HiE - A Hollow in Equestria

by Charlie_K

Chapter One Hundred Thirty One

Chapter One Hundred Thirty One

Brick Wall entered the palace gym, sans his armor and clutching his workout bag in his teeth, before promptly dropping the satchel on the floor.

"I definitely need to clean that thing one of these days," he muttered to himself.

It wasn't the first time he'd reminded himself of that particular need. And it probably wouldn't be the last time either before he finally followed through with it and got it done. But every time he'd been in a position to do it, something always came up that needed his attention more.

But right now that was neither here nor there. His shift was over for the day, and all he wanted to do was relax and unwind. Lift a few weights, maybe take a light jog on the treadmill, anything to stretch his tired muscles and work out some of the kinks that came from his usual daily duties. And at the moment he had the gym to himself.

Lifting weights seemed like the best place to start... up until he realized that he wasn't actually alone and didn't quite have the gym all to himself. Somepony else had apparently gotten the same idea as him and was currently grunting while doing bench presses.

It was really none of his business, but he had nothing better to do at the moment and decided to investigate out of curiosity. He could always do his own workout afterwards.

One quick glance at the cutie mark of crossed spears over a shield was enough to tell him it was his fellow guard and Lieutenant, Piercing Lance, who was currently grunting and making all manner of commotion through tightly gritted teeth, and all but pinned underneath a barbell while straining with both forelegs and unicorn magic simultaneously in an effort to lift the weight back up.

He glanced at the weights currently on the bar, and had to do a double take at the embossed figures against the red background paint he was reading. Were those numbers really accurate?

"Lance, isn't that a bit much weight for you?"

"That-" Lance grunted, "that's the idea. More weight, more strength."

Through no small effort the bar was forced back up as high as Lance's legs could stretch, before they were shakily brought back down again.

Brick observed as another rep was performed, by a pony who obviously wasn't physically cut out for that amount of weight, but refused to acknowledge such facts for themselves.

"You really should be using a spotter, you know?" he asked.

Lance merely grunted and stubbornly pushed the weights back up yet again as high as forelegs would allow, powered by pure spite alone at this point.

Brick kept his mouth shut as he observed another rep being performed, figuring that the grunted commotion, trembling hind legs, and flickering horn were going to be the extent of communication for the foreseeable future, as the bar sank steadily lower on trembling forelegs, until it was dangerously close to resting against throat fur.

"Wall-" Lance grunted/gasped in strained desperation with eyes that were threatening to bulge, "help..."

Brick said nothing, simply reaching over with a single hoof to take hold of the bar in the middle between Lance's hooves. With a simple grunt, he easily lifted the obscene amount of weight -by unicorn standards- up off his fellow guard and return it to its resting brackets on the bench before any permanent physical injury could occur.

Lance merely laid there, limbs splayed out, physically exhausted and gasping for air at this point, trying to recover from what could've turned into a near-death experience, unable to sit up and otherwise move from the padded rest of the bench's back.

"You alright?" Brick asked.

Lance managed a weak nod in between gasps that were slowly dying down and being replaced by normal breathing.

"I know it's none of my business," Brick started as he located Lance's workout towel on the floor next to the bench and passed it over. "But do you wanna tell me why you're trying to kill yourself with what's almost twice your body weight?"

Lance welcomed the towel being offered, and groaned while slowly trying to sit up on the bench, before falling back down on it again, too exhausted for anymore physical activity at the moment.

"I need to get stronger. Physically and magically."

"Okay," Brick replied slowly. "Where did this come from all of the sudden?"

"The Espada beat a scorpio into submission the other day. With his bare fists," Lance stated while toweling off with all the strength that exhausted muscles could spare, which was basically none whatsoever as the towel just continued to lay there uselessly. "The chatter is all over the palace, directly from those yetis the palace is playing host to."

"So I've heard," Brick replied. Although the iteration he'd heard had been a bit different, and involved something along the lines of breaking the beast's stinger right off of its tail. "And you think you can lift enough weight, to get to the point of being able to do the same thing?"

"Sweet Tartarus no!" Lance stated. "I don't have a chance of rivaling that amount of strength, none of us do. That's the problem."

Brick didn't immediately respond, instead waiting to see where this was going to go if he simply kept his mouth shut, and his input out.

"It's... scary, y'know? Scary to think about how something with that much strength is just freely walking amongst us at the palace. Scary to think of just how drastic the gap between us really is. Scary to think about how easily it could wipe us all out if it ever turned against us, and there wouldn't be a thing any of us could do about it.

"Discord, we can at least kind of get a bead on and figure out. But the Espada is a whole different and unreadable story. I know Princess Celestia trusts him, but just being around that thing makes me feel uneasy. Have you ever been in the same room together?"

"I've never had the pleasure," Brick commented.

"Well then lemme tell you, it's a pretty harrowing experience. Every one of your instincts is tripping, signalling there's danger in the vicinity, and telling you to run like your life is in danger. And it's all coming directly from him, like his very presence is enough to make the air itself retreat in fear of being around him.

"And now we hear that he, the Espada, physically beat a freakin' constellation beast when he rescued the yetis and that unicorn from the wasteland? We knew he was stronger than us, but that strong!? How're we supposed to be at peace with such a drastic disparity in our strength levels being the case? How're we supposed to just go on with our day, knowing that is a thing?"

"... The same way we're expected to go on with our day, knowing about all the other things that could end Equestria as we know it," Brick replied.

Lance slowly managed to look up at him in response.

