"Lamont! LAMONT!"
Lamont heard his father's distinct throaty yell resonating from the den. Ever fleet of foot, he practically vaulted over piles of junk as he quickly made his way to the living room, making sure to grab the Louisville slugger which Fred, his dad, had been using as a makeshift door prop. He and his ailing father lived in a rundown neighborhood in Watts, and recently there had been a streak of break-ins, effecting even the Sanford household. They didn't have much, but a thief would take whatever he thought he could make a buck off of; last week someone had stolen the planters right off the window sills, snatched them clean off.
"Dad!!" Lamont juked his way around the mountains of garbage which littered the floor, nearly tripping over an old rusty bumper that had been stripped off a Beamer. Fred was standing at the window, his old service rifle held tightly across his chest. "Dad, what's going on?! Do I need to call the cops?!"
"No," the feisty old man said, "call animal control! There's a gorilla romping around in the backyard." Fred pulled back the curtain just a sliver and brandished his gun over his head like a Tusken Raider in an attempt to frighten the beast. "Y'all get the hell out of here! We don't sell any bananas here; the grocer is three doors down, you hear?"
"Dad..." Lamont gave his father an incredulous look as he made his way over to the window, his baseball bat now hanging limply at his side. Lamont scanned the yard carefully, not seeing any gorilla. "I don't see any gorillas out there. Have you been taking your medication like you're supposed t--" On the periphery of his vision, he saw someone making their way around the side of the house. "Somebody's out there!"
"I know 'someone' is out there, you big dummy!" Fred struck Lamont over the head with the stock of his rifle, sending a tremor of pain through his head.
"OW!" Lamont nursed his head with one hand, and swatted at the crotchety old man with the other. "Why the heck did you do that, dad?! That really hurt!"
"You were being a dummy, dummy! And besides, you know that cotton-ball on your head took the brunt of that, Baa-Baa Black Sheep."
"Whatever. I'm going to go out there and see who it is, ok?" Lamont unlatched the front door, and poked his head out into the yard. "Hey," Lamont spoke confidently, "we know you're out here! Come on out or we'll call the cops!"
Fred's palm met his face, making an audible smack. "I coulda done that, son! Get out there, and show them the Sanford family isn't one to be messed with!"
Lamont strode out into the yard, his bat poised to knock someone's block off. He didn't see anybody in the yard, but he had seen someone walk around the side of the house. Hugging the vinyl siding, Lamont sidled his way through the space between the house and the dividing wall. It would have been the perfect place to hide for a thief, dark and narrow. He came to the end of the walk space, but saw no one hiding there; all the commotion must have scared off whoever had been prowling in their yard.
"I didn't find anyone." Lamont wiped his feet on the mat, not that a little dirt would be noticeable anyhow in the heaps of rubbish. "We really need to clean this place up, dad. I nearly tripped myself up trying to get in here. Imagine if I'd been hurt and there really was a burglar outside, a more brazen one."
"Lamont, if you didn't pile up all this junk like this, we wouldn't have this problem! All this trash, it's a safety hazard for a man of my advanced years. I can't believe you'd let your own father breathe in all these noxious fumes and stumble his way through this crap like some kind of damned minefield; you're giving me flashbacks of the Battle of Lys, boy!"
Oh boy, Fred was about to tell one of his old World War I fish tales.
"Oh hush! You know you never made it out of ROTC! I tried to clean up this mess last week but you won't let me throw out any of this junk, you old goat!"
"Old?!" Fred gritted his teeth and pumped his fists angrily. He looked like one of the Munchkins from the Wizard of Oz with his short stature and his potbelly. "Boy, you can't throw out any of these priceless antiques! This is our livelihood!"
Lamont scanned the trash heap, picking up an old, rusted drinking flask as a reference. "This is our livelihood? No one is going to want this!"
"They might if they're a flask connoisseur."
Lamont gave the old man a deadpan stare. "How many times has someone come in here looking for a barely functional flask?" He tossed the thing lazily back into the heap.
"Today might be the day! Now pick that up, boy!" Fred rebuked his poor son by poking him in the side repeatedly with the butt of the rifle that he was still holding. "And once you do that, clean up this damned mess!"
"Alright, alright! But I'm going to need your help too. There's too much junk for just me to haul off."
