//------------------------------//
// 456 - Simple Stallions 
// Story: Lateral Movement 
// by Alzrius 
//------------------------------//

“So there I was, the only thing standing between Mama-, I mean, my mother and that ghoul! It tried to scare me off, screeching ‘I’m gonna eat your heart!’ at me, but I just smirked and said, ‘you’re gonna have a hard time with that after I knock your teeth out!’ That made it so mad that it let out a scream and charged at me! But it wasn’t expecting me to bellow a battle-cry and rush to meet it head-on!”

“You were very brave, protecting your mother like that,” smiled Granola Bar warmly. From her spot on the sitting room’s comfortable sofa, she leaned forward, resting her chin on her fore-hooves as she watched Piggy relate his life-or-death struggle against the ghoul he’d encountered. It was quite the performance, as the rotund little stallion leaped and twirled as he relayed the blow-by-blow of the hard-fought struggle. That, she knew, was a testament to just how excited he was to tell her what happened; normally he never moved that fast unless it was to run away from danger or toward food.

The two of them had the sitting room all to themselves now. They’d just been finishing up the delicious meal that Trotsworth had brought them – after several days of apples, the salad, baked sweet potatoes, and biscuits that the old butler had brought them had been beyond delectable – when Piggy had come bounding into the room. “You’re back!” he’d cried, ignoring the groans from Funshine and Slip ‘n’ Slide and the giggle from Hopscotch. 

“It’s about time!” had been the next thing out of his mouth, trundling over to her with a cross look. “I had a really hard time keeping this place together while you were off having fun in Canterlot!” He’d paused then to swipe a biscuit from her plate, his little cheeks puffing out as he devoured it. “You better have brought me something nice!”

For her part, Granola Bar hadn’t answered, unable to do anything but smile happily at seeing Piggy again. It had taken her several seconds to collect herself, and when she did her first act had been to pull the fussy little stallion into a hug. “I really missed you,” she’d murmured, the words coming from the bottom of her heart. That had been the point when her friends had decided to let her and Piggy catch up in private…though she suspected that they simply hadn’t wanted to be in the same room as the fat little earth stallion any longer than they had to, letting Trotsworth escort them to their guest rooms. Not that Granola Bar minded either way, simply happy to see Piggy again.

The little stallion’s petty antics were just as soothing to her now as they had been during their time trying to survive in the ruins of Vanhoover. Back then, the scope of the destruction and the totality of how everything had fallen apart had left her stunned, unable to comprehend how her entire world had collapsed so completely. Even though she hadn’t lost any family the way everypony else had – an only child whose parents were farmers in Equestria’s heartland, she’d come to Vanhoover several years ago live out her dream of starting her own children’s summer camp – the horrors that had happened during and after the flooding had left a deep mark on her. Between the utter terror of being hunted by monsters to the despair of wondering why no one in Equestria had come to rescue them, she’d felt her will to live slipping away day by day.

But Piggy had changed all that. Not because the little stallion was charming or brave or handsome. Rather, it was because of how incredibly petty he was.

That pettiness had saved her.

In a place where death lurked around every corner, where survival was a struggle that all too often required preying on others, and where the most you could hope for was to last another day before the monsters dragged you off to a gruesome and painful end, seeing someone else so completely full of themselves – to the point where he was nearly divorced from reality – had been a complete shock to Granola Bar’s system. That Piggy could be so deluded that he thought he was the leader of their little band, and that his rich mother would just show up and be able to fix everything, had reminded her that there was more to life than just grim survival. Listening to him had made her remember back when she’d been concerned with trivial things, and in so doing given her a glimpse of the better life she hadn’t even realized that she’d started to forget.

Pettiness was a luxury that Granola Bar had lost when Vanhoover had fallen, but Piggy never had.

That, and the little guy was simply adorable. Even though he was quite clearly no longer a foal, he still acted like one, trying to boss everypony else around and throwing tantrums when he couldn’t. It was like watching a little colt put on grownup clothes and prance around, play-acting how they thought an adult should be. It was why she was enjoying listening to him go on about the ghoul he’d fought. She had no doubt he’d actually encountered one and been forced to deal with it – he simply didn’t have the imagination necessary to make up a story like that from nothing – but that he didn’t seem to realize how unbelievable his rendition of it sounded just made it all the more endearing to her.

Though to be fair, he was putting some real effort into the retelling. The portly little pony was already flushed and starting to sweat, breathing heavier as he relayed the tale of his heroic battle. “So my dashing toward it caught it by surprise, and that gave me the advantage!” continued Piggy, rearing up on his hind legs as he pantomimed a mighty struggle, his belly jiggling back and forth like someone was shaking a water balloon. “We went tumbling, and it tried to bite me again! But before it could, I reached out and grabbed a nearby chair leg, and shoved it between its jaws, propping its mouth open! It howled, but it couldn’t stop me as I lifted it overhead and slammed it down onto the desk!”

“And you weren’t scared at all?” prodded Granola Bar, unable to help herself.

“Scared? Hah!” Despite how hard he was breathing, Piggy puffed up more. “When it rolled off the other side of the desk, I just beckoned it and said ‘come get some!’ But it started trying to keep the desk between me and it, worried about what would happen if I got my hooves on it again. But that wasn’t about to stop me! I simply knocked the entire desk into the wall, keeping it pinned while it tried to get away! But it managed to wriggle free, and tried to go after my mother again, and that’s when I got angry!”

Giggling a little, Granola Bar nodded, encouraging him to keep going. From the look of him he’d collapse soon, but Granola Bar wasn’t about to get in the way of his fun. Especially not when it made all her stress of the last several days evaporate. 

