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// 138 - Locked Out 
// Story: Lateral Movement 
// by Alzrius 
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Lex couldn’t help but feel the corners of his mouth turn upward ever so slightly as he watched everypony finish preparing to leave.

Seeing his response to criminality had apparently encouraged everyone even more than he’d dared to hope; several times in the last few minutes he’d given various ponies instructions, and they’d immediately rushed to fulfill them with all possible haste. Each time it happened he felt a rush of achievement, certain that their eagerness to carry out his directions was both a demonstration of faith in his guidance as well as a statement of gratitude for all he’d done for them. At first he’d pushed those feelings away, finding them to be self-indulgent, but then he’d remembered what Sonata had said earlier in the day about engaging with the ponies that he was responsible for – and how well his earlier experiment had worked when he’d spoken with everyone at the party, before the newcomers had arrived – and he’d reluctantly allowed himself to enjoy the resulting sense of satisfaction. Now he was glad he had.

For the first time in a while, he felt like he’d genuinely contributed something towards the betterment of his fellow ponies’ community. Slaying monsters was a self-evident necessity, of course, but dealing with imminent threats was the absolute lowest level of leadership. After all, anyone could intuitively understand that hostile creatures and dangerous situations needed to be dealt with; actually governing consisted of so much more, such as reinforcing public order by punishing those who transgressed it.

Admittedly, meting out criminal justice was only a minor aspect of the great society he envisioned, but at least now he was making some sort of progress toward it, rather than simply trying to staunch the ongoing damage afflicting Vanhoover. After being unable to implement any long-term policies with regard to Tall Tale, and needing to spend so much time fighting hordes of monsters – to say nothing of being unable to save Pillowcase’s life – it felt good to actually accomplish something, and it had left him hungry for more. 

I need to work harder, he decided. There’s still so much more good that I can do for everypony…even that criminal, Fencer. The thought made him glance over at where a pair of medical ponies were gently ushering her into the cage that C. Shell’s crew had thrown together. 

As he watched, silently chastising himself for using her old name, they gingerly helped Garden inside, and she almost collapsed onto the blanket that lay on the floor, panting with the effort of straining her curse-weakened muscles. One of the medical ponies said something, probably asking her if she needed anything, and Garden silently shook her head in reply. In response, the pony that had spoken closed the cage’s door, and then adjusted the latch to seal it…causing the smile to immediately drop from Lex’s face. He scanned the crowd, and a moment later found the pony he was looking for. “C. Shells!” he barked, causing the mare in question to jump as she heard him call her name.

Giving a visible gulp, she crept towards him, and Lex saw more than a few ponies stop what they were doing to watch her approach him. The spectacle was enough to make him frown in confusion, but he put it out of his mind as she reached him. “Yeah?” she asked, taking a deep breath.

Lex pointed at Fen-, at where Garden was imprisoned. “Her cage is only sealed with a latch. I wanted you to use something more secure.”

C. Shells licked her lips and swallowed before replying. “That was the best we were able to do. We have some padlocks, but none that were big enough to fit around the bars, so we jury-rigged the latch together.” She paused for a moment, then added. “The spaces between the bars are thin enough that she won’t be able to get her hoof through to get at it.”

“An external latch won’t be any kind of barrier to something that tries to get at her,” replied Lex disapprovingly.

Now it was C. Shell’s turn to look confused. “Huh? Wait, I thought this was supposed to be some kind of…I don’t know, makeshift prison cell. Are you saying you wanted this built to protect her?” There were more ponies looking at them now, and almost all activity had come to a stop as they watched the exchange.

Lex huffed, fighting down the familiar irritation that came with having to explain something he felt was obvious. “We’re about to venture out into a city that’s still infested with ghouls, to confront a group of ponies that will, according to what I’ve been told, meet us with hostility. She,” he pointed at Garden, “is completely unable to defend herself in her current state. A wooden cage might not be much of a barrier if something attacks her, but it’s far and away better than nothing, something that won’t be true if an assailant can simply unlatch the door.”

C. Shells just stared at him for a moment, caught completely by surprise, until she managed to recover her poise. “Okay, um…we could do some quick work on it and move the latch inside. That way she’d be able-”

“No,” interrupted Lex. “I don’t want her to be able to leave at will. Confinement might not be part of her sentence, but I don’t trust her not to do something stupid like fleeing into the city while we’re moving out.” He didn’t think that was likely, of course; Garden had to know that going out alone in her current state would be utterly suicidal. But her conduct up until now had driven home that she was dangerously unpredictable, and he wasn’t going to take any chances. After all, his placing those debilitating curses on her meant that he had a heightened duty of care to her while she labored under them. Since he hadn’t appointed any sort of correctional official to see to her rehabilitation, her well-being was his responsibility.

“In that case, a lock is definitely what you need,” C. Shells admitted. “We’ll need a little bit of time, but we can go adjust it so that one of our padlocks fits.”

“Don’t bother,” answered Lex as he turned away from her. “I’ll do it myself.”

He withdrew a gemstone from his bag as he approached the cage, idly noting the way Garden shrank away from him as he got closer to her. Embedding a spell in a gemstone took enough time and effort that he didn’t like to use them idly, but it was already late afternoon; any further delays would make it difficult for them to reach the edge of the city by nightfall, and Lex had no intention of loitering here another night. If he had to expend a minor resource to avoid another delay, then it was well worth it.