"Oh, I would, son, but I can't on account of my arthritis." Fred held one of his old,veiny hands uncomfortably close to Lamont's face. "Do you see it, boy? Do you see the arthritis?" It looked normal to him, as normal as an old couch potato's hand could be.
"I don't see anything, dad."
Offended that Lamont wasn't able to see the inflammation in his joints, Fred walloped him again over the head with the gun.
"FRED SANFORD," a voice bellowed over the old man's shoulder, "the good Lord ought to strike you down!" It was Lamont's Aunt Esther, Fred's sister-in-law, popping in for a surprise visit. "Behold, children are a heritage from the Lord, the fruit of the womb a reward! Do you know where that's from, you heathen?"
Fred, turning on his heels, wincing at the sight of Esther.
"See! What did I tell you Lamont? I told you there was a gorilla prowling around in the backyard!"
Lamont shook his head solemnly. "Hey Auntie." Lamont hugged Esther's neck.
"Monkey see, monkey do. Do you know where that's from, Esther?"
Esther bowed her lips up angrily at Fred. "Why are you so mean and crusty?"
"Yeah, I'm crusty." Fred threw his hands up in irritation. "Speaking of crust, you got some on your upper lip. Oh wait. That's just your mustache."
Lamont buried his face in his hands, trying to suppress the embarrassment swelling up from within. His skin was as brown as a Hershey Kiss, but he could feel his cheeks burning a fiery red. Sometimes he couldn't believe the amount of lip that came out of such a sweet looking old man. Fred mistook his look as one of mirth:
"That was a good one, wasn't it Lamont?"
Ignoring his father's continued impudence, Lamont went to the kitchen to fetch a chair for his aunt. She was encumbered with several black trash bags filled with assorted items. Esther volunteered at the local church as a distributor of goods for the needy in the community, so surely those bags were filled with heavy canned goods and the likes.
"Here you go, Aunt Esther." Lamont set a tarnished, but sturdy chair down before his elderly aunt. "What brings you out here?"
Before Esther could sit down, Fred had waddled his way over to the chair and taken it for himself.
"Thank you, son. Thank you."
"Oh, I'm just distributing donations to the poor; there was something mixed in with one of these bags here that wasn't food or clothes, so I thought I'd let y'all have it. Maybe you can sell it or something. It looks valuable."
Fred took a quick swig from a bottle of gin, holding a finger up in protest. "That's real nice of you to think of us Mr. Kong, but ain't you just said that these donations are for the poor?"
"What do you think you are, you old fish-eyed buzzard?" Esther dropped the bags to the floor and began rummaging around in them. "It's an old music box or something, pretty little thing," she said as she struggled to find the thing, "I don't think you would have any problem selling it, unlike all the rest of the junk around here."
"Don't call any of my stuff junk, Monkey Lips; these are priceless antiques." Fred pulled out an old lightbulb from the junk pile at his foot. "This was one of Einstein's prototype lightbulbs-"
"Pops, I think you mean Edison."
"-quiet down now, Lamont. Here you go, son; screw that in for old Esther."
Lamont took the old bulb and screwed it into the fixture above him. Flipping the switch caused the thing to emit the most pitiful light that any bulb had probably ever output. The thing provided three straight seconds of dim glow before fizzling out forever. Esther seemed unimpressed by the hardly dazzling light-show.
"That thing was pitiful, but you're still the oldest and dullest thing in this whole house." Finally, Esther produced an old, imitation gold leaf music box. It was encrusted with some sort of cheap looking blue resin. Lamont and Fred had been in the junk business long enough to spot something so obviously fake. "Here, Lamont. I think it's real gold!"
"I don't think so," Lamont said skeptically, taking the thing in his hands. "Holy cow!"
"What?!" Fred nearly jumped out of his seat at his son's abrupt exclamation. "What is it son?!"
"I think this might be real, dad. The gold has the right weight to it...and I think this blue stuff might be lapis-lazuli. Dad, this could be worth a lot of money!"
"What?!" Fred brought his trembling hand up to his chest. "How much are we talking here, son?!"
"Thousands, if its real."
"You hear that?" Fred attempted to steady hisself with the support of the chair, but couldn't seem to grip it in his excitement. "I'M COMING, ELIZABETH!"
