should try it sometime."

She approached him. "I know it's hard," she said softly. "I had a sentimental attachment to a lot of the treasure too, it was good stuff." She paused. "What are you going to do now, man? I'm with you. I'm behind you wherever you're going."

"Hmph." He tossed his head bitterly. "New followers… in the market for a new chosen one… no. Absolutely not. I'm still the chosen one. We will continue our game plan. We will receive the reward Mitgaeard promised us. We will steal Equestria. I… I will HAVE it!"

"Yeah you will, you magnificent bastard," she said wickedly, grinning. She gave him a passionate kiss, then jumped backward, landing flat on her back on a hill of coins.

"No matter how much they stole or destroyed," she said, twirling her hooves around in the coin piles, "this is still billions. With a B. How could we possibly spend billions? Whatever we spend on Mitgaeard's campaign, we're sure to have some left over. And once we're ruling the roost, I'm sure we'll have made it all back twofold in taxes by our first year."

"That's a thought," he said cheerfully.

"Yup. Thoughts. I'm full of those."

"It's not that I'm crazy about money, though, you know," he reminded her. "It's treasure that I'm into."

"Ah, I'm sure there's still plenty of that out in the world," she said dismissively. "We'll tax that too! And we'll hunt for lost treasures every year." She popped her jaw out of its socket, causing it to turn into the shaggy gray jaw of the Beast. "It's not like we're ever going to die," she growled through the Beast's tusks. She popped the jaw back into place and it transformed back into her own as she winked.

"All too true," said Vorpal Blade, winking back at her.

Skippmud waved her arms and legs, making a little snow angel in the coins. "Come over here," she said. "Get up on this and give me a bit of the old mele kalikimaka."

"Ooh!" he grinned, walking toward her. "All these centuries and I've never had a girl on top of my treasure hoard. Why didn't I ever think of that?" He climbed up the mound, lowering himself down over Skippmud's body.

"Because you need me," she said back in a husky voice. "You're just rotten at being rotten. You need a naughty thing like me to teach you what's what."

"I do need you," he agreed, gazing deeply into her eye. "I love you."

"Huh," she remarked, brushing her mane out of her other eye. "You've never said that before."

"What? I've said that lots of times."

"Not while you were on top of me, you haven't," she said dryly.

"All this time we've been sleeping together, I never said that?"

"Nope."

"Well… have you?" he asked. "I don't recall."

"Take me on our treasure hoard and promise me that Equestria will be ours," she said seductively, "and I will say 'I love you' all you want."

"Sounds about right," he said cheerfully.

He lowered himself down and they kissed passionately. She rubbed her body up against his as he pulled her close.

"Equestria will be ours," he whispered.