Reaching the cage, Lex placed a hoof on it. Telekinetically raising the gemstone – a small peridot – to eye-level and began to chant. As he released the spell, the peridot crumbled away to nothing, but when Lex removed his hoof from the cage there was a large padlock around the edge of the door, keeping it securely closed. Heedless of the hushed murmurings that were now going on around him, Lex eyed the magically-created lock for a moment before deciding that it would have to do. He would have preferred to have channeled additional magic into it just to be safe, but even if he hadn’t already pushed what his body could handle by enhancing the curses he’d laid on Garden, that wouldn’t have been possible. Once a spell had been stored in a gemstone, it was externalized, and so any additional magic he pulled in through his body wouldn’t be able to reach it.

“Lex?” 

C. Shell’s voice pulled him out of his thoughts, and he glanced over at her disinterestedly. Now that he’d taken care of this altogether minor issue, he was ready to move on to other things. “What?”

She flinched a little at the question, and again he frowned at her odd behavior. “Um, I’m sure you’ve thought of this already, but that lock…” She trailed off for a moment, but then seemed to get over whatever was holding her back. “It has a keyhole, but I didn’t see any key when you made it.”

“It doesn’t require one,” answered Lex flatly. Now that he’d confirmed that her question was trivial, he let himself start to concentrate on other things as he spoke, barely paying attention to her. “The lock is a product of my magic, so it will open when I touch it and close when I release it. The only reason it has a keyhole at all is because the spell’s framework was modeled off of normal locking mechanisms.”

“Oh.” Lex heard the half-hearted response from C. Shells, and it was enough – in conjunction with how oddly timid she’d been acting – for him to wonder what was going on with her. Usually he’d ask Sonata what was going on with somepony, but she wasn’t around at the moment, which…come to think of it, he hadn’t seen her since he’d finished handing down Garden’s sentence. Where was she?





“But you gotta admit,” pressed Sonata, trying to keep the pleading tone out of her voice, “Lex totes did a terrific job saving everybod-, er, everypony. Like, a whole buncha times.”

“I know,” answered Scrubby uncomfortably, “but he just…”

He hesitated, giving her a worried look, and Sonata immediately spoke up. “Seriously, I won’t get upset by whatever you say about Lex. Trust me, I’ve, like, heard it all before.”

“And you won’t tell him?”

Sonata shook her head. “Cross my heart, hope to something something cupcake in my eye,” she assured him, using that half-remembered rhyme she’d heard Pinkie say a couple of times.

“Er, okay…” Pausing to glance around nervously – just because they were in the far corner of the warehouse didn’t mean they couldn’t be overheard – Scrubby continued in a low voice. “The way he looked when he was punishing that mare…it was like he was enjoying it! I mean, she looked so sad and heartbroken, but he was smiling while he cursed her!” He shivered at the memory. “It made me wonder, you know? What if he-, I’m just saying, what if he killed all those monsters because he just likes doing things like that? He sure doesn’t seem interested in making friends, so I wasn’t sure what to think before, but now I’m wondering if he’s doing all of this because he gets a kick out of hurting things and knows that monsters and criminals are acceptable targets.”

Sonata bit her lip. In the last couple of minutes, she’d spoken with three other ponies to try and get a sense of just how badly Lex had screwed up his image, hoping against hope that it wasn’t as bad as it had looked to her. But no, it had turned out to be exactly that bad, or maybe even a little worse; Scrubby hadn’t been the first pony to wonder if Lex had been pleased to hurt such an obviously-grieving mare. This is going to be totes hard to fix, she knew. But she had to try. “You know that’s not true,” she said slowly. “Lex healed you after those fish-monster-thingies hurt you, remember? And if he liked hurting things, he totes wouldn’t have worried so much about everyone staying safe when we were all out there fighting together.”

“All I know is, he keeps going on about how this is ‘his’ city, but after what I just saw I know I wouldn’t want to live here if he’s in charge,” retorted Scrubby with another nervous glance around. “Listen, I’m gonna go back. I don’t really want him wondering why I’m having secret meetings with his girl.” Sonata nodded, but he was already trotting back, leaving her to hang her head and sigh.

Sonata knew that, underneath all of his scowly grumpiness, Lex adored her more than anyone else ever could. That was what had caused her to fall in love with him, after all, and it was because she loved him so much that she wanted him to be adored too. But in that regard Lex was his own worst enemy, since he didn’t seem to understand why everything he did made people uncomfortable. That was why she’d volunteered to help him out, and sure enough they’d started to make some progress. But now they were back to square one, and turning this around was going to be even harder than before.

I won’t let him tell me not to help out again, she decided, but that’s not gonna fix things right now. If everypony lost faith in him now, Sonata knew Lex could kiss his dreams of ruling Vanhoover bye-bye. Worse, if the ponies here went back to Tall Tale and started telling everypony there about what had happened with Fencer (whoops, I mean Garden, she reminded herself), he might lose that city too. I, like, totes need to do something! But what? After all, she’d already sang and danced a whole bunch before, but everypony was still turning away from Lex now, so clearly that wasn’t enough. 

So what would be? 

The last few minutes had shown her that trying to talk people down wasn’t a promising solution. And Lex would completely blow his stack if she tried to enchant everyone. But if entertainment wasn’t enough, reason didn’t work, and magic wasn’t an option, then what was left?

She didn’t know, but maybe there was someone else who would…