Fred nearly fainted, his heart pounding like a war-drum. Lamont grabbed Fred by the arm and guided him back to his seat. Lamont still had his doubts, but if this thing were real, it might be a game-changer for he and his father. It had yet to be authenticated but the excitement in the air was palpable, Fred practically exuding lust in the way he eyed the little box.
"Esther," Fred said, tears welling in his tired eyes, "I take back all the mean things I ever said about you. You're the cutest monkey I've ever seen, and that's the honest to God truth."
Esther narrowed her eyes at the old man's back-handed compliment. She was starting to wish that she hadn't brought the thing by for the old geezer, and she wouldn't have, if it hadn't been for the sake of her nephew. She'd go to the grave never knowing what her sister Elizabeth could have possibly seen in Fred. Grabbing her bags, Esther stormed out of the house.
"Well," Lamont said, "it's certainly nice, but it will be even nicer if it still plays. This thing looks ancient, and I'm willing to bet the interior mechanisms haven't held up quite as nicely as the outside. Let's try it out shall we?"
Lamont opened the box and saw what he assumed was the revolving figure of a horse, but couldn't find any sign of a key or handle to make the thing function. "I don't see any way to make it play." Lamont turned the thing carefully in his hands, looking for something, anything, that might make the old box spring to life with tinkling music.
"Pass it here, son."
Lamont handed the music box to his father, who studied it intently, running his old and feeble fingers over its every inch. Fred didn't know anything about music boxes, but he knew a lot about junk, and this music box, the way he saw it, was just a fancy piece of junk. Fred went to hold the hinged top of the box open, scanning for the key.
*Thud*
The music box hit the hardwood floor with a considerable force, the figurine equine dislodged from its little rotating pedestal. The gold parts had been dented and the lapis lazuli had crumbled on impact. The value of the piece had plummeted significantly due to Fred's slippery fingers.
"Dammit," Fred berated himself, "I don't know what happened, son. My fingers wouldn't grip it right." He could feel his face flushing red with embarrassment. Suddenly he felt very hot, and his clothes felt constricting as he fidgeted nervously in the chair.
"Hold on," Lamont said, a noticeably exasperated tinge to his voice, "I'll go get a broom."
"You ain't mad are you, son? I didn't mean to break it!"
Lamont said nothing as he delved into the kitchen pantry for a broom. He knew it was an accident but his father had chosen a hell of a moment to have one. Fred being childish wasn't anything new, but Fred breaking a potentially priceless antique was. Sometimes Lamont just wished his father was capable of acting like the adult he was.
Lamont produced a broom and dustpan to his father. "Clean this mess up while I get to work on the other messes around here..." Lamont felt really sour right about then; they'd held a fortune in their hands and now that same fortune was in pieces all over the floor.
Not thrilled by the sound of having to work, Fred spit out a mouthful of gin and clutched his chest. He was a bit of a drama queen, famous in some circles for his overly dramatic 'Big One' routine, a macabre joke in which he would pretend to be dying from a failed heart.
"Oh! It's the big one! I'm coming Elizabeth! My own son, my own flesh and blood, is trying to work me to an early grave!"
He stood up and went through the usual motions of one of his feigned heart-attacks: the overly dramatized speeches, the exaggerated convulsing, the foaming at the mouth.
Suddenly, the charade was broken by the violent contortion of his facial muscles. The look on his face could only be described as pure pain as he felt a stabbing pang in his chest.
Fred reached helplessly for Lamont's pants leg, but couldn't quite manage to grasp it. Grabbing a fistful of air, he fell forward onto his stomach. Lamont stared on unimpressed. He'd seen Fred preform the routine a hundred times...on any given week. Fred laid very still, not making a peep of noise. His silence was out of character; he'd never get this elaborate over a joke. Lamont knew his father preferred cheap laughs.
"Come on, dad. You had your fun, but you're not fooling anyone. Get up right now and help me clean up this mess."
...
"Dad, this isn't funny anymore," Lamont persisted, rolling his father onto his back, "get your crazy ass up off the floor!"
...
"Please! Get up!"
Either Fred had become a master at playing possum or he really did just have the 'Big One'. Lamont was frantic; he leaned over and held his ear to Fred's heart. Nothing.
Tears began to well in his eyes as he began compressing his father's chest. He hoped for a miracle.