The delicious meal had been wonderful, and sleeping in a real bed sounded like paradise, but right now – watching Piggy’s frolicking – Granola Bar couldn’t imagine being anywhere else.





“And so there I am, an angry roc above me, and diamond dogs popping out of the ground below! I couldn’t go up and I couldn’t go down! My wings were already getting tired, and there was no cover anywhere! So you know what I did next?”

“What?! What?!” gasped Feathercap, his eyes wide. Nor was he alone, as Fruit Crunch and Cleansweep were hanging onto every word. Straightlace looked a little more composed, but he was still paying rapt attention to everything her husband said. Only Fiddlesticks seemed to be uninterested in Tryout’s tale, rolling her eyes as she rocked Tiddlywinks in her foreleg.

Although she sympathized with the filly – Tryout was acting as though Cleansweep had been away at summer camp, rather than having been left alone while their home had turned into a wasteland – Feather Duster couldn’t help but smile. Despite the tongue-lashing that mare had given him, Tryout’s joy at seeing Cleansweep had been wholehearted. When he’d seen Cleansweep making a beeline for him, he’d immediately launched himself at her, and the two had embraced in midair. That had been followed by her husband oohing and aahing over their daughter’s pet snake, which had led to Cleansweep hurriedly telling her father about what she had been up to with the rest of her friends (who had also come running, their animals included). 

Of course, Tryout wasn’t a pony to be outdone, and he had immediately launched into his own tale of the hardships he’d been through. Coming from anypony else Feather Duster would have thought his stories would have been exaggerations, but from Tryout…well, they were probably still exaggerations, but that was because he saw everything as an adventure, and so his description of events was always more colorful than how most other ponies would have described them. Feather Duster could still remember the time he’d shooed away a gopher that had made a nest in their cellar; he’d later referred to it as “The Basement Battle with the Big Bad Badger,” telling the story whenever anypony had mentioned something related to pest-control. 

In the case of his current tale, Feather Duster would have guessed that he’d maybe seen one diamond dog – or, more likely, some other burrowing animal – sticking its head aboveground while a falcon or eagle or similarly-sized bird had been flying overhead. That would have been all Tryout needed to envision himself caught between a roc and a hard place, which was a joke he’d made just a few minutes ago. But while the foals had all groaned at the terrible pun, no one had missed how widely they’d grinned while doing so.

In a lot of ways, it was like Tryout was a big foal himself. He’d never lost his sense of childlike wonder at how much excitement there was to be found in even everyday things, to say nothing of his unquenchable thirst for new adventures. It was by far his best quality as a father, since it let him relate so well to their daughter, even if it left something to be desired in a husband.

And in this case, that ‘something’ was the realization of just how perilous their daughter’s relationship with Lex Legis was.

The fact that Lex’s instructions to Cleansweep and her friends had been benign so far meant little to Feather Duster. After all, Lex was still the same pony who had found fault with Princesses Celestia and Luna – the two most benevolent and noble ponies there were – to the point of engaging in violence against them. He used curses on anypony who displeased him. He was in a lurid relationship with two sisters at the same time (as well as a third mare, though rumor had it she’d left him recently). And he was working closely with River Bank…

…who had ordered her to become part of that lurid relationship as well.

“So when the roc dived down to snatch me, I rolled out of the way at the last possible second, and it went straight into the hole in the ground that led to the diamond dogs’ lair! And believe me, you could hear the fur and the feathers starting to fly when that happened! But I knew better than to stick around and find out who won!”

The conclusion of Tryout’s story earned a round of cheers from the children, and by that point even Fiddlesticks was paying attention, though she was shaking her head ruefully. But Tryout was already launching into the tale of what had happened next, keeping them spellbound.

A moment later Feather Duster winced at her choice of terms, knowing that if something happened to make Cleansweep lose Lex Legis’s favor, she’d find herself spellbound in a very different manner.

I need to do this, Feather Duster realized a moment later. River had all but sold her to Lex, giving her to him like a party favor in a maid outfit, but all the horrible threats that the other mare had cowed her with were nothing compared to the danger of Lex Legis’s ire. River had the power to ruin her family’s reputation, but Lex had already proven himself to have the ability and the willingness to do far worse than that. And if he did, it would likely fall on Cleansweep, since she was his student now. That couldn’t be allowed to happen.

Tryout wouldn’t be any help, Feather Duster knew. He’d come up with some sort of elaborate scheme to either run or fight, and she felt certain that neither would work. Not against the kind of power that Lex could bring to bear. Or worse, Tryout might encourage Cleansweep to keep studying under Lex anyway, seeing the danger as a source of excitement rather than as something that their daughter needed to be protected from. While that wouldn’t upset Lex, it wouldn’t discourage him from punishing Cleansweep if she upset him somehow. The only thing that had even the slightest chance of that…

Would be if he was sleeping with his student’s mother.

There was no guarantee that would work, of course. But from what Feather Duster had seen, Lex had, if not genuine affection for the girls he took to bed, then at least consideration for them; certainly, he seemed to indulge that ill-tempered mare Aria quite a bit more than other ponies. If worse came to worst, that might make all the difference if she needed to beg him to spare her daughter. At the very least, she couldn’t afford not to try.

Tonight, she decided, realizing that she’d resolved herself. She’d been putting this off for as long as possible, longer than she should have, but Tryout’s return had put an end to that. It has to be tonight. She wasn’t sure how Lex felt about mares who were already mothers, but she doubted her appeal would be enhanced if he thought she’d renewed her physical relationship with her husband.

Feather Duster’s eyes slid back over to Tryout, watching as he and the foals shared a laugh over some anecdote of his, and silently apologized to him. Even though she’d thought she was a widow until earlier that afternoon, she still felt awful about what she was going to do to him now. But it had to be done.

For their daughter’s sake.