"See, this is why you scored higher on the exam than I did."

Brick didn't say anything in response, but he was able to understand Lance's concerns well enough. He'd even modified his own workout routine in response to such facts coming to light, but not to the drastic degree that Lance had apparently been striving for. He'd preferred to instead take the gradual approach to building up physical strength through incremental increases in weight, rather than all at once.

Not that he had any misguided belief that it would actually amount to much, other than making him feel a bit better about everything.

Truth be told, he'd been uncomfortable ever since the changeling invasion. He didn't know a guard who hadn't seen or otherwise heard about the Espada slapping Princess Celestia around in aerial combat like she was nothing to him. How something could be so scrawny, yet so powerful, was a complete mystery to him. He didn't even look like he had the muscle mass of a skinny teenager, and yet he could hit hard enough that not even an alicorn could keep up with him.

Yes. It was an uncomfortable thing to think about. And it made him thank Faust every single day that the Espada was on their side. If they were ever to be enemies then there was no hope for any of them; just like if the dragon lands went and decided to launch a full scale invasion on them.

By now Lance had finally managed to scrape together just enough physical strength to sit back up on the bench without any outside assistance, and looked about ready to topple back over again if met by something as little as the breeze from a stray wing flap of a pegasus.

"Leaving that particular worry aside, we really need to shape up around here, and better ourselves if we're going to be worth anything. We're the freakin' Royal Guard for crying out loud! We can't afford to be seen as useless, just because the Espada is working for our boss. Him storming into the wasteland to rescue ponies in need while we all sit around and keep watch here, he's making us look pretty much like a bunch of union hires or something. Like he's the one doing the actual work while we're nothing but a bunch of foals playing soldier."

"Maybe so, but that's a different problem, and better reserved for another day," Brick noted, opting to change the subject to something that was less stressful to think about than their own shortcomings in effectiveness. "Right now, you look like you could use a hot shower, a cool drink, and a few hours of rest."

"Yeah..." Lance mumbled. "But I'm too weak to walk there right now. I think I'll just stay here and marinate in my own juices for a while until I'm a little less dead."

Brick just shook his head and gave Lance a reassuring pat on the back, doing his best to ensure he didn't deliver enough force to disrupt the delicate equilibrium that was preventing a faceplanting on the floor from occurring.

"C'mon, I'll help get you there and get washed up," he offered.

Lance grunted in response, but made no effort to push him away, or otherwise reject the offer of assistance. That would take physical strength and ungratefulness that simply wasn't present right now. Right now all that was possessed was way too much exhaustion to resist being moved.

"So," Brick spoke up as he went about gently helping lance up off the bench and into a standing position. "How many reps did you manage?"

"Twenty nine," Lance grunted while trying to remain physically upright on forelegs that felt too shaky to satisfy what was being demanded of them. "It would've been thirty, but..."

"Yeah," Brick replied as he looked Lance over. Even just standing up at this point looked like it was too physically taxing after that workout session. Even talking looked physically taxing. Walking the whole way would definitely be out of the question.

He knew that there was only one thing he really could do in this situation as he looked over his coworker's trembling frame, and he proceeded to do just that.

He crouched down and proceeded to thrust his head and neck underneath's Lance's sweaty barrel, over the objections about having his cold nose coming so close to touching sensitive junk that might've been in the path of travel, before easily barrel-lifting and hoisting Lance's smaller frame up onto his own own back, before standing up to walk to the showers himself, despite the immediate squawk of protest at being treated like a sack of flour and subjected to all the indignity that went right along with it.

"What a disgrace. A royal guard having to be carried around after being winded by a little exercise," Lance grumbled in protest, but made little effort to try and climb back down. "Stupid obscene earth pony strength making me look like a pushover. So help me, Wall, I'm going to keep lifting weights until the day when I can bench press you. And without my magic!"

"Yeah, yeah, I love you too," Brick replied as he trotted along, knowing that was going to be a very long road ahead.

Lance merely grunted while continuing to hang limply, perpendicularly across Brick's back on the way to the showers, knowing it was pointless to do anything but be grateful for the assistance, while falling into the rhythmic -borderline soothing- beat of his trotting hooves against the palace floor.

"Thanks, big guy..."

Author's Note:

So funny story time. Originally this was going to be tacked onto the end of the previous chapter. But time constraints and a poorly-timed case of the flu had other ideas and didn't make that possible. And at the moment my brain is so foggy I can't make the transition between this scene and the next one feel smooth and organic enough, to come off as anything but choppy and disjointed.

So enjoy a mini update and the first chapter of 2023.

Comments

[Shisarakage]

Ah, the camaraderie of brothers-in-arms. At least Lance has the right motivations for his chosen path of overloading his body.

[Black_Knight]

Yeah, trying to overdo it in physical exercise is never a good idea with how little you gain vs the damage you can cause to your body.

But the most vicious part of it, is you do it anyway when you finally find the motivation to actually do it.

[Emperor of Jurai]

Never a good idea to push too hard, if you injure yourself then the time you spend resting and healing will undo any progress you made and then some. Still Brick is a pretty cool bro.

[byayan]

It's good to see the other side of Ulquiorra is on the scene, the shadow guards, I hope it doesn't turn into something like "¡that thing is threatening our jobs!" type of situation.
Not that it would amount to anything.

[Fireeaters]

"His bicep is as thick as my head" "We must go to the gym this instant"

[Dirty Bit]

11472559 Very true.

[A Soul In Limbo]

Well this was delightfully goofy. X3