As Lamont attempted to resuscitate his father, the broken bits of music box behind him burned a fiery red. An intense heat permeated the room, singeing the hair on Lamont's hair, however he was too absorbed to notice. Suddenly, the field of energy stemming from the box imploded, collapsing in on Lamont and Fred's seemingly dead body. Like rag dolls, they were flung into the uncertain void of the multiverse.
---
Scootaloo held her hooves firmly against her eyes as per Apple Bloom's request, eagerly awaiting her present. It was her birthday and no one had ever thrown such a to- do for her, or any to-do at all actually. Before forming the Cutie Mark Crusaders with Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle, Scootaloo had once celebrated all her birthdays by herself, if such a thing can even be called a celebration. To have someone recognize her was...flattering. For a moment she felt she knew what it might be like to be her idol Rainbow Dash with all eyes on her. Granted, that wasn't very many.
"A'right now, y'all can look," Apple Bloom said with a fillyish giddiness.
Scootaloo brought her hooves away from her eyes and suppressed the urge to vomit at what she saw. Apple Bloom and Sweetie Belle had taken her scooter without her knowing and applied a custom paint-job. The deck was painted over with crude hieroglyphics that appeared to tell the story of the assemblage and adventures of the Cutie Mark Crusaders, while every other inch of the thing was covered in rhinestones. It appeared as if a particularly tacky caveman had decided to vandalize it.
"I bedazzled it," Sweetie boasted excitedly. "Do you like it?"
"Yeah...I love it," Scootaloo fibbed, mustering the most enthusiastic inflection she could. "You guys did a really..uh...good job? It's a wonder you didn't get a cutie mark for scooter customization."
The look in Scootaloo's eyes betrayed her words. Her previously awesome scooter's swag had been supplemented with shi-- doody. She would've ranked it among the worst gifts she'd ever received, but no one had ever given her anything. Scootaloo got on the scooter and rode it around in a circle for a bit to reinforce how 'happy' she was to receive this 'wonderful' gift.
"It rides good gals. I think I'll go ride it around town a bit, ya'know, to show it off. I hate to get my gift and run but I'm so eager to show everypony."
Scootaloo started making her way towards the tree line of the Everfree Forest with her present in tow. Maybe she could offload it in a thicket without anypony from town
seeing her riding the thing. This scooter was seriously uncool; if she was seen with it in public she'd lose what little dignity she had, especially if Rainbow Dash were to see it.
"Uh, Scoots? Are ya ok?" Apple Bloom said, strolling beside Scootaloo. "I thought y'all were going to take it into town where everyone could see what a good job Sweetie and I did."
"I am! That's where I'm going right now!"
"But you're walking towards the forest, not town."
"I'm...uh...taking the scenic route?" Scootaloo had nothing. "I want to see how it will do off the beaten trail, ya'know?"
"Oh!" Apple Bloom's eyes lit up in understanding. "Ok, I hear ya! We'll see you back in town then?"
"Yep," Scootaloo continued, "I'll being riding this baby right down Mane Street." She forced a smile that was closer in resemblance to a cringe. "Just give me a moment to break her in, ok?"
Satisfied with Scootaloo's answer, Apple Bloom turned on her hooves and bounded off into town with Sweetie Belle. Scootaloo would have to come up with a convincing excuse for having 'lost' her scooter within five minutes of getting it back, but she'd cross that bridge when she came to it. Right now her sole priority was to be rid of this gag inducing set of wheels.
Scootaloo walked a little beyond the decrepit warning sign that denoted the Everfree Forest as a 'supernatural' and 'wicked' place, yadda, yadda, yadda. Disregarding another warning to 'stay out' and 'turn back' printed in blocky black letters, Scootaloo scanned the trees for a space to chuck her ride. She wanted to stow the scooter away deep enough in the woods that nopony would have a chance of finding it, even accidentally. Veering off the trodden path, Scootaloo brushed aside briars and hanging limbs as she made her way into a marshy patch of land.
Her scooter now buried in a squishy mud tomb, Scootaloo was formulating a convincing story when something in her periphery vision gave her reason for pause. Sprawled on the ground lay what looked like an old, brown burlap sack. Maybe somepony else had decided to use the same hiding spot as her? Curiosity getting the better of her, Scootaloo descended on the unidentified, crumpled mass. Possible danger was an afterthought; in her head, Scootaloo was ten feet tall and pure muscle. Suffice to say, she'd outgrown fillyish fears